Midweek Music Update: Wednesday 15 October 2025
Welcome to this week’s round-up of news, commentary and industry announcements that you may have missed from the past week.
If you are looking for advice in relation to any of the issues mentioned, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Legal updates
Drake's defamation lawsuit against UMG over Kendrick Lamar diss track has been dismissed (Music Week)
Judge denies motions by UMP, Concord and ABKCO to amend their claims against Anthropic (Billboard)
In the news
Netflix and WMG join forces to create shows based on WMG's artists and songs (Music Week)
Taylor Swift's 'The Life of a Showgirl' debuts with 4.002 million equivalent album units, smashing records (Billboard)
BMG and Spotify have entered into a direct US publishing licencing agreement (Music Week)
Warner Music UK's COO Isabel Garvey steps down (Music Week)
MTV to discontinue its UK music channels from next year (BBC)
Spotify integrates with ChatGPT to give the user tailored recommendations (MBW)
Live music proves popular amongst Gen Z's who spend more on live music than the average fan (Music Week)
WME opts all its clients out of their likeness being used in Open AI's video generation tool, Sora (MBW)
Industry changes/ developments
Features and commentary
Feature on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (Guardian)
Dame Caroline Dinenage, Chair of the UK’s Culture Media and Sport, talks AI regulations (Music Ally)
Grassroots music venues move to a not-for-profit model (Music Week)
Daniel Ek steps back as Spotify CEO, here's what you may have missed (MBW)
The arguments for and against Virgin's Downtown Music acquisition (MusicAlly)
Catalogue Investments drives industry growth but non-ABS funding dips (DigitalMusic News)
