CMU Digest is our weekly round-up of the most interesting music business news stories from the last seven days.Â
This week: Spotify has found its big boy boots and wants everyone to know that it will dictate the future of streaming rather than kowtowing to the demands of major labels; in the US, the breakneck pace of AI development is keeping Shira Perlmutter, the boss of the US Copyright Office, awake at night as she warns copyright reform is inevitable; zombie-Unicorn Utopia Music has been sent to the glue factory as the Swiss courts reject its bankruptcy appeal – and now shareholders want to sue, and employees are asking who signed off on doctored payslips; touts on Viagogo are listing thousands of tickets they don’t own in an “industrial scale” ticketing scam; and songwriter collecting society PRS is suing Live Nation in the UK over the way it breaks out the costs of VIP tickets
ICYMI: Hipgnosis is back, groaning with cash and looking to go shopping; Pershing Squareâs Bill Ackman wants Universal Music to ditch the Dutch stock market; the UK government has told the live sector to introduce a ticket levy âswiftlyâ before it steps in; German collecting society GEMA has sued OpenAI for copyright infringement; Live Nation CFO Joe Berchtold has said the company is hopeful that Donald Trump‘s electoral win will mean the DOJ is less likely to break up the company