Live Nation, AI & Mergers

The first half of 2026 has included its fair share of surprises. Perhaps none was more surprising than Bill Ackman‘s Pershing Square making a bid to buy Universal Music Group for over $60 billion (a plan which was ultimately rejected by the UMG board). Then, a number of large music companies merged, blurring the lines between what can be considered a major music company versus a large independent.

Spotify struck a licensing deal with UMG for its new AI music remixing product, and Live Nation might have reached a shocking settlement with the Department of Justice in its antitrust trial in March — but the several states continued with the case, resulting in winning a jury verdict on all counts.

It remains to be seen what these developments will mean for the music business in the latter half of the year, perhaps more layoffs across the newly merged music companies. Maybe even the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

On the final episode of season two of Billboard On the Record, host Kristin Robinson speaks to Billboard‘s executive editor, business Dan Rys, senior finance correspondent Elizabeth Dilts Marshall, and senior legal reporter Bill Donahue to break down the biggest music business news of 2026 so far.

Check out the full episode of On the Record below on YouTube, or check it out on other podcast platforms here. Read a condensed and edited portion of the conversation below.

UMG and Spotify announced a licensing deal for Spotify’s forthcoming AI music remixing product. How does it fit into the overall AI music landscape?

Robinson: There’s a lot of companies in the AI music landscape right now doing remixing of existing IP, so that is an uphill battle for several reasons, one of which is that there’s a lot of competition. Many companies are pursuing this vision, but Spotify’s big advantage is that they already have licenses with a lot of music companies. Sure, they need to get additional licenses for this AI product, but they already have the relationships. This is not a brand new startup — they have money behind them that some of these startups aren’t going to have. Additionally, people are already going to Spotify. So I don’t think it will be hard to get people to use a feature within a platform they’re already on, whereas, it will be hard to get people to go to a new platform specifically just for AI remixing.

Bill, do you think it’s actually likely that the result of this antitrust lawsuit is that Live Nation and Ticketmaster will get broken up?

Donahue: It is historically very, very rare. There are big examples of it — AT&T was broken up in the ’80s, and that’s what led to all the telecom companies we have now. But there are very few examples of it. We think of this like trust-busting and breaking up these big companies, but to actually do it in the modern era is very, very rare. Microsoft lost a case like this and was ordered broken up, but it was overturned on appeal. Google lost a case like this and the judge didn’t break them up — didn’t force them to sell Chrome or Android. So it is just a very, very rare outcome in a case like this. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. The judge has it in his toolkit and could say there’s no other way to fix the market without doing this — and that’s certainly what the states are going to argue, that there’s this implicit power to these two companies being combined, this huge promoter and this huge ticketing company. We’ll see, but the way of history is against that kind of happening.

What are some other punishments that could be more feasible?

Donahue: In antitrust terms, these are called behavioral remedies, if you really want to get into the weeds. It’s restrictions on their conduct. It’s saying you can’t penalize, you can’t retaliate against venues that opt to not use Ticketmaster. You could say they have to make their back-end software easier to use, so that if a venue is locked into their system, they can still offer ticketing options in other ways. There’s a lot of different things they can do, and they work in a lot of cases. So it’s not like it’s not like breaking them up or nothing. But it’s certainly going to be a disappointment for a lot of people [if that’s all that happens.]

Between Downtown and Universal Music Group, BMG and Concord, and Primary Wave and Kobalt, 2026 is a time of major consolidation in the music industry. Why is this happening now?

Marshall: Let’s zoom out of our very insular, music-centric focus for a second and think about the broader world. What’s going on? It’s not great, really. There are multiple conflicts around the world. They’re having substantial impacts, triggering greater volatility. It has been true for some time now that there is more institutional investor capital in music than in almost any other kind.

Zooming back into our music world: if this is music and this is everything else, even within entertainment, music — for all of its incredible cultural impact — is still significantly smaller than other entertainment industries on a monetary basis. So you can get a real bang for your buck if you’re a big institutional investor like GIC, who partnered with Sony to fuel more of their catalog investments, or the Michigan Retirement Systems, which has for many years through Great Mountain invested in Concord. And then of course BMG, which is this interesting private company owned by Bertelsmann, which is still a family-controlled German media conglomerate.

So we can use those as examples of why this is happening. BMG and Concord, why did that happen? They’ve explored it a number of times. Their relationship and how many times these companies have evolved in ownership and structure goes back decades. When I interviewed Thomas Coesfeld, the CEO of BMG and soon to be of the combined entity, and Bob Valentine, the CEO of Concord, they said it actually went back to the very first time they met each other, which was a couple of years ago, I believe in 2023. They both became CEOs on the same day.

So what we’re seeing is the result of conversations that have evolved over years, and then there’s just this moment where, because of all that’s going on in the rest of the world, there’s hyper-fueled activity and investment in music.

With so much consolidation in 2026, what does this mean for independent music, and should independent music companies be worried?

Rys: I do not think that independent music companies should be worried — and I don’t think they would want to be considered worried either. I think there’s a lot of health in the independent music sector. And I also think we’re coming to a bit of a blurring of the lines in terms of what we’re even really talking about when we talk about independent music.

The music business needs to come together to talk about what we mean by “independent” anymore, because what is indie versus major when you have tie-ups like Concord and BMG? We’ve talked about that being a “quiet major,” just because they have so much catalog and less emphasis on frontline. But there are now many companies that are raking in five, 10 billion dollars a year, and these are gigantic companies — how are we calling them independent?

I just think that unfortunately the music business will never agree on anything, so we’ll have to come up with some terminology that works for everybody. But to more directly answer the question: I don’t think independents need to be wary. I think they have, to some degree, more options than ever. You can be nimble with a five-person team or a 5,000-person one if you’re smart.