And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - SUNO Sued, Ai Labels, Resale Ticket Act, Choosin Texas Stays Ontop

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

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

Welcome to Andy Update is. I am your host, Ross Golan, and this is the music industry news for the week of July 13, 2026. Let's start with the news. Oh yeah, Suno got hacked. We all know this, if you are following any music industry news, and it revealed that they scraped millions of songs for AI training. The leaked data supports claims that Suno collected music from YouTube, Dizer and other platform strengthening ongoing copyright lawsuits. I keep saying this. I think Suno is going to go the way of LimeWire. It's going to go the way of Napster.

And those companies that are doing ethical AI training where they pay their creators are probably going to survive. Some with a smaller margin like an Udio who's already doing deals with majors. I would bet on them before I would bet on Suno. Sure, a lot of people use Suna. now, but they also use LimeWire Napster and those you don't use anymore. Suno responds to industry on AI music. The company says it's working with artists and rights holders on AI transparency,

investing in tools like watermarking and audio fingerprinting and believes AI disclosure should be left to artists and platforms. I bet they believe that. New study finds Gen Z are willing to spend more on, live music. This is also not a surprise because those people are sick of not seeing other humans and they need reasons to see humans. And here's a good one. R-A.A. and Sagafra announced that they have introduced new AI generated and AI-assisted labels to identify AI usage in release music. I do wonder, would you listen to a song that has AI assisted as a label? I'm curious about that.

that already exists all over. So what are your thoughts if you heard that? Would you think down on that song? I don't know. Sam Fender and Olivia Dean set UK record with Rain Me In. The song has become the longest running number one by a British artist after spending 16 consecutive weeks. Atop the UK chart, Sam Fender, you know, I got to see him in front of like 300 people when we did some live. And the writer is at South by Southwest in 2000. 2019. U.S. Copyright Royalty Board proposal would extend physical mechanical royalty rates through 2032. This is good because, you know, it used to be 9.1 cents. Now it's 12 point something cents per song per album. A new proposal would keep current royalty rates for physical releases and downloads in place for another five years pending approval. I bet that happens. And that's good because people are buying more manufactured music like vinyl.

Stubhubb faces class action lawsuit following ticket resale investigation. The new lawsuit alleges Stubhub's practices differ from how it describes. It's fan-to-fan market base. And in the same type of news, D.C. passes anti-ticketing, scalping law. The Resale Act caps resale prices at 10% above face value, creating some of the toughest ticket resale rules in the United States. I think we're seeing where the trend is heading. Iron Maiden sells large stake of their music to Pop House entertainment.

Pop House always going for that cool vintage stuff like Kiss and Abba. That's a cool company. Warner Chapel music promotes David Goldson to executive vice president of A&R. I mentioned that because he's a cool guy. In some signings, KG Elephant signs with Big Loud Rock for Records. That is cool. That's a cool band. Also, T.I. Yeah, that's right. Ti signs with Reservoir for publishing. We like both T.I. And Reservoir. So we're rooting for that. Here's some chart news. Oh, what's this song? Choose in Texas by L.O. Langley is number one on Billboard Hot 100 for the 13th week. Non-consecutive. Very impressive. Confessions number two by Madonna debuts at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. She's still putting out cool stuff. Die-die. FIFA. World Cup official song in 2006, debuts

number one on the Billboard Global 200 chart. Congrats to all of our friends involved in that. Choose in Texas, go listen to the Luke Dick episode. Confessions, you can listen to Watt, you can listen to Circuit, and Dye-Dye, you can listen to John Bellion and

Ed Shearren. If you want to listen to some earlier stuff, go join our Patreon. We also had our first Patreon hang on Zoom, and it was awesome. Thanks to Peter Fenn for joining that. Oh yeah, back to charts. The Real Me by Future debuts at number one on Spotify's top album debut Global Chart and you seem pretty sad for Girl So in Love by Olivia Rodriguez number one on Spotify's top album Global Chart for the fourth week in a row. Congrats to our friends on that as well.

So yeah, so that's the news for this week. Pretty exciting stuff happening in the music industry, but mostly on our Patreon page. That's right. Patreon.com forward slash and the writer is. You heard it here first. Thank you, Georgia Wedbush, for great notes. And we will talk to you all soon. Have a good week. Bye.