Music Industry
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Congress has passed the American Music Tourism Act, putting the federal government one presidential signature away from formally adding concerts, festivals, recording studios, music landmarks and venues of all sizes to the United States’ national tourism strategy. The House approved S. 195 by voice vote September 15 after the Senate…
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Universal Music Group is suing digital music distributor DistroKid, accusing the company of enabling copyright infringement and distributing large volumes of AI-generated material that UMG says competes with legitimate artists for listeners and royalties. UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Capitol CMG filed the lawsuit September 15 in the U.S. District…
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Taylor Swift’s complete catalog of 58 official music videos is now available on Spotify Premium, giving the streaming service its first full Swift video archive seven months after she used Spotify and Apple Music to give “Opalite” a head start over YouTube. The catalog arrived September 16th and stretches from…
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Spotify is expanding Fresh Finds from a discovery playlist into a yearlong artist-development program that offers emerging independent musicians everything from recording time and production software to tour opportunities and six months of therapy. Called Fresh Finds Forward, the program launched September 17 and is expected to support roughly 10,000…
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My Block Records, the independent label founded by producer Warryn Campbell and associated with gospel singer Erica Campbell, has sued former distributor SRG/ILS Group over royalty accounting tied to more than 113 million streams. The breach-of-contract lawsuit was filed September 17th in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District…
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Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music and dozens of affiliated publishers have sued Anthropic over material allegedly used to build Claude, accusing the AI company of illegally obtaining and copying copyrighted lyrics, sheet music and musical compositions for training. The lawsuit was filed August 28th in the U.S. District Court…
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Jermaine Dupri and his So So Def companies have ended their $18 million royalty lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment less than two months after filing it, telling a federal court that the parties had resolved their dispute before Sony formally joined the case. Dupri, So So Def Recordings and So…
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Ariana Grande can begin subpoenaing social-media platforms and payment services in an effort to identify the people she accuses of stealing, leaking and selling years of unreleased music. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark H. Epstein granted Grande’s request for expedited discovery on August 19th, clearing her lawyers to seek…
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Spotify has reached 300 million Premium subscribers, hitting a new scale for paid audio streaming as subscriber growth, revenue and profitability all increased during the second quarter of 2026. The company disclosed the milestone August 4th with its Q2 results. Premium subscriptions increased 9% from a year earlier, while Spotify…
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Influence Media Partners has agreed to acquire substantially all of Anthem Entertainment’s assets for more than $600 million, adding a sprawling collection of publishing rights, master recordings and film and television music to its BlackRock-backed music investment platform. The agreement was announced July 29th and covers Anthem’s music publishing catalogs,…
