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Sonos, the audio technology company known for its elegant, compact speakers, has laid off approximately 200 people, the company announced on Wednesday (Feb. 5).
The restructuring follows the layoffs of 100 employees — about 6% of Sonos’ workforce at the time — in August 2024 after a disastrous rollout of a new smartphone app forced the company to lower sales projections and delay product launches. In the wake of the problems, CEO Patrick Spence resigned in January and was replaced by interim CEO Tom Conrad, Pandora’s chief technology officer during the groundbreaking internet radio service’s early years.
In a letter to employees posted on the Sonos website, Conrad explained that the company needed to reshape its organizational structure to become more efficient. “One thing I’ve observed first hand is that we’ve become mired in too many layers that have made collaboration and decision-making harder than it needs to be,” Conrad wrote. “So across the company today we are reorganizing into flatter, smaller, and more focused teams.
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“Most significantly, we are reorganizing our Product organization into functional groups for Hardware, Software, Design, Quality and Operations, and away from dedicated business units devoted to individual product categories,” he continued. “With this simpler organization in place, cross-functional project teams will come together to improve our core experience and deliver new products. Being smaller and more focused will require us to do a much better job of prioritizing our work — lately we’ve let too many projects run under a cloud of half-commitment. We’re going to fix this too.”
The company’s woes are evident in its financial statements. In fiscal year 2024 (ended Sept. 30, 2024), Sonos’ revenue dropped 8.3% from the prior year and came in 13.4% below fiscal 2022’s revenue. Over that time span, a $67.4 million net profit turned into a $38.1 million net loss despite Sonos reaching a high of 3.08 products per household, up from 3.05 in fiscal 2023, and being in 16.3 million homes. In addition to music-focused speakers, Sonos also sells “soundbar” speakers for TVs and in May 2024 launched a luxury headphone, Sonos Ace.
With news of the layoffs hitting after markets closed on Wednesday, Sonos shares fell 2.2%, to $13.95, in after-hours trading. The stock is well below its 52-week high of $19.76 set in March 2024 but has reclaimed some losses after falling to a low of $10.23 in August. Sonos hit an all-time high of $44.72 on April 14, 2021.
Record Store Day on April 12 will feature more than 300 titles being released, including collectible music from Elton John, Post Malone, Prince, Gracie Abrams, Queen, Taylor Swift, John & Yoko, Charlie XCX, the Killers & Bruce Springsteen, and many more.
As usual, the vast majority of the releases are vinyl LPs, many with a color or picture-disc slant; and also as usual, most releases will be in limited supply.
This will mark the 18th year of RSD, launched back in 2008 after the idea emerged at a gathering of indie record store owners and label executives. Since then, the event has single-handedly revived vinyl into a viable music format that sells over $1 billion annually in the U.S. alone. What’s more, RSD has also evolved into an international event.
Each year, stores wait in anticipation to see which titles will emerge as must-haves on the big day — the kinds of drops that bring long lines of fans waiting outside participating stores. With a limited supply for most titles, it can mean fans shuffle from store-to-store seeking their sought-after title. But while searching for those titles, it can also mean finding an unexpected treasure.
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“The whole energy in a record store is just super inspiring,” 2025’s Record Store Day Ambassador Post Malone said in a statement provided by the RSD organization in announcing the event. “I feel at home. It’s really an unexplainable feeling to hit up a shop and dig through crates, just see what grabs your eye.”
Malone will issue his Post Malone Tribute to Nirvana, a 2020 livestream performance of Nirvana covers accompanied by blink-182’s Travis Barker on drums, guitarist Nick Mack and bassist Brian Lee. Moreover, 100% of net proceeds from the release will be donated to MusiCares’ Addiction Recovery/Mental Health division.
Malone will also be participating in another RSD release, which is also expected to be a hot item as its a collaboration with 2022’s Record Store Day Ambassador, who also happens to be the biggest music artist in the world, Taylor Swift. They will release their collaboration track “Fortnight,” on a double sided 7-inch vinyl single.
While RSD brings out plenty of long-time collectors, i.e. older demographics, it was Swift who helped spread the day’s popularity to younger fans in 2023 when she caused traffic jams at stores filled with fans seeking her special release of folklore, the long pond studio sessions — a double LP that year. Last year, keeping the young flowing to record stores included releases from Olivia Rodrigo, Noah Kahan, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
This year’s titles for younger music fans include: Gracie Abrams: Live from Radio City Music Hall; Beabadoobee’s Live and Acoustic in London; Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine on double black vinyl; and two releases from Charli XCX, the first a collaboration title, Guess featuring Billie Eilish, on 7-inch vinyl; and an edited version of prior release: Number 1 Angel, on apple-colored vinyl with a new RSD exclusive cover. That title’s tracks were previously part of a double-LP release Pop 2.
Moreover, RSD continues to diversify its genres offerings as rap and hip-hop fans will be able to seek titles from Cypress Hill, Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dog and a new release from the Wu-Tang Clan in a collaboration with Mathematics as they release Black Samson, The Bastard Swordsman: Wu-Tang, The Saga Continues Collection on 180-gram LP vinyl. What’s more Wu-Tang Clan are expected to make an appearance at the RSD press event today.
Jazz releases include music from Pharaoh Sanders, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio; while Harry Potter fans will be treated to five different soundtrack albums from that movie series, all on double-LP, clear vinyl.
Finally, in a move to revive another marketing tool previously used to promote RSD, this year’s event will feature a “Record Store Day Song of the Year,” with the tag being applied to the double-a-sided 12-inch single of “Be Here Now,” done by the song’s author George Harrison on one side, with Beck’s cover tribute on the other side.
Other new RSD titles expected to be popular this year include a 12-inch EP collaboration between the Killers and Bruce Springsteen; a David Bowie live-stream from 2003 will now be available as a vinyl and CD release; and a 12-inch, 180-gram yellow vinyl release of John & Yoko with the Plastic Ono Band of their live 1972 One-To-One concert.
Most musician biopics follow a familiar arc — a rise and fall, fueled by the childhood trauma behind it all, then a third-act redemption tied to a career peak. The rise usually involves a montage of tour buses and adoring audiences, the fall a montage of drug use and mistreatment of friends or colleagues. By 2007, the formula was so well established that it inspired the parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. More recently, Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, imaginative as they were, leaned on some of the same tropes.
As the producers behind the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown developed the project, they faced the challenge of making a film that didn’t rely on those plot points, about an iconic singer-songwriter who seldom reveals much. Dylan never derailed his career with a debilitating drug problem (his 1966 tour was fueled by amphetamines, by many accounts, and a motorcycle accident that summer gave him the chance to take some time off), and his career doesn’t have a clear arc so much as a series of sudden left turns. He established himself as a folk singer, then left that scene behind to become a rock star — then veered into country, made an album about his divorce and recorded three gospel albums as a born-again Christian, all in the first two decades of a career that has lasted more than six. It’s not an easy story to make into a film, let alone one with commercial appeal.
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The film works, though. As of the first week of February, the movie has grossed more than $67 million in the U.S. and more than another $20 million abroad, according to Box Office Mojo, and it’s already one of the 10 most successful music biopics in history. It has also received critical acclaim, and numerous Academy Award nominations — including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Timothée Chalamet as Dylan), Best Supporting Actress (for Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez), and Best Supporting Actor (for Edward Norton as a note-perfect Pete Seeger). Just as important for Dylan and the companies that have the rights to his music — Universal Music Group owns his publishing, Sony Music his recordings — the film has introduced both his story and his music to a younger generation.
From the beginning, the idea behind the film was to focus on a few years of Dylan’s life, from his 1961 arrival in New York to the summer of 1965, when he “went electric” by performing live with a rock band at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Dylan’s company had been developing a project set at this time, and in 2016 it optioned the rights to the Elijah Wald book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, which HBO planned to develop into a film. Jack Cocks, who is credited with co-writing the screenplay to A Complete Unknown, wrote a script, but the project never moved forward.
A few years later, Alex Heineman asked his friend and fellow film producer Fred Berger if he would be interested in making some kind of Dylan biopic. “I asked, ‘How did you get the rights?’” Berger remembers. “And he said, ‘I don’t have them.’” The two went to Dylan’s management, which told them that HBO had the rights to another project.
Meanwhile, Berger and Heineman reached out to Chalamet, who was interested in playing Dylan. When the rights to the project became available in 2019, it ended up at Searchlight Pictures, with James Mangold directing — but it didn’t start shooting for another few years. “We got Searchlight and then we got Jim [Mangold], and then we got COVID,” says a source close to Dylan. After that came the writer’s strike.
By then, Mangold, along with Berger and Heineman and Dylan’s team, had the story, as well as an approach. “James Mangold and I and the other producers have a similar feeling about biopics, which is that a cradle-to-grave approach is an expanded Wikipedia page,” Berger says. (Mangold shares a co-writing credit with Cocks.) The director “focused on a narrow period of time” that offered a compelling story to make a larger point about Dylan and what drives him.
In his book, Wald shows that Dylan’s decision to go electric wasn’t just a matter of instrumentation but of leaving the folk scene, with its focus on authenticity and leftist politics, for a rock band and a style that involved more leather jackets than workwear. The original approach for the movie would have spent more time on that political context but the film casts the conflict in more personal terms: Dylan needs to turn away from familial figures, including Pete Seeger, in order to follow his muse. Mangold “approaches story from character,” Berger says. “It’s not about acoustic versus electric — it’s about the family that lifted him up and how those relationships are on the line.”
The stakes are personal, in other words, so A Complete Unknown lacks a rousing resolution, as well as rousing music to accompany it. (The last song Dylan is seen playing in the film is the same song that ended his actual Newport set, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” an acoustic kiss-off to a scene he had outgrown.) Afterward, Dylan seems to be contemplating his next move, rather than rejoicing in triumph, as Queen is seen doing in Bohemian Rhapsody after the scene set at its Live Aid performance.
It’s hard to know what the success of A Complete Unknown might mean for future music films, but it certainly opens up more possibilities. Coincidentally, one of the next rock biopics to come out will be Deliver Me from Nowhere, a movie about Bruce Springsteen essentially going acoustic, on his 1982 album Nebraska. (It’s Springsteen’s darkest and least commercial album, so don’t expect anthemic music there, either.) It will be interesting to see how that does — and what other stories will follow it to the big screen.
Spotify and Warner Music Group have signed a new multi-year agreement covering both recorded music and music publishing, following Spotify’s similar deal with Universal Music Group earlier this year. The partnership, announced today (Feb. 6), aims to drive innovation and increase the value of music for artists, songwriters and fans.
The agreement focuses on advancing audio-visual streaming, expanding music and video catalogs, and, notably, introducing new paid subscription tiers with exclusive content bundles. It also reinforces “artist-centric” royalty models that reward artists for attracting and engaging audiences. Additionally, the new publishing deal introduces a direct licensing model with Warner Chappell Music in several countries, including the U.S.
In a statement, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl emphasized the collaboration’s role in expanding the music ecosystem and delivering value to artists and songwriters.
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“It’s a big step forward in our vision for greater alignment between rights holders and streaming services,” Kyncl said. “Together with Spotify, we look forward to increasing the value of music, as we drive growth, impact, and innovation.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek highlighted 2025 as a pivotal year for Spotify’s innovation, “and our partners at Warner Music Group share our commitment to rapid innovation and sustained investment in our leading music offerings. Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible for audiences worldwide—making paid music subscriptions more appealing while supporting artists and songwriters alike.”
During Warner Music’s August 2024 earnings call, Kyncl addressed the relationship between labels and digital service providers and refuted the notion that they are entrenched adversaries. “I know that investor attention has recently been focused on the dynamics between labels and DSPs, with some speculating that we’re adversaries playing a zero-sum game,” he said. “That’s simply not the case. We’re actively engaged with our partners around ways to drive growth for all of us.”
WMG announced its new pact with Spotify moments before reporting results for is fiscal first quarter, which saw a dip in revenue that it attributed to the termination of its distribution agreement with BMG, among other factors. The label group on Thursday also announced that it had agreed to purchase a controlling stake in Tempo Music Investment, a catalog company that owns rights to songs by Wiz Khalifa, Florida Georgia Line and others, in a deal sources say is worth several hundred million dollars.
Bolstered by both organic growth and additions to its repertoire, Reservoir Media posted strong gains in its latest fiscal quarter and raised its guidance for fiscal year revenue and earnings.
Revenue increased 19% to $42 million in its fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 31, the company announced Wednesday. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a commonly used measure of profitability, climbed 26% to $17.3 million.
During Wednesday’s earnings call, CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi cited the company’s repertoire, its ability to capture demand for its music for the 16% improvement in music publishing revenues and the 20% jump in recorded music revenues. In addition, Khosrowshahi attributed the company’s “commitment to cost containment and closely managed business operations” to the improvement in adjusted EBITDA.
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In the publishing division, price increases at streaming services helped digital revenues grow 20% to $16.7 million while mechanical royalties jumped 143% to $900,000 on the strength of physical sales of existing catalog. Performance and sync revenues improved just 2% and 3%, respectively. In the recorded music division, digital revenue grew 24% to $8.1 million, physical sales rose 18% to $2 million and sync royalties jumped 23% to $1 million. Neighboring rights revenue fell 7% to $900,000. The quarter was helped by an unspecific royalty recovery from a routine audit, said CFO Jim Heindlmeyer.
Reservoir Media has spent over $70 million on catalog acquisitions in the first three quarters of its fiscal year. Those deals include the acquisition of the catalog of South African composer Lebo Morake and the producer royalties of Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick).
“The pipeline remains robust, and we continue to be excited about the opportunities that are before us, we continue to have that populated with more off market deals, and that’s a strategy that we’ve been able to execute on successfully for many years now,” said Khosrowshahi.
The company also signed a publishing deal with k.d. lang and extended its deal with songwriter Serban Cazan (“Mantra” by Jennie).
After exceeding internal expectations in the quarter, Reservoir Media raised its full-year guidance. The company now expects revenue to be $155 million to $158 million, an increase of $5 million from the previous quarter’s guidance. Adjusted EBITDA to fall within $61.5 million and $64.5 million, a $2.5 million increase.
Shares of Reservoir Media responded by climbing as high as $8.85, up nearly 9%, in early Wednesday trading before settling at $8.30, up 2.1%, by midday.
The Music Business Association has announced the agenda for Music Biz 2025, set for May 12-15 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly. This marks the first time the conference will be held in Atlanta, as part of a new rotating host city model, following a decade in Nashville.
The change, announced last March, is inspired by the Music Biz Roadshow series, which has connected industry professionals with local artist communities like Memphis and Chattanooga since 2022.
New events include a First Timers’ Meetup on May 12, allowing newcomers to connect with Music Biz staff and board members, followed by first day-capping party sponsored by Spotify. The State of the Industry breakfast on May 13 will explore global consumption trends and industry outlooks. Multi-panel discussions like Humans of Music and Workflow Workshop will focus on workforce and operational improvements.
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The Music Biz Roadshow returns on May 12, with support from The Mechanical Licensing Collective and Made In Memphis Entertainment, to help artists and their teams optimize revenue streams. Tech-focused pros can attend events such as the Startup Lab on May 12, Startup Round Robin on May 13, and the Music Tech Hackathon on May 15. Additional summits include Let’s Talk Physical, Music Security Summit, Publishing Summit, Music & Money and the Indie Label Summit.
The fourth annual Bizzy Awards dinner, sponsored by Warner Music, will be held on May 14, honoring late Twitch executive Cindy Charles, who died in a tragic traffic accident in October, with the 2025 Presidential Award, and Digital Data Exchange with the 2025 Impact Award. Finalists will be announced in February, with winners recognized at the event.
Music Biz president Portia Sabin expressed excitement for this year’s expanded agenda, highlighting the industry’s strong hand in shaping the program.
“The task of building a comprehensive, four-day program for our Annual Conference becomes harder and harder every year thanks to the innovative and compelling panel ideas contributed by our ever-growing global community — it’s a good problem to have!” said Sabin. “We’re proud of how the agenda for Music Biz 2025 came together, and we can’t wait to welcome both new & returning faces to our event in this year’s new host city.”
President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order directing the U.S. to take steps to start developing a government-owned investment fund that he said could be used to profit off of TikTok if he’s successful at finding it an American buyer.
Trump signed an order on his first day office to grant TikTok until early April to find an approved partner or buyer, but he’s said he’s looking for the U.S. to take a 50% stake in the massive social media platform. He said Monday in the Oval Office that TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, was an example of what he could put in a new U.S. sovereign wealth fund.
“We might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options,” he said of TikTok. “But we could put that as an example in the fund. We have a lot of other things that we could put in the fund.”
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Sovereign wealth funds invest in assets, such as stocks, bonds and real estate. They are typically funded by a country’s budgetary surpluses, which the U.S. currently does not have.
Trump noted many other nations have such investment funds and predicted that the U.S. could eventually top Saudi Arabia’s fund size. “Eventually we’ll catch it,” he promised.
There are over 90 sovereign wealth funds around the world that mange over $8 trillion in assets, according to The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a London-based organization made up of roughly 50 of these entities.
In the U.S., more than 20 sovereign wealth funds exist at the state level, according to analysis from the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based nonpartisan think-tank.
The largest ones — based in Alaska, New Mexico and Texas — are financed through revenue that comes from oil, gas and mineral proceeds and used to fund in-state programs, such as education. Though these funds are owned by governments, they tend to operate as standalone institutions with their own investment strategies and staff, the center said.
The president put Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, in charge of laying the groundwork for creating a the fund, which would likely require congressional approval. The executive order says a plan for the fund — including recommendations for investment strategies and a governance model — has to be submitted to Trump within 90 days.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration had studied the possibility of creating a sovereign wealth fund for national security investments, but the idea did not yield any concrete action before he left office last month.
Bessent said the administration’s goal was to have the fund open within the next 12 months, and Lutnick said another use of the fund could have been for the government to take an profit-earning stake in vaccine manufacturers.
“The extraordinary size and scale of the U.S government and the business it does with companies should create value for American citizens,” Lutnick told reporters.
TikTok was supposed to be banned in the U.S. last month under a federal law that forces ByteDance to divest its stakes or face a ban. The law was passed in April with bipartisan support in Congress and signed by Biden. The two companies and some users quickly took legal action against the statute, which was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court last month.
After taking office, Trump, who had attempted to ban the popular app during his first term, directed the Justice Department to pause enforcement of the law for 75 days. The reprieve has given the company more time to work out a deal with the administration.
Several investors — including billionaire Frank McCourt and Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — have spoken publicly about their desire to purchase TikTok’s U.S. platform. Trump has said “many people” had also reached out to him privately about it. Last week, he said Microsoft was one of the U.S. companies eyeing the social media platform.
A San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup called Perplexity AI presented a proposal to ByteDance last month that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of an entity that combines TikTok’s U.S. platform with Perplexity’s business, a person familiar with the matter previously told the Associated Press. If successful, the proposal would allow the U.S. government to have a sizable stake in that entity once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion.
The wait is over. In 2025, Billboard U.K. will be hosting its inaugural Power Players list, also known as the Power 100, for the U.K. and Ireland’s world-beating music industry professionals.
While Billboard’s Power 100 ranks the music industry’s most influential executives globally, this list will celebrate and recognise the executives and members that are at the forefront of the U.K. and Ireland’s music scene, and boosting the region’s hugely talented artists on a global scale
Billboard U.K.’s Power Players list will be published in June 2025, and will be celebrated with an exclusive event at the upcoming inaugural SXSW London.
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Further details will be shared in the coming months.
“The U.K. and Ireland has long been home to some of the most influential figures in global music, shaping the industry and driving artists to new heights,” says Mo Ghoneim, president of Billboard U.K. “We look forward to spotlighting the executives leading this charge with Billboard U.K.’s Power Players, from labels to live, streaming to rights, and beyond.”
The news follows a period of success for British and Irish artists in recent years. In 2024, there were appearances for Hozier, Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran on Billboard’s Year-End Top Artists charts. Rising stars, meanwhile, like Lola Young, Aretmas, Myles Smith and more are growing their audiences domestically and internationally.
2025 will also be a bumper year for concert-goers with the U.K. hosting some of the most in-demand tours and live experiences: Oasis will kick off their reunion tour in Wales before heading around the globe, and superstars like Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Usher and more come into market for huge shows.
There are challenges to be met, too: Grassroots music venues face decimation without urgent action; legislation on artificial intelligence is paramount to the government’s agenda on growth; artists are finding touring a loss-making endeavour; the live and festival landscape continues to evolve and bring new obstacles. These themes will shape the inaugural U.K. Power Players, but the doors are wide open.
The Power Players list will be peer-nominated and selected by the Billboard U.K. team. Nominations open Feb. 4 and will close in two weeks on Feb. 17. Interested parties can fill in the nominations form here. For any queries, please contact power100@uk.billboard.com or tsmith@uk.billboard.com.
Spotify’s share price continues to soar in 2025 following a massive gain in 2024, making the music streaming company’s $109.3 billion market capitalization worth about the same as every standalone, publicly traded music company from which it licenses music combined — with nearly enough left over to include concert promoter Live Nation.
Based on closing prices Monday (Feb. 3), Universal Music Group has a market cap — the value of outstanding shares — of $51.1 billion, amounting to less than half of Spotify’s. The other standalone, publicly traded “multi-sector” music companies covering record labels and music publishers total another $27.8 billion: Warner Music Group ($16.6 billion), HYBE ($6.5 billion), JYP Entertainment ($1.8 billion), Believe ($1.5 billion), SM Entertainment ($1.3 billion), YG Entertainment ($646 million), Reservoir Media ($522 million) and Avex ($421 million). That brings the multi-sector aggregate market cap to $80.4 billion. If you add Live Nation’s $33.6 billion market cap to the multi-sector group, the combined market cap exceeds Spotify by just $4.7 billion.
Additionally, if you add the market cap of Sony Music – which is part of the Sony Corp. conglomerate and doesn’t trade as a standalone company – to UMG and WMG’s, the three major music groups’ aggregate market cap isn’t much more than Spotify’s. Importantly, if Sony Music was independent of Sony Corp, its value would be comparable to that of UMG. In the past four quarters, the two companies have had almost equal revenues on a dollar basis — $11.6 billion for UMG to $11.59 billion for Sony Music. Assuming the companies have similar margins and growth prospects, Sony Music’s market cap could — but would not necessarily — equal UMG’s $51.1 billion. Add WMG, and the three majors have a combined market cap of $118.8 billion — just $9.5 billion more than Spotify’s market cap at the end of trading on Monday.
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This imbalance between Spotify and music companies’ values hasn’t always existed. A move into podcasting and a pandemic-led growth spurt pushed Spotify’s stock above $380 in February 2021. The frothy times didn’t last long, however. Investors who were previously attracted to streaming companies’ high growth rates eventually demanded more financial discipline. When Spotify shares fell to an all-time low of $69.29 on Nov. 4, 2022, its roughly $13.3 billion market cap was less than a third of UMG’s $40.9 billion. But layoffs and price increases turbocharged Spotify’s financial statements and sent its share price into a new stratosphere. In 2023, the company laid off roughly a quarter of its full-time staff and implemented the first of two price increases. In 2024, Spotify’s share price rose 138.1%. Last month, it jumped another 22.6%.
Today, Spotify’s market value puts it in a rarefied air amongst entertainment companies. Netflix — which has 302 million subscribers globally to Spotify’s 252 million, and much higher prices — currently has a market cap of $418.8 billion. Walt Disney, which spans streaming, cable TV networks and theme parks, is worth $206.1 billion. Sony Corp, a huge company that includes games, movies, TV and hardware, has a market cap of $133.7 billion. Telecommunications giant Comcast, owner of NBCUniversal and cable company Xfinity, is worth $126.7 billion. Spotify is worth more than Warner Bros. Discovery ($24.9 billion), sports gambling company DraftKings ($20.2 billion) and video game companies Nintendo ($87.6 billion), Roblox ($46.4 billion) and Electronic Arts ($32.2 billion).
Approximately 900 people joined a town hall meeting hosted by Burning Man Project on Saturday (Feb. 1) with the organization’s CEO Marian Goodell, along with other staffers, making myriad announcements regarding the 2025 event, including information regarding a tiered ticketing system with new prices.
The town hall happened after months of fundraising efforts by Burning Man Project — the nonprofit behind the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and other Burning Man-related initiatives –after it reported a $10 million deficit due, as Goodell explained to Billboard in November, 2024 tickets not selling as forecasted.
The financial issue was compounded when Burning Man 2024 failed to sell out for the first time in many years. In November, Goodell said all ticket tiers saw decreased sales in 2024 and estimated that attendance was down by roughly 4,000. As such, in the latter part of 2024, Burning Man spent months trying to raise $20 million (with 2024’s $10 million deficit added to $10 million the organization typically raises every year) through a subscription program that encouraged Burners from around the world to make monthly donations to Burning Man Project.
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In the Saturday meeting, Goodell noted that the organization did not meet this fundraising goal, although she did not announce how much money was raised. (Goodell did note that a December campaign to raise $3 million was a success, and elaborated on the organization’s financial picture in a recent blog post.) She added that Burning Man Project “did manage to reduce our internal spending and budget by 9%… and will continue to tightly manage operating expenses and capital expenses across the organization.”
Goodell and the team then unveiled a revamped ticketing program, with new and updated price tiers. Tickets for Burning Man 2025 will start at $550, with prices scaling up from there — $650, $750 and $950m and more.
Tickets will be sold in three separate public sales, with the first happening on Feb. 12. Tickets in this sale (dubbed the “Today Sale”) will be $550, $650, $750, $950, $1,500, and $3,000, plus applicable taxes and fees. Registration for this sale opens on Monday (Feb. 3), with the sale offering a limited number of tickets available at each price. The Burning Man site notes that “$550 and $650 tickets are expected to sell quickly.” The meeting did not address how many tickets will be available at each price point.
Since 2022, Burning Man’s main sale tickets cost $575, an increase from $475 in 2019. (Burning Man didn’t officially happen in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic.) Therefore, many 2025 main sale tickets will be sold at a higher price than in previous years. In the meeting, Goodell emphasized that making new tiers (with ticket tiers previously offering no tickets between $550 and $1,500) provides more pricing options than ever before and “helps keep ticket prices affordable”
Beyond this first sale, the annual Steward’s Sale will happen on March 5, with these tickets going to camps, art installations, art cars, and groups supporting organizational initiatives having access to attending the event. The Stewards Sale has its own ticket price allotments reserved unrelated to other ticket sales.
Another ticket sale (dubbed the “Tomorrow Sale”) will happen at to be determined date and include ticket tiers based on ticketing availability following the “Today Sale.” A final sale (the annual “OMG sale”) will happen in July and offer any remaining tickets across all the price points.
Meanwhile, two new programs — the “Renaissance Program” and “Resilience Program” — will debut with the goal of bringing networks and groups to Black Rock City and brings people affected by natural disasters and geographical conflict, respectively. More information regarding these programs will be announced in the coming weeks and months.
Goodell alluded to backlash over the recent fundraising campaign among factions of the global Burning Man community, saying that “with the event selling out every year, we [previously] didn’t need to explain that tickets do not cover the event cost and that philanthropy is needed, but the game has changed, and we should have brought you along better on this journey and we appreciate you sticking with us… We are learning and improving, reducing bureaucracy and red tape, and we hope that you see and feel this in how you engage with us and one another.”
The meeting featured presentations from several members from Burning Man Project, with operations director Charlie Dolman explaining several new processes, including an expedited process to acquire the vehicle passes that allow Burners to drive through the event. Burning Man will also issue new “decommodification guidelines” meant to, as Dolman said, address “cultural issues,” along with a more organized ingress and egress system. (In previous years it’s taken some attendees roughly 12 hours to leave the event.)
“Over the last last few months we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from a lot of people, and I just want to say that we’ve heard you, and honestly even when it’s been uncomfortable we’ve kept our eyes and ears open. We want that feedback,” Dolman said, continuing that “in places we’ve overcomplicated things and we’ve made things too bureaucratic maybe, and that’s no fun. That has all been done with good intention… but also it became not fun, so we needed to course correct.”
Later in the presentation, Goodell also noted a new attempt to push back on costs related to the Bureau of Land Management, with fees from the organization typically coming in at $8 million. “I think we’re going to see some improvements in costs with the BLM,” she disclosed.