Data

The world’s richest company released a sleek new product this week that was years in the making and had to meet its exacting standards before it was ready to be used by millions of people. But it wasn’t a phone, a gadget or an AI chatbot. The latest innovation from Apple was a better way of listening to classical music. And it only exists because of a curious failure by the most successful music-streaming services.

Source: Apple Wants to Solve One of Music’s Biggest Problems

YouTube is launching a new product called Analytics for Artists that will help musicians adopt a multiformat approach to video, Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen announced. Cohen shared some stats that show just how big YouTube Shorts has gotten. As of December 2022, the TikTok competitor records 50 billion daily views, many of which come on videos that feature pop music. According to Cohen, the top 1,000 songs on YouTube Shorts got more than 280 billion combined views in January 2023.

Source: A new analytics tool helps musical artists harness YouTube Shorts and its 50 billion daily views – Tubefilter

VRDB is a system that was developed within SCAPR, the international association for performers’ collective management organisations (CMOs). It is a project that started in earnest in 2014. Its mission was to make a fundamental shift away from a claims-based model for international performer collections, to one based around a shared and agreed view of performer line-ups on sound recordings and audio-visual works. 

Source: ‘It takes time to deliver this level of change and not everyone is able to move at the same pace’.

At the heart of AI lies machine learning, where models learn to recognize patterns and make predictions based on the data they are fed. As AI models continue to grow in size, the demand for training data has increased exponentially. This growth has led to a surge in interest in data collection, annotation, and management. Companies that can provide AI developers with access to vast, high-quality datasets will play a vital role in shaping the future of AI.

Source: How AI is Creating Explosive Demand for Training Data

There is no way to see full album or song credits on YouTube Music right now. But that may be changing soon. An eagle-eyed reddit user spotted a change to the song menu that now includes an option to view song credits. Tapping the overflow menu next to each song will bring up options with a ‘View song credits’ to see the composer, producer, songwriters, and performers listed by the music metadata provider. 

Source: YouTube Music Song Credits Coming Soon? — The Evidence

Australian music tech company Jaxsta has acquired Vampr, a social network connecting musicians and artists, dubbed as “LinkedIn for creatives.” Jaxsta noted that Vampr’s ‘freemium’ business model already converts 4% of weekly active users into paying subscribers. The business model is expected to accelerate when Vampr Pro is bundled with the Jaxsta Creator subscription, said Jaxsta.

Source: Jaxsta acquires ‘LinkedIn for creatives’ Vampr

The UK’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation has published its report on what impact the streaming services’ recommendation algorithms might be having on music consumption. “There are widely held beliefs that the use of these technologies might serve to unfairly advantage certain groups at the expense of others,” says the report’s intro. “This report finds that evidence proving or disproving whether these technologies embed, amplify, or introduce unfair biases is mixed, and at times inconclusive.”

Source: How DO streaming algorithms change the way we listen to music? – Music Ally

Data analytics platform Viberate is looking to turbo-charge its user-base growth in 2023 by cutting the cost of its full service from $129 per month to $9.90. The Slovenia headquartered company described the dramatic move as “scary, but the right thing to do”, claiming that it would help make the music industry more inclusive and access to game-changing data tools more democratic. Viberate says that its analytics tool processes over 1 billion data points each day.

Source: Viberate cuts subscription cost to under $10 in bid to democratize access to high end data analytics tools

The conference opened with a talk from the International Publishers Association president Karine Pansa about a two-year project focusing on data collection, as well as the need for more accessible books. As Pansa noted, the adoption of digital publishing practices vary wildly. In Japan, for example, digital audiobooks account for 36% of the total revenue of the book market, while they represent less than 1% in other countries with large book markets.

Source: Digital Book World Focuses on Data and Accessibility

The music industry has not shied away from its keenness to adopt Web3 solutions. From nonfungible tokens (NFTs) helping artists connect with their communities, to various blockchain use cases, including event ticketing. Another relevant implementation of the technology to be considered by industry insiders is how Web3 tools can help artists and companies manage music metadata.

Source: Web3 can help artists and companies manage music metadata: B2B music exec