YouTube is rolling out a new set of features for better mobile-based playback, song search, and creator-friendly tools, including a feature that will highlight the “like and subscribe” buttons when a creator utters those words. The company is making it easier for users to increase playback speed. With the new update, users can just tap…
Nearly a year ago, developers Seth Forsgren and Hayk Martiros released a hobby project called Riffusion that could generate music using not audio but images of audio. It sounds counterintuitive (no pun intended), but it worked — my colleague Devin Coldewey got the rundown here. While their approach had its limitations, Riffusion netted Forsgren and…
Bandcamp has officially changed hands from its old new owner, Epic, to its new new owner, Songtradr, and lost half its employees in the process. Songtradr confirmed that “50% of employees received offers” to continue on under the new ownership — and naturally the other 50% didn’t. The venerable digital music marketplace was acquired by…
Online publishing platform Medium has led a bit of a tumultuous life. Seeking to thread the needle as it tried to be both a publisher and a writing platform, the company tried several different business models (allowing individual publications on its platform to offer paywalls, building its own publications, and more), seeing varying levels of…
Two of the biggest drivers of growth on social and e-commerce platforms have been food and influencers, so it should come as no surprise that startups are now getting in on the act in trying to combine how these two work together. In the latest turn, a startup out of Berlin called Lanch — which…
Block, the Jack Dorsey-founded fintech company previously known as Square, has acquired Hifi, a music-focused fintech startup. Hifi founder and CEO Damian Manning announced the news in a LinkedIn post yesterday. The company also updated its website, which states that it’s joining Block to “further our shared purpose of economic empowerment with the financial technologies…
The rise of short video apps has fueled people to use many tools to make their videos different by remixing popular songs. Many creators use tricks like speeding up, slowing down or using clap tracks to modify songs. While labels and social media companies have tools to keep a watch on track usage so artists…
EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo marketplace, was once loftily thought of as a possible challenger to Instagram in Europe. More recently has fallen on much harder times, and now it has a new owner. Freepik — a Spain-based platform partly owned by EQT that provides images, graphics, and other media for designers and other online creatives…
EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo marketplace that once was loftily thought of as a possible challenger to Instagram in Europe but more recently has fallen on much harder times, has a new owner. Freepik — a Spain-based platform partly owned by EQT that provides images, graphics, and other media for designers and other online creatives —…
Sony Group announced today that it has established Sony Innovation Fund: Africa (SIF: AF), a program that will support the growth of entertainment businesses in Africa. Appropriately, the Tokyo multinational conglomerate, through Sony Ventures Corporation (SVC), has earmarked $10 million for early-stage startups in gaming, music, film and content distribution. Sony Ventures’s latest endeavor to…