Composium Digest: Big Hit makes an investment in AI company?
Composium | March 2, 2021
Composium Digest is a newsletter-only addition delivered once a week. Get overviews of interesting stories happening in the music industry, stay informed of various opportunities music startups and companies offer, and catch up on some of the Composium articles you might have missed.
TikTok plans to pay $92 million for selling user data
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium CEO
The Byte Dance-owned platform is going to pay $92 million due to TikTok gathering and selling users’ data.
The lawsuit claims that the U.S. users’ data was sent to servers in China and “other countries where China-based employees could access the data.”
Among the data collected are biometric information like facial characteristics, ethnicity, age, and gender, and even data from video drafts that weren’t posted.
While TikTok said it “disagreed with the allegations,” it thought it would be best to settle the matter, and the app is now required to stop collecting biometric and video drafts’ data.
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SoundSys
Sidney O’Gorman, Composium Ambassador
Members of the music industry from India, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand have collaborated with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Barcelona Music and Audio Technology (BMAT) to create a new platform, SoundSys.
Created to "help more efficiently manage and distribute public performance royalties," this collaboration has provided the combined necessary funds for the project that otherwise would not be affordable had it been developed by one party.
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Spotify on expanding to 85 new markets and other plans
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium CEO
Announcing its plans on its “Stream On” event, this addition will mean that the company will soon be available in 178 markets in total.
The 85 new areas are located in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, and have more than 1 billion new potential listeners.
This will probably result in a wider variety of genres represented on the streaming service, tapping into even more music cultures and exposing local artists’ works to Spotify’s listeners around the world.
During “Stream On,” the platform also mentioned Spotify HiFi, which will let its users listen to songs in lossless audio format later this year.
Another announcement Spotify made is its new tools for creators such as expansion of Marquee, launch of “Discovery Mode” (beta version), the opening of the Canvas looping visual feature for artists, and others.
Fancircles partners with Paloma Faith, The Levellers, Ed Harcourt and more
Monserrat Torres, Composium Ambassador
Recently, FanCircles has partnered with a number of acts including Paloma Faith, The Levellers, and Ed Harcourt. Jon Sevink, The Levellers’s fiddle player mentions how Fancircles is “the most creative and immediate way we have of communicating with fans. We think of it as an interactive online magazine where we can express our creativity using music, artwork and videos.”
FanCircles, previously known as GigRev, helps artists create and have control over their own fan engaging platform. In addition, it aims to help artists have a sustainable income stream during the pandemic. Founder and Ceo Kevin Brown stated that FanCircles was not made to overpower other social media and main streaming platforms. Brown and his team just “wanted to make it easy for artists to control their own content without getting bogged down in tech and the analytics that go with it.”
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Big Hit makes a $3.6 million investment in an AI voice replication company?
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium CEO
The BTS record label invested $3.6 million in Supertone, the technology of which can mimic voices of singers.
This isn’t the first time we’re seeing Supertone make news — last year, the company was able to recreate Kim Kwang-seok’s (the late famous folk singer) voice, a performance that left many crying, and others amazed by how exact the voice sounds.
The investment makes for future collaboration between Big Hit and the AI company. Given the ever-growing rise of BTS and their rigorous schedule, a potential partnership seems quite fitting.
Although some are extremely excited by the technology, it also raises a lot of questions around ethics and copyright. Supertone, however, alleges on its website that “any synthetic voice created by the company is not monetized without the permission of the right holder.”
Copyright Law - Taylor Swift's Evermore
Sidney O’Gorman, Composium Ambassador
Fans of the popular singer-songwriter Taylor Swift around the world are familiar with her recent album "Evermore", but they may not be aware that this particular addition to the artist's discography has resulted in litigation.
After an attempted lawsuit from the owners of a theme park called Evermore over the title of her album, Swift "has now hit back with a lawsuit of her own" after discovering the park's alleged infringement of her musical works. The park is being accused of using the artist's recordings "without authorization or license agreement", as well as that of artists like Katy Perry, The Beatles, and others.
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Speaking of Spotify…
Anouk Dyussembayeva, Composium CEO
Spotify made an official statement addressing why hundreds of K-pop songs were off their platform. The reason: they weren’t able to renew a global licensing agreement with Kakao M, affecting works of Zico, ASTRO, IU, SEVENTEEN, MONSTA X, among others.
Kakao M responded by declaring that the Swedish streaming provider was the one who didn’t renew the agreement, although Kakao M did made a request.
Whether the music would be on Spotify South Korea remains unclear.
Daft Punk split up after 28 years
Monserrat Torres, Composium Ambassador
The French electronic music duo, Daft Punk, have confirmed their decision to split with an eight-minute video titled “Epilogue.” Although devastated, fans have shared their reactions to the news with hilarious memes on twitter. In addition, celebrities, such as The Weeknd, have shared their reactions along with how Daft punk influenced them and the music industry.
Since starting in 1993, Daft Punk has created outstanding works such as their albums Homework in 1997 and Discovery in 2001. Having first influenced music in “the emerging house and techno scenes of Europe”, the duo is now known as “legends of genre-blending pop music” with their last album Random Access Memories in 2013. Daft Punk will be missed dearly by many but their numerous accomplishments will forever be remembered.
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Catch up on Composium’s original articles!
Minh Khuat on working at Remote Control Productions
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Learning music from the age of three, Minh attended Vietnam National Academy of Music (VNAM) when he was only 8 years old, majoring in Piano Performance and Music Theory…
Mistakes composers should avoid. Advice from Patrick Kirst
Born and raised in Germany, Patrick Kirst is a well-respected composer for visual media in Los Angeles. The composer scored The Kissing Booth and The Kissing Booth 2, a commercial success featured on Netflix.
Falling in love with film music as a child, Patrick Kirst decided to study music at the classical conservatory in Germany. In 2000, he left the country to study jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston, later moving to New York to pursue contemporary classical music at New York University, and relocating to study film music at USC Thornton School of Music after…