Sam Altman was reinstated late Tuesday as OpenAI’s chief executive, the company said, successfully reversing his ouster by OpenAI’s board last week after a campaign waged by his allies, employees and investors. The company’s board of directors will be overhauled, jettisoning several members who had opposed Mr. Altman. Adam D’Angelo, the chief executive of Quora, will be the only holdover.
Source: Sam Altman Is Reinstated as OpenAI’s Chief Executive
Universal Music Group (UMG) has won a court case against a proposed class action lawsuit that argued the recording company underpaid its signed artists some $750 million in royalties. Andrus Titus and William McLean, members of the 1990s rap duo Black Sheep, filed the lawsuit this past January, alleging that UMG breached its contract with them, and with other artists, when it allegedly accepted lower royalty payments from Spotify in exchange for a tranche of Spotify stock in 2008.
Source: Universal prevails in lawsuit alleging it owed artists $750m in Spotify royalties
BMI’s transition to a for-profit model moved forward Tuesday as a New Mountain Capital-led group acquired a majority investment in the organization. Mike O’Neill, BMI’s president & CEO, will continue to lead the company, along with his leadership team, following the closing, according to the announcement. New Mountain will acquire the company from the shareholders who own currently own it; those shareholders must approve the sale.
Source: BMI Sold to New Mountain Capital
CreateSafe, the music tech studio that collaborated with Grimes on an AI using a clone of her voice, has raised $4.6 million in a seed funding round to launch TRINITI, a new “artistic intelligence” platform. Polychain Capital, a cryptocurrency and blockchain tech investment firm, led the funding round. Grimes also joined CreateSafe’s advisory board to continue to experiment and develop emergent new use cases to collaborate with AI.
Source: CreateSafe Announces Funding for New AI Platform Following Grimes Collab
beatBread has announced a new Songwriting Advance Division to offer streaming advances to artists. Songwriters can customize their advance terms by adjusting the scope, term length, and revenue shares to help tailor an agreement to meet their funding needs. Publishing advances with beatBread are also available for both existing catalogs and those with unreleased songs.
Source: beatBread Launches Songwriting Advance Division with $3M
On News Corp.’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call, CEO Robert Thomson said that the company is in “advanced discussions” with companies to license its content for their AI engines. “We are in advanced discussions with a range of digital companies that we anticipate will bring significant revenue in return for the use of our unmatched content sets,” Thomson said.
Source: News Corp. CEO Expects “Significant” Revenue From AI Companies That License Content
New York-headquartered Reservoir Media has raised its financial outlook after recording another quarter of double-digit revenue growth, despite some headwinds to the music rights company’s bottom line. In an earnings release on Tuesday (November 7), Reservoir reported revenue of USD $38.4 million for its fiscal Q2 2024, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of 2023, ended September 30.
Source: Reservoir Media’s revenues grew 15% YoY to $38.4m in calendar Q3
Naylor and Keeling each bring with them experience from Round Hill Music Royalty Fund Ltd (RHM). Formerly a UK-listed entity like Hipgnosis Songs Fund, RHM was last week officially acquired off the stock exchange by Concord via Alchemy Copyrights, LLC. Until that acquisition, Naylor was non-executive Chairman of RHM over the past year.
Source: Hipgnosis Songs Fund names Rob Naylor as new Chairman, Francis Keeling as non-executive director
A rebound in performing rights and heightened demand for physical product helped the value of global music copyright reach $41.5 billion in 2022, surpassing the $40 billion mark for the first time, according to a report released Monday (Nov. 6). While record labels commanded a majority of the global market, the $5 billion annual increase was “evenly shared” between recorded music and music publishing, noted the report’s author, Will Page.
Source: Global Value of Music Copyright Climbed to $41.5B in 2022
Source: Tech Giants Spend Billions on AI Startups—And Get Just as Much Back