Whitney Houston, Cher, Paul Simon and Chaka Khan are among the music legends set to receive Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Recording Academy. The Recording Academy — which presents the Grammys — will recognize Cher, Paul, Chaka and Whitney, who died in 2012, during a Special Merit Awards ceremony on Jan. 31. Carlos Santana will also receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors recipients for their "creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording."

At the same ceremony, Elton John's songwriting partner Bernie Taupin will receive the Trustees Award from the Academy. This honor is given to people who "have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording."

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Universal Music Group and music creation platform Splice have established a partnership to create AI music tools together, the companies announced on Thursday, the latest in a flurry of AI developments to hit the business in the past several months.

The partnership brings together the world’s largest music company and one of the industry’s biggest music software platforms, though UMG and Splice were vague on the sorts of tools they’d actually be creating beyond saying they’d be “advanced commercial AI tools that can deliver high fidelity and precise expression of artistic intent.”

On Thursday, the board of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., announced that the historic performing arts venue will be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, the White House said.

The vote was announced by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on social media

Country music star Jelly Roll has been granted a full pardon from Governor Bill Lee in Tennessee for his past crimes.

The singer, whose real name is Jason DeFord, was among 33 people who received pardons from Lee on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. The 41-year-old was convicted of robbery when he was 17 after he stole $350 from people in a home in 2002, which led to his arrest and a sentence of one year in prison plus probation. Later, in 2008, police discovered marijuana and crack cocaine in his car, leading to eight years of court-ordered supervision.

Earlier this month, Sabrina Carpenter and SZA became the latest artists to protest about their music being used in White House social-media posts.

The songs, which both had lyrics or performance context related to handcuffs, were clipped as background to videos of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers handcuffing people on immigration raids. 

The Music Hall Of Williamsburg concert venue in New York City will close at the end of 2026. The Brooklyn-based venue’s promoters, The Bowery Presents, confirmed it will keep hosting shows throughout next year.

The Bowery Presents co-partners Jim Glancy and John Moore made the announcement in a memo obtained by Variety and BrooklynVegan.

Following yesterday’s announcement that Apple Music would soon be available on ChatGPT, the app is now live. Here’s what you can do with it.

Spotify has been taking heat in recent months for its decision to accept and run recruitment ads for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

Now, in an unwelcome end-of-year twist for the company, it’s being threatened by the US administration with new “fees or restrictions” on its business. Not because of anything Spotify has done, but because of intensifying tensions between the US and the European Union.

This being 2025 (and this being this US administration) the threat was made in a post on X by the official United States Trade Representative account.

Every year, music-industry economist Will Page publishes his ‘Global Value of Music Copyright’ report. It aggregates revenues for recorded music, publishers and collecting societies – while avoiding double-counting for the latter two.

The aim is to get to a Big Number that reflects recordings and publishing. And that Big Number for 2024 (note, not 2025) is $47.2bn.

“That’s up just $2.3bn (5.2%) on the prior year; growth is slowing largely because this is the first year where the pandemic effects have vanished,” wrote Page in his report. “After years of recovery, we’re now settling back into a steadier state.”

Massive Attack, Brian Eno and Caribou (Dan Snaith) are just some of the artists that have called on Live Nation Entertainment to drop operations in Israel.

The artists, musicians and music workers have signed an open letter as part of the Musicians for Palestine campaign, calling on the multinational company to drop Live Nation Israel and adopt “policies to ensure its programme and partnerships are not complicit in oppression anywhere”.

“As musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers, and workers, we refuse to be silent as apartheid Israel continues its genocidal oppression against the Indigenous Palestinian people,” the letter reads.

As the calendar flips, Billboard writers look ahead to 14 questions the music business will confront in 2026, from Live Nation to AI to UMG and more.

Universal Music Group and Roblox have signed a new strategic agreement that will see the companies collaborating to enhance music and commercial integrations across artist and fan experiences. The deal includes the integration of commercial features that aim to drive increased engagement and revenue for artists and labels, with the ability to leverage Shopify for digital and physical merchandise sales. 

UMG and Roblox will work to streamline artist and label engagement within the platform, including access to new Roblox tools and beta features.

TikTok has signed a deal to sell its US business to three American investors – Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX – ensuring the popular social video platform can continue operating in the United States.

The deal is expected to close on 22 January, according to an internal memo seen by he Associated Press and Reuters. The TikTok chief executive officer, Shou Zi Chew, said in the memo that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors.

The new TikTok US joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX with 15% each. Another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, according to the memo.

Facebook is testing a system that charges users for sharing web links, in a move that could prove to be a further blow to news outlets and other publishers.

Meta, the social media platform’s owner, said it is carrying out a “limited test” in which those without a paid Meta Verified subscription, costing at least £9.99 a month, can only post two external links a month.

The test appears to involve a subset of Facebook pages and user profiles on Professional Mode, which includes features used by content creators to monetise their posts.

Passim, the Boston folk club and collective announced the 2025 recipients of its Iguana Music Fund, which provides support for New England-based musicians at critical stages of their careers.

The grants provide up to $40,000 to support activities such as community and career building projects including recording, equipment purchases, and event creation.

Musicians and music industry workers with the Musicians For Palestine campaign have published an open letter to Live Nation this week, calling for the live-entertainment giant to cease its operations in Israel.

“We cannot stay silent while Live Nation Israel glorifies the genocidal Israeli military that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” states the letter. “We echo long-standing Palestinian calls for accountability over its years of artwashing of Israeli apartheid and now genocide.”

The letter has hundreds of signatures so far, including artists Brian Eno, Massive Attack and Caribou.

 Perry Farrell and his Jane’s Addiction bandmates appear to have formally buried the hatchet, ending a year of legal warfare and public vitriol that began with an infamous on-stage brawl in Boston.

While the group has reconciled personally, the “truce” confirms the permanent end of the band as members pivot to solo projects.

The resolution was shared in a pair of announcements on the band’s social media channels.

An analysis of the industry and trends behind the GRAMMY nominees – Best New Artists are slightly newer. UMG dominate (again). Gender balance slips.

YouTube will stop submitting its data to the U.S. Billboard charts next month due to a dispute over how streams are counted, according to an announcement Wednesday from the streamer’s global head of music Lyor Cohen.

At the center of the issue is the methodology by which Billboard counts paid/subscription versus ad-supported (i.e. free) streams: While Billboard updated its chart rules on Monday to upgrade ad-supported streams — increasing from 1:3 to 1:2.5, i.e. 2.5 ad-supported streams now equal one paid/subscription stream — YouTube has long argued that they should be weighted equally.

The National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), representing over 60 leading independent management and talent agencies, has issued a formal letter to the U.S. Senate urging the immediate passage of the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA).

The bipartisan legislation seeks to close a decades-old loophole that allows terrestrial AM/FM radio broadcasters to avoid paying performers. Currently, the U.S. is the only democratic nation where artists are not compensated for broadcast airplay, placing American creators in the same category as North Korea and Iran.

While streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music pay royalties to both songwriters and performers, broadcast radio only pays songwriters. This disparity costs American artists an estimated $500 million annually in lost foreign royalties, as many countries withhold payments to U.S. artists because the U.S. does not reciprocate.

Is ASCAP systematically underpaying radio performance royalties for non-feature music? A number of production music owners and publishers believe so, and they’ve slapped the PRO with a $123 million lawsuit as a result.
Alibi Music, Capp Records, Manhattan Production Music, and eight others, repped by entertainment attorney Richard Busch, submitted that multimillion-dollar complaint to the New York Supreme Court yesterday. A copy of the suit was shared with DMN.

Naming the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) as the lone defendant, the action covers multiple bases in its 16 detail-oriented pages. But at the top level, the plaintiffs maintain that “ASCAP is unreasonably and unfairly diverting over $15 million” in radio royalties from non-feature music owners annually.

Having confirmed its lineup of Bandcamp Friday promotions for 2026 earlier this month, now Bandcamp has revealed how much money the initiative drummed up for artists and labels in 2025.

“Across this year’s Bandcamp Fridays, fans contributed $19 million directly to artists and labels, surpassing 2024’s total and underscoring the continued strength of fan-driven support on the platform,” announced the company.

In a new experiment, Meta is limiting the number of links users can post on Facebook, unless they have a paid Meta Verified subscription.

Over the last week, several users have spotted Meta’s test, which impacts link posting. Social media strategist Matt Navarra noted that users part of the test can only post two links unless they pay for a Meta Verified subscription, which starts from $14.99 per month.

According to the screenshot posted by Navarra, users can still post affiliate links, comments, and links to Meta platform posts, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.