Tech

In today’s podcast news roundup, Stitcher pins “The Bellas Podcast”; the 2022 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards nominees have been announced; Cadence13 announces an investigative docuseries on Victoria’s Secret; and more. DEALS Stitcher, the podcast company owned by SiriusXM, announced its acquisition of “The Bellas Podcast” hosted by twin sisters and WWE Hall of Fame inductees Brie

Imagine it’s 2025. The global music business has been radically transformed and disintermediated. Over 100 million new songs have been uploaded to DSPs in this one year. This extraordinary growth, up from the 22 million songs in 2021, largely comes from legions of new developing artists in Africa, India and the Middle East and their

Facebook said it will remove “severe sexualizing content” targeting public figures — including celebrities, politicians, creators and people who have “involuntarily” become famous — that is posted on Facebook or Instagram, as part of an update to its bullying and harassment policies. The social media giant said it already removes attacks on public figures that

You might soon get the chance to be the proud owner of a one-of-a-kind “SpongeBob SquarePants” digital collectible: ViacomCBS announced that it’s rolling into the market for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — a craze that has swept across the media and entertainment industry this year. ViacomCBS announced a strategic partnership with NFT startup Recur to

NBA coach and former player Steve Nash is executive producing “10 Days,” an upcoming Audible Original scripted drama podcast starring Glen Powell. Powell (“Top Gun: Maverick,” “Scream Queens”) plays a minor-league hoops player who gets a 10-day contract with the Philadelphia 76ers and tries to prove he belongs in the NBA. The cast also includes

Van Jones, CNN political commentator and DC insider, is looking to provide Americans exhausted by bitter partisan fighting a breath of fresh air — and hope for the future — with his new podcast. The former Obama adviser is gearing up to launch “Uncommon Ground With Van Jones,” a weekly interview podcast from Amazon Music.

UPDATED: Snapchat users reported problems accessing the app Wednesday, in what appeared to be an outage affecting multiple regions for more than three hours. User reports of problems with Snapchat from across the U.S. started to surge at about 7:15 a.m. ET, according to uptime-monitoring site DownDetector. Many Snapchat users said they couldn’t post Stories

Paul Simon, who celebrates his 80th birthday on Wednesday, hasn’t written the last chapter in his epic singer-songwriter career. The musician’s life and career are the subject of an upcoming audiobook biography, “Miracle and Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon,” from Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times journalist Bruce Headlam. It’s set to be released on

“Squid Game” is officially the most popular TV show in its initial debut that Netflix has ever released, according to the company. The streamer said Tuesday that the ultraviolent Korean drama has been sampled by 111 million members since its Sept. 17 premiere worldwide, over the span of just 25 days. That means “Squid Game”

In the mood to watch a movie or binge a TV series via a headset strapped to your face? You’re in luck! Vudu, Fandango’s TV and movie digital storefront, is now available in an app for Facebook’s Oculus Quest 1 and Quest 2 virtual-reality headsets. Vudu will now serve as the movie and TV store

Critical Role, the company that built itself on livestreaming Dungeons & Dragons gameplay, has teamed up again with Wizards of the Coast — the official publisher of D&D — for a big new adventure due out next year. The book “Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep” is inspired by the campaigns of CR’s live play

Steve Harvey is set to stay on the radio airwaves for at least another five years. The multihyphenate entertainer and host renewed his contract with Premiere Networks, iHeartMedia’s radio-syndication arm, to continue hosting “The Steve Harvey Morning Show” through the end of 2026. The program regularly ranks as the top syndicated morning radio show in

Discovery Plus is coming to Canada, with a launch set for Oct. 19 — offering a mammoth bucket of more than 60,000 episodes from Discovery’s stable of brands plus a lineup of original, streaming-only shows. Discovery Plus is available for $4.99 Canadian per month with ads, while an ad-free version is $6.99 Canadian per month.

As the NFT — or nonfungible tokens — marketplace has found its footing among the crypto rich, spurring the digital collectibles to reach sales highs of over $2 billion in the first quarter of 2021, per CNBC, Hollywood has increasingly looked to the emerging sector as a space ripe for representation. Jumping in with both

G4, the gaming TV network that NBCUniversal shut down in 2013, is coming back to cable. The content studio and network, revived by Comcast Spectacor more than a year ago, will officially return to linear television on Nov. 16, 2021. At launch, G4 will debut linearly on the channel lineups of Comcast’s Xfinity TV, Verizon

Lava for Good, the multimedia platform founded by Lava Records’ Jason Flom and Jeff Kempler, has announced a new slate of advocacy-oriented podcasts with the goal of “revealing underlying truths and amplifying the voices of contemporary social justice champions to inspire action towards a more informed, empathic and just society.” Founded and led by Flom

In today’s podcast news roundup, Spotify preps a pair of podcasts to highlight content trends, artists and creators on the streaming service; theSkimm launches a weekly pop-culture pod; the New York Times is beta-testing a new podcast app; Reveal and PRX investigate the death of a Black teenager in Mississippi; and more. DATES Spotify has

Freddie Mercury blasting through the Cannes Palais at 11 a.m. is not for the faint of heart. But it underscored the key feature of Remarkable Entertainment’s format “Starstruck,” in which participants are transformed into their favorite stars, like the Queen frontman. British media consultancy, K7 Media, included the show at a presentation on Monday at

Laurieann Gibson is bringing her wealth of experience in the dance and entertainment world to the streaming world. The renowned choreographer, dancer, Emmy-nominated director, producer and author inked a deal with fan-focused streaming aggregator Cinedigm to launch the BOP (Born Out of Passion) Network. It’s slated to be available worldwide as a free, ad-supported VOD

Gear up for some boozin’ and brawlin’ animated adventuring, Critters: “The Legend of Vox Machina” series from Critical Role will storm onto Amazon Prime Video next February. Season 1 of “The Legend of Vox Machina,” an adult animated fantasy-adventure series based on Critical Role’s first Dungeons & Dragons campaign, is scheduled to premiere Feb. 4,

Brigette Lundy-Paine and Golshifteh Farahani have joined cast of “City of Ghosts,” a supernatural neo-noir fiction podcast set in New York City. In “City of Ghosts,” Lundy-Paine, star of Netflix’s “Atypical” and United Artists’ “Bill and Ted Face the Music,” plays El Rivkin, a misanthropic information broker who makes a living collecting and selling the

Apple, signaling its major entertainment-industry ambitions, is significantly boosting its L.A. footprint: The tech giant said it’s building two new facilities, along the border of Culver City and the City of Los Angeles, that will serve as its headquarters for the region. The complex will encompass more than 550,000 square feet once completed. An Apple

Google said it will prohibit ads and monetization of YouTube videos and publisher content that deny climate change or contradict “well-established scientific consensus” about the causes of climate change. YouTube will still allow videos with falsehoods about climate change on its platform — but will demonetize videos or channels that promote hoaxes or conspiracy theories

Condé Nast Entertainment announced that it hired Chris Bannon, a 25-year audio programming development and production, as senior VP, head of global audio. Most recently, Bannon served as chief content officer at podcast leader Stitcher for five years. He left the company in October 2020, following SiriusXM’s acquisition of Stitcher from E.W. Scripps Co. Prior

Twitch has released details of its initial investigation into Wednesday’s massive data leak that exposed upwards of 125 gigabytes of proprietary information and code. That allegedly included info about the livestreaming streaming platform’s creator payouts, Twitch’s source code and an unreleased Steam rival being developed by Amazon Game Studios. Twitch said “some data was exposed

After 10 years, YouTube is nixing YouTube Rewind, its annual video-recap celebration of creators — saying that one single video can’t reflect “the full breadth” of its creator community. The Google-owned video giant said Thursday that when it debuted YouTube Rewind in 2011, “we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of the amazing

Lena Waithe, the Emmy-winning actor, writer and producer, is diving into audio programming in a new partnership with Audible. Audible, Amazon’s premium audio storytelling service, announced a multiproject development deal with Hillman Grad Productions, founded by Waithe and Rishi Rajani. The first original project under the deal has already been greenlit and is in active

Emily Morse’s “Sex With Emily” — touted as the industry’s longest-running sex and relationship podcast — has signed a distribution and monetization deal with Acast. The show, which Morse launched in 2005 from her San Francisco apartment, consistently ranks as No. 1 in Apple Podcasts’ sexuality category. Under the deal, Acast will host and distribute

Meredith, home to publications including People, EW, Better Homes & Gardens and InStyle, will become part of Dotdash, the digital publishing division of Barry Diller’s IAC holding company, under a proposed takeover deal. The terms give the deal an enterprise value of about $2.7 billion. Under the deal, Dotdash will acquire Meredith in an all-cash

Twitter, looking to focus development dollars on its core business, said it reached a deal to sell MoPub, which sells monetization solutions to mobile app publishers and developers, to marketing software company AppLovin for $1.05 billion in cash. Twitter had acquired MoPub in September 2013 for about $350 million. In 2020, MoPub generated approximately $188