Rebecca Day

Supply chain disruption will likely speed the transition to new Wi-Fi technologies, panelists said on Parks Associates’ Thursday virtual Connections event. Legacy chips are based on older wafer technology that’s “impossible to use” during the current wafer crisis,” said Oz Yildirim, Airties general manager, so the transition to Wi-Fi 6, 6e and 7 “will just go faster.” At RF semiconductor company Qorvo, Wi-Fi 6 and 6e technology are well over 80% of shipments, said Marketing Director Tony Testa.

Nearly half of U.S. broadband homes subscribe to four or more over-the-top video services, with streaming now the primary way consumers view TV content, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson on a Thursday Future of Video webcast. But service stacking is starting to slow, as viewing bumps up against an “inevitable point of subscription overload from having a finite amount of time and budget to spend on watching video,” Erickson said.

Spotify paid out more than $7 billion to the recording industry last year, more than other services “and more than any single retailer in history in a single year,” blogged CEO Daniel Ek Thursday. Major label streaming services “are healthier than ever,” said Ek, noting publishers earned over $1 billion from Spotify for the second straight year. Some 100 Spotify professional artists protested in Los Angeles this month about the music streaming service's payouts and priorities, the Los Angeles Times reported. Grammy Award-winning songwriter Kennedi Lykken, who has written for Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande and Britney Spears, said her last royalty check from Spotify totaled $432. “I’m not ungrateful, but I can’t live on that," she said. In 2021, over 1,000 artists generated more than $1 million from Spotify alone; 50,000 generated $10,000-plus, Ek said. Spotify generates more than a fifth of global recorded revenue, he said, saying multiplying those amounts by four gives an estimate of “how much the artist is generating beyond just Spotify.” Ek compared the music publishing business to the “hyper-competitive worlds of film or sports,” noting, “it’s difficult to make it in music. I get that." The streaming service's published royalty fixtures "show that Spotify is improving on the music industry of the past, and more and more artists are able to stand out in the streaming era,” Ek said. Among Spotify artists generating $10,000 or more from the service, 28% “self-distribute,” and 34% lived in countries outside the top 10 music markets, he said, noting the industry is “less concentrated” today than in the CD era when a quarter of sales went to the top 50 artists. At Spotify, 12% of sales come from the top 50 artists, he said. The service has paid out over $30 billion since its launch, he said.

Amazon emailed Alexa customers Friday notifying them they can make a donation to the American Red Cross to support Ukraine. When users say, “Alexa, make a donation to support Ukraine,” Alexa confirms the dollar amount. When we asked what our options were, Alexa went off track, saying she could help with morning activities, relaxation, education, entertainment, health and fitness and more, and asked which we wanted to explore. We tried again, confirmed the donation and were told the donation was sent via Amazon Pay.

The Netflix “first-mover advantage” and its large subscriber base gives it a “nearly insurmountable competitive advantage” over streaming peers, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote investors Wednesday, upgrading shares to “neutral” from “underperform.” Netflix “appears to have hit a ceiling" on subscribers in the U.S. and Canada “and is pulling new levers to lower churn,” he said, citing a new season of the Russian Doll series in Q2 and the final season of Stranger Things scheduled to straddle Q2 and Q3. Subscription price increases will likely fuel added content production and growth in other regions, Pachter said. Future subscriber growth will occur mostly in less developed regions at much lower subscription prices, while subscribers in saturated markets pay higher rates to fund new content. Wedbush expects Netflix to deliver profit growth as long as it can continue raising subscription prices, “but competition may create a price ceiling.”

Some 42 markets have access to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, under 10% of the viewing public in the U.S., and just 3 million 3.0-capable TVs were shipped in the U.S. last year, said Digital Tech Consulting President Myra Moore, moderator on a Streaming Media Connect panel last week.

Customer choice is driving subscription and release strategies at HBO Max, said Jason Press, WarnerMedia global executive vice president-direct-to-consumer technology and program management, on a virtual Streaming Media event Tuesday. WarnerMedia continues to experiment with "the right strategy at the right time" after last year releasing feature films theatrically and on HBO Max simultaneously amid COVID-19 theater closures.

Dolby bought Millicast, a startup that provides scalable low-latency video streaming, for customers to create virtual environments. There's "growing demand to make online events as lifelike and compelling as being there in person," said Marie Huwe, senior vice president-Dolby.io. Dolby now can enable global customers to build “virtualized, massive audience experiences that feel almost as if you were there,” said Millicast CEO Alexandrine Platonoff. The NFL, NBC and Disney use Millicast. Also Thursday, Dolby reported revenue in the past quarter fell to $351.6 million from $389.9 million in the year-ago period. For this quarter, Dolby projects a revenue range of $315 million-$345 million, citing uncertainties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Friday, shares closed down 11% at $75.85.

Spotify shares closed down 17% at $159.76 Thursday after Q4 revenue grew 24% year on year to $3.1 billion. It forecast $2.97 billion in Q1. Citing previous controversies, CEO Daniel Ek said results are typically measured in “months, not days.” Commenting on the “slippery slope” of censoring content, Ek called it a “complicated issue." Spotify is “trying to balance creative expression with the safety of our users," he said. Musician Neil Young had pulled music from Spotify to protest COVID-19 misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (see 2201310048). Wednesday, Ek referenced the steps Spotify is taking due to the controversy, including putting COVID-19 content on the platform from experts. “The important part here is that we don’t change our policies based on one creator, nor do we change it based on any media cycle or calls from anyone else,” Ek said, not referencing Young by name. The company’s policies were “carefully written with the input from numbers of internal experts,” he said. “And while Joe has a massive audience -- he’s actually the No. 1 podcast in more than 90 markets -- he also has to abide by those policies.” Streaming, meanwhile, replaced the a la carte model, he said: “And now you see lots of subscription services getting to 100 million" subscribers.

SiriusXM's buying AudioID, announced Monday, is expected to simplify advertising buys for satellite radio, streaming music and podcasts, said SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz on Tuesday's Q4 call. She focused on SiriusXM’s streaming business, which “still has a long way to go.” The company is working to make it easier to use its app “in many more places,” to drive usage by satellite and stand-alone digital subscribers. When subscribers stream, they consume more, she said: “They listen twice as many hours on twice as many devices.” The company expects most subscriber adds to come in the second half, “given continuing semiconductor shortages and other factors limiting vehicle sales” late last year into 2022, said Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan. Shares closed 6.3% higher Tuesday at $6.76. Given automotive constraints, SiriusXM “played the hand they were dealt … about as well as they could have played it,” Pivotal Research's Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote investors. Short-term risks are the economy and chip shortages curbing auto production, said the analyst. Long term, he cited autonomous driving as a threat.