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The battle to woo advertisers to new forms of audio continues. On Thursday, Spotify announced that, for the first time ever, brands can now sponsor Spotify’s owned and operated playlists. Spotify has over 400 of them. To start, 25 will be open for sponsorships.

One of radio's bigger deals in quite some time will come from Northern Michigan where Black Diamond Broadcast is purchasing eight stations from Northern Star Broadcasting for $1.95 million. Here are the details of the deal brokered by Jason James of Patrick Communications...

(by Wayne Ens)Our friends in digital media have been much more effective at harnessing the power of words than we have. While our statistics were expressed in ratings or demographics, they introduced “big data,” making our mere ratings seem pitifully small. While we sold video commercials viewed on a screen, they introduced a “window” through which we could view the world.

(By Ronald Robinson) “The attention span of a gnat.” That’s the justification a number of radio people put forward when they become aware that audiences are tuning out. They also refuse to take responsibility for such audience behaviors and, often, will claim their audiences are dysfunctional dolts. I have been hearing that hobbled justification my entire career.

Keeping you in the loop about how Pandora continues to pursue its goal of stealing your listeners and revenue, we listened in to CEO Tim Westergren's presentation at the annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, Wednesday. And, here's what he had to say.

More from Westergren about radio. He says one of the big tectonic shifts in the years to come will be the migration of listeners off of radio and over to Internet radio. And he says one of the reasons that will happen has to do with the fact that radio doesn't pay artists for their music and Pandora does.

Westergren did field a question about hedge fund Corvex Management, which owns 9.9% of the company and is pushing the company to explore a sale instead of pursuing a “costly and uncertain business plan.” Westergren was ready to take on that question. Here's what he had to say...

This battle comes from the Saginaw market, where fired WHNN-FM hosts Johnny Burke and Blondie first filed a lawsuit against Cumulus, claiming age discrimination. Cumulus then filed a counter-suit claiming the two violated their noncompetes by broadcasting a show identical to the one they were doing before they were fired, online. Cumulus claims Burke used WHNN's proprietary information and solicited former advertisers for their new internet show,

When was the last time a listener mailed you a letter about your programming? When was the last time a listener came to your radio station and asked to see your public file? It's probably been awhile. You are well aware that the FCC still requires you to keep all correspondence from the listening public in a paper file. Did you know that rule is now over 40 years old?