Spotify is trying another method to get people more engaged with the platform while tapping into the power of social recommendations. It's prompting some users in Vietnam to record a playlist reaction with their voice. This clip will be shared as a podcast episode.
Those who see the prompt, which a Reddit user spotted, can create a voice reaction in one go or piecemeal with shorter clips by pausing the recording. They can edit their captures and add background music. They'll be able to link to the playlist before posting their episode.
Spotify confirmed to TechCrunchthat it's running the test, though it didn't reveal how it will moderate the recordings or whether it plans to roll out the feature more broadly. Theoretically, this could lead to people dabbling in audio creation for the first time, but whether people actually want to hit the record button to react to a playlist remains to be seen.
Spotify has been testing an in-app podcast recording option off and on for years. In a recent trial that took place in New Zealand, it published podcast episodes that a user recorded to that person's profile. That seems a smart way for the company to take advantage of friend connections on Spotify — a playlist recommendation from a buddy is perhaps more effective than one suggested by the algorithm. Recording a reaction podcast to offer a recommendation seems unnecessary, though.
Walmart will add a perk to its membership program in September that would make it a more veritable rival to Amazon Prime. The retail giant has struck a deal with Paramount Global to add its streaming service to Walmart+ starting in September. Walmart+ members, who are currently paying $12.95 a month or $98 a year for unlimited free delivery on orders over $35 across the US, will also get a Paramount+ Essential subscription for free. Walmart's membership prices will remain the same, it's just that the service will now come with an answer to Amazon's Prime Video.
The Paramount+ Essential plan typically costs $5 a month or $50 a year and streams content with "limited commercial interruptions." Paramount's streaming service offers shows and movies from various production studios, including BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and the Smithsonian Channel. It also streams every CBS Sports event and gives users access to the CBS News Streaming Network and to all local CBS stations across the country.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Walmart held talks with Walt Disney Co., Comcast Corp. and Paramount Global executives to discuss the possibility of teaming up to provide one of their streaming products to its members. Walmart and Paramount have reportedly agreed to a two-year partnership that would give Walmart+ members access to the ad-supported streaming service. The first 12 months will be an exclusive partnership between the two, though it's unclear what would change once they enter the second year of the deal.
Walmart says its membership program has shown positive growth every month since its launch in 2020. Paramount also recently reported that its streaming service has been doing well and that it has added 3.7 million subscribers in the second quarter of the year even after pulling out of Russia. The partnership could boost their numbers further, though we'll likely have to wait until the companies publish their earnings results by the end of the year to know for sure.
The major cost-cutting drive at Warner Bros. Discovery is continuing, as the company is reportedly laying off around 70 workers across HBO and HBO Max. Most of the cuts are on the side of the streaming service, according to Deadline.
The layoffs account for around 14 percent of staffers across the two divisions. HBO Max's nonfiction team is being downsized, which isn't surprising given the influx of reality and documentary programming from the Discovery side of the business. Leadership may believe it's redundant for HBO Max to have its own reality division. As Variety notes, kids' programming will be less of a priority for HBO Max too, as there have been cuts to the live-action family originals department.
Although there had been rumors that the ax would fall on many HBO Max originals as part of budget cuts and a changing strategies, that's not exactly that case, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The publication notes that leadership at the streaming service is expanding its lineup of originals, albeit with fewer non-fiction and live-action family projects. No projects were canceled as part of today's layoffs.
Warner Bros. Discovery recently cannedBatgirl and Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, movies that were lined up as HBO Max exclusives. According to reports, the company shelved the films in favor of tax breaks.
In addition, HBO Max's casting and international teams have been downsized. The team that handles acquisitions of third-party content has been affected too. Meanwhile, layoffs are said to be expected in other Warner Bros. Discovery divisions. Engadget has contacted HBO Max for comment.
WarnerMedia and Discovery merged in April to form Warner Bros. Discovery. An effort to slash costs got underway quickly, with the company announcing it would shut down CNN+ only a few weeks after that streaming service launched. Next year, the company will merge HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single platform. It's not yet clear what the unified streaming service will be called, though it may retain the HBO Max name or, according to one report, it could simply be named "Max."
Disney's D23 Expo takes place in just a few weeks and one panel that will be worth paying attention to is all about games. It takes place at 4PM ET on September 9th and it will feature several Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century projects.
The first Disney and Marvel Games Showcase will include new game announcements. It will also offer a look at something new for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, as well as updates on upcoming titles Disney Dreamlight Valley and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. On top of all that, we'll get an early peek at a Marvel action-adventure title that's in the works at Amy Hennig’s studio, Skydance New Media.
The showcase will stream live on the D23, Disney and Marvel YouTube, Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as on Marvel's Twitch channel. After the showcase, D23 attendees will be able to view a presentation that features developer interviews and special guests.
Snapchat+ is barely over a month old, but that isn't stopping Snap from adding a few extra perks to its subscription service. The social network has released a "summer drop" for members that, most notably, includes priority replies to stars' Stories. If you're determined to get the attention of your favorite celebrity or influencer, this could bump you up the queue.
The drop also lets you choose a "post view" emoji viewers will see after your Snaps. You'll have more Bitmoji backgrounds, and can set more custom app icons. More features will arrive in the "coming months," Snap said, although it didn't offer a preview of what was coming.
Whether or not you'd find use for these features, the $4 per month offering appears to have strong early demand. Snapchat+ already has over 1 million subscribers, according to the company. That's a tiny fraction of Snapchat's 347 million daily users. but it's no mean feat for a paid plan only six weeks old. Frequent feature drops could keep that momentum going and give Snap a way to stand out against rivals like Instagram and TikTok.
Ahead of Andor’s debut on September 21st, Disney will bring Rogue One: A Star Wars Story back to theaters. The 2016 film will return to IMAX screens in the US on August 26th, along with an “exclusive look” at the upcoming Disney+ series. Details on the preview are sparse, but it’s likely to expand on the most recent Andor trailer Disney shared on August 1st. Either way, Rogue One’s rerelease will give Star Wars fans a chance to rewatch the film before Diego Luna reprises his role as Cassian Andor.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is returning to theaters later this month in anticipation for ANDOR! ✨ pic.twitter.com/ObryEAjipm
Set five years before the events of Rogue One, itself a prequel to A New Hope, Andor tells the story of how the rebellion began. Disney is billing the series as a spy thriller. With Andor, Diego Luna isn’t the only actor returning to the franchise. Genevieve O’Reilly and Forest Whitaker reprise their roles as Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera. The series was originally scheduled to debut on August 31st, but Disney pushed it back to give more time for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law to find an audience. The first three episodes of Andor will debut simultaneously, with subsequent episodes to follow every Wednesday.
Rogue One is widely considered one of the better films to come out of the Disney Star Wars era. The movie made more than $1 billion during its original box office run and even earned two Academy Awards. If you don’t live near a theater with an IMAX projector, you can watch the film on Disney+.
In the first days of social media, to build a personal brand online you mostly just needed a basic working knowledge of html. In 2022, however, the influencer marketing industry's reach is estimated at around $16.4 billion. With so much money to be made, it's little wonder that an entire support ecosystem has sprung up to help get the next generation of PewDiePies camera-ready. In the excerpt below from her new book examining the culture and business of online influencing, Break the Internet, Olivia Yallop enrolls in a summer gaming influencer camp for teens.
Beginning the course bright and early on a Monday morning in August stirs memories from classrooms past, as the students — myself, plus a small group of animated pre-teen boys hailing from across the UK — go around and make our introductions: an interesting fact about ourselves, our favourite foods, two truths and a lie. A pandemic-proofed schedule means we are learning remotely, in my case prostrated on my parents’ sofa. Once logged on, we meet our course coach Nathan, an upbeat, relentlessly patient Scottish instructor with a homegrown YouTube channel of his own, on which he reviews electronic synthesisers and (he reveals privately to me) vlogs whisky-tasting.
Twenty minutes into our induction, I realise I am already out of my depth: I have accidentally landed in a class of aspiring YouTube gamers. Within the influencer landscape, gaming is a microcosm complete with its own language and lore, each new game franchise spawning an expansive universe of characters, weaponry, codes, and customs. Whilst the students are happily chatting multiplayer platform compatibility, I am stealthily googling acronyms.
Far from the bedroom-dwelling pastime of the shy and socially reclusive, as it has been previously painted, gaming is a sprawling community activity on social media platforms. Over 200 million YouTube users watch gaming videos on a daily basis; 50 billion hours were viewed in 2018 alone, and two of the five largest channels on YouTube belong to gamers. And that’s just YouTube — the largest dedicated gamer streaming platform is Twitch, a 3.8m-strong community, which has an average of 83,700 synchronous streams — with 1.44 million viewers — taking place at any time.
Just a fraction of these numbers are users actually playing games themselves. Gaming content usually consists of viewing other people play: pre-recorded commentary following skilful players as they navigate their way through various levels or livestreamed screenshares to which viewers can tune in to watch their heroes play in real time. According to Google’s own data, 48 per cent of YouTube gaming viewers say they spend more time watching gaming videos on YouTube than actually playing games themselves.
If, like me, you find yourself wondering why, you’re probably in the wrong demographic. My classmate Rahil, a die-hard fan of Destiny 2, broke it down: ‘What makes these content creators so good is that they are very confident in what they do in gaming, but they are also funny, they are entertaining to watch. That’s why they have so many followers.’
Watching other people play video games is a way to level up your skills, engage with the community’s most hyped gaming rivalries, and feel connected to something beyond your console. Being a successful gaming influencer is also a way to get filthy rich. Video game voyeurism is a lucrative market, making internet celebrities of its most popular players, a string of incomprehensible handles that read to me like an inebriated keyboard smash but invoke wild-eyed delight in the eyes of my classmates: Markiplier, elrubiusOMG, JuegaGerman, A4, TheWillyrex, EeOneGuy, KwebbelKop, Fernanfloo, AM3NIC.
PewDiePie — aka 30-year-old Felix Kjellberg, the only gamer noobs like me have ever heard of — has 106m followers and is estimated to earn around $8 million per month, including more than $6.8 million from selling merchandise and more than $1.1 million in advertising. Blue-haired streamer Ninja, aka Detroit-born 29-year- old Tyler Blevins, is the most-followed gamer on Twitch, and signed a $30 million contract with Microsoft to game exclusively on their now- defunct streaming service Mixer. UK YouTube gaming collective The Sidemen upload weekly vlogs to their shared channel in which they compete on FIFA, mess around, prank each other, order £1,000 takeaways, and play something called ‘IRL Tinder’, living out the fever dream of a million teenage boys across the internet. For many tweens, getting paid to play as a YouTube gamer is a hallowed goal, and each of my classmates is keen to make Minecraft a full-time occupation. I decide to keep quiet about my abortive attempt at a beauty tutorial.
Class kicks off with an inspirational slideshow titled ‘INFLUENCERS: FROM 0 TO MILLIONS’. My laptop screen displays a Wall of Fame of top YouTubers smiling smugly to camera: OG American vlogger Casey Neistat, Canadian comedian Lilly Singh, PewDiePie, beauty guru Michelle Phan, and actor, activist, and author Tyler Oakley, each underlined by a subscriber count that outnumbers the population of most European countries. ‘Everyone started off where you are today,’ says Nathan enthusiastically. ‘A laptop and a smartphone — that’s all they had. Everybody here started with zero subscribers.’ The class is rapt. I try to imagine my own face smiling onscreen between professional prankster Roman Atwood (15.3m subscribers) and viral violin performer Lindsey Stirling (12.5m subscribers). Somehow, I can’t.
Nathan hits play on early comedy vlogger nigahiga’s first ever upload — a 2007 viral video sketch entitled ‘How to Be Ninja’ that now has 54,295,178 views — and then a later video from 2017, ‘Life of a YouTuber’. ‘Look at that — 21.5M subscribers!’ Nathan taps on the follower count under the video. ‘It didn’t happen overnight. It took a year, 12 months of putting up content with 50 views. Don’t get disheartened. Take every sub, every view as a...’ he mimes celebrating like the winner of a round of Fortnite.
Thanks to its nostalgic pixelation and condensed frame ratio, watching ‘How to Be Ninja’ creates the impression that we’re sitting in a history class studying archival footage from a distant past: Late Noughties Net Culture (2007, colourised). In a poorly lit, grainy home video that feels like a prelapsarian time capsule, two teenage boys act out a hammy sketch in which they transform into martial arts experts, including off-tempo miming, questionable jump cuts, and a tantalising glimpse of old-school YouTube — running on Internet Explorer — that flies over the heads of my Gen Z classmates. The sketch feels like two friends messing around with a camera at the weekend; it’s almost as if they don’t know they’re being watched.
In the second video an older and now more-polished Higa — complete with designer purple highlights in his hair — breezily addresses his multi-million-strong fanbase in a nine-minute HD monologue that’s punctuated by kooky 3D animation and links to his supporting social media channels. ‘I am in one of the final stages of my YouTube career,’ he says, ‘and my YouTube life, so …’ The camera cuts to reveal his extensive video set-up, professional lights, and a team of three clutching scripts, clipboards, cameras, and a boom mic behind the scenes, all celebrating exuberantly: ‘That means we can get out of here right?’ asks one. ‘Yeah, it’s really cramped back here…’ says another, ‘I have to poop so bad.’
‘What’s the difference between these two videos?’ Nathan prompts us. ‘What changed?’ The answers roll in quickly, students reeling off a list of ameliorations with ease: better lighting, better equipment, a better thumbnail, slicker editing, a more professional approach, background music, higher audio quality, and a naturalistic presentation style that at least appears to be ad-libbed.
‘What makes a good video more generally?’ asks Nathan. ‘What are the key elements?’ When he eventually pulls up the next slide, it turns out Nathan wants us to discuss passion, fun, originality, and creativity: but the class has other ideas. ‘I heard YouTube doesn’t like videos lower than ten minutes,’ offered Alex. ‘There’s many things that they don’t like,’ Lucas corrects him. ‘The algorithm is very complicated, and it’s always changing. They used to support “let’s plays” [a popular gaming stream format] back in 2018, and then they changed it, and a lot of Minecraft channels died.’ Rahil pipes up: ‘They find as many ways as possible to scrutinise your video … if you do many small things wrong, you get less money, even though YouTube is paid the same money by the advertisers. So you should never swear in your videos.’ ‘No, demonetisation is different,’ corrects Fred.
There is something fascinating and incongruous about watching pre-teens reel off the details of various influencer revenue models with the enthusiasm of a seasoned social media professional. The fluency with which they exchange terms I’m more accustomed to encountering on conference calls and in marketing decks is a startling reminder of the generational gulf between us: though they may be students, they’re not exactly beginners on the internet.
As the conversation quickly descends into technocratic one- upmanship, Nathan attempts to steer our analysis back to entry level. ‘Once you reach 1,000 subscribers,’ he enthusiastically explains to the class, ‘that means you can monetise your channel and have ads on it.’ A heated debate about the intricacies of YouTube monetisation ensues. Nathan is corrected by one of his students, before another pipes up to undercut them both, and suddenly everyone’s talking all at once: ‘Most YouTubers make money from sponsorships, not advertising revenue, anyway,’ offers one student. There is a pause. ‘And merch,’ he adds, ‘the MrBeast hoodies are really cool.’
‘Okay then,’ says Nathan brightly, shifting the slide forward to reveal a list of attributes for creating successful content that begins, ‘Attitude, Energy, Passion, Smile’, ‘what about some of these…’
Looking at my notes, I realise Nathan’s original question, ‘What makes a good video?’, has become something else entirely: what does YouTube consider to be a good video, and thus reward accordingly? It’s a small elision, admittedly, but significant; good is whatever YouTube thinks is good, and interpretations outside this algorithmic value system aren’t entertained. His prompt about creative possibilities has been heard as a question about optimising the potential of a commodity (the influencer) in an online marketplace. ‘It’s all about value,’ he continues, unwittingly echoing my thoughts, ‘what value does your video bring to the YouTube community? How are you going to stand out from all the other people doing it?’
This cuts to the heart of criticism against influencer training courses like this one, and others which have sprung up in LA, Singapore, and Paris in recent years: that it’s ethically inappropriate to coach young people to commodify themselves, that it’s encouraging children to spend more time online, that it’s corrupting childhoods. Influencers and industry professionals rolled their eyes or responded with a mixture of horror and intrigue when I’d mentioned the Fire Tech programme in passing. ‘That’s disgusting,’ said one agent, ‘way too young.’ (Privately, I thought this was an inconsistent position, given she represented a mumfluencer with a family of four.) ‘I respect it,’ said a Brighton-based beauty guru, ‘but I would never personally make that choice for my kids.’ ‘Crazy times we live in,’ offered a NYC-based fashion influencer, before admitting, ‘for real, though, I kind of wish I had had that when I was younger.’
Whether it's "the vivid detailing in each song," her "openness to new media and technology" or projects like her Mi.Mu Gloves, Imogen Heap's work has inspired the likes of A$AP Rocky, Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves. "Heap’s music sounds like it could be released today, and not simply because the 2000s are trendy again," Zhang writes.
Warzel's Galaxy Brain newsletter makes the cut in our weekly roundup a lot because his writing on technology and related topics is consistently on point. This week, he spoke to an ex-Infowars staffer about the Alex Jones trial, including what that work experience was like and what we can do to hold Jones accountable.
"Musk has become the figure everyone was looking for: a powerful man who sold the fantasy that faith in the combined power of technology and the market could change the world without needing a role for the government," Marx writes. "But that collective admiration has only served to bolster an unaccountable and increasingly hostile billionaire. The holes in those future visions, and the dangers of applauding billionaire visionaries, have only become harder to ignore."
You might not have to pick up your local Facebook Marketplace purchases in the near future. Meta has confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that DoorDash is now handling Facebook Marketplace deliveries as part of an "early" partnership. Couriers will deliver orders that are small enough to fit in a car trunk and come from sellers up to 15 miles away, The Journal's sources said, and should complete their dropoffs within 48 hours.
The feature is currently free to reel in customers, one tipster said. It's not clear how Facebook and DoorDash would charge customers later on. The companies have been testing the offering in multiple US cities in recent months.
The reasoning for the team-up is reportedly simple. Meta has learned that Marketplace is one of the few Facebook features young people use when they're not jumping to TikTok, according to the sources. DoorDash could help spur demand, particularly among younger users.
For DoorDash, the alliance could help reduce its dependence on restaurant orders. The company has already been delivering groceries and convenience store essentials for years. This would give DoorDash a steadier stream of income, and might help it compete with Uber Eats' nationwide shipping service.
Facebook's crackdown on hate speech apparently has room for improvement. As The Washington Postexplains, the non-profit watchdog Tech Transparency Project (TTP) has published a study indicating that white supremacist groups still have a significant presence on the social network. Over 80 of these racist organizations have a presence on Facebook, some of which the company has already labeled as "dangerous organizations" it normally bans. Researchers found 119 pages and 20 groups, including 24 pages Facebook auto-generated when users listed white supremacist groups as employers or interests.
Searches were also problematic, according to the watchdog. Facebook displayed ads next to searches for white supremacist groups, even when those outfits were on the social site's blocklist. Recommendations steered visitors to other hate pages, and Facebook's tactic of redirecting users to pro-tolerance groups was only effective for 14 percent out of 226 searches. Some searches for supremacists displayed ads for Black churches. This could effectively identify targets for extremists, TTP said.
In a statement to Engadget, Meta said it "immediately" began removing ads from searches linked to banned groups. It also said it was fixing the issue with a "small number" of auto-generated pages. The company further vowed to keep working with outside experts to "stay ahead" of hate and other extremist content. You can read the full statement below.
The survival of these groups on Facebook isn't completely surprising. University of Michigan associate professor Libby Hemphill told The Post that hate groups are increasingly aware of how to dodge content restrictions. Online platforms are frequently scrambling to adapt, and the TTP study suggests they're not always successful.
Even so, the findings add to Meta's headaches. They come just weeks after GLAAD accused Meta brands of doing too little to protect LGBTQ users, and relatively soon after whistleblower Frances Haugen said Facebook's algorithmic content filtering only caught a "tiny minority" of hate speech. There's plenty of pressure to ramp up anti-hate measures, and it's not yet clear how well the latest fixes will help.
"All 270 groups that Meta has designated as white supremacist organizations are banned from our platform. We invest extensively in technology, people, and research to keep our platforms safe. We immediately resolved an issue where ads were appearing in searches for terms related to banned organizations and we are also working to fix an auto generation issue, which incorrectly impacted a small number of pages. We will continue to work with outside experts and organizations in an effort to stay ahead of violent, hateful, and terrorism-related content and remove such content from our platforms."
