Clearnote, which has just launched in beta, uses an AI-guided, TurboTax-style questionnaire covering royalties and rights and then automatically generates the correct agreement with clauses tailored to the user’s needs. Users can also load in artist and producer profiles and let Clearnote fill in more than a dozen contract fields with one click.
Source: AI Contract Platform Clearnote Aims to End Deal Delays: ‘The System Is Outdated’
Google’s AI Overviews are reducing traffic to review content and buyers’ guides by up to 50%, according to an affiliate marketing specialist. Paul Cunliffe, who works with publishers on their affiliate channels, described the arrival of AI Overviews as a “real challenge at the moment in the affiliate space”. Publishers can earn affiliate revenue by linking to products and services, taking a commission when readers make a purchase by clicking through a link.
Source: Google AI Overviews ‘leading to affiliate revenue drop of 20-40% at some publishers’
Lyrics and music data company Musixmatch says it has signed AI licensing deals with the publishing arms of all three major music companies. The deals with Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group and Warner Chappell Music give Musixmatch access to catalogs of over 15 million musical works, with which the company plans to develop new analytical tools and “non-generative AI services.”
Source: Major music publishers ink AI licensing deals with lyrics and music data company Musixmatch
OpenAI appears to have calmed fears around Sora 2, winning over SAG-AFTRA, CAA, UTA and actor Bryan Cranston with new guardrails on the platform to protect actors’ voices and likenesses. Cranston was among those who raised concerns when the initial launch of the AI video platform allowed users to create his image without his permission. In a statement issued by the actors’ union on Monday, Cranston thanked OpenAI for updating Sora 2 to add new protections.
Source: Bryan Cranston, SAG-AFTRA and Agents Applaud Fixes to Open AI’s Sora 2 After Outcry
Social platforms and the creator economy have been re-writing the rules of audience engagement for some time now. Together, they have accelerated the fragmentation of entertainment and made niche the new mainstream. However, the ability to tell stories is only one component of success. In fact, the most adept creators marry storytelling and data science together. This dual role has emerged as much out of necessity as it has because of the features social platforms offer.
Source: Why digital natives and data science are key to embracing the creator economy
A leader in funding for independent labels and musicians, beatBread has announced the launch of the Global Independence Fund (GIF), a new $100 million fund designed to provide independent labels and distributors with flexible financial support. The fund aims to ensure that independent music businesses have access to capital on terms that align with their needs, allowing them to grow, compete more effectively to sign new artists, and maintain control of day-to-day decision making.
Source: beatBread Launches $100 Million Global Independence Fund
U.S. consumers vehemently oppose AI music and strongly prefer media made by humans, according to a new survey. And despite (or perhaps because of) the ongoing AI-content avalanche, these respondents were rather united in their opposition to artificial intelligence. At the top level, 82% expressed concerns “about AI’s societal impact,” and roughly 66% confirmed believing “that AI could one day go to war with humans.”
Source: U.S. Consumers Vehemently Oppose AI Music, Survey Finds
Cloudflare, a web infrastructure company, has updated millions of websites’ robots.txt files in an effort to force Google to change how it crawls them to fuel its AI products and initiatives. There have been lawsuits, efforts to kick-start new marketplaces to ensure compensation, and more—but few companies have the kind of leverage Cloudflare does. Its products and services back something close to 20 percent of the web, and thus a significant slice of the websites that show up on search results pages or that fuel large language models.
Source: Inside the web infrastructure revolt over Google’s AI Overviews
Italian news publishers are calling for an investigation into Google’s AI Overviews, arguing that the search engine’s AI-generated summaries feature is a “traffic killer” that threatens their survival. FIEG, the Italian federation of newspaper publishers, said it has submitted a formal complaint to Agcom, Italy’s communications watchdog. Similar complaints have been filed in other EU countries.
Source: Italian news publishers demand investigation into Google’s AI Overviews
As machine-made books flood online marketplaces, a new UK initiative is introducing an Organic Literature stamp to help readers identify books created by real authors. The scheme will involve Organic Literature stamps being placed on books written by humans, with only limited AI use permitted for tasks such as formatting or idea generation.
Source: Certified organic and AI-free: New stamp for human-written books launches