The New York press conference announcing Tidal and its 16 artist stakeholders in March 2015 proved to be a prescient sign of the streaming service’s trajectory. Jay Z, Beyonce, Kanye West (pictured above), Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Jason Aldean, Madonna, Jack White, Arcade Fire’s Win Butler & Régine Chassagne, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Calvin
Tech
The Podcast Academy, an industry association looking to establish the premiere awards program for the fast-growing world of podcasts, announced nominees for the first Ambies awards. The group announced a total of 164 Ambies nominees spanning 23 categories (see full list below), selected by voting members of the Podcast Academy. The Ambies winners will be
Barcelona-based Filmarket Hub, in coordination with Amazon’s audio storytelling company Audible, has issued an open PitchToPro call for series projects. It’s the first time that Filmarket Hub, an online marketplace which curates film and TV series in development, is partnering with an audio-exclusive company and the first step into the growing spoken-word marketplace. According to
Square, the payments-processing company led by CEO Jack Dorsey, announced plans to buy a “significant” majority stake in Tidal, the music and entertainment streaming platform run by Jay-Z. Square said it expects to pay a $297 million, in a combination of cash and stock, for the Tidal stake, with existing artist shareholders the remaining stakeholders.
Kings of Leon is poised to make history as the first band to release an album as a non-fungible token, or NFT, a cryptographic way to buy and sell digital art and media. The Grammy-winning rock band’s new album, “When You See Yourself,” will release March 5 via streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music,
Parler is still alive and kicking — and the right-wing social media company, which styles itself as an “unbiased” home for conservatives, is still trying to wring money out of Amazon. In a new lawsuit filed in Washington State court, Parler accused of Amazon of breach of contract, defamation and anticompetitive behavior. That came as
Google has planted a flag in the digital-advertising ground: The internet giant said it will no longer sell ads using personally identifiable information from web browsers. Google already announced that its Chrome browser would phase out support for third-party cookies by 2022. Now, “we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will
Netflix just made its iPhone app a little more funny-looking. The streaming giant Wednesday launched Fast Laughs, a new feature for its mobile apps that presents a string of comedy clips from its stand-up specials, TV series and movies. Netflix’s Fast Laughs displays full-screen vertical video in an auto-playing feed, borrowing a page from apps
Kevin Mayer, previously one of Disney’s top executives and ex-CEO of TikTok, was named chairman of DAZN, a global sports-streaming service, the company announced. Mayer, who worked at the Walt Disney Co. for more than two decades and led the launch of Disney Plus, will replace John Skipper, the former ESPN chief who had joined
Dish Network has teamed with DraftKings to let TV subscribers see sports-wagering odds and fantasy contests while they watch live games — and, in some case, initiate actual bets. Under the pact, Dish’s satellite TV customers with internet-connected Hopper set-tops will be able to access the DraftKings app to view betting odds and fantasy contests.
FuboTV grew its internet pay-TV subscriber rolls at a rapid clip last year — and it sustained heavy losses to get there. The company ended 2020 with 547,880 subscribers, up 73% year-over-year. It gained 92,800 net new subscribers in the fourth quarter, an increase of 237% year-over-year. Total net loss for last year was $570.5
More than a dozen books penned by Dr. Seuss hopped onto Amazon’s best-sellers ranking after the company that oversees the estate of the iconic children’s author said it decided to discontinue publication of six titles that “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” As of Tuesday afternoon, 13 of the top 20 best-selling
“Fortnite” creator Epic Games has acquired Tonic Games Group, the parent company of “Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout” studio Mediatonic, the companies announced on Tuesday. The companies did not disclose numbers behind the deal. A blog post on Mediatonic’s website, however, confirmed that the game will remain purchasable on Steam and PlayStation, and the previously announced
A new game set in the world of the Aliens movie franchise is coming this summer. “Aliens: Fireteam” is a cooperative third-person survival shooter in which three-player teams must fight swarms of the interstellar creatures to complete the mission and get out alive. The game is from Cold Iron Studios, the San Jose-based game studio
In what may be the first move of its kind in the music-streaming world, SoundCloud has introduced what it describes as “fan-powered royalties, a more equitable and transparent way for emerging and independent artists to earn money on SoundCloud.” In other words, each listener’s subscription or advertising revenue is distributed among the artists that they
Sony’s PlayStation group is throwing in the towel on its digital movie and TV transactional VOD business. As of Aug. 31, 2021, the PlayStation Store will stop offering movie and TV show purchases and rentals. Sony said it is exiting the transactional VOD business — after more than a decade — because it sees more
Value-oriented TV maker Vizio has filed to go public, revealing that its base of over-the-top streaming viewers in the U.S. grew 61% in 2020. For the year ended 2020, Vizio reported total revenue of $2.04 billion (up 11% year over year) and net income of $102.5 million (up more the fourfold from $23.1 million in
Roku will add a fat stack of ad tech to its streaming platform under a deal to buy Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising business, putting Roku in position to offer a fully addressable advertising solution for TV programmers. Under the agreement, announced Monday, Roku will obtain Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) technology and dynamic ad
Tech giant Apple has now reopened all 270 of its retail locations in the U.S. in some capacity, nearly a year after shutting them down indefinitely because of the coronavirus pandemic. Apple on March 13, 2020, had announced the closure of all Apple Stores outside of China as a precaution to slow the spread of
Spotify users worldwide will no longer have access to music tracks from K-pop acts represented by Kakao M, an offshoot of Korean internet giant Kakao Corp. The global music streamer’s deal with the label has expired and has not been renewed. “Spotify can confirm that starting March 1, 2021, Kakao M’s catalogue will no longer
Post Malone and Pokémon: a combination so crazy that it just might work. Malone had the honor of kicking off P25 Music, a year-long celebration in partnership with Universal Music Group, on Saturday — the official Pokémon Day, no less — with a virtual concert that livestreamed on Pokémon’s YouTube and Twitch accounts, and its
Facebook’s agreement to pay $650 million to settle class-action litigation alleging it violated users’ privacy via its photo-tagging feature — one of the biggest ever in a privacy lawsuit — has been approved by a federal judge. Under the settlement, Facebook users who submitted claims in the case (about 1.6 million people) will receive at
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has released its year-end revenue report for 2020. And despite a year of enormous hardships, there’s some positive news to share. In the U.S., recorded music revenues grew 9.2% in 2020 to $12.2 billion at estimated retail value, according to the RIAA report. It marks the fifth consecutive
Taylor Cassidy, like many teens, says she joined TikTok “just for fun.” She quickly found a larger purpose on the fast-growing short-form video platform: shining a spotlight on Black history and promoting messages of positivity and empowerment. The St. Louis-based creator, who turned 18 last month, started on TikTok in November 2019. Her first videos
TikTok and its parent company, China’s ByteDance, have agreed to a settlement resolving a federal class-action lawsuit claiming the short-form video app wrongfully collected users’ biometric data and shared it with third parties. Under the terms of the settlement, TikTok will pay $92 million toward a fund for users who claim their personally identifiable information
Ahead of its analyst day presentation, Twitter outlined an ambitious plan to double annual revenue by 2023. Most of that will continue to come from advertising — but the social network also is looking to generate a growing chunk of subscription revenue. One of the forthcoming subscription products: “Super Follows,” a program that will let
Marc Whitten, head of Amazon’s entertainment devices and services group and former longtime Xbox exec, has left the e-commerce giant to join Unity Technologies as general manager of its Unity Create Solutions game development division. John Riccitiello, Unity’s president and CEO, announced Whitten’s hire on the company’s earnings call earlier this month. “Marc is an
Walmart whipped up a new recipe that bakes content, commerce and celebrity into an interactive-video shopping site. The retailing giant on Thursday officially launched Walmart Cookshop (cookshop.eko.com) together with interactive-video company Eko. The site is stocked with 22 how-to cooking episodes with chefs and celeb hosts, including Sofia Vergara and her son, Manolo (pictured above),
Twitter revealed new long-range targets for the business ahead of its investor day presentation Thursday — projecting that it will at least double total annual revenue and daily users over a four-year span. Per a regulatory filing, Twitter expects annual revenue to grow more than twofold, from $3.7 billion in 2020 to $7.5 billion or
Australia’s parliament on Thursday passed the last elements of the controversial new law that will require major tech firms to pay local publishers for news. Amendments earlier this week brought to an end a standoff between the Australian government and Facebook, which last week took the dramatic move of disabling Australian users’ ability to share