Finance

The renewed desire to bundle is something of a race against the clock. Zaslav and some other media moguls (perhaps most notably Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch) have long touted their plans to use the cash generated from their cable TV channels to help fund streaming efforts. But it has become increasingly clear that cord-cutting continues to accelerate, and there are inflection points on the horizon that would only speed up cable’s demise.

Source: The Great Rebundling: Who Will Figure Out How to Rebuild Pay TV First?

AI-powered music collaboration platform boombox.io has closed a seed funding round, securing $7 million in investments from Forerunner, super{set} startup studio and Ulu Ventures. According to Boombox, using its so-called ‘Boombot’ AI tool, it leverages Generative AI to “enrich and extend a musician’s creative process.” The San Francisco-based platform claims that this tool “generates new ideas and fleshes out partial ones to make music creation more dynamic, faster and smarter.”

Source: Generative AI-powered music startup boombox.io raises $7m

One of the US’s most prominent brokerages has quietly become a major shareholder in two of the big three global music recording companies over the past few years. Boston-headquartered Fidelity Investments, the second-largest brokerage in the US, has snapped up around $1.125 billion worth of shares inUniversal Music Group, the world’s largest music rights holder, and about $450 million–worth of shares in Warner Music Group, the third-largest rights holder.

Source: It owns a chunk of both Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. But what is Fidelity Investments?

Tipalti’s new fundraise arrives as the company expands its presence in the music business. Tipalti recently partnered with Create Music Group to “modernize, centralize and consolidate” the company’s payment processes with end-to-end automation. The platform also cites GoDigital Media Group as a client on its website. Tipalti says that its transactions soared by 50% in 2022 to a total annualized payments volume of $43 billion.

Source: Payments automation platform Tipalti raises $150m from JPMorgan and Hercules Capital

Stockholm-headquartered anotherblock, which revealed a $2.5 million raise last June and officially launched in August, detailed its newest multimillion-dollar round today. Contrasting the seemingly insignificant offerings of many competing NFT platforms, anotherblock’s tokens are according to the company’s website tied to the partial ownership of tracks’ streaming royalties.

Source: Music NFT Startup anotherblock Announces $4.4 Million Raise

AudioShake — a startup that uses AI to deconstruct music tracks into stems that can be used for remixes, sampling and other applications — has announced it’s just raised USD $2.7 million in a seed round. That takes its total fund-raising to date over $5 million, the company said. Among the investors in the round are Black Squirrel Partners, a growth equity and content investing firm founded by Metallica, alongside Q Prime, Eric Wasserman, Paul Donahue and others.

Source: AI music startup AudioShake raises $2.7M in seed round with backing from Crush Music, peermusic… and Metallica

For the Directors Guild of America, the primary focus is getting a better deal on international streaming residuals. AMPTP president Carol Lombardini has already made an offer to the writers on that issue, which could form a starting point for talks with the DGA. A DGA deal could then be applied to SAG-AFTRA, which begins its negotiations on June 7, potentially increasing the AMPTP’s leverage with writers.

Source: DGA Talks Open Second Front in Labor Battle; Directors to Focus on Streaming Gains

Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, in remarks to analysts during a morning earnings call, said music publishing had shown continued momentum, but recorded music revenue fell short of expectations. “We underperformed in recorded music. There’s plenty of room for improvement,” Kyncl said. Kyncl said AI tools could be properly harnessed to transform the music industry, even as it faces a challenge from AI-generated music content and increasing competition from indie music labels.

Source: Warner Music CEO On AI: “Framing It Only as a Threat Is Inaccurate”

As screenwriters continue their strike against Hollywood companies, the two sides remain a galaxy apart, portending a potentially long and destructive standoff. “Any hope that this would be fast has faded,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “I hate to say it, but it’s going to be a while.”

Source: ‘It’s Going to Be a While’: No End in Sight for Hollywood Strike

Despite analysts expecting a problematic fiscal quarter, tech giant Apple beat expectations in the March 2023 quarter with a revenue of $94.8 billion. While that number is down 3 percent year over year, Apple’s services segment — including Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade, among others — reported revenue of $20.9 billion in the quarter, a new record.

Source: Apple Services Reach Record Quarterly Revenues of $20.9 Billion