The European Commission's competition division has given the green light to the acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings by Universal Music Group's distribution and services unit for the independent sector Virgin Music Group (VMG). In a February 13 decision, the Commission said the approval was "conditional upon full compliance with the commitments offered by the companies, which entail the full divestment of Downtown's royalty accounting platform Curve Royalty Systems, Ltd ('Curve')." In a statem...

US Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) have introduced the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting (CLEAR) Act, a bipartisan legislation designed "to protect the intellectual property rights of creators and encourage transparency in the development of artificial intelligence (AI)." The CLEAR Act, which has received the support of a wide range of organisations from the creative sector, would "require a notice be submitted to the Register of Copyrights with respect to cop...

Over 20 organisations from across Europe’s music ecosystem have called on the European Union institutions to adopt a "strong budget" and an "ambitious sectoral approach" for music within the future AgoraEU programme. Organisations representing creators (ECSA, IAO, FIM), music rights organisation (GESAC, AEPO-ARTIS), music publishers (IMPF), labels (IMPALA), managers (EMMA) and the live sector (Live DMA, Yourope, Liveurope), among others, argue in an open letter to European policy makers that the...