business
AI-Driven Rights Management Agency Muserk Forms Joint Venture to Reduce Piracy of Japanese Content
Muserk, the AI tech-driven global rights management agency for music and video, has partnered with leading Japanese marketing and media research company Video Research on a new joint venture designed to cut down on piracy of Japanese content worldwide. Dubbed Muserk V.I.D., the venture “will service, manage and protect the online rights of the major broadcasters, networks, and production companies of Japan, around the world,” according to a release announcing the deal. Through the partnership with Muserk, Video Research – which provides marketing, media and TV audience research for leading media firms and advertisers in Japan – will utilize Muserk’s AI technologies, M-Match and M-PAC, to manage and protect its clients’ online video rights. Founded by CEO Paul Goldman – who will serve as CE...
AMP Music Summit Draws Inspiration From History & Community in Second Virtual Event
The AMP Music Summit presented by KCRW held its second online conference earlier this week, celebrating the power of collaboration between artists, business leaders and local communities through music, storytelling, technology, law and culture. While the main arc of the AMP Music Summit focused on culture-shifting changes resulting from COVID-19, a common theme at AMP’s second event was the power of music to inspire smaller cities while building a sense of community and collective pride. “It’s great to hear the stories of hope and that’s really a lot of what we’re trying to do with this conference,” said Simon Lamb, who along with Rebel Industries founder Josh Levine and Seth Combs co-founded AMP Music Summit earlier this year. “We want to provide a counter narrative to s...
Executive Turntable: TalentX Founder Named Triller Chief Strategy Officer, Radio Promo Vets Launch New Company
Social media star, entrepreneur and TalentX Entertainment co-founder Josh Richards has been named chief strategy officer at AI-driven music video and entertainment platform Triller, which he also invested in. In his new role, Richards will lead strategy at Triller while also overseeing the company’s implementation of live streaming and monetization tools. Triller, a rival to the wildly popular video-sharing platform TikTok, last year raised $28 million in a funding round led by Proxima Media last year, also drawing investors including Snoop Dogg and Lil Wayne. In June, the platform — which currently has music licensing partnerships with Warner, Sony Music and UMG — hit 50 million monthly active users. “After seeing the US and other countries’ governments’ concerns over Tik...
Apple overtakes Saudi Aramco as world’s most valuable public company
Apple’s stock hit a record high on Friday after reporting blockbuster quarterly results, helping the iPhone maker briefly overtake Saudi Aramco to become the world’s most valuable publicly listed company. Apple’s stock surged to as high as $412.22 a share, putting its market capitalization at $1.762 trillion, according to the share count provided by Apple in a regulatory filing on Friday. Saudi Aramco, which has been the most valuable publicly listed company since going public last year, had a market capitalization of $1.760 trillion as of its last close, according to Refinitiv data. Last up 6.2% at $408.78 in midday trading, Apple’s market capitalization stood at $1.748 trillion. After Apple bought back $16 billion worth of shares in the June quarter, it had 4,275,634,000 outstanding shar...
Amazon Prospers During Pandemic With Expectation-Beating Results
Amazon dodged a coronavirus bullet in its second quarter, posting big gains in sales and operating income as shoppers around the world stayed home and did the bulk of their shopping online. The online retail giant, which operates the Amazon Music streaming platform and is one of a small handful of tech companies in the “trillion-dollar club”, reported net sales of $88.9 billion in the quarter ending June 30, 2020, beating analysts’ expectations with a whopping 40 per cent improvement on the same period last year. Also during the period, operating income almost doubled to $5.8 billion, up from $3.1 billion in second quarter of the previous year. Revenue from subscription services ballooned to $6 billion, well advanced from the $4.6 billion reported in the corresponding per...
Publishing Briefs: Rodney Jerkins Puts Hipgnosis Under His Spell, Primary Wave Acquires Stake in Devo
Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited has acquired the 982-song music catalog of four-time Grammy winner Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, who under the terms of the deal will also join Hipgnosis’ Investment Adviser’s Advisory Board. The agreement includes 100% of Jerkins’ writer’s share of income for his early works and 100% of his publishing interest and writer’s share of income for his later works. Jerkins’ long list of hits includes tracks for Mary J. Blige (“I Can’t Love You”), Brandy (“The Boy Is Mine”), Whiney Houston (“It’s Not Right But It’s Okay”), Destiny’s Child (“Say My Name”), Beyoncé (“Déjà Vu”), Spice Girls (“Holler”/”Let Love Lead the Way”), Michael Jackson (“You Rock My World”), Sam Smith (“Stay With Me”), Lady Gaga (“Telephone” feat. Beyoncé), Jennifer Lopez (“If You Had My Love”), Jus...
SiriusXM, Pandora Add Self-Pay Subscribers, Advertising Falls Amid Pandemic
Audio entertainment giant SiriusXM, the home of Howard Stern, on Thursday said it added self-pay subscribers in its satellite radio and Pandora businesses for the second quarter, the first one that was fully affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The company, controlled by John Malone‘s Liberty Media, said its satellite radio subscribers fell when including promotional subs, just like had been the case in the first quarter. In the year-ago period, it had added a total of 174,000 net users. In the latest period, SiriusXM added 264,000 self-pay customers, but lost 768,000 promotional subs to end June with 30.3 million self-pay and 34.3 million total users, down 516,000. “Paid promotional subscribers decreased due to declines in shipments from automakers offering paid trial su...
Ashley Judd’s Sexual Harassment Claim Against Harvey Weinstein Revived by Appeals Court
Harvey Weinstein will have to face a sexual harassment claim from Ashley Judd even though the actress was never actually employed by the disgraced movie mogul. On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that California Civil Code § 51.9 encompassed their relationship sufficiently to provide Judd with the ability to sue him for sexual harassment. Judd alleges in her complaint that she became Weinstein’s victim when the movie mogul made demands on her in a hotel room about 20 years ago. Judd says that she only escaped after relenting to a deal where she would let him touch her if she won an Academy Award. Later, Judd says she was in serious discussions for a big role in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, but that opportunity was torpedoed after Weinstein or someone ...
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Grilled at Big Tech Hearing About Being Unfair to Streamers
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos might be the richest person in the world, but he’s also a rookie. Until Wednesday, he had never before been grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. That changed today when top executives at the nation’s leading technology companies gathered — at least virtually — for testimony before a House of Representatives antitrust subcommittee. There, Bezos faced blistering questions about whether the e-commerce giant has abused its market power. “A lot of people want to know when the HBO Max app will be available on your Fire devices,” Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Bezos. “I understand negotiations are ongoing but your company is not only asking for financial terms but also for content from Warner Media…. Is it fair to use your gatekeepe...
Alice Ivy Signs Global Publishing Deal With Concord, Native Tongue
Alice Ivy has struck a new worldwide publishing deal through a joint venture with Concord Music Publishing and Australian independent publisher Native Tongue. “Publishing is something I’ve taken my time with,” said Ivy of the new arrangement, which is effective immediately. “I wanted to hold off until I’d matured as a songwriter and a producer and wait for the right partners to come along. Between the team at Native Tongue, who’ve always looked out for me, and my new family at Concord, it feels like the best possible set-up for me at this exciting stage in my career. When it came down to it, they asked what I was looking for and I said, ‘I want to be jumping on planes and writing music every day’ and they said, ‘we can do that.'” The Melbourn...
G-Herbo Tabs Saweetie, City Girls, Wale and NLE Choppa For Mental Health Notes Panel
In hopes of aiding struggling Black teens, G-Herbo is collaborating with Audiomack to help restore their mental health with his forthcoming Mental Health Notes Panel, airing today (July 29) at 6:00 p.m. ET on Twitch. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Clemons MD, the star-studded lineup will include Saweetie, City Girls, Wale, NLE Choppa and NAMI CEO Dan Gillison as speakers for today’s festivities. Designed to provide tools to help Black youth maneuver through the ups-and-downs of mental health, this forum will offer a bevy of techniques to help lessen their everyday battles, while de-stigmatizing the importance therapy in the African American community. “I wanted to gather everyone to encourage open dialogue, so that we not only become a support system for one another, but our fans as well, Herbo tel...
4 Big Tech CEOs Getting Heat From Congress on Competition
Four Big Tech CEOs — Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google and Tim Cook of Apple — are set to answer for their companies’ practices before Congress as a House panel caps its yearlong investigation of market dominance in the industry. The four command corporations with gold-plated brands, millions or even billions of customers, and a combined value greater than the entire German economy. One of them is the world’s richest individual (Bezos); another is the fourth-ranked billionaire (Zuckerberg). Their industry has transformed society, linked people around the globe, mined and commercialized users’ personal data, and infuriated critics on both the left and right over speech. Critics question whether the companies, grown increasingly powerful after...
