After a disappointing late summer and fall, major movie theater chains pinned hopes on a run of tentpoles that could help prop up the box office — and their bottom lines. But, one by one, in reporting fourth-quarter earnings in February and early March, the top chains all posted revenue that fell short of even the comparable quarter in 2021, when the industry was in the thick of the pandemic.
Source: Theater Chains to Studios: Please Send Us More Movies
Spending on video services by U.S. households is projected to fall by 8% to around $1,060 per year in four years, according to Ampere Analysis. The advertising and media research company says U.S. homes video spend peaked last year at $1,150 a year, largely attributable to lower spending on streaming. Legacy pay TV cord-cutting is also a major part of this move — as well as downward pressure for less spending on streaming services.
Source: Television News Daily: U.S. Home Video Spending To Shrink 8% In 4 Years, Streaming Declines
There will be no press release, no big announcement, as he would have to acknowledge that he was wrong. But make no mistake: Mark Zuckerberg just buried the metaverse. The metaverse is dead. Zuckerberg has just held the funeral by turning to the next big shiny thing, namely artificial intelligence. “We’re creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area,” Zuckerberg said in a Feb. 27 post on Facebook.
Neal Mohan posted his first open letter to creators as YouTube’s new boss, coming after CEO Susan Wojcicki stepped down last month. “Creators and artists are the heart of YouTube, and I’ll continue to put them first,” Mohan wrote in the letter, continuing the tradition of Wojcicki’s regular updates to creators. “In today’s challenging macroeconomic climate, we’re offering opportunities to grow a business on our platform.”
Universal Music Germany, in association with the German Music Industry Association (BVMI) and Web3 music platform twelve x twelve, just held its awarding ceremony on February 23, 2023. What made the recent event different than its predecessors was that its Gold and Platinum Awards were given in digital tokens along with their traditional physical formats. Digital awards are stored on the blockchain and they are used to commemorate an artist’s achievements.
Source: Universal Music Germany To Award Artists With Blockchain Tokens
Growth from streaming video subscriptions is expected to slow significantly through 2030. Expect media companies like NBCUniversal and Amazon Studios to adopt new ways of making money. “As I’ve said in the past, the current mechanisms for monetizing content are not working,” James L. Dolan, the interim executive chairman of AMC Networks said during the company’s earnings call this month. “The content industry needs to reorganize itself.”
Source: Honey, we blew up the Hollywood business model. Does anyone know how to fix it?
The European Commission launched a pair of formal antitrust investigations of Apple in June 2020. Now there’s a development. The Commission has sent Apple a ‘Statement of Objections’ that zeroes in on music streaming. It’s a follow-up to a previous Statement of Objections sent in April 2021. Today’s missive takes the in-app purchasing issue off the table: the Commission “does no longer take a position as to the legality of the IAP obligation for the purposes of this antitrust investigation”.
Source: EC narrows its Apple music-streaming investigation to ‘anti-steering’ issues – Music Ally
Creator royalties, or a lack thereof, on NFT marketplaces have been the niche’s biggest talking point of late. For SuperRare though, the decision to pay creators was already made five years ago. According to the project’s co-founder and CTO Jonathan Perkins, when SuperRare launched in 2018, the royalty aspect was going to be a “standard.” “What I think we’re seeing pan out now is just the kind of chaos of a new market taking shape.”
Source: NFT Royalties Are ‘Not Going Away on SuperRare’: Co-Founder Jon Perkins – Decrypt
NFT band and brand KINGSHIP, which was launched by Universal Music Group as a virtual band of cartoon apes through its Web3 label 10:22PM in late 2021, announced in a series of tweets on Wednesday (February 22) that it’s teaming up with Spotify on a token-enabled playlist. According to one of the tweets, This is a special curated playlist exclusively for KINGSHIP Key Card (NFT) holders”.
Music moderation is necessary, as music has long been a favorite method of hate groups for recruiting new members. Every time the Southern Poverty Law Center or Anti-Defamation League has a moment to poke around, they find a new crop of hate music on streaming services. These are the blatant ones. There are many borderline cases, ones that demand careful human moderation because music is multivalent and can encode messages very effectively.