AUDIO STREAMING SKYROCKETS:  First up today, another indication of the growing prominence of streaming in the music ecosystem.  Nielsen is reporting that overall music consumption in the US rose 3% in 2016, and that the primary engine of this growth was audio streaming which rose 76% YoY.  One caveat to this stat though – Nielsen is only factoring on-demand services into their YoY calculations.  So Pandora and the streams from radio broadcasters are missing here.  My guess is that if you added the rest of streaming to the calculation, you’d probably end up with growth in the +20-30% range.  Still impressive, regardless.  (link)

TLR SHADINESS:  Speaking of Nielsen, they’ve made an unusual change to their measurement definition of radio stations’ Total Line Reporting, which might end up creating more streaming inventory for the broadcasters.  First some background.  Nielsen allows stations to do something called Total Line Reporting (TLR) when their streams are an exact simulcast of what you hear from their broadcast antennas.  This allows broadcasters to combine both AQH Rating #s and claim more total audience, which they can sell for higher rates.  The TLR protocol has been in place for a while, so nothing new here.  What is new is Nielsen’s disclosure that broadcasters now only need to simulcast in a station’s Metro Survey Area in order to qualify for TLR.  That means any listener who uses an IP address outside the Metro is no longer required to hear the simulcast.  This will allow broadcasters to insert different programming (and ads) for non-Metro listeners, thus creating new streaming inventory to sell.  This change sort of feels like a measurement slight of hand to benefit the broadcasters.  And it’s so bizarre that the broadcasters themselves don’t even have a handle on this yet.  But I’m guessing they’ll embrace the change since it benefits them.  (link)

PROGRAMMATIC LEARNINGS:  And finally today, AdAge has a summary article on programmatic using a “what have we learned so far” perspective.  I believe the author is spot on, especially with the first, second and last points.  Programmatic isn’t just an efficiency play meant to save money by eliminating sales/buying costs.  In fact the whole process is more accurately described as “programmanual”, with a constant need for experts to help set up and optimize the DIDs.  When you build anything new there’s usually a process of launch/learn/adjust, and the programmatic side of digital media is going through this very thing right now.  (link)

Have a great Wednesday!