Hypebot reports: “Deezer has shared that it ended 2018 with 14 million active monthly users, of which 7 million are paying subscribers. About half of its paid users are in the music streamer’s home country of France. Now 75% of the revenues are coming from self-pay subscribers, and France is less than 50% of revenues. It’s quite a dramatic shift,’ Deezer CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht told Music Ally.”
The Hollywood Reporter reports: “As the great de-bundling of cable grows courtesy of “skinny” digital offerings, where consumers get a few dozen channels — think Sling TV from Dish Network — instead of several hundred, Roku on Jan. 2 took a baby step toward bundling streamers.”
Variety reports: “Hulu, the video-streaming hub that is owned by Comcast, Fox and Disney, will launch its own effort to help sponsors determine ‘attribution,’ or whether the ads people see spur a consumer to make a purchase or take some other concrete action, like sign up to take a test drive at a car dealership.”
Hypebot reports: “Amazon is bringing Alexa voice control to the car. Announced in September, the Echo Auto is finally shipping to the more than one million drivers that pre-ordered it. To boost sales farther, the Echo Auto is on sale for $24.99, a 50% savings. Add free Spotify and TuneIn accounts and any advantage held by broadcast radio and SiriusXM virtually disappears.”
Gamesindustry.biz reports: “Shots have been fired today in the digital distribution platform war as Ubisoft shuns Steam in favour of Epic Games. While the recently launched Epic Games Store hasn’t had much trouble attracting smaller indie developers, this exclusive agreement on such a high-profile AAA title represents a serious coup over Steam.”
Variety reports: “A new community creation makes its way to The Block, along with new weapons and minor adjustments in the latest update to ‘Fortnite,’ Epic Games revealed in its patch notes Wednesday. Last month, Epic Games revealed that The Block would be used to display the best user-generated creations.”
Variety reports: “A former Fox News staffer, Laurie Luhn, whose allegations of being victimized by one-time Fox News Channel chief Roger Ailes were instrumental in his ouster from the network, has filed suit over her portrayal in an upcoming Showtime miniseries about the influential media executive. She is seeking more than $750 million in damages.”
Tech Crunch reports: “Well, that didn’t take long. We’re less than ten days into 2019 and already Vietnam is aiming threats at Facebook after it violating its draconian cybersecurity law which came into force on January 1. It looks likely that the new law will see contact from Vietnamese government censors spike, but Facebook has acted on content before.”
The Hollywood Reporter reports: “In a threat to the new influencer economy, regulators send a message to stars like DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather who are getting paid to promote coin offerings. Experts say the SEC scrutiny on celebrities touting digital currency is serious enough to consider avoiding potentially lucrative deals entirely.”
Billboard reports: “Indie distributor and publisher CD Baby announced this week that its member artists had earned ‘well over’ $100 million dollars in 2018. ‘That’s a ton of money,’ said CD Baby’s Chris Robley, ‘but we’re expecting to pay out even more for the coming year as we open up new opportunities and expand existing ways of ‘monetizing’ music’.”
