Top News:
Chris Welch / The Verge:
Daniel Ek says Spotify is working on a deluxe Spotify tier, costing around $17 to $18, that has “a lot more control, a lot higher quality across the board” — The saga of Spotify HiFi has many twists and turns. First announced over three years ago, the music service's higher …
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Billboard, Neowin, TechCrunch, Music Business Worldwide, 9to5Mac, The Media Leader, Digital Trends and RAIN News, more at Techmeme »
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Ashley Carman / Bloomberg:
Spotify reports Q2 revenue up 20% YoY to €3.8B, MAUs up 14% YoY to 626M, subscribers up 12% YoY to 246M, above est., and €266M operating income; SPOT jumps 12%+ — Spotify Technology SA shares surged to their highest in more than three years on Tuesday after the Swedish audio …
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Music Ally, Chris Walton on LinkedIn, The Information, Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, @alexweprin, @thetranscript_, @sarafischer, @eldsjal, Spotify, @natetharp@threads.net, @carnage4life@threads.net, Neowin, Benzinga, MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal, Proactive, The Verge, Tech Xplore, Investor's Business Daily, Axios, Fast Company, Quartz, Billboard, Music Ally, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, The Wrap, Music Business Worldwide, Variety and Reuters
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
YouTube Q2 ad revenue grew 13% YoY to $8.66B, vs. $8.93B est.; Google's subscriptions, platforms, and devices unit that includes YouTube TV had revenue of $9.3B — The Google-owned video platform still saw its ad haul rise by 13 percent compared to last year.
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Observer, The Verge, The Register, Alphabet Inc., The Desk, Reuters, Neowin, Quartz, The Wrap, MediaPost, 9to5Google, Deadline, Wall Street Journal, Variety, Next TV and TVNewsCheck, more at Techmeme »
The Information:
Internal messages: Meta staff complained about Threads' algorithm limiting political posts, after the For You page was slow to show news of Biden dropping out — Shortly after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election Sunday, an employee at Meta Platforms posted in the company's internal forum …
Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal:
Former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter, who backed Nelson Peltz in a failed proxy fight for two Disney board seats, sells his stake of nearly 26M Disney shares — Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, the former Marvel Entertainment executive, who for the last decade and a half has been one of Disney's …
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Variety, Gizmodo, New York Post, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Reuters
Reuters:
A Moscow court finds Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar guilty in absentia of distributing false information about the Russian army and sentences him to 8.5 years — A court in Moscow said on Tuesday it had found Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar guilty in absentia of knowingly distributing false information …
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International Center … and Committee to Protect …
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Reuters:
The US calls on Russia to free Russian-American RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who was jailed last week in what RFE/RL said was “a mockery of justice”
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Inter Press Service, @newshour@threads.net, PBS NewsHour, Washington Post, TVNewsCheck, Associated Press, Semafor, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, Voice of America, Committee to Protect …, Sky News, CNN, New York Times, Reporters Without Borders, USAGM, BBC, CBS News, European Federation … and The Guardian
Laura Dubois / Financial Times:
The EU raises concerns over the independence of Italy's public broadcaster Rai after budget cuts and alleged “intimidation” by Giorgia Meloni's government — European Commission raises alarm over independence of public broadcaster Rai after budget cuts and ‘intimidation’
Judd Legum / Popular Information:
A look at Sinclair's Rapid Response Team, which produces biased short articles; affiliates must include at least three RRT stories nightly — Eugene Ramirez, the lead anchor of Sinclair's national evening news broadcast, resigned in January over concerns about the accuracy and right-wing bias …
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@eugeneramirez, @michaelsocolow, @agt00soul, @sueblueswilson, @jayrosen_nyu, @kali_fissure, @drvolts, @davidfolkenflik, @juddlegum, @thetnholler, TVNewsCheck, The Daily Beast, @kbode@threads.net, @FAIR@mastodon.world, @davinasass@threads.net, @shamrockchickens@threads.net, @realjuddlegum@threads.net, @kiminsley11@threads.net, @KimPerales@toad.social and @emmettoconnell@mas.to
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Twitch introduces new policy and moderation updates to curb sexual harassment, including making its policy “easier to understand” and adding moderation tools — Twitch has introduced new policy and moderation updates that aim to help curb sexual harassment.
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Associated Press, more at Techmeme »
Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:
Comcast reports Peacock Q2 revenue up 28% YoY to $1B, and a $348M loss, down from $651M in Q2 2023; paying subs were up 38% YoY to 33M but down from 33.5M in Q1 — Comcast and its entertainment unit NBCUniversal report second-quarter results, including the “best year-over-year improvement” …
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Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
BBC reports UK households paying the £169.50 licence fee fell by 500K to 23.9M in 2023/2024; 69% of Britons under 16 consume any BBC content in an average week — Corporation faces stark challenge as it struggles to reach younger audiences who are watching Netflix and YouTube
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Though the UK's ICO says it's “disappointed” with Google's not deprecating third-party cookies, the regulator has only weakly enforced data protection laws — In a material development that will likely have a big impact on online business models, Google is no longer proposing …
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Digiday:
Google says it won't be “deprecating third-party cookies” in Chrome and will instead keep working on “privacy-preserving alternatives” via Privacy Sandbox APIs
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Adweek, Beet.TV, Privacy Sandbox, AdExchanger, The Cyber Express, Information Commissioner's …, Search Engine Land, @pedrodias, @levie, Bloomberg, Caitlin Halpert on LinkedIn, Neowin, MarTech, Emil Protalinski on LinkedIn, @cmagovuk, Tech Xplore, @edzitron, @ariellesgarcia, @dalmaer, @ngriffin_uk, @simonw, @vtoubiana, @jdaykin, @aripap, @aripap, @mattlanza, @jeffjarvis, @sarafischer, Gizmodo, @murakamiwood, @rowan_m, @alextcone, @michaelmiraflor, @chronotope, @keithepetri, @samueljscott, @incloud, @thezedwards, @paperghost, @kendraebarnett, @glenngabe, @ryanbarwick, @lukolejnik, @simoahava, @robinberjon, @lukolejnik, @wolfiechristl, Silicon Republic, @torgo@mastodon.social, Wall Street Journal, Mark McEachran on LinkedIn, The Register, The Information, Financial Times, The Verge, GOV.UK, Search Engine Land, Fast Company, James Rosewell on LinkedIn, Marc Majewski on LinkedIn, Mahesh Narayanan on LinkedIn, @mysk@mastodon.social, Google Help Center, Simo Ahava on LinkedIn, @wchr@mastodon.social, W Media Research, The Drum, Angelina Eng on LinkedIn, CBS News, Matthias Cada on LinkedIn, Engadget, Oliver Klander on LinkedIn, Rio Longacre on LinkedIn, @lauren@mastodon …, 9to5Google, @jaffathecake@mastodon.social, Paul Bannister on LinkedIn, Alex Cone on LinkedIn, The Drum, AdExchanger, Ad Age and @LukaszOlejnik@mastodon.social
Bron Maher / Press Gazette:
A look at The Guardian's recipes app Feast, which costs £2.99/month and has reached 100K+ downloads since April 2024, and how its bundling differs from the NYT — The Guardian says its new recipes app Feast has achieved more than 100,000 downloads since it soft-launched in April.
Jess Jones / City A.M.:
LADbible owner LBG Media reports H1 2024 revenue up 55% YoY to £42.3M, adjusted earnings up 240% YoY to £10.2M, and a global audience of 493M; LBG jumps 11%+ — Shares in LBG Media soared 12 per cent after the company behind popular entertainment channel LAD Bible posted strong revenue …
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LBG Media
Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
BBC reports BBC Commercial revenue of £1.9B in 2023/24, down from £2.1B in 2022/23, and 3.8M BritBox International subscribers, with a 25% annual growth rate — BBC Commercial, the revenue-generating arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation, has revealed a dip in sales and earnings for the 2023/24 fiscal year.
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Deadline, Broadcast, BBC, WORLD SCREEN, Broadband TV News, The Hollywood Reporter and The Hollywood Reporter
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Max Goldbart / Deadline:
BBC plans to lay off 500 more staff by March 2026 and reports a £263M operating deficit in 2023/24, up from £193M in 2022/23, projected to be £492M in 2024/25
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
Huw Edwards tops the list of BBC's highest paid journalists for 2023/24 despite being off-air since July 2023; 46 BBC journalists earned above £178K
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