Streaming music service Pandora is launching a new radio station today that features songs from albums that aren’t available for sale yet.

The station, called Pandora Premieres, features a slew of unreleased music, interviews and other extra content from both established and emerging artists about a week before you can buy them via retail stores. You can listen to those songs as often as you’d like in any order, (so basically, its on-demand), and kicks off with music from John Fogerty and Laura Marling. The content itself receives a refresh once a week, in which case you’ll have to either buy the album to continue hearing those previously unreleased tracks or wait for them to get played on your custom smart radio stations.

The move marks an important step in Pandora’s attempt to become just as vital to the music industry as the traditional radio stations were decades earlier. I’m curious about whether Pandora is paying for its users to play these tracks, or if Pandora Premieres is primarily a promotional vehicle that music companies can pay for to help sell new albums. And given Pandora’s problems with generating enough revenue, I’m guessing they probably aren’t paying for on-demand licensing, which is far more expensive than the digital radio fees.

If Pandora is getting paid for what it plays on Pandora Premieres (at least in part) by the music industry, then it could prove to be an extremely smart move, too — and one that traditional radio has turned into a source of revenue. This is also something that Grooveshark is exploring with the launch of their new Grooveshark radio service that debuted last month.

Navigating to the new station reveals that Pandora is maximizing its advertising by pulling in a sole sponsor, as you can see from the screenshot above. Beyond that, Pandora’s Tim Westergren only had this to say about the new station in a company blog post:

“Pandora Premieres is also a new and unique vehicle for artists, both established and emerging, to reach and expand their audience. Seeing the impact of Pandora on the careers of working musicians continues to be one of the most gratifying parts of this experience.”

We’ve reached out to Pandora for clarification about its strategy for Pandora Premieres and will update this post with any new information we find out.

Over the last few months, Slacker Radio has made some big moves to step outside the shadow of rival smart radio service Pandora — and it’s doing so with some help from Pandora itself, according to Slacker Radio CEO Jim Cady.

“We’ve been able to monetize users with free accounts without placing limits on how many hours you can listen to radio content before getting capped,” said Cady in an interview with VentureBeat. He’s referring to the new restrictions Pandora implemented in late February, which limits users with free accounts to a 40-hour-a-month listening cap because the company’s copyright licensing costs are too high to maintain. It’s a curious move, as anyone who uses Pandora often enough to reach the listening cap is obviously a dedicated user, and normally, you’d want to keep such people happy so they wouldn’t venture to other competitors.

“There’s been record growth since February, and we’ve definitely seen an uptick in users around March,” Cady told me. “At a certain point, you just have to put two and two together and realize that Pandora users are leaving [for Slacker].”

Slacker provides free, ad-supported custom smart radio stations composed of over 13 million songs and talk radio programming. The company also offers two tiers of premium subscription services, which gives users ad-free listening, unlimited song skipping, access to ESPN and ABC News radio, and more for $4 or $10 per month. So basically, it’s a slightly altered streaming music service than Pandora.

But to be fair, Pandora’s listening cap isn’t the only thing that may have boosted Slacker’s growth. Slacker rolled out a massive overhaul back in February that completely revamped the music service’s user interface. Slacker got a new blue-and-off-white color scheme, clearer navigation, greater emphasis on album artwork, and a design that keeps both desktop and mobile versions looking similar. Since then, Slacker announced yesterday that it’s  added 6 million new listeners (3.5 million joining through mobile devices alone) and tripled the number of iOS app installs. It also added over 100,000 new paid subscribers since February.

“If you look at our growth, both in new users and iOS installs, we’re really focusing on improving the mobile experience because that’s where people are coming from,” Cady said. So clearly, the service’s recent overall made a big impact, too.

And as for overall usage, the company said its audience is listening to the service 25 percent longer since February. It didn’t, however, disclose the exact number of hours those listeners are spending per session or per week, which is important when gauging how it stacks up to rival music services. (For perspective, Pandora listeners spend about 20 hours per week on the service.)

But Slacker Radio might not even need to beat its main rival on obtaining more listeners or higher listener hours. Over the past several months, Pandora has stated that music licensing costs are cannibalizing its capability to turn a profit and grow the business long-term. If Slacker can continue monetizing its free audience without adding listening hour caps (despite those same expensive music licensing costs), it may have a big advantage.

Cady said the company is able to avoid listening hour restrictions through continued paid subscriber growth and through big partnerships with automobile makers and wireless carriers that the company plans to announce later in the year. He decline to specify who those partnerships would be because the operational details are still being fleshed out.

“That’s when we’ll really see some growth in our paid subscriptions,” he said of the partnerships. That said, there’s still plenty of competition among streaming music services, which is likely to heat up going forward. Apple, Google, and Amazon are all rumored to roll out their own smart radio music services, and startups like Beats Audio’s Daisy music service (with rock legend Trent Reznor as its creative lead) are plotting a big splash in late 2013. I’m also curious to see what Microsoft has under its sleeve later this month as it unveils a next-gen Xbox, which already has its own Xbox Music-branded streaming service.

Photo via Slacker Radio

Streaming music service Spotify has added another million paying subscribers in the past few months, bringing its total number of paying users to 6 million — far more than any competitor.

Spotify announced that it had 5 million paid users back at an event in December, so it’s a bit of a surprise to have added another million paying users so quickly. It’s a good sign for a company that has a serious sustainability problem — Spotify hasn’t yet become profitable because it pays too much to music royalties (reportedly 35 cents paid per 100 songs streamed). It also doesn’t make up the cash it loses for offering free streaming to more than 15 million people, a move designed to introduce people Spotify and get them to subscribe.

While other unlimited streaming services are out there, such as Rdio and Rhapsody, neither have come close to collecting Spotify’s numbers. Rhapsody has more than a million paid users in the United States, while Rdio has never released its number of free or paid users.

Rumors point to Apple and Beats launching streaming services soon, but it is unclear when they will launch and what each service will offer. Apple is apparently leaning toward a Pandora-like streaming radio approach, while Beats’ “Daisy” service will likely be more like Spotify’s all-you-can-listen-for-one-fee service.

Top photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Streaming music service Rdio has made its service available in seven new countries — Mexico, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria — and has opened up free music streaming to users in Brazil.

Rdio has had trouble collecting new listeners compared to competitors Spotify and Rhapsody, and so it has been expanding its service all over the world to find more people to jam out to its 18 million song catalog. In late January, it opened up a free music streaming option to the U.K., Canada, Australia, and 11 other countries to get more people on board. Rdio is now available in 24 countries, some with free streaming and others only by paid subscription.

“Rdio is the best product on the market for discovering music, and we will continue to improve that discovery experience by developing smarter tools to surface artists and songs our users love,” Rdio CEO Drew Larner said in a statement. “By opening the social circle to seven new international markets, we’re making Rdio an increasingly global way to play, discover, and share music.”

By comparison, Spotify is available in 23 countries with free and paid options and has more than 5 million paid users. Rhapsody is only available in the United States, but it has accumulated more than one million paid users and will finally launch in Europe this year. Rdio has never released its paid user numbers, but it is widely suspected to be less than one million.

Rdio’s free music streaming is not unlimited, and you eventually get cut off and need to pay. Rdio in the U.S. costs $5 a month for web streaming, $10 a month for web and mobile apps, and $17 a month for family pricing. Pricing in other countries varies.

Additionally, Rdio also used today to launch a minor update to its iOS app. The new version of the app features a full-screen player and “social listening” so you can see which of your friends have listened to what albums.

Beats Electronics has secured a $60 million investment to spin off its forthcoming streaming music service Daisy into a separate entity, the company announced today.

The music service itself  is the first attempt by former Nine Inch Nails rocker Trent Reznor, along with Beat Electronics,  to reinvent the streaming music marketplace, which Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and a few others dominate. Daisy was first announced back in December 2012, and has since added former Topspin head Ian Rogers as its CEO.

Right now we don’t know a lot about what the service will look like. However, if Beats CEO Jimmy Iovine’s recent comments are any indication, it seems like a sure bet that Daisy will lean towards curated playlists rather than an on-demand music library or algorithm-based smart radio stations.

Daisy may also be in discussions with tech giant Apple to pair the streaming service with iTunes, according to a Reuters report that cites anonymous sources familiar with the matter. If true, the $60 million investment makes much more sense, as Apple already has a strong grip over worldwide music sales as well as the music industry itself.

The new investment was led by Access Industries, Marc Rowan, James Packer, and others. The fresh capital will allow Daisy to become an independent company, which will launch its music service in late 2013.

We’ve pasted the full press release below:

Beats Electronics, LLC (Beats), the leading audio brand co-founded by legendary artist and producer Dr. Dre and Interscope Geffen A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine, has secured a $60 million investment led by Access Industries (the industrial group founded by Len Blavatnik), Marc Rowan, James Packer and entities affiliated with Lee M. Bass for a new music service powered by Beats, internally dubbed “Daisy”. With this new capital, “Daisy” has become a stand-alone company and is set for launch in late 2013.

“Beats was always about helping people re-discover the magic in the experience of listening to music,” said Iovine. “ Now that we are well along the way to addressing the quality of audio playback with Beats headphones and speakers, Daisy allows us to re-introduce the same magic into the process of music discovery and consumption”.

This investment group brings significant expertise in music and subscription business, complimenting and extending the advantages already bestowed upon “Daisy” from its close relationship with and initial investment from Beats.

“Beats has the vision, the brand, the management team and now the investor group to effectively change the expectations and experiences of a music subscription service,” said Len Blavatnik. “I’m looking forward to taking on this exciting challenge together.”

Earlier this year Beats announced former Topspin head Ian Rogers will be Chief Executive Officer of “Daisy” and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor will serve as the music service’s Chief Creative Officer. In 2012 the company also purchased digital music service MOG, which will provide the foundation platform for “Daisy”.

Investment Bank Moelis & Company acted as the exclusive financial advisor and placement agent for this raise.

Slacker Radio rolled out a pretty drastic makeover today aimed at making its streaming music service seem fresh in the face of heavy competition from the likes of Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and others.

Despite offering a combination of music, news programming, and OnDemand tracks, Slacker has always lagged behind those competitors (Spotify, Pandora, and XM Radio) in terms of both paying customers and listeners. (Spotify has over 5 million paying subscribers to Slacker’s 500,000.) Slacker Radio currently has a larger library of music than Pandora, news/sports/talk stations from ABC and ESPN, and over 200 curated smart radio stations.

But being a more complete streaming music service may have contributed to Slacker’s obscurity. People like simple, straightforward services that perform a few tasks and then build on those tasks. Slacker’s new design zeros in on this logic, offering a much cleaner user interface that strips out a lot of the clutter found in the previous version.

Gone is the heavy black and gold interface, which has been replaced with mostly whites, grays, and lots of light blue. The U.I. also seems to keep a forward approach in terms of how it could translate to mobile devices, which is a big area of growth for streaming music services. However, Slacker’s new interface will also appear on native apps for Android, iOS, and Xbox Live.

Admittedly, I haven’t spent much time using Slacker’s service, but the revamped interface does make me want to give it a second chance. Check out some screenshots of the new site below.

Strapped for cash and fighting for relevance, the relaunched Myspace already has enough problems. But it looks like the company and its music-focused revamp have another, potentially bigger issue: credibility.

The site recently came under fire from digital rights management group Merlin because Myspace is allegedly using many of the songs without permission, as VentureBeat previously reported. Merlin negotiates digital music contracts with thousands of indie labels around the world, and it boasts a library of about 3 million tracks, including those by Ani Difranco, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Wilco, and several others. (See a longer list pasted below.)

“This is not bedroom artists hoping to get their music onto the Internet. Merlin’s [song library] is real, commercially significant [music] that’s playing on other services in a way that’s equivalent to the major labels,” Merlin CEO Charles Caldas said in an interview with VentureBeat yesterday. He added that, at one point, music from Merlin’s record label clients accounted for about 10 percent of Spotify’s total business — meaning it’s definitely a crop of songs that people want to listen via a streaming music service.

So, how is Myspace able to use music it doesn’t have permissions for? Well, the music-minded social network permits its users to upload their own songs to the service, essentially allowing them to promote their work to a broader audience that otherwise would only receive attention if it signed a contract with a record label.

This is both Myspace’s most valuable and deadly feature, as many of its users have created dummy accounts to upload their favorite artists’ music. Searching the site for Arcade Fire brings up over a dozen results for artists claiming to be Arcade Fire — including one that sports “ArcadeFireOfficial” in its customized URL.

None of them are the band’s official Myspace page, and what’s more, Myspace doesn’t have rights to publish Arcade Fire’s music, Caldas said.

“The disappointing thing [about Myspace] is that you have a service that’s come in supposedly geared toward enabling and empowering music artists, and its first act is to offer a whole range of songs without the permission of those artists,” Caldas told me.

Having investigated what a standard Myspace artist page is, I find it pretty hard to tell the difference between an illegitimate account and an official page. Artist pages all look professional, and Myspace doesn’t give out a stamp that verifies official artists’ pages.

Myspace declined to comment to VentureBeat about its dealings with Merlin, but the company did previously confirm that its users were responsible for any music from Merlin’s library that appears on the site.  Likewise, Myspace’s new terms of service indicates that users are ultimately responsible for what they upload, and that the company will remove any content that it does not have permission to use in accordance with DMCA rules.

YouTube also ran into trouble years ago because of its users illegally uploading videos that contained copyrighted tracks. However, unlike YouTube, Myspace doesn’t have a ridiculously large user base that makes it difficult to filter out songs that the site doesn’t have permission to use. Each artist listed below has less than 15 “dummy” Myspace artist accounts.

“Frankly, I’m not going to spend hours trolling a site trying to find my music,” Caldas said.

Caldas said Merlin previously ran into difficulty with the first iteration of Myspace music after its contract with the site expired in 2011. Merlin has been in continuous negotiations for a new contract with Myspace, but the two parties have yet to reach any sort of agreement, he said.

The conflict over song permissions is something that could prove disastrous to the young music-focused Myspace, according to some critics.

“At this stage in Myspace’s renaissance, it is necessary the company ‘cover its bases’ to avoid negative press or legal issues, which could influence usership and revenues. Even this seemingly minor oversight could be a reputation issue for the company,” said Kenneth Wisnefski, the founder of online marketing firm WebiMax. “The buzz surrounding the network’s return to prevalence could easily be subdued by such negative press and the music-themed site should attempt to renew its license with Merlin as to not limit its extensive track offerings while still adhering to licensing regulations.”

While the attention over music permissions may work in Merlin’s advantage (meaning Myspace is forced to sign a new contract because users want Merlin’s library of music), it doesn’t discount the fact that Myspace is facing a serious problem that could hurt the service overall. The last thing the site needs is people questioning how much of its 50 million song library is actually worth listening to. This is especially true for new users, who may load up their Myspace music queue with tons of tracks from Merlin’s library, only to find out days later that those same tracks are gone thanks to DMCA requests.

At the same time, Myspace could be declining to reach a new contract with Merlin — as well as other smaller record labels — because it simply doesn’t have the money to pay for it. Back in November, it was revealed that the company was seeking a $50 million round of funding to become a true Spotify competitor.

Whatever the case may be, Myspace needs to address these licensing issues quickly, before it develops a bad reputation with the kinds of artists and users it hopes to cultivate in the future.

Artists Myspace technically can’t play on its site:

Amon Tobin
Ani Difranco
Animal Collective
Arctic Monkeys
Arcade Fire
Bad Religion
Billy Bragg
Boards of Canada
Bob Sinclair
Bon Iver
Chuck Prophet
Dan Zanes
DJ Khaled
Grizzly Bear
First Aid Kit
Hercules and Love Affair
Jim Jones
Josh Rouse
Kid Koala
Marilyn Manson
Prodigy
Sharon van Etten
She & Him
Sonny Landreth
Space Cadets
The National
The XX
Tom Waits
Vampire Weekend
Wilco

Iconic music man Trent Reznor’s new Beats By Dre-backed streaming music service should launch sometime late this year.

The music service, which has the girlie-sounding name Daisy, is the first attempt by Reznor to reinvent the streaming music marketplace, which Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, and a few others dominate. Reznor has a good track record when it comes to bucking the tradition music industry’s business model, having successfully sold and distributed Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV without the help of a major record label in 2008. The musician first unofficially announced that he was partnering with Beats on the new music service back in October, as VentureBeat previously reported.

While we know relatively little information about how Daisy should differ from other streaming services, Beats did provide some insight into the partnership itself in today’s announcement. Notably, Reznor is Daisy’s chief creative officer, while former Topspin head Ian Rogers is the CEO. Rogers is taking over leadership responsibilities for MOG, which Beats acquired back in July.

As for what we can expect from the new music service, Rogers offered up the following explanation for how Daisy will differ from what’s already available:

While I use and love many music services today (mostly MOG, Songza, and Pandora in my personal life), the music experience and interface hasn’t evolved all that much. In many ways it seems like we’ve spent the last fifteen years answering the basic question of “how do we make the music available” (the question Napster answered in 1999) and not “how do we find the music we love? the music we want to listen to right now?”

Rogers said he’ll continue working with the music artist promotion service Topspin under the new role of executive chairman. Beats is presumably fine with the Daisy CEO devoting some of his time to Topspin, as the company recently made a majority stake in the startup, according to Rogers.

Via The Verge

Pandora announced a new agreement today that will put its streaming music service into automobile maker Chrysler’s line of vehicles, it announced today at the 2012 Consumer Electronic Show.

While Pandora usually gives a lot of attention to expanding its profile on mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets), it’s trying to enter your car, as VentureBeat reported nearly a year ago. That makes perfect sense for two main reasons: Regular AM/FM “free” radio isn’t that great anymore, and playing music in your car goes together like chocolate and peanut butter.

The deal with Chrysler is one of over a 1,000 partnerships Pandora has made to make its service available on other platforms. Pandora already has agreements with the top 19 automotive brands in the U.S, and its music service is now available in 85 different vehicle models and through 175 automotive aftermarket devices (aka stereo systems installed after the car was purchased.)

We’ve listed some other usage statistics Pandora released below:

• Listener hours for Pandora during the month of December 2012 were 1.39 billion, an increase of 54 percent from 906 million during the same period last year.
• Share of total U.S. radio listening for Pandora in December 2012 was 7.19 percent, an increase from 4.71 percent during the same period last year.
• Active listeners were 67.1 million at the end of December 2012, an increase of 41 period from 47.6 million during the same period last year.
• Pandora is now available on over 85 vehicle models, 175 automotive aftermarket devices and 760 consumer electronic devices.

NEW YORK CITY — Popular streaming music service Spotify announced that it has reached the 5 million paid subscriber milestone, with 1 million paid users in the U.S., the company said today at a private event. It also said a web-based player would arrive early next year.

Spotify pulled out all the stops to celebrate its progress at a classy event at New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet on the west side of Manhattan. On top of a smoke machine, the company had nine different large screens flashing different images of musicians and concerts.

“We’re punks because we’re restless and we tell it like it really is,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said on stage. Ek said unlike other disruptors, Ek said he didn’t want to “kill” what came before, but to reshape it for the better, speaking of the music industry.

Ek said Spotify has 20 million total active users and more than 1 billion playlists. The one million paid users in the U.S. matches Rhapsody’s subscriber count. With the subscriber numbers in mind, Ek said if Spotify was not the largest, it was at least the fastest growing music service in the U.S.

On the contentious topic of royalty payments, Ek said Spotify has paid out “half a billion dollars in royalties” to artists and labels.

Ek also used the event to show off the features of the new Spotify web-based player. The player lets you browse through similar artists to one you like all on the same page. You can click the image of different artists and songs will start playing. Ek said the player’s” Discover” page is personalized so everyone’s page looks different and recommends different artists to check out. “If you really like metal, you’ll have a metal page,” Ek said.

The new web player will also include the ability to “follow” influential people, which will also help with discoverability. Ek followed Pres. Barack Obama’s account on stage as an example.

He also followed Bruno Mars as an example of following an artist’s music picks. This way you can listen to what your favorite artist is listening to while he or she is writing a new record, Ek said. Other people you can follow, for example, include Justin Bieber and Paul McCartney.

The event was capped with a performance by Grammy-nominated artist Frank Ocean. He performed the song “Pyramids.”

Streaming music service Rdio launched a brand new version of its iOS app today that features a drastically revamped, much prettier user interface.

The new version comes as rival service Spotify is tiptoeing into Rdio’s territory with a new web player. Rdio already rolled out a revamped version of its web player back in May. And it apparently feels the need to polish its mobile applications to keep users happily listening to music rather than abandoning ship for another service.

The new iOS app design borrows quite a bit from the web player design. The old grid-like navigation has been replaced with a new sidebar that’s similar to the website, a paradigm increasingly common among iOS apps in general (YouTube, Facebook, etc.). Users can quickly see a list of popular songs/albums, their own playlists, friend activity, and listening history. The new design also focuses much more on album artwork than in previous version. The interface also places much more emphasis on syncing songs/playlists for offline listening.

Overall, the iOS app is quick and easy to navigate.

Rdio, which has more than 18 million tracks in its library, does give listeners a limited amount of free use, but to gain access to the iOS app and unlimited music streaming you’ll need to sign up for a $10-per-month premium account.

The app is available to download for free via the iTunes store. Check out some screenshots of Rdio 2.0 embedded below.

Rumors about a fresh round of funding for streaming music service Spotify resurfaced today, according to a Wall Street Journal report that cites anonymous sources familiar with the deal.

The report claims Spotify is close to closing over $100 million, which could put the startup’s valuation at about $3 billion. The round comes from multiple investors, including Goldman Sachs. The funding amount is considerably less (up to $220 million at a $4 billion valuation) than it was in previous rumors of the round back in May.

The music service has experienced massive growth ever since its initial launch in the U.S. last year. Shortly after, it hooked up with social media behemoth Facebook to be one of the first Timeline launch partners. The service currently has 15 million active users across 15 countries and over 4 million paying subscribers.

Founder Daniel Ek has previously hinted that Spotify could generate as much as $900 million in revenue this year. That’s certainly impressive, but as VentureBeat has previously noted, Spotify’s business model isn’t bulletproof. Critics cite the company’s extremely high music licensing costs as one reason it may not succeed in the future, while warning that it’s overly dependent on major music companies. Also, indie music labels aren’t happy with Spotify’s payment structure and have even removed their music from the service entirely.

My guess is that the alleged new funding has something to do with the company wanting to protect itself from heightened competition — not from rival music services like Pandora, Rdio, MOG, and Rhapsody but from the likes of Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft recently announced plans to launch a streaming service through its Xbox Live platform, which is very similar to Spotify in both pricing and scope. And rumors say Apple will soon throw its hat into the ring with an Apple-branded Internet Radio service, which has provoked lots of fear from both Pandora and Sirius XM shareholders.

Founded in 2009, Stockholm, Sweden-based Spotify has raised a total of $189 million to date from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, DST Global, Sean Parker, and others.