Billboard announces new Subscription Services "on-demand songs" chart.

According to Billboard.biz, Billboard, Nielsen and NARM's digitalmusic.org launched the first-ever subscription services on-demand songs chart. The data collected for this chart will also be included in the industry's most popular Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Billboard Hot 100 chart is based on digital download track sales, physical singles sales, radio airplay and now streaming services. These streaming services are tracked by Nielsen BDS.

The new Subscription chart is solely based on data from Nielson BDS. The company tracks streaming activity since 2005 and measures music channels such as MOG, Muve Music, Rdio, Rhapsody, Slacker and Sportify. Through the first 70 days of 2012, the company has recognized more than 4.5 billion audio streams.

Billboard's editorial director Bill Werde, commented on the new development:

"Billboard always recognizes trends in the way fans experience music. With some of these services growing exponentially and integrating into the social web, the time is right to launch a streaming chart and to incorporate this activity into the Hot 100"

With the new formula in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, music consumers gain more direct influence on the chart's ranking because they can decide what they want to stream at what time instead of indirectly changing the radio channel, that they are listen to if they don't like a song.

Additionally, the new streaming chart will also measure on demand video request services like Akoo, Yahoo! and Vevo.

The new streaming chart and the updated Billboard Hot 100 went online on March 16.

Streaming services and on-demand music is a highly growing segment in today’s music industry. Major labels such as Sony are currently launching their own streaming platforms (Sony Music Entertainment) and consumers start to use these services on devices such as smart phones and tablet PCs. Further many customers listen to radio online nowadays by streaming their favorite radio channels.

Billboard staff (2012). Billboard, Nielsen, DigitalMusic.org Launch First-Ever Subscription Services "On-Demand Songs' Chart Retrieved Sunday March 25^th, 2012 via: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/billboard-nielsen-digitalmusic-org-launch-1006451952.story

Voicemail receives rotation add for “I Got Love” on major radio station BigFM in Germany.

Internationally acclaimed Jamaican dancehall reggae outfit Voicemail recently completed work on its latest album Next Level which is to be released by the US-based Captivate Music. The entertainers arrived back in Jamaica last weekend after spending a week in NYC in order to work on their album project. Besides recording sessions and photo shoots, Kevin & Craig gave various Interviews in which they introduced the first single “I Got Love” of their upcoming album to the public.

Voicemail received great feedback from underground blogs as well as from mass media for their latest release. Popular blogs associated the song to the style of Sean Kingston and described it as “Summer Smash!”. The german radio station BigFM added the song to it’s rotation in January after airing an Interview with the group. Voicemail also did an exclusive dubplate recoding for the morning show of the station. Kevin and Craig are especially happy about reaching their international target group through the channel. BigFM has approximately 250.000 listeners per hour with the average age of 26 in the south of Germany.

Kevin said: “This is is a great opportunity for us to build an audience in a major music market such as Germany. We’re significantly interested in a steady growth of our fan bases overseas, especially in Japan, where we have lots of fans as well as in Europe and of course the U.S.”

Craig added:”I’m glad that customers in Germany appreciate our sound and our image. As a real authentic caribbean act, we want to show the uniqueness of our home country Jamaica to people around the globe.”