Keyframe Audio Stock Music Site Revamp – YouTube Whitelist for Filmmakers

With a new director on board, the team at Keyframe Audio has launched a new version of its website, and they added over 50.000 new songs. But the most exciting part for filmmakers is that they are developing a unique system that automatically whitelists and clears the right in YouTube’s Content ID system when you use tracks from Keyframe Audio. Let’s take a closer look at this new version of the site.

If the name Keyframe Audio sounds familiar to you, you’re right: in January 2019, we already talked about the launch of the platform. Since the Beta version, the team developed dramatically and continues to expand daily. An update to our original article was needed to show you what’s new.

New Director and New Keyframe Audio Website

First of all, Keyframe Audio’s new director is Jeremiah Benzion. If you don’t know who Jeremiah is, he was previously the Licensing and Artist Director at Arlist.io, another music licensing platform. Also, Keyframe Audio is now part of HAAWK, which is a big player in the “YouTube Content ID and Facebook/Instagram Rights Manager” game.

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Pokémon Go maker Niantic names Megan Quinn as chief operating officer

Pokémon Go maker Niantic has named Megan Quinn as chief operating officer. Founder and CEO John Hanke said in a post that Quinn will lead business operations and international development for the company as it prepares for the next phase of growth.

He said that Quinn has been a supporter of the mission since the company’s roots as a part of Google. At Google, she worked for Hanke in various roles for seven years before Niantic even got started. It’s a significant appointment, as high-ranking women are still rare in game companies and women make up roughly 20% of game industry professionals. It’s also important as Niantic has seen great success, with hundreds of millions of downloads and billions of dollars in revenues.

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Byton Resumes Production Of M-Byte Electric SUV

Byton also finalized the home charging installation deal for the U.S. market with Qmerit. 

Byton's CEO Daniel Kirchert revealed this week several images showing that the company is busy making first M-Byte all-electric SUVs.

The pre-production in Nanjing actually started in October 2019, but then was interrupted by COVID-19 in early 2020.

We are not sure whether those are still pre-production cars or already some demo units, but the schedule is to start customer deliveries in China in mid-2020.

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Comics Still Selling Well in Booktrade Despite Coronavirus Pandemic

With the Direct Market effectively shuttered due to Diamond Comic Distributors' shutdown and several state mandates, the booktrade has become the defacto primary distribution channel for comic book publishers including Marvel, DC, BOOM! Studios, and VIZ Media.

ICv2's Milton Griepp has organized a report of booktrade sales in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. According to figures from Bookscan, March 2020's sales for the top 20 kids graphic novel titles "were actually up substantially over" March 2019 and that the top 20 adult graphic novels were "similar" to those from this point last year.

But how?

While Diamond has been shutdown for the past two weeks, several publishers use other distributors for bookstores. BOOM! Studios, for example, uses Simon & Schuster.

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Netflix Inks First-Look Deal With ‘Mouse Guard’ Comic Book Publisher BOOM! Studios

Netflix has struck a first-look deal with BOOM! Studios, the comic book publisher behind franchises including Lumberjanes, Something is Killing the Children, Once & Future, andMouse Guard.

The deal covers live-action and animated series and comes after the streamer began worked with BOOM! on a feature adaptation of The Unsound with Shazam! director David F. Sandberg in 2019.

BOOM! Studios previously struck a first-look film deal with 20th Century Studios and the studio took a minority stake in the company. That first-look deal runs through January 2021 and the studio is releasing supernatural thriller The Empty Man in August. However, following the Disney merger, BOOM!’s $150M animated movie Mouse Guard, directed by Wes Ball, was cancelled and the company moved beyond 20th Century Studios, setting up projects across town including feature film Memetic with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg producing and The Batman screenwriter Mattson Tomlin at Lionsgate and a slew of TV projects to Amazon, HBO Max, Peacock, CBS All Access and Disney+.

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