The CRTC denied a request filed by Sarnia Media and Entertainment Inc. for a broadcasting licence to operate an English-language low-power commercial FM radio station in...
Former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies has claimed that it "makes no sense" for the CRTC to regulate content on the internet through the Online Streaming Act, despite claims by...
Quebecor Inc., organizations supporting Canada music and radio sector, as...
A Montreal-based media and entertainment company is expanding in the U.S....
OTTAWA – Veteran Liberal MP Hedy Fry was elected chair of the House of Commons committee on Canadian...
Civil groups and Canadian telecoms companies agree that the CRTC should...
The Supreme Court of Canada has decided it will hear an appeal from Music Canada and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN).
SOCAN and Music Canada, which represents Sony Music Entertainment Canada, Universal Music Canada, and Warner...
The House of Commons Heritage committee has moved...
The CRTC needs to do away with restrictive regulations, argue multiple...
The Liberal government’s proposed updates to the Broadcasting Act have...
Music Canada CEO Graham Henderson will step down from the role he’s held for more than 15 years, the organization announced in a Thursday press release. In the statement, Henderson said working at Music Canada had been a...
Quebecor Inc. has launched a music streaming service, QUB musique, focused on Quebec-based artists. ...
Stingray Group Inc. and Pennsylvania-based music company Music Choice have settled their duelling U.S. lawsuits involving patent infringement. Stingray said in its earnings press release Wednesday that it will pay Music Choice...
BCE Inc. and Stingray Group Inc. have launched a targeted advertising platform that allows ads to be placed on their radio stations, audio streaming apps and podcasts. The companies said in a press...
Allarco Entertainment 2008 Inc.’s Super Channel...
The House heritage committee says the government should do more to fight piracy, including holding internet service providers “accountable,” and put in place efforts to...
While the Canadian music industry aims to address revenue shortfalls in the...
Music in public establishments such as malls, bars and restaurants should...
Stingray Group Inc. said it is aborting its previously announced...
Stingray Digital Group Inc.’s move to enter the Canadian radio market has...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. has appointed Ryan Fuss its new senior vice-president of advertising sales, effective Oct 1.
The company plans to “roll-out advertising across several of its multiplatform properties and introduce new products for advertisers” in the coming...
According to the latest numbers from Statistics Canada, 67 per cent of adult Canadians purchased a digital product, such as a subscription to a streaming service, ebooks or online newspapers, between...
The CRTC has set Sept. 4 as the deadline for comments in two acquisitions in the broadcasting sector. It opened consultations Friday on the proposed acquisition of Groupe Serdy by Quebecor Inc. and...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. is turning from fighting Pennsylvania-based Music Choice to offering to buy...
Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube said Monday that its subscription platform YouTube Premium and its YouTube...
The ongoing review of the Copyright Act will begin focusing on the music, radio, television and film sectors next month. The House of Commons industry committee has heard from 100 stakeholders since the review began in...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. will enter the radio business with the purchase of Newfoundland Capital...
The CRTC has denied a proposal by Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. to create...
The owner of iHeartRadio Media Inc., the company that aggregates radio content through its app, has filed...
As part of its government-ordered proceeding on future content distribution models, the CRTC is asking a number of companies — including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Netflix Inc. — for information about their digital media broadcasting revenues, subscribers and viewing in Canada. Several years ago, during its Let’s Talk TV proceeding, those two companies refused to provide such info to the regulator, triggering conflict with the commission that saw then-chairman Jean-Pierre Blais briefly walk out of a hearing and threaten to revoke the digital-media exemption order under which Netflix...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) is estimating that it has broken...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. and Birch Hill Equity Partners ramped up their lobbying in December, with both submitting their first communications reports for the year in the last weeks of 2017....
The CRTC has approved the acquisition of two Ontario radio stations by Byrnes Communications Inc. from...
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. will unlock FM chips in its newer smartphones, according to a press release...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. has purchased the New York-based streaming service Quello Concerts in a move it said makes it the “the leading distributor of Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) concerts in the world.”
Stingray said in a Wednesday release that the...
TORONTO — If there’s one thing radio players can do to be successful in...
OTTAWA — Markets outside of Canada are increasingly important for music...
Amazon.com Inc. is making available its Fire TV Stick Basic Edition plug-in streaming device available...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. is challenging the validity of patents held by...
Music Canada is asking the government to address the disparity between the value of creative content and the revenues that are generated from it. “The Value Gap challenges the livelihood and...
Sirius XM Canada Holdings Inc. has added 75 new channels to its SiriusXM Streaming service, it said...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has filed an appeal in Federal Court arguing that a Copyright Board decision that established the making available right under the Copyright Act applies to...
Amazon.com Inc. is making its voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant Alexa available on its...
Amazon.com Inc. issued a request for proposals Thursday for North American cities interested in hosting its second headquarters, and some of Canada’s biggest cities are planning to throw their hat into the ring.
Amazon said in a press release that the second...
More than half of anglophones who own smartphones use the devices to stream audio content, according to a...
The Copyright Board has ruled that the making available right under the...
The CRTC has renewed the licences of 11 radio stations after it found them in non-compliance with licence conditions. On Friday, it renewed two radio stations for shorter terms — Radio Ville Marie’s French-language CIRA-FM...
Canada’s heritage and culture ministers are of one mind when it comes to...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. will offer free access to its Stingray Music mobile app to Via Rail passengers through a partnership with the Crown corporation.
Stingray said in a press release Monday that it will provide free access to the app for six months to “all travellers who activate the app using VIA Rail's on-board WI-FI.”
It added that the “app features a selection of over 50 channels specially selected for VIA Rail and an additional 2,000 channels in more than 100 genres.”
Stingray will also...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. said Monday its mobile music-streaming application has surpassed the...
The popularity of music streaming platforms among anglophone Canadians has grown over the past year, with 32 per cent reporting using a music streaming service in the past month when surveyed in the spring of 2017. That’s...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron is increasing the data limits of wireless...
The Federal Court has dismissed an application by Re:Sound Music Licensing Co. for a review of tariffs...
The CRTC said Thursday it won’t give Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron extra time to shut down its...
Two Ontario markets with prospective applications for broadcasting licences can’t sustain any new radio stations, the CRTC said Friday. In separate decisions posted online, the regulator said...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron made its bed and now it has to lie in it, according to consumer and digital rights advocates who opposed the company’s request for a delay in complying with the CRTC’s...
BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. are trying to lure customers of Quebecor...
Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron is asking the CRTC for more time to comply with the decision killing its Unlimited Music service last month, when it was found to be out of step with the concurrent decision on differential pricing practices that essentially banned zero-rating....
Manon Brouillette, president of Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron, downplayed the effect that BCE Inc.’s recent move to deploy fibre-to-the-home...
Rob Farina will take on the role of head of radio content, strategy and iHeartRadio for BCE Inc.’s media division, the company announced in a Thursday press release. The position, effective May 29, will...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. has named Valery Zamuner to the position of senior vice-president of mergers, acquisitions and strategic initiatives, effective May 23. “With her...
Canada has become the world’s sixth-largest market for recorded music, according to a new report from the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The group’s 2017 Global Music Report said...
Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly is meeting this week with digital platforms, telling a CBC morning radio show Friday that she was in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., region Thursday meeting with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Canada and had appointments with Spotify AB and Facebook Inc. that day. In response to a question from host Matt Galloway about how to protect Canadian culture when a foreign digital platform, such as Netflix Inc. or YouTube, “doesn’t pay a fee or a tax, has no obligation to show any Canadian content...
OTTAWA — When talking about CBC/Radio-Canada’s role in the media landscape, the public broadcaster is a “pygmy amongst giants,” and more focus should be aimed at large...
New data shows that the number of anglophone Canadians with TV subscriptions has continued to fall, reaching 75 per cent in the fall of 2016 — a 14-per-cent decline over the past five years. That number is down two per cent...
Marie Ginette Lepage is leaving Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron to join the team at Stingray Digital Group Inc., Stingray announced. In a press release, the company said Lepage would take on the role of senior...
Sprint Corp. has agreed to acquire a 33-per-cent stake in music streaming service Tidal in an agreement that will see it offer exclusive music content for its customers. The deal will provide...
The CRTC said Thursday in two decisions it has approved three channels — Stingray Brava, Bestseller and Mult — for distribution in Canada. Stingray Digital Group Inc.'s Stingray Brava is an...
BCE Inc. has named Rob Farina head of iHeartRadio, syndication and strategic initiatives at Bell Media Radio. Farina was previously brought in by the company to help advise on the launch of iHeartMedia Inc.'s free...
More than two-thirds of anglophone Canadians use the Internet to listen to streaming audio, a number that rises to more than 90 per cent among students and those under 35, according to a new report from Media Technology Monitor...
A coalition of artists, including authors, directors and musicians, is asking Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly to consider the compensation artists receive as part of the ongoing review of Canadian content...
OTTAWA — Conservative MP Maxime Bernier said Wednesday that if he is selected as the next leader of the federal Conservative Party and the next Canadian prime minister, he would move to make changes to CBC/Radio-Canada that would keep it from competing with the private sector. “Do we need a public broadcaster that runs bad Canadian copies of American popular shows?” Bernier asked, during a press conference on Parliament Hill, also questioning the need for CBC to air...
CRTC commissioner Christopher MacDonald said radio stations must build on their strengths in order to deal with increasing competition in a speech to the Ontario Association of Broadcasters (OAB)...
GATINEAU, Que. — Those who innovate shouldn’t be penalized because their competitors can’t keep up, the CRTC heard Friday from representatives of the telecom company...
GATINEAU — On the first day of the CRTC’s hearing on differential pricing practices, a consortium representing small telecoms asked the CRTC to allow but regulate the practice of zero-rating,...
SoundCloud has opened its subscription service, SoundCloud Go, to Canadian customers, the audio platform announced Wednesday. In a post on the company’s blog, SoundCloud said the service, which allows listeners to...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. said Friday it has purchased more than 600 hours of exclusive music and documentary content from EuroArts Music International GmbH, making it Stingray’s first content distribution partner. The Montreal-based music distributor said in a press release it will receive “hundreds of exclusive pre-2013 concerts and documentaries” from Berlin-based EuroArts in the $1.3-million deal. The agreement also includes worldwide rights to not only EuroArts’ back catalogue, but an option to buy all its future content, according to the release....
Amazon.com Inc. has launched a stand-alone music streaming service in the United States. While it has offered music streaming for its Prime customers since 2014, the new Amazon Music Unlimited is available to...
Corus Entertainment Inc. is making seven of its news talk radio stations available for free internationally on Apple Inc.’s Apple Music streaming service. The company said in...
iHeartMedia Inc.'s free digital radio and music streaming service is now available in Canada, according to a press release from BCE Inc.’s media division. The free app, iHeartRadio, is available on a preview basis...
The Association québécoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) is asking for regulatory action to help support the music industry as it deals with the...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. has responded to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by competitor Music Choice and filed its own suit against Music Choice alleging illegal business activities. In June, Music Choice, a...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. is expanding its management team with the appointment of a head of content distribution in the United States. Rick Bergan, who previously held the senior vice-president of distribution position at...
Canadians will be able to watch some Major League Baseball (MLB) games on Twitter Inc.’s social media service. The company said in a press release Monday that it would live-stream out-of-market games from the MLB and the National Hockey League (NHL) in the United States. Cameron Gordon, spokesman for Twitter Canada, said in an email that out-of-market MLB games will be available in Canada. That means that though Canadians won’t be able to watch Blue Jays games (the rights to which are held by Rogers Communications Inc.), they will have access to games played by the...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has acquired a New York-based company specializing in tracking data of music released on streaming websites. “With Audiam, SOCAN now has a comprehensive database and metadata of all musical works and commercially...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. said Tuesday that its mobile streaming music app has doubled its user base in the span of a year, reaching one million downloads. Users spend an average of five hours per week listening...
Facebook Inc. and AT&T Inc. have waded into the CRTC’s review of differential pricing practices, arguing that the commission should allow carriers to offer zero-rated services...
Questions around telecoms’ usage of data caps should be at the centre of the CRTC’s proceeding on differential pricing practices, advocacy groups said in interventions, calling for the...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. said Wednesday that it has acquired the Festival 4K television channel, which broadcasts live performances, including festivals, concerts and theatre productions, according to the press release. The Montreal-based music distributer said in a Wednesday press release that Festival 4K, launched in April 2015, has seven million subscribers under contract worldwide. “The demand for expertly curated cultural programming in 4K UHD quality is growing exponentially worldwide,” Mathieu Péloquin, Stingray’s senior...
The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) has signed an agreement with a European partner to manage Canadian rights overseas. In a Friday press release, the French authors’...
The majority of Canadians doesn’t believe that online media, such as Netflix Inc.’s over-the-top (OTT) service or music streaming services like Spotify AB's, should fall under the...
The number of anglophone Canadians with smartphones reached 77 per cent in the fall of 2015, up from 73 per cent in the spring of that year, according to a new report from Media Technology Monitor, a project...
If communications providers stick to principles of transparency and openness, zero-rated and sponsored data services can stay out of regulatory and consumer trouble, according to a report released...
OTTAWA — A panel discussion on net neutrality Friday dug into whether zero-rating can help or harm market competition, with Ted Woodhead, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs at Telus Corp. taking issue with the...
BCE Inc. is bringing in a new face to help lead the launch of iHeartMedia Inc.'s free digital radio and music streaming service in Canada. As of May 1, Rob Farina will be Bell Media's senior advisor for the...
T-Mobile U.S. Inc. announced Thursday it has added more video providers to its unlimited mobile video streaming service, Binge On, including Google Inc.’s Youtube, Google Play Movies and Discovery GO. It said in a press...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. said Monday in a press release that it has signed an agreement with EITC’s du, a provider of mobile, Internet, cable and IPTV services in the United Arab Emirates, to provide Stingray Music and...
Stingray Digital Group Inc. announced Tuesday it is launching a TV app for Telus Corp.’s Optik TV subscribers, called Stingray Music Videos TV. It said in a press release that the app will be available to Optik TV customers in British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec and “provides free access” to 10,000 music videos. Among other features, customers will have access to curated themed playlists, be able to create their own personalized playlists, and control video playback, Stingray said in the release. The release added that the app will be available in the coming...