Chris Cooke

Chris Cooke focuses on explaining how law, regulation and business decisions shape the modern music industry, turning dense disputes and policy papers into clear, case-led coverage. He writes extensively for CMU across news, analysis and explainers, with a particular focus on legal battles, AI and platform policy, live sector regulation and corporate power in music. Over decades he has combined journalism with education and consultancy work that help people understand the structures, revenue flows and rights that underpin the music business.

Legal battles, regulation and rights

Much of Cooke’s recent work dissects lawsuits, court rulings and regulatory interventions that directly affect artists, labels, publishers and platforms.

He frequently reports on copyright and publicity rights cases, such as a Japanese ruling that a performer’s voice is protected by publicity rights and a US appeals court decision that AI training is not fair use, using multiple judgments in a single piece to show how doctrine is evolving across jurisdictions. His coverage of disputes around AI training, including challenges to earlier fair use positions from government agencies, tracks how news organisations and music companies push back against permissive interpretations of copyright law. He follows trademark and passing-off battles too, such as litigation brought by Outkast against Ovrkast over a confusingly similar performer name, grounding branding controversies in the underlying legal tests.

Cooke’s reporting regularly connects courtroom drama to policy debates and practical enforcement. He has covered plans to reintroduce anti-piracy web-blocking in the US, explaining how obligations might extend beyond traditional ISPs to VPNs and DNS resolvers when rightsholders secure court orders. He tracks major-label strategies and collective publisher actions, from litigation against platforms like Anthropic to demands for huge damages and new piracy claims, showing how rights owners use the courts to force changes in technology and distribution practices.

Across these pieces he tends to use specific cases as the spine of the story, then layers in industry reactions, prior rulings and the likely operational impact on companies and creators.

AI, platforms and the future of music

Cooke is a consistent voice on how artificial intelligence and digital platforms are reshaping music creation, distribution and monetisation.

He reports on legal and policy attempts to define the status of AI-generated works, including test cases where Canadian music publishers argue that only humans can be authors under copyright law. He has covered the explosive growth of AI-generated tracks on services like Deezer, using data points such as AI uploads exceeding half of total submissions to highlight scale and stress points in existing business models.

His pieces on companies like Suno and Google examine how training datasets are assembled, how many audio files are scraped, and how platforms argue that any music uploaded to services such as YouTube is “fair game” for AI training, setting out the clash between technical practice and rights-holder expectations.

Beyond AI training, Cooke tracks how streaming platforms respond to fraud, transparency and identity challenges. He has covered proposals and lawsuits that allege services like Spotify tolerate a two-tier approach to streaming fraud when superstar artists benefit, as well as moves by distributors and labels to clamp down on “AI slop” and infringing uploads.

He reports on product and policy changes such as Apple Music’s plan to label tracks “Made With AI” and Spotify’s introduction of “AI personas”, explaining how transparency tags and self-declaration schemes are supposed to work and where enforcement may be needed. His coverage of social media and short-form platforms spans new regulations, like a French social media ban for under-fifteens, and major copyright suits against services such as X, setting those stories within wider questions about whether US copyright law now needs a rewrite for the platform era.

Live sector, ticketing and touring controversies

Cooke is a regular chronicler of the live music business, particularly where ticketing, regulation and tour politics collide.

He has reported in detail on touting and secondary ticketing, including coverage of Oasis tickets listed for around £3000 and questions about whether the UK government will finally deliver a promised ban on for-profit touting. In that work he links consumer pain points and high prices to regulatory timelines and political priorities, showing how delayed interventions leave space for resale markets to flourish. He follows scrutiny of major live players too, covering calls from MPs for competition regulators to urgently investigate the live sector amid allegations of a “climate of fear” around Live Nation’s dominance.

His live coverage also tracks the practical and reputational fallout of touring controversies. Recent pieces follow the unfolding drama around Ed Sheeran’s US tour, from storm-related cancellations to the axing of Macklemore over on-stage political statements, using those stories to explore how artist speech, promoter decisions and venue politics intersect. He reports on weather disruptions, stadium ownership issues and tour schedule changes in a way that connects operational detail with broader debates about who really controls major touring operations. Elsewhere he has examined how regulatory bodies such as a fair trade commission scrutinise K-pop deals after complaints from performers, treating individual disputes as windows into contract norms and power balances in fast-growing markets. His live and ticketing work tends to move quickly from headline drama into deeper questions about governance, competition and consumer protection in the live ecosystem.

Deals, organisations and industry structure

The structure and consolidation of the music industry is another constant thread in Cooke’s reporting.

He covers high-profile corporate moves ranging from Scott Borchetta’s departure from HYBE and the repositioning of the Big Machine label group, through to Universal’s acquisition of Downtown Music and its earlier strategic alliance and buyout of [PIAS], situating each transaction within ongoing debates about market share and major-label power. His coverage of mergers such as BMG and Concord’s tie-up and other large-scale deals sets out both headline purchase prices and the implications for distribution, catalog control and independent sectors. He also follows policy reports and government plans, including documents like “Our Plan For Music” that bundle new funding and licensing reforms, drawing lines between legislative proposals and their likely impact on different parts of the business.

Cooke’s wider work on organisations and rights infrastructure spans collecting societies, mechanical licensing bodies and trade groups. He has written about entities such as The MLC and UK Music, explaining their role in representing rights-holders, administering royalties and lobbying for sector-wide changes. His licensing coverage includes detailed looks at AI licensing principles published by independent publisher alliances, which insist that song rights and recording rights must be valued equally in AI deals rather than replicating historic streaming imbalances. Across these stories he tends to map how money and control flow through labels, publishers, platforms and intermediaries, reflecting his broader role leading CMU’s mix of journalism, training, consultancy and events designed to help professionals navigate and understand the music business.