Spotify packed on 10 million Premium customers in the last three months of 2022 to stand at 205 million, topping its previous guidance. The growth of its paid subs, up 14% year over year, was “aided by promotional intake and household plans,” the company said. Overall, the streamer gained 33 million total monthly active users in the fourth quarter — a record high — to reach 489 million (free and paid), up 20% year over year.
January, 2023
Evolution of music and art arrives with NFT project for hit cross-genre single
Staking their claim as part of the evolution of NFTs in music entertainment are The Avila Brothers, Billy Ray Cyrus and Snoop Dogg. In collaboration with metaverse experts Animal Concerts and crypto media powerhouse Cointelegraph, the world-renowned music artists are taking their latest hit song “A Hard Working Man” to Web3 via an exclusive NFT collection depicting the artists in a wide range of hard-working professions.
Source: Evolution of music and art arrives with NFT project for hit cross-genre single
Australia’s Music Industry Lauds Government for ‘Listening and Responding’ With National Cultural Policy
Prime minister Anthony Albanese and arts minister Tony Burke were on hand Monday (Jan. 30) for the launch of Revive, a five-year action plan that lays the groundwork for what government and industry hopes will facilitate a robust music space through sorely-needed infrastructure, investment and ideas.
Is catalog really eating frontline music’s market share in streaming
Catalog music eating into frontline music’s market share has become one of the music industry’s bigger talking points these past few years. But is ‘old’ music really getting that much more popular? Or does the definition of catalog need an adjustment in today’s streaming-led music industry – where audiences appear to be playing (and replaying) hit songs for far longer than they might once have done?
Madeline McIntosh to Step Down as CEO of PRH US
The fallout from Penguin Random House’s failure to acquire Simon & Schuster continued today with the news that PRH US CEO Madeline McIntosh will leave the company in the near future. McIntosh’s resignation follows, by about three weeks, the departure of Gina Centrello, the longtime publisher and president of the Random House Publishing Group.
AI voice tool ‘misused’ as deepfakes flood web forum
A British AI firm said it was rethinking its “safeguards” after its audio tool was used to clone celebrity voices and have them say racist and homophobic slurs. Eleven Labs tweeted on Monday that it had been a “crazy weekend” and admitted to finding “an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases” just days after it released a demo version of the tool.
Source: AI voice tool ‘misused’ as deepfakes flood web forum
Google created an AI that can generate music from text descriptions, but won’t release it
Google has created an AI system that can generate songs given detailed text descriptions. But it won’t release it for fear of the risks. Detailed in an academic paper, MusicLM was trained on a dataset of 280,000 hours of music to learn to generate coherent songs for descriptions of — as the creators put it — “significant complexity” (e.g. “enchanting jazz song with a memorable saxophone solo and a solo singer” or “Berlin ’90s techno with a low bass and strong kick.”
Source: Google created an AI that can generate music from text descriptions, but won’t release it
Yuga Labs Says It Does Not Have Copyright Registration Of Bored Ape Images
Y
uga Labs, parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club, said in a court filing it does not have “copyright registrations” for the NFT collection’s images. However, as legal experts have noted, Yuga did not sue Ripps on a copyright claim. A number of possible reasons have been suggested, from a lack of copyright registrations to Yuga wanting to avoid allowing Ripps to use a Fair Use/Freedom Of Speech defense.
Source: Yuga Labs Says It Does Not Have Copyright Registration Of Bored Ape Images, in New Court Documents
OpenAI, Github Seek to Dismiss AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
Microsoft, along with its subsidiaries GitHub and OpenAI, has told a San Francisco federal court that a proposed lawsuit over the open-source code the companies use to train their AI systems is unsustainable. The companies say that the complaint, filed by anonymous copyright owners, needs to outline the allegations more precisely. Additionally, the companies state that GitHub’s Copilot system, which suggests lines of code for programmers, was within fair use of the source code it recommends.
Source: OpenAI, Github Seek to Dismiss AI Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
Universal Music Defeats Class Certification Motion In Artists’ Suit
A federal judge has rejected artists’ motion for class certification in a copyright-recapture lawsuit filed against Universal Music. The court explained in detail how “the need for individualized proof” – i.e. whether each of the contracts is or isn’t made for hire – “precludes certification of the proposed classes.” Similarly, a second work-for-hire test, centering on whether the music had been “specially commissioned,” likewise “requires a highly individualized inquiry,” according to the document.
Source: Universal Music Defeats Class Certification Motion In Artists’ Suit