Without the human and aesthetic nuance needed for fiction, informational content, including much nonfiction, can be very effectively rendered by machine voices, especially if the operation providing them does rigorous testing for mispronunciations, syntax gaffes, and so on. Text to speech can offer a far more affordable route, both in time and money, to getting backlisted titles onto the busy audiobook market.
Source: Germany’s Bookwire Now Offers Artificial Narration for Audiobooks
hyprAUDIO is a sync-specific search engine that can sift through hundreds of thousands of tracks by tapping into the power of AI. Even better, searches can be triggered by using example audio clips instead of descriptive terms. That’s something music supervisors are already doing in their sync briefs, instead of using more cumbersome descriptive terms.
Source: How hyprAUDIO Is Using AI to Solve Sync Music Licensing Overload
Rapper and visual artist Latashá is a living embodiment of web3’s potential to support independent artists. She minted and successfully sold her first NFT in 2021 of a music video she had made — her first foray into the web3 world. Since then, she’s sold NFTs of her work for tens of thousands of dollars and has become a highly visible advocate for artists to leverage web3 technology.
Source: Web3 artist Latashá on educating creators about crypto’s ebbs and flows
News providers are now flocking to the app, with many of those that arrived early now seeing follower counts upwards of a million, and many seeing six-figure or seven-figure follower growth in 2022. Even BBC News, which once derided Tiktok as a place for “light news”, joined the app in March, though it has yet to make much of on impact on it.
Source: Why is journalism starting to become viral on Tiktok?
The deal includes IAG’s purchase of a controlling interest in Stills’ intellectual property, including his music publishing catalog of 1,000-plus songs from his stints in Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY); Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN); Manassas; The Rides and The Stills-Young Band, as well as his solo career.
Source: Stephen Stills Sells Catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group in Expansive Deal
Warner Music Group has joined a strategic funding round for San Francisco-based Authentic Artists, a music platform that claims to power “metaverse-native virtual artists, digital collectibles and interactive music experiences”. Authentic Artists says that its music platform uses “cutting edge deep learning, game engine and blockchain technologies”.
Universal Music Group, via its Universal Music Production Music division, has quietly launched a new sample service called Usample. According to the Usample website, the service offers a catalog of around 7,000 “rare” tracks, that, Universal says, come “from the depths of the [UMG] archive, digitised for the first time since the original pressings”.
Source: Universal Music Group just launched a ‘secret’ sample service… for major label artists only 🤫
On Tuesday, 35 technology companies—among them Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Microsoft, Alibaba, and Sony—announced their founding membership in an organization calling itself the Metaverse Standards Forum. The Forum’s stated goal: to foster coordination and cooperation among the hundreds of companies currently jockeying to create (or depending who you ask, dominate) the still-nascent metaverse.
Depending on the particular NFT collection, there may be restrictions on the usage of intellectual property (IP) on the holder’s side, and so many have started looking into NFTs that give buyers the ability to leverage and commercialize their NFTs’ artwork. And that has led to an explosion of projects that give extensive or complete freedom for holders.
Source: Should You Copyright Your NFTs?
Netflix’s Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, speaking at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, confirmed that the future of the streaming giant will include ads, explaining the about face. “We adding an ad tier; we’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today,” Sarandos said Thursday, speaking on the Cannes Lions stage with Sway podcast host Kara Swisher. “We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say, ‘Hey, I want a lower price and I’ll watch ads.’”
Source: Ted Sarandos Explains Why Netflix Will Add New Ad-Supported Tier to Streaming Service