Blog
Guides, product updates and practical tips for making music and music videos with AI.
More Than Half of Uploads, Less Than 3% of Plays: The Real Fight Over AI Music Isn't in the Studio
In July 2026, the French streaming platform Deezer published a number that works as a dividing line: AI-generated tracks had, for the first time, passed half of its new daily uploads, averaging roughly 90,000 a day in June. Deezer's own announcement put it plainly — on that platform, machines now hand in more new songs each day than people do.
From North America to the World: How the Beatles' Merchandise Business Came Home to Universal
London, August 19, 2026. Apple Corps Ltd, the company that manages the creative and commercial interests of the Beatles, announced an exclusive, long-term, global partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG): UMG will handle the band's physical and digital merchandise, licensing business, and e-commerce worldwide. The official announcement calls the deal "landmark" — but if you know the thirteen-year history of Beatles merchandise licensing, you will see it less as a brand-new relationship than as the completion of a long consolidation.
The Bridge and the Wall of Mandopop Touring: Inside the IMC Group Asia–CMC Live Alliance
On August 21, 2026, at BPM Live Space in Chengdu's Eastern Suburb Memory park, a signing ceremony took place: IMC Group Asia, a Singapore-headquartered live entertainment company, and CMC Live (华人文化演艺) announced a deep strategic partnership. The plan is to connect CMC Live's Mandopop content with IMC's production and touring capabilities across Asia and beyond, jointly developing the overseas market for Chinese-language music (partnership release).
Pop Music's Rising Price of Admission: From Outside Lands' Nepo Babies to a UK Government Class Warning
When the 18th edition of the Outside Lands festival wrapped up in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in August 2026, the San Francisco Chronicle summed up the event's most talked-about story with a slightly barbed headline: the festival had been taken over by "nepo babies" — Cruz Beckham, son of the Beckhams; Magnus Ferrell, son of actor Will Ferrell; and Audrey Hobert and Malcolm Todd, the two children of TV producer Tim Hobert, all took the same stage in quick succession.
Three Names, One Beach, Three Guitars: The Telecaster's 75th-Birthday Experiment
From August 28 to 30, 2026, a black pop-up pavilion appeared on the beach at the Aranya Xiami Music Festival, flanked by a multi-story yellow Telecaster model. Fender, the instrument brand behind the world's most recognizable solid-body electric guitar, staged its 75th birthday by the sea: anniversary-model test drives, panel talks, film screenings, a rare-instrument exhibition — and a donation ceremony with the Smile Angel Foundation under the Chinese Red Cross Foundation.
Lanlao Signs with RCA Records China: After the Wild, Organic Breakout, What Can a Global System Actually Catch?
On September 10, 2026, Sony Music China announced a global exclusive strategic partnership with rapper Lanlao SKAI ISYOURGOD, signed through its label RCA Records China. The official language was about "charting new territory" — but for anyone who has followed the Chinese internet over the past two years, that territory already existed: from a home studio in Huizhou to Memphis drum loops, from the "lai cai" meme flooding Douyin to AI cat covers on overseas TikTok, Lanlao's global audience arrived before the label did.
After a Government Hotline Became a Ballot Box, Time Fengjun Was Not the Only Casualty
Xuzhou's 12345 hotline took in nearly 50,000 concert-related complaints in ten days. What turned the episode from entertainment gossip into a public issue was not how loudly fans argued. It was that a civic helpline was used, by two opposing fan camps at once, as a voting machine.
Skai Isyourgod Signed to RCA — But He Already Went Global: A Late Signing and an Oversimplified Conclusion
On 10 September 2026, RCA Records Greater China, a Sony Music China label, announced an exclusive global strategic partnership with the rapper Skai Isyourgod (Music Sound / 音乐先声). Across the Chinese-language music industry, the news was widely read as Chinese-language rap formally entering the international mainstream music business.
T-Pop Is Going Global, but It Does Not Need to Become the Next K-Pop
Thai pop music is going through a moment that makes optimism easy.
Restrained, and Able to Breathe: Has AI Music Reached Its "Eureka Moment"?
You may have noticed something similar: a lot of AI music today is genuinely impressive on first listen, yet rarely makes you want to play it a second time.