Scottish electronic DJ and producer Barry Can’t Swim (real name: Joshua Mainnie) released Loner, his second album, in July 2025, coming after his debut, When Will We Land?, in October 2023. There was no real break between the campaigns, with live performances of new music working to bridge the two albums. Ninja Tune’s Louis Lloyd Gilchrist (senior product manager), …

Forgive us an involuntary shudder when a huge social-media platform tells us that its latest change will make something “easier and more fun”. That’s often code for ‘shoving more rubbish you haven’t asked for into your feed’. Let’s hope that isn’t Facebook’s plan this time round, eh? “We’ve upgraded Facebook’s recommendations engine so it learns your interests quicker and shows you newer and more relevant reels,” 

68% of South Asian musicians and professionals feel poorly represented or invisible in the UK music industry. That’s the sobering finding of a report, The South Asian Soundcheck, published by non-profit organisation Lila. Based on a survey of 349 people, the report found that 45% face stereotypes about what kind of music they should be making; 40% have to deal with family concerns that music is not a stable career; and 32% have experienced direct racial discrimination.

Japan was famously slow to jump aboard music-streaming’s bandwagon, but research firm Luminate now thinks it is “the growth story to watch in global premium streaming music”.  The company’s data shows that Japan accounts for nearly a third of all premium (paid) streams across the Asia-Pacific region. What’s more, 66% of Gen-Z in Japan are music streamers, with 42% of them now paying – up from 36% in 2023.

AI giant Anthropic has been denied its motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought against it by music publishers alleging copyright infringement of their lyrics. It’s a setback for the company, because previously the publishers’ lawsuit had been narrowed down by Judge Eumi K. Lee. However, they were allowed to refile, and Lee has declined to throw out the amended complaints. The case will now proceed.

Why is singing like blowing up a balloon? You’ll find out if you watch one of TED-Ed’s latest videos: ‘How to improve your singing’. Hosted by opera singer Denyce Graves-Montgomery, it’s the first in a new music-education series produced in partnership with YouTube itself. But the project goes beyond YouTube too. The 'Think Like a Musician' series will “bring high-quality music education resources to teachers around the world” 

It’s a positive development that some of the biggest companies in live music are keen to shout about their sustainability work. The latest example is AEG Europe’s announcement this morning of a deal to provide “the country’s greenest energy” to its venues in the UK. Those include The O2 arena in London, with solar and hydro power playing a big role in keeping the lights on in a renewable way.

Last week we wrote about AI band Bleeding Verse, whose Spotify listeners had just overtaken one of their main influences, human band Holding Absence. Now there has been a development. “Just wanted to give you guys an update and let you know that I signed a deal with Hallwood Media,” Bleeding Verse’s creator announced in a post for their Patreon members…

OpenAI has reached some significant new milestones with its ChatGPT service. “More than 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, and we process over six billion tokens per minute on the API,” CEO Sam Altman announced at the company’s ‘Dev Day’ yesterday. And, like so many big tech services before it – Facebook, Spotify and others included – ChatGPT is entering its ‘I’m a platform for third-party apps’ phase…

OpenAI launched the latest version of its GenAI video model Sora recently, including a standalone TikTok-like app to watch clips created with it. But as it soared up the app-store charts, a barrage of videos featuring copyright-protected characters from TV shows, films and games made headlines. Now OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman has responded with two promises. “First, we will give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls,” he wrote in a blog post.

TikTok has tweaked the revenue share it offers creators in the US and Canada for superfan subscriptions, giving them a bigger percentage of the digital loot. From the start of this month they get 70% of the net revenue from fans subscribing to their profiles for exclusive streams and perks. What’s more, they can up that to 90% through an “exciting new bonus opportunity” that has yet to be announced in detail.

With all the hubbub around TikTok possibly being closed down in the US this year, very few people saw a shutdown in its second biggest market coming. But on Friday (3 October) TikTok’s licence to operate in Indonesia was suspended by the country’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs. The announcement cited a recent request for data on “the alleged monetisation of live activity from accounts suspected of online gambling activities” – although the context appears to be less about gambling and more about a recent period of public protests in Indonesia.

Within a few hours on Friday, Music Ally received press releases from three of the biggest music services touting records broken by Taylor Swift’s new album that day. “The Life of a Showgirl became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2025 so far, hitting this 2025 milestone in under 11 hours,” announced Spotify. “The Life of a Showgirl has become the most-streamed album of all time in its first 24 hours on Amazon Music globally, breaking her own previous record set by The Tortured Poets Department,” said Amazon Music.

The RIAA sought to amend its lawsuit against GenAI music firm Suno last month to include new allegations about the company stream-ripping music from YouTube to train its model. However, Suno wants the judge in the case to throw out the proposed amendment. Why? According to Billboard, the company’s lawyers are arguing that it is NOT illegal to copy material that is freely available online.

Whenever British musician Raye gets an award and a microphone at the ceremony, she uses that platform to renew her call for more rights and support for songwriters. And she did it again at last week’s Ivors Academy Honours event in London. “I just want to encourage us, especially in the publishing splits conversations,” she said, referring to her…

A lot of human musicians are worrying about how the explosion in GenAI music might negatively impact their royalties. But a growing number of startups are tapping other forms of AI to help increase that income. Claimy being one of them. The French startup has just raised a €1.5m pre-seed funding round to continue building its 'AI-powered rights administration platform', which is currently available in France and the UK.

There is some breaking news from France this morning: the Paris Judicial Court has ruled that facilitating streaming fraud is illegal.

When streaming services announce stats with percentages, they’re usually trumpeting success. In Deezer’s case, it’s highlighting a concern.

Alt-rock / emo band Holding Absence have just over 853,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Another band, Bleeding Verse, have just over 916,000.

Spotify isn’t done yet with the country-by-country releases of its 2024 Loud & Clear payouts data. Saudi Arabia is the latest.

Discussion of UMG-owned Virgin Music Group’s planned acquisition of Downtown Music Group is heating up again today.

Threads has launched a group discussion feature in their app, in which users can now invite and be invited to group chats in communities of different topics. Blue tags on the For You feed signify community-originated content. Users can also enjoy custom emojis for interacting with posts outside of the classic heart icon. “Communities help you find and connect with your people,” said the detailed invitation from Threads, which was sent to some users.

Since the country’s recorded music market moved ahead of Argentina’s in 2024 — a nation twice its size — to a #25 global ranking, Chile has revealed itself to be one of the fastest growing regions in Latin America. In 2024 its market grew by 18.32%, to a total of $111m. This is particularly notable in the context of Chile’s significant political upheaval between 2019-2021, …

Midia Research has published its latest recorded-music market estimates, covering the first half of 2025. The company claims that global revenues grew by 5.9% to $18.3bn, although that growth is less than in the two previous years. “Significantly, growth not only slowed in percentage terms, the absolute amount of revenue added was also smaller,” wrote MD Mark Mulligan in a blog post…

With the important caveat that a final decision is not due until 11 December, German collecting society GEMA appears to be in a strong position in its lawsuit against OpenAI alleging song-lyrics infringement. That’s according to AI Fray’s report on the initial court hearing in the case. “The presiding judge left no doubt in her introductory outline of the issues in the case that the panel deems OpenAI liable for copyright infringement,” it explained.