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In an unusual ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a California appeals court has rejected Metallica’s lawsuit demanding that its insurance company pay for more than $3 million in losses stemming from concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, issued Monday (March 18) by California’s Court of Appeal, said that six COVID-cancelled 2020 shows in South America were not covered by Metallica’s insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London, thanks to a clear exclusion in the contract for any losses stemming from “communicable diseases.”
The legendary rock band had argued the case should have gone to trial, since a jury could have decided that non-COVID reasons led to the cancellations. But Justice Maria Stratton, improbably citing Swift, said it was “absurd to think that government closures were not the result of Covid-19.”
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“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well,’” the justice wrote. “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by musicians, venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to months of severe travel restrictions, forced closures and bans on large gatherings.
But like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies included express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies, like many for brick-and-mortar businesses, often required “physical damage” that’s tricky to show with a pandemic shutdown.
The biggest such case in the music industry is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Live Nation, seeking coverage from Factory Mutual Insurance Co. for more than 10,000 shows (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that were canceled or postponed during the pandemic. After a judge refused to dismiss Live Nation’s allegations in 2022, the case remains pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer refused to cover their losses stemming from the South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, but was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.
Court documents show that in May 2020, the band submitted a loss of $3,234,569 stemming from the cancelled shows, covering things like $184,996 in payroll for retained crew members. But citing the disease exclusion, the insurer quickly denied the claim: “Unfortunately we have to advise that no coverage is afforded for this matter under this Policy,” the company wrote in a June 2020 response letter.
In December 2022, a Los Angeles judge rejected Metallica’s case and the various arguments for why Lloyds should have paid for the concerts — including ruling that the cancellations were caused by travel restrictions that were “a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.”
Appealing that decision, Metallica argued that a jury might have found a different cause for the concert cancellations. The band’s attorneys pointed to the fact that venues later reopened and the shows were performed in 2022, “despite the ongoing presence of COVID.”
But in her ruling Monday, Justice Stratton said that argument missed the mark. With the advent of vaccines and more information, “much had changed” by the spring of 2022.
“People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness,” the justice wrote. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic.”
The judge also rejected various other arguments from Metallica, like the claim that the policy did not cover COVID cancellations because it did not specifically use the term “virus”: “The insurance policy definition of communicable disease does not refer to any pathogens nor does it limit the exclusion to only those communicable diseases caused by specific pathogens.”
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
The National Music Publishers’ Association’s SONGS foundation has announced its latest board of directors, including both songwriters and publishing executives.
The SONGS (Supporting Our Next Generation of Songwriters) Foundation was founded by the publishing trade organization in 2015 as a way to support aspiring songwriters, offering scholarships and direct financial assistance to help kickstart their careers in addition to other partnerships. With the new board, the foundation announces that it will be centering its focus in the coming year on helping songwriters with mental health, wellness and financial advisory services.
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Artist and songwriter Jewel will be returning to the board this year. She will be joined by fellow songwriters and new members Justin Paul and Benj Pasek (Kobalt), Dan Wilson (UMPG), Lauren Christy (Reservoir), Allison Russell (Concord), Jordan Reynolds (Warner Chappell), Gaby Moreno (peermusic) and CAM (Sony Music Publishing).
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The executives joining the board include some of the biggest names in the publishing business, some of which are already part of the NMPA‘s board of directors. Those include Sony Music Publishing chairman/CEO Jon Platt, Warner Chappell Music co-chair/COO Carianne Marshall, Reservoir founder/CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi, peermusic president/COO Kathy Spanberger, BMG executive vp/general counsel Keith Hauprich, Concord chief publishing officer Jim Selby, Kobalt head of creative Alison Donald, and Universal Music Publishing Group executive vp/co-head of A&R Jennifer Knoepfle. The NMPA’s leadership team of president/CEO David Israelite, executive vp/general counsel Danielle Aguirre and senior vp of external affairs Charlotte Sellmyer will retain their seats on the board.
“We are thrilled to bring together this level of talent, experience and insight onto one board for the sole purpose of helping songwriters,” said Israelite, who is also the president of the SONGS Foundation, in a statement. “The foundation has achieved a great deal, but there is so much more we can and will do for creators with the guidance of this unparalleled group.”
The board will officially launch during its annual fundraising golf tournament in Los Angeles on April 15.
There is no shortage of AI voice synthesis companies on the market today, but Voice-Swap, founded and led by Dan “DJ Fresh” Stein, is trying to reimagine what these companies can be.
The music producer and technologist intends Voice-Swap to act as not just a simple conversion tool but an “agency” for artists’ AI likenesses. He’s also looking to solve the ongoing question of how to monetize these voice models in a way that gets the most money back to the artists — a hotly contested topic since anonymous TikTok user Ghostwriter employed AI renderings of Drake and The Weeknd‘s voices without their permission on the viral song “Heart On My Sleeve.”
In an exclusive interview with Billboard, Stein and Michael Pelczynski, a member of the company’s advisory board and former vp at SoundCloud, explain their business goals as well as their new monetization plan, which includes providing a dividend for participating artists and payment to artists every time a user employs their AI voice — not just when the resulting song is released commercially and streamed on DSPs. The company also reveals that it’s working on a new partnership with Imogen Heap to create her voice model, which will arrive this summer.
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Voice-Swap sees the voice as the “new real estate of IP,” as Pelczynski puts it — just another form of ownership that can allow a participating artist to make passive income. (The voice, along with one’s name and likeness, is considered a “right of publicity” which is currently regulated differently state-to-state.)
In addition to seeing AI voice technology as a useful tool to engage fans of notable artists like Heap and make translations of songs, the Voice-Swap team also believes AI voices represent a major opportunity for session vocalists with distinct timbres but lower public profiles to earn additional income. On its platform now, the company has a number of session vocalists of varying vocal styles available for use; Voice-Swap sees session vocalists’ AI voice models as potentially valuable to songwriters and producers who may want to shape-shift those voices during writing and recording sessions. (As Billboard reported in August, using AI voice models to better tailor pitch records to artists has become a common use-case for the emerging technology.)
“We like to think that, much like a record label, we have a brand that we want to build with the style of artists and the quality we represent at Voice-Swap,” says Stein. “It doesn’t have to be a specific genre, but it’s about hosting unique and incredible voices as opposed to [just popular artists].”
Last year, we saw a lot of fear and excitement surrounding this technology as Ghostwriter appeared on social media and Grimes introduced her own voice model soon after. How does your approach compare to these examples?
Pelczynski: This technology did stoke a lot of fear at first. This is because people see it as a magic trick. When you don’t know what’s behind it and you just see the end result and wonder how it just did that, there is wonder and fear that comes. [There is now the risk] that if you don’t work with someone you trust on your vocal rights, someone is going to pick up that magic trick and do it without you. That’s what happened with Ghostwriter and many others.
The one real main thing to emphasize is the magic trick of swapping a voice isn’t where the story ends, it’s where it begins. And I think Grimes in particular is approaching it with an intent to empower artists. We are, too. But I think where we differentiate is the revenue stream part. With the Grimes model, you create what you want to create and then the song goes into the traditional ecosystem of streaming and other ways of consuming music. That’s where the royalties are made off of that.
We are focused on the inference. Our voice artists get paid on the actual conversion of the voice. Not all of these uses of AI voices end up on streaming, so this is important to us. Of course, if the song is released, additional money for the voice can be made then, too. As far as we know, we are the first platform to pay royalties on the inference, the first conversion.
Stein: We also allow artists the right to release their results through any distributor they want. [Grimes’ model is partnered exclusively with TuneCore.] We see ourselves a bit like an agency for artists’ voices.
What do you mean by an “agency” for artists’ voices?
Stein: When we work with an artist at Voice-Swap we intend to represent them and license their voice models created with us to other platforms to increase their opportunities to earn income. It’s like working with an agent to manage your live bookings. We want to be the agent for the artists’ AI presence and help them monetize it on multiple platforms but always with their personal preferences and concerns in mind.
What kinds of platforms would be interested in licensing an AI voice model from Voice-Swap?
Stein: It is early days for all of the possible use cases, but we think the most obvious example at the moment is music production platforms [or DAWs, short for digital audio workstation] that want to use voice models in their products.
There are two approaches you can take [as an AI voice company.] We could say we are a SaaS platform, and the artist can do deals with other platforms themselves. But the way we approach this is we put a lot of focus into the quality of our models and working with artists directly to keep improving it. We want to be the one-stop solution for creating a model the artist is proud of.
I think the whole thing with AI and where this technology is going is that none of us know what it’s going to be doing 10 years from now. So for us, this was also about getting into a place where we can build that credibility in those relationships and not just with the artists. We want to work with labels, too.
Do you have any partnerships with DAWs or other music-making platforms in place already?
Pelczynski: We are in discussions and under NDA pending an announcement. Every creator’s workflow is different — we want our users to have access to our roster of voices wherever they feel most comfortable, be that via the website, in a DAW or elsewhere. That’s why we’re exploring these partnerships, and why we’ve designed our upcoming VST [virtual studio technology] to make that experience even more seamless. We also recently announced a partnership with SoundCloud, with deeper integrations aimed at creators forthcoming.
Ultimately, the more places our voices are available, the more opportunities there are for new revenue for the artists, and that’s our priority.
Can some music editing take place on the Voice-Swap website, or do these converted voices need to be exported?
Pelczynski: Yes, Dan has always wanted to architect a VST so that it can act like a plug-in in someone’s DAW, but we also have the capability of letting users edit and do the voice conversion and some music editing on our website using our product Stem-Swap. That’s an amazing playground for people that are just coming up. It is similar to how BandLab and others are a good quick way to experiment with music creation.
How many users does Voice-Swap have?
Pelczynski: We have 140,000 verified unique users, and counting.
Can you break down the specifics of how much your site costs for users?
Pelczynski: We run a subscription and top-up pricing system. Users pay a monthly or one-off fee and receive audio credits. Credits are then used for voice conversion and stem separation, with more creator tools on the way.
How did your team get connected with Imogen Heap, and given all the competitors in the AI voice space today, why do you think she picked Voice-Swap?
Pelczynski: We’re very excited to be working with her. She’s one of many established artists that we’re working on currently in the pipeline, and I think our partnership comes down to our ethos of trust and consent. I know it sounds trite, but I think it’s absolutely one of the cornerstones to our success.
As artificial intelligence and its potential effects on creativity, copyright and a host of other sectors continues to dominate conversation, the Universal Music Group and electronic instruments maker Roland Corporation have teamed up to create a set of guidelines that the companies published under the heading “Principles for Music Creation With AI.”
The seven principles, or “clarifying statements,” as the companies put it, are an acknowledgment that AI is certainly here to stay, but that it should be used in a responsible and transparent way that protects and respects human creators. The companies say that they hope additional organizations will sign on to support the framework. The seven principles, which can be found with slightly more detail at this site, are as follows:
— We believe music is central to humanity.
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— We believe humanity and music are inseparable.
— We believe that technology has long supported human artistic expression, and applied sustainably, AI will amplify human creativity.
— We believe that human-created works must be respected and protected.
— We believe that transparency is essential to responsible and trustworthy AI.
— We believe the perspectives of music artists, songwriters, and other creators must be sought after and respected.
— We are proud to help bring music to life.
The creation of the principles is part of a partnership between UMG and Roland that will also involve research projects, including one designed to create “methods for confirming the origin and ownership of music,” according to a press release.
“As companies who share a mutual history of technology innovation, both Roland and UMG believe that AI can play an important role in the creative process of producing music,” Roland’s chief innovation officer Masahiro Minowa said in a statement. “We also have a deep belief that human creativity is irreplaceable, and it is our responsibility to protect artists’ rights. The Principles for Music Creation with AI establishes a framework for our ongoing collaboration to explore opportunities that converge at the intersection of technology and human creativity.”
Universal has been proactive around the issue of AI in music over the past several months, partnering with YouTube last summer on a series of AI principles and an AI Music Incubator to help artists use AI responsibly, forming a strategic partnership with BandLab to create a set of ethical practices around music creation, and partnering with Endel on functional music, among other initiatives. But UMG has also taken stands to protect against what it sees as harmful uses of AI, including suing AI platform Anthropic for allegedly using its copyrights to train its software in creating new works, and cited AI concerns as part of its rationale for allowing its licensing agreement with TikTok to expire earlier this year.
“At UMG, we have long recognized and embraced the potential of AI to enhance and amplify human creativity, advance musical innovation, and expand the realms of audio production and sound technology,” UMG’s executive vp and chief digital officer Michael Nash said in a statement. “This can only happen if it is applied ethically and responsibly across the entire industry. We are delighted to collaborate with Roland, to explore new opportunities in this area together, while helping to galvanize consensus among key stakeholders across music’s creative community to promote adoption of these core principles with the goal of ensuring human creativity continues to thrive alongside the evolution of new technology.”
Spotify paid out $9 billion in music royalties in 2023, with $4.5 billion going to independent artists. That huge pool of money is divvied up amongst hundreds of thousands of artists — some wealthy enough to live without royalty checks while many others need streaming to help keep their lights on.
The number of artists who made at least $10,000 in royalties from Spotify rose 16% to 66,000, according to the company’s latest Loud & Clear report released Tuesday (Mar. 19). That was twice the growth rate in artists earning at least $10,000 as the 8% uptick seen in 2022 when that number rose to 57,000.
The number of artists who reached other thresholds also increased at a higher clip in 2023 than in 2022. Last year, the number of artists who made $100,000 from Spotify in 2023 rose 15% to 11,600, compared to 10,100 the prior year, when the number was up 6%. And there were 1,250 artists who generated over $1 million from Spotify in 2023, an 18% increase from 1,060 in 2022 when the $1 million club grew by just 2%.
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The company’s fourth annual Loud & Clear report provides an update on the company’s goal of allowing 1 million creators the opportunity to make a living from their art, a statement that goes back to CEO Daniel Ek at the company’s 2017 investor day presentation. How much an artist requires to pay the bills will vary by country, but it’s safe to say Spotify isn’t allowing 1 million artists to quit their day jobs and be working musicians.
Nevertheless, the number of artists who made what could be called a substantial amount of royalties on the platform continues to grow. The number of artists who made $10,000 from Spotify (66,000) last year was 2.8 times the 23,400 who reached that level in 2017. Compared to 2017, the number of artists who reached the $100,000 threshold in 2023 (11,600) was 2.7 times higher; and the number of artists who earned $1 million (4,300) last year was also 2.7 times higher. Over that period, Spotify’s annual revenue grew 3.2 times, rising from 4.1 billion euros ($4.6 billion) to 13.2 billion euros ($14.3 billion), according to the company’s financial statements.
By Spotify’s own estimate, the universe of working musicians is much larger than the 66,000 artists who earned $10,000 last year. The company says there are 225,000 emerging or professional recording artists globally. Separately, 235,000 artists have released at least 10 songs in their careers, a group that averages at least 10,000 monthly listeners.
Loud & Clear makes a point of highlighting how independent artists can make a living from streaming royalties. Last year, a quarter of the 66,000 artists in the $10,000 club were self-distributed through do-it-yourself platforms such as DistroKid and TuneCore. Unlike artists signed to record labels, self-distributed artists can pocket the entirety of their streaming royalties minus any distribution fees. Artists signed to labels may make more overall than independent artists, but they earn a fraction of the total receipts and must repay advances and marketing and promotion expenses.
Another Loud & Clear point of emphasis is that streaming is benefitting artists around the world. Indeed, the global nature of streaming platforms means music can easily travel from any corner of the globe to a mature streaming market where a high proportion of paid subscribers provides attractive royalties compared to ad-supported platforms. Of the 66,000 artists who generated at least $10,000 in Spotify royalties in 2023, more than half are from countries where English is not the first language. That’s not surprising given that Spotify is available in 184 countries and territories and has a major presence in large markets — such as India, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and France — with strong local, non-English music scenes.
To get a sense of which artists might be in Spotify’s $1 million club, Billboard examined a list of Luminate’s top 1,000 U.S. artists ranked by audio on-demand streaming. The list includes some young artists who have found success in the streaming era — such as Jelly Roll (No. 66), The Neighbourhood (No. 102) and PinkPantheress (No. 144) — and rely on streaming royalties more than more established artists with greater touring success.
Many of the top streaming artists are older musicians who earn far more from touring than streaming royalties: Fleetwood Mac (No. 54), George Strait (No. 97), AC/DC (No. 110), Elton John (No. 125), P!nk (No. 128), Billy Joel (No. 169), Journey (No. 172), Motley Crue (No. 395) and Garth Brooks (No. 489), among many others.
The top 1,000 list also includes bands that broke up long ago or haven’t released new music in decades: the Beatles (No. 49), Queen (No. 87), Nirvana (No. 112), Creedence Clearwater Revival (No. 134), Led Zeppelin (No. 151), Abba (No. 318), Bee Gees (No. 328), The Smiths (No. 341) and the Grateful Dead (No. 444). Those music royalties are undoubtedly welcomed, but these artists are certainly secure financially without them.
Other top-streaming artists are deceased: Juice WRLD (No. 15), 2Pac (No. 89), Frank Sinatra (No. 109), Elvis Presley (No. 146), Notorious B.I.G. (No. 150), Bob Marley (No. 167), Johnny Cash (No. 245), Dean Martin (No. 336), Prince (No. 362), Jimmy Buffet (No. 425), Tom Petty (No. 428), David Bowie (No. 441) and John Denver (No. 470).
Some artists don’t even pocket their Spotify royalties because they’ve sold their rights to investors. Katy Perry (No. 82) sold her recorded music catalog to Litmus Capital. Kenny Chesney (No. 157) sold a majority stake in his recorded music catalog to Hipgnosis Song Management. Jason Aldean (No. 50) sold a portion of his recorded music catalog to Spirit Music Group. Primary Wave acquired a 50% stake in Whitney Houston’s master recording revenue. The list of contemporary artists who sold their publishing rights is long; the list also includes Future (No. 12), Bruno Mars (No. 57), Imagine Dragons (No. 58) and Metro Boomin (No. 132).
Artists in the $1 million club are outliers, however. Anyone fortunate enough to be earning $1 million a year from Spotify already makes a good living from touring, merchandise, sponsorships and other areas. The point of Loud & Clear is to highlight the financial opportunities Spotify provides to those artists the report calls the “most dependent on streaming as part of their livelihood.” For that middle class of artists, streaming pays much better than it used to. While only a small fraction of 1 million artists can say they make a living from Spotify, the number rises every year.
Six months after Sam Smith and Normani beat a copyright lawsuit over their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger,” a federal judge is refusing to force their accuser to reimburse their legal fees — a bill the stars say exceeded $700,000.
Smith and Normani have argued that they shouldn’t be forced to foot the huge bill they incurred fending off the “frivolous and unreasonable” lawsuit, which claimed the duo had copied a little-known 2015 song of the same name when they created “Dancing.”
While U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu dismissed the lawsuit last year, he ruled Monday (Mar. 18) that the case was not so completely baseless as to warrant punishing the accuser with paying the stars’ massive legal bill.
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“Plaintiff’s claims were neither frivolous nor objectively unreasonable,” the judge wrote, calling the lawsuit a “close and difficult case” on a “contentious area of copyright law.”
Attorneys for Smith and Normani had argued that the lawsuit was merely a “gamble,” filed against the stars with “hopes for a massive payout.” But Judge Hsu said Monday there was “no evidence” of such ill intent by the accusers.
The case was filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who claimed that “Dancing” was “strikingly similar” to their 2015 same-named track. In their complaint, they said it was “beyond any real doubt” that the song had been copied.
But in September, Judge Hsu said it was, in fact, very much in doubt. Granting Smith and Normani’s motion for an immediate ruling ending the lawsuit, the judge said the songs simply were not similar — and he criticized the plaintiffs for manipulating them to make them appear more alike.
“Permitting copyright plaintiffs to prevail … by rotating chords, recalibrating the tempo, and altering the pitch of a defendant’s song so that it sounds more similar to the plaintiffs’ would lead courts to deem substantially similar two vastly dissimilar musical compositions,” the judge wrote at the time.
Unlike most forms of American litigation, winners in copyright lawsuits are often able to legally recover the money they spent on lawyers fighting the case. Judges grant such requests in cases where a lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed or was litigated too aggressively, and fee awards can serve as a powerful deterrent against future questionable lawsuits.
In an October motion seeking $732,202 in fees, attorneys for Smith and Normani argued that Vincent, Miranda and Banlaoi’s case had been exactly the kind of pointless lawsuit that needs to be deterred. They argued that the songwriters and their lawyers had used aggressive tactics to advance faulty copyright claims that would be bad for all musicians.
“Plaintiff sought to monopolize unprotectable elements that are common property to all,” Smith and Normani’s lawyers wrote at the time. “Claims like Plaintiff’s here threaten to cheat the public domain and curtail the creation of new works.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Hsu was not persuaded. He called Smith and Normani’s arguments “generic reasoning” that would lead to many such awards in future copyright lawsuits.
“Yes, Plaintiff’s counsel aggressively litigated the case,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff’s conduct in this litigation does not rise to the level that calls for deterrence.”
Judge Hsu did rule that Smith and Normani could recover their legal “costs” from the plaintiffs, but such awards are typically far smaller than awards of attorney’s fees. In earlier court filings, attorneys for Smith and Normani calculated such costs at $10,173.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday (Mar. 19).
China‘s Tencent Music Entertainment Group saw its profit jump 36% to 5.22 billion yuan ($735 million) in 2023 as growth in paid subscriptions helped offset mixed results in its social media business, according to an earnings filing on Tuesday (Mar. 19). The leading music streaming company in China — Tencent Music operates QQ Music, Kugou […]
When video-blogger Martina Sazunic moved from Seoul to Tokyo in 2016, she was shocked to learn that — unlike in South Korea — using music by some of Japan’s biggest pop stars on her YouTube channel was not permitted. Doing so, she quickly learned, would result in the offending video being taken down at the request of the rights holder.
“In [South] Korea, the record labels were open to uploading music videos and that encouraged people to share and spread Korean music. At the same time in Japan, labels refused to upload their music,” says Sazunic, a Canadian expat, who has spent 15 years producing content for YouTube and since 2021 has run the popular lifestyle channel King Kogi (188,000 subscribers), featuring videos about her adopted homeland.
For many years, local labels were reluctant to upload official music videos on YouTube through fear of cannibalizing physical sales and would only release truncated versions of songs on the platform. Use of sound recordings in user-generated content would, for the most part, be blocked and taken down. The rising popularity of streaming in the world’s second-biggest recorded music market — worth $2.7 billion in 2022, according to IFPI, behind only the United States — has, however, been transformative, leading local labels and management companies to pivot away from blocking songs on UGC platforms and towards licensing and monetizing them.
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“It’s been an uneasy process for consumers in Japan and that’s entirely down to Japanese rights holders, but the market is moving wholeheartedly into embracing music usage on UGC,” says Rob Wells, chief executive of Los Angeles-headquartered Orfium, one of several international tech firms now fighting it out to grow their share of the country’s emerging, yet potentially huge, UGC music market.
At present, UGC monetization is in its infancy in Japan, says Wells, but he predicts the market will rapidly grow over the next five years to deliver rights holders the kind of returns they already receive from other major music territories.
In 2022, Alphabet-owned YouTube says it paid out a record $6 billion to the music industry, although executives in Asia tell Billboard that only around 5% of that total — around $300 million – went to rights holders in Japan. That’s despite YouTube being the most popular video platform in the country with over 70 million monthly active users (YouTube declined to comment when contacted by Billboard for this article).
The main reason why Japan’s digital music market lags behind other countries is down to stakeholders’ historic desire to protect the enduring popularity of physical music formats, primarily CDs and music DVDs/Blu-ray discs, which accounted for 66% of revenues in 2022, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).
Digital’s share of the market is fast-growing though with streaming revenues rising 25% year-on-year to 93 billion yen ($618 million) in 2022, fueled by increased consumer take up of subscription services during the pandemic. That same year, overall digital music sales exceeded 100 billion yen ($665 million) for the first time since the RIAJ began tracking the data in 2005.
In response to the changing market, many of Japan’s leading labels and management companies (which often own the master recording rights for their acts) are rushing to partner with copyright technology companies to track and monetize the use of their content online.
Orfium, which generates income for clients by tracking and monetizing the use of music in broadcast and UGC platforms, has been active in Japan since 2022 when it acquired social media firm Breaker and is now one of the biggest operators in the local market. Others include Los Angeles-based PEX, Swiss-based Utopia Music, Spain’s BMAT and California-based Vobile.
French Music company Believe began operating in Japan last year and recently launched PLAYCODE, a new imprint dedicated to championing Japanese hip-hop acts. Prior to the company entering the market, Erika Ogawa, general manager of Believe Japan, said YouTube was being “under-utilized” by the music industry in Japan.
“It has untapped potential, particularly in terms of monetization, audience engagement and artist development which should be exploited by leveraging all its capabilities,” said Ogawa last year in a blogpost.
“I see Japan as being a huge opportunity for us and the wider industry,” says Wells, who served as Universal Music Group’s president of global digital business before joining Orfium in 2017. The company now has over 700 employees across nine territories in Europe, Asia and the U.S.
Wells says the company’s clients in Japan, which include Warner Music Japan, Victor Entertainment and leading music and entertainment company Avex Inc, have seen a 77% year-on-year rise in the number of YouTube UGC views being monetized with revenues growing 34%. (Wells declined to provide equivalent financial figures. Globally, Orfium says it generated more than $200 million in incremental revenue in 2022. Notable U.S. clients include Sony Music Publishing, Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt, Ingrooves and Hipgnosis.)
In recent months, the company has ramped up its operations in Japan, signing a deal with JASRAC, Japan’s largest collective management organization. It has also started working with entertainment company Bandai Namco Music Live, a leading player in the Japanese anime music market that represents an extensive catalog of more than 100,000 sound recordings and compositions, as well as more than 3,000 digital creators, including many YouTubers and Virtual YouTubers — a popular trend in Japan where online creators use virtual avatars and are known as VTubers.
The Bandai Namco deal marks Orfium’s entry into the global anime market — a rapidly growing sector that generated almost $25 billion in 2023, according to Morgan Stanley Research, and is projected to rise to over $35 billion within the next three years. The rising global prominence of Japanese anime opens up opportunities for the country’s creators of anime music, says Alan Swarts, CEO of Orfium Japan. Anime ranks as one of the continent’s most popular music genres behind only pop and Enka (traditional Japanese music), with 11 of last year’s top 30 songs in Japan being either anime theme songs or anime related. Anime titles in Bandai’s catalog include the hugely popular Love Live series, One-Punch Man and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Swarts points to last year’s launch of a new weekly global chart by Billboard Japan, ranking the top 20 Japanese songs based on streaming and/or sales activity from more than 200 international markets, excluding Japan, as a significant development in the country’s music business that has heightened local labels’ focus on reaching global audiences.
“For a long time, Japan was a very insular physical-based market. That’s now changed and within Japanese music companies there is a big push to go global and make Japanese music as a big as Latin and K-pop has become outside their native territories,” says Swarts. “Utilizing streaming services and UGC platforms like YouTube will be key towards achieving that aim.”
“For us, Japan is the jump off point – the gateway to the rest of Asia,” says Wells. “People will soon realize that there are no more blocks on them being able to share music on these [UGC] platforms and that will quickly accelerate the growth.”
Nelly signed with WME for global representation. The rapper and singer’s most recent album, Heartland, was released in 2021 and peaked at No. 7 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart, while the single “Lil Bit” featuring Florida Georgia Line remained at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Country Digital Song Sales chart for three weeks. Signed to RECORDS (Sony Music), Nelly also recently launched MoShine, a moonshine brand.
Symphonic metal band Nightwish renewed its contract with Nuclear Blast, reaching a new global multi-album deal with the label that it first signed with 20 years ago. The label also announced that it signed American death metal band Gatecreeper, which will release its third album, Dark Superstition, on the Nuclear Blast on May 17. Gatecreeper is represented by managers James Vitalo and James Grottola at Gold Theory Artists and booking agent Merrick Jarmulowicz at Ground Control Touring.
Play It Again Sam, an imprint of the [PIAS] label group, will release Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds‘ forthcoming album under a global license, in partnership with Cave’s label, Bad Seed. Titled Wild God, the album is slated for release on Aug. 30.
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Activist Artists Management signed folk-pop singer-songwriter Weyes Blood for management. She will be represented by Activist founding partners Bernie Cahill and Matt Maher, along with Activist senior director of A&R/creative Anna Kolander and head of global marketing Chris Ruff. Weyes Blood’s most recent album, And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Heatseekers Albums chart. She has performed at festivals including Coachella and Pitchfork and toured throughout the United States, Europe and Australia.
Indie-electronic pop group Metronomy signed with Ninja Tune, which released the band’s latest single, “Nice Town.” It marks the first release from the band’s upcoming Posse EP Volume 1 follow-up.
UTA signed country band Ole 60 for global representation in all areas. The group will continue being represented by Davis Danziger, Wales Toney and Ty Little at Whale Tale Management and lawyer Matt Cottingham. Coming up, Ole 60 is slated to support Dylan Gossett and Charles Wesley Godwin on their upcoming tours and will play the Grind City Music Festival in Memphis.
New York band Wild Pink signed with Fire Talk Records, which released the group’s label debut, the single “Air Drumming Fix You,” on Mar. 7. The group is booked by Ryan Farlow at Arrival Artists (North America) and Joren Heuvels at Hometown Talent (United Kingdom, EU and Asia) and managed by Joseph Marro at Lesser Matters. The band has a publishing deal with Downtown.
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Abbey Cone signed with Downtown Artist & Label Services for distribution. Her first release under the Downtown banner is a live cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Cone’s team also includes Amanda Quinton of Quinton Digital for management, Wasserman Group for booking and Warner Chappell Music/T.R.U.T.H. for publishing.
Veteran British singer-songwriter Dave Mason signed an exclusive management deal with Red Light in Atlanta. His team at the firm consists of Charlie Brusoc and Nick Manarino, which will work with Mason on his forthcoming music releases as well as the release of his memoir, which is slated for release this summer. He’s booked by Alec Vidmar and Darius Sabet at UTA.
Philadelphia artist Julia Pratt signed to RECORDS (Sony Music), which released her latest single, “Carolina,” last week in advance of a new EP. Pratt is managed by Doug Neumann and Josh Roth at Standards Music and booked by Seth Rappaport at Paladin Artists.
Singer-songwriter Alli Walker signed with RECORDS Nashville. To celebrate the partnership, Walker has released the track “I Like Big Trucks,” adding a country flavor to the 1990s Sir Mix-a-Lot hit “Baby Got Back.” Josh Easler, executive vp of promotion & commercial strategy for RECORDS Nashville, says, “The RECORDS Nashville team is always looking for artistry that stands out, and Alli Walker does just that. We are excited to get started amplifying what she is already having success with.” – Jessica Nicholson
Nashville punk band Winona Fighter, fronted by Chloe Kinnon, signed with Rise Records and shared a new single and music video, “I’m in the Market to Please No One.” More new music is slated for release this year. The band is booked by Justin Edwards at WME and managed by Michael Iurato at In De Goot Entertainment.
Country artist Dusty Black signed with Brown Sellers Brown and Stone Country Records for management and label representation, respectively. Black was formerly the CEO of Black Tie Moving before making the transition to artist.
ADA Japan signed a deal to distribute, promote and market Japanese-language songs by the Korean boy group One Pact via its South Korean label and entertainment agency, Armada Entertainment. Jump-starting the partnership was ADA’s release of One Pact’s debut local single, “Must Be Nice.” The band came to prominence after appearing on the Korean TV music audition series Boys Planet and the rap battle show High School Rapper 4.
MaKenzie signed with Warner Records, which released her new single, “Maybe” featuring TA Thomas, on Friday (Mar. 15). The R&B artist is managed by Tarek “Terk” Stevens at Terk Entertainment Group and attorney Donald Woodard at Carter + Woodard. Also at Warner Records, alt-rocker Willy Cobb signed with the label’s War Buddha Records imprint, which released his debut single, “Cigarette Smell,” on Friday (Mar. 15). Cobb is managed by Neil Mason at Red Light.
How to Dress Well (a.k.a. Tom Krell) signed with Sargent House for the release of his forthcoming album, I Am Toward You, which is set to drop May 10. He is managed by Shaun MacDonald at Codex Management.
BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville signed Alison Nichols, who earned a viral TikTok hit with her debut release, “is it just me?”, followed by her latest release, “HOOPS.” Nichols, who is of Asian-American heritage, grew up in Georgia and gleans influence from the Texas country music scene. – Jessica Nicholson
British-Chinese sibling duo Esme Emerson (Esme and Emerson Lee-Scott) signed with Communion Records and released its new single, “Please,” on the label, with an EP due later this year. The duo is booked by rowan@infinitefuture.co.uk.
Musician and social media influencer Peet Montzingo signed a management deal with Do Less. The signing coincided with the release of his HARV-produced debut single, “Party With a Weirdo,” on Friday (Mar. 15) through Vydia.
Punk band Gloom Girl MFG signed with R+D Artist Group for management ahead of the release of its Cage the Elephant-produced EP, POLYCRISIS. Additionally, the group recently signed with Reliant Talent Agency for booking. Gloom Girl MFG is signed to Los Angeles-based label Signs From the Universe.
Iconoclast, an artist and brand development company, said on Tuesday (March 19) it acquired legendary Great American Songbook singer Tony Bennett‘s catalog, as well as his name and image likeness rights.
The vocal titan known for his renditions of “Because of You” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” dedicated his nearly seven-decade career to the canon of American jazz classics, show tunes and popular songs from the first half of the century that are known as the Great American Songbook. Bennett, who died last July, became a bridge late in life between the classics and modern pop music through concerts and recordings with Amy Winehouse, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang and others.
Iconoclast founder Olivier Chastan, along with Bennett’s son and manager Danny Bennett, said the company has secured several Tony Bennett-branded projects, including a New York City restaurant, a series of watches with luxury American watch company Bulova and a Paramount+ documentary called The Lady and The Legend, about Bennett’s frequent collaborations with Lady Gaga.
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“We all walk in the footsteps of giants. Tony was one of these giants,” Chastan said in a statement. “Besides his extraordinary talent that radiated for over 60 years, Tony’s legacy is one of character, integrity, kindness and courage. We are truly honored to be the custodians of this incredible and historical legend.”
Danny Bennett said he expects the deal will ensure his father’s works “endure for future generations.”
“In working with Tony for over 40 years, my philosophy was always that I didn’t manage a career but, rather, managed a legacy,” said Danny Bennett. “Iconoclast … will continue this tradition.”
Chastan founded Iconoclast in 2021, after having previously led Irving Azoff‘s Iconic Artists Group. The company owns rights to works by artists including The Band musician Robbie Robertson, Marianne Faithfull and David Cassidy.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Iconoclast was represented by Sam Roseme and Peter Paterno of King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano, and Tony Bennett was represented by Don Friedman of Grubman, Shire, Meiselas & Sacks.