Spotify shares closed down 17% at $159.76 Thursday after Q4 revenue grew 24% year on year to $3.1 billion. It forecast $2.97 billion in Q1. Citing previous controversies, CEO Daniel Ek said results are typically measured in “months, not days.” Commenting on the “slippery slope” of censoring content, Ek called it a “complicated issue." Spotify is “trying to balance creative expression with the safety of our users," he said. Musician Neil Young had pulled music from Spotify to protest COVID-19 misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (see 2201310048). Wednesday, Ek referenced the steps Spotify is taking due to the controversy, including putting COVID-19 content on the platform from experts. “The important part here is that we don’t change our policies based on one creator, nor do we change it based on any media cycle or calls from anyone else,” Ek said, not referencing Young by name. The company’s policies were “carefully written with the input from numbers of internal experts,” he said. “And while Joe has a massive audience -- he’s actually the No. 1 podcast in more than 90 markets -- he also has to abide by those policies.” Streaming, meanwhile, replaced the a la carte model, he said: “And now you see lots of subscription services getting to 100 million" subscribers.
TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board spot checks in 2021 of TV ratings found that generally age ratings and descriptors were being applied consistently and accurately, the group said Wednesday. It said it will continue those spot checks this year, and look at other ways to increase ratings consistency among network and streaming programming.
MaxBet TV tapped Setplex’s platform to launch what the companies called the first casino and gambling-centric TV network.
Univision completed its $4.8 billion buy of Grupo Televisa’s media content and production assets (see 2104140067), and the combined company is now named TelevisaUnivision, said a news release Monday. The new company will produce content for former Univision platforms and others and launch a Spanish-language streaming service in 2022. TelevisaUnivision combines Televisa’s four broadcast channels, 27 pay-TV channels, Videocine movie studio and Blim TV subscription VOD service with Univision’s broadcast networks, nine Spanish-language cable networks, 59 TV stations and 57 radio stations. SoftBank Latin America Fund, Google and Raine Group are investors in the combination. For personnel news about the new company, see the personals section of this issue.
AMC Networks and Comcast signed a multiyear renewal of their distribution agreement that covers continued carriage of AMC's linear networks and wider availability of its streaming services to Xfinity TV, broadband and XClass subscribers, they said Monday.
Neil Young's Spotify dispute spurred the company's streaming-music rivals to tout their own services. The musician wanted the service to choose between him and podcast host Joe Rogan over the latter's COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. A Spotify-curated Neil Young Radio playlist came up on the service Friday, but Young’s solo recordings weren’t there. The company didn't comment. Apple Music's Twitter account encouraged Young's fans to “listen to his entire catalog” on its service. SiriusXM said it would have an exclusive limited run with "Neil Young Radio." Qobuz emailed that Young's discography is available.
TV was the most pirated industry between January and September 2021, with pirate websites being visited 67 billion times for TV content during that nine-month span, Akamai said Wednesday, citing Muso-provided data. Total visits to pirate sites during that span for TV, film, music, software and publishing content topped 132 billion, Akamai said. Many of the titles being pirated aren't generally available in the areas where visitors are coming from, it said. During that nine months, the U.S. was the biggest location for pirate site visits, at 13.5 billion, with Russia following at 7.2 billion, India (6.5 billion), China (5.9 billion) and Brazil (4.5 billion), Akamai said.
SoundHound got a multiyear agreement with Qualcomm to enable its voice AI technology with Snapdragon platforms, SoundHound said Tuesday.
YouTube, which has tried to tamp down on content violating its policies, is now taking aim at content "that comes right up against our policy lines but doesn't cross it," CEO Susan Wojcicki blogged Tuesday. She said YouTube aims to have views of borderline content under 0.5% on the service. She said the violative view rate, which tracks what percentage of views on YouTube comes from content violating its policies, was 0.09% to 0.11% in Q3. She said the rate fell more than 70% between 2017 and Q3 2021. She said in response to creators asking for more details about policy violations, YouTube is hiring to expand its ability to provide such specifics. She said the EU's Digital Services Act "could have implications for online speech" and YouTube is trying to line up support for "a unified digital consumer protection framework ... that still allows YouTube to best serve our users." She said YouTube creator engagement helped as EU member states incorporate the Article 17 copyright directive into local laws. Wojcicki said the number of YouTube channels globally making more than $10,000 is up 40% year over year. She said to boost its short-video feature Shorts, it will expand the capability to remix YouTube content. She said it's in early stages of testing how shopping features that allow viewers to browse and buy products featured in their videos can be integrated into Shorts. She said Shorts views have topped 5 trillion, while YouTube has more than 50 million music and Premium subscribers, including trials.
FuboTV secured exclusive U.S. rights via a six-year sublicense with Fox Sports to stream select matches from Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), it said Monday. The deal starts with the UEFA Nations League in June. The UEFA coverage will stream on Fubo Sports Network, part of fuboTV’s base plan, and via distribution partners Hisense Smart TVs, LG Channels, Sports on Tubi, Plex, Samsung TV Plus, The Roku Channel, Vizio Channels and Xumo, it said.