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In the 1970s, Louis Messina visited the Houston Astrodome to check out the events his new business partner, Allen J. Becker, was putting on. “He’s doing boat shows and having Evel Knievel jump over 150 cars and thrill shows and demolition derbies,” Messina recalls. “I went, ‘Holy crap, there are 60,000 people here!’ A guy jumped from the top of the Astrodome into the air bag.”
Becker, 90, who died Monday (Dec. 12) at his Houston home, first approached Messina, then a New Orleans rock promoter, in 1975 to form a concert-promotion partnership. Their company, PACE Concerts, went on to dominate Texas and much of the South for more than 20 years, booking stars from The Who to Bruce Springsteen to Rush.
“Allen had an old saying: ‘I’d rather lose money with you than you make a dime without me’ — meaning that if you had a good idea and you truly believed in it, he’ll be there with you,” says Messina, today an Austin-based promoter who has represented acts from George Strait to Taylor Swift. “He saw something in me that no one else in my whole life saw in me.”
Becker had been a life insurance agent in 1965 when a banker friend suggested they promote a consumer boat show at the new Astrodome. The show was a success and led to years of monster-truck rallies and tractor pulls. In 1975, the New Orleans Superdome approached Becker about producing entertainment events for acts such as Bob Hope and The Temptations, which is where he met Messina. A Glenn Miller fan, Becker recognized he had a blind spot in rock acts and reached out to Messina to partner on shows throughout the South.
It was Messina who suggested moving to Houston to create the partnership that became PACE Concerts: “We’ll make a go of it and we’ll see what happens,” he told Becker.
Like other promoters in the U.S., Becker and his son, Brian, soon recognized the money in the concert business wasn’t in ticket sales but in beer, hot dogs and popcorn. They steered PACE into building amphitheaters for $8 million to $10 million apiece — “They were affordable,” Messina says — in Nashville, Atlanta and elsewhere. “The concert promoters who have really prospered have been the ones that stepped out and got involved in facilities,” Becker told Billboard in 1998, about controlling sheds and their revenue streams. “You need those other revenue streams.”
“That created 10, 12, 13 amphitheaters,” says Gary Becker, Allen’s son, a former top PACE exec who was 16 when his father employed him to shuttle bus and truck drivers to their hotels and purchase batteries and guitar strings for touring artists. “You go to an Elton John and book him 13 times around those amphitheaters and it was a win for everybody, including the bands.”
In 1998, PACE was on track to gross nearly $250 million in revenue when Robert Sillerman‘s company SFX bought it for $130 million. Two years later, Silllerman then sold SFX to radio giant Clear Channel Entertainment for $3.3 billion in stock — Brian Becker, Allen’s son, served as CEO of that company for the next five years. “It was definitely emotional,” Gary Becker recalls. “It was time for my dad. Things can’t stay the same. It gets too big, I guess.”
Born in Houston, Becker was the son of a shoe salesman and a homemaker. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a marketing degree. He served in the Air Force, then started his career in 1957 with Kansas City Life Insurance Company. When he began working in entertainment, he told Texas Monthly in 1996, it was a “real street business.”
After the SFX sale, Becker continued to be active in that business. He oversaw the ACE Theatrical Group, whose holdings included the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn and the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts in New Orleans, before selling them in 2018.
“He liked to compete, and he liked to win, but he liked to do it in the best way possible,” Gary Becker recalls. “You don’t need to go for the jugular. You don’t need to press real hard. You want the people you do business with to know you are honest and fair.” In 1998, Allen Becker told Billboard: “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. We have a reputation in the marketplace, and people trust us. It has been a hell of a career.”
Becker’s survivors include his sons, Brian and Gary; daughter, Sunni Markowitz; 11 grandchildren; and one great grandchild. His wife of 54 years, Shirley, died in 2008.
South Korean investment and management firm Beyond Music made its first acquisition of a North American music catalog by purchasing the rights to the music of Greg Wells, a Grammy-winning Canadian songwriter-producer whose credits includes music recorded by Adele, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Katy Perry and Quincy Jones.
Wells’ career spans genres and decades. As a songwriter, Wells has credits on Aerosmith’s Nine Lives, Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love, Adele’s 21 and John Legend’s Bigger Love. His production credits include The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Twenty One Pilots’ Vessel and the In The Heights soundtrack. The rights vary by title and include publishing rights, producing income rights, and master performance rights, according to a company spokesperson.
With the Wells acquisition, Beyond Music’s assets under management are 300 billion won ($230 million). Before this deal, Beyond Music – which claims to be “largest music IP management company in Asia” – spent more than $200 million on acquisitions in Asia, including the catalogs of FNC Investment, KNC Music and Interpark, to build a catalog of more than 26,000 songs. The company received funding from institutional investors including KB Securities, Base Investment, Maven Growth Partners and Dreamus Company.
The Wells acquisition was made by a newly established U.S.-based subsidiary, Beyond Music US, because domestic transactions are simpler for tax and legal purposes, and the company wants to pursue additional international opportunities in the future, according to the spokesperson. That said, Wells’ catalog covers many Western artists who are also popular in South Korea and throughout Asia. This company believes this acquisition is a “unique opportunity” and “a stepping stone for Beyond to become a global music rights management company,” the spokesperson added.
“Now is the time to become a global music rights management company by securing not only Asian, but also international music rights,” Beyond Music CEO Jangwon Lee said in a statement. Jangwon is also the CEO of Content Technologies and CT Investments, which debuted a K-pop focused exchange-traded fund, using the ticker KPOP, on the NYSE Arca Exchange in September. Beyond Music is a subsidiary of Contents Technology.
In a statement, Wells called it “an honor to be the first major music catalog acquisition for Beyond outside the Korean market. I am impressed with their commitment to creative freedom as well as maximizing the impact of my songs. I feel my work is in good hands with them.”
Wells won a Grammy in 2019 for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media for his production and engineering work on The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (he spoke with Billboard’s Pop Shop podcast about the soundtrack in 2018). He also received Grammy nominations for his work on In the Heights, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.
SoundCloud Holdings GmbH and its subsidiaries reported revenue in 2021 of 230.7 million euros ($273 million at the average exchange rate in 2021 of 1.18308), up 19% from the prior year, according to audited financial statements published by the privately held company in Germany on Tuesday (Dec. 13).
SoundCloud, which originally gained popularity for its embeddable streaming widget, has a unique business model that mixes tools for music creators and listening for fans. Fan revenue — from advertising and subscriptions — improved 16.6% to 143.3 million euros ($170 million), or 62.2% of total revenue, down from 63.5% in 2020. Revenue from subscribers grew 20% year over year and exceeded internal expectations, according to the financial statements. Advertising revenue was in line with expectations, with 12% year-over-year growth.
Revenues from creator tools grew 23.7% to 87.3 million euros ($103 million) and increased to 37.8% of total revenue, up from 36.5% in 2020. The company attributed the improvement to the number of artists that chose to self-release music through the platform to take advantage of organic growth at major DSPs such as Spotify, as well as improving monetization of platforms such as Meta, TikTok and Twitch.
Founded in 2007, SoundCloud originally gained popularity through its ubiquitous, embeddable music player. It eventually launched a subscription streaming service, SoundCloud Go, in 2016, but did not rank in the top eight music subscriptions in the second quarter of 2022, according to figures released on Dec. 7 by MIDiA Research. Deezer was the eighth-largest subscription service with 9.5 million subscribers and a 1.5% global share. Spotify had the largest share with 30.5%, equal to 187.8 million subscribers. SoundCloud’s financial statements did not reveal the number of subscribers to its streaming service.
Unlike its peers, though, SoundCloud has always been a unique destination for artists to connect with listeners. The platform offers SoundCloud Next Pro, a service that allows artists to upload tracks to the platform and distribute them to other streaming services as well as pitch music to SiriusXM, which owns a minority stake in SoundCloud following a $75 million investment in 2020. A 2019 acquisition of Repost Network, an artist rights management and distribution platform, provides SoundCloud with a subscription product that offers creative services such as promotion and marketing.
In January 2022, SoundCloud added a third business segment, called roster, to connect fans and artists. Roster provides support services for emerging and developing artists. Its launch coincided with the announcement of a joint venture with artist management firm Solid Foundation Management to “identify, invest in, and foster the careers of artists featured.”
Gross profit margin — defined as gross profit as a percent of revenue — improved 12% to 35.4% on the strength of growth in subscriptions. Content costs — mainly royalties paid to record labels, publishers and independent artists — totaled 120.8 million euros ($143 million), up 14.1% from 105.9 million euros ($125 million) in 2020. As a percent of fan revenue, content costs declined to 84.2% from 86.1% in the prior year.
Despite the improved gross margin, operating loss deepened to 21.1 million euros (-$25 million) from 15.4 million euros (-$18 million) in 2020. SoundCloud increased its marketing spending 69.7% and made “significant investments” in headcount to help “propel the company into its next phase of growth.” Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created uncertainties and disrupted supply chains, it has had a limited impact on SoundCloud’s financials, as direct business with partners in Russia accounted for only 0.5% of its annual revenues.
Since the end of the period covered by these financial statements, SoundCloud announced in August its plans to lay off 20% of its workforce due to “a significant company transformation and the challenging and economic and financial environment,” a spokesperson told Billboard at the time. The company had an average of 451 employees in 2021, up from 392 in 2020, with growth spread across its technology, business and operations segments.
SoundCloud expects slower growth in 2022 due to inflation and other macroeconomic trends that could stifle consumer spending levels. It expects gross profit “to grow slightly” with a similar or higher gross margin as in 2021. Free cash flow from operations is expected to be “slightly negative” in 2022.
It also believes it has opportunities to find acquisition targets. In April, it acquired Musiio, an artificial intelligence and machine learning company, for approximately $7 million cash and an undisclosed amount of equity, according to the financial release. SoundCloud believes Musiio allows it to “further leverage its vast data to identify what’s next in music trends and talent” and create playlisting tools for the music industry.
As 2022 comes to a close, the music business can look back on another hectic year: turnover at the top levels of several big companies; record-breaking successes in several sectors of the industry; and some major headlines coming from sometimes unexpected places, all of which captured the attention of the music business over the past nearly 12 months. Here are 10 big stories and trends that helped define the year in the industry.
The Executive Turntable
The end of the year is always time for turnover, and the final stretch of 2022 has seen more of that than usual. The biggest story of all, however, is a change atop the Warner Music Group, with Stephen Cooper exiting after a successful 11-year run that saw the major double its revenue and boost its market share while taking the company public once again. He’ll be replaced by YouTube’s Robert Kyncl in February, in a move that has been widely seen as a nod toward the tech-based present and future of the music biz, particularly at WMG. Though changes atop the major groups are relatively rare, that was far from the only transition this year: Def Jam, Island and Capitol all welcomed new chairmen/CEOs, with Tunji Balogun, the duo of Justin Eshak and Imran Majid and Michelle Jubelirer taking over the trio of UMG companies, respectively. John Esposito also is transitioning into a new chairman emeritus role at Warner Music Nashville, handing the day-to-day reins to his longtime heirs apparent Ben Kline and Cris Lacy, who will take over in January. Warner also integrated 300 Entertainment into the 300 Elektra Entertainment Group, with Kevin Liles in charge, then placed it under the umbrella of the newly-formed Atlantic Music Group, with Julie Greenwald at the helm. And just recently, Motown chairman/CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam surprised many in the industry by announcing her intention to step down, at a time when the label is in its best shape in years, with a successor yet to be named. The C-Suites have been spinning much more than usual this year.
The Ticketmaster-Taylor Swift Meltdown
Cross Taylor Swift, and her fans, at your peril. The biggest artist in the world, whose latest album Midnights easily cleared the biggest streaming week globally of 2022, had set a presale for her first tour in five years, with tickets slated to become available on Nov. 15 through Ticketmaster. But the company badly, and somewhat inexplicably, misjudged the level of demand that existed for Swift’s tour. Long wait times, astronomical prices and service outages tanked the pre-sale, with billions of bots, according to the company, flooding the site and resulting in 3.5 billion requests to access it — four times the previous high water mark. That resulted in millions of frustrated, ticket-less fans. Which would have been bad enough, if it didn’t spark a firestorm that has yet to abate and is showing no signs of doing so. (As Billboard’s Glenn Peoples wrote, “Ticketmaster is one of the few non-partisan issues in America in 2022.”) There is now a Justice Department investigation into whether Live Nation has abused its market share in the live business (which was said to pre-date the Taylor tour, though it came to light in the wake of the problem) and a Senate antitrust panel hearing on the docket, as well as several state-level probes, and a lawsuit from more than two dozen fans accusing the company of fraud and “anticompetitive conduct.” It’s unclear if changes are on the horizon, but it has proven a headache of massive proportions.
Top-Level Touring Success
The headlines have never been rosier: Live Nation and Ticketmaster reported record-breaking quarters. Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour became the first ever to average a $10 million gross per show. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour closed in on the record for highest-grossing tour of all time. In short, it was a great year to be in the live music business — if you’re one of the biggest artists or promoters in the world. For a lot of others, the outlook was much less rosy: a “nightmare” of supply chain issues, COVID-related cancellations and postponements, rising costs and routing difficulties all combined to make it much more difficult for a lot of artists to get back out on the road this year. It is, and will continue to be, a process to get back to normal.
Synchs On Fire
A well-placed synch has always been a big revenue driver, particularly for legacy acts, but this past year the combination of prestige television and the TikTok algorithm combined to super-charge some of the biggest synchs to not just big bucks, but new chart highs, too. This past year, the biggest story on this front was Kate Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill,” which received a high-profile synch in Stranger Things and simply took off, surging into the top five of the Hot 100, becoming the oldest song to reach No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart and returning to the top 10 of the Alternative Airplay chart after a record 28-year absence, while doubling its label revenue in the first two weeks after the series aired. And that wasn’t even the only Stranger Things-related synch to blow up: Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” ballooned 400% in streams in the days after its synch in the season finale. Songs featured in Euphoria, The Batman and Thor exploded in value, while the RIAA’s midyear report saw synch revenue growing faster than ever. Most recently, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” with a placement in Netflix’s Wednesday, saw its revenue grow more than 8,000% in a single week.
Ebbs and Flows of Catalog Market
The red-hot catalog market has been the talk of the business for almost half a decade at this point, but over the past year things started to change in some unexpected ways due to rising interest rates, the dwindling number of truly elite catalogs available and the faltering of some of the sector’s most prominent players. And still there were big wins, including Sting’s deal with UMPG that Billboard estimated could be worth well north of $300 million, Stephen Stills’ sale of a controlling interest in over 1,000 songs to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group and UMG’s purchase of Frank Zappa’s catalog in the region of $30 million. Meanwhile, Brookfield dropped $2 billion into Primary Wave, which promptly acquired the catalogs of Joey Ramone ($10 million) and Huey Lewis & the News ($20 million). Concord swung a package deal for the Genesis catalog as well as those of its individual members for somewhere around $350 million, and new players like Litmus Music came into the market with $500 million to spread around (some of which just went towards Keith Urban’s master recordings). So despite a “challenging environment” and an end to the catalog “feeding frenzy,” there’s still a lot of juice left in those old songs (and a big Pink Floyd-sized catalog potentially in the offing).
The Rush Toward Services
While one sector of the business is running with arms wide open toward catalog ownership, another sector is running just as firmly in the opposite direction: toward services, or partnering with artists and labels to provide a backbone of support to help them achieve their goals without giving up ownership through distribution, marketing, publicity, promotions, royalty claiming and other services. The independent distribution space has generally been a viable business model for decades, but the rush into services ramped up in the past year. Companies like SoundCloud, TikTok, Tencent and Downtown embraced the shift with realigned business models, joining relatively new entrants to the space like UnitedMasters, Stem and Utopia. Many of the major labels (Interscope, Republic, 300) also launched their own distro subsidiaries in an attempt to grow their market share in an increasingly indie world. For some, however, the shift was less of a slam dunk than they may have envisioned, with a tough business model that relies on scale colliding with the increasingly-murky corners of the digital music industry –resulting in fraud, financial challenges and lukewarm responses from the market.
The Onset of Crypto Winter
Early in the year, Web3 projects exploded in what seemed like every sector of the music business, including all three major labels along with companies like Spotify, Coachella, Ticketmaster, Gibson, the Grammys and Death Row Records — not to mention artists like Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, Pharrell and Keith Richards. Universal launched an NFT band, Warner partnered with a slew of web3 companies, Snoop promised to buy Death Row and make it into an NFT record label; the possibilities seemed endless. But the seas proved to be much choppier than many had expected, and a series of selloffs and financial failures (as well as recession and inflation fears) brought in what many called the Crypto Winter, with sales and enthusiasm beginning to ebb as the year went on. By the time the second-biggest crypto exchange, FTX, spectacularly failed in November, there had been a 70%-80% cool-off in the market, to the point where the once-ubiquitous format seemed ready for another hibernation while the industry tries to figure out how best to take advantage of the new-ish technology. Expect the ebbs and flows to continue until we’re all in an acronym haze.
BTS Break Rattles Biz — And HYBE Stock
By just about any metric, BTS has been one of the biggest and most formidable acts of any genre in the past several years, racking up No. 1 hits, big-name collaborations, massive box office grosses and accounting for nearly one-third of the entire K-pop market in the U.S. since 2021, according to Luminate. So the group’s decision to take some time off for solo projects was a blow to the group’s management company, label and agency HYBE, which saw its stock, already down 45% for the year at that point, sink 27% in the week after the announcement. (Shares recovered a bit after closing at 145,000 won following the announcement, hitting a low of 107,000 on Oct. 13 and rebounding to 157,000 as of Dec. 12.) With the group members facing the prospect of mandatory service in the South Korean military, HYBE is facing an uncertain outlook for 2023, despite third-quarter growth and the possibility of positive returns from BTS members’ solo projects. For K-pop fans, however, there is room for other companies to step in: JYP Entertainment has had chart success with TWICE and Stray Kids multiple times this year, SM Entertainment’s BLACKPINK scored a No. 1 album in October and Big Hit Entertainment has generated success with Tomorrow X Together. While there’s plenty of opportunity in the K-pop market, the road ahead is uncertain for HYBE, a company that not too long again was a slam dunk.
Despite Complications, the Business is Thriving
It’s been a complicated year for the business overall, as the return from COVID has been trickier than expected, breaking new artists has become harder than ever and overarching financial issues like inflation and the possibility of a recession have cooled what had been a white-hot market. But despite those challenges, the music business has been growing on almost all fronts for another year. The touring business has already been covered here, but the U.S. recorded music business also saw on-demand audio streams surpass 1 trillion for the first time ever — representing a 611% increase from 2015, according to Luminate. Despite supply chain issues that continue to bedevil labels and manufacturers, vinyl sales passed $1 billion in revenue for the first time since the mid-1980s. At the midyear mark, they were up more than 22% — well before Taylor Swift’s Midnights set the record for largest vinyl sales week since Luminate began tracking data in 1991. Overall consumption is up another 9.2% year over year so far in 2022, with no signs of slowing down and with record companies increasing their guidance for investors in 2023. Amid cutbacks and hiring freezes in tech and media, the music business stil appears to be on strong footing.
It’s Still a TikTok World
Love it, hate it, rue its influence or spend hours scrolling it, the industry was as obsessed with TikTok in 2022 as it’s ever been, and the ByteDance-owned social streaming behemoth has leaned further than ever into its connections to the music biz — for better or worse, depending on whom you ask. The service has been behind the massive success of hits both old (Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” Frank Ocean’s “Lost”) and new (Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” Bebe Rexha and David Guetta’s “I’m Good”) while helping break new artists like Em Beihold and Cafuné. But the labels’ love affair with TikTok has, over the past year, cooled down, as breaking a hit has become more complicated and the marketing pluses that it offered have fizzled. A distribution play from the platform called SoundOn was met with a lukewarm response, while a ByteDance streaming service, Resso, has rolled out in select markets, with rumors that it could come to the U.S. soon — if TikTok can ease the concerns of U.S. officials. And that comes as the frustration over low payouts and song leaks have some executives warning of a repeat of the early days of MTV and YouTube, when music content was regularly used to promote a fledgling service without commensurate compensation. Still, the biggest song on the platform in 2022 — a nine-year-old track from Swedish sad boy Yung Lean — grew its stream count by over 1,000%, and TikTok is still the single biggest proving ground for singles in the current digital climate. What to make of TikTok in 2022? How about…everything?
BERLIN — Austrian collecting society AKM, which manages and licenses rights for songwriters and publishers, has joined ICE Core for online licensing. That means ICE, the online licensing hub created by collecting societies in Germany (GEMA), the U.K. (PRS for Music) and Sweden (STIM), will now represent and collect for AKM compositions for online services in much of the world, excluding the U.S. and some Asian markets. The deal includes AKM mechanical rights subsidiary, Austro Mechana.
“The ICE Core reflects the best licensing solution for online music services, with the best value, for our members,” said AKM CEO Gernot Graninger in a statement. “In these times more than ever, societies need to find the right services at the right value.”
ICE was created in response to a change in European Union regulation that allows the societies that take in money for public performing rights in their local territories to compete in the online world. Inevitably, the larger societies, including France’s SACEM and the partnership behind ICE have emerged to dominate that business, since they can make the investments needed to manage the vast amounts of data generated by streaming services. Gradually, this model is spreading to other territories.
AKM had been managing its rights under a partnership with GEMA.
ICE provides several services, including licensing and online processing, and it operates a copyright database. But the core of its operation is licensing – which is why it goes by the name ICE Core. In addition to its founding partner societies, ICE also represents IMRO, the Irish collecting society; SABAM, the Belgian society, and BMI. Concord Music Publishing, Songtrust and peermusic, all based in the U.S., are also direct members.
In November, ICE Core distributed €102 million, breaking its own record for monthly distribution.
“We’re very happy to welcome AKM into the Core,” said ICE chief commercial officer Ben McEwen in a statement. “The collaboration to make this happen reflects all parties working together in the interests of rightsholders, the very DNA of everyone who is part of the ICE hub.”
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online.
If the 2010s were the decade that established streaming as the de facto way that most people enjoy music, the 2020s will be the decade the platforms’ royalty rates took a leap forward.
For much of streaming services’ existence, the industry has tried to gently balance the need to foster growth with the need to generate something close to subsistence-level income for creators and rights holders. If rights holders squeeze too tight, they could strangle the life out of the companies they depend on to carry them in a post-CD, post-download world. Too loose a grasp on streaming platforms would mean the spoils of technological disruption would remain with tech companies.
The process requires patience. With social media apps, licensing deals start small, with lump-sum payments rather than percent-of-revenue royalties while the fledgling platform builds a sustainable business model. Because licensing deals are renewed every three years, rights owners endure long waits to secure better terms that will result in more royalties. It will take a few cycles for a platform to generate meaningful royalty income for its label partners.
This year, there were numerous developments that point to better royalty rates in 2023 and beyond. They have different degrees of certainty, however. Higher subscription prices are sure to move the needle and result in higher payouts to artists and labels. Whether artists and labels will finally get paid for terrestrial radio play in 2023 is less certain, although the mood in Washington D.C. seems favorable. And with the authors of Chokepoint Capitalism, Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin, currently making the media rounds, and the Federal Trade Commission cracking down on companies that take advantage of gig workers, the plight of creators in today’s digital economy is getting mainstream attention (my colleague Rob Levine brought attention to tech companies’ value destruction in his book, Free Ride, a decade ago).
Congressional Bill to Get Artists & Labels Paid for Radio Airplay Clears Critical House Vote
12/09/2022
Music subscription price increases
Artists have wanted a raise from streaming services for years. Part of the problem is how royalties are calculated — a pool of money is split according to the number of times the tracks were played. That puts album-oriented artists at a mathematical disadvantage to mainstream artists in popular genres like pop and hip-hop. Another common complaint is that streaming services have barely raised their subscription prices for more than a decade. With prices flat, the best way to improve streaming royalties is to attract more subscribers. Keeping subscription fees relatively affordable, especially when Netflix and other video streaming services routinely hiked their prices, ensured customer acquisition would continue. Affordable family plans, which cover up to six people for 50% more than an individual plan, helped attract customers and reduced churn — but didn’t help artist payouts. Finally, this year Amazon, Deezer, YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music) and Apple Music announced broad price increases to individual and family plans. Spotify has hinted it will follow with price hikes of its own in 2023. The financial impact could be massive: A modest increase of $1 per month for individual plans and $2 per month for family plans in mature markets — less in developing markets with lower prices — would easily generate many hundreds of millions of incremental subscription royalties, which totaled $12.3 billion in 2021, according to the IFPI.
A TikTok subscription service
TikTok doesn’t pay much in royalties, but it plays an outsized role in cultural trends — the app has over 1 billion active users and is especially popular with Gen Z consumers. That has changed the balance of power in music streaming. “The major streaming platforms are reacting to culture now rather than driving it,” Tatiana Cirisano, music industry analyst and consultant for MIDiA Research, recently told Billboard. In that light, news that TikTok is working to expand its Resso subscription service (it’s available only in Indonesia, Brazil and India) is a big deal. Currently, TikTok creates impressions and demand for music that has downstream effects on other platforms — see a TikTok video, listen to the entire track at Spotify, YouTube Music or Apple Music. But if TikTok owned both the short-form video platform and the subscription platform, it could better convert that initial interest into downstream listening while eroding the influence of the Spotifys and Apple Musics of the world. More importantly, a TikTok subscription service would help change TikTok’s status as a royalty underperformer.
Subscription streaming rates
Publishers and songwriters will get a slight raise in subscription streaming royalty rates over the next five years due to a settlement reached in August by the National Music Publishers’ Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Digital Media Association. The headline royalty rate will go from 15.1% of revenue in 2023 to 15.35% in 2027. That’s not a huge gain, but it’s an improvement. The settlement could help in other ways, too. Streaming services were able to get favorable terms for bundles and free trials that allow them to get more subscribers into the ecosystem. That would help songwriters and publishers by increasing the number of subscribers — the major driver in streaming royalty growth — as they enjoy modest annual increases in royalty rates.
Inflation adjustments to noninteractive streaming rates
Each year, the rate paid by noninteractive streaming platforms in the U.S. is adjusted to account for inflation over the previous year. In 2023, artists and labels will get a raise due to inflation rates that reached a 40-year high in 2022. (The rates increased 7.1% for subscription plays and 9.1% for ad-supported plays.) In years past, noninteractive streaming services such as Pandora were a more significant part of artists’ and labels’ incomes. That gave extra weight to the decisions of the Copyright Royalty Board and changes in the per-play streaming rates. Now, on-demand services like Spotify and YouTube dominate the streaming landscape and noninteractive webcasting has diminished in value and relevance. Still, Pandora’s ad-supported listening hours fell only 5% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 — to 2.75 billion — and it paid out $921 million in royalties in the first nine months of the year. Above all, a raise is a raise.
Terrestrial radio royalties
Legislation that would pay artists and labels for airplay on U.S. terrestrial radio was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday (Dec. 7). With only a month left in the current Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he’s confident the bill could make it through the next Congress (that could be 2023 or 2024). While this isn’t the first legislation to address the lack of a performance right, the AMFA arrives at a time when lawmakers — in D.C. and elsewhere — have taken an interest in creators’ ability to make a living in the streaming age. Outgoing House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler has shown concern about a “race to the bottom” in streaming royalties, for example, and U.K. lawmakers examined the equitableness of streaming royalties paid to artists in that market. Passage of an AMFA-like law, or a settlement with radio broadcasters, would be a huge coup for artists and labels who get only promotion from radio airplay while radio stations are obligated to pay songwriters and publishers. In fact, U.S. radio royalties would be two — not one — new stacks of money. That’s because the lack of a performance right for broadcast radio in the U.S. means European countries withhold royalty payments from American artists for performances on their soil, SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe explained in a recent Billboard op-ed.
Music companies’ quarterly results in October and November were a bright spot amid a mostly bleak earnings season. High inflation, rising interest rates and the chance of a recession presented a triple-whammy to most sectors — particularly tech and retail — but in the music industry, those macroeconomic threats weren’t enough to dampen consumer demand and investors’ confidence.
“While the broader economy is facing challenges, the music industry as a whole remains healthy,” says Golnar Khosrowshahi, founder and CEO of Reservoir Media, which raised its full-fiscal-year forecast by 11% for both revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).
So what worked in music companies’ favor? In short, more people are going to concerts and buying streaming subscriptions, and revenues from those sectors helped bolster quarterly results for nearly every publicly listed music company.
Diversifiction = Fortification
The major labels, which have a piece of the market in nearly every segment of the music industry, all reported quarterly revenue gains over the third quarter last year, ranging from 16% at Warner Music Group to 6% at Sony Music Entertainment. On Universal Music Group’s third-quarter call, chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge attributed the company’s 13.3% third-quarter revenue gains to UMG’s diversification strategy. While ad-supported streaming revenue slowed significantly, only growing 5.2% (from last year’s 15.6% growth), licensing and other revenues rose by 30% due to an $84.2 million increase in touring revenue from Latin American, European and Asian markets where UMG is in that business. Merchandising and other revenue related to those tours grew by over 100% to almost $199 million. “We are better positioned to navigate the inevitable ebbs and flows of revenue of any particular business, as well as to weather any macroeconomic headwinds,” said Grainge.
Live’s Alive Again
Live Nation Entertainment had its biggest summer concert season ever, reporting that more than 44 million fans attended 11,000 events in the third quarter, as attendance for stadium shows tripled to nearly 9 million. Companywide, Live Nation reported $6.2 billion in quarterly revenue, up nearly 67% from the last-comparable quarter, which for it was the third quarter of 2019.
Streaming’s Still Strong
On a call with investors, an analyst asked Sony deputy president/CFO Hiroki Totoki what risks Sony Music Entertainment faces. His reply: “Streaming is very successful, and we don’t really have that much of a concern.” Spotify’s third-quarter results confirm that. Revenue rose 12% to roughly $3.2 billion at a constant currency, on a 13% uptick in subscription revenue from more than 195 million subscribers — 1 million more than the company targeted.
French streaming company Deezer also reported double-digit revenue growth, although it attributed the increase in part to a one-euro price hike the company instituted in France earlier this year. Deezer’s revenues rose nearly 14% to $112.5 million at the Sept. 30, 2022, exchange rate.
Price hikes, coming at a time consumers’ costs are rising across the spectrum, are the final thing working for music industry companies. After Apple said it would raise its standard individual streaming plan price by $1 to $10.99 in the U.S. and Spotify signaled it was also considering a price increase, major labels and other streaming company executives all said they expect trickle-down benefits.
It’s also worth noting that although Totoki said on the call that Sony is “taking steps to prepare for further deterioration… in each of our businesses,” the company raised its revenue and operating income targets for the full fiscal year by $9.8 billion and $1.9 billion, respectively (at Sony’s assumed exchange rate for the second half of the fiscal year).
Irving Azoff‘s latest signing to his Iconic Artists Group is “The King of Cool,” Dean Martin.
On Wednesday (Dec. 7) Iconic Artists Group announced a new agreement with The Dean Martin Family Trust to “manage, develop and expand” the legendary singer and actor’s legacy to new generations. The deal encompasses Dean Martin‘s name, image and likeness along with a range of rights from his career, including the trust’s interest in his self-titled variety shows and specials, the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast series, feature films and sound recordings from his time with Capitol and Reprise Records.
Over the course of his career, Martin, who died in 1995, sold over 50 million albums worldwide and appeared in 85 films and numerous TV shows, according to Iconic Artists Group’s press release. His hit songs include “That’s Amore,” “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” “Volare,” “You’re Nobody till Somebody Loves You” and “Everybody Loves Somebody.”
Martin rose to fame alongside Jerry Lewis, with whom he had a massively popular show at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, New Jersey beginning in 1946. The live show launched them as an in-demand duo, and they went on to team up for a total of 16 feature films and a string of appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour.
After splitting professionally with Lewis, Martin went on to host the hugely successful Dean Martin Show from 1965-74, for which he received two Emmy nominations for outstanding variety series. That was followed by The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, a series of 54 specials that aired from 1974 to 1984.
Martin was posthumously honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
“Dean Martin was America in film, recordings, nightclubs, comedy & TV,” said Azoff in a statement. “He was the epitome of coolness. It is both an honor and privilege to welcome this cherished American talent to our Iconic family.”
Martin’s long-time business manager and trustee of The Dean Martin Family Trust, Laura Lizer, added, “Dean Martin’s work and cultural influence across so many media platforms, including music, television, movies, radio, and live performances, makes his diverse catalog and legacy one of the most unique assets in entertainment history. Aligning the Dean Martin Family Trust with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group secures Dean’s legacy for generations to come.”
Founded in January 2020, Iconic Artists Group has made several attention-getting deals over the last couple of years. In January 2020, the company purchased a controlling interest in The Beach Boys‘ music catalog, including sound recordings, select musical compositions, brand and memorabilia. The company also signed a partnership with the family of Nat King Cole to sell asset rights from his estate, acquired Linda Ronstadt‘s recorded music assets and purchased the catalogs of former Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmates David Crosby and Stephen Stills in separate deals.
MSG Sphere, the long-awaited, globe-shaped venue under construction in Las Vegas, has been promised to revolutionize the concert-going experience. Before it even opens, however, MSG Sphere is transforming the corporate structure of its creator.
On Monday, MSG Entertainment announced new plans for an upcoming spin-off that will separate MSG Sphere, the next-generation music venue being built in Las Vegas, from the rest of its live music business.
The latest version of the proposed transaction results is a pure-play music company under the corporate name MSG Entertainment that includes venues such as Madison Madison Square Garden, Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre and The Chicago Theatre. MSG Entertainment would also include the entertainment and sports booking business, the Radio City Rockettes and the Christmas Spectacular production, and long-term arena license agreements with New York Knicks and New York Rangers, which play their home games at Madison Square Garden.
The first iteration of the spin-off paired the live music business with MSG Networks, a regional sports network that carries live games of the Knicks, Rangers, New York Giants, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres. That would have put the company’s two most mature divisions under one roof, separate from MSG Sphere and Tao Group Hospitality, the operator of restaurant and nightlife properties. MSG Entertainment would, however, combine the financially risky Sphere project with the more stable revenues of MSG Networks, which generated $608.2 million of revenue and $131 million of operating profit in the year ended June 30, 2022. The new plan “is optimal for maximizing shareholder value, while providing both companies with enhanced strategic and financial flexibility to drive long-term growth,” the company said in a statement.
The new spin-off plan puts MSG Networks with MSG Sphere and Tao Group Hospitality. The spin-off company will take the name MSG Sphere Corp and “would have enhanced flexibility to execute its business strategy and pursue global growth opportunities,” executive chairman and CEO James L. Dolan said in a statement.
The proposed transaction would be structured as a tax-free spin-off to all MSGE shareholders. Owners of MSGE Class A and Class B shares would receive a pro-rata distribution expected to amount to about a two-thirds economic interest in MSG Entertainment, the live entertainment company. The parent company, MSG Sphere, would retain approximately a one-third interest in MSG Entertainment.
The $1.8 billion MSG Sphere at The Venetian is slated to open in 2023 with a U2 residency. The spherical venue will provide a multi-sensory experience of audio and visuals for 20,000 standing spectators or 17,500 seated guests. It includes 160,000 square feet of video viewing space and an exterior exosphere with programmable LED technology.
By the early 1990s, Fleetwood Mac was running on fumes. The group’s 1990 album, Behind the Mask, peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200, and Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, who died on Nov. 30, hinted that they were done touring.
Then the band got some valuable exposure from an unlikely place: Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. As Clinton told Billboard, a supporter who drove him to an event in Los Angeles suggested that he use the song and “I knew it was a brilliant idea.”
At the time, with George H. W. Bush in the White House after eight years of Ronald Reagan, the song was like a breath of fresh air: Upbeat, optimistic, and full of the rock n roll sensibility that Clinton symbolized as the first Baby Boomer to serve as president. Clinton himself was a musician – a saxophone player good enough to perform on The Arsenio Hall Show as well as a fan, so it made sense to have a song that reflected his perspective.
“Honestly, Bill and Hillary [Clinton], that was one of their favorite songs,” remembers Paul Begala, the chief strategist of the 1992 campaign who became a counselor to the president after he won. “He had grown up with dreams of becoming a musician and he loved that band.”
In some ways, “Don’t Stop,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1977, wasn’t an obvious choice. “Once I got in the race,” Clinton told Billboard, “some of my staff tried to get me to go with a more current song.”
But it worked.
“That song encapsulated everything,” Begala tells Billboard. “He started insisting we play it at every rally – he just loved it. He also loved that Garth Brooks song ‘We Shall Be Free,’ but he settled on ‘Don’t Stop’ because of the message.”
Some of that was the implication that the future belonged to the Baby Boomers. “His conception of Bush was that he was a good man but his time had come and gone,” Begala says. Some of that involved the concept of “future preference,” an idea Clinton learned about from his Georgetown University professor Carroll Quigley.
Quigley “said that America became the greatest nation in history because our people had always embraced two important ideas: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that every one of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so,” Clinton said. “’Don’t Stop’ captured the sentiment perfectly with both its lyrics and its upbeat, simple melody.”
Fleetwood Mac appreciated his use of the song, and the Rumours-era lineup – Nicks, McVie, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham – reunited to play its first show in six years at Clinton’s inaugural ball. That seems to have boosted the band’s sales, and the Feb. 6, 1993, issue of Billboard reported that the band’s Greatest Hits jumped from No. 30 to No. 11 on the Catalog Albums chart, while Rumours debuted on that chart at No. 36.
By 1997, the band’s classic lineup was back together again – first for a show that was recorded for the live album and TV special The Dance, then for a tour that ran through much of that year. The next year, Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In January 2001, Fleetwood Mac reunited to perform at a farewell party for Clinton on the White House lawn. “On one of his last days as president, the staff organized a farewell party on the South Lawn and the band surprised him,” Begala remembers. “I introduced Fleetwood Mac and they started playing ‘Don’t Stop’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” The band played an 11-song set.
“It was one of the most amazing moments of my life,” Begala says.
Clinton told Billboard that he would always be grateful to Christine McVie and her bandmates for letting him use the song, reuniting to play his inaugural ball and “for giving me a lifetime of great music and memories, and, of course, for that roadmap to the future.”