Analysis News Using copyrighted content to train AI without permission is not ‘fair use’, US court rules in Thomson Reuters case However, the ruling might not apply to the music industry’s lawsuits against generative AI developers
Analysis News SM Entertainment revenues rose 9% to $196m in Q4; K-Pop firm retires $27.8m worth of its own shares Japan proved to be a particular strong market for SM in the latest quarter, as the company celebrates its 30th anniversary this year
Analysis News From Warner’s Spotify and Amazon deals to Sir Lucian Grainge’s 2025 memo… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
Analysis News Warner has a new deal with Amazon Music… and 4 other things we learned from Robert Kyncl on WMG’s latest earnings call WMG's leadership team conducted the company's calendar Q4 earnings call on February 6. MBW listened in, here's what stood out...
Analysis News The major record companies lost market share again on Spotify last year. But BMG and ‘artist-centric royalties’ make this a more complicated picture than it first appears. To understand one of the industry's favorite graphs, a few things first need to be taken into account
Analysis News Warner Music Group generated $1.67bn in calendar Q4; subscription streaming revenues rose 6.6% YoY Warner Music Group has published its financial results for the three months ended December 31, 2024
Analysis News TikTok’s parent company quietly launched a music licensing platform called EasyOde ByteDance appears to have a service in the works that could shake up the global music licensing market.
Analysis News K-Pop in crisis? Around 93m albums were sold in South Korea in 2024 – 23m fewer than in 2023 New data shows that, even as K-Pop gets bigger in the US, album sales declines in its home country in 2024
Analysis News Spotify posts $1.5bn annual operating profit for 2024, as subscriber base grows to 263m in Q4 Spotify posted a quarterly operating income of over half a billion dollars
Analysis News From Spotify’s $10bn music industry payout to Concord’s Johnny McDaid catalog acquisition… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
Analysis News Can AI-generated content be copyrighted? Here’s what a new report from the US Copyright Office says… A work that combines human creativity with AI can be copyrighted, so long as there is a “sufficient” amount of human expression
Analysis We talked with Anthropic’s Claude about The Beatles. Those copyright ‘guardrails’ seem to be working… pretty much. Anthropic's Claude can still be tempted into referencing Beatles lyrics – but chatbot refuses to print them verbatim
Analysis News Spotify paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024 – a full $1bn more than in 2023 Streaming company has paid out nearly $60bn to music rightsholders since Spotify was founded in 2008.
Analysis News In the wake of new Spotify deal, Universal Music Group adds $3.4 billion to its market cap; Warner Music Group shares up 4.7% as investors await similar agreement with streamer Universal and Warner jointly pile on around $4 billion in market cap value following landmark announcement