Prof Snyder's Music Biz News

(May is Mental Health Awareness Month)

It's not just Schumann, Monk, Cobain and Adele. It's the 1st Chair Violinist in your local orchestra, the flamenco guitarist in the Mexican restaurant, the roadie setting up the PA, the person on the rigs hanging lights, the piano major in college, the choir director at church, etc. Out of 100,000, 138 of them will commit suicide,

The national average is 32 across all occupations (CDC report: Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation. 2021). (This was before the increasing negative effects of AI on the music industry)

Maybe if those 138 had...

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain. (That's why I can use a screen grab and not worry about copyright infringement.) But Hal Roach made the zombies green and so created a derivative that he could copyright and make $ licensing.

BMG's announcement about Synch + brought to light how agentic AI is replacing music supervisors and song pluggers. "AI tools analyze BMG’s repertoire of over three million songs and 200,000 production music tracks to find precise matches for film, TV, and advertising briefs."

Those who opt-in to allow BMG's agentic AI tr...

For the last 14 years, the Big 3, the holy trinity SONY, WMG, and UMG have dominated the music industry, devouring all of the other labels, and scooping up music catalogs.

BMG, once a major label itself, though seemingly disappeared, has been kept alive by its parent company Bertlesmann, and it has sprung back to life joining with the old jazz label, Concord.

Both have been on a feeding frenzy of music catalogs owning 4.3 million songs, enough to claim a spot with the Big 3 labels ....(BMG would prefer to be considered the king of indies).

...

The 1st AI Music Chart (versus Billboard charts)

The 1st Performing rights Organization (versus ASCAP, BMI, SESAC)

The 1st AI Streaming platform (versus Spotify)

Just three of the parallel music organizations in the rapidly expanding AI music industry.

(This is not an endorsement of AI Music...just reporting what I see)

"A new music industry is being built—with its own rules, its own economics, and its own definition of success. And for the first time in modern history… That industry doesn’t need the old one to survive." ChatGP...

This is the 3rd and last podcast linking 3 music biz events that I believe marks a change in access to the music markets. Indie distributors and labels being swallowed by majors, major labels and Spotify now allies working together to create an answer to AI music (and market control), and DDEX becoming the required meta data required for access to the new music ecosystem.

DDEX has added AI descriptions into the Meta data of song files. Spotify and the major labels have adopted DDEX as the sole source of Meta Data Spotify requires to accept new uploads...

Part 2 of 3: Once they competed, now they work together for the first time to create a new music ecosystem built around AI. Spotify, WMG, UMG, SONY Music, Believe, and Merlin joined forces in reaction to AI.

The labels have licensed their music to Spotify to be used in Spotify's new AI tools being developed. All in theory to better serve musicians and copyright holders, except of course those who aren't paid royalties because their song didn't achieve 1,000 streams in 1 year (where do those royalties go?)

What will happen to artists outside the new ecosystem? Part 3...

A brilliant (my opinion) world-wide promotional campaign by Taylor Swift for 'Life of a Showgirl' became tainted as her fans began to notice videos with 'A bartender's hand passing through a napkin. A disappearing coat hanger. A carousel horse with two heads.' Sure signs of AI residue, and fans weren't/aren't happy.

Will Smith, T Swift, and even Katy Perry, (at least their promo teams), are learning you can't fool the fans, and if you use AI for anything, quality control is imperative!!!

Sources: https://snydersmusicbiznews.blogspot.com/2026/03/ai-and-orange-door.html

This is Part 1 of 3 podcasts of recent events that I believe are connected:

1. The Majors Swallow the Indies

2. Major Labels and Spotify's Agreement for Total Domination

3. New DDEX Standard for AI Influence in Music May Affect Music Uploads and Streaming

Universal Music Group, and the other majors, are buying indie music companies at a rapid pace. CDBaby, once seen as an alternative distributor for indie musicians, is now part of the corporate system. What does this mean for artists, maybe you, who preferred the freedom from corp ownership? UMG now represents...

Agentic AI. "AI that doesn’t solely rely on human prompts nor require human oversight."

Meta (Facebook) just bought the 1st all AI social media network, Moltbook. AI agents interact and talk to each other, even creating new religions for AI bots, humans aren't welcome.

Agentic AI agents are already creating music (a brief example is at the end of the video), new genres, and they're uploading to Spotify on their own.

They not only create music for human consumption, they create music for other bots to listen to.

There has al...

Ticket Scalpers for a Charles Dickens Reading Tour were called 'Sidewalk 'Men'.

The term scalper was first used in a book about the railroad.

The first bot scalper was used for U2's Vertigo Tour.

Now Ticketmaster/Live Nation are in court (now settled) because of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket fiasco, the first time AI was used to scalp tickets for resale.

AI Scalping Bots have learned, and continue to learn, how to imitate humans. CHAPTAs aren't effective anymore, as AI Bots can even mimic frustrated humans trying to...

While AI detection tech is improving, SONY announced it has the tech that can identify the original music in AI generated songs by percentages...“30% of the music used is by the Beatles and 10% is by Queen.” Should artists begin the celebration? It may be too late!

The Internet is being divided up by the record labels into 'walled gardens,' charging tech companies to slip into the gardens and train AI on the music. It may be too late.

A nonprofit company you probably haven't heard of, Common Crawl, has been silently crawling and archiving the...

A historical dive into the demise of live local music.

(Note: This is not an endorsement of drinking)

Looking back to the glory days when band's were prolific and there were plenty of venues to play in, packed with fanatical music lovers. Small local venues were a proving ground for emerging artists, where they could build a following from high school age, and expand the boundaries of music performance. Label A&R reps prowled local clubs looking to sign the next big band. Most live local acts now mostly consist of singles or...

I ask anti-AI musicians if they had ever had actually checked out what it's capable of, most say no.

So I decided to demonstrate how over 70+ million Alexa subscribers can now ask Alexa to write a song, by just talking to an Alexa enabled speaker. You'll hear the conversation between me and Alexa as we discussed creating a Valentine song for my cat, Jonesy. Listen to the song. Do you think it's AI slop? Personally, I think it's scary good. (It also created the artwork).

When Amazon announced the new Alexa +, it's integration with Suno...

After music publishers lost the 1st round against Anthropic and Claude last year, they're back with a vengeance!

Anthropic failed to reveal it had used BitTorrent to download millions of lyrics, songbooks, etc. Even though they did inform the book publishers who had also sued and won 1.5 Billion dollars. The judge wouldn't let them bring that into the case though. They had sued for a paltry $75 Million before. This time it's a whopping $3+ Billion dollars!

Anthropic is now worth $350 Billion. Assuming they settle like the book publishers, when can songwriters and lyricists expect to cash...

ElevenLabs and Spotify just released an album, The 11 Album featuring Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel, and others all using AI in some way. "This is the first known direct deal between Spotify and an AI company to easily and directly distribute AI songs on the streaming platform" ...and it won't be the last.

This led to my learning more about ElevenLabs (created 2023), the large cloned voice market, and the surprising web of AI partners:

Bandcamp is be promoted as the first major music company to ban AI music.

While Humans rejoice, there's more here than meets the eye.

I do a deep-dive into Bandcamp's recent history, Songtradr - its owner, questions about the new policy, and what the CEO actually thinks about AI and music (you'll be surprised)!

This is for anyone who records music, and is looking for a tax write-off.

The HITS (Help Independent Tracks Succeed) Act was passed last summer (2025), but it hasn't been publicized like No Tax on Tips. (Side note...the tips you get at gigs don't count!). This Act allows you to write-off any recording costs, up to $150,000, you may have had in 2025, but only 2025.

So if you need a tax write-off, start digging for those receipts!

Be sure your recording friends are aware and share this podcast...the TAXMAN is coming!

Music historians will note that 2025 was the year of another major change in music production and composition.

The official beginning of musical 'slop.' When Artificial Intelligence began to elbow its way into music (and every other thing), and replaced songwriters playing guitars, with music designers writing prompts.

2026 will probably be the year when the shift in the Matrix will settle, and the new music world order is established.

So much happened that looking back at the totality of it all, can be overwhelming.

So here is a quick list of 2025...

Merriam-Webster made the word 'slop' the 2025 Word of the Year.

It refers to AI music as being garbage, but "Every Media Revolution Breeds Rubbish and Art." EDM, Rap, Hillbilly, Rock, Bubblegum, all have been considered to be trash...the slop of the day. 97% of people can't differentiate what is and isn't AI generated. One writer wrote that while 90% of AI music is garbage, but 10% is 'tolerable.' Hasn't that always been the case with popular music? Before AI, only 5% of released music broke even, another 5% were hits that made up for the 90% that didn't break even.

A snapshot, using data, comparing the worlds of traditional musicians and AI designers. The number of people using AI music tools is immense, far outnumbering traditional musicians by millions. 3 types of Music Creators:

There is a lot of tension between trad musicians and AI designers. But, though probably a lot of traditional musicians like myself will disagree, I've come to realize that those using AI to create music for the first time in their lives, are not the enemy. And that AI is already very entrenched in trad music making, regardless of what...

The frequency of music companies + AI announcements is increasing exponentially, daily.

It's overwhelming and almost impossible to keep up.

The Big Question: How will musicians be paid?!

These are my guesses, hypotheticals, and conjectures based on what I've read. We're starting to get hints how the pennies might trickle down. The labels say don't worry kid, we'll take care of you.

The only certainty being labels are excited and beginning to "envision how they’ll get their beaks wet" "But as for the dry, chapped beaks of powerless copyright stakeholders—small-time arti...

Here are 10 misconceptions I've read in comments across social media.

These are my observations and opinions.

You can jump to the part you'd be interested in.

00:00 Intro

00:30 There are established laws, passed by Congress, that regulates ai.

01:29 The government of the US cares about artists and musicians and is working on laws regulating AI and copyrights.

03:34 What is stated in the copyright office reports is permanent and binding.

04:19 The law states that only human created parts of a song can be copyrighted…any parts generated by...

AI Creep: "AI has now slipped into everyday life and we seem less guarded about its use"

Performance Rights Organizations, ASCAP, BMI, and SECAN have updated their policies to accept “compositions partially generated.”

They will now register and pay royalties for partially AI-generated music, provided it involves a human-led creative process. Composers are trusted to voluntarily reveal how much AI was used during composing the music.

Everyday, we wake up to learn AI has silently become a part of the eco-system of the music business. As you read this, behind the curtain, corporations are...

Udio wants to be the music industry's "AI good guy".

UMG and Udio settled their lawsuit, and the Udio subscribers are pissed off! "Udio will now be a 'walled garden' in which users can only stream their AI creations on the platform, with no ability to export and distribute their works. In response, Udio opened a 48 hour window, ending today 11/4/25, for subscribers to download their music.

Otherwise, all of those AI created songs might never be heard (is that a bad thing?), humans who downloaded Udio tracks to then build on will probably jump to...

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/CrUlIezY7ug

The music biz has always blurred the lines between the real and the fake, like KISS dubbing in the audience on their live album.

Will Smith has gotten some brutal press for his use of AI to 'enhance' his audience in a video of him performing. The controversy is exposing some much deeper realizations about the use of AI.

"AI fatigue is hitting hard."

"AI-generated content isn’t just underperforming; it’s triggering active resentment."

"Public backlash against AI-generated content is growing."

Halloween Issue: Stream ripping has been part of music piracy for decades, from copying songs on the radio to cassette, to now when an individual rips music or video from a streaming platform and coverts it into a downloadable file that any user can use offline.

If you haven't heard of stream ripping, it's probably because the labels have had some success regulating it. But now it's back in the headlines.

The AI companies like Suno and Udio are accused of stream ripping to train their AI models. Of course the labels have already been...

"...labels to quietly consider licensing arrangements rather than risk exposing gaps in ownership or registration in court."

For the discovery process between Udio and UMG, the court agreed that Universal Music Group must:

1. Provide copies of all of the music they claim was infringed, I.E., prove it!

2. Provide all of the record agreements between the label and the artists to determine if UMG actually owns the recordings. If the agreement specifies that the record was Made Work For Hire, the label owns it forever. If not, it's possible that at 35 years, the...

"Fans may soon follow virtual personas with the same passion as human celebrities."

An AI Musician with millions of streams gets a 3 million dollar contract.

An AI Actor worries human actors.

Both are seen as threats by human musicians and actors, but does the common person care?

This is a case in which a human and AI successfully 'collaborate.'

Are there times when AI can be your creative partner? Sources: https://snydersmusicbiznews.blogspot....

• The internet is no longer “for humans, by humans.”

• "82% of listeners cannot distinguish AI-made music from human-created music"

• "The Internet Will Be More Dead Than Alive Within 3 Years, Trend Shows. All signs point to a future internet where bot-driven interactions far outnumber human ones"

• 38 percent of (mostly) human-made webpages from 2013 no longer exist, which is the result a process known as “link rot.”

• "A growing number of tech users now believe that AI is God."

• "AI SLOP MIGHT FINALLY CURE OUR INTERNET ADDICTION?"

Sources:

https://snydersmusicbiznews...

Taking a break from AI, copyright law, etc...I dive into the new field of composing music, designed to enhance specific culinary delights. "Scientists Invent this 90-sec Song [Sweetest Melody] to Make Chocolate Taste Better"

Research shows that certain instruments make food sweeter, or more bitter. How does your instrument affect taste?

Does it work? Researchers say: "We're able to show that we can change the experience in [the] mouth by about 5 or 10 percent."

Will there be a Spotify playlist with music designed just for specific tastes to "create a multisensory experience that...

Suno and Udio are being sued by the labels, but there is another major suit most haven't heard about. Sued by UMG and other labels, Anthropic almost got away with scraping millions of copies of printed music to train AI for free, claiming 'Fair Use.' Until it was exposed, in a similar class action lawsuit by book authors, that Anthropic hid it also scraped printed music from the same LibGen, torrents, and other sites. The book authors won, and now, using the same winning arguments against Anthropic, the record labels will probably win! Multiple book authors in the...

Podcast Link

Artificial Pop (A-Pop), Music Designers, AI Music Charts, Oh My!

The separation between human music and AI music is widening and becoming more obvious.

AI now has its own all AI record labels, there will probably be a Billboard AI Chart, the 1st 'Music Designer' who uses Suno is signed to a record deal, A-Pop (Artificial Pop) is becoming as thing.

Meanwhile humans are looking at creating paid subscriptions to human-only music streams, a new human-only music social network is coming, and I predict soon human-only music boutique record...

Link to YT video

People use AI (SUNO, UDIO) to create songs comprised of real musicians' copy-protected works. It's blatant copyright infringement, hidden by laundering copyrights so they can't be traced to the original owners. Here is what you need to know:

Money Laundering

Al Capone used to run money made from bootlegging and other crimes through laundromats to 'clean' money, make it legitimate, so that nobody could trace it back to the original 'dirty' crime money. Thus the term 'money laundering'. The music biz, including Spotify, has had a history of money...

$2 billion is lost to streaming fraud each year, representing about 7-10% of total streaming royalties, and growing.

Streamfarms, consisting of AI bots, and more likely people in developing countries PRETENDING TO BE AI BOTS, are paid to rapidly inflate the number of streams of a song, as well as likes, follows, and playlists, pushing both human and fake artists to the top.

Other artists find market visibility to be monopolised by fraudsters and mediocre music. It's already been hard to break through, is it even possible to compete with those using streamfarms, cheating their way...

Link to video: https://youtu.be/hJeu5KvgBww

"You have to die before they think you are worth anything". Jimi Hendrix

The deaths of the greatest generation of rockers, is bringing in millions of dollars, and the industry has learned to cash in. Even just a rumor of a death, like when Paul McCartney was supposed dead and replaced by a double (he wasn't), can result in big boosts in sales and streams.

With the assassination of John Lennon, the records labels began to realize that when an artist dies, even if past...

From the days of hipster musicians touring living rooms, to the present with major acts playing in backyards and bowling alleys, artists are skipping large venues and thinking small, the stage wherever they can strap on a guitar and play.

With fans having to finance tickets to go to concerts, the trend is for the artists to go to them. Bands like All American Rejects achieved over 4 Million dollars in marketing on their 'House Party Tour' by playing at skating rinks and homes.

Now the labels and marketers smell the money and are getting involved...

Jonesy believes that every aspiring musician should be given a kitten before the first music lesson!

In this podcast, Jonesy the cat points to famous DJ and producer deadmau5: "While cats may sometimes be destructive, deadmau5 is a fan of having feline pals around." As cat-dad to Peanut, Dizzy and Dolly, even though they may be a pain at times, he believes that's 'The price of a cat'. And surely Peanut, Dizzy and Dolly simply tolerate a cat-dad that wears mouse ears! Sometimes, just giving a cat a little scratch behind the ears, or a belly-rub, is...

[Warning...this vid is a little philosophic] While watching an interview of David Gilmore about his newest album, Luck and Strange, I was reminded that music is a gift to humans. That AI will never wait for years to finish a song, always looking for that special something it needs to complete it. That AI will never be visited by a Muse. That AI will never experience music.

The Cambridge dictionary defines muse as: a person, or an imaginary being or force that gives someone ideas and helps them to write, paint, or make music.

...

Podcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOzs8lbX9g4

1 - Courts just opened the door for AI to copy copyrighted material under Fair Use, as long as they purchase 1 copy.

2 - The First Record Label to Exclusively Feature AI Artists: IT'S ALL FAKE. Artists, Music, Backstories, Videos...everything.

3 - "There's No Going Back!" 'Deezer' Chief Innovation Officer.

Sources at https://snydersmusicbiznews.blogspot.com/2025/06/is-it-real-or-is-it-ai.html

SubStack https://srfrjff.substack.com

A former exec at Meta (Facebook) said "...asking for permission from rights owners to train models would 'basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.' "

In 1997, it was the new technology, MP3s, used by Napster, that the labels said would kill Music.

Back then the labels sued Napster, Kazaa, etc; today the labels are suing Suno and Udio. Is history repeating itself? Lot's of parallels!