THE BIG STORY: Two years after the Department of Justice filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation seeking to split the company from Ticketmaster, a federal judge ruled that the case could move ahead to a blockbuster trial.

The feds claim Live Nation runs an illegal “flywheel” — reaping revenue from ticket buyers, using that money to sign artists, then leveraging that repertoire to lock venues into exclusive ticketing contracts that yield ever more revenue.

After more than a year of discovery, Live Nation urged the judge to end that case, arguing that little hard evidence had been uncovered. But in his ruling last week, Judge Arun Subramanian (yes, that Arun Subramanian) said the government could proceed to trial on several key accusations, including that Live Nation abused its vast portfolio of amphitheaters to force artists to use its promotion services.

“A reasonable jury could certainly find that artists were coerced into going with Live Nation as their promoter to get into its amphitheaters,” the judge wrote.

For more, go read our full story here, with the judge’s actual written ruling; Live Nation’s unusual response urging the feds to settle; and its push for a trial postponement amid a fast-track appeal. And stay with Billboard for the trial – set to start next Monday.

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Other top stories this week…

-Two producers who dropped their lawsuit against Karol G over a song from her chart-topping album Mañana Será Bonito – and, in a rare move, apologized for filing it in the first place.

-The record labels are cracking down on corporate social media accounts that use popular songs. Here’s why it’s happening, and what experts say might come next.

-Skaters at the 2026 Winter Olympics got a hard lesson in the complex world of music licensing as they tried to use popular songs in their routines: “It’s a clearance nightmare.”

-Prosecutors filed their main brief in Sean “Diddy“ Combs’ criminal appeal, arguing there’s no basis to disturb the mogul’s prostitution conviction and four-year prison sentence.

-Miley Cyrus asked a judge to dismiss the long-running lawsuit claiming her chart-topping “Flowers” ripped off Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man,” arguing the two songs are “very different.”

-As Lil Durk’s murder-for-hire trial nears, a judge ruled that prosecutors can introduce some of his lyrics as evidence, ruling they are directly relevant to the accusations in the case.

-OutKast reached a settlement to end a lawsuit against an electronic dance music duo calling itself ATLiens – the same name as one of the hip hop duo’s best-known songs.

-Regional Mexican music legend Ramón Ayala is facing a $25 million lawsuit from a tour photographer alleging Ayala’s son engaged in abusive behavior toward the staffer.

-R&B singer Kenny Lattimore filed a lawsuit against distributor SRG/ILS Group, claiming he’s received only a single royalty check since the release of his last album in 2021.

-In unrelated Live Nation news, a judge refused to dismiss a civil suit over the deadly 2023 shooting at the Beyond Wonderland festival at Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre.

-Donny Osmond is facing a lawsuit from a concertgoer who says she suffered a “traumatic retinal injury” after being hit with a giant inflatable lit-up ball at his Las Vegas residency.

-The estate of Isaac Hayes reached a settlement with President Donald Trump to end copyright litigation over the use of the 1966 song “Hold On, I’m Comin’” at election rallies.

David Ahumada has been appointed head of CAN LATAM at ONE Publishing.

With more than 10 years of experience in the publishing industry, Ahumada, a Colombian music executive, will consolidate operations in the Andean region and accelerate regional growth aligned with ONE Publishing’s global vision. His new role will focus on active catalog development, regional partnerships creations and the optimization of services. 

Additional priorities include strengthening relationships with songwriters, fostering regional co-creation initiatives, and reinforcing partnerships with collective management organizations and key industry stakeholders.

“Borderless co-creation, sharing audiences, genres, and cultures, at a time when LATAM is at the center of global attention, is extraordinary,” Ahumada said in a press statement. “I am excited about ONE Publishing’s commitment to technology as a facilitator of a less visible side of the business, publishing, making it more accessible, fair, and efficient for creators. That path represents the future, and being part of it means staying at the forefront, strengthening service to songwriters, and generating more opportunities for art.”

Prior to being named ONE Publishing’s head of CAN LATAM, Ahumada built his career as an A&R at Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell Music and Sony Music Publishing. Also with a background in music business and audio engineering, he will bring creative sensibility, editorial judgment and a data-driven mindset to the team. 

With the new appointment, ONE Publishing not only deepens its positioning in the Latin American region, but it also “reinforces its growth strategy built on innovation, creative development, and an active defense of authors’ rights as the foundation of its publishing business in Latin America,” as noted in the statement. 

Lenny Kravitz, Maroon 5, Ozuna and Yandel are among the artists who will headline the Starlite Occident Marbella 2026 lineup, the festival announced on Tuesday (Feb. 24).

The two-month “boutique” festival, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, also has Grupo Frontera, Manuel Turizo, Danny Ocean, Carlos Rivera, Gente de Zona, Mau y Ricky and Elvis Crespo among its first confirmed artists, along with Deep Purple, Delaossa, Sergio Dalma, Zucchero, Diana Krall, and more.

Held every summer in a natural outdoor quarry in Marbella, Spain, Starlite Occident Marbella brings together rock, pop, Latin music, electronic music, jazz and major international voices, offering an experience that combines top-tier concerts, closeness to the artist and a premium environment far from the typical mega-festival model.

The event also features a philanthropic component through the Starlite Foundation, which has raised millions of euros for international charitable projects, integrating philanthropy at the heart of its proposal.

This year, it will return from June to August, with definitive dates yet to be announced. Tickets will be available starting Thursday (Feb. 26). For more information on the lineup and to purchase tickets, visit the Starlite Occident’s website.

The announcement of Starlite Occident Marbella comes two months after the celebration of Starlite Occident Madrid, another event organized by Starlite Music Group. In its third edition, that concert series — held at IFEMA Madrid in December — hosted the first Billboard No. 1s Spain, a collaborative event between Grupo Starlite and Billboard featuring performances by Ana Mena, Pablo Alborán, Rozalén and more.

The ongoing debate around so-called “walled gardens” in the music industry continues with a new open letter titled “Say No to Suno,” in which a number of artist rights groups call out the AI music company for its training practices and its approach to AI song downloads. “Suno built its business on our backs, scraping the world’s cultural output without permission, then competing against the very works exploited,” the letter reads.

Written for the blog The Trichordist, the letter was signed by the Music Artists Coalition, the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, the Artist Rights Alliance, North Music Group, the Artist Rights Institute and the ECR Music Group — many of which are known for taking strong, pro-copyright stances.

The discussion around whether AI music companies should implement walled gardens — or forbidding AI songs to exit the platform — has become a major point of discussion in recent weeks. In late January, Michael Nash, chief digital officer and executive vp at Universal Music Group, was interviewed on Billboard’s On the Record podcast and shared that Suno’s disinterest in making the service a walled garden is a reason why UMG has yet to settle its part of the major labels’ $500 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Suno. “That’s kind of a hat-hanger in this discussion,” he said.

Paul Sinclair, chief music officer at Suno, weighed in on the topic a few days later in a lengthy LinkedIn post titled Open Studios, Not Walled Gardens: “If we had tried to lock music into closed systems over the last 25 years, we wouldn’t have streaming as we know it.” He said that new innovations could spring from AI development, including new genres, “but for that promise to be real, these tools can’t just be toys inside a box.”

The activists’ letter disagrees with Sinclair’s argument. “At its core, Sinclair’s argument is just a tired remix of the old trope that ‘information wants to be free.’ What that really means is: ‘We want your music for free.’”

The letter adds: “Ask yourself: just why are most gardens surrounded by fences or walls? To keep out rabbits, deer, raccoons and wild pigs seeking a free lunch. We cultivate, nurture and protect our gardens precisely because that makes them much more productive over the long run.”

Not all stakeholders believe in the “walled garden” approach. Warner Music Group, for example, found a settlement with Suno, ending its part of the major labels’ lawsuit against the AI music company, without forcing it into a closed environment. Instead, as part of the deal, Suno agreed to limit the number of downloads of AI music and users who want more downloads must pay extra. When asked about “walled gardens” on WMG’s latest earnings call, on Feb. 5, CEO Robert Kyncl said: “I think this issue is getting painted too much in black and white… Black and white is never the answer,” adding “it’s worth it to do the hard work of finding the equilibrium that creates value — we think we got it right.”

Spotify also does not appear to have an issue with AI music leaving its place of origin and ending up on their site: “A growing catalog has always been very good for us,” co-CEO Gustav Söderström said in reference to the rise of original AI-generated songs on a recent earnings call. “It attracts new users, drives engagement and builds fandoms … while the music may be generated on various AI platforms, the point is that regardless of where the music is made, the cultural moment always happens on Spotify.” 

The group of activists also call out Suno’s training practices in the letter as well, alleging that Suno’s use of copyrighted songs as training data without a license is a “brazen rip-off of artists enabled by irresponsible AI… The hijacking of the world’s entire treasure-trove of music floods platforms with AI slop and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived.”

The group also raises concerns about Deezer’s latest research, which says that up to 85% of all streams on fully AI generated music are fraudulent or artificial. “Suno has yet to demonstrate persuasively that its platform does not, in practice, serve as a scalable input into streaming-fraud schemes — raising a serious concern that Suno has, in effect, become a fraud-fodder factory on an industrial scale,” the letter reads.

Read the letter in full below:

Say No to Suno

Late last year, thieves disguised as construction workers broke into the Louvre during broad daylight, grabbed more than $100 million worth of crown jewels, and roared off on their motorbikes into the busy streets of Paris. While some of those thieves were later arrested, the jewelry they stole has yet to be recovered, and many fear those historic works of artistry have already been recut, reset, and resold.

Closer to home, but no less nefarious, is the brazen rip-off of artists enabled by irresponsible AI, whose profiteers are recutting, remixing, and reselling original works of artistry as something new. The hijacking of the world’s entire treasure-trove of music floods platforms with AI slop and dilutes the royalty pools of legitimate artists from whose music this slop is derived.

Meanwhile, those who are promoting this new business model are operating in broad daylight, too – minus the yellow safety vests. That is AI music company Suno, the brazen “smash and grab” platform whose “Make it Music” ad campaign suggests that the most personal and meaningful forms of music can now be fabricated by their unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists’ work.

How significant is this activity? Publicly revealed data says Suno is used to generate 7 million tracks a day, a massive quantity that suggests a dominant market share of AI tracks. According to recent reports, Deezer “deems 85% of streams of fully AI-generated tracks [on its service] to be fraudulent,” and that such tracks include outputs from major generative models. As JP Morgan’s analysts said, Deezer’s data “should be indicative of the broader market.” Suno has yet to demonstrate persuasively that its platform does not, in practice, serve as a scalable input into streaming-fraud schemes — raising a serious concern that Suno has, in effect, become a fraud-fodder factory on an industrial scale.

In a February 2 LinkedIn post, Paul Sinclair, Suno’s Chief Music Officer, claims that his company’s platform is about “empowerment” that enables “billions of fans to create and play with music.” He argues that closed systems are “walled gardens” that deny people access to the full joy of music.

Ironically, Sinclair’s choice of analogy undermines his own argument. Ask yourself: just why are most gardens surrounded by fences or walls? To keep out rabbits, deer, raccoons and wild pigs seeking a free lunch. We cultivate, nurture and protect our gardens precisely because that makes them much more productive over the long run.

While Sinclair may be loath to admit it, AI is fundamentally different from past disruptive innovations in the music industry. The phonograph, cassettes, CDs, MP3s, downloads, streaming – all these technologies were about the reproduction and distribution of creative work. By contrast, irresponsible AI like Suno appropriates and plunders such creative work while undermining the commercial ecosystem for artists.

Think back to the days of Napster. What brought the music industry back from the ruinous abyss of unfettered digital piracy? It was the very “closed systems” that Sinclair derides as exclusionary. At least streaming platforms maintain access controls and content management systems that enable creator compensation, even if the economic outcomes for many creators remain inadequate. Should we be against Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music? What about Netflix, Disney+ and HBO, too, while we’re at it?

At its core, Sinclair’s argument is just a tired remix of the old trope that “information wants to be free.” What that really means is: “We want your music for free.”

Artists need to understand Suno’s game. They are not putting technology in the service of artists; they are putting artists in the service of their technology. Every time artists’ creations are used by the platform, those creations have just unwittingly been contributed to the creation of endless derivatives of artists’ own work, not to mention AI slop, with limited or no remuneration back to the human creators. Suno built its business on our backs, scraping the world’s cultural output without permission, then competing against the very works exploited.

It’s also important to keep in mind that using Suno to generate audio output calls into question the copyrightability of whatever Suno creates. Most countries around the world including the US Copyright Office have been clear that generative AI outputs are largely ineligible for a copyright – meaning the economic value of the Suno creation lies solely with Suno, not with the artist using it. The only ones gaining empowerment from Suno are Suno themselves.

Many in our community are embracing responsible AI as a tool for creation, and as a means for fans to explore and interact with our artistry. That’s wonderful. But it’s not the same as creating an environment where AI-generated works sourced from our music are mass distributed to dilute our royalties or, worse yet, reward those actively seeking to commit fraud. Artists need to know the difference – all AI platforms are not the same, and Suno, which is being sued for copyright infringement, is not a platform artists should trust.

Responsible AI-generated music must evolve within a framework that respects and remunerates artists, enhances human creativity rather than supplants it, and empowers fans to engage with the music they love. At the same time, AI services must preclude mass distribution of slop and prevent fraudsters from destroying the very ecosystem that has been built to reward and sustain artists and audiences alike.

All of us, including billions of music fans, share an urgent, deep and abiding interest in protecting and rewarding human genius, even as AI continues to change our industry and the world in unimaginable ways. So in 2026, even as the Louvre continues to revamp its own approach to security, we in the arts must rise to confront those who would “smash-and-grab” our creativity for their own benefit.

Together, while embracing innovation, we must work to establish more effective safeguards – both legal and technological – that better promote and protect all creative artists, our intellectual property, and the spark of human genius.

Say no to Suno. Say yes to the beauty and bounty of the gardens that feed us all.

Signed:

Ron Gubitz, Executive Director, Music Artist Coalition

Helienne Lindvall, Songwriter and President, European Composer and Songwriter Alliance

David C. Lowery, Artist and Editor The Trichordist

Tift Merritt artist, Practitioner in Residence, Duke University and Artist Rights Alliance Board Member

Blake Morgan, artist, producer, and President of ECR Music Group

Abby North, President, North Music Group

Chris Castle, Artist Rights Institute

Ticktock, Klay Thompson — Megan Thee Stallion is ready to walk down the aisle. In a new video, the rapper revealed that she’s hoping a proposal is in her future, telling a handful of Olympic athletes in Milan that she’s “manifesting” an engagement ring.

In the clip posted Monday (Feb. 23) on her YouTube channel, Meg continued her Winter Olympics video series by going out to a cafe with athletes Brittany Bowe and Hilary Knight — who just got engaged to each other — and Laila Edwards. While out and about, the hip-hop star gushes to the Team USA hockey captain and speed skater, “I heard y’all just got engaged, congrats! I love love, that’s so sweet.”

After watching a video of Knight proposing to Bowe earlier in the month before the Winter Games concluded Feb. 22, Ms. Stallion crossed her fingers and added, “Manifesting my engagement, too.”

Meg and a certain Dallas Mavericks baller have been dating since before July of last year, when they made their red carpet debut as a couple after initially sparking romance rumors with subtle posts on Instagram. The pair has been loud and proud, with the two showing off love ever since; the hitmaker often shares videos of their dates and dropped the loved-up single “Lover Girl” in November, which reached No. 38 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In a pre-Valentine’s Day interview with People, Meg opened up about finding love with Thompson at a time when she wasn’t looking for it. “I didn’t even know I was going to be in my relationship, to be honest,” she told the publication at the time.

“I think that because finally I started being in a better mind space about myself and my life, and I had already been doing a lot of work to heal me,” she continued. “Maybe God just opened up that space for me to have somebody that loved me right. This is one of the first times that I’ve ever been just overly comfortable.”

Watch Meg hang out with Olympians and manifest her engagement below.