Music Ally Connect is coming up in January. Our series of Connect Chats interviews with speakers continues today with Christine Osazuwa.

Last week, we reported on AI-music firm Suno's $250m funding round and speculated that this could be a trigger for licensing deals.

The AI-music firm raised $250m of funding earlier this month, and claimed that nearly 100 million people have used its service. However, Billboard has got its hands on the company’s pitch deck for investors, which has some equally-interesting stats on Suno’s business. For example, the claim that it now has more than one million paying subscribers, up 300% in the last year.

It seems to start earlier every year, doesn’t it? No, not Christmas-music season: rumours of Spotify’s next set of price rises.

Hindi film fans of a certain vintage will be familiar with the name Ultra and its bright-red, gothic-style logo.

The European Commission has confirmed that it has concerns about Universal Music Group's proposed acquisition of Downtown Music.

Going viral on TikTok and other social-media platforms can create big streaming spikes, but do those listeners actually become fans?

While most of Music Ally’s GenAI focus goes into music, we’re keeping a watching brief on what’s happening with AI-generated images, video... and virtual worlds. Meta has a new research project in the latter camp called WorldGen. “Imagine being able to type out a simple prompt like ‘cartoon medieval village’ or ‘sci-fi base station on Mars’ and generate an interactive 3D world within minutes,” is 

The latest contribution to the debate about UMG’s planned acquisition of Downtown Music – and the wider industry landscape – comes from Secretly Group’s Darius Van Arman. In a long, thoughtful op-ed for Stereogum he addresses the deal’s implications, while also offering some criticism of the ‘artist-centric’ recent pivots of streaming services, and the consolidation of the music press to boot.

The $207m acquisition of music-streaming service Napster last March was supposed to herald a glorious new era for the famous brand. Its new owner, Infinite Reality, had recently raised a $3bn funding round valuing the company at $12.25bn after all. Hadn’t it? Well, about that... Having rebranded as Napster, the parent company revealed to shareholders last week that the investment has not come through. 

Tickets for Olivia Dean’s ‘The Art of Loving Live’ North American tour went on sale last Friday (21 November), and very quickly sparked controversy among fans – and fury from the artist herself. “There seems to be an issue with ticket re-selling and pricing. My team are currently looking into it,” wrote Dean in an Instagram story on Friday, warning fans off “buying tickets in the comment sections as it is most likely a scam”.

Could clipping be one answer to social-media burnout for artists? Ranked Music thinks it might, and explained why.

We reported on the imminent announcement of deals with all three majors for AI-music startup Klay Vision yesterday.

Just eight minutes before Aussie band Amyl and The Sniffers were supposed to play a free homecoming show for 10,000 in Melbourne last Friday, the band announced cancellation due to safety concerns. But in a move to soften the blow, the band opted to redirect their performance fee of AU$5,000 each to various local venues that helped launch their career, totaling AU$35,000 in free drinks to the public at some of the most beloved bars across the city.

This week we hosted the first ever Music Ally Marketing Week — our new tentpole online event culminating with the official release of our coveted Music Ally Campaigns of the Year Report and their category awards tomorrow (keep an eye on your inbox). This week-long celebration of music marketing excellence and innovation offered attendees the opportunity to learn from those at the forefront of modern music marketing.

Charli xcx released “House” and “Chains of Love” last week, the two first releases of her soundtrack for upcoming film adaptation Wuthering Heights. Both have done incredibly well by streaming standards, especially “Chains of Love”, which is pushing 6mil listens on Spotify alone within seven days of its release. Compare that to Rihanna’s release of “Friend of Mine” for the Smurfs movie, which reached around 4.5mil Spotify streams twelve days post-release (Source: Chartmetric).

A Spotify blog post giving listeners tips on making more of their playlists contains some news of a TuneMyMusic integration.

Ukraine’s music industry has faced obvious challenges over the past few years, but a new organisation is looking to provide support there.

It’s been quite the week for Tyler, the Creator. Having made his debut in Fortnite, now he has been named Apple Music’s Artist of the Year.

Music service Audiomack is launching a new tier for artists who want access to more features on its platform.

Warner Music Group’s latest quarterly financials saw the company post record revenues: $1.87bn in the third quarter of this year.

Brands will spend $37bn advertising in the ‘creator economy’ in the US alone this year, according to a new study from the IAB.

US indie-folk band Big Thief released Double Infinity, their sixth studio album, on 5 September. It was their first new album in over five years, although various solo projects helped bridge that gap. Big Thief’s team at 4AD shared with us how the campaign effectively engaged younger audiences and new territories. Campaign highlights include: A Stronger Focus on South East Asia…

As if audiences weren’t excited enough for Tyler, the Creator’s annual Camp Flog Gnaw on 15th and 16th November - Childish Gambino got fans even more excited ahead of his performance. On his Instagram Stories, he shared a link inviting fans to vote on the setlist for his slot at the festival. Fans were able to watch votes come in in real-time and the idea quickly spread across blogs and fan pages.

Much of the conversation around AI and artist deals has focused on how AI might impact clauses in artist-label agreements. But it’s not the only area that artist teams should be paying attention to. A recent Digiday article surveyed creators of various sizes and content types and found that “brand deals are largely being written without clauses related to AI, intellectual property and copyright, which could leave creators and brands exposed.”