Round Hill Sues Suno & Anthropic for $1B+, Curve Royalties Deal Closes - August 18

Round Hill Music's billion-dollar-plus copyright salvos against Suno and Anthropic dominate today's brief, joined by Ellie Goulding's conflict-of-interest suit against Live Nation-linked managers. Meanwhile, the Merlin-Jamen Capital acquisition of Curve Royalty Systems officially closes, tidying up a loose end from UMG's Downtown deal. Deals & M&A • Merlin and Jamen Capital close Curve Royalty Systems acquisition from Virgin Music Group, fulfilling EC condition on UMG's $775M Downtown deal. Lawsuits & AI • Round Hill Music sues Suno and Anthropic separately for copyright infringement, with damages potentially exceeding $1 billion each. • Round Hill's Suno suit also names data-scraper Bright Data for bypassing paywalls and stripping copyright metadata. • Ellie Goulding sues TaP Management's Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, alleging undisclosed Live Nation ownership and conflicts of interest from 2018 to 2025. • Vermont's Stone Church venue sues StubHub for trademark infringement and deceptive ticketing practices, seeking over $5 million. Streaming & Tech • YouTube will count views from the first frame of playback starting August 24, eliminating minimum watch-time thresholds for long-form content. • Alibaba launches HappyShrimp 1.0 beta, an AI music-generation model, partnering with China's Taihe Music Group. • SubmitHub reports 23.2% of one million-plus releases in its pipeline were fully AI-generated; platform licensing its detection tech to the industry. • Anghami COO warns AI music tools are trained on Western catalogues and underserve Arabic-language music. • MPA strikes IP protection deal with ByteDance covering AI products Seedance and Seedream. • Spotify rolls out a new feature letting editors and users add contextual notes to playlists. Live & Touring • Live Nation plans to convert San Diego's historic Wonder Bread building into a 4,000-capacity venue, opening in 2028. • Ozzfest confirms its 2027 return to Birmingham's Villa Park after an eight-year hiatus, with an AI Ozzy Osbourne avatar in tow. Also Today • WMG CEO Robert Kyncl defends Suno licensing deal and calls on Netflix to launch a dedicated music offering to rival YouTube. Five minutes, six categories, zero fluff.

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Today is Tuesday, august eighteenth, twenty twenty six. First up, deals and MA. Merlin and Jamin Capital have completed their acquisition of Curve Royalty Systems from Virgin Music Group. The European Commission granted final approval today, establishing Curve as a standalone business. This deal resolves a condition the Commission imposed on Universal Music Group's $775 million acquisition of downtown music holdings back in 2023. Moving to lawsuits and AI. Roundhill Music filed two separate copyright infringement suits today, one against Suno and one against Anthropic, alleging the AI labs infringed tens of thousands of songs to train their models. The damages in each case could exceed $1 billion. Songs at issue include Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and I Got You, I Feel Good by James Brown. Separately, Ellie Goulding sued her former managers Ben Mawson and Ed Millette of Tap Management. Goulding alleges they failed to disclose that Tapp's parent company was owned by Live Nation, creating a clear conflict of interest. The managers took 20% commission while steering her into Live Nation touring, merchandise, and documentary deals from 2018 to 2025. Also, Vermont Indie venue The Stone Church sued StubHub for trademark infringement and deceptive marketing, seeking more than $5 million in damages. The suit alleges StubHub used false scarcity warnings, deceptive pricing badges, and speculative ticket listings. On to streaming and tech. YouTube is making a major change to how views are counted. Effective August 24th, YouTube will count a public view from the first frame of playback across long-form videos, podcasts, and live streams, eliminating any minimum watch time threshold. This matches the standard already used for shorts. Creator earnings and partner program eligibility will continue to use the older engaged views metric. Now live and touring. Live Nation announced plans to transform San Diego's historic Wonderbread building in East Village into a 4,000 capacity venue. The city has a gap between small clubs and large arenas, and Live Nation expects the venue to open in 2028. Meanwhile, Ozfest officially confirmed its return to Villa Park in Birmingham for 2027 after an eight-year hiatus. Sharon Osborne and Jack also confirmed that an AI Aussie Avatar, a real-time interactive facsimile, will appear at the festival. Finally, International. Alibaba launched Happy Shrimp 1.0, a beta AI music generation model that turns a single text prompt into a fully produced song with melodies, arrangements, lyrics, and vocals. Alibaba partnered with China's Tai He Music Group for professional production and commercial applications at launch. That's your music industry rundown. See you tomorrow.