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A new venue in Brooklyn is set to bring large-scale cultural events to an industrial area of the city.
Announced Tuesday (May 21), Brooklyn Storehouse is a 104,000-square-foot warehouse that’s been taken over as a venue for culture-spanning programming involving fashion, art, music and more — with an emphasis on electronic events.
Brooklyn Storehouse is a partnership between two longstanding independent promoters: New York City‘s TCE Presents, the parent company of event producer Teksupport, which was founded by Rob Toma and has produced electronic music events in pop-up (and often industrial) spaces around the city since 2010, and Broadwick Live. Founded by Simeon Aldred in 2010, Broadwick Live is a U.K. live events company that operates 30 venues and event spaces including Drumsheds and the former Printworks London. Housed in a former Ikea and a converted newspaper printing facility, respectively, Drumsheds and the now-defunct Printworks London fit squarely into Broadwick Live’s focus on repurposing industrial buildings.
Together, TCE Presents and Broadwick Live have leased the Brooklyn Storehouse from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with the warehouse space existing amid a 300-acre industrial waterfront complex. The building was first used for shipbuilding during World War I and II, and its structure maintains its original industrial aesthetic. Much of the Navy Yard is currently being developed for industrial use by clean energy and climate solutions companies. As such, it’s unlikely that the area will be built out with housing units, allowing Brooklyn Storehouse more leeway when producing live (and often late-night) events.
“One of the problems we have in the U.K. is that nearly every space we open, two years later someone’s building condos right on our back door, and it becomes a constant pressure,” says Aldred. “One of the things that’s very attractive about the Navy Yard is that it’s protected for jobs, and it’s going to be like that for a long time.”
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The founders — who launched the endeavor with “50/50 our own money,” says Aldred — soft-launched Brooklyn Storehouse last September with a fashion show by Ralph Lauren. The venue can host a maximum of 7,000 people.
Brooklyn Storehouse
Phillip Reed
The partnership brings Toma and his team’s strengths— “promotions, marketing, bookings, licensing, opening doors, breaking down operations, community outreach” says Toma — along with the company’s ability to, Aldred says “immediately supercharge this [space] with 30 to 40 shows.” Over the next few months, Brooklyn Storehouse is set to host performances from Justice, Charlotte de Witte, Dom Dolla, John Summit, Swedish House Mafia, Alesso, James Hype and Meduza and four parties from Ibiza-based party brand CircoLoco later this year.
Toma adds that a lot of those artists are “coming to us because we don’t only focus on selling tickets on the dance floor. They know the spaces we do are involved with fashion [and other cultural programming], and they know this is that.” Toma also says artists are drawn to performing shows in special locations, with Brooklyn Storehouse thus offering “an advantage over our competitors.”
Toma adds that the key to making the space work is “the balance of not only having programming in terms of cold hard tickets. It’s more about figuring out how to position it in a way where we’re also bringing in several different industries, from film to fashion.” The founders hope it can be a space where orchestras, musicians and other groups can set up extended creative residencies. It will be also used for corporate gatherings.
Brooklyn Storehouse is the first of several venues Broadwick Live and TCE Presents plan to operate in the United States, with the partners also currently looking at former industrial spaces in Boston, Miami, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo, Brazil.
“In America at the moment we’ve got 25 to 30 [conversations ongoing],” says Aldred. “Five to 10 of those are in the money part of the talk, so they’re becoming quite real.”
In these industrial spaces, the partners see a particularly timely expansion opportunity, with Aldred predicting that many such facilities will open up as the power grid converts to clean energy.
“These spaces were used for kind of dirty work,” he says. “In the next 5 to 10 years, you’re gonna see them coming offline from being dirty and developers not knowing what to do with them. You’re not going to bulldoze a hundred-year-old power station with amazing architecture. It’s not easy to put retail in them. It’s not easy to put housing into them.”
But as is the hope with Brooklyn Storehouse, parties, fashion shows and DJ sets will be just the right fit.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Spotify faces a lawsuit over allegations that it “unlawfully” chose to reduce royalty payments to publishers and songwriters; Earth, Wind & Fire reaches a settlement over how much it’s owed in damages by an unauthorized tribute band; Elvis Presley’s granddaughter sues to protect Graceland from a “fraudulent” foreclosure; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Spotify Taken To Court Over Royalties
Weeks after Billboard estimated that Spotify would pay roughly $150 million less to songwriters and publishers over the next year, the streaming giant is facing a legal battle over the move.In a lawsuit filed last week, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) claimed Spotify had “unilaterally and unlawfully” chosen to cut its royalty payments nearly in half by “erroneously recharacterizing” the nature of its streaming services to secure a lower rate.“The financial consequences of Spotify’s failure to meet its statutory obligations are enormous for songwriters and music publishers,” the MLC wrote. “If unchecked, the impact on songwriters and music publishers of Spotify’s unlawful underreporting could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.”At issue in the lawsuit is Spotify’s recent addition of audiobooks to its premium subscription service. The streamer believes that because of the new offering, it’s now entitled to pay a discounted “bundled” royalty rate under federal law. But the MLC says Spotify’s interpretation is legally incorrect and represents a “clear breach” of its requirements under the law.This is the second lawsuit of the past six months for the MLC — an entity created by Congress in 2018 to collect royalties under the Music Modernization Act. After the MLC filed a similar case against Pandora in February, that streamer argued that the group was supposed to operate as a “neutral intermediary” and was “not authorized to play judge and jury” or pursue “legal frolics.”For the full breakdown of the new case against Spotify — including industry reactions and access to the full complaint filed in court — go read Kristin Robinson’s entire story here.
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Other top stories this week…
TRADEMARK TRIAL AVERTED – Earth, Wind & Fire reached a settlement with a tribute act that used the R&B group’s name without permission, avoiding a looming trial over how much the unauthorized group would have to pay in damages. The agreement came months after a federal judge ruled that the tribute act — “Earth, Wind & Fire Legacy Reunion” — had infringed the band’s trademarks.LIVE NATION CASE EXPLAINED – With an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation from the U.S. Department of Justice expected soon, Billboard‘s Dave Brooks dove deep — breaking down the particulars of the looming case, explaining how it might affect Live Nation and recounting recent federal efforts to crack down on anti-competitive practices at tech giants like Google and Apple.COURTHOUSE ROCK – Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking a “fraudulent” foreclosure sale of the late singer’s historic Memphis home Graceland. Keough’s lawyers say the sale foreclosure was triggered by phony claims that her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, borrowed $3.8 million and used Elvis’ famed mansion as collateral.UMG DROPPED FROM DIDDY CASE – Universal Music Group (UMG) and CEO Lucian Grainge were dismissed from a lawsuit claiming they “aided and abetted” Sean “Diddy” Combs in his alleged sexual abuse — a move that came after the lawyer who filed the case admitted there had been “no legal basis for the claims.” The sudden reversal came as UMG’s lawyers argued that the accusations were so “offensively false” that they planned to take the unusual step of seeking legal penalties directly against the accuser’s lawyer.SAMPLE SETTLEMENT – Kanye West reached a settlement with the estate of Donna Summer to resolve a copyright lawsuit that accused him of “shamelessly” using her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” without permission in his song “Good (Don’t Die).” The case, filed in February, claimed that West “arrogantly and unilaterally” used her music even though he had been explicitly refused a license.NAME GAMES – Members of the 1980s new wave band The Plimsouls won a legal ruling against the group’s guitarist over the trademark rights to the band’s name. The case was the music industry’s latest battle over the names of classic rock groups, including Journey, Stone Temple Pilots, Jefferson Starship, the Rascals, the Ebonys, The Commodores and The Platters.
Live entertainment executive Jason Miller is leaving operational responsibilities at ELA, the joint venture he launched with global entertainment leader CTS Eventim in 2021. Miller continues to hold an ownership stake in the concert promotion company. During his nearly three years as CEO, Miller, based in Los Angeles, led ELA to produce shows in all […]
When country singer-songwriter Brett Young celebrated his first Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Diamond-certified single for his 2017 hit “In Case You Didn’t Know,” the Nashville party looked a bit different than the typical Music Row shindig. The father of two welcomed not only his wife and daughters, but music executives were encouraged to bring their children as well — with more than 30 kids taking part in the event.
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The celebration was also a launch party of sorts for Family Alliance in Music (FAM), a Nashville-based non-profit, which advocates for and supports professionals across all facets of the music industry, including executives and creatives, who are achieving their career aspirations while caring for members of their family units.
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FAM was co-founded by a collective of Nashville music executives — Jackie Jones (senior vp of artist and industry relations for the RIAA), Haley Montgomery (senior manager of awards & membership for the Academy of Country Music) and Margaret Hart (YouTube’s head of Nashville industry and label relations).
The organization offers a place of community, education, and support for all families, aiding music industry members who are also parents, caretakers for aging or sick family members, and those who want to start families. FAM’s multi-pronged approach encourages employers to provide clearly defined, comprehensive family benefits and flexible work practices, as well as offering information to employers detailing why such benefits are vital.
“We all have a family,” Montgomery tells Billboard.
The idea for FAM sparked in 2021, after Montgomery invited Jones to a breakfast meeting in Nashville.
“She thought I wanted to do the typical networking meeting, but I said, ‘I would love to talk about your kid,” Montgomery recalls. “You actually post about her [on social media] and you are successful. How does that work?’” At the time, Montgomery had been surveying the music industry around her as she was hoping to start a family.
“I had been looking at this industry that I had put so much of my heart into and I couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t going to support my full self, which included starting a family,” Montgomery says. “I showed her a survey I’d done across the industry — 25% of companies in the music industry don’t even support the minimal amount of time it takes to heal your body after giving birth. So, to me, that said, ‘This isn’t welcome here.’”
Meanwhile, Jones, who has an eight-year-old daughter, had been having conversations with Hart because they had heard from others in the music industry questioning how to balance family and career.
“Seeing how this is an industry that goes way beyond just the ‘9-to-5,’ and asks so much of those working in it — if the industry wants to truly be inclusive, it has to consider these issues,” Jones says.
“Part of what we’re doing is ripping the blindfold off,” adds Hart, a mother of two. “This is who we are; this is our whole selves.”
According to a survey of employers conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in March 2022, 24% of private-industry employees had access to paid family leave (parental leave and family caregiving leave) through their employers.
There is currently no federal law requiring paid family and medical leave for the private sector, though 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws creating paid family and medical leave programs for eligible workers. In Tennessee, the Tennessee Paid Family Leave Insurance Act went into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, allowing insurance companies to offer paid family leave, which employers can voluntarily choose to purchase for their employees. The insurance would cover the birth or adoption of a child by the employee, placement of a child with the employee for foster care, care of a family member with a serious health condition, or in aiding families of service members of active duty or an impending call/order to active duty.
In surveying 20 music companies, FAM found that more than half offered at least 12 weeks of fully paid leave for birthing caretakers, while 25% supported only four weeks or less of fully paid leave for a birthing caretaker. Some of the top company policies did include aid for IVF, adoption and fertility testing.
FAM advocates for companies in the music industry to offer more comprehensive family benefits including, at a minimum, 12 weeks of fully paid leave for birthing caretakers, six weeks of fully paid leave for family caretakers (those caring for sick or aging family members) and for non-birthing caretakers, as well as offering travel to the nearest compliant state/care in aiding with termination assistance.
In 2023, the organization formed a task force encompassing top executives across the spectrum of the industry, including Shannon Casey (Wasserman Music), Halie Hampton-Mosley (Why & How Management), Morgan Mills (CmdShft), Tiffany Provenzano (mtheory), Rachael Terrell (Paramount), Rachel Wein (Prescription Songs), Dan Wise (maddjett) and Mackenzie Cooper (Triple Tigers).
The task force’s work is centered around four core pillars: education and resources, community, benefits and grants. In helping to increase visibility for parents and caretakers within the music industry, they just held a music industry family meet-up event in Nashville a few weeks ago. The task force is also working on holding a fertility-focused workshop and expanding the organization’s current benefits resource to include recommendations for employers regarding fertility benefits and caretaker leave. FAM is under fiscal sponsorship with the Players Philanthropy Fund (PPF), allowing the organization to receive charitable donations, while working to eventually have its own 501c-3.
“I’ve been so fortunate to work for companies that provided incredible benefits and understanding,” Jones says. “I’ve taken care of a child, I’ve had maternity leave. I’ve now lost a parent — those aren’t things you get over in a week—these are things you have to take time and have grace for.”
“It’s important to have diversity in our workforce,” Montgomery says. “Having people with different lifestyles and backgrounds at the table is going to allow you to reach more people. And it’s good business; it’s such a recruitment and retention tool.”
Hart says that their discussions with various music industry companies has been met with openness and she advises senior executives to advocate for others in their company through encouraging these policies.
“When you can be a senior executive and come into these conversations, make sure that as you protect yourself, that you’re protecting the people coming behind you, that maybe don’t have the influence that you have in the room. It’s not just about getting you the leave that you need — it’s about getting the new employee the leave that they will need if they decide to have a family or need to be a caretaker. We’ve had conversations where someone will say, ‘Oh, my boss told me I can kind of take what I need.’ That’s a lovely sentiment, but ultimately what happens when a coordinator or assistant might need to go on leave, they aren’t protected by the handshake agreement that you’ve just made.”
Jones notes that some of the industry members who have navigated the biggest issues with family and caretaking benefits are the creatives, musicians, and artists, and says they hope to provide grants to aid this segment of the industry: “These are the very people who drive the industry at large. How are we going to help the musicians, the touring teams? Those issues are harder than, ‘Hey, can you change your policies? There is no safety net for a 1099 touring employee.”
Jones adds that making meaningful change in this segment of the industry doesn’t always necessitate a complete policy overhaul.
“I don’t want people to think, ‘They want me to provide maternity leave to my entire road crew, my band.’ It’s about what other things can you do to help make things easier—can you help with shipping breast milk from the road? Or, if someone needs to spend several weeks caring for a sick or elderly family member, can you promise them that their job will still be there? It’s not about the cost; it’s about the culture.
“In the case of women touring, whether in a band or on the road, they are usually in the minority,” Jones continues. “If you are the only woman in the band, how do you speak up? Or you look around and there are those fears of, ‘If I voice this concern, what if I don’t get to be on this tour anymore?’ Or it could be a woman that is a tour manager, or a dad that wants to take time with his newborn, or someone who needs to care for a parent.’”
“We have to be proactive to create a safe space for people to have benefits and resources that are going to be able to keep them in this industry,” Hart says. “It’s a very complicated issue and I don’t want to say, ‘We’re going to fix it,’ but I think we can help make it better.”
Suno, a generative AI music company, has raised $125 million in its latest funding round, according to a post on the company’s blog. The AI music firm, which is one of the rare start-ups that can generate voice, lyrics and instrumentals together, says it wants to usher in a “future where anyone can make music.”
Suno allows users to create full songs from simple text prompts. While most of its technology is proprietary, the company does lean on OpenAI’s ChatGPT for lyric and title generation. Free users can generate up to 10 songs per month, but with its Pro plan ($8 per month) and Premier plan ($24 per month), a user can generate up to 500 songs or 2,000 songs, respectively, on a monthly basis and are given “general commercial terms.”
The company names some of its investors in the announcement, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective. Suno also says it has been working closely with a team of advisors, including 3LAU, Aaron Levie, Alexandr Wang, Amjad Masad, Andrej Karpathy, Aravind Srinivas, Brendan Iribe, Flosstradamus, Fred Ehrsam, Guillermo Rauch and Shane Mac.
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Suno is commonly believed to be one of the most advanced AI music models on the market today, but in past interviews, the company has not disclosed what materials are included in its training data. Expert Ed Newton-Rex, founder of Fairly Trained and former vp of audio for Stability AI, warned in a recent piece for Music Business Worldwide that it seems likely that Suno was trained on copyrighted material without consent given the way he has been able to generate music using the model that closely resembles copyrights.
In a recent Rolling Stone story about the company, investor Antonio Rodriguez mentioned that Suno’s lack of licenses with music companies is not a concern to him, saying that this lack of such licenses is “the risk we had to underwrite when we invested in the company, because we’re the fat wallet that will get sued right behind these guys.… Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”
Suno representatives have previously said, however, that their model will not let anyone create music by using prompts like “ballad in the style of Radiohead” or employ the voices of specific artists.
Many AI companies, including OpenAI, argue that training on copyrights without licenses in place is “fair use,” but the legality of this practice is still being determined in the United States. The New York Times has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for training on its copyrighted archives without consent, credit or compensation, and Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO and other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic for using its lyrics to train the company’s large language model.
In the Suno blog post, CEO Mikey Shulman wrote: “Today, we are excited to announce we’ve raised $125 million to build a future of music where technology amplifies, rather than replaces, our most precious resource: human creativity.”
“We released our first product eight months ago, enabling anyone to make a song with just a simple idea,” he continued. “It’s very early days, but 10 million people have already made music using Suno. While GRAMMY-winning artists use Suno, our core user base consists of everyday people making music — often for the first time.
“We’ve seen producers crate digging, friends exchanging memes and streamers co-creating songs with stadium-sized audiences. We’ve helped an artist who lost his voice bring his lyrics back to life again after decades on the sidelines. We’ve seen teachers ignite their students’ imaginations by transforming lessons into lyrics and stories into songs. Just this past weekend, we received heartwarming stories of mothers moved to tears by songs their loved ones created for them with a little help from Suno.”
The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) has sent a letter to Judiciary Committee leadership in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, asking for the overhaul of the statutory license in section 115 of the Copyright Act, which “prevents private negotiations in a free market” for mechanical royalty rates for songwriters and music publishers in the U.S.
On May 20, David Israelite, the organization’s president and CEO, teased this announcement in a guest column for Billboard, saying: “soon we will unveil a legislative proposal to permanently fix the power imbalance songwriters face by being subject to a compulsory license for their songs.”
In his new letter, NMPA’s Israelite writes that doing away with the 100-year-old system of government-regulated price setting for songwriter and publisher royalties (specifically, mechanical royalties) and allowing rate negotiations to occur in a free market would prevent songwriters and publishers from being taken advantage of by “Big Tech:” “Those who do operate in a free market, such as record labels, have negotiated protections against bad faith tactics. However, music publishers and songwriters have no such leverage under the [Copyright Royalty Board] to do so.”
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For years, music publishers and songwriters have lamented that they do not get to negotiate for their U.S. mechanical royalty rate privately because of wording in section 115 of the Copyright Act, which places “non dramatic musical works,” like songs, under a compulsory license, dating back to 1909. The rate for that license is determined by a set of Copyright Royalty Board judges, who weigh the interests of the music business against that of tech companies like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and more to determine what they feel is a fair price for music.
Record labels, which work with “sound recording” copyrights, not “musical works,” are able to freely negotiate their rates, as are music publishers and songwriters outside the U.S. Because of the discrepancy between how U.S. music publishers and songwriters are treated compared to others, publishers feel that they are held back from getting the best rates possible.
The letter arrives just a week after music publishers, the NMPA, and the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) — which collects and distributes mechanical royalties for U.S. publishers and songwriters — waged a war against Spotify for paying a lower U.S. mechanical royalty rate for premium, duo and family plans, starting in March 2024. Spotify believes that the addition of audiobooks to premium, duo and family plans qualifies these tiers as bundles, a type of subscription that pays a lower royalty rate.
For days after this information was first reported, various music organizations made statements against Spotify, often calling its reclassification “cynical” and a “loophole” to pay songwriters less and takes advantage of the settlement made between music publishers, songwriters and streamers to agree on a rate structure for 2023-2027 (known as “Phonorecords IV”), which was approved by the Copyright Royalty Board judges.
In the NMPA’s letter — addressed to Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) — Israelite calls Spotify’s move a “manipulat[ion] [of] the compulsory licensing rules” and the latest in what he feels is the “continued abuse of the statutory system by digital services… [which] has made it clear that additional action by Congress is needed.”
On May 15, the NMPA sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer for hosting lyrics, music videos, and podcast content that contain their copyrighted musical works without a proper license. The next day, on May 16, The MLC joined in, filing a lawsuit against Spotify for “improperly” reclassifying its premium, duo and family plans and trying to get a discount, which would result in what Billboard estimates is a $150 million annualized reduction in U.S. mechanical royalties, compared to what they would have paid if these tiers never changed over.
In his new letter, NMPA’s Israelite proposes a solution for abolishing the current system, saying: “Congress should allow rightsholders the choice to license through the MLC using the statutorily set royalty rates or to withdraw from the MLC and operate in a free market if they meet certain conditions.”
He continues, “if copyright owners chose to withdraw their copyrights from the blanket license, currently administered by the MLC, they would be required to do the following:
Require all rightsholders who exercise this option to provide 6 months’ notice to the Register of Copyrights and the MLC;
Require that the withdrawing rightsholders ensure their musical work copyrights and ownership interests are registered in the MLC’s public database;
Require the MLC to flag those rightsholders and their catalogues as withdrawn from the MLC blanket license and subject to voluntary license negotiations; and
Require copyright holders to maintain with the MLC database current, up-to-date contact information, which would be used to contact for licensing.”
Read the full letter below:
Dear Chair Durbin, Ranking Member Graham, Chairman Jordan, and Ranking Member Nadler:
The Music Modernization Act (MMA) has offered not only songwriters and music publishers, but also digital service providers, unprecedented benefits. However, the bill has amplified the need for corrections to the century-old compulsory license governing their work.
Large, foreign-owned companies, like Spotify, should not enjoy unfair advantages over American songwriters because of outdated federal policy. By making one simple change, Congress can undo a more than 100-year-old mistake in the compulsory license and ensure songwriters and music creators continue to benefit from their creative efforts.
How did we get here? Almost six years ago, members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees came together to pass the MMA, a landmark piece of copyright legislation for the age of digital music streaming. The MMA took important steps forward in improving the compulsory license imposed on songwriters and music publishers by creating the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) to administer a blanket license under Section 115 of the Copyright Act, which is taken by digital music services.
The MLC increased transparency through a public database, furthered licensing efficiency through a central administrator, and improved the process for distributing musical work royalties. However, the benefits did not extend to, or remedy, the ongoing issues faced by rightsholders subject to the government rate-setting process.
The continued abuse of the statutory system by digital services, most recently Spotify, has made clear that additional action by Congress is needed. The royalty rates paid to musical work copyright owners for uses of those works under the Section 115 blanket license are set in a proceeding before the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), within the Library of Congress, once every five years. In these proceedings, music publishers and songwriters must face off against some of the biggest tech companies in the world: Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, among others to establish rates for the use of musical works.
Because the law prevents private negotiations in a free market, publishers and songwriters have seen ongoing abuse of the statutory system and CRB rate-setting process with little ability for recourse. Most recently, Spotify has found a new way to game the statutory rate system to underpay rightsholders by hundreds of millions in royalties.
In March, Spotify began manipulating the compulsory licensing rules and reclassified its premium subscription music service, along with almost 50 million subscribers, into what it is calling a “bundle.” The benefit to taking this action is, under the compulsory royalty rates, bundles attribute less revenue – and therefore pay less in royalties – to the music than a premium subscription music service. Spotify has taken a part of its music service that was previously offered to consumers for free, audiobooks, and it is now calling audiobooks a bundle with its music service to substantially reduce the musical work royalties owed.
Those who do operate in a free market, such as record labels, have negotiated protections against these bad faith tactics. However, music publishers and songwriters have no such leverage under the CRB to do so.
Fortunately, there are solutions Congress can enact that would preserve the benefits of the MMA and the MLC while providing songwriters and publishers a better chance to compete on a level playing field with Big Tech firms like Spotify. Rather than picking who wins and who loses, Congress should allow rightsholders the choice to license through the MLC using the statutorily set royalty rates or to withdraw from the MLC and operate in a free market if they meet certain conditions.
If copyright owners chose to withdraw their copyrights from the blanket license, currently administered by the MLC, they would be required to do the following:
Require all rightsholders who exercise this option to provide 6 months’ notice to the Register of Copyrights and the MLC;
Require that the withdrawing rightsholders ensure their musical work copyrights and ownership interests are registered in the MLC’s public database;
Require the MLC to flag those rightsholders and their catalogues as withdrawn from the MLC blanket license and subject to voluntary license negotiations; and
Require copyright holders to maintain with the MLC database current, up-to-date contact information, which would be used to contact for licensing.
This would give rightsholders the option to stay within the current compulsory system or to operate within a free market. It would also restore basic principles of fairness to the market by requiring streaming platforms to deal with music makers as partners. Finally, it would provide a needed point of leverage for songwriters and music publishers to negotiate with streamers, like Spotify, who can otherwise use their power to bend government regulations to their advantage. All of this could be accomplished by building on the successful infrastructure created by the MMA and the MLC.”
Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, has filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking a looming foreclosure sale of the late singer’s historic Memphis home Graceland, calling the proceedings “fraudulent.”
In a case filed in Tennessee court last week, Keough alleged that the foreclosure was triggered by phony demands from a company called Naussany Investments – an entity that allegedly claims her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, borrowed $3.8 million and used the famed mansion as collateral.
The alleged loans are recorded in documents supplied by Naussany that feature Lisa Marie’s signature, but Keough’s lawyers say those records are “forgeries” and that she “did not in fact sign the documents.”
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“These documents are fraudulent,” Keough’s attorneys write in their May 15 complaint, obtained by Billboard. “Lisa Marie Presley never borrowed money from Naussany Investments and never gave a deed of trust to Naussany Investments.”
The foreclosure sale for Graceland had been scheduled for Thursday, but according to court records, Keough’s attorneys won a temporary restraining order last week blocking any sale until the judge can rule on the dispute. A court hearing is set for Wednesday on Keough’s efforts to secure a longer-term injunction blocking the sale.
Naussany (Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC) could not immediately be located for comment. An attorney for Keough declined to comment. News of the lawsuit was first reported Monday by the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
When Elvis died in 1977, his daughter Lisa Marie inherited his estate, including Graceland — a tourist mecca that pulls in millions of dollars a year in revenue. Until her death last year, she served as trustee of the Promenade Trust, an entity that controls the Memphis mansion. When she passed away, Keough assumed that same role and took control of the property.
According to the lawsuit, Naussany alleges it made the multi-million dollar loan to Lisa Marie in 2018 and recorded the transaction in Florida. But Keough’s lawyers say that Naussany is “a false entity created for the purpose of defrauding the Promenade Trust,” orchestrated by a man named Kurt Naussany who has sent “numerous emails seeking to collect the purported $3.8 million debt.”
Keough’s attorneys say the evidence “strongly indicates the documents are forgeries” – most notably, that the notary who allegedly signed off on the transaction has confirmed that she did not do so. “Indeed, she confirmed she has never met Lisa Marie Presley nor notarized any document for her.”
Sony Music Publishing has entered into an agreement with Otis Redding‘s estate, now doing business as Big O Holdings, to administer the songs of the late soul legend in the United States. The singer’s widow, Zelma Redding, said SMP was the right partner to help in their “never-ending effort” to keep Redding’s legacy “recognizable around the world.”
Redding composed or co-wrote many of the songs readily associated with him, including “Respect,” which later became Aretha Franklin’s signature, “Mr. Pitiful,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “Hard to Handle,” eventually adopted by The Black Crowes, and “These Arms of Mine,” later featured in Dirty Dancing. He also co-penned, with fellow future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jerry Butler, the searingly emotional ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” which lifted all the way to No. 2 on the R&B chart in 1965.
Redding’s ethereal and timeless “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which he co-wrote with M.G. guitarist (and future Blues Brother) Steve Cropper, was released in early 1968, a month after the singer’s tragic death in a plane crash on Dec. 10, 1967. “Dock of the Bay” whistled its way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in March of 1968, the singer’s first visit to the chart’s top 20.
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“As one of the most significant songwriters of our lifetime, Otis Redding remains an American treasure,” commented Sony Music Publishing chairman/CEO Jon Platt. “Otis’ songs have shaped the cultural landscape across genres and generations, and it is a privilege to partner with the Redding family as stateside custodians of this singular music catalog.”
The Georgia native was a master interpreter as well, turning old standard “Try a Little Tenderness” into a frenetic hit in 1966, and he put his own spin on classics made famous by other soul icons like “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King) and “My Girl” (Sam Cooke). His version of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which he and backing band Booker T. & the M.G.’s performed at the Monterey Pop Festival, was legendary for how much it deviated (“I can’t get me no…”) from the original. On his final album before his death, a two-hander with fellow all-timer Carla Thomas titled King & Queen, Redding scored hits with the boisterous “Tramp” and “Knock on Wood.”
Redding released six studio albums between 1964 and 1967, mostly via Stax sister label Volt. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994.
“Otis Redding was a rare talent – his songs are unmistakably brilliant, and their enduring impact remains strong to this day,” said SMP president and global chief marketing officer Brian Monaco. “We are honored to join forces with the Redding family to represent his catalog and strengthen his legacy as one of the most iconic songwriters in American history.”
Pavement, James Blake, Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett and more have been announced as headliners for the 2024 edition of Seattle’s famed Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival held at Seattle Center. Kim Gordon, Freddie Gibbs, Aly & AJ, Cypress Hill and Marc Ribillet will also perform at the 51st edition of the festival, which is set to take place Aug. 31-Sept. 1.
The Labor Day weekend staple returned last year for its 50th anniversary with new production partners the New Rising Sun coalition, in the process bringing back a sense of local identity to the long-standing event.
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Last year’s return “was a huge success,” says McCaw Hall GM Joe Paganelli, who also co-leads New Rising Sun. “We wanted to realign the festival with Seattle’s changing growth, purpose and needs. We dug deep and invested heavily in visual arts and trying to create a spirit of discovery.”
After taking three and a half years off due to COVID-19, the revived festival saw great success last year with Pacific Northwest bands like Sleater-Kinney, Band of Horses and Sunny Day Real Estate on the bill. This year, organizers dug even deeper into the festival’s roots and brought back talent booker Chris Porter, who previously booked Bumbershoot for 18 years. Paganelli initially reached out to Porter for advice on the 2024 lineup before asking the veteran booker to return.
“I didn’t see it coming but I was very touched and honored,” says Porter, who adds that New Rising Sun was “bringing [the festival] back in the very similar spirit of eclecticism and discovery as we had done in years past, so I wanted to pick up where we left off.”
With a lineup that also includes Badbadnotgood, Chvrches’ Lauren Mayberry, Carl Cox, Lee Fields, St. Paul & the Broken Bones, The Polyphonic Spree, Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird, Porter focused on two main components to book this year’s festival: discovery and value.
“It’s great if people go to see their favorite bands or artists perform, but hopefully they’re going to find their new favorite band there too,” says Porter. “The only thing I wanted to do a little differently than last year is maybe broaden it a little bit, address some world/global music sounds more and stretch the demographics.”
The full Bumbershoot lineup also includes Acid Tongue, All Them Witches, Angélica Garcia, Automatic, Balthvs, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Corridor, Dean Johnson, Disq, Emi Pop, Flesh Produce, George Clanton, Gold Chisme, Grynch, Helado Negro, Hurray for the Riff Raff, I Dont Know How But They Found Me, k.flay, Kassa Overall, King Buffalo, Kultur Shock, Ladytron, Lemon Boy, Linda from Work, Lol Tolhurst x Budgie, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Mercury Rev, Moor Mother, NAVVI, Neal Francis, Oh, Rose, Parisalexa, Pink Siifu, Pom Pom Squad, Psymon Spine, Pure Bathing Culture, R E P O S A D O, Rocket, Spoon Benders, Squirrel Flower, Stephanie Anne Johnson, Sux, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, TEKE::TEKE, The Divorce, The Groovy Nobody, Thee Sacred Souls, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings, Tres Leches and Warren Dunes.
“We’re lucky to work in Seattle and doing this [festival] in this area. The community is very open-minded and open to discovering different sounds and different art,” says Porter. “It is really rewarding and I hope people like what we did this year.”
In addition to music, Bumbershoot will continue with its renowned visual arts component. The festival is reinforcing its commitment to the regional community with the return of fan favorites like the Fashion District, the Out of Sight exhibit and a film program while also introducing new programming including a unique partnership with NASA, a Bigfoot deepfake animation competition and more.
Additionally, the Century 21 District at the Pacific Science Center will feature a “Sculpture Parking Lot” featuring large-scale contemporary sculpture. “Songs for Space,” in partnership with NASA, will project James Webb Space Telescope images in the PACCAR IMAX theater alongside a range of different vocal groups, including gospel, opera and Gregorian chant.
The Recess District will present the art of performance with rollerskating, gymnastics, breakdancing, double-dutch jump rope and cheerleading as well as a skateboard competition and a wrestling showcase called Bumbermania!
New Rising Sun’s commitment to Bumbershoot is only in its second year, and Paganelli says growing the festival’s presence is a priority going forward. “We’re going to supercharge and expand the Bumbershoot brand with new and different opportunities throughout the year, which includes a brick-and-mortar venue that will harken back to Andy Warhol’s Factory,” he says. “Then there will be additional programming verticals coming out that we’re not prepared just yet to release but are in the planning process already.”
Tickets for the 2024 Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival are on sale now. Head here to check out the full lineup along with the festival’s culinary and visual arts programming.
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