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Fifty years ago, Steven Gaines, a New York Sunday News rock ‘n’ roll newspaper columnist, lined up to ask the Beatles‘ John Lennon a question during a press event for the musical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band On the Road. Gaines blurted out, “Hi, John, does seeing Sgt. Pepper’s being made into an off-Broadway show make you feel old?” Lennon responded acerbically: “I don’t need that to make me feel old, mate. Next!”
It was a humiliating moment for Gaines, and he wandered off. Peter Brown, the Beatles‘ former day-to-day manager and president of the Robert Stigwood Organization, which produced the show, noticed Gaines’ dejection, invited him to talk in a nearby lounge, and the pair became lifelong friends. Later, using Brown’s connections, the duo spent much of 1980 recording exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Beatles insiders such as Apple Corps’ Neil Aspinall and publisher Dick James. The transcripts became the basis for their 1983 best-seller The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles.
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Reading like a “paperback pulp novel,” as Rolling Stone declared, the book contains revelatory allegations such as Lennon’s brief sexual relationship with the Beatles’ late manager, Brian Epstein, and Lennon and Ono’s journey through heroin addiction. When the book came out, McCartney burned it in his fireplace, and his late wife, Linda, photographed the destruction. Now that Brown and Gaines have released the full transcripts from those 1980 interviews in a new book, All You Need Is Love: The Beatles In Their Own Words, which is out now, Gaines tells Billboard by phone from his East Hampton, N.Y., home that the first book may have been “polarizing,” but it’s based on talks with reliable — and comfortable — sources such as a jovial, weed-smoking McCartney.
Billboard: Why put this book out now, 41 years after the publication of The Love You Make?
Steven Gaines: I had the tapes in a bank vault for 40 years while we tried to figure out what to do with them. I wanted there to be full access to the tapes for historians, for the public. Peter and I, getting up in years, decided we had to make a decision now. Publishers were interested. We didn’t do it for the money, because there’s not a huge amount of money involved.
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My favorite detail in the book is “Dalí’s coconut” — a $5,000 gift Lennon commissioned for Starr in which the surrealism master Salvador Dalí created what appeared to be half a coconut lined with a sponge and “a long, curly black hair that he’d plucked from his mustache, he claimed, although I had my suspicions,” as Brown writes in the book.
A young man working for the Beatles in New York, Arma Andon, came in from America, because Dalí wanted to be paid in cash, and you couldn’t bring cash, especially in American dollars, out of England. He went out with Peter Brown and Dalí and his wife Gala to dinner. When it was over, Salvador Dalí asked Arma Andon if he’d like to go with him to a whorehouse. We didn’t put that in the book because it had nothing to do with the Beatles.
The other weird thing was … the hair in the coconut. We don’t know if Dalí got that from his mustache or his pubic hair. John wanted so badly to give Ringo something special, because Ringo felt so maligned and [like] such an outsider and they didn’t appreciate his drumming. When Peter showed it to John, they wet the hair, and the hair curled up, or straightened out, or — I forget what it did. John loved it so much. I forget what they gave Ringo instead. Ringo never knew about the coconut.
I was surprised at the bluntness of your questions, especially to McCartney: “Rock ‘n’ roll bands had a reputation for being bad on the road, like tying groupies to bedposts and f—– them with a fish. But you guys were supposed to be celibate.”
It was one of the things I always wondered about. They were always painted as such angels. Then, of course, there was Hamburg [where the Beatles performed in Germany in the ’60s] and all the hookers. It really shocked me that Paul said there were lots of girls on the road. Why hadn’t any of them come forward?
Paul invited me and Peter to his house in Sussex for the weekend. Paul whispered to me, “Do you smoke grass?” I said, “Not since I’ve been here.” He said, “I’m not allowed to smoke in the house because of the kids and because I’ve been arrested. Let’s go out in my car and we’ll drive around and smoke a joint.” We got into his Mini, the fanciest Mini I’d ever seen. He put one joint on the dashboard of the car.
Then the second joint fell down around the windshield-wiper defroster slot. Paul said, “Oh, no, no, no, they’ll find it, they’ll pull me over for a ticket, and Linda, and they’ll find it! We’ve got to get it out of there.” So we pulled over to the side of the road. We opened up both the doors to the car. He got some screwdrivers out of the bonnet and we started unscrewing the dashboard. His neighbors were walking down the street: “Having car trouble, Mr. McCartney?” “Oh, no, that’s OK, that’s fine, thank you very much.” We never found the joint. We screwed everything back together.
That was my experience in the interview: He was really shockingly forthcoming.
For decades, Yoko Ono was said to have broken up the Beatles, but the studio footage in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back suggests it was really about business — particularly regarding Allen Klein, whom Lennon wanted to hire as manager, while McCartney and others disagreed. All You Need Is Love indicates all these reasons are true, and others as well.
The first thing was that Brian [Epstein] died. He was the glue that held the Beatles together. Then the guys were getting tired of each other. They couldn’t go out on the street, they were the most famous people on earth, everything they did, every gesture, everything they said, was blown up, and they could only see each other, and it created tremendous tension.
If the feelings behind them weren’t so bad, they maybe would have solved those financial problems. There is a moment in Get Back when John and Yoko go over to speak with Peter Brown. Peter says, “Allen Klein is here,” and John and Yoko say, “Oh, when can we see him?” Peter says, “He’s at the Dorchester [Hotel in London], you can see Allen Klein tomorrow.” What they do behind everyone’s back is call the Dorchester and see him that night. And he brainwashes them. He made everything worse. He picked at all the scabs. He made the Beatles fight with each other.
How did you and Peter come up with this arrangement to write together?
In 1980, I was broke and down and out and unhappy and miserable in New York. He was living in Laguna Beach in a penthouse on a cliff. He said, “You’ve got to get out of New York. Stay here for a while.” It was glorious, and I said, “What about that book now?” He said, “Let’s write a proposal.” Then it exploded. We got $250,000 for the hardcover rights, $750,000 for the paperback rights. It went on and on until we had almost $2 million in advances. The problem was, it was too honest, it was too direct and the Beatles fans weren’t ready for it. But everybody’s grown up now. They’re ready for All You Need Is Love.
The 2024 IMS Ibiza conference began today (April 24) on the event’s namesake island electronic music mecca. The conference’s program includes three days of talks on multiple facets of the electronic music business, including streaming, labels, AI, wellness, the island clubbing economy and much more.
As is tradition, IMS started today with an introduction from the event’s founders, including BBC Radio legend Pete Tong, followed by the presentation of the annual IMS Business report, which looks at the trends, growth sectors and general health of the global electronic music industry.
Marking its tenth edition this year, the report was authored by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan and is available here. Generally, the 2024 report found significant growth areas along with a higher year over year valuation of the industry as a whole. It also offered insights on the general music industry landscape, stating that “after a slower 2022, the global recorded music market returned to strong growth in 2023, up 10%.”
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These are ten key findings from the 2024 report.
1. Spotify Gained Market Share, But Totaled Less Than a Third of The Global Streaming Market
The global streaming market currently has a whopping 713.4 million total subscribers, with this subscriber base growing by 14.4% between the third quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023. This equates to 90 million added subscribers, which is 6.5 million more subscribers than were added over the same period a year earlier.
The report finds that Spotify remained the largest DSP, increasing its global share to 32% in the third quarter of 2023. Tencent Music Entertainment remained the third largest, overtaking Amazon Music in the third quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Chinese platform NetEase Cloud Music also had strong growth and helped contribute to significant growth for the whole of the Chinese streaming market.
2. Revenues Grew Strongly Across The Industry, Especially In the Live Sector
Revenues of 15 of the world’s biggest music companies – across labels, publishers, DSPs and the live sector – grew by 18% in 2023, for a total value of $75.9 billion. “While less than the post-lockdown boom growth of 2022,” the report states, “this is still strong.”
2023’s largest growth sector was live, a function of the fact that “lingering pent-up lockdown interest fostered increased demand, and tickets were both more expensive and sold in larger quantities.” The growth of live was followed by growth of DSPs, which grew by 16% over the last year.
3. Major Labels Dominated, But Lost Market Share To New-Generation Labels
While record labels across the board experienced strong growth in 2023, “non-majors grew the fastest.” More specifically, major labels grew by 7% overall in 2023, with the publicly traded non-majors like HYBY and Believe growing by 17%. Additionally, 57% of HYBE’s revenue was in non-recorded products, compared to 23% for WMG.
“HYBE and Believe grew the fastest,” the report states, “representing the spearhead of a new generation of record labels that pursue revenue streams closely aligned with the dynamics of today’s fan and creator centered music business.”
4. The Top 10 Markets For Electronic Music As Determined By Monthly Spotify Listeners Are:
Germany
United States
Australia
United Kingdom
Brazil
India
Mexico
South Africa
Canada
France
Per the report, Australia is a standout on this list, as the country has 10 times more electronic music listeners than the entire country has people. (In the United States, this ratio is closer to 1:1.) Mexico, India and Brazil represent the newer wave of global electronic music markets, with listener numbers smaller than each country’s total population, which suggests that electronic music culture is still securing a foothold in these territories.
South Africa is also a standout, with nearly twice as many electronic listeners as people. The country’s strong listening figures, the report says, “reflect the degree to which South Africa has built its own electronic scenes and culture.”
5. Electronic Music’s Online Fandom Surged In 2023, Outperforming Other Genres
The genre gained significant followers across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Spotify, and saw vastly more follower growth than rock, hip hop and Latin. This online expansion saw electronic’s following surpass that of rock on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Meanwhle, while hip-hop remains the dominant streaming genre, electronic is getting closer to the stream counts of Latin and rock.
6. Ibiza Clubs Are Still Booming Post-Pandemic
Clubs on the island continued their post-pandemic rebound, with Ibiza club ticketing revenue reaching €141 million (approximately $150 million) in 2023, up 14% from 2022 and 76% from 2019. “The strength of demand,” the report states, “was illustrated by the fact that average ticket prices increased from €44 in 2022 to €51 in 2023.”
In 2019, total ticket revenue across clubs on the island was €80 million ($85 million), with an average of 123 events per venue over the course of the season. In 2023, ticket revenue was €141 million ($150 million), with 147 events per venue.
7. Tech House Remained The Most Popular Dance Genre on Beatport
Like last year, tech house was the digital download platform’s most popular genre. This year, Afro House shot up from being in the 18th spot in the first quarter of 2022 to the ninth spot in the third quarter of 2023. The report notes that this rise “coupled with the rise of South Africa as a leading Spotify market for electronic music, further points to the rising importance of sub-Saharan Africa in electronic music culture.
Beatport’s ten most popular electronic subgenre’s overall were:
Tech House
House
Techno (peak/driving)
Melodic House & Techno
Drum & Bass
Dance/Electro Pop
Deep House
Minimal/Deep Tech
Progessive House
Afro House
8. SoundCloud Maintained Its Position As a Home For Electronic Music
Electronic music genres grew by 24% on SoundCloud in 2023, the second successive year this has happened. The platform is forecasted to have at least another 10% growth of the genre, with the report stating that “SoundCloud is both consolidating and expanding its long-term position as one of the global homes of electronic music fan communities.”
9. There’s an Apparent Perception Gap Regarding The Industry’s Gender Equality Advancements
In a survey of members of the Association For Electronic Music and IMS delegates, 82% of respondents said that the industry was doing well on gender issues related to diversity of lineups and employees. But a survey of male, female and gender expansive industry members found that women and gender expansive creators were more likely than men to be “interrupted, excluded, questioned and judged unfairly.”
Additionally, a tendency among women to undervalue their contributions is reflected in a industry pay gap, with women creators nearly twice as likely as men to discover they are being paid less than their peers in the same or similar roles.
10. The Global Electronic Music Industry Was Worth $11.8 Billion In 2023
Particularly significant growth happened in festivals and clubs, with this sector representing nearly half of the industry total. Recording and publishing were also significant contributors, with music hardware and software making up the next biggest segment — around a quarter of total — although growth in this hardware and software sector was relatively slow in 2023.
Given this $11.8 billion valuation, the report states that “the global dance music business is now firmly in its post-pandemic growth phase.”
Universal Music Group is betting big on French-speaking Africa, announcing a new partnership on Wednesday with Wèrè Wèrè Music founder Binetou Sylla to lead Def Jam Africa‘s efforts in the rapidly growing music market. Working with Universal Music France and Capitol France, Sylla and her team will focus on discovering and producing French-speaking artists in […]
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday night that would force TikTok’s China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that’s expected to face legal challenges and disrupt the lives of content creators who rely on the short-form video app for income.
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The TikTok legislation was included as part of a larger $95 billion package that provides foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and was passed 79-18. It now goes to President Joe Biden, who said in a statement immediately after passage that he will sign it Wednesday.
A decision made by House Republicans last week to attach the TikTok bill to the high-priority package helped expedite its passage in Congress and came after negotiations with the Senate, where an earlier version of the bill had stalled. That version had given TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, six months to divest its stakes in the platform. But it drew skepticism from some key lawmakers concerned it was too short of a window for a complex deal that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.
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The revised legislation extends the deadline, giving ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, and a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress. The bill would also bar the company from controlling TikTok’s secret sauce: the algorithm that feeds users videos based on their interests and has made the platform a trendsetting phenomenon.
TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday night.
The passage of the legislation is a culmination of long-held bipartisan fears in Washington over Chinese threats and the ownership of TikTok, which is used by 170 million Americans. For years, lawmakers and administration officials have expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data, or influence Americans by suppressing or promoting certain content on TikTok.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell said. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our U.S. government personnel.”
Opponents of the bill say the Chinese government could easily get information on Americans in other ways, including through commercial data brokers that traffic in personal information. The foreign aid package includes a provision that makes it illegal for data brokers to sell or rent “personally identifiable sensitive data” to North Korea, China, Russia, Iran or entities in those countries. But it has encountered some pushback, including from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the language is written too broadly and could sweep in journalists and others who publish personal information.
Many opponents of the TikTok measure argue the best way to protect U.S. consumers is through implementing a comprehensive federal data privacy law that targets all companies regardless of their origin. They also note the U.S. has not provided public evidence that shows TikTok sharing U.S. user information with Chinese authorities, or that Chinese officials have ever tinkered with its algorithm.
“Banning TikTok would be an extraordinary step that requires extraordinary justification,” said Becca Branum, a deputy director at the Washington-based Center for Democracy & Technology, which advocates for digital rights. “Extending the divestiture deadline neither justifies the urgency of the threat to the public nor addresses the legislation’s fundamental constitutional flaws.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who voted for the legislation, said he has concerns about TikTok, but he’s also worried the bill could have negative effects on free speech, doesn’t do enough to protect consumer privacy and could potentially be abused by a future administration to violate First Amendment rights.
“I plan to watchdog how this legislation is implemented,” Wyden said in a statement.
China has previously said it would oppose a forced sale of TikTok, and has signaled its opposition this time around. TikTok, which has long denied it’s a security threat, is also preparing a lawsuit to block the legislation.
“At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, wrote in a memo sent to employees on Saturday and obtained by The Associated Press.
“This is the beginning, not the end of this long process,” Beckerman wrote.
The company has seen some success with court challenges in the past, but it has never sought to prevent federal legislation from going into effect.
In November, a federal judge blocked a Montana law that would ban TikTok use across the state after the company and five content creators who use the platform sued. Three years before that, federal courts blocked an executive order issued by then-President Donald Trump to ban TikTok after the company sued on the grounds that the order violated free speech and due process rights.
The Trump administration then brokered a deal that had U.S. corporations Oracle and Walmart take a large stake in TikTok. But the sale never went through.
Trump, who is running for president again this year, now says he opposes the potential ban.
Since then, TikTok has been in negotiations about its future with the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a little-known government agency tasked with investigating corporate deals for national security concerns.
On Sunday, Erich Andersen, a top attorney for ByteDance who led talks with the U.S. government for years, told his team that he was stepping down from his role.
“As I started to reflect some months ago on the stresses of the last few years and the new generation of challenges that lie ahead, I decided that the time was right to pass the baton to a new leader,” Andersen wrote in an internal memo that was obtained by the AP. He said the decision to step down was entirely his and was decided months ago in a discussion with the company’s senior leaders.
Meanwhile, TikTok content creators who rely on the app have been trying to make their voices heard. Earlier Tuesday, some creators congregated in front the Capitol building to speak out against the bill and carry signs that read “I’m 1 of the 170 million Americans on TikTok,” among other things.
Tiffany Cianci, a content creator who has more than 140,000 followers on the platform and had encouraged people to show up, said she spent Monday night picking up creators from airports in the D.C. area. Some came from as far as Nevada and California. Others drove overnight from South Carolina or took a bus from upstate New York.
Cianci says she believes TikTok is the safest platform for users right now because of Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by the tech giant Oracle.
“If our data is not safe on TikTok,” she said. “I would ask why the president is on TikTok.”
Spotify’s stock jumped as much as 17.3% on Tuesday (April 23) following the company’s first-quarter earnings report showed the company is starting to deliver better profits and margins. The share price closed at $303.49, up 11.5%, after reaching a new 52-week high of $319.30 earlier in the day.
Investors’ expectations for future quarters often drive large swings in stock prices when a company delivers results for past quarters. For Spotify, cost-cutting and newfound financial discipline are expected to produce tangible results next quarter. The company’s guidance for second quarter operating income of 250 million euros ($268 million) was well ahead of Guggenheim analysts’ estimate of 179 million euros ($192 million) and JP Morgan’s estimate of 199 million euros ($213 million), and was a vast improvement from the 247 million euro ($264 million) operating loss in the second quarter of 2023. Gross margin guidance of 28.1% far exceeded Guggenheim’s estimate of 26.6% and JP Morgan’s estimate of 26.9% and would be nearly four percentage points above the prior year period’s 24.3% gross margin.
First-quarter results often exceeded Spotify’s guidance from three months ago. Revenue of 3.63 billion euros ($3.9 billion) slightly topped the high end of guidance of 3.6 billion euros. Gross margin of 27.6% was more than a percentage point above guidance of 26.4%, although operating income of 168 million euros ($180 million) was under guidance of 180 million euros ($192 million).
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Gross margin was 243 basis points — 2.43 percentage points — better than the 25.2% gross margin in the prior year period. Spotify said the improvement came from improved music and podcast profitability that was partially offset by costs from its growing audiobooks business. Operating income was impacted by 82 million euros ($89 million) in social charges and was helped by lower personnel costs and marketing spending.
“We consider this a real trend” rather than the result of one-off events, said interim CFO Ben Kung during Tuesday’s earnings call when asked by an analyst what to expect from margin growth for the remainder of 2024.
Although Spotify didn’t surpass forecasts for subscriber growth, it met expectations and generated more revenue, on average, from each paid customer. Average revenue per user improved 5% to 4.55 euros ($4.94) thanks to price increases in July 2023. Total monthly active users of 615 million was slightly below Spotify’s guidance of 618 million, but the 239 million subscribers matched the company’s forecasts.
“It is really a new Spotify, and we are being relentless resourceful in all of our costs,” CEO Daniel Ek said during Tuesday’s earnings call. Second-quarter margins were helped by decreases in streaming delivery costs and other costs of revenue, Ek explained. The podcast segment, which was a drag on profitability in 2023, is expected to be profitable in 2024, he added.
The longtime knock against Spotify was it had a great product but wasn’t a great business. The economic demands of music streaming, which require Spotify to pay music rights holders most of its revenue, left little for R&D, marketing, salaries, and general and administrative expenses. Although the company has amassed more than 600 million monthly users — 239 million of them paid subscribers — it has been perpetually unprofitable.
Spotify’s fortunes began to change in 2023 after the company knuckled down, laid off 17% of its global workforce in December and jettisoned many high-priced, celebrity podcast deals — namely parting ways with Price Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Studio and striking a non-exclusive deal with the previously exclusive-to-Spotify The Joe Rogan Experience.
If it’s possible, Record Store Day was even bigger this year than last year, when Taylor Swift caused a traffic jam at record stores across the nation, according to some of the merchants Billboard’s Retail Track columnist visited this past Saturday (April 20).
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This year, the Olivia Rodrigo “Stick Season”/Noah Kahan “Lacy” seven-inch was cited as the hottest seller by store managers and owners, but overall, a wider breadth of releases drove more traffic into stores, according to Rough Trade store manager George Flanagan.
Other big sellers — or records that the retailers wished they had more copies of — included Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” seven-inch; the Sparks/Noël double LP No. 1 Song in Heaven/Is There More to Life Than Dancing?; Talking Heads‘ Live at WCOZ double LP; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” seven-inch; and a 12-inch featuring David Byrne‘s cover of “Hard Time” and Paramore‘s cover of “Burning Down The House.”
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This year, Swift issued The Tortured Poets Department on Friday, the day before Record Store Day (RSD), and it has so far sold an astounding 1.5 million records in its first three days of availability. But independent record store merchants say that while the album was a solid seller for the weekend, this album didn’t have the impact that Swift’s exclusive for last year’s RSD, Folklore: the Long Pond Studio Sessions. That’s because this year’s album was widely available at mass merchants, Amazon, and on her website, and at sale prices just a little bit above their wholesale cost. Nevertheless, retailers say they will always warmly welcome any new release by Swift.
Retail Track began the day at Darkside Records in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where at 9:15 — 15 minutes after the store opened — there were some 250 people waiting in line for their turn to enter the store. Letting customers in 15 to 20 at a time, the line — which lasted until nearly 6:30 p.m. on Saturday — stretched around the 9,000-square-foot store and deep into the filled-to-capacity parking lot. The first person in line showed up at 8 p.m. Thursday (April 18), according to Darkside co-owner Justin Johnson, who added that when he showed up to open the store on Friday morning (April 19), a full day before Record Store Day kicked off, there were already four people queued up.
“It was absolutely an incredible turnout. Everyone was really cool and we had a great time,” Johnson told Billboard. “It was our best day ever and it blew away last year’s Record Store Day, which up to then had been our best day ever.”
What’s more, one woman drove 11 hours from Michigan to shop at Darkside because of how the store had handled the autographed Taylor Swift CD last year, she told Johnson. “[She] wanted to support us for treating the Swifties so fairly and combating the bots,” Johnson said. And she showed up early enough at the store to be No. 10 in line, he added.
After leaving Darkside, Retail Track drove over the Hudson River to Middletown, N.Y. to visit Rock Fantasy, a record store/pinball machine/video game arcade. Open since 1985, Rock Fantasy leans hard rock/metal, but owner Stephen Keeler said the Rodrigo/Kahan single was the day’s top seller. He added that about 30 customers were in line when he showed up to open the store. Moreover, he says the store celebrated Record Store Day/420 by staging two shows on successive nights at Quinnz Pinz, the local bowling alley where he promotes shows. The weekend kicked off with a Grateful Dead tribute band, Gratefully Yours, on Friday night; while on Saturday night, Kiss tribute band Psycho Circus performed. On the afternoon of Record Store Day, Rock Fantasy held a pinball tournament in the store.
Some of the 250 music fans waiting on line for their turn to shop Darkside Records—a store logo displayed about the tent structures.
Ed Christman
Rock Fantasy’s layout is long and narrow, almost like a railroad apartment with five or six rooms. Besides the records, tchotchkes and other music memorabilia it sells in the front two rooms, the store also houses 53 pinball machines and a few vintage video games. Customers can choose to play on machines featuring Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Kiss, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, the Beatles, Elton John, the Rolling Stones and Guns & Roses, as well as machines licensed from movies like Jaws, Pulp Fiction, Godzilla, OO7 and Jurassic Park.
Heading back to the other side of Hudson, Retail Track tried a little potluck with a store called The Vinyl Room in Beacon, N.Y. While it turned out to be more of a bar and restaurant than a record store, it was nevertheless a fun place to visit. The space had only two racks of vinyl, mainly used records, but the store’s interior design, which used records and other music memorabilia and ornamentation, more than made the trip worth it.
Across the street, at the local VFW Hall, was the Beacon Record & CD Fest, a swap meet with about a dozen vendors where Retail Track lucked out by scoring a copy of the Tommy James & The Shondells single “Gingerbread Man” on Roulette Records.
Staying on the same side of the Hudson, Retail Track next headed to Cold Springs, N.Y. and visited Half Moon Records at The Shoppes, an emporium-style setup with a number of different rooms and stores. Half Moon, which comprised the front two rooms of The Shoppes, was filled with records. One of the co-owners, Peter Hamboussi, said the store had just doubled the space devoted to records about a month ago; while co-owner Nicole Le Blanc said the store hopes to build its country music inventory. Like other merchants, Hamboussi said he wished he had received more copies of the Byrne and Paramore record, as well as the Cranberries. He said he usually does good business on Record Store Day later in the afternoon, as devout music buyers continue on their crawls.
Finally, Retail Track headed back to New York City to visit Rough Trade Records, which had a line of about 100 people when the store opened, including customer George West, who was first in line at about 5 p.m. on the Friday night prior. West is usually first in line every year at the store for the event, reported Rough Trade’s Flanagan, who added that by 8 p.m. on Friday, five people had queued up. The line lasted all day Saturday until about 5:30 p.m., when the store stopped regulating the in-flow. Nevertheless, when Retail Track showed up at around 6 p.m., the store was jam-packed and still doing brisk business.
Rough Trade and Rockefeller Center presented Indie Plaza in conjunction with Record Store Day, where eight bands and DJs entertained music fans, Rough Trade customers, and tourists from 1PM to 9PM. Pictured above is the Rough Trade booth, stocked with records and next to it is the artist merch booth selling wares from the bands. In the background, on the stage, Armand Hammer are working their way through their set.
Ed Christman
Another factor boosting traffic and sales at Rough Trade on Saturday was that it hosted Indie Plaza in Rockefeller Center, in the vast open space above the skating rink. During the day, DJs and bands alternated playing on a stage erected at the end of the plaza abutting 50th Street, keeping the crowd entertained until 9 p.m. Rough Trade set up a booth filled with music, while next to it was another booth with merch from the bands performing that day to sell to the fans enjoying the shows. Dave The Spazz, Sunrisa Disco, and Nancy Whang took turns helming the DJ booth in between sets by Cloud Nothings, Dehd, Armand Hammer, Glitterer, Sunny War, Corridor, Snõõper and Wishy.
“Last year, Record Store Day was our best day ever and it’s worth noting that Taylor Swift was a huge part of our business that day,” Flanagan said. “I was convinced we wouldn’t be able to top that, but we did; we were up by 5% to 10% more. I think one of the reasons why [2024 RSD] became the store’s best day ever is because there was something like 20% more titles out this year.”
For the last store visit of the day, the plan was to head back to home base of Astoria, Queens, to visit the semi-new Pancake Records on Steinway Street. But Retail Track ran out of gas (figuratively) and out of time (literally) — and the local bar with cold Pabst Blue Ribbon cans was beckoning.
Megan Thee Stallion and Roc Nation are facing a lawsuit from a cameraman who claims he was forced to watch her have sex with a woman inside a moving vehicle while she was on tour in Spain.
In a complaint filed Tuesday (April 23) in Los Angeles court, Emilio Garcia accused the superstar of subjecting him to a hostile work environment due to the alleged incident, which he says amounted to harassment that left him “embarrassed, mortified and offended.”
“After a night out, plaintiff Stallion and three other women were riding in a SUV together,” Garcia’s lawyers write in the lawsuit, obtained by Billboard. “Suddenly, Stallion and one of the other women start having sex right beside plaintiff. Plaintiff could not get out of the car as it was both moving and he was in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country.”
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Garcia claims that the day after the incident — which allegedly occurred in June 2022 near Ibiza, Spain — Megan told him, “Don’t ever discuss what you saw.” He says she then “berated him” and made “fat-shaming comments” towards him.
In the months following the alleged incident, Garcia claims that Roc Nation switched him from a monthly rate to a per-assignment arrangement. He says he also “noticed a change in how he was treated and saw a decrease in the number of bookings he received from Stallion.” In June 2023, he claims he was told that he was told that “his services would no longer be required.”
Beyond the allegations of a hostile workplace, Garcia also claims that Megan and Roc Nation violated California wage-and-hour laws by failing to fully pay him for the “myriad” tasks he performed for the superstar as her personal cameraman: “More than once, Stallion interrupted plaintiff during dinner and demanded that he immediately shift his focus to assist with her TikTok creative ideas.”
Despite his status as an independent contractor, Garcia claims that Megan effectively treated him like an employee. He says she repeatedly told him explicitly that he was “not allowed to service any other client other than herself.”
Notably, Garcia is represented by the same attorneys (Neama Rahmani and Ronald Zambrano) who filed a high-profile hostile workplace case against Lizzo on behalf of three of her backup dancers. Like the new case, that earlier lawsuit also features allegations that employees were forced to watch sex acts in a European country during an overseas tour.
A rep for Megan and Roc Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
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: Pharrell faces another trademark dispute, this time filed by Pink over the term “P.Inc”; Madonna is sued again by fans angry about delayed starts to her concerts; YoungBoy Never Broke Again is arrested again on new drug and gun charges; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Pink v. P.Inc
Another week, another trademark dispute for Pharrell Williams.Less than a month after his longtime friend and musical collaborator Chad Hugo accused him of wrongly trying to secure trademarks to their shared “Neptunes” name, the superstar was hit with a similar action from the singer Pink.The disputed trademark? The term “P.Inc,” which Pharrell’s lawyers applied to register last year as a federal trademark covering a wide range of advertising and business services. Pink’s lawyers say the term is so similar to her own stage name that it would confuse consumers who see it.Strangely enough, Pink is actually not the first trademark owner to complain about Pharrell’s trademark application. Last month, the application drew another opposition filing from a retail giant that’s used the term PINK for decades. For more, go read our full story here.
Other top stories this week…
MADONNA SUED AGAIN – Madonna and Live Nation were hit with another federal class action lawsuit over late starts to her concerts, this time filed by spurned Washington D.C. ticket buyers who are accusing her of showing “total disrespect for her fans” by forcing them to wait “hours for her performance in a hot, uncomfortable arena.” The case comes three months after Madonna was hit with a similar case in New York – a case that she is currently seeking to have tossed out of court.YOUNGBOY ARRESTED – YoungBoy Never Broke Again (aka NBA YoungBoy) was arrested on new drug and weapons charges amid a years-long house arrest in Utah as he awaits trial on separate federal gun charges. Local police say he ran a “large scale prescription fraud ring” aimed at purchasing codeine from area drug stores, using associates to illicitly buy the pharmaceuticals under a real doctor’s name. Federal prosecutors, who had already accused the rapper of breaking the terms of his house arrest, quickly moved to revoke his pre-trial release altogether.MOTOWN LEGEND FIRES BACK – Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr. fired back after being named as a defendant in an ugly legal battle pitting his son against a former business advisor and romantic partner, calling it a “craven, desperate, and disgusting attempt” to “shake down” his family.
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Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr. is caught up in an ugly legal battle pitting his son against a former business advisor and romantic partner – a lawsuit he says is a “craven, desperate, and disgusting attempt” to “shake down” his family.
In a filing Monday in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Gordy demanded that he be dismissed from the case, arguing that the legendary record executive had been unfairly dragged into the litigation to distract from “wanton acts of embezzlement” committed by his son’s accuser.
“Extortion—though illegal and highly unethical—is a powerful weapon,” wrote Gordy’s lawyers Christopher Frost and John D. Maatta. “Nowhere is that more true than here.”
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Gordy founded Motown in 1959, paving the way for the influential soul music sound that came to bear the same name. He eventually signed the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and Stevie Wonder and many others to the label, before selling it off to MCA in 1988.
His strongly-worded response on Monday came amid a back-and-forth legal dispute between his son, Kennedy Gordy (better known by his stage name Rockwell), and Anita Hawker Thompson, who previously served as the CEO of Kennedy’s company, Rockwell Entertainment Enterprises.
Kennedy’s company sued Thompson last year, claiming that he suffers from “psychological impairments” and that Thompson had abused her power over him to steal $1.7 million in royalty payments that had been paid to the company.
Last week, Thompson responded by filing her own scathing countersuit, accusing Kennedy of subjecting her to “physical, sexual, and psychological abuse” during a years-long romantic relationship. In it, she also named the elder Gordy as a defendant, claiming he knew about his son’s abusive conduct and “tried to cover it up.”
But in Monday’s filing, Gordy’s attorneys blasted Thompson’s allegations as “a falsified, unverified narrative” that was aimed at distracting from the fact that she had “illegally abused her position of trust over Kennedy.”
“The response of Ms. Thompson [is] a craven, desperate, and disgusting attempt to further shake-down the Gordy family and to attempt to manufacture a fabricated claim to conveniently offset the claim for theft and conversion that she is facing — to which she has no legitimate legal or factual defense,” Berry’s attorneys write.
In her lawsuit last week, Thompson’s attorneys included pages of disturbing allegations of “intimate partner violence,” including that Kennedy “beat, kicked, punched, and raped” her and then used “threats of violence and deportation to secure her silence.” But in his response Monday, the attorneys for the elder Gordy say that those “fabricated events” could only have plausibly taken place in the 1980s – well past the statute of limitations for bringing them to court.
“Ms. Thompson and her counsel, well-aware that the fabrications complained of occurred over thirty years ago, do not mention any dates when the fabricated wrongs are alleged to have taken place,” Gordy’s lawyers write.
Attorneys for both Thompson and Kennedy did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday.
Poems Publishing is just getting started, but the idea of the company has been in the making for over a decade. The new boutique publisher, based out of a midcentury modern house in Encino, Calif., was founded by a team of executives from all areas of the publishing business. Stefan and Jordan Johnson, who found Grammy-winning success as the writing/production duo The Monsters & Strangerz (Maroon 5’s “Memories”; Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart”; Justin Bieber’s “Ghost”), always wanted to start a publishing company with their brother, Christian, a former vp of A&R at Big Deal Music and Hipgnosis. But for the past decade, they had been waiting for the right situation to come along.
That situation finally materialized a few years ago when the brothers discussed their aspirations with Mega House Music’s co-founders David Silberstein and Jeremy Levin, who have managed The Monsters and Strangerz for about 10 years. Together, the group teamed up with Mega House president Haley Evans and manager Laura Higbee to launch Poems with the goal of offering high-touch service and creative mentorship in fair deals that “everyone can feel good about,” says Jordan.
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The company started slowly with the signing of one emerging singer-songwriter, Ella Boh, two years ago. Now, Poems is ready to expand. With a current roster of four — Boh, as well as Jack LaFrantz, Isiah Tejada and Jackson Foote — and an exclusive administration deal with Kobalt, Poems is seeing success with Benson Boone’s current Billboard Pop Airplay No. 1 “Beautiful Things,” which was co-written by LaFrantz (who is administered through a prior deal with Position Music), and “Love On” by Selena Gomez which was co-written and co-produced by Tejada (along with Stefan and Jordan).
“It’s really validating for us as a new publishing company,” says Silberstein of his writers’ recent breakthroughs. “It’s great to have songs at radio, performed by artists we love. It just makes us hungry for more. We’re trying to stack up those BMI and ASCAP awards.”
Why did it feel like this was the right time and the right situation to start a new publishing company?
Silberstein: Over the last 15 years, we’ve had a number of people approach us about different ventures. The Monsters and Christian have as well. It just never felt right. About two or three years ago, we started talking with Stefan, Jordan, Christian, Haley and Laura about forming a publishing company. We learned from our vantage point as managers that there’s a lot of value in having creatives involved at the publishing company that can provide mentorship and feedback that some executives might not have. We also know that Christian had been wearing the publisher hat for years and had a lot of valuable experience there. Our thought was instead of trying to do it all independently of each other, we could pull it all together and try to offer the greatest creative service of all publishers. Our goal is to be the No. 1 creative service publishing company.
Jordan: It was always our plan to start a publishing company some day. We’ve been working with Mega House for 10 years now, and when we started talking about the idea with them, it felt right to have them as partners. It helps Stef and I stay in the studio. We needed other members on the team who weren’t stuck in sessions eight hours a day.
Stefan and Jordan, you have had plenty of success creatively, and as Jordan said, your creative process can take up easily eight hours a day already. Why did you want to get into the business side?
Jordan: We’ve been through deals ourselves and seen what it’s like to not get the best end of the deal. We thought it’d be great to create a company where we can help the next generation of writers with their goals and with deals everyone can feel good about. It’s great to be in a place now where our success is not all just predicated on us being in the studio and writing songs. We can have more impact.
Stefan: There are some producers and writers that have created publishing companies that will far outlast them as a producer and writer and continue to create opportunity and help people’s dreams come true. We really love seeing the impact that’s possible.
What songwriter- or producer-led companies do you admire?
Stefan: Prescription Songs [founded by Dr. Luke], MXM Music [founded by Max Martin], Nice Life [founded by Ricky Reed], Pulse [founded by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, Josh Abraham] — those are all amazing companies that provide amazing service. Some of them are even so big now that some people don’t realize that it started with one producer or writer.
Jordan: We love the idea of it feeling like an entity of its own. It’s not the Monsters’ publishing company. It’s a company that we are partners of, and we help in any way we can.
David and Jeremy, why was it important to have your longtime management clients as part of this founding team at Poems?
Levin: Having the Monsters on board is great. They can answer a lot of questions for whoever is signed to us from a creative perspective. They’re professionals in the truest sense of the word. Partnering with them was really natural and a great way to continue our relationship with them forever.
Silberstein: A lot of the places we are beginning to pitch songs to as songwriter managers are to the producers — when the producers have control or executive production credit on the project. The Monsters are just the highest echelon of producers and have access to top projects and also to all their peers of other great producers and great artists. It will bring great mentorship and opportunities for the roster.
All of you have creative and A&R backgrounds. What are you looking for in potential signees to build this roster?
Christian: We’re building a roster from scratch so the person side is important. You want to develop a community. The best thing that can happen is that you build your roster and the roster is its own self-sustaining thing. Where the writers are bringing each other into sessions and looking out for each other.
Levin: As a foundation for us, we want to have writers and producers across genres and with different skill sets so that we have diversity across the board.
Silberstein: When an opportunity comes in, we don’t want to be like, “Oh, we have five people for this.” Maybe just one or two. We want to build the right community within the publishing company so there’s no feeling of competition for the same things.
Jeremy and David, you have been managing songwriters and producers for over a decade. I often hear that managers end up picking up a lot of the creative and A&R work for publishers these days, especially when the A&Rs at the publisher have too many songwriters to keep up with. Did that prior experience help your transition to working as a publisher?
Silberstein: As managers, we always took the approach that, even though there are many incredible publishers, whatever the publisher did was going to be icing on the cake. We always had the mentality that as managers we would have to do it all, whether that’s setting up sessions, pitching songs — the things that publishers do. If we have a great publishing partner, that’s great, but we are going to service our clients regardless. We definitely take this mentality into our role as publishers now. We take this role super seriously because we’ve seen both the good and bad. There’s some incredible individual publishers who are just slapped with a 50-person roster, and it’s no fault of their own that they can’t service them fully.
Management companies that expand into publishing or records often sign whoever they manage to their new label or publisher. Do you plan to do this with your Mega House roster?
Levin: I don’t think there’s anything super wrong with that model, but it’s not something we’ve done a lot of. We try to keep them separate if we can.
Silberstein: We’ve found it’s the most impartial to represent somebody just as a manager and then try to help them negotiate a publishing deal with you as well.
You had a huge success recently with your signee Jack LaFrantz, who is the right-hand man for Benson Boone and co-wrote on his breakout hit “Beautiful Things.” What does this early win mean for Poems?
Silberstein: It’s really special for Poems, and I feel so proud and happy for Jack. It’s cool to see a writer as kind and talented as him have their first hit. It’s even cooler that Jack and Benson have been working together since Benson’s earliest days. They believed in each other through the years and stuck together.
Levin: Jack is so talented musically, and he’s one of those rare people that when you meet them you fall in love with them right away. He’s got a magnetic aura to him. The second we had a meeting with him, we knew he was great.
What’s the value of choosing a boutique, songwriter-led publisher like Poems over a large indie or major publisher?
Stefan: You can be at any one of the majors, and you can have a go-to person that’s really amazing. I don’t want to downplay what any one of the bigger publishers does, but with a boutique like us the engagement you’ll get is very high. We have more people on our team right now than we have writers because we want to provide the highest level of service, and we want to build our roster right. We’ve all been in the game long enough to know what a good and bad publisher does.
Jordan: Because of the way the team is rounded out, there’s always going to be somebody on the team who has the answer to a question or the expertise needed.
Christian: We will only grow very deliberately — that’s one of the words that we use frequently. When we sign, it is with intentionality, and songwriters can expect the service that comes with that.