If you want to watch the next two FIFA Women’s World Cups in the US, you’ll need a Netflix subscription.

FIFA confirmed the news today, marking an unexpected change for the sports event, which has historically played on free-to-air broadcast channels. The shift to a streaming platform inevitably makes it more costly and hurts viewer accessibility, while likely injecting FIFA with a lot of cash.

Netflix and FIFA haven’t said how much Netflix is paying for exclusive airing rights. But Netflix and other streaming services have been paying out hefty, sometimes record-setting sums to air live sporting events as the company seeks to earn more revenue from commercials and draw more viewers. Netflix, for example, paid $5 billion to swipe the World Wrestling Entertainment’s weekly RAW program from the USA cable network for 10 years, starting next month.

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Music streaming platform SoundCloud announced Tuesday that it is introducing a new, cheaper paid plan for artists simply called Artist, while renaming its Next Pro plan to Artist Pro. The new basic tier will cost $39 per year and put some limits on features like track amplification, distribution, monetization, and AI mastering. Artists subscribing to […]

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• Netflix is reportedly reining in some of the generous employee perks it's known for.
• This includes its parental leave policy, salaries, and even merch, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The changes signal a culture shift at a firm that's grown considerably and faces investor pressure.

The tech industry's war on perks seems to have switched to its newest channel: Netflix.

The media and entertainment giant is reportedly trying to rein in some of its employee perks, including its parental leave policy, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The company is trying to discourage employees from using the unlimited time off it gave parents for a year following the birth or adoption of a child, the Journal reported, citing internal communications and interviews with current and former employees.

"We did not plan for employees to use 1-year as the starting point for evaluating how much time away they needed for bonding and care, nor did we assume that employees would view this as a 1-year-leave," one HR official wrote to managers, according to the Journal, which said that Netflix has been trying to curb usage of the full year of leave since 2018.

Among employees, taking more than 6 months of parental leave is now "widely understood to be an unwise career move," the Journal reported. A Netflix spokesperson told the Journal that over the last four years, US employees at the company averaged 6.3 months of parental leave, and employees outside the country averaged 7.5 months.

A Netflix spokesperson told BI in a statement, "Employees have the freedom, flexibility and responsibility to determine what is best for them and their family. Our parental leave policy has always been to 'take care of your child and yourself.'" Sergio Ezama, Netflix's chief talent officer, said the company has "not pulled back" on its parental leave policy.

The company has also implemented a limit of $300 in company swag such as coffee mugs or sweatshirts per year that each employee can order, the Journal reported.

Meanwhile, the streamer has asked managers to tighten the purse strings on compensation. It previously let them pay above market rates to attract and retain talent; now, managers are asked to ensure salaries stay within 50% to 95% of employees' peers, per the Journal, citing emails.

Netflix updated its well-know culture memo in June, removing the "freedom and responsibility" section and adding one called "People Over Process" which spoke of hiring "unusually responsible people" who thrive on openness and freedom.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live conference in October that he received pushback for changing the memo.

"We are constantly working on improving the culture," he said. "And so when anyone says, 'Hey, the culture is changing.' Yes, of course it needs to. We definitely change the culture. We wanted to reflect how we work, not dictate how we work."

He said that the company had fewer than 300 employees when he and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings wrote the memo. While the initial memo was "perfectly suited" for the company's size at the time, the revised version "actually reflects much more today our 14,000 employee business culture," he said.

The changes signal a culture shift at the streamer as it contends with pressure from Wall Street and other challenges. The company has recovered from shedding subscribers for the first time in a decade in 2022, but in recent years has cracked down on password-sharing to boost its subscription numbers.

Netflix isn't the only company reining in perks. As a focus on efficiency sweeps the tech industry, spurring mass layoffs and cost-cutting initiatives, other companies are cracking down. Meta recently fired some employees who misused its $25 Grubhub meal perk. Google told staff last year it was reducing café hours on campus and shifting fitness class offerings and shuttle schedules based on usage.

Like with much of physical media, the onslaught against optical media is ongoing. In the latest hit against physical media fans, LG has discontinued its remaining Blu-ray players. However, this doesn't spell the end for Blu-rays, which, in at least some categories, are seeing growing interest.

LG has no plans to make more Blu-ray players, FlatpanelsHD reported on Wednesday. Its most recent players, the UBK90 and UBK80, came out in 2018 and are no longer available for purchase on LG’s website. You can still find them at third-party retailers, but when stock runs out, LG won’t be replenishing. Trying to access LG's "Blu-ray & DVD Players" webpage now results in a redirect to LG's 4K TVs. We can take a hint, LG.

FlatpanelsHD spoke with LG Korea, which reportedly didn’t commit to a permanent exit from Blu-ray players. But for the foreseeable future, the company won’t be selling a type of device that it hasn’t updated in almost seven years.

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• Are you still paying for cable TV?
• If so, consider that the people who own cable TV networks seem increasingly uninterested in hanging on to them.
• That's the real story behind WBD's corporate maneuvering Thursday — to make a cable TV spinoff or sale much more likely.

Comcast is ditching its cable TV networks. Now Warner Bros. Discovery may do the same.

That's the takeaway from Thursday's news that WBD is splitting up its cable TV business from its streaming and studio operations.

To be clear: WBD is not saying that it intends to ditch its cable networks, like TNT and Food Network.

Instead, it's using hand-wavy language like "a new corporate structure designed to enhance its strategic flexibility and create potential opportunities to unlock additional shareholder value" to describe what it's doing.

But to be super clear: The reason WBD is doing this now is so it can get rid of its cable operations in the future, perhaps by merging them with the cable TV spinoff that Comcast has planned for next year. And, just as important, because it wants to tell Wall Street that a breakup is on the table.

Not coincidentally, WBD shares are up 13% on the news.

Reminder: WBD has floated this idea before, though less formally. Earlier this summer, WBD execs said (quietly) they were looking at the same kind of corporate restructuring, and then decided to back off the idea.

What has changed since then?

On the one hand, not a lot. The structural challenges around a split still remain: Namely, the fact that while cable TV networks are declining assets, they're still profitable ones, and those profits help keep their owners' other assets afloat.

On the other hand: Now that Comcast has announced it is absolutely going to split off its declining cable TV assets, it helps make other splits more likely. That's because Comcast's spun-off cable TV operation will want to find other cable TV networks to add to its collection so it can increase negotiating power. Which (potentially) solves the "who wants to buy a declining asset?" problem WBD was looking at before.

Also of note: Donald Trump's second term in office may be much, much friendlier to consolidation, as WBD CEO David Zaslav noted the morning after Trump's election. (Reminder: The Trump 2.0 merger mania many people expect may not extend across the board. Trump's incoming team continues to make noise about reining in Big Tech, and that scrutiny may also apply to (at least some parts of) Big Media.)

All of which is worth remembering if you still pay for a package of cable TV networks, which means you are continually being asked to pay more for them. (Just Thursday, Google said it was hiking the price of its YouTube TV cable bundle by 14%.) You, the consumer, are being told cable TV is worth paying more for. But cable TV owners want to get these things off their books.

Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.

With new short films set to debut on its free streaming service tomorrow, TV-maker TCL is positing a new approach to monetizing TV owners and to film and TV production that sees reduced costs through reliance on generative AI and targeted ads.

TCL's five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL's free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.

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Spotify has officially discontinued Car Thing, its in-car streaming device, with all units now disabled, the company confirmed to TechCrunch.  Earlier today, an X user noticed that their Car Thing is indeed no longer functioning, displaying a message that it’s “no longer operational,” along with a reminder of the refund terms valid until January 14, […]

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• If you're looking for something different to watch on Netflix, you've come to the right place.
• We've highlighted 11 titles you've probably never seen but should watch.
• Check out movies like "Sea of Love," "The Thin Blue Line," and "Silverado."

Ian Phillips contributed to a previous version of this article.

Note: Numerous Netflix titles drop off the streaming service monthly so the availability of titles below may change.

"Blue Jay"

Jim Henderson (Mark Duplass) is back in his hometown to sell his late mother's house when he bumps into his high-school girlfriend, Amanda (Sarah Paulson). They end up spending the day together, leading to a lot of laughs and some shocking revelations.

Duplass, who also wrote the screenplay, and Paulson are fantastic together. If you're looking for a different kind of love story, this is for you.

"Casting JonBenet"

If you can't get enough of Netflix's new docuseries "Cold Case: Who killed JonBenét Ramsey," we recommend this fiction/doc hybrid the streamer made in 2017.

"Casting JonBenet," Kitty Green's directorial debut ("The Assistant," "The Royal Hotel"), explores the unsolved murder in a unique way: by filming the casting of a fake movie about the JonBenét murder.

Green hires actors who live in the region of Colorado where the Ramseys lived. Some of them even know the family. The movie is made up of actor auditions and reenactments of key events, like the police news conference after the murder, and JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy, being interviewed by police. A handful of actors portray the main figures of the case in these moments — yes, even young girls as JonBenét.

The movie is a fascinating study of our own obsessions about the case rather than a search for answers.

"Compliance"

If you're looking for something very different, check out this movie.

Written and directed by Craig Zobel ("Mare of Easttown," "The Penguin"), this disturbing movie is based on "strip search phone scams" that went on in the early 2000s.

In the movie, like the real-life instances, someone calls a fast-food restaurant claiming to be a police officer, and then convinces the manager over the phone to conduct a strip search of a female employee.

The movie stars Dreama Walker as the employee, Ann Dowd as the manager, and Pat Healy as the caller impersonating a police officer.

"Emily the Criminal"

After a nonexistent theatrical release in 2022, this thriller has found a second life on Netflix.

Aubrey Plaza plays a woman crippled by student debt and unable to find a good job due to a criminal record. She decides to get into the credit-card scam game, leading her down a dark path in the Los Angeles crime scene.

"Kicking and Screaming"

No, we're not talking about that Will Ferrell soccer movie. This 1995 movie was Noah Baumbach's feature directing debut, showcasing his talent for mixing comedy with middle-class malaise. Here, he looks at a group of college graduates who are having trouble becoming real adults.

Josh Hamilton, Parker Posey, and Eric Stoltz round out the ensemble cast.

"Oldboy"

Park Chan-wook's beloved film follows a man who seeks revenge after being imprisoned for 15 years. Get ready for a fun and twisted tale with an impressive single-shot fight sequence.

"The Other Side of the Wind"

In 2018, 48 years after Orson Welles began production on what would become his final feature film, Netflix finally released what was meant to be Welles' Hollywood comeback. 

Chronicling the last day of a filmmaking legend's (John Huston) life, the movie plays with a film-within-a-film storytelling style, rapid editing, and numerous types of film stock to tell a moving story about life and legacy.

Keep an eye out for a Dennis Hopper cameo, a stunning performance by Oja Kodar, and a scene-stealing role from Welles' longtime friend, fellow filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.

"Sea of Love"

This late-1980s erotic neo-noir thriller stars Al Pacino as Frank Keller, a New York detective trying to track down a serial killer who is using a singles' column in the newspaper to find victims.

Ellen Barkin plays Helen Cruger, a woman at the top of Frank's suspects list. There's just one problem: he's falling in love with her.

John Goodman, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Rooker all give great performances, too.

"Silverado"

This classic 1985 Western from director Lawrence Kasdan ("The Big Chill") follows a group of misfit friends as they try to clean up the town of Silverado.

Filled with great gunfights and banter, it's highlighted by an ensemble cast that includes Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Rosanna Arquette, John Cleese, Kevin Costner, Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, Jeff Fahey, and Linda Hunt.

"The Squid and the Whale"

Noah Baumbach's acclaimed early 2000s dramedy stars Jesse Eisenberg as a young man living in Brooklyn in the early 1980s who is dealing with the divorce of his parents, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney.

"The Thin Blue Line"

Errol Morris' acclaimed documentary proved a man was wrongly convicted of murder and also uncovered the man who actually did the crime.

Using beautifully shot reenactments and engaging interviews, this chilling exploration inside the mind of a killer is considered one of the best non-fiction works ever created.

• Spotify Wrapped missed the mark this year for many users.
• Some Spotify listeners were frustrated by the recap's aesthetic and missing metrics from years past.
• Some also said Spotify relied too heavily on generative AI in the recap.

Spotify Wrapped came out Wednesday, and some of the platform's users are already eager to put it behind them.

The streaming company's year-end recap gives people insight into their listening habits each year, via stats like their top songs, artists, and minutes spent listening.

This year, however, seemed to miss the mark for many. Listeners took to social media to air their frustrations with what they said was an inaccurate or underwhelming year-in-review that lacked the personality and insightful metrics they appreciated from Spotify's recaps of yesteryear.

"I'm not usually one to complain but this was one of the most boring Spotify Wrapped recaps I've been a part of and I've been a member since 2017," one Reddit user said.

This year's Wrapped did away with some of last year's features. It didn't, for example, reveal listeners' top genres or give them "sound towns," which told you a town with similar music taste as yours.

Instead, this year Spotify introduced features like the Wrapped AI podcast, powered by Google NotebookLM, featuring two AI voicebots discussing your listening habits. There was also Your Music Evolution, which gave highly specific, yet also inscrutable, names like "pink pilates princess strut pop" to describe your musical genres in certain months.

Some users felt particularly disappointed with what they saw given they also had to wait longer for their recaps this year. Spotify Wrapped came out on December 3 this year, a few days later than the November 29 release of last year's recap.

"This is what we waited for? This is so lame and anticlimactic. No top genres, no music aura and all the other cool stuff that was there before," another person said on Reddit.

"It's giving turned in homework late for participation points it feels so lame," one person said on TikTok, writing in the video's text overlay that this year's Wrapped felt "inaccurate" and "disappointing."

One user even said they were moved to cancel their Spotify Premium subscription and switch over to Apple Music, which recently made available on a monthly basis its Wrapped equivalent, Replay.

"Spotify wrapped so bad and full of AI garbage i cancelled my spotify and got apple music," one person said on X.

"Wrapped is an experience that fans look forward to every year, and our approach to the data stories did not change this year," Spotify told BI in a statement.

"We celebrated fan-favorite data stories like Your Top Artist and Top Songs with new insights like longest listening streak and top listening day," the company said. "We're always exploring ways to expand Wrapped and bring new data stories to users across more markets."

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the criticisms around the AI features in Spotify Wrapped this year.

Other users who were disappointed highlighted that Spotify underwent layoffs in the last year.

Spotify cut more than 2,000 total employees across three rounds of layoffs last year. In an earnings call this year, CEO Daniel Ek stood by the December cuts as "the right strategic decision" but said it affected daily operations "more than we anticipated."

Spotify Wrapped debuted in 2016 and quickly became one of the most platform's celebrated features, and for many years was differentiated feature against rival music-streaming platforms.

Spotify Wrapped's popularity and easy ability to share the results to social media boosted its popularity and eventually helped pressure Apple to debut a similar recap feature for Apple Music in 2019, which began as a web-only feature.

Five years later, Apple Music finally made the feature available in the app itself.

Spotify Wrapped, the streamer’s highly anticipated annual listening recap, has arrived. In addition to its usual personalized summary detailing your favorite artists, songs, podcasts, and more, the company this year is introducing two new features, including most notably, an AI-powered podcast of your 2024 Wrapped created with Google’s AI summarization tool, NotebookLM. Spotify is also […]

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• Around 60 million households watched Jake Paul fight Mike Tyson on Netflix on Friday night.
• The matchup was vaguely unsettling — a 58-year-old against a 27-year-old social media star.
• Jake Paul's talent for attracting attention is undeniable, and that may be good for the sport of boxing.

On Friday night, 60 million households watched live on Netflix as Jake Paul beat Mike Tyson in eight rounds of a boxing match. It was a sheer spectacle: a controversial social media star and the aging athlete who has been a pop culture fixture for the last 30 years.

No one was really sure what to expect: Would Iron Mike wallop Paul, whose boxing career is mainly about clout rather than pure skill, or would the 27-year-old Paul's youth trump the 58-year-old former champion?

But after the match, as Paul graciously showed deference to the veteran, there was still a larger lingering question: What the hell did we just watch?

Even though I'm not personally a boxing fan, I tuned in. Everyone on my Bluesky feed seemed to be talking about it — the buzz was real. Even though Netflix suffered embarrassing glitches with an overloaded livestream, it seemed to be a real triumph for its forays into live sports events.

Still, the consensus I was seeing on Bluesky (almost certainly from non-boxing enthusiasts like myself) was that this whole thing had a vaguely tragic air with the older man losing to a potentially lesser — though younger — opponent. Tyson's own comments when he was interviewed by a tween before the fight had a morose vibe.

I've underestimated Jake Paul before, and I've learned my lesson. In 2018, Paul started selling an online course on how to be an influencer. I paid for the video courses and discovered that Paul hadn't just stumbled into success with pranks and bad rap songs. He studied platforms methodically and ruthlessly. He advised wannabe influencers on the best time of day to post to YouTube (3 p.m.), shared that Musical.ly (before it became TikTok) was easy to game by posting frequently, and showed that a quick way to grow a Snapchat audience was to put your QR code in a Tinder profile.

He told hard truths like how Twitter was a good way to reach older people (ouch) — and that it was important to have a Facebook profile and page because the old people who run brands that might sponsor you were still on Facebook.

A key thing that the Paul brothers and other early Vine stars learned was that "collabs" with fellow stars would massively boost both audiences. This is still true across a variety of platforms (notice how many video podcasters appear on each other's podcasts). In a way, Paul vs. Tyson was simply the ultimate content "collab."

Jake Paul can give the impression that his brain cells sound like the shaking of a can of Axe body spray. (In fact, he has his own line of body spray, called "W," which he would spray all over himself whenever on camera backstage before a match.) But he knows what he's doing — how to manipulate attention and the lucrative power that attention can bring — much more than you might think.

Jake Paul's relationship with the boxing world is weird. Obviously, his path to 60 million households watching on Friday night came from his fame as a social media influencer rather than working his way up through the ranks of boxing. But he seems serious about the sport — you don't fight Mike Tyson if you're not — and there's a positive way of looking at Friday's spectacle: By leveraging his clout and fame, he's attracting attention — and big-money prizes — to the boxing world. The $6 million purse for the women's undercard match that aired just before the Tyson fight was the biggest amount ever for a women's boxing prize.

It's unclear where Jake Paul goes from here, or where boxing goes. Paul tweeted over the weekend about how he is still processing his role as a disruptor in the sport. It's pretty clear where Netflix goes: It'll be showing two big NFL games on Christmas Day with Beyoncé as the half-time show. Hopefully, this time, they'll be prepared for a steady stream.

Correction: December 3, 2024 — Netflix said 60 million households tuned in live for the Paul-Tyson fight, not 60 million people. An earlier version of this story misstated that figure.

Amazon Music announced on Tuesday the launch of 2024 Delivered, a new personalized yearly recap feature inspired by Spotify’s popular Wrapped experience. The feature delivers a summary of your listening habits, including your top artists, songs, genres, and more.  To see your 2024 Delivered, open the Amazon Music app on your iOS or Android device […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• MrBeast said his Amazon show "Beast Games" broke 40 world records.
• It comes amid allegations of poor conditions and a class-action lawsuit filed by some contestants.
• MrBeast finally addressed a lot of the accusations this week, but questions remain.

MrBeast said his upcoming $100 million Amazon reality show "Beast Games" broke 40 Guinness World Records.

"Guinness just dropped off some of the world records we broke while filming Beast Games lol," MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, wrote on X on Wednesday. "IM SO EXCITED TO DROP THIS SHOW IN 22 DAYS 🥰"

While he didn't reveal the full details of the records, he hinted at a few, including the largest cash prize in a game show, the most cables for a show, and the "largest island given away in a show."

It's not been smooth sailing

Donaldson, 26, is YouTube's biggest creator, with 332 million subscribers. He rose to fame with his ambitious stunts, including recreating Netflix's "Squid Game."

"Beast Games" is along the same vein, featuring at least 1,000 contestants.

Amazon has promoted it as "the world's largest live gameshow" with the "biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming" of $5 million.

Amazon announced the reality competition in March. It was supposed to kick-start Amazon's video ad sales efforts, attracting a wide audience and appealing to advertisers.

However, coverage of the show has not been entirely smooth sailing.

As well as complaints from contestants about inadequate living conditions, some have also said they were injured, not given access to hygiene products and medical care, and subjected to sexism in a New York Times report, and a class-action lawsuit five of them filed in September.

Amazon declined to comment on the lawsuit to BI. A spokesperson for Donaldson previously told BI that Amazon was not involved in the Las Vegas round of the show, where many of the allegations surfaced, which was "a promotional video shoot."

The spokesperson also said that this shoot was "unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues."

Much of the rumors and allegations directed at Donaldson and the show went unanswered for months until Donaldson appeared on YouTube Oompaville's channel to address everything at once on November 23.

Donaldson said he could not address some of the allegations due to legal proceedings, but he described some of the claims about injuries on set as "disinformation."

Since then, Donaldson has also been more outspoken on his social media.

"We have tons of behind-the-scenes dropping when the show does to show how blown out of proportion these claims were," he wrote on X in response to a user who enquired about the "terrible conditions" on the show. "Just can't release it now because it would spoil the games."

None of the above has tempered production of "Beast Games," with Donaldson releasing a teaser on November 25, saying he had "poured everything I have into this show."

"I'll see you December 19th," he said, confirming the show's release date.

Future projects could be more difficult

Donaldson previously revealed he'd "spent way more than $100 million" on "Beast Games." He didn't clarify if this was the budget for one season, but the show has only been commissioned for one so far.

The move lines up with Amazon's strategy of increasing spending on entertainment and sports content, which "Beast Games" was supposed to be a benchmark for.

Donaldson has largely shrugged off bad press over the years, but partnering with a giant like Amazon has put more eyes on him than ever.

Creator economy experts previously told BI that "Beast Games" would not be going anywhere despite the negative headlines. But they warned that the top YouTuber may find it harder to fund his next big project because of the headache it caused Amazon.

"They'll still do partnerships with him," Diana D'Angelo, the CEO of Breaking Creatives Agency, told BI. "But maybe they'll put a bigger check on what he's actually doing and how it's being done."

• Disney brought the magic in 2024, but it isn't out of the woods just yet.
• Streaming turned a profit for the first time, and it righted the ship at the box office.
• While CEO Bob Iger won a proxy battle, Trump's second term now looms.

After a string of challenges, Disney brought the magic in 2024.

It wasn't long ago that CEO Bob Iger was battling an expensive proxy fight, creative challenges, and streaming business losses.

Iger has put many of those concerns behind him. Disney fended off activist shareholder Nelson Peltz. And he addressed two areas that have been a big concern for Wall Street: returning the film division to profits with "Inside Out 2" and "Deadpool & Wolverine," and turning the corner in its streaming business.

On a fourth-quarter earnings call in November, a confident Iger projected rosy earnings all the way out to 2027 and was rewarded with a 9% surge in Disney's stock price.

Perhaps most important, after a botched succession in 2020, the company reassured critics that it's on track to name Iger's replacement in early 2026.

Disney isn't out of the woods just yet. It still faces the ongoing decline of its linear TV business. With another ESPN streamer in the works, its streaming offerings are multiplying, which risks consumer confusion. And some insiders have worried that a returning President Donald Trump could lead to retribution — or a chilling effect on the company's creative output and journalism — after Iger and Trump publicly sparred during Trump's first term.

Meanwhile, here's a look back at Disney's biggest wins of the past year:

For the first time, its streaming business became profitable

Disney turned a crucial corner with its streaming business in 2024.

Services like Hulu and Disney+ generated a small but noteworthy profit — to the tune of $47 million — for the first time in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, that figure grew to $321 million.

Subscription price hikes were key. The basic price for Disney+ is now $16 a month, compared to $7 when it launched in 2019. Iger said on a call with investors this month that in raising prices, the company sought to move users toward ad-supported subscription options.

Edging forward on succession

Disney has given itself a self-imposed deadline of 2026 to name Iger's successor — which is when the executive's contract expires and is longer than some had anticipated.

After Iger's last succession plan fell flat, resulting in his return to the company in 2022, this time the effort is being spearheaded by Morgan Stanley's James Gorman.

Four internal candidates have been floated: Disney Entertainment cochair Dana Walden, movie head Alan Bergman, Disney Experiences chair Josh D'Amaro, and ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro. Disney is also considering outsiders, though no frontrunner has emerged.

Getting back on track with box office hits

Iger acknowledged last year that Disney movies weren't what they used to be in terms of quality following box office disappointments like "Elemental," "The Little Mermaid," and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."

But in 2024, Disney righted the ship. "Inside Out 2" broke the record for an animated movie opening, while "Deadpool & Wolverine" — the only film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe it released this year after the company decided to slow its roll — was an irrefutable smash, signaling a possible antidote to superhero fatigue.

Betting big on experiences

Experiences are key to Disney's future, with Chairman Josh D'Amaro overseeing a $60 billion investment over the next decade into park expansion — and the company's most ambitious foray yet into gaming, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

New attractions and lands inspired by hit films like "Avatar" and "Monsters, Inc." will arrive at parks worldwide, according to THR, and four new cruise ships will roughly double its fleet by the end of the decade.

Disney also placed its biggest bet to date on gaming earlier this year with a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. Disney will work with the "Fortnite" studio to develop an interactive space inspired by its IP.

Iger triumphed in the Peltz proxy battle (but now must face Trump)

Iger won a lengthy and expensive proxy battle against activist investor Nelson Peltz in April after shareholders voted to keep the CEO and Disney management's board over two new members nominated by Peltz's firm.

Peltz has criticized Disney's succession planning, streaming losses, and stock performance.

But looking ahead, Iger could be facing another threat when Trump takes office again — with its ABC News division having already drawn the president-elect's ire. While Iger criticized Trump during his first term, he appears to be remaining on the political sidelines this time around.

If it didn't already look like Drake had lost the feud of the year, it certainly does now.

In a legal filing Monday, an LLC owned by Drake called Frozen Moments alleged that Universal Music Group and Spotify worked together to make "Not Like Us" — a viral diss track Kendrick Lamar released about Drake earlier this year — a bigger hit than it naturally would have been. The petition, filed three days after Drake's rival released the critically acclaimed surprise album "GNX," claims UMG did this by offering lower licensing rates on the song to Spotify in return for promotion, then paying third-party companies to have bots inflate streams of it; "Not Like Us" has surpassed 900 million plays on Spotify. ("Family Matters," a Drake diss track about Lamar released around the same time, has 122 million plays.) The filing also accuses UMG of using pay-to-play tactics to increase the song's radio play and have influencers promote it across social media. It's not a lawsuit yet, but a petition seeking more information about the alleged practice.

"Streaming and licensing is a zero-sum game," Drake's filing says. "Every time a song 'breaks through,' it means another artist does not. UMG's choice to saturate the music market with 'Not Like Us' comes at the expense of its other artists, like Drake."

The twist: UMG doesn't just represent Lamar but also Drake. And Drake is one of the biggest artists streaming on Spotify, with about 10 million more monthly listeners than Lamar. If major companies like UMG and Spotify really are conspiring to help one artist over another, they would be severely disrupting the way people discover and come to love music and risking the entire streaming model the music industry now relies on.

Hip-hop fans are mocking Drake's litigiousness as petty and destructive to his street cred. "This is Drake's Jan. 6," the musical artist and former NFL running back Arian Foster posted on X. Music industry insiders, meanwhile, are skeptical of the allegations themselves.

"It's not in Spotify's interest for their model to be undermined by people not getting paid fairly," Tony Rigg, a music industry advisor and lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, tells me. "Bots, potentially, would undermine both" Spotify and UMG. In other words, for the top of the music industry, rigging with bots would be "not like us."

The kind of manipulation, also called artificial listening, that Drake is talking about does happen. Some artists use third-party companies that enlist accounts made by bots to listen to the same playlist on repeat. That's an issue because of how streaming companies pay. They divide up royalty payments from a limited pool of cash. More plays means more of the pie. And as more people have taken to uploading AI-generated slop to streaming platforms like Spotify, they risk becoming more diluted. In September, a North Carolina musician was charged with music streaming fraud; the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York claims he made more than $10 million using those kinds of tactics. (The case is ongoing.) Smaller artists looking to make money off streaming can suffer. But it's harder to know how it could affect megastars like Drake and Lamar, who are already among the top performers in Spotify's streaming ranks.

There are more than 100 million songs each on popular streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud. Last year, Spotify booted tens of thousands of songs from its platform reported to be generated by AI and also listened to by bots — essentially, computer music for computers. UMG itself has pushed back against AI-generated music, trying to block AI from training on its catalogs on streaming platforms.

Spotify declined to comment, but the company does have policies in place to detect and combat artificial streaming. A UMG spokesperson told me that "the suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue. We employ the highest ethical practices in our marketing and promotional campaigns. No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear."

Fans can argue whether Drake or Lamar won the feud. By throwing lawyers and corporations into the rap battle, Drake has made it much less street and much more corporate. It's hard to imagine bots would be driving so many listeners to Lamar, a 17-time Grammy award winner. The song itself has been nominated for five Grammys, has been used at political events and protests around the world, and became a hit on TikTok. In the end, the attention, and ears, on the two artists' beef may have made Spotify and UMG both winners.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

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