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While 2022 will be remembered as the year that Taylor Swift made history as the first artist to populate the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with songs from her album Midnights (among other chart records), Billboard’s annual Money Makers ranking of music’s top royalty and box-office earners reveals that she dominated 2021 as well.
Swift, who released two (Taylor’s Version) rerecorded albums, finished the year as the No. 1 earner globally with an estimated $65.8 million in take-home pay. That’s an impressive sum considering she did not tour, which usually constitutes the lion’s share of an act’s annual income, and last year’s runner-up, The Rolling Stones, spent three months on the road last fall concluding their No Filter Tour.
Swift topped the ranking because she owns half of her studio record catalog and because of the strength of her sales and streaming income, $29.8 million and $28.9 million, respectively, in a year that saw her international streams surpass her U.S. streams, 9 billion to 6.8 billion, a 34% increase.
The Stones’ live dates, all of which took place in the United States, resulted in a $44.5 million box-office take. That played the biggest role in boosting the veteran rockers to No. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Money Makers ranking with a total income of $50.8 million.
But Swift, who finished second in the U.S. ranking — she and the Stones have swapped the top two spots since 2018 — was not far behind with $38.8 million, largely on the strength of her master recording royalties.
Compared side-by-side, the top five earners on the global and U.S. Money Makers rankings are nearly identical, with Harry Styles holding the No. 3 spot on both, $41.3 million and $37 million, respectively; and Drake at No. 5, with $30.7 million and $23.8 million. The big difference can be found at No. 4, where K-pop superstars BTS reside on the global ranking, with a $38.4 million in 2021 take-home pay, and the hard-touring Eagles occupy the U.S. tally, with earnings of $27.3 million.
Methodology
Money Makers was compiled with 2021 Luminate and Billboard Boxscore data, the RIAA’s physical and digital revenue report for 2021, and IFPI global revenue statistics. All revenue figures cited are Billboard estimates and may not equal the sum of the subcategories due to rounding and the omission of revenue categories. Global sales were extrapolated for 21 artists that ranked highest on the 2020 Money Makers list. Global artist royalties were extrapolated using U.S. revenue totals, minus 30% of international royalties in line with major-label contractual clauses for foreign distribution.
U.S. formulas were used to estimate publishing revenue. Calculating royalties from master-recording performance rights was not possible because those rights do not exist for most uses in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, references to streaming totals consist of combined on-demand audio, video and programmed streams. References to recording-career totals are the sum of an act’s sales, streaming and publishing earnings. Revenue from featured-artist appearances, merchandising, synchronization and sponsorship is not included. Touring revenue, after the manager’s cut, equals 34% of an act’s Boxscore. Sales royalties were calculated based on physical and digital albums and track sales. Streaming royalties consist of on-demand audio and video streams, and estimated royalties from webcasting, SiriusXM and Music Choice.
The following royalty rates were used: album and track sales, 22% of retail revenue; 66% of wholesale if the artist owns his or her masters. On-demand streaming royalties were calculated using blended audio and video rates of, respectively, $0.0053 and $0.0038 per stream, applied against a 37% superstar-artist royalty rate; 50% for heritage artists (acts that have released at a minimum of 10 albums or been active for at least 20 years); and 79% for artist-owned masters. Further, a blended statutory subscription per-stream rate of $0.0024 was applied to programmed streams and per-play estimated rates of 74 cents for Music Choice and $46 for SiriusXM. Royalties for programmed streams were calculated on a similar basis using a 50% base royalty rate; 68% for artists that own some of their masters and 100% for artists that own all their masters, minus 5% for side performers.
Publishing royalties were estimated using statutory mechanical rates for album and track sales. The Copyright Royalty Board streaming formula produced an average rate of 13.4% of streaming revenue, an average of $2.50 per play for hit songs; $1 per play for heritage spins and genre songs that didn’t attain hit status; and per-play publishing rates of 40 cents for Music Choice, $8.33 for SiriusXM and $0.0003 for programmed streams. A 10% manager’s fee and 4% producer’s fee were deducted from the appropriate revenue streams.
Over the past three years, the music business has become less dependent on the biggest hits, which account for a smaller share of total streams than they once did. Not in December, though. Holiday music is dominated by a relatively small number of big recordings — Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” — and that hasn’t changed since 2019.
So far this season, through Dec. 8, the top 50 holiday songs accounted for 34.3% of all streams from the top 10,000 holiday tracks — the exact same percentage as when Billboard looked at holiday music in Dec. 2019. The share of the top 100, at 46.1%, is just slightly lower than the 46.6% share from 2019 while the shares of the top 250, 500 and 1,000 are all less than one percentage point lower than three years ago.
That’s not surprising. Holiday listening is dominated by a small number of recordings that have become enduring favorites. Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 every year since 2019. The order of the next few songs hasn’t changed either: Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Burl Ives’ “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and Andy Williams’ “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Other than “All I Want for Christmas,” all of them were recorded before 1964.
New holiday tracks have a hard time breaking through. At 28 years old, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is an outlier among tracks that are usually 50 years or older. “Last Christmas” by Wham!, currently fifth in on-demand audio streams, is a relatively youthful 36. At Nos. 8 and 12, Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” are the babies of the top 10.
Pop music has no use for such tradition, or centrality – especially now that personalization has reduced the number of plays track get from prominent placement on streaming-service playlists. From 2019 to 2022, the share of the top 10,000 on-demand streaming songs devoted to the top 50 went from 10.3% to 5.8%. The share of the top 250 went from 25.5% to 17.5% during that same period, while the share of the top 1000 went from 49.2% to 41.6%.
Christmas is one of the few times – perhaps because most people spend it with friends or family – when we all listen to the same songs.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top ten places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about the changes in the music business that have made the genre so important, was originally published in 2019.
Five months ago, during the dog days of summer, Sony Music executive Lyn Koppe was already running a 15-person meeting to prepare for Christmas. It wasn’t her first that year, either. Koppe, executive vp global catalog for Sony’s Legacy Recordings, leads a team that every January begins planning how to promote the year’s holiday releases, as well as the company’s evergreen seasonal music. As the sun shone down on Sony’s Manhattan offices, which overlook Madison Square Park, the group tossed around ideas by phone with executives from TikTok and members of Mariah Carey’s management team on how to promote the 25th-anniversary reissue of Carey’s Merry Christmas. Someone from management suggested looping in Carey, whom Koppe says is “very hands-on” about marketing — “the look and feel, timing and strategy.” And, within minutes, the five-octave alto herself had joined the call to chime in on the best way to promote the reissue.
“I think there were a few jaws on the floor,” says Koppe, recalling her TikTok counterparts’ reaction to Carey’s cameo at the meeting. But there was a lot at stake: The singer’s iconic Christmas album has become an annuity for her and Sony, a blue-chip property in a holiday recorded-music business that was worth $177 million in 2018 in the United States alone, estimates Billboard.
Carey understands that even the most enduring albums need promotion. So Koppe’s team of music elves — which included executives from marketing, publicity, A&R and product management — worked with Twitter to create an exclusive video of Carey reading fans’ tweets about her holiday music. They created a video skit to go with an enhanced version of the album for Spotify. And by fall, they were promoting the Last Christmas soundtrack — which includes the Wham! single the movie is named after, as well as other songs by the late George Michael, who was the songwriter of the duo — and working to maintain the visibility of time-honored seasonal hits by Andy Williams, The Ronettes and Elvis Presley. “We make sure they’re not forgotten about,” says Koppe.
This year, at least, there’s little danger of that. For about a century, the business of Christmas music was defined by holiday purchases, which meant that hit recordings were enormously profitable the year they were released but didn’t generate much revenue after a couple of years. Few record stores stocked much older Christmas music, and terrestrial radio doesn’t pay to use recordings in the United States. But because streaming monetizes the ongoing consumption of music rather than an initial purchase, it has changed the concentrated business of Christmas music even more dramatically than the rest of the industry. These changes have also amplified the cumulative advantage of the classic holiday recordings that come up first in search results — whether typed in or voice-requested.
Although it’s hard to get exact figures for the holiday music business, the most popular recordings in the genre generate far more revenue than they did a decade ago. “Last Christmas” by Wham! sold 81,000 tracks in the United States in 2008 — and sold and streamed the equivalent of 706,000 last year, according to Nielsen Music. Older recordings are getting more popular, too: Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the third-most-popular holiday recording of 2018, sold 52,000 tracks in 2008 and streamed and sold the equivalent of 839,000 last year. Overall, holiday music accounted for 0.89% of on-demand streams in 2015 and 1.11% last year — and during that time, the overall revenue from on-demand streaming rose from $1.57 billion in 2015 to $5.5 billion in 2018, according to the RIAA.
Most of this Christmas cash goes to a relatively small number of rights holders. Last year, the top 50 holiday recordings accounted for 35.3% of all holiday streaming, while the top 50 pop tracks accounted for just 12% of streaming in that genre. Half of the top holiday track streams go to the top 252 recordings, while half of pop streams go to the top 613 pop tracks. At the top, the rewards are considerable — the top holiday recording of 2018, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” was streamed almost a quarter as much as the year’s top pop song. But the No. 100 holiday recording on streaming services was streamed less than 10% as much as the No. 100 pop track.
To get a sense of just how much streaming has changed this part of the business, consider that some of the most popular holiday recordings weren’t easily available on traditional CD albums a decade ago. The second-most-popular holiday song in 2018 was “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, a 1950s country artist who aside from that track sold the equivalent of 1,000 albums, including downloads and streaming. Some holiday hits by famous artists weren’t even available on albums: Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” the Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” were issued as singles, though they’re all available now on compilations.
At a time when streaming is ruled by pop and hip-hop from the past two decades, the list of the top 100 holiday tracks is dominated by the original versions of classic songs, recorded by artists that younger listeners aren’t familiar with: Williams, Helms, Burl Ives (“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” the No. 5 most popular holiday recording of 2018) and Gene Autry (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” No. 9). Helms’ version of “Jingle Bell Rock” is more than 12 times as popular as the second-biggest version, by Hall & Oates. Perhaps it is because holiday music is so associated with tradition, “I don’t know of a rerecording that outperforms the original,” says SiriusXM director of programming Jess Besack.
These songs are like blue-chip stocks: uncool but no less valuable for it. And they’re likely to grow in value, along with streaming revenue in general. “Christmas hits,” says Koppe, “are the gifts that keep on giving.”
Christmas music has been a significant part of the music business for as long as there has been one — and some of the same songs have been popular since the days of wax cylinders. The first known Christmas recording is “Jingle Bells,” cut by the banjo player Will Lyle in 1889. In 1905, Victor Records had a hit with “Silent Night, Hallow’d Night,” an English version of the German hymn “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” Thirty years later, Bing Crosby made the song an even bigger hit, which was included on the 1940 Decca compilation An Album of Christmas Music — the Now That’s What I Call Christmas! of the 78 rpm era.
Over the next few years, Crosby helped make Christmas big business. His 1942 recording of “White Christmas” sold 600,000 copies that year and 2 million in 1943, according to Crosby biographer Gary Giddins, and it is said to have sold over 50 million copies worldwide — making it the biggest single ever. That recording, plus another take on “Silent Night” and other songs, were released as the Crosby album Merry Christmas, a version of which is still in print today.
Rock changed pop culture, but singers like Presley embraced the season, too: The most popular holiday LP in the United States is his Christmas Album, which has been certified 17-times platinum in various versions. It includes a rendition of “White Christmas” that upset songwriter Irving Berlin so much that he asked radio stations not to play it.
As pop music continued to evolve, Christmas repertoire did too. Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’,” released by Mercury Records in 1979, was the first rap single to go gold, with sales of 500,000 (see story, below). In 1987, Run-D.M.C. hit No. 78 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Christmas in Hollis,” which sampled Clarence Carter’s 1968 soul single “Back Door Santa.” Other holiday music sounded less like the songs on the pop charts: Producer Chip Davis’ new age project, Mannheim Steamroller, hit No. 50 on the Billboard 200 in 1984 with Christmas, and it went on to release 38 holiday albums that all together account for 21.6 million album-equivalent units.
Although streaming has boosted the holiday music sector even more than the overall industry, it’s harder than ever to score a Christmas hit that remains popular year after year. It’s one thing for a new tune to sell, or stream, in its initial year of release — but quite another to show up on the chart every year, like Carey does. “Getting a big hit with a new Christmas song is gold when it happens,” says Kevin Gore, president of global catalog at Warner Music Group (WMG). “But it’s not easy.”
Some acts score with new versions of classics: Pentatonix had 19 of last year’s 200 most popular holiday streaming tracks, and Michael Bublé had the second-most-popular versions of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But the original recordings are usually far more popular, at least partly because streaming algorithms have turned their familiarity into advantageous positioning. “Original recordings, with years of thumbs-up and listens, definitely tend to rise to the top of our Christmas and holiday stations,” says Alex White, vp music programming and curation at Pandora.
That’s an understatement: Since most streaming services tend to recommend songs that are already popular, especially in response to general search queries like “Christmas music,” Billboard’s Holiday 100 chart has less turnover than the Supreme Court.
For hits that break through, though, the payoff can be extraordinary. Last year, Ariana Grande’s original 2014 track “Santa Tell Me” garnered 82.9 million streams, more than any other original holiday song released this decade. The second-most-popular was Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” also an original, with 58.5 million. Because streaming-service algorithms tend to reinforce popularity, a bit of luck and the right promotion could keep them high on the chart for years to come.
Even by the standards of pop music, holiday hits are unpredictable. Among this year’s candidates: Keith Urban’s “I’ll Be Your Santa Tonight,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Digital Song Sales chart; the Jonas Brothers’ “Like It’s Christmas,” which reached No. 25 on the Holiday 100 when it came out and was streamed 12.7 million times in the first three weeks following its release; and Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Hot 100. All three are upbeat, with the cozy but celebratory feel of holiday classics. “The Jonas Brothers song captures the good feel of a modern Christmas classic,” says Jeff Moskow, head of U.S. A&R for the Now That’s What I Call Music series, who slotted it after Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Now’s Christmas playlist on Spotify.
Even if a song doesn’t outlast December’s snowmen, it could still help the artist that recorded it. Holiday releases are an easy way to keep performers visible at the end of the year, which can only help merchandise sales. “It’s an always-on music business,” says Jay Gilbert, co-founder of Label Logic, a company that provides marketing services for labels and managers. “You need to keep your audience engaged.” And the popularity of Christmas movies means that holiday music often scores lucrative synch placements.
Sometimes, new Christmas songs that debut without much fanfare maintain their popularity surprisingly well. Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” peaked at No. 42 on the Hot 100 when it arrived in 2014 and improved to No. 33 in 2018. Similarly, Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” peaked at No. 78 when it was released in 2013 and rose to No. 44 last year. “I don’t know why some songs stick and some don’t,” says Moskow.
As in the rest of the music business, popularity depends significantly on playlist placement — for both new and old material. Consider “Driving Home for Christmas” by British musician Chris Rea, an original song he wrote that hit No. 11 on the U.K. singles chart in 1988. It took over a decade for it to become a Christmas staple in the United Kingdom, and it’s now on Spotify’s Christmas Hits playlist — even though Rea hasn’t had a song on a U.S. chart since 1990, and most listeners are probably unfamiliar with him. “A song like Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is experiencing a lot more discovery than it would have in a different era,” says WMG’s Gore.
No one wants to leave discovery to chance though, even for established classics. So executives who don’t have stars like Carey to work with are getting creative. Warner made a video for a new recording of “White Christmas” by Bublé, and Universal Music Group’s UMe catalog division hired studios to make animated clips for nine of its classic holiday recordings, including Dean Martin’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and The Jackson 5’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“We recognized that there’s an opportunity to develop and extend engagement with our holiday catalog to an underserved audience that primarily accesses music through YouTube,” says UMe president/CEO Bruce Resnikoff. So far, the 1.4 million YouTube views that Frank Sinatra’s “Jingle Bells” racked up in the three weeks between Nov. 4 and Nov. 25 represent a 220% increase over the same period last year.
To younger YouTube users, some of these songs may sound as quaint as the animation looks. But Christmas music has always been driven by collective nostalgia — listeners want a version of “White Christmas” just like the one they used to hear. “If a customer requests a holiday song simply by song title, they likely expect and enjoy the classic recorded version as a return,” says Karen Pettyjohn, senior music curator at Amazon Music.
The more customers enjoy those results, of course, the more likely streaming algorithms are to keep offering them. Which means that songs like Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” could remain popular as long as Christmas itself.
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
When Taylor Swift sells the remaining 170,000 tickets for her 52-date Eras tour later this month, the U.S. trek will have generated $591 million in sales, Billboard estimates. The average ticket price is $215, according to concert business sources.
This total will make Swift the highest-grossing female touring artist of all time, according to the Billboard Boxscore chart, topping current title holder Madonna whose Sticky & Sweet Tour (of 2008 and 2009) currently holds the No. 1 slot with a gross of $407 million. Swift’s U.S. tour will also put her in fourth place on the all-time Top Tours chart, which is currently led by Ed Sheeran, whose 2017-2019 Divide shows grossed a total of $776.2 million.
Normally with a tour of this scale, artists share some revenue with a promoter and an agent. In this case, Swift will presumably keep a higher share of revenue, because she’s not represented by one of the major booking agencies and because independent promoter Louis Messina is booking the entire tour and providing some of the services an agency normally would.
Other companies involved in the tour won’t do as well as they normally do, either. Ticketmaster and SeatGeek, which handled sales for the tour, normally allow ticket buyers to sell tickets on their secondary markets and take a percentage of that revenue. (Ticketmaster handled sales for 47 shows, while SeatGeek sold seats for the remaining five.) But Swift would not allow the companies who handled primary ticket sales to also sell secondary market tickets. As well, Swift asked Ticketmaster to help make sure tickets went to fans, rather than scalpers, and the company says it used its Verified Fan technology to reduce the number of tickets on resale sites by 75%.
That’s an expensive decision. Ticketmaster makes a much higher margin on resale tickets than primary tickets, since it keeps all of the fees it charges — typically 10% of the sale price for the seller and another 20% for the buyer. The company still charges a 25% service fee for all primary ticket sales. However, it only keeps a small percentage of that money, $3.50 to $5 per ticket, which for this tour will come out to about $7.6 million to $10.8 million. The rest of the fees normally go to venues and promoters. (Ticketmaster, like most ticketing companies, also charges 2.75% for credit card processing, of which it keeps about 10% and pays the rest to credit card companies. The Eras tour generated approximately $13.8 million in these fees, Billboard estimates.) All told, by the time Ticketmaster sells the remaining 170,000 tickets, the company’s total revenue will add up to between $9 million and $12.9 million.
Ticketmaster’s efforts to fight scalpers means that relatively few tickets wound up on the secondary market – but the ones that did are expensive. A month after the presale, on Dec. 14, the average resale ticket price was $1,425, according to TiqIQ, which tracks secondary ticket sales across multiple marketplaces.
TiqIQ estimates that about 1,100 resale tickets are available per show, out of an average of about 50,000. At an average price of $1,425, that would work out to about $1.6 million worth of tickets per show on the secondary market. Assuming that Ticketmaster would have captured about 15%–20% of those purchases, based on 2018 estimates by the United States Government Accountability Office, that means that the company could have brought in an additional $12.5 million to $16.4 million in revenue, of which Ticketmaster would have kept $3.8 million to $5 million in fees, if Swift had allowed the company to sell tickets on its own secondary market.
SeatGeek, which has a 12% share of the secondary market according to its April earnings report, agreed to turn off resale for the five shows it ticketed on the tour, but not the 47 shows sold by Ticketmaster. (Ticketmaster blocked secondary sales for the SeatGeek shows.) That means SeatGeek could make about $9 million from the Ticketmaster shows it lists on its secondary market, although it missed out on about $960,000 in revenue for not allowing secondary sales on the five shows for which it initially sold tickets.
Working with Swift has benefits beyond the financial, of course. In addition to the prestige of working with an artist of that stature — and enduring the embarrassment of the flubs around the Nov. 15 presale — Ticketmaster will presumably see an increase in app downloads and usage of its digital ticket platform, which has been a priority for the company.
After massive technical problems marred the Nov 15. pre-sale for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, forcing some fans to queue for several hours to buy tickets or fail to buy them entirely, Ticketmaster is changing tactics to sell the remaining 170,000 seats for the artist’s 52 shows. The company, hoping to avoid long fan wait times and site crushing web traffic from bots and Swifties, is going back to an older technology: The 20-year-old Ticketstoday platform, modeled after The Grateful Dead’s own fan club system and still used by jam bands like Phish and Ween. The system has been updated in recent years and even deployed for artists like Ed Sheeran and Madonna, although it’s never handled 170,000 tickets for a single sale.
The move, coupled with Ticketmaster’s agreement to not participate in secondary ticket sales for the Eras tour, shows how eager ticketing companies are to work with a mega earner like Swift while avoiding the crush of traffic that disastrously caused widespread disruptions to her Nov. 15 presale. The record-breaking sale is now the subject of multiple congressional inquires around the Live Nation-owned company. These include a request from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the crash and a call from her counterpart on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), to hold a hearing on the “lack of competition in ticketing markets.”
The decision to use Ticketstoday — originally built for Dave Mathews Band’s fanclub platform MusicToday by manager and Red Light Management founder Coran Capshaw in the early 2000s and sold to Live Nation in 2008 — would significantly reduce fan wait times and the potential for another site crash by gating off the most vulnerable parts of the ticketing platform to uninvited fans and bot attacks thought to be responsible for the disruption issues. Instead of making fans queue up again to order their tickets, this will essentially assign tickets to them based on their preferences.
Despite receiving an unprecedented level of negative publicity, Billboard estimates Swift’s Nov. 15 presale generated approximately $554 million in sales for Ticketmaster (which ticketed 47 dates on the Eras tour) and Seat Geek (which ticketed five dates as the primary ticketing company for the Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Cowboys).
The 170,000 remaining tickets not sold during the presale have a cumulative face value worth $37 million, Billboard estimates. Once Swift completes the sale of her remaining tickets for the Eras Tour, Billboard estimates that she will have generated $591 million in the U.S. alone. Based on projection, Taylor would easily capture the title of Billboard Boxscore’s highest-grossing female touring artist of all time, topping the current title holder Madonna who’s Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-09) currently holds the No. 1 slot grossing $407 million, and the number four slot on the all-times tour chart, currently topped by Ed Sheeran, whose Divide tour from 2017-2019 grossed $776.2 million.
Typically, Ticketstoday helps artists sell a small portion of their available tickets – usually about 8% per show — directly to their most loyal fans, much like a lottery system. Fans receive an email about a limited number of VIP or high demand tickets available for sale for an upcoming show, and then those who want to buy the tickets select a pricing option and provide their credit card information in advance. If there are more fans wanting tickets than tickets available, a digital lottery is held and the fans selected have their credit cards automatically charged.
While Ticketmaster stayed online during the attack and sold a record 2.2 million tickets in 12 hours, the site could barely handle the traffic created by 14 million fans and billions of bots the company claimed hit the site. This system using Ticketstoday will pace out the sales, and they will be processed away from the public, avoiding any similar potential issues. To determine which fans would get to participate in the upcoming sale, Ticketmaster used its Verified Fan platform . Fans who bought tickets to the 2020 Lover Festival, canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have been prioritized, as well as those who bought select Taylor Swift merchandise, like a “F— the Patriachy” keychain that went on sale in August. Participating fans will be sent an email requesting their credit card number and choice of tour seating options representing various price ranges and seat locations. Ticketmaster will then work to match fans with their purchase request and charge their card on file. The entire process will take about four weeks and is expected to be completed by Dec. 23.
Welcome to The Contenders, a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 albums chart dated Dec. 24): Just before the last Christmas push, a final ‘S.O.S.’ from the pop world aims to sleigh the competition.
SZA, S.O.S. (Top Dawg Entertainment/RCA). It’s been five years and countless false starts since R&B superstar SZA dropped her massively influential full-length debut Ctrl. Early signs from the release of her second album S.O.S. indicate that the fans have stuck around: the set dominated the daily Spotify and Apple Music charts over the weekend, while drawing reviews strong enough to make a lot of early December year-end lists look premature.
With no physical release on the schedule, the vast majority of the album’s first-week numbers will mostly come from streaming. But with 23 tracks, including a trio of proven singles in Billboard Hot 100 top 20 hits “Good Days,” “I Hate U’ and “Shirt,” plus guest appearances from Travis Scott and Phoebe Bridgers, it should still end up scoring one of the late year’s strongest debuts.
A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Me vs. Myself (Highbridge the Label/Atlantic). A Boogie Wit da Hoodie was one of the most prolific artists on the Billboard charts at the turn of the decade, with a couple dozen Hot 100 hits and a Billboard 200 No. 1 album in 2018’s Hoodie SZN. The past two years haven’t been as kind commercially, but the artist born Artist Dubose looks to reverse that trend with the release of fourth studio album Me vs. Myself.
Me vs. Myself will also need to lean on streaming , since it, too, has no physical version and A Boogie has never sold much music – Hoodie SZN was the first album to top the Billboard 200 with sales of under 1,000 copies. But MvM will also get a boost from its 22-song tracklist, with features from fellow streaming stars Kodak Black, Lil Durk, Roddy Ricch.
Anuel AA, LLNM2 (Real Hasta la Muerte/Sony Latin). As with SZA and A Boogie, Latin trap hitmaker Anuel AA’s latest effort arrives without a physical product – but it has a tracklist expansive enough to make both S.O.S. and Me vs. Myself look like EPs by comparison. LLMN2 (short for “Las Leyendas Nunca Mueren 2,” or “Legends Never Die 2”) runs a bountiful 33 tracks, with big-name guests from both reggaetón (Nicky Jam, Jowell & Randy, Zion) and hip-hop (DaBaby, Lil Durk, Kodak Black).
Anuel’s hit the Billboard 200 top 10 twice already, with 2020’s Emmanuel (No. 8) and 2021’s Ozuna teamup Los Dioses (No. 10), but 2021’s first Las Leyendas Nunca Mueren release peaked at No. 30. That album had just 16 tracks, so maybe going with the volume-shooter approach for its sequel will net him the top 10 hat trick.
This story is part of Billboard‘s The Year in Touring package — read more stories about the top acts, tours and venues of 2022 here.
At some point during Daddy Yankee’s ongoing La Ultima Vuelta tour, which kicked off this summer, publicist Mayna Nevarez looked around and took stock of what was happening around her.
“I was with him at sold out arenas in Seattle, Denver, Sacramento and, I swear, it brought tears to my eyes,” says Nevarez, who owns Nevarez PR in Miami and has been Yankee’s publicist for over 15 years. “For so long it was cities like Miami, Los Angeles, New York — big Latin hubs — and we forget that the United States is so much more than that.”
Daddy Yankee is no stranger to big tours; in 2007, for example, he played 17 U.S. shows, and in 2019, he played a fabled 12 sold-out dates at Puerto Rico’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico. But La Ultima Vuelta (The Last Tour) has been his biggest trek by far, selling over 1.1 million tickets for a $125.3 million in gross ticket sales during the tracking period, from Nov. 1, 2021-Oct. 31, 2022, landing him at No. 13 on Billboard’s Top Tours tally.
Yankee’s numbers point to Latin music’s potential for big touring success beyond Bad Bunny and beyond the cities that were long considered Latino strongholds. In 2022, Latin artists of all sizes and genres filled arenas, theaters and festivals, underscoring the huge potential and growing presence of Latin music across the country.
The fray, of course, is led by Bad Bunny, who tops this year’s Top Tours chart with a $373.5 million gross across 65 shows in arenas and stadiums with a combined attendance of nearly 2 million. Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour broke venue revenue records in 12 of the 15 U.S. markets that it played, including Yankee Stadium, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The North American leg of tour averaged $11.1 million per show — the biggest per-show average gross by any artist in any genre in Boxscore history (dating back to the late 1980s).
At this moment in time at least, Bad Bunny is “a unicorn,” says Henry Cardenas, de CEO of CMN, which promoted Bunny’s U.S. tour in partnership with Live Nation. “No one does what he does.” But at a touring level, “What Bad Bunny really did is take Latin music to industry execs who aren’t Latin, and make them realize there was a viable market,” says Nelson Albareda, founder and CEO of marketing and promotion company Loud and Live.
Loud and Live, which is owned by Albareda, is a prime example of Latin’s growth in touring. The entertainment, marketing and promotion company was launched four years ago and in 2019, pre-pandemic, produced around 50 shows. This year, it came in at No. 14 on the Top Promoters chart, with $96.5 million in gross ticket sales for 386 shows.
“Overall, touring is definitely stronger, and shows are doing better, including in emerging markets like Seattle, Salt Lake City,” says Albareda. “Secondary markets are here to stay and it’s not just the A acts. It’s not a fluke. I think you’ll see the Kansas City, Minneapolis, Nashville, Raleigh, Salt Lakes also do well. The Latino population is now much greater and definitely they’re in every city.”
This allows for vertical growth that may not be always visible on the touring charts. Loud and Live’s roster, for example, includes touring stalwarts like Ricardo Arjona, who ends the year at No. 63 on the Top Tours list ($31.5 million gross on 32 shows), but it also includes rising star Camilo, who just fell short of the Top 100, grossing $11.4 million and selling 149,000 tickets in 28 shows.
Tours by smaller acts, says Jorge Juarez, co-founder of management and promotion company Westwood Entertainment, can still yield impressive margins. Rising Mexican rapper Santa Fe Klan, for example, played 23 markets on his first U.S. tour, selling some 7,000 tickets per market at an average $100 ticket price, per Juarez. And regional Mexican acts have seen a surge in ticket sales as well.
“There’s been a general tendency of growth here for the last two years. Certainly, a lot of factors post-pandemic that gave a surge, but we were already on a trend of growth,” says Hans Schafer, senior vp of Latin touring for Live Nation. “It was inevitable that we would reach this point one way or the other […] The sort of evolution that we’re seeing in different genres within Latin is all adding to that. More music, more new artists. Better production at all levels. Connectivity with multigenerational fans.”
On top of that, the growth of the U.S. Latino population and its middle class cannot be discounted as a factor in the overall growth of touring and consumption. According to Nielsen’s “The Evolving Hispanic Consumer” study from 2021, in the next 40 years Latinos will contribute more growth than any other U.S. population segment, contributing 53% of population growth in the next five years and 58% of the growth to 2060. In terms of buying power, from 2010 to 2019, Hispanic buying power increased by 69%, outpacing non Hispanics (41%).
According to a Pew Research Center Statistical Portrait of Hispanics published in July 2022, Latino demographics have grown “in just about every corner of the nation. While California, Texas and Florida hold about half of the U.S. Latino population, the fastest growth rates are in states like North Dakota (up 148% between 2010 and 2020) and South Dakota (up 75% over the same period).”
The growth has profound impact at many levels. In the last decade, for example, Latinos became the largest racial or ethnic group in California for the first time, a fact that explains why cities like Sacramento and San José are now major touring destinations for Latin artists of all stripes.
The direct result of a Latin population with acquisition power can be seen at the new SoFi Stadium, which opened in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and hosted its first full stadium shows with Los Bukis, the romantic Mexican group that had its heyday in the 1990s, on Aug. 27 and 28, 2021. The stadium also hosted two nights of Bad Bunny this last September.
“The way we position ourselves is, we’re in Los Angeles, we’re in Inglewood, we’re 50% Latino,” says Adolfo Romero vp of programming for SoFi Stadium, Hollywood Park and YouTube Theater, which has held sold out shows by the likes of Rosalía and Mexican rockers Caifanes this year. “We looked at many different artists [for SoFi opening night] and when we saw this opportunity with Los Bukis, we were very aggressive. I think it kind of opened the eyes to the industry to see that Latin acts could do stadiums. That led us to do two nights of Grupo Firme in 2022, and now we have two nights of Bad Bunny.”
Romero says that when he booked Los Bukis for what would be their first-ever U.S. stadiums, the prospect of selling over 70,000 tickets for a Mexican nostalgia act didn’t make him loose sleep. “I come from [major league] soccer. If we can sell 70,000 plus for soccer here, what’s the difference?” he says. “It’s the same demographic. We have disposable income. A lot of our community was working in the service industry. Now, many of their kids are college grads.”
Welcome to The Contenders, a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 albums chart dated Dec. 17): As holiday titles and heavy hitters vie for the top of the December charts, new albums from a star hip-hop producer and a couple of K-pop hitmakers join in the merriment.
Metro Boomin, Heroes & Villains (Boominati Worldwide/Republic): You might have thought the big album releases were starting to wind down for 2022, but Metro Boomin begs to differ. The Atlanta-via-St. Louis producer has been one of the biggest behind-the-scenes names in hip-hop for a decade, and new album Heroes & Villains shows off his Rolodex, with enough star collaborators — Future, Young Thug, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, 21 Savage, Gunna, even narrator Morgan Freeman — to justify an accompanying short film.
After dominating streaming charts on Spotify and Apple Music over the weekend, the set appears due for a big debut on the Billboard 200 — perhaps even one to challenge the producer’s Republic label-mate Taylor Swift and her five-week No. 1 Midnights for the chart’s top spot. (He hit No. 1 in 2020, with 21 Savage full-length team up Savage Mode II .) Though its consumption is mostly digital, Metro did release a CD version of Heroes & Villains to select physical retailers — and also debuted a deluxe “Heroes Version” of the album to streamers and digital retail on Monday, adding instrumental versions of each track.
RM, Indigo (Big Hit): Singer/songwriter/rapper RM released his solo debut, Indigo, on Friday, a varied album that features marquee R&B names Erykah Badu and Anderson .Paak, as well as veteran Korean hitmakers Tablo and Park Ji-yoon. BTS, the world-conquering group which RM previously achieved stardom with, scored five No. 1 albums over the past half-decade, from 2018’s Love Yourself: Tear to this June’s Proof.
His chart bow for Indigo this week will have to come without help from a physical release, as the set’s CD packages — which often move big numbers for Korea’s biggest pop acts — are not due until Dec. 16. Earlier this year, RM’s bandmate J-Hope entered the Billboard 200 at No. 17 with his own solo album debut Jack in the Box, also only from the support of a streaming and digital retail version of his album. (Jack has yet to be released on CD in the U.S.)
ITZY, Cheshire (JYP Entertainment/Dreamus/Republic): Korean pop quintet ITZY hit the Billboard 200’s top 10 for the first time in July with their sixth EP Checkmate. This week, they aim to return to the top tier with sixth EP, Cheshire, featuring advance English-language single “Boys Like You” — though technically it’s already in its second week of release, since the streaming and digital retail version of the set dropped last Wednesday (Nov. 30).
Cheshire’s chart performance will depend mostly on sales of its physical editions, which went on sale Friday. Like many K-pop releases, the CD came out in collectible deluxe packages (13 total, including versions exclusive to Barnes & Noble, Target and the group’s official webstore), each with a standard set of items and randomized elements (such as photocards and a poster).
IN THE MIX
Backstreet Boys, A Very Backstreet Christmas (K-BAHN/BMG): The classic boy band’s first holiday set made its Billboard 200 debut back in October, but should surge on the chart this week following its Dec. 2 vinyl debut (and the approaching season). It’s only reached No. 17 so far, making this week its best chance of keeping alive Backstreet Boys‘ double-digit streak of consecutive top 10 albums.
Arcangel, Sr. Santos (Rimas Entertainment): Veteran reggaetón and Latin trap hitmaker Arcangel made a splashy return last Wednesday alongside perhaps the biggest male pop star on the planet with the Bad Bunny collab “La Jumpa.” That song should give Sr. Santos, the single’s 18-track parent album released on Friday — which also features appearances from Myke Towers, De La Ghetto and Bizarrap — a nice head start in consumption for this week.
Ivan Cornejo, Dañado (Manzana Records): Regional Mexican star Ivan Cornejo charted at No. 149 on the Billboard 200 in June with sophomore set Dañado, which has since climbed as high as No. 64 thanks to its stellar streaming performance. The seven-track mini-album received a deluxe reissue on Friday, with three new bonus tracks, which should give it a big boost from its current chart perch of No. 145.
TikTok has proven its success at renewing widespread interest around old songs countless times over the past several years. 2022 was no exception, as the short-form video platform announced Swedish Sadboy rapper Yung Lean’s 2013 track “Ginseng Strip 2002” was its most popular track of the year thanks to a trend of users singing along for about 10 seconds and then kissing at the end.
The nearly decade-old track was used in almost 11 million videos across the app in 2022, and while TikTok royalties are notoriously low to music rights holders, the upside proposition has been established that a viral hit there will drive streaming elsewhere. With “Ginseng Strip 2002,” that was most certainly true.
Since the “Ginseng Strip 2002” TikTok trend started to take off around the turn of the new year, its impact is relatively easy to compare year-over-year. And it’s considerable. As of Dec. 1, the track had been streamed more than 71 million times on-demand in 2022 in the U.S. That’s a 780% increase from the full year prior, and up over 1,070% when compared to the same 48-week period (Jan. 1-Dec. 1). To date, the track has over 206 million global streams on Spotify.
The viral success has undoubtedly been a pleasant surprise payday for Lean as well as his label, Swedish indie YEAR0001, and publisher Sony Publishing. Based off U.S. streams alone, the different rights holders have earned about $350,000 so far in 2022. Split up, that’s about $260,000 for the master recording to the label and artist, and $62,900 to the publisher and co-writers Yung Lean and Yung Gud, based on Billboard‘s estimates.
This is actually the second time “Ginseng Strip 2002” has gone viral. The casually hedonistic track that came together by accident during a microphone sound check, according to producer Yung Gud, first took off on YouTube in 2013. That quick success on YouTube caused Yung Lean some anxiety, as he told Beats 1 Radio in 2017. “I was kinda scared at one point that it was just gonna be a couple million views and some viral hit, and there wasn’t going to be anything else,” he said. “I was just trying to figure out my place and everything. I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder.”
Yung Lean and YEAR0001 had not responded to a request for comment for this story at the time of publishing.
When Motown Records chairwoman and CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam announced on Tuesday she would be stepping down to “pursue new endeavors,” the news was met with surprise, concern and the one inevitable question: What’s next for the storied label founded by Berry Gordy?
“Nobody saw this coming,” says one veteran label executive of the stunning announcement, stemming from the fact that Habtemariam was promoted to the chairwoman/CEO post in March 2021, only 20 months ago. Her groundbreaking appointment as the third woman — and only the second one of color — ever to hold that title at a major label was concurrent with other major news: Motown was being re-established as a standalone label after first being under the Island Def Jam umbrella and most recently under the Capitol Music Group banner.
During Habtemariam’s tenure — which also includes six years as president — she has rebuilt Motown into the strongest position it’s held in years. After overseeing the label’s relocation from New York to Los Angeles in 2014, Habtemariam announced her first major signing in 2015: a joint venture with Atlanta-based Quality Control. The alliance yielded such now-marquee names as Lil Baby, Lil Yachty, Migos and City Girls for the label’s roster. Other entrepreneurial ventures ensued, including Blacksmith Recordings (Vince Staples) and Since the 1980s (Asiahn, Njomza), alongside roster mates Erykah Badu, Kem, Tiana Major9 and Nigerian star Tiwa Savage. This fall, Motown signed Youngboy Never Broke Again after inking a global joint venture with his Never Broke Again collective last year. Also new to the roster are Brandy and Sean “Diddy” Combs with a one-album deal for the first release from his R&B-focused label Love Records.
At the time of Habtemariam’s promotion to chairman in 2021, Motown’s overall U.S. market share was 0.85%, having grown from 0.4% in 2017 to 0.59% in 2020, and she’s since grown it further, to 0.95% to date in 2022. While catalog had primarily driven Motown’s performance in the past, its market share growth in 2020 and 2021 was largely due to its frontline commercial releases, thanks primarily to the QC roster, Staples and veteran R&B chart-topper Kem. In April 2021, its current market share — essentially the performance of music released in the 18 months prior to the measurement period — was just shy of 1%. That’s after averaging 0.14% from 2015 to 2019 and more than doubling that number to 0.32%, according to Luminate data. In 2022 so far, Motown’s current market share has risen to 1.30%.
Habtemariam has also wielded influence at the corporate level, too, having co-founded and served as co-chair of Universal’s Task Force for Meaningful Change, dedicated to supporting initiatives designed to support marginalized communities battling injustice, inequality and inclusion issues. Having spent 20 years at UMG in various roles, Habtemariam was well-respected internally, several sources note.
Habtemariam’s pending departure will leave only two people of color running major labels as chairmen/CEOs: Epic Records’ Sylvia Rhone, now in her eighth year at the label and third as chairman/CEO, and Def Jam Recordings’ Tunji Balogun, who will celebrate his first anniversary at the label in January. As to who will succeed Habtemariam, inside sources say nothing has been decided yet. And in talking to several other industry executives, no one had any contenders they wanted to suggest. Given past precedent, however, UMG could opt to have a senior executive oversee the label for an interim period, as happened in 2020 when Paul Rosenberg exited as Def Jam CEO and Universal tapped Jeffrey Harleston, its general counsel and executive vp of business & legal affairs, to temporarily oversee label operations while it conducted a search, which lasted almost two years and ultimately resulted in the appointment of Balogun. Universal Music Group had no comment when contacted.
Just as important as diversity and inclusion in the search for Motown’s next chief is what happens now with the label itself. Will it remain a standalone or be folded back into the Capitol Music Group or another sister label?
One senior-level executive notes that Motown “has never been set up to run on its own.” The label shares some services through Universal and still uses Capitol’s radio promotions team, while its market share still goes through Capitol Music Group, a setup similar to those at other UMG labels like Island, whose market share goes through Republic. Another label executive who agreed to talk on background said that while it’s too soon to predict what happens with Motown, bringing the label back under CMG isn’t an unrealistic scenario. In an uncertain economic climate that’s already sparked layoffs at CNN, Twitter and other companies, such a move would reduce overhead while strengthening Capitol’s R&B/hip-hop presence.
However, given the strides made under Habtemariam’s watch, one major label executive says Motown shouldn’t be viewed as “disposable.” They continue, “I would hope that Motown stays standalone. Its legacy remains an important part of Black culture and pop music, thanks to its generational talent then — and now.”
Additional reporting by Dan Rys.