Warner-Music-Group

Warner Music Group signs on to SoundCloud’s artist-friendly payment model

When SoundCloud launched its artist-friendly fan-powered royalty system last year, the model was only available for independent artists subscribed to the streamer’s paid tiers. Now, SoundCloud h

These four iconic European founders plan to kick the asses of VCs who never started a company

Until recently, Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, co-founder of Teleport, had banded together as a sort of “mini Angel brand” known as “Taavet+Sten.” Tamkivi has done arou

Twitch partners with indie music licensing group Merlin

Twitch will strike up a partnership with independent digital music licensing group Merlin, marking the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform’s latest effort to get cozy with the recording industry

Apple Music expands Chinese music reservoir via Tencent deal

Apple Music users around the world will soon have access to more Chinese musicians. Tencent Music Entertainment, the online music subsidiary of Tencent, said Tuesday that “record labels and arti

Snap makes a deal with Universal Music Group, adding its catalog to Sounds

Snap today announced a multi-year deal with Universal Music Group, one of the largest music companies in the world. From Queen to Justin Bieber, users can clip songs from the expansive UMG catalog to

NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs is now worth $2.6 billion thanks to half of Hollywood, the NBA and Michael Jordan

From the early success of Crypto Kitties to the explosive growth of NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs has been at the forefront of the cryptocurrency collectible craze known as NFTs. Now the company is reapin

Tencent Music now has joint labels with all ‘big three’ record labels

The music streaming arm of Tencent is further tightening its ties with the “big three” record label companies, its major licensing partners. Tencent Music Entertainment announced Tuesday t

Roblox raises at $29.5 billion valuation, readies for direct listing

Roblox is now one of the world’s most valuable private companies in the world after a monster Series H raise brings the social gaming platform a stratospheric $29.5 billion valuation. The compan

Snapchat had a big August amid TikTok uncertainty

The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. Or maybe it was just the Disney eyes filter that went viral. In any event, preliminary estim

Dr. Seuss comes to the blockchain thanks to the maker of CryptoKitties

From CryptoKitties to the NBA, Dapper Labs has paved the way for blockchain popularity beyond speculation that’s purely monetary and now with Dr. Seuss Enterprises another collectible applicatio

Sisense nabs $100M at a $1B+ valuation for accessible big data business analytics

Sisense, an enterprise startup that has built a business analytics business out of the premise of making big data as accessible as possible to users — whether it be through graphics on mobile or

Kobalt’s edge in changing the music industry

Kobalt Music Group is driving the music industry to provide more transparency and faster royalty payments to musicians and challenging the traditional record labels and publishers with its own alterna

How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars

Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own n

How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn

You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour. Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and ro

Spotify needs to crack down on labels snatching user data

Spotify seems to have learned little from the Facebook developer platform’s scandals despite getting a huge boost from the social network in its early days. Spotify has been caught allowing reco

SoundCloud buys artist distribution platform Repost Network

The past year has seen Spotify embark on a series of acquisitions to beef up its service, particularly on podcast content. Now it is the turn of SoundCloud, another European music startup — albe

TikTok’s next ambitious goal is to discover future music stars

TikTok needs a lot of music. A lot. The short-form video service began life as a lip-synching app in China, where it’s called Douyin, and although other categories of content, like skits and lif

Artiphon raises $2M round led by Warner Music

Artiphon, the startup behind the electronic instrument that it’s dubbed the Instrument 1, has raised $2 million in seed funding. We previously described the Instrument 1 as a symphony, rock band

Flying taxi startup Blade is helping Silicon Valley CEOs bypass traffic

Blade, backed by Lerer Hippeau and Airbus, has begun chauffering the Bay Area's elite.

Spotify rival Tencent Music posts maiden quarter loss of $130M on one-off costs

Tencent Music Entertainment Group, the Chinese answer to Spotify that Tencent spun out and floated on the New York Stock Exchange in December, reported a net loss of 876 million yuan ($127 million) in
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