Welcome to and the update is I am your host, Ross Golan.

This is the news in the music industry for the week of May 18th, 20206.

Let's start with some stories this week.

UMG and Spotify signed a licensing deal to allow users to do AI covers of songs.

Wow, that's going to piss off a lot of artists, I'm sure, because now they're going to be

competing against themselves. Now, on the other hand, it will probably trigger royalties for any of the licensed material,

both on the publishing and on the record side.

Now, most of you aren't 100% universal writers, so other publishing companies will have a say in that.

But this is something that had been discussed for a long time

and expect this to be a thing.

And hopefully it will create more revenue for artists

without causing too much headaches for those who are trying to release new music.

Now, if you're looking at charts,

you're going to notice a lot of the songs that are on the charts right now are not brand new,

so it is hard to crack in. And this may just make it even more crowded. We don't know yet.

Okay, Shamrock Capital closed an $800-plus million content acquisition fund.

Shamrock is famously the company that bought and sold Taylor's catalog. They are massive and

they are good at what they do, so I'm sure getting $800 million will help. They're also looking at film and television gaming sports and other creator economy assets.

Fuga and Insomniac Music Group renewed their global distribution partnership.

Fuga has been recently purchased by Universal and so has everyone else.

Hybe and YG also renewed their distribution deal.

That's also, that's a massive partnership.

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