Songza

Webcaster (and recent Webby winner, see RAIN here) Songza has revealed some impressive usage stats.

Songza says its service -- with the Concierge feature that offes playlists based on time of day and likely listener activities -- now reaches 4.7 million monthly "active users," generating nearly 1.1 million hours of listening each day. They've streamed more than 560 million songs in the last 30 days.

The webcaster has also released a pretty significant update of its mobile app for Apple devices. Its 3.0 version for iOS includes six significant improvements. One is "HQ Audio," powered by technology from Audyssey Laboratories, designed to improve headphone sound quality without requiring higher bitrates (and increased data usage). Other new features include faster ways to find favorite artists, discover new playlists, and -- by shaking the mobile device -- find a playlist to suit your current activity.

Songza says its apps have been installed six million times.

Last month RAIN reported (here) that Songza completed a $3.8 million fund-raising round.

Read more on today's news in Hypebot here.

The 2013 Webby Awards Winner in the "Web: Radio & Podcasts" category was the Newyorker.com, for its podcast offerings. Dynamit's CD 102.5, Astro Radio Sdn Bhd's hitz.fm, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were "Webby Honorees" for this category.

Meanwhile, Songza is the 2013 Webby Winner in the "Mobile & Apps: Music" category. The People's Voice went to Pandora, and DeliRadio was also a nominee in the category. 8tracks Radio was a "Webby Honoree."

Several radio and Internet-related operations scored nominations in various categories, including Rdio, SoundCloud, Spotify, NPR Music, the BBC's iPlayer Radio, Stitcher Radio, TuneIn Radio, and Slacker Radio for Windows 8.

Take a look at all the winners and nominees at the Webby Awards site here.

Webcaster Songza now has $3.8 million more to build their business, following their latest round of funding. TechCrunch reported Sunday on the relevant SEC filing, and that Amazon is an "unconfirmed investor."

Songza is the service that offers different channels of music based on listeners' activities, moods, and time of day (a feature that Clear Channel pretty much copied with its "Perfect For" iHeartRadio feature it added in January). The service was launched by the team behind AmieStreet.com ("crowd-priced" MP3s), of which Amazon was an investor. 

Billboard says last June Pandora stocks "dropped 11.2% over two trading days shedding some $208 million of market value after BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield warned in a blog post that Pandora investors should be worried by the sudden rise of Songza." By July, Songza reportedly had 2 million active listeners, but CEO/cofounder Elias Roman tells Billboard that number is now significantly higher.

In August, investors put $1.5 million into Songza. Other recent successful webcaster investment rounds (from Billboard) include Earbits, Radical.fm, Senzari ($3 million), and TuneIn ($16 million).

Read more from TechCrunch here. The SEC document is here. Here's Billboard's coverage.

Research firm Fizziology found that while Pandora dominates other music services on social media, iHeartRadio seems to especially appeal to Top 40 listeners.

Pandora users mentioned the service on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs over 1.9 million times over a three week period (1/7-1/31). To compare, webcasters like Songza and Clear Channel's iHeartRadio had fewer than 50-thousand mentions.

However, "users of iHeartRadio talked about Top 40 artists the most during the three-week period. 28% of all posts mentioning an artist referred to those with songs on the Top 40 chart," Fizziology's Patrick McMullen wrote. "It seems that Top 40 listeners are the type who like to set-it and forget-it when it comes to listening to music online."

In addition to Top 40, iHeartRadio users talked about hip hop and country music the most on social media. Pandora, with both a significantly large audience and a wide span of musical offerings, "could perhaps serve as a sample of the online music listening population as a whole," McMullen suggested. Pandora listeners most often mentioned hip hop/rap (31%), pop (24%), and R&B (17%) music on social media. Fizziology found Songza listeners mentioned more genres of music than any other service's listeners, "possibly due to the streaming algorithms based more on groove than genre." Songza users mentioned pop (28%), R&B (19%) and Top 40 artists (16%) the most, but also bluegrass (1%), blues (1%), jazz (1%) and world music (1%).

McMullen also recently penned a guest piece for Digital Media Wire, in which he revealed his company's findings on geographical preferences for various services. While Pandora and Spotify dominate in every region of the U.S., digging deeper reveals some interesting regionality. "Rdio is the least popular music service, but creative communities and the West coast specifically seem to have taken a liking to the service much more than the rest of the nation," McMullen found. "On the contrary, iHeartRadio is much more popular in the South than it is in creative communities or the West coast."

Read more from Fizziology here and in Digital Media Wire here.

Online audio ad network TargetSpot has added six new partners to its network, including Songza and Radionomy.

Songza is a webcaster that offers mood- and activity-focused playlists. Radionomy is a free service that allows users to launch their own webcasts.

In addition to those two services, TargetSpot will deliver in-stream audio ads for just hear !t, Thefuture.fm, Soundtracker, and HulkShare. TargetSpot CEO Eyal Goldwerger said, "Our research shows that Internet radio users switch between streaming sites multiple times a day. Our highly diversified network lets advertisers reach their desired target audiences regardless of the service they listen to or the device they use."

With today's news, the TargetSpot ad network now includes more than 85 radio groups and pureplay online music providers.

Today Clear Channel announced new functionality for its iHeartRadio Internet radio platform,  including a feature that allows users to choose listening options based on their moods or activities.

This new feature, called "Perfect For," (screenshot at right) bears a striking resemblance to webcaster Songza's "Music Concierge," (screenshot below) which the independent webcast service launched in March (see our coverage here). 

"Perfect For" allows iHeartRadio listeners to "browse through a menu of moods and activities perfect for a particular day and time." Based on their choice, the feature then suggests appropriate options from "hundreds of carefully curated stations."

Clear Channel says, "Early morning users may see station suggestions perfect for waking up – like 'Caffeinated Country: Gourmet Roasted in Nashville' and evening weekday users may see stations to help them wind down – like 'Ambien-T: Ambient Music, Prescription Strength.'"

The new function "will also suggest live radio stations from iHeartRadio’s catalog of over 1,500 stations from across the country to users based off of the mood or activity they select. The feature launches today with thousands of new stations, and many more to be added daily." Clear Channels says "Perfect For" will initially be available for iPhones and PCs, but users can save stations on these devices and access them via any device where iHeartRadio is available. The feature will be available on other mobile and tablet devices soon.

Also new, iHeartRadio has added a new alarm clock feature which will give users the ability to utilize the service as an alarm clock or to set reminders.