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iHeartMedia shares fell 36.1% on Thursday after the company’s first-quarter earnings showed continued uncertainty in broadcast advertising mixed with improvements in its digital business.
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iHeartMedia’s loss of 12 cents per share bested analysts’ estimate of a loss of 55 cents per share, according to MarketWatch, and its revenue ($799 million) and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ($105 million) both fell within the guidance it provided.
CEO Bob Pittman and COO and CFO Rich Bressler reminded listeners to Thursdays’ earnings call that the first quarter is historically the slowest period of the year. They also reiterated the company’s optimism about 2024 and the expected benefits of political advertising in the second half of the year.
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“Although the marketplace continues to be dynamic, with a changing outlook on interest rates, inflation trends and global and domestic uncertainty, we remain confident that this is a recovery year highlighted by the strong momentum and our podcast business and the sequential improvement of our multi platform groups year over year adjusted EBITDA performance,” said Pittman.
The current quarter may be an improvement over the first quarter, but iHeartMedia doesn’t expect much improvement over 2023. Thursday’s guidance for Q2 revenue as “approximately flat” compared to the prior-year quarter’s revenue of $920 million was slightly below analysts’ consensus of $935 million, according to Zacks Equity Research. April revenue is expected to be down 0.4%, Bressler said, and the multi-platform group’s gross revenue is expected to be down “mid-single digits” in the second quarter.
iHeartMedia shares dropped to $1.38 on Thursday, bringing their year-to-date loss to 48.3%. Thursday’s closing price was 70.8% below the stock’s 52-week high of $4.73 established on July 31, 2023.
Another blemish was the first quarter’s free cash flow (FCF) was negative $88 million, although it was improvement from negative $133 million in the prior-year quarter. First-quarter FCF did not include the $101 million iHeartMedia received from the sale of BMI to New Mountain Capital in February.
Total revenue of $799 million was down 1.5% from the prior-year period. The multi-platform group, which includes iHeartMedia’s broadcast radio networks and events business, suffered the biggest declines: revenue fell 6.7% to $493 million and adjusted EBITDA dropped 11% to $77 million.
Led by growth in podcasts, digital audio group revenue rose 7.0% to $239 million and adjusted EBITDA jumped 25.9% to $68.1 million. In the audio and media services division, revenue improved 12.7% to $69.2 million and adjusted EBITDA soared 54.4% to $23.7 million.
Prescription Songs and Emily Warren‘s Under Warrenty have signed singer-songwriter bülow to a global publishing deal. Fresh off the release of her two co-writes “Texas Hold ‘Em” by Beyonce and “Yuck” by Charli XCX, bülow says of her deal, “I’m very excited to start this journey with Emily and Prescription. So many serendipitous moments led us here organically, and I have the utmost admiration for this team.”
Kobalt has signed songwriter Imani “Mocha” Lewis. News of her signing comes after the whirlwind success of Tyla‘s Grammy-winning track “Water,” which was co-written by Lewis, along with eight other tracks on the South African artist’s debut album.
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Position Music has signed Golden to a worldwide publishing deal as part of a joint venture with Global 7 Publishing. A Colombian writer, musician and Grammy-nominated producer, Golden has worked on tracks for Coco Jones, ¿Téo? and Shenseea.
peermusic has signed award-winning Chilean producer and songwriter Vladi Cachai (Don Omar, Gloria Trevi, Bryant Myers, J Quiles) to an exclusive worldwide publishing deal. The deal was signed jointly by peermusic Spain and peermusic Chile and will encompass both Cachai’s existing song catalog and his future works.
Budde Music has signed songwriter Billy Mann to a go-forward “creative and administrative” publishing agreement. A hitmaker with thirty years of expertise, Mann has worked with stars like P!nk, Backstreet Boys, David Guetta, John Legend, Céline Dion, Carole King, Burt Bacharach and more.
Warner Chappell Music and The Core Entertainment have signed a joint global publishing deal with Hannah McFarland. A rising singer-songwriter and opener for artists like Kelsea Ballerini, Old Dominion, and Travis Tritt, McFarland was recently invited to sing “I Remember Everything” alongside Zach Bryan at a show in Alabama, introducing her talent to a stadium of new listeners. “We are so excited to work with Hannah McFarland and represent her unique talent,” says Bryce Sherlow, A&R manager at WCM Nashville.
Sony Music Publishing Nashville has announced the signing of country songwriter Brian Fuller to a global publishing deal. Fuller is a fast-rising songwriter in Nashville, and news of his SMP deal follows the release of his first-ever major label cut “I Could Be That Rain,” from Randall King’s 2024 album Into The Neon.
Nashville-based rights management company Muserk is expanding its royalty and administration services in Asia. This includes the signing of a series of new clients with impressive cultural impact in their home markets, including Thai neo-soul artist Phum Viphurit and Japanese label and publishing company Midi Inc/Yano Music Publishing. In the coming months, the company says it also plans to bring in more Chinese and Indonesian clients.
For much of the last decade, the Spanish collective management organization SGAE was part of one of the weirdest stories in the music business. Over the years, the collective management organization combined larger-than-life misbehavior (“Going to brothels after dinner was normal,” former senior executive Pedro Farré told El País in 2017) with an only-in-the-entertainment-business royalty accounting scheme called “la rueda” (the wheel) in which television companies played music to which they controlled the rights on late-night shows at barely audible levels in order to get back some of the money they paid SGAE in royalties.
Such songs became known as “witches’ music,” since they were played during “the witching hour,” often on astrology programs that could last for hours, and some were barely changed arrangements of public domain classical compositions registered to television executives and their relatives. In 2017, police raided SGAE headquarters.
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How much of this was amusing, as opposed to outrageous, varied directly with whether any of the money belonged to your company or creators with whom you worked, and in May 2019 the collecting society trade association CISAC took the unusual step of ejecting SGAE. Within months, hundreds of creators notified SGAE that they intended to withdraw their rights and alternatives began to emerge, including the Barcelona-based UNISON. That seemed to put more urgency behind the reforms that were already taking place, and two years later SGAE rejoined CISAC and began to rebuild the trust of creators, publishers and other CMOs.
Since then, SGAE has stabilized and turned itself around, a process that solidified and gained ground under new CEO Cristina Perpiñá-Robert, who was appointed a little more than a year ago. Last year, the organization took in €349.1 million ($377.7 million, using the average 2023 conversion rate) and distributed €354.1 million ($383.1 million), according to its 2023 financial results, which will be announced on May 10. (Distributions are higher than revenue in 2023 because of special payments from broadcasters that SGAE received in 2022 and disbursed in 2023.) Those numbers represent a 24.9% gain in revenue and a 26.6% increase in distributions, and they arguably understate SGAE’s biggest achievement: Giving publishers and creators confidence that they’re distributing royalties in a fair way.
Over that same period, the number of SGAE members with authors rights grew from 36,956 to 83,148 as it celebrates its 125th anniversary. Perpiñá-Robert has also helped make SGAE something of a hub for digital rights for Latin American repertoire. SGAE is also benefitting from the global popularity of Spanish-language music, especially a new wave of Spanish urbano musicians like Quevedo and Bad Gyal.
“For them to see SGAE as something that’s not old and bureaucratic, that’s been really good,” says Perpiñá-Robert, who previously worked at SGAE, then left for CISAC and returned last year. The Spanish CMO never had the scale of SACEM (the French CMO) or PRS (in the U.K.), and that may not change – the Spanish economy is much smaller than those of France and the U.K. But it could become a kind of specialist hub. “Everywhere is, in Europe, local music is doing better,” Perpiñá-Robert says. But only a couple of countries manage to export that local music around the world.
Since the European Commission opened up competition among CMOs to manage rights online, two major hubs have emerged to license music for online use in Europe and some other territories: SACEM and ICE, the latter of which is a joint venture of PRS, GEMA (Germany) and STIM (Sweden). (Each society still collects for offline uses of music in its home country.) They compete to represent rights from creators, publishers and even other societies, and the conventional wisdom is that most of the smaller societies will become dependent on these, while those in the middle will get squeezed. But the rise of Latin music offers SGAE another path forward.
“We’re trying to become a pan-European hub for digital for Latin American music,” says Perpiñá-Robert. SGAE collects online royalties in Europe for all the Latin American societies except those in Mexico and Brazil. (Some international superstars from Latin America sign directly to ASCAP or BMI, which make their own international deals.) With CMOs, scale leads to scale – smaller societies that lack the resources to handle the amount of data now needed to manage royalties accurately tend to get smaller, while bigger ones tend to invest, grow and then invest and grow more. And there’s never been a better time to represent any kind of Latin music rights.
As SGAE improves its reputation, its past is also getting another look. Former SGAE president Teddy Bautista, who once faced possible jail time on charges of misappropriation of funds, was acquitted, along with others. And even “la rueda” was more of a failure of organizational governance than anything else: SGAE followed its own rules, but broadcasters gamed them.
SGAE still faces its share of challenges, including a UNISON lawsuit for anti-competitive behavior. But it has already made serious progress toward earning back trust, and it could go from a problem child to a serious player.
Music Business Association president Portia Sabin’s career has reached most of the corners of the music industry, including drumming under the stage name of P-Girl in all-female punk power-pop band The Hissyfits in the late 1990s.
After studying for a doctorate in anthropology and education at Columbia University in the early 2000s, she worked intermittently for the indie label Kill Rock Stars (and married its founder Slim Moon in 2004). Around that time, she also founded Shotclock Management and in 2006 took the reins of Kill Rock Stars when Moon left to work at Nonesuch Records. She led the label — home of Bikini Kill, The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney and Elliott Smith — for 13 years while serving on the boards of directors for both U.S. label trade associations — the American Association of Independent Music and the RIAA — and the Recording Academy’s Pacific Northwest chapter. “I made a lot of connections across the industry through them and got a good sense of what part trade associations play in the ecosystem, as well as ideas about board management,” she says.
That experience has served Sabin well since she took over the Music Business Association, known colloquially as Music Biz, in 2019. Formerly called the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the organization initially catered to retailers, wholesalers and labels’ sales divisions. But as the music industry limped through the Napster and digital download era and eventually reinvented itself around streaming, Music Biz took on a much broader mandate. It serves as a forum where all sectors of the industry can unite to discuss mutual problems and explore new opportunities.
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Despite that evolution, Sabin says, “I will always have a soft spot for retailers because I knew them from when I ran [Kill Rock Stars]. There were times when physical sales of Elliott Smith records were literally what kept my family with food on our table. It was very, very tough during those transition years of 2010 and 2011. There just wasn’t much money coming in, except for physical.”
Ahead of Music Biz’s annual conference, which will take place next week (May 13-16) in Nashville, Sabin spoke to Billboard about how it has grown and what attendees can expect.
How does this year’s convention compare with 2023?
We had about 2,100 people last year, and we are now more than 50% further along in terms of registrations than last year at this point. I’m anticipating about 2,300. Our board wanted us to grow international attendance, so we have folks from over 30 countries.
How many members does Music Biz have?
We currently have 369 member companies. When I came on board in 2019, we had individual memberships and student memberships. We’ve done away with both of those categories. When we’d have great high-level panels, there’d be a hundred students there, and it was not a good match; it just didn’t work. We still do have some individual members who are grandfathered in because there are folks who are very critical to the music industry, who’ve always been very knowledgeable and helpful. They do a lot of moderating but nowadays, members mainly participate through company memberships. I think that’s important because that’s what we’re in the business of doing — putting companies together at our meetings.
There seems to be a big international presence at this year’s conference compared to past gatherings.
That’s been really growing. That’s part of the mandate that our board gave us. They really want us to grow international attendance and we’ve been doing it. We have folks from over 30 countries, which is exciting.
Artificial intelligence is a big topic this year.
Yes. AI is the big one that everyone’s talking about. We have TuneCore sponsoring our AI track, and [TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson] is going to be doing a keynote with Meng Ru Kuok, the CEO and founder of BandLab, which is on the cutting edge of everything that everybody wants to talk about. The programming is crowdsourced. Our call for proposals or presentations goes out about September; and then everybody has until the middle of December to get in their proposals. And then in January, we review every single proposal, and get a real sense of what the industry is interested in finding out more about. We choose the ones that we think are the best. Every year is different. Two years ago, we probably had 30 proposals on [non-fungible tokens]. This year, we had zero.
I see the conference is still hosting a metadata track.
I always say it’s our least sexy but most popular track. Its stuff that people really need to know — critical knowledge. And there are a lot of advancements in that area, like combining the ISRC [International Standard Recording Code] and ISCW [International Standard Musical Work Code] at creation, with rapid matching. There’s definitely going to be a lot of new things to learn.
Any other programming you want to highlight?
I love that we got so many submissions on social impact — doing good stuff in the world. So, we now have a whole track for this area. We have a streaming track, of course. We have a track on fraud, and we still have a physical track. In all, we have 17 tracks.
The transformation from NARM to Music Biz occurred before you took the helm; and while the conference still has a big legacy physical business presence, overall the meeting’s scope is much larger.
When [NARM] became the Music Business Association, it kind of fell off my radar; and I didn’t find out about it again until about 2017 when I went to the conference, and I was blown away. It was everybody that you would want to talk to and just so many different pieces of the industry in one place. That’s what they did really well when they transitioned.
How are you growing the association and the conference?
We are pushing it even more; expanding [the organization and conference] and diversifying the types of companies that can be members. We still really focus on our core of retailers, labels and distributors. We want to celebrate them, support them and preserve them; and we do so with our physical programming, which happens at the conference but also throughout the year.
In the past, the conference was a hotbed of dealmaking and private meetings between companies up in the hotel suites. Will that ingredient still be prevalent this year?
The programming is important to the Music Biz conference, but networking is just as important. We believe that those deals still happen at Music Biz because when we look at attendance, it’s still like 27% C-suite attendees. A lot of decision-makers are at the conference, which makes a big difference. In order to accommodate private meetings, we created an hour and a half break in the middle of the day, where there’s no programming, and that is for people to have lunch and network. Also, we used to start programming earlier and go until six o’clock, but we decided that by five o’clock everybody’s ready to have a drink in the bar.
What is the relationship between your organization and the RIAA nowadays?
I think it’s great. I learned a lot from them when I was on their board for a couple of years. They are wonderful people and I love what they do, which is very different from what we do. They do so much advocacy work and we really don’t because we’re a Switzerland kind of trade association, with too many [members] with competing positions on the various issues. So, I try to do advocacy and collaboration and consensus building from the inside. For example, look at all of the efforts we’ve been making recently on fraud. That’s an issue where for a while it was very contentious and divisive in our industry. People were pointing fingers and saying, “oh, it’s not my problem; it’s your problem.” And now, I think people are sort of saying, “you know, we’ve got to figure this out, because fraudsters are going make life hard for everybody.” It’s been really, really cool to see the industry coming together around this issue.
The conference goes to Atlanta next year.
Yes, it’s going to be fun. We bought out the whole hotel. It’ll just be the music folks. I hope it feels like going to a sleepaway summer camp.
Pete Ganbarg is stepping aside as Atlantic Records’ president of A&R, a role he has held since 2018, to launch Pure Tone Records, a joint venture with the label. The first artist signed to Pure Tone Records is platinum Canadian singer/songwriter Forest Blakk, whom Ganbarg originally signed to Atlantic.
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Ganbarg, who has worked at Atlantic for almost 16 years, will continue to A&R several acts on the Atlantic Music Group roster, including twenty one pilots, Shinedown, Gayle, Halestorm, and others.
“The launch of Pure Tone Records as a standalone label is an exciting moment for me,” Ganbarg said in a statement. “It’s the best of both worlds – a golden opportunity to run my own shop, while at the same time having the backing of the outstanding Atlantic team who I’ve worked with so closely over the past 15-plus years.”
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“For the past 16 years, Pete has brilliantly led our A&R mission – discovering, signing, and championing a genre-crossing array of hit artists, while also boosting our theatrical presence with a string of award-winning cast albums,” Atlantic Music Group Chairman & CEO Julie Greenwald and Atlantic Records Chairman & CEO Craig Kallman said in a statement. “At the same time, he’s mentored and built a fantastic A&R team who are expert at nurturing baby acts and superstars alike. The formation of Pure Tone is an important event for Pete and Atlantic, as he brings his decades of experience, his impeccable taste, and great ears to steering his own ship, and we’re thrilled to be his partners on this exciting next phase of his musical journey.”
If the name Pure Tone sounds familiar, Ganbarg has been using the moniker for nearly two decades. He formed Pure Tone Music prior to joining Atlantic as an A&R consultancy, whose clients included Kelly Clarkson, Chaka Khan, Santana, Aaron Neville, Donna Summer, and others. He also operates a pair of publishing joint ventures with WMG’s Warner Chappell Music under that name. Its writers have achieved multiple gold and platinum certifications, including the 2024 Grammy-winning record of the year, Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers.”
“I’m looking forward to making Pure Tone [Records] a home for exceptional, original talent, and at the same time, I’m very happy to continue to work with my amazing Atlantic artist roster,” Ganbarg continued. “I want to thank Julie and Craig for their tremendous support over the years, and for having the faith to join me in this new adventure.”
The New York-based Ganbarg joined Atlantic in 2008 as executive vp of A&R. Through his tenure, he signed or shepherded recordings by twenty one pilots, Halestorm, Jason Mraz, Christina Perri, Melanie Martinez, Skillet, Brett Eldredge, Matchbox Twenty & Rob Thomas, among others.
He also led Atlantic’s tremendous success with Broadway cast albums, including co-signing and A&R’ing the Diamond-certified original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton. He won Grammy Awards as a producer of the original Broadway cast recordings of Dear Evan Hansen and Jagged Little Pill, and more recently oversaw the Broadway cast recordings for this season’s Tony-nominated shows, Suffs and The Notebook. He also worked on the soundtrack for The Greatest Showman and Daisy Jones & The Six.
Ganbarg began his A&R career in 1989 at SBK Records. In 1997, while at Arista Records, he conceived and A&R’d Santana’s 30x platinum worldwide, nine-time Grammy-winning Supernatural.
There is no word on Ganbarg’s successor as president of A&R.
The Maryland bill targeting speculative ticketing in the state was signed into law by Gov. Wes Moore today. The consumer protection bill focuses on the sale and resale of live event tickets and was supported by the Recording Academy, National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), Eventbrite and more.
The bill bans speculative ticketing (the practice of listing tickets on secondary sites before a reseller owns a ticket), as well as require ticketers to present “all in” pricing for consumers, meaning the full price of the ticket — including all fees — must be present in the price first shown to fans. The law will go into effect on July 1.
“In addition to Senators [Dawn Danielle] Gile and [Pamela] Beidle and Delegate [C.T.] Wilson, we’re also grateful to Marylanders who spoke out and let their elected officials know that they want protection from parasitic scalpers who use acts of deception to gouge concert fans,” said Audrey Fix Schaefer, communications director of Merriweather Post Pavilion and I.M.P. in a statement. “Nearly 17,000 letters were sent by Marylanders to their state legislators, letting those in Annapolis know they want protection from the rampant deception and abuse that’s taking place now. We applaud the entire State legislature for this groundbreaking legislation, and we look forward to working with the Attorney General’s office to help ensure enforcement.”
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The bill requires resellers to provide the zone and seat number for non-general admission events, eliminating the common practice of resellers listing an unspecified seat and procuring a ticket — for a lesser price — once a consumer has purchased the “unspecified” seat from a secondary site. It also reduces resellers’ ability to list generic tickets on resale sites before on-sale for the actual event has occurred.
A standout of the bill for proponents like NIVA, NITO and others, is that the bill makes it illegal for secondary ticketing platforms to provide a marketplace for the sale or resale of tickets that violate the law. If a consumer purchases a ticket that is counterfeit, canceled by the reseller or fails to meet its original description, the secondary platform would be responsible for paying the consumer back for the total amount paid, including any fees. Platforms selling or offering to sell speculative tickets can be fined up to $10,000 for the first infraction and $25,000 for each subsequent infraction.
Additionally, the bill mandates “all-in” ticket pricing — where consumers see the full price of the ticket, including fees, from the beginning of their transaction — and require those fees to be itemized so fans know where their dollars are going. The passage of the bill also means Maryland’s attorney general’s office can conduct a review of how resellers are procuring their tickets, the price difference for fans on the primary versus secondary market, fraudulent tickets, the use of bots, what measures other states have enacted to protect consumers during the ticket buying process and more.
The AG’s study is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
Today, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Marcus King announced the launch of the Curfew Foundation, a new foundation dedicated to raising funds for various causes close to King’s heart and developing a support system for musicians from all walks of life who are battling challenges such as mental health and addiction.
The name Curfew is inspired by Matt Reynolds, a friend of King’s who was a singer-songwriter, tour manager and pillar in the music community, who took his own life in 2017. Nicknamed “Curfew” by Colonel Bruce Hampton, Reynolds’ unexpected passing inspired King and mutual friend Charles Hedgepath to name the foundation in their friend’s honor.
“I began the process of forming my non-profit organization Curfew Foundation with my friend, writing partner and fellow Greenville, S.C. native, Charles Hedgepath in late 2018/early 2019,” King says. “This idea came to me after the death of multiple peers and friends within the music community and a feeling that something needed to change. I’m very excited to be part of the change and part of the community and team working to get the message out and to help those in need.”
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Tour promoter Live Nation has pledged to contribute $1 from every ticket sold on King’s upcoming Mood Swings tour to the Curfew Foundation with Marcus King’s Family Reunion Festival in August also matching this commitment.
Curfew plans to focus on various areas of need, including supporting fine arts programs, as well as providing instruments and funding to music programs in schools. Additionally, the foundation will advocate for mental health, sobriety and addiction support, combatting isolation by offering a hotline for those in crisis and emphasizing the importance of community support.
King also announced today a partnership with Stand Together and the 1 Million Strong impact initiative that seeks to transform the way people think about and approach addiction and recovery. King is aiming to inspire others to prioritize mental health and support both sober touring musicians and fans.
“I am so delighted to be working with Stand Together Music! I met their team at SXSW during a SPIN event, and learned all about 1 Million Strong and the incredible work they’d been doing for sober concert goers! I was so moved by the passion, enthusiasm and their commitment to creating a space and accepting atmosphere for people to enjoy the music while not being afraid to be themselves,” said King. “It all resonated so deeply with me and my personal journey. I went through a prolonged period of self-medication in an effort to feel something, anything. The high I’m chasing now is being entirely present in the music along with a few thousand of my closest pals.”
Together, King and 1 Million Strong are working to build a more inclusive experience for the sober community who live and work around a historically alcohol-exposed environment and often feel marginalized from the rest of the music community. Mood Swings tour initiatives will include offering Marcus King-themed mocktails, which will be available for concert attendees and guests to enhance their sober party experience.
“Music brings people together, breaks down barriers, and accelerates change. In that unity, we have the opportunity to drive real progress in the addiction, recovery, and mental health space by partnering with Marcus King,” said Colette Weintraub, head of Stand Together Music, Sports & Entertainment. “There can be a prevailing belief in society that people who are struggling with addiction or mental health are deficient or broken. We don’t believe that. We believe people are strong and resilient.”
Dates for King’s Mood Swings tour are listed below. Learn more about the mood swings tour here: Visit the website here.
May 10 – The Masonic – San Francisco, CA
May 11 – Grand Sierra Ballroom – Reno, NV
May 14 – The Wiltern – Los Angeles, CA
May 15 – The Van Buren – Phoenix, AZ
May 17 – The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
May 18 – Fillmore Auditorium – Denver, CO
May 22 – The Monument – Rapid City, SD w/ Chris Stapleton
May 24 – Denny Sanford PREMIER Center – Sioux Falls, SD w/ Chris Stapleton
May 25 – Harrah’s Stir Cove – Council Bluffs, IA
May 26 – EPIC Event Center – Green Bay, WI*
May 29 – The Pageant – St Louis, MO
May 30 – GLC Live at 20 Monroe – Grand Rapids, MI
May 31 – Blossom Music Center – Cleveland OH w/ Chris Stapleton
June 01 – Railbird Festival – Lexington, KY
June 02 – Salt Shed – Chicago, IL
June 04 – College Street Music Hall – New Haven, CT*
June 06 – Freedom Mortgage Pavilion – Philadelphia, PA w/ Chris Stapleton
June 07 – Jiffy Lube Live – Bristow, VA w/ Chris Stapleton
June 08 – Landmark Theatre – Syracuse, NY
June 10 – Ruby Amphitheater – Morgantown, WV*
June 12 – T-Mobile Center – Kansas City, MO w/ Chris Stapleton
June 13 – Thunder Ridge Nature Arena – Ridgefield, MO w/ Chris Stapleton
June 14 – The Criterion – Oklahoma City, OK
June 15 – Globe Life Field – Arlington, TX w/ Chris Stapleton
July 11 – Darien Lake Amphitheater – Darien Center, NY w/ Chris Stapleton
July 12 – The Pavilion at Star Lake – Pittsburgh, PA w/ Chris Stapleton
July 13 – Palace Theatre – Albany, NY
July 16 – Egyptian Room – Indianapolis, IN
July 18 – Huntington Center – Toledo, OH w/ Chris Stapleton
July 19 – Schottenstein Center – Columbus, OH w/ Chris Stapleton
July 20 – The Fillmore Detroit – Detroit, MI
Sept. 04 – Orpheum – Vancouver, BC
Sept. 06 – Grey Eagle Event Center – Calgary, AB
Sept. 07 – Midway Music Hall – Edmonton, AB
Sept. 09 – Burton Cummings Theatre – Winnipeg, MB
Sept. 13 – Massey Hall – Toronto, ON
Sept. 14 – London Music Hall – London, ON
Sept. 17 – Kemba Live! – Columbus, OH
Sept. 19 – Warner Theatre – Washington, D.C.
Sept. 20 – Warner Theatre – Washington, D.C.
Sept. 21 – The Ritz – Raleigh, NC
Sept. 24 – Avondale Brewing – Birmingham, AL
Sept. 26 – Riverside Theater – Milwaukee, WI
Sept. 28 – The Sylvee, Madison, WI
Sept. 29 – Vibrant Music Hall – Des Moines, IA
Oct. 07 – Roxian Theatre – Pittsburgh, PA
Oct. 09 – State Theatre – Portland, ME
Oct. 11 – House of Blues Boston – Boston, MA
Oct. 12 – The Fillmore – Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 13 – Brooklyn Paramount – Brooklyn, NY
Oct. 17 – La Riviera – Madrid, Spain
Oct. 18 – Sala Apolo – Barcelona, Spain
Oct. 20 – Fabrique Milano – Milan, Italy
Oct. 21 – Komplex 457 – Zurich, Switzerland
Oct. 23 – Le Transbordeur – Lyon, France
Oct. 25 – Essigfabrik – Cologne, Germany
Oct. 27 – Markthalle – Hamburg, Germany
Oct. 28 – De Roma – Antwerp, Belgium
Oct. 29 – AFAS Live – Amsterdam, Netherlands
Oct. 31 – Metropol – Berlin, Germany
Nov. 01 – The Grey Hall – Copenhagen, Denmark
Nov. 03 – Bataclan – Paris, France
Nov. 05 – Eventim Apollo – London, UK
Nov. 06 – Albert Hall – Manchester, UK
Nov. 07 – Barrowland Ballroom – Glasgow, UK
Nov. 09 – O2 Institute – Birmingham, UK
Nov. 10 – The Great Hall – Cardiff, UK
Nov. 12 – Olympia – Dublin, Ireland
Warner Music Group said on Thursday that revenues increased 7% during its fiscal second quarter to $1.5 billion, with the company pointing to the strength of its publishing business and a boost in subscription streaming revenue in recorded music.
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Hits like Teddy Swims‘ “Lose Control” and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” drove an 11% increase in recorded music streaming revenue, including a 13% uptick in subscription streaming revenue. Swims and Boone held the No. 1 and 2 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart in the first quarter, while Megan Thee Stallion‘s “Hiss” debuted in the No. 1 spot in February.
“This quarter, we saw massive hits from artists across different genres and all stages of development – exactly the kind of mix we want,” said WMG CEO Robert Kyncl on a call with investors. “[The increase in streaming revenue] was driven by stronger music performance as well as subscriber growth and subscription price increases.”
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Recorded music revenue grew by 4% to $1.19 billion overall in the quarter compared to a year ago, as the termination of Warner’s distribution agreement with BMG was a drag on the division’s streaming and digital revenue growth and made for a challenging year-ago comparison. Excluding the impact of BMG terminating its distribution agreement and not renewing its digital license deal with WMG, total revenues were up 8.8%.
Music publishing revenue grew by 19% to $306 million as WMG songwriters’ contributions to hits like Jack Harlow’s “Lovin On Me,” Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends” and Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Carnival” drove a more than 30% uptick in music publishing streaming revenue.
Kyncl said Warner’s growing global market share in music publishing was thanks to organic growth — like signing decorated British singer/songwriter Raye early in her career. But it was the company’s inorganic growth plans that generated the first question from analysts on the company’s earnings conference call.
In April, WMG called off plans to submit a binding offer to acquire French music company Believe.
“We decided not to pursue it for a variety of reasons that I cannot go into,” Kyncl said in response to an analyst’s question about the decision. “We have a clear strategy in expanding our offerings to serve more artists across a wider array of their careers. We are building against that … We always look at ways to accelerate beause all of this work takes time. Any time there is an option in the market to accelerate our roadmaps, we will look at it.”
Ultimately, the acquisition and bidding process for Believe pushed Warner to disclose publicly it was considering making an offer, but the time WMG had to conduct due dilligence was brief and “not in our control,” Kyncl said, which also played a part in WMG walking away.
The company is “staying vigilant about M&A opportunities” that could enhance it’s goal of providing “lower-touch services that many independent artists, labels and songwriters rely on.”
Warner Chappell announced a partnership with BandLab and its artist service platform ReverbNation that aims to provide administration and a full-service JV tier to develop BandLab’s most promising writers.
A former YouTube executive and advocate for technology and music, Kyncl ended the call with a plug for “Where That Came From,” an AI-generated song by Grammy-award winning country star Randy Travis. Travis has suffered from aphasia since 2013, limiting his ability to sing. That he was able to release new music for the first time in years last week, was “a wonderful example of what is possible with AI,” Kyncl said.
Nick Ditri’s career as a dance music producer got a big boost when Tiesto used a 2013 bootleg remix of Avicii’s “Silhouettes” by his duo, Disco Fries. But like countless other unauthorized remixes, “Silhouettes” isn’t found on most of the popular streaming platforms. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t live anywhere outside of YouTube when Tiesto played it,” Ditri tells Billboard.
That could soon change. Eleven years later, Ditri is trying to give commercial legitimacy to tracks in that commercial gray area. He is a managing partner of ClearBeats, a startup that enables derivative works — remixes, interpolations, mashups and alternate versions — to become properly licensed tracks. ClearBeats’ other managing partner, Bob Barbiere, is a former Dubset executive and veteran in digital technology and rights clearances. Ditri and Barbiere created the company with Suzanne Coffman and Yolanda Ferraloro of veteran music sync company Music Rightz.
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Digital platforms are awash in unauthorized derivative works because “it’s the easiest way to get your foot in the door, especially in dance music and in hip hop,” says Ditri. In a perfect world, those tracks would be licensed for distribution to digital platforms or synchronizations in TV shows, advertisements or movies. “But the problem is it usually ends at SoundCloud where it might get muted or pulled down,” he says. “[Or] it ends at YouTube or a DJ pool.”
ClearBeats wants to address what Barbiere calls the “90/90 irony.” He estimates that 90% of artists who create derivative works want publicity and promotion, not the original artist’s rights or royalties. Additionally, 90% of rights owners would rather make money from a derivative work than take it down from a digital platform. But because the proper infrastructure doesn’t exist, Barbiere estimates that less than 5%, and maybe as little as 1%, of derivative works have proper attribution and are earning money for rights holders.
“Why shouldn’t 90% of that content live in an ecosystem where everybody can distribute into it, consume it, be properly attributed to it, and royalties paid downstream?” asks Barbiere.
The status quo not only prevents original recordings’ ability to generate revenue from derivative uses, but it also limits creators’ ability to build their careers, says Ditri. “If [producers] built a playlist network of five amazing Spotify playlists or Apple music playlists, and that’s their main source of promo and then they go and do a bootleg, that bootleg’s only gonna live wherever they posted — which is not going to be Spotify. So, they can’t even tap into their own networks. And it’s limited on Instagram and other socials as well.”
Currently, ClearBeats is helping labels, distributors and artists with bespoke licenses, working on a few long-term, strategic projects and helping companies identify and collect unpaid or suspended royalties. Barbiere says he has been contacted by distributors who want to help clients get licenses for tracks that incorporate samples as well as streaming platforms that want to license music catalogs to allow their users to create derivative works. A subscription-based registry for licensors and licensees is expected to roll out at the end of 2024 into 2025.
As for Ditri, co-founding ClearBeats provides him an opportunity give Disco Fries’ derivative works like “Silhouettes” a life outside of YouTube. “I’m thankful for the video clip,” he says, “but wouldn’t it be wonderful if this had existed back then?”
When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
To determine how great this loss in royalty value would be for the music business, Billboard calculated that songwriters and publishers will earn an estimated $150 million less in U.S. mechanical royalties from premium, duo and family plans for the first 12 months that this is in effect, compared to what they would have earned if these three subscriptions were never bundled. Notably, this change will not impact Spotify’s premium, duo or family pay outs for the first two months of 2024. Bundling kicks in starting in March, so this number refers to losses for the first 12 months after premium, family and duo is qualified as a bundle, not the calendar year of 2024.
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Billboard’s figure was calculated by determining how Spotify’s service revenue, payments to labels, performance royalty rates, and other factors that impact mechanical income are expected to rise each month throughout 2024. These 2024 projections are based on actual numbers pulled from the Mechanical Licensing Collective’s Spotify rate sheets for 2023. For premium specifically, the streamer will pay an estimated $100 million less in the first 12 months bundling is in effect, in comparison to what Spotify was projected to pay in the next 12 months had it never been reclassified.
To be more conservative with the premium-only estimate, if the lost royalty value was calculated purely based on actual 2023 numbers from the MLC, the losses would be around $80 million for the first 12 months, but given all of Spotify’s music service revenue grew by an average of 1.1% every month in 2023, according to Billboard’s calculations, $80 million is almost certainly a low-ball. (A representative for Spotify declined Billboard’s request for comment).
As Spotify grows, the chasm between what payments would have been to songwriters and publishers if premium was counted as a regular standalone service versus what it will be paid now as a bundle with books is expected to increase. According to Spotify’s latest earnings call, the company is growing steadily, up 14% year-over-year for premium subscribers and 20% year-over-year for premium revenue globally.
The lost royalty value for songwriters and publishers could become even larger if Spotify ups the cost of premium to $11.99, which a source close to the matter thinks is possible. It is also possible that this loss could be lessened by how many users change their subscription from premium, duo and family to Spotify’s forthcoming music-only tier, which will pay out in the way that premium did before it was bundled, but this is unlikely to make a significant impact in the estimate of first year losses, considering the tier has yet to be launched and users are automatically renewed on their current plans, even after bundling.
Given there are some unknowns still present, estimates range for lost mechanical royalty value for the first year. One source close to the matter agrees with Billboard’s estimate, also independently calculating that the lost royalty value will total at $150 million in U.S. mechanical royalties for premium, duo and family. Another source calculated somewhere between $140-150 million. A third source says their personal estimate totaled at around $120-130 million at minimum.
This change only impacts the United States, but there are fears that Spotify’s reclassification will have a domino effect worldwide, given other major markets like Australia, Canada, Ireland, U.K. and New Zealand also have audiobooks now included in Spotify premium. Roberto Neri, CEO of the U.K.-based songwriting organization The Ivors Academy told Billboard that “if Spotify gets away with this in the U.S., they will no doubt use it in their future negotiations with European, [Asian-Pacific] and other territories,” and that “what happens in one territory can impact others.”
The National Music Publishers’ Association, which represents U.S. music publishers, said that it would be “looking at all options” to fight back against Spotify’s changes to premium when it was first announced in March, and now that the fight between TikTok and UMG has concluded, it has turned its “full attention” to this issue.
“It appears Spotify has returned to attacking the very songwriters who make its business possible,” said David Israelite, the NMPA’s president and CEO, when the change to premium was first announced. “Spotify’s attempt to radically reduce songwriter payments by reclassifying their music service as an audiobook bundle is a cynical, and potentially unlawful, move that ends our period of relative peace. We will not stand for their perversion of the settlement we agreed upon in 2022.”
Phonorecords IV Settlement
So, how did we get here? It all goes back to the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), the slate of judges that set the rates for U.S. streaming mechanicals, based on weighing the business interests of publishers, songwriters and services. Unlike the sound recording side of the music business, which decides on their streaming rates based on private, free market negotiations, the publishing mechanicals are highly regulated in the U.S.
Every five years, the NMPA, Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and members of the Digital Media Association (DiMA), such as Spotify and Apple Music, come together to discuss the rates for the next five-year period; and if no agreement can be reached, then the CRB judges make a determination after a rate trial. In 2022, the three organizations convened about the period of 2023-2027, called “Phonorecords IV” or “Phono IV,” and decided, in an effort to save time and money, to come to a voluntary settlement to present to the CRB judges.
Even though the Phono IV settlement included changes to the way bundling worked (which was considered a concession to streaming services), many in the music business called the settlement as an overall win, especially because the previous five-year rate (Phono III) was fought over for about five years, causing confusion over rates in the interim. When it was announced, the NMPA touted the Phono IV settlement as delivering the “highest rates in the history of digital streaming,” because of its win for a larger headline rate, and many felt it signaled a new era of cooperation between streaming services and the music business. Israelite says now in his statement that Spotify’s latest move to bundle audiobooks “ends our period of relative peace.”
How Bundling Affects Mechanical Revenue
Even though the price of Spotify premium is rising, that additional revenue does not benefit songwriters and publishers. Now that premium is considered a bundled service with audiobooks, some of the subscription price is owed to book publishers and authors to license their works, too.
Mechanical revenue for bundles is calculated by seeing what audiobooks are valued at as a standalone offering ($9.99) and weighing that against the price of the premium bundle offering ($10.99), according to Phono IV. The value of music is found by dividing the total premium price ($10.99) by the two services (audiobooks only and premium) together ($21), which results in music being valued at about 52% of the total bundle, or around $5.70 per subscriber.
How Bundling Affects the Total Content Cost
The first step in calculating the mechanical royalty rate a streaming service owes to songwriters and publishers is to find the “all-in pool.” Streaming generates two forms of royalties for music publishing — performance and mechanical — so this “all-in pool” includes both types. (Performance royalties are determined by a separate, but also U.S. government regulated, process).
The all-in pool is the greater of either the headline rate (which ranges from 15.1% for 2023, 15.2% for 2024, 15.25% for 2025, 15.3% for 2026, and 15.35% for 2027) of Spotify’s music revenue (which is now lowered to around $5.70 per subscriber because of bundling) or the percentage of total content cost (TCC), a.k.a. what royalty Spotify pays to labels.
Previously, Spotify premium qualified for the full rate of the lesser of 26.2% of TCC for the period (or $1.10 per subscriber). Now, after deciding to change its premium offering to include audiobooks, Spotify argues it qualifies as a “bundled subscription offering,” which moves its rate down to 24.5% of TCC for the accounting period.
Regardless of whether the CRB mechanical formula determines all-in royalty pool based on the percentage of TCC or the headline rate, both options are negatively affected by Spotify reclassifying premium as a bundle. According to Billboard’s calculations, every month of 2023 used the headline rate of music revenue as the all-in pool for premium, but after bundling, the next 12 months will use the percentage of TCC as this pool.
After that, the final mechanical royalty pool is determined by subtracting out the performance monies from the all-in pool. This number is weighed against a calculated royalty floor. Whichever is the larger number is the final amount owed to publishers and songwriters for U.S. mechanical royalties.