UMG strikes its final (maybe) deal of 2025: with Roblox Universal Music Group’s dealmaking team has been on a tear in 2025, and its final deal of the year appears to be with Roblox.

TikTok’s current owner ByteDance set for $50bn profit in 2025 As the deal to sell TikTok’s US operations enters its final weeks, ByteDance appears to be ready to celebrate an *extremely* profitable 2025.

Netflix is acquiring avatar-focused startup Ready Player Me Ready Player Me emerged during Peak Metaverse Hype a few years ago, with a focus on avatars. Now it is being acquired by Netflix.

Spotify says ‘anti-copyright extremists’ scraped its library This is not the Christmas present that Spotify would have been hoping for: a huge chunk of its metadata being released on filesharing.

PPL payouts to artists and rightsholders total £277.7m in 2025 Good news for musicians in the UK who’ve been hanging on for their final payouts of the year before going Christmas shopping.

Create Music Group buys dance-focused Cr2 Holdings Group Already one of the most active acquirers of music companies in recent times, Create Music Group ends 2025 with one more flash of its wallet.

UMG and Splice team up for ‘AI-powered music creation tools’ Within hours of Music Ally publishing an analysis of Universal Music Group’s AI deals in 2025, it sprang another one on us – with Splice.

TikTok US sale is signed and sealed according to internal memo TikTok’s US operations will not end this year under new, American ownership. But a sale appears to be signed and sealed for the new year.

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

Musicians For Palestine urges Live Nation to pull out of Israel Musicians and music industry workers with the Musicians For Palestine campaign have published an open letter to Live Nation this week.

Bandcamp Fridays generated more than $19m of sales in 2025 Bandcamp has revealed how much money its Bandcamp Friday promotions drummed up for artists and labels in 2025.

25 insights about India’s music industry in 2025 This was the year Music Ally offered its most comprehensive coverage of the Indian music market yet, with the launch of our South Asia edition. It’s been a mixed 12 months for the world’s most populous country as the recorded music industry remained…

2026 Music Marketing Trends: World-Building, Mystery Campaigns, IRL Activations & More What hundreds of global campaign submissions reveal about the future of music marketing. Music Ally has published our Campaigns of the Year report since 2011. Every year we receive hundreds of submissions from…

BMG renews and expands its music-publishing deal with TikTok TikTok has renewed its direct music-publishing agreement with BMG, which TikTok described as “expanded”. Both companies announced the deal.

Midia Research says Spotify leads ad-supported music market Midia Research claims that Spotify is now the biggest ad-supported audio service by monthly active users, with 442.2 million of them.

YouTube withdraws from Billboard’s US charts in weighting row Is there time for one last music-industry row to break out in 2025? Yes. YouTube is pulling its data from Billboard’s US music charts.

Global value of music copyright grew 5.2% to $47.2bn in 2024 Every year, music-industry economist Will Page publishes his ‘Global Value of Music Copyright’ report. The one for 2024 is out now.

Discogs names its top global artists for 2025 Online catalogue and record marketplace Discogs has released its 'Year in Review' for 2025, including naming its top artist globally.

The A to Z of AI Music in 2025, Part 4: Transparency to Zero-Sum Game Here's part four of our look-back at the key talking points around AI and music in 2025, with a view to what might happen next in 2026.

US administration threatens Spotify and other EU tech companies 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…

Sandbox: What’s going to give you the marketing edge in 2026? 2025 has been a prodigious year for music marketing, with countless campaigns competing for fans’ attention within the setting of an ever evolving landscape. And as highlighted in Music Ally’s Campaigns of the Year, the past 12 months…

Hybe sets its sights on Africa with management initiative Having expanded into Latin America and India this year, South Korean music firm Hybe isn’t stopping there. Now it has announced a move into Africa via a “global management partnership” with executives Brandon Hixon and Colin Gayle. They’ll…

Spotify defends 1,000-stream royalties threshold after critical report It’s just over two years since Spotify introduced changes to its payouts, including only paying recorded-music royalties for tracks that have been streamed at least 1,000 times in the last 12 months. Now a report published by…

UK government AI survey findings back stronger copyright rules The British government has been running a consultation on potential changes to UK copyright law focusing on AI training.

The A to Z of AI Music in 2025, Part 3: Newton-Rex to Spotify Here’s our look-back at the key talking points around AI and music in 2025, with a view to what might happen next in 2026.

Bain & Company report explores how Americans discover music Streaming services’ playlists are still the most popular way Americans discover music, according to a report from Bain & Company.

The Weeknd seals his rumoured-$1bn Lyric Capital catalogue deal In August, reports claimed that The Weeknd was in talks with investment firm Lyric Capital Group to raise $1bn of financing.

Primal Scream spark anger over anti-semitic concert visuals London’s Roundhouse apologised last week after Primal Scream used a video entwining Jewish symbol the Star of David with a swastika.

AIM Ireland keen on a ‘Spotify levy’ to support local artists Which country will be next to introduce some kind of levy on global streaming services to benefit local artists and content? Perhaps Ireland.

Amazon Music goes all-out for a Kylie Minogue Christmas number one Amazon Music appears to be going all-out to secure the UK Christmas number-one single this year with Kylie Minogue's 'XMAS'.

UMG responds to EC regulators’ concerns about Downtown deal There is news on the European Commission’s investigation into UMG’s acquisition of Downtown Music. UMG has filed its response.

The A to Z of AI Music in 2025, Part 1: AI Technologies to Fair Use In 2025, AI music was not just the big story for the music industry: it was a host of trends, deals, questions, anxieties and controversies.

The A to Z of AI Music in 2025, Part 2: GEMA to Merlin Here's the second part of our look-back at the key talking points around AI and music in 2025, as well as the implications for 2026.

Report calculates climate impact of live music in US and UK A report published this week by MIT’s Climate Machine team – aided by Coldplay, WMG, Live Nation and Hope Solutions – has calculated the annual carbon emissions of live music in the US and UK. The figure for the US is 14.3 MTCO2e (a unit…

Disney licenses OpenAI while igniting copyright fight with Google OpenAI’s GenAI video model Sora caused consternation in the film, TV and games industries after its launch this autumn, when its users started making merry with AI-generated clips featuring copyrighted characters. Now it has secured…

Anirudh, Himesh, Sai Abhyankkar, Saiyaara team feature in Spotify’s 2025 Wrapped fan destinations Earlier this month, Spotify took its annual online Wrapped experience on-ground through more than 50 fan destinations worldwide. Featuring some of the biggest artists of 2025, they gave music lovers…

NTS Radio to celebrate 15 years of online broadcasting  Next year marks 15 years on the air for NTS Radio, the London-based music discovery platform known for its eclectic global programming.

Connect Chats: Nadine Kroher – ‘AI detection alone isn’t enough’ "As AI-generated music gains popularity there is a risk that streaming platforms and distributors may become flooded," says Nadine Kroher.

SZA is latest artist to hit back at an ICE post using her music The White House’s campaign to promote the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) by using liberal-leaning artists’ music in social media posts continues. The latest used SZA’s ‘Big Boy’ – a track originally recorded for…

Spotify offers ‘more control’ starting with Prompted Playlist “For the first time, Spotify is giving users the power to steer the algorithm,” is how the streaming service’s latest announcement begins. “Imagine a Spotify that doesn’t just passively learn from you but literally listens to you. One…

Connect Chats: Tomas Luyke – ‘Focus on finding your people’ "Focus on finding your people, not everyone's people," says Tomas Luyke, director, marketing EU at Nettwerk Music Group.

Online attack falsely linked Taylor Swift to Nazi symbols A report has examined a wave of recent social-media posts associating Taylor Swift's latest album with far-right and Nazi imagery.

UK live bodies protest over increased business rates for venues A group of 17 live-industry bodies in the UK have written to the country’s leader Sir Keir Starmer protesting at tax changes.

Talha Anjum and Umair were Spotify’s most-streamed local acts in Pakistan during 2025 Last week, Spotify shared year-end charts for Pakistan, but as in previous years, they focused on domestic acts and releases. For the second time in a row, rapper Talha Anjum and producer Umair are the top two…

Boxscore chart reveals five tours grossed over $300m in last year Two concert charts in two days, and Coldplay tops them both. The second is the annual Boxscore chart published by Billboard.

ABBA Voyage has contributed more than £2bn to the UK’s economy ABBA’s holo-tastic ABBA Voyage concerts kicked off in 2022 in a 3,000-capacity venue in London. But how much is it worth to the UK economy?

Hangout adds a fully-licensed Generate Music’ AI feature Social-music service Hangout launched in November 2024 as a revival of early-2010s platform Turntable·fm. Now it has a GenAI feature.

Study: most US teenagers are using YouTube and TikTok every day The US-based Pew Research Center has published its latest study into the online habits of teenagers. It reveals that 92% of them use YouTube.

Katseye are TikTok’s top artist of 2025 with over 30bn views There’s a very cosmopolitan feel to TikTok’s chart of its top artists in 2025, and not just because the top spot is taken by Katseye.

Spotify confirms it paid no royalties to fake King Gizzard band We reported yesterday on the removal from Spotify of music uploaded to the service in the name of ‘King Lizard Wizard’.