All told, the A.I. start-up hauled in $7.3 billion in a year. Its five funding deals stood out not just for their speed and size, but for their unusual structures. In one of those deals, Anthropic agreed to use technology such as chips and cloud computing services from the companies that invested in it. That meant, in effect, that some of the money it raised would be pumped back into its investors.
Source: Inside the Funding Frenzy at Anthropic, One of A.I.’s Hottest Start-Ups
OpenAI has completed a deal that values the San Francisco artificial intelligence company at $80 billion or more, nearly tripling its valuation in less than 10 months. The deal is another example of the Silicon Valley deal-making machine pumping money into a handful of companies that specialize in generative A.I. — technology that can generate text, sounds and images on its own.
Source: OpenAI Completes Deal That Values the Company at $80 Billion
Legendary rock singer Rod Stewart has sold his song catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists for nearly $100 million in a deal that comprises interests in his publishing catalog and recorded music, as well as some name and likeness rights. The deal comes as Iconic announced that it has raised more than $1 billion in new capital for future catalog investments, primarily from the investment firm HPS Investment Partners.
Source: Rod Stewart Sells Song Catalog to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group for Nearly $100 Million
In the roughly 18 months since it was founded by Lior Tibon, former COO of Tidal and now Duetti’s CEO, and Christopher Nolte, a former Business Development executive at Apple Music, the company has partnered with more than 250 indie artists, including Olivia O’Brien, Sevyn Streeter and Łaszewo. Now Duetti announced it has raised USD $90 million in new funding, including $15 million in new equity and a $75 million credit facility.
Source: Duetti raises $90 million in new funding to acquire indie artists’ catalogs
Publishers and CEOs across the industry agree AI is an existential threat to the future of journalism, and their businesses have spent the past year wrestling with a conundrum: Ink a deal with the AI players or fight it out in court. Do the CEOs and publishers of these trusted news brands prefer paying journalists’ salaries or attorney fees?
Source: Take the Cash or Fight? Media Moguls Split on AI Deals
Inspired by Universal Music Group‘s ‘artist-centric’ streaming strategy, Spotify’s new rules see ‘premium’ artists and ‘premium’ content financially prioritized over so-called low-quality tracks and creator accounts with low engagement. Amongst those rules are that tracks on Spotify must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate royalties on the platform.
Source: Only 19% of artists on Spotify had over 1,000 monthly listeners in 2023
Copyright infringement hits home – a cautionary tale. Some of you may have seen the article by David Segal in the Sunday NY Times several weeks ago about a rather sordid copyright fracas in which I have been embroiled over the past few months. It’s a pretty wild story. If you don’t feel like reading the whole NYT article, here’s a brief summary of how it unfolded:
The significant capital raise arrives as heat appears to be reentering the blockbuster music rights acquisition space. Over the past seven days, Billboard has reported that Sony Music Group recently agreed to buy a 50% stake in Michael Jackson‘s publishing and recorded music catalog for $600 million-plus, while the long-running potential sale of Queen’s music rights is also reportedly picking up pace.
Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience. What will emerge in the wake of mass extinction, Brian Morrissey, another media analyst, recently wrote in his newsletter, “The Rebooting,” is “a different industry, leaner and diminished.” In fact, he told me, what we are witnessing is nothing less than the end of the mass-media era.
Source: Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?
The company says it delivered USD $9 billion last year to recipients across record companies and music publishers, plus independent distributors, performance rights organizations, and collecting societies. According to Spotify, the $9 billion figure means that its annual payouts to music rightsholders have “nearly tripled in the past six years”.