epresented as songwriters, producers and executives at companies - McCormick suggested the women in music should use AI too.

Beyond the AI discussions, as she did last year, NMPA Danielle Aguirre touched on the impact of Spotify and Amazon Music's controversial bundling strategy, where bundling music with audiobook offerings allows the streamers to pay out songwriters less in royalties. To date, Aguirre said the publishing business has lost nearly $500 million over the strategy. Still, she said, revenue was up this year to $7.3 billion.

Further, the NMPA honored several hitmakers during its meeting, including most-notably P!Nk, who performed acoustic renditions of her hit songs  Who Knew,   What About Us,  and  Perfect. 

 Experiencing someone else's words as your own, to me, is connection,  P!nk told the crowd before the performance as she reflected on her songwriting career. When I was a scrappy teenager from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, I did not write songs to win awards. I wrote songs because I had feelings. A truly alarming number of feelings… I wrote these feelings down. I set them to music and then screamed them into a microphone for the last 25 years. 

Rising country act Carter Faith, whose Cherry Valley was a THR editor's pick for the best albums of 2025, started off the event with a performance of her song  Six String. 

Also honored Wednesday was producer-songwriter Julian Bunetta, whose hits include international smashes like Teddy Swims'  Lose Control  and Sabrina Carpenter's  Espresso.  Amber Mark performed a rendition of  Lose Control  in his honor.

Grammys CEO Harvey Mason Jr. was given the Industry Legacy Award as well, joining Israelite for a fireside chat, while Jordin Sparks surprised Mason afterward to perform  No Air,  her breakthrough hit he wrote.