Digestible Media
Film/TV/Video
- Boom.tv — whose live-streaming platform targets small, amateur esports tournament — raised $10M in Series A funding from Bitkraft Esports Ventures, Crest Capital, and Pole To Win. (Read more)
- Movie theaters in California are set to reopen (at 25% capacity) on June 12.
Publishing
- Digiday reports that US and European publishers are bracing for a second wave of layoffs. (Read more)
- Vogue profiled Roula Khalaf, new editor of the Financial Times. (Read more)
Music
- Kiswe Mobile, a high-end event live-streaming platform based in New Jersey, announced a broad partnership with Big Hit Entertainment, the record label behind K-Pop group BTS. (Read more)
- SiriusXM announced a $1.5B debt offering (4.125% Senior Notes due 2030). (Read more)
Interactive Media
Gaming
- Twitch is receiving a massive surge of legal takedown requests for clips that contain background music, going back through 2017. It caught Twitch and Twitch users off guard, with numerous popular accounts now threatened with permanent bans based on Twitch’s 3-strike rule. (Read more)
- Twitch is trying to work with creators through the problem, but appears to also be advising many to delete their entire catalog of past videos.
- Twitch doesn’t offer a way to bulk delete videos, forcing creators to delete videos one by one. (Many creators have thousands of clips.)
- Kalypso Media Group, the Germany-based game publisher, acquired the remaining 40% of Gaming Minds Studios (creator of Railway Empire) it didn’t already own. (Read more)
Communications
- Reliance Jio Platforms sold a 1.16% stake to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for $750M. It’s the latest in a wave of new investors in India’s top mobile carrier, following deals with Facebook, Silver Lake, KKR, and Mubdala. (Read more)
- The US Senate‘s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a bipartisan report warning the US government to do more to block Chinese influence over US telecom infrastructure. (Read it here)