Membership services platform Patreon is growing up: The company announced Tuesday that it is moving away from its one-size-fits-all pricing model for creators, introducing two new tiers in the process. In addition, Patreon is also standardizing its payment processing fees, and introducing a new dedicated rate for small-donor transactions. Patreon’s cut of the membership fees
Tech
Google has been teasing its big gaming announcement for weeks, and the time has finally come to see what all of its buzz building is about. The company is set to kick-off its Game Developers Conference keynote at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday for a roughly hour-long event that will be livestreamed. While Google hasn’t spelled
HP is giving VR headsets another shot: After first releasing a fairly unremarkable PC-based headset among a wave of similar Windows Mixed Reality devices in 2017, the company is now back with a device that aims to trump competitors like HTC’s Vive Pro with a higher display resolution. HP’s new Reverb VR headset offers 2160
Songtrust, the digital rights-management platform cofounded by Downtown Music Publishing’s Justin Kalifowitz, today announced that Joe Conyers III has been elevated to Chief Strategy Officer. According to the announcement, as co-founder and GM of Songtrust for the past eight years, Conyers has led the company from prototype to servicing over 20,000 publishers to collect their
The importance of knowing what’s trending on video in Asia was underlined Tuesday when YouTube’s international marketing director Sean Park told FilMart delegates that Asia now accounts for five of its top 10 territories in the world – even without China, where the Google-owned platform is not allowed to operate. A day earlier, executives from
March 19, 2019 3:00AM PT Black Ops Studios Asia has struck a deal with Asian streaming service iflix to create original content from the Philippines. The companies said that BlackOps will deliver at least one feature film and one TV series before the end of the year, but they did not specify any titles, genres
Streaming entertainment is smacking into the wall of the paradox of choice — and the cost to consumers of piecing multiple services together. The boom in subscription streaming services has given consumers more options than ever, with an array that includes Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, CBS All Access, Showtime and YouTube Premium. Even
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings confirmed at a press event in Los Angeles Monday that his company won’t be taking part in Apple’s upcoming video service. “Apple is a great company,” Hastings said. However, Netflix wanted to control its experience within its own app, which is why it wasn’t working with Apple. “We have chosen not
Earlier this month, Amazon, Google, SiriusXM and Spotify challenged the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase the compulsory mechanical rates paid to songwriters by 44% over the next five years. The streamers have come under fierce criticism for the move, which they claim is over the complexities of the CRB’s rules but is widely assumed
Angel Aristone has been promoted to executive vice president of communications for iHeartMedia, the company announced today. According to the announcement, Aristone will continue to position iHeart as a media and entertainment leader through proactive strategic communication efforts on both a local and national level. She will also continue to oversee media relations and external
The UFC — in a major jump to digital away from traditional pay TV — inked an expanded pact with ESPN under which all of the mixed martial arts promoter’s pay-per-view events will be available exclusively on ESPN+ in the U.S. for the next seven years. Under the agreement, the ESPN+ subscription streaming service will
March 18, 2019 11:26AM PT Google’s unveiling of its take on the future of gaming will kick-off the second day of the annual Game Developers Conference and will include hands-on time with some of the tech unveiled at the event, Variety has learned. A Google employee also confirmed to Variety that a logo for the new tech
Netflix used a press event at its Los Angeles studio lot Monday morning to announce the launch of a new interactive family show. “You vs. Wild,” which will debut April 10, is an eight-episode show starring survival expert Bear Grylls. Viewers will be able to show Grylls on expeditions around the world, and have a
Myspace-related news travels very, very slowly in the late 2010s. So while the company had quietly acknowledged a massive data loss in response to user inquiries last year, it took until this weekend for the greater public to begin to become aware that all music uploaded to the site prior to 2015 has now migrated
Viral R&B star Queen Naija is featured in MTV’s newest digital original series, “The Birth of Queen Naija,” The first episode of the three-part docu-series launched Monday (March 18) on MTV Facebook, with the other installments to be released on following Mondays. “The Birth of Queen Naija” will also be available MTV YouTube on Fridays,
Tencent Penguin Pictures grew out of Tencent Video to bring content to the Chinese tech giant’s video streaming platform — one of the world’s largest by user numbers. It is distinct from Tencent Pictures, another production division, which is more closely tied to Tencent’s own IP through its online literature, comics and gaming sectors. Penguin’s
CEO of HBO Asia since 2003, Jonathan Spink has seen the growth of pay-TV in Asia, the moves towards content localization and original production, and has faced up to the challenge of internet-based streaming services. He joins Variety on Monday in a keynote presentation at Hong Kong’s FilMart, and is expected to unveil an expanded
Google is set to unveil its take on the future of gaming at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco next week. Little is known about Google’s plans, with speculation ranging from a cloud gaming service to a full-fledged game console. However, patents filed by the company, code snippets, and other clues suggest that
On a day that saw Spotify and Apple trade barbs in the public arena via strongly worded blog posts, Warner/Chappell co-chair COO Carianne Marshall has written an open letter to songwriters criticizing the four streaming services — Spotify, Amazon, Google and SiriusXM/Pandora — for their recent appeal of the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase the
Amazon is rejiggering the payment structure for its Prime Video Direct self-publishing program to reward the highest-performing content with higher rates — while reducing royalty rates for less-popular titles. Starting April 1, 2019, the standard license fee for all titles made available through Amazon’s Prime Video Direct for Prime subscription access in the U.S. will
March 15, 2019 10:28AM PT Snapchat is set to unveil a mobile gaming platform for its app at a partner event next month, according to a new Cheddar report. The platform will allow developers to distribute games within Snapchat’s app, according to the report. A Snapchat spokesperson declined to comment. Snapchat’s corporate parent Snap is
Internet platforms played a central role in the mass shootings at New Zealand mosques Friday — which left at least 49 dead — and immediately prompted renewed calls for Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to take much stronger steps to combat the spread of violent hate speech. One of the attackers live-streamed the attack on Facebook
Cinedigm is making a big new leap into online video: The entertainment distributor and digital-network operator is acquiring Future Today, a video-platform company that operates over 700 free, over-the-top channels including HappyKids.tv and Fawesome.tv, in a deal valued at $60 million. Cinedigm has agreed to pay $45 million in cash and $15 million in common
March 14, 2019 9:28PM PT Netflix has picked up global rights to Mandarin-language TV horror-thriller series “Green Door.” It debuted on Taiwan’s Public Television Service from Feb. 16, with new episodes playing every Saturday. On-demand streaming on Netflix begins from March 16, 2019. The six-episode show is adapted from Taiwanese author Joseph Chen’s novel of
March 14, 2019 7:43PM PT [embedded content] Apparently even AI systems can win awards these days. Alongside Taylor Swift and 5 Seconds of Summer, Amazon’s famous AI voice assistant Alexa also received an award at this year’s iHeartRadio Music Awards. The Game Changer Tech Award, the first award of its kind presented at the event,
Outgoing Sony/ATV chairman Martin Bandier is certainly not phoning it in during his last month on the job — earlier this month he signed a deal that brings Dolly Parton’s entire catalog to the company, and today he sent a letter to the company’s songwriters slamming the decision by Spotify, Amazon, Google and Pandora to
Two high-ranking Facebook execs — chief product officer Chris Cox and Chris Daniels, who has run the WhatsApp messaging product — are leaving the company. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes in a memo to employees, which Facebook shared in its news blog. The departures come after Zuckerberg last week outlined a new privacy vision
Free-streaming TV service Tubi has accepted the rose — with a throwback to the very first runs of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” Starting April 1, the ad-supported video on demand service will offer the first seasons of reality-dating shows “The Bachelor” (from 2002) and “The Bachelorette” (from 2003). It also will stream “The Bachelorette:
March 14, 2019 10:04AM PT Ikea is getting ready to unveil the smart speaker products it has been building with Sonos: The furniture giant will unveil its first smart speakers at the Milan Furniture Fair next month, it announced Thursday. And with the announcement also come a few hints of what to expect, thanks to
March 14, 2019 10:00AM PT App development platform AppOnboard just launched a new tool that gives anyone the ability to craft a mobile game demo without the need for coding. AppOnboard Studio rolled out globally on Thursday. It supports popular software like Adobe Creative Suite and Sketch, so creators can easily import art and other