Media & Entertainment

Spotify hikes subscription price in France by 1.2% to match new music-streaming tax

Spotify has hiked the price for its premium subscription in France by an eye-watering €0.13 in response to a music-streaming levy imposed by the government at the start of the year. At €11.12 per month for an individual subscription plan, the new price is 1.2% higher than the previous amount — the same as the […]

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The U.S. government sues to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster

The United States Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, creating a dominant entertainment machine that controls the majority of ticket sales and venue bookings in the country. But Taylor Swift

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Spotify’s ‘Listening Party’ feature falls short of expectations

It’s been three years since Spotify acquired live audio startup Betty Labs, and yet the music streaming service isn’t leveraging the technology to its fullest potential—at least not in our opinion.  Betty Labs-owned Locker Room launched in 2020 as a sports-focused social audio app where sports fans could engage in live conversations, create watch parties,

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Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI approached her to use her voice

OpenAI is removing one of the voices used by ChatGPT. Users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson, the company announced on Monday, and Johansson herself released a statement saying she hired legal council to inquire about the Sky voice and get exact details about how it was developed. Sky is now being paused

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NYC-Dublin real-time video portal reopens with some fixes to prevent inappropriate behavior

When putting a video portal in a public park in the middle of New York City, some inappropriate behavior will likely occur. The Portal, the vision of Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys, was designed to bring people together and let them share common experiences. After it opened earlier this month, the vast majority of

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YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube TV rolled out the feature to iPhones and iPads. The feature, which first launched in March 2023, is aimed at sports viewers who want to

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Netflix to take on Google and Amazon by building its own ad server

Netflix announced during its Upfronts presentation on Wednesday that it’s launching its own advertising technology platform only a year and a half after entering the ads business. This move pits it against other industry heavyweights with ad servers, like Google, Amazon and Comcast.  The announcement signifies a significant shake-up in the streaming giant’s advertising approach.

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Google TV to launch AI-generated movie descriptions

As anticipated, numerous AI-related announcements were made at this year’s Google I/O 2024 conference, including the unveiling of a new feature for Google TV.  Gemini, the company’s family of generative AI models, will enhance the smart TV operating system so it can generate descriptions for movies and TV shows. When a description is missing on

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Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

Google’s gunning for OpenAI’s Sora with Veo, an AI model that can create 1080p video clips around a minute long given a text prompt.  Unveiled on Tuesday at Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference, Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and time lapses, and make edits and adjustments to already generated footage.

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