Welcome to Music Business Worldwide’s weekly round-up – where we make sure you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. 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.
The music industry’s rhythm of announcements is slowing to a lazy summer beat. But there was still enough big news this week to capture MBW’s attention.
That was especially true in the world of music-making, and, particularly DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations).
On Monday (June 23), Splice announced it had struck a new deal with Avid to bring its sample library to ProTools.
Then, a few days later, AI music platform Suno – currently being sued by the major music companies – announced it had acquired WavTool, a DAW which boasts “professional-grade music production features”.
Elsewhere this week, the results for music rightsholders from two key AI copyright cases involving Meta and Anthropic were mixed.
And there was a big announcement from SESAC-owned Rumblefish and that small social media platform, TikTok.
Here’s some of the biggest stories from the past few days…
Suno, the AI music startup currently in a legal battle with major record labels alongside its rival Udio, is foraying into the digital audio workstation (DAW) market with its acquisition of WavTool.
Music creation platform Splice has integrated its sample library with Avid’s Pro Tools digital audio workstation, making millions of loops, sound effects and one-shots available to the artists and producers who use the popular music-making tool.
The idea is to speed up the music-making process by eliminating the need to switch between apps when adding samples to a music project.
The new Pro Tools 2025.6 will allow subscribers to access around 2,500 samples for free, with the rest available through a monthly subscription fee.
For the second time this week, a US federal judge has issued an opinion on whether or not using copyrighted materials without permission to train AI amounts to “fair use” – and the most recent ruling contradicts the previous one.
In an order on Monday (June 23), Judge William Alsuphanded a partial victory to AI company Anthropic in its defense against a lawsuit by three authors, declaring that training AI on copyrighted materials does indeed count as fair use.
Two days later, another judge in the same court – the US District Court for the Northern District of California – declared the exact opposite.
TikTok and CapCut have a new official partner providing music data, licensing, and royalty management services: Rumblefish.
US-based Rumblefish is part of the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), which in turn is owned by SESAC Music Group’s Music Services division.
According to Rumblefish, the new agreement will enable music publishers to directly license both ByteDance platforms.
This arrangement, MBW has confirmed, will enable publishers to ink multi-territory licensing deals with ByteDance, dependent on the geographical scope of each pubco’s rights.
Two US senators have called on the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate Spotify over allegations that its streaming “bundling” practice harms consumers and could “damage” the marketplace and the music royalty system.
