News Megan Thee Stallion inks distribution deal with Warner Music that allows her to remain independent The deal has the potential to "shift the landscape in the music industry," Says Roc Nation's Desiree Perez
News Music Reports acquires music licensing and data platform Blokur Independent music rights administration platform Music Reports says its acquisition of Blokur is meant to complement its existing services and technology
News Natasha Billing named SVP, Commercial and Data Insight at Warner Music UK; Nick Allum upped to VP, Data and Insight Warner says the new appointments are meant to elevate the quality of service provided to labels and partners
News Downtown, Hipgnosis and NMPA rally behind Universal Music Group in its fight with TikTok Andrew Bergman, David Israelite, Merck Mercuriadis all publicly support UMG's position
Analysis News From Universal’s feud with TikTok to YouTube Music’s 100m subscribers… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up The five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
News Merck Mercuriadis to exit CEO role at Hipgnosis Song Management, becoming Chairman; Ben Katovsky promoted to Chief Executive of company HSM, which has approximately $3 billion-worth of assets under management, counts Blackstone as a majority investor
News Gamma, now worth $400m, confirms $100m investment led by Alpha Wave Investment arrives less than a year after gamma’s March 2023 launch
News As Universal Music hits begin to vanish from TikTok, UMG accuses platform of ‘unwillingness to appropriately compensate artists and songwriters, protect human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and address online safety issues’ Removal of UMG's catalog follows the collapse of the two parties' licensing talks
News Big change at Universal Music Group: John Janick and Monte Lipman to head up newly-restructured label groups in the US Both key executives increase responsibilities at UMG
News Primary Wave moves into Brazilian music with stake in Nas Nuvens Catalog (report) The deal reportedly involves Primary Wave taking a 50% stake in the three-year-old Brazilian music rights company
Analysis News As YouTube Music hits 100m paid subscribers, Lyor Cohen says the platform ‘cares profoundly about the health of the music industry’ YouTube has surpassed 100 million paid YouTube Music and Premium subscribers worldwide
Analysis 78% of small-to-midsize businesses in the US currently misuse personal streaming accounts to play music to their customers. It’s costing the music industry $1.38 billion per year. Ola Sars highlights an important opportunity in publicly-played music for rightsholders
News Sony Music Publishing UK appoints ZaZa Kazadi, Adrienne Bookbinder, Nasra Artan to senior A&R roles The new appointments come some two months after Sony Music Publishing UK reshuffled its A&R department
News TuneCore and Amazon Music UK partner to offer free studio time to independent artists Twelve self-releasing artists at TuneCore will be granted access to Metropolis Studios' Studio X
Analysis TikTok’s biggest headache in its fight with Universal Music Group is UMG’s publishing catalog (and 2 other observations on the feud the whole music industry is talking about) What's really going on behind the scenes of music's big Grammy Week fall-out
News Kenny Ong appointed Managing Director for Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore at Sony Music Ong to spearhead the company's expansion and strategic development across the region
News USTR’s ‘Notorious Markets’ Report doesn’t mention AI-voice cloning, despite RIAA’s efforts The USTR report identifies a 'complex ecosystem' of online services that enable digital piracy
News Warner Chappell Music signs Grammy-nominated R&B artist Coco Jones to exclusive publishing deal Jones is up for five awards at the forthcoming 66th Annual Grammys