Industry this Week
Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
3/14 | 3/15 | 3/16 States demand Live Nation mistrial | 3/17 | 3/18 | 3/19 | 3/20 |
3/21 | 3/22 Chip fabrication in Austin, Texas | 3/23 | 3/24 New Spotify Artist Protection feature | 3/25 Meta and Google lose landmark social media trial | 3/27 | 3/28 |
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I was pleasantly surprised by the Gorillaz’ lates album, The Mountain. Anushka Shankar’s deep collaboration on the project pulled me in and seeing her on that tiny SNL stage (she alone has filled up Royal Albert Hall) got me to buy the album. Moon Cave is a bouncy fusion of Gorillaz nostalgia and the classical sitar virtuoso. B+
Enjoy it as the soundtrack to this week’s newsletter
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3/16
Live Nation-Ticketmaster divestment back in court after 30 U.S. states demand mistrial
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Lobbyist and Trump ally, Mike Davis, advised the DOJ to oust antitrust head, Gail Slayter three weeks before trail began (Semafor).
Case was settled much sooner than expected with behind-closed-doors deals (Live Nation) that released some venues from Live Nation contracts and $280m in damages. Equivalent to 4 days of their 2025 revenue, according to opposition National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).
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3/22
Elon Musk announces large scale chip manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas
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The Terafab project will produce microchips for Tesla, SpaceX and xAI (Spectrum).
Production of electronics from cell phones, hard drives and toys to cars and kitchen appliances are reacting to geopolitical tensions between the United States. The Iran War placing more strain.
Private industry has been working with the White House to ween dependence from Taiwan as the world’s primary microchip supplier.
Taiwan’s TSMC invested $12B to build a fabrication plant in Arizona now in partial operation.
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3/24
Spotify beta feature let artists vet releases before they appear on their profiles
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Spotify’s new Artist Profile Protection feature — now in limited beta — has been designed to combat ongoing issues with misattributed releases, whether from metadata errors, artists sharing the same name, or “bad actors” who are “maliciously” attaching music to artists’ profiles (MBW).
Fake AI generated songs have been attached to Tyler, the Creator, Father John Misty and others.
An increasing number of AI generated songs are being uploaded to streaming platforms, Deezer reported 60,000 each day. Although AI generated songs cannot be copyrighted, Michael Smith had plead guilty for creating “hundreds of thousands of songs with AI” and using “automated programs called ‘bots’ to fraudulently stream his AI-generated songs billions of times,” earning $8 million in royalties (Futurism).
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3/25
Meta and Google at fault for social media addiction
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The Los Angeles jury determined Meta and Google were liable in the 20-year-old plaintiff’s social media induced depression, suicidal thoughts and body dysmorphia (Semafor). TikTok and Snap settled with the 20-year-old plaintiff before trial started.
One Good Photo
Jonathan Ernst/ Reuters