Becky Hill has been announced as the latest artist to receive a BRIT Billion Award by the BPI, the representative voice for the UK’s world leading record labels and music companies.

The BRIT Billion award celebrates Becky’s achievement in surpassing the landmark of one billion career UK streams - as calculated by the Official Charts Company. She was presented with the prestigious award backstage at Parklife Festival in Manchester’s Heaton Park on Sunday ahead of her performance.

Becky Hill said:
“1,000,000,000 streams of my music in the UK. wild. This year marks my 11th year in the music industry and for eight of them I dreamed of ‘breaking the uk’… I think this award signifies that goal being achieved! Thanks to the songwriters and producers that created this music with me over the years and thanks to YOU music lovers for listening & dancing! Now for the rest of the world! ??”

Winner of Best Dance Act two years running at the BRIT Awards 2022 and 2023, Becky Hill already has a Gold-certified top 10 album to her name in the shape of Only Honest At The Weekend. Her critically acclaimed run of hits include a number one spot on the Official Singles Chart with Gecko (Overdrive) (with Oliver Heldens) and a further four top 10 singles with the anthems Wish You Well (with Sigala), Afterglow (with Wilkinson), Crazy What Love Can Do (with David Guetta and Ella Henderson) and Remember (with David Guetta) – the latter having already amassed over 160 million streams in the UK.

Officially launched on 4th May 2023, the first wave of 13 artists to receive the BRIT Billion award included global icons ABBA, Coldplay, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, pioneering rap and hip-hop artists AJ Tracey and Headie One, and chart-dominating pop artists and singer-songwriters Anne-Marie, Ellie Goulding, George Ezra, Lewis Capaldi, RAYE, Rita Ora and Sam Smith. Recent recipients include Years & Years’ Olly Alexander, who received the BRIT Billion award from Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh at Mighty Hoopla festival, and singer-songwriter James Arthur, who was presented with his award live on BBC’s The One Show from presenters Alex Scott and Roman Kemp.

The BRIT Billion award reflects the extent to which streaming has transformed the music landscape for artists and fans alike over the past decade – more than 85% of the UK’s recorded music consumption now takes place through streaming, and in 2022 there were a record 160 billion audio streams in the UK in total.

 

Radiohead album 'OK Computer' has been recreated in full just using sounds from Nintendo 64 games.

YouTuber on4word has reimagined the entirety of the band's 1997 album with sounds from some classic games from the iconic video game console.

The ambitious project includes sounds from games like 'The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask', 'The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time', 'Golden Eye 007', 'Super Mario 64' and 'Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards'.

In the accompanying YouTube video, the creator included the reimagined LP - which is titled 'OK Nintendo 64' - along with visuals from the games in question.

'Super Mario 64' was used to give fresh takes on 'Airbag', 'Subterranean Homesick Alien' and 'Fitter Happier', while 'Mario Kart 64' sounds were used on 'Paranoid Android'.

'Exit Music (For A Film)' was remade with the help of 'Banjo Kazooie', while 'Goldeneye 007' lent itself to 'Climbing Up The Walls' and 'Karma Police' was remade with sounds from 'Star Fox 64'.

When it comes to 'The Legend of Zelda', 'Let Down' and 'Electioneering' were recreated with 'Majora's Mask' and 'Ocarina of Time'.

Meanwhile, Radiohead fans are still waiting for their first new album since 2016's 'A Moon Shaped Pool', and drummer Philip Selway previously revealed the band has a "collective desire" to make new music.

The sticksman insists he and his bandmates - Thom Yorke, brothers Jonny and Colin Greenwood, and Ed O'Brien - all want to work together again in the future, "for the right reasons", but have no immediate plans while they are busy with other projects.

He told Under the Radar: "There is still that collective desire to make music again together, in one way or another.

"But at the moment, we're just finding the right context for that and the right projects. But it's not going to be within the next year, probably. But it will happen because we want to and when you want to you're doing it for the right reasons."

 

Paul McCartney has used artificial intelligence (AI) to create the Beatles' final song.

During an appearance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday, the music legend revealed that his team used the technology to "extricate" his late bandmate John Lennon's voice from an old demo.

He added, "We just finished it up and it'll be released this year."

McCartney did not disclose which song will be released, however, it is widely believed to be a 1978 Lennon composition called Now and Then. The demo appears on a cassette Lennon's widow Yoko Ono once gave to McCartney. The Imagine singer made the cassette, labelled "For Paul", shortly before he died in 1980.

The concept of using AI came from Peter Jackson's 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, for which dialogue editor Emile de la Rey used the technology to separate the band members' voices from background noise and create clean audio from old footage.

"He (Jackson) was able to extricate John's voice from a ropey little bit of cassette," McCartney explained. "We had John's voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, 'That's the voice. This is a guitar. Lose the guitar.'"

"So when we came to to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had (and) we were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway."

The same process allowed the 80-year-old to "duet" with Lennon on his recent tour.

However, McCartney expressed concern over other ways AI can be applied, adding, "I'm not on the internet that much (but) people will say to me, 'Oh, yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs', and it's just AI, you know? It's kind of scary but exciting, because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads."

Soap2Day, one of the world's most popular pirate streaming sites, has unexpectedly shut down. Via numerous domains, many put in place to avoid site-blocking measures and search engine delisting and deindexing programs, Soap2Day serviced around 108 million visits per month. Other than a statement that the site will close forever, no reason has been provided for the shutdown.

Soap2Day, one of the most popular movie and TV show pirate streaming sites on the Internet, says it has closed down ‘forever’

Official domains including soap2day.to, soap2day.ac, soap2day.sh, soap2day.mx, s2dfree.to, s2dfree.cc, s2dfree.de, s2dfree.is, s2dfree.nl, plus the site’s domain uptime advisory pages at soapgate.org and soapgate.cc, all display the same shutdown message.

Hello guys: We have decided to close soap2day forever. We are very sorry Bye – Soap2day Team

Other than the message above, the Soap2Day team has provided no additional details on the site’s sudden demise. Whatever the reasons, issues with traffic levels and visitor numbers seem unlikely to be part of that equation.

Soap2Day Was a Pirate Success Story

Despite web blocking, domain downranking in search engines, and other anti-piracy measures, Soap2Day was one of the big ‘pirate streaming’ success stories of recent years, with traffic trending upwards and massive visitor numbers every single month.

Traffic has been improving all year; 84.2m visits in January, 93.6m in February, with figures for March and beyond even more impressive.

SimilarWeb data for single domain: soap2day.to

To put these traffic levels into perspective, Soap2Day received more traffic than the recently closed RARBG, 30 million more monthly visits than leading torrent site YTS (and by extension every torrent site in the top 10 most-visited sites list), and around 10 million visits more each month than streaming giant FMovies.

Given the above, it seems relatively safe to conclude that Soap2Day did not shut down due to a lack of popularity. Two domains used by the platform to notify users of official URLs (soapgate.org and soapgate.cc) received 12 million visits per month combined, yet neither offered any content for streaming.

So What Killed Soap2Day?

Soap2Day and similar large streaming sites face continuous pressure from global anti-piracy groups exerting pressure using various means, internationally and locally.

Late 2021, Hollywood and Netflix obtained a High Court injunction to block Soap2Day domains in the UK along with a similar order early February 2022 in Australia and an expansion a few months later.

The Motion Picture Association and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment obtained a subpoena in the United States that aimed to unmask the site’s operators in March 2022.

As data from SimilarWeb shows, Soap2Day’s traffic in the United States made it a go-to location for movie and TV show fans, potentially at the expense of licensed platforms operating in the same market.

In October 2022, Hollywood reported Soap2Day to the United States government. The higher traffic levels reported at the time were due to the MPA combining various Soap2Day domains but perhaps the most interesting comment is the linking of Soap2Day with operators in China.

Soap2Day also found its way onto the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s ‘Infringing Website List’ last October and just weeks later, was again targeted in a DMCA subpoena obtained by Hollywood.

Beware of Strangers Bearing Gifts

In common with RARBG, copycat sites claiming to be Soap2Day already exist in huge numbers and that volume is only likely to increase in the days and weeks to come. At the time of writing, based on loose calculations, there are at least 480 ‘Soap2Day’ branded domains in circulation.

Random tests on 50 of those domains in the past few hours revealed more than 20 attempts to dump malware. Anyone looking for Soap2Day alternatives should therefore be aware that movies and TV shows aren’t the only gifts on offer from would-be Soap2Day replacements.

Hundreds of thousands of pirating BitTorrent users have been sued over the years. This practice continues to keep courts busy in the U.S., mostly thanks to Strike 3 Holdings. Today, we look at a recent attempt by an accused Comcast subscriber to stop a lawsuit in its tracks. This effort failed with the Colorado court noting that the plaintiffs are not copyright trolls.

Strike 3 Holdings has been a familiar name in U.S. federal courts for a while now.

Last year, the adult entertainment company filed a record-breaking number of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates.

The company is keeping up this pace in 2023, averaging dozens of lawsuits per week. Most of these are never mentioned in the press and a large number are settled behind closed doors.

Every now and then, an accused Internet subscriber objects, but these cases rarely go to trial. According to some, the lawsuits’ main objective is to collect settlement payments and default judgments.

Motion to Quash

This line of reasoning was also brought up by a “John Doe” defendant whose IP address was targeted in a recent complaint. The defendant submitted a motion to quash, hoping to prevent Comcast from revealing their identity.

“Considering the thousands of John Does being sued by Plaintiff, it is highly likely that Plaintiff has no intention of pursuing an actual trial on the merits in the thousands of copyright infringement cases filed by Plaintiff Strike 3,” Doe’s attorney writes.

“[Strike 3] instead hopes to profit from settlements with small and relatively resource limited individual defendants as well as default judgments against individual defendants who are unsure of how to, or feel they are financially unable to, defend themselves through the full course of a copyright infringement trial.”

Based on these and other arguments, the defendant tried to stop the lawsuit in its tracks. However, as we have seen before in these types of cases, the Colorado federal court denied the request.

According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael E. Hegarty, who handles all the Strike 3 cases in the district, subpoenas to identify Internet subscribers can only be quashed if there’s a valid claim of privilege or if a privacy issue is implicated. That’s not the case here.

Reliability of the Evidence

The accused pirate’s motion raised questions about the accuracy of the evidence and whether it can accurately detect infringers. For example, if a subscriber has an open wifi network, others including neighbors might use it as well.

Judge Hegarty doesn’t deny this, but notes that this argument is not sufficient to quash the subpoena. Instead, the defendant can bring it up at a later stage.

“Defendant’s arguments challenging Plaintiff’s investigation methods and concerning the accessibility of a Wireless Firewall/Router are premature at this stage of the litigation and more properly raised during adjudication of the merits of this case,” Judge Hegarty writes.

If the case wasn’t allowed to go forward, rightsholders couldn’t possibly enforce their copyrights against alleged BitTorrent pirates, the order adds.

“In fact, Plaintiff’s attempt to obtain information from the ISP is a necessary first step in Plaintiff’s process of discovering the identity of the alleged infringer for the purpose of enforcing its copyright.”

No Troll

The argument that the company simply pursues these cases to collect settlements isn’t sufficient either. On top of that, the court refutes the suggestion that Strike 3 is a copyright troll.

“[T]he Court has neither observed nor been made aware of any particular Defendant in the cases before this Court who has experienced ‘coercive’ settlement tactics by Plaintiff,” Judge Hegarty writes.

“[T]his Court has handled over a hundred similar cases and consistently found these plaintiffs are not copyright trolls but rather actual producers of adult films whose works are infringed.”

Whether the term “troll” applies is a matter of semantics. A few weeks ago, a Florida court allowed the term to be used during a rare trial, which is scheduled to take place later this year.

Embarrassment and Undue Burden

Finally, the motion to quash highlighted the Doe defendant’s fears that exposing their identity could lead to undue embarrassment and all sorts of related problems.

Specifically, it “would be highly embarrassing to Defendant, unjustifiably stigmatizing to Defendant, injurious to Defendant’s character and reputation, and potentially jeopardizing to Defendant’s employment.”

Judge Hegarty admitted that these are serious concerns. However, since the defendants in these cases can request a protective order to proceed anonymously, it is no reason to quash the subpoena and end the case before it even gets started.

“The Court finds that Defendant has not met his or her burden of showing that the subpoena served on Comcast must be quashed. Therefore, the Court denies Defendant John Doe’s Motion to Quash,” Judge Hegarty concludes.

This outcome doesn’t come as a surprise as similar efforts in Colorado’s federal court have failed as well. However, it is important to highlight that these cases continue to make their way through the courts.

Since all Strike 3 cases in Colorado end up at Judge Hegarty’s desk, this order suggests that it will be very hard to submit a successful motion to quash in this district.

New research published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office reveals that the majority of citizens believe that it's unacceptable to obtain digital content from illegal sources. Of the minority that continue to pirate, 60% also buy content from legal sources. Better affordability and a wider offer are the top cited reasons for people to stop using illegal sources.

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has published the findings of its 2023 study on ‘European Citizens and Intellectual Property: Perception, Awareness and Behavior.’

The study aims to gain a better understanding of European consumers’ attitudes toward intellectual property and covers physical counterfeit goods and online digital content; our focus here will be on the latter.

Most Europeans Oppose Use of Illegal Content Sources

Given the entertainment industries’ regular and urgent calls to tackle online piracy, the EUIPO study paints a more positive picture in respect of attitudes towards illegal content.

“In general, most Europeans do not support obtaining digital content from illegal sources. The majority disagree with a variety of reasons that are sometimes used to justify this behavior, such as that it is OK if only for personal use (65 % disagree or tend to disagree with this), if the price of the content is too high (72 %), or if the content is not available via a legal source (74 %),” the report notes.

In line with most, if not all, studies in recent years, acceptance of piracy decreases with age. While 19% of citizens aged 55-64, and 18% of those aged 65 and over, believe that its acceptable to access content via illegal sources if the price is too high, acceptance rates jump to 41% and 46% in the 25-34 and 15-24 groups, respectively.

Piracy acceptance rates are also higher in the younger age groups when content isn’t available from legal sources, reaching 44% among 15 to 24-year-olds. However, the majority of Europeans (80%) say that they prefer to obtain content from legal sources, if an affordable legal option is available.

In that respect, a surprising 69% of respondents consider the quality and range of content to be better than that currently available from illegal platforms.

14% of EU Citizens Pirate, But Not Exclusively

The study found that 43% of Europeans paid to access online content from a legal service in the past 12 months. Just 14% admitted to having used illegal sources during the same period but these aren’t all hardcore pirates. Of this group, six in every 10 citizens (60%) also purchased content from legal sources, leaving a small minority overall who only consume content from illegal sources.

Among those who used exclusively legal sources, the main reason cited for not using illegal sources is that the content they want is available on legal platforms (44%), with 40% stating that they prefer not to use illegal platforms because of the harm this could cause to content creators.

Avoidance due to perceived dangers of pirate sites affecting either themselves or someone else was relatively low, 13% and 19%, respectively. Fear of being caught and/or fined was higher at 24%.

Overall, 82% of those surveyed agreed that obtaining content illegally carries a risk of exposure to some kind of harmful content, such as scams or content inappropriate for minors. This belief is held more among those who don’t access content online (85%) than those who do (75%).

Sports Content Popular With Pirates

While 14% of Europeans report that they accessed content from illegal sources in the previous 12 months, one type of content proved to be the biggest draw.

Sports content was obtained from illegal sources by 12% of Europeans, with 11% saying that they used a set-top box or downloaded apps. Once again, the younger the pirate, the more likely they are to access content illegally.

“Accessing content from illegal sources is considerably more common than average among younger Europeans. In the 15-24 age group, 33 % report using illegal online sources intentionally, 27 % say they have streamed content from illegal sources to watch sports, and 25 % say that they have used illicit streaming devices to access content illegally – all more than double the EU average,” the study notes.

Where Europeans Access Illegal Content

Just over four in ten Europeans (43%) who access content illegally online say they do so via dedicated websites. Roughly a third (32%) say they acquire content using social media with just under a quarter mentioning apps (23%). Peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent and dedicated IPTV services are used less often.

“There are no marked differences between age groups or Member States when it comes to preferred channels,” the study notes.

Uploading, Sharing, Providing Content to Others

In light of the 14% of Europeans who accessed content from unlicensed sources in the preceding 12 months, that 11% overall uploaded/shared content with others seems relatively high.

In common with those who download or stream from illegal platforms, uploading is much more common among younger people. The researchers note that in the 15-24 and 25-34 groups, 25% and 21% uploaded/shared content in the preceding 12 months, a figure that drops to less than 10% among those aged 44 and above.

“There is a very strong correlation between accessing content illegally and making protected content illegally accessible by uploading it: 42 % of those who have also accessed online content from illegal sources have also uploaded protected content, while only 6 % of those who have not accessed content illegally have uploaded protected content,” the researchers add.

Justifications & Reasons to Stop Pirating Content

According to the study, those who access content online using illegal sources are more likely to believe that there are reasons to justify this behavior than those who do not. Leading justifications for accessing content illegally include ‘personal use’ (71%), legal content being too expensive (68%), and the content being unavailable on a legal service already purchased (65%).

“The impact of price and availability of offers is mirrored in the fact that a better affordability of content from legal sources and a larger offer of such are the most important reasons that users of illegal sources would stop using them (for 43 % and 37 % of Europeans, respectively),” the researchers note.

“A better understanding of the harm caused by using pirated content to the content producers or to jobs and the European economy (22 % and 21 %, respectively) are much less likely to keep people from using illegal sources.”

GOOGLE TRANSLATION FROM CHINESE:

The entire station HR and entry assessment have been opened.If the malicious speed limit is found, it will be permanently banned and gangster. For details, please see the "survival of this site" in the site.
Please use the claiming system to make the species. You can earn a G value to recruit game publishers.
The 9kg area is open in a limited time. As of July 31, only Power User (Power User) and above are visible to
If you have any questions, please see the announcement and forum in the site first-> Novice Village
Free time on the whole station: June 10th to July 9th, it will change back to limited time free species
Activity: Release seeds and receive rainbow ID.(For details, see the forum in detail).

Hello,

I am using torrents fo 15 years now and have and got some good private trackers through years; many has going down, but hopefully new grows up instead. I found this place through browsing about invite forums and found this with nice looking interface and hopefully found some friends here and looking for some invites  and giving some too. I have unique name here and not in use in any  tracker. Will be active in forum with daily posts.

with regards