Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relationship between website owners and AI companies — ideally giving publishers greater control over their content. It’s called Pay per Crawl, and Cloudflare is launching the “experiment” in private beta on Tuesday.
Source: Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping | TechCrunch
WMG and Bain Capital said on Tuesday (July 1) that they will source and acquire the catalogs together, while WMG will manage all aspects of marketing, distribution, and administration. The funds might be deployed swiftly: Warner and Bain are reportedly mulling the acquisition of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ recorded music catalog for around $350 million.
Source: Warner Music Group and Bain launch $1.2 billion fund to buy rights; each party owns 50% of venture
Bloomberg now reports, citing a person familiar with the discussions, that the buyers cited by Trump are a group of investors who were previously in talks with ByteDance, including Oracle, Blackstone and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Those talks broke down after Beijing withheld approval in the wake of Trump’s decision to impose sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods.
Outlaw country artist Aventhis is verified on Spotify – where just over a million (1.072M) listeners absorb his work each month. He’s even popular enough to have one of those official Spotify-generated ‘THIS IS… Aventhis’ playlists under his name. And his music? It’s gaining traction, with the blues-soaked, 2025-released Mercy On My Graver racking up more than 2 million plays. Aventhis isn’t real. Neither is his voice. He, and it, are both AI-generated.
Source: The AI music problem on Spotify (and other streaming platforms) is worse than you think
The battle between technology heavyweights and many of the country’s most famous creative companies and artists is playing out in Washington and in court. At stake are billions of dollars and precedents that could shape the future of AI and U.S. copyright law. While the fight is far from over, some in creative industries fear it might be too late to stop the advance of AI as it roils their professions.
Source: Hollywood Confronts AI Copyright Chaos in Washington, Courts
On Thursday, the tech giant officially launched Offerwall, a new tool that allows publishers to generate revenue beyond the more traffic-dependent options, like ads. Offerwall lets publishers give their sites’ readers a variety of ways to access their content, including through options like micropayments, taking surveys, watching ads, and more.
Source: As AI kills search traffic, Google launches Offerwall to boost publisher revenue | TechCrunch
The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe. It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice. The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded.
Source: Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features
Suno announced the acquisition a day after its rival Udio released a visual editing workstation for AI-generated music. Suno’s acquisition of WavTool integrates the latter’s browser-based DAW technology into Suno’s existing AI music generation platform. In a press release Suno described WavTool as “the first browser-based DAW to combine professional-grade music production features” like VST plugin compatibility, sample-accurate editing, and live recording.
Source: AI music platform Suno acquires WavTool, moving into DAW market
The tool called ‘Sessions,’ available to Standard and Pro-tier subscribers, allows users to manipulate song structures by moving, extending or replacing sections within tracks. Udio explains in a press release that Sessions automatically identifies musical elements like choruses and bridges from audio waveforms, allowing for the editing of lyrics and sound through a “visual workstation”.
Source: Udio, still battling copyright lawsuit from music majors, launches AI ‘visual editing workstation’
An open letter from authors calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators. The letter argues that authors’ work has been “stolen” by AI companies: “Rather than paying writers a small percentage of the money our work makes for them, someone else will be paid for a technology built on our unpaid labor.”
Source: Authors call on publishers to limit their use of AI | TechCrunch