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Normally in the music industry, it’s more or less impossible for ordinary investors to buy music rights. Thus, Web3 startups saw an opportunity to tokenise music assets, allowing fans access to music rights in a wholly new fashion. Of course, this garnered a lot of interest during the Crypto boom a couple of years ago.

Vice was valued at $5.7 billion just six years ago, eyeing a potential IPO. Now, the trendsetting media company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company’s lenders — Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital — have agreed to purchase the company for $225 million. That’s only about 4% of the company’s

Amazon has reached a deal with Embracer Group, the company that holds the IP rights for “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” to release a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The upcoming game will be an open-world MMO adventure set in Middle-earth, featuring the stories of

TikTok has upended how music is discovered, used and consumed these days; now, its long-term effort to build a business around that is getting a boost. The Bytedance-owned app today announced a search feature called “NewMusic”, which users can use to find new tracks, and artists can use to promote them. To see new music

Netflix is planning to cut its spending by $300 million this year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The report indicates that part of the reason why the streaming giant is looking to cut costs is because it delayed its plans to crackdown on password sharing in the U.S. and elsewhere

As Disney approaches its third round of expected layoffs and deals with production delays due to the ongoing writers strike, the company delivered more bad news to investors. Its flagship streaming service, Disney+, lost a whopping four million subscribers in Q2 2023, bringing the total to 157.8 million subscribers, compared to 161.8 million subs in

After the film “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” became a hit, topping $200 million at the worldwide box office, Hasbro wants more. Hasbro-owned production company eOne announced Thursday that it is launching a new free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel dedicated to the widely popular role-playing tabletop game. Variety was the first to cover

Video game consultant Rami Ismail was a bit sleepy in an early morning meeting, until his client said something particularly strange: “I’m really just looking for a way to get my game its Bigolas Dickolas moment.” “I had to absolutely wake up very fast to politely find a way to explain I had no idea

Disney, the global entertainment conglomerate operating a variety of streaming platforms, suffered a 2% contraction in its total subscriber base for the quarter ending March this year. The decline is largely attributed to one specific streaming service: Hotstar. The Disney+ Hotstar platform, catering to viewers in India and Southeast Asia, lost 4.6 million subscribers during

In a significant move made by Disney, the company announced Wednesday that U.S. customers are getting a new app that combines Disney+ and Hulu content. During Disney’s quarterly results, CEO Bob Iger revealed that the new streaming option will launch later this year. However, the company also plans to keep Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ as

After aggressively promoting its new lifestyle social media platform Lemon8 in the U.S., ByteDance appears to be brewing another content app for its biggest overseas market. Lemon Inc, a subsidiary of ByteDance, has submitted a trademark application for a range of book publishing products and services, according to a filing posted on the United States

Music streaming platform SoundCloud is today launching a new tool to let artists engage with their fans better. The new product, conveniently called Fans, lets artists direct message their followers and sort their listeners through different engagement measures. SoundCloud said that Fans product was available to 10,000 artists and now will this beta release it

Amazon announced Monday the launch of its new unit Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, which will allow the company to license Amazon Originals and other titles to third-party media companies, which could include streaming services (free, ad-supported or subscription), cable TV as well as pay TV distribution. For the first time, titles such as “The Marvelous

TikTok is partnering with big-name publishers, including NBCU, Condé Nast, DotDash Meredith, BuzzFeed, and others, in an effort to pull in more premium ad dollars. At this week’s NewFronts, the video entertainment company announced a new premium ad product that would allow marketers, for the first time, to position their brand ads directly after TikTok’s

A few weeks before Warner Bros. Discovery launches its new HBO Max/Discovery+ streaming service, Max, TechCrunch spoke with WBD chief technology officer Avi Saxena and chief product officer Tyler Whitworth about building the new platform from the ground up, rolling out new features, improving functionality, adding new tech and all around designing the product. They

Warner Bros. Discovery announced Friday that its streaming business will turn a profit in 2023. The company previously said it expected to break even by 2024 and become profitable in 2025. “It is an important time for Warner Bros. Discovery. We’ve come through some major restructurings and have repositioned our businesses with greater precision and

Hulu Live TV announced Thursday that it is adding new channels to its library, bringing the total to over 90 channels across live sports, news and entertainment. The streaming service will soon launch channels like PBS Kids, local PBS stations and Magnolia Network. In the coming months, local PBS affiliates will roll out to Hulu

Google is celebrating Star Wars Day with a special easter egg featuring Grogu, also known as Baby Yoda. When you type “Grogu” or “Baby Yoda” into the Google Search bar, the character will appear in the bottom right corner of your screen. Once you click on him, he will use the Force to knock out

The previously announced integration of Showtime into Paramount+ draws closer as the company reports its first-quarter fiscal earnings. Paramount+ with Showtime is set to launch in the third quarter. While the integration is anticipated to generate around $700 million in future annual expense savings, which Paramount announced last quarter, it also resulted in a programming

Fandom, the entertainment site and wiki hosting service, had two announcements to share this week—the launch of Creator Class, new quarterly workshops for creators, as well as a new portfolio of original video content featuring its acquired brands GameSpot, Metacritic and Screen Junkies. The company introduced a new program Wednesday for its top creators —

In the must-watch final season of “Succession,” Kendall Roy enters a conference room with his siblings. As the scene opens, he takes a seat and declares: “Who will be the successor? Me.” Of course, that scene didn’t appear on HBO’s hit show, but it’s a good illustration of generative AI’s level of sophistication compared to

At the 2023 IAB NewFronts event Tuesday, NBCUniversal revealed four new ad formats for brands to expand their advertising reach with Peacock Premium subscribers, including AI-powered shoppable ads, among others. The company also announced two new original films set to arrive soon on the streaming service. The first ad format that grabbed our attention was

In Roku’s recent quarter, the company posted better-than-expected revenue of $741 million, but worried investors with its warning of an uncertain ad market and declining average revenue per user. Today, at the IAB NewFronts, the streaming media company introduced its latest ad products to potentially help it address the latter, at least. These included new

As part of this year’s YouTube Newfront presentation, the company announced Monday that it’s rolling out new ad formats to its short-form feature Shorts. For instance, the company is expanding Shorts into its video reach campaigns. Video reach campaigns use Google AI to improve reach by combining ad formats like skippable and non-skippable ads. With

Amazon is doubling down on free, ad-supported content with today’s introduction of Fire TV Channels, its new, free and ad-supported (FAST) video experience coming to Fire TV devices this week. Though Fire TV had previously offered FAST content, Fire TV Channels will now be continuously updated throughout the day and integrated into several areas across

As part of its pitch to advertisers this week at the IAB NewFronts, Amazon announced today it has plans to bring over 100 Amazon Original series and movies from Amazon Prime Video to its ad-supported free streaming service Amazon Freevee (previously known as IMDb TV). The titles will be released throughout the year, the company

“Black Mirror” is officially returning this June, Netflix announced today, bringing viewers a sixth season that will potentially make them feel like we’re all inching closer to a grim, tech-infused dystopian reality. Alongside the announcement, Netflix released the first teaser for season 6, featuring a space station in orbit, a haunting smiley face emoji that

Fireside, the Mark Cuban-backed interactive entertainment app, has now confirmed its $25 million Series A, valuing the business at $138 million, post-money. The company had been rumored to be raising at a $125 million valuation last year, after attracting a number of high-profile creators to its streaming platform for live and virtual shows. The funding

YouTube Music contractors have officially unionized with the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA after winning an historic vote through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Forty-one workers voted yes out of a total of 49 eligible voters; the remaining eight workers did not vote. This election has meaningful implications for Google beyond YouTube Music. The union earned

Warner Bros. Discovery has found a new partner to bring HBO content to India: Mukesh Ambani-backed Viacom18. HBO Original, Max Original and other Warner Bros. television series will arrive on JioCinema next month and will air shows “on the same day as the U.S.,” Warner Bros. and Viacom18 said in a statement. The “exclusive” content