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More than 50 members of the music industry have joined an advisory committee to help guide an ongoing study by MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative.
The report, expected to be released this fall, is designed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between live music and climate change, to identify areas where the industry and concertgoers can make improvements to reduce emissions and create positive environmental outcomes, and to analyze the latest sustainable technology and systems that can be adopted in the live events space and other areas of the industry.
The ultimate goal of the study is to determine sector-specific and industry-wide decarbonization solutions.
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The new advisory board includes Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino along with other Live Nation execs; Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl; and reps from companies including Wasserman Music, WME, Atlantic Records, Upstaging, Inc., Farm Aid, Projects Tait, Global Motion Ltd., Women of Qolor Entertainment and many more.
On the artist side, the committee includes Ellie Goulding, Adam Met of AJR and representatives from the live and touring teams of artists including Billie Eilish, FINNEAS, Harry Styles, Shawn Mendes, Fred again.., Jack Johnson and Coldplay.
Participants also include reps from nonprofits and NGOs like Reverb, Support+Feed, Julie’s Bicycle, Global Citizen and Client Earth. See the complete list of participants here. Anyone can submit data to the report by emailing p1lm@mit.edu.
The MIT study is being executed with the support of Coldplay, Warner Music Group, Live Nation and consulting firm Hope Solutions.
“With the participation of the advisory committee and contributions of data from various sources, we are well on our way to producing a significant contribution to knowledge that can support meaningful actions to address climate change,” said Prof. John E. Fernandez, director of MIT’s environmental solutions initiative, in a statement.
“I would characterize the music industry as risk-averse,” Fernandez told Billboard in March of working within the industry. “It’s a business, and artists are trying to make a living, so we’ve seen an enormous amount of concern over the risk entailed with making a commitment to reduce emissions.”
Over the past decade, as U.S. recorded music revenue grew from $7 billion in 2014 to $17 billion in 2023, the combined market share of music sales and streaming controlled by the three major labels went from 64.9% in 2014 to 64.3% in 2023, Billboard estimates. That modest decline, which counts only music that the majors control rather than just distribute, came even as the companies bought market share with acquisitions of independent labels like 300 Entertainment, 12Tone and Alamo, plus buyouts of joint ventures. And it came about partly because about 5% of the global recorded music market — about $1.5 billion annually, according to a Billboard estimate — is now controlled by digital distribution services that mostly serve DIY and independent artists such as CD Baby, DistroKid and TuneCore, which I founded and ran until 2012. And this part of the market is projected to continue to grow.
This comes as consumers have access to more independent music than ever on the same online services, and even the same playlists, as major label releases. But one of the responses from the major music companies seems to be, if you can’t beat them, push to change the rules to take a portion of their royalties.
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Last year, the three major labels made separate deals with Spotify, as well as with Deezer, on new licensing terms for recordings, to which all other rightsholders on those platforms have to agree. The new agreements changed the policy on when a stream of a recording can generate a royalty, and in some cases the amount earned. In addition, this year, under the rules laid out by the Music Modernization Act (MMA), some portion of the “accrued but unpaid” mechanical “black box” royalties currently held by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) become eligible to be paid out to member publishers, some of which have executives on the MLC board, based on their market share on the platform and at the time the royalties were earned. Although both policies apply to the entire market, they will redistribute revenue disproportionately to large labels and publishers, especially the majors, at the expense of smaller companies and DIY and independent creators.
Deezer now applies a royalty multiplier to tracks by artists that have at least 1,000 streams per month from 500 unique listeners, a policy that generally benefits major label artists, who tend to be more popular. Under Spotify’s new deal terms, royalties that previously would have been paid out on recordings with fewer than 1,000 streams over the course of the prior 12 months are now essentially reallocated to recordings that streamed more than 1,000 times over that same time period. And since the majors control fewer recordings that stream less than 1,000 times compared to the vast number controlled by DIY creators and independent labels, those royalties will overall go disproportionately to them.
In 2023, there were 106 million recordings that received between one and 1,000 streams (others generated no streams at all), which together accounted for a total of 13.68 billion streams globally, according to Luminate. Since each Spotify stream is worth a global average of between $0.0038 and $0.0042, that suggests that, although it’s hard to measure the impact of individual services, about $33 million a year could flow from smaller artists to more popular ones that are disproportionately signed to major labels.
To understand what these new policies mean in practice, consider the indie band Head of Femur. Over the last two decades, the band released several albums that include a total of 58 tracks. Under Spotify’s new model, the service will only pay out royalties for the band’s recordings that streamed more than 1,000 times in the prior 12 months, no matter how much the recordings streamed in total. In other words, a band with 58 tracks that stream 999 times each, for a total of 57,942 streams, will make nothing — while a band with a single song that streams 1,000 times will get paid. The royalties that would have gone to those 57,942 streams will go to bigger acts — many of them on bigger labels.
The model for streaming mechanical royalties changed in a way that will benefit the same players. Before the October 2018 passage of the Music Modernization Act and the January 2021 creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Spotify and other streaming services didn’t get the mechanical licenses they needed, and as a result faced multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, with potentially ruinous statutory damages. In addition, services weren’t paying out all, or in some cases any, royalties for some of the songs they had licensed — to the point that the MLC reported that it received $397.7 million in adjusted unpaid “historical” mechanical royalties that had been earned but not paid out. The Music Modernization Act was supposed to address these issues by making it easier to license mechanical rights and accurately pay publishers and songwriters.
In order to do this, the Music Modernization Act made three significant changes to the relevant parts of U.S. copyright law. First, it created a “blanket” compulsory license for digital services for every song ever written, to protect the services from liability for copyright infringement. Second, it shielded the services from liability for infringement before the law took effect. Third, it mandated the creation of a database to be administered by a designated “mechanical licensing collective,” with the goal of accounting to and paying publishers and songwriters billions of dollars in mechanical royalties generated by trillions of streams — promptly, accurately and transparently. The collective was also charged with paying out the $397.7 million in “historical” mechanical royalties earned but not paid out before 2021.
By enacting the MMA, Congress made mechanical licensing easier and protected digital services from liability for infringement. Although the law calls for penalties if digital services do not pay the MLC, it includes no specific regulations about the MLC paying rightsholders or offering rightsholders any remedies if it fails to do so. (The U.S. Copyright Office oversees the MLC and every five years reviews whether it should continue administering the compulsory license.) In fact, the Music Modernization Act states that its regulation of the mechanical licensing collective “shall supersede and preempt any State law (including common law) concerning escheatment or abandoned property, or any analogous provision, that might otherwise apply.”
That means that any unpaid mechanical royalties are subject solely to the Music Modernization Act, which says that after a certain amount of time they become eligible to be distributed according to “relative market share” of copyright owners “as reflected in reports of usage.” Essentially, the money is divided by market share on a given platform during a given time, which means that it will disproportionately go to larger publishers. So far, the MLC has yet to distribute any money based on market share. But as of June 2024, the MLC is sitting on $634 million in “black box” royalties that it has taken in but not distributed, according to the organization; it also received $397.7 million in undistributed historical royalties, of which it is sitting on $285.9 million. Eventually, all of that money — $919.9 million — will be eligible to be distributed by market share on a given platform and time period.
Over the next decade, predictions suggest that consumers will continue to turn their attention to a wider selection of DIY and independent artists. Under these policies, however, some of the revenue generated by their work will be disproportionately paid to the major labels and publishers instead of to the artists and songwriters who earned them.
Jeff Price is the founder and CEO of Word Collections. He previously co-founded and was GM of spinART Records and founded and was CEO of TuneCore and Audiam.
Following the unexpected shuttering of the MTV News website earlier this week, Paramount has now largely cleaned house on the sites for several more of its cable channels, in a potential cost-cutting move.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the sites for Comedy Central, CMT, Yellowstone airer Paramount Network and TV Land were instead directing users to the media conglomerate’s streaming platform Paramount+. On Monday, MTVnews.com was taken down, purging some 20 years of stories from the web.
A pop-up window on the Comedy Central site reads, “While episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website, you can watch Comedy Central through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows.” Similar language shows up on the CMT, Paramount Network and TV Land sites, as well as that of MTV (which was separate from MTVnews.com).
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aramount said in a statement, “As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we have introduced more streamlined versions of our sites, driving fans to Paramount+ to watch their favorite shows.”
As noted by LateNighter, the cleaning out of the Comedy Central site in particular wipes out a huge trove of archival material from The Daily Show and other late night series, along with clips from South Park, Key & Peele and Workaholics, among many others. Some of that material is available on YouTube, but it’s not as easily searchable or accessible as it was on the network page. (The oldest video on the Daily Show YouTube channel, for instance, is from 2016, while the show’s history stretches back 20 years before then.)
On Paramount+, only the two most recent seasons of The Daily Show are available. The platform has several South Park specials and the 1999 feature film Bigger, Longer and Uncut, but the show’s primary streaming home is on Max. Paramount+ does have the full runs of Key & Peele and Workaholics.
As of publication time, sites for Paramount’s BET, Nickelodeon and VH1 were still active, while MTV.com offered some episodes and clips.
The website changes come on the heels of Paramount’s co-CEOs — George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins — telling employees at a town hall meeting Tuesday that they were embarking on a cost-cutting mission as profits have dropped for the company. Paramount is looking for $500 million in reduced costs, which will mean layoffs for some employees. Cheeks also said at the town hall that “We’re looking at selling certain Paramount-owned assets — in fact, we’ve already hired bankers to assist us in this process — and we’ll use the proceeds to help pay down debt and strengthen our balance sheet.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
SXSW will no longer engage in partnerships with the U.S. Army or weapons manufacturers, the event announced Wednesday (June 26). “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model,” reads a statement posted to the SXSW website. “As a result, the U.S. Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of […]
Given the glacial pace at which federal antitrust litigation moves, the U.S. Department of Justice’s historic lawsuit against Live Nation and its wholly owned subsidiary Ticketmaster is expected to take years to wind its way through the legal system whether it’s fully adjudicated or the live-event Goliath agrees to make changes to its business, which the government often terms “behavioral remedies.”
And though it’s clearly too early to predict how the case will play out, legal expert and antitrust attorney Lawrence J. White from New York University’s Stern School of Business says the potential winners and losers have already been largely pre-determined based on hints found in the 128-page complaint that the DOJ filed May 23 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
“The companies mentioned in the complaint as being the most harmed by anti-competitive behavior are typically the same companies that stand the most to gain in the solution,” White says.
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In the case of Live Nation, the winners will very likely be the company’s main concert promotion rival, AEG Presents; secondary-market ticketing competitor SeatGeek; and a handful of major independent promoters like Chicago’s Jam Productions. The losers would likely be Live Nation; Irving Azoff and Tim Leiweke’s venue owner, management and hospitality company, Oak View Group — which the DOJ alleges “has described itself as a ‘hammer’ and ‘protect[or]’ for Live Nation” — as well as, potentially, major artist management companies and talent agencies, depending on the government’s solution for more competitive ticket pricing.
“The government tends to rely on private companies to carry out its policy goals during the remedy phase of an antitrust case,” explains White, pointing toward the original consent decree drafted around the 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. That agreement unsuccessfully propped up two private companies — AEG and Comcast Spectacor — to serve as competitors to Ticketmaster.
Whether the DOJ wins in court or ends up settling with Live Nation, White says it will lean on large corporations to assist with enforcement of the ruling. As Live Nation’s only major competitor for ticketing and concert promotion, AEG, which owns AXS Ticketing, is an obvious choice as a DOJ partner because of the company’s large scale, which will be critical for the DOJ’s long-shot goal to lower ticket prices. (The DOJ is believed to have interviewed more than 100 individuals from the live-music industry as part of its recent antitrust investigation into Live Nation.)
In a May 23 press release that announced the lawsuit filing, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anti-competitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live-events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators.” He contends that increasing competition among Live Nation’s ticketing rivals and in the artist promotion space will lower the face value prices of tickets.
Prior to the 2010 merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, four or five ticketing companies were capable of competing with the latter at the arena level. In 2024, only two remain: AXS and SeatGeek, the secondary site that also happens to own one of the only primary ticketing products capable of servicing major arenas and stadiums.
In a statement released to Billboard, SeatGeek said, “We are hopeful that the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit to break up the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly will restore fair market competition to live entertainment.” On the concert promotion front, there are far fewer major independent promoters now than there were prior to 2010 and only a handful capable of touring major arena acts across the country. In addition to Jam Productions, they include Nashville’s Outback Concerts and Another Planet Entertainment in the San Francisco Bay Area. All three promoters declined to comment for this story.
In a May 31 letter to his staff, AEG chairman/CEO Jay Marciano outlined how the DOJ could make concert promotion fairer and drive down the cost of ticketing by dismantling Live Nation’s “flywheel” business model, which is cited in the DOJ’s complaint and described in its May 23 press release as “a self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long-term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again.”
Marciano’s letter said Live Nation’s flywheel model “deploys the excessive profits of its ticketing monopoly to outspend what the concert market can profitably sustain.”
Under this theory, ticket prices would drop if Live Nation was prevented from using its other revenue sources to overpay artists and compete with other promoters offering artists an 85/15 or a 90/10 split on ticket sales.
Although the theory is not widely accepted by most major talent agents or managers — IAG executive vp/head of global music Jarred Arfa calls it “unrealistic” and “illogical” — it is gaining popularity among large indie promoters and DOJ lawyers, sources tell Billboard. White notes that whether the government settles or takes Ticketmaster to trial will depend on “the time and resources the DOJ wants to expend on the case and the evidence against Live Nation it has collected.”
When the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) releases its annual Music Industry Action Report Card, co-founder and president/CEO Willie “Prophet” Stiggers says a barrage of distressed phone calls from executives inevitably follows. The assessments grade music companies on how well they’ve kept promises made in 2020 to diversify their executive ranks, among other measures; the executives call, he explains, to complain that the grades affect their bottom lines.
“That’s what we want to do,” says Stiggers, who is also the CEO of artist and brand management company 50/50 Music Group Management. “You can’t continue to operate with false promises after saying that you stand in solidarity with your Black brothers and sisters and then don’t promote the Black executive and don’t ensure that a woman is in an environment where she is protected and her vision is executed.”
BMAC was established in June 2020 following the movement #TheShowMustBePaused to advance racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the music business. But this year’s mass industry layoffs, which included many DEI executives, has “unrolled some of the progress we were making,” Stiggers says.
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As a result, BMAC will present a new version of its report before its fourth annual gala in September. The organization has sent a link to executives that asks them to anonymously indicate whether they have seen true change, what has worsened and what still needs to be addressed.
The early results, Stiggers says, are “almost a slap in the face — a ‘whitelash,’ if you will, to the commitments that were made in 2020. The question has become, Was this s— really performative or not?”
The National Action Network Award that Stiggers received this year — “a 360 moment for me because my activism began with [NAN founder and president] Al Sharpton. I created and led [the organization’s] youth division.”
Diwang Valdez
Why are there fewer Black executives in the music industry now than in 2019?
The major labels, I’m sure, would tell you AI [artificial intelligence]. The uncertainty of that realm has caused them to tighten up. But my suspicions are, there’s a bit of that, but these positions [for Black and women executives] were not permanent. A lot of the people were put in these positions in 2020 — managers became senior-level directors, for example — and then in 2024, they have been asked to go back to that lower position or exit altogether. When you have the RIAA report record-breaking revenue that the industry generated in 2023, it’s a little lost on me how that translates to the lack of employment.
What are your thoughts on the DEI positions that have been eliminated since 2020?
The reality is that a lot of these commitments from the labels were three-year commitments. That seemed to be the hot number where they thought maybe at the end of the three years this s— would go away or we would be on to something else. Seemingly, the contracts that these DEI executives had were three-year deals. Once they were up, [the labels were] like, “We did that. We checked the box. Now let’s go back to business as usual.” There was so much potential for us to set this thing on the right course. So for us to go backward is really embarrassing, and history is going to reflect this.
How are you counseling these companies to elevate people of color and women?
A lot of our conversations with these labels, we do confidentially. Here’s what I can say about it. We bring all kinds of stats to prove how profitable diversity is; how profitable it is when you let women lead; how profitable historically it has been when people of color — those who make the product, who consume the product — lead [in terms of] how that product is distributed. This is not even a moral conversation at this point. I’m telling you how it impacts your bottom line.
The prototype of the first BMAC Award, which was given in September 2021 to The Weeknd at the first gala. “He said, ‘This is the greatest award I ever received.’ ”
Diwang Valdez
What do you think of the Recording Academy’s attempts to diversify the voting membership for the Grammy Awards?
Racism is a 450-year-old issue. It is not going to be solved in three or four years. What we can do is talk about the progress that has been made. We have, for the first time, a Black CEO of the Recording Academy. That’s progress. We watched new categories get introduced [like] best song for social change. That didn’t exist prior to Harvey Mason jr. as CEO. He’s up against decades of systems that we are slowly chipping away at. The mere fact that there is a Black Music Collective. The fact that Jay-Z stood on the stage and held a Grammy named after Dr. Dre. We’re not going to act like that is the liberation of our people, but we’re not going to act like that’s not change.
You say BMAC has moved from protest to policy. How?
In 2022, it came to our attention that there were over 500 cases of Black men that were locked up for lyrics. That became a problem for us. So BMAC created the federal legislation called the RAP Act. The work that we did on that federal level created all these statewide bills like what Gov. [Gavin] Newsom signed in California last year. That was a direct result of our work. We are working with the group around Fix the Tix and are working with the groups around AI protection. Our work around legislative policy is as loud, as real and as meaningful as the work we’re doing with pipeline programs.
What are some of those pipeline programs?
Three years ago, we partnered with the RIAA and Tennessee State University and [Nashville Music Equity’s] Brian Sexton, who is an alumnus there, to bring a unique commercial business school to young people who want to get into the industry. We bring in executives and artists from all over the industry. They get paid internships that come out of that every year. We’ve had several people get gainfully employed at record labels and music studios. Most recently, Live Nation hired one of the participants. Tri Star [Sports & Entertainment] hired a young woman from this year’s classes.
A portrait of Stiggers; his wife of 29 years, Fatima; and three of their children, from left: Zaira, Nailah and Willie III. They have since been joined by daughter Safra-Cree. “We met in high school and started [our] family young, which defined my greater purpose,” he says.
Diwang Valdez
That’s not your only Nashville-related initiative.
BMAC also put out a report in 2022 called Three Chords and the Actual Truth: The Manufactured Myth of Country Music and White America. When we released that report, there was a call to action for the music world to join us in addressing the structural racism on Music Row in Nashville and creating access. We were inspired by a guy named Michael Tubbs from Stockton, Calif. He created Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and got mayors from all over the country to create these pilot programs where they would give [citizens of their city] guaranteed income of up to $2,000 a month. He got the qualitative and quantitative data needed to show the positive effects of small increments of money going to people directly.
We felt we could bring the same concept to the music industry and creators. The Academy of Country Music was the first to raise their hand and join us. A year to the date of that report, 20 young Black kids [in the music community] started receiving $1,000 a month, plus mentorship and [other] services.
BMAC is also working with the live industry.
We did a partnership with Live Nation and created BMAC Live, a 10-day intensive program in California as part of Live Nation’s School of Live. They allowed BMAC to come in and carve out a program specifically geared toward young Black non-college-bound students who have a desire to be in the live space. We’ve had 3,000 applicants already, and we are going to pick 20 of the best of that group and fly them out to Los Angeles for a full week. Each of those young people will go to their respective cities and receive a paid internship from Live Nation for six months. [Then] they will be eligible for the Live Nation apprenticeship program. That’s another six months that will then lead to employment. That’s the type of access and training we talked about, and that program will scale and grow annually.
A plaque commemorating the first Music Business Accelerator Program created by BMAC in partnership with the RIAA that started at Tennessee State University in 2021.
Diwang Valdez
Is there anything else you would like to highlight?
We’re working on something really special with Apple Pathways. [We are training young people] around spatial audio, spatial visual and preparing them for the technology of tomorrow. This is where we are going, and if we don’t create the accessibility to the technology, another divide is about to happen. Another shift will take place in which Black America is left out once again.
Is BMAC looking to expand its staff as these programs and initiatives develop?
Yes. We will be expanding and looking at college representatives. Young people are ready. They’re not moving with the same barriers and the same willingness to allow norms to continue to separate people. It’s a different spirit among this generation here.
One thing we realized is that this fight for justice isn’t just here in the U.S. We are in partnerships with organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, and we are forging a tremendous movement with several key organizations throughout the continent [of Africa]. I’m very concerned about what’s happening with Afrobeats. If we don’t get over there and start working with our African brothers and sisters to understand the industry, the cultural appropriation that took place in hip-hop, blues, rock, country will happen over there. If we do not protect the [intellectual property], it will be cultural colonization all over again.
Blackstone doesn’t intend to increase its latest offer to acquire Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF), the London-listed investment trust it first launched a takeover bid for on April 20. The private equity firm said in a regulatory filing Tuesday (June 25) that the financial terms of its June 3 offer “are final and will not be […]
Billionaire hedge fund titan Steve Cohen‘s Point72 Asset Management has acquired a 5.5% stake in Sphere Entertainment Co, the MSG Entertainment spin-off company that owns the state-of-the-art Las Vegas Sphere venue. Point72 disclosed in a regulatory filing on Monday (June 24) that it acquired 1.56 million shares of Sphere Entertainment Co in the second quarter, […]
JKBX, the music investment platform backed by Spotify and Red Light Management, said Tuesday (June 25) that yields on more than half the songs up for investment on the platform saw substantial increases in 2023. That’s evidence, the start-up’s execs say, that if it makes dollars, it makes sense.
Pronounced “jukebox,” JKBX’s first Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated offering went live in March, giving average Joe investors the chance to buy royalty shares that earn money when songs like Adele‘s “Rumour Has It” or Taylor Swift‘s “Welcome To New York” get played.
Ten of the 85 songs in JKBX’s initial offering generated yields of 5% to 9.6% percent in 2023, while total revenue for songs in the listing was up 9% in 2023 compared to 2022, the company said. While investors get paid dividends based only on income that JKBX has received since April 1, which excludes most of the 2023 reported income, the jump in yields makes the case that investors stand to earn tangible returns, JKBX executives say.
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The highest-earning song by 2023 revenues was OneRepublic‘s “Counting Stars”, which generated $376,750 in combined revenue from the songwriter’s share of composition rights and producer’s share of sound recording rights. That works out to a 5.5% yield per royalty share for composition and a 6.98% yield per royalty share for sound recording rights.
Another OneRepublic song, “If I Lose Myself,” along with “Wings” by Birdy, were among the songs with the highest per-royalty-share yields in 2023, at 9.66% and 7.71%, respectively. When the company launched, executives estimated investor returns of around 3.5%.
The 10 most popular songs to buy royalty shares in include Beyoncé‘s “Halo,” Ellie Goulding‘s “Burn” and “Lean On” performed by Major Lazer, MØ and DJ Snake, among others. The company declined to say what percentage of the royalty shares in the initial offering have sold.
JKBX is quick to caution that future returns are not guaranteed. The estimated yields are based on the last 12 months of income, and “variations in income are expected over the copyright lifespan of the asset,” the company says.
Institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds have led recent demand for investing in music assets because the yields on music rights are typically resilient during broader market downturns and the asset class offers low-risk returns compared to other alternative assets.
Institutional investors, private equity funds and high-net-worth individuals have poured billions into acquiring direct stakes in catalogs or backing companies that do, or into buying securities backed by catalogs held by music companies like Concord, Kobalt and Chord.
JKBX was founded in 2022 with the goal of bringing retail investors into the asset class by offering a cheaper, Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated way to invest in music. It officially launched in March of this year.
“JKBX empowers people to invest in music as a regulated security, bringing together investment fundamentals with true passion,” JKBX CEO Scott Cohen said in a statement. “I believe that the fans that helped make these songs successful should also have the opportunity to share in the wealth.”
LONDON — Tom Kiehl has been announced as the new chief executive of UK Music, succeeding Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, who left the British industry trade body last year to work for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Kiehl has held the role of interim chief executive at UK Music since Njoku-Goodwin’s sudden exit in September. He has worked at the London-based umbrella organization, which represents all sectors of the United Kingdom’s music industry, since 2012 – initially working as director of public affairs before being promoted to deputy CEO in 2018.
In a statement announcing Kiehl’s appointment, UK Music said it had received more than 130 applications for the role and had carried out an “extensive recruitment process” to find its new CEO.
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“We are entering a critical new era of change for the music industry when the political landscape is also rapidly changing. At this important time, I’m confident Tom is the right person for the job,” said Tom Watson, UK Music Chair, in a statement.
Watson went on to say that Kiehl “will be a tireless advocate for our members and our sector – using his wide range of talents to drive UK Music to even greater heights.”
Kiehl’s promotion to the head of UK Music comes less than two weeks before the U.K. general election on July 4 when the country goes to the polls to elect a new government.
Last month, Kiehl called on the leaders of all the main British political parties to support the U.K. music industry’s role as a “key national asset” that is facing intense global competition.
To help grow the British music industry, which generated £6.7 billion ($8.2 billion) for the country’s economy in 2022 and supports 210,000 jobs, according to research commissioned by UK Music, the trade group wants policy makers to protect creators’ rights from being exploited by AI developers, as well as secure a cultural touring agreement with the EU to address many of the lasting issues caused by Brexit.
UK Music also wants the next government to introduce a new tax credit to increase U.K.-based music production and establish tighter regulations for secondary ticketing platforms.
Kiehl’s extensive experience of working with politicians and government officials means that he is well placed to try and achieve those aims. Prior to joining UK Music, the widely respected music executive worked in the Houses of Parliament for 11 years as a senior advisor and researcher for the Liberal Democrat party. More recently, Kiehl led a successful campaign to change planning laws to better protect grassroots music venues.
“It’s an immense privilege and great responsibility to take on the role of leading UK Music at such a pivotal moment,” said Kiehl in a statement.
The newly appointed CEO said he would continue to work with the organization’s members to lobby government officials for measures that would support the music industry “ranging from strong copyright protections and more music teachers, to key safeguards around AI and greater support for music freelancers.”
“My vision for UK Music is to build on our mission of bringing our sector together to speak with one voice and secure our place as the key organization that fuels the growth and prominence of the UK’s music industry,” said Kiehl. “We must be relevant, representative, and able to deliver for the sector in order to achieve this.”