business
Jordan Hallpike Joins WME UK Office as Crossover Music Agent
WME today announced that Jordan Hallpike has joined the company as a crossover agent in the music department, based in London. In his role, Hallpike will focus on forging new creative opportunities on behalf of WME’s client roster in addition to serving as a lead for business development projects. Hallpike comes to WME with over 10 years of experience across the music and creative sectors in Europe. He has served as the director of music at the Ibiza Rocks Group where he was responsible for talent booking, event programming, and creative direction. Hallpike is also the co-founder of the creative studio Midnight Movement, where he worked with Live Nation, Island Records, Sky, ITV, and Warner Music Group. Hallpike’s hire comes on the heels of several key promotions in the agency’s musi...
KuCoin announces a $100 Million Fund to Empower Web3 Growth
KuCoin’s role in empowering the Web3 universe continues, this time with the launch of a new $100 million fund. Spearheaded by KuCoin, the leading crypto exchange, together with its brand new NFT trading platform’s KuCoin NFT Marketplace-Windvane and venture capital arm KuCoin Ventures, the $100 million “Creators Fund” targets the incubation of early-stage NFT projects. Empowering Web3 Universe The goal, according to a press release the platform shared, is to use the funds to support the NFT Metaverse ecosystem. As such, projects drawn from fields such as arts, Esports, PFPs, GameFi, and Asian culture among others, are set to benefit. To help accelerate this growth as Web3 takes shape is KuCoin’s launch of a new decentralised NFT marketplace dubbed “KuCoin NFT Marketplace-Windvane. Pe...
Razer Shareholders Agree for Company to Go Private at $3.17 Billion USD Valuation
Razer is now planning to go private again after it obtained approval from an overwhelming majority of shareholders. According to a new report from Reuters, the gaming peripheral giant is looking to purchase all remaining shares and take the company private under chairman and founder Min-Liang Tan and non-executive director Kaling Lim, who own roughly 57% of the company. The deal would value the Hong Kong-listed company at $24.7 billion HKD (approximately $3.17 billion USD) and translate to a purchase price of $2.82 HKD (approximately $0.36 USD) per share for the remaining shares. The current offer price marks a 44% premium over the company’s closing price on October 28, 2021, a day before Razer went into a trading halt due to discussions of a deal. It’s also 5.6% above market close on Wedn...
Twitter Experiences Mass Deactivations After Elon Musk Takeover
Twitter saw mass “organic” deactivations and huge fluctuations in follower numbers for some of the platform’s highest-profile users in the days after Elon Musk agreed to a $44 billion takeover deal of the social media giant. According to an NBC News report published Tuesday, the follower numbers for some of Twitter’s most-followed accounts, including former President Barack Obama, singers Katy Perry and Taylor Swift all dropped by hundreds of thousands. Obama, who is Twitter’s most-followed user with 131.7 million followers, saw his follower count fall by 300,000 since Monday. Perry, who has 108.8 million followers, lost 200,000. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Twitter routinely purges the platform of bots and fake accounts which can le...
Ferrum Network integrates with Algorand to advance EVM and AVM interoperability
Ferrum’s integration with Algorand provides for seamless Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM) interoperability. The integration expands Ferrum’s staking-as-a-service solutions onto the Algorand blockchain. Ferrum also plans to launch a multi-chain token bridge for Algorand before the end of Q2, 2022. Ferrum Network, a cryptocurrency network that seeks to help existing blockchain networks address interoperability issues via a suite of multi-chain infrastructure solutions, has announced successful integration with the Algorand blockchain. With this integration, the blockchain interoperability platform’s staking-as-a-service solutions are now accessible to projects in the Algrorand ecosystem. The Ferrum Network announced this via a press release shared...
Johnny Depp Completes Four Days on Stand, Says Defamation Trial Is His ‘Fight Back’
Actor Johnny Depp concluded a grueling four days on the witness stand Monday, telling jurors in a calm voice that he filed his libel lawsuit against his ex-wife because it was his best chance to reclaim his reputation, just hours after they heard audio clips of him berating his wife with coarse vulgarities. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “It was the only time I was able to fight back and use my own voice,” Depp said of his decision to sue Amber Heard for a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post in which she refers to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” He continued to deny that he ever hit Heard, and accused her of hitting him and throwing items including paint cans and vodka bottles at him. And jurors heard an a...
Pepe Garza to Lead Estrella Media’s New Music Division
Estrella Media has promoted longtime radio programmer and television personality Pepe Garza to head of content development and A&R for the company’s newly established music division Estrella Media Music Entertainment (EMME). Garza will also serve as the executive producer of digital audio for the multi-platform media company. According to an official description of his new role, Garza will help lead the new division where he’ll “seek out new talent” to sign to the label and publishing arm and “help develop the next generation of Latin music stars.” Garza will also be responsible for curating new original digital audio series for Estrella’s free streaming platforms and podcasts. “Pepe has been a leading figure in the growth and support of Regional Mexican music and transformed the way f...
Weekly Report: Coinbase unveils NFT marketplace in beta, Binance chasing regulatory compliance
Coinbase NFT allows waitlisted users to join a beta program of the NFT marketplace Kadena Eco launches a $100 million grant to empower developers to build on the Kadena network a16z has established an academic crypto-research focused lab to solve important problems in the blockchain scene Binance recruits two former regulators to its compliance and surveillance team Australia defines a policy roadmap toward the regulation of crypto assets Here are the top cryptocurrency headlines you might have missed last week: Coinbase NFT launches in beta plans to add users over the coming weeks progressively Coinbase announced mid last week that it started allowing a few members on the waitlist of Coinbase NFT to start using the platform, which is currently in a limited beta stage. Coinbase says t...
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B — crypto industry reacts
In the hours and days before Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s purchase of social media giant Twitter, discussions on free speech were common among many online users both in and out of the crypto industry. Twitter announced on Monday that it will become a privately held company following its board of directors accepting a bid from Musk to purchase the firm’s stock for $54.20 per share in cash — roughly $44 billion. Though the transaction is expected to close in 2022, it is still subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders as well as certain regulators. In one of his last tweets prior to news of the purchase becoming public, Musk said, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.” Twitter quoted the Tesla CEO saying “free speech is the bedrock of...
Songwriter & ASCAP President Paul Williams Remembers Senator Orrin Hatch as a Champion of Creators
Sometimes there is truth in old sayings like “politics makes strange bedfellows.” That was certainly the case with Senator Orrin G. Hatch, and perhaps many of the music creators and recording artists whose livelihoods he protected and whose work he recognized as important to our culture – even if it wasn’t to his personal taste. Senator Hatch, who died on April 23 at the age of 88, had a certain way of greeting me. “You rascal, Paul,” he’d say with a devilish smile. “Are you behaving yourself?” And I would often reply, especially when I was in his office explaining the challenges we were facing as songwriters and asking for his support. “Yes, I’m behaving, Senator, and I’m grateful that you are in our corner standing with songwriters on this issue.” And he did stand with music creators on ...
Songwriter & ASCAP President Paul Williams Remembers Senator Orrin Hatch as a Champion of Creators
Sometimes there is truth in old sayings like “politics makes strange bedfellows.” That was certainly the case with Senator Orrin G. Hatch, and perhaps many of the music creators and recording artists whose livelihoods he protected and whose work he recognized as important to our culture – even if it wasn’t to his personal taste. Senator Hatch, who died on April 23 at the age of 88, had a certain way of greeting me. “You rascal, Paul,” he’d say with a devilish smile. “Are you behaving yourself?” And I would often reply, especially when I was in his office explaining the challenges we were facing as songwriters and asking for his support. “Yes, I’m behaving, Senator, and I’m grateful that you are in our corner standing with songwriters on this issue.” And he did stand with music creators on ...
Private Equity Firm Blackstone Group Eyes Ubisoft Acquisition
Private equity firm Blackstone Group is now eyeing a potential acquisition of Ubisoft. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the French studio behind the Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow Six franchises has been looking to sell in recent months and has now attracted the attention of several private equity firms including the Blackstone Group and KKR & Co, the two largest in the world. Both firms have “preliminary takeover interest” but Ubisoft has not entered “any serious negotiations with potential acquirers” just yet. Kotaku also points out that the gaming giant has been “working closely with several outside consultancy firms” to audit its business, noting that while it’s common practice for companies to do this to become more profitable, sources also suggest that Ubisoft is...
