Digital Music News reports: “The Warner Music-owned publisher and Caldecott Music Group’s BandLab Technologies reached out today with word of their “groundbreaking” union. As described by the companies, Warner Chappell is set to handle administration for ReverbNation creators enrolled in a “new ReverbNation Publishing Administration program.”
GamesBeat reports: “Web3 game startup GFAL has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round from investors including Supercell and Mitch Lasky among others. Barcelona-based GFAL has done a soft launch of its mobile game Elemental Raiders and it is steadily growing the Web3 game’s audience. The $3.2 million seed funding round adds to the $4.4 million in capital GFAL raised from the successful launch of its $GFAL token back in Q1 2023.”
Variety reports: “The three media companies planning to launch a much-scrutinized sports streamer later this year are set to give advertisers a sneak peek at the new outlet. Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery plan to use their new streaming joint-venture — the official name of the video hub has yet to be announced — to boost the impressions they have to sell to Madison Avenue during the industry’s annual “upfront” market, according to three people familiar with the matter.”
Games Industry Biz reports: “Epic Game’s battle royale, Fortnite, led Newzoo’s revenue and user engagement charts for March. This is according to the research firm’s March monthly engagement and revenue charts for games across the PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch. The data now covers the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy markets. Fortnite continues to have the most monthly active users (MAU) it did in February. Last month, the third-person shooter was also second in consumer revenue.”
Business Insider reports: “Google’s parent company, Alphabet, hit a new milestone on Friday: a $2 trillion market cap. Google is now the world’s fourth most valuable public company, right behind Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, which has a market cap of just over $3 trillion and overtook Apple earlier this year for first place.”
Reuters reports: “The Financial Times has signed a deal with OpenAI to license its content for the development of AI models and allow ChatGPT to answer queries with summaries attributable to the newspaper, the latest media tie-up for the Microsoft-backed (MSFT.O), opens new tab startup. Financial terms of the agreement, announced, opens new tab on Monday, were not disclosed. It follows similar deals by OpenAI over the past few months with the Associated Press, global news publisher Axel Springer, France’s Le Monde and Spain-based Prisa Media, opens new tab.”
TechCrunch reports: “Carv, a data layer platform that lets web3 gaming and AI companies, as well as gamers, control and monetize their data, has raised a $10 million Series A round led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures. Carv’s new round comes approximately five months after it received a strategic investment led by HashKey Capital. The startup did not disclose its valuation and the total funding it has raised so far. In 2022, Carv was valued at roughly $40 million when it raised a seed round led by Temasek’s VC arm, Vertex Ventures.”
Next TV reports: “Heading into the upfronts, Warner Bros. Discovery said it launched Olli, a first-party data platform advertiser can use for converged, targeted advertising campaigns. Media agencies IPG Mediabrands, OMG and RPA and retailer Wayfair are the first to use the platform, which enables campaign planning activation and measurement across Warner Bros. Discovery’s portfolio of content and brands, the company said.”
Hypebot reports: “Meta shared some stats on the 3.24 billion people using its family of apps daily, a total that is up 7% year over year. Threads has become a true X/Twitter competitor with 150 million active monthly users. Multiple music marketers tell us they’ve added Threads to their social mix with worthwhile results.”
Music Business Worldwide reports: “Music data company Luminate, which collects the data used in Billboard charts, has formed a new partnership with indie record store groups in an effort to diffuse a controversy over how it collects information on sales of physical music. Under the new partnership, which launched on April 19, Luminate collects data on physical music sales, including vinyl, CDs and cassettes, from StreetPulse, a music data company that receives daily sales metrics directly from stores.”
