And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - And The Update Is…May the 4th Be With the Charts: Hits, Headlines & Industry Chaos

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

And The Update Is…a weekly beat on the industry . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And the Update is. I'm your host, Ross Golden, and this is the news in the music industry for the week of May 4th. May the 4th be with you. Okay, here's some stats for you all. Choose in Texas by Ella Langley is still at number one on the Hot 100 chart. Congratulations to former guest Luke Dick, who always puts out some of the crazy songs. For those of you never heard that interview, that one is

awesome. Maybe the craziest story we've ever had. And also speaking on former guests, The Great Divide by Noah Khan is number one at Billboard 200. Beauty and the beat, still up at the top of the Global 200 chart. How crazy is that? I mean, almost 15 years later.

What the heck? You know? What the heck? Okay. Other things that are going on on the global charts, bring your love by Madonna, And Sabrina Carpenter debuted, that debuted at number one on Spotify's top songs. Debut global chart, that is pretty impressive considering that Madonna and Sabrina are in different generations. And Madonna is still putting out relevant stuff. So that's pretty cool.

Middle of Nowhere by Casey Musk, man, is she good? Number one is Spotify's top albums debut USA chart. We should call the Grammys for album of the year already. They shall probably be up there. maybe again with Noah Khan, who as you know, right now, it's just killing out all the charts in the USA. All right, here's some news for you all. Sony Music Group reportedly in talks of a $4 billion acquisition of recognition music group. That potential deal would give them access to a massive catalog, becoming one of the largest asset acquisitions in music history.

I will take 1% of that and be stoked. Soon no, targeting $5 billion. in a Series D fundraiser. Maybe they can pay some people for using their stems for training their AI models. Udio admits to using YouTube audio in training AI models. So there you go. If Udio does it, I think we can guess Suno is doing it too. That's probably the least surprising news of all time.

A federal judge halt Spotify's Paola case. That sent the dispute to arbitration. the proposed class action lawsuit. Question Spotify's discovery mode and allege the platform favored pay promotion music. That is an interesting take on that and that would be really interesting. That would level the playing field quite a bit. B. Miller signs to her public records. Man, she's been around for a minute and she's still so young and she's just so good.

It's great to see that she is putting out music. Tiger Lewis signs to Republic Records 2. The War and Treaty signs with Atlantic Outpost for records. That band is awesome. If you don't know them, you should check out that too. Mariah the scientist signed a UMPG for publishing. I bet that was not a small deal. She decides to leave Jody and Crew over there.

She can always come to my publishing company because I think she is amazing. Okay, so that is most of the news this week. If you guys haven't had a chance to check out the interview with Rick Biotto on Tuesday, that is an in-depth conversation with a fellow YouTuber slash podcast host kind of guy. He is really smart and it is a fun conversation. We have another episode coming on Tuesday that will be fresh out of the box. So stay tuned. Thank you all for listening.

and thank you Georgia Webbush once again for some amazing notes. Appreciate you all. Talk soon.