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Pandora and other online radio companies received great news yesterday when the Copyright Royalty Board agreed to a new set of royalty regulations for streaming sites. The board ruled that Internet radio stations will each pay SoundExchange based on how much they stream and the size of their audience, with payments beginning at $0.08 per song rather than the $0.19, which practically put company’s like Pandora out of business. Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, who has been fighting the raised royalty rates for years, said “This is definitely the agreement that we’ve been waiting for.”
Yahoo withdrew its lawsuit against the NFLPA over statistics and data used in fantasy sports leagues. While the Supreme Court sided with fantasy sports leagues in a similar case involving the MLB, Yahoo apparently withdrew its suit “voluntarily.” Yahoo will now be forced to pay the NFLPA millions of dollars in fees for the right to use player’s statistics in their fantasy football league.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a new program to increase the number of media jobs in the media capital of the world. While Bloomberg hopes to create 8,000 new jobs in the media industry, the city is only devoting $1.5 over five years to the cause. With more than 300,000 people working in the media industry in New York, which accounts for approximately $30 billion in annual revenue, the plan is being viewed by many as too little too late.
Google is finally bringing its applications out of beta. The company’s flagship application and email service, Gmail, has been in beta for over five years. Google noted that with 1.75 million companies successfully running Google applications for business, it has proved that the free applications are more than ready to hit the market place without the beta tag.
Disney and Nickelodeon are both reportedly moving into the mobile gaming market. While Disney announced that it will launch games for the iPhone and Blackberry, amongst other handheld devices, Nickelodeon started Addicting Games iNetwork, an extension of its addictinggames.com for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Both companies are hoping that the mobile gaming buzz will help bring in much needed additional revenue.