Media & Entertainment

Podcasting startup Podeo gets $5.4M to go beyond the Arab world

Podcast listeners crossed half a billion people at the end of last year as listenership maintained steady growth. With countries in the Arab world having some of the most engaged listeners, a podcasting startup out of Dubai is doubling down on the opportunity. Podeo is a UAE-based podcast distribution platform that has made a name […]

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YouTube blocks videos from Adele, Green Day, Bob Dylan, others in dispute with SESAC

A number of YouTube videos featuring music from artists such as Adele, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, and R.E.M. have been unplayable in the United States since Saturday. For example, if you try to play Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” (whether it’s the classic album recording or a live performance), you are instead told: “This

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Brian Williams might host a live election night special for Amazon

Amazon Prime Video could be getting into the live news business, if only for one night. Variety reports that the company is in talks with longtime NBC and MSNBC news anchor Brian Williams to host a live Election Night special, competing with more traditional TV news broadcasts to offer non-partisan coverage of the U.S. presidential

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Wordy’s new app helps you learn vocabulary while watching movies and TV shows

Wordy is a new iOS app that offers a unique way to learning English. The app automatically translates and defines unknown words while you watch your favorite movies or TV shows. Wordy has over 500,000 titles available, including popular series such as HBO’s “The Penguin” and the new Disney+ show, “Agatha All Along.” Created by

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The beloved Rodecaster board gets a video production counterpart

Like much of the podcasting world, we loved the Rodecaster Pro when it launched toward the end of 2018. It’s taken a half-dozen years, but microphone-maker Rode is finally extending the user-friendly line into the world of video. The Rodecaster Video faces much stiffer competition than the original Pro board did. In this post-pandemic age

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John Mulaney skewers San Francisco tech crowd at Dreamforce

Attendees of the giant, annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco love being the butt of the joke. Last year, Seth Myers entertained them during a 40-minute set that poked fun at the tech industry’s liberal use of self-affirmations. “You are achieving, you are amplifying, you are accelerating,” Myers said. “‘Architect?’ I saw ‘architect’ used as

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Indian filmmaker abandons human musicians for AI-generated music

Indian filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is ditching human musicians for artificial intelligence, saying he’ll use only AI-generated tunes in future projects, a move that underscores AI’s growing reach in creative industries. The filmmaker and screenwriter, known for popular Bollywood movies including Company, Rangeela, Sarkar, and Satya has launched a venture, called RGV Den Music, that

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YouTube unveils ‘Hype,’ a new way for fans to help smaller creators grow their reach

YouTube creators no longer have to rely solely on the recommendation algorithm, search results, or collabs to help them grow their audience. At the company’s Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, YouTube announced a new feature that will allow a creator’s existing viewers to help “hype” a video with a click of a button, allowing

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Generative AI startup Runway inks deal with a major Hollywood studio

Runway, a startup developing AI video tools, including video-generating models, has partnered with Lionsgate — the studio behind the “John Wick” and “Twilight” franchises — to train a custom video model on Lionsgate’s movie catalog. Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said in a statement that the studio’s “filmmakers, directors and other creative talent” will get

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