Tech

Netflix is feeling its oats with a price hike across all streaming plans: Coming just two days before it reports fourth-quarter 2018 results, the timing of the fee increases may indicate the company will report a big beat on Q4 expectations. The streamer is scheduled to report earnings on Thursday, Jan. 17, after market close.

IMDb, the Amazon-owned entertainment database, has premiered its latest original show: “UnMade,” featuring Rainn Wilson, Nick Cannon, Kristen Schaal, Reggie Watts and other comedians discussing early pet projects that were never produced, until now — sort of. In each episode, one of the guest comedians recounts a project they created and pitched back when they were

Verizon has expanded its ties to Apple — offering wireless subscribers on its two most expensive unlimited plans access to the Apple Music for no extra charge. Starting Jan. 17, Apple Music will be included in Verizon’s Beyond Unlimited and Above Unlimited plans, the telco announced Tuesday. For Apple, the bundling agreement promises to augment

January 15, 2019 5:58PM PT Roku has taken the Infowars channel off its platform after the streaming device faced criticism for carrying the controversial program hosted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “After the InfoWars channel became available, we heard from concerned parties and have determined that the channel should be removed from our platform,”

January 15, 2019 4:23PM PT In this week’s edition of the Variety Movie Commercial Tracker, powered by the TV advertising attention analytics company iSpot.tv, Universal Pictures claims the top spot in spending for the second week in a row with “Glass.” Ads placed for the superhero thriller had an estimated media value of $9.89 million

Snapchat corporate parent Snap Inc. is facing another major executive departure: The company’s chief financial officer Tim Stone is on his way out, Snap revealed in a regulatory filing Tuesday afternoon. Stone will stay with the company to find a new candidate for his position for the time being, according to the filing. His last

Netflix is rolling out its biggest price increase to date — including hiking the standard HD plan from $10.99 to $12.99 per month — for all subscribers in the U.S. and parts of Latin America. The obvious risk: Some customers will see the higher prices as a reason to bail on Netflix, while there’s also

Streaming device maker Roku faced a backlash Tuesday over its decision to carry a channel for Infowars, the controversial website of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. The company responded by saying that Infowars wasn’t currently violating its terms of use. The uproar over Roky carrying Infowars comes a few months after most other major platforms,

“Burn the Stage: The Movie,” a documentary following K-pop group BTS on their 2017 concert tour, will be streaming on the YouTube Premium subscription service starting this Friday. The movie is based on the previous YouTube original series “BTS: Burn the Stage.” Since its release in theaters worldwide last November, “Burn the Stage: The Movie” has

January 15, 2019 9:40AM PT Amazon is giving its Fire TV streaming stick a no-cost upgrade: The company will include its Alexa voice remote with device controls with the Fire TV stick going forward, while keeping the price at $39.99. The new remote, which was previously only available with the slightly pricier Fire TV 4K

January 15, 2019 9:37AM PT Don’t expect Bob Bakish to blindly follow the rest of Big Media into its consolidation craze. Viacom’s CEO made clear his company can go it alone even as competing conglomerates seem engaged in a race for scale. “Viacom doesn’t really require a transformational deal,” he said during a keynote Q&A

NBCUniversal’s announcement this week that it intends to launch a streaming service in 2020 presents a new challenge to the media industry: The digital pool is about to get very crowded with fierce rivals and competing consumer options. The Comcast-owned media conglomerate’s yet-to-be-named broadband entity, which will be overseen by veteran programming chief Bonnie Hammer,

Netflix is flexing its pricing-power muscle to kick off 2019 — hiking fees for all streaming-video plans for customers in the U.S. Netflix’s most popular plan, the Standard tier that offers two HD streams, is increasing 18%, from $10.99 to $12.99 per month. The Premium plan, which provides up to four Ultra HD streams, is

Facebook, awash in scandals over user privacy and questionable business tactics, wants to spread some good news. The company announced that it has earmarked $300 million over the next three years to support local news programs, content and partnerships. It’s partly a response to critics who have accused Facebook of making money from news content

January 15, 2019 6:25AM PT Spotify, which has been gearing up to launch in India for several years, could do so as soon as January 31, sources tell Variety. While industry insiders say the streaming giant has not yet locked down deals for the country with the three major-label groups — Sony, Universal and Warner —

Streaming music service Pandora has launched a new voice mode as part of its mobile apps, allowing users to search for songs, podcasts and more with simple voice commands. The new feature is being made available to a small subset of Pandora’s users at launch, with plans to gradually bring it to all of the

January 14, 2019 4:00PM PT Dish’s internet TV service Sling TV launched a free promotional tier on Roku streaming devices Monday, which lets users watch some episodes even without signing up for an account. The company has plans to bring a similar tier to other streaming devices in the near future, a spokesperson confirmed. Sling

Amid reports that multiple artists are seeking to following Lady Gaga by removing their collaborations with R. Kelly from streaming services, Kelly’s collaborations with Celine Dion (“I’m Your Angel,” 1998) and Chance the Rapper “Somewhere in Paradise,” 2015) appear to be in the process of being removed. While Kelly has been accused of sexual misconduct

YouTube provided more clarity about how it determines when videos with “vulgarity and inappropriate language” are eligible for ads — and which words and usage contexts it deems just freaking advertiser-unfriendly. The Google-owned video site has long had a policy specifying that videos that include profanities and strong language may be “demonetized,” or stripped of

Steve Burke tackled two important goals with Monday’s announcement of NBCUniversal’s plan to launch an advertising-supported streaming service in 2020. The CEO of NBCUniversal knew the company needed a strategy to compete in the OTT arena, and he knew the time had come to winnow his direct reports. The unveiling of the streaming service coincided

Among the thousands of companies showing off their products at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, there were also a few dozen startups dedicated to augmented reality (AR). And while a lot of the focus around AR hardware has been on enterprise use, an increasing number of companies is getting ready

Verizon is currently alpha testing its own game streaming service, according to The Verge. Verizon Gaming is currently up and running on the Nvidia Shield set-top box and will eventually make its way to Android smartphones, The Verge said. Games on the service can be played with a paired Xbox One controller. Although Verizon has

The newly formed Endeavor Streaming products and services division has announced wrestling-entertainment mainstay WWE as a marquee client. Previously, WWE had relied on BAMTech, now called Disney Streaming Services, to deliver its over-the-top WWE Network subscription service since its launch in early 2014. WWE’s agreement with Disney Streaming Services expired at the end of 2018 and

Norway’s authority for investigation of economic and environmental crimes (Økokrim) has launched an investigation into claims that Tidal has falsified streaming numbers, the Norwegian publication Dagens Næringsliv (via Music Business Worldwide) reported this morning. Last year, the paper, which has aggressively investigated Tidal, accused the company of intentionally falsifying streaming numbers for Beyonce’s “Lemonade” and Kanye West’s

Fox and Star India’s leading OTT platform, Hotstar, is partnering with a plethora of top Indian talent to create original programming under the brand Hotstar Specials, the company announced Monday. Filmmakers who have signed up to create content for Hotstar include Shekhar Kapur (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”), Neeraj Pandey (“M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story”), Kabir

As widely speculated, Spotify and T-Series, India’s leading music and film company, have agreed to a global content deal, the companies announced today. The deal will see Spotify’s worldwide audience gain access to T-Series’ entire Indian song catalog, including Bollywood and regional movie soundtracks, as well as non-film albums and emerging artist content. The deal

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seems to have almost everything, ranging from the truly innovative to the slightly bizarre. But every year, there are a few things that don’t make it to the show floor. Some of these MIAs can tell you as much about the industry as its carefully choreographed announcements. With that

January 11, 2019 12:46PM PT Apple is working on three new iPhone models for 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The company’s fall phone line-up will once again include a lower-priced model with a LCD screen, according to the report. The high-end phone will come with three rear camera lenses, whereas the other two

Foldable phones, bread-baking robots, and sci-fi toilets: This week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had its share of far-out gadgets, many of which likely won’t ever turn into mass-market products. But there were also a few devices that stood out from the crowd, demonstrating both how fast technology advances and where media consumption and

January 11, 2019 9:37AM PT Google has stopped making its Chromecast Audio streaming adapter, and is instead focused on smart speakers going forward. A company spokesperson confirmed Friday that Chromecast Audio is being discontinued, sending Variety the following statement: “Our product portfolio continues to evolve, and now we have a variety of products for users