En masse, the music industry seems to have decided that NFTs were a terrible idea best swept under the carpet and forgotten. And in fairness, many of the industry’s initial experiments with NFTs deserve exactly that fate. However, with the hype having ebbed away the musicians who are still exploring how NFTs and related web3 technologies might be able to serve their art and their fan communities.
Source: Sound of Fractures wants tokens to ‘re-imagine our relationship with music’
When Walter Woodman and his team were working on one of their latest film productions, they kept hitting a snag. They couldn’t get the character at the centre of their picture, a man with a balloon for a head, to look quite right. “It would draw a face on the balloon and we didn’t really want that,” Mr. Woodman said. “If we even mentioned the word ‘face’ it would put a human face inside the balloon … and so I think we learnt after a while to say ‘the balloon man is expressionless’.”
Source: Lights, camera, algorithm: How artificial intelligence is being used to make films
Concord launched a USD $1.511 billion bid for the UK-listed company’s assets, at $1.25 per share. That bid very slightly topped a recent $1.50 billion takeover proposal from Blackstone, which valued HSF at $1.24 per share. Today (April 25), Blackstone issued a terse-but-fascinating comment to the markets, and specifically to HSF shareholders, in the wake of Concord’s new offer.
Jeff Price, the founder and CEO of global publishing administrator Word Collections, has released an article providing the results of auditing the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) using the MLC’s own publically available data. The results, according to Price, reveal that since the organization’s inception on January 1, 2021, the MLC has not paid out $600 million, or over 25%, of the mechanical royalties it has received from Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube Music, and other digital services.
Source: Word Collections says 25% of MLC Collection Isn’t Distributed
“The MLC is not authorized to opine on whether particular transmissions offered by Pandora or other DMPs [digital music providers] are properly characterized as interactive or noninteractive as a legal matter,” Pandora wrote in its firmly worded answer, “much less whether Pandora qualifies for statutory licensing under a different section of the Copyright Act (Section 114) that falls outside the MLC’s purview.
Source: Pandora Fires Back Against ‘Misguided’ MLC Royalties Lawsuit
The agreement will lead to the production of audio versions of select deep backlist series books that would not otherwise have been created, using ElevenLabs’s text-to-speech technology. According to ElevenLabs, the tech firm has developed an AI-based tool that can transform text into speech using artificial intelligence and makes it possible to “reflect the emotion, intonation, and pacing of the written word in audio, delivering a high-quality experience that sounds human”.
Source: HarperCollins and ElevenLabs AI to create audiobooks for foreign titles
Few new technologies have been quite as foundation-shaking as generative AI. Apart from the head-snapping speed at which the technology has developed, it operates on such different principles from other information technologies as to challenge the very notion of creativity, and to defy traditional concepts of authorship, identity and intellectual property.
Source: Hollywood’s AI Concerns Present New and Complex Challenges for Legal Eagles to Untangle
French tech startup Mistral AI has been speaking to investors about raising several hundred million dollars at a valuation of $5 billion, The Information reported on Tuesday. It’s unclear which investors Mistral has spoken to about a new funding round, the report said, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter.Source: France’s Mistral AI seeks funding at $5 billion valuation
Reddit’s latest transparency report reveals that user bans for repeat copyright infringement skyrocketed in the last half of 2023. The company attributes the 258% increase to improved detection methods and increased operational capacity. The number of items that were removed from the site following copyright complaints dropped to little over half a million.
Source: Reddit Reports Surge in Copyright-Related User Bans * TorrentFreak
With Government oversight and input, the industry has now collectively agreed (although not yet implemented) voluntary Transparency and Data codes. However, for the MMF and other members of the Council of Music Makers (the Ivors Academy, the Featured Artists Coalition, the Music Producers Guild, and the Musicians’ Union) the most pressing issues have always been financial. We want to address the mechanics and distribution of streaming revenue.
Source: Is the music industry gaslighting artists? – Music Ally