Legislators and industry players urged action in response to Facebook-Cambridge Analytica reports and big data’s relationship to privacy (see 1803200047 and 1803210056). And House and Senate Commerce Committee leadership submitted formal requests Friday for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before their respective committees (see 1803220052).
Streaming music sales, 65 percent of music industry revenue last year, grew 43 percent to $5.7 billion, RIAA reported, as its continues seeking copyright law updates to match such changes. Paid subscriptions were the biggest growth driver for the music industry, RIAA said, posting $4 billion in revenue, up 63 percent. Paid subscriptions comprised 47 percent of the total recorded music market. RIAA differentiates full-service paid subscriptions and limited-tier services such as Amazon Prime and Pandora Plus, which accounted for 14 percent of subscription revenue vs. 11 percent in 2016.
The future of TV content won’t follow a linear path as consumers adopt combinations of services, said a Tuesday NPD blog post. Analyst John Buffone identified four personas. The cable customer wants a large channel bundle, has low tolerance for quality of service issues and wants traditional user interfaces, remotes and familiar channel numbers. The morphing cable customer wants streaming media, too, and 45 percent use Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Hulu, driving integration of apps into set-top boxes like Comcast's X1. As streaming TV buffering and latency issues diminish, this consumer will become a core target for virtual MVPD subscriber acquisition. Tech-savvy consumers get a skinny TV bundle through a service such as Sling TV and attach a media player for a few desired channels. Forty-four percent of these virtual MVPD subscribers are 35-54 years old and typically tune into family networks. The direct-to-consumer (DTC) trend adopted by many millennials -- paying for just those channels they watch -- has extended beyond HBO to NBC, CBS, Disney and others. Amazon Channels gave support to this model. The smallest, “most intriguing” future TV customer, checks out a wide range of video options: Snapchat shorts, Facebook originals, “and will identify if a strategy such as Viacom’s mobile partnerships has legs,” Buffone said.
Sunday’s pedestrian fatality involving an Uber self-driving SUV in Tempe, Arizona (see 1803190024), spotlighted what could be “glaring limitations” in laws and regulations for driverless car technologies, Andrew Maynard, director-Arizona State University’s Risk Innovation Lab, emailed us Tuesday. The Lab works with local authorities on autonomous driving. Though it’s too early to tell how the incident will affect rules and liability, speculation has begun about whether Uber or the driver is liable, said the professor, “or even whether the pedestrian who was killed is to blame.”
Uber halted autonomous vehicle test operations in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto, a spokesman emailed us Monday, after a self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian Sunday in Tempe, Arizona. The company is "fully cooperating with local authorities in their investigation of this incident," he said. One vehicle operator was in the front seat; no passengers were in the back seat, he said. A Tempe Police Department statement confirmed the accident occurred while the car was in autonomous mode, with a vehicle operator behind the wheel. The automobile hit a female walking outside the crosswalk, said police. She was transported to a local hospital where she died Monday, they said. Late Monday, Tempe police at a media briefing identified the pedestrian as Elaine Herzberg, 49, and said she was walking a bike across the street where she was struck. They identified the Uber vehicle operator as Rafael Vasquez, 44, and said he was "cooperative" with authorities and showed "no evidence" of "impairment." Authorities deferred to Uber questions about what the responsibilities of Vasquez were when the vehicle was in the autonomous mode.The National Transportation Safety Board is "sending team to investigate Uber crash in Tempe, Arizona," it tweeted Monday. "More to come." Uber didn't disclose the vehicle's maker, but authorities said it was a Volvo XC90 SUV. Consumer Watchdog, a frequent critic of commercializing autonomous driving without tight regulatory oversight (see 1709120050), wants “a national moratorium on all robot car testing on public roads until the complete details of this tragedy are made public and are analyzed by outside experts so we understand what went so terribly wrong,” emailed John Simpson, privacy and technology project director. "Arizona has been the wild west of robot car testing with virtually no regulations in place. That’s why Uber and Waymo test there. When there’s no sheriff in town, people get killed.” The accident in Tempe is "a reminder of the risk that comes with rushing to get more and more self-driving cars on public roads before we know they are safe," said David Friedman, Consumers Union director-cars and product policy and analysis. "The promise of self-driving cars is that they can avoid fatalities, but this tragedy makes clear they have a long way to go. Right now, Congress is focused on exempting these cars from safety standards in an effort to get them on the market faster. Congress needs to shift its focus to ensuring these cars are safe."
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek shunned “pomp or circumstance” of a conventional initial public offering road show at the company’s first investor day Thursday, saying the traditional model “isn’t a good fit.” Noting the typical IPO requires a quiet period, he said: “We don’t think that’s the right thing to do.” Spotify has allowed employees and shareholders to buy and sell stock for years “and that shouldn’t stop just because our stock is becoming more widely owned,” he said.
Some new Samsung TVs have voice control and IoT improvements allowing connections to some other home devices in what the company calls "TV intelligence." Its 2018 QLED TVs and AV products include an app, integration with Microsoft Xbox gaming and SmartThings and Bixby voice control, it said at a company event in New York Wednesday. TV intelligence is “where your TV automatically configures" all your other devices, said Pedro Freitas, senior manager-service innovation. Sarah Nelson of business development demonstrated how consumers can set up a TV wirelessly using a smartphone app that connects to it via Bluetooth Low Energy.
Audio and custom installers aren't worried about Amazon and are focusing on helping customers with home networks, ProSource CEO David Workman told the group's meeting in Nashville Sunday. “Their share of market in television is only about 9 percent,” he said of large-panel TVs. Amazon didn't comment Monday. On average, homes have 10 devices connected to the network, forecast to jump to 50 in five years, Workman said. Consumers largely don’t understand what they need to do to keep networks stable or prepare for the future, he said. “Things are changing constantly, and it all hangs on the network.” This is "one of the most dynamic periods of technology,” Workman said: It’s confusing for dealers, let alone customers.
Spotify believes it has double the monthly active users (MAUs) of next-closest competitor Apple Music, said its SEC filing for its initial public offering: 159 million MAUs and 71 million subscribers for its premium services as of Dec. 31. Apple didn’t comment Thursday. Spotify lost $1.5 billion last year, vs. a $658 million loss in 2016, and revenue grew to $5 billion last year from $3.6 billion, said Wednesday's filing.
Adding connected home control to Comcast’s X1 voice remote is a “work in progress” because “we’ll never really be done,” said Bryan Kissinger, digital home product management, in a Monday blog post about expanding the X1 voice remote to the smart home. The cable ISP last month announced new voice commands for home automation and security, enabling customers to adjust temperature by saying “Xfinity Home, I’m cold,” or to change colors of smart bulbs. It added a “guard word” -- Xfinity Home -- for connected home commands, for instance, to ensure the platform didn’t search for a movie or song called “disarm” when a customer wanted to disengage the security system, Kissinger said. A new voice team is building voice integrations for connected home commands. While Xfinity Home is a mouthful, Kissinger said part of the power of the X1 voice remote is that a trigger word isn’t required. A challenge, he said, is that “there are a lot of different ways you can say something.”