News and Updates about Cord Cutters

Apple reportedly has a new Apple TV 4K ready to ship. The holdup is software. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is timing the launch of the new Apple TV 4K for fall 2026, around the readiness of its next-generation Siri, with both the new Apple TV and a refreshed HomePod mini currently in "very advanced testing."

The new Fire TV interface is now available worldwide on all current-generation Amazon Fire TV Stick devices and Amazon Ember smart TVs, and Amazon says all current-generation Fire TV Sticks, the Fire TV Cube, and Ember smart TVs purchased globally now ship with the redesigned UI. That's the broadest distribution since the update quietly began on a handful of premium devices four months ago.

NTS Radio and Swedish audio company Atonemo launched the NTS Radio Player today, a compact Wi-Fi streamer purpose-built for NTS's curated channels and continuously running mixtapes, designed to connect directly to speakers and amplifiers you already own. The practical question it raises: does dedicated hardware make NTS meaningfully better than casting from your phone to whatever speaker is nearby, The Verge reported today.

Apple is making the full Formula 1 Austrian Grand Prix weekend free to U.S. viewers in the Apple TV app from June 26–28, 2026. Practice, qualifying and the Grand Prix will stream at no cost with an Apple ID, with no paid Apple TV subscription required. Sports Business Journal reported Thursday that this is the first time Apple has made a complete F1 race weekend free in the United States.

Peacock is launching its vertical video feed in the Peacock app, rolling out original Bravo microdramas and a swipeable short-form section built into the mobile app. According to Peacock, the two Bravo series are the first official originals in the microdrama format announced by a major U.S. entertainment streaming platform.

Fox Corp. agreed Monday to acquire Roku for approximately $22 billion, gaining a foothold in the operating system running inside more than 100 million streaming households globally. As Deadline framed it yesterday: "Fox Corporation is buying an operating system." Analysts and executives have described it as a distribution and ad-tech play rather than a content-library acquisition, and the numbers bear that out.

The Spotify disco ball icon fix is now live on iPhone. The familiar flat green circle is back in the App Store today, 25 days after Spotify publicly told users the standard icon would return "next week." The update is available now, according to 9to5Mac.

A growing number of Chromecast with Google TV owners are finding their remotes won't stay paired, and the pattern of complaints points to something more than individual hardware failures. 9to5Google reported that a fresh wave of complaints has accumulated across Reddit and Google's support forums, enough for reports to flag a recurring complaint pattern. The Chromecast with Google TV remote not working pattern has surfaced before, but the current volume and consistency are harder to dismiss.

Amazon began notifying Prime subscribers in India and Australia this week that Amazon Music Prime ads will start appearing in their included music streaming tier, with offline downloads being removed at the same time. The notification email directs users who want what the tier used to offer to pay for Amazon Music Unlimited on top of their existing Prime membership fee.

YouTube TV customizable multiview is here: what you can watch, how to check, and what it still can't do

Spotify and Universal Music Group recently announced a licensing deal that clears both master recording and publishing rights for AI-generated music, allowing the company to launch a tool letting Premium subscribers create covers and remixes of songs from participating UMG artists. The tool will cost extra on top of a standard Premium subscription. No price and no launch date have been set so far.

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Spotify used its 2026 Investor Day this week to announce four podcast features and, more deliberately, to argue that they belong together. Spotify podcast memberships, AI-generated personal audio, in-episode Q&A, and rebuilt brand sponsorship tools are not separate bets.

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Nearly 700 ad-free titles are now streamable across 135 countries, but eligibility, scope, and what stays Audible-only are worth understanding before you assume full access.

Apple Music introduced a mandatory AI disclosure system in early March, requiring labels and distributors to tag content whenever artificial intelligence played a "material portion" of its creation. The Apple Music AI-generated music policy covers four categories: sound recordings, artwork, lyrics and compositions, and music videos. Here is the tension at the center of it: Apple says the tags are required, but its own technical specification describes them as optional, defaults to assuming none...

Spotify just launched verified badges for podcasts, bringing its "Verified by Spotify" program to show pages and search results across the platform. The light green checkmark identifies a show as the official presence of the creator, publisher, or brand it claims to be. The rollout pairs with a reinforced takedown policy that explicitly covers AI-assisted impersonation but the badge itself says nothing about whether a show's content was made by a human.

Disney announced a new round of Disney+ and Hulu integration features on May 19, 2026, bringing the two apps closer together with Hulu profile linking, Hulu access inside Disney+ for eligible Hulu subscribers, new Hulu profile avatars, and an upcoming Live Guide. Bundle subscribers who primarily watch Hulu on demand can now bring more of their Hulu activity into Disney+, though Hulu Live TV, add-ons, and non-adult profile linking are not fully folded in yet. Disney says there are "no current...

Apple SVP Eddy Cue wants an F1 movie sequel, and he wants more Formula 1 streaming rights. Those two ambitions point in the same direction: Apple is trying to own more of the F1 fan experience, not simply carry races under contract through 2030. A sequel to F1 The Movie is in development, Apple's U.S. rights deal is now in effect, and the question now is whether Apple's platform-first approach actually expands F1's U.S. audience or just repositions it behind a different paywall.

Sony's PlayStation Plus price increase is due to take effect tomorrow, May 20, pushing monthly subscriptions from $9.99 to $10.99 and three-month plans from $24.99 to $27.99 across the U.S., UK, and Europe, GamingBolt and BBC reported this week. The annual plan stays flat at $80. Sony cited "ongoing market conditions."

Spotify confirmed last Wednesday that its app, Web Player, and support site were degraded around 8 p.m., with users reporting access problems on Downdetector. The company's response was brief: the service was "slow or not working properly," and the matter was under investigation. No mention of an external attack, a DDoS event, or any outside actor appeared in Spotify's public statement.

Netflix began rolling out a redesigned mobile app on April 30, 2026 in nine countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, built around a new vertical video swipe feed called Clips. Netflix says the redesign is meant to capture more daytime viewing and help members discover titles faster, Variety reported. The company plans to roll out the update to the rest of the world "in the months to come."

Spotify announced today that Spotify for Creators and Megaphone will adopt Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) protocol, the same technology Apple introduced for video podcasts in iOS 26.4. Once that rollout completes, Spotify-hosted shows will be able to distribute and monetize video on Apple Podcasts without any changes to existing setups, TechCrunch reported. Separately, creators on five supported third-party hosting platforms can already publish video directly to Spotify now.

Netflix told advertisers Wednesday that its ad business is entering a new phase and for most subscribers on the ad-supported plan, the changes are not what the headlines imply. More ads on Netflix does not mean longer commercial breaks in the middle of Bridgerton. It means more countries, more live-event inventory, new ad surfaces, and smarter targeting. Whether Netflix ads are increasing next year depends almost entirely on what you watch.

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YouTube TV Customizable Multiview: What's Changing and What's Not

Spotify launched "Spotify 20: Your Party of the Year(s)" yesterday, giving every user, free or premium, access to lifetime listening data the platform has never surfaced before. The feature went live as part of the company's 20th anniversary campaign and is available now in the mobile app. It's a different product than Wrapped, not an extension of it, and that distinction matters before you go looking for yours.

Walmart's Onn 4K Pro is sold out, and Onn 4K Pro scalpers on eBay and Facebook Marketplace are listing the $60 streaming box for $90 to $100 before shipping, Android Authority reported today. That's a 50 to 67 percent markup. The Pro is marked out of stock on Walmart's product page; the cheaper Onn 4K Stick remains available at $40, per the same report.

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Switch 2 owners searching for how to watch YouTube on Switch 2 have one documented option right now, and it runs through a free battle royale game. A Reddit user discovered that Super Animal Royale surfaces YouTube clips in a scrolling news feed on its main menu. Select a clip, choose "watch on YouTube," and the console opens an external browser with full YouTube search. Video tops out at 360p, account sign-in isn't available, and the YouTube web interface frequently fails to render correctly.

Spotify launched lossless streaming in September 2025, four years after first promising it. For subscribers who stream at home over Wi-Fi, the upgrade was seamless. For anyone who depends on downloaded tracks, the rollout left a quiet problem in place: enabling lossless does nothing to audio files already stored on a device. Older downloads stay at whatever compressed quality they were originally saved, and Spotify has not announced a fix. Streaming sounds one way; the phone plays another.

The same YouTube symptoms can come from three different bugs. A frozen spinner, a black screen, a "Content no longer available" error, any of these could point to a timing race in WebKit's codec pipeline, a blocked-request loop in Brave, or a rendering failure in Zen Browser. The surface looks identical. The causes are not, and neither are the fixes.

Spotify today launched the Verified by Spotify badge, a green checkmark that appears on artist profiles and next to artist names in search results, confirming a real person is behind the music. The timing is pointed. Sony Music had requested removal of more than 135,000 AI-generated songs impersonating its artists from streaming services in the weeks before this launch, TechCrunch reported. Rival platform Deezer disclosed last week that AI-generated tracks now represent 44% of all new music...

Netflix today pushed a redesigned mobile app to iPhone users in nine countries, with a new vertical video feed called Clips at its center. The update is Netflix's most significant mobile overhaul in years, built to turn the frustrating "what should I watch?" moment into a swipeable discovery experience rather than a chore. For iPhone users in the launch markets, the Netflix iPhone app redesign is live now.