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Universal Music Group set the music world aflame on Tuesday with its scathing open letter announcing that it would yank its music from TikTok after its licensing agreement with the platform expires on January 31. That letter is UMG’s equivalent of a nuclear bomb threat, the culmination of a year of tense negotiations between the world’s largest music corporation and its most important viral marketing device. The industry is currently on watch, wondering if that drastic move will actually come to fruition, or if the…

On Wednesday, the Indian government issued a notification allowing domestic public companies to list directly on global exchanges at the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Gujarat's GIFT City. This was a long-standing demand by large Indian companies wanting to access foreign capital.Here’s a look into how this impacts Indian startups and investors.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisitIIM LucknowIIML Executive…

Food-delivery platform Swiggy has tested a Rs 10 platform fee on users. It started by levying this as a Rs 2 fee back in April last year, and raised it to Rs 3 in October. Now, it is potentially looking at increasing this levy.Swiggy is not the only company in the consumer internet space to impose such charges, and platforms are looking at these fees to optimise unit economics in their quest for profitability.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering CollegeCourseWebsiteMITMIT Technology Leadership…

Google’s Play Store will allow a variety of real money gaming (RMG) apps, which let players wager actual money based on the outcome of online games, to be listed on the platform, it said in a blogpost. At the same time, the popular app store will be charging them a service fee, adding to the pressure their margins already face due to increased indirect taxation.Here’s a deeper dive into what this means for one of the most profitable, and more recently troubled, startup ecosystems in the country:Elevate Your Tech Prowess…

On January 8, ChatGPT developer OpenAI issued a blog post responding to allegations levelled by the New York Times in a lawsuit filed last month. The news organisation had accused OpenAI of "wide-scale copying" and using millions of articles published by it for training chatbots.OpenAI has refuted some of these allegations and claimed that the fair use doctrine of copyright laws will apply in its case. ET explains the case and its ramifications.Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill CoursesOffering…

After a prolonged tug-of-war between asset managers and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the regulator green-lit the first-ever US-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track the price of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency: bitcoin. The SEC has granted approval to 11 applications from major entities such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, and ARK Investments.What is an ETF, and why is there a lot of buzz around this?An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a type of investment fund or product that trades…

Colorado workers who need to take time off from work to care for a new baby or family member — or to deal with their own serious health condition — can now receive pay for that time away from their job. But there are limitations on both the length of paid time available and how much is paid under the state’s Family and Medical Leave Insurance program, known as FAMLI. Colorado voters created the program in 2020 when Proposition 118 passed with nearly 58% support. Employers and employees began paying into the program last…

Prize money disbursement in esports tournaments this year is expected to surpass the Rs 30-35 crore mark cumulatively handed out in 2023 as such events continue to grow in reach and scale, and organisers remain upbeat.Tournament organiser (TO) Skyesports alone has announced a target pool of $2.5 million (Rs 20 crore) to be paid out to winning teams in 2024. Game publisher Krafton, which disbursed Rs 3.8 crore in 2023, also said both the prize size and scale of its tournaments shall be higher in 2024 with more penetration…

While Interstellar popularised the idea of black holes, physicists and research labs continue to expand their research of such interstellar phenomena to further understand the origins of our universe. In December 2021, the US-based National Aeronautics Space Agency launched the imaging X-ray polarimetry explorer mission to explore the remnants of supernova explosions, the particle streams emitted by black holes and other cosmic events.  On 1 January,…

Last week’s copyright infringement lawsuit by The New York Times ( NYT) against ChatGPT- maker OpenAI has opened another battlefront between big technology companies and news publishers. NYT has questioned the very essence of how large language models (LLMs) – on which tools such as ChatGPT-- are trained. The development could have broader ramifications for news media firms and how they should be valued for helping train language models by the courts. Even as most generative AI companies are dealing with copyright issues…