Hello
Here’s your Last Week in Digital Media and all of the news you may have missed:
GENERAL
- Spotify has debuted its own weekly music charts. The charts are initially US-only and an overall Global Chart, with local market charts planned for the future.
- Spotify has added the ability to search for songs by lyrics. Useful for all of us who think we know the lyrics but don’t know the name of the song.
- also from Spotify, they are introducing promo cards so that it’s easier for artists and podcasters to share their content and encourage people to listen to Spotify. The Spotify Promo cards are also available to anyone, and it’s not hard to imagine the format being used by brands and marketers,
- Google is bringing the Stories format to the main Google mobile app, with Stories now appearing in the Google App Discover tab.
- Instagram has added shopping to IGTV and plans to bring shopping to Reels.
- there are several rumors that AT&T may be looking to divest and reduce headcount across its media business (paywall).
- Microsoft’s Edge browser (built on the Chrome browser engine) is slowly increasing market share. Google’s Chrome still dominates, but it’s the first share shift I have seen that’s not connected to a major Microsoft operating system update.
- you might have missed it, but Microsoft has re-rebranded Bing to Microsoft Bing. The website is still bing.com. As part of the change, Microsoft also shared details on a program called Give With Bing, which donates to charity with each search.
- a recent study by Piper Sandler (an investment bank and research firm) places TikTok as the #2 app amongst US teens, behind Snap but ahead of Instagram. The highlights of the report are worth a read.
ONLINE VIDEO
- just an interesting piece of trivia, YouTube is marketing that, as a benefit of YouTube Premium, you get early access to new (non-premium) YouTube features.
- in other YouTube news, the company is testing features to turn YouTube into a shopping destination. At present, this involves YouTube asking creators to tag products in their video to make them shoppable.
- Roku’s own streaming service, “The Roku Channel,” is now available on Amazon’s Fire TV, suggesting Roku is committed to growing the audience of their own ad-supported streaming service.
- there’s a great article by the IPG Media Lab on the rise of online streaming co-viewing and what it means for brands.
- there are unconfirmed reports that Amazon is planning to expand its IMDB TV service internationally. The service is currently US-only, but reports suggest that Mexico and the UK will be the next markets.
REGULATORY
- the long-awaited House Judiciary Antitrust Sub Committee released its report on the digital economy. The full antitrust report (PDF link) is 450+ pages, and I’m still working my way through it; suffice to say it pp11 sets the tone “the digital economy has become highly concentrated and prone to monopolization,” and by pp20 it’s already getting into recommendations on “structural separations and prohibitions of certain dominant platforms from operating in adjacent lines of business.” There are several weeks worth of newsletters in just unpacking everything in the document. So instead, I recommend reading the analysis from various media outlets such as CNN, Protocol, theVerge, Business Insider, and CNBC.
PRIVACY, TRUST, and SAFETY
- a coalition of privacy-focused companies (including the NY Times and the FT) announced something called Global Privacy Control, with a similarly named website. It’s a significant enough move that it even got the twitter endorsement of the Californian AG.
- Arizona will be proceeding with its lawsuit with Google on the topic of location data, specifically address the allegations that alleged that Google engaged in the “widespread and systemic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users” for ad purposes.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week.
Joshua
PS. It takes most of the weekend to compile and write his newsletter. I’m planning (or at least hoping) to skip next week’s newsletter and take a short break instead. Thanks for your support and patience while I recharge.