Business
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When deadmau5 got the masters of four of his biggest albums back from Ultra Records last June, his team had a plan to capitalize on the newly acquired intellectual property.
The first move was the release of a remix of the 2009 deadmau5 and Kaskade classic “I Remember” by current house phenom John Summit. After that dropped last July, the entire deadmau5 catalog saw a 45% streaming bump, the producer’s team reports. Additional remixes from these albums followed, wiht each LP subsequently seeing a 48% to 82% streaming increase. Vinyl reissues of the albums sold 25,000 units.
“All for albums that are over ten years old,” says deadmau5’s longtime manager Dean Wilson.
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With The Circuit Group — the company launched last year by Wilson and his wife/business partner Jessica Wilson along with Brett Fischer, David Gray and Harvey Tadman — the mission is to create this type of increasingly valuable IP for electronic artists at all levels, and in so doing help them create and maintain independence.
Upon launching last October, the company – which brought together members of management companies Seven20 and Ayita — outlined plans to acquire 50% ownership in artists’ IP portfolios and partner with them to build opportunities across verticals while also offering traditional artist management.
Now, The Circuit Group — which has offices in L.A., the United Kingdom and Miami — is expanding as it works to fulfill that mission, announcing seven key hires on Wednesday (June 12). They include James Sutcliffe, who joins as chief strategy officer, bringing years of leadership experience at companies including Ministry of Sound and LIVENow; and Simon Birkumshaw was hired as director of operations of label services, having formerly served in A&R roles at companies including LabelWorx and Defected Records.
Elsewhere, Ian Massoth, who helped launch projects including Chris Lake’s Black Book Records and Fisher’s Catch & Release label and event concept, joins as director of A&R of label services. Shivani Phull is the company’s new CFO advisor, Bianca Price joins as social media manager, Nick Sung is the new director of marketing and Charlie Tadman was hired as director of A&R. Together, the group of new hires have served in roles at companies including PIXELYNX, Spotify, various Insomniac Events properties and a variety of high-profile artist projects.
The company’s artist roster currently features more than 40 acts, including original clients like Chris Lake and Fisher, whose collaborative project, Under Construction, drew 12,000 people to a party on Hollywood Boulevard last October. (Dean Wilson says such events “are all done independently” under The Circuit Group umbrella in conjunction with various partners.)
Recently signed clients include longstanding electronic singer/producer Anabel Englund, ascending electronic act Clonee, and producer and vocalist Aluna, who will work with The Circuit Group to grow the events side of her Noir Fever label. While artists work with the company in varying capacities across publishing, management and development, Jessica Wilson says the focus is “all driven to the IP at the end of the day.”
“It’s finding and building opportunities outside the core business of making a record then putting a pair of headphones on and some USB sticks in and playing to fans,” adds Dean Wilson. “What we’re trying to show with The Circuit Group is that we can help artists grow their business better than anybody else, from the label, to publishing, merchandise business, tech ventures, touring IP and so on.”
The Wilsons say it’s especially crucial for artists to identify such business opportunities given how low, and volatile, streaming rates are.
“Even if they’re in a current deal or not, all of these artists want to get involved in building their own indie brand,” says Jessica Wilson. “They don’t want to be a so-and-so label artist. They want to be synonymous with their own label, and we’ve put the right people in the right places to help artists build their own brands, make their own output and do it as they want to do it.”
Below, Dean and Jessica Wilson talk to Billboard about expanding the company, creating independence for artists and electronic music’s growing value in the marketplace.
So an emerging artist signs with the company, then what happens?
Dean: It’s building a plan. In dance, you can be making records at home, then all the sudden one of them starts to get traction and suddenly they’ve got an agent and shows and are making real money.
We’ve all been there in this company, and we all made the decisions that, at that point, we were told to make, which was that you signed to a record label, got an agent and signed publishing. Those label and publishing deals paid you some money, so you’re selling your rights at that point. No one’s thinking 10 or 15 years down the road. They’re thinking, “I’m broke right now, so I need to do these deals.” And the manager, who’s also often a friend of the artist, is broke too, so he or she is happy to do the deals.
That’s not bad. We’ve all done those deals. What we want to impart is our knowledge of, “You don’t need to do those without the right infrastructure and the right team. You can do all of that and hang on and control your rights.”
How?
Dean: The first step is sitting down and planning with each artist what they want to do and showing them how we did things for [a variety] of artists. Each artist has a different brand and a slightly different mindset and might not want to do something a certain way. It’s about how far down the road you can look and work your way back from. That’s hard to do without a team infrastructure and people who’ve been there before who can help and advise, because otherwise you’re going to continue doing those short-term things that you have to do to pay the bills.
Jessica: We’re geared up and ready to go. We have a distribution deal we’ve put in place. We’ve got a beautiful backend for rights that is going to make it easy for every label to plug into and automatically get everything uploaded… The excitement for us right now is that we’ve hired all of these key people to actually make it work. You’ve got deadmau5 bringing in great talent, you’ve got Chris [Lake] bringing in great talent. You’ve got people attracted to Fisher and Cloonee. All these people want to come and work with us, and we’re giving them a direct output line to go and do this themselves instead of helping to rely on a major.
How fundamental has deadmau5’s career as an independent artist been as a model for what you’re doing with The Circuit Group?
Dean: We’ve learned from the stuff that hasn’t worked more so than the stuff that did. He was the first electronic act to ever do a 360 deal when he was with EMI/Virgin. It was a complete and utter f—ing disaster. I put this beautiful business plan together and showed it to them, and within the first couple of months I’d gone, “Oh my god. They don’t get it.”
I remember talking to the chairwoman at the time and saying, “If we own the business together and we owned an ice cream shop and were 50/50 partners, and I had six people working full time and you had no one working full time, do you think that would be an equal partnership that would work?” She said no, and I said, “Well that’s how you’re behaving. You’ve done a deal for all the rights, but all you talk about is when the next record is coming.” It was that dawn of that moment of “Okay, we’ve got to work out how to do this independently.”
In terms of intellectual property, are there opportunities that are unique to electronic music?
Dean: In electronic music we’re really lucky because we do remixes and stem packs and remix competitions. And you can move quickly because it’s not like pop or country where there’s 20 writers on a record. And [The Circuit Group] can do all of these things because we’re in control of it all.
So you can jumpstart pre-existing material with strategic moments like John Summit’s “I Remember” remix?
Dean: It’s exactly that. That’s the opportunity in dance. We’re still a baby genre when it comes to real business. Yes, dance has been around since the early ‘90s, but it wasn’t a real business. It’s really only been 10 or 15 years that it’s been a multibillion-dollar business.
So now you have all this material that’s now 15 or 20 years old. Look at how many “Sandstorm” remixes you’ve heard. It’s still as big now as it was when it first came out, maybe even bigger. Those classic dance records just keep getting remade and resampled, and they live on forever and actually keep making more money. So, you’re creating more value and more IP on top of the original. The material has two value streams that we in the dance world can really only do at the speed that we do it, because of the way it’s made.
How do you see The Circuit Group continuing to grow?
Dean: It’s important to make it clear that we’re not trying to grow a massive management company, we’re trying to grow a business that is IP-centric and that supplies all the services as a flywheel around it. We don’t want 100 acts. We’re not trying to build Red Light. We want to get it right with the people we’re invested in and who we can see growing into the next Chris Lake or the next Fisher.
Jessica: Or the next Aluna. And to reiterate what Dean said, scaling management is not an easy task and not something we want to do in that regard. We are laser-focused on IP and on building those brands.
Around the time that ChatGPT was first released to the public, Alex Bestall, CEO of Rightsify, a music production library, discovered that he was sitting on a new, lucrative business opportunity. “I realized all the songs and all the metadata we have around the songs had a lot of value for AI,” he says. “It was a pretty quick and easy choice for us to license our library out.”
Hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of songs or other musical content are needed to train a competitive AI model to generate music. Though a number of AI companies believe they don’t need to pay for the music that their models train on, citing “fair use,” others have taken a more musician-friendly approach by paying artists and rights holders when using their music to train AI models.
On the surface, the AI industry seems like a perfect new customer for music production libraries — affordable, pre-cleared catalogs of songs in a variety of styles. Historically, production music has been popular among advertisers, social media creators, podcasters and low-budget film and TV producers who need music to soundtrack their creations but lack the time or money to license big-name hits, which often have multiple rights holders and hefty fees. As use cases for production music have grown, so has that sector of the publishing business. As of 2022, MIDiA Research says production music is worth about $1 billion across recorded music and publishing combined.
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While many artists’ rights advocates consider licensing songs to be the “ethical” way to train an AI music model, it still poses a legitimate threat to the existing music business: “Once the [licensing transaction] is made, that model is going to end up totally competing with you for the same customers,” says Antony Demekin, CEO of Tuney, an AI music company that makes songs intended for social media creators and podcasters. “Over time this could degrade your whole business if you’re not careful about the deal you make.”
No standard contract exists for the licensing of production music for AI training. Despite the long-term risks, Bestall says he has licensed his back catalog to multiple AI companies. (Non-disclosure agreements prevent him from revealing which ones.) “Usually we license our back catalog and then we have an ongoing commitment to deliver a certain amount of music over the next two or three years of the agreement,” he says.
In the short term, these new deals between music production libraries and AI companies have actually created jobs for more human musicians. Given his new customers’ desire for more music during their deal terms, Bestall now has 24 full-time musicians — and almost 100 contractors — employed to make more music and grow Rightsify’s library, which already has over 1 million copyrights.
Lee Johnson, CEO and founder of production library Audiosparx, says AI has also allowed him to grow his business. Audiosparx is best known for licensing its catalog to train Stability AI’s Stable Audio model beginning in 2023, and Johnson says he received permission from the musicians represented in his catalog before he agreed to license their music to the AI company. Audiosparx acts as the licensor for production musicians, but unlike Bestall’s library, it does not acquire the songs in its catalog outright. “We took the deal to our artist community and about 90% of the artists opted into it,” he says. “About 10% decided to stay out of it. It was encouraging to see that much uptake because a lot of people are very passionately against [AI]. … We just felt it made more sense to have a seat on the train and ride the train to the future, rather than getting run over by [it].”
Bestall and Johnson say that, so far, partnering with AI companies has not yet affected their other business. Bestall, however, remains sober about the changes that may occur in the next few years. “I know it’s a threat to our existing business lines, but a huge opportunity for the future,” he says. “I think if people are too married to the exact business model of the past, they may struggle.” Johnson, who has pivoted Audiosparx’s business multiple times over its 20-year existence, expresses a similar view about being open to change.
Not everyone agrees. “I think this is short-term money for a long-term loss,” says Henry Phipps, an emerging film composer who previously held a full-time job writing songs for a production library. After surveying the future of AI music, he left his post to try working for an AI music start-up. Now, he’s back writing for libraries and working toward his dream of being a film/TV composer. (Phipps spoke to Billboard under the condition that his former employers’ names would be kept private.) “But you can’t blame anyone for taking the opportunity to include their music in these datasets because you’d be missing out on a short-term paycheck, and everyone else would go ahead,” he says. “It’s kind of futile to try to stop the tide. Someone will always take the deal.”
To Phipps, the way production music is made is already similar to the way AI music is prompted. “I get a brief, which feels like a prompt,” he says. “Recently, one of those prompts was for reality TV with a bunch of adjectives, and then my job is to return a piece of music. It already feels like machine work in a way.”
While “very few people aspire to be production library composers long-term,” Phipps explains, “it is a way into [the music business] — to survive, eat and pay rent and work towards projects that are more creatively fulfilling.” Phipps says working at an AI music start-up made him “more nervous” for his future opportunities as a composer for film and TV. As he sees it, AI music could augment, but not entirely replace, the compositions of blockbuster film scorers — but it might “cut off the bottom rungs of the ladder” by decreasing opportunities for young upstarts like him.
Ed Newton-Rex, former vp of audio for Stability AI and founder of non-profit Fairly Trained, which certifies AI music companies that properly license their training data, advises that “if a library wants to take a deal like this, the terms should be very well thought through.”
Particular areas of concern Newton-Rex identifies include making sure that once a deal term ends, the AI model that used it will be retired or re-trained without the library’s material. “There’s no current way to just untrain a model, but you can add clauses to control what happens after the license is over,” he says. Newton-Rex also advises libraries to be careful about licensing their data to an “open-source model” — a move he calls “totally irreversible” because it makes the model available for public use.
Still, Newton-Rex admits there is “absolutely” still risk ahead. “Musicians making production music are hugely at risk,” he says. “Ultimately, generative AI is faster, cheaper and the quality is already very good.”
Just in case, Bestall is covering his bases by launching his own AI model, Hydra II, to generate royalty-free background music for cafes, hotel lobbies and other public spaces, should his customers ever prefer AI music to his current repertoire of background library music. Still, he feels his library will always be essential: “We’re not too concerned about the possibility of AI companies saying they don’t need production music anymore. Human data is so valuable for AI.”
Just hours after convicted “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli was sued over claims that he illegally copied and distributed Wu-Tang Clan’s one-of-a-kind album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a federal judge has ordered him to appear in court and to immediately stop “causing further damage.”
In a ruling late Tuesday, Judge Pamela Chen issued a temporary restraining order against the disgraced pharma executive, siding with arguments from PleasrDAO — a digital art collective that bought the album in 2021 after Shkreli was forced to forfeit it as part of his criminal case.
“Plaintiff will suffer immediate and irreparable injury—namely, erosion of the Album’s uniqueness as an original work of art,” the judge wrote. She also ordered Shkreli to appear in court later this month and said she might force him to turn over digital records and account for any ill-gotten profits.
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And Judge Chen explicitly threatened Shkreli with criminal penalties if he flouts her order: “Defendant is warned that any act by him in violation of any of the terms of this order, after actual notice of this order to defendant, may be considered and prosecuted as contempt of this court.”
The quick restraining order came less than a day after PleasrDAO sued Shkreli over the leak of the album, accusing him of violating both their purchase agreement and the federal forfeiture order that required him to hand it over. They also accused him of violating federal trade secrets law, which protect valuable proprietary information from misappropriation.
“The album was supposed to constitute the sole existing copy of the record, music, data and files, and packaging,” the group’s attorneys wrote earlier on Tuesday. “It now appears, however, that Shkreli improperly retained copies of the data and files at the time of the forfeiture and has released and/or intends to release them to the public.”
In an X post on Tuesday, Shkreli said: “these super nerds are suing me 🤣🤣🤣🤣 the least crypto ethos, whitest, least culturally relevant dorks good luck!” In later posts, he called the lawsuit “frivolous” and also re-shared an X post in which another user suggested the lawsuit would fail: “Even if they win, doesn’t Shkreli just anonymously leak the album online out of spite?”
Shkreli did not immediately return a request for additional comment.
Wu-Tang’s legendary Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was recorded in secret and published just once, on a CD secured in an engraved nickel and silver box. Though the group intended the bizarre trappings as a protest against the commodification of music, Shaolin later became the ultimate commodity. In 2015, Shkreli – already infamous as the man who intentionally spiked the price of crucial AIDS medications — bought it at auction in 2015 for $2 million.
The deal came with an unusual stipulation: that the album could not be duplicated or otherwise released to the general public in any form until 2103, or 88 years after the initial purchase. According to court documents, the deal did permit for the album to be played for private listening events in “spaces not customarily used as venues for large musical concerts.”
In 2017, Shkreli was found guilty on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. After he was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to repay $7.4 million, the federal judge overseeing the case ordered him to hand over Shaolin to help pay the restitution.
PleasrDAO says it bought the album from federal prosecutors in 2021 for $4 million, and in 2024 acquired the copyrights and other rights to the album for $750,000. Last month, the group said it would hold private listening events at an Australian museum, where fans would be able to “experience” certain songs from the album.
But in Tuesday’s lawsuit, PleasrDAO said that Shkreli had unlawfully retained copies of Wu-Tang’s music, and had recently begun threatening to release them to the public.
In April posts on X, he allegedly said “LOL i have the mp3s you moron” and “i can just upload the mp3s if you want?” In May, he allegedly posted an image of a PleasrDAO webpage in which the group said the album would not be available until 2103 and said “look out for a torrent im sick of this shit” – a reference to a method of internet filesharing. On Sunday (June 9), the group says he “played music from the album publicly” over the internet to nearly 5000 listeners.
In their filings, the group argued that the release of the album would cause “incalculable monetary loss,” since the value of the album was based on the “uniqueness” of the single copy: The Album’s potential resale value and the profits that PleasrDAO may earn from playing or exhibiting the music will diminish as the data and files become more widely available.”
In her restraining order later on Tuesday, Judge Chen seemed swayed by those arguments. Saying that PleasrDAO would likely “succeed on the merits” of its case against Shkreli, she ruled that he was immediately barred from “using, disseminating, streaming, or selling any interests in the Album” or “in any way causing further damage to Plaintiff respecting the Album.”Judge Chen also ordered Shkreli to appear in court on June 25 to explain why she should not issue a more robust injunction. Such an order, the judge said, would require Shkreli to account for any copies he retained, who he distributed them to, and what profits he gained from doing so, and would allow for the seizure of any remaining copies of the album that he might still be holding.
Rauw Alejandro, in the midst of touring and releasing new music, has assembled a new core management and business team, Billboard has learned.
Leadership includes his longtime attorney and business manager José Juan Torres and his longtime personal manager Matías Solaris.
In addition, sources confirm Alejandro has brought in Jorge “Pepo” Ferradas, founder of and CEO of FPM Entertainment, to head overall strategy of his career moving forward.
Rauw Alejandro was previously managed by Eric Duars, who signed him in 2017 and with whom he split last year.
“It’s a different vision, a different perspective,” Alejandro told Billboard last week about his new team during the Governors Ball music festival, where he was performing. “What we did together was great,” he said about working with Duars, and added: “I have a great team right now. I’m 31 years old, a grown ass man. I feel really happy at this moment of my life. I feel in control of my whole career. I know what I want to do. I have my notes. I learned. It’s just part of growing.”
Ferradas is Camilo and wife Evaluna’s longtime manager, and also co-manages Rels B along with Fede Lauria of Dale Play. Prior to launching FPM, Ferradas’ management experience includes managing Colombian star Shakira in all Spanish-speaking markets as well as overseeing her deal with Live Nation. Ferradas later helped found and develop GTS, Universal’s tour and management company, and was president of music at Univision.
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In the crowded world of reggaetón acts who came up in the mid-to-late 2010s, Rauw Alejandro (born Raul Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz) stands out as an artist who also performs dazzling choreography and experiments with genres like dance. That mix has continued to yield hits; to date, Alejandro has placed 53 songs on Billboard’s Hot Latin songs chart, including 11 top 10s, among them “Santa,” with Rvssian & Ayra Starr, which peaked at No. 8 in May. Thanks to his combined touring, streaming and sales numbers, Alejandro ended 2023 at No. 6 on Billboard’s year-end Top Latin Artists chart.
Alejandro is currently signed to Sony Music U.S. Latin.
Connecting to listeners, not making money or signing to a major label, is the most important aspect of success for a musician, according to a new report titled “Sustainability from Chaos” by MIDiA Research and Amuse, a distribution and artist services company. Even if they reach only a small number of people, 89% of all creators surveyed and 94% of full-time professionals believe that success is defined by moving people with music.
Money matters, too, but relatively few artists say they strive to be superstars. Just 17% of creators and 21% of full-time musicians said being famous is critical to success, while 21% of both groups said signing to a record label is a sign of success. Still, 83% of full-time musicians — and 63% of all creators — defined success as making a career out of music.
The report is based on a survey of 450 artists conducted in April 2024 for MIDiA Research’s Creator Survey.
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It’s an important time to consider how artists define success. Artists have a wealth of options for releasing and financing their music. And there are far more independent artists than artists who have signed traditional record deals. MIDiA estimates that 95% of artists are “artist direct,” meaning they work with a distributor or artist services platform. Only 1% of artists are signed to a major label; the remainder are signed to indie labels.
The vastness of the independent artist market, and their desire for control over their careers, explains why companies are investing heavily in distribution and artist services. Universal Music Group has Virgin Music Group. Sony Music Entertainment has AWAL. Warner Music Group was interested in — but did not acquire — Believe, owner of TuneCore. Distributors such as STEM, UnitedMasters, Ditto and Symphonic have collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding in recent years.
For these service providers to succeed, they must provide artists with deeper, more meaningful connections with fans. According to MIDiA Research, the old definitions of success are being replaced by newer metrics of success such as community membership (such as Discord and WhatApp groups), sold-out shows and merchandise sales. According to the report, this approach “emphasizes building long-lasting relationships over merely accumulating views and followers.”
In the past, mainstream success was measured by chart position, radio play, awards and cover stories. Those achievements would give an artist a good chance at a sustainable career in music. But in the streaming era, those signals of mainstream success have been replaced by what the report called “misleading” metrics such as listens and follows. Chart position and radio play aren’t seen as meaningful indicators, according to the report, although they have marketing value.
Most full-time, professional artists want to work with a distributor with label services or a self-serve platform with tools that support artists to release their albums and tracks. In fact, these artists would rather work with a distributor (31%) than sign to an indie label (20%) and are nearly as interested in taking a do-it-yourself route (17%) or using a self-serve, online platform with artist tools (16%). Only 10% prefer using a management company to run their businesses, and only 6% prefer to sign with a major label.
Considering all creators — including both professional and part-time artists — a self-serve online platform is the preferred way to release albums and tracks (28%), followed by an indie label (25%), a distributor with label services (20%) and the do-it-yourself route (13%). A major label is preferred by just 7% of all creators. Management companies were the least preferred partner (6%).
Artists surveyed feel that breaking through the noise (54%) is the biggest challenge they face. Not having enough time to create (40%) and not having financial resources (35%) were the second- and third-biggest challenges cited by artists. That “noise” refers to the massive amount of music released every day online. In 2023, there was an average of 103,500 tracks uploaded daily to digital platforms, up 10.8% from 93,400 per day in 2022, according to Luminate’s Year-End Report 2023. Major labels accounted for just 3.9% of those tracks — as measured by new ISRC numbers — compared to 96.1% for the rest of the industry.
Building a sustainable career is made more difficult by the challenges of touring. Skyrocketing costs mean that live music is no longer the best way for artists to make money — but it’s still a goal for many artists and a path to financial comfort. In the report, MIDiA Research recommends that artist services companies provide stipends or salaries for new signings as well as tour support typically offered by record labels: “All artist services companies,” it writes, “need to take a longer-term view on artist relationships.”
Merlin, the digital licensing partner for the independent music sector, announced that it renewed its licenses with Meta on Wednesday (June 12). That means the music of Merlin members — releases from labels like Domino, Secretly, Ninja Tune, Warp Records and many more — can continue to be discovered on Facebook and Instagram.
“This renewal is about more than simply licensing music – it’s about the strength of building long term relationships, seeking innovative ways to deliver music to fans and those discovering our artists for the first time, and the value of the dynamic nature of independent music,” Jeremy Sirota, CEO of Merlin, said in a statement. “Merlin, on behalf of its members and their artists, is leading the way to build an ethical, sustainable, and indie-centric world.”
“Meta is thrilled to renew our partnership with Merlin, one of the leading champions of independent music,” added Tamara Hrivnak, vice president of music & content business development at Meta. “Our continued collaboration will foster further innovation in music discovery and creative expression. We’re excited for what the future holds.”
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Merlin’s global membership accounts for around 15% of the recorded music market, and Merlin negotiates deals not only with Meta but with Apple, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, and more than 40 other platforms.
“In an industry that has always been in flux, Merlin is the steady hand,” Sirota explained earlier this year. “Merlin doesn’t have investors looking for an exit. There is no parent company with different motives. We are a mission-driven organization that operates like a not-for-profit and is funded entirely by our members.”
As short-form video platforms have become increasingly important for driving music discovery, artists are eager to make their songs available through platforms like Reels. And Reels took on even more importance earlier this year when Universal Music Group’s licensing negotiations with TikTok fell apart.
Historically, no short-form video platform has been able to match TikTok when it comes to causing a previously unknown song to erupt into the public consciousness overnight. When the wider music industry realized it might have to live without TikTok as a marketing tool at some point, many marketers redoubled their efforts to reach an audience through Reels and YouTube Shorts.
LONDON — A U.K. indie label is suing Sony Music-owned Ministry of Sound Recordings over a remix of a song by R&B artist Jay Sean that became a global viral hit on TikTok a decade after its original release.
According to legal papers filed in the London High Court, which have been viewed by Billboard, 2Point9 Records is suing Ministry of Sound for copyright infringement of Sean’s “Ride It” – a Top 20 single in the United Kingdom in 2008.
Attorneys for London-based 2Point9 say that a 2019 remix of “Ride It” by Kosovo-based producer DJ Regard, whose real name is Dardan Aliu, illegally sampled the master recording of Sean’s original track without clearing its use.
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First posted on TikTok, Regard’s “Ride It” quickly became a viral hit before being licensed by Sony-owned imprint Ministry of Sound Recordings and officially released in July 2019.
The track peaked at number two in the U.K. singles chart the same year. In the U.S., Regard’s “Ride It” peaked at number 62 on the Hot 100 (where it spent 10 weeks on the chart) and number three on the Billboard Top 100 Hot Dance/Electronic chart.
The song has since gone on to be streamed more than 1.3 billion times on Spotify, while the video has been viewed more than 285 million times on Regard’s official YouTube channel. 2Point9 says total YouTube views of the remix have crossed 500 million and well over 4 million videos have been created by TikTok users.
DJ Regard
Courtesy Photo
The London-based indie, which was founded by Billy Grant and Rob Stuart in 2000, alleges that Ministry of Sound Recordings was notified that the track featured an unauthorized sample of Jay Sean’s 2008 song when it first released it, but “chose not to enter into any meaningful commercial discussions” over clearing the sample.
2Point9’s legal claim is for infringement of the production master recording rights of the original version of “Ride It,” which the label says it owns on a worldwide basis.
The indie label employed producer Alan Sampson in 2007 to work with Jay Sean, real name Kamaljit Singh Jhooti, on a number of songs, including “Ride It.” Sampson is not listed among the claimants and Billboard understands that the producer assigned his share of the master recording rights to 2Point9 under the terms of his 2007 production contract.
Attorneys for 2Point9 say that when Ministry of Sound was first told in 2019 that the DJ Regard version of “Ride It” featured an unauthorized sample, the Sony-owned label rejected their claims and insisted the new song featured a re-recording of Sean’s vocal.
Several months later, Ministry of Sound acknowledged that Regard’s song did feature parts of the original recording and subsequently replaced the infringing sample with a re-recorded version.
The re-recorded “Ride It” was commercially released in late 2019 but was assigned the same ISRC code as the earlier infringing song, say 2Point9. The indie label infers this was done to prevent any distinction being drawn between the two songs when tracking global plays. The original DJ Regard track (featuring the unauthorized sample) still continued to receive regular airplay in the U.K. after the new version was released, claim 2Point9.
“Throughout the entire time we have been pursuing this claim, Ministry of Sound Recordings has treated our label with arrogance and dismissiveness,” said Billy Grant, co-founder of 2Point9 Records, in a statement.
“Why they think that this kind of behaviour against a small label is acceptable is bewildering,” said Grant, noting that prior to Ministry of Sound’s acquisition by Sony Music Entertainment in 2016 it too was an independent label.
Grant vowed to continue his legal fight “until we get justice” and said his company was “determined” to make Ministry of Sound realize “that it is not OK to ride roughshod over the commercial rights of those in the independent sector and that there are consequences for doing so.”
According to legal papers, 2Point9 Records has not yet been able to fully quantify the size of its losses and damages relating to the infringing recording but believes them to be substantial. Sony Music U.K. said it would not be commenting whilst the legal case is ongoing.
As the author of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), I am thrilled with the benefits it has provided music creators and music streaming services. Rarely does Congress come together in a bipartisan, bicameral way to respond to a market problem with a comprehensive, collaborative and business-driven solution.
The bill updated copyright law for the digital generation, and the cornerstone of the legislation — the creation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) — has been a shining example of an industry working together to solve major market challenges. However, recent attempts by streaming services to redefine the original intent of the statute, to benefit themselves, are concerning and must be corrected.
The MLC was created to solve a massive music industry problem. Streaming services often failed to find the correct copyright owners and therefore held on to large sums of money owed to songwriters and music publishers. This both kept earnings from rightful owners and also opened streaming services up to large amounts of liability — from which lawsuits were piling up, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars. Both sides had a major incentive to find a better way forward.
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Along with my colleague, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), I authored a bill to establish a company that would be funded by the digital streaming companies, and governed by copyright owners, which would receive all of the streaming mechanical money owed and then distribute that money based on copyright ownership. The company would also operate a first-of-its-kind public database so that song ownership information would be more transparent than ever.
To create the MLC, the U.S. Copyright Office held an impartial designation period where anyone could campaign to run the company. A coalition representing the vast majority of the music publishing and songwriting industry came together and was selected.
In five short years, the MLC was activated and is now a towering example of success. It has distributed over $2 billion in royalties to publishers and songwriters. It has a match rate of over 90%. It operates the most accurate, open database of music rights information in the world.
Crucially, as the MLC is responsible for ensuring accurate payments to its songwriter and publisher members, the MMA made clear that it not only has the authority but is mandated to enforce the rights of its members if it determines any streaming service is not reporting or paying properly. Most recently, the MLC was forced to litigate against Pandora for underpaying royalties.
Unfortunately, this has led DiMA, which represents the major streaming companies and has a seat on the MLC’s board, to attempt to reinterpret the original intent of the MMA. They are pushing the misguided idea that the MLC was meant to be “neutral” when it comes to enforcing the rights of copyright owners. Nothing could be further from our objective.
This definition of neutral is simply another way to take the voice away from those who have struggled to be heard when it comes to receiving what they are owed for their labors. This was never the intent.
Should the MLC not enforce and litigate when necessary to uphold the rights of its members, those members would have absolutely no recourse to defend their property rights. This notion of neutrality would make the MLC toothless and completely undermine the important role of the Collective. Allowing the MLC to dole out royalties is inextricable from its primary purpose of ensuring those royalties are correct.
It is a perversion of the legislation to attempt to convince current lawmakers that the MLC was meant to give equal weight to the opinions of the digital companies as the rights of songwriters. Of course, there is a massive incentive for DiMA and its membership to want the MLC to relinquish its role as enforcer of music creators’ copyrights. Billions of dollars in royalties are on the line.
The streaming services’ vision of a neutral MLC is not in line with the original intent of the MMA, and they know it because they were intimately involved in the lengthy negotiation of the language of the bill. The resulting legislation was fair and allowed for the collective and the courts to do their jobs when it comes to disputes.
The five-year milestone since the MMA was signed into law is an important time for reflection and refining. However, it is not a time to redefine the most important music legislation of our time.
Doug Collins is a lawyer and former Member of Congress representing Georgia’s Ninth Congressional District. He served as Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee as well as Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet. He introduced the Music Modernization Act along with the bill’s lead cosponsor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
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On Tuesday (June 11), the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) held its annual global music publishing summit at 3 West in New York. Boasting panels on a wide-ranging list of publishing hot topics, from fraud to film/TV synchronization, the one-day event featured executives from ABKCO, Rimas Publishing, Spirit Music Group, Warner Chappell, CD Baby, Pex and more.
One highlight of the day included the panel Opportunities Abroad: Maximizing Overseas Collection featuring Michael Simon (Harry Fox Agency), Alexander Wolf (SESAC International), David Alexander (MusicIndustry.Africa), Mark Chung (Freibank Music Publishing, IMPF) and Tomas Ericsson (AMRA).
During the panel, the experts, who hail from around the world, discussed the increasingly globalized music market, which regions hold the most value and how to maximize that value. “It can’t be like it was in the 90s,” said Simon. “Back then the answer was to sit back and wait for checks to arrive in your mailbox — that world seems to be disappearing.”
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Some experts stressed the importance of leaning on sub-publishers with local knowledge to ensure proper collections. Ericsson, whose company AMRA collects digital royalties on a worldwide basis, explained that using AMRA can also be a solution to pain points in collection worldwide because “the majority of societies do not have the capital incentives to invest in better technology and therefore use whatever means they have to process this money to others.”
“My bet is on Asia,” said Wolf of the region with the most untapped potential for publishers. “They’re knowledgeable, and they’re making money… Africa as a continent is more troubled. Countries like Nigeria are especially great countries, great musicians but in the last thirty years, Nigeria had seven different collection societies. There is value there, but we need patience.”
The AIMP event coincided with what’s known as New York Music Month (NYMM) — a collection of events across the five boroughs to support the city’s local music scene. Though the festivities continue throughout the entire month, the bulk of NYMM events happen the week of June 10-15. In the publishing business, the annual gathering is fondly known as “Publishers’ Week” or “Songwriters’ Week” in reference to events like AIMP, the National Music Publishers’ Association’s annual meeting and the Songwriters Hall of Fame — all of which take place in the same five-day period. Others also call it “Indie Week,” a reference to the Association of American Independent Music’s five-day conference of the same name.