Tag: Disney
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Spotify, Apple, YouTube and Netflix among PS5 media partners

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

November this year is New Consoles Month, with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S plus Sony’s PlayStation 5 making their debuts. While games are the focus, music and video streaming will also be part of the packages.

Sony revealed some of its plans yesterday: at launch the PS5 will have apps for Apple TV, Disney+, Netflix, Spotify, Twitch and YouTube available in its media hub, with Amazon Prime Video and more to follow.

There’s also going to be a media-focused remote-control device to control this, with dedicated buttons for Spotify, YouTube, Netflix and Disney+.

“The PS5 console also features a new Control Center that makes controlling your music easier than ever before, so you can quickly switch between channels, skip, and pause your music,” said Sony.

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Disney reorganisation makes streaming its ‘primary focus’

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

Streaming being the primary focus for record labels is nothing new in our industry, but in Hollywood it’s still a major talking point.

Witness Disney’s announcement yesterday that the company is having a strategic reorganisation of its media and entertainment businesses “designed to further accelerate the company’s direct-to-consumer strategy, in light of the rapid success of Disney+”.

This isn’t Disney abandoning cinemas entirely, of course, but the announcement did make it clear that it’s now the company’s own streaming services (note the plural: Hulu and ESPN+ are included here) that come first, and the “legacy distribution business” second.

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PlayStation Plus and Disney+ both report subscription growth

Avatar photo by Stuart Dredge

We like to keep an eye on subscription-based entertainment businesses outside music, and yesterday two big companies’ financial results offered us some new data to consider.

Sony Corporation’s results included the announcement that there are now 44.9 million people paying for the PlayStation Plus service, up from 41.5 million a quarter ago.

PS Plus costs $9.99 a month, $24.99 a quarter or $59.99 a year, and enables people to play PlayStation 4 console games online, as well as getting two free PS4 games a month and various discounts. Sony’s wider PlayStation Network (a decent measure of PS4 owners) has 113 million monthly active users, so that’s a conversion rate of 39.7%.