Prof Snyder's Music Biz News

While SUNO is portrayed by many as the evil AI music company training AI on copyrighted music without permission, traditional music schools worldwide, like the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami and the National Institute of Education in Singapore, embrace it. Meanwhile students at Berklee College of Music say AI is ruining their education. Other institutions like Syracuse University...

2 Live Crew just lost the copyrights to their records. Copyright law states that they could get their music back from the labels after 35 years if they follow the instructions, and in 2024 they did. But they just lost on appeal by the label, not because of usual 'work-for-hire' issues, but rather because one of the members who had died, filed bankruptcy decades ago. This is a first. Musicians fili...

"Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) have officially signed a licensing agreement that will allow “AI-enabled superfans” to produce AI covers and remixes of participating UMG songs." Up until now a song was created to listen to, dance to. An artist's official release has been the definitive version of a song. Listeners could interpret it differently, but the recording itself remained fixed. So...

"He will exist digitally as himself for as long as we have computers." The emerging world of “deadbots”—AI-powered digital recreations of deceased individuals that can speak, answer questions, and interact using a person’s voice, personality, and digital history. With reports that Sharon and Jack Osbourne are developing an interactive AI version of Ozzy Osbourne, the music industry may be entering...

(May is Mental Health Awareness Month) It's not just Schumann, Monk, Cobain and Adele. It's the 1st Chair Violinist in your local orchestra, the flamenco guitarist in the Mexican restaurant, the roadie setting up the PA, the person on the rigs hanging lights, the piano major in college, the choir director at church, etc. Out of 100,000, 138 of them will commit suicide, The national average is 32 a...

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain. (That's why I can use a screen grab and not worry about copyright infringement.) But Hal Roach made the zombies green and so created a derivative that he could copyright and make $ licensing. BMG's announcement about Synch + brought to light how agentic AI is replacing music supervisors and song pluggers. "AI tools analyze BMG’s rep...

For the last 14 years, the Big 3, the holy trinity SONY, WMG, and UMG have dominated the music industry, devouring all of the other labels, and scooping up music catalogs. BMG, once a major label itself, though seemingly disappeared, has been kept alive by its parent company Bertlesmann, and it has sprung back to life joining with the old jazz label, Concord. Both have been on a feeding frenzy of...

The 1st AI Music Chart (versus Billboard charts) The 1st Performing rights Organization (versus ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) The 1st AI Streaming platform (versus Spotify) Just three of the parallel music organizations in the rapidly expanding AI music industry. (This is not an endorsement of AI Music...just reporting what I see) "A new music industry is being built—with its own rules, its own economics, an...

This is the 3rd and last podcast linking 3 music biz events that I believe marks a change in access to the music markets. Indie distributors and labels being swallowed by majors, major labels and Spotify now allies working together to create an answer to AI music (and market control), and DDEX becoming the required meta data required for access to the new music ecosystem. DDEX has added AI descrip...

Part 2 of 3: Once they competed, now they work together for the first time to create a new music ecosystem built around AI. Spotify, WMG, UMG, SONY Music, Believe, and Merlin joined forces in reaction to AI. The labels have licensed their music to Spotify to be used in Spotify's new AI tools being developed. All in theory to better serve musicians and copyright holders, except of course those who...

A brilliant (my opinion) world-wide promotional campaign by Taylor Swift for 'Life of a Showgirl' became tainted as her fans began to notice videos with 'A bartender's hand passing through a napkin. A disappearing coat hanger. A carousel horse with two heads.' Sure signs of AI residue, and fans weren't/aren't happy. Will Smith, T Swift, and even Katy Perry, (at least their promo teams), are learni...

This is Part 1 of 3 podcasts of recent events that I believe are connected: 1. The Majors Swallow the Indies 2. Major Labels and Spotify's Agreement for Total Domination 3. New DDEX Standard for AI Influence in Music May Affect Music Uploads and Streaming Universal Music Group, and the other majors, are buying indie music companies at a rapid pace. CDBaby, once seen as an alternative distributor f...

Agentic AI. "AI that doesn’t solely rely on human prompts nor require human oversight." Meta (Facebook) just bought the 1st all AI social media network, Moltbook. AI agents interact and talk to each other, even creating new religions for AI bots, humans aren't welcome. Agentic AI agents are already creating music (a brief example is at the end of the video), new genres, and they're uploading to Sp...

Ticket Scalpers for a Charles Dickens Reading Tour were called 'Sidewalk 'Men'. The term scalper was first used in a book about the railroad. The first bot scalper was used for U2's Vertigo Tour. Now Ticketmaster/Live Nation are in court (now settled) because of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket fiasco, the first time AI was used to scalp tickets for resale. AI Scalping Bots have learned, and cont...

While AI detection tech is improving, SONY announced it has the tech that can identify the original music in AI generated songs by percentages...“30% of the music used is by the Beatles and 10% is by Queen.” Should artists begin the celebration? It may be too late! The Internet is being divided up by the record labels into 'walled gardens,' charging tech companies to slip into the gardens and trai...

A historical dive into the demise of live local music. (Note: This is not an endorsement of drinking) Looking back to the glory days when band's were prolific and there were plenty of venues to play in, packed with fanatical music lovers. Small local venues were a proving ground for emerging artists, where they could build a following from high school age, and expand the boundaries of music perfor...

I ask anti-AI musicians if they had ever had actually checked out what it's capable of, most say no. So I decided to demonstrate how over 70+ million Alexa subscribers can now ask Alexa to write a song, by just talking to an Alexa enabled speaker. You'll hear the conversation between me and Alexa as we discussed creating a Valentine song for my cat, Jonesy. Listen to the song. Do you think it's AI...

After music publishers lost the 1st round against Anthropic and Claude last year, they're back with a vengeance! Anthropic failed to reveal it had used BitTorrent to download millions of lyrics, songbooks, etc. Even though they did inform the book publishers who had also sued and won 1.5 Billion dollars. The judge wouldn't let them bring that into the case though. They had sued for a paltry $75 Mi...

ElevenLabs and Spotify just released an album, The 11 Album featuring Liza Minnelli, Art Garfunkel, and others all using AI in some way. "This is the first known direct deal between Spotify and an AI company to easily and directly distribute AI songs on the streaming platform" ...and it won't be the last. This led to my learning more about ElevenLabs (created 2023), the large cloned voice market,...

Bandcamp is be promoted as the first major music company to ban AI music. While Humans rejoice, there's more here than meets the eye. I do a deep-dive into Bandcamp's recent history, Songtradr - its owner, questions about the new policy, and what the CEO actually thinks about AI and music (you'll be surprised)!

This is for anyone who records music, and is looking for a tax write-off. The HITS (Help Independent Tracks Succeed) Act was passed last summer (2025), but it hasn't been publicized like No Tax on Tips. (Side note...the tips you get at gigs don't count!). This Act allows you to write-off any recording costs, up to $150,000, you may have had in 2025, but only 2025. So if you need a tax write-off, s...

Music historians will note that 2025 was the year of another major change in music production and composition. The official beginning of musical 'slop.' When Artificial Intelligence began to elbow its way into music (and every other thing), and replaced songwriters playing guitars, with music designers writing prompts. 2026 will probably be the year when the shift in the Matrix will settle, and th...

Merriam-Webster made the word 'slop' the 2025 Word of the Year. It refers to AI music as being garbage, but "Every Media Revolution Breeds Rubbish and Art." EDM, Rap, Hillbilly, Rock, Bubblegum, all have been considered to be trash...the slop of the day. 97% of people can't differentiate what is and isn't AI generated. One writer wrote that while 90% of AI music is garbage, but 10% is 'tolerable.'...

A snapshot, using data, comparing the worlds of traditional musicians and AI designers. The number of people using AI music tools is immense, far outnumbering traditional musicians by millions. 3 types of Music Creators: Traditional Musicians AI Music Designers Hybrids There is a lot of tension between trad musicians and AI designers. But, though probably a lot of traditional musicians like myself...

The frequency of music companies + AI announcements is increasing exponentially, daily. It's overwhelming and almost impossible to keep up. The Big Question: How will musicians be paid?! These are my guesses, hypotheticals, and conjectures based on what I've read. We're starting to get hints how the pennies might trickle down. The labels say don't worry kid, we'll take care of you. The only certai...