Finance

Los Angeles-based private equity firm Shamrock Capital raised $600 million in a new fund aimed at acquiring film, television, music, video games and sports rights, the company announced Thursday (Feb. 2). Founded in 1978 as Roy E. Disney‘s family office, Shamrock now says it has $4.4 billion of total assets under management, including $2 billion in its content strategy, thanks to the close of this new fund, the Shamrock Capital Content Fund III.

Source: Shamrock Capital Raises $600M in New Fund

Alphabet, parent company of Google and YouTube, turned in fourth-quarter 2022 earnings that missed analyst estimates, as YouTube’s ad revenue again suffered a year-over-year decline. YouTube ad revenue was $7.96 billion in Q4, down 7.8% from $8.63 billion a year earlier. Analysts expected YouTube advertising revenue to come in at $8.2 billion for the most recent quarter, per FactSet. Total revenue was pegged at $76.58 billion, with earnings per share of $1.19, according to Refinitiv.

Source: Alphabet Misses Q4 Earnings Estimates, YouTube Ad Revenue Drops by Nearly 8%

Apple missed Wall Street estimates for the last three months of 2022, with sales down 5%, amid iPhone manufacturing disruptions and fell short of Wall Street’s earnings estimates . Apple’s Services segment turned in revenue of $20.8 billion — a quarterly record — but its growth slowed down in the period, to a 6.4% year-over-year increase. The segment includes the App Store, Apple Pay, and subscription services like Apple TV+, Apple Music and iCloud.

Source: Apple Quarterly Revenue Dips 5%, Missing Wall Street Forecasts, as Services Biz Posts Record Sales of $20.8 Billion

Airbit offers a catalog of over a million beats from producers and beatmakers across the world. The platform, which reports to have over 800,000 users, has so far sold over 2 million beats, according to a press release on Wednesday (February 1). Producers have earned more than $50 million on Airbit to date, the company says.

Source: After reaching milestone of 60m creators, BandLab acquires beat marketplace Airbit

Recent signs of life in the NFT space ultimately yielded a significant jump in market activity in January, as organic trading volume grew 38% from December, per data from DappRadar. Sales of NFT assets totaled $946.7 million last month, according to the analytics firm, which tracks data across multiple blockchain networks and marketplaces. That’s a significant rise from the $683.9 million figure registered in December, and marks the largest market-wide total since June 2022.

Source: NFT Sales Jump 38% in January as Bored Apes Drive Trading Surge – Decrypt

After buying a song catalog and associated income streams from Justin Bieber, the company has now also acquired a song catalog from TMS, the British songwriting and record production trio of Tom ‘Froe’ Barnes, Benjamin Kohn and Pete ‘Merf’ Kelleher for an undisclosed fee. Included in the TMS catalog are songs Someone You Loved and Before you Go, which were hits for Lewis Capaldi and Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself for Jess Glynne.

Source: Hipgnosis is in buying mode again, as company snaps up song catalog of British hitmakers TMS

On January 30, the worldwide legal firm Rosen Law Firm announced that it intends to bring a class action lawsuit against the company Yuga Labs. This latest lawsuit is another effort to make Yuga Labs responsible for the significant losses that NFT investors who purchased BAYC and APE over the previous several years have sustained as a result of the company’s actions.

Source: Yuga Labs Facing More Lawsuits Over NFTs

Spotify packed on 10 million Premium customers in the last three months of 2022 to stand at 205 million, topping its previous guidance. The growth of its paid subs, up 14% year over year, was “aided by promotional intake and household plans,” the company said. Overall, the streamer gained 33 million total monthly active users in the fourth quarter — a record high — to reach 489 million (free and paid), up 20% year over year.

Source: Spotify Hits 205 Million Paid Subscribers, Topping User Growth Targets for Q4 With Record Total Quarterly Gain

StoryCo also revealed its first narrative experience, The Disco Ball, which will be released in 2023. The “immersive and collaborative storytelling experience” will be produced by the Halo television series writer Kyle Killen and artists shelby and sandy, but invites collaboration from the community to finish the main character’s journey.

Source: Hollywood in Web3: StoryCo Raises $6M to Decentralize Storytelling

In his reasoning for cutting 6% of Spotify’s global workforce, Daniel Ek wrote: “In 2022, the growth of Spotify’s [operating expense] outpaced our revenue growth by 2X. That would have been unsustainable long-term in any climate, but with a challenging macro environment, it would be even more difficult to close the gap.” Added Ek: “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth.” That’s something of an understatement.

Source: Over-spending and under-pricing: Spotify’s commercial missteps have come back to haunt it.