About this episode

This episode covers various topics in the music industry, including World Cup songs, AI implications, and notable news about artists.

Your weekly guide to the music biz and how it all works. This week, Stu and Joe go football crazy and stick a reducer early doors on this week's music biz news: → 270. That’s how many ‘unofficial anthems’ called ‘World Cup 2026’ have been uploaded to Deezer … and 70% of them are AI slop. → YouTube reckons that its terms of service allow it to use independent musicians’ uploads to train AI models . Is that really true? → Tupac Shakur has been dead for 30 years – or HAS he, etc etc – but if you think that will stop him returning to his acting career for a new console game, you’re wrong … → Say You, Say Me… just don’t Say It In My Voice Without Permission. Why has Lionel Richie been filing trademarks for some of his most famous sung phrases? → UK indie streaming service Cantilever has raised £250,000 of funding from a group of independent labels . Can it carve out a niche for itself against giants like Spotify though? → Ariana Grande is one of the ‘good eggs’ of the pop world, and this week brought more evidence of that: her new charitable foundation, and beef with the White House … → The Happy Mondays want to sell you a giant pill. But wait, it’s not what it seems! This is the…

People in this episode

Hosts: Stu, Joe

Topics covered

• music business
• World Cup songs
• AI in music
• trademark issues
• independent music
• charity in pop
• music merchandise

Keywords

• music biz
• World Cup
• AI
• trademark
• independent labels
• Ariana Grande
• Lionel Richie
• Tupac
• Happy Mondays

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: YouTube, Cantilever, Deezer

Products: giant pill

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