Reported

January. A Sony Publishing co-write. Two writers, one room, one laptop. One of them typed a working title from the session they had had the week before into Suno. Ninety seconds later it gave them back a passable demo of a song that, by any deal either of them had signed, was not supposed to exist. They closed the laptop. They kept writing. Nobody called a lawyer, because no songwriter has ever won by calling a lawyer first. The two settlements that landed last autumn, UMG wi

Every sync cuts two cheques. One shrank in 2025. The other kept growing. The trade only printed the one that shrank. By the numbers $641m: what flowed to labels and recordings worldwide in 2025 −2.0%: that figure's drop on the year, the first since 2020 ~$1.55bn: what flowed to US songwriters and publishers in 2024 ~$2.2bn+: a rough floor for the global sync economy The line they printed, the line they didn't Every sync cuts two cheques. One to the recording. One to the song.

Primary Wave just bought the publisher that defined "I don't want a major" for two decades. Twelve months on from a string of indie sales, the indie-admin tier looks thinner than it has in years, and a real question is on the board. On 23 March 2026, Primary Wave Music signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kobalt Music Group from Francisco Partners. The deal values Kobalt at roughly $1.5 billion, with the combined company sitting around $7 billion, and Brookfield investing