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Walter F. Ulloa, the Latin media veteran who founded Entravision Communications, died unexpectedly of a heart attack over the New Year’s holiday weekend, his company announced. He was 74 years old.
At the time of his death, Ulloa was the chairman and chief executive of Entravision, a global digital marketing and media company that boasts more than 4,500 technology and consumer brand clients, according to Ulloa’s LinkedIn page. He co-founded the company with Philip Wilkinson in 1996.
In the U.S., Entravision is known mainly for its robust media offering, which includes 55 television stations, making it the largest independent broadcaster of Univision-affiliated stations in the country, and 47 radio stations, most of them Spanish-language.
Ulloa, who was Mexican-American, grew up in California and graduated from USC. He later attended Loyola Law School. He started his career in media at KMEX-TV, Univision’s flagship television station in Los Angeles, where he worked multiple jobs, from production manager to news director to CEO, before launching Entravision.
Especially at a time when Spanish-language media was not in the hands of Latinos, Ulloa was a trailblazer who saw early on the possibilities in the field and recognized the power of Latin ownership.
“Walter Ulloa was a visionary businessman who took a Spanish-language TV station and built it into a global enterprise,” posted congressman Chuy García (D-IL) on Twitter. “His commitment to empowering the Latino community was his guiding star and his passion. My thoughts are with his family and the many friends he leaves behind.”
Walter Ulloa was a visionary businessman who took a Spanish-language TV station and built it into a global enterprise. His commitment to empowering the Latino community was his guiding star and his passion. My thoughts are with his family and the many friends he leaves behind. https://t.co/tANjo6Li73— Congressman Chuy García (@RepChuyGarcia) January 4, 2023
For the first time ever, Billboard is introducing a peer-voted award to its annual Power 100 ranking of the music industry’s most influential executives. This new Power Player’s Choice Award will honor the executive whose peers believe has the most impact across the music business over the past year, from recording and publishing to touring.
Voting will be open to all Billboard Pro members, both existing and new, with one vote per member.
The first round of voting will begin Jan. 6, with an open call for nominees.
The second round of voting will begin Jan. 11, in order to narrow down the top 20 nominees into the final five top executives.
The third round of voting will begin Jan. 13, to select the winner from that list.
Voting will close Jan. 17.
If you are not yet a member of Billboard Pro, you can join here.
Downtown Music Holdings has acquired Curve Royalty Systems, a company that specializes in royalty processing for digital income, it was announced Thursday (Jan. 5). Curve will now be a part of Downtown Music, a division that focuses on servicing the professional music industry.
In recent years, Downtown has pivoted away from its previous role as a traditional publisher and rights holder by selling off its 145,000-song catalog and putting its efforts into building a service-focused music company to tap into the growing cohort of DIY artists and professionals. The company has quickly amassed a suite of service tools via acquisitions including Curve, FUGA, CD Baby, Soundrop, AdRev and more. Downtown is also an active investor in companies like Beatbread and Vampr.
Though Downtown is integrating Curve into its suite of offerings for distribution and monetization, the royalty processing firm — which can distill multiple royalty statements into one cohesive report — will continue to serve its existing client base of over 1,000 labels and publishers worldwide. This includes Warp Records, Ingrooves, Mad Decent, MRC, Royalty Solutions Corp, Domino Recording Company, Hospital Records/Songs in the Key of Knife, Cal Financial and Alta Financial. Since its inception in January 2019 by co-founders Tom Allen, Richard Leach and Ray Bush, the company says it has processed nearly $4 billion in revenue.
Downtown Music president Pieter van Rijn said of the deal, “In Downtown Music, we’ve combined innovative technology and industry-leading services to create an offering that empowers music businesses and their creators. Curve perfectly complements our mission to be the leading music industry platform and their past work speaks to their high standards and pioneering technology.”
Downtown CEO Andrew Bergman added, “For some time, we have been admirers of the technology and service quality that Tom and Richard have been building at Curve. As we got to know them and their team, it became ever more obvious that their dedication and forward-thinking vision were a great fit for Downtown. Accuracy, precision, timeliness, and innovation in royalty services are core to Downtown’s mission of supporting creators and the businesses that serve them. Welcoming the Curve team to Downtown is another important step in furtherance of our mission.”
A record 159 billion music tracks were streamed in the United Kingdom last year, up 8.2% on 2021 and more than double the volume of audio streams registered five years ago — and more than 40 times bigger than a decade ago — according to year-end figures from labels trade body BPI.
In 2017, just over 68 billion music tracks were streamed in the U.K. That number soared to 159.3 billion in 2022 when an average of more than three billion audio streams were listened to on music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music every week (the numbers don’t include video streams on YouTube or other video streaming platforms).
BPI reports that it now takes an average of 1.3 million audio streams to break into the U.K.’s official Top 40 singles chart and a combined seven million audio and video streams to score a number one.
Across digital and physical formats, the equivalent of 166 million albums were streamed or purchased last year, up 4.3% on the previous 12 months. Contributing to the rise in music consumption was the ongoing resurgence of vinyl, which shows no signs of slowing.
Sales of vinyl LPs climbed 2.9% year-on-year in the U.K. in 2022 to 5.5 million units — marking a 15th consecutive year of growth for the once considered dead format and the highest level of vinyl purchases in the country since 1990, when …But Seriously by Phil Collins was the year’s biggest-selling studio album.
Vinyl now represents just under one third (31.7%) of all physical music sales in the U.K., while CD sales fell 19.3% year-on-year to 11.6 million units and cassettes climbed 5.2% to 195,000 units. The CD’s share of the U.K. physical market now stands at about 67%, while tapes account for 1.1%, up from 0.9% in 2021.
Overall, streaming now accounts for just over 86% of all music sales in the U.K., up from 83.1% in 2021. That leaves physical formats with 10.4%, digital albums at 2.2% and track equivalent albums with 1.2% of all sales.
Five years ago, streaming accounted for just over 50% of the British market. In line with the year-on-year increase in music streaming, digital download sales fell 18.9% year-on-year to 3.7 million in 2022.
The U.K. is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the U.S. and Japan with sales of just over $1.8 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2022 Global Music Report.
BPI’s preliminary year-end report, published Wednesday (Jan. 4), doesn’t include financial sales data. Instead, it uses Official Charts Company data to measure U.K. music consumption in terms of volume. The London-based organization will publish its full year-end report, including recorded music revenues, later this year. Another British trade body, the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), is due to report on annual music retail spending later this month.
For the first time since year-end charts were introduced more than 50 years ago, British artists accounted for the top 10 biggest-selling singles in the U.K. last year (either as the lead or as a featured artist), led by Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” which topped the U.K. singles chart for 10 consecutive weeks (as well as 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100) and was streamed more than 180 million times in the United Kingdom.
Hit singles by Ed Sheeran, Cat Burns, Glass Animals, Lost Frequencies & Calum Scott, LF System, Sam Fender made up the rest of the top 10, joined by Kate Bush, whose 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” spent three weeks at number one following its high-profile Stranger Things synch and was streamed 124 million times in the U.K.
Styles also landed the year’s best-selling album with his third studio set Harry’s House. He is the first artist to have both the U.K.’s top single and top album since Lewis Capaldi in 2019. Sheeran’s = (Equals) and Taylor Swift’s Midnights were the year’s second and third best-selling albums, respectively, with Midnights the only album to achieve more than 200,000 chart-eligible sales in a single week. More than 60,000 of those first week sales were vinyl purchases, says BPI.
Last year was also a strong year for independent artists and labels in the U.K. Independent labels grew their share of the U.K. music market for a fifth consecutive year to account for 28.6% of album or their equivalent purchases across streaming and physical, up from 26.9% in 2021. Nine independently released LPs topped the U.K. albums chart in 2022 including records by The 1975, Central Cee, Fontaines D.C. and Wet Leg.
In a statement, BPI chair Yolanda Brown said the success of homegrown talent in 2022 was down to a “compelling mix” of musical creativity and artistry, coupled with the “the ever-expanding opportunities afforded by streaming” and the support of record labels.
Round Hill Music Royalty Partners has acquired the royalty income stream of Steve Lillywhite, one of the premier rock producers of the last 45 years, in a deal that includes his share of royalties from such albums as U2’s October and War; Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming and Crash; and The Rolling Stones‘ Dirty Work. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Additional recordings on which Lillywhite served as a producer or worked are covered by the deal, including music by Phish, Peter Gabriel, Morrissey, Talking Heads, Counting Crows, Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Psychedelic Furs.
“As someone who grew up idolizing the bands and albums Steve Lillywhite produced, it is an honor to partner with him on this exciting transaction,” Round Hill Music CEO Josh Gruss said in a statement. “Steve’s catalog includes royalties to some of the most sought-after songs and albums of all time. We are thrilled to have reached this milestone transaction.”
For his part, Lillywhite added in a statement that the deal brings his catalog under “a kindred spirit [Gruss], who is a pioneer in the music royalty business and the ideal partner for me and my family as I look to my next steps.”
According to the announcement on the transaction, Lillywhite has produced or contributed to more than 500 records in his more than four-decade career. During that time, he won the Grammy for Producer of The Year in 2006 for U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which also won the Grammy for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album. He also won Grammys as one of the engineers/mixers listed on U2’s “Beautiful Day” and “Walk On,” which won Record of the Year in 2001 and 2002, respectively.
Other acts Lillywhite has produced or worked with during his career — and whose music is part of the acquisition — include XTC, The Pogues, Big Country, Joan Armatrading, Sinead O’Connor, Marshall Crenshaw, Crowded House, The Killers and Chris Cornell.
The Lillywhite deal adds to Round Hill’s overall investment portfolio, which has now taken in more than $200 million in investments in more than 40 acquisitions, according to the company.
Stanley Mills, a former music publisher who served on the boards of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the Harry Fox Agency, has died at the age of 91.
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Mills, the son of Mills Music Publishing Company founder Jack Mills, died on Thursday (Dec. 29) at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y. A cause of death was not provided.
Mills was born on Feb. 18, 1931. He began his career by working for his father at Mills Music. He remained with the company after it was sold to EMI Music Publishing in 1964. Two years later, he joined E.B. Marks (now Carlin America). In 1968, with the urging of his songwriter friends, Mills founded September Music and Galahad Music, representing many influential songs at the time, including “Cara Mia,” “Hands Up,” “My Melody of Love,” and the “Chicken Dance.”
Mills sold both September Music and Galahad Music to Memory Lane Music in 2015.
He is survived by his sons, Kenneth Mills and Mitchell Mills; nephews, Joshua Mills and Peter Alpert; and five grandchildren. Services will be private.
Mariah Carey may have had the most popular song of the 2022 holiday season, but Pentatonix was its most-listened-to act. The five-person vocal group had 92 recordings in the top 10,000 holiday tracks and total consumption of 2.58 million song units, based on sales and streams from Nov. 4 to Dec. 22, according to Luminate — more than any other artist.
While Pentatonix doesn’t have the same kinds of smash singles as Christmas-time mainstays like Carey, Andy Williams and Burl Ives, the group uses a combination of quantity and popularity to drive its seasonal success. Pentatonix’s top holiday track, a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” ranked No. 43 and accounted for about 10.5% of its total track consumption. Its cover of the David Foster-Jennifer Thompson-Jenner song “Grown Up Christmas List” ranked No. 187 and its rendition of the traditional songs “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Deck the Halls” were Nos. 189 and 191, respectively. Additionally, Pentatonix’s collaboration with Maren Morris, “When You Believe,” from the 1998 animated feature The Price of Egypt, ranked No. 188.
While most artists are content with the occasional holiday release, Pentatonix has released four studio albums comprised mostly or entirely of holiday music since Oct. 2018: Christmas Is Here! In 2018, We Need a Little Christmas in 2020, Evergreen in 2021 and Holidays Around the World in 2022. In addition, the group released a compilation album, The Best of Pentatonix Christmas, in 2019. Some recordings from its 2012 EP PTXmas and its 2014 album That’s Christmas to Me remain popular to this day. In addition, each November and December, the group tours U.S. arenas to perform holiday music.
Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” was once again the most popular holiday track with 1.29 million song units, narrowly beating the 1.24 million song units of Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” But Carey, the self-described “Queen of Christmas,” doesn’t have Pentatonix’s depth of holiday catalog. She ranked fifth in total consumption with 1.96 million units from 36 tracks within the top 10,000. Her second-most popular holiday recording, a cover of Darlene Love’s 1963 standard “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” ranked only No. 68. Her 2010 original recording “Oh! Santa” ranked No. 110 and her version of the traditional Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” was No. 130.
The No. 2 holiday artist was Bing Crosby with 2.43 million song units from 61 tracks in the top 10,000. Crosby’s top recording, “White Christmas,” was No. 13. “Hawaiian Christmas Song” at No. 38, “Winter Wonderland” at No. 63, “Silent Night” at No. 72, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” at No. 83, “The Little Drummer Boy” at No. 86 and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” at No. 95.
At No. 3 was Michael Bublé, whose 25 recordings in the top 10,000 amassed 2.39 million song units. Bublé had numerous songs in the top 100, including “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” at No. 16, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” at No. 31, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” at No. 45 and “Holly Jolly Christmas” at No. 46. Bublé also stands out for having numerous recordings in the top 100 that are the second-most popular versions of the songs. (Burl Ives’ version of “Holly Jolly Christmas,” ranked No. 4 while Perry Como’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” ranked No. 10.) But Bublé is also notable for knocking off some holiday legends. His 19-year-old version of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” ranks 38 slots above Bing Crosby’s historic recording from 1943.
Nat King Cole ranked fourth in holiday music consumption with 2.1 million song units from 33 recordings in the top 10,000. Cole’s top recordings were his now-standard versions of “The Christmas Song” at No. 12 and “Deck the Halls” at No. 15. “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Joy to the World” were also in the top 100, at Nos. 51 and 82, respectively.
After Carey at No. 5, artists in the top 10 were Andy Williams (1.84 million), Frank Sinatra (1.71 million), Perry Como (1.38 million), Burl Ives (1.37 million) and Brenda Lee (1.31 million).
This year, a handful of new recordings beat long odds and were among the 50 most popular holiday tracks: Lizzo’s cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas” and Lauren Spencer-Smith’s version of “Last Christmas” by Wham! ranked Nos. 39 and 47, respectively, in consumption – measuring track sales and streams – from Nov. 4 to Dec. 22, according to Luminate. Kane Brown’s version of “Blue Christmas,” made famous by Elvis Presley, ranked No. 48.
If historical trends persist, though, many of this year’s new holiday recordings won’t even survive the summer. Creating a holiday standard is one of the most difficult, unlikely tasks in all of songwriting.
Looking back over the last five years shows the slim odds a new recording faces in becoming an annual favorite. In 2017, 72 newly released tracks made the top 1,000 holiday recordings of the last two months of the year. Three of them — Sia’s “Santa’s Coming for Us” (No. 37), Pentatonix’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (No. 68) and Us the Duo’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (No. 98) — made the top 100. Gwen Stefani had eight of the 72 new recordings in the top 1,000. Hanson’s “Finally, It’s Christmas,” at No. 610, was an original song competing against new recordings of well-worn favorites like “Wonderful Christmastime” and “The Christmas Song.”
Five years later, only 30 recordings released in 2017 remained in the top 1,000. Sia’s “Santa’s Coming for Us” dropped from No. 37 to No. 171, while her song “Snowman” has risen to No. 53 to become the most popular recording of the class of 2017. Stefani had only three recordings from 2017 in the top 1,000, and her top-ranked holiday song, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” released in 2011, slipped to No. 42 from No. 18 five years earlier. Hanson was in the top 1,000 — with “What Christmas Means to Me,” originally recorded by Stevie Wonder in 1967, not its original song from five years earlier.
To become a holiday favorite, a new recording must prove itself by competing against popular holiday songs that have withstood decades-long wars of attrition. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is a relatively young holiday standard at 28 years old. “Last Christmas” by Wham!, ranked No. 5 this holiday season, is 36. Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” (No. 7) and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” (No. 8), just 8 and 12 years old, respectively, have beaten the odds to challenge established recordings like Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (No. 6), released in 1963 and often heard in advertisements and movie soundtracks.
That weeding-out process isn’t enough to deter songwriters from trying to create the next holiday hit and collect royalty checks year after year, though. This year, Chris Isaak, Backstreet Boys and Thomas Rhett released albums or EPs of Christmas songs. Sam Smith, Alanis Morissette, Dan + Shay, Joss Stone, Lukas Graham and Remi Wolf released individual tracks.
Even though the odds of writing a holiday standard are slim, the payoff is a lure, says Rhett Miller, singer for the alt-country band The Old 97’s. Miller and his musician friends have told “a probably apocryphal story” amongst themselves about musician Nick Lowe walking to his mailbox one day in a bath robe and finding a check for a million dollars not knowing that Curtis Stigers’ cover of his song “Peace, Love and Understanding” was featured on the soundtrack to the movie The Bodyguard that would go on to sell 44 million copies worldwide.
“In the olden days, landing a song on a soundtrack like that was sort of the end all be all,” says Miller. “But, really, the Christmas song is the biggest dream of any songwriter — to have a song that connects and becomes a standard.” Miller acknowledges the long odds a holiday recording faces in becoming a recurring hit. Writing a holiday standard is like winning the lottery: A jackpot is exceedingly unlikely, but, as the saying goes, you can’t win if you don’t play. “I did have an idea that if we contributed an album of holiday songs to the conversation, we would at least be in the running for one of those songs that connected,” says Miller.
Miller has the benefit of having an influential company in his corner: Disney. James Gunn, writer and director of Marvel Comics’ Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise, cast the Old 97’s for the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special that premiered on Disney+ video on-demand streaming service in November. The Old 97’s re-recorded their original song, “Here It Is Christmastime,” with actor-singer Kevin Bacon, and performed the song wearing prosthetic makeup. That helped “Here It Is Christmastime” debut at No. 7 on the Holiday Digital Song Sales and No. 27 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales charts for Dec. 10. Although the recording ranks only at No. 865 this holiday season, it will likely benefit from Marvel Comics fans viewing the special in the coming years.
In the streaming age, nothing helps posterity like a partnership with a giant multi-national entertainment platform. Lizzo, Spencer-Smith and Brown, the top of the Class of 2022, recorded their holiday tracks under exclusive partnership with Amazon Music. In earlier years, Amazon Music has released original holiday recordings by Katy Perry (“Cozy Little Christmas” in 2018), Carrie Underwood (an original song, “Favorite Time of the Year,” in 2020), John Legend (“Happy Christmas [War Is Over]” in 2019), Taylor Swift (“Christmas Tree Farm [Old Timey Version]” in 2019) and Camila Cabello (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” in 2021).
“Each year, we really look to work with artists that we know our customers love and who we think are going to be a good fit for our holiday listeners and really work with them to find the right track,” says Stephen Brower, global co-lead, artist relations at Amazon Music, “whether that’s a cover in the case of Lizzo doing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Someday at Christmas’ or in Katy and Carrie’s cases, having brand new songs.”
What holiday listeners seem to want every November and December is comfort music that harkens back to eras bygone. Even an original holiday song must have a classic, throwback sound that takes from late ’50s and early ’60s pop and rock. The rockabilly in Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” and Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” production in The Ronettes “Sleigh Ride” set a template that’s been closely followed by later artists. “Ever since Mariah, only songs that had that ’60s Spector feel seem to be getting any traction,” says Sean Ross, author of the Ross on Radio newsletter.
Christmas is no time to reinvent the wheel. Recreating the sounds of Christmas past gives Lizzo, Spencer-Smith and Brown the best chance at capturing an audience and maintaining momentum for the next five years. “Because the Christmas music season is typically only about six weeks, people don’t get tired of them,” Tom Poleman, chief programming officer for iHeartMedia, says in an email to Billboard. “As a result, there’s a huge supply of great songs to play, making it hard for new ones to cut through. The ones that do break through are usually well-made remakes of holiday classics by a big star like Kelly Clarkson.”
This holiday season, Clarkson’s covers of Chuck Berry’s “Run Run Rudolph” (No. 103) and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (No. 238) were the first and second most popular versions of those songs after the originals. She also has popular versions of “My Favorite Things” (No. 282), “Please Come Home for Christmas” (No. 317) and “Silent Night” (No. 382). But Clarkson is the rare contemporary artist whose original songs are more popular than her covers. In a few years, “Under the Mistletoe” (No. 105) from 2020 and “Christmas Isn’t Canceled (You Are)” (No. 168) from 2021 could become the next “Underneath the Tree” (No. 8).
Miller is aware of the long odds that “Here It Is Christmastime” faces in the coming years – but he’s hopeful he can have a Clarkson-level hit one day. “It’s going to be something,” he says. “But will it be my Nick Lowe-in-a-bath robe moment? I don’t know. It would be great if something broke through.”
Music streaming company LiveOne’s podcasting division, PodcastOne, filed an S-1 with the Securities Exchange Commission on Tuesday as a prelude to becoming a standalone, publicly traded company. LiveOne has set a record date of Jan. 16 for PodcastOne’s special dividend to LiveOne shareholders of record.
The spinoff “will meaningfully enhance our industry market perception,” the company wrote in the filing, “thereby providing greater growth opportunities for us than our consolidated operation as a private subsidiary of LiveOne.”
LiveOne will remain PodcastOne’s majority shareholder and will distribute approximately 6.2% of outstanding shares to LiveOne shareholders. LiveOne will retain 86.3% of outstanding shares. The remaining shares will be held by holders of bridge notes as well as the company’s directors and executives. PodcastOne currently expects its shares to trade on the Nasdaq.
In addition, LiveOne said it intends to explore spinning out SlackerOne into a separate public company during its 2024 fiscal year. LiveOne acquired music streaming service Slacker in 2017 for $50 million. Slacker was ordered by a judge in November to pay SoundExchange $10 million for performance royalties owed since 2018. Slacker asked the judge to overturn the ruling, saying the decision had led debtors to default on two senior secured notes, threatening “economic damage” to the company that would be “unsustainable.” The judge denied LiveOne’s request.
PodcastOne was co-founded in 2012 by current president Kit Gray and Westwood One founder Norman Pattiz and ranks No. 14 on Podtrac’s list of top podcast publishers in the U.S. It has about 2.1 billion downloads annually and produces 350 episodes per week. Among its podcast titles are Court Junkie, Cold Case Files, The Adam Corolla Show and Nappy Boy Radio with rapper T-Pain. PodcastOne also operates LaunchpadOne, a do-it-yourself platform for independent podcasters in the vein of Spotify-owned Anchor and Amazon-owned Art19 that distributes content to Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts and other outlets. LiveOne — then named LiveXLive — acquired PodcastOne in 2020.
PodcastOne generated $32.2 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, a 36% improvement from the prior-year period, and plans to have revenues of $25 million in the nine-month period ending Dec. 31, 2022, according to LiveOne.
While 2022 will be remembered as the year that Taylor Swift made history as the first artist to populate the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 with songs from her album Midnights (among other chart records), Billboard’s annual Money Makers ranking of music’s top royalty and box-office earners reveals that she dominated 2021 as well.
Swift, who released two (Taylor’s Version) rerecorded albums, finished the year as the No. 1 earner globally with an estimated $65.8 million in take-home pay. That’s an impressive sum considering she did not tour, which usually constitutes the lion’s share of an act’s annual income, and last year’s runner-up, The Rolling Stones, spent three months on the road last fall concluding their No Filter Tour.
Swift topped the ranking because she owns half of her studio record catalog and because of the strength of her sales and streaming income, $29.8 million and $28.9 million, respectively, in a year that saw her international streams surpass her U.S. streams, 9 billion to 6.8 billion, a 34% increase.
The Stones’ live dates, all of which took place in the United States, resulted in a $44.5 million box-office take. That played the biggest role in boosting the veteran rockers to No. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Money Makers ranking with a total income of $50.8 million.
But Swift, who finished second in the U.S. ranking — she and the Stones have swapped the top two spots since 2018 — was not far behind with $38.8 million, largely on the strength of her master recording royalties.
Compared side-by-side, the top five earners on the global and U.S. Money Makers rankings are nearly identical, with Harry Styles holding the No. 3 spot on both, $41.3 million and $37 million, respectively; and Drake at No. 5, with $30.7 million and $23.8 million. The big difference can be found at No. 4, where K-pop superstars BTS reside on the global ranking, with a $38.4 million in 2021 take-home pay, and the hard-touring Eagles occupy the U.S. tally, with earnings of $27.3 million.
Methodology
Money Makers was compiled with 2021 Luminate and Billboard Boxscore data, the RIAA’s physical and digital revenue report for 2021, and IFPI global revenue statistics. All revenue figures cited are Billboard estimates and may not equal the sum of the subcategories due to rounding and the omission of revenue categories. Global sales were extrapolated for 21 artists that ranked highest on the 2020 Money Makers list. Global artist royalties were extrapolated using U.S. revenue totals, minus 30% of international royalties in line with major-label contractual clauses for foreign distribution.
U.S. formulas were used to estimate publishing revenue. Calculating royalties from master-recording performance rights was not possible because those rights do not exist for most uses in the United States. Unless otherwise noted, references to streaming totals consist of combined on-demand audio, video and programmed streams. References to recording-career totals are the sum of an act’s sales, streaming and publishing earnings. Revenue from featured-artist appearances, merchandising, synchronization and sponsorship is not included. Touring revenue, after the manager’s cut, equals 34% of an act’s Boxscore. Sales royalties were calculated based on physical and digital albums and track sales. Streaming royalties consist of on-demand audio and video streams, and estimated royalties from webcasting, SiriusXM and Music Choice.
The following royalty rates were used: album and track sales, 22% of retail revenue; 66% of wholesale if the artist owns his or her masters. On-demand streaming royalties were calculated using blended audio and video rates of, respectively, $0.0053 and $0.0038 per stream, applied against a 37% superstar-artist royalty rate; 50% for heritage artists (acts that have released at a minimum of 10 albums or been active for at least 20 years); and 79% for artist-owned masters. Further, a blended statutory subscription per-stream rate of $0.0024 was applied to programmed streams and per-play estimated rates of 74 cents for Music Choice and $46 for SiriusXM. Royalties for programmed streams were calculated on a similar basis using a 50% base royalty rate; 68% for artists that own some of their masters and 100% for artists that own all their masters, minus 5% for side performers.
Publishing royalties were estimated using statutory mechanical rates for album and track sales. The Copyright Royalty Board streaming formula produced an average rate of 13.4% of streaming revenue, an average of $2.50 per play for hit songs; $1 per play for heritage spins and genre songs that didn’t attain hit status; and per-play publishing rates of 40 cents for Music Choice, $8.33 for SiriusXM and $0.0003 for programmed streams. A 10% manager’s fee and 4% producer’s fee were deducted from the appropriate revenue streams.
