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Where the Heck Did the Mainstream Go?
Despite consolidated revenues at the top of the charts, Top 10 streams only account for 0.05% of total plays. The mainstream is fading into its own long tail...What was the song of summer this year? Oh, don’t worry if you can’t name it. Nobody seems to know what it was or can agree on.  Billboard says it was “Ordinary” by Alex Warren. Spotify says it was “Love Me Not” by Raven Len. TikTok’s winner was Jess Glynne’s “Hold My Hand” — not so much because it charted, but because it became the soundtrack of a popular meme.
And I’m not embarrassed to admit it — I haven’t heard any of these tracks. The monoculture of big hits consumed by the masses is officially dead. In fact, a decade ago, the top 10 songs out of some 50 million at the time accounted for 16% of all U.S. streams. Today, the top 10 songs account for less than a third of that — just 0.05% of total streams. That means the music mainstream — the big hits, the cultural consensus, the “everyone’s listening to this” moment — is fading fast.  Heck, even the hits are smaller. I mean, have you heard Taylor Swift’s “Tortured Poets Department?” You may have, but I haven’t. And tons of other people haven’t either. And that was last year’s biggest-selling album. Yes, the biggest songs are getting less of the pie. 

 

A folk musician had her voice cloned by AI – and her recordings claimed by a copyright troll. Welcome to 2026.
The music industry’s latest collision with AI technology has arrived — and this time it involves voice cloning, copyright claims on songs that have been in the public domain for over a century, and an independent folk musician from North Carolina caught in the middle. A folk singer-songwriter from North Carolina, discovered in January that AI-generated covers of her songs had been uploaded to her Spotify profile without her consent. Then, in a separate incident, a user filed copyright claims against Campbell‘s YouTube videos, via the Content ID access of gamma-owned distributor Vydia. In September 2025, Spotify said it had removed more than 75 million tracks in a crackdown on AI-generated content and streaming manipulation, and the platform is now piloting a new opt-in feature that would allow artists to manually approve releases before they appear on their profiles.Meanwhile, Michael Smith, a North Carolina man who used AI to generate hundreds of thousands of songs and stream them billions of times via bots pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in what has been described as the first criminal prosecution for AI-assisted streaming fraud in the United States.

 

Why Do So Many AI Video Tools Miss the Mark for Musicians?
The latest generation of AI video tools can do almost anything except, it seems, behave the way musicians actually need them to. Spotify every day. This means that somewhere, at this very moment, someone has written what they believe is the most important song of their life and it has just landed in a digital pile the size of a small city.  Most young listeners won’t find it simply by digging. As artists were busy optimizing for streaming, the visual social feed became just as important, with 82% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials discovering new music through short videos. AI video tools are evolving so quickly that even the people building them occasionally pause and wonder when the ground shifted beneath their feet. Models like Google’s Veo 3 are producing hyper-realistic clips that weren’t possible a year ago.  So music has never been more abundant, visuals have never mattered more for discovery, and Artificial Intelligence has never been more powerful. And yet, many AI video tools still feel strangely disconnected from music. 

 

Willie Nelson to perform at Baylor University after 72-year absence
Country music icon Willie Nelson will perform at Baylor University on May 14, marking his first return to perform at his alma mater since he was a student there in 1954.  The "Willie Nelson & Family" concert will take place at Magnolia Field at Baylor Ballpark, with gates opening at 6 p.m. and the show beginning at 7:30 p.m. Livingstone addressed long-standing rumors about Nelson being banned from campus, saying the university is "not aware of any such ban."  Nelson, 93, was born in Abbott, Texas, about 25 minutes from the Baylor campus. He attended the university on the G.I. Bill during spring and summer quarters in 1954 after serving in the U.S. Air Force. Tickets go on sale in a tiered system. Baylor students and Bear Foundation members can purchase presale tickets Thursday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Central Time using the code "TRIGGER." General public sales begin Friday at 10 a.m. at baylorbears.com/tickets.

 

RIAA, NMPA, and more file amicus brief backing UMG, Concord and ABKCO in original Anthropic case, arguing AI firm’s unlicensed copying is ‘inexcusable’
The RIAA, NMPA, and six other key music industry groups have thrown their weight behind the music publishers suing Anthropic over AI copyright infringement.  The coalition, which also includes A2IM, SoundExchange, SONA, BMAC, the Music Artists Coalition, and the Artist Rights Alliance, filed an amicus brief on Monday (March 30) urging a federal court to reject Anthropic’s fair use defense in the case brought by Universal Music Publishing Group, Concord Music Group, and ABKCO in October 2023. Anthropic, it notes, is raising money at a $380 billion valuation following a $30 billion Series G round — and “indisputably has the means to compensate copyright owners.” 

 

Want to Track How Much Money 'AI Slop' Drains From Artist Royalties?
AI-generated “artists” flood Spotify, rack up millions of streams, and siphon revenue from real musicians; SlopTracker wants to make this impossible to ignore. A new website called SlopTracker aims to visualize the potential economic impact of AI-generated music on streaming platforms — particularly Spotify — by identifying suspected AI artists and estimating how much money their streams may be diverting from real musicians.  The site presents a running dashboard that tracks streams, estimated royalties, and the number of Premium subscriptions effectively needed to generate that revenue. Its central argument: while the music industry is facing a surge of AI music tools, it's also dealing with a surge of AI music profiles already operating inside streaming ecosystems.  Because generative tools can produce tracks quickly and cheaply, large numbers of AI-generated songs can be uploaded to streaming services in bulk, potentially gaming recommendation systems and accumulating streams at scale. For independent artists — who already compete in an environment of massive content oversupply — that shift could have major implications. The rise of AI music has already sparked industry debates around copyright, training data, and the role of generative tools in the creative process.

 

TikTok’s distro service SoundOn cracks down on manipulated audio via ACRCloud partnership to intercept unauthorized tracks
SoundOn, the music distribution and promotion platform owned by TikTok, is cracking down on unauthorized uploads by deploying a new detection service from content recognition firm ACRCloud. The tech uses audio fingerprinting to identify these modified works before they reach streaming platforms, flagging them for pre- and post-distribution review.  With Derivative Works Detection, SoundOn will use what it describes as a “rigorous customer identification process,” requiring uploaders to verify their identity with photo ID, with flagged content escalated to “human review”.  TikTok said that the partnership adds “an extra layer of anti-fraud detection” into SoundOn.SoundOn says this ensures that the content delivered to DSPs like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music is “original, authorized, and trusted.” “By enabling accurate identification and verification of music at scale, we’re helping support a more transparent and reliable ecosystem for artists, rightsholders, and digital services alike.”

 

The Unsung: Why Songwriters Still Live in the Shadows of Streaming
With digital distribution moving so quickly, releases will often gather thousands of plays before appropriate songwriter attribution is accredited, leaving recognition and revenues behind. It's a big problem. There is something magical about a great song. It can trigger a memory, set the scene for an iconic TV or movie moment, or fill a room with people singing the same chorus without even knowing why it hits so hard. Songs are the connective tissue of our culture, yet the people who write them remain some of the least visible and least understood figures in the music business. In this digital age, we don't have that same tangible medium anymore. There are no liner notes to pore over, no label copy to study. Credits exist on streaming platforms, but finding them requires an active search, and in an era built for immediate consumption, most listeners never take that step. Because releases move so quickly, a song can come out before that credit information is even fully finalized. That information is provided to DSPs by the label or distributor, and because publishers are not part of that delivery chain, they often have little visibility into missing or incorrect credits until after the fact. The pace of digital releases means a song can reach millions of people before a songwriter’s name is properly attached. For more read here.

 

Artists face steep income decline due to AI
The latest edition of Re|Shaping Policies for Creativity, UNESCO’s flagship monitoring report covering more than 120 countries, warns that generative AI is projected to drive significant income losses for artists by 2028. ‑generated content in global markets. The report stresses that these disruptions are occurring at a pace that outstrips current policy responses, exacerbating inequalities and threatening the livelihoods of millions of cultural workers. Music creators could see their revenues fall by 24 per cent, while those working in the audiovisual sector may lose 21 per cent of their income due to the expanding presence of AI generated content in global markets. The report stresses that these disruptions are occurring at a pace that outstrips current policy responses, exacerbating inequalities and threatening the livelihoods of millions of cultural workers. 

 

AI in the Music Industry: Art or Slop? 
In November 2025, a new song began circulating and gaining traction on TikTok. The song, “I Run” by HAVEN. seemed to become instantly popular in videos and across many social media platforms. You may remember it from your own ‘For You’ page. However, within a few weeks of its release, suspicions started circulating that the song was in fact a product of AI. The vocals, in particular, were compared to singer Jorja Smith. Smith, however, commented under HAVEN.’s profile, confirming it was not her singing. After doing a bit more digging on the profiles, it was revealed by a TikTok user that one of the creators of the song plugged the vocal into Suno, an AI music creation program, to give it a higher tone. A new version of the song was released in December with a real singer, and the controversy surrounding the song quickly fizzled out. But it wasn’t to be the last example of AI-generated music not only being produced but gaining the kind of traction or surpassing that of real artists. Music is an art that is created painstakingly by the artists who have spent years on their vocal skills, performing skills, technical and production abilities, and instrumental skills. AI-generated music is not art. Is it “AI slop” as many are calling it? Maybe. Maybe it’s actually pleasing to listen to. But in a world where AI is in danger of taking over many jobs, let’s not let AI take over the arts. Promoting AI on streaming platforms amounts to stealing from real artists on these music platforms. 

 

Amid rise of AI deepfakes, Spotify to let artists vet releases before they appear on their profiles

Spotify is giving artists a new way to protect their profiles from AI deepfakes and misattribution.
The streaming platform is piloting a new opt-in feature that lets artists review and approve eligible releases before they go live.  The company says protecting artist identity has become “a top priority for 2026,” noting that “the rise of easy-to-produce AI tracks has made the [misattribution] problem worse” across streaming services.  Spotify’s new Artist Profile Protection feature — now in limited beta — has been designed to combat ongoing issues with misattributed releases, whether from metadata errors, artists sharing the same name, or “bad actors” who are “maliciously” attaching music to artists’ profiles.  “Open-access distribution channels have lowered the barrier for independent artists to share music with the world, promote collaborations easily, and transfer music between distributors seamlessly,” says Spotify. “But that openness comes with gaps that bad actors can exploit.”

 

Supreme Court Unanimously Sides With Cox Communications In $1 Billion Major Label Copyright Battle — With Major Implications for Other ISP Battles
In a judgment that will dramatically affect the copyright litigation landscape, the Supreme Court has unanimously held that ISPs, in providing internet access without actively encouraging piracy, aren’t contributorily liable for users’ infringement.  The nation’s highest court handed down the significant decision today, the better part of a decade after a jury ordered Cox Communications to pay $1 billion. Stemming from an infringement complaint levied by the major record labels, the massive verdict specifically concerned the ISP’s alleged failure to address subscribers’ repeat infringement.  Unsurprisingly, the penalty didn’t sit right with Cox, which spearheaded a multi-year appeal. And on the opposite side of the dispute, the majors moved forward with several distinct-but-similar complaints against different ISPs; multiple actions were paused pending the Supreme Court’s decision here.

 

Streaming fraud man who pocketed $8m using hundreds of thousands of AI songs streamed billions of times by bots pleads guilty
The man at the center of what’s been described as the first-ever criminal prosecution for AI-assisted streaming fraud in the United States has pleaded guilty. Michael Smith, of Cornelius, North Carolina, pleaded guilty today (March 19) to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud before U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl in the Southern District of New York.  The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Smith has also agreed to pay over $8 million in forfeiture.  Smith is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Koeltl on July 29.