STREAMING SUBS GOING WORLDWIDE:  As the subscription side of streaming becomes more competitive, industry insiders are starting to look at aggregated subscription totals across the world to see if the market is still in high growth mode or if it’s starting to mature.  Right now the total number of worldwide subs is estimated between 100-105M.  The research firm Midia is calling for a repeat year of explosive growth in 2017 by forecasting another 40M subs to be added just this year.  Then the market’s growth is expected to decelerate as streaming subscriptions saturate the more tech savvy countries.  Conventional wisdom says the US could eventually see a peak of 20% of music listeners buying a streaming subscription.  Right now the US penetration is still well under 10% (excluding Satellite subs), so it feels like there’s still plenty of room to grow.  This will be an important trend to watch over the next few years.  (link)

RADIO’S DIGITAL REV COMES TO MAIN STREET:  Here’s an interesting look inside the state of Digital as a revenue channel within Local Radio.  Overall there’s positive momentum with the average market-level radio cluster now billing over $1M annually in Digital rev, which is +12% YoY.  This growth rate is similar to what we’re seeing in the entire digital industry as local clients start to embrace digital marketing tools once reserved only for the bigger national clients.  The only caveat to these numbers is that radio sales departments are famous for moving peas around the plate to make it look like they’re achieving new strategic initiatives.  So some of this Digital increase could actually be the old “shave five bucks from the spot rate and book it as digital” play.  That might explain why the Digital side of the house is showing strong growth while the Spot side continues to decline.  (link)

CRAP IS THE NEW TRANSPARENCY?:  I know that may sound like a funny title, but it’s the message Publicis Strategy & Growth Office Rishad Tobaccowala delivered in a keynote address at a 4As summit this week.  His comments echoed those of P&G’s Marc Pritchard, with the point that improvements in digital media need to start with supply chain transparency but then must be completed with quality data.  To that end weeding out crap data partners is his team’s primary goal in 2017.  Mr. Tobacccowala’s comments on the state of the industry are pretty cutting, as you can see in the quote below.  I’ll let you read the article and decide for yourself if “Crap” should be the ANA’s marketing word of the year for 2017.  (link)

Have a great Thursday guys!