Weekly Roundup – July 30th, 2025
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Spotify Hits 276 Million Paying Subs, Exceeding Forecasts, But Swings to Quarterly Loss
"However, in its latest earnings report, the company also posted a quarterly loss rather than a predicted profit, which had been expected given that the company has been boosting its bottom line with price increases, cost reductions, and a recent pullback from exclusive podcast deals in favor of non-exclusive pacts (case in point: Joe Rogan).
But the firm reported a swing from a €274 million year-ago profit to a second-quarter loss of €86 million ($100 million), or 42 euro cents per share, as its operating expenses rose 8 percent to €914 million ($1.06 billion). Drivers of the profit hit were increased personnel, professional services and marketing costs, as well as what the company calls “social charges,” meaning payroll taxes that go up with the firm’s stock price. As such, Spotify was the victim of its recent share gains.
Spotify shares fell in Tuesday pre-market trading."
Our Take: Spotify recently increased in valuation, satisfying shareholders and investors alike. This is after ditching exclusive podcasts, cutting costs, and raising prices. However, a rising stock price meant they had to pay higher payroll taxes. This was not necessarily a problem in and of itself. It’s only a problem when your share prices fall (they did). Consistent profitability remains elusive for virtually every streamer in this day and age. Music streamers such as Spotify are in a particular bind, because they are ostensibly growing by every conceivable metric (rising number of premium subscribers, increases in monthly active users, and all-around cost-cutting), yet still post regular losses every other quarter. Expect a short-term boost to share price when they roll out some jargon-soaked reinvention of ads and price hikes and call it innovation.
Goodbye Colbert, hello Bari Weiss? Paramount stands at fork in the road after finally winning FCC approval
"...It has been a particularly rough few months at Paramount-owned CBS, where the settlement of a lawsuit regarding “60 Minutes” and announced end of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show has led critics to suggest corporate leaders were bowing to President Donald Trump.
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According to published reports, Ellison has explored purchasing The Free Press, a flourishing news site founded by Bari Weiss perhaps best known for a former NPR editor’s study of liberal bias in public broadcasting. An Ellison spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment on Friday."
Our Take: Wherever you land on the Colbert cancellation, one thing is hard to dispute: his ratings surge began almost the moment he pivoted to a pointed, persistent focus on Trump after the 2016 election. That became his meal ticket, a go-to crutch for easy audience engagement. The problem is, Trump won’t be in office much longer and will soon be well into his 80s. The #Resistance model was lucrative, and in many ways still is. But the country will be in a different place relatively soon. Everyone is pivoting. So acquiring a news outlet like The Free Press, a centrist publication with contributors ranging from the hard left to the MAGA right, might be a smart move for Paramount.
MLS Reveals Apple TV Streaming Numbers, Raising Questions
"After more than two years of largely unanswered questions, Major League Soccer has given its first major indication on the performance of its media-rights deal with Apple. The disclosure, however, only amplifies the scrutiny around the groundbreaking, but much-debated, streaming pact.
MLS commissioner Don Garber, in the midst of detailing accomplishments from the first half of the 2025 season, gave the first specific accounting late Wednesday of the average audience on MLS Season Pass games on Apple TV.
“The Apple deal has grown. We’re averaging 120,000 unique viewers per match,” Garber said. “That’s an increase of almost 50% compared to last year. Distribution has helped drive a lot of that.”
That figure—given as a matter-of-fact statement amid several other comments around the league’s large-scale schedule deliberations, competitive growth, stadium development, and other league issues—stunned many observers. After all, MLS has largely sidestepped all audience-related inquiries on the Apple deal’s performance since the league struck the 10-year, $2.5 billion agreement in 2022."
Our Take: MLS on Apple TV benefits Apple more than it does the MLS. 120,000 Viewers per match is on par with the viewership rates of ASMR librarian roleplays on YouTube. Apple TV’s 4k 60fps HDR stream of MLS games is both impressive and ambitious. However, it is a committed MLS fan that purchases this sort of season-long package. A big part of cable that streaming has yet to replicate is that people flip through channels until they land on a program that piques their interest. The lay sports fan isn’t stumbling upon the MLS Season Pass tile on the Apple TV hub. MLS are not getting the organic exposure that comes with having a deal with a company like ESPN, that will feature your games on both cable and its streaming platforms.
It’s Official: Streaming Is Now the King of TV*
*According to Nielsen
"The streaming future is now the streaming present.
Americans watched more television via streaming services than they did through cable and broadcast networks in the month of May, Nielsen said in a report on Tuesday. It is the first time that has happened over a full month.
Share of television time by type
Nielsen began comparing streaming viewership with traditional network and cable television in 2021. At that time, even with streaming on a rapid ascent, the gap between the two was huge: Nearly two-thirds of all TV time was spent watching cable and broadcast, and just 26 percent was with streaming."
Our Take: Nielsen has only just now declared streaming as ‘king’ because it had to line up deals with major streamers first. Streaming platforms have highly advanced audience metrics that Nielsen would never be able to provide in the first place. This speaks to two things: 1.Nielsen is in a very precarious position in the streaming economy especially when all the streamers have their own sophisticated metrics. 2. The major streaming platform executives came of age in the cable era where Nielsen shares were practically the only way to get an idea of your audience count. For these people, the Nielsen name still carries symbolic weight. Nielsen still being around is a case study in how to coerce major streaming platforms to pay for data that these platforms already have access to.
