Happy Thursday, media friends.
Amazon Music is now producing original songs with established artists that will be exclusive to Amazon and with ownership retained by the artist. It's the latest move in the dance by music streaming services to experiment with how much they can work directly with artists without triggering a backlash by the major record labels. (Read more)
The labels continue to drag their feet in giving Spotify rights to stream music in India (where it's trying to launch) in response to Spotify's direct publishing deals with a number of unsigned artists.
...There were 229.5M paying subscribers to music streaming services worldwide at the end of June, up 38% yoy and up 16% since January 1. Market share of those 229.5M subscribers: 36% Spotify, 19% Apple Music, 12% Amazon, 8% Tencent. (Read more)
Spotify market share held steady yoy while Apple Music's grew 3%, Amazon's slipped 1%, and Tencent's slipped 2%. This suggests that Apple Music's growth is coming at the expense of non-Spotify music services.
...no newsletter tomorrow. Back next week.
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Smart Reads
- Rob Wijnberg of De Correspondent outlined "the problem with real news" in a Medium post, saying most news is "all about the highly visible, extremely unusual, depressingly terrible, bizarrely short term, and simply momentous. Which means: it leaves out the slow, the structural, the hopeful, the long term, and the developing". (Read it here)
- Danny Crichton at TechCrunch claims "the second blockchain bubble is now complete" and it's time to focus on long-term R&D in 3 key areas: identity, decentralized web, and security tokens. (Read it here)
- Mathew Ingram at the Columbia Journalism Review chronicled "The Outline and the curse of media venture capital". (Read it here)
- Andrew Hayward at Esports Observer argues that Clash Royale could be the game that drives growth of the mobile esports market in Western countries, which haven't seen the interest mobile esports has generated in Asia. (Read it here)
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FILM/TV/VIDEO
Deals
- Discovery Inc expanded its content partnership with Hulu by making it the exclusive streaming provider for a many Discovery shows in addition to making 5 more channels available in the Hulu live OTT service. (link)
- It also said it's bringing channels to live OTT service SlingTV.
- Discovery stock jumped 7% at the news.
- Virgin Media, the UK cable operator owned by Liberty Global, announced a new VOD service for children (called My Virgin TV Kids) in partnership with video tech company Zone TV. (link)
- Sony Pictures Television acquired a minority stake is UK production co Eleventh Hour Films, which created Foyle’s War and Safe House for ITV and New Blood for BBC One. (link)
Updates
- HQ Trivia, the popular live trivia show/game on a mobile app, secured Target as a sponsor for a game in which the winner gets $100k, an all time record. (link)
Talent
- VICE Media hired Hozefa Lokhandwala (from JP Morgan) as Chief Strategy Officer, Lucinda Treat as Chief Legal Officer, Doug Jossem (from Twitter) as Chief Revenue Officer, and Danielle Carrig as Chief Communications Officer. (link)
- James Schwab (president) and Alex Detrick (communications chief) are departing but will remain advisors.
- Verizon laid off 50+ people from its video product team, perhaps unsurprising given the June shuttering of its OTT service go90. (link)
- Disney's board elected Michael Froman as its newest member. He is Vice Chairman and President of Strategic Growth at Mastercard and served as US Trade Representative for 2013-2017. (link)
- CAA China hired Wei Hao as co-head of motion pictures for the major talent agency.
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PUBLISHING
Updates
- Snap will now enable its official media partners (who have channels on Snapchat Discover) to aggregate publicly shared user posts into curated segments and make money off ads that accompany them. (link)
Talent
- Tim Armstrong is stepping down as CEO of Oath, the content division of Verizon, which named current COO K. Guru Gowrappan as the new CEO, taking over day-to-day responsibilities starting Oct 1. (link)
- Armstrong will remain in a less involved capacity through the end of this calendar year.
- Instagram COO Marne Levine is shifting over to become VP of Global Partnerships for Facebook overall. (link)
- Josh Barro is stepping down as senior editor at Business Insider. He says he'll announce his next endeavor soon. (link)
- GQ editor-in-chief Jim Nelson is stepping down from the Conde Nast-owned men's fashion publisher and will be replaced by Will Welch who has been editor-in-chief of GQ Style. (link)
Performance
- Meredith Corp is laying off 200 employees and merged cooking magazines Cooking Light and EatingWell. (link)
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AUDIO/MUSIC
Deals
- iHeartMedia is acquiring podcast network Stuff Media for $55M, with Atlanta-based Stuff Media CEO Conal Byrne becoming head of podcasting at iHeart. (link)
- Stuff Media has 30 podcast brands that have collectively produced 10,000 episodes and 1B downloads. It's best known for HowStuffWorks, one of the most popular English language podcasts in the world.
- Raine Group invested $15M into Stuff Media in 2017 after it spun out as an independent company (it has had several owners over the last 20 years).
- BMG acquired LA-based hip-hop label RBC Records. (link)
Updates
- Endeavor, the entertainment and sports conglomerate that owns the WME talent agency, launched a new division - Endeavor Audio - dedicated to developing, financing, producing, distributing and marketing podcasts. (link)
- Malcolm Gladwell and Slate chairman Jacob Weisberg are co-founding a podcasting startup (name TBA). Weisberg is stepping down as chairman and editor-in-chief of Slate. (link)
- Ithaca Management Holdings, the holding co of talent manager and entertainment investor Scooter Braun, is suing talent manager and recently departed Spotify exec Troy Carter (and his Atom Factory firm) for $10M. (link)
- Brat Studios, the new LA-based startup that has raised $42M for its efforts to produce digital video series for teens, launched a record label division. It will sign non-exclusive deals with artists for individual singles rather than for an album or longer-term period. (link)
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GAMING
Deals
- PlayVS, an LA-based startup building the infrastructure for high-school esports competitions around the US, has partnered with Riot Games to run League of Legends competitions with students who are playing on behalf of their schools. (link)
- PlayVS has raised over $15M since its founding one year ago.
- Sky and LA-based production co Skybound Entertainment (best known for The Walking Dead) launched a joint venture, Skybound Stories. It will use both new and existing IP from the companies to create narrative games on mobile...episodic video series where the user makes choices that affect the story arc. (link)
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