Big tech companies have been eyeing big media companies for years — but they’ve never gotten together before. Now it’s finally, probably happening: Amazon is getting ready to pay $9 billion for MGM Holdings, the Hollywood studio that brings you James Bond and a smattering of other stuff, like the Pink Panther movies and The Handmaid’s Tale TV show.
Source: Why Amazon is paying $9 billion for MGM and James Bond
In addition to the 500,000 digital assets stored across its stock music, video and motion graphics libraries, Israel-based Artlist also runs an in-house record label and music publisher, Artlist Original. Producing over 1,000 songs a year exclusively for the Artlist catalog, it’s this portfolio of works that IMPEL will now represent as a licensing partner.
Source: KKR-backed Artlist joins independent music publishers’ agency IMPEL
Washington, DC Attorney General Karl Racine announced a new antitrust suit against Amazon Tuesday, accusing the company of stifling competition by exerting control over third-party sellers. The lawsuit, filed in DC Superior Court, alleges that Amazon fixed prices on its massive online retail platform by blocking third-party sellers from selling their products for less elsewhere.
Source: DC attorney general files antitrust suit against Amazon over third-party seller agreements
The German Parliament has adopted new legislation that will implement the EU Copyright Directive into local law. This includes the controversial Article 17 that, according to some, would lead to overbroad upload filters. To deal with these concerns, the German law prevents ‘minor’ and limited use of copyrighted content from being blocked automatically.
Source: German ‘Upload Filter’ Law Sets Standards to Prevent Overblocking * TorrentFreak
On April 15th, Hollywood writer and director Kevin Smith announced that he was putting an unreleased film of his, “Killroy was Here” up for sale via NFT (i.e. ‘Non-Fungible Token’). He’s auctioning this work off ‘lock, stock and barrel’ – that is, all the digital files of which the film is comprised, and without retaining any copies or backups.
Already a fast-growing sector pre-pandemic, the virtual health and fitness business has soared during quarantine, with Wellness app installs reaching 1.2 billion in 2020 alone. The growth of this space has also created a significant opportunity for music rightsholders, with music’s role in the remote fitness business becoming so central that instructors are now being compared with the likes of “influencers and DJs”.
Source: How Tuned Global is helping fitness brands integrate licensed music into their virtual classes
The broadcaster announced at its upfront presentation on Monday that Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon’s new animated series, Krapopolis, will have groundbreaking technology involved in its distribution and marketing. Krapopolis is going to be “the first-ever animated series curated entirely on the Blockchain” and mark the broadcast network’s debut move into the NFT business. Fox says it is also debuting a new NFT company called Blockchain Creative Labs.
Source: Dan Harmon Making First Blockchain Animated Series as Fox Embraces Crypto
Unless Apple and Amazon signed some very unique deals with labels, lossless streaming comes at a higher price than standard quality. That means that for now, Apple and Amazon are deciding to eat the cost in order to tie more people into their ecosystems. Amazon was previously criticized for this in 2011, subsidizing Lady Gaga‘s album sales of Born This Way by discounting it to $0.99:
Source: Does Apple’s lossless streaming movie impair fairer subscription prices?
The entertainment company is involved in various enforcement initiatives and a few days ago, added a new anti-piracy patent to its arsenal. With a blockchain-based distribution system, Disney hopes to make it harder for pirates to intercept films being distributed to movie theaters.
Source: Disney Patents Blockchain-Based Movie Distribution System to Stop Pirates * TorrentFreak
Google transparently reports the billions of copyright takedown requests it receives for its search engine. However, finding out how many videos are flagged and removed on YouTube appears to be quite the challenge. We gave it a go nonetheless and can also conclude that the Content ID system is a cash cow.
Source: YouTube’s Takedown Numbers are a Mystery, But Content-ID is a ‘Cash Cow’ * TorrentFreak