Asher Lara Is Selling the Creator Playbook. The Platforms Still Own the Field.
Asher Lara earns more than most creators ever will. His agency is selling his methods to companies that don't control the feeds they post into.
OCTOBER 5, 2026
TopicMedia
Thirty films a year, a monitor for CNN
Paramount is reportedly close to settling with the states blocking its Warner takeover. The terms under discussion read less like an antitrust remedy than an industrial policy.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2026
The bet on being named in the answer
Profound raised $180m at $1.8bn to help brands appear in AI-generated answers. The valuation has nearly doubled since February, and the revenue it rests on is undisclosed.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
Therapy reaches the tours that cannot afford it
Large tours have carried therapists for years. A £272,000 fund is an attempt to extend that to the smaller tours where the pressure is identical and the budget is not.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2026
At thirty, an independent label sells curation
Stones Throw marks three decades with a festival, two listening bars and a radio show. In a market with more music than anyone can hear, the product is judgement.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2026
Paramount's defence: the market was invented
The studio's filing argues the states drew the markets to fit the case, and points out that the cinema chains the suit claims to protect are publicly in favour of the deal.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2026
The lyric sheet became the engagement surface
A words-on-screen feature that began as a CD booklet is now where streaming services measure whether a listener is paying attention.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2026
Paramount and the states agree to talk
A dozen attorneys general trying to stop a $111bn merger will sit down with the buyer at the end of October. California's attorney general says that is routine.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2026
Producers ask governments to make streamers pay for local stories
A coalition of 23 industry groups used Toronto to argue that the reach of global platforms is displacing the commissions that domestic storytelling depends on.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2026
Animation follows the pipeline
Streaming demand outgrew domestic capacity, and the work moved to wherever the trained crews were. The leverage moved with it.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2026
Vinyl is a real business again
Physical formats were supposed to be a nostalgia trade winding down. They are the fastest-growing line in recorded music.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026
Games became the safest bet
Adaptations were a running joke for two decades. They are now the closest thing to a reliable franchise pipeline the studios have.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026
The big screen got bigger
Premium formats are a small share of screens and a large share of opening weekend. The upgrade, not the ticket, is what theatres now sell.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026
Publishing is Hollywood's R&D
A book that finds an audience has run the experiment a studio cannot afford to run, which is why option deals now arrive weekly.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2026
Documentaries lost their buyer
Streaming built a market for non-fiction features and then stopped shopping in it. What remains buys a narrower kind of film.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2026
Sync is the growth line
Streaming is the volume business and it grows slowly. Licensing a song to a screen is the smaller number that is moving.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2026
Consent becomes a line item
Hollywood did not ban synthetic performers. It priced them, which turns a question about art into a schedule of permissions and payments.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2026
Restoration is a funding problem
The scanning technology is solved and affordable. What decides which films survive is a grant cycle and a shrinking number of specialists.
AUGUST 17, 2026
The disc endures: physical media's stubborn second life
As streaming libraries shuffle and shrink, collectors and boutique labels have turned owning films into a movement.
JUNE 8, 2026