Music News

Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Photo Credit: Maxpower2727 TikTok could operate out of South Dakota if its U.S. sale closes – at least according to numerous reports coming from the Mount Rushmore State. Local outlets covered the interesting possibility on the heels of a related Facebook post from South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden. While it probably goes without saying, the outcome hinges on (among other things – more on this in a moment) TikTok actually selling its stateside operations. At prese

Photo Credit: !K7 Create Music Group has announced the acquisition of indie electronic label !K7. The deal was already in motion before the death of !K7 Founder Horst Weidenmueller in February 2025 at age 60. A representative shared the following statement from Weidenmueller. “This transition is a deeply personal one for me, but I know that with Create Music Group, !K7 is in the right hands. Create Music Group shares our commitment to artists, labels, and creativity, and I am confident that th

Photo Credit: Deezer Deezer says over 20,000 fully AI-generated tracks are uploaded to its platform daily, or around 18% of all uploaded content. Global streaming platform Deezer has reported that over 20,000 entirely AI-generated tracks — or around 18% of all tracks — are uploaded to its platform daily. That’s an increase from the previously reported 10% in January, when Deezer launched its cutting-edge AI music detection tool. The company’s AI music detection tool sets an industry standard —

Photo Credit: Alejandro Luengo The Trump administration’s efforts for a TikTok deal may have gone down in flames thanks to the president’s tariffs. But Trump insists a deal is still on the table. President Trump still says a potential deal to spin off TikTok’s US assets is “still on the table,” just days after it was put on hold and the deadline extended yet again. But China’s displeasure with the recently imposed trade tariffs may have killed any chance for a deal. Trump remains undeterred on

Photo Credit: HBO / Max Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ lawyers have subpoenaed Warner Bros. seeking raw, unedited footage from the HBO docuseries, ‘The Fall of Diddy.’ His lawyers sent the subpoena back in March to Warner Bros. asking for “all recordings, including raw and unedited footage” from the interviews with two accusers who appeared in the series. The docuseries aired on HBO/Max in January. The subpoena also contains a demand for any notes or journals the accusers gave the documentary’s producers

Photo Credit: CNN Diddy requests the video footage of him brutally beating Cassie Ventura to be excluded from evidence at his trial, claiming it has been manipulated. Sean “Diddy” Combs has requested the hotel video footage that showed him beating ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura be excluded from evidence at his trial. The disgraced music mogul and his team claim the footage, which was released by CNN in May last year, has been manipulated. “Mr. Combs seeks to exclude all available video files re

Photo Credit: Melissa Lee / Marine Corps Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ sex-trafficking case gets underway in about a month, but his defense team has asked for an adjournment. Instead, they want to see the May 12 starting date pushed back by two weeks. His lawyers argue the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY has not been fully sharing material such as emails from a former Combs employee. They allege that the prosecution’s witness ‘Victim-4’ seems to have “cherry picked messages” shared on WhatsApp. Outs

Chartmetric trending artist du jour, De La Soul Digital Music News is now expanding its longtime partnership with Chartmetric, the industry’s most respected music intelligence and data platform. Jumping in, DMN readers will soon have access to a constantly-updating track popularity ranking, complete with fast-emerging breakouts. Complementing the ranking will be Chartmetric’s latest data trend analyses, which will include a broad range of genres, artists, and broader worldwide music developmen

Photo Credit: BubbleTeaNeo / reddit The death toll for the Jet Set nightclub roof collapse in the Dominican Republic rose to 226 people over the weekend. Officials said they were able to rescue 189 people alive from the rubble, while 200 more were injured. 14 still remain hospitalized, four of those in critical condition. The roof of the night club collapsed during a merengue concert on April 8 during a live performance by Rubby Pérez. Rubby Pérez was tragically killed in the accident, as was

Drake has officially filed an amended ‘Not Like Us’ defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group. Photo Credit: musicisentropy Right on cue, Drake and his legal team have fired off an amended “Not Like Us” defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG). The “Nokia” act and his counsel submitted the bolstered complaint yesterday, just a couple weeks removed from a major discovery win. As we noted closer to April’s beginning, the presiding judge had given Drake until the 16th to eit

Photo Credit: Ed Sheeran by Eva Rinaldi / CC by 2.0 Coachella makes a few last-minute lineup changes, securing Weezer and Ed Sheeran, as several artists cancel their sets. Ed Sheeran and Weezer have been added to the 2025 Coachella lineup ahead of the festival kicking off this weekend. Weezer will play the Mojave tent on Saturday, April 12, from 3:10-3:55, during the festival’s first weekend. Sheeran plays during the second weekend, during the 3-4 PM time slot on Saturday, April 19. Both acts

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. speaks during Grammys on the Hill in support of the expanded No Fakes Act. Photo Credit: The Recording Academy Federal lawmakers have reintroduced the No Fakes Act, which is drawing strong support from in and well beyond the music industry. Senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle reintroduced the legislation today. We’ve covered the years-old bill (which, looking to tackle AI deepfakes, would establish bolstered voice and likeness prote

A federal lawmaker is criticizing the latest TikTok sale deadline extension. Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa Is the latest extension to the TikTok forced-sale deadline “a clear violation of the law”? At least one member of Congress believes so, and he’s expressing “deep reservations” as a result. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) just recently voiced that pushback in an open letter to President Trump, who last week extended the cutoff for ByteDance to divest from TikTok in the U.S. Prior to this extens

Josh Tillman chose celebration over cynicism on this grand London stage View the full article

Her previous acting experience has included appearing in episodes of the hit AppleTV+ football comedy Ted Lasso.View the full article

Photo Credit: Flou For all the attention paid to missing music metadata, copyright infringement, and royalty battles, the music industry often overlooks a potentially bigger issue: chaotic music contracting. Enter Flou, whose CEO, Alexiomar Rodriguez, is helming one of the more promising missions in the music industry: to fix the chaos that surrounds music agreements. Here’s a breakdown of his vision for ‘Music Contracts 2.0’ — including a detailed white paper. What’s wrong with music contract

Photo Credit: Agustin Flores After sharing permits and stating the festival would go forward, Fyre Festival 2 organizers have postponed the festival and offered refunds for ticket buyers. A message sent to ticket holders this afternoon confirmed Fyre Festival 2 will not go forward as planned in Mexico from May 30 to June 2. “The event has been postponed and a new date will be announced. We have issued you a refund. Once the new date is announced, at that time, you can repurchase if it works fo

Berlin, Germany. Photo Credit: Fernando Pascullo GEMA has reported a 4.3% year-over-year (YoY) revenue increase for 2024, when its live music collections spiked by nearly 17%. The German society revealed these and other figures in an English-language summary of its 2024 annual report, which points to €1.33 billion (currently $1.45 billion) in total revenue for the year. Behind that sum – and thanks in part to a cost-rate decrease – GEMA made north of $1.23 billion/€1.13 billion (up 4.7% YoY)

Photo Credit: Mengwen Cao for Global Citizen The Global Citizen Festival will return to Central Park on September 27, this time with a search for a new hitmaker with Colossal and Live Nation. The Global Citizen Festival, driving millions of actions from global citizens and billions of dollars in commitments to end extreme poverty, is back for another year. The 2025 edition of the Global Citizen Festival campaign once again supports and partners with a variety of nonprofit organizations aligned

Photo Credit: Global Gaming League The Global Gaming League has raised $10 million in funding from celebrity investors including T-Pain and Flavor Flav. The league is not focused on eSports, but rather a league that brings together every kind of player. GGL was founded by Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum music producer and entrepreneur Clinton Sparks, in partnership with T-Pain and tech entrepreneur Jeff Hoffman (Priceline, UBid, Booking.com). The GGL is a multi-title gaming league with celebr

The Los Angeles headquarters of Ares Management Corporation, which has backed GoldState Music in a $500 million round. Photo Credit: Hathaway Dinwiddie About five months after acquiring a reported $200 million worth of catalogs, GoldState Music has announced a $500 million strategic-capital raise. West Palm Beach-based GoldState disclosed that half-billion-dollar round in a formal release today. The Charles Goldstuck-founded company attributed part of the sizable sum to a “structured capital

Photo Credit: Google Google has announced it is adding its text-to-music model Lyria to Vertex AI. Vertex AI is now the only generative AI platform with models across all modalities—video, image, speech, and music. Vertex AI can now build a complete, production ready asset starting from just a text prompt, to an image, to a complete video featuring both music and speech. The model was also updated with Veo 2, an advanced video generation model to allow video to be refined and repurposed with p

Photo Credit: People Magazine / Instagram Green Day’s headlining set brought the heat to Coachella with a firework that hit a palm tree, causing it to catch fire dangerously close to the crowd. During Green Day’s set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s first weekend on Saturday, a firework lit a palm tree on fire in the nearby artist section. The fire was dangerously close to a crowd of onlookers. “This firework just flew into the crowd and exploded right next to FaZe Banks and

Photo Credit: Kate Nash by Man Alive! / CC by 2.0 Kate Nash calls out Spotify for paltry payments, but Spotify responds by saying they sent her check to Universal — so it’s out of their hands. In an all-too familiar situation, another artist has called out Spotify for piddly payments on a significant number of streams. This time, it’s Kate Nash, whose 2007 hit “Foundations” has over 100 million plays on Spotify. But Nash told BBC’s Woman’s Hour podcast that she’s hardly seen a dime. “‘Foundat

Photo Credit: Pexels Music production and digital content creation is a fast-paced world, and managing payouts to all artists, influencers, and creators involved can quickly become a logistical nightmare. Let’s take a peek at how Tipalti has helped some of the biggest names in the music business, like Symphonic Distribution, Create Music Group, Spitfire Audio, and Thematic stay on track with efficiency and compliance in royalty payouts. The following was created in collaboration with Tipalti,