Business
Page: 162
AEG Presents and Tim Hinshaw’s Free Lunch have entered into a strategic partnership, Billboard can exclusively report. Under the terms of the partnership, Hinshaw will be responsible for securing and marketing hip-hop, R&B and gospel tours for AEG’s global touring division.
The alliance follows in the wake of Kendrick Lamar’s “The Pop Out — Ken & Friends.” The Juneteenth concert at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. was presented by pgLang and Free Lunch. Streamed to fans around the world on Amazon Music — Hinshaw’s current client — the event broke the record for the most minutes watched of any Amazon Music production.
In announcing the partnership, AEG Presents president of global touring Rich Schaefer said, “Tim’s connection to hip-hop and R&B — whether it’s the music, the artists or the culture — is unmatched. I’m excited to bring someone of Tim’ stature on to help our team expand in an area we’ve already had so much success in. His spirit and energy will be a great addition to the touring team, and we look forward to learning from him as we help build our business together.”
Trending on Billboard
Free Lunch founder and CEO Hinshaw added, “I am honored that this chapter started with Kendrick Lamar’s ‘The Pop Out — Ken & Friends,’ an iconic moment for L.A. and hip-hop. Partnering with AEG is a natural next step for Free Lunch. I have been very fortunate in my career to play a role in delivering some of the most unforgettable live music experiences for the culture and look forward to continuing that success with Rich and the whole AEG team moving forward.”
Formerly Amazon Music’s head of hip-hop and R&B, Hinshaw launched Free Lunch in 2023. As noted in a release announcement, the multifaceted creative shop is principally focused on “authentically bridging the gap between culture and corporate America.” During Hinshaw’s five-year tenure at Amazon, he oversaw the streaming service’s industry strategy and partnerships across both genres, inclusive of the global flagship brand Rotation. Among the various projects he brokered was 2022’s exclusive livestream of The Big Steppers Tour: Live from Paris via Amazon Music and Prime Video. The event not only spotlighted Kendrick Lamar’s second performance in Paris, it also celebrated the 10th anniversary of his second studio album, good kid, m.A.A.d city.
Hinshaw also helmed artist negotiations for Amazon Music Live, a livestreamed concert series on Twitch and Prime Video that aired following Thursday Night Football. Among artists featured on the series were Lil Baby, A$AP Rocky and 21 Savage. Additional livestream projects under Hinshaw while at Amazon Music included: Tyler, The Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost Live concert in his hometown of Los Angeles; Kanye “Ye” West’s #FreeLarryHoover benefit concert in L.A.; J. Cole’s Dreamville Festival from Raleigh and Summer Walker’s homecoming show in Atlanta for Black History Month.
Prior to joining Amazon Music, Hinshaw established the urban music division at Fender Guitars. He also worked in music marketing for Vans. Honored as executive of the year in 2022 for Billboard’s annual R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players issue, Hinshaw began his music industry career as co-manager of his songwriter brother, Charles “Prince Charlez” Hinshaw. That endeavor led to a joint venture label deal with Island Def Jam and a global co-publishing agreement with Rondor/Universal Music.
AI has incredible promise and music creators are first in line exploring just how far these tools and innovations can take us.
At the same time, like every new technology, AI has risks and music creators are also first in line working to ensure it develops in lawful, responsible ways that respect individual autonomy and extend human creativity and possibility.
Yet today, a year and a half after the first mass market AI services were released, we still don’t know whether the promise or the peril of AI will win out.
Too many developers and investors seem to see a zero sum game – where AI behemoths scrape artists’ and songwriters’ life’s work off the internet for free and without any opportunity for individual choice, autonomy, or values. Where most of us see music, art, and culture to be cherished, they see soulless data to copied, “tokenized,” and exploited. Where most of us look to collaborate and reach for new horizons, they prefer to exploit art and culture for their own narrow gains. On the road to society’s AI future, it’s their way or no way.
At the top of the list of irresponsible developers are two music generation services, Suno and Udio, who claim to offer the ability to generate “new” music based on simple text prompts – a feat that’s only possible because these models have copied and exploited human-created music on a mass scale without authorization. Both have clearly chosen the low road of secretive, unconsented scraping and exploitation of copyrighted creative works instead of the high road of licensing and partnership.
Trending on Billboard
To address this egregious conduct, a group of music companies have today filed lawsuits against Suno and Udio in federal court in Boston and New York City, respectively. These lawsuits seek to stop the companies’ industrial scale infringement and steer generative AI back onto a healthy, responsible, lawful path.
Suno and Udio clearly recognize the business risks they are taking, going to extreme lengths to avoid transparency and refusing to disclose even the most obvious facts about how they have exploited copyrighted works or to even show us what works they have copied and used. If they really believed their own “fair use” rhetoric, if they really believe what they are doing is legal, would they work so hard to hide the ball?
The worst part is, these are multi-million dollar companies funded by the deepest pockets in the world who know the long term value music brings to their projects and who can well afford to pay fair rates for it; they just don’t want to. They willingly invest mass sums in compute and engineering, but want to take the most important ingredient – high quality human creativity – for free.
It’s a deeply shortsighted gamble – and one that has a track record of failing to deliver. Early internet services who relied on similar arguments and failed to get permission before launching are the ones who flamed out most spectacularly. Meanwhile digital streamers that partnered with artists and rightsholders to gain permission and innovate a healthy, sustainable marketplace together are today’s leading global music services.
And it’s totally unnecessary. Music creators are reaching out and leaning into opportunities in AI that support both innovation and the rights of artists and songwriters and have extended the hand of partnership and licensing to responsible AI companies.
In the last year, Sony, Warner and Universal have used creative AI tools to deliver breathtaking new moments with iconic artists including The Beatles, Roberta Flack, and David Gilmour and the Orb, all with appropriate partnership and consent. Music companies have partnered with ethical cutting-edge AI firms like BandLab, Endel and SoundLabs. And singer/songwriter Randy Travis used AI to record his first new song since largely losing his voice after a 2013 stroke.
But AI platforms should not mistake the music community’s embrace of AI as a willingness to accept continuing mass infringement. While free-market partnerships are the best path forward, we will not allow the status quo scraping and copying of artists’ creative legacies without permission to stand unchallenged. As in the past, music creators will enforce their rights to protect the creative engine of human artistry and enable the development of a healthy and sustainable licensed market that recognizes the value of both creativity and technology.
Generative AI has extraordinary promise. But realizing it will take collaboration, partnership, and genuine respect for human creativity. It’s time for AI companies to choose – go nowhere alone or explore a rich, amazing future together.
Mitch Glazier is Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The three major music companies filed lawsuits against AI music companies Suno and Udio on Monday, alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.” The lawsuits, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), arrive four days after Billboard first reported the news the labels were seriously considering legal action against the two start-ups.
Filed by plaintiffs that include Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the lawsuits allege that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
“Building and operating [these services] requires at the outset copying and ingesting massive amounts of data to ‘train’ a software ‘model’ to generate outputs,” the lawyers for the major labels explain. “For [these services], this process involved copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies [to] generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings.”
Trending on Billboard
“Since the day it launched, Udio has flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry as part of a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service,” the lawsuit against Udio reads. “Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners.”
The lawsuit is seeking both an injunction to bar the companies from continuing to train on the copyrighted songs, as well as damages from the infringements that have already taken place. Neither Suno nor Udio immediately returned requests for comment on Monday.
Suno and Udio have quickly become two of the most advanced and important players in the emerging field of generative AI music. While many competitors only create instrumentals or lyrics or vocals, Suno and Udio can generate all three in the click of a button with shocking precision. Udio has already produced what could be considered the first AI-generated hit song with the Drake diss track “BBL Drizzy,” which was generated on the platform by comedian King Willonius and popularized by a Metro Boomin remix. Suno has also achieved early success since its December 2023 launch, raising $125 million in funding from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.
Both companies have declined to comment on whether or not unlicensed copyrights were part of their datasets. In a previous interview with Billboard, Udio co-founder David Ding said simply that the company trained on “good music.” However, in a series of articles for Music Business Worldwide, founder of AI music safety nonprofit Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, found that he was able to generate music from Suno and Udio that “bears a striking resemblance to copyrighted music. This is true across melody, chords, style and lyrics,” he wrote.
The complaints against the two companies also make the case that copyrighted material was used to train these models. Some of the circumstantial evidence cited in the lawsuits include generated songs by Suno and Udio that sound just like the voices of Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Jackson and ABBA; outputs that parrot the producer tags of Cash Money AP and Jason Derulo; and outputs that sound nearly identical to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Green Day’s “American Idiot,” and more.
In a recent Rolling Stone profile of Suno, investor Antonio Rodriguez admitted that the start-up does not have licenses for whatever music it has trained on but added that it was not a concern to him. Knowing that labels and publishers could sue was just “the risk we had to underwrite when we invested in the company, because we’re the fat wallet that will get sued right behind these guys… Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”
Many AI companies argue that training is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine — an important rule that allows people to reuse protected works without breaking the law. Though fair use has historically allowed for things like news reporting and parody, AI firms say it applies equally to the “intermediate” use of millions of works to build a machine that spits out entirely new creations.
Anticipating that defense from Suno and Udio, the lawyers for the major labels argue that “[Suno and Udio] cannot avoid liability for [their] willful copyright infringement by claiming fair use. The doctrine of fair use promotes human expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain, limited circumstances, but [the services] offe[r] imitative machine-generated music—not human creativity or expression.”
News of the complaints filed against Suno and Udio follow up a previous lawsuit that also concerned the use of copyrighted materials to train models without a license. Filed by UMG, Concord and ABKCO in October against Anthropic, a major AI company, that case focused more specifically on copied lyrics.
In a statement about the lawsuits, RIAA CEO and chairman Mitch Glazier says, “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge. But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”
RIAA Chief Legal Officer Ken Doroshow adds, “These are straightforward cases of copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale. Suno and Udio are attempting to hide the full scope of their infringement rather than putting their services on a sound and lawful footing. These lawsuits are necessary to reinforce the most basic rules of the road for the responsible, ethical, and lawful development of generative AI systems and to bring Suno’s and Udio’s blatant infringement to an end.”
After scoring a Hot 100 No. 1 single with Kendrick Lamar for “Not Like Us” last month, Mustard partners with BMG for his forthcoming studio album, Faith of a Mustard Seed.
“I’m happy to join forces with BMG, a company known for its dedication to nurturing artistic independence, integrity, and innovation,” Mustard tells Billboard. “Together, we’ll continue to push the boundaries of creativity and deliver groundbreaking music that resonates with audiences worldwide.”
On Friday (June 21), Mustard kicked off the rollout to his fourth studio by releasing a first single, “Parking Lot,” featuring Travis Scott. Slated to drop July 26, Faith of a Mustard Seed follows Mustard’s 2019 release Perfect 10, which featured Hot 100 charting hits “Pure Water,” “100 Bands” and “Ballin.” Upon its release, the effort debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and included an all-star lineup with Migos, Young Thug, Gunna, Roddy Ricch, Future, A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, and more.
Trending on Billboard
“Mustard’s approach, coupled with a proven track record of chart-topping hits, delivers unparalleled musical experiences to audiences worldwide,” says Dan Gill, BMG’s executive vp of recorded music, West Coast. “We look forward to supporting and working alongside him as we continue to elevate his artistry and the impact of his music.”
Adds Tim Reid, BMG senior vp of repertoire & marketing: “Mustard’s anthems have consistently orchestrated the soundtrack to the Culture. Partnering with Mustard and the 10 Summers Team on his next movement is an exciting opportunity for the BMG Team to help propel his brand and turn the ordinary into extraordinary.”
Mustard recently featured at Lamar’s Juneteenth Concert celebration, which honored the West Coast. During his set, he brought out Tyler, The Creator, Steve Lacy, Ty Dolla $ign, Roddy Ricch, Blxst, Dom Kennedy, and 310 Babii. He also joined Lamar for his performance of “Not Like Us,” where the Compton rapper performed the song five times.
Weeks after teaming with Oak View Group to acquire Canadian Music Week, Loft Entertainment has made another strategic partnership to expand its reach. The Toronto-based music company is joining forces with one twenty eight, a talent booking and cause marketing “impact agency” that focuses on connecting artists and influencers with social causes. The agency has […]
Rimas Entertainment has announced new corporate appointments, adding two key executives to its leadership team, Billboard has learned.
Rodrigo Prichard has been named general manager of Rimas Entertainment, and will begin July 1, reporting directly to the company’s chief operating officer, Jorge Bracero. Kristen Quintero-Garriga has been named vice president of brand partnerships under RIT.MO, Rimas’ new division that acts as a creative consultancy and sales force.
“I am thrilled to welcome Rodrigo Prichard and Kristen Quintero-Garriga to our corporate leadership team,” Bracero said in a press statement. “Their deep knowledge and experience in the music industry and in creating strategic alliances are invaluable to us at this time of growth and evolution. I am confident that their leadership will be crucial in further driving Rimas’ success in the future.”
Prichard, who was vp of legal and business affairs at Universal Music Latin before joining Rimas, will oversee all departments of the record labels within the Rimas conglomerate (Rimas Music, Sonar, Nain Music) in Puerto Rico, the United States and all other markets.
Trending on Billboard
Prior to joining Rimas, Quintero-Garriga was market manager at Puma Energy LATAM, Burger King and Advice Global. In her new role, she will lead brand partnerships, offering her expertise to Rimas, Habibi, Rimas Sports, Fundación Rimas and Rimas Nation, among others.
“Rimas is what all other brands aspire to be right now: agile, smart and passionate,” Prichard expressed. “I am honored to join this family of visionary professionals and look forward to contributing to the brand’s success.”
Quintero-Garriga added: “The speed and efficiency with which each business line under Rimas Entertainment has developed have created great opportunities to forge strategic alliances with local and international brands, which we will capitalize on. We are focused on creating unparalleled collaborations with brands and our world-class artists, athletes and events that we are bringing to Puerto Rico.”
A few weeks back, a member of the team at my company, Ircam Amplify, joined one of the multiple AI music generators available online and input a brief prompt for a song. Within minutes, a new track was generated and promptly uploaded to a distribution platform. In just a couple of hours, that song, in which no human creativity played a part, was available on various streaming platforms. We diligently took action to remove the track from all of them, but the experiment highlighted a significant point.
It is now that simple! My aim here is not to pass judgment on whether AI-generated music is a good or a bad thing — from that perspective, we are neutral — but we think it is important to emphasize that, while the process is easy and cost-effective, there are absolutely no safeguards currently in place to ensure that consumers know if the music they are listening to is AI-generated. Consequently, they cannot make an informed choice about whether they want to listen to such music.
With AI-generated songs inundating digital platforms, streaming services require vast technological resources to manage the volume of tracks, diverting attention away from the promotion of music created by “human” artists and diluting the royalty pool.
Trending on Billboard
Like it or not, AI is here to stay, and more and more songs will find their way onto streaming platforms given how quick and easy the process is. We already know that there are AI-generated music “farms” flooding streaming platforms; over 25 million tracks were recently removed by Deezer, and it is reasonable to speculate that a significant proportion of these were AI-generated.
In the interest of transparency, consumers surely deserve to know whether the music they are tuning into is the genuine product of human creativity or derived from computer algorithms. But how can AI-generated tracks be easily distinguished? Solutions already exist. At Ircam Amplify, we offer a series of audio tools, from spatial sound to vocal separator, that cover the full audio supply chain. One of the latest technologies we have launched is an AI-generated detector designed to help rights holders, as well as platforms, identify tracks that are AI-generated. Through a series of benchmarks, we have been able to determine the “fingerprints” of AI models and apply them to their output to identify tracks coming from AI-music factories.
The purpose of any solution should be to support the whole music ecosystem by providing a technical answer to a real problem while contributing to a more fluid and transparent digital music market.
Discussions around transparency and AI are gaining traction all around the world. From Tokyo to Washington, D.C., from Brussels to London, policymakers are considering new legislation that would require platforms to identify AI-generated content. That is the second recommendation in the recent report “Artificial Intelligence and the Music Industry — Master or Servant?” published by the UK Parliament.
Consumers are also demanding it. A recent UK Music survey of more than 2,000 people, commissioned by Whitestone Insight, emphatically revealed that more than four out of five people (83%) agree that if AI technology has been used to create a song, it should be distinctly labeled as such.
Similarly, a survey conducted by Goldmedia in 2023 on behalf of rights societies GEMA and SACEM found that 89% of the collective management organizations’ members expressed a desire for AI-generated music tracks and other works to be clearly identified.
These overwhelming numbers tell us that concerns about AI are prevalent within creative circles and are also shared by consumers. There are multiple calls for the ethical use of AI, mostly originating from rights holders — artists, record labels, music publishers, collective management organizations, etc. — and transparency is usually at the core of these initiatives.
Simply put, if there’s AI in the recipe, then it should be flagged. If we can collectively find a way to ensure that AI-generated music is identified, then we will have made serious progress towards transparency.
Nathalie Birocheau currently serves as CEO at Ircam Amplify and is also a certified engineer (Centrale-Supélec) and former strategy consultant who has led several major cultural and media projects, notably within la Maison de la Radio. She became Deputy Director of France Info in 2016, where she led the creation of the global media franceinfo.
Carín León, the soulful yet big-voiced regional Mexican singer who ended 2023 as the 10th highest-grossing Latin touring act of the year on Billboard’s Boxscore charts, has announced a new partnership between his label, Socios Music, and Virgin Music Group and Island Records.
The deal is unique in that both Virgin and Island will distribute and market León’s product under Socios Music, the label León formed in partnership with his manager, Jorge Juárez. Virgin will distribute and market everywhere for the U.S. Latin market as well as global markets, while Island will work the U.S. mainstream market. The agreement encompasses parts of León’s back catalog as well as new material, including León’s most recent album, Boca Chueca, Vol. 1 (released May 30), which debuted at No. 5 on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Albums chart and No. 8 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart.
To date, León has placed 16 songs on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, including three in the top 10, and six No. 1s on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Airplay chart. The hits include numerous collaborations with major Mexican music acts like Grupo Firme, as well as pop acts like Maluma, Camilo and Kany García. León has also raised eyebrows (in a good way) with his forays into the country music market. “The One (Pero No Como Yo),” his bilingual collab with country star Kane Brown, peaked at No. 46 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, and he played Stagecoach this spring in addition to making his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
“Carín León has established himself as one of the most exciting and creative artists in the world today,” said JT Myers and Nat Pastor, co-CEOs of Virgin Music Group, in a statement. “He has also assembled around him a world-class team and together we are already building upon the amazing work they’ve done throughout Carín’s incredible career.”
“Carín León is a true outlier,” said Justin Eshak and Imran Majid, Co-CEOs of Island Records. “He transcends not only stylistic and sonic boundaries, but also cultural boundaries. We’re thrilled to work with Carín and manager Jorge Juarez via this new partnership with Virgin Music Group and Socios Music.”
León first appeared on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Airplay chart as a soloist in 2019 with “Me la aventé” and, during the pandemic, scored a major hit with his cover of Latin pop song “Tu,” recorded as a live session during lockdown. Initially signed to indie Tamarindo Rekordsz, in December 2022 he began working with Juárez, a veteran concert promoter and manager.
Juárez negotiated last year’s tour with AEG Live and León’s publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group, as well as the new deal with Virgin and Island.
“We are proud to have assembled an incredibly collaborative team at both Virgin Music Group and Island Records to work alongside us to take Carín’s career to even greater heights,” said Jorge Juarez, Leon’s manager and business partner at Socios Music. “We are already seeing huge benefits from this new partnership and are excited for the future.”
In support of the new music, Carín’s forthcoming Boca Chueca Tour 2024 kicks off July 22 in Paso Robles, California, with stops in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Nashville, Houston and Toronto, as well as a landmark performance at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. See the complete list of dates and tickets here.
Spotify has officially unveiled a basic premium tier for users who prefer not to pay extra for audiobooks, the company announced Friday (June 21). The plan is priced at $10.99 — $1 less than its premium individual plan, which includes 15 hours of audiobook listening time per month.
The reveal of the basic tier, which Spotify teased during its Q1 earnings call in April, follows the company’s June 3 announcement that it would be raising prices in the United States for a second consecutive year. Starting in July, its premium individual plan will bump up to the $11.99 price point, while its duo plan will rise to $16.99 a month (up from $15.99) and its family plan will spike $3 to $19.99 a month.
The news also follows a recent Bloomberg report that Spotify plans to roll out a high-fidelity audio tier later this year for $5 more per month than its premium individual plan.
Trending on Billboard
Shares of Spotify rose 1.5% to $317.86 this week, marking their third consecutive weekly gain. On Friday alone, the stock gained more than 1.2%.
The new tier comes amid a pitched battle between Spotify and music publishers following the streamer’s decision to reclassify its premium offerings as “bundles,” which qualifies those plans for a discounted rate on mechanical royalties in the United States. According to Billboard estimates, publishers and songwriters will earn roughly $150 million less in royalties in the first year following the change.
On May 15, nearly one month after the bundles were first reported, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) sent Spotify a cease and desist letter for allegedly hosting unlicensed lyrics, music videos and podcast content on the service. The following day, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC) sued the streaming company, alleging it had “improperly” classified its premium tiers as bundles.
Later in May, NMPA president/CEO David Israelite sent a letter to Judiciary Committee leadership in both the U.S. House and Senate asking for an overhaul of the statutory license in section 115 of the Copyright Act, which “prevents private negotiations in a free market” for mechanical royalty rates for songwriters and music publishers in the United States. At the NMPA’s annual meeting on June 12, Israelite announced that the organization had filed an official complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and sent letters to the attorneys general for nine states along with consumer trade groups, alleging Spotify has violated the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (“ROSCA”), section 5 of the FTC Act and other consumer protection laws.
Spotify has hit back at the various actions taken by the NMPA, at various points calling its accusations “baseless” and “misleading.” Of the MLC lawsuit, the streamer argued that “bundles were a critical component” of the Phono IV agreement struck between publishers and streaming services, that “multiple DSPs include bundles as part of their mix of subscription offerings” and that it “paid a record amount to publishers and [collecting] societies in 2023 and is on track to pay out an even larger amount in 2024.”
James Dolan, executive chairman/CEO of MSG Entertainment, will lead the New York-based live events company for another three years. Dolan received a new contract that will keep him at MSG Entertainment through June 2027, the company revealed on Friday (June 21) in a regulatory filing. Dolan, who is also the CEO of both MSG Sports […]