📈Virtual Rock, Peacin' Out, and Regulation
Happy Friday! This week we are covering everything from streaming platforms to who you are going to see on C-SPAN taking on Zuckerberg. Let’s get into it!
Sold Out Shows From A Kitchen
If you’re even remotely familiar with internet communities and social media, chances are you’ve heard of Twitch. It is the world’s leading live streaming platform for gamers. More recently, it is attracting artists and creatives by the droves.
Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, attracts an average of 30 million visitors a day, and its users watched more than one trillion minutes of content last year, according to the company. A ridiculous amount of platforms (think Periscope and Facebook Live) have tried to do what Twitch has perfected. What makes Twitch stand out, particularly for music, is how it fosters connections between performers and their audience, and allows those connections to be efficiently monetized. The New York Times says,
CENTRAL TO TWITCH’s popularity among musicians is its economic model, which is quietly revolutionizing the business by providing an alternative to the winner-take-all system of on-demand services like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.
Music streaming on Twitch exploded during the pandemic. According to the company, music viewership has grown by 550 percent over the last year. Part of its branding outreach has been through deals with shuttered music venues, hosting streams by indie bands at clubs like Brooklyn Steel in New York.
Don’t ditch your local venue or local artists but I wouldn’t be surprised if that same venue started streaming your favorite online vocalist to bring in a crowd. Seems a little futuristic but the future is here people!
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Flying The Coop
Tech executives at some of the top firms are leaving their posts. Why? Because they aren’t getting good enough benefits packages. I’m kidding, but only in part. The Wall Street Journal has identified one reason to be “to join startups that build communications and collaboration tools, a market expected to skyrocket as more businesses settle into hybrid work arrangements”.
Companies like Airtable, who has added some 13,000 new paid customers to its platform, are drawing in execs from the likes of Microsoft and other Fortune 50 organizations. The funding side of the market is following suit as well.
Spending in the global collaboration and enterprise social software market is forecast to reach $4.5 billion this year, a 17.1% increase from 2020, according to the latest forecast by information-technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc. It expects to see double-digit gains into 2022.
As the pandemic seemingly subsides, an estimated 60% of international companies are developing permanent hybrid workplace models where most employees come into the office no more than three days a week. This shift is quickly attracting talent.
“In some ways I get a bigger seat at the table working for the challenger,” Tony O’Donnell, a former vice president of engineering at Shutterstock Inc., said of his move this month to virtual-presentation software startup Prezi Inc. as its chief technology officer.
As companies ~semi-return~ to the office, I’m excited to see a new list of incentives for employees and that includes hybrid working environments.
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Cracking Down
President Biden named Lina Khan, a notable Big-Tech critic, as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC investigates antitrust violations, deceptive trade practices and data privacy lapses in Silicon Valley and throughout corporate America. This move signals the White House’s effort to crack down further on industry giants.
Ms. Khan will be the lead on efforts to regulate monopolistic activity by the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. Khan’s appointment was a win for activists who want Biden to take a more hard line approach to big companies.
This decision gives her the autonomy to control the FTC’s agenda, staff and proceedings. Four other commissioners, two Republicans and two Democrats, are all appointed by Biden. However, as the Chair of the FTC, Khan will essentially act as the agency’s chief executive.
Ms. Khan signaled at her April confirmation hearing that she intends to carry her concerns about the tech giants into her role at the agency. She told lawmakers she saw a “whole range of potential risks” around the tech companies.
“One that comes up across the board is that the ability to dominate one market gives companies, in some instances, the ability to expand into adjacent markets,” she said. She also said regulators should apply more scrutiny to mergers involving the companies.
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ICYMI
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