Media

After adding 15 hours of free audiobooks listening to its subscription plan late last year, Spotify today is introducing a $9.99 per month option that will allow its free users to also access its audiobooks collection. The company announced on Friday its new “Audiobooks Access Tier,” wh

Reddit filed its S-1 last week and is set to take the bold step of being the first venture-backed public listing of 2024. If successful, Reddit has the power to open the IPO window for other late-stage startups anxiously waiting in the wings. But to have any chance of sparking an exit trend, it nee

As streaming apps and services are gradually showing more ads to viewers, adtech startup Vibe plans to help small businesses take advantage of that trend by letting them access that ad inventory with a self-serve ad platform like the ones small businesses use to run ads on Google's or Meta'

The merger of Indian media assets of Reliance, its portfolio Viacom18 and Disney will create an entity that captures 85% of the country’s on-demand streaming service audience and about half of the TV viewers, analysts said, posing bigger challenges to Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, Appl

Reliance, its portfolio Viacom18 and Disney are merging their media businesses in India, creating the largest media entity in the world’s most populous nation. Reliance, which will control the joint venture, directly owns 16.34% of the merged entity, which it has valued at $8.5 billion. Disne

There are plenty of GenAI-powered music editing and creation tools out there, but Adobe wants to put its own spin on the concept. Today at the Hot Pod Summit in Brooklyn, Adobe unveiled Project Music GenAI Control, a platform that can generate audio from text descriptions (e.g. “happy dance,&

With the European Commission set to rule on Spotify’s complaint focused on competition in the streaming music market, there are hints that the ruling will not be in Apple’s favor. This week, the Financial Times reported the EC will issue its first-ever fine against the tech giant for al

Facebook, Instagram, Snap, YouTube and other social networking companies offer programs to connect creators with brands, and now Spotify is doing the same. The company announced the launch of AUX, its new in-house “music advisory agency” for brands. While not necessarily a creator marke

YouTube is changing the design for creators’ channels on the big screen, the company announced today. The changes include more accessible action buttons, like “Subscribe,” a more modern design and other tweaks that were first introduced for artists’ pages last fall. At the t

Nielsen today released its January report on viewing usage across linear TV and streaming, which revealed that YouTube is once again the overall top streaming service in the U.S., with 8.6% of viewing on television screens. Netflix, meanwhile, saw 7.9% of TV usage. The new data points to YouTube

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki. The  news broke widely yesterday, though Wojcicki posted the news

Fake porn of Taylor Swift. Photorealistic — but fictionalized — images of Gaza. The list of disconcerting deepfakes goes on, and — as deepfake-creating tools grow easier and cheaper to use — the waves of fakes are coming faster and fiercer. According to a recent Pew Center p

On a brutal December day, 17% of Spotify employees found out they had been laid off in the company's third round of job cuts last year. Not long after, music fans around the world realized that the cult-favorite website Every Noise at Once (EveryNoise), an encyclopedic goldmine for music discov

Broadcasting company Sinclair recently sold off its free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service STIRR to Thinking Media, a startup that provides cloud-based streaming solutions for FAST and over-the-top (OTT) services. The new owners have ambitious plans for the streamer, including an internatio