Marketplace

If the creator economy is booming, why are some of the most prominent creator-economy companies in the music industry’s orbit laying off staff? It’s a question you can expect to be hearing more often, as the excitement around trends in social media and DIY artistry fails to insulate companies serving these sectors from economic headwinds. Or, indeed, hubris.

Source: Patreon layoffs are latest wobble for the creator economy – Music Ally

The move underscores the extraordinary lengths that museums and their biggest donors feel they must take to extend museums’ influence online as cultural institutions are struggling to recover from a pandemic-driven drop in attendance. The museum might even ply some of the sale proceeds into buying art, including digital art attached to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, MoMA director Glenn Lowry said.

Source: WSJ News Exclusive | $70 Million in Art at MoMA to Be Sold to Extend Museum’s Digital Reach

Nearly half of all the music played on American broadcast and cable TV is production music, according to a new study by music data company BMAT. The survey, done in February and March of this year, indicated that music was used in 39% of the total airtime, and that 46% of that music originated in production music companies or music libraries.

Source: Use of Production Music on Broadcast and Cable TV Reaches New Heights: Study

The White House painted an incomplete economic picture of its new policy for free, immediate access to research produced with federal grants. That has left many scholars wondering whether publishers will adapt their business toward more open-access models or whether authors will be on the hook to pay for the unfunded mandate.

Source: Who’ll pay for public access to federally funded research?

Getting indie films to work in theaters is harder than ever, but online distribution means more arthouse films are getting made than ever before. “There are just so many more ways now to finance and monetize these movies,” Andrea Scrosati, COO of Freemantle said. “We made seven films last year, and we’re making 36 this year.”

Source: TIFF: Cinemas Are Still Suffering as Streaming Drives New Arthouse Movie Boom

Encapsulating months of fact finding and three weeks of live testimony delivered during last month’s high profile August trial, PRH attorneys reiterate their claim that the government manufactured a fatally flawed case against the nearly $2.2 billion merger that focused on harm to a handful of mega-bestselling authors—and then ultimately failed to prove it. “By the time of trial, the government was focused only on books that yielded advances of $250,000 or more,” PRH lawyers argue

Source: In Post-Trial Briefs, PRH Attorneys Say DOJ Failed to Prove Its Case Against S&S Merger

Spotify CFO Paul Vogel says the music streaming platform will begin testing and trialing audiobooks “very soon.” The Spotify executive said the company plans to continue to expand its portfolio of products, as it sees opportunities for growth in both its established markets and its developing markets. “It’s going to come out reasonably soon, but I would say don’t expect that to be the last change or improvement we make on the audiobooks offering,” Vogel said regarding the launch timing for audiobooks.

Source: Spotify exec says the company will begin testing audiobooks ‘very soon’

“I don’t think all streamers are created equal, “ Bob Iger bluntly said today at the 2022 Code Conference. “There will be haves and have nots,” the former House of Mouse boss added, predictably praising Disney+, Netflix, and the “deep pockets” of Apple and Amazon. “I’m not going to make predictions about the others, Iger went on to say.

Source: Bob Iger Predicts A Reckoning For Streaming Services, Linear TV Death, “Smaller” & “Scarred” Movie Industry

Streaming television is going through an existential crisis, involving the people who make it and the viewers who watch it. Its revolutionary zeal has naturally faded, as that initial wave of near limitless expansion, boundless creative opportunities and vast archival choices crashes ashore, after a spate of megamergers and a drop in new subscribers.

Source: Streaming TV is having an existential crisis, and viewers can tell