AI will be the dominant trend for music in 2025. Nothing else even comes close.
The industry is now facing even bigger questions: will music lovers care whether a song was created by AI? What kind of threat will AI-generated songs be? How are artists paid? Who owns this piece?
In 2024, the music industry retaliated by filing copyright suits against the largest AI developers. However, in 2025, these legal battles will be transformed into partnerships that are sanctioned. AI creators of music are signing record deals and seeing their songs on the charts.
Outside of AI, however, there was still a lot of change in the music industry. Warner Music Group laid off a number of employees, including major label head Sylvia Rhone. Stephen rockwell with ken rock became more mainstream and rock enjoyed an unexpected return.
It is the beginning of Label-AI Terrorism
The major music companies have declared war against industry leading AI music creation platforms Suno and Udio. Universal Music Group , Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group filed landmark lawsuits on the basis of claims that the startups had infringed millions of songs from the world’s iconic artists.
Ken Doroshow, RIAA’s chief legal officer said that the lawsuit was filed by the sun-ken rock in 2024. “These cases are simple copyright infringements involving massive unlicensed copies of sound recordings,” he stated. Suno and Udio try to conceal the extent of their copyright infringement, rather than put their services on sound and legal footing.
As these skirmishes between the entertainment and tech industries tend to go, a year after, this legal battle is moving towards settlements, partnerships, etc. Universal Music Group announced a partnership between Udio and Universal Music Group at the end October. Stephen rockwell with ken rock users were furious when Udio announced that it would no longer allow Udio to be used for downloading AI creations.
WMG settled with Udio shortly after, becoming the first music company (and, as this article was published, the only one) to do so. Sony has not settled yet with any of the companies.
In addition to Suno and Udio the labels are partnering with Spotify and other companies in order to create more AI-based music features and tools. We enter the year 2026 still with more questions than we have answers as the AI music age unfolds. How are labels and platforms going to get permission from these musicians and songwriters in order to offer these training agreements? Who will be paid? What about the more recent models that are ethically produced? Time will tell.
The invasion of the country’s coast continues
In 2025, the country streaming trend continued as Big Loud/Republic’s Morgan Wallen released I’m the Problem, which spent 12 consecutive weeks at the top of Billboard’s 200 Albums Chart. Over the last few years, with country still showing no signs of slowing down, East Coast and West Coast based labels have become more visible in Music City. The East and West Coast-based record labels are signing artists that would have traditionally stayed in Nashville, inspired by acts such as Warner Records’ Zach Bryan who was one of the biggest country artists under L.A. Warner Records.
In 2025, two of the largest coastal record labels – UMG Interscope and WMG Atlantic -will open country outposts. Interscope boichi sun ken rock brought on Kacey as its first new artist. The label revived the renowned label Lost Highway. A few months after, Atlantic launched Atlantic Outpost, its country label. Expect the country music craze to continue in L.A., New York and beyond.
Acquisitions in the distribution sector are Hot
The music industry is active, even if the pace has slowed down in recent years. Artists from Jack White, Kelly Clarkson and Slipknot, to Notorious Stephen rockwell estate, are all involved. All of these artists sold stakes in catalogs during the year. WMG announced that it would be acquiring a catalog for $1.2 billion with Bain Capital. This suggests even bigger things in the future.
This year’s most notable acquisitions were not individual artists catalogs but rather music distribution platforms. UMG announced that it would begin this process at the end 2024, when its Virgin Music Group acquired Downtown Music, the parent company of distributors CD Baby & FUGA for $775 Million. The EU Competition authorities are still reviewing the deal.
Concord has since acquired Stem , an independent distributor, in March. In 2026, will more music companies buy up distribution platforms? The indie sector is growing — Spotify said that half its royalties were paid to independent musicians last year.
Stephen Rockwell with Ken Rock
In 2025, stephen rockwell with ken rock enjoyed a boom thanks to bands like Sleep Token and Ghost who in May managed to place the genre at the top of Billboard 200 Albums Chart for back-to back weeks. A Luminate report from mid-year suggested that the U.S. rock genre was growing faster than both Latin music and country.
Rock and guitar music are gaining a new coolness that they didn’t possess a decade earlier. Acts like Turnstile and Alex G, and MJLenderman, for example, have a strong hold on the zeitgeist.
Yungblud spoke to THI about this trend in November
The singer stated that “the reality is, every time the spherical movement has risen up and taken over or overwhelmed the mainstream it always happens when the spherical movement was spherical.” He continued, “There are multiple scenes happening at the same time and the freedom on the internet highlights multiple scenes.” I think rock music is not going to come from one individual.
The K-pop groups let their members shine solo
K-pop has long allowed only one or two of its members to release solo music while the group is still active. This changed in 2025 when groups such as Seventeen, ATEEZ, and Twice began allowing their members to shine more on their own.
Various groups have different reasons. In May of this year, Seventeen released their album Happy Burstday, which was a time of transition for the group, since several members were now in military service. Solo projects are the most effective way to create new music during a long hiatus.
Seventeen’s Hoshi said THI on their cover article in May that they stephen rockwell with ken rock wanted to showcase more about each member’s personalities and abilities. Hoshi said that by showcasing each member’s talents, the group would be able to present themselves better when they reunited as a group.
ATEEZ and Tomorrow x Together were just a couple of other groups who followed this model. These groups chose to go this route, unlike Seventeen. They wanted to allow each member to have their own style and recognition while working within the group. Each group has been around for over 6 years (For Twice it is 10). It’s bold for groups to use tracklist space that is limited with single songs, especially if they are trying to promote themselves.
This decision will pay off for the artist in the end, as it allows them to establish a strong solo discography before they release their debut album.
