The European Central Bank, or ECB, has announced it will be collaborating with five companies for the development of potential digital euro user interfaces. In a Friday announcement, the ECB said it had chosen “Big Four” tech company Amazon, fintech firm Nexi, Spanish digital bank CaixaBank, French payments platform Worldline and the European Payments Initiative, or EPI, to each focus on developing a prototype based on specific use cases of the digital euro. According to the central bank, the firms will create front-end prototypes, which will not be used in later phases of the digital currency project. Source: ECB The ECB chose the five companies based on their fulfilling “specific capabilities” when compared to 50 other front-end developers that responded to the central bank’s...
Songwriter and publisher U.S. mechanical streaming royalty rates are going up — slowly — to a headline rate of 15.35% of total revenue from 2023-2027. That’s the big news out of Wednesday’s (Aug. 31) joint announcement on the “Phonorecords IV” settlement from the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Associations International and the Digital Media Association (DiMA). But how long will it take to get there and at what pace? What are the other conditions? Billboard now has more more key details about the deal. Under the new settlement agreement — which the NMPA touts will set the “highest royalty rate in the history of streaming anywhere” — the headline rate will escalate from 15.1% of revenue in 2023 to 15.2% in 2024 and then a half a percentage point inc...
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. You can now purchase items on layaway at Amazon. The mega-retailer introduced payment plans on thousands of Amazon Layaway items, including furniture, home entertainment, laptops and PCs, cameras and camera accessories, sports and exercise gear, lawn and garden essentials, electronics, musical instruments and more. No credit check, no interest, no cancellation or restocking fees. Before you get started, here’s what you need to know about the payment plan. Note: Amazon Layaway is not yet available for orders shipping to CT, DC, IL, MD, OH and PA. How Doe...
On Tuesday, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS, domain Amazon.eth received an offer for 1 million USDC (a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar) from an anonymous wallet address on OpenSea. The offer to buy the ENS domain went unanswered however, and no transaction took place. This is despite the last sale of the domain name being five months ago for 33 Ether (worth around $100,000 at that time). The expired million-dollar offer for Amazon.eth on OpenSea | Source: OpenSea It is unclear at the time of publication whether the owner simply was not informed of the offer, or did not consider it to be near fair value, or if the bidding and domain owner accounts were linked in an attempt to boost the price of the asset (in what is known as a “wash trade”). According to data from Op...