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Reservoir Media has entered into a strategic partnership with Fool’s Gold Records, adding the A-Trak co-founded independent label to its recorded music portfolio. As part of the deal, Reservoir acquires the master rights to key catalog recordings from artists including A-Trak, Danny Brown and Low Pros. In addition, Reservoir will take on exclusive marketing and distribution responsibilities for all past and future Fool’s Gold releases through its label platform.
As part of the deal, facilitated by Fool’s Gold CFO Jorge Mejias, label manager Nathaniel Heller and A-Trak’s management team at TMWRK, Fool’s Gold joins Reservoir’s roster of influential independent labels, which includes Chrysalis Records, Tommy Boy Music and New State. The partnership also extends to a new sub-label, A-Trak & Friends, which will be distributed by Reservoir. The first release from this imprint, “Reaching” by James Juke featuring LION BABE, debuted last month.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Founded in 2007 by A-Trak (Alain Macklovitch), Nick Catchdubs, David Macklovitch, and the late Joshua Prince, Fool’s Gold has built a reputation for blurring the lines across hip-hop, dance and electronic music. The label played a pivotal role in launching the careers of artists like Kid Cudi, whose debut single “Day ‘N’ Nite” was released through Fool’s Gold, as well as Run the Jewels, Flosstradamus and Danny Brown. A-Trak’s own projects, including his duo Duck Sauce’s hit “Barbra Streisand,” are also part of the catalog now under Reservoir’s distribution.
A-Trak has also made a name for himself as a solo artist with tracks like his remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll” and singles such as “Ray Ban Vision” and “Believe.” The Fool’s Gold catalog further includes music from Treasure Fingers, Hoodboi, Tommy Trash and Michael Christmas.
Reservoir president and chief operating officer Rell Lafargue said, “As both founder and artist, A-Trak has built Fool’s Gold into a genre-blurring label that has been at the forefront of hip-hop, house, and everything in between for nearly two decades. We’re proud to welcome A-Trak, Fool’s Gold, and its artists into the Reservoir family as we continue to champion culturally significant independent music.” He continued, “This multifaceted deal also highlights Reservoir’s ongoing expansion in recorded music and our team’s ability to deliver across the full spectrum of the music business.”
A-Trak added, “I’ve been thoroughly impressed by Reservoir ever since the first time we all spoke. Everyone at the company has a deep passion for quality music. A big part of what’s helped Fool’s Gold navigate 18 years in the music biz is staying very nimble and malleable. Reservoir was able to craft a creative deal with us that showed real agility — that’s exactly what we were looking for in a new partner.”
Concord Originals, the film and TV division of music company Concord, has acquired storied film studio RKO, giving the Nashville-based music company a wealth of opportunities to promote and capitalize on its publishing and recorded music catalog.
RKO is one of Hollywood’s oldest studios and produced numerous timeless films and TV productions from the ‘20s to ’50s, including King Kong, Citizen Kane, The Best Years of Our Lives, It’s a Wonderful Life, Suspicion and The Woman in the Window. Legendary industrialist Howard Hughes owned RKO for a brief stretch, buying the company in 1947 and selling it to General Rubber and Tire in 1955.
The acquisition covers derivative rights for remakes, sequels, stage productions and stories — “anything that someone with creative intent and with a little bit of sweat equity could theoretically turn into a project,” Concord CEO Bob Valentine tells Billboard. Concord’s deal for RKO gives it the opportunity “to develop new and interesting projects around that original IP,” Valentine explains. Turner Broadcasting System, now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, acquired the distribution rights to the original RKO library in 1987.
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RKO’s library includes what Valentine calls “some of the most seminal musicals” created in the mid-20th century, many of which have not yet been adapted for live performance. Among RKO’s musicals are films starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers such as Top Hat and Swing Time. “I wouldn’t underestimate the potential for theatrical development,” he says.
RKO will continue to operate as a standalone entity within Concord Originals after the transaction. Sophia Dilley, head of Concord Originals, and current RKO president Mary Beth O’Connor will run RKO has co-presidents. RKO chairman and CEO Ted Hartley will stay on as lead producer and chief storyteller of active RKO projects.
Dilley’s six-person team will expand to nine after the acquisition. RKO’s Brian Anderson will work across both companies as director of contract, administration and distribution, according to Dilley. As part of a recent restructuring at Concord Originals, Wesley Adams was upped to vp of production and distribution, Charlie Hopkins was promoted to vp of development and Imogen Lloyd Webber was given the new role of executive vp of marketing and communications of Concord Originals and Theatricals.
“Our plan will be to grow strategically, because a lot of these film companies grow too fast, they have overhead too fast,” says Dilley. “Our mission is to be really frugal and careful about how we put this together so that it’s set up for success long term.”
Concord Originals was founded in 2021 as an outgrowth of Concord’s realization that it could be “a more direct beneficiary” of derivative works that involved the company’s music rights, says Dilley. Among the productions by Concord Originals are Stax: Soulsville USA, a Peabody Award-winning, four-part HBO documentary that was co-produced with Polygram Entertainment and Warner Music Entertainment, and Let the Canary Sing, a documentary about singer Cyndi Lauper produced with Fine Point Films and Sony Music Entertainment. Concord Originals is also working on a biopic on blues legend Robert Johnson, whose publishing catalog is represented by Concord Music Publishing.
In addition, Concord Originals has a partnership with Skydance Entertainment and Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions to develop original projects. One such project is a limited series based on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Rogers & Hammerstein’s catalog was acquired by Concord in 2017 through its purchase of Imagem Music Group.
At an invite-only, dimly lit vinyl bar just outside of central Tokyo, a handful of pool cues are framed above the table. Each has a nameplate, but only one name belongs to an American: Brandon Silverstein. The prime placement represents much more than billiards skill — it symbolizes the years of work, and ultimate partnership, between Silverstein’s entertainment company, S10, and the bar’s proprietor, Japanese entertainment giant Avex. In March, the two companies cemented that partnership with the launch of Avex Music Group, the rebranded U.S. division of Avex (formerly known as Avex USA), and Silverstein was named CEO.
Silverstein describes AMG as “a boutique major with a global perspective” — and that ethos is exactly what drew him to Avex five years ago. After he launched S10 in 2017 as an artist management firm, his friend and collaborator Ryan Tedder suggested he start a publishing company. “I was looking for a partner — and was looking for a different type of partner,” Silverstein recalls while seated in the fifth-floor lobby of Avex’s pristine Tokyo headquarters.
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In 2019, Silverstein was introduced to Naoki Osada, then-head of Avex USA, and the two hit it off. In 2020, S10 Publishing launched as a joint venture with Avex, and soon after, Silverstein flew to Tokyo for the first time to meet with Avex founder and chairman Max Matsuura and Avex Group CEO Katsumi Kuroiwa. “From the initial meetings, [we had] very similar visions, cowboy mindsets,” Silverstein says. Today, S10 Publishing’s roster boasts nine songwriter-producers, including Harv (Justin Bieber), Jasper Harris (Tate McRae, Jack Harlow) and Gent! (Doja Cat).
In May, AMG announced it had signed fast-rising producer Elkan (Drake, Rihanna) to a global publishing deal and partnered with the hit-maker on his joint-venture publishing company, Toibox by Elkan — the first, Silverstein hopes, of many such deals. “Artists are some of the most incredible entrepreneurs, and they just need an infrastructure, the right infrastructure, to have their ideas prevail,” he says. That thinking is Avex’s backbone: The company’s approach to creation, Kuroiwa says, is “entrepreneurship, since we’re an independent company — and we would like to remain independent.”
Most recently, AMG scored a major signing with We the Band, famously known as Bieber’s backing musicians (evidence, Silverstein suggests, of his theory that “artists are finding talent first”). He says S10’s relationship with the act dates to when it signed member Harv to a publishing deal in 2021; soon after, Harv scored a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 as a co-writer/co-producer on Bieber’s “Peaches.”
For Avex — known in Japan as the fourth major, alongside Sony, Universal and Warner — the early investment in S10 Publishing was essentially a down payment on global domination, the initial step of a five-year plan that culminated this year in AMG’s launch. (In conjunction with Silverstein’s new role, Avex acquired 100% of the S10 Publishing song catalog and an additional stake in S10 Management; Avex now has the largest share in S10 Management, alongside Silverstein and Roc Nation.)
Since its inception in 1988, Avex has always moved the needle, largely thanks to Matsuura’s singular vision and healthy relationship with risk. “When we started, we were laser focused on Euro-beat, a really small genre and market,” recalls Kuroiwa, who joined Avex Group in 2001 and became CEO in 2020. “[We did] stuff that other record companies wouldn’t choose to do, and that has shaped who we are today.” It’s even part of the company motto: “Really! Mad + Pure.”
“I don’t think I would be here today if Avex wasn’t that kind of company,” adds Takeya Ino, president of Avex’s label division, Avex Music Creative, which has a roster of over 500 artists. “It’s about creating a new movement, and that has always been the way at Avex: disco booms, Euro-beat, Japanese hip-hop. And then we think about what’s next for us — and the answer would be the global market,” adds Ino, who joined Avex in 1995.
Despite now employing around 1,500 people across offices in over 50 cities and earning $1 billion in 2024, the publicly traded Avex still has that small-but-mighty mindset that allowed it to become “a comprehensive entertainment company,” Kuroiwa says. “You see a lot of that nowadays, but we were the pioneers — one of the first labels to have an in-house management business, scout and train our own artists, produce and host live events.”
Those pillars still support Avex, particularly Avex Youth Studio, the intensive training program for potential future superstars where over 200 trainees are enrolled. Scouts regularly scour around 500 arts schools to identify talent; once selected, trainees aren’t charged tuition because Avex sees them as investments.
It was at Avex Youth Studio’s main facility, avex Youth studio TOKYO, in Tokyo’s Setagaya City, that, roughly four years ago, emerging Japanese boy band One or Eight was developed. For the past two years, Avex has been testing its next act, with the current top seven boys (ages 14-16) training together. The boys’ influences include Bieber, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran and Morgan Wallen; clearly, from the start, the goal is global success.
It’s evident in how Avex produces live events, thanks to AEGX, a deal made with AEG in 2021 that has brought superstars such as Sheeran and Taylor Swift to Japan for sold-out stadium shows. “Initially, [AEGX] was built to support the overseas artists that wanted to perform in Japan,” Kuroiwa explains. “But now we’re entering an era where Asian artists will perform and succeed overseas, which means there will be demand for both.” After helping non-Japanese stars book shows in Japan, AEGX can now help Japanese artists book shows in the United States and elsewhere. For One or Eight, Ino has his sights on New York’s Madison Square Garden.
From left: Neo, Mizuki, Takeru, Reia, Souma, Ryota, Tsubasa and Yuga of One or Eight during rehearsal at avex Youth Studio TOKYO.
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And much like how teaming with AEG helps Avex and its artists tour beyond Japan, partnering with Silverstein’s S10 helps Avex and its artists score hits.
One or Eight’s debut in August 2024 marked the first time an Avex act had U.S. management in S10 (co-managed with Avex). And in May, Atlantic Records and Avex partnered on all future releases for the group. “The staff that are involved in this project are from Japan as well as the U.S., and so we have this cross-border structure in place,” Kuroiwa says. “Visionwise, it really comes down to creating a successful case model. This whole project, the purpose is to have global hits — and not just one.”
The band’s credits exemplify one of Kuroiwa’s mottos: “Co-creation is key.” One or Eight’s debut single, “Don’t Tell Nobody,” was co-produced by Tedder, and Stargate produced its second single, “DSTM” (which prominently samples Rihanna’s Stargate-produced “Don’t Stop the Music” — the first time the hit has been officially sampled). “DSTM” also credits S10 songwriter David Arkwright, who co-wrote Riize’s “Get a Guitar,” which Silverstein says was an early win for the publishing company. (Riize is signed to SM Entertainment, which in 2001 partnered with Avex to launch the subsidiary SM Entertainment Japan.)
“Our writers are getting early access to placing songs for [One or Eight],” Silverstein says, adding that many have attended writing camps in Japan. “This is an ongoing [exchange] where we’re creating records that may work for our next boy group or girl group coming from Japan, or whatever the group is.”
Fast-rising Avex act XG — the first project under the XGALX brand, a partnership with executive producer Simon Park — also embodies Kuroiwa’s collaborative vision. The Japanese girl group, which is based in South Korea, debuted in 2022 and appeared at Coachella in April. “We’ve seen how K-pop players ventured into the global market, but we didn’t have the right Japanese talents to get on that bandwagon at that time,” Kuroiwa says. “It took us five years, also because of the pandemic, but we trained [XG] in studios, integrating the knowledge and expertise from our side as well as their side, meaning K-pop. What you get from that is something completely new.”
For Ino, the success of K-pop — which he says “built that pathway for foreign music to enter the U.S. market and to succeed globally” — is, in part, what made him confident that the world would similarly embrace J-pop.
He cites Japan’s “aging society” as one of Avex’s impetuses to take J-pop global, saying that in terms of growth potential, it’s a primary driver for needing to market outside of Japan. He also points to the sturdy U.S. infrastructure that Avex has built with S10 and beyond: “Everyone said that now is the time, there is an opportunity, there is a chance to really go into the U.S. market,” he says. “Maybe it was Ryan [Tedder] who accentuated that point the most — he said that now is maybe not the time for K-pop anymore. It’s really the time for J-pop.” But, Ino adds with a laugh, “he is working with HYBE anyway.” (In February, Tedder teamed with HYBE to form a global boy group that has yet to debut.)
J-pop is indeed its own world. To Ino, the umbrella term represents a “more diverse” class of music. “And there’s the anime, manga and V-tubers [viral YouTubers],” he adds. “We have all these categories that we can really leverage and take advantage of, so integrating them all together, it will be our forte.”
Now, with AMG, that integration will only grow. Following S10’s 2020 joint venture with Avex, the pair constructed a studio house in West Hollywood for events and to build a creative community. In April, AMG upgraded to a new, larger WeHo home that previously belonged to A$AP Rocky and Rihanna that will continue to be used for community-building, as well as housing Avex’s executives when they visit from Japan.
“Creatives are craving boutique companies that are fresh and exciting and are globally positioned, and I don’t think there’s a lot of that,” Silverstein says. “We want to back the artist’s vision and the writer’s vision and the producer’s vision and allow them to be their own CEO. I think that’s the change [we need] — and I think Avex Music Group will prevail because of that.”
As Kuroiwa and Ino see it, AMG will prevail because of the groundwork it has laid so carefully over the last five years. “[S10] really helped us in creating something new,” Kuroiwa says. “There were a couple of companies in Japan that [attempted this] in the past, but they couldn’t make it happen.”
To which Silverstein says with a confident smile: “We’ve got the right team. We’ve got the right relationships. We have the right partnership. We have the right vision. We have the right momentum. We’re ready.”
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Billboard hosted its inaugural Global Power Players event in London on Wednesday (June 4) to celebrate music industry leaders from across the world.
The invite-only event at Shoreditch House in east London honored the chosen executives for the Global Power Players list and the first-ever U.K. Power Players selections. Huge names including Sir Elton John and his husband and manager David Furnish, EMPIRE founder and CEO Ghazi Shami and afrobeats superstar Tems were recognised with special awards.
John and Furnish collected the Creators’ Champion Award, and John used his speech to warn the U.K. government that “we will not back down” in relation to the Labour party’s controversial AI bill, which proposes an opt-out approach for music rights holders. Key industry figures such as John have called upon the government to work with the creative industries to find a solution; the government’s bill has been rejected by the House of Lords on five occasions in recent weeks.
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“Copyright has to be transparent and seek permission,” John said. “These two principles are the bedrock of the industry and they must be included in the data bill as a backstop. Let’s be clear: we want to work with the government, we want our government to work with us. We are not anti-AI and we are not anti-Big Tech.”
He added: “I will fight for this until it’s done and people have a fair deal. Every young artist or new person who writes a song, I want them to have a future and have their copyright respected.”
Ahead of her headline set for Billboard Presents The Stage as part of SXSW London on Thursday (June 5), Tems collected the Diamond Award from incoming Billboard Africa editor Nkosiyati Khumalo.
“Being African and a musician is a whole new world and I feel like Billboard has been so supportive of not just African music but the whole scene and the culture,” she said. “This has been a really great honor, especially given that that African music is moving to heights that has never been seen before, and Billboard is one of the key players in moving that needle forward.”
EMPIRE founder and CEO Ghazi Shami was the recipient of the coveted Clive Davis Visionary Award, joining TDE’s Punch and Top Dawg (2024), Bang Si-hyuk (2023) and Joe Smith (2014) as honorees. Named after the iconic recording executive, the prize was presented by Nigerian musician and YNBL label boss Olamide, and follows EMPIRE alum Shaboozey’s record-busting stay atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2024 with “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”
Collecting the award, Ghazi said: “I often tell people that EMPIRE is a philanthropy company masquerading as a record label. I truly believe that in my heart. It wasn’t always that way. Being a visionary means you see a need in your community and you try and figure out how to serve that need. I felt that the San Francisco and the Bay Area community had a void in the music distribution space and fast-forward 15 years later, I’m blessed to say we built a global operation that reaches the four corners of the earth. We have employees in 25 countries and have probably the most diverse staff in the music business by design and intention.”
He added, “I grew up as an immigrant kid in San Francisco with Palestinian parents who were refugees of war, and sometimes as a child I often felt like I was invisible. How would I be seen in a world that didn’t see me? I took the initiative to build a company where everyone could be seen and everyone could be heard and I always like to tell people that if you’re excellent they can’t deny your existence.”
Today (June 4), Music Nation Copyrights Management, which handles music rights management in the United Arab Emirates, announced the company received formal approval to license, collect and distribute royalties from public performance and neighboring rights. The approval will deliver a vital new source of revenue for music rights holders, according to Music Nation.
Through partnerships with performing rights organization BMI and digital global collective management organization SoundExchange, Music Nation will be the industry’s first rights management organization capable of natively collecting performance, mechanical and neighboring rights.
“Today marks a pivotal moment for the UAE and Music Nation,” said Music Nation chairwoman Rasha Khalifa Al Mubarak in a release. “After years of careful planning, Music Nation is positioned to become a cornerstone of music licensing, empowering the Emirates’ vibrant creative industry. As an Emarati, I am honored to establish a world-class music rights infrastructure that not only elevates local artists to greater heights, but also showcases our rich musical heritage and cultural traditions to the world.”
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Music Nation is part of a broad UAE initiative to support the creation of a thriving music ecosystem and to elevate the region’s music industry by protecting the rights of music creators and compensating them for the commercial use of their work.
“The Ministry [of Economy] continues its efforts to develop an advanced system for the governance of copyright and related rights, based on global best practices. This is achieved by developing regulatory and legislative frameworks, stimulating investment in creativity, and supporting effective collective management systems that ensure the protection of rights and enhance the confidence of creators and musicians in the country’s creative climate,” said undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy Abdullah Ahmed Al Saleh in a release.
He continues: “The collective management license for music plays an important role in promoting a creative culture in society, providing comprehensive protection for the intellectual property rights of musicians and artists, and providing mechanisms to ensure financial justice for artists and creators in the distribution of revenues and transparency in the collection and distribution of copyrights. This supports raising the competitiveness of the music industry in the country and making it an attractive destination for creative and cultural works worldwide.”
Music Nation will begin collecting royalties in the UAE for more than 2 million songwriters, composers, publishers, artists, sound recording owners and other music creators. That 2 million figure represents the combined copyrights held by clients of BMI and SoundExchange. Music Nation will collect and distribute royalties on their behalf in the UAE.
“We are thrilled to partner with Rasha, the Music Nation team and SoundExchange to ensure that music creators in the UAE have the opportunity to turn their passion into their careers by being paid for their creative work,” said BMI president and CEO Mike O’Neill in a release. “BMI has always been an unwavering advocate for the songwriters, composers and rights holders behind the songs the world loves, and we’re excited to provide our music licensing infrastructure, expertise and deep experience fostering career development to benefit the region’s incredible creators. There are endless possibilities ahead that Music Nation will deliver, and we look forward to a bright future together.”
The UAE and the broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remain the fastest-growing music market in the world, with the IFPI reporting the territory expanded in 2024 for a tenth consecutive year. Music revenue in MENA last year climbed by 22.8%, outpacing the global average of 5.9% growth.
“This is a major milestone and a vote of confidence from the UAE Ministry of Economy in the combined abilities of Music Nation, SoundExchange and BMI,” said SoundExchange president and CEO Michael Huppe in a release. “We’re excited to get to work establishing the region’s premier collective management organization and serving creators with the same level of excellence we have for more than two decades in the U.S.”
On Tuesday (June 3), VNYL Inc. announced it has acquired record subscription service Vinyl Me, Please. VMP, which launched in 2013, was facing bankruptcy and liquidation.
VNYL will relaunch the brand and service under new ownership and with a new leadership team that includes Nick Alt as CEO and Emily Muhoberac as president. “This isn’t about reinventing Vinyl Me, Please,” said Alt in a statement. “It’s about restoring its true form as the ‘Best Damn Record Club.’”
VNYL already has two subscription services under its umbrella: VinylBox and the VNYL brand. According to a release, the three brands will be marketed to specific audiences: VMP for audiophiles, VinylBox for millennials and VNYL for Gen Z and Alpha.
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“Our philosophy is simple: not every collector is the same,” said Alt. “We’re building different clubs to serve different types of listeners — with pricing and curation that actually match their needs.”
In 2021, amidst a pandemic boom for the format, VMP grew to 80,000 active customers and finished its highest-performing quarter with a 74% growth in membership from the same time period the previous year, as Billboard previously reported. (2021 was the largest year for vinyl album sales since Luminate started tracking sales in 1991.)
Reflecting in the same 2021 article with Billboard, VMP co-founder/CEO Cameron Schaefer said: “What stands out to me now looking back at the origin of VMP is the simplicity of what we were trying to do. We were trying to just pick one record a month that we thought would be worth your time and attention, and that was it.”
In 2022, VMP announced plans to open its own pressing plant in a 14,000 sq. ft., audiophile-grade, Denver-based space. It was going to be used for manufacturing and production, tours and special events.
Looking ahead, VNYL hopes to bring VMP back to its original mission that Schaefer laid out. As Muhoberac said in a statement: “Vinyl customers deserve a white glove experience and that’s far from what they’ve gotten recently. We intend to do that by getting back to the fundamentals of VMP with a great customer experience.”
Hawaiian singer-songwriter Maoli signed with WME for global representation in all areas. According to a press release, Maoli has racked up more than half a billion streams globally across nine independent album releases. He’s managed by Jason Gibbs, Shawn Dailey and Emilie Glover at Red Light. Maoli is currently on a tour of the U.S. […]
MusiCares announced that it launched its 2025 Wellness in Music Survey on Monday (June 2). The study, which MusiCares first introduced in October 2020, includes questions on such sensitive topics as sexual harassment, sexual assault, suicide, mental health and substance use. The anonymous survey is limited to music professionals who are 18 and older. Responses are due by Friday (June 13) at 5 p.m. PT.
MusiCares seeks to get participants to answer dozens of detailed questions about their health and well-being by saying, “The survey allows MusiCares to understand how music professionals are doing on a large scale, and to then tailor our services to the community’s most pressing needs. Your participation isn’t just valuable — it’s vital for making real, positive changes for everyone in the music community.”
Key updates this year include additional questions around family/caregiving and the experiences of music professionals with disabilities.
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MusiCares reports that nearly 2,800 music professionals responded to last year’s survey. Based in part on their responses, MusiCares expanded telehealth support for addiction recovery, introduced financial coaching, covered childcare costs and increased access to preventive care services, including mammograms and cervical screenings.
In its letter asking people to participate in the survey, MusiCares ticks off several ways in which music careers can be especially challenging in terms of health and well-being: “Unpredictable, gig-based income. High out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Long hours on the road, often in a new city each day. These challenges don’t just affect performers — they affect touring crews, engineers, stagehands, and every behind-the-scenes worker who keeps the music going.
“The truth is: life in music isn’t just challenging — it’s often destabilizing in ways that most traditional workers never encounter. From a lack of benefits and paid leave to the mental toll of creative burnout, the risks are real — and they’re widespread.
Go here to access the survey in English. Go here to access the survey in Spanish. Go here to access the social media toolkit in both English and Spanish.
Last year’s survey results were sobering — and that was before wildfires in Los Angeles and hurricanes across the Southeast disrupted thousands of lives, including many who work in music.
Here are some of the key findings from last year’s survey:
78% earned $100,000 or less — lower than national household averages.
69% couldn’t comfortably cover expenses through music work alone.
53% said their income hadn’t stabilized post-pandemic.
47% and 44% cited financial concerns as a direct cause of stress and anxiety, respectively.
65% were not confident about the trajectory of the music industry.
87% had health insurance, but only 54% had dental.
78% skipped hearing screenings, despite working in high-decibel environments.
70% of those 45+ missed colonoscopy screenings.
62% of women 24+ missed cervical cancer screenings.
60% of those under 45 skipped vision screenings.
8.3% had serious thoughts of suicide, compared to 5% nationally. Of those, 15.1% made a plan and 3.5% attempted — far above national rates.
36% reported using marijuana or marijuana-derived products in the past month. Among those users, 36% reported daily use.
Offering preventive, emergency and recovery programs, MusiCares is a safety net supporting the health and welfare of the music community. Founded by the Recording Academy in 1989 as a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) charity, MusiCares safeguards the well-being of music workers through direct financial grant programs, networks of support resources and tailored crisis relief efforts. For more information visit www.musicares.org.
Four years before Taylor Swift began her crusade to re-record new versions of her early albums so she could own the valuable master recordings, Bowling for Soup did the same. The pop-punk band put out Songs People Actually Liked — Volume 1, note-for-note copies of early quasi-hits such as “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” and “Punk Rock 101,” and justified it by telling fans they were more mature, better musicians and sought to “add some luster” to the originals.
The band conspicuously did not say the 2015 project’s main purpose was to secure the rights to those songs, boost streaming royalties and be able to license them to movies, ads and TV shows. At the time, that seemed crass. “We had to be very careful about never making our audience feel like we were taking advantage of them,” says Jaret Reddick, the band’s frontman, by phone from a Disney cruise with his family in Juneau, Alaska. “Shortly after that, Taylor Swift literally educates the entire music population on song ownership. She made it OK for all of us to re-record our stuff and everybody will back us. It was such a blessing.”
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Swift announced Friday (May 30) that she purchased the master recordings to her first six albums, from 2006’s Taylor Swift to 2017’s Reputation, from investment firm Shamrock Capital, for an undisclosed price. The sale was the end of a six-year crusade, after music mogul Scooter Braun bought the Nashville record company, Big Machine Label Group, which had released Swift’s original recordings. Angered that control of her catalog went to Braun, who’d worked with her enemy Kanye West, Swift tried and failed to buy back the recordings from Braun, then Shamrock, which bought them from Braun for what sources say was around $360 million.
Swift’s strategy — re-recording all six of those albums with most of the original musicians as “Taylor’s Versions,” convincing top radio stations to air them and streaming services to emphasize them in playlists while promoting them on her massive tours — has been influential, directly or indirectly, on other artists. It has also led to major labels overhauling their contracts to avoid anybody else replicating “Taylor’s Versions.” In part because Swift’s re-recordings have muted sales, streaming and licensing for the originals, all three major labels have recently overhauled their contracts to force artists to wait 10, 15 or even 30 years to re-record after departing their labels. “You try to put the shortest re-recording restriction you can get in the record contract — it used to be five years after release, but now I’ve found they’ve extended it to 10 years,” says Ben McLane, another music attorney.
Nonetheless, artists in the post-“Taylor’s Versions” age persist in following Swift’s lead: Pop-punk band Cartel recently announced it would release a re-recording of its 2005 album Chroma this September. “Artists are re-recording their masters more frequently than they were,” says Josh Karp, a lawyer who represents Cartel and other artists. “Part of that is definitely that Taylor shined a big bright light on it and showed it could be done successfully.”
Long before Swift, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and many others re-recorded their hits to claim financial control, and the process still happens today, with or without Swift’s influence. Switchfoot put out a new version of its 2003 breakthrough The Beautiful Letdown 20 years later; TLC, Wheatus and Paris Hilton have done the same in recent years; and Ashanti announced in 2022 that Swift inspired her to begin a similar project. “It’s also a technological issue,” Karp says. “It’s simply easier to record now than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.”
Swift’s crusade, according to Gandhar Savur, a music attorney, has helped young artists better understand the benefits of signing label licensing deals rather than ownership deals. In the former, artists retain control of their recordings, although they’re unlikely to get an advance payment from a label to fund an expensive recording project; in the latter, the label pays out that advance money in exchange for ownership of the recordings for as long as several decades. “Historically, artists have said, ‘Don’t give away your publishing,’ and that message has gotten across. Now I feel like artists are starting to feel that way about their recordings as well,” Savur says. “Part of that is a result of big stories and big headlines and Taylor Swift and whoever else talking about the importance of owning their recordings.”
After Wheatus finished re-recording its 1999 alt-rock hit “Teenage Dirtbag” in April 2020, and it went viral on TikTok and Instagram during the pandemic lockdown, the new master generated nearly $25,000 for singer-songwriter Brendan Brown, according to Billboard estimates in 2023. Although Swift did not inspire the new version — that would have been original label Sony Music’s losing the master recordings, according to Brown — the singer-songwriter has praised Swift for raising the issue. “I would love to see the contract,” Brown said by phone from a tour bus en route to New Jersey after Swift’s announcement Friday. “But generally the answer is, ‘Yeah. Nice job. Get ’em.’”
When Chappell Roan called on the music industry to pay artists a living wage and give them health insurance during her Grammys acceptance speech in February, she sparked a debate about labels’ responsibility to the acts they sign, including the artist’s potential — and the label’s investment — that is put at risk if mental health struggles take center stage.
Nearly three-quarters of some 1,500 independent musicians reported struggling with mental illness, according to a 2019 survey by the digital distribution platform Record Union. Even among unionized musicians and performers, rates of mental health problems and substance use disorder are higher than among the general population, according to Sound Advice, a book written by music journalist Rhian Jones and performance coach Lucy Heyman.
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Over the past several months, Billboard asked more than a dozen artists, managers, financial planners, music executives and therapists about creatives’ single biggest out-of-pocket health care expense, and the answer was consistently the same: therapy.
Sobriety coaches, on-tour therapists and mental skills training offer potentially career-saving — even lifesaving — support for singers battling anxiety so intense it can rob them of their voices.
But they come with eight-to-10-figure medical bills, these sources say. And health insurance, for those fortunate enough to have it, often covers just a fraction of the cost.
“It’s $250 a session for someone who is good and qualified,” says Chief Zaruk, joint-CEO of The Core Entertainment, an entertainment company launched with Live Nation that represents Bailey Zimmerman, Nate Smith, Nickelback and others. “If you’re a beginner artist without a record deal, maybe a publishing deal, you’re making $2,500 a month, and you’re like, ‘Wait, I’m going to take more than a third of that and put it toward a therapist?’ They just can’t do it.”
Zaruk and Core co-founder and CEO Simon Tikhman provide their employees with 10 free sessions with a therapist, a life coach or business coach each year. Tikhman says they extend the service to many of their artists, including those just starting off, because, “If you help yourself now when you are playing in 200-300 person venues, it will give you the tools to help you manage [feelings of] overwhelm when you are in arenas.”
Ariana Grande, who has made millions of dollars of free counseling available to fans through a partnership with app-based therapy company Better Help, called on record labels in February to include therapy coverage in young artists’ contracts.
At least one major music company explored the cost of providing those services, according to a former executive from the company who spoke on condition of anonymity. That former executive, who advocated that the company offer therapy as a recoupable expense, says internal researchers determined around 2020 that coverage was ultimately too costly.
While therapy is expensive, the cost of foregoing needed mental health care is enormous, says Dr. Terry Clark, director of The Conservatory at Canada’s Mount Royal University.
For more than two decades, Clark has studied how mental skills training is used to equip classical musicians and dancers with tools to cope with stage fright and anxiety after failed auditions. Some of the lessons involve setting goals and picturing oneself achieving those goals on stage, like an imaginary rehearsal where the artist can make mistakes and envision how the show could go on.
“Careers can go on a long, long time,” Clark says. “But if you burn yourself out and there isn’t a later, the cost is enormous when you look at what you’ve lost.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde described successfully treating her paralyzing stage fright with the psychoactive drugs MDMA and psilocybin, a therapy commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, though that is still awaiting approval for use in the United States.
For others, substance use disorders can be part of their mental health struggles.
Kristin Lee, founder of the Los Angeles-based business management firm KLBM, says her musician clients’ biggest out-of-pocket health care expense is treatment for addiction and substance use disorders.
A number of organizations, including MusiCares, Music’s Mental Health Fund, Sweet Relief and Backline, provide financial assistance to help independent artists pay for mental health care. Lee estimates 35 percent to 40 percent of her clients get subsidized health insurance through SAG-AFTRA, and those who don’t qualify for it often pay $700 to several thousand every month for private insurance for themselves and employees.
“Touring is probably the absolute worst thing to do while you’re trying to be sober. It’s a rigorous way of life with no downtime, and it’s entertainment, so it’s supposed to be fun,” Lee says. She says some of her clients have hired sobriety coaches to go on tour with them at a cost of $70,000 a year.
Sobriety coaches are meant to be a resource a patient needs less over time, and so the cost eventually declines. Regardless, the investment for many is worth it.
“Rehab is expensive, too,” Lee says.