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Music Ally chatted to Group Speed, the agency who worked with Australian electronic duo Breathe. on their debut album rollout. 

By treating five-year-old catalogue tracks as growth levers and repositioning the duo within Spotify’s algorithm, they doubled their monthly listeners to 1 million. Here are the campaign highlights:

Independent label Hopeless Records was a founder member of indie think-tank ORCA, and now its president Louis Posen has taken to its Substack to argue that music-streaming “saved the industry but stifled the artist”.

“By shifting the metric of value from the album or song to the time spent listening to it, the industry has hit a structural ceiling that threatens the very diversity it claims to host,” wrote Posen.

Friday’s proceedings in the state-led antitrust trial against Live Nation and Ticketmaster were far quieter than CEO Michael Rapino’s headline-grabbing testimony the day before. But the shorter session still served a strategic purpose for the plaintiff states: to pull the case back to one of its most straightforward themes—that Live Nation’s control over major amphitheaters gave it leverage over artists, venues, and rival promoters that shaped the market.

Live Nation Entertainment’s longtime chief executive was the star witness at a New York antitrust trial Thursday, defending the dominant position his company has taken over the last two decades as a lawyer for nearly three dozen states tried to portray the concert giant as greedy and abusive to customers.

Michael Rapino, who has led the company since it was formed 21 years ago, testified at the trial resulting from the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department brought two years ago against Live Nation and its ticketing subsidiary, Ticketmaster.

The Live Nation ticketing employee who told a coworker that some of the company’s customers were “so stupid” called his remarks “very immature and unacceptable” during testimony at the company’s antitrust trial on Tuesday. He was also seen bragging that the company was “robbing them blind, baby,” in internal messages from 2022 that were presented in the trial.

"Under Donald Trump, antitrust enforcement has become a growing cesspool of corruption," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said about new proposed legislation to add reforms to antitrust reviews.

With Universal Music Group at the forefront of the music industry’s AI dealmaking, chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge’s appearance at a conference held by Nvidia – one of those partners – was a hot ticket this week. He talked about AI’s potential for musicians.

“As long as they’re respected, as long as there’s guardrails, as long as they’re not taken advantage of stylistically and creatively…they will see over this next period what the power of the possibility is, and how it’s going to change their relationship with their audience,” said Grainge.

The man who defrauded streaming services of $8 million with AI-generated slop songs has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
On Thursday, Michael Smith, the man accused of defrauding music streaming services with AI-generated slop tracks, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Smith agreed to pay back the $8,091,843.64 he received in royalties from the streamers, and his charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Now that the IFPI’s Global Music Report for 2025 is out – here’s our coverage from yesterday in case you missed it – some more country-specific figures are emerging from local label bodies. Starting with France and Italy.

In a 2024 lawsuit, the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division alleged that Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation, illegally stifles competition at the hundreds of venues Live Nation operates across the United States, artificially driving up ticket costs for concertgoers. The DOJ asked for the two companies, which merged in 2010, to be broken up.

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it’s launching “Creator Fast Track,” a new program designed to help creators grow on Facebook with guaranteed pay and increased content reach. The social network also shared that it paid creators nearly $3 billion through its monetization programs in 2025, a 35% increase from the previous year and its highest annual total to date.

Patreon CEO Jack Conte says he’s not anti-AI. He can’t be.

“I run a frickin’ tech company,” he told the audience at the SXSW conference in Austin this week. Still, the founder of the creator platform has limits. Conte doesn’t think AI companies should be able to train their models on the work of creators without compensation, calling their decision to dub this “fair use” a “bogus” argument.

There’s a cluster of stories today around the topic of… we’ll call it AI music-making. People who are using GenAI models to make music at a more serious level, with the ambition of earning an income – a non-fraudulent one! – from their work.

We’ll start with ElevenLabs, which launched its Eleven Music tool last August. The company says that “nearly 14 million studio-grade tracks” have been created using the model, which it stresses is only “trained on licensed music”.

I run a company that competes with Ticketmaster every day in primary ticketing. So, I'll acknowledge upfront that I have skin in this game—and that's exactly why you should hear me out. Nobody watches the ticket market more closely than we do. I want this settlement to work. I really do.

The president and CEO of concert promotion titan Live Nation was peppered with questions on Thursday about the company’s pricing tactics and ticketing fees, which have drawn the ire of concertgoers, artists and around 30 states suing over antitrust claims.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has lambasted the US Department of Justice’s settlement with Live Nation, and has called for the remaining states to continue to seek a breakup of the entertainment giant and Ticketmaster.

Instagram may get more of the attention when it comes to Meta’s interactions with creators (influencers, as was) but Facebook is clearly no slouch in terms of the revenues it is generating for those social-media stars.

“Facebook paid content creators nearly $3 billion in 2025 — a 35% increase from the previous year and its highest annual total ever,” announced the company in a news release for its new ‘Creator Fast Track’ program that aims to attract more “established creators” to the platform.

When music-industry executives talk about an exciting new era of licensed musical AIs that enable fans to interact with their favourite artists’ music… it’s unclear whether there’s much evidence, yet, that fans want this.

Even big numbers from Suno – which has been used by 100 million people with two million of them opting to subscribe – aren’t cast-iron proof of long-term demand for AI music-making. How many of those 100 million use it regularly?

The IFPI Global Music Report 2026 reveals a music industry that accelerated its growth in 2025 — and surpassed USD $30 billion in annual recorded music revenues for the first time.

To be clear: the IFPI’s numbers refer strictly to wholesale recorded music revenues (i.e. the money paid through to labels, distributors, and artists).

Today, we’re launching Creator Fast Track, a new program designed to help creators accelerate their growth and success on Facebook with guaranteed pay and increased content reach. This new program comes as part of Facebook’s growing commitment to and investment in the creator economy.

Deezer reports its first year of profitability for the fiscal year 2025—the first time the French music streamer has surpassed all key metrics.

On Wednesday, French music streamer Deezer unveiled its 2025 financials, reporting profitability for the first time and exceeding all three key metrics across adjusted EBITDA, positive net income, and free cash flow. This, Deezer said, marks “the start of a cycle of sustainable profitability.”

Deezer reported $9.4 million (8 million euros) of positive net income and $11.8 million (10 million euros) of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. The company generated $639 million (543 million euros) of revenue and $159 million (135 million euros) in adjusted gross profit, up by 2 million euros since 2024.