Los Angeles-headquartered Genies, which “provides consumers and celebrities with the tools to create high-quality avatars,” just recently revealed the $150 million Series C. Silver Lake, a backer of Endeavor, Oak View Group, Jio, Peloton, and Madison Square Garden Sports, led the round, which brought with it a $1 billion valuation for five-year-old Genies.
Source: Genies Raises $150MM, Touts Pacts With Universal Music, Warner Music
Last year Sony Group Corporation – parent company of Sony Music Group –spent USD $200 million to acquire a 0.7% stake in the games company. That investment followed a heftier stake acquisition in 2020, when Sony spent $250 million to acquire equity in Epic worth around 1.5% of its business. Today (April 11), Epic Games has confirmed that Sony has agreed to spend $1 billion to acquire an additional stake in its company.
Source: Sony is spending $1bn to buy another 3% stake in Epic Games to help ‘build the metaverse’
Concerned investors are pushing two resolutions at the social media titan’s upcoming shareholder meeting they say would provide badly needed oversight of Facebook, Instagram and the potential “dystopian downsides” of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse project.
Source: Meta shareholders slam Zuckerberg, question metaverse’s ‘dystopian…
This week, the AT&T/Time Warner era will officially come to a close. As Discovery combines with Warner Bros., it will mark an end to one of the most disastrous mergers in media history, perhaps second only to the AOL/Time Warner union in 2000.
Source: AT&T’s WarnerMedia Era Ends: How Culture Clashes, Massive Debt and Donald Trump Doomed the Merger
Since 2020, more than a few companies have fronted nosebleed sums for song rights, with wild multiples and billions thrown around. But now, following deals with some of the biggest names in music, the catalog sales boom could be cooling.
Source: Is the Catalog Sales Rush Ending? Reports Point to Possible Slowdown
Steven Soderbergh has long been unafraid to experiment with new technologies. So when he first talked to Roman Coppola about supporting emerging filmmakers through Coppola’s blockchain-based nonprofit Decentralized Pictures, Soderbergh was similarly eager to see for himself if blockchain’s promise of revolutionary problem-solving could extend into entertainment.
Volta is described as a “free, self-service XR creation platform” that allows creators to construct and broadcast “metaverse-reaching” immersive experiences. The company says that it allows live streaming artists to use any audio source to automate various visual effects in sync with their music in real time. Volta claims that this is the first ever initiative of its kind.
Source: Immersive live-streaming tech company Volta raises $3m from Deadmau5, Robb McDaniels and more
Perhaps the billion-dollar question is this: can artists that have gone viral — on TikTok or elsewhere — transition into becoming long-term superstar acts? Last month in Nashville during CRS, Big Machine Label Group chief Scott Borchetta offered a bleak assessment on a frenzy of TikTok signings. “Not any of those [TikTok artists] that got signed to big deals have worked,” Borchetta stated soberly.
Source: Is the Music Industry Wasting Money on TikTok and Viral Artists?
Sony spent approximately USD $911 million on music catalog acquisitions in the 10 months leading up to February, 2022. The stat was recently revealed by Sony Corp‘s Executive Deputy President and CFO, Hiroki Totoki, on an investor presentation. Somewhere around half of that $911 million figure would have gone on Sony’s double-acquisition of Bruce Springsteen’s publishing catalog and his recorded music catalog.
Source: Sony spent an average of $91m on music catalog acquisitions every month over the past 10 months
Amazon has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM, the company announced on Thursday. The completion of the transaction will see more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows become a part of Prime Video, the online retailer’s streaming service.