The beginning of 2026 was particularly eventful in the world of music streaming. Price increases, huge deals, the intensification of the music streaming market in China, the escalating fight against AI… The music industry experienced significant upheaval. And to keep you in the loop, Soundiiz is launching its first music streaming gazette! What’s new in the music streaming world? Let’s dig in!
What’s new in the music streaming world? China’s market keeps on growing.
We begin in China, a country whose practices and habits in the world of music streaming are almost unknown to us. But as elsewhere in the world, platforms dominate the music market. Among them are Tencent Music Entertainment and NetEase Cloud Music.
Both companies are trying to establish themselves in a saturated market where, according to Music Business Worldwide, more than 170 million users pay for subscriptions.
Spotify, TIDAL or Amazon Music have no presence in China, and China’s economic realities and barriers to entry for companies not based there make this country difficult to understand for those unfamiliar with it.
But for artists worldwide, China is a crucial market. Statistics show that, unlike many other regions, such as Europe or North America, streaming revenues in China continue to grow year after year. With this in mind, the UMG label aims to strengthen its presence in China and enable its artists – including Taylor Swift – to amass millions of streams.
Following an agreement reached in 2020 that allowed NetEase to operate UMG licenses, the deal has been renewed, with the amount and duration currently kept secret.
The AI-concern
The contract is interesting, as it also includes clauses on the promotion and marketing of UMG artists and local artists. This is a way to both strengthen UMG’s presence in the Chinese market and boost the careers of local artists. This is a significant step for the world of music streaming. And especially for the artists whose music is distributed via UMG.
Furthermore, although the details of these contract terms remain unclear, UMG and NetEase have committed to “responsible AI practices.” A quick note: NetEase Music is known for its “social” dimension, which operates almost like a social network alongside its music streaming platform.
In an era where engagement is a key factor in career development, this partnership between UMG and NetEase Music reflects a trend where fans and superfans are increasingly gaining power.
This comes shortly after NetEase Cloud Music signed another agreement with the Korean producer Most Contents. The contract authorizes NetEase to stream nearly one hundred Korean works, including soundtracks from K-dramas (a genre of Korean cinema), on its platform for its Chinese customers. Given the worldwide popularity of Korean culture, this deal has had a bombshell effect in China, strengthening NetEase Music’s position.
What’s new in the music streaming world? Spotify’s latest price hike and its consequences
On the other side of the globe, in the United States, Spotify has once again been making headlines. The reason: another price hike for Premium subscriptions. As we’ve already mentioned, for several years now, the major streaming platforms have been implementing regular price increases. They offer different justifications each time, to the point that users are struggling to find clear answers.
The implementation date for this increase is early February 2026, with a planned $1 increase to monthly subscriptions. Spotify Premium will now cost $12.99 instead of $11.99, affecting user costs and market competitiveness.
This time, Spotify justifies itself by claiming that it is necessary to continue offering an optimal user experience. And also that this increase will have a direct impact on how Spotify supports artists. These rather vague explanations have angered its users. And the United States isn’t the only country affected. Estonia and Latvia are also the subject of price increases.
The consequence? Stock market woes. Spotify is now two dollars more expensive than its main competitors. And while its stock had been fluctuating for several months, it experienced a significant drop on January 18th, Digital Music News reported
According to the publication, this decline is directly linked to the announcement of the price increase for monthly subscriptions. These practices have consequences for music consumers and for the companies themselves!
And there’s no indication that Apple Music, Amazon Music, TIDAL, Deezer, or others won’t also implement price increases in the coming weeks or months.
What’s new in the music streaming world? Bandcamp’s fight against AI-music
For years, Bandcamp has positioned itself as a streaming platform whose strategy prioritizes defending artists’ rights. In our article on Bandcamp’s history, we highlighted the service’s business model and its various initiatives implemented within a framework of fairer compensation.
A few months ago, Bandcamp launched a Premium subscription offering access to monthly selections, exclusives, and events specially curated and presented by humans—without any algorithmic intervention. This approach, while somewhat anachronistic, has attracted many curious users. It was therefore inevitable that Bandcamp would not remain idle in the face of the ongoing debate over Artificial Intelligence—quite the opposite.
In a widely circulated press release, Bandcamp announced its commitment to fighting any song generated by AI or using Artificial Intelligence tools. Their objective? To ban them, pure and simple. The goal is, among other things, to limit songs that imitate artists or styles, most of which are composed with Artificial Intelligence tools.
They write:
“We want musicians to keep making music, and for fans to have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans […] If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.”
Banning!
While many other platforms have also taken a stand against AI, Bandcamp goes further, and this is where their statement becomes interesting. They are not simply banning music entirely generated by artificial intelligence. They are also banning music produced by “real musicians” using prompts or AI tools.
The distinction is essential. Any song containing even the smallest AI-generated element should therefore be removed from Bandcamp.
Detection?
However, Bandcamp does not specify how it intends to identify these songs. They do not appear to have developed a detection tool, and even companies with greater financial resources seem powerless to detect AI-powered songs with absolute certainty. This is especially true given that such detection becomes increasingly complex as AI technologies evolve.
Another aggravating factor: the democratization of tools like Suno enables musicians to use AI in their own compositions, saving time and money, reducing intermediaries, and producing more efficiently.
How to detect it? How can we know if a producer or singer has used technology not created by a human? Bandcamp currently offers no answers.
However, in its press release, it encourages users who suspect they have detected a hint of AI to use the flagging tool available on its services to create a request. This request is then sent to the Bandcamp team. It analyzes the song and decides whether to ban the song and the artist in question.
This technique currently appears both rudimentary and complex to replicate at scale across all streaming services. Still, it at least has the merit of positioning Bandcamp in the “war” against Artificial Intelligence.
We hope you enjoyed this first edition of the Soundiiz Gazette! And that you now have a better understanding of the latest news in the world of music streaming! As the situation is constantly evolving, we will undoubtedly repeat the experience in the (very) near future!
In the meantime, don’t hesitate to use Soundiiz to transfer all your streaming data from one platform to another, create beautiful smartlinks, and download and store your playlists! You can discover all our features right here.
