Following a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year.

But documents obtained by the Guardian show that while Ticketmaster eliminated this fee to comply with the rules, the company simply raised the cost of different fees in a number of its venues to ensure it didn’t lose money.

In December, rapper Bbno$ posted a message on social media announcing that he was quitting music. “As you guys know, I am for the people,” he wrote. “And the people have asked me to stop making music. Due to the millions of people begging me to stop, I have made the incredibly difficult decision to stop making music for the foreseeable future.”

Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE: SPOT) will post its first quarter 2026 results and deck to shareholders on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 before market open. The company will hold a question and answer session to discuss first quarter 2026 results at 8:00 am Eastern Time. 

AI firm Anthropic is still facing copyright-infringement lawsuits from music publishers… and now the publishers are going in for what they hope will be the legal kill.

The publishers, who include various UMG subsidiaries as well as Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music, have filed for partial summary judgement against Anthropic in the case, which focuses on their allegations that the company’s Claude model was trained on their lyrics.

If you’ve been around as long as Music Ally has, you’ll have seen a number of startups try to make ‘music messaging apps’ work, usually without success.

Rithm, PingTune, La-La, Doowapp, Music Messenger, Beatshare, MuzApp, Sharebunk, Ditty and MSTY are among the examples we’ve covered over the years, and none of them could get the ‘WhatsApp, but with music clips’ idea to stick.

Well, this is awkward. Two separate newspapers confidently claimed that BTS’s comeback concert had been watched by an estimated 300 million people on Netflix. However, Netflix… begs to differ.

“BTS The Comeback Live | Arirang drew 18.4 million global viewers (Live+1), proving the group’s influence has only intensified during their time apart,” is the official statement from the video-streaming service.

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Live Nation Entertainment to provide by March 27, 2026, a joint letter explaining how they intend to proceed with court review of their proposed antitrust settlement.

The order from Judge Arun Subramanian states: “Defendants, the United States of America, and any other settling parties who anticipate their settlements will require the Court’s review under 15 U.S.C. § 16, should jointly file a letter on the docket providing guidance as to how these cases will proceed between them. Specifically, they should apprise the Court of when they expect to file a proposed consent judgment, and the steps that they expect will be required as to the review of the proposed consent judgement, including the anticipated timing of those steps.”

Apple Music has partnered with Ticketmaster and Bandsintown to surface upcoming concerts based on your listening, with quick links to buy tickets. Here are the details.

There have been several examples in the last year of new tracks or albums seemingly released by artists that turned to be fake. Songs that they had never recorded – often AI-generated – turning up under their profiles on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services.

Emily Portman, The Sweet Enoughs and Blaze Foley are three examples of musicians who found themselves spoofed in this way. And Foley’s been dead since 1989. Each new story increased the pressure on DSPs to take action. Now Spotify is.

Global Local has launched UnMute, the UK’s first artist roster dedicated to showcasing disabled artists, including Ali Affleck, Deaf Rave, DJ Flood and Drag Syndrome.

The roster has been in development for more than two years with support from Andrew Lansley, Creative Director for UnMute, and input from partners The Musicians’ Union, Attitude is Everything, and Drake Music.

Influencers will be able to link products directly in their content, similar to how TikTok Shop links are embedded.

For a brief window during every high-demand onsale, thousands of highly engaged fans are in the same place, at the same time, paying attention. Queue-it’s new Visitor Engagement feature gives ticketing organisations a way to make that moment count, by improving the waiting experience for fans and capturing zero-party data in the process.

The live music event and discovery platform is bringing concert listings directly to Apple Music users.

BMG generated EUR €900 million (USD $1.02bn) in annual revenues in 2025, down 6.5% YoY on a reported basis, or down 1.5% YoY on an organic basis.

That’s according to a new set of annual fiscal results from the music company’s parent, Bertelsmann, published today (March 26).

StubHub (NYSE: STUB), the world’s largest ticket marketplace, and vivenu, a leading global ticketing platform, today announced a partnership that gives event organizers on vivenu’s platform direct access to StubHub’s audience of more than 125 million fans in 200+ countries. The connection is live today, is free to use, and requires no exclusive commitment.

The partnership works through a direct connection between vivenu’s ticketing system and StubHub’s marketplace. Any organizer using vivenu can now choose to list tickets on StubHub from their existing dashboard with a click of a button. When a fan purchases a ticket on StubHub, the sale syncs automatically and that ticket is removed across all other organizer’s sales channels. StubHub handles payments, customer support, and delivery.

On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s determination that internet service provider (ISP) Cox Communications was liable for copyright infringement committed by its users.

In the majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court ruled that a service provider can only be found contributorily liable if it intended for its service to be used for infringement. To establish this intent, a provider must either actively encourage or promote infringement through its service (inducement) or purposefully build a service tailored to facilitate infringement (lack of substantial non-infringing uses).

Lyria 3 is now available in paid preview through the Gemini API and for testing in Google AI Studio.

Spotify is beta-testing a new feature called Artist Profile Protection that lets artists review releases before they go live. Sometimes songs end up on the wrong artist pages because of metadata mixups or shared names. But increasingly, artists have been targeted by impostors and AI-generated fakes. Profile Protection offers a buffer against bad actors.

After previously announcing the nighttime stadium lineup, CMA Fest has unveiled a list of about 150 artists who will be doing free shows on the daytime stages when the festival takes over the downtown Nashville area June 4-7.

Stephen Wilson Jr., Tucker Wetmore, the War and Treaty, Melissa Etheridge, Carter Faith, Dasha, Marcus King, Molly Tuttle, Ty Myers, Ernest, Midland and Charles Wesley Godwin are among the artists who’ll be making their way to the three venues whose lineups were just announced — the Chevy Riverfront Stage, the Dr. Pepper Amp Stage at Ascend Park and the Chevy Vibes Stage at Walk of Fame Park.

The federal settlement that abruptly pulled the Department of Justice out of its antitrust case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster is now facing heightened scrutiny, with Judge Arun Subramanian ordering the parties to publicly outline how they plan to move the agreement through Tunney Act review.

In an order entered Monday, Subramanian directed Live Nation, the United States, and any other settling parties to file a joint letter by Friday, March 27 explaining when they expect to submit a proposed consent judgment and what review steps they believe the court must take.

M&G Investments announces a $267 million asset-backed securities financing deal for Seeker Music, providing financial firepower to fuel growth. Music publishing and record company Seeker Music, established in 2020 with backing from M&G Investments’ Life business, has secured a $267 million asset-backed securities financing deal with M&G. The transaction provides Seeker with the financial firepower to fuel its growth plans while diversifying M&G’s portfolio.

Epic Games cuts over 1,000 jobs in its second major round of layoffs in three years. It’s part of an effort to offset spending more than it’s making on Fortnite.

Despite being one of the most popular video games on the market since its 2017 debut, Fortnite is spending more money than it’s making in 2026. According to Bloomberg, Fortnite developer Epic Games is laying off more than 1,000 employees amid a broader downturn in engagement with the game over the past year. It’s the company’s second major round of cuts in three years, having eliminated 830 employees for similar reasons in September 2023.

In 2026, music can reach hundreds of millions of people while sitting almost entirely outside the traditional music business.

Platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts can drive superstar-scale audiences for artists whose profiles remain completely under the radar, providing a platform for their music to cut through on the established music-streaming services too.

Katy Arnander, director of programming at SXSW London, teased this year’s conference program Tuesday evening at an event at a hip bar in the uber-cool neighborhood of Shoreditch, East London, where the festival is staged. The bar’s name, Equal Parts, neatly reflected the nature of SXSW London, as outlined by Arnander.

Bandsintown announces a new integration with Apple Music that brings concert listings directly to artist pages on the streaming platform.
Live music and event discovery platform Bandsintown has announced a partnership with Apple Music that integrates the service with concert listings directly into the music streaming platform. With the release of iOS 26.4, tour dates will automatically appear on Apple Music artist pages and in a new Concerts tab within Search, significantly expanding concert discovery on Apple Music.