Christmas NDM stories

News Corp buys Storyful for £15m

Social news agency distributes video and user-generated content to news organisations such as the BBC and ITN

News Corp has bought Dublin-based social news agency Storyful for €18m (£15m). Storyful is a website where videos and current news stories are uploaded to for people to talk about and discuss. Storyful is a team of technologists and journalists, working round the clock in Asia, Europe and the United States. Some of us are veterans of big news brands like Reuters, BBC, CNN and the International Herald Tribune. Others cut their teeth in national newsrooms in Ireland and Korea. 

The company describes the organisation as "Storyful is dedicated to helping news and communications professionals everywhere to use social media to make their news-gathering,reporting and storytelling shine."

Rupert Murdoch's global publishing business said Storyful would remain a stand-alone operation that would complement its existing video offerings, including WSJ Live. The founder and chief executive Mark Little and David Clinch, executive editor, will stay, with News Corp senior vice president for video Rahul Chopra joining Storyful's management team as chief revenue officer.

News Corp has something of a mixed record with buying technology and digital media startups. Furthermore...

• They payed $580m (£324m) in 2005 acquisition of MySpace. 
• The social networking service atrophied under News Corp ownership as rivals including Facebook and Twitter forged ahead, and was sold for about $35m in 2011.

UK entertainment spending rises with surge in film and music streaming

Value of film and TV downloads, streams and subscriptions rises to £621m, and number of tracks streamed doubles to 7.4bn

After five years of decline, sales of entertainment products such as music, films and video games were growing again last year because of booming digital services such as Netflix and Spotify, according to figures published on Wednesday. The surge in popularity of watching TV and films on the likes of Netflix, Amazon's LoveFilm and Apple's iTunes fuelled a 40% increase in spending on digital videos with downloads, streams and subscriptions rising to £621m, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA). The digital revolution was also felt in the UK music industry, where the number of tracks streamed doubled to 7.4bn, thanks to a rise in users of services such as Spotify and Deezer, which have almost halted a 10-year decline in music sales.

• The shift to digital viewing more than offset a 6.8% fall in the sale of physical DVDs to £1.4bn
• a five-year decline in total video sales, which managed 3.7% growth to £2.06bn last year.

"Services like Netflix, LoveFilm and Blinkbox are transforming the video business by making content available over multiple devices," said Kim Bayley, director general of the ERA, 

• In the UK music market, total sales of albums and singles fell by just 0.5% to £1.04bn, as the popularity of digital downloads and streaming services almost offset the continuing plummeting sales of CDs, according to the music industry trade body BPI.
• The value of digital subscriptions to music services rose by 34% last year to £103m
• ...as the number of tracks streamed doubled to 7.4bn.
• Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell 3.6% in value to £772m.

In terms of music, the industry is in decline and therefore we as consumers of music and digital information should be willing to keep our favourite artists performing by helping them earn the amount which they should. This could be through more digital downloads and decreasing the amount of piracy which goes on in a consumers everyday life as part of the norm.