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UMG Nashville has launched Silver Wings Records, a distribution arm and independent artist services, fueled by Virgin Music Group’s global distribution network. Silver Wings Records will create custom campaign services for independent artists, offering options for developing and enhancing campaigns. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news UMGN’s […]
Two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Rod Stewart has sold his genre-bending song catalog of hits, deep cuts and more to Irving Azoff‘s Iconic Artists Group. Styled as a “wide-ranging cross-media” partnership, the deal with IAG includes the raspy singer-songwriter’s rights to his sound recordings and his interest in his publishing, as well as certain name, image and likeness rights, Billboard has confirmed.
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The company, which Azoff co-founded in January 2020, declined to offer financial particulars of its deal with Stewart, who joins an elite roster of IAG acts that includes The Beach Boys, Cher, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Dan Fogelberg, Nat “King” Cole, Dean Martin and CSN bandmates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.
Concurrently, Iconic announced on Thursday (Feb. 15) that it has raised $1 billion as part of an investment from HPS Investment Partners — which it said will enable them to acquire and manage even more legendary assets.
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IAG’s arrangement with Stewart encompasses his entire career, beginning with his standout vocal contributions on Jeff Beck’s first two albums — Truth and Beck-Ola — and then the rollicking-and-randy output of the legendary Faces, his band with fellow Jeff Beck Group alum Ronnie Wood. That combo, filled out by Kenney Jones and the late-greats Ian McLagan and Ronnie Lane, produced several early 1970s gems co-written by Stewart, including “Miss Judy’s Farm” “Bad ‘n’ Ruin” and their only proper hit in the U.S., “Stay With Me” (No. 17, Hot 100).
Stewart’s solo career began in earnest during a brief window between his time in the JBG and Faces, but he truly broke through with album No. 3, 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story, which topped the Billboard 200 and produced breakthrough hits “Maggie May” (co-written with Martin Quittenton) and a cover of “(Find a) Reason to Believe.” Throughout the decade he bagged an album’s worth of greatest hits, including “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” which spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, as well as “You Wear It Well,” “Hot Legs,” “You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)” and his foray into disco, “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Plus, it was during the 70s that he established himself as an able interpreter of other people’s songs, like “The First Cut Is the Deepest” (Cat Stevens) and “Twistin’ the Night Away” (Sam Cooke ).
The 1980s saw Stewart turn to more soft rock stylings and he scored a string of top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including “Passion,” “Tonight I’m Yours (Don’t Hurt Me)” “Infatuation,” “Forever Young” and one of his biggest tracks of the decade, a cover of Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train.” The next decade produced adult contemporary hits like “Rhythm of My Heart,” off his top-10 album Vagabond Heart, and the juggernaut that was his multi-platinum Unplugged…and Seated, which capped at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and included his wedding reception-ready version of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately.” For much of the 2000s, Stewart has released a series of highly popular Great American Songbook albums and other genre-specific collections, including ones for rock and soul. Later this month, he’ll release his 32nd studio album, Swing Fever, a salute to the big band era. The rest of the year will find him on the road and wrapping up his Las Vegas residency.
The partnership with IAG arrives less than a year after Stewart backed out of a potential catalog sale to Hipgnosis following lengthy negotiations. He said at the time that “this catalog represents my life’s work. And it’s become abundantly clear after much time and due diligence that this was not the right company to manage my song catalog, career or legacy.” (Hipgnosis went on to have a bumpy 2023 that has spilled over into this year.)
Yet now Stewart has reason to believe the “time is right” and that “I feel fortunate to have found partners in Irving and his team at Iconic that I can entrust with my life’s work and future musical legacy.”
Azoff added, “We are thrilled to welcome one of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of our time, Rod Stewart, to the Iconic family. Our new partnership with HPS provides us with the resources and flexibility to make blockbuster signings like this one and to continue the success of our legendary artists and their legacies.”
Iconic’s financial advisors during the process was Artisan and Moelis, while Kendrick & Baron acted as the company’s legal advisors. Jackoway Tyerman represented Stewart. HPS Investment Partners enlisted Lisbeth R. Barron and the team at Barron International Group, LLC as financial advisor, and Latham & Watkins as legal advisor.
While Travis Scott performed a three-song medley at the Grammys earlier this month, the teams of some of the producers and songwriters who helped make his hit album Utopia were fuming — they didn’t yet have the signed paperwork that would get them paid for their work on the project.
At the time, at least four of the producers and writers involved with the album still didn’t have producer agreements or publishing splits finalized, according to four sources close to the project, meaning they cannot get fully compensated for their work. Some of Utopia‘s contributors do have their agreements completed: Ted Anastasiou, a rep for Scott, said in a statement that “the vast majority of payments for contributors on this album have been paid and that any outstanding payments are near complete.”
Artist managers and entertainment attorneys say it is increasingly common for acts to put out an album first and figure out all the clearances later. (Utopia came out more than six months ago, on July 28, 2023, and went on to become one of the biggest releases of the year.) “The amount of paperwork potentially required for clearing a single track has become so excessive that I think some music industry executives may have become desensitized to the importance of having everything in place before release,” says entertainment attorney Gandhar Savur.
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Although artists often enjoy revenue streams outside of recorded music — notably touring and merchandise — the same is not true for most songwriters and producers. Writers are usually financially dependent on publishing royalties from the songs they work on. Producers typically depend on a mix of master royalties (often just an advance unless an album recoups its budget, which is rare) and publishing royalties (but only if they contributed songwriting).
This means all but the most famous writers and producers are already in a precarious financial situation. On top of that, massively successful artists are often slow to finalize the deals that dictate what percentage of royalties writers and producers are owed, and what fee is thrown to producers. As the months tick by, collaborators’ frustration grows.
Anastasiou, Scott’s rep, said in his statement that “the challenge with contributor payments on albums with multiple participants on each track is that negotiations and issues frequently occur before and after an album’s release, as terms need to be agreed and are all interdependent. This becomes further complicated when some participants, like those quoted in the story, are relatively unknown and their minor contributions only came to our attention afterward.”
Anastasiou continued, “these challenges are not unique to Travis or any specific artist. Attributing any blame to Travis or his team for this common issue is both wrong and short-sighted, especially when Travis’ team has been more than proactive every step of the way and are hard at work to finalize the last few remaining payments.”
The Utopia contributors who spoke to Billboard about their experience would almost certainly dispute that they are “relatively unknown.” But as Anastasiou noted, the collaborative nature of much contemporary pop music does mean that there are mountains of paperwork and negotiations for an artist’s team to complete around each album release.
“Back in the day, a band could release a record and basically have a producer agreement, maybe a mixer agreement and a few session musicians, and possibly not much else,” Savur explains. “These days, commercial pop tracks can have multiple producers, outside people contributing beats or music beds, samples and interpolations, one or two featured artists or side artists who each need their own agreements and also waivers from their record labels, and sometimes a dozen or more co-writers who are all signed to different publishing companies.”
“I don’t know any attorney’s office that represents producers and songwriters that’s not completely underwater at the moment, scrambling to get all the deals done,” adds Dan Petel, founder of This Is Noise MGMT, another writer-producer management company. He says the problem is compounded by artists releasing music more frequently in order to keep their fan bases engaged.
To make things even more complicated: Artists’ teams are usually responsible for all the clearances on their albums, but the money paid to the producers will usually come from a label. For producers, “the lack of a direct contractual relationship [with the label] yields an uncomfortable disconnect between who creates the music and who pays for it,” says Matt Buser, an entertainment attorney.
And once an album is released, artists often hit the road, meaning their attention — and their team’s attention — is focused elsewhere. Still, “the labels insist that the producer agreements be finalized and signed by both parties [producers and artist] for the producers to be paid their fees in full,” explains Maytav Koter, founder of Good Company MGMT, which works with songwriters and producers. But one of those parties might be bouncing from town to town on tour.
Most writers and producers have little recourse to ensure clearances get done in a timely fashion. “I’ve not gotten a cohesive response as to what the f— is going on,” says a source close to a person involved with making Utopia who is still waiting on paperwork. “Why is it so hard to ask people to do good business?” asks a member of another frustrated Utopia producer’s team.
Savur says that extensive back-and-forths over email are routine for post-release clearances. The only other option is to try to take down the track or sue the artist who put it out — without a signed producer agreement in place, for example, that artist has released that producer’s work without permission. Writers and producers hardly ever take this route, though. They most likely want to stay in the good graces of the artists they work with — especially if they are stars — and suits are costly and time-consuming.
That means all that’s left for collaborators is following up with the artist’s team week after week, and making personal appeals. As one source whose client is waiting on finalized Utopia paperwork puts it, “don’t you want to make the people who write your hit songs happy?”
Last year, Kanye West started looking for a distribution deal to release a new album. When Vultures 1, a full-length collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign, finally came out on Saturday, it was through FUGA — a business-to-business tech and distribution platform for labels — according to information available in YouTube’s content management system.
FUGA was not pleased, according to a company spokesperson. “Late last year, FUGA was presented with the opportunity to release Vultures 1,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Billboard. “Exercising our judgment in the ordinary course of business, we declined to do so.”
The spokesperson continued, “on Friday, February 9, 2024, a long-standing FUGA client delivered the album Vultures 1 through the platform’s automated processes, violating our service agreement. Therefore, FUGA is actively working with its DSP partners and the client to remove Vultures 1 from our systems.”
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A rep for West did not respond to a request for comment.
When West began hunting for a new distributor, some potential partners passed on the chance to work with him due to the rapper’s antisemitic comments. Others’ interest diminished when they found out that streaming services might not support the album.
The lead single from Vultures 1, “Vultures,” was distributed by Label Engine, a company owned by Create Music Group, according to information in YouTube’s CMS. The follow-up, “Talking/Once Again,” was also delivered last week by Label Engine. The album was subsequently delivered by FUGA.
FUGA’s plan to remove Vultures 1 from its platform is just the latest hiccup for the album. Its release was repeatedly delayed. After it came out, on Wednesday, the track “Good (Don’t Die)” was removed from Spotify after a complaint from Donna Summer’s estate.
“Kanye West… asked permission to use Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love, he was denied… he changed the words, had someone re sing it or used AI but it’s I Feel Love… copyright infringement!!!” the estate wrote in an Instagram Story on the official Donna Summer account on Saturday.
Priscilla Presley is facing a lawsuit that claims she illegally turned her back on a former business partner who had helped her “dig herself out of impending financial ruin” and played a key role in getting the recent Priscilla movie made.
The lawsuit, filed last year and obtained by Billboard, claims that Elvis Presley’s ex-wife partnered with a woman named Brigitte Kruse in 2022 to help develop and monetize her name and likeness rights — a move that came as Presley was allegedly “60 days from insolvency” and facing $700,000 in unpaid tax debt.
But Kruse claims that in August 2023, Presley and two new advisors suddenly sent her a cease-and-desist letter and “cut off all communication” with her former partner. She claims the sudden about-face came as her extensive and time-consuming efforts on Presley’s behalf were finally paying off.
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“Though [Kruse’s company] was integral to the Priscilla movie, all individuals other than Priscilla were excluded from the premiere of the Priscilla Movie at the Venice Film Festival,” reads the October lawsuit, which was first reported Wednesday (Feb. 14) by Daily Beast.
In court filings since the case was first filed, Presley’s lawyers have pushed the dismiss the lawsuit. They argue that Kruse “targeted” their client and that Priscilla split with her former partner because she had discovered that Kruse was “attempting to misappropriate Ms. Presley’s assets.”
Formally, the case against Priscilla was filed by a company called Priscilla Presley Partners, a corporate entity created by Kruse and Presley to commercially exploit Priscilla’s name, image and likeness (known as NIL). According to the lawsuit, the entity is 51% owned by Kruse and 49% owned by Presley.
The lawsuit claims that it was Presley who first approached Kruse to help run her affairs — a role Kruse accepted even though it required her to give up her existing career and “devote her attention full-time to managing Pricilla’s life.” After allegedly discovering that Presley’s “financial position was far worse than expected,” the lawsuit claims Kruse and a colleague named Kevin Fialko immediately “sprang into action to prevent Priscilla’s financial ruin and public embarrassment.”
“Because of the upcoming movie about Priscilla’s life … Kruse (and Fialko) began arranging for engagements for Priscilla to allow her to dig herself out of impending financial ruin (and the potential negative public ramifications of the same), and engaging professionals to keep creditors at bay,” the lawsuit reads.
But according to the lawsuit, the partnership came undone after the intervention of Keya Morgan, a former manager for Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee who was acquitted in 2022 on criminal charges that he stole more than $200,000 in proceeds of memorabilia sales from Lee before his 2018 death.
The lawsuit claims that Morgan “professed to be a friend of Priscilla’s” and said he wanted to assist in Kruse and Priscilla Presley Partners’ efforts to monetize her likeness, but that shortly after he became involved, the partnership was thrown into chaos.
“The next day, [an attorney] sent Kruse a letter, purportedly on behalf of Priscilla personally, alleging various misconduct, such as falsely alleging that Kruse had attempted to sell Priscilla’s home, and demanding that Kruse cease and desist immediately, any and all activity on behalf of Ms. Presley,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit claims that Presley’s actions have breached the contract that she signed with Kruse when they created the entity, which was allegedly drafted by Presley’s own lawyer.
“In reliance on the agreements defendant voluntarily entered into, plaintiff has devoted substantial time and capital into increasing the value of defendant’s NIL” Priscilla Presley Partners’ lawyers say. “When defendant’s NIL and earning capacity is at its highest that it has been in decades, defendant, without notice, cut off Plaintiff’s ability to exploit that NIL for her sole benefit.”
In the months since the case against Presley was first filed, her attorneys hit back with their own version of events.
In a November motion to dismiss the case, Presley’s lawyers say Kruse “targeted” their client and “inserted herself” into her affairs, and had somehow “convinced” Priscilla to sign an agreement where she was only a minority owner of her own NIL rights. And they say the sudden split came about because of Kruse’s own improper actions, not because of any other cause.
“Eventually, Ms. Presley learned that Ms. Kruse and her associate were attempting to misappropriate Ms. Presley’s assets and were engaging in other acts of wrongdoing,” Presley’s lawyers wrote in a November response. “Thus, Ms. Presley began extricating herself from Ms. Kruse’s various entanglements. In response, Ms. Kruse … utilized her control of [Priscilla Presley Partners] to orchestrate and file this Florida lawsuit.”
In technical terms, Presley’s lawyers are seeking to toss out the case on far simpler grounds: That she has no connections to the Florida county where Priscilla Presley Partners filed the lawsuit, meaning the court lacks jurisdiction to hear it.
A hearing on Presley’s motion to dismiss is scheduled for May. Neither side immediately returned a request for comment on Wednesday. Morgan, who was not named as a defendant or accused of any wrongdoing, could not immediately be located for comment.
Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign aren’t feeling the Valentine’s Day love as their Vultures 1 track “Good (Don’t Die)” has been removed from Spotify after less than four days on the streaming service. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Good (Don’t Die)” was taken down from Spotify […]
When it comes to songwriters’ income, streaming services are regarded as both heroes and villains: They saved the music industry from unbridled piracy, but, some say, pay a pittance to most creators. In his first interview as the new president/CEO of the Digital Media Association (DiMA), Graham Davies says he’s focused on convincing the industry they’re the good guys.
Davies assumed the top role at the U.S. organization — which represents the interests of Amazon, Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and feed.fm — in January, succeeding the organization’s longtime leader, Garrett Levin.
Before taking the job, he worked on the other side of the negotiating table as head of the Ivors Academy, the United Kingdom’s foremost songwriter advocacy organization. It’s a career change equivalent to a district attorney becoming a defense lawyer, but Davies says his extensive knowledge of song creators’ needs will help him make a real impact at DiMA.
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A classically trained pianist, Davies began his career in the mid-1990s at British collection society PRS for Music, where he assisted with the more than 100-year-old organization’s transition from physical to digital in a time of great uncertainty and record low collections. He also worked alongside the Swedish and German performing rights organizations (PROs) to form the International Corporate Enterprise, a licensing and processing hub that serves over 250,000 rights holders and multi-territory digital music companies that combined and modernized the societies’ back offices.
In 2018, Davies became CEO of what was then the British Academy of Songwriters Composers and Authors and determined the organization needed a better fundraising initiative, greater outreach to other industry partners and, he says, a “stronger voice” among songwriters. As one of the first orders of business, he rebranded BASCA as the Ivors Academy to align with the most well-known and successful part of the organization, the Ivor Novello Awards, named after the Welsh singer, composer, actor and dramatist who was one of the most revered British performers of the first half of the 20th century.
Davies also formed partnerships with other musicians’ unions and groups for greater advocacy reach, including the Musicians Union, the Music Producers Guild and the Featured Artist Coalition. He worked with songwriter Tom Gray to push the #BrokenRecord grassroots campaign, which called for improved rights and remuneration for U.K. music creators and, Davies says, made “radical progress on the diversity of membership and the board.”
To accomplish all of this, Davies says the academy needed money, and that’s where his relationship with streaming services and DiMA began. He connected with Apple Music, Amazon Music and Levin for funding and support.
Davies now intends to similarly rebrand DiMA as a global organization to, as he puts it, “educate about the value that streaming services bring to the music business” and to advocate in favor of its members regarding legislation and other global issues.
In the wake of the contentious five-year-long Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) Phonorecords III proceedings, which marred DiMA’s relationship with music publishers, Davies says he intends to use his background in publisher and songwriter advocacy to find areas of “common ground” so the two sides can navigate the age of artificial intelligence (AI) together.
Why do you think you’re the right fit for DiMA?
I think of this as the new start of DiMA. It’s [the progression] of things that started happening during Garrett Levin’s tenure. Now DiMA is evolving to be a more global voice for music streaming. That’s the core of our vision and strategy. My non-U.S.-ness makes sense for this vision. Music streaming is a global industry, and lots of the issues are the same across jurisdictions. We will definitely continue to have a very sharp focus in the U.S. on activities here, though.
What is on the docket for your first year?
First is ensuring that DiMA is visible. It’s important that people see that DiMA is building on Garrett’s legacy. I’m also still in the listening phase to hear everyone’s perspectives and combine that with what I know from my time in the United Kingdom.
What message do you want to send to the industry?
[There is still] pressure on services to pay more into the industry. People want to know where the money goes. How much are the streaming services paying into the industry through both royalty payments and also investing? There are hugely notable investments that our members are making — not just [regarding] consumers’ wants and needs in the evolving streaming market. They are funding a lot of initiatives in different territories to bring forward a healthy pipeline of music. For example, there is a Rising Star program at the Ivors Academy that was funded by Apple and is now funded by Amazon. I’m not sure there’s enough awareness, and I’m ready to push that education.
What do you say to songwriters who criticize your move to the other side of the bargaining table?
I think [my desire to] listen and understand where everyone is coming from and find common solutions is seen to be really positive. To have someone who has worked from a PRO perspective, a songwriter advocate perspective and now [represents] streaming services is good. There will be some points of difference. You know, a CRB negotiation is a CRB negotiation. But so far, the vast majority of the voices have all been positive.
For Phonorecords IV, DiMA’s members joined with the National Music Publishers’ Association [NMPA] and the Nashville Songwriters Association International to reach a settlement. This was viewed as a major improvement from Phono III, which took five years to determine a rate and was quite contentious. Do you foresee similar collaborative CRB negotiations in the future?
There is absolutely a need for a close connection between the rights holders and the streaming services because if the streaming market doesn’t thrive, almost no one thrives. Our successful settlement with Phono IV was a great indicator of our ability to coordinate. I have big shoes to fill, but I hope to build on that. I think everyone is looking for as much collaboration as possible.
How will AI affect DiMA’s members?
The thing that we are looking at most intensively right now is the personhood legislation that’s being discussed in the United States. We believe that there should be appropriate safeguards to protect an individual’s personhood — name, image, likeness and voice — but the law has to be appropriately bound for all parties.
We are favoring a federal approach as opposed to the patchwork of state laws. It’s got to balance the individual’s ability to control this and the foundational protections that streaming is built on. Secondary liability has really provided our members with certainty. The focus has to be on those that are directly active in producing content that is problematic without shifting that liability to the streaming services. There’s lots to be discussed within this.
Does that mean you’re in favor of creating a process for taking down works that violate an artist’s right of publicity, similar to how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act works for copyright infringements?
That’s right. There has been clarity on the issue of liability to date, and this has provided certainty [for the streaming services.]
What else will you focus on in your first year?
The organization of licensing and operations. You would expect this coming from my background. I’m used to collecting societies and back-office entities focused on transparency, efficiency and neutrality.The Music Modernization Act is a really great example of the industry coming together to solve problems with efficient and effective solutions. I think we feel that the Mechanical Licensing Collective re-designation process is a really important [example] where the MMA was successful. The re-designation process is an important process to speak to all the people involved, figure out what’s working, what isn’t working and where we can improve. We definitely see areas to be looked at [at the MLC].
Can you elaborate on the MLC re-designation process?
There is an opportunity for more insight into the metrics and how the MLC is operating. It is still quite early in its setup, and DiMA members have been absolutely supportive of that journey. But you would expect any back-office operation to have efficiency in its next phase. And we’ll be keenly wanting to see how the MLC improves that. Garrett set some of this out in the field hearing earlier last year [which discussed the successes and failures of the MMA five years after it was passed]. We feel neutrality is an area that needs particular attention. In terms of decision-making on these kinds of policy issues, it’s a good idea to have these five-year reviews.
When you say neutrality is an area that needs attention, are you referring to the MLC and the NMPA having the same outside counsel, as Garrett noted at the MMA field hearing, or something else?
Exactly. The services as well as other songwriters are concerned about just how neutral the MLC is operating. Our understanding is that the MLC was established in the interest of all stakeholders and to operate in a neutral way.
This story appears in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Toby Gad’s music career began in the late ‘80s – and like many long careers in music, it has hardly been a straight line rising to the top. If anything, the German songwriter-producer’s journey brings to mind a hiking trail that winds through a mountain range: There have been tough, uphill ascents, breathtaking overlooks, extended rest stops and the occasional detour.
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Over the last couple decades, Gad has written songs for and with stars including Beyoncé (“If I Were a Boy”), Demi Lovato (“Skyscraper”), Madonna (“Living for Love”), Fergie (“Big Girls Don’t Cry”) and John Legend (“All of Me”), with the latter two songs topping the Billboard Hot 100.
Following a whirlwind period of hitmaking, Gad looked at his jam-packed schedule and decided to take a bit of a breather in the mid ‘10s. After becoming what he calls a bit of a “surf bum” in Los Angeles, he found himself back in the industry when Deutschland sucht den Superstar – the German version of the Idol franchise – invited him on the show as a judge.
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The stint reinvigorated Gad, who is currently back in L.A. and prepping for the release of Piano Diaries – Volume One. The album, slated for a mid 2024 release, finds him reimagining some of his signature songs, tapping previous collaborators (Keke Palmer, Victoria Justice) and fresh faces (Camylio) for new, stripped-down versions. Last month, he previewed the project on The Kelly Clarkson Show (a TV program hosted by yet another one of his star collaborators) with an intimate performance of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” featuring Justice on vocals.
Ahead of the release of Piano Diaries – Volume One, Gad spoke to Billboard via Zoom from his poolside L.A. studio, which boasts a grand piano (the one he and Legend wrote “All of Me” on) and a gorgeous view of the city – not bad for someone who spent several years living on instant soup in New York City waiting for that career-making song.
You were recently on The Kelly Clarkson Show, and you’ve known her for years. What’s it been like to watch her become this big daytime TV star in America?
I’m really happy for her. The first time we worked together on the Stronger album — before we even got into studio — she asked if we can go out for dinner. So we met in Silver Lake and had a dinner together. And we were just chatting away for two hours. And she’s such a wonderful, warm-hearted person and wants to know about your family and tells you all about her life and her family. And I think that’s why she has this show — because she loves talking to people. She has a very approachable way. If she talks to you, you instantly feel like, “We could be friends.”
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On her show, you performed a reimagining of “Big Girls Don’t Cry” with Victoria Justice. What was it about Justice that made you reach out to her for this particular song?
She has actually not sang for a long time. She’s put a lot of energies into just acting and then recently she began releasing some music again. There’s one song, “Only A Stranger,” that she released which is very soft. And when I heard that I just was really curious to see what she would sound like on “Big Girls Don’t Cry” with a soft rendition, because the [original] song is Fergie’s belting voice. It worked out and she was totally happy that I called her. We were having so much fun. If you look into her TikTok, there’s dozens of little video clips of us climbing mountains or going through L.A., surfing together. Anything we can connect to the song, it’s so much fun. We actually were just in Baja for three days writing a few more songs.
So there’s more coming with her?
That won’t be Piano Diaries, but for her, we just wrote some stuff for her. And it was a lot of fun.
You mentioned TikTok — what do you think of it? It’s become such a big part of the music industry.
Short answer, I think it’s an amazing opportunity in general – TikTok, Instagram, being able for artists to have a direct conduit to their fans and directly let people hear what they’re doing. This is such a blessing. Most of my career was the old days where you would depend on record labels. Between you and the listener, there was always label. Now any artist anyone can just release something and publish it. And that’s incredible. I love that. And just recently, we restarted my Kite Records record label, and we’re releasing Piano Diaries on that via AWAL and Orchard. And it’s such an incredible opportunity. I love it.
You also have “Little Do You Know” with Keke Palmer and Aloe Blacc. You worked with Keke, what, 15 years ago?
When she came from Akeelah and the Bee and had Barbershop with Queen Latifah, then she got a record deal with Atlantic Records. We wrote a few songs – I think I had three songs on that Atlantic Records record — and she must have been 12 or 13 years old. I have some videos from back then — she always wanted to do the trust fall with me. She was such a powerful, driven kid back then already. I called her up and she was like, “Yes! Let’s do it.” Aloe is the sweetest, too, they have amazing chemistry.
So with Keke, have you kept in touch all these years?
I reached out to her last year — I was a judge on German Idol, and we filmed a documentary about my life for the German network. I asked her to be part of that and she was happy to come over and give some interviews. And that was nice. I actually reached out to a bunch of people: John Legend, Leona [Lewis], Natasha [Bedingfield], Colbie Caillat, everyone did little interviews about the relationships we’ve had work-wise and it made it onto this one-hour documentary that aired in Germany. “Bottoms Up” is one of the songs we had back then and also True Jackson, VP, her TV show, we did the title song. So every now and then our lives intersect.
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You also have a new version of “Skyscraper” that you did with Camylio. He has such an amazing voice, how did he come across your radar?
I heard of Camylio a while ago and that was actually a little trickier because he’s signed to Universal/Republic so we had to convince his label. I’ve been a fan of his voice for a while, we’ve written together every now and then. I just wanted to hear it with a male voice — with a very strong male voice — and I think he did a beautiful job on it. We haven’t locked in the next single yet, but we have “All of Me,” which is going to be Colbie Caillat, and for “If I Were a Boy” or “Untouched,” but I’m not sure who it’s going to be. Who would you want to hear on these songs?
God, great question, putting me on the spot. Maybe SZA on “If I Were a Boy”? I don’t know. I did want to ask about that song. You co-wrote it with BC Jean, but how did you go about putting yourself in the mindset to write from a female perspective or to help enable that perspective?
With BC Jean, I had done 10 songs with her back then, we found each other on MySpace. This was one time where we just did a little pizza run from the studio in New York — I had a studio on 46th between 5th and 6th — and we were walking down the street and she was ranting about a boyfriend and said, “Well, if I were a boy, I would kick his ass.” Or something like that. And I was like, “Wait a minute, did you just say, ‘if I were a boy?’ That’s a great line. Let’s go back to the studio and write more of what you would do if you were a boy.” I got the guitar out and we were just line-by-line thinking all the all the things she would do different if she were a boy.
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What made you want to do this album in the first place, to revisit these songs in a stripped-down context. What inspired that idea?
Well, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” I wrote 20 years ago with Fergie. “All of Me” now has its 10th anniversary. When I hear them on the radio I feel like I want to record them how I hear them today. And I also wanted to make a collection with the songs that have defined my career. Also, when I write songs, I usually write on the piano here. This is the piano I like to write on – we wrote “All of Me” on this piano. Quite often, the first version of a song is piano-vocal, and I wanted to let people hear that. It has an intimacy to it. I felt it would be great to have an album where those songs are stripped down and you dig in a little deeper into the lyric. But then also remixes where it can go crazy with different styles.
So “All of Me” was written on that piano. Was it in the exact room you’re in right now?
Yeah, right in here. John was so in love with Chrissy [Teigen] and said he wanted to write a song for her. And he already had the words, “all of me loves all of you,” and he had the first chord. And then from there we just built it together. I’m still very much in love with my wife, and I was thinking, “What I would want to sing to her?” And we were trading places at the piano and an hour and a half later, it was done.
Amazing. That’s just two people in a room. I’ve read an interview with you where you opine that having a big team of songwriters can spoil a song. Why is that, for you?
Personally, to me, I think authenticity is very important. If it comes straight from a journal, basically, the song feels like it’s out of the moment and an urgent, honest emotion put into music. Then it resonates the most with me. And I think if you have many people in the room, everyone contributes their idea from a different angle, and it has a danger of possibly becoming a more generic song versus something that just happens to be really weird and original. “All of Me” isn’t weird but it touches on something in a very authentic way. It’s a love song that feels like, “Wow, he’s really in love at that moment.” I love that about songs if they feel personal.
I also want to ask about Madonna, because you worked on Rebel Heart. I gather there were some sessions where you were waiting around but she didn’t show up?
Waiting around? That was Beyoncé. That was the days with Beyoncé and Jay-Z where I was on hold for a week, and she didn’t show up the first three days. With Madonna, we had a writing camp from Interscope and she didn’t come to the writing camp. But then Interscope convinced me to do another writing camp in New York that time it was in a studio next to Alicia Keys’ studio. And they actually did show up the first day. It was very intimidating at first, but then we kind of bonded and we ended up doing five weeks together.
How was it songwriting with her?
You know, at first it was Mozella and me and S1, he’s a beatmaker from Dallas. The three of us prepared ideas, we came in a little earlier in the studio, and then when she arrived, we showed her what we had just prepared. And fortunately, she liked the ideas, and then she sat down with us. And those were just rough ideas, like a beginning of a chorus or a little hook or something. Then we worked on it together and finished it together. I recorded her and we got a routine going. And later on, she was in the studio with Diplo, and his career was exploding so he had very little attention for Madonna and Madonna was pissed. She said, “Let’s get Toby back in because he’s the finisher.”
“Living for Love,” which you worked on, is like the best song on the album.
Thank you so much. I’m debating if I should put that on the Piano Diaries album. I saw the tour right after we wrote those songs it was absolutely amazing to see how quickly she transformed those songs into something that could be performed on stage with all her acrobatics. It was such a beautiful payoff to the writing sessions, to see those songs visualized. She’s such a star on stage. It’s unbelievable.
I also wanted to ask about the new Milli Vanilli documentary. At the start of your career, you had some writing credits on their debut album. When did you realize there was some fakery going on?
We’ve never met the guys. Frank Farian took us to the studio and we recorded the three songs. And then like a week or two after that album was finished and on the charts, it was such a quick turnaround. We were pretty much watching it from the outside. We heard the rumors that they didn’t sing, but it only became really clear after the tape started jamming, and then when they had to return the Grammy. The movie is well done. It’s super entertaining. And it’s so funny, because while these things unfolded, I was in the studio with Frank but working on our album, my brother and me we were doing an album called Q during that time. And I mean, Frank had a heart attack during that time — it really got to him and it was a sh-tstorm in the studio while they were touring in America doing all these big stadium tours. They came back and said, “We must sing on the [second album],” and Frank was like, “No, the album is finished. I’m not touching it anymore. It’s coming out.”
So he must have been panicking. Was he more anxious or angry?
All of that, all of the above. It was not easy for him. I mean, it was his biggest dream to make his mark in America. So in a way that was his, “Wow, finally.” He’s a massive producer in Germany with Boney M., but I don’t think America knows Boney M.
They had a couple hits in America, but never as big as the Milli Vanilli songs.
To have something resonate in America was for him a lifelong dream, and then it going so wrong was a disaster for Frank.
Were you ever worried about how it would affect your career?
No, because people loved the music. And it was just the fact that the performers didn’t really sing. They performed, they were dancing, and at the time, it was a bit more of a grey zone. A lot of singers would have backing tracks when they performed live and sing a few words, but the fact that they didn’t sing at all, that was hard.
You’re working on Piano Diaries now, and I gather it’s not finished. Is there anyone who you haven’t worked with who you would really like to, either on this project or in the future?
I would love to work with P!nk. I think it’s about time that we write a song. Somehow it’s never happened but I think it should.
Anything else you want to add about this project?
It’s a really exciting inflection point in my career. I came to America in 2000 with a lot of dreams and very little money. The first four or six years in New York were really, really hard. There were times when I was living on a bagel and an instant soup but I just couldn’t imagine going back to Germany — I had to write the song that would put me on the map. And okay, if we go from 2005-2006 – when “Big Girls Don’t Cry” was on the map – to 2015, which was kind of the culmination of all this amazing, incredible work with all these big stars. I was the No. 3 songwriter on Billboard [in 2014], which was incredible. And then I kind of dreamt of not working anymore. My calendar was two to three sessions every day for the next several months, and I thought, “When is this going to end?” [laughs] I pulled the plug and actually learned to surf, traveled, did some home renovations, started working on a movie I’m still working on, and then became a judge on German Idol. And that was such a great experience — being in front of the camera and being celebrated for being a songwriter — that I felt I needed to write songs again. From that, I was pushing hard again. The last two years, I was working really hard on getting good songs again, and with Piano Diaries I’m for the first time looking back on this incredible journey.
Fortnite owner Epic Games has reached an agreement with a celebrity choreographer to resolve his lawsuit claiming the company stole copyrighted dance moves, three months after a federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that allowed the case to move forward.
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In court filings on Monday, Epic and choreographer Kyle Hanagami asked a Los Angeles federal judge to dismiss his lawsuit, which had been schedule to go to trial in May. The terms of any kind of agreement were not made public, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
The lawsuit from Hanagami, who has worked with BTS, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears, claimed that Epic had turned his novel dance moves into lucrative “emotes” that Fortnite players could buy in the game – one of a spate of such cases over the use of viral dance moves in video games.
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In his complaint, he claimed that Epic had copied a routine he created to a Charlie Puth song and used it without permission as the basis for a Fortnite “emote” — a pre-programmed dance move that players can purchase from Epic and employ using their digital avatars. He called it “intentional misappropriation” of his “fame and hard work.”
Dancers and choreographers have fought for years to protect pop music routines — like JaQuel Knight, who has created dances for Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion. But federal courts and the U.S. Copyright Office for years largely rejected those efforts, often ruling that copyright law only covers more extensive choreography, like ballets.
In August 2022, Hanagami’s case faced that same fate. A federal judge tossed the case by ruling that Epic had copied only several unprotected “poses” from Hanagami’s routine in Fortnite, and that even when combined together, they were just a “short” routine that couldn’t be covered by copyright law.
But in November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned that ruling, reviving Hanagami’s case and allowing it to move forward toward a jury trial. Calling its decision a “novel” ruling on “one of the oldest forms of human expression,” the appeals court said that dance copyrights should be analyzed more holistically — more similarly to how courts dissect copyrighted music.
“We see no reason to treat choreography differently,” the appeals court wrote. “Reducing choreography to ‘poses’ would be akin to reducing music to just ‘notes.’ Choreography is, by definition, a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into a coherent whole. The relationship between those movements and patterns, and the choreographer’s creative approach of composing and arranging them together, is what defines the work. The element of ‘poses,’ on its own, is simply not dynamic enough to capture the full range of creative expression of a choreographic work.”
That ruling sent the case back to the lower court for more proceedings, and a trial had been tentatively scheduled to begin in May.
Veteran music industry executive Jessica Rivera has joined multimedia company HOORAE — owned by actress, producer and entrepreneur Issa Rae — as president of its Raedio division. In her new post at Raedio, which is approaching its fifth anniversary, Rivera will supervise the “audio everywhere” division’s various operations including its record label, publishing, music supervision, […]