Round Hill Sues Suno & Anthropic for $1B+, Curve Royalties Deal Closes - August 18

Email us hereRound Hill Music's billion-dollar-plus copyright salvos against Suno and Anthropic dominate today's brief, joined by Ellie Goulding's conflict-of-interest suit against Live Nation-linked managers. Meanwhile, the Merlin-Jamen Capital acquisition of Curve Royalty Systems officially closes, tidying up a loose end from UMG's Downtown deal. Deals & M&A • Merlin and Jamen Capital close Curve Royalty Systems acquisition from Virgin Music Group, fulfilling EC condition on UMG's $775M Downtown deal. Lawsuits & AI • Round Hill Music sues Suno and Anthropic separately for copyright infringement, with damages potentially exceeding $1 billion each. • Round Hill's Suno suit also names data-scraper Bright Data for bypassing paywalls and stripping copyright metadata. • Ellie Goulding sues TaP Management's Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, alleging undisclosed Live Nation ownership and conflicts of interest from 2018 to 2025. • Vermont's Stone Church venue sues StubHub for trademark infringement and deceptive ticketing practices, seeking over $5 million. Streaming & Tech • YouTube will count views from the first frame of playback starting August 24, eliminating minimum watch-time thresholds for long-form content. • Alibaba launches HappyShrimp 1.0 beta, an AI music-generation model, partnering with China's Taihe Music Group. • SubmitHub reports 23.2% of one million-plus releases in its pipeline were fully AI-generated; platform licensing its detection tech to the industry. • Anghami COO warns AI music tools are trained on Western catalogues and underserve Arabic-language music. • MPA strikes IP protection deal with ByteDance covering AI products Seedance and Seedream. • Spotify rolls out a new feature letting editors and users add contextual notes to playlists. Live & Touring • Live Nation plans to convert San Diego's historic Wonder Bread building into a 4,000-capacity venue, opening in 2028. • Ozzfest confirms its 2027 return to Birmingham's Villa Park after an eight-year hiatus, with an AI Ozzy Osbourne avatar in tow. Also Today • WMG CEO Robert Kyncl defends Suno licensing deal and calls on Netflix to launch a dedicated music offering to rival YouTube. Five minutes, six categories, zero fluff.