From the Ottawa Business Journal: "The expanding role of Internet search engines—call it 'Googlemania' —will be the top technology trend of 2006, according to Deloitte's annual survey of the technology, media and telecommunications industries...

"Deloitte says 2006 is likely to see...radio on the cusp of significant change, with the proliferation of podcasts, satellite radio and streaming audio over the Internet. Radio listeners will become customers, and will enjoy increasing control over what they listen to, how they listen to it (live or time-shifted playback), and on what device.

"Audience fragmentation will create a new range of opportunities for broadcasters and advertisers. New formats and platforms will enable advertisers to target their messages to specific audiences. Watch for embedded ads in console games, banner ads on mobile phones and audio ads interspersed in podcasts.

"The Deloitte study predicts convergence-based media such as IPTV and video-on-demand over broadband networks are likely to prosper. But it consigns mobile television to the technology dustbin, saying it 'may be the most obvious example of convergence failure in 2006.'"


Read the entire article at the Ottawa Business Journal.

BY DANIEL MCSWAIN with PAUL MALONEY
After the release of comScore Arbitron listener ratings for October, AOL Radio "looked into [the ratings], and we saw a big spike in our own internal reporting data," according to Deana Graffeo of AOL Corporate Communications.

In a conversation with RAIN about the notable upswing in AQH that AOL Radio experienced during the months of September and October, Graffeo said, "we began reporting listening through the AIM/Triton [instant messaging] service." The Triton AIM service originally launced in June, but Graffeo said that listening reporting through the service began in the middle of September.

Graffeo also noted that another cause for listenership increase came from the early October launch of the member radio service for the Mac client, although Graffeo proposes that the  listenership increase from the AIM/Triton launch was probably much more substantial than the Mac client launch.

AOL's growth in AQH by almost 70% in October marked a dramatic rise for the broadcaster, which led the way among Arbitron's surveyed webcasters, all of whom posted substantial increases for the same month.

Read RAIN's previous coverage of the October comScore Arbitron ratings here, and coverage on AOL's AQH growth here.

From Washington Post: "Music executives love to blame illegal downloading for their industry's woes. But, based on the results of a new nationwide poll, they might want to look in the mirror.

"Eighty percent of the respondents consider it stealing to download music for free without the copyright holder's permission, and 92% say they've never done it, according to the poll conducted for The Associated Press and Rolling Stone magazine. Meanwhile, three-quarters of music fans say compact discs are too expensive, and 58% say music in general is getting worse...

"A total of 618.9 million CD albums were sold during 2005, sharply down from the 762.8 million sold in 2001, according to Nielsen Soundscan. At the same time, 352.7 milliontracks  were sold digitally in 2005, a category that wasn't even measured five years ago...

"Even though millions of tracks are downloaded for free each week on peer-to-peer networks, a sense of queasiness remains... Many fans also say they just don't like what they're hearing... (T)he poll also found that 49% of music fans ages 18-to-34 — the target audience for the music business — say music is getting worse.

"Overall, music fans were split on why music sales have been declining for the past five years: 33% said it was because of illegal downloads, 29% said it was because of competition from other forms of entertainment, 21% blamed it on the quality of music getting worse and 13% said it was because CDs are too expensive.

"FM radio is still the main way most fans find out about new music, according to the poll. Television shows are a distant second."

Read the entire story at the Washington Post.