After apologizing yesterday for the insensitive depiction of Hindu gods and goddesses, creators of Amazon's political drama "Tandav" announced today they will implement changes to the show. Yesterday, Ali Abbas Zafar apologized publicly in the face of the backlash. 

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• Today, many individuals in India planned to protest against the Amazon drama, which debuted on Prime last week.
• The Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which has begun regulating streamed media content, stated that it had reached out to Amazon executives about the issue. 
• Some local legislators filed complaints with the local police alleging Amazon published material to outrage religious viewpoints and cause harm. 
• Police in Uttar Pradesh confirmed they initiated an investigation into Aparna Purohit, chief of Amazon India's original Prime Video content. 
• Amazon has stated that India is a high priority target market and currently has over 80 original film or TV show titles in production or development for the country.
• Earlier this month, an Amazon executive called India one of the most exciting streaming markets in the world. 

Total Annual Amazon Prime memberships topped an estimated 142 million in the U.S. for the first time. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners LLP data found that monthly memberships typically spike during the holidays, but in 2020 annual memberships spiked during this period instead. 

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• Since Amazon rolled out the month-to-month Prime membership option four years ago, it has seen a jump in monthly memberships, which causes the overall percentage of annual memberships to go down. 
• In 2020, for the first time, Amazon's percentage of annual memberships increased in the holiday shopping quarter rather than decreased as buyers committed to longer-term memberships. 
• As of December 31st, 2020, 53% of Amazon Prime members had an annual membership, which is up from 49% in Q3 2020. 
• Last week, some consumer legal groups alleged that Amazon intentionally made it too difficult to cancel Amazon Prime subscriptions. 

Retail sales in the U.S. fell by 0.7% in December, marking the third straight month of decline. Online sales fell by 5.8% from November but were up more than 19% YoY.

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• Holiday retail sales rose by 8.3% YoY, according to the National Retail Federation. The NRF had previously projected holiday sales would rise by 3.6%-5.2%
• The WSJ attributed December's decline to the continuous rise in COVID-19 cases, leading states like California to impose new restrictions.
• 140,000 Americans lost their job last month, ending a seven-month job growth streak. 965,000 Americans filed for initial unemployment benefits.

Future Outlook:

• The U.S. has ramped up vaccination efforts in January, with more than 12.2 million Americans receiving the first dose, according to the CDC.
• Last month, the U.S. passed a $900B stimulus package with $600 direct payments and $300/week unemployment benefits. President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9T proposal that will provide additional stimulus checks of $1,400.

This story first appeared in Inside E-Commerce. You can read the full issue here. 

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