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The American Federation of Musicians Fires Back Against UMG and WMG Dismissal Arguments as AI Compensation Dispute Turns Ugly
The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has urged a New York federal court to let its lawsuit against Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group proceed, rejecting the majors’ effort to dismiss the case over their AI licensing deals with Suno and Udio.  The union says the deals triggered the “new use” provision of its collective bargaining agreement with Universal and Warner, which it argues requires the labels to compensate members whose recordings were licensed to the AI companies.  It argues that this “new use” provision is contained within Article 21(a) of the Sound Recording Labor Agreement (SRLA) – something the two major music companies dispute.  At issue is whether the musicians who performed on those recordings are owed a share of the revenue flowing from the majors’ settlements and licenses with Suno and Udio. The three majors first sued Suno and Udio in 2024, in a case coordinated by the RIAA that alleged “mass infringement” of copyright.  The AFM and the labels are negotiating the next SRLA, with AI at the center of the talks.

 

AI music generator Suno breach affects 55M users
A cyberattack at AI music generator Suno last year allowed a hacker to steal the personal information of more than 55.3 million people, according to the data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, offering the first glimpse into the scale of the data theft. The breach happened in November 2025, but was only recently revealed thanks to reporting by independent news outlet 404 Media.  The data theft also included Suno’s source code, which revealed how the company allegedly scraped millions of songs and lyrics from popular streaming sites, including Deezer, Genius, and YouTube, to train its AI models. Several major record labels are currently suing Suno, claiming that its mass-scraping efforts violate copyright law. Suno has not yet publicly disclosed the cyberattack, or notified individuals that their information was taken. Suno co-founder Mikey Shulman did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment about the incident.  After publication, Suno spokesperson Rachel Racusen did not dispute the number of users affected, and confirmed that the company experienced a security incident in November 2025. It’s not clear why the company has not yet publicly acknowledged the data breach on its website. Nor did the company provide TechCrunch, when asked, with any communication the company may have sent to users informing them of a data breach.

 

90,000 AI tracks flood uploads daily – passing 50% of all new music uploads for the first time
The volume of fully AI-generated music being uploaded to streaming services has surged yet again.
According to eye-opening new stats revealed by Paris-headquartered streaming service Deezer today (July 21), fully AI-generated music accounted for more than half of all new tracks uploaded to its platform for the first time in June.  Deezer says it was receiving nearly 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day in June.  On peak days, that content made up more than 50% of all new music delivered to the service. The 90,000-a-day peak marks an escalation from the 75,000 AI tracks a day, or 44% of daily deliveries. The trend has prompted a  record-industry push for transparency, with the RIAA and IFPI campaigning to label AI tracks as either “AI-generated” or “AI-assisted” across the world’s streaming services. Deezer says it detected and tagged more than 13.4 million AI tracks across 2025, and that its tool can identify fully AI-generated music from generative models including Suno and Udio.

 

The ‘AM Radio In Every Vehicle Act’ Just Received a Major Boost In Congress — Though the RIAA, Recording Academy, and SAG-AFTRA Absolutely Hate This Bill
Radio broadcasters from across the US have been gathering in Washington to once again lobby Congress in support of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, a proposed bill that would require AM radio in all new passenger vehicles.  The law would apply to both vehicles manufactured in the US and imported vehicles, and would authorize the DOJ to fine or bring a civil action against manufacturers that don’t comply.  Radio broadcasters argue that AM radio is necessary for emergency alerts, especially in rural communities and during power outages. If broadband or satellite connections go down, the argument is that AM radio can continue to broadcast national emergency messages, including weather warnings and AMBER alerts. The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act has been awaiting consideration on the House floor since November 2025, when it was discharged from the House committee on Transportation. The bill was reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Markey (D-MA) and Cruz (R-TX) after a prior 2023 version failed to pass despite bipartisan support. 

 

Why are people buying so many CDs?
CD sales are apparently going up, reportedly thanks to fans realizing they’re an affordable way to support their favorite artists. According to a new report from research firm Luminate, 16.3 million CDs were sold in the first half of 2026 in the US, a 16 percent increase year-over-year. The growth in CD sales was driven by “collection building and price accessibility. The data suggests that “the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible,” Luminate says. “This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself.” Physical album sales — vinyls, CDs, and cassettes — were up overall as well, increasing 7.8 percent year-over-year. Vinyl sales were at 21.8 million units and cassette sales hit around 205,000 units, Luminate’s Denise Schenasi tells The Verge. The higher vinyl sales continues a trend of the format outselling CDs that has been going for a few years now.

 

Have We Hit Dystopia Yet? Band Wakes Up to Find AI Has Stolen 94% of Their Spotify Royalties by Duplicating Their Album and Altering the Speed
Musician Owen Lyman-Schmidt found out that his work had been stolen when a longtime fan of his band, Makeshift Hammer, messaged him to let him know an album on Spotify sounded as if someone had taken his music and “distorted it a bit.” They sent a link to an album called Blue Road by an artist named Carey Dupont.  “I had never heard of Carey Dupont. And if you looked closely, the album art didn’t quite make sense,” Lyman-Schmidt wrote. “Dupont had no other releases that I could find and was seemingly otherwise unknown to the internet.” Lyman-Schmidt describes Makeshift Hammer as “Philly’s premier mandolin-bass guitar-junk percussion gutter-folk duo, which is a fancy way to say we know a thing or two about being unknown.” He and his bandmate Bobby have been playing together “for a dozen years,” and music isn’t their day job; in fact, Lyman-Schmidt is a private detective.  “But Carey Dupont seemed even more off the grid than we were. They had no website, no social media, no dead ticket links to past shows, no profile in alt-weeklies,” he explained. “Nothing except Blue Road, the album, on every streaming service.” Makeshift Hammer’s fans and friends alike agreed that there must be some way to address the issue. “The theft is so blatant,” wrote one listener. Soon, the duo learned that another local Philly musician, Katie Feeney, better known as Roberta Faceplant, had experienced a similar problem. By now, the tracks from the Blue Road album had surpassed 650,000 listens, and it seemed near-constant and obviously inflated listens using bots. The fake listener bots havebeen plaguing Spotify and other music streaming platforms well before the birth of today’s AI. The combination of AI music fraud and artificially inflated streams is a symptom of a larger streaming-era problem: platforms have made music far easier to distribute at the cost of authenticity. Distorted streams, royalties, and artist visibility are plaguing smaller artists who already have to fight to be seen and heard. So what are the major industry players willing to do about it?

 

Meta’s Newest AI Tool Is Using Your Instagram Photos Without Permission
Meta has launched a new AI generator, available for free through the Meta AI app, as well as on Instagram Stories and WhatsApp. It’s already a problem.  Worse still, Meta policy states that “people may be able to create content with your Instagram content using AI features at Meta,” and that users “will not be notified about content created using AI features at Meta.” However, Meta claims that users “have control” over this feature, stating that there are settings to disable this kind of use of one’s pictures—but it’s clearly an “opt-out” situation rather than an “opt-in.” Meta is launching a slew of Muse-powered AI effects for Instagram Stories, including customizable filters that can be used to modify existing photos. The company also teased Muse Video, an AI video generator, which is “already in development,” but information on that tool is currently scarce.Meta announced the launch of its new AI image generator, Muse Image, built by its dedicated AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs. The tool is now available for free via the Meta AI app, as well as on Instagram Stories and WhatsApp.  Muse is mostly the same as other AI image generators on the market; it comes with a variety of preset image prompts to help users “spark ideas.” However, as TechCrunch points out, the model is already causing problems.

 

Warner Music Hits Back Hard at the American Federation of Musicians’ AI Lawsuit
Warner Music Group (WMG) is officially looking to toss the breach of contract lawsuit filed against it by the AFM, maintaining, among other things, that the agreement at the case’s center “does not cover AI licenses.” WMG recently shed light on its dismissal arguments when requesting a related pre-motion conference. As first reported by DMN, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) in June accused the major label (and Universal Music) of failing to cut its members in on Suno and Udio licensing revenue.  In the plaintiff’s view, each of those pacts constitutes a “new use” under the relevant Sound Recording Labor Agreement (SRLA) – meaning that the AFM musicians who contributed to the licensed recordings are purportedly entitled to a piece of the gen AI pie. Now, Warner Music has made clear that it’s on a decidedly different page. Ahead of an anticipated motion to dismiss, the major told the court that “Warner Music Group Corp. is not a signatory to the SRLA, does not itself own copyrights, was not a plaintiff in the copyright infringement lawsuits against Suno and Udio, and thus does not have licenses with Suno or Udio.”  “To the extent AFM seeks to assert a breach of contract, it is not against Warner Music Group Corp. That is alone enough to dismiss the complaint as to Warner,” the pre-motion letter reads. Time will tell whether Warner Music’s dismissal push is effective – though even if the defendant wins in the courtroom, a PR victory could prove elusive.

 

This Isn’t Just Copyright—It’s Trade Discrimination Against American Creators
On July 8, an unusually broad coalition representing virtually every corner of the American music industry—including performers, musicians, independent labels, collecting societies, unions, songwriters’ organizations, managers, and the Recording Academy—sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warning that the European Commission has indicated it may consider legislation that could use this gap in U.S. law as the basis for reducing or denying royalties to American performers and record companies in Europe. According to the coalition, nearly $300 million in annual royalties could be at risk if Europe abandons the longstanding principle of national treatment in favor of what proponents call “material reciprocity,” the latest mercantilist dodge. That makes this story about far more than royalties for broadcasts (“neighboring rights”). It is about whether a longstanding defect in U.S. copyright law is beginning to produce real economic consequences for American creators overseas—and why organizations that rarely agree have united to ask the United States government to respond and protect American creators. The music industry has long viewed copyright disputes primarily through the lens of intellectual property. This coalition letter recognizes that international copyright rules increasingly function as trade rules as well. Decisions made in Brussels can directly affect the income of American creators and the competitiveness of American cultural exports. 

 

NMPA Releases Latest Per-Stream US Publisher Payouts from Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and Amazon
NMPA president and CEO David Israelite unveils the latest per-stream songwriter and publisher payout across Spotify, YouTube, Apple, and Amazon.  In a post on LinkedIn, National Music Publishers’ Association President and CEO David Israelite unveiled the latest per-stream songwriter and publisher payout. These numbers represent both mechanical and publishing sub-licenses across Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. Notably, YouTube is not at the bottom of that barrel.  “How much is 1 million streams worth to the songwriters who make these businesses possible? And remember—most songs are written by 4-5 songwriters, so this amount is split among all of the writers and publishers,” Israelite wrote, noting in an email to Digital Music News that this data from the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) is only inclusive of the U.S., across both mechanical and performance payouts. Specifically, Spotify’s free, ad-supported tier saw a payout of $800, (.0008 per stream for publisher and writers combined) while individual paid Spotify accounts raked in $1,346 (.001346 per stream) Individual YouTube accounts led to a payout of $2,159 (.00216 per stream); individual Apple accounts amounted to $2,367 .00237 per stream), while individual Amazon accounts led to a payout of $3,743 (00374 per stream). Already, A&R representatives and others across the industry are speaking out about those numbers, noting that they represent broader issues across the royalty payout structure.

 

iHeartMedia cuts radio jobs across US as it targets $50m in annual cost savings (report)
iHeartMedia has begun another round of layoffs across its radio division.
The cuts began on Tuesday (June 23) and rolled out across stations in markets across the country through the week, according to RadioInsight, which has tracked the named exits.  iHeartMedia framed the cuts as part of a change to how it programs its stations, in a memo sent to staff by Multiplatform Group CEO Ann Marie Licata and Chief Programming Officer Tom Poleman. “As the number one company in audio, our business model is to build engaged relationships with listeners and then monetize those relationships,” the iHeartMedia executives wrote.  They said iHeartMedia was “now taking an important step that will move us further into the future: Evolving how we program our stations to reward and develop our leading and up-and-coming talent.”  The memo pledged that “Guaranteed Human” would stay “at the core of everything we do,” and that “real voices and real talent strengthen our real connection and commitment to our communities.”  On the cuts themselves, Licata and Poleman wrote that the changes were built around speed for advertisers. The layoffs are tied to a cost-cutting program iHeartMedia outlined alongside its first-quarter results in May.  The company said it anticipated a further USD $50 million in annualized cost savings this year, to begin in the second half of 2026.

 

AI Could Use as Much Water as 1.3 Billion People by 2030, U.N. Report Warns
he water used by artificial intelligence is expected to equal the needs of 1.3 billion people by 2030—threatening natural resources for billions around the world. That’s according to a new report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) which quantifies the carbon, water, and land footprints of AI's electricity use around the globe. The report finds that AI’s environmental cost is often mismeasured—focusing solely on carbon emissions. However, cooling and generating power for data centers comes with a “water footprint,” while the energy infrastructure and supply chains to build the data centers have a “land footprint.” These are important factors to consider, the report says, when analyzing the stressors a region might be facing due to data centers. By 2030, the report finds, global data centers powering artificial intelligence are projected to consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity. This is nearly triple the combined annual electricity use of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria—countries that together are home to more than 650 million people. The water footprint of data centers is projected to equal the basic domestic water needs of all 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa for a year, while their land footprint could exceed 5,590 square miles.But switching to cleaner sources of energy isn’t as simple as it sounds. Minimizing one footprint could come at the expense of magnifying another, researchers say. For example, switching from coal to bioenergy cuts electricity’s carbon footprint by 70%—but increases its water footprint more than 30-fold and its land footprint 100-fold. For a number of communities around the globe, AI is already using up significant energy resources. In 2025 alone, data centers consumed an estimated 448 terawatt-hours of electricity, the report found—more than the country of Saudi Arabia. In many cases, this excessive energy use comes at a cost to those who reside near them.