Strategy in TECH...
Tidal Music AS (Tidal) has announced that users “will no longer be able to access music in the MQA or 360 Reality Audio formats via any TIDAL application or integration.” So that’s that…MQA is done and gone…as of July 24, 2024. The company says it will replace all MQA tracks with “the highest quality FLAC version” available.
On Tuesday, Emerald Holding, Inc. [NYSE: EEX], aka Emerald Expositions, a national B2B tradeshow company, reported its financial results for the First Quarter of Fiscal 2024. Emerald, as most Strata-gee readers know, is the owner of the CEDIA Expo show, the Total Tech Summit show, and various publishing entities like CE Pro, Custom Integrator and more.
The consolidated results looked pretty good, but one business unit was a decided under-performer. Can you guess which one? Read on…
Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE: EEX), the parent company of Emerald Expositions, one of the country’s largest B2B tradeshow exposition companies, reported its Fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and full-year results. The results were mixed with full-year revenues growing by 17.5% compared to Fiscal 2022, but profits collapsing by 102% to a Net Loss.
Company management expressed extreme optimism on a call with financial analysts, but its stock value dropped dramatically the day it released these numbers.
In what may be another sign of the post-pandemic blues, data published this week by research firm Antenna showed that growth in streaming service subscriptions in the U.S. dropped by 50% in 2023. Some are saying the boom in streaming is over…or could it be an over-adjustment that will correct itself and return to growth again soon?
The Nikkei is reporting a robust revival in Japan of sales of prerecorded analog cassette tapes, a format once thought dead and gone. Now, the report says, the humble cassette tape “is experiencing a renaissance, charming a new generation of music enthusiasts with its nostalgic appearance and distinctly warm and rich sound.”
Walmart announced Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Vizio, the high-value TV maker, for $11.50/share in an all-cash deal worth a total of $2.3 billion. Walmart announced the acquisition as part of its highly positive and optimistic presentation of the retailer’s fourth-quarter earnings. Walmart stock popped on the earnings report, more encouraged by its forward optimism of more growth rather than on the acquisition itself.
But Walmart plans to have this acquisition drive profit growth going forward.
Canada’s The Lenbrook Group announced today that it has spun off its digital media and content-related businesses as a separate unit, independent of its hardware brands. The new unit will be known as The Lenbrook Media Group and is to be headed by former MQA Ltd. CEO Mike Jbara.
Spotify Technology, S.A. announced that it will lay off approximately 1,500 employees, or about 17% of its entire staff. The company says the cuts are necessary to adjust operations for a very different operating environment than it anticipated when it built staff to drive growth in 2020 during the pandemic.
These are not its first layoffs in 2023…
Some of you may know that I health walk most mornings. I am always listening to something during these walks, which average 2-3 miles a day. Often, I’m listening to music. (Did you know that I was formerly a professional musician?) But I also listen to several different podcasts, and today I want to share with you one that I enjoy and I think you will too. That podcast is Audio Unleashed.
Well it’s the time of Auld Lang Syne as we say farewell to 2022 and look forward with anxious anticipation for 2023. It was a consequential year of stories for our industry in 2022, and we’ll go over the top stories on Strata-gee this year.
