SoundCloud Earnings: Burning Cash While Building For Future SoundCloud's latest earnings report shows a familiar pattern in music streaming -- the company's expenses and losses far outpaced its revenue growth in 2014. Revenue grew 53.9 percent to €17.4 million (US $19.7 million) but its loss before income taxes, depreciation and amortization nearly doubled to €36.9 million (US $41.8 million). The deficit came from a large increase in administrative expenses -- the staff to develop and market the service -- up 67.8 percent to €47.8 million (US $54.1 million). In all, including cost of sales, SoundCloud spent €56.4 million (US $63.8 million) to generate €17.4 million. Fast growth meant SoundCloud was burning cash in 2014. Its operating activities -- the normal course of business -- had a net outflow of €32.3 million. In order to keep its growth engine fueled, SoundCloud raised $77 million in funding last year, and it may need even more. Two benchmarks indicate a range of revenue that could be expected from SoundCloud.
Adam Curtis: “We don't read newspapers because the journalism is so boring” Adam Curtis remains at the forefront of documentary filmmaking. He began in the early 80s, but his first major breakthrough came in 1992 with Pandora’s Box, a film which warned of the dangers technocratic politics and saw him pick up his first of six career BAFTAs. Holed up in a BBC basement, Curtis brings together disparate subjects and uses archival footage to chart political history. His love of music is playfully interwoven into the narrative, whilst his unique, deadpan voice discusses the failures of political systems and ideologies. In his 2004 film, Power of Nightmares, his most remarkable piece of work to date, Curtis debunked the myth that al-Qaeda was an organised global network posing an apocalyptic threat to the West, which, In a post-911 context that saw governments and mass media exaggerating al-Qaeda’s size and influence, was a bold message. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) So, let's start with this idea of “static culture”. What could Savages do? Yeah.
Google privacy policy changes: How to keep your web history private - simple 3-step solution By Julian Gavaghan Updated: 13:33 GMT, 29 December 2012 Even though Google's controversial new privacy policy is now 'live', you can still defend yourself against the search giant's prying eyes. Google will now use your web browsing history as part of a 'profile' it builds on all signed-in Google users - and removing this information will limit the extent to which Google records your every move - including your embarrassing secrets. Here's how: 1. 2. 3. Although disabling web history will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes, it does mean the Web giant will anonymise the data in 18 months. It will also prevent it from certain kinds of uses, including sending you customised search results. If you don't sign in, Google will track your searches via the computer's IP address. While it is not known exactly how Google would use your combined information, the policy has been widely criticised.
‘Music is a difficult beast’ admits Heineken as it launches global music-focused campaign The new global strategy #LiveYourMusic, which was created in partnership with Publicis Worldwide, will be supported with a TV campaign, special bottle designs, new packaging, local digital activation and experiential activity. It will be rolled out across all its markets from summer onwards. The TV ad sees numerous people loudly sing Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, before reaching a climax when all the singers come together in a Heineken sponsored music stadium. The new bottle designs and packaging are expected to fit in with the musical direction the brand is taking. Anuraag Trikha, Heineken’s global brand communication director, told Marketing Week that it sponsors more than 1,000 music events globally as music remains an important gateway to reach millennials. “Music has almost become the beat of how Heineken communicates and touches people around the world. “Music is a very difficult beast for brands and it’s challenging for brands to create salience.
How He Used Facebook to Win | by Sue Halpern Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy by Daniel Kreiss Oxford University Press, 291 pp., $99.00; $27.95 (paper) Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters by Eitan D. Cambridge University Press, 261 pp., $80.00; $30.99 (paper) Not long after Donald Trump’s surprising presidential victory, an article published in the Swiss weekly Das Magazin, and reprinted online in English by Vice, began churning through the Internet. According to Grassegger and Krogerus, Cambridge Analytica had used psychological data culled from Facebook, paired with vast amounts of consumer information purchased from data-mining companies, to develop algorithms that were supposedly able to identify the psychological makeup of every voter in the American electorate. Even more troubling was the underhanded way in which Cambridge Analytica appeared to have obtained its information. And this was just Facebook. There were other digital innovations as well. In Detroit, Mrs.
Protéger sa vie privée dans Internet et les réseaux sociaux Photo: iStock Seulement Facebook ? On ne peut plus parler de vie privée dans Internet sans évoquer constamment Facebook. 1- Il n’y a pas de renseignements banals Le nom de votre mère, votre date d’anniversaire, votre lieu de naissance… Ces renseignements que vous publiez ou que vous ajoutez à votre profil d’utilisateur semblent bien innocentes, mais en les croisant, on peut faire beaucoup. Pour vous permettre de récupérer un mot de passe perdu, par exemple, plusieurs sites utilisent une question personnelle comme « Quel est le nom de votre mère ? 2- Ne vous surestimez pas. Lors d’une étude conduite par Caroline Vallet, tous les jeunes de moins de 18 ans interrogés ont affirmé qu’ils trouvaient les paramètres de confidentialité de Facebook faciles à utiliser. « Savent-ils vraiment si bien les utiliser, ou sont-ils plutôt inconscients ? Après tout, ces réglages changent souvent et sont parfois difficiles à trouver et à déchiffrer. 3- Les amis de vos amis sont-ils vraiment vos amis ?
Interstellar (2014) New Snapchat Map Feature Is Exposing Cheaters Snapchat has turned everyday users into private detectives by allowing us to view our friends’ locations on a new Snapchat map feature, accessible through the app. You don’t have to be Sherlock to see what your friends or lovers are doing without you, thanks to the opt-in update that came out last Wednesday. Now, when you open Snapchat and pinch the Stories screen (yes, pinch) a map will appear with bitmoji versions of all your friends. Users, experts, and parents have shared concerns over the safety of the new update. For other users, they’re less concerned about safety and more concerned about maintaining their covert infidelity. But there’s a lot more to be worried about than cheating. Or find out that your friends don’t want to hang out with you. Or have your chronic lateness exposed. Screenshot by Sarah Montgomery
Marc Anthony Takes On Jay-Z's Roc Nation With New Media Company Marc Anthony – actor, singer, producer extraordinaire – is looking to be the Jay-Z of Latino Roc Nation in 2016. Similarly to HOV, Anthony aims to empower Latino musicians and athletes alike with Magnus Media, a new entertainment branding, marketing, and social media company. “This [company] was born out of frustration,” Anthony told Billboard. Anthony launched a sports division last November after already having signed big music names like Gente de Zona, Chino & Nacho, and Alejandro Sanz. “Baseball, like music, is an ingrained cultural passion for many Latinos throughout the world,” he explained, “And there’s no shortage of amazing stars of Hispanic origin. We’re with you all the way Marc.
Paul Ford: What is Code? | Bloomberg A computer is a clock with benefits. They all work the same, doing second-grade math, one step at a time: Tick, take a number and put it in box one. Tick, take another number, put it in box two. Tick, operate (an operation might be addition or subtraction) on those two numbers and put the resulting number in box one. Tick, check if the result is zero, and if it is, go to some other box and follow a new set of instructions. You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can’t do those things billions of times per second. Apple has always made computers; Microsoft used to make only software (and occasional accessory hardware, such as mice and keyboards), but now it’s in the hardware business, with Xbox game consoles, Surface tablets, and Lumia phones. So many things are computers, or will be. When you “batch” process a thousand images in Photoshop or sum numbers in Excel, you’re programming, at least a little. 2.1 How Do You Type an “A”? It’s simple now, right?
The Daily Swarm This is about as indie as it gets, right? Billboard.biz: For nearly 50 years, Time Inc. Ten of the 17 selected artists will participate in the Vegas festival: Delta Spirit, Elan Atias & White Elephant, J. Blank Space: What Kind of Genius Is Max Martin? Among the stranger aspects of recent pop music history is how so many of the biggest hits of the past twenty years—by the Backstreet Boys, ’NSync, and Britney Spears to Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and the Weeknd—have been co-written by a forty-four-year-old Swede. His real name is Karl Martin Sandberg, but you would know him as Max Martin, if you know of him at all, which, if he can help it, you won’t. He is music’s magic melody man, the master hooksmith responsible for twenty-one No. 1 Billboard hits—five fewer than John Lennon, and eleven behind Paul McCartney, on the all-time list. But, while Lennon and McCartney are universally acknowledged as geniuses, few outside the music business have heard of Max Martin. Presumably this is because Martin writes all of his songs for other people to sing. The fame that Lennon and McCartney achieved by performing their work will never be his, which no doubt is fine with Martin. Sandberg was born in Stenhamra, a suburb of Stockholm, in 1971.
Mark Cuban Is Voting For "The Devil He Knows" Hillary, Warns Trump Presidency Will Crash Stocks In an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban shared some of his thoughts on what a potential Donald Trump presidency would do to the stock market, as well as who he would vote for if he had to choose today. Cuban opens up the conversation by discussing his main issue with Trump, which is that he hasn't taken the time to understand issues in any depth, and that he is unpredictable in what he's going to say from one topic to another, which will ultimately not play well for the market. "Let's take a step back first of all. Where Donald has come from, to today, you would think that he would be more knowledgeable on the issues, that we would look at what he's had to say, and say you know what, he's really picked up some in depth knowledge, he's nuanced on different topics whether it's immigration, whether it's the job plan, whether it's the economy, but that just hasn't happened, and to me that's a problem." "Probably not as smart as he thinks he is.