Music Industry News You Might Have Missed This Week

Ticketmaster Rebrands 'Verified Fan' Program: Introducing 'Advance Registration'

Ticketmaster has quietly rebranded its 'Verified Fan' program to 'advance registration' amidst controversies and lawsuits related to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour pre-sale. The change was detailed in a blog post, emphasizing that signing up doesn't guarantee ticket purchases but aims to block bots and resellers. Web addresses associated with Verified Fan now redirect to the advance registration page. While the new system intends to prevent scalping, fans should note that receiving an access code doesn't guarantee tickets, as availability is first-come, first-served. Live Nation and Ticketmaster are invoking their arbitration clause in response to class-action complaints from Swifties who felt shortchanged during the presale. The companies are actively lobbying and addressing concerns amid regulatory scrutiny and antitrust investigations.

Grammy Awards Introduce New Guidelines Excluding Solely AI Works

The Recording Academy has announced new eligibility guidelines for the Grammy Awards, stating that only human creators are eligible to be considered for nominations and wins. The guidelines were updated in response to the growing presence of AI-generated music in the industry. While works featuring elements of AI can still be considered, they must contain "meaningful contributions" from human creators to add a human element to the music or lyrics. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. emphasized that in songwriting-based and performance categories, the majority of the work should be done by humans. The guidelines also include changes to Album of the Year eligibility, requiring a music creator to account for at least 20% of all work on the album. Additionally, the number of nominees in major categories has been reduced from 10 to 8. These changes aim to address the challenges posed by AI-generated music while recognizing the importance of human contributions in the arts.

Spotify Reportedly Set to Introduce 'Supremium' Tier with HiFi Audio and Expanded Audiobook Access

Despite calls for a price increase from music industry leaders, Spotify has yet to raise its standard $9.99 per month individual subscription price in the US. However, according to a new report, the streaming giant is preparing to launch a new higher-priced subscription tier called 'Supremium'. The Supremium tier is expected to offer HiFi audio quality, a feature that was announced in 2021 but has yet to be rolled out. The new tier will initially be introduced in non-US markets later this year. The move is part of Spotify's efforts to generate more revenue and address investor demands for price hikes. In contrast to competitors like Apple Music and Amazon Music, Spotify users will likely be required to pay extra for the HiFi feature, while rival services have added it to their standard premium plans at no additional cost.

AI Music Models Thriving at Big Tech Companies

Big tech companies like Google, Meta (Facebook's parent company), and Microsoft are making significant strides in AI music research. Google's MusicLM is a language model that generates music from text prompts, while Meta's MusicGen is a text-to-music AI generator trained on thousands of licensed tracks. Microsoft's 'Muzic' project focuses on AI music and encompasses projects like DeepRapper, an AI rap generator that incorporates rhymes and rhythms. Muzic also includes models for singing voice synthesis, such as DeepSinger, which synthesizes high-quality singing voices without human recordings. Additionally, Microsoft's MuseCoCo is an AI-powered text-to-symbolic music generator that allows musicians to generate music efficiently from given text descriptions. These developments demonstrate the growing influence of AI in the music industry, raising concerns about copyright infringement and the use of scraped data. Overall, AI music models are becoming increasingly sophisticated and diverse, presenting new possibilities for music creation and composition.

Ticket Scalping Woes at Taylor Swift's South America Tour Spark Potential Regulations

The sale of tickets to Taylor Swift's South America tour has been marred by problems caused by scalpers, leading to discussions about implementing stricter regulations similar to those proposed in the U.S. Congress. Swift's S?o Paulo concert witnessed overwhelming demand, resulting in tickets selling out within 40 minutes, leaving many fans empty-handed. The situation worsened as scalpers attempted to cut ahead in line and even threatened violence, leading to the removal and arrest of several individuals by consumer protection agents. Although ticket scalping is already a crime in Brazil, a congresswoman, Simone Marquetto, has introduced a bill to increase penalties, proposing a maximum sentence of four years and fines of up to 100 times the ticket price. The bill aims to combat scalpers' exploitation, which deprives less fortunate individuals of attending desired events and poses a threat to the public economy.

Spotify for Artists Standardizes Data Access, Deleting Historical Song Data

Spotify for Artists is implementing changes to standardize historical data access on its analytics platform, leading to the deletion of data older than two years plus the year-to-date starting from July 1st. To preserve their historical data from 2020 and earlier, artists are urged to download their data before the deadline. Previously, historical data was used for research and decision-making regarding marketing strategies for new releases. While Spotify will provide song data for the past two years plus the current year, all-time stream counts will still be available. The change is driven by cost-cutting but will pave the way for new analytics features, including custom date range filters, enhanced engagement states, fan segmentation, and more historical data. Certain analytics features with low usage, such as 'Similar artists' and 'Compare to other artists,' will be removed. Artists can download their data as a CSV file from the web interface but not the mobile app.

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