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Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs outlines how it'll make money from Toronto
For the last two years, Google's Sidewalk Labs has been working on a planned neighborhood on Toronto's waterfront. Now, thanks to internal documents obtained by the Toronto Star, the company's plans on how it will make money through the development have been revealed. Sidewalk Labs plans to take a portion of property taxes, development fees and siphon off tax revenue generated by increased property values in the region.
Amazon may reveal its ad-supported IMDB streaming service this week
Rumors about an ad-supported video streaming service from Amazon have been swirling for a little while now, but it looks like the service is right around the corner. CNBC now reports that Amazon's IMDB subsidiary will announce the service this week. In August, sources familiar with the matter told The Information that the service, which is said to be comparable to offerings from Roku and Vudu, was tentatively being called Free Dive and would be available to Fire TV users. Amazon has been in talks with at least three major media companies, according to CNBC's sources, and content will include both movies and past TV shows.
Epic gives Unreal Engine creators a larger cut of product sales
Epic Games announced today that it will be taking a smaller cut of sales made through its Unreal Engine Marketplace, where creators like digital artists, sound designers and programmers can sell products that game developers can use in their own projects. Going forward, creators will now get to keep 88 percent of their product sales as opposed to the 70 percent they were taking previously. Not only that, Epic Games will be applying this new split retroactively, so any sale made on the platform since it launched in 2014 will be subject to the new rate.
Lenovo continues to struggle as a smartphone maker
Lenovo has published its earnings for the fourth quarter of the 2017/18 financial year, and the results are... mixed. One of the report's biggest headlines is that the company posted its fastest pace of revenue growth in more than two years, thanks largely to signs of life from its PC arm -- revenue here climbed 16 percent to $7.7 billion during the quarter. Lenovo currently holds the unenviable title of world's worst performing technology stock, so it's clearly keen to tout this figure, and indeed, the company's shares climbed as much as 4.4 percent after it published the results.
Salon asks readers to pick their poison: ads or crypto mining
If you use an ad-blocker, you'll now be met with a pop-up when you visit Salon's website, the Financial Times reports. It will offer you two choices -- turn off your ad-blocker or let the website mine cryptocurrency with some of your computer's extra processing power. Salon says on its site that it makes its money off of advertisements, but because more and more readers are now using ad-blockers, it has seen a large drop in revenue. Cryptocurrency mining is its way of recuperating those losses. "Like most media sites, ad-blockers cut deeply into our revenue and create a more one-sided relationship between reader and publisher," Salon says. "For our beta program, we'll start by applying your processing power to mine cryptocurrencies to recoup lost ad revenue when you use an ad blocker. We plan to further use any learnings from this to help support the evolution and growth of blockchain technology, digital currencies and other ways to better service the value exchange between content and user contribution."
YouTube reportedly curbing musician criticism with promotion deals
YouTube has always had a rocky relationship with the music industry, and the struggle looks set to continue following reports that the video streaming service is effectively bribing artists to keep their criticisms to themselves. According to sources cited by Bloomberg, YouTube has given a number of musicians several hundred thousand dollars for promotional support, on the promise that they don't say negative things about the site.
HTC gives Vive developers all app revenue for the rest of 2017
Now that HTC is all-in on Vive headsets and letting Google deal with its Pixel smartphone business, it has to deal with another reality: The public still isn't exactly sold on VR. To keep sales momentum going, it has announced a promotion aimed at attracting Vive app developers and keeping existing ones happy. Rather than taking its usual 30 percent cut, HTC will give 100 percent of app revenue to developers for the entire fourth quarter of 2017, starting in October.
Lyft is growing faster than Uber, but there's a long way to go
Despite the plethora of external scandals and internal struggles, Uber is still a popular service, and recently reached a milestone of five billion rides taken with its service. Despite hitting the less auspicious mark of giving a million rides a day, Lyft is still growing -- and it's growing faster than its competitor.
Snopes needs money to continue fighting fake news
When you want to find out if something on the internet is true, you head to Snopes.com. The venerable fact-checking site, established in 1994 by David Mikkelson, is now part of Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network, the group that Google and Facebook use to deal with the recent rise in fake news. Unfortunately, Snopes is having trouble with revenue and has gone to GoFundMe to stay afloat on while it deals with legal issues around advertising.
Uber responds to claims it charges what 'you're willing to pay'
Uber is in the midst of several lawsuits and has a controversial CEO leading the company. It also has to placate its own growing horde of dissatisfied drivers who complain that their revenue potential is dropping, even while Uber exaggerates how much its drivers earn. Bloomberg reports that Uber may have yet another problem on its hands with its new "upfront pricing" fees. The feature, introduced last year, allows Uber to charge some passengers more for their rides. The problem is that Uber hasn't changed the way it pays its drivers; they're still generating money the same basic way, based on time, distance and mileage.
'League of Legends' owners open up revenue streams to pro teams
"We recognize that the current ecosystem isn't consistently profitable yet for team owners or for the league." That's how Riot Games' directors of eSports Jarred "Bradmore" Kennedy and Whalen "Magus" Rozelle laid out the studio's plans to funnel more money to professional League of Legends teams in 2017. The changes come after four years of explosive growth across the eSports industry, with League of Legends leading the charge, but it also follows a public spat between coaches and founders about the game's booming economy.
Google will give app developers a bigger cut of the revenue
It's not just Apple that's looking to the deal sweeter for app developers. According to Recode, Google is also introducing a new revenue-sharing model that will give them a bigger cut. Just like Cupertino, the big G plans to increase the amount Android developers take home from 70 percent to 85 percent of all revenue from subscriptions. Google's offer sounds even better than the iPhone-maker's, because the company will reportedly give publishers 85 percent of the revenue from every subscriber, not just from those who sign up and pay for 12 full months.
Snapchat aims to make over $1 billion in revenue in 2017
Snapchat has raised another $1.8 billion in funding, TechCrunch reports today, making the platform's current valuation somewhere in the neighborhood of $18 billion to $20 billion. While the company isn't profitable just yet, it has some very high hopes to break $1 billion in annual revenue by 2017.
Warner Music makes most of its money from streaming
The rise of streaming services has definitely changed how we consume music. It's also changing how record labels make money. In its earnings report for Q1 2016, Warner Music Group, one of three major labels alongside Sony and Universal, revealed that streaming is now its biggest source of revenue in terms of recorded music. It also says it's the first "major music company" to report this transition. More specifically, Warner's revenue from streaming rose $72 million during the quarter, putting it ahead of physical sales and digital downloads for the label. Of course, the decline of physical sales has been well-documented both globally and in the US.
Yahoo is laying off 1,700 people and closing five offices
Yahoo can't seem to figure out how to turn itself around. Today it announced a new "aggressive strategic plan" to pare itself down to focus on its strength in its Q4 earnings report. That plan involves laying off 15 percent of its workforce and closing five international offices.
Apple planned ahead for the inevitable hardware slump
It was inevitable but nonetheless concerning to investors: iPhone sales flattened out this quarter, part of an overall trend of weakness in the smartphone market, and Apple admitted that next quarter will see sales decline year over year for the first time. Yes, the company just reported record-breaking profit -- again -- but as the iPhone goes, so does Apple. As such, the company is forecasting its first revenue decline in years.
Microsoft reports a $2.1 billion loss in Q4
Microsoft's earnings for the fourth quarter are in, and they show an operating loss of $2.1 billion, despite $22.2 billion in revenue (compared to $23.3 billion last year). A lot of that is due to the previously announced write-down for Nokia (and 7,800 job cuts) that caused an $7.5 billion hit. Of course, we knew that was coming, but the other news is that revenue and operating income were slightly down from last year too. Microsoft sold 8.4 million Lumia phones in Q4 (compared to 5.8 million last year), but revenue dropped 38 percent to $748 million. As the company looks forward to Windows 10, revenue for that division dropped 22 percent, a figure that it attributed to XP's end-of-support cycle.
Major indie labels are not happy with Apple Music
Smaller record labels are unhappy with Apple Music, so much so that some big-name artists may be unavailable when the company's new subscription music service launches on June 30th. Beggars Group says it's "very concerned, especially for artists releasing new albums in the next three months," about Apple's proposal to pay zero royalties out during the three-month free trial it's offering users. In a letter to its artists and managers, it explains that it struggles to see "why rights owners and artists should bear this aspect of Apple's customer acquisition costs."
Warner Music made more money from streaming than it did downloads
So it seems that while streaming services don't offer much of a payout for artists, at least one label is apparently doing pretty well off of them. Warner Music Group announced today that for the first time ever it made more money off of streams than it did selling downloads. With income from Spotify and YouTube, the outfit raked in some 33 percent more money in its second quarter while digital music sales only increased by a paltry seven percent. The Deftones' label says that it'll keep working with streaming partners to keep this sort of thing happening and to "ensure artists and songwriters receive appropriate value for their work." Hopefully that means a re-appraisal of streaming royalties for the people who, you know, actually make the music that's being streamed. [Image credit: Getty Images]
YouTubers can now get paid for sharing Nintendo gameplay videos
Nintendo is today rolling out its "Creators Program," a system that ensures it gets paid when YouTubers share its content. The Creators Program is a response to the popular "Let's Play" YouTube clips that feature long amounts of gameplay. Nintendo took issue with such videos back in 2013, asserting its copyright over them either by issuing takedowns or inserting commercials before them. Last year, it did the same with popular Mario Kart 8 videos but also revealed it had a plan to start revenue sharing, and some eight months later it's ready to explain how it all works.
