Source: Facebook Parent Meta Expected to Post Slowest Revenue Growth Since IPO
April, 2022
Alphabet misses on revenue as YouTube ad business slowed by Ukraine war
Google parent Alphabet Inc on Tuesday reported its first quarterly revenue miss of the pandemic after the war in Ukraine hurt YouTube ad sales, leaving investors rattled as the global economy sputters. Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat said it was too early to predict when sales slowed by the war may pick up and warned that the strengthening U.S. dollar would hurt sales even more in the current quarter.
Source: Alphabet misses on revenue as YouTube ad business slowed by Ukraine war
Elon Musk’s World of Hurt
The two-decade long content and data collection free-for-all on digital platforms is starting to face pushback on multiple fronts and in multiple jurisdictions, which ultimately could greatly increase operational complexity and cost — to say nothing of liability risk — for digital platforms, even or perhaps especially for very large, U.S.-based digital platforms.
Social music creation platform BandLab closes Series B funding round at $65m
The investment round was led by Vulcan Capital, the multi-billion-dollar investment arm of Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, with participation from Caldecott Music Group and K3 Ventures, a venture capital firm that was an early backer of super app Grab and tech giant Bytedance. BandLab says the funds will allow it to expand its team and continue “to refine and grow its offerings to music creators and aspiring artists worldwide”.
Source: Social music creation platform BandLab closes Series B funding round at $65m
Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch on Publishing: ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’
Book banning efforts are occurring at alarming rates and copyright remains under siege from companies looking to take publishers’ content with little or no compensation. “Copyright challenges, from tech-company-backed entities who are coming for publishers’ content in every way they can, are gigantic and cannot be overstated,” Pietsch said.
Source: Michael Pietsch on Publishing at BISG: ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’
135,000 artists are now getting paid through SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties platform
SoundCloud has revealed a series of updated stats about its payout system’s progress. These stats include the fact that 135,000 independent artists are now getting paid through Fan-Powered Royalties (FPR). This marks a 30% growth in the volume of artists who have signed up to monetize their music via FPR on the platform since March 2021.
Source: 135,000 artists are now getting paid through SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties platform
PRS For Music Posts 22.4% 2021 Growth As Live’s Struggles Continue
PRS for Music, which posted an almost 20 percent downturn in collections for 2020, revealed its 2021 financials today. As highlighted, the London-headquartered entity said that revenue jumped by 22.4 percent in 2021, to £777.1 million ($990.3 million at the present exchange rate). Predictably, online plays (and especially streaming) drove PRS for Music’s 2021 revenue growth, with the category having hiked by 45.6 percent YoY to $341.2 million (£267.8 million), or about 34.5 percent of total collections.
Source: PRS For Music Posts 22.4% 2021 Growth As Live’s Struggles Continue
David Zaslav Vows Warner Bros. Discovery ‘Will Not Overspend to Drive Subscriber Growth’
In the wake of big content spender Netflix’s shocking Q1 subscriber loss, David Zaslav made a point to say Warner Bros. Discovery “will not overspend to drive subscriber growth” during Discovery’s first-quarter earnings call Tuesday. “As you’ve heard me say, we are not trying to win the direct-to-consumer spending war,” the WBD CEO said, instead promising that the newly combined WarnerMedia-Discovery company would “invest in scale smartly.”
Source: David Zaslav Vows Warner Bros. Discovery ‘Will Not Overspend to Drive Subscriber Growth’
Netflix’s Advertising Dilemma: Will Partners Get Any More Transparency?
With advertising comes the need to let advertisers know whether they’re getting their money’s worth. Which means sharing data — something that the streaming world as a whole and Netflix specifically hasn’t been keen on doing. “In the ad world … one of the requirements is some level of transparency and third-party auditing and reporting,” says Jim Lombard, CEO of connected TV ad marketplace Tetra TV. “[Netflix has] been slow to reveal that stuff.”
Source: Netflix’s Advertising Dilemma: Will Partners Get Any More Transparency?
‘Upload Filters’ Don’t Violate Freedom of Expression, EU Top Court Rules
The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed Poland’s request to annul Article 17 of the Copyright Directive. The Court finds that the legislation, which could boost the use of ‘upload filters,’ does not violate freedom of expression, as long as they can sufficiently distinguish between illegal and legal content. This effectively puts an end to years of opposition.
Source: ‘Upload Filters’ Don’t Violate Freedom of Expression, EU Top Court Rules * TorrentFreak