Reservoir Media has acquired a majority interest in the Miles Davis publishing catalog, as well as as well as other rights associated with the late jazz icon’s estate, including a partnership in name and likeness opportunities and certain rights to his recorded music, the company announced early Tuesday. The deal includes 90 percent of Davis’s music publishing rights and of the estate’s income from his recordings.
Source: Miles Davis’ Publshing Catalog Acquired by Reservoir Media
Carolyn Brotherton, a musician and former union organizer spearheads the coalition of artists called Seattle Artists Against Spotify. Over 30 local performers, DJs, and record label owners have signed the letter at the time of writing, voicing their concerns for what they dub is Spotify’s “anti-human, anti-art, and “anti-listener” direction. The open letter criticizes Spotify’s business practices, especially around the use of AI generated music.
Source: Spotify Boycott Expands—More Than 30 Seattle Artists Leave
US-based royalty rights org SoundExchange has filed an appeal following its devastating loss in a lawsuit against SiriusXM stemming from allegedly unpaid royalties. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the PRO’s lawsuit against SiriusXM last month, ruling that Congress never granted it authority to file lawsuits on behalf of rights holders for whom it collects royalties.
Source: SoundExchange Officially Appealing Its Loss Against SiriusXM
Publishers – already under financial pressure from soaring costs, falling advertising revenues, the decline of print and the wider trend of readers turning away from news – argue that they are effectively being forced by Google to either accept deals, including on how content is used in AI Overview and AI Mode, or “drop out of all search results”, according to several sources.
Source: ‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model
OpenAI wants to prove that generative artificial intelligence can make movies faster and cheaper than Hollywood does today. The startup is lending its tools and computing resources to the creation of a feature-length animated movie made largely with AI that is expected to be released in theaters globally next year.
Chris Dicker, chief executive of Candr Media Group and board member of the Independent Publishers Alliance, said that the publisher’s Trusted Reviews website was taken down multiple times on 16 August when it was scraped 1.6 million times in a day. This was up from a previous record of 1.2 million scrapes on the site a day earlier. He said the average level of AI scraping for Trusted Reviews is running at between approximately 70,000 and 100,000 times a day.
Source: AI bots bombard publisher websites with ‘no meaningful value exchange’
Publishers have welcome a ruling from the European Commission fining Google £2.5bn and ordering it to stop abusing its dominant position in the world of adtech. Daily Mail publisher DMGT is among those to have previously argued Google has been guilty of “punishing publishers that do not submit to its practices” by effectively rigging ad auctions. It filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in the US in 2021.
Source: Publishers welcome EU move to break up Google adtech monopoly
The federal judge overseeing Anthropic PBC’s proposed $1.5 billion copyright settlement is concerned class lawyers are striking a deal behind the scenes that will be forced “down the throat of authors.” Judge William Alsup at the hearing said the motion to approve the deal was denied without prejudice, but in a minute order after the hearing said approval is postponed pending submission of further clarifying information.
Source: Anthropic Judge Blasts $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement (2)
Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action lawsuit after it downloaded a massive trove of pirated books to train its large language models. The settlement amounts to about $3,000 per book, and is believed to be the largest ever recovery in a U.S. copyright case, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Source: Anthropic to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Book Piracy Class Action Lawsuit
Generative AI startup ProRata.ai has raised $40 million in Series B funding as it prepares to launch a new product for publishers. ProRata.ai’s product, Gist Answers, lets publishers embed custom AI search on their websites. Publishers can show AI-powered summaries and recommendations exclusively based off their own content or showcase content from ProRata.ai’s broader network of 750 publishers.
Source: ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches new search tool for publishers