Udio now says it will briefly allow subscribers to download their existing songs following widespread backlash to drastic changes made to the platform following the AI firm’s licensing settlement with Universal Music Group (UMG).

The move comes in response to growing outrage — and even threats of legal action — from users after Udio struck the UMG deal, under which the AI company immediately barred its paying subscribers from downloading their own songs, even those they had created long before the UMG deal.

In the statement posted late Thursday (Oct. 30) to Reddit, Udio said it would provide a 48-hour window starting Monday (Nov. 3) for all users to download their existing songs. Any songs downloaded during that time will be covered by the prior terms of service that existed before the UMG settlement.

“Not going to mince words: we hate the fact we cannot offer downloads right now,” Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez wrote in that post. “We know the pain it causes to you, and we are sorry that we have had to do so.”

In the Reddit post, Sanchez also tried to explain the reasons for the original change, saying that Udio is a “small company operating in an incredibly complex and evolving space” that had chosen to partner directly with artists and songwriters. “In order to facilitate that partnership, we had to disable downloads,” he said.

If the download ban is a requirement of the legal settlement with UMG, how can Udio now reverse course and allow users to download their songs? Sanchez said Udio had “worked with our partners to help make this possible.” A spokesman for UMG did not return a request for comment.

Any existing songs that are downloaded during next week’s window will be owned by the users who made them. Under Udio’s terms of service, the company grants all users of the platform — paid subscribers or free users — any ownership rights to their songs, including express permission to use them for commercial purposes. The company does require users of the company’s free tier to include attribution that the song was made with Udio.

The deal between UMG and Udio, announced Wednesday (Oct. 29), will end UMG’s allegations that Udio broke the law by training its AI models on vast troves of copyrighted songs. Under the agreement, Udio will pay a “compensatory” settlement, and the two will partner on a new subscription AI service that pays fees to UMG and its artists, and allows artists to opt in to different aspects of the new service.

The revamped Udio will be quite a bit different from the current service — a “walled garden” where fans can stream their creations but cannot take them elsewhere. While the new version won’t launch until next year, the firm immediately disabled all downloading on Wednesday, a move that drew predictable backlash from its users, particularly on the company’s Reddit sub.

 “This feels like an absolute betrayal,” wrote one Reddit user. “I’ve spent hundreds of $$$ and countless hours building tracks with this tool,” wrote another. “No one warned us that one day, we wouldn’t even be able to access our own music. You can’t just pull the plug and call that a ‘transition.’”

Some Udio subscribers even floated the idea of legal action: “What you have committed is fraud. Just so you understand,” wrote one user. “You may not feel any legal ramifications immediately, but not everyone who used your platform is without resources.”

The window for downloads will kick off on Monday, but it’s unclear exactly when. Udio said in the post that it would “provide the exact starting time and end time” on Friday (Oct. 31), but had yet to do so by Friday afternoon. An Udio spokesperson did not offer more details when reached by Billboard for comment.

Happy Halloween, Arianators. Ryan Murphy has announced the main cast of the upcoming 13th season of American Horror Story, which will feature Ariana Grande making her debut on the show alongside series regulars such as Evan Peters and Emma Roberts.

The news was revealed Friday (Oct. 31), with the Glee creator’s production company sharing a video on Instagram unveiling the stars on next season’s billing set to Vera Lynn’s cover of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” The Wicked leading lady’s name was revealed fifth in the lineup, following Peters, Sarah Paulson, Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates — each of whom are beloved members of the AHS universe.

Also returning to the show is Jessica Lange, who hasn’t participated in a season since 2018. Billie Lourd, Gabourey Sidibe and Leslie Grossman will also share the screen for season 13.

AHS isn’t the first Murphy project Grande will have starred in, with the Grammy winner playing Sonya Herfmann — aka “Chanel No. 2” — on Scream Queens in 2015. The next season of AHS will be a Scream Queens reunion of sorts, as both Roberts and Lourd costarred with Grande in the latter project.

The Victorious alum has also previously worked with Peters, who played her love interest in the music video for Billboard Hot 100-topper “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love).”

Grande has been actively filling up her resume with more acting projects since starring in Wicked, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. In July, it was announced that she will voice a character in Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

On the same day the AHS casting news dropped, Grande also wrapped filming on Focker in-Law, the next installment of the Meet the Parents franchise premiering in 2026. On Instagram, the vocalist celebrated the conclusion of the project by sharing photos of herself on set with her castmates and writing, “these past few months have been so, so unimaginably special. i love my Fockers, and i love my Byrnes… so, so very much. i will miss this bunch terribly.”

See the AHS season 13 casting announcement below.

On Wednesday night (Oct. 29), Universal Music Group (UMG) and AI music company Udio announced they had reached a strategic agreement. Importantly, this agreement not only settled UMG’s involvement in the massive copyright infringement litigation the major labels brought against Udio and another AI music company, Suno, last summer, but also paved the way for the two companies to “collaborate on an innovative, new commercial music creation, consumption and streaming experience,” according to the announcement.

The newly revamped version of Udio is set to debut in 2026, and it will feature fully-licensed UMG sound recordings and publishing assets that are totally controlled by UMG — but only those from artists that choose to participate.

Here, Billboard looks at the deal more deeply and answers some questions that have arisen in the wake of the first-of-its-kind agreement.

Why did UMG and Udio decide to come together and settle this week?

It’s hard to know exactly what happened behind closed doors, but reports that the major music companies had been in talks to settle with Udio — and Suno, which was also sued in a nearly identical lawsuit by the majors — have been circulating since this summer, making it relatively unsurprising to hear that at least one deal has been finalized.

One clue as to why there was incentive to settle here comes from a recent Barclays Research report on the majors’ lawsuits against the AI music firms, which stated that it could be “prohibitively expensive to lose” for Udio, much more than Suno, given the two firms had raised $10 million and $125 million, respectively, at the time the report was published on Tuesday (Oct. 28). Even a tough settlement, the report states, “would likely only mean the disappearance of Udio.”

The timing of the press release about the UMG-Udio deal also arrived the night before UMG’s Q3 earnings call, which took place yesterday (Oct. 30). The company has a history of announcing big news just before earnings calls in general, including one instance when UMG reached an agreement with TikTok the night before earnings in 2024 after a three-month standoff.

What exactly will this 2026 version of Udio entail?

The new version of Udio will feature a number of tools to allow users to remix, mash up and riff on the songs of participating UMG artists. Users will also be able to create songs in the style of participating artists and use some artists’ voices on songs.

According to Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez, who spoke to Billboard just after the deal was announced, “[Udio is] going to involve all kinds of AI models, like a base model… The best way to explain it, [is it] will have sort of like flavors of the model that will be specific to particular styles or artists or genres. And this, again, provides an enormous amount of control.”

How can UMG artists and songwriters participate, and can they get paid for that?

Yes, UMG artists and songwriters will be remunerated for participating in Udio. According to a source close to the deal, this will include financial rewards for both the training process of the AI model and for its outputs. The details of exactly how that payment will work beyond this are unclear. Sanchez declined to answer a question about whether the model uses attribution (tracing back which songs in a training dataset influenced the outputs of a model) or digital proxies (a selected benchmark, like streaming performance, used to determine the popularity of songs in a dataset against others overall) as a way to determine payment — two of the most often proposed methods of AI licensing remuneration.

This answer is also made more complicated when considering the breadth of AI tools Udio plans to offer on its service. Importantly, artists can pick and choose exactly which Udio tools they “opt-in” to: “We’re going to launch with a set of features that has a spectrum of freedom that the artist can control,” Sanchez said. “There are some features that will be available to users that will be more restrictive in what they can do with their artists or their songs. And then there will be others that are more permissive. The whole point of it is not only education but just meeting artists at the levels they’re comfortable with.”

Who is the target audience for the newly revamped Udio?

According to Sanchez, it’s fans: “We want to build a community of superfans around creation. As we say internally, it’s connection through creation — whether that’s with artists or that connection with other music fans. We want to lean into that. I think it’s going to be a huge asset for artists and fandoms.”

Are Sony and Warner still pursuing their lawsuits against Udio?

Yes, for now. UMG’s settlement and deal with Udio does not impact Sony Music and Warner Music Group’s lawsuit against Udio for widespread copyright infringement. While some industry onlookers posit that Sony and Warner are more encouraged to settle now that UMG is no longer pursuing litigation against Udio, there’s no indication that these companies are definitely planning to do so yet.

Why are some Udio users upset about this deal?

By doing this deal with UMG, Udio has agreed to a major pivot in its offering to users. Currently, the site is known for helping users make songs from simple text prompts, which they can then export and upload to streaming services, share on social media — or whatever they want to do.

Users are particularly upset because, as part of this deal with UMG, Udio immediately removed its users’ ability to download their work from the service. Angry subscribers gathered on a subreddit to complain. “This feels lie an absolute betrayal,” wrote one user. “I’ve spent hundreds of $$$ and countless hours building tracks with this tool,” wrote another. “No one warned us that one day, we wouldn’t even be able to access our own music. You can’t just pull the plug and call that a ‘transition.’”

In a statement to Billboard on Thursday (Oct. 30), an Udio spokesperson said that disabling exports on the platform is “a difficult but necessary step to support the next phase of the platform and the new experiences ahead.” On Friday (Oct. 31), Udio relented slightly, writing on Reddit that starting Monday (Nov. 3), the platform will give users a 48-hour window to download their existing songs — and that any songs downloaded during that time will be covered by the terms of service that existed before the UMG deal was signed.

The move to restrict downloads in the long term may prove to be more than just an inconvenience for users — Udio could also be hit with legal claims over it. There could be arguments made that disabling downloads was a breach of the subscription contract that Udio signed with users, or that Udio falsely advertised its services in violation of consumer protection laws. It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened in recent memory: Just last year, Amazon Prime users brought claims like this over changes to the cost of ad-free movie and TV streaming for subscribers.

About three decades later, Common is thanking Fat Joe for saving his life. The Chicago rapper joined Joe & Jada earlier this week, where he recalled shooting a commercial in the mid-’90s on the West Coast when an altercation nearly broke out amid his feud with Ice Cube and Mack 10.

“That man really saved my life. I was out on the West Coast with one of my guys I knew and he just wasn’t happy with the whole Mack 10 [and] Ice Cube beef that we had,” he said.

Essentially, one of Common’s friends escalated a situation, and before it crossed the line, Fat Joe stepped in to smooth things over — at least for Common.

“It’s not cuz Fat Joe is tougher than anyone. I literally begged for your life. I literally got in the middle, ‘He’s my friend, he’s my brother,’” Joe recalled. “They finally saw him on their soil and they was talking crazy and I was like, ‘This is literally my brother and I was begging them.’ It was the serious ones … Basically, I stood in the middle. It was over after that day.”

Common confirmed the beef was squashed from his side from that point forward and compared Joe’s intervention to a scene straight out of a movie.

“You settled that. I’m like, ‘Man, we in California, don’t start nothing.’ They already wanted a piece on me no matter what,” he explained. “My guy out there going off. I knew it was [Joe] that said, ‘This can’t happen.’ … That’s when Fat Joe the gangsta, this n—a here because he was straight up like, ‘You can’t do that to my man.’ It was like one of them movies, Goodfellas.”

Common etched his name in rap history with his acclaimed and scathing diss track “The Bitch in Yoo,” which was released in 1996 and took aim at Ice Cube, raising tensions with the West Coast.

During a 2020 interview with DJ VLAD, Mack 10 rehashed the near-altercation with Common and reiterated that Fat Joe stepped in to smooth things over. “Common is all right. Ain’t nobody got no issues,” Mack said. “Everybody grown. We done seen each other a million times since then.”

Watch the Joe & Jada episode with Common below. Talk about saving Common’s life begins just short of four minutes.

Taylor Swift has been toppled from the summit of the U.K. Albums Chart by British rapper Dave on Friday (Oct. 31) following a massive opening week for his third LP The Boy Who Played the Harp.

Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl broke numerous records in its opening week on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart and held the spot for three consecutive weeks following its release on Oct. 3.

Now London-born Dave has secured the top spot for the third time in his career by notching 73,800 U.K. chart units over the past seven days, making it the second biggest opening week for a British album this year, behind Sam Fender’s People Watching (110,000) and ahead of Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving (53,000). It’s the fourth biggest opening week overall of 2025 so far, placing behind Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl, Fender and Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend. 

Dave first hit the No. 1 spot in 2019 with Psychodrama and again in 2021 with We’re All Alone in This Together. His new LP, The Boy Who Played the Harp, was announced just weeks before its release and featured no singles in the rollout. The record features guest appearances from James Blake, Jim Legxacy, Tems and Kano, and will be supported by a U.K. arena tour in 2026.

The Life of a Showgirl falls two places to No. 3, and Swift has also lost the top spot on the U.K. Official Singles Chart with lead single “The Fate of Ophelia” to KPop Demon Hunters’ “Golden.” 

As he celebrates his return to touring, Bon Jovi celebrates finishing at No. 2 with a new edition of 2024 LP, Forever. The Legendary Edition features duets with Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Williams, Avril Lavigne and Lainey Wilson. The band will perform a number of stadium shows, including two at London’s Wembley Stadium, next June.

Lily Allen’s searing West End Girl LP has been the talk of the town as she examines the breakup of a marriage, widely assumed to be informed by her separation from Stranger Things star David Harbour. Her first LP in eight years, West End Girl closes the week at No. 4 – her highest placing in more than a decade – and she’ll tour the album in full at a run of U.K. theaters in 2026.

Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving finishes the week at No. 5 on the U.K. charts, although it remains in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 this week at No. 7.