Amazon joins Microsoft, which recently launched Publisher Content Marketplace, in developing platforms to allow publishers to license content and be paid-per-use, rather than by offering an blanket, up-front fee. The two tech giants are not operating in a vacuum, as a variety of companies have been racing to establish their their own licensing platforms.
Data
CLEAR Act Would Create Notice Requirements for Copyrighted Works in AI Training Data
If enacted as drafted, the bill would establish mandatory reporting requirements for companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) models that are trained using original works that are protected under U.S. copyright law, and would create an additional cause of action for copyright owners alleging that generative AI developers failed to give such notice with respect to their works.
Source: CLEAR Act Would Establish Notice Requirements for Copyrighted Works in AI Training Data
Spotify hits a record 751M monthly users thanks to Wrapped, new free features
Swedish music streaming giant Spotify saw its user numbers peak last quarter, driven by its year-end “Wrapped” campaign, which rounds up stats and listening highlights for users and new features on its free tier. Spotify said the “Wrapped” campaign resulted in more than 300 million engaged users and 630 million shares on social media in 56 languages.
Source: Spotify hits a record 751M monthly users thanks to Wrapped, new free features | TechCrunch
Why Trust for Visual Content Cannot Be Solved by Centralized Commercial Solutions
Blockchain and centralized platforms promise to address trust in visual content through commercial gatekeeping. These approaches share a fatal flaw that has nothing to do with their technical elegance: they gate trust behind commercial access. And in doing so, they create systems that, by their very design, cannot serve the function that trust infrastructure requires.
Source: Why Trust for Visual Content Cannot Be Solved by Centralized Commercial Solutions – Kaptur
Silicon Darwinism: Why Scarcity Is the Source of True Intelligence
At the heart of modern data science, there is a division. On one hand, machine learning is in a race for scale. On the other hand and less loudly, a revolution is taking place in the backward direction: these are quantized models, edge inference, TinyML, and architectures that will survive on very limited resources.
Source: Silicon Darwinism: Why Scarcity Is the Source of True Intelligence | Towards Data Science
Publishers fear AI search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’
Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to plummet over the next three years, as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet. An overwhelming majority are also planning to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom.
Source: Publishers fear AI search summaries and chatbots mean ‘end of traffic era’
Spotify Releases ‘Prompted Playlists’ in the US and Canada
On Thursday, Spotify announced the beta rollout of its new AI-powered Prompted Playlist feature for Premium subscribers in the United States and Canada. The company first tested the feature in New Zealand last month, building on an earlier AI playlist feature launched in 2024. Now, users can request what they want to hear in much more detail compared to the earlier version.
Source: Spotify Releases ‘Prompted Playlists’ in the US and Canada
Introducing: Duetti and Billboard’s Music Finance Index
The industry-first, seminanual benchmark polls artist managers, lawyers and indie executives for their expectations for catalog investment trends. The Index is intentionally centered on the perceptions of music industry stakeholders, rather than buyout funds and financial institutions that can be a few steps removed from the “action” in the space.
Source: Introducing: Duetti and Billboard’s Music Finance Index
“Streamflation” Is Real: U.S. Data Shows Soaring Price of Streaming Video Services
The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday released its December Consumer Price Index, showing modest inflation of 0.3 percent on a monthly basis and 2.7 percent for the year. But a deeper dive into the data tables also shows an outlier that is relevant to Hollywood: Subscription video services. According to the BLS data, “Subscription and rental of video and video games” saw inflation of 19.5 percent in December.
Source: “Streamflation” Is Real: U.S. Inflation Data Shows Soaring Price of Streaming Video Services
Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025
Google search traffic was down globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data. In addition, referrals to more than 2,500 publisher websites from Google Discover, a feed served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system, were down 21% year on year. Since May 2023, Google search referrals were down 21% globally, with Google Discover down 18% and all external referrals down 24%.
Source: Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025