Cayman Islands-based Corvex Master Fund will be allowed to buy up to 14.99 percent of Pandora, the FCC Media Bureau said in a declaratory ruling Tuesday. “The public interest would not be served by prohibiting the proposed additional foreign ownership of Pandora Media by Corvex.” Corvex's request was unopposed, the bureau said. Corvex is based in the Cayman Islands but controlled by U.S. citizens. It asked the FCC to preapprove up to 14.99 percent, though it's only currently seeking 9.99 percent ownership (see 1608120061). A declaratory ruling that allowed Pandora to buy KXMZ(FM) Box Elder, South Dakota, included a condition that the FCC must grant approval for foreign entities that want to acquire more than 5 percent of the company, and requires Pandora to seek FCC permission to go above 49.99 percent foreign owned. Another Cayman-based company, Matrix Master Fund, is also seeking a stake in the music streaming company (see 1612210063).

Comcast plans to launch its TV Everywhere Xfinity Stream app later this month as a successor to its Xfinity TV app. In a news release Tuesday, the company said that, through Xfinity Stream, Xfinity TV customers will be able to watch more than 200 live channels and more than 40,000 on-demand titles on mobile devices, and access and program their DVRs. The Stream app also will let users switch to a Spanish-language guide, filter their favorite channels and access Common Sense Media reviews and ratings, the cable operator said. Comcast said the app will be available for download on iOS or Android devices starting Feb. 28, and people with the latest Xfinity TV app on their devices will see it transition to Stream through an app update that day.

Epix is now part of the lineup on the Apple TV 4th generation, the premium network said in a news release Wednesday. It last month unveiled a new streaming content app for TiVo (see 1701240017).

A third of U.S. broadband households subscribe to a paid streaming music service, up from 26 percent in 2015, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report. Most paid streaming music services had growth in 2016, and Amazon Prime Music led the market with 15 percent penetration in U.S. broadband households. Amazon Prime Music experienced a 50 percent subscription bounce for the period, and it late last year bowed Amazon Music Unlimited, its on-demand music streaming service with multiple subscription options. Spotify nearly doubled its subscriber base from 4 percent to 7 percent of households for 2016, and SiriusXM Streaming, Apple Music and YouTube all had modest adoption growth during the year, said Parks. Pandora and Google Play Music “did not change substantially” vs. 2015, it said. Free, ad-supported music services offer convenience and value, but consumers have been swayed to pay for services that offer commercial-free listening, on-demand content and expanded libraries, said Parks analyst Glenn Hower. Other findings: 58 percent of U.S. broadband households stream music or audio outside the home, and they stream 3.6 hours of music or audio weekly on computers, 2.7 hours on smartphones, said Parks.

Starz launched its $8-per-month pay TV service on DirecTV Now, it announced Tuesday. Starz joins the separate eight-channel Starz Encore offering, which AT&T first made available in its $70-per-month “Gotta Have It” package when the streaming service launched last year (see 1611280058). Starz on DirecTV Now will offer more than 2,500 TV episodes and movies, it said.

Nineteen percent of U.S. broadband homes have canceled an over-the-top service in the past 12 months, indicating sizable subscriber experimentation and OTT providers' use of no-contract, cancel-anytime models to entice subscribers, Parks Associates reported Wednesday. It said churn rates have been lowest among the three dominant providers -- Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. The researcher said OTT-subscribing households have upped their spending on such services from an average of $3.71 a month in 2012 to $7.95 a month in 2016. It said spending on physical media purchases and rentals went from averaging $15 a month to $8 a month, and spending on digital transactional video went from averaging $2.42 a month to $1.42 a month.

Comcast put out a beta version of its Xfinity TV app for Roku that lets subscribers watch live and on-demand programming and access their cloud DVR recordings via the devices, it said in a blog post Tuesday. Comcast said the app is available on recent Roku TV models and Roku players, and the company plans to expand support for other Roku players through the beta testing.

The broadcast and over-the-top industries, rivals for viewers, can benefit from each other, Comcast Wholesale Network Services Executive Director Steven Lacoff said in a blog post Tuesday. Content providers are more interested in converging their OTT and broadcast workflows, such as through unified video publishing and management workflow, Lacoff said: "These benefits are invaluable for an OTT brand, because viewers have been spoiled by the simplicity and quality of the broadcast experience." He said the rise of niche OTT providers "makes for a crowded and noisy marketplace," but broadcasters can learn from established OTT players when trying to set up their own direct-to-consumer OTT offerings.

Millennials dominate the ranks of the "cordless" -- cord-cutters and those who never have subscribed to a cable, satellite or fiber optic TV service -- accounting for 43 percent of them, GfK MRI said in a news release Tuesday. About 30 percent of millennials are cordless, vs. 16 percent of baby boomers. Cordless millennials spend 65 percent of their viewing time with streaming video, while cordless boomers spend 56 percent of their viewing time watching live, linear, over-the-air programming, it said. The researcher said it surveys about 25,000 people in-person annually.

Epix is releasing a new streaming content app for TiVo devices, the pay-TV network said in a news release Tuesday. The app will launch first with Atlantic Broadband customers, and other National Cable Television Cooperative cable systems with TiVo set-tops deployed will also be able to access the app, it said.