Warner Music India teamed up with Rthyms.Life, which is this creator-focused platform based out of India and Dubai that wants to push Indian artists onto global charts. The deal means Warner handles worldwide distribution while Rthyms keeps its roster of artists like Guru Randhawa and Aastha Gill in control of their careers, from studio time to bookings.
Warner Music India has been making moves lately by grabbing stakes in companies like Divo and SkillBox, plus they started MAATI for folk music and 91 NORTH RECORDS with Warner Music Canada to spotlight South Asian talent. The whole thing is supposed to give creators more reach without losing their grip on the creative stuff, which honestly sounds like the standard pitch every platform...
A judge in California seems ready to let a massive group of Ticketmaster users band together for their antitrust case against Live Nation. George Wu heard arguments about class certification and basically brushed off the company's lawyer when he tried claiming you can't lump all these ticket buyers together. The plaintiffs want to represent every American who paid service fees on primary tickets since 2010, which could mean millions of people going after billions in damages.
The original lawsuit from 2022 says Ticketmaster was secretly hooking up brokers with tickets while pretending to fight scalpers, then forcing those brokers to resell only on their platform. They're also accused of jacking up prices by 20% to 80% through fees and...
The Lipman brothers are getting the Grammy Salute to Industry Icons award at the Pre-Grammy Gala happening at the Beverly Hilton. Monte and Avery started Republic Records back in the '90s, and the label has basically dominated Billboard's rankings for over a decade. Universal Music Group recently put them in charge of a bunch of East Coast labels like Island and Def Jam.
Harvey Mason from the Recording Academy says they show what happens when you grind hard with actual talent behind it. Clive Davis is hosting the whole thing and called them trailblazers for how they back artists and push for diversity in the business.
The brothers also do charity work with organizations like City of Hope and the Robin Hood Foundation. The actual...
Tuned Global just locked down another three years with e&'s Twist Music, and the streaming app is about to blow up across the UAE and Saudi Arabia after getting traction in Egypt. Con Raso from Tuned Global says telcos are basically becoming entertainment hubs themselves, with music acting as the sticky thing that keeps people from bouncing to other services.
The MENA region grew like crazy last year with streaming making up almost all the revenue, but Raso thinks the numbers hide how early-stage everything still is. He pointed out that in places like Egypt, telcos are the main gateway for people to pay for streaming since credit cards aren't super common yet.
The whole setup lets Twist mix international tracks with Arabic content...
Spotify says its end-of-year recap hit 200 million people in about a day, which marks a 19% jump from last year when it took over two days to reach that same number. The Sweden-based streaming platform rolled out new stuff like a multiplayer mode where you can compare stats with friends, and shares went up 41% to around 500 million. Marc Hazan from Spotify said they wanted to make it bigger and more connected to creative expression.
Other streamers have been doing their own versions of this for a while. Apple Music started its thing back in 2019, YouTube Music did the same that year, and Amazon Music joined the party more recently with a feature called Delivered.
Radhika Apte says she has zero fear of missing out on stuff by living in London instead of Mumbai. The actress explained that she travels back and forth for projects when needed, and if something passes her by, then it just passes her by. She thinks nothing is as important as people make it seem.
The star will appear in the upcoming thriller Saali Mohabbat as Smita, a quiet housewife who loves gardening and has a peaceful existence until an event changes everything. Apte described her character as an introverted plant lover whose simple life gets disrupted.
What pulled her toward the role was how different this crime thriller feels compared to recent fast-paced Indian films. She pointed out that the movie relies on subtlety, silence...
A Croatian engineering student from Pazin just placed third at the Eureka IIEC international competition after developing concrete that fixes its own cracks. Ivan Sloković created ConCure through a partnership between Zagreb's Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, plus the National Technical University of Athens, and the stuff actually handles corrosion problems in reinforced structures by patching itself up.
The competition brought together 20 teams from around the globe, and other Croatian entries scored decent results across different categories. Universities and startups are pumping out legit innovation instead of leaving everything to corporate labs and research facilities with massive budgets.
Mate Rimac's company finally hit all the checkpoints to unlock 897 million euros from the EU after showing off 60 prototype robotaxis that passed verification tests. The Croatian Vehicle Centre confirmed the prototypes exist and went through some testing at a temporary factory near Zagreb, but nobody actually checked how well the self-driving tech works yet. Croatia is about to send the payment request to Brussels after meeting 17 different requirements.
Rimac claims his outfit has built over 60 vehicles for different purposes, like crash testing and wind tunnel runs. The original deal says 50 to 100 fully autonomous Level 5 cars need to hit Zagreb streets by early next year, which is basically the impossible dream of the car industry...
Zagreb beat out every other major Croatian city in a nationwide quality-of-life survey, and coastal towns didn't even come close. Mayor Tomislav Tomašević picked up the trophy at a regional development conference after Ipsos polling showed residents think the capital delivers better living conditions than beach cities with over 35,000 people. The ranking factored in 29 different metrics covering finances, municipal services, demographics, and economic development.
Tomašević said the city plans to keep investing in infrastructure and policies that make both locals and tourists comfortable. The award ceremony went down at an EU funds conference where officials hand out prizes for successful regional projects.
