The opt-in agreement between Kobalt and $3.3 billion-valued Eleven Labs establishes what sources describe as “parity” between publishing and recorded music revenues. Each side will receive an approximate 50/50 split of royalties generated from the AI platform. Eleven Music’s basic tier is trained on production music, but a forthcoming ‘Eleven Music Pro’ offering will soon be trained on cleared catalog from Kobalt and Merlin.
ElevenLabs launches an AI music generator, which it claims is cleared for commercial use
The AI audio-generation unicorn ElevenLabs announced the launch of a new model that allows users to generate music that’s cleared for commercial use. This move marks ElevenLabs’ expansion beyond its main focus thus far in its three years of existence, which has been building AI audio tools. ElevenLabs is a leader among companies making text-to-speech AI products, and it has expanded into conversational bots and tools that translate speech into other languages.
Canadian Author Sues Four AI Companies for Copyright Infringement
J.B. MacKinnon of Vancouver has filed class action lawsuits against Anthropic, Databricks, Meta, and Nvidia, alleging they illegally used copyrighted works by Canadian writers to train their large language models. The lawsuit claims MacKinnon’s books were part of a 196,640-book dataset that Nvidia used without securing licensing fees or author consent. “The models were entirely built on the mining of copyrighted work,” MacKinnon told the CBC.
Source: Canadian Author Sues Four AI Companies for Copyright Infringement
Is It Still Disney Magic if It’s AI?
A deepfake Dwayne Johnson is just one part of a broader technological earthquake hitting Hollywood. Studios are scrambling to figure out simultaneously how to use AI in the filmmaking process and how to protect themselves against it. While executives see a future where the technology shaves tens of millions of dollars off a movie’s budget, they are grappling with a present filled with legal uncertainty.
Source: Is It Still Disney Magic if It’s AI?
Music Funding Platform beatBread Secures $124M in Latest Round
Leading music funding platform beatBread has announced securing an additional $124 million in credit and equity capital as it continues to scale. The company will use the capital to expand its sales, marketing, and product operations, while providing more flexible funding to artists, writers, and independent label clients. Strategic investors who took part include Citi, Deciens Capital, Mucker Capital, and Advantage Capital.
Source: Music Funding Platform beatBread Secures $124M in Latest Round
As AI Changes Internet Search, Reddit Lies in a Sweet Spot
A report last month from search analytics firm Ahrefs showed Reddit appearing in 5.5% of Google’s AI Overviews responses, the most of any source. Reddit’s position as a repository of knowledge shared and curated by actual people is a big part of the appeal. “Human conversation is not being replaced by AI, instead, it’s becoming more important,” Reddit Chief Executive Steve Huffman said on the company’s earnings call.
Source: As AI Changes Internet Search, Reddit Lies in a Sweet Spot
Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping
On Monday, Cloudflare published research saying it observed the AI startup ignore blocks and hide its crawling and scraping activities. The network infrastructure giant accused Perplexity of obscuring its identity when trying to scrape web pages “in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences,” Cloudflare’s researchers wrote.
Source: Perplexity accused of scraping websites that explicitly blocked AI scraping | TechCrunch
AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences, online news media told
News companies have been warned of a “devastating impact” on online audiences as search results are replaced by AI summaries, after a new study claimed it caused up to 80% fewer clickthroughs. The threat posed by Google’s AI Overviews, which summarise a search result with a block of text, has rapidly risen to the top of the concerns among media owners. Some regard it as an existential threat to outlets reliant on search result traffic.
Source: AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences, online news media told
Recognition Music prices $372M bond deal backed by Justin Bieber and Shakira catalogs
Recognition Music Group has priced its USD $372 million asset-backed securities (ABS) offering on July 30, with the bonds carrying a 5.604% coupon and yielding 1.7 percentage point over the benchmark. The bonds were three times oversubscribed, suggesting strong investor appetite for music royalty-backed debt.
Source: Recognition Music prices oversubscribed $372M bond deal backed by Justin Bieber and Shakira catalogs
SESAC Music Group Closes $889M Whole Business Securitization
The deal raises SESAC Music Group’s outstanding senior notes to a total of approximately $1.1 billion. This bond issuance is notable as it is the largest 144A-rated whole business securitization ever completed in the music sector. The newly issued bonds are backed by nearly all of SESAC Music Group’s assets and revenue streams, spanning both its Performing Rights and Music Services divisions.
Source: SESAC Music Group Closes $889M Whole Business Securitization