With many of the streaming services no longer around, and with iHeart in bankrupcy and the Music Modernization Act rewriting how musicians are paid, Triton Digital, one of the largest provider of audio streaming is changing hands. Scripps (formerly half of Scripps Howard, the Newspaper and TV conglomerate) is acquiring Triton for $150 million in cash. Scripps has been unloading its radio properties, so this deal makes very little sense. Something must be going on behind the scenes with taxes or foreign ownership
Any ideas?
‘Triton’ streaming app sucks. They must be free for stations and promising ad revenue or something ? Stations that have a streaming service that allow usage of VLC, have been dropping those streaming. I use VLC one week then the next week you cant use VLC . Triton is popping up. I think it generally hates Opera browser.
annoying.
parrott
There is a reason for that, and why I will continue to not permit discussions of publishing details of directly accessing streams. The streams are the intellectual property of the radio station owners, and they have a full set of legal rights to protect those assets.
I have not, nor will I ever publish nor permit to be published details of how to circumvent copyrights or terms of service. While I personally think the business approach many radio stations is flawed (see Cumulus and iHeart bankruptcies), I will not be pushed into a battle I have no interest in fighting.
Capiche?
Sorry for not making this clearer – you asked why stations seem to be removing streams that can be played if the listener is technically astute enough to bypass their security measures and violate their terms of service.
Radio is in serious decline and doing increasingly stupid things. Yesterday,Entercom (owner of the former CBS radio stations) got itself banned from Madison Square Garden and all sports figures who work there. It also affects Madison Square Garden.
Seems that Scripps is moving to from content (selling radio properties) to infrastructure.
From what I know, Triton Digital does not produce content but is huge at streaming. I hadn’t realized this until I read the article above and saw their customer list, but they own and run the Montreal based streamtheworld.com business that powers a very high percentage of the North American stations.
I subsequently verified that with BigGup Mike right here https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=39742017
They also sell the data of who is streaming when. Because streaming requires a 1:1 setup when the stream starts, they know precisely how many people (or pseudo people) are listening minute by minute in real time.
They also have tried, with only limited success as far as I can tell, to sell advertising when the local station goes to commercial but can’t carry national ads because of the unresolved AFTRA dispute over voiceover royalties.
For many stations, they include a “pre-roll” advertisement before the station stream starts. For listener supported station such as NPR, it is normally a request for a donation. For commercial stations, it is normally just packing in an additional commercial on top of all the commercials that the station has in that hour.
It is especially annoying for people that stream in their cars and lose internet connections during the journey and require streams to restart. I have found that some commercial stations have figured this out and do not play the pre-roll commercial again if they had just played it, but the non-commercial stations will play the pre-roll again each time asking for another donation.
I have purged these stations from the list of stations that I stream.
When I started this thing, listening on cell phones was a novelty and I didn’t pay much attention to it. Originally I penalized stations for having pre-roll video ads – which are even more problematic for people paying for wireless bandwidth.
When I do programming testing, I still prefer to use ootunes on my Apple device, as his cleverness bypasses those pre-roll advertisements.
The most stupid one that I bumped into in the last week was a radio station putting a 30 second video pre-roll that was nothing but a promotion for the radio station. I know about your radio station, that’s why I am already here – duh! Never underestimate the power of ego in the radio business
I would like to know if the SEC has an open investigation in that story about the Chinese spy chips that both sources deny. There is no “on the record” source and nobody has produced tangible proof. The story had the potential to seriously damage the stock values of several important tech companies.