Streaming
Netflix to End Password Sharing in US Beginning in 2023: Report
Netflix will begin cracking down on password sharing in the US starting in early 2023, reports The Wall Street Journal. This summer, the streaming platform tested out an “extra home” fee in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras after first rolling it out in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. Based on those tests, the new monthly fee is expected to cost $3 per extra home in the US. Netflix is well aware of how the crackdown will alienate customers. “Make no mistake, I don’t think consumers are going to love it right out of the gate,” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors in early December. Advertisement Related Video To that end, the company has reportedly discussed gradually implementing the change. With Netflix losing subscribers throughout 2022, however, the stre...
Danny Elfman ‘Surprised’ by ‘Wednesday’ Success, Thought It Was Going to Be ‘A Little Cult Thing’
Wednesday is officially a smash. The Netflix show, which premiered Nov. 23, has climbed the ranks since its release and has become the third most watched show on the streaming platform after Stranger Things and Squid Game, but for the show’s composer Danny Elfman, the success came as a major surprise. Speaking alongside Phoebe Bridgers for an interview with NME published Friday (Dec. 16), the composer — well known and loved for his work on The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland and more — spoke about what it was like working on Wednesday and how he feels about the show resonating with the masses. “Wednesday was just fun. I grew up on The Addams Family, but I really also dug the Charles Addams cartoons even more so, so for me, it was like a well known kind ...
SoundCloud Revenue Rose 19% in 2021 Thanks to Subscriber Growth, Creator Tools Adoption
SoundCloud Holdings GmbH and its subsidiaries reported revenue in 2021 of 230.7 million euros ($273 million at the average exchange rate in 2021 of 1.18308), up 19% from the prior year, according to audited financial statements published by the privately held company in Germany on Tuesday (Dec. 13). SoundCloud, which originally gained popularity for its embeddable streaming widget, has a unique business model that mixes tools for music creators and listening for fans. Fan revenue — from advertising and subscriptions — improved 16.6% to 143.3 million euros ($170 million), or 62.2% of total revenue, down from 63.5% in 2020. Revenue from subscribers grew 20% year over year and exceeded internal expectations, according to the financial statements. Advertising revenue was in line with exp...
HBO Max to Pull Westworld From Streaming Library
Last month, HBO canceled Westworld after four seasons, and now, WarnerMedia plans to pull the series from its streaming library altogether. According to Variety, HBO Max also plans to remove The Nevers from its catalog. Joss Whedon created the latter show, which premiered in 2021 and was supposed to premiere the second half of Season 1 next year. Sources told the trade those remaining episodes may air on another platform. HBO Max’s decision to pull Westworld and The Nevers follows a decision, announced on the same day, to rescind its Season 2 renewal of the Jake Johnson and Ophelia Lovibond-starring Minx and instead cancel the comedy instead. Season 1 of the show will be removed from the streamer, as will the also-canceled Love Life, which ...
Disney+ Launches Ad-Supported Plan: What You Need to Know
Disney has dipped its toe into ad-supported streaming by launching the new Disney+ Basic plan. Initially only available in the US, the cheaper tier arrives roughly one month after rival streamer Netflix rolled out its own ad-supported subscription. It’s worth noting that Disney+ Basic launches with access to the platform’s entire catalog as opposed to Netflix’s ad-supported plan, which debuted without many popular TV shows and movies. However, the cheaper tier does come with some restrictions: It doesn’t allow downloads or come with extra features like GroupWatch and Dolby Atmos support. Along with Disney+ Basic, there is a reworked lineup of ad-supported Disney Bundles that come with Hulu, ESPN+, and/or live TV. Advertisement Related Video Read on to find out everything you need to k...
What’s a TikTok Hit Worth? This Year’s Most Popular Track Grew Over 1,000% on Streaming
TikTok has proven its success at renewing widespread interest around old songs countless times over the past several years. 2022 was no exception, as the short-form video platform announced Swedish Sadboy rapper Yung Lean’s 2013 track “Ginseng Strip 2002” was its most popular track of the year thanks to a trend of users singing along for about 10 seconds and then kissing at the end. The nearly decade-old track was used in almost 11 million videos across the app in 2022, and while TikTok royalties are notoriously low to music rights holders, the upside proposition has been established that a viral hit there will drive streaming elsewhere. With “Ginseng Strip 2002,” that was most certainly true. Since the “Ginseng Strip 2002” TikTok trend started to take off around the turn of the new year, ...
What’s a TikTok Hit Worth? This Year’s Most Popular Track Grew Over 1,000% on Streaming
TikTok has proven its success at renewing widespread interest around old songs countless times over the past several years. 2022 was no exception, as the short-form video platform announced Swedish Sadboy rapper Yung Lean’s 2013 track “Ginseng Strip 2002” was its most popular track of the year thanks to a trend of users singing along for about 10 seconds and then kissing at the end. The nearly decade-old track was used in almost 11 million videos across the app in 2022, and while TikTok royalties are notoriously low to music rights holders, the upside proposition has been established that a viral hit there will drive streaming elsewhere. With “Ginseng Strip 2002,” that was most certainly true. Since the “Ginseng Strip 2002” TikTok trend started to take off around the turn of the new year, ...
Here Are the Best Spotify Wrapped Memes of 2022
It’s Spotify Wrapped season, that wonderful time of the year when a multi-billion dollar corporation tricks its users into running a global marketing campaign for free. With quirky graphics, completely made-up genres and plenty of opportunities to publically shame your friends, it’s tough to refrain from sharing your top songs and artists of the year and flexing your greatness—or cringiness. In honor of this brazen display of data harvesting, we’ve compiled the best Spotify Wrapped memes of 2022. Obliterating your parents’ computer for a YouTube rip of a song was so worth it Let’s get this out of the way right now: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with listening to 225 hours of Skrillex in a year Can’t tell if we’re supposed to laugh or cry? ...
A Track Sung By an AI Voice Has Eclipsed 100 Million Streams
While artists work hard to produce new music for fans and increase their streaming numbers, an A.I. has effortlessly recorded a song that eclipsed 100 million streams. According to a report by Music Business Worldwide, Chinese streaming giant Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) has recorded and released over 1,000 new songs that feature AI-generated vocals mimicking the human voice. One track in particular, titled “Today,” has become the first song with an AI voice to surpass the nine-digit milestone. That led to just under $350,000 in streaming revenue, per MBW. The songs use TME’s “patented voice synthesis technology,” Lingyin Engine, which is said to be able to replicate the voices of real-life singers to produce original songs throughout any genre and language. The company also repo...
Failure Announce “We Are Hallucinations” Streaming Concert Film
Failure have announced a streaming concert film, dubbed “We Are Hallucinations,” premiering December 15th. It marks the veteran alt-rockers first foray into streaming and captures performances from the band’s summer 2022 tour in support of their 2021 album Wild Type Droid. The 18 songs selected for the film span all six of Failure’s studio albums, including choice cuts such as “Stuck on You” — as seen in the trailer below. “It’s crazy that we have never made a concert film before,” remarked guitarist Greg Edwards in a press release, “but I think this will really stand as a definitive document of the dynamic between the three of us on stage and the connection we have with our fans.” Advertisement Related Video Failure are treating fans just in time for the holiday. In addition to the c...
Metallica’s Helping Hands Benefit Concert To Stream on Paramount+ and YouTube
Metallica have announced that their Helping Hands benefit concert on December 16th will stream via Paramount+, Pluto TV, and YouTube. The show will take place at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles and also features a charity auction. Along with the streaming announcement, the band also revealed that Greta Van Fleet will play an opening set and Jimmy Kimmel will host the evening’s festivities. Metallica shared the following in a statement: “We’re looking forward to celebrating the achievements of All Within My Hands in our final show of the year, the Helping Hands Concert & Auction at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on Friday, December 16. This will be the third time we hit the stage to benefit the Foundation, but the very first time that it will be streamed live with a full audi...
TikTok Has Gen Z Hooked — Can Its Streaming Service Get Them to Pay for Music?
Ask music business executives to characterize their relationship with TikTok and the response is typically a variation of, “It’s complicated,” as one major-label executive puts it. As the short-form video streaming platform continues to dominate pop culture — last September, it claimed 1 billion monthly active users globally, a figure that has surely ballooned in the 13 months since — it has continued to draw the ire of the music industry for its low payouts to rights holders, even as labels, managers and publishers increasingly rely on the platform to market singles and break artists. But as TikTok’s parent company ByteDance explores an expansion of its fledgling music streaming service Resso — currently only available in India, Indonesia and Brazil — into new territories, another respons...
