Apple is losing more than $1 billion per year on its streaming service, Apple TV+, according to a new report from The Information. Apple TV+ is the only service in Apple’s portfolio that isn’t profitable, the report reveals. The company has spent around $5 billion on content each year since the streaming service launched in […]
Apple is reportedly losing $1B per year on its streaming service
Архив рубрики: streaming services
Netflix reportedly plans to cut spending by $300 million this year
Netflix is planning to cut its spending by $300 million this year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The report indicates that part of the reason the streaming giant is looking to cut costs is because it delayed its plans to crack down on password sharing in the U.S. and elsewhere from the first quarter of the year to the second quarter, which means that revenue from the move is now expected to come in toward the second half of the year.
The company urged staff earlier this month to be sensible with their spending, including in relation to hiring, but noted that there would not be a hiring freeze or additional layoffs.
A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment.
It’s worth noting that although Netflix plans to cut costs by $300 million this year, this number represents a small fraction of the company’s overall expenses. For instance, Netflix’s operating expenses last year were about $26 billion.
The streaming giant beat estimates for the first quarter of the year but reported a lighter-than-expected forecast last month. Netflix raised its estimate for the amount of free cash flow it aims to generate in 2023 to at least $3.5 billion, up from $3 billion.
Netflix has been exploring new ways to generate revenue. The company launched its crackdown on password sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain earlier this year. In these countries, Netflix requires paying users to set a primary location for their account. If someone they don’t live with uses their account, Netflix alerts them to “buy an extra member.” Netflix allows up to two extra members per account for a fee, which varies from country to country.
In addition, the company launched a new ad-supported plan called “Basic with Ads” last November. The tier costs $6.99 per month, which is $13 less than Netflix’s Premium plan, nearly $9 less than the Standard plan and $3 less than the Basic plan. With this plan, Netflix is competing with other major streaming services that offer ad-supported options, including Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Peacock.
In an effort to lower costs, Netflix conducted a series of job cuts last year. In May 2022, the company laid off approximately 150 staffers. A month after that, the company laid off 300 more people, which represented about 3% of its workforce at the time. Netflix then laid off another 30 employees in September who were part of its animation department.
Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is expected to hit the U.S. on or before June 30.
Netflix will crack down on password sharing this summer
Netflix reportedly plans to cut spending by $300 million this year by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch
Netflix reportedly plans to cut spending by $300 million this year
Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies
Netflix is restructuring its film units and vowing to make fewer but better movies, according to a new report from Bloomberg, which Netflix partially confirmed. The report said the streaming giant is combining film units that produce small and midsize films, resulting in a handful of layoffs, including two longtime executives. Netflix told TechCrunch that these changes were made to simplify its structure and set it up for the next phase of its growth, but declined to comment on how many people were being let go.
Scott Stuber, chairman of Netflix Film, has been looking to scale back the company’s output of films to ensure that more of them are high quality, according to the report.
It appears that this change has already been implemented, as the report comes as Netflix recently revealed its 2023 original films lineup, which consists of 49 titles. In comparison, the company had 85 original films in its lineup last year. For context, a Netflix original refers to both the content that has been produced in-house and the content to which it owns the distribution rights. It’s unclear for now if Netflix would also be scaling back the addition of originals that it didn’t produce, but obtained the rights to — a move that would impact the output of new originals on the service.
One of the executives leaving the company is Lisa Nishimura, who was behind the company’s foray into standup comedy and original documentaries, Netflix confirmed. Nishimura had worked on some of Netflix’s most popular titles, including “Making a Murderer,” “Power of the Dog” and “Tiger King.”
Ian Bricke, who served as the vice president of Independent Original Film at Netflix, will also be leaving. Bricke played a big part of Netflix’s dominance in the rom-com space, as he spearheaded notable titles like “The Kissing Booth,” “Set It Up” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
“Lisa Nishimura joined Netflix in the DVD days, and as the company moved into streaming, she built our original documentary and stand-up comedy divisions from the ground up, and established Netflix as a powerhouse in both spaces,” Stuber said in an emailed statement. “Ian Bricke has been at the company for more than a decade, building and leading our independent film team, attracting filmmakers like Tamara Jenkins, Nicole Holofcener, and Mark and Jay Duplass. We thank them both for their contributions to making us a world-class film studio and wish them the best for the future.”
The handful of layoffs come after Netflix conducted a series of job cuts last year. In May 2022, the company laid off approximately 150 staffers. A month after that, the company laid off 300 more people, which represented 3% of its workforce at the time. Netflix then laid off another 30 employees in September who were part of its animation department.
On the editorial side, Netflix laid off 25 people on its editorial staff just five months after launching its in-house Tudum publication.
Earlier this year, Netflix boasted to shareholders it has successfully scaled its decade-long original programming initiative.
“Now that we are a decade into our original programming initiative and have successfully scaled it, we are past the most cash-intensive phase of this buildout,” the company wrote to shareholders. “As a result, we believe we will now be generating sustained, positive annual free cash flow going forward.”
Netflix is scheduled to report Q1 2023 results on April 18.
Netflix appears to be working to bring games to TV with the iPhone as a controller
Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch
Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies
Movie and TV app ReelTime helps you track your viewing, check ratings and more
It’s not easy to keep up with all the content being released to dozens of streaming services. However, TV tracker apps make our binge-watching habits a little more manageable. ReelTime is an app for iOS device users who want to track TV shows and movies that they’ve streamed, content they’re currently watching and titles they want to watch.
With its latest update, ReelTime 1.6, the redesigned app now includes ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and The Movie Database (TMDB), as well as an updated home screen and lock screen widgets so users can see upcoming movies and TV shows, changes to their library and watch progress without opening the app. Similar TV tracking apps like JustWatch and Reelgood also include IMDb ratings — but not Rotten Tomatoes or TMDB ratings.
Powered by streaming guide JustWatch and the use of the Trakt API to keep track of movies and shows, ReelTime notifies users of newly added episodes, release date changes, new posters and more, all on one interface. Users can also customize which notifications they want to receive.
Image Credits: ReelTime
Image Credits: ReelTime
ReelTime was created by Maxwell Handelman, who launched the app on the Apple Store a year ago.
“ReelTime is not a streaming service, but I’m aiming for it to be the absolute best in terms of entertainment reference and tracking. Since the very beginning, I’ve been listening to my users and adding the features that they want … I’ve got a lot planned for the future of the app,” Handelman told TechCrunch.
Handelman is working on adding new features to the app.
In the future, users will get a discover feature that allows them to find more titles. As of now, ReelTime only lets users search for content they’re already aware of or browse popular titles based on data from TMDB and JustWatch.
The community feature will give users the ability to leave comments under movies and TV shows.
Another feature in the works will let users share their ratings and comments.
The TV tracker app is only available to download on iPhones and iPads. It’s free and doesn’t require any in-app purchases or subscriptions. ReelTime claims that it doesn’t track users or collect any of their data.
Whip Media Group, parent to TV show tracking app TV Time, raises $50M
Movie and TV app ReelTime helps you track your viewing, check ratings and more by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Movie and TV app ReelTime helps you track your viewing, check ratings and more
Kids and teens now spend more time watching TikTok than YouTube, new data shows
Kids and teens are now spending more time watching videos on TikTok than on YouTube.
In fact, that’s been the case since June 2020 — the month when TikTok began to outrank YouTube in terms of the average minutes per day people ages 4 through 18 spent accessing these two competitive video platforms. That month, TikTok overtook YouTube for the first time, as this younger demographic began averaging 82 minutes per day on TikTok versus an average of 75 minutes per day on YouTube.
In the years since, TikTok has continued to dominate with younger users. By the end of 2021, kids and teens were watching an average of 91 minutes of TikTok per day compared with just 56 minutes per day spent watching YouTube, on a global basis.
This new data is based on kids’ and teens’ use of TikTok and YouTube across platforms, which was compiled for TechCrunch by parental control software maker Qustodio using an analysis of 400,000 families who have accounts with its service for parental monitoring. The data represents their real-world usage of apps and websites, not an estimate.
And to be clear, these figures are averages. That means kids aren’t necessarily sitting down to watch an hour and a half of TikTok and an hour of YouTube every day. Instead, the data shows how viewing trends have changed over time, where some days kids will watch more online video than others, and will switch between their favorite apps.
However, the broader picture this data paints is one where the world’s largest video platform may be losing its grip on the next generation of web users — specifically, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Gen Z is typically thought to include people born between the mid- to late-1990s and the 2010s. Meanwhile, Gen Alpha — a generation whose childhood was put on pause by Covid, then driven online — includes those born after the early to mid-2010s.
In a prior annual report, Qustodio had analyzed kids’ app usage and found that TikTok was nearing YouTube in terms of average time spent. However, that report examined the data in a somewhat clunky fashion. It had included early 2020 app usage in a report largely focused on 2019 trends — a decision the firm had made at the time in order to highlight the increased connectivity taking place at the beginning of the pandemic. The report also focused on a handful of top markets, rather than global trends.
Kids now spend nearly as much time watching TikTok as YouTube in US, UK and Spain
The new data, compiled upon TechCrunch’s request, has been cleaned up to provide a clearer picture of the year-over-year shift in video viewing trends among the web’s youngest users.
According to the firm’s findings, YouTube was still ahead in 2019 as kids and teens were spending an average of 48 minutes on the platform on a global basis, compared with 38 minutes on TikTok. But with the shift in usage that took place in June 2020, TikTok came out on top for 2020 as a whole, with an average of 75 minutes per day, compared with 64 minutes for YouTube.
This past year, the averages grew even further apart. In 2021, this younger demographic spent an average of 91 minutes per day on TikTok versus just 56 minutes on YouTube.
Image Credits: Qustodio data
Image Credits: Qustodio data
The firm also broke out metrics for leading countries like the U.S., the U.K. and Spain, which demonstrate an even more incredible shift on a regional basis, compared with the global trends. For example, U.S. kids and teens last year spent an average of 99 minutes per day on TikTok versus 61 minutes on YouTube. In the U.K., TikTok usage was up to a whopping 102 minutes per day, versus just 53 minutes on YouTube. These figures include both website and app usage, we should note.
YouTube, no doubt, is well aware of this shift in consumer behavior as are all other social app makers, including Meta and Snap. That’s why YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat have all now copied TikTok’s short-form vertical video feed with their own products.
In YouTube’s case, that’s YouTube Shorts, a short video platform the company believes will prove to be a discovery engine that will drive users to its long-form product. The company recently touted that YouTube Shorts had topped 1.5 billion logged-in monthly users, and suggested that channels producing videos of different lengths were seeing gains in watch time. It didn’t, however, share any specific figures on that front.
YouTube’s first-party data, of course, takes into account a broader global audience — not just kids and teens. And it includes cross-platform usage on phones, tablets, the web, smart TVs, game consoles, connected devices and more.
But despite Shorts’ growing adoption per YouTube’s data, Qustodio’s research seems to indicate younger people have simply been opting for the short-form content provided by TikTok. At the same time, TikTok has been slowly pushing its user base to consume longer videos. This year, for instance, TikTok expanded the max video length to 10 minutes, up from its earlier expansion to 3 minutes. And while most TikTok videos are not multiple minutes long, the “optimal” video length for a TikTok video has been growing.
In 2020, TikTok told creators that 11 to 17 seconds was the sweet spot to find traction. In November 2021, it amended that to 21 to 34 seconds.
Over time, this could also help to drive up the average watch time on TikTok as well.
Qustodio’s larger annual report on digital trends indicates YouTube isn’t the only app to feel the impact of TikTok’s rise and the unique interests of Gens Z and Alpha. Young people use a different mix of apps than the generations before — like Roblox, for instance, which has been used by 56% of kids, or Snapchat, used by 82%. On average, they are totaling 4 hours of screen time per day, which includes educational apps.
The good news for YouTube, however, is that it’s still ahead of other video streaming services in terms of time spent.
Globally, kids spent 56 minutes per day on YouTube last year, ahead of Disney+ (47 min), Netflix (45 min), Amazon Prime (40 min), Hulu (38 min) and Twitch (20 min)
Kids and teens now spend more time watching TikTok than YouTube, new data shows