Rights

Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI

When Meta announced last week that it would not sign new deals to pay for news in Australia for use on Facebook, it downplayed the value of news to its services, stating that just 3% of Facebook usage in Australia was related to news. There are now calls to designate Meta under the news media bargaining code, which would force the company to negotiate with news media publishers and pay for news content on its platforms.

Source: Australian news media could seek payment from Meta for content used to train AI

Rashida Tlaib Introduces New Bill to Fix Streaming Royalties

The United Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) are celebrating the introduction of the Living Wage for Musicians Act, led by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, to Congress. The bill, shared with Digital Music News on Wednesday (March 6th), would create a new streaming royalty and help ensure that artists and musicians can build sustainable careers in the age of streaming.

Source: Rashida Tlaib Introduces New Bill to Fix Streaming Royalties

Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft, Bans Its Employees

While DALL-E developer OpenAI is busy fighting with Elon Musk, the creators of two other notable image generation AIs, Midjourney and Stability AI, seem to have sparked a beef of their own over the most ironic thing imaginable, considering the nature of the companies involved – image theft. It is claimed that employees from Stability AI infiltrated Midjourney’s database and stole all prompt and image pairs, an action that also caused a 24-hour outage.

Source: Midjourney Accuses Stability AI of Image Theft, Bans Its Employees

AIMP Statement on TikTok Music Licensing

The statement comes in the face of multiple publishers in the industry withdrawing their catalogs from the short-form video platform and denying the renewal of a licensing deal. “Whether or not indie publishers are provided with the opportunity to continue with the current license model or not, there are a few issues that need to be addressed,” the statement begins.

Source: AIMP Statement on TikTok Music Licensing

National Music Publishers Assn. Does Not Plan to Renew TikTok License 

The standoff between TikTok and Universal took a turn when the National Music Publishers Assn., which reps many indies, said it does not plan to renew. If more publishers join in — the two other major companies, Sony and Warner Chappell, have not yet done so — it would mean more music will vanish from the platform and more artists and songwriters will see their livelihoods impacted.

Source: National Music Publishers Assn. Does Not Plan to Renew TikTok License — Will Indie Publishers Follow?

Researchers tested leading AI models for copyright infringement. GPT-4 performed worst

Patronus AI on Wednesday released research showcasing how often leading AI models produce copyrighted content. “We pretty much found copyrighted content across the board, across all models that we evaluated, whether it’s open source or closed source,” Rebecca Qian, Patronus AI’s cofounder and CTO, said. “Perhaps what was surprising is that we found that OpenAI’s GPT-4 produced copyrighted content on 44% of prompts that we constructed.”

Source: Researchers tested leading AI models for copyright infringement using popular books, and GPT-4 performed worst

Music royalties trading platform JKBX launches with approval from the SEC

JKBX has announced that it has received qualification from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its assets. The result: as of this week, investors – including consumers aka ‘retail investors’ – can legally purchase shares in the royalty streams of hits via JKBX.com. The JKBX platform soft-launched last year, but while awaiting SEC qualification, its users could only ‘reserve’ (rather than outright buy) these royalty shares.

Source: Music royalties trading platform JKBX launches – with regulatory approval from the SEC

Why Musicians Are Doubling Down on an Unlikely Venue to Reach New Listeners

Artists are signing deals with game companies to debut new songs through interactive events and as background music for games themselves, in some cases weeks before those tracks are released on the likes of Spotify. Artists are also selling virtual goods featuring their likenesses and music for players’ avatars.

Source: Why Musicians Are Doubling Down on an Unlikely Venue to Reach New Listeners

Bryan Ferry Partners With Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists

The deal sees the company acquiring 50% of Ferry’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights from his solo work and Roxy Music catalog, which reaches back to the group’s galvanizing 1972 debut album and includes such hit songs as “Love Is the Drug,” “More Than This,” “Avalon,” “Virginia Plain,” “Dance Away,” “Slave to Love” and more. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Source: Bryan Ferry Partners With Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists; Company Acquires 50% of Roxy Music Frontman’s Catalog

Three Publishing Veterans Form a New House, Authors Equity

Madeline McIntosh, Nina von Moltke, and Don Weisberg—most recently at Penguin Random House US and Macmillan, respectively—have joined forces to form a new publishing company. As its name implies, the publisher will operate outside of traditional publishing business models, offering no advances but paying authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model followed by some other types of hybrid publishers.

Source: Three Publishing Veterans Form a New House, Authors Equity

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