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Tag: YouTube

  • T-Series beats PewDiePie to become world’s top YouTube channel

    T-Series beats PewDiePie to become world’s top YouTube channel

    MUMBAI: After a heavy battle of several months, music label and production house T-Series has finally overtaken PewDiePie to become the top YouTube channel. T-Series now has 90.52 million subscribers, a little above the Swedish YouTuber’s 90.49 million. For the last six years, PewDiePie, aka Felix Kjellberg has been the most subscribed YouTube channel. It was around six months ago that the threat from T-Series started to become imminent, leading to a massive anti-T-Series campaign from his followers. A few days ago, T-Series chairman Bhushan Kumar had tweeted an appeal to Indian viewers to increase its subscriber count.

    India’s telecom revolution enabled T-Series to jump from 30 million subscribers at the start of 2018 to where it has reached now.

  • IPRS grants music license to Google for India

    IPRS grants music license to Google for India

    MUMBAI: The Indian Performing Right Society Limited (IPRS) has granted a license to Google, enabling the company to utilise IPRS members’ Indian works repertoire in India across YouTube and related services.

    IPRS is the registered copyright society in India authorised to carry out the copyright business in respect of musical works and literary works (lyrics), associated with musical works and members comprising of author (lyricists), music Composers and music publishers.

    IPRS CEO Rakesh Nigam stated, “The IPRS agreement with Google is nothing short of historic. IPRS and its members will benefit greatly from the arrangement with Google. IPRS licensing reach has significantly increased  as a registered copyright society and its mandate to function efficiently and transparently vis-à-vis licensees, members and the public. This is another step to ensure IPRS’ standing as the preeminent copyright society in India”

    YouTube global head of music licensing Christophe Muller said, “This is yet another step in YouTube’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that writers, composers and publishers continue to be paid fairly, and that our users are able to enjoy their favorite songs and discover new music on YouTube.  We’re extremely pleased to have reached this important agreement with IPRS that will bring more value to songwriters and artists, and deliver an incredible experience to music fans in India.”

    Saregama India Ltd CEO IPRS director Vikram Mehra said, “This is an extremely positive development. The deal between IPRS and Google for its YouTube and other related services will surely strengthen the copyright ecosystem in India. Indian Artistes will recognise value from the exploitation of their creations and this arrangement will yield more value for all IPRS members.”

    IPRS chairman Javed Akhtar said, “The IPRS-Google agreement is a historic milestone for Indian authors and music composers as well as music publishers. I congratulate and thank Google for backing Indian artistes, music publishers and the creative fraternity in such a strong way in India. This is the beginning of a very strong relationship with Google. IPRS is determined to ensure that these relationship augers well and proves beneficial to the creative fraternity in India. YouTube has a strong and pioneering role to play in encouraging creators and connecting them with markets and users. This deal between IPRS and Google for its YouTube and other related services will provide benefits to creators and members of IPRS in a tangible and meaningful way.”

  • YouTube to launch music streaming app in India

    YouTube to launch music streaming app in India

    MUMBAI: Google-owned YouTube has announced the launch of its new music streaming app YouTube Music in the country, in a bid to grab a pie of the growing Indian audio streaming industry.

    According to reports, the ad-supported version of YouTube Music is free and to get access to ad-free YouTube Music Premium, consumers will have to pay Rs 99 a month, the company said in a statement.

    YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen said, "With YouTube Music, we are hoping to bring the best in global and Indian music to millions of fans across India, and give them an immersive music experience."

    The company also announced to bring "YouTube Premium" to India which would be available for Rs 129 a month that included membership to YouTube Music Premium, offline downloads and access to all YouTube originals.

    "Samsung Galaxy S10 users can enjoy four months of free, ad-free access to YouTube Premium," said the company.

    YouTube Music would throw a big competition to services like Gaana, Saavn, Apple Music and Amazon Music. This is the second big debut of global music streaming giant in India after Swedish platform Spotify made its way into the country late last month and garnered over one million users.

  • Google rolls out AR effect tools for YouTube Stories

    Google rolls out AR effect tools for YouTube Stories

    MUMBAI: With the overwhelming popularity of Stories feature on social media platforms, the companies are leaving no stones unturned to make it more attractive. Now, Google is rolling out support for its advanced Augmented Reality (AR) effect tools for YouTube Stories while its rival Facebook and Instagram already support AR filters for Stories on their platforms.

    The new feature will allow users to add animated masks, glasses, 3D hats and more such objects to their selfies. "To make all this possible, we employ machine learning (ML) to infer approximate 3D surface geometry to enable visual effects and ML pipeline for Selfie AR," Google Artificial Intelligence research engineers Artsiom Ablavatski and Ivan Grishchenko wrote in a blog post on Saturday.

    "That way we can grow our dataset to increasingly challenging cases, such as grimaces, oblique angle and occlusions. Dataset augmentation techniques also expanded the available ground truth data, developing model resilience to artefacts like camera imperfections or extreme lighting conditions," the post added.

    The company has also claimed that it will use improved "anchoring" process with the new AR effects to make them look more real and responsive. According to the post, it uses a unique set of technologies "that can track the highly dynamic surface geometry across every smile, frown or smirk."

    However, YouTube Stories is not available to every user yet as the tech giant launched the feature last year but only to creators with more than 10k subscribers.

  • Shemaroo projects 25-30% digital business growth in FY 2020

    Shemaroo projects 25-30% digital business growth in FY 2020

    MUMBAI: Content powerhouse Shemaroo started its initiatives for digital business comparatively earlier than many other traditional media companies in India. The company has now stepped up its new media segment which is almost 30 per cent of the overall business with the launch of ShemarooMe. Shemaroo is taking a slow but steady approach and does not intend to go head-to-head with giants like Amazon and Netflix.

    Talking to investors in a conference call after posting Q3 results, Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd CEO Hiren Gada said that the new OTT business has been built at a significantly low capex model making it sustainable. According to him, India being a highly heterogeneous market leaves the opportunity for even late entrants. Despite some segments being covered by existing players, a significant chunk of potential segments are still open.

    “We looked into our own content pie and saw that there are few segments where we have a significant offering and strong market position in terms of either being number one, two or three in terms of content or share of viewership etc., and we looked at actually how we can leverage those opportunities to create the connect. ShemarooMe is the short consumer connect bit that we are looking to do,” Gada said. The core strategy is to establish the new OTT platform as the best option for consumers in its core categories.

    However, it won’t get into web series since Shemaroo holds a steady ground in nonfiction content like classic films, devotional etc., which it believes is a better value add to its core.

    Moreover, Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd COO Kranti Gada expects TV-friendly content catalogue to see good consumption since initial tests on YouTube proved favourable. ShemarooMe has a large number of popular Bollywood movies on the platform and Hiren Gada thinks digital will have movies as a significant consuming category.

    Although Shemaroo is witnessing significant growth in YouTube channels viewership, the revenue from the segment has been flattish due to several reasons. But the management is optimistic as digital ad spend is headed up and expected to keep growing at a certain rate. Shemaroo CEO thinks YouTube being the largest video platform will capture a good share of that growth.

    “What is heartening more than anything else is the fact that there are core consumption and viewer habit formation of coming to the platform, consuming, interacting, seeking out content and engaging with it,” he added.

    Hiren Gada projects that the overall digital pie of the company will see a 25 to 30 per cent growth in FY 2020 as the industry level growth is between 20-25 per cent. Shemaroo has always aspired 5 per cent higher than the sector. Hence if the industry grows at a higher pace, he seems confident that Shemaroo’s digital business will grow faster.

    On being asked about the company’s debt reduction plan, Hiren Gada said, “We are hoping that now with ShemarooMe and hopefully with a better YouTube growth, those trends should continue in the direction that we all are expecting and overall on the debt front even this quarter there has been a slight marginal reduction. So the debt is at a broad level the content requirement for on a so content acquisition versus monetisation so all the acquisition is being funded by internal accruals from monetisation at this point in time.”

  • Tata Motors, WATConsult unveil ‘Apni Hatchback’

    Tata Motors, WATConsult unveil ‘Apni Hatchback’

    MUMBAI: Tata Motors, a global automobile manufacturer, unveiled a new music video titled ‘Apni Hatchback’ for the brand's bestselling hatchback- the Tiago. This is in collaboration with WATConsult, a digital and social media agency from Dentsu Aegis Network’s bouquet.

    Released across Tata Motors’ digital platforms, the music video leverages the growing acceptance and popularity of the rap music culture in the country and is an ode to the Tata Tiago community. Looking at the pace at which ‘Indie Hip Hop’ is cutting through the clutter of Bollywood among the audience, ‘Apni Hatchback’ is a testament to Tata Motors’ ability and efforts in catching the pulse of the audience. The music video is conceptualised and executed by WATConsult, the digital media partner for Tata Motors’ passenger vehicle business.

    Speaking on the same Tata Motors, head – marketing, passenger vehicle business unit Vivek Srivatsa said, “Raising a toast to all our Tiago customers, we are elated to launch this music video – ‘Apni Hatchback’. The video has been made keeping in mind our consumers, who are young, cool and fun loving. The Tiago has been one of our best-selling brands and we plan to continue leveraging newer trends and keep engaging with our audience in innovative ways. We are confident that our customers will shower as much love upon this video as they have on our product.”

    WATConsult founder and CEO Rajiv Dingra said, “Tata Motors in the last few years has been consistently innovating, not only in terms of bringing world-class vehicles on the road but also banking on the power of digital to deliver dynamic and unique communication through regular interventions. This music video is yet another shining example of how the brand has leveraged popular culture to create distinctive digital content.”

    The video that embraces the rap culture talks about the safety and the love customers have for the car, was released two days before Valentine’s Day and leveraged all social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. 

  • English biz news genre exhibits drop in TV viewership, growth on digital platforms

    English biz news genre exhibits drop in TV viewership, growth on digital platforms

    MUMBAI: Despite all the hullabaloo about digital cannibalising TV, the rapid rise of digital platforms hasn’t had a negative impact on traditional news viewing for now. In fact, the two consumption modes have complemented each other, enhancing the reach of content and news pieces to an ever wider audience. This trend, however, does not seem to hold true for English business news. While the viewership of the genre is increasing on digital, that on TV seems to have taken a hit in the recent past.

    Comparing viewership data for the top three channels in the past one year, it is not difficult to spot this difference. The leader in the genre, CNBC TV18, had 654 impressions ‘000 in week 4 in 2018 compared to 339 impressions ‘000 for the corresponding period in 2019. ET Now saw a dip from 608 impressions ‘000 to 155 impressions ‘000 in January 2019. BTVI too wasn't exempt from this trend, showcasing a viewership drop from 110 impressions ‘000 to 52 impressions ‘000. 

    According to BARC data, the core audience for the English business news channel is All India (U+R): NCCS AB: Males 22+ Individuals. CNBC TV18 has witnessed a drop of 39 per cent viewership among its core audience within a time frame of 15 weeks, starting week 40 2018 to week 2 2019. CNBC TV18 accounts for 65 per cent of the genre viewership. If we consider CNBC TV18 Prime HD, the viewership share goes up to 70 per cent.

    On the other hand, CNBC TV18 seems to be gaining quite a bit of traction on YouTube. The channel's total subscribers on YouTube are 285,867; it gained around 18,000 subscribers and was watched for 14.7 million minutes in December 2018.

    Commenting on the growth of business news on digital media, PwC MD risk assurance- media and entertainment Anand Punmiya said, “If we analyse TV English business news viewership data for past one year it appears that spike and downtrend are clearly event driven. However, on an average the TV viewership impressions were in the range of 500-600 and there was a marginal fall when news became available on digital platforms. It may not be apt to state that viewers have moved from TV to digital platform with respect to English business news, both platforms continue to have their own significance and convenience of use.”

    Urban India is ahead when it comes to consuming news on digital mediums but it is mainly headlines. However, for analysis, views or opinions, the preferred option is always a news channel or newspaper. Advertising on digital medium is growing rapidly, though not at the expense of TV revenues.

    BTVI claims to have doubled its viewership market share from 10 per cent in December 2018 to 19 per cent in January 2019.

    BTVI COO Megha Tata said, “In my opinion, core TG of the genre (22+ Males) is out of home (at their place of work) during the prime time of the genre (8 am to 4 pm). Hence, measuring at home does not give a true picture of genre viewership. Having said that, English business news is a very unstable genre and according to current measurement methods, genre viewership has seen a decline of 18 per cent in CY 2018 as compared to CY 2017. However, BTVI has grown by 19 per cent in the same time period.”

    BTVI has built a strong digital ecosystem, its content is available on OTT platforms such as Hotstar, JioTV, YouTube, Sony LIV, ZEE5, and YUPP TV. The channel is available on these platforms both as LIVE stream and VOD. 

    “Going by our experience, we have seen a huge uptake of business news content on OTT platforms as well as trading apps mentioned above. Clearly, there is a huge market for business content on digital ecosystem. However, we have grown our viewership on linear TV platform as well. Hence, it would be more accurate to say that viewers are getting added as genre consumers on digital platforms and not shifting from TV to digital,” Tata added. 

    Besides such OTT platforms, large proportion of business news genre viewers actively deal in stock market over various trading platforms. Such trading platforms have relevant set of viewers ready to consume business content on these platforms. Knowing this, BTVI became the only English business news channel to be present on trading apps such as Axis Direct, Kotak Securities, IIFL markets, HDFC Securities and Geojit. 

    With the general elections just around the corner, it remains to be seen what English business news channels have on offer to woo the audiences. With a tantalising political contest on offer, business news channels would like to seize upon the chance to regain some of the lost momentum with clever and engaging programming.

  • Aaj Tak becomes the world’s first News Channel to be awarded YouTube’s ‘Diamond Play Button’

    Aaj Tak becomes the world’s first News Channel to be awarded YouTube’s ‘Diamond Play Button’

    MUMBAI: India’s No.1 news channel Aaj Tak creates history yet again! The prestigious ‘Diamond Play Button’ bestowed by YouTube, recognises Aaj Tak as the global no.1, the first and the only news channel in the world to have crossed the 10 Million Subscriber mark.

    The Award was presented by YouTube to the India Today Group last week. This milestone achievement on YouTube by an Indian channel, puts India right on top of the global news media map. The fact that Aaj Tak is well ahead of the global peers, is a testament to the unshakeable trust and the phenomenal following , Aaj Tak has relentlessly earned over 18 years since inception. The 'Diamond Play Button' is the top honor awarded by YouTube, next only to the Ruby Button at the 50 Million mark

    Ms Kalli Purie, Vice-Chairperson, India Today Group on accepting the recognition for the milestone said, “I am so proud that AajTak has won the YouTube Diamond Button, the only news channel in the world to have earned this award. The diamond button is not an overnight success, this is something AajTak has worked very hard towards. We first got the silver button, then the gold button and then finally we got the diamond button at 10 million subscribers. The journey doesn’t stop here, we are ambitious and we are moving ahead, trying and working towards now the YouTube Ruby Button that comes in at 50 million subscribers. And I am sure with the support of our viewers, we will get there too, and we will get there ‘Sabse Tez’.”

    Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube in her letter lauding the Aaj Tak YouTube channel for this accomplishment said,  “We hope you will accept this Diamond Creator Award as a token of our appreciation and respect for what you have accomplished.” In the letter Susan Wojcicki expressed her amazement at the magnitude of this achievement. She wrote “The 10 Million Mark? At this point we are actually scratching our heads. How on earth did you do that? 10 million subscribers is not just a lot of people. It is more than the entire population of New York City!”

    Citing that the Aaj Tak YouTube channel is no longer just a channel but a movement, she added, “You have clearly touched a nerve in the world and you have found a legion of fans who expect – and receive- great things from you.”

    An unmatched record of 18 straight years at the numero uno position, helps Aaj Tak beat all its global rivals like BBC News, CNN, ABC News etc. As on 17th January 2019, Aaj Tak has 13.07 million subscribers.

  • Modern brand marketing methods not just digital-exclusive

    Modern brand marketing methods not just digital-exclusive

    MUMBAI: The use of the internet and other digital media and technology to support 'modern marketing’ has given rise to the concept of digital marketing, and we at Tanishq believe that the focus has always been on building a 360-degree marketing plan, with seamless integration of products, services and communication. We try to not look at traditional and digital as two separate entities. Although digital ad spends have shown a considerable increase in comparison to traditional media, the base however, continues to be relatively smaller. Regardless, we have intensified the number of digital assets and we are also leveraging new-age tools at disposal like geo-targeting, virtual reality, online-to-offline attribution modelling etc., basically all tools that help us ensure maximum accessibility of the brand, for the consumers.

    Most categories and brands are focusing on a multichannel media approach and that has reflected a lot in the festive season as well. With regards to the ad spend share for FMCG brands, we have noticed a reduction in their focus from traditional mediums like TV and seen them re-direct their path to the digital front with customised campaigns across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and other social channels.

    With the upcoming concept of omni-channel marketing, a smart digital strategy becomes all the more critical. No more can we focus only on one medium, especially if buyers themselves are branching out through new arenas. A diversification in mediums is essential when it comes to communicating our brand messaging.

    Brands today are evolving with its consumers, and are looking towards transforming mass online marketing to one-to-one interactions to engage with the consumer. As a result of this, we are already on our way to developing a big-data driven approach to create moments of delight for our consumer through an intelligent recommendation system, not to mention taking the in-store experience online through AR/VR tools. Basically we want to be present with the customer, when the “intent rich” digital discovery moment occurs.

    (The author is  associate vice president, marketing, jewellery division at Titan Company. The views expressed here are her own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them)   

  • LaLiga 1|2|3 matches to be broadcast via YouTube in over 155 global markets

    LaLiga 1|2|3 matches to be broadcast via YouTube in over 155 global markets

    MUMBAI: LaLiga has announced that all matches from its second division, LaLiga 1|2|3, will now be available for free via YouTube to millions of consumers worldwide.

    Starting today, the LaLiga YouTube channel will provide live English commentary from this season´s LaLiga1|2|3 matches in over 155 countries, bringing the competition to large global territories where no previous transmission had been in place.

    The regions covered in the deal (listed in the below table) include major markets in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, with all content provided via geolocation. The broadcasts, which are due to begin from today, will provide a significant increase in coverage of LaLiga1|2|3, offering thousands of Spanish football fans around the world the chance to follow their favourite teams for free.

    For those not yet familiar with the competition, the channel will provide an exciting new platform to get better acquainted with the historic teams playing in the division, such as RC Deportivo, Real Zaragoza, Malaga, CA Osasuna and Cadiz CF.

    In addition to broadcasting the eleven matches from each game week, a 50-minute highlights programme will also be available to provide a summary of the major events from each match day.

    In Spain, matches will continue to be shown through existing broadcast operators beIN Connect, Orange, Telecable, Telefónica and Sky.

    Melcior Soler, director of the LaLiga Audiovisual department, said: “The way we consume live sports is being changed by a new generation of online broadcasters, and we are committed to using such channels to extend the appeal of our competitions. This move will strengthen the LaLiga 1|2|3 by bringing it to an entirely new global audience, in a format that we think will really appeal to the viewer.”

    LaLiga is continuing to grow its digital environments, having signed a landmark agreement with Facebook in 2018 to broadcast every LaLiga Santander match via the social media network in eight south-east Asian countries. Also in 2018, it increased its social media following to over 65 million, and agreed an OTT broadcast platform together with the Association for Spanish Professional Leagues.