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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...
Spotify to Acquire AI Voice Startup Sonantic
Spotify said on Monday (June 13) it will acquire Sonantic, a tech company that specializes in creating hyperrealistic artificial voices. In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Spotify said Sonantic’s technology could allow the audio company to better communicate with users when they aren’t looking at their screens and help reduce other barriers to entry for new listeners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Based in London, Sonantic was founded in 2018 by Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn. The company caters toward entertainment industry professionals and, in 2020, raised €2.3 million (about $2.4 million) in seed funding. Sonantic has also worked with Val Kilmer, who was diagnosed with throat cancer and ...
Taylor Swift Drops 11-Minute ‘Short Film’ Version of ‘All Too Well’ Song on Spotify & Apple Music
Is 10 minutes of “All Too Well” just not enough “All Too Well” for you? Fans noticed that an 11-minute version of Taylor Swift‘s opus, with updated instrumentals and a retailored outro, was quietly made available to stream on Saturday (June 11) as the singer-songwriter-director screened and discussed her All Too Well short film at the Tribeca Festival in New York City. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The newly released, cinematic version of “All Too Well,” officially titled “All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (The Short Film),” actually clocks in at 11 minutes, 26 seconds. The actual “10-minute” version that was released on Swift’s re-recorded Red album is 10 minutes, 13 seconds long. The end of Swift’s latest edit of the song repeats the...
Jennifer Lopez Says She Was Asked to Cut ‘Kids in Cages’ From Super Bowl Set, Plus More ‘Halftime’ Revelations
Jennifer Lopez‘s Netflix documentary Halftime premiered at the Tribeca Festival on Wednesday. The film, which arrives on the streaming platform June 14, gives viewers an inside look at the singer preparing for the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, for which she shared the stage with Shakira, but also touches on personal tidbits in Lopez’s life that fans would otherwise not see. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Here are five takeaways from Halftime ahead of its arrival on Netflix Lopez Was Frustrated With the NFL Over Time Constraints for Her & Shakira’s Performance While Lopez was honored to be asked to perform at the Super Bowl, the NFL wanted to bring in Shakira for her performance — a move that led to the singer suggesting that she a...
Spotify Lays Out Roadmap to Higher Margins: Here’s the Plan
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and a parade of top executives had a simple message for investors in a live-streamed presentation from New York on Wednesday (June 8): Our margins will be better. Although the company has communicated its long-term vision through quarterly earnings calls, press releases and occasional Wall Street conferences, it hasn’t gathered the investment community for a meaningful conversation since going public in 2018. “I’m not sure that journey’s very well understood,” said Ek. “And, frankly, we probably haven’t done a very good job explaining it.” Despite posting 24% revenue growth in both 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, the company’s share price is down 51.7% in 2022. As CEO, Ek’s job on Wednesday was to captain the nearly four-hour presentation communicating to investor...
