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With 110 million buyers, sellers, collectors and lurkers roaming through Discogs every year, the 23-year-old online music marketplace’s forum threads are not exactly full of emotional support. In one of the notoriously messy threads, users complain about the May 2023 increase in selling fees from 8–9%. “What a rip off,” goes one post.
In another forum, someone advises a seller contending with a buyer demanding a full refund: “People here need to have more balls when dealing with dopes. Grow a pair.” And another user simply writes: “Discogs has gone downhill. It’s really sad. I have loved this site for so long. It feels like bots are running it. AI is just going to make it worse.”
How does Discogs turn these passionate, semi-anonymous user criticisms into upgrades? Very carefully, according to Lloyd Starr, chief operating officer since May 1: “We’ve got millions of people on the platform every month now. It’s a lot harder to find the signal in that noise.”
To improve communication between Discogs and its users, the company’s executive leadership plans to spend 2024 rolling out initiatives to solicit user suggestions and make broad changes. The Discogs community remains angry about the fee increase — which applies to shipping costs, too — and the way the company suggested the “easiest thing” for sellers to do would be to increase their prices. In a “we can do better” post last month, founder and CEO Kevin Lewandowski announced a soon-to-be-created Community Advisory Board, for users to “bring feedback and ideas to Discogs and influence how the platform evolves.”
The advisory board, Starr suggests, will be the centerpiece of Discogs’ changes. In roughly late March, Discogs will solicit applications from users and appoint representatives from the “selling, contributing and collecting” communities, as Starr calls them, by early summer. “It’s more of a dynamic conversation than a one-way post on a forum,” he says.
Lewandowski and Starr have already begun their Discogs feedback-solicitation tour. The pair traveled to New York City together in mid-January to meet with power users, including Craig Kallman, chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records, who gave them a tour of his two million LPs. Starr won’t reveal exactly what these users suggested, but he outlines a broad plan for Discogs to use surveys, polls and live contests at record-selling events. “We really want the community to feel listened to and give them advice,” he says.
In addition, Discogs will roll out “25 in ’25,” an attempt to boost the company’s online database from 17 million listed items to 25 million by its 25th anniversary in November 2025. (As of 2019, the latest year in which Discogs released sales numbers, users sold 14.6 million items on the platform, including 11.6 million vinyl LPs.)
To help achieve 25 million, the company recently hired Brent Greissle, a longtime user who has personally added 50,000 entries to Discogs’ database, as principal of discography affairs, to oversee the project. Starr also hopes to expand the database’s “richness and diversity in culture,” tapping into Brazil’s record-store community, for example, through trips to Sao Paulo, like one Lewandowski recently took to visit the world’s biggest LP collector, Zero Freitas, who by some accounts owns over six million records.
As for technological changes, Lewandowski spells out plans to improve the log-in and checkout systems and want lists. “I wrote most of the code originally back in 2000. It had a major rewrite in 2004. Some of our current software goes back that far,” he says. “This enables us to do things faster and give the community things they’ve been asking us for.” Starr elaborates that Discogs has been working for years to upgrade order management, user authentication and fraud mitigation to bring the site up to Amazon-style e-commerce standards — but it’ll take more time. “We’ve got a little technical debt to resolve here,” he says.
Several Discogs users say they’re skeptical of broad changes coming from executive leadership, which they say hasn’t listened to their concerns. Jonathan Highfield, a longtime seller near Liverpool, England, complains that Greissle, a liaison between Discogs management and user forums, is too overloaded to respond effectively about slow-loading pages or difficulty searching for releases by genre, style or label. “If they’re listening, great, but the channel is too narrow for enough information to pass through,” Highfield says. “It makes people not want to use the site.”
And like many sellers, Kurt Walling, a semi-retired optician in Streetsboro, Ohio, who has been offloading portions of his personal collection via Discogs for years, remains upset about last year’s increase in selling fees. Of the imminent changes Starr is describing, Walling says: “My inclination is to think it’s corporate stuff. I don’t think it’s sincere.”
By way of response, Starr says, the last time Discogs changed its fees was 10 years ago, and since then, the company has been “absorbing the rising cost of salaries, the rising cost of enterprise software.” Plus, competitors like Amazon and eBay take a sales percentage out of every order, and Discogs is “doing the same thing.” While Discogs could have communicated the new fees more effectively to users, according to Starr, “I don’t think removing fees makes sense.”
And for all the discontent found on the Discogs forums, one user is satisfied with his experience: Kallman, who continues to use its database to help track Atlantic’s vast catalog of releases. “Crucial, rare, out-of-print recordings that might otherwise be at risk of being forgotten in the digital era are all preserved,” he says. “The database is the most valuable asset of Discogs, and they give it away for free. It’s a constant, evolving, living, breathing organism that continues to fine-tune to maintain the completeness of the platform.”
To judge from the results of a report commissioned by GEMA and SACEM, the specter of artificial intelligence (AI) is haunting Europe.
A full 35% of members of the respective German and French collective management societies surveyed said they had used some kind of AI technology in their work with music, according to a Goldmedia report shared in a Tuesday (Jan. 30) press conference — but 71% were afraid that the technology would make it hard for them to earn a living. That means that some creators who are using the technology fear it, too.
The report, which involved expert interviews as well as an online survey, valued the market for generative AI music applications at $300 million last year – 8% of the total market for generative AI. By 2028, though, that market could be worth $3.1 billion. That same year, 27% of creator revenues – or $950 million – would be at risk, in large part due to AI-created music replacing that made by humans.
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Although many of us think of the music business as being one where fans make deliberate choices of what to listen to – either by streaming or purchasing music – collecting societies take in a fair amount of revenue from music used in films and TV shows, in advertising, and in restaurants and stores. So even if generative AI technology isn’t developed enough to write a pop song, it could still cost the music business money – and creators part or even all of their livelihood.
“So far,” as the report points out, “there is no remuneration system that closes the AI-generated financial gap for creators.” Although some superstars are looking to license the rights to their voices, there is a lack of legal clarity in many jurisdictions about under what conditions a generative AI can use copyrighted material for training purposes. (In the United States, this is a question of fair use, a legal doctrine that doesn’t exist in the same form in France or Germany.) Assuming that music used to train an AI would need to be licensed, however, raises other questions, such as how many times and how that would pay.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of songwriters want credit and transparency: 95% want AI companies to disclose which copyrighted works they used for training purposes and 89% want companies to disclose which works are generated by AI. Additionally, 90% believe they should be asked for permission before their work is used for training purposes and the same amount want to benefit financially. A full 90% want policymakers to pay more attention to issues around AI and copyright.
The report further breaks down how the creators interviewed feel about using AI. In addition to the 35% who use the technology, 13% are potential users, 26% would rather not use it and 19% would refuse. Of those who use the technology already, 54% work on electronic music, 53% work on “urban/rap,” 52% on advertising music, 47% on “music library” and 46% on “audiovisual industry.”
These statistics underscore that AI isn’t a technology that’s coming to music – it’s one that’s here now. That means that policymakers looking to regulate this technology need to act soon.
The report also shows that smart regulation could resolve the debate between the benefits and drawbacks of AI. Creators are clearly using it productively, but more still fear it: 64% think the risks outweigh the opportunities, while just 11% thought the opposite. This is a familiar pattern with the music business, to which technologies are both dangerous and promising. Perhaps AI could end up being both.
After more than 1,500 votes cast over three rounds of voting, Billboard Pro members selected Universal Music Publishing Group chairman/CEO Jody Gerson for the 2024 Power Players’ Choice Award, which honors the executive they believe had the most impact across the business in the past year. Since Gerson joined UMPG in 2015, the company’s annual […]
In Warner Music Group‘s sprawling 2023 ESG report, released Tuesday (Jan. 30), the label outlined plans and goals for its workforce, artists and environmental impact.
“We are determined to transform our business and spur industry change to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis,” the report states in an expansive section on sustainability practices. “This includes measuring and understanding WMG’s environmental footprint, setting science-based targets to reduce emissions…and leveraging our scale, experience and partnerships to foster cross-industry cooperation to minimize the environmental impacts of making and distributing music.”
For the company, these changes start with the company’s brick-and-mortar spaces, with the goal that “WMG will source 100% renewable energy for our operations” by 2030.
The plan is to first implement this initiative in WMG’s global offices and workspaces before rolling it out to WMG-owned and operated facilities. The company also plans to decarbonize its workplaces through 100% renewable energy-based power by 2030.
The report cites WMG joining with Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group in 2023 to establish the Music Industry Climate Collective. The first initiative of this working group has been supporting the development and implementation of sector-specific guidelines for calculating Scope 3 GHG emissions within the recorded music industry. “Scope 3” refers to indirect emissions that occur in the value chain, such as those from product manufacturing, distribution and licensing.
The company also noted a previously announced partnership with MIT, Live Nation, Coldplay and Hope Solutions to understand and mitigate the environmental impact of the live events.
The company cites a goal of increasing public transportation utilization by 20% at Warner Music live events. This effort has already resulted in a partnership between Warner Music Finland Live and Helsinki City Public Transportation, which has provided fans with free public transportation included in their concert tickets.
With its environmental impact data independently reviewed and assured by a third-party auditor for the first time in 2023, WMG reports that in the past year, it has made “significant strides” in its Scope 1 and 2 data collection, analysis and methodology. (Scope 1 and 2 refers to emissions that are owned or controlled by the company and indirect emissions that result from activities of the company.)
“Despite our return to office,” the report says, its efforts “have led to an overall decrease in our reported Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions for 2023.”
The report also cites successful employee-driven initiatives, including its U.K. Wrights Lane office eliminating single-use plastic and switching to reusable cutlery and serveware. The WMG office in France has eliminated paper cups and improved waste management to increase recycling.
Regarding sustainable products and merchandise, the company outlines “an industry-first method” of creating vinyl albums using PVC alternatives. Says the report: “We are delivering these changes in partnership with our artists and songwriters, many of whom are increasingly looking for ways to share music with their fans in a sustainable way.”
Read the full report here.
LONDON — A U.K. Parliament committee is calling on the British government to address the “endemic” misogyny and discrimination that many female artists face in the music industry.
A report from the Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) published Tuesday (Jan. 30) urges ministers to take legislative steps to protect musicians and creators from sexual harassment, including banning the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in cases involving sexual abuse, bullying or misconduct.
The highly critical 70-page report acknowledges that female representation is improving in many areas of the business but warns that progress remains slow with sexual harassment and abuse against women common occurrences in an industry “still routinely described as a boys club.”
“People in the industry who attend awards shows and parties currently do so sitting alongside sexual abusers who remain protected by the system and by colleagues,” said the cross-party committee of MPs.
Their inquiry found a “culture of silence” existed across the music industry with many victims of sexual harassment or abuse afraid to report such incidents.
Victims who do speak out struggle to be believed or may find their career ends as a consequence, the committee found. They said that much of the evidence they had received had to remain undisclosed, “including commentary on television shows and household names,” due to confidentially and legal clauses.
The report follows an inquiry into misogyny in the U.K. music industry, which began in June 2022 and saw a number of artists and executives give evidence, including senior executives from all three major labels, representatives of the live industry, former BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac and British pop singer and Ivors Academy board director Rebecca Ferguson.
Giving evidence in September, Ferguson, who first shot to fame on the U.K. version of The X Factor, said that misogyny in music was just “the tip of the iceberg of the things that are happening behind the scenes.”
She said that women in the music business who experience abuse often feel that they “can’t speak up” because “they are scared they will never work again.” Ferguson told MPs that she had been informed rapes were going unreported.
In addition to sexual abuse and harassment, the inquiry found that women pursuing careers in music face limited opportunities compared to men, a lack of support and persistent unequal pay, while female artists are “routinely undervalued and undermined.”
The committee recommends that ministers introduce legislation to give freelance workers the same protections from discrimination as employees, as well as imposing a legal duty on companies and employers to protect workers from sexual harassment by third parties.
On the subject of non-disclosure agreements, the report said the government should consider a retrospective moratorium on NDAs signed by victims of sexual abuse.
The report also called for stronger safety requirements for industry sectors where harassment and abuse are known to take place, such as recording studios and music venues.
Additionally, managers of artists should be licensed, while record labels were recommended to regularly publish information about the diversity of their creative rosters, workforce and gender and ethnicity pay gaps – a practice that many labels and large music companies already do.
The committee said the music industry and the British government should increase investment and support in diverse talent, particularly in male-dominated areas such as A&R, sound engineering and production.
“Women’s creative and career potential should not have limits placed upon it by ‘endemic’ misogyny which has persisted for far too long within the music industry,” Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, said in a statement.
Responding to Tuesday’s report, Jo Twist, CEO of U.K. labels trade body BPI, and Yolanda Brown, BPI chair, said all parts of the music industry have “a shared responsibility” to tackle misogyny in music “head on.”
Silvia Montello, CEO of the London-based Association of Independent Music (AIM), said the report “makes for uncomfortable but sadly unsurprising reading.”
“It should not still be this hard, here in 2024, for women to be supported to succeed and to be taken as seriously as our male counterparts,” said Montello in a statement.
After years of stagnancy, women are gaining ground on the charts and at the Grammys.
A report on gender equality in the music industry by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative — which was supported by Spotify and is the latest in an annual series released by the groups — assessed 12 years and 1,200 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Charts, looking at artists, songwriters and producers.
The study, Inclusion in the Recording Studio? Gender & Race/Ethnicity of Artists, Songwriters & Producers across 1,100 Popular Songs from 2012 to 2022, is out Tuesday (Jan. 30.)
The study’s key takeaway is that women’s participation in music creation, which has historically lagged, has improved across several metrics.
On the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Charts, the percentage of women artists reached 35%, a 12-year high. The study attributes this change to the fact that 40.6% of spots on these charts in 2023 were occupied by individual women artists, an increase over 2022 when the number was 34.8%. Improvements were less significant for women-led bands or duos.
The number of women songwriters also increased, from 14.1% in 2022 to 19.5% in 2023. The study notes that this change was due “almost exclusively to the number of women of color credited as songwriters in 2023.” The reports cites 55 women of color receiving a songwriting credit in 2023, a jump from 33 women of color 2022 and 14 in 2012.
Fifty-six percent of songs in 2023 included at least one woman songwriter — an increase from 2022 and the highest percentage in 12 years.
“The changes for songwriters are doubtlessly due to the work of numerous groups working to support women in music,” Dr. Smith says in a statement. “Whether She Is The Music, Spotify Equal, Moving the Needle, Women’s Audio Mission, Be the Change, Keychange, Girls Make Beats, or others, there has been a groundswell of support for women across the last several years. This advocacy and activism is propelling change in the industry. While there is work to be done, these groups are well-positioned to keep fighting for change.”
In the producing realm, fourteen, or 6.5%, of the producers credited in 2023 were women. This surpassed the previous record of 4.9% in 2019. Nearly half, or six, of the women producers in 2023 were women of color. But, over the nine years the study has assessed gender equality in production, 94% of the evaluated songs did not include a single woman producer. Across nine years, there have been 29.8 men to every one woman working as a producer.
The race/ethnicity of artists is also a focus of the report. In 2023, 61% of the artists on the Hot 100 Year-End Charts were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group, while 39% were white. This was a 12-year high and an increase from 2022, when the number was 50.6%, but not significantly greater than the percentage of underrepresented artists in 2020, when the number was 59%.
The study also assessed the six major Grammy categories: record of the year, album of the year, song of the year, best new artist, producer of the year and songwriter of the year.
The study found that nearly a quarter (24%) of nominations across these six categories went to women in 2024 — a jump from 15.5% in 2023. This overall change was reflected in four categories: record of the year, album of the year, song of the year, and best new artist. This year, nominees in these categories include Taylor Swift, Victoria Monét, SZA, Miley Cryus, boygenius, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. In each of these categories, the percentage of women nominees increased significantly from 2023 to 2024 and from the first year the awards were evaluated in 2013.
For the fifth year in a row, no women were nominated for producer of the year.
“Awards like the Grammys show us how women’s contributions to the industry are received,” Dr. Smith says. “The increases in nominations this year are a positive step in recognizing the creative work that women did last year in competitive fields. The Recording Academy has clearly taken inclusion seriously and worked to increase the diversity of its membership, particularly its voting members.”
But, she continues, “There is still too little recognition for women producers and songwriters in those categories, and there are too few women of color nominated for their work. For music industry honors to truly reflect the creative workforce and the audience they serve, there must be a place for women and particularly women of color in these awards.”
Other key findings:
• In 2023, 164 artists appeared on the Hot 100 Billboard Year-End Chart. Of these, 64.6% were men, 34.8% were women, and 0.6% were gender non-binary.
• Across the 12-year sample, women artists were the most likely to work in pop (34.7%) and least likely in alternative (14.4%) and hip-hop (14.9%).
• Across 12 years, Drake had the most credits as a solo artist, appearing 52 times, double that of Justin Bieber, who appears on 25 songs. Nicki Minaj was the woman with the highest number of credits, appearing 25 times, while Ariana Grande followed with 23 songs and Rihanna with 22.
• The percentage of underrepresented women on the charts in 2023 was 65%, with this number the same as 2022 and and almost doubling since 2012, when it was 33.3%. “Put differently,” the study says, “women of color continue to dominate the charts.”
• In terms of genre, across 12 years, women were most likely to write pop (20.1%) and dance/electronic (19.6%) songs, and least likely to write hip-hop and rap (7.5%) and country (9.9%) songs. Even in pop music, where women songwriters most often appear, they were outnumbered by male songwriter by a ratio of 4 to 1.
As part of our continuing efforts to serve the music industry and its creators, Billboard Pro now features a music industry events calendar for readers.
The calendar will act as music’s most complete summary major national and international industry events, from conferences to festivals to networking mixers and more. Just as Billboard is music’s must-read source for news, charts and analysis, now it also is the go-to for business happenings.
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Dec. 4–10 – XLive (Las Vegas)
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Artist development isn’t dead, but it sure has changed. Two decades ago, a 20-something jazz musician named Norah Jones became a breakout star for Blue Note Records, a traditional route to stardom when people still bought CDs and social media didn’t exist. Last year’s breakout jazz artist, Laufey, cultivated a fan base on TikTok and posts sheet music for her songs online so fans can download it before the recordings come out.
To AWAL CEO Lonny Olinick, Laufey’s success is a sign of the times. The Icelandic singer built an online following by herself, but she needed a team to develop her career and handle marketing and promotion logistics. Her second AWAL album, Bewitched, topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts in September. “We’re seeing this real inflection point where artists are starting to, with their own teams and then between the team and AWAL, realize that there are no barriers in what can be achieved,” says Olinick, who earned an MBA from Stanford Business School and worked at consulting firm Bain & Company before joining Kobalt in 2016.
Artists such as JVKE, whose “Golden Hour” reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, and Mercury Prize winner Little Simz have used AWAL to find success outside of the major-label system. AWAL’s services-focused approach is becoming the norm as major labels increasingly provide distribution, marketing, promotion, accounting and even financing without needing to own the rights to artists’ recordings as part of standard deals. Sony Music acquired AWAL in 2022 to complement its labels and its distribution business, The Orchard. Universal Music Group is also building its own artist services business, through a revamped Virgin Label Group.
A pingpong table that Olinick says “we have artists sign when they’re in the L.A. office.”
Maggie Shannon
Paradoxically, services-based music companies still have to do many of the same things as traditional labels — just with different deals. Only recently, Olinick says, has the 16-year-old company truly met that challenge. “Last year and the year before were probably the first years where we fully realized that vision, where I’m confident that we can do all of the things that exist in the traditional world.”
Most people in the music industry understand record labels and distributors, but services-based companies are a bit harder to get. How would you describe AWAL to the uninitiated?
The most important part of music in my mind is artist development. You try to find artists who have great music, compelling stories and a work ethic and try to help them forge their own path. And throughout history, the best artists have been artists who don’t fit in a box, and the path that they take is completely bespoke. And you can’t do it again the same way. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that’s the best in the world at doing that — at finding outlier artists who have great stories to tell and helping them grow. You need a great marketing team, a great digital marketing team, radio, synch and branding — all the things that exist in the traditional world. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that can do all those things, just with a different business model to keep the economics in favor of the artist.
You don’t have an everyone’s-welcome model — you choose who you want to work with. How do you do that?
We’re very opinionated about music. It’s really important as a company to have that creative, A&R-driven aesthetic. There’s three dimensions to it in my mind. There’s the music: Does the music speak to people? Two, is there a story to be told, and does this person want to communicate something beyond just the music that’s interesting and compelling? And three, does the person have a work ethic? Being successful in music requires relentlessly hard work on all sides.
“I love art of all types and take a lot of inspiration from culture,” Olinick says. “These books cover amazing music, art and sneaker culture.”
Maggie Shannon
Tell me about the staff on the creative side, as well as the administrative one.
We do everything, but the majority of our staff is focused on A&R, marketing and creative. That’s where we think we can be different and where we can help our artists tell stories. There’s 180 people across 14 offices. It’s run as a global company. If we find a record in Sweden, the U.S. company can jump on it, or the U.K. company or the Canadian one. Everyone is working collaboratively to try to do the best they can for the artist. And in each of those offices, we have traditional marketing, digital marketing, synch, brand partnerships, publicity — we basically do everything that an artist needs largely in-house. And then to the extent that we feel like we need something beyond what our 180 people can do, we will partner.
What’s the financial commitment when you work with an artist? Are you always writing a check?
It depends. Some of the deals are unfunded. We’re fortunate to be a part of Sony, so if it makes sense and we believe in the opportunity, there’s no check we couldn’t write if it made sense. But each deal is bespoke for the artist. We try to put as much money into marketing as we possibly can because we believe that that’s the thing we can do that hopefully makes a difference.
This “thing with eyes is something my son made for me,” Olinick says. The feeling of being watched “keeps me motivated every day. The small trophy is from our office awards for ‘Person on the Phone the Most.’ I take great pride in that.”
Maggie Shannon
Sony acquired AWAL in 2022 and it already owned The Orchard. How do the two work together?
The whole Sony ecosystem makes a ton of sense, and AWAL and The Orchard are great examples of that. The Orchard is best in class at supporting record companies. And if you look at the scale at which they operate, and the quality of what they do on behalf of labels, there’s just no one who’s doing that kind of work. It’s an incredible team led by Brad [Navin] and Colleen [Theis], who are just incredible executives. I look at us in a very similar way: the best at doing artist development in this nontraditional way. Being able to work together on tools and distribution is a great advantage for our clients and for The Orchard’s clients.
Some artists have gone from majors or big indies to AWAL, including Nick Cave, Cold War Kids and Jungle. Have some artists gone from AWAL to majors?
Our job is to develop the best artists in the world. And I think if we do that — especially if we do that at any scale — there’s going to be certain artists where the deal offered by a major is really compelling. Early on, we saw a lot more artists who would migrate and go do another deal. We developed Steve Lacy, Omar Apollo and Kim Petras — artists who have gone on and had real success at majors.
“The Marshall cabinet is actually a refrigerator,” Olinick says. “My office tends to have items from our artists, but the exception is that Beatles collectible — I don’t have anything to do with The Beatles, but it reminds me to aspire to work with the greatest artists.”
Maggie Shannon
You’ve had some time to integrate into Sony. How has being part of this larger company changed your life as a CEO?
Anytime you go into these things you have aspirations for what it will be. At the same time, [merger and acquisition] deals tend not to be what you expected them to be. People think that I’m sometimes saying the company line, and it couldn’t be further from the truth: The experience has been phenomenal. That comes down to two dimensions. Rob [Stringer, Sony Music CEO] is just an incredible music executive who comes from an A&R perspective. Being a part of a company where he sets the tone that music is at the center of everything you do has made us a better company. And because of that, it has basically been, “Here’s all these resources that Sony has that you can take advantage of, but continue to run the company the way you have because we’ve had tons of success doing it.” It has all been additive.We have more resources to invest. We have better technology. We can partner with Sony in certain markets where it makes sense. We’re out there building local businesses in Spain, Brazil, Nigeria and India. The Sony team has been incredibly supportive. Everyone sees that this is a meaningful part of the business and because AWAL is so music-centered and so is Sony, there’s just a lot of mutual respect and collaboration. It has been nothing short of reenergizing in an already energized business.
The music business is undergoing some contraction with layoffs and consolidation. Do you foresee laying people off, or are you hiring?
We’re actively hiring. We hired a head of hip-hop and R&B last year in Norva Denton. We hired a senior vp of A&R in Chris [Foitel]. We hired Cami [Operé], who’s our publicist. We just hired a new CFO [Sumit Chatterjee]. We’ve hired in Spain, Brazil and Nigeria. We bought a company in India [digital distribution firm OKListen]. So, we’re actively in the market because the business continues to grow. We had our best year last year; we’ll have our best year this year.
Spotify shares gained 4.7% to $214.13 this week, helping the Billboard Global Music Index improve 2.3% to a record 1,595.11. Spotify’s fourth consecutive weekly increase came two weeks ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 6, which will show the full impact of its recent price increases in the United States and other major markets.
If a rising tide lifts all boats, Netflix’s superlative fourth-quarter earnings report explains why Spotify shares posted yet another positive week. Netflix shares rose 18.1% to $570.42 this week — including a 10.7% gain on Wednesday alone — after the company said it added 13.1 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, the most since 2020, with revenue up 12.5% to $8.8 billion. Not only was the quarter encouraging for streaming in general, the video streaming giant offered the music business some insights about finding growth in a maturing market: Netflix’s growth hasn’t been hurt by either the company’s constant price increases or its recent efforts to limit password sharing. In fact, pricing played an important part in that growth.
“As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service,” the company stated in a letter to shareholders. Cutting down on password sharing has made an impact, too. Netflix said “millions” of subscribers are using features such as Transfer Profile (a user transfers a profile from a shared account to a new account) and Extra Member (adding a user to an account for $7.99 per month in the United States), and that paid sharing “is now a normal course of business.”
Because of its large market capitalization, Spotify’s gain was a major factor in the Billboard Global Music Index’s 2.3% gain this week. The top-performing music stock of the week was iHeartMedia, which gained 26.7% to $2.85, putting it 68% below its 52-week high of $9.01. Music streaming company LiveOne was another high performer, gaining 13.5% to $1.51. The company announced on Thursday that Podcast One — LiveOne spun off the podcast company and remains a majority owner — reached new agreements with two of its most popular podcasts, The Adam Carolla Podcast and The Adam and Dr. Drew Show. Elsewhere, Sphere Entertainment Co. shares rose 8.7% to $34.45 following the company’s recent hire of Jennifer Koester, a former Google executive, as president of Sphere Business Operations, effective Feb. 5. One of Koester’s duties will be to develop a corporate conference business for product launches and other events.
Eight of the index’s 20 stocks fell this week — although none dropped more than 3%. SiriusXM shares fell 1.5% to $5.34; the company announced Wednesday that it would maintain its quarterly cash dividend at $0.02666 per share. Hipgnosis Songs Fund fell 2.1% to 0.7057 pounds per share amidst multiple regulatory filings that hinted at tension between the company’s new board and its investment advisor, Hipgnosis Song Management. Hipgnosis shareholders will vote on Feb. 7 on a proposal that would result in paying a fee to bidders on its catalog.
Stocks were broadly up in the United States this week as positive economic news made an impact on markets. The tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed 0.9% to 15,455.36 and the S&P 500 rose 1.1% to 4,890.97. Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta reached new highs this week, though Tesla shares fell 13.6% after the company warned vehicle unit sales in 2024 “may be notably lower” than last year. On Friday, Intel shares fell 11.9% after the company offered investors a disappointing outlook for the current quarter during its Thursday earnings release.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released data that showed gross domestic product grew at a better-than-expected annualized rate of 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Then on Friday, the Department of Commerce released data that showed personal incomes ended the year on a high note by increasing 0.3% in December. What’s more, a measure of how much people are spending showed that price increases have slowed. Personal consumption expenditures in December were 2.6% higher year over year (and 2.9% higher excluding food and energy). Last week, new consumer sentiment data showed an improvement in Americans’ feelings about the economy and their expectations for future inflation.
Stocks also improved outside of the United States. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 rose 2.3% to 7,635.09. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index improved 0.2% to 2,478.56. And China’s SSE Composite Index jumped 2.8% to 2,910.22.
Taylor Swift‘s relationship with Travis Kelce has been a touchdown for the NFL, which has benefited in multiple ways since the two publicly became an item in the fall. On Sept. 24, the rumored romance between the pop superstar and Kansas City Chiefs tight end was seemingly confirmed when Swift was seen cheering on Kelce […]