ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

An investment in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below together with all of the other information included in this Annual Report before making an investment decision with regard to our securities. The statements contained herein or incorporated herein that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. If any of the following risks actually occurs, our business, financial condition, or results of operations could be harmed. In that case, you may lose all or part of your investment. In addition to the other information provided in this Annual Report, you should carefully consider the following risk factors in evaluating our business before purchasing any of our common stock. Although it is not possible to identify or predict all of the risks and uncertainties we face, we believe the discussion below includes all of the risks that are material to our business.

Summary Risk Factors

Risks Related to our Financial Condition

Risks Related to Our Business

Risks Related to Owning Our Common Stock

Risks Related to Our Financial Condition

We have required debt and equity financing to maintain operations.

We have in the past failed and expect to for the foreseeable future to continue to fail to create cashflows from revenues sufficient to cover basic costs. As a result, we have relied heavily on convertible debt and equity financing. These financings have created a dilutive effect on our common stock and may continue to do so. For the foreseeable future, we will continue to rely upon debt and equity financing to maintain operation of the Company.

We have generated minimal revenues under our current business model, which makes it difficult for us to evaluate our future business prospects and make decisions based on those estimates of our future performance.

For the year ended December 31, 2020, substantially all our revenues were derived from the historical business of ScreenPlay, which relies on a Subscription service-based model using older and more expensive A/V technology. Our revenues for 2020 did not contain any significant contribution from any Ad-Supported Services or the provision of the Loop Player to OOH venues or our Loop App to retail consumer end users. As a consequence, it is difficult, if not impossible, to forecast our future results based upon our historical data. Our projections are based upon our best estimates on future growth and the development of our business plan. Because of the related uncertainties, we may be hindered in our ability to anticipate and timely adapt to increases or decreases in sales, revenues, or expenses. If we make poor budgetary decisions as a result of unreliable data, we may never become profitable and may continue to incur losses, which may result in a decline in our stock price.

We have incurred significant operating losses in the past, and we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to be profitable, or to generate positive cash flow on a sustained basis. In addition, our revenue growth rate may decline.

We have incurred significant operating losses in the past and, as of December 31, 2020, had an accumulated deficit. For the years ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, our operating losses were $15.4 million and $11.5 million, respectively. We have incurred significant costs to license content and continue to pay royalties or minimum guarantees to record labels, publishers, and other copyright owners for such content. We cannot guarantee that we will generate sufficient revenue from our efforts to monetize the Service via the sale of our Premium Service and generating advertising revenue, including on our Ad-Supported Service, to offset the cost of our content and these royalty expenses. If we cannot successfully earn revenue at a rate that exceeds the operational costs, including royalty expenses and guarantee payments to the Music Labels, associated with our Service, we will not be able to achieve or sustain profitability or generate positive cash flow on a sustained basis.

Additionally, we also expect our costs to increase in future periods, which could negatively affect our future operating results and ability to achieve profitability. We expect to continue to expend substantial financial and other resources on:

These investments may not result in increased revenue or growth in our business. If we fail to continue to grow our revenue and overall business, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be harmed.

There is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern and if we are unable to generate significant revenue or secure additional financing, we may be unable to implement our business plan and grow our business.

We are a small and emerging media company that is in the process of rolling out a new business plan as our products and services have only recently been fully operational and ready for delivery to our customers. Consequently, we have not generated sufficient revenues to operate our business. We have an accumulated deficit and have incurred operating losses for years and expect losses to continue during the remainder of fiscal 2021 and beyond. Our independent registered public accounting firm has indicated in their report that these conditions raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern for a period of 12 months from the issuance date of this report. The continuation of our business as a going concern is dependent upon the continued financial support from our current and potential stockholders. The Company’s primary source of operating funds since inception has been cash proceeds from debt and equity financing transactions. The ability of the Company to continue as a going concern is dependent upon its ability to generate sufficient revenue and its ability to raise additional funds by way of its debt and equity financing efforts. There can be no assurance that adequate financing will be available in a timely manner, on acceptable terms, or at all.

There is uncertainty regarding our ability to grow our business to a greater extent than we can with our existing financial resources without additional financing. We have no agreements, commitments, or understandings to secure additional financing at this time. Our long-term future growth and success is dependent upon our ability to continue selling our services, generate cash from operating activities and obtain additional financing. We may be unable to continue selling our products and services, generate sufficient cash from operations, sell additional shares of common stock, or borrow additional funds. Our inability to obtain additional cash could have a material adverse effect on our ability to grow our business to a greater extent than we can with our existing financial resources.

 We will require additional capital to support business growth and objectives, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms, if at all.

We intend to continue to make investments to support our business growth and will require additional funds to respond to business challenges, including the need to develop new features or enhance our existing Service, expand into additional markets around the world, improve our infrastructure, or acquire complementary businesses and technologies. Accordingly, we have in the past engaged, and may in the future engage, in equity and debt financings to secure additional funds. If we raise additional funds through future issuances of equity or convertible debt securities, our existing stockholders could suffer significant dilution, and any new equity securities we issue could have rights, preferences, and privileges superior to those of holders of our common stock. Any debt financing, we secure in the future could also contain restrictive covenants relating to our capital-raising activities and other financial and operational matters, which may make it more difficult for us to obtain additional capital and pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. We may not be able to obtain additional financing on terms favorable to us, if at all. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms satisfactory to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth, acquire or retain users, and to respond to business challenges could be significantly impaired, and our business may be harmed.

We may not be able to utilize all, or any, of our net operating loss carryforwards.

We have significant net operating loss carryforwards. As of December 31, 2020, we had net operating loss carryforwards of $18 million in the United States relating to federal taxes and $17.9 million in the United States relating to state taxes. In certain jurisdictions, if we are unable to earn sufficient income or profits to utilize such carryforwards before they expire, they will no longer be available to offset future income or profits.

Risks Related to Our Business

If our efforts to attract prospective OOH customers and D2C users and to retain existing customers and users of our Service are not successful, our growth prospects and revenue will be adversely affected.

Our ability to grow our OOH business and generate revenue depends on retaining, expanding, and effectively monetizing our OOH customer base, including by increasing the number of venues that have adopted our Service and increasing advertising revenue on our OOH Ad-Supported Service delivered through our Loop Player and monetizing content across the OOH Service. We must convince prospective OOH customers of the benefits of our Service and our existing users of the continuing value of our Service. Our ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers, and convert users of our OOH Premium subscription service to our OOH Ad-Supported Service depends in large part on our ability to continue to offer compelling curated content, leading technologies and products like the Loop Player, superior functionality, and an engaging customer experience.

Our ability to grow our D2C business and generate revenue depends on retaining, expanding, and effectively monetizing our total user base, including by increasing advertising revenue on our D2C Ad-Supported Service, increasing the number of subscribers to our Premium Service, and finding ways to monetize content across the Service. We must convince prospective users of the benefits of our Service and our existing users of the continuing value of our Service. Our ability to attract new users, retain existing users, and convert users of our Ad-Supported Service to subscribers to our Premium Service depends in large part on our ability to continue to offer leading technologies and products, compelling highly curated content, superior functionality, and an engaging user experience. As consumer tastes and preferences change on the Internet and with mobile devices and other internet-connected products, we will need to enhance and improve our existing Service, introduce new services and features, and maintain our competitive position with additional technological advances and an adaptable platform. If we fail to keep pace with technological advances or fail to offer compelling product offerings and state-of-the-art delivery platforms to meet consumer demands, our ability to grow or sustain the reach of our Service, attract and retain users, and increase our Premium Subscribers to our Loop App may be adversely affected.

In addition, in order to increase our advertising revenue, we also seek to increase the listening time that our Ad-Supported OOH customers and D2C users spend on our Ad-Supported Service and find new opportunities to deliver advertising to users on the Service. The more content users stream on the Ad-Supported Service, the more advertising inventory we generally have to sell. Further, growth in our Ad-Supported user base increases the size and scope of user pools targeted by advertisers, which improves our ability to deliver relevant advertising to those users in a manner that maximizes our advertising customers’ return on investment and that ultimately allows us to better demonstrate the effectiveness of our advertising solutions and justifies a pricing structure that is advantageous for us. If we fail to grow our Ad-Supported OOH customers and user base, the amount of content streamed, and the listening time spent by our Ad-Supported OOH customers and users, we may be unable to grow Ad-Supported revenue.

In order to increase our Ad-Supported OOH customers and users and our Premium Subscribers, we will need to address a number of challenges, including:

Failure to overcome any one of these challenges could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Moreover, the provisions of certain of our license agreements may require consent to implement improvements to, or otherwise change, our Service. We may not be able to obtain consent from our rights holders to add additional features and functionality to our Service or our rights holders may be delayed in providing such consent, which may hinder our ability to be responsive to our users’ tastes and preferences and may make us less competitive with other services.

We face and will continue to face competition for Ad-Supported Users, Premium Subscribers, and user listening time.

We compete for the time and attention of our D2C users with other content providers based on a number of factors, including quality of experience, relevance, diversity of content, ease of use, price, accessibility, perception of advertising load, brand awareness, and reputation.

We compete with providers of music videos and other short form unscripted video content, which is purchased or available for free and playable on mobile or other connected devices, including CTVs. These forms of media may be downloaded or accessed by content streams from other online services, including YouTube and Vevo. Many of our current or future competitors are already entrenched or may have significant brand recognition, existing user bases, and/or ability to bundle with other goods and/or services, both globally and regionally, and/or markets which we seek to penetrate.

We also compete with providers of non-music content that offer an on-demand catalog of differing content that is similar to certain of our content. We face increasing competition from a growing variety of content providers that seek to differentiate their service by content offering and product features, and they may be more successful than us in predicting user preferences, providing popular content, and innovating new features.

We believe that companies with a combination of technical expertise, brand recognition, financial resources, and digital media experience also pose a significant threat of developing competing music video and other video distribution technologies. If known incumbents in the digital media or entertainment space choose to offer competing services, they may devote greater resources than we have available, have a more accelerated time frame for deployment, and leverage their existing user base and proprietary technologies to provide services that our users and advertisers may view as superior. Our current and future competitors may have higher brand recognition, more established relationships with content licensors and mobile device manufacturers, greater financial, technical, and other resources, more sophisticated technologies, and/or more experience in the markets in which we compete. Our current and future competitors may also engage in mergers or acquisitions with each other to combine and leverage their customers and audiences. Our current and future competitors may innovate new features or introduce new ways of consuming or engaging with content that cause our users to use or switch to another product, which would negatively affect our user retention, growth, and engagement.

We compete for a share of advertisers’ overall marketing budgets with other content providers on a variety of factors, including perceived return on investment, effectiveness and relevance of our advertising products, pricing structure, and ability to deliver large volumes or precise types of advertisements to targeted user demographic pools. We also compete for advertisers with a range of internet companies, including major internet portals, search engine companies, social media sites, and mobile applications, as well as traditional advertising channels such as terrestrial radio and television.

Large internet companies with strong brand recognition, such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Twitter, have significant numbers of sales personnel, substantial advertising inventory, proprietary advertising technology solutions, and traffic across web, mobile, and connected devices that provide a significant competitive advantage and have a significant impact on pricing for reaching these user bases. Failure to compete successfully against our current or future competitors could result in the loss of current or potential advertisers, a reduced share of our advertisers’ overall marketing budget, the loss of existing or potential users, or diminished brand strength, which could adversely affect our pricing and margins, lower our revenue, increase our research and development and marketing expenses, and prevent us from achieving or maintaining profitability.

We depend upon third-party licenses for substantially all of the content we stream and an adverse change to, loss of, or claim that we do not hold any necessary licenses may materially adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

To secure the rights to stream content, we enter into license agreements to obtain licenses from rights holders such as record labels, recording artists, music publishers, performance rights organizations, collecting societies, and other copyright owners or their agents, and pay royalties or other consideration to such parties or their agents. We cannot guarantee that our efforts to obtain all necessary licenses to stream content will be successful, nor that the licenses available to us now will continue to be available in the future at rates and on terms that are favorable or commercially reasonable or at all. The terms of these licenses, including the royalty rates that we are required to pay pursuant to them, may change as a result of changes in our bargaining power, the industry, laws and regulations, or for other reasons. Increases in royalty rates or changes to other terms of these licenses may materially impact our business, operating results, and financial condition. Our license agreements with the largest music companies for our OOH companies for our OOH business were entered into years ago and those music companies have requested a review and update of those licenses. The updating of those licenses (or entering into new licenses to cover our OOH business) is expected to increase our license costs associated with such rights, including our minimum guarantee payment obligations.

We enter into license agreements to obtain rights to stream music videos, including from the major record labels who hold the rights to stream a significant number of sound recordings—Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group. If we fail to maintain and renew these licenses our business, operating results, and financial condition could be materially harmed.

We generally obtain licenses for two types of rights with respect to musical compositions: reproduction and public performance rights. We negotiate directly for these rights. We have obtained direct licenses for public performance rights with the three largest publishers for our consumer business and are in the process of obtaining such licenses for our OOH business.

In the United States, public performance rights are generally obtained through intermediaries known as PROs, which negotiate blanket licenses with copyright users for the public performance of compositions in their repertory, collect royalties under such licenses, and distribute those royalties to music publishers and songwriters. The royalty rates available to us today may not be available to us in the future. Licenses provided by two of these PROs, ASCAP and BMI, cover much of the music we stream and ASCAP and BMI are governed by consent decrees relating to decades-old litigations. An increase in the number of compositions that must be licensed from PROs that are not subject to the consent decrees could likewise impede our ability to license public performance rights on favorable terms.

In other parts of the world, including Latin America, we obtain reproduction and performance licenses for musical compositions either through local collecting societies representing publishers or from publishers directly, or a combination thereof. We cannot guarantee that our licenses with collecting societies and our direct licenses with publishers provide full coverage for all of the musical compositions we make available to our users in such countries. In markets that lack collecting society infrastructure, such as in the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia Pacific, it is extremely difficult to identify who owns the publishing rights in the content we stream. This practical obstacle creates additional risk exposure as there inevitably will be licensing gaps in the content we stream, and these risks may increase as we look to expand into new developing markets with uncertain publishing licensing landscapes.

With respect to non-music content, we obtain distribution rights directly from rights holders. We either negotiate licenses directly with individuals or entities. We are dependent on those who provide content on our Service complying with the terms and conditions of our license agreements. However, we cannot guarantee that rights holders or content providers will comply with their obligations, and such failure to do so may materially impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.

There is also no guarantee that we have all of the licenses we need to stream content, as the process of obtaining such licenses involves many rights holders, some of whom are unknown, and myriad complex legal issues across many jurisdictions, including open questions of law as to when and whether particular licenses are needed. Additionally, there is a risk that rights holders, creators, performers, writers and their agents, or societies, unions, guilds, or legislative or regulatory bodies will create or attempt to create new rights or regulations that could require us to enter into license agreements with, and pay royalties to, newly defined groups of rights holders, some of which may be difficult or impossible to identify.

Even when we are able to enter into license agreements with rights holders, we cannot guarantee that such agreements will continue to be renewed indefinitely. For example, from time to time, our license agreements with certain rights holders and/or their agents expire while we negotiate their renewals and, per industry custom and practice, we may enter into brief (for example, month-, week-, or even days-long) extensions of those agreements or provisional licenses and/or continue to operate on an at will basis as if the license agreement had been extended, including by our continuing to make content available. During these periods, we may not have assurance of long-term access to such rights holders’ content, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and could lead to potential copyright infringement claims. It is also possible that such agreements will never be renewed at all. License agreements are generally restrictive as to how the licensed content is accessed, displayed, and manipulated, as licensors seek to protect the use of their content. In order to provide the highest level of Services and best experience for our customers and end users, we may from time to time seek expansion of our licenses to provide us with greater functionality of our Services as it relates to the relevant content. The inability to expand our licenses, or the lack of renewal, or termination, of one or more of our license agreements, or the renewal of a license agreement on less favorable terms, could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We have no control over third-party providers of our content. The concentration of control of content by our major providers means that even one entity, or a small number of entities working together, may unilaterally affect our access to music video and other content.

We rely on various rights holders, over whom we have no control, for the content we make available on our Service. We cannot guarantee that these parties will always choose to license to us or license to us on terms that are acceptable to us.

The music industry has a high level of concentration, which means that one or a small number of entities may, on their own, take actions that adversely affect our business. For example, with respect to music video content, the A/V recordings licensed to us under our agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group makes up the vast majority of the music currently consumed on our Service. Our business may be adversely affected if our access to music is limited or delayed because of deterioration in our relationships with one or more of these rights holders or if they choose not to license to us for any other reason. Rights holders also may attempt to take advantage of their market power (including by leveraging their publishing affiliate) to seek onerous financial or other terms from us or otherwise impose restrictions that hinder our ability to further innovate our Services and content offerings. This may be of particular concern in markets where local content is important and such local content is held by local major labels or even individual artists, making it difficult to obtain such local content at all or on economically favorable terms. In addition, publishers’ fractional ownership of shares of musical works enhances their market power. As a result, the loss of rights to a major publisher catalogue would force us to take down a significant portion of popular repertoire in the applicable territory or territories, which would significantly disadvantage us in such territory or territories. The lack of complete metadata with respect to publisher ownership may also present challenges in taking down all the tracks of a given publisher. Even if we can secure rights to music video content from record labels and other copyright owners, recording artists may object and may exert public or private pressure on those record labels or copyright owners or other third parties to discontinue licensing rights to us, hold back content from us, or increase royalty rates. As a result, our ability to continue to license rights to music video content is subject to convincing a broad range of stakeholders of the value and quality of our Service. To the extent that we are unable to license a large amount of content or the content of certain popular artists, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be materially harmed.

We are a party to many license agreements that are complex and impose numerous obligations upon us that may make it difficult to operate our business and provide all the functionality we would like for our Services, and a breach of such agreements could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Many of our license agreements are complex and impose numerous obligations on us, including obligations to, among other things:

Many of our license agreements grant the licensor the right to audit our compliance with the terms and conditions of such agreements. Some of our license agreements also include steering, non-discrimination, and so-called “most favored nations” provisions, which require that certain material terms of such agreements are no less favorable than those provided in our agreements with any other similarly situated licensor. If triggered, these provisions could cause our payments or other obligations under those agreements to escalate substantially. Additionally, some of our license agreements require consent to undertake certain business initiatives and, without such consent, our ability to undertake or continue operating new business initiatives may be limited. This could hurt our competitive position.

If we materially breach any of these obligations or any other obligations set forth in any of our license agreements, or if we use content in ways that are found to exceed the scope of such agreements, we could be subject to monetary penalties, and/or rights holders could impede our business by withholding content, discounts, and bundle approvals and the rights to launch new service offerings, and could ultimately terminate our rights under such license agreements, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our royalty payment scheme is complex, and it is difficult to estimate the amount payable under our license agreements.

Under our license agreements and relevant statutes, we must pay all required royalties to record labels, music publishers, and other copyright owners in order to stream content. The determination of the amount and timing of such payments is complex and subject to a number of variables, including the type of content streamed, the country in which it is streamed, the service tier such content is streamed on, the amount of revenue generated by the streaming of the content, the identity of the license holder to whom royalties are owed, the current size of our user base, our current ratio of Ad-Supported users to Premium Subscribers in each of our OOH and D2C businesses, the applicability of any most favored nations provisions, and any applicable advertising fees and discounts, among other variables. Additionally, we have certain arrangements whereby royalty costs are paid in advance or are subject to minimum guaranteed amounts. An accrual is estimated when actual royalty costs to be incurred during a contractual period are expected to fall short of the minimum guaranteed amount. Additionally, we also have license agreements that include so-called “most favored nations” provisions that require that the material terms of such agreements are the most favorable material terms provided to any music licensor, which, if triggered, could cause our royalty payments under those agreements to escalate substantially. As we have only recently begun to grow our D2C Service and have yet recognize substantial revenue from such services and may not do so during the initial term of our licenses, we expect that any minimum guaranteed payments on licenses required for that service will be the maximum we will need to pay out under those licenses for the relevant time period.

We cannot assure you that the internal controls and systems we use to determine royalties payable will always be effective. We have in the past identified a material weakness in our internal controls and may identify additional material weaknesses in the future. If we fail to implement and maintain effective controls relating to rights holder liabilities, we may underpay/under-accrue or overpay/over-accrue the royalty amounts payable to record labels, music publishers, and other copyright owners. Underpayment could result in (i) litigation or other disputes with record labels, music publishers, and other copyright owners; (ii) the unexpected payment of additional royalties in material amounts; and (iii) damage to our business relationships with record labels, music publishers, other copyright owners, and artists and/or artist groups. If we overpay royalties, we may be unable to reclaim such overpayments, and our profits will suffer. Failure to accurately pay our royalties may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Minimum guarantees and advances required under certain of our license agreements may limit our operating flexibility and may adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.    

Certain of our license agreements contain significant minimum guarantee or advanced payments. Such minimum guarantees related to our content acquisition costs are not always tied to our revenue and/or user growth forecasts (e.g., number of users, active users, Premium subscribers), or the number of video music sound recordings and musical compositions used on our Service. Accordingly, our ability to achieve and sustain profitability and operating leverage on our Service in part depends on our ability to increase our revenue through increased sales of our Service and advertising sales on terms that maintain an adequate gross margin. The duration of our license agreements for sound recordings and musical compositions that contain minimum guarantees is frequently two years, but we do not currently have enough customers and do not anticipate acquiring enough customers whose revenue could cover such minimum guarantees and any existing customers may cancel their Service at any time. Our forecasts of customer acquisition or retention and advertising sales during the term of our license agreements do not meet the number of customers required to cover our minimum guarantee payments. To the extent our Service revenue growth or advertising sales do not materially increase during the term of our license agreements, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected as a result of such minimum guarantees. In addition, the fixed cost nature of these minimum guarantees may limit our flexibility in planning for, or reacting to, changes in our business and the market segments in which we operate.

We rely on estimates of the market share of streaming content owned by each content provider, as well as our own user growth and forecasted advertising revenue, to forecast whether such minimum guarantees could be recouped against our actual content acquisition costs incurred over the duration of the license agreement. As we are in the early stages of developing our D2C business we expect the minimum guarantees not to be recouped for the foreseeable future.

Difficulties in obtaining accurate and comprehensive information necessary to identify the compositions embodied in music video sound recordings on our Service and the ownership thereof may impact our ability to perform our obligations under our licenses, affect the size of our catalog that can be offered to customers and end users, impact our ability to control content acquisition costs, and lead to potential copyright infringement claims.

Comprehensive and accurate ownership information for the musical compositions embodied in music videos is often unavailable to us or difficult or, in some cases, impossible for us to obtain, sometimes because it is withheld by the owners or administrators of such rights. We currently rely on the assistance of third parties to determine certain of this information. If the information provided to us or obtained by such third parties does not comprehensively or accurately identify the ownership of musical compositions, or if we are unable to determine which musical compositions correspond to specific sound recordings, it may be difficult or impossible to identify the appropriate rights holders from whom to obtain licenses or to whom to pay royalties. This may make it difficult to comply with the obligations of any agreements with those rights holders. This may also make it difficult to identify content for removal from the Service if we lose the rights to such musical compositions.

These challenges, and others concerning the licensing of musical compositions embodied in sound recordings and music videos on our Service, may subject us to significant liability for copyright infringement, breach of contract, or other claims.

We face many risks associated with our international expansion, including difficulties obtaining rights to stream content on favorable terms.

We are considering the further expansion of our operations into additional international markets. However, offering our Service in a new geographical area involves numerous risks and challenges. For example, the licensing terms offered by rights organizations and individual copyright owners in countries around the world are currently relatively expensive. Addressing licensing structure and royalty rate issues in any new geographic market requires us to make very substantial investments of time, capital, and other resources, and our business could fail if such investments do not succeed. There can be no assurance that we will succeed or achieve any return on these investments.

In addition to the above, expansion around the world exposes us to other risks such as:

As a result of these obstacles, we may find it impossible or prohibitively expensive to enter additional markets, or entry into foreign markets could be delayed, which could hinder our ability to grow our business.

If we fail to effectively manage our growth, our business, operating results, and financial condition may suffer.

Our rapid growth in recent months has placed, and will continue to place, significant demands on our management and our operational and financial infrastructure. In order to attain and maintain profitability, we will need to recruit, integrate, and retain skilled and experienced personnel who can demonstrate our value proposition to users, advertisers, and business partners and who can increase the monetization of the content streamed on our Service, particularly in OOH venues and on CTVs and mobile devices. Continued growth could also strain our ability to maintain reliable service levels for our users, effectively monetize the video content streamed, develop and improve our operational and financial controls, and recruit, train, and retain highly skilled personnel. As our operations grow in size, scope, and complexity, we will need to improve and upgrade our systems and infrastructure, which will require significant expenditures and allocation of valuable technical and management resources. If we fail to maintain efficiency and allocate limited resources effectively in our organization as it grows, our business, operating results, and financial condition may suffer.

Our business emphasizes rapid innovation and prioritizes long-term customer and user engagement over short-term financial condition or results of operations. That strategy may yield results that sometimes do not align with the market’s expectations. If that happens, our stock price may be negatively affected.

Our business is expected to grow and become more complex, and our success depends on our ability to quickly develop and launch new and innovative products. Our approach to the development of our business could result in unintended outcomes or decisions that are poorly received by our users, advertisers, or partners. We have made, and expect to continue to make, significant investments to develop and launch new products, services, and initiatives, which may involve significant risks and uncertainties, including the fact that such offerings may not be commercially viable for an indefinite period or at all, or may not result in adequate return of capital on our investments. No assurance can be given that such new offerings will be successful and will not adversely affect our reputation, operating results, and financial condition. In certain instances, we prioritize our long-term customer and user engagement over short-term financial condition or results of operations. We may make decisions that reduce our short-term revenue or profitability if we believe that the decisions benefit the aggregate customer and user experience and will thereby improve our financial performance over the long-term. These decisions may not produce the long-term benefits that we expect, in which case our user growth and engagement, our relationships with advertisers and partners, as well as our business, operating results, and financial condition could be seriously harmed.

If we fail to accurately predict, recommend, curate and play content that our customers and users enjoy, we may fail to retain existing customers and users and attract new customers and users in sufficient numbers to meet investor expectations for growth or to operate our business profitably.

We believe that a key differentiating factor between Loop Media and other streaming content providers in the OOH and D2C markets is our ability to curate content and deliver that content to customers and users for them to enjoy. We have invested, and will continue to invest, significant resources in our content curation and technologies that help predict what customers and users will enjoy; however, such investments may not yield an attractive return and such refinements may not be effective. The effectiveness of our ability to predict user preferences and curate content tailored to our customers and users’ individual tastes depends in part on our ability to gather and effectively analyze large amounts of customer and user data. While we have a large catalog of music videos and other content available to stream, we must continuously identify, analyze, and curate additional content that our customers request and that our users will enjoy and we may not effectively do so. Failure to do so could materially adversely affect our ability to adequately attract and retain users, increase content hours consumed, and sell advertising to meet investor expectations for growth or to operate the business profitably.

If we are unable to obtain revenue from our Service on CTVs and mobile and connected devices, our results of operations may be materially adversely affected.

Our business model with respect to monetization of our Service on CTVs and mobile and connected devices is still evolving. As we expand into providing content direct to consumers, there is increasing pressure to monetize mobile and other connected devices, including CTVs and other in-home devices. We offer our Service through our Loop App on CTVs and mobile and connected devices, from which we seek to generate advertising revenue; however, to date, we primarily rely on our OOH Service to generate revenue. If we are unable to effectively monetize our D2C Service on CTVs and mobile and connected devices, our business, operating results, and financial condition may suffer.

Expansion of our operations to deliver content beyond music video, subjects us to increased business, legal, financial, reputational, and competitive risks.

Expansion of our operations to deliver content beyond music videos involves numerous risks and challenges, including increased capital requirements, new competitors, and the need to develop new strategic relationships. Growth in these areas may require additional changes to our existing business model and cost structure, modifications to our infrastructure, and exposure to new regulatory, legal, and reputational risks, including infringement liability, any of which may require additional expertise that we currently do not have. We may not be able to generate sufficient revenue from non-music video content to offset the costs of creating or acquiring this content. Further, we have initially established a reputation as a music video streaming service and our ability to gain acceptance and listenership for other non-music video content, and thus our ability to attract users and advertisers to this content, is not certain. Failure to successfully monetize and generate revenues from such content, including failure to obtain or retain rights to non-music video content on acceptable terms, or at all, or to effectively manage the numerous risks and challenges associated with such expansion could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Streaming depends on effectively working with operating systems, online platforms, hardware, networks, regulations, and standards we do not control. Changes in our Service or those operating systems, hardware, networks, regulations, or standards, and our limitations on our ability to access those platforms, operating systems, hardware, or networks may seriously harm our business.

We rely on a variety of operating systems, online platforms, hardware, and networks to reach our users. These platforms range from desktop and mobile operating systems and application stores, to wearables and OTT distribution platforms and services. The owners or operators of these platforms and services may not share our interests and may restrict our access to them or place conditions on access that would materially affect our ability to access those platforms and services. In particular, where the owner of a platform is also our direct competitor, the platform may attempt to use this position to affect our access to users and ability to compete. For example, an online platform might arbitrarily remove our Service from its platform, deprive us of access to business-critical data, or engage in other harmful practices. Online platforms also may unilaterally impose certain requirements that negatively affect our ability to convert users of our Loop App to the Premium Service, such as conditions that limit our freedom to communicate promotions and offers to our users. Similarly, online platforms may force us to use the platform’s payment processing systems that may be inferior to, and more costly than, other payment processing services available in the market. Online platforms frequently change the rules and requirements for services like ours to access the platform, and such changes may adversely affect the success or desirability of our Service. To maintain certain elements of the Service on a platform, we may need to make additional concessions to the platform operator that may adversely affect other aspects of the business or require us to invest significant expenses. Online platforms may limit our access to information about users, limiting our ability to convert and retain them. Online platforms also may deny access to application programming interfaces or documentation, limiting functionality of our Service on the platform.

Furthermore, because devices providing access to our Service are not manufactured and sold by us, these devices may not perform reliably, and any faulty connection between these devices and our Service may result in consumer dissatisfaction toward us, which could damage our brand. We may not be able to comply with the requirements of various operating systems, online platforms, hardware, networks, regulations, and standards on which our Service depends, and failure to do so could result in serious harm to our business.

If our security systems are breached, we may face civil liability and/or statutory fines, and/or enforcement action causing us to change our practices, and public perception of our security measures could be diminished, either of which would negatively affect our ability to attract and retain OOH Customers, Premium Subscribers, Ad-Supported Users, advertisers, content providers, and other business partners.

Techniques used to gain unauthorized access to data and software are constantly evolving, and we may be unable to anticipate or prevent unauthorized access to data pertaining to our users, including credit card and debit card information and other personal data about our users, business partners, and employees. Like all internet services, our Service, which is supported by our own systems and those of third parties that we work with, is vulnerable to software bugs, computer viruses, internet worms, break-ins, phishing attacks, attempts to overload servers with denial-of-service, or other attacks and similar disruptions from unauthorized use of our and third-party computer systems, any of which could lead to system interruptions, delays, or shutdowns, causing loss of critical data or unauthorized access to personal data. Computer malware, viruses, and computer hacking, and phishing attacks have become more prevalent in our industry, have occurred on our systems in the past, and may occur on our systems in the future. Though it is difficult to determine what, if any, harm may directly result from any specific interruption or attack, any failure to maintain performance, reliability, security, and availability of our products and technical infrastructure to the satisfaction of our users may harm our reputation and our ability to retain existing users and attract new users. The systems and processes that we have designed to protect our data and our users’ data, to prevent data loss, to disable undesirable accounts and activities on our platform, and to prevent or detect security breaches, may not prevent security breaches, and we may incur significant costs in protecting against or remediating cyber-attacks.

In addition, if an actual or perceived breach of security occurs to our systems or a third party’s systems, we may face regulatory or civil liability and public perception of our security measures could be diminished, either of which would negatively affect our ability to attract and retain users, which in turn would harm our efforts to attract and retain advertisers, content providers, and other business partners. We also would be required to expend significant resources to mitigate the breach of security and to address matters related to any such breach.

Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to maintain the security of data relating to our users, to comply with our posted privacy policy, laws and regulations, rules of self-regulatory organizations, industry standards, and contractual provisions to which we may be bound, could result in the loss of confidence in us, or result in actions against us by governmental entities, data protection authorities, or others, all of which could result in litigation and financial losses, and could potentially cause us to lose users, advertisers, and revenues. Any of these events could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition and could cause our stock price to drop significantly. 

Our Service and software are highly technical and may contain undetected software bugs or vulnerabilities, which could manifest in ways that could seriously harm our reputation and our business.

Many of the products we offer are technical and complex. Our Services and products like the Loop Player or any other product we may introduce in the future, may contain undetected software bugs, hardware errors, and other vulnerabilities. These bugs and errors can manifest in any number of ways in our products, including through diminished performance, security vulnerabilities, malfunctions, or even permanently disabled products. We plant to update our products from time to time, and as a result some errors in our products may be discovered only after a product has been used by users and may in some cases be detected only under certain circumstances or after extended use. Additionally, many of our products are available on multiple operating systems and/or multiple devices offered by different manufacturers, and changes or updates to such operating systems or devices may cause errors or functionality problems in our products, including rendering our products inoperable by some users. Any errors, bugs, or other vulnerabilities discovered in our code or backend after release could damage our reputation, drive away users, allow third parties to manipulate or exploit our software (including, for example, providing mobile device users a means to suppress advertisements without payment and gain access to features only available to the Ad-Supported Service on tablets and desktop computers), lower revenue, and expose us to claims for damages, any of which could seriously harm our business. Additionally, errors, bugs, or other vulnerabilities may—either directly or if exploited by third parties—affect our ability to make accurate royalty payments.

We could also face claims for product liability, tort, or breach of warranty. Defending a lawsuit, regardless of its merit, is costly and may divert management’s attention and seriously harm our reputation and our business. In addition, if our liability insurance coverage proves inadequate or future coverage is unavailable on acceptable terms or at all, our business could be seriously harmed.

Interruptions, delays, or discontinuations in service arising from our own systems or from third parties could impair the delivery of our Service and harm our business.

We rely on systems housed in our own facilities and upon third parties, including bandwidth providers and third-party “cloud” data storage services, to enable our users to receive our content in a dependable, timely, and efficient manner. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, periodic service interruptions and delays involving our own systems and those of third parties that we work with. Both our own facilities and those of third parties are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, and similar events. They are also subject to break-ins, sabotage, intentional acts of vandalism, the failure of physical, administrative, technical, and cyber security measures, terrorist acts, natural disasters, human error, the financial insolvency of third parties that we work with, and other unanticipated problems or events. The occurrence of any of these events could result in interruptions in our Service and unauthorized access to, or alteration of, the content and data contained on our systems that these third parties store and deliver on our behalf.

Any disruption in the services provided by these third parties could materially adversely impact our business reputation, customer relations, and operating results. Upon expiration or termination of any of our agreements with third parties, we may not be able to replace the services provided to us in a timely manner or on terms and conditions, including service levels and cost, that are favorable to us, and a transition from one third party to another could subject us to operational delays and inefficiencies until the transition is complete.

Assertions by third parties of infringement or other violation by us of their intellectual property rights could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Third parties may in the future assert, that we have infringed, misappropriated, or otherwise violated their copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property rights, and as we face increasing competition, the possibility of intellectual property rights claims against us grows. Our ability to provide our Service is dependent upon our ability to license intellectual property rights to audio content, including video music recordings, any musical compositions embodied therein, as well as other visual content and any other media assets that content providers, artists, and/or labels can add or provide. Various laws and regulations govern the copyright and other intellectual property rights associated with audio and visual content, including video music and sound recordings and musical compositions. Existing laws and regulations are evolving and subject to different interpretations, and various legislative or regulatory bodies may expand current or enact new laws or regulations. Although we seek to comply with the statutory, regulatory, and judicial frameworks by, for example, entering into license agreements, we may unknowingly be infringing or violating any third-party intellectual property rights, or may do so in the future. Moreover, while we may often be able to seek indemnities from our licensors with respect to infringement claims that may relate to the content, they provide to us, such indemnities may not be sufficient to cover the associated liability if the licensor at issue does not have adequate financial resources.

In addition, music, internet, technology, and media companies are frequently subject to litigation based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation, or other violations of intellectual property rights. Many companies in these industries have substantially larger patent and intellectual property portfolios than we do, which could make us a target for litigation. We may not be able to assert counterclaims against parties that sue us for patent, or other intellectual property infringement. In addition, various “non-practicing entities” that own patents and other intellectual property rights often attempt to aggressively assert claims in order to extract value from technology companies. Further, from time to time we may introduce new products and services, including in territories where we currently do not have an offering, which could increase our exposure to patent and other intellectual property claims from competitors and non-practicing entities. It is difficult to predict whether assertions of third-party intellectual property rights or any infringement or misappropriation claims arising from such assertions will substantially harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. If we are forced to defend against any infringement or misappropriation claims, whether they are with or without merit, are settled out of court, or are determined in our favor, we may be required to expend significant time and financial resources on the defense of such claims, and such claims also would divert management time and attention from our business operations. Furthermore, an adverse outcome of a dispute may require us to pay significant damages, which may be even greater if we are found to have willfully infringed upon a party’s intellectual property; cease exploiting copyrighted content that we have previously had the ability to exploit; cease using solutions that are alleged to infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property of others; expend additional development resources to redesign our solutions; enter into potentially unfavorable royalty or license agreements in order to obtain the right to use necessary technologies, content, or materials; indemnify our partners and other third parties; and/or take other actions that may have material effects on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Failure to protect our intellectual property could substantially harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

The success of our business depends on our ability to protect and enforce our patents, trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and all of our other intellectual property rights, including our intellectual property rights underlying our Service. We attempt to protect our intellectual property under patent, trade secret, trademark, and copyright law through a combination of intellectual property registration, employee, third-party assignment and nondisclosure agreements, other contractual restrictions, technological measures, and other methods. These afford only limited protection, and we are still continuing to develop our processes for securing our intellectual property rights. Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our product and brand features or obtain and use our trade secrets and other confidential information. Moreover, policing our intellectual property rights is difficult and time-consuming. We cannot assure you that we would have adequate resources to protect and police our intellectual property rights, and we cannot assure you that the steps we take to do so will always be effective.

We have filed, and may in the future file, patent applications on certain of our innovations. It is possible, however, that these innovations may not be patentable. In addition, given the cost, effort, risks, and downside of obtaining patent protection, including the requirement to ultimately disclose the invention to the public, we may choose not to seek patent protection for some innovations. Furthermore, our patent applications may not issue as granted patents, the scope of the protection gained may be insufficient, or an issued patent may be deemed invalid or unenforceable. Any of our present or future patents or other intellectual property rights may lapse or be invalidated, circumvented, challenged, or abandoned. Our intellectual property rights also may not provide competitive advantages to us. Our ability to assert our intellectual property rights against potential competitors or to settle current or future disputes could be limited by our relationships with third parties, and any of our pending or future patent applications may not have the scope of coverage originally sought. Our intellectual property rights may not be enforced in jurisdictions where competition may be intense or where legal protection may be weak. We could lose both the ability to assert our intellectual property rights against, or to license our technology to, others and the ability to collect royalties or other payments.

We currently own the www.loop.tv internet domain name and various other related domain names. Internet regulatory bodies generally regulate domain names. If we lose the ability to use a domain name in a particular country, we may be forced either to incur significant additional expenses to market our Service within that country or, in extreme cases, to elect not to offer our Service in that country. Either result could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. The regulation of domain names in the United States and in foreign countries is subject to change. Regulatory bodies could establish additional top-level domains, appoint additional domain name registrars, or modify the requirements for holding domain names. As a result, we may not be able to acquire or maintain the domain names that utilize our brand names in the United States or other countries in which we may conduct business in the future.

Litigation or proceedings before governmental authorities and administrative bodies may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights, to protect our patent rights, trademarks, trade secrets, and domain names and to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. Our efforts to enforce or protect our proprietary rights may be ineffective and could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources and management time, each of which could substantially harm our operating results. Additionally, changes in law may be implemented, or changes in interpretation of such laws may occur, that may affect our ability to protect and enforce our patents and other intellectual property.

User metrics and other estimates could be subject to inherent challenges in measurement, and real or perceived inaccuracies in those metrics may seriously harm and negatively affect our reputation and our business.

As our business grows, we expect to develop and regularly review key metrics related to the operation of our business, including metrics related to our active users, premium revenue per user, subscriber numbers, OOH venue locations, and other metrics to evaluate growth trends, measure our performance, and make strategic decisions. These metrics will be calculated using internal company data and will not be validated by an independent third party. While these numbers are expected to be based on reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring how our Service is used across large populations of users and customers. The calculations of our active users may not reflect the actual number of people using our Service (if one user has more than one account or if one account is used by multiple users). Errors or inaccuracies in our metrics or data could result in incorrect business decisions and inefficiencies, including expending resources to implement unnecessary business measures or failing to take required actions to attract enough users to satisfy our growth strategies.

In addition, advertisers generally rely on third-party measurement services to calculate metrics related to our advertising business, and these third-party measurement services may not reflect our true audience. Some of our demographic data also may be incomplete or inaccurate because users self-report their names and dates of birth or because we receive them from other third parties. Consequently, the personal data we have may differ from our users’ actual names and ages. If advertisers, partners, or investors do not perceive our user, geographic, or other demographic metrics to be accurate representations of our user base, or if we discover material inaccuracies in our user, geographic, or other demographic metrics, our reputation may be materially harmed.

We are at risk of artificial manipulation of stream counts and failure to effectively manage and remediate such fraudulent streams could have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Fraudulent streams and potentially associated fraudulent user accounts or artists may cause us to overstate key performance indicators, which once discovered, corrected, and disclosed, could undermine investor confidence in the integrity of our key performance indicators and could cause our stock price to drop significantly.

As we further develop our D2C Service, we may in the future be impacted by attempts by third parties to artificially manipulate stream counts. Such attempts may, for example, be designed to generate revenue for rights holders or to influence placement of content on Loop Media generated Playlists or industry music video charts. These potentially fraudulent streams may involve creating non-bona fide user accounts or artists or using compromised passwords to access legitimate user accounts. We seek to detect fraudulent streams and aim to remove fake user accounts created for the above purposes and filter them out from our metrics on an ongoing basis, as well as to require users to reset passwords that we suspect have been compromised; however, we may not be successful in detecting, removing, and addressing all fraudulent streams and any related user accounts. If in the future we fail to successfully detect, remove, and address fraudulent streams and associated user accounts, it may result in the manipulation of our data, including the key performance indicators, which underlie, among other things, our contractual obligations with rights holders and advertisers (which could expose us to the risk of litigation), as well as harm our relationships with rights holders and advertisers. In addition, once we detect, correct, and disclose fraudulent streams and associated user accounts, this may result in the removal of certain user accounts and/or a reduction in account activity, which may affect key performance indicators and undermine investor confidence in the integrity of our key performance indicators. These could have a material adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We are at risk of attempts to manipulate or exploit our software for the purpose of gaining or providing unauthorized access to certain features of our Service, and failure to effectively prevent and remediate such attempts could have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

As our business develops, we may be impacted by attempts by third parties to manipulate or exploit our software for the purpose of gaining or providing unauthorized access to certain features of our Service. Third parties may seek to provide mobile device users a means to suppress advertisements without payment and gain access to features only available to the Ad-Supported Service on tablets and desktop computers. If we fail to successfully detect and address such issues, it may have artificial effects on our key performance indicators, which underlie, among other things, our contractual obligations with rights holders and advertisers (which could expose us to the risk of litigation), as well as harm our relationship with rights holders and advertisers. The discovery or development of any new method to gain unauthorized access to certain features of our Service, such as through the exploitation of software vulnerabilities, and the sharing of any such method among third parties, may increase the level of unauthorized access (and the attendant negative financial impact described above). We cannot assure you we will be successful in finding ways to effectively address unauthorized access achieved through any such method. Additionally, compared to our Ad-Supported Users, individuals using unauthorized versions of our application may be less likely to convert to Premium Subscribers. Moreover, once we detect and disable such unauthorized access, this may result in the removal of certain user accounts and/or a reduction in account activity, which may affect our key performance indicators and could undermine investor confidence in the integrity of our key performance indicators. These could have a material adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Various regulations as well as self-regulation related to privacy and data security concerns pose the threat of lawsuits, regulatory fines and other liability, require us to expend significant resources, and may harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

As we collect and utilize personal data about our customers and users as they interact with our Service, we are subject to new and existing laws and regulations that govern our use of user data. We are likely to be required to expend significant capital to ensure ongoing compliance with these laws and regulations. Claims or allegations that we have violated laws and regulations relating to privacy and data security could result in negative publicity and a loss of confidence in us by our users and our partners. We may be required to make significant expenditure to resolve these issues and we could be subject to civil liability and/or fines or other penalties, including by government and data protection authorities.

Existing privacy-related laws and regulations in the United States, and in other countries are evolving and are subject to potentially differing interpretations, and various U.S. federal and state or other international legislative and regulatory bodies may expand or enact laws regarding privacy and data security-related matters. Laws coming into effect in various states, adoption of a comprehensive federal data privacy law, and new legislation in international jurisdictions may continue to change the data protection landscape globally and could result in us expending considerable resources to meet these requirements.

We may find it necessary or desirable to join self-regulatory bodies or other privacy-related organizations that require compliance with their rules pertaining to privacy and data security. We also may be bound by contractual obligations that limit our ability to collect, use, disclose, share, and leverage user data and to derive economic value from it. New laws, amendments to, or reinterpretations of existing laws, rules of self-regulatory bodies, industry standards, and contractual obligations, as well as changes in our users’ expectations and demands regarding privacy and data security, may limit our ability to collect, use, and disclose, and to leverage and derive economic value from user data. Restrictions on our ability to collect, access and harness user data, or to use or disclose user data, may require us to expend significant resources to adapt to these changes, and would in turn limit our ability to stream personalized content to our users and offer advertising and promotional opportunities to users on the Service.

We have incurred, and will continue to incur, expenses to comply with privacy and security standards and protocols imposed by law, regulation, self-regulatory bodies, industry standards, and contractual obligations. Any failure to comply with privacy laws could result in litigation, regulatory or governmental investigations, enforcement action requiring us to change the way we use personal data, restrictions on how we use personal data, or significant regulatory fines. In addition to statutory enforcement, a data breach could lead to compensation claims by affected individuals (including consumer advocacy groups), negative publicity, and a potential loss of business as a result of customers losing trust in us. Such failures could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and operations.

If we fail to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, our ability to accurately and timely report our financial results could be adversely affected.

We are required to maintain internal control over financial reporting and to report any material weaknesses in those controls. We previously identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting that related to, among other things, accounting for rights holder liabilities. During 2020, we took a number of actions designed to remediate certain of these material weaknesses, including the hiring of additional accounting and finance team members and the implementation of new controls, processes, and technologies. Based on the testing of operating effectiveness of these controls completed to date, as of December 31, 2020, we have remediated some of our identified material weaknesses, but other previously identified material weaknesses remain.

If we continue to have material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting or fail to meet our obligations as a public company, including the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the “Sarbanes-Oxley Act”), we may be unable to accurately report our financial results, or report them within the timeframes required by law or stock exchange regulations, and we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, which would cause the price of our common stock to decline. Under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we are required to evaluate and determine the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting and provide a management report as to internal control over financial reporting. Failure to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting also could potentially subject us to sanctions or investigations by the SEC, or other regulatory authorities, or stockholder lawsuits, which could require additional financial and management resources. We may be unable to fully remediate previously identified material weaknesses, or we may identify additional material weaknesses in the future, which could materially adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.

We rely on advertising revenue to monetize our Service, and any failure to convince advertisers of the benefits of advertising on our Service in the future could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Our ability to attract and retain advertisers, and ultimately to generate advertising revenue, depends on several factors, including:

We may not succeed in capturing a greater share of our advertisers’ core marketing budgets, particularly if we are unable to achieve the scale, reach, products, and market penetration necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of our advertising solutions, or if our advertising model proves ineffective or not competitive when compared to other alternatives and platforms through which advertisers choose to invest their budgets.

Failure to grow the Ad-Supported customer and user base and to effectively demonstrate the value of our Ad-Supported Service and other similar offerings on the Service to advertisers could result in loss of, or reduced spending by, existing or potential future advertisers, which would materially harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Selling advertisements requires that we demonstrate to advertisers that our offerings on the Service are effective. For example, we need to show that our Ad-Supported Service has substantial reach and engagement by relevant demographic audiences. Some of our demographic data may be incomplete or inaccurate. For example, because Ad-Supported users self-report their personal data, which may include their genders and dates of birth, the personal data we have may differ from our Ad-Supported users’ actual genders and ages. If our Ad-Supported users provide us with incorrect or incomplete information regarding their personal data, such as genders, age, or other attributes we use to target advertisements to users, or the data are otherwise not available to us, then we may fail to target the correct demographic with our advertising. Advertisers often rely on third parties to quantify the reach and effectiveness of our ad products. These third-party measurement services may not reflect our true audience or the performance of our ad products, and their underlying methodologies are subject to change at any time. In addition, the methodologies we apply to measure the key performance indicators that we use to monitor and manage our business may differ from the methodologies used by third-party measurement service providers, who may not integrate effectively with our Ad-Supported Service. Measurement technologies for mobile devices may be even less reliable in quantifying the reach and usage of our Ad-Supported Service, and it is not clear whether such technologies will integrate with our systems or uniformly and comprehensively reflect the reach, usage, or overall audience composition of our Ad-Supported Service. If such third-party measurement providers report lower metrics than we do, there is wide variance among reported metrics, or we cannot adequately integrate with such services that advertisers require, our ability to convince advertisers of the benefits of our Ad-Supported Service could be adversely affected.

We depend on highly skilled key personnel to operate our business, and if we are unable to attract, retain, and motivate qualified personnel, our ability to develop and successfully grow our business could be harmed.

We believe that our future success is highly dependent on the talents and contributions of our senior management, including Jon Niermann, our Chief Executive Officer, members of our executive team, and other key employees, such as the key technology, product, content, engineering, finance, research and development, marketing, and sales personnel. Many of our employees have unique skills required for and/or historical knowledge of our business. Our future success depends on our continuing ability to attract, develop, motivate, and retain highly qualified and skilled employees. All of our employees, including our senior management, are free to terminate their employment relationship with us at any time, and their knowledge of our business and industry may be difficult to replace. Qualified individuals are in high demand, particularly in the digital media industry, and we may incur significant costs to attract and retain them. We use equity awards to attract talented employees. If the value or liquidity of our common stock declines significantly and remains depressed, that may prevent us from recruiting and retaining qualified employees. If we are unable to attract and retain our senior management and key employees, we may not be able to achieve our strategic objectives, and our business could be harmed. In addition, we believe that our key executives have developed highly successful and effective working relationships. We cannot assure you that we will be able to retain the services of any members of our senior management or other key employees. If one or more of these individuals leave, we may not be able to fully integrate new executives or replicate the current dynamic, and working relationships that have developed among our senior management and other key personnel, and our operations could suffer.

We have acquired and invested in, and may continue to acquire or invest in, other companies or technologies, which could divert management’s attention and otherwise disrupt our operations and harm our operating results. We may fail to acquire or invest in companies whose market power or technology could be important to the future success of our business.

We have recently acquired assets from Spkr, Inc. (“Spkr”) and invested in EON Media and may in the future seek to acquire or invest in, other companies or technologies, including additional investments in EON Media, that we believe could complement or expand our Service or enhance our capabilities or content offerings, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. Pursuit of future potential acquisitions or investments may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses in identifying, investigating, and pursuing suitable opportunities, whether or not they are consummated. In addition, we have limited experience acquiring and integrating other businesses. We may be unsuccessful in integrating our recently acquired businesses or any additional business we may acquire in the future, and we may fail to acquire companies whose market power or technology could be important to the future success of our business.

We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from any acquisition or investment due to a number of factors, including:

If we acquire or invest in other companies, these acquisitions or investments may reduce our operating margins for the foreseeable future. In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to acquired goodwill, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. In the future, if our acquisitions or investments do not yield expected returns, we may be required to take charges to our operating results based on this impairment assessment process. Acquisitions or investments could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our operating results. In addition, if a business we acquire or invest in fails to meet our expectations, our business, operating results, and financial condition may suffer.

Our operating results may fluctuate, which makes our results difficult to predict.

As our business further develops, our revenue and operating results could vary significantly from quarter to quarter and year to year because of a variety of factors, many of which are outside our control. As a result, comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. Factors that may contribute to the variability of our quarterly and annual results include:

Risks Related to Owning Our Common Stock.

The trading price of our common stock has been and will likely continue to be volatile.

The trading price of our common stock has been and is likely to continue to be volatile. In 2020, the trading price of our common stock ranged from $0.495 to $3.45. The market price of our common stock may fluctuate or decline significantly in response to numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, including:

In addition, the stock market in general, particularly the OTC Pink Open Market operated by OTC Markets Group, Inc. (the “Pink Open Market”) and the market for small media companies, have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. Securities class action litigation has often been instituted against companies following periods of volatility in the overall market and in the market price of a company’s securities. Such litigation, if instituted against us, could result in very substantial costs, divert our management’s attention and resources and harm our business, operating results, and financial condition.

Because of their significant ownership of our common stock, our founders and other large investors have substantial control over our business, and their interests may differ from our interests or those of our other stockholders. Sales of substantial amounts of our common stock in the public markets by our founders or other stockholders, or the perception that such sales might occur, could reduce the price that our common stock might otherwise attain and may dilute your voting power and your ownership interest in us.

As of December 31, 2020, our founders and largest investor, beneficially owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, common stock representing 40% of the combined voting power of all our outstanding voting securities. As a result of this ownership or control of our voting securities, if our founders and/or significant stockholders act together, they will have control over the outcome of substantially all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors. This may delay or prevent an acquisition or cause the trading price of our common stock to decline. Our founders may have interests different from yours. Therefore, the concentration of voting power among our founders may have an adverse effect on the price of our common stock.

Sales of substantial amounts of our common stock in the public market by our founders, affiliates, or non-affiliates, or the perception that such sales could occur, could adversely affect the trading price of our common stock, and may make it more difficult for you to sell your common stock at a time and price that you deem appropriate.

If securities or industry analysts publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business or cease publishing research about our business, our share price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock will be influenced by the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about our Company, if any do so in the future. If one or more of the analysts who may cover us in the future downgrade our common stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our Company, our common stock price would likely decline. Further, if one or more of these analysts, once they cover us, cease coverage of our Company or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which might cause our common stock price and trading volume to decline.

The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources and divert management’s attention.

We are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations incurs substantial legal and financial compliance costs, makes some activities more difficult, time-consuming, or costly, and places increased demand on our systems and resources. The Exchange Act requires, among other things, that we file annual and current reports with respect to our business and operating results. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. To maintain disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting that meet this standard, significant resources and management oversight are required. As a result, management’s attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could harm our business and operating results.

We do not expect to pay cash dividends in the foreseeable future.

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our share capital. We currently intend to retain any future earnings for working capital and general corporate purposes and do not expect to pay dividends or other distributions on our common stock in the foreseeable future. As a result, you may only receive a return on your investment in our common stock if you sell some or all of your common stock after the trading price of our common stock increases. You may not receive a gain on your investment when you sell your common stock, and you may lose the entire amount of the investment.