Infinite Catalog

In this week's IC Community Newsletter: The final chapter of Ted Gioia's Substack published book, "What Can Music Do Today?" Murray Stassen at Music Business Worldwide (MBW) reports on the disappointing end to MLC's lawsuit against Spoitfy's "bundles" (still feels like the scare quotes are necessary, though). Meanwhile, the National Music Publishers Association is?launching more than 2,500 takedown notices over unlicensed music in podcasts on Spotify. Stuart Dredge at Music Ally details Warner Music Group's latest strategic shuffle. And, The Quietus' Christian Eede reports London's mayor has assembled a Nightlife Taskforce, led by fabric's Cameron Leslie, to?rescue the city's flailing club scene.

In the Indie Intel roundup from the just published IC Community Newsletter 69: Charlotte Caleb and Darren Hemmings have some thoughts on the current "Superfan" fixation. Eamonn Forde exposes the emerging payola-adjacent nonsense that TikTok influencers are peddling over at The Quietus. Duetti's Music Economics report ruffles Spotify's feathers. Daniel Tencer at Music Business Worldwide (MBW) reports on Deezer's attempt to stem the deluge of AI slop that is now responsible for 10% of the daily uploads to the platform.

hey, come here I need to tell you something... ??? IT'S THE PERFECT TIME TO STOP DOING ROYALTIES IN SPREADSHEETS

IC's Community Weekly is so back. In this edition's roundup of Indie Intel: Benn Jordan developed a tool to detect AI-generated music with 100% accuracy. Water & Music and Cherie Hu updated their Music Tech Ownership Ouroboros. Shawn Reynaldo interviewed Liz Pelly about her book “Mood Machine,” highlighting Spotify’s artist exploitation. Meanwhile, discussions about the music industry’s challenges surfaced as Martin Mills criticized UMG’s approach to indie labels (via Network Notes). Drowned in Sound offered ways to support indie ecosystems in 2025. MBW reported Spotify executives earned $1.25B in 2024, including a $93M bonus for Daniel Ek.

?? IC is hiring! We're looking for a new Junior Catalogs Team Member to join our growing team at Infinite Catalog. If you’re friendly, outgoing, an exceptional communicator, and passionate about music, we’d love to hear from you! Infinite Catalog helps record labels, managers, artists, and publishers get royalty accounting done. You’ll be on the front lines with them, helping solve problems and get artists paid. If you have your own catalog, have done royalty accounting, or are an artist who has received royalty statements of your own, you already know how important royalty accounting is, and we especially would love to hear from you specifically. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to join a fully independent, self-funded, owner-operated music-tech company that's changing the music industry for the better! Learn more and apply here: https://lnkd.in/eDF-zvhT #MusicIndustry #RoyaltyAccounting #MusicTech #JobOpening

Yesterday's DOJ indictment is 10 million reasons why pro-rata royalties need to go. In the first US case against streaming fraud, a North Carolina man has been charged with generating $10 million through AI-created songs and bot-driven streams—a glaring spotlight on the flaws in our current pro-rata royalty system. IC Co-founder Hunter Giles saw this coming. Last May, he warned that AI was super-charging royalty theft, but it wasn't the real problem. The culprit? Pro-rata royalties. Put simply: ?? Pro-rata: Your subscription money is divided among all streamed tracks, not just the ones you listened to. ?? User-centric: Your money goes directly to the artists you actually stream. A user-centric model could cut out most fraud like this overnight, putting money back in the pockets of legitimate artists and hard-working labels. We're not just theorizing. Beatdapp, a streaming fraud detection company, estimates that fraud siphons about $2 billion from artists annually. They're working with The Mechanical Licensing Collective to enhance fraud detection, a crucial step towards fairness. Read Hunter's full article on the topic in the comments. h/t Music Business Worldwide (MBW) #MusicIndustry #StreamingRoyalties #ArtistRights #MusicTech

Biggest of shouts to Beatdapp and The Mechanical Licensing Collective for helping nab a guy (and yet-to-be-named AI company) siphoning $10m worth of royalties out of the music industry Reminder that an estimated $2 BILLION in royalties are stolen every year from you, me, and everyone else in the music industry because streaming services use a pro-rata royalties system, and switching to user-centric would wipe out much of this fraud literally overnight.? More on this in my writeup from, ahem, last year: https://lnkd.in/eKebg5Kw

Spotify's CEO cashed out more in 12 months than any artist has ever made on the platform. IC CEO Hunter Giles recently took a deep dive into Spotify executives' stock cashouts, calculating the equivalent number of streams it would take for an artist to match these figures. The staggering results: ?? Daniel Ek cashed out $345M, equivalent to 115 billion streams. This would rank him as the # 1 artist of all time on Spotify, surpassing Drake's current record. ?? Martin Lorentzon's $166.8M cashout equals 55.6 billion streams, which would place him at # 9 between Kanye West and Post Malone. ?? Alex Norstr?m's $26.4M is equivalent to 8.8 billion streams, ranking # 185 between Usher and Frank Sinatra. It's even more striking when you consider Spotify's recent change that cuts $150M worth of songwriter royalties by reclassifying listeners' subscriptions as "bundles" thanks to the addition of audiobooks to the platform. While executives benefit from soaring stock prices, artists and songwriters face potential income reductions. This raises important questions about equity in the music streaming economy: How can the music industry work towards a more equitable distribution of streaming revenue? What responsibilities do streaming platforms have in ensuring fair compensation for artists and songwriters? Could alternative models, such as profit-sharing mechanisms, offer a more balanced approach? For a deeper analysis of Spotify executive cashouts and their implications, check out the full post linked in the comments.

This week's newsletter features: Previous Industries, Kate Nash, The Folk Implosion, Bodysync, reissues of The Mountain Goats, Daniel Johnston and New Math, incoming Xiu Xiu and Peel Dream Magazine records, tour dates and more!

ft. a job at Secretly Group + new music from Jeffrey Silverstein, Rui Gabriel, Carson McHone, The Gossip reissues, Robert Plant loving Ratboys, a jaw-dropping Divine Interface video and more!