Media

Songwriters, producers and musicians will now be viewable on Spotify, filling a long-standing gap in the information available on the streaming service. That’s all great but now I want them to add full liner notes so I can obsess over details like I did when I was in high school.

If a news organization receives some level of government funding it will now be tagged as such on YouTube as part of that site’s efforts to fight the spread of misinformation. I’m not sure that’s going to make much of an impact given how a similar program at Facebook has gone, but it’s something.

Now that his contract with Legendary has expired Chris Hardwick has rebranded the Nerdist Podcast to ID10T and moved it outside the Nerdist brand.

It seems a number of high-profile media brands have stopped posting to Facebook’s Instant Articles format after initially experimenting with it. While the number of organizations using it is reported to have grown, the abandonment of it by big name news groups would seem to be a major blow. Perhaps they finally wised up that not only was short-term monetization not great but long-term brand equity was being damaged as well.

I’m no expert but it seems to me that firing a bunch of editors and investigative journalists for the sin of having reported pieces critical of their magazine’s parent company is just going to lead to more headaches in the long-term. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what Newsweek seems to have done.

Sounds like Buzzfeed is experiencing the same issues with revenue as many other media outlets at the moment as the entertainment side of the business has now been copied by so many others it can no longer sustain the unprofitable news operation. Oh, and of course Facebook sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

The Atlantic has become the latest media outlet to remove story comments, shunting everything into a new “Letters” section.

Content Marketing

Your regular reminder that who companies do business with matters in this age of polarizing political opinions and widespread belief that “standing for important causes” is something consumers want more and more. The latest example is a movement to ditch the popular HQ trivia app after it was reported Founder’s Fund – lead by Peter Thiel, who sued and shut down Gawker and who’s been a big Trump supporter – was involved in a recent funding round.

I’m struggling to come up with any example that would be similar to the news Viacom is looking to acquire VidCon, the annual convention aimed at video producers. The company wants to own the gathering in an effort to keep reaching the young “influencers” that attend it, but the ramifications of an entity like Viacom having control over what has been an agnostic event seem substantial. VidCon has been getting a lot of attention from a variety of tech and media companies over the last couple years and Viacom managing it may mean other companies aren’t welcome and that it becomes a platform for the media giant to peddle its wares.

Social Media

A cool new update to WordPress’ Conversations tracking, providing a single view for all the engagements and conversations you’re tracking.

Facebook is looking to add more long-form videos to reverse the recent trend of people spending less time on the social network and offer more opportunities to place pre- and mid-roll ads, a direct assault against YouTube.

Technology

A new campaign has been launched encouraging technology companies, specifically the makers of the phones and other devices we all rely on these days, to take some responsibility for how young kids have become so addicted to social networks through those devices.There’s some pushback from various parties but it’s hard to argue “keep kids safe” is a bad idea. Unless of course there’s money to be lost from such a position.

Instant availability as well as the ubiquitous reminders to sign up are helping Apple Music overtake Spotify in number of subscribers.

Want even more recommendations? Check out my Pocket Shared Items.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.