Bluesound now offers iHeartRadio, the high-res wireless audio company said Wednesday. The iHeart Radio library includes more than 20 million songs and “thousands” of live U.S. radio stations, the companies said. Bluesound users also can create custom music stations from the iHeartRadio library. Other free services offered on Bluesound are Slacker Radio (basic) and TuneIn. Premium music services available for Bluesound users include Deezer, Juke, Murfie, Napster, Qobuz, Rdio, Rhapsody, Spotify, Tidal and WiMP, Bluesound said.

SFX and Spotify established a content distribution partnership that involves the inclusion of audio and video content from SFX's Beatport service on Spotify, a joint news release said Wednesday. The deal will allow Beatport, an electronic music content supplier, to host "a variety of premium and exclusive content" on Spotify, which includes new music and video coverage of live events, they said. It said Beatport launched its own streaming service and mobile apps earlier this year, and has more than 5 million registered users.

E.W. Scripps acquired podcast content provider Midroll Media, said Scripps in a Wednesday news release. It said the 5-year-old acquiree produces original podcasts and operates a network generating revenue for more than 200 shows.

The Department of Commerce and the National Foreign Trade Council's Global Innovation Forum have partnered to aid startups and small businesses in accessing the global marketplace, a Forum news release said Wednesday. The partnership pairs the forum and its members with the Obama administration's National Export Initiative, the release said, and will accelerate the Commerce Department's Startup Global, an initiative designed to "help more startup firms think global from the earliest stages" of growth. “The Obama administration is committed to ensuring American entrepreneurs have the tools they need to prepare for global success from day one," Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said in a statement.

Nearly 75 percent of global consumers surveyed favor downloading over streaming when planning to watch content remotely, Arris said in its 2015 Consumer Entertainment Index released Wednesday. Arris interviewed 19,000 individuals from 19 countries -- 1,000 from each nation. The research found that almost 60 percent of consumers watch TV on mobile devices, up 6 percent from 2014, and traditional broadcast TV leads over-the-top (OTT) TV services in global popularity by 3 percent in 2015. In the U.S. and Canada, broadcast TV popularity dropped one percentage point from 2014 and OTT popularity fell two percentage points from the year prior, with broadcast still leading OTT in both countries by 6 percent, the report said. Arris also found that 63 percent of respondents worldwide reported issues with Wi-Fi connectivity in the home, and 78 percent consider having high-speed Internet connection in rooms used to watch TV either "vital" or "very important." U.S. consumers surveyed reported an average of 7.2 Wi-Fi-connected devices in the home, compared with the global average of 6, and 53 percent of surveyed Americans said they encountered Wi-Fi connectivity issues at least occasionally at home.

Building HEVC’s 10-bit HEVC profile into smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices will incur an 80-cents-per-unit royalty, while shipping “other devices,” such as a Blu-ray player, set-top box or videogame console with HEVC Main 10 will cost $1.10 per unit, HEVC Advance’s pricing sheet said. Cents-off hardware discounts prevail for using less-robust HEVC profiles, while additional charges accrue for using HEVC format extensions from the patent pool. Video content providers will be called on to foot the royalty bill -- 0.5 percent of “attributable revenues” -- for streaming or broadcasting HEVC content. Royalties will be about half for devices shipped to outside the U.S. and EU and some industrialized Middle East and Asia-Pacific countries than to those nations. HEVC Advance will offer hardware licensees no yearly cap or royalty-free allowance, newly named CEO Pete Moller told us Monday. He acknowledged the HEVC Advance royalty rate structure is much more expensive than MPEG LA’s, but “we frankly believe that we got it right,” said Moller, former executive vice president at GE Licensing. “Ours balances the rights of patent owners and essentially patent users. We don’t think the MPEG LA pricing structure, frankly, is as optimal for that balance between users and owners.” MPEG LA representatives didn’t comment. Its patent portfolio numbers some 850 patents, said a patent list posted this month to the MPEG LA website that shows Samsung as holding roughly 53 percent. The five founding members of HEVC Advance -- Dolby Labs, General Electric, Mitsubishi Philips and Technicolor -- expect to launch later this year with more than 500 patents worldwide, “and that number will increase substantially as time goes on and more and more patents are deemed essential,” Moller said. He also expects additional licensors to join the pool.

Station transaction volume reached $223.3 million in Q2, SNL Kagan said in a news release Monday. That's nearly double the $120.5 million in merger and acquisitions in Q1, SNL Kagan said. “However, broadcast station deal volume year to date is still far off from the billion-dollar-plus quarters in 2013 and 2014, which were boosted by M&A among the major affiliate TV station group owners.” In Q2 2015, radio deals totaled $125.1 million, while TV deal volume was at $98.2 million, said the industry researcher. The 2015 first half deal volume of $343.8 million is 6 percent of the $5.3 billion deal volume that had occurred last year by the end of Q2, the firm said. The 2014 numbers were propelled by big transactions like the $2.5 billion Media General/LIN deal, it said. The deal market in 2015 has been more modest, it said. “There is still appetite for additional station consolidation, although radio deal financing is deterred by high debt leverage multiples and ad revenue softness, while the FCC incentive auction scheduled for 2016 has TV station owners in major markets holding out for potentially higher spectrum values.”

Nearly half of American TV and video consumers watch content through over-the-top providers, said a survey released Friday by CALinnovates. Forty-four percent identified as currently using streaming video services, including 57 percent of individuals aged 18-29 and 63 percent of parents with a child under 17. Forty-three percent of consumers canvassed said they believe cable or satellite TV services will be widely used in 2020, and more than 60 percent of consumers ages 18-24 plan to continue to subscribe to cable or satellite TV, the survey found. Zogby Analytics canvassed more than 2,100 consumers March 3-6, CALinnovates said.

The FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau is taking comments on Mediacom's push to amend retransmission rules in a way that would limit broadcast blackouts. The bureau is taking comments for 30 days, it said in a notice posted Wednesday opening docket RM-11752. Mediacom filed a petition with the FCC earlier this month seeking rules preventing local broadcasters from imposing blackouts unless a station's signal is available for free over-the-air or via Internet streaming to 90 percent of the homes in the relevant market (see 1507070061).

The American Television Alliance listed for FCC officials several actions that it believes should be considered signs of negotiating in bad faith by broadcasters. In an ex parte notice filed Friday in docket 10-71, it said he commission should seek comment on: restricting access to online content, requiring bundling, blacking out of marquee events, stopping the importation of an out-of-market signal, ceding broadcast negotiation rights to a third party such as an affiliated TV network, equipment limits and charging for subscribers who don't receive a broadcaster's service. With Section 103 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization (STELAR) directing the FCC to review its test of good-faith negotiations, the agency should now seek comment on whether seven negotiating tactics constitute bad faith, ATVA said. "An overhaul of the good faith rules is critical, because the rules on the books today are not strong enough to combat the variety of ways that a broadcaster can exercise its leverage to extract higher fees and force blackouts." Bundling overall should not be prohibited, but broadcasters should have to provide stand-alone service to multichannel video programming distributors that want it, the ATVA said. The meeting members included Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, Sports Fans Coalition Chairman David Goodfriend, Suddenlink General Counsel Craig Rosenthal and DirecTV Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Stacy Fuller.