AI Music News
Your independent source for AI music news and what each story means for music creators.
- 07 Jul
07 JulSuno hires Grace James and Christian Bowne to lead artist marketing and licensing
- Suno hired Grace James as VP and Head of Artist Marketing and Editorial, and Christian Bowne as Director and Head of Music Business Development, both starting this week.
- Grace James spent nearly two decades marketing artists including Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, and Lizzo, with senior roles at Atlantic Records, Roc Nation, and TIDAL.
- Christian Bowne joins from YouTube, where he spent 16 years leading music licensing and launching products like Shorts and Dream Track.
- 06 Jul
06 JulJamendo sues Suno, claiming its Bark model trained on 919 hours of Jamendo music
- Jamendo, the music licensing subsidiary of Winamp Group, sued Suno in Massachusetts federal court on June 29, 2026.
- The complaint claims Suno's early open-source model Bark was built in part on roughly 919 hours of Jamendo audio.
- The MTG-Jamendo dataset holds more than 55,000 tracks and was released for non-commercial research only.
- 06 Jul
06 JulSuno cites Udio ruling in bid to block Sony and Universal's 61,026-track expansion
- Suno filed a notice of supplemental authority in the Sony and Universal case, days after the July 2 Udio ruling.
- Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Sony's bid to add 30,442 recordings to the parallel Udio case in New York.
- Sony and Universal want to grow the Suno case from 560 works to 61,026, pushing potential damages past $9 billion.
- 03 Jul
03 JulJudge denies Sony Music's bid to add 30,442 recordings to its Udio lawsuit
- Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein denied Sony Music's motion to add 30,442 recordings to its copyright lawsuit against Udio on July 2, 2026.
- The ruling keeps the case at the 333 works Sony originally put in suit, sharply limiting Udio's potential statutory-damages exposure.
- Hellerstein said adding more than 30,000 works near the close of discovery would "materially alter the scope of the case."
- 03 Jul
03 JulWeird Al Yankovic turned down a lucrative AI ad: 'I can't be the poster boy for AI'
- Weird Al Yankovic said he pulled out of a paid ad for business productivity software after learning the product was AI, telling Syracuse.com he had been offered "a nice pile of money."
- He backed out about a week before the shoot, saying "I can't be the poster boy for AI, forget it."
- Yankovic has said plainly he is "not a fan of AI," despite the "Weird AI" jokes that follow him online.
- 01 Jul
01 JulAustralia's music industry calls AI training the largest IP theft in its history
- Australia's leading music and creative groups issued a joint open letter demanding the government protect creators from mass-scale AI training.
- The coalition called the unauthorized use of Australian songs to train AI the largest theft of intellectual property in the industry's history.
- The trigger was a report that millions of Australian and New Zealand works sat inside four AI training datasets used without consent or payment.
- 30 Jun
30 JunNotes.fm launches Credits.fm, a free open database of 150M+ song credits for the AI era
- Notes.fm launched Credits.fm on June 30, 2026, a free open database indexing more than 150 million song codes and credits.
- Credits.fm is searchable across ISRC.fm, ISWC.fm, and IPI.fm, and ships an open API plus MCP so tools like Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT can pull verified credits.
- Notes.fm says it has identified more than $10 million in unclaimed royalties in the past year, for artists including James Blake, Zach Bryan, and Mt. Joy.
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- 30 Jun
30 JunTIDAL cuts off royalties for fully AI-generated music
- TIDAL will stop paying royalties on tracks it judges to be fully AI-generated, with the policy taking effect July 15, 2026.
- Fully AI tracks stay streamable but get an on-platform "AI" tag, lose royalty eligibility, and are blocked from TIDAL's direct-to-fan sales.
- TIDAL will use automated tools to remove AI tracks built to impersonate a real artist.
- 29 Jun
29 JunBackstreet Boys move to trademark their spoken voices against AI deepfakes
- BSB Entertainment filed a US sound-mark trademark for the spoken words Hi, we're the Backstreet Boys.
- Trademark firm Gerben IP spotted the application, submitted on June 24, 2026.
- The group joins Taylor Swift and Lionel Richie, who filed their own voice-related marks against AI clones.
- 29 Jun
29 JunEros launches Eros Music Worlds with seven AI-native artists and a Mohammed Rafi deal
- Eros Innovation launched Eros Music Worlds, an AI-powered music label and platform.
- It debuted seven AI-native artists across genres from alt rock to Bollywood pop.
- Eros signed a perpetual partnership with the family of late playback singer Mohammed Rafi.
- 29 Jun
29 JunGoogle pushes a middle way on US AI rules, including a Content ID style fix for copyright
- Google published a white paper on AI governance in America, setting out what it wants US policymakers to do.
- The report frames a middle way between over-regulation and no regulation of AI.
- Its section on creativity and copyright floats a Content ID style system to manage AI-generated music.
- 29 Jun
29 JunInnovate UK opens a £10m createch fund and music startups can apply
- Innovate UK opened a competition that will invest up to £10m in createch startups.
- The Next Wave Breakthrough Wave 1 competition funds projects with total costs of £100k to £500k.
- It is open to micro, small and medium UK companies working on early-stage, ambitious ideas.