Source: State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation
Data
Meta joins others reinventing search with AI
Meta is reportedly working on AI-powered search to reduce its dependency on Microsoft and Google. The development comes during a season where many vendors are finding new opportunities with search using generative AI. For example, Google — the clear leader in search up to now — has transformed its longstanding search strategy with AI Overviews, a feature that summarizes search results, provides product comparisons and performs other generative AI-powered services, over the past year.
Source: Meta joins others reinventing search with AI | TechTarget
Google’s AI search summaries are rolling out to over 100 more countries
Google’s AI Overviews are expanding across more than 100 countries this week. The AI-generated search summaries will appear for users in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Colombia, Chile, the Phillippines, Nigeria, and many more locations. You can view the full list of countries on Google’s website. In each country, AI Overviews will now appear in any supported language, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Source: Google’s AI search summaries are rolling out to over 100 more countries
Six Biggest Companies to Spend $126 Billion on Content in 2024, up 9%, Led by Disney
That estimate comes from a new report by U.K.-based research firm Ampere Analysis. The spending across the six companies — Disney, Comcast, Google, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and Paramount Global — will reach a new high in 2024 and account for 51% of the total content spending landscape, up from 47% in 2020, according to Ampere.
Source: Six Biggest Companies to Spend Record $126 Billion on Content in 2024, up 9%, Led by Disney
Is generative AI doomed? An expert’s take on the “model collapse” theory
The current crop of generative AI systems needs high quality data, and lots of it. To source this data, big tech companies continually scour the internet, scooping up terabytes of content to feed the machines. But since the advent of widely available and useful generative AI systems in 2022, people are increasingly uploading and sharing content that is made, in part or whole, by AI.
Source: Is generative AI doomed? An expert’s take on the “model collapse” theory
Adobe has a new tool to protect artists’ work from AI
As the engine powering the world’s digital artists, Adobe has a big responsibility to mitigate the rise of AI-driven deepfakes, misinformation, and content theft. In the first quarter of 2025, Adobe is launching its Content Authenticity web app in beta, allowing creators to apply content credentials to their work, certifying it as their own.
Source: Adobe has a new tool to protect artists’ work from AI
MIDiA: A Music creator economy recalibration
The music creator economy was thrust into the wider music industry’s limelight with the Covid lockdowns triggering a surge in new creators. Our latest music creator report shows that progressively more creators are starting with lower expectations for streaming. Their royalty expectations are already so low that this is no longer a pain point for them. Instead, they are becoming critical of streaming’s ability to further their careers, focusing on the medium’s closed door between them and their fans.
GEMA proposes licensing model for AI-generated music
GEMA, a German performing rights collection society and licensing body, has introduced a licensing model for AI providers, seeking to address the use of copyrighted music in AI training and the creation of AI-generated songs. GEMA proposes that authors should receive compensation beyond a one-time payment for training data. It suggests that such one-off payments may not sufficiently compensate authors given the potential revenues from AI-generated content.
Source: GEMA proposes licensing model for AI-generated music
Zuckerberg: creators, publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says there are complex copyright questions around scraping data to train AI models, but he suggests the individual work of most creators isn’t valuable enough for it to matter. In an interview with The Verge deputy editor Alex Heath, Zuckerberg said Meta will likely strike “certain partnerships” for useful content. But if others demand payment, then — as it’s done with news outlets — the company would prefer to walk away.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg: creators and publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI
AI crawlers are hammering sites and nearly taking them offline
Kyle Wiens recognized something was wrong in July when his staff at iFixit began receiving alerts about high traffic on their cellphones. They also were able to identify what had caused the issue: It turned out to be a web crawler sent out into the world by Anthropic, makers of the Claude chatbot, to try and gather training data.
Source: AI crawlers are hammering sites and nearly taking them offline