Technology

Workplace training has long been considered one of the key early areas where virtual reality can make a dent in the enterprise. Walmart already made some noise when it announced it would be bringing VR hardware into its training centers, now the company is planning to send Oculus Go headsets to each of its 5,000 stores so that more of Walmartemployees can get instruction more often.

The big box giant will begin sending four headsets to each Walmart supercenter and two headsets to each Neighborhood Market in the country. That may not necessarily seem like a ton to train a store full of employees, but at Walmartscale that amounts to about 17,000 headsets being shipped by yearend.

The move is the evolution of an announcement that the company made last year that it was working with STRIVR Labs to bring virtual reality training to its200 &WalmartAcademy& training centers. Those training sessions were done on PC-tethered Oculus Rifts, the move to Oculus Go headsets really showcases how much more simple standalone headset hardware is to setup and operate. Just being able to send a few of these to each store and expect that people will be able to navigate them easily is a win for Oculus and Facebook as most early VR hardware has taken a healthy bit of troubleshooting in order to engage with anything.

&Walmart was one of the first companies to benefit from VRability to enrich employee education, and its applications will only grow from here,& Oculus business partnerships head Andy Mathis said in a press release. &What makes it so compelling is that costly, difficult, or otherwise impossible scenarios and simulations become not only possible, but immediately within reach.&

Virtual reality offers a unique opportunity to gain exposure to processes and products before itactually go-time. For employees, the experience can be more engaging than existing options and I would imagine people are less prone to distractions or mindlessly clicking through screens.

STRIVRinstruction videos are largely 360 video-based with interactive onscreen prompts and can offer employees an opportunity to see and feel like they&re interacting with new initiatives before the infrastructure is even in place. In todayannouncement, Walmart specifically highlighted how new store features like &Pickup Towers& for online purchases were able to be get running more quickly as employees had already &interacted& with them in VR before they were installed in the store.

Walmart will start shipping the headsets to stores this month.

More consolidation is afoot in the world of cloud-based voice services. Today, Vonage — once a VoIP pioneer that today offers cloud-based unified communications and other IP services in the business market — announced that it would acquire NewVoiceMedia, a UK startup that builds cloud-based contact center solutions, for $350 million in cash.

Vonage says the price represents 3.8 times NewVoiceMediaprojected 2019 revenue. But it isn&t a stellar exit for the startup, which has been around since 1998 and was last valued at upwards of $311 million, according to Pitchbookdata. That was over two years ago, andwe&d heard the valuation was actually closer to $500 millionat the time. Its investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and more.

On the other hand, the deal will help Vonage increase the services it provides, and thus the margins it makes, in a wider suite of value-added IP services — which today include office phone systems, marketing automation and an existing call center solution, as well as MPLS and other IP services. Specifically, it gives it the platform to integrate also more deeply with other software providers like Salesforce, an important part of how Vonage sells its services to would be customers.

&We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of NewVoiceMedia, which represents a major step forward in the realization of our strategic vision to deliver a differentiated, fully-programmable communications solution that drives more meaningful customer interactions and better outcomes for businesses,& said Vonage CEO Alan Masarek, in a statement.&This acquisition accelerates Vonagegrowth strategy and leadership position in cloud communications, strengthens our presence with global mid-market and enterprise clients, and deepens our integrations and key go-to-market relationships with CRM providers, especially Salesforce.com.&

Vonage is today a $3.2 billion company traded publicly on the NYSE, and its stock is up slightly in trading today.

Vonage claims NewVoiceMedia is the largest privately-owned, pure-play, cloud contact center company globally, with some 700 customers mostly in the mid- to large-enterprise range, including Adobe, Siemens, Time Inc., FundingCircle, and Rapid7.

Dennis Fois, the CEO of NewVoiceMedia, will stay on and continue to lead NewVoiceMedia business, which has 400 employees today. &Vonage and NewVoiceMedia share a powerful vision to serve businesses with cloud communications that connect employees and enable personalized conversations with their customers and prospects,& Fois said in a statement. &Together, we can help businesses create richer experiences through a state-of-the-art, global, programmable cloud communication platform.&

Vonage said it would finance this deal througha combination of existing revolver capacity, cash on hand and cash on the balance sheet of NewVoiceMedia.The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2018, subject to standard regulatory review and customary closing conditions.

Spotify today is taking another step that may make record labels uncomfortable. Fresh off reports that the streaming service iscutting its own licensing deals with independent artists, the company this morning announced it will now allow indie artists to directly upload their music to its service, too.

The upload feature is today launching into beta onSpotify for Artists, the online dashboard that arrived publicly last year. This dashboard and its accompanying mobile appallow artists to track metrics surrounding their streams and their fan base demographics.

Through the new upload tool, artists will now be able to add their own tracks to the streaming service in just a few clicks.

Explains Spotify, artists will upload the music, preview how things will appear, then edit the musicmetadata, if need be. They&ll also be able to choose when those new tracks &go live& on Spotify. (No more new music Fridays, perhaps.)

Most importantly, Spotify says that artists are paid as usual for their uploaded music & the royalty payments will simply be direct deposited to artists& bank accounts every month.

Another new report in the dashboard will detail how much the uploaded streams are earning and when they can expect to be paid.

The upload option is free, and Spotify says it won&t deduct any fees or commissions of its own.

The move is likely to concern labels, who have traditionally acted as gatekeepers between artists and fans. But through digital media platforms, artists have been exploring new ways to build their audience.

For example, on SoundCloud & a service Spotify once considered acquiring & indie musicians, DJs, bands and other performers have been able to attract followings. Similarly, YouTube has often served as a discovery vehicle for unknowns.

Both services will be impacted by this move, as itone of the reasons they&re used by artists. Now, they&ll be able to point fan bases directly to their Spotify tracks.

Those who are able to gain fans on their own may be able to route around the need for a label, and subsequently keep more of their earnings in the process.

&Artists receive 50% of net revenues from the songs they upload,and Spotify also accounts to publishers and collection societies for additional royalties related to the music composition,& said Kene Anoliefo, the Senior Product Lead for SpotifyCreator Marketplace, confirming the payout structure.

Meanwhile, according to a recent report by The NYT, artists working with labels may see much smaller percentages. The report said that Spotify typically pays a record label around 52 percent of the revenue generated by each stream. The label, in turn, then pays the artist a royalty of anywhere from 15% to as high as 50%.

If artists are dealing directly with Spotify, they could be making more money.

Labels suggested that they could retaliate against Spotify for overstepping. The NYT had also said. They may do things like withhold licenses Spotify needs for key international expansions, like India, or not agree to new terms after existing contracts expire.

They could also offer more exclusives and promos to Spotifyrivals, like Apple Music, which has surged ahead in the U.S. and is now neck-and-neck here with Spotify for paid subscribers. (Some reports, as well as AppleCEO Tim Cook, have claimed Apple Music is ahead in North America.)

Spotify has historically downplayed these concerns to investors, saying that itbuilding a two-sided marketplace, and that italways licensed music from creators both &large and small& and will continue to license music from whomever owns the rights.

A music upload feature also means artists who own their own rights could break out big on Spotify if they catch the attention of playlist editors & something that Spotify now makes it easier for them to do,as well.

In addition, having indies upload music directly means Spotify could better compete against Apple Music by attracting more artists and their fans to its platform.

The upload feature is debuting in beta on an invite-only basis in the U.S., Spotify says.

A small handful of independent artists are already on board, includingNoname, Michael Brun, VIAA, and Hot Shade. They provided Spotify with some initial feedback in earlier testing ahead of the beta launch, the company says.

&We started off by working with artists who are both deeply engaged in our platform & so they use Spotify for Artists often & and they also release music often,& said Anoliefo, adding that music upload has been one of artists& most requested features.

&We used the test with them to shape the tool and make an upload process that we think is really easy, transparent and flexible. It&ll enable artists to use the tool to upload music through Spotify for Artists whenever they like. There are no barriers or constraints. And they can upload as often as they&d like. And as many times as they like,& she said.

Over the next few months, Spotify will email other artists to ask them to try out the feature, as well.

Initially, it will open up access to a few hundred more, before rolling it out publicly to the over 200,000 monthly active users of the Spotify for Artists platform.

At launch, music upload will be a web-only feature. The company wouldn&t comment on its plans to bring the feature to mobile.