Fifteen years music industry domain experience. Now building Sigil: the governance layer for AI in music.

📈 AI Artist Eddie Dalton Hits UK Sales Chart, Not Streaming Chart

⚡ AI-generated blues artist Eddie Dalton, created by Dallas Little of Crunchy Records, reached number two on the UK Official Singles Sales Chart with 'Another Day Old', though the track did not appear in the main Official Singles Chart or Spotify's UK Daily Top 200.

⚡ Spotify told CMU it is prioritising action on spam and impersonation rather than filtering music by how it was made, while Apple Music and Deezer push for AI labelling at the point of upload.

📑 Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index: Capability Up, Trust Down

⚡ 53% of people worldwide now use genAI, a faster rollout than either the PC or Internet.

⚡ (US data) 73% of AI experts think AI will be good for jobs, but only 23% of the public agree.

⚡ The number of reported AI-related incidents climbed to 362 in 2025, up from 233 the year before.

🤖 iGroove Launches 'Label OS', an AI-Powered Operating System for Indie Labels

⚡ Swiss distributor iGroove, supporting around 1,000 labels and artists, has rebuilt its tech stack around AI to launch Label OS, automating royalty accounting, payments, contracts, splits and deal modelling.

⚡ "A 5 person team with the right AI tools can now outcompete a label with a team of 50."

📊 IFPI Global Music Report 2026: The AI Beats

⚡ Global recorded music revenues hit $31.7 billion in 2025, up 6.4% year on year, with 837 million paid streaming subscribers worldwide.

⚡ IFPI CEO Victoria Oakley confirmed a dozen AI licensing deals announced in the past year, with 20-plus further partnerships between labels, rights holders and AI companies.

⚡ Deezer reported in January 2026 that it receives over 60,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day, with 85% of streams on AI-generated music across its platform in 2025 being fraudulent, up 70% from the prior year.

⚡ The UK government confirmed on the same day that it has ditched plans for a text and data mining copyright exemption that would have let AI firms use copyrighted works without permission.

⚖️ First US Criminal Prosecution for AI Streaming Fraud

⚡ Michael Smith pleaded guilty to the first ever US criminal prosecution for AI-assisted streaming fraud, having used AI to generate hundreds of thousands of fake songs, botted them billions of times across Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music, pocketing $8M+ in royalties.

🇬🇧 UK Government Drops AI Copyright Exception

⚡ Of 11,500 consultation responses, 88% backed requiring licences for AI training on copyrighted works; 3% supported opt-out.

⚡ The opt-out is no longer the government's preferred option.

⚡ UK Music CEO Tom Kiehl called it "a major victory," saying the industry can work "without the constant fear that the fruits of their labour could effectively be taken by AI firms without payment or permission."

⚡ The UK music industry is part of a creative sector contributing £146 billion to the economy.

⚡ No new legislation has been introduced and a future exception has not been formally ruled out.

⚖️ BMG Sues Anthropic / Claude

⚡ BMG has filed a lawsuit against AI developer Anthropic, alleging the company built its $380 billion valuation by illegally scraping and torrenting nearly four million copyrighted musical compositions from "pirate libraries" to train its Claude models.

⚡ The complaint accuses Anthropic of "egregious law-breaking" by intentionally stripping identifying metadata from these works and generating infringing lyric replicas, seeking a permanent injunction and significant statutory damages.

⚖️ Suno CEO = 'Both Innovator and Enemy'

⚡ The Wall Street Journal profiled Suno CEO Mikey Shulman as both the future of music and enemy number one; Warner settled, Sony, GEMA, Koda and two indie artist class actions remain live.

⚖️ 8 Music Industry Bodies Tell Court Anthropic Has No Excuse for Not Licensing Copyrighted Music

⚡ US RIAA, NMPA, A2IM, SoundExchange, SONA, BMAC, the Music Artists Coalition and the Artist Rights Alliance filed a court submission arguing that Anthropic, valued at $380bn, has the means and precedent to license music for AI training, and that a ruling against it could set the legal template for every AI copyright case the music industry brings.

🎵 ElevenLabs Quietly Launches AI Music App to Rival Suno and Udio

⚡ ElevenLabs released ElevenMusic on iOS, seven free tracks per day via text prompt with a $9.99/month Pro tier, backed by a $500M Series C at an $11bn valuation, with no training data licensing disclosures made for the app.