Video Games | Concurrent Media

At his Streaming Media blog, Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn adds a new wrinkle to the ongoing debate over why Amazon kicked Apple TV and Chromecast products out of its online store. According to Rayburn’s sources, Amazon has been chatting up content owners about offering a live, over-the-top video service of some kind.

Rayburn speculates that such a plan could help explain why Amazon recently acquired the cloud-based live streaming platform provider Elemental Technologies at an unusually high valuation:

Insiders say Elemental is on a run rate to do close to $100M in 2016. So if the rumors of Amazon valuing Elemental at $500M are correct, Elemental is getting about 5x projected 2016 revenue, a rather high valuation, unless Amazon is also placing value on them for other reasons, like the ability to power their own live OTT service.

I’ll add another data point in support of the notion: Twitch, which Amazon acquired last year for close to $1 billion. As noted in a post here last week, Twitch is rolling out a new set of tools to help its broadcasters linear-ize their channels, by mixing live and on-demand content and creating playlists that turn the channel into a 24/7 experience. Read More »

With the upcoming launch of YouTube Gaming, YouTube will have dedicated apps for its three most popular categories of videos: music (Music Key), kids (YouTube Kids) and now video games.

While the Google-owned site has long supported discreet “channels,” those are largely a convenience for individual video creators as they look to build their own corporate or personal brands. They were not created by YouTube with an eye to sorting the content in its vast online library by category or genre. Nor, by extension, were they created to try to segment YouTube’s vast audience by interests, tastes or demographics the way, say, a category-specific cable TV network like Nickelodeon or CNBC seeks to do.

By creating category-specific apps, however, YouTube is clearly edging toward that model.

The launch of YouTube Gaming, of course, is also Google’s response to the rapid growth of Twitch, the live-streaming gaming site it came close to buying last year only to have Amazon snatch it away at the last minute. While Twitch’s audience of 100 million active monthly users is a small fraction of YouTube’s more than 1 billion, they’re a dedicated bunch. The average Twitch user spends 106 minutes a day on the site, according to the company, and peak concurrent usage can reach 1.5 million. Read More »

Top Headlines

The Moves Tech Giants Just Made That Should Terrify Hollywood

The expansion of original programming coming from outside Hollywood should be a grave concern for an entertainment industry just beginning to see this intensification of competition — particularly among mobile-centric young consumers — for its core businesses, pay TV, and box office. Source: The Moves Tech Giants Just Made That Should Terrify Hollywood | Variety

The Next Step of YouTube’s Original Content Evolution Involves Traditional Film Studios

While YouTube has traditionally leaned on its popular creators who have amassed millions of fans and user-generated content, more and more deals are happening with large traditional film studios like Lionsgate and Sony. Source: The Next Step of YouTube’s Original Content Evolution Involves Traditional Film Studios – Adweek

Media Companies Are Getting Sick of Facebook

Creating the stories and videos can be expensive and limit publishers’ direct relationships with readers, according to executives at six news companies. Source: Media Companies Are Getting Sick of Facebook – Bloomberg

Fox to Launch New Six-Second Ad Format for Digital Content and TV

Fox Networks Group is preparing a new six-second ad format for digital platforms and eventually traditional TV, mirroring an ad format recently adopted by Google’s YouTube, the company said. Source: Fox to Launch New Six-Second Ad Format for Digital Content and TV – WSJ

Spotify is testing ‘Sponsored Songs’ in playlists

Sponsored content in general is not new for Spotify — last year they allowed their most popular playlists to be sponsored by brands — but allowing labels to promote individual songs certainly is. Source: Spotify is testing ‘Sponsored Songs’ in playlists – The Verge

The NFL’s Digital Push Into Europe

The NFL is partnering with marketing giant WPP and the investment firm Bruin Sports Capital in a new venture aimed at convincing more Europeans to watch American football on their televisions and mobile devices. Source: The NFL’s Digital Push Into Europe – WSJ

Raise Your Hand If You Still Like Music Downloads

Music downloading is far from dead, according to a just-released study. In fact, offline listening is far more common than streaming online. Source: Raise Your Hand If You Still Like Music Downloads

For Amazon, Live OTT Comes With A Twitch

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