Want a free front-and-center ticket to hivio 2016, the audio future festival? Here’s how to get one. Click the image below and enter your name and email. The more you tell friends and acquaintances about hivio, the better your chances to lock in your free seat! But act fast, the contest ends in ONE WEEK. Just who will you be rubbing shoulders with? In random order… Anya Grundmann, NPR’s VP Programming & Audience Development. Ian Grace, CEO of Virgin Radio International Jesse

Memo to music labels: The “value” of music is defined by consumers, fans, and listeners, not by you and your minions. From Billboard: A renewed focus on the value of music comes as a transition point for the record business. Rob Wells, Universal Music Group’s president of digital who brokered deals with “freemium” services like Spotify, left the company in late February. Now the company is rethinking the value of unlimited free streaming, according to a label source. At the s

Remember when some broadcasters dismissed online radio, arguing it would never catch on because the data plan caps would keep a lid on demand and discourage ongoing use of the platforms? Well, I and others long ago revealed the flaws in that argument based strictly on the relatively thin data requirements of audio streams (especially when compared to the real data hog: Video). But now comes a new statement from underdog mobile provider T-Mobile: Stream all the music you want

“When it comes to mobile devices, we need to remind listeners that radio is FREE – that its use does not sap so much precious battery energy and even more precious data plan bandwidth.” So argue the folks I call the “freeks.” These are the well intentioned folks in the radio industry who believe that listeners do not have their own best interests at heart. That listeners are, as a group, a bit dull-minded. Thus, listeners must be marketed at and advertised to in order to conv

It’s yours for the taking! Just visit the Mark Ramsey Media Facebook page.  If you don’t already “Like” the page, just follow the instructions on the landing page. If you DO already “Like” the page, then follow the instructions here. I regularly update this page with nuggets from across the mediaverse that are relevant to your future viewed through my own particular lens.  I also frequently post content days or weeks before it appears here in the blog. I also want to make a s

I didn’t even know it had a headache. But so says WIRED magazine in its September cover story. Here’s the heart of their argument: Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t r