Digestible Media
Film/TV/Video
- TV networks and SVOD services in the US are removing content that is seen as glorifying police violence (like COPS) or portraying slavery or racism in a positive like (like Gone With The Wind).
Publishing
- Facebook launched its dedicated news section of the Facebook app, called Facebook News, for all US users today. (Read more)
- NewsKKR informed the board of publishing giant Axel Springer that it plans to force of buy-out of remaining shareholders as part of its take-private of the company. (Read more – in German)
- Tucker Carlson, who hosts a primetime show on Fox News, sold his ~33% stake in The Daily Caller, the American conservative news site he co-founded, to his co-founder Neil Patel. (Read more)
- Digiday did a case study on how Bloomberg Media is reducing its subscriber churn rate. (Read more)
Music
- Wave, a startup whose platform hosts concerts within virtual worlds, raised $30M in Series B funding from Maveron, Griffin Gaming Partners, RRE Ventures, Upfront, Scooter Braun, and Alex Rodriguez. (Read more)
- Warner Music shares remain stable after the music group’s IPO last week. It’s currently trading around $31/share ($16B market cap), having started trading at $27 and finished its first day at $29
Podcasting/Audio
- Podhero launched as a podcast streaming app where users pay a $4.99 per month subscription, which is them divided among their favorite podcasts (at percentages they can set). (Read more)
- This is from the creators of the podcast discover app Swoot.
- Money allocated to podcast creators who haven’t created a Podhero account will remain available for them to claim whenever they sign up in the future.
Interactive Media
Gaming
- Unity, the game engine, has long been criticized for being quick to release new updates that are then buggy for many months, frustrating developers.
- It announced it will now make the default Unity license a long-term supported (LTS) version which comes out annually and is supported for two years. (Read more)
- Users who still want to frequent stream of new updates can opt into that but for most users those new features will just release as part of the next LTS version (after most bugs have been solved).
- Sensor Tower released data on the top grossing mobile games for the month of May. (Read more)
Of note:- #1 PUBG, $226 million
- #2 Honor of Kings, $204 million
- #7 Pokemon Go, $82 million
- Sales of legally-bought game consoles are growing substantially in China, which has traditionally been much more of a PC and mobile market and where most consoles have typically been acquired through the gray market (consoles manufactured at Chinese factories for other markets but sold domestically under the table). (Read more)
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