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The Universal Music Group announced a massive restructuring of its record label operations Thursday (Feb. 1), reorganizing its web of frontline labels to align them under two main companies, in Republic Records and Interscope Records. The move, which can loosely be termed an East Coast (Republic) and West Coast (Interscope) realignment, means that Interscope’s John Janick and Republic’s Monte Lipman will be leading U.S. label operations for UMG.
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As part of the move, the other U.S. label heads will now report through to Janick and Lipman, a source confirms. In the new alignment, Janick will now oversee Interscope, Geffen, Capitol, Motown, Priority, Verve and Blue Note, while Lipman will oversee Republic, Def Jam, Island and Mercury.
UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge announced the move today in a memo to staff, in which he acknowledged that Republic and Interscope have been the two market leaders in current market share in recent years; in 2023, Republic claimed 13.47% of the U.S. market, while Interscope was second, at 8.80%.
“As our labels continue to maintain their creative A&R and marketing independence, unique identities, and entrepreneurial spirit, they’ll also be provided with access to the talent and resources best able to support their rosters and bring them to new levels of success,” Grainge wrote in the memo, obtained by Billboard. “It’s a proven model we pioneered on the East Coast several years ago — one that we will accelerate and expand.
“As this model takes shape and spurs new creativity, our U.S. recorded music business will continue to outperform and outgrow our competition,” Grainge continued. “Led by the industry’s best creative visionaries — we will cultivate more repertoire sources, we will invest more in new artists and emerging genres, and UMG will become an even more attractive destination for the world’s most gifted artists.”
The move comes after weeks of speculation about layoffs and restructuring at the company, and while no other moves were announced Thursday, layoffs are still expected, according to many sources. In his memo, Grainge said that “In the coming weeks, John and Monte will be making further announcements about structure, resources and next-generation partnerships. These and other developments will also power some of the other initiatives I outlined in my New Year’s note, including super-fan and audience monetization, state-of-the-art D2C, e-commerce, branding and more.”
Universal has restructured its label network in the past, generally during times of big change in the music business. In 1999, at the formation of what is now the Universal Music Group, the company structured its label operations into Island Def Jam, Universal Motown Republic, Verve Label Group and Interscope Geffen A&M. In 2012, UMG purchased EMI Music’s recorded music operations, bringing Capitol Records, Blue Note and others under its purview, forming the Capitol Music Group. Then in 2014, UMG unwound its East Coast operations to make Def Jam, Island and Motown all standalone labels; in subsequent years, Motown would be moved under the Capitol Music Group umbrella, while Island would begin sharing services with Republic. This new reorganization combines several of those labels under a streamlined structure once again.
“The competition within our own company in signing and developing artists is no accident. It’s by design,” Grainge wrote in his memo. “By creating a home for a variety of independent and competitive creative centers and the leaders that run them, we increase opportunities for growth and success.
“At the same time, our culture never lets our ‘in-house’ competition become destructive; our executives never forget that we are all part of the same UMG team. John and Monte consistently share strategies for success with our labels in the U.S. and around the world, strategies that benefit artists signed to all our labels, not just those on Republic and IGA.”
With Universal Music Group‘s catalog now being slowly removed from TikTok, the music company issued a new statement Thursday (Feb. 1) commenting on what it says are TikTok’s “woefully outdated” views on music licensing and compensation. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The stalemate between the world’s […]
With 110 million buyers, sellers, collectors and lurkers roaming through Discogs every year, the 23-year-old online music marketplace’s forum threads are not exactly full of emotional support. In one of the notoriously messy threads, users complain about the May 2023 increase in selling fees from 8–9%. “What a rip off,” goes one post.
In another forum, someone advises a seller contending with a buyer demanding a full refund: “People here need to have more balls when dealing with dopes. Grow a pair.” And another user simply writes: “Discogs has gone downhill. It’s really sad. I have loved this site for so long. It feels like bots are running it. AI is just going to make it worse.”
How does Discogs turn these passionate, semi-anonymous user criticisms into upgrades? Very carefully, according to Lloyd Starr, chief operating officer since May 1: “We’ve got millions of people on the platform every month now. It’s a lot harder to find the signal in that noise.”
To improve communication between Discogs and its users, the company’s executive leadership plans to spend 2024 rolling out initiatives to solicit user suggestions and make broad changes. The Discogs community remains angry about the fee increase — which applies to shipping costs, too — and the way the company suggested the “easiest thing” for sellers to do would be to increase their prices. In a “we can do better” post last month, founder and CEO Kevin Lewandowski announced a soon-to-be-created Community Advisory Board, for users to “bring feedback and ideas to Discogs and influence how the platform evolves.”
The advisory board, Starr suggests, will be the centerpiece of Discogs’ changes. In roughly late March, Discogs will solicit applications from users and appoint representatives from the “selling, contributing and collecting” communities, as Starr calls them, by early summer. “It’s more of a dynamic conversation than a one-way post on a forum,” he says.
Lewandowski and Starr have already begun their Discogs feedback-solicitation tour. The pair traveled to New York City together in mid-January to meet with power users, including Craig Kallman, chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records, who gave them a tour of his two million LPs. Starr won’t reveal exactly what these users suggested, but he outlines a broad plan for Discogs to use surveys, polls and live contests at record-selling events. “We really want the community to feel listened to and give them advice,” he says.
In addition, Discogs will roll out “25 in ’25,” an attempt to boost the company’s online database from 17 million listed items to 25 million by its 25th anniversary in November 2025. (As of 2019, the latest year in which Discogs released sales numbers, users sold 14.6 million items on the platform, including 11.6 million vinyl LPs.)
To help achieve 25 million, the company recently hired Brent Greissle, a longtime user who has personally added 50,000 entries to Discogs’ database, as principal of discography affairs, to oversee the project. Starr also hopes to expand the database’s “richness and diversity in culture,” tapping into Brazil’s record-store community, for example, through trips to Sao Paulo, like one Lewandowski recently took to visit the world’s biggest LP collector, Zero Freitas, who by some accounts owns over six million records.
As for technological changes, Lewandowski spells out plans to improve the log-in and checkout systems and want lists. “I wrote most of the code originally back in 2000. It had a major rewrite in 2004. Some of our current software goes back that far,” he says. “This enables us to do things faster and give the community things they’ve been asking us for.” Starr elaborates that Discogs has been working for years to upgrade order management, user authentication and fraud mitigation to bring the site up to Amazon-style e-commerce standards — but it’ll take more time. “We’ve got a little technical debt to resolve here,” he says.
Several Discogs users say they’re skeptical of broad changes coming from executive leadership, which they say hasn’t listened to their concerns. Jonathan Highfield, a longtime seller near Liverpool, England, complains that Greissle, a liaison between Discogs management and user forums, is too overloaded to respond effectively about slow-loading pages or difficulty searching for releases by genre, style or label. “If they’re listening, great, but the channel is too narrow for enough information to pass through,” Highfield says. “It makes people not want to use the site.”
And like many sellers, Kurt Walling, a semi-retired optician in Streetsboro, Ohio, who has been offloading portions of his personal collection via Discogs for years, remains upset about last year’s increase in selling fees. Of the imminent changes Starr is describing, Walling says: “My inclination is to think it’s corporate stuff. I don’t think it’s sincere.”
By way of response, Starr says, the last time Discogs changed its fees was 10 years ago, and since then, the company has been “absorbing the rising cost of salaries, the rising cost of enterprise software.” Plus, competitors like Amazon and eBay take a sales percentage out of every order, and Discogs is “doing the same thing.” While Discogs could have communicated the new fees more effectively to users, according to Starr, “I don’t think removing fees makes sense.”
And for all the discontent found on the Discogs forums, one user is satisfied with his experience: Kallman, who continues to use its database to help track Atlantic’s vast catalog of releases. “Crucial, rare, out-of-print recordings that might otherwise be at risk of being forgotten in the digital era are all preserved,” he says. “The database is the most valuable asset of Discogs, and they give it away for free. It’s a constant, evolving, living, breathing organism that continues to fine-tune to maintain the completeness of the platform.”
After a string of pivots, rebrands, upgraded offerings and expanded plans, YouTube Premium and Music has passed the magical 100 million subscribers mark, counting users in trials, the company announced Thursday (Feb. 1).
That’s up from the 80 million Premium and Music subscribers around the world (including trials), reported in November 2022, and a jump from 50 million users at the end of 2021.
The milestone is cause for great celebration at the company, notes Lyor Cohen, global head of music at YouTube, in an open letter to the industry issued today (Feb. 1). “This 20-million-member growth in just over a year underscores the strength of our twin engine of advertising and subscriptions revenue,” writes Cohen.
The Alphabet-owned business unveiled its subscription offering, YouTube Music, back in October 2015, and launched its dedicated app the following month.
The streaming landscape then was littered with naysayers. “Many doubted a subscription model could thrive on YouTube,” Cohen notes. “They said the market was crowded and our platform was too different. Today – 100 million subscribers later – our distinctiveness is precisely what drives our success and why I still see so much room for growth.”
Later, in June 2018, YouTube announced the launch of YouTube Premium, formerly known as YouTube Red. Since then, notes Cohen, the Premium service’s global expansion has ramped up and is “now thriving in over 100 countries and regions” with “more on the horizon in 2024.”
By crossing the 100 million mark, “we’re delighted and humbled,” comments Adam Smith, vice president of product management at YouTube, in a separate statement.
Along the way, “we learned a lot, made a few pivots (and even rebranded), expanded our offerings and plans, and made YouTube Music and Premium available in over 100 countries and regions,” adds Smith.
In a matchup of streaming heavyweights, Spotify, the market-leading music platform, holds the advantage. The Sweden-based business came to market early, in 2008, and boasted 226 million premium subscribers worldwide in Q3 2023.
Though Apple rarely shares updates on subscriber numbers, in June 2022, J.P. Morgan estimated Apple Music could hit 110 million subscribers by 2025. The last time the company reported subscriber numbers for Apple Music was in 2019, when it reported 60 million paid users.
As YouTube hangs the decorations, captains of the industry are lining up to thank their tech partner — including a former YouTuber now leading a major label.
“Having been at YouTube when we conceived of the subscription service, 100 million customers felt like a distant possibility,” says Robert Kyncl, who was chief business officer at YT before joining Warner Music Group as CEO. “Today, it’s yet another signpost on a journey of extraordinary growth. The fact that YouTube continues to go from strength to strength isn’t just good for them, it’s healthy for the entire music ecosystem.”
Lucian Grainge, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, says the team led by Cohen and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan deserves credit for “continuing to grow and drive innovation while making significant contributions to the global music ecosystem. Our partnership demonstrates that if you start from a foundation of respect for artists and songwriters, there are limitless opportunities to create thriving businesses that benefit artists and fans alike.”
Adds Helen Smith, executive chair of pan-European independent music companies’ trade body IMPALA: “YouTube has a unique place in the music ecosystem, is a valued member of IMPALA’s Friends scheme and a great partner of our 100 Artists to Watch program.” She continues, “We look forward to continuing to work together across the whole European market where there is so much potential for digital services who see diversity as an asset.”
According to Cohen, YT’s businesses have contributed $6 billion in the past year.
“The music industry is at a critical juncture,” he writes. “Together, we can harness technological innovation to drive unprecedented value for artists and fans, building on our momentum that contributed $6 billion to the music industry in 12 months.”
That future, one where the music industry “thrives,” he insists, would see both sides leveraging AI to enhance creative imagination, seamlessly bridging short-form and long-form content for maximum artist exposure, and more.
Read Cohen’s thank you letter here.
A years-long legal fight over Nirvana‘s iconic smiley face logo could be headed for a major showdown, sparked by a former record label art designer who says he, not Kurt Cobain, created the famed drawing.
Lawyers for the 1990s legends are locked in a sprawling, three-way dispute over the image, which has appeared on countless t-shirts and other merch in the years since Cobain’s death. Nirvana is suing fashion designer Marc Jacobs for using it without permission on grunge-themed apparel, while Robert Fisher — a former designer at Geffen Records — is fighting the band over who created it in the first place.
In a filing last month in Los Angeles federal court, Fisher asked for the right to take the case to a federal appeals court. He wants to challenge a decision in favor of the band, issued in December by the judge overseeing the case, that he claims would “unfairly tip the balance of equities in favor of Nirvana” in an upcoming trial.
“For justice to occur, the jury should be presented with all disputed issues of fact, not only those convenient to Nirvana,” Fisher’s lawyers wrote.
Nirvana has been in court for years over the famous drawing – a yellow smiley face with X’d-out eyes that first appeared during promotion for 1991’s Nevermind. The design eventually became something of an unofficial logo for the band, and has become particularly prominent again in recent years amid a wave of 90s nostalgia among younger music fans.
Lawyers for Nirvana’s corporate entity first sued Marc Jacobs in 2018, accusing the design house of using a look-alike image on a line of its own t-shirts and other apparel called “Bootleg Redux Grunge.” They said Jacobs had just replaced “Nirvana” with the word “Heaven” and replaced the two eyes with an “M” and a “J,” but had changed little else.
“Defendants’ use of Nirvana’s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional, and is part and parcel of a wider campaign to associate the entire ‘Bootleg Redux Grunge’ collection with Nirvana, one of the founders of the ‘grunge’ musical genre,” the band’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In their initial complaint, Nirvana’s lawyers said the smiley face had been created by Cobain – the conventional wisdom for decades about the logo’s origins. But after reading media coverage of the lawsuit, Fisher jumped into the case in 2020, claiming the band’s allegations against Jacobs suffered from just one teeny-tiny flaw: “It is, in fact, Mr. Fisher, who authored the Happy Face, not Mr. Kurt Cobain.”
In legal filings, Fisher told a detailed story of how he allegedly created the design. While working as an art director at Geffen, he said he had quickly become “Nirvana’s go-to person for most of its graphic design needs.” In the summer of 1991, he says he was asked to design something more “consumer-friendly” than an existing t-shirt logo, which featured a circular illustration depicting one of the circles of hell from Dantes Inferno.
“Wanting to stick with a circular design, he started playing around with variations of the smiley faces that he used to draw in his final year at [college], when acid culture was at its peak,” Fisher’s lawyers wrote. “Ultimately, Mr. Fisher settled on an x-eyed design and added a tongue pointing sideways.”
After the lawsuit against Marc Jacobs was filed, Fisher says he originally took his story to the band, assuming it would “help” their lawyers to understand his involvement in the creation of the smiley logo. But he says he was quickly rebuffed because the “the facts” were “a serious inconvenience” to the band.
“For 30 years now, Nirvana has reaped enormous profits from Mr. Fisher’s works through the sale of a wide range of products,” his lawyers wrote in their legal filings. “Assisted by a team of lawyers and managers, Nirvana was able to do so without any compensation to Mr. Fisher by falsely claiming authorship and ownership.”
Unsurprisingly, Nirvana see things differently. The band’s lawyers have staunchly maintained that it was Cobain who had designed the image. But as an alternative, they’ve also argued something else: That even if it was Fisher who created the logo, he did done so as a “work-for-hire” for Geffen. Under the rules of copyright law, would mean that the company — and not Fisher — was the legal “author” of the work.
In December, Judge John A. Kronstadt largely agreed with Nirvana’s assessment. Fisher had argued that he’d done the logo on his own, as a side project separate from his job at Geffen. But the judge ruled that Fisher had clearly been an employee of Geffen at the time, and the task in question – designing a graphic for a Geffen-signed band – was clearly done as part of that job. “Assuming Fisher drew the Smiley,” the judge wrote, “it was a work for hire for Geffen.”
It’s that ruling that Fisher now wants to appeal. In last month’s filing, he asked Judge Kronstadt to hit pause on the case, and instead allow him to immediately challenge the decision at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In doing so, he warned the judge that his decision on the work-for-hire issue was not only “highly erroneous” – he says he created the design “as a fan of the band, outside of any of his tasks for Geffen” — but also procedurally unfair.
“It will likely be years until this lawsuit is finally resolved and Fisher is able to appeal,” his lawyers wrote. “This case would proceed to a trial where the jury would be extremely limited in the findings it could make and where it would be required to completely ignore Fisher’s position in this matter.”
Attorneys for Nirvana did not return a request for comment, but they believe no such delay is necessary. In legal filings, they’ve asked the judge to move toward settling a trial date; in private correspondence that Fisher disclosed in his filings, they were more blunt: “We are opposed. The Court’s ruling is clear, carefully considered and correct. No more delay. Let’s get the case to trial ASAP.”
Lawyers for Marc Jacobs – which obviously stands to benefit if Fisher is the true owner of the smiley face logo – declined to comment for this story. But they’ve also weighed in and, unsurprisingly, they want any talk of a trial postponed until Judge Kronstadt decides on whether Fisher can get his chance to make his case before an appeals court: “The case will only be ready for trial after Mr. Fisher’s role in that trial is determined.”
In recent weeks, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Doug Stone, John Michael Montgomery, Ray Stevens and Lee Greenwood have all publicly announced plans to wrap the road portion of their careers. They’re hardly alone.
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The Oak Ridge Boys started their farewell tour this past fall, though tenor Joe Bonsall, suffering from a neuromuscular disorder, was forced to hang it up at the end of December. Dolly Parton recently revealed that she had decided not to return to the road since she wrapped her last tour in 2016. Additionally, country/rock band The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and the Eagles, whose current lineup includes country artist Vince Gill, are also concluding their regular concert routines. (Gill will continue to work as a solo act.)
Retirement is a well-earned rite of passage for most people in later life, though there are plenty of musicians — Willie Nelson and the late Tony Bennett and B.B. King are good examples — who maintain a road life until their bodies give out. They find it difficult to stop, spurred by fan adoration, good paychecks and/or the simple joy of performing.
But this new wave of retirees is generally finding it easier to hang it up after experiencing an extended home life during the pandemic. Once their tours were canceled in 2020, most country artists found themselves anchored for 12 to 24 months. Artists in their prime couldn’t wait to get back out, but those on the back end of their careers began to recognize that if they ended their road-warrior phase, it wasn’t necessarily the end of the road.
“We got a dose of our real life,” Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder Jeff Hanna says.
The benefits include the kinds of everyday events that can’t be experienced from 1,000 miles away: dinner with a spouse, attending a daughter’s graduation or playing with the grandkids in the backyard. Making music for a living is attractive — none of the retirees wish they’d dug ditches or balanced books instead — but it involves sacrifices, and they discovered the opportunity exists to stop and smell the roses at home.
“We’ve got enough to retire on, so why not enjoy the rest of my life with my family?” asks Stone, whose 13-year marriage has produced a 7-year-old daughter. “We love going to Disney. I want to go see the redwoods and stuff like that.”
That yearning to explore the world is part of the attraction for young musicians, and in the early years, America’s topographic diversity can help keep a touring job interesting. But heavy concert schedules don’t usually allow much time to play tourist. Stone remembers one trip in upstate New York when the bus came within a 10-minute drive of scenic Niagara Falls. They had to bypass it stay on time, and he has never been back.
“I didn’t get to see America,” he says. “I got to see the back seat of a bus.”
The current wave of road retirements is actually a sign that some of Nashville’s structural changes have worked. Many of country’s previous legends — Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers or 1960s/1970s-era George Jones — faced financial problems after spending lavishly during their peak commercial years. Since then, business management companies have sprouted, helping modern acts plan their financial futures. Where many of their predecessors were required to tour until they couldn’t stop, modern acts have options.
“Most of them over the decades have gotten smarter in terms of managing their finances,” says Action Entertain Collective booking agent Travis James, who represents Montgomery and several other ’90s-associated acts. “Are there exceptions to that? Sure. There’s always going to be people that piss their money away with divorce or drugs or whatever the case may be. That’s in accounting and that’s in the NFL — it’s in everything. But by and large, the artists that were viable enough to have long careers and a show full of hits, even if they didn’t do it right the first half of their career, they figured out how to do it right the second half.”
Not that everyone is thrilled about hanging it up. During the COVID-19 break in the concert schedule, The Oaks missed the stage, missed seeing their fans and longed to make music again.
“That’s all we do in our lives,” bass singer Richard Sterban says. “We go out and entertain people and help people with our music. And we were not able to do that, so we didn’t necessarily like that feeling.”
Still, long rides on a sedentary tour bus and the repetitive motion involved in making music take a toll. Greenwood has titanium knees after several surgeries and had back surgery in 2020. Hanna blew an Achilles tendon in 2019 and now walks for exercise instead of running. And he has experienced some issues with his left hand — “which is kind of the money hand on the guitar,” Hanna says. “I have to play a little differently now.”
The body sort of makes retirement inevitable for most — “Like [Jimmie] Fadden says, ‘Do the math,’ ” Hanna quips — but modern artists’ money management makes it easier to take that step.
Greenwood, Stevens and Stone all plan to conclude their regular concert schedules in 2024, while Montgomery expects to wrap in 2025. The Oaks and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band could go on for years, in some cases picking the venues based on sentiment rather than income.
“We would prefer to go back to familiar places, to go back to people that we know,” Sterban says. “Basically, we want to perform in front of people that have helped make us who we are today.”
But the demand goes up once promoters and fans realize the artist’s shows are coming to an end, which also increases the price for many bookings. That’s the good news for the agents, though farewell tours are bittersweet for them, as they lose valuable clients.
“When they tell me they can cut back, that doesn’t help my financial bottom line,” James says. “I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m necessarily happy about it, but I sure am proud that I was part of the solution in helping them fulfill their goals professionally.”
If they retire early enough, the artists may be preserving themselves, too. Extended travel is physically challenging at any age. They’ll very likely miss the stage, but maybe not the wear and tear required to get there.
“I want to be on the planet,” Stone says, “not in it.”
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Drag-focused management firm Producer Entertainment Group (PEG) is officially expanding their stiletto-shaped footprint in the entertainment industry. On Thursday (Feb. 1), PEG announced their acquisition of Five Senses Reeling (FSR), a touring and events agency catering to LGBTQ audiences, Billboard can reveal. FSR joins PEG’s growing suite of businesses, including music label PEG Records, SERV […]
To judge from the results of a report commissioned by GEMA and SACEM, the specter of artificial intelligence (AI) is haunting Europe.
A full 35% of members of the respective German and French collective management societies surveyed said they had used some kind of AI technology in their work with music, according to a Goldmedia report shared in a Tuesday (Jan. 30) press conference — but 71% were afraid that the technology would make it hard for them to earn a living. That means that some creators who are using the technology fear it, too.
The report, which involved expert interviews as well as an online survey, valued the market for generative AI music applications at $300 million last year – 8% of the total market for generative AI. By 2028, though, that market could be worth $3.1 billion. That same year, 27% of creator revenues – or $950 million – would be at risk, in large part due to AI-created music replacing that made by humans.
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Although many of us think of the music business as being one where fans make deliberate choices of what to listen to – either by streaming or purchasing music – collecting societies take in a fair amount of revenue from music used in films and TV shows, in advertising, and in restaurants and stores. So even if generative AI technology isn’t developed enough to write a pop song, it could still cost the music business money – and creators part or even all of their livelihood.
“So far,” as the report points out, “there is no remuneration system that closes the AI-generated financial gap for creators.” Although some superstars are looking to license the rights to their voices, there is a lack of legal clarity in many jurisdictions about under what conditions a generative AI can use copyrighted material for training purposes. (In the United States, this is a question of fair use, a legal doctrine that doesn’t exist in the same form in France or Germany.) Assuming that music used to train an AI would need to be licensed, however, raises other questions, such as how many times and how that would pay.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of songwriters want credit and transparency: 95% want AI companies to disclose which copyrighted works they used for training purposes and 89% want companies to disclose which works are generated by AI. Additionally, 90% believe they should be asked for permission before their work is used for training purposes and the same amount want to benefit financially. A full 90% want policymakers to pay more attention to issues around AI and copyright.
The report further breaks down how the creators interviewed feel about using AI. In addition to the 35% who use the technology, 13% are potential users, 26% would rather not use it and 19% would refuse. Of those who use the technology already, 54% work on electronic music, 53% work on “urban/rap,” 52% on advertising music, 47% on “music library” and 46% on “audiovisual industry.”
These statistics underscore that AI isn’t a technology that’s coming to music – it’s one that’s here now. That means that policymakers looking to regulate this technology need to act soon.
The report also shows that smart regulation could resolve the debate between the benefits and drawbacks of AI. Creators are clearly using it productively, but more still fear it: 64% think the risks outweigh the opportunities, while just 11% thought the opposite. This is a familiar pattern with the music business, to which technologies are both dangerous and promising. Perhaps AI could end up being both.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday (Jan. 31) that a tribute band sued by Earth, Wind & Fire for trademark infringement can continue to try to prove its bold counterargument: That the legendary R&B group abandoned the intellectual property rights to its name.
Faced with a lawsuit for using the name “Earth Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion” at concerts, the smaller act argued last summer that the original group had allowed plenty of other tribute bands to use its name without repercussion — so many, in fact, that it could no longer claim any exclusive legal rights to it.
Lawyers for Earth, Wind & Fire have called that argument meritless and demanded that it be dismissed, but in a decision Wednesday, Judge Federico A. Moreno refused to do so. Though he said Legacy Reunion might ultimately find it “difficult” to prove that “abandonment” argument, he said they had “done enough” to avoid having it tossed out entirely in the early stages of the case.
Earth, Wind & Fire has continued to tour since founder Maurice White died in 2016, led by longtime members Philip Bailey, Ralph Johnson and White’s brother, Verdine White. The band operates under a license from an entity called Earth Wind & Fire IP, a holding company owned by Maurice White’s sons that formally owns the name.
In a March lawsuit, that company accused Legacy Reunion of trying to trick consumers into thinking it was the real Earth Wind & Fire. Though it called itself a “Reunion,” the lawsuit said the tribute band contained only a few “side musicians” who briefly played with Earth, Wind & Fire many years ago.
“Defendants did this to benefit from the commercial magnetism and immense goodwill the public has for plaintiff’s ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ marks and logos, thereby misleading consumers and selling more tickets at higher prices,” the group’s lawyers wrote.
Tribute acts — groups that exclusively cover the music of a particular band — are legally allowed to operate, and they often adopt names that allude to the original. But they must be clear that they are a tribute band, and they can get into legal hot water if they make it appear that they are affiliated with or endorsed by the original. In 2021, ABBA filed a similar case against a what it called a “parasitic” band called ABBA Mania.
Facing the lawsuit filed by Earth, Wind & Fire, Legacy Reunion filed a response in August that listed out a dozen other tribute acts that allegedly feature “Earth, Wind & Fire” as part of their name. Legacy Reunion argued that since the original band had “taken no action to enforce its purported trademark rights,” it had legally abandoned them.
“Due to the unchecked third-party use of the phrase, [EW&F] has abandoned ‘Earth, Wind & Fire,’ and [the name] has lost its trademark significance,” wrote attorneys for Substantial Music Group, which operates Legacy Reunion.
In a response fired back in September, attorneys for Earth, Wind & Fire said the band had very obviously not abandoned its rights to the name, adding that the “bare allegations” made by Legacy Reunion, combined with just a “handful” of other tribute bands, falls “woefully short” of what they would need to prove.
Wednesday’s decision by Moreno rejected Earth, Wind & Fire’s motion to dismiss the abandonment argument, but it does not mean that Legacy Reunion has evaded the band’s infringement allegations. To the contrary, the smaller group must now actually prove that argument in future proceedings.
An attorney for the Earth, Wind & Fire did not immediately return a request for comment.
It’s too soon to say what impact Universal Music Group’s plan to pull all its music from TikTok will have. But if you’re looking for a clue, try asking an Australian.
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Last February, TikTok began running tests in the country in which it limited the amount of licensed music some users encountered on the platform. The intent was to measure and compare the different ways people interact with the app — and what impact music has on their experience.
Some users took to X (formerly Twitter) to decry the tests: “Tiktok really ruining its own app with all this ‘sound removed’ garbage,” one Australian user posted. Another added: “wtf is up with tiktok removing like half the sounds??? like i swear ive seen SO many tiktoks where the sound has been removed.”
Some guessed at the time that the results were possibly meant to inform TikTok’s licensing strategy, but now, the social platform is facing an even bigger test.
Starting today, music from the Universal Music Group (UMG) catalog will begin to disappear from TikTok in countries around the world after negotiations between the companies soured. According to an open letter penned by UMG, the two failed to agree on key points like compensation, artificial intelligence and infringing works on the social app.
The ramifications will reverberate across the entire music business. UMG’s TikTok license covered its recorded music and publishing holdings, meaning that it’s not just artists on UMG labels like Republic and Interscope whose music will soon disappear. Universal Music Publishing Group is the second largest publisher in the world, holding a 21.16% market share on the Pop Airplay chart in the third quarter of 2023, not to mention a formidable trove of evergreen catalogs. When the company pulls that catalog, it will pull any song any of the songwriters it represents contributed to as well, impacting many other labels and publishers in the coming weeks.
As one A&R from another publisher put it last night at Spotify’s Songwriter of the Year Grammy event, this move by the world’s largest music company feels akin to the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes that halted much of the film business last year. Though the pain will be felt in the short term, the hope is that UMG’s stand will lead to substantive change that benefits everyone in the music industry in the long term. There’s an opportunity for the “movement” to grow too, should the other major music companies, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group (WMG), as well as indies, decide to pull their catalogs as well when their licensing deals expire. (WMG, however, announced a multi-year licensing deal with TikTok last July, and it is unclear when other licenses will be up for renewal.)
Much like the Hollywood strikes, this battle will also come with casualties. UMG-affiliated artists and songwriters with releases already slated for the coming weeks, those who just released something new, and those who are currently trending on TikTok are all likely to feel the effects. Among them: Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which has seen a remarkable resurgence more than 20 years after its release on UMG’s Polydor label thanks to Saltburn and, now, TikTok; and “Made For Me” by Muni Long, which was released in September via Supergiant/Def Jam and is currently No. 2 on the TikTok Top 50 chart. As Justin Lehmann, manager to Amine and Khai Dreams, previously said in an interview with Billboard, “without breaking [on TikTok], it’s difficult to say what else can cause a big moment to happen for anybody.”
It’s easy to imagine that some artists affiliated with UMG would consider pushing back their release dates given how important TikTok has become to label marketing efforts. If the holdout lasts months, it could lead to a bottleneck for major album releases awaiting a resolution. Meanwhile, UMG will be forced to protect its copyrights against unlicensed user uploads, issuing takedown notices to combat them.
In the interim, indie artists might see a bigger window to get their songs noticed on the short-form app. One major label employee joked that he could see some people trying to make soundalike recordings or covers of big songs by UMG recording artists in hopes of filling the void.
The risk with UMG’s gamble is that TikTok fares just fine without its giant catalog, eventually forcing UMG and other music companies into worse negotiating positions than ever. It’s hard to imagine a comparable user experience without the likes of Taylor Swift, Drake, BTS, The Weeknd, Olivia Rodrigo and so many other superstars, but this moment will serve as the ultimate test. It turns out Australia was just the warm up.