Tag: Media

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UnitedMasters releases iPhone app for DIY cross-service music distribution

Alphabet-backed UnitedMasters, the music label distribution startup and record label alternative that offers artists 100 percent ownership of everything they create, launched its iPhone app today.

The iPhone app works like the service they used to offer only via the web, giving artists the chance to upload their own tracks (from iCloud, Dropbox or directly from text messages), then distribute them to a full range of streaming music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and more. In exchange for this distribution, as well as analytics on how your music is performing, UnitedMasters takes a 10% share on revenue generated by tracks it distributes, but artists retain full ownership of the content they create.

UnitedMasters also works with brand partners, including Bose, the NBA and AT&T, to place tracks in marketing use across the brand’s properties and distributed content. Music creators are paid out via PayPal once they connect their accounts, and they can also tie-in their social accounts for connecting their overall online presence with their music.

UnitedMasters

Using the app, artists can create entire releases by uploading not only music tracks but also high-quality cover art, and by entering information like whether any producers participated in the music creation, and whether the tracks contain any explicit lyrics. You can also specific an exact desired release date, and UnitedMasters will do its best to distribute across services on that day, pending content approvals.

UnitedMasters was founded by former Interscope Records president Steve Stoute, and also has funding from Andreessen Horwitz and 20th Century Fox. It’s aiming to serve a new generation of artists who are disenfranchised by the traditional label model, but seeking distribution through the services where listeners actually spend their time, and using the iPhone as manage the entire process definitely fits with serving that customer base.

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HQ Trivia lays off ~20% as it preps subscriptions

HQ Trivia is struggling after a mutiny failed to oust its CEO. Downloads per month are down 92% versus last June according to Sensor Tower. And now four sources confirm that HQ laid off staff members this week. One said about 20% of staff was let go, and another said six to seven employees were departing. That aligns with Digiday reporter Kerry Flynn’s tweet that 7 employees were let go bringing HQ to under 30 (shrinking from 35 to 28 staffers would be a 20% drop).

That will leave the company short-handed as it attempts to diversify revenue with the upcoming launch of monthly subscriptions. “HQ Words Everyday. Coming next month . . .  Bigger prizes . . . More ways to win. $9.99/mo. subscription” the company tweeted from the account for its second game, the Wheel Of Fortune-style HQ Words. The company has been trying to regain momentum with new hosts since the departure of Quiz Daddy aka Scott Rogowsky, HQ Trivia’s original host.

hq trivia app 1

The cuts hit HQ’s HR, marketing, and product engineering teams, according to LinkedIn profiles of employees let go. The cuts could further hamper morale at the startup following a tough first half of the year. HQ Trivia and co-founder Rus Yusupov did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

HQ Trivia employees petitioned to remove co-founder Rus Yusupov from the CEO position

Following the tragic death of co-founder and CEO Colin Kroll, Yusupov retook control. But staff found him difficult to work with as he’d allowed the product to stagnate and popularity to decline. Yusupov was slow to make changes to the app, and “no one wanted to work under Rus” a source told me.

That led 20 of 35 staffers to sign a letter to HQ Trivia’s board asking them to remove Yusupov, though it was never formally sent. Yusupov caught wind of the plot and fired two of the leaders of the petition. That further sunk morale, leading to the exit of HQ Trivia’s SVP of brand partnerships and its marketing manager. The board began a search for a new CEO, though it’s unclear how that’s panned out.

Since then, new games HQ teased in April haven’t materialized as its download rate continued to suffer. It’s dropped to the #731 US game on iOS according to AppAnnie. HQ Trivia saw just 827,000 downloads from January through June 2019, down 92% from the 10.2 million it saw in the same time frame in 2018 according to Sensor Tower. That’s the same percentage drop in downloads from June 2019 versus June 2018, indicating Rogowsky’s replacements that started in April couldn’t turn things around.

Interest in the live game show format seems to be waning as a whole. HQ Trivia fan site HQTrivia.fan shut down this week fearing the end was near for the official game, and the (Business) INSIDER-run clone of the game on Facebook Watch called Confetti stopped airing at the end of June.

Rather than solely monetizing a waning audience via in-app purchases and sponsorships, HQ Words announced it would debut a $9.99 monthly subscription sometime this month that would grant access to winning “bigger prizes”. This could be a smart way to squeeze more dollars out of a smaller but more diehard audience.

While HQ Trivia was an inspiring approach to mobile gaming, its twice-daily games didn’t fit the always-on nature of mobile. It’s failed build a proper onboarding experience that gives users a taste of it games right away rather than forcing them to wait for the next scheduled match as we suggested over a year ago. Gamers are fickle, craving instant gratification, and HQ hasn’t tried to meet them in middle.

Perhaps there’s a future for HQ on cable television, or as a small but steady business on mobile catering to loyalists. But all the unfortunate events and mismanagement may make it difficult to exceed the $100 million valuation it raised money at during its peak.

 

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Stranger Things 3 is now available on Netflix

July 4 is American Independence Day, but it also marks the arrival of Stranger Things season three — a release that might just be the most-anticipated in the history of Netflix.

Season three dropped at 12:01 PDT which means, dear reader, that it is now online and ready for your viewing pleasure.

The series has been an enormous hit for Netflix. Beyond a litany of awards, it has proven to be a smash with Netflix subscribers. More than 15 million watched the season 2 opener within three days of its release, while every episode of the second season had racked up more than four million views within that early window.

Netflix has gone to town promoting season three — with teasers in popular Roblox and Fortnite and an international promotion campaign — so you can expect that the numbers will be even higher this time around. The only question is whether it can deliver on the hype?

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Earios is a new podcast network for women creators

It might seem like you’ve now got podcasts covering any and every conceivable topic, but comedy writer and actor Maria Blascucci argued that there’s still “this whole untapped market” — namely, podcasts created by women.

Certainly, some of the most successful shows are hosted by women — but if you look at list of popular podcasts, you’ll see a lot of men. Similarly, most of the major podcasting networks and companies (like Gimlet, Crooked Media and Earwolf) were founded by men.

So Blascucci teamed up with her friends Amanda Lund (also a writer and actor) and Priyanka Mattoo (a former agent at United Talent Agency and William Morris Endeavor) and created a new company called Earios. They raised $26,000 on Kickstarter last year, and launched their first shows this week.

“As we saw the landscape of podcasts changing and becoming more like television … we started to realize that we might as well carve out a space for ourselves, a community of funny women, instead of just letting it happen to us,” Lund told me.

Acast raises $35M to help podcasters make money

The goal is to launch 12 shows this year, including four this week — Filling the Void (where “Love” creator Lesley Arfin talks to her friends about their passions and hobbies), Foxy Browns (with Mattoo and Camille Blackett discussing beauty and wellness from the perspective of women of color), Web Crawlers (where Melissa Stetten and Ali Segel explore strange and mysterious things on the web) and The Big Ones (where Blascucci and Lund discuss moral dilemmas).

Upcoming shows include titles from comedian Margaret Cho and musician Feist.

“What we have trying to do is just trying to do projects and [find] really interesting voices and perspectives that alone will make our shows stand out,” Lund said. “With podcasting, there is a template for it. It sounds like this, and your art looks like this, and we’re conscious of not necessarily falling into that same template. We’re still trying to do things outside of the box whenever possible and keep the medium cracked open, in a way.”

As for monetization, while there are startups exploring subscriptions and paywalls (with some hiccups), Earios is focused on running ads in partnership with Acast.

Mattoo suggested that there’s a similar untapped market here, recalling that as she talked to ad sales companies, “The refrain we heard over and over again was, ‘We have all these ads targeted at women and nowhere to put them.'”

Spotify buys Gimlet and Anchor in podcast push, earmarks $500M for more deals

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‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ director to helm first episodes of Amazon ‘Lord of the Rings’ series

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos seems to be really hoping that his streaming service’s forthcoming ‘Lord of the Rings’ original series can match Game of Thrones in terms of fantasy hype. Now, thanks to Deadline, we know the person who will be in the director’s chair for the first couple episodes of this Bezos-beloved project: Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona.

Bayona’s last directorial credit is Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, the most recent attempt to squeeze some more entertainment juice from the dinosaur film franchise. Before that, however, Bayona directed the critically acclaimed Spanish language film The Orphanage, as well as The Impossible and others.

Bayona will direct the first two episodes of the Amazon Studios Lord of the Rings project, which will take place before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first book by J.R.R. Tolkien in the trilogy upon which the Peter Jackson feature films were based. Like the movies, Amazon’s show will be shot in New Zealand.

Bayona joins feature film writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay on the list of big-screen talent that will help try to ensure that Amazon’s series feels sufficiently epic.

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KKR has acquired Corel (including its recent acquisition Parallels), reportedly for $1B+

Only six months after snapping up virtualization specialist Parallels, Canadian software company Corel is itself getting acquired. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed with multiple sources that private equity giant KKR has closed a deal to buy the company from Vector Capital, which has owned some or all of Corel since 2003.

KKR’s interest in Corel was first rumored in May, when PE Hub reported the two were in talks for a sale valued at over $1 billion. At the time, representatives of Corel declined to comment, although our sources inside the company indicated that the reports were not inaccurate.

Fast forward to today, and both KKR and and a spokesperson for Parallels/Corel declined to comment. But, we now have a copy of the memo provided by an internal source that has been sent out to staff announcing that the deal has indeed closed, and that Corel is now officially part of the KKR family of companies.

According to the memo, KKR is very optimistic about Corel’s prospects. It plans to give Corel an “infusion of capital” to accelerate its growth, which will go into two areas. First will be expanding operations for the existing business: Corel is the company behind a number of longstanding software brands including WordPerfect, Corel Draw, WinZip, PaintShop Pro. Second will be making acquisitions (and the sheer proliferation of promising startups in the last decade dedicated to all variety of apps and other software that may have found it a challenge to scale means Corel could have rich pickings).

There are no layoffs planned as part of the deal, and the official announcement had been planned to go out next week, but now looks like it may be moved up to tomorrow (Wednesday).

Vector and Corel itself have never publicly disclosed much on user numbers or financials, but Vector has described the company as “highly profitable”, with dividends of over $300 million to date. The memo we’ve seen notes that Corel (including Parallels) has millions of customers across its various software platforms and apps.

The acquisition of Corel by KKR marks another chapter in the company’s long corporate history.

Founded in the 1980s — when personal computers were just starting to enter the mainstream but well before we had anything like the internet (not to mention the world of cloud-based apps) that we know today — Corel once positioned itself as a potential competitor to Microsoft in the software wars.

When Corel purchased WordPerfect from Novel in 1996, Corel founder Michael Cowpland viewed the software package as an integral part of that rivalry, describing it as the Pepsi to Microsoft’s Coke — that is, Word.

Microsoft proved the mightier of the two, and it even eventually signed a partnership with Corel that saw it investing in the company: a sell out, as one disappointed Canadian journalist described it at the time. The two have also sparred over patents.

Corel, which went public early in its life, got battered in the first dot-com bust (which was not helped by an insider trading scandal that led to Cowpland’s departure). Vector stepped in and took it private in 2003.

After restructuring the company, Vector listed Corel again in 2006. But, amid another recession that again hit Corel hard, it once more took it private in 2010. In the intervening years, Corel has been focused on modernising its offerings, bringing in e-commerce, direct downloads, subscriptions, and acquisitions to bring the company’s products and wider business closer to how consumers and workers use computers today.

Parallels was a part of that strategy: its products help people work seamlessly across multiple platforms, letting employees (and IT managers) run a unified workflow regardless of the device or operating system, with Parallels providing support for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chromebook, Linux, Raspberry Pi and cloud — a timely offering in the current, fragmented IT market.

If the $1 billion+ figure is accurate, that strategy seems to have worked: across the two times that Vector took Corel private, it never paid more than $124 million for the company (the second time, as its stock was tanking, it paid just $30 million).

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Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ comes to Roblox ahead of its July 4 premiere

Netflix is bringing its hit TV show Stranger Things to Roblox. On Monday, Roblox announced the launch of limited-time, Stanger Things-themed items that will be made available to its over 90 million players, who can earn them by solving daily riddles and puzzles. Other free, limited-time items like a “Scoops Ahoy” hat and Demogorgon mask will also be offered as virtual items for players’ Roblox avatars.

The first of the two themed items are live now and will be free to download through July 12. Four more items can be unlocked by solving daily riddles and puzzles, with a new clue arriving each day ahead of the July 4 premiere of Stranger Things Season 3.

Roblox will also share clues across its social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it says.

What’s interesting about the Roblox integration is that it may reach children younger than those ages 14 and up — the ages that the series itself is rated for (TV-14). (Likely, some braver tweens are already familiar with the show and are watching alongside mom or dad…or at least with their approval).

However, the Roblox partnership is only one of several gaming-focused initiatives Netflix has planned to market some of its most anticipated programming, including both Stranger Things and other titles.

At this year’s E3, Netflix detailed a series of gaming initiatives, including integrations with partners like Ubisoft, Behavior Interactive, and even Fornite, in addition to Roblox. Already, some Fornite players had found the “Scoops Ahoy” easter egg back when Season 9 launched, Netflix said.

Plus, the company is preparing not one but two new Stranger Things-themed games. The first, called Stranger Things 3: The Game, will launch across platforms including Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, Android and iOS on the same day the third season premieres. Like its predecessor, also by developer BonusXP, the game is meant to be a companion to the current season and features 16-bit action for a nostalgic feel.

Next year, Netflix is planning another new Stranger Things title, with a mobile game for iOS and Android. This one is a location-based RPG/puzzler where players explore The Upside Down hidden all around them, while working with other players to “overcome its emerging evils.”

Netflix is also preparing to launch a turn-based tactics game adapted from the Netflix Original series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC and Mac.

A wave of digital marketing isn’t entirely new for the streaming service.

In the past, it toyed with mobile experiences to advertise its shows — like the standalone Orange is the New Black app it launched back in 2014, or the “FakeBlock” app introduced to advertise the new season of Arrested Development.

The company also toyed around with a cross between games and TV with the 2018 launch of Minecraft: Story Mode, which some could consider a form of gaming. Netflix, however, did not. It even claimed at the time that the company did not have any plans “to get into gaming.”

Well, that’s no longer true.

While many of the integrations and games themselves are built by partnered developers, Netflix is clearly involved. And unlike the throwaways apps from years prior, these are more series efforts on Netflix’s part — not just promotional vehicles for its shows.

The marketing doesn’t stop at digital games either.

Netflix’s Stranger Things is more than just a show, its a whole business unto itself. It’s Baskin Robbins ice cream flavors, and Target exclusives like a Stranger Things bike, toys and apparel. It’s posters, games, and all kinds of other merch, too. And that’s just one show. An analyst previously said Netflix’s merch biz could be a billion-dollar addition to the company’s revenue.

Beyond gaming and other stuff to buy, the Stranger Things empire extends to brand deals with Coke, Levi’s, H&M, Nike, Eggo, Schwinn, Trivial Pursuit, Burger Kind, and more. 

The Roblox and Fornite integrations are live now. The Season 3-themed game arrives July 4.

 

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Netflix is officially making a show based on Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ comics

Netflix has placed an 11-episode series order for “The Sandman,” a show based on the critically-acclaimed comics by writer Neil Gaiman.

While there have been Sandman comic-book characters since 1939, Gaiman’s version (co-created by artists Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg) first appeared 50 years later. Instead of a costumed crimefighter, he was a brooding deity known variously as Dream and Morpheus, and who ruled over the world of dreams.

Over the course of 75 issues, as well as subsequent follow-ups like the gorgeous prequel “Overture,” Gaiman and his collaborators told a sprawling dark fantasy story. In the process, they paving the way for Vertigo (DC’s soon-to-shutter imprint for creator-owned comics aimed at mature readers) and helped popularize the practice of collecting comic storylines into trade paperbacks.

A number of different “Sandman” adaptations have failed to reach the screen over the years, including one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s involvement. Meanwhile, Gaiman’s work has recently been adapted in the Starz series “American Gods” and the Amazon Prime series “Good Omens.”

“The Sandman” comics are often held up as an example of what the medium has to offer beyond superheroes, but it’s worth noting that they started out as part of DC’s superhero universe, with early issues featuring appearances by members of the Justice League.

So it seems notable that the show will be made for Netflix, rather than the DC Universe streaming service. The service recently canceled its “Swamp Thing” series, and its place in WarnerMedia’s larger plans remains unclear.

Netflix is making an animated series based on Magic: The Gathering

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news over the weekend that a deal was in the works, and it claimed that this will be DC Entertainment’s most expensive TV series yet.

According to Netflix’s subsequent announcement, Allen Heinberg (who co-wrote the recent “Wonder Woman” film) will serve as showrunner. Gaiman will also be involved, writing the first episode alongside Heinberg and David S. Goyer.

“We’re thrilled to partner with the brilliant team that is Neil Gaiman, David S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg to finally bring Neil’s iconic comic book series, The Sandman, to life onscreen,” said Netflix’s vice president of original series Channing Dungey in a statement. “From its rich characters and storylines to its intricately built-out worlds, we’re excited to create an epic original series that dives deep into this multi-layered universe beloved by fans around the world.”

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PlayStation Vue raises prices by $5 per month, following its recent content deals

Sony’s PlayStation Vue live TV streaming service is joining its rivals with the roll out another price increase. The company announced today it will be upping the price for all its plans by $5 per month each. The change is live as of today for new subscribers, and will kick in for current customers with the beginning of the first billing cycle on or after July 31.

The company says the decision was made due to the rising costs of content — the same reason it raised prices by $5 just around a year ago. That made Vue’s cheapest plan $45/month; now its cheapest plan is $50/month.

Its most expensive “Ultra” plan is a whopping $85/month.

However, the company also said today it’s soon adding NHL Network and ACC Network to its plans. These additions, along with its optional Sports Pack for $10/month, makes Vue a compelling choice for sports viewers, as they gain access to NFL Network, NBC Sports, Fox Sports Networks, Stadium, beIN, and regional networks, among others.

The company, we should note, is not alone in citing rising content costs as the reason for its price hike. Its competitors have all done the same at some point in recent months.

For example, YouTube TV raised its prices in April — and that one was a pretty substantial $10 to $15 per month increase, depending on when you signed up. (And this time, it didn’t grandfather in existing customers into old pricing like the last increase did.) Dish-owned Sling TV also raised prices last year as did AT&T’s DirecTV Now — the latter which raised them again in 2019.

Hulu in early 2019 also raised its prices for Live TV, while dropping the price for its on-demand service.

For Vue, price increases have become something of an annual occurrence. In addition to last year’s $5/month increase, the service rolled out a $10/month increase in 2017, as well.

This latest price increase follows Vue’s recent addition of beIN Sports last week and a hefty set of June renegotiations with NBCU, Turner, AMC and Discovery/Scripps. 

The company at the time warned that changes could be in store, saying:

Most of the programming/content you watch on PlayStation Vue is licensed from programmers for the right to air their networks/channels. Once these agreements near expiration, we enter into renewal discussions where we work hard to try and obtain the best value for our customers. Though infrequent, sometimes certain licenses will not be renewed, in which case PlayStation Vue would no longer carry the affected channels or networks. This section will be updated periodically to list channels and networks coming up for renewal. Please note that the dates listed below are subject to change.

With the ongoing price increases, these live TV streaming services are no longer as much of a bargain over traditional cable or satellite subscriptions — they’re merely an alternative, albeit ones with better cross-platform support in some cases, or tools to better customize your lineup.

And while they don’t directly compete with on-demand services, they do in the sense that consumers only have so much they’re willing to spend on their TV entertainment. On that front, these services will be looking for customers who will soon have a lot more choice. On the horizon are new services like Disney+, Apple TV+, NBCU’s streaming service, and something from WarnerMedia (whose plans keep changing.) That may lead to services that offer a bundled discount — like Hulu with Live TV combined with Disney+ — to fare better.

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MobiTV tunes into $50M for its set-top-box-free broadcast services for pay TV providers

After raising $21 million in 2017 for a late-stage pivot from mobile TV to set-top-box-free IPTV services for the home, MobiTV is announcing another large growth round. The company — an early mover in building services to stream broadcast TV on mobile devices (it was established in 1999) — has raised $50 million more to continue building momentum, in part by expanding internationally.

MobiTV today has deals in place with 90 cable and other TV operators, covering 2 million people, with its MobiTV Connect services — providing access to 350 channels including those from A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Crown Media Family Networks, C-SPAN Networks, Disney and ESPN Media Networks, SHOWTIME, and Viacom — making it possible to add new channels by way of apps — no need for a set-top box, with customers instead either using existing streaming devices such as a Fire TV stick, Roku or Apple TV; or their smart TVs.

“Our vision of creating leading edge video experiences and technology in a unique, cost-effective manner has allowed MOBITV to win business faster than anyone else in the industry… since we first launched the platform in 2016,” said Charlie Nooney, MOBITV Chairman and CEO, in a statement. “We continue to demonstrate our ground-breaking approach to addressing operator challenges as they upgrade their pay TV offering in an increasingly competitive marketplace.”

The funding comes from existing investors Oak Investment Partners and Ally Financial, along with investment from Cedar Grove Partners. We’re trying to find out the valuation. For some context, in 2017, its valuation was  between $400 million and $500 million, according to figures from PitchBook and also what sources told us.

The set-top box has developed as a cornerstone to how many pay-TV services work today: emerging at a time when TV sets were very limited in terms of their functionality — they were not designed for hundreds of channels that could be added and removed depending on what your subscription plan offered — they took on a key role for pay TV providers in the struggle for “customer ownership”: the set-top box ensured that would-be channel owners could only connect with viewers by going through pay TV providers.

But fast forward to today, and those set-top boxes have become a millstone for anyone but the very largest providers (and maybe the biggies, too, but it’s notable that the reference customers noted by MobiTV are not the Comcasts of the world, but companies like Citizens Fiber, Windstream, and EPB).

Set-top boxes can have technical faults, they are expensive, and they go out of date in terms of their functionality. The latter is an important point, because the rise of streaming and over-the-top services have completely transformed how consumers get their TV content today. They now have options for cord-cutting — that is, bypassing pay TV providers altogether — by getting channels and on-demand content over the Internet, and linking that through to their TVs to watch.

MobiTV’s technology was originally built for mobile phones, and as such bypassed the set-top box from day one. While broadcast TV viewing on mobile never became a mass-market phenomenon (people watch on-demand on mobiles, and some might watch broadcast streams, but mainly it’s for short pockets of time rather than the main, default screen people use). Then the team, led by Nooney, spotted the opportunity to bring the same technology to larger screens.

The promise of set-top-box-free pay TV services gives the operators a wider array of channels and potentially more flexibility in how they are provisioned. At the same time, a solution like MobiTV’s potentially lowers the total cost of ownership for providers by removing the need for the set-top boxes.

That’s not to say that some of its customers are not using both. Here, they can provide a certain set of channels directly through those boxes, with another set that are offered on top of that.

“We believe in MOBITV’s superior consumer experience and know that being the only true TVaaS commercially deployed solution in North America has differentiated their positioning in the marketplace,” said Bandel Carano, Managing Partner, Oak Investment Partners, in a statement. “They have reinvented pay TV by providing operators a platform that allows consumers to use their streaming devices or SmartTV, while eliminating the requirement of a STB – without completely alienating it! This leaves room for everyone to evolve and future-proof their cable offering at a pace comfortable for both operators and consumers.”