The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this week is expected to lay out its new legal strategy in an ongoing antitrust battle with Facebook that will also reveal how FTC chief Lina Khan plans to take on the market power of U.S. tech giants.
Source: FTC expected to reveal new strategy in Facebook antitrust fight
Streaming music service Audius isn’t quite like SoundCloud or Spotify: it’s a fully decentralized service built on a blockchain network, rather than relying on centralized servers and oversight. It’s also now the first streaming service to partner with massively popular social media service TikTok to let artists easily port their tunes into the app.
Source: TikTok Mixes It Up With Ethereum, Taps Audius as First Music Streaming Partner – Decrypt
A new paper published by Microsoft’s research department proposes to tackle piracy with a blockchain-based bounty system titled “Argus.” The system allows volunteers to report piracy in exchange for a reward. It uses the Ethereum blockchain and is transparent, practical, and secure, while limiting abusive reports and errors.
Source: Microsoft Envisions a Blockchain-Based Bounty System to Catch Pirates * TorrentFreak
The embrace of NFTs by Kings of Leon was a wake-up call for their record label—and the music industry, which is now racing to avoid the same mistake that almost killed it 20 years ago. Done right, NFTs offer the ease and ubiquity of internet distribution (think Napster), but with digital rights protection built in (think iTunes).
Source: Are NFTs The New Napster? This Time The Music Industry Isn’t Taking Chances
Much of the criticism of AI-created music is the lack of originality, because it takes its lead from basic musical structures. But that supposed lack of originality suits the concept of royalty-free music perfectly. By its very nature, ‘stock music’ is not designed for exclusive use: it needs to be generic, designed to set a mood but not be too invasive for the listener.
Source: How artificial intelligence is transforming the royalty-free music industry
Thanks to algorithmic playlists and the increased push towards always-on background sounds (lo-fi beats to study to, etc), music nowadays matters less, reducing to ‘vibe’ – for which musicians in turn are catering – and increasingly amorphous as genres meld into the so-called monogenre. For orientation purposes concerning new art, I’d probably be better off getting into gaming.
Source: Can AI Save Us from Crashing into Contemporary Art’s Dead End?
A non-fungible token (NFT) rentals protocol called reNFT launched on the Ethereum mainnet recently, allowing users to “rent out” assets like CryptoPunks. While interesting on a conceptual level, the new service has stirred a key question which strikes at the heart of the NFT sector: Why not just copy and paste?
Source: CryptoPunk Owners Have New Way to Make Money: Renting Out Their Avatars – Decrypt
An artificial intelligence system is capable of being an “inventor” under Australian patent law, the federal court has ruled, in a decision that could have wider intellectual property implications. The applications claimed Dabus, which is made up of artificial neural networks, invented an emergency warning light and a type of food container, among other inventions.
An NFT is a unit of data that certifies a digital asset to be unique and can be traced to help prevent fraud. That’s something appealing to artists, who are always concerned about fakes, copies, and plagiarism. But the main appeal is the end of the galleries as the sole gatekeepers of who gets to access the fame and money of the artists’ Olympus.
Source: Blockchain Is Democratising Art for Everyone | The Fintech Times
Music rights giant ASCAP said today that a quartet of early-stage startups/university music projects will compete in its Immersive Music Studio Challenge. The cohort aims to tackle wide-ranging music industry issues. Some have already laid out commercialization plans, while others came together for the program and haven’t thought that far down the road.
Source: ASCAP Lab highlights a quartet of early-stage music startups