Music streaming service Tidal announced it won’t pay royalties for AI-generated music in an email to users and an announcement on its website published Monday. “Tidal’s priority is ensuring royalties go to original works directly produced, written, and performed by people,” the announcement reads. “We will therefore not knowingly attribute royalties to music we identify as wholly AI-generated.”

Like much of the internet, music streaming services are awash in AI-generated slop. Spotify promised to fight AI spam with labeling and filtering but also embraced the broader trend of AI music. AI-generated bands like The Velvet Sundown and Breaking Rust have millions of listens on Spotify and make the service money. In May, Spotify announced a deal with Universal that would let fans create “covers and remixes of their favorite songs.”Soon Spotify customers will be able to push a button and discover what Metallica would sound like if it were a reggae band. 

Tidal is trying something different. The streaming service isn’t a giant in the field — Apple Music, YouTube, and Spotify dominate the charts — but it’s built a reputation by collaborating with artists, giving them a bigger cut of the streaming profits, and focusing on delivering high quality versions of audio. Tidal is the streaming service for listeners obsessed with bit-rate and FLAC. It’s for people who have $200 digital-to-analog converters next to their computer.

The company said it won’t pay for “wholly” AI-generated music but it also said it won’t remove AI-tainted music from the platform entirely. Like Spotify before it, Tidal said it’s going to work to identify the AI slop on its platform, label it, and hold AI-generated music to a “higher standard of content integrity.” Spotify said something similar last year, but there are still plenty of unlabeled AI-generated tracks on the platform.

Tidal also said it won’t remove AI-tainted music entirely. “Artists should have the freedom to create with AI tools, and listeners should have the autonomy to choose the type of content they consume,” it said. As of this writing, The Velvet Sundown and Breaking Rust are both live on Tidal. Breaking Rust’s bio identified it as AI-generated country music, but The Velvet Sundown had no bio at all.

“Tidal will not allow music that is 100% AI-generated to be monetized. No royalties will go to such releases, nor will AI-generated uploads be eligible for direct-to-fan sales,” the company said in an email to its users.

It elaborated on its website. “Starting today, AI-generated music will not be monetizable,” it said. “We are only in the beginning of the era of AI-generated music. We acknowledge the ongoing debate regarding whether certain AI-generated music (e.g. AI-generated music developed from fairly and properly licensed models) should be entitled to earn royalties. This debate will continue as the technology advances and rightsholders and AI music platforms develop licensing models.”

It’s unclear if The Velvet Sundown and other bands like it will keep making money on Tidal. These bands are black boxes. Are they wholly AI-generated and therefore exempted from compensation from Tidal? Or are they human-directed enough that the streaming service will continue to compensate them. 404 Media reached out to Tidal to ask but did not hear back.

On June 28, the day before Tidal’s announcement, The Velvet Sundown released a cover of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” on Spotify and Tidal. It’s atrocious and it’s not labeled as AI-generated on either service.

“We exist to confuse music journalists, comfort robots, and help Spotify executives sleep at night,” says the frontpage of The Velvet Sundown’s website. “We were basically built for it, engineered to fill playlists, avoid royalties, and haunt your Discover Weekly like a ghost with good taste. Is it art? Is it a loophole? Either way, it streams beautifully."

In de afgelopen dagen gingen „veel gesprekken” tussen advocaten en asielzoekers niet door vanwege „logistieke problemen”. Dat schrijft de Raad voor Rechtsbijstand. Gespreksuitnodigingen zouden niet op tijd zijn verstuurd, en vervoer voor asielzoekers zou niet worden geregeld.

Het Rijk stelt dertig miljoen euro beschikbaar. Sportkoepel NOC-NSF spreekt van een „once in a lifetime’-kans” de Spelen deels „in eigen land” te houden.

• Teams meet in round of 32 in New York on Tuesday

• ‘We’ve been labelled as favourites … we are confident’

Didier Deschamps has warned France’s rivals that the team will not change their attacking approach to this World Cup, saying as he prepared for the last-32 tie against Sweden on Tuesday: “We have a capacity for danger, and I want us to keep it.”

The France head coach said it was “good to be busy” as he returned to the camp after time at home fol­lowing the death of his mother last week. Deschamps expressed gratitude for the support he had received from his team after his bereavement, in another sign of the tight bond among Les Bleus this summer.

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Not for the first time in this tournament, there were long periods when Brazil did not impress. And not for the first time in this tournament, they got away with it. It may be inexplicable but the Carlo Ancelotti method that worked at Real Madrid is working again: stay in games and eventually either opponents will make a mistake or brilliant players will do something brilliant.

Brazil were 1-0 down at half-time and struggling. Their earliest ever exit form a World Cup seemed entirely possible. Five players in the Brazil starting lineup were aged over 30, five of the six most defensive players – and they looked it. Japan were quicker, slicker, sharper and more imaginative. But the introduction of Endrick and a change of shape and approach at half-time changed everything. Brazil started slinging crosses into the box and Japan wobbled. Casemiro, barely a pedestrian in the first half, headed the equaliser and, deep into injury time, Gabriel Martinelli squeezed in the winner.

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Heartless Bastards

@mbootsman
Lovely 😍 🌹
@lucp

Microsoft's support policy for its .NET runtime and development platform is too short for enterprises, according to a developer who has revived a long-standing complaint in a new GitHub issue. The current release lifecycle for modern .NET, formerly known as .NET Core, is an annual major release, with even-numbered versions being long-term support (LTS) for three years, and odd-numbered versions maintained for two years. The legacy and Windows-only .NET Framework, which is in maintenance, is defined as a component of Windows and therefore supported for much longer. Breaking changes are rare, but it is old and many libraries and application frameworks do not support it, including Microsoft's ASP.NET Core. Earlier this month, a developer opened an issue in the official .NET repository arguing that the LTS support window is "too short for upgrade and adoption cycles." The problem with the current three-year cycle is that by the time the next LTS release appears, two of those years have already elapsed, leaving just one year to upgrade. Even when they can get the upgrade done in time, potential customers "are hesitant to adopt software which is soon to run out of the defined EOL [end of life] window." Another developer commented: "I've got telemetry showing about 50 percent of the deployed versions of my software are running EOL versions." They also complained about the one-year upgrade window, saying: "I try to use netfx [.NET Framework] as much as I can because of the ten-year support tied to OS life but that's getting harder and harder as the ecosystem drops FX support." The problem is not new, but is becoming more pressing as .NET Framework ages. A similar complaint in 2023 drew comment from program manager Richard Lander, who said: "We chose the support time frames to enable a balance between stable deployment time for users and enabling the team to spend most of their time innovating." He said that Microsoft had discussed longer support time frames and extended paid support offerings but has "opted to continue with only the free support plan." Microsoft's free support period is shorter than that offered for some other platforms including Java (five years plus extended support for LTS versions) and Python (five years security fixes for all releases). Upgrading from one .NET version to another can sometimes be done easily, but complications include breaking changes, third-party dependencies that may also need updating, the usual testing and deployment cycle, and in some cases paying external developers for the upgrade. "The .NET Framework only incurs costs for functional modifications and bug fixes, but .NET tries to add to that the non-negligible cost of version upgrades at relatively short intervals," said a comment to the 2023 issue. In March, Microsoft principal software engineer Shay Rojansky requested feedback on dropping .NET Framework support in the Microsoft.Data.Sqlite library, drawing the comment that "right now .NET Standard 2.0 and framework 4.8 are the only .NET targets with reasonable support timelines available for enterprise." The .NET Standard 2.0 specifies a common set of APIs implemented by .NET Framework and modern .NET releases, including .NET 10. Rojansky said the comment was off-topic, yet it is a factor in the enduring use of .NET Framework, which in turn may explain why the proposal was closed as "not planned." ®

SAN FRANCISCO (ANP) - Gevoelige lijsten met onderdelen en leveranciers, evenals foto's van de nog niet aangekondigde iPhone 18 Pro-modellen van Apple, zijn op het dark web verschenen. De bestanden zijn geplaatst door de ransomwaregroep die eerder gegevens stal bij Tata Electronics, een Indiase toeleverancier van Apple. Dat bericht persbureau Reuters op basis van documenten en een bron die bekend is met de zaak.

Het datalek kan gevolgen hebben voor de zorgvuldig georganiseerde productie van de iPhone, waarvoor Apple samenwerkt met een groot wereldwijd netwerk van leveranciers. Ook kan het de relatie tussen Apple en Tata Electronics onder druk zetten. Apple houdt informatie over zijn toeleveringsketen streng geheim.

Bovendien krijgen concurrenten, vervalsers en andere leveranciers mogelijk inzicht in welke bedrijven welke onderdelen voor de iPhone maken.

Datalek

Apple presenteert naar verwachting in september de iPhone 18 Pro en iPhone 18 Pro Max. Het datalek komt op een lastig moment voor het bedrijf. Vorige week verhoogde Apple al de prijzen van de iPad en MacBook vanwege de sterk gestegen kosten van chips. Marktkenners verwachten dat ook de prijzen van iPhones de komende maanden zullen stijgen.

Reuters meldde eerder al dat de ransomwaregroep World Leaks meer dan 200.000 bestanden van Tata op het dark web had geplaatst. Daarbij zaten ontwerpdocumenten van oudere iPhones en onderdelen van Tesla, eveneens een klant van Tata. Ook zouden documenten van chipmakers TSMC en Qualcomm zijn buitgemaakt. Beide bedrijven leveren onderdelen voor iPhones.

Uit nieuwe documenten blijkt dat minstens zes bestanden een gedetailleerd overzicht bevatten van onderdelen van de iPhone 18 Pro en de bedrijven die deze leveren. Het gaat onder meer om chips op het moederbord en onderdelen van de batterij en camera's.