Music News

Photo Credit: Paolo Villanueva / CC by 2.0 CGL, the company behind the biggest tours, such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, announces a controlling investment from Providence Equity Partners. GCL, a worldwide leader in live events logistics, has announced a strategic investment from Providence Equity Partners. The private equity firm has significant experience investing in and supporting companies in the entertainment and media sectors. Providence will become the majority shareholder of CGL, and

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

Photo Credit: Gabriel Tovar Goldman Sachs has long had a bullish outlook on the global music industry, but its latest ‘Music in the Air’ report reveals the investment bank wildly overestimated recorded music and streaming revenues for 2024. The overestimate has prompted a notable downgrade in its future forecasts—the streaming plateau is here. Goldman Sachs initially projected a robust 7.6% global music industry growth rate for 2024. However, the actual growth rate clocked in at 6.2%—marking t

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: Justin Higuchi / CC by 2.0 A new TikTok trend is turning the concept of ‘propaganda’ on its head — and singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams finds herself squarely in its crosshairs. The trend is known as ‘propaganda I’m not falling for’ and sees Gen Z TikTok users creating lists of things, people, or concepts they’ve labeled propaganda—or things they refuse to buy into. The lists are often set to a remix of Charli XCX’s single “I think about it all the time” featuring Bon Iver and can

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

Rodney Jerkins, who’s sold an interest in his work to HarbourView. Photo Credit: HarbourView Let the IP acquisitions continue: HarbourView Equity Partners has officially purchased “select catalog assets” from veteran producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins. HarbourView disclosed the deal today – albeit without getting too specific about the precise song rights at hand or the transaction’s price tag. However, the Newark-headquartered firm in its formal release did emphasize that the play “was faci

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: Quick PS U.S. House Republicans have introduced a sweeping provision in the latest budget reconciliation bill that would prohibit states and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade. Late Sunday night, new language was added to the budget reconciliation bill stating that “no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision

You probably already know what a webcam is. But if you have a Macbook that is one of the most recent models (2022 and later), your built-in webcam is probably leaving much to be desired in terms of image fidelity.  Even with the better built-in webcam, you may want to be clearer or have more control over how you look with settings like color temperature, sharpness, contrast, zoom, and field-of-view. Having an external camera achieves that, and it also gives you more natural-looking motion (like

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,

Photo Credit: Lorenzo Spoleti How accurately can humans identify music created using artificial intelligence? A new study conducted by MIT Technology Review reveals humans struggle against diffusion-created AI music from platforms like Suno and Udio. Diffusion models for creating music don’t compose songs the same way a human might, by starting with chords and adding vocals and drums. Instead, these models generate the noise of music all at once—visualized by a waveform. With hundreds of milli

Photo Credit: Chris Daughtry, lead singer of Daughtry, by Luis Blanco / CC by 2.0 Gebbia Media has acquired Big Machine Rock from Hybe America. The roster includes Daughtry, Badflower, Sammy Hagar, Olive Vox, and more. Gebbia Media, a subsidiary of Siebert Financial Corp., has acquired Big Machine Rock, the rock imprint of Big Machine Label Group, which has played a major role in shaping the future of modern rock. The acquisition marks a new chapter in Gebbia Media’s rapid ascent within the mu

Photo Credit: Hybe Latin America / Telemundo Hybe Latin America and Telemundo present Pase a La Fama, a first-of-its-kind music competition seeking Mexico’s next global music sensation. Telemundo and Hybe Latin America are joining forces for the first time on Spanish-language television to present Pase a La Fama, an innovative music competition premiering Sunday, June 8 at 9PM ET. The reality series brings together aspiring musicians in a high-stakes journey filled with raw talent, bold reshuf

Photo Credit: Hybe Corp. K-pop powerhouse Hybe has set up a Chinese subsidiary to support its artists’ expansion into the market. Hybe China Co., Ltd. was launched April 2 in Beijing—Hybe’s fourth overseas branch following those in Japan, the US, and Latin America. Its new Beijing-based entity will focus on backing artists’ activities in China, notably to compete with its rival agencies, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment. According to industry insiders, Hybe’s latest m

Belift Lab act Enhypen, which is helping drive concerts revenue growth at Hybe. Photo Credit: Ten Asia Thanks in large part to a substantial jump on the concerts side, Hybe has reported record Q1 2025 revenue of ₩500.61 billion (currently $349.36 million). The professional home of BTS shed light on its first-quarter showing today, with the mentioned revenue representing a close to 39% increase from the same period in 2024. As Hybe acts released relatively few albums during Q1, however, recorde

A live performance from SM Entertainment act Aespa. Photo Credit: Plumflower Snow Hybe has officially moved to sell its remaining SM Entertainment stake – encompassing almost 10% of the rival K-pop agency – to Tencent for north of $175 million. The Big Hit parent disclosed the sizable selloff in a regulatory filing, which regional outlets promptly covered. According to the document, Hybe intends to exit its SM position altogether, exchanging 2.21 million remaining shares for a cool ₩243.35 bi

BTS, whose Army diehards are coordinating to report AI deepfakes depicting Hybe artists. Photo Credit: HopeSmiling BTS agency Hybe’s deepfake crackdown is in full swing, and South Korean police have made multiple arrests in connection with alleged AI-powered crimes. We touched on that deepfake-takedown push yesterday, when Ador vowed to pursue legal action against those making “malicious” online comments about NewJeans. The overarching Hybe, we noted, has for years been spearheading anti-haras

Photo Credit: Julian Hochgesang iHeartMedia now commands a 40% share of advertising revenue and markets in the United States, as measured by Miller Kaplan. That’s according to the radio conglomerate’s Q1 2025 earnings call with investors. The milestone underscores iHeartMedia’s continued ability to outpace competitors and leverage its vast audience reach, robust ad tech investments, and the largest sales force in audio to capture the growing slice of advertising revenue. For Q1 2025, iHeartMe

Photo Credit: iHeartMedia A recent class action lawsuit filed in New York’s Southern District Court has put iHeartMedia under scrutiny after a cyberattack in December 2024. The data breach allowed hackers to exfiltrate sensitive information that iHeartMedia did not keep secure including social security numbers, financial account details, and health insurance data. The complaint filed on behalf of Tennessee resident Cheryl Shields and affected individuals, revolves around the significant delay

Photo Credit: DJ Bunt by Wendy Huynh Airbnb will offer unique experiences at Lollapalooza festivals across the world, hosted by artists and music industry insiders, starting in July. Airbnb has announced its first global live music partnership, offering unique fan experiences at Lollapalooza festivals in Berlin, Chicago, São Paulo, and Mumbai. Guests will have access to curated Airbnb Experiences, many of which will be hosted by performing artists. Starting this summer at Lollapalooza Berlin,

Mumbai, where Hungama, now preparing to shut down its music streaming service, is headquartered. Photo Credit: Hardik Joshi So long, Hungama Music: The Indian streaming service is reportedly set to cease operating this coming Tuesday, April 15th. Music Ally identified the quick-approaching shutdown today, pointing to an official update that the Mumbai-headquartered company provided to users. “Starting 15th April, 2025, the Music Section will bid goodbye as we make way for exciting new experi