Business
Page: 119
Over the past decade, as U.S. recorded music revenue grew from $7 billion in 2014 to $17 billion in 2023, the combined market share of music sales and streaming controlled by the three major labels went from 64.9% in 2014 to 64.3% in 2023, Billboard estimates. That modest decline, which counts only music that the majors control rather than just distribute, came even as the companies bought market share with acquisitions of independent labels like 300 Entertainment, 12Tone and Alamo, plus buyouts of joint ventures. And it came about partly because about 5% of the global recorded music market — about $1.5 billion annually, according to a Billboard estimate — is now controlled by digital distribution services that mostly serve DIY and independent artists such as CD Baby, DistroKid and TuneCore, which I founded and ran until 2012. And this part of the market is projected to continue to grow.
This comes as consumers have access to more independent music than ever on the same online services, and even the same playlists, as major label releases. But one of the responses from the major music companies seems to be, if you can’t beat them, push to change the rules to take a portion of their royalties.
Trending on Billboard
Last year, the three major labels made separate deals with Spotify, as well as with Deezer, on new licensing terms for recordings, to which all other rightsholders on those platforms have to agree. The new agreements changed the policy on when a stream of a recording can generate a royalty, and in some cases the amount earned. In addition, this year, under the rules laid out by the Music Modernization Act (MMA), some portion of the “accrued but unpaid” mechanical “black box” royalties currently held by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) become eligible to be paid out to member publishers, some of which have executives on the MLC board, based on their market share on the platform and at the time the royalties were earned. Although both policies apply to the entire market, they will redistribute revenue disproportionately to large labels and publishers, especially the majors, at the expense of smaller companies and DIY and independent creators.
Deezer now applies a royalty multiplier to tracks by artists that have at least 1,000 streams per month from 500 unique listeners, a policy that generally benefits major label artists, who tend to be more popular. Under Spotify’s new deal terms, royalties that previously would have been paid out on recordings with fewer than 1,000 streams over the course of the prior 12 months are now essentially reallocated to recordings that streamed more than 1,000 times over that same time period. And since the majors control fewer recordings that stream less than 1,000 times compared to the vast number controlled by DIY creators and independent labels, those royalties will overall go disproportionately to them.
In 2023, there were 106 million recordings that received between one and 1,000 streams (others generated no streams at all), which together accounted for a total of 13.68 billion streams globally, according to Luminate. Since each Spotify stream is worth a global average of between $0.0038 and $0.0042, that suggests that, although it’s hard to measure the impact of individual services, about $33 million a year could flow from smaller artists to more popular ones that are disproportionately signed to major labels.
To understand what these new policies mean in practice, consider the indie band Head of Femur. Over the last two decades, the band released several albums that include a total of 58 tracks. Under Spotify’s new model, the service will only pay out royalties for the band’s recordings that streamed more than 1,000 times in the prior 12 months, no matter how much the recordings streamed in total. In other words, a band with 58 tracks that stream 999 times each, for a total of 57,942 streams, will make nothing — while a band with a single song that streams 1,000 times will get paid. The royalties that would have gone to those 57,942 streams will go to bigger acts — many of them on bigger labels.
The model for streaming mechanical royalties changed in a way that will benefit the same players. Before the October 2018 passage of the Music Modernization Act and the January 2021 creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Spotify and other streaming services didn’t get the mechanical licenses they needed, and as a result faced multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, with potentially ruinous statutory damages. In addition, services weren’t paying out all, or in some cases any, royalties for some of the songs they had licensed — to the point that the MLC reported that it received $397.7 million in adjusted unpaid “historical” mechanical royalties that had been earned but not paid out. The Music Modernization Act was supposed to address these issues by making it easier to license mechanical rights and accurately pay publishers and songwriters.
In order to do this, the Music Modernization Act made three significant changes to the relevant parts of U.S. copyright law. First, it created a “blanket” compulsory license for digital services for every song ever written, to protect the services from liability for copyright infringement. Second, it shielded the services from liability for infringement before the law took effect. Third, it mandated the creation of a database to be administered by a designated “mechanical licensing collective,” with the goal of accounting to and paying publishers and songwriters billions of dollars in mechanical royalties generated by trillions of streams — promptly, accurately and transparently. The collective was also charged with paying out the $397.7 million in “historical” mechanical royalties earned but not paid out before 2021.
By enacting the MMA, Congress made mechanical licensing easier and protected digital services from liability for infringement. Although the law calls for penalties if digital services do not pay the MLC, it includes no specific regulations about the MLC paying rightsholders or offering rightsholders any remedies if it fails to do so. (The U.S. Copyright Office oversees the MLC and every five years reviews whether it should continue administering the compulsory license.) In fact, the Music Modernization Act states that its regulation of the mechanical licensing collective “shall supersede and preempt any State law (including common law) concerning escheatment or abandoned property, or any analogous provision, that might otherwise apply.”
That means that any unpaid mechanical royalties are subject solely to the Music Modernization Act, which says that after a certain amount of time they become eligible to be distributed according to “relative market share” of copyright owners “as reflected in reports of usage.” Essentially, the money is divided by market share on a given platform during a given time, which means that it will disproportionately go to larger publishers. So far, the MLC has yet to distribute any money based on market share. But as of June 2024, the MLC is sitting on $634 million in “black box” royalties that it has taken in but not distributed, according to the organization; it also received $397.7 million in undistributed historical royalties, of which it is sitting on $285.9 million. Eventually, all of that money — $919.9 million — will be eligible to be distributed by market share on a given platform and time period.
Over the next decade, predictions suggest that consumers will continue to turn their attention to a wider selection of DIY and independent artists. Under these policies, however, some of the revenue generated by their work will be disproportionately paid to the major labels and publishers instead of to the artists and songwriters who earned them.
Jeff Price is the founder and CEO of Word Collections. He previously co-founded and was GM of spinART Records and founded and was CEO of TuneCore and Audiam.
SiriusXM is facing a class action lawsuit that claims the company has been earning billions in revenue by tacking a deceptive “royalty fee” onto consumers’ bills.
In a complaint filed last week in federal court, attorneys for four aggrieved subscribers claim that SiriusXM adds a “U.S. Music Royalty Fee” – allegedly 21.4 percent of the actual advertised price – onto the normal price that users pay for satellite radio plans.
“This action challenges a deceptive pricing scheme whereby SiriusXM falsely advertises its music plans at lower prices than it actually charges,” attorneys for the users write. “SiriusXM intentionally does not disclose the Fee to its subscribers. SiriusXM even goes so far as to not mention the words ‘U.S. Music Royalty Fee’ in any of its advertising, including in the fine print.”
The lawsuit claims the royalty fee is an “invented” charge that SiriusXM has “deceptively” labeled to falsely suggest that it’s mandated by the government to pay for music rights. In reality, the lawsuit says, it’s a really just a “disguised double-charge for the music plan itself” that no other competing music services imposes on their users.
Trending on Billboard
“Reasonable consumers would expect that the advertised price for SiriusXM’s music plans would include the fundamental costs of obtaining the permissions necessary to provide the music content that SiriusXM has promised is included in those plans,” lawyers for the subscribers say.
According to the lawsuit, SiriusXM has reaped huge benefits from the “unlawful advertising scheme” since it was implemented in 2009, allegedly collecting $1.36 billion in such royalty fees in 2023 alone. In just in the states of Washington and Florida — the locations where the plaintiffs live — the lawsuit claims Sirius has collected $932 million in royalty fees since the charge was created.
And, according to the complaint, SiriusXM allegedly tries its best to ensure that consumers never find out: “SiriusXM’s sign-up process, automatic renewal process, and policy of not sending monthly or ongoing billing notices or invoices are deliberately designed to prevent subscribers from learning of the U.S. Music Royalty Fee.”
Those allegations echo claims made by New York’s attorney general, who sued SiriusXM in December over claims that the company made it “extremely difficult” for listeners to cancel their subscriptions. In a statement at the time, SiriusXM called those claims “baseless allegations” that “grossly mischaracterize” its customer service practices.
The new lawsuit was filed in the form of a proposed class action, aimed at eventually representing “millions of individuals” who have allegedly paid the royalty fee after seeing a lower price advertised.
“To be clear, plaintiffs are not seeking to regulate the existence or amount of the U.S. Music Royalty Fee,” lawyers for the subscribers wrote. “Rather, plaintiffs want SiriusXM to include the [fee] in the music plan prices it advertises to the general public.”
A representative for SiriusXM did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Read the entire lawsuit here:
Downtown Music launched Curve Royalty Services on Thursday for labels, publishers, and distributors that are hoping to find a third party to handle the laborious work of accounting on their behalf. Downtown had previously acquired the company Curve Royalty Systems in 2023.
“It has always been our goal to make royalties better and easier,” Richard Leach, managing director at Curve, said in a statement. “Now our royalty services team can take on those parts of the process [that] clients would like to outsource.”
Curve was launched in 2019. “We ingest data from the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, any physical distributors, 1,000+ different sources,” co-founder Tom Allen explained in 2022. “We then allow labels and publishers to input the contract details, and we output the artist statements.”
Trending on Billboard
“In its simplest form,” he added, “it is just a bit of math.”
But it can be a lot of math in the streaming era. Back in 2012, when streaming services began acquiring more users, “statements that we were used to seeing, maybe we would hit hundreds of thousands of lines on a statement, and you could still manage that on Excel,” Leach added in the same interview. “Suddenly we were getting millions and millions of lines of data every month. Anyone who’s familiar with Excel knows it collapses at a million lines.”
In this new landscape, some labels and distributors were “really struggling,” Leach continued. “And that was really the genesis for Curve. We struggled to find the software to deal with the scale. Suddenly processes were taking days instead of hours. We couldn’t find a solution” — until “Tom thought he’d have a crack at building it.”
Curve expanded into the U.S. in 2021. The following year, the company said it processed close to $1 billion in revenue. It currently serves around 1,500 clients, including notable independent labels like Domino, Epitaph, and Armada.
Downtown acquired Curve in January 2023. “We have been admirers of the technology and service quality that Tom and Richard have been building,” Downtown CEO Andrew Bergman said at the time.
Country star Randy Travis had members of Congress gushing and brought star power to an otherwise businesslike hearing titled “Radio, Music, and Copyrights: 100 Years of Inequity for Recording Artists,” held Wednesday (June 26) by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.
“This is a great honor,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee, adding that the other three witnesses “will have to live in his shadow.”
Travis, who has had difficulty speaking since suffering a stroke in 2013, was represented at the hearing by his wife, Mary Travis. His circumstances made him a fitting witness and supporter of the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA), a bill that would create a performance right for sound recordings at terrestrial radio. Unable to sing, Travis has given up touring and relies on royalties for his long-term health care. A country artist who performed others’ compositions would benefit from royalties from continued airplay on terrestrial radio.
Trending on Billboard
“This piece of legislation is essential to correct 100 year old issue regarding artists and non payment for their work performed on the most prominent music platform in America — one which they helped to build and sustain,” said Mary Travis.
AMFA would establish fair market value for radio performance royalties similarly to how rates are set for streaming platforms. It also compels foreign radio stations to pay U.S.-based artists for the performance of their songs. Outside of the U.S., radio stations commonly avoid paying performance royalties to American artists and record labels despite the existence of a similar performance right in those countries.
The bill would task the Copyright Royalty Board, the three-judge body that determines streaming, satellite radio and mechanical royalties rates, with setting the royalty rates for the new license. Under AMFA, stations that earn less than $1.5 million in annual revenue (and whose parent companies make less than $10 million in annual revenue) to pay $500 annually. Small, non-commercial stations with annual revenue less than $100,000 would pay as little as $10 per year.
“I think you’ve gotten the balance exactly right,” Mike Huppe, president and CEO of SoundExchange, told members of the committee. While small broadcasters would pay modest fees under AMFA, the large national corporations that dominate the broadcasting industry would pay more. Huppe argued they could easily afford it. “This is a $15 billion business in the US,” he said. “Eighty-eight percent of all Americans listen to radio. The biggest broadcast groups are becoming bigger and more powerful.”
Radio broadcasters don’t see it that way, though. Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, warned the committee that any additional royalties would be too much. “AMFA would impose a new royalty on local radio that is financially untenable for broadcasters of all sizes,” he said. Eddie Harrell Jr, regional vp and general manager of Radio One, agreed. “Make no mistake that a new performance royalty imposed on local stations would create harm for local stations, listeners and the recording industry itself,” said Harrell. Local broadcasters, he said, “are operating on extremely tight margins right now.”
The most dire warnings from LeGeyt and Harrell often centered around AMFA’s threat to radio stations’ ability to serve their communities. Because stations’ revenue are not growing, Harrell explained, any additional expense threatens services stations provide to their communities — he cited a program that collects donated items for needy families — and undermine their ability to broadcast during natural disasters. “Those are the things that are lost in what we do as opposed to just playing the music and so our ability to lead community efforts like that would be impacted by any new expense that we’d have to endure.”
While Huppe acknowledged the value radio stations provide to their communities, he wondered why musicians shouldn’t be paid when stations pay to syndicate talk radio shows and license sporting events. “Why should Randy Travis have to be the one to bear the load of this community effort and all the charitable work?,” Huppe asked.
Artificial intelligence’s threat to the music business was interspersed into the conversation about performance rights and royalties. Travis proved an exceptional witness on this topic, too, having recently released his first new track since his stroke in 2013, “Where That Came From,” with the help of generative AI software to recreate his voice. (Issa paused the hearing for a minute to play the song over the loudspeakers by pressing his smartphone next to his microphone.) “His piece of AI work was humanistic and artistic,” said Mary Travis. “And that’s the difference [between] the good and the bad AI.”
When asked by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) if users of generative AI software should be able to create unauthorized copies of a singer’s voice, Mary Travis was succinct: “Absolutely not,” she said flatly. Later, she compared unauthorized use of an artist’s voice to identity theft. “There needs to be laws that are in place to keep that from happening,” she said, “which means consent and compensation and attribution and provenance.”
But the hearing mostly focused on the economics of the radio business and the two sides’ inability to come to agreement. Huppe said the NAB’s strategy “is to run out the clock” and wait for another bill to be introduced in the next Congressional term. LeGeyt took “significant issue” with Huppe’s characterization and blamed the recording industry’s representatives for not supporting the conversations. “NAB stands willing to be in a conference room,” he said.
Rep. Issa, however, doubted LeGeyt’s willingness to make a deal with record labels. Noting that the NAB has been negotiating on Radio One’s behalf, Rep. Issa asked Harrell if his stations “would be willing to pay something to get this problem to go away?” “Mr. Chairman, I would not say that,” Harrell replied.
Minutes later, Issa took an admonishing tone with LeGeyt. The NAB did not offer “one penny” in higher royalties in their negotiations, Issa claimed, and if artists started to encourage people to listen only to radio station’s streaming offering, the cost to stations would be “far more than a modest concession,” said Issa.
Grammy winner Brandon Lake, known for his Billboard Hot Christian Songs chart-topping hits including “Gratitude” and “Praise You Anywhere,” has signed with UTA for booking representation. Lake recently wrapped a sold-out, 20-city tour crisscrossing the United States and was both a co-host and a winner at the annual K-LOVE Fan Awards in Nashville. “I am […]
Following the unexpected shuttering of the MTV News website earlier this week, Paramount has now largely cleaned house on the sites for several more of its cable channels, in a potential cost-cutting move.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the sites for Comedy Central, CMT, Yellowstone airer Paramount Network and TV Land were instead directing users to the media conglomerate’s streaming platform Paramount+. On Monday, MTVnews.com was taken down, purging some 20 years of stories from the web.
A pop-up window on the Comedy Central site reads, “While episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website, you can watch Comedy Central through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows.” Similar language shows up on the CMT, Paramount Network and TV Land sites, as well as that of MTV (which was separate from MTVnews.com).
Trending on Billboard
aramount said in a statement, “As part of broader website changes across Paramount, we have introduced more streamlined versions of our sites, driving fans to Paramount+ to watch their favorite shows.”
As noted by LateNighter, the cleaning out of the Comedy Central site in particular wipes out a huge trove of archival material from The Daily Show and other late night series, along with clips from South Park, Key & Peele and Workaholics, among many others. Some of that material is available on YouTube, but it’s not as easily searchable or accessible as it was on the network page. (The oldest video on the Daily Show YouTube channel, for instance, is from 2016, while the show’s history stretches back 20 years before then.)
On Paramount+, only the two most recent seasons of The Daily Show are available. The platform has several South Park specials and the 1999 feature film Bigger, Longer and Uncut, but the show’s primary streaming home is on Max. Paramount+ does have the full runs of Key & Peele and Workaholics.
As of publication time, sites for Paramount’s BET, Nickelodeon and VH1 were still active, while MTV.com offered some episodes and clips.
The website changes come on the heels of Paramount’s co-CEOs — George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins — telling employees at a town hall meeting Tuesday that they were embarking on a cost-cutting mission as profits have dropped for the company. Paramount is looking for $500 million in reduced costs, which will mean layoffs for some employees. Cheeks also said at the town hall that “We’re looking at selling certain Paramount-owned assets — in fact, we’ve already hired bankers to assist us in this process — and we’ll use the proceeds to help pay down debt and strengthen our balance sheet.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Following its acquisition of Exile Music last November, HYBE is expanding its global entertainment empire in Latin America, launching new offices in Mexico City, Miami and Los Angeles and introducing new properties to its Latin-focused operation.
The move includes the introduction of a new label, Docemil Music, and the rebranding of Exile Music as Zarpazo. Another Exile division, Exile podcasts, will be rebranded as Ajá Podcasts.
“Latin music is one of the fastest-growing genres in the global market,” says Jonghyun “JH” Kah, CEO of HYBE Latin America. “Additionally, there are very nimble and smart independent local music companies that aim to change the status quo by developing new acts and really sticking with them.”
Trending on Billboard
By the same token, adds Kah, the Latin market is unique in the longevity enjoyed by its artists, and older songs have a long shelf life. “We aim to rediscover the soul of Latin sound and make it a global phenomenon by focusing on talent that resonates with different generations and has a defining impact on the music world, not just within the Latin sphere,” he says.
The company’s executive team includes Jeremy Norkin, who co-founded Exile Music and is now serving as HYBE Latin America’s COO. Elsewhere, Docemil will be headquartered in Mexico City and led by GM Fernando Grediaga, who brings over 23 years of industry experience, including stints at EMI Music and Universal Music, among others. Zarpazo, formerly Exile Music, is based in Miami and will be led by Grediaga and Santiago Duque, who formerly worked at Rimas Entertainment and Sony Music. Zarpazo’s roster includes emerging artists Magna and Chicocurlyhead.
HYBE Latin America also includes a boutique touring agency led by Norkin with a diverse roster that includes Quevedo, Cypress Hill, Nach, KHEA and Marc Seguí.
In expanding in Latin America, HYBE is looking to tap into a burgeoning market with no genre borders, says Kah.
“We see a lot of diversity in Latin music, and we are not bound to any particular genre. As K-pop can encompass many different genres of music, I believe Latin music can be more diverse in many ways,” he says. “As music transcends boundaries, our targets cannot be confined to geographical borders. Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world, which is why we are headquartered in CDMX. Nonetheless, the U.S. Hispanic market is just as big or perhaps even bigger than Mexico. We’re also keeping in mind that Latin artists come from all over the world, including the Americas and Europe.”
HYBE, of course, is known for developing mega K-pop stars like BTS via a sophisticated artist identification and development infrastructure. “HYBE always seeks out the best talent, allows them to discover their authentic voice, and connects them with their fans. K-pop’s training system is competitive since we’re trying our best to train well-rounded professional artists,” says Kah. “In our new endeavors, we will scout for talent and provide them with the tools they need to improve. Our goal is to ensure that our artists discover their own unique voices and establish stronger relationships with their fans than ever before.”
That said, Kah adds that HYBE Latin America “won’t just be replicating our practices from Korea, or from the U.S.” Rather, he says, “our system will try to seek the best of both worlds. The Korean approach is highly exclusive, and the initial costs are extremely high. In Latin America, we want to revamp our model, we want to plant seeds and see how they grow. It took K-pop more than a decade to get to where it is. I hope that in 10 years we can confidently say we made the same unique success here.”
Mathew Rosengart, a powerhouse litigator whose resume includes clerking for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter and a stint as a Department of Justice trial attorney, has a stable of high-profile Hollywood clients like Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Sean Penn and Casey Affleck. But it’s his work with Britney Spears in successfully freeing the pop superstar from a controversial, restrictive and highly scrutinized 13-year conservatorship that catapulted the Greenberg Traurig partner into something of a household name and globally recognized legal eagle.
In a swift four months, from July to November 2021, Rosengart dove headfirst into the probate court case after being handpicked by the singer herself with one goal in mind — to free Spears from the arrangement that limited her rights and left all life decisions in the hands of a team led by her father Jamie Spears. Rosengart accomplished that on Nov. 12, 2021, when L.A. County Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny granted a petition to terminate the conservatorship. Over the past three years, Rosengart remained on the case to settle loose ends while resolving an ongoing legal dispute with the singer’s father, Jamie Spears, over his attorney’s fees. The latter matter was resolved two months ago, bringing a quieter end to the entire ordeal but delivering an exclamation point nonetheless.
Trending on Billboard
There’s no active litigation at this time, Rosengart has said. “As she desired, her freedom now includes that she will no longer need to attend or be involved with court or entangled with legal proceedings in this matter,” he explained in a statement issued on April 26.
As such, Rosengart is closing the chapter as Spears’ litigator of record as he shifts focus toward to other clients. “It has been an honor to serve as Britney’s litigator, to work with her to achieve her goals in obtaining the court-ordered suspension of her former conservator, followed by restoring her fundamental rights and civil liberties, while continuing to protect her and more recently to extricate her from all outstanding litigation and the byzantine probate court proceedings. As I’ve always said, the credit goes to Britney,” Rosengart says in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
Rosengart’s work with Spears over these past three years extended beyond the conservatorship as he emerged wearing many hats as a trusted counsel and point of contact in a number of high-profile negotiations and situations. It is understood, however, that his role in her life was always as a litigator and such an arrangement would always have an end date.
Rosengart played a key role in shepherding a number of deals and developments in Spears’ life. Those included a massive Simon & Schuster book deal for her best-selling memoir The Woman in Me, a prenuptial agreement and subsequent divorce with ex-husband Sam Asghari, a restraining order against ex-husband Jason Alexander (who attempted to crash her Asghari wedding) and more. In May, following an incident at Chateau Marmont that reportedly left her with an ankle injury, Spears credited Rosengart with helping her through the aftermath. “This man is wonderful!!! He’s like a father to me,” she posted. “I adore you and admire you mister Matthew!!!”
For his work, Spears has repeatedly and profusely praised Rosengart through multiple Instagram posts (her primary source of public commentary) and in The Woman in Me. Rosengart has also been hailed as a hero by the pop star’s legions of fans, a group that doggedly propelled the #FreeBritney movement. Though the attention, compliments and numerous accolades and awards may have been a surprise for Rosengart, it wasn’t completely new. Rosengart once triumphed on behalf of Penn in a defamation case against Lee Daniels, and the Oscar-winning actor has since praised his lawyer as a “tough-as-nails street fighter with a big brain and bigger principles.”
He previously told THR that he leaned on those principles when taking the case. “I’ve always detested bullying, even growing up,” he told THR. “Bullying a woman is even more unacceptable and abhorrent. It was troubling to me both personally and professionally, and I felt I could help stop it, as a lawyer and otherwise. That’s a pledge I made, and it was really rewarding to be able to help.”
Spears’ life started to change in June 2021, when, for the first time, the singer addressed the court herself, by phone, during a conservatorship hearing. Spears spent more than 20 minutes unloading to Judge Brenda Penny in a scorching declaration of life under the “abusive” restrictions she’d been under since 2008. “It is my wish and my dream for all of this to end,” said Spears who requested during prepared remarks that she be able to hire an attorney of her choosing rather than continue with conservatorship-approved counsel Samuel Ingham.
Within days, on July 10, 2021, Rosengart made his way to Spears’ residence where, in a pool house, they met to discuss a plan that would see the powerhouse litigator and former Department of Justice trial attorney to take the case. The court approved his appointment in July, and in a swift four months Spears’ wish was granted. On Nov. 12, 2021, Judge Penny granted a petition to terminate the 13-year arrangement in a landmark probate court decision, delivering a seismic shift for Spears that freed her from the conservatorship and opened her life in a way that left her future open ended.
Last October, California Gov. Mathew Rosengart signed Senate Bill 43 that updated the state’s conservatorship laws for the first time in half a century. The bill was designed to give individuals protected rights while also increasing transparency on the process.
When the conservatorship was terminated that day in November, Rosengart fielded a question from reporters outside the court house in Downtown Los Angeles. “What’s next for Britney?” asked a journalist, to which Rosengart replied, “What’s next for Britney — and this is the first time this could be said for about a decade — is up to one person: Britney.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
SXSW will no longer engage in partnerships with the U.S. Army or weapons manufacturers, the event announced Wednesday (June 26). “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model,” reads a statement posted to the SXSW website. “As a result, the U.S. Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of […]
Country Thunder Music Festivals and Premier Global Production president Troy Vollhoffer had a decadelong career as a hockey player beginning in the early 1980s — including multiple years in the Western Hockey League and a stint with the Baltimore Skipjacks, minor-league affiliate of the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins. But off the ice, he was already building his status in live music production.
Vollhoffer tells Billboard his money from playing hockey “allowed me to have the capital to invest into theatrical equipment, a lighting system,” which he used to launch Premier Global Production in 1986. For nearly four decades, the company has rigged touring lights and outdoor staging for artists including Metallica, Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen, Tim McGraw and Florence + the Machine, as well as for events including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo Music Festival and Austin City Limits.
Though he was leading a production company, Vollhoffer says, “I never thought the festival business would be an interest of mine.” Still, his experience with live events meant he was able to observe numerous concerts and festivals over the years. “We did a lot of festivals, and we saw some great ones and we saw some not-so-great ones,” he says.
Trending on Billboard
Years before he transitioned into his current role leading the Country Thunder brand of festivals and the production company, he was already familiar with the territory: Vollhoffer’s father served as a production manager for the Big Valley Jamboree in Saskatchewan, Canada, and as a teenager, Vollhoffer helped as a stagehand.
The festival would change names and shift from country to rock acts and back again, but in 2005, Vollhoffer acquired the festival (at the time called the Craven Country Jamboree). In 2017, the event was folded into the Country Thunder brand as Country Thunder Saskatchewan, one of the six multiday Country Thunder Festivals Vollhoffer oversees in the United States and Canada.
Vollhoffer acquired the Country Thunder brand in 2009 from Larry Barr, for the Arizona and Wisconsin festivals. Country Thunder Alberta (another Canadian event) was added to the fold in 2016, followed by Country Thunder Saskatchewan in 2017, Country Thunder Florida in 2019 and Country Thunder Bristol (in Tennessee) in 2021. Since acquiring Country Thunder Wisconsin and Country Thunder Arizona, attendance has surged from averaging 12,500 patrons per day to up to 30,000 per day.
This year, Luke Combs is headlining Country Thunder Festivals in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Florida. Eric Church and Lainey Wilson were named as headliners this year for the Arizona and Wisconsin events. Country Thunder Bristol, set for this weekend (June 28-29), will feature Cody Johnson, HARDY, Bailey Zimmerman and Trace Adkins.
These names extend the Country Thunder brand’s storied history of headliners — which already includes Keith Urban, George Strait, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire and the late Toby Keith — who have made for some memorable moments, such as when Strait played the Craven Country Jamboree in 2009 and the time Keith got behind the bar and served up drinks after his set in 2008.
“The music business is going to miss Toby Keith,” Vollhoffer says. “He was such a big personality. After his show, he just went behind the bar. He was like, ‘I got this,’ started bartending, and he was back there rocking it up until three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning.”
Far from a cut-and-paste mentality, Vollhoffer says the brand strives to make each festival as unique as the artists who play them, from Country Thunder Arizona’s site embedded in the mountains to the more coastal feel of Country Thunder Florida. Given the far-flung locations of each festival across the United States and in Canada, Vollhoffer and his team take care to book artists that resonate in each market.
“There are bands you’d play in Phoenix that you wouldn’t play in Wisconsin and people who aren’t even known in Canada that do great business in Arizona,” Vollhoffer says. “The thing about Canada is that records break later there. Something could be super hot in America, but maybe not [in Canada] yet. But when you’re booking a show a year in advance, you’re rolling the dice at times.”
One of those dice rolls that proved fortuitous was booking Wallen just prior to his skyrocketing success. In 2019, Vollhoffer met with Wallen’s team to discuss booking him for multiple Country Thunder festivals in 2020.
“I had dinner with his management. He was a $25,000 act, and that’s what we paid him that year. I agreed to do the deal and I was to take a flier on him for Saturdays [at multiple festivals] — and it didn’t end up working out [due to the coronavirus pandemic, which caused festivals to be canceled in 2020]. We pretty much sold out right across the board when it hit, but that doesn’t happen very often,” Vollhoffer adds.
By the time Wallen headlined three Country Thunder festivals in 2022 — Arizona in April, Wisconsin in July and Florida in October — his 2021 breakout set, Dangerous: The Double Album, had become the No. 1 title on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart. The same month that Wallen headlined Country Thunder Florida (October 2022), he also played his first headlining stadium show in Arlington, Texas.
Another risk that paid off was booking Zimmerman in July 2022, just as he was earning his initial hits with “Fall in Love” and “Rock and a Hard Place.”
“When we booked him for [Country Thunder] Wisconsin, I think we were maybe the second show he’d ever done professionally,” Vollhoffer recalls. “He was on around one in the afternoon. We had an influx of audience, which was unusual for [1 p.m.]. There were a ton of people, and it was fantastic.”
For each event, between 500 and 800 staffers are hired to work security, parking, camping, hosting, operational site crews and entrance gates. Vollhoffer has seen the increasing costs associated with putting on a festival, from talent booking costs to expenses for staffing, hotels and transportation.
“I’m pretty fortunate to be able to compile great lineups, and that’s from relationships — but it’s getting a little bit harder now,” he says, adding that the exchange rate hits hard with the Canadian festivals.
Since the October 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, where 58 people were killed and over 850 people were injured, Vollhoffer has escalated security at his festivals. “Our security budget has been increased by twice what it was previously, and our police presence in each market is very high,” he explains. “We’ve had [police] dogs, we’ve had towers set up so police have a bird’s-eye view all over the site. We’ve done drones, all sorts of things. It’s all about keeping fans safe.”
As with most festival owners, Vollhoffer is aware of the impact the rising overall costs of putting on the series can have on ticket prices. The general-admission ticket price for the six Country Thunder festivals averages less than $300.
“Unfortunately, you have to raise your ticket price,” he says. “I don’t know if there is a correction coming or not, but you can no longer charge the consumer more than what the market will bear. There was a lot of money in the marketplace. Now that’s changed. We’re having a great year, but we take one year at a time. I don’t believe the adage is necessarily correct where in times of economic downturn, the show business will always flourish. People have a decision between buying milk and buying a concert ticket. I think they’re buying milk right now.”
The Country Thunder festivals have also earned the respect of Vollhoffer’s peers, with Country Thunder Arizona, Wisconsin and Bristol each earning the Academy of Country Music’s festival of the year honors. Vollhoffer was also honored with the ACM Awards’ Lifting Lives Award and received the Don Romeo talent buyer of the year accolade.
Vollhoffer says the idea of expanding the festivals beyond North America “is not off the table,” though he says, “We’ve not entertained it. We wanted to become a household name in America first, but Europe’s different … a lot of different red tape to jump through, a lot of different regulations, and it has a very mature festival market, with the rock festivals.”
As for artists Vollhoffer would love to see headline Country Thunder, he says, “We’ve talked about having Post Malone — he’d be a great addition.” He also notes that he’s seeing several newcomers who seem poised for future headliner status. “Riley Green’s coming in hot; I think he’s going to be great. And Tucker Wetmore is on fire.”
Vollhoffer adds, “We have so many great artists this year. We are fortunate to have Luke Combs and Eric Church headlining. That’s always great business. It’s going to be a great year.”