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Welcome to Screentime

Screentime
Bloomberg

Good morning from Los Angeles, wherever you may be, and welcome to a special midweek edition of this newsletter. In case you didn't notice, it's got a new name: Screentime, which is also the name of Bloomberg's new reporting project covering the future of entertainment.

Every week, we're going to push out a bunch of stories about the people, companies and ideas reshaping the way we fill our days (especially now that we're homebound). 

I started what became Hollywood Torrent when I was a 20-something working for TheWrap, enthusiastic enough to notice the forces that were going to reshape the entertainment business. Almost a decade later, rapid change is the norm. 

But don't take it from me, take it from John Fraher, the senior executive editor at Bloomberg in charge of business, energy, finance and legal (among other things):

You are looking at one of the biggest business opportunities of modern times.

The pixelated screen — the smartphone in your hand, the tablet in your kid's bedroom, your boring old TV set — has become the vehicle for a turbocharged entertainment business that is now worth $2.1 trillion and getting bigger all the time.

As the internet speeds up, it is the battleground where movie studios, tech giants, music labels and video game designers are vying for your attention — and your money.

The next few years will bring an explosion of new content as 5G reaches maturity. The streaming wars between Disney, Apple, Netflix and others are just getting going. Asia is leading a surge in gaming — a business that eclipsed Hollywood years ago. And there will be a host of other technologies and genres that will transform entertainment in the years to come: virtual reality, OTT streaming and the booming podcast business, among others.

These trends are being accelerated by the coronavirus lockdown, which has turned the world into a captive audience, desperate for distraction. We are streaming more movies, playing more Fortnite-style battle royales and watching more online fitness gurus than ever before. The quarantine era has created its first celebrity in Joe Exotic from the Netflix hit "Tiger King." And many old-school stars, deprived of their red carpets and stages, are desperately trying to stay relevant on social media, sometimes with cringeworthy results.

In short, the business of entertainment is changing faster than ever before.

And so welcome to Screentime, our attempt to capture this great disruption.

Screentime will leverage Bloomberg's global newsroom of 2,700 reporters and analysts to bring you stories, podcasts, newsletters and videos from all over the world. We will tell you about the winners and losers in the great race to monetize our time and attention. Wherever there is entertainment there is also hype, and we will deconstruct that where we see it. We will ask whether we are seeing one of the great bubbles of our era as entertainment moguls pour billions of dollars into content.

Perhaps most importantly, who will pay for all these shows and streaming subscriptions as the world enters a wrenching economic downturn?

In the next week we will bring your stories about how the lockdown era is changing entertainment as we know it, as well as articles about gaming in India and Roblox, a sort of online playpen for America's kids. And of course, we will cover NBCUniversal's big move into streaming with the initial rollout of its Peacock service tomorrow.

Walt Disney, who practically invented the idea of cross-platform entertainment, once hesitated to describe his work as an "art." "It's part of show business," he reportedly said, "the business of building entertainment."

That is what Screentime will chronicle. We hope you enjoy it.

Bad Bunny is the biggest pop star in the world

One of Screentime's new features is the Pop Star Power Rankings, a new chart that measures the rise and fall of the world's most in-demand musicians.

Every month, we'll publish a list of the 25 biggest pop stars in the world, as determined by six criteria: ticket sales, concert grosses, album sales, Spotify streams, Instagram interactions and YouTube views.

The big winner in month one is Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper who was the most popular artist on Spotify and YouTube last month.

You can see the top three below. For more, please check out the full rankings.

Five stories you shouldn't miss

Nintendo's Animal Crossing Is the Biggest Hit of the Lockdown

The new version of the video game franchise is the unqualified success of the coronavirus era.

After Coronavirus, Entertainment Will Never be the Same

The pandemic is revealing pressure points across the industry as consumers are left with more time than money to spend on content.

Quibi to Let People Watch on TV Sets After Viewers Complain

With viewers quarantined at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, many users complained about being limited to small screens.

'What's Netflix?' High Culture Fans Embrace the New Mass Medium

Older ballet and opera lovers deprived of their high-culture fix because of shuttered theaters and concert halls are taking the plunge into video streaming for the first time.

How Coronavirus Changed the Way We Watch, Listen and Play

We're listening to less music, streaming more video — and prime time no longer exists.

Weekly playlist

Spotify's "Legacy of Laurel Canyon" playlist is a pretty good way to relax these days.

 

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.

 

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