Product Operations & Strategy Manager

The biggest music industry news | July 2026 roundup. Apple Music price rises, Spotify's latest video tools and AI updates from Deezer, Suno and TikTok. Plus, reviews from Outbreak and 2000trees festivals. RouteNote heads to Outbreak Festival. Outbreak Festival 2026 proved that bigger doesn't have to mean losing what made it special, combining a stacked lineup with the welcoming, community-driven atmosphere it's known for. Standout sets from Alexisonfire, La Dispute, Trapped Under Ice and surprise guests Static Dress made for a memorable weekend, while RouteNote Ltd also take a look at the festival's stage design, production, food and overall experience. Read its review to find out why Outbreak remains one of the UK's must-visit festivals for fans of hardcore and alternative music. RouteNote attends 2000trees festival. 2000trees Festival 2026 delivered another standout weekend, combining a carefully curated lineup with the friendly, community atmosphere that keeps fans coming back year after year. Highlights included sets from Coach Party, PUP, High Vis and Night Swimming, alongside late-night silent discos, great food and plenty to enjoy away from the main stages. Read its review to find out why 2000trees remains one of the UK's best independent music festivals. Suno hack exposes AI training data from YouTube, Deezer and Genius. A reported hack of AI music platform Suno has revealed source code suggesting its models were trained using music and metadata scraped from platforms including YouTube Music, Deezer and Genius. The leak comes as Suno continues to defend itself against copyright lawsuits from major record labels, raising fresh questions about how AI music models are trained and whether copyrighted works were used without permission. Apple Music increases subscription prices. Apple Music has increased the price of its Individual, Family and Student subscriptions in the US, UK and Europe, with the Family plan seeing the largest jump from $16.99 to $19.99 per month. Apple says the changes are due to rising licensing costs, marking its first Apple Music price increase since 2022. TikTok tests AI deepfake detection. TikTok is testing a new AI deepfake detection tool that helps creators identify and report unauthorised AI-generated versions of themselves. The feature, currently being trialled with a small group of US creators, uses identity verification and facial matching to detect potential impersonations across the platform. Deezer reports 90,000 AI-generated uploads every day. Deezer says it is now receiving around 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day, with AI music making up more than half of all new uploads on peak days in June. In response, the streaming service will remove AI-generated tracks used for streaming fraud, as well as AI tracks that haven't been streamed for at least six months, while continuing to expand its AI detection technology. Despite the surge in uploads, Deezer says fully AI-generated music still accounts for just 1-3% of total streams, suggesting listeners continue to favour human-created music. Spotify expands its music video tools. Spotify has expanded its music video features with a new Video Pitching Tool, a dedicated global music video chart, and wider in-app discovery opportunities for eligible artists' videos. The update follows the rollout of direct music video uploads in Spotify for Artists, with videos now able to appear across areas including Home, artist profiles, release pages and editorial playlists. Instagram now lets you change the music on old posts. Instagram now lets users replace the music on published feed posts and carousels without deleting and re-uploading them, preserving all existing likes, comments and shares. The new feature makes it easier for artists and creators to update older posts with trending tracks, correct audio mistakes or swap in newly available music without losing engagement. It's a simple but practical update that gives creators more flexibility when promoting music on the platform. YouTube lets creators customise their Shorts thumbnails. YouTube has introduced custom thumbnails for Shorts, allowing creators in the YouTube Partner Program to upload dedicated thumbnail images instead of relying on a frame from the video. The update gives artists and creators more control over their branding while helping Shorts stand out across YouTube. Alongside the new feature, YouTube has also announced additional thumbnail improvements, including AI-powered thumbnail ideas and enhanced editing tools.

The families of four teenagers who died by suicide are suing Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube for "years of mounting harm" from their platforms. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Delaware Superior Court, was brought by families from Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota and Tennessee whose children died during a 14-month period beginning in July 2024. The Social Media Victims Law Center represents the families. Founder Matthew Bergman said it's "particularly relevant" that these deaths occurred "long after" similar lawsuits were filed. The complaint alleges the four teenagers suffered social media addiction, severe sleep deprivation, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation after years of platform use. Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap face numerous state and federal lawsuits over harm to minors. Meta reported $2.4 billion in legal expenses in the second quarter, contributing to a 14% drop in profits.

How TikTok is building the future of Agentic AI for advertising. An ecosystem of partners and AI solutions is redefining how marketers create, optimize, and scale campaigns. In recent years, much of the conversation around artificial intelligence has focused on what generative AI can create: images, videos, copy, code, and insights. Those capabilities have transformed how marketing teams work, accelerating everything from creative ideation to reporting. But marketers still spend too much time stitching together systems, managing repetitive tasks, and moving work from one platform to another. The next chapter of AI won't be defined by what it generates. It will be defined by what it helps marketers accomplish. NowThis Media Group is entering the era of agentic AI - where intelligent systems don't simply respond to prompts, but understand objectives, connect information across platforms, recommend actions, and increasingly execute complex workflows alongside marketers. For advertising, this represents a fundamental shift in how campaigns will be built, managed, measured, and optimized. Today's marketers don't need another AI tool. They need AI that works across the increasingly complex systems they already use, connecting creative, media, measurement, CRM, and commerce so they can spend less time managing workflows and more time driving business outcomes. Building an ecosystem for agentic AI. Throughout the history of advertising technology, the biggest innovations have come from collaboration. Search, programmatic advertising, measurement, commerce, and customer data all evolved because platforms and partners built solutions together. Agentic AI will be no different. Making that future possible requires more than building AI into products. It requires enabling an ecosystem where technology partners can turn their expertise into intelligent advertising solutions. That's the thinking behind TikTok Agentic Hub, a marketplace of AI-powered advertising solutions enabled by TikTok for Business Model Context Protocol (MCP). Rather than asking advertisers to adopt another standalone AI assistant, TikTok partners are now able to build and publish AI skills on TikTok's Agentic Hub. Whether launching campaigns, generating creative, diagnosing performance, managing product catalogs, or analyzing results, these Skills help marketers accomplish more without switching between disconnected systems. Powered by TikTok for Business MCP and Agentic Hub, developers can build AI advertising solutions that connect AI agents to TikTok Ads, then publish and distribute those solutions to advertisers within the TikTok ecosystem. Partners - including HubSpot, Wix, Constant Contact, WorkMagic, Innovid, Kochava, Shoplazza, MADHOUSE, Mobvista, HuntMobi, Cyberklick, Storyverse, BELLNOVA, and AI Rudder - have already published AI skills spanning campaign management, creative generation, catalog management, reporting, diagnostics, and performance optimization. Beyond these horizontal capabilities, partners are also building industry-specific AI skills tailored to verticals like e-commerce and real estate, demonstrating how the Agentic Hub can address both broad marketing needs and specialized business challenges. AI skills in action. Each skill solves a different problem. Together, they demonstrate what's possible when AI is paired with deep marketing expertise. Lead generation: Capturing demand is only valuable if businesses can immediately act on it. HubSpot's TikTok to HubSpot Lead Sync Skill automatically synchronizes TikTok Instant Form submissions into HubSpot's Smart CRM, intelligently handling field mapping, custom properties, ad account discovery, and email deduplication. Instead of exporting leads between systems, marketers can move seamlessly from customer acquisition to customer engagement. Measurement: This is another area ready for reinvention. As marketing becomes increasingly omnichannel, marketers are looking beyond traditional attribution to understand TikTok's broader business impact. WorkMagic's TikTok Halo Estimator Skill helps advertisers estimate incremental revenue beyond conventional measurement models, giving marketers a more complete picture of the value their campaigns create across TikTok Shop as well as third-party e-commerce marketplaces. Budget optimization: Kochava's Budget Pacing Monitor Skill forecasts delivery trends, identifies pacing risks before they impact performance, diagnoses underlying causes, and recommends corrective actions. Instead of spending hours reviewing dashboards, marketers receive intelligent recommendations that help them act faster and with greater confidence. Commerce: Commerce businesses face a different challenge - not collecting data, but knowing how to act on it. Wix's Wix to TikTok Revenue Optimizer Skill analyzes business data to identify the highest-value revenue opportunity before preparing a recommended TikTok campaign, complete with product selection, audience strategy, creative direction, promotional offers, and budget recommendations. AI doesn't simply surface insights. It transforms them into executable marketing plans. Building an ecosystem, not just more AI features. These examples represent something much larger than new product capabilities. They point to how advertising technology will evolve over the coming decade. "Marketers don't need more AI tools. They need AI that works across the systems they already rely on," said Angela DeFranco, VP of product, HubSpot. "By reducing the friction between advertising and CRM, agentic AI can help teams move faster, automate repetitive work, and focus on what matters most: building lasting customer relationships." The future won't belong to platforms with the largest collection of AI features. It will belong to ecosystems where specialized expertise can be packaged into intelligent capabilities marketers can easily discover, deploy, and build into their existing workflows. Looking ahead. As AI continues to evolve, NowThis Media Group expect increasingly sophisticated agents capable of orchestrating workflows across creative development, media buying, commerce, CRM, and measurement. Agentic Hub is an important step toward that future, helping developers publish and distribute AI-powered advertising solutions to advertisers within the TikTok ecosystem. Together with TikTok for Business MCP, it helps partners build faster, reach more customers, and scale AI-powered advertising solutions on TikTok. The advertising industry has continually reinvented itself, from search and social to mobile and machine learning. Agentic AI represents the next inflection point. Qing Lan leads ad platforms and agency business at TikTok, overseeing the infrastructure (ads platform, tools, API, and agents) that powers brands' marketing success and empowering agency partners to unlock new levels of results. He is currently driving a strategic shift to reshape the advertising experience through agentic AI, turning complex workflows into seamless, intelligent operations.