New Music Preview for June featuring:

• Green Day
• Linkin Park
• The Dead Weather
• Kings of Leon
• Keri Hilson
• And More!

To view the full list, click here.

Recently we detailed the gains made by social networking in 2008, according to Nielsen’s “Global Faces & Networked Places” report. Not surprisingly, the biggest gains in usage were in older demographics. In 2008 Facebook added more users in the 35-49 demo than in any other. Also, there were twice as many 50+ users who joined last year as there were in the under-18 segment.

Coca Cola recently made a major announcement regarding a new strategy on advertising. The soft drink giant, which spends $3 billion globally on advertising, has announced a plan to use value-based compensation for their advertising agencies. This means a performance-based system where agencies will be able to earn up to 30% profit if all goals are met. If none are met, the agency would merely be compensated for its actual out-of-pocket expenses. The traditional model has been for agencies to be compensated for the amount of time put into creating a campaign.

Market research firm NPD release a study that shows that there were twice as many Blackberry Curves sold in the first quarter as iPhones. The Curve is Research In Motion’s older Blackberry model. The new one is the Blackberry Bold. The real curve came from Verizon, which offered a “Buy one, get a model of equal or lesser value free” promotion during February and March. This increased RIM’s market share by 50%!

Coleman Insights revealed a study on the impact of the PPM on spoken word formats at the recent Talk Radio Seminar. Their study, “The Truth About the PPM Performances of Spoken Word Formats,” is the latest in their “Mapping the DNA of the PPM” series.

In this study, they studied the results for 88 stations in a variety of spoke word formats (All-Talk, News/Talk, All-Sports, etc.), including some public radio stations that program some music, in addition to NPR or other talk radio programming. Here are 9 key findings from that study:

Hulu: It’s A Hit!

To be precise, in February, according to comScore’s VideoMetrix, Hulu was #4 with a bullet among US video sites. Hulu passes Viacom and Microsoft in total viewers and video streams and it’s right on the heels of #3 Yahoo! Here are the comScore numbers:

Google Lets You Target Yourself

The latest in targeted online ads is targeting yourself. Google AdSense, like other online ad services, uses user interests, demonstrated by his/her web site browsing history, to target ads on other web pages. Cookies in a consumer’s browser indicate the users’ browsing history and, by inference, his//her interests. Google will place each user into one of 600 subcategories of interests.

A famous football coach once said that “success is never final” and that statement certainly applies to the radio business where we are in essence playing a new 24/7 game every day making it imperative that you regularly review, refresh, rewrite and improve station music, imaging, promotions, air staff and web site. Here’s a recommended checklist for starters.

A current fad in both the consumer and business media is to beat up on terrestrial radio for losing listeners. And as if that weren't enough, to point out that the listeners who are staying aren't listening as long as they had in the past. There are a number of problems with these dark forecasts and dire warnings. Not the least of which is that if you look at the simple numbers, the current health of terrestrial radio is not only extremely strong, but isn't getting any worse.