Mobile

Spotify is closing down Heardle, the Wordle-inspired music guessing game it acquired last July for an undisclosed sum. Similar to Wordle, Heardle offers players six tries to guess a popular song — but instead of typing in different letters to form words, players listen to a song’s intro to guess the artist and title. At

Spotify today is introducing new technology that will give radio broadcasters the ability to turn their existing audio content into podcasts, or what it’s calling “broadcast-to-podcast.” Based on IP Spotify acquired in late 2021 from an Australia-based podcast tech company Whooshkaa, the feature set will be integrated into Spotify’s enterprise podcast tech platform Megaphone, where it’s

Comixology was genuinely a gamechanger. Before the platform came along, I knew very few people who had ever read a comic on a phone or tablet. There was entirely too much friction in the process to prioritize screens over print. The app proved a viable option, courtesy of a stocked store and a clever UI

The time has finally come for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to reveal details about its highly anticipated streaming service, which combines HBO Max and Discovery+ content. During a press event today, the company announced the name, launch date, price, new features and upcoming content slate. The new streamer is called Max and is rolling out

Among the many announcements during today’s Warner Bros. Discovery press event, the company revealed it greenlit a new Game of Thrones prequel called “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight.” A release date has yet to be announced, but the show will eventually debut on Max, WBD’s new streaming service. “A Knight of

With next month’s arrival of the new streaming service “Max” from Warner Bros. Discovery, the company is also promising a revamped product experience with an expanded feature set, improved recommendations, and better performance. The new service, which combines HBO Max and Discovery+ content into one offering, will gain an updated user interface that’s delivered by

YouTube is starting presales of NFL Sunday Ticket subscription starting today. The company is selling the add-on to subscribers of the YouTube TV Base plan at $249 for the season. The company is also offering NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone bundles at $289 for the season during the presales. The streaming company will increase

Google TV, the company’s smart TV operating system that powers Chromecast devices and various TVs, is today getting a significant update aimed at expanding access to free, streaming TV. The company announced this morning Google TV will now integrate access to free streaming channels like Tubi, Plex, and Haystack News directly in its redesigned Live

Marvel Studios released a teaser trailer today for “The Marvels,” featuring three badass female superheroes—Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Captain Rambeau. The movie is set to hit theaters on November 10 and sees Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris reprise their roles. “The Marvels” is the third movie of the MCU’s Phase Five and

At the Star Wars Celebration in London, Lucasfilm announced that “Star Wars” The Bad Batch” will return for a third and final season on Disney+ in 2024. The company did not provide an exact release date. The series follows Clone Force 99, also known as the Bad Batch, which is a group of elite clones

Four Democratic lawmakers have written to the Department of Justice to investigate Warner Bros. Discovery and launch an inquiry into alleged anti-competitive behavior. Democratic representatives Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline and Joaquin Castro wrote that the merged company has harmed workers and reduced consumer choice. Warner Bros. Discovery was formed after WarnerMedia merged with

YouTube Premium, the $11.99 per month ad-free version of YouTube, is today introducing a number of new features aimed at attracting and retaining subscribers. Most notably, the subscription plan will now include higher-quality video for web and iOS users, support for co-watching videos on FaceTime through Apple’s SharePlay, and other controls for managing your queue

At the Star Wars Celebration in London, Lucasfilm announced that Star Wars spinoff “The Acolyte” will premiere on Disney Plus in 2024. The series is set at the end of the High Republic era before the events of the main Star Wars films. Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae will be staring in the leading roles.

T-Mobile announced today that it has extended its partnership with Major League Baseball to allow its customers to continue receiving free MLB.TV subscriptions through 2028. An MLB.TV subscription typically cost $150 per year. The extended partnership comes as T-Mobile has offered MLB.TV as a free perk for its customers for the past eight years. MLB.TV

Roku has announced that the ad-supported Disney+ tier, Disney+ Basic, is now available to its users. When the ad-supported plan launched four months, many users were surprised to find that it wasn’t accessible on Roku. At the time, Disney told TechCrunch that was still in talks with Roku about reaching an agreement that suits both

Netflix continues with its livestreams, this time with the “Love is Blind” season 4 cast. This will be the streamer’s first-ever live reunion special in its history. “Love Is Blind: The Live Reunion” will air on April 16 at 8 p.m. ET. The five main couples attending the live reunion include Brett Brown and Tiffany

Savvy Games Group, a games and esports company that is part of the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund, has agreed to acquire mobile games studio Scopely for $4.9 billion. Founded in 2011, Scopely is known for several popular mobile games including Yahtzee With Buddies, Star Trek Fleet Command, Marvel Strike Force, Stumble Guys and Scrabble

The Roku Channel has added 14 new free, ad-supported channels featuring TV shows and movies from Warner Bros.’s content library. Earlier this year, Warners Bros. Discovery announced that it reached a deal with Roku and Tubi to license 2,000 hours of content. The content is now available on Roku. Roku’s new channels feature many popular

Amazon is set to shutter Book Depository, an online bookstore and competitor it acquired back in 2011. The news comes hot on the heels of a swathe of cutbacks at the internet giant, with two separate rounds of layoffs impacting at least 27,000 people across various divisions including its highly profitable AWS cloud unit and,

Warner Bros. is in talks about a “Harry Potter” Max Original series on HBO Max, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to TechCrunch. The company is nowhere near striking a deal yet, the source tells us. Bloomberg was the first to report about the potential deal. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and guest host Amanda Silberling are joined by Sarah Peterson from The Nudge, a startup that texts its users ideas of fun things to do in their cities each weekend. Sarah talked about the company’s origin and how they’ve built

Spotify is shutting down its live-audio app Spotify Live, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. The company says it will continue to explore live features on its main platform. The news was first reported by Music Ally. “After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio,

Netflix has ordered a TV pilot for the first time in its history, a Netflix spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. The company typically follows the straight-to-series model, so its willingness to greenlight a pilot is certainly notable. The comedy series is titled “Little Sky” and stars “Nine Perfect Strangers” actress Samara Weaving. The series will follow

Roku is the latest tech company to announce a second round of layoffs with today’s news that it’s letting go of 6% of its workforce, or around 200 employees. The company disclosed the cuts in an SEC filing, explaining that the decision is part of a larger plan to lower its year-over-year operating expense growth

Hulu is slowly rolling out a new interface on streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku, among other compatible devices. The new redesign moves the navigation to the left side with options for TV, Movies and My Stuff. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the updated interface began rolling yesterday. It will be

Netflix is restructuring its film units and vowing to make fewer but better movies, according to a new report from Bloomberg, which Netflix partially confirmed. The report said the streaming giant is combining film units that produce small and midsize films, resulting in a handful of layoffs, including two longtime executives. Netflix told TechCrunch that

Reliance’s Jio, having aggressively recruited talent from Disney’s Hotstar, is placing a substantial wager on IPL in a bid to win a large slice of India’s streaming market. Manish Singh 7 hours Mukesh Ambani’s Jio, the South Asian telecom powerhouse, has long sought to entice its customer base with a plethora of services aimed at

Netflix is adapting the “Scott Pilgrim” comic books into an anime series, which is exciting in its own right, but fans of the movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” are in for a treat. The entire cast of the 2010 live action hit will return to reprise their roles as voice actors, including Michael Cera

When Netflix launched its ad-supported plan four months ago, there were a few devices that the plan didn’t support—Apple TV being one of them. Starting this week, the cheaper tier is available in the Netflix tvOS app. A Reddit user that goes by websgeisti noticed the update yesterday. The user noted that Netflix’s Basic with

Google is launching a new ad transparency center that will let users search for verified advertisers and their campaigns across all of the company’s platforms including Search, Display, and YouTube. This new transparency center — which is accessible directly via this link and through the My Ad Center page — will let you search for