Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.
If, like many of us, you took an opportunity to unplug this holiday season, here’s a chance to catch up with music business news – with five of the most meaningful industry headlines from the past couple of weeks.
Long story short: There have been multiple notable developments related to Universal Music Group.
First, on December 23, UMG and Amazon Music announced a new licensing deal that moves forward with UMG’s vision for “Streaming 2.0“: More segmentation of streaming subscribers, higher ARPU in part due to higher subscription rates, and a more “artist-centric” approach to royalty payouts.
Meanwhile, on Thursday (January 2), we learned that Bill Ackman‘s Pershing Square, one of UMG’s largest shareholders, has closed out a finite-life fund. As a result, Pershing Square is handing over some of its UMG shares – worth 2.6% of UMG’s outstanding stock – to private investors.
Elsewhere, a trio of music publishers, including UMG, this week came to a preliminary agreement with Anthropic, developer of the Claude AI Chatbot, over ‘guardrails’ designed to prevent the AI platform from training on UMG-represented lyrics.
UMG, Concord, and ABKCO sued Anthropic in 2023, alleging that Claude was blatantly ripping off copyrighted song lyrics. The case continues.
Outside of UMG news… Duke University’s law school looked at the music IP entering the public domain in the US in 2025, which includes 1924 recordings such as George Gershwin‘s Rhapsody in Blue, Al Jolson‘s California Here I Come, and Jelly Roll Morton‘s Shreveport Stomp.
Finally, the New Year brought with it a new list of Honours in the UK, including some for prominent music industry personalities. Among the Brits with new titles this year are Atlantic Records EVP Austin Daboh, Sony Music VP Jackie Hyde, and broadcaster Jasmine Dotiwala.
Here’s what happened while you were drinking eggnog…
1) UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP AND AMAZON MUSIC INK NEW DEAL, INCLUDING EXCLUSIVE CONTENT… AND WITH ‘STREAMING 2.0’ AT ITS HEART
Universal Music Group (UMG) and Amazon Music jointly announced a renewed worldwide licensing agreement on December 23.
According to a press release, the deal encompasses an “expanded global relationship that will enable further innovation, exclusive content with UMG artists, and advancement of artist-centric principles including increased fraud protection“.
The PR claims that the deal will ensure that “UMG’s artists achieve their commercial potential through [Amazon Music’s] continued product enhancements and exclusive content that elevate authentic engagement between artists and fans“.
Speaking in a statement today, Universal Music Group CEO & Chairman Sir Lucian Grainge commented: “We are very excited to advance our long-standing, excellent partnership with Amazon Music that marks a new era in streaming — Streaming 2.0…”
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management (PSCM) is closing out an investment fund that held a stake in Universal Music Group, and is distributing 47 million shares of the music company to the fund’s co-investors.
The news came the same day that Pershing Square Holdings, a closed-ended fund owned by PSCM, announced it had received regulatory approval to delist from the Amsterdam Euronext stock exchange.
Pershing Square Holdings controlled 10.25% of UMG’s stock at the end of 2023, according to UMG’s annual report for the year. The 47 million shares that Pershing Square is distributing amount to 2.6% of UMG’s outstanding shares. After the distribution, the investment company will still hold 140 million shares, or 7.6% of UMG, Pershing Square said in a statement on Thursday.
“The PSVII funds have elected to distribute UMG stock to their limited partners rather than cash because we believe that UMG stock is substantially undervalued at its current share price, and the tax-free stock distribution enables our limited partners to continue to own UMG shares,” Pershing Square said…
On January 1, 2025, thousands of copyrighted works from 1929 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1924. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon in the United States.
This year’s compositions include classic songs such as Singin’ in the Rain and Ain’t Misbehavin’.
On the recordings side, according to Duke University Law School, tracks now “open for legal reuse” include a run of tracks performed in 1924. They include George Gershwin performing Rhapsody in Blue, Jelly Roll Morton playing Shreveport Stomp, and an early recording from contralto and civil rights icon Marian Anderson… (Duke University Law School)
Universal Music Group has secured something of a breakthrough in its case against Anthropic – the generative AI platform that is being sued by UMG (plus Concord and ABKCO) over alleged copyright infringement.
The plaintiffs in the case accuse Anthropic, which has absorbed USD $8 billion of investment from Amazon, of ripping off copyright-protected lyrics to train its AI chatbot, Claude.
In the latest development, Anthropic has committed to implementing already-existing “guardrails” to prevent its platform from ingesting lyrics represented by the plaintiffs. Importantly, according to a California legal filing, these “guardrails” will be applied to future tech developments and products from the company.
The music rightsholders’ lawsuit against Anthropic continues despite the new agreement. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “the court is expected to issue a ruling in the coming months on whether to issue [a] preliminary injunction that would bar Anthropic from training future models on lyrics owned by the publishers”… (The Hollywood Reporter)
