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This August, Dead & Company will celebrate 60 years of Grateful Dead music with three massive concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Fans can reasonably assume – as they can with most major touring artists today – that the sound will be impeccable.
But six decades ago, when the Grateful Dead began gigging around that very same park, quality sound was far from a given. Audiences routinely endured terrible audio, and bands also struggled to parse the noise and play together. Modern cornerstones of concert production, from monitors to digital delay towers, had yet to be invented.
The Grateful Dead didn’t just embrace new advancements in audio technology – as journalist and Deadhead Brian Anderson chronicles in his new book, Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection, the revered band actively drove concert sound forward, creating many of today’s standards in the process.
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Loud and Clear specifically tackles the first decade of the band’s history, from its Bay Area formation in 1965 to the Wall of Sound, the gargantuan sound system worth nearly $2 million in today’s dollars that it took on the road in 1974. During those years, the band and the cast of characters in its orbit – from an audiophile LSD chemist to hard-nosed roadies – continually iterated its sound system, introducing numerous innovations in service of creating a deeper performer-listener connection through quality sound. The pinnacle was the Wall of Sound, a technological marvel that towered behind the band and allowed each musician to manipulate their individual mixes in real time.
“I knew this was for a general audience,” says Anderson, who asked himself, “How do I make it digestible and explain this stuff in a way people are gonna understand?” The son of Deadheads – who saw the band repeatedly in this era and took him as a toddler to see the Dead at Alpine Valley in the late ‘80s – found the answer in those strong personalities within the Dead’s organization. Loud and Clear is as much a story about the Dead’s audio equipment as it is about the band’s musical philosophy and the way money, fame, and excess challenged it.
“The wheels came very close to coming off,” Anderson says of the Dead in this era. The band took the Wall of Sound – which, when its almost 600 speakers were assembled, measured 60 feet long and more than three stories tall – on the road for nearly 40 shows in 1974, and the unprecedented production feat came close to bankrupting the Dead and tearing it apart. Plus, at a time with far fewer regulations, transporting, assembling, and disassembling the Wall came with plenty of risks for the (often inebriated) crew tasked with doing so; Loud and Clear’s at-times harrowing narrative includes broken arms, nearly-severed toes, falling equipment, electrocutions and flipped trucks. “It’s amazing that nobody bit it,” Anderson says.
The Dead ultimately carried many of the lessons of the Wall of Sound into the proceeding years – but after taking a hiatus in 1975, returned without the advanced system in 1976. “They somehow kept it together,” Anderson says, “but there was a collective sigh of relief at the end of 1974 when they’re like, ‘OK, you know what? Let’s take a break here.’”
The Grateful Dead (L to R: Bill Kreutzmann, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh) perform on May 25, 1974 at Santa Barbara Stadium in Santa Barbara, California with their Wall of Sound.
Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
What inspired you to write a book not just about the Dead, but about such a specific topic and period?
I am the child of early Deadheads who both started seeing the band in the late ’60s and early ’70s in Chicago and the tri-state area. I grew up hearing them talk about the Wall of Sound and this system’s sonic clarity. They would talk about seeing the band perform with this massive assembly of gear behind them – and it’s called the Wall of Sound, so it’s just captivated me my entire life.
As time went on, I grew to appreciate the scale of the Wall. When I was at VICE, I was the Features Editor [at science and tech vertical Motherboard], and I thought it would be cool to do a deep dive into the Wall of Sound. I embarked on writing that initial story because I knew that it had more than just the technology component – it’s a story about obsession, obsessive people who came from all walks of life. After that story came out, it quickly dawned on me that there’s so much more here – like, maybe I could do a full book on this one day.
How did the Dead’s pursuit of quality sound differentiate themselves from their peers and ultimately help them amass the following that they did?
Not long after the band had gotten going, [singer/guitarist] Jerry Garcia’s mother, Ruth, purchased her son a pair of Klipsch speakers. That was, basically, the very first iteration of the Dead’s sound system. No other bands at the time had their own rig like that, so immediately, they were elevated above most of their peers, at a time when musical PAs didn’t exist. Most any club that they were playing at the time, if it did have a sound system, it was just a small little box to like each side of the stage. The famous example, on a bigger level, is the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Live sound presentation in the mid ’60s was kind of terrible.
Then they get hooked up with Owsley Stanley, who was their patron and their original sound man. He was using money that he was making from manufacturing LSD to bankroll the band. He was kitting them out with top-flight gear by early 1966 – and right around that time, the acid tests were getting going. The Dead were basically the in-house band at the acid tests, and the acid tests would be the model that they would follow, really, through the end of their career: During the acid tests, the band and the crowd were all the same organism, everyone was in the same sonic envelope.
The whole point of putting [all the audio equipment] at the musicians’ backs [in the Wall of Sound in 1974] was to ensure that the band and the crowd would all hear the same thing and be in the same sonic envelope together – and that harkened right back to the acid tests. There’s also an ethic with the Dead that was there from the very early days: That ethic was to present the sound in such a way that the person in the very back row would experience the exact same thing as someone who was hanging right on the barrier. Part of their righteous approach to sound was to present the sound in such a way that everyone in the space together [would] experience the same high quality.
At its roots, the Dead almost had a punk-like, DIY ethos. What tensions did that introduce as the band’s operation grew and professionalized?
By the early ’70s, the sound system that was growing into the Wall of Sound had become the center of the Dead’s homegrown world-building project, which included their own record label, in-house travel and booking agencies, a publishing arm, and a whole cottage industry of boutique sound and audio companies that were building kit for the Dead. [The Dead wanted] to do everything their own way; it didn’t necessarily make sense to do what they were doing, but they did it anyway. It was super, super punk, super DIY.
From the very beginning, they would always funnel money back into their sound system – that’s basically how the Wall of Sound was able to grow. As early as mid-1973, management was starting to be like, “Hey guys. We can’t do things like we did in the very early days.” It became clear that they were hemorrhaging money through this sound system. By mid-’74, it was starting to get through to Garcia and some of the other band members that this was not sustainable. Despite their wanting to continue on in this very punk, DIY fashion where money would just always be funneled back into the sound system, the reality was such that they couldn’t do that anymore.
As much as the book is about the band, it’s also about the crew that surrounded it. Why emphasize those supporting characters?
I knew that if I was gonna do this book, I had to push the story forward somehow. I didn’t want to just tell this story through old sound bites from Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir or Phil Lesh. There were so many other people who were in the room in this era who helped put this thing together and who made it go on the road, setting it up and tearing it down. I was really interested in illuminating what the day-to-day was like of conceiving [the Wall of Sound] and building it and taking it on the road. I wanted stretches of the book to kind of feel like you’re going on tour with them.
The Grateful Dead at The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen rock festival at Watkins Glen, New York on July 28, 1973.
Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
Your book outlines several audio innovations by the band, including pioneering the use of on-stage monitors, helping to invent digital delay towers, and using feedback-cancelling microphones to make the Wall of Sound work. What were the most significant lasting impacts the Dead had on modern concert audio?
There’s a number of them. A curved speaker, no one had done that before the Dead. The theory and the mathematics existed, so a curved speaker existed on paper, but the Dead were really the first to fly a curved speaker. Today, you go to see Metallica at a stadium or you go see a local punk band at the dive bar, you’re gonna see versions of a curved speaker – and that’s the Dead lineage.
Delay towers, that’s not the Wall of Sound, but an adjacent sonic first that the Dead and their crew and their technicians helped forge in that era. Kezar Stadium, RFK, Watkins Glen, those three [big outdoor concerts] in summer of ’73 were crucial to figuring out digital delay. That’s another convention of modern sound reinforcement at much bigger shows that anyone is familiar with.
From a philosophical standpoint, a lasting impact of all the Dead’s innovations in the audio realm in this era was an elevated presentation. The Dead instilled this awareness of pursuing the highest-quality sound that you can because you owe it to your audience, because these people are coming to see you perform.
And in turn, that reoriented what fans expected of concert audio, not just at the Dead’s shows but at any show.
By the time the Dead came back from their hiatus in 1976, the world of audio had kind of caught up to them. They realized, “We don’t need to carry this massive equipment with us anymore, because the state of the art has advanced to a point where we can rent a sound system that sounds just as good, if not better, than the Wall of Sound for a fraction of the price.” A lot of that really owes to the ground that they broke through the Wall of Sound.
At a couple points in the book, you quote Garcia interviews from this period where, when lamenting the challenges of ensuring quality audio on tour, he says he wishes the band could have its own venue tailored to its own production standards. That never came to pass – but today, Dead & Company has played upwards of 40 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas. What would Jerry have thought of Sphere?
Last year, the first time I went to the Sphere, walking in, I couldn’t help but draw all of these connections. In the very early ’70s, they were always having conversations about, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we had our own spot where we could set up our sound system, just exactly perfect, and people can come see us perform?” They started to take some very serious steps to figure out, “OK, what would this space look like?” One of the ideas they were kicking around was a Buckminster Fuller-style geodesic dome – like a sphere. So, you walk into the Sphere to see Dead and Company, it’s like, “Oh, here it is.” Inside of the Sphere is basically the Wall of Sound, but taken to an exponential degree. The Wall of Sound walked so the Sphere could run.
I have to think Garcia would’ve been tickled to take the Sphere for a ride. There’s the public perception of Garcia as this wooly, hippie-type guy, but he was always embracing the cutting edge, from the gear that he was playing and just experimenting with to getting really into computers in the late ’80s and early ’90s. He just loved, like, f—king around with the newest technology.
What’s your favorite Wall of Sound show?
June 16, 1974, at the Des Moines Fairgrounds, for sonic and setlist reasons as much as personal reasons – my mother was at that show. That show, to me, is the epitome of your outdoor Grateful Dead show in the sun in the summertime. An amazing show. [Editor’s note: Selections from this show were officially released in 2009 as Road Trips Volume 2 Number 3, which is available on streaming platforms.]
Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection will be released by St. Martin’s Press on June 17.
Loud and Clear.
Courtesy Photo
Spotify has partnered with industry mental health nonprofit Backline to launch a global hub of mental health resources as part of their nascent Heart & Soul initiative.
Officially dubbed ‘Heart & Soul, Mental Health for Creators,’ the new partnership sees Backline and Spotify joining forces to launch their Global Mental Health Resource Hub, which aims to serve as a comprehensive support platform for industry professionals around the world.
While Spotify first launched its Heart & Soul initiative in 2018 as a way of providing support and deepening understanding of emotional well-being amongst its employees, Backline first emerged in 2019 to connect industry professionals and their family with mental health and wellness resources.
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The new partnership sees Backline now expanding their services beyond U.S. borders for the first time, serving as a response to the growing mental health crisis that affects industry workers – be it artists, touring crew and industry professionals – of all levels and locations.
“Backline is honored to serve as a steward of Spotify’s investment into the creative community,” Hilary Gleason, Backline’s Executive Director & Co-Founder, said in a statement. “Bringing our work to scale is a meaningful way to uplift the well-being of artists all around the world.
“This collaboration is taking these invaluable mental health and wellness resources beyond borders. Music knows no bounds, and now people who make music happen have access to care and a compassionate community. Our work together will help ensure that artists have the resources, support, and stability they need to thrive both personally and professionally.”
The new initiative will see Backline’s expanding their resources worldwide, including an international, multilingual database of trusted music industry and mental health support resources and crisis lines from around the world; an email concierge service that provides one-on-one support to aid individuals in navigating care options and mental health systems in their countries; and access to their free digital guide Mind the Music: A Mental Health Guide for the Music Industry.
Additionally, support for songwriters, and access to wellness events are included, as is free therapy access for ambassadors of Spotify’s EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs.
“It’s clear that the mental health challenges artists face are real, and that the current support systems often fall short. It’s on all of us in the industry to respond with action,” noted Monica Herrera Damashek, Spotify’s Head of Artist & Label Partnerships.
“We know this is only one step but we look forward to building on this for a more supported, sustainable environment for the artists who shape culture every day.”
Additionally, Spotify is also providing financial support to expand organizations such as MusiCares, Music Health Alliance, Music Minds Matter, and Noah Kahan’s The Busyhead Project; spotlighting mental health stories from the creative community across Spotify for Artists and Spotify Songwriting; and offering curated playlists, podcasts, and audiobooks to support creators’ wellbeing via the Heart & Soul, Mental Health for Creators hub.
“Heart & Soul is our commitment to the creators behind the music. Artists and songwriters face immense pressure, and their mental health can’t be an afterthought,” added Spotify’s Head of Social Impact Lauren Siegal Wurgaft.
“Supporting creators’ well-being is essential to sustaining a vibrant music ecosystem. By working closely with trusted partners like Backline, we’re not just offering resources, we’re helping drive lasting change in how the industry approaches mental health.”
Billy Jones, a longtime figure in New York’s live music scene, has died at age 45. A statement provided to multiple outlets by a spokesman for the club says Jones died on Saturday morning (June 7) due to “a highly aggressive case of glioblastoma,” a form of brain cancer. Jones was the co-founder/owner of Brooklyn’s […]
Jonathan Mayers, co-founder of Superfly Entertainment and the co-creator of iconic festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, has died. His age and cause of death are unknown at this time.
Mayers grew up an hour outside New York City and attended Tulane University in New Orleans, graduating in 1995. He was first introduced to the music business through his work with famed New Orleans venue Tipitina’s and the long-running Jazz Fest celebration. He co-founded promotion company Superfly in 1996 with Rick Farman, Richard Goodstone and Kerry Black and staged its first concert during Mardi Gras with the Meters, Maceo Parker and Rebirth Brass Band. In 2002, the four men launched and sold out the first Bonnaroo after discovering the perfect festival site an hour outside of Nashville in Manchester, Tenn. Partnering with promoter Ashley Capps of AC Entertainment, agent Chip Hooper of Paradigm and manager Coran Capshaw of Red Light — and securing headliners like Trey Anastasio from Phish and Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir — the men created a 70,000-person festival that would become the blueprint for hundreds of other music festivals across the country.
In 2005, Mayers’ Superfly launched Vegoose in Las Vegas with programming at multiplevenues throughout the city. The first festival brought in approximately 37,000 visitors, and Mayers and his team ran the festival for three seasons before opting to shut it down. Mayers would also partner with Another Planet Entertainment in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008 to launch Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In 2017, Mayers led efforts to partner with Viacom and Comedy Central to produce a large-scale indoor/outdoor comedy festival in San Francisco called Clusterfest that included performances by Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah.
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While working on Clusterfest, Mayers began interfacing with major film and TV rights holders and created a new experience concept allowing fans to “step inside” some of their favorite TV shows on recreated TV sets. Mayers and team licensed rights from shows like Seinfeld, The Office, South Park, Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Daily Show to create immersive fan experiences visited by hundreds of thousands of fans. For the show Friends, Mayers led efforts to create pop-up experiences in multiple cities, including New York, Boston and Atlanta.
Despite his success, Mayers’ relationships with his co-founders at Superfly began deteriorating during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in August 2021, he was terminated from his position at the company. In early 2022, Mayers sued Farman, Goodstone and Black and accused them of civil misrepresentation, breach of contract and fraud for allegedly lowballing him for the value of his shares in Superfly. Also named in the complaint was Virgo Investment Group, a California private equity fund; Mayers alleged that its top executive, Jesse Watson, strung him along for months, promising $5 million in financing before firing him last summer. On Jan. 20, 2023, a New York judge dismissed the lawsuit.
After leaving Superfly, Mayers began work on a new project called Core City Detroit which sought to raise money to invest in a “culturally rich neighborhood anchored by a music campus providing world- class services, infrastructure, and housing for local/national artists & industry along with entertainment experiences for the public,” according to an investment deck on the project. Phase 1 of the Core City Detroit project included a drive-in diner by celebrity chef Kiki Louya and the renovation of an old pickle factory into a music production complex.
Mayers’ longtime friend Peter Shapiro, founder of Dayglo Presents and the Brooklyn Bowl, described him as a creative mastermind who had a deep love for live music and a vision for how it would evolve over the next two decades.
“Jonathan was one of the true real visionaries of the modern concert world and one of the core minds behind Bonnaroo,” Shapiro tells Billboard. “Modern-day festivals are all in some way built off of his vision.”
Company officials at Another Planet Entertainment issued a statement to Billboard following Mayers’ passing. “Jonathan was a bright light, always pushing new and creative ideas in the entertainment space,” they said. “He was a visionary who was integral in the founding and the spirit of Outside Lands. Everyone in the Another Planet family will miss him dearly.”
It’s not every day that a roomful of music industry executives keeps quiet during a party.
But Billboard’s annual Country Power Players Party celebrating the leaders in the genre, hosted June 4 at Category 10 in Downtown Nashville at Category 10, yielded respectful silence as a series of emotional moments highlighted the importance of health initiatives in the business.
Music Health Alliance founder Tatum Allsep challenged the industry to help financially in meeting the increasing mental health needs of the creative community as she accepted the Impact award from Brothers Osborne. Billboard country chart manager Jim Asker announced plans to step down from his position on Aug. 15, citing health issues, as Christian artist Lauren Daigle presented him with a farewell commemorative Billboard cover. And Little Big Town applied precision harmony to the poignant “Rich Man” as the band picked up the inaugural Ben Vaughn Song Champion award from songwriter Liz Rose (“Girl Crush,” “You Belong With Me”). The Song Champion hardware is named for the former Warner Music Nashville president/CEO, who died in January at only 49.
Vaughn “has left an indelible mark on our hearts,” LBT’s Karen Fairchild said, acknowledging his daughter, who attended the event. “I don’t feel at all worthy to talk about your dad, other than to just say that we miss him, and I know you do, and we’re here for you. You have a community of people here that will stand by you forever. All you do is just reach out and you tell us what you need, because that’s what your dad always did for us.”
Following a welcome by Melinda Newman, Billboard‘s executive editor of West Coast and Nashville, rising country artist Reyna Roberts hosted the Power Players Party, which included a surprise appearance by Garth Brooks, who handed the prestigious country executive of the year trophy to AEG/Goldenvoice executive vp Stacy Vee, recognizing her contributions to the high-profile Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, Calif.
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Brooks portrayed Vee as an underdog in a male-dominated industry.
“In this business, like so many businesses, a female needs to work 1000 times harder than a male to get a tenth as much as the male gets,” Brooks said. “That’s just how it always has been. The blessing on that – I think that’s what makes Dolly Parton, Dolly Parton. I think that’s what – and I was firsthand watching this – makes Reba McEntire, Reba McEntire. You can’t outwork her, right? I’m married to one of the greatest singers of any format (Trisha Yearwood). I watch her every day work 1000 times harder than me to get a 10th as much as they give me. So with that, I think that kind of describes Stacy.”
BigXThaPlug scored the Innovator award, presented by Shaboozey just weeks after topping the Hot Country Songs chart dated April 19 with “All The Way,” a rap-and-country hybrid featuring guest Bailey Zimmerman from his forthcoming collaborations project.
“X is someone who didn’t just break the mold,” Shaboozey enthused. “He melted it down and made it his own.”
Ella Langley snagged the trailblazer award, presented by Lainey Wilson, while Riley Green – who collaborated on Langley’s “you look like you love me” – was handed the groundbreaker award by Ronnie Dunn, one-half of the duo Brooks & Dunn.
“Any wisdom that has been passed along to me from the women in the business, I’ve tried to share it with Ella, and Ella seems like she’s all ears,” Wilson told the crowd. “She wants to listen. She wants to know more and do more and be more, and that’s what makes her just a superstar. I’m proud of Ella, not just for being the trailblazing artist that she is, but for the heart that she’s got to go with it.”
Asker announced his intention to pass the torch on the influential Billboard country chart position while recounting challenges he’s faced as a stage IV non-Hodgkins cancer survivor.
“They didn’t think I’d make it through the first two weeks in the hospital,” Asker recalled.
He beat those odds and subsequently ran 15 26.2-mile marathons, raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He expects to continue teaching writing classes at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee, and to study for another degree.
Music Health Alliance, meanwhile, has made assisting cancer patients and other members of the music community its non-profit mission. In the 12 years since its inception, the organization has reportedly benefited more than 32,000 people and saved the industry more than $145 million in health care costs. That’s particularly noteworthy; the majority of music-industry workers are independently contracted and historically face greater difficulty accessing insurance than corporate-employed staff.
T.J. Osborne hailed Allsep as “Nashville’s very own Mother Teresa.” Allsep, in turn, sought to motivate the movers and shakers in the room to step up their game in an increasingly difficult emotional period.
“In the last few months, MHA has seen a 250% increase in requests for mental health support,” she noted. “Y’all, that’s not a statistic. That’s a screaming flare. It is a fucking S.O.S. call, and we have got to do better.”
“We’ve got to have a plan for the long haul,” she continued, noting the MHA’s new mental health initiative in partnership with Universal Music Group. We know that music heals, but even the healers need healing. So here’s the ask to every label, to every publisher, to every platform, to every artist, everybody who makes a living in this industry: please don’t just admire the mission and the impact. Feel it. Fuel it. Fund it. We so desperately need you to stand with us, to nurture the noise, and then we can truly heal the music.”
Early in 2024, Clipse prepared to play a new album for their label, Def Jam. While these types of playbacks can be routine, this one was freighted with extra significance: The rap duo composed of brothers Pusha T and Malice had not released an album together since 2009.
Their comeback soon hit a speed bump. One song on the new album featured a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar, who spent part of 2024 in a venomous back-and-forth with Drake. And, as Pusha T recently told GQ, Lamar’s presence on the Clipse track made Def Jam’s parent company, Universal Music Group, uncomfortable.
“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Pusha T told the publication. “And then they wanted me to take the record off [the album].”
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Clipse refused to make the requested changes, leading to the unravelling of Pusha T’s association with Def Jam — his label home for over a decade. Even though the rapper still owed Def Jam albums, he paid a seven-figure sum to get out of the deal, according to longtime manager Steven Victor. “If you’re an artist, your whole life is to create art and put it out,” Victor says. “If someone’s telling you that you can’t do that, or you have to do it within the confines of whatever box they put you in, that’s like creative jail.” (Reps for Universal Music and Def Jam did not respond to requests for comment.)
Pusha T has his own antagonistic history with Drake, which culminated in the scathing 2018 diss record “The Story of Adidon”; Victor says Pusha T’s verses have been facing strict label scrutiny ever since. Meanwhile, the fallout from Lamar’s battle with Drake is still ongoing: The latter has sued Universal Music Group, accusing the company of defamation over Lamar’s track “Not Like Us.”
Victor spoke with Billboard about the end of Pusha T’s relationship with Def Jam, and finding a new home for the rapper — and the Clipse album — at Roc Nation.
When you started to hear objections to the Lamar verse on the Clipse album, where were they coming from?
UMG has this department where they review lyrics. So it was that department. The real reason [that department] is there is to protect the artists and the label from lawsuits for copyright infringement. They do it for all the labels. Some labels adhere to it closer than others.
Let’s say you interpolate somebody else’s song. [That department] is there to make sure that the song is properly cleared. It’s not meant to be like, “You said XYZ about XYZ artist, so we’re not going to release this music.”
While you’ve been working with Pusha, have you ever had challenges with that department before?
In the beginning, no. But starting in 2018, yeah.
That’s the year Pusha released “The Story of Adidon.” He put that on SoundCloud, and it’s never been officially released on streaming services. Was that a way of getting around any internal objections?
Part of the reason, yeah, to avoid that. [Also] we never actually properly cleared it.
Pusha T mentioned two songs in his interview with GQ, Rick Ross’ “Maybach Music VI” and Pop Smoke’s “Paranoia,” where his verses were ultimately cut. Was that because of the same department’s scrutiny?
Yes. What happened on the Pop Smoke song is that UMG thought that he was dissing Drake on that song. He wasn’t, but they thought he was. Pop Smoke was released on my label [Victor Victor], and obviously I managed Pusha. So they came to me and said, “We’re not going to put this out now, unless you get Pusha to change these lyrics.” Even though it has nothing to do with Pop Smoke, they’re like, “Either he changes these lyrics, or we’re not putting the album out.”
What happened to freedom of speech? First of all, he’s not dissing Drake. But how do you get to tell him to just change his lyrics or you’re not putting this album out?
From what Pusha told GQ, this Kendrick verse they’re concerned about on the new record is not dissing Drake, either.
Yeah, I don’t know what their concern is. But they were like, “There’s a line here; we think it’s controversial; [Kendrick] needs to change it, or we’re not putting it out.” We’re not going to ask him to change the verse. You guys are wrong. Stop looking at this this way. None of this makes any sense.
It got to the point where the conversation became, “You can’t keep stopping this guy from being able to put out his art.” He’s a rapper. Every time he puts out an album or a song, you can’t listen to it to make sure that he’s not dissing somebody before you put it out. He has to think about what he’s saying before he’s saying it in the hopes that you might not think that he’s saying the wrong thing? Who could live their life like that?
I went to them and I said, “Let us put the song out somewhere else since you guys have an issue with it. You guys won’t have to stand behind whatever complications come from it. We’ll put the song out somewhere else, and we’ll license it back to you guys when the album comes out.” Their response was, “How about you just find somewhere else to put out Clipse? Just pay something to us and put it out somewhere else.”
My thing was, we can’t do that — Pusha and the Clipse are one thing. [At this point], he clearly doesn’t trust you guys. You guys haven’t been good stewards of his career.
So they said, “Find another deal, and let’s figure out a business.” They didn’t drop us. They were like, “Pay us this money” — which was an exorbitant amount of money, a s—t ton of money — “and we’ll let you out the deal.” That’s what happened. We paid them the money, an insane amount of money. It wasn’t, like, $200,000. It was a lot of money for an artist to come up with. They bought themselves out of the deal.
How many solo albums did Pusha have left on his deal with Def Jam?
I don’t really want to talk about that part. He had like three albums left.
So you had to pay seven figures to get out of the deal?
Yeah.
How quickly were you able to get another deal in place?
It happened simultaneously [with getting out of the previous deal]. It took a couple of weeks for us to figure out the paperwork. Again, it was a lot of money — we kept on going back and saying, “Can we pay you this amount of money and a part of the profit? Can we figure out a deal where we pay you as the guys make money from the new release, instead of coming up with this large sum of money [right now]?” They said no. They were like, “We want our money, and we want some of the profits.”
Once I knew that we had, in principle, a deal in place with Def Jam [to leave], I got on the phone with Jay-Z. I was like, “Look, this is what’s happening. We’ve been talking about doing X, Y, Z, together. There’s an opportunity here to do this album. What do you think?”
He hit me back right away, like, “You just made my day. Let’s figure it out. What do we need to get it done?” I went back to Pusha, and said, “Listen, Jay’s gonna give us a very artist-friendly deal, we get to own the masters, and they’ll put the marketing power of Roc Nation behind it. You guys are friends. It’s a great outcome.” We worked out the deal in less than 24 hours.
You had to pay Def Jam a lump sum to get out and also give a cut of what you make off the new record?
Yeah, we had to give them a cut also, which is insane. But the good thing about it is that Pusha is in control of his future. Now he has three deals in three different places. At the beginning of his solo career, we put out records independently with Mass Appeal; he owns those records. Then we did the deal with G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam; when Kanye left Def Jam, we worked out an agreement with him where he gave Pusha his masters back on the G.O.O.D. Music side. And now we did this deal with Jay.
Pusha is having way more success creatively, financially and professionally, than he did at the peak of his career, which was when [Clipse’s] “Grindin’” came out. Smart and steady wins the race.
What appeals to you about taking the independent route?
I still think there’s a place for major record labels. But if you can get away with being at a place that understands the culture that you’re in a lot more, moves more nimbly, and you can get the same resources that you would from a major, why would you go to a major, especially with the way the deals are structured?
You can get everything and more from somebody that not only looks like you, but behaves like you, has the same mindset as you. You’re not dealing with layers and layers of corporate bureaucracy and nonsense. And all artists are not treated equally in the major record label system.
One thing you still hear about the majors is that, to the extent that radio matters, they have the muscle there, and they also have an international presence that’s hard to replicate.
Cap. I call cap. I’ve done it on a smaller scale and on the larger scale. All you need is a team. You can hire and you can outsource a great international team, a great radio team. For some artists it’s definitely more beneficial to be part of a major record label. But you don’t need to be on a major record label to find success.
Obviously Pusha T and Def Jam had a long relationship. Is it tough to see it end this way?
Pusha has been signed to Def Jam for almost 15 years. We’ve been there for a long time; we’ve seen different regimes come and go. But at the end of the day, if a relationship is not working, for whatever reason, it doesn’t make any sense to stay there, regardless of how much you might like it or might feel comfortable. And I don’t know if the amount of attention, focus and detail that we were looking for [on this album rollout] would have happened there anyway.
Is this the start of a potentially closer relationship between Victor Victor and Roc Nation?
I’d say so. There’s a lot going on, a lot of moving parts. But the focus right now is definitely this Clipse album.
Taylor Swift announced on Friday (May 30) she has regained ownership of her master recordings from Shamrock Capital, the private equity firm that purchased them from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in late 2020. According to sources, Shamrock sold Swift’s catalog back to her for an amount relatively close to what they paid for it — which sources tell Billboard was around $360 million.
In a message on her website, Swift says: “All the times I was this close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now… I really get to say these words: All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs to me. All of my music videos. All the concert films. The album art and photography. The unreleased songs. The memories. The magic. The madness. Every single era. My entire life’s work.”
In her announcement, Swift expressed gratitude and praised Shamrock for how they handled the deal, noting they understood the deeply personal meaning behind the transaction. “My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams,” she writes. “I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
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The saga of Swift’s masters goes back to June 2019, when Ithaca purchased Big Machine Label Group, which owned the master recordings to Swift’s first six albums, for an estimated $300 million. Swift’s catalog was worth at least half of that amount, according to estimates at the time. Over the years, Swift has very publicly declared her displeasure with the shuffling around of her masters and, in 2019, began re-recording those Big Machine albums in order to restore control over her songs from a commercial standpoint.
Her re-recording journey began with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April 2021, followed by Red (Taylor’s Version) in November 2021. In 2023, she released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), each topping the Billboard 200 chart. Fans are still anticipating the re-recording of her self-titled debut and her final Big Machine LP, Reputation. Since leaving Big Machine in November 2018, she’s released five additional albums on Republic Records: Lover (2019), Folkore (2020), Evermore (2020), Midnights (2022) and The Tortured Poets Department (2024). She also embarked upon and completed her career-defining Eras Tour, which rewrote the rules of what a concert tour could be, and massively boosted streams and sales of her entire catalog, including the re-recordings.
Swift was not involved in Shamrock’s 2020 purchase of her music. “This was the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge,” she said at the time.
Shamrock’s 2020 statement about acquiring Swift’s catalog from Ithaca emphasized their admiration for her artistry and the value of her music. They described Swift as a “transcendent artist” with a “timeless catalog” and said their investment was driven by belief in the long-term potential of her work. While they had hoped to partner with her directly, they acknowledged and respected her decision not to be involved. Shamrock expressed appreciation for Swift’s professionalism and conveyed interest in collaborating with her in the future.
Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, given that sources close to the negotiations say Swift paid a price close to the $360-million price tag Shamrock paid back in 2021, that would imply Shamrock did not make much, if any, profit off the sale of the assets. However, the financial firm with ties to Disney still made a profit of around $100 million in total over the three plus years it owned the records. The six albums and two live albums that Swift recorded when she was signed to Big Machine generated roughly $60 million a year on average globally from 2022 to 2024, according to Billboard’s estimates based on Luminate data. Distribution, marketing and royalty payments to Swift likely consumed about 50% of that revenue, leaving Shamrock with an annual profit of around $30 million a year.
In 2023, Billboard reported that the re-recordings of Swift’s albums Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) were vastly out-streaming their originals since the new versions were released, with the new Fearless earning three times the equivalent album units as the original, and the new Red as much as 10 times the original.
As of May 22 according to Luminate, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) has racked up 2.3 million equivalent album units to the original’s 8.6 million U.S. units, despite the latter having a more than 12 year head start; Red (Taylor’s Version) has accumulated 5.18 million equivalent album units to the original’s 9.16 million U.S. units, despite the latter having been released nearly 10 years prior to the re-recording; Fearless (Taylor’s Version) has accrued 3.0 million equivalent album units to the original’s 11.7 million U.S. units, the latter having had a 13-year head start; and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has earned 4.87 million equivalent album units to the original’s 14.6 million, with a nine year gap in release dates.
Overall, Swift’s catalog has racked up 116.77 million equivalent album units in the United States over the years, according to Luminate, stretching back to her self-titled debut album in 2006. She has sold 54 million albums in the U.S. and generated 70.746 billion streams.
Read Taylor’s full message on reclaiming her masters:
Hi,
I’m trying to gather my thoughts into something coherent, but right now my mind is just a slideshow. A flashback sequence of all the times I daydreamed about, wished for, and pined away for a chance to get to tell you this news. All the times I was thiiiiiiiis close, reaching out for it, only for it to fall through. I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away. But that’s all in the past now. I’ve been bursting into tears of joy at random intervals ever since I found out that this is really happening. I really get to say these words:
All of the music I’ve ever made… now belongs… to me.
And all my music videos.All the concert films.The album art and photography.The unreleased songs.The memories. The magic. The madness.Every single era.My entire life’s work.
To say this is my greatest dream come true is actually being pretty reserved about it. To my fans, you know how important this has been to me — so much so that I meticulously re-recorded and released four of my albums, calling them Taylor’s Version. The passionate support you showed those albums and the success story you turned The Eras Tour into is why I was able to buy back my music. I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now.
All I’ve ever wanted was the opportunity to work hard enough to be able to one day purchase my music outright with no strings attached, no partnership, with full autonomy. I will be forever grateful to everyone at Shamrock Capital for being the first people to ever offer this to me. The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair, and respectful. This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams. I am endlessly thankful. My first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.
I know, I know. What about Rep TV? Full transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it. The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in the first 6 that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or photos, or videos. So I kept putting it off. There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch. I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now. Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about. But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.
I’m extremely heartened by the conversations this saga has reignited within my industry among artists and fans. Every time a new artist tells me they negotiated to own their master recordings in their record contract because of this fight, I’m reminded of how important it was for all of this to happen. Thank you for being curious about something that used to be thought of as too industry-centric for broad discussion. You’ll never know how much it means to me that you cared. Every single bit of it counted and ended us up here.
Thanks to you and your goodwill, teamwork and encouragement, the best things that have ever been mine… finally actually are.
Elated and amazed,
Taylor
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Dilts Marshall and Dan Rys.
I recently had the opportunity to testify before Congress about the NO FAKES Act of 2025 — a landmark effort to protect human voices and likenesses from being cloned by artificial intelligence without consent.
I started singing when I was four years old and have used my voice throughout my career to amplify lyrics that I believe in. Each recording reflects pieces of my individuality and artistry that have evolved throughout my life.
My recordings reflect my human experience, and I am honored that they are a part of people’s lives — from wedding vows to breakups, to celebrating milestones and even the special relationship between a mother and daughter.
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But today, my voice and likeness, along with so many others, are at risk. AI technology is amazing and can be used for so many wonderful purposes. But like all great technologies, it can also be abused when it is harnessed to steal people’s voices and likenesses to defraud families, manipulate the images of young girls, impersonate government officials or pose as artists like me.
It’s mind-blowing that we must even question that our voices and likenesses should be our own to control. It’s scary and unquestionably wrong.
I was so gratified with the commitment of the bipartisan group of Senators I testified before last week in DC to deal with deepfake images by supporting the NO FAKES Act, which would prevent the theft of someone’s voice or likeness to harm, harass, bully or defraud them or others, and damage our careers, reputations and values.
The NO FAKES Act gives every person the power to say “yes” or “no” about how their most personal human attributes are used.
In Congress, I was asked about the impact of unauthorized deepfakes on the careers and livelihoods of young artists — and that impact can be immense. Every performer in our business must establish early in their career who they are and what they stand for, creatively, artistically and personally. That is how we build connections with our fans. But if bad actors can invade that artist-fan bond and distort the story a young artist tells the world about who they are, many careers could be lost before they truly get started. And that’s a problem that goes beyond the arts — unconsented deepfakes and voice clones rob every person of the ability to speak their own truth and tell their own story.
The NO FAKES Act also supports innovation by providing a roadmap for how these powerful tools can be developed responsibly. And it doesn’t stand in the way of protected uses like news, parodies, or criticism. Thanks to technology companies like OpenAI and Google who support this bill, as well as the legions of creators who have worked so hard to advocate for it (nearly 400 of us last week endorsed it here), and the child protection and anti-sex-trafficking and exploitation groups who support it and continue to fight for those who are most vulnerable, we have a real chance of it becoming law this year.
It has been a special honor to record songs that shine a light on the battles many women fight, especially domestic violence. Fans have shared with me that “Independence Day” has given them strength, and in some cases, the song has been the catalyst that has made them realize they need to leave an abusive situation.
Imagine the harm an AI deepfake could do breaching that trust, using my voice in songs that belittle or justify abuse. Or the devastation of a fan, scammed by a deepfake voice clone impersonating me or any artist they trust, into handing over their hard-earned money to a fraudster. Or my voice and/or likeness being used to promote a product that may be subpar at best, and harmful at worst. And while this isn’t the part that I am an expert on, knowing AI is being used to deepfake and manipulate young girls in ways that can devastate and ruin their lives is especially troubling. As a mother, an artist and a human being who cares about others — I ask you to join in the fight to stop that kind of betrayal.
Passing the NO FAKES Act will set us on the right path to develop the world’s best AI while preserving the sacred qualities that make our country so special — authenticity, integrity, humanity and our endlessly inspiring spirit.
Martina McBride is an award-winning country music singer who has charted seven top 10s on the Billboard 200 and landed 21 songs on the Hot 100 in her career, and been nominated for 14 Grammys. She’s also a four-time CMA Female Vocalist of the Year and three-time ACM Top Female Vocalist winner, and in 2019 was honored with the ACM’s Icon Award.
Dan Storper, the co-founder and CEO of Putumayo World Music, died on Thursday (May 22) at 74, just two days after his birthday. Sources confirm that he passed peacefully at home in New Orleans, surrounded by family, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Jacob Edgar, founder of the label Cumbancha and Storper’s longtime friend and colleague, shared a heartfelt statement with Billboard Español: “Just three days ago, I posted birthday wishes to Dan Storper, the founder of Putumayo World Music and my colleague and friend for nearly 30 years. I knew then that Dan was in his last days, but I couldn’t imagine a world without him. He passed away yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.”
Edgar, who began working with Storper in 1998 after being offered what he called “the dream job no one could dare dream of,” described the late visionary as “an exceptional human,” he wrote. “Funny, energetic, passionate, micromanaging, and compulsive. A workaholic to the extreme. He could drive you crazy, but you loved him anyway because his heart was in the right place, and he was a good soul.”
In 2023, the globetrotting entrepreneur marked 30 years of his groundbreaking label.
But Storper’s journey with Putumayo began long before the label existed. Originally launched in the 1970s in New York as a store selling handcrafted goods and musical finds from his travels in Latin America, Africa, India, and beyond, the shop gradually shifted its focus to music. By 1993, it had transformed into Putumayo World Music, a record label dedicated to curating global sounds for a wider audience, co-founding it with Michael Kraus.
The label became an international success, celebrated for its uplifting and culturally diverse compilations. Known for its signature brightly illustrated album covers and expertly sequenced playlists, Putumayo invited listeners to embark on musical journeys across continents, introducing many to the rhythms, traditions, and languages of faraway lands. Storper’s leadership helped bridge cultural divides through the universal language of music.
In an interview with Billboard Español in 2023, Storper reflected on what he saw as Putumayo’s mission. “I look back with a certain measure of pride at the fact that we’ve really introduced so many people to music that they were not familiar with — whether it be Latin, African, Caribbean, European, and more,” Storper said at the time, as he reflected on his company’s three-decade legacy. He also mentioned that Carlos Santana met several African bands through the Putumayo catalog that the guitarist later ended up collaborating with.
Storper also spoke fondly of how the label crafted its signature compilations. “Putumayo’s strength is not only selecting some great songs with that human touch, but putting together a sequence to take you on a musical journey, and as we say, it’s guaranteed to make you feel good,” he added.
Even as his health declined, Storper’s commitment to preserving global music remained unwavering. This April, he and Edgar donated their shared archive of 37,000 CDs — a collection built over more than 30 years — to the Harvard Music Library and the ARChive of Popular Music. “He and I listened to almost every one of those albums and scrawled notes over most of them marking out the tracks we thought had a chance to make into a Putumayo collection someday. I’m glad to know that legacy will be preserved,” said Edgar.
Talent agent and Sound Talent Group (STG) owner Dave Shapiro, 42, was among those killed in a fiery plane crash in San Diego, Calif., in the early morning on Thursday (May 22), according to a statement from his agency.
“We are devastated by the loss of our co-founder, colleagues and friends,” said a spokesperson for Sound Talent Group. “Our hearts go out to their families and to everyone impacted by today’s tragedy. Thank you so much for respecting their privacy at this time.”
Shapiro and two other STG employees were killed when their 1985 Cessna Citation reportedly crashed around 4 a.m. on Thursday (May 22) in the Tierrasanta neighborhood. Billboard is not naming the two other victims at this time at the request of company officials, who are trying to notify family members. The plane was also carrying other passengers who have not yet been identified, officials tell Billboard, noting that there were no survivors.
A well-known music agent, Shapiro launched STG in 2018 with Tim Borror and Matt Andersen following successful careers at the Agency Group and United Talent Agency. His roster includes Sum 41, Pierce the Veil, I Prevail, Set it Off, Story of the Year, Silverstein, Parkway Drive and Eve 6. He also operates the Velocity Records music label, whose roster has included Thursday, Concrete Castles and Craig Owens.
Shapiro was also an avid pilot with more than a decade of flying experience and was the owner of Velocity Aviation, through which he offered pilot instruction. Known around the music industry as an adventurous spirit, Shapiro’s aviation website describes his thrill-seeking lifestyle and pursuit of adrenaline.
“From BASE jumping to aerobatic flying, Helicopters to twin engines, flight instructing to furthering his own education, doesn’t matter to Dave as long as he gets to be in the sky,” the website reads. At one point, Shapiro even housed the San Diego office of STG in an airplane hangar alongside some of his aircraft.
Besides aviation, Shapiro was a lifelong supporter of independent music and hard rock, punk and indie acts that didn’t fit within music’s mainstream. With the launch of STG, he and his partners paved the way for the launch of nearly a dozen independent agencies in the years that followed.