Headlines

Blackstone’s Hipgnosis closes $1.47bn asset-backed securities transaction

Blackstone’s Hipgnosis has successfully completed a $1.47 billion music rights asset-backed securities transaction (i.e. bond offering). The ABS deal, referred to as Lyra 24-2, sees investment giant Blackstone raise $1.47 billion in debt financing backed by royalties from the 45,000-song Hipgnosis Songs Fund portfolio it acquired in July. Blackstone acquired Hipgnosis Songs Fund‘s assets from HSF’s then-public shareholders in a transaction worth USD $1.584 billion.

Source: Blackstone’s Hipgnosis closes $1.47bn asset-backed securities transaction

Rostrum Pacific unveils AI-powered music distribution platform SpaceHeater

The platform, currently in beta testing, is set to officially launch in early 2025 and access will be by invite only. It is said to be “the first in the market to offer AI attribution via Sureel AI.” The tech will enable artists and labels to track how their music is used in AI training models and determine fair compensation for AI-generated outputs.

Source: Rostrum Pacific unveils AI-powered music distribution platform SpaceHeater

The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards

Though the band has been broken up for 50 years, Paul McCartney decided to use AI last year to create “the last Beatles record.” McCartney isn’t using this technology to resurrect his late bandmates, John Lennon and George Harrison, with deepfakes. Instead, McCartney took one of Lennon’s demos from 1978 and used AI to clean up the recording’s poor sound quality.

Source: The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards

‘Artificial intelligence is not a threat to music,’ says researcher

Streaming has reduced musicians’ income from record sales. This has made concerts the main source of income for many. “AI will not take over the concert market. People will always be interested in what other people do. And we will still want to experience live music,” Jeffs says. At the same time, he sees that many side jobs for musicians are already disappearing. These include jobs creating background music, jingles for radio and podcasts, and music for films, games and advertising.

Source: ‘Artificial intelligence is not a threat to music,’ says researcher

Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom

For many news publishers around the world Google Discover is now their primary source of traffic. Research from NewzDash, a news performance monitoring tool, shows that on average Discover accounts for 55% of publishers’ total Google traffic. This is up from 41% in a previous study. Yet it’s a risky strategy to rely on Discover traffic. Several Googlers are on record saying sites shouldn’t rely on Discover.

Source: Publishers hooked on Google Discover traffic risk race to the bottom

Can Google’s Watermark Tool Save the Internet from AI Slop?

Google DeepMind, in collaboration with Hugging Face, open sourced its research titled ‘Scalable watermarking for identifying large language model outputs’ in a bid to distinguish between human and AI content on the internet, driven by LLMs. Launched exactly a year ago, SynthID, their watermarking tool, is now available for wider access.

Source: Can Google’s Watermark Tool Save the Internet from AI Slop?

TikTok deepens integration with Spotify and Apple Music via ‘Share to TikTok’ feature

TikTok’s increasing integration with music streaming platforms comes amid ongoing tensions between the short video platform and music rights holders. After resolving the licensing dispute with Universal Music Group (UMG) earlier this year, during which the music of UMG-signed artists disappeared from the platform, TikTok is now embroiled in a licensing dispute with Merlin, the licensing org for indie labels and distributors.

Source: TikTok deepens integration with Spotify and Apple Music via new feature that lets streamers ‘Share to TikTok’

AI Startup Perplexity to Triple Valuation to $9 Billion in New Funding Round

Perplexity is finalizing a new funding round that would value it at $9 billion—triple its valuation from just a few months ago—the latest sign of continued investor excitement for artificial intelligence startups. The funding round would turn Perplexity into one of the most valuable young AI startups to emerge out of the generative AI boom. It was valued at just $520 million at the start of this year.

Source: AI Startup Perplexity to Triple Valuation to $9 Billion in New Funding Round

Ziff Davis study says AI firms rely on publisher data to train models

Leading AI companies rely more on content from premium publishers to train their large language models (LLMs) than they publicly admit, according to new research from executives at Ziff Davis. While AI firms generally do not say exactly what data they use for training, executives from Ziff Davis say their analysis of publicly available datasets makes it clear that AI firms rely disproportionately on commercial publishers of news and media websites to train their LLMs.

Source: Ziff Davis study says AI firms rely on publisher data to train models

‘Millions’ of NYT and NY Daily News stories taken by OpenAI for training data

Millions of stories published by sites including The New York Times and The New York Daily News have been found in three weeks of searching OpenAI’s training dataset. The news publishers are currently trawling through data to find instances of their copyrighted work being used to train OpenAI’s models – but they say the tech company should be forced to provide the information itself.

Source: ‘Millions’ of NYT and NY Daily News stories taken by OpenAI for training data

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