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TOGETHER WITH |
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It's Friday and if you were sentient during the early '00s, you probably remember Napster as a rebellious music sharing app for the masses. Well, now it's back…and it wants you to make AI music. |
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Today's News |
📱 Paramount+ embraces short-form 👊 Patreon clashes with Apple ✉️ Google sends a cease-and-desist 🎯 YouTube takes aim at slop channels 💬 Spotify gets group chats
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SHORT-FORM FRENZY |
 | Another streaming platform wants you to watch vertically. |
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Paramount+ really wants to make short-form happen |
The short-form push: Paramount Skydance reportedly plans to go toe-to-toe with Netflix and Disney+ by adding short-form content to its flagship streamer Paramount+. |
According to internal documents obtained by Business Insider, Paramount+ Head of Global Product and Design Dan Reich emailed fellow Paramount Skydance execs earlier this month to set up a meeting with Paramount's Product Chief Dane Glasgow. |
The subject of that meeting: |
"We are trying to figure out how to jump-start efforts to get a million clips into our Short Form UX as quickly as possible." | | | | - Paramount+ Head of Global Product and Design Dan Reich |
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As his email suggests, Reich and his team aren't wasting any time: Paramount+'s ~80 million subscribers will reportedly begin seeing short-form content on its mobile app in the first quarter of this year. Initially, that content will be clips from Paramount's various properties. |
The context: Paramount's interest in short-form doesn't come as much of a surprise. Once TikTok began dominating in 2020, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and more all introduced their own copycats of it. Now, streaming services are jumping on the same bandwagon. |
Within the last two weeks alone, execs from both Disney and Netflix have unveiled plans to add or expand short-form in their own streaming services. A short-form feed is set to roll out to Disney+ later this year, while Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told investors that his company hopes clips will help promote its upcoming programming. |
Paramount itself has already posted hundreds of clips on its YouTube channel, where it has 2 million subscribers and attracts ~60 million views per month. In order to get people to watch its short-form content on Paramount+, however, the company will first have to entice them to pay $9-14/month in subscription fees. |
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An expanded creator economy program will bring Spotify and Snap to the main stage at MIP London |
The creator economy is coming to MIP London. |
From February 22-24, an expanded Creator Economy programme will bring key players at the intersection of digital content and platforms to the international media market's main stage. |
Here are three sessions you won't want to miss: |
"The Year of Change or Die" (Tuesday, February 24)
Drawing on exclusive new data, media cartographer and provocateur Evan Shapiro will use his "data filled crystal ball" to show where the television business is headed next. |
"Talent as a Shortcut: How Community-led IP Scales Across Platforms" (Monday, February 23)
Explore the central role of creators in driving audience growth, format development, and monetization with executives from Snap Inc., Spotify, and leading pan-European digital studio and talent agency We Are Era. |
"Building Sustainable Growth in Creator-Led Content" (Tuesday, February 24)
This in-depth discussion will be led by a full roundtable of industry experts, including Helen O'Donnell (BBC Talentworks), Molly Lyy (Head of Creator Management, EMEA, Patreon) and Kristina Petrova (VP Platform Operations and Digital Rights, We Are Era). |
Thousands of digital media professionals and 550+ buyers will head to London next month for three days of first-look screenings, one-on-one networking, and expert-led sessions. |
Will you be at MIP London 2026? |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
 | Patreon's homepage shares empowering messages with creators. Apple has its own ideas. |
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INDUSTRY BUZZ |
 | Barb was tracking YouTube viewership on British TVs. The apples-to-apples comparison didn't last for long. |
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Google has issued a cease-and-desist against the firms measuring YouTube like TV |
The cease-and-desist: Last July, U.K.-based measurement nonprofit Barb announced a new form of ratings designed for YouTube content. Rather than counting raw metrics like views—which are hard to compare against TV traffic—Barb teamed up with market research company Kantar Media to measure YouTube the way Nielsen measures TV. |
That system, informed by audience panels that track YouTube activity within individual households, quickly delivered some telling results. That is, until Google issued a cease-and-desist order against Barb and Kantar Media, forcing them to suspend their innovative ratings system. |
According to The Financial Times, Google brass expressed doubt about the accuracy of the ratings—but that's not actually the stated reason why the cease-and-desist letter was sent. Google claimed that the ratings breached YouTube's terms of service by mishandling creator content, in large part because Kantar Media used "audio-matching automatic content recognition" to determine which YouTube channels panel members were watching on their TV screens. That, according to Google, constituted a misuse of the YouTube API. |
The paradox: Google's decision might be technically sound, but it still seems a bit contradictory. Inexact measurement systems have been a major roadblock in YouTube's efforts to position itself as a realistic alternative to traditional TV networks. One would think, then, that YouTube and its parent company would be all for new measurement solutions (even if they do play a bit fast and loose with the rules of API usage). Advertisers aren't happy about the sudden switch-up. |
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PLATFORM UPDATES |
 | AI is looking awfully sloppy these days. (Photo credit: Andrei Dodonii via Getty Images) |
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YouTube has banned some slop channels. Can it stay ahead of "low quality AI content"? |
The crackdown: YouTube is making good on its pledge to reduce the amount of AI slop on its platform. According to a report from video editing software company Kapwing, at least 18 channels known for publishing AI slop have been either deleted or had their videos hidden. |
Those hubs include some of the most popular producers of AI slop. CuentosFacianantes—which uploaded content that Kapwing described as "low-quality Dragon Ball-themed videos"—amassed more than 1.2 billion views before disappearing from YouTube. Another seemingly deleted channel, Imperio de Jesus, cracked our Global Top 50 ranking amid a wave of religious AI slop. |
The background: For a while, AI slop channels of this kind were allowed to operate with relative impunity as long as they didn't flagrantly break YouTube's rules. In 2025, however, Hollywood studios became implicated in the mounting deluge of slop, and advertisers threatened to pull dollars from YouTube unless a thorough cleanup occurred. |
The platform responded by vowing to limit the monetization of unoriginal and repetitive content, and CEO Neal Mohan reiterated the importance of that crackdown in an open letter he authored at the start of 2026: |
"To reduce the spread of low quality AI content, we're actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait..." | | | | - Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO |
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At the same time, however, Mohan also discussed the AI-powered products YouTube plans to roll out in 2026—and therein lies the rub. AI has become an inescapable force on YouTube, with Google's Veo engine itself capable of generating videos that are almost indistinguishable from creator content. With a product like that available to the masses, is it even possible for YouTube to effectively combat the onslop of AI? |
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WATCH THIS 👀 |
 | Spotify wants in on DMs, too. |
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Spotify is introducing group chats |
The update: Group messaging is coming to Spotify. |
In an update to an August 2025 blog post introducing the rollout of its one-on-one Messages feature, Spotify announced that users can now "share the podcasts, playlists, and audiobooks you're listening to with up to 10 friends and family members per chat." (That reveal and an accompanying video are tucked away at the very bottom of the post, so you'll have to do some scrolling to find them.) |
Spotify's big Messages update reflects a larger industry trend that has seen one of its top podcasting rivals—YouTube—dip its own toes back into the world of DMs. Will Google's video platform be the next to embrace group chats? |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. |
