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In today's CMU Daily: It’s been a busy few days for Hipgnosis news. And yes, it’s been a busy few months for Hipgnosis news, but these last few days were even busier. We run through the key dramas, players and moments of the Hipgnopera

One Liners: Bella Figura snaps up RAK catalogue; Deezer does ad-sales deal with Global; Big Life Management promotions; new Artist Ambassadors for FAC; new music from Lambrini Girls, mui zyu, LYLO

Also today: Lawyers working on the Astroworld lawsuits want access to a lot more of Travis Scott’s text messages; TikTok battles lawmakers and regulators in both the EU and US; and an ex Amazon employee claims she was told to ignore the company’s copyright policies when working on AI projects because “every else is doing it”

Plus: Sasha Keable is CMU Approved

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The actual state of Hipgnosis

A feeling familiar to many in the music business: it’s 3am and after a long and painful dinner party you pop to the fridge to have one last go at the trifle, only to see it slip through your hypnopompic-addled fingers and smash to the floor in a cacophony of glass, custard and ladies fingers. The brain can play funny tricks in that liminal near-hypnotic state between conscious and unconscious. 

Anyone familiar with Linn F Cooper and Milton H Erickson’s groundbreaking 1954 scientific work ‘Time Distortion In Hypnosis’ will know that being in a hypnotic state can really mess with how you perceive seconds ticking by. One type of time distortion, said Cooper and Erickson in their book - “and a most interesting one” - can take place during “times of danger or narrow escape, where intervals of very brief clock reading seem to be long”. 

Reporting the account of a fellow psychiatrist who was involved in a road accident, Linn and Erickson detail the man’s “subjective feeling that time was now either standing still, or going in slow motion; it seemed to him as though it took approximately half an hour from the time the car started to turn over till it hit the decline on the side”.

In the world of the other Hipgnosis - note the ‘i’ and ‘g’ - which has arguably been involved in a slow motion car crash all of its very own, time distortion has seemingly been monkeying around with how we perceive the passage of days and weeks. Taking stock after a particularly Hipgnosis-heavy weekend, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the wheels only really began to come off this particular clown car a mere six months ago - even if it does feel like a whole lifetime has gone by. 

Over the past few months, briefings, counter-briefings and counter-counter-briefings have been flying back and forth between the lead characters in the drama, with histrionics reaching levels only normally seen in Grand Opera. The fact that the key players all seem to be named Hipgnosis-something-or-other only heightens the dramatic dreamlike mirror world of this particular stage show, where everything you touch turns into a company called Hipgnosis.

The various machinations between Hipgnosis the fund - or SONG - and Hipgnosis Song Management - or HSM, the Merck Mercuriadis-led, Blackstone majority owned investment advisor - are complicated enough. 

We've tried to summarise everything that's happened - and what might happen next - in a condensed history of the last six months spent in a state of Hipgnosis. Click through to read the full story...

Your Culture // Campaign Management Assistant (Brighton)

Gondwana Records // Part Time Social Media, Online Marketing & Digital Content Manager (Manchester Hybrid)

The O2 // Production Supervisor (London)

AXS Europe // Technical Project Manager (London)

The Halls // Assistant Box Office Manager (Wolverhampton)

Como No & La Linea // Operations & Reporting Manager (London Hybrid)

Kilimanjaro Live // Promoter Assistant (London)

foundation.fm // Account Manager (London)

Horizon is CMU's new weekly newsletter - published each Friday - that brings you a hand-picked selection of early-stage career opportunities from across the music industry.

Whether you're looking for your first job in music or you're ready to take a step up, Horizon is here to help you find your dream job faster.

👉 Click through to see the current selection.

ONE LINERS

RAK Publishing, FAC Artist Ambassadors, CIISA + more

DEALS

Bella Figura has announced that it’s going to slurp up RAK Publishing, home to an “extensive and varied” catalogue including works by Hot Chocolate, Joan Jett, Kim Wilde and “many others”. Nathalie Hayes - current MD of the RAK group of companies, and daughter of legendary producer Mickie Most and his wife Christina Hayes, who founded the company - says that after her parents launched the business “55 years ago” she “grew up knowing so many of the RAK writers as they were often on holiday with us!” Of the Bella Figura Music deal, she adds, “they share the ethos of being boutique and I know that they will take great care of such wonderful songs”. BFM’s CEO and co-founder Alexi Cory-Smith says, “I have loved these songs and artists since I was a kid. I was mesmerized by Errol Brown when I watched Hot Chocolate on ‘Top Of The Pops’ as a young girl”, adding that Bella Figura “will work our socks off to look after and promote” the “amazing legacy” of the writers.

Deezer - which is due to report Q1 revenue figures on 29 Apr - has appointed radio and outdoor advertising behemoth Global to become its exclusive ad sales partner for the UK, via Global’s DAX advertising exchange. Mazen Abdallah - Deezer’s VP for brand partnerships and ad sales -  is “THRILLED” to announce the partnership, and says that the deal is not only a “strategic alignment” that is “leveraging” the DAX network but is actually a “shared commitment to delivering value to advertising partners” as well as “enriching the experience” of Deezer listeners. Who can ask for more? Global’s Tom Streetly, DAX’s commercial top dog, says he’s particularly excited about the “valuable 18 to 34” audience and “vast database of first-party data” that Deezer will bring to DAX. Champagne for everyone!

APPOINTMENTS 

Reservoir Media - the owner of Big Life Management - has announced a raft of promotions at the management company. Kat Kennedy, Colin Roberts and Claire Kilcourse have been promoted to partners, with Kennedy also taking on the role of Managing Director, having most recently been General Manager. Kennedy says that it’s an “honour” to take the company into its “next phase alongside two of my best friends, Colin and Claire”, adding that she’s also “excited to see our young managers Natalie Meadham and Dana Landman continue to grow with the company”. Big Life was founded by Tim Parry and the late Jazz Summers in 1986. Parry says, “I’m really proud to see how Kat, Claire and Colin have developed their skills through the years they have been at Big Life, and they’ve all shown incredible loyalty to the company. The longstanding relationships they have built with their clients are testament to their dedication, thoughtfulness and expertise as managers”.

If you thought three people in one announcement was a lot, then brace yourself. The Featured Artists Coalition has appointed not three but twenty new Artist Ambassadors “to help amplify” the organisation’s “collective voice”. Bringing the total number of FAC Artist Ambassadors to 142, the 20-strong cohort join existing ambassadors including Annie Lennox, Johnny Marr, Carl Cox and comprises, in full: Duran Duran, Nia Archives, Becky Hill, Murray Matravers, Baby Queen, Girli, Cherise, Elkka, Friedberg, Joel Culpepper, Sam Duckworth, English Teacher, Richard Hughes, Eckoes, Guvna B, OneDa, CJ Pandit, SOAK, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Gus Unger-Hamilton. Phew. Guvna B says “Music transformed my life completely and as an artist the main thing I want to do is focus on the art. Thankful that the FAC are there to cover my blind spots and think about my rights and interests. Buzzing to be able to contribute to this collective voice”.

INDUSTRY PEOPLE 

UK Parliament’s Women And Equalities Committee is holding an ‘Evidence Session’ tomorrow 24 Apr, part of the follow-up to its groundbreaking ‘Misogyny In Music’ report. The session will include Jen Smith and Andrew Medlock - interim CEO and COO of the new Creative Industries Independent Standard Authority, or CIISA. They will be joined by David Smy, Deputy Director Of Enabling Regulation at the Office For Students. MPs on the committee will have the opportunity to examine the ongoing development of CIISA as a watchdog for the creative industries, as well as discussing an earlier report - ‘Attitudes To Women And Girls In Educational Settings’ - which highlighted the need for better mechanisms to tackle sexual misconduct and harassment in higher education. The Musicians Union this week criticised the UK government’s response to the ‘Misogyny In Music’ report. 

GIGS & FESTIVALS

The Great Escape has announced full details of its conference programme, which kicks off in just over three weeks from today. 

Pitchfork have announced the return of Pitchfork Music Festival London, taking place 5-10 Nov. The festival also released the first wave of artists set to perform throughout the week, including Tierra Whack, CASISDEAD, Sega Bodega, Kae Tempest, Empress Of, Marika Hackman + more.

American Express presents BST Hyde Park have announced Brandi Carlile, Anna Calvi and Paris Paloma as guests for Stevie Nick’s headline show on Friday 12 July.

RELEASES

Lambrini Girls have released new single ‘Body Of Mine’. 

mui zyu has released new single ‘the rules of what an earthling can be’. Her album ‘nothing or something to die for’ is out 24 May via Father/Daughter Records.  

LYLO have released new single ‘We Move Again’. Their new album ‘Thoughts Of Never’ is out on 10 May via El Rancho Records

Approved: Sasha Keable

British Colombian Sasha Keable is not to be played with. After a three year hiatus, her latest single ‘Hold Up’ emerges as a searing R&B track, showcasing Sasha’s vocal prowess and cut throat lyricism.

Unapologetically emotional and forthright, like the greatest soul singers, the South London artist infuses real-life pain and joy into her music, with ‘Hold Up’ speaking volumes.

In her own words Sasha explains the origins of her new creation: “The new music came from a place of feeling powerless in everything else in life, the only place I felt safe and like I had control over the outcome was in the studio, so I just lived in there, I lived my life, and wrote songs about it everyday”. 

“I’ve found the joy in creating and a safe space within music I’ve never had before”, she adds. “It’s always felt so all or nothing and now I realise I’m just here to do what is best for me, to express myself through myself. I can’t do anymore than that”. 

Back and better than ever, Sasha Keable is on the path to an illustrious career.

🎧 Listen to ‘Hold Up’ here

Astroworld lawyers want access to more of Travis Scott's text messages

Lawyers working on the Astroworld lawsuits have asked the court for more comprehensive access to the phone and social media records of the festival's founder and headliner Travis Scott. 

At one point we thought most of those records had been lost after Scott accidentally dropped his phone into the sea. But in the end that wasn’t the case. The problem now, it seems, is the “inadequate” search terms employed by defence lawyers when they were selecting what communications to share. 

“The search terms and methodology employed are inadequate”, says a new legal filing. “The terms are too narrow”, it adds, noting they “contain no names, abbreviations or shorthand”. 

As a result lawyers working for victims of the Astroworld crowd surge have received just 26 pages of communications from the nearly 15,000 texts Scott's team collated. 

With two weeks to go until the first case gets to trial, those lawyers now want the court to order Scott's team to hand over “all responsive, non-privileged communications, originating between 1 Jan 2021 and 31 Dec 2021”. 

Ten people died and hundreds more were injured during a crowd surge at the 2021 edition of Astroworld, the Live Nation-promoted Houston-based festival that Scott founded. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed in the aftermath of the tragedy. 

Lawyers acting for those who were injured, and the families of those who were killed, want access to messages sent and received by Scott before and after the festival. 

Scott initially said that much of the required information had been lost when his phone fell into the Gulf Of Mexico in January 2022. Last year, though, it emerged that most of the “lost” data had been recovered via the musician's iCloud account. 

Since then, says Scott's legal team, all the relevant communications have been collated and shared with lawyers working for the victims. According to Law360, Scott’s lawyers claimed in court documents filed earlier this month, “The discovery record illustrates Mr Scott's full discovery compliance, even if temporarily set back by the accidental loss of his iPhone and his unfamiliarity with (and understandable efforts to avoid) cloud-based storage technology”. 

Not so, say lawyers acting for the victims. The “inadequate search methodology” was “unilaterally” chosen by Scott's team, and it is that inadequate methodology that means “only 26 pages of communications” were provided out of a possible “14,891 text communications” that were sent and received between “1 Jan 2021 through 31 Mar 2022 time-frame alone”. 

On top of that, “to date, zero communications to or from” Scott's social media accounts have been produced. “These communications have never been 'lost'”, the lawyers add, “as they have always been within Mr Scott’s possession, custody, and/or control”. 

To that end, the victims’ attorneys want the court to order Scott's team to hand over “all responsive, non-privileged communications” contained in those 14,981 text messages and Scott's social media accounts. 

Or alternatively, they add, all of Scott's text messages, social media messages and iCloud data should be handed over to Terry Jennings, the former judge who was recently appointed to decide what data gathered by the police investigation into Astroworld should be shared with the victims’ legal teams, so that he could also decide what data from Scott’s messaging and social media accounts should be shared too.

TikTok battling regulators and lawmakers in both EU and US

TikTok says it is “disappointed” that European Union officials have launched new formal proceedings against the social media app to assess whether the launch of TikTok Lite in two European markets violates the Digital Services Act. Meanwhile, in the US, TikTok staffers have been reassured that the company will take to the courts to fight any attempt to ban the app within the country. 

In a statement yesterday, the European Commission stressed that, under EU rules, large platforms like TikTok are “obliged to submit a risk assessment report, including measures to mitigate any potential systemic risks, prior to launching any new functionalities that are likely to have a critical impact on their systemic risks”. 

This is all part of the relatively new EU Digital Services Act, which regulates large digital platforms. Though, not so new that TikTok would not have been aware of these obligations prior to launching TikTok Lite in France and Spain. 

TikTok Lite is a version of the video-sharing app made to perform better over slower internet connections. Although this iteration of the app isn't new, having first launched in Thailand in 2018, it was not previously available in Europe. 

One specific feature of the app has caused particular concern amongst Commission officials, and that’s a rewards programme which allows users to earn points - which can be exchanged for Amazon vouchers and TikTok coins - in return for wiling away time in the app watching videos and fulfilling other tasks. 

That rewards programme, says the Commission, was “launched without prior diligent assessment of the risks it entails, in particular those related to the addictive effect of the platforms, and without taking effective risk mitigating measures”. In light of the “suspected absence” of “effective age verification mechanisms on TikTok”, this is “of particular concern for children”.

In its response, TikTok insisted that its rewards programme is only available to adults, stating that it is “disappointed” with the Commission’s decision. A spokesperson added that the “TikTok Lite rewards hub is not available to under eighteens and there is a daily limit on video watch tasks”. 

Though, really, given the Commission's concern is as much about the effectiveness of TikTok's systems for blocking access to the rewards programme for under eighteens, it will need to make efforts to show that its verification processes are, in fact, robust, and provide an effective barrier to under eighteens from accessing the programme.  

The Commission says it requested that TikTok submit a risk assessment report relating to TikTok Lite and the rewards programme last week. The deadline for that submission is today, with TikTok then having until 3 May to provide other information that has been requested. 

If TikTok fails to reply by that deadline then the Commission “may impose fines up to 1% of the provider's total annual income or worldwide turnover and periodic penalties up to 5% of the provider's average daily income or worldwide annual turnover”. 

With TikTok achieving $16 billion in ad revenue in the US alone last year, that could quickly become a substantial sum of money. The Commission also says that it might force the suspension of the rewards programme in Europe pending an assessment of its safety. 

Meanwhile, over in the US, TikTok's political woes relating to the claims that the Chinese government has access to user data via the app's China-based owner Bytedance continue apace.

This weekend the House Of Representatives backed for a second time proposals that would force Bytedance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US. This time the sell-or-be-banned law was included in a bigger bill that also includes aid packages for Ukraine and Israel. That means it should get consideration in the Senate much more speedily. 

Should the bill successfully pass both chambers of Congress, TikTok has made it clear that it will fight the sell-or-be-banned law in the courts, based on the argument it is unconstitutional on free speech grounds. Similar arguments were used to stall attempts by then President Donald Trump to ban use of TikTok in the country and a state-level TikTok ban that was passed by lawmakers in Montana. 

TikTok’s Head Of Public Policy for the Americas, Michael Beckerman, has confirmed in a memo to staff that that's the plan should the Senate endorse the proposals voted through by the House. According to The Information he wrote, “At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge. We’ll continue to fight, as this legislation is a clear violation of the first amendment rights of the 170 million Americans on TikTok”.

Setlist Podcast: MPs want to see action on musicians’ income

Chris Cooke and Andy Malt discuss the warning from UK politicians that there need to be “tangible steps to improve musicians’ remuneration and performer rights” by this time next year, and Blur drummer Dave Rowntree’s class action lawsuit against PRS For Music over songwriter royalties, and more.

🎧 Click here to listen - or search for 'Setlist Podcast'

Amazon AI employee claims she was told to breach copyright rules because “everyone else is doing it”

Amazon in the US has been accused by an ex-employee of breaching its own internal copyright rules as it sought to keep up with rivals in the race to develop ever more sophisticated AI models. When she challenged the policy breaches, she claims, she was told it was fine because “everyone else is doing it”.

The claim is made in a discrimination and unlawful dismissal lawsuit filed by AI researcher Dr Viviane Ghaderi. Although it’s a small part of the litigation, the allegation seems to confirm concerns in the music and wider creative industries that those developing AI models are being very slack when it comes to their copyright obligations.

The core part of Ghaderi’s lawsuit deals with the discrimination she claims she was subjected to when she returned to Amazon after maternity leave. That discrimination first resulted in her being demoted and then in her dismissal.

On her return to the company she also “inherited a project relating to defendants’ large language models”, the lawsuit explains. “Ms Ghaderi was in charge of flagging violations of Amazon’s internal copyright policies and escalating these concerns to Amazon’s in-house legal department”.

In March 2023, the legal filing says, Ghaderi met with her team director, Andrey Styskin, who wanted “to understand why defendants were not meeting goals on a project relating to search quality on the Alexa team. Ms Ghaderi outlined the challenges she had faced because of Amazon’s internal copyright-related policies - which she had fully complied with”.

Styskin allegedly “rejected Ms Ghaderi’s concerns about Amazon’s internal policies and instructed her to ignore those policies in pursuit of better results because ‘everyone else’ - ie other AI companies - ‘is doing it’”.

Ghaderi says she communicated her concerns to Amazon’s legal team that managers were directing her to violate both the company’s own policies and intellectual property law.

She also notes that, since she raised those issues internally at Amazon, various AI companies have been sued by copyright owners. She specifically cites the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI, though she could have referenced the lawsuit filed by a group of music publishers against the Amazon-backed Anthropic. These lawsuits, she says, prove the concerns she raised were reasonable.

Most of the AI companies that have been sued by copyright owners argue that they don’t need permission when using copyright protected works to train an AI model because such use is ‘fair use’ under US law. 

Needless to say, the copyright owners do not agree. If they prevail in court, claims like those made by Ghaderi will likely be used to argue that many of those involved in the big AI race were rather reckless when it came to navigating their legal obligations.