The Biz: CD Sales Surge As Recorded Music Revenues Grow; DOJ Backs AI Companies In Copyright Cases; All The Majors Take On Claude

Sales of recorded music in all formats grew in the first six months of 2026, up 6.9% against 2025, the Recording Industry Academy of America reported this week.

Total revenues were at $6 billion with the overwhelming majority, of course, coming from streaming at $4.9 billion, with paid subscriptions accounting for $3.4 billion of that total.

But don’t count out physical media. As Gen Z embraces the formats that can actually be embraced, vinyl grew once again — up 17.7% against last year — while CD sales grew an eye-popping 58.6%.

“The power of music, amplified from earbuds to basement listening parties to World Cup playlists across the US, is reflected not only in its cultural significance but also in the $6 billion revenue documented in RIAA’s Mid-Year Recorded Music Revenue Report. These results point to a healthy, diversified marketplace supporting continued investment in artists and new ways for audiences to experience music,” said RIAA VP of Research Matt Bass. 

DOJ Sides With AI Companies In ‘Fair Use’ Training Dispute

The Department of Justice is reiterating its stance that using copyrighted works to train large language models is fair use and not subject to infringement actions.

In the ongoing suit between The New York Times and Microsoft and OpenAI, the paper claims that the models were trained by “copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted news articles” to produce “substitutive products without permission or payment.”

Microsoft and OpenAI have repeatedly argued their use of material is protected by fair use. The DOJ — in parallel with a policy document issued by the White House in March that makes the same case — agrees, calling AI development critical to national security.

“But LLM training is its own use. It does not involve any substitution. … In fact, training does not reveal anything to the public at all—it simply creates a copy of a protected work in order to teach an LLM to recognize relationships between data and adapt to new information,” the DOJ wrote. “The potential for future outputs that might cause market harm is simply not relevant to evaluating an LLM training use under the required use-by-use analysis.”

Sony, Warner Chappell Join The Fray Against Claude

After Sony and Warner Chappell filied a lawsuit in California Aug. 28, every major label’s publishing arm is taking on Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude.

UMG, Concord and ABKGO filed a similar suit in Nashville in Oct. 2023; that suit has been moved to California.

In the latest filing, Sony and Warner described Claude’s use of copyrighted material “one of the largest and most blatant ongoing thefts of intellectual property in history.”

The suit seeks $150,000 per work infringed.

The complaint said “tens of thousands” of works have been infringed, meaning, with a victory by the publishers, Anthropic would be on the hook for billions of dollars.