Last month, Reddit detectives made a startling discovery, and in so doing perhaps offered a glimpse at the future of music: an AI-generated band, The Velvet Sundown, was landing in users’ eardrums. With a full album of decently-polished tracks, a made-up bio, and plausibly real images, “they” had quickly racked up 1  million monthly listeners on Spotify, seemingly out of thin air. 

As the industry raced to get to the bottom of The Velvet Sundown’s success, questions were raised and debate ensued. The industry and the internet easily found similar bands and artists, who, with nary a real world footprint, had racked up hundreds of thousands of listeners across all platforms and genres.

The discussion quickly zeroed in on questions about human creativity, IP protections, ethics and the role of AI in music. But the immediate problem, the one actually costing artists money, isn’t how these songs were made. It’s how they were heard. 

The problem isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s artificial streaming. 

Whether music is created by machine or human, inauthentic streams distort engagement and siphon royalties. Bots, clickfarms and manipulated playlists are common tactics being used across the digital ecosystem to manufacture popularity. By some estimates, 5 to 10 percent of all streams are inauthentic. That’s billions of listens, and real royalties being redirected from legitimate creators to fraudsters jumping into the royalty pool. It’s organized and sophisticated manipulation that’s leading to lawsuits and criminal investigations. 

Don’t get me wrong: As U.S. authorities allege in the Michael Smith case, AI-generated music exacerbates the ease of committing fraud by pulverizing any barriers to creating music. But ask any artist, and they’ll tell you that the mere creation of a song doesn’t guarantee any listeners, let alone hundreds of thousands of listeners. In a market flooded with hundreds of thousands of new tracks each day, streams don’t happen by magic. 

If we want to have a truly fair and transparent marketplace, we must scrutinize whether any artist or any track benefits from inauthentic streams. We need to ensure that a song, regardless of its creation, earns listeners through genuine engagement, not gamesmanship. Because, ultimately, fraudsters don’t care if the music is made by a robot or a rock band. They only care about exploiting the system. 

Fortunately, this is one area where the industry is able to actively take charge and fight back. Companies across the ecosystem are investing heavily in fraud detection tools and technologies. Streaming platforms are penalizing fraudulent tracks to deter bad actors and working with artists, labels and distributors to raise awareness about suspicious activity. And through the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, industry leaders are collaborating on anti-fraud solutions with a goal to disrupt fraud as a united front. 

Through collaboration and shoring up our defenses, the music industry can root out bad actors and deter their tactics. Together, we can fight fraud and secure a more fair, transparent, and authentic streaming future. 

Michael Lewan is the Executive Director of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance. Launched in 2023, the MFFA is a global non-profit organization representing more than 25 member companies aligned in a mission to eradicate streaming fraud. Prior to joining the MFFA, he worked at the Recording Academy from 2017 to 2025 where he led public policy and advocacy initiatives. 

Investing in Welsh soccer clubs isn’t just for Hollywood superstars. Four years after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the Welsh Wrexham AFC team and boosted the moribund club’s status from the lower-rung National League to a historic three consecutive promotions in the English Football League, Snoop Dogg is getting in on the action.

The rapper known as a major American football booster through his Snoop Youth Football League for inner-city youth has become a co-owner and investor in a different Welsh soccer team, Swansea City A.F.C. The one-time Premier League club that currently plays in the English second division, announced the news on Thursday (July 18) in an Instagram post that read, “Swansea City is delighted to announce global rap superstar and multi-platinum selling artist @snoopdogg has become the club’s latest high-profile co-owner and investor.”

In addition, the team posted a promo video featuring a graffiti artists throwing up a mural announcing the news with Snoop providing the voiceover. “For many years I’ve been associated with soccer,” Snoop says over images of him rocking a number of different soccer jerseys (or “kits” as the English refer to them) on stage over the years.

“Yeah, I’ve worn a lot of kits in my life. But now I’m at the part of my life where I’m trying to find a kit that fits. The kit with the hit,” he says. “You know what I’m talking about. One team. The underdogs. [A] team that feels like me, that reals like me. I’m talking about Swansea City. Yeah baby! I’m not a player, I’m a owner. Swansea City, we coming to a hood near you. Big Snoop Dogg, Swansea City, baby, let’s go!” The video ends with the final look at the tagger’s piece, a mural of Snoop wearing the Swansea jersey.

At press time the team had not disclosed the amount of Snoop’s investment or ownership stake.

In a statement on the team’s official website it said, “[Snoop] has also always had a deep love of sport, and football in particular. At one point he was a brand ambassador for the FIFA video game series, and has been pictured wearing a variety of team jerseys over the years…  And it is hoped his global profile and love of football can play an important part in helping us spread the Swansea City name as far and wide as possible in order to boost our commercial performance to further support our aspirations as a club.”

It noted that the official mural painted by Hasan “HASS” Kamil, as seen in the video, was recently unveiled in the West Stand at the team’s home stadium.

In an accompanying statement, Snoop, 53, added, “My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City. The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me. I’m proud to be part of Swansea City. I am going to do all I can to help the club, and I look forward to getting to know all my YJBS.”

Swansea City chief executive Tom Gorringe added, “It is very exciting for us as a football club to formally welcome Snoop Dogg as a co-owner and investor into Swansea City. His enjoyment and love of football is well documented, and he has often spoken of a desire to get more involved in the sport. We are delighted he believes that being part of Swansea City is the right way to realise that ambition. Dogg is passionate about this project and helping us continue to raise the profile of the club to as wide an audience as possible.”

The team’s ownership group also had high praise, writing, “To borrow a phrase from Snoop’s back catalogue, this announcement is the next episode for Swansea City as we seek to create new opportunities to boost the club’s reach and profile. Snoop’s colossal global fanbase and audience will certainly help us do that, and he has made clear to us throughout this process just how excited he is at the prospect of joining the club.”

Last weekend Snoop helped reveal the look of the club’s 2025-2026 home kit in a video in which he said, “See that? That’s official. Official like a referee with a whistle, baby. We comin’ to get it,” while showing off the white shirt with “Dogg” embroidered on the back.

Check out Swansea’s announcement below.

The House gave final approval to President Donald Trump’s request to claw back about $9 billion for public broadcasting and foreign aid early Friday as Republicans intensified their efforts to target institutions and programs they view as bloated or out of step with their agenda.

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway, wary of crossing Trump or upsetting his agenda.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 216-213. It now goes to Trump for his signature.

Opponents voiced concerns not only about the programs targeted, but about Congress ceding its spending powers to the executive branch as investments approved on a bipartisan basis were being subsequently canceled on party-line votes. They said previous rescission efforts had at least some bipartisan buy-in and described the Republican package as unprecedented.

No Democrats supported the measure when it passed the Senate, 51-48, in the early morning hours Thursday. Final passage in the House was delayed for several hours as Republicans wrestled with their response to Democrats’ push for a vote on the release of Jeffrey Epstein files.

The package cancels about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

The effort to claw back a sliver of federal spending came just weeks after Republicans also muscled through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase the U.S. debt by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

“No one is buying the the notion that Republicans are actually trying to improve wasteful spending,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPB represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.

The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Democrats were unsuccessful in restoring the funding in the Senate.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the stations are “not just your news — it is your tsunami alert, it is your landslide alert, it is your volcano alert.”

As the Senate debated the bill Tuesday, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck off the remote Alaska Peninsula, triggering tsunami warnings on local public broadcasting stations that advised people to get to higher ground.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said he secured a deal from the White House that some money administered by the Interior Department would be repurposed to subsidize Native American public radio stations in about a dozen states.

But Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, a network of locally owned and operated stations, said that deal was “at best a short-term, half-measure that will still result in cuts and reduced service at the stations it purports to save.”

Max McNown is giving fans even more of his soul-baring sound. The 23-year-old singer-songwriter has released the deluxe edition of his sophomore album, Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), featuring 11 new tracks that chronicle themes of grief, healing, young love and self-discovery.

The expanded set, out now via Fugitive Recordings x The Orchard x Columbia Records, arrives as McNown continues a meteoric rise in the country-folk space. Led by the focus track “Forever Ain’t Long Enough,” the deluxe album also includes a new version of “Night Diving” featuring country artist Cameron Whitcomb.

Releasing the single “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)” last November, McKnown recently told Billboard that he felt reluctant to share such a vulnerable single about his girlfriend of nearly two years. But the track quickly resonated with fans, becoming his first entry on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and the Billboard Hot 100 — and soon, the 23-year-old’s perspective changed.

“I wasn’t expecting a song that is so specifically about my girlfriend to do so well,” he reflects. “It gives me a lot of encouragement to keep writing personal songs about my life.”

McNown wrote “Better Me For You” in May 2024 during a session with Trent Dabbs, Ava Suppelsa and writer-producer Jamie Kenney, at the lattermost’s Nashville-area studio. At the time, McNown had a basic melody, a simple concept and the written phrase, “I didn’t know you’d have brown eyes,” which became central to the song’s chorus.

Produced by Jamie Kenney (Colbie Caillat, Laci Kaye Booth), the new tracks expand McNown’s signature blend of folk, country and indie pop, with earthy tones and introspective lyrics inspired by his Pacific Northwest upbringing. Tracks like “Same Questions” and “St. Helen’s Alpenglow” explore heartbreak and reflection, while “The Cost of Growing Up” provides a melancholic meditation on life’s challenges.

The Nashville-based artist will bring his new music to stages across North America on the Forever Ain’t Long Enough tour, kicking off Aug. 21 in Kansas City. He is also set to perform at Lollapalooza on Aug. 2.

Soccer Mommy (a.k.a. Sophie Allison) has shared a stellar rendition of Pavement’s “Gold Soundz” as part of her recent appearance on Like a Version, the long-running covers segment from Australian radio station triple j.

Recorded during Allison’s recent Australian tour in June, the two-song set began with a standard original, which in this case was “Abigail,” the final single from Soccer Mommy’s 2024 album Evergreen.

The cover portion of the set saw Allison and her band turn their attention to 1994, sharing a bittersweet version of “Gold Soundz” – the second single from Pavement’s second LP, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.

“I chose this song ’cause I love Pavement,” Allison said in a post-performance interview. “I’m a huge Pavement fan. I’ve actually covered another Pavement song before, but I just always really liked this one and I thought it fit my voice nicely.

“I think it’s just really catchy. It gets stuck in your head,” she added. “It has a nice melody and nice guitar parts. I really like the jangliness of the guitars in this song. I think that’s what drew me to it.”

Indeed, Allison has certainly shown her love of Pavement in the past. In 2022, Soccer Mommy was invited to perform at Pavements 1933 to 2022, the indie rock outfit’s New York City pop-up museum, where she shared covers of “Here,” “Gold Soundz,” and “Spit on a Stranger.”

The following year, Soccer Mommy’s Karaoke Night EP featured covers of Taylor Swift, Slowdive, Sheryl Crow, and R.E.M., while opening with a recorded rendition of Pavement’s “Here.”

“I do love Pavement,” Allison continued. “I really, really love Pavement. I first  discovered Pavement when I was in high school, and that’s kind of when I got really into them, and especially Slanted and Enchanted was my favorite album. But I’ve just always really liked them. 

“It was one of those bands that I got into in high school and never grew out of, and particularly there’s a little bit of a renaissance right now with them kind of touring again and doing stuff together. So I think that’s why it’s fresh in the mind.”

Pavement have been sporadically active since their 2022 reunion, with a run of international tour dates taking place since. More recently, they’ve also been the subject of the aptly-titled Pavements, an experimental semi-fictional biopic directed by Alex Ross Perry which was officially released in June.

For his part, Perry has expressed his love of Soccer Mommy’s nascent cover, commenting on triple j’s Instagram post of the track, “I extremely support this.”

Having first launched in 2004, the Like a Version series has gone from being a near-impromptu acoustic affair to featuring larger studio productions. Numerous artists have taken part over the past two decades, with the likes of Billie Eilish, Childish Gambino, Arctic Monkeys, and more reinventing classic tracks in the process.

View Soccer Mommy’s cover of Pavement’s ‘Gold Soundz’ below.