Business
Page: 176
Dick Asher, a titan of the music industry who held presidential roles at both PolyGram and Columbia Records, has passed away at the age of 92, Variety has confirmed.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
His son Jeffrey annoucned via Facebook that Asher passed away peacefully at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. on Tuesday, July 25.
“It is with a heavy heart to inform y’all that my father, one of the legendary executives of the music industry, passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 92!! Here he is in London England presenting Mott the Hoople with awards for sales of their albums,” Jeffrey wrote alongside a photograph of his father alongside the British rockers.
Trending on Billboard
Born in New York City in 1932, Asher’s career in the music industry spanned over four decades, with his tenure coinciding with the careers of some of music’s biggest names, including Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Bon Jovi.
He began his professional journey after graduating from Tufts University and Cornell Law School. Following his service in the Marine Corps, he joined CBS Records (now Sony Music) in the mid-1960s as vice president of business affairs.
Perhaps one of the most notable moments in Asher’s early career was his meeting with Bob Dylan during the singer’s recovery from a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966.
Asher traveled to Woodstock, New York, to negotiate Dylan’s contract renewal, a task that few others were able to accomplish during that period. Reflecting on the meeting, Asher once recounted asking Dylan about his new music, to which Dylan replied, “It’s a little further on down the road.”
After a brief stint at Capitol Records, Asher returned to CBS in 1971 and worked closely with Clive Davis at Columbia Records.
He was instrumental in revitalizing the company’s struggling U.K. division and was later promoted to head of international operations. In the late 1970s, as the music industry faced a downturn due to the decline of disco, Asher was named deputy president of Columbia Records, playing a crucial role in stabilizing the company’s finances.
Asher’s most significant contribution to the music industry came in the 1980s when he took a stand against the powerful network of independent promoters, known as “The Network.”
These promoters had monopolized radio airplay through payola and other questionable practices.
As detailed in Frederic Dannen’s book Hit Men, Asher attempted to break free from their influence by releasing Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1” without their involvement.
However, the song initially faced significant resistance from major radio stations. Despite this, Asher’s determination ultimately contributed to Congressional hearings that exposed and dismantled the network’s operations in the mid-1980s.
Asher’s tenure at Columbia Records came to an end in 1983 after conflicts with the company’s president, Walter Yetnikoff. He subsequently joined Warner Communications and later became the president and CEO of PolyGram Records in 1985. During his time at PolyGram, the company released several blockbuster albums, including Bon Jovi’s “Slippery When Wet” and Def Leppard’s “Hysteria.”
Despite these successes, Asher left PolyGram in 1990 following a contractual dispute.
After departing PolyGram, Asher returned to law practice and provided consultancy services to various artists and companies.
He also became an original director for Electronic Arts, serving in this capacity for 24 years. In the 1990s, he moved to Florida and later joined Florida Atlantic University as an affiliate professor of commercial music, where he played a pivotal role in establishing the school’s recording studio.
Asher is survived by his wife, Sheila, and his son, Jeffrey. He also leaves behind four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Ticketmaster announced Wednesday (July 24) that the company is expanding its presence in Africa with the acquisition of Quicket, described in a press release as “a major player in Africa’s general admission event and festival ticketing.” Quicket, which was founded in South Africa in 2011, is known for its self-service platform and event organizer […]
Pipe Bueno has inked a deal with Warner Music Latina, becoming the label’s latest signee deriving from Colombia’s música popular scene, the company tells Billboard.
The agreement was made with Bueno’s management companies Ocesa Seitrack, where he’s represented by Alex Mizrahi and Octavio Padilla, and JB Management, where he’s represented by Juan Guillermo Ballesteros. He signed with both companies last year. Campaigns for the 32-year-old Colombian artist will be managed and operated from the Warner Música Mexicana division in Los Angeles, with the support of Warner Music Mexico.
“At some point, I envisioned being backed by one of the best record labels in the world, and without a doubt, Warner Music is one of them,” said Bueno in a statement. “I am excited to know that today I am signing with a company that has begun to believe in Colombian regional music, and has its eyes set on our genre. I have high expectations, and Warner Music’s support will be crucial in achieving everything I have in mind.”
Trending on Billboard
“For us, making this signing happen was very important,” added Ballesteros. “We have achieved an incredible partnership with a total focus on everything that surrounds Pipe Bueno…his music and all his projects as a brand. We want to elevate the Colombian genre to another level, and we are confident we have found the best way to do it with Warner Music.”
Under the new deal, Bueno announces his upcoming album. According to a press release, it “promises a unique fusion, showcasing his Colombian regional music while honoring and celebrating Mexican regional music.” His debut single under the label, “Una Pregunta” featuring Gerardo “El Jerry” Coronel, premieres Thursday (July 25).
“We are delighted to welcome Pipe Bueno to the Warner Music family,” said Roberto Andrade Dirak, MD of Warner Music Latina. “His dedication and passion for Colombian popular music are inspiring, and we are proud to be part of this new stage in his career.”
Rubén Abraham, GM of Mexican music at Warner Music Latina, added: “He’s an artist who respects and deeply understands the essence of Mexican regional music. His upcoming album is a great opportunity to continue boosting Pipe’s career in Mexico and the United States; it features high-level collaborations that reinforce Pipe’s credibility and respect in Mexican music.”
The artist born Andrés Felipe Giraldo Bueno launched his self-titled debut album in 2008 and has since risen to pioneer “la música popular Colombiana,” a musical genre that fuses traditional folk music from the Paisa Region with Regional Mexican elements, such as mariachi and ranchera. The genre is locally known as “música de cantina” and is played at every parranda, parties that feature local music and food. Bueno has since laced the genre with urban and pop rhythms by teaming up with artists such as Wisin, Zion and Darrel. He has also collaborated twice with his good friend and colleague Maluma on the tracks “La Invitación” (2014) and “Tequila” (2020). The former track peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Latin Rhythm Airplay chart in 2017.
Universal Music Group (UMG) got a boost from physical sales in the second quarter, but the conversation during Wednesday’s earnings call was mostly focused on streaming. Subscriptions, which accounted for more than half of total recorded music revenue, were a key factor in the company’s 8.7% revenue growth in the quarter. Even so, UMG’s streaming business is not firing on all cylinders. Ad-supported streaming continues to show weakness and UMG revealed that Facebook no longer licenses its premium videos.
CEO Lucian Grainge said the industry has entered “the next phase” of the streaming and subscription business, one characterized by collaboration with streaming companies to produce new products and allow artificial intelligence to allow artists to sing their music in different languages. “The amount of work, win-win dialogue [and] creative discussions that are going on between us is really extremely exciting,” he said.
Trending on Billboard
Here’s what else you should know about UMG’s most recent quarterly earnings and what was said on the call.
Streaming is growing — unevenly
Although UMG’s recorded music subscription revenue improved 6.5%, not all subscription platforms are performing equally well. CFO Boyd Muir cited a “slowdown in subscriber growth at certain platforms” while noting that Spotify, YouTube “and many regional and local platforms” continue to show healthy growth. Generally, UMG is optimistic about the overall marketplace’s ability to find new subscribers. Michael Nash, executive vp of digital strategy, said UMG’s consumer research has identified 180 million consumers from the top 19 territories “that will form the next wave of subscription adoption,” even taking into account price increases.
“Other” streaming revenue dropped 3.9% in the quarter, which Muir attributed to a decline in ad-supported streaming and some platform-specific issues (see Facebook below). UMG warned of weak ad-supported streaming last quarter, and Muir said UMG needs to see “broad-based improvement across multiple partners and geographies over a longer timeframe before we’re ready to adopt a less cautious view.”
Meta is no longer licensing UMG premium videos for Facebook
Another reason for a slowdown in non-subscription streaming revenue was Facebook’s departure from music videos. “Meta had previously offered previous music videos on Facebook,” Muir explained. “This product offering was less popular with Facebook’s user base than other music products, and as a result, Meta is no longer licensing premium music videos from us. As of May of this year, Meta is now focusing instead on other areas involving music content, and we are working together to expand these areas as part of a multifaceted renewal.” Showing premium videos is not the only aspect of Meta’s licensing agreements with labels, however. As Billboard has previously reported, Meta reached a licensing deal with UMG in 2017 that allowed UMG’s repertoire in user-uploaded videos on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. And a deal reached in 2020 allowed users to add songs from UMG’s catalog to videos on Facebook’s gaming platform.
The noncontroversial Spotify bundle controversy
After Spotify began offering both music and audiobooks, the company asserted it can pay a discounted “bundle” royalty rate to publishers and songwriters for premium streams. When asked about the audiobook bundle controversy on Tuesday, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek described it as a not-unusual disagreement between counterparts. “That’s the nature of all supplier and distributor relationships,” he said during the company’s earnings call. UMG had a similarly unsensational response when asked about the bundle controversy. Rather than feeling cheated out of royalties, Muir said UMG “[is] confident our revenue participation reflects the value our artists and our music is bringing to their platform.”
UMG invested 519 million euros ($562 million) in the first half of 2024
Three transactions accounted for 450 million euros ($487 million) of investments in the first half of the year: a majority stake in Nigerian label Maven Global; an investment in Complex; and a $240 million investment in Chord Music Partners, a joint venture of KKR and Dundee Partners that owns over 60,000 copyrights. UMG spent 96 million euros ($104 million) on catalog acquisitions in the half-year, including 75 million euros ($81 million) that had been sitting in an escrow account.
The new judge in Young Thug’s sprawling Atlanta gang trial has been greeted by a flood of new motions, including a renewed demand to release the rapper from the “torturous conditions” he’s faced while sitting in jail for more than two years.
A week after Judge Paige Reese Whitaker took the reins in the massive racketeering case, Thug’s attorney Brian Steel asked her on Tuesday (July 23) to release the rapper on bond and allow him to live under house arrest with strict monitoring until a verdict is reached.
Judge Ural Glanville, who was removed from the case earlier this month after revelations of a secret meeting with prosecutors and a key witness, has repeatedly denied such requests. In his new motion, Steel told Whitaker that those rulings had forced Thug to “languish” in jail for years without ever being convicted of a crime.
“The most fundamental premise of our criminal justice system is that the criminally accused cannot be punished for an offense until the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Steel told the new judge in his filing. “In our society, liberty is the norm.”
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that their YSL was not really a record label called Young Stoner Life but rather a violent Atlanta gang called Young Slime Life. Citing Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
The trial kicked off in January 2023 but has faced repeated delays and disruptions, including an unprecedented 10-month jury selection, the stabbing of another defendant and now the removal of the presiding judge. Prosecutors have only presented part of their vast list of potential witnesses, and the case is expected to run well into 2025.
Since being arrested on the day the indictment was released, Thug has sat in jail. Steel has repeatedly asked for pre-trial release, but Glanville rejected those requests after Fulton County prosecutors warned that the rapper might intimidate witnesses if granted bond. At a hearing last year, the judge ruled that Thug posed “a significant risk to the community.”
In Tuesday’s motion, Steel urged Whitaker to reject those concerns, repeating his previous promises that Thug would submit to strict conditions under house arrest. Steel said those conditions include the use of electronic monitoring, the hiring of off-duty police officers to guard him, subjecting all communications to monitoring and requiring searches of all people entering the home.
“This will prevent any possibility to intimidate a witness or otherwise obstruct the administration of justice,” Steel wrote. “With these parameters in mind, it cannot be said that Mr. Williams would be a threat or a danger to the community or any person or property in the community.”
Thug’s conditions while “languishing in the county jail” have been “tortuous,” Steel wrote — including 22 hours of daily isolation, “inedible food” and an “ant infested room” from which he cannot see out the windows.
“Ordering Mr. Williams to wear an ankle monitor and to be in ‘total lockdown’ in his home is the equivalent to custody and confinement and has been deemed lawful confinement without the punishment imposed by the current county jail conditions wrongly imposed on Mr. Williams,” Steel wrote.
In addition to Thug’s renewed motion for bond, Whitaker is also facing a flood of other motions as she takes over the case, including multiple requests to declare a mistrial.
Echoing a similar motion already filed by Thug’s legal team earlier this month, attorneys for Yak Gotti (Deamonte Kendrick) argued in a Tuesday filing that Glanville’s secret meeting with prosecutors was an “egregious violation” and grounds for an immediate mistrial: “Kendrick’s Constitutional rights were violated when neither he nor his attorneys were present at a critical stage of the proceedings,” attorney Doug Weinstein wrote.
Attorneys for Quamarvious Nichols, another YSL defendant, made a different argument for a mistrial: that a brand new judge could not possibly “make informed rulings” after missing the first 19 months of trial in which over 100 witnesses had already testified.
“Trials evolve and decisions are made by the court based in part on the way the trial and evidence play out over time,” attorney Bruce Harvey wrote. “This Court has missed crucial proceedings necessary to make fair and well-founded rulings and to properly instruct the jury both during and at the conclusion of trial.”
Whitaker is facing new filings from prosecutors, too. In a motion filed Tuesday, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office asked the judge to order defense attorneys to stop making “extrajudicial statements to the media” about the case, arguing that it could have a “prejudicial effect” on jurors. Prosecutors cited specific statements allegedly made by Steel, Weinstein and other defense lawyers to media outlets.
Whitaker has set a hearing date for next week to hear and potentially decide the various new motions.
Billboard’s peer-voted Latin Power Players’ Choice Award is back for 2024 and asking music industry members from all sectors to honor the executive they believe had the most impact across the Latin genre in the past year. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Voting is open to all […]
Thirteen years ago, the then-unknown teenager Rebecca Black posted her song “Friday” to YouTube, hoping to spark her music career. We all remember what happened next. The song, which amassed 171M views and 881K comments on YouTube to date, was pushed up the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 58 on the Hot 100. “Friday” was a true cultural phenomenon — but only because it was a laughingstock.
“I became unbelievably depressed,” Black said of the song’s meme-ification — and the cyberbullying that came with it — on Good Morning America in 2022. “And [I felt] trapped in this body of what the world would see me as forever. I hadn’t even finished growing.”
Many music makers dream of waking up one morning and realizing a song of theirs has gone viral overnight. But, as Black’s experience shows, not all virality is created equal. At best, it can bring a Hot 100 hit, radio play and a slew of new, lifelong fans. At worst, it can be the artists’ worst nightmare.
Trending on Billboard
One such worst-case scenario recently took place with Gigi D’Agostino’s 1999 Italo dance track “L’amour Toujours,” which was recently co-opted by the German far-right. In a popular video posted to social media, a group of young men sang the song outside a bar on the German island Sylt, replacing the original lyrics with a Neo-Nazi slogan that translates roughly to “Germany to the Germans, out with the foreigners.” As they chanted the xenophobic lyric, one of the men raised his arm in a Nazi-like salute. Another put two fingers to his upper lip in a seeming allusion to Adolf Hitler’s characteristic mustache.
After that, several events in Germany, including Oktoberfest in Munich, looked into banning the song, and D’Agostino replied to an inquiry from German newspaper Der Spiegel with a written statement, claiming that he had no idea what had happened.
Granted, the circumstances of virality are rarely that bad, but songs commonly end up on an “unintended side of TikTok,” as Sam Saideman, CEO/co-founder of management and digital market firm Innovo, puts it. “We try to educate our partners that sometimes you cannot control what uses of your song [are] on the internet.” While Innovo “may plan a campaign to [pay creators to] use the song in get-ready-with-me makeup videos,” he explains, another user’s totally different kind of video using the song could become far more popular than the originally planned use, pushing the campaign organically onto another part of the platform and away from its target audience.
For example, Twitter and TikTok users twisted “Cellophane,” FKA Twigs’ heartbreaking 2019 ballad about unrequited love, into a meme beginning in early 2022. Oftentimes, videos using the song pair Twigs’ voice with creators that are acting melodramatic about things that are clearly no big deal. Even worse, one popular version of the audio replaces Twigs’ voice with Miss Piggy’s (yes, the Muppet character).
“Digital marketers are able to boost certain narratives they support,” says Connor Lawrence, chief marketing officer of Indify, an angel investing platform that helps indie artists navigate virality. “It happens a lot — marketers boosting a narrative that is most favorable to the artist’s vision to hopefully steer it.” Saideman says he likes to keep a “reactionary budget” on hand during his song campaigns in case they need to try to course-correct a song that is headed in the wrong direction.
But digital marketing teams can’t do much to fix another bad type of song virality: when songs blow up before the artist is ready. “I am actively hoping that my baby artist does not go viral right now,” says one manager who wished to remain anonymous to protect their client’s identity. “They need to find their sound first.” Omid Noori, president/co-founder of management company and digital marketing agency ATG Group, adds, “It’s a real challenge when someone goes viral for something when they aren’t ready to capitalize on it, or even worse, the song that took off sounds nothing like anything you want to make again.”
Ella Jane, an indie-pop artist who went viral in 2020 for making a video that explained the lyrics to her song “Nothing Else I Could Do,” says that going viral early in her artistic career had positive and negative effects. She signed a deal with Fader Label and boosted her following, but she’s also still dealing with the downsides four years later. “I’m grateful for it, but I think because my first taste of having a successful song was inextricable from TikTok, it has cast a shadow on my trajectory in some ways,” she says.
Over her next releases, Jane says she chased the algorithm, like many of her peers who experienced TikTok hits early in their careers, trying out lots of different video gimmicks to hook listeners. “It doesn’t reflect who I am as an artist now,” she says. “That feeling is addicting, and you feel like you’re withdrawing from it when your videos don’t hit. It can leave artists at a point where they’re obsessed with metrics.” This obsession has been reinforced by some record labels who use metrics as the only deciding factor in whether or not to sign a new artist.
“This is no different than hitting the lottery,” Noori says. “Imagine you get the $100 million jackpot on your first try… It makes artists feel like failures before they even really get started.”
As artists are increasingly instructed by well-meaning members of their team to make as many TikToks as possible, some have turned to sharing teasers of unfinished songs as a form of content — which have occasionally gone viral unintentionally, despite not even being fully written and recorded. That’s what happened to songs by Good Neighbours, Leith Ross, Katie Gregson MacLeod and Lizzy McAlpine, leading many of them to rush to finish recordings so they could capitalize on their spotlight before it faded.
“People put a lot of pressure on the recorded version,” says Gregson MacLeod, whose acoustic piano version of her song “Complex” went viral before she had recorded the official master. “If it is not exactly like the sound that went viral, if you don’t sing the words in the exact same way or use the exact same key, sometimes people decide, ‘We’re not having it.’” While she says she was ultimately happy with how it all turned out, not everyone is so lucky. Within two weeks of the song’s virality, she rushed to release a “demo” version to match the rawness of her original video, as well as a produced version, earning her a combined 43 million plays on Spotify alone.
McAlpine, however, decided to run away from her unfinished viral song. After posting a popular video of herself playing a half-written song, she told her fans in a TikTok video, “I’m not releasing that song ever because I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel genuine. It never felt genuine. I wrote it for fun. It wasn’t something I was ever going to release, or even going to finish… That is not who I am as an artist; in fact, I think I’m the opposite… I’m not concerned with overnight success. I’m not chasing that… I want to build a long-lasting career.”
Noori says TikTok virality in particular has led to a “huge graveyard of one-hit wonders,” something that is far more common today than the bygone days of traditional, human gatekeepers. “With the algorithm, how do you even know who saw your content?” he asks.
Still, there’s an argument to be made that perhaps, as P.T. Barnum famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” “I’ve been thinking about that idea a lot and whether or not it is true for virality,” says Saideman. “And it’s hard to say.”
Black ultimately reclaimed “Friday” and her music career in 2021 by getting in on the joke, turning the decade-old cult hit into a hyperpop remix, produced by Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs and featuring Big Freedia, Dorian Electra and 3Oh!3. From there, Black continued to release music as a queer avant pop artist and played an acclaimed DJ set at Coachella in 2023. Still, the original version of “Friday” is her most popular song on Spotify by a long shot, even though it was released before the streaming era began.
“The beauty and curse of these platforms, especially TikTok today,” Saideman says, “is that they are remix platforms. When you put your music on them, you are opening your music up creatively to other people using it in positive and negative ways. You can’t have one without the other.”
This story was featured in Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up to receive Machine Learnings, and Billboard’s other newsletters, for free here.
Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, strong gains in publishing revenue and a jump in merchandise sales propelled Universal Music Group (UMG) to solid revenue growth in the second quarter of 2024.
Despite a fall in ad-supported streaming that hampered streaming revenue gains, UMG’s overall revenue rose 8.7% to 2.93 billion euros ($3.16 billion at the quarter’s average exchange rate), the company announced Wednesday (July 24). Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 17.4% to 580 million euros ($624 million) and EBITDA margin improved 1.1 percentage points to 19.8%. EBITDA was helped by revenue growth and cost savings from layoffs announced earlier in the year, though those benefits were partially offset by an increase in lower-margin revenue from merchandise and physical sales.
In the recorded music segment, revenue grew 5.8% to 2.2 billion euros ($2.37 billion). Subscription revenue improved 6.5% to 1.14 billion euros ($1.23 billion) while other streaming revenue dropped 4.2% to 343 million euros ($369 million). Overall, streaming revenue fell 4.2% due to slower growth at ad-supported platforms and the timing of deal renewals.
Trending on Billboard
Subscription growth was slowed by two factors, CFO Boyd Muir said during the earnings call. First, price increases in 2023 provided a boost a year ago. Second, while Spotify, YouTube Music and “many regional and local platforms” have continued to show strong growth, some other subscription services “have been less successful in driving global adoption.”
Physical revenue rose 9.5% to 357 million euros ($384 million) thanks to releases by Swift and Billie Eilish, which helped offset a tough comparison against a strong quarter in Japan for physical sales in the prior year, said Muir. Licensing and other revenue climbed 18% to 315 million euros ($339 million). Download revenue fell 21.3% but amounted to just 48 million euros ($52 million).
At Universal Music Publishing Group, revenue rose 10.1% to 511 million euros ($550 million). Digital revenue rose 17.8% to 311 million euros ($335 million) and accounted for most of publishing’s gains. Performance royalties improved 3.1% to 100 million euros ($108 million), while synch royalties grew 1.7% to 61 million euros ($66 million) and mechanical royalties fell 10.3% to 26 million euros ($28 million).
Of the 15 different songs to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 this year, UMPG had songwriters n 13 of them, which CEO Lucian Grainge called “an extraordinary achievement.”
Merchandising revenue jumped 44.6% to 227 million euros ($244 million) due to higher direct-to-consumer sales and gains in touring merchandise sales. Muir credited tours by Olivia Rodrigo, The Rolling Stones, Nicki Minaj, 21 Savage and Morgan Wallen for that growth.
Topline results for Q2:
Total revenue of 2.93 billion euros ($3.16 billion), up 8.7%.
EBITDA: 580 million euros ($624 million), up 14.9%.
Recorded music revenue of 2.2 billion euros ($2.37 billion), up 6.8%.
Recorded music subscription revenue of 1.14 billion euros ($1.23 billion), up 6.5%.
Recorded music other streaming revenue of 343 million euros ($369 million), down 4.2%.
Publishing revenues of 511 million euros ($550 million), up 10.1%.
Merchandising revenue of 227 million euros ($244 million), up 44.6%.
Billboard’s peer-voted Latin Power Players’ Choice Award is back for 2024 and asking music industry members from all sectors to honor the executive they believe had the most impact across the Latin music genre in the past year. Voting is open to all Billboard Pro members, both existing and new, with one vote per member […]
In a major leadership and strategic shakeup at the world’s top K-pop company, HYBE promoted Jason Jaesang Lee to be the company’s new chief executive officer on Wednesday (July 24), replacing Jiwon Park, according to a press release.
Lee previously served as president of HYBE America and chief strategy officer, a role which saw him lead HYBE’s 2021 acquisition of Scooter Braun‘s Ithaca Holdings and spearhead the Seoul-based company’s initial public offering in 2020.
In positioning him at the top of the company, HYBE said Lee “is the central figure for the forthcoming ‘HYBE 2.0’ strategy rollout,” a global expansion plan that has been in the works since the start of 2024.
Trending on Billboard
“Jason is an entertainment industry veteran with vast experience in strategic planning and operations across both domestic and overseas businesses,” the company said in the statement. “Under his new leadership, we are looking forward to advancing as a global entertainment lifestyle platform company.”
More than the home of BTS, HYBE’s budding empire has expanded in the U.S. and Latin American music markets in recent years with the November acquisition of Exile Music, the music division of Spanish-language studio Exile Content, and HYBE America’s acquisition of hip-hop label Quality Control and, before that, the country powerhouse Big Machine Label Group.
HYBE’s revenue-generating engine showed signs of slowing earlier this year when the company reported in May that its first quarter revenue fell to the lowest point in two years, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) fell to the lowest point since the first quarter of 2021.
Park, who was named CEO in July 2021 when HYBE founder Bang Si-Hyuk transitioned to board chairman, “decided to step down … [and] will continue to contribute to the company’s growth strategy by leveraging his expertise in the intersection of entertainment and technology,” according to the statement.
During Park’s tenure as CEO, HYBE more than doubled its revenue and operating profit and became the first Korean entertainment company ever to generate more than 2 trillion Korean won ($1.4 billion) in revenue.