Engadget reports: “As December nears every year, Spotify reveals all of the artists, genres, songs and podcasts you listened to most in the last 12 months. The 2023 installment of the streaming service’s Wrapped year-in-review debuts today on the Spotify app with an all-new design alongside the familiar story-style format. For the first time in a while, you can also view your streaming stats on desktop via the web.”
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Digital Music News reports: “You may be uneasy about what the future holds when it comes to generative AI, but teenagers are not. A new UK study has found that 79% of teens say they’ve used generative AI online in some form. Generative AI uses algorithms and large language models to create new content including text, images, video, code, and yes, even music. Some of the most popular services being used by these teens include ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E, Snapchat My AI, and Bing chat.”
Games Beat reports: “Kek Entertainment has raised $8 million in funding to foster cross-platform gaming experiences across mobile devices, consoles and PCs. This financial infusion will fuel the development of their flagship title, an unannounced vehicle shooter game merging mobile and PC/Console gamers onto a unified platform.”
Music Business Worldwide reports: “Nikki Semin Han, a former CEO of SM Entertainment, has launched a new US-headquartered company called TITAN CONTENT. Claimed to be the “world’s first premier multinational K-pop powerhouse music company”, TITAN says that it is “poised to reshape and revolutionize the K-pop landscape”, and has secured backing from a number of private investment firms.”
TechCrunch reports: “Amazon is launching an AI-powered chatbot for AWS customers called Q. Unveiled during a keynote at Amazon’s re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this morning, Q — starting at $20 per user per year, now in public preview — can answer questions like “How do I build a web application using AWS?” Trained on 17 years’ worth of AWS knowledge, Q will offer a list of potential solutions along with reasons you might consider its proposals.”
Pocket Gamer Biz reports: “League of Legends and Valorant creator Riot Games has announced the latest milestone of its Social Impact Fund, officially having raised $50 million in support of nonprofits, communities and organisations globally. This major sum has been reached in less than five years, with the Social Impact Fund having first launched in 2019 to “empower players to give back to their communities”.”
Music Ally reports: “Startup Roon Labs started life in 2015 as an offshoot from audio-hardware firm Meridian. Now the company, which developed a service for discovering music and playing it on devices around the home, is being acquired by another big-audio brand: Samsung subsidiary Harman.”
Music Business Worldwide reports: “Splice, a sample library and music creation platform, has expanded into representing the tapestry of South Asian music with the launch of its new label, Aaroh. The platform — valued at nearly USD $500 million after raising $55 million in February 2021, according to Bloomberg — has been a key player in the DIY music-making space since its inception in 2013.”
TechCrunch reports: “The generative AI hype hasn’t died down yet. Case in point, Pika, a startup creating an AI-powered platform to edit and generate videos from captions and still images, today announced that it raised $55 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Homebrew, Conviction Capital, SV Angel, Ben’s Bites and notable angel investors including Quora founder Adam D’Angelo, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Giphy co-founder Alex Chung.”
The Hollywood Reporter reports: “BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the U.K. public broadcaster BBC, on Tuesday launched BBC Podcasts Premium, its Apple subscription podcast service, in 166 new countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. Specifically, the service is now available in France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, India, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, South Africa and Nigeria.”
