Click Headlines to read more of the latest news!

US appeals court overturns BMI rate hike on concert promoters, ruling rates were ‘unreasonable’
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Tuesday (February 24) ruled that the rates imposed on concert promoters in Judge Louis Stanton’s 2023 decision – which more than doubled the royalty rate songwriters receive from live concerts in the US – were “unreasonable”, and vacated the ruling.
BMI had celebrated the original decision as a “massive victory” that ended “decades of below-market rates for songwriters, composers and publishers in the live concert industry.”  The ruling gave songwriters a 138% rate increase, from around 0.21% to 0.5% of concert revenue. The previous rate had been set at 0.3% for venues under 10,000 seats and 0.15% for larger venues.  However, the appeals court found that Judge Stanton erred on multiple fronts.  You can read the decision in full here.

 

Supreme Court Declines to Review a Monumental AI Copyright Decision — Leaving the ‘Human Authorship’ Standard In Place
The Supreme Court has opted against hearing a case concerning an attempt to copyright AI-generated artwork – thereby leaving in place an appellate court’s determination that the Copyright Act “requires all eligible work to be authored in the first instance by a human being.”  That cert rejection surfaced (along with a number of others) in a Supreme Court order list yesterday, just shy of one year after an appeals court unanimously ruled against the appellant. Said appellant, computer scientist Stephen Thaler, initially sued in 2022 after the Copyright Office rejected his 2018 registration application for an AI image entitled “A Recent Entrance to Paradise.” In its decision, the appeals court pointed to all manner of Copyright Act elements – required signatures, protections tied to the creator’s lifespan, an inheritance provision, and more – implying human authorship as a condition for registration.  “Because many of the Copyright Act’s provisions make sense only if an author is a human being, the best reading of the Copyright Act is that human authorship is required for registration,” Circuit Judge Patricia Millett summed up.What about protections for human-recorded covers of AI music? Or human-captured photographs of AI art? Not to mention situations where registrants “borrow” heavily from AI and then claim authorship.  Well, the appeals court acknowledged a lack of firm answers to these and similar questions; Thaler’s case, the opinion spelled out, only addressed AI’s being listed as the sole author of a work. “Those line-drawing disagreements over how much artificial intelligence contributed to a particular human author’s work are neither here nor there in this case,” Judge Millett wrote. “That is because Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the sole author of the work before us, and it is undeniably a machine, not a human being.”

Suno is a feral pig rampaging through a well-tended garden, say creator organizations

A coalition of music creator advocacy organizations has borrowed the incident as the starting point for a stinging open letter about Suno, the AI music generation platform that trained its models on copyright protected recordings scraped from the internet without permission. The letter - signed by the US Music Artists Coalition, the European Composer And Songwriter Alliance, the Trichordist’s David Lowery, artist and Duke University practitioner-in-residence Tift Merritt, producer and ECR Music Group president Blake Morgan, North Music Group’s Abby North, and Chris Castle of the Artist Rights Institute - was published on Music Technology Policy on Sunday, and asks music fans, and the music industry, to “Just say no to Suno”. And, even worse, “every time artists’ creations are used by the platform, those creations have just unwittingly been contributed to the creation of endless derivatives of artists’ own work, not to mention AI slop, with limited or no remuneration back to the human creators”. There is another problem for anyone using Suno to make music. The US Copyright Office has been clear that generative AI outputs are largely ineligible for copyright protection. AI-generated music also “dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists”, the letter argues. The open letter asks the music community to “say no to Suno”. The music industry’s executives, one by one, appear to be saying “yes”. Dealin' with the Devil!

 

Who Are the Biggest Music Pirates in the Land? United States Trade Representative Releases Latest ‘Notorious Markets Report’
The United States Trade Representative (USTR) released its annual Notorious Markets Report, revealing digital and physical markets where widespread copyright piracy is taking place, and identifying the biggest offenders.  With the United States co-hosting the FIFA World Cup, we are particularly attuned to sales of counterfeit merchandise and illicit streaming of sports broadcasts,” said Ambassador Jamieson Greer. “Not only do such activities amount to intellectual property theft, they also harm consumers, such as through purchasing substandard goods that can present health or safety concerns or downloading malware when visiting sites engaged in these activities.” The 2025 Notorious Markets List highlights 37 online markets and 32 physical markets that are reported to engage in or facilitate substantial trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy. The Notorious Markets List reveals both widespread and evolving trends in counterfeiting and piracy, and identifies a wide variety of sites, including e-commerce and social commerce sites, as well as “bulletproof” hosting providers, streaming sites, or other piracy-enabling sites for copying and distributing content. Cyberlockers make up the bulk of the notorious markets on the list, while popular names of old like RapidShare and MegaUpload have been taken down—like a hydra several others have popped up to fill the gaps. Also on the list are several ecommerce sites responsible for creating counterfeit merch and goods, especially on China’s version of TikTok, Douyin.

 

Key Adjustments
Making some basic changes to pitch, tempo or chord voicing can often help get a stalled song idea back on track. You’ve had the framework for a new song kicking around your recorder for quite some time, but you can’t seem to bring it to fruition. And after weeks or months of listening but not progressing, you’re quickly growing tired of the entire track—everything in it now sounds stale and uninspiring. What began as a promising idea runs the risk of being indefinitely sidelined.  Sometimes it just takes some basic adjustments to pitch, tempo or texture to get a stalled song back on track. Here are some alteration suggestions you can try during the recording process, whether it’s using a capo or re-tuning a guitar, transposing a keyboard chord progression, raising or lowering a track’s pitch, plus other ideas such as guitar alternatives, keyboard changes, tempo shifts, pitch, and more.

 

Legendary Record Promoter ROGERS RAMSEY CORKILL Passes

Texas Radio Hall of Famer Roger Ramsey Corkill died suddenly last week, according to a social media post from his son, Nick, who wrote, "He lived a full and beautiful life, what a remarkable run it was." After working radio jobs in Corpus Christi and Virgina Beach – and as a TV weather forecaster – he transitioned to record promotion, first with Mercury, then MCA, where he was Southwest Regional Dir./Promotion from 1979-1998 before launching Roger Ramsey Promotions. Read tributes to the man nicknamed the Ramjet on his Facebook page here. Watch his Texas Radio Hall of Fame induction video and acceptance speech from 2015 here. A celebration of life will be held in the coming weeks.

 

Artist representatives launch ‘Say No To Suno’ campaign: ‘AI slop dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived.’
A coalition of artist representatives has published an open letter calling on the music community to reject AI music generator Suno.  In an open letter titled ‘Say No to Suno’, the artist reps described the company as a “brazen smash and grab” platform, accusing it of using “unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists’ work”. Published Monday (February 23) on the Music Technology Policy blog, the letter was signed by figures including Ron Gubitz, Executive Director of the Music Artist Coalition; Helienne Lindvall, songwriter and President of the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance; and Chris Castle of the Artist Rights Institute.  Other signatories included artist David C. Lowery; artist and Artist Rights Alliance board member Tift Merritt; Blake Morgan, artist, producer, and President of ECR Music Group; and Abby North, President of North Music Group.The letter arrives as Suno continues to face copyright infringement lawsuits from major music companies and rights organizations. The RIAA filed suit against both Suno and rival Udio in mid-2024, acting on behalf of all three majors, alleging “mass infringement” of copyright.

 

Irving Azoff Lambasts YouTube Over Billboard Charts Pullout, Says the Platform ‘Pays Music Creators — Artists and Songwriters — Less Than Any Other Comparable Digital Service’
Irving Azoff is once again lambasting YouTube – this time over the Google subsidiary’s much-publicized Billboard charts pullout. Meanwhile, the firmly worded criticism has arrived amid substantial subscriber growth for YouTube Music.  The music mogul just recently took aim at YouTube, and specifically its well-documented exit from Billboard’s charts. As many are aware, Azoff has been calling out elements of the platform’s business model for a while now. “When YouTube starts paying artists and songwriters on par with other music services, then its streams can be counted the same as Apple, Spotify, etc. Until then, we should all be happy to let YouTube take its toys and go home,” the Oak View Group co-founder proceeded. 

 

Apple revives the Apple Music Connect name — this time as a B2B promo platform for labels and distributors
When Apple Music Connect launched alongside Apple Music in 2015, it was pitched as a direct artist-to-fan social channel embedded within the app.  It was quietly shut down in 2018, after struggling to gain traction.
Now, Apple has resurrected the name — but this time, Apple Music Connect serves as a professional toolkit for labels and distributors to promote content, pitch releases to Apple’s editorial team, upload press photos, and coordinate marketing materials. Apple has set a minimum of 10 days before release for full consideration and seven days for late submissions. Apple explained what editorial teams want in a pitch, such as rollout plans, key media moments, focus tracks, not artist biographies.

 

BMI Responds to Second Circuit Opinion on Live Concert Rates
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its opinion regarding Live Nation, AEG and the North American Concert Promoters Association’s (NACPA) appeal of BMI’s rate court decision that increased the royalties paid to songwriters, composers and publishers by the live concert industry. The Court returned the matter to Judge Louis L. Stanton to provide further explanation of a reasonable rate owed to BMI. While we disagree with many aspects of the Court’s opinion, we were pleased that it confirmed our position that free market rates can be considered when determining the compensation owed to music creators. Even the Court suggested a range of potential reasonable rates that would still be 50 – 80 % higher than our prior rate. That said, we are unwavering in our belief that our songwriters, composers and publishers deserve more, and we are evaluating all of our options moving forward, including seeking further appellate review.

 

Music distributor Alliance Entertainment says it sold over 16m vinyl records and 13m CDs in 2025
US-based physical entertainment distributor and wholesaler Alliance Entertainment has reported quarterly growth in its vinyl and CD businesses as part of its financial results for calendar Q4 2025.  For calendar Q4 (the company’s fiscal Q2 2026) ended December 31, 2025, the Florida-headquartered firm posted a 3% year-over-year increase in vinyl record revenue, which it attributed to “continued consumer demand for collectible and limited-edition releases”. On a unit (volume) basis, Alliance said it sold 16.3 million vinyl records over the 12 months ended December 31, 2025, a 5% increase (see below), while CEO Jeff Walker confirmed on an earnings call the company sold over 13 million CDs in 2025.Alliance’s quarterly update follows the recent publication of stats on the wider US market by research firm Luminate, whose Year-End Music Report showed that US vinyl sales increased for the 19th consecutive year in 2025.  Vinyl unit sales in the world’s largest recorded music market grew 8.6% YoY to 47.9 million, according to Luminate, with more than 4 in 10 vinyl records sold at indie record stores. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 CDs were purchased through e-commerce sites.