Rights

Kobalt Funding Tops $1B Following Refinancing, Royalty Securities

Less than five months after unveiling an over $700 million catalog partnership with Morgan Stanley, Kobalt says it’s increased its total “funding capacity” to north of $1 billion. New York-based Kobalt touted the deployable capital today, via a formal release. The more than $1 billion at hand refers specifically to the mentioned Morgan Stanley-powered tranche as well as a refinancing and a newly obtained $266.5 million from an asset-backed securitization.

Source: Kobalt Funding Tops $1B Following Refinancing, Royalty Securities

Music licensing platform WavMaker launches with $5m seed funding

WavMaker, a new music licensing platform dedicated to video creators, has launched with $5 million in seed funding led by Vicky Patel, a principal at Nashville record label Wavy Records and co-founder of Monarch Media. The startup says it seeks to help video creators streamline the process of finding high-quality music for video projects by offering a curated library of songs cleared for commercial use.

Source: Music licensing platform WavMaker launches with $5m seed funding

France Fines Google Amid A.I. Dispute With News Media

French regulators on Wednesday said Google failed to notify news publishers that it was using their articles to train its artificial intelligence algorithms, part of a wider ruling against the company for its negotiating practices with media outlets. The disclosure by the French competition authority was part of a fine of €250 million, or about $270 million, for failing to negotiate fair licensing deals with media companies to publish article links in search results.

Source: France Fines Google Amid A.I. Dispute With News Media

Jammable Faces BPI Legal Threat Over Soundalike Artist Voices

London’s BPI today confirmed the development on social media, pointing readers to a (paywall-blocked) breakdown of the situation from The Times. Jammable (formerly Voicify AI) bills itself as “the #1 platform for AI music.” And according to its website, the service enables users to replicate uploaded voices, automatically remove reverb from recordings, generate text-to-speech vocals, and make existing projects’ vocals sound as if they’d been recorded in different voices, among other things.

Source: Jammable Faces BPI Legal Threat Over Soundalike Artist Voices

With the MLC’s Re-Designation Underway, Streamers and Publishers Clash Over Its Future

According to the MMA, the MLCis reviewed every five years by the Copyright Office in a process called “re-designation.” Now, with the MLC’s first-ever re-designation currently underway, both its critics and supporters have become more vocal in hopes of swaying the results and/or public opinion about the organization’s operations to date.

Source: With the MLC’s Re-Designation Underway, Streamers and Publishers Clash Over Its Future

Publishers Cite Napster and AI Threat in Legal Battle with the Internet Archive 

A copyright lawsuit filed by several major publishers puts the future of the Internet Archive’s scan-and-lend library at risk. In a recent appeal, the non-profit organization argued that its solution is protected by fair use and critical to preserving digital books. The publishers, however, frame it as a radical and unlawful threat to their exclusive right to publish ebooks.

Source: Publishers Cite Napster and AI Training Threats in Legal Battle with the Internet Archive * TorrentFreak

Barcelona appeals court rules that SGAE ‘abused its position’ in the market

The Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) “abused its position” as the country’s dominant collective management organization (CMO) to prevent members from switching to a competing agency, a court in Barcelona has concluded. The ruling marks a victory for UNISON, a Barcelona-based private music rights management company set up in 2017 as a competitor to SGAE.

Source: Barcelona appeals court rules that Spanish authors’ society SGAE ‘abused its position’ in the market, in victory for rival UNISON

Midjourney bets it can beat the copyright police

Last week, Midjourney, the AI startup building image generators, made a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it change to its terms of service related to the company’s policy around IP disputes. It mainly served to replace jokey language with more lawyerly, doubtless case law–grounded clauses. But the change can also be taken as a sign of Midjourney’s conviction that AI vendors like itself will emerge victorious in the courtroom battles with creators whose works comprise vendors’ training data.

Source: This Week in AI: Midjourney bets it can beat the copyright police | TechCrunch

Deezer has deleted 26m ‘useless’ tracks since it launched artist-centric model with UMG

Deezer says that it had around 200 million pieces of content on the platform last year, which means that over 13% of this content has been deleted. “The intention is to declutter the platform, focus on tracks that are valuable to our users and increase the market share for all artists who create this music,” Folgueira told MBW. “The tracks that have been removed include noise, mono-track albums, fake artists and tracks that haven’t been listened to in the past 12 months.”

Source: Deezer has deleted 26m ‘useless’ tracks since it launched artist-centric model with Universal Music Group

HarbourView Equity Partners Scores $500 Million Debt Financing

HarbourView Equity Partners has secured $500 million in debt financing to fuel further song-rights acquisitions. KKR led the financing, which likewise drew participation from Kuvare Asset Management, per HarbourView. “We are grateful to KKR for working with us to deliver a flexible and innovative financing structure that will support HarbourView in expanding its reach,” HarbourView founder and head Sherrese Clarke Soares said.

Source: HarbourView Equity Partners Scores $500 Million Debt Financing

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