Top News:
Spotify:
Spotify reports Q1 revenue of €1.5B, up 33% YoY, reduces net loss to €142M, says it has 217M MAUs, up 26% YoY, with 100M premium subscribers, up 32% YoY — Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) today reported financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2019 ending March 31, 2019.
Discussion:
New York Times, The Guardian, Variety, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Business Insider, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Engadget, @pkafka, @richbtig and 9to5Mac, more at Techmeme »
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Paul Sawers / VentureBeat:
Spotify confirms it paid €50M to acquire the podcasting studio Parcast in addition to the €308M spent on Anchor and Gimlet in 2019 — Spotify has confirmed that it paid €50 million ($56 million) to acquire Parcast, the story-based podcasting studio it snapped up last month.
Discussion:
MediaPost
Nic Fildes / Financial Times:
Sources: UK's Telegraph Media Group plans to cut about 50 jobs in its commercial department as it continues its shift to a subscription-first revenue strategy — Telegraph Media Group has launched its latest round of restructuring as it presses ahead with its shift to a premium subscription-based model.
Discussion:
@orskov and @jayrosen_nyu
Stuart Dredge / Music Ally:
Royalties from digital services to UK copyright society PRS for Music rose 17% to £145.7M in 2018, the first year of its licensing deal with Facebook — British collecting society PRS for Music saw its collections grow by 4.4% to £746m (around $965.4m) in 2018, setting a new record.
Discussion:
The Guardian, Music Business Worldwide and NME
Daniel Funke / Poynter:
Survey of 1,018 US journalists: only ~15% say they have been trained on how to best report on misinformation, while 80%+ have been duped by false info online — The spread of misinformation has changed the way that social media users interact with news. — A study published in Science Advances …
Discussion:
@poynter
Ginny Marvin / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft rebrands Bing Ads as Microsoft Advertising, says it will introduce more advertising products with built-in AI over the next year — The new name reflects a broader focus on ad inventory, data and targeting capabilities. — First there was Microsoft adCenter. Then there was Bing Ads.
Discussion:
Bing Ads, @carnage4life and The Drum, more at Techmeme »
Bloomberg:
Sources: Walmart plans to create at least 6 original Vudu shows over the next year, which will make money by advertising products, testing “shoppable content” — - Decade-old streaming service plans to tout new ad technology — Walmart Inc. already sells more TVs than anyone.
Discussion:
@lucas_shaw, Engadget, MacRumors, The Verge and Forbes, Thanks:@lucas_shaw
Bloomberg:
With PR workers now outnumbering journalists six to one, journalists are bombarded by PR pitches looking to control corporate narratives — - For every reporter there are six PR workers, Census reports — Number of PR specialists to keep rising, Labor Department says
Discussion:
@erinahennessy and @elisabethmahy
Christopher Cadelago / Politico:
The unusual relationship between the US President and NY Times photographer Doug Mills, whom Trump has called “my genius photographer” — Earlier in his administration, as Donald Trump launched attack after attack on the mainstream media, a series of newspaper photographs caught his attention, in a good way.
Discussion:
@anitakumar01
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
After a record-busting $1.2B opening weekend, Avengers: Endgame shows that, despite the ubiquity of streaming content, theaters can still deliver breakout hits — LOS ANGELES — Audiences have splintered into a million personalized subsets. Streaming services are sprouting like mushrooms.
Discussion:
Variety and /Film, more at Techmeme »
Jessica Davies / Digiday:
El Pais-owner Prisa Media made a tool that uses machine learning to identify articles that evoke positive feelings, in a bid to sell brand-safe ads at a premium — Monetizing hard news has always been a thorn in the side of general-news publishers. For some advertisers …
@nytopinion:
NYT apologizes, says it published the antisemitic cartoon because of a faulty process when an editor working without adequate oversight decided to include it — We apologize for the anti-Semitic cartoon we published. Here's our statement. pic.twitter.com/nifZahutpO
Discussion:
New York Times, CNN, The Wrap, @vp, Newser, Poynter, @yashar, @ajcglobal, @dschwammenthal, @jgreenblattadl, @gipperschutzpah, @intelcrab, @ltcpeterlerner, @danielbshapiro, @aahronheim, Herman Cain, Breitbart and Jerusalem Post