Music Ally Independent Journalism Statement

Music Ally never charges for editorial coverage. That means that our News reporting, Sandbox content, Insight Reports, and any other analysis you read here – or listen to on our podcast – is free from commercial consideration. These are created and published at the discretion of the Editorial team alone, based on their judgement of a story’s importance or newsworthiness. (Music Ally also publishes partner content under our Co-Labs vertical, which is clearly marked as such, and is not created by our Editorial team. You can find more details on that here.)

In short: nothing published by Music Ally’s Editorial team is paid-for. You can contact the Editor here.

Music Ally in context

Music Ally is a multi-pronged company. Our journalism – news, analysis and research reports – is mainly funded by individual and corporate subscriptions, but in recent years we have launched sponsor-supported versions for independent labels, managers, publishers and collecting societies.

Meanwhile, we run conferences and present awards; do training both through our online Pro platform and in-person for clients; and offer marketing strategy services to music companies and artists. We’ve recently launched other things, like the SI:X music/tech startups contest, and our MUdaL hybrid editorial+events+training initiative in Latin America.

We’re bringing our knowledge to more people in new formats, but that brings with it commercial relationships with a number of the companies we write about in our journalism.

Artificial intelligence

Music Ally does not publish AI-generated written content. Music Ally’s editorial strength – and the value to our readers – is derived from the deep, ongoing analysis undertaken by our journalists and researchers. We do use AI tools where it helps improve our reporting – to help sift through information or analyse data, for instance – but all of our editorial output is entirely sourced, analysed, written, and published by humans.

Editorial integrity

Our editorial integrity is the core of Music Ally’s culture and business. So, two things:

  1. Music Ally’s commercial relationships do not influence our journalism. We don’t cover companies we do business with more often or more positively as a result, nor do we cover their rivals less or more negatively.
  2. We’ll let you judge whether this is true by offering maximum transparency. This page lists the companies we currently have (or have recently had) commercial relationships with, so you can assess our independence accordingly.

Internally, our ethos has always been clear. We’ve had partnerships with large DSPs like Spotify, Amazon and YouTube while covering the fiercest criticism of streaming economics, artist royalties and the ‘value gap’.

Major labels are some of our largest corporate subscribers, but we don’t shy away from industry criticism of them. Linkfire is a long-time sponsor of our conferences, but we write regularly about its rivals in the smart-links space.

The BPI and the Broken Record campaign may be opposed, but working on events with the former hasn’t reduced our coverage of the latter. And so on. We know this, but we think it’s important to disclose those relationships here, so you can judge our coverage for yourself.

Commercial Relationships

Partner Content

We publish partner content under our Co-Labs vertical – this is created by brand partners in liaison with the Editorial Team. While this content is not written by us, we work closely with Partners to ensure that it adheres to the same levels of quality, thoughtfulness, and usefulness as our own work. This content is published as Co-Labs content and is clearly labled as such. The Co-Labs archive is here.

Guest Columns

Guest column policy, November 2023: We occasionally publish posts which voice the opinions of guest authors. These are chosen at the Editorial team’s discretion and are not paid-for. We publish posts that advance specific perspectives on important issues, and must not be overt advertorial for the author’s business. You can explore the guest column archive here.

Music Ally’s current and recent commercial partnerships:

This list will be updated regularly

Corporate Subscriptions

Our five largest corporate subscribers by value in 2021 were Spotify, Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and Google. None of them accounted for more than 6% of our revenues for that year.

If you work for a collecting society, an independent label, independent publisher, management company or music/tech startup, you can subscribe to Music Ally for free thanks to our sponsor partners, with support from industry trade bodies.

  • The independent labels subscription is currently sponsored by Too Lost and Spotify for Artists, in association with WIN.
  • The independent publishers subscription is currently sponsored by Broma 16 / Heaven 11 and Spotify.
  • The management subscription is currently sponsored by Sound Royalties and Audius, in association with IMMF.
  • The PROs subscription is currently sponsored by ICE and Broma 16 / Heaven 11.

The Japanese-language version of Music Ally is sponsored by SS Fuga and Recochoku.

Past sponsors of these subscriptions include FUGA and Songtrust.

Events and Conferences

Music Ally Connect is an annual international music industry conference held in London in January every year. The 2025 event was sponsored by The MLC, MusixMatch, Virgin Music Group, Amazon Music, Beatdapp, Songkick, SoundCloud, Even, PRS for Music, Rimas Publishing, Luminate, Matchtune, SACEM, Trolley, Vistex, Chartmetric, Push, and Reed Smith.

Music Ally NEXT is an annual music industry conference held in London in June. Last year’s event was sponsored by Beatdapp, Amazon Music For Artists, AMRA, Universal Music Group, Red Bull Media House, Tunecore, Even.biz, and Aiode.

The Music Ally Publishing Summit is an annual event for the international music publishing industry  held in London in October. Last year’s event was sponsored by ICE, The MLC, QRS, Music Reports, SESAC, Muserk, Spotify, PRS for Music, DDEX, Broma 16, Heaven 11, and ASCAP.

The Music Ally Marketing Awards is an annual celebration of the industry’s best marketing campaigns. Last year’s event was sponsored by Spotify for Artists, Creed Media, Round, NEWU, TikTok and Blackstar.

We have worked on a number of the BPI’s ‘Insight Session’ events in recent years, working with the industry body on the programmes and subsequent reports.

Past sponsors of our own events include Linkfire, The Orchard, Vevo, MQA, AdRev, Nielsen, 7digital, Chartmetric and ICE.

Training and Learning

Launched in October 2022, the MUdaL online learning centre and knowledge network for Latin America was conceived and developed by Music Ally and Relatable, with the support of Spotify for Artists as the headline sponsor.

In October 2022 we launched a free five-course video series called the Amazon Music for Artists Pro Series in a commercial partnership with Amazon Music.

We are a partner for the Music Business Academy for Africa training program. The 2024-25 edition is powered by The Orchard.

Music Ally SI:X

Launched in September 2022, our music/tech startups contest and mentorship program is being held in association with Amazon Music, ASCAP Lab, Red Bull Media House, Reed Smith, Music Foundry and Universal Music Group.

Last updated: 02/10/23

Music Ally is accredited as a Living Wage Employer. We are based in London, a region where nearly a fifth of all jobs (19%) pay less than the real Living Wage – around 785,000 jobs. The real Living Wage is the only rate calculated according to the costs of living. It provides a voluntary benchmark for employers that wish to ensure their staff earn a wage they can live on, not just the government minimum.

Music Ally is an equal opportunities employer. For details of our policy please click here.