Music Industry Daily

Bad Bunny's $467M Tour Record, GEMA's PLAI AI Dataset - July 27

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Bad Bunny rewrote Latin touring history this weekend, and Germany's GEMA made a bold AI licensing move days before a landmark court ruling. Meanwhile, StubHub's CEO is under congressional fire, Katy Perry is furious at the White House, and Charli xcx's streaming boycott has a crack in it. Here's everything that mattered today. Lawsuits & AI • House Democrats demand StubHub CEO Eric Baker's records on his stake in ticket-resale hedge fund Andro Capital. • GEMA launches PLAI, a licensed AI-training dataset of ~178,000 audio files, with Klangio as first customer. • Luminate survey: 38% of Americans less interested in AI music, 28% more — teens aged 13–17 most enthusiastic. • GEMA's copyright suit against Suno heads to Munich court July 31, days after PLAI's debut. Live & Touring • Bad Bunny's Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour grossed $467.5M across 55 shows, a record for male Latin artists. • Tour had zero mainland US dates due to ICE-related fan-safety concerns; Bad Bunny's career gross now tops $1.2B. • Kacey Musgraves quietly dropped three August–September tour dates in Chicago, Boston, and Brooklyn. • Roxette canceled their entire North American 40th-anniversary tour, blaming soaring production costs. Artists & Releases • Katy Perry condemned the White House for using "Firework" without permission in Iran strike TikTok footage. • Perry sold "Firework" in a $225M catalog deal; the White House used it without license or clearance. • Charli xcx "begrudgingly" put three physical-only B-sides on iTunes, breaking her DSP streaming boycott. • Rick Ross' Set In Stone debuted at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 with just 17,189 album-equivalent units. Five minutes, four categories, zero fluff.
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Today is Monday, July 27, 2026. First up, lawsuits and AI. A Democratic lawmaker is demanding answers from StubHub's CEO over a potential conflict of interest. Representative Robert Garcia sent a letter to Eric Baker on July 24th asking for internal records on Baker's ownership stake in Andro Capital, a hedge fund that resells tickets on Stubhub's own platform. Written responses are due by August 6th. The timing matters. This probe lands just as the industry grapples with questions about who profits from resales on major marketplaces. Meanwhile, Germany's Gima Collection Society just launched PLAI, a licensed AI training dataset of roughly 178,000 audio files from 57,000 works. The move is strategic timing. Gima's Munich court ruling in its copyright lawsuit against AI music company Suno comes down on July 31st. Clanggeo, an AI transcription firm, is the first customer signed up to use the dataset. And a new survey from Luminate tells us how Americans actually feel about generative AI in music. Out of 1,758 respondents, 38% said they'd be less interested in AI-made music. About a third are neutral. 28% are more interested. Interestingly, teenagers, the 13 to 17 crowd, were notably more positive about it than young adults aged 18 to 24. On to Live and Touring. Bad Bunny's Debitirarmas Fotos World Tour just wrapped with historic numbers. The tour grossed $467.5 million across 3.1 million tickets sold on 55 shows. That's the record for the highest-grossing male Latin artist tour ever. Here's what makes it remarkable. He achieved this without playing a single date on the mainland United States. A deliberate choice due to ICE-related fan safety concerns. In other touring news, Casey Musgraves quietly canceled three dates on her Middle of Nowhere tour. August 20th in Chicago, August 29th in Boston, and September 2nd in Brooklyn. TMZ reports it's a scheduling decision, not a health matter. And Roxette pulled the plug entirely on their 40th anniversary North American tour, citing soaring production costs. That's despite It Must Have Been Love recently hitting YouTube's Billion Views Club. Now, artist news. The caption read, Iran has been warned. Perry called the use appalling and took to social media to condemn it. Charlie XCX made a surprise move on July 26th. She released Music, Fashion, Film, B-Sides edition on iTunes. Three tracks she had vowed would never appear on streaming services. The three B-Sides are I Keep on Thinking About You, Playboy Bunny, and If You Take the Music. They were previously physical-only releases. She said she was doing it begrudgingly. And Rick Ross's 12th studio album, Set in Stone, debuted this week at number 45 on the Billboard 200 with just over 17,000 album equivalent units. That's a steep drop from his previous solo album opener, which landed at number 22. That's your music industry rundown. We'll be back tomorrow.