Royalty-free music startup Slip.stream has secured $7.5 million of Series A financing from investors including Sony Music Entertainment, Third Prime, and Lightshed Ventures. Slip.stream says it will work with Sony Music to explore new “premium music opportunities” for Sony Music artists within the Slip.stream platform.
Source: Sony Music joins $7.5m funding round for royalty-free music startup Slip.stream
Sony Music Entertainment (SME) is officially waiving unrecouped debts for more artists and songwriters, CEO Rob Stringer has announced. “First major for artists and songwriters to announce and implement pay-through on legacy unrecouped earnings,” the remuneration portion of the document states. “Potential to impact thousands of our artists & songwriters. Plans to expand the program in the upcoming year.”
Source: Sony Music Entertainment to Waive Unrecouped Debts for More Artists
As the attention recession meets the fragmentation of listenership, viral moments will become fewer and further between and have less of a sustained impact. This is because there are increasingly fewer massive cultural moments for everyone, and more, smaller moments for individuals and their niches.
Source: The record label addiction to virality is about the attention recession, too
Books and magazine articles have long provided the IP Hollywood depends on, but until recently, authors played little role in the process. Now, lit agencies and publishers are changing the rules and shortening the page-to-screen pipeline.
Netflix and Meta were the canaries in the proverbial mine for the attention recession and it is looking increasingly likely that difficult times lie ahead. If the attention crunch was not enough on its own, it has been compounded by the perfect storm of headwinds: the cost of living crisis, rising interest rates, energy and global grain supply constraints, and the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Source: The Attention Recession: How inflation and the pandemic are reshaping entertainment
Last spring, the little-known crypto artist Beeple sold an NFT for an eye-popping $69 million. This month, he revealed he’d been working with Madonna for a year to create a trio of racy NFTs that depicted the “Material Girl” giving birth to a tree, a centipede, and butterflies. They sold for $135,000, $346,000 and $146,000, respectively.
Source: High-profile NFT auctions from Beeple, Madonna flop amid crypto crash
British photographer Gered Mankowitz has an archive that spans 60 years, capturing an extraordinary array of stars that include Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Slade, Elton John and Kate Bush. Now, he hopes that vast treasure trove will be given a new lease of life after selling the lot to a company that plans to use digital technology to turn the images into three-dimensional works of art.
There is more to a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT than merely an encrypted link to a JPEG image. According to the terms & conditions of acquiring an ape published by BAYC creator Yuga Labs, “Yuga Labs LLC grants you an unlimited, worldwide license to use, copy, and display the purchased Art for the purpose of creating derivative works based upon the Art (‘Commercial Use’).” That commercial-use license has been a key to the success of the BAYC brand. It has enabled an entire ecosystem of BAYC spinoffs and merchandise — derivative works — to flourish and greatly buoyed the value and price of the NFTs, at least until the recent market pullback.
Falling stock prices are coinciding with rising interest rates, inflation and heavier-than-usual debt loads at the largest conglomerates. The heightened pressure to deliver earnings and the need to pay more to service debt will inevitably force a pullback — at least in the short term — in the tidal wave of spending on content production, marketing and distribution.
Source: How the Market Crash Is Forcing Hollywood Giants to Reassess Digital Strategies
Whether Netflix’s subscriber growth slowdown at the 222 million mark portends things to come for other major streamers is one of the biggest unknowns fueling media stock volatility. Hollywood has staked its hopes for growth over the past few years on drawing subscribers from the global market thanks to streaming’s ability to reach beyond geographic borders.
Source: Can Streamers Get to 1 Billion Subscribers? Netflix Misfire Raises Doubts