A 2024 Digital Media Trends study by Deloitte says media and entertainment companies “should be thinking more about the world ahead than the one they’re being forced to leave behind,” a suggestion underscored by the fact that 60 percent of Gen Zs surveyed prefer watching user-generated content on social platforms to programming offered by streaming services “because they don’t have to spend time searching for what to watch.” Both Gen Zs and Millennials also believe they get better recommendations from social media than the commercial platforms (54 percent). Continue reading Gen Z, Millennials Prefer Social Videos to Streaming Services

Google is beginning to extend YouTube TV’s multiview functionality to mobile platforms, with iPhones and iPads added in time for March Madness and Android coming in the months ahead. During early access, some users will see an option to simultaneously watch up to four different, though pre-selected, streams in their “Top Picks for You” section. After selecting multiview, viewers will be able to toggle audio and captioning between streams and can jump in and out of a particular game’s full screen view. YouTube TV announced multiview last month “on all devices that support multiview.” Continue reading YouTube TV Begins Offering Multiview for iPhones and iPads

Dish Network’s Sling TV subscription streaming platform has added a feature called Sling Arcade that lets users play games while Sling plays television content in an optional adjacent window. Available only to Sling customers who have Amazon Fire TV or Android TV, it has 10 games at launch that the company describes as “both classics and contemporary favorites,” including “Tetris,” “Wheel of Fortune,” “Poker Online” and “Solitaire Clash.” Sling is offering Arcade free to those with the Sling Freestream FAST service as well as those with paid subscriptions to Sling TV. Continue reading Sling TV Offers Free Games to Subscribers via Arcade Feature

Apple has been fined $1.95 billion by the European Union after the bloc’s executive body, the European Commission, found the iPhone maker in violation of antitrust law by using its App Store market dominance to stifle music streaming competition. The EC found that Apple suppressed the ability of app developers to communicate with iOS users about alternative music subscription services available outside the App Store. The fine stems from a 2019 complaint from Spotify that triggered an investigation into Apple. Spotify hailed the result as a win for consumers and “an important moment in the fight for a more open Internet,” while Apple has vowed to appeal. Continue reading Apple Fined $1.95 Billion by EU for Music Streaming Antitrust

On the heels of ElevenLabs’ demo of a text-to-sound app unveiled using clips generated by OpenAI’s text-to-video artificial intelligence platform Sora, Pika Labs is releasing a feature called Lip Sync that lets its paid subscribers use the ElevenLabs app to add AI-generated voices and dialogue to Pika-generated videos and have the characters’ lips moving in sync with the speech. Pika Lip Sync supports both uploaded audio files and text-to-audio AI, allowing users to type or record dialogue, or use pre-existing sound files, then apply AI to change the voicing style. Continue reading Pika Taps ElevenLabs Audio App to Add Lip Sync to AI Video

GitHub Copilot Enterprise is being released for general availability for $39 per month. Calling the tool GitHub’s “most advanced AI offering to date,” the company says it can be customized to an organization’s knowledge and codebase, placing “the institutional knowledge of your organization at your developers’ fingertips.” Infusing GitHub Copilot Enterprise throughout a company’s software development lifecycle lets team members “ask questions about public and private code, get up to speed quickly with new codebases and build greater consistencies across engineering teams” while ensuring everyone access to the same standard codebase. Continue reading GitHub Copilot Enterprise in General Release at $39 Monthly

MoviePass says it has sold more than 1 million tickets since relaunching last spring, and has also announced the first profitable year in the company’s 13-year history. Co-founder and CEO Stacy Spikes, who purchased the company out of bankruptcy in 2021, is giving artificial intelligence much of the credit for the turnaround. The MoviePass Cinematic Marketplace is an aggregator for the theatrical industry that uses AI and machine learning to improve attendance engagement and ticket sales. Spikes says hitting the milestones “highlights the powerful impact” the technology enhancements have had “from the previous business model.” Continue reading MoviePass Reaches 1 Million Tickets Sold and Turns First Profit

Slack AI is a new paid add-on for enterprise clients that want to boost productivity using artificial intelligence. Generative capabilities in the initial release include personalized responses to questions, channel recaps and thread summaries that promise to “catch you up on long conversations in one click.” Slack says pilot data indicated customers including Uber and Anthropic “could save an average of 97 minutes per user each week using Slack AI to find answers, distill knowledge and spark ideas.” Slack AI is backward compatible, generating information based on the history built over time on the platform. Continue reading Slack AI Brings Generative Features to Channels and Threads

Google has rebranded its Bard chatbot as Gemini, and is launching a Gemini mobile app along with a subscription offering for Gemini Advanced that will be included as part of the new $19.95 monthly Google One AI Premium plan. As with Bard, Google will continue to make a free version of the Gemini chatbot available. Gemini Advanced is powered by Gemini Ultra, the most sophisticated of the three Gemini AI models Google unveiled in December. “Gemini Advanced not only allows you to have longer, more detailed conversations, it also better understands the context from your previous prompts,” Google explains. Continue reading Google Intros Gemini Advanced Chatbot, One AI Subscription

In his annual letter about the state of YouTube, CEO Neal Mohan shared that YouTube TV has passed 8 million subscribers in seven years. Mohan also revealed that YouTube viewers watch a daily average of 1 billion hours of the 19-year-old streaming video platform on a TV screen. With more than 3 million channels in the YouTube Partner Program, the platform has in the past three years paid over $70 billion to creators, artists and media companies. Now, as YouTube integrates AI, Mohan envisions developing “entirely new ways of empowering creative expression, managing rights, and driving revenue.” Continue reading Milestone: YouTube TV Surpasses 8 Million Global Subscribers

To the appreciation, if not delight, of sports fans, Google is allowing YouTube TV subscribers to exercise more choice in what games to watch in their multiview windows. YouTube TV offers the option of watching up to four different sporting or news events simultaneously on a single screen. However, it doesn’t allow endless free choice, but presents combination options. Users complained and Google responded by serving up more multiview combinations to choose from, but stopped short of generating customizable multiplex streaming feeds for each user. Continue reading YouTube TV Expands NBA League Pass Choices in Multiview

Hulu has revised its Terms of Service in an effort to ban password sharing amongst friends and family members outside of a subscriber’s primary personal residence. Hulu has been announcing via email that subscribers will have until March 14 to comply. According to the revised Terms of Service: “If we determine, in our sole discretion, that you have violated this Agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the Service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this Agreement.” The move by Hulu follows what has been reported as a successful crackdown on password sharing by Netflix in addition to a record number of subscribers in the fourth quarter. Continue reading Hulu Is Joining Netflix in Cracking Down on Password Sharing

Amazon this week began serving advertising to Prime Video customers who did not elect to pay an additional $2.99 per month in addition to the basic annual Prime membership of $139 per year or $14.99 per month. Adding commercials is estimated to potentially bring in more than $3 billion a year for Amazon, which is expected to have 2023 revenue of around $567 billion. The surplus will come in handy to pay out $1 billion a year over 11 years for the rights to NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.” The ad-supported Prime Video service launches in the U.S., Canada, UK and Germany, with Mexico, France, Italy, Spain and Australia following later in the year. Continue reading Amazon Stands to Gain $3 Billion a Year from Prime Video Ads

Microsoft has added the Mesh mixed reality platform to its Teams remote collaboration app, making 3D and VR meetings now generally available to desktop Windows users and those with Meta Quest headsets. The immersive 3D meeting environments feature spatial audio as well as “live reactions” and the other standard Mesh features will be available to those with Microsoft Teams business accounts. Custom immersive spaces are also available to those with Teams Premium licenses. Microsoft says “hundreds of millions” of people worldwide are currently using Teams, although Mesh for Teams has only been in public preview since late 2022. Continue reading Microsoft Adds Mesh to Enable 3D and VR Meetings in Teams

Netflix added 13.1 million subscribers in Q4 2023, its biggest gain in a year-end quarter, and the streamer continues to try to broaden its demographic reach by investing in new content, including a new deal for live WWE wrestling matches. The expansion into live-streaming provides an opportunity to draw regular, appointment viewers, something advertisers like. “No entertainment company has ever tried to program at this scale, and for so many tastes and cultures,” Netflix wrote in a shareholder letter that says it plans to spend up to $17 billion on content in 2024. Continue reading Netflix Adds WWE, Touts 12.5 Percent Revenue Growth in Q4