Eric Cohen-Peckham

Eric Cohen-Peckham Contributor Share on X Eric Cohen-Peckham is the creator of the Monetizing Media newsletter and podcast. He was previously TechCrunch’s media columnist. More posts by this contributor Unity IPO aims to fuel growth across gaming and beyond The companies that will shape the upcoming multiverse era of social media

Eric Cohen-Peckham is the creator of the Monetizing Media newsletter and podcast. He was previously TechCrunch’s media columnist.

The Latest from Eric Cohen-Peckham

Bear and bull cases for Unity’s IPO

Key data points from its S-1 filing help explain Unity's ability to stay ahead of the curve.

Unity IPO aims to fuel growth across gaming and beyond

Unity is currently in a powerful position as the key platform for developing VR/AR content and distributing it across different operating systems and devices.

The companies that will shape the upcoming multiverse era of social media

Throughout this series on the rise of multiverse virtual worlds, I have outlined the collision of gaming and social media into a new multiverse era of social media within virtual worlds due to technol

Making money from games: The future of virtual economies

Fictional portrayals of virtual worlds such as “Ready Player One” and “The Matrix” typically portray the physical and virtual worlds as distinct realms siloed from each other.

Multiverse virtual worlds will be healthier for society than our current social networks

The basis of the classic James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” is an evil media mogul who instigates war between the U.K. and China because it will be great for TV ratings. There’s been

If socializing within games is so popular, why hasn’t the multiverse arrived yet?

Thus far in this series we’ve outlined “multiverse” virtual worlds — a concept different from the metaverse — as the next stage of social media and what this future will look lik

What virtual worlds in the coming multiverse era will look like

Gaming and social media are on a collision course, the result of which will be mainstream popularity of virtual worlds primarily driven by user-generated content (UGC) and anchored in small groups and

Why social networks want even more gaming

Even if you don’t play games, you have spent years of your life in one or more virtual worlds. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WeChat are lightweight versions of virtual

Games already are social networks

Video games are only getting more popular. Roughly 2.5 billion people around the world played games last year, double the number of players in 2013. Gaming is a $149 billion industry, growing 7% year

A multiverse, not the metaverse

Following web forums, web platforms and mobile apps, we are entering a new stage of social media — the multiverse era — where the virtual worlds of games expand to become mainstream hubs for socia

How Europe overtook the US in championing free markets

The deregulation of major U.S. industries like telecom and energy in the 1970s and 80s sparked competition that lowered consumer prices and drove product innovation between competitors. Europe, on the

How Unity built the world’s most popular game engine

What do BMW, Tencent, Pokémon Go creator Niantic, movie director Jon Favreau and construction giant Skanska have in common? They’re all using the same platform to create their products. Founded in

Kobalt’s edge in changing the music industry

Kobalt Music Group is driving the music industry to provide more transparency and faster royalty payments to musicians and challenging the traditional record labels and publishers with its own alterna

How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars

Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own n

How Kobalt is simplifying the killer complexities of the music industry

Backed by over $200 million in VC funding, Kobalt is changing the way the music industry does business and putting more money into musicians’ pockets in the process. In Part I of this series, I walk

The Kobalt EC-1

Music is the lifeblood for many of our lives, but that mellifluous sound emanating from our radios and AirPods belies an immense and intricate web of collection societies, labels, copyright holders, a

How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn

You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour. Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and ro

Patreon’s future and potential exits

Through the Extra Crunch EC-1 on Patreon, I dove into Patreon’s founding story, product roadmap, business model and metrics, underlying thesis, and competitive threats. The six-year-old company last

The Patreon EC-1

TechCrunch is launching a new format for Extra Crunch members, called the EC-1. Modeled after the Form S-1 filing that late-stage startups submit to the SEC as part of the IPO process, EC-1s are autho

The founding story of Patreon

It’s May 7, 2013 and Jack Conte is, in his own words, “totally exhausted, slash, totally wired, in that really weird in-between zone.” He has spent 18 hours per day for the last 50 days building
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