SiriusXM

There's so much news to cover today! We wanted to make it quick and easy for you to catch up with some of the great coverage from our colleagues, so here are some important news items in brief:

-- Yahoo, Spotify team up: Yahoo and Spotify have announced a global deal, that will have the leading on-demand music service replacing Rhapsody as Yahoo's music partner, and is perhaps the net portal's biggest music move since it shuttered its own on-demand service Yahoo Music Unlimited in 2008. Read more in the Los Angeles Times here and TechCrunch here.

-- TuneIn, Adam Carolla partner: Streaming aggregator and tuning service TuneIn and Carolla Digital have partnered to make the latter's shows (The Adam Carolla Show, ACE On The House, This Week With Larry Miller, Penn's Sunday School with Penn Jillette, and more) available on the TuneIn service. Read the press release here.

-- Slacker, ABC Radio launch lifestyle stations: Webcaster Slacker Radio and ABC Radio have launched "Men's Life" and "Women's Life," gender-targeted online talk radio stations. Read more in PCMag here.

-- Howard on Google TV: Reuters reports SiriusXM will make all of its programming available on Google TV, including Howard Stern's shows, plus live sports. A new app will allow listeners to pause live content and play back up to five hours. Google's I/O developer conference starts today in San Francisco. Read more here.

-- Radio One and a former employee battle over website, Facebook URL: Read Tom Taylor for more on the new "Streetz 94.5" in Atlanta, launched by former Radio One programmer Steve Hegwood, and the battle over the Streets94.5.com and www.facebook.com/Streetz 94.5. Taylor on Radio-Info coverage is here.

-- Leykis, Lionel on Talk Radio online: At the 2012 Talkers New Media Seminar, talk radio legend Tom Leykis appeared with LionelMedia's Lionel on a panel to talk streaming and podcasting strategy. Watch video (by Art Vuolo) from Talkers.com here.

-- ASCAP, BMI, SoundExchange obsolete, says economist: Stanford economist Roger Noll, at the recent recently asked a group of attorneys at a recent American Antitrust Institute conference, suggests we now have the information technology which has "eliminated the reason for (royalty-collection organizations) existing in the first place. Digital Music News reports here.

SoundExchange today announced it has made $1 billion in royalty distributions to copyright owners since its inception in 2000 (read the press release here). What's more, this year SoundExchnage's quarterly payments have topped $100 million.

Today's New York Times suggests the story is good news for the organization, which "has been criticized for being slow to pay everyone who is owed royalties. At the end of 2010, the last date for which audited accounts are available, SoundExchange was holding $132 million..." for performers it couldn't reach and performances that couldn't be accounted for.

The paper also suggests SoundExchange is now challenged by "direct deals" between major content licensees like SiriusXM (which is suing SoundExchange for allegedly interfering in such deals) and Clear Channel (with its well-publicized Big Machine Records deal) and copyright owners.

Read more in The New York Times here. Also, SoundExchange's 2011 annual report is here. 

SoundExchange is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit brought against it and A2IM (American Association of Independent Music) by SiriusXM in March. SiriusXM contends that the music industry organizations interferred with its attempts to secure direct licenses with rightsholders.

In SoundExchange's court documents filed yesterday, the royalty collection agency accuses SiriusXM of trying to use the courts to influence royalty negotiations. SoundExchange also argues that SiriusXM's failure to obtain direct licenses doesn't imply a "conspiracy."

You can find previous RAIN coverage of the SiriusXM lawsuit here, here and here.

Seeking Alpha has more coverage on SoundExchange's dismissal request here.

"At a time when more and more content is available and consumers continue to be time-constrained, there are still only 24 hours in a day. We believe curated content... is more important than ever and will be even more important in the future as even more content becomes available especially on the Internet."

So said SiriusXM CEO Mel Karmazin recently. The quote got Digital Music News thinking, as it looked at web music services and their approaches as to music library size vs. curation.

"Others are buying that philosophy [of the importance of curation]," writes DMN, pointing primarily to Pandora. The webcaster has a music library of "just" 900,000 tracks from 90,000 artists -- "a number that has remained flat over the past few years."

On the other side of the table, there's the likes of Spotify, with millions of tracks in their libraries but relatively little curation. But Spotify's "fantasies involve curating apps," writes DMN, "not just endless spreadsheets of music."

Indeed, as RAIN has reported (here and here), Spotify and its on-demand competitor Rdio are both developing some sort of Pandora-like Internet radio service. It's not hard to see why. DMN points out that SiriusXM has 22.3 million subscribers ("roughly seven times the global subscriber base of Spotify"), while Pandora just announced they attracted more than 51 million active listeners in April 2012.

"As much as the Spotify OS needs a massive and comprehensive catalog to make this work, the future may belong to those who effectively deliver less," concludes DMN (here).

For those keeping score at home, there are now at least four major music companies looking to emulate Pandora-like personalized Internet radio. The latest addition is SiriusXM. Though the satellite radio company has for years now been hinting at some kind of "personalization" features (RAIN coverage from November 2010 here), details were nowhere to be found. Until now.

CEO Mel Karmazin said during SiriusXM's earnings call that, "Late this year, we plan to debut a SiriusXM version of personalized music online, allowing subscribers to tailor their favorite SiriusXM music channels to their tastes."

The web radio stations will be available to SiriusXM's Internet radio subscribers. And they will of course be commercial-free.

"Free and freemium competitors online will have a tough time matching the commercial-free aspect of SiriusXM-branded music combined with the unique sports and talk content we offer," argued Karmazin. Clear Channel's own personalized radio service is commercial-free, while Pandora and others offer to remove commercials for paying users.

"Make no mistake, SiriusXM is targeting the likes of Pandora and Spotify," writes Billboard. "SiriusXM's entry into personalized Internet radio shows this is a very competitive space." In just the past few weeks, its bee reported that Spotify, Rdio and Turntable.fm are also developing Pandora-like Internet radio services (RAIN coverage here, here and here).

Karmazin also took the opportunity to attack streaming radio royalty rates, which he says are "extraordinarily high." And Billboard writes (here) we can expect SiriusXM "to become even more vocal about the webcasting royalties paid by services such as Pandora and iHeartRadio."

SiriusXM is already unhappy with its current royalty rates. The company has been trying to secure direct licenses with rightsholders, thereby avoid SoundExchange and the statutory license (RAIN coverage here). Then SiriusXM sued SoundExchange and A2IM for allegedly interfering with its attempts to obtain those direct licenses (RAIN coverage here and here).

Finally, SiriusXM recently updated its Android app to include more interactive features. The upgrade allows mobile users to replay up to 5 hours of content, start songs and shows from the beginning, skip ahead and access SiriusXM's new 2.0 channel line-up. You can find out more here.

Last week we wrote about new calculations from Live365 general counsel Angus MacDonald, which found that 90% of SoundExchange's 2011 revenue came from just SiriusXM and Pandora (RAIN coverage here).

Now SoundExchange refutes the claim, though the collection agency says they "are not able to publicly disclose the payments to SoundExchange from specific digital music services." SoundExchange argues that royalty payments from SiriusXM and Pandora made up "substantially below" 90% of their revenues.

Billboard.biz has more coverage here.

MacDonald calculated that Pandora's royalty payments alone made up 36.66% of SoundExchange's revenues. The webcaster paid "about as much in royalties for its FY 2012... as it made in TOTAL REVENUES for its previous fiscal year, FY 2011," wrote MacDonald.

Pandora paid 49.7% of its FY 2012 revenues to SoundExchange, according to its 10-K submitted to the SEC.

SiriusXM is currently suing SoundExchange and A2IM, accusing the record industry organizations of interfering with its efforts to reach direct deals with rightsholders (RAIN coverage here and here).