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Dominique Casimir, chief content officer for BMG, announced she is exiting the company on Thursday (Mar. 21).
“It has been an exceptional journey to have been part of shaping BMG’s story from almost day one,” Casimir said in a statement. “We built something unique — a global company with a genuinely artist-focused spirit — and celebrated many milestones together. I am truly grateful for the possibilities I have been given and the amazing people I work with, but I have decided that it is time for something new in my life and career.”
“I would personally like to thank Dominique for her outstanding contribution and unparalleled commitment to BMG over many years,” added BMG CEO Thomas Coesfeld. “We respect her decision to move on, and I would like to wish her all the very best for her personal and professional future, personally, on behalf of the BMG Board — and the wider BMG team.”
Casimir’s departure comes during a period of transition for BMG.
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In April 2023, the company claimed to be the first to combine its new release and catalog recordings businesses. The following month, BMG announced that it would shorten its long-term succession plan for longtime CEO Hartwig Masuch, meaning that Coesfeld stepped into the role on July 1 instead of New Year’s Day 2024.
BMG subsequently exited its distribution agreement with Warner Music Group’s ADA and took “direct control of our relationships with streaming services,” as Coesfeld said in a statement at the time. In October, BMG laid off around 40 employees. (Layoffs have swept through the music industry in the last 15 months.)
And in November, the company announced a restructure that Coesfeld described as “local where necessary, global where possible.” “Fifteen years after the emergence of streaming, music is going through another tectonic change,” Coesfeld said in a statement at the time. “It is vital we now reengineer our business to make the most of that opportunity.”
Casimir started working at BMG in 2008. Her portfolio eventually grew to encompass GSA (2016), Continental Europe (2019), Asia Pacific and Latin America (2020), and the company’s global synch operation (2021). She was promoted to chief content officer in May 2022.
Michael Jackson’s son Blanket is asking a Los Angeles judge to stop his grandmother from using money from the iconic singer’s estate to fund her ongoing legal battles against the estate’s executors over their recent $600 million deal with Sony.
In court filings obtained by Billboard, Blanket argued Monday that the estate shouldn’t foot the bill for Katherine Jackson’s pending appeal, in which she’s challenging a ruling last year that gave co-executors John Branca and John McClain approval to proceed with an unnamed transaction.
While the disputed deal itself is not explicitly named in legal documents, it appears to be the Jackson estate’s estimated $600 million deal to sell part of the singer’s catalog to Sony, the terms of which were first reported by Billboard last month.
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Monday’s objections highlight a recent rift between Katherine and Blanket. Both of them initially opposed the estate’s proposed transaction, but after the judge ruled last year that the deal could move forward, Blanket and Jackson’s other children accepted the decision. Katherine opted instead to keep fighting, filing an appeal that remains pending.
In December, Katherine filed motions asking that the estate pay for her legal bills stemming from her objections, including the ongoing appellate case. But in his filing on Monday, Blanket said it would be “unfair” to force him and his siblings to pay for that case, since his grandmother’s efforts face “long odds.”
“It is readily apparent that a reversal on appeal would be an extreme longshot,” wrote lawyers for Blanket, who now uses the name Bigi. “Given those odds, Bigi decided not to waste his resources to participate in an appeal. Nonetheless, Katherine has decided to appeal this court’s ruling. That decision is not for the benefit of the heirs.”
It’s unclear exactly how much Katherine is seeking. In a court filing earlier this month, Branca and McClain said she had asked for more than $561,548 to cover her legal fees for both her initial objections and the current appeal. In that filing, the executors said they strongly opposed any estate payments for her “failed objection” and “meritless appeal.”
In his filing Monday, Blanket didn’t entirely oppose his grandmother’s request. He argued that the estate should, in fact, pay her legal bills for her initial opposition to the deal — arguing that she had presented “essential evidence” about the proposed transaction and that “all heirs and beneficiaries benefited from this court’s scrutiny.”
But he also argued the actual dollar total she had requested “might be high,” and questioned whether she had really needed to hire “four lawyers charging fees of $840 to $1,400 per hour.” And he argued any legal fees for the ongoing appeal should be entirely denied, since the ruling allowing the deal to proceed had been “reasoned and detailed.”
“Katherine’s petition has the practical effect of requiring Bigi and his siblings pay for her appeal,” Blanket wrote. “It would be unfair to make those beneficiaries shoulder this burden when they expressly decided an appeal would not be in their best interests.”
An attorney for Katherine Jackson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Reps for the Jackson estate declined to comment.
Merlin and Deezer announced a new partnership through which Deezer’s artist-centric royalty model will be integrated across Merlin’s membership of independent record labels, distributors and other rights holders. The model, which is currently being rolled out in France, is designed to reward artists and tracks that are viewed as playing a part in attracting and retaining subscribers to the platform while excluding white noise and other types of “functional” audio from the royalty pool.
“We have worked with Deezer to ensure their new model works for the benefit of our members, representing a path forward in ensuring that high-quality music, and the artists who create it, are recognized and rewarded in the manner they deserve,” said Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota in a statement.
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Added Deezer CEO Jeronimo Foglueira: I’m very happy to see that Merlin and its members are embracing Deezer’s artist centric model and joins us in redefining artist remuneration in the streaming era, to make sure artists are paid more fairly for their music.”
Warner Music India made a strategic investment in Global Music Junction (GMJ), the music and entertainment subsidiary of digital entertainment and technology company JetSynthesys. The move gives Warner Music India a seat on the board of GMJ and expands its partnership with the company, with which it previously struck a distribution deal in 2021. GMJ — which provides services including content creation, events management, innovative distribution, marketing solutions, technical analytics, and legal expertise — is a leader in the music markets for the Bhojpuri, Kannada, Gujarati, Haryanvi and Oriya languages. “This is a significant milestone in the expansion of our presence across India,” Alfonso Perez Soto, president of emerging markets at Warner Music, said in a statement. “Working with the amazing team at GMJ last year not only strengthened our partnership, but enabled us to better support artists from the central regions of India, bringing them the best artistic support that any company can provide, and helping them connect with fans across the country and around the world.”
AEG Presents and LIV Golf announced an exclusive multi-year partnership that will see AEG and its subsidiary, Concerts West, booking musical acts and producing concerts for LIV Golf events globally. Since launching the LIV Golf Invitational Series in 2022, followed by the official kickoff of the LIV Golf League last year, artists including Zac Brown Band, Tiësto, Nelly, Sebastián Yatra and Alesso have performed at LIV Golf events. Starting this spring, AEG Presents and its Concerts West subsidiary will book musical acts and produce concerts for LIV Golf tournaments worldwide, handling talent booking, artist management, show/venue planning, creative development and technical production.
The City of McKinney, Tex., which is a major hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, chose Notes Live to build what will be the company’s largest venue yet: the 20,000-capacity, $220 million open-air Sunset Amphitheater. The effort to bring the venue to McKinney was a joint effort between the city, the McKinney Economic Development Corporation and the McKinney Community Development Corporation. Construction on the Sunset is slated to begin late this year, with the aim of opening it in time for the concert touring season in 2026. The project is expected to support more than 1,300 direct and indirect jobs and create $3 billion in regional and local economic activity in its first 10 years of operation.
Audio entertainment platform Pocket FM raised $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed with participation from Stepstone Group. The latest round brings Pocket FM’s total funding to date to $196.5 million. The money will support the company’s push into the U.S. market while also supporting its expansion into Europe as well as Latin American markets in 2024. Pocket FM will also continue to strengthen its exclusive content library and build AI-powered personalized recommendations to enhance the user experience. The company claims to have surpassed $150 million in annual recurring revenue and says the platform racked up more than 75 billion minutes of streaming worldwide last year.
Warner Music South East Europe acquired a minority stake in Slovenian independent label NIKA. The label boasts a repertoire of more than 11,000 songs, including tracks from Big Foot Mama, Koala Voice, Luka Basi, Nipke and Siddharta. The label’s releases are currently distributed through Warner’s indie distribution and label services arm ADA. The deal will allow Warner Music to upstream NIKA’s roster to its international network. NIKA has been Warner Music’s licensee in Slovenia since 1995.
Melissa Etheridge partnered with Gritty In Pink, which powers the INPINK marketplace — a platform, described as being similar to Upwork, where female freelancers in music can find jobs. Through the partnership, female videographers can submit an INPINK listing to showcase their work to be considered for a job capturing and editing content at Etheridge’s upcoming shows in Santa Clarita, Calif., and Thousand Oaks, Calif. Those interested can submit their listings between Mar. 20 and Mar. 28. Etheridge will also serve as a “strategic advisor” for the INPINK marketplace. Prior to the partnership, the singer-songwriter hired an INPINK videographer to shoot her tour last year and ran a photography campaign with INPINK to find a female photographer to take press photos.
ASM Global signed a strategic partnership with King Abdullah Financial District Development and Management Company (KAFD DMC) to lead the operation and management of the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The conference center includes a 1,215 square-meter banquet hall, a 600-seat auditorium and multiple outdoor plazas.
NightEvolution — which owns Ibiza dance music clubs Amnesia and Cova Santa and Amnesia’s in-house night Pyramid — joined forces with Dubai developer Sekoya Management, which owns Dubai venue Soho Garden and its electronic music sub-brands/venues Code, Playroom and Hive. Under the agreement, NightEvolution and Sekoya will present a new events series called Horizon in Ibiza, Dubai and elsewhere.
AI-powered beat and track generator SOUNDRAW drew $3 million in new funding led by Carbide Ventures, along with other investors including mint VC, Ceres, iSGS, SMBC Venture Capital, Deepcore, Kazuomi Kaneto and Paul Rosenberg, CEO of Goliath Artists and president of Shady Records.
The future of an international drumming competition designed to highlight and encourage young female drummers is in question after the program’s co-founder/executive director resigned earlier this month following accusations he made inappropriate comments to one of the contestants.
David Levine was asked to step down from the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Hit Like a Girl on Mar. 10 after Irish singer-drummer Ria Rua posted a video to Instagram claiming he asked her for “inappropriate pictures” in 2019 and told the then-20-year-old he “enjoyed” blurring out the outline of her breast in one of her photographs so he could use it in promotional assets for the contest. Levine says his comments were meant to be supportive and sarcastic, not offensive.
“Women shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff,” Rua said in the Instagram video. She then shared a screenshot of Levine’s email, which included the line, “Please send me more of those photos, even the ones your Mum may not like.” For “context,” she then showed the profile picture from her contest entry page that prompted his request. In it, she was not wearing a top under her jacket. “He edited out my boob and he said he enjoyed it,” she said.
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Rua tells Billboard that, in addition to the email, Levine made some of these comments over two phone calls. She said he asked if her mom liked the photo, and she replied, “I don’t know. I’m sure she doesn’t love it.” The second call was about a possible cymbal endorsement deal, in which she says she brought up the altered photo and he said “he had enjoyed photoshopping my boob.”
In a statement announcing his resignation, posted to Instagram, Levine said, “I wish to sincerely apologize for the inappropriate and offensive comments I made to [Ria Rua] as well as the harm my behavior has caused to others in the female drumming community. There is no excuse for my bad judgment, abusing my authority and undermining Hit Like A Girl’s good works. The Hit Like A Girl Board has requested my resignation as Executive Director and I am fully complying with that request, effective today, March 10, 2024 at 12:00 PM PT. Furthermore, I will be entering sexual harassment sensitivity counseling in the days ahead.”
He concluded: “Until new Directors can be installed the Hit Like A Girl and Drum Summit websites, social media and YouTube along with all current projects will be suspended,” adding, “I would ask that everyone in the drumming community continue to support the growth of female drummers through other channels.”
When reached for comment, Levine — who also owns TRX Cymbals and developed Drum Summit: Empowering Women Through Drumming — told Billboard in an email, “The board members asked for my resignation immediately after Ria Rua’s messages were posted and I complied. I sincerely hope the organization’s mission and work will continue however I am not involved in that process.” He also said his comments to Rua were “my attempt at sarcasm.”
Sexual harassment is by far the most widely-cited problem facing female creators in the music industry, according to a 2021 study by MIDiA Research, in conjunction with Tunecore and its parent company, Believe. The study found that “almost two-thirds of female creators identified sexual harassment or objectification as a key challenge.” The #MeToo movement empowered women to come forward with personal stories, ranging from drugging and rape to sexist behavior and misogyny. The industry, as a whole, still seems reluctant to speak out, instead feeling more comfortable addressing parity and advancement for women, including with initiatives like the Hit Like a Girl contest.
Rua started playing music in primary school, initially with the tin whistle and then guitar. At 12, she picked up drums and accompanied an accordion marching band, then joined The National Youth Orchestra of Ireland. In 2017, she entered a Hit Like a Girl competition, which she says seemed “massive,” sponsored by “all the big companies” and judged by “the best drummers and percussionists in the world.” In 2018 she won the organization’s Joe Hibbs Award.
Rua decided to share her story now, she tells Billboard, because she writes songs about women’s issues and had just released a new song about this specific experience and wanted to “practice what I preach.” In the Instagram video, she also noted she’d been inspired to speak out by recent allegations of sexual misconduct, “especially all the stuff about P. Diddy.”
“[Levine] is still the head of [Hit Like A Girl] and it’s still running to this day,” she said in her video. ”If it happened to me, I’m sure it happened to other women out there.”
Less than a year after Rua’s incidents with Levine, she says she told a then-Hit Like a Girl board member. She asked the board member to discuss it with the board, but not to tell Levine. The board member, who left the organization in 2021 because of what Rua told her about Levine — and does not wish to be named because of an unrelated personal issue — confirmed that account to Billboard. “I had no evidence of anything. I couldn’t really do anything formally.”
“At that time, I was still pretty afraid,” Rua says. “This guy is massive. He runs Hit Like a Girl. He owns the TRX Cymbal company. He owns another management company that manages a lot of the top brands.”
Rua posted a second video in which she sobbed and thanked everyone for supporting her, and then a third video explaining she came forward because she had written her song “Asking For It” “about my story with David” and now, when she sings it, “I’m going to remember the support that I had.”
Hit Like A Girl began in 2012 “as a drum contest/market development project,” as Levine puts it, which he co-founded with DRUM! magazine publisher Phil Hood and Mindy Abovitz, founder of female-focused Tom Tom magazine — both of whom left the organization years ago.
Levine told Billboard in an email that Rua entered the contest in 2017 and 2018 under her birth name — which Billboard has decided not to run at her request — and that during this time they “had multiple conversations by phone, email, text, etc.” He continued, “She was a talented musician and an interesting person.” He also attached the 2017 photo she submitted. Rua says they exchanged only one email and one Instagram message and had two phone calls. She provided the email and Instagram message to Billboard.
“At some point in 2018 [name redacted] introduced her new persona, Ria Rua, with a completely new look,” Levine tells Billboard in an email. “During a phone call I asked her if I could use one of the photos for a social media post to promote her and the contest. She told me that her mother didn’t approve of them. I responded in an email that she should send me the photos, ‘even the one’s her mum may not like.’ As with the rest of the email, I was trying to show support but, unfortunately, my attempt at sarcasm was not appreciated.
“I felt that the image she sent me was a bit too provocative for the Hit Like A Girl audience so I retouched it and sent it back to her for approval, which she provided. My recollection of our conversation is that I said something to the effect that I was happy to be able to photoshop the image so that it would be appropriate for us to share.”
Rua says she distinctly remembers him using the word “enjoyed” when talking about editing the photo. After that, she never entered the contest again.
Hit Like A Girl was incorporated and received 501(c)(3) charitable status in 2021, and Levine became executive director, he told Billboard, “with a board of directors that included six women.” He added, “We also established chapters in nearly 60 countries around the world that were managed exclusively by women. I often relied on these women for advice and approval.”
Since Rua’s post, she says other women have shared similar correspondence they received from Levine or conversations they had with him after entering the contest.
One California-based drummer — who does not wish to be named — shared screenshots with Billboard of “some weird stuff he said to me on text.”
In the thread, Levine provides suggestions on drum technique and then writes, “Second, try to move your head and body more when you play to show you’re feeling the best and having fun. It will drive the boys crazy.” In another, he writes, “Let me know if you come back up to LA. Maybe I’ll break quarantine for you,” followed by a wink emoji. In regard to some photos she had submitted during the pandemic, he also remarked, “I’ll have to get you a sexier mask, though. You Look like a nurse at a retirement home.”
Asked about these comments, Levine told Billboard in an email, “I don’t recall the other exchange you reference but I did offer advice on how contestants might improve their entries from time to time, when asked. I see now that my comments were inappropriate.”
He concludes by writing that Hit Like A Girl accomplished “many amazing and unprecedented things for girls and women in the past 12 years, not least the fact that drums are no longer considered a ‘gendered’ instrument.”
MC Lyte is among the honorees who will be saluted at the SEED Summit + Awards. Founded by industry veteran Valeisha Butterfield, the inaugural event will take place March 22-24 at the 1 Hotel in Los Angeles.
Also being honored alongside rap legend Lyte will be Massah David and Miatta Johnson, founders of the creative agency MVD Inc., and financial expert-coach Dr. Lynn Richardson. The award ceremony will take place on the evening of March 23.
Among the creators, executives and artists participating in the SEED Summit earlier that day will be songwriter-producer Bryan-Michael Cox, singers Melanie Fiona and Estelle, 11th & Co chairman/CEO Ebonie Ward, Kickstarter CEO Everette Taylor, Franklin Entertainment’s DeVon Franklin and Reign Ventures’ Monique Ludlett. The summit will conclude on March 24 with the SEED Retreat, a full day devoted to wellness of the mind, body and soul.
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Butterfield conceived of SEED, an organization and multimedia platform, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. What began as a series of masterclasses to inspire creators, executives and performers, SEED has since expanded beyond the summit and awards to include the SEED Book Club, which produces best-selling books for television and film adaptation through SEED Entertainment, and SEED Wellbeing.
“The power of storytelling transforms lives and as we celebrate this tremendous milestone with our inaugural SEED Summit + Awards, the culture stands together for the launch of SEED,” said Butterfield in a statement. “Illuminating the most iconic stories and people of our generation is our mission as we plant seeds into the next generation of creators, storytellers, leaders and professionals following in our footsteps.”
Butterfield separately serves as vp of partnerships and engagement at Google. She also chairs the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective and is the former co-president of the Grammys’ parent organization.
In a joint statement, honorees MC Lyte and Dr. Lynn Richardson commented, “Valeisha’s entire life and career have been dedicated to elevating the culture, so to be recognized with this inaugural award, we’re humbled and grateful. We commit to continuing to plant seeds into the next generation of creators and artists.”
Added Luckett, “I’m delighted to be a part of this year’s SEED summit. Valeisha always does a wonderful job of curating a safe space for us to share our experiences and empower one another.”
Partners in the SEED Summit + Awards include Pronghorn, iBest Wines and The Chris Paul Family Foundation. The event will be hosted by media personalities Alesha Reneé and Gia Peppers.
For more information about the SEED Summit + Awards, visit the SEED website.
If you’ve scrolled through TikTok recently, you might have noticed that it sounds different than it did a few months ago.
Users have gotten creative with their sound choices. They’ve posted edits to a song from the children’s cartoon Little Einsteins, the Spongebob theme song, music from the quiz platform Kahoot, Kevin MacLeod’s royalty-free track “Sneaky Snitch” and the 20th Century Fox theme. There have been dances set to classical music, and the iPhone ringtone. Users have even posted screen recordings of what it’s like scrolling through their feeds, one with the text, “This is the funniest era of TikTok to ever exist.”
It’s all because Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok failed to reach a new licensing agreement after the previous one expired on Jan. 31. UMG issued an open letter on Jan. 30 citing concerns over AI, compensation, harassment and copyright infringement on the social media app. TikTok responded in a statement, saying, “It is sad and disappointing that Universal Music Group has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.” Music credited to songwriters signed to Universal Music Publishing Group disappeared at the end of last month following a grace period.
TikTok has proved vital to artists, breaking new artists’ careers and causing songs to go viral, but the removal of UMG’s catalog has hit social media creators hard, too. Kenna Dean, 22, a dance creator with 1.7 million followers on the app, is one of many TikTokers who found out her videos with music by Universal artists – including one with 1.5 million likes – had been muted.
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“It was actually really disappointing, because it’s time you put into those videos,” Dean says. “You have comments on them, and you have other people who have done your dances out there. And then all of that is just gone, which was alarming.”
Dean had plans to film a dance collaboration with two other creators, @karaleighcannella and @jaedengomezz, on the same day the catalog was pulled. “All of the dance creators, we kind of woke up and were like, ‘What do we dance to?’” Dean says. They stumbled across Niana Guerrero’s viral dance (which now has over 14 million likes) to Kevin MacLeod’s “Fluffing a Duck” – a royalty-free track – as well as a dance to the Samsung alarm tone. “I just thought it was so funny,” says Dean, who jumped on both trends.
UMG is just one portion of the music industry. There are, of course, many artists who are not affiliated with Universal, or any label at all, and that music is still available for creators to use on TikTok – and a lot of users have opted to simply use the music at their disposal. Dean pointed out that she’s trying to use more songs by independent artists.
“I think it is a chance that we can prove that we are also worth listening to,” says independent artist and creator Charisse Chua. “Us not being signed doesn’t stop us from still creating good music and releasing it out there.” Earlier this month, Chua, 19, posted a clip of her song “would you take it all back?” with the caption, “umg songs might be gone [from] tiktok but mine aren’t!!”
But it’s still a challenge to get music to reach more viewers. “I expected there to be a lot more interaction than there was,” Chua says, adding that there are a lot of artists trying to use the app to boost their music.
Many TikTokers have also turned to covers as a way to replace the missing songs. In one video, creators danced to a cover of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” from the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Another user made a video featuring medieval-style instrumental versions of songs that got 1.9 million likes, with the audio being used in over 700 videos.
Glee covers are also popular, with a clip of the Glee Cast version of “Rose’s Turn,” uploaded by @girlyteengirl123, currently trending on the app, having been used in over 300,000 videos and reaching No. 3 in Billboard’s TikTok Top 50 chart. A remix of Ice Spice’s “Think U The Shit (Fart)” in the style of the Nintendo character Toad was uploaded to TikTok on Jan. 26 – just days before the licensing agreement expired – and has since gotten 2 million likes, having been used in close to 9,000 videos, often as a joking substitute for the original song. And some users took matters into their own hands, recording covers themselves.
“I just thought, ‘Well, I’m a singer. I might as well just do my own acapella version,’” Vicky Ntamag, 25, a musician and dancer, says. She began uploading her covers to TikTok after the dispute, starting with a cover of Nicki Minaj’s “FTCU” and responding to a few requests in her comments. Her cover of ATEEZ’s “Crazy Form” was used over 200 times and her acapella version of RIIZE’s “Talk Saxy” was used in upwards of 2,770 videos. RIIZE even posted a video dancing to Ntamag’s cover that now has a million likes.
At the time Ntamag posted the cover, the original song was still available on TikTok (RIIZE is signed to RCA which is under Sony Music Entertainment) but it has since been taken down as the song falls under Universal Publishing. RIIZE posted a video using Ntamag’s cover with the text “don’t worry everyone… we still have this sound!”
Some of these covers are gaining real traction – and attention from bigger artists. Mikael Arellano’s cover of Taylor Swift’s “Bejeweled” got 1.5 million likes, with OneRepublic commenting, “Can you help us too..” Arellano then posted a video singing the band’s “Counting Stars,” and OneRepublic used the audio in two videos uploaded to its account. Conan Gray, who recently told Rolling Stone, “I think there’s going to be a lot of interesting acapella covers happening from UMG artists until this is settled,” sang over a clip of his own music video.
“The TikTok community is really strong,” Ntamag says. “And we help each other with the songs. That’s why I’m taking the requests, because some of them want to use them for their edits, or there’s certain songs that were taken off that I’m going to make an acapella [version] for, just to help my fellow TikTokers.”
The communal aspect drives TikTok. Building upon a previous joke is how memes function and audio sharing is integral to that. Participating in and even viewing trends forms the shared experience of being on TikTok, and certain sounds define eras of the app – even if those sounds happen to be TV show themes and ringtones to capture the beginning of February. Soon after the dispute, TikTok seemed to shift away from some of the more creative options towards just using the music that was still available on the app, although covers and royalty-free tracks remain popular.
“We were all a little bummed when we saw that the music was taken off,” says Ntamag. “But I feel like it’s also an opportunity that we can use to share who we are and how funny we are and what kind of music we make and how creative we can be.”
Global music sales grew for the ninth consecutive year in 2023, with recorded music revenues increasing in every market and region, and across almost all formats, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) Global Music Report 2024.
Total revenues climbed to $28.6 billion, a rise of just over 10% on the previous year, and the second highest growth rate on record after 2021’s 18.5% year-on-year spike.
2023’s total sales figure is the highest level since 1999 — when IFPI first started compiling global music revenues and sales totaled $22.2 billion — on an absolute dollar basis, not accounting for inflation. Piracy and declining physical sales saw the market bottom out at $13 billion in 2014.
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Driving last year’s growth was an 11.2% rise in paid streaming subscription revenue, which totaled $14 billion, up from $12.7 billion in 2022, and accounted for almost half (48.9%) of global music sales.
The rise in global paid streaming revenue comes after many of the leading streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Deezer, all raised their subscription prices in key territories over the past 12-18 months. For the majority of streaming services, the hikes were their first price rises since launching more than a decade ago.
Despite the rising cost for consumers, the number of music streaming subscribers continues to grow globally, with IFPI reporting that the number of paid subscriptions to streaming services surpassed 500 million for the first time in 2023.
When shared usership and family accounts are considered, there are now more than 667 million users of paid subscription accounts globally, says the London-based organization, up 13% from the 589 million recorded in the previous 12 months.
Total streaming revenues, comprising of paid subscription and advertising-supported tiers, rose 10% to $19.3 billion to make up 67% of worldwide recorded music sales, roughly flat with last year’s share of the market.
Nevertheless, streaming’s year-on-year growth continues to slow as a result of its already high penetration of the global music market. In 2021, total streaming revenues spiked 24% year-on-year. In 2022, the rate of growth had more than halved to 11.5%.
Sales Up Across All Formats
Although streaming continues to dominate global music revenues, 2023 also saw strong gains in physical record sales and performance rights revenues. Combined CD and vinyl revenues grew for a third consecutive year to $5.1 billion, up 13% on 2022’s total, with Asia generating almost half (49%) of all physical revenues worldwide.
IFPI attributed the region’s continued dominance of the physical market to strong sales of K-pop acts such as boyband Seventeen, who topped IFPI’s 2023 global album charts with FML and also had the year’s eighth best-selling album with follow-up set SEVENTEENTH HEAVEN.
In terms of market share, physical accounted for just under 18% of the overall market last year, marginally up from 17.5% in 2022 but still down on 2021’s share.
Performance rights revenue, meanwhile, climbed 9.5% to $2.7 billion, representing 9.5% of global revenues, while sync income was up 4.7% to $632 Million, representing 2.2%.
The only formats to record a decline in 2023 were digital downloads and what IFPI classifies as other (non-streaming) digital formats, which fell by 2.6% to $900 million, representing just 3.2% of the global market.
“The figures in this year’s report reflect a truly global and diverse industry,” said IFPI chief financial officer and interim joint head John Nolan in a statement accompanying the report.
Nolan said the strong rise in paid streaming subscribers worldwide, as well as services’ price increases, contributed “significantly” to overall revenue growth. He also said the music industry’s recovery from its lows of a decade ago wouldn’t have been possible without “record companies’ sustained investment in artists and their careers.”
According to IFPI figures, record companies invest $7.1 billion each year globally in A&R and marketing alone. They are also paying out more money than ever before to artists, said IFPI, with label payments to musicians increasing by 96% between 2016 and 2021, versus a 63% rise in record company revenues.
No Change in the Global Top 10 Music Markets, With U.S. Still On Top
In terms of world markets, IFPI said that music revenues were up in all of the 58 markets it tracks, with the U.S. retaining its long-held No. 1 position with music sales growing 7.2%, compared to 4.8% growth last year.
Japan holds steady in second place with sales growing 7.6% in 2023. The third and fourth-biggest markets for recorded music remain the United Kingdom (+8.1%) and Germany (+7%), respectively.
The rest of the top 10 is made up of China (+25.9%), representing the fastest rate of increase in any top 10 market, followed by France (+4.4%), South Korea (percentage not provided), Canada (+12.2%), Brazil (+13.4%) and Australia (+11.3%). (IFPI’s free-to-access report does not provide market-by-market revenue breakdowns).
Those cross-market gains are mirrored on a regional basis with revenues from the U.S. and Canada region up 7.4%.
Combined, the U.S. and Canada region accounts for almost 41% of global recorded music revenues, reports IFPI, while Latin America — where streaming makes up 86% of the market — saw growth of 19.4%, far outpacing the global growth rate and representing the 14th consecutive year of revenue growth in the region.
Europe remains the second-biggest region for music sales, accounting for more than a quarter (28%) of global revenues and growing 8.9% year-on-year. In third place is Asia, where revenues rose by almost 15% in 2023, driven by strong gains in physical and digital sales.
Once again, the fastest-growing market region was Sub-Saharan Africa, which recorded a 25% rise in music sales, largely driven by increased take up of paid subscription services (up by just under a quarter) and the thriving South African music market, which grew by almost a fifth and contributed more than three quarters of the region’s revenue.
Revenues in the Middle East and North Africa, where streaming holds a 98% share of the recorded music market, rose by almost 15%.
(IFPI uses current exchange rates when compiling its Global Music Report, restating all historic local currency values on an annual basis. Market values therefore vary retrospectively as a result of foreign currency movements, says IFPI, which represents more than 8,000 record company members worldwide, including all three major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.)
Transformation Underway
Present at the Global Music report’s launch in central London were senior executives from all three major labels, as well as Konrad von Löhneysen, founder and director of Germany-based independent Embassy Of Music. Leila Oliveira, president of Warner Music Brazil, also participated in the event via video call from Rio.
Reflecting current industry trends, the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the record business, and particularly risks around generative AI, was a key topic of conversation among the speakers.
“The reality is that we’re at the beginning stages of another transformational event for the music industry,” said Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business at Sony Music Entertainment.
“While I’m enthusiastic about where the evolution will lead, it is essential that we find new products and new business models around these technologies to ensure the future of human creativity can be invested in, and that creators can be rewarded,” Kooker said.
He subsequently warned: “We must also fight the position that too many companies want to take to ignore copyright and intellectual property rights, and use our content without permission or without proper compensation.”
Adam Granite, executive vp of market development at Universal Music Group, said that while AI used “in the service of artists is wonderful,” AI that uses musicians’ work “without authorization and compensation is not.”
“We believe it’s perfectly possible to develop and adopt AI technology while also ensuring artists rights are protected,” said Granite, citing UMG’s recent partnerships with Roland Corporation and YouTube on AI initiatives as industry-led developments that give “artists a seat at the table and will help safeguard their rights” as more AI products enter the music business.
Shares of Abu Dhabi-based music streaming company Anghami soared 59% on Wednesday (March 20) after an SEC filing showed media company MBC Group has taken a 13.7% stake in the company. Anghami rose as high as $1.79 before closing at $1.59. Trading volume spiked to 11.3 million shares, over 300 times its daily average.
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Saudi Arabia-based MBC Group bills itself as “the largest and leading media company in the Middle East and North Africa.” Founded in London in 1991 as a satellite TV channel, MBC Group’s properties now include 13 free-to-air TV channels, three radio stations and Shahid, a leading Arabic streaming platform. MBC Group also owns MBC Studios, a content production house, and MBC Academy, an educational and training platform.
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The two companies already had a marketing partnership that renewed in 2022. The partnership gives Anghami exposure across MBC Group’s programming. MBC Group “create[s] new opportunities for rising music talent,” Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC GROUP, said at the time, “and we continue to inspire upcoming musicians by encouraging platforms like Anghami to give them the creative space to publish their premium music content.”
Investors appeared to take MBC Group’s ownership stake as a positive sign that Anghami would have the financial and promotional resources to build a profitable business. Anghami shares have fallen 86% since its Feb. 4, 2022 debut on the Nasdaq. The company was warned by the Nasdaq exchange in Nov. 2023 for trading under the $1 threshold for the previous 30 days. The Nasdaq gives companies 180 days to regain compliance or face delisting from the exchange. Anghami said it would “consider available options to cure the deficiency,” including a reverse share split.
Wednesday’s closing price is well below the valuation of two recent investments in Anghami, however. Anghami received a $5 million strategic investment from SRMG in Aug. 2023 that valued Anghami at $2.50 per share. A Nov. 2023 deal with OSN Group that valued Anghami at $3.65 per share — and caused Anghami’s share price to jump 97% to a 52-week high of $3.11 — will provide Anghami with the OSN+ video streaming platform and result in an investment up to $50 million.
Anghami shares traded as high as $16.80 in April 2022 but have fallen 86% below the $11.00 closing price on its first day of trading on Feb. 4, 2022, after merging with Vistas Media Acquisition Company, a special purpose acquisition company. In the 55 trading days in 2024, Anghami has closed below $1.00 29 times.
In the first nine months of 2023, Anghami had 1.73 million subscribers and adjusted revenue of $30 million, up 8% year over year. The company has not yet announced full-year 2023 results.
If you believe everything you read — and the state of U.S. politics suggests that, unfortunately, many people do — private equity has replaced money as the root of all evil. The truth, as usual, is a bit more complicated.
The latest piping hot take comes from The New York Times opinion section, in a piece that argues that “private equity is destroying our music ecosystem.” (No, not the ecosystem!) The problem seems to be that private equity, which often loads companies up with debt and can be unrealistic in its goals for returns — this much is true, although it’s not clear that public companies or other sources of capital are better — is “gobbling up the rights for old hits and pumping them back into our present.” This sounds downright grotesque, what with the gobbling and the pumping and so on, but it’s really just an ostentatious way to say that companies with money are buying creators’ rights as an investment.
This is bad for the ecosystem, the Times says, because the investors behind these deals — the most prominent example in the piece is Primary Wave’s purchase of 50% of Whitney Houston’s music and other rights — promote the songs they own in a way that somehow squeezes out new music. If that’s the case, though, they’re doing a terrible job of it. In 2023, a full 48% of U.S. on-demand audio streaming came from music released between 2019 and 2023, according to Luminate. A Billboard analysis of 2021 music consumption in the United States showed that music from after 2010 accounted for 78.7% of on-demand streaming, music released in or after 2000 accounted for 90% and all music recorded before 1980 accounted for fewer streams than Drake.
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This idea that new music is losing ground to old songs seems to come from a misunderstanding of catalog music, which consists of tracks released more than 18 months ago. The market share of catalog has never been higher — it was 72.6% last year, up from 65.1% in 2020, and it was much lower before streaming took off. But while many people associate catalog with classic rock — AC/DC, the Eagles and the ’60s and ’70s acts that dominated the category in the CD era — that’s an outdated idea. The music that drives this category isn’t that “deep catalog,” but rather what many executives call “shallow catalog” — releases from the last five or 10 years, often from artists who are still active. Some journalists see the size of some private equity deals and jump to the conclusion that classic rock is killing new music. Even by music business standards, though, this is bad math. When it comes to on-demand streaming, Drake isn’t only bigger than the Beatles — he’s more popular than all the music from the ’60s, plus the ’70s and the ’50s, combined.
The Times opinion essay gets the trend backward: Private equity doesn’t make songs popular, it buys songs that are steady in the popularity they already have. Even before music streaming got big, some investors realized that classic songs generate steady royalties that are far less vulnerable to market cycles than most assets. U.S. songwriters got more interested in selling their rights after 2006, when the IRS began to treat income from catalog sales as a capital gain, which is subject to a lower tax rate than personal income from publishing royalties. Streaming simply smoothed out the peaks and valleys of reissue revenue into predictable returns that appeal to investors — especially for songs that have stood the test of time.
Although private equity invests in song catalogs, it rarely manages them, and most of the executives who do come from the music business. (At least some of what they do now is not so different from what they did then.) For that matter, most of the ways the opinion piece says investors are “building extended multimedia universes around songs” aren’t quite as new as they seem. The Monkees and Alvin and the Chipmunks were both “multimedia universes” in their day, as was Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley PTA,” a country hit (for Jeannie C. Riley) that inspired a movie, a TV show, Spanish and Norwegian translations, and a sequel song. Nicki Minaj built her hit “Super Freaky Girl” around Rick James’ “Super Freak” — with encouragement from the 50% owner Hipgnosis Songs Fund, according to the Times — but James’ song was the basis for a hit back in the CD era. Remember “U Can’t Touch This?” Hammer time?
The radical thing about on-demand streaming is that most of the music ever made is now easily available, in a way that its popularity can be measured by consumption rather than purchase. And it has become clear that music from the last few years is more popular with listeners than industry executives thought, especially relative to brand-new and older music. When older songs do blow up big on streaming services, it often has less to do with promotion than serendipity — Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” returned to the Hot 100 in 2020 after a TikTok video of a skateboarder went viral and Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill hit No. 3 two years later after Stranger Things music supervisor Nora Felder decided it would be the perfect song to use as a plot device. And although many adults consider those songs classics, one reason they became hits again is that, from the perspective of younger fans, they are new. Isn’t this a good thing?
There are plenty of problems with streaming, including its low payments to most creators and the difficulty of breaking new acts. But neither of these has anything to do with private equity — the first comes from the way royalties are distributed and the reluctance of consumers to pay more for subscriptions, while the latter has more to do with how hard it is to stand out amid the sheer volume of new music that comes online every day. More serious discussion about these issues is important, but lamenting the fact that important creators earn so much money for the rights to their work isn’t the right way to start it.
Another Planet Entertainment is opening a new 2,150-capacity venue in Sacramento in early 2025, company president of concerts & festivals Allen Scott announced today (March 20), establishing a foothold in one of California’s fastest-growing metro markets. Named Channel 24 because of both its proximity to the Sacramento and American rivers, and its location on 24th […]