Streaming Services

The streaming service HBO Mac has ordered a two-part documentary exploring the life and death of the late actress Brittany Murphy, WarnerMedia announced on Thursday.

Our Brittany Murphy documentary cuts through the tabloid noise with an elevated, nuanced depiction of a sensational story. Crafting a grounded account of Brittany Murphy’s life struggles and sudden passing comes with great responsibility and we’ve partnered with a masterful creative team to produce a thoughtful examination of a tragedy that has long been cause for speculation,” so Jennifer O’Connell, executive vice president, Non-Fiction and Live-Action Family Programming, HBO Max.

In a move to prevent password sharing, Netflix is testing a new feature that would ask users to verify their account via e-mail or text code if they don't live in the same household as the account owner. According to some users, they received a notification, saying: "If you don't live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching."

"This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorised to do so," a Netflix spokesperson told BBC.

Square, Jack Dorsey’s digital payments company, is acquiring a majority ownership stake in the music streaming service TIDAL. Jay-Z, who bought Tidal in 2015 for $56 million, will join Square’s board of directors.

Jack Dorsey tweeted: "Square is acquiring a majority ownership stake in TIDAL through a new joint venture, with the original artists becoming the second largest group of shareholders, and JAY-Z joining the Square board. Why would a music streaming company and a financial services company join forces?!"

"I said from the beginning that TIDAL was about more than just streaming music, and six years later, it has remained a platform that supports artists at every point in their careers," said Jay-Z.

Audio streaming application Spotify is rolling out a new feature that will let users filter their liked songs by mood and genre. The feature will be introduced only in its mobile apps, with no desktop version at this stage.

These filters will change as users like new songs. For now, the feature will only be rolling out to English-speaking markets, including the US, Canada, and the UK. It will be rolled out over the coming weeks to Free and Premium listeners on Android and IOS devices.

Over the next few days, Spotify will launch its service in 85 new markets across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, as announced at its online event, "Stream On". The company will also add support to 36 new languages on the platform.

The streaming platform stated, "Our dedication to international artists and listeners is unwavering. Working closely with local creators and partners, we’ll deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market, with scaled language translations and specialized payment formats. These 80+ markets represent more than 1 billion people—potential Spotify listeners who have yet to tap into the power of our platform."

Pornhub allows new users to upload videos. The company had temporarily suspended the function. Now it is returning alongside a new upload identification requirement. The move comes after Pornhub came under criticism at the end of last year for its handling of content showing abuse. The New York Times, for example, criticized the pornography platform in a column for not doing enough to crack down on the distribution of abusive content.

Users who want to upload content must now verify themselves - the platform uses a solution from a third-party provider, namely the London-based company Yoti. Users have to upload a recent photo and an official photo ID, as well as a video or voice recording of themselves.

On Thursday, Warner Bros. announced that it would release all of its 2021 movies on HBO Max at the same time they hit theatres. New releases will be available to stream on HBO Max for a month and then will continue theatrically in the U.S. and international territories.

Movies that are scheduled to launch in 2021 include Denzel Washington’s The Little Things, Dune, Godzilla vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat, and Matrix 4.

After months of delays due to Covid-19, Warner Bros. has decided to release its upcoming blockbuster Wonder Woman 1984 on its HBO Max streaming service the same day it hits theatres in the U.S., December 25. The sequel to the 2017 hit was originally supposed to be released in June, then moved to October.

According to a press release, the film will debut in theatres internationally on December 16.

Launched one year ago, Disney+ reached 73.7 million paid subscribers as of early October, a jump from the 60.5 million subscribers the service had on August 3. The numbers are part of The Walt Disney Company’s fourth-quarter earnings report released Thursday.

CEO Bob Chapek said, in a statement, that "The real bright spot has been our direct-to-consumer business, which is key to the future of our company, and on this anniversary of the launch of Disney+ we're pleased to report that, as of the end of the fourth quarter, the service had more than 73 million paid subscribers - far surpassing our expectations in just its first year."

WandaVision, one of Marvel Studios' most anticipated new series, will premier on January 15th, 2021 on Disney Plus. The announcement was made on Disney Plus's official Twitter account along with a teaser showing mostly already released images.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Youtube can only actually accommodate a part of the ordered commercials for the US elections. Due to the demand the advertising prices have doubled in some cases.

Shortform streaming mobile platform Quibi has announced it will shut down on December 1, just six months after going live.

"We feel that we’ve exhausted all our options. As a result we have reluctantly come to the difficult decision to wind down the business, return cash to our shareholders, and say goodbye to our colleagues with grace," the company wrote in a statement, stating that "the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service or because of our timing."

Quibi will attempt to sell its content and technology in the upcoming months.

Netflix, the largest video streaming provider, has cancelled the free trial period in many countries without notice.

Markets, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and Japan have switched over to a model where the second month is free.

The 30-day trial subscription is no longer available in Germany and France either. In some other countries, nothing has changed yet.

Spotify announced on Tuesday the global launch of video podcasts, a feature that allows users to watch the video content from a select group of creator podcasts.

In a direct response to YouTube, where only paid subscribers can listen to video content in the background, Spotify says all of its users will be able to seamlessly move between the video version and the audio.

After being an active streamer on Twitch since latest 2016, rapper Logic has announced that he is retiring from music stating that "it came to a point where I felt forced, like I had to do certain things". He has now announced that he has signed a deal to stream a set amount of hours exclusively on Twitch earning seven figures.

While his passion for video games is known he also states that "I’m a musician, I’ll always be one. I’m still gonna, like, rap on songs that probably won’t come out".

Netflix has renewed "The Crown" for a final sixth season. This announcement comes after the streaming services said the series would come to a close with its fifth season in January.

"As we started to discuss the storylines for series five, it soon became clear that in order to do justice to the richness and complexity of the story, we should go back to the original plan and do six seasons," so writer Peter Morgan.

Netflix has released the trailer for the second season of the superhero series "The Umbrella Academy". This time, the Hargreeves siblings are "blasted back in time to 1960s Dallas, the scattered siblings build new lives for themselves — until a new doomsday threat pulls them back together." Season 2 is set to premiere on Netflix on July 31.

Spotify has launched a real-time lyrics feature in 26 different markets across India, Latin America and Southeast Asia today. The feature is provided by the music data company Musixmatch.

Amazon has launched Prime Video Watch Party, a feature that allows you co-watch streaming with up to 99 fellow Prime members, in the US.

The host of the co-watching session will be able to start, stop, and pause the Watch Party as needed throughout the viewing, and those changes will also be synced to all participants’ devices instantly.

The streaming service has announced that it'll contact users that are subscribed to the streaming service but haven't used it in over a year in order to notify them about their subscription. The users will be asked if they want to continue their subscription and if Netflix doesn't hear back it's planning on automatically canceling the service.