{"id":234959,"date":"2025-06-27T16:40:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T15:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=234959"},"modified":"2025-07-11T15:35:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T14:35:29","slug":"from-double-daw-deals-to-ai-lawsuit-results-for-meta-and-anthropic-its-mbws-weekly-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/from-double-daw-deals-to-ai-lawsuit-results-for-meta-and-anthropic-its-mbws-weekly-round-up\/","title":{"rendered":"From double DAW deals to AI lawsuit results for Meta and Anthropic… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to\u00a0Music Business Worldwide<\/a>\u2019s weekly round-up \u2013 where we make sure\u00a0you caught the five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days. MBW\u2019s round-up is supported by\u00a0<\/i>Centtrip<\/i><\/span><\/a>,\u00a0which helps over 500 of the world\u2019s best-selling artists maximize their income and reduce their touring costs.<\/i><\/p>\n

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The music industry’s rhythm of announcements is slowing to a lazy summer beat. But there was still enough big news this week to capture MBW’s attention.<\/p>\n

That was especially true in the world of music-making, and, particularly DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

On Monday (June 23), Splice<\/strong> announced it had struck a new deal with Avid to bring its sample library to ProTools<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Then, a few days later, AI music platform Suno<\/strong> \u2013 currently being sued by the major music companies \u2013 announced it had acquired WavTool<\/strong>, a DAW which boasts “professional-grade music production features”.<\/p>\n

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Elsewhere this week, the results for music rightsholders from two key AI copyright cases involving Meta<\/strong> and Anthropic<\/strong> were mixed.<\/p>\n

And there was a big announcement from SESAC-owned Rumblefish and that small social media platform, TikTok<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Here’s some of the biggest stories from the past few days…<\/p>\n

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<\/figure>1) AI music platform SUNO acquires WavTool<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n

Suno, the AI music startup\u00a0currently in a legal battle<\/a>\u00a0with major record labels alongside its rival Udio, is foraying into the digital audio workstation (DAW) market with its acquisition of WavTool.<\/p>\n

Suno<\/b>\u00a0announced the acquisition on Thursday (June 26), a day after its rival\u00a0Udio<\/b>\u00a0released a visual editing workstation<\/a>\u00a0for AI-generated music.<\/p>\n

Suno\u2019s acquisition of\u00a0WavTool<\/b>\u00a0integrates the latter\u2019s browser-based DAW technology into Suno\u2019s existing AI music generation platform.<\/p>\n

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Photo: A Jardiel<\/figcaption><\/figure>2) Splice strikes partnership with Avid for ProTools library<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n

Music creation platform Splice has integrated its sample library with Avid\u2019s Pro Tools digital audio workstation, making millions of loops, sound effects and one-shots available to the artists and producers who use the popular music-making tool.<\/p>\n

The idea is to speed up the music-making process by eliminating the need to switch between apps when adding samples to a music project.<\/p>\n

The new\u00a0Pro Tools 2025.6<\/strong>\u00a0will allow subscribers to access around\u00a02,500<\/strong>\u00a0samples for free, with the rest available through a monthly subscription fee.<\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Tinseltown\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>3) Court shoots down Sarah Silverman’s case against Meta AI – but declares using copyrighted works for training is not ‘fair use’<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n

For the second time this week, a US federal judge has issued an opinion on whether or not using copyrighted materials without permission to train AI amounts to \u201cfair use\u201d \u2013 and the most recent ruling contradicts the previous one.<\/p>\n

In an order on Monday (June 23), Judge\u00a0William Alsup<\/strong>\u00a0handed a partial victory<\/a>\u00a0to AI company\u00a0Anthropic<\/strong>\u00a0in its defense against a lawsuit by three authors, declaring that training AI on copyrighted materials does indeed count as fair use.<\/p>\n

Two days later, another judge in the same court \u2013 the US District Court for the Northern District of California \u2013 declared the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

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<\/figure>4) RUMBLEFISH INKS BYTEDANCE DEAL TO PROVIDE MUSIC LICENSING TO TIKTOK, CAPCUT<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/h6>\n

TikTok and CapCut have a new official partner providing music data, licensing, and royalty management services: Rumblefish.<\/p>\n

US-based Rumblefish is part of the Harry Fox Agency (HFA), which in turn is owned by\u00a0SESAC<\/a>\u00a0Music Group\u2019s Music Services<\/strong>\u00a0division.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Rumblefish<\/strong>, the new agreement will enable music publishers to directly license both\u00a0ByteDance<\/a>\u00a0platforms.<\/p>\n

This arrangement, MBW has confirmed, will enable publishers to ink multi-territory licensing deals with ByteDance, dependent on the geographical scope of each pubco\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

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Diego Thomazini\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>5) US senators call for FTC probe into Spotify’s bundling practices<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n

Two US senators have called on the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate\u00a0Spotify<\/a>\u00a0over allegations that its streaming \u201cbundling\u201d practice harms consumers and could \u201cdamage\u201d the marketplace and the music royalty system.<\/p>\n

In March 2024, Spotify\u00a0reclassified<\/a>\u00a0its Premium subscription tiers as \u201cbundles,\u201d as they now include\u00a015 hours of audiobook access\u00a0<\/a>each month.<\/p>\n

The move\u00a0controversially resulted in Spotify\u00a0paying a lower mechanical royalty rate to publishers and songwriters in the United States.<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/figure>MBW\u2019s Weekly Round-Up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world\u2019s best-selling artists maximise their income and reduce their touring costs.<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The biggest music industry headlines from the past few days<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234959"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236070,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234959\/revisions\/236070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}