WatchTVEverywhere (WTVE) supports Apple's single sign-on feature due to an update to the TV Everywhere authorization platform, cable ISP MCTV -- which created WTVE -- said in a news release Wednesday. MCTV said that opens the door for hundreds of small- and mid-sized MVPDs using WTVE to use the single sign-on capability. It said prior to the platform update, only the largest pay-TV operators supported the Apple feature.

Pandora announced features for artists designed to help them reach their fans directly. This builds on Pandora’s Artist Audio Messages platform launched in 2015. Artists can promote live shows, geo-target messages and provide links for ticket purchases, said the company. They can introduce a new single to fans, leverage listener data to position a track on an optimum channel and upload their own profile photo, it said.

​Netflix streaming membership in Q2 “grew more than expected due to our amazing content,” the company said Monday in its quarterly letter to shareholders. Netflix added 5.2 million subscribers in Q2, including 1.1 million in the U.S, and 4.1 million internationally, it said. That compared favorably with the 1.7 million new members it added in Q2 a year earlier, including 1.5 million internationally and only 200,000 in the U.S. “It was a good quarter,” the company said. “The competition for entertainment time is always intense, but the silver lining is that the market is vast and diverse,” Netflix said. Linear TV “is still huge, piracy still substantial, and there are thousands of firms and approaches around the world earning some fraction of consumers’ entertainment time.” So “broad” is the entertainment market opportunity that Netflix has grown from zero to more than 50 million streaming homes in the U.S. in the past decade, “and yet HBO continues to increase its US subscriptions,” the company said. “It seems our growth just expands the market. The largely exclusive nature of each service’s content means that we are not direct substitutes for each other, but rather complements.” The “large-cap tech companies, especially Amazon, are investing heavily in original and licensed content around the world,” Netflix said. “Creating a TV network is now as easy as creating an app, and investment is pouring into content production around the world. We are all co-pioneers of internet TV and, together, we are replacing linear TV. The shift from linear TV to on-demand viewing is so big and there is so much leisure time, many internet TV services will be successful. The internet may not have been great for the music business due to piracy, but, wow, it is incredible for growing the video entertainment business around the world.”

Streaming media devices are in and DVD-Blu-ray players are out, judging by Nielsen data, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Monday. He said live TV viewing was down across most groups in Q1, falling particularly far among those ages 12-34, and DVR usage continued to decline among younger viewers and grow among older Americans. He said data indicates the average U.S. home watches a DVD or Blu-ray disc every other week, while use of game consoles for video consumption remains flat. He said use of streaming media players like Roku and Apple TV is growing rapidly, with usage among people ages 50-64 up 227 percent year over year. Dixon said video via PC is bifurcating, with usage by people under 18 declining while usage for older people is increasing. The analyst said video via smartphone continues to be highly popular among young millennials ages 18-24, but even people over the age of 64 have started watching enough video via smartphone to be measurable.

The BBC served 24.1 million stream requests during this year’s Wimbledon tennis championships via BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer, making it the most streamed Wimbledon in history, the broadcaster said in a Monday announcement. The most popular match was the July 10 “epic” that Gilles Muller won over Rafael Nadal after 66 games, generating 1.4 million stream requests, it said. “With more people streaming this year’s tournament than ever before, BBC Sport also saw record numbers of users signing in,” it said. During the second week of the tournament a weekly record of 2.1 million “unique browsers” signed into BBC Sport, it said.

Pirate websites and apps always will find advertisers, so an effort by ad agency partnership Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) to track piracy apps and convince marketers not to advertise with them is unlikely to move the needle on piracy, blogged anti-piracy tech firm Red Points CEO Laura Urquizu Friday. Media companies would be better served trying to find ways to more quickly take down content-infringing websites, links and apps, she said. Most such pirate apps don't garner much major advertiser support, but given their high volumes of traffic they still get advertisers, though more along the lines of "annoying pop-ups [and] scams for making money online," Red Points said. TAG said the blog post "misses the point entirely, as TAG's new app anti-piracy tool is not a silver bullet, but a single piece of TAG's comprehensive approach to fighting content piracy across the industry. ... Only by working together as an industry to exchange information, use cutting-edge anti-piracy services, and raise the standards for all companies can we address this insidious threat. Nearly a dozen established, effective anti-piracy vendors have already been validated by TAG to offer anti-piracy services."

Traditional MVPDs likely will end 2017 with just shy of 1.1 million video subscriber losses, with almost half of those in traditionally weak Q2, Macquarie's Amy Yong wrote investors Thursday. She said 2018 losses, at 773,000, and 2019 losses, at 644,000, should be less pronounced. The analyst said Charter Communications, Comcast and WideOpenWest are likely well positioned to handle video pressures due to their broadband infrastructures and over-the-top experimentation. In a companion note, Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen said despite those subscriber trends, network affiliate revenue will be affected by pricing built into long-term contracts, further penetration of younger networks in some bundles and subscriber contributions from virtual bundles. Nollen said some networks should start seeing bigger results from growing virtual MVPD offerings.

Among U.S. broadband homes, 59 percent subscribe to Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu, 6 percent to some other over-the-top service without also subscribing to one of those three, Parks Associates said in news release Wednesday. Three percent of U.S. broadband households subscribe to one or more sports OTT services like MLB.TV, NFL Game Pass, NBA League Pass or WWE Network. Parks said 65 percent of U.S. broadband households subscribe to at least one OTT service, but household penetration is slowing and growth is higher among multi-subscription households and older consumers.

The Starz app has netted more than 1 million subscribers since its spring 2016 launch, and the amount of the company's over-the-top content has grown by more than 125 percent, to 5,500 titles, said a news release Monday. The programmer said the amount of kids' programming has grown to close to 1,250 series episodes and movies. Starz plans to expand OTT content 40 percent, to nearly 7,700 selections by year's end.

On-demand audio streams surpassed 184 billion for 2017 through June 29, vaulting 62 percent over the year-ago period, said Nielsen’s U.S. mid-year music report released Wednesday. But album sales fell 18 percent to 81.9 million, with album sales plus track equivalent albums (10 downloads or singles) down 20 percent to 112.6 million, digital albums sales down 20 percent to 35.1 million and physical album sales off 17 percent to 46.9 million, which Nielsen said reflected consumer listening habits and the industry focus on single releases. Total audio consumption -- albums plus track equivalent albums plus on-demand streaming equivalent albums -- was up 9 percent to 235.5 million vs. the 2016 period, it said. Artist highlights in the first half included a 551 percent spike in Taylor Swift streams for the week ending June 15 after the singer released an album on all major streaming platforms for the first time since 2014; and Ed Sheeran with the top-selling album, Divide, leading 2017 album sales with 743,000 copies sold, Nielsen said. The Divide release on March 3 contributed to weekly on-demand audio streams passing the 7 billion mark for the first time in the U.S., when they exceeded 7.5 billion the week ending March 9, it said.