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Tidal has officially joined Apple Music, Deezer, and Amazon Music in raising the price of its individual subscription to $10.99 per month in the U.S. Meanwhile, Spotify is reportedly preparing to roll out a more expensive premium tier of its own. Amazon Music, for its part, has since late February of this year charged $10.99 per month for individual Unlimited plans in the States. Before that, Access Industries’ Deezer upped its individual tier to $10.99 during 2022’s second half – as did Apple Music.

Source: Tidal Price Increase Announced for U.S. Subscribers

The foundation of any generative AI model is the underlying data. Developing generative AI typically requires exceptionally large datasets, especially in the pre-training step. The data used in this step forms the foundation of the model in the chosen domain, such as language or images. The volume and quality of data required to pre-train a generative AI model from scratch may impact the ability of new players to enter the market.

Source: Generative AI Raises Competition Concerns

Goldman Sachs has released its 2023 ‘Music in the Air’ report, dialing back its prior music industry revenue forecast slightly. In pointing to the possibility of a cool $153 billion in yearly industry revenue – up substantially from a prior projection of around $131 billion – Goldman in the 2022 analysis made clear its belief that streaming was showing “no sign of saturation.”

Source: Goldman Releases (Slightly) Dialed Back ‘Music in the Air’ 2023

Starting this fall, Canva users will be able to add songs from WMG’s catalog, or the catalogs of indie rights holders represented by Merlin, to their videos or other media presentations. Rights holders will earn royalties when clips of their songs appear in published videos made with Canva. Canva is often used to quickly produce videos for TikTok, YouTube or other video services. It’s also commonly used for businesses’ training videos, slideshows and other presentations.

Source: Canva inks deals with Warner and Merlin to let creators use songs in their content

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited young adult romance bestseller list was filled with dozens of AI-generated books of nonsense on Monday and Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, Amazon appeared to have taken action against the books, but the episode shows that people are spamming AI-generated nonsense to the platform and are finding a way to monetize it.

Source: AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon’s Bestseller Lists

Netflix’s latest attempt in its quiet campaign to soften the impact of the upcoming UK Media Bill took place this morning with policy boss Benjamin King raising concerns regulator Ofcom could become “something of a global policeman.” The draft Media Bill, which is yet to publish in full detail, will bring so-called Tier 1 streamers such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ under Ofcom’s jurisdiction in areas such as harmful material and due impartiality for the first time.

Source: Netflix Policy Boss Warns Ofcom Could Become “Something Of A Global Policeman” Due To Media Bill

Unionized movie and television directors approved a new three-year contract with Hollywood studios on Friday, with 87 percent voting in support. The Directors Guild of America, which has 16,321 eligible voters, announced the results, saying that there was record turnout and that the contract included “gains on wages, global streaming residuals, safety, diversity and creative rights.”

Source: Hollywood Directors Ratify Their Contract as Writers Continue to Strike

2022 was a big year for music publishing companies (plus their songwriters… and their investors) in the United States. Not only did pubcos benefit from a rise in streaming activity in the US (the world’s largest music market), many of them also welcomed a substantial bump in performance royalty income, thanks to the re-opening of public spaces in multiple international territories following Covid lockdowns.

Source: The US recorded music industry grew by $500m on a wholesale basis in 2022. The US music publishing industry grew by nearly double that amount.

Like almost every other nation, Sweden has been experiencing high inflation recently. Consumer prices have risen 9.7 percent over the past year, reflecting multiple factors: large spending to support households during the pandemic, Covid-related disruptions of supply chains, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Beyoncé.

Source: Opinion | Is Taylor Swift Underpaid?

Gannett sued Google, alleging the tech giant has used anticompetitive business practices to gain an illegal monopoly over the digital advertising market. “Google controls how publishers sell their ad slots, and it forces publishers to sell growing shares of that ad space to Google at depressed prices,” the filing says. “The result is dramatically less revenue for publishers and Google’s ad-tech rivals, while Google enjoys exorbitant monopoly profits.”

Source: Gannett sues Google over ‘deceptive scheme’ to gain online ad monopoly