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	<title>Margot Yarrow, Author at Cream</title>
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		<title>Robot Does Michael Jackson&#8217;s Moonwalk, Then Eats It Hard</title>
		<link>https://www.creamglobal.com/2455/robot-michael-jackson-billie-jean-dance-crash-viral-video/</link>
					<comments>https://www.creamglobal.com/2455/robot-michael-jackson-billie-jean-dance-crash-viral-video/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Margot Yarrow]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 19:14:48 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Billie Jean]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanoid robots]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robots]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[viral video]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.creamglobal.com/2455/robot-michael-jackson-billie-jean-dance-crash-viral-video/</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>A humanoid robot dancing to 'Billie Jean' at a Chinese robot store went viral after wiping out on some stairs and getting dragged offstage like a corpse.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/2455/robot-michael-jackson-billie-jean-dance-crash-viral-video/">Robot Does Michael Jackson&#8217;s Moonwalk, Then Eats It Hard</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="key-points">
<ul>
<li>A humanoid robot dancing to Michael Jackson&#8217;s &#8220;Billie Jean&#8221; at a store in Shenzhen, China has gone massively viral</li>
<li>The bot pulled off a passable moonwalk before crashing hard into a step on the stage — twice</li>
<li>A human technician had to drag its lifeless frame offstage while &#8220;Billie Jean&#8221; kept playing</li>
<li>The clip is being held up as a perfect example of how far humanoid robotics still has to go</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>A humanoid robot attempted Michael Jackson&#8217;s moonwalk in front of a live crowd. It did not end well — and the internet absolutely cannot get enough of it.</p>
<p>The video, filmed at a &#8220;robot store&#8221; called Future Era in Shenzhen, China, shows the bot striding out onstage to Jackson&#8217;s 1983 classic &#8220;Billie Jean&#8221; and actually pulling off some halfway-decent footwork to start. There&#8217;s a moment — genuinely — where you think it might be okay. The little guy sashays across the stage, attempts something that resembles the iconic moonwalk, and the crowd is watching with what can only be described as cautious optimism.</p>
<p>Then it hits the step.</p>
<p>What follows is the kind of slow-motion catastrophe you can&#8217;t look away from. The robot stumbles, flails with that wild, trout-out-of-water energy that only a falling robot can produce, briefly seems to recover — and then walks straight back into that same step and crumbles into a completely lifeless heap on the stage floor. Face down. Done. Gone. While &#8220;Billie Jean&#8221; keeps playing over the speakers, because nobody thought to turn it off.</p>
<p>And then, for the perfect punchline: a human technician walks out and drags the robot&#8217;s inert body offstage. Just hauls it away. The crowd watches in near-total silence.</p>
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@waffle_pawffle" data-unique-id="waffle_pawffle" data-embed-from="oembed" data-embed-type="creator" style="max-width:780px; min-width:288px;">
<section> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@waffle_pawffle?refer=creator_embed">@waffle_pawffle</a> </section>
</blockquote>
<p> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script></p>
<p>You could not write a better bit of physical comedy. The setup, the false recovery, the second fall, the corpse drag — it&#8217;s a four-act structure. It has <em>arc</em>.</p>
<h2>Why Everyone&#8217;s Losing It</h2>
<p>Part of what makes the clip so irresistible is how hard it commits to the premise before everything falls apart. This wasn&#8217;t a robot quietly malfunctioning in a lab. This was a full public demonstration, with an audience, with Michael Jackson, with a <em>moonwalk</em>. The higher the ambition, the more spectacular the collapse.</p>
<p>The video has inspired waves of jokes and genuine secondhand embarrassment online — and it&#8217;s also being pointed to as a pretty clear-eyed illustration of where humanoid robotics actually stands right now. As <a href="https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/robot-michael-jackson-wiping-out-illustrates-industry-problem">Futurism noted</a>, most of the impressive robot demos you see circulating online are carefully pre-programmed routines. Everything looks incredible right up until something unexpected happens — like, say, a step. The infinite variables of a real environment are exactly the kind of thing these bots aren&#8217;t built to handle yet. A messy kitchen, a stray chair, two stairs at a robot store in Shenzhen — all equally capable of ending the show.</p>
<p>For context, another viral robotics moment making the rounds this week is footage of the company Figure livestreaming one of its humanoid robots sorting packages on a conveyor belt. It&#8217;s a deliberately controlled, constrained setup — and the robot still only barely outpaced a human intern competing against it. Which, as observers pointed out, was an intern who may have had every reason to lose on purpose.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the first time a robot has gone haywire in spectacular fashion at a public event, either. Earlier this year, a different bot made headlines for <a href="https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15833609/Watch-moment-robot-collapses-dancing.html">trashing a hot pot restaurant</a>, and compilation videos of robots losing the plot in various creative ways have quietly become their own genre of internet content. The &#8220;Billie Jean&#8221; bot is just the latest — and arguably the most theatrical — entry.</p>
<h2>The Bigger Picture (Which Doesn&#8217;t Make It Less Funny)</h2>
<p>None of this means the tech isn&#8217;t advancing. It clearly is. But there&#8217;s a real gap between a robot nailing a choreographed routine in ideal conditions and a robot that can vacuum your living room, navigate your dog&#8217;s toys, and not destroy itself on the way to the kitchen. The dancing is the easy part — or at least, it&#8217;s supposed to be.</p>
<p>Until that gap closes, we&#8217;ll have videos like this one. And honestly? The internet seems pretty okay with that arrangement.</p>
<p>As one observer put it, unless your job description is specifically &#8220;dancing badly to Michael Jackson while absolutely eating it on two stairs,&#8221; your career is probably safe from the robot uprising. For now.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/2455/robot-michael-jackson-billie-jean-dance-crash-viral-video/">Robot Does Michael Jackson&#8217;s Moonwalk, Then Eats It Hard</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
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		<title>YouTube Is TV Now — and Madison Avenue Is Listening</title>
		<link>https://www.creamglobal.com/1325/youtube-brandcast-2026-creators-brands-tv/</link>
					<comments>https://www.creamglobal.com/1325/youtube-brandcast-2026-creators-brands-tv/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Margot Yarrow]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 06:19:37 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandcast 2026]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Creator Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Streaming Wars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[YouTube]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.creamglobal.com/1325/youtube-brandcast-2026-creators-brands-tv/</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>From Trevor Noah to MrBeast, YouTube's 2026 Brandcast made one thing clear: the creator economy has officially outgrown Hollywood.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1325/youtube-brandcast-2026-creators-brands-tv/">YouTube Is TV Now — and Madison Avenue Is Listening</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="key-points">
<ul>
<li>YouTube&#8217;s 2026 Brandcast at Lincoln Center unveiled a major slate of creator-led shows, pitching itself directly as a TV network replacement</li>
<li>Trevor Noah, Alex Cooper, Kareem Rahma, and Erling Haaland are among the names attached to new YouTube-exclusive series</li>
<li>YouTube now accounts for 12.7% of all TV viewing per Nielsen, up from 10.8% a year ago — Netflix grew from 8.6% to just 8.8% in the same period</li>
<li>The platform has paid out over $100 billion to creators in the past four years, and is rolling out new AI tools and a two-click checkout feature for connected TVs</li>
<li>Creators like Kareem Rahma walked away from traditional TV deals to bet on YouTube — and the platform is betting right back on them</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>&#8220;Welcome to the YouTube era.&#8221; That&#8217;s how YouTube CEO Neal Mohan opened the company&#8217;s annual Brandcast upfront at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night, and he wasn&#8217;t being modest. With Zara Larsson kicking off the evening and Chappell Roan closing it out, YouTube didn&#8217;t just show up to upfront week — it showed up to win.</p>
<p>The message to the room full of media buyers was blunt: YouTube is no longer a platform where TV content goes to be clipped and repurposed. It is TV. And it&#8217;s time for advertising dollars to reflect that.</p>
<p>Per Nielsen&#8217;s The Gauge report, YouTube commanded 12.7% of all TV viewing as of January 2026 — up from 10.8% during the same period in 2025. Netflix, by comparison, inched from 8.6% to 8.8%. YouTube has been the No. 1 platform in watch time for three consecutive years, and the company says it reached 244 million viewers ages 18 and up in November alone — roughly 91% of the U.S. adult population. Those aren&#8217;t streaming numbers. Those are broadcast numbers.</p>
<h2>A Slate That Looks a Lot Like a Network&#8217;s Pitch Deck</h2>
<p>The centerpiece of Brandcast was YouTube&#8217;s expanded Creator Shows slate — a programming lineup that, in both format and ambition, resembles exactly what legacy TV networks present during upfront week. Only instead of showrunners and studio executives, the stars of this pitch deck are creators.</p>
<p>Trevor Noah, hosting the evening, set the tone early. &#8220;Some of you may recognize me from stand-up comedy. Some of you may recognize me from my podcast. Some of you might recognize me from The Daily Show,&#8221; he told the crowd. &#8220;But there is one place where you definitely see me, and that&#8217;s on YouTube. These days, everything is on YouTube, everything. Sports, entertainment, interviews, podcasts, you name it.&#8221; Noah is now putting that conviction into action with Trevor Noah&#8217;s World Tour, a travel series exclusive to the platform.</p>
<p>Alex Cooper unveiled an entire programming slate for her Unwell Network, including Before the Steps, a Met Gala docuseries; Pot Stirrer, a competition series; and Holiday Hard Launch, a microdrama. &#8220;Legacy media spent decades deciding who we should watch,&#8221; Cooper told the crowd. &#8220;Their problem is this generation stopped asking for permission. Networks didn&#8217;t lose this audience. They never had her. And she doesn&#8217;t just watch — she shows up, not because of an algorithm. It&#8217;s her choice. Her loyalty is not bought. It&#8217;s earned.&#8221;</p>
<p>Former NBA star Dwyane Wade announced a new season of Fly on the Wall. Soccer superstar Erling Haaland is planning both a World Cup docuseries and a fall competition series called Erling&#8217;s Gauntlet. Cleo Abram, Johnny Harris, Quen Blackwell (Feeding Starving Celebrities 2.0), and Dude Perfect (Squad Games) rounded out the roster. Julian Shapiro-Barnum — the creator behind Recess Therapy and Celebrity Substitute, which has cleared 500 million views — is launching Outside Tonight in June, a weekly late-night variety show he describes as the first of its kind built specifically for YouTube.</p>
<p>&#8220;I feel like YouTube has gotten to this amazing place where we are just making the TV ourselves,&#8221; Shapiro-Barnum said. &#8220;We&#8217;re not waiting on anybody to open any door for us or unlock any budget. We&#8217;re going to brands with an idea, getting it funded ourselves and are in production within less than a year of coming up with it.&#8221;</p>
<h2>Kareem Rahma&#8217;s Road to YouTube — Through CNN&#8217;s Dead End</h2>
<p>Perhaps no story at Brandcast captured the platform&#8217;s moment better than Kareem Rahma&#8217;s. The creator behind Subway Takes — the viral series that has put Cate Blanchett, Lil Nas X, and Ramy Youssef on a New York City train for hot takes — was supposed to be celebrating a television win. CNN had picked up his other show, Keep the Meter Running, in which Rahma rides along with yellow cab drivers to their favorite spots around the city. Then they sat on it. For three years.</p>
<p>&#8220;I did the whole rigmarole with television, and it was a disaster,&#8221; Rahma said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to wait anymore. I walked away from the deal and decided to do it independently on YouTube.&#8221;</p>
<p>At Brandcast, he announced Keep the Meter Running as a YouTube exclusive — nine episodes shot around New York and one international. CNN had required a rigid 45-minute runtime per episode. On YouTube, that constraint is gone. &#8220;Some episodes are 45 minutes, and some episodes are 12 minutes — we&#8217;re not really concerned with having an exact runtime. It&#8217;s more about the story and what is the best we can do for the audience. I was literally fishing with a Korean man in the forest yesterday,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Rahma&#8217;s pivot was well-timed. On the morning of Brandcast, a coordinated wave of coverage about him broke across the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Deadline, and others — a campaign that, as YouTube exec Adam Faze quietly acknowledged, had some help from Google&#8217;s own PR apparatus. That YouTube&#8217;s parent company now sees fit to lend its promotional muscle to individual creators marks a meaningful shift in how the platform thinks about talent retention.</p>
<h2>The Retention Problem — and How YouTube Is Solving It</h2>
<p>For all its dominance, YouTube has always had a version of the same problem: it builds careers that everyone else wants to buy. Justin Bieber was discovered here. So was Marques Brownlee. The platform&#8217;s algorithm, its monetization tools, and its sheer scale have made it the most powerful incubator for creators on the planet — which also makes it a prime target for poaching.</p>
<p>Netflix has been the most aggressive. In December, iHeartRadio brought 15 shows to the streaming giant — including The Breakfast Club and My Favorite Murder — on the condition that they stop distributing on YouTube. Netflix has also signed Pete Davidson and former NFL player Michael Irvin for original podcast-style shows. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has called YouTube &#8220;a little bit of a farm league&#8221; for creators to &#8220;cut their teeth on.&#8221;</p>
<p>YouTube&#8217;s answer to all of this is Creator Partnerships, a newly reimagined product (previously called BrandConnect) that connects top creators directly with brand sponsorships, provides white-glove support across press, marketing, and technical needs, and now packages creator output into formal seasonal series with premiere dates and press kits. YouTube doesn&#8217;t fund or finance these projects directly — but it does everything else it can to keep creators happy enough to stay.</p>
<p>&#8220;All big creators today are multi-platform by default, but we definitely see YouTube as the crown jewel of the media portfolio,&#8221; said Taylor Kelly, chief strategy officer at Night Media, which manages talent including Kai Cenat, Hasan Piker, the Kalogeras Sisters, and MrBeast (from 2018 to 2024). &#8220;YouTube brand deals are usually bigger on a per-deal basis.&#8221;</p>
<p>MrBeast — Jimmy Donaldson, the world&#8217;s most-watched creator — is perhaps the clearest proof of concept. He has a sign in his North Carolina studio that reads &#8220;Rule #1: YouTube First,&#8221; even after producing Beast Games, the biggest unscripted series in Amazon&#8217;s history. Making that show, he admits, temporarily changed how he thought about his YouTube content — and not entirely for the better. &#8220;After the first season of Beast Games, we might have made our YouTube content a little too overproduced, where it felt inauthentic, which we&#8217;re curving back and fixing,&#8221; Donaldson said.</p>
<p>Mohan&#8217;s framing of all this is deliberate. &#8220;MrBeast can do a deal for a TV show, but he knows his brand, his business, and his community are built on YouTube,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They want to be entrepreneurs, own their work, and have a direct relationship with an audience. We give them that freedom.&#8221;</p>
<h2>Brands Are Already Following the Audience</h2>
<p>The brand side of the equation is catching up fast. Coach&#8217;s &#8220;Explore Your Story&#8221; creator-led campaign — which included episodic &#8220;Story Sessions&#8221; with Olympic gymnast Sunisa Lee and track and field athlete Tara Davis-Woodhall — drove a 60% jump in Gen Z brand awareness and a six-fold increase in consideration in a single quarter. Chanel has leaned into behind-the-scenes documentary-style content from its handbag campaigns and runway productions. Nike has used YouTube to distribute long-form athlete storytelling, including Grant Fisher&#8217;s first NYC half marathon and Keely Hodgkinson&#8217;s post-injury comeback, with engagement ranging from 50,000 to two million views per video.</p>
<p>Research by social and influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy found that 70% of marketers planned to increase production of long-form creator content heading into 2024 — and the trend has only accelerated since. &#8220;Brands simply follow where consumer attention is,&#8221; said Thomas Walters, chief innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy. &#8220;A rise in YouTube consumption on TV and a rejection of passive scrolling habits in favor of more intentional media consumption has helped prompt rising brand investment in long-form.&#8221;</p>
<p>That audience is broader than it&#8217;s ever been. YouTube&#8217;s 2.7 billion monthly users skew younger — <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/the-return-to-long-form-why-youtube-is-winning-back-brands">research from Vogue Business and youth culture agency Archrival found that 88% of Gen Zs and millennials use YouTube to discover new products</a> — but the aging of millennials is quietly becoming one of the platform&#8217;s biggest selling points with advertisers. &#8220;The older millennials will turn 45 this year, and they really are the first generation to grow up with a supercomputer in their pocket,&#8221; said Brian Albert, managing director of YouTube Media Partnerships and Creative Works. &#8220;As they grow older, we just don&#8217;t expect them to consume media the way their parents did. They are filling in that 18 to 49 demo that really was at the heart of TV buying for decades.&#8221;</p>
<p>Up to 78% of Gen Alphas also use YouTube regularly, making it the dominant video platform in their media diet, according to research from GWI.</p>
<h2>The Ad Tech to Back It All Up</h2>
<p>Beyond the programming slate, Brandcast introduced a suite of new ad products aimed at closing the gap between attention and commerce. Buy with Google Pay enables a two-click checkout flow directly on connected TVs — and YouTube says conversions from CTV ads grew more than 200% year over year in Q1 2026. AI-powered Custom Sponsorships can dynamically build thematic content packages at scale, while new generative AI creative tools powered by Gemini, Veo, and Nano Banana take advertisers from brief to finished ad in a single workflow.</p>
<p>The platform also introduced a Masthead with Custom Content Shelf, letting advertisers pair hero creative with a curated video lineup, and an Affiliate Partnerships Boost to amplify affiliate-linked creator content directly on the platform. The message, as YouTube chief business officer Mary Ellen Coe framed it, is that YouTube wants to handle the full funnel — from the first impression to the checkout — without the buyer ever leaving Google&#8217;s ecosystem.</p>
<p>Over the past four years, YouTube has paid out more than $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies — a number Mohan cited not just as a flex, but as a defensive moat. &#8220;There&#8217;s no platform on planet Earth that has invested in the creator economy to the same extent that we have,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Brittany Broski, whose Royal Court show has featured Harry Styles and Charli XCX, summed up the cultural moment as plainly as anyone. &#8220;We&#8217;re in a new, exciting era of talk shows right now,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We&#8217;re watching the demise of Hollywood and the influx of new Hollywood.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mohan, for his part, isn&#8217;t trying to predict which creator or format will define that new Hollywood. &#8220;My job isn&#8217;t to predict what content will be front and center in three years,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s to make sure that when the next creator has a brilliant idea, they have the tools to share it with the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>Chappell Roan — who was creating on YouTube years before she became a superstar — closed out the night. It was the kind of full-circle moment YouTube couldn&#8217;t have scripted better if it tried.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1325/youtube-brandcast-2026-creators-brands-tv/">YouTube Is TV Now — and Madison Avenue Is Listening</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
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		<title>Byron Allen Buys BuzzFeed in $120M Deal, Takes CEO Role</title>
		<link>https://www.creamglobal.com/1258/byron-allen-buys-buzzfeed-120-million-deal-ceo/</link>
					<comments>https://www.creamglobal.com/1258/byron-allen-buys-buzzfeed-120-million-deal-ceo/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Margot Yarrow]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 04:43:09 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BuzzFeed]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Byron Allen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BZFD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Digital Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media Acquisitions]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.creamglobal.com/1258/byron-allen-buys-buzzfeed-120-million-deal-ceo/</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Byron Allen's family office is acquiring a 52% stake in BuzzFeed for $120 million, making him CEO as founder Jonah Peretti steps aside after 20 years.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1258/byron-allen-buys-buzzfeed-120-million-deal-ceo/">Byron Allen Buys BuzzFeed in $120M Deal, Takes CEO Role</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="key-points">
<ul>
<li>Byron Allen&#8217;s family office, Allen Family Digital, is acquiring a 52% majority stake in BuzzFeed for $120 million</li>
<li>Allen will become Chairman and CEO; founder Jonah Peretti steps down after 20 years to lead a new BuzzFeed AI division</li>
<li>The deal — structured as $20M cash plus a $100M promissory note — pulled BuzzFeed back from the brink of bankruptcy</li>
<li>BuzzFeed stock more than doubled on the news, surging over 113% to around $1.60 on Tuesday</li>
<li>Allen plans to pivot BuzzFeed toward free streaming video, audio, and user-generated content, directly targeting YouTube</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>Byron Allen is taking over BuzzFeed. The media mogul&#8217;s family office, Allen Family Digital, has agreed to acquire a 52% controlling stake in the struggling digital publisher for $120 million — a deal that hands Allen the chairman and CEO title and ends Jonah Peretti&#8217;s nearly two-decade run as the company&#8217;s founder and chief executive.</p>
<p>BuzzFeed stock exploded on the news, surging more than 113% to around $1.60 on Tuesday — a year-to-date high — after shares had closed Monday&#8217;s regular session at just 73 cents. Volume hit 61 million shares, dwarfing the stock&#8217;s average daily volume of roughly 360,000. For a company that was openly warning investors about its ability to stay afloat, it was a dramatic reversal.</p>
<p>The transaction values BuzzFeed shares at $3 each — more than four times Monday&#8217;s closing price — and is structured as $20 million in cash at closing plus a $100 million promissory note due five years out, accruing interest at 5% annually. The deal is expected to close by the end of May, subject to customary conditions.</p>
<h2>A Lifeline for a Company on the Edge</h2>
<p>The timing couldn&#8217;t be more critical. Earlier this month, BuzzFeed disclosed it had missed a $5 million debt payment due at the end of April and had moved to extend that deadline to May 18. The company had been <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/05/12/byron-allen-buzzfeed-deal-ceo">openly warning investors</a> about severe liquidity issues — operating with minimal cash against $58.4 million in debt while facing the threat of a Nasdaq delisting after shares fell below the $1 threshold. It had received a similar delisting warning in 2023 and resorted to a reverse stock split to stay listed.</p>
<p>Without Allen&#8217;s investment, bankruptcy appeared to be the likely next chapter. The company&#8217;s market cap heading into Monday was roughly $28 million. Allen&#8217;s deal values the business at more than three times that.</p>
<p>The Q1 2026 numbers reported alongside the deal announcement didn&#8217;t offer much comfort on their own: revenue fell 12.4% year-over-year to $31.6 million, advertising revenue dropped nearly 20%, and net losses widened to $15.1 million from $12.5 million in the same quarter a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA came in at negative $7.8 million. The company exited the quarter with just $6.8 million in cash.</p>
<p>But investors weren&#8217;t focused on the rearview mirror. They were focused on what Allen brings to the table.</p>
<h2>Who Is Byron Allen — and What Does He Want With BuzzFeed?</h2>
<p>Allen founded Allen Media Group in 1993 and has built it into one of the largest independent media companies in the country. He owns 13 ABC, CBS, and NBC network affiliate TV stations across 11 U.S. markets, plus 10 24-hour HD television networks — including The Weather Channel — serving nearly 275 million subscribers. He also owns digital streaming platforms and is one of the largest independent producers of first-run syndicated television programming in the business.</p>
<p>He&#8217;s also about to become a late-night presence: Allen Media Group&#8217;s <em>Comics Unleashed</em> is set to take over <a href="https://www.tvinsider.com/people/byron-allen/">The Late Show with Stephen Colbert&#8217;s</a> time slot on CBS when Colbert&#8217;s run ends later this month.</p>
<p>Allen has spent years pursuing bigger acquisitions — he previously made bids tied to Paramount Global, BET, and Tegna — but none of those deals came together. BuzzFeed represents something different: a distressed but iconic digital brand he can acquire at a fraction of its former value and reshape on his own terms.</p>
<p>And he&#8217;s not being subtle about what he wants to do with it. &#8220;Our vision is to build on the iconic foundation of BuzzFeed and HuffPost by expanding into free-streaming video, audio and user-generated content,&#8221; Allen said in the announcement. &#8220;As of this moment, with the power of AI, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube to become another premiere free video streaming service.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a bold swing for a company that, until yesterday, was struggling to make payroll.</p>
<h2>The End of the Peretti Era</h2>
<p>Jonah Peretti co-founded BuzzFeed in 2006 and turned it into one of the defining media brands of the social internet era — pioneering viral content, social distribution, and the quiz format that once made the whole internet stop what it was doing to find out which Disney princess they were. At its peak in 2016, BuzzFeed raised $200 million from NBCUniversal at a $1.7 billion valuation. In 2013, Disney reportedly offered $650 million for the company, an offer Peretti turned down.</p>
<p>The years since haven&#8217;t been kind. BuzzFeed went public via SPAC in 2021, took on heavy debt to acquire Complex Networks for around $300 million, then spent the following years selling off assets — Complex, First We Feast — and shuttering its award-winning news operation, BuzzFeed News, in 2023. HuffPost, acquired from Verizon Media in 2020, remained. So did Tasty, the food brand. But the company&#8217;s stock had lost more than 98% of its value before Monday&#8217;s rally.</p>
<p>Peretti, for his part, is framing his exit from the CEO role as a move he&#8217;s genuinely excited about. &#8220;I&#8217;m confident I can have a bigger impact and create more value in this new capacity,&#8221; he said on a conference call Monday, per the New York Times, adding that stepping down would allow him to play &#8220;a more hands-on role developing products and technology.&#8221;</p>
<p>In a formal statement, Peretti was effusive about his successor: &#8220;Byron Allen has built one of the world&#8217;s largest media companies and is one of the most accomplished media entrepreneurs in the industry, having spent 30-plus years transforming distribution infrastructure, identifying strategic assets, and scaling them into something much greater. Byron&#8217;s vision, operational experience, and long-term commitment to premium content makes him exceptionally well-positioned to lead BuzzFeed and HuffPost into our next phase of growth.&#8221;</p>
<p>He added a personal note that says a lot about the moment: &#8220;And personally, I&#8217;m thrilled Byron is taking over &#8216;The Late Show With Stephen Colbert&#8217;s&#8217; time slot, and highly confident that his relationships with talent will bring some incredible stars to the BuzzFeed platform.&#8221;</p>
<p>As President of BuzzFeed AI, Peretti will focus on applied AI research, product innovation, and what the company describes as &#8220;technology-driven media formats.&#8221; It&#8217;s worth noting that BuzzFeed&#8217;s previous AI pivot — which included AI-generated quizzes and articles — <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/buzzfeed-disastrous-earnings-ai">drew significant criticism</a> and didn&#8217;t move the needle financially. Whether Peretti can make the strategy work in a new capacity remains an open question.</p>
<h2>What&#8217;s Getting Restructured</h2>
<p>Alongside the Allen deal, BuzzFeed announced a round of cost reductions and a structural change: BuzzFeed Studios — which produces vertical micro-dramas, animation, digital video, and premium studio content including feature films — along with the Tasty food brand will be spun off into a new independent entity. The company hasn&#8217;t offered many specifics on that spinoff yet.</p>
<p>Allen will oversee both BuzzFeed and HuffPost after the transaction closes, with his eyes set on the streaming opportunity. The incoming CEO&#8217;s track record in broadcast and his existing relationships across the television industry give BuzzFeed something it hasn&#8217;t had in a while: an operator who knows how to build and distribute content at scale.</p>
<p>Whether that&#8217;s enough to resurrect one of the internet&#8217;s most recognizable names — and whether BZFD stock at $1.60 represents a real turnaround story or just a momentary spike — Wall Street&#8217;s only analyst covering the stock currently has a price target of $1, implying meaningful downside from current levels. The stock is still trading more than 95% below its March 2021 peak.</p>
<p>But for a company that was staring down bankruptcy a week ago, even getting to ask that question feels like progress.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1258/byron-allen-buys-buzzfeed-120-million-deal-ceo/">Byron Allen Buys BuzzFeed in $120M Deal, Takes CEO Role</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
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		<title>Spotify&#8217;s All-Time Wrapped Is Here for Its 20th Birthday</title>
		<link>https://www.creamglobal.com/1032/spotify-party-of-the-years-20th-anniversary-wrapped-feature/</link>
					<comments>https://www.creamglobal.com/1032/spotify-party-of-the-years-20th-anniversary-wrapped-feature/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Margot Yarrow]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 13:26:55 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[20th Anniversary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Party of the Years]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spotify]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spotify Wrapped]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.creamglobal.com/1032/spotify-party-of-the-years-20th-anniversary-wrapped-feature/</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[<p>Spotify's new 'Party of the Year(s)' feature shows your full listening history — first song, top artist, and a 120-track playlist. Here's how to find it.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1032/spotify-party-of-the-years-20th-anniversary-wrapped-feature/">Spotify&#8217;s All-Time Wrapped Is Here for Its 20th Birthday</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="key-points">
<ul>
<li>Spotify launched &#8220;Your Party of the Year(s),&#8221; a Wrapped-style recap covering your entire time on the app — not just this year.</li>
<li>It reveals your first day on Spotify, the first song you ever streamed, your all-time most-streamed artist, and total unique songs listened to.</li>
<li>A personalized playlist of your top 120 all-time tracks — with individual play counts — is included.</li>
<li>The feature is free for both premium and free users, available worldwide, but only for six weeks.</li>
<li>It&#8217;s part of Spotify&#8217;s 20th anniversary celebrations, which also revealed Taylor Swift as the most-streamed artist in platform history.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>Spotify just gave you the most dangerous gift imaginable: a full accounting of everything you&#8217;ve ever listened to since the day you joined. Every guilty pleasure. Every heartbreak anthem on repeat. Every song you definitely didn&#8217;t play 47 times in a single month. It&#8217;s all there.</p>
<p>The streaming giant rolled out <strong>&#8220;Spotify 20: Your Party of the Year(s)&#8221;</strong> on Tuesday as the centerpiece of its 20th anniversary celebration — and it&#8217;s essentially Spotify Wrapped, but instead of covering just the past year, it covers your entire history on the platform. We&#8217;re talking day one. The very first song you ever hit play on.</p>
<p>The experience surfaces a handful of stats that Spotify has never shared with users before: the date you first opened the app, the first track you streamed, your most-listened-to artist of all time, and the total number of unique songs you&#8217;ve played across your whole time on the platform. It&#8217;s the kind of data that&#8217;s been sitting in Spotify&#8217;s servers for years — and now it&#8217;s yours to cringe at, celebrate, or immediately screenshot and send to your group chat.</p>
<p>On top of the stats, every user gets a personalized <strong>All-Time Top Songs Playlist</strong> — 120 tracks, ranked by how many times you&#8217;ve actually played them, with the play count displayed right there next to each song. No hiding from the truth.</p>
<h2>How to Find It (Before It&#8217;s Gone)</h2>
<p>The feature is mobile-only — you won&#8217;t find it on the web player — so open up the Spotify app and search <strong>&#8220;Spotify 20&#8221;</strong> or <strong>&#8220;Party of the Year(s).&#8221;</strong> You can also go directly to <a href="http://spotify.com/20">spotify.com/20</a> on your phone. Like Wrapped, everything comes packaged in a custom share card you can post to Instagram or send to friends.</p>
<p>Both free and premium users have access, and the feature is available globally. The catch: it&#8217;s only live for six weeks, so don&#8217;t sleep on it.</p>
<p>&#8220;The real story of 20 years of Spotify belongs to the fans and artists who have come together to turn discovery into something personal, moments into movement, and listening into community,&#8221; said Angela Leffell, Spotify&#8217;s Global Brand Lead for Brand and Creative. &#8220;Instead of just celebrating Spotify, we wanted to give the story back to our users.&#8221;</p>
<p>Axel Ulfson, a Product Manager at Spotify, put it a different way: &#8220;Your Party of the Year(s)&#8221; gives users &#8220;the full listener journey from the moment they join Spotify.&#8221; The goal, he said, is less about what you listened to and more about &#8220;the broader story of how listening has moved us over time.&#8221;</p>
<h2>The Bigger 20th Anniversary Picture</h2>
<p>The personal recap is the latest piece of a much bigger birthday celebration Spotify has been rolling out. Last month, the company <a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-04-23/spotify-20-most-streamed-music-podcasts-audiobooks/">revealed the most-streamed artists, songs, albums, podcasts, and audiobooks in platform history</a> — and the results were about as surprising as you&#8217;d expect.</p>
<p>Taylor Swift topped the all-time most-streamed artist list. Bad Bunny&#8217;s <em>Un Verano Sin Ti</em> took the crown for most-streamed album ever. The Weeknd&#8217;s &#8220;Blinding Lights&#8221; is the most-streamed song in Spotify history. The Joe Rogan Experience is the top podcast. And for audiobook fans: Sarah J. Maas&#8217; <em>A Court of Thorns and Roses</em> is the most-streamed audiobook among premium subscribers.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth putting the scale of all this in context. Last year&#8217;s annual Wrapped — which Spotify said was its biggest ever — pulled in over 200 million engaged users within the first 24 hours, a 19% jump from the AI-heavy 2024 edition that landed with a thud. Users shared their Wrapped recaps 500 million times. &#8220;Party of the Year(s)&#8221; is betting that the same impulse — to see yourself reflected in your own data and immediately show other people — works just as well when the timeline stretches back years instead of months.</p>
<p>Given that most of us have a complicated, deeply personal relationship with our Spotify history, that bet seems pretty safe.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com/1032/spotify-party-of-the-years-20th-anniversary-wrapped-feature/">Spotify&#8217;s All-Time Wrapped Is Here for Its 20th Birthday</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.creamglobal.com">Cream</a>.</p>
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