Note that we’re taking the day off from news coverage today (Tuesday 4/15) as we travel back to Chicago. (Check out other news sources via the RAIN Bookmarks above. ) We’ll have a full NAB and RAIN Summit issue tomorrow.

THE RAIN LAS VEGAS SUMMIT IS TODAY (4/14): We’re in Las Vegas today for our RAIN Las Vegas Summit. We hope to see you here! You can read details on our location and agenda in Kurt’s blog, in the right-hand column of every issue of RAIN. For today, our plan is to publish a condensed version of RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter. We’ll be back to a full issue on Wednesday.

RADIO NEXT STUDY: 38% OF RADIO LISTENING IS INTERNET, SATELLITE, OR CABLE RADIO”: According to the Radio Next study, released today at RAIN’s Las Vegas Summit, 38% of time spent listening to “radio” is via delivery modes other than terrestrial AM and FM broadcasts. That is, listening to satellite radio, cable radio, Internet-only webcasts, online simulcasts of AM/FM programming and podcasts accounted for well over a third of the total time spent with radio among respondents. Sponsored by Solutions Media Group, Ando Media, and this publication, the study also indicates all of online streaming (Net-only webcasters plus AM/FM streams) accounts for 16% of total radio listening (split evenly between the two); satellite radio and cable radio each account for 11%. Given that the study was conducted online and based on self-reporting, “the results are certainly a bit more ‘ahead of the curve’ than we’d see today in a study of the general population as a whole,” RAIN publisher and research vet Kurt Hanson admitted. “Nonetheless these results can certainly be considered a bellwether of where radio is headed in the near future.” And while AM/FM listening levels may be declining year to year, when growth of other modes of radio listening are taken into account, “listening to radio in all of its forms is almost certainly growing significantly,” Hanson also said. Read more about the Radio Next study here and here.

TWO NONPROFITS PICK UP CITIES’ SLACK ON MUNI WI-FI: U.S. cities may have dropped the ball on their “muni Wi-Fi” ambitions, but two nonprofits are picking it up and running. Wired’s Michael Fitzgerald reports D.C.-based nonprofit One Economy is launching a two-year program to bring internet access to 500,000 low-income Americans in more than 50 communities (funded partly by $36 million from AT&T and its foundation). Additionally, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation said it will put up $15 million over five years to create the nonprofit Knight Center of Digital Excellence, which in turn has set up a $10 million Digital Opportunity Fund to seed access projects for 26 communities that raise matching funds. Recently, city Wi-Fi projects in Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco have stalled.

ITUNES ISN’T (YET) THE BIGGEST RETAILER, DISTRIBUTORS COMPLAIN: We reported a week ago Friday (here) that Apple’s iTunes Music Store was now the biggest music retailer in the United States. Now, some in the industry are disputing that, and it’s not (just) other retailers. Digital Music News and Hits Magazine report major label record distributors are say they’re “billing more with Wal-Mart than Steve Jobs’ online store,” and “wondering where NPD Group, which made the original claim, got its information.” Apparently NPD based the study on consumer interviews, not hard shipping data. So for now, “the belt” is under dispute.

COMPANIES CONNECT JUKEBOXES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS: “Mobile social platform” company LocaModa and TouchTunes, which runs the network that connects those high-tech jukeboxes you see in bars these days, have partnered to extend the TouchTunes experience to mobile consumers and social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The deal will extend the “on-location experience” to social networks, and allow patrons to interact with flat panel screens on TouchTunes jukeboxes via their mobile phones (such as information about the music playing on the jukebox, user generated content and patron photos from their social network profiles). Those online will be able to view and participate in the activity of the jukebox in the club or bar.

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