Weekly Roundup – December 16th, 2024

"Disney+ is getting a lot more grown up, with a major update Wednesday set to bring a dedicated ESPN tile to the platform for Disney Bundle subscribers, and a selection of Hulu and ESPN content becoming available to all subscribers of the platform, even if they don’t currently use a bundled offering."

Our Take: Offer your product at a discount for starters, then once the customer is hooked, upsell them. Easy money for Disney.

"Betting On Football Has Reached The High School And Pee Wee Ranks.
Football in December means high school playoffs and championship games. Along with Pop Warner National Championships. Beyond the College Football Playoff or America’s Game and the pageantry and patriotism fans salute during this weekend’s Army-Navy game, betting on football is most popular during the biggest watch and wager events.
Good or bad, that now includes youth sports.
Like the Special Olympics story that went viral, some people are going to say it's wrong to bet on High School and Pee Wee football because it's kids. Others may argue why it is okay because it brings attention and legitimacy to the events with more eyeballs on the games and leagues."

Our Take: Betting on 10-year-old Timmy missing that field goal isn't a gag, it's very real. Next up is recess.

"Amid national concerns about technology’s impact on youth, many teens are as digitally connected as ever...YouTube tops the list of the online platforms we asked about in our survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022.
TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among teens. Roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% say the same for Snapchat.
Facebook and X use have steeply declined over the past decade. Today, 32% of teens say they use Facebook. This is down from 71% in 2014-15, though the share of teens who use the site has remained stable in recent years. And 17% of teens say they use X (formerly Twitter) – about half the share who said this a decade ago (33%), and down from 23% in 2022."

Our Take: The 'youth' are a visual culture and TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat are fundamentally visual in nature.

"The days of eschewing cable in favor of live-TV streaming as a money-saving endeavor are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Why it matters: The initial promise of cord-cutting was a cheaper bill, but streaming prices are increasingly rivaling cable.
Driving the news: YouTube TV, the live-TV streaming bundle, will raise prices by $10 a month starting in January, bringing it up to $82.99.
The price bump is the latest in what's becoming an annual occurrence for streaming services, as Wall Street investors have pressured media giants to make streaming profitable."

Our Take: The glory years of the cable package deal in the late 90's and early 2000's are within living memory for Wall Street investors. The idea is to kill cable via discounts and specials and the promise of 'ease-of-use', then hike up the price on a packaged streaming deal. It's also unclear whether streaming will ever reach the heights of cable in its heyday, given the recent profusion of media technology (and competition with video-based social media like TikTok).

"Despite previously using artificial intelligence tools to help resuscitate old John Lennon vocals, fellow Beatle Paul McCartney is now singing a different tune about the tech.
As the Guardian reports, the beknighted Beatle has issued a statement ahead of the UK parliament's debate over amending its data bill to allow artists to exclude their work from AI training data. In it, McCartney warned that AI may take over the industry if nobody takes a stand.
"We[’ve] got to be careful about it," the Beatle said, "because it could just take over and we don’t want that to happen, particularly for the young composers and writers [for] who, it may be the only way they[’re] gonna make a career."
"If AI wipes that out," he continued, "that would be a very sad thing indeed.""

Our Take: AI has been in use to supplement the production process for well over a decade. It started with the mastering service LANDR. Towards the end of the 2010's top producers were already using plugins to help create sticky melodies, enhance the overall mix, and analyzing a particular track for 'hit potential'. However, the question for the future is whether human-generated music will be viewed as superior to purely AI-generated music, or if anyone will be able to tell the difference at all.