Jessie Parker, the festival director of Australia and New Zealand’s Laneway Festival, is stepping down after 16 years with the touring event, she announced this week.

Parker shared the news in a LinkedIn post on Monday (Aug. 17), saying she will leave the role at the end of the month. “After 16 years with Laneway Festival, and six incredible years at the helm as General Manager / Festival Director, it is time for me to wrap up this chapter and step down at the end of this month,” she wrote.

Parker joined Laneway as an event assistant and rose through the organization over the following decade to become general manager and, in May 2025, festival director for Australia and New Zealand — one of the highest-ranking female executives in the country’s live-music industry.

“Reflecting on where it all started as an event assistant, I never could have imagined the wild, rewarding journey ahead,” she wrote. “To go from managing resident comms and running accred around the site, to leading six simultaneous touring events across Australia and New Zealand has been the privilege of a lifetime.”

Her departure caps a high point for the festival. Laneway’s 2025 run was its most successful, drawing 200,000 attendees across sold-out shows in Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, with a bill led by Charli XCX, Clairo, BICEP and Olivia Dean. The festival went on to win the inaugural ARIA Award for Best Festival and was named Music Event of the Year in New Zealand.

Parker pointed to the industry work behind the scenes as her proudest contribution, citing her roles on the Australian Festivals Association board and the NSW Music Festivals Roundtable “during a transformative era for live music.”

Parker did not detail her next move, saying only that she is “excited for what comes next and fully open to new opportunities.” She did not announce a successor, and Laneway — part of the TEG group, with co-founders Danny Rogers and Jerome Borazio — has not yet named a replacement.

The exit comes at a pivotal moment for the festival. Laneway returns to Australia and New Zealand in 2027, but announced last week that it will not visit Adelaide or Perth next year, scaling back to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, with venues, dates and lineup still to come.

The pullback lands amid a turbulent stretch for Australia’s festival sector, which has seen a wave of cancellations and closures in recent years. Laneway marked its 21st year in 2026 with a lineup headlined by Chappell Roan, alongside Wet Leg, Wolf Alice, PinkPantheress, Geese and Lucy Dacus.

Ellie Goulding claims in a new lawsuit that her former managers, Ben Mawson and Ed Millet of TaP Management, never told her about Live Nation’s controlling stake in their firm.

The “Lights” singer initiated legal claims for breach of fiduciary duty in the U.K. on July 24, according to court records reviewed by Billboard. She’s suing both Mawson and Millet, who co-founded TaP in 2010, as well as the management firm’s parent company, HNOE Limited.

Goulding signed to TaP in 2018 and remained there through 2025. According to Variety and Rolling Stone, which both obtained copies of the singer’s lawsuit, Goulding is alleging that Mawson and Millet pushed her during this period to do business with Live Nation for touring, merch and a documentary film.

The problem, Goulding reportedly alleges, is that nobody ever disclosed to her that Live Nation had purchased a controlling stake in HNOE in 2015 — or that Live Nation then bought out the rest of the company in 2019.  Unbeknownst to Goulding at the time, the ownership arrangement allegedly subjected Mawson and Millet to contractual obligations that barred them from steering artists under their management away from doing deals with Live Nation.

According to Goulding, this meant that Mawson and Millet did not prioritize finding the best deals for her as a client.

“The defendants had a personal interest or duty in dealings between Ms. Goulding and companies in the Live Nation group, which was in actual or potential conflict with the interests of Ms. Goulding in securing the best commercial terms with whichever promoter, merchandiser or other counterparty it was most advantageous for her to deal with,” reads the lawsuit, per Variety.

Goulding is seeking unspecified financial damages in the lawsuit. Reps for Goulding and TaP did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday (Aug. 17).

Live Nation, which is neither named as a defendant nor accused of any wrongdoing, declined to comment on the case.

Accusations that Selena Gomez duped investors into putting $1.2 million into mental health startup Wondermind are baseless, the star’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, says after Gomez was named in a lawsuit filed Thursday (Aug. 13). Rosengart will be filing a motion to dismiss claims made in the suit.

On Saturday (Aug. 15), the litigator denied allegations made against Gomez in the statement seen below, which was first published by People. Billboard independently verified the statement with Rosengart.

“The allegations that Selena Gomez engaged in any way whatsoever in any purported ‘fraud’ or other wrongdoing are completely meritless, both factually and legally. We will vigorously defend these false allegations and indeed are filing a motion to dismiss the baseless claims against her,” Rosengart said.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a group of five investors — Brent Saunders, Marc Roberts, EJ Solimine, Andrew Resnick and Mark Peikin — who are seeking the return of the money they invested in Wondermind, as well as additional financial damages for alleged wrongdoing by leadership at the company, which they say “quietly collapsed around them” while “not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors.”

The group claims that Gomez, Mandy Teefey (Gomez’s mother) and Danielle Pierson (former executive), who co-founded the mental health-focused company in 2021, led them to inves in the company in 2022.

Wondermind was envisioned as a suite of mental health media initiatives, including a digital magazine, a mobile app and a podcast.

The plaintiffs allege they were promised Gomez would be actively involved as Wondermind’s head of marketing, leveraging her huge fanbase and social media following to promote companity initiatives.

The plaintiffs allege Pierson — who no longer works at the company — told them Wondermind had a “potential future valuation” of more than $4 billion, and that she’d generated $40 million a year at her prior media company, The Newsette. They were also allegedly told the company had partnerships in place with JPMorgan and Fidelity, as well as major ad deals and interest in cover story features with stars like Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Elton John and Camila Cabello.

The lawsuit claims pitches turned out to be false, and that the investors only learned “the sheer magnitude of the fraud that the defendants had foisted upon them” when an exposé was published by The Cut last year that painted a picture of an apparently troubled financial state at Wondermind.

“The accounts in the Cut article collectively show that, from the outset, Wondermind had no plan for its future — much less a plan for achieving a multi-billion dollar valuation,” the lawsuit says.

The Cut reported in part that, after speaking with 14 current and former Wondermind employees, they’d learned Gomez distanced herself from the company soon after its launch, that finances were dire due to Teefey’s alleged erratic behavior and substance abuse issues, and that Pierson left Wondermind in 2023 due to a power struggle with Teefey; Pierson’s work at her previous employer was also under scrutiny.

“The information unearthed in this article proved not only that the company was, and is, in a state of financial calamity; it proved that the defendants’ representations about the company’s operations, personnel and financial prospects were a fiction. There was no legitimate enterprise in the works, much less a lucrative one,” Thursday’s lawsuit alleges.

Teefey denied allegations of company mismanagement, and said Wondermind remained viable, when The Cut article went to publication last year. “I started Wondermind because I wanted to help people with mental illness. It’s unfortunate that a few disgruntled employees with an ax to grind can spread lies about me and distort the truth. Even more disappointing that the media is willing to amplify their lies,” she said.

Latin superstar Romeo Santos is suing his longtime accounting and business management firm, claiming its “gross negligence” left him with unpaid tax bills and ultimately cost him millions of dollars in damages.

In a lawsuit obtained and first reported by Billboard, Santos (Anthony Santos) claims that BDO USA botched his financial affairs so badly that it amounted to professional malpractice — and that the company has since “rebuffed every overture” to find an “amicable solution” to the problem.

“For nearly seven years, Santos  … entrusted his financial affairs to an accounting and business-management practice that sold itself as a dedicated entertainment-industry specialist,” writes his attorney, James Sammataro of the firm Pryor Cashman. “What [BDO] delivered instead was gross negligence, year after year.”

Santos isn’t the first music star to complain about BDO. Back in 2022, Fat Joe filed a lawsuit claiming the firm and two of its employees stole millions of dollars in “brazen” fraud that has the “hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.” The case later settled in 2024 on confidential terms.

Santos broke out in the early 2000s as the lead singer of Aventura, a bachata group that’s put 13 songs in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart. After launching a solo career in 2011, Santos has released seven hits that have topped the Hot Latin Songs chart, including 2014’s “Odio” collab with Drake and 2011’s “Promise” featuring Usher.

According to Wednesday’s (Aug. 12) lawsuit, Santos initially hired the firm Morrison Brown Argiz & Farra LLP in 2016; the company was later acquired by BDO in 2021. He says he did so because the firm sold itself as an “entertainment-industry specialist” that could effectively manage the business affairs of “a global touring and recording artist and the multistate and international tax exposure that comes with it.”

But he says BDO’s subsequent failures “spanned nearly every function it was retained to perform,” including basic functions like properly paying his taxes and filing returns. He also says the firm botched his New York state taxes, filing an “incoherent” return that sparked a costly audit, and also failed to file for credits on foreign taxes already withheld from his royalties.

“The withholding was no secret: it appeared on the face of the royalty statements in BDO’s files,” his lawyers write. “Yet year after year, the credits went unclaimed.”

When he finally fired the company in 2023, Santos says BDO quickly withdrew money from his own account without authorization to pay its own fees. “The episode is a fitting coda to the engagement: the firm that could not manage to remit Santos’ taxes on time remitted its own fee without delay — after it was fired from his account, without asking,” the suit reads. “To this day, BDO has not returned the money.”

All told, the lawsuit claims that Santos is owed at least $2.3 million in damages, stemming from tax penalties and interest, the unapproved withdrawal, the cost of hiring new accountants to fix the problems and “lost value” from other professional missteps.

“Two years of demands, documentation, and patience had produced BDO’s acknowledgment of ‘specific errors,’ its silence on the core failures, and nothing else — leaving plaintiffs with no choice but to initiate legal action,” Santos’ attorneys write.

A spokesperson for BDO did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday (Aug. 13).

Dance music download store Beatport has added an AI detection tool to ensure that fully AI-generated music does not appear in the platform’s catalog.

Music fraud detection tool Beatdapp will now be employed for AI-generated music identification across the Beatport catalogue. Music identified as being fully made by AI will be withheld at ingestion to the site, with rights holders notified directly, the company says.

The implementation of the tool expands on the company’s AI policy announced in January 2025, which states that fully AI-generated music is not permitted in its catalog, while AI-assisted tracks that remain majority human-created are tagged as such.

The AI detection tool expands on a previously existing Beatport partnership with Beatdapp that uses another offering from the company to address fraudulent streaming activity.

“Beatport exists to serve DJs and empower artists & labels,” the company’s CEO Matt Gralen said in a statement. “This means partnering with our community and providing confidence in what our platform offers. While new production techniques have driven electronic music forward since the beginning, there is a difference between a tool that assists human creation and a system that replaces it entirely. Beatport is built on the former.”

Beatport reports that a recent survey the company conducted found that 60% of Beatport users would not play AI-generated tracks in their sets, with 77% citing a strong preference for playing music made fully by humans. The survey also found that just 8% of Beatport users are currently open to playing AI music, with 13% saying they’d consider it if associated artists and labels are fairly compensated.

“The music industry has always embraced new technology,” said Beatdapp co-founder and CEO Andrew Batey. “What’s needed now is the infrastructure to bring transparency to the age of generative AI. By combining AI Music Detection with our existing fraud detection capabilities, we’re helping Beatport strengthen the integrity of its platform while protecting human creativity and giving artists, labels, DJs, and fans confidence in the music they discover and support.”

“Beatport’s approach aligns with AFEM’s AI Principles by keeping human creativity at the centre while recognizing that not all uses of AI are the same,” added Jay Ahern, chief strategy officer at the Association for Electronic Music. “Human intent and creative control must sit alongside consent, licensing, transparency, attribution and remuneration.”

Four siblings who claim they were abused by Michael Jackson have hit a roadblock in their child sex trafficking lawsuit against the King of Pop’s estate.

In a Wednesday (Aug. 12) ruling, first obtained and reported by Billboard, Judge Hernán D. Vera booted the claims brought by Edward, Dominic, Marie-Nicole and Aldo Cascio out of a public courtroom. The federal judge said that under the clear terms of a 2019 settlement between the family and the Jackson estate, all related disputes must be handled in confidential arbitration.

“Although the allegations are horrific, the court is without discretion to do aught but enforce the language of the arbitration clause,” wrote Judge Vera.

The Cascio siblings grew up with Jackson and once referred to themselves as his “second family.” While previously staunch defenders of the star against pedophilia claims, the family members alleged in a February lawsuit that Jackson raped and molested them as children over the course of more than a decade.

The Jackson estate strongly denies these claims, which the Cascios first raised in 2019 after the release of the explosive HBO documentary Leaving Neverland. The four siblings, along with their fifth brother Frank, claimed privately at the time that this documentary “deprogrammed” them. The estate paid them a $3.5 million settlement without admitting any wrongdoing.

The Cascios now say that settlement is void and unenforceable because they were coerced into signing it. Judge Vera ruled on Wednesday that those arguments, “while serious”, clearly do not belong in a public courtroom under the terms of the settlement.

“While plaintiffs are fully within their rights to raise questions about unconscionability, those challenges must be presented later before an arbitrator,” wrote the judge.

The ruling echoes another decision reached in March by a different judge in California state court, who oversaw a related legal proceeding over Frank’s sexual assault claims. In that case, the judge ruled that Frank’s signature on the same settlement agreement required arbitration of all further disputes.

A lawyer for the Cascio siblings, Howard King, told Billboard on Wednesday, “It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the decision on whether the Cascios were duped into signing an unconscionable agreement with an arbitration clause will be made by an arbitrator rather than a jury of peers.”

“The family had hoped the court would allow for a public trial over the decades-long molestations of the Cascio siblings by Michael Jackson and the ensuing cover-up by his advisors,” added King. “Instead, the family will seek justice from the dark confines of a private conference room.”

Reps for the Jackson estate did not immediately comment on the decision.

The estate has previously characterized the claims as a “desperate money grab,” pointing out that the Cascios “spent decades defending and affirming Michael’s innocence” before changing their tune. The siblings stated during a 2010 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, for example, that Jackson was “never” inappropriate with them, and Frank wrote in a 2011 memoir, “Michael’s love for children was innocent, and it was profoundly misunderstood.”

Jackson, who died in 2009, was never convicted or held legally liable for any accusation of child sex abuse during his lifetime; he settled a civil claim in 1994 without admitting any wrongdoing, and he was acquitted at a criminal trial in 2005. But such allegations have continued to dog his legacy, most notably when Leaving Neverland amplified claims from two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, in disturbing detail.

The Jackson estate vehemently denies all claims of sexual misconduct, and it called Leaving Neverland a “one-sided hit job” in litigation that ended with the documentary being removed from HBO. Robson and Safechuck are continuing to litigate civil abuse claims against the estate.

Ticketmaster users can now use Google’s AI chatbot Gemini to find live events, the ticketing company announced on Wednesday (Aug. 12).

Ticketmaster is now available as a connected app on the Gemini platform, where fans can look for events and compare seating options and prices before being taken to the Ticketmaster marketplace to complete the purchase.

The Gemini integration will allow users to strike up a conversation with the AI platform to find events versus using traditional search engines. Users can prompt Gemini with questions or phrases like, “Find me two tickets to a football match under $150” or “What concerts are happening in Chicago this weekend?”

“Eligible events are surfaced automatically based on relevant fan searches, creating new discovery opportunities while keeping Ticketmaster as the secure destination for purchasing tickets,” stated a press release announcing the integration. For Ticketmaster clients and event organizers, the release boasts that the partnership could mean “access to fans earlier in the decision-making journey.”

The process requires users to connect Ticketmaster in Gemini and then ask @Ticketmaster to help them find concerts, sporting events and more. If a user finds an event to attend, they will be directed to Ticketmaster’s marketplace. When users reach the marketplace, their selected seats will already be loaded for a more seamless purchase experience.

The app is currently available in English across Gemini on the web, iOS and Android for U.S.-based users. Ticketmaster intends to scale it to additional languages and markets over time.

Gemini is the latest in AI integration for Ticketmaster, which has already rolled out event discovery across ChatGPT, Claude and Amazon Alexa+.

Chris Brown wants a new trial in his former housekeeper’s dog attack lawsuit, arguing that the jury’s “excessive” $13 million verdict was influenced by improper evidence about his infamous 2008 assault of Rihanna.

Brown’s lawyers filed a motion on Monday (Aug. 10) asking to wipe the trial verdict won in June by Maria Avila, who was mauled by a 200-pound dog while cleaning Brown’s Los Angeles-area home six years earlier. Brown accepted some liability for the incident but said Avila was partially at fault, testifying during the trial that he specifically warned her not to go outside unaccompanied because of the unfriendly dog.

Monday’s motion, obtained by Billboard, argues that the trial’s judge unfairly allowed Avila’s attorney to ask an “inherently inflammatory” question during Brown’s cross-examination: whether he is a convicted felon. The R&B star answered “yes, ma’am” to this inquiry — referencing, without providing any details, his 2009 guilty plea to assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna.

“Mr. Brown’s conduct in an unrelated domestic-violence matter 17 years prior had no bearing on Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries, causation or damages,” reads the motion. “The jury was affirmatively told that the conviction could be used to determine whether Mr. Brown was believable. Thus, … it was expressly authorized to discount Mr. Brown’s testimony based upon a 17-year-old crime of violence having no direct relationship to honesty or veracity.”

Brown’s lawyers say this and other issues at trial — including the exclusion of evidence that the singer’s head of security gave money to Avila’s family after the incident — led to an inflated verdict of $12.9 million. They argue that this amount “cannot reasonably be reconciled with the evidence of the injuries and damages actually established at trial.”

The solution, argues Brown’s camp, is to hold a brand new trial in front of a different jury. Avila’s lawyer, Nancy Doumanian, told Billboard on Wednesday (Aug. 13) that she expects the judge will deny this request.

“You can’t hit the reset button every time a jury holds you accountable,” said Doumanian. “The evidence was overwhelming, the jury got it right, and we’re confident this motion will meet the same fate as the defense did at trial.”

In the meantime, Doumanian has been making moves to collect Avila’s judgment from Brown. In a court filing last month, the attorney argued that this money should come out of Brown’s profits from his ongoing stadium tour with Usher.

Australia, despite its reputation as a nation obsessed with rough-and-tumble sports, has produced its share of inventions and leading-edge initiatives in the digital age.  

Wi-fi technology, the electronic pacemaker, and the black box flight recorder were all developed in the Great Southern Land. Boxed wine — colloquially known in these parts as “goon” — is one of ours, too. In December 2025, Australia became the world’s first country to ban social media for children, implementing groundbreaking laws that block under-16 from such platforms as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Other countries have followed suit.

And just last month, Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese committed to strict copyright protections in the AI age, and gave the strongest of assurances that tech companies would not have the right to copyright-protected content, including music, to train AI “without the artist’s control.”

With that announcement, the PM also unveiled a new Office of AI, which would design the new Australian standards — essentially a functioning licensing framework built on consent and payment.

Those high-level pledges weren’t lost on Sam Duboff, Spotify’s global head of artists, marketing & policy, the executive who leads the streaming giant’s work on artist policy, streaming transparency and responsible AI, making him one of the business’ most senior voices on the intersection of music, technology and public policy.

Duboff recently visited Australia to talk with artists and partners in the domestic industry about its own AI protections and initiatives.

Albanese’s comments feel to be “very aligned with our approach,” he tells Billboard. “From what I’ve seen,” Duboff notes, “it feels like the (Australian) government positions are really similar to our approach, which is respect for copyright, and making sure this AI age is helping existing IP holders.”

One of the messages carried during those meetings down under were on Spotify’s AI music products that “we’ve announced and are planning to build with the industry,” Duboff explains. “The history of Spotify is all about respect for copyright. Spotify was born 20 years ago out of the plate of piracy and we were able to build a license experience that was, you know, making fans want to pay for music. We see a similar opportunity today where a lot of emerging AI tech platforms are, their focus on music products are competing with artists, or trying to replace artists.”

Duboff continues, “we think we could build products that respect copyright in partnership with the industry, that power existing artist careers.”

As Spotify works to increase transparency around AI usage in songs and on artist profiles, it recently announced partnerships with Universal Music Group (UMG) and Merlin to allow for AI remixing of songs, effectively allowing users to create AI remixes and covers of songs by participating artists signed to labels under the UMG and Merlin umbrellas. Remixing capabilities will be made available as a paid add-on for premium subscribers.

Earlier this week, the tech business announced the creation of a new label that will be applied to AI-generated artists and begin rolling out in mid-September. Music from artists bearing the label, called “AI Persona,” will not be included in personalized recommendations on the platform.

Duboff points to Spotify’s four core “artist-first” AI principles, coming soon off the back of an announcement that it was strengthening its policies on negative use cases of AI-generated music.

“We’re trying to bet big on human artistry. Our belief is, in the AI era, the platform that’s gonna win is the one where listeners can trust what they’re listening to the most. And so, in the same breath that we’re fighting spam and (AI) slop, we’re building these new tools that let artists get verified for being authentic, upload video, share their song DNA, and everything else.”

Based in New York, Duboff also leads the teams responsible for many of the music streaming leader’s biggest initiatives for artists, including Spotify for Artists, Loud & Clear, Wrapped for Artists, Countdown Pages, Clips, Campaign Kit and Spotify Charts.

One Australia-specific initiative that caught his eye was Spotify’s Turn Up Aus Live event series, presented in central Sydney. A throwback to the classic pub gig, the fan-first events are meant to celebrate Aussie artists — and “share that local flair” — at a time when so many are struggling to be seen and heard above the 100-million-plus songs available online at the touch of a screen.

During the southern winter, Hooligan Hefs and Genesis Owusu have performed under the Turn Up Aus Live banner at The Bat & Ball in Redfern. “The success of that is something we’d like to look at for different countries,” he explains. “Turn Up Aus is one of one.”

The live campaign is a phase of a so-called “local pride” stamp that began 12 months ago, explains Spotify’s Australian and New Zealand head of music, Ben Watts. During that time, the streamer has worked with 500 local artists; produced more than 1,000 billboards locally and abroad; including Times Square, and counted 2,000 fans engaging in the live events and activations.

In recent years, Australian recording artists have overpowered by North American and European artists in ARIA’s year-end charts and triple j’s Hottest 100 poll, a situation the domestic industry and its partners have been trying to rectify. It won’t be an easy fix.

As previously reported by Spotify, the Turn Up Aus program is making a difference by generating 223 million more streams of domestic music in Australia for 2024-25. “We’re really happy with that in real numbers,” Watts tells Billboard, “and we see this as only the beginning. It’s not just about the streams. It is really about helping the artist build that fandom and that will be ongoing.”