And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - And The Update Is...Taylor & Drake Make History, AI Makes Headlines

Episode Date: June 13, 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 am your host, Ross Golan. This is the music industry news for the week of June 8th, 2006. We have had a busy week. Let me tell you why. I am here in New York City, New York, United States of America, where we have a billboard in Times Square to celebrate our launch of our Patreon page. That's right, you can go to patreon.com forward slash, and the writer is. and get some access that you can't get any other way.

Come on in, be part of the family. Let's do this. Okay, so that's our deal with Patreon. Now, yesterday was a songwriter Hall of Fame. A lot of people are inducted that have done some crazy things, you know, like Kenny Loggins and Alanis Morissette and Walter A, you know, these great, great producers and writers. But the news that is loudest is,

Of course, that Taylor Swift became the youngest female to be inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame at the age of 35. And for those of you who need some trivia in a bar, Stevie Wonder was 13 when he first released a song. So he was eligible at 33. He is the youngest person to be inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame. Okay, so let's get to some news. Now, the investor conference was this week. This is what they call Songwriter Week in New York. and we did our live episode on Tuesday.

It was super fun and you will get more information about that. But also NMPA hosted their annual meeting. And at the NMPA annual meeting, they announced that NMPA established a new AI licensing deal with UDio. That agreement gives music publishers the opportunity to opt into what NMPA calls the first AI licensing deal. of its kind. Will Udio's other competitors now have to do the same thing? I don't know. We'll find out. AFM, American Federation of Musicians, Sue's major labels over an AI settlement. The AFM alleges that musicians have not received their share of benefits from UMG and WMG's agreements with Suno and Udio. We will be watching that as well.

Meanwhile, Warner Music Group acquires AI tracking startup Surreal. Surreal's technology is designed to track songs used in AI systems, ensuring creatives are properly credited and compensated. Everything is AI, AI, AI, AI these days. Spotify is exploring live festival streaming. Reports say that the platform is in talks with concert promoters about bringing festival live streams, to the platform. So if you felt like maybe going to a festival was your only way to see other humans, now you can remove that from your list and you can really just become a full life hermit.

If you choose to do that, that is both sad and exciting for those who don't want to talk to other humans. Seeker Music Group teams up with Virgin Music Group for Global Distribution. Congratulations, Evan Bogart. and team, the partnership expands the reach of Seekers' $400 million catalog of recordings and copyrights through Virgin. UMG prices a $1 billion bond offering. The proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including refinancing debt and covering transaction expenses. Again, Universal Music Group is the place to go if you want to learn about equity and debt equity and other exciting things that will pull you away from just writing a song today.

UMG and Sony music push for greater transparency in their Suno lawsuit. The labels are urging the court to reveal how many audio files Suno used to train its AI models. I'm going to guess it's all of them. Primary wave signs a catalog and name. image and likeness deal with Donna Summers' estate. The deal covers the late singer's music assets, recordings, name, image, and likeness. That is the biggest catalog acquisition of the week. Concord partners with Lido music.

The partnership strengthens Concord's push into the global Latin music market. If you're not watching what Concord is doing, since Concord will be acquired by BMG, That company is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Some signings to look at. Florida Georgia Line has signed for new management because they are back together. Wow. Now let's get to some charts. Hate that I made you love me by Ariana Grande reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Congratulations. Arianna, Ilya, and Max Martin. Max Martin now has 30 number one songs behind Paul McCartney's 32. He is knocking on the door for most number one Billboard Hot 100 songs. That is wild. Iceman by Drake is number one on Billboard's 200 chart for the third week in a row. again for all of you who thought that somehow Universal was unhappy by this release, you are not understanding how money flows.

Do that again by Malcolm Todd. Debuts number one on Spotify's top album debut Global Chart. I knew it. I knew you by Taylor Swift. Debues number one on Spotify's top song debut Global Chart. We'll see where she lands on Billboard next Monday. all those songs clean up in the U.S. just like they did globally.

Okay, so that is the news for this week. Thank you all for listening. Now we released Lizzo this week. That episode is awesome. And if you want to check out our interview with Gino the Ghost, which is entertaining as fuck, you should go join our Patreon so you can check that out. Gino is very funny.

Yeah, so there you go. That is the update. Thank you, Georgia, Webbush, for the excellent notes. As always, we are out. Bye.