Business
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For decades, the production power of a concert tour was measured in the number of trucks it took to haul its gear across the country.
But bigger isn’t always better, especially in a theater environment where the space across the proscenium arch has to support loudspeakers that maximize coverage without distracting from the look and feel of the show. For The Outsiders musical at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway in New York City, that has meant experimenting with the new, lighter, more compact L-Series line source loudspeakers from L’Acoustics.
The speaker deployment is a first for Broadway and part of Sound Designer Cody Spencer’s use of L’Acoustics L-ISA immersive audio technology for The Outsiders. The new show is nominated for 12 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Sound Design of a Musical.
Announced last year at L’Acoustics’ keynote event at the Hollywood Bowl, the L-Series speakers are being deployed at a number of new activations in the touring world, including their recent installation at First Avenue in Minneapolis. The L-Series speakers use up to 60% less material to construct, compared to speakers with similar sound power and coverage, and 30% less space. Unlike traditional line array configurations that must be hung at a J-shaped angle, the L-Series can be installed in a fixed configuration, requiring less physical space to deploy while allowing crew to make sound adjustments without mechanical ones.
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The loudspeakers are the latest of the line array speaker system first developed by L’Acoustics founder Christian Heil 40 years ago. Thanks to Heil’s work on Wavefront Sculpture Technology (WST) theory, line array technology has improved sound reinforcement for live performances and become the standard for sound coverage and clarity at large venues and festival spaces, allowing fans in the back to hear vocals and higher frequencies without the sound being distorted.
The new L Series speaker, starting with the L2, a 10-inch progressive ultra line source long-throw speaker “is the ultimate accomplishment of 30 years of technology improvements on the line array,” L’Acoustics CEO Laurent Vaissié said in a statement.
Laurent Vaissié
Hal Horowitz Photography
“When Christian started thinking about this back in the late 80s and early 90s, the idea was to create a fully coherent speaker configuration that was able to get uniform coverage from front to back,” Vaissié said. “With the L series, we’re able to eliminate more of the material and the physical boundaries between the different parts of the speaker and line array to make it even more compact.”
“We did this,” Vaissié explained, “by physically removing the articulation between the parts of the line array and creating the L2’s very specific shape.”
That shape was the result of analyzing “thousands of different shows where we looked at the audience configuration,” Vaissié continued. “We realized if we start with that shape already, we’re almost there in terms of coverage. We realized could eliminate the articulation of the line array and fine tune the coverage with electronics and software. And that’s the reason why I say it’s the ultimate evolution because 10 years ago, we could not have done the L2 because the electronics and the software were not yet at the level it needed to be. But today we finally got to the point where the mechanical design, software and electronics are converging so that we can have an optimized design for the L2, eliminate all the physical material that we didn’t need, make it smaller, and then adjust with software and electronics to get perfect coverage in the vertical domain.”
Spencer said the L2 speakers helped The Outsiders solve an issue created by the production’s use of a rain curtain, which pushed the show’s front-of-house speakers downstage.
The Outsiders
Cody Spencer
“I plugged them into our Soundvision model,” Spencer said in a press release, adding that he found that the L-series speaker “gave us three more rows of coverage in front of the orchestra over traditional line array loudspeakers.”
The L-Series speakers are currently on tour with Italian hip-hop duo Coez & Frah Quintale and will be used on Sarah McLachlan’s 2024 tour.
“We are sold out of L2 right now through the first quarter of next year. We could have more, but we’re trying to balance between the needs for the rental companies and the needs for the installation project,” says Vaissié. “The market has been responding very well and the demand is much higher than we anticipated.”
It’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday evening in Miami, and Ty Baisden is still taking care of business with an energy level that belies the hour.
“I’m a firm sleeper who gets my eight hours,” says Baisden, his Georgian drawl giving way to laughter. “But what I don’t do is the bulls–t. So subtract the bulls–t, and you’ve got a lot of time to work and a lot of time to rest.”
That philosophy has anchored Baisden since he broke into the business as a manager in 2008. During that time, the native Atlantan also closely observed successful creative/business partnerships including Disturbing Tha Peace Records with Ludacris and Chaka Zulu and Grand Hustle Records with T.I. and Jason Geter.
Given the tenuousness of most manager-artist relationships, Baisden wanted to apply that collaborative model to the right act. “I was like, ‘I’ve got to find an artist that will want to partner with me where they deal with all the creative and I deal with all the business. Then we can build a company together, and we’ll be protected because the company is our protection.’ ”
In 2014, he found an ideal artist-partner in Brent Faiyaz after discovering him on SoundCloud. “It wasn’t an easy thing,” Baisden recalls. “I had executives telling me, ‘Don’t partner with artists; that’s dumb.’ And I had artists thinking, ‘No, I’d rather do something with a major label.’ Brent was the first artist that really believed in the overall process of that kind of partnership.”
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Over the last nine years, the business alignment between Baisden’s firm COLTURE — an acronym that stands for Can Our Leverage Teach Us Real Equity — where he is head of ventures and innovation — and Faiyaz’s Lost Kids label has yielded several successes. Among them: Faiyaz’s 2020 EP, F–k the World, bowing at No. 20 on the Billboard 200, followed by his momentous No. 2 debut with second studio album Wasteland — against Bad Bunny’s multiweek No. 1 juggernaut Un Verano Sin Ti — in 2022.
Then in 2023, Faiyaz’s F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland Tour grossed $5.3 million and sold 68,000 tickets over 18 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Separately, in 2023, he launched his own creative agency, ISO Supremacy, in partnership with UnitedMasters. (Baisden is not involved.) ISO joined forces with PULSE Records in an artist development joint venture, and in May struck gold with genre-melding R&B singer Tommy Richman, whose “Million Dollar Baby” has spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Splitting his time between Atlanta and Miami with a 22-member staff, Baisden, 40, works alongside COLTURE co-founder and head of creative services Jayne Andrew and partner Paris “PK” Kirk. The three are also co-founders and equity partners in COLTURE Holdings, which houses the firm’s nonmusic-related businesses.
“I don’t manage artists,” Baisden says of the business he has built with Faiyaz. “The skin that I have in the game is seeing another Black man be successful in whatever they want to do.”
Devin Christopher
What COLTURE accomplishment stands out over the last 18 months?
Our company vertically integrated and built Brent’s [2023] tour from start to finish. Usually, management will hire out for everything to get done. I partnered with Wasserman Music’s Callender to route it and negotiate the deals. Meanwhile, I handled the entire budget. Jayne handled all the band details, creative direction and making sure Brent felt comfortable onstage while PK handled all the lifestyle and afterparty events. And we each split time going to the different [tour stops] and booking the buses, freight and travel.
That’s not the job of managers, but we’re not managers; we build businesses. To build a business, you’ve got to manage the budget so you can determine your margin. Brent’s tour profited because we controlled every single dollar that was spent. I just think that’s very loud. So many people go out on the road and don’t make money. The artist gets paid, but when it’s time to do your balance sheet, you come out in the red. Many times, when you have other people managing a big lift, you’re going to get blindly overcharged.
How does the COLTURE partnership with Faiyaz and Lost Kids work?
Christopher Brent Wood [Faiyaz’s birth name] and I are business partners. When Christopher turns into the artist Brent Faiyaz and I’m operating on the latter’s behalf, then my job title is manager, for which I get a percentage. That’s probably the best way I can put it. We’re 50/50 partners in Lost Kids, under which we have multiple businesses. That was basically our handshake to one another in the beginning. Those projects and his tours are the financial seeds for Brent and me to go out and make individual investments. Lost Kids gave Brent the opportunity to invest in ISO Supremacy with his high school friend Darren Xu, and now they’re having a huge success with Tommy Richman. Beyond music and publishing, our biggest investments under Lost Kids involve real estate in Atlanta and Dallas and more than 20 startup companies, including Athletic Greens, Therabody, Audio Shake and Seed. And the great thing is three of those four companies — Seed, Audio Shake and Athletic Greens — are led by women.
Lost Kids also sponsors annual initiatives on behalf of female executives and entrepreneurs.
We just finished our fourth annual Show You Off grant program, giving 12 women $10,000 grants each to run their own business or launch a new idea. One of the policies of the grant is to reward Black women that are from the DMV [Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia] area. This year was a heavy one with new ideas involving STEM companies, [artificial intelligence] technology, electric batteries, etc. Thus far, we’ve donated about half a million dollars or more to Black women-helmed businesses.
What additional clients and businesses are under the COLTURE umbrella?
On the producer side, we have Nascent, who’s just finishing his project, Don’t Grow Up Too Soon, that we’ll distribute independently; Jordan Waré and Dpat, who have both worked with Brent. We have a partnership with [podcast] Million Dollaz Worth of Game to help [former rapper/co-host Gillie Da Kid] build out a music division. We’re doing their artist N3wyrkla’s first rollout with Troy Carter’s Venice Music. We collaborate as well with [pop duo] Emotional Oranges on distribution and creative direction when needed. Then, in the same kind of partnership I have with Brent, there’s Canadian female artist Kalisway, who writes and produces funk and R&B. Lastly, we’re helping actor Malcolm Mays [Starz’s Raising Kanan] launch his music career to diversify his business.
What’s the biggest issue facing the independent community right now?
An indie company can put out a song and the song can blow up, but more than likely, the company doesn’t have sufficient infrastructure to make sure everybody’s paid fairly based on their contributions to the record that just changed their artist’s life. The artist and the label are going to get big checks, but the songwriters and producers are probably going to get paid a year or two later, depending on how savvy their manager is — if they even have a manager.
Where do you envision COLTURE three to five years from now?
We have a 10-year plan outlining that parent company COLTURE Holdings will be generating $100 million in revenue by 2030. That’s the goal. Over the next three years, we’re launching our full-fledged media department, including TV, film, podcasting and digital content. The sports division is developing, and we’re continuing our real estate operation. We’re basically building a community and a pipeline for disrupters who can either stay within our ecosystem or build their own businesses.
Additional reporting by Shira Brown.
This story originally appeared in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
About four months ago, Maiden Voyage, an album of Iron Maiden radio recordings from the 1980s, popped up for sale on Coda Records’ website without the storied metal band’s permission. Andrew Wyllie, Iron Maiden’s head of business affairs, contacted the act’s labels, BMG and Warner Music, for help persuading the U.K. retailer to pull down the unauthorized album — with, he says, no success. His next call went to Corsearch.
The 75-year-old brand-protection company, which fights bootleggers using artificial intelligence, image-matching software and automated takedown notices on retail sites like Amazon, Etsy and eBay, quickly ended the sale of Maiden Voyage and social media ads for it and was “more effective in getting those records taken down than our record company,” Wyllie says. “They’ve definitely affected the bottom line.”
(A Coda rep says the store removed Maiden Voyage after hearing from Iron Maiden, the process was “very straightforward” and “we’re happy just to take stuff down if there’s a problem.”)
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For a long time, artists, managers, labels and merchandise companies have likened online bootleg sales to a game of Whac-A-Mole: When attorneys send cease-and-desist notices to unauthorized and knock-off merch retailers, the seller reemerges elsewhere. But in recent years, companies such as Corsearch and rival CounterFind have used more sophisticated methods to protect their music-business clients. They remove tens of thousands of online listings every month, hire regional attorneys to invoke the U.S. trademark statute known as the Lanham Act and prosecute violators.
“It’s scientific, it’s strategic and there are solutions,” says Eric Cohen, founder of TZU Strategies, which collaborates with Corsearch and claims to have removed 55,000 counterfeit listings on behalf of top music stars. Using “robust” technology, he says, “we are able to connect a large majority of the counterfeiters that are using multiple accounts selling on multiple platforms in multiple ways.”
Corsearch has 450 employees and 5,000 clients, including A-list artists and music companies. “We work with law enforcement we’ve had relationships with for 15 years,” vp of enforcement Joe Cherayath says.
Dallas-based CounterFind is more of a “boutique” company, says co-founder and head of business development Rachel Aronson. In 2017, the founders were working with Linkin Park when frontman Chester Bennington died and, as Aronson recalls, “An insane amount of counterfeit merch was popping up all over the place.” CounterFind removed “millions of dollars in counterfeit products from the market in one weekend,” she says.
Since then, CounterFind has expanded to 30 employees and works with Bravado, the merch company owned by Universal Music Group (UMG) that represents Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and dozens of other artists. “The majority of these major counterfeiters are working from their couches overseas and they’re creating print-on-demand products,” Aronson says.
Music bootlegging and counterfeiting is big business. Last year, U.S. Border and Customs Protection seized nearly $2.8 billion in copyright-infringing goods shipped from countries like China, Turkey and Canada. Jeff Jampol, whose company, JAM Inc., manages the estates of The Doors, Janis Joplin and others, estimates these unauthorized sellers cost artists roughly $20,000 to $50,000 for every $1 million in yearly T-shirt sales. “It’s kind of endless,” says Rick Sales, longtime manager for Slayer, Ghost, Mastodon and others. “It’s like, ‘How long is a piece of string?’”
Bravado’s president, Matt Young, adds that Counterfind and Universal Music’s in-house intellectual-property-protection team have been “proactive” and UMG artists and managers appreciate the company’s reports showing all the takedowns they’ve achieved of unauthorized material online. But “it kind of still is like Whac-A-Mole,” he says: Amazon has been “great” at strengthening its protocols to fight against bootleggers, but “these marketplaces don’t really care where this business comes from,” and “if you Google any artists, the first several things you see would be pirated goods.”
Representatives for Corsearch and CounterFind disagree. Aronson describes a repeat offender who was “basically scraping and copying an artist’s entire merch site” using a website address with one letter removed from the official URL. After months of reporting the bootlegger through its multiple hosting providers, CounterFind employed the Lanham Act to permanently remove the site and domain. In April, Corsearch worked with police in China to raid warehouses belonging to alleged online counterfeiter Pandabuy and seized millions of packages about to be shipped to customers. “The key point,” Cherayath says, “is not to stop at cease-and-desist — that’s just one of the mechanisms in the enforcement strategy.”
In addition to scouring the internet for unauthorized merch sellers and providing data to the band about where counterfeiters are located, Corsearch helps Iron Maiden discern which t-shirt manufacturers are bootleg operations and which are harmless fans who design their own apparel for a few extra bucks. The Corsearch system also allows the band’s management to respond to fans’ tips and identify bootleggers and counterfeiters based on complaints — like the Facebook scammers who promise VIP tickets and backstage access with a $500 click.
“It’s the bane of my life. As soon as we announce a tour, the bootleggers online have already stolen the image from a tour poster and put it on a t-shirt in five minutes,” Wyllie says. “The Corsearch system almost pays for itself. You’re not having to use local attorneys and you’re getting to the root of the problem pretty quickly.”
A version of this story appears in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Attorneys for Madonna and Live Nation say they’re facing a “harassment campaign” from the lawyers suing over delayed starts to the singer’s concerts, aimed at “extorting a lucrative settlement” rather than actually litigating the case.
The charged language came amid a class action accusing Madonna and Live Nation of breaking laws by making fans wait hours at December concerts in Brooklyn on her Celebration Tour — one of three such cases filed over the past six months that all make similar allegations.
Over the weekend, the dueling teams of lawyers engaged in a bizarre back and forth. On Friday (June 7), attorneys for the accusers told the judge that the two sides had “reached a settlement” that would end the case. But first thing on Monday morning (June 10), Madonna’s legal team emphatically denied that any such deal had been reached: “The parties have not settled this matter.”
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“To be clear, defendants are not necessarily opposed to settlement if certain terms can be reached,” wrote Jeff Warshafsky, a partner at the law firm Proskauer who reps Madonna and Live Nation. “But defendants will not be harassed into settlement and cannot abide false statements made to the court.”
In the filing, Madonna’s lawyer said the two sides had “discussed the possibility of settlement” but that they had “made no settlement offer” and “we do not know what plaintiffs believe they are accomplishing or trying to accomplish with the false notice.”
“The false notice is part and parcel of the harassment campaign that plaintiffs’ counsel has been waging against defendants over the last several months in hopes of extorting a lucrative settlement by forcing defendants to incur unnecessary legal fees,” Warshafsky wrote. “Whatever plaintiffs’ motive … defendants believe plaintiffs’ complaint is completely without merit and intend to fully defend themselves.”
An attorney for Madonna’s accusers did not immediately return a request for comment.
Madonna and Live Nation were first sued in January over the Brooklyn shows — a case that made headlines because it claimed the fans “had to get up early to go to work” the next day. She was later hit with a similar case in Washington, D.C. that claimed fans had waited in an “uncomfortably hot” arena and that she had lip-synched portions of the show. A third case, filed last month, echoed those claims but also alleged that Madonna’s show had been unexpectedly “pornographic.”
All three cases have been filed as class actions, seeking to represent potentially thousands of other fans who also faced the alleged delays. By starting the concerts later than expected, the cases claim Madonna and Live Nation breached their contracts with fans and violated state consumer protection laws.
Madonna’s attorneys have strongly rejected those accusations. In a request to dismiss the New York case earlier this year, her lawyers argued that simply needing to wake up early was not the kind of “cognizable injury” that can form the basis for a lawsuit. And they say that anyone buying a concert ticket is well aware that a show likely won’t start at the exact time printed on the ticket.
“No reasonable concertgoer — and certainly no Madonna fan — would expect the headline act at a major arena concert to take the stage at the ticketed event time,” her legal team wrote in April.
A version of that motion to dismiss the case remains pending. With no settlement reached, a response from Madonna’s accusers is due on July 1.
In 1995, Peter Shapiro purchased the New York club Wetlands. “That was the home of the jam band, Grateful Dead scene in New York,” he recalls. At the time, though, “it wasn’t cool to be a Deadhead. And Wetlands wasn’t necessarily the cool play.”
But styles that were frowned upon by one generation are often taken up by the next. While many artists — and the mainstream music business — ignored jam bands for years, this has started to change. Intrigued by the scene’s genre-hopping open-mindedness and the unwavering devotion of its followers at a time when “superfan” is the industry buzzword of choice, the rest of the music business has started to take an interest in a space it long kept at arm’s length.
“If you’re a pop artist, and you see a bunch of bearded weirdo hippies able to do whatever they want on their own terms, that’s an appealing path to think about,” says Mike Luba, longtime manager of the String Cheese Incident.
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At festivals, “you’re seeing jam bands pop up on lineups that are traditionally more indie rock or haven’t really touched the jam thing in the past,” explains Dave DiCianni, who co-manages Goose along with other jam bands like Eggy and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. “It’s cool to see it permeating into general pop culture,” he adds.
The Big Bang for jam bands, according to Shapiro, was the death of the Dead’s Jerry Garcia in 1995. “Everyone saw the Dead; they were the number one touring band in the 1990s,” Shapiro continues. “Garcia dies, and that audience of live music, improvisation-loving people splinters. That creates the jam band scene. Phish lifts up” — the band first cracked Pollstar‘s highest grossing U.S. tours list at the end of 1994 — “along with String Cheese Incident, Disco Biscuits, Medeski Martin and Wood,” and more.
Over the years, groups associated with the scene “will pop in and out of mainstream pop culture,” Luba says, pointing to Rusted Root and the Spin Doctors. But many of the acts in this space were overlooked, if not dismissed outright, by the mainstream music industry, in part because they didn’t generate chart hits or millions of streams, even as they moved lots of tickets. Nick Stern, whose management client Karina Rykman is “jam adjacent,” contends that the jam scene is “the most looked down-upon genre in the music business.”
For some artists, that gives it an inherent underdog appeal: “I’m interested in things that are unfashionable,” Vampire Weekend lead singer Ezra Koenig told The New York Times Magazine in 2020. He also noted that he finds Phish “more inspiring, forward-thinking, exciting and talented than a lot of what was higher up in the cool hierarchy;” Vampire Weekend recently hopped on stage with Goose, the new arena-filling stars of the jam scene.
Jam acts may also be benefitting from the catholic tastes fostered in the streaming era — as DiCianni puts it, listeners’ interests are now “less compartmentalized.” And artists and managers in the jam band scene posit that its emphasis on being present, in the moment, with a like-minded community for an ever-changing live experience offers an increasingly potent antidote to the distracted, frenetic, nichified, social media-driven world.
But there’s another reason why the mainstream music industry is increasingly interested in jam acts. “People outside the jam band space are coming to me almost in awe of the fandom in this scene,” says Ben Baruch, Goose’s other co-manager.
In interviews over the last six months, many of the most powerful executives in music have talked up the importance of cultivating “superfans.” Despite music’s popularity, it is poorly monetized compared to spaces like gaming. This is partially because the music streaming model currently offers artists few ways to foster meaningful connections with followers. Jam bands have been doing this for decades — perhaps because they didn’t get much support from the traditional industry, and have never depended on record sales or streaming.
Jam band devotees are impressively diligent about attending shows, buying merchandise, and streaming live performances, which change nightly. “They almost treat their favorite bands like a sports team, where they’re following along with what happens in every moment in every show,” says Ethan Berlin, who is co-agent for Goose, Pigeons and Rykman, among others. “They’re so invested — for years.”
And these fans have long had “ears that are a mile wide,” according to Rykman. At a time when the walls between the jam world and the rest of the music industry appear more porous, jam enthusiasts have flexed their muscles to help propel some artists from adjacent worlds to greater heights.
Take Billy Strings: The versatile guitarist and songwriter, now signed to Warner’s Reprise Records, has picked up Grammy nominations for Best American Roots Performance and Best Country Duo/Group Performance; he won the award for Best Bluegrass Album in 2021. At the same time, Strings has played with Bill Kreutzmann (a founding member of the Dead), String Cheese Incident and Goose, among others. He saw “there’s another whole world where traditional bluegrass can actually cross over and be accepted,” Luba says. Strings’ current tour includes multiple arenas.
Berlin is also the agent for Khruangbin, a trio whose dreamy instrumental grooves now attract 10,000 to 25,000 tickets per market; Berlin describes them as “not quite jam, maybe not even jam-adjacent, but definitely jam-friendly.” Notably, “they were embraced by that scene early in their career, ” he continues. “One of the first looks they had outside of Houston, where they’re from, was when they were invited to play Lockn’ Festival [one of the leading jam gatherings] in 2016.”
For Rykman, whose 2023 debut album featured guitar from Phish co-founder Trey Anastasio, this is one of “the beautiful things about the jam space.” “Myself, Khruangbin, Vulfpeck, we’re not jam bands with capital J’s — none of us play two sets, we still play three-minute songs,” she continues. “But jam band fans were early” to signal appreciation.
Similarly minded artists — what Rykman calls “singular groovy organisms” — might also want to court this community — music-loving superfans hiding in plain sight who can help them build the sort of formidable live business that ensures a long career. Another one of Baruch’s management clients is the Disco Biscuits; in the past 18 months, he says “they’re growing more than they have in 20 years.”
“What musician wouldn’t want that level of diehard fan?” Berlin asks.
Spotify’s stock price rose 3.9% this week after the company’s announcement of a U.S. price increase on Monday (June 3) sent the stock on a roller-coaster ride. Shares rose to a new 52-week high of $331.08 on Wednesday — its highest point since Feb. 25, 2021 — before closing at $308.11 on Friday (June 7).
After raising subscription prices in the United States and many other major markets in July 2023, Spotify further hiked rates in the United Kingdom and Australia in May. The additional U.S. price increase, which goes into effect in July, will raise individual rates to $11.99 per month and family plans to $19.99 per month. The higher prices will help Spotify cover the costs of bundling music with limited free streaming of audiobooks. The streamer is giving its customers plenty of options, though. A music-only tier has been introduced in the United Kingdom that costs 10.99 pounds ($13.99) per month, compared to 11.99 pounds ($15.26) per month for the music-and-audiobook option. Two-person Duo plans and student plans also offer discounts to the standard individual plan.
The Billboard Global Music Index rose 0.1% to 1,801.44 as Spotify’s gain helped overshadow losses by 13 of the index’s 20 companies. Other of the index’s largest companies posted modest declines this week: Warner Music Group fell 0.9% to $29.51, Universal Music Group fell 1.2% to 28.23 euros ($30.53) and Live Nation dropped 3.4% to $90.56. The index is 2.5% below its high of 1,847.64, set the week ended May 3, 2024.
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iHeartMedia, the index’s greatest gainer for the second consecutive week, rose 35% to $1.25 a week after gaining 6.4%. In just two weeks, iHeartMedia’s year-to-date loss has improved from 67.4% to 53.2% without any major news releases or regulatory filings. At the company’s annual general meeting on Wednesday (June 5), shareholders reelected CEO Bob Pittman and CFO/COO Rich Bressler to the board of directors and approved an advisory vote on the company’s 2023 executive compensation.
SM Entertainment dropped 8.5% to 83,500 won ($60.51) amidst controversy over an alleged sex scandal involving Johnny and Haechan of the group NCT, which SM Entertainment has denied. Such a large drop isn’t uncommon when a K-pop company’s artists are plastered across the South Korean news. In October, K-pop stocks dropped on news that SM Entertainment artist Exo was leaving for a different agency. In April, HYBE shares fell sharply after news broke that Min Hee-jin, CEO of HYBE imprint ADOR, had attempted to take over management of the subsidiary label.
Elsewhere, CTS Eventim rose 4.3% to 82.80 euros ($89.56). On Thursday (June 6), the German concert promoter and ticketing company finalized a $327 million acquisition of Vivendi’s festival and ticketing businesses. Last year, See Tickets sold 44 million tickets and had revenue of 105 million euros ($114 million). The deal does not include See Tickets France.
SiriusXM shares fell 9.5% to $2.56 this week, bringing its year-to-date loss to 53.2%. The satellite radio company, which also owns streaming platform Pandora, is betting on the success of the new streaming app it launched in December and its $9.99-per-month price. The in-car satellite product, which includes streaming access, costs “about $19” per month, CEO Jennifer Witz said at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference Conference on May 21. The company is attempting to maintain those satellite customers while attracting new streaming customers and reducing its reliance on promotional discounts. “I do think we’ll have opportunities to both capture more demand but also maintain that full price base at those higher price points and implement rate increases over time,” said Witz.
Some U.S. stock indexes reached all-time highs this week. The S&P 500 hit a record 5,375.08 Friday, although it closed at 5,346.99, down 0.1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite reached a new high of 17,235.73 on Thursday and ended Friday at 17,133.12, up 2.4% from the prior week. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 declined 0.4% to 8,245.37. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index rose 3.3% to 2,722.67. China’s Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.2% to 3,051.28.
A California judge presiding over a sex trafficking case that was brought against Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) CEO/executive chairman James Dolan, the Azoff Companies and Harvey Weinstein in January is weighing several motions to throw out the lawsuit, with a decision expected to be announced as soon as early next week.
Attorney Douglas Windor, a high-profile litigator who represented Casandra Ventura (a.k.a. singer Cassie) in her since-settled sex trafficking lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed an explosive lawsuit in January on behalf of Tennessee massage therapist Kellye Croft, who alleged that Dolan and an employee of Azoff Music Management conspired to traffic her to California to have sex with Dolan — who in turn allegedly trafficked her to Weinstein.
Representing Azoff Companies is powerful New York litigator Daniel Petrocelli, partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, who has represented Donald Trump and Travis Scott. Dolan is represented by Danya Perry, a former assistant U.S. attorney and ex-chief of litigation at MacAndrews & Forbes.
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Petrocelli and Perry have each filed separate motions to dismiss the case, which is being handled by Judge Percy Anderson, while Perry has issued a blanket denial of Croft’s claims against Dolan.
Croft alleges that she was hired to work with the late Glenn Frey in October 2013 while the vocalist and Eagles frontman was touring with the band and opening act JD and the Straight Shot, which is led by Dolan. Croft alleges that Dolan befriended her during the tour, gained her trust and then sexually assaulted her before coercing her into a sexual relationship while on the road.
Two months after returning home to Nashville in the wake of the tour, Croft alleges she was contacted by an executive at Azoff Music Management and hired to work as Frey’s masseuse for the Eagles’ six-night run of concerts at Kia Forum in Los Angeles. When Croft arrived in Los Angeles, she learned that he was staying at a different hotel than the band — leading her to suspect that she was really hired by Azoff Management as a favor to Dolan.
“Ms. Croft did not perform a single massage on any member of the Eagles while working at The Forum,” Wingdor writes, alleging that “in reality, Ms. Croft was flown out to Los Angeles for the purposes of engaging in unwanted sexual acts with Dolan.”
Croft also claims that she was set up by Dolan, allegedly with the help of two Azoff employees, for an encounter with Weinstein, the disgraced film producer and convicted rapist, during her stay at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Croft says she was confronted by Weinstein in an elevator and allegedly offered a job on the set of an upcoming film — only to later be sexually propositioned by the film producer, who then followed her to her room and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.
Dolan’s relationship with Weinstein dates back to 2003 when Dolan and Weinstein were part of an investment group — which also included financier and convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein — that was hoping to purchase New York magazine. Dolan also briefly served on the board of The Weinstein Company starting in 2016.
Croft allegedly decided to file the lawsuit after Dolan sent her the lyrics to “I Should’ve Known,” a song he wrote lamenting his failure to stop Weinstein from victimizing women.
In April, Perry filed a motion to dismiss Croft’s lawsuit, arguing that even if the woman’s claims were true, she still can’t sue Dolan under the Trafficking Victims Protect Act because “the bill targets and criminalizes sex trafficking, not sexual relations (which is all that is alleged in (Croft’s complaint),” according to the motion. Wigdor responded in a separate filing that Perry’s reading of the law was “wrong.”
As to the Weinstein allegation, Perry is arguing that Dolan and other former Weinstein Company board members were already released from any claims “to alleged sexual misconduct by Weinstein” during 2018 bankruptcy proceedings. Wigdor countered that Croft “did not consent to waive her claims” and wasn’t aware of the bankruptcy.
Petrocelli’s motion to dismiss argues that Croft’s complaint “contains no facts suggesting the Azoff Entities participated in, benefitted from, or even knew about any sex trafficking scheme” when hiring her. Petrocelli also wants Croft and her attorney sanctioned for filing the lawsuit and is asking that Croft be required to pay Azoff’s legal costs.
The motions have been taken under advisement by the judge, who late last week canceled a Monday (June 3) hearing for oral arguments on the motions, noting the “Court finds this matter appropriate for decision without oral argument.“ His ruling is expected any day.
Following the example of its bustling Nashville division, BMG is moving headfirst into its focus as a frontline label and investing heavily in developing U.S. acts.
Less than six months after Jon Loba was promoted from president of BMG Nashville to president of frontline recordings at BMG North America, he now expands his reach to president of frontline recordings, The Americas, to include Brazil under his watch. He will oversee new releases across all genres, including pop, rock, R&B/Hip-Hop, country and Latin.
“We’re going to become much more frontline focused,” Loba tells Billboard. “There’s a reallocation of resources to the U.S. We’re going to be much more frontline competitive, including building out our LATAM division.”
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The move comes with a heavy investment in A&R, A&R research and digital resources, with BMG doubling the dollars it had been spending on U.S. signings and acquisitions. “The whole idea of putting me in this position was [BMG] very much wanted the rest of the U.S. to match the culture of Nashville and how we broke acts,” Loba says.
BMG’s country division has been a frontline powerhouse with such platinum artists as Jason Aldean, Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, Parmalee, Dustin Lynch and Blanco Brown, while the non-country genres were “focused on acquisition and established artists,” Loba says. “We want to be intentional about growing organically, as well as being a home for new viral acts.”
Running BMG Nashville has taught Loba that “the icons come from fringes” and copycats need not apply. “We want to be a home for artists that maybe don’t easily find a home elsewhere or that others don’t immediately see the value in,” he says. “We want to be home for a different perspective, a different voice.”
Part of BMG Nashville’s success has come from the strength of its radio promotion team, and Loba expects that team to work to select non-country records going forward. “Radio tends to be the rocket fuel of streams too,” he says. “You may have streaming airplay for a certain amount of time without radio’s involvement, but I still don’t know an artist who doesn’t care about radio airplay, so to be attractive to our current and potential artists, you can’t afford not to have a radio presence.”
BMG expects to still be very involved in the acquisition space, with the focus on signing new acts coming as an additive to the existing business. According to its 2023 year-end report, the Berlin-based BMG made 30 acquisitions last year as revenues grew to 905 million euros (the equivalent of $986 million), up 4.6% over 2022. Among its main acquisitions were the purchase of Paul Simon’s royalty income in his Simon & Garfunkel recordings as well as acquiring the catalog of British rock band The Hollies.
Unlike a number of labels that are combining frontline and catalog operations, BMG’s will remain separate (even though, before new BMG CEO Thomas Coesfeld took over last July, the plan had been to unite the two). Thomas Scherer, who formerly ran the publishing division, is now head of global recorded catalog. According to the 2023 report, recordings account for 34% of BMG’s revenue, 61% comes from publishing and the remaining 5% comes from broader rights.
Loba has also set his executive team, many of whom are refining their duties. Below are the key members of his team and their defined roles.
*JoJamie Hahr, executive vp of recorded music, BMG Nashville, will oversee day-to-day management of BBR Music Group and its three imprints, which are home to such acts as Jelly Roll, Aldean and Wilson. Hahr, who joined the company in 2017, reports to Loba.
*Zarah Ortiz, vp of repertoire and campaign management, will oversee BMG’s building presence in Latin American markets including Mexico and Brazil and such genres as Afro-pop. Based in Miami, Ortiz, who oversees a team in Mexico, reports to Loba, as does GM Daniel Fernandes in Brazil.
*Dan Gill, executive vp of recorded music, West Coast, will oversee the pop, rock, R&B/Hip-Hop and international outbound repertoire. Gill, who joined BMG following its 2014 acquisition of Vagrant Records, led the success of such acts as blink-182 and LP at BMG and will lead the campaign on upcoming releases from YG, Chief Keef, Wiz Khalifa and others. He reports to Loba.
*Gill’s direct reports include Cyndi Lynott, senior vp of marketing, who will lead BMG’s recorded frontline strategy for pop artists including New Kids on the Block and The Script; Sean Heydorn, senior vp at Rise Records, who will now lead all rock frontline efforts, including Rise’s roster and BMG rock acts Godsmack, Lenny Kravitz and Sum41; Shane Cosme, senior vp of international marketing for BMG U.S., who will be responsible for handling U.S. repertoire outside the United States; and Tim Reid, senior vp of repertoire & marketing, who will oversee R&B/Hip-Hop in the United States as well as handle RBC Records, home to Chief Keef and Run the Jewels. Reporting to Reid is Jecoure Lemothe, vp of A&R and marketing, who will also handle day-to-day operations for RBC Records. Lynott, Heydorn, Cosme and Lemothe are L.A.-based, while Reid has relocated from L.A. to Nashville.
*Bryan Columbus, vp of recorded music, Canada, reports directly to Loba; he returns to BMG following a stint at Concord Label Group. Before Concord, Columbus led Canadian market campaigns for Nashville’s Broken Bow Records Music Group through BMG’s partnership with Black Box Music.
Loba hints there will also be more changes coming, including additions to the frontline, global and U.S. teams.
Major League Baseball’s players’ union is firing back at claims that it discriminated against Bad Bunny’s sports agency, saying the company was penalized due to “egregious and systemic” rules violations, including offering prospective clients free VIP tickets to Bad Bunny concerts.
Rimas Sports sued the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) last month, claiming the union had used a “pre-determined investigation” to ban the Puerto Rican agency to protect existing agents from competition. The lawsuit is seeking an injunction that would overturn the league’s penalties and allow Rimas to continue to represent players.
But in a response filing this week, attorneys for the union said Rimas had incurred the punishment through its own “unethical conduct” that had broken MLBPA rules — namely, offering splashy and valuable gifts to prospective clients to win them over.
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“The regulations strictly forbid such inducements,” the union’s lawyers wrote in a motion on Wednesday (June 5). “Player agents must compete for clients based on the quality of their representation, not the quality of their gifts.”
The MLBPA’s investigation into Rimas had unearthed “egregious and systemic violations” of those rules, the union’s attorneys said, quoting from an arbitrator’s ruling that said Rimas’ core strategy had been “building a baseball agency by luring players with forbidden gifts.”
“Immunizing Rimas from the consequences of its own bad conduct will harm players and other player agents by encouraging player-player agent relationships borne out of perquisites not performance,” the union’s lawyers wrote. “What Rimas seeks is a get out of jail free card for itself. The public has no interest in such an outcome.”
Launched in 2021 by Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio) and his longtime manager, Noah Assad, Rimas Sports aimed to provide homegrown representation to Major League Baseball’s many players from Latin America.
But in April, the MLBPA handed down a raft of penalties against the agency, including decertifying one agent, barring Assad from seeking certification and prohibiting existing certified agents from joining the company. When Rimas challenged the penalties, an arbitrator rejected the appeal and upheld the union’s actions.
Last month, attorneys for Rimas escalated the dispute by filing a lawsuit in federal court that accused the MLBPA of imposing a “death penalty” on the new agency. They claimed the penalties had come from a “discriminatory” investigation that had been launched because Rimas had threatened established agencies with competition.
“The ‘good ole boy’ order of baseball sports agency … was being put at risk, as these Puerto Rican ‘outsiders’ were disrupting baseball sports agency order too much, too fast,” attorneys for Rimas wrote. “This was something that the MLBPA and Rimas Sports’ competitors would not allow.”
Calling the penalties “extraordinary and unprecedented,” Rimas sought a preliminary injunction putting them on hold while the case plays out. The agency claimed the penalties had caused immediate harm, including preventing the agency from completing its agreement to sign reigning National League MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. as a client.
In its initial filing of the lawsuit, Rimas did not specifically indicate what exactly MLBPA accused the group of doing wrong. But in Wednesday’s opposition, the union laid out the accusations in great detail.
According to the filing, certain prospective clients were offered free concert tickets, including VIP concert tickets to Bad Bunny concerts and suite access to a Phoenix Suns game. Another player was allegedly offered a $200,000 interest-free loan. “This kind of conduct became culture at Rimas,” the MLBPA wrote.
The agency was “so dismissive” of the rules around illegal gifts that it continued to violate them even after they were notified that they were under investigation, the union’s attorney wrote Wednesday.
In technical terms, the MLBPA has filed both an opposition to deny Rimas an injunction, as well as a motion to compel arbitration — meaning a judge will order that the dispute must be handled via private arbitrator, not in federal court. A hearing is set for later this month for the judge to weigh the key issue in the case.
The Canadian government has made a major announcement about the implementation of the Online Streaming Act, with implications for artists and music companies at home and abroad.
The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) has revealed that foreign streaming services with significant revenues will have to make base contributions to Canadian content. Streaming companies with no affiliation to Canadian broadcasters and over $25 million in annual contributions revenues will have to pay 5% of those revenues into specified funds.
Those contributions will be used to boost Canadian content in the music, news and film industries, generating an estimated $200 million in increased funding altogether.
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The decision comes after a consultation process that included public hearings last fall, as well as over 360 written submissions.
The government specified that these contributions will go towards “areas of immediate need,” prioritizing already existing funds in order to expedite the delivery process. Those funds include FACTOR and Musicaction, which industry groups like CIMA and the Canadian Live Music Association say are in need of increased funding.
The Beaches Awarded Group of the Year at Billboard Canada Women in Music Launch Announcement
Billboard Canada and iHeartRadio teamed up to present a big award to a major Canadian group this week.
The Beaches received the first-ever Billboard Canada Women in Music Award for Group of the Year on Wednesday (June 5), honoring the Toronto quartet’s breakout year. The band was on hand for the announcement of Billboard Canada‘s Women in Music celebration event, which is officially set for September 7, 2024.
The band was presented with the award by Billboard Canada CEO Amanda Dorenberg and CCO Elizabeth Crisante. At the event, more Canadian artists (including a few legends of the industry) will be recognized and honored for their artistry and blazing trails as women in the industry.
Receiving the award as part of a livestream performance on iHeartRadio’s YouTube, The Beaches played a stripped-back set of three songs from their hit 2023 album, Blame My Ex. The acoustic set saw drummer Eliza Enman McDaniel with just a shaker, leaving space for Jordan Miller’s powerful lead vocal and light harmonies by guitarists Leandra Earl and Kylie Miller.
After the performance, iHeartRadio’s Shannon Burns did a Q&A with the group, joking about playing pool with them and asking them audience-submitted questions. The band talked about their experiences as women in the music industry, providing some advice for up-and-coming female artists.
“Make sure you do it with your friends,” McDaniel said. The group spoke about how isolating it can be to be a woman in a still-male-dominated — though gradually changing — industry. It’s important to be surrounded by women you trust, they emphasized, whether in your band or on your team.
Watch the full performance and announcement here.
Lowell Wins the First Billboard Canada Non-Performing Songwriter Award
Lowell has won the first Billboard Canada Non-Performing Songwriter Award (presented by SOCAN), which honors a Canadian songwriter making a big impact behind the scenes.
The win was announced at Billboard Canada‘s Power Players event on Sunday (June 2) at the CN Tower. The award was presented to Lowell (Elizabeth Lowell Boland) by SOCAN CEO Jennifer Brown and vp of creative and member relations Cameron Kennedy.
“Songwriters have it really tough,” Lowell said while accepting the award. “We make no money, and then we very silently make other people really famous and then just cry about it at night because no one loves us,” she joked.
“So it’s really nice that you guys are giving me a little pat on the back — I’m going to take this on behalf of all of my amazing songwriter friends that have not gotten that pat on the back, yet.”
Lowell, who has also released music under the same name, was one of five finalists for the inaugural edition of the award — the first in Canada recognizing songwriters’ work for other artists. Other shortlisted writers included Tobias Jesso Jr., Jeremy Fedryk, Ali Willa Milner and Aaron Paris — an extremely strong initial shortlist featuring a crop of writers responsible for songs that garnered Grammy nominations, top chart placements and millions of streams.
Lowell has had a major year, including co-writing credits on “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “Bodyguard,” two of the biggest hits on one the year’s biggest albums, Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter. The award considered songs from 2023 before Cowboy Carter was released, but beyond Beyoncé, Lowell has shown a unique ability to help artists break through to a new level.
Lowell additionally co-wrote and co-produced Blame My Ex, the breakthrough album from Toronto band The Beaches, including the Lowell-penned hit “Blame Brett,” which held No. 1 at alternative radio for 17 weeks and is rising at U.S. and Canadian Top 40. She’s also a close collaborator of Lu Kala, the Congolese-Canadian artist who made her Hot 100 debut this past year, co-writing Kala’s emotional ballad “Nothing But Love.”
In her acceptance speech, Lowell highlighted the importance of supporting Canadian talent.
“Some people think I live in L.A. but I don’t, I live in Toronto,” she said, addressing the room full of powerful and influential members of the Canadian music industry. “I like to find talent here, I like to see who L.A. is not looking for and what the world needs, and that’s a lot of people that are here either in this room or working with people in this room. […] My goal is to largely not ignore the real talent which is in this f—ing city,” she continued to a round of cheers.