2016 is proving to be tricky year for streaming rights. No sooner did it start to look like artists and labels were beginning to feel comfortable with streaming then along come a veritable flood of songwriter class action suits in the US, against TIDAL , Rhapsody and Spotify , twice .

While the music industry slowly got its head around the brave new world of digital in the 2000’s piracy used to be the dominant focus of record labels and their trade associations. Now, with so much momentum and scale among legitimate services that focus has understandably lessened.

Guardian Circle is a new app, which allows you to build groups of ‘guardians’ consisting of personal contacts that you wish to rely on. You cansendalerts to these groups immediately bringing your guardians into an ‘alert room’, where they see your location and can chat with you to figure out how to best help you.

Last Thursday Variety reported that Facebook is considering bidding for the NFL streaming rights for Thursday night games. The National Football league is auctioning off the digital rights to stream 18 regular season games on OTT services (Non-Traditional-internet based video streaming services.

Slowly but surely the traditional media industries are waking up to the importance of YouTubers but those taking note most quickly are the subscription video companies, Netflix in particular. As recently illustrated by its commissioning of ‘Haters Back Off’ from YouTuber Colleen Balling-Evans’ alter-ego Miranda Sings – who incidentally has 6 million subscribers on YouTube, nearly 10% of Netflix’s entire subscriber base.

One of the key changes stemming from the evolution of desk/laptop content consumption to smartphones is that the native operational mode of the latter is vertical. The only reason to turn it sideways is when there’s no way of enjoying the full experience vertically.

There are two gaping holes in the digital music landscape: 1) a wide range of products for mass market consumers, 2) telco music bundles for pre-pay mobile customers. MusicQubed has just taken a stab at addressing both with a MTV Trax pre-pay SIM bundle with UK mobile carrier EE.

Independent label services company Essential Music & Marketing is no longer independent, having just been acquired by Sony Musi c and merged with Sony’s label services division Red to create a new entity: Red Essential.

The BBC has launched a music app called, well, BBC Music . Available only in the UK, this native music app is one step on a well considered path for the BBC as it tries to carve out a role for itself in streaming era.

2015 was a big year for streaming music but it was a bigger deal for streaming video, generating $16 billion in revenue compared to $4.5 billion for streaming music. (Both figures are retail values). The contrast between the two streaming markets is pronounced: Streaming Video: Exclusives are a standard part of video services Streaming Music: Virtually all of the same 30 million songs are available everywhere Streaming Video: Rights are fragmented across a host of TV networks and studios Streaming Music: 3 labels account for the majority of rights Streaming Video: Subscribers are just as likely to be male or female and have relatively even age distribution Streaming Music: Subscribers are predominately male and under 45 Streaming Video: Services compete on price, content proposition and functionality Streaming Music: Services largely operate within the same price point and content Streaming Video: Video services are profitable (Netflix has a 32.

Last Wednesday at the MMIX stream of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Scott Mirer, VP of the device partner ecosystem at Netflix gave a keynote speech where he shared newly acquired insights into global SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand) consumption.

YouTubers have become some of the biggest reach content creators out there. The likes of Marcus Butler, Zoella and Pewdiepie are living proof that it is completely possible today for a single YouTuber to supersede the reach of large traditional content creators and their programmes for a fraction of the budget.

The internet’s ‘gift’ to media companies was free. And it’s the gift that just keeps giving. Record labels, newspapers, online publishers, TV companies, games publishers continue to grapple with how to convince audiences to pay when their product or direct alternatives are ubiquitously available for an investment of nothing more than a swipe of a finger.

Vevo has long been in search of an identity. In fact you could make an argument that it has had an identity crisis since its inception as a music industry appendage/Trojan Horse superimposed on YouTube (with the latter having little say in the matter unless it was willing to kiss label relationships goodbye).

So something remarkable happened at this year’s Grammys awards. Not the who, where orwhat about the winners of the world’s most prestigious music awards ceremony. Something far more profound for the future of content discovery and consumption occurred.

The inevitable first shot by Apple in the video streaming originals battle has been fired. On Friday the Hollywood Reporter ran with the announcement that Apple was paying for media mogul Andre Young – aka hip hop star and Beats cofounder Dr Dre to script and produce a six-part “semi-autobiography” provisionally entitled Vital Signs .

Facebook is testing a way for users to receive, read and respond to their SMS conversations in its Messenger app . Facebook had gone back and forth on its SMS integration in the past, but it is becoming clear thatits best chance to make the phone number disappear (as it set out in its 2016 vision statement) is by absorbing it, rather than competing against it.

Direct to fan platform BandPage today announced that it is being acquired by YouTube. BandPage already integrates with a number of streaming services to sell merchandise, tickets and more for artists directly to fans on streaming platforms.