Hypebot • new music industry, music marketing & music tech news from across the web

Starting today, Spotify listeners (Free and Premium) can follow their favorite venues, discover new spots nearby, and explore upcoming lineups, all without leaving the app. Plus, the Live Events feed now has a fresh new look, with smarter recommendations and daily updates that make finding the next concert easier and more personal than ever.

Udio has been sued again for copyright infringement, this time by a group of independent artists and songwriters. Although the majors are already suing Udio, the music creators say that their lawsuit “emphasises the significant and unequal harm inflicted on independent musicians by AI”

Faced with further budget cuts following the Trump administration’s elimination of federal funding for public media, local public radio outlet KCRW has trimmed an additional 10% of its staff. Included in the cuts were several of the station’s most well-known music DJs, including Jason Kramer, Jeremy Sole and José Galván. Also as part of the changes, host Elvis Mitchell’s long-running interview series “The Treatment” will now run inside “Weekend Edition.”

Inside the matchmaking service that’s pairing up volunteers to learning disabled and autistic music fans, breaking down the barriers to nightlife

Australian band’s decision to remove catalogue in protest of CEO’s military investments an easy one, frontman says, and making music with friends remains ‘top of the triangle’

The UK’s Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has secured an alliance with the British Arts Festivals Association (BAFA), which will see the two trade bodies work together across events, data analysis, representation, training and more.

AIF and BAFA have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), committing to hosting twice-yearly online member meetings, working together to deliver in-person events in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, publishing joint reports outlining the state of the festival sector, and establishing shared data points.

Lettuce established a scholarship fund in partnership with nonprofit organization Music is a Language to provide a full-tuition scholarship for a student attending Berklee College of Music. The renowned school in Boston is where the band’s members first met.

The scholarship will support young musicians from underserved communities who demonstrate exceptional talent and commitment. Lettuce will contribute $1 from every ticket sold on newly announced tour dates to fund the scholarship, beginning with House of Lett, intimate performances scheduled for December 5 and 6 in Denver at a location not yet revealed.

Wasserman Music has entered a five-year partnership with Save The Music Foundation, committing to fund J Dilla Music Tech Grants in six high schools across L.A. and New York.

Through the new partnership, Wasserman Music and Save The Music will ensure that students not only have access to high-quality music education, but also the chance to connect with artists and industry leaders who can inspire and support their creative journeys. In the partnership’s first year, Wasserman Music will support one high school in Los Angeles and one in New York, with future years alternating between the two cities. Each launch will include special events featuring Wasserman staff and clients, including songwriting workshops, live student performances, executive-led panels, and student-produced podcast interviews.

AI-music startup Suno made waves with a $125m funding round in May 2024. Now it may be tapping investors for another nine-digit injection of capital. Bloomberg reported that Suno is in talks “to raise over $100 million at a valuation of more than $2 billion).

It added that Suno is currently “generating more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue” from subscriptions to its service, while reiterating recent reports of talks with major labels to settle their lawsuits against the company and reach licensing deals.

The big question: can Suno close its new funding round without settling those lawsuits? The other big question: can Suno afford to settle those lawsuits without closing its new funding round?

The UK-based Queer Artist Database, which as of now features over 350 artists and performers, was created as a means for queer and trans-identifying artists of all genres and nationalities to find bookings.

The database is designed to “support queer artists and increase representation across our community on event and festival lineups,” says FQR. “Venues, promoters, and festivals are officially committing to using the database when planning their future lineups for 2025 & 2026.”

beatBread launches a $100 million global independence fund in association with leading indie music organizations, including AIM, WIN, and IMPALA.

A leader in funding for independent labels and musicians, beatBread has announced the launch of the Global Independence Fund (GIF), a new $100 million fund designed to provide independent labels and distributors with flexible financial support.

Spotify has been spotted developing a “SongDNA” feature that would allow users to discover music through the credits — the writers, collaborators, vocalists, engineers, lyricists, producers, composers, and others who worked on a given track or album.

The feature was discovered in the app’s code by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who was able to generate screenshots of how SongDNA would appear in the app. Based on her findings, SongDNA would introduce a visual experience where you could essentially navigate through the credits, see how people were connected to each other, and explore their various works.

The majors have urged the US Supreme Court to uphold their billion dollar win in a piracy lawsuit against ISP Cox. It argues that that ruling will result in mass internet disconnections, but the majors say that’s not true, and that Cox was simply held liable after saying ‘fuck copyright law’

Nothing says ‘be kind to us with regulations pls’ more than a carefully-crafted economic impact report – a strategy used by the music and tech industries alike when trying to remind policymakers why their lobbying demands should be heard.

The latest example comes from YouTube via Oxford Economics, one of the go-to companies for this kind of thing – from Live Nation and the German music industry to TikTok and YouTube in India.

No one would have expected Taylor Swift‘s “The Life of a Showgirl” to lose its grip on the album chart in week 2, and it indeed held on at the top of the Billboard 200, with 338,000 equivalent album units in its second week out.

Last week, Swift set a record in the Luminate/Soundscan-era data-keeping books with 4.002 million units. Although this week’s figure marked a predictably significant drop-off from that record-buster, even the second week for “Showgirl” ranked as the fifth best week for any album this year, per Billboard and Luminate. The only albums that had a higher number than 338,000 units in a single frame this year were first-week figures for releases from Wallen (who opened with 493,000), the Weeknd (who started with 490,000), Sabrina Carpenter (which started with 366K) and, of course, Swift’s own debut tally.

Latin music pulled $490.3 million in mid-year revenue in the first half of 2025, up nearly 6% from the same point last year. Music from all over Latin America — including best-selling albums from Bad Bunny, Fuerza Regida (pictured above), Rauw Alejandro, Karol G and more — helped the genre grow faster than the U.S.-based market in 2025.

Streaming is doing all the heavy lifting, accounting for a massive 98% of that bump, with paid subscriptions alone generating $271.1 million.

Geese and CashorTrade announced a partnership ahead of the band’s upcoming tour dates, which include shows in Madison, Wisconsin; Denver’s Gothic Theatre; The Fillmore in San Francisco; Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre and more. The North American run wraps up on Nov. 21 at the Brooklyn Paramount in Brooklyn, New York.

With each date sold out, the band’s website offers links to join the ticket waitlist, or find tickets selling at face value via CashorTrade.

The Grand Ole Opry will celebrate 100 years since its inaugural broadcast with two shows on Nov. 28.

November 28, 2025 marks exactly 100 years since the evening a single fiddle tune performed by Uncle Jimmy Thompson marked the first Grand Ole Opry broadcast.

Slated to appear during the shows is Trace Adkins, Bill Anderson, Mandy Barnett, T. Graham Brown, Steven Curtis Chapman, Henry Cho, The Gatlin Brothers, Vince Gill, The Isaacs, Kathy Mattea, Charlie McCoy, Scotty McCreery, Gary Mule Deer, Riders In The Sky, Ricky Skaggs, Don Schlitz, Connie Smith, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, The Whites, Mark Wills, Suzy Bogguss and more to be announced soon.

An outage affecting web hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has taken out vast swathes of the web, including websites, banks and some government services.

Amazon said on Monday morning that the outage had been “fully mitigated” and that most services are returning to normal after an hours-long stretch during which much of the internet could not load. 

Music industry strategist, podcaster and author Keith Jopling shares an extract from his forthcoming new book, Body Of Work: How The Album Outplayed The Algorithm And Survived Playlist Culture. To coincide with the UK’s National Album Day, and the recently-announced Mercury Prize, Keith shares both his thoughts on the continuing relevance of the album format in today’s music ecosystem, and an exclusive extract of the book’s foreword: “The album is god”.

Spotify has announced it is teaming up with the world’s biggest music companies to develop “responsible” artificial intelligence products that respect artists’ copyright.

The market-leading music streamer is collaborating with the Sony, Universal and Warner music groups – whose combined rosters feature artists including Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift – to create new AI features.

Spotify did not give details of what the new products would entail, but the company said artists would not be forced to participate, and their copyright would not be violated.

In a significant step towards interfacing with AI and its impact on the music industry, Spotify has partnered with the big three record companies — Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — as well as licensing giant Merlin and global digital music company Believe to develop “responsible” AI products to empower artists and songwriters.

Spotify announced its latest initiative to make “significant investments in AI research and product development,” according to a release, marking one of the first times that major music companies have come together to develop tools that address artists’ and songwriters’ concerns about AI usage in the music space. Spotify notes that it hopes to expand its partnership to additional distributors and rights holders over time.