The Writers Guild of America (WGA) – which represents screenwriters – has begun a strike spurred partly by the streaming economy. The post Hollywood screenwriters go on strike in streaming video row appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The big news from Netflix’s financial results yesterday was that its co-founder Reed Hastings is stepping down from his co-CEO role. The post Netflix is adding subscribers again, as its founder steps down appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Recent years have been boomtimes for TV production companies, thanks to the emergence of streaming video services and their enormous budgets. The post Report: SVOD services to slow growth in original content spend appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Analytics firm Viberate has been digging into the Netflix bump for artist and actor Sofia Carson, star of Purple Hearts. The post Viberate explores the Netflix effect for artist Sofia Carson appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

The topic of unionised workers within and around the music industry is growing in prominence, with two more stories to add to the trend. The post Unionisation afoot for YouTube and Netflix music workers appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Netflix has been spooking the investor horses – well, certainly giving them long faces – with its decline in subscribers in recent times. The post Netflix is growing again, adding 2.4m subscribers in Q3 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Bloomberg Intelligence looks into how much money the biggest tech firms are spending on content for their video streaming services. The post Report: Amazon will spend $15bn on video programming in 2022 appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Spotify’s management should probably prepare for a new round of ‘if Netflix can hike its price why can’t you?’ questions in the coming weeks. The post Netflix raises its monthly subscriptions in North America appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

How bad for the environment is streaming? It’s one of the questions we’re still seeking answers to. In the video streaming world, Netflix is playing its part. The company has been working with researchers at the University of Bristol to calculate the carbon footprint of watching its service. Wired has the details: “Netflix claims that one […]

Netflix ended 2020 with 203.7 million paying subscribers, according to its latest financial results. The company added 8.5 million net paid members in the final quarter of the year, and 37 million in 2020 as a whole – a record for Netflix. The video streaming service generated $6.64bn of revenues in Q4, and a net profit […]

November this year is New Consoles Month, with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S plus Sony’s PlayStation 5 making their debuts. While games are the focus, music and video streaming will also be part of the packages. Sony revealed some of its plans yesterday: at launch the PS5 will have apps for Apple TV, Disney+, […]

Netflix warned investors that its subscriber growth was going to slow in the second half of this year, and it has. The video streaming service added 2.2 million net new paid subscribers in the third quarter, taking it to just under 195.2 million overall. Netflix also said that it expects to pass 200 million subscribers (201.2 […]

With recent app store controversies involving Spotify and Epic Games, the focus has been squarely on Apple and its App Store, even though the Fortnite publisher also has issues with Google and its Google Play store. Spotify’s relationship with Google has been much friendlier: the companies have teamed up on smart-speaker giveaways, and Spotify has […]

Customers paying their subscription even though they’re not using your service? The stuff of dreams, so you’d think (well, you would if you owned a gym, for example). In a world where streaming services have to keep a close eye on their ‘churn’ rate (cancellations) it might not seem in their interests to boot off […]

We’re still waiting to find out what effect the Covid-19 pandemic is having on music streaming subscriptions. All eyes on Spotify’s Q1 financials next week for that. But Netflix’s first-quarter figures were published yesterday, giving us a glimpse at the impact on video subscriptions. Netflix added 15.8 million net new paid subscribers in Q1, benefiting from […]

Netflix is making some changes to the way its service runs in Europe, in response to a request from the European Union’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton. He asked the video streaming service what it could do to reduce its load on the continent’s internet networks, with populations working at home en masse. “Streaming platforms, telecom operators […]

Getting viewing figures for shows on Netflix has historically been difficult: even for the producers of those shows. Recently, the video streaming service has given out some stats for its original shows: in its first four weeks, 76m Netflix member households ‘chose to watch’ The Witcher, for example – a metric that merely counts how many people […]

Netflix published its latest quarterly financial results yesterday, including its full-year figures for 2019. In that year, the company’s revenues reached $20.16bn, with its Q4 total of $5.47bn representing 30.6% growth year-on-year. Netflix ended 2019 with 167.1 million global streaming paid memberships, up 20% year-on-year having added nearly 8.8 million net new subscribers in the […]

Earlier this year, we reported on the publication of a book, ‘Spotify Inifrån’ (‘Spotify Untold‘), which claimed to tell the inside story of Spotify’s rise. Then, in August we reported on the news that TV production company Yellow Bird UK, part of the much-bigger Banijay Group, had optioned the screen rights to the book and was developing […]

The notion of ‘exclusive Christmas playlists’ may seem a bit strange: with a relatively-small pool of tracks to choose from in the grand scheme of things, unless you’re commissioning original tracks Amazon-style, differentiation is hard. But Spotify has a new spin on the idea: it has partnered with Netflix to launch eight playlists from the cast members […]

Shares in video-streaming service Netflix rose last night, after the company announced its latest financial results. This, despite actually missing one of its key targets for the third quarter of 2019. “In Q3, we grew to $5.2 billion in revenue, up 31% over the prior year, and operating income doubled to $1.0 billion. Paid net […]

Lead: In the 1970s, “pop promos” (as they were called) were the preserve of the mega-star act, but after the launch of MTV in 1981 they became standard practice across the industry. The arrival of YouTube in 2005 may have blown apart MTV’s dominance but the format of music videos did not change much; it […]

Debate surrounds what the first music video actually was, but by the 1970s these “pop promos” had become the playthings of the biggest acts in the world while by the 1980s, after the arrival of MTV, they were the biggest weapons in the promotional arms race for everyone. All the arrival of YouTube in 2005 […]

In June this year, Netflix got the exclusive on a short film called ‘Anima’, a collaboration between director Paul Thomas Anderson and musician Thom Yorke, released alongside the latter’s new album of the same name. Now there’s another musical project to report on from the video-streaming service: ‘Entergalactic’. This time, the collaboration is between musician […]

Lead: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” is a quote commonly attributed to Philadelphian retailer John Wanamaker in the 1800s and it has haunted the advertising and marketing worlds ever since. Spending money and hoping for a consumer reaction previously involved stacking up a […]

There are plenty of opinions about Netflix’s Mötley Crüe biopic ‘The Dirt’, based on our social feeds. But what impact has the film had on demand for the band’s music? A press release for the band suggests that it’s paying off. “The age demo for fans streaming Mötley Crüe’s music includes a much younger demographic. […]

In December 2013, Beyoncé managed to release her eponymous fifth solo album as a complete surprise to fans and the music industry alike, bar a small, trusted circle of insiders and digital partners. Nearly five and a half years on, she’s repeated the feat, albeit with a live album rather than a new set of studio […]

Netflix published its latest financial results yesterday, and there was a lot to shout about. The video-streaming service added 9.6 million paid memberships (i.e. subscribers) in the first quarter of 2019 – a record – taking it to just under 149 million in total. Of those net new adds, 1.7 million came from the US and […]

Will children ever tire of YouTube? Surely not! Yet that’s the suggestion being made in a new report published by research firm Kids Insights, which is out today. “According to our data across all ages 4-18 the number of children spending time each day watching YouTube has declined from 61% to 51% in a persistent […]

Video-streaming service Netflix published its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2018 yesterday, and thus also the full calendar year. The company ended 2018 with 139 million paying members, having added 29 million of them during the year. Its revenues grew by 35% year-on-year to $16bn, while its operating profits nearly doubled to $1.6bn. […]

The UK’s independent-music trade body AIM is preparing for its first AIM Sync global sync-licensing conference, which takes place in London on 28 January. Ahead of the event, some of the speakers told Music Ally about their hopes for sync-licensing in 2019, from an independent perspective. The tone was one of optimism, with labels seeing […]

Expect another day of ‘If Netflix can increase its prices why can’t Spotify?’ headlines, after the video-streaming service announced plans for a 13-18% increase in the US. That includes a two-dollar rise for Netflix’s most-popular subscription plan in the US, which will now cost $13 a month rather than $11. The cheapest $8 plan will […]