UK

Inside Radio reports today UK-based music licensing company and performance rights organisation PPL has contacted several U.S. broadcast groups to insist they pay royalties for UK stream listening, or block the streams altogether. According to Inside Radio, Cox Media Group is one of the groups that received the letter.

Broadcasters like Clear Channel, Emmis, and CBS Radio indeed take measures to prevent non-U.S. streaming. In fact, the PPL says no U.S. radio group has approached the organization for a license. While Pandora blocks UK listening, U.S. operator Live 365 is PPL-licensed to stream to UK listeners.

According to the news source, only the largest radio groups have been contacted by PPL -- so far. PPL spokesman Jonathan Morrish did say the organization plans to send similar letters to other American broadcasters as part of a "broader PPL project."

Morrish said his group is "merely ensuring that services that are streaming in the UK are correctly licensed... Any overspill received outside the U.S. would not therefore be covered by the U.S. statutory license and instead separate licensing arrangements would need to be made."

While generally broadcasters aren't interested in streaming to foreign listeners their advertisers aren't interested in reaching, one exception Inside Radio brings up is overseas-based U.S. military audiences.

More in Inside Radio here.

Radio is far-and-away the preferred device for audio consumption among UK adults who are also Internet users. That's anything but true for the 15-19 age cohort however.

A May 2013 study from Audiometrics indicates 35% of UK Internet users overall chose radio as their favorite platform for "listening to audio." That's more than twice the second-favorite, "computer/laptop" (16%).

Yet merely 3% of teens picked radio as their favorite. Smartphone/mobile phone (36%) and iPod/MP3 player (35%) were the big winners with teens.

Note that there's nothing in this report about actual content -- and it's likely that a good number of these teens who seem to be abandoning radio as a device may still avidly consume streaming content from local or national broadcasters.

EMarketer estimates "81% of (UK) teen mobile phone users (ages 12 to 17) will use a smartphone this year, and that percentage will rise to 96% by 2017."

Read more in eMarketer here.

A new service in the UK called Audiometrics says 48% of adults in that country listen to audio or radio online weekly -- that's 25 million age 15+. In the 25-34 demo, 59% are weekly listeners online.

Audiometrics' first market research to measure listening behaviour was published today and presented to key companies from the online audio sector at the initial meeting of the IAB's Audio Council in London.

Meanwhile RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), which measures and profiles the audiences of UK radio stations, reported recently that listening via digital platforms (online, DAB radio, and digital television services) was up 11% over last year, and total digital hours were up 14% (two-thirds of that are on DAB).

More than a third of all radio listening is now via digital, says RAJAR.

Read more on Audiometrics here and RAJAR's figures here.

According to MusicWeek, popular (and growing, see today's top story) pureplay webcaster Slacker will reportedly launch in the UK within the next three months.

Such a move would make Slacker the largest U.S.-based Net radio outlet available there (Pandora is not licensed in the United Kingdom).

Slacker will come to Britain by way of a partnership with Vodafone, the world's second-largest mobile telecom company.

You may remember that Slacker "relaunched" earlier this year, with a new look, new features, and an ad campaign positioning itself as an alternative to market leader Pandora. It also recently added voice personalities to some of its channels. The article sources Slacker president and CEO Jim Cady recently revealing that "Session listener times on Slacker without a host have been averaging around 29 mins, but with a host personality or presenter session listening is growing to around 79 minutes."

Read the full article here.

An article in the UK's The Guardian reveals British songwriters earned a record £51.7m in UK royalties from digital music services in 2012 -- more than their take from broadcast radio.

"Digital music players are now the biggest single source of income for songwriters in the UK, having overtaken radio last year after previously eclipsing live events and pubs, according to the UK royalties body PRS for Music," wrote the paper.

Read the full article in The Guardian here.

Leading music subscription services are ramping up their global expansions.

GigaOm reports Rhapsody will launch in 16 additional European countries in the first half of this year (but didn't mention which). This is the first "proper international launch" for Rhapsody, which is in the UK and Germany by way of acquiring Napster, (the brand under which it operates in those nations).

Meanwhile, Rhapsody competitors Spotify and Rdio are both rumored to be entering the Japanese market in the coming months. Sony's Music Unlimited is currently Japanese music subscribers' only option. Spotify is in 20 countries worldwide, Rdio in 17.

Read more on the Rhapsody news in GigaOm here; more on Spotify and Rdio in Japan Daily Press here.