Online Video Content Doubled in 4 Years

The number of young Americans watching online videos every day has more than doubled, according to survey findings released Tuesday. They’re glued to them for nearly an hour a day, twice as long as they were four years ago.

And often, the survey found, they’re seeing the videos on services such as YouTube that are supposedly off-limits to children younger than age 13.

“It is the air they breathe,” said Michael Robb, senior director of research for Common Sense Media, the nonprofit organization that issued the report.


The group tracks young people’s tech habits and offers guidance for parents.



The survey of American youth included the responses of 1,677 young people, ages 8 to 18.

Among other things, it found that 56% of 8- to 12-year-olds and 69% of 13- to 18-year-olds watch online videos every day.

In 2015, the last time the survey was conducted, those figures were 24% and 34%, respectively.
The margin of error was plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

Overall screen time hasn’t changed much in those four years, the survey found.
The average tween, ages 8 to 12 for the purposes of this survey, spent four hours and 44 minutes with entertainment media on digital devices each day.

For teens, it was seven hours and 22 minutes.

That did not include the time using devices for homework, reading books or listening to music.

But the findings on video-watching indicate just how quickly this generation is shifting from traditional television to streaming services, often viewed on smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Among the teens surveyed, only a third said they enjoyed watching traditional television programming “a lot,” compared with 45% four years ago.

Half of the tweens said the same, compared with 61% in the last survey.


YouTube was their overwhelming first choice for online videos, even among the tweens who were surveyed — three-quarters of whom say they use the site despite age restrictions.

Only 23% in that age group said they watch YouTube Kids, a separate service aimed at them and even younger children.

And of those, most still said they preferred regular YouTube.

“It puts a lot of pressure on a parent to figure out what they can reasonably filter,” Robb said.

When presented with the findings, YouTube said that, in the coming months, it will share details on ways the company is rethinking its approach to kids and families.

For now, Farshad Shadloo, a spokesperson for YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, reiterated the company’s terms of use on age: “YouTube is not a site for people under 13.”

Among other things, the company also cited its restriction filters and YouTube Kids.

Even so, many children with online access are adept at getting access to regular YouTube or other streaming content — partly because their parents are overwhelmed, said Sarah Domoff, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at Central Michigan University who studies tech’s impact on youth and families.

Those parents could certainly be doing more to track screen time, she said.
But, as she sees it, filters on services such as YouTube also aren’t adequate.

“It’s really hard to block out certain things unless you’re standing over your child,” Domoff said.
That’s especially hard to do when devices are portable.

Some are skeptical about how much YouTube will change a service that easily leads its users, young and old alike, down a “rabbit hole” of video content, much of it created by everyday people.

“If your model is built on maintaining attention, it’s really hard to do something,” said Robb, of Common Sense Media.

His advice to families: “Protect homework time, family time, dinner time and bedtime.
Have device-free times or zones.”

Domoff added, “There needs to be a game plan.”

Associated Press

Drake dominates Apple Music as most-streamed artist in 2018

LOS ANGELES  — Drake was a dominate force on Apple Music as the platform’s most-streamed artist of the year globally.

Apple released its “Best of 2018” list Tuesday that Drake’s “Scorpion” was the top album, while his hit “God’s Plan” was the most popular single. The rapper’s song “Nice for What” came in second and “In My Feelings” at No. 4


Drake’s fifth studio album had four other songs in the top 100 including “Nonstop,” ”I’m Upset,” ”Mob Ties” and “Don’t Matter To Me,” featuring Michael Jackson. He was also featured on Lil Baby’s “Yes Indeed,” Migos’ “Walk It Talk It” and BlockBoy JB’s “Look Alive.”

Post Malone’s songs “Rockstar” and “Psycho” were in the top 5. His album “Beerbongs & Bentleys” was the second-most streamed followed by Cardi B’s, the late XXXTentacion and Travis Scott.

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Spotify aims to strike chord in stock market debut

Spotify on Tuesday debuts as a publicly traded company, hoping that its streaming music model will be a hit with investors and a boon to artists.

In an unusual move, Spotify will list existing shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange rather than issuing new stock, allowing its founders and investors to maintain control and avoiding the cost of hiring Wall Street underwriters.

“Spotify is not raising capital, and our shareholders and employees have been free to buy and sell our stock for years,” 35-year-old chief executive and co-founder Daniel Ek said in a blog post Monday ahead of the listing of “SPOT” shares.

Ek said the move “puts us on a bigger stage,” but “doesn’t change who we are, what we are about, or how we operate.”

The Swedish platform which has helped make streaming the most popular way to listen to music in parts of the world estimated the company’s value to be as much as $23.4 billion.

Spotify said in a regulatory filing that it had 159 million monthly users including 71 million paying subscribers — twice that of closest rival Apple Music, which the iPhone maker launched in 2015 to win a slice of the growing streaming market.

Spotify warned last week that its sales growth was likely to slow this year, but that it still expected to post a narrower annual loss.

Spotify, which has not posted a profit since the service launched in 2008, said unfavorable exchange rates were the main reason for the growth slowdown.

The company also said it aimed to boost its subscriber numbers by 30 to 36 percent this year.

Cool and sticky

“Spotify is a ‘cool’ brand,” said eMarketer principal analyst Paul Verna.


“Teenagers especially love Spotify. This bodes well for continued brand loyalty, which is a big factor in the stickiness of music services.”

Users of streaming music services don’t like to rebuild playlists or profiles, making it likely they will stick with Spotify if given good value, according to the analyst.

While pressure is on to pay higher royalties to music creators, Spotify has made inroads with artists. Taylor Swift released a new “Delicate” music video on Spotify last month. The singer caused a stir in 2014 by pulling her music from the service over fees, but returned to the platform three years later.

Music sales soared anew last year in the United States backed by the rise of streaming, bringing revenue to a level last seen a decade ago.

“Spotify has been the driving force in nothing less than a turnaround in the US recorded music industry,” Verna said.

Spotify’s model of letting people stream songs on demand is proving more popular than paid downloads, curated playlists, or internet radio broadcasting, according to the analyst.

The Recording Industry Association of America said that revenue grew a robust 16.5 percent in 2017, marking the first time since 1999 at the dawn of online music that the business has expanded for two years in a row.

The growth was almost entirely attributable to the public’s embrace of streaming, with subscriptions to paid platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and the new service of retail giant Amazon growing 56 percent to 35.3 million users.

Streaming has been transforming the music business in much of the world, although artists frequently complain that they see little of the industry’s newfound bounty.

Timing trouble?

In 2006, Ek and co-founder Martin Lorentzon, who rode the internet boom to riches, came up with the idea of creating a legal platform to distribute music online, which at the time was dominated by illegal file sharing sites.

They experimented with sharing music files between the hard drives on their computers.

In October 2008 Spotify was finally ready to go live after Ek pleaded with music labels to open their catalogs.

Wall Street could go far in securing the Swedish startup’s status as a success story if the listing goes well.

But, the timing could hurt Spotify since tech stocks overall are being dragged down by worries about \privacy and Facebook’s handling of people’s data.

“Spotify will be lumped in with other tech stocks, which have been battered lately because of Facebook’s data privacy issues,” Verna said.

“One could argue that this is unfair to Spotify, but they’re going to have to get used to market volatility and getting dragged down (or pushed up) by other companies in their general space.”

In perhaps a poetic turn, Facebook has been credited with playing into Spotify’s success.

In 2009, Spotify won the public backing of Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg, who posted: “Spotify is so good.”

In 2011, when Spotify launched service started in the United States, it allied with Facebook, quickly garnering one million paying users. MKH

source: technology.inquirer.net

Netflix adds fewer US subscribers than forecast; shares fall

Video-streaming service provider Netflix Inc reported U.S. subscriber additions below its own forecast, which the company attributed to the ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards.

Shares of Netflix, known for its original shows such as "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black", plunged about 15 percent to $93.55 after the bell.

The company said on Wednesday it added 0.88 million U.S. subscribers in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with its forecast of 1.15 million.

"Our over-forecast in the US for Q3 was due to slightly higher-than-expected involuntary churn (inability to collect), which we believe was driven in part by the ongoing transition to chip-based credit and debit cards," the company said.

Internationally, Netflix added 2.74 million subscribers, compared with its projection of 2.40 million.

Netflix has been aggressively building its overseas presence as its key U.S. market matures.

The company said revenue rose to $1.74 billion from $1.64 billion a year earlier.

Netflix forecast adding about 1.65 million customers in the United States in the current quarter. It also said it expected to add about 3.50 million subscribers worldwide.  — Reuters

YouTube 'pay-per-view' premium channels coming soon

Visitors to Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube may soon have to pay to view content on so-called premium channels.

A report on the Financial Times said this could help YouTube compete with other online outlets like Netflix and Hulu, as well as major networks like CBS.

"The move, which has been in the works for months, could be announced as early as this week. It will apply to as many as 50 YouTube channels, people familiar with the plan say. Viewers will be able to subscribe to each channel for as little as $1.99 a month," it said.

"YouTube has moved away from its early days as a destination for user-generated content to professionally produced video that would not look out of place on television. In the past 18 months it has spent more than $200m on advances to dozens of start-up channels," it added.

The FT report said YouTube's subscription channels may compete with streaming service Netflix, which has more than 30 million subscribers, and Hulu.

Financial Times quoted a person familiar with the plan as saying the subscription service will let channel operators produce different content.

It added that while YouTube said it had “nothing to announce” regarding channel subscriptions, it was “looking into creating a subscription platform that could bring even more great content to YouTube for our users to enjoy and provide our creators with another vehicle to generate revenue from their content, beyond the rental and ad-supported models we offer.”

The Financial Times report said YouTube’s channel partners include Howcast, World Wrestling Entertainment, The Onion and gamers' network Machinima.

Meanwhile, a separate article on The Atlantic Wire noted Google had already been floating the idea "for months if not years now."

 

"The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform. There are a lot of our content creators that think they would benefit from subscriptions, so we're looking at that," it quoted a YouTube spokesman as saying last January. — TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com