Beginning later this month, Pandora becomes the exclusive streaming home for the uber-popular Serial podcast. And starting next year, Pandora adds Serial’s sister radio show/podcast This American Life (on what can only be a non-exclusive basis). I’ve been thinking about the consequence of this announcement, and here’s the best I can come up with: It’s good PR for Pandora in an otherwise quiet time It’s great news for Serial, which gets to add an all-new distribution partner w

If you aren’t the exclusive provider for something meaningful, you’re sunk. In April, I shared Bloomburg’s report that Apple Music’s strategy would be to secure new music exclusives from some of the industry’s hottest artists, and I wrote about how exclusives were set to power the next generation of online radio competition and, by association, all radio competition. Now there’s a report that this strategy is beginning to unfold, big time: Apple [has] started creating their o

Once it was enough just to stream whatever the music industry pumped out. The marketplace was littered with online radio alternatives large and small. This was fine when there was nothing but blue sky and everyone was land-grabbing to scale distribution as quickly as possible. But now the online radio ranker has winners and losers – stars and dogs. And nothing perpetuates stars like stardom. So how do the challengers disrupt the leaders? Apple has one answer. Apple is not typ

On the surface, retailer Target may not have a lot to do with your radio brand. But look closer, because the similarities are staggering. Like radio, Target has a wide array of items, together aimed at a broad-based, massive audience.  Like radio, Target is suffering from a million tiny cuts as Internet options eat into their business with lower pricing or greater selection (i.e., in the radio context, greater value).  Like radio, Target is a trusted brand that includes human