Business
Page: 16
Reggaetón icon Yandel has signed a worldwide publishing administration deal with Warner Chappell Music, the company announced on Thursday (Feb. 13). The hitmaker joins the publishing company after signing a recording deal with Warner Music Latina in September 2023, which marked his first deal with a major label after releasing albums via his own company, […]
Music streaming company LiveOne saw its revenue drop 6% to $29.4 million in its fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 31, the company announced Thursday (Feb. 13). Revenue in the audio division fell 1% to $27.1 million. The drop led LiveOne’s operating loss to widen to $5.1 million from $800,000 in the prior-year period.
In the nine-month period, LiveOne’s revenue of $95.1 million was up 8.7% from the prior-year period. Operating loss in the period more than doubled, however, to $7.3 million from $3.5 million.
LiveOne, which has both a Slacker-branded music streaming service and numerous business-to-business relationships, ended the quarter with 800,000 Tesla “subscribers” — 475,000 of which are ad-supported. The company used to have preferred status with Tesla, powering the in-auto music streaming app that was free to Tesla owners, but that relationship changed in 2024. Now, LiveOne is no longer free to Tesla owners, although the electric vehicle manufacturer will continue to pay grandfathered LiveOne accounts in perpetuity.
Trending on Billboard
Now, LiveOne sells discounted packages to Tesla owners. “The conversion opportunity has enormous upside by offering Tesla owners an opportunity to upgrade and have access on all devices at discounted priority pricing,” LiveOne CEO Robert Ellin said in a statement in October. “We’ll drive growth, unlock new revenue streams, own our data, and increase ARPU [average revenue per user].”
But the third-quarter decline caused LiveOne to lower its expectations for the full year. While announcing earnings, the company updated its guidance for full-year revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. LiveOne now expects revenue for the full fiscal year ending March 31 to be $112 million to $120 million, down from $120 million to $135 million. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $6 million to $10 million compared to previous guidance of $8 million to $15 million.
The revised guidance caused LiveOne shares to fall 18.6% to $0.96 on Thursday. That put LiveOne’s share price 55% below its 52-week high of $2.15.
On Wednesday (Feb. 12), PodcastOne –which LiveOne spun off in 2023 while retaining approximately 72% of its outstanding shares — announced that quarterly revenue increased 22% to $12.7 million and net loss narrowed to $1.6 million from $2.6 million.
In April 2022, when The Kid LAROI headlined the March Madness Festival in New Orleans, the Australian rapper was at a “critical time in his career,” as one of his agents, Sara Schoch, recalls. He was on the brink of switching to a new manager and he was about to release a follow-up track to his smash single “Stay” with Justin Bieber. “He was rolling out new music and reframing how he was presenting to fans,” says Schoch, United Talent Agency’s co-head of global brand music partnerships.
The venue LAROI’s team chose was TNT Sports, for which he headlined a Coca-Cola-sponsored stage at the televised March Madness Music Festival in New Orleans and made a commercial for the soda brand containing original music. Within a month, his single “Thousand Miles” debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. The connection led to a broader brand deal, including an alternative-reality-enhanced video that was part of Coke’s summer-music campaign. Then he sold out a tour of ballrooms and amphitheaters in minutes. “It was a big deal,” Schoch says. “The TNT team is artist-first and understanding of who’s going to break. They give [artists] media visibility. They have the infrastructure. I haven’t seen an organization bring all those things together, especially in such a consistent way.”
Trending on Billboard
Where rival sports networks mostly focus on fixed, one-time, widely viewed events — like the Super Bowl Halftime Show or Beyoncé‘s halftime performance during the NFL’s Christmas Day game last year, both on Fox Sports — TNT’s operations-plus-A&R-plus-brands skillset is unique. Known for its NBA and NCAA basketball coverage — and to a lesser extent hockey, auto-racing and tennis events — the network has spent the last decade and a half building makeshift stages in U.S. cities for free events, signing headlining superstars from Kendrick Lamar to Rihanna to Bruce Springsteen, helping to break new artists such as Doechii and Shaboozey and broadcasting all the copiously brand-stamped events on cable television. For this weekend’s NBA All-Star Game in the Bay Area, Chance the Rapper will headline an opening concert, broadcast on TNT, on Thursday evening (Feb. 13) at Pier 48 in San Francisco.
“We’re jack of all trades, I guess,” says André Plasiance, TNT Sports’ vp of live events, who acts as a sort of A&R man combined with a concert promoter. “We got a lot of things on our plate.”
One of Plaisance’s first events for the network, then known as Turner Sports, was to build a stage near the Mississippi River in New Orleans for a Jimmy Buffett concert as part of the three-day NCAA Big Dance Concert Series in 2012. Even Buffett’s people were confused about how Turner would basically create an entire city, including the stage, out of a park. One of them asked Plaisance, a New Orleans native, “Ever been there?” Plaisance replied: “Not really.” But the team pulled off the event, which also featured KISS and The Black Keys, before some 130,000 people.
Since then, Plaisance says, “There’s a level of trust that we could do that successfully. We’re able to build on that throughout the years.”
Basketball, according to Rick Faigin, executive vp of Acceleration Community of Companies, an agency that works with artists and brands, has a way of intersecting with music that other sports don’t have, even when they try — like Major League Baseball, which sporadically stages performers during its Home Run Derby, or the annual Super Bowl Soulful Celebration, starring The Isley Brothers, Yolanda Adams and others in recent years. Some of that may be “because TNT has made it that way,” Faigin says. He adds that the Super Bowl Halftime Show has exactly one sponsor — Apple Music — while TNT Sports’ various events surrounding NBA games and March Madness provide far more music-branding opportunities. (It must be noted that Chance the Rapper and The Smashing Pumpkins performed during player introductions and intermissions in a New Year’s Eve 2024 NHL game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, broadcast on TNT.)
“One thing [TNT’s team] are great at is delivering a high-quality production that rivals any of the major music festivals out there, from the staging to the overall production to the festival grounds,” says Byron Taub, vp of sponsorships and experiential marketing for Capital One, which has partnered with the network since 2011. “We want to create memories for our customers through these memorable types of events. We’re looking to create immersive experiences that tap into their passions — sports, music, dining, entertainment.”
For TNT, “the home run, or slam dunk, or three-point shot, whatever analogy you want to use,” according to Plaisance, is when the network can work with an artist to break a pump-it-up sports anthem. Examples include Muse‘s “Madness,” which became a March Madness anthem in 2013, licensed for TV promos and performed in a concert in Atlanta; and The Black Keys’ 2024 track “Beautiful People (Stay High),” used in Final Four promos last year around the time the band performed at TNT Sports’ Capital One Jamfest. “We’re constantly looking for those synchs to have that 360 tie-in, for the broadcast and the band live experience as well,” Plaisance says.
“It’s exposure you can’t pay for,” adds Dave Aussenberg, music brand partnerships agent at Creative Artists Agency, which represents Shaboozey, Mumford & Sons and others who’ve played TNT sports-and-music events. “These are some of the most desirable sporting events to attend. The more music events you attach to these weekends, it’s a huge win for fans.”
In a half-hour Zoom, Plaisance suggests his passion lies in building venues from scratch, beginning with the Buffett performance in 2012. For the NCAA’s annual March Madness basketball tournament games in San Antonio, “You’re basically building an arena in a downtown park, providing everything from the festival perimeter to the restrooms to the stage, every piece of infrastructure, generators,” Plaisance says. “You get to build a new arena every year.”
For Plaisance, a native of Southwest Louisiana, a lifelong obsession with live music began when his parents took him to Willie Nelson‘s concert at the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans. When the Superdome reopened in 2006, symbolizing the city’s post-Hurricane Katrina rebirth, U2 and Green Day’s performances showed Plaisance “what music can do to a building.”
“I get goosebumps, right now, thinking about that,” he continues. “You see how relevant music is with sports and the crowd. That made an impression on me.”
When Chappell Roan won best new artist at the 2025 Grammys, she used her platform on Music’s Biggest Night to demand that labels provide “a livable wage and healthcare” for artists. While her speech was greeted with applause from many artists and industry players at the ceremony, not everyone was cheering — the most outspoken case being an op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter where former music exec Jeff Rabhan called Roan “too green and too uninformed to be the agent of change she aspires to be today.”
The op-ed was widely shared — and widely criticized, leading to a backlash to the backlash as artists like Charli XCX and Noah Kahan came to Roan’s defense, speaking up in her favor and joining her in donating to healthcare support for developing artists. (Various industry organizations have donated as well.)
Trending on Billboard
“It is clear that young people, artists and/or writers, have had enough of record labels and tech companies taking advantage of them,” Justin Tranter tells Billboard. The songwriter, who co-wrote hits for Justin Bieber (“Sorry”), Imagine Dragons (“Believer”) and Roan (“Good Luck, Babe!”), had an immediate, visceral response to the THR op-ed in a comment on Instagram: “Please delete this. Now.”
Roan’s critics doubled down on their grievances, too, and the discourse — which has clearly hit a nerve in the industry — continues.
“Songwriters have been ringing this alarm for years,” says Michelle Lewis, a songwriter and executive director of Songwriters of North America (SONA). “When her speech started, my phone blew up. Everyone knows this is my fight. [Roan] said ‘healthcare’ or ‘health insurance’ like three times.”
Lewis, whom Tranter recommended Billboard speak to about this topic, says, “It’s in the industry’s best interests to jump in” on the healthcare discussion before it reaches a head, particularly with so many artists and songwriters struggling to make it in a streaming economy that pays some creators a fraction of what they would have made in the physical media era. Lewis acknowledges that Roan using terms such as “employee” and “livable wage” opens up a “hornet’s nest,” but she says it’s time to find “inter-industry solutions for more vulnerable” people working in music. “Let’s stick with health insurance,” she says. “That’s something I think we can find a workable solution around.”
“No change is going to happen right now, but I can promise you that serious conversations are being had. I can promise you labels, managers, executives in our business are going, ‘We need to figure this out,’” insists Tranter. “If you don’t follow young people’s lead, at some point you will lose. That is the huge takeaway from this conversation.”
Here, Tranter speaks to Billboard about Roan’s speech, the “misogynistic” THR op-ed and why healthcare options that do exist for artists come with asterisks.
When Chappell was giving her acceptance speech for best new artist, what were you thinking?
First off, her getting the award is such an honor. I feel it’s the greatest honor of my career to be the tiniest, tiniest part of her journey. What she chose to speak about in this unbelievable moment — not gonna lie, it brought a little misty tear to my eye. I was blown away and inspired at her fearlessness. It’s genuinely moving.
When you read the op-ed criticizing her for the speech, what were you thinking?
I thought it was such a pro-corporation, pro-old guard, old person [take] and extremely misogynistic. For him to think that because she is a young woman she has no clue what she’s talking about is so gross. And to find out this person has apparently worked at educational [institutions] for young artists and musicians? And this is the energy he is putting toward his students, the energy of ‘let the corporations continue to treat you terribly’? The whole thing was heartbreaking, to be honest. His article was heartbreaking. Also laughable to be that out of touch. Gen Z has had enough. It’s never been a good idea to not support young people.
Do you think this is a case where the old guard sees change potentially coming and is trying to stop it?
Whether its artists or songwriters being taken advantage of, it’s reaching a boiling point. When it comes to artists, labels need artists to do more work than ever. And that’s no one’s fault, it’s just how technology has changed. The artist has to be the head of their marketing department, it’s just a fact. Now the labels need the artist to write, sing, record, tour and be the head of their own marketing department. The industry is asking for us to do more and more and yet don’t want to give them more and more. Luckily, Gen Z knows better and is going to fight for themselves. It’s amazing to see.
There’s also the mental health component of healthcare. Being an artist on a major label comes with an occupation hazard most jobs don’t entail – national scrutiny about your work, your appearance, your opinions.
In most jobs whether you do good or bad is not in the court of public opinion. It’s very stressful to be a professional creative where the whole world gets to watch and see how you did at your job that day.
From your perspective, as someone who works with artists and industry insiders, what’s the tone of the conversation around this since the Grammys?
Everyone feels excited that with Chappell opening that door and with Raye speaking out for songwriters at all the different awards she’s won. Everyone finally feels like young artists are using their voices to help everyone. This business is old and a mess — there aren’t overnight solutions to any of these conversations — but the fact that these conversations are being had by such public figures is such a joy and will lead to change finally. Michelle Lewis and I speak frequently about healthcare for songwriters. There have been brilliant people fighting this fight in the darkness for a while now, so for someone like Chappell or Raye to say it in bright spotlights is very exciting.
Artists signed to major labels are sometimes eligible for healthcare through SAG-AFTRA. Can you walk me through your experience with that?
In SAG-AFTRA, you have to make a certain amount a year [$27,540 in covered earnings to qualify] to be eligible for their health insurance. So the year you sign your deal and the year you get your advance, you can probably afford health insurance. If you know it exists. If your deal was big enough and you have a good enough lawyer and a good enough business manager and they can walk you through all of these things. Very real chance you might have a manager who is amazing but they were your friend in college and you busted your asses together and you’re learning [the industry] together. That’s no shame to that manager — they probably are the right manager for you — but they might not know these things because it is so hard to figure out.
Then in year two, maybe your advance is gone and you’re not earning. You’re back in the studio and figuring out your next step. And it has to be specifically money that’s going through SAG-AFTRA. A brand deal isn’t going to count toward that, a touring gig isn’t going to count toward that. If you don’t make that your second year, all of a sudden you lose your health insurance. But you’re still signed to one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.
I have my health insurance through SAG-AFTRA and lucky for me there are songs like “Believer” from Imagine Dragons and “Cake By the Ocean” by DNCE that get so many continual film and TV syncs that my health insurance is covered. But if you’re a songwriter or artist that doesn’t have a song that gets used in film and TV over and over, you might be an artist that most people know of — or a songwriter that most of the industry has heard of — but if you don’t have a song that is getting synced like crazy and has money going through the SAG-AFTRA system, all of a sudden you don’t have health insurance.
That’s why it’s so beautiful for Chappell and Raye to be raising their voices. They are not fighting for themselves. They have broken through; they are now fighting for the next generation of writers and artists. That’s why it felt so condescending for him, the writer, to be like, well, when Prince and Tom Petty took on the industry, they were decades in. Well, no – that’s why it’s so beautiful that Chappell did it on what some might consider her first night of household-name status. To me, that is so much more inspiring. To fault her for that is wild.
You do see a tendency for people to celebrate activism that happened decades ago while decrying contemporary activists for ‘doing it wrong’ in some way. What do you think the next steps are?
The big win a week later is look how many conversations are happening. And I’m honestly kinda grateful that very misogynistic article was written because it’s kept the conversation going longer. We live in such a quick news cycle and here we are still talking about it. Okay, boomer, thank you for booming so hard, now we’re even angrier. By the way, I’m old – I’m Gen X — but I think like a young person when it comes to equality. I’m so glad this boomer boomed because now we have something to be even angrier about, and anger is going to fix this problem.
In the ever-evolving world of music asset trading, Influence Media Partners early on broke away from the initial frenzy over evergreen rock music classics to pursue a riskier strategy: acquiring contemporary music catalogs, including hip-hop. One of its biggest deals was the 2022 acquisition of Future’s publishing catalog, which consists of 612 songs composed from 2004 to 2020.
Last year, Influence Media, which is backed by BlackRock and Warner Music Group (WMG), expanded its operations with the founding of SLANG, a label and music publishing operation. While the music company has signed publishing deals and separate joint ventures with Future and DJ Khaled that allows them to sign songwriters to publishing deals, its label is betting on such developing acts as hip-hop artists Camper, RX YP and TruththeBull — a sector of the business that usually does not attract institutional investors.
Rene McLean founded Influence Media in 2019 with his wife and business partner, Lylette Pizarro McLean, a former music industry marketing executive, and Lynn Hazan, a former CFO for Epic and RED. He grew up in New York just before hip-hop music and culture were becoming mainstream in the early 1990s. “What do you do when you’re 18 in New York City?” he says. “You start clubbing. I got drawn into nightlife and music, and I loved hip-hop and did break dancing and graffiti and all that stuff.” Even though he was the son of jazz musician Rene McLean Sr. and the grandson of renowned jazz saxophonist-composer Jackie McLean, “I didn’t want to be a musician or in the music business,” he recalls. “But then something went off in my head.”
Trending on Billboard
“I like to keep meaningful books and collectibles I’ve picked up throughout my career to remember where I come from.”
Carl Chisolm
After landing a promotion position at Virgin Records, followed by similar jobs at RCA — where he worked with Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan — and Elektra, McLean formed Mixshow Marketing and Promotion company The RPM Group before founding Influence Media.
What led you to found Influence Media?
At that point in time, I had created a conference, a trade magazine, and, through the conference, we were doing a lot of brand work. That’s when Lylette Pizarro entered my life. We had gotten corporate clients to sponsor the conference, so we went out and created our own boutique agency, which wound up having a bunch of Fortune 500 clients like PepsiCo, LVMH and Verizon. We did everything from sponsorship to endorsement deals to strategy work, and that led us to think if we’re going to really get back into the nuts and bolts of the music business, the only way to really be impactful was to create Influence Media. By then, streaming had come on, and we saw the future. So we raised money and acquired three catalogs, which we then sold to Tempo.
After selling those catalogs, you got $750 million in funding from BlackRock and WMG and bought more catalogs — Future, Blake Shelton and Enrique Iglesias. Why start SLANG?
Lylette and I felt that, outside of acquiring and investing in these catalogs, there was an opportunity to build a label and a publishing company. I’ve always looked for the white space. We’re not just finance folks; we come from the music business.
Is WMG a partner in the label? Are you using them for distribution and publishing administration?
Yes, SLANG is a part of Influence and Warner is one of our strategic partners in Influence.
“My son painted these art pieces,” McLean says. “I love the color that they add to the office.”
Carl Chisolm
Who is doing the A&R and signing the artists to the label?
I’ve done all the signings to date, but we’re going to bring in a head of A&R. We now have a staff of about eight. But it’s been very boutique in the way I’ve been looking at these acts. We really want to develop these acts properly and break them solidly. And it seems like it’s really going in the right direction.
In looking at your roster, the bigger names are Will Smith and The Underachievers.
Will Smith is a distribution deal. But we’re highly involved in all the marketing and everything else. We work closely with Will’s camp. They’ve been great partners. And we just had our first No. 1 gospel record with him. So that’s wonderful right there.
I would classify the rest of your roster as developing artists, like Camper and RX YP.
Camper is incredible. He is a Grammy-nominated R&B producer, and he’s done a lot of things with H.E.R., Daniel Caesar and Coco Jones. RX YP is a rapper from Atlanta, very street. We also have, like you mentioned earlier, The Underachievers, who were originally signed to RPM and we picked them back up. They have a project coming out soon. They’re doing something with the clothing designer Kid Super. We’ve got TruththeBull, which is a true artist development story in the making. His debut mixtape is coming out in April, and his most recent single debuted [at No. 28 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50]. We’re really excited about that project.
“Blake Shelton signed this guitar. We have been working with him on the Influence Media side since 2022, and we are honored to work with such a luminary.”
Carl Chisolm
You have eight albums by developing acts either out already or coming out this year. With such a small staff, does SLANG have the bandwidth to try to break that many acts?
But they are not all coming at the same time. Some of them, like RX YP, are releasing things later in the year. The focus right now is on TruththeBull, Leaf, Isaia Huron and Camper. When you are working with developing acts, there are no days off, so it’s constant development, building and building. And if things are going in the right direction, then you just keep fueling it to keep it going. But then certain acts are just very creative on their own, so we lean on their creativity and just amplify it. Some acts require heavy lifting and then there’s some light lifting.
Why start a publishing division?
In my mind, it goes hand in hand with the label. The great thing about the publishing side of things is that you can step in at a more accelerated [pace]. We’ve had three No. 1s in the last six months courtesy of our relationship with Future. We also publish Lil Durk and, I love this one, RaiNao. It’s pronounced “right now,” and she’s currently on Bad Bunny’s album. It’s getting huge exposure. She’s working on her new project. We’re excited about her, as we are about our friend DJ Khaled. We are currently his publisher, too.
In addition to a publishing deal with Future, you have partnered with him on other business. What does that entail?
We also have a joint venture with him regarding signing writers. The same thing with DJ Khaled. We get vertically involved with a lot of artists that we work with. For instance, with Future we secured [a deal for] him to be the face of Grand Marnier, which just started rolling out. And we helped Visa organize their first large event at the Louvre and secure Post Malone [for it]. We had RaiNao perform at the Louvre with Post. That’s an example of how we see the world.
“I was drawn to this chess board because it reminds me of my hometown, the best city in the world, NYC,” he says.
Carl Chisolm
How are these deals structured?
It depends. Some of the [artists] are signed directly to us; some of them are [joint ventures]. There’s the distribution deal [with Smith]. We have the ability to be flexible.
Earlier, you indicated that SLANG is funded by Influence Media, which primarily invested in contemporary, established artists. SLANG works with developing artists, a sector of the business that institutional investors typically don’t fund. Does SLANG have the same investors as Influence? How much funding does it have?
Same investors. I am not going to disclose [financing], but you know Influence is well funded. There’s no lack of capital needs. But you have to look at it right. Most companies that start with too much money usually don’t win because, when you have access, you can be very undisciplined. We’re very conscious of the mindset and how we allocate what we spend and invest in. It’s really about discipline and focus. That’s what got us to where we’re at.
This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
This analysis is part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter Machine Learnings. Sign up for Machine Learnings, and other Billboard newsletters for free here.
Have you heard about our lord and savior, Shrimp Jesus?
Last year, a viral photo of Jesus made out of shrimp went viral on Facebook — and while it might seem obvious to you and me that generative AI was behind this bizarre combination, plenty of boomers still thought it was real.
Trending on Billboard
Bizarre AI images like these have become part of an exponentially growing problem on social media sites, where they are rarely labeled as AI and are so eye grabbing that they draw the attention of users, and the algorithm along with them. That means less time and space for the posts from friends, family and human creators that you want to see on your feed. Of course, AI makes some valuable creations, too, but let’s be honest, how many images of crustacean-encrusted Jesus are really necessary?
This has led to a term called the “Dead Internet Theory” — the idea that AI-generated material will eventually flood the internet so thoroughly that nothing human can be found. And guess what? The same so-called “AI Slop” phenomenon is growing fast in the music business, too, as quickly-generated AI songs flood DSPs. (Dead Streamer Theory? Ha. Ha.) According to CISAC and PMP, this could put 24% of music creators’ revenues at risk by 2028 — so it seems like the right time for streaming services to create policies around AI material. But exactly how they should take action remains unclear.
In January, French streaming service Deezer took its first step toward a solution by launching an AI detection tool that will flag whatever it deems fully AI generated, tag it as such and remove it from algorithmic recommendations. Surprisingly, the company claims the tool found that about 10% of the tracks uploaded to its service every day are fully AI generated.
I thought Deezer’s announcement sounded like a great solution: AI music can remain for those who want to listen to it, can still earn royalties, but won’t be pushed in users’ faces, giving human-made content a little head start. I wondered why other companies hadn’t also followed suit. After speaking to multiple AI experts, however, it seems many of today’s AI detection tools generally still leave something to be desired. “There’s a lot of false positives,” one AI expert, who has tested out a variety of detectors on the market, says.
The fear for some streamers is that a bad AI detection tool could open up the possibility of human-made songs getting accidentally caught up in a whirlwind of AI issues, and become a huge headache for the staff who would have to review the inevitable complaints from users. And really, when you get down to it, how can the naked ear definitively tell the difference between human-generated and AI-generated music?
This is not to say that Deezer’s proprietary AI music detector isn’t great — it sounds like a step in the right direction — but the newness and skepticism that surrounds this AI detection technology is clearly a reason why other streaming services have been reluctant to try it themselves.
Still, protecting against the negative use-cases of AI music, like spamming, streaming fraud and deepfaking, are a focus for many streaming services today, even though almost all of the policies in place to date are not specific to AI.
It’s also too soon to tell what the appetite is for AI music. As long as the song is good, will it really matter where it came from? It’s possible this is a moment that we’ll look back on with a laugh. Maybe future generations won’t discriminate between fully AI, partially AI or fully human works. A good song is a good song.
But we aren’t there yet. The US Copyright Office just issued a new directive affirming that fully AI generated works are ineligible for copyright protection. For streaming services, this technically means, like all other public domain works, that the service doesn’t need to pay royalties on it. But so far, most platforms have continued to just pay out on anything that’s up on the site — copyright protected or not.
Except for SoundCloud, a platform that’s always marched to the beat of its own drum. It has a policy which “prohibit[s] the monetization of songs and content that are exclusively generated through AI, encouraging creators to use AI as a tool rather than a replacement of human creation,” a company spokesperson says.
In general, most streaming services do not have specific policies, but Spotify, YouTube Music and others have implemented procedures for users to report impersonations of likenesses and voices, a major risk posed by (but not unique to) AI. This closely resembles the method for requesting a takedown on the grounds of copyright infringement — but it has limits.
Takedowns for copyright infringement are required by law, but some streamers voluntarily offer rights holders takedowns for the impersonation of one’s voice or likeness. To date, there is still no federal protection for these so-called “publicity rights,” so platforms are largely doing these takedowns as a show of goodwill.
YouTube Music has focused more than perhaps any other streaming service on curbing deepfake impersonations. According to a company blog post, YouTube has developed “new synthetic-singing identification technology within Content ID that will allow partners to automatically detect and manage AI-generated content on YouTube that simulates their singing voices,” adding another layer of defense for rights holders who are already kept busy policing their own copyrights across the internet.
Another concern with the proliferation of AI music on streaming services is that it can enable streaming fraud. In September, federal prosecutors indicted a North Carolina musician for allegedly using AI to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then using the AI tracks to earn more than $10 million in fraudulent streaming royalties. By spreading out fake streams over a large number of tracks, quickly made by AI, fraudsters can more easily evade detection.
Spotify is working on that. Whether the songs are AI or human-made, the streamer now has gates to prevent spamming the platform with massive amounts of uploads. It’s not AI-specific, but it’s a policy that impacts the bad actors who use AI for this purpose.
SoundCloud also has a solution: The service believes its fan-powered royalties system also reduces fraud. “Fan-powered royalties tie royalties directly to the contributions made by real listeners,” a company blog post reads. “Fan-powered royalties are attributable only to listeners’ subscription revenue and ads consumed, then distributed among only the artists listeners streamed that month. No pooled royalties means bots have little influence, which leads to more money being paid out on legitimate fan activity.” Again, not AI-specific, but it will have an impact on AI uploaders with bad motives.
So, what’s next? Continuing to develop better AI detection and attribution tools, anticipating future issues with AI — like AI agents employed for streaming fraud operations — and fighting for better publicity rights protections. It’s a thorny situation, and we haven’t even gotten into the philosophical debate of defining the line between fully AI generated and partially AI generated songs. But one thing is certain — this will continue to pose challenges to the streaming status quo for years to come.
A Manhattan federal judge has tossed out a sexual assault lawsuit against Russell Simmons on grounds that he now lives in Indonesia, but legal problems still abound for the Def Jam co-founder.
In a decision issued Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl ruled that Simmons had shown by “clear and convincing evidence” that he is now a permanent resident of the Indonesian island of Bali, meaning his federal court lacked required form of jurisdiction to hear the case.
The ruling is a setback for the unnamed Jane Doe plaintiff, who sued Simmons last year over accusations that he raped her in the 1990s while she served as an executive at Def Jam. But the case can likely be re-filed in state court, where it would potentially not face the same issues.
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, her attorneys vowed to do so – claiming Simmons was trying to “dodge accountability for his reprehensible behavior and escape litigation on procedural grounds.”
“From the beginning of this case, Simmons has claimed to be a stateless citizen domiciled in Bali, despite building his life and career in New York and taking advantage of his clear ties to the state when it benefits him,” said Kenya Davis, a lawyer at the firm Boies Schiller Flexner. “Our plaintiff is not deterred by this gamesmanship. We respect the judge’s decision, and we will see Mr. Simmons in New York state court.”
In his own statement, an attorney for Simmons praised the judge’s decision to dismiss the case: “Our justice system is based on rules and procedures,” said David Fish an attorney at the law firm Romano Law. “We are pleased that the court followed the rules of civil procedure and case law related to who can be brought into court.”
Asked about whether the case would continue in state court, Fish said: “I can’t predict what plaintiff’s counsel will do going forward.”
Simmons, who founded Def Jam Recordings in 1984 and later built a formidable hip hop empire, has faced a slew of abuse allegations since 2017 — first in an investigative article by the New York Times, then in a 2020 documentary film that featured interviews with numerous alleged victims.
Last year, Simmons was hit with two lawsuits over such claims. The first came from the Jane Doe at the center of this week’s ruling, who says that she was serving as a successful music video producer when she was “sexually harassed, assaulted, sexually battered, and raped by her boss.”
The other case came from Drew Dixon, a former A&R at Def Jam who accused Simmons of rape in both the Times article and the documentary. In her February 2024 lawsuit, Dixon accused Simmons of defaming her by suggesting during an interview that she was lying about the incident.
That case remains pending. Simmons had moved to dismiss Dixon’s lawsuit at the outset on free speech grounds, but that request was denied by a judge last week, sending the case toward more litigation and an eventual trial.
Simmons also faces additional litigation from three other accusers — Tina Klein-Baker, Toni Sallie and Alexia Norton Jones – who alleged in New York court filings last month that the hip hop mogul had reneged on confidential settlements that separately required him to pay them a total of nearly $8 million.
BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville has added to its artist roster, signing singer-songwriter Alexandra Kay to the label, Billboard can reveal.
BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville is also home to artists including CMA/ACM entertainer of the year winner Lainey Wilson, Billboard 200 chart-topper Jelly Roll, and “Try That in a Small Town” hitmaker Jason Aldean.
“There is not a better team that could be on this journey with me,” Kay tells Billboard. “I truly, from the bottom of my heart, think I am in the best hands in Nashville. I’m proud of my journey and am really excited to see what BBR can do with pouring gas on this fire.”
Kay is celebrating her new label deal by giving fans a taste of her new music, with the upcoming song “Cupid’s a Cowgirl” to release on Feb. 21.
Trending on Billboard
“It was just a really magical moment where we were just fed the song from the heavens and we were the outlet for it, and we had so much fun writing it,” Kay says.
Last year, Kay opened arena shows on Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken tour, and opened for Morgan Wallen’s sold-out Hyde Park show in London. On Feb. 23, she’ll launch her headlining Cupid’s A Cowgirl Tour in the U.S. and Canada, plus visit the U.K. and Europe on her All I’ve Ever Known Tour. Last year, she also teamed with Jelly Roll for the song “Leave The Light On,” as part of the soundtrack for the film Twisters.
“Having known Alexandra for a number of years, I came away from every interaction impressed not only with her talent, passion and work ethic, but also her strategic mind and determination to build a career not for a moment, but for a lifetime; a career anchored in the strong bond she is building with audiences around the world,” Jon Loba, president, Frontline Recordings, Americas, BMG, said in a statement. “It felt much like when I was first getting to know Jelly Roll. So, it was ironic when, completely separate from me, he saw the same qualities and invited her to tour with him last year. We are so excited to welcome Alexandra to the BMG family and look forward to continuing to help her build that lifetime career.”
The label deal marks a new milestone in a career that has already seen Kay find success on the Billboard charts and on the road. Illinois native Kay made her Grand Ole Opry debut in 2022. Her upcoming Europe shows will mark a return for Kay, who has previously performed at London, England’s C2C festival. Kay has also notched four top 10 songs on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, including “Best Worst Ex” with Julia Cole, as well as “That’s What Love Is,” “Backroad Therapy” and “Everleave.”
She released her debut project, All I’ve Ever Known, in 2023; that same year, Kay rose to No. 12 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. All I’ve Ever Known centered around healing from heartbreak after weathering a divorce, with songs including “Everleave” and “Painted Him Perfect.” Kay tells Billboard that her forthcoming album will have a decidedly more upbeat flair.
“I’m so excited for everybody to get a taste of this new era from me. I look back at All I’ve Ever Known, and it was a divorce album, and I look at that as I was surviving during that time. I’m thriving in this record and I know who I am. It’s full of confidence. It’s full of a healed heart that’s just wide open and ready to accept love again. And it’s definitely the most pop-leaning thing I’ve ever done, which is something that I’ve really been wanting to dip my toes into.”
It’s well established that a song which becomes popular on TikTok often becomes popular on streaming services soon after. The platform aims to quantify this effect in its second annual Music Impact Report, released on Thursday (Feb. 13): On average, “an artist can expect an 11% increase in on-demand music streaming over the course of the three days following a peak in TikTok total views.”
TikTok commissioned the latest report, and it hits the same themes as its predecessor, repeatedly emphasizing the extent to which music fans on the platform are more engaged than average listeners, and thus more supportive of the larger music ecosystem. (Luminate conducted the analysis.)
“TikTok’s role as a driver of music discovery and artist success is already well known,” Ole Obermann, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement. “However, Luminate’s report goes even further in laying out the many ways in which TikTok and its community of highly-engaged and high-spending music fans are proven to drive incremental revenues, chart success, and added value to artists and the music industry.”
Trending on Billboard
The study finds that 40% of U.S. TikTok users “listen to a new album on release week — a rate that is 27% higher than that of the average U.S. music listener.” And they are more likely to seek out additional information about musicians they like: “50% of U.S. TikTok users say they enjoy watching videos about music artists, such as interviews and behind-the-scenes content — 47% higher than the average U.S. social and [short-form video] user.”
The report also finds that American TikTok users are more willing to shell out for music (“spending 46% more money on [it] each month than the average U.S. music listener”), live experiences (52%), and artist merch (62%).
On top of that, they like to watch the charts — and try to influence them. “TikTok users are 40% more likely to make music purchases with the specific goal of boosting an artist’s chart position compared to the average consumer who makes music purchases,” according to the report.
In 2024, TikTok went wide with the “add to music app,” which allows users to quickly save music they find on the platform to their streaming service of choice. The latest report indicates that users have saved more than 1 billion songs to their streaming service of choice, though it’s hard to make much of this number without any additional context, as TikTok has a large user base.
The report also serves up two case studies that suggest a strong correlation between TikTok views and saves (for Sabrina Carpenter the week she released Short n’ Sweet) and between saves and streams (for Korn’s catalog). But the overall impact of the feature on the interplay between TikTok and streaming services remains unclear.
In his statement, Obermann said the “add to music app” “is already positively influencing artist success and chart placements, and the most exciting thing is that we are just getting started.”
BMG has a new look, with the company unveiling their fresh brand identity as part of their continuing BMG Next strategy.
Unveiled on Thursday (Feb. 13), the new branding is described as a “significant milestone” for the Berlin-based company’s evolution as a leader in the global industry. Dubbed a “comprehensive refresh”, the nascent design is said to represent the company’s bold approach to continuity and innovation, while still honoring its heritage.
“BMG has been through a significant transformation, and our refreshed brand reflects that journey,” said BMG CEO Thomas Coesfeld. “From the beginning, we’ve been a forward-thinking music company. Now, we’re building on that foundation with a renewed focus on innovation and creativity. Our vision is to contribute to a world where music makes a lasting impact. By uniting creative intuition with cutting-edge technologies, we empower our clients and partners to achieve long-term success.”
The new redesign is part of the company’s BMG Next strategy. Launched in 2023, it’s described by BMG as emphasizing a localized yet globally scalable approach. As Coesfeld explained in 2024, it’s “local where necessary, global where possible”.
Trending on Billboard
The brand identity update features a new symbol and an updated color scheme, moving away from the red color that has become associated with BMG for many years. According to a press release, the symbol is designed to bring “energy and movement” to the company’s visual identity, while still reinforcing its status as a modern music company that continues to integrate services related to music publishing and recorded music.
“While the BMG logo remains the same, our new symbol and brand hero colors reflect the company’s dual commitment to stability and forward-thinking innovation,” explained BMG Executive Vice President of Corporate Communications Kristal McKanders Dube. “‘Midnight,’ a deep emerald-blue, represents parent company Bertelsmann’s enduring commitment to music and BMG’s independent strength. The accent colors—‘Limelight,’inspired by the iconic stage spotlight, and ‘Platinum,’ along with other metallic tones, pay tribute to the industry’s highest achievements.”
“Our new visual identity isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s a statement of intent,” added Coesfeld. “At its core, it redefines our ambition and who we are today: we put artists and songwriters at the heart of everything we do. We embrace technology, collaborate with an ecosystem of partners, and stay true to our distinctive approach to artist advocacy.
“With the implementation of our BMG Next strategy, we have reached a new level in how we deliver for music creators, how we partner with the industry, and how we operate as a whole.”
The brand identity refresh was developed in collaboration with global brand consultancy Wolff Olins, and its launch coincides with the unveiling of BMG’s first phase of a redesigned website, which aims to showcase its offerings while celebrating the achievements of its artists and songwriters.