Blog: Critical Developments - Page 3

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.

If Amazon Swallows Retail, Could Facebook Do the Same with Media?

Zach Fuller
Former President and CEO of Netscape James L. Barksdale once said he knew of two ways to make money, ‘Bundling and Unbundling’. Whilst much of the focus has been on the unbundling factor of media, with consumers increasingly opting for more affordable SVOD services over cumbersome and expensive Pay-TV offerings, we could soon see another re-bundling factor occur.
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Bertelsmann and Penguin Random House: A Strategy Based on Extremes

Zach Fuller
Having created a next-gen music publisher in BMG, German media giant Bertlesmann are applying a similar strategy to their publishing division. Consistent with BMG’s tactic of investing heavily in legacy music publishing assets as well as niche Indie labels, Bertlesmann are doubling down on their most valuable publishing asset by moving to acquire an increased stake in Penguin Random House.
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Why Net Neutrality Is Central To The Streaming Economy

Tim Mulligan
The existential question of the digital era is net neutrality. Since the utopian days of 1989 when World Wide Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee first connected his colleagues via computers at CERN in Switzerland, the emerging interconnected world of academics and entrepreneurs has been engaged in an ongoing battle of the underlying principles of the infrastructure underpinning the internet.
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Dalian Wanda’s Global Ambition Comes Up Against The Cold Logic Of Financial Reality

Tim Mulligan
Last week Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda, which is controlled by China’s second wealthiest individual Wang Jialin, was placed under a regulatory probe by the China Banking Regulatory Commission . The powerful state regulator announced that it was looking into Dalian Wanda, along with Fosun International, HNA and Anbang, due to concerns about the systemic risk to the Chinese financial system for the overseas activities of these four disparate conglomerates.
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Welcome To The Post-DIY Era

Mark Mulligan
I recently took part in the True Music Forum in Madrid, an event organized by Boiler Room. I was on a panel that explored whether DIY is now coming of age with a host of high profile artists, most of them urban artists, bypassing or twisting the traditional label model and still achieving stand-out success.
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Four Companies That Could Buy Spotify

Mark Mulligan
For much of 2016 it looked nailed on that Spotify would IPO in 2017 and that the recorded music industry would move onto its next chapter, for better or for worse. The terms of Spotify’s $1 billion debt raise (which mean that Spotify pays an extra 1% on its 5% annual interest payments every six months beyond its previously agreed IPO date) suggest that Spotify was thinking the same way too.
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