Many publishers struggle to fully capitalise on the revenue potential of their digital audiences despite having various monetisation opportunities at their disposal. This shortfall stems from the internal disruption caused by digital transformation to their legacy product strategy, organisational structure, and technology infrastructure. It’s not the lack of opportunity that is holding publishers back.
Source: Monetising digital audiences: A call for alignment across strategy, teams, and tech
With the ease at which musicians can not only create and mix, but distribute and self-release their tracks, it’s unsurprising that the quantity of music now being put out into the world is significantly higher than it was a few decades ago. But, when compiling a recent deep-dive feature, we were quite surprised to discover just how big that margin has become
As the technology’s reach into the information sector expands, a recent report from Ithaka S+R shows that academe is still grappling with how best to integrate it into the scholarly publishing process. “Generative AI has injected a lot of variables into the equation of scholarly publishing. And there’s not yet a shared framework for understanding what those implications are,” said Dylan Ruediger, co-author of the report and a senior program manager of the research enterprise division at Ithaka S+R.
Source: Scholarly publishing world slow to embrace generative AI
Amazon Music Unlimited is adding Audible audiobooks under its individual subscription plan — though unlike Spotify, it’s working with publishers. Spotify angered songwriters and publishers by arguing it didn’t need to pay the full mechanical royalty rate since it offered multiple royalty-earning services in one, it appears that Amazon Music will work with publishers to determine new rates privately.
Source: Amazon Music Now Has Audible’s Audiobook Catalog — And the NMPA Is ‘Optimistic’ About It
Musical.AI, which bills itself as the company that built the world’s first secure platform for rights management in AI training, has partnered with China-headquartered license management firm Kanjian to bring what it says is a fully licensed, ready-to-use music catalog to AI developers.
Source: Musical.AI teams up with China’s Kanjian to deliver licensed music to AI developers
Particle’s plan is to use AI to do two particularly useful things. First, it organizes lots of articles and coverage into collections the platform calls “Stories,” so you can get lots of information and perspective on whatever you’re reading about. Some stories in Particle include more than 100 news articles, plus X posts, a section of salient quotes on the subject, and more.
Source: Particle is a new app using AI to organize and summarize the news
Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning’s announcement that it would use AI translation for commercial fiction has outraged both authors and translators – despite attempts to reassure them with promises that no books will be translated in this way without careful checking and that authors will have to give consent. “A translator translates more than just words, we build bridges between cultures, taking into account the target readership every step of the way,” says Michele Hutchison, winner of 2020’s International Booker prize.
Source: ‘It gets more and more confused’: can AI replace translators?
Though the band has been broken up for 50 years, Paul McCartney decided to use AI last year to create “the last Beatles record.” McCartney isn’t using this technology to resurrect his late bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison, with deepfakes. Instead, McCartney took one of Lennon’s demos from 1978 and used AI to clean up the recording’s poor sound quality.
Source: The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards
Source: State of the independent music economy: Fragmentation AND consolidation
Adobe is going all in on generative AI models and tools, even if that means turning away creators who dislike the technology. Artists who refuse to embrace AI in their work are “not going to be successful in this new world without using it,” says Alexandru Costin, vice president of generative AI at Adobe. “Our goal is to make our customers successful, and we think that in order for them to be successful, they need to embrace the tech.”
Source: Adobe execs say artists need to embrace AI or get left behind