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A collection of fifteen notable music organizations have come together to express their dissatisfaction in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In a letter to congress, the organizations note that the current DMCA safe harbor laws are “failing”. The organizations include the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), SoundExchange and National Music Publishers’ Association. Safe harbor laws currently allow internet services to avoid liability for users who post copyright infringement content on their sites. Presently, users cannot be penalized if they upload copyrighted material.

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Searches for illegal MP3 downloads is going to become difficult for people in the U.K.

There are a plethora of websites on the internet that provide free downloads to copyrighted music. When searching for music on Google, websites containing illegal content can sometimes appear within the first page of search results. Not only does this keep musicians and songwriters from being paid for their work – it also puts Google users up for the risk of spam. The user may have been searching for a safe result in the first place. A new change for Google users in the U.K. may put a halt to downloading content without paying for it.

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced that Michael Jackson’s album Thriller is the first album to be certified platinum 33 times in America.

The Recording Industry of America is known for keeping track of how many albums are sold within the U.S.. Jackson’s album was released in 1982 and has sold around 33 million copies in the country. This is a new record for the music industry.

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For many of us, music is something that can always improve our mood.

Hearing one of our favorite songs can turn our day around and instantly make us feel better. Music has the ability to make us feel immense pleasure, almost like a powerful drug. A new study conducted at McGill University says that music actually affects the same part of the brain as opioids do. Similarly, these chemicals are also activated when participating in activities like eating sweets or exercising.

The study notes that people “consistently rank music as among the top ten things in their lives that bring pleasure, above money, food and art.”

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Prince has returned to Spotify after not being on the streaming service for two years.

The release of the music came just hours before the airing of the 59^th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday. The release of the catalogue on Spotify was planned purposely for this time, as the awards ceremony had planned to air a tribute to the late singer.

Since returning, the singer has collected over 1.5 million monthly listeners. Prince’s top song on Spotify is “Purple Rain”, which is currently at 25.4 million streams.

Accessing Prince’s music on online hasn’t always been easy. The demand for Prince’s music online has soared since his death. While going out and buying physical albums is not necessarily a popular activity anymore, Prince’s grieving fans rushed out to stores to retrieve his music after hearing the news of his death. According to Nielsen Music, on the day he died in April 2016, Prince sold 239,000 physical albums.

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According to IFPI, streaming is the music industry’s fastest-growing revenue source. Streaming services are continuously looking for new ways to improve and offer the best services to its users.

Google is currently looking to advance, and is planning to merge two of its music streaming apps

Currently, Google owns two separate music subscription service apps, YouTube Music and Google Play Music. Product teams from both apps are working on a way to combine the two apps. No sudden changes for app users will appear soon. However, in the future, a single music-streaming app from Google is likely to appear.

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