Business
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Sony Music Publishing‘s administration division in Nashville will relocate to Nashville’s Music Row area, having signed a lease to move into the 17th + Grand building (located at 1001 17th Ave.) from its current location in downtown Nashville at 424 Church Street, a source has confirmed to Billboard. The move is slated to take place […]
The Sphere venue in Las Vegas isn’t turning a profit, but it’s doing enough to encourage investors to buy into its owner, Sphere Entertainment Co.
Shares of Sphere Entertainment gained 13.8% to $40.29 this week after the company’s quarterly earnings report released Monday (Feb. 5) showed that the state-of-the-art venue — currently capturing eyeballs ahead of the Super Bowl in Las Vegas on Sunday — took in revenue of $167.8 million and had an adjusted gain of $14 million (adjusted to certain items including $117 million of non-cash impairment related to the company’s failed bid to open a Sphere in London).
Sphere Entertainment was the top-performing music stock in a week when music stocks soared to new heights, with the 20-company Billboard Global Music Index gaining 3% to land at a record 1,636.43. While the numbers of winners and losers were even at 10 stocks apiece, most of the index’s most valuable companies posted gains this week. Tencent Music Entertainment rose 6.7% to $9.67, Live Nation improved 1.5% to $89.53 and Universal Music Group gained 1.2% to 27.41 euros ($29.55).
Spotify, another of the index’s largest companies, gained 8.2% to $240.77 after its earnings results on Tuesday (Feb. 6) showed its subscriber number grew to 236 million, up 10 million in the quarter, and that revenue grew 16% to 3.67 billion euros ($4.05 billion). The share price reached its highest mark since December 2021 as investors discovered a renewed faith in Spotify following its decision to cut 17% of its workforce in December. Spotify has always had a good product. Now, there is a growing feeling it can be a good business, too.
“The market is now seeing the potential of this business,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a Wednesday (Feb. 7) note to investors, “as record [monthly active user] net adds and subscribers come alongside price increases and an aggressive turn towards cost efficiency.” Stronger revenue growth and the potential for better margins led Morgan Stanley to raise its Spotify price target from $250 to $270.
Major indexes gained this week, too, and one reached a major threshold: The S&P 500 closed above 5,000 for the first time on Friday as it rose 1.4% to 5,026.61, while the Nasdaq composite improved 2.3% to 15,990.66, its highest level since 2021, thanks to big gains from chip maker Nvidia and e-commerce giant Amazon. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 declined 0.6% to 7,572.58. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index rose 0.2% to 2,620.32. China’s Shangai Composite Index jumped 5% to 2,865.90.
It was a busy week for corporate earnings reports. CTS Eventim shares rose 5.5% to 66.90 euros ($72.12) following the company’s fourth-quarter results Wednesday. The German concert promoter’s 2023 revenue reached 2.4 billion euros, up 22.5%, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization improved 31.9% to 501.4 million euros.
Warner Music Group (WMG) shares briefly rallied following its earnings results on Thursday — with the stock up 5.1% to $38.05 — but it finished the day down 2.5% and the week down 2.6% to $35.71. Morgan Stanley analysts remained “overweight” on WMG and kept the price target at $42. Guggenheim analysts reiterated their “buy” rating and maintained their $46 price target.
MSG Entertainment shares rose 9% to $36.81 after the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings results were released Wednesday. The New York-based live entertainment company raised revenue guidance for its full fiscal year by 10% to a range of $930 million to $950 million. Executive chairman/CEO James Dolan attributed the strong quarter to “record results” from the Christmas Spectacular production, the long-running show featuring the Radio City Rockettes.
LiveOne shares fell 2.1% after PodcastOne reported a 22% increase in revenue in the first nine months of its fiscal year on Thursday (Feb. 8). (LiveOne spun off PodcastOne in 2023 and retained a 73% stake.) PodcastOne ranked No. 10 in Podtrac’s top publisher’s rankings and achieved a U.S. audience of 5.3 million, but its net loss increased from $3 million to $13.7 million.
What’s the best way to become a superstar? First, become a successful mainstream artist.
That’s one of the key takeaways from the inaugural annual report from music data company Chartmetric.
Of the roughly 710,000 new artists added to Chartmetric’s platform in 2023 that placed into one of six career stages — ranging from “undiscovered” to “legendary,” only a small fraction of a percent finished the year amongst the top 35,000 artists. Instead, most new artists — 87.6% of them — fell into the “undiscovered” category, while 12.3% of them reached “developing,” one category above.
The upper echelons were incredibly difficult for new artists to reach. Just 0.05% of new artists — about 355 — finished in the mid-level category or higher — meaning they ranked in the top 35,000 on the platform. Chartmetric created its proprietary Career Stages categories by taking into account artists’ performance across streaming services, social media platforms and radio airplay.
But wait, the numbers are even more imposing! There were actually 1.3 million new artists added to Chartmetric in 2023, but only 710,000 of them were actually assigned a career stage. Chartmetric told Billboard it does not assign every artist a career stage to limit duplicates, remove non-artist profiles and filter out artists with limited data.
Chartmetric’s statistics throw cold water on the notion that social media and do-it-yourself distribution can help any artist reach the levels of success previously attainable only to artists on record labels. Those rare instances grab headlines and feed the narrative that technology has eroded traditional gatekeepers’ powers and democratized access to audiences. And while it’s true that artists such as Armani White and Jxdn rode TikTok fame to major-label record deals, those success stories are outliers. Anonymity, or something close to it, is the norm.
Economic mobility is far from impossible, though. Because Chartmetric tracks so many artists, even incredibly low odds of success can result in a meaningful number of artists moving up the ranks. The 355 new artists that broke into or surpassed the mid-tier level is a big enough number of breakthrough new artists to feed a system of record labels and artist-services companies that must constantly seek out young candidates to become future stars.
Still, the challenging math underpinning success in music makes sense. Getting heard is difficult when audiences live under a constant deluge of listening options. A massive amount of music is released every day — more than 110,000 on average every day in 2023, according to Luminate. Chartmetric added 17.2 million new tracks to its database in 2023 — 7.7 million were released last year — and has 103.9 million tracks in its system.
To evaluate career stage development, Chartmetric took a sample of artists who had reached a career stage on June 11. The vast majority of artists fell into the undiscovered category. In fact, undiscovered artists made up all but 150,000 of the roughly 1.5 million artists who had been given any career stage category on June 11.
Rather than take huge jumps in career stages, most artists who break out to superstar status come from the mainstream, not from the mid-level or developing categories. More than half — 54.2% — of mid-level artists (No. 12,000 to No. 35,000) rose to the mainstream category (No. 1,500 to No. 12,000), the strongest relationship between any two career stages, says Chartmetric.
Put another way, getting to the upper echelon usually means you’ve already had considerable success. This is likely to result of “a steady, consistent rise to the top,” Chartmetric opines, rather than overnight fame.
This path to success makes sense given the advantageous starting point of most major label artists. Rare is the artist plucked from obscurity and developed into a chart-topping success from scratch. In most cases, artists build a career independently and prove themselves — whether through a TikTok hit or ticket sales — before signing with a record label. The bidding war comes after, not before, an artist finds an audience. Undiscovered artists are far riskier propositions for record labels than mid-tier artists.
There is some economic mobility for less successful careers — but not much. About 12% of developing artists were able to rise to mid-level status (No. 12,000 to No. 35,000). Far fewer jumped all the way to the upper echelons: Just 0.25% of developing artists jumped mid-level status and reached mainstream (No. 1,500 to No. 12,000) or superstar (top 1,500).
Just as economic mobility characterizes the “American dream,” the idea that a person can strive to achieve a better life, the great hope of the modern music business is that artists can make a living on streaming royalties. Whether the system is fair is under debate. Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud have changed their royalty calculations to favor professional and developing artists over undeveloped artists and non-music content. In the European Union, lawmakers are pressing music streaming services to improve payouts to artists.
Chartmetric’s report doesn’t dispel any notions that the odds are stacked against new artists hoping to break into the mainstream. Success is possible, but it’s rare.
When Apple launched its new $3,500 Vision Pro virtual reality headset this past week, the implication was clear: The future, whether people like it or not, is no longer knocking on the door but inside the living room. (If you can afford one, that is.) The immersive, three-dimensional experience that the headsets — and those from other companies, like Meta — offer is a test of where technology can go, and how humanity may interact through technology moving forward.
But while early reviews focused on the Vision Pro’s relative clunkiness, the quality of the graphics and how it all functions, the possibilities of VR technology are fascinating when applied to music — particularly the idea of 3D, immersive concert experiences. While those types of experiences have been around conceptually for a few years, now — with the company AmazeVR being one of the launch apps on Vision Pro (and also available on the Meta headset) — they are in people’s homes.
AmazeVR was founded in 2015 by Korean company Kakao and first made waves in 2021 after partnering with Roc Nation to produce a virtual reality Megan Thee Stallion concert tour, which was shown in AMC theaters in a dozen cities around the country. It also partnered with K-pop company SM Entertainment for a similar 3D concert experience with the group aespa. But for the past two and a half years, AmazeVR has been working on its app to launch with the Vision Pro headset — and later this month, on Feb. 28, it will unveil a new immersive concert experience with the band Avenged Sevenfold that will, according to AmazeVR creative director Lance Drake, be “our most dynamic and trippy, incredible show to date.” The new launch helps Drake earn the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Drake has been a music video director for over a decade, having worked with the likes of Miike Snow, Steve Angello and Muse. He also directed Muse’s IMAX concert film Simulation Theory, which came out in 2020 amid the pandemic and which led to what he called a bit of an existential crisis as a director, leading him to virtual reality.
“The reason why I decided to do VR was, the Muse videos that I did were adapted by Microsoft into VR games, and they took those adaptations on tour as a VIP experience, and I got to see the fans of our videos actually interact with the music videos I had made, the worlds we had built and the storylines, and I was like, ‘Wait a second, there’s something here,’” Drake says. “So when this opportunity with Amaze happened everything aligned: It’s music-driven, it’s artist-driven, and what we do is like a hybrid between a live concert, a music video and a game.”
Here, Drake discusses AmazeVR’s work in virtual reality and spatial video, the music tie-ins that are beginning to make the technology viable for artists, and the possibilities that exist moving forward. “I think just having spent a decade in music videos and feeling like 2D has hit the ceiling of what people expect, and how it’s kind of just this promotional tool, I see what we’re doing now — and spatial and VR content in general — as a new medium for musicians and visual creatives to go beyond the two dimensional,” he says. “Once you’re seeing content in 3D and it’s in your room and it’s a part of your life in a physical manifestation, it becomes way more meaningful and there’s more value to that.”
This week, Apple released its new Vision Pro VR headset, and AmazeVR Concerts launched as one of the headset’s music-centric apps. What can you do with the Amaze app?
We’re a day one launch on the Vision Pro, having been working in spatial for the past two and a half years. We create VR concerts — we’re shooting the biggest musicians in the world on stereo video and putting them in fully-immersible CG environments and giving users and fans the closest performance they will ever get. The artists are photo-real, performing to you in the most insane CG-driven world imaginable. There’s interactive moments. And over the past two and a half years we’ve been building the VR concert, which is typically four songs from an artist and an interlude in the middle, and it plays out a bit like a standard concert, but it’s 3D, the user is fully in the world with the artist, and it’s the closest performance you’ll ever get in your life. When they’re performing, they’re looking at you and they’re speaking to you.
How long have you been working on this?
I’ve been working with AmazeVR for two and a half years. We started with the HottieVerse with Megan Thee Stallion, which was our launch. We partnered with AMC and we took her show on the road to movie theaters, and fans could get a taste of the future and buy tickets. We played 12 different cities, it sold out at most locations, and then from there we grew. We’ve done five shows since, and we’ve been working on the technology, bringing the budget down. The Megan Thee Stallion project was about a year-long life cycle from creation to premiering, and since then we’ve done shows in two-month life cycles.
What was your experience like working on the Megan project, and what did you learn from it?
I think the big learning lesson was that the market was just not at the point it is right now. We’re at a real precipice with the Vision Pro launch. At the time Megan came out, which was two years ago, we had to come to the fans, we had to create a space in which fans could go to a movie theater, and oftentimes — and this was the blessing of that show — for a lot of people, their first time trying VR was with our experience, because they were fans of Megan and they had this unique chance to do something different within VR. But now we’re at a point where Meta headset sales have been growing exponentially since, and now Apple has entered the ring, and since then we’ve been hyper-focused on launching our own app, so we have our own app on Meta and now on Vision Pro. So we’re now kind of ahead of the game because we’ve been shooting spatial content and building these worlds for what people want to see in VR for over two years.
You guys also have a partnership with K-pop company SM Entertainment, right?
The founders of our company are Korean, they’re engineering geniuses, and they’ve been working in VR for nearly a decade. So we have deep ties in the K-pop industry and have a partnership with SM. And the first show we launched with was aespa; similarly, we did a theatrical run in South Korea, which did really well, and our second show [with] Kai just happened through SM [and will be out in South Korea Feb. 14]. And we’re going to continue to expand and grow in the K-pop market, especially in the theatrical market because fans are very hungry and eager there for this kind of content.
You also have a new project with Avenged Sevenfold coming out later this month. What can you tell me about that?
Avenged Sevenfold is definitely our most dynamic and trippy, incredible show to date. What sets it apart is that we were able to shoot all five members of the band truly live performing. We took their entire touring team, their back line, and they were on the stage with us and we did a full recording of them performing live on a sound stage, which to my knowledge has not been done in spatial, 3D video. We’re really excited because it’s really putting the musicianship at the forefront. Brian [Synster Gates] and Zackey [Vengeance] playing guitar, you’re seeing every note they play, you’re seeing the vocal performance, and it’s what makes spatial video so special — it gives the user permission to look wherever they want. So you can really focus on the drum fills, you can really see that particular guitar solo, and it’s really bringing that performance element and the musicianship back to the forefront with this show.
What are some of the complications that still need to be worked out with music and this technology?
It’s more just getting the word out and getting people on board. The artists that we’ve worked with — from T-Pain, who is heavily involved in Twitch and the digital world; Zara Larsson, who had a huge Roblox show; and Avenged Sevenfold, who are very involved in crypto and NFTs and Web3 — it’s taken these kinds of artists to invest in us and understand and want to be at the frontier of this. But now that we’ve entered a world where Apple is in the game, I think it’s going to be a lot easier for artists to understand what we’re trying to make, and also we’ve had to do a version of every genre of music to then show to artists for them to see how it applies to them. It was hard for us to take a Megan Thee Stallion show to rock acts and say, “We want to do this for you.” It’s really taken us to fulfill every genre and what that VR concert would look like. But now we’ve done pop, K-pop, hip-hop and now rock; I think it’s going to be a lot easier for bigger artists to see how this applies to them.
Where do you see it going from here?
What’s most exciting with the Apple launch is that it’s not only a viewer, it’s a creative tool. There’s cameras built into it, it’s gonna be a lot easier to be social with this headset, and for users to create this content. I really see this as a new medium, a new genre. For years, especially in the music space, music videos have been a dying art; they’re becoming less and less popular, and a lot more visual focus has been on TikTok. I see this as a new ceiling for creativity and a new bar for fans to invest in and get closer to their favorite artists.
A man accused of stalking Taylor Swift outside her Manhattan apartment has been declared mentally unfit for trial, prosecutors say, meaning his criminal charges will be dismissed and he will be transferred to a mental health facility.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office said Friday it had confirmed the results of a psychiatric examination that found David Crowe “unfit to stand trial” on misdemeanor charges of stalking, harassment and contempt. Crowe was arrested three times last month outside Swift’s TriBeCa building.
“The criminal case is now dismissed by function of law,” a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said in the statement. “He will now be committed to the custody of the Office of Mental Health to receive necessary treatment.”
In a statement, Crowe’s public defender, Katherine LeGeros Bajuk, said: “We are pleased that all parties now agree to the obvious truth that Mr. Crowe is too ill to proceed, and that he requires treatment, not jail. We look forward to ensuring Mr. Crowe is provided with the psychiatric treatment and supportive social services he needs to achieve a successful and stable re-entry into society.”
Though he will not face charges, Crowe will not simply be released. He will committed to a mental health treatment facility, where he will be confined for an undefined time period until deemed fit to be released by doctors. Prosecutors can argue against any potential future release, and often seek civil court protection orders barring defendants like Crowe from contacting victims like Swift after they’re released.
In charging documents, prosecutors alleged that Crowe had been spotted roughly 30 times near Swift’s apartment building since late November, and that on multiple occasions he had stated that he was there to speak to the superstar.
The Seattle native was first arrested on January 20, after police responded to a 911 call regarding a “disorderly person” near Swift’s apartment. Crowe had allegedly “attempted to open a door to a building at the location” and was taken into custody on a previous arrest warrant. After he was released, Crowe was arrested again just two days later in the same area, after witnesses reported an “emotionally disturbed male acting erratically” and police spotted him “harassing multiple complainants.”
Crowe was released from custody again on Jan. 24 after he was arraigned on stalking and harassment charges. Though the judge imposed a strict protection order, Crowe then apparently bee-lined back to the vicinity of Swift’s apartment, where he was arrested for a third time and charged with criminal contempt.
After Crowe’s third arrest, prosecutors warned the judge that he had willfully disobeyed her previous ruling and made clear that he would not abide by future restrictions. Following that hearing, the judge ordered Crowe to remain in custody while he awaited further proceedings.
If he had gone to trial on the original stalking charges — all misdemeanors — Crowe could have faced up to 18 months in prison if convicted. If also convicted on the later charges — two counts of second-degree criminal contempt for breaching his protection order, also misdemeanors — he could have faced an additional two years in prison.
This past Monday (Feb. 5), roughly 300 people across music industry sectors gathered at The Novo theater in downtown Los Angeles for the first -ever North American music industry climate summit. Outside, sheets of rain came down during unusually heavy storms in Southern California, adding a sense of urgency – and purpose – to an event meant to catalyze the music industry into taking meaningful action on the issue.
Organized by the Music Sustainability Alliance (MSA) – a neutral body that functions as a sustainability convener and resource for the entire industry – the Music Sustainability Summit featured eight hours of panels on climate-related topics, from carbon emissions related to fan travel to environmentally responsible food sourcing at events. Attendees were encouraged to (and did) bring their own water bottles and lanyards, with reusable cups on hand and a plant-based lunch served with bamboo plates and cutlery.
The event was a watershed moment for the music industry’s relationship with climate change, marking the first-time leaders of all sectors of the industry came together to discuss the issue and commit to creating systemic change. Enthusiasm around the event – which had to move to a larger venue to accommodate interest and drew a big crowd even in inclement weather – demonstrated that the industry is eager, even desperate, to become more sustainable and use the platform of music to inspire and catalyze a cultural movement for climate action.
Beyond knowledge sharing, the summit succeeded in bringing together stakeholders in the music industry’s fight against climate change, solidifying and expanding this community and shoring up the collective knowledge base. The summit was hosted by Joel Makower, a business sustainability expert and journalist whose depth of knowledge on the subject was matched by a thoughtful, often funny demeanor that brought levity to an often very existential seeming problem.
“The good news we don’t hear enough about is that we already have the solutions to climate change that work and are affordable,” noted one panelist. “How do I know this? Because we’ve scienced the s— out of it.”
(The summit was held under the Chatham House Rule, which advises that anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from that meeting, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. This rule was enacted so that summit attendees could speak freely in order to allow the event to have the highest impact. Billboard was the media sponsor of the Summit and agreed to abide by this Rule.)
Representatives for the MSA tell Billboard that following the summit, the plan is to keep momentum going through the formation of working groups. The MSA — lead by president and co-founder Amy Morrison, director Eleanor Anderson, co-founder and board member Michael Martin and board member Kurt Langer — will function as admin for these groups, helping bring people together, organize meetings and take notes to ensure conversations turn into action.
The MSA will also host monthly webinars to focus on specific issues. The first one next month will include a vote on how the industry can use its platforms to encourage audiences to be climate-minded voters. The summit will become an annual event, scheduled to happen annually on the day after the Grammys. Additionally, the MSA is working on accessible online content including an updated resource guide and other educational materials.
Music Sustainability Alliance staff Kurt Langer, Amy Morrison, Eleanor Anderson, and Michael Martin
Gilbert Flores
A crucial part of the plan is to have employees from competing companies engage with each other in a pre-competitive environment to share information and take steps that will be necessary for all companies to enact to meaningfully address climate change. The summit demonstrated that these precompetitive conversations are possible, with one panel featuring chief sustainability officers from Live Nation, AEG, ASM Global and Oak View Group, who told the audience they were all friendly with each other anyway.
Here are a few of the many things learned at the inaugural event.
The Music Industry Has Oversized Influence On The Issue
While it’s not yet clear just how much carbon emissions the music industry is responsible for, it’s likely that this number is relatively small in comparison to other industries. But the influence the industry has on climate change is massive, with many speakers emphasizing that because music affects culture — and the hearts, minds and motivations of listeners — the effect the industry can have on the issue is tremendous.
“Music makes culture,” one speaker observed, and thus determines “what things in culture become normalized.”
Artists Can Do a Lot, But They Can’t Do It All
There were many conversations about the effect artists can have in terms of educating their audiences on climate change and motivating fans to take action. These conversations observed that authenticity is the key to successful initiatives and that fans find it most inspiring when artists take action with them. Billie Eilish’s sustainability efforts were cited many times throughout the day, including a statistic that 130,000 fan actions resulted from Eilish’s climate change initiatives during her last tour.
These discussions advised, however, that artists cannot take on the burden of responsibility alone, with everyone in the industry responsible for initiating action, while also working with legislators.
Practical Solutions Are Available Now
A presentation on waste management noted that four billion single use cups are thrown away at live events every year. But the music industry is leading the re-use movement in the United States through a company called r.Cup — which provides reusable cups in venues and at festivals and which has eliminated 43 tons of plastic so far. Both AEG and Live Nation have employed successful reusable cup programs at various events.
Emissions: Fan Travel Is The Leading Issue
In terms of energy use, a panel on diesel fuel noted that the quickest way to decarbonize the music industry would be to remove diesel generators from event sites. While this measure is currently cost prohibitive and not yet possible, as most legacy rental companies would need a massive infrastructure upgrade to make it happen, the panel emphasized that it’s likely the technology to make this happen is forthcoming.
This conversation also included the use of HVOs (renewable diesel) that reduces CO2 emissions by 90%, along with talk about the option for currently available batteries to replace diesel generators in ancillary uses like parking lots and site lighting, etc. The hybrid use of batteries and generators was also discussed.
During the panel, it was noted that fan travel contributes to 50-80% of music industry carbon emissions, an acute issue given that many festivals happen in far-flung locations and that even many cities connected to the grid don’t offer public transportation. This conversation illustrated the need for promoters, venues, festival producers, fans, artists and municipalities to work together.
Food Is a Crucial Piece of Puzzle — And Action On It Can Happen Now
With animal agriculture being a major contributor to climate change, deforestation and air and water pollution, a food-focused panel demonstrated that the industry – from massive arena concerts to video shoots to award shows and meetings – can impact this in a positive way through plant-based catering and concessions.
It was suggested that even large venues that get food from large, national distributors could open up one plant-based concession stand to a local business or allow this business to park a food truck outside. Changing menus to include plant-based options is doable now, and a good place to start in terms of action that has the potential to change people’s everyday food choices.
Support And Feed, an organization founded by Eilish and Finneas’ mother Maggie Baird that works to mitigate climate change and increase food security by driving global demand, acceptance, and accessibility of plant-based food, is considered a leader in this space. The food panel also cited that roughly 8.8 million gallons of water were saved thanks to Eilish’s last tour switching to plant-based catering.
In what could be the largest valuation ever of a musician’s music assets, Sony Music Group has closed an agreement to buy half of Michael Jackson‘s publishing and recorded masters catalog in a deal that sources say valued those music assets somewhere above $1.2 billion. Other sources have suggested it might be as much as $1.5 billion. At those valuations, Sony will pay at least $600 million for its stake of the legendary rights.
That means that the Jackson deal, which closed late last year, is at a bigger valuation than the $1.2 billion that Queen is currently seeking. And whereas the Queen valuation includes, sources say, royalties from income streams beyond the masters and publishing, including from the Freddie Mercury biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, and theatrical productions using Queen’s music, Sony’s deal with the Michael Jackson estate does not include royalties from the Broadway play and other theatrical productions featuring Jackson’s music.
It may not, however, just be Jackson’s music that’s involved in the deal. Sources say the current deal includes non-Jackson-authored songs in his Mijac publishing catalog, which also includes the approximately 250-song Sly & the Family Stone publishing catalog as well as iconic songs written and/or performed by Jerry Lee Lewis, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Ray Charles, Percy Sledge and Dion.
Last February, following a story first reported by Variety that the Jackson deal was being negotiated, Billboard estimated that the iconic artist’s estate earns about $75 million annually. Those assets include ownership of master recordings, publishing for Jackson’s share of his songs, his Mijac publishing catalog and revenue from merchandise and royalties from theatrical shows featuring Jackson’s music. At the time, Billboard estimated that within the $75 million estimate, Jackson’s recording and publishing assets alone brought in $47.2 million to the estate; and that Mijac might be bringing in another $5 million to $8 million annually.
The Jackson estimate, however, did not take into account that his popularity appears to be growing as the streaming marketplace expands.
Sales and streams of Jackson’s music grew steadily from 1.07 million album equivalent units in 2020 to 1.47 million in 2023 — up 37% over those three years — according to Luminate. That outpaced the overall U.S. music market for album consumption units, which grew 22.9% during that time period. Outside the United States, Jackson is arguably even more popular. In 2023, consumption of his music grew 38.3% to 6.5 billion on-demand streams, up from 4.7 billion streams in 2021.
Next year, a Jackson biopic called Michael will be released, likely fueling even more growth to his fanbase, boosting consumption and triggering more revenue to flow to his estate and any other rights holder.
With all of the economic returns the estate is delivering, the masterminds behind it — lawyer John Branca and A&R executive John McClain — are expected to continue to stay involved as co-executors.
Sources indicate that the Sony deal also leaves in place Primary Wave’s stake, which is believed to be about 10% of Jackson’s publishing assets.
Throughout the years, Sony has paid the Jackson estate more than $2 billion in some major deals that go beyond distributing royalties for his records and songs. In 1991, the company paid $100 million to buy the first half of what became Sony/ATV; ATV Music was the catalog that Jackson bought in 1985 that contained the Beatles catalog and other popular songs. That was merged into Sony’s music publishing operation to become Sony/ATV, with Sony and Jackson each owning 50% of that company. In 2016, the company paid $750 million for the remaining 50% of Sony/ATV. It also paid $287.5 million for the Jackson estate’s share of the consortium that owned EMI Music Publishing in 2018, as well as dividends during its ownership of those assets that came out to a total of about $1.6 billion. And now, the latest deal adds another $600 million or more, driving the total amount past the $2 billion mark.
Sony has been active with acquisitions over the past year. Last year, it also acquired what has been described as a significant minority stake in the Latin label and management company Rimas Entertainment, which launched Bad Bunny‘s career. While it’s unclear what percentage Sony bought, the overall deal for the label and management was expected to have about a $300 million valuation, sources said at the time.
In May 2023, Sony also acquired the RECORDS catalog from Barry Weiss, Ron Perry and Matt Pincus, buying out the latter duo in a deal that was seeking a $100 million valuation; and then did a going forward 50/50 deal with Weiss, who retained control of the label’s recent catalog.
Reps for Sony, the Jackson estate and Primary Wave declined to comment.
Since investing in the Chicago Sky in 2006, singer Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child fame has sung the national anthem at multiple games, joined a Sky star in a photo-op with local high school players, hung out with fans at a meet-and-greet — and, of course, enjoyed the best seats in the house.
With her minority stake in the 2021 WNBA champion team, Williams belongs to an exclusive group of pop stars who own a slice of a sports team, including Usher, J. Cole, Pitbull, Fergie, Marc Anthony and Justin Timberlake. And with the Sky recently valued at $85 million, her investment is paying off in multiple ways.
“It checks a lot of the boxes — [she] is from the city, a fan of the sport, a woman, a member of an iconic group,” says Jonathan Azu, founder and CEO of Culture Collective, which manages Williams. “It has the hallmarks of why you would do something like that: ‘I’m associated with this team, so it brings a lot of value to my brand.’ ”
Michelle Williams speaks to kids at a the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boys and Girls Club Monday, Feb. 27, 2006 in Chicago.
Jeff Roberson/AP Images
For an artist, that kind of value is both figurative and literal. Whether it’s Usher buying a small stake in the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, Anthony and Fergie becoming minority owners of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Cole buying into the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets or Pitbull becoming co-owner of NASCAR’s Trackhouse Racing Team, money is a primary motivator.
“The stock market can go down, but the value of, say, the Texas Rangers is not going to go down,” says Michael Rapkoch, founder and CEO of Dallas-based Sports Value Consulting. Usher’s $9 million Cavs investment, for instance, may have more than quadrupled in value since he first made it in 2005, according to Forbes estimates. “I’m very happy to say that I don’t just have a basketball team, I have a championship team,” Usher tells Billboard, noting the Cavs won in 2016 under his watch. “That legacy is associated with something that I made an investment in.”
Perhaps the best-known artist-turned-team owner is Jay-Z, who spent $1 million on a small stake in the NBA’s Nets in 2004, helped move the franchise from New Jersey to his native Brooklyn, then divested from the team in 2013 to avoid a conflict of interest with his Roc Nation Sports agency. His windfall from that deal, according to Forbes, was an estimated $1.4 million.
Marc Anthony attends the NFL, ESPN/ESPN Deportes and the Miami Dolphins press conference at the Time Warner Center on July 21, 2009 in New York City.
Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images
Investing in a team can also mean easy self-marketing. When Timberlake, whose investing group owns a reported 2.8% of his hometown NBA team, the Memphis Grizzlies, played camera operator at home games, Sports Illustrated covered the story. “Sports is entertainment. There is crossover at every level,” Mark Cuban, who recently sold his majority stake in the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks for a reported $3.5 billion, tells Billboard.
That said, even a minority stake can be risky — “no different than any business,” as Cuban says. “If it’s not well run [and] customers aren’t happy, you can lose a lot of money.” That’s why none of longtime Bay Area music business manager Tim Jorstad’s clients have ever bought stakes in teams, even though many of his clients, which include the Doobie Brothers, Jefferson Airplane and members of Journey and the Grateful Dead, are regional sports fans.
Nonetheless, the perks tend to outweigh the potential downside for artists craving a piece of the sports pie. “It’s a fun investment. [Artist-owners] go to a lot of games and get to sit in the owners’ box and go onto the field and schmooze,” Jorstad says. “There are very few other normal investments where you get that kind of public exposure.”
J. Cole during the Miami Heat vs Charlotte Hornets game at FTX Arena on November 10, 2022 in Miami, Florida.
Lauren Sopourn/Getty Images
Additional reporting by Gail Mitchell.
This story will appear in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The $10 billion-a-year sports agency business is almost as hard to break into as the big leagues themselves — the gatekeepers are entrenched and powerful, and the cost of competing with them can be prohibitive. Right now, though, a growing disconnect between athletes and agents — players want their agents to find them lucrative ways to leverage their fame, while agents want to focus on the high-dollar contracts — is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to disrupt the business. Some of them are coming from the music industry, leveraging their own cultural cachet to find clients and opportunities, including Jay-Z, whose Roc Nation includes a sports agency business; Young Money APAA Sports; and Quality Control Sports. More music stars are on their way this year too.
The business is now dominated by five firms — CAA Sports, Wasserman Sports, WME Sports, Excel Sports and Octagon — which together generate half of the $6 billion in commissions that the top 20 firms collected, according to Forbes. On the surface, these companies operate a bit like music and film/TV agencies, where executives identify opportunities for their clients and negotiate on their behalf. But the vast majority of the money comes from long-term player contracts that deliver giant commissions, and many athletes think this leads agents to ignore sports-adjacent opportunities and investments. Roc Nation and Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports, built on their reputation for combining sports and entertainment, used this to challenge the entrenched players, successfully enough that they are now ranked No. 7 and No. 9 by revenue, respectively, according to Forbes.
Does that mean other musicians and music executives will follow their lead — or even that they should? Launching a sports agency is expensive — it can take between $40 million and $50 million, according to Forbes, which is a big bet even for most stars. So that usually means finding additional investors, in the form of financial backers or other entrepreneurs, plus athletes who are either looking for an agent or a new one.
Roc Nation, which had a rock-solid source of both cash and credibility in Jay-Z, entered the sports business in 2013, five years after the company’s launch, with four-time All-Star Yankees second baseman Robinson Canó. Its sports division now has 190 clients, including Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball and New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley, and about $2 billion in player salaries and another $500 million in sponsorships and nonsalary deals, according to Forbes, which estimates that the company’s sports operations generate $203 million a year. (Roc Nation declined to comment on its finances.) Klutch Sports, where Paul is agent and manager for LeBron James, as well as a board member for Live Nation Entertainment, generates about half that.
That kind of success brings competition, including from music executives Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas, who launched Quality Control Sports in 2019, four years before HYBE purchased their company. Their agency’s clients include New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara and Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Richie James. The Lil Wayne-owned Young Money APAA Sports has also put points on the board by signing University of Miami’s Leonard Taylor III ahead of the 2024 NFL draft.
That doesn’t mean every venture succeeds, though. Jeezy started his Sports 99 agency in 2019, but it closed during the pandemic, and Kanye West’s Donda Sports, launched in 2022 with basketball players Aaron Donald and Jaylen Brown, imploded within months after West made a series of antisemitic comments.
The fast-paced evolution of both the sports and music businesses may continue to tempt musicians with money and influence, but anyone who enters the sports agency business, no matter how famous, will probably do so as an underdog.
This story will appear in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.
From Celine Dion to Joni Mitchell and Allison Russell, Canadian artists made a big splash at the Grammys last weekend.
But there’s one Canadian music executive who also cleaned up. She may be the wealthiest, most influential, yet under-the-radar woman in the country’s music industry: Golnar Khosrowshahi of independent publishing and management company, Reservoir Media.
Among the 10 Grammy honours for Reservoir Media is Joni Mitchell at Newport, who won in the folk album category. The legendary singer-songwriter also made her Grammy performance debut. Following a brain aneurysm in 2015, Mitchell had stopped performing, but in 2022 she made a triumphant comeback at the Newport Folk Festival, bringing her living room jam sessions — Joni Jams — to the festival stage. At the awards, she took the stage accompanied by frequent collaborator Brandi Carlile, cello and violin duo SistaStrings, and Canadian Allison Russell on clarinet.
The NYC-based Reservoir firm has offices in L.A., Nashville, Toronto, London and Abu Dhabi and signed Mitchell to an all-encompassing global music publishing admin deal in 2021.
Notably, Reservoir is owned by the Iranian-Canadian Khosrowshahi family, who founded and then sold the Future Shop home electronics chain to Best Buy in 2001 for $580M. Reservoir is run by daughter Golnar, a classically trained pianist with impeccable business credentials.
The music firm now represents 150,000 copyrights and 36,000 master recordings that include the Tommy Boy and Chrysalis catalogues.
In addition to Joni Mitchell, Reservoir also represented winners by boygenius, SZA and Killer Mike. – David Farrell, Rosie Long Decter and Richard Trapunski
Charlotte Cardin Tops 2024 Juno Awards Nominations
Charlotte Cardin has earned the most nominations for the 2024 Juno Awards. The breakthrough Montreal pop singer-songwriter got six nods, including artist of the year, album of the year and pop album of the year (99 NIGHTS), single of the year (“Confetti”) and TikTok Fan Choice. She’s also nominated for songwriter of the year.
Daniel Caesar and TALK follow with five nods each. Allison Russell, Aysanabee, Connor Price, Lauren Spencer Smith, Tate McRae and DVBBS each received three nominations.
The nominations were announced on Feb. 6 in a press conference at the CBC Building. Comeback artist Nelly Furtado, who’ll be performing as well as hosting the broadcast ceremony, was a surprise guest at the nominees announcement. She also received a nomination for “Eat Your Man,” her collaboration with Dom Dolla, for dance recording of the year.
Punjabi-Canadian artist Karan Aujla, a cover star for Billboard Canada’s inaugural digital cover, was also nominated for breakthrough artist of the year and announced as a performer at the Junos ceremony at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax on March 24. He follows fellow cover star AP Dhillon, who played the first full Punjabi performance at the awards last year. Joining Aujla as performers will be country breakout Josh Ross and singer-songwriter TALK.
Another Punjabi-Canadian artist, Shubh, is nominated for the TikTok Fan Choice, a fan-voted award, along with Aujla, Cardin, Ross, Caesar, DVBBS, Tate McRae, ThxSoMch and Walk off the Earth.
McRae’s “greedy,” which has topped the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 multiple times, is also nominated for single of the year, along with Cardin’s “Confetti,” Caesar’s “Always,” LU KALA’s “Pretty Girl Era,” and TALK’s “A Little Bit Happy.”
Nominated with Cardin for album of the year are Néo-Romance by Alexandra Stréliski, NEVER ENOUGH by Daniel Caesar, Mirror by Lauren Spencer Smith and Lord of the Flies & Birds & Bees by TALK.
Cardin, Caesar, Smith and McRae, all relatively young artists, are all nominated for artist of the year as well, along with the legacy artist of the category, Shania Twain.
The Junos will be broadcast live on CBC from Halifax’s Scotiabank Centre on Sunday, March 24. Tickets for the show and the JUNO Week events are on sale at ticketmaster.ca/junos. The majority of the awards will be presented at The Juno Opening Night Awards the night before the main ceremony on March 23.
Find the full list of nominations here and interviews from the red carpet at ca.billboard.com – Richard Trapunski
How Canadian Music Took Over 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend
Toronto was alive with music at the 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend – not just on the ice, but all around the city. As the hockey spectacle returned to the city for the first time since 2000, and to Canada for the first time since 2012, the multiple-day event brought live music from major stars including Nelly Furtado, the Kid Laroi and Diplo.
As the stars of the game played each other in skills competitions and 3-on-3 hockey, music was an integral component. Each of the four teams chosen by an NHL player was co-captained by a celebrity: Tate McRae, Justin Bieber, Michael Bublé and Will Arnett. They weren’t just there to sit on the bench, but they helped choose each team at the player draft on Thursday night (Feb. 1). Bieber even helped out with the players’ on-ice warm-ups.
“We went all-in [with music] this year,” said Steve Mayer, the NHL’s Chief Content Officer. “We’re so happy that we have what represents not only the best in the NHL coming here, but in our minds, the best in Canadian music. And being here in Canada with seven Canadian teams, we better know our Canadian music.”
The headliner of this year’s NHL All-Star Game was one of the biggest artists in the world. McRae comes from a hockey family, and the sport’s culture is a major part of her current image. So it felt natural to see her perform on three different stages on the ice in a glittery top with six dancers and the production value you might see at a big award show.
“For the past year or two years now, I feel like I’ve fully immersed myself in the hockey world,” McRae told Billboard Canada.
Michael Bublé said he’s proud seeing what McRae has accomplished and called her before the game.
“I told her I was happy for and proud for her,” he remarked. “And as a Canadian, it made me happy to see another young Canadian breaking through….Honestly, we’re kind of dominating music right now. We are sending a ton of artists out there, and we’ve already got a ton of career artists out there. This little place made a bunch of great ones.”
The star factor revved way up on Thursday night (Feb. 1), when Justin Bieber played an invite-only concert at the 2,500-capacity venue History, his first gig in over a year. Diplo, The Kid Laroi and Nelly Furtado also played at concerts over the weekend, but Bieber’s was the one that captured the most headlines and social media attention in a set that spanned his whole career. – Richard Trapunski
Last Week In Canada: Drake’s OVO Sound Partners With Santa Anna