Michael Smith, who pleaded guilty to running hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs through bot accounts to steal more than $8 million in streaming royalties, faces sentencing on July 29, the same month Spotify pulled roughly 500,000 fraudulent streams tied to Kalshi prediction-market betting.
Dance and electronic music posted the fastest physical-sales growth of any US genre in the first half of 2026, and per DJ Mag's data, CDs grew 16% while vinyl managed just 2.3%.
Belgium's Code Orange wildfire alert forced the mayors of Boom and Rumst, backed by Antwerp province's governor, to ban all fireworks and pyrotechnics at Tomorrowland's opening weekend, and organisers say they found out from the media.
A worldwide shortage of pressing capacity and raw PVC is stretching vinyl orders out to 6 to 12 months, and independent house and techno labels are absorbing the delay while major-label repress runs get priority.
Rotterdam withdrew Nous'klaer Festival's permit a day before doors after the Netherlands issued its first-ever code red heat warning, forcing the label to rebuild its lineup indoors within 24 hours.
Fusion Festival, the sponsor-free, VIP-free institution at Kulturkosmos Lärz, closed its 2026 edition after a wildfire evacuation and record heat, confirming this was its last outing before a planned pause that keeps it off the calendar until 2028.
Beatport's mid-year 2026 review confirms tech house on top, but the movement is elsewhere: afro house going mainstream, Brazilian funk and Latin electronic breaking through, and UK garage crossing to American floors.
MODULA 26, a new synthesizer and electronic-music expo, debuts at Dynamo Zürich on 17 and 18 July 2026, with Moog, Arturia, Waldorf and Teenage Engineering among the names behind its first edition.
A weak yen and rising costs are quietly pushing Korea's and Japan's underground scenes to swap artists and share booking costs, building something that looks like one regional circuit, per Mixmag Asia.
US vinyl grew for a 19th straight year in 2025, selling 46.8 million records and out-earning the CD by more than three to one, its strongest run since 1983.
DJ is now the number-one dream career in New Zealand and has climbed to tenth worldwide, up from 24th in 2024, according to a Remitly study of 'how to become a' searches across 145 countries.
The Top 100 Festivals 2026 poll filled its upper ranks with global electronic music mega-brands. But Tomorrowland's stronger house programming at Crystal Garden shows the festival is also making room for sounds beyond its main-stage EDM identity.
A Warner Music pilot turns 11 US record shops into drop-off points for warped, unplayable records, testing whether the format that just passed a billion dollars can finally be recycled at scale.
The high-resolution service grew revenue 45.7 percent in 2025 and did what Spotify and the majors refuse to do: publish an independently checked per-stream rate. For house and techno artists who treat streaming as loose change, the number is less a payday than a challenge to a whole opaque system.
Touring DJ fees that have roughly jumped from 50,000 to 80,000 dollars a night are pushing independent clubs to the wall in 2026, and a growing camp of promoters argues the headliner model itself, not rent or tickets, is what is killing them.
Solidays in Paris, Defqon.1 in the Netherlands and a string of outdoor events were called off as Europe topped 45°C and the Dutch issued their first ever code red for heat, a preview of the climate math every summer festival now has to do.
Defqon.1 was called off mid-weekend after the Dutch weather service issued the Netherlands' first-ever Code Red heat warning, with temperatures near 40C. It is the clearest sign yet that extreme heat is now a festival-season problem.
Reactional Music has won a 2.5 million euro EU grant to put licensed music inside video games, a frontier that indie labels like Ninja Tune are already betting could pay better than streaming.
Britain's competition watchdog caught StubHub UK adding fees at the last click and ordered automatic refunds for tens of thousands of fans. It is the first real test of the country's new pricing-transparency law.
Splice and MIDiA Research named Afro house the Sound of the Year after a 778% jump in downloads, and the data shows a South African export now driving the whole house genre.
A new Japanese law gives performers and record companies a royalty when commercial recordings play in cafes, shops, bars and hotels, even when Japanese records spin overseas, in the world's second-biggest music market.
For thirteen years it was a read-only shrine. This week it became a tool: a Directory to the Underground that links 40,000 rave flyers to living profiles of artists, promoters and clubs.
Corsica Studios closed in March 2026 after bar takings halved. Across the UK, 36% of nightclubs have shut since 2020. The economics of underground music venues were always brutal; the sober generation is finishing the job.
A new report on San Francisco's club scene shows local DJs being pushed off the bill by touring headliners and social-media follower counts, a booking shift playing out in dance cities worldwide.
elrow founder Juan Arnau expects alcohol at events to drop 30 to 40 percent within five years and bar revenue to fall as much as 70 percent within a decade, as a generation that drinks less rewrites what a festival has to sell.
A study at Drumsheds measured a 18.5% average rise in heart-rate variability during the calm phases of a guided electronic music session, with anxiety dropping and feelings of connection going up.
The EUDA's 2026 wastewater study found MDMA down 16 percent across European cities while ketamine jumped 41 percent and cocaine 22 percent, a quiet shift in what the floor is actually taking.
Across Europe, beloved underground clubs are closing because the maths stopped working: turnout is down and irregular, costs keep rising, and Prague's Ankali is the human face of a structural squeeze the UK and Berlin numbers spell out in full.
Deezer has launched a free web tool that scans playlists on 20 streaming services for fully AI-generated tracks, while disclosing that synthetic music now makes up 44% of the songs uploaded to its own platform every day.
SACEM collected a record 1.704 billion euros in 2025, up 7.5%, with all the growth coming from international and digital rights, the exact streams that pay club-music producers.
A House of Commons committee found Live Nation controls up to 66 percent of UK ticket sales and operates in a 'climate of fear,' and has urged the Competition and Markets Authority to open a full market investigation before the end of 2026.
Hide, the Saint Asaph Street club in Christchurch, holds its final party on 27 June 2026 after seven years, closing not because of rent or noise but because owners Mitch Ryder and Sam Smith took a buyer's offer.
Pacha New York won a temporary liquor licence on 30 May, surrendered Avant Gardner’s permit, and pledged $27m over a decade to safety and community as it targets a 13 June opening at the former Brooklyn Mirage.
Grace Jones will play live at Glitterbox on 24 July as the disco-house party settles into Friday nights at Amnesia for 2026, with Jorja Smith joining the 9 October closing.
Berlin recorded fewer visitors and fewer overnight stays in 2025 than in 2024, and the city's own tourism boss is openly linking the dip to a shrinking club scene and a retreating Ryanair.
Ibiza club ticketing hit 160 million euros in 2025 across fewer nights per venue, entry roughly doubled over a decade, a Hï VIP pass now runs 1,000 euros, and the island stripped out more than 14,000 tourist beds, the numbers of a scene repositioning as luxury and shedding its affordable crowd.
Spotify's Africa boss says it will grow paying subscribers in Nigeria rather than raise the low subscription price, which is the core reason a stream pays Nigerian artists about 1.98 naira.
Harm-reduction body The Loop has secured the first Home Office licences to run year-round, venue-funded drug testing inside two of Britain's biggest clubbing operations, moving real-time drug intelligence off the festival calendar and into the regular season.
Sunwaves has confirmed that SW35 (May 1 to 5, 2025) was its final edition on Romania's Black Sea coast after 18 years, citing circumstances "out of our control," and is taking the festival abroad.
Berlin opened a 721 million euro stretch of the A100 in August 2025, and the planned next phase through Ostkreuz would put roughly 21 cultural venues, including ://about blank, Club OST and Salon Zur Wilden Renate, directly in the path of a state-built motorway.
Presenting the 2026 IMS Business Report, MIDiA's Mark Mulligan argues the underground's value now sits in scenes and identity rather than stream counts, even as the global electronic industry grows to $15.1 billion.
