Mediagazer: Amazon's Prime Music service debuts: Ad-free streaming, 90K albums, 1M songs, but few hits (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

11:15 AM ET, June 12, 2014

Top News:

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Amazon's Prime Music service debuts: Ad-free streaming, 90K albums, 1M songs, but few hits — Amazon Turns On Prime Music Streaming, Sans Current Hits — There have been a lot of murmurs that Amazon would turn on its music streaming service this week, and it looks like that's just what it quietly did a little while ago.

Discussion: Re/code, USA Today, AdAge, VentureBeat, Reuters, Forbes, Gigaom, Amazon.com, ReadWrite, Wall Street Journal, Talking Biz News, Associated Press, Variety, Pocket-lint, AppleInsider, Guardian, 9to5Mac, Softpedia News, Engadget, App Advice, The Verge, @schukin, The Next Web and New York Times

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:
Amazon adds streaming Prime Music to play against Apple's Beats

Discussion: The Verge

Olivia Petersen / Politico:

POLITICO Launches Journalism Institute — POLITICO announced today the creation of POLITICO Journalism Institute, an initiative focused on training the next generation of journalists and supporting diversity in Washington newsrooms. The program will offer intensive, hands-on training …

Discussion: FishbowlDC, Poynter, @michaelroston and @tombevanrcp

Christopher Ketcham / The New Republic:

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Winner, a Lefty Hero, & a Plagiarist — Pulitzer winner. Lefty hero. Plagiarist. — In early 2010, the editors at Harper's Magazine began reviewing a lengthy manuscript submitted by Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter.

Discussion: @sonnybunch, @trdeghett, @jgreendc, @sarahw, @jackshafer and @wilshylton

Ricardo Bilton / Digiday:

The Onion launches Clickhole, a satirical website that aims to take on clickbait — The Onion's Clickhole takes aim at viral site clickbait — The rise of the viral industrial complex, wherein attention-grabbing headlines and social-friendly content rule, has given The Onion a whole new playground.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, ClickHole, @digiday and @jaspjackson

Variety:

Reuters Taps Variety as Its Syndication Partner for Entertainment News — Penske Media Corporation has signed a wide-ranging syndication deal with Reuters that will make Variety its partner for entertainment news, the companies announced Thursday. — The pact will extend the reach …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is one of three seen as top contenders for Times succession — As the 33-year-old son of New York Times publisher and company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family has steered the institution since 1896, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger is one in a handful …

Inside:

Introducing proximity alerts and much more in the new Breaking News iOS app — We're excited to launch a powerful new feature that's a first for a mobile app: when a big story breaks near your physical location, we'll send you a push alert with the news. We call it a “proximity alert,” …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab and The Next Web

Reuters:

Nigerian media chase politics in Boko Haram coverage — (Reuters) - A year ago, the daily editorial conference at Nigeria's Guardian newspaper might have paused to consider where on the inside pages to place a story about the latest Boko Haram attack. — These days there is no need to think.

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Comcast to test its YouTube competitor by the end of the year — Comcast is looking to test a new platform for the distribution of online videos through its new X1 cable set-top boxes by the end of the year, the company's SVP of Video Matt Strauss confirmed during an interview at the sidelines of the TV of Tomorrow Show this week.

Discussion: FierceCable, VentureBeat and @jank0

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:

Songwriters Are Losing $2.3 Billion A Year Due To Outdated Government Regulations — The National Music Publishers' Association, the lobbying group for songwriters, said the lost revenue is based on what it believes its constituents could collect if government regulations were lifted.

Discussion: New York Times, Billboard, hypebot and Variety

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Media seeks Senate vote on shield law — In the wake of the Supreme Court's refusal to take up a case involving a New York Times reporters refusal to identify his sources, a coalition of more than 70 news organizations and press freedom groups is urging the Senate to take prompt action to pass …

Discussion: @joshgerstein and The Huffington Post

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

AT&T's Pitch to the Feds: Let Us Buy DirecTV, and Maybe TV Bills Won't Go Up So Much — Remember when AT&T told investors that it could cut its programming bills by 20 percent if it buys DirecTV? — That was last week. This week AT&T is telling regulators why they should let it buy DirecTV, and it's making a similar argument.

Discussion: Multichannel News, Los Angeles Times, CNET and Variety

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Q&A: Penelope Muse Abernathy on how community newspapers can face the digital transition — When we talk about disruption in the journalism business, the conversation often centers on the big players. It's easy to focus on a place like The New York Times because its plans for carving out a future in journalism often make headlines.

Discussion: Street Fight and @niemanlab

ScienceDaily:

Internet not responsible for dying newspapers, new study finds — We all know that the Internet has killed the traditional newspaper trade, right? After all, until the general population started interacting with the web in the mid-90s, the newspaper business was thriving — offering readers top notch journalism and pages of ads.

Discussion: @mathewi and @donlday

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism:

News organisations face second wave of disruption with potentially profound societal implications says new international study — Many traditional news companies are struggling with a second wave of digital innovation that threatens to sweep away the relationships they have enjoyed with readers and viewers for a century or more.

Discussion: Poynter, Nieman Journalism Lab, Guardian, Guardian, BBC, @gavmorris and @uniofoxford

Alan D. Mutter / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Digital publishing metrics: What's real? — The ecstasy of digital publishing is that it enables the granular measurement of everything from traffic to ad clicks. The agony is trying to figure out which metrics matter. That's the vexing issue we're going to tackle today, but, first, let's get real:

Discussion: @mccarthyryanj

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Sky News boss criticises press influence on television newsrooms — John Ryley says his newsroom tries not to follow the agenda of newspapers such as the Daily Mail — John Ryley, head of Sky News, has criticised TV broadcasters' reliance on newspapers for setting the news agenda.

Discussion: Sky News, @charliebeckett, broadcastnow.co.uk and Guardian