business
Twitter Users Can Soon Get Blue Check for $7.99 Monthly Fee
Twitter has announced a subscription service for $7.99 a month that includes a blue check now given only to verified accounts as new owner Elon Musk works to overhaul the platform’s verification system just ahead of U.S. midterm elections. In an update to Apple iOS devices available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K., Twitter said users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can receive the blue check next to their names “just like the celebrities, companies and politicians you already follow.” But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday (Nov. 5) that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Verified accounts did...
The Ledger: How Much More Revenue Can Streaming Price Hikes Bring?
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. Apple Music’s recent subscription price increase and a likely forthcoming price hike by Spotify would provide a boost to U.S. and global music revenues and likewise impact catalog valuations. Higher prices for Apple Music and Spotify’s individual plan could be worth hundreds of millions in additional subscription revenue annually in the U.S. Incremental revenues resulting from these price increases have the potential to reach roughly $650 million a year for streaming services. That assumes 7% growth in subscribers in 2023, no additional churn, a full year of higher prices and higher prices for both self-paid and p...
Web3 Foundation makes bold claim to SEC: ‘DOT is not a security. It is merely software’
The entity supporting research and development of Polkadot as well as overseeing fundraising efforts for the blockchain has argued that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission should not consider the DOT token a security under its regulatory purview. In a Nov. 4 blog post, the Web3 Foundation Team’s chief legal officer Daniel Schoenberger said Polkadot’s native token (DOT) had “morphed” and was “software” rather than a security. Schoenberger said the claim was “consistent with the views” it had shared with the SEC following discussions it began in November 2019. “While the Polkadot vision had not contemplated that the blockchain’s native token would be a security, we understood that the SEC’s view was likely to be that the to-be-delivered token would be a security, at least at...
Diddy Makes a Big Move Into Cannabis Game With $185 Million Purchase of Major Pot Players
Sean “P. Diddy” Combs never does anything halfway. On Friday (Nov. 4) the music/fashion/sprits/media mogul announced that he plans to make a major investment in the legal marijuana game with a $185 million deal to buy licensed weed operations in three states. If approved, the deal would create the nation’s largest Black-owned and licensed cannabis company, a platform Diddy said he wants to use to increase Black participation in the field. “It’s diabolical,” Combs, 53, told the Wall Street Journal about his desire to get into the pot business to help address long-running inequities that have seen Black people disproportionately arrested and jailed for marijuana crimes even as they make up a “tiny” percentage of the market for legal weed. “How do you lock up communities of people, break down...
Cory Marks Ready to Support a Major Tour, After 3-Year Pandemic Delay
After years of trying to sell his hard-charging sound to Canadian country radio, Cory Marks had finally found his hit song and opening tour slot to propel his career forward in 2020. The year prior he released his first bankable hit, “Outlaws and Outsiders” — an anthemic track produced by his new label boss and collaborator Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch with features from country legend Travis Tritt and rock icon Mick Mars of Mötley Crüe. The song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s rock chart and helped earn him an opening slot for Canadian country legend Gord Bamford’s 2020 tour. Then the pandemic hit, and the breakout career of the former Royal Military College hockey player was temporarily put on ice. But after a three-year wait, Marks is returning to the road, opening for a...
Twitter Layoffs Begin as New Owner Elon Musk Complains of Ad Revenue Drop
Employees braced for widespread layoffs at Twitter Friday as new owner Elon Musk overhauls the social platform. In a letter to employees obtained by multiple media outlets, the company said employees would find out by 9 a.m. PDT (noon EDT) if they had been laid off. The email did not say how many people would lose their jobs. Some employees tweeted early Friday that they had already lost access to their work accounts. They and others tweeted messages of support using the hashtag #OneTeam. The email to staff said job reductions were “necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.” Twitter’s roughly 7,500 employees have been expecting layoffs since Musk took the helm of the company. Already, the billionaire Tesla CEO has fired top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, on his fi...
JAY-Z and Jeff Bezos Are Looking To Buy the Washington Commanders
Earlier this week, NFL‘s NFC East team, Washington Commanders‘ owner Dan Snyder has set the gears in motion to explore a potential sale. Now just a day after the announcement, business moguls JAY-Z and Jeff Bezos have reportedly began looking into acquiring the team. Snyder’s sale comes at a time when the owner has been in hot waters with both the NFL and the US Government’s House Oversight Committee due to his history of sexual harassment and financial misconduct through the organization. Snyder and his wife have reportedly hired Bank of America Securities “to consider potential transactions.” Billionaires Bezos and JAY-Z are among big-name front runners who have shown interesting in buying the team. Bezos, who has a net worth of $114 billion USD already has ties in the area, owning the W...
Quebec’s energy manager to seek government approval to stop powering crypto miners
Hydro-Québec, the firm managing electricity across the Canadian province of Quebec, plans to reallocate energy supplied to crypto mining firms. According to a Nov. 3 tweet from Canadian lawmaker Pierre Fitzgibbon, the government will request a decree from the energy board to release the company from its obligation to power crypto miners in the province. Hydro-Québec allocated 270 megawatts toward the mining firms, but electricity demand in Québec is expected to grow to a point that powering crypto will put pressure on the energy supplier. The report Hydro-Québec filed with the government’s energy board on Nov. 1 said temporarily reducing the power provided to mining firms could help prevent threats to the “reliability and security” of energy for Québec residents. The distributor repo...
The Latin Grammys Are Evolving — And Asking Members to Come Along
Just minutes after nominations to the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards were announced in September, Manuel Abud called all of the nominees in the best new artist category. “One of our nominees was at school,” the Latin Recording Academy CEO says, referring to 15-year-old Yahritza Martinez, frontwoman of sierreño trio Yahritza y Su Esencia. “She stepped out to take my call and then went back to class.” Artists don’t usually learn about their nominations in a personal call from the academy’s CEO. But Abud — who stepped into the new role in 2021, succeeding longtime president/CEO Gabriel Abaroa Jr. after 18 years — says a top priority is making the academy more accessible to the Latin music community. The goal is more participation and greater representation across what Abud calls the “four Gs”: geog...
Bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer could delay public offering to 2023
Bitdeer, a crypto mining firm spun off from China-based mining manufacturer Bitmain, may see its public offering on the Nasdaq delayed a year depending on a vote from shareholders of the Blue Safari Group Acquisition Corp. In a Nov. 2 Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Blue Safari said it will be holding a shareholding meeting before the end of 2022 to vote on whether to extend the deadline of its deal with Bitdeer. The mining firm announced in November 2021 that it had entered into a definitive merger agreement with Blue Safari in order to go public through a special purpose acquisition company in the United States. The SEC filing stated the shareholders could give the company the option to extend the deadline up to four times until December 2023, as well as move the meeting...
Music Companies Must Now Include Salary Ranges on New York Job Postings
A new New York City law requiring employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings has officially gone into effect this week, with music companies hiring in the city mandated to comply. On the first day of the law, a picture of at least one of the major music companies’ salary ranges has come into focus. The day the law went into effect, several companies were criticized for overly-broad salary ranges that effectively subverted the point of the regulation, which was designed to give prospective employees insight into what they could be expected to earn at different companies in the city and address salary discrepancies between men and women and for people of color. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, posted reporting and producing jobs with ranges between $40,000 to $160,000; te...
Core Scientific may consider bankruptcy following uncertain financial condition: Report
Bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific is reportedly considering a potential bankruptcy amid a group of its convertible bondholders consulting restructuring lawyers. According to a Nov. 1 report from Bloomberg Law, the Core Scientific bondholders worked with legal firm Paul Hastings following a United States Securities and Exchange Commission filing suggesting financial distress. The Oct. 26 filing indicated that the mining company was unable to meet its financial obligations in late October and early November, citing the low price of Bitcoin (BTC), rising costs of electricity, an increase in the global BTC hash rate and legal issues with crypto lending firm Celsius. Core Scientific claimed in an Oct. 19 court filing that Celsius owed the firm more than $2.1 million for post-petition charges,...
