A good music producer facilitates a studio environment that allows an artist to plunge into the depths of their soul, and cleverly shapes the sound of their music – a bad one, meanwhile, can halt a promising career. But in 2023, 70 years on from the dawn of rock’n’roll, this tremendous power still lies in the hands of an overwhelming majority of men.
For years, TikTok has told lawmakers that the private data of its U.S. users is secured — and safe from potential influence or exfiltration — in a cluster of data centers located in Northern Virginia.
But interviews with seven current and former employees and more than 60 documents, photos and videos from the data centers reveal that the centers have faced security vulnerabilities ranging from unmarked flash drives plugged into servers to unescorted visitors to boxes of hard drives left unattended in hallways. Sources suggest that these challenges are the result of TikTok trying to grow its data storage capacity very quickly, and sometimes cutting corners along the way.
Documents, photos, and interviews also suggest that TikTok’s data center operations are still tightly enmeshed with ByteDance’s business in China. Among other suppliers, the data centers use servers produced by Inspur, a company that the Pentagon said in 2020 was controlled by the Chinese military and that the Commerce Department added to a sanctions list last month. Documents also show that as recently as last week, server work orders were sent to data center technicians by Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd., a ByteDance subsidiary partially owned by the Chinese government, which TikTok has repeatedly insisted has no control over its operations.
The track, heart on my sleeve, credited to the ‘artist’ ghostwriter, has racked up more than 230,000 plays on YouTube, and more than 625,000 plays on Spotify.
In addition to AI-replicated vocals of Drake, the track – a seemingly original composition – also features AI-replicated vocals of The Weeknd’s voice.
Both Drake and The Weeknd release their (real life) records via UMG and its Republic Records.
Said UMG in a statement to MBW in the wake of today’s news: “UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already.
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
In which I have my first exchange with ChatGPT about Spotify royalties.
you know, you're right. Spotify royalties are much more difficult than solving for π. We'll be quoting you, thank you for that clarification. https://t.co/bkYUlIXInN
[It is not enough for a Silicon Valley company to have a good idea or a compelling product or service. No, no–like Elizabeth Holmes the convicted felon, or Google, who probably should be convicted felons, these people have to convince themselves that they are saving the world. Literally. This is true no matter how ordinary their accomplishments.
Like the self-hypnotist, they convince themselves that their powers of commerce are transcendent and otherworldly. History begins with them. Never should their revelatory accomplishments be compared to building a better mousetrap.
Spotify is no different, and they will damn well prove that their mission statement has no less than the predictive power of the oracle of Balaam. But of course they fail, flesh and blood being what it is in this time before the Singularity.
Tim Ingham fries up Spotify’s “mission statement” in this must read expose. But realize this–you can rest assured that if Daniel Ek didn’t write this claptrap himself, he definitely must have approved it. So if you ever wondered whether Ek had a grip on reality, it appears that his grip is weak. But you know, in the beginning was the word, et cetera, et cetera.]
In Spotify’s words, Loud & Clear exists for one reason above any other: “[To] provide a valuable foundation for a constructive conversation”.
Thing is, it’s not the surface-level data on Loud & Clear – the data that Spotify wants you to pay attention to – that makes for the most “constructive conversation” about the music industry and where it’s headed.
To get to the good stuff, you’ve got to dig a little deeper than that….
Taken at face value, these figures point to the ever-widening base of artists earning decent payouts from the world’s largest subscription streaming platform.
Spotify obviously likes that narrative a lot. As its Loud & Clear site boasts: “More artists are sharing in today’s thriving music economy compared to the peak of the CD era.”
Thing is, any half-credible analysis of these numbers has to take into account how they’ve changed over time.
And when we start treading this path, these figures begin to take on a different nature – one that flies in the face of Spotify’s wonderfully earnest, but laughably silly, mission statement.
Artist Rights Watch--News for the Artist Rights Advocacy Community 