Superplastic, the designer toy brand launched by Kidrobot founder Paul Budnitz, has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding to turn two of its characters into animated digital media stars: Starting Tuesday, the company’s Janky and Guggimon characters will come to life on Instagram, where they will publish animated videos, interact with their
Tech
July 30, 2019 5:35AM PT While he was appointed chief of Sony Music’s combined operations just two weeks ago, Rob Stringer’s first earnings report for the division is a strong one: Sony Music Entertainment’s operating income is up 18% and revenue up 11% year-over-year in the first fiscal quarter of 2019. The results were released
SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris has been accused of violating union rules in her re-election campaign — and has issued a strong denial in response. Attorney Robert Allen, in a letter sent Monday on behalf of unnamed union members, said Carteris had allegedly used insider information to take credit for SAG-AFTRA’s new deal with Netflix and
July 29, 2019 12:17PM PT Dave Matthews, Anderson .Paak and Maren Morris have united with some of the music industry’s biggest executives to form a new lobbying group that will represent artists in a number of music-related issues on a national and state level. The news was first reported by Bloomberg. The board of the
AT&T has named Debra Lee, former chairman and CEO of BET Networks, to its board of directors. Lee joined Viacom’s BET Networks in 1986 and stepped down from her role in May 2018. At BET, she served in several leadership roles, including COO and general counsel, before she served as chairman and CEO at BET
Cloud movie locker UltraViolet is shutting down this coming Wednesday (7/31), putting an end to one of Hollywood’s more ambitious efforts to promote the ownership of digital content. Consumers have 2 more days to link their UltraViolet libraries to an existing retailer to make sure they won’t permanently lose access to their digital movies and
July 29, 2019 9:20AM PT ByteDance, the company behind the hugely popular TikTok app, is working on its own phone. A ByteDance representative confirmed the company’s plans for a mobile phone in a conversation with Reuters, explaining that ByteDance got its hands on the talent required to build the device through a deal with Smartisan,
Epic Games’s first Fortnite World Cup Finals pulled in a live-streaming audience of more than 2 million concurrent viewers on Sunday who watched a 16-year-old wunderkind win the $3 million solo grand prize — the largest cash payout for an individual esports champ. The winner: 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, aka “Bugha,” a Fortnite player from Pennsylvania
The average age of the top touring performers is 52.6 years old, Tim Ingham revealed in a Rolling Stone column last week. His data is based on Pollstar’s midyear tally of the 100 highest grossing acts in the world. Led by 72-year-old Elton John, who grossed $82.6 million between Nov. 22 2018 and May 22
Netflix and Amazon Web Services are among the newest members of the Academy Software Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting the use of open source software in Hollywood that is being spearheaded by the Linux Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The foundation also announced Monday that it now stewards the
The National Basketball Association and China’s Tencent Holdings have announced a five-year extension of their existing partnership, which sees Tencent as the NBA’s official digital partner. The new deal runs to the end of the 2024-25 season and covers live NBA games, NBA programming and interactive fan experiences. Under the new deal, live NBA games,
July 28, 2019 9:21AM PT PledgeMusic, the direct-to-fan marketplace that suspended operations in February, owing hundreds of artists money for unfulfilled campaigns, took its site offline on Thursday. While the service had promised that artists would be able to access their user data, that information is currently unavailable. In a message posted late last week,
John Legere, T-Mobile’s trash-talking chief exec, claimed Friday that the $26.5 billion union of his company and Sprint is a “pro-consumer, pro-competition” deal. His comments came after proposed merger was OK’d by the Justice Department with the requirement that the new company sell wireless assets to Dish Network, on the theory that this would establish
July 26, 2019 8:00AM PT Location-based virtual reality (VR) startup Imverse has teamed up with MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff and “Lawnmover Man” director Brett Leonard to launch a MacGyver-themed VR escape room. MacGyverWorld, which is being produced by Mark Rickard from Leonard’s Studio Lightship outlet, is expected to debut in 2020. The experience will
July 26, 2019 6:20AM PT Drake and SiriusXM Pandora have established a creative partnership, the satellite and internet radio giant announced on July 25. Described as an “extensive deal,” Drake’s presence will include a dedicated station, curated music and collaborations with creative talent. Currently boasting a reach of over 100 million listeners, the Drake partnership
Twitter’s changes to make the social net easier to use — and efforts to clean up the platform by curbing spam, harassment and other malicious activity — appear to working as CEO Jack Dorsey expected: Twitter grew its daily user base in Q2 at its fastest rate in nearly two years, boosted the top line
July 26, 2019 3:00AM PT Google has teamed up with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to give 100,000 Google Home Mini smart speakers to people living with paralysis and their caregivers, the company announced Friday morning. Eligible U.S. residents can apply on the website of the foundation. The commitment comes as Google is increasingly
MADRID — Rolling off their partnership on “While at War,” one of the biggest and highest-profile Spanish movies of 2019, Academy Award winning director Alejandro Amenábar (“The Others,” “The Sea Inside”) is now teaming with Movistar +, the pay TV division of Spain’s Telefonica, on the development of a drama series, inspired by the Spanish
Mike Biggane, Spotify’s global head of curation strategy, is leaving the company for a new position at Universal Music Group, sources tell Variety. Among the music streaming giant’s top executives, he follows the recently reported departure of Spotify’s chief economist Will Page, who will stay on as a consultant while writing a book. News of
Amazon is a major player in the streaming-video wars, but its Q2 results show where its priorities lie: getting people to buy more stuff and delivering that faster. The e-commerce giant missed its profit target for the second quarter of 2019, with higher-than-expected costs for the company’s move to offer one-day shipping through its Prime
Investors in Google’s parent company Alphabet can stop holding their breath: The company posted stronger-than-expected Q2 2019 earnings Thursday, revealing a net income of nearly $10 billion for the quarter. Alphabet’s shares were up more than 9% in after-hours trading. In Q2, Alphabet generated revenue of $38.94 billion, compared to $32.66 billion during the same
July 25, 2019 10:00AM PT Mozilla’s mixed reality browser Firefox Reality went live on Facebook’s Oculus Quest VR headset Thursday, offering users an alternative to the built-in Oculus browser. One of the differences touted by Mozilla: a big focus on privacy. “To protect our users from the pervasive tracking and collection of personal data by
Location-based virtual reality (VR) startup The Void has teamed up with mall operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) to open 25 new outposts in the U.S. and Europe by 2022, both companies announced Thursday morning. This includes new locations in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego that will open this summer; Variety was first to
July 25, 2019 8:30AM PT MarketCast Group’s longtime chief executive officer Henry Shapiro will become chairman of the company while veteran media executive John Batter assumes the CEO role, MarketCast announced Thursday. Batter was most recently CEO of Gracenote, the digital and data segment of Tribune Media Co. Gracenote became one of the world’s largest
How do you get a YouTube video to pop? Certain video title keywords are associated with much higher view counts, according to a new study of the platform’s biggest channels by Pew Research Center. The non-profit research group analyzed high-subscriber-count YouTube channels and new videos they posted during the first week of 2019 (Jan. 1-7).
Premium podcast company Luminary Media later this year will launch “Villains,” a 13-part show about the U.K.’s Great Train Robbery, under a multi-series pact with Mosaic Media’s new podcast production company, Ninth Planet Audio. “Villains” is currently in production from executive producers Will Green and Aaron Ginsburg at The Cut, and Ben Adair at Western
Facebook investors had their eyes firmly on the company’s Q2 numbers Wednesday, ignoring anything and everything that could have clouded the pretty picture: The company’s stock went up as much as 4% in after-hours trading after it revealed that it once again beat the expectations of the market in its most recent quarter. That’s despite
July 24, 2019 11:03AM PT Oculus VR headset users just got one more video service to watch in their virtual living rooms: Amazon’s Prime Video service went live on Oculus Go, Quest and Samsung Gear VR headsets with a dedicated Prime Video VR app Wednesday. In addition to access to the entire Prime Video catalog,
Following Tuesday’s Q2 2019 earnings release, Snapchat’s corporate parent Snap Inc. saw its share price rebound to IPO levels Wednesday morning. Investors were embracing the stock on news that Snapchat was able to grow its base of daily active users by 13 million during the quarter. Snap shares surged as much as 17.5% Wednesday morning
Asia-based streamer iflix is pulling out of the Middle East after entering the region with some fanfare two years ago in a partnership with Kuwait-based mobile and data services operator Zain. Shuttering the streamer’s Iflix Arabia joint venture is taking place as disgruntled distributors with whom it has content deals complain about missing payments and