YouTube

CharityBuzz has listed a new auction this morning for lunch in Beverly Hills with YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley on September 18th. In Hurley’s case, the funds raised from the auction will benefit CAA Foundation.
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YouTube has acquired a startup called Directr according to a post on the company’s website, as noted by the Wall Street Journal. Directr is a startup that makes two iOS apps for video creation—one focused on everyday users, and the other designed with small business marketing videos in mind.

The company says that for now, “everything you love about Directr is staying the same.” Directr’s current employees, however, will be joining the YouTube video ads team. Neither party has said how much the buyout cost yet, but Directr has confirmed that despite the change of ownership, it will continue to offer its current apps, which will now be available for free.

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Google may not be buying Spotify, but a top executive from YouTube is jumping ship from the Google-owned company to the subscription music service giant. Re/code reports that Shiva Rajaraman, whose title was Director of Product Management at Google (YouTube) according to his LinkedIn, is leaving Google/YouTube several years with the company to take a new role at Spotify. The report notes that Rajaraman’s role at YouTube encompassed managing the development of YouTube’s yet-to-be launched music streaming service, and his new position at Spotify employs him at what will likely be a major competitor to YouTube’s delayed service.

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YouTubers believed to be in violation of copyright laws typically get a takedown notice advising them to remove whatever content their video is using without permission. But in the case of YouTube star Michelle Phan who has over 6 million subscribers following her online make-up tutorial channel, things have taken an aggressive turn. Ultra Records has filed a lawsuit against Phan claiming that she used 50 of their songs in her YouTube videos without proper permission.

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Frustrations over delays in launching YouTube’s long-awaited subscription-based music service are the reason the company has just lost its second head of music in less than a year, reports the WSJ.

Chris LaRosa, YouTube’s product manager in charge of music, will be leaving Google this Friday to join a startup. A YouTube spokesman confirmed LaRosa’s departure but didn’t say which startup LaRosa would be joining.

We’ve been hearing rumors about YouTube’s plans to launch the service since last October – the rumors then suggesting it would launch that year. Then it was going to be the first quarter this year. And then the second quarter – which just ended, still with no sign of the service nearing launch …

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In April of this year, it was announced that JW Player would soon be adding support for the Chromecast, and today the feature finally went live for everyone. For those unfamiliar, the JW Player platform powers a variety of popular websites including ESPN and millions of others. With today’s release of JW Player 6.9, it just got a whole lot easier to view web video on your TV.

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After weeks of leaks, rumors and speculation, the NVIDIA Shield Tablet and Wireless Controller have officially been announced this morning. NVIDIA posted a series of videos on their YouTube channel promoting the new device with the slogan “high-performance gaming everywhere”.

In terms of aesthetics, the device looks like we imagined. It features dual 5MP cameras, dual front-facing stereo speakers, and an 8-inch, 1920×1200 display. The specs under the hood are equally impressive. The device boasts an NVIDIA Tegra K1 GPU, an ARM Cortex A15 CPU clocked at 2.2GHz, and 2GB of RAM.

In terms of pricing, there are two different models of the device. A 16GB WiFi variant and a 32GB WiFi + LTE version, selling for $299 and $399, respectively.  Both models will ship for a July 29th release. 
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Google today updated its Chromecast website with a few notable and worthwhile enhancements. Previously on the site, you could only view a selection of the apps with Chromecast support, but with today’s refresh, you can now view all of the apps with support for the streaming stick. That number has been growing rapidly recently, but there is a search option on the new site, as well. Though, the search functionality is still rather limited and not as robust as the Play Store.

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Google has began rolling out an experimental feature on its search engine that makes it easier to find live events on YouTube or Hangouts on Air. A live event will begin showing up in search results up to 3 hours before it starts, providing users with a link that takes them to the event page to watch. A card-like box appears at the top of Google when searching for the name or author of live events. 
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RBC analyst Mark Mahaney has put together a cheat-sheet (via re/code) to help make sense of Google’s earnings call, due later today.

The tl;dr version is that gross revenues above $15.65B will be viewed by the market as positive, below $15.55B seen as negative and anything between the two business as usual. The market consensus is for a neutral announcement at around $15.61B and earnings per share of $6.25 – ad growth offset by lower revenues due to more mobile ads, which typically cost less … 
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Earlier today, access to Google’s variety of web services was finally restored in China, after weeks of them being offline. This evening, however, Reuters reports that once again, the Mountain View company’s services are being disrupted in China. This includes tools such as Google Search, Maps, Gmail, advertising services, and more.

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YouTube has established itself as a mainstream platform for streaming video content online, but its ambitious goal of reaching 1 billion “watch time” hours per day through 2016 is reportedly lagging behind expectations. The Information has learned that YouTube has less than 300 million viewing hours per day, up from the 100 million daily hours of watch time when the goal was set in fall 2012. 
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It’s official. Google has purchased music streaming service Songza (Play Store). Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a report broke last month that Google was offering $15 million to acquire Songza. The deal follows Apple’s announcement earlier this year that it bought music streaming service Beats Music and headphones and accessories maker Beats Electronics for $3 billion.

The service is expected to improve Google’s own Play Music service as well as YouTube (and could possibly benefit YouTube’s potential music service) and other services, and Google says that nothing will change for Songza users in the immediate future.

If you’re not familiar with Songza, the service offers curated playlists in a music streaming service across various platforms including Android, iOS, and the Web. Playlists are chosen in several ways including based on moods and occasions.

Check below for statements on the acquisition from both Google and Songza…

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YouTube may be in the process of starting its own music service, however the Google-owned company will soon be making the jump to radio as well. Yep, you read that correctly. Earlier today, Mountain View’s video streaming platform announced that it has made a deal with SiriusXM that will bring tracks from some of its featured up-and-coming recording artist to a weekly show aptly named YouTube 15.

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