Nintendo has released a new app designed to delight gaming fans who have embraced the music featured in popular games such as “Super Mario Bros.,” “The Legend of Zelda” or “Pokémon.” Nintendo Music parses nearly 40 years of musical history from the Japanese gamemaker, available free via the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service on iOS and Android. Users can stream songs or download for offline listening, building their own playlists to share or accessing Nintendo-curated programming. Recommendations will propagate based on a fan’s Nintendo Switch play activity. Continue reading Nintendo Music Debuts with 40 Years of Tunes for Switch Subs

Google announced it is rolling out its Gemini AI-powered video presentation app that enables users to easily create video presentations. Vids is a productivity app featured in the company’s suite of Google Workspace products. The new app uses AI model Gemini to automatically insert royalty-free stock video footage, create storyboards and scripts, and generate music and voiceovers. It allows users to add documents, slides, visuals, audio and transitions to the presentation’s timeline. “Personalize your content with Vids recording studio to deliver employee training, share company-wide announcements, meeting updates, and more,” suggests Google. Continue reading Google Offers New AI-Powered Vids App to Workspace Users

In a move that may appeal to music fans as well as marketing professionals, ByteDance-owned video platform TikTok just announced the availability of a new promotional feature called “Share to TikTok” that enables users to share music, podcasts and audiobooks from Apple Music and Spotify to TikTok, directly from the share menus of the streaming services. Content shared to TikTok will feature links directing users to the original sources to foster discovery and engagement on the partnering services. The new feature follows the launch of “Add to Music App,” a tool for users to save songs they discover on the TikTok app to their streaming service of choice. Continue reading TikTok Introduces New Feature to Share and Promote Music

Apple is giving bands the opportunity to turn their concert repertoires into Apple Music playlists with the Set List feature, which lets fans savor the live concert experience. Powered by Bandsintown, Set List enables artists to turn the songs from a single show, residency or tour into a playlist that in addition to being shared on Apple Music can be displayed on music app Shazam (Artist and Concert pages). Once a Set List is published, artists can use the Promote feature from the web or the Artists app on iOS to share the playlist with fans on social media. Continue reading Apple Helps Bands Promote Live Performances with ‘Set Lists’

Qobuz, an audio platform in operation since 2007 that has been growing in popularity worldwide, recently added the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) and Digital eXtreme Definition (DXD) audio formats as download options in its online store. Described as the ultimate in hi-res digital audio capture and playback, the two are not commonly offered. And while there is not yet a large catalog of songs, audiophiles welcome the news as a harbinger of things to come. Qobuz has already added about 22,500 mainly DSD tracks to its catalog of more than 100 million songs, and says there are more on tap. Continue reading Qobuz Queues Up Hi-Resolution DSD and DXD Music Tracks

California-based Ticketmaster, part of Live Nation Entertainment, is the first company to enable new iOS 18 Apple Wallet event features that offer venue maps, parking details, recommended playlists from Apple Music, local weather and links to purchase merchandise, as well as location sharing to help find friends on arrival to live events. Venues and teams can also customize the Ticketmaster experience with links to their app or website so fans can get information about their events from Apple Wallet tickets. The app debuts with the Los Angeles Football Club home game at BMO Stadium on October 19. Continue reading Ticketmaster Debuts Apple Wallet iOS 18 Features for Events

Hailuo, the free text-to-video generator released last month by the Alibaba-backed company MiniMax, has delivered its promised image-to-video feature. Founded by AI researcher Yan Junjie, the Shanghai-based MiniMax also has backing from Tencent. The model earned high marks for what has been called “ultra realistic” video, and MiniMax says the new image-to-video feature will improve output across the board as a result of “text-and-image joint instruction following,” which means Hailuo now “seamlessly integrates both text and image command inputs, enhancing your visuals while precisely adhering to your prompts.” Continue reading MiniMax’s Hailuo AI Rolls Out New Image-to-Video Capability

Meta Platforms has unveiled Movie Gen, a new family of AI models that generates video and audio content. Coming to Instagram next year, Movie Gen also allows a high degree of editing and effects customization using text prompts. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated its abilities last week in an example shared on his Instagram account, where he sends a leg press machine at the gym through transformations as a steam punk machine and one made of molten gold. The models have been trained on a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets. Continue reading Meta’s Movie Gen Model is a Powerful Content Creation Tool

YouTube is introducing AI detection tools designed to allow people to learn when their face and/or voice are copied and used in third-party videos. As part of the effort, YouTube’s existing Content ID program that protects copyrighted music will expand to include more broad-based voice simulation detection technology. The new tools aim to protect “people from a variety of industries — from creators and actors to musicians and athletes,” according to the company. The Google-owned platform is also coming up with a way to address unauthorized use of its content for training AI models. Continue reading YouTube Adding Tools to Protect Against Unauthorized AI Use

Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing will be investigated, pledged UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Lisa Nandy in response to protests by thousands of disappointed fans who failed to secure tickets to the Oasis reunion tour. Fans waiting in online Ticketmaster queues saw prices shoot up by as much as £200 before they were able to make a purchase. Thousands more reportedly couldn’t even access the site to buy tickets, resorting instead to ticket-resale sites in what is being described as the biggest concert debacle since Taylor Swift fans were frustrated by their attempts to use the service to purchase 2023 Eras Tour tickets. Continue reading Concert Ticket Dynamic Pricing Draws UK Government Scrutiny

Musician and tech entrepreneur will.i.am is launching an interactive radio service built around conversational AI. Called RAiDiO.FYI, the service lets listeners talk to artificial intelligence serving as DJs as part of a one-on-one exchange designed as a personalized listening experience. RAiDiO.FYI’s AI DJs are trained to converse about topics ranging from music to sports, weather and breaking news. The new service is an offshoot of the performer’s FYI.AI, a platform of digital tools for artists. Users can access RAiDiO.FYI for free on the FYI app for iPhone and Android. Continue reading Will.i.am Launches AI-Powered Interactive Service RAiDiO.FYI

Tidal — the music streaming service owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block payment processing company — is launching a royalty-tracking toolkit for songwriters. The new feature lets authors organize disparate publisher information in one place. “Songwriters juggle a mix of collection societies, publishing platforms, royalty management services, streaming services, and single-purpose apps to manage their royalties, careers, and catalog,” explains the company, which claims to be the first platform to serve songwriters “throughout the full writing career cycle.” Tidal has partnered with performing rights organization AllTrack to handle the backend. Continue reading Tidal, AllTrack Team to Provide Songwriter Royalty Snapshots

Last year Sony entered into a joint venture with Singapore-based startup Startale Labs. Now the first fruits of that collaboration have come to light, with the launch of Soneium, an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain, from Startale and Sony Block Solutions Labs. The platform is first being made available to developers, with plans for an eventual public launch, the goal being “to create new services by leveraging the various businesses and IP within the Sony Group so that Soneium becomes an infrastructure that everyone can use on a daily basis,” according to Sony. Continue reading Sony and Startale Labs Launch Soneium Blockchain for Web3

Music streaming service SoundCloud has added a digital merch outpost, the SoundCloud Store, where select artists who have signed up for the paid Next Pro tier can design exclusive merchandise for their fans — “with minimal effort — letting them focus on their craft while driving meaningful revenue beyond streaming.” The items will be manufactured by SoundCloud, which is launching what it calls “the first edition” of the SoundCloud Store in the U.S., Canada and European Union. Only artists that own 100 percent of their merchandise rights are invited to apply to participate. Continue reading SoundCloud Helping Artists to Design for New Merch Stores

Meta Platforms has expanded its licensing deal with Universal Music Group, which now covers users sharing songs from the UMG library across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp and Horizon without fear of copyright violation. As part of a multiyear partnership, Meta and UMG will work together to address “unauthorized AI-generated content that could affect artists and songwriters.” This could encompass everything from users experimenting with voice copying or scraping songs for AI mashups to enterprise level crawling and theft for model training, and suggests Meta will be implementing a filtering system to detect infractions. Continue reading Meta, UMG Music Deal Emphasizes the Responsible Use of AI