If I were still at Interscope, here are the things I’d be worried about. I’d be worried that I don’t have a direct relationship with my consumer. The artists and the streaming platforms do. I’d also be worried that the streaming services aren’t making enough money, because that can jackknife.
Source: Jimmy Iovine Knows Music and Tech. Here’s Why He’s Worried.
Tencent Holdings Ltd has today (December 31) informed its shareholders that a Tencent-led Consortium has signed a share purchase agreement with Vivendi to acquire 10% of Universal Music Group. The deal has been struck with UMG holding an enterprise value of €30bn ($33.6bn), meaning that over $3bn will land in Vivendi’s coffers as a result of the acquisition.
Source: Official: Universal Music Group to sell 10% stake, worth over $3bn, to Tencent-led Consortium
Just over two years ago, relatively few people had heard of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Today, it is widely recognized as the most formidable anti-piracy association on the planet. After dozens of domain seizures, it now boasts close to 2.3 million visits to its website every month, a figure that most pirate sites would struggle to match.
Source: Domain Seizures Give ACE Anti-Piracy Portal a Massive Traffic Boost – TorrentFreak
Analysts claim it’s not only possible to see who’s blowing up now, but more importantly, who’s going to be blowing up next. Chartmetric says it can shortlist which of the 1.7 million artists it tracks will have a big career break within the next week. Pandora-owned Next Big Sound reports its patented algorithm can predict which of the nearly 1 million artists it tracks are most likely to hit the Billboard 200 chart for the first time within the next year.
The private equity firm KKR has signed a definitive agreement to acquire OverDrive in a deal announced on Christmas Eve. KKR bought the leading digital platform that delivers e-books and digital audio to libraries and schools from Rakuten USA, a subsidiary of Japan’s Rakuten Inc. Rakuten bought OverDrive in April 2015 from founder Steve Potash for $410 million.
Facebook is pursuing rights to music videos from major record labels, programming that could boost interest in its Watch video service, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is in the midst of negotiating new licensing deals with the three largest music companies, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, and has asked for music video rights.
Source: Facebook pursues music video rights in possible challenge to YouTube
Live sports, one of the final bastions of free and pay TV, appears under threat from the online upstarts. In addition to Amazon and DAZN, Facebook, Twitter and Google subsidiary YouTube have all dabbled in live sports and now regularly compete in rights auctions in key territories. As forecast by a report published back in January by Indian media giant Tata Communications, 2019 looks like a “tipping point for the sports industry.”
Source: Is Streaming the Future for International Sports Rights?
The new update now lets creators address copyright disputes directly from their digital back-end workspace and gives them the option to trim out the claimed content in question. The “Assisted Trim” option is the biggest feature rolling out with the new Studio update, with the “endpoints of the edit pre-set to where the claimed content appears in the video,” according to a Google product blog.
Source: YouTube gives creators more control over copyright claim disputes with new update
If a writer used AI to complete Cao Xueqin’s famous unfinished Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, who should own the copyright? Cao Xueqin, the writer, or the AI algorithm? “So far, there is no law specifically addressing ownership of AI-created work [in China],” said Liu Wenjie, a law professor at the Communication University of China.
Source: What if an AI algorithm wrote a bestseller? Who would own the copyright?, – AsiaOne
The DGA issued a statement on Thursday saying that it was “deeply disappointed” that the trade deal includes the “safe harbor” language. The guild said that the provision “does nothing but provide a free pass from monetary liability to the world’s largest tech companies at the expense of our members and countless other middle class creative professionals across North America.
Source: DGA Expresses Dismay Over New U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal’s Inclusion Of Copyright “Safe Harbor”