Netflix wants to start keeping your downloads fresh for you.  Streaming-video giant Netflix is introducing a feature this week called “smart downloads,” which deletes shows you’ve watched offline and automatically downloads the next episode for you. “Downloading today is a very manual process, and most of the time people will only download a couple episodes of …

Premier League soccer matches are becoming the next tech darling.  Facebook secured a deal to become the only place to stream Premier League matches in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos starting next year until 2022, in a deal worth about £200 million (or about $265 million), according to a report by the Times of London.  Last month, rival Amazon snapped up exclusive …

Apple Music still trails Spotify in total users, but it may have just taken the lead in one all-important market: the US.  Each of the two music services has more than 20 million paying subscribers in the US, but Apple‘s is “now a hair ahead,” Digital Music News reported Thursday, citing an unnamed music distributor.  In the midst a larger cultural shift to …

YouTube is giving big uploaders new ways to make money by giving them the chance to sell merchandise directly on the site and set up monthly paid membership subscriptions that unlock perks for superfans.  It comes after more than a year of demonetization drama at YouTube. Google‘s massive video site, which has 1.9 billion monthly users, mostly pays back money to its …

Video on Facebook is about to get more interactive.  Facebook on Tuesday announced a grab-bag of developments for video on its giant social network, including the addition of interactivity features that can turn anyone into the Scott Rogowsky of their own HQ Trivia-like empire.  Facebook also said it’s widening ways for people to make money off their videos on Facebook, like …

Fresh off its takeover of TV programmer Time Warner, mobile carrier AT&T said it will launch a $15-a-month sports-free television-streaming service centered on Time Warner’s Turner collection of channels — so think TBS and TNT minus any basketball, plus CNN and Cartoon Network.  And that means no HBO.  The service, called AT&T Watch TV, would be free for people who already pay AT&T …

Patreon, which gives fans a way to pay their favorite creators on a recurring basis, is aiming to build out tools that will allow creators to sell merchandise more easily, through a takeover of startup Kit.  Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.  Patreon said its goal in integrating Kit is to invent a way to automate “merch for membership” …

This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. Apple is adding a new browse tab and sidebar to its Apple News curation of articles, the company said Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Apple News is also getting integrated into its Stocks app, so you can see …

This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. The Apple TV streaming-television device can replace the clunky cable box for Charter Spectrum cable subscribers later this year, Apple said Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. WWDC is the event at which Apple details the newest software that will hit its devices …

Spotify canceled its controversial hateful-conduct policy on Friday in a policy update post.  Earlier this month, Spotify initiated a new policy addressing hate speech and hateful conduct, which let the music-streaming service remove songs or artists from its service or bury them without any promotion, like banning them from playlists. Under the new policy, Spotify stopped promoting the music of at least two …