Entertainment

Apple has rolled out its new subscription music streaming service, and it's getting mostly raves from reviewers. "Apple has built a handsome, robust app and service that goes well beyond just offering a huge catalog of music by providing many ways to discover and group music for a very wide range of...

The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo officially kicks off in Los Angeles on Tuesday, but the festivities already have begun with a number of press events leading up to the opening. The trade show for the video game industry regularly draws in game developers, retailers and journalists from aroun...

Spotify has raised $526 million in its latest round of funding, according to reports that surfaced Wednesday. That's more than half the $1 billion Spotify raised in funding over the past nine years, said Susan Schreiner, analyst at C4 trends. The news came on the heels of Apple's Monday announcement...

Amazon on Monday announced a casting call through a sponsored article in a gaming publication. The company is looking for talent to join Amazon Game Studios to help develop "an ambitious PC game project." Amazon founded Amazon Game Studios about a year ago. The in-house wing for game development ini...

CBS-owned pay-TV service Showtime on Monday announced that it will make its standalone streaming service available on Roku players and Roku TV models, as well as via Sony's PlayStation Vue, for US$10.99 per month. The service will be accessible through those channels in July -- coinciding with the s...

Nintendo not only has embraced the idea of releasing its iconic intellectual properties for mobile devices, but also is planning to base its next videogame console on a version of the Android operating system, according to a Japanese-language business publication. The outlet recently was proven ri...

Streaming video accounts for more than half of all of fixed network Internet traffic, according to a newly released report from Sandvine, which based its findings on data from 250-plus communication service providers, or CSPs. Web browsing and social networking accounted for far less peak traffic --...

Will the Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable merger be approved? Comcast and Time Warner Cable decided to merge last year, but that deal eventually was blocked by regulators. After it fell apart last month, we all wondered what big deal might be next. Now we know. So will the Charter, TWC deal...

Charter Communications on Tuesday announced a deal to acquire and merge with Time Warner Cable, and also reaffirmed its commitment to buy Bright House Networks. The $56 billion cash-and-stock acquisition, if regulators give it a nod, will result in a merger of Charter Communications and TWC under a ...

Popular trivia game QuizUp on Thursday issued an update that gives players access to a broader array of social networking tools. Users' exchanges had been spilling out of the trivia app and into forums, so developer Plain Vanilla Games decided it was time to build out the game's social features. Qui...

Popcorn Time, known as the "Netflix for Pirates," has introduced a browser-based service that lets users play streaming videos without having to download anything. The videos play on the company's servers. However, the browser-based service does not include a built-in virtual private network, a feat...

Verizon will make a tender offer of $4.4 billion for AOL, the companies announced Tuesday. AOL will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon upon completion of the merger agreement this summer. The deal drives Verizon's LTE wireless video and over-the-top video strategies, and provides support an...

Valve last week announced that it was allowing players to sell video game mods on its digital distribution platform, Steam, starting with mods of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but the policing of the marketplace and the percentage of revenue shared with creators have become points of contention. Vide...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation last week called out the Entertainment Software Association for opposing its video game preservation efforts. The EFF and law student Kendra Albert earlier this year petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ant...

News last week that Zynga founder Mark Pincus had replaced Don Mattrick as CEO, less than two years after vacating the position, sent the company's shares tumbling. The sharp reaction was a clear indicator of investors' concern over the management change. Pincus' return to the helm sparked concern f...