Caesars Entertainment has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Fertitta Entertainment, which also owns the Houston Rockets NBA franchise and Golden Nuggets hotels and casinos.

The all-cash transaction has been valued at approximately $17.6bn (£13bn/€15bn), including taking on roughly $11.9bn of Caesars’ outstanding debt, meaning Fertitta will pay around $5.7bn for Caesars.

Fertitta Entertainment is the company of Tilman Fertitta, a hospitality billionaire and US ambassador to Italy and San Marino.

M.I.A. is suing Kid Cudi for $2.8 million after the British rapper was kicked off his Rebel Ragers Tour for “making offensive remarks” during her opening act.

President Donald J. Trump is now saying “cancel it” about the concert series his Freedom 250 organization is putting on in June and July, after five of the nine artists announced backed out within 48 hours of the shows being announced.

Universal Music and Sony Music are dramatically expanding their litigation against AI music giant Suno, claiming over 61,000 copyright infringements. Just moments after Sony Music Entertainment expanded its lawsuit against AI music company Udio, Sony and Universal Music Group dramatically expanded their litigation against Suno, the biggest AI music platform in the game. Instead of just 560 works, the music label giants are claiming infringement of over 61,000 works—at least, if a judge approves their latest amended complaint.

In both of these expanded cases, the labels used Audible Magic, an industry-standard audio fingerprinting technology, to scan Suno’s training data, confirming that the platform used “millions” of their copyrighted tracks to train its AI models. Now, that data source is being submitted into the court record to await approval.

“A lot of new beginnings in my life atm,” wrote Sheeran at the time. And now in an email to fans, he has revealed that he is leaving Warner Music Group / Asylum Records after 15 years being signed to the imprint.

There’s this alarming trend in the Suno subreddit. People aren’t just prompting AI songs; they’re sitting around listening almost exclusively to their own slop. And in some cases, they proudly proclaim that they don’t listen to music on traditional streaming platforms anymore — it’s just AI all day.

The U.K.’s Parliamentary trade committee has urged the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate the live music industry as a matter of urgency, saying that Live Nation operates in a “climate of fear.”

The House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, a cross-party group made of MPs from both sides of the aisle, launched an inquiry into the U.K.’s live music industry market last December.

See a photo gallery of stars on the carpet at the American Music Awards, including Katseye, Karol G, EJAE, Sombr, Teyana Taylor and other stars.

Far from winding down its lawsuit against Udio, Sony Music is now looking to supersize the copyright infringement action by accusing the AI music platform of training on north of 30,000 recordings without authorization.

Sony Music has again moved to amend its high-stakes complaint against Udio, according to filings shared over the weekend with Digital Music News. And right on cue, Udio aggressively pushed back against the request. Two years and one discovery marathon later, it was only in late April that the defendant formally answered the suit’s present version and doubled down on its longstanding fair use arguments.

Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist and restless genius whose bold, distinctive tone and constant experimentation kept him on the cutting edge of jazz for more than 50 years, died Monday at age 95.

Canadian authorities introduced the Online Streaming Act three years ago, imposing new funding obligations on major streaming platforms. The OSA is now being fully implemented, with financial commitments reportedly even higher than initially expected. The changes have drawn widespread criticism, particularly from US corporations and film industry representatives.

Water & Music has reported on a private webinar for Kobalt – one of Udio’s licensing partners – publishing a summary of some of the key features for the service, including its name: Starstruck.

The report outlines four modes for users: Cover (“for instance, hypothetically, a Charli XCX-style cover of a Taylor Swift song); Reimagine (which “keeps the lyrics but rewrites the musical composiiton entirely”); Remix (which “applies genre or style shifts to existing recordings”); and Create (where “users write their own lyrics and pair them. with a selected artist’s voice, subject to guardrails around topic, language, and style”).

“Is AI music the next Snapchat filter?” wonders the latest thinkpiece from Rolling Stone, focusing on a burgeoning ‘text to song’ trend on TikTok.

What’s that? It’s when people use AI-music apps (well, one in particular: Suno) to turn messaging threads with friends into songs, then share them on TikTok.

The board of Universal Music Group has rejected an unsolicited $64 billion takeover offer from Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital, the company announced on Friday. The move comes a day after key shareholder Cyrille Bollore urged UMG to reject the offer.

The “Board of Directors has unanimously determined that the unsolicited and non-binding proposal it received from Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P. on April 7, 2026, is not in the best interests of UMG, its shareholders, artists, songwriters, employees and other stakeholders,” the announcement reads in part.

Hedge fund Pershing Square, led by Bill Ackman, made a surprise €55bn acquisition bid for Universal Music Group earlier this year, but admitted at the time that the deal would be toast if it didn’t win the approval of the Bolloré Group, a key shareholder in UMG.

What’s that smell in the air today? It might just be rapidly-warming bread, because Bolloré Group boss Cyrille Bolloré has given the bid a resounding thumbs-down during his company’s annual general meeting.

“We think the price is not ​there at all,” said Bolloré according to Reuters. “He [Ackman] is not making an offer with his own money. ​It is our money, the company’s money.”

Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok recently announced the renewal of their licensing agreement, which includes a commitment to get rid of unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform to improve how artists and songwriters are credited. 

In their joint announcement, UMG stated the agreement “extends TikTok and UMG’s groundbreaking commitment to AI protections that promote human artistry and ensure platform economics effectively flow through to artists and songwriters. TikTok and UMG will work together to remove unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform, while further improving artist and songwriter attribution.”

Startup Un:hurd Music has been building its business of marketing-tools for artists, with more than 200,000 signed up. Now it’s launching a new venture for managers and labels called Contxt.

Based in Manchester, The Warehouse Project has been putting on its seasonal club nights since 2006, building a global reputation for its lineups of DJs and artists. Its latest move is a digital one: a partnership with Apple Music.

The Warehouse Project has joined the streaming service’s ‘Club Live’ initiative, which launched earlier this month as a new series of electronic-music livestreams broadcast on the Apple Music Club radio station.

Live Nation has made its latest move to overturn the recent verdict that it is an illegal monopoly in the US. However, it could soon be facing another policy headache across the Atlantic due to calls for a new competition investigation in the UK.

In the US, the company has filed two motions with Manhattan federal court asking for the April verdict to either be reversed, or for a new trial to be set.

A hiatus was no damper on fan love for BTS: The group won Artist of the Year prize at the American Music Awards Monday night, scoring that fan-voted honor for a second time, and for the first time since going on a hiatus for military service. They previously picked it up in 2021.

Katseye draws some of that same level of fan hysteria, so it was little surprise to see that group winning New Artist of the Year, although the competition for that trophy was particularly fierce, with newly minted stars Sombr, Olivia Dean, Ella Langley, Leon Thomas and Alex Warren also in the mix.

Spotify already brings together listeners’ favorite music, podcasts, and audiobooks in one place. Now, we’re trialing a new format that expands the content available on our platform: narrated Articles. 

Starting today, over 650 long-form magazine articles will be available in English language to users where audiobooks are available. Produced by our in-house team, Spotify Audiobooks, the curated collection includes stories from publications including Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Vogue, Variety, Billboard, Vibe, GQ, WIRED, Vanity Fair, and Pitchfork.

Each narrated Article is under two hours long and available within Premium users’ monthly audiobooks allowance, alongside our existing audiobook library. Free users can purchase Articles individually for $1.99.   

Gone are the days where a few Facebook posts can sell out a festival. Social media is increasingly geared towards influencers and engagement over being a place to check in with friends. Twitch streamers are now celebrities, and festivals are following suit.

Universal Music Group’s inked a fresh multi-year licensing deal with TikTok, which is teeing up expanded marketing campaigns and doubling down on efforts to decommission AI deepfakes.
UMG and the self-described “best platform for music discovery and promotion” unveiled their latest partnership agreement today. As usual, the companies opted against shedding light on the payout particulars and other hard numbers at hand.

But to put it one way, many are aware that the video-sharing app’s promo capabilities are more valuable than its straight licensing payments.