Media & Entertainment News | TechCrunch

Chroma, backed by Pinterest and Twitter co-founders, sells to AI audio company Bronze

Sarah Perez — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 21:07:54 +0000

Chroma, a startup building a new type of audiovisual entertainment for mobile devices, has been sold. The company, which had financial backing from Twitter and Medium co-founder Biz Stone as well as Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, is headed to London-based audio technology company Bronze, an AI music startup. Founded by record producer Lex Dromgoole, who’s […]

Thanks, Netflix, but we don’t need another daily word game

Lauren Forristal — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Netflix is adding a new title to its gaming library: a daily word puzzle that is eerily similar to a lot of other mobile games that exist already. Announced in October, the streaming giant teamed up with TED, the well-known nonprofit media organization, to launch TED Tumblewords, a new daily word puzzle game. In this […]

Itching to write a book? AI publisher Spines wants to make a deal

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 12:54:04 +0000

Generative AI has upended how we write things, or even if we write at all. Now a startup wants to be the main character in the next chapter of that story: AI that replaces the role of the publisher. Spines is a self-publishing platform that claims that — thanks to being powered by artificial intelligence […]

Ben Affleck tells actors and writers not to worry about AI

Maxwell Zeff — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 00:43:52 +0000

Unions representing Hollywood actors and writers went on strike last year to secure protections against AI systems taking their jobs. But Ben Affleck says that actors and screenwriters shouldn’t worry about AI because it’s not capable of doing either job today, and likely won’t for a long time. “Movies will be one of the last […]

Beyoncé to perform live on Netflix during NFL Christmas Gameday stream

Dominic-Madori Davis — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:27:42 +0000

Beyoncé is headed to Netflix. The singer will perform live during the halftime show during the Houston Texans vs. Baltimore Ravens Christmas Day game, which is set to be streamed on Netflix as part of its newly minted three-year deal with the NFL. “Your early Christmas wish has been granted as Beyoncé will perform during Netflix’s […]

Moonvalley wants to build more ethical video models

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Moonvalley, a new generative video startup, claims it's building models using more ethical and transparent approaches.

World of Warcraft turns 20

Anthony Ha — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 22:26:25 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft (WoW) in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online role-playing game’s influence’s 20 years later. For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided […]

Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight shows Netflix still struggles with live events

Anthony Ha — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 21:43:24 +0000

Viewers have been talking about Friday evening’s boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul — but probably not for the reasons Netflix was hoping. Yes, the 27-year-old Paul (a YouTuber turned professional boxer) defeated the 58-year-old Tyson (a former heavyweight champion who came out of retirement for this match) in eight rounds, but the […]

Meghan Markle is expanding her consumer portfolio

Dominic-Madori Davis — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:11:36 +0000

InStyle reported yesterday that Meghan Markle is an investor in the hair and wellness company Highbrow Hippie, founded by her colorist Kadi Lee and Myka Harris. The company was announcing the launch of a new hair care line and Meghan told the outlet that she was “proud to invest in her as a friend and […]

Reliance, Disney complete India media merger valued at $8.5B

Manish Singh — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:21:46 +0000

Reliance and Disney have completed their landmark Indian media merger, creating an $8.5 billion entertainment powerhouse in the country’s streaming and television markets. The deal, proposed in February, brings together Disney Star with Reliance-controlled Viacom18 under a joint venture that will control about 85% of India’s streaming market and roughly half of television viewership in […]

Don Lemon officially leaves Elon Musk’s X

Maxwell Zeff — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:14:19 +0000

Former CNN anchor Don Lemon said on Wednesday he is leaving Elon Musk’s X, a decision made less than a year after X announced that “The Don Lemon Show” would appear on the social media platform three times a week. That deal was canceled before it was ever signed, and Lemon sued Musk and X […]

Spotify will start paying video podcast hosts based on how well their videos perform

Aisha Malik — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:11:08 +0000

Spotify announced on Wednesday that it will start paying podcast hosts who make popular videos on its streaming platform, as the company looks to take on YouTube’s dominance in the video podcast space. The company announced a new “Partner Program” that lets creators monetizes their content beyond ad revenue. Although creators can already monetize their […]

Mark Zuckerberg sings with T-Pain on ‘Get Low’ remix

Amanda Silberling — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:23:28 +0000

There now exists an MP3 file in this world of Mark Zuckerberg earnestly singing the lyric “to the window, to the wall, ’til the sweat drop down my balls.” The Meta founder met his wife, Priscilla Chan, at a college party where the song “Get Low” by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz featuring […]

Spotify teases a ‘super premium’ tier for superfans and upcoming video expansion in Q3 earnings call

Sarah Perez — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:12:39 +0000

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has once again teased the company’s long-delayed HiFi or “super premium” tier, a higher-qualify subscription offering the streaming service first announced in 2021 and then failed to roll out. In the company’s third-quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, the exec suggested that such a product was still on the way, […]

Bluesky is benefitting from an exodus of unhappy X users following the election

Sarah Perez — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:26:15 +0000

X, formerly Twitter, is no longer the “digital town square” it once promised to be. Following the results of the U.S. presidential election, floods of users unhappy with the app’s latest direction are moving over to a competing app, Bluesky. Bluesky’s decentralized social media platform has steadily grown from 9+ million users as of September […]

Sam Bankman-Fried is coming to the big screen

Dominic-Madori Davis — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:45:57 +0000

Variety reports that Lena Dunham is working with Apple and production studio A24 to adapt Michael Lewis’ book “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon,” which chronicles the life of Sam Bankman-Fried and the implosion of his company, FTX. She is set to write the script, the outlet said. FTX, once one of […]

Particle launches an AI news app to help publishers, instead of just stealing their work

Sarah Perez — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:40:55 +0000

The media industry today may not have a very favorable view of AI — a technology that’s already been used to replace reporters with AI-written copy, while other AI companies have scooped up journalists’ work to feed their chatbots’ data demands, but without returning traffic to the publisher as search engines once did. However, one […]

Apple’s geoblocks on media services in EU draw consumer protection ire

Natasha Lomas — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:15:37 +0000

Apple’s pile of regulatory woes in the European Union has ticked up again: The iPhone maker is being accused of unlawfully discriminating against consumers by applying restrictions on how several of its media services can be accessed around the bloc. Consumer protection authorities in three EU Member States have been investigating the geoblocking measures (access […]

Meta taps US, UK universities to test VR in education, creates digital twin ‘metaversities’ in Europe

Paul Sawers — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 14:33:43 +0000

As part of an ongoing effort to embed virtual reality (VR) in education, Meta has launched a new partnership with a slew of universities in the U.S. and U.K., designed to provide feedback on a new product that Meta hopes will finally make VR just a little more mainstream. The new Meta for Education beta […]

The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards

Amanda Silberling — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 17:46:05 +0000

The Beatles have been nominated for two Grammy awards this year, and no, we did not accidentally fall into a time warp back to the 1960s. The Beatles’ song “Now and Then,” refined with the use of AI and released last year, is up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance. So, the […]