Despite Facebook efforts to promote it, the company's ad-supported Watch on-demand video service is gaining only modest traction, The Diffusion Group said Tuesday. It said its survey of 1,632 adult Facebook users about their awareness and use of the Watch tab found half hadn't heard of the video service and 24 percent have heard of it but never used it. It said 14 percent of those surveyed use Watch at least weekly, and 6 percent at least once a day. TDG said despite the slow build of Watch, Facebook still has big long-term potential as a large-scale video provider and Watch was never intended to generate massive audiences.

Yamaha unveiled the XDA-QS5400RK multiroom streaming amplifier for the custom channel as part of its MusicCast line. The rack-mountable amps deliver four zones of streaming audio into eight channels, and can send audio to AV receivers, sound bars and hi-fi gear, said the company. The amps can be daisy-chained for up to 32 zones, it said. Supported streaming services are Spotify, Pandora, SiriusXM Internet Radio, SiriusXM Music for Business, Tidal, Deezer and Napster. Devices such as TVs and turntables connected to MusicCast receivers and sound bars can be linked to QS zones for simultaneous playback, Yamaha said, and analog sources can connect directly to the Aux input on the QS for access in any zone. A “cut-in” input is able to automatically sense an input signal and temporarily override a selected source to enable integration of media players, CD changers and paging systems into a multi-zone audio system, it said. Release date for the QS is November at $2,699, Yamaha said.

Growing virtual MVPD services like Sling TV and DirecTV Now helped mitigate some subscriber defections of traditional MVPDs in Q2, Kagan said Thursday. Cable, direct broadcast satellite and telcos lost 860,640 video subscribers, for 89.4 million residential customers and 92.2 million overall. DBS had its second-largest quarterly decline, at 478,000. AT&T's DirecTV Now and Dish Networks affiliate Sling TV numbers cut overall quarterly subscription losses about 45 percent and raised the residential figure to 93.5 million. Residential MVPD penetration is 75 percent, when including Sling TV and DirecTV Now. The quarter had the second largest Q2 video subscriber drop for cable since 2015, bringing year-to-date losses to 685,790. Telco video losses improved, with the industry losing 56,000 subs, a fraction of its typical quarterly losses the past two years. Others have also said vMVPDs offset some traditional MVPD customer losses (see 1808150010).

Gracenote announced a new mobile video analytics tool designed to give MVPDs, video streaming services and hardware makers visibility into the performance of mobile video streaming applications and how it affects user behavior, attitudes and engagement with their platforms and those of competitors. The tool analyzes the impact of video resolution, startup time and buffering on subscriber experience and satisfaction; provides metrics on how, when and where viewers tune in and for how long; and gives reasons mobile users subscribe or disengage from specific streaming services, including pricing feedback, it said. In cases of low user engagement, the Gracenote analytics can leverage passive video tests and survey responses to map user behavior and identify the cause of disengagement and churn, said the company. It also shows wireless providers areas of network congestion to help determine whether they need to add capacity to improve user experience, Gracenote said.

While traditional pay-TV operators continue to lose subscribers, it's likely that if virtual MVPD subscriber numbers were available and counted, pay-TV subs increased in Q2, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged. Moderating pay-TV subscriber losses would be uplifting news for programmers, many of which are cheering the rise of vMVPDs, he said: Those same content companies undoubtedly "will show no restraint" when seeking price increases from vMVPDs and are all busy building direct-to-consumer offerings in anticipation of "the pay TV party ... com[ing] to an end." Another Tuesday report also said over-the-top viewers are watching more vMVPD content (see 1808140014 or 1808140011).

More than a billion connected TV devices are in use worldwide, said Strategy Analytics Monday, citing smart TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles and digital media streamers. Smart TVs are 60 percent of the installed base of connected video devices, it said. Samsung has caught up with Sony at the top of the pack of connected TV device units and is poised to take the lead this half due to its dominant position in smart TVs, said analyst David Mercer. Companies such as Roku have built successful businesses selling dedicated streaming devices as consumer preference for viewing and engaging with TV content shifts, said analyst David Watkins. SA expects more than 55 million digital media streamers to ship globally this year, along with more than 150 million-plus smart TVs.

Launching the Disney-branded direct-to-consumer service late next year will be “the biggest priority of the company during calendar 2019,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger on a Tuesday earnings call. The “first priority” with the new service will be “reaching the core Disney fan, and we certainly have a number of different company touch points to do that,” he said. Though still in the “early days” of the launch of the ESPN+ direct-to-consumer service, “conversion rates from free trials to paid subscriptions are strong and subscription growth is exceeding our expectations,” said Iger. Disney had “relatively modest expectations” going into the ESPN+ launch,” he said in Q&A when pressed for specific subscription numbers. “I'm not going to be specific on numbers. We're just not ready to get into that.” The company is “heartened by the fact that the conversion rates from free to pay have been quite strong and the trends that we're seeing in terms of churn are modest in nature in the sense that they're manageable,” he said. “We feel really good about how we are positioned and we'll continue to look opportunistically in terms of what rights will be available,” he said. “A lot of the rights in sports are already spoken for,” but there are still “opportunities to take some of the rights that we already own for the ESPN primary channels and move them along” to ESPN+, he said.

Warner Music Group’s streaming revenue grew 22 percent in Q3 ended June 30 and now accounts for 56 percent of total sales, said CEO Steve Cooper on a Tuesday earnings call. WMG’s streaming revenue is three times that of physical media and seven times that of downloads, he said. The company will credit to artists’ royalty checks in August and September $126 million of the $504 million in proceeds it collected when it sold its equity in Spotify, said Cooper. That’s in keeping with the policy WMG established in February 2016 when it became the “first major” to share “proceeds from equity in streaming services” with its artists, he said. “The overall record-music picture remains encouraging,” Cooper said. For the first half of calendar year 2018, music consumption was up 18 percent in the U.S. and up 6 percent in the U.K., he said. “Streaming revenue recently overtook physical for the first time in Germany, and in Japan, streaming is beginning to gain traction, with digital revenue up 13 percent in the first quarter.” Apple and Spotify “continue to grow their global subscriber numbers,” and Amazon and YouTube are “both off to a great start” with their premium streaming services, he said. “This increased competition is good news for our business, and we’re happy to see other large tech companies, such as Facebook, begin to recognize the true value that music brings to their platforms.”

Numerous music labels are suing a pair of sites that convert video or audio streaming on YouTube into mp3 files, seeking to have the "stream ripping" sites shut down. In the docket 18-cv-00957-CMH-TCB complaint (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, and posted Monday, the plaintiffs said sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com induce and facilitate copyright violation by the sites' users as well as violate YouTube's terms of service. They said the two sites combined have close to 120 million visitors a month. The plaintiffs include Capitol Records, Warner Bros. Records and Sony Music Entertainment. The suit seeks an injunction against the operators of those sites, surrender of the domain names and statutory damages. The sites didn't comment Tuesday.

Few companies are more “uniquely positioned” than CBS “to profit from the explosion of premium content” on over-the-top and direct-to-consumer services, said CEO Leslie Moonves on a Thursday afternoon earnings call. The call was his first since the CBS board voted the previous day to hire outside counsel to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Moonves (see the personals section of this publication). Adam Townsend, executive vice president-corporate finance, at the top of the call put off limits any discussion or Q&A about the allegations or investigation. “In light of any litigation and other matters, and on the advice of counsel,” said Townsend, “the scope of today’s call and any questions will be limited to the quarterly results of the company.” OTT services “are becoming mainstream,” and CBS has its “own, well-established platforms growing right along with consumer demand,” said Moonves. The network’s previous goal was by 2020 to have 8 million subscribers combined for its two “cornerstone” services, CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, he said. CBS is now on pace to reach that milestone in 2019, so the network is upping its forecast to 16 million subscribers by 2022, he said. “In other words, we plan to double our original goal in just two additional years, and that doesn’t even include the subs we’re just beginning to get internationally.”