The music business is littered with stories about songwriters or studio contributors and session musicians who never get the credit — or money — they&re often due for their work on hit songs.

And for every storied session musician in &The Wrecking Crew& there are perhaps hundreds of other contributors who aren&t getting their just desserts.

Thatwhere Jammber comes in. The five-year-old company co-founded by serial entrepreneur Marcus Cobb has developed a suite of tools to manage everything from songwriting credits and rights management to ticketing and touring all from a group of apps on a mobile phone. And has just raised $2.4 million in funding to take those tools to a broader market.

Jammber &Muse&gives collaborators a single platform to exchange lyrics and song ideas, while the company&Splits&app tracks ownership and credits of any eventual product from a collaboration. The companynStudio tracks songwriting credits to assist with chart and Grammy submission — through a partnership with Nielsen Music— and its &PinPoint&helps organize touring. The recording applications even have a presence feature so session musicians, songwriters and artists can actually be tagged in the studio while they&re working.

&I think we need to get attribution and monetization closer to the creators,& Cobb has said. &Why aren&t we doing that The industry is growing and thriving. Are we making sure that performers and creators of all different tiers are being equally compensated&

The answer, sadly, for many in the music industry is no. In fact, while Cobb had originally set out to make a networking tool for creatives with Jammber he wound up shifting the service to the management toolkit after visiting the offices of a music label.

Jammber chief executive Marcus Cobb

&I saw stacks and stacks of payroll checks that were returned to sender,& Cobb, told CrainChicago Business. &These checks were taking three months to two years to print, and they were wrong addresses, or there were stage names instead of legal names.&

That experience convinced Cobb of the demand, but it was Nashville that gave the serial entrepreneur the crucible within which to develop the full suite of tools that now make up Jammbersoup-to-nuts platform.

Cobb likes to say that Jammber was conceived in Chicago (where the company spun up from the citymassively influential 1871 entrepreneurship center) and born in Nashville — the home of the multi-billion-dollar American country music industry. All of the tools in Jammber, Cobb says, were created with input from a local musician, producer, artist and repertoire person or a label executive.

In 2015, the company came down to Nashville as part of the first batch of companies in Project Music,a joint venture between the Country Music Association and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center meant to encourage the development of technology for the music industry.

As the number of competitors in the ride-hailing industry dwindles, geographic expansion is emerging as the next proving ground to determine who will be the victor in the ride-hailing market.

The race for control of the industry, which is estimated by Goldman Sachs to grow eightfold to $285 billion by 2030, is escalating with ChinaDidi Chuxing already surpassing Uber as the most valuable startup in the world. With a recent valuation of approximately $56 billion, compared to Uber$48 billion, Didi is posing a real threat to Uberoperations and shows no signs of slowing down. Cementing its position as the top ride-hailing service in China, Didi is now turning its attention to another region of the world that is still filled with vast opportunities and not yet dominated by a single taxi alternative: Latin America.

While many ride-hailing and sharing services have already sprung up and faced regulation in cities across Latin America such as Mexico City, Montevideo, and São Paulo, the region still presents an enormous opportunity for the companies that can adapt and move fast enough.

The current opportunities in Latin America

Unlike many other regions of the world, Latin America is still very much reliant on traditional forms of public transportation such as buses, trains, and subway systems. Whatmore, larger cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City, and Bogota simply cannot support any more vehicles on the road without an infrastructure overhaul. Large metro areas are already at or above maximum capacity during peak hours, making owning and commuting with a car more of a hassle than a luxury. As a result, many commuters across Latin America are putting less importance on owning a vehicle and opting to use alternative modes of transportation and on-demand services instead.

Beyond the rising demand for alternative transportation options, italso worth noting that Latin America is the worldsecond-fastest-growing mobile market. In a region of approximately 640 million people, there are more than 200 million smartphone users. By 2020, predictions say that 63% of Latin Americapopulation will have access to the mobile Internet. Latin American smartphone users have quickly adopted global apps, such as Uber and Facebook. However, tech companies have yet to fully tap into the regionpotential.

Chilean taxi drivers demonstrate along Alameda Avenue against US on-demand ride service giant Uber, in Santiago, on July 10, 2017.Uber smartphone app has faced stiff resistance from traditional taxi drivers the world over, as well as bans in some places over safety concerns and questions over legal issues, including taxes. (MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images)

The key players

Uber

According to a Dalia survey, Latin Americans with smartphones that live in urban areas are the most likely to have used a ride-hailing app or site. Overall, 45% have used an app, with Mexico taking the top position in the region at 58%.

Uber entered Latin America in 2013 and claims to have more than 36 million active users in the region, proving employment for more than a million drivers. The company quickly dominated Mexico, which is now its second-largest market after the U.S. In fact, up until recently Uber claimed a near monopoly on ride-sharing in Mexico with few competitors. Uber also has operations in more than 16 Latin American countries.

99 (formerly 99Taxis)

With an urban population of approximately 180 million, Brazil is the ultimate prize for ride-hailing and taxi companies with several services competing for market share. Most notably, 99 (formerly &99Taxis&) was able to gain momentum early on with exclusive services that extended beyond basic ride-hailing (such as its 99 TOP and 99 POP services) and better tools for its drivers.

With over 200,000 drivers and 14 million users, 99 attracted the attention of investors worldwide, including that of ChinaDidi Chuxing. Didi invested $100 million into 99 in January 2018 before acquiring 99 entirely months later for nearly $1 billion to take on Uber in Latin America, shortly after it acquired Uberoperations in China.

Easy Taxi

Rocket Internet -backed taxi booking service, Easy Taxi, started in Latin America in 2011, two years after Uber first started in San Francisco. The company provides an easy way to book a taxi and track it in real-time. Today, the company is owned by Maxi Mobility, which acquired the company from Rocket Internet in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. Maxi Mobility also owns Cabify, and operates across many Latin American markets, including Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Panama, Brazil, Peru, and Chile, in addition to a handful of markets elsewhere.

To solidify its position in the region, Easy Taxi merged with Colombian taxi-booking app Tappsi in 2015. Tappsi launched in Bogotá in 2012 and was doing quite well in the Colombian market. The merger allowed the companies to pool their resources just as other competitors, such as Uber, began entering the region.

Easy Taxi maintains impressive traction, raising more than $75 million to date. But as the ride-hailing battle in Latin America pushes forward, the company is rumored to be a likely investment or acquisition target for Uber, Didi, or the largest global investor in this space, Softbank.

Cabify

Cabify is a Spanish company that provides private vehicles for hire via its smartphone app. Although founded in Madrid, Cabify has always positioned itself as a Latin American company, investing heavily across the region. The company was able to gain a strong foothold due to some significant funding raised by its parent company, Maxi Mobility. In January 2018, Maxi Mobility raised another $160 million and said the funding would be used to accelerate both of its companies, Cabify and Easy Taxi, in the 130 cities where they operate throughout Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

Cabify reported it has over 13 million users and grew its installed-base by 500% between 2016 and 2017, tripling its user base and fulfilling six times more trips in 2017.

Cabify competes directly with Uber, 99, and Easy Taxi in Brazil; however, it reportedly has around 40% market share in Sao Pãolo, one of the largest cities in all of Latin America.

Smaller players to watch

Beat (Formerly Taxibeat)

Beat is a profitable ride-hailing service founded in Athens, Greece that also operates in Peru. Beat is slowly expanding its operations across Latin America, though expansion appears to be limited to Chile for now.

As of January 2017, Beat had around 15,000 drivers and 800,000 customers in Peru.

Nekso

Toronto-based Nekso bet on the Latin American taxi-hailing market before its home market with a pilot launch in Venezuela in 2016. Nekso was able to gain acceptance from the taxi industries in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Panama with its slightly different approach to ride-hailing.

The company connects a network of 550+ licensed taxi companies with thousands of drivers and allows users to flag down a cab off the street and without using in-app requests. Nekso also uses artificial intelligence technology to offer drivers real-time updates on weather, events, and traffic data to predict areas of a city which may need more drivers. The company claims taxi drivers can spend up to two-thirds of their day looking for or waiting for riders and that Nekso technology helps drivers increase their daily rides by more than 25% percent.

At the end of 2017, Nekso boasted around 150,000 users and facilitated approximately 400,000 rides per month. Now, the company plans to make its debut in Canada as well as expand to more countries in South America, including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru.

Didi, 99, and the next phase

99new owner, Didi, which dominates the Asian market and was able to defeat Uber in China, has big plans for international expansion. Its acquisition of 99 reveals the potential it sees in Latin America but also adds to the complicated web of global ride-hailing services.

After Didi shut down and acquired Uberassets in China, it also bought a stake in Uber for $1 billion. Uber, Didi, and 99 are all backed by Softbank. However, everywhere outside of China, Didi and Uber are competing with each other. Didifull plans for 99 are not yet obvious, but the company has already set up an office in Mexico and begun poaching staff from Uber in Mexico.

With an infusion of capital, Latin Americaride-hailing industry is multiplying. That said, companies that want to compete in the region will need to use an aggressive and strategic approach that can withstand the uniqueness of commuters and transportation options in the region. Itonly a matter of time until we see if these companies continue ramping up their operations for geographic domination, or if we see more and more partner up to advance their technologies and address other looming threats & such as bike sharing, scooter sharing, and even autonomous vehicles.

Two of the founders of 99, who sold their company to Didi, have already launched a dockless bike sharing startup called Yellow in Brazil and raised $9 million to grow its operations. No other scooter company has taken the plunge into Latin America yet besides Grin Scooters in Mexico City, but other larger cities such as Buenos Aires, Bogota, Santiago, and Lima would be ideal markets if the companies can figure out pricing as well as security and safety issues first.

Didiactivity in Brazil and Mexico is sure to trigger a new wave of competition between existing ride-hailing players and create an even more tangled web of alliances and acquisitions. Whether or not these companies can adapt and move fast enough to rise to the top, and deal with the other looming alternative modes of transportation, remains to be seen.

A popular top-tier app in Apple Mac App Store was found pilfering browser histories from anyone who downloads it.

Yet still, at the time of writing, the rogue app — Adware Doctor — stands as the No.1 grossing paid app in the app storeutilities categories. But Apple was warned weeks ago and did nothing to pull the app offline.

Now it seems Apple has pulled the app. Apple would not comment on the record.

Applewalled garden approach to Mac and iPhone security is almost entirely based on the inability to install apps outside the app store, which Apple monitors closely. While itnot uncommon to hear of dangerous apps slipping into GooglePlay store, itnearly unheard of for Apple to face the same fate. Any app that doesn&t meet the companystrict security and sometimes moral criteria will be rejected, and users won&table to install it.

This app promises to &keep your Mac safe& and &get rid of annoying pop-up ads& — and even &discover and remove threats on your Mac.& But what the app won&t tell you is that for just a few bucks it&ll steal and download your browser history — including all the sites you&ve searched for or accessed — to servers in China run by the appmakers.

Thanks in part to a video posted last month on YouTube and with help from security firm Malwarebytes, itnow clear what the app is up to.

Security researcher Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker and now chief research officer at cybersecurity startup Digita Security, dug in and shared his findings with TechCrunch.

Wardle found that the downloaded app jumped through hoops to bypass AppleMac sandboxing features, which prevents apps from grabbing data on the hard drive, and upload a userbrowser history on Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

Wardle found that the app, thanks to Appleown flawed vetting, could request access to the userhome directory and its files. That isn&t out of the ordinary, Wardle says, because tools that market themselves as anti-malware or anti-adware expect access to the userfiles to scan for problems. When a user allows that access, the app can detect and clean adware — but if found to be malicious, it can &collect and exfiltrate any user file,& said Wardle.

Once the data is collected, itzipped into an archive file and sent to a domain based in China.

Wardle said that for some reason in the last few days the China-based domain went offline. At the time of writing, TechCrunch confirmed that the domain wouldn&t resolve — in other words, it was still down.

&Letface it, your browsing history provides a glimpse into almost every aspect of your life,& said Wardlepost. &And people have even been convicted based largely on their internet searches!&

He said that the appaccess to such data &is clearly based on deceiving the user.&

Apple was contacted weeks ago. The email it responded with, in not so many words, said &we can&t tell you anything,& but forwarded the feedback.

A meagre $4.99 for the app may not seem much to the average user, but ita heavy price to pay for having the app steal your browser history — which users will never get back. And given that Apple makes a 30 percent cut of every purchase of this popular app, there isn&t much financial incentive to withdraw the app from the store.

Updated at 9:05am PT: with confirmation that the app has been pulled.