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Hello all -
No Digest yesterday as there was pretty much just one news story to report: that of Apple 'acquiring' Asaii. Music Ally had some excellent thoughts on this, picking up that Asaii had made some bold claims about its ability to spot rising stars through data analysis, leading to speculation that the platform might be used by Apple to give it an inside edge on signing artists and competing with Spotify and its direct licencing deals etc.
Cut to today though, and it seems that might not be the case. TechCrunch reports today that in fact Apple has simply hired the founders of Asaii, and have not acquired the company as previously reported. If that is correct (and the evidence certainly suggests it to be) then it implies that Apple's play is merely a strong data science, potentially more likely to be connected to its own artist dashboard. Time will tell, of course, but certainly this one is perhaps less of a headline grabber that might have been first thought.
Elsewhere it is interesting to see that the well-backed Jaunt VR startup has just laid off a large percentage of its workforce and at the same time announced a pivot into Augmented Reality instead. Given how much hype VR has been subject to, this might be the first sign of cracks showing. Not a massive shock in some respects - do you know anyone who owns a VR headset? - but with many exploring VR in music one wonders if this is a sign of a shift away from virtual reality in general as The Next Big Thing.
Have a great evening,
D.
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But we asked and Apple has declined to confirm the deal, and it gave no green light to use its usual statement — the one it often issues when smaller startups are acquired. (You can see a sample of it in this story about Apple buying computer vision startup Spektral last week, which we did get Apple to confirm.) That is, the company has not acquired the assets of the startup. What it has done is hire a few employees of the company — specifically the three founders, Sony Theakanath, Austin Chen and Chris Zhang — who are all now working at Apple at Apple Music. (Apple has done this before: for example, it hired a team from the mapping app PinDrop in the UK; at the time it was also misreported as an acquisition.) It’s not clear if the three will be working on similar technology, or other kinds of tools to affect how music is discovered on Apple Music. Apple has already launched a beta of its own analytics service called Apple Music for Artists.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/apple-asaii-apple-music/
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Finally, and most intriguingly, Asaii had another product that Theakanath talked about during his Midemlab pitch in June: a tool he described as an “automated A&R web platform” aimed at labels, managers and promoters trying to identify breaking artists as early as possible. Theakanath claimed that it could “identify up and coming artists 10 weeks before they hit the charts” by analysing the data from streaming services including Spotify and SoundCloud, with around a 70-30 rate of hits to misses – i.e. it predicted hits 70% of the time. “A hit is considered someone you can sign and make a profit out of in some way, or they jump onto a major playlist in some way,” he said then. An in-house tool for Apple to spot hot tracks and emerging artists faster? That could be extremely useful, and not just to help Apple Music decide which new artists to give playlist and co-marketing support to.
https://musically.com/2018/10/15/confirmed-apple-has-bought-music-analytics-startup-asaii/
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In practical terms, Pithouse will head up a division which, for an enhanced fee, will offer Orchard-affiliated independent artists and labels a more holistic set of global services – including the likes of radio promotion and traditional PR – when compared with the company’s standard client agreement. Pithouse will be based in New York and report to The Orchard’s CEO, Brad Navin.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/the-orchard-makes-play-for-independent-artists-with-new-global-division-under-tim-pithouse/
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Universal Music Group (UMG) has entered into a multi-year, direct licensing agreement with digital audio streaming platform Mixcloud. The global agreement, excluding China and Japan, includes payment for previous use of UMG’s music. Under the agreement, UMG’s recording artists will be compensated for the use of their music on Mixcloud’s ad-supported and future subscription services.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/universal-signs-multi-year-direct-licensing-agreement-with-mixcloud/
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The ALI's projects are trusted and admired for playing it straight and have always been known for their neutrality, clarity and precision. But not this time. The copyright project is being led by some of the most notoriously anti- creator copyleft irritators, many with financial ties to big tech companies – with a goal of tilting the playing field and producing a very biased Copyright Restatement that shortchanges songwriters, artists, and the copyright holders. The Copyright Office of the United States, the non-partisan lead copyright adviser to Congress, has called the ALI's project an effort "to create a pseudo-version of the Copyright Act that does not mirror the law precisely as Congress enacted it."
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8479902/dina-lapolt-copyright-american-law-institute-creators-rights-op-ed
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One of the top-funded VR content startups, with backers including Disney and GV (Google Ventures), is laying off a “significant portion” of its employees as it pivots away from virtual reality. In a blog post titled “The Future of Jaunt is AR,” the formerly VR-focused company announced it was leaving much of its VR business behind and shifting toward AR tech, laying off many of its employees in the process: "We will be winding down a number of VR products and content services in the coming weeks. We will work with our current clients to deliver our existing commitments and manage this transition smoothly and professionally. In addition, this unfortunately means that some of our valued and highly talented colleagues will be moving on."
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/disney-backed-jaunt-lays-off-significant-number-of-employees-as-it-moves-away-from-vr/
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Indeed, from Musical.ly videos (RIP) and the oversaturated market of dance challenges to sample packs and remix apps, we are now seeing artists of all career stages racing to create the strongest, highest-quality creative ecosystems, powered by democratized creation and social interaction. The source of creative innovation (and value) no longer lies solely in the creation or distribution of a finished product, but rather in how the ingredients underlying that product are made available to empower an entirely new, innovative ecosystem of self-organized self-expression.
https://medium.com/@cheriehu42/what-the-music-industry-can-learn-from-chefs-table-1c736b2d63b4
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“When it becomes a thing like YouTube, it’s a similar culture where it [became] less and less exclusive and now anyone can do it,” Palsma said. “I think, in the long run, it’s good. For me, personally, as an artist, it’s a little scary. If you’re making it so that anyone can put anything on Spotify, it’s a lot harder to advocate for better pay for artists.” Tisch senior and musician Claire Hawkins questioned potential legal issues that could arise from such an initiative. “How do we make sure no one’s infringing on copyright?” Hawkins said. “It seems like there are too many opportunities to game the system and this is opening up a few more. I think there’s going to have to be some way that they differentiate but I don’t know what that’s going to entail.”
https://nyunews.com/2018/10/14/10-15-music-spotify/
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As is his right under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—the sweeping set of privacy rules that came into effect across the EU in May—Veale asked Twitter to give him all the personal data it holds on him. The company refused to hand over the data it recorded when Veale clicked on links in other people’s tweets, claiming that providing this information would take a disproportionate effort. So, in August, Veale complained to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which on Thursday told him it was opening an investigation. As is common with big tech firms, Twitter’s European operations are headquartered in Dublin, which is why Veale complained in Ireland.
http://fortune.com/2018/10/12/twitter-gdpr-investigation-tco-tracking/
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