Techmeme: Why distribution deals with unsigned artists are a good path to profitability for music platforms like Pandora and Spotify (Startups and S**t)

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October 24, 2015, 11:20 AM

Top News

New York Times:

Sources: Uber looking to raise close to $1B in new venture capital at valuation of $60B-$70B — Uber Said to Plan Another $1 Billion in Fund-Raising — Just three months after raising an enormous sum of money from investors, Uber is at it again. — The ride-hailing service is planning …

More: TechCrunch, Tech Times, International Business Times and Business Insider

Tweets: @mattrosoff, @mikeisaac, @lesliepicker and @mdudas

iFixit:

Nexus 5X teardown shows many components are modular and can be replaced independently — Nexus 5X Teardown … Teardown — Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions. — Featured Guide — This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.

More: Engadget, AndroidGuys, TechSpot, Greenbot, Phandroid, MobileSyrup.com, Android Community, Geeky Gadgets, Tech Times, Pocketnow, SlashGear, TechnoBuffalo, Ubergizmo, Android Authority and The Verge

Bloomberg Business:

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft's strong earnings highlight the benefit of a head start in cloud services over legacy IT firms — The Cloud Is Raining Cash on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft — Each company's impressive earnings can be attributed to a shift in the industry that's punishing a slew of legacy firms.

More: Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Bloomberg View

Mark Bergen / Re/code:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Brings in Less Egotistical Leadership — Bruno Bowden describes Google's top ranks in a very Google-y way. With stats. — “In leadership at Google, you have to be three-plus standard deviations better than normal in technical ability,” said Bowden …

More: ZDNet. Tweets: @brianosh and @mikeindustries

Semil Shah / Haywire:

Y Combinator's and AngelList's recent announcements of follow-on funds, while disruptive to traditional VC, are nonetheless good for the overall VC ecosystem — AngelList and Y Combinator Continue To Shake The Trees — They say that “bad things come in threes.”

More: Stratechery, venturedeal.com and Xconomy

Tweets: @pmarca, @bryce, @nedrenzi, @sama and @danprimack

Startups and S**t:

Why distribution deals with unsigned artists are a good path to profitability for music platforms like Pandora and Spotify — Thinking Outside of Pandora's Box — “And you ain't get a coin, [Nas], you was getting f**ked then — I know who I paid, God - Serchlite publishing

Tweets: @startupljackson, @mathewi, @mmasnick and @mdudas. See also Mediagazer

Mathew Ingram / Fortune:

Pandora shares fall more than 30% after company reports quarterly loss of $85M

More: TechCrunch, AppleInsider, Pandora, Bloomberg Business, 24/7 Wall St. and Ars Technica

Tweets: @mathewi, @richbtig and @joshconstine

See also Mediagazer

Joe Fedewa / Phandroid:

HTC and Under Armour delay fitness tracker again, with HTC promising suite of related fitness products in early 2016 — HTC's Under Armour fitness tracker slips to Q1 2016 — In July we reported on HTC and Under Armour delaying the HTC Grip until later this year.

More: Ausdroid, Fone Arena, Ubergizmo, Droid Life and Android Central

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:

Android compatibility document mentions forthcoming car infotainment OS — Google details how to implement a car version of Android—which doesn't exist yet. — With every new version of Android comes a new version of the Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD).

More: Android Authority, PCWorld and Android Police

Dell Cameron / The Daily Dot:

DoJ says courts should require Apple to decrypt data on iOS devices because software is “licensed, not sold” to customers — DOJ dismisses Apple's arguments against decrypting iOS communications — The U.S. government rejected Apple's arguments in federal court …

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Engadget and Boing Boing

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Brewster Contacts App Team Gets Acqui-Hired By Burger King Owner RBI, Brewster Lives On — We've heard a lot about software eating the world; now a company that has built its business around food is now eating up a software startup. Restaurant Brands International, owner of Burger King and Horton's …

Tweets: @delrey, @caseynewton and @rafat

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Joomla CMS patched on Thursday to fix critical SQL-injection flaw affecting millions of websites — Joomla bug puts millions of websites at risk of remote takeover hacks — Just-patched flaw allows outside hackers to gain administrator access. — Millions of websites used in e-commerce …

More: Trustwave, Joomla!, Gizmodo, Security Affairs, Softpedia News, The Tech Report, SC Magazine, Threatpost, The Register, The Hacker News and CSO

ACLU:

District court dismisses Wikimedia v. NSA internet surveillance case brought by ACLU for broad coalition, says plaintiffs failed to show they were monitored — Court Dismisses ACLU Challenge to NSA Internet Surveillance — ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal district court granted the government's motion …

More: Techdirt and Wikimedia blog. Tweets: @csoghoian and @astepanovich. See also Mediagazer

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Channels with Peter Kafka:

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Sources:

Sam Altman on OpenAI's next model and the AI backlash

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