The 10 Biggest Music Law Stories of 2025: AI, Diddy, Drake, Mariah Carey & More 

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• AI Boom Sparks Endless Legal Issues 

  The meteoric growth of artificial intelligence over the past three years only accelerated in 2025 — and, like the rest of the world, the music industry spent the year grappling with difficult questions about how AI will upend the status quo in the near future. 
    
  AI-powered artists like Xania Monet and Breaking Rust put up big numbers, but it’s not entirely clear that the humans behind them even own the legal rights to their songs. An artist named HAVEN. nearly broke out with its viral “I Run” — that is, until it was revealed that creators had used AI to generate the vocals and Jorja Smith’s team accused them of deepfaking her voice in the process. 
    
  Universal, Sony and Warner continued to litigate their massive copyright infringement lawsuits against AI firms Suno and Udio — until they didn’t. In October, UMG struck a deal with Udio to settle their portion of the litigation, agreeing to partner on a more-limited AI “walled garden.” Warner quickly inked its own settlement with Udio, then struck another one with Suno that will allow that company to keep most of its current form.  
   
  The deals will see the platforms pay licensing fees for the millions of songs they use to train their models, and will crucially require artists to opt in before they’re included — big wins for human musicians as they fight to avoid being replaced by machines. But with something so immensely complex, the devil will be in the details, more of which will likely emerge in 2026. 

• Diddy Goes Down … Sort Of 

  Once one of the music industry’s most powerful figures, Sean “Diddy” Combs faced the music in 2025, going to trial in early May over allegations of heinous sexual abuse. Over eight weeks in a Manhattan courtroom, the feds and witnesses told jurors about “freak off” parties in which Combs allegedly plied women with drugs and forced them to have sex with male prostitutes. In response, the star’s lawyers admitted their client was a domestic abuser with weird sexual tastes, but said he was not the sexual monster described by prosecutors — and that the feds had clearly overshot their case. 
    
  In the end, that argument largely worked. After two days of deliberation, jurors issued a verdict in July that cleared Diddy of the most serious sex trafficking and racketeering charges that could have seen him sent to prison for life. But he didn’t get off completely: He was still convicted of two prostitution charges, on which he was sentenced in October to four years in prison. 
    
  What’s next? Diddy, now living at a New Jersey federal prison, has launched an appeal of his conviction and sentence. And he’s still facing dozens of civil lawsuits filed by alleged victims. How they play out will be a big legal story to watch in 2026. 

• Jay-Z Dragged into Diddy Mess – and Fights Back  

  As the sprawling litigation spree against Diddy heated up, other music industry figures in his orbit got dragged into the fray. Jay-Z was one such target at the tail end of 2024, with an anonymous woman alleging that he and Diddy raped her together when she was 13 years old at an after-party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.
   
  The shocking claims were dropped by February — but Jay-Z wasn’t done fighting. The rapper went on to file two lawsuits of his own, accusing both the woman and her Texas-based attorney, Tony Buzbee, of extortion and defamation, claiming they’d fabricated a “wildly false” story to “blackmail” him for a payday. The superstar was dealt a loss in July when his Los Angeles case was thrown out, but he’s appealing that ruling and still has pending claims in Alabama federal court.  

• Drake Sues Over a Diss. And Loses. 

  Just weeks into 2025, Drake shocked the music world by suing UMG for defamation over Kendrick Lamar’s scathing diss track “Not Like Us,” a Grammy-winning banger that labeled Drake a “certified pedophile.” Few had expected a rapper to respond to lyrical insults by hiring lawyers; fewer still had expected him to file it against UMG, his longtime label where he rose to the very top of the music industry. 
    
  Drake’s case was always something of a gamble. It aimed to protect his reputation, but it also posed risks of harming it. To many, going to court over a diss track felt antithetical to a genre rooted so heavily in authenticity, and Drake’s case prompted ridicule in some corners of the hip-hop world. “What type of shit is that?” asked A$AP Rocky in September, in one representative example. 
    
  In August, Drake lost that wager: A federal judge dismissed the case, ruling that listeners would hear the “pedophile” diss as just one more “inflammatory insult” during a “heated rap battle,” not the kind of “sober facts” that could be proven true or false. Will that ruling hold up on appeal? Drake is going to find out, and experts say he has a fighting chance. Stay tuned in 2026 for the answer. 

• Spotify Cases Raise Big Questions 

  Spotify remained the uncontested heavyweight champion of music streaming in 2025, reporting in November that it saw a 12% year-over-year jump to 281 million paying subscribers. But it also faced two new lawsuits that raised big questions about the modern streaming ecosystem. 
    
  In one case, a Spotify user claimed in November that the streamer’s Discovery Mode and editorial playlists amount to a “modern form of payola,” allowing labels to secretly boost their tracks with a “deceptive pay-for-play” regime. Spotify says the lawsuit is “nonsense” and “riddled with misunderstandings,” but Discovery Mode has raised eyebrows for years — even as it’s slowly become a key part of the music marketing toolkit. 
    
  Another case, also filed last month, claims that Spotify turned a “blind eye” to streaming fraud — the use of bots and other means to artificially boost numbers. It claimed Drake and other stars had enjoyed “billions” of such fake streams, depriving other artists a fair cut from Spotify’s finite royalty pool. The problem of streaming fraud is not a new one, and Spotify says the lawsuit ignores its “best-in-class systems” designed to combat it, but it will be fascinating to watch the issue be dissected in federal court. 

• Song Theft Cases Just Keep on Coming 

  As seems to be the case every year, 2025 saw a steady drip of copyright lawsuits brought against artists over allegedly unlicensed samples and interpolations in their songs. The old music industry saying holds true: “If you write a hit, expect a writ.” 
   
  Among the artists to face such cases this year were Lizzo, who was sued over a sample in a track poking fun at the Sydney Sweeney ad controversy; Rauw Alejandro, accused of using material from reggaeton legend DJ Playero; and Bad Bunny, who faced a case over a track from his chart-topping Un Verano Sin Ti. Ye, who’s battled more than a dozen sampling claims over his career, was hit with two. Travis Scott was also sued twice, once alongside SZA and Future. 
   
  Music lawyers can expect to keep racking up billable hours on this seemingly never-ending parade of song theft claims in 2026. The blockbuster case against Miley Cyrus over her megahit “Flowers” is moving ahead after a judge refused to dismiss it in March. Another huge case is also headed for trial, after an appeals court ruled in May that a lawsuit over Sam Smith and Normani’s 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger” must be decided by a jury. Stay tuned. 
   

• Christmas Comes Early for Mariah Carey 

  One major song theft case was wrapped up with a bow this year: a lawsuit alleging Mariah Carey’s holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You” infringed a 1989 track of the same name. A federal judge held that the two songs really just share Christmas song clichés, and she ordered songwriter Vince Vance to repay Carey’s legal fees for filing “frivolous” arguments during the litigation.  
   
  The case was a big deal because “All I Want for Christmas is You” is big business. The 1994 blockbuster earned a whopping $8.5 million in global revenue in 2022, and it has retaken the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 every holiday season since 2019. The song hit No. 1 for a whopping 19th week on Monday (Dec. 8), tying the record for most time atop the chart. 

• Artists Fight for Termination Rights 

  Aside from the usual parade of traditional infringement claims, a more obscure area of copyright law was also a hot topic in 2025. Termination rights allow artists who sign over their master recordings to regain control of that intellectual property after 35 years.  
   
  At the beginning of the year, an unusual federal court ruling out of Louisiana determined for the first time that termination rights apply not just in the U.S., but also across the globe. This set off alarm bells among music industry attorneys, who said the decision could lead to chaos in cross-border dealings and even violate international treaty obligations. The case is now on appeal.  
   
  Then, in May, Salt-N-Pepa made waves by suing UMG over termination rights. The legendary hip-hop duo claimed UMG is refusing to give them back control of their masters, while the company maintained that the fine print of Salt-N-Pepa’s original record deal bars them from exercising termination rights. The lawsuit is continuing to play out in court — and Cheryl “Salt” James even referenced it during their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November. 

• Live Nation in DOJ Crosshairs 

  One of the biggest legal stories of 2024 was the Department of Justice (DOJ) suing to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which the live events juggernaut bought back in 2010. That case chugged along through the famously-unhurried legal system in 2025, with Live Nation losing its first bite at dismissing the antitrust claims in March. 
   
  Next came the lengthy evidence collection process, followed by Live Nation arguing in a November summary judgment motion that there’s simply no proof it wields monopolistic control over the live industry. Unless Live Nation wins summary judgment, the DOJ case will go to trial in early 2026. 
   
  Another branch of the federal government took Live Nation to court this year, too. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought a lawsuit in September alleging that Ticketmaster has violated the BOTS Act by failing to adequately keep scalpers off the site. Live Nation calls the claims “categorically false” and is fighting back.  

• Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Keeps Lawyers Busy 

  Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour, which wrapped up at the end of 2024 after a two-year run with a record-shattering haul of more than $2 billion, was so big that it developed its own legal system in 2025. 
    
  In March, New York prosecutors charged members of a “cybercrime crew” with stealing more than 900 Eras Tour tickets from StubHub and reselling them for over $635,000 in illegal profit. And in August, the FTC sued a ticket broker that allegedly used bots to buy thousands of Eras Tour tickets that it resold for more than $1 million in profit. 
   
  Then, in October, an angry Swiftie sued StubHub for giving her “inferior” replacement seats at the last minute after she dropped $14,000 on Eras tickets. And just last month, a federal judge issued a key early ruling in favor of hundreds of Swifties who filed an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster over the infamous Eras presale in 2022.