Hollywood productions are enraptured by the sound of the U.K. scene. Experimentalist Jerskin Fendrix landed an Academy Award nomination for Poor Things (2023), as did Mica Levi for The Zone of Interest that same year. A24’s upcoming The Smashing Machine (Oct. 3), starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Emily Blunt, will feature music from London-based alt-jazz star Nala Sinephro.
Source: Brits Are Scoring Big: How U.K. Acts Took Over Hollywood’s Biggest Soundtracks
The Firecrawl founders are working on tools to help website owners, publishers, and other content creators “get paid when AI uses their content. We think this is the way it should be,” CEO Caleb Peffer said. While there have been lots of efforts around this idea from big names like Adobe and Getty, Peffer feels that Firecrawl has an edge because it’s already working with those who are scraping data.
Source: AI crawler Firecrawl raises $14.5M, is still looking to hire agents as employees | TechCrunch
A click-to-cancel rule could have a serious downside for streaming services’ revenues – but the global momentum for such a rule is growing. A group of US House representatives have introduced the Click to Cancel Act, a two-page bill that would turn the FTC’s overturned regulation into law, in exactly the same form as the FTC set it out last fall. That would allow the rule to get past the regulatory requirements the FTC faces when it makes changes to how businesses operate.
Source: The US’s ‘click-to-cancel’ rule could soon be law. What would that mean for streaming services?
Meta acquires AI audio startup WaveForms to advance emotional voice synthesis and integrate tech into Superintelligence Labs. WaveForms’ main focus is the ‘Speech Turing Test,’ a challenge to create AI-generated speech that is indistinguishable from human voices. The platform incorporates what it calls ‘emotional general intelligence’—software designed to replicate the emotional nuance of human speech within generated speech.
Source: Meta Acquires WaveForms to Boost AI Audio Capabilities
The opt-in agreement between Kobalt and $3.3 billion-valued Eleven Labs establishes what sources describe as “parity” between publishing and recorded music revenues. Each side will receive an approximate 50/50 split of royalties generated from the AI platform. Eleven Music’s basic tier is trained on production music, but a forthcoming ‘Eleven Music Pro’ offering will soon be trained on cleared catalog from Kobalt and Merlin.
Leading music funding platform beatBread has announced securing an additional $124 million in credit and equity capital as it continues to scale. The company will use the capital to expand its sales, marketing, and product operations, while providing more flexible funding to artists, writers, and independent label clients. Strategic investors who took part include Citi, Deciens Capital, Mucker Capital, and Advantage Capital.
Source: Music Funding Platform beatBread Secures $124M in Latest Round
A report last month from search analytics firm Ahrefs showed Reddit appearing in 5.5% of Google’s AI Overviews responses, the most of any source. Reddit’s position as a repository of knowledge shared and curated by actual people is a big part of the appeal. “Human conversation is not being replaced by AI, instead, it’s becoming more important,” Reddit Chief Executive Steve Huffman said on the company’s earnings call.
Source: As AI Changes Internet Search, Reddit Lies in a Sweet Spot
Recognition Music Group has priced its USD $372 million asset-backed securities (ABS) offering on July 30, with the bonds carrying a 5.604% coupon and yielding 1.7 percentage point over the benchmark. The bonds were three times oversubscribed, suggesting strong investor appetite for music royalty-backed debt.
Source: Recognition Music prices oversubscribed $372M bond deal backed by Justin Bieber and Shakira catalogs
The deal raises SESAC Music Group’s outstanding senior notes to a total of approximately $1.1 billion. This bond issuance is notable as it is the largest 144A-rated whole business securitization ever completed in the music sector. The newly issued bonds are backed by nearly all of SESAC Music Group’s assets and revenue streams, spanning both its Performing Rights and Music Services divisions.
Source: SESAC Music Group Closes $889M Whole Business Securitization
The financial terms of the multiyear deal, which haven’t previously been disclosed, offer a window into how publishers and artificial-intelligence companies are valuing news content in the midst of a seismic change in how consumers seek information online. The annual payment amounts to nearly 1% of the Times’s total 2024 revenue. It was the first AI-related licensing pact for the Times and Amazon’s first such agreement with a publisher.
Source: Amazon to Pay New York Times at Least $20 Million a Year in AI Deal