Comcast's NBC Sports Group and AEG are jointly rolling out NBC Sports Pub Pass. It's a customizable over-the-top platform aimed at the U.S. pub and restaurant market. It will feature soccer, rugby and cycling content, including content not seen on linear TV, Comcast said.

A Strategy Analytics report analyzing ratings and reviews for Pandora and Spotify said consumers are more satisfied with Spotify than Pandora, but Spotify customers are three times more likely to be frustrated by customer service issues than Pandora's. The analysis of more than 2,100 online U.S. reviews showed consumers rated Spotify 4.07 out of five stars, 3.54 for Pandora. Issues with the app or software drove most consumer dissatisfaction, and there were far more for Pandora consumers, said SA, noting both services’ apps had received recent updates. Changing the user experience made Spotify harder for users to navigate, said SA analyst Kevin Nolan, and Pandora users reported that the app “no longer worked properly.” Pandora users “are more likely to switch to Spotify,” it said: Pandora users mentioning Spotify in their reviews were “far more negative towards Pandora” than Spotify users mentioning Pandora. The report, which examined more than 500 of the services’ two- and one-star reviews, found more than half of negative reviews involved a poor app experience.

College students have another cut-rate streaming music option, with SiriusXM the latest service to offer favorable pricing for on-demand music. SiriusXM’s $4 monthly Student Premier package, 69 percent off the regular price, combines commercial-free music with Personalized Stations Powered by Pandora, SiriusXM Video, college conference channels, sports, comedy, news and entertainment channels. Subscribers can listen on a mobile phone or tablet, laptop, streaming media players, Xbox, PlayStation and Amazon Alexa-powered devices, it said. Earlier this month, Amazon announced (see 1908060054) Prime Student members can get its Music Unlimited service for 99 cents a month, in addition to the $6.49 monthly Prime fee. Spotify’s $4.99 monthly Premium Student sub includes Showtime and Hulu; its management attributed lower-than-expected Q2 subscriber adds to a marketing miss, saying the student program had “no awareness.”

Hardware could play a pivotal role in streaming music’s next phase of growth, blogged Futuresource Tuesday. With music streaming reaching mass adoption in numerous markets, its next frontier is to win over radio and casual listeners who have been slower to convert to streaming due to price, convenience and awareness, said analyst Alexandre Jornod. To awaken the “massive passive” market segment, a “seamless device” that replicates the accessibility and simplicity of radio will be an important part of the transition, Jornod said. Older consumers tend to own a smart speaker before a streaming subscription, he said, which highlights smart speakers as “a key driver of streaming subscriptions, especially in age groups with traditionally slower music streaming adoption.” That means Spotify, recently surpassed in listeners in the U.S. market by Apple, will continue to have to rely on partnerships with smart speaker makers to grow its listener base vs. competitors Amazon and Google, which add free versions of their music services to their Echo and Google Home smart speakers, said the analyst. Although Apple has HomePod, it has grown its streaming music business by making Apple Music the default streaming app on the iPhone: in the four markets where Apple Music is estimated to have over 3 million subscribers -- the U.S., U.K., Canada and Japan -- Apple has at least 30 percent of the smartphone market, Jornod noted. An estimated 50 million Echo speakers are in use, and a recent Futuresource survey indicated Echo owners are three times more likely to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited than other respondents: music is a core smart speaker activity and Amazon is able to upsell users directly on the device. Google, meanwhile, has been leveraging its Google Home devices and Pixel phones to snare YouTube Music subscribers by offering six free months of the service.

A week after announcing a partnership bringing on-demand Spotify to premium-tier AT&T Wireless customers (see 1908050032), Spotify said it's partnering with Bango to broaden access to mobile customers worldwide. The partnership will allow millions of customers to choose a Spotify subscription to be bundled with their mobile plan, or as a “bolt-on,” the companies said Tuesday. Bango’s Resale technology allows Spotify to reach new customers, and its data insights will help target specific customers with offers to generate higher customer adoption, they said. Resale distribution partners, such as communications companies, “find these value-added bundles keep their customers loyal and attract new, higher value customers,” said Bango.

Pay-TV providers with 93 percent of the market lost 1.5 million net video subscribers in Q2, vs. a net loss of about 420,000 subscribers in the year-ago quarter, reported Leichtman Research Group Monday. Over the past year, top pay-TV providers had a net loss of about 5 million vs. a loss of about 1 million a year earlier, it said. Only Sling TV had subscriber gains in Q2, with 48,000, while DirecTV Now lost 168,000. The top seven cable companies lost about 455,000 video subscribers vs. about 275,000, more than any quarter since Q2 2014, LRG said. Satellite TV services continued to lead all categories with subscriber losses of about 855,000, vs. a net loss of 480,000; DirecTV lost 778,000 for its fifth consecutive quarterly loss, said the researcher. The top phone providers lost about 100,000 video subscribers vs. a loss of about 45,000 subscribers. Top providers reported 86.6 million subscribers: seven cable companies had 46.5 million video subscribers, satellite TV services reported 27.5 million, phone companies 8.8 million and the top publicly reporting vMVPD pay-TV services had 3.8 million, it said.

If or when there's a Viacom/CBS deal, the combined company would be the second-largest player in U.S. TV advertising, wrote MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson in a note to investors Friday. Churn at Showtime and CBS All Access could be reduced and usage increased with the addition of Paramount's film library and Nickelodeon content, he said. The CBS/Paramount production asset would become a serious competitor to Disney, Comcast, AT&T and Netflix, he said. The combined company could reap faster affiliate fee growth with Viacom benefiting "from the big stick of the CBS Broadcast Network," he said.

Viacom's Q3 revenue was up 6 percent in what CEO Bob Bakish said was the long-promised return to advertising sales growth. In a call with analysts Thursday, he said domestic ad sales grew for the first time in 20 quarters, "a significant milestone." He said Viacom will launch BET Plus this fall, a streaming service featuring a variety of original content, in partnership with producer/director/actor Tyler Perry. He said its Pluto TV streaming service has grown from 12 million active monthly users at the start of the year to 18 million in July, and user growth should continue as Viacom broadens distribution and content. Chief Financial Officer Wade Davis said Paramount is on track for full-year profitability, its first since 2015. Asked about Disney Plus competition to Nickelodeon, Bakish said Disney pricing "does look very competitive," but Viacom's strategy is to play in the various price points from free to big, more-expensive bundles. It didn't take questions on a possible Viacom/CBS deal. Viacom said revenue for the quarter was $3.36 billion, up from $3.24 billion last year.

The CBS All Access streaming subscription VOD and livestreaming service will add children's programming to its library starting later this year, including some original programming, CBS said Thursday. The broadcaster also said its CBSN Local, its set of local streaming news services, will accelerate rollout in the 13 major U.S. markets where CBS TV Stations has local news operations. CBSN New York launched in December, CBSN Los Angeles in June, with Boston and Bay Area services to roll out this year. CBS said Thursday it will launch CBSN in remaining markets in early 2020. Those markets are Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, Miami, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

The National Association of Attorneys General urged streaming services to protect young viewers from tobacco imagery in video content. In a letter released Wednesday, 43 state and territory AGs said the companies should eliminate or exclude tobacco imagery in future original streamed content for young viewers; designate as such tobacco-free content for all ages; allow controls to restrict access to content with tobacco imagery, regardless of rating; and stream “strong anti-smoking and/or anti-vaping Public Service Announcements, as appropriate, before all content with tobacco imagery.” The letters were sent to 13 companies, including Amazon.com, Comcast, Discovery, Google and Viacom, NAAG said. The companies didn't comment.