Weekly Story

Netflix announces immediate fee increase for new UK subscribers

Netflix is increasing its monthly fee for streaming movies and television shows from £5.99 to £6.99, hoping that the "House of Cards effect" will keep subscribers from deserting to the rival Amazon/Lovefilm service. The price increase will take effect immediately for new subscribers but will be delayed for two years for existing members. Netflix will allow subscribers to continue paying £5.99 a month if they opt for a lower-resolution "SD" quality service. It also has a multiple-users service for £8.99 a month which allows four users to view programmes at the same time on a single monthly account. In an email to subscribers this morning, Netflix said: "In orderto continue adding more films and TV programmes, we are increasing our price from £5.99 to £6.99 for new members. As a thank you for being a member of Netflix already, we guarantee that your plan and price will not change for two years." Netflix is raising prices not just in the UK but almost across the board for its 48 million global subscribers.

My opinion:

I think that Netflix are taking a very big risk in increasing the price, as they could not attract new customers and maybe loose their old customers. Even though in the email they said they for the existing customers they are not rising the price for another two years, i think it could still affect the current customers because they might not like this decisions as they will call themselves loyal customers for choosing netflix. I think this is a very big step which they are taking and it could be beneficial or it could affect the business very badly. They will also be benefiting from it as they will then receive £6.99 where they use to receive £5.99. 

I think this could also change the mind of people who were thinking Netflix as they might want to find someone cheaper than netflix. This means Netflix will not be getting extra customers or attracting new customers because they have increased their prices and i think customers will always like to save money which means they are likely to change sources and move to something like LoveFilm, which i think to attract customers they offer a first three month free trail, where as netflix only offer one month free trail. 

Weekly story

One Direction coverage boosts Sun on Sunday sales by 2%

The opening night of One Directions latest tour helped boost the Sun on Sundays sales by 2% last month. It went to 1.7 million the biggest riser of all Sunday papers. The paper also saw sales climb with scoops about boxer Amir Khan and actor Kym Marsh. Its rivals the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror were also up – the Mail on Sunday growing by 0.7% on the previous month to 1,566,728, while the Trinity Mirror title was marginally up by 0.1% to 928,697.The Sunday People was up 0.8% on the previous month to 373,440 (but down 11.3% year-on-year) with the Sunday Express up 1.1% to 428,337 (down 6.8% on the year).The Sunday Times was down just over 1% on the previous month to 830,404, down 5.9% on the same month in 2013, with the Sunday Telegraph down 1.8% on the month, and 2.3% year-on-year, to 411,003.The Independent on Sunday was the only quality title to register a monthly increase, up 1% to 101,554, down 11.1% on the year.

My View:

In my opinion i think that the reason why the Sun On Sunday saw a sales rise of 2% is because of One Direction as their tour helped boost Sun On Sundays sales. It also shows that almost all popular papers were seeing some rise in their sales, i think this is because the stories which they are distributing are very latest and mean something to the audience which is why they are purchasing news papers. Even though the paper saw so much decline on year to year, now they might be seeing some good news. I still think that this might only be for only a little time, then sales are then again likely to drop because newspapers are in decline. Its all about the digital media and how thats increasing sales and revenue each year.

Notes from the impact of new/digital media presentations

Twitter presentation
-People using it globally
-500 million users
-causes/could cause even more problems
-The audience not only consume the information now, they produce it as well
-Twitter is providing such information that people have stopped by print now
-Twitter played a very big part in the Arab Spring in getting the people in Egypt and Tunisia freedom
-Citizen journalist
-Protests are caused

Facebook presentation  
- Global village- Mcluhan
-Allows the audience to share values
-Empowers the audience to produce content
- Al Gore-"the internet is an empowering tool"
-Pluralism
-China blocked Facebook in 2009 because they thought it causes problems for the government, as Chine has the biggest democracy.
- Users could be tracked without their permission

Music industry 
- Spotify commercial music streaming service launched in 2008
- No need to download
-Artists are not making money from the music industry
-Reducing privacy
-No profits being made

Film industry- Netflix
- Unlimited movies and TV programmes available after subscription
- Audience mainly 18-36
- Subscription increase from £6.50 to £7.50, becoming more popular, more demand
- Could result to decrease in subscribers
- Netflix coming up with their own channel, expanding
- Pluralist- Audience have full control over the media
- Its brainwashing them
- Blockbuster video and HMV have shut down as people don't buy DVD or CD any more

Mobile 
- Mobile has grew very rapidly
-Specially smartphones
- The reason why their has been an increase in smartphones is because people can do anything with them
- Its an easier way to communicate
-People can watch whatever they like on their smartphones

SKY
-Things have changed in the way people now consume TV programmes
- Its up to the audience when they want to watch a certain programme
- People can record the programme and watch in it their own time
- They don't have to go with the scheduling
- Time shifting

Music industry
- Album sales have dropped
-Many business's such as HMV have shut down because they weren't generating enough revenue to survive
- Artists should get money as they produce the music
-Ordinary people are becoming very popular through the use of the internet
-Such as Sean Kingston, he got popular through the internet and social media
- On the other hand people like Rebecca Black didn't succeed, even by using the internet

Instagram  
- Instagram was launched in 2010
- The users could just share picture at that time and now it has made significant improvements such as
- DIrect messaging
- Video posting
- April 2013 Facebook tried buying Instagram as it was a market leader and they knew that they would have generated so much revenue

Camera 
- Everything is now on Digital
-From pixel cameras now films are made on digital camera
- Digital have made it all on money
- Marxists would like the digital film

Weekly story

Spotify says it's 'a matter of time' before it overtakes Apple's iTunes in Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/25/spotify-itunes-apple-europe-streaming-music

In the last 4 months Spotify has added more than 1m active users in the UK, it is trying to overtake Applies iTunes as the biggest digital music service in the Europe. "Some of our partners are saying Spotify is now generating more revenue each month across Continental Europe than iTunes," Spotify's head of label relations in Europe, Kevin Brown, told industry site Music Week."Given that download sales are declining and Spotify is growing rapidly, particularly in the UK, it is only a matter of time before Spotify is bigger than iTunes across Europe as a whole." Most of them 1m users are paying for a subscriptions, rather than listening to the free version. Spotify said in March 2013 that globally, it had 24m active users, including 6m paying subscribers. The company has not updated those figures since, but music industry sources tell The Guardian that the company has been waiting to surpass 10m paying subscribers before announcing new stats.

My view
The reason why i think that the Spotify is growing very rapidly is because people are interacting with it because its the new market leader. The digital media is growing rapidly, as people have stopped buying CD's or downloading music. People don't want to waste their money buying or downloading music, they are more than happy to just pay subscriptions and get access to unlimited music. The reason why i think that Spotify will be very successful in overtaking Apple iTunes is because people have even stopped paying for downloads, Apple only give access to music once their customer pay for the download, with Spotify the audience can get access to music just by paying the subscription.

Spotify is one of the major problems for the music industry and because of Spotify the CD revenue has decreased. Spotify has a very large impact on the music industry, which is why they are the most popular ones. Spotify gives unlimited access to music to the audience which could be used anywhere wherever the internet is. 

Weekly story

Is BSkyB no longer the chosen one?

Since the BT have invested in BT sports, BSkyB is beginning to stagger from the impact. The telecoms group holds a slug ofPremier League rights and will have exclusive access to the Champions League. Sky boss Jeremy Darroch reports third-quarter results on Thursday, and the forecast is troubling. In the third quarter last year,Sky signed a net of 152,000 customers an this time the number dropped down to 80,000. Sky's market share of new additions has slumped from a peak of 90% in 2012, and is now thought to be around 39%. BT, meanwhile, is on the rise, with a forecast 73% market share, up from 48% in the same quarter last year. Sky are facing loads of problems because of BT, since they have launched their BT sports. Sky have been losing so much revenue as people are not using Sky any more, they are using BT this is why the BT market share has raised and the Sky market share has fallen.

My view

The reason why i think that Sky sales are dropping because BT are much cheaper than Sky, so people would defiantly want to save money wherever they can, which is why people are choosing BT. BT already had loads of customers because of their Calls, TV and broadband, and now that they have introduced BT sports people are using it because BT is much cheaper than Sky Sports. This will allow them to save much more money as Sky are much more expensive.  This is the reason why Sky are losing so much revenue and customers and BT are increasing the amount of customers they have. I think if Sky make themselves cheaper and more affordable for customers, then customers are likely to choose them because they have been their before BT.

Weekly Story #4

Deezer takes on Spotify with 5m paying subscribers and new discovery features

The streaming music service Deezer has doubled its number of paying subscribers to five million in the last year, just 1m less than rival Spotify. Deezer says they have 12 million monthly active users, and a 30m tracks available to for stream. "We multiplied our subscriber base by 2.5 in one year. Nobody else can do this, and we did it outside the US, so it's a very strong footprint," said Deezer chief executive Axel Dauchez, referring to the fact that while Deezer is available in more than 180 countries, the US is not one of them.Deezer's growth is being fuelled by those telco deals, particularly where the cost of subscribing to its service is bundled into people's monthly mobile contracts. However, that also means it is unclear how many of the 5 million subscribers are actively using Deezer, as opposed to simply having it available as part of their tariff.

My view:
The reason why i think that Deezers online subscribers have doubled is because their monthly subscription is included in their mobile phone plan. This is why loads of people have started using it because it is included in their mobile plan. This means they don't have to pay for extra subscription to get the service as it is already in the plan. This is the reason why they have doubled their monthly subscribers. Otherwise it is very hard to increase or persuade subscribers to subscribe. Spotify are not like Deezer, they have to persuade people to pay for their content on a direct debit, which is why it is not that easy for them to make money. Online music streaming has increase so much because people like using the internet, this is why the CD sales have dropped.

Weekly story #3

Guardian website tops 100 million monthly users for the first time

The Guardian website received 100 million browsers for the first time in march. The main reason for this was the missing Malaysia Airways story, this helped them boost their monthly browsers. The whole Guardian browsers was boosted by 12%, which resulted to a new record of 102.3 million monthly unique users. Average daily unique browsers also reached a new high of 5.67 million, up 5% month-on-month, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations multiplatform figures published on Thursday.David Pemsel, deputy chief executive of Guardian News & Media, said: "Our strong performance in Australia is especially encouraging less than a year since our launch there, while the announcement this week of Guardian US winning a prestigious Pulitzer prize underlines our influential position in the US media landscape. Now the Guardian are motivated and to puss the ground even more by trying the past results. The Daily Mail passed the 100 browser in August 2012 because of the London Olympics.

My view:

I personally think that the actual reason for this is new and digital media, how its forcing people to get their news from the internet and not by purchasing newspapers. I think this is why print is in decline and no one is interested in buying news papers as they can get news online. The internet is the new market leader and distributor, it attracts a very wide range of audience now. The reason why the Guardians online browser increased is because the audience like getting news off the internet, rather than getting it off newspapers. This has encouraged the Guardian to push this even more and make the usage of their internet website even more. The more audience they get the more they benefit from it, this is why they will do so many things now to attract an large audience.