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TikTok Ventures Deeper Into Music With New Sound-Editing App
Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
TikTok is continuing its foray into the music industry by testing a new sound-editing app for musicians and creators called Mawf.
The Culver City-based video-sharing app and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, are currently beta-testing the sound-editing tool throughout Europe and the U.K., Business Insider reported Wednesday.
Mawf transforms users’ vocals and other audio inputs into instrumental sounds like trumpets, saxophones and flutes. A series of levers allows users to modify the sounds, which are sourced from the machine-learned analysis of recordings by professional musicians, according to the app’s website. Music production platforms, such as Ableton Live and Logic Pro, can integrate Mawf’s features as a plugin, which allows users to incorporate the app’s audio into their projects.
TikTok’s experiment with Mawf comes after the social media firm launched its own music distribution platform, SoundOn, last month. The platform lets artists directly upload their music to TikTok and earn royalties when that music is used in videos.
TikTok has carved out an increasingly influential role in the music business, with the video-sharing platform popularizing music by new and established artists alike and launching several successful music projects. “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical”—which originated as a TikTok passion project—won this year’s Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, March, while pop star Olivia Rodrigo took home the Best New Artist award after her hit song “Drivers License” was featured in more than 1.4 million videos on the app. TikTok also recently backed its first musical theater production, “For You, Paige,” which premiered last week in New York.
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- TikTok Launches SoundOn To Help Music Artists Monetize Songs ... ›
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- TikTok Funds Its First Musical, "For You, Paige" - dot.LA ›
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Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
'We’re Running Out of Ore on Earth': Astroforge Targets April for Test Asteroid Refining Mission
02:00 AM | February 13, 2023
Photo: Astroforge
One of the most-used elements in industrial work on Earth is disappearing.
Popular for industrial use because of its resistance to corrosion and heat, platinum sells for over $1,000 an ounce and is in everything from wedding bands to medical devices to a number of auto parts.
And retrieving what little of the element does remain, will only exacerbate the ongoing climate crisis – resource extraction was the source of half the world’s carbon emissions and 80% of its biodiversity loss in 2019 and that number has likely only risen.
The problem’s been known for awhile; back in 2016 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicted demand would outpace supply of platinum and palladium. At that time, the college estimated we’d run out of platinum by 2050, a mere 27 years from now.
There’s also the issue that what platinum remains is in the hands of powers adversarial to the U.S.
Russia accounts for up to 30% of the world’s palladium supply, and up to 10% of its platinum, and its war in Ukraine has pushed export prices higher. MIT also estimated that China, another stockpiler of industrial metals, could stop selling its platinum stores to the greater globe as soon as 2034.
So what is there to do?
The answer could lie thousands of miles from our planet, in deep space, according to Astroforge CEO and former Virgin Orbit veteran Matt Gialich. Gialich is certain that in the near future, it’ll be commonplace for companies to operate refineries in space that can sort and send back elements crucial for construction on earth.
“We know that these concentrations are super high in space,” Gialich said. He said Astroforge is starting with platinum metals, but it does have “a future roadmap that’s much, much bigger than that,” but wouldn’t share more about what other materials the company hopes to mine in space. It’s reminiscent of the old California Gold Rush – the minute you tell someone there’s platinum in them there asteroids, others with means will want to rush in first.
Astroforge is developing technology to mine and refine minerals in deep space. The company will face a vital test in its mission to mine asteroids for minerals this April, when it tests its in-space refinery technology for the first time.
In particular, Astroforge is looking at retrieving palladium and platinum from asteroids. The shrinking store of these metals makes it easier to understand why going to space to mine more might not be such a far-fetched plan.
Gialich pointed out the emissions problem and noted, “part of that is platinum group mining… not all, but a big part of it. When it comes to mining metals, there’s just no way to solve that; you can do things to reduce it, but we’re running out of ore on the earth as we continuously mine.”
He noted that a while ago, it wasn’t feasible to undertake these sorts of missions, but said that mission price continues to drop as more companies enter the private space race and offer rideshare missions for lower and lower costs.
“As we continue to run out of ore and as access to space becomes cheaper, we think we're actually past the inflection point of when this makes more economic sense to do,” Gialich said.
But, it’ll take a lot of cash and crafty partnerships – NASA spent $800 million to retrieve only 60 grams during a similar project. Two other space mining firms, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, were bought out before reaching their goals. This is why Astroforge raised $13 million in May, but it’ll likely need much more than that for future missions and anticipates future fundraises. Gialich wouldn’t disclose if Astroforge has any customers signed up for future missions or to buy space ore yet.
This upcoming mission in April will see Astroforge’s small in-orbit refinery hitch a ride to space on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, in partnership with British small satellite launcher OrbAstro. The plan is to test the refinery capabilities in space first by supplying the refinery with an “asteroid-like material” (so, a rock, but not an asteroid) that the tech will then vaporize and sort into its elemental components while in orbit. It’s a vital test of if the refinery can function in space, and if all succeeds, a critical part towards Gialich’s overall mission – becoming the first company to successfully mine asteroids.
“We have gone to asteroids before,” Gialich said. “We've landed on them, we've taken samples from them, we’ve done every step of the way, scientifically, multiple times. We just haven’t added that refining piece in, but that is actually very simple. You can prove that out on Earth, there’s not a big difference [in space].”
And Gialich really, really wants to be first. After all, whoever is,will have their pick of lucrative contracts as other private and public players rush in to gather up their share of the valuable asteroid minerals. NASA is leading a mission to explore an asteroid that some have joked could be worth $10 quintillion.
“We’re going to be the first commercial company to explore that frontier,” he promised. “There’s enough space out there for a ton of companies to exist and be successful. We’re still going to do it first.”
That, of course, remains to be seen. The SpaceX launch doesn’t yet have a window open. But when it does, it’ll be a crucial test of Astroforge’s system. And, it could eventually lead to an overhaul of our centuries-old mining system that might very well one day help the planet. At least, that’s Gialich’s overall goal.
“We’re going to save the planet, and to save the planet we need to have big, audacious ideas that really solve a critical problem we have on Earth, and we have a resource problem on Earth,” Gialich said. “Now that we’re a globalized world, there’s nowhere else to grow. There’s not an option here, this has to be done.”
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
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Hello Sunshine’s Liz Jenkins on How Young Studios Are Disrupting Hollywood
12:04 PM | March 25, 2022
Image courtesy of Liz Jenkins
On this episode of Office Hours, Hello Sunshine Chief Operating Office Liz Jenkins joins the show to talk about how she aims to disrupt the way storytelling is produced, in Hollywood and beyond.
Hello Sunshine is a media brand and content company founded by actress Reese Witherspoon that highlights female authorship and storytelling across all its platforms, putting women and girls at the center of each narrative. Jenkins joined the company as its CFO in 2018, overseeing its finances and growth as a business. She oversees Hello Sunshine's scripted, unscripted content and its kids and animation studios, along with its book club.
Jenkins sees Hello Sunshine as a new media company amid an industry dominated by massive legacy companies, rethinking the way content studios have worked in the past, and changing the way women’s stories are produced within the industry.
“I think one of the things that has taken the industry a long time to catch up with, frankly, the innovation that's been driven by technology companies, has been the fact that these legacy companies have massive legacy businesses – ie. cable networks that generate billions of dollars of cash,” she says. “It’s the innovator’s dilemma, effectively, right?”
By contrast, she says, Hello Sunshine started from “a blank piece of paper” and a mission to bring “content, commerce and community” to a mission-driven storytelling brand.
“When we talk about commerce, we don't just mean selling things to people,” Jenkins adds. “We mean really engaging with the users and our audience on a really deep level.”
Jenkins’ experience in technology and business, as head of strategic ventures for Sony PlayStation, and senior VP of corporate development and strategy at Media Rights Capital, have served her well in her role at Hello Sunshine.
“I do have that really kind of entrepreneurial business and building mindset that one would always say exists in the Bay Area,” she says. “But I think it's very much the same in the entertainment business, right? Every film is a startup, new business, you're bringing together like a couple 100 people who never worked together before–potentially a couple of them have–to build something overnight."
Jenkins also discussed the ways Hollywood has been shifting in recent years to reflect a greater diversity of storytelling and talent both in front of and behind the camera. She says she’s seen progress in the greater efforts to include more women and people of different backgrounds has had an impact on the larger culture.
“We don't have to rewind the clock back very far to see a really different space that we were in,” Jenkin says. “And I think that if anything, the last few years have proven to us that even the most sacred and long-standing institutions are fragile – right? – And require a lot of vigilance to protect.”
Still she sees there’s still a lot of work to be done, especially in creating the kinds of pipelines to attract talent and to sustain the number of decision-makers who will focus on telling more inclusive stories.
“It requires a real commitment to excellence and authenticity,” she says. In order to sustain the kind of changes that have reshaped Hollywood in the past several years, “you can't be complacent.”
Jenkins also talks about how Hello Sunshine chooses the streaming partners it works with on their shows, based in part on their audiences, their interests and the amount of marketing their willing to put into a project. She also talks about how young viewers, readers and listeners are changing the way media is being produced.
Want to hear more episodes? Subscribe to Office Hours on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Fellow Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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Spencer Rascoff
Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.
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