2011

To close out our publication year, today we begin with the first of three issues reviewing the biggest stories in Internet radio of the past year. Today's stories will be January through March; we'll cover the middle of the year tomorrow, and the final third on Friday. (By all means, if we've let one slip by, let us know by using the feedback form below. If you don't see the form, please click the purple headline above.)

After Friday, we plan to take a short hiatus and return to weekdaily-coverage after the New Year. We'd like to mention now how much we appreciate your support -- as a newsmaker or spokesperson, a sponsor of RAIN or the RAIN Summit, and as a RAIN reader, contributor, and Summit attendee. A huge part of the reward and satisfaction we feel in publishing RAIN is the opportunity it gives us to work and interact with you.

Thanks very much for a wonderful year. On behalf of publisher Kurt Hanson, RAIN Summits president Jennifer Lane, associate editor Michael Schmitt, RAIN Summits coordinator Patrick Fitzell, have a safe and enjoyable holiday, and best wishes in the new year. - PM

Cloud music, recommendation engines and group listening. Those are just a few of the big online music trends of 2011, according to a new ReadWriteWeb article.

The year was good for algorithm-powered Internet radio services, with Pandora going public in February and the Echo Nest fueling new music services like iHeartRadio.

"As powerful as these machine-driven recommendation engines can be, there's still something to be said for human curation," writes ReadWriteWeb, pointing out that human-curated music services like Turntable.fm (pictured) and Shufflr.fm gained in popularity during the year.

Turntable.fm drove another 2011 web music trend, one that harkens back to AM/FM: group listening, where many users hear the same music at once. Meanwhile, Facebook forcefully introduced social features to streaming services while giant tech companies pushed music into the cloud.

You can find ReadWriteWeb's full analysis of the biggest Internet music trends of 2011 here.

We've uploaded hundreds of photos from RAIN Summit Chicago 2011. From the panels and presentations to socializing at the RAIN Reader Cocktail Party, we have photos of it all.

You can find galleries here, here, here and a fourth from RTT News here.

Thanks to RTT News and Carl Magnuson, Director of Sales at Social Radio, for taking these photos.