17 October, 2024
ByteDance is shutting down TikTok Music globally
ByteDance said it is shuttering its music streaming service, TikTok Music, in November.
“We are sorry to inform you that TikTok Music will be closing on 28 November 2024,” a notice on TikTok Music’s website reads. The service was available in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and Mexico.
Subscribers can continue to use the service until November 28, after which renewals will be automatically canceled, the notice said. Users who want to transfer their playlists to other streaming services will need to do so by October 28, and refund requests need to be submitted by November 28.
“Our Add to Music App feature has already enabled hundreds of millions of track saves to playlists on partner music streaming services. We will be closing TikTok Music at the end of November in order to focus on our goal of furthering TikTok’s role in driving even greater music listening and value on music streaming services, for the benefit of artists, songwriters, and the industry,” Ole Obermann, global head of Music Business Development, TikTok, said in a statement.
TikTok said that it will continue partnering with music streaming services rather than competing with them. In February, the company launched the “Add to Music” feature on TikTok that lets users add tracks directly to a playlist on Apple Music, Amazon Music, or Spotify.
TikTok Music was rooted in a ByteDance product called Resso, which was first launched in India and Indonesia in 2019 and later expanded to Brazil.
In 2023, ByteDance rebranded Resso to TikTok Music in Brazil and Indonesia, and soon after expanded it to Singapore, Australia, and Mexico. Resso was banned early this year in India.
TikTok has become a popular way for people to discover music and serves as a launchpad for artists, driving their streams. TikTok has a significant impact on increasing value for artists via streaming and fueling music discovery, per a study conducted by TikTok and entertainment data research firm Lumiate.
ByteDance, which also owns a music distribution platform called SoundOn, likely wanted to bank on TikTok’s popularity to drive streams within its own ecosystem, but the service didn’t expand internationally beyond a few markets.
TikTok also has had a shaky relationship with the music industry lately. Earlier this year, Universal Music Group (UMG) pulled its music catalog out of the service after disagreements over royalties. In response, TikTok called out UMG for “false narrative and rhetoric.” In March, both parties called a truce and signed a new deal.
Separately, TikTok is fighting a case against a bill that would possibly lead to the short video app being banned in the U.S. This might have hampered ByteDance’s plans of expanding TikTok Music to markets like the U.S.
Apple breaks down iPhone 16 repair process
As noted on Wednesday, Apple quietly took steps to improve the iPhone 16’s repairability. In addition to adding new items to the list of repairable components, the company introduced a clever new method for removing the phone’s battery. On Friday, Apple published step-by-step instructions for swapping out the new handset’s battery.
Glue has long been the arch enemy of the do-it-yourself repair person. It has also become ubiquitous in handset internals as manufacturers have raced to make devices more compact.
What makes Apple’s new approach novel is that, instead of making the phone larger to accommodate more screws, it has introduced an adhesive that loosens its grip on the battery when low voltage is applied.
Foray Bioscience is breaking down the barriers of bringing biomanufacturing to plants
Ashley Beckwith spent years of her academic and professional career focused on the intersection of biology, materials and manufacturing to build medical solutions more efficiently. When she realized the tech could be applied to plants and plant-based materials, an area that desperately needed it, she decided to switch gears.
“Life on earth is only as secure as our global plant populations, and today our plant populations are really in crisis,” Beckwith told TechCrunch. “Nearly 40% of our plant species are threatened by extinction. Forest landscapes unscathed by humans shrunk 12% [in 2022]. These plant resources are being squeezed on all fronts.”
Beckwith took what she knew about biomanufacturing, the process of using microorganisms and cell cultures to produce biological molecules and materials on a commercial scale, and launched Foray Bioscience in February 2022. The company uses biomanufacturing to grow harvest-free plant-based materials, seeds and molecules.
Biomanufacturing has been around for about 100 years, Beckwith said, but it hasn’t had many practical use cases for plants thus far. Because each plant species is so different, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to cultivate cells, which made biomanufacturing with plant cell cultures laborious. Foray looks to change that through its database approach; it provides predictive insights and experimental direction to help speed up the research and development process for each plant species.
“At Foray, we are developing these advanced tools for plant-less production to ask less of these resources and start to give back more,” Beckwith said.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup raised a $3 million seed round led by ReGen Ventures, an Australian firm focused on backing technology that helps restore the planet’s resources. Engine Ventures, Understorey Ventures and Superorganism also participated in the round. The startup has now raised $3.875 million in total funding and plans to build out its team.
Beckwith said that it took a while to fundraise the round because what the company is trying to do doesn’t fit squarely into one category but rather at the intersection of many, from manufacturing to biology to conservation. This “odd ball” feeling is something Beckwith is used to running up against. She said that the reason she launched the company to begin with is that there wasn’t a natural home for the research she was doing in plant biomanufacturing.
“I was in this weird cross-disciplinary bubble,” Beckwith said. “That was really apparent to me when I got toward the end of my PhD. If this research was going to move forward and progress, I had to carry it forward into the next iteration of itself. Because of the newness of the field, there wasn’t really a home for it in the academic setting or manufacturing setting. We had to make our own space.”
She described taking the science out of the lab and launching the company as a “long journey.” The startup currently is working with other companies to help them set up their biomanufacturing by designing their clients a research and development roadmap and helping them develop commercialization strategies.
Beckwith also has a vision that this work will allow Foray to create a genetic banking system for plant seeds, especially those that aren’t easy to document, and allow new seeds to be grown from just a few cells. This will help with conservation efforts, too.
There are many parallels between Foray’s tech and mission and the rise of lab-grown meat and seafood. While the science isn’t exactly the same, Beckwith said, both have the same goal of replacing products and resources that humans are used to getting from nature with a lab-grown option that’s less harmful to natural environments. While lab-grown meat is a little further along in the journey, Beckwith is optimistic about Foray’s future.
“With the scale of the growing human population, and our growing demands on natural resources, it’s really important for us to be as efficient with those natural resources as possible so we can keep them around for the long-term,” Beckwith said. “This tool really allows us to move past the natural constraints that exist in the wider world and get more from less so that we can reduce our footprint on these natural resources, but still have access to the goods we need to survive as a society.”
Waymo to double down on winter testing its robotaxis
Waymo regularly takes its autonomous vehicles on winter road trips to test the cars in snowy environments. In 2017, it was Michigan. Last year, it was Buffalo.
This year, Waymo will hit multiple wintry locales, including Truckee, California; Upstate New York; and Michigan, from the Upper Peninsula to the metro Detroit area.
Waymo didn’t say whether it would take its Zeekr vehicles up north for testing, but the company will be putting both its fifth- and sixth-generation Driver through its paces. The hardware for the sixth-generation Driver is designed for winter environments, with sensors that can melt snow off them.
Details of the tests are scant, but we do know the tests will always feature a human safety driver behind the wheel.
Halliburton shuts down systems after cyberattack
Oil drilling and fracking giant Halliburton said it has shut down some of its internal systems following a cyberattack earlier this week.
In a brief statement filed with government regulators on Thursday, Halliburton said it became aware of unauthorized access to its systems on Wednesday and responded by “proactively taking certain systems offline.” The company said it is “working to identify any effects of the incident.”
Halliburton, which has close to 48,000 employees in dozens of countries per company filings, is one of the world’s largest energy companies. The U.S. energy giant is widely associated with the massive oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, in which Halliburton later agreed to settle with the U.S. government for $1.1 billion.
Reuters first reported the cyberattack on Wednesday.
U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson Jeremy Ortiz said in a statement that, “there are no indications that the incident is impacting energy services at this time and DOE is coordinating with interagency partners.”
It’s not uncommon for companies to shut down their systems following a cyberattack, with the goal of preventing the intruders from having continued access to breached systems or gaining access to others. Several companies this year, including health giant Change Healthcare and automotive software maker CDK, shut down their systems following ransomware attacks.
Halliburton spokesperson Victoria Ingalls declined to comment beyond the company’s filing. When asked by TechCrunch, Ingalls declined to describe the nature of the security incident or say whether the company has received any communication from the intruders.
The spokesperson said “any subsequent communications will be in the form of an 8-K,” referring to public filings.
On Friday, TechCrunch identified a potential security issue that allows anyone to access internal Halliburton systems through its single-sign-on provider. When asked by TechCrunch if it was aware of the issue and if Halliburton provides the means to allow for the public reporting of security flaws, Halliburton spokesperson Ingalls declined to answer and reiterated the company’s boilerplate statement.
The spokesperson declined to say which executive, if any, oversees responsibility for cybersecurity at Halliburton, when asked by TechCrunch.
According to the company’s latest full-year earnings release, Halliburton made $23 billion in revenue during 2023, up by 13% on the year prior. Halliburton chief executive Jeff Miller made $19 million in total executive compensation during 2023, the company’s filings show.
Updated with comment from DOE spokesperson.
Foray Bioscience is breaking down the barriers of bringing biomanufacturing to plants
Ashley Beckwith spent years of her academic and professional career focused on the intersection of biology, materials and manufacturing to build medical solutions more efficiently. When she realized the tech could be applied to plants and plant-based materials, an area that desperately needed it, she decided to switch gears.
“Life on earth is only as secure as our global plant populations, and today our plant populations are really in crisis,” Beckwith told TechCrunch. “Nearly 40% of our plant species are threatened by extinction. Forest landscapes unscathed by humans shrunk 12% [in 2022]. These plant resources are being squeezed on all fronts.”
Beckwith took what she knew about biomanufacturing, the process of using microorganisms and cell cultures to produce biological molecules and materials on a commercial scale, and launched Foray Bioscience in February 2022. The company uses biomanufacturing to grow harvest-free plant-based materials, seeds and molecules.
Biomanufacturing has been around for about 100 years, Beckwith said, but it hasn’t had many practical use cases for plants thus far. Because each plant species is so different, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to cultivate cells, which made biomanufacturing with plant cell cultures laborious. Foray looks to change that through its database approach; it provides predictive insights and experimental direction to help speed up the research and development process for each plant species.
“At Foray, we are developing these advanced tools for plant-less production to ask less of these resources and start to give back more,” Beckwith said.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup raised a $3 million seed round led by ReGen Ventures, an Australian firm focused on backing technology that helps restore the planet’s resources. Engine Ventures, Understorey Ventures and Superorganism also participated in the round. The startup has now raised $3.875 million in total funding and plans to build out its team.
Beckwith said that it took a while to fundraise the round because what the company is trying to do doesn’t fit squarely into one category but rather at the intersection of many, from manufacturing to biology to conservation. This “odd ball” feeling is something Beckwith is used to running up against. She said that the reason she launched the company to begin with is that there wasn’t a natural home for the research she was doing in plant biomanufacturing.
“I was in this weird cross-disciplinary bubble,” Beckwith said. “That was really apparent to me when I got toward the end of my PhD. If this research was going to move forward and progress, I had to carry it forward into the next iteration of itself. Because of the newness of the field, there wasn’t really a home for it in the academic setting or manufacturing setting. We had to make our own space.”
She described taking the science out of the lab and launching the company as a “long journey.” The startup currently is working with other companies to help them set up their biomanufacturing by designing their clients a research and development roadmap and helping them develop commercialization strategies.
Beckwith also has a vision that this work will allow Foray to create a genetic banking system for plant seeds, especially those that aren’t easy to document, and allow new seeds to be grown from just a few cells. This will help with conservation efforts, too.
There are many parallels between Foray’s tech and mission and the rise of lab-grown meat and seafood. While the science isn’t exactly the same, Beckwith said, both have the same goal of replacing products and resources that humans are used to getting from nature with a lab-grown option that’s less harmful to natural environments. While lab-grown meat is a little further along in the journey, Beckwith is optimistic about Foray’s future.
“With the scale of the growing human population, and our growing demands on natural resources, it’s really important for us to be as efficient with those natural resources as possible so we can keep them around for the long-term,” Beckwith said. “This tool really allows us to move past the natural constraints that exist in the wider world and get more from less so that we can reduce our footprint on these natural resources, but still have access to the goods we need to survive as a society.”