Streaming Music

Two years ago, Microsoft rebranded Xbox Music to Groove Music in efforts to make its music streaming service relevant to more consumers. Today, Microsoft announced that it is now giving up on Groove Music, and partnering with Spotify instead. The company has said that it will stop selling Groove Music passes soon. Any customers subscribed to the service...

Surpassing 4.6 billion streams across leading streaming platforms in just 6 months, Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” has officially become the most streamed song of all time. According to Universal Music, the number includes streams for both the original song and the accompanying remix featuring Justin Bieber, making Despacito the biggest hit of 2017 so far. Justin Bieber has...

According to a new report by ReCode, Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors is in talks with the music industry about creating its own streaming music service. Sources say that Tesla has had talks with all of the major labels about licensing a proprietary music service. “We believe it’s important to have an exceptional in-car experience so our customers can listen...

On Thursday, Spotify announced that it has reached a milestone of 50 million paid subscribers. With this announcement the music streaming company is keeping a strong lead over Apple, its main competitor in the market. Spotify has added an additional 10 million subscribers in just 5 months. Spotify didn't immediately say how many people are now...

According to a new year-end report by Nielsen (via Pitchfork), streaming music has became the primary mode of music consumption in the U.S. for the first time ever. In 2016, on-demand audio streams surpassed 251 billion in 2016, which marks a 76% increase and accounting for 38% of the entire music consumption market. There were more streams on an...

In an interview published on Thursday, Apple Music executives Jimmy Iovine and Larry Jackson adopted a defensive tone when talking about things like the fallout of a Frank Ocean deal. While talking to the New York Times about the Frank Ocean deal, Iovine said: "We had a deal —we were working with Frank Ocean, and he...

In an effort to compete with music streaming market leaders like Spotify and Apple Music, Google has today announced the launch of a new and improved Google Play Music service, that will recommend music for users based on the search engine's machine learning tools, including location, activity and the weather, offering a more personalized listening experience.  Google says that starting...

In an interview with Billboard, Apple Music executive Jimmy Iovine talked about the future of Apple Music, shared thoughts about his team, and discussed the importance of merging various technologies together. Iovine said that Apple is aiming to build a streaming music service that bridges technology with art and music creation. During the interview, he...

According to a draft report from the Recording Industry Association of America obtained by Bloomberg News, the music industry is finally making profits off streaming music, thanks to the growth of paid services like Apple Music and Spotify. The report highlights that retail spending on recorded music grew 8.1% to $3.4 billion in the first half of 2016, and...

Apple has built a new proposal to set fixed songwriting royalty rates for music streaming services. The government filing was created in collaboration with the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) and would set songwriting royalty rates at 9.1 cents per 100 streams. Although the change would simplify a complex royalty system, it would also increase the...

Sonos has today announced in an official blog post that it has let go of an undisclosed number of employees, and that it is planning to shift its focus within the music industry as it looks at two particular areas i.e. streaming music services and voice control. “We’re making a decision to substantially and confidently increase our...

The CEO of Rogers Communications says that his strategy in launching a partnership with streaming music service Spotify was all about encouraging wireless customers to use more mobile data. On Monday, Guy Laurence said that he didn’t even consider offering unlimited data usage for Spotify Premium (normally costs $10/month), which Rogers recently added as a...