Topic
The sale of insolvent Native Instruments took effect on 1 July 2026: inMusic took the core business and Boris FX took iZotope. NI says existing licences are unaffected, but its products need online activation and its new owner has already cut staff, so producers should plan for the licence server, not the press release.
Industryvia Chambers and Partners (GÖRG press release)
Spotify's reported "Music Pro" superfan add-on, at up to $5.99 a month extra, has still not launched in the West. Instead, Reserved went live in the US on 18 June 2026: two tickets per tour held for top fans, inside ordinary Premium, through Live Nation. Here is what is confirmed, what is only reported, and what artists can actually do.
Industryvia Spotify
Kenshi Yonezu's anime film theme "IRIS OUT" topped Billboard JAPAN's first-half 2026 chart after reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Global 200, the highest yet for a Japanese-language song. Japan's trade ministry puts the music industry's 2024 overseas income at ¥72.58bn, and most of the money it can trace arrives as streams, not sync fees. The lesson for artists anywhere is that a placement is where discovery starts, and the money comes later.
Industryvia Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)
TIDAL now lets independent artists in the US sell tracks and albums through TIDAL Upload, with payments run by Square and 90% of each sale going to the artist before processing fees and taxes. Uploads earn no streaming royalties, so for a DIY artist on TIDAL a sale is the main way to get paid. On fees alone it undercuts Bandcamp for newer sellers, but it is US-only, digital-only and has no fan community yet.
Industryvia Block
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.
Industryvia Spotify Newsroom
One email a week: the music-tech and AI-in-music news that mattered, and what we think about it.