CMU Daily 07.07.23: TikTok Music launches in Brazil and Indonesia, Twitter sends legal letter about Threads

TikTok Music goes live in Indonesia and Brazil
The long anticipated TikTok-branded music service has launched in Indonesia and Brazil. It very much builds upon Resso, the existing music streaming app operated by TikTok owner Bytedance, which was already available in both those markets.

Licensing talks around TikTok Music have been ongoing for some time. All three majors and indie label repping Merlin are on board for the launch, which is mainly interesting because Sony Music previously pulled its content from Resso.

In terms of the TikTok Music experience, it has all the social media style elements that were notable features of Resso, which is basically being replaced by the new app and is set to be switched off in September.

However, TikTok Music will be more closely connected to the main TikTok app, and it seems likely that there will be further integration between the two apps as things evolve.

That connection is important for various reasons. Not least because TikTok Music will not offer a free tier. Indeed, the free tier of Resso was phased out in May. Which means that - while Spotify uses its free tier to hook people in and then upsell them a premium subscription - TikTok will need to do the upselling via its main video-sharing app.

In terms of pricing, in Brazil a monthly TikTok Music subscription will be $3.49 and in Indonesia it's $3.25, although Android users in the latter will only pay $2.96 a month for the first year. Monthly subscriptions in emerging markets are always significantly cheaper than in Europe and North America, though those launch price points do slightly undercut Spotify in both markets.

TikTok is remaining tight lipped on its plans to expand TikTok Music into other markets. Resso is currently also available in India, which makes it an obvious contender for the next place where TikTok Music will go live.

Commenting on the new service, TikTok's Global Head Of Music Business Development Ole Obermann says: "We are pleased to introduce TikTok Music, a new kind of service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a best-in-class streaming service".

"TikTok Music will make it easy for people in Indonesia and Brazil to save, download and share their favourite viral tracks from TikTok", he goes on. "We are excited about the opportunities TikTok Music presents for both music fans and artists and the great potential it has for driving significant value to the music industry".

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Epic says there are no grounds for further delaying US injunction against Apple's anti-steering provision
Epic Games has urged the US Ninth Circuit Appeals Court to reject a request by Apple to further postpone an injunction that bans the tech giant's often controversial anti-steering provision. Epic claims that Apple, in its recent arguments in favour of such further postponement, "scraped the very bottom of the barrel and came up empty".

Fortnite maker Epic has been pursuing legal action against Apple, of course, in relation to the latter's App Store rules. In particular the rule that says in-app payments on iOS devices must use Apple's commission-charging transactions system. And the accompanying anti-steering provision, which bans app makers from sign-posting alternative payment options online, for example via a web page.

In litigation pursued through the Californian courts, Epic claimed that those rules violate competition law, presenting arguments in relation to both US-wide federal and Californian state law. In the main those arguments proved unsuccessful, but the district court judge hearing the case did agree that the anti-steering provision violated Californian unfair competition law.

And to that end she issued an injunction ordering that that particular rule no longer be enforced. However, both Epic and Apple then decided to take the dispute to the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, so the injunction was paused while those appeals went through the motions.

In the end, the Ninth Circuit pretty much upheld the lower court's ruling, including the injunction against the anti-steering provision. And last week judges in the appeals court declined a request from both parties to reconsider that judgement.

Earlier this week Apple went back to the Ninth Circuit confirming that it now intends to take the decision regarding its anti-steering provision to the US Supreme Court. And with that in mind, it believes the injunction regarding that provision should remain paused while it goes through that process.

Responding to that, Epic says in a new court filing that - to justify further postponing the injunction - there must be "reasonable probability" that the Supreme Court will consider the case; "significant possibility" that Supreme Court judges could reverse the lower court's decision; and "likelihood that irreparable harm will result if [the injunction] is not stayed".

Epic then argues that there is "no realistic prospect" that the Supreme Court will hear the case, "much less reverse" the rulings made by the lower courts. Therefore there are no grounds for further delaying "an injunction that should have taken effect more than a year ago".

Elsewhere, Epic again disputes Apple's claim that without the anti-steering provision it will not be able to "protect users from fraud, scams, malware, spyware and objectionable content". The content that apps will link to is already accessible via an iOS device - for example via a web browser. So, "Apple is not protecting users; it is protecting its bottom line".

And if, on the off chance, the Supreme Court did take the case and ultimately overturn the lower court decision regarding the anti-steering provision, "Apple could simply and easily revert to its existing anti-steering rules".

Meanwhile, by further delaying the injunction and allowing the anti-steering provision to remain in force, "Epic, other app developers, and consumers are all directly injured when Apple requires [alternative payment options] be concealed".

In its filing earlier this week, Apple noted that Fortnite is not currently available on iOS devices because Epic won't comply with other App Store rules. Therefore, it said, Epic itself is not actually affected by any further postponement of the injunction.

However, Epic counters, it does still operate iOS apps via a subsidiary business and, as such, "continues to be affected by the policies that govern the App Store". Epic now owns Bandcamp, you may remember, which continues to have apps available on iOS devices.

We await to see how the Ninth Circuit responds.

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TikTok creators says Montana law-makers have taken sledgehammer to First Amendment by banning the app
The group of TikTok creators who are seeking to stop the video-sharing app from being banned in the US state of Montana submitted a new legal filing with the courts this week, requesting a preliminary injunction that would basically ban the ban.

Law-makers in Montana have backed a law, known as SB419, which will stop the distribution of the TikTok app within the state from the start of next year. The ban is mainly a response to the ongoing concerns in political circles that the Chinese government has access to TikTok user-data via the app's China-based owner Bytedance. Though concerns have also been raised about TikTok exposing children to content that encourages reckless behaviour.

Five TikTok creators are involved in the lawsuit which argues that SB419 is unconstitutional, in particular infringing the free speech rights contained in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Their legal action is being financed by TikTok itself, which has also filed its own lawsuit. Though the two separate lawsuits have now been consolidated by the judge overseeing the litigation.

The new legal filing setting out the case for a preliminary injunction that would stop SB419 from going ahead states: "Although SB419 purports to safeguard national security and protect children from dangerous content, Montana has no authority to enact laws advancing its own view of United States foreign policy or national security interests, nor may the state ban an entire medium based on perceptions that some speech shared through that medium is unsuitable for children".

Not only that, but "even if Montana could regulate any speech that users share through TikTok", SB419 is inappropriate, it argues. Because, any attempts to refine and restrict the First Amendment "requires a scalpel", whereas: "SB419 wields a sledgehammer".

"SB419's constitutional defects are extraordinary" the legal filing then claims, reckoning that it violates multiple elements of US constitutional law, including the Foreign Affairs Doctrine and Commerce Clause as well as the good old First Amendment.

Plus SB419 "is preempted by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and Section 721 of the Defense Production Act, which authorise the President and Committee On Foreign Investment In The United States - not states - to address putative national security risks posed by foreign economic actors".

With all that in mind, "plaintiffs respectfully request an order enjoining SB 419 in its entirety".

It remains to be seen how the state's Attorney General Austin Knudsen now responds. He previously said, when asked about the TikTok creators' lawsuit: "We expected a legal challenge and are fully prepared to defend the law".

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Night & Day noise abatement dispute remains unresolved
The dispute between grassroots venue Night & Day and Manchester City Council continues, after a court hearing that was due to take place this week failed to go ahead. According to reports, further acoustic testing at the venue is now planned for September which could mean there is no resolution of the dispute until the autumn.

The City Council issued a noise abatement order against the central-Manchester venue in 2021, based on a complaint made by a resident who moved into a property next to Night & Day during the COVID lockdowns.

Night & Day argues that complying with the order would force a significant change to its late night operations making the wider business commercially unviable. And, of course, the order is seeking to alter operations that have been underway at the venue for decades.

Not only that, but - as the venue explained in a Facebook post last week - "the source of this problem is that no acoustic consideration was given during the planning and development stages of the apartments next to the pre-existing venue N&D. This is confirmed within the apartments planning file held today at MCC Planning Portal".

The dispute initially got to the magistrate's court in Manchester last November. After a pause, the hearing was meant to resume in January, but that was postponed to March to allow talks between the venue and the council to continue. At the March hearing the case was again adjourned with the judge ordering that more acoustic testing of noise levels at the venue be carried out.

The case was then due to return to court on Tuesday. But that didn't happen in order to allow further out-of-court discussions between the venue and the council. Those discussions didn't reach any agreement, so the case was due to resume in court yesterday with both sides appearing via video link. However there were then technical issues that stopped that from happening.

According to the Manchester Evening News, the court hearing has been formally adjourned to 21 Jul. However, yet more acoustic testing will reportedly take place in September, which means the next court hearing proper may not take place until later in the autumn.

A spokesperson for Night & Day told MEN: "Night & Day and its legal team have had a number of meetings this week outside of the courtroom with Manchester City Council. We went into these meetings in a positive and constructive manner, with the hope of moving things forward".

"Unfortunately the council have now asked for yet another round of acoustic testing", they added. "It feels like we're going backwards. We really don't understand why these discussions and the testing didn't happen before the noise abatement notice was served on the venue back in 2021".

Meanwhile a spokesperson for the council said: "Before talks this week both parties agreed to come together to engage in discussions regarding sound levels, with the council willing to make concessions so that a final and lasting agreement could be reached. We were hopeful at the start of the week progress could be made though, sadly, this was ultimately not possible".

"However, the council remains entirely committed to reaching a settlement which recognises the needs of residents, allows us to meet our legal obligations, as well as allowing the venue to remain commercially viable. Given the trial is still live it would not be appropriate to go into further detail about the discussions which have taken place".

However, "from the outset", the spokesperson then insisted, "the council has said time and again Manchester's music venues are an important part of the fabric of the city, playing a vital role in the night-time economy and in creating opportunities for new artists".

"Recently the council announced a major and independent review into Manchester's grassroots music venues and how the council and its partners can better support and champion them, while being considerate of residents and businesses and the council's legal responsibilities".

Which is all well and good, though if a venue as important to Manchester as Night & Day ends up being forced into closure, the council can undertake as many reviews as it likes, but any claims it makes about respecting culture in the city will lack any real credibility.

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Live Nation launches app that "incorporates music into the practice of meditation"
Live Nation has launched a new app called Mindful Nation which, and I quote, "seamlessly incorporates music into the practice of meditation".

And while that might seem like a surprising development, the live giant says that is has "invested in many mental health programmes for staff and the touring industry at large, and the Mindful Nation app expands this support by delivering on-demand mindfulness practices for the broader entertainment industry and music lovers everywhere".

The app builds on a Mindful Nation programme that was originally developed for the music company's employees, led by former artist manager Niamh McCarthy.

Live Nation boss Michael Rapino explains: "We first launched Mindful Nation as a programme for our employees, and it's great to see Niamh now bringing the benefits of mindfulness to touring artists and crew across our industry, as well as music fans".

As for what you get in the app, Live Nation explains that there are "over a thousand classes searchable by trainer, vibe or preferred class duration - with special sonic beats for the app's meditations curated by world renowned producers and independent artists, including Janax Pacha, Mose Musica, Chris IDH and more".

McCarthy adds: "Music is transcendent and has the power to connect and support. The artists on Mindful Nation are vehicles to that higher source which we are bringing into people's everyday lives through our meditation classes".

"We are all totally overstimulated by the extraordinary amount of data and connectivity that exists in today's world that we are not equipped to deal with", she goes on. "The classes on the Mindful Nation app are like a timeless album, never out of date. Users can keep going back to these resources again and again to support themselves through the highs and lows of life".

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DEALS

HarbourView, one of those equity funds buying up music rights, has done some big old deals with Nelly and Wiz Khalifa. TMZ reports that the former was worth $50 million and got HarbourView a 50% stake in Nelly's entire catalogue, though the official statement implied the deal relates specially to the musician's recordings. The Wiz Khalifa deal covers "select recorded music and publishing assets".

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APPOINTMENTS

DIY distributor CD Baby has appointed Faryal Khan-Thompson as SVP Marketing And Community Engagement. She previously worked for rival Tunecore. Says CD Baby President Scott Williams: "We are THRILLED to welcome Faryal to the team during this exciting time of transformation and evolution for our company and are confident that her leadership and vision will play a pivotal role in CD Baby's continued success".

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RELEASES

Want to listen to Taylor's version of 'Speak Now'? Well, feel free to do that right now. Yes, Taylor Swift's ongoing project in which she re-records her old albums continues. This time its 2010's 'Speak Now' getting the rework treatment. And just in time to coincide with all the new revelations about the 2019 sale of the label that released the originals, Big Machine, to that pesky Scooter Braun; a sale with outraged Swift and motivated the re-records project.

Skrillex has teamed up with Boys Noize on new single 'Fine Day Anthem' - so don't go saying I didn't tell you.

The Pigeon Detectives have released new album 'TV Show', their first in six years. And there's a video for the title track too.

Alison Goldfrapp has posted a Yotto remix of 'So Hard So Hot', a track on her recent album 'The Love Invention'.

Lo Barnes has released new single 'Don't Wait'.

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AWARDS

ERA - the UK's Digital Entertainment And Retail Association - has announced that it will stage a Summer Party on 6 Sep at London's Eastcheap Records where, among other things, it will - and I quote - "launch a brand-new series of Retail Champion Awards, set to honour the outstanding achievements and contributions of individuals who have been inspirational and given exceptional support to ERA and its members". For information about how to nominate such champions click here.

Check out our weekly Spotify playlist of new music featured in the CMU Daily - updated every Friday.

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Twitter sends legal letter to Meta over Threads, apparently intellectual property rights do matter!
A lawyer representing Twitter owner X Corp has written to your old mate Mark Zuckerberg to express concern that Meta, in developing its new social media app Threads, might have "engaged in systematic, wilful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property".

Which - from a music industry perspective - is kind of interesting. Turns out Twitter does know about the existence of intellectual property laws. Who knew?

Very much connected to Meta's Instagram platform, Twitter-esque Threads went live earlier this week and is already boasting tens of millions of users.

X Corp alleges that Meta was able to make its new app extra Twitter-esque by employing lots of ex-Twitter employees to help develop it. And, of course, ever since job cuts king Elon Musk took over at Twitter last year, there have been lots of ex-Twitter employees for Meta to headhunt.

"Over the past year, Meta has hired dozens of former Twitter employees", says the legal letter to Meta boss Zuckerberg, which was first published by Semafor.

And, it goes on, those former employees "had and continue to have access to Twitter's trade secrets and other highly confidential information", while some "have improperly retained Twitter documents and electronic devices".

"With that knowledge", the letter alleges, "Meta deliberately assigned these employees to develop, in a matter of months, Meta's copycat 'Threads' app with the specific intent that they use Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property in order to accelerate the development of Meta's competing app, in violation of both state and federal law as well as those employees' ongoing obligations to Twitter".

The legal letter then confirms that "Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information. Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure or use of its intellectual property by Meta".

Of course, while Twitter is very keen indeed to enforce its own intellectual property rights, it has generally been somewhat less keen to help other intellectual property owners stop the infringement of their rights on the Twitter platform. Or at least, that's what the music industry would argue, given that Twitter is the one big social media firm yet to secure any licences for the music that is used in videos posted by its users.

In their recent lawsuit against Twitter, a group of music publishers stated: "While numerous Twitter competitors recognise the need for proper licences and agreements for the use of musical compositions on their platforms, Twitter does not, and instead breeds massive copyright infringement that harms music creators".

Not only that, the publishers "have spent significant time and resources to identify specific infringers and specific infringements, and to notify Twitter of them. Those specific infringers and specific infringements already number in the hundreds of thousands. Twitter has repeatedly failed to take the most basic step of expeditiously removing, or disabling access to, the infringing material identified by the infringement notices".

But, if Zuckerberg has allowed or facilitated the infringement of Twitter's IP rights by his Meta people, well, that's clearly not on. Insists Twitter.

Though, needless to say, Meta denies any wrongdoing. And it has done so via, well, a post on Threads. "No one on the Threads engineering team is a former Twitter employee - that's just not a thing", wrote Meta Communications Director Andy Stone yesterday.

Musk, meanwhile, used Twitter to respond to reporting on the legal letter that his lawyers have sent to the Meta chief, noting simply: "Competition is fine, cheating is not". Fun times.

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