Internet Radio Wrap: LAUNCHcast Goes CBS, Pandora Hits New Milestone
It’s a big day for Internet radio, with two announcements suggesting strong growth ahead for the world of online music broadcasting.
LAUNCHcast Gets CBS Support
First up, Yahoo’s LAUNCHcast Radio: The company that’s been Yanged into the ground has announced it’s essentially handing off its online radio system to CBS Radio. The official phrasing is that CBS Radio “will power Yahoo Music’s LAUNCHcast Radio.” All of LAUNCHcast’s stations, however, will be combined with CBS’s. A new CBS Radio player will replace the Yahoo player on the Yahoo Music site. And CBS Radio will handle all sales related to the stations. As far as we can tell, CBS has all but acquired the thing. (Yahoo, presumably, will continue to take some portion of the profits.)
In any event, the move will create a combined 300+ stations and will add support for Firefox and Safari browsers. It’ll also bring some traditional stations into the LAUNCHcast mix, including New York’s WFAN, Los Angeles’s KNX, and Philly’s WPHT.
The change is scheduled to take place early next year.
Pandora’s Boom
The other news comes from Internet radio company Pandora. After a year filled with royalty-related woes, Pandora has some happy news to share: Its popular iPhone app has now topped 2 million users. Not bad for a company that had said it was on the verge of shutting down just a few months ago.
“Times, they are a changin’,” notes Pandora founder Tim Westergren.
