BrianFagioli writes: In a move sure to rattle some subscribers, YouTube TV has announced a price increase for its Base Plan. Starting January 13, 2025, the monthly subscription cost will jump from $72.99 to $82.99. The search giant cites the rising costs of content and investments in service quality as the primary reasons for this adjustment.

Over 300 musicians have signed an open letter defending the Internet Archive against a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its preservation of 78 rpm records. The letter, organized by Fight for the Future, opposes the lawsuit filed by major record labels including Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

The labels claim the Archive's Great 78 Project, which digitizes shellac discs from the 1890s-1950s, amounts to widespread copyright infringement. Musicians argue the lawsuit prioritizes corporate profits over artists' interests.

Peter Jackson is co-executive producer of a new animated Lord of the Rings prequel called The War of the Rohirrim. "Set in an epic world 183 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the King of Rohan is forced into a last stand in ancient Hornburg after a sudden attack..." explains The Hollywood Reporter.

But Variety writes that the movie "fizzled" in its overseas debut this weekend: "Moana 2" has notched $600 million in global ticket sales, standing as the sixth-biggest movie of the year after just two weeks of release. Disney's animated sequel, which was developed as a TV series before pivoting to theaters, has generated $300 million overseas and $300 million domestically... Among new offerings, the Warner Bros. anime fantasy film "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim," faltered with $2 million from 3,410 screens in 31 territories... [The movie] opens in North America and an additional 42 offshore markets on Dec. 13. Top earning territories were Spain with $347,000 followed by Mexico with $239,000 and Thailand with $146,000...

Meanwhile, Paramount's "Gladiator II" collected $17 million in its fourth frame at the international box office, boosting its tally to $235 million overseas and $368.4 million globally. The quarter-century-in-the-making sequel Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning 2000 epic "Gladiator" has been far bigger in offshore markets... There's also "Red One," a Christmas-set action comedy starring the Rock as Santa's head of security, which collected $3.5 million from 4,000 screens in 75 overseas markets. The film, from Amazon MGM, has generated a soft $78.2 million from offshore territories and $164 million globally. "Red One" was originally destined for streaming before the studio opted for a theatrical release, so any coinage from the big screen could be viewed as a win for movie theaters, Amazon MGM and Warner Bros. (which has international rights on Amazon MGM releases). From a strictly theatrical standpoint, though, "Red One" carries a $250 million budget before marketing and stands as one of the year's biggest misfires.

Not every tech "advent calendar" involves programming puzzles. Instead the geek tradition of programming-language advent calendars "seems to have started way back in 2000," according to one history, "when London-based programmer Mark Fowler launched a calendar highlighting a different Perl module each day."

So the tradition continues...

• Nearly a quarter of a century later, there's still a Perl Advent Calendar, celebrating tips and tricks like "a few special packages waiting under the tree that can give your web applications a little extra pep in their step."

• And of course there's a separate advent calendar for Raku programmers.

• Since 2009 web performance consultant (and former Yahoo and Facebook engineer) Stoyan Stefanov has been pulling together an annual Web Performance calendar with helpful blog posts.

• There's also a JVM Advent calendar with daily helpful hints for Java programmers.

• Another advent calendar promises daily posts about C#.

• The HTMHell site — which bills itself as "a collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites" — is celebrating the season with the "HTMHell Advent Calendar," promising daily articles on security, accessibility, UX, and performance.

• There's even an advent calendar with tips for the reverse-engineering framework Radar.

• There's still a lovely web-design themed calendar at Designcember.com.

And meanwhile developers at the Svelte frontend framework are actually promising to release something new each day, "whether it's a new feature in Svelte or SvelteKit or an improvement to the website!"

But not every tech advent calendar is about programming...

• Adafruit's managing director is publishing a Retrocomputing Advent Calendar — daily looks at the ghosts of computers past.

• The Atlantic continues its 17-year tradition of a Space Telescope advent calendar, featuring daily images from both NASA's Hubble telescope and James Webb Space Telescope

• The gaming blog Rock Paper Shotgun has been counting down their favorite games of 2024...

The new movie Y2K is either a comedy or a disaster/horror film, according to Wikipedia. The film "imagines a turn of the century where the machines don't just glitch or stop working," writes the Hollywood Reporter. "They go full homicidal." With a cast that includes 1990s icons like Alicia Silverstone and the lead singer for the Napster-loving 1990s metal band Limp Bizkit, the movie "gives the '90s the ending it deserved," according to the article.

They interviewed the film's director (and co-writer and co-star) Kyle Mooney, best-known for SNL, starting by complimenting his fidelity to the tech of its day. "The film opens with a high schooler getting home and logging into AOL Instant Messenger, which is not a scene I think I've ever seen in another movie..." Mooney: All of my relationships, between 17 and 22 years old, were short-lived and spawned because I was most confident flirting on Instant Messager....

Q: The tech here is such a huge part of the story. Were there any logos or brands you had a tough time getting on camera?

Mooney: Definitely. This isn't really a spoiler, but Jaeden Martell's character's computer — the one that we open up with him logging into AOL — eventually turns into a robot. That was supposed to be an iMac. But I don't think Apple wanted their machines strangling people or whatever the robot does — so we had to change the look of it by, like, 30 percent. There were a few instances like that, where we couldn't get the exact thing, but we were allowed to get as close as possible.
Deadline's article includes a spoiler about the film, but also this interesting note about two of its young actors, Julian Dennison and Jaeden Martell: [A]lthough Dennison and Martell were both born after 2000, they enjoyed slipping into the "lack of convenience and the lack of technology" that came with the era.

"I wish I got to experience that. I wish I didn't live in the age of everything being so accessible," said Martell.
And apparently the movie also includes a quick shout-out to Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson.

Mozilla's developer blog is announcing "JavaScriptmas". [F]rom December 1st to December 24th, we will release a fun, daily coding challenge for you to solve on [code-learning platform] Scrimba. Each challenge comes with an introductory screencast called "scrim", some starter code, and then it's your turn to fill in the gaps.

JavaScriptmas is about coding, learning, and the chance to win exciting prizes. Two lucky coders will be chosen as winners at the end of JavaScriptmas, and each will win a MacBook Air M3, swag from MDN and Scrimba, and a lifetime Scrimba Pro membership (worth ~$200 per year). The Scrimba membership will give you access to all courses, including the Frontend Developer Career Path based on the MDN curriculum.

Most of the challenges will evolve around JavaScript algorithms. You will also practice subjects like DOM manipulation, UI design, CSS, accessibility, and even a bit of cyber security. The challenges are a collaborative effort from Scrimba teachers, mentors, and MDN content writers, all with the goal of turning you into a more well-rounded web developer.

Winners will be chosen randomly from everyone who submits correct solutions. We want JavaScriptmas to be accessible for both beginners and experienced developers alike. That said, the more challenges you solve, the better your chances of winning! To maximize your chances, try to solve all 24 challenges and submit them as both regular entries and social entries. You don't have to submit your solutions on the same day they're published — the deadline for any submission is midnight UTC on Christmas Eve.

"Okay, we're doing this," begins a new announcement at The Verge: Today we're launching a Verge subscription that lets you get rid of a bunch of ads, gets you unlimited access to our top-notch reporting and analysis across the site and our killer premium newsletters, and generally lets you support independent tech journalism in a world of sponsored influencer content. It'll cost $7 / month or $50 / year — and for a limited time, if you sign up for the annual plan, we'll send you an absolutely stunning print edition of our CONTENT GOBLINS series, with very fun new photography and design... A surprising number of you have asked us to launch something like this, and we're happy to deliver. If you don't want to pay, rest assured that big chunks of The Verge will remain free — we're thinking about subscriptions a lot differently than everyone else...

If you're a Verge reader, you know we've been covering massive, fundamental changes to how the internet works for years now. Most major social media platforms are openly hostile to links, huge changes to search have led to the death of small websites, and everything is covered in a layer of AI slop and weird scams. The algorithmic media ecosystem is now openly hostile to the kind of rigorous, independent journalism we want to do.

A few years ago, we decided the only real way to survive all this was to stand apart and bet on our own website so that we could remain independent of these platforms and their algorithms. We didn't want to write stories to chase Google Search trends or because we thought they'd do well on social media. And we definitely didn't want to compromise our famously strict ethics policy to accept brand endorsement deals from the companies we cover, which almost all of our competitors in the creator economy are forced to do in order to run sustainable businesses...

[W]e intend to keep making this thing together for a long, long time. So many of you like The Verge that we've actually gotten a shocking number of notes from people asking how they can pay to support our work. It's no secret that lots of great websites and publications have gone under over the past few years as the open web falls apart, and it's clear that directly supporting the creators you love is a big part of how everyone gets to stay working on the modern internet. At the same time, we didn't want to simply paywall the entire site — it's a tragedy that traditional journalism is retreating behind paywalls while nonsense spreads across platforms for free.
The print premium for subscribers is described as a "beautiful / deranged print product" that's drawn from a series of articles "about what Google had done to the web, capped off by a feature about search engine optimization titled 'The People Who Ruined the Internet.'" But it ships with a satirical cover that instead proclaims it as "The Verge Guide to Search Engine Optimization". A tongue-in-check announcement explains: [A] year has passed, and we've had a change of heart. Maybe search engine optimization is actually a good thing. Maybe appeasing the search algorithm is not only a sustainable strategy for building a loyal audience, but also a strategic way to plan and produce content. What are journalists, if not content creators? Anyway, SEO community, consider this our apology. And what better way to say "our bad, your industry is not a cesspool of AI slop but a brilliant vision of what a useful internet could look like" than collecting all the things we've learned in one handy print magazine? Which is why I'm proud to introduce The Verge Guide to Search Engine Optimization: All the Tips, Tricks, Hints, Schemes, and Techniques for Promoting High-Quality Content!
Whoops — slip off the cover and the real title appears: "CONTENT GOBLINS" (written in green slime). Again, it's "an anthology of stories about 'content' and the people who 'make' it." In very Verge fashion, we are meeting the moment where the internet has been overrun by AI garbage by publishing a beautifully designed, limited edition print product. (Also, the last time we printed a magazine, it won a very prestigious design award.) Content Goblins collects some of our best stories over the past couple years, capturing the cynical push for the world's great art and journalism to be reduced into units that can be packaged, distributed, and consumed on the internet. Consider Content Goblins as our resistance to that movement. With terrific new art and photography, we're making the case that great reporting is vital and enduring — and worth paying for.

This gorgeous, grotesque magazine can be yours if you commit to an annual subscription to The Verge — while supplies last.

The Guardian reports: People working in the music sector will lose almost a quarter of their income to artificial intelligence within the next four years, according to the first global economic study examining the impact of the emerging technology on human creativity. Those working in the audiovisual sector will also see their income shrink by more than 20% as the market for generative AI grows from €3bn (A$4.9bn) annually to a predicted €64bn by 2028.

The findings were released in Paris on Wednesday by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), representing more than 5 million creators worldwide. The report concluded that while the AI boom will substantially enrich giant tech companies, creators' rights and income streams will be drastically reduced unless policymakers step in...

The study concluded that under current regulatory frameworks in most countries, creators stand to lose on two fronts. Unauthorised use of their works by generative AI models will eat into remuneration earned through copyright, while at the same time work opportunities will shrink as AI-generated outputs become more competitive against human-made works. The report predicted that by 2028, exponential growth in generative AI music would account for about 20% of traditional music streaming platforms' revenues, and about 60% of music libraries' revenues.
The report warned of revenue "derived directly from the unlicensed reproduction of creators' works, representing a transfer of economic value from creators to AI companies," according to the article.

On a hopeful note, it adds that the CISAC's president also applauded Australia and New Zealand for their thoughtful response to the issue. "By setting a gold standard in AI policy, one that protects creators' rights while fostering responsible and innovative technological development, Australia and New Zealand can ensure that AI serves as a tool to enhance human creativity rather than replace it."

Thanks to Slashdodt reader Bruce66423 for sharing the news.

"$15.8 million every 60 seconds. That's how much US consumers spent in two hours on Monday night," reports CNN, "capping off a five-day spending spree that smashed previous records." U.S. consumers spent a total of $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday, up 7.3% from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics... Consumers spent a record $41.1 billion across the five days beginning Thanksgiving Day, according to Adobe. "While Cyber Monday remained the season's and year's biggest online shopping day, year-over-year growth was stronger on both Thanksgiving and Black Friday," Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement... The company's data projects that holiday spending from November 1 to December 31 will surpass $240 billion, up 8.4% from the previous year.

The record sales on Cyber Monday were boosted by US consumers shopping on their mobile devices, which accounted for $7.6 billion in spending. This year, 57% of online sales came through a mobile device, compared to 33% in 2019, as shopping on mobile phones has surged in popularity... Buy now, pay later" programs also contributed nearly $1 billion in spending on Cyber Monday, a record high. About 75% of these types of transactions occurred through a mobile device.

Cyber Monday shopping wasn't just confined to the US, either. Global sales reached $49.7 billion, up 3% from the previous year, according to data from Salesforce.
The top-selling items included consumer electronics like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch OLED, the article points out (adding that "About 78% of all consumer smartphones and 87% of consoles were imported from China in 2023, according to a report from the Consumer Technology Association.")

More interesting statistics from CNN:

• "Discounts on apparel peaked at just over 23% off, while TVs and computers peaked at almost 22% off, according to Adobe. And the discounts might last: Adobe projects discounts of up to 18% off computers through the end of the year... "

• "For US retail sites, the share of revenue from affiliates and partners like social media influencers was 20.3% on Cyber Monday, up almost 7% from the previous year. "

• "Additionally, companies employed AI chatbots to assist consumers, like Amazon's Rufus. Traffic to retail sites from chatbots increased by nearly 2,000% on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe."

The long-running Advent of Code site just entered its 10th year, with 162,809 people completing both of its Day One puzzles (which involve a hunt for the missing historian of the North Pole). But its not the only site offering Christmas-themed programming puzzles:

• Hundreds of SQL lovers are trying the daily challenges from the "Advent of SQL" site.

• You can sign up for daily emails with webdev challenges from the Advent of JavaScript and Advent of CSS sites.

• The "Advent of No-Code" site challenges you to build something new every day using no-code tools like AI-powered dev environments or the social coding site Val Town.

• TryHackMe.com is publishing "beginner-friendly, daily gamified cyber security challenges" in an event they're calling the "Advent of Cyber."

• And Norway's biggest chess club (founded by world champion Magnus Carlsen) has even launched a site with daily chess puzzles called — what else? — Advent of Chess. (It promises at the end of the event someone will win a chessboard signed by Magnus Carlsen).

Walmart said Tuesday it had completed its $2.3 billion all-cash acquisition of TV maker Vizio, a move by the retailing giant to expand its advertising business. From a report: The closing of the deal follows the expiration of the waiting period under federal regulations. Walmart announced the deal to buy Vizio in February 2024. Walmart said the acquisition of Vizio will let it "bring to market new and differentiated ways for advertisers to meaningfully connect with customers at scale and boost product discovery" through Walmart Connect, the company's U.S. retail media business.

Walmart and Vizio will continue to operate separately "for the foreseeable future," according to the announcement. William Wang will continue to lead Vizio as CEO, reporting to Seth Dallaire, executive VP and chief growth officer of Walmart U.S. Vizio, founded in 2002, is a leading vendor of value-priced HDTVs. Its device ecosystem and its smart TV operating system, SmartCast, provide free, ad-supported access to streaming content.

U.S. movie theaters are struggling to attract casual moviegoers, who once made up a significant portion of box office revenues, as shorter theatrical runs and changing consumer habits reshape the industry. The domestic box office, which regularly exceeded $10 billion in annual ticket sales before COVID-19, is expected to reach only $8.5 billion this year.

Films now average 32 days in theaters compared to 80 days pre-pandemic, limiting opportunities for audiences to discover movies spontaneously. Midtier films generating $50-100 million at the box office have become scarcer, particularly in genres like drama and romantic comedy. Theater chains are responding with enhanced experiences and loyalty programs to draw audiences back.

"It's fair to say there is a missing billion dollars that, if we had the right movies, people would be going to see them," said Bruce Nash, founder of movie business site the Numbers, told LA Times. Frequent moviegoers comprise only 12-15% of box office revenue, according to Patrick Corcoran of theater consulting firm Fithian Group.

Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun consumed Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" artwork -- a banana taped to a wall -- during an event in Hong Kong on Friday, declaring "the real value is the concept itself." Sun, founder of cryptocurrency platform Tron, purchased the piece for $6.2 million at Sotheby's last week, significantly above its $1-1.5 million estimate.

The acquisition included only a certificate of authenticity and assembly instructions, not the physical banana or tape. The Chinese-born entrepreneur, who faces SEC charges over fraud and securities violations, made the payment in cryptocurrency.

Nvidia has introduced Fugatto, an AI music editor that can generate never-head-of audio combinations, including instruments mimicking animal sounds.

The tool processes both text and audio inputs to create music, sound effects, and modified speech. The system can isolate vocals, swap instruments, and alter voice characteristics.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Past corporate-sponsored Hour of Code tutorials for the nation's schoolchildren have blurred the lines between coding lessons and product infomercials. So too is the case again with this year's newly-announced Hour of Code 2024 flagship tutorials, which include Microsoft Minecraft, Amazon Music, and Transformers One movie-themed intros to coding. The press release announcing the tutorials from tech-backed nonprofit Code.org, which organizes the Hour of Code and counts Microsoft and Amazon as $30+ million donors, boasts of its "decade of partnership with [Microsoft] Minecraft this year, reaching more than 300 million sessions of Minecraft Hour of Code since 2015!"

Interestingly, The Transformers (Paramount Pictures, which released Transformers One in the U.S., is a $25,000+ Code.org donor) is cited as one of the OG's of children's Saturday morning cartoon advertising (aka 30-minute commercials) that prompted the Children's Television Act (CTA) of 1990, an act of Congress that ordered the FCC to put in place regulations to protect children from advertising. Throughout the 1980s, Action for Children's Television (ACT) criticized children's television programs that "blur(red) the distinction between program content and commercial speech."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Plex is beginning to test its "newly reimagined Plex experience," which will be available first on mobile and is coming to TV platforms "very soon." Plex says the new experience has been in development for almost two years and is "designed to bring everything you love into one seamless interface." But don't worry -- while the new version of the app is currently missing some features, Plex says it will be "closing those gaps" and will keep the current app available during the preview, which will hopefully prevent a Sonos-like debacle.

A big change for the new app is redesigned navigation that more clearly delineates between media you might have on your Plex server and the company's streaming and on-demand offerings. The bottom bar has dedicated tabs for your media libraries, live TV, and on-demand movies and shows. The Watchlist, which lets you make a list of things you want to watch, has a spot at the top of the app. And artwork is shown more prominently.

The Trade Desk, one of the largest publicly traded advertising technology companies in the world, is building a connected television operating system. Axios reports: Existing OS providers, like Roku, Amazon's Fire TV and Google's Android TV, have a conflict of interest because they own content, [CEO and founder Jeff Green] said. Green believes that conflict of interest has muddled the advertising ecosystem for everyone. "We're looking at a concentration around a handful of players that lack objectivity," Green said. "We think we're in a unique position to make the ecosystem better." [...]

Ventura, a nod to the company's headquarters in Ventura, California, will be rolled out to the market in the second half of 2025, Green said. The company has been working to build the system quietly for three years. While some OS developers, such as Google, Amazon and Roku, have also developed their own hardware devices to service their operating systems, Green said The Trade Desk has "no intention of getting into the hardware business." Rather, it will partner with other hardware companies, such as smart TV manufacturers, as well as various television distributors, such as airlines, hotel chains, and gaming companies, to bring its OS to their devices.

Green believes hardware companies will be excited about the opportunity to partner because, in a competitive streaming environment, more hardware companies will need to build advertising businesses to scale. [...] Because The Trade Desk's goal is ultimately to improve a murky marketplace, Green said he isn't looking to make money from the OS directly. Ventura will be successful if it drives more pricing transparency and stronger measurement for the CTV advertising ecosystem writ large, he said. "Ultimately, the measure of success will be, do we have an ad auction that is so transparent that we can predict outcomes?" The Trade Desk will benefit financially from a more transparent ecosystem because it lacks a conflict of interest, Green said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Who up missing Musi?" a Reddit user posted in a community shocked by the free music streaming app's sudden removal from Apple's App Store in September. Apple kicked Musi out of the App Store after receiving several copyright complaints. Musi works by streaming music from YouTube -- seemingly avoiding paying to license songs -- and YouTube was unsurprisingly chief among those urging Apple to stop allowing the alleged infringement.

Musi was previously only available through the App Store. Once Musi was removed from the App Store, anyone who downloaded Musi could continue using the app uninterrupted. But if the app was ever off-loaded during an update or if the user got a new phone, there would be no way to regain access to their Musi app or their playlists. Some Musi fans only learned that Apple booted Musi after they updated their phones, and the app got offloaded with no option to re-download. Panicked, these users turned to the Musi subreddit for answers, where Musi's support staff has consistently responded with reassurances that Musi is working to bring the app back to the App Store. For many Musi users learning from others' mistakes, the Reddit discussions leave them with no choice but to refuse to update their phones or risk losing their favorite app. The app may remain unavailable for several months as the litigation unfolds. "After Apple gave in to the pressure, Musi sued (PDF) in October, hoping to quickly secure an injunction that would force Apple to reinstate Musi in the App Store until the copyright allegations were decided," reports Ars. "But a hearing on that motion isn't scheduled until January, making it appear unlikely that Musi will be available again to download until sometime next year."

Further reading: Google, Apple Drive 'Black Box' IP Policing with App Store Rules

Comcast plans to spin off several of its cable TV networks into a standalone company as it shifts focus to streaming and other profitable ventures like Peacock, theme parks, and broadband services. The Associated Press reports: Those one-time stars for Comcast's NBCUniversal cable television networks include USA, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel, as well as CNBC and MSNBC. Movie ticketing platform Fandango and the Rotten Tomatoes movie rating site would also become part of the new company. Peacock will remain with Comcast, as will Bravo, which provides significant content for the Peacock streaming service.

Comcast telegraphed the potential shift last month as it released quarterly earnings before confirming Wednesday that it will spin off assets that generated about $7 billion in revenue over he past 12 months ending September 30. That's about 5.5% of Comcast's total revenue during that period, according to the company. But there is a shrinking pool of cable subscribers as millions cut the cord and rely increasingly on streaming platforms for entertainment.

Mark Lazarus, current chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group, will serve as the new entity's chief executive officer. Anand Kini, the current chief financial officer of NBCUniversal, will take on the same title with the new company as well as the chief operating officer role. [...] Comcast expects the new company to have the financial flexibility to be "a potential partner and acquirer of other complementary media businesses." The spin-off is targeted for completion in about a year, the entertainment giant said, pending financing and approval from its board and government regulators. "Like millions of US consumers, Comcast finally cut the cord by divesting itself of most of its cable TV channels," said Paul Verna, principal analyst at market research company eMarketer. "The benefits are clear to Comcast. It's dropping money-losing assets from a technology and media empire that will retain its lucrative (internet service provider) business, theme parks, broadcast networks, and Peacock streaming service."

According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple plans to license some of its Apple TV+ content to competing services in an effort to save money and spread its reach. From the report: Apple has hired an executive to license its original productions to other companies, a strategy designed to increase sales from its film business and improve the visibility of its content. [...] Apple is focused on licensing its movies to other companies, such as foreign TV networks and stores, where viewers can rent or buy them, according to a person familiar with the plans. The company isn't planning to license its original TV shows to third parties. (At least not yet.)"

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and services boss Eddy Cue have pushed the team overseeing Apple TV+ to lower costs, improve the financial performance of the service and deliver more hits. The company has spent billions of dollars on original films and TV shows and has received strong reviews and praise from critics. Yet few of its titles have attracted a large audience and its streaming service doesn't make money. Apple has already started selling TV+ via Amazon in a bid to increase the audience for the service. Licensing to third parties will generate additional revenue and introduce Apple movies to people who don't yet pay for TV+. Since Apple TV+ launched in 2019, Apple has spent over $20 billion to build a library of original content. Yet, the streaming service only garnered 0.3 percent of U.S. screen viewing time in June 2024, according to Nielsen. "Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day," wrote Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw in July.

Ars Technica notes that Apple is estimated to have 25 million subscribers, making it "one of the smallest mainstream streaming services."