Almost like in a long-distance battle to compete for media attention, in the past few hours some of the main multimedia entertainment platforms, such as Netflix, YouTube and Spotify, have released several important news.
Spotify, like other companies (eg Meta), has released its data for the first fiscal quarter of 2022: all while Netflix and YouTube, which have already completed the practice, have looked ahead, announcing various initiatives and improvements.
In the past few hours, Spotify has released the data of its first quarterly of 2022, revealing several good trends, but also some shadows, which consequently punished it in after hours trading. Specifically, the company of CEO Daniel Ek revealed that monthly active users grew by 19% year-on-year to 422 million (39% leased in Europe), and that subscribers grew by 15% annually to 182. million: the company has amortized the effects of the disconnection of 1.5 million Russian users with growth in Europe (39% of subscribers from the Old Continent) and in Latin America (21% of total subscribers).
Many of these good results have been attributed to initiatives such as the partnership drawn up with Barcelona, with Ikea (for the Vappeby lamp with a button dedicated to Spotify), with Porsche (for the infotainment), and functional improvements (e.g. Blend collaborative playlists) brought to 10 members), with the promise that it will be possible to choose as a payment method, together with the billing of Google Play, even that of Spotify itself, thanks to an agreement with Mountain View.
The painful notes, however, are there. It is true that podcasts have grown compared to December 2021 (from 3.6 to 4 million) but Ek explained that, precisely due to the large investments in non-music content (more than a billion dollars, also for the acquisitions of Podsights and Chartable ), the gross margin should remain “flat”, which did not please investors (- 13% on the stock market) with Rich Greenfield of LightShed Ventures (venture capital company) who went so far as to talk about a ” deep disconnect between what Spotify is doing and what investors want ”(ie, an immediate payoff).
From YouTube which has already pitted, thanks to Google, its quarterly, concrete news arrives. In particular, the platform announced the extension to creatives in 68 countries of the Super Thanks monetization function: the latter, which allows users to support their favorites by buying super thanks (from 2 to 50 dollars), obtaining in exchange a animation when giving thanks to a video, as well as a “Thank you” comment indicating how much donated, has also been improved, as creators can now customize thank-you comments.
In addition, in the next two weeks, the pre-publication control tools previously present only on the desktop will also be extended to mobile users, which – when loading content from a smartphone – will perform some checks, eg. regarding the eligibility for the ads or copyright issues, before allowing a publication which, without controls, could also lead to sanctions, copystrike warnings, demonetization.
Netflix is undoubtedly going through a rude awakening after its first drop in users, which has literally sunk it on the stock market. Employees, according to Bloomberg reports, are starting to look around and ask for financial guarantees, also because many of them have accepted remuneration plans linked to share ownership and therefore with many cases of investments literally gone up in smoke. The company has already run for cover and, in addition to having reorganized the developers by levels (to reduce costs and highlight the goals achieved by them), has announced a reinforcement of its commitment in the videogame sector given the intention to offer, by the end of the year, compared to the current 18 titles, almost 50 video games, remaining for now – according to the Washington Post – within the mobile sector.