Rounding up recent tech news that impacts livelihoods in the creative community ...

RIAA: music business grows by double digits in 2016
On March 30 the RIAA released its 2016 statistics on music shipments and revenue, showing an 11.4 percent growth over 2015, amounting to $7.7 billion in revenue. Streaming and paid subscriptions grew by 68.5 percent, accounting for the majority of U.S. music business revenue for the first time. While celebrating the good news, Chairman/CEO Cary Sherman said, "The unfortunate reality is that we have achieved this modest success in spite of our current music licensing and copyright laws, not because of them." Details of this marketplace distortion are presented at ValueTheMusic.org, an awareness-raising website launched by the RIAA, The Recording Academy and 14 other leading music organizations, including NMPA and SoundExchange. With the 2017 GRAMMYs on the Hill Awards days away, and the March 30 bipartisan reintroduction of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, the time is ripe to unshackle the American music industry from burdensome, out-of-date overregulation.

University of Toronto forms $150 million Artificial Intelligence research hub
The formation of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence was announced on March 28, based at the University of Toronto with $150 million in funding. As part of a pan-Canadian AI push, Vector will work with other national centers and hopes to balance U.S. firms' AI dominance with publicly-accessible training and research. AI algorithms are already responsible for the many of the music recommendations that subscribers receive on streaming services, and their role in mediating online activity is expected to grow in the coming years.

Congress strikes down FCC privacy rules
In a March 23 Senate vote followed by a March 28 House vote, Congress passed a resolution of disapproval by way of the Congressional Review Act, rejecting the Federal Communications Commission's October 2016 privacy regulations. These rules never took effect and will now be eliminated. Using FCC jurisdiction over broadband providers to restrict how personal data could be used, the defunct regs required an opt-in before broadband providers could share or sell data. The ability to opt-out from data sharing was previously a standing requirement and now comes back into force. On March 28 the White House and FCC Chair Ajit Pai expressed support for Congress' action, which followed Pai's dissenting opinion when the privacy regulations were originally passed.

Later this week: 2017 GRAMMYs on the Hill Awards to honor Keith Urban