Stuart Dredge

England

Editor at Music Ally

Journalist at Freelance

I scribble a little, but not here any more.

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Articles

Reddit sues Anthropic after trying to block its bots from site

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

AI firm Anthropic remains in litigation with music publishers over its training policies. However, now it faces another legal battle: with Reddit. The latter is suing Anthropic claiming that it scraped the UGC platform’s data without paying for it or securing permission. “Anthropic is in fact intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent,” claimed the lawsuit according to the Wall Street Journal.
Katseye launch their avatars in children’s game Toca Boca World

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

US-based pop group Katseye have a new marketing activation in Toca Boca World, a popular children’s mobile game. Billboard reported that the six members of the group will each have their own avatars within the game, and there will be additional music and virtual items available once the promo goes live next Tuesday (10 June). The group will also be holding a ‘takeover’ of the game’s Voxella Festival Stage.
Lego rebuilt a classic Run-DMC track to challenge stereotypes

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

Lego’s latest marketing campaign focusing on diversity and inclusion has a music angle. The bricky brand has rebuilt Run-DMC’s 1983 hit ‘It’s Like That’ with the help of a ‘Global Girls’ crew of musicians and DJs. It’s now called ‘She Built That’ and soundtracks a video encouraging “girls to redefine and reclaim what it means to be a builder”.
PRS for Music reveals its payouts grew 8.1% to £1.02bn in 2024

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

UK collecting society PRS for Music has announced its distribution figures for 2024. It paid out £1.02bn to rightsholders last year, up 8.1% year-on-year. This was based on the society increasing its revenues by 6.1% to £1.15bn. This is all meaningful because PRS for Music had previously set a deadline of 2026 to reach £1bn of annual payouts. It noted that online royalty collections grew by 9% to £401.2m last year including a 180% boost for revenues from the games industry.
Fever acquires ticketing firm Dice in live-tech consolidation

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

Just this morning we reported on a $100m funding round for live-events tech firm Fever. Now we know how it’s going to be spending some of that money: it has acquired ticketing company Dice. The deal will see Dice continuing as a standalone app selling tickets for artists, promoters and venues, who will also gain “access to Fever’s audience spanning 40+ countries, and reaching 300 million people last year through its discovery platform and media” according to the announcement.
Audiomack taps Beatdapp’s technology to tackle streaming fraud

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

Anti-fraud startup Beatdapp has signed up another streaming service to use its technology. Audiomack is working with the company to analyse its platform and “remove fraudulent streams from sales reports, identify compromised user accounts, detect bots, and help inform editorial decisions”. The latter including its charts and algorithmic playlists. With more than 40 million monthly active users, Audiomack is one of the biggest DSP clients for Beatdapp so far.
UK parliamentary committee starts fan-led live music review

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

Last year, a UK parliamentary report on grassroots music venues recommended a ‘fan-led review’ of live and electronic music, modelled along the lines of a similar initiative for football. At the time, the British government knocked the idea on the head, saying it wanted to focus on an already-announced ticketing consultation instead. However, now the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that made the original recommendation has announced plans to launch the fan-led review after all.
Spotify publishes pointed payout stats for Canadian artists

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

“Canadian artists are thriving on Spotify – and the world is listening,” is the bullish headline for the streaming service’s latest country-specific breakdown of its payout stats for 2024. And in this particular country, the message is aimed squarely at local politicians and regulators. The key numbers: Canadian artists’ Spotify royalties grew by 5% last year to nearly $460m CAD ($336.4m at current exchange rates).
Events-tech firm Fever raises its latest nine-digit funding round

2 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

New York-based Fever is a technology firm focusing on live music and sports events, providing ticketing and marketing support for a range of festivals and venues. It’s also a dab hand at raising money: a $227m round led by Goldman Sachs in 2022 followed by a $110m round the following year that valued Fever at $1.8bn. Now the company has announced another nine-digit round: $100m of funding from investment firms L Catterton and Point72 Private Investments, as well as existing investors.
Taylor Swift streams spiked 55.1% after her catalogue buyback

3 days ago | musically.com | Stuart Dredge

Taylor Swift’s announcement last Friday that she had bought back the recordings for her first six albums had one immediate effect: it activated Swifties worldwide to stream them. Variety reported on data from Luminate showing that streams of Swift’s overall catalogue spiked by 55.1% that day to more than 30.6m daily streams. Meanwhile, Spotify revealed sharp increases for the original versions of Swift’s albums, including the two that she has yet to release ‘Taylor’s Version’ re-recordings of.