Tech
- Spotify’s business model and a story from The Information on how music streaming is a bad business model
- Where are Hedge fund managers allocating their capital? Well here’s a pretty interesting heat map of where they’re betting bigger… Whale Wisdom
- Roblox got beat with its earnings report because people (kids?) simply aren’t spending as much time playing games on their tablets etc post pandemic – that’s somewhat a speculation but a probable one Yahoo
- Creandum close a new fund at USD 500M opening for investments in DeFi, Web 3.0 and more DiDigital
- Klarna in preparation for public listing shows a 38% growth top line to 13.75 Bn SEK and at the same time increasing the bottom line loss from SEK 1.4 Bn to 7.1 Bn. DiDigital
Media
- Storytel CEO (since 14 years) and co-founder apparently ousted by new large shareholder EQT as the company revealed their FY2021 results. The combined news lead to the share dropping nearly 20% the same day. What does it mean when a large shareholder – allegedly – forces a founder from his/her company (but remains as Director)? I suppose it remains to be seen but the conversations within that BoD cannot have been pleasant. DiDigital
- Both Spotify and Amazon are reportedly looking to acquire podcast firm Audioboom MusicBusiness
- Streaming in the U.S. hit a new record marking more than 180 billion minutes per week in January with Netflix capturing the most of the time Fierce video
- Netflix partners with Take-Two for feature film based on the game BioShock VentureBeat
- On the same note as Netflix above, Amazon partners with dj2 Entertainment for more game-movie adaptations VentureBeat
- Netflix to invest USD 45M in French and European movies Variety says.
- News broadcasts dominating what we’re watching in Sweden since the Russian attack on the Ukraine was initiated MMS
- Antenna’s yearly streaming report was published and really helpful churn and gross/net subscription numbers are highlighted
- Libsyn – the engine basically being the go-to-distributor for podcasts until 2 years ago now launches their own distribution with Libsyn Studio Beta Podnews
Completely out of the scope from regular updates in this news letter – but working with staff from Ukraine it is hard not to consider some of the horrifying details of the ongoing invasion of a Democratic country. I cannot help but to reflect around these numbers keeping this old saying in mind: “One death is a tragedy, 1000 is statistics” – I really want to stress that behind each of these numbers is a tragedy.
- By the numbers:
- 800,000 – refugees estimated to have left Ukraine since the invasion began, according to the UN.
- 160,000 – Ukrainians thought to be internally displaced.
- 100,000 – refugees who arrived in Poland on Monday alone.
- -3C – temperature last night in Medyka, one of the main checkpoints on the Polish border.
- 4 million – refugees the UN is expecting to leave Ukraine, most of them women and children, equivalent to 9 per cent of the country’s population or the whole of the Manchester and Birmingham metropolitan areas leaving the UK. Tortoise
- Digital platforms manoeuvre the Russian censorship NYT – as we’ve unfortunately learned the Russian tactics covers non-kinetic as well as kinetic “maskirovka”. Platforms such as Meta’s facebook, Google’s Youtube and others have taken steps to limit the information flow. Complicated decision that probably will need further reviews.
