Too many shops, not enough time. No, Music Ally hasn't been jostling with the Westfield mega-mall crowds again.

German production-music company Sonoton Music has an enviable client list in terms of artists, with Kendrick Lamar, PinkPantheress, Drake...

Audiotool has been building some momentum with its browser-based digital audio workstation (DAW) – it has 300,000 monthly active users.

In a busy day for announcements about music-related funding of different kinds, industry body Music Technology UK has published its latest report: focusing on government investment in music-tech startups. It calculates that the UK government’s Innovate UK arm has invested £14m in British music-related startups in the 2020-2024 period, although this was only 3.9% of the total funding in the sector.

A report this week from news site Semafor has flung some more cats into the pigeon-packed US live-music industry, and it concerns the antitrust lawsuit that Live Nation is facing. “Live Nation executives and lobbyists have been negotiating with senior DOJ officials outside the antitrust division to avert a trial,” claimed Semafor, citing “simmering” tensions between the current US administration and the Department of Justice’s antitrust boss as an additional factor.

Thus far, music-industry executives haven’t figured prominently in coverage of the Epstein Files being released by the US Department of Justice. Billionaires and politicians, yes. Music figures, not so much. Not yet, at least. One who has, though, is Casey Wasserman, founder of the Wasserman talent agency, after the release of a series of emails between him and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

A report from Live DMA and Reset Network has found that four major companies can be linked to the lion's share of Europe's music festivals.

The OpportunitySecret City Records is looking to hire a full-time Marketing Director to lead our international marketing efforts across artists and releases throughout the calendar year, as well as supervising the Marketing department at Secret City Records. The Marketing Director acts as one of the primary point of contact for artists and/or artist management and as Project Lead for the global campaigns with the internal and external teams throughout the planning, activation, and review process.

Spotify has a new feature providing its listeners with more context about the music they listen to. It’s called ‘About the Song’ and will show up as “short, swipeable story cards” in its mobile app’s ‘Now Playing’ screen if listeners scroll down. For now it’s in beta for Premium subscribers in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” was the take of one reviewer (you can surely guess who) on Bad Bunny’s performance last night. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting,” they added, mere days after…

Having seemingly secured its future in the US – and fixed its technical teething troubles there – TikTok’s next regulatory headache is kicking off on the other side of the Atlantic. The European Commission has published a preliminary verdict from an investigation finding TikTok “in breach of the Digital Services Act for its addictive design. This includes features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its highly personalised recommender system.”

We hear regularly from music-industry bodies of all stripes about their policy asks from regulators and politicians. Now Spotify has published its own lobbying priorities in a ‘Maintaining the Growth and Resilience of Music Streaming: A Policy Roadmap’ document. While the contents won’t come as a big surprise to people who’ve been following Spotify’s interactions with regulators and governments in recent years, they’re a useful summary of where the biggest music-subscription player is directing its energies.

A drastic 92% dip in earnings from events dragged down Indian major label Saregama’s revenue from operations by a sharp 46% year-on-year, for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. The gap was too large to be filled by the upticks in come in income from artist management and music, which rose 119% and 11% respectively, given that video also generated 23% less revenue compared to the same period last year.

Indian “going-out” app District by Zomato has released ‘Touching Grass’, a “cultural intelligence” report, which CEO Rahul Ganjoo, says seeks to answer the question ‘How are people really going out today?’. Gigs, of course, are a big part of going out, with the report citing EY’s 2025 A Studio Called India study that estimates the number of concerts held across the country is expected to rise from 14,470 in 2024 to 24,520 by 2030.

The European Music Managers Alliance (EMMA) has released a study based on a survey of 330 music managers in more than 30 countries.

Last month, we reported on a lawsuit accusing tech firm Nvidia of downloading “millions of pirated copyrighted books” from the Anna’s Archive shadow library to train its AI models. The news made for particularly difficult reading within the music industry. Why? Well, Spotify and all three major labels had just sued Anna’s Archive for scraping the streaming service’s metadata and audio.

Sony Group Corporation has published its latest financial results today, including figures for its music businesses, covering the final quarter of 2025 (its fiscal Q3). The headline figure is ¥542.4bn ($3.45bn at current exchange rates). That was Sony’s overall music revenue in the final quarter of 2025, up 13% year-on-year. However, ¥76bn of that revenue was from the ‘Visual Media and Platform’ division, which although it sits within Sony’s music business, is more about animation and mobile games.

Tech giant Alphabet’s latest financial results are out, and they reveal how much YouTube made from advertising in the final quarter of 2025, as well as the year as a whole. YouTube ads generated $11.38bn of revenue in Q4 last year, taking the total for 2025 to $40.37bn. That was up 11.7% year-on-year: an impressive performance given the wobbles in the wider advertising economy.

Spotify just announced changes to its 'Lyrics' feature, including global adoption of its 'Lyrics Translation' function.

Liverpool's council is introducing a new support scheme for grassroots venues, delivered in partnership with charity the Music Venue Trust.

The ‘walled garden’ was a key feature in several of the AI-music licensing deals struck by major labels in late 2025.

Swedish company Soundtrack has built a business offering background music to businesses and the hospitality industry.

Indies body Impala has a new report out today: ‘Powering an Independent and Culturally Diverse European Music Ecosystem’. 

ECSA and Gesac have renewed their calls for a clampdown on ‘coercive buy-outs’ – particularly from big video-streaming services.

The number 13 may be unlucky for some, but Fortnite Festival’s Season 13 certainly isn’t for Chappell Roan.