Welcome to the final CMU Daily of the year! We will be back in your inboxes in January, unless any major music business stories break over the Christmas period. If that happens, we will publish them on the site and, depending on how big they are, we may send a special Christmas bulletin. But let’s hope it’s a quiet Christmas… 

In today’s CMU Daily: TikTok has been very busy this week as it works hard to avoid being banned in the US next month, seeking the help of both the US Supreme Court and Donald Trump. Also today, the latest developments in the lawsuits and criminal proceedings against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. 

Plus: As the year comes to an end, don’t forget to check out our playlist featuring artists and tracks that were CMU Approved in 2024. 

Meanwhile, until 2025, have a very merry Christmas, an invigorating Hogmanay and restful start to the New Year.

Chris, Kaya + Sam

TikTok seeks help from Supreme Court and Donald Trump in latest bid to avoid January ban in the US

As TikTok works hard to avoid being banned in the US next month, this week it has formally reached out to the two entities that could stop or at least postpone the ban: the US Supreme Court and Donald Trump. 

It’s asked the Supreme Court to pause the ban that is due to kick in on 19 Jan so that judges there can properly consider what it calls a dispute of “profound significance for the entire nation”, while TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has met with Trump after the incoming President said he had a “soft spot” for the short form video app. 

Meanwhile, in Europe, TikTok’s lawyers are now having to deal with a European Union investigation into whether it is compliant with rules in the EU’s Digital Services Act that are designed to combat disinformation. 

Whereas the impending ban in the US relates to concerns about the Chinese government’s access to TikTok user data via the app’s China-based owner ByteDance, the EU is investigating whether the Russian government was able to use the social media platform to interfere in the recent Romanian elections. 

The 19 Jan deadline in the US comes from a law passed earlier this year which gave ByteDance 270 days to sell TikTok otherwise it will be banned in the country. Attempts to get that sell-or-be-banned law overturned in a Washington DC appeals court on free speech grounds failed earlier this month, which is why TikTok is now taking the matter to the Supreme Court. 

It wants the Supreme Court to initially pause the ban while it goes through with its next appeal. Failure to do so, it said in a legal filing on Monday, will result in the shutdown of “one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration”.

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Jay-Z says “sham” rape allegations against him should be withdrawn, as Diddy accepts he’ll have to await trial in prison

There have been more developments in relation to the many allegations of sexual assault against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs over the last week, with new lawsuits being filed and the musician giving up on his bid for bail. Meanwhile Jay-Z - also accused of rape in one of the Diddy lawsuits - has further laid into the lawyer leading on that litigation, Tony Buzbee. 

Lawyers for Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, hit out at Buzbee yet again after at media interview with the unnamed woman who says both Combs and Carter raped her at a party in New York in 2000 when she was just thirteen years old. The interview with NBC News, says Carter’s legal team, shows the woman’s allegations “for what they are: a sham”, because “basic facts in her narrative are wrong”. 

In a letter to the New York court where Buzbee filed the lawsuit, Carter’s attorneys insist that the “stunning revelations” in the new interview “make clear” that legal papers put together by Buzbee on behalf of his client “had no factual basis whatsoever”. Which means, they add, Buzbee failed in his duties under ‘federal rules of civil procedure’ to “conduct a reasonable inquiry into the facts and the law before filing”. 

Carter and his lawyers have been publicly scathing of Buzbee - who is leading on numerous lawsuits against Combs - ever since this one lawsuit was amended to include Carter as a co-defendant. To date Buzbee has been equally forthright in his responses. 

In their letter, Carter’s attorneys list various claims by his accuser which they say are demonstrably wrong. She claims the assault took place at a party at Combs’ home, but photos show the party took place at a nightclub. She claims she spoke to Benji Madden of Good Charlotte at the party, but he was on tour in the Midwest at the time. She says her father picked her up after the assault, but he denies that happened.