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It’s an overcast Saturday afternoon in Miami, and Axel Hedfors seems in his natural habitat while eating sushi on the patio restaurant of a luxe beachside hotel. Hours from now, the producer — known to most as Axwell — will play the main stage at Ultra Music Festival, a show he’s been prepping for in his hotel room since arriving in Florida.
This set will contain classics from Axwell’s solo catalog, along with his work with Swedish House Mafia and the catalog of his namesake label, Axtone. It will also be the first time he’s played Ultra as a solo artist and his first Ultra set since selling the Axtone catalog to Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment in January.
This sale included approximately 200 songs spanning the last 20 years, including hits by Supermode, Steve Angello, Laidback Luke, Don Diablo, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, CamelPhat, Kölsch and big room-classics like Ivan Gough & Feenixpawl’s “In My Mind” and Axwell’s era-defining remix of this same song. Pophouse, which also acquired Swedish House Mafia’s master recordings and publishing catalog in 2022, has acquired both Axtone’s back catalog and the label itself, with Axwell staying on permanently as its founding partner and creative advisor.
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While Axwell and his team decline to disclose the sale price, the congratulatory handshakes he gets from acquaintances at the restaurant indicate the deal was a good one.
Axwell says the cash infusion from Pophouse has enabled him and his team to operate with “more muscle.” He cites the Axtone & Friends pool party that happened a few nights prior down the street in South Beach as something Pophouse helped pay for, allowing for a splashier event than they might have otherwise been able to afford.
“I know before that we would have been a bit more on a budget,” he says, “and now we were less on a budget, which is nice. There’s opportunity [with Pophouse]. If we have ideas and want to do something differently, we can with their help.”
The sale also made sense given Axwell’s longstanding relationship with Per Sundin, the CEO of Pophouse and former president of Universal Music Nordics. “It’s not some anonymous fund,” Axwell says. “This is somebody we know, and that made me feel like this was worth exploring. Per appreciates music, so he’s not just going to destroy it. He’s going to be respectful about it.”
The sale happened at a good time for Axwell, who acknowledges that he and the team were “kind of maybe stuck in the old routine” of signing records. Given that generating hits has become harder for labels of all genres in the streaming and TikTok eras, Axtone had, like so many other labels, become more focused on volume than Axwell might have liked.
“It’s a small company on a budget trying to make every release recoup and work out financially,” he says. “Then we picked up the pace a little bit, and obviously not all records get noticed in today’s climate. A lot of records don’t do anything, because it’s so much harder these days to get them noticed. Then a lot of records become a project you just do for love, rather than earning. You have one record that pays for 20 other records.”
This strategy had evolved significantly since Axwell launched Axtone in 2005 as a way to untether himself from other peoples’ timelines. “I was tired of dealing with other labels,” he says. “Back then you had to send the CD, and they were like, ‘Maybe we can release it in three months.’ I was fed up with not releasing ourselves, so starting the label was an amazing move.”
This move proved especially prescient as Axtone clocked hits that distinguished Axwell’s taste as a curator and skills as a solo artist as he rose in tandem with the Swedish House Mafia rocket. He says many classics from the Axtone catalog, like Supermode’s “Tell Me Why” (which samples Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy”), still generate roughly 100,000 streams a day, partially because they’re featured on big Spotify and Apple Music playlists — placement that almost assures they’ll never fall below a certain daily stream rate.
This, no doubt, made the Axtone catalog especially attractive to Pophouse, a company focused on using acquired music in new IP and brand development. The company’s success stories include the long-running ABBA Voyage show in London, which is set to the music of the famous Swedish disco pop quartet, who appear during the performance in hologram form. ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus is also a co-founder of Pophouse, which announced in March that it raised a total of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to invest in catalog acquisitions and create entertainment experiences around those music rights.
“Obviously, I wouldn’t mind them doing an ABBA kind of thing with dance music,” says Axwell. “A show [that features] not only my music would be great, because obviously Pophouse also has Avicii’s music, Swedish House Mafia’s music. It could be something interesting.” (Pophouse acquired a 75% stake in Avicii’s recordings and publishing catalog in 2022.)
Axwell is consulting with Pophouse on any projects Axtone music might be involved in, with the business partners currently planning a box set to commemorate the label’s 20th anniversary this year. The package feels particularly well-timed given that, as Axwell says, “what we’re noticing is that a lot of the old catalog means a lot to the new generation.”
“When you put on ‘Calling’ or ‘Reload’ or my ‘In My Mind’ remix, they just go,” he says, referencing EDM era hits he was involved with and adjacent to. “Some old records don’t continue to work; they kind of fade out. But these still pack a punch. It’s amazing that we managed to do something that lasts.”
This point is proven extremely true a few hours later, when thousands of people stand in front of a fire-spitting Ultra main stage and sing along to classics including Axwell’s edit of Swedish House Mafia’s 2011 hit “Save The World,” the 2017 Axwell / Ingrosso smash “More than You Know” and inevitably and blissfully, the trio’s all time classic “Don’t You Worry Child,” which he follows with their 2022 hit “When Heaven Takes You Home” and 2010’s “One (Your Name).” “That was fun,” he tells the audience while standing on the decks at the end of the set, “and you are beautiful.”
This is Axwell’s first time playing the festival’s biggest stage as a solo act, though he has a long history at this site through his work with Swedish House Mafia. The group’s Ultra mythology includes ending their massive farewell tour here in 2013, then reuniting at the festival five years later. When asked if he feels any kind of way about playing Ultra Miami on his own, Axwell says he feels “like Seb and Steve are always with me, because of the songs.”
Beyond this psychospiritual connection, Axwell spent time in the studio with Sebastian Ingrosso and Steve Angello fairly recently as the trio continues hashing out new Swedish House Mafia music. Last November, Angello told Billboard that the trio scrapped the second album they’d been working on as a follow-up to their 2022 LP Paradise Again.
Axwell confirms that while he’s “super proud” of Paradise Again — the first Swedish House Mafia album after an earlier run of monster singles — the guys aren’t currently working on an LP “because that’s a heavy process. I think it was something we wanted to do to have that in our lives. But now I think we want to go back to the spontaneousness of just doing one song and getting it out [when we want to], not in 12 months when the album is ready.” (He notes that Paradise Again was not included in Pophouse’s acquisition of the Swedish House Mafia masters, given that the 2022 deal was retroactive.) He also says that the trio will eventually “probably come back” to play Ultra Miami again, as the urge to do so “tickles after a while, you know?”
Axwell is also currently tinkering with his own forthcoming solo work. Famously meticulous — he’s been known to spend months on a single high hat sound and calls himself “the slowest person on earth” when it comes to making music — he says a lot of what he’s working on is roughly 80% finished. The final 20% of each song will take some time, he says, although he’s not sure how long. (One new song samples SNAP’s “The Power,” although he’s thus far had a difficult time clearing one of the samples used in the 1990 club anthem. He assures, however, that “I’m not giving up.”) When his music is finally complete, he foresees releasing it as a series of singles.
In the meantime, Axwell’s life will remain, as he tells it, “a s—storm” of logistics that involve his own touring, flying around Europe with his wife for their kids’ competitive car races (one son is 11 and races go carts, while his 16-year-old competes in F4), and prepping for Tomorrowland 2025 dates with Swedish House Mafia and as a solo act. All in, life will continue on the same dance world megastar trajectory as it did before the Axtone sale, but now with a bit more financial padding and space to focus.
“The good thing for me is that I still make music,” he says, “so even though we sold the label, it’s not like this is a goodbye to my whole life.”
Nicole George-Middleton has been promoted to executive vice president and head of creative membership at ASCAP, the organization announced Wednesday (April 23). In her elevated role, George-Middleton will oversee songwriter, lyricist, and composer relations, reporting directly to ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews and joining the organization’s senior leadership team. She will also continue to serve as […]
Eminem’s publisher is dropping a lawsuit that claimed a Detroit-area Ford dealership stole “Lose Yourself” for TikTok videos that warned viewers they “only get one shot” to buy a special edition truck.
Less than three months after Eight Mile Style sued LaFontaine Ford St. Clair for copyright infringement over the social media ads, the music company told a judge Tuesday (April 22) that it would voluntarily dismiss the case permanently.
Court documents did not offer any explanation for the move, giving no indication whether a settlement had been reached or if the case was simply being dropped. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
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Eight Mile, which owns the copyrights to “Lose Yourself” and other Eminem songs, filed the case in January, accusing LaFontaine Ford — which owns several dealerships near Eminem’s hometown — of blasting the song in the social media videos even though “at no time” did it get a license to do so.
“This is an action for willful copyright infringement … against LaFontaine for its unauthorized use of the composition in online advertisements for one or more car dealerships in blatant disregard of the exclusive rights vested in Eight Mile,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit claimed the videos, which allegedly appeared on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in September and October, used “Lose Yourself” to boost a special Detroit Lions-themed Ford truck, telling viewers: “With only 800 produced, you only get one shot to own a Special Edition Detroit Lions 2024 PowerBoost Hybrid F-150.”
Eminem doesn’t own Eight Mile Style and was not involved in the lawsuit.
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to easily add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate “synch” license, just like any conventional advertisement on TV.
That crucial distinction has led to numerous lawsuits in recent years. The restaurant chain Chili’s has been sued twice for using copyrighted songs in social videos, once by the Beastie Boys over “Sabotage” and again by Universal Music Group for allegedly using more than 60 songs from Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and many others. The hotel chain Marriott and more than a dozen NBA teams have also recently faced copyright lawsuits over the same thing.
Most people might not open their streaming platform of choice and play a track of wave sounds or bird calls. But on the cross-DSP page that lists “Nature” as an official artist, listeners will hear many of Mother Earth’s greatest hits, rarities and B-sides woven into songs from a growing group of musicians making nature-infused music for a good and urgent cause.
Launched in April 2024, this project, called Sounds Right, raises money for conservation efforts by generating royalties from noises credited to “nature.” On Tuesday (April 22), in honor of Earth Day, the multi-genre playlist is adding music from 36 new artists, all of whom have created original songs incorporating elements like the crashing of waves and glaciers, the delicate buzz of moth wings, running antelopes and wildlife in the dense Amazonian rainforest — all recorded out in the field.
Some of the artists involved include U.K. disco pop duo Franc Moody, Belgian techno star Amelie Lens, Indian pop artist Armaan Malik, hip-hop group KAM-BU and Swedish House Mafia’s Steve Angello. A track by I. JORDAN features the call of the U.K.’s rare Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, while London producer Alice Boyd layered vintage 1970s bird songs with present-day recordings to illustrate the natural soundscapes that have been lost to human development. Many of the project’s archival nature sounds were donated by esteemed field recording artist Martyn Stewart and his project, The Listening Planet.
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As the music industry grapples with how to mitigate climate change within the sector, Sounds Right’s expansion is another indicator that artists are keen to plug into opportunities to help. Sounds Right global program director Gabriel Smales tells Billboard that many of these artists were recruited by EarthPercent and Eleutheria Group — both Sounds Right partners who reached out to musicians with “what we think is one of the most meaningful creative opportunities in music,” he says. Other artists reached out to Sounds Right directly with a desire to contribute, raise money and, Smales says, “treat the natural world as a partner — a creative force with something urgent to say.”
While the original group of Sounds Right artists mostly remixed pre-existing songs to incorporate wind, waves, birds and more, Tuesday’s addition is largely new music, a shift that Smales says “tells us this isn’t a one-time campaign — it’s becoming a space for genuine artistic and cultural expression.” He cites an ambitious goal of “every artist” making at least one track “with Nature” and says Sounds Right will soon be announcing a way for anyone who’d like to participate to get on board.
A huge incentive to do so? The project is working. The tracks included in Sounds Right’s 2024 launch have racked up more than 100 million streams from more than 10 million listeners, with Smales citing “significant” media interest and social media engagement. In the last year, Sounds Right has raised $225,000 for Indigenous and community-led conservation in the Tropical Andes, an area famous for its biodiversity, with $100,000 coming from royalties and the rest coming from individual and institutional donations.
This money has funded organizations like Colombia’s Fundación Proyecto Tití, which protects critically endangered cotton-top tamarin monkeys and employs locals to steward more than 2,200 acres of regenerated forest. The money from Sounds Right has specifically funded the group’s restoration work with local farmers and the preservation of forest corridors. Meanwhile, money donated to Reserva Natural La Planada is being used to invest in scientific tourism and the protection of biocultural heritage across nearly 8,000 acres of land governed by 10 Indigenous communities in Colombia’s Awá Pialapí Pueblo Reserve.
As more artists contribute and Sounds Right streams grow, royalties are expected to scale “significantly,” says Smales, at which point leaders will invite more donors and match-funders to multiply funding. Smales anticipates committing “far more” funding in 2025 than in 2024 and aims to raise $5 million annually by 2028.
But he says Sounds Right leaders “are under no illusion” that $5 million a year will fix the accelerating horrors of climate change and attendant environmental degradation. Wildlife populations have dropped by an average of 69% in the past 50 years, more than 1.2 million species are currently at risk of extinction and more than two-thirds of the Earth’s land and marine ecosystems have been degraded by human activity. Meanwhile, wildfires, floods, extreme heat and other weather events are affecting delicate ecosystems and displacing humans and animals around the world.
“So far we’ve failed to address the root cause of the biodiversity crisis,” Smales says. “Our economic model doesn’t value nature properly, treating it as a resource to be optimally exploited and a place to dump our waste.” As such, a major goal for Sounds Right is getting people to see nature’s inherent value and recognizing the earth as not just something we use and live on, but as a living entity to protect.
Sounds Right is pushing this message on multiple continents. In Denmark, the project is helping send young people on artist-led nature trips and encouraging them to share 10-second field recordings as part of a #naturesings campaign. In Colombia, Sounds Right partner VozTerra is supporting teachers to train their students in acoustic ecology. A project in Kenya is forthcoming, as is additional music to be added to the playlist in conjunction with World Mental Health Day in October. Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in the Brazilian Amazon this November, Sounds Right will spotlight musical “collaborations” with the Amazon and Congo Basins, which together produce roughly 40% of the world’s oxygen and which are targeted to start receiving Sounds Right funding from 2025 onwards.
While climate change is daunting and the world is vast, Smales thinks Sounds Right has huge potential to effect change, given that it meets people in a very personal place: “their ears and the phones in their pockets.” The idea is to create greater interest in and love for nature by putting it in the music we all live our lives to, an awakening Smales hopes will inspire people to do more and to demonstrate the public demand for change to business and political leaders.
“We’re working,” he says, “to go beyond the headphones and build a deeper sense of agency in our collective efforts to protect the planet.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A breakdown of the many lawyers working on the Sean “Diddy” Combs litigation; a motion by Lil Durk to dismiss his federal murder-for-hire charges; an updated version of Drake’s lawsuit against Universal Music Group focused on the Super Bowl; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: The Diddy Debacle’s Many, Many Lawyers
To lead off Billboard’s annual Top Music Lawyers list, I dove deep into the many attorneys involved in the litigation against Sean “Diddy” Combs over his alleged sexual abuse.
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Spread across a complex criminal case and dozens of civil lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions, the Combs litigation unsurprisingly involves a slew of high-powered lawyers, ranging from veteran defense attorneys to experienced sex-crimes prosecutors to a prolific plaintiff’s lawyer who says he represents more than 100 victims. And that’s not even mentioning the BigLaw attorneys hired to defend top industry players who have been dragged — they say wrongly — into the messy litigation.
For the whole story, which covers more than 20 lawyers in all, go read my full article here. And make sure not to miss the actual Top Lawyers list after that, detailing the top music industry attorneys who are making deals, guiding clients and watching out for AI.
Other top stories this week…
IF THE SONG DOESN’T FIT – Lil Durk asked a federal judge to dismiss murder-for-hire charges, claiming prosecutors are citing song lyrics as evidence even though he wrote them more than six months before the alleged crime. Prosecutors had claimed last year that the Chicago drill star rapped about ordering his “OTF” crew to murder rival Quando Rondo, but his lawyers said that claim was “demonstrably false” and that the feds used such evidence to mislead a grand jury: “Unless the government is prosecuting Banks on a theory of extra-sensory prescience, the lyrics could not have soundly informed the grand jury’s finding of probable cause,” Durks lawyers wrote.
DRAKE v. UMG UPDATE – Drake filed an amended complaint in his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” focusing heavily on the Super Bowl halftime show that took place after the original case was filed. Drake’s lawyers say the decision to censor the word “pedophile” during the broadcast had actually helped his case: “Kendrick Lamar would not have been permitted to perform during the Super Bowl Performance unless the word ‘pedophile’… was omitted from the lyrics — that is because nearly everyone understands that it is defamatory to falsely brand someone a ‘certified pedophile’,” the star’s lawyers wrote.
LEGAL R.I.P. – Music attorney Joel Katz, for decades one of the industry’s most powerful figures, died last week at the age of 80. A longtime practice group chair at the firm Greenberg Traurig, Katz represented a who’s who of top music executives over his career, as well as major artists (Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Tim McGraw) and industry groups (Recording Academy and Country Music Association). After Recording Academy head Deb Dugan accused Katz of sexual harassment in 2020 — an allegation he denied — he joined Barnes & Thornburg in 2021, where he spent the rest of his career. Go read Melinda Newman’s full obituary here, featuring reactions from around the industry.
DIDDY TRIAL DELAY DENIED – Judge Arun Subramanian denied a request by Diddy to delay his sex trafficking and racketeering trial by two months, ruling that the move was made too close to trial. The star’s lawyers had argued they didn’t have enough time to prepare for trial after prosecutors added new charges earlier this month. But the judge ruled that the new indictment largely overlapped with earlier charging papers, telling Diddy’s lawyers he found it “unclear why there isn’t sufficient time to prepare.”
SMOKING GUN OR ‘UNRELIABLE’? – Elsewhere in Diddy-world, his lawyers asked the judge to exclude the infamous 2016 surveillance video of him assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura from the trial, arguing it would “unfairly confuse and mislead the jury.” They claim the clip was edited by CNN and then the original was destroyed, leaving only an “inaccurate, unreliable video” to play for jurors: “The manipulation of the videos was specifically designed to inflame the passions of CNN’s viewing audience, and that is what the government is hoping to leverage in this case.”
DISASTER DEPOSITION – Megan Thee Stallion asked a federal judge to hold Tory Lanez in contempt of court over “disruptive” and “inflammatory” behavior during a recent deposition in a civil lawsuit. Lanez — currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for shooting Megan — made a “mockery of the proceedings” by harassing a female lawyer and demanding definitions of basic terms. The motion came in a defamation case Megan filed against gossip blogger Milagro Gramz, who she claims has waged a “coordinated campaign” with Lanez to “defame and delegitimize” the superstar rapper in the wake of the shooting and trial.
DANCE DANCE LITIGATION – A TikTok user named Kelley Heyer, who says she created last summer’s viral “Apple dance” to a Charli XCX song, is suing Roblox over allegations that the company violated copyright law by selling her dance moves as an “emote.” Heyer claims that other games paid her for a license, but that Roblox used her moves without a deal. The lawsuit is the latest in a long line of cases filed over viral dance moves that are used in video games.
Etsy has agreed to sell Reverb, an online marketplace for musical instruments and equipment, to Creator Partners, an investment firm founded by a former SoundCloud CEO, and Fender-owner Servco, the companies said on Tuesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Bought by Etsy in 2019 for $275 million, Reverb is used by fans to purchase collectibles like the recording console used to track the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Travis Barker’s drums, as well as regular guitars, pedals, keyboards and other music-related products.
The deal, which is expected to close in the coming weeks, will see U.S.-based music gear selling site return to its roots as an independently operated company backed by Creator Partners and Servco.
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Creator Partners is the investment company of former SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor, and it stakes in BMI, Colors+Studios, Mogul, as well as SoundCloud. Servco is the majority owner of guitar company Fender, which Creator Partners is also invested in. Reverb previously raised $25 million from a group of investors led by Summit Partners.
The deal for Reverb comes at a time when the threat of global tariffs has sparked fears of rising prices for music product imports, merchandise and other goods. In a blog post announcing the new ownership, Reverb CEO David Mandelbrot said the company plans to roll out a new option for sellers “that allows you to get paid faster and drop off your gear locally, without needing to create a listing or ship.” Reverb has other plans to expand its offerings of music-making software and to improve search, ship and help services on the website.
“Over the past five years, we’ve learned a lot from Etsy as we’ve expanded our community,” Mandelbrot wrote in the blog post. “As we look ahead, with a focus on growing the entire industry by helping more people buy and sell used music gear, we’re excited to align ourselves with two new partners who share our passion and focus.”
According to Mandlebrot, buyers and sellers using the website should not notice any disruption as the companies work toward closing this deal in the coming weeks, and Creator and Servco sought to assure Reverb users that Fender will not get preferential treatment on Reverb. Reverb’s partnership with Fender will stay the same, including Fender’s certified pre-owned program, which is one of 20 such offerings available on Reverb, the companies said.
Creator Partners’ Trainor said they are keen to invest in Reverb and its goal of growing “the entire industry through seamless secondhand commerce.”
Mark Fukunaga, executive chair of Servco, said his company has been invested in musical instruments and education for over 90 years. “We remain committed to being good stewards of leading musical instrument companies, like Reverb, and supporting players everywhere in pursuing their passion to create music.”
Chris Janson has returned to his former label home of Warner Music via a partnership with the country singer-songwriter’s Harpeth 60 Records imprint. Clay Hunnicutt leads Harpeth 60 Records’ radio promotion staff, with team members including Ray Vaughn and Lauren Bartlett. Janson previously released his first three albums through Warner, earning hits including “Buy Me a Boat” and “Good Vibes.” — Jessica Nicholson
Emerging singer-songwriter Esaú Ortiz signed with Sony Music Latin. The música mexicana artist from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, first gained traction on social media with songs like “Triple Lavada,” which was featured on playlists such as Apple Music’s Hits 2025 and Spotify’s Éxitos México. His first official project under Sony Music Latin is said to feature “an explosive remix and heavyweight collaborations,” according to a press release. “I know I have the best team to take my music to the next level and to the ears of everyone,” Ortiz said in a statement. ” I believe we will do great things together, which makes me very happy.” — Griselda Flores
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Big Wild, a project of producer, singer, songwriter and engineer Jackson Stell, signed a label deal with Giant Music and a management deal with Ceremony Music Group. His first release under Giant was the single “You Belong Here,” which dropped April 11.
Jasmine Amy Rogers, the singer and actor who plays Betty Boop in Boop! The Musical on Broadway, signed a record deal with Nashville-based label Melody Place for the release of new original music at the end of 2025. According to a press release, the music will be “somewhere in the mainstream pop/urban world.” Rogers is also featured on the Boop! The Musical cast album set for release later this spring.
Metalcore band Wind Walkers signed with Fearless Records, which released the group’s new single and video “The End Aesthetic.” Wind Walkers just kicked off its Shapeshifter Tour on April 16 in Little Rock, Ark.
Indie-rock/dream-pop band Yumi Zouma signed with Nettwerk, which released its new single, “Bashville on the Sugar,” on Friday (April 18). Yumi Zouma is managed by Phil Jones at Tuesday’s Artists Management and booked by Alisa Preisler at Ground Control, Beckie Sugden at CAA and Sam Wald at WME. The band was previously signed with Polyvinyl Record Co.
Nettwerk also signed Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter BEL and will release her forthcoming single, “Fresh Start,” on Friday (April 25). BEL is managed by Justin Little and Chad Heimann at Brilliant Corners.
TAMLA Records and Capitol Christian Music Group (Capitol CMG) signed Peech. to their artist roster. In 2024, Peech. broke through with the single “Snowfall” and the mixtape L.I.V.E. On Friday (April 18), he released his latest single, “Don’t Miss Your Moment.” — Jessica Nicholson
Riser House Records signed indie-pop group The Wldlfe and will release the band’s new single, “Make Me Cry,” on Friday (April 25). The band is composed of Jansen Hogan, Carson Hogan, and Jack Crane.
Scotland-born, Texas-raised country singer Callum Kerr signed with ONErpm and Huff Co. Kerr also works as a model and actor. His new single, “Cold Beer Cold,” is out now.
Sony Classical signed Berlin-based pianist Alexander Malofeev, who will release his debut album for the label in the fall. Malofeev first rose to prominence in 2014 at the age of 13, when he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians. He has since performed with leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala.
Asher White signed to Joyful Noise, which released her latest single, “Kratom Headache Girls Night,” on Tuesday (April 15). White’s most recent album, Home Constellation Study, was released on Ba Da Bing! in 2024.
Oakland-based punk band The Lucky Eejits signed with Southern California indie label HEY!FEVER Records. The group recently won a spot at this year’s San Francisco Punk in the Park Festival on May 3. Lucky Eejits is set to release new music by the end of this year.
Anjula Acharia remembers when the one person who had set her up for success told her she was going to fail. And Jay-Z was there, too.
In 2008, Acharia and Interscope Geffen A&M’s then chairman, Jimmy Iovine, were sharing breakfast at a New York hotel. Iovine — who had partnered with Acharia’s South Asian music/news hub, Desi Hits, to develop a Universal Music Group-backed imprint — remembered her previously telling him how much “Beware of the Boys,” Jay-Z’s 2003 remix of Panjabi MC’s bhangra single, had meant to her as the kind of cross-continental exchange that she hoped Desi Hits would foster. So when Acharia stood up to leave the breakfast, Iovine asked her to stick around for a few more minutes… at which point Jay made his surprise entrance.
Acharia, who was in her 30s at the time, geeked out, gushing about her love of “Beware of the Boys” and asking the rap superstar about how the remix had come together. Then Iovine pulled the rug out from under her. “While I was sitting with him and Jay-Z, Jimmy told me that Desi Hits was going to fail,” she recalls. “His words were, ‘I know pop culture, I know a visionary, and this is just way too early. This would be right in 10 to 15 years.’ ”
Anjula Acharia. Styling by Kristina Askerova. Hair and Makeup by Shayli Nayak. Versace dress and jewelry, Paris Texas shoes.
Harsh Jani
A Punjabi kid and die-hard music fan born to South Asian immigrants, Acharia grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, devouring music that fused styles from around the world and dreaming of creating a platform that spoke to both Eastern and Western demographics. She was a senior partner at a London-based executive search firm who co-founded Desi Hits Radio as a popular early podcast in the mid-2000s; then Iovine backed Desi Hits in 2007 as a stateside label for South Asian artists after she moved to New York. The pair helped engineer a crossover hit in 2009 with “Jai Ho,” A.R. Rahman’s Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire theme that was remade for U.S. listeners with The Pussycat Dolls added to it.
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“She was so talented and passionate about the music,” Iovine reflects today, “but sometimes things just don’t come together.” And by the early 2010s, Acharia admitted her mentor had been correct: The world wasn’t ready. “We didn’t have streaming platforms, social sharing or an ecosystem to support the industry,” she explains. “It was just very segmented back then and really hard for things to travel.” She wondered aloud why Iovine had invested in Desi Hits if he had doubted the idea. “And he says, ‘Because you’re an album, not a single.’ ”
On roughly the timeline Iovine predicted, the industry has changed drastically — and Acharia, who spent that intervening time outside of music, is returning to it with an entirely new album, so to speak. She and Warner Music Group exclusively tell Billboard that they have launched 5 Junction Records, a joint-venture label under WMG, as a pipeline for South Asian artists to reach North American listeners, much like a modern Desi Hits but with significantly more established talent and infrastructure. That talent includes its flagship pair of artists: Bollywood mainstay and pop triple-threat Nora Fatehi and ascendant Indian singer-rapper King. Both already have multiple hits and millions of streams overseas, giving them the ideal foundation to take the first crack at establishing North American footholds.
“It’s always been in our mind to promote this music to the world,” King says. “That has always been the fight, but now, I feel like we are at the right time and right spot. The next five years are looking bright.”
King. Styling by Nikita Jaisinghani. Hair by Javed Sheikh and Makeup by Swapnil Haldankar. Versace jacket and shirt, Brune & Bareskin shoes, Amrapali necklace.
Harsh Jani
Nora Fatehi. Styling by Meagan Concessio. Hair and Makeup by Marianna Mukuchyan. David Koma dress, tights and shoes.
Harsh Jani
Acharia believes that a cultural wave is about to crash down on the U.S. mainstream, similar to how Korean pop, Latin music and Afrobeats all made an impact on top 40 radio beginning in the late 2010s. Based on the South Asian market boom over the past decade — by the end of 2023, India had become the second-largest on-demand streaming market in the world, behind only the United States — and the English-language artists who have made overtures in the hemisphere through touring and studio team-ups, she’s not alone in that prediction.
“The best way to think about it is, what are your next billion-user markets?” WMG CEO Robert Kyncl says. He notes that the South Asian industry has been top of mind for him for over a decade: As vp of content at Netflix in the early 2000s, Kyncl saw firsthand the scope of demand for Hindi shows, and as YouTube’s chief business officer in the 2010s, he spent every year in the region, developing partnerships that he believes are paying off today. “You have to invest,” he says. “If you don’t, you’ll wake up five, 10 years from now and realize you just missed this whole new growth era.”
Kyncl has been friends with Acharia since his Netflix days (when he first discovered Desi Hits in the course of researching Hindi shows) and has followed her career closely. After leaving Desi Hits in 2014, Acharia stayed in the entertainment space by managing Priyanka Chopra Jonas, whom she originally signed as a Bollywood star trying to kick-start a music career and now helps steer as a global superstar. Acharia also joined the venture capital company Trinity Ventures before launching her own fund, A-Series Management and Investments, where she was an early investor in companies like ClassPass and Bumble.
Yet unfinished business gnawed at her. “Music is a place that makes me feel like I’m home, and fusion music makes me feel like I’m being seen,” she says. Acharia spoke to other labels last year about the idea for 5 Junction, but Kyncl personally convinced her to bring the project to WMG. She will work closely with Warner Records CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and COO Tom Corson, as well as GM Jurgen Grebner, who steered international marketing at Interscope for over 20 years, and Alfonso Perez-Soto, who served as WMG’s emerging markets leader before recently becoming executive vp of corporate development.
Although Acharia was removed from the major-label world for years, some of its most prominent executives believe she’s the perfect steward for this ocean-spanning endeavor. Corson describes her as “a powerful force who is extremely well-connected across the world. We hit it off from the jump, and we’re thrilled to be in business with her.” Kyncl says that, if he were to describe the “ideal entrepreneur,” that person would resemble Acharia. “You have a vision, you’re strategic about it and you won’t stop until you win,” he says. “She has it. It makes absolute sense for us to partner with her, and she’ll make us better by pushing us.”
From left: Fatehi, Acharia and King.
Harsh Jani
Her ties to Kyncl aside, Acharia says that WMG made the most sense as a home for 5 Junction because the label group is “way ahead” in the scene. Since WMG created Warner Music India five years ago, the label has partnered with Diljit Dosanjh, a Bollywood superstar with 25 million Instagram followers who has headlined North American arenas; Karan Aujla, a former songwriter turned singer/rapper/YouTube behemoth; and Kushagra, a 20-year-old indie-pop newcomer whose single “Finding Her” is currently one of India’s biggest streaming hits.
When Jay Mehta became managing director of Warner Music India in April 2020, he was a team of one; now, the label has 34 employees. Part of that growth had to do with timing, as the market quickly expanded globally. Last decade, “India was dominated by Indian streaming services, which did not have a global footprint,” Mehta explains. “Spotify launched in India in 2018, and it took until 2021, 2022 for them to become the leaders [in the country]. We needed Spotify and YouTube to have massive presences in India in order to take artists global.”
Acharia also points out that subtle cultural shifts in North America helped fuel opportunities. “Think about all the foreign-language content on Netflix and other streaming platforms that people have watched — especially during COVID, where people were stuck at home,” she says. “And then, with vertical video, people are watching things with subtitles all the time … Everything affects each other. We’re more used to hearing foreign languages, so we’re more OK to listen to it in our music.”
Harsh Jani
Harsh Jani
At 5 Junction, Acharia will work closely with Mehta’s Warner Music India team, which has utilized streaming data to identify artists who can transcend international borders and songwriting camps to supply them with global hits. Fatehi, a Toronto native of Moroccan descent who moved to India and became a marquee Bollywood act, signed a deal with WMG in early 2024 to help her level up as a singer, dancer and actor. “The larger goal was always to go global, to let the whole world know my story,” she says. When she met Acharia, Fatehi told her that she wanted to become a cross-cultural entertainer along the lines of Jennifer Lopez, and Acharia told her, “Yes, let’s do it together.”
Fatehi says she has never met anyone more persuasive than Acharia. “I feel like our hungers align,” she says. “It’s hard to take a vision and sell it to someone else, because most people don’t have an attention span to listen to you for more than five minutes. But when [Anjula] opens her mouth and starts her pitch, you somehow have FOMO — you feel like you’re going to miss out if you’re not paying attention.”
In January, Fatehi released the Jason Derulo collaboration “Snake,” a thumping dance track built around East Asian melodies. It has earned 18.5 million official on-demand streams globally, according to Luminate; one month after its release, Aujla was featured on “Tell Me,” a OneRepublic collaboration that has earned 28.8 million global streams.
More than two decades after Jay-Z and Panjabi MC linked up, Acharia still believes these types of collaborations are key for breaking South Asian artists in North America. “The strategy that I had 15 years ago was cross-pollination, but we didn’t have the infrastructure to support that,” she says. Now creative borders are easier to cross. For instance, Fatehi and Derulo met up in Morocco to film a music video for “Snake” that combined hip-hop and Bollywood choreography. And after King recruited Nick Jonas for a new version of the former’s smash “Maan Meri Jaan” in 2023, King made a surprise appearance during the Jonas Brothers’ performance at Lollapalooza India in 2024 to perform it, a “cinematic” moment that he says he still can’t believe actually happened.
Harsh Jani
At the same time that Western artists are paying more attention to India as a touring market — Coldplay performed in the country for the first time in January, grossing $30.5 million across five shows in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, according to Billboard Boxscore — South Asian artists are more clearly identifying North American territories where thousands of fans will show up to their shows. Acharia name-checks New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, but also says that Canadian cities have demonstrated “huge” ticket demand. After Dosanjh scored his first top 10 album in Canada with 2023’s Ghost, his Dil-Luminati tour last year became the highest-grossing North American tour by a Punjabi music artist in history, thanks in part to sold-out stadium shows at Vancouver’s BC Place and Toronto’s Rogers Centre.
Perez-Soto sees Toronto, where the metro area had a South Asian population of more than 1.1 million as of 2021, as a crucial gateway for the rest of North America. “South Asian music through Toronto, like Latin music was through Miami, has established an important bridge between the local origin of the music and the second generation,” he says. “They have this hybrid vision of culture, where things are getting mixed up and mutually enriched.”
Kyncl has kept WMG focused on these macro-trends for years. “It’s not like we’re just starting,” he says. “It’s just that Anjula is adding an additional element, which is bringing talent here.” Under her guidance, Fatehi is spending most of April in the recording studio and will issue the follow-up to “Snake” by the end of the month, with a mix of releases aimed at Eastern and Western markets throughout the year. Meanwhile, King says he is “working on an EP and some collaborations” to follow his January single “Stay,” in addition to multiple Bollywood projects.
Mehta believes that an Indian artist will make an impact on the U.S. mainstream charts in 2025. “We saw it with Hanumankind, on the back of a viral moment,” he says, referencing the Indian rapper’s 2024 track “Big Dawgs,” which exploded on TikTok and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. “But we want to make a consistent way of bringing a lot of these artists onto the charts. The U.S. is extremely competitive, but if we get the right sound representing the culture and the right artist, with Anjula’s strengths, we should be able to make something big happen.”
Acharia knows this will take time, but for her, the personal stakes are worth the investment. She was once told that Desi Hits wouldn’t last; now, 5 Junction could define her legacy. “It’s something that I started, and I want to finish it,” she says. And for his part, Iovine is proud that the world has finally caught up to her vision.
“I’m not surprised at all at any of her success,” Iovine says, “and I’m glad she’s doing this now.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Billboard
Leading rock label Better Noise Music has announced a raft of new signings, including iconic pop-rock band Yellowcard, which will release its new album on the label later this year.
The as-yet untitled LP, which will be produced by Travis Barker, who also played drums on the album, marks something of a comeback for Yellowcard, which hasn’t released an album of new material since its self-titled set dropped in 2016 via Hopeless Records. The group is known for mid-aughts hits including “Ocean Avenue” and “Lights and Sounds” — the title tracks off the group’s two most successful albums, released in 2003 and 2006, respectively.
Also signing to Better Noise is Swedish power metal band Sabaton, which has racked up 4 billion streams on Spotify alone, according to a press release. The group has released a total of 10 studio albums, most recently on Nuclear Blast with its 2022 LP The War to End All Wars. Sabaton has landed four albums on the Billboard 200.
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Better Noise additionally signed American rock band In This Moment, which is currently in the studio working on a new album and set to drop new tracks later this year. The band has scored four entries on the Billboard 200, with its 2014 set, Black Widow, peaking at No. 8.
Finally, Better Noise signed The Rasmus, the popular Finnish rock band that has a new album set to drop in 2025.
“We are beyond excited to welcome Yellowcard, Sabaton, The Rasmus, and In This Moment to the Better Noise family,” said Better Noise president/COO Steve Kline in a statement. “These exceptional bands showcase the diversity and creativity that define our rich roster of rock and alternative artists. Each brings a proven global track record and a distinctive approach to rock music. We look forward to partnering with them and taking each band to the next level and beyond.”
The Better Noise roster also includes Five Finger Death Punch, The Funeral Portrait, Asking Alexandria and The Hu, among many others.
Durand Jones & The Indications – the trio of Durand Jones, Aaron Frazer and Blake Rhein – have announced their most extensive tour to date. Following a successful opening slot on Lenny Kravitz’s European tour, the band will hit their biggest headlining shows yet, with stops at Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater in Austin and The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
The tour will kick off Sept. 11 at The Van Buren in Phoenix and run through some of North America’s most iconic venues, including Webster Hall in New York, Tipitina’s in New Orleans, First Avenue in Minneapolis and The 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. The 37-date trek will come to a close on Nov. 16 at House of Blues in Dallas.
In addition to announcing their fall tour, Durand Jones & The Indications have released the second single from their upcoming album Flowers, due June 27 on Dead Oceans. The new single “Flower Moon” puts Frazer’s signature falsetto front and center as the group waxes poetic about love in springtime. The band draws from their extensive knowledge of soul and R&B history to deliver one of their most irresistible dancefloor tracks yet.
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“It felt right to release ‘Flower Moon’ with this record. Spring is here and the flowers are blooming everywhere. We really wanted to catch that essence of the song and bring it to life for the listener,” Jones said in a release. “Also the Flower Moon is happening in a few weeks, so everything just seemed aligned to bring this song to our fans. It’s a feel-good tune to enjoy with friends or a loved one.”
Check out the video for “Flower Moon,” directed by Alec Basse, below.
Flowers will mark Durand Jones & The Indication’s fourth studio album and a return to the band’s roots with a mixture of gritty funk and Southern soul that inspired their 2016 self-titled debut. The album was self-produced in Rhein’s Chicago home studio and reflects the “ups and downs in our personal lives and professional lives,” Frazer said when the album was announced, adding, “and flowers are a sign of maturity, growth, spring, productivity.” The new song follows lead single “Been So Long,” which was released last month.
Check out a full list of tour dates below.
Sept. 11 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren Sept. 12 – Flagstaff, AZ @ Orpheum Theater Sept. 13 – Abiquiú, NM @ Blossoms & Bones Sept. 15 – San Antonio, TX @ The Aztec Theatre Sept. 16 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater Sept. 18 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse Sept. 19 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl Sept. 21 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club Sept. 23 – Philadelphia, PA @ UnionTransfer Sept. 26 – Boston, MA @ Citizens House of Blues Sept. 27 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall Sept. 30 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi Annex Oct. 1 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed Oct. 3 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre Oct 4 – Fort Collins, CO @ Washington’s Oct. 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot Oct. 7 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater Oct 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre Oct. 11 – Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl Oct. 23 – Del Mar, CA @ The Sound Oct. 24 – Sacramento, CA @ Channel 24 Oct. 27 – Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom Oct. 28 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom Oct. 29 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox SODO Oct. 31 – Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory Concert House Nov. 1 – Bozeman, MT @ The ELM Nov 3 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue Nov 4 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom Nov 5 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall Nov. 7 – Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall Nov. 8 – Montreal, QC @ Beanfield Theatre Nov. 9 – South Burlington, VT @ HIgher Ground Ballroom Nov 11 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall Nov. 12 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel Nov. 14 – New Orleans, LA @ Tipitina’s Nov. 15 – Houston, TX @ Heights Theater Nov. 16 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues