DIVER.G.ENT

Formed at university, Bristol quartet My First Time channel the scrappy energy of early Blur, the wry storytelling of The Streets, and a splash of Charli XCX’s pop sleaze. New single ‘Sippy Cup’ crashes like a hurled pint glass

Legal action in Vietnam has resulted in popular stream-ripping site Y2mate going offline, with the operator of the service agreeing to shut down the site permanently. Meanwhile in Brazil the campaign against stream manipulation continues, with a court ordering that TurbineDigital be blocked

Lucian Grainge has sent a memo to UMG employees updating them on the major’s negotiations with AI companies. Most interestingly he identifies two scenarios where artist consent will be sought before employing AI tools: voice clones and AI-generated songs that “incorporate an artist’s existing songs”

The major labels recently added stream-ripping allegations to their Suno and Udio lawsuits. The AI start-ups say the majors’ new claims are invalid, but fear that a ruling in an earlier legal battle involving stream-ripper Yout could open them to liability. So they want that earlier ruling changed

Neil Young is boycotting Amazon, announcing in a blog post “soon my music will not be there”. It seems to be the links between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and US President Donald Trump that has prompted the boycott. The musician also urges fans to “forget Amazon” and instead “buy local”