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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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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
Pontifax AgTech's Gil Demeter on Investing in the Next Generation of Robotics and Bioscience
07:22 AM | January 15, 2021
Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash
On this week's episode of LA Venture, hear from Gil Demeter, the vice president at Pontifax AgTech. We had a great discussion about next generation robotics and bioscience. Pontifax AgTech has over $465 million in assets under management, and is one of the largest food and agtech funds in the world.
Key Takeaways
- Pontifax is a growth-stage investor in food and agriculture technology, and invests somewhere in between late-stage venture and early-stage growth.
- Typically, their investments range from $15 to $25 million in initial capital and typically twice that over the lifetime of the company.
- Gil notes that farmers are pretty sophisticated when it comes to new tech and utilize multiple pieces of software. Growers don't necessarily have the whole institution backed up to analyze it.
- Gil says labor and water are the two biggest issues for growers, distributors, and many others in the agricultural ecosystem.
- When it comes to agriculture, gene editing is huge, as is innovation around natural, usually organic solutions to spur growth in crops without having to put more inputs, chemicals or expensive seed into the process to yield a better result.
- Food tech has blown up in the last five years and intersects with interest in health tech - including food and diet.
Gil Demeter is vice president at Pontifax AgTech.
Want to hear more of L.A. Venture? Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
Here's How To Get a Digital License Plate In California
03:49 PM | October 14, 2022
Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash
Thanks to a new bill passed on October 5, California drivers now have the choice to chuck their traditional metal license plates and replace them with digital ones.
The plates are referred to as “Rplate” and were developed by Sacramento-based Reviver. A news release on Reviver’s website that accompanied the bill’s passage states that there are “two device options enabling vehicle owners to connect their vehicle with a suite of services including in-app registration renewal, visual personalization, vehicle location services and security features such as easily reporting a vehicle as stolen.”
Reviver Auto Current and Future CapabilitiesFrom Youtube
There are wired (connected to and powered by a vehicle’s electrical system) and battery-powered options, and drivers can choose to pay for their plates monthly or annually. Four-year agreements for battery-powered plates begin at $19.95 a month or $215.40 yearly. Commercial vehicles will pay $275.40 each year for wired plates. A two-year agreement for wired plates costs $24.95 per month. Drivers can choose to install their plates, but on its website, Reviver offers professional installation for $150.
A pilot digital plate program was launched in 2018, and according to the Los Angeles Times, there were 175,000 participants. The new bill ensures all 27 million California drivers can elect to get a digital plate of their own.
California is the third state after Arizona and Michigan to offer digital plates to all drivers, while Texas currently only provides the digital option for commercial vehicles. In July 2022, Deseret News reported that Colorado might also offer the option. They have several advantages over the classic metal plates as well—as the L.A. Times notes, digital plates will streamline registration renewals and reduce time spent at the DMV. They also have light and dark modes, according to Reviver’s website. Thanks to an accompanying app, they act as additional vehicle security, alerting drivers to unexpected vehicle movements and providing a method to report stolen vehicles.
As part of the new digital plate program, Reviver touts its products’ connectivity, stating that in addition to Bluetooth capabilities, digital plates have “national 5G network connectivity and stability.” But don’t worry—the same plates purportedly protect owner privacy with cloud support and encrypted software updates.
5 Reasons to avoid the digital license plate | Ride TechFrom Youtube
After the Rplate pilot program was announced four years ago, some raised questions about just how good an idea digital plates might be. Reviver and others who support switching to digital emphasize personalization, efficient DMV operations and connectivity. However, a 2018 post published by Sophos’s Naked Security blog pointed out that “the plates could be as susceptible to hacking as other wireless and IoT technologies,” noting that everyday “objects – things like kettles, TVs, and baby monitors – are getting connected to the internet with elementary security flaws still in place.”
To that end, a May 2018 syndicated New York Times news service article about digital plates quoted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which warned that such a device could be a “‘honeypot of data,’ recording the drivers’ trips to the grocery store, or to a protest, or to an abortion clinic.”
For now, Rplates are another option in addition to old-fashioned metal, and many are likely to opt out due to cost alone. If you decide to go the digital route, however, it helps if you know what you could be getting yourself into.
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Steve Huff
Steve Huff is an Editor and Reporter at dot.LA. Steve was previously managing editor for The Metaverse Post and before that deputy digital editor for Maxim magazine. He has written for Inside Hook, Observer and New York Mag. Steve is the author of two official tie-ins books for AMC’s hit “Breaking Bad” prequel, “Better Call Saul.” He’s also a classically-trained tenor and has performed with opera companies and orchestras all over the Eastern U.S. He lives in the greater Boston metro area with his wife, educator Dr. Dana Huff.
steve@dot.la
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