Booming video games industry makes up half the UK entertainment market January 3, 2019 The video games sector now accounts for more than half the UK’s entertainment market and is bigger than video and music combined, new figures have revealed. The booming games industry is worth £3.86bn, more than double its value in 2007, and now makes up over 51 per cent of the entire UK entertainment market, according [...]
Telegraph hires Waitrose Food editor William Sitwell who resigned after vegan row January 3, 2019 The Telegraph has hired the former Waitrose Food magazine editor who stepped down after suggesting vegans should be force-fed meat, the company said today. William Sitwell, who resigned from the supermarket magazine after making comments about “killing vegans” in an email to a journalist, will join the Telegraph as a restaurant critic, writer and commentator. [...]
Shortlist Media losses double as it closes men’s print magazine in shift to digital January 3, 2019 Shortlist Media, the publishing group behind Shortlist and Stylist magazines, saw its pre-tax losses double last year as it looks to shift its advertising revenue away from print. The company reported pre-tax losses of £8.6m in the year to the end of March 2018, with turnover rising marginally to £22.9m from £22.6m the year before. [...]
Record digital sales of The Greatest Showman boost UK home entertainment market January 3, 2019 Hit movie The Greatest Showman helped the UK home entertainment market grow by 10 per cent in 2018, new figures have revealed. The popular musical, which stars Hugh Jackman as the head of a circus troupe, was the best-selling film of the year, with more than 2.7m copies sold. A majority of the film's sales [...]
Brits rack up £1.3bn in music sales, with UK artists making up half of the top 20 best-sellers for 2018 January 3, 2019 British artists had their most bumper year to date in 2018, as local musicians scored half of the UK’s top 20 albums last year with more than £1.3bn in music retail sales across the country. Data released today by record label association the BPI put singer/songwriter George Ezra's 'Staying At Tamara's' as the best-selling album released in 2018, [...]
Netflix to appoint former Activision exec as new finance chief January 2, 2019 Netflix has appointed a new finance chief to its executive team, filling a four-month-long hole left by the role's former occupant David Wells. The streaming service said it has hired Spencer Neumann for the position, a veteran media executive who was most recently the chief financial officer for gaming firm Activision Blizzard. As first reported by Reuters, Neumann [...]
Android apps send user data to Facebook without consent, report shows January 2, 2019 Almost two dozen popular Android apps automatically send user data to Facebook as soon as they are opened in a potential breach of data protection laws, a new report by Privacy International has revealed. An analysis of 34 Android apps showed 61 per cent of apps automatically transfer data to Facebook, even if the user [...]
Netflix comes under fire for removing comedy episode critical of Saudi prince January 2, 2019 Netflix has pulled an episode of a comedy show that criticised Saudi Arabia after complaints from the country’s regime, sparking fears over freedom of expression in the kingdom. The online streaming service removed an episode of the standup show Patriot Act in which host Hasan Minhaj criticised Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal [...]
Chinese cinemas show bumper profits, but growth slows January 1, 2019 Growth in China’s box office takings dropped to nine per cent in 2018, a reduction from the year before, state media has reported. The world’s second largest market for movies increased to 60.98bn yuan (£7bn) last year, but the pace of growth slowed from 13.45 per cent. Despite some big-budget flops, domestic films made up [...]
Spotify settles $1.6bn lawsuit with independent publisher over songwriters’ rights December 21, 2018 Music streaming service Spotify has settled a lawsuit with Wixen Music Publishing, which had sought damages of $1.6bn (£1.3bn) regarding the hosting of thousands of songs without a sufficient copyright licence. Wixen accused Spotify of infringing the rights of songwriters and publishers on over 10,000 of its songs and underpaying them, while handing “outrageous annual salaries to its executives”. Some of [...]
