Nokia and Technicolor will partner to create virtual-reality content using Nokia's OZO+ VR camera and OZO content creation tools, they announced Tuesday.

Former FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony last week drew online viewing, generating "a massive peak" of 2.5 Tbps of livestreaming video traffic on the Akamai platform on a workday, blogged Shane Keats, director-industry marketing, media and entertainment. Akamai said Tuesday the peak was three to seven times higher than typical non-event day traffic peaks. Pointing to daytime peaks also being set during the Rio Olympic Games and U.S. presidential inauguration, it "expect[s] to see more records being broken."

An agreement between YouTube and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is designed to ensure ASCAP members are paid more fairly and accurately for the use of their music on YouTube, they said in a Tuesday announcement. The agreement leverages YouTube’s data exchange and ASCAP’s database of musical works “to address the industry challenge of identifying songwriter, composer and publisher works on YouTube,” they said. The collaboration will enable “new levels of monetization and transparency” for ASCAP members, with an ultimate goal of ensuring that “more money goes to the songwriters, composers and publishers whose creative works fuel the digital music economy,” said ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews.

Thirty content companies from around the globe are forming an anti-online piracy coalition that will, among other things, sue offenders, said an announcement Tuesday. Members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) include Amazon, AMC, BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada and Bell Media, Canal+ Group, CBS, Disney, HBO, Hulu, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Sky, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Star India, Telemundo, Televisa, 20th Century Fox, Univision and Warner Bros. ACE said its efforts will include research, working with law enforcement on curtailing piracy, filing litigation and pursuing voluntary agreements. It said MPAA would play a role, with that group's anti-piracy resources being used alongside the anti-piracy expertise of ACE member companies.

Analysts reacted positively in Monday notes to investors on SiriusXM’s $480 million Pandora stake (see 1706090005), viewing it as validation of the music streamer's advertising-supported business. BTIG has "long been skeptical of Pandora’s potential as a standalone business,” said Brandon Ross, acknowledging the “potential strategic value” Pandora brings to SiriusXM and to Liberty Media, which owns 65 percent of SiriusXM. Through the Pandora investment “or an eventual acquisition,” he wrote, “we hope that SIRI can learn how to succeed in the mobile world.” SiriusXM (SIRI) needs to become more like its mobile competitors at collecting and using data, said the analyst, saying the connected car is more future risk to the satellite radio provider than benefit. Macquarie Capital views SiriusXM as the “greater winner” from the investment, given the deal’s structure and the voice the company will have in Pandora’s strategic direction with addition of three board members, wrote Amy Yong. Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter expects Pandora subscriptions to grow and “contribute meaningful leverage and profitability” when they reach critical mass. He sees potential inclusion of Pandora in SiriusXM’s product offerings as a way for the satellite firm to provide “a more interactive experience” to its 30 million-plus subscribers. A SiriusXM weakness has been “lack of on-demand listening," Pachter said.

SiriusXM will pay $480 million to buy 19 percent of Pandora’s outstanding common shares, SiriusXM said in a Friday announcement. Under the deal, which will land SiriusXM three seats on the Pandora board, including that of chairman, SiriusXM is making a “strategic investment” in Pandora that's “a unique opportunity” to enter “the ad-supported digital radio business, a space where SiriusXM does not play today,” said CEO Jim Meyer in a statement. “Pandora's large user base and its ability to provide listeners with a personalized music experience are tremendous assets.” Nearly two years ago, senior SiriusXM executives told investors not to expect the company to enter the streaming audio marketplace anytime soon (see 1507280011). With a strategic review complete, Pandora said it's selling Ticketfly to Eventbrite for $200 million in a deal to close next quarter that's expected to include a deal letting the streaming radio service "substantially broaden the scale of its ticketing opportunities."

There's little research on what consumers think about Ultra HD, said Paul Gray, an IHS Markit analyst, at his company’s media and technology conference in London Tuesday. French consortium 4Ever "found that resolution from more pixels has no wow factor," he said. High dynamic range “was incredibly visible,” Gray said. With HDR, “you have to be careful when you keep cranking up the brightness,” Gray said. "I do worry about commercials for soap powder where they turn it up to whiter than white and if you don’t flinch, then your wash is not white enough. So some kind of standardization is necessary.” High frame rate, is "quite genre-specific. Hollywood content is shot at 24 frames per second and it doesn’t make much sense to watch it at 120 frames per second. But for sports, it’s really fantastic.” A “surprise” from Mobile World Congress was that when HDR was demonstrated on a mobile device, “you would expect high power consumption and battery drain,” but that didn't happen, said Simon Gauntlett, Dolby Labs director-imaging standards and technology: Quality HDR doesn't mean that the screen “is bright all the time.”

Facebook is allowing publishers to include closed captions for live videos, blogged Product Manager Supratik Lahiri and Director-Accessibility Jeffrey Wieland Tuesday. They wrote that the number of live broadcasts have grown by more than four times over the past year with one in five Facebook videos being live -- so providing closed captions could help increase participation.

Apple bowed its voice-controlled HomePod speaker. HomePod arrives in December at $349, the company announced Monday. Amazon's Alexa Echo is $179, Google Home, $129. The HomePod works with an Apple Music subscription. As a digital assistant, HomePod can send messages, get updates on news, sports and weather and control smart home devices when users speak the “Hey, Siri” trigger phrase.

Amazon Echo owners will have more productive conversations with Alexa after integration with a Nuance virtual assistant for the enterprise market. It’s the first such example of virtual assistants working together, Nuance said. It paves the way for Echo owners to manage accounts with banks and insurance companies by voice, said Robert Weideman, general manager of Nuance’s enterprise division, in an interview. He said a voiceprint is a more secure biometric than fingerprints that can be copied or passwords that can be stolen. His company measures more than 125 elements to differentiate a voice to authenticate the user. As messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and Twitter Direct Messages become more popular, consumers will be able to “friend” providers, Weideman said. Google Home also presents consumer voice opportunities, he said.