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Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.
The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement.
“Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally,” it said.
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Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality hardware team.
The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs. A year ago, Google said it would lay off 12,000 employees or around 6% of its workforce.
In a post on X — previously known as Twitter — the Alphabet Workers Union described the job cuts as “another round of needless layoffs.”
“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter,” the union wrote. “We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”
Google is not the only technology company cutting back. In the past year, Meta — the parent company of Facebook — has slashed more than 20,000 jobs to reassure investors. Meta’s stock price gained about 178% in 2023.
Spotify said in December that it was axing 17% of its global workforce, the music streaming service’s third round of layoffs in 2023 as it moved to slash costs and improve its profitability.
Earlier this week, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units. It also will lay off about 500 employees who work on its livestreaming platform Twitch.
Amazon has cut thousands of jobs after a hiring surge during the pandemic. In March, Amazon announced that it planned to lay off 9,000 employees, on top of 18,000 employees it said that it would lay off in January 2023.
Google is currently locked in a fierce rivalry with Microsoft as both firms strive to lead in the artificial intelligence domain.
Microsoft has stepped up its artificial intelligence offerings to rival Google’s. In September, Microsoft introduced a Copilot feature that incorporates artificial intelligence into products like search engine Bing, browser Edge as well as Windows for its corporate customers.
Beatport is launching the new year with a pair of key promotions. The company’s CFO Matt Gralen will now also serve as president, while Helen Sartory will serve as chief revenue officer for all of the company’s revenue drivers, including the electronic music digital download store Beatport and the open format music download platform Beatsource, along with Plugin Boutique, Loopcloud, LabelRadar and Beatport Amp.
Both Gralen and Sartory will continue reporting to Beatport CEO Robb McDaniels, with Gralen and McDaniels to collaborate on company-wide strategy and Sartory overseeing the next phase of The Beatport Group’s growth strategy. Both are based in the company’s London office.
The company reports that Beatport’s annual revenue has more than tripled since McDaniels took over as CEO in 2017. A representative for Beatport tells Billboard that the company’s annual revenue for 2023 was “well over” $100 million. In 2022, the digital service claimed to have sold 25,519,770 song downloads — making up nearly 12% of all tracks downloaded globally.
“Matt and Helen have proven themselves as trusted leaders through building out our product portfolio, supporting our diverse team and culture, and delivering profitable growth,” said McDaniels in a statement. “We believe that, just as streaming revolutionized the music industry in the previous decade, a significant shift to more engaged and interactive experiences is coming. DJs are the originators of this movement and all types of creators and fans are joining. I am pleased to have Matt and Helen take on expanded roles as we continue to invest in this future.”
Before starting at Beatport, Gralen served as executive vp of corporate development at UnitedMasters, a distribution platform for independent artists. He also previously held positions at Mass Appeal, Raine Group and Goldman Sachs.
“Our team at Beatport cares deeply about the future of music for creators and fans, and we believe that strong businesses can help drive positive change,” added Gralen. “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity ahead and the team I work alongside. We all look forward to delivering for Beatport’s global community.”
Sartory has been with Beatport for a year and a half, and most recently served as senior vp of creator services. She previously held positions at The Rattle, Greenhill & Co. and Lazard.
“The last year and a half at Beatport has been incredibly rewarding,” Sartory said. “We’ve built innovative tools and technology for artists, producers and labels, and have increased incremental revenue opportunities along the way. I am looking forward to working with the entire Beatport team in this expanded role to continue to transform our business.”
After 25 years, Jack Sussman is stepping down as executive vp of specials, music, live events and alternative programming for CBS Entertainment. Sussman, who will leave following the Feb. 4 Grammy Awards, will return to producing, including serving as executive producer of two tentpole CBS specials, the Tony Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors.
Mackenzie Mitchell has been upped to vp of specials, while Mitch Graham will continue to run unscripted as executive vp of alternative, which he has overseen since 2020. Graham will report to Amy Reisenbach, president of CBS Entertainment, while Mitchell will report to Reisenbach and Bruce Gillmer, president, of music, music talent, programming and events for CBS parent Paramount and chief content officer of music of Paramount +.
“This is a storied department and I know both Mackenzie and Mitch will lead the team with distinction, transparency and positivity,” Reisenbach said in a staff memo obtained by Billboard. “They both launched careers and rose through the ranks at CBS while establishing deep roots in the TV community with limitless passion and creativity for making quality popular television.”
Sussman joined CBS in 1998 following roles at MTV, VH1, CNN and NBC and oversaw a wide variety of specials and yearly awards shows at the network. “I love live television,” he told Billboard in a 2017 profile. “You get one chance at it, and everybody’s got to be going in the same direction, because you are walking a tightrope.”
In an internal email, Sussman wrote to his colleagues, “I’m returning to my roots. I get to close out my career how I started in this business — producing. Working with talented artists and other creative producers has always been the best part of the job and now I will get to do that full time.” In addition to working on the Tonys and Kennedy Center Honors, Sussman says he will be “developing and producing outside passion projects for various platforms and live events along with the pro social and charitable organizations I have connected with throughout my career. A perfect next chapter as I look to slow down a little.”
Sussman has worked on more than 100 specials at CBS and with such artists as Garth Brooks, Bruno Mars, Celine Dion, Adele and Michael Jackson. “I’m so grateful to all the artists, managers, producers, record labels and production teams I’ve worked with along the way,” he wrote. “I had the good fortune early in my run at CBS of being mentored (and yelled at on occasion) by the giants who started the live television event business. I learned so much from them, and only hope I have been able to pass along some of that historical wisdom to this next generation.”
Both Graham and Mitchell have long tenures at CBS. Mitchell began at CBS in 2014 as a temporary assistant and had risen to vp while working on such annual shows as the Grammy Awards, Kennedy Center Honors and Tony Awards, as well as such specials as Garth & Trisha Live! and Adele: One Night Only. Graham started in the publicity department in 1999 and transitioned to the alternative department in 2013. He has worked on such shows as Amazing Race and Survivor. He has overseen the unscripted division since 2020.
“So proud to have watched these individuals and the collective team grow,” wrote Sussman in his memo to CBS staffers. “Mitch Graham is the best Alternative executive in town and Mackenzie Mitchell has grown into an outstanding executive overseeing our music and specials. You will not find two finer humans. The team is in great hands moving forward. They are simply the best, and a big reason this decision is both easier and harder.”
Sussman most recently oversaw CBS’ New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash. The Dec. 31 show averaged 8.31 million viewers, more than doubling its primetime audience in 2022. This made it CBS’s most-watched original entertainment special since the Grammy Awards in February 2023. CBS also scored a ratings win with Jan. 7’s Golden Globes, which averaged 9.47 million viewers in its first year on the network, according to Nielsen.
By almost every metric, the music business in 2023 has been defined by Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen. Collectively, they have led the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 for 23 of the 52 weeks of the year, with Swift topping Billboard’s year-end Top Artists chart and Wallen ruling both the year-end Billboard 200 Albums and Hot 100 Songs charts with One Thing at a Time and “Last Night,” respectively.
Combined, the two recording artists have an astounding 2.49% in overall U.S. album consumption unit market share, according to Luminate. (Year-to-year percentages are based on data from Dec. 29, 2022, through Dec. 28, 2023.) Their domination underscores a year of explosive growth for country — of the two rerecorded albums Swift released in 2023, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) qualified in the genre — which is up 21.8% year over year. That’s almost double the 12.6% year-to-year growth of recorded music overall for the same period and nearly five times the 4.8% increase the genre had from 2021 to 2022.
Country music accounted for 8.40% of the recorded-music market in 2023, up from 7.76% the year prior — and Swift and Wallen weren’t the only acts fueling those gains. Hit albums by Zach Bryan, Luke Combs and Bailey Zimmerman helped country’s current market share — defined as releases that arrived within the past 18 months — surge from 7.97% to 10.37% year over year, a 30% gain. And while that’s only good enough for third place when the genres are ranked by current market share, No. 1 hip-hop and No. 2 pop both fell year over year: the former from 26.72 % to 22.32%, the latter from 13.07% to 11.13%.
Country’s growth almost outstripped Latin music’s strides. Which isn’t to say Latin had a down year — the genre grew 21.9% year over year, the third-highest mark in the industry, largely due to the mainstream success of such new acts as Peso Pluma and Eslabon Armado, and its volume growth (13.5 million units year over year) bested that of pop (11.6 million). In 2021, Latin’s share of the overall industry was 6.33%; in 2023 that number has jumped to 6.86%, and its 37.8 billion on-demand streams for current releases is the third-highest among genres.
R&B/Hip-Hop Slips Again
R&B/hip-hop remains firmly entrenched as the No. 1 U.S. genre with 25.27% of the market, largely because of its outsize percentage of on-demand streams. (The genre accounts for more than one in four streams.) But some metrics indicate that hip-hop’s dominance — it commanded nearly 30% of the overall market in 2020 — may be waning.
The genre’s market share has dipped every year since that 2020 peak, as has its share of on-demand streams, which stood at 30.11% in 2021 and is now at 26.63%. Current consumption of R&B/hip-hop has also slipped 7.4% from 2022 to 2023 and is down in every format for the same period — including the genre’s strong suit, streams, which dropped 7.0% to 93.2 billion. Despite No. 1 Billboard 200 releases from Travis Scott, Drake and Rod Wave, among others, hip-hop albums have continued to lose share since the midyear headlines that the genre had not produced any full-length chart-toppers. That said, its 93.2 billion current streams is more than double the 38.8 billion racked up by 2023’s second-place genre, pop, which sustained overall growth this year. And while R&B/hip-hop’s overall growth, at 5.9%, was 10th among genres, it finished third on that metric in overall volume, adding 15.6 million equivalent album units over last year, behind only rock and country.
Tipping The Sales Scales
While overall album sales have seesawed over the last few years, they have shown growth this year — up 5.2% after a down 2022. Driving sales once again is rock, which has a monumentally large share of the market: 41.47% of all album sales and 43.36% of physical sales. Those numbers are larger than the next four genres — R&B/hip-hop, pop, country and World music, in that order — combined and largely stem from immense catalog sales. Rock sales account for 47.50% of the entire catalog category — defined as music older than 18 months — a 4.0% year-over-year increase. Rock catalog album sales totaled 30.8 million units in 2023, more than the combined sales — current and catalog — of the next two genres, pop and R&B/hip-hop.
Latin music’s album sales growth is the inverse of rock. With just 0.57% of overall album sales in 2023, the genre ranks 14th out of the 15 core genres tracked by Luminate — lower than blues, jazz, classical and holiday/seasonal. Only new age placed below it.
Like hip-hop, Latin’s huge overall growth comes mostly from on-demand audio streams, but also a big chunk of the on-demand video streaming market, 10.0%, which is larger than its 6.86% overall market share. Pop is the only other genre on this chart where its market share of on-demand video streams exceeds its overall percentage by that much: 17.35% to 12.33%.
World Music’s Gains
Latin is just one genre of non-English-language music that occupies more and more of the mainstream U.S. music market. The umbrella genre of World music, which includes K-pop and Afrobeats, among other styles, has grown massively. In 2019, World music accounted for 1.69% of the overall industry; in 2023, that’s up to 2.73%, a 35.3% jump. That growth is most evident when looking at album sales. World music captured 6.93% of the market this year, with physical sales totaling 7.96% of that figure. The bulk of those sales is attributable to K-pop, which surged 88.8% year over year. Afrobeats also had a big impact on the genre, particularly in on-demand streaming, where it was up 54.3% year over year.
Titanic Taylor
Swift’s dominance of music and popular culture this year has been well documented. But how big is she in genre terms? With 18.89 million in album consumption units so far this year, her industry market share is 1.79%. If Swift was her own genre, she’d rank at No. 9 based on the data used here — just a few thousand units shy of Christian/gospel’s 1.76% market share and ahead of children music’s 1.11%. In 2023, Taylor Swift is bigger than jazz.
Merlin, the global digital licensing agency for the independent music industry, has unveiled its new board – one that doesn’t feature co-founders Martin Mills and Michel Lambot.
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The new board comprises leaders from the indie sector in 12 different countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Oceania, and includes six new faces.
Exclusively revealed by Billboard today (Jan. 10), Merlin welcomes new board members Golda Bitterli, VP of sales, Revelator (Israel); Jeffrey Chiang, director of global business, Fluxus (South Korea); Fer Isella, founder and CEO, limbo music (Spain); Irina Lipczyk-Kolakovska, digital distribution lead, e-muzyka (Poland); Simon Wheeler, director of global commercial strategy, Beggars (U.K.); and Megan Jasper, CEO, Sub Pop (U.S.).
They join returning Merlin board members Pascal Bittard, founder and CEO, IDOL (France); Marie Clausen, managing director North America, Ninja Tune (U.S.); Tom Deakin, head of EMEA, AudioSalad (U.K.); Chris Maund, COO, Mushroom Music (Australia); Carlos Mills, founder, Mills Records (Brazil); Louis Posen, president & executive director, Hopeless Records (U.S.); Michael Ugwu, CEO, Freeme Digital (Nigeria); Darius Van Arman, co-CEO, Secretly (U.S.); Horst Weidenmueller, CEO & Owner, !K7 (Germany); and Justin West, president & CEO, Secret City (Canada).
Van Arman is reappointed as chairperson for a second term, having first joined the board in 2015, and playing an “instrumental” role in guiding the organization’s strategic direction, reads a statement.
Additionally, Jennifer Newman Sharpe, general counsel, Exceleration, and Dorothee Imhoff, CCO, FUGA, are appointed board advisors this year.
Merlin’s board is elected from and by its membership, which represents tens of thousands of independent record labels, distributors, and rightsholders, including K7!, Because Music, Beggars Group, Better Noise, CD Baby and Downtown Music (including FUGA), Exceleration, and many others.
In the upcoming year, explains Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota in a statement to Billboard, the organization “is committed to fostering meaningful, sustainable and value-driven member growth.”
Its mission, “to support labels and distributors who invest in artists and their unique cultural contributions. By associating with members who invest in high-quality music around the world, Merlin aims to strengthen its network, while offering unparalleled access and benefits to our members, and enriching the global music landscape.”
Sirota and Merlin also pay tribute to outgoing board members Martin Mills (Beggars), Merlin co-founder, board member and former chairperson, and Michel Lambot ([PIAS]), Merlin co-founder and board member, two giants of the independent music community whose “long-standing leadership” helped members “around the world own their independence.”
Also, Sirota points to the completion last year of the initial build of a Data Warehouse, which should enable Merlin to make “significant strides in data, analytics, and insights to further advance our mission and our members.” In 2024, “we will now start to provide actionable insights derived from our collective data,” he adds. Part of that plan includes expanding Merlin’s data and insights team, which in time should “deliver insights that help our members make informed decisions and foster growth.”
Martha Henderson, the banking star who had a major role in City National Bank financing the entertainment industry over four decades, and whose expertise has seen her repeatedly honored on Billboard’s “Women in Music” and other power lists, is set to retire.
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Currently serving as vice chairman of entertainment banking at City National Bank, Henderson will step down on Feb. 2, 2024, ending her 40-year tenure with the organization.
Los Angeles-based Henderson joined City National in 1983 from Wells Fargo, where she launched her career in its private bank unit serving the entertainment industry.
With Henderson at the helm, City National’s team serving the entertainment industry now provides financial expertise to more than 90% of entertainment business managers, according to a statement from the bank, plus more than 50% of all Broadway shows, and upwards of 80% of the country music industry in Nashville.
Also, she created a team to serve the needs of Latin entertainers, expanded its business to New York, Miami, Atlanta and on Music Row in Nashville, and more.
“Martha is an institution at City National and I am grateful for her extraordinary service,” comments Kelly Coffey, CEO City National Entertainment. “Her decades of leadership and the profound impact she has had are felt throughout the organization.”
As she prepared for retirement over the last several years, explains Howard Hammond, CEO, City National Bank, Henderson “invested herself in ensuring the continuing entertainment banking leadership team is well prepared to support our clients,” singling-out experienced teammate JaHan Wang, executive vice president of entertainment banking.
Henderson’s financial wizardry hasn’t gone unnoticed outside of the bank. Billboard named her to its “Power” list in 2023 and 2022, and recognized her in its “Women in Music” list of the most powerful women in the music industry for 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018.
Separately, Variety named Henderson in its “Women’s Impact Report” as one of the most important women in Hollywood, doing so in 2016, 2019 and 2020, while Barron’s profiled her as the most powerful banker in Hollywood in 2017.
“Among the career highlights I am most proud of is the opportunity I had to grow and develop the next generation of leadership at the bank to continue our focus on serving clients,” comments Henderson ahead of he departure. “I’m confident City National’s unwavering dedication to the industry will only grow.”
Bailee Madison — best known as an actor for her roles in films and TV shows including Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, Just Go With It, The Strangers: Prey at Night and A Week Away — has signed with Jonas Group Entertainment’s Red Van Records ahead of the release of her upcoming song, “Kinda Fun,” […]
Mexican American artist Xavi has signed with WME for global representation in all areas, as reported by Billboard last week. The last few months have been pivotal for the 19-year-old singer-songwriter (born Joshua Xavier Gutiérrez) who kicked off 2024 with his first No. 1 on any Billboard chart thanks to his romantic corrido “La Diabla,” […]
LONDON — Paid-for streaming revenues grew to a record high of £1.86 billion ($2.4 billion) in the United Kingdom last year, helping drive a 9.6% rise in overall music spending, according to year-end figures from the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA).
In 2023, British music fans spent a total of £2.2 billion ($2.8 billion) on music purchases via subscriptions to music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, and vinyl and CD purchases. That’s more-or-less equal to 2001’s total, the historic peak of the CD era, when U.K. music sales stood at just over £2.2 billion, reports ERA. When compared to 2019, the last full year pre-pandemic, music sales have climbed by almost 39% in the space of four years.
Driving the growth was a 9.8% year-on-year rise in subscription streaming revenues, while spending on physical formats was up 10.9% to £311 million ($395 million) the London-based organization says in its preliminary annual figures published on Tuesday (Jan. 9).
Breaking down physical music revenues, vinyl album sales grew 18% to £177 million with Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version), The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds and Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd among the year’s best-selling titles.
Despite CD sales falling 7% year-on-year in volume terms to 10.8 million units, revenue from the long-written-off format actually rose 2% in 2023 to £126 million ($160 million), marking the first increase in CD revenue in two decades.
ERA says the growth can be attributed to the format’s continued popularity among dedicated music fans, keen to buy their favorite artists in multiple and deluxe formats, as well as a rise in the number of Gen Z and Millennials buying CDs.
This Life by British pop group Take That was 2023’s top CD album in the U.K. with just over 127,000 units sold. Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was the year’s second most popular CD release.
Streaming now makes up more than 88% of all music sales in the U.K., compared to 64% five years ago, with physical formats accounting for 9.4% of today’s market, according to labels trade body BPI, which released its year-end listening figures last week.
BPI reports that more than 179 billion music tracks were streamed in the U.K. in 2023, up 12.8% on the previous year’s total, with the equivalent of 182.8 million albums streamed or purchased in 2023 across digital and physical formats, up 10% on the previous 12 months.
In a statement, ERA CEO Kim Bayley said the year-end figures represented a “red letter day” for the U.K. music industry with the rise in revenues “a testament not just to the creativity of artists, but to the entrepreneurial drive of digital services and retailers.”
Although both ERA and BPI use Official Charts Company sales data as the basis for their reporting, the two organizations take different approaches to measuring the health of the recorded music business. ERA’s figures are based on retail spending in the U.K., whereas BPI’s measure music consumption levels. (ERA’s subscription streaming numbers are estimates based on information provided by digital services and label trade income reported to BPI). BPI and ERA are both due to publish their full annual reports later in the year.
Overall, revenues across the U.K. entertainment market – comprising of music, video and games retail sales – were up 7% on 2022’s total to a record high of £11.9 billion ($15.1 billion), marking the eleventh successive year of growth. Streaming and digital services accounted for almost 92% of entertainment revenue, reports ERA.
Of the three sectors, recorded music sales are in third place, trailing both games and video (comprising of video-on-demand subscription services such as Netflix and DVD sales), which totaled £4.7 billion ($6 billion) and £4.9 billion ($6.2 billion) respectively.
The U.K. is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the U.S. and Japan with sales of just under $1.7 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2023 Global Music Report.
On Wednesday, Jan. 31, the Recording Academy’s Producers & Engineers Wing will come together with its Songwriters & Composers Wing at the Grammy Museum in downtown L.A. to host “A Celebration of Craft.” The event will honor Leslie Ann Jones, a seven-time Grammy winner and the first woman chair of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees (1999-2001), who has been a top recording and mixing engineer and record producer for more than four decades.
The celebration — a first joint Grammy Week event for the Academy’s craft wings — will kick off the Academy’s official events in the lead-up to the 66th annual Grammy Awards.
The event will also shine a light on this year’s nominees for songwriter of the year, non-classical.
“I’m so excited for our Producers & Engineers and Songwriters & Composers Wings to come together for A Celebration of Craft later this month,” Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said in a statement. “I look forward to joining with music people from both of these communities to kick off our Grammy Week celebrations.”
Maureen Droney, vp of the Producers & Engineers Wing, added in a statement: “From her decades-spanning recording career to her work as former chair of the Recording Academy’s board of trustees, a co-chair of the P&E Wing, and much more, Leslie Ann Jones has always been committed to the music community and to excellence in recording.”
In her statement, Susan Stewart, MD of the Songwriters & Composers Wing, said: “A Celebration of Craft will mark the first Grammy Week event for the Songwriters & Composers Wing since our Wing was founded in 2021, and we could not be more enthusiastic to come together with our community for an evening dedicated to celebrating their creativity.”
Jones has held staff positions at ABC Recording Studios in Los Angeles, the Automatt Recording Studios in San Francisco, Capitol Studios in Hollywood, and now Skywalker Sound, where she records and mixes music for records, films, video games and TV and produces records, primarily in the classical genre.
Jones, the daughter of famed comedy recording star Spike Jones, serves on the advisory board of Institute for the Musical Arts and on the board of directors of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.). She is also an artistic advisor to the Technology and Applied Composition degree program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Jones was inducted into the NAMM TEC Hall of Fame in 2019 and was the recipient of the 2022 G.A.N.G. Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also a member of the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Board.
Grammy Week culminates with the 66th annual Grammy Awards at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena on Sunday, Feb. 4. The ceremony will be broadcast live on CBS and stream live and on-demand on Paramount+ at 8-11:30 p.m. ET/5-8:30 p.m. PT.