American recorded music grew 6.9% in the first half. The fastest-growing format was the one the industry spent twenty years writing off.
Cameron Bunney via UnsplashUploads to streaming services have reached a rate no audience can absorb. A fifth of everything already there was streamed exactly zero times last year.
The complaint against DistroKid says it has no quarrel with disclosed AI music. Its target is the distributor that, by one industry count, carried three-quarters of the AI tracks sent to the charts.
Large tours have carried therapists for years. A £272,000 fund is an attempt to extend that to the smaller tours where the pressure is identical and the budget is not.
The recorded music industry is tightening distribution rules as generative tools make fake songs and fake listening cheap. Executives put the fraudulent share of streams at close to one in ten.
Streaming is the volume business and it grows slowly. Licensing a song to a screen is the smaller number that is moving.
September 5, 2026For fifteen years every stream paid the same. The platforms are now deciding that some plays should count for more, and the arguments are about who loses.
September 4, 2026
