Pandora redesigned its app Tuesday to better showcase how it’s evolved beyond the radio-like streaming-music service it started out as more than a decade ago. The latest update adds more ways to tweak the kind of song Pandora plays next and introduces a main discovery feed that personalizes recommendations throughout the day, while it also highlights more formats like …

 Locast — a nonprofit startup that grabs over-the-air channels and streams them free over the internet — said late Thursday that the four giant US broadcasters’ “sham litigation” against it is an antitrust conspiracy to drive it out of business and threaten its supporters. Locast’s first official answer to the copyright suit goes beyond simply rejecting the companies’ accusations of …

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki rejected calls to spin off YouTube, Google’s massive online video service, from the search giant and its parent company, Alphabet.  “We use technology from Google that’s really helpful, like all the machine learning … to find the violative content. Being able to do that at scale, we benefit from the Google technology,” she said Wednesday at the …

YouTube, Google‘s massive online video site, is about to embark on the biggest changes yet to kids videos. The company is reengineering how it treats clips directed at children, following this month’s record $170 million penalty for violating kids’ data privacy. YouTube pledged to disable comments, notifications and personalized ads on all videos directed at children, and its machine learning will police YouTube’s sprawling …

Video site Vimeo launched a marketplace for video jobs, designed to connect creators looking for gigs with businesses, brands and agencies that need freelance video pros. Any paid Vimeo member can be included in the marketplace by marking his or her account as “available for hire,” and people on the hunt to hire someone can post listings via their own …

Facebook is introducing new, interactive advertising to its News Feed, adding ads that integrate polls, simple gaming and augmented reality into the main destination people go when they check the most popular social network in the world.  With more than 2 billion daily active users, Facebook is one of the world’s most powerful advertising giants. Its massive advertising revenue totaled …

Tonic is a new app with a radical approach to recommendations personalized for you: It doesn’t want to know who you are, make money off your interests or hook you on using its app more and more. Instead, Tonic wants to recommend five, and only five, things every day, like an article or photo essay.  It’s definitely the first app …

Podcast mobile app Pocket Casts is now free. Once a $3.99 download, the service is switching to a free model for mobile use and is introducing a new Plus subscription to replace the $9 version that previously unlocked desktop and web listening.  “In today’s rapidly evolving audio landscape, it’s important we stand for free and open access — not walled …

NBC will launch the Peacock streaming service in April, NBCUniversal said Tuesday. Peacock is pinning its hopes for streaming success against a ballooning group of competitors by leaning into shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation, movies from its studios and originals that include a bunch of reboots (including reboots of reboots). The company didn’t specify pricing, other than to …

Patreon, which gives fans a way to pay their favorite creators on a recurring basis, is selling the merchandise-distribution startup Kit that it acquired last year. Geniuslink, a tech company that offers link shortening for marketing products, is the buyer.  Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.  “When the Kit team was acquired by Patreon last year, we shared our …