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iHeartMedia subsidiary iHeartCommunications pushed back the maturity date of much of its debt by three years and reduced its amount of long-term debt by $440 million. In November, the company’s debt holders were given the opportunity to exchange existing debt for new debt with higher interest — and approximately $4.8 billion, or 92.2%, of them […]
Hit songs come and go — artists last. What lasts even longer, though, are Christmas songs, which stream every year — and generate revenue accordingly.
The biggest example is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which reemerges on the Billboard Hot 100 toward the end of every year — it has hit No. 1 annually since 2019 — heralded by a Carey video announcement that “It’s Tiiiiime.” How popular is it? It is the No. 16 biggest song of all time by U.S. consumption, a weighted measure of digital sales and streaming used by Luminate for about a decade. It is also the No. 42 song of all time in U.S. on-demand audio streaming.
The steadiness of the song’s popularity suggests that there’s a chance it could be the biggest hit of the 21st century, although it’s obviously impossible to know, or even figure out how such things might be measured in the future. There is a precedent, though. Bing Crosby’s 1942 recording of “White Christmas” is said to be the best-selling single of all time, with 50 million copies worldwide, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Is “All I Want for Christmas” emerging as a next-century successor of sorts?
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It’s possible. Most hits get big fast, stay big for a while, and remain big-ish for years, sometimes with a boost from an artist’s subsequent releases. Holiday hits get big every year and disappear like Frosty the Snowman, only to come back the following fall, as predictable as the holiday season itself. Carey released “All I Want for Christmas” as a radio single from her 1994 album Merry Christmas, but it didn’t hit the top 10 of the Hot 100 until December 2017. By then, the charts reflected rising streaming listenership, as well as radio play and decreasing sales. Streaming fueled the song’s rise to No. 1 in 2019 (for three weeks), then in 2020 (for two weeks), 2021 (three weeks), 2023 (two weeks) and now 2024 (three weeks as of the chart dated Dec. 28). It has now spent 17 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in total — the most of any song except Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” (featuring Billy Ray Cyrus), each of which occupied the top spot for 19 weeks. Unlike those songs, though, “All I Want for Christmas” may continue to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 for years to come.
The list of songs with the most on-demand streams skews toward songs from a few years ago, since they have had a few more years to generate streams, and toward music that appeals to younger listeners, who were early adopters of Spotify and other services. Of the top 100, most of the songs came out after 2010, and almost all of them after 2000. The only older songs that have been streamed more than Carey’s are Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (No. 27) and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” (No. 31), according to Luminate; the only other older songs in the top 100 are the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and, at 95, Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
Like most holiday hits, “All I Want for Christmas” does well worldwide — especially in English-speaking markets like the U.K. and Canada, where this year it hit No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100. It’s also popular beyond the Anglosphere: This year the song topped the German Top 100 Single Chart, as well as the Austrian chart and the Swiss chart, and its popularity is growing elsewhere. (At a time when Anglo-American recordings are losing market share to local-language music in most European markets, English Christmas songs still do well. For the chart week of Dec. 20-26, for example, nine of the top 10 singles on the Official German Charts were English-language Christmas songs.) “All I Want” is No. 48 on the songs with the most on-demand streams internationally, according to Luminate.
One reason for the song’s success is how much Carey leans into the song’s seasonal success. She is far more popular than any of the other acts with big Christmas songs: She has had 19 No. 1 Hot 100 hits, second only to The Beatles, with 20, and she has hit No. 1 in a record 20 different years. Some artists with that kind of career would blanch at the idea of being identified with holiday music, but Carey embraced it — to the point that she applied for a trademark on the title “Queen of Christmas,” albeit unsuccessfully. In addition to her annual video announcement of the season, now something of an event in itself, she does an annual Christmas tour, which this year included 18 arena shows. In 2023, “All I Want for Christmas” accounted for 23% of her streams, according to Luminate.
It’s impossible to predict whether the song will become the most popular of the century — or even how Billboard might measure such things by then. “All I Want for Christmas” certainly isn’t going anywhere: Its on-demand streams grew 15% and 8.3% in 2022 and 2023, respectively, according to Luminate, compared to overall on-demand streaming growth of 12.1% and 12.7%. But it’s also not gaining ground on the current on-demand streaming champion, Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower,” which had 333.12 million on-demand streams in the U.S in 2023, compared to 249 million for “All I Want for Christmas.”
Then again, holiday songs are nothing if not evergreen. For the past few years, the top four songs on Billboard’s Holiday 100 chart have been Carey’s, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Last Christmas.” Carey’s is by far the newest of the four. The second-biggest holiday hit, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 for three weeks last holiday season, was recorded in 1958 — 66 years ago. If “All I Want for Christmas” has the same kind of run, it could still be No. 1 in 2060 — whatever kind of listening that might include 35 years from now.
Days after a panel of federal judges voted to uphold a new law that would ban TikTok in the United States beginning on Jan. 19, the independent label Artist Partner Group (APG) started assessing how that might potentially impact its marketing campaigns — and how the company should adjust.
“It’s hard to imagine a reality where TikTok actually goes down,” says Alec Henderon, head of digital at APG. “But we need to be prepared. We are doing video shoots ahead of time, so if it does go, we have top-tier content hitting other short-form video platforms very quickly.”
J.D. Tuminski, former digital marketing lead at Def Jam and founder of Casadei Collective Marketing Agency, is also advising clients to be ready. “If folks are being smart right now,” he says, “they’re already putting plans in place for other platforms and thinking about alternative marketing strategies.”
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At least most music marketers have been down this road before. President Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020 but was blocked by the courts. “We’ve had this conversation internally so many times,” sighs Rafael Rocha, CEO of the marketing agency NuWave Digital. “If I was a betting man, I would bet confidently that it will not get banned.”
Or maybe not banned for long. President Trump returns to office on Jan. 20, and recently he has appeared more enthusiastic about TikTok, saying he had “a warm spot in my heart” for the app. In addition, on Wednesday (Dec. 18), the Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok’s challenge to the law that would ban it in the U.S. TikTok’s stance is that a ban would lead to “massive and unprecedented censorship of over 170 million Americans.”
Marketers are trying to prepare for the app’s potential disappearance nonetheless. No one wants to be caught flat-footed, especially because TikTok has “become such a large part of our execution when music is released and for teasing new music,” says Allison Laughter, vp of digital, marketing and streaming for Red Light Management. If the app were outlawed in the U.S., it would “hurt us in the short run for sure.”
The pain would probably be felt more acutely by rising artists who don’t yet have name recognition. “Where is new artist discovery happening in 2025 if this app completely disappears?” asks Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of the digital marketing company Songfluencer. “There is new artist discovery on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts — it just doesn’t happen on the same scale as it does on TikTok.”
Some genres that are reaching a new audience abroad might also be more vulnerable if TikTok use is prohibited. “Country music is bigger than it’s ever been, and we’re seeing more global success than we ever have,” Laughter adds. “It would be a shame to have an international platform taken away from us at a moment when we really have leverage with country acts. It’s slowing down a rocket ship while it’s hot for us.”
Many executives got some practice grappling with a TikTok-less existence earlier this year. On Feb. 1, Universal Music Group’s deal with the platform expired, and all its artists’ music was pulled from the app. A month later, many songs from other labels that featured contributions from Universal Music Publishing Group writers were removed as well.
“That was a wake up call for a lot of people,” says Dan Roy Carter, a former TikTok employee who recently launched Carter Projects, his own music marketing company. “That made people look at other platforms [outside of TikTok] and realize they have to develop them.”
But most marketers did not find that other short-form video platforms could fill the void left by TikTok’s absence. “Anyone I’ve spoken to who tried to pivot to another platform during that time frame generally didn’t find anything that was comparable straight away,” Carter says. That was certainly Laughter’s experience: “I don’t think that we found the sweet spot of how to mimic the success or reach we might see on TikTok with any other platform.”
If the TikTok ban did go through in the U.S., however, the platform would still be available for hundreds of millions of users globally (at least for now). And clips that are popular on TikTok often make their way to other social media platforms. “Say TikTok is banned here — that doesn’t mean that internationally it can’t be a part of a strategy to drive streaming,” says Jen Darmafall, director of marketing for ATG Group. “When you see Reels and Shorts make an impact on music consumption, it is often following something that’s going viral on TikTok first.”
Several marketers discussed using VPNs to circumvent a potential ban Stateside and continue to market their acts to audiences in Europe, Latin America and Asia. And digital marketers abroad would almost certainly see an influx of business from American artists and labels. “Hiring companies to be a liaison to TikTok creators outside of the U.S. is something that I would think about if I was a musician,” Tuminski notes.
Artists and labels would also watch carefully to see where TikTok’s large, famously active user base in the U.S. ends up. “If this goes down, we’ll need to be reactive towards where the content and the traffic and energy shifts,” Henderson says. “Short form video is not going away,” Cloherty agrees. “The TikTok audience will go somewhere.”
Reels and Shorts are typically mentioned as potential TikTok substitutes due to their short-form video focus. But other platforms can also serve as potential conduits for conveying music to listeners.
X, formerly Twitter, doesn’t pop up in many music marketing conversations these days, but Henderson has seen it bring in new listeners for rappers. He’s been focused on trying to harness the power of Twitch as well. The APG artist Flawed Mangoes saw a sizable jump in streams after appearing on the stream of Kai Cenat, one of the most popular personalities on the platform.
Marketers are also intrigued by the possibilities of Snapchat. “It’s still very heavily used by kids, but it’s not as heavily used by artists,” says Jenna Rosenberg, former vp of digital marketing at Atlantic Records. “There is an audience on there, it’s just that no one’s talking to them.” Darmafall has observed “more and more artists posting about following them on Snapchat.”
And if TikTok gets outlawed, the audience hunting for a substitute might end up on another app altogether, something that isn’t currently part of everyday conversation. “Platforms ebb and flow,” Rosenberg says. “Kids will find one that they’ll gravitate towards, and then we’re all going to have to learn it really quickly and educate the artists on how to utilize it.”
For now though, TikTok continues to operate in the U.S., driving new listeners to songs like Lola Young’s “Messy” and Sam Barber’s “Indigo.” “As people are building out their plans for any releases that are coming at the start of the year, they are still including TikTok as part of that plan,” Darmafall says. “It just can’t be your only plan.”
Universal Music Group and Amazon Music have expanded their global partnership, embracing “Streaming 2.0” as both companies aim to enhance artist-to-fan engagement through exclusive content with UMG artists, innovative product opportunities and increased fraud protection.
The partnership will explore new and enhanced product opportunities, including advancements in audiobooks, audio and visual programming and livestreaming content. UMG and Amazon Music will also collaborate to combat issues such as unlawful AI-generated content, fraud and misattribution, ensuring the integrity of creative works.
“We are very excited to advance our long-standing, excellent partnership with Amazon Music that marks a new era in streaming — Streaming 2.0,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, chairman & CEO of UMG. “We appreciate Amazon Music’s deep commitment to the interests of our artists, and look forward to progressing our shared artist-centric objectives through product innovation and accelerating growth of their service.”
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UMG laid out its Streaming 2.0 strategy — focusing on innovation, consumer segmentation, geographic expansion and higher average revenue per user (ARPU) — at the company’s capital markets day gathering in August. UMG plans to grow subscriptions in developing markets, where subscribers significantly boost ARPU. Additionally, UMG aims to attract audiobook listeners and satellite radio subscribers to convert them into music streaming users, leveraging these new audiences to drive further growth.
Steve Boom, vp of audio, Twitch and games for Amazon, noted that the expanded partnership would redefine streaming services by introducing more artist-to-fan connections through innovative products and exclusive content. “We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with UMG which will enable us to partner on meaningful new ways for artists to deepen their engagement with fans around the world, while working together to protect the work of artists, songwriters and publishers,” he said.
UMG has partnered with several AI technology companies to enhance artists’ creative and commercial opportunities while ensuring ethical practices. These collaborations include YouTube/Google, ProRata.AI, Endel, SoundLabs and BandLabs, among others.
The two companies expanded their working relationship in 2022 as well, providing Amazon Music and Twitch users with greater access to UMG content, including live streams, spatial audio, artist merchandise and other exclusive experiences.
In a miserable week for stock markets worldwide, Spotify continued to fall from its all-time high, K-pop stocks sank and one of the smallest companies on the Billboard Global Music Index posted a double-digit gain.
LiveOne was the week’s biggest gainer as the music streaming company’s shares rose 19.6% to $1.22 after it announced on Wednesday (Dec. 18) that its partnership with Tesla surpassed 350,000 subscribers. On Friday (Dec. 20), the company also said it has regained compliance with the Nasdaq exchange’s minimum bid price requirement.
Only two other music stocks posted gains this week. Sphere Entertainment Co. rose 2.5% to $38.74, bringing its year-to-date gain to 14.0%. Sphere Entertainment shares have lost 12.1% since the company announced its fiscal first-quarter results on Nov. 12. Reservoir Media also improved 2.3% on the week after jumping 4.8% to $9.26 on Friday.
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The Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) fell 3.3% to 2,168.69, lowering its year-to-date gain to 41.4%. Just three of the index’s 20 stocks finished the week in positive territory. After increasing each week from late October to early December, the BGMI lost 4.9% over two consecutive weekly losses. The latest 3.3% weekly decline is only the fourth time in 2024 that the index has dropped more than 3% in a calendar week.
Stocks’ bad week extended beyond music companies. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite dropped 1.8% to 19,572.60 and the S&P 500 declined 2.0% to 5,930.85. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 was down 2.6% to 8,084.61. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 3.6% to 2,404.15. China’s Shanghai Composite Index dipped 0.7% to 3,368.07.
Among other music companies, Live Nation had a modest decline of just 2%, dropping to $133.17 despite more analysts increasing their price targets on the stock this week. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $150 from $140 and Benchmark increased it to $160 from $144 and maintained its “buy” rating.
Spotify, the index’s most valuable company, fell for the second consecutive week. After closing above $500 on December 4, Spotify shares dropped 8.3% and closed at $460.88 on Friday, down 4.8% for the week. Overall, streaming had more losers than winners this week. Cloud Music fell 7.9% to 116.60 HKD ($14.99), marking the second-largest decline of the week. SPDB International began coverage of Cloud Music this week at a 145 HKD ($18.64) price target and “buy” rating. Elsewhere, Anghami fell 3.7% to $0.79.
Four K-pop stocks declined an average of 5.1% this week, reflecting the ongoing political uncertainty in the South Korean market. SM Entertainment was down 6.3%, JYP Entertainment fell 5.8%, HYBE dropped 4.3% and YG Entertainment sank 3.9%. Year-to-date, the four South Korean companies are down an average of 18.3%, a far deeper deficit than Universal Music Group (down 5.6% YTD) or Warner Music Group (down 12.9% YTD).
iHeartMedia, the week’s biggest loser, dropped 17.5% to $1.89. The radio company’s stock was trading at $1.00 on July 21 and rose to $2.61 on Dec. 6. In the last two weeks, however, its shares have slipped 27.6%.
For all the value derived from social media, artists and labels have yet to generate revenue directly from their activity on Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. In contrast, Weverse, a social media and e-commerce platform owned by South Korean company HYBE, changes up the typical social media dynamic by generating direct revenue from the fandom it facilitates.
This month, in an effort to generate even more revenue from superfans, Weverse introduced a digital membership tier that offers additional perks such as ad-free viewing, video downloads for offline access, high-quality streaming and language translation. The paid digital membership is separate from the fan clubs offered on the platform and Weverse’s own direct messaging feature that allows users — for a fee — to message their favorite artists.
“Digital membership, we believe, is the very first cornerstone of the future evolution” of the music business,” Weverse CEO Joon Choi tells Billboard. He adds that in the first two weeks that digital memberships were made available on the platform, 79 artists (out of 162 active artist communities on Weverse) have given fans the option of signing up for them.
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Weverse is an anomaly in social media: a platform with a small number of high-demand musicians rather than a large number of mostly unpopular artists. Launched in 2019, Weverse had 9.7 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of Sept. 30, according to HYBE’s latest financial results, down from 10.6 million a year earlier. The platform is a Swiss Army knife of a promotional vehicle. Artists not only post media content and updates but also conduct live-streams and respond — for a fee — to fans’ direct messages, while the platform additionally sells concert live streams, music and merchandise. And HYBE’s most popular artists can rack up amazing numbers on the platform: Earlier this week, BTS member Jung Kook set a Weverse record with 20.2 million real-time views of a 2.5-hour live broadcast in which he spoke to fans during a break from his military duty.
In recent months, Weverse expanded beyond K-pop artists by welcoming such Western, English-language stars as Ariana Grande and The Kid Laroi, hinting at possibilities that have record labels salivating. Goldman Sachs analysts have estimated that improved monetization of superfans — including new digital platforms, greater emphasis on vinyl buyers and higher-priced music subscription plans — could result in $3.3 billion of incremental revenue globally by 2030. Given the potential, it wasn’t surprising to hear both Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl and Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge express their interest in superfan products and experiences earlier this year. In September, UMG CFO Boyd Muir said the company was in “advanced talks” with Spotify about a high-priced superfan tier — something Chinese music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment already launched with early success.
In the early days of its membership tier, Weverse is still figuring things out. “We are pioneering this field, so we see a lot of unknowns,” says Choi. For example, he says Weverse has heard from many labels that it should bundle the digital membership tier with fan clubs already offered by artists into something like a premium membership tier (of the 162 active artist communities on Weverse, 72 currently offer fan clubs). He adds that Weverse would not make the decision independently but is discussing it with labels. “Combining them together in the future, I think it’ll be stronger than what we offer right now,” says Choi.
The rollout of the membership tier hasn’t been without controversy, though. In October, an article at The Korea Herald quoted an email from Weverse to its partner record labels in which the company said participation in the membership tier is “mandatory for all artist communities hosted on Weverse.” The article also quoted a South Korean lawmaker who called on the country’s Fair Trade Commission to investigate Weverse’s “new forms of monopolistic practices and determine whether unfair treatment is occurring against affiliated companies using the platform.” Weverse says it has not been contacted or investigated by regulators.
Choi pushes back against the assertions in The Korea Herald, saying artists on the platform are not required to offer a subscription tier, in contrast with the email quoted by the newspaper. “That’s not mandatory,” he insists. In a separate statement to Billboard, Weverse said it “aims to roll out digital membership to all communities” but that the decision “is the choice of labels and artists” and, in any event, fans will still be able to use many existing Weverse services for free. Despite Weverse playing an integral role in the marketing and promotion of K-pop artists, Choi argues it doesn’t have enough market power to make such demands: “We are not in a dominant place where we can just present the policy and dictate our policy to the artist or labels however we want.”
Weverse has also received criticism for its revenue-sharing splits with labels, with The Korea Herald additionally citing an anonymous source as saying the company proposed a “disproportionate” share of the revenue ranging from 30% to 60%, leaving the artist and label with anywhere from 40% to 70%. Choi declined to comment on the business arrangements that determine how much subscription revenue Weverse keeps but noted the platform is investing money into the subscription tier to create features valuable to artists and their fans.
The pushback encountered by Weverse foreshadows the challenges platforms and labels will face as superfan platforms proliferate and the stakeholders wrangle over how the money will be shared. Labels and publishers have spent decades trying to get more value from streaming services, and short-form video apps like TikTok necessitated new conversations about how to compensate creators for the value they bring to the platform. As Choi says, “What we’re doing is basically creating a new value by connecting the artist and super fans in the same place.” In the process, HYBE has pioneered a new model that could become standard practice for artists and labels in the music business of the future.
Last year, studio and production house OBB Media teamed up with iHeart to produce the annual Jingle Ball TV Special, the annual holiday event that airs on ABC each year as a two-hour broadcast. Featuring performances from some of the top artists in the business, the special is culled from the two live Jingle Ball holiday concerts held in New York and Los Angeles. Last year’s special, which aired Dec. 21, 2023, on ABC, landed as the No. 1 TV program among adults aged 18-49 and No. 2 overall on the night that it aired, with 9.5 million people tuning in — a 500% increase over the year prior. That marked the highest total viewers for the special since 2013.
This year, OBB and iHeart teamed up once again for Jingle Ball, which aired Wednesday (Dec. 18) on ABC and is now available to stream on Hulu. Featuring performances by the likes of Shaboozey, Benson Boone and Gracie Abrams, the special aimed to not only be a showcase for performances but an engaging presentation that went beyond just a filmed concert into “an experience and a show,” OBB Media founder/CEO Michael D. Ratner tells Billboard.
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Jingle Ball isn’t OBB’s only foray into the music world. This year alone, the OBB’s live division (the company also houses TV, film, music video, studio and branded content wings) produced a concert film for The Kid LAROI, the Hulu live special on the iHeart Music Festival, and, most recently, Sabrina Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas Netflix special, which highlighted the breakout star’s holiday fruitcake EP (which subsequently landed in the top 10 of the Billboard 200) as well as performances by Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Tyla, Shania Twain and more. And all that helps make Ratner Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Ratner discusses OBB’s work on Jingle Ball, the Carpenter special and what film and TV content can do for an artist’s career. “There’s a lot of clutter in the market,” Ratner says, “and content can be an incredibly powerful differentiator in helping artists pop, especially as the creation of content has become completely democratized.”
This week, OBB and iHeart worked to produce the annual Jingle Ball TV special, which aired Dec. 18 and is now streaming. What key decision did you make to help make that happen?
Audiences don’t just want a concert, they want an experience and a show. OBB partnered with iHeartRadio to make sure that the two-hour special is dynamic, funny, tells a story, brings you closer to the artist and, most importantly, delivers great music.
What stood out to you the most about working on this year’s event?
I really think this year’s show represented the next wave of incredible talent stepping into the spotlight — from Gracie Abrams to Tate McRae, Shaboozey, The Kid LAROI and Benson Boone, it was a really exciting group. Also, filming live in arenas is always invigorating, and it was exciting to film the L.A. show in the brand-new Intuit Dome.
You guys also worked on Jingle Ball last year, which was the No. 1 rated TV program among adults (18-49) and No. 2 overall on the night when it aired. What did you learn from working on it last year that you were able to apply to this year, and how did you do things differently?
Last year we saw social media engagement for the show spike about 10 times more than the prior year, so we leaned into that even further this year, focusing on cutting more social clips to engage individual fanbases and help build a community-watching experience. Also with the Thanksgiving break falling a week later this year, our turnaround time to deliver the special after the L.A. and New York shows was shrunk to four days — and it’s already a quick turnaround — so we were even more efficient and streamlined on the backend to navigate editorial, artist approvals and delivery.
You guys also produced Sabrina Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas special on Netflix. How did that come together, and what was that like behind the scenes?
We’re constantly trying to push the boundaries and think about innovative ways to collaborate with exceptional talent. We — and specifically Simone Spira, who is a production and development executive here — had the idea internally at OBB to do a holiday variety music special with Sabrina, as we all loved the fruitcake EP and knew she could carry her own, given her authentic love of the holidays and that she could dance, sing, act and do it all. This all proved to be true as the show is everywhere — it’s dominating the internet, Sabrina surprised fans at the NYC premiere which was awesome, she was on Colbert, and it even made the SNL Weekend Update, which was a personal favorite moment for me, as I grew up watching SNL all the time.
How important can a TV special be for an artist’s career?
Incredibly important. But it’s not just the TV special — content that brings you closer to your fans and your community is an essential companion piece to the music. Whether it’s a TV special, thoughtful social content, or anything in between, content is going to continue to be a larger piece of an artist’s strategy. There’s a lot of clutter in the market and content can be an incredibly powerful differentiator in helping artists pop, especially as the creation of content has become completely democratized.
How important is music to what OBB Media does?
OBB is a storytelling company and we love making projects that are culturally relevant. Musicians have always been and continue to be key tastemakers and culture creators, so music is a key fixture in everything we do.
What’s next for you guys?
We have a VR special coming out on Meta Quest on Dec. 27 starring Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, which we filmed at the Forum during the SWEAT Tour. We love working on music projects in all of these different formats and mediums, and I think it’s a testament to how music is the throughline no matter how technology, viewing patterns and audience behaviors evolve. We’re also filming more of our Billions Club series with Spotify, and we’re excited for some major episodes with incredible artists that are coming soon. Looking ahead to 2025, we have some really big stuff coming that we can’t talk about quite yet, but stay tuned.
Daddy Yankee and his estranged wife Mireddys González reached a partial agreement in their first court hearing on Friday (Dec. 20) over his allegations that she withdrew $100 million in funds from two of his companies without authorization. Following private negotiations, both parties agreed that the artist born Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez will regain the […]
A criminal investigation has been launched into suspected fraud at U.K. collecting society PPL after the organization discovered “suspicious activity” on a small number of member accounts.
PPL said one staff member had been dismissed following an internal investigation it carried out over several months earlier this year. The alleged crime is now being investigated by The Metropolitan Police, the CMO said in a short statement.
“We recently became aware of suspicious activity on a small number of member accounts. We immediately conducted an internal investigation, and one employee was dismissed,” said a spokesperson Thursday (Dec.19). The organization said it was “working with the limited number of impacted members to rectify accounts.”
PPL is the second largest of the United Kingdom’s two main collecting societies and licenses recorded music on behalf of labels and artists to U.K. radio and television broadcasters, as well as its use in bars, nightclubs, shops and offices.
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Last year, the 90-year-old organization — which has more than 110 neighboring rights agreements in place with international CMOs, including SoundExchange and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) in the United States — collected revenues of £285 million ($356 million), its highest ever annual total. In 2023, PPL paid out £247 million ($309 million) to almost 165,000 performers and recording rights holders.
Record industry sources tell Billboard that the suspected embezzlement is believed to have involved an individual or individuals posing as recording artists who were not registered as PPL members and then fraudulently claiming royalties on their behalf.
Billboard understands that PPL discovered the scheme when the real artists tried to register as members earlier this year. Sources say that the fraudulent royalty claims are believed to have taken place over a number of years, possibly as far back as 2016, with the fraudulent transactions believed to total around £500,000 ($625,000).
PPL said it was unable to comment on the case while a criminal investigation is underway and declined to answer questions on when it discovered the suspicious activity, the timeframe of the alleged offense or whether the impacted member accounts relate to U.K. artist members or overseas partner CMOs. The Metropolitan Police has been approached by Billboard for details.
The criminal investigation into suspected embezzlement at PPL comes as the music business battles on multiple fronts against fraudulent activity and rampant copyright infringement on a global scale.
In November, Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings, seeking $500 million in damages (Believe refutes the claims). One month earlier, TikTok cited issues with “fraud” as its reason for walking away from renewing its license with Merlin, a digital licensing coalition representing thousands of indie labels and distributors.
There have also been several high-profile cases against individuals accused of defrauding streaming platforms, rights holders and collection societies in recent years.
In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists.
More recently, a North Carolina musician was indicted by federal prosecutors in September in the first ever federal streaming fraud case. Prosecutors allege Michael Smith used two distributors to upload “hundreds of thousands” of AI-generated tracks, and then used bots to stream them, earning him more than $10 million since 2017.
To try and curb the rise in fraudulent activity the music business has been ramping up its efforts to stop money being illegally siphoned out of the royalty pool.
Last year, a coalition of digital music companies, including distributors including TuneCore, Distrokid and CD Baby, as well as streaming platforms Spotify and Amazon Music, launched the “Music Fights Fraud” task force. The past 12 months have additionally seen Spotify and Deezer change their royalty systems to include financial penalties for music distributors and labels associated with fraudulent activity.
Spotify is firing back at Drake’s accusations that the streamer helped Universal Music Group artificially boost Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” calling the allegations “false” and blasting the rapper’s legal action as a “subversion of the normal judicial process.”
The new filing is the first response to a petition filed last month in which Drake accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.
In a motion filed Friday in Manhattan court, the streaming giant says it has found zero evidence to support the claims of a bot attack, and flatly denies that it struck any deal with UMG to support Lamar’s song.
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“The predicate of Petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false,” the company’s lawyers write. “Spotify and UMG have never had any such arrangement.”
Beyond denying the allegations, the filing repeatedly criticizes Drake for going to court in the first place — calling his claims of a conspiracy “far-fetched” and “speculative,” and questioning why Spotify (a “stranger” to the “long-running fued” between Drake, Kendrick and UMG) is even involved.
Spotify also criticized Drake for the way in which he brought his claims to court — not as a full-fledged lawsuit, but as an unusual “pre-action” petition aimed at demanding information. The company accused Drake of using that “extraordinary” procedure because his allegations are too flimsy to pass muster in an actual lawsuit and would have been quickly dismissed.
“What petitioner is seeking to do here … is to bypass the normal pleading requirements … and obtain by way of pre-action discovery that which it would only be entitled to seek were it to survive a motion to dismiss,” Spotify’s lawyers write. “This subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected.”
A spokesperson for Drake and his legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on Spotify’s filings.
Drake went to court last month, accusing UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal “RICO” statute often used against organized crime. He accused Spotify of participating in the scheme by charging reduced licensing fees in exchange for recommending the song to users. A day later, he filed a similar action in Texas, suggesting that UMG had legally defamed him by releasing a song that “falsely” accused him of being a “sex offender.”
The legal actions represent a remarkable twist in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. That a rapper would take such a dispute to court seemed almost unthinkable at the time, and Drake has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world for doing so.
The actions also represent a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
UMG has not yet filed a responded to the litigation in court. But in a statement issued at the time, the music giant called Drake’s allegations “offensive and untrue”: “No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
In Friday’s filing, Spotify echoed that criticism — arguing that civil RICO cases are difficult to prove even with ample evidence, and that Drake hardly has any: “The Petition asserts no specific facts of any kind in support of these alleged RICO and deceptive practices violations,” the company wrote. “Instead, it relies exclusively on speculation … or the claims of anonymous individuals on the internet.”
Spotify’s attorneys seemed particularly focused on disputing the idea that swarms of bots had been able to flood the platforms to fraudulently boost Lamar’s track — a hot-button issue in the modern music industry. In an affidavit attached to Friday’s filing, Spotify’s vp of music offered sworn testimony that the company “invests heavily” in efforts to “mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
“When we identify attempted stream manipulation, we take action that may include removing streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty fees,” David Kaefer wrote in the filing. “Confirmed and suspected artificial streams are also removed from our chart calculations. This helps us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists.”