News No, Spotify hasn’t gone down – unless you were pirating the Premium service Many listeners who were using a 'crack' to listen to Spotify Premium for free have been locked out of the service
News Adrian Pope named EVP Digital Business & Global Partner Relations at Virgin Music Group Virgin describes Pope as a “pioneer in the development of the digital music business”
News Drake’s lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ to go forward as UMG prepares motion to dismiss Lawyers for Drake are also pushing forward a separate case in Texas, alleging 'payola' payments by UMG for playing 'Not Like Us'
News Sphere Entertainment generated $308.3m in Q4, missing earnings forecasts, but promises 2025 will be its ‘best year yet’ The company is forging ahead with a second Sphere in Abu Dhabi, and planning smaller Spheres for a wide range of markets
News Create Music Group acquires deadmau5 and mau5trap Records catalogs in $55m+ deal The deal also includes the formation of a JV under which Deadmau5 and Mau5trap will release new music via Create
News Superstruct’s UK company revenues jumped 26% to $222m in 2023 – the year before firm was acquired by KKR in a $1.4bn deal Company swung to an operating loss of £33.26 million
News Duetti raises $200m in debt funding; expands into publishing catalog deals for indie artists and songwriters Company’s total raised to date – including equity financing, debt financing, and asset-backed securities (ABS) sales – comes to $435m
News Drake settles legal dispute with iHeartMedia over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ However, Drake's legal petition against Universal Music Group will remain active in a Texas court
Analysis News From Amazon’s Suno tie-up to Kobalt’s new publishing platform… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
News Sir Lucian Grainge calls for ‘appropriate guardrails’ on AI amid debate on UK’s proposed copyright changes “How do we best protect creative and imaginative invention, and harness the power of new technology without that technology harnessing us?"
News $500m-valued Suno has admitted training AI on copyrighted music. That hasn’t stopped Amazon from adding its controversial tech to Alexa The new voice assistant is also integrated with the Claude chatbot from Anthropic, an AI company facing a copyright lawsuit from music publishers
News ASCAP’s payouts to songwriters and publishers rose 6.5% to $1.7bn in 2024, as membership ‘soared’ past 1m mark ASCAP bills itself as the only performance rights organization in the US operating on a not-for-profit basis
News Patrick Moxey’s publishing company must cease using ‘Ultra’ name within 6 months as Sony wins trademark battle Under a court order, Ultra International Music Publishing has 180 days to change its name
News UK mulling changes to proposed ‘opt-out’ policy for AI amid growing pressure from artists and lawmakers (report) One option would be to limit the 'opt-out' policy to British AI companies, while others would need advance permission to train AI on copyrighted materials
News John Cooper Clarke to receive headline prize at UK’s Northern Music Awards The awards, held this year on March 27 in Liverpool, are the creation of music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins