News Warner Bros. Discovery strikes JV with Cutting Edge to co-own vast catalog of film and TV music, in deal worth $1bn+ Companies create a JV to co-own catalog of more than 400,000 compositions and song cues
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…
Interviews Key Songs in the Life of… Joe Hadley Spotify's partnership-focused exec selects eight tracks that helped shape who he is and what he does..
Interviews ‘We aim to solidify Saudi Arabia as a global destination for music and entertainment within the next five years.’ MDLBEAST CEO Ramadan Alharatani talks XP Music Futures and shares his predictions for the music industry in the MENA region
News Exceleration Music acquires jazz specialist Mack Avenue Music Group Mack Avenue’s labels have earned several dozen Grammy nominations and awards
News The MLC makes four Advisory Committee appointments MLC appoints UMPG, Kobalt, Warner Chappell and Hipgnosis execs to Advisory Committee
News Ben Vaughn, President & CEO of Warner Chappell Nashville, passes away In 2009, Vaughn became the youngest executive to head a major publisher in Nashville
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
News Mike Chester promoted to General Manager of Warner Records Exec was most recently EVP of Promotion & Commerce
News Universal asks Texas court to dismiss Drake petition over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us’ UMG called Drake's petition “an apparent effort to pressure" UMG and others "to limit the distribution" of Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us'
Interviews Terry McBride on fan communities, TikTok, and building Nettwerk to be a ‘generational’ music company MBW's Trailblazers series meets Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group
News Tuned Global rolls out AI music features via AudioShake partnership Tuned Global’s clients will now be able to separate songs and generate word-by-word lyric transcriptions
News Amazon hikes prices for ‘Music Unlimited’ streaming service in the US, UK and Canada The update puts Amazon Music Unlimited’s non-Prime rates in line with Spotify, which raised the price of its Premium subscription in the US to $11.99 in June 2024
News US investor group including Employer.com founder, Roblox CEO claims to have secured $20B+ for TikTok purchase bid (report) Jesse Tinsley said his planned bid has interest from Roblox CEO David Baszucki and Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley, as well as YouTuber MrBeast
News Concord acquires publishing catalog of Ed Sheeran collaborator Johnny McDaid McDaid has also written for the likes of P!nk, Lewis Capaldi, Keith Urban, Shawn Mendes, Zara Larsson, Alicia Keys, and Jung Kook, amongst many others
News OpenAI, valued at $157bn and facing multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, says China’s DeepSeek may have used its data to train rival AI model without permission DeepSeek spent far less money on developing a chatbot than US AI companies, but it may have done so by stealing OpenAI's IP
News Influence Media Partners raises $360m in debt financing led by Goldman Sachs BlackRock acted as a joint placement agent.
News Spotify wins ‘bundling’ lawsuit, as court dismisses legal action brought by the MLC Court grants Spotify's motion to dismiss the lawsuit