The industry-first, seminanual benchmark polls artist managers, lawyers and indie executives for their expectations for catalog investment trends. The Index is intentionally centered on the perceptions of music industry stakeholders, rather than buyout funds and financial institutions that can be a few steps removed from the “action” in the space.
Source: Introducing: Duetti and Billboard’s Music Finance Index
Mechanical Licensing Collective is seeking an immediate appeal of a court ruling in its legal battle with Spotify over audiobook bundling and royalty payments. The request triggered a sharp procedural battle. In a 33-page opposition filed January 9 Spotify argued that The MLC waited nearly a year too long to request this type of expedited review and fails to meet the legal requirements for an immediate appeal.
Source: MLC vs. Spotify bundle battle intensifies as streamer opposes immediate appeal
Heavybit, the self-described “leading early-stage investor in enterprise infrastructure,” led the newer raise. Also contributing to the $4.5 million tranche were the Business Development Bank of Canada and Halifax-based Build Ventures. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2026, Musical AI intends to keep on building out its core attribution tech. Per the company, the involved tools are “successfully deployed” and “can parse what percentage of a generated output came from which source.”
Source: Attribution and Licensing Startup Musical AI Scores $4.5M Raise
The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday released its December Consumer Price Index, showing modest inflation of 0.3 percent on a monthly basis and 2.7 percent for the year. But a deeper dive into the data tables also shows an outlier that is relevant to Hollywood: Subscription video services. According to the BLS data, “Subscription and rental of video and video games” saw inflation of 19.5 percent in December.
Source: “Streamflation” Is Real: U.S. Inflation Data Shows Soaring Price of Streaming Video Services
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he UK will bring into force a law which will make it illegal to create non-consensual intimate images, following widespread concerns over Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot. Speaking to Labour MPs on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer warned X could lose the “right to self regulate”. “If X cannot control Grok, we will,” he said, adding the government would act quickly in response to the issue.
Google search traffic was down globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data. In addition, referrals to more than 2,500 publisher websites from Google Discover, a feed served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system, were down 21% year on year. Since May 2023, Google search referrals were down 21% globally, with Google Discover down 18% and all external referrals down 24%.
Source: Global publisher Google traffic dropped by a third in 2025
One music industry strategist thinks so, arguing in a provocative new essay that the streaming giant should implement a 250,000 monthly listener threshold to concentrate payments among professional musicians who can earn a sustainable living. The proposal comes as Spotify moves in the opposite direction for podcasters, slashing its Partner Program eligibility requirements by half.
The national executive director and chief negotiator of the actors union SAG-AFTRA enumerated on his dollars-and-cents approach to what the labor group calls “synthetic performers” in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday. His remarks previewed the tack that the union may take when its negotiations with studios and streamers begin on Feb. 9, where AI is again expected to be a top issue.
Source: SAG-AFTRA’s Likely Strategy: Make AI Performers as Expensive as Humans
The Paris Judicial Court has ordered Google to block nineteen additional pirate site domains through its public DNS resolver. The blockade was requested by Canal+ and aims to stop pirate streams of Champions League games. In its defense, Google argued that rightsholders should target intermediaries higher up the chain first, such as Cloudflare’s CDN, but the court rejected that.
Elon Musk’s X Corp. filed a landmark antitrust complaint against the NMPA, Sony, Universal, and other major music publishers, claiming that they used a coordinated “extortionate campaign” to force licensing deals. The lawsuit alleges that a flood of “baseless” DMCA notices targeted over 200,000 posts and suspended 50,000 users, allegedly to coerce X to sign industry-wide agreements.
Source: X Sues Music Publishers Over “Weaponized” DMCA Takedown Conspiracy * TorrentFreak