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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...

Dave Ramsey hosted one of his EntreLeadership Summits recently in Dallas. The event featured a lineup of well-known speakers such as Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Pat Lencioni, Dr. Henry Cloud, Chris Hogan, and Christy Wright. Ramsey was also joined on stage by special guest, former President George W. Bush. The event provides attendees with knowledge on leadership, building company culture, communication, work/life balance, and organizational health.

Greater Media's WMJX in Boston has a new General Sales Manager. Brian Schneekloth, who spent 12 years as the VP and Manager of the Katz Radio Group, replaces Tina Murley who was promoted to DOS at Greater Media Boston.

The 2016 WGN inductees are Max Armstrong, Floyd Brown, Jim Carollo, Dan Fabian, Marilyn Miller, Tom Petersen, and Dean Richards.

iHeartMedia’s Central Texas Region has promoted Callie Hoch to Regional Digital Program Director and Travis Hill (pictured) to Director of Marketing and Promotions. The Central Texas Region includes Austin and San Antonio, and both positions will split their time between the cities.

(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.