Role Model is first artist to use Spotify ‘Reserved’ ticketing

Spotify’s next big step into ticketing is rolling out. ‘Reserved’ was announced last month at Spotify’s investor day in New York, and is now live for its premium subscribers in the US. As we explained then, it will see Spotify reserving two tickets for partner artists’ “most dedicated fans” then send emails and push-notifications inviting them to complete the purchase.

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Report highlights big-tech platforms’ role in spreading Indian ‘hate music’

US-based non-profit The Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH) has published a report titled ‘Profiting from Hate Music: The Role of YouTube, Meta, Spotify and Apple Music in Hosting and Monetizing India’s Hate Music Industry’. The report has been co-written by Kunal Purohit, the author of the book ‘H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars’, which was published in 2023 and documented the rapid growth of the genre in India.

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UMG UK’s Rebecca Allen: ‘We’ve got to pivot, we’ve got to adapt’

If you’re looking at how major labels are reshaping themselves for the next era, Rebecca Allen is one of the best primary sources.

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How do you stay current in the modern music industry? ‘Stay on TikTok four hours a day’

Having built one of YouTube’s largest music-channel network, Andre Benz sold it to Create Music Group in 2022 then launched Broke Records.

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SoundCloud hails RepostExchange as a ‘bot-free’ promo tool

Despite the best efforts of industry bodies like the IFPI – and its efforts have been strenuous – there are still many dodgy companies and websites offering ways to buy likes, followers and streams for artists. They’re all best avoided. SoundCloud wants to help its community of artists plot an ethical path through the promotional waters. It has just named…

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New climate report shows labels’ progress towards reducing emissions

The Music Climate Pact (MCP) has released an annual report detailing actions taken by participating labels towards reducing carbon emissions.

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Watch out, YouTube: Spotify is launching direct full-length video uploads for artists

Spotify is rolling out the ability for artists to upload full-length videos to its service – enhancing its competition with YouTube.

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Threads now has 500m monthly users (and some new features)

Instagram’s Threads app raced to 100 million users in its first month after launch in July 2023. Now it has 500 million.

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Report: Meta’s ‘monopoly’ of music-ad budgets is ending

Music marketing-tech company Ctrl+Reach has published a report analysing wider trends in the music industry's advertising spending.

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Live-focused superfans startup Swsh raises $4m funding round

Swsh is the latest superfan-focused music startup, but its focus is on a specific aspect of fandom: live experiences.

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Record Store UK launches campaign to create a vinyl emoji

There isn’t an official emoji for vinyl, despite the format being nearly two decades into its sales revival. But that could change...

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Music business ended 2025 with 921.6m paid streaming subscribers

By the end of this year, it’s quite possible that there will be more than one billion music subscribers globally.

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The Atlantic uncovers ‘millions’ of songs used for AI training

It’s very clear that some AI-music services have trained their models on huge datasets of commercial music. But which songs exactly? That’s the question at the heart of lawsuits against Suno and Udio, and it’s also the subject of a fascinating investigation by The Atlantic’s ‘AI Watchdog’ project.

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Here’s looking at you, Def Jam… Label expands in Casablanca

Universal Music Group’s global expansion of its Def Jam label continues, following previous launches in South-East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Sweden and China. Where to next? Of all the markets, in all the towns, in all the world, it’s launched in Casablanca with Def Jam Recordings North Africa. Its focus will be on the wider Maghreb region – the western part of North Africa that includes Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania.

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How ‘Superfandom’ is Reshaping Music Streaming’s Next Chapter

By Con Raso, CEO and founder of music cloud platform Tuned Global.Streaming executives from SoundCloud, Audiomack, and Tuned Global say the future of music platforms lies in community, local scenes – and giving fans meaningful ways to participate, create, and shape what comes next. Streaming has been the dominant format for music consumption for more than a decade, and in that time, the focus of many conversations in the industry has largely centered on catalogue size, subscriber growth, and personalisation algorithms.

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Suno’s chief product officer defends ‘platform integrity’ policies

Suno is preparing to launch its first model based on music licensed from rightsholders: something its CEO Mikey Shulman trailed in his recent announcement of the company’s $400m funding round.

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Anthropic’s Claude FM is a 24-7 music stream on YouTube

Thus far, AI giant Anthropic’s main interaction with the music industry has been a legal battle with publishers, who are suing it for copyright infringement of their lyrics. More positively, Anthropic has worked with streaming services Spotify and Melon to integrate them into its Claude chatbot. But now, a surprise: it has quietly got into the ‘lo-fi music on YouTube’ space too.

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Played By Humans is verifying ‘human artistry in an AI age’

Label and live music company Jazz Is Dead is up to something interesting: and it’s all about trying to protect the human musicians who make jazz (and other genres) in the face of AI. It has launched an initiative called ‘Played By Humans’ that “verifies human artistry in an AI age with an authentication stamp delivered through our detection tool”.

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Francisco Partners exits its investment in Muse Group

Muse Group is the parent firm of brands and companies including Ultimate Guitar, Hal Leonard, MuseScore and Audacity among others: a key company in the music-education and tech space. Its acquisition of Hal Leonard in December 2023 was backed by funding from private-equity firm Francisco Partners. Two and a half years later, the latter is exiting the investment – although it’s all on friendly terms.

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Deezer debuts ‘AI music detector’ for playlists… on all DSPs

Deezer continues to lean in hard to its technology for detecting AI-generated music – and then generating headlines about its scale. The latest example being an ‘AI music detector’ for people’s playlists, even if they use rival streaming services. Pitched with the question “how much AI music is there in your playlists?” it encourages people to use its existing TuneMyMusic-powered playlist-transfer feature to import playlists from a range of other services, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and SoundCloud.

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NMPA strikes Udio and Klay AI deals and reveals US revenues

We’ve seen a growing slate of deals between major labels and AI-music companies that include the former’s publishing arms. Now US music-publishers body the NMPA has announced two of its own agreements: with Udio and Klay. The deals were revealed by CEO David Israelite at the NMPA’s annual meeting yesterday (10 June) – and the Udio deal has one notable term.

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Madverse raises investment round led by Kobalt’s Willard Ahdritz

Delhi-headquartered music distribution, publishing and marketing company Madverse Music Group has closed its first institutional funding round, led by Ahdritz Capital, the investment vehicle of entrepreneur and the founder-chairman of the Kobalt Music Group Willard Ahdritz. The round—through which Madverse has raised an undisclosed amount—also saw participation from Mohnish Sani and Suraj Sani from US-based SumoSan Ventures; Ashish Jain and Sidharth Kohli from Indian consulting firm 10X Global; and Vijay Sajjanhar from UAE-based investment company Marigold Capital.

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Music prediction is a $400m market in 2026 so far – on one platform

What if you could use your knowledge of upcoming release schedules, quiet insider chats with artist teams, your skill at reading Chartmetric data – or anything else in the music business that you were pretty certain about – to place bets? For instance, if you were very sure that Taylor Swift will get the most streams on Spotify in June…

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Content Editor – Warp Records – London

Warp is looking for a social-first creative to join our team in London, helping bring our Artists’ stories to life across digital platforms. You’ll be a creative all rounder and skilled in visual storytelling, bringing solid experience creating short form video, graphic design, motion graphics and imagery. Based within the Digital Communications team, you’ll work fluidly with other departments, including A&R, Streaming, Marketing and E-Commerce, delivering creative for social media, mailers, websites and beyond.

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Curated music-streaming service Cantilever raises £250k from independent labels

UK-based startup Cantilever has raised £250k of pre-seed funding from a group of 20 independent labels and individuals from those companies.

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American Federation of Musicians sues majors over AI deals

US-based musicians’ union the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) has launched a lawsuit against UMG and WMG over their AI deals.

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