What We're Reading

A parade of up-and-coming musicians from Universal Music took the stage at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles Saturday in a pre-Grammy Awards performance for a room full of the executives who will make or break their careers.

Talent bookers from James Corden’s late-night show, marketing executives from top brands and executives from Spotify Ltd. and YouTube looked on. Sandwiched in between tables for Apple Inc., an imposing player in online music, and Pandora Media Inc., owner of the world’s largest online radio service, sat executives from a new act trying to break onto the scene: Facebook Inc. 

The world’s largest social network has redoubled its efforts to reach a broad accord with the industry, according to interviews with negotiators at labels, music publishers and trade associations. A deal would govern user-generated videos that include songs and potentially pave the way for Facebook to obtain more professional videos from the labels themselves.

“We’re hopeful that they are m

• What BMW’s China sales say about their economy.  “Xubao” or false reporting; who knew!  Quartz
• Pay your bills or we take your cat (seriously)  TheMoscowTimes
• A $1.65 billion buyout, 300 hours of video uploaded every minute,  300 million hours streaming per day, a “farm” of sorts where prominent studios are paying huge sums to acquire companies that bundle together YouTube channels,  an ever-expanding ad platform, a new premium service (Music Key) and a new marketing strategy aimed at turning YouTube starts into, well true stars.  Aand imagine; YouTube is still an experiment. NYTimes
• Why the middle class isn’t as well off as some would have you believe.  According to IRS data, 99% of American households make less than $388,000 a year, and 95% make less than $167,000 a year. The true middle in terms of income — that is, the cutoff to be in the top 50 percent of earners — is roughly $35,000 a year. Salon (and those middle class jobs are disappearing to automation and outsourcing overseas

"I keep calling it the Woodstock of television," Seibert tells Mashable. "It is the biggest audience of mass television viewing in the history of moving pictures."

Seibert isn't joking. With over 1 billion unique users watching over 6 billion hours of video each month, YouTube's reach is stunning. According to Neilsen, the site reaches more U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 than any cable network.

It's easy to see why cartoon creators would forego the red tape and high pressure of cable television in favor of the Internet. Taking a cartoon from concept to production is grueling work, requiring a huge commitment from the creators and a huge paycheck from the network. More often than not, pitches never see the light of day.

Simon's Cat is hand-drawn, frame by frame. Tofield himself storyboards the episodes.

On YouTube, that process is accelerated tenfold. Operating on a smaller scale with smaller risks, cartoonists can take a chance with more niche ideas and experiment