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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

YouTube Music is officially adding podcasts to its platform in the United States on Android, iOS and the web. The rollout comes a few months after YouTube podcasting head Kai Chuk revealed that podcasts would be added to YouTube Music soon. The update allows users watching podcasts on the main app to continue listening to them

Peacock losses continue to widen this quarter, NBCUniversal parent company Comcast reported Thursday, just days after the company announced that Jeff Shell’s time as NBCU CEO was up. Peacock had $704 million in losses in Q1 2023, a significant jump from $456 million in the same year-ago period. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Peacock

Roku delivered its first quarter results on Wednesday with better-than-expected revenue and the addition of 1.6 million active streaming accounts in the period. Although the company’s results came in above analyst estimates, Roku told investors that it sees its advertising business remaining challenged. The company’s revenue for the quarter reached $741 million, up just 1%

Last week, a song using AI deepfakes of Drake and the Weeknd’s voices went viral, but neither major artist was involved in its creation. Meanwhile, Grimes has taken to Twitter to offer 50% royalties on any AI-generated song that uses her voice, then declared that she is interested in “killing copyright,” which would probably undermine

Netflix has announced that the third season of “The Witcher” will premiere on June 29. The streaming service is splitting up the season into two parts, with the second half of the season debuting on July 27. The third season will be particularly notable because it will be last with Henry Cavill playing Geralt. Following this

Alphabet reported its latest earnings report today, citing that YouTube raked in $6.69 billion in advertising revenue for the first fiscal quarter of 2023—an approximate 2.6% decline compared to the $6.87 billion during the same period last year. Despite the disappointing number, YouTube managed to slightly beat analysts’ expectations of $6.6 billion. This is the

In its first-quarter earnings call, streaming music service Spotify talked in more detail about how AI advances are impacting its business. On the positive side, the company offered an update on the user adoption of its new AI DJ feature, which offers personalized music selections introduced by a realistic-sounding DJ voice powered by AI. But

YouTube TV users have long complained of poor picture quality, low bitrate and other issues that impact the streaming experience. The company finally addressed the issues, including an increased bitrate for some live content, a fix for the 5.1 surround sound syncing issue and a major upgrade for the YouTube TV app for Apple TV.

As Twitter’s legacy blue check mark system finally comes to an end, the social network’s new paid-for verification system is causing more than a little chaos, with CEO Elon Musk himself stepping in to pay for some celebrities’ verification when they refuse to do so. However, another little nugget to emerge from the carnage today

A few months after Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) sued Paramount over the streaming rights for “South Park,” Paramount is now striking back. On Wednesday, April 19, Paramount countered sued WBD, alleging that the company is withholding two required payments of $26 million each, bringing the total unpaid fees to $52 million. “South Park Studios has

Disney+ has announced that six Spider-Man films and the 2018 film “Venom” will be launching on the streaming service in the United States. Tobey Maguire’s trilogy of “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2” and “Spider-Man 3” and Andrew Garfield’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” will arrive on the platform tomorrow, while Tom Holland’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and Tom Hardy’s “Venom” will

Google Fi, the cell phone carrier operated by Google, is getting a series of new updates and rebranding to Google Fi Wireless. The rebrand adds a bit of clarity about what exactly the service offers to its customers. As for the new updates, Google Fi Wireless is adding cellular connectivity for the Pixel Watch or

Paramount+ has ordered a “Star Trek: Section 31” original movie event with Michelle Yeoh reprising her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou, according to a blog post on the “Star Trek” official website. This will be the first Star Trek movie based on a character from the 2017 series “Star Trek: Discovery.” A release date has

More than sixteen years after pivoting to streaming, Netflix is saying goodbye to its mail-order DVD business. The company plans to shutter the service sometime “later this year,” it announced on Tuesday. Ah, where has the time gone? Netflix debuted more than 25 years ago, and at first it both rented and sold DVDs online

Netflix’s flubbed foray into livestreaming was a topic of discussion during the streamer’s first-quarter earnings on Tuesday with co-CEO Greg Peters telling investors how sorry the company was for “disappointing so many people,” and explaining in more detail what had happened. Over the weekend, Netflix had been set to release its first live reunion special

Netflix is upgrading its ad-supported plan in terms of streaming quality and concurrent streams. The company said users subscribed to this plan will be able to see content in 1080p resolution (up from 720p) with support for two concurrent streams. These benefits are rolling out to users in Canada and Spain today. People using the

Netflix’s long-awaited crackdown on password sharing is finally coming to the U.S., the streamer said on Tuesday. Netflix originally planned to roll out “paid sharing” in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2023. However, Netflix now says it’ll introduce that change — an update designed to convert account-sharers into paying users — a little

Set in an alt-near future reality, Peacock’s newest original series, “Mrs. Davis,” releasing on April 20, is edging towards being a little too believable—minus the kidnapping Germans, an elusive Holy Grail, and a life-threatening venture inside a gargantuan whale. The show centers around an all-knowing AI that’s designed to satisfy its users, sending them on

YouTube TV just won its first-ever Technical Emmy award for its “Views” suite of features, which let users access sports highlights, key plays, player stats and game scores. At the 74th annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards last night, YouTube TV was declared the winner for the category “AI-ML Curation of Sports Highlights.” “Thank you

A song featuring the voices of Drake and The Weeknd called “Heart On My Sleeve” has amassed over 250,000 Spotify streams and 10 million views on TikTok. But the two renowned musicians had nothing to do with the song — an artist going by the name “ghostwriter” generated the song using AI. Drake and The

Twitter is rolling out more “government-funded media” labels on the accounts of international news outlets. These include the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat. “For more than 90 years the ABC has always been and remains an independent

Netflix is having issues with the livestream of its “Love is Blind” reunion episode. We always knew the livestream would be messy, as reality show reunions always are — but after an hour delay (and counting), Netflix’s livestream is looking even messier than Zack and Irina’s short-lived relationship. Per Down Detector, more than 10,000 users

At Meta Connect 2022, the tech giant announced a three-year partnership with NBCUniversal that would bring Peacock to the Meta Quest virtual reality headset. Today, the streaming app is now available on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro devices. Subscribers can get Peacock in the Meta Store and stream 90,000 hours of movies and

James Murdoch’s venture fund Bodhi Tree slashed its planned investment into Viacom18 to $528 million, down 70% from the committed $1.78 billion, the two said late Thursday as the global weakening economy hammers investors’ appetite. Viacom18, a joint venture between Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance and Paramount Global, did not say why Bodhi Tree slashed its pledged

The rumors going around about Apple TV launching a multiview feature  — which was spotted by developer Steve Moser — are coming true. Tonight, Apple is launching a beta version of the feature on the Apple TV 4K during its MLB Friday Night Baseball livestream, TechCrunch has learned. Users participating in the Apple beta software