AI Music Industry

RIAA chief Mitch Glazier says the NO FAKES Act has 'a real shot' in the lame duck after Ted Cruz blocked it on the Senate floor

• Sen. Ted Cruz objected on September 30, 2026, when Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked the Senate to pass the NO FAKES Act (S. 4591) by unanimous consent.
• RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier told Billboard On the Record, published October 7, 2026, that the bill has a real shot in the lame-duck session after the November 3 midterms.
• Glazier said a 2027 reintroduction in both the House and the Senate is the more likely outcome.

SIQA AI Music Awards 2026 nominees: the full list across 25 categories, led by Ava Bently and Slime Dot, with Xania Monet, Solomon Ray and Aria Blu

• SIQA named 125 nominations across 25 categories for its first AI Music Awards, held on November 13, 2026 at The Mayan in Los Angeles.
• Ava Bently and Slime Dot lead the field with 6 nominations each, and Xania Monet and Proph3ci follow with 5 each.
• The AI Song of the Year nominees are Xania Monet, Nova Solé, Waking Up Christopher, Aria Blu and Millionaire Muses.

Why are people boycotting Spotify? The 4 reasons, from Daniel Ek's Helsing bet to AI music

• People are boycotting Spotify over Daniel Ek's investment in AI defense company Helsing, ICE recruitment ads, AI-generated music and artist pay.
• Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Massive Attack and Sylvan Esso pulled their music in 2025, most of them over Helsing.
• Spotify added AI labels in 2026, including the AI Persona badge, but both of its badges sit on the artist profile, not the song.

The AI Music Briefing #22: "Sounds like AI" isn't evidence, from THE MOTEL to Taylor Swift

The AI Music Briefing for September 26 to October 2, 2026: why "sounds like AI" isn't evidence, Michael Smith's 46-month ask, and the ROSS ruling.

Questlove sees AI as a parallel to sampling, and says AI companies should pay for what they train on

• Questlove told Billboard On the Record, in an episode published September 30, 2026, that he sees AI as a parallel to sampling culture.
• He said AI companies should be transparent about the material used to build their platforms and pay for it.
• He won't sample AI-generated music yet because he dislikes its digital distortion, but thinks models may perfect it in about 10 years.

8 insights from Musixmatch CEO Max Ciociola on lyrics, Suno and AI licensing

• Musixmatch CEO Max Ciociola told Music Business Worldwide on September 28, 2026 that lyrics are becoming "the LLM of the music industry".
• Musixmatch works with almost 250,000 rightsholders and has more than 80 million users.
• Its Sentinel tool checks AI prompts and outputs for copyrighted lyrics in under 100 milliseconds, and Suno is its first named client.

The AI Music Briefing #21: AI artists can't perform live? ABBA's avatars play with a 10-piece band

The AI Music Briefing for September 19 to 25, 2026: why AI artists can perform live, Qobuz's 0.38% AI stream share, and a second Suno suit.

Why TikTok is full of AI Viking rap: Suno songs, invented warriors and 8.5 million views

• AI Viking rap is AI-generated hip-hop about Valhalla and battle, performed on screen by invented, heavily tattooed Viking characters, and it spread across TikTok throughout 2026.
• Know Your Meme says creators make the songs with tools such as Suno and the performers with image and video generators.
• North Wind Calls by the AI act Draugr Balled, posted on TikTok on April 4, 2026, passed 8.5 million views and 315,100 likes.

Latin music crossed $1bn in the US, and its catalogue is still training AI for free

• José Valentino Ruiz published the argument in The Hill on September 20, 2026.
• He teaches music business and entrepreneurship at the University of Florida and has won multiple Latin Grammys.
• US Latin music revenue crossed $1bn for the first time in 2025.

The AI Music Briefing #20: One tool made 92.8% of AI music, and one distributor shipped 77.6% of it

The AI Music Briefing for September 12 to 18, 2026: SIQA put Suno at 92.8% of AI music, SubmitHub started blocking AI tracks, Universal sued DistroKid.

Spotify says it paid Busta Rhymes over $1m last year. He says streaming still doesn't work.

• Busta Rhymes told the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast that the industry has not worked out how to pay artists from streaming.
• A Spotify spokesperson replied that the company paid out more than $1m in 2025 for streams of his catalogue.
• Spotify pays rights holders from a shared pool rather than paying artists directly, so a payout figure and an artist complaint can both be accurate.

The AI Music Briefing #19: AI music gets its first awards show, and the artists do the voting

The AI Music Briefing for September 5 to 11, 2026: SIQA booked the first AI Music Awards, Suno shipped v6, and Universal signed ElevenLabs.

Symphonic CEO Jorge Brea says AI's bigger risk is how easy it made launching a distributor

• Jorge Brea, who founded Symphonic 20 years ago, published his argument as an MBW Views op-ed on September 10, 2026.
• He says the volume of AI-generated music is survivable, and that weak distribution companies are the real opening for abuse.
• AI now lets one person ship a polished distribution front end without rights verification, royalty processing or fraud detection behind it.

Clinton Sparks and Johnny Gillespie hold a patent on AI mixing. Here's who actually needs a licence

• US Patent 11,929,098 was granted on 12 March 2024, and it names John Edward Gillespie as the sole inventor with Clinton Sparks as a co-owner rather than an inventor.
• The patent carries 17 claims and only 2 of them stand on their own, both tied to one specific cloud setup with a template library and a time code sync unit.
• Forte AI, Cryo Mix and RoEx Automix each miss at least 1 of the 4 steps claim 1 requires, so none of them is exposed on the public record.

The AI Music Briefing #18: Secretly offered 100+ labels an AI licence and 3 said yes

The AI Music Briefing for August 31 to September 4, 2026: the DOJ called AI training fair use, 4 new suits landed, and 3 of 100 indie labels signed.

Your indie distributor probably isn't indie any more: 4 deals that moved the pipes in 2026

• Universal closed its $775 million acquisition of Downtown in early 2026, which brought FUGA, CD Baby and Songtrust into the major.
• Warner acquired Revelator, the white label distribution and royalty platform behind hundreds of indie labels, distributors and rights holders.
• DistroKid sold at a reported $2 billion valuation to private equity firm CVC Capital, moving data for more than 2 million artists and an estimated 30% to 40% of all new releases.

Secretly Distribution offered 100+ labels an AI licence. 3 said yes.

• ElevenLabs licensed training rights from Merlin and Kobalt on opt-in terms, with revenue participation and a most favored nation clause for Kobalt.
• Secretly Distribution offered that licence to all of its 100-plus label partners, and three labels and seven artists opted in.
• The independent sector spent two years demanding consent and a seat at the table, and when it got both, almost nobody sat down.