Nintendo confirms live-action Zelda movie is in the works

Zelda fans already got a stellar new game with “Tears of the Kingdom” this year, but Nintendo just dropped another exciting nugget of news: the gaming giant is working on a live-action movie based on the Legend of Zelda franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the 37-year-old franchise,

Don’t be afraid of the ‘AI-assisted’ Beatles song, ‘Now And Then’

There’s been a bit of FUD around the decision to use a form of AI to resurrect John Lennon’s voice in what Paul McCartney called “the last Beatles record.” What they’ve done is far from the sketchy AI imitations of artists we see cluttering Soundcloud today, and has mu

Kaiber’s new app helps artists create music videos using generative AI tools

Kaiber, the generative AI creative studio behind the music videos of popular artists Kid Cudi and Linkin Park, announced today the launch of its new mobile app to give creators, musicians and artists a range of AI tools, including text-to-video, image-to-video and video-to-video. Founded in 2022, K

French soccer players back African mobile video network StarNews Mobile in $3M round

African mobile video network StarNews Mobile has secured $3 million in pre-Series A funding. StarNews offers African content creators a platform for monetizing their work through a subscription model. Currently, the service is available in six African countries, including Cameroon (where it started

Web Summit names ex-Wikimedia CEO, Katherine Maher, to take over in wake of Cosgrave controversy

Web Summit has named a new CEO: Katherine Maher — previously CEO and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation (between 2019 and 2021). Maher is also chair of the board of the foundation behind the private messaging app Signal, and holds various other board and fellowship positions ̵

Agora enables brands to host live shopping events and auctions

Agora, the company that develops “real-time engagement” APIs, is making its livestream shopping technology widely available to help more brands build live commerce experiences, including shoppable shows, live auctions, personal shopper livestreams and more. The solution has been in beta

YouTube debuts new playback controls and creator-focused features

YouTube is rolling out a new set of features for better mobile-based playback, song search and creator-friendly tools, including a feature that will highlight the “like and subscribe” buttons when a creator utters those words. The company is making it easier for users to increase playba

Bandcamp’s new owner lays off half the company

Bandcamp has officially changed hands from its old new owner, Epic, to its new new owner, Songtradr, and lost half its employees in the process. Songtradr confirmed that “50% of employees received offers” to continue on under the new ownership — and naturally the other 50% didn’

TikTok scores sizable Disney deal including a content hub and publisher partnership

TikTok has landed Disney as its latest big-name publishing partner for its premium ad product, Pulse Premiere, announced earlier this year. The company will join other large publishers, including NBCU, Condé Nast, DotDash Meredith, BuzzFeed and more, which offer brand-safe videos for marketers to

Medium expects to be profitable in 2024 as it climbs toward 1M subscribers

Online publishing platform Medium has led a bit of a tumultuous life. Seeking to thread the needle as it tried to be both a publisher and a writing platform, the company tried several different business models (allowing individual publications on its platform to offer paywalls, building its own pub

Block acquires music financial services startup Hifi

Block, the Jack Dorsey-founded fintech company previously known as Square, has acquired Hifi, a music-focused fintech startup. The company declined to share deal terms. Hifi founder and CEO Damian Manning announced the news in a LinkedIn post yesterday. The company also updated its website, which s

Hook wants to help you create a legal remix of your favorite track for TikTok

The rise of short video apps has fueled people to use many tools to make their videos different by remixing popular songs. Many creators use tricks like speeding up, slowing down or using clap tracks to modify songs. While labels and social media companies have tools to keep a watch on track usage

EyeEm, the photo marketplace, changes hands as Freepik picks it up out of bankruptcy

EyeEm, the Berlin-based photo marketplace, was once loftily thought of as a possible challenger to Instagram in Europe. More recently has fallen on much harder times, and now it has a new owner. Freepik — a Spain-based platform partly owned by EQT that provides images, graphics, and other med

Instagram head says Threads is ‘not going to amplify news on the platform’

Instagram’s new Twitter-like app Threads is not prepared to truly challenge Elon Musk’s X, if recent statements by Instagram head Adam Mosseri hold true. In response to a post about Threads’ position on hard news, Mosseri explained the company did not intend to “amplify̶