Streaming
Netflix to Start Charging “Extra Home” Fee for Sharing Accounts Between Households
Netflix is cracking down on users mooching off of their family members, friends, and exes: This summer, the streamer will begin to implement an “extra home” fee for those using the same account with people they don’t live with. The small fee, which equates to about $2 or $3, will go into effect on August 22th in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. “If your Netflix account is being used on a TV outside of your home, you will need to pay an extra $2.99 per month for each extra home. You will only be charged when you or someone who uses your account chooses to add an extra home—this fee will NOT be automatically charged,” Netflix wrote on their Honduras pricing page. After a trial period in the previously-mentioned countries, Netflix will start implem...
The Ledger: Royalty Growth Requires Changing More Than How They’re Calculated
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. If The Beatles wrote a song about music royalties, the band would sing about a “Long and Winding Road” to higher subscription fees and better pay for artists and labels. The music subscription business model has become the record industry’s main breadwinner since launching in the early 2000s. But for two decades, many artists and rights holders have bristled at the royalty rates paid by streaming services. Some rates have improved: ad-supported royalties grew as online advertising matured. Royalties from subscription services have less wiggle room for change, however. The biggest innovation is a change in how to divvy a...
Netflix’s Cheaper Ad-Supported Tier Will Offer Smaller, Worse Catalog
You get what you pay for, the saying goes, and Netflix seems determined to prove that point with a cheaper, ad-supported tier that also comes with a smaller, worse catalog. As Protocol reports, the backbone of the ad-supported tier seems likely to be Netflix originals. Many of the company’s existing contracts for third-party content would allow other companies to take a slice of the ad-money pie, and while co-CEO Ted Sarandos has been trying to renegotiate those deals, it’s hard to convince other companies to willingly take less money. “We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it,” Sarandos said. “But I don’t think it’s a material hold-back to the business.” Advertisement Related Video He added, “The vast majority of what people watch on Netflix, we ca...
SoundCloud, Warner Music Group Strike Deal on Fan-Powered Royalties
SoundCloud has finalized a deal with Warner Music Group that would allow WMG’s artists with songs on the SoundCloud platform the ability to get paid based on the number of individual users streaming their music, rather than by market share of total streams, sources tell Billboard. The revenue model is part of SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties initiative, which it launched last March with the aim of re-tooling how the platform doles out streaming revenue to rights holders and providing more detailed data to help support independent artists on the platform. In practice, it allows independent creators who own their rights and upload their works to SoundCloud through its Repost system the ability to get paid according to how many fans stream their music, rather than the current industry stand...
YouTube Creators Can Now Link Their Shopify Stores to the Platform
YouTube creators and merchants will now have the ability to link their Shopify stores to their YouTube channels via a newly announced partnership between the two platforms. Revealed Tuesday (July 19) in a blog post by YouTube VP of Shopping Product David Katz, the partnership will allow creators to display their Shopify-listed products across their YouTube channels while benefitting from Shopify’s real-time inventory syncing “so that viewers are never disappointed to find a product out of stock,” Katz wrote. Additionally, creators can enable checkout directly from YouTube so users can purchase items without ever leaving the platform. “Shopify is the commerce infrastructure of the internet, powering millions of independent businesses all over the world,” said Shopify VP of Product Kaz Nejat...
Netflix’s Better-Than-Expected Subscriber Forecast is Good News for Music Streamers
Investors have reason to feel upbeat about subscription businesses after Netflix revealed better-than-expected quarterly results on Tuesday (July 19). Netflix subscribers dropped 970,000 subscribers to 220.7 million in the second quarter — it warned in April that it expected to lose as many as 2 million subscribers — and forecast a 1 million-subscriber gain in the third quarter. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected Netflix to lose an average of 1.84 million subscribers in the second quarter, according to Reuters. The good news caused Netflix’s share price to quickly rise 8.2% to $218.15 in after-hours trading on Tuesday, up from $201.63 on Monday, when shares gained 5.6%. Still, Netflix shares are down 66.5% year to date through Tuesday. Tuesday’s announcement was also good news for other...
Netflix Loses Nearly One Million Subscribers Worldwide
Netflix has followed a bleak first quarter marking its first loss of subscribers in 11 years with even worse news. During its latest quarterly report, the streaming giant revealed a loss of an additional 970,000 worldwide subscribers. Breaking down the subscriber change by region, Netflix lost 1.3 million in the US and Canada; dropped another 770,000 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; held steady in Latin America; and gained one million in Asia. The losses don’t come as a surprise, but actually beat the company’s previous estimate back in April that it would shed two million total customers during the second quarter. In a letter to shareholders, Netflix revealed it currently has 73.28 million paid subscribers in the US and Canada and 220.67 million worldwide. The company also pro...
TikTok to Add Content Ratings on Videos With ‘Overtly Mature Themes’
In an effort to prevent potentially disturbing or “overtly mature” material from reaching users under the age of 18, TikTok will begin adding content scores to videos as part of a new feature meant to emulate ratings used in the film, TV and gaming industries. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to a blog post shared on Wednesday, TikTok will begin rolling out an early version of the feature in coming weeks and place a “post unavailable” message to block out videos that are age restricted. To determine which videos fall into that restricted category, TikTok will assign a “maturity score” based on the video’s “thematic maturity” levels. “When we detect that a video contains mature or complex themes, for example, fictional scenes th...
Crosby, Stills & Nash Music Returns to Spotify
Crosby, Stills & Nash music can now be streamed on Spotify once again, five months after David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills requested their labels remove their recordings in support of Neil Young‘s decision to leave the streaming service. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Their music is available via Spotify as of Saturday (July 2). CSN will donate proceeds from streams to COVID-19 charities for at least a month, a source tells Billboard. In February, the band members commented, “We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast. While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly conseq...
Netflix Adds Cheaper Tier for Customers Who “Don’t Mind Advertising”
Netflix has confirmed it will be launching a cheaper, ad-supported tier. The streamer’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos explaining the reasoning behind the lower-priced plan at Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, June 23rd during a sitdown with Sway podcast host Kara Swisher. “We’ve left a big customer segment off the table, which is people who say, ‘Hey, Netflix is too expensive for me and I don’t mind advertising,’” said Sarandos (via The Hollywood Reporter). “We’re adding an ad tier; we’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price and I’ll watch ads.’” During Netflix’s last quarterly call in April, the company reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers, marking the first time its customer base has de...
RIP Lead Singles: Why Hip-Hop Titans Are Dropping Full Albums All at Once
Future’s “Wait For U” has quickly become one of the year’s biggest hits, as the Drake– and Tems-featuring R&B track logs another frame in this week’s Hot 100 top five. And an integral part of the song’s success — like many other recent hits in the genre — is that fans helped choose it. I Never Liked You marked Future’s eighth No. 1 project on the Billboard 200, bowing with 222,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending May 5, according to Luminate – the biggest week for any 2022 album at that point and the biggest first-week number for any Future solo album. During the same week that I Never Liked You debuted at No. 1, “Wait For U” raced to the top of the Hot 100 as the clear focus track from the album. [embedded content] Yet the song, which sits at No. 3...
YouTube Shorts Throws Down Challenge to TikTok, Hits 1.5B Monthly Viewers
As YouTube’s short-form video platform gains momentum against competitors like TikTok and Reels, more than 1.5 billion users view Shorts content every month, the company said on Wednesday. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last shared in April that YouTube had 2 billion logged-in users each month, while YouTube Shorts averaged more than 30 billion daily views. The Shorts monthly viewership figures come in contrast to TikTok, which said it surpassed 1 billion monthly active users last September. The YouTube figures account for logged-in users who have viewed at least one Shorts video on the platform in the span of a month, which doesn’t necessarily differentiate between users who are intentionally seeking out Shorts videos or those who accidentally happen upon them when using YouTube. According to...
