“Catalog age is the strongest divider in today’s valuation landscape.” The words of Duetti’s first ‘Music Finance Index’ this week.

Spotify choosing its emerging-artists to watch in the year ahead is as familiar an annual tradition as its Wrapped promo.

Apple exec Eddy Cue has published a new year’s recap post about the growth of the company’s services business in 2025 – including Apple Music

Should rap lyrics be considered fair game as evidence in a court of law? The UK-based initiative Art Not Evidence believes it's unjust.

Morgan Stanley has been conducting its annual survey of Americans’ audio habits, and this year’s is the first to ask them questions about AI music. The answers will certainly make some waves in the music industry. “What we found surprised us, with 50-60% of listeners 18-44 reporting 2.5-3 hours per week of AI music listening,” wrote analyst Benjamin Swinburne, according to Sherwood’s report on the study…

With ticketing reforms afoot in the US and UK, now the calls for change are expanding to Europe, via an open letter signed by a number of artists, management and live firms and industry bodies. The letter, to EU justice commissioner Michael McGrath, targets ‘predatory ticket resale’ with the goal of expanding the EU’s Digital Fairness Act to tackle “industrial-scale ticket scalping worth some €2.5bn annually”.

The fatal shooting of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent last week has ignited more protests against the agency and the White House – including some prominent music artists. Veteran rocker Dave Matthews posted a video on Instagram sharing his thoughts, telling fans that “I don’t want my taxes to pay for ICE, to masked thugs to roam our streets and terrorise our communities and rip families apart”.

Indie folk group Big Thief (Adrienne Lenker, Buck Meek, James Krivchenia and Joshua Crumbly) released Double Infinity this past September, their first new album in over five years. The band’s team at 4AD (Will Tompsett, Emma Toney and Casper Mills) shared their approach with Music Ally for building loyalty with new audiences, letting lyrics lead creative, and more. Since the Big Thief’s audience has been skewing younger and more international, the team aimed to “de-pedestal” the band to appeal to a changing demographic.

Whatsapp rolled out several new group chat features this Wednesday, including options to assign roles to chat members, create event reminders and turn words into text stickers. The new features follow a number of other recent Whatsapp group chat enhancements, including larger file sharing, screen sharing and voice chats. Whatsapp Channels, which offer the ability to create what’s essentially a group chat of an unlimited size with follower privacy protection, have also been of use to artist teams for the past couple of years.

Self-proclaimed “the people’s boy band” Boy Throb has two goals: “win a Grammy” and “get Darshan his visa”. The band wants to bring Darshan Magdum, the band’s fourth member, from India to their base in LA. Following the advice of their immigration lawyer, the band has cultivated a substantial social media audience, gaining over 1.2mil followers on TikTok in just one month.

Veteran rappers Salt-N-Pepa sued Universal Music Group last May, claiming the label blocked their attempts to exercise their ‘termination rights’ to reclaim their early recordings. However, this week the case has been dismissed. Why? Because the judge agreed with UMG’s argument that Salt-N-Pepa’s original deal was signed with the company owned by their producer, Hurby ‘Luv Bug’ Azor, rather than with the group.

For late founder Sam Phillips’ 103rd birthday, Nashville-based label Sun Records is bringing their vinyl prices back to 1952, the year the label was founded. The campaign will include over 30 CD and vinyl releases from the Sun Records catalogue, including works from legacy artists like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. “Phillips believed music should be for the people,” said the Sun Records press release.

It’s time for Universal Music Group boss Sir Lucian Grainge’s annual scene-setting message to staff. The key phrase this year? ‘AI slop’.

Rare is the month in which the Indian outpost of one of the major labels does not announce the launch of a new partnership or acquisition.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have several regulatory and legal headaches in 2026, one of which is a lawsuit filed by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and seven states last September. Now the companies are going on the front foot with an effort to have the case dismissed. Variety has the details of their motion, which claims that the case is an “egregious instance of agency overreach”.

We reported on the BPI’s music-consumption figures for 2025 earlier this week, representing the number of sales and streams in the UK.

La Défense Arena in Paris is Europe’s biggest indoor music venue, and soon it will be owned by the world’s biggest live-music company.

The Weekend signed a rumoured-$1bn deal with investment firm Lyric Capital late last year backed by his publishing and recording rights.

Landr’s expansion beyond its roots in AI-mastering continue. The company has acquired Reason Studios, the firm behind the Reason DAW.

Nvidia built its business with chipsets and graphics processing units (GPUs), but it has also become one of the prime movers in AI.

SZA is auctioning off a fan hangout for Freedom for Sudan's fundraiser, offering the winner a one-on-one opportunity with the artist.

Independent US artist LaRussell sold $57k of digital albums to fans via D2C platform Even in 24 hours this week, as he kicked off a 30-day campaign for his new LP ‘Something In The Water’. Yes, one of those superfans contributed more than others: NBA basketball star Kyrie Irving paid $11k for his copy of the album, with Snoop Dogg ($2.5k) and Cedric The Entertainer ($1k) also chipping in.

Juno Award-winning Canadian musician Ashley MacIsaac found himself out of a gig last month due to a false AI-generated Google summary.

Universal Music Group’s India outpost is doubling down on the film music segment by buying a 30% stake in Excel Entertainment.

Sales and streams of recorded music in the UK grew by 4.9% last year according to figures published by industry body the BPI. That amounts to 210.3m album-equivalents, including a 5.5% rise in audio streams to 210.3bn. The BPI hailed an 11th consecutive year of growth for overall consumption, but there was a notable deceleration from 2024’s 9.7% overall growth, and its 11% increase in the number of audio streams.