Amazon spent $80 million to acquire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a decision that incurred extra expenses because of Covid-19 protocols, test screenings in New Zealand — one of the few places in the world at the time where the company could gather a group of people in a dark movie theater — and a last-minute dash to incorporate all the gonzo footage before the film’s release on Oct. 23.
Source: Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream
Grumpy Cat is no longer with us. Tardar Sauce passed away in 2019 but the humans she shared a house with are keeping her memory alive. They do this in the form of merchandise, but also in court where they have filed over a dozen lawsuits against sellers of counterfeit and copyright-infringing products.
Source: “Grumpy Cat” is Long Gone But Her Copyright Lives On in Court * TorrentFreak
Live Nation has taken a timeline provided by the British government as an all-clear for the summer festival season, selling some 170,000 tickets this week to three major U.K. summer festivals that were put on sale this week — and according to comments made around the company’s grim 2020 earnings report on Thursday, it is optimistic that North America can be on a similar pace.
Source: Live Nation CEO Says U.S. Music Festivals Could Reopen by ‘Mid-Summer’
Even as the company hopes a burst of material could help it compete with rivals Peacock, HBO Max and Hulu, it must contend with another challenge: how to grab new streaming customers while not letting go of legacy dollars. It is, after all, that money that help pays for the service, which won’t be profitable for at least several years.
Source: For ViacomCBS, another Paramount Plus challenge: How to hold on to old money while pursuing the new
Once seen as a marginal forum for comedy, tech talk and public radio programming, podcasting is one of the hottest corners in media. Yet its formats and business practices are still developing, leading producers, executives and talent to view the medium as akin to television circa 1949: lucrative and uncharted territory with plenty of room for experimentation and flag-planting.
Source: Podcasting Is Booming. Will Hollywood Help or Hurt Its Future?
The mind-boggling amount of music being uploaded to Spotify continues to get even more mind-boggling. As part of Spotify’s ‘Stream On’ event on Monday (February 22), the company confirmed that more than 60,000 new tracks are now being ingested by its platform every single day.
Source: Over 60,000 tracks are now uploaded to Spotify every day. That’s nearly one per second.
About .09% of the 8 million or so creators on Spotify make $100,000 or more per year in royalties on the leading music streaming service. The noteworthy statistic came to light earlier this week, during the Stockholm-based service’s ‘Stream On’ investor conference.
Source: Just 7,500 Artists on Spotify (Out of 8 Million) Make $100,000 or More
EU countries face a June deadline to adopt national versions of a bloc-wide law that aims to improve media producers’ bargaining position against tech powerhouses including Facebook and Google. Under the law, passed in 2019, news publishers can demand payment for reuse of their content.
Source: Facebook Fight Over Media Payments Shifts Focus to Europe
After a tumultous month that saw Facebook pull news from its platform in protest, Australia’s government agrees to make the News Media Bargaining Code law. After a last-minute round of senate amendments were added to the bill on Tuesday, the bill was sent back and quickly passed to the lower house on Wednesday.
Source: Australia passes law forcing Google and Facebook to pay news publications
The merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has the potential to touch every part of the industry, including how much authors get paid and how bookstores are run. All this comes amid an atmosphere of increased attention on the dominance of large companies like Facebook and Google, and a new Justice Department to evaluate them.
Source: What Happens When a Publisher Becomes a Megapublisher?