Holiday Season!
Spotify is leaning even further into the world of podcasts—and getting access to a treasure trove of listener data in the process. The audio company announced on Tuesday that it’s acquiring Megaphone, one of the biggest podcast hosting companies that helps advertisers target specific audience segments across various podcasts. And obviously, where there is user segmentation, there’s user data. Personally, Spotify is one company that I’m cool with giving my data to—I listen to my Spotify-curated Discover Weekly playlist every week and can’t wait until I get to see the end of year data they share, from my Top 2020 songs playlist to how many hours of music I’ve listened to this past year. I’m definitely curious to see how this style of personalization extends into podcasts in the very near future.
AMC is going nationwide with its private theater rental program. Movie lovers can rent out a screen at one of AMC’s 600 screening rooms nationwide for as many as 20 people. After testing the program in beta, the exhibitor saw 110,000 inquiries around the country. It’s showing recent titles like TENET for $149 and old classics like SHREK for $99. If you ask me, seeing SHREK on the big screen sounds like an absolute dream, and it’s cool to see theaters getting innovative in their quest to survive this pandemic.
Lil Nas X is making a comeback almost two years after his genre-mashing EP went insanely viral and Old Town Road was all we heard anywhere and everywhere—for months. He’s had a chill, very Gen-Z-feeling approach to promoting upcoming music, as he’s been teasing upcoming singles on Twitter for months (this one in particular seems like it’s going to be a bop). He’s finally officially putting out a new album, and his newest single “Holiday” came out today. He’ll be promoting the song with a virtual live concert experience with Roblox, a global gaming company, on Saturday.
Two of the best TikToks I saw this week were this video from one of my favorite series where a man asks strangers what happiness means to them, and this video of a girl discovering an extra, err, roommate living in her ceiling.
—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant
