BBC Earnings Dip; Spotify’s Ad-Supported Revenue Grows 13%; Forbes Threatens Perplexity with Legal Action

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 24th Jul 2024 in News

On today’s news digest: BBC Earnings Dip; Spotify’s Ad-Supported Revenue Grows 13%; Forbes Threatens Perplexity with Legal Action

BBC Commercial, the arm of the broadcaster which generates revenue, has revealed a dip in sales and earnings for the past financial year. The broadcaster’s sales reached £1.9bn, with earnings amounting to a total of £199m (figures noted are before deductions including tax and interest.) This is lower than the previous years’ figures, which hit £2.1bn and £252m, respectively. Key expenditures for the BBC during the past fiscal year include its acquisition of BritBox International, which set it back £255m. The outlook appears bright for BBC Studios, the broadcaster’s main commercial subsidiary, which reported 3.8 million subscribers and 25% annual growth rate. Additionally, the broadcaster gained record levels of investment in its content. In other news, the broadcaster revealed that it intends to reduce its workforce by 500 full-time positions. These cuts will be implemented over the next two years.

Spotify’s earnings for Q2 2024 were also announced: the streaming giant posted a record net profit for the quarter, hitting £230m. Its total revenue for the quarter reached a total of £3.2bn. This is a significant increase compared to the same time last year, in which Spotify saw a net loss of £254m. The platform’s costs were significantly lower in Q2, mainly as a result of recent workforce cuts and reduced spend on marketing. Looking specifically at the platform’s ad supported revenue, an increase of 13% was recorded with double-digit growth in all regions. Growth for music ads was propelled by gains in impressions sold, as well as increased pricing. Meanwhile, growth for podcast ad revenue was partly thanks to a rise in impressions sold across original and licensed podcasts.

Looking to the latest at the intersection of AI and publishing, Forbes has threatened Perplexity with legal action. Forbes sent the CEO of the AI company a letter which accused it of stealing text and images belonging to the publisher through copyright law. This closely followed Perplexity AI’s chatbot allegedly ripping off Forbes’ reporting without providing any attribution. The AI-created content was also turned into a podcast and YouTube video, which ended up outranking all Forbes content found on Google Search results regarding the matter – still failing to include any citations. This is the latest of many moves by publishers which have set out to put a stop to their work from being used to train AI – or at least gain some compensation for it. In this case, Forbes demands that Perplexity remove the misleading news sources and reimburse the publisher for advertising revenue it earned as a result of the infringement, among other requests.