The music industry’s legacy of sloppy, archaic and indifferent data management, particularly with respect to who owns what, has proved a major liability in the age of streaming, when billions of individual transactions need to be tracked, reported and paid out on every day. But repeated efforts to improve the situation through data sharing and collaboration throughout the value chain have floundered, mostly on fears of loosing proprietary control and leverage.
With a summer box office that’s loaded with such window-respecting movies as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick, Thor: Love & Thunder, Jurassic World: Dominion, Bullet Train, and more, it’s pretty safe to say that most of the majors have gotten their jonesing for day-and-date out of their system. They’ve largely learned that collapsed windows siphon ticket sales, spur greater piracy and infuriates talent.
Source: European Lawmakers Reach New Deal on Social Media Regulations
Snapchat achieved an 18 percent year-over-year jump in daily active users during Q1 2022 – the first full quarter in which it’s had licensing deals in place with each of the Big Three labels – as an average of 332 million individuals utilized the app. Snap Inc. revealed this and a number of other interesting performance specifics in a breakdown of its results for January, February, and March of 2022.
Source: Snapchat Records 18% Daily Active User Growth As Revenue Jumps 38%
A man at the center of a copyright scam that abused YouTube’s Content ID system to fraudulently obtain more than $23m to the detriment of artists has entered a plea agreement with the US government. Webster Batista Fernandez wrongfully claimed to own the rights to more than 50,000 tracks and illegally monetized user uploads for years.
Source: Man Pleads Guilty to $23m YouTube Content ID Scam * TorrentFreak
Here’s a comforting thought for email marketers who are themselves confused by the Metaverse: 49% of consumers haven’t heard of it, and 27% know little more than the name, according to 2022 Consumer Trends: Metaverse & Social Commerce, a study by CommerceNext. Another 20% of consumers know what the metaverse is but don’t know how to interact with it, and a mere 5% are familiar with it and are excited to use it.
Source: Email Marketing Daily: Consumers Haven’t A Clue About The Metaverse, Study Shows
Soundful claims to “democratize music production” by giving its users access to what it says is music theory-trained algorithms and one “of the biggest original sound libraries ever assembled” to make music. Users can create a new track from scratch using a variety of templates and genres and all tracks are fully licensed for use in videos, advertisements and social media campaigns.
Source: AI-powered music creation platform Soundful raises $3.8m funding round
The Ukrainian Publishers and Booksellers Association (UPBA) has released a new spring 2022 rights catalogue, Books From Ukraine (PDF), which features titles in six categories available from Ukrainian publishers. The intent behind Books from Ukraine, association president Oleksander Afonin says, is to create a way for international publishers to provide financial support to Ukrainian publishers during the chaos and hardships caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Equity, the performing arts workers union, is campaigning against the use of AI in film and audio production, calling for laws to be changed to protect performers’ rights. The group in their campaign called “Stop AI Stealing The Show” proposes that laws should be introduced which would force companies to get actors’ permissions before using AI to replicate their likeness or voice.
Source: UK performers union is fighting Artificial Intelligence for actors’ rights
A last-minute proposal to change the liability regime for online search engines in the Digital Services Act (DSA) was circulated in the European Parliament amending a proposal of the EU Commission that already favours rightsholders. It is expected to receive the support of the EU Commission and Council.
Source: DSA: rightsholders make final push for takedown obligations on search engines