The organizations cited the need for bigger scale and international reach amid today’s “increasingly competitive, complex and scale-driven music ecosystem.” Koda, Teosto and Tono said: “[C]ooperation on a Nordic scale is no longer sufficient. The Board of Polaris Hub has accordingly decided to initiate a phased wind down of the venture in an orderly manner around the turn of 2025–2026.”
Source: Nordic collecting societies shutter Polaris licensing hub over changing market demands
YouTube’s parent company, Google, is using a subset of the platform’s videos to train AI applications, including its text-to-video tool Veo. That includes videos made by users who have built their livelihoods on the service, helping turn it into the biggest streaming entertainment provider in the U.S. The move has sparked deep tensions between the world’s biggest online video company and some of the creators who helped make it a behemoth.
Source: Google is training its AI tools on YouTube videos. These creators aren’t happy
It concluded that because songwriters are not “owed” black box royalties, the class doesn’t have a legitimate claim under UK law. It also concluded that Rowntree’s lawyers hadn’t proposed an alternative to PRS’ method of distributing black box royalties, and doubted that the “cost-benefit” ratio of the lawsuit made sense, given that PRS is a not-for-profit owned by its publisher and songwriter members.
If publishers cannot monetise content, they cannot reinvest in the accurate and authoritative journalism readers rely upon to make informed decisions that empower them to participate effectively in democratic processes. Publisher trade bodies see Canada-EU trade deal as chance to curb big tech power. A possible Canada-European Union Digital Trade Agreement could help scale Canadian and European innovation leaders, while ensuring the ethical, positive and responsible use of AI through reasonable guardrails.
Source: EU and Canada publishers issue joint plea to halt AI ‘strip mining’ of news
Suno claims that even if its AI learned from copyrighted songs, the outputs it generates are entirely new sounds that cannot infringe existing recordings under copyright law. The motion represents the latest salvo in ongoing legal battles over AI training on copyrighted music, with Suno already defending against a separate lawsuit filed by major labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group in June 2024.
Source: Suno argues none of the millions of tracks made on its platform ‘contain anything like a sample’
A On Friday, a proposed class action was filed in Washington federal court against Amazon over a “bait and switch” in which the company allegedly misleads consumers into believing they’ve purchased content when they’re only getting a license to watch, which can be revoked at any time.
Source: You Don’t Actually Own That Movie You Just “Bought.” A New Class Action Lawsuit Targets Amazon
The artificial-intelligence startup expects to pay publishers from a $42.5 million revenue pool initially, and to increase that amount over time, Perplexity said Monday. Its payments to publishers will come out of the subscription revenue generated by a new news service, called Comet Plus, that Perplexity plans to roll out widely this fall.
Source: Perplexity Is Launching a New Revenue-Share Model for Publishers
Anthropic has settled a lawsuit from authors, who accused the Amazon-backed company of illegally downloading and copying their books to teach its AI system, in among the first deals reached by creators over novel legal issues raised by the technology. “This historic settlement will benefit all class members,” says Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. “We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks.”
The Weeknd is looking to raise roughly USD $1 billion in financing backed by his music catalog. That’s according to Bloomberg, which reported on Saturday (August 23), citing people familiar with the matter as saying that the Canadian singer would pledge his stake in publishing rights and master recordings. No agreement has been reached as discussions are still ongoing, the report said.
Source: The Weeknd seeks $1B in music-backed financing (Report)
As the September 1 deadline nears to submit books for consideration in the class action lawsuit against AI company Anthropic, the Authors Guild is advising its members to send their contact information and titles to the court-appointed class counsel for authors. In its post, the Guild advises authors who believe pirated copies of their books may have been unlawfully downloaded by Anthropic to provide the requested information and “to share the website with any other authors you know.”
Source: Authors Guild Urges Members to Register Titles in Anthropic Lawsuit