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AI Music News

Your independent source for AI music news and what each story means for music creators.

  1. Warner Music Group and Suno logos, the licensing contract now fought over in discovery
    17 Jul

    Suno fights to keep its Warner licensing deal secret in the UMG and Sony lawsuit

    • Suno filed a 20-page response on July 16, 2026 opposing Universal Music and Sony Music's renewed push to obtain its Warner Music licensing contract
    • Suno argues handing over the deal would threaten to chill future settlements across AI copyright litigation
    • Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson already denied the labels' request in April, and a July 9 hearing failed to resolve the dispute
    Read the full story
  2. Spotify's Talk to Spotify prompt bar in the app surrounded by album artwork
    17 Jul

    Spotify launches Talk to Spotify, a ChatGPT-style assistant, in beta

    • Spotify launched Talk to Spotify in beta on July 14, 2026 for Premium subscribers on iOS and Android in the US, Ireland, and Sweden
    • The assistant takes typed or spoken prompts to build playlists, queue tracks, save songs, and answer questions about what's playing
    • Talk to Spotify draws on each listener's playlists, favorite artists, and listening history to personalize responses
    Read the full story
  3. Suno brand graphic reading Make any song you can imagine, from the AI music generator hit by a source code hack
    16 Jul

    Suno hack exposes source code showing it scraped YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius

    • A hacker breached Suno and gave 404 Media source code and data from the AI music generator's training libraries, reported on July 15, 2026.
    • The leaked code shows Suno scraped 113,879 hours of YouTube Music, 17,615 hours of Genius, and 12,287 hours of Deezer, plus Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, and podcast RSS feeds.
    • The hacker also accessed data on hundreds of thousands of Suno customers, including emails, phone numbers, and Stripe payment details.
    Read the full story
  4. A hand holds a phone showing the Anthropic and Claude logos against a blurred Anthropic backdrop
    15 Jul

    Anthropic fights music-biz attorney Donald Passman's bid to exit its $1.5B settlement

    • Donald Passman, author of the music-business bible, wants out of Anthropic's $1.5 billion author settlement
    • His book was swept into the settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic, which covered books used to train Claude
    • Anthropic opposes the exit, calling his excusable-neglect argument legally groundless
    Read the full story
  5. Luminate 2026 Midyear Report cover with black-and-white artist photos and the title Trends in Music, TV & Film
    15 Jul

    Luminate 2026 Midyear Report: 8 numbers behind streaming growth, AI music, and the CD surge

    • Global on-demand audio streaming grew 9.8% to 2.8 trillion streams in the first half of 2026
    • 54% of U.S. musicians show positive feelings toward generative AI tools, compared with 35% of non-musicians
    • The highest-ranking AI-assisted song sits at
    Read the full story
  6. Swimming with Narwhals 2026 startup pitch competition banner from Music Tectonics and Yamaha Music Innovations
    15 Jul

    Music Tectonics and Yamaha Music Innovations Fund open Swimming with Narwhals 2026 to year-old startups

    • Music Tectonics is running its 2026 Swimming with Narwhals pitch competition with the Yamaha Music Innovations Fund, which launched in 2025.
    • Only startups no more than one year old can apply, including idea-stage and pre-launch companies, and a music focus is not required.
    • The only entry fee is a single conference badge, offered at a discount, and applications run July 15 to August 7, 2026.
    Read the full story
  7. Suno brand artwork reading Make any song you can imagine on an orange gradient
    15 Jul

    Suno job listing signals it is building toward IPO readiness

    • A Suno job listing for a Director of Accounting cites building toward the controls and rigor required for IPO readiness
    • The role includes leading Suno through its first-year financial statement audit
    • It arrives a month after Suno raised $400M+ at a $5.4 billion valuation
    Read the full story

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  9. Björn Ulvaeus, CISAC president and ABBA co-founder, speaking at a microphone about creators and AI licensing
    14 Jul

    Björn Ulvaeus says AI deals should pay for training data, not chase every output

    • Björn Ulvaeus gave the opening keynote at the United Nations' AI for Good Summit in Geneva, his most detailed speech yet on AI and creators.
    • He argued the industry should be paid for the music that went into training a model, not for tracing individual outputs coming out of it.
    • Ulvaeus pointed to early Spotify licensing as the template, where a share of platform revenue flowed collectively to rights holders.
    Read the full story
  10. Leinster House in Dublin, seat of the Oireachtas, where the Dáil debates the Sinn Féin motion on AI and creator rights
    14 Jul

    Ireland's parliament debates using its EU presidency to force AI copyright rules

    • Sinn Féin culture spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh tabled a motion asking Ireland to use its EU Council presidency to lead on AI and copyright.
    • Ireland took over the six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union in early July 2026.
    • The motion also asks for legislation on AI licensing, transparency, fair remuneration, and personality rights.
    Read the full story
  11. The Warner Music Group building in Burbank, the major label asking a court to dismiss the AFM's AI licensing lawsuit
    14 Jul

    Warner says its union contract never covered AI, and asks a judge to throw out the AFM's lawsuit

    • Warner asked Judge Edgardo Ramos to dismiss the AFM's breach-of-contract suit in a letter filed on July 10, 2026.
    • Warner argues the Sound Recording Labor Agreement was signed in March 2023, before Suno and Udio existed, so it never covered AI licensing.
    • Warner says Article 21, the "new use" clause the AFM's case rests on, only points to other agreements and confers no payment right on its own.
    Read the full story
  12. Philadelphia folk duo Makeshift Hammer, whose album was cloned on Spotify by the fake artist Carey Dupont
    13 Jul

    A fake artist took 94% of Makeshift Hammer's Spotify royalties with a sped-up copy of their own album

    • A fan tipped off Philadelphia duo Makeshift Hammer to 'Blue Road', an album by an unknown artist named Carey Dupont containing their songs at altered speed under lightly renamed titles
    • The cloned tracks collected close to 50,000 listens each in a year, while many of the 4-year-old originals sat between 1,000 and 2,000
    • By band member Owen Lyman-Schmidt's account, the clone captured 94% of the royalties his band's recordings earned on Spotify
    Read the full story
  13. Global Music Rights logo, the performing rights organization founded by Irving Azoff
    13 Jul

    5 streaming platforms coordinated to remove Irving Azoff's GMR from US mechanical rate-setting

    • A Phonorecords V motion shows Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora and Google jointly moved to remove Global Music Rights from the US mechanical rate-setting process
    • The platforms argue GMR is a performing rights organization without the 'significant interest' in mechanical rights required to participate
    • Independent songwriter advocates including Eight Mile Style and the Songwriters Guild of America are preparing objections demanding a 15.65-cent physical mechanical rate
    Read the full story

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