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When Megan Thee Stallion released her single “Hiss” on Jan. 26, she let the music do the talking, with two exceptions: On Jan. 30, she appeared on Good Morning America, the top-rated network morning show. Then, on Feb. 1, she logged on to social-audio platform Stationhead to speak directly to her most dedicated supporters.
“Let me tell y’all something — if ‘Hiss’ hits No. 1, I’m having an OG ratchet-ass Hottie party,” she said on the HottieRanch fan channel, laughing along as two of her longtime fans hosted an off-the-cuff conversation with her. “[My first single] ‘Cobra’ and ‘Hiss’ are the first two music videos that I’ve done since I’ve been off of my labels, and I did this shit because I finally had full creative range. I could do whatever I wanted to do,” she declared. “I’m just happy that [people are] appreciating the art, because I really thought about it and put my all into it. And I’m just happy to be here, today — the Hotties are gagging!”
During the 14 minutes that Megan spent on HottieRanch, 7,000 fans logged on to the channel, racking up 3,000 song downloads through the site and flooding the comments with her signature snake emojis and messages of support. Fireworks effects and alerts about sales milestones and other benchmarks flew across the app’s interface, and “Hiss” later debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — Megan’s first-ever solo chart‑topper. According to Stationhead, its users contributed 13,200 download sales and millions of global streams to the track’s debut, and the benefits did not end there. The song’s withering lyrics — which target Nicki Minaj, Tory Lanez and other artists — led Minaj to hop on her own Barbz channel on Stationhead to clap back during an extended dialogue with her fans. Her own dis track, “Big Foot,” followed, leading to a back-and-forth that boosted streams for Minaj’s and Megan’s songs — and to Stationhead trending on X as the two MCs and their fans traded darts.
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It’s one of the latest examples of Stationhead’s growing popularity with artists who want to foster strong connections to their fans and boost streams and chart positions in the process. In recent months, Olivia Rodrigo, Cardi B, BTS, Blackpink, Ed Sheeran, Jennifer Lopez, Coldplay, GAYLE and other acts have engaged with fans on the platform — which focuses exclusively on music — playing songs, telling stories and answering questions while thousands listen along.
“Stationhead is incorporated in every single and album release that we do,” says Kirsten Stubbs, co-head of pop/rock digital at Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA), who has run campaigns with Rodrigo and Selena Gomez on the platform and says she first discovered it after hearing about it from fans themselves. “It’s an app that the industry was looking for for a long time, and they were the first ones to really nail that strategy.”
“Your fans on Stationhead are like your season ticket holders at a sporting event: You can build a plan around them, count on them to show up to things,” says TMWRK founder and CEO Andrew McInness, whose company manages Diplo and Dillon Francis, among others, and who serves on Stationhead’s board. “Those types of fans are the reason why Taylor Swift is Taylor Swift, why Nicki Minaj has her power base or the various HYBE or K-pop artists have this big support system.”
The platform, which debuted in 2017, functions much like a digital pirate radio station, where anyone with a streaming music account can host their own station and play music, with other users able to log on and listen, chat and even call in and speak to the DJ. And since the app functions as a skin over Spotify or Apple Music, each listener in a room counts as an individual stream.
Over the years, Stationhead has evolved into a destination for fan groups to discuss (whether through the chat or a podcast-like audio function) their favorite artists with the channel’s host. These virtual connections sometimes lead to in-real-life relationships with, for instance, channel members meeting at music venues to see concerts together. The addition of channels — rooms created specifically for fans of certain artists, such as Minaj, Jimin or Stray Kids — in January 2023 solidified the app’s new direction and led to Cardi and Rodrigo discovering the app through their fans and occasionally joining them. According to the company, there are now more than 1,000 channels.
“Music’s future is leaning into fandom, period, and fandoms live here,” says Stationhead co-founder Ryan Star. “They played the instrument we built better than anybody.”
The platform’s role in fostering the artist-fan connection — and helping to deliver hits — comes at a time when “superfan” is arguably the industry’s biggest buzzword. In his New Year’s memo to staff, Universal Music Group (UMG) chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge wrote that in 2024, the label group will focus on “grow[ing] the pie for all artists by strengthening the artist-fan relationship through superfan experiences and products.”
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl also cited superfans in his holiday letter to staff, calling them “relatively untapped and undermonetized.” Two months later, during a panel discussion at the Web Summit conference in Doha, Qatar, Kyncl mentioned that WMG had hired a team of engineers to help the company build its own superfan operation, with an emphasis on “a cross-platform solution,” which he said at a later appearance that he felt labels were better positioned than anyone to do.
Stationhead and WMG aren’t alone in the superfan space; HYBE’s WeVerse and companies like Medallion and Fave are attempting to address different aspects of superfan monetization, with various levels of success. UMG invested in NTWRK’s $109 million acquisition of Complex in February, and Live Nation, Spotify and others have also expressed an interest in or begun to explore ways to enter the superfan space. Last year, a Goldman Sachs report estimated that there will be a $4.2 billion addressable market for superfan monetization by 2030, and Luminate reported that superfans spend 80% more on their favorite artists than the regular music listener.
But Stationhead has gone further than many others in terms of bringing more revenue into the business by focusing on the one thing at its center: the music. “Stationhead is a good example of a company that is creating the bridge between the main lane of how someone makes money — whether that be a rights holder, artist or roster — and people who are avid listeners or supporters who are exhibiting fan affinity,” says Mike Pelczynski, a strategist who helped build SoundCloud’s direct-to-fan capabilities and pioneered its fan-powered business. “They know you still need to make money based on scale and volume of plays, and they’re creating hyper communities that help, literally, stream music in groups, but then also give [artists] the capability to tap into those people, and then to give them something else, like merch or other purchase [options].”
Before he began developing Stationhead in 2014, Star released albums and performed in the band Stage and as a solo artist. He says that whenever he opened for such acts as the Goo Goo Dolls or O.A.R., he made a point of meeting fans at the merchandise booth afterward — even when the headliners would roll their eyes.
“I think right now [fandom] is still a buzzword, and I hear a lot of people throw it around, and they don’t really know it,” he says. “I know it from the days of actually being an artist that relied on those kinds of fans for my life. For me, I was like, ‘These are the people who are gonna be there for me no matter what.’”
SB19 fans who met on Stationhead at the Filipino boy band’s concert at Araneta Coliseum in Manila in 2022.
Courtesy SB19 Stationhead Team
On a Wednesday afternoon in early March, 3,700 people were logged on to Stationhead’s BTS ARMY Jungkook channel; 3,500 were tuned in to the BTS ARMY channel dedicated to V; 1,200 people were on the ONCE channel for fans of TWICE; 1,300 were on the STAYS channel for fans of Stray Kids; and 800 people were on the BardiGang channel dedicated to Cardi B fans. The Beyhive channel, which Beyoncé has never visited, had 150 listeners, with the host dutifully streaming “Texas Hold ’Em” every three songs. Stationhead says it drove 15% of first-week downloads for the song when it debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
During the pandemic, social audio apps like Clubhouse, Spotify’s Greenroom/Live and Amazon’s AMP live radio app began to pop up, sometimes attracting star names to host conversations or live podcast shows on their platforms. But those big names — occasionally brought in with big checks — were often what attracted audiences, and investors, to the platforms. (Last year, both Amazon and Spotify shut down their platforms, and Clubhouse laid off half its workforce.) Stationhead grew on the opposite side of the spectrum: the company says it has never paid for marketing, or for an artist to appear on the platform. Instead, artists and labels who have embraced it heard about it through the fans themselves, and Stationhead says that 95% of the billions of streams it facilitated in 2023 came when there were no artists on the platform, just fans hanging out amongst themselves.
It’s something that speaks even to the biggest artists in the world. “It’s a good way to get thousands, tens of thousands of people to all come together and have an amazing experience together. And with great examples, artists jump in, and then that turns into content because people record that kind of stuff and it travels beyond the platform onto Instagram or TikTok,” says Atlantic general manager Paul Sinclar, who has worked Stationhead into rollouts with Ed Sheeran, Melanie Martinez, Charlie Puth and the Barbie soundtrack, among others. And the experience goes well beyond just boosting a song’s streams or downloads — true, die hard fans are created through more than just commercial interactions. “If you get an audience together that wants something special and cool to them in that moment, there’s an opportunity. But we try to measure it by, did fans think that was an amazing experience?”
When Sheeran released his Autumn Variations album last September, his fans were having a listening party on Stationhead — and Sheeran randomly crashed the party, with no heads up. When GAYLE was launching her tour, she held a contest on Stationhead for her fans to guess her set lists, which became a nightly listening party and debate, culminating with GAYLE herself jumping in to confirm the set list and update a playlist for her fans. For the release of the Barbie soundtrack, Atlantic facilitated a 12-hour listening party, with a different fan each hour hosting their own playlist based on a different song and artist that appeared on the album. For the two year anniversary of Rodrigo’s SOUR album, she popped in to a listening party her fans were holding, proving the power the platform has to boost catalog, too. “The spontaneity of logging in and not knowing who is gonna be in there, if the artist is gonna be in there, is a really cool experience,” Stubbs says.
Stationhead says that over the past year, its user base has quadrupled to more than 15 million fans, and the average user spends over two hours per day on the platform. The company claims it drove billions of streams and hundreds of thousands of downloads in the past year, creating tens of millions of dollars in additional revenue for labels and artists — an admittedly vague figure that it nonetheless expects to grow fivefold in the next year. (The company declined to reveal specifics.)
Stationhead’s revenue comes largely from a cut of the downloads sold through the platform — a format that IGA’s Stubbs says is “more important to the success of a song and album because downloads are weighted more” for chart algorithms.
Though its current business model is better suited to making money for streaming services and rights holders, Stationhead says that will change soon. “In the same way that Discord and Twitch created entirely new channels of revenue for the video game industry, Stationhead is doing the same with music,” co-founder and COO Murray Levison says. “We plan to continue to innovate in the space and roll out a number of monetization features over the course of the next year.”
Until then, Stationhead continues to do what it does best: serve as the destination for over 1,000 fandoms. “Stationhead is always on, and the community is always there even if nobody is talking,” Star says. “We’ve been building it quietly for years now, really focused on understanding the fans, learning them, validating them, giving them a home — all of this has happened. We found our audience, and this market is just beginning. And it’s going to be massive.”
A version of this story appeared in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Country artist Orville Peck has signed with Warner Records – and has already teased new music on the way.
“I was ready for a change,” Peck tells Billboard. “I spent most of last year making several huge changes to all aspects of my life – my career being just one of them. I was ready for a clean start.”
Today (April 1), Peck announced his first release on the label: a collaboration with Willie Nelson. The pair will duet on a cover of “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” a song originally released in 1981 by Latin country artist Ned Sublette and covered by Nelson in 2006. Peck himself previously performed a rendition for SiriusXM and at his 2023 Hollywood Bowl show.
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Jeff Sosnow, EVP of A&R at Warner – whom Peck calls “the GOAT” – tells Billboard he met Peck a few years ago and was taken “not only by his musical acumen and knowledge, but also his sense of purpose, ambition and curation of his own world, which all extends from the music.”
“It’s rare to come across an artist who checks so many necessary boxes for a path to success – great songs, singular voice, curation of overall aesthetic and visuals, ambition, communication and work ethic. With [what’s ahead], we have a real opportunity to fortify and grow Orville’s base and reach.”
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In 2019, Peck released his debut album Pony on Sub Pop. The following year, in 2020, he signed with Columbia and released his major label debut EP Show Pony. Two more EPs followed in 2022 leading up to his second full-length that August, Bronco.
“I was drawn to Warner because of their unique emphasis on their artists,” says Peck. “It may seem like it should be the standard but more and more, the music industry invests less and less in artists.” He says in addition to Sosnow being “a genuine fan of music,” he has “great respect” for Warner CEO and co-chairman Aaron Bay-Schuck along with COO and co-chairman Tom Corson. “They have helped me to feel so motivated,” he adds.
Currently, Warner is on a hot streak with its superstars and emerging talent alike. Next month (on May 3), Dua Lipa will release her anticipated album Radical Optimism, while Zach Bryan is currently playing to sold-out arenas on his The Quittin Time Tour. Plus, rising acts like Teddy Swims and Benson Boone occupied the Hot 100’s top two slots last week with “Lose Control” and “Beautiful Things,” respectively.
“The last five years have proven Warner has the patience and ingenuity to work with real artists with vision and songs and grow with them,” says Sosnow. “The structure of the company has put us in a unique place where we do indeed have a special sauce.”
Peck is signed to Brandon Creed’s Good World Management, and is managed by Creed along with Dani Russin and Anika Capozza. The firm says: “Warner has been in Orville’s corner for many years and when the moment arose to work together, they immediately seized the opportunity with incredible support and enthusiasm…We are so excited for this new partnership and couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with them.”
As Peck says, this next chapter can be defined by “evolution and exploration. I have honestly never felt so excited about my career before.”
Adds Sosnow: “The possibilities are really limitless for Orville. He is a generational talent.”
Orville Peck
Ben Prince
Linkin Park has reached a settlement to end a lawsuit that accused the band of refusing to pay royalties to an ex-bassist who briefly played with the band in the late 1990s.
In a statement issued on Friday, the band said it had reached an “amicable resolution” with Kyle Christner, who sued the band last year over claims that he had “never been paid a penny” for contributions he made during several months he was in Linkin Parkin 1999.
The dispute was sparked by an anniversary re-release of Linkin Park’s smash hit 2000 debut album Hybrid Theory, which holds the distinction as the best-selling rock album of the 21st century. Christner claimed he had contributed some of the material released on the anniversary box set – a claim confirmed by the band in Friday’s statement.
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“Kyle is a very talented musician who made valuable contributions to Linkin Park at a pivotal time in 1999,” Linkin Park wrote in Friday’s statement. “He performed with the band in several shows and many record label showcases. Kyle helped write and performed on many songs from that era, including some of the songs on the Hybrid Theory EP.”
The statement was accompanied by a joint filing in court seeking to formally end the lawsuit, signed by attorneys for both Christner and for Mike Shinoda and other Linkin Park members. Christner’s attorneys did not return a request for comment on Monday.
Christner sued in November, claiming he had been a member of the band for several months in 1999 until he was “abruptly informed” that he had been fired shortly before the band signed a record deal with Warner Records. He accused the band of continuing to profit from songs he helped create, while effectively erasing his involvement.
“Christner has never been paid a penny for his work with Linkin Park, nor has he been properly credited, even as defendants have benefitted from his creative efforts,” his lawyers wrote at the time.
In addition to Shinoda, the lawsuit also named Linkin Park’s other living members (Rob Bourdon, Brad Delson and Joseph Hahn), as well as its business entity, Machine Shop Entertainment, and the band’s label, Warner Records.
In particular, Christener pointed to the re-release of Hybrid Theory. He argued that the special 2020 box set included several songs to which he had contributed, including a never-before-released demo track that has amassed 949,000 views on YouTube.
Before Friday’s settlement, Linkin Park had been battling to dismiss the case. In a filing last month, the band argued that the case had been filed far too late and that the statute of limitations on such claims had “long since passed.”
“Defendants repudiated plaintiff’s purported ownership in any and all of the works mentioned in the [lawsuit] more than three years before plaintiff filed this lawsuit — and indeed for over two decades,” the band’s lawyers wrote at the time.
In 1992, Maná scored a hit with “Vivir Sin Aire,” a love song that also served as a metaphor for the environment — and set the Mexican rock band down a path it still walks today. Not only has the group included one song inspired by environmental or social change on every album since, but in 1996, the band — comprising Fernando “Fher” Olvera, Alejandro González, Sergio Vallín and Juan Calleros — cemented its environmental commitment by launching the Selva Negra (Black Jungle) Ecological Foundation, which protects species, restores ecosystems and promotes environmental education.
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Nearly 30 years since its creation, Selva Negra has more than delivered on its mission. It has directly hatched and released 8 million sea turtles, planted over 800,000 trees, produced over 500,000 plants in its communal greenhouse and worked with the Interamerican Development Bank to help preserve Mexican forests and promote projects to raise consciousness on climate change, among many other actions. All the while, the foundation has promoted myriad social justice causes, including providing support and dignified living to immigrant communities in the United States, Mexico and Latin countries.
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Speaking from his home base of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico — and wearing a silver charm of a sea turtle, his favorite animal, around his neck — Maná frontman and Selva Negra president Olvera speaks on why the work is never over.
Fher Olvera (center) bagged saplings with the Selva Negra team.
Courtesy of Selva Negra
Several years ago, you spoke about a plan to develop an environmental curriculumfor schools. How is that coming along?
We do a lot of environmental education on the ground. But what’s most important, and what we tried to achieve with the previous governments, was making ecology a part of the core school curriculum like geography or math. It’s coming along, but our government doesn’t understand the environment. We’re trying to change that.
On the band’s last U.S. tour, you donated to many organizations that help migrants. What is your position on that issue?
More than a political position, it’s a humanitarian position. When we spent time with [President Barack] Obama in the White House, we weren’t supporting Democrats or Republicans — we were supporting the people who work, who put bread on the tables of American families. We are for human rights. The Latin community in the United States is so strong now that it can change an election, and presidents can no longer offend Latins so easily. Well, some can.
Tell us about Platanitos, the place where you have your turtle preserve.
It’s very close, in an area called Nayarit [Mexico]. Platanitos is an enormous beach where the government has an untouchable reserve, and we partnered with them to take care of the turtles. In Platanitos, we have a conservation station that houses the biologists and the team that takes care of the turtles. They collect the eggs, put them in a protected area. There they grow for a little over a month until they hatch, and they push the baby turtles to sea at night so no predators eat them. Last year, we liberated to sea almost 1 million baby turtles, our record. There are many turtle camps worldwide. It shows that man can do good with the same hand that does harm. We took a single species, but there are many more.
Do you feel artists have an obligation to promote social justice now more than ever?
If it comes from the heart, yes. If it’s not within them, and it’s against my principles to say this, they’re under no obligation. An artist’s obligation is to make good art — to give the best of themselves in their songs, their lyrics, the arrangements, everything that makes up the music. Now, if on top of that they want to talk about women’s rights, or education rights, or health, the environment, whatever, then that’s the cherry on the cake. I believe many people have been inspired by Maná to protect the environment — to think globally and act locally.
Fher Olvera releasing turtle with Selva Negra.
Courtesy Selva Negra
This story originally appeared in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Pharrell Williams and producer Chad Hugo – who together formed the prolific songwriting duo The Neptunes – are now battling each other in a legal dispute over the group’s name, after Hugo accused Williams of “fraudulently” seeking sole control over the trademarks.
Before Williams was a solo star, The Neptunes produced a slew of radio hits in the early 2000s, including Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body.” The legendary duo, who have been friends since childhood, were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022.
But in a legal action filed last week at a federal tribunal, attorneys for Hugo accused Pharrell and his company of attempting to unilaterally register trademarks for the Neptunes name – a move they say violates their longstanding agreement that saw the pair split everything equally.
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“Throughout their over thirty year history, [Hugo] and Williams agreed to, and in fact, have divided all assets,” wrote Hugo’s attorney Kenneth D. Freundlich, a prominent music industry litigator. “By ignoring and excluding [Hugo] from the any and all applications filed by applicant for the mark ‘The Neptunes,’ applicant has committed fraud in securing the trademarks and acted in bad faith.”
In a statement to Billboard on Monday, a rep for Pharrell said there had been no ill-intent behind the disputed trademark filings: “Pharrell is surprised by this. We have reached out on multiple occasions to share in the ownership and administration of the trademark and will continue to make that offer. The goal here was to make sure a third party doesn’t get a hold of the trademark and to guarantee Chad and Pharrell share in ownership and administration.”
Hugo’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
At issue in the dispute are three separate applications to register “The Neptunes” as a trademark – one covering the use of the name on streaming music, another for music videos and other content, and a third covering live performances. They were filed in 2022 by PW IP Holdings LLC, Pharrell’s company that also owns such registrations for his band N.E.R.D., his Miami-based Goodtime Hotel, and numerous other brand names connected to the superstar.
In his legal filings last week, Hugo’s attorneys argued that Pharrell had “knowingly and intentionally” filed those applications without required input from Hugo, even though he was “fully aware” that either Hugo or their partnership entity should have been listed as a co-owner: “Nothing, either written or oral, provided Williams or [PW IP Holdings] with the unilateral authority to register the trademarks.”
Hugo’s attorneys said they’ve “repeatedly” contacted Pharrell’s team about the problem, and that the star’s lawyers had “admitted that [Hugo] is equal co-owner of the trademarks” and promised to include him — a claim that lines up with Williams’ statement on Monday.
But the case claims that sharing never actually happened, partly because Pharrell’s company has insisted on “onerous business terms” that would deprive Hugo of proper control and compensation. The petition did not specify what exactly those “onerous” terms included.
Last week’s filings targeted only with the three recent trademark applications, but Hugo’s case could potentially expand beyond them. That’s because Pharrell’s company already successfully registered The Neptunes name as a trademark for musical sound recordings, and has another pending application to register the name for clothing and other merch.
In his filing last week, Hugo’s lawyers said that the trademark registrations covering sound recordings “and possibly others” would be subject to a future legal action aimed at having them voided.
When brothers Oscar and Jesús Flores launched the first-ever of Pa’l Norte in 2012 in Monterrey, Nuevo León — under Apodaca Group, their father Oscar Flores Elizondo‘s entertainment and promotion company — they figured it would be a one-time thing.
“We thought it would happen once, and then we’d just move on with our other projects,” Oscar says. He, along with Jesús and their sister Blanca, comprise the leadership of Apodaca alongside their dad, who founded the company in 1978 as Representaciones Artísticas Apodaca. At the time, the brothers were young executives and, as much as they liked their dad’s business, they wanted to put their own stamp on it. “My brother and I had never produced a festival when we decided to launch Pa’l Norte; fun fact, we had never even attended a festival in our lives,” Oscar says with a chuckle.
But even if it was a one-hit wonder, they wanted to give it a shot in hopes of diversifying the company’s roster of live music events. Apodaca was, and still is, a leader in the regional Mexican scene producing several shows and concerts for that genre in Monterrey, where the company is based. So, the brothers — taking the years of experience they already had working under their father — decided the company’s first festival would be a rock-only lineup. The first edition, Pa’l Norte Rock Festival, a one-day event, featured artists like Calle 13, Carla Morrison, Kinky and Zoé.
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Even with hiccups along the way, including being understaffed and a hailstorm the day before which they thought would cancel the event, they pulled through. And, unlike today, the event didn’t have a lot of support from sponsors, even with the Apodaca name attached to the festival. It was also at a time when the city, located in a state that borders Texas, was recovering from a brutal wave of murders linked to organized crime. Which is not to say Monterrey is a crime-less city today — but although organized crime is still a major concern in the city, it has not affected the festival in its 12 years. Its security plan includes city and state police officers (Fuerza Civil) inside and outside the festival, plus private security.
When Pa’l Norte first launched, Monterrey — an important commercial entry port between the Northeastern region of Mexico and the United States — was also on its way to becoming a modern economic region exploding with tech innovation. “It was like the perfect musical symphony,” says Francisco Orozco, professor at the school of business at the prestigious Tecnológico de Monterrey. “There was a political change in the city that opened doors for these types of events to happen and people gained the confidence and courage to leave their homes again. We proved we weren’t just bullets.”
Three years into the festival, Oscar and his brother dropped the rock-only label because “we wanted to grow and bring more commercial artists,” says Oscar (the festival also adopted the slogan “Siempre Poderoso y Ascendente,” or, “Always Powerful and Ascendant”). They also scored a partnership with concert promoter OCESA, which Live Nation acquired in 2021 for $416 million, doubling down on their efforts to expand their reach. “OCESA has been a great ally that has supported us a lot,” Oscar says. “We are partners in many festivals, but this partnership was key for Pa’l Norte because together with them, we were able to grow in many areas such as sponsorships, international artists.”
The now re-branded Tecate Pa’l Norte — after landing a major sponsorship deal with the beer giant — has gone through massive changes, which has led to its global appeal. “Apodaca has been very meticulous with their alliances, from the beer industry to teaming up with the ministry of tourism to have hotels and transportation available when the festival takes place, [and] also partnering with airline Viva Aerobus for sponsorship,” Orozco says. “It’s a business model that works. They know the importance of allies and that’s why the festival has grown the way it has.”
Today, it’s the “most important musical event in Northern Mexico,” according to Nuevo León’s Ministry of Tourism. “Every year we are talking about more than 75% hotel occupancy derived from Pa’l Norte, but this year will be much more special because it coincides with Easter,” the government agency told Billboard in a statement. “Throughout these 12 years, it has positioned itself not only to impact the creative industries in Nuevo León, but also as one of our most important economic and tourism engines. This year we estimate a revenue of close to 750 million pesos (approximately $46 million U.S.).”
Pa’l Norte’s three-day event now has nine stages that gathers 100,000 people per day at the emblematic Parque Fundidora (before, the capacity was 37,000 when it started at Parque Diego Rivera). Its lineup has evolved from genre-specific to super-eclectic with past headliners including Billie Eilish, Foo Fighters, Caifanes, Maná, Tame Impala, The Killers, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and 50 Cent. This year’s edition was headlined by Peso Pluma, Blink-182, Imagine Dragons, Maná and Fuerza Regida.
“At the end of the day, promoters are looking to have the most popular acts on their lineup,” says Alan David Robles-Soto, director of the music production program at Tecnólogico de Monterrey. He’s also a guitarist who’s performed alongside Mexican bands like Jumbo and División Minúscula. “It’s the same case with Coachella: it used to be a rock festival and then it wasn’t. It’s in the promoter’s best interest, they want to push sales and the ones who are going to sell are bands like Blink-182.”
Pa’l Norte is perhaps Mexico’s biggest, and most diverse, music festival, though other major events like Vive Latino and EDC Mexico (both produced by OCESA in Mexico City) also move significant tickets: The former had a total of 160,000 attendees this year, while EDC Mexico had 200,000 people in attendance for its 2023 edition. Meanwhile, the Machaca festival, also in Monterrey, gathered 65,000 last year, according to local reports, and the Baja Beach Fest in Baja California (which went from six days to three) draws in a daily capacity of 35,000.
“The importance that Mexico has in Latin America in terms of income in the sub-sector of live music is noteworthy,” Orozco says. “Artists are not only performing in Mexico City or Monterrey but also in other states where we did not imagine artists would go. They understood that people are willing to spend a lot of money for these experiences. Geographically and logistically, the country, which borders the U.S., is in a very important spot for them as well.”
Producing more than 600 shows a year, including 15 festivals across the country, Apodaca now has several divisions under its umbrella, including booking, distribution and management. With Pa’l Norte, the goal is only to become more global and, in the future, Oscar hopes to add a streaming option to expand its reach and potentially turn it into a two-weekend event, à la Coachella. For now, he’s pleased with the festival’s growth over the past 12 years and the impact it’s had on the Mexican state.
“As citizens of Nuevo León, we are very proud that Pa’l Norte is a source of work for restaurants, hotels, taxi drivers during that week,” says Oscar. “At the festival, we have more than 10,500 people working per day; generating that number of jobs fills us with pride. We want to keep impacting. The slogan says it all [always powerful and ascending].”
Christine Lepera might be one of the country’s top music litigators, but decades ago, she wasn’t even sure she still wanted to be a lawyer at all.
In 1986, just a few years after she graduated law school, she was working at a New York firm where she was “dissatisfied” and, like many young attorneys, faced existential questions about her chosen career path.
“I never intended to be a music lawyer, and after four years at a corporate firm on Wall Street, I was basically ready to quit the law entirely,” she recalls with a laugh.
Today, that’s hard to imagine. Lepera — who is chair of the music litigation group at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp (MSK) — for years has been one of the music industry’s go-to trial lawyers.
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She handles many different types of cases, from representing Daryl Hall in last year’s headline-grabbing battle with longtime partner John Oates that’s still pending to Dr. Luke in his just-settled defamation case against Kesha. But her primary specialty is defending superstar artists against allegations that they’ve stolen their songs from someone else.
Over the past year, Lepera has handled such copyright cases for Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Post Malone and others; previously, she has done similar work for Katy Perry, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), Drake, Ludacris and many more. For Lepera, who herself plays piano, working those lawsuits is not just about the people involved, but about their music — and their right to create without facing needless lawsuits.
“What I get the most enjoyment from is servicing the music,” Lepera says. “In many of these cases, what you’re dealing with is people who have not stolen anything and have just used basic musical building blocks. And the other side is literally trying to monopolize music that they shouldn’t.”
In recognition of her achievements, Lepera has been named Billboard’s 2024 Lawyer of the Year. Fellow partners Eric German, Bradley Mullins and David Steinberg join her on the Top Music Lawyers list.
Facing an impasse in her young career, Lepera turned to Martin Silfen — her former law professor at New York Law School and a music attorney who represented clients like Blondie, LL COOL J and Aerosmith — for advice. Silfen connected her with Leonard Marks, a legendary New York music attorney who counted Billy Joel, The Beatles and Elton John as clients over his long career.
The timing was just right. At that point, Marks was getting plenty of litigation business sent his way from John Eastman, another powerful industry attorney who is best known for representing Paul McCartney in his wranglings with the other members of The Beatles (prompted by their association with manager Allen Klein). The late Marks, whom Lepera fondly recalls as an eccentric attorney with you-can’t-believe-he’s-a-lawyer vibes, brought her into his small firm and gave her a shot.
“Len hired me, I started doing lots of entertainment cases and everything changed,” Lepera says.
From left: Attorneys Christopher Buccafusco, Christine Lepera and Carla Miller discussed how copyright law affects creators at a 2019 panel at Cardozo Law School in New York.
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One of the first major cases she handled was a copyright lawsuit filed in 1990 against Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber that accused him of stealing the title song from his smash hit The Phantom of the Opera from a Baltimore liturgical composer. The case dragged on for years, featuring countersuits, multiple appeals and an attempted appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before ending in the late 1990s with a victory for Lloyd Webber in a high-profile jury trial.
The long-running lawsuit provided plenty of material for the young music litigator to cut her teeth. “It was a 10-year extravaganza,” Lepera says, laughing. “And we won everything at the end of the day.”
In the years that followed, big music cases kept coming. In 2006, Lepera won a jury verdict clearing Ye and Ludacris of allegations that they had based their 2003 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit, “Stand Up,” on an earlier song. In 2015, she helped defeat a lawsuit claiming that Jay-Z and Timbaland had stolen material from an Egyptian composer for their 2000 smash “Big Pimpin’.” In 2017, Lepera won a ruling that Drake had made fair use of a spoken-word jazz track when he sampled it on his 2013 song “Pound Cake.”
The attorney’s trajectory culminated in 2022, when she won a federal appeals court decision that Perry’s 2013 single “Dark Horse,” another Hot 100 No. 1, had not infringed the copyright of an earlier song. It was not only a big win for the singer, overturning millions in damages, but also set an important legal precedent that individual songwriters cannot lock up simple musical “building blocks.”
For years, such lawsuits have been a source of anxiety for creators and companies alike, particularly in the wake of the controversial 2015 verdict that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ “Blurred Lines” had infringed Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up.” In the years that followed, artists became more cautious about vetting their songs with musicologists, often preemptively offering writing credits to would-be accusers rather than risking a lawsuit.
But from Lepera’s perspective, song-theft lawsuits didn’t increase after the “Blurred Lines” verdict; rather, they’ve always just been an unfortunate byproduct of success. “You write a hit, you get a writ,” she jokes. In fact, she suggests the verdict had a positive impact: More artists are willing to fight back against questionable allegations and more courts are willing to scrutinize bad lawsuits.
“They’re going to fight and not give into this fear,” Lepera says of her clients and other modern artists. “Even though it’s a very draining, expensive, uncomfortable and uncertain process, I think we’re seeing very strong advocates turning around and deterring these kinds of cases.”
In the past year, Lepera fought battles inside and outside the copyright sector. She represented Lipa in two high-profile lawsuits that claimed the star had copied earlier songs when she wrote her megahit “Levitating.” In June, a federal judge dismissed one of them, agreeing with Lipa’s argument that she had never heard the song in question; the other case, where Lepera has made the same argument, is awaiting a decision. Lepera also won a ruling in September dismissing a lawsuit against Jay-Z, Timbaland and Ginuwine that claimed they had lifted material from an old soul tune for the songs “Paper Chase” and “Toe 2 Toe.”
Perhaps more notably, Lepera resolved the decadelong litigation by Dr. Luke against Kesha, in which her client claimed the pop star had defamed him when she accused him of rape in 2014. After years of litigation and appeals, a trial was set for July 2023; instead, a confidential settlement was reached in June. As part of the agreement, the two issued a joint statement in which Kesha said she “cannot recount everything that happened” while Dr. Luke maintained that he was “absolutely certain that nothing happened.”
The Dr. Luke v. Kesha case, which started years before the #MeToo movement and was heavily litigated throughout that period, sparked strong emotions on both sides and sometimes thrust Lepera herself into the spotlight. In deposition videos made public in 2019, Lady Gaga told her, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
When facing such situations as an attorney, Lepera says she sticks to the “facts and the law” of a given legal argument and is not intimidated by the celebrities involved or the PR dimensions that can accompany it.
“I can’t advocate a position unless I believe in it,” she says. “I have to truly believe in whatever it is I’m arguing. I’m not really emotional. I don’t have that trepidation of ‘Oh, look who I’m representing.’ ”
Another major 2023 case for Lepera was the public breakup of beloved duo Hall & Oates, in which she served as Hall’s lead counsel. In the dispute, which attracted heavy media attention thanks to sealed filings later becoming public, Hall accused Oates of violating their partnership agreement by unilaterally attempting to sell part of their joint entity to Primary Wave, a prominent music company that has acquired many catalogs in recent years.
As the case unfolded, it became clear the matter was deeply personal for Hall, who in legal filings called the alleged sale by Oates the “ultimate partnership betrayal” and said it specifically had been designed to hurt him after years of worsening relations between the duo. Oates later responded by calling the accusations “inflammatory, outlandish and inaccurate” and saying that they had left him “deeply hurt.”
In late November, after a climactic court hearing in Nashville, a judge sided with Hall and Lepera, putting the Primary Wave deal on hold and allowing an arbitrator time to decide Hall’s arguments against it. The dispute remains pending.
Due to the massive media attention, Lepera says the case has been “very painful, obviously, for both of them.” Bands, she says, are “almost like family,” and when things “fall apart at the seams” after a long career, there are bound to be intense feelings for all involved. After decades of handling such cases, she says the job of a good litigator is to understand and absorb that human dynamic, but also to channel it into a winning legal argument.
“My challenge is to be there to absorb and listen to that,” Lepera says, “but also to just cut through and get to the result that’s needed.”
This story originally appeared in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
After nearly 1,000 votes cast over three rounds of voting, Billboard Pro members selected Dina LaPolt, founder and owner of LaPolt Law, for the 2024 Top Music Lawyers Power Players’ Choice Award, which honors the attorney they believe had the most impact across the industry in the past year. With multiple industry roles — on […]
HYBE shares jumped 17.5% to 230,000 won ($170.84) this week following news that the company struck a 10-year partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG) that calls for the label to distribute HYBE’s physical and digital music and put its artists on HYBE’s Weverse social media platform. HYBE America CEO Scooter Braun will oversee all promotional and marketing collaborations between the two companies. After dropping 9.1% over the previous four weeks, the announcement brought the South Korean company’s year-to-date deficit to just 1.5%.
Another K-pop company, SM Entertainment, was one of five music companies to post double-digit stock gains this week, with its shares rising 14% to 87,800 won ($65.22). On Wednesday (March 27), the company announced the appointment of Tak Young-jun to co-CEO alongside existing CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk. SM Entertainment also announced a 1,200-won ($0.89) per-share dividend totaling 28.1 billion won ($20.8 million), an amount equal to the prior year’s dividend.
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The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index rose 1.9% to a record 1,752.24 as 16 stocks posted gains, only three lost ground and one was unchanged. Even with an unusually high number of winners, the float-adjusted index, which gives greater weight to more valuable companies, fell this week because two of the three losers are among the most valuable music companies. Spotify, which has a market capitalization of roughly $50 billion, fell 0.4% to $263.90. Live Nation fell 0.2% to $105.77; its market capitalization is about $24 billion. Two more of the index’s largest companies had gains under 2%: UMG rose 1.6% to 27.88 euros ($30.11) and Warner Music Group (WMG) improved 1.4% to $33.02. Another valuable member of the index, Chinese music streamer Tencent Music Entertainment, rose 2.2% to $11.19.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund shares climbed 13.5% to 69 pence ($0.87) after the company’s board of directors released an internal report on Thursday (March 28) that showed the fund’s investment advisor, Hipgnosis Song Management, “materially” overstated annual revenue and misled investors about the amount of control exercised over the rights in its portfolio. The negative news was welcomed by investors who have taken issue with the company’s accounting practices and portfolio valuation. Hipgnosis shares traded as low as 52.9 pence ($0.67) on March 4 but have rebounded since the company overhauled its board and hired Shot Tower Capital to put together the due diligence report.
CTS Eventim, the German live events promoter and ticketing company, rose 11.1% to 82.45 euros ($89.05) after releasing earnings for the fourth quarter and full-year 2023 on Tuesday (March 26). The company expects “a moderate rise” in total revenue in 2024. Demand is “rising continuously,” CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg wrote in the annual report, and the company expects the recent decline in inflation to provide “new, consumption-driven impetus for growth in the future.”
Believe shares rose 7.2% this week to 16.92 euros ($18.27) following the company’s announcement that it will accept a formal offer from WMG by April 7. WMG revealed its interest in Belief on March 7 and said it would be willing to pay at least 17 euros ($18.36) per share. A consortium that includes Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie has lined up a large block of shares and is willing to offer 15 euros ($16.20) per share for the remainder. With Believe shares currently trading so close to WMG’s soft bid, investors apparently don’t think the consortium’s original offer is going to suffice.
Stocks were mixed as the trading week was shortened by some exchanges’ closure for Good Friday. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite fell 0.3% to 16,379.46 and the S&P 500 rose 0.4% to 5,254.35. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 rose 0.3% to 7,952.62. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 0.1% to 2,746.63. China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropped 0.2% to 3,041.17.
Let me start this column the way I ended the last one: Private equity isn’t destroying the music business. But it’s worth wondering: How will so much outside investment change the way the music industry works?
Obviously, we’re going to see more documentaries, Broadway shows and box sets, both to make money and to promote catalogs. But will this lead to significant changes to royalty distribution or the industry’s balance of power? And is there even a small chance of what might be called a subprime publishing meltdown?
As Cyndi Lauper sang, though, money changes everything — and that was before her recent rights sale. So I spoke with a half dozen serious players — music publishers and private-equity-backed catalog buyers of rights, plus lawyers and consultants who have been working on these deals since investment started flooding into the music business at the end of the 2010s, about how these new players are changing the business. Any new investment sector will have successes and failures — a new report from Shot Tower Capital says Hipgnosis Songs Fund overstated its revenue and overpaid for catalogs, although Hipgnosis has said it disputes this — but what does all of this mean for music in the long term?
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One of the few points of agreement is that this has been great for creators so far, especially songwriters. These deals involve creators who are already making money, but the ability to sell their catalogs lets them replace a steady stream of revenue with a one-time cash infusion — it’s “allowed artists the ability to have more liquidity opportunities,” according to one buyer. This is helpful if they need cash, want to diversify their assets, or have to think about estate planning. The emergence of outside buyers has also spurred traditional music companies to buy more publishing assets, especially in cases where they already own related rights, for reasons that can be either strategic (“we can bundle rights”) or defensive (“we can monetize this without interference”). That competition implies that prices will rise, which is good for creators.
It also means that potential investors will bid for a wider range of catalogs, including more recent songs in more genres — which is already happening. So what happens when some of the world’s biggest investment entities own so many catalogs? They will push — using the various tools at their disposal — to raise the value of their assets. They will not do this out of goodwill, of course; they will do it out of self-interest. But any move that raises the value of the song catalogs that they own will also raise the value of the song catalogs that they do not, and this could be very good for songwriters.
“Investors now stand in the shoes of the songwriter,” as one buyer of catalogs told me, “and will use their political clout to help make how a songwriter is paid fairer.” An executive who works for another company that buys catalogs is skeptical of some private-equity-backed ventures, because “their incentives are misaligned with those of creators.” But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. To the extent that some aspects of copyright regulation involve political power, the influence of private equity could counter that of the big technology companies that generally lobby to undermine copyright. Two executives even suggested that private equity could serve as an engine of reform to make collective management organizations more transparent. “We put up with all of this,” the argument goes, “but Wall Street won’t stand for it!”
Right now, some of the catalog acquisition business rests on the idea that new buyers can do more to promote songs than the current owners, especially with film or theater projects. Eventually, though, at least some of that advantage could disappear. Executives can see what works, and some of them will inevitably bring that knowledge to other companies. Plus, as we reach Peak Rock Doc, catalog owners — traditional publishers and private equity players alike — could start to see diminishing returns.
What about the downsides? The reason private equity has such a bad reputation is that it usually buys assets with considerable leverage and holds them for a limited amount of time, which can often result in layoffs at companies in which they invest. Although deal structures vary, a source familiar with many deals told me that buyers generally don’t borrow more than half the purchase price of copyright assets, which seems reasonable.
Eventually, of course, some buyers will become sellers, presumably because their funds have run their course, or perhaps because they do come under pressure. In some cases, operators will be able to attract other investment. In others, “secondary sales will just expand the field for what is in play,” a publishing executive pointed out. A market for publishing assets inevitably means that not everyone will succeed — but it should also provide other buyers. A certain amount of consolidation may be inevitable, but it might not be so bad. Some writers will worry about how the new owner of their songs will treat them, but realistically — and this might sound cold, but it’s also true — that’s something creators need to think about before they sell.
Is there any chance of a broader market failure — a subprime copyright crisis, of sorts? Music copyrights generate steady cash the way mortgages once did, but while individual investments can rise or fall, it’s harder to imagine that a financial squeeze would lead to a selling frenzy that would send prices downward across the board. This isn’t a massive liquid market the way housing is, plus there’s less leverage and far more due diligence about the assets being purchased. (One lawyer said that this market is encouraging creators and publishers to improve their contracts and document-retention practices.)
Although it might seem counter-intuitive, the market for music copyrights might actually be more solid than that for housing. So far, on-demand streaming has proved pandemic-proof, and it seems recession-proof, so the only danger would be a collapse of the copyright system — and it’s hard to imagine how that would happen, especially now that the music business survived illegal file-sharing. Outside investment in music rights will change, like everything else in the business, but it looks like we’re going to see steady, long-term change — most of which creators have good reason to be optimistic about.