Pandora’s acquisition of Next Big Sound will give it “a powerful analytics tool used by tens of thousands of music makers, labels and marketers looking for data and insights about artists and their fans,” Pandora said in a Tuesday announcement. Terms weren’t disclosed. “The combination of Pandora’s listening data and Next Big Sound’s analytical capabilities will create a vital source of data,” said Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews. Next Big Sound’s offering will be “enhanced through the addition of Pandora’s data on music preferences, patterns and trends,” Pandora said. “The acquisition will also benefit brands that advertise with Pandora by delivering access to insights that can help them identify artists to partner with and measure the reach and impact they achieve through those partnerships.”

Account-sharing, a “lingering challenge" for the over-the-top category, will be a panel topic at Parks Associates Connections conference, Tuesday-Thursday, in San Francisco. Some 57 percent of U.S. broadband households access an OTT video subscription, Parks said in a Friday news release, citing Q3 2014 data, but 8 percent are using a subscription OTT video account held by someone outside of their home. Six percent of viewers are exclusively using shared accounts to access subscription OTT video content, the industry researcher said. That equates to 11 percent of all households that are relying exclusively on shared accounts when using subscription OTT services, Parks said. Eleven percent of Netflix subscribers, 10 percent of Hulu Plus subscribers and 5 percent of those using Amazon Prime Instant Video are using an account paid for by someone else, Parks said. It said that account sharing is highest among younger households, where 22 percent of those 18-24 years old who use an OTT service used one paid for by someone outside of their household. "OTT video accounts for a disproportionate amount of content consumed when compared to expenditure,” Research Director Brett Sappington said. More than a third of video consumed per week is OTT, but it's only 9 percent of the household video budget, Sappington said. "Account sharing is part of the larger problem in monetizing the strong consumer demand for OTT content.” While the all-you-can-eat subscription model is “very popular,” several OTT services are experimenting with models that blend advertising, subscription and transactional options, Sappington said. "Pay TV providers will have to quickly move up the OTT learning curve, which is very different from the traditional pay TV environment."

The American Cable Association and NAB reached agreement on an extension of the HD carriage exemption to which neither organization would object, they said in an FCC filing posted Friday in docket 98-120. The current exemption is set to expire June 12, and while ACA has requested an extension, NAB has argued that granting one would be outside FCC authority. Neither association would object to an FCC order that would make small cable systems that don't offer HD programming exempt from the HD carriage requirement, and redefine small cable systems as those having an activated channel capacity of 552 MHz or less or serving 1,500 or fewer subscribers and not affiliated with a cable operator serving more than 2 percent of all multichannel video programming distributor subscribers, they said. The current exemption defines small as systems having less than 2,500 subscribers and not affiliated with a cable operator serving more than 10 percent of all MVPD subscribers. Cable systems ineligible for the new exemption after June 12 would have until Dec. 12, 2016, to come into compliance, and after then, any system using the exemption that starts offering HD programming would no longer be eligible and would be required to notify all broadcasters in its market, said ACA and NAB.

Both sides in a dispute over how much Pandora should pay a performing rights organization said the PRO won. Judge Louis Stanton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was said to have awarded Broadcast Music Inc. a royalty rate of 2.5 percent of Pandora's annual revenue, up from the current rate of 1.75 percent. Pandora vowed an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in New York. "After a nearly two-year legal battle over the value of the BMI repertoire to the Pandora digital music service, the Rate Court ruled resoundingly in BMI’s favor and concluded that our proposed rate of 2.5 percent of revenue was 'reasonable, and indeed at the low end of the range of fees of recent licenses,'" BMI said in a Thursday news release. "The decision also establishes that existing marketplace agreements can be taken into account when determining rates, a key factor for us, and the industry. This is an important step forward in valuing music in the digital age." The ruling in docket 1:13-cv-04037-LLS on BMI v. Pandora wasn't available on the court's online filing service. It may be released this week, a court official said. Earlier this month, the 2nd Circuit ruled for Pandora on a case involving American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, upholding a 1.85 percent rate in March 2014 for the company to pay from its annual revenue for ASCAP works (see 1505060072). The benchmarks cited by Stanton "don't provide an appropriate competitive foundation for a market rate," Pandora Government Affairs Director Dave Grimaldi said Friday. "We anticipated a range of potential outcomes in this case and remain confident in our ability to grow and thrive. Pending the outcome of the appeal, this ruling could increase our content costs as a percent of revenue by up to 80 basis points." ASCAP cheered Stanton's decision, though it wasn't a direct party to it. Stanton's decision "cited market benchmarks ASCAP has long argued are relevant in rate court proceedings," an ASCAP spokeswoman noted Friday. "This decision is welcome news for music creators, but make no mistake, Pandora will stop at nothing in their ongoing effort to shortchange songwriters. ASCAP and the music community must continue to fight for the urgent reforms needed to enable all songwriters, composers and music publishers to obtain fair compensation for the use of our music.”

With smartphones the third-most-owned consumer electronics product in the U.S., ownership of digital content is poised to surpass traditional content within the next few years, a CEA study said Monday. “A strong consumer appetite for mobile connected devices is causing some very interesting changes in the CE ownership landscape,” said Steve Koenig, CEA senior director-market research. Smartphones are owned by 72 percent of U.S. households -- an increase of 8 percentage points over 2014, he said. Tablets are in more than half of U.S. households and showed the largest increase in ownership growth over 2014, rising 9 percentage points, Koenig said. Laptops experienced the second-largest gain in household penetration, residing in 67 percent of households, he said. Basic cellphones saw the steepest category drop, to under 50 percent penetration, and fell out of the top 10 list for owned tech products, he said. Household penetration of digital media streaming devices rose 5 percentage points to 29 percent ownership and in-vehicle communication devices rose 4 percent to 34 percent ownership, CEA said. Digital content ownership grew 10 percentage points to 63 percent ownership, it said.

A small cable operator said it's trying to resolve Gray Television's retransmission consent complaint alleging the operator carried WVLT-TV Knoxville without the broadcaster's permission. Spirit Broadband retransmitted without Gray's consent the station's signal on its cable systems serving the Knoxville market since Jan. 1, the station owner said in a retrans complaint posted Friday in docket 12-1. Spirit, with about 100 video customers, isn't carrying WVLT and hopes to work out a settlement with the station, Vince King, its president, said in an interview Monday. "We’re trying to work it out now that [the complaint will] be withdrawn," he said of Gray's retrans complaint against Spirit. A lawyer for Gray had no immediate comment. Citing a retrans case involving TV Max, Gray said the base forfeiture would be $952,500, covering the 127 days as of Thursday that WVLT was carried without Gray's permission on Spirit, with a fine of $7,500 daily. A 2014 commission order levied a $2.25 million fine in the TV Max matter (see 1407090047).

Up to 90 percent of consumers are open to “cutting the cord” and canceling pay-TV subscriptions in favor of over-the-top (OTT) services under the right circumstances, Limelight said Wednesday in a study. Flexibility of on-demand viewing and cost are the main drivers of the shift to OTT services, Limelight said. Millennials -- consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 -- appear to be “leading this change,” with Limelight finding that they watch on average four to seven hours of online video per week -- almost twice that of all other age groups. Personal computers are still the top choice for consuming online video, but younger viewers are 10 percent more likely to watch online video on a smartphone than other age groups, Limelight said.

The FCC is seeking comment by July 6 on the Paperwork Reduction Act implications of public file rules, with the act requiring the agency every three years to get an OK from the Office of Management and Budget on information collections, the commission said in Wednesday's Federal Register. It seeks comment on whether the public file rules are “necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the Commission, including whether the [collected] information shall have practical utility,” and whether the commission’s burden estimate is accurate. The public file rule might serve some valid purpose, but since the FCC has never done anything to investigate the validity of that proposition, nobody can say for sure, said Harry Cole, a broadcast lawyer for Fletcher Heald, on its blog. "It’s probably safe to assume that the FCC is not enthusiastic about launching such an investigation on its own," he wrote. "As we have previously observed, the Commission has ignored for nearly a decade a petition for rulemaking filed by our friend, communications attorney David Tillotson, challenging the validity of the public file requirement."

The FCC Media Bureau granted EchoStar and Funai their separate waiver requests to market new models of DVRs without analog tuners, it said in an order adopted Friday and released Monday in dockets 15-47 and 15-42. The waiver requests were unopposed, the bureau said. CEA submitted the only comments in either docket and did so to urge the bureau to quickly eliminate the analog tuner requirement for all manufacturers (see 1503130017). Though the bureau stopped well short of granting CEA's request to eliminate all analog tuner rules, it agreed with EchoStar and Funai that a digital-only device has “several advantages over equipment using both analog and digital tuners,” including lower costs that can be “passed down to consumers,” it said. It also agreed that granting the waivers “would have a minimal impact on consumers” because “the vast majority” of their target markets “would be entirely unaffected by the elimination of an analog tuner,” since they buy pay-TV subscriptions or will have the devices hooked up to TVs that already have built-in analog tuners, it said. The bureau will hold EchoStar and Funai to their “voluntary commitments to educate consumers and retailers about the capabilities and limitations” of their devices, it said. Each company commits to “provide retailers with an in-store product information data sheet and consumer education materials describing their respective devices’ functionality,” it said. They also must “clearly disclose in product guides that their devices lack the ability to receive over-the-air analog signals,” it said. EchoStar and Funai must offer free 30-day return or exchange privileges if the customer purchased a device with the “mistaken belief that it receives analog services,” the bureau said. “We believe that these commitments will adequately protect any consumers that this waiver will affect.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was among those remembering Benton Foundation Chairman Charles Benton, who died Wednesday at 84 (see 1504300048). "Charles Benton dedicated his life to ensuring that our communications networks serve everyone regardless of age, race or economic means," Wheeler said in a Friday written statement. "He was among the first to recognize that access to communications networks is more than an economic or first amendment issue; it is a social justice issue." Gifts can be made in Benton's honor to his foundation, at 1560 Sherman Ave., Suite 440, Evanston, IL 60201, the group said.