Today, YouTube announced major changes to its YouTube Partner Program, allowing creators to earn ad revenue on Shorts, its TikTok competitor. TechCrunch reports: Now, Shorts creators can qualify for the Partner Program, which allows creators to earn ad revenue from YouTube. The existing Partner Program requires YouTubers to have over 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last year. Now, Shorts creators can join the Partner Program if they have at least 10 million views on the platform over the last 90 days. As members of the Partner Program, these creators will earn 45% of ad revenue from their videos.

"I'm proud to say this is the first time real revenue sharing is being offered for short form video on any platform at scale," said YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan. He's right. TikTok has started experimenting with ad revenue sharing, but its efforts seem to focus more on the advertiser than the creator, as only the top 4% of all videos on TikTok can be monetized through its TikTok Pulse program. For the most part, creators have found it increasingly difficult to make money from TikTok's Creator Fund. [...]

YouTube Shorts is poised to become TikTok's biggest competitor. If creators can make more money on Shorts than on TikTok, then they're incentivized to make original content for the YouTube platform. YouTube also shared that this update to the Partner Program will enable the platform to license more music for use in Shorts, which could help encourage creators to use Shorts more often. Creators in the program will be compensated the same, regardless of whether they use licensed music. YouTube also unveiled Creator Music, now in beta testing. Creators can browse a large catalog of songs to purchase for use in their content, with the terms of the music rights spelled out in simple terms. They'll also be able to opt for tracks with new revenue-sharing option where both creators and music rights holders earn money from their content.

Since January 1, 2009, Jonathan Mann has written an original song every day and shared it online. Starting as an unemployed 26-year-old, Mann remembers in an online video that "I made my living entering video contests — I'd submit to 12 of them in 12 days, win one or two, and that was my income for the month."

But Mann released that video after song #4,000, reflecting that "A bunch of videos went viral. I released eight albums. In 2016 I got the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days writing a song. And I've carved out this living delivering keynotes at conferences all over the world — as well as watching all the other talks then getting up at the end to sing a song that recaps everything."

And now 13 years, 8 months, and 9 days after he first began, "I have officially written 5000 songs in 5000 days," Mann announced Friday on Twitter — sharing a special 5,000th song including singing appearances from 112 of his listeners. Mann still shares his videos free online — but for four years, Mann has also been auctioning the songs as NFTs living on the Ethereum blockchain. (By Friday night someone had bid 5 ETH -- about $1,700 -- for song #5,000. And the NFTs also confer membership status for the decentralized autonomous organization, SongADAO).

Mann also writes songs on commission on a "pay-what-you-feel" basis, and has even written songs for companies like SquareSpace and OKCupid. ("Most businesses pay between $2000 and $5000 for a song and a video.") Once Steve Jobs even opened Apple's press conference about its iPhone antennas dropping phone calls by playing one of Mann's satirical songs.

"I saw that on YouTube this morning, and couldn't help but want to share it," Steve Jobs said, according to this 2017 summation of Mann's other wacky career highlights: On day #202, he won a $500 American Express gift card in a jingle contest held by Microsoft for the launch of their Bing search engine. When TechCrunch quipped that Bing had succeeded "in finding the worst jingle ever," Mann responded with a second song — setting TechCrunch's article to music (along with a speculative interior monologue which Mann acknowledges is "completely made up.")

Mann later admitted that his jingle was the worst song he'd recorded that July. ("I wrote it in 10 minutes ...") And his worst song that October was a related song that he'd written when "I received an email from Microsoft of a video showing middle-school kids in Pennsylvania singing and dancing to my Bing song."

"I was horrified. Don't get me wrong, the kids were adorable, but Bing? What had I created!?"

But he was honored when the kids told him they'd enjoyed dancing to his song, and when they asked for one about their own school, Mann obliged.

When Steve Wozniak turned 60, Mann was ready with a musical tribute — Song #588, "That's Just Woz...."

And in January of 2011, as the world learned Jobs had taken an indefinite medical leave of absence, Mann released song #753: Get Better, Steve Jobs...

Mann's duet with Siri earned over 1,609,675 views....

On Day #810 Mann convinced his girlfriend Ivory to sing the other half of a duet called "Vegan Myths Debunked." They'd apparently been dating for a year before he started his song-a-day project. But after four more years, on Day #1,435, Mann and his girlfriend Ivory decided to break up — and released a music video about it....

And in 2014, on day 1,951, Mann's wife gave birth to his son Jupiter....

Day #2000, in June of 2014, Mann answered questions from Reddit users, answering every question with a song....

At a speaking engagement, he offered his own perspective on time: "100 days went by, a year went by, a thousand days went by. At a certain point, it just becomes a part of my life. And so that's how I stand before you now having written 2,082 songs in as many days."

As the audience applauds, he segues into his larger message, "I'm happiest when I'm making."
The article closes by quoting the song Mann wrote on Day #2001 — for a video which included part of every one of the 1,999 previous videos, in a spectacular montage called "2000 Songs in 2000 Days...."

"And I will sing until I'm all out of breath. And the color of the sun is a dark, dark red. And the governments will fall. And we'll sing until it hurts. And we'll ring forever through the universe."

The video ends with a personal message from Mann himself.

"Make something every day," it urges in big letters.

"Just start. I believe in you."

Apple has officially announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. In the first big display redesign since Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017, both handsets have a new pill-shaped cutout that replaces the notch and can adjust dynamically. Both devices also have a faster A16 Bionic chip and an always-on display. From a report: Apple CEO Tim Cook calls the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max the "most innovative pro lineup yet." The iPhone 14 Pro will start at $999, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Both will be available for preorder on September 9th and available in stores on September 16th. The first notable design change with the iPhone 14 Pro models is the display. While Apple will offer the usual 6.1- and 6.7-inch options, the notch is being replaced by a pill-shaped cutout that will house the Face ID components and a second circular cutout for the front-facing camera. Apple has moved the proximity sensor behind the display, and notifications will now pop out of the notch in an animation. Apple calls this system the Dynamic Island. Notifications and alerts will adapt and move around the pill-shaped notch, and Apple is really leaning into how it animates and uses the system for new notifications. Apple demonstrated a variety of ways the Dynamic Island will animate and work in practice, including live activity widgets coming to life and animations and controls for music. When you swipe to go home, background tasks like music playback will move to the island.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A high-profile push by Congress to rein in the nation's biggest internet companies is at risk of failing with time running out to pass major legislation ahead of midterm elections. Alphabet's Google, Apple, Amazon.com and Meta and their trade groups have poured almost $95 million into lobbying since 2021 as they seek to derail the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which has advanced further than any US legislative effort to address the market power of some of the world's richest companies. After a nearly two-year battle, the bill is now at a critical juncture as the Senate returns this week for a final stretch before the November midterms. Backers of the measure swear they have the necessary votes, yet it's unclear if they do, and the Senate will be busy with other must-pass spending legislation.

Although clipping the wings of tech giants through antitrust reform had support from both Republicans and Democrats during this Congress, a likely GOP majority in the House next year is expected to focus on allegations that internet platforms squelch conservative viewpoints. That's why tech lobbyists have been trying to run out the clock. Leading Republicans like California's Kevin McCarthy, who is on track to become Speaker under a GOP majority, have publicly opposed the antitrust push. The legislation's sponsors can see the window narrowing. Antitrust advocates were expecting a vote before Congress adjourned for four weeks in August. But Schumer told donors in July that it didn't have enough votes to pass.

The bill has 13 co-sponsors in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and be sent to the House. Supporters like Yelp's head of public policy Luther Lowe, a longtime Google critic, argue that enough undecided lawmakers would vote for the measure if it came to the floor. A Schumer spokesperson said he's working with the bill's sponsors to find the necessary votes and he still plans to bring it to the floor. The bill was approved by both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on strong bipartisan votes. Several amendments have addressed concerns about privacy and security issues. What hasn't killed the bill "has made it stronger," said Yelp's Lowe. The measure seeks to restrict the companies from favoring their own products, so that competitors who depend on these platforms to reach consumers wouldn't be at a disadvantage. That could impact the design of Google Maps, the display of Apple Music on an iPhone or the prominence of Amazon Basics on the company's e-commerce site. "I don't see it going to the floor," said Michael Petricone, senior vice president of government affairs at the Consumer Technology Association, a trade group that counts Amazon, Google and Facebook among its members. "With an election coming up, I expect senators to come back and focus on issues that are popular with voters. Tech regulation is not one of those issues."

A jeweler. A plastic surgeon. An OnlyFans Model. They and others received a blue check in likely the biggest Instagram verification scheme revealed to date. After ProPublica started asking questions, Meta removed badges from over 300 accounts. From a report: To his more than 150,000 followers on Instagram, Dr. Martin Jugenburg is Real Dr. 6ix, a well-coiffed Toronto plastic surgeon posting images and video of his work sculpting the decolletage, tucking the tummies and lifting the faces of his primarily female clientele.

Jugenburg's physician-influencer tendencies led to a six-month suspension of his Ontario medical license in 2021 after he admitted to filming patient interactions and sharing images of procedures without consent. He apologized for the lapse and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from female patients who say their privacy was violated. But on Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, and in roughly a dozen sponsored posts scattered across the web, Jugenburg's career and controversial history was eclipsed by a new identity. On those platforms, he was DJ Dr. 6ix, a house music producer who's celebrated for his "inherent instinctual ability for music composition" and who "assures his followers that his music is absolutely unique." It's an unconvincing persona -- perhaps even less so once his "music" is played. But it was enough to secure what he wanted: a verification badge for his Instagram account.

The coveted blue tick can be difficult to obtain and is supposed to assure that anyone who bears one is who they claim to be. A ProPublica investigation determined that Jugenburg's dubious alter ego was created as part of what appears to be the largest Instagram account verification scheme ever uncovered. With a generous greasing of cash, the operation transformed hundreds of clients into musical artists in an attempt to trick Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, into verifying their accounts and hopefully paving the way to lucrative endorsements and a coveted social status. Since at least 2021, at least hundreds of people -- including jewelers, crypto entrepreneurs, OnlyFans models and reality show TV stars -- were clients of a scheme to get improperly verified as musicians on Instagram, according to the investigation's findings and information from Meta.

Twitter has launched a test version of Twitter Spaces today that includes podcasts, "letting you listen to full shows through curated playlists based on your interests," reports The Verge. From the report: The redesigned Spaces tab opens with Stations, topic-based playlists combining podcast episodes pulled from RSS with Twitter's social audio events and recordings. It functions like a Pandora station but for spoken word and is pretty different from the a la carte listening podcast consumers are used to on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Live and upcoming spaces are still in the tab, further down the page. The test will roll out to a random group of users across the world, initially only in English. The more users listen, the more tailored the audio Stations will become. But Twitter isn't starting from square one -- the company is relying on what it already knows about its users' interests to curate the playlists. It'll draw from the interests of people they follow, as well.

"What we're really trying to capture here is as if it's like another user recommending you something," Twitter senior product manager Evan Jones, who focuses on audio, told Hot Pod. Podcast discovery is notoriously difficult, limited either to top 100 charts, hand-picked selections on apps, or -- more often than not -- word of mouth. No platform has managed to crack it, yet. It's easy to imagine the promotional possibilities around being able to share and listen to podcasts in the same app, but it's not quite there yet. The test does not yet have a clipping capability, and listening can only happen in the Spaces tab, not on the timeline. That being said, Spaces has a clipping feature that could be applied to podcasts at some point.

The first fruit of YouTube's new podcast strategy has taken shape with a new "Explore" page "Podcasts." 9to5Google reports: youtube.com/podcasts is now live and is linked to on the existing Explore page alongside: Trending, Music, Movies & Shows, Live, Gaming, News, Sports, Learning, and Fashion & Beauty. It appears to have first gone live in late July, and is slowly becoming more widely available as it's not showing up for all users we checked with today. Available on desktop web and mobile, it's very rudimentary at this point. There are carousels, which can be expanded via "Show all," for "Popular episodes," "Popular podcast playlists," "Recommended," and "Popular podcast creators." The rest of this page links to various categories: Comedy, True Crime, Sports, Music, and TV & Film.

You're just browsing through regular video thumbnails rather than anything more optimized. Meanwhile, tapping one just opens the regular player on Android, and doesn't even default to the "Listening controls" available for YouTube Premium subscribers. You get large buttons and shortcuts to like, save, and quickly adjust playback speed. The podcast experience for end users will presumably get more optimized over time, while it remains to be seen what the UI in YouTube Music is going to be.

The ubiquitous device is becoming a shop window for the firm's services. From a report: As it dreams up more gadgets to sell to more people, however, Apple is employing another strategy in parallel. The company has so far put 1.8bn devices in the pockets and on the desks of some of the world's most affluent consumers. Now it is selling access to those customers to other companies, and persuading those who own its devices to sign up to its own subscription services. As Luca Maestri, Apple's chief financial officer, said on a recent earnings call, the Apple devices in circulation represent "a big engine for our services business." The strategy is picking up speed. Last year services brought in $68bn in revenue, or 19% of Apple's total. That is double the share in 2015. In the latest quarter services' share was even higher, at 24%. Apple doesn't break down where the money comes from, but the biggest chunk is reckoned to be fees from its app store, which amounted to perhaps $25bn last year, according to Sensor Tower, a data provider.

The next-biggest part is probably the payment from Google for the right to be Apple devices' default search engine. This was $10bn in 2020; analysts believe the going rate now is nearer $20bn. Apple's fast-growing advertising business -- mainly selling search ads in its app store -- will bring in nearly $7bn this year, reckons eMarketer, another research firm. Most of the rest comes from a range of subscription services: iCloud storage, Apple Music and Apple Care insurance are probably the biggest, estimates Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. More recent ventures like Apple tv+, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade and Apple Pay make up the rest. New services keep popping up. Last November Apple launched a subscription product for small companies called Apple Business Essentials, offering tech support, device management and so on. In June it announced a "buy now, pay later" service. The company claims a total of 860m active paid subscriptions, nearly a quarter more than it had a year ago.

Apple: Shazam turns 20 today, and as of this week, it has officially surpassed 70 billion song recognitions. A mainstay in popular culture, the platform has changed the way people engage with music by making song identification accessible to everyone. For more than 225 million global monthly users, to "Shazam" is to discover something new. [...] With its continued commitment to innovation over the past two decades, Shazam is pioneering new ways to bring fans closer to the music and artists they love with new tools like the concert discovery feature, which spotlights concert information and tickets on sale for shows nearby, simply by Shazaming a song, or by searching for it in the Shazam app or website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It sounds like something out of an urban legend: Some Windows XP-era laptops using 5400 RPM spinning hard drives can allegedly be forced to crash when exposed to Janet Jackson's 1989 hit "Rhythm Nation." But Microsoft Software Engineer Raymond Chen stands by the story in a blog post published earlier this week, and the vulnerability has been issued an official CVE ID by The Mitre Corporation, lending it more credibility. According to Chen, CVE-2022-38392 was originally discovered by "a major computer manufacturer," and it can affect not just the laptop playing the song but adjacent laptops from other PC companies as well.

The specific hard drive model at issue -- again from an unnamed manufacturer -- would crash because "Rhythm Nation" used some of the same "natural resonant frequencies" that the drives used, interfering with their operation. Anyone trying to independently recreate this problem will face several obstacles, including the age of the laptops involved and a total lack of specificity about the hard drives or computer models. The CVE entry mentions "a certain 5400 RPM OEM hard drive, as shipped with laptop PCs in approximately 2005" and links back to Chen's post as a primary source. And while some Windows XP-era laptop hard drives may still be kicking out there somewhere, after almost two decades, it's more likely that most of them have died of natural causes. The PC manufacturer was able to partially resolve the issue "by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playbanck," says Chen. However, these HDDs would still crash if they were exposed to another device that was playing the song.

"Need an easy way to make $23 million?" asks Mashable.

"Have you ever considered just claiming music others uploaded to YouTube as your own and collecting the royalties? That's basically all two Phoenix men did to swindle Latin music artists like Daddy Yankee and Julio Iglesias out of millions of dollars in royalties, as detailed in a new piece from Billboard last week.

According to Kristin Robinson of Billboard, Jose "Chenel" Medina Teran and Webster Batista set up a media company called MediaMuv and claimed to own the rights to various Latin music songs and compositions. In total, MediaMuv claimed to own more than 50,000 copyrights since 2017, when Teran and Batista began their scheme.

In order for MediaMuv to claim these copyrights and collect royalties through YouTube's Content ID system, the fraudulent company needed to partner with AdRev, a third-party company that has access to YouTube's CMS and Content ID tools and helps artists manage their digital copyrights. MediaMuv created a few fake documents and provided AdRev with this paperwork in order to prove ownership over the music it claimed. From there, AdRev not only helped MediaMuv collect royalties for those copyrights but also provided Terana and Batista with direct access to YouTube's CMS so they could claim copyrights on its own.

Teran and Batista's four-year-long royalties heist came to an end late last year following an investigation from the IRS. According to Billboard, the two were indicted on "30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft."
Mashable calls it "a huge reminder that online copyright is deeply flawed..."

"[J]ust think about how many more careful scammers are still skimming royalties off of an untold number of artists."

Tim Culpan, writing at Bloomberg: As Washington embarks on a multi-billion dollar, decade-long semiconductor development campaign, Beijing is reckoning with its own 20-year effort that's largely failed to deliver. Both will need to grapple with wasted funds and misguided goals as they play catch-up to Taiwan and South Korea. Architects of China's ambitious efforts may be facing the music for having not produced world-beating technology, Bloomberg News reported this week. Multiple corruption probes announced by authorities stem from anger among the nation's top leaders over an inability to develop semiconductors that could replace American components, it reported. Two of the most scrutinized areas are the $9 billion bailout of Tsinghua Unigroup Co., and the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund -- known as the Big Fund.

For all intents and purposes, China has failed to achieve its semiconductor goals, and those tasked with realizing them are being brought to account. Beijing won't be smarting at the loss of money -- it's been willing to burn cash -- but at the lack of progress such expenditure was supposed to buy. Those looking at China's achievements are mostly finding what they seek, and ignoring the rest. Semiconductor Manufacturing International, for example, got a lot of attention recently when industry analysts TechInsights wrote: "SMIC has been able to fabricate features that are small enough to be considered 7nm."

As first reported by Music Ally, Spotify is testing a new website to sell tickets directly to fans, "rather than just linking to external ticketing firms." From the report: For now, this is strictly a test rather than a full commercial launch. It kicks off [August 10] with a small number of artists, with pre-sale tickets available to fans through Spotify's app and a newly-launched tickets.spotify.com website. The test is happening in the US, with Annie DiRusso, Tokimonsta, Osees, Dirty Honey, Limbeck, Crows and Four Years Strong the first artists confirmed for the initiative. The tickets will come from those artists' pre-sale allocations for upcoming concerts.

Don't get carried away with any 'Spotify takes on Ticketmaster' hyperbole just yet. The company is making it very clear that this is just a test for now, and that it's focused on pre-sales rather than primary ticketing. [...] The theory behind the test kicking off this week is to find out whether Spotify can both widen its involvement in pre-sales while selling the tickets directly. We would expect that to include a share of the revenues, although Spotify declined to give any details of the business model. There's another obvious motivation behind the test. Pre-sales of their own allocations can be an important income stream for artists, so if Spotify can help them do it, that could be a reputation-booster at a time of renewed debate (alright: big arguments) about musicians' streaming royalties.

If Spotify can also become one of the ways artists ensure their tickets go to genuine fans rather than touts -- resales are not allowed in the test -- that could also be positive. And in this case, Spotify has the data to prove whether ticket buyers are genuine fans: their listening history. Important caveat: there's no suggestion at this point that Spotify will use this data as a barrier to purchase, in a 'you can't buy this artist's pre-sale ticket because you haven't streamed them enough' way. We're imagining something else: options for artists to promote their native-Spotify pre-sales to their biggest listeners in the cities / regions where the concerts are happening.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner and avid crypto enthusiast, is not sold on the metaverse. "The worst part is that people are buying real estate in these places. That's just the dumbest shit ever," he told the crypto-themed YouTube channel Altcoin Daily this past weekend. From a report: Cuban's comments come as the hype surrounding the metaverse -- a term that loosely describes an emerging virtual world where people can hang out, play, and shop -- seems to be cooling. Last November, Facebook changed its name to Meta, spurring a flurry of excitement about the potential of the metaverse, which fueled a land grab for digital plots in so-called metaverse platforms created by the likes of the Sandbox and Decentraland.

These platforms enable investors to buy land as an NFT, which can be developed with virtual buildings or experiences or resold on secondary markets like NFT exchange OpenSea. Companies like Warner Music Group, Atari, Samsung, and Adidas have all bought digital land -- a move that Cuban, based on his latest comments, appears unlikely to follow. Cuban also isn't buying the central claim of metaverse land speculators that scarcity will make these digital plots valuable. "It's not even as good as a URL or an ENS [Ethereum naming service], because there's unlimited volumes that you can create," he said during the YouTube interview. Despite being an investor in Yuga Labs, the owner of popular NFT collections Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, Cuban said he was not a fan of the company's land sale, which raised about $317 million for its metaverse platform Otherside in April. "I still thought it was dumb to do the real estate. That was great money for them, you know, but that wasn't based off a utility," he said.

Walmart has held discussions with major media companies about including streaming entertainment in its membership service, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing three people with knowledge of the conversations, part of an effort to extend its relationship with customers beyond its brick-and-mortar stores. From a report: In recent weeks, executives from Paramount, Disney and Comcast have spoken with Walmart, the people said, as the retailer ponders which movies and TV shows would add the most value to its membership bundle, called Walmart+. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private. It is unclear whether any of the streaming companies are inclined to reach a deal with Walmart. Disney operates the Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu streaming services; Comcast owns the Peacock streaming service; and Paramount runs the Paramount+ and Showtime services.

A Walmart+ membership, which costs $12.95 per month, includes free shipping on orders and discounts on fuel. It also includes a free six-month subscription to the Spotify Premium music service. As the streaming field gets more crowded, the biggest media companies have turned to giants in other industries to find new subscribers. Wireless providers like Verizon and T-Mobile have struck deals to offer their customers free or discounted subscriptions to streaming services like Disney+ or Paramount+ as an extra incentive to sign up. Media companies, in turn, receive an influx of new customers whose subscriptions are subsidized by their wireless partner.

How some people tricked Google into getting their own knowledge panels and fooled Amazon-owned IMDb into believing they are top stars in dozens of movies. From a report: I was casually browsing IMDb when I landed on the page for an upcoming Ranbir Kapoor starrer movie "Animal." I saw the cast details and I found a face and a name I didn't recognize. Finding out about this guy led me to a whole new world of how so many young Indian men from small towns are gaming the system to manufacture their own fake online clout. So who is this guy? I had not heard of him before and he is named in the "Top cast" category for this movie, alongside Indian actor Ranbir Kapoor. According to his IMDb page, he has acting credits in some big-budget productions. I am beginning to suspect that this could be a case of IMDb vandalism. IMDb allows anyone to add and edit pages. They don't allow you to see the edit history of a page though like Wikipedia and evidently, the edits are not reviewed effectively either.

I googled this guy. Wow, so Google has a knowledge panel on him. There are also links to his music on various music platforms. Okay, so probably he is pretending to be an actor on IMDb but according to his google search results, he is actually a legit musician? Skimming through the search results, I found biographies written about him on a few websites of doubtful credibility. Like this one on a website called issuewire.com. I looked at his YouTube and other social media profiles and he doesn't have a lot of followers or any music content on there. I shazamed a couple of his songs and they're just copies of existing random music mashed together with some audio editing tool like Audacity. Possibly to avoid getting copyright notices. Hmm. I think I am now beginning to get a clearer picture of what's going on here.

He set up a profile on a bunch of different music streaming platforms. Uploaded remixed mash-up of existing songs using some audio editing software. Published biographies and profiles about himself on sites that do not verify submissions. Set up an IMDb page with fake credits. All this to trick google into believing he is a person of eminence. [...] I went back to his IMDb and checked the cast details of some of the movies he is part of. And I found a few dozen profiles with the exact same modus operandi.

Winamp, the premiere music player of the late 1990s and early 2000s that was acquired by Radionomy from AOL in 2014, has received a major new update for the first time in four years. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Ars Technica: The release notes for Winamp 5.9 RC1 Build 1999 say that the update represents four years of work across two separate development teams, delayed in between by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the work done in this build focuses on behind-the-scenes work that modernizes the codebase, which means it still looks and acts like a turn-of-the-millennium Windows app. The entire project has been migrated from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2019, a wide range of audio codecs have been updated to more modern versions, and support for Windows 11 and https streams have both been improved.

The final release will be version 5.9, with some features targeted for release in version 5.9.1 "and beyond" (version 6.0 goes unmentioned). It requires Windows 7 SP1 or newer, dropping support for Windows XP. That said, in our limited testing the "new" Winamp is still in many ways an ancient app, one not made for the age of high-resolution, high-density displays. This may cause usability problems, depending on what you're trying to run it on. But hey, for all you people out there still trying to keep hope alive, it's nice to see something on Winamp.com that isn't a weird NFT project and a promise of updates yet to come.

SoundCloud CEO Michael Weissman told employees in an email that the company "will be making reductions to our global team that will impact up to 20% of our company."

"Making changes that affect people is incredibly hard. But it is one that is necessary given the challenging economic climate and financial market headwinds," he added. "Today's change positions SoundCloud for the long run and puts us on a path to sustained profitability. We have already begun to make prudent financial decisions across the company and that now extends to a reduction to our team." Billboard reports: In a statement, a rep for SoundCloud confirmed that the company "announced an approximate 20% reduction of its global workforce due to a significant company transformation and the challenging economic and financial environment." "During this difficult time," the rep added, "we are focused on providing the support and resources to those transitioning while reinforcing our commitment to executing our mission to lead what's next in music." Back in 2017, the company cut around 40% of its workforce, which then-CEO Alex Ljung said was necessary for the company to "control" its "independent future."

Billboard notes that SoundCloud has moved towards profitability in the five years since. "The company obtained a $170 million infusion led by The Raine Group and Temasek and a $75 million investment from Pandora parent SiriusXM." This led to SoundCloud announcing its first profitable quarter in 2020. Earlier this year, the company said its annual revenue run rate was around $300 million.

Crunchyroll announced that it's acquired Right Stuf, one of the world's leading online anime superstores. "Expanding Crunchyroll's eCommerce offerings, the acquisition aims to serve anime fans and collectors an even wider array of merchandise for online purchase including manga, home video, figures, games, music and everything in between," writes the company in a post. From the report: Founded in 1987, Right Stuf is a leading consumer source for anime pop culture merchandise online. By visiting its eCommerce portal, enthusiasts and collectors can find thousands of products, including Blu-rays, manga books, music, figurines, collectables, and more. Right Stuf also offers licensed anime home video products through its own label.

"For 35 years, Right Stuf's mission has been to connect anime fans with the products they love," said Shawne Kleckner, CEO of Right Stuf. "Joining forces with Crunchyroll allows us to accelerate and scale this effort more than ever before. There has never been a more exciting time to be an anime fan than today!" Kleckner and the Right Stuf team will join Crunchyroll's Emerging Businesses organization, led by Terry Li. Sony acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175 billion from AT&T, in a deal that closed in August 2021.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications has agreed to settle piracy lawsuits filed by the major record labels, which accused the cable Internet provider of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who illegally download copyrighted songs. Sony, Universal, Warner, and their various subsidiaries sued Charter in US District Court in Colorado in March 2019 in a suit that claimed the ISP helps subscribers pirate music by selling packages with higher Internet speeds. They filed another lawsuit against Charter in the same court in August 2021.

Both cases were settled. The record labels and Charter told the court of their settlements on Tuesday in filings (PDF) that said (PDF), "The Parties hereby notify the Court that they have resolved the above-captioned action." Upon the settlements, the court vacated the pending trials and asked the parties to submit dismissal papers within 28 days. Charter subsidiary Bright House Networks also settled (PDF) a similar lawsuit in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida this week. The record labels' case in Florida was settled one day before a scheduled trial, as TorrentFreak reported Tuesday. The case was dismissed with prejudice (PDF) after the settlement.

No details on any of the settlements were given in the documents notifying the courts. A three-week jury trial in one of the Colorado cases was scheduled to begin in June 2023 but is no longer needed. The question for Internet users is whether the settlements mean that Charter will be more aggressive in terminating subscribers who illegally download copyrighted material. Charter declined to comment today when we asked if it agreed to increase account terminations of subscribers accused of piracy. "Even if the settlements have no specific provision on terminating subscribers, Charter presumably has to pay the record labels to settle the claims," adds Ars' Jon Brodkin. "That could make the country's second-biggest ISP more likely to terminate subscribers accused of piracy in order to prevent future lawsuits."