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US senators revive bill that would force AI-generated audio, video and images to carry labels
A bipartisan group of US senators has reintroduced legislation that would require AI-generated audio, video and images to carry disclosures identifying them as artificially generated. Its backers include SAG-AFTRA, the Songwriters Guild of America, Music Creators North America and the Society of Composers and Lyricists.  The AI Labeling Act would require providers of generative AI systems to attach a visible disclosure to AI-generated content, along with a machine-readable disclosure recording the system used and the time it was created. Large social media, search and content-sharing platforms with at least 10 million monthly US users, or more than $1.5 billion in annual revenue, would also have to flag that content and would be barred from stripping out the disclosures, under the proposal.  Any AI chatbot would separately have to tell users they are interacting with an artificial intelligence system. The Federal Trade Commission would enforce the requirements, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) would convene a working group to set technical standards for labeling and detecting AI content.

 

Suno’s latest legal opponent fought the tobacco industry – and won a quarter of a trillion dollars
Suno and Udio have a new adversary in their copyright fight with independent musicians: Hagens Berman, the law firm that took on the tobacco industry.  The firm has joined forces with Delgado Entertainment Law to represent independent artists whose recordings were allegedly copied without permission to train the two companies’ AI music-generation models. The firm’s arrival raises the stakes for Suno and Udio.  Hagens Berman represented 13 US states in what it describes as the largest recovery in litigation history, a settlement with the tobacco industry that the firm values at $260 billion. “Independent artists and producers represent the heart and soul of the music industry, and in the landscape of AI, they stand to lose the most,” said Berman, the firm’s managing partner. The case Hagens Berman has joined was first filed in June 2025 by country musician Tony Justice and his label, 5th Wheel Records.  Justice, a full-time truck driver whose song Last of the Cowboys has been streamed more than 8 million times on music platforms such as Spotify, sued both companies in June last year, in separate complaints against Suno in Massachusetts and Udio in New York.  That lawsuit argued that “rather than simply license these copyrighted songs like every other tech-based business does, Suno/Udio elected to simply steal the songs and generate AI-soundalike music at virtually no cost.” Suno did not deny stream-ripping music from YouTube, but its lawyers argued the practice is not illegal under the DMCA. The lawsuits against Suno and Udio seek damages for affected artists and an injunction to end what the firm calls “massive and ongoing infringement” of their rights.

 

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.

 

Music streaming services targeted as Texas Attorney General launches payola investigation
The Attorney General of Texas has launched an investigation into payola in music streaming. He wants to know if any music companies have “undisclosed financial arrangements” with the streaming services that result in their music being unfairly prioritised, and which violate Texas state law. Allegations of payola in music streaming are being put in the spotlight by the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, who wants to know if there are any “undisclosed financial arrangements” between the streaming services and music companies that allow specific artists or tracks to “boost visibility, playlist placement or recommendation rankings” in violation of the state’s laws. As a statement from Paxton’s office explains, “payola is the practice of receiving compensation in exchange for preferential promotion without proper disclosure”. In the US, the most famous form of payola involved labels or their agents paying or otherwise bribing programmers at radio stations so that they would playlist specific tracks. Such conduct is “prohibited by federal law”, Paxton’s statement reminds us. But are the streaming services themselves involved in any of that dodgy conduct? And if so, does that involve secret envelopes of cash and other freebies for influential executives, as in the radio payola heyday? Then there’s Spotify's controversial Discovery Mode, where independent artists and labels get an algorithmic boost in return for accepting a 30% discount on royalties. That’s not done in secret at all - the marketing scheme has its own website - but some argue that it’s basically a modern form of payola. It’s not clear how much of all this will be covered by Paxton’s investigation. However, with plenty of allegations of dodgy music marketing doing the rounds - and ongoing criticism of things like Discovery Mode - it should be interesting to see what the Texas AG uncovers. 

 

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.

 

Tech startup RTM Audio launches AI music detector UAI, which issues a signed certificate with every verdict
A new music-technology company called RTM Audio has launched an AI music detector that it says produces an independently verifiable certificate for every track it analyzes.  The Los Angeles-founded company says its system, UAI, runs two separate measurements on each track, one on the production and one on the vocal, and flags a recording as AI only when both agree. RTM Audio says four patent applications are in preparation.  When the system is not fully confident, RTM Audio says, it routes the track to a human reviewer rather than forcing a verdict. RTM Audio was founded by mixing and mastering engineers Ohad Nissim, Teezio, and Calin Enache, alongside music attorney Matt Buser.  Nissim, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, is a Grammy-nominated mastering engineer, while Teezio, the company’s CEO, is a two-time Grammy winner. “The whole point was to build something where a human artist is never accused unless two independent systems both flag the same track, and then you get a certificate, not a confidence score.”Deezer said in April that it was receiving nearly 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day, more than 44% of all new music uploaded to the platform.

 

NO FAKES: Senate panel backs bill that could cost platforms $750k per AI deepfake
The US Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced the NO FAKES Act, the bipartisan bill that would create a federal right protecting Americans’ voice and visual likeness from AI-generated deepfakes.  The committee passed the bill unanimously by voice vote on Thursday (June 18), according to Deadline, which noted that “three Republican senators — Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Eric Schmitt — raised First Amendment concerns”.  Clearing the committee sends the bill toward a vote by the full Senate, after which it would still need to pass the House of Representatives and be signed by the President before becoming law. Penalties under the bill are tiered: $5,000 per work for an individual, $25,000 per work for a company that creates or distributes a replica, and up to $750,000 per work for an online service that fails to comply. 

 

Majors and BMG ask US Supreme Court to overturn copyright termination ruling they say will cause ‘chaos’
The major music companies and BMG have asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that lets songwriters reclaim the worldwide rights to their songs under American law.  In a petition filed on June 11, the rightsholders warned that the decision would unleash “chaos” on the industry if left to stand, and asked the justices to reverse a January ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The ruling held that a songwriter exercising their termination right recaptures the worldwide rights once signed away, not just the US copyright.  Termination, written into the 1976 Copyright Act, lets creators undo an old transfer and reclaim their rights, 35 years after the grant, or 56 years for pre-1978 works.  Until that decision, the long-standing industry view was that termination reached only US rights, with overseas rights staying with the publisher.  Once briefing wraps, the court will decide whether to grant review, a long shot regardless, since the justices take only a sliver of the cases put before them each term.

 

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. 

 

A landmark bill targeting AI deepfakes faces a US Senate Judiciary Committee vote on June 18. Five things to know about the NO FAKES Act.
In 2023, an AI-generated track called Heart on My Sleeve cloned the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, drawing hundreds of thousands of streams before it was pulled from Spotify and YouTube.  Neither artist performed on it, and cloning a voice is not clearly copyright infringement – a gap the NO FAKES Act aims to close.  The Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act goes before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday (June 18).  It would create, for the first time in US federal This is its third attempt.  A version introduced in July 2024 ran out of time before that Congress ended, and a 2025 reintroduction stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee as sponsors negotiated with big tech and free-speech groups warned it swept up protected speech.  A bipartisan group reintroduced the latest version on May 20.  Here are five things the music business needs to know before the vote. 1) It would create a federal right to your own voice and likeness law, an intellectual property right in a person’s voice and visual likeness, 2) Platforms could face up to $750,000 per track, 3) It builds on Tennessee’s ELVIS Act – but makes it national, 4) Its backers run from the major labels to indie artists – but not everyone is sold, 5) It lands as AI floods streaming – and detection still isn’t reliable. If the NO FAKES Act clears the committee on Thursday, it would still face the full Senate, the House, and the President‘s desk before becoming law.

 

Paying for Precision—The New Economics of Music Usage Data for Royalty Distribution
For decades, the music industry has accepted a compromise in how royalties from public performance are distributed. When music is played in cafes, restaurants, retail stores, gyms, and other licensed venues, businesses pay fees with the expectation that the rights creators will be compensated for those plays. But in practice, collective management organizations (CMOs) have relied on proxy data to allocate those royalties rather than concrete data. That proxy data is derived from radio airplay, surveys, and partial reporting from a limited pool of venues.This system was designed to balance cost, practicality, and precision. However, it comes with a major structural limitation—it does not measure what is actually played across the majority of physical locations. Instead, music usage and therefore royalty payments are estimated based on indirect signals. That creates a fundamental issue for musicians and rights holders who want to be paid when their music is utilized in this way. Without a benchmark tied to real-world playback in these environments, there is no way to quantify how accurate royalty distributions truly are. The industry is not working within known margins of error, but rather without a measurable understanding of how far distributions diverge from actual usage in public performance settings. This lack of precision in royalty distribution has financial consequences for everyone involved. When proxy-based systems are used, value is redistributed along blurred lines. Some rights holders benefit disproportionately because their music is over-represented in proxy datasets. Others are underpaid because their music, while played in venues, is not captured. This is particularly relevant for independent artists and niche genres that may perform strongly in public spaces, but lacks broader airplay data. Other sectors outside the realm of music routinely invest in better data to improve outcomes. Music royalty distribution for public performance is now approaching the same inflection point. The central issue is no longer technological feasibility, but whether the industry is willing to move beyond systems that are not capable of measuring their own accuracy. As expectations around fairness and transparency increase, reliance on proxy data becomes harder to defend.

 

Is Anyone’s Music Safe? Newly Identified ‘Giant Datasets’ Containing Millions of Songs Raise Fresh Questions About Music AI Training Processes
Are gen AI companies actively developing their music models with the same collections of copyrighted tracks? And despite ongoing discussions about free-for-all training, is this process far more systematic than we’ve been led to believe?  These and other pressing questions are taking center stage following an investigative report from The Atlantic’s Alex Reisner, who identified “four giant datasets of songs that are being shared within the AI-development community.” Unsurprisingly, even in light of the noted report, we don’t have a concrete answer. Said report pinpointed four training datasets consisting of north of 22 million recordings between them – including two collections clocking in at closer to 100,000 recordings apiece, one containing 9.7 million songs, and the last with roughly 12.3 million tracks. Google and Stability AI have reportedly utilized tracks from one of the 100,000-song datasets, the Free Music Archive. Owing to “the industry’s secrecy around training data, we don’t currently know who has used the others” – though all four are said to have been “downloaded thousands of times” in total, per the report.

 

After Spotify Eyes Concert Streaming, YouTube Launches ‘Music Nights’ Exclusive Live Concert Series
Just a week after Spotify reportedly began shopping around to secure licensing to stream live events, YouTube claps back with “Music Nights.” The new series of exclusive concerts designed “for dedicated fans” will include release parties, intimate shows, and special tour stops, with the first three to feature Isaiah Rashad, Kacey Musgraves, and Bleachers.  “This year, we’re hosting Music Nights in music hubs across the globe, from Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo to unique destinations with a special meaning to artists, like New Braunfels, Texas, and Asbury Park, New Jersey,” reads YouTube’s blog post. “You can dive into the full performances, relive standout tracks on repeat, and explore exclusive behind-the-scenes moments on Shorts, directly on each artist’s Official Artist Channel.” YouTube’s Music Nights is just the latest move in the ongoing rivalry between YouTube Music and Spotify. The two companies have become increasingly competitive in the podcast arena in recent months. But the live music scene is already fiercely competitive, and YouTube has a well-established foot in that door—which might explain the timing of the Music Nights announcement.

 

Suno’s Legal Battle Against Sony Music and UMG Just Got 100 Times More Serious—Literally
Universal Music and Sony Music are dramatically expanding their litigation against AI music giant Suno, claiming over 61,000 copyright infringements.  Just moments after Sony Music Entertainment expanded its lawsuit against AI music company Udio, Sony and Universal Music Group dramatically expanded their litigation against Suno, the biggest AI music platform in the game. Instead of just 560 works, the music label giants are claiming infringement of over 61,000 works—at least, if a judge approves their latest amended complaint.  In both of these expanded cases, the labels used Audible Magic, an industry-standard audio fingerprinting technology, to scan Suno’s training data, confirming that the platform used “millions” of their copyrighted tracks to train its AI models. Now, that data source is being submitted into the court record to await approval. Naturally, Suno strongly opposes this move, arguing it would effectively reset the case and delay their ability to pursue their “fair use” defense in a timely manner. However, the labels state that they could settle that matter via summary judgment separately before completing the discovery required for the newly submitted 61,000 tracks.

 

Musicians’ Union Sues Major Labels for Artists’ Share of AI Song Generator Settlement Money
The The American Federation of Musicians is suing major record companies Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group over the labels’ recent moves to settle their lawsuits with AI music generators Suno and Udio, arguing that the settlements’ benefits aren’t reaching the musicians themselves.  “While the Defendants protected their own interests and created a significant source of new revenue with the retrospective settlements and prospective licenses, they have refused to compensate the musicians whose work – created with their own instruments and through their talent, creativity, and hard work – is fed into AI machines for profit,” the AFM said in the complaint filed in federal court. The AFM’s lawsuit comes months after UMG and WMG reached settlements with Udio and Suno last fall. UMG, the world’s largest music company, struck the first deal, announcing a settlement and partnership with Udio in late October of 2025. WMG came after, announcing a partnership of its own with Udio in mid-November. Weeks after that, WMG became the first (and so far the only) major label to settle with Suno.  The “big three” record companies, which includes Sony Music Group alongside UMG and WMG, first sued Suno and Udio in 2024, accusing that the AI music generators of massive copyright infringement by training their models on thousands of iconic songs without permission. Sony is the lone major music company that hasn’t settled with either AI company. 

 

Spotify's AI bet: more of everything, less of what you want
Spotify was a music app at one time. Then it added podcasts. Then audiobooks. Now the company is piling AI features into its app at a pace that can feel overwhelming. The latest wave, announced at its investor day, skews heavily toward using AI to generate content rather than using AI to help users find content they actually want.  Until now, Spotify has been largely a platform for human-created content — music, podcasts, and audiobooks. As it adds AI-powered tools to generate all of those formats, the app is poised to look very different. That shift is also creating friction — AI can now produce music faster than Spotify can manage it. The company is no longer focused solely on consumption — it’s actively nudging users to create content, too, even if it’s just for themselves. The risk is that this trades depth for breadth: The more time users spend making sense of a cluttered app, the less time they spend discovering and listening to content by other creators. This raises the question: Is Spotify deepening its competitive moat or diluting what made it essential?