Archives for July 2022

While advance leaks of major albums were common as the CD era gave way to digital downloads, and could devastate a new album’s prospects, a crackdown on digital piracy and the shift to a streaming-first model — along with surprise releases like Beyoncé’s — have greatly reduced that threat.

The last time Beyoncé suffered a major leak was with “4” in 2011, when she told listeners, “While this is not how I wanted to present my new songs, I appreciate the positive response from my fans.” (Representatives for Beyoncé and her label declined to comment on her release strategy, and did not immediately respond to questions about the leak.)

Behind the scenes, the luxury of having advance notice and — hallelujah! — an early promotional single can give industry gatekeepers, like radio stations and streaming services, the runway to get themselves involved before an album’s launch.

“To have anything prior to the drop is a gift,” said Michael Martin, a senior vice president of programming at Audacy, which runs more than 230 radio stations around the country. “When you have time to prepare, you can be a better marketing partner with the artist and label and management. You can have everything ready to push out at the moment the project hits the ecosystem. That’s what you want. You don’t want to scramble.”

“Break My Soul,” a throwback to 1990s dance music and the first single from “Renaissance,” was released more than a month ago. With 57 million streams and 61,000 radio spins in the United States, according to Luminate, the song currently sits at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — its peak thus far and only the third time Beyoncé has hit the Top 10 in the last decade as a principal artist. (Her two most recent chart-toppers came as a guest: “Perfect Duet” with Ed Sheeran, in 2017, and “Savage Remix” with Megan Thee Stallion, in 2020.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/arts/music/beyonce-renaissance-rollout.html

The F.T.C. said in its request that asking for an injunction was sometimes a prelude to filing a complaint against a merger, which could embroil Meta and the agency in a lengthy trial and appeals process. A F.T.C. spokeswoman said the agency had not filed such a complaint and declined to comment further on the agency’s strategy.

Ms. Khan, 33, who was appointed by President Biden last year to acclaim from the left, has tried to make good on expansive promises to rein in corporate power. She became prominent after she wrote an article in law school in 2017 criticizing Amazon. As F.T.C. chair, she has called for regulators to vigorously enforce antitrust laws and has said she may craft sweeping online privacy rules that would implicate Silicon Valley companies.

The lawsuit drew praise from Ms. Khan’s allies. Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director of the Open Markets Institute, a liberal think tank, said in a statement that the lawsuit was a “step toward making building, not buying, the norm for Facebook.”

But tech industry allies assailed Ms. Khan’s actions. Adam Kovacevich, the chief executive of Chamber of Progress, an industry group funded partly by Meta, said that with the new lawsuit, “the agency is more focused on getting headlines than results.” He said Meta “isn’t any closer than pickleball or synchronized swimming are to locking up the fitness market.”

Meta said in a blog post that the F.T.C. would fail to prove that the Within deal would “substantially lessen competition,” which is the bar that is typically set to block a deal under federal antitrust law.

In its lawsuit, the F.T.C. said that if Meta bought Within’s Supernatural, it would no longer have an incentive to improve Beat Saber, the virtual reality fitness game it already owns. But Nikhil Shanbhag, an associate general counsel for Meta, said in the blog post that the games weren’t competitors.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/technology/meta-facebook-vr-ftc.html

Beyond the economic tumult, Meta faces its own particular set of challenges. Last year, Apple made privacy-related changes that hampered Meta’s ability to measure and deliver its advertising on Apple-made mobile devices. (Meta makes the vast majority of its advertising revenue from smartphones.)

It is also staring down the barrel of one of its toughest competitors in TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app that has captured the attention of more than one billion people in just a few years. Mr. Zuckerberg has begun to shift his company’s products to mimic TikTok’s offerings, including making sweeping changes to Instagram and Facebook.

At the same time, Mr. Zuckerberg has been spending big on his vision for the metaverse. He has told investors, technologists and others that the effort may take years to come to fruition and that the endeavor will be costly. Some investors are skeptical that the investments will pay off in the long term.

Still, there were bright spots in Meta’s earnings report. The company said its “daily active people,” its term to describe users across its family of apps — which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — increased to 2.88 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago. That exceeded analysts’ expectations that the company was losing visitors. The Facebook app also saw user growth within the United States, an area that some believed was saturated.

Mr. Zuckerberg said he was encouraged by other areas of Meta’s business that are driving growth and engagement, like the Reels video product, a feature within Instagram that is similar to TikTok’s video offering. Investments in artificial intelligence recommendation algorithms have also driven more people to use the service and for longer periods, the company said.

His goal, he said, was to eventually make more money from Reels, which is not as lucrative for Instagram as the app’s other advertising formats. Part of the challenge was to push through a “cannibalization” effect, where more people use the new Reels product and shift away from viewing more valuable ads displayed in between the photos and stories portions of the app. Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed it was only a matter of time before Meta figured out how to better make money from Reels.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/technology/meta-earnings-revenue-decline.html

But while the show was struggling to find its footing behind the scenes, it continued to generate excitement — and ratings — with a series of star contestants. Within just one season, four new champions were added to the show’s all-time leaderboard, fueling plenty of theorizing among fans about what was behind the new streak of winning streaks. For a while, the growing celebrity of the winning contestants — including Amy Schneider, Matt Amodio and Mattea Roach — offered a welcome distraction from the lack of clarity around who would become the permanent face of the show.

Jennings remains the champion with the highest number of consecutive wins (74) and the highest amount of money won in regular-season games ($2.5 million) in the show’s history. Bialik, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and is best known for her role as a scientist in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” has made clear from the beginning that she is interested in getting the job permanently, though she has had to balance it with the demands of her sitcom “Call Me Kat,” and faced criticism for endorsing a “brain health supplement” for a company that settled a lawsuit accusing it of false advertising. Jennings has also received criticism for old social media posts, apologizing for tweeting “unartful and insensitive things” after he was initially revealed as a “Jeopardy!” guest host following Trebek’s death.

After Richards’s departure, Davies, a veteran game-show producer who developed the original American version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” took over temporarily as executive producer — and that job, too, soon became permanent.

Under Davies, the show has worked to expand beyond its traditional structure and to cater to its passionate fans, announcing daily statistics for each contestant and, on Wednesday, a new podcast.

And there are more specials coming. Bialik will host “Celebrity Jeopardy!,” which debuts on ABC in September, while Jennings will host the first Second Chance Tournament, as well as the upcoming Tournament of Champions. In his announcement, Davies hinted that there could be more spinoffs ahead, noting that Bialik would also host a couple of new tournaments, in addition to the college championship.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/arts/television/jeopardy-ken-jennings-mayim-bialik.html