Pandora Is Buying A Radio Station In South Dakota, Here’s Why

We know from previous industry experience that buying and selling radio stations is a long drawn out process. However, Pandora has picked a very opportune time to announce that they’re buying a terrestrial radio station in South Dakota.

This news comes fresh off the heels of the announcement from Apple about iTunes Radio. One of the things that was touted during and after the WWDC keynote on Monday was the fact that Apple has negotiated some great licensing rates with the major record labels. Licensing is one of the things that’s been plaguing Pandora and making it an extremely tough market for them.

We’ve learned from multiple sources, including radio industry trade site allaccess.com that Pandora is in the process of buying HOT AC, Hits 102.7 KXMZ in Elder-Rapid City South Dakota from Connoisseur Media.

The executives at Pandora didn’t just up and decide to buy a “real” broadcast radio station for fun, or to see how it was done in the “old days”, rather this is a very strategic business move for the internet radio giant. Pandora is purchasing the radio station so that they can get lower licensing rates, the rates that terrestrial broadcast stations get, for streaming. It’s these lower rates that make it possible for Clear Channel Media and Entertainment to offer so much with their iHeartRadio platform.

San Antonio based Clear Channel owns over 500 stations nationwide and broadcasts most of them via their iHearRadio app. Pandora’s General Counsel, Christopher Harrison, took to an op-ed piece in The Hill to explain their move and how they are treated unfairly, specifically in regard to iHeartRadio.

Pandora has filed a motion in it’s legal proceedings against ASCAP alleging “discriminatory treatment of PANDORA and other Internet radio companies by ASCAP and their publishing industry members”

The radio station that Pandora purchased currently plays a Hot Adult Contemporary (Hot AC) format which is a mix of top 40 hits and familiar favorites. It’s unclear what direction Pandora will take with the format of the station, but one industry executive we spoke to suggested that Pandora will have to play a “we play everything” format in order to take full advantage of the loophole they’ve climbed through with the purchase of the radio station.

It’s also unclear as to whether or not Pandora will purchase more traditional radio stations. Harrison said in regards to the purchase: “This acquisition allows us to qualify for the same RMLC license under the same terms as our competitors,” adds HARRISON. “While this might seem like an unexpected move for PANDORA, it makes sense even beyond the licensing parity. PANDORA excels in personalizing discovery and terrestrial radio is experienced in integrating with a local community. We look forward to broadcasting our personalized experience to the community in RAPID CITY, an area where over 42,000 residents already use PANDORA. And we will apply PANDORA’s insights about listening habits to program music that accurately reflects local listeners’ evolving tastes.”

So is this move in response to iTunes Radio?

image: hitz1027.com

Is iTunes Radio The Pandora Killer?

Almost a month ago, Google held their annual developer’s conference known as Google IO. At the conference over 5000 Google developers across all of their platforms gathered at the Moscone Center in San Francisco for three and a half days of pure Google.

In that same venue, more than 5000 Apple developers, across all of their platforms, are gathered this week for the World Wide Developer’s Conference (WWDC).

Last month Google unveiled a new product called “Google Play All Access”. During the ceremonious unveiling, Google touted all kinds of features that positioned the part-radio, part-streaming music, part-cloud library, customizable music platform as a Spotify killer. Unfortunately, since the unveiling we haven’t heard much else about it. For all intents and purposes Google’s new music service has gone the way of Google Music, which is far from Apple’s stranglehold on library functionality and Spotify’s streaming offerings.

Today, during the WWDC Apple announced iTunes Radio. This was one of the longest rumored announcements for this year’s conference, which is being held more 200 days since Apple’s last announcement..

iTunes Radio will give users a variety of ways to get “radio like” streaming services via iTunes. Without any customization an iTunes user will be able to use iTunes Radio to hear radio stations generated by algorithms based on what’s already in the users iTunes library. Apple has also curated several stations based on genre, very similar to Pandora.

The service will be ad-supported and free to any iTunes user. Those users who pay for iTunes backup service iTunes Match will get to use iTunes Radio without ads.

Apple plans to make money by selling the streaming tracks at regular iTunes store prices. When you’re listening to an iTunes radio track, a purchase button will come up that will enable a friction-less download of the song that you are listening to.

Apple has some advantages over Pandora, Slacker, and even Spotify because they already have 600 million devices on the market, which means 600 million iTunes users. They’ve also already negotiated their own licenses with most of the major labels. Billboard Magazine reports that Apple will pay $.16 cents per stream in addition to a portion of the advertising revenue. However, payments won’t begin until Apple reaches a pre-established threshold of users on the iTunes Radio service.

Will iTunes Radio bring the music streaming crowd back to Apple? U.S. residents will be the first to test it out.

Images: VB

Apple is throwing a curve ball to would be iPhone thieves.

Israeli Startup: Jinni Is Powering Big National Sites With Pandora Like Movie Engine

You may not have heard of Yosi Glick, the founder of Israeli startup Jinni, but one things for sure you will probably agree with his fundamental principles behind video discovery.

Glick talks in this story with Bloombgerg’s Cliff Edwards about how most video (movie) discovery/recommendation sites have things all wrong. Edwards uses the example of the movie The Usual Suspects. When you watch The Usual Suspects on most video platforms it’s going to recommend Se7en. While both could be characterized as crime thrillers, the audience for Usual Suspects is hardly the audience for Se7en.

Glick’s startup Jinni has put a lot more into discovery when it comes to movies. They provide in-depth algorithms and matching, making it more like a Pandora for movies. Jinni has created an “entertainment genome” that weighs thousands of different parameters to serve up like minded suggestions for movie viewers.

In addition to offering a much more thorough recommendation engine for movie viewers, LG Electronics invested $5 million into Jinni for voice recognition software. The voice recognition software taps into the platform where a user could say “I want to watch a Harrison Ford action movie” and it would serve up Indiana Jones or Star Wars.

LG and Jinni are mum on whether the technology has gone into this next round of smart tvs that the Korean manufacturer is putting out.

They must be doing something right because some of the top companies in the world have employed Jinni’s technology. Best Buy’s movie rental site uses Jinni and Microsoft entered into a deal last September to incorporate Jinni’s software into the Xbox 360 service.

Linkage:

Put Jinni to your own test here at their website

Source: Bloomberg

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Miami Startup: Senzari Raises $1 Million Dollars For Global Expansion

Miami music startup Senzari has just raised $1 million dollars for global expansion.

Leading the round was Dave McClure’s 500 startups. Other investors from both Miami and Silicon Valley also participated in the round for this unique global music service.

Move over Pandora, Senzari has over 11 million songs (compared to Pandora’s 900,000) and the best part is that it is available outside of the United States. The service is available in the United States as well as Spain (in a partnership with MTV) and Brazil (in a partnership with VH1).

Aside from it’s gigantic catalog of songs Senzari separates itself form other on demand listening services like Pandora, Spotify and Slacker Radio by partnering with music distributors instead of the record labels directly. Some of their partners include SoundExchange, and publishing companies ASCAP, BMI, and SEASAC.

“We are excited about joining the 500 family as it allows us to leverage its impressive mentor network and global relationships,” says Senzari COO Demian Bellumio to techcrunch.com. “As a matter of fact, we created a special section in Senzari with radios for each of the stops of the tour with music that represent current and classic hits.”

Senzari also offers a proximity based service called “Around Me” that allows users to use social media data to find songs that people in close proximity to them are listening to, very similar to Berlin startup wahwah.com

Linkage:

Check out Senzari for yourself here

Source: TechCrunch

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