This year, two significant music markets – France and Canada – have slapped new taxes on the revenues of music streaming services.

The reaction from music streaming companies has been visceral. They decried the Canadian tax as “discriminatory” and hinted at plans to fight the new regulation, while in France, Spotify raised its subscription prices to offset the tax and pulled its funding from two French music festivals.

Within the music industry, the idea of taxing streaming services is somewhat unnerving, given that the music industry as a whole is downstream from the digital service providers who bring music to listeners, and streaming is a low-margin business.

In addition to paying upwards of 60% of revenue in royalties to rights holders, streaming services already pay a value-added tax (VAT) or sales tax in many jurisdictions, and in recent years, many countries have instituted digital service taxes (DSTs).

But while those taxes are broadly applied  – to every business that sells, in the case of VAT/sales taxes, and to all digital businesses in the case of DSTs – a tax specifically on music streamers is something of a novelty.

Yet, this past spring, two congressional lawmakers proposed a similar US tax on music streaming — much larger than the Canadian or French taxes.

So is this the beginning of a new wave of taxes targeting music streaming (and by extension, the music business as a whole)?

To answer that question, it helps to examine what France and Canada are doing and the political context in which those taxes are occurring. That can give us some idea of whether or not such taxes are likely to multiply — and where.

Direct to fan platform Bandcamp is celebrating its 40th Bandcamp Friday on May 3. The initiative was launched during Covid lockdown in March 2020 and sees the platform waive its share of revenues from artists’ sales.

Bandcamp, which was acquired by Songtradr in September, reports that artists have generated $123 million via this initiative since then.

According to the company, fans have paid artists and their labels $1.3 billion via Bandcamp to date. Bandcamp was founded in 2008.

The company also says on its website that in the past year alone, fans have spent $194 million on 14.1 million digital albums, 10.8 million tracks, 1.7 million vinyl records, 800,000 CDs, 350,000 cassettes, and 50,000 t-shirts.

Fans have paid artists and independent labels $16.4 million in the past 30 days alone, Bandcamp reports on its website.

On Wednesday (May 1) Bandcamp said that its fanbase is growing at a rate of approximately 100,000 per month, whose “engagement is not just supporting artists financially but also driving a significant shift in how music ecosystems can operate”

SoundCloud is launching a new feature called Buzzing Playlists, a set of playlists curated based on fan engagement with music by Next Pro artists.

Buzzing Playlists are designed to address the ‘Zero-Plays Problem’ faced by many new artists. Through its First Fans program, SoundCloud’s recommendation algorithm analyzes music by Next Pro artists who opt in, the company said on Thursday (May 2).

Since the launch of First Fans, SoundCloud says over 3.5 million tracks have been analyzed and recommended to potential fans, with the average Next Pro artist seeing a 400% increase in listens.

BMG EVP Global Corporate Communications Steve Redmond is to step down from the company after 12 years.

The highly-regarded communications exec and media advisor is credited with shaping the company’s image and helped define its positioning over a period during which its revenues have more than quadrupled to become one of the largest international music companies outside the three majors.

BMG says that a successor will be announced shortly.

During his tenure, Redmond led communications around more than 100 acquisitions and championed the company’s fairness initiatives towards artists and songwriters alongside former CEO Hartwig Masuch.

Most recently, he has led internal and external communications around the handover to new CEO Thomas Coesfeld and the company’s new strategy.

In another attempt seemingly aimed at pushing more users towards its Premium subscription service, Spotify has begun restricting access to song lyrics on its free tier.

While Spotify hasn’t issued an official announcement, the company did confirm to TechCrunch that features can vary over time, between markets and across devices. This response suggests the change may be more than just a limited test, although Spotify has yet to confirm any specific affected regions or users.

Spotify’s confirmation to the news outlet follows posts on Reddit from disgruntled users who encountered messages indicating a limit on how many lyrics they could view.

French audio technology company Ircam Amplify has introduced a new tool aimed at identifying music created using artificial intelligence.

The tool called AI-Generated Detector is targeted towards record labels, publishers, rights organizations, distributors, and music streaming platforms. Ircam Amplify says that it can scan up to 5,000 music tracks in under a minute with an accuracy rate of 98.5%.

That is slightly higher than Believe’s new software called AI Radar, launched in November 2023, which Believe says can detect AI-made music with a 98% accuracy rate. In September 2023, TikTok said it was working on an automatic AI content detection tool as it launched a new protocol to label AI-generated content on its platform.