MUSIC BUSINESS NEWS

Clear Channel Releases Beta Version Of New iHeartRadio   Clear Channel Radio last week announced the beta release of its new iHeartRadio digital music platform, incorporating 800 of the company's over-the-air and digital-only radio stations and user-created stations. Of course, the music service has been in existence for several years, but the new version features the ability for users to create their own personalized stations simply by entering an artist or song and letting a Pandora-like algorithm generate personalized digital music channels. According to a company statement, the new iHeartRadio is designed to provide listeners "more songs, better music intelligence, more user control, and deeper social media integration." Listeners now canaccess a catalog of more than 11 million songs and 400,000 artists, more than 10 times the number of songs offered by Pandora. "The New iHeartRadio will reinvent the digital radio experience by offering the innovative features that listeners want the most - live real radio plus the ability to create custom stations, all in one integrated service," Clear Channel's Chairman of Media and Entertainment Platforms Bob Pittman said. "We released the New iHeartRadio beta on Facebook so that our most passionate fans could be the first to experience the new product." [Full story: Business Wire] New iHeartRadio App Pits Clear Channel Against Pandora   Following up on its announcement of a new version of iHeartRadio last week, Clear Channel launched an iPhone application on Monday [Sept. 12], essentially positioning the digital music service directly against Pandora. According to company data, the iHeartRadio app has been downloaded 34 million times, but has long been overshadowed by Pandora, which Crain's New York Business says pioneered personalized digital stations with limited advertising. "We've got 10 times more songs than Pandora does," said Brian Lakamp, EVP of Clear Channel's digital division. "We've got more albums than Pandora has songs." Lakamp noted that advertising is expected to be introduced to the service in 2012, but insisted it will be "judiciously done and [designed] to maximize the user experience." So what was Pandora's take on the new, upgraded iHeartRadio? "Clear Channel's announcement is further evidence that we're at the tipping point in radio's transition from broadcast delivery to Internet delivery," Pandora founder Tim Westergren commented in a statement. [Full story: Crain's New York Business] Songza Launches Cloud-Based Music Playlist Platform   The virtual music cloud just cloudier with the launch of Songza, a digital service that allows users to create and share music playlists with one another. In fact, Songza is not entirely new; in a previous incarnation it was an online music platform that was acquired by Amie Street in 2008 [before Amie Street was bought by Amazon last year]. The "new" Songza allows users to create and upload their own playlists and access other users' playlists from Songza's cloud-based platform. As reported by VatorNews, the service is free with no listening limit, and users can listen from their mobile devices with Songza's iPhone or Android app. "We love Songza's unique approach to this market because it marries expert curation with the social graph to deliver users the right soundtrack at the right time for free," observed Timothy Komada, managing partner at Deep Fork Capital, one of the investors in the company. "Even the busiest music fan can have an excellent, personalized streaming music collection with Songza." Touted as a service with "playlists for anything," Songza features over 75,000 lists created by other users, music labels, music experts, artists, and celebrities. Over 14.5 million songs currently are circulating through the site. [Full story:VatorNews] Still Lacking Firm Model, Turntable.fm Lands $7 Million In Funding   "If 2010 was the year of social media, 2011 belongs to digital music." That's the word from Forbes, which this week reported on the launch of Turntable.fm and the $7 million in venture capital the start-up recently landed. The new funding was led by Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures with existing investors First Round Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, and First Round Capital. But that's just the institutional funding, as a number of other notable investors - Jimmy Fallon, the Roots, Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter, Madonna's manager Guy Oseary, former MySpace Music head Courtney Holt, and Facebook's former director of monetization Tim Kendall - also tossed in some cash. As Forbes observes, "the site still has a business model to figure out, legal questions to answer, and plenty of competition." In fact, co-founders Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein created Turntable out of the ashes of Stickybits, a creator of scannable bar codes that raised $1.6 million in VC funding; when that concept failed, they switched to social music. [Full story: Forbes] Automobiles To Become Digital Music Devices On Wheels   "Half of all radio listening is in the car [so] if you want to be a truly anytime, anywhere complete radio solution for someone, you have to have something for the car." That was Pandora founder Tim Westergren talking to the BBC at the Consumer Electronics Show late last week in Las Vegas, noting that "in the last couple of years that whole industry has woken up to the potential of personalized content in the car, which is becoming like a big rolling consumer electronic device. So the opportunity for us to get in there is extraordinary and right now we are chasing that hard." Fact is, both Pandora and satellite broadcaster Sirius XM have been working closely with car manufacturers in the U.S. for a number of years in order to get their services in front of the car-buying consumer. Meanwhile, Ford has been showcasing its new Sync system and potential integration with such online services as Pandora, Spotify, and Slacker, reinforcing just how important the automobile sector will be for subscription music services in the coming years. Additionally, in order to reach mass audiences, most streaming music services are looking to partner with Internet Service Providers [ISPs] and telcos in order to transform the automobile to a digital music device on wheels. [Full story: MusicWeek] "We're Finally Doing It": Bob Seger Joins iTunes   "We're finally doing it," rock musician Bob Seger announced this week. "We're going digital." One of the last digital music holdouts, Seger finally released two of his albums - Live Bullet [1976] and Nine Tonight [1981] - for sale on iTunes, along with Early Seger Volume 1, a collection of spruced-up tracks and previously unreleased songs from the early 1970s. "There's just so much of that stuff...I'd love people to finally hear it," he said. In the ten years since Apple launched iTunes, Seger was one of the most notable critics of digital music, part of a stubborn - but steadily shrinking -cast of characters that still includes AC/DC, Garth Brooks, and Kid Rock. "It's probably the best delivery system ever invented, but the industry gave up a lot of quality to have that system," Seger's longtime manager, Ed "Punch" Andrews, observed. "At some point, if this is what everybody is accepting, we know we have to keep current. But if we were going to do this, we needed to make sure it was as great as we could make it." Noting that Live Bullet and Nine Tonight underwent more than a year of remastering to ensure top sonic quality for the downloadable versions, Andrews said, "This wasn't about doing this quickly, but doing it right." [Full story:USA Today] Al Bell Presents American Soul Music  ... And American Soul TV If you're into classic and contemporary Soul, R&B, Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Hip-Hop Soul, Rap Soul, and Neo-Soul, we invite you to listen to Al Bell Presents American Soul Music. Former Stax Records owner and Motown President Al Bell personally has programmed this awesome radio station online, presenting your favorites from the 1960s and '70s [and some '80s], a lot of the best new music that's being released today, and some real gems you haven't heard in a long, long time. Come to www.AlBellPresents.Com and hear it for yourself!