Kidjo’s star ceremony is set for Aug. 18 at 11:30 a.m. PT.
Could this be the last time? Tune in August 7th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West. Phone #: 844-686-5863 If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
Here’s a recap of recent music industry hires and in-house promotions as of August 7th, 2026. If you have a job shuffle to share, we’re all ears. Send us a note to news@digitalmusicnews.com. If you’d like to post a job on our Job Board, just send us a request to noah@digitalmusicnews.com.
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love dangerous AI
Australia’s New Year’s bash Beyond the Valley 2026 has sold out before tickets even reached the general public. This year’s edition of Australia’s New Year’s festival, Beyond the Valley, has already sold its entire ticket allocation before they even reached the general sale.
How sweet — or suite — it still is. Judy Collins is doing a valedictory lap or two around the country on what is billed as a farewell tour, even though, at 87, she’s showing little in the way of weariness about maintaining a full concert schedule or lack of prowess in pulling these shows […]
British powerhouse music producer William Orbit, known for his work with Madonna, Blur, Pink, and All Saints, has died at age 69. William Orbit, a giant among British music producers best known for his work with the likes of Madonna, Blur, Pink, and All Saints, has passed away.
A year and change later, a federal judge has partially dismissed the declaratory judgment complaint filed by Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) against Sony Music, Universal Music, and BMG. However, the wider copyright infringement battle, complete with multiple intensifying actions, is raging on.
A jury will decide a case against Megan and Roc Nation filed by Emilio Garcia, who said he was forced to watch the rapper have sex in a car in a 2024 lawsuit.
The feeling of holding the cuddly 18-inch Derpy plushie against the body provides a "comforting, cozy feel," per a product description.
Also up north this week: A recap of this year's OVO Golf Classic and a high-profile departure from Departure.
The announcement dropped on a pulverizingly humid Thursday afternoon in New York City: just a few hours later, an Olivia Rodrigo surprise gig would take place at Brooklyn’s intimate, 1,100-capacity venue Warsaw.
Unlikely duet previews Synonym, an ambitious covers album featuring Cynthia Erivo, Chaka Khan, Brandi Carlile, and WILLOW
Worsham issues his first independent album, Once Upon a Second Time Around, and discusses his multifaceted career.
With less than a year on the scene, the five-piece performed like pros at its first full concert in the States for a sold-out show at Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Hot on the heels of Music Canada securing a mass court order to block YouTube stream-ripping sites, IFPI takes aim at Musi—after Apple already roughed them up.
"All the records are the results of our fans, BLINKs, and their unconditional support," Jennie has said of the group's success.
The couple first sparked romance rumors in 2024.
After eight years together, the group best known for maximalism makes a strong case for pulling back.
Which new Latin music release is your favorite? Vote below!
That cover art is almost certainly AI too. | Image: Fenix Flexin It took long enough, but now LA rapper Fenix Flexin appears to have admitted using AI for the 80s synth pop-themed song "Rubberz." His comments follow the producer Medasin's videos claiming that an AI tool called Treblo (formerly...
Amazon Music tees up another Outside Lands livestream, with Twitch, Prime Video, Fire TV, and Samsung TV Plus all part of the network. Amazon Music may not have maintained the momentum of its rivals Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Qobuz in terms of subscriber growth, but it continues to boost its...
“Making this decision wasn’t easy, but I’m learning that health has to come first”
Los Angeles, sweltering thanks to an unusual August humidity, got even hotter on Wednesday as Variety toasted the best and brightest young talent in show business.
‘Super Graphic Spectacular’ at Los Angeles’ Shrine Auditorium in October will benefit the Midwest Princess Project
Thanks for this. I love this track. Was raised on Steely Dan by my mother and my uncle. Mom introduced me to Aja at age of 8. I listened to it incessantly. Then, my uncle introduced me to Katy Lied and I was completely hooked. Yacht rock my ass. Fagan and Becker were mad scientist […]
Agent Plugins 1.0 defines a write-once-run-anywhere container for passing tools and skills across different agent platforms
Not every up-and-coming artist can say they watched Michelle Obama jam out to their music before landing on the charts. But two weeks after Will Ferrell proudly played his son Magnus Ferrell’s single “Asleep Talking” on the former first lady’s “IMO” podcast, the 22-year-old musician scored his...
Katseye’s Sophia becomes the latest member of the group to take a step back from upcoming promo activities, citing prioritizing her mental health. Katseye member Sophia Laforteza has become the latest in the group to take a break from Katseye’s upcoming promotional activities.
Chappell Roan and her non-profit The Midwest Princess Project have announced a two-day fundraiser “The Super Graphic Spectacular” taking place at Los Angeles’ The Shrine on October 21-22.
Live Nation’s aggressive international expansion has delivered yet another high-profile play – this time in Prague, where the promoter’s scored a JV deal covering venues including the O2 Arena.
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” in theaters now via Mubi. “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” the third feature from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, is not the film you think it is.
“You know these things cost bread, so Em put the cheese up for it,” the rapper shared
What, you didn't think the top gangs were busy watching agents escape their sandboxes too, did you?
Katseye member Sophia Laforteza has announced that she’s taking a temporary step back from the group’s upcoming promotional activities, emphasizing that she needs to prioritize her “mental health and wellness.” In a post on Weverse, the group revealed that she has the “utmost support” from the...
One night after country singer joined band for “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Slash and Duff McKagan make surprise appearance for Lies classic and Fleetwood Mac cover
The biggest headlines from the past few days... Source
MAST Upgrade installation hit highest pressure ever achieved without the super-hot plasma destabilizing
After a long estrangement, Buckingham and Nicks are again friends. “Stevie and I are talking all the time now,” Buckingham said. “Next year quite a few things will reveal themselves”
Selena Gomez, Christina Aguilera, Law Roach, Ciara, Simu Liu and Jeff Goldblum are among those who have been named as founding honorary host committee members of the Olympics-inspired Legacy House in Los Angeles.
We asked a large group of longtime fans to give us their favorite Dead classics
TL;DR: We introduce Stochastic Primal-Dual Decoding (SPDD), a lightweight inference-time method that steers... The post Balancing Multiple Objectives in Generative Recommendations with Adaptive Decoding appeared first on Spotify Engineering.
Electronic music extraordinaire also worked on Blur’s experimental 13 in addition to songs by U2, No Doubt, Pink, and more
Unnamed member of funk legends reportedly suffers “cardiac incident” prior to Chase Center tour stop with Lionel Richie; gig will be rescheduled, band says
The artist now recording as Johnny Blue Skies joined Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney for a psychedelic jam as they close their North American tour
Gregg Alexander wasn’t planning to make a splashy return with New Radicals, his pop-rock collective that burned bright and fast in the late 1990s before abruptly disbanding. So it’s fitting that “One Night Only (Break Loose Break Free!),” the group’s first new song in 28 years, arrived last Friday...
MBW's Trailblazers series meets Juan Carlos Dominguez, founder and CEO of Latin America-focused concert powerhouse Feel The Club Source
Kickstarter launches the Kickstarter Culture Fund, a $1 million fund supporting independent creators across music, art, fashion, film, and music. Kickstarter has announced the launch of the Kickstarter Culture Fund, a $1 million fund to support independent creators working across music, art,...
Attackers turned admin access into a route downstream, while N-able tells N-central customers to patch – again
Madonna kicked off August with another “Club Confessions” appearance – this time, it was a performance at WorldPride in Amsterdam featuring surprise guest Kylie Minogue.
Cancer diagnostics breach spills personal and health info as extortion crew says healthcare giant ‘should’ve paid the ransom’
K-pop company's latest quarterly report was published on Wednesday, August 5 Source
Timer interrupts reopen branch predictor poisoning window, with a working Zen 2 exploit to prove it
Investigation into whether staff improperly accessed Minnie Merriman’s file after she was named for the first time this week
AI Developers’ Trail of Book Destruction — There is no “loophole” in copyright that permits scanning books if you destroy the original. There is a single federal district court decision that did not acknowledge the body of case law that says otherwise, including binding precedent from its own...
Website support widget lasted 18 months before Redmond ended the conversation
Kickstarter has announced the Kickstarter Culture Fund, a $1 million fund “supporting independent creators” in art, fashion, film – and music. It’s financed by Kickstarter and is open to creators around the world.
Suno has published a blog post titled “How We’re Building the Future of Music Responsibly.” The author, Suno co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman, says it shares the company’s “clear set of principles”, ones that are, “always rooted in supporting artistry and creativity.” It’s an attempt to position...
“Is it possible to build a successful music streaming platform without striking licensing deals? Actually, maybe,” we wrote about Musi back in 2024, as we described the success of the music streaming app that looked and felt like a DSP, without having the deals a DSP needs.
Back in March we wrote about Musixmatch’s launch of Sentinel – “a real time music copyright detection service designed for user-generated content platforms”. Yesterday, Musixmatch announced Suno as the first customer to adopt it and its music fingerprinting technology.
Can’t get enough Green Day in your life? Good news, because now you can: an official 24/7 stream YouTube called Green Day TV has been launched which gives fans “around-the-clock immersive programming.” The band says that the stream will feature “a continuous stream of Green Day’s music videos, live...
Music of Our Desire (Mood) is a platform that crawls the web, ticketing platforms and social media to find information on “every concert, not just the big ones.” As a result of all that web-crawling and info-smooshing, Mood has a lot of data – which it’s publishing as a series of reports.
Intruder gained access to engineering files and potentially export-controlled technical data
If you market music, you probably use one or more of Meta’s platforms to do it, and the target audience for that marketing will often include young people and teenagers.
Unlimited Technology Systems says names, Social Security numbers, diagnoses, and insurance details may have been swiped
Humans will get the AI models they deserve
Former Merseyside police officer sacked after failing to declare he was 'too close' with the wrong crowd
As it fends off multiple high-stakes copyright suits – and eyes additional licensing pacts – Suno has unveiled plans to adopt “new audio watermarking” tech and implement “a new downloads policy designed to limit the ability to mass distribute songs on streaming platforms.” The gen AI upstart...
Suno sent out an update and then quickly issued a new press release that excluded a previously announced partner. The company says nothing has changed about the partnership.
The sequel to Lionsgate’s record-setting Michael Jackson biopic could start filming later this year for a 2028 release, according to studio executives. No sooner had Lionsgate reported some serious profits last quarter, thanks in no small part to the success of Michael, than the studio announced...
Tyga isn’t bothered to admit he used Suno to create his new album. But does that fact make it chart ineligible per new rules laid out by a coalition that includes UMG, RIAA, A2IM, WIN, IMPALA, The Recording Academy, SAG-AFTRA, and the IFPI?
Beijing’s not saying why, which is just what happened when it investigated Micron
WMG plows ahead with more AI licensing deals, counting its money while UMG and Sony continue to duke it out in court with AI companies like Suno and Udio.
Machine-generated traffic to surge 1000x in five years, while we meatbags keep clicking away slowly
ASOBISYSTEM calls the launch its biggest spending yet in North America, and a permanent base for J-pop acts it has been sending on tour across the US. Source
AI usage is evident but isn't yet a serious problem
APAC-focused live events specialist Triangle Group (formerly Creation Collective) has announced a $15 million raise and welcomed ex-Live Nation higher-up Roger Field to its executive team. Singapore-headquartered Triangle Group revealed the funding and the appointment in a formal release.
Suno plans watermarks and download limits to stop "large-scale abuse."
Early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second
Live Nation’s majority-owned livestreaming platform Veeps has begun the process of mass layoffs across its entire music media portfolio. Veeps, the ticketed livestreaming platform majority-owned by Live Nation, has started the process of laying off massive swaths of employees across cultural...
After announcing a massive expansion in the heart of Nashville, TikTok shutters its office in Music City, laying off 250 people to “streamline” its operations. TikTok’s U.S. joint venture has laid off 250 employees in Nashville as the office closes its doors on October 5.
Some artists spend lots of time, lots of money and personal capital winning a statue. So what? Every musician wants to hear their name followed by two magical words: “Grammy winner”.
Heavy music comes in many forms ranging from black metal to hardcore punk to shoegaze. There's a bunch of subgenres in between and the ...
Two weeks after the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) fired off an amended suit against Warner Music and Universal Music, the latter major is doubling down on its dismissal push.
Left alone, autonomous fixes often fail to fully remediate flaws
I didn’t know this was Larry Carlton’s first appearance on a Steely Dan track. “Katy Lied” is the least talked about Steely Dan album, except for maybe the two latter-day twenty first century LPs I used to think that crown was held by “The Royal Scam,” but that album has fans, of the opening cut,...
ZZ Top canceled their Tuesday performance in Chula Vista and their Wednesday show at the Hollywood Bowl, citing “insurmountable obstacles.” Their touring partner Cheap Trick held an “intimate” show at the Troubadour.
The following MBW op-ed comes from Andreea Gleeson, former CEO of TuneCore and founder of AGA (Andreea Gleeson Advisory) Source
The latest 'Tim's Take' from Music Business Worldwide founder, Tim Ingham Source
Documentary filmmaker Alison Ellwood’s most recent project is “Boy George & Culture Club.” Prior to that she directed “History of the Eagles,” “The Go-Go’s,” “Laurel Canyon”… Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alison-ellwood/id1316200737?i=1000780220185...
Robert Kyncl said WMG expected its "licensing deals to contribute materially to our subscription streaming revenue growth starting in fiscal '27." Source
Suno’s AI vocalists could learn a thing or two from this glitchy image. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Suno announced plans to implement a new watermarking technology and download policy to limit the spread of spammy AI tracks and increase transparency.
The action is coordinated by IFPI, which represents the recorded music industry worldwide Source
The biggest fears AI stokes are most often rooted in displacement. Generative AI music models are trained on vast quantities of existing music and capable of producing songs that are catchy, enjoyable, and even beautiful. Source
Exclusive: They came to him young, dreaming of a career in the music industry. Now former employees have come forward, accusing the Melbourne talent manager of intimidating behaviour and sexual harassment going back decades Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast On 22 October...
Times Music CEO Mandar Thakur talks catalog acquisitions, India’s subscription challenge, and why he believes Indian music’s biggest opportunity lies abroad... Source
No two fans connect with an artist in exactly the same way. Some have been listening since the very beginning, while others may be discovering them through a shared playlist today. Some return to the same songs for comfort, while others are always eager to hear what’s next.
Company has opened a waitlist for Suno Vinyl, a service that turns songs made on its platform into physical records Source
Earlier this week, WMG released some highlights of its quarterly results sooner than expected. Now, the whole report is out and beyond what we knew – total revenue is $1.86bn, of which recorded revenue is $1.49bn, and lots of operating cash flow growth – the rest of the results have been regarded...
Distributer Symphonic have partnered with ArtyShield, an AI platform that helps rightsholders protect their work from unauthorised AI use. Symphonic clients can now access some of ArtyShield’s tools for free, including access to MusicShield, a tool that is designed to “help protect music before it...
UK startup Play One We Know (POWK), aims to help grassroots artists, bands and independent venues build more sustainable futures by “turning fan attention into meaningful support” – by making it easier for audiences to buy, book and connect with grassroots artists and venues via bespoke QR codes.
Have you ever found yourself wishing that your AI-generated songs on Suno sounded a bit “warmer?” Or with a “fuller sound stage?” Well, now you can finally play your AI-songs through your audiophile hi-fi setup, because Suno is about to launch a service that lets you “turn the music you make on...
Power Up is the award-winning long-term initiative co-founded by PRS Foundation and Ben Wynter, and aims to drive meaningful change by investing in Black music creators, industry professionals and executives in the UK.
It’s nearly over, folks – we’ve had most of the big music-oriented results now – and the takeaway by the market seems to be one of cautious approval, with a keen eye on the future.
Since ChatGPT first launched in November of 2022, AI-generated and augmented content has flooded social platforms. Initially lauded as a new tool to superpower creators and marketers alike, AI has instead exacerbated a pre-existing problem: an overwhelming amount of content that has left everyone...
And you thought we were done with this one… | Image: Fenix Flexin We were pretty sure that Fenix Flexin's "Rubberz" was made using AI, but musician Medasin was confident that it was made using Treblo specifically. Now the company and a new detection tool seem to confirm it.
Texas' data center backlash accelerates as Governor Abbott orders an audit, transmission politics intensify, and Willie Nelson brings the AI infrastructure debate into Texas culture.
British singer and songwriter Raye released her second studio album, This Music May Contain Hope, on 27 March 2026. It came three years after her breakthrough album, My 21st Century Blues. Lead single ‘Where Is My Husband!’ was released over half a year before the album came out which, on paper at...
A couple of months ago we reported on the case of Fenix Flexin, an artist who appeared bewildered by how his viral song “Rubberz” was garnering accusations of being AI-generated, partly because its 80s, synthy, Smiths-y sound was so different to his usual rap songs.
We’re happy to release our first MusicBrainz Server update since the schema change, following our migration of user accounts to the MetaBrainz website, which we’ve been spending most of our development time on until now.
Spotify and Merlin today announced a new licensing agreement for Spotify’s upcoming fan-made covers and remixing tool, which will give listeners a new way to engage with the music they love from participating artists and songwriters.
I dag presenterade vi vårt resultat för det andra kvartalet 2026 och nådde samtidigt en milstolpe som ingen annan ljudstreamingtjänst tidigare har uppnått: 300 miljoner premiumanvändare. Under andra kvartalet accelererade vår intäktstillväxt och bruttomarginalen slog nytt rekord.
Today, we announced our Second Quarter 2026 earnings, and with them a milestone no audio streaming service has ever reached: 300 million Premium Subscribers.
They’re expensive, elaborate – and may not contain all the music. After Olivia Rodrigo, Charli xcx and more sent out incomplete or unfinished vinyl versions, fans are feeling shortchanged It was one of the most anticipated collaborations of the year: Charli xcx teaming up with film-maker David...
Why some people mow a lawn better than others.
Every song has a story, but fans rarely get to hear it from the creators themselves. K-Pop giant JYP Entertainment is pulling back the creative curtain with its new video podcast show, JYP Podcast, bringing audiences closer to the music and stories behind some of their favorite artists.
Recommender systems have become a regular part of our lives, from the home pages of our favorite apps and... The post From Models to Products: LLMs for Recommendation at Spotify Scale appeared first on Spotify Engineering.
Two minutes and thirty seconds into the title track of Rachika Nayar's Heaven Come Crashing, an absolutely massive drum and bass beat drops. As a fan of Nayar's debut record Our Hands Against The Dusk, it caught me off guard. That album has no percussion on it at all.
Edward “Bud” Cole speaks in Japan in 2023. | Image: Jun Sato/WireImage Fender CEO Edward "Bud" Cole gave an interview to T3 in May celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Telecaster with comments on AI and music that initially flew under the radar.
That cover art is almost certainly AI, too. | Image: Fenix Flexin Fenix Flexin is best known as a member of Shoreline Mafia, a rap duo from Los Angeles. But he's recently found solo success with the track "Rubberz," which has climbed to number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100.
