The Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) and SoundExchange have announced that the two entities have entered into a purchase agreement under which SOCAN will acquire the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency (CMRRA). The transaction, which is still subject […]
The entertainment giant struck an alliance with TikTok that will have creators on the popular quick-hit video service making shorts tied to characters and stories from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, FX and more. The resulting pieces from creators who opt-in to the program will be available on both […]
Universal Music Group banked gross proceeds of EUR €403 million (USD $467 million) from selling part of its Spotify shareholding during the first half of 2026. On MBW‘s calculations, UMG artists could be in line for approximately $131 million of that money. The sale figure was […]
South Korea‘s largest music copyright collective has ended its ban on registering songs made with artificial intelligence. The Korean Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) will now register AI-assisted works and pay royalties on them, provided a human creator took a substantial part in the […]
At industry events publishers fume about the broken bargain with Google, which historically scraped and copied their entire websites at no charge in exchange for sending them substantial amounts of traffic. Now that referral traffic is drying up. At events most agree that publishers must unite to […]
Spotify has signed a licensing agreement with Merlin, the digital licensing partner for independent labels and distributors, for its upcoming fan-made covers and remixing tool. The tool will let fans create covers and remixes of songs from participating Merlin members’ artists and […]
According to Gallup, seven in 10 Americans now say they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, up from 64% in 2024. But as familiarity has grown, so has skepticism. More Americans now believe AI does more harm than good, expect it to reduce the number of U.S. jobs over the next decade, […]
Google has begun giving publishers a prominent “Top Stories” plug above many news-based queries which generate an AI Overview summary. While the move could lead to more referral traffic for publishers, they could lose the opportunity to feature in these snippets if they opt out of allowing […]
After the Supreme Court’s Cox ruling reshaped ISPs piracy liability, the record labels behind a $46.8 million verdict against Grande Communications are ready to walk away from the case entirely. Grande won’t let them, however. The Internet provider is holding out for a formal win and the […]
On Friday, a judge largely denied a motion to dismiss from a web scraper, SerpApi, which is accused of conspiring with Perplexity AI to illegally scrape copyrighted Reddit content from Google search results. In his opinion, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that at this early stage, […]
