At the beginning of March, Spotify reclassified its Premium Individual, Duo, and Family subscription streaming plans as bundles because those plans now offer access to audiobooks.

The move controversially resulted in Spotify paying a lower mechanical royalty rate to publishers and songwriters in the United States, drawing the ire of the US-based National Music Publishers Association and The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC).

The latter org sued Spotify in the US in May for allegedly underpaying royalties to songwriters and publishers as a result of its Premium ‘bundling’ move.

Today (November 19), we learn that Spotify’s rival, Amazon Music, has become the latest music streaming service to bundle audiobooks with its Premium subscription. 

In a challenge to Spotify’s audiobook service, Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers in the US, UK, and Canada can now listen to one audiobook a month from Amazon-owned audiobook service Audible. The retail and tech giant acquired Audible for $300 millionin 2008.

The NMPA has already responded to the news, and the contrast between the organization’s reaction to Amazon Music’s move and its response to Spotify’s move earlier this year is striking.

Downtown-owned B2B distributor FUGA has entered into a new partnership with Australia-born UNIFIED Music Group, which operates across Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, and Toronto.

FUGA said on Thursday (October 10) that the deal will see it provide strategic marketing support, access to its global technology platform, physical distribution, and neighboring rights services to UNIFIED Music Group-owned labels.

The deal includes UNIFIED Recorded Music labels UNFD (Silverstein, Thornhill & ERRA) and Domestic La La (Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers, Dear Seattle, Teenage Joans), alongside future releases on Community Music (Ocean Alley, Sarah Saint James, ISHAN).

UNIFIED is already an existing client of Downtown-owned royalty accounting platform Curve, via a partnership that started in January 2022.

Downtown added that the partnership would see UNIFIED gain wider access to its global ecosystem through additional services, including sync and licensing solutions via Downtown Music Publishing and neighboring rights collection through Downtown Neighbouring Rights.

The recent sale of tickets to Oasis’ 2025 reunion tour was “the biggest on-sale in history” with “the most demand in history,” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said.

During an appearance at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday (October 9), Rapino also revealed that Ticketmaster – Live Nation’s ticketing division – was hit by “multi billions” of bots during the sale.

He also said that scalpers were selling $6,000 tickets to Oasis shows – even before ticket sales officially opened.

Universal Music Group owns the [PIAS] Group.

UMG announced it had acquired 49% of [PIAS] in 2022, following a “strategic alliance” inked between the companies the prior year.

Universal has now completed the acquisition of the remaining 51% of shares from [PIAS] co-founders Kenny Gates and Michel Lambot, for an undisclosed fee.

Universal is acquiring two core business divisions within the [PIAS] Group:

1. Label services division [Integral], which provides physical and digital distribution services to independent labels;
2. The [PIAS] Label Group, home to the company’s own and associated record labels, including Play It Again Sam, harmonia mundi, Demain, Spinefarm, Source and partner labels such ATO, Heavenly, Mute, and Transgressive.

Subsequent to the acquisition, [Integral] will merge with UMG’s Virgin Music Group.

Spotify is taking the next step in its effort to become a video platform, announcing on Tuesday (October 15) that it’s expanding music video streaming to 85 new markets.

Spotify didn’t specify which countries or regions are included in the rollout, but noted that the new offer is available only to Premium subscribers, and comes with “a limited catalog of music videos.”

The Sweden-headquartered company initially announced the launch of music videos in beta back in March, when it offered the service in 11 countries – the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya. It later added Egypt to the list.

The US is not on the list of new markets, the Verge reports.

“As with all of our features, availability can vary across markets and tiers,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge.

“Music videos on Spotify are still in beta and we look forward to bringing it to even more users across more markets, including the US, in the future.”

A California appeals court has given a final green light to Michael Jackson’s estate to proceed with a sale of the music legend’s catalog to Sony Music valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The decision overturns objections raised by Michael Jackson’s mother, Katherine Jackson, who argued that the sale of the estate’s “single most valuable asset” violated her son’s wishes.

The court’s final ruling, issued on Wednesday (August 21), supports a preliminary rulinghanded down on July 17. Katherine Jackson had claimed that the sale was not in her son’s best interest and that the catalog’s value would continue to rise. However, the court determined that the executors of Jackson’s estate had the authority to proceed with the sale under the terms of his will.

“The will gave the executors broad powers of sale, with no exception for the specific assets at issue in this case,” the court said. “As such, the probate court did not err in concluding that it was Michael’s intent to allow the executors to sell any estate assets, including those at issue in the proposed transaction.”

“THE PROBATE COURT DID NOT ERR IN CONCLUDING THAT IT WAS MICHAEL’S INTENT TO ALLOW THE EXECUTORS TO SELL ANY ESTATE ASSETS, INCLUDING THOSE AT ISSUE IN THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION.”

CALIFORNIA’S SECOND DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL

The court also noted that Katherine Jackson “forfeited her contention that the proposed transaction violates the terms of Michael’s will” by failing to raise them in the initial probate proceedings.

The sale, first reported in February, will see Sony Music acquiring 50% of Jackson’s publishing and recorded masters catalog. MBW understands that the deal valued the Jackson estate’s music rights at around $1.5 billion, implying a sale price of around $750 million for the transaction. If confirmed, that would top the GBP £1 billion (USD $1.31 billion) at which Queen‘s catalog was valued in its recent sale, also to Sony Music.