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The 60th annual Grammy Awards were held in New York City last night, and aside from a fresh bunch of winners, the music industry has a lot to toast: People are paying for music again, retail sales are climbing, Spotify is set to go public this spring. Here’s the story, in chart form, of the music industry’s recovery over the past few years. Meanwhile, U.S. copyright authorities decided on Saturday to increase the royalty payments that music streaming companies like Spotify and Apple make to songwriters and music publishers, jumping to 15.1 percent from 10.5 percent. [Rani Molla and Peter Kafka / Recode]
Newspaper publisher Tronc replaced the editor of the Los Angeles Times after a few months on the job. Lewis D’Vorkin is out — he’s been moved to a job within Tronc’s corporate apparatus — and Jim Kirk is in. Meanwhile, the LAT’s publisher, Ross Levinsohn, is still suspended following a brutal report on his “frat house” past, though one of his recent hires has already been shuffled out of the paper. [Sydney Ember / New York Times]
The Trump administration may be considering an unprecedented federal takeover of the nation’s 5G mobile network to guard against China. According to a PowerPoint deck acquired by Axios, national security officers want a centralized nationwide 5G network within three years — expect a heated debate between the administration and wireless providers over how it will be built and paid for. [Axios]
Everyone wants to be popular online — increasingly, many will even pay for it. The New York Times explores social media’s black market, looking at how a shadowy “follower factory” called Devumi sells millions of Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. And here’s a look inside another internet scheme — the online “pump and dump” chat groups that scam thousands of wannabe cryptocurrency investors. [The New York Times]
The first wave of a hacking crime called “jackpotting” is hitting ATMs in the United States. Thieves install malicious software and/or hardware that forces the machines to spit out huge volumes of cash on demand. The malware attacks had been exploiting banks in Europe and Asia; last week, the U.S. Secret Service quietly began warning banks that cash machines have been targeted in American cities. [Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security]
Emoji terminals are being used to track customer satisfaction in airports, public bathrooms and gas stations worldwide. Look behind the scenes at HappyOrNot, an eight-year-old Finnish startup that makes the ubiquitous smiley-face (or frowny-face) “frictionless” feedback consoles, which have already been installed in more than a hundred countries and have registered more than six hundred million responses — more than the number of online customer ratings ever posted on Amazon, Yelp or TripAdvisor. [David Owen / The New Yorker]
Top stories from Recode
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This is cool
Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue cover photo is always star-studded — and often controversial. This year, in addition to digitally erasing James Franco, photographer Annie Leibovitz accidentally gave Reese Witherspoon an extra leg and Oprah Winfrey a third hand.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
