Your New Chat Buddy
Scale & Strategy
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OpenAI Unveils GPT-4o
Spotify
IN THE LOOP
OpenAI Unveils GPT-4o: Your New Chat Buddy
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OpenAI has just dropped GPT-4o, the latest and greatest version of its famous Chat-GPT product, and boy, are we excited!
During Monday's livestream demo, OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer, Mira Murati, spilled the tea on what this new version can do.
Here’s what creators need to know:
Multilingual Magic: GPT-4o works its magic across a whopping 50 languages! Need to translate your project from English to Italian? No problemo! Just fire up the app, and you’re good to go.
Custom Creations Galore: The “builders” have been busy! Over a million custom GPTs are now at your service. Take, for example, educational creators like Khan Academy, who've built their own AI teaching assistant. For just $4 a month, you can have your very own virtual tutor. As Murati puts it, “University professors can create content for their students, or podcasters can create content for their listeners.”
Desktop Delight: And here’s the icing on the cake – a desktop version of ChatGPT is now available for MacOS users. It’s already speeding up workflows, and early reviews are looking mighty fine.
Zoom Out: OpenAI isn’t the only one in the generative AI game. Google’s in on the action too! At Google’s I/O developer conference, YouTube announced AI-generated quizzes that’ll let viewers test their knowledge after watching educational content. Clever, right?
With these new tools, the future of content creation just got a whole lot more exciting!
Spotify's Royalty Rumble: Are Artists Getting the Short End of the Stick?
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Spotify might be making some big changes, but will they be music to the ears of artists?
According to Billboard, songwriters and other musical artists could be looking at up to $150 million less in royalty payouts this year thanks to Spotify’s recent Premium subscription restructuring.
Here’s the lowdown:
Price Hike: Spotify plans to up the price of its Premium subscription by $1–2 per month for both families and individuals.
Audiobooks in the Mix: Bloomberg reports that Spotify is now bundling audiobooks into its Premium subscription package. But here’s the catch: Spotify has to pay for both books and music licensing with the revenue it generates from Premium subscription fees.
So, what’s the problem?
Spotify is now paying a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for Premium streams. And that might mean smaller total payouts to Spotify artists.
Creators like music commentator Anthony Fantano and Joey Hiphop are feeling the pinch.
“While I do believe in funding the arts…I’m not sure throwing every voice, creed, composer, [and] writer into one massive, click-per-stream royalty pool is the way to do it,” said Fantano in a video. “It’s most likely going to lead to people getting ripped off and making less money.”
Hiphop agrees, saying on X, “I don’t have a great solution…If I was an artist, I’d put my music up for sale directly and have it on streaming. D2C is the way to go.”
Big Picture: Spotify promised $1 billion in artist payouts over the next four years, but the recent changes have left some scratching their heads. And with Spotify’s newfound interest in audiobooks, some publishers are worried that authors might soon face the same fate as musicians.
IN THE LOOP
Money
Slow Growth Spree: US-based podcast ad revenue saw a modest 5% growth in 2023, reaching $1.9 billion, which was $1 million less than expected. Comedy, sports, and news podcasts pocketed 17% of this revenue.
Niche categories accounted for more than a quarter of the revenue, indicating that advertisers highly value smaller but more targeted listening audiences.
Matchmaking Galore: Instagram’s Creator Marketplace is expanding its horizons to include creators from 10 new markets. Germany, France, Turkey, Mexico, and Argentina are among the new entrants.
Content knows no boundaries – for Meta, creators, and brands alike.
Audiences
Migration Madness: Substack has introduced a program allowing ten video stars to transform their TikTok channels into Substack shows and communities.
Brace yourself for more platforms adjusting their mission to woo TikTok creators and their valuable audience.
Happy YouTube-versary: Celebrating one year as the most-watched streaming platform on Nielsen’s Gauge chart, YouTube now boasts about 150 million viewers watching it on TV sets in the US.
As YouTube goes mainstream on TV, ponder over how to grow your channel for this new batch of viewers.
Tech and Tools
Not My Content, Not My Problem: OpenAI is developing a tool enabling creators to opt out of having their content contribute to training AI models. Expected to be available in 2025.
It's another reminder that publicly accessible AI tools can use your content to inform their learning models if you're not careful.
Comparing Made Easy: Google Analytics now offers a new tool called “saved comparisons,” allowing users to streamline data analysis by comparing different sets of data.
Comparing your analytics against each other often makes more sense than benchmarking them against industry standards.
And Finally
Scrape Away: A US judge dismissed a lawsuit by X, which accused a data-scraping company of violating its user agreement by copying and selling content from X, along with tools that allowed others to do the same.
Expect X to update its user agreement soon.
Thinkers Take Center Stage: "Intellectual influencers" are having a moment. Audiences are now favoring authentic and knowledgeable content creators over those with a high follower count, according to Business Insider.