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Warner Music Group announced over the weekend that it has called off plans to submit a binding offer to acquire French music company Believe. The label did not elaborate on its decision, only that it was made “after careful consideration.” Believe followed up in a statement, saying it will “review the situation with all interested […]
Morgan Wallen was arrested and jailed on Sunday night (April 7) in Nashville after the chart-topping country singer allegedly hurled a chair off the six-story roof of a popular bar on the city’s bustling Broadway street. On Monday morning (April 8), Billboard received a statement from Wallen’s attorney, Worrick Robinson of Worrick Robinson Law, confirming […]
GEMA’s revenue rose 8.4% in 2023, to €1.28 billion ($1.4 billion), the German collective management society (CMO) announced April 8, and for the second year in a row it will distribute more than a billion Euros to its members – €1.08 billion ($1.17 billion) to be exact. That income was offset by an expense ratio […]
Shares of Spotify jumped 17.6% to $310.31 this week on a report that the streaming giant will raise prices again in select markets as well as news that it named a new CFO, Christian Luiga, a former CFO and deputy CEO at European defense and security company Saab AB.
Spotify’s newfound willingness to both raise prices and control costs has given new life to its stock price after an expensive entry into podcasting caused a downturn in 2022. Through Friday (April 5), shares of Spotify have increased 65.2% year to date and 134.2% over the past 12 months. Not even Believe, up 57.1% in 2024 thanks to competing interests to acquire the company, has matched Spotify’s momentum this year. Sphere Entertainment has also enjoyed a boost on Wall Street since U2’s inaugural residency at the $2.3-billion Las Vegas venue, but its 37.7% gain in 2024 also lags behind Spotify.
For more than a decade, Spotify kept its subscription prices low and emphasized subscriber growth over profits. The market’s mood has shifted in recent years, though. Once satisfied with growth in user numbers, investors now want high-flying streaming companies to be profitable, too. Since Spotify announced a price increase on July 24, 2023, the share price has increased 89.5% and raised the company’s market capitalization by roughly $29 billion to $61.5 billion. The share price has gone up 71.7% since Spotify announced it would cut 16% of its staff on Dec. 4, 2023.
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This week, investors reacted to a Bloomberg report that Spotify is raising subscription prices in select markets and will pass another rate hike in the United States later this year. Following the news, Spotify gained 8.2% to $291.77 on Wednesday (April 3). Labels appeared to benefit, too: Universal Music Group rose 5.5% and Warner Music Group gained 5.8% on Wednesday following news of the price increase.
Rather than shy away from price increases in successive years, Spotify could have a unique ability to withstand higher prices compared to its peers. Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in an investor note on Thursday (April 4) that music is “broadly under-monetized” and the quality of Spotify’s product gives it “unique pricing power.” Guggenheim analysts wrote in a report on Wednesday that they believe the price increase could mean a “9% revenue impact” in the affected markets.
What’s more, the higher prices could help Spotify by improving its audiobook business. Spotify now gives subscribers in the United States and some other markets 15 hours of free audiobook streaming per month; users can also purchase additional listening time and buy audiobooks to keep. A recent Morgan Stanley survey revealed Spotify was used by 38% of audiobook listeners, second only to veteran audiobook platform Audible despite Spotify having launched audiobooks only a few months before the survey. “Audiobooks appear to be perhaps a larger revenue opportunity than podcasting based on this survey works and long-standing consumer price points for books,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.
The Billboard Global Music Index dropped 0.2% to 1,748.38 as nine of the index’s 20 stocks were winners, 10 were losers and one was unchanged. No company other than Spotify posted a double-digit increase, however, and three companies — iHeartMedia, Cumulus Media and Anghami — had double-digit declines.
Stocks were mixed globally this week. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite dropped 0.8% to 16,248.52 and the S&P 500 fell 1.0% to 5,204.34. The United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 fell 0.5% to 7,911.16. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.9% to 3,069.30. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index lost 1.2% to 2,714.21.
Music streaming company Anghami (NASDAQ: ANGH) was the biggest loser of the week after dropping 41.1% — it lost 44.5% on Wednesday alone — after OSN Group, a premium entertainment provider for the Middle East-North Africa region, acquired a 55.45% stake. The deal, first announced in November 2023, combines the Abu Dhabi on-demand music streaming service with a paid, on-demand video streaming platform that carries both Arabic and Turkish titles and content from Western brands such as HBO, Universal Pictures and Paramount.
On Wednesday (April 10), Music Forward Foundation’s All Access Fest is expecting roughly 1,200 students and young adults to enter the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles to learn all about the music industry.
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Launched in 2018, the music and live entertainment convention gives 16–24-year-olds the opportunity to meet professionals who work in the business and provides resources for those who want to pursue a career in it.
This year’s day-long event will feature panels, networking sessions, roundtables and exhibit booths with more than 100 industry professionals from entertainment companies including BMG, Snap Inc., Downtown Music, Live Nation, Concord, Ticketmaster, EMPIRE and many more.
Exhibitors for the 2024 edition will include AEG, Girls Make Beats, Universal Music Group, Los Angeles Film School, Lux Lighting, Inner City Arts and Belmont University. In addition to high school students, hundreds of post-secondary students from colleges including Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge, Carnegie Mellon University, Loyola Marymount University, NYU, Pepperdine University, UCLA, UC Irvine, UNLV, USC, Santa Monica College, and more are also expected to attend.
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The wide breadth of industry partners and experts at All Access is designed to give students — many of whom are coming from the Los Angeles, Compton, Inglewood and Centinela school districts — and other young people a greater understanding of all the possible employment opportunities in the music business, from artist to record label executive to lighting tech to costume handler.
“A lot of the kids, particularly in the demographics that we’re reaching, don’t know about these opportunities,” says Nurit Smith, executive director at Music Forward Foundation. “They don’t know the ecosystem. That’s why when we talk about live entertainment, we’re looking at touring from all different angles.”
Nurit Smith
Music Forward Foundation
Live entertainment is just one of many areas of expertise that All Access covers. The event can help give attendees an understanding of what it takes to be a touring musician or someone who makes those touring dreams a reality in a number of different capacities. To that end, promoters Insomniac Events and C3 Presents — which put on festivals like EDC and Austin City Limits, respectively — will have activations at the event, helping showcase the path to getting involved in that aspect of the industry.
After several years of virtual or hybrid events, Music Forward Foundation — a national non-profit in the Live Nation family — returned last year to a fully in-person convention, which Smith says made a huge impact coming out of the pandemic. The young people were a lot more eager for interpersonal connections rather than panels, so this year, the format “is being flipped on its head,” he explains.
“We’re gamifying this whole thing” with a scavenger hunt, Smith says. During the hunt, participants can have their resumes reviewed and will also be given the opportunity to meet three new people, have a new headshot taken and engage in additional activities that will help them experience different facets of the music industry and where their interests might align with a future career. “We really want to help them navigate this exciting and dynamic space that we’re creating and be very active in their learning,” Smith adds.
Additional happenings at the convention include an artist lounge for open mic sessions, artist wellness activities, an appearance from artist Blu DeTiger, A&R listening sessions and direct access to industry mentors.
While All Access Fest is only in its sixth year, Music Forward Foundation has been helping young people for more than three decades. The organization was established in 1993 as the International House of Blues Foundation in association with the famed House of Blues franchise. After House of Blues was acquired by Live Nation in 2006, the foundation became Music Forward as it expanded its reach and partnered with music entities far beyond the scope of its parent company. In its more than 30 years of work, the foundation has invested more than $42 million back into the music community and placed hundreds of young adults in paid positions.
While those numbers speak to the foundation’s ongoing efforts, Smith insists that All Access’ success is, in other ways, incalculable. “The success of supporting this next generation’s pathway will be the connective tissue in the partnerships that we all build together,” she says.
Registration for All Access Fest is free and open to young adults, regardless of school enrollment. In September, Music Forward will also host a virtual All Access Fest to reach more people globally.
Elected officials in Maryland are currently moving a ticketing reform bill titled SB0539 through the state legislature, with approval from both the House and Senate pending. The proposed law is a consumer protection bill aimed at the sale and resale of live event tickets that has been endorsed by the Recording Academy, National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), Eventbrite and more.
The current iteration of the bill would ban speculative ticketing (the practice of listing tickets on secondary sites before a reseller owns a ticket), as well as require ticketers to present “all in” pricing for consumers, meaning the full price of the ticket — including all fees — must be present in the price first shown to fans. The bill would pertain to concerts, theater shows and live sporting events.
Based on the bill’s language, resellers will have to provide the zone and seat number for non-general admission events. This would eliminate the common practice of resellers listing an unspecified seat and procuring a ticket — for a lesser price — once a consumer has purchased the “unspecified” seat from a secondary site. It would also reduce resellers’ ability to list generic tickets on resale sites before on-sale for the actual event has occurred.
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Audrey Fix Schaefer, vp of the board of directors and communications director for the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), tells Billboard that fans regularly search online for concert tickets for shows promoted by I.M.P. — where she also serves as communications director — and are directed to misleading secondary sites that mark up the price or offer tickets for events that haven’t yet gone on sale.
“It’s fraud,” she says. “It’s unregulated arbitrage that deceives fans into thinking that they have to overpay because they can’t get a ticket through us. They figure that it sold out when the tickets haven’t been put on sale.”
Fix Schaefer gives the example of Mitski’s upcoming tour, which will make two stops at I.M.P.’s Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., later this year. For those shows, $125 tickets were being advertised on secondary sites for $12,000 before the actual on-sale. “That’s obscene,” she says, and “there isn’t a single show [resellers] don’t do this on.”
The Maryland bill would also make it illegal for secondary ticketing platforms to provide a marketplace for the sale or resale of tickets that violate the law. If a consumer purchases a ticket that is counterfeit, canceled by the reseller or fails to meet its original description, the secondary platform would be responsible for paying the consumer back for the total amount paid, including any fees.
Making the platforms responsible for the refunds is “a huge win,” says Fix Schaefer, who notes that other consumer protection ticketing laws like the federal Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act tend to go after individual resellers who are harder to prosecute. Several states around the country are also looking to tackle unfair ticketing practices, including Arizona’s HB2040 (informally known as the “Taylor Swift bill”), which would make it illegal to use bots to purchase unauthorized amounts of tickets or circumvent electronic queues to skip lines ahead of waiting fans. But similar to the federal BOTS Act, the fines for violating these proposed laws would be borne by individuals — not the platforms.
Secondary ticketing platforms, Fix Schaefer adds, are “not going to want to take [the] hit for [resellers]…it’s like having a storefront where they know they’re selling illegal goods but they say, ‘Oh, I just rented that shelf out so somebody.’ No. You’re responsible.”
The Maryland bill would also mandate “all-in” ticket pricing — where consumers see the full price of the ticket, including fees, from the beginning of their transaction — and require those fees to be itemized so fans know where their dollars are going. Nathaniel Marro, managing director of NITO, explains that this portion of the bill will greatly benefit artists. “Artists have no capability of controlling the fees. They don’t make any money off those fees. They are going to the venue and the promoter and the ticketing company,” he says. “The artist wants those fees separated because when fans complain and get upset about how much tickets cost, the only people they are going to point to is the artist.”
Artists will also benefit from fans not spending their entire entertainment budgets on tickets alone. As Marro argues, most fans have a finite level of ancillary income and, if they are spending all or most of it on the ticket, that’s less money spent on music and merch, which goes directly to the performers they came to see.
While other measures, including a cap on resale prices and one that would have compelled secondary sites to identify resellers who are breaking the law, were stricken from the bill as it passed through the state legislature last month, a provision that remained was the commission of a study looking into ticketing practices. If the bill is passed, The Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Attorney General will conduct a review of how resellers are procuring their tickets, the price difference for fans on the primary versus secondary market, fraudulent tickets, the use of bots, what measures other states have enacted to protect consumers during the ticket buying process and more.
Fix Schaefer predicts that the study, which would be produced by the end of 2024, would succeed in bringing legislatures back to the table on measures like resale caps. “As they are gathering the facts and the data to see what kind of consumer deception and gouging occurs,” she says, “they will be left with a mission to come back and do more.”
There’s little doubt that TikTok drives the discovery of new and unfamiliar music. Exactly how much engagement it creates downstream — at on-demand music streaming platforms — is less clear.
It’s been roughly two months since Universal Music Group announced its decision to remove its catalog from TikTok after the companies’ licensing agreement ended on Jan. 31. To see if its absence from TikTok has hurt UMG’s streaming numbers, Billboard looked at Luminate’s weekly market shares for UMG, as well as for Sony Music and Warner Music Group, going back to the beginning of 2023.
The conclusion? Thus far, there’s no clear evidence that UMG’s U.S. market share has been affected by its catalog’s removal from the wildly popular platform. Since the week ended Feb. 8 through the week ended Mar. 28, UMG’s market share has not deviated from what could be considered normal trends. Importantly, the company has not suffered a major blow — either in market share or chart appearances — while absent from TikTok.
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In the eight weeks since TikTok started pulling UMG catalog following the lapse of their licensing agreement, UMG’s overall on-demand audio streaming market share (using a moving four-week average to smooth out fluctuations) dropped 1.8% — not 1.8 percentage points — from 38.72% to 38.02%. Most of that drop came from a 5.8% decline (from 34.42% to 32.43%) in market share of current (less than 18 months old) titles — an entirely normal fluctuation that reflects the ebbs and flows of any music company’s new release schedule. Since early 2023, the eight-week change in UMG’s current market share (again, using a moving four-week average) has dipped more than 5% five times. Sony Music experienced a 5% or greater decline six times. Warner Music Group saw it happen seven times.
Catalog (music over 18 months old) market share is less driven by music companies’ new release schedules but also tends to see small increases and decreases. In the eight weeks ended March 28, UMG’s catalog market share declined 0.8% (from 40.01% to 39.7%). That wasn’t atypical; WMG dropped 0.9% over the same period. Going back to the beginning of 2023, UMG’s catalog market share gained more than 1% six times and fell by more than 1% four times. UMG’s competitors saw their catalog market shares fluctuate by more than 1% more times than UMG.
Given the importance of on-demand audio streaming to record labels, a loss in market share would hit UMG in the pocketbook. In 2023, UMG’s record labels received about $6.17 billion in royalties from streaming, according to its 2023 annual report. Just a 5% decline in streaming revenue is worth over $300 million annually. TikTok, on the other hand, is a relatively small part of UMG’s business. The previous licensing deal with TikTok was worth about 1% of UMG’s annual revenue, CFO Boyd Muir stated in the company’s Feb. 28 earnings call — equal to $120 million annually based on 2023’s total revenue.
TikTok has a well-earned reputation for driving chart success for tracks — from Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” to Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” — by raising their profiles and creating downstream traffic at on-demand streaming services. A 2023 TikTok study conducted by Luminate found that higher TikTok engagement corresponds with elevated streaming volumes and that U.S. TikTok users are more likely than average consumers to both stream music and subscribe to a music streaming service. TikTok engagement went offline, too: The study found that 38% of TikTok users in the U.S. went to a show in the last 12 months and that 45% bought some merchandise — suggesting higher-than-normal levels of engagement with music.
But there’s evidence that TikTok is less valuable to music discovery than music streaming services that still offer UMG’s catalog. TikTok users who would potentially discover UMG’s music “still have a lot of ways to find new music and new artists in the absence of TikTok,” MusicWatch managing partner Russ Crupnick tells Billboard via email, “though admittedly it’s an important option.” MusicWatch has found that TikTok users are three times as likely to cite their favorite streaming service as the top source for music discovery as they are TikTok. And two-thirds of TikTok users say music streaming services are a source for hearing new songs and new artists; 49% of TikTok users cite TikTok as a favorite for finding new music.
Still, an absence from TikTok means UMG’s artists aren’t reaching young consumers where they spend much of their time. TikTok is an especially popular option for teens, notes MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano. A MIDiA survey of U.S. consumers found that 24% of all people surveyed listen to songs they first heard on TikTok on a monthly basis. That number jumps to 52% for 16-to-19-year-olds, and 55% of people in that age group say TikTok is one the top three places where they discover new music — ahead of YouTube (47%) and music streaming services (36%).
Looking at only streaming market share data does not capture the full picture, though. It’s entirely possible that UMG has been hurt by its absence from TikTok in other ways. If its catalog were available at TikTok, UMG could have had one or more out-of-left-field viral hits thanks to the unsolicited usage of its music by TikTok users. After all, TikTok can surface old music in expected ways.
What’s more, two months is also too little time to draw any grand conclusions. “The constant fluctuation in release schedules as well as the ever-evolving ways that consumers use social apps mean that it will be necessary to assess over a much longer timescale,” Chaz Jenkins, Chartmetric’s chief commercial officer, tells Billboard in an email. Additionally, Billboard examined market share in the U.S. only. Global market share data would tell a fuller picture.
Besides, some artists have found ways to work around the ban. As Billboard reported in February, artists are doing acoustic versions of songs, speeding up the recordings’ tempos and posting interviews to stay in front of their fans. “Artists impacted by this are just being more creative on TikTok about how they’re getting music out,” said Shopkeeper Management digital marketing manager Laura Spinelli.
For all of TikTok’s promotional value and ability to break hits, the app might be more of a silo than people think: MIDiA also found that 76% of consumers who said TikTok is a main source of music discovery don’t seek information on an artist after finding a song on the app. In other words, what happens on TikTok often stays on TikTok. Let’s see if the impact of UMG’s absence from the app will be just as contained.
Universal Music Group (UMG) is facing a lawsuit that claims a 1992 Mary J. Blige hit featured an unlicensed sample from a 1973 funk song that’s famous for being sampled in dozens of other tracks, including releases from Biggie and Tupac as well as a recent Doja Cat tune.
In a complaint filed Thursday (April 4) in Manhattan federal court, Tuff City Records accused Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) of copyright infringement over Blige’s “Real Love,” which spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. 7 on the chart.
The allegedly-copied song? “Impeach the President” by the Honey Drippers — a legendary piece of hip-hop source material with a drum track that’s also been sampled or interpolated by Run-DMC, Dr. Dre and many others. Most recently, it was featured in Doja Cat’s 2023 track “Can’t Wait.”
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In the complaint, Tuff City’s attorneys say they have “advised defendant repeatedly of the presence of the uncleared sample” in “Real Love” but that Universal has done nothing about it.
“Defendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate Plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis,” wrote Tuff City’s attorney Hillel Parness in the complaint.
Blige herself is not named in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing.
In a bizarre wrinkle, Tuff City claims that UMG Recordings — a subsidiary of UMG and the owner of the master to “Real Love” — has already reached an agreement regarding the use of the uncleared sample on the sound recording. But they say the music giant’s publishing arm has refused to do the same as it relates to the underlying composition.
“Defendant’s refusal to cooperate with plaintiff is difficult to reconcile with the fact that plaintiff reached an agreement with UMG Recordings,” Tuff City’s attorneys write.
Tuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation. Over the past fifteen years, the company has sued over tracks by Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean and others, typically alleging that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations.
That process has not always gone smoothly. In 2014, a judge dismissed a case over Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” on the grounds that any alleged sample was “barely perceptible” after multiple listens. In 2018, another judge ordered Tuff City to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees spent by Beastie Boys defending a case that was “clearly without merit.”
The new case is also not the first time Tuff City has sued over “Impeach the President.” Way back in 1991, the company sued Sony Music and Def Jam over claims that producer Marley Marl had illegally sampled the track on LL Cool J tracks “Around the Way Girl” and “Six Minutes of Pleasure.”
At the time, the lawsuit was a novel legal attack on sampling, which had long been at the core of hip-hop but had rarely involved paying for licenses or seeking authorization. In a 1992 article, the New York Times warned that Tuff City’s lawsuit over “Impeach the President” could fundamentally change hip hop, forcing rappers and producers to clear every element used in their albums — a formidable idea at the time.
“A single rap album can include dozens of samples, from single drumbeats to full musical phrases,” the New York Times article reads. “Finding the copyright owners, negotiating fees or royalties and gaining legal clearance is time consuming and can add tens of thousands of dollars to the production costs.”
Tuff City’s case eventually settled on confidential terms, but it proved to be a sign of things to come. In the years since, federal courts have ruled that nearly any amount of sampling of sound recordings counts as copyright infringement. As a result, labels and artists today attempt to clear almost any direct sampling in their songs and will typically remove those elements if a deal can’t be reached.
Of course, Blige’s “Real Love” came out just months after Tuff City filed its case against LL Cool J, and well before such practices had become universal. It’s unclear why the company waited more than 30 years to sue over it, but copyright law has a so-called “rolling” statute of limitations that allows for such long-delayed actions.
A spokesman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.
Texas officials are expecting more than 1 million people to visit the state Monday (April 8) for a chance to experience a rare total solar eclipse in the state that will be visible from the Texas border town of Eagle Point all the way to Texarkana.
To mark the event, the state will be home to more than a dozen festivals celebrating in true Texas style: from the Salt Lick BBQ festival honoring the beloved Driftwood brisket and ribs joint in Texas Hill Country to the rugged Texas Traditions camping fest, where attendees must sign a waiver acknowledging the danger posed by “poisonous snakes, reptiles, spiders and insects; diseased or startled animals, dogs, snares and traps; ladders, deer blinds, trucks, jeeps and four-wheelers.”
But the state’s largest celebration will be the Texas Eclipse festival, to be held on a sprawling ranch in Burnet, Tex., 100 miles north of San Antonio. Texas Eclipse is organized by a newly formed alliance of independent promoters including longtime EDM promoter James Estopinal and his recently rebranded Texas concert outfit Disco Presents; technologist, entrepreneur and Texas Eclipse festival founder and “head of alignment” Mitch Morales; and California-based festival organizer, curator and producer Gwen Gruesen from Symbiosis Gathering.
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Texas Eclipse is being headlined by U.K. superproducer Paul Oakenfold, American indie dance duo Big Gigantic, veteran dance producer Tycho and Philly dubstep superstar Subtronics. Other performers include jam scene super franchises like String Cheese Incident, Disco Biscuits, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead along with dozens of others, including CloZee, Boogie T, LP Giobbi, Zeds Dead and Bob Moses, who will appear across six stages curated and designed by the festival’s 12 global partners.
“People are drawn to eclipses in part because of the potential to experience something bigger than themselves,” says Gruesen, who is the only one of the three organizers to have witnessed an eclipse in person, having put together more than a half-dozen festivals and experiences from North America to Australia around totality events like the one taking place Monday. She notes that it’s the job of event organizers not to supplement the experience but to create opportunities to highlight the eclipse as a headliner.
To that point, adds Morales, “We’re not programming any content during the totality event. We don’t think we need to augment that experience.”
Music only represents a fraction of the bookings for the camping festival, which also includes hundreds of speakers including funghi expert Paul Stamets, environmentalist Adrian Grenier and more than 20 astronauts and researchers from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Attendees can attend yoga, movement and meditation instruction and experience immersive art from collective Meow Wolf as well as workshops from visionary artist and storyteller Hannah Muse.
Estopinal, a veteran live music promoter who played a key role popularizing raves and live EDM shows beginning in the 1990s, tells Billboard that Texas Eclipse has been one of the most challenging events he’s ever promoted due to its geographic isolation and the sheer size of the site being built.
“This is one I will never forget and I’m excited to pull it off,” Estopinal says. “From the size of the event, to the sheer scale, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen and I can’t wait to see what happens.”
The 2024 eclipse will first be viewable in the coastal Sinaloan city of Mazatlan, Mexico around 11 a.m. CT. In the U.S., it will be visible at Eagle Pass, Tex., starting at 1:30 pm CT and slowly moving Northeast through Texarkana, Ark., before crossing into, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennyslvania, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. The total eclipse will end its U.S. journey in Caribou, Maine, before crossing into New Brunswick, Canada. It will last be viewable on the French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
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A group of criminals pulled off the biggest heist ever in Los Angeles. Thieves stole almost $30 million in cash from a holding facility on Easter Sunday.
As spotted on Raw Story, the burglars brought the plot from the Ocean’s Eleven to real life. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) say that the crew broke into a money holding facility in the neighborhood of Sylmar. According to a source who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, the unidentified individuals broke into the building’s roof and evaded the security system all together. Once inside, they reportedly accessed the vault without issue and made off with close to $30 million dollars in cash.
The perpetrators were so experienced that the staff at the facility didn’t notice the money missing right away. “It’s just mind blowing that you would never suspect it,” an anonymous employee told ABC News. “$30 million in the Valley, gone. How? Why? I’m still trying to process it. Was it an inside job? Was it just one person? Was it a group? You know, there’s a lot of questions.” The LAPD and FBI have confirmed they are working and “have a joint investigation into an alleged burglary that occurred on Sunday evening, March 31, 2024. No additional information related to the incident is being released,” the agencies confirmed in a joint statement.
You can view reporting live from the scene below.
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