Click Headlines to read more of the latest news!

The MLC and Pandora file competing summary judgment motions in mechanical royalties dispute
The Mechanical Licensing Collective and Pandora Media filed competing motions for summary judgment last week in a two-year-old lawsuit accusing the music streaming service of underpaying royalties owed to rights holders.  Both parties submitted their filings on Thursday (February 5) in the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, each claiming the undisputed facts support their position. The MLC argues that features on Pandora’s ad-supported service, including on-demand listening sessions, unlimited skips and replays, and personalized programming qualify it as an “interactive service” requiring mechanical royalty payments to songwriters and publishers. The MLC said Pandora had responded to its November 2021 notice with a letter from outside counsel that “categorically reject[ed]” the MLC’s letter and “refused to correct previous usage reporting or make additional royalty payments.” The MLC brought its lawsuit against Pandora in 2024, coinciding with its first-ever re-designation process, under which the US Copyright Office initiated five-year review of the MLC and the Digital Licensee Coordinator (DLC).  Elsewhere, the MLC also sued streaming giant Spotify in May 2024 over its alleged underpayment of royalties to songwriters and publishers by “bundling” its Premium subscription with access to audiobooks. However, that lawsuit was dismissed “with prejudice” in January 2025. The MLC then asked the court to reconsider the dismissal.

SoundExchange Claims Coverage of 91% of the ‘Global Neighboring Rights Market’ Following Multiple CMO Deals
SoundExchange announces 17 new deals with collective management organizations worldwide, covering over 90% of the global neighboring rights market.  On Monday, SoundExchange announced the addition of 17 new agreements with collective management organizations (CMO) worldwide in recent months. The most recent signings with partners in Kenya, Barbados, Panama, Paraguay, and European territories bring the non-profit organization’s portfolio to over 90 agreements while expanding coverage of the available global neighboring rights market to over 91%.  The SoundExchange International Services team reached the bulk of these agreements in 2025, with new rights owner pacts in the latter half of the year with Barbados’ Copyright Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (COSCAP), Sociedad de Gestion de Productores Fonograficos del Paraguay (SGP), and the Kenya Association of Music Producers (KAMP). Already, SoundExchange has finalized agreements in 2026 with Kenya’s KAMP and Norway’s Gramo. The largest neighboring rights collective in the world, SoundExchange boasts nearly 500,000 artists and rights owners who trust the company to collect their international royalties. As a non-profit, SoundExchange aims to streamline the complex administrative burden of international collections under the lowest administration rate among comparable neighboring rights organizations.

Just-Introduced ‘CLEAR Act’ Would Force AI Companies to Disclose Copyright Inputs — And Seriously Complicate Matters for AI Mega-Giants
On Tuesday, February 10, Congress proposed the Copyright Labeling and Ethical Reporting (CLEAR) Act, a bill that would require tech companies to disclose the copyrighted works used to train their AI models.  If passed, the bill would force tech companies to file a notice with the Register of Copyrights that outlines the copyrighted works used to train their AI systems. It would also require that such notices be filed before the public release of new AI models, and would also require retroactive notices to be filed for AI models already available. Further, the U.S. Copyright Office would be tasked with creating an open (and accessible) database of these notices to ensure greater transparency over which works have been used for which publicly available AI model. Civil penalties would be enacted on companies that fail to comply. Though just introduced, the bill has already seen bipartisan support and endorsements from numerous creator advocacy organizations. These include the Copyright Alliance, SAG-AFTRA, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Writers Guild of America (WGA) East and West, Directors Guild of America (DGA), the American Federation of Musicians, the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), SoundExchange, the Authors Guild, the Artists Rights Alliance, the Television Academy, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

WHAT IS THE "3 MINUTE RULE" IN MUSIC?? (History Lesson)

The most common records were 78 RPM (revolutions per minute) records, which could hold approximately three minutes of sound per side. This technological limitation meant that early recordings had to fit within this time frame, setting a standard that would influence the music industry for decades to come.

What makes an artist investable in music today? 
In music, what makes someone investable?  For decades, the answer was simple: catalogues. Evergreen music that showed up neatly in a spreadsheet.  But today “investability” is bigger than that. It’s about a person. A story. A community. An audience that doesn’t just listen… they believe. Investors have started to see a shift in what makes a good investment. It isn’t just about past earnings anymore; it’s also about future potential.  In finance, “investable” has always meant one thing: predictable revenue. Safe bets. Assets you can rely on to behave exactly as expected. Goldman Sachs projects that global music revenue will double to nearly $90 billion by 2030. That future revenue isn’t just numbers; it’s songs that haven’t been written yet. It’s the 14-year-old at home scribbling lyrics about her life, or the next producer building beats on a cracked-screen laptop that barely holds a charge. They are the future value of this industry.

YouTube’s subscription business is now generating roughly $20bn a year – with music a key growth driver
YouTube‘s advertising revenue growth decelerated in the fourth quarter of 2025, even as its parent company crossed a major financial milestone.  But the slowdown in ad growth masks a bigger story: YouTube’s subscription arm has quietly become a formidable revenue engine in its own right. Alphabet’s Q4 2025 earnings, published on Wednesday (February 4), show YouTube’s ad revenues grew 8.7% year-on-year to $11.4 billion, down from the 15% growth rate posted in Q3 2025.  For the full year, YouTube’s advertising business generated $40.37 billion – up 11.7% on 2024’s $36.1 billion haul. Simple math implies YouTube’s subscription business, spanning YouTube Music, YouTube Premium, YouTube TV and NFL Sunday Ticket, is now generating approximately $20 billion annually.  YouTube Music has been repeatedly cited by executives as a major contributor to that subscription growth.  Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, exceeded $400 billion in annual revenues for the first time in 2025.

Why distinguishing human creation from AI mimicry matters more than ever
As generative AI tools grow more sophisticated, the line between how a human performance sounds and what a probabilistic model can imitate is blurring.  To navigate this future, we must first understand exactly what we are listening to… To have a grounded conversation about the future of our industry, we must first demystify the source of AI music. It helps to understand that AI music generators are, fundamentally, pattern-recognition machines.  Today’s most popular AI music creation platforms start by compiling massive libraries of music from across the internet and training their generators to recognize sounds that tend to appear together: sonic textures, rhythmic patterns, chord progressions, and common songwriting choices. This results in a reconstruction that can be described as “smoothed,” or arguably, “basic,” since the generator relies on the aggregated choices of thousands of real musicians to rebuild the track from the fingerprint alone. AI music generators can adjust the fingerprint accordingly based on its awareness of the requested modification, and generate the updated track. While the results are often amusing, like hearing a cartoon character sing a reggaeton hit, this capability poses serious risks when an artist’s voice or image is involuntarily associated with work they did not create or approve. Perhaps the most compelling argument for the distinction between human and AI music lies in the nature of creativity itself. Because AI generators rely on “smoothing” and pattern recognition, the songs they create are necessarily based on creative choices that are common enough to be identified in libraries of existing music.

Getting Better at Editing
(A review of some common editing activities and techniques to help tighten up your tune after the fact)
There are times when a new song idea flows onto the recorder effortlessly, with no further structural tinkering required. On the other hand, there are certain works that may need extra attention right from the get-go—perhaps it’s an intro that goes on too long, or one too many verses before you get to a chorus, and so forth. While we might be tempted to start over from scratch, there are times when a little post-production editing work can go a long way. Here we review some common editing activities and techniques, from lengthening a coda or moving a chorus, to removing extra verses or inserting a replacement bridge, plus best ways to make edits without noticing the stitch marks. Editing also works wonders during the mix process. Let’s say you’ve made three different mixes of the song, and upon listening back you decide you like portions of all three attempts. Not a problem—you can simply extract the preferred parts from the various mixes, then lay each section onto a new editing template, taking care to properly align them so the listener isn’t aware of the individual splices. When done correctly, don’t be surprised if this Frankenstein mix turns out to be the best of the bunch.

Spotify Stock (SPOT) Plunges Another 7% in Wednesday Trading, Erasing All 2025 Gains
Spotify’s stock (SPOT) continues to take a bath in 2026, amid broader downturns across tech and other sectors. On Wednesday trading, the stock ended just above $440—down over 7% on the day, and more than 23% in 2026 alone. The valuation means that SPOT has now erased all of its wildly successful 2025 run-ups, which saw the stock surge to an astounding $785 in June 2025.  Tech stalwarts like Spotify are under increasing pressure to demonstrate stable financial growth and healthy margins in the face of socioeconomic rockiness and new tech like AI. This is especially true of stocks like SPOT, with high price-to-earnings ratios.It’s an interesting time for Spotify, having recently secured ‘Buy’ ratings from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs—and then promptly taking a dive below $500 per share.

Apple Music Says It Flagged Roughly Two Billion Fake Streams During 2025 — With Penalties for Alleged Fraud Now Doubled
Just how deep does the AI fraud problem run? A one-stop answer remains elusive, but Apple Music has provided a closer look at the issue’s scope – to the tune of approximately two billion “fraudulent streams” detected during 2025.  This telling stat emerged during a new Hollywood Reporter sit down with Apple VP of music, video, sports, and international Oliver Schusser. By the outlet’s description – meaning its summary of Schusser’s remarks – Apple Music last year “identified and demonetized as many as 2 billion fraudulent streams.”  And while those illicit plays might not have exclusively reached AI uploads, logic and plenty of evidence suggest that machine-made slop is comparatively well-suited for gaming the system.  As of Feb. 1, these percentages have doubled to 10% and 50%, which attributes the move’s timing in part to the ongoing AI audio avalanche.  In general, tackling fraud is definitely a positive – though the retooled penalty policy raises questions about the underlying approach.  Among different things, if streaming fraud is egregious enough to warrant a 50% penalty, might it be time to ban the involved “artist(s)” and uploader altogether? 

Wixen Music Publishing files $50m copyright suit against Meta, claims tech giant wants to replace songwriters with AI
Wixen Music Publishing is suing Meta for copyright infringement, claiming the social media giant continues to use hundreds of its copyrighted songs on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp without permission.  The lawsuit, filed in California federal court last Thursday (January 23), claims Meta has “willfully” infringed the copyrights of over 330 musical works – including songs by The Doors, Weezer, Styx, The Black Keys, Missy Elliott and Townes Van Zandt – after the companies’ licensing agreement expired on December 10, 2025.  Los Angeles-based Wixen is seeking at least $49.65 million in statutory damages, plus additional compensation for claims of defamation and interference with its business relationships. Wixen is seeking maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work infringed – totaling at least $49.65 million for the 331 works listed in the complaint – as well as injunctive relief to prevent further infringement.  The publisher is also seeking at least $20 million in damages for its defamation and business interference claims.

‘Physical music is powerful and under-leveraged. In 2026, it won’t be a sideshow – it’ll be a core strategic revenue (Thom Skarzynski)
Recent Luminate stats support his thesis about the commercial significance of physical music. According to Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Report, US vinyl sales increased for the 19th straight year in 2025, growing 8.6% YoY to 47.9 million units.  Plus, more than four in ten vinyl records were sold at independent record stores, while Direct-to-Consumer sales now make up 13.6% of all physical albums sold – a 2.1 percentage point increase vs. 2024. Streaming is a volume-based game to play, and it’s gotten harder and harder to “move the needle.” The data is clear that the landscape is shifting: TikTok doesn’t drive virality the way it once did, editorial playlists don’t garner the impact they once had, terrestrial radio doesn’t directly correlate to streams, and syncs don’t mean the same thing now that the number of platforms to watch has ballooned. (entire article here)