Streaming
‘The Best Man: The Final Chapters’ Trailer Hits And That Book Is Still Causing Trouble
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty Peacock is giving out an early Christmas gift. The Best Man: The Final Chapters is heading to the streamer on Dec. 22 just before the holiday. A teaser trailer dropped late over the weekend to preview the show. The 8-episode series began with two popular movies, 1999’s The Best Man and 2013’s The Best Man Holiday, helmed by director Malcolm D. Lee. The movies starred Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Sanaa Lathan, Terence Howard, Morris Chestnut, Monica Calhoun, Melissa de Souza, and Harold Perrineau, becoming one of the most beloved of the black rom-coms. In the first movie, Diggs plays Harper, a writer who draws animosity from his college buddies after publishing his first novel Unfinished Business, a thinly disguised version of their l...
Ozzy Osbourne to Perform Virtually as Part of “Ozzfest” at Metaverse Music Festival
Ozzy Osbourne is set to perform virtually for the “Ozzfest” portion of the second annual Metaverse Music Festival, which takes place online November 10th through the 13th. The Metaverse Music Festival (MVMF) will be hosted in Decentraland, the largest user-owned and operated virtual social world. Presented by digital asset platform Kraken, this year’s MVMF will feature 100-plus artists virtually performing across curated community genre stages that utilize new, Web3-enabled immersive virtual concert experiences. That said, the festival is free for all and can be attended even if you have don’t have a VR headset. As an example, the main attraction for this year’s MVMF is the “Tower of Babel” stage, which is set in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Here, attendees can watch headliners such as Uni...
Apple Hikes Music and TV+ Subscription Prices
Apple Music and Apple TV+ subscribers are about to see slightly bigger numbers on their bills, because Apple has today hiked the prices of both subscription services. 9to5mac reports that the prices of both Music and TV+ will raise about $1-$3 monthly. Individual Apple Music plans will now be $10.99 a month instead of $9.99, or $109 a year instead of $99. For family plans, you’ll see your total increase from $14.99 to $16.99. Apple TV+ subscribers will now pay $6.99 a month instead of $4.99, or $69 annually instead of $49.99. This is the first time Apple has raised their subscription prices in the US. According to an Apple spokesperson, you can blame increased licensing costs for the jump, but the silver lining is that artists and songwriters will earn a tiny bit more per stream....
Apple Music’s Price Hike Boosts Music Stocks
Universal Music Group, Hipgnosis Songs Fund and other music stocks got a much-needed boost on Tuesday (Oct. 25) following news of Apple Music’s price hike, as investors bet it would trigger a wave of streaming subscription cost increases. Universal Music Group’s stock closed 11.6% higher, Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd ended up 7.8% and Korean music companies SM Entertainment and HYBE finished the trading day 4.8% and 4.4% higher, respectfully, on Tuesday. On Monday, Apple announced that it was raising the standard U.S. and U.K. individual plan price to $10.99 from $9.99. This 10% price hike — Apple’s first — comes amid high inflation and a darkening economic environment in many global markets. If Apple can raise prices at a time like this, that is a sign the music industry can charge more ...
TikTok to Launch Songwriting Platform for Creators With Simon Cowell, UMG & Samsung
TikTok creators will soon be handed a fresh set of tools to soundtrack their videos and potentially make hit songs when a new in-app platform created by Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment company, in partnership with Universal Music Group and Samsung, launches on the platform later this month. Called StemDrop, the initiative will provide TikTok’s more than 1 billion monthly users with access to music “stems” (the isolated components of a song, such as drum tracks or individual vocal parts) from an exclusive new track composed by hit songwriters Max Martin, Savan Kotecha and Ali Payami entitled “Red Lights,” which creators can then use to record and share their own versions. The project was conceived by British music mogul Cowell and entertainment executive Tim Van Rongen in pa...
The Ledger: How Streaming Platforms Are Looking Beyond Music to Boost Their Margins
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me took a humorous look at the health consequences of fast-food restaurants’ practice of up-selling customers to higher-priced, larger-portioned items – a super-sized cup of Coca-Cola rather than a large, for example. To the customer, up-selling looked like a good deal: the additional soda or food cost only a few cents more. For restaurants, the tactic padded margins because the difference in price dwarfed the cost of goods. Super Size Me comes to mind when looking at music subscription services and their quest to improve their margins. Those services have the equivalent of a super...
Wednesday Addams Trailer Reveals Christina Ricci’s New Character and Fred Armisen’s Uncle Fester: Watch
The official trailer for the upcoming Netflix Addams Family adaptation Wednesday has arrived, and like any long-awaited family reunion, there are a lot of new people to meet and a few familiar faces that look a bit different since the last time we saw them. Jenna Ortega stars in the Tim Burton-directed solo series for the titular teenage daughter of the Addams Family, who is sent to Nevermore Academy after a horrific piranha incident previously shared in the show’s teaser. After a series of unusual occurrences including an attempted murder, Wednesday summarizes her new digs in her signature, sardonic delivery with “There’s just something wrong about this place, not just because it’s a school.” On top of fleshing out the series’ overarching mystery, the trailer also introduces a number of n...
White Supremacist Acts Are ‘Prevalent’ on Spotify, But the Streamer Says It’s Working On It
Spotify is vowing to remove racist, anti-semitic and other hate content from its platform following a new report that says music from a number of white supremacist acts is “prevalent” on the streaming service. The report, published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday (Sept. 22), found a total of 40 white supremacist acts hosted on Spotify, violating the platform’s rules against “dangerous content.” According to the report, “extremist” musical sub-genres encompassed by these artists include Fashwave, electronic music that espouses white supremacist ideology; Rock Against Communism, a sub-genre of punk that promotes racism and antisemitism; and National Socialist Black Metal (NBSM), a sub-genre of metal that espouses fascism and white supremacy. The ADL noted that several of thes...
James Earl Jones Abdicates Darth Vader Voice Role to AI Technology
James Earl Jones has apparently relinquished the role of lead Star Wars antagonist Darth Vader to AI voice technology. The 91-year old actor and EGOT winner originated the character with his vocal performance in 1977’s Star Wars. In a report by Vanity Fair about the Ukrainian start-up Respeecher, it was revealed that the process of transitioning the vocal responsibilities from Jones to the company’s proprietary AI algorithm has been ongoing since the Sith Lord’s revival in the 2022 Star Wars prequel series, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Respeecher programmers employed an algorithm that uses archival recordings to create new dialogue. Jones provided his singular, sinister take on Darth Vader for a number of Star Wars spin-offs throughout the years, but his last contribution came in 2019’s The Ri...
Streaming Is Growing — Just Not Like It Used To: 5 Takeaways From the RIAA Mid-Year Report
The music subscription market, the driving force behind the U.S. recorded music industry’s six-year growth streak, posted another gain in the first half of 2022, according to RIAA midyear figures released Wednesday (Sept. 21). But revenue from paid services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music have slowed from earlier break-neck paces. After rising at double-digit growth rates in recent years, subscription revenue grew by only 9.4% in the first half of 2022, down from 11.3% at the mid-point of 2021 and 13.7% at the mid-point of 2020. The $387.6 million increase, to $4.5 billion, was less than half of the $823.5 million reported a year earlier, a period in which streaming services surged during the early pandemic’s lock-down periods and strict restrictions. Still, subscription rev...
‘Andor’: How to Stream the ‘Star Wars’ Prequel Series on Disney+
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. A new era begins with Andor, the Rogue One prequel series, now streaming on Disney+. The three-episode premiere arrived on Wednesday (Sept 21). Diego Luna stars as Andor in the 12-episode series from the Star Wars franchise, which follows Cassian Andor’s journey as a rebel hero. Stellan Skarsgård, Genevive O’Reilly, Alex Ferns, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona and Denise Gough are among the cast. Read on for details on how to watch Andor and other Disney+ exclusives for free. How to Watch Andor on Disney+ Andor is streaming exclusively on Disney+, at no extr...
Tiktok Owner ByteDance Offers to Buy Back $3B in Outstanding Shares
TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. could spend as much as $3 billion to buy back shares from investors after the company scrapped its plans to go public this year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing a memo sent to ByteDance investors. The China-based company offered to repurchase investors’ existing shares for up to $176.94 per share, a move that would value ByteDance at close to $300 billion, much higher than previously reported, according to the WSJ. While the company did not provide a reason for the share repurchase in its memo, the move would provide liquidity to some of its long-term shareholders, offering some recompense for the scrapped IPO plans, the WSJ reported. ByteDance indefinitely shelved plans for an initial public offering in the U.S. or Hong Kon...
