Week of October 11–17, 2026
Welcome to The Unlimited Brief, our weekly roundup of independent music and music industry news. This week we start with the music: five artists from this week’s coverage at Indie Music Discovery. Then the business, where streaming services laid out what they want to pay songwriters, Taylor Swift went after her own voice, Universal made another round of cuts, and YouTube Music and Deezer gave listeners new ways to spot AI music.
Missed last week? Read the Oct 4–10 edition.
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Indie Music Discoveries
Rose Wollman, “Alabanza”. Violist Rose Wollman performs a setting of Martín Espada’s poem “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100,” composed by Francisco Cortés-Álvarez. It’s about September 11, told through the ordinary workers who went to their jobs that morning. Wollman plays viola, with soprano Maria Brea and pianist Dror Baitel. It’s part of her forthcoming album, Becoming America.
Willem James Cowan, What Should Happen Next? The London, Ontario folk artist’s album is about heartbreak, loss and starting over. Most of it was written after he moved back in with his parents in early 2023. The standout, “Choke,” was written in the days after a breakup, and he built much of the production from his own apartment over about six months.
When In Rome, “Don’t Stare at the Sun”. The English synth-pop duo are back with a single from their forthcoming album Illumination. It was sparked by a health warning about the sun that struck the band as, in their words, pretty scary and ridiculous. The result is an upbeat blend of synth-pop and new wave.
princefarming, Bleeding Star. princefarming is the solo project of Michael Wynn, and this EP goes back more than fifteen years. It pairs two early songs, remixed by Nixon Boyd, with a previously unreleased title track, all originally recorded at home on GarageBand. The lead single, “You Win The Trophy,” is a cautionary tale about chasing a dream in Los Angeles.
Dwayne Gretzky, Dwayne’s World Vol. 1. After sixteen years and more than a thousand shows, the Canadian party band has released its first live covers album. It collects twenty performances from their YouTube series, recorded live with no overdubs on a recreated Wayne’s World basement set.
More new music this week: Brayden Bell, “Biggest Fan” · ARK IDENTITY, “SIT” · Maya Killtron, “Touch This Body” · David Jane, Ambleside
Fine Print: Rights, Law and Policy
The streaming rate fight: what each side wants
Last week we told you that the Phonorecords V proceeding, which sets the mechanical royalty rates streaming services pay songwriters and publishers, was under way. This week the services’ proposals for 2028 through 2032 became public, and they’re far apart from what songwriters want.
- Spotify wants to keep today’s rates, including the 15.35 percent headline rate, for all five years, and calls the last deal a success (Digital Music News).
- Apple, Pandora and Google also propose keeping the 15.35 percent rate, with a few smaller changes.
- Amazon goes the other way. It wants to cut the headline rate to 13.4 percent for non-bundle services and lower its per-subscriber rate from $1.10 to 96 cents (Music Business Worldwide).
- The NMPA and NSAI want the greatest of 20 percent of service revenue, 40 percent of total content costs, $2.40 per subscriber, or four-tenths of a cent per play, adjusted for inflation.
The hearing is set for March 22, 2027.
And this week the fight got personal. NMPA chief David Israelite called Amazon the worst offender among the services, saying its 13.4 percent headline rate is less than songwriters were paid a decade ago. He also objects to its proposals on bundles, late fees and how revenue is defined (Digital Music News).
Taylor Swift is going after her own voice
Swift’s company has filed trademark applications in the UK, the EU and Australia, covering the spoken phrase “Hey, it’s Taylor Swift” and a stage photo of her with a pink guitar. It follows three U.S. applications filed in April. In Australia, the application has been accepted and is in its opposition period, but nothing is registered anywhere yet. One trademark attorney points out that registering a celebrity’s voice has never been tested in court (Music Business Worldwide).
Universal versus DistroKid
UMG sued DistroKid in September, alleging it floods streaming services with AI-generated tracks and distributes infringing ones, with about a thousand UMG recordings copied and nearly two thousand infringing recordings identified. This week DistroKid confirmed it has removed some tracks in response, which it described as a very small number. It disputes UMG’s allegations (Music Business Worldwide).
Live Nation answers the FTC, and the FTC sues a broker
The FTC and seven states say Live Nation and Ticketmaster let brokers exceed ticket limits. On Tuesday, October 13, Live Nation filed its answer, calling the suit misguided and pointing to more than a billion dollars spent fighting scalpers since 2010. A judge denied its motion to dismiss on September 28. The two sides don’t agree on a trial date: April 2028 for the plaintiffs, October 2028 for Live Nation (Digital Music News).
Meanwhile, the FTC filed a BOTS Act suit of its own against a ticket broker, REPS & Company. It alleges that since 2022 the broker used thousands of accounts registered under other people’s names, proxy services and multi-session browsers to get around purchase limits. The FTC says REPS spent more than $1.3 billion on over 18.5 million tickets. These are allegations (Digital Music News).
Royalty Check: Following the Money
Universal is cutting again
More executives are leaving under UMG’s cost-cutting program, which targets 250 million euros in annual savings, around $270 million, and runs through 2027. Def Jam chairman Tunji Balogun is leaving by year-end. Polydor UK’s Ben Mortimer is out, and so are two A&R presidents at Interscope Geffen A&M and the head of UMG UK’s artist and strategy team, Rebecca Allen, after 27 years. Republic Records chief Jim Roppo has been named vice chairman of Warner Records Group. UMG’s profit margin in the second quarter slipped to 20.5 percent from 22.7 percent a year earlier (Music Business Worldwide; also Digital Music News).
A new CEO for Pipeline
Pipeline, a music financing platform that describes itself as backed by $200 million, launched in January through Matt Spetzler’s investment firm, Jamen Capital, and has named Ben Katovsky as CEO. Katovsky most recently ran Recognition Music Group, and before that he was CEO of Hipgnosis Song Management. Pipeline has partnered with Merlin to offer advances against digital royalties, and bought Clarty Partners in March. Who’s behind the $200 million hasn’t been named (Music Business Worldwide).
Two publishing deals
- Primary Wave and The Verve Pipe. Primary Wave has taken an interest in the publishing and recorded rights of Brian Vander Ark and The Verve Pipe. The agreement covers all of the band’s songs except last year’s album Reconciled, plus Vander Ark’s solo albums. That includes the band’s platinum-certified album Villains, home of “The Freshmen.” Terms weren’t disclosed (Digital Music News).
- Warner Chappell and My Chemical Romance. Warner Chappell has signed the band to an exclusive worldwide administration agreement covering its publishing catalog, including future songs. Terms weren’t disclosed (Digital Music News).
Headlines: AI Music Is Getting Labels
YouTube Music has started labeling songs made primarily with generative AI, using disclosures from music partners and its own detection. Partners choose fully, partly or no Gen AI, and human-performed songs using Auto-Tune or AI mastering count as no Gen AI (Music Business Worldwide).
Deezer is adding a toggle that removes fully AI-generated music from search results, with a global rollout planned before the end of 2026. Deezer says it receives nearly 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day, which on peak days is more than half its new uploads but only one to three percent of streams (Music Business Worldwide). Those are Deezer’s own figures.
Quick Hits
- Cinema licensing: The UK’s Copyright Tribunal backed PRS for Music in a dispute over cinema licensing. The rate goes from 7.33 pence to 7.9 pence per admission, applying from July 2024 (Music Business Worldwide).
- Travis Scott suit dropped: Songwriters dismissed their sample lawsuit against Travis Scott and Sony Music, without prejudice, so they could refile. It’s unknown whether there was a settlement (Music Business Worldwide).
- BTS on Spotify: BTS’s label says the album ARIRANG has passed 5 billion Spotify streams, about 2 billion ahead of any other 2026 album. That’s BigHit’s figure (Music Business Worldwide).
- Raye and the bots: Raye says scalpers used AI bots to generate hundreds of thousands of fake sign-ups, 1.8 million for just 5,000 Royal Albert Hall seats, so her team reviewed the list by hand (Music Business Worldwide).
On This Day in Music History
- October 11, 1975: Saturday Night Live premieres. NBC’s late-night show debuted with George Carlin hosting and Janis Ian and Billy Preston as musical guests (Wikipedia).
- October 16, 2003: iTunes for Windows arrives. It brought Apple’s store to Windows users. The iTunes Music Store had opened that April with 200,000 tracks, and sold more than a million songs in its first week (Wikipedia). Twenty-three years on, the services are still arguing over what a song is worth.
Dates to Watch
- October 23: Raye’s one-off show at London’s Royal Albert Hall
- By end of 2026: Deezer’s AI-music toggle rolls out globally; Def Jam’s Tunji Balogun departs
- March 22, 2027: Phonorecords V hearing
- April 2028 / October 2028: Proposed trial dates in the FTC’s case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster (plaintiffs / Live Nation)
The Unlimited Brief is a weekly production of Unlimited Sounds Radio. Indie Music Discovery is part of the Unlimited Sounds family.
Sources: Music Business Worldwide, Digital Music News, Wikipedia, Indie Music Discovery.
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