June 1, 2025

Media & Entertainment

apple music growing us market Media & Entertainment music streaming Spotify

US paid music subscribers cross 100 million mark for first time

The U.S. crossed the 100 million paid subscribers mark for music streaming services for the first time ever last year, as per a new report by the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). The subscriber number was up from 96.8 million in 2023, with year-on-year growth of roughly 3%. RIAA’s report said that these numbers

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Apps Media & Entertainment moviefone

Remember Moviefone? Well, it’s back.

For millions of moviegoers in the ’90s, Moviefone 777-FILM number was the go-to source for learning about showtimes. Now, under new ownership, Moviefone is trying to make a comeback. On Friday, as part of its 35th anniversary celebration, Moviefone announced the relaunch of its mobile app and a new nationally syndicated broadcast TV series. Set to

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AI Media & Entertainment Stability AI stable virtual camera

Stability AI new AI model turns photos into 3D scenes

Stability AI has released a new AI model, Stable Virtual Camera, that the company claims can transform 2D images into “immersive” videos with realistic depth and perspective. Virtual cameras are tools often used in digital filmmaking and 3D animation to capture and navigate scenes in real time. With Stable Virtual Camera, Stability sought to add

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AI Media & Entertainment

Musk’s AI company, xAI, acquires a generative AI video startup

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup working on AI-powered video generation tools along the lines of OpenAI’s Sora. Aakash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, announced the news in a post on X on Monday. “Over the past 2 years we’ve built 3 video foundation models as a small team — Hotshot-XL,

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People are using Google’s AI model to remove image watermarks

Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image generation feature, which lets the model natively generate and edit

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AI Apps chirp 3 DeepMind Demis Hassabis Enterprise Google Media & Entertainment voice AI

Google adds its HD voice model Chirp 3 to its Vertex AI platform

Most of the focus in generative AI has been on text-based interfaces used to generate text, images, and more. The next wave appears to be voice, and it’s rolling in fast. In the latest development, Google today announced that it would be adding Chirp 3 — its speech-to-text and HD text-to-speech models — to its

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AI Media & Entertainment Security Startups TC TC Sessions: AI TechCrunch Sessions: AI

Vote for the session you want to see at TechCrunch Sessions: AI 

We’ve been blown away by the overwhelming response to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. After thorough consideration, we’ve selected six standout finalists. The power to choose who will take the stage and share their AI expertise with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts is now in your

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matthew e butler Media & Entertainment Netflix the electric state

How ‘The Electric State’ team created a world of unlikely robots

The new Netflix movie “The Electric State” depicts a world full of robots — but not robots as we know them. Directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo (who previously helmed two Avengers blockbusters, “Infinity War” and “Endgame”) for a reported budget of $320 million, “The Electric State” takes place in an alternate version of

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AI ChatGPT Media & Entertainment OpenAI writing

OpenAI’s ‘creative writing’ AI evokes that annoying kid from high school fiction club

When I was 16, I attended a writing workshop with a group of precocious young poets, where we all tried very hard to prove who among us was the most tortured upper-middle-class teenager. One boy refused to tell anyone where he was from, declaring, “I’m from everywhere and nowhere.” Two weeks later, he admitted he

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Apps audiobooks Media & Entertainment Spotify

Spotify launches a program to publish audiobooks from independent authors

In an expansion of its existing audiobook efforts, Spotify on Thursday announced the launch of a new publishing program for authors that allows them to submit short-form stories they’d like to see turned into audiobooks. When Spotify selects a story for audiobook publishing, it will handle the production and distribution of the work to other

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