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More than a dozen NBA teams are facing copyright lawsuits from Kobalt and other music companies over allegations that the basketball teams used songs in social media videos without permission.
In 14 separate actions filed in federal court Friday, Kobalt and others accused each club of using copyrighted music in promotional videos on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) to “increase viewership” and “engage its fanbase.”
In the case against the New York Knicks, the music companies accused the team of using songs by “New York legends” Jay-Z and Cardi B. The case against the Philadelphia 76ers cited use of songs by Philly native Meek Mill. In the action against Atlanta Hawks, the complaint said the club had used music by “Atlanta’s own” Migos and OutKast.
But in each case, the overarching allegation was the same – that a sophisticated corporate entity had stolen music that it knew it was supposed to pay for.
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“Defendants are acutely aware of the protections that the copyright laws of the United States afford,” lawyers for the music companies wrote in language that appeared in each lawsuit. “[The team] utilizes the full extent of legal protections available for its own intellectual property while simultaneously knowingly and willfully infringing on the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs.”
In addition to the Knicks, 76ers and Hawks, the lawsuits targeted the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Denver Nuggets, the Indiana Pacers, the Miami Heat, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the New Orleans Pelicans, the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Sacramento Kings and the San Antonio Spurs.
A spokesman for the NBA did not immediately return a request for comment.
The other music companies who signed onto the lawsuits include Artist Publishing Group, Notting Hill Music and Prescription Songs.
Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok provide huge libraries of licensed music for users to add to their videos. But there’s a key exception: The songs can’t be used for commercial or promotional videos posted by brands. That kind of content requires a separate synch license, just like a conventional ad on television.
In recent years, music owners have cracked down on brands that blur those lines on social media. All three major labels sued drink maker Bang Energy for using hundreds of copyrighted songs in TikTok videos, with Universal and Sony eventually winning judgments. The owner of the “Space Jam” song has filed several lawsuits over the past year, including suing a minor league baseball team that used the famed 1990s track in a Facebook video. And earlier this month, the Beastie Boys sued the owner of Chili’s for using the trio’s “Sabotage” in social media clips that spoofed the song’s famous music video.
The inaugural SXSW London will take place June 2-7, 2025, at more than 20 venues throughout the city’s Shoreditch neighborhood, marking the first time the longstanding event will happen in Europe.
As the gears get turning, the event has also announced new hires Clare Barry, the former marketing director of Cannes Lions; writer and film programmer Anna Bogutskaya; and artistic curator Beth Greenacre. Organizers forecast that SXSW London will generate more than £75 million (roughly $97 million) for the U.K. economy.
According to its booker Adem Holness, a London native, the event will also emphasize the city’s many cultures while working to connect artists and industry workers from local scenes with international audiences and potential partners.
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“The thing we can do uniquely is pull together reflections of the cutting-edge, grassroots music communities and — if I’m just thinking about the music program — how people can get involved in what is happening at the cutting edge and how they might be able to work with those different international music scenes to develop them and develop ideas with them,” he says. “That’s what I think SXSW London should be.”
This focus is thus not just on music, film and technology, but the cultures these things emanate from. This, Holness envisions, will create a gathering that “doesn’t just feel like a series of performances, but like you’re experiencing culture and moment around that.”
The event will also incorporate broader European perspectives, with Holness and his team focused on programming that highlights “the cutting edge of music and culture in Europe and beyond.” As such, he adds, the goal is to “make sure our neighbors and friends feel like they’re a big part of what we’re trying to do.”
Still, the 20,000 anticipated attendees will land at an event site that is distinctly London, with Holness saying that Shoreditch “feels in a way like a microcosm of what London is. It’s a hub of technology, but you’ve also got incredible nightlife. You’ve got distinct diasporic communities in and around that area and obviously the whole of London. But I think [Shoreditch provides] a great opportunity for people who might not have been to London before to understand who we are and what we’re about.”
SXSW London follows the 2023 debut of SXSW Sydney. The original event in Austin has been happening since 1987 and has grown to become one of the biggest events in the global music calendar, attracting hundreds of thousands of musicians, creatives, filmmakers, media companies and music industry executives to the state of Texas every March.
“I hope that the Austin and Sydney teams, when we’ve done our take on it, feel proud of it as well,” Holness says. “I hope they feel like it lives up to the incredible work they’ve done, but also has its own flavor.”
In April 2021, it was announced that SXSW had signed a “lifeline” deal with P-MRC, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, making P-MRC a stakeholder and long-term partner with the Austin festival. P-MRC is the parent company of Billboard.
In a move that highlights her selective engagement with social media, Ariana Grande, who deactivated her Twitter account years ago but remains the seventh-most-followed person on Instagram, is set to join HYBE’s superfan platform, Weverse.
Weverse Company tells Billboard that the chart-topping star will join the platform on Sunday (July 21), adding to a roster that includes BTS, BLACKPINK, JVKE, NCT 127, (G)I-DLE, Lauv, YOASOBI, Conan Gray, AKB48 and thuy. In joining the platform, Grande will have the ability to post messages and content to her own dedicated community, hold livestreams for members, read personalized fan letters, upload exclusive media content, share disappearing messages, and utilize the popular Weverse Shop, which sold more than 18 million pieces of merchandise last year to fans in more than 198 countries.
The announcement marks a significant moment for both Grande and Weverse, opening up a new way for the singer to deepen her connection with fans while showing a commitment to her continued business relationship with HYBE and HYBE America CEO (and Grande’s former manager) Scooter Braun.
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Since opening in June 2019 with Billboard 200 chart-toppers TOMORROW X TOGETHER as its first artist, Weverse now hosts 146 artists from countries including South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Its biggest artist community, for BTS, boasts 26 million members, while the ENHYPEN community has 9.8 million. Today, HYBE reports over 155 million lifetime downloads and an average of 10 million monthly active users across 245 countries and regions, with 90% of its user base now coming from outside Korea. Despite Warner Music Group (WMG) announcing plans for its own superfan app — as well as WMG and Sony investing early in rival superfan platform Fave — Weverse says its start with K-pop artists delivered important insights to entice top Western stars like Grande to join.
“What’s lucky for us has been that K-pop idols are the types of artists that have a very strong core fanbase,” Joon Choi, president of Weverse Company, tells Billboard of the company’s half-decade of growth that now includes investment from Universal Music Group. “As a platform and a business, we had already enjoyed the competitive edge or advantage of being there first and being there early to observe what superfans actually want.”
While artists can use Weverse to access first-party data for content delivery, promotion and to stay connected to international fans, the platform has expanded opportunities in live music with not only event streaming but its Weverse Con Festival and a Weverse by Fans tool through which fans can develop their own merch.
“We were there earlier and we have a long experience of observing the demands of our fans,” Choi adds. “That’s why we were able to create this one-stop fan service that includes merch development, merch selling, communities, videos, live streaming and even magazines…I do see the growth of startups or services that are entering this particular [superfan] market and that’s good. The more competition in the market is actually better for us because being the only player in that particular market sector makes us nervous.”
New competitors or not, Weverse continues to expand; currently, the company boasts a total of 400 employees in South Korea, 60 in Tokyo, and 20 in Santa Monica, Calif. (with the target to grow to 30 this year). And with a major star like Grande, there’s a slew of Arianators that could soon be joining the platform. Still, the executive admits he doesn’t know what to expect from the Eternal Sunshine singer once she officially joins. As he puts it, “It is totally up to the artists.”
Read on for more insights from Joon about Grande’s big move and what lies in store for Weverse’s future.
Weverse is adding new artists all the time, but Ariana Grande is a huge name with a worldwide fanbase. What have the weeks been like leading up to this announcement?
I just traveled a lot; I’ve been a globetrotter. We have offices in Santa Monica and Tokyo, and in each office location our leaders are currently meeting and contacting many artists and labels, so I believe our platform and business are becoming truly international and crossing borders. As we do that, we have opportunities to engage with and work with big artists, but also rising stars, so these opportunities are being created.
In the past, Weverse or artists have held special events or activities to begin their time on the platform. Will Ariana have a welcome party?
My simple answer to that question is that it is totally up to the artists. So, although we do have sessions where we offer guidelines or guidance in terms of how to better utilize the platform to cultivate the superfan culture or fandom, we do not necessarily engage too much [in terms of] planning activities or what’s going on the Weverse platform. I know that this might not be the direct answer that you’re looking for, but we have artists onboarded onto Weverse with a very good understanding of the difference between Weverse and other social media platforms.
What opportunities do you see for Weverse in welcoming Ariana Grade, and what opportunities are now open to Ariana?
Weverse is definitely a distinct platform, different from other social media platforms, so I’m also very curious how it will be utilized by artists like Ariana Grande. It really depends on each artist or label whether they discuss details about how they want to or plan to utilize Weverse. But in this particular case, we don’t know yet — that’s something that I’m closely watching.
But I would like to add that when I look at Weverse from my perspective as the leader of this business, it’s important to have enough resources and big enough clusters of a particular genre, specific country or culture. So, that’s why we’ve been working hard to onboard many artists. During the first half of this year alone, we have onboarded Nightly, thuy, Lauv, Umi, Conan Gray and JVKE. And then we have Ariana Grande. But Gracie Abrams has been very active as well; she’s good. So, when you see Weverse as a platform and in terms of the growth of our platform, it is very important that we have thriving clusters of certain music genres, countries or cultures to generate a network effect as well.
Weverse does a lot of business selling music, albums and merchandise via Weverse Shop, but Ariana isn’t only involved in music: she has R.E.M Beauty and perfumes; she’s in movies and television. Does she give you opportunities to expand into new commerce markets?
I can’t comment on an artist’s existing merchandise lines or albums since there must be agreements or contracts in terms of production and distribution in place. How merchandise is developed and sold through Weverse really varies by each artist. But a feature that we have on Weverse, Weverse by Fans, has been very effective and is gaining a lot of attention from artists because it is based on fan demand. Also, Weverse by Fans doesn’t require a minimum quantity of manufacturing goods for production. So, as soon as there’s enough demand for a certain type of merch, we can immediately produce and sell those.
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On one hand, Ariana Grande is one of the most followed people on Instagram, but she also deactivated her Twitter years ago and takes social media breaks. How were discussions with an artist who might have complex feelings about social media?
That’s a very good question. Actually, when we meet a lot of artists, we tell the artists to actively use other social media because Weverse is a little different. It’s a place where people who love the artist gather. This isn’t our claim — artists have been saying this particular characteristic makes Weverse a very friendly and safer platform for artists to engage with their fans and the public compared to [other] social media…and that’s not just specific to big-name artists. We have been having opportunities to work with rising rookies as well. We don’t really care whether it’s a big-brand artist or not; what’s more important for us is to seek and discover artists interested in cultivating superfan culture, regardless of how famous or how popular they are, to work with us and use Weverse.
Ariana is the seventh-most-followed person in the world on Instagram. Do you worry that adding an artist with such a wide audience could open Weverse up to trolls or those with bad intentions?
Our product features are already equipped and have the advantage of features like filtering, reporting and in-house moderators to prevent and manage ill-intended activities on Weverse’s platform. I do understand the concern that you raised regarding such potential, and I agree with you. However, such circumstances or ill-intended activities occurred for artists already onboarded on Weverse. So, it would not just be for Ariana Grande that such a thing could happen. But I believe we have about four years’ know-how in operating and managing trolls or activities like that. So, we are not too worried, although we are still being very, very cautious about how to manage that.
I’d add that we always tell artists when onboarded to Weverse that the best use case has been using live broadcasts to communicate with fans directly. K-pop artists have been doing so well in terms of using Weverse as a platform for that, and also through the membership, they can have closer, more direct interactions with their fans as well. So, we’ve been telling artists from the inception, from the moment that they are onboarded to Weverse, that these are some of the ways that are historically proven to be very effective to have a very long-term and sustainable fandom relationship.
What is the onboarding process like? Are you personally meeting top artists?
We’re not a service that allows anyone to sign up, [like] on a website like YouTube or other social media. We don’t know when that’s going to happen, maybe in the far future we will switch to such a model. But so far, we have been doing internal research to discover and identify artists who would have a potential benefit or whose fanbase overlaps with the user base of Weverse. These days we are getting a lot of inbound inquiries from artists or other labels themselves. In the past, we used to do a lot of outreach to discover or find more artists, but since last year, as words such as “superfan” and “Weverse” have become more buzzy in the industry and the market, we have been gaining a lot of attention.
It’s not just me but other teams; we call it a B2B team in Korea, but maybe in the United States, it’s called a customer success management team. We have internal resources that frequently discuss and follow up with labels and artists.
I’m personally curious as someone in media, do you ever imagine a day you might expand the type of people beyond musicians?
Definitely. We already have some actors and actresses onboarded, but this question is really good. We’ve thought about it, but the timeline is very important. The ultimate goal of Weverse is to create a superfan not only for human artists. While I believe Weverse is currently working the best for superfans of a person with a thriving fandom, we’ve already seen an interesting case of the virtual idol group in Korea called PLAVE with a significantly high engagement level within their community on Weverse, which is very, very noteworthy. That’s where we saw the potential of expanding this platform not just for human artists but also for virtual artists. However, we also see the possibility of extending this IP to include other types of artists; this is a fun future that we can imagine at the moment. We still have a lot of room for further growth within the music industry so that’s where we have greater focus.
Since you said this was your personal curiosity, I’m giving you my personal opinion and projection on that potential. [Laughs] My biggest question working at Weverse is, “How many people out of the entire human population would have the ‘superfan’ DNA?” That’s kind of the ultimate thing we are looking for. Someone might be a superfan of a certain sport or sports team — there’s always a superfan of something or someone.
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There’s the Weverse Con Festival, Weverse Magazine, there’s exclusive shows to stream. Why is Weverse developing IP beyond the platform? I imagine a HYBE Festival would be well received.
Weverse is a platform, so neutrality is the greatest value that we really emphasize and prioritize, which has been the case since Chairman Bang [Si-Hyuk] originated this platform. From day one, we really valued neutrality as an important value for us, but also in using such a new business model, we believe that we can lead innovation in the music industry. When you look back on the music industry’s history for the last two or three decades, it started by simply selling albums, then the touring business rose, and since 2000, technology has been disrupting the music industry. Now, it’s time for us to seek the answer to what’s next, right? I think Weverse is a platform and a business that has been most actively conducting experiments in order to answer what’s next for the music industry. If our experiments succeed, we can definitely offer benefits to artists all around the world, and that has been the basic philosophical foundation for our business and platform. We’re very, very, very, very serious about it.
Some people here might not like what I’m just about to say, but considering all the other [types of] content — it can be TV shows, movies, video games, everything — we think music itself, just as a piece of content, is the least compensated compared to all the others. So, we really have to think about that from a business perspective. …There is way more around music, right? There is no doubt that music is the core — and that’s why the mission statement of HYBE is, “We believe in music” — and that’s where we started from. [But] to make it a sustainable business, that’s where we can evolve from.
It was fun to see JYP Entertainment founder J.Y. Park perform with Chairman Bang at Weverse Con Festival last month. JYP is one of the last big K-pop agencies not on Weverse. Was this a hint?
We’ve always wanted all the artists from JYP, no doubt! [Laughs] But this time, it was just about the music. But of course, we’ve always wanted JYP — simple!
Removing yourself from work for a second, who or what are you a superfan of?
I’ve been a very big [music] fan since the ’80s: I listened to Casey Kasem with America’s Top 10, I was a Billboard kid. I think about all the famous songs and artists from the ’80s and ’90s — I’m that old guy [Laughs] — and then I had the recent memorable experience with PLAVE. The DJ JoJo [Wright] from KIIS FM actually visited Weverse Con Festival, held a lot of interviews with artists performing, and mentioned that one of the most impressive interviews he had was with PLAVE. From my perspective, from the ’80s and ’90s to virtual artists on the radio, that’s a very interesting journey to see and experience.
The two largest publicly traded record label and music publishing companies posted stock gains in a week that otherwise saw major indexes fall sharply.
Shares of both Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) managed modest gains this week as companies prepare to release their latest quarterly earnings reports. UMG, which reports earnings on Wednesday (July 24), rose 2.6% to 28.11 euros ($30.61). Year-to-date, UMG shares are up 8.9%.
WMG, which reports earnings on Aug. 8, gained 3.5% to $32.00 after receiving a nod from Jefferies analysts earlier in the week. Noting that WMG shares are down this year (-10.6% as of Friday) and trade at a discount to UMG, Jefferies called WMG’s current price “attractive” and believes the company will benefit from its slate of new releases (Zach Bryan, Dua Lipa) and cost-saving measures. Indeed, WMG did well in the first half of the year by owning the top three tracks in the U.S., according to Luminate’s midyear report. Jefferies has a $38 price target on WMG, which represents an 18.8% upside over Friday’s closing price.
The Billboard Global Music Index fell 2.9% to 1,779.41, dropping its year-to-date gain to 16.0%. Overall, nine stocks were gainers, ten were losers and one was unchanged. But the rough week extended far beyond music stocks. The Nasdaq composite fell 3.6% to 17,726.94 as investors dumped tech stocks such as chipmaker Nvidia (down 8.8% this week) and cybersecurity company Crowdstrike (down 11.1% on Friday thanks to a massive global internet outage), while the S&P 500 fell 2.0% to 5,505.00. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 dropped 1.2% to 8,155.72. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 2.2% to 2,795.46. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.4% to 2,982.31.
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Spotify shares fell for the second consecutive week, dropping 2.4% to $295.09. On Thursday (July 18), Guggenheim reiterated its “buy” rating and $400 price target. Analysts expect to see some “modest cost savings” from lower publishing royalties, a move that has sparked controversy in the music industry and attracted the attention of some U.S. lawmakers. What’s more, Guggenheim analysts do not expect a “significant portion” of premium subscribers to switch to the lower-cost “basic” tier following price increases for the standard plans. Investors weren’t as optimistic, though, and Spotify fell 10.8% below its 2024 high of $331.08 set on June 5.
SiriusXM fell 8.1% to $3.41, bringing its year-to-date loss to 37.7%. This week, Morgan Stanley slightly lowered its forecast for net satellite radio subscriber additions in both the second quarter and the full year. SiriusXM, which reports quarterly earnings on Aug. 1, lost 1.4% of its satellite radio subscribers in the first quarter of 2024.
LiveOne shares rose 5.7% to $1.49 following the release of a preliminary look at quarterly earnings on Thursday. The music streaming company, which owns Slacker and a majority of podcaster PodcastOne, expects fiscal first-quarter revenue to increase 20% to $33.1 million.
K-pop stocks added to their losing streaks this week. HYBE fell 3.8% to 182,500 won ($131.31) and brought its year-to-date loss to 21.8%. SM Entertainment fell 5.8% to 73,300 won ($52.74) and has dropped 20.4% this year despite launching a new joint venture with Kakao Entertainment and overhauling its corporate governance. YG Entertainment lost 8% to 35,250 won ($25.36), bringing its year-to-date decline to 30.7%. JYP Entertainment was an outlier, gaining 2.6% this week to 59,000 won ($42.45), although the stock is still down 41.8% this year.
Travis Scott averaged $3.3 million per show from the first seven dates of the European and U.K. leg of his Circus Maximus Tour for a total of more than $23 million so far, according to figures reported by Live Nation. Scott landed in the U.K. on June 28 for two dates at GelreDome in Anthem, […]
Beyond the drama and debate surrounding this year’s Copa América, we at Round saw a different kind of news story emerge: How the oldest international football competition in the world is driving niche Latin American music genres to new audiences in North America.
Soccer is increasingly finding its footing in American culture, and its rise in popularity is reflected in the number of viewers this year’s tournament reeled in. According to The Hollywood Reporter, both Fox and Univision registered record viewership for the Euro 2024 and Copa America finals. The Spain-England game drew a combined 9.43 million viewers on Sunday afternoon, and in primetime, Argentina’s victory over Colombia averaged 11.63 million viewers across the two networks. Fox scored more than 6 million viewers for both matches, which, outside of the World Cup, became the most-watched soccer telecasts ever on the network.
Copa America’s record ratings were reflected on TikTok, where the #CopaAmerica2024 hashtag garnered 71.5 million views. The U.S. accounted for 13% of the content creation on TikTok around the event, second only to Mexico at 15%, according to data compiled by Round Technology, which can scrape social media platforms to provide proprietary data. Whilst conversation on social platforms was initially driven by what was happening on the pitch, we later saw audiences interact more than ever with Latin music, demonstrating how central music has become to the tournament.
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This year, Shakira’s halftime performance at the Copa America final infused Latin culture into the event despite initial reservations from Colombia’s national team coach, Néstor Lorenzo, about extending the halftime break for the show (soccer tournaments typically don’t have halftime shows, and if they do, they don’t extend beyond 15 minutes). Meanwhile, Colombia’s music elite rocked up to the tournament decider, with Feid, Ryan Castro, Karol G, Maluma, Blessd, Camilo, Fonseca and Juanes all in attendance. Impressively, those artists collectively represent more than a quarter of a billion monthly listeners on Spotify.
On TikTok, three tracks stood out as firm favorites for the platform’s users: Shakira’s “Punteria” (the official song of TelevisaUnivision coverage of the tournament); Ryan Castro’s reggaeton track “El Ritmo Que Nos Une” (the Colombian team’s official song); and MC Danone’s Brazilian funk tune “Vem Quebrando.” Together, those tracks have featured in nearly 550,000 TikTok creations since the tournament began on June 21. In comparison, across the pond in Europe, the official song of the Euros, “FIRE” by Meduza, OneRepublic and Leony, sparked just 70,000 creations, while England’s unofficial anthem “Three Lions (It’s Coming Home)” garnered 64,000 creations during the tournament.
Copa America’s surprising success on TikTok, coupled with its deepening connection to music, has been game-changing for artists by bringing attention to emerging genres. Take, for example, “Vem Quebrando,” a Brazilian funk song popularized by Colombian midfielder Richard Ríos, who performs a TikTok dance associated with the track whenever he scores.
Originally recorded by MC Danone, “Vem Quebrando” has seen a significant rise in popularity, racking up more than 85 million streams and highlighting the potential for niche genres to find a wider audience. With 1.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify, MC Danone illustrates how local Latin American sounds are being funneled to American audiences via soccer and, ultimately, how TikTok has the potential to dictate the impact of an event.
Copa America 2024 has shown that soccer is more than just a game, bringing the sport further into North American homes and introducing a rich tapestry of Latin American music to a new audience.
As the dust settles on Copa America 2024, attention turns to the 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico. With soccer’s popularity expected to continue growing in the States, the tournament presents a huge opportunity for local sounds from Latin America to make their way to American audiences. TikTok and other UGC platforms will undoubtedly be key accelerators for these hyper-local sounds, offering a pathway for a new wave of genres to find success in the North American market.
Ray Uscata is managing director of Round, North and South America. Round is a tech-enabled digital agency using content, creators and communities to place the world’s leading brands and artists at the center of culture.
At the midway point of 2024, the recorded music business is in fine form. Streaming is growing, physical purchases remain strong and download purchases are so few that any declines are barely noticeable amidst streaming’s success.
Billboard has already reported the major takeaways from Luminate’s midyear report — you can read a main article here and a follow-up article with more observations here — but a document filled with so much data, augmented by market research, merits another story. Below you can find five additional insights from the report (which you can download a copy of here).
Putting Digital Into Perspective
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Digital’s share of the market rose slightly to 95.3% of equivalent album units (EAUs), up from 95.2% at midyear 2023, 92.3% at midyear 2022 and 91.2% at midyear 2021. If that seems higher than some other figures you’ve spotted at Billboard, don’t worry. Because Luminate tracks only sales and purchases, comparing its data to other available data is like comparing apples and oranges. Public companies that report recorded music revenues have a lower digital share than Luminate’s consumption-based numbers. At Universal Music Group, digital’s global share was 69.8% in 2023, while at Warner Music Group it was 67.0%. Those companies’ digital shares are lower than what’s found in the Luminate report for a couple reasons. First, both companies get more than 10% of their recorded music revenue from physical sales globally (16% for UMG, 11% for WMG). Second, music companies group record labels with merchandise, various licensing revenues and expanded rights revenues — things not tracked by Luminate
Luminate’s digital share is also higher than the RIAA’s widely observed industry numbers, which had digital at 86.4% of recorded music revenue in the U.S. in 2023. But the RIAA tracks a few things that Luminate doesn’t. That includes SoundExchange collections (encompassing satellite radio and cable music services such as Music Choice and Stingray), which last year accounted for 5.8% of total revenue; and synchronization royalties, which accounted for 2.4%.
Long Live the Album
Not many years ago, the album was declared dead and some people predicted single-track releases would become standard. Sure, the album has been forever unbundled, and artists tend to release individual tracks ahead of an album’s release. Yet the format continues to thrive. At the midway point of 2022, four albums had more than 1 million equivalent album units. Last year, five albums had surpassed that threshold by June 30. And this year, seven albums topped 1 million EAUs.
As Billboard’s Dan Rys noted earlier this week, this year’s top album, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, did especially well, boasting 2.6 times as many EAUs as the No. 2 album, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time. To be fair, though, One Thing at a Time has had incredibly longevity: It was the No. 1 album in the first half of 2023, and its 3.31 million EAUs in that period were only 29% less than TTPD’s 4.67 million units in the first half of 2024.
Notably, sales are a major part of the consumption pie for some of the top albums. In the case of TTPD, more than half (53%) of total EAUs came from purchases. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, the No. 4 album, got 23.3% of EAUs from purchases.
Catalog Didn’t Kill Current Music
Catalog’s share of total EAUs was 72.8% — exactly equal to the prior-year period. This ends a run of increasing catalog market share that led to much — and some might say unnecessary — handwringing over the popularity of current music being released by record labels. By comparison, catalog’s share was 72.4% at midyear 2022 and 69.4% at midyear 2021. (Luminate classifies catalog music as being more than 18 months old.) Not all catalog music could be considered “old,” of course. Swift’s 2019 album Lover, which was No. 10 overall and No. 5 in album sales at the midyear mark this year, falls into the catalog category. So does her 2020 album Folklore, which ranked No. 8 in album sales. SZA’s SOS, released in December 2022, reached catalog status in June even though it was the No. 5 album on the midyear 2024 chart with 1.06 million EAUs. These are examples of “shallow” catalog that have achieved a degree of longevity, not “deep” catalog such as reissues and golden oldies.
Latin Music Has a Chart Disadvantage
Latin music streaming is 32% ad-supported, far below the 19.6% average for all genres and less than half the 12.9% of country music. That matters for both chart position and industry revenues, as premium streams produce greater per-stream royalties than ad-supported streams. In addition, premium streams are weighted more heavily when determining chart position. To compare albums and tracks that are consumed in a variety of formats — physical albums, downloads and streams — Luminate converts streams into EAUs, and ad-supported streams convert to EAUs at a lower rate than premium streams do. It makes sense: Ad-supported streams produce lower per-stream royalties than premium streams. Given Latin music’s relatively high percentage of ad-supported streams, that’s bad news for the genre, whose streams convert to EAUs at about 1,500 streams per EAU — much higher than country and pop, which have the lowest genre conversion rate at about 1,360 streams per EAU. Latin’s high proportion of ad-supported streaming also matters because it tends to under-index in terms of sales: No other genre has lower digital track sales, digital album sales and physical album sales as a percentage of EAUs.
Big Populations, Small Revenue
Developing markets have huge populations but relatively little revenue. India, which has a population of 1.4 billion and 659 million smartphone users, has the lowest proportion of premium streams in the 49 countries tracked by Luminate: Just 9.7% of all on-demand audio and video streams in the country are premium streams, which means 92.3% of all streams come from ad-supported streaming. With a population of 275 million, Indonesia is the fourth most-populated country worldwide, but in terms of music streaming, the country has the second-lowest proportion of premium streams at 15.5%. Globally, the average premium share is 57.5% and is highest in European countries, including Norway (93.5%), Iceland (92.9%), Sweden (89.6%), Netherlands (87.6%) and Denmark (87.1%).
Warner Records has had plenty to celebrate already this year. At the midyear mark of 2024, the label finished an impressive third in current market share at 6.30%. That’s a big jump from the same point last year when it ranked fifth, at 5.62%, and represents the label’s best mark at the midway point in years. That was at least partly due to a string of successful singles in the first half of this year from artists as diverse as Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, Zach Bryan, Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha and David Guetta, each of whom has made a huge mark on the charts in the first six months.
But this week brought even better news with the release of Luminate’s 2024 Midyear Report. Warner Records had the top three most-streamed songs of the first half of the year in Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Bryan’s “I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves and Swims’ “Lose Control,” respectively. That marks the first time any label has had the top three songs at the midyear mark since 2015, the year that streaming officially tipped the industry back into profitability. This week, the label also held down the top three spots on Billboard’s Dance/Mixshow Airplay chart with Lipa’s “Illusion,” Rexha’s “Chase It” and Guetta and OneRepublic’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” representing the first time Warner has ever achieved that feat and the first time any label has done it since 2018.
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Both are impressive milestones, representing a creative, radio, streaming and commercial achievement for the label across several formats and genres — and that’s even before the release of Bryan’s latest album, The Great American Bar Scene, which topped the charts at five different formats this week and racked up 137,000 equivalent album units in its first full week of availability. All that helps make Warner Records’ executive vp of promotion and commerce Mike Chester Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Chester talks about those midyear achievements, his work across both radio promotion and overall commerce at the label and how things have changed since he arrived in 2018. “Artists have been tirelessly refining their sound, approach and craft, a dedication now reflected in our success,” he says. “They deserve immense credit for navigating this demanding process and emerging triumphantly, as does the best-in-class team here at Warner Records.”
This week, Luminate’s 2024 midyear report revealed that Warner Records had all of the three most-streamed songs of the year so far, in Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control,” the first time in at least a decade that one label has held the top three slots. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
Global artist development. In today’s interconnected marketplace, it’s crucial to respect each territory outside the U.S. When nurtured properly, these regions can provide a massive platform for launching artists. Take Benson Boone and Teddy Swims, for example. They’ve spent as much time abroad over the past two years as they have in the U.S. This strategic international presence has been instrumental in driving a global audience, leveraging the power of algorithms and trends to expand their reach. Zach Bryan stands out by doing things his way, with integrity and purpose. His ability to connect authentically with his fans is unparalleled.
In addition to your guys’ success at pop, country and rock, Warner has the top three songs on the Dance/Mixshow Airplay chart with Dua Lipa’s “Illusion,” Bebe Rexha’s “Chase It” and David Guetta and One Republic’s “I Don’t Wanna Wait,” a first for Warner and the first time a label has achieved that since 2018. How were you guys able to hit that mark, and how does the dance/mixshow world differ from other formats?
We have dedicated significant effort to emphasizing the dance genre, as evidenced by the launch of Major Recordings and our ongoing commitment to dance music at Warner Records. Foremost, we are fortunate to have exceptional music from artists such as Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha and David Guetta, who are able to move culture every day. I would like to extend special recognition to Josh Reich [senior vp of Top 40 & dance promotion] whose strategic vision and passion for the genre have been instrumental in our success.
Warner is having a hugely successful commercial year so far, posting a 6.30% midyear current market share, the label’s best mark in years. What do you attribute that to?
There is no doubt that this achievement is a testament to [Warner co-chairman/COO] Tom Corson and [Warner co-chairman/CEO] Aaron Bay-Schuck‘s incredible leadership. Artists have been tirelessly refining their sound, approach and craft, a dedication now reflected in our success. Keys factors have been patience, consistency and providing our artists with the necessary space for proper development. They deserve immense credit for navigating this demanding process and emerging triumphantly, as does the best-in-class team here at Warner Records.
You joined Warner in 2018 as head of promotion, and took on the broader role of head of promotion and commerce in 2021. How have you seen the commercial landscape evolve over that time and how have you positioned your team to be able to capitalize on that?
Interestingly, 2018 was also the year TikTok made its debut in the United States, revolutionizing our world from day one. Since then, the landscape of artist development has seen remarkable shifts, with audience fragmentation, genre evolution and the growing influence of niche subcultures becoming the norm. Beyond the digital realm, the physical product space has also transformed, offering fans more meaningful and collectible items that create a deeper connection to our artists and their music. As streaming growth evolves, we continue to think deeply about how to monetize our music in many different ways.
“Our approach to managing artists is ‘Let’s create the world that the music becomes connected to,’” says Jason Murray, president of full-service boutique talent management firm Vector Management, who has helmed the long-running company since January 2023.
Vector was founded in Nashville by music biz powerhouse Ken Levitan 1998, with Jack Rovner joining as co-founder in 2003. Over the years, Vector has grown to approximately 40 staffers guiding the careers of nearly three dozen artists across its roster, including Charley Crockett, John Hiatt, Allison Russell, Peter Frampton and Hank Williams, Jr.
Following a stint at BMG Canada as head of Canadian operations, Murray joined Vector in 2022, before officially becoming president in January 2023, charged with overseeing new business and operations. At that time, the Canadian indie label/management company Murray co-founded, Black Box Music, merged with Vector. Levitan and Rovner remain at Vector as founding partners.
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Vector also guides the careers of such established artists such as Brian Kelley, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and newcomers including Chase McDaniel and Americana artist Bella White, whose song “Burn Me Once” was featured on the soundtrack for Hunger Games: The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes.
In recent weeks, the artist management company, which has offices in Nashville, Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, has also added Yung Gravy, The Aces, Jack Harris and 3OH!3 to the roster.
Vector has found particular success within the Americana and roots genres, thanks to clientele that includes musical troubadour Crockett and blues-rocker Marcus King, as well as Grammy winners Russell and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. This year, Russell’s “Eve Was Black” won best American roots performance, while Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway earned best bluegrass album for City of Gold. Tuttle & Golden Highway are among the leading nominees for this year’s International Bluegrass Music Association Awards.
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“If you look at the just the Americana and roots space — artists including Molly, Charley, Allison, Nitty Gritty [Dirt Band] — it is, without question, 85% of our revenue,” Murray says. Still, upon joining the company, he immediately identified ways to further heighten awareness for his stable of performers.
“There was a very strong footprint in circles like Americana, but it hadn’t hit that Renaissance yet,” Murray says. “I was like, ‘Okay, this is a company with three decades of quality control, and that goes to the people within the company, how we treat our partners, and the type of artists, whether that’s a John Hiatt, an Emmylou [Harris], a Hank Jr. How do I add value to this?’ It’s in the mechanics of releasing music and marketing. It’s the same ethos, but different tools in the toolbox.”
In terms of newer artists, Murray calls the art of breaking an act “the hardest thing to do,” especially given today’s streaming and content-centered music landscape.
“I look at that and think, ‘What feels intuitive to a manager?’ We need advocacy and awareness at DSPs for starters. We’re not putting out 100 records a week — we’re not in a spreadsheet at a major label — so how do we go tell the story and create true connectivity to our artists? We live in the era of content, and content creation is very different now than it was four years ago; it’s all short-form. So we built out our marketing team, looked at merch and e-commerce to make sure it feels focused and that we have the tactical tools we need.
“The marketing and all those other things are done on the back of creating something we are really passionate about,” Murray continues. “For us, it’s a full end-to-end ecosystem. We get involved on the creative level at whatever capacity the artist needs, but we’re there early enough that it allows us to immerse ourselves in the world that the record is becoming the soundtrack to. The more we understand the fibers and little idiosyncrasies that make the album special to the artist, it allows us to go into this amazing marketing team we have built here over the past two years and elevate that project.”
Crockett’s social media, leaning into his reputation as an observant musical troubadour, is filled with videos chronicling his day-to-day life on the road, from jamming with fellow Texas singer/songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson to numerous concert photos tracing his travels. The company’s marketing approach also offers space for artists to focus on issues they feel passionate about, whether that is King’s recent music (which addresses his struggles with drugs and alcohol) or Russell’s advocacy for human rights. Over the past year, Russell not only released her second album, The Returner, and embarked on her headlining tour of the same name this year — but in 2023, Russell organized the All-Star benefit concert Love Rising at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, in response to a slate of Tennessee anti-LGBT+ legislation.
“I give [Vector’s West Coast leader] Nicki Loranger a lot of credit. She had a vision that aligned with Allison and has supported Allison’s goals as a spokesperson, an artist, an advocate, a storyteller, a performer and helped put that in motion, and all these things to surround Allison’s mission,” Murray says.
King is among the artists who joined Vector under Murray’s tenure. In August 2023, Murray began an eight-month lead-up to what would become King’s 2024 album Mood Swings. What started with King sending Murray a Dropbox folder of 12 songs he had worked on with Rick Rubin, including “F—k Up My Life” and “Delilah,” soon became a quest to take the songs’ emotional arcs and translate them to visuals. Murray recalls creating a Pinterest board of color palettes, fonts and fashion colors that would represent the album. The ideas kept flowing, evolving into the idea of an album trailer visual to give fans an entry point into the record. They also set up an album listening event at the planetarium in Nashville, offering a space for King to play the music and discuss the songs.
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The neon red, cursive scrawl of “Mood,” and a collection of face emojis bearing cowboy hats and various facial expressions, became signifiers for the album — a throughline from album art to merchandising. “When he’s out touring the world for a year, it all ties back together,” Murray says.
In recent years, artists such as Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan have seen meteoric rises, selling out arenas and stadiums and dominating not only Billboard’s Americana chart, but the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. Last year, Bryan’s self-titled album spent two weeks atop the Billboard 200, while Kahan’s song “Stick Season” rose to No. 9 on the Hot 100 this year. Murray has seen the growth fuel the entire Americana genre.
“I feel like the ceiling just raised about 13 floors in terms of what the genre means,” Murray says. “We’ve built a rich history here in Americana and it’s about great songs, great stories, and great live shows. I think those pieces mean more now to a listening audience than ever before, so it’s a bit of a perfect storm. The counterculture has become the culture. You look at the history of all music genres — rock in the ‘70s, hip-hop, punk rock… you don’t know it’s coming until you’re in it.”
Upon joining Vector, Murray (along with Levitan) signed singer-songwriter Crockett, who Murray calls “a phenomenal artist, great songwriter.” His music draws on a deep knowledge and respect for music history in a variety of styles, melding them with vivid lyrics and a commanding vocal.
Though the genre does have radio stations and shows dedicated to its artists, as well as playlists such as Spotify’s Indigo and Amazon Music’s Fresh Folk & Americana, touring remains the bedrock for building an enduring career within Americana and roots music. Crockett has assembled a reputation as a rollicking live performer and Levitan and Murray capitalized on that by issuing his first live album, last September’s Live From the Ryman, and a concert film of his Ryman concert, which aired in February on PBS.
Crockett also released his $10 Cowboy album in April (via Son of Davy/Thirty Tigers) and has embarked on a tour that includes some of his biggest venues to date including Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre, Colorado’s Red Rocks, and two nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. He also paid homage to some of Texas’ most iconic venues, performing a slate of shows at places like Austin’s Broken Spoke and Houston’s Armadillo Palace.
The prolific Crockett recently announced $10 Cowboy Chapter II: Visions of Dallas (coming Monday, July 22), which follows April’s original $10 Cowboy. For Murray, the goal is marketing his artists year-round, regardless of how often projects are released.
Murray isn’t concerned about flooding the market. “When it comes to off-cycle or on-cycle, that was a system put in place by the labels, and it’s not how people consume,” he explains. “I use the analogy of Starbucks — they market all year long, and they still have their tentpoles, like the pumpkin spice latte or the peppermint latte. But what you do throughout the year is important. When we think about oversaturating the market — I don’t think that exists. I think it’s more quality control. Charley’s one of the best out there, and everything he puts out is so refined and thought out.”
The 360-degree approach to management has allowed the company to craft customized strategies for realizing each artist’s career vision.
“That’s part of what gets me excited about what we do here at Vector,” Murray says. “We’re not a volume business — we look at it more as a powerful boutique with attention to detail.”
Marcus King and Jason Murray
Courtesy of Jason Murray/Vector Management
Attorneys for Priscilla Presley are suing four of her former business partners over allegations of elder abuse and fraud, accusing them of a “meticulously planned” scheme to drain Elvis Presley’s ex-wife of “every last penny she had.”
In a complaint filed Thursday (July 18) in Los Angeles court, lawyers for Presley, 79, accuse Brigitte Kruse, Kevin Fialko, Vahe Sislyan and Lynn Walker Wright of fraudulently convincing her to give them power over nearly every aspect of her life — and then abusing that control to steal her money.
“This action arises out of a meticulously planned and abhorrent scheme by the defendants in this action to prey on an older woman by gaining her trust, isolating her from the most important people in her life, and duping her into believing that they would take care of her (personally and financially), while their real goal was to drain her of every last penny she had,” writes high-profile attorney Martin Singer, who now represents Presley.
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Calling Kruse a “con-artist and pathological liar,” Singer says the defendants took more than $1 million from Presley and convinced her to sign a deal that would give them 80% of her future income.
“The fact that the plaintiff in this case is internationally recognized actress, author, and cultural icon … demonstrates both how effective the defendants’ plan was (and needed to be), and how anyone can be a victim of elder abuse and fraud,” Singer writes.
The new case comes eight months after Kruse’s company, Priscilla Presley Partners, filed its own lawsuit against Priscilla in Florida. That case claimed that Presley illegally turned her back on Kruse and Fialko after they had helped her “dig herself out of impending financial ruin,” including negotiating the deal that led to last year’s Priscilla biopic.
But in Thursday’s new lawsuit, Singer argues that the earlier case was merely a cover for Kruse and Fialko’s alleged misdeeds.
“When it became clear to the defendants that their scheme had been uncovered, they attempted to falsely portray themselves as the victims by filing a lawsuit against Presley in Florida in the name of several of the sham companies they established, alleging that Presley breached the fraudulently-induced operating agreements,” her legal team writes.
According to the complaint, Sislyan is Kruse’s husband and participated in the scheme; and Walker-Wright is an Orlando-area attorney who allegedly helped the others carry it out.
Singer and Priscilla’s other attorneys say that Kruse and the others “established a personal relationship” with her and then used it to “isolate her from her long-time business and financial advisors,” whom they argued were “deceitful or incompetent” and causing her to lose money. Once they had isolated her, the lawsuit says, Kruse and the others took steps to “fraudulently induce” Presley into signing over power of attorney, giving them control over her trusts and bank accounts, and signing deals with “sham” companies like Priscilla Presley Partners.
One of those deals, the lawsuit says, gave the defendants “an exclusive license to exploit and profit off of her name, image, and likeness, and to control and receive virtually all of her income from any of her professional ventures.”
“Dissatisfied with what existing resources they could siphon from her, the defendants’ plan involved usurping control over her ability to control her finances going forward and forcing her into a form of indentured servitude, where plaintiff was forced to work so that they could receive the lion’s share of any revenue that she was able to earn in the future,” Singer writes.
An attorney for Kruse and Priscilla Presley Partners did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations. Walker-Wright also did not return a request for comment.