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Tencent Music lets AI songs onto QQ Music, but puts fully AI tracks on a different royalty model
Tencent Music says more than 10 million people use its AI music production platform, and its tools can publish a generated song to QQ Music in one click. On its Q4 call it said songs made wholly by AI get a different royalty-sharing model, while AI-assisted songs sung by humans stay on the traditional one. We haven't seen a big Western streaming service draw that line in public.
12 May 2026AIvia Tencent Music Entertainment Group
Brazil and Mexico on Spotify, by the royalty numbers: R$2bn, MX$8.2bn and who actually gets paid
Spotify says Brazilian artists generated about R$2bn on the service in 2025 and Mexican artists about MX$8.2bn. Both numbers are real growth, but they measure money paid to rights holders, not to artists, and Mexico's headline "more than half from abroad" is close to Spotify's own global average.
11 May 2026Industryvia Spotify Newsroom
Akai's MPC XL and MPC Sample: the standalone beat machine at both ends of the price range
Akai launched a $2,899 flagship MPC in January and a $399 battery-powered sampler in March, and two months later its parent inMusic agreed to buy Native Instruments. The two machines show how Akai is building a ladder into one software platform, and the NI deal raises the stakes on what runs on it.
9 May 2026Releasesvia inMusic Brands
Coca-Cola denies its ad copied Johnny Cash's voice in an ELVIS Act case with no AI in it
Coca-Cola has answered the Johnny Cash estate's lawsuit over a college-football ad sung by a Cash tribute performer, admitting the ad uses "a male singing voice" but denying it infringes. The most prominent case yet under Tennessee's AI-era voice law, as far as we know, turns on a human soundalike, which is exactly why session singers and tribute acts should follow it.
8 May 2026Artist rightsvia CourtListener
"Blue dot fever": why big US tours are being cut, and who pays when they are
Pussycat Dolls, Meghan Trainor, Zayn and Post Malone with Jelly Roll all cut US dates this spring as unsold seats showed up as blue dots on Ticketmaster maps. Live Nation says demand is at record levels, so the real story is which tours were sized and priced past their audience, and who absorbs the loss when they fold.
7 May 2026Industryvia Live Nation Entertainment

Tencent Music lets AI songs onto QQ Music, but puts fully AI tracks on a different royalty model

Brazil and Mexico on Spotify, by the royalty numbers: R$2bn, MX$8.2bn and who actually gets paid

Akai's MPC XL and MPC Sample: the standalone beat machine at both ends of the price range

Coca-Cola denies its ad copied Johnny Cash's voice in an ELVIS Act case with no AI in it

"Blue dot fever": why big US tours are being cut, and who pays when they are

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