Variety
Legendary Digital, with brands like Nerdist and Geek and Sundry, is launching a new SVOD service, Alpha, filled with fantasy, sci-fi, gaming content, for $4.99 a month.
Bloomberg
Spotify is launching in Japan -- “a large and lucrative market where fans have demonstrated a continuing fondness for CDs and even vinyl records,” as Bloomberg News notes. “Spotify … will offer a free, advertising-supported service as well as an ad-free version for 980 yen ($9.70) per month starting Thursday.”
The Drum
"Mack and Moxy" has been on public TV, via American Public Television and others, since February. It focuses on issues like autism inclusion, literacy, hunger, wildlife preservation, emergency preparedness, STEM education, the power of play, the great outdoors and more. Celebrities pop in. It starts on Netflix to coincide with National Bullying Prevention Month in October. Mack's a moose-like thing; Moxy is a pink raccoon.
Forbes
Mobile is the straw the stirs Facebook's advertising drink. In the second quarter, mobile advertising made up 84% of total sales in the quarter, up from 72% in the same period a year earlier.
Re/code
Ted Sarandos, Netflix's content chief, is joining Spotify's board of directors, another big sign that Spotify is serious about moving further into video.
Tubefilter
Surprisingly, the fast food giant has a new online series, "What's Cooking" that will do behinds the scenes looks at how McDonald's food is made. The first one, on the history of the Egg Muffin, is pretty cool.
TechCrunch
Google says in coming months it will expand Brand Lift from measuring online video to cover TV and let businesses ad Google Maps data and photos to their ads. TechCrunch says Google is "moving away from cookies and using logged-in data to track and market to users across multiple devices, apps and sites." Google's Matt McGowan calls the move a "depreciation" of the cookie tracker.
Tubefilter
The Internet Creators Guild, formed in the summer by YouTube's most prominent thinker-creator Hank Green and VidCon exec Laura Chenikoff, has a new members-only Website filled with tips, whines, data and so on. It costs $60 a year.
American Libraries
Streaming video makes library materials available on any device, at any time, and in any location. For academic libraries, a wide array of streaming video content, platform, hosting, and licensing options is available.
Variety
Vimeo announced three new projects involving women in front of and behind the camera, but it still looks like it is more interested in original content to spur interest in its premium-content platform.