IMPALA members have flagged that some of the language used in the press in reaction to Deezer’s proposal is “clearly unfortunate.” Impala’s letter reads. “It’s a common thread through the history of recorded music that the great artistic advances and changes have come from, and through, the independent sector. I don’t expect Goldman Sachs to know that, but Deezer and UMG certainly do.”
Source: IMPALA Responds to Deezer & UMG’s Proposal for Streaming
Wiedenfels said that the media company had been “hopeful” the strikes would be over by early September. They weren’t — so WBD issued the warning to investors that the strikes would lower its total earnings given that content releases would be “subdued” in Q3 and Q4.
UK-listed Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) has today (September 14) issued its shareholders a proposal to sell 29 catalogs from its portfolio for USD $440 million to another Hipgnosis fund – the private, Blackstone-backed Hipgnosis Songs Capital (HSC). In an announcement to its investors this morning, Hipgnosis Songs Fund makes no bones about one of its primary motivations for selling the 29 catalogs to HSC: That it will act “as a catalyst for a re-rating of [HSF’s] share price”.
New York-based Round Hill Music LP has acquired Austin-based Rident Royalties, expanding its neighboring rights platform, Sound Hill, with the addition of 1,000 new clients. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in a press release announcing the acquisition on Wednesday (September 13). Round Hill Music said its acquisition of Rident Royalties brings additional expertise, industry networks, technology and territorial reach to Sound Hill.
As Hollywood actors and writers continue to strike for better pay and benefits, California lawmakers are hoping to protect workers from being replaced by their digital clones. On Wednesday, Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San José) is expected to introduce a bill that would give actors and artists a way to nullify provisions in vague contracts that allow studios and other companies to use artificial intelligence to digitally clone their voices, faces and bodies.
Source: California lawmakers want to protect actors from being replaced by artificial intelligence
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et another group of authors has filed class action copyright infringement lawsuits against artificial intelligence pioneers Open AI and Meta, claiming the companies’ AI services used unauthorized copies of their books to train their AI models, including copies that were allegedly scraped from notorious pirate sites.
Source: More Authors, Including Michael Chabon, Sue AI Developers Over Copyright
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pen generative AI company Stability AI has announced the launch of Stable Audio, the company’s first AI product for music and sound generation. A first-of-its-kind product using the latest generative AI techniques, Stable Audio aims to deliver faster, higher-quality music generation with an easy-to-use web interface.
Source: Stability AI Launches Stable Audio for AI Generating Music
Spotify took its newest AI feature live today, affording access to both paid and ad-supported accounts in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. According to the streaming giant, the “hyper-personalized” multi-hour playlist “updates frequently between sunup and sundown,” even adopting a fresh title (generated from the included songs’ genres) with each iteration.
Source: Spotify Daylist Launches — A ‘Hyper-Personalized’ AI Playlist
According to JKBX, the program will give artists and songwriters the opportunity to receive ongoing payments for the music they helped make – even if they’ve already sold their rights or no longer own the rights in their catalog. JKBX says it will pay a portion of revenue to artists and songwriters who sign up for the program.
On the heels of Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet’s report last week of criminal gangs using Spotify’s royalty system to launder money through artificially inflated stream counts, a new report from the Financial Times has prompted further industry conjecture about the legitimacy of DSP stream counts. Although few would argue against the simplicity introduced by Spotify’s initial financial model upon its 2011 debut in the US the distribution of that money back to the artists has long been a hotly debated topic.