Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Sky and BT announce long term partnership for cross-supply of content

Cover image for Sky and BT announce long term partnership for cross-supply of content
Alistair Taylor
British broadcasters Sky and BT confirmed this week a long-term extension and expansion to an overall content cross-supply deal. Following the initial agreement signed in the UK last December , the partnership now includes Ireland, allowing Sky Ireland customers access to Sky Sports and BT Sport through a single Sky TV subscription.
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Guess Which is The Leading Headphone Brand?

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Mark Mulligan
Headphones have been centre stage of the digital music market since the launch of the iPod in 2001. Portable music started more than two decades earlier with Sony’s Walkman, but it was digital’s ability to fill a device with catalogues of music, rather than just one album that empowered music listeners to cut the cord from their home stereos.
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How Are Modern Media Subscription Services Building Competitive Advantages Against Traditional Media?

Zach Fuller
Media, with its creative nature, often likes to define itself as distinct from other industries, and yet it is governed by many of the same principles that shape other areas of commerce. With the shift to streaming in full swing, how are media business models being affected by the market forces that influence its ability to experiment with pricing and other modes of monetisation.
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Quick Take: Will Stream Djing be the Renaissance of Soundcloud?

Zach Fuller
After a difficult two yearsthat saw acquisitions fall through and a lack of meaningful uptake of its subscription service, SoundCloud have needed some positive news. Reveredwithin the creator community though still struggling to make a profit, SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainorannounced today at Amsterdam Dance Eventthat DJs will soon be able to mix and perform by streaming material from SoundCloud’s catalogue within DJ software programs.
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Facebook Launches Its Smart Speaker: A Few Strategic Considerations For Portal

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Zach Fuller
Earlier this year, MIDiA predicted that Facebook would join the smart speaker market. A TV dongle or smart speaker: It makes strategic sense for Facebook to develop a TV dongle like Amazon’s Fire Stick or smart speaker like Apple’s HomePod, to give it a hardware foothold in the home—something that Oculus clearly is not going to be anytime soon, if ever.
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Looking for the Music in Tencent Music

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Mark Mulligan
The Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) F1 filing makes for highly interesting reading, but don’t expect copious amounts of data to give you an inside track in the way that Spotify’s F1 filing did. Instead TME’s F1 bears much closer resemblance to iQyi’s F1, namely a basic level of KPIs, lots of market narrative and even more space assigned to explaining all of the risks associated with investing in a Chinese company.
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Making Free Pay: Fine-tuning Freemium

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Mark Mulligan
Streaming is transforming music and TV business models, driving growth in both audiences and revenue. A balance between free and paid tiers and services has been key to this success, but, growth is not always balanced, and as we approach maturity in many western markets, more may be needed of free, ad supported options.
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