Author: Steve

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy Acquires Dominion Energy’s Natural Gas Transmission and Storage Business for $9.7 billion

It has been confirmed that Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s energy unit will acquire Dominion Energy Inc’s natural gas transmission and storage business for $9.7 billion.

This puts Berkshire Hathaway Energy into a very strong position in the market.

Potentially, this is why Warren Buffett has been holding onto an extra large cash sum? Maybe not.

Reserve Your Cybertruck Now Live in China on Tesla Website

Tesla Cybertruck orders in China.

Tesla is now officially taking Cybertruck orders in China. You can head to the Tesla website to reserve your Cybertruck.

The Cybertruck has such a unique design I’m sure there will be a lot of upper class Chinese who would love to be driving around in such a car. Really makes a statement.

Bill Ackman: Amazing 1 Hour Interview with Pershing Square Founder, hedge funds & learning from your mistakes (Video)

Bill Ackman is a very interesting person in the world of investing. Below is a great interview with Bill that talks about everything Pershing Square, hedge funds and learning from your mistakes. There are a lot of great quotes inside this interview.

Notion – How Do Medium and Large Businesses Use Notion?

Notion is an amazing new product that has been growing in popularity very quickly. If you have never used Notion it is a Wiki, Notes, Docs and To List manager all in one product. Notion allows customer to use the service in whatever way they choose and it’s a completely customisable toolset to meet each persons needs.

Notion is all run by a very small team at present of around 50 people and worth a valuation of around $2 billion.

At my company we have started to use Notion as we needed an internal wiki as our company has been growing very quickly from around 30 staff to now 80 staff. Notion provides a great place to have staff members collaborate on documents and organise as much information as possible.

I have been wondering for some time how other medium and large companies are using Notion? However, there seems to be very little information about this online at present.

If you have been using Notion at your organisation I would love to hear how you have been using the product to benefit collaborate, communication and transparency.

What are my Top 3 Affiliate Network Sites in 2020?

There are three main affiliate sites that standout at the present and they are:

However, that being said a lot of big companies have start putting their own affiliate programs into their own hands as they want to control the relationships with the websites and not leave it to affiliate networks, which they have been doing for so long.

Is TikTok deciding the future of music?

TikTok has become a very strong force in online video and become a place for youth culture to thrive.

TikTok has a great feature that allows anyone creating a TikTok to use any music they have licensed in their catalogue. This has driven great success for specific artists and it has now become a marketing strategy of the major labels to get their music used by song of the world’s largest TikTok creators.

TikTok isn’t the future of music, but it is for sure a driving force in the music industry.

Music Industry – Old Money, No Longterm Thinking, Lacks Innovation!

Now the music business sees TikTok as its tool. After being caught flat-footed by the success of “Old Town Road,” and then bringing it in-house at Sony, the labels decided they wanted some of that action. If TikTok could build the unknown Lil Nas X, imagine what it could do with a known quantity, a star?

The music business used to be first, but now it’s last. Because it is controlled by old people who did not get the memo, who believe they are indispensable and that no one can resist their money.

But isn’t it funny that not a single musical star has captured the zeitgeist of the Minneapolis/Black Lives Matter explosion in a song we all know. Illustrating that reflecting life, and opening up an audience’s eyes as to the way of life, are not part of the equation. In the music business, it’s all about collecting fans and milking them dry. When one of the biggest acts in the business, Justin Bieber, tries to manipulate the system to make his record number one, who in the hell is gonna listen to the words of a pop star?

via Bob Lefsetz

The quote above is from the most recent newsletter / article from Bob Lefsetz. Bob has been a long time music industry journalist and I thought that the above section is by far the best thing I have read about the music industry in the past 12 months.

Lefsetz is right!

The music industry has long been run by 60 year old businessman who don’t under the generations they are targeting. It’s no longer about the music and the industry runs more like buying and selling real estate than an art form at the top.

Pop music struggles to tell stories and really drive emotions. This is exactly why tracks from John Lennon, Elton John, Rolling Stones, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, are still getting very large numbers of plays even with the youngest audiences.

Personal / Life Moments Hard to Select via AI – Google Shutting Down Print AI Subscription Service

Droid Life has learned (via The Verge) that Google is shutting down the AI-guided trial service on June 30th.

Google didn’t announce why it is closing the printing service, but I would assume this won’t be the last time we see this service being offered.

The service was $8 per month and it had AI pick your 10 best picture and print them on 4×6 cardstock.

There are some things in life which aren’t going to be improved by AI and I think one of them is selecting moments to print from your life. People like to be in control and taking the time to look through all the photos is actually the most rewarding part of the process.

Top 10 Adobe Premiere Pro Effects and How to Use Them (Video)

Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the Adobe products that has been growing a lot of the past few years and it’s easy to see that it is one of the best tools in the ever growing Adobe creative suite.

The video above talks about the best 10 effects that are currently in Adobe Premiere Pro. It runs through these effects are how to best use them inside Adobe Premiere Pro.

How much do companies pay for background music that accompany commercials or viral videos?

For a company to properly license a song they would need to get the sync license from the music publisher/writer of the song, pay a fee, and then obtain a license from the record company/owner of the sound recording itself.

This is exactly why Synchedin was created.

It solves the complexities of sync licensing and makes the process as easy as obtaining a Spotify subscription.

  • Unlimited commercial projects
  • Unlimited downloads
  • 1000s of known artists
  • Copyright control so no issues!
  • $4.99 per month

In what ways is Google Waymo a threat to Tesla and its Self Driving Technology?

Waymo at present has a private valuation that is twice as high as Tesla.

How can this be?

Margins! Tesla is focused on the full production of the car where Waymo is focused purely on the underlying technology with self driving cars. Thus, Waymo will have a Gross Margin that is extremely high in comparison to Tesla.

Eric Schmidt talked about this a lot. How Google and its products always wanted to be focused on providing the technology sub stack instead of the full product as it keeps margins at a high level and thus maximising value.

How much does SoundCloud Pay for 100k Plays?

Soundcloud and other music streaming services dont pay per play. The payment model is based on a pro-rata model, which means it has a huge number of factors such as country, type of account, marketshare and many more.

From 100k plays on Soundcloud you can possibly expect to make around $100 at best. But that is also if all those plays are monetizable plays.

Is Google Play Music Closing Down?

Yes.

Google Music is scheduled to close down later this year around (September or October). Google Music has been an outstanding product, but it seems as though it hasn’t got as much traction as they wanted and they are merging it with YouTube Music and will put all their efforts behind the YouTube Music initiative.

Should I Copyright my music before putting it on YouTube?

It’s not required.

Copyright for music is technically given automatically when you create the track. You don’t have to register it with any organisation across the world to “get the copyright”.

Thus, after creating a track I would look to release the track on YouTube, Soundcloud and into all music streaming services (which you can do for Free via RouteNote).