Music industry professionals still betting on major labels to develop artists should know the system has structurally exited that business.
On this week’s podcast episode, I break down the data showing UMG and WMG now redirect spending toward catalog acquisitions rather than new careers. . .
. . . have made AI licensing deals explicitly designed to reduce artist relationships. . .
. . . and then kept the copyright settlement money those deals generated without passing any of it on to the artists whose music was used for training.
I also looked at:
- TikTok trying to fill this development vacuum, but 59% of its new-user feeds are already AI-generated content, so even that alternative is narrowing fast.
- Spotify’s global top 50 fell from over 90% new releases in 2019-2020 to roughly 70% by early 2026, and by May seven of the top ten songs were more than two years old.
- Luminate found that 56% of 13-to-24-year-olds regularly listen to music made before 2000, with 25% of that group favoring tracks from the 1990s or earlier.
- Hip hop, which held roughly 30% market share at its late-2000s-to-2020 peak, has gone entire months without a single Billboard Top 10 placement.
- Suno raised $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation while battling UMG and Sony in federal court over training data.
- Tidal announced it will pay zero royalties on fully AI-generated tracks and badge them for listeners.
- The AFM’s lawsuit against Warner and Universal over withheld AI settlement money gives artists a concrete legal precedent to cite when evaluating any publisher or label deal where royalty flow-through terms are left unstated.
- YouTube’s argument that uploading a video constitutes blanket consent to train Google’s Lyria 3 model shows why reading platform terms of service before posting has become a practical rights-management step, not a formality.
On the gear side:
- Dean Guitar’s parent Armadillo Enterprises filing for Chapter 11 after a Gibson trademark loss illustrates how intellectual property exposure can collapse a company faster than market conditions,
- while Höfner’s acquisition by GEWA Music suggests bankruptcy does not always end a legacy instrument brand
- Royer Labs finds a new home
- and a new honor for Jimi Hendrix in New York City
You can hear it at bobbyoinnercircle.com, or via Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Mixcloud, Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn Radio, or RadioPublic.
Also, a video version of this podcast is now available on YouTube as well.
