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Amazon launched today its new interactive NCAA bracket feature on Fire TV, giving users the ability to create a bracket and track their progress throughout the March Madness tournament. Fire TV users can find the feature via the new dedicated March Madness hub on the home screen or by saying “Alexa, fill my bracket.” They

Spotify has bigger plans for the technology behind its new AI DJ feature after seeing positive consumer reaction to the new feature.  Launched just ahead of the company’s Stream On event in L.A. last week, the AI DJ curates a personalized selection of music combined with spoken commentary delivered in a realistic-sounding, AI-generated voice. But

The fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is impacting a range of startups and larger firms including, as we know now from SEC filings, publicly traded companies like Roku, Roblox, Quotient, and others. Roku said in a filing that it had around $487 million held at SVB, representing around 26% of its cash

At Spotify’s Stream On event today in LA, the company introduced a significant redesign of its app, which capitalizes on its investments in personalization technology while also adopting a similar short-form video feed as the one popularized by TikTok. In the updated Spotify mobile app, users and subscribers will gain access to a handful of

Roku and Best Buy announced today that as part of their new first-to-market partnership, Roku gets access to Best Buy’s advertising platform. Also, Best Buy customers have exclusive access to Roku-branded TVs. The relationship is a first for Best Buy since it’s never partnered with a TV streaming platform to provide its first-party sales data.

In addition to news related to its mobile app’s revamp and the introduction of TikTok-style music and podcast discovery feeds, Spotify announced podcast-focused news at its Stream On event in LA this morning. The company showed off a redesigned version of its Spotify for Podcasters dashboard, which will now work to better organize its tools

Social music streaming startup Stationhead announced today that it’s launching a new live commerce tool that allows select artists and hosts to sell digital tracks to fans during livestreaming parties on their stations. The startup says artists including BlackPink, Niall Horan, TXT and 5 Seconds of Summer have already used the feature during live release

Roku devices are getting an upgrade. The company announced today a series of updates coming to its media streamers and TVs with the new version of its software, Roku OS 12. The updates, which will focus on areas like live TV and sports, among other things, will also be accompanied by a revamp of the

Starting today, Netflix is giving TV users the option to customize the size and style of subtitles and closed captions. This update gives subscribers the ability to choose from three sizes — small, medium and large — as well as four styles/colors which include the default white text option, drop shadow (white text with black

Among the wave of Spotify announcements coming out of today’s Spotify Stream On event, the company shared some exciting news with podcast listeners — in particular, Batman fans. Spotify is launching a new podcast series “The Riddler: Secrets in the Dark,” starring comedian-actor Hasan Minhaj as The Riddler. As part of Spotify’s exclusive multiyear partnership

At Spotify’s Stream On event today, the company introduced new tools to help artists on the streaming service build an audience and grow. Spotify showcased a suite of tools to help artists find fans who would enjoy their music the most, and also announced new features designed to create buzz around their content, merchandise and

Hotstar will lose HBO content at the end of this month in the latest setback for the Disney-owned on-demand video streaming giant that recently also lost rights for a popular cricket tournament in the country. HBO’s catalog — shows such as Succession, The Last of Us, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Industry, Watchmen, The

YouTube announced today that it’s relaxing the controversial profanity rules that it introduced toward the end of last year. The company says the new rules ended up creating a “stricter approach” than it had intended. The new update to the policy allows creators to use moderate and strong profanity without risking demonetization. The original policy

While “Ted Lasso” writers and co-stars Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein have confirmed multiple times in interviews that the Apple TV+ original series will likely end after three seasons, the story of AFC Richmond may not be over. Sudeikis recently mentioned that he’s open to the idea of a spin-off, which would be a first

Publishing platform Medium is opening up its debut Mastodon instance, me.dm, to its members, the company announced today. Last month, Medium first teased its plans around the Fediverse — the group of interconnected servers powering a range of open source, decentralized applications, including the Twitter alternative Mastodon and others. It said it wanted to make access to

Amazon announced today the launch of a dedicated Oscars hub on Fire TV where movie buffs can get ready for the 2023 Academy Awards ceremony, including watching all the nominated movies and casting their votes for Oscar winners via the on-screen interactive voting experience, “Oscars predictions.” The new Oscars hub will live on the Fire

SiriusXM, the satellite radio company and Pandora owner, disclosed today it’s laying off 475 employees, representing 8% of its workforce. In an email sent to employees, CEO Jennifer Witz said the cuts would impact “nearly every department” across the company, and follow a review of SiriusXM’s operations announced in November that aimed to identify areas

Movies Anywhere, the Disney-owned app that lets users access their digitally owned movie collection from across services, is shutting down two features, “Screen Pass” and “Watch Together.” Screen Pass, which launched in 2020, allows you to loan out three movies per month within the app, which recipients can then watch for up to 72 hours.

The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered today, and it appears the series is ending with an epic mic drop. Season 4 makes its debut on March 26, giving fans 10 more episodes before we bid farewell to the Roy family. The new trailer gives viewers a closer look at the feud

YouTube’s new head Neal Mohan penned his first letter to creators emphasizing that the company in the year ahead aims to continue supporting the community by giving them more tools to make money. He also touched on other 2023 priorities, including how YouTube is looking to experiment with generative AI and multiple formats like Shorts

Audible today announced that it would launch its first-ever singing competition series as an exclusive podcast featuring artists Sara Bareilles and Kelly Rowland as judges. “Breakthrough” will premiere on the Amazon-owned audio service on June 1. On the podcast series, Bareilles and Rowland will mentor five artists over the course of nine episodes. The host

Roku struck a deal with creator company Jellysmack to launch new content featuring 17 popular YouTube and TikTok creators like Brad Mondo, Lauren Riihimaki (LaurDIY), Emmy Cho (Emmymade), Karina Garcia and more. The company announced yesterday that it’s launching two free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, “Hello Inspo” and “Mysteria,” to The Roku Channel’s Live TV

A new “Stranger Things” play is coming to the Phoenix Theatre in London’s West End in late 2023, Netflix announced today. “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is a prequel spinoff play set in Hawkins in 1959, less than 25 years before the Netflix series. It will feature younger versions of Jim Hopper, Bob Newby and

The Block-owned music streaming service TIDAL is shifting the way it pays artists after an experimental program failed to generate results. Unlike Spotify and other market leaders, which pay musicians small fractions (…of fractions) of pennies for each play, TIDAL has taken a more imaginative approach to artists payouts. The platform, which targets consumers who

The European Commission (EC) has confirmed a previously-issued preliminary view that Apple’s so-called “anti-steering” practices, which prevent developers from informing users about alternative payment options, constitutes unfair trading practices. However, in a refined Statement of Objections sent to Apple and published for the public today, the EC also said that it’s dropping an additional anti-trust charge

Chris Rock is a widely beloved comic; he’s also a savvy entrepreneur. Though Rock might have talked with media outlets about being assaulted by actor-producer Will Smith last March during the Academy Awards — he could have also chosen to sue Smith — he instead stayed mum, turning “the slap” into material for his first

Shelley McKinley Contributor Shelley McKinley is chief legal officer at GitHub, home to more than 100 million software developers. Last week marked the first time the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In oral arguments in the Gonzalez v. Google case, important questions were raised about platform responsibility

The Korean-language Netflix series “Squid Game” became one of the streaming service’s most popular shows of all time, thanks to the ability to subtitle or dub episodes in the viewer’s own language. Now, similar technology is coming to YouTube for the broader creator economy. YouTube announced today it’s rolling out support for multi-language audio tracks,

Netflix decreased its subscription costs in more than 100 territories over the past week or so as customers continue to contemplate which streaming services to keep amid price hikes. The amount that Netflix is lowering its prices varies from country to country. “We can confirm that we are updating the pricing of our plans in

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) reported underwhelming Q4 results yesterday, revealing a net loss of another $2.1 billion, including $217 million from its streaming division. This is despite the company touting the success of its new original series “The Last of Us,” which averaged over 15 million viewers, and the recently launched video game Hogwarts Legacy,