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Concord and Blackstone are in a bidding war to acquire the equity of Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF). On Wednesday (April 24), Concord bid $1.25 per share for HSF’s share capital, beating Blackstone’s offer of $1.24 per share (1.00 GBP), or $1.5 billion, announced on Sunday (April 21). In response to Concord’s latest offer, Blackstone said on Thursday (April 25) that it was “considering its options.”
Concord had opened with a bid of 0.93 pounds ($1.14) per share, equal to $1.4 billion, on April 18.
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Some investors are betting the bidding will go well above the current offers. On Tuesday, shares of HSF rose as high as 1.03 pounds ($1.28) respectively, 3.2% above Blackstone’s offer, and closed at 1.01 GBP ($1.26), 1.6% above its bid. Nearly 78 million shares traded hands that day — about 11 times the average daily trading volume over the previous three months. Even before Concord’s second bid of 1.00 pounds ($1.25) per share was announced on Wednesday, shares of HSF peaked at 1.016 pounds ($1.27) and closed at 1.014 pounds ($1.26).
Investors who want to capitalize on an eventual acquisition will buy HSF shares up to — but not equal to — their expected deal price. If investors thought the deal would happen at $1.30, they could bid up to $1.29 per share and make a small yet quick profit. Shareholders will vote on an acquisition offer at HSF’s June 10 shareholder meeting.
The same dynamic was recently seen after Believe became the subject of takeover talks. When a consortium of investors announced a bid of 15.00 euros ($16.04) per share, investors immediately bid the share price up to 14.22 euros ($15.23) but suspected it wasn’t wasn’t the final offer. Even before Warner Music Group (WMG) announced it was interested in acquiring Believe for at least 17.00 euros ($18.18) per share, shares were trading around 15.25 euros ($16.31), nearly 2% above Believe’s offer.
Concord could have two advantages that would allow it to bid higher than Blackstone: its source of funding and its ability to administer HSF’s portfolio. “If all else is equal,” Stifel analysts wrote in a Monday (April 22) note to investors, Concord can outbid Blackstone because it has a lower cost of capital — Michigan Retirement Systems, a state pension fund — and a superior ability to “extract revenue from an under-managed portfolio.”
But Blackstone has a trump card: Hipgnosis Song Management, which is majority owned by Blackstone, has an investor advisory agreement with HSF gives it a call option to acquire HSF’s portfolio if the advisory agreement is terminated. Stifel analysts believe the call option could act as “a deterrent” to prevent further price escalation — although it didn’t prevent Concord from bidding a second time. HSM appears determined to employ the call option. In a April 22 statement, HSM said it was “confident that the [Songs Fund] has no legal grounds to terminate our relationship without being subject to HSM’s contractual rights contained in the [investment advisory agreement, or IAA].”
Investors run the risk that the bidding process for HSF won’t transpire as they anticipated. In the case of Believe, WMG never made a formal offer and eventually dropped out of consideration — which could leave investors who bought Believe shares as high as 16.58 euros ($17.73) in the red if the acquisition proceeds at the original 15-euros per share offer.
The 100 Percenters, a musicians’ advocacy group, announced Wednesday (April 24) that several music organizations have signed a pledge designed to hold companies accountable for ensuring workplace safety.
Signees to the pledge, which was devised by The 100 Percenters, include the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), BMI, the Recording Academy, the Mechanical Licensing Collective (the MLC), EVEN, Artistry Group, Eat Predators, HRDRV, Industry Blackout, LVRN, Love Pulse Music.
Called the Safe Music Business pledge, the agreement asks signatories to abide by the following rules:
Committing to keeping artists, songwriters, producers and staff safe in their workplace and studio sessions
Committing to reporting sexual harassment, intimidation or violence to the appropriate parties in our workplace or studio sessions and taking action
Not tolerating inappropriate behavior in their workplace or studio sessions
Having or creating a safe space to support their artists, songwriters, producers and staff who don’t feel safe
Having or hiring safe space leadership to support their artists, songwriters, producers and staff who don’t feel safe
The organization hopes the pledge will help protect artists, songwriters, producers and staff members who work for or with these organizations. Safety is a particularly pressing concern for women and non-binary creatives working in male-dominated spaces in the industry. The 100 Percenters, founded by songwriter Tiffany Red, is primarily focused on initiatives that protect music’s most marginalized creatives and professionals.
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If a signatory breaks the pledge, a representative from The 100 Percenters says it will have a private conversation with the executives at the company, asking them to take accountability and take meaningful steps to ensure the workplace will be safer in the future. Such instances would be handled on a case-by-case basis, and the organization that breaks its vow could be removed from the pledge — with that removal potentially announced publicly.
The organization announced the signatories of the pledge with a corresponding open letter from Red that pointed to recent allegations of alleged abuse perpetuated by music professionals like Sean “Diddy” Combs and Russell Simmons. “The truth remains to be determined in a court of law,” the letter clarifies. “However, can we not acknowledge the troubling pattern of alleged abuse of power in music?”
The letter continues: “Despite finding allies within these companies who acknowledged the necessity of initiatives like the Safe Music Business pledge, the response has been dishearteningly silent. We encountered a significant reluctance throughout the outreach process to secure pledges. It’s a disappointing reality. It shouldn’t be such a challenging task for companies to adopt a more transparent, proactive stance in addressing sexual misconduct and violence within the music industry.”
“We are immensely grateful for the companies and organizations that have taken the SMB pledge,” the letter adds. “Their commitment to creating safer work environments within the music industry is commendable and represents a significant step towards positive change. By pledging to prioritize workplace safety, these companies demonstrate leadership and a genuine dedication to the well-being of music creatives and professionals. Their actions serve as an inspiring example for others to follow, and we sincerely appreciate their efforts to foster a culture of respect, safety, and inclusivity in our industry.”
To read the full letter, visit the 100 Percenters website here.
Believe reported strong first-quarter revenues of €230.3 million ($248.5 million) on Wednesday (April 24) despite foreign exchange fluctuations that led to slower organic growth compared to the final quarter of last year. The company reported an adjusted organic growth rate of 16.1%, which was in line with guidance, although down from 21.8% adjusted growth in […]
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Sneaker haven JD Sports is out here making big boy moves as they look to give Foot Locker Inc. a run for their sports apparel money.
According to Reuters, JD Sports is looking to take out more of their competition as they’re on the verge of purchasing Hibbett Inc. for a cool $1.08 billion dollars. The move comes as the sports attire field has been taking SNKRS-size losses in, and that includes the likes of juggernauts such as Reebok, Puma and Nike. Still, JD Sports is looking to expand their empire. After buying the likes of Shoe Palace, Finish Line and DTLR, JD Sports seem to be on a mission to corner the sports attire market out on these streets.
Reuters reports:
“Being part of a larger global retailer like JD Sports gives Hibbett more resources compared to its U.S. peers, Foot Locker and Dick’s,” said Cristina Fernández, analyst with Telsey Advisory Group.
JD Sports will pay $87.50 per Hibbett share in cash, representing a premium of about 20% to the U.S. firm’s last closing price.
Hibbett’s shares were up nearly 19% at $86.17 in U.S. noon trading.
JD’s acquisition of Hibbett, which has about 1,169 stores across 36 U.S. states, will extend its breadth in the country from “coast to coast”, finance chief Dominic Platt said in an analyst call.
It already owns Shoe Palace, which has a big presence on the U.S. west coast, and DTLR, which is established in the east.
“From a competitive standpoint, (the deal) puts incremental pressure on Foot Locker as JD Sports becomes a stronger player in the US,” Fernández wrote in a note.
How will Foot Locker respond to this power play? We have no idea but as long as sneakerheads get the grails that they fiend for, we riding with whoever gives us the best chances of copping. Just sayin’.
What do y’all think of JD Sports buying Hibbett Inc.? Is less competition in this field better for consumers? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Concord Music raised its bid to take over Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) on Wednesday (April 24) to $1.25 per share, one penny higher than the competing offer that Blackstone floated on April 20 — further ratcheting up the fight for control of the music rights company’s assets.
Concord’s new all-cash offer values Hipgnosis’s assets — which include rights to songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Christine McVie, Blondie, Shakira and Journey — as worth around $1.51 billion. It includes a plan to sell up to 30% of Hipgnosis’ assets within 18 to 24 months of an acquisition, according to a filing with the London Stock Exchange.
HSF’s board of directors unanimously recommended shareholders approve this new bid from Concord, a reversal from Monday (April 22) when those directors said they would support an offer from Blackstone equivalent to $1.24 per share if the investment giant made it official. Blackstone’s bid remains a “possible offer,” according to the company’s statement on Saturday (April 20).
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“Concord … remains committed to becoming the new owner of Hipgnosis,” the filing reads. “The Hipgnosis Directors believe that the Increased Concord Offer is in the best interests of Hipgnosis Shareholders as a whole, and accordingly unanimously recommend that Hipgnosis Shareholders vote in favour of the resolutions required to implement the Increased Concord Offer to be proposed at the Court Meeting and the General Meeting which are due to be held on or around 10 June 2024.”
The new offer presents a 42.6% premium over HSF’s closing share price on April 17, the day before Concord’s initial offer became public. Any offer will require the support of investors representing at least 75% of the company’s public shares at a court meeting expected to be held on June 10; until that date, additional new offers may still be lodged.
Concord plans to finance the acquisition through a combination of debt and equity, with the majority of the equity financing coming from Concord followed by “minority participation by Apollo Funds.” Apollo will also provide the debt, the amount of which has not been disclosed.
Blackstone floated a “possible offer” of $1.5 billion, or $1.24 per share, to buy Hipgnosis Songs Fund over the weekend. The private equity giant owns two other entities under the Hipgnosis name, including a private music royalty fund with its own catalog holdings worth more than $700 million. Blackstone has yet to file an official bid.
Last year, Concord acquired Hipgnosis rival Round Hill Music Royalty Fund for $468 million in the biggest catalog deal of 2023. Through that acquisition, Concord gained rights to over 150,000 songs, among them works by The Beatles and tunes recorded by Elvis Presley, Meatloaf, James Brown and Billie Holiday.
Chicago impresario Nick Karounos and his partners at Auris Presents Stuart Hackley and John Curly are opening a 750-person capacity, 10,000 square foot venue in Chicago’s famed Bucktown neighborhood later this spring. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Outset, located on the outskirts of the Lincoln Yards […]
Tupac Shakur’s estate is threatening to sue Drake over a recent diss track against Kendrick Lamar that featured an AI-generated version of the late rapper’s voice, calling it a “a flagrant violation” of the law and a “blatant abuse” of his legacy.
In a Wednesday cease-and-desist letter obtained exclusively by Billboard, litigator Howard King told Drake (Aubrey Drake Graham) that he must confirm that he will pull down his “Taylor Made Freestyle” in less than 24 hours or the estate would “pursue all of its legal remedies” against him.
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“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King wrote in the letter. “Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”
Drake released “Taylor Made” on Friday, marking the latest chapter in a back-and-forth war of words between the Canadian rapper and Lamar. Beyond taking shots at both Kendrick and Taylor Swift, the track made headlines because of its prominent use of artificial intelligence technology to create fake verses from Tupac and Snoop Dogg – two West Coast legends idolized by the LA-based Lamar.
“Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior/ Engraving your name in some hip-hop history,” the AI-generated Tupac raps in Drake’s song. “If you deal with this viciously/ You seem a little nervous about all the publicity.”
In Tuesday’s letter, Tupac’s estate warned Drake that the use of his voice clearly violated Tupac’s so-called publicity rights – the legal power to control how your image or likeness is used by others. And they took particular exception the use of his voice to take shots at Lamar.
“The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult,” King wrote.
A rep for Drake declined to comment on the demands of the Shakur estate.
It’s unclear if Snoop Dogg, whose voice was also featured on “Taylor Made,” is planning to raise similar legal objections to Drake’s track. On Saturday, he posted a video to social media in which he seemed to be learning of the song for the first time: “They did what? When? How? Are you sure?” A rep for Snoop Dogg did not return a request for comment.
The unauthorized use of voice cloning technology has become one of the music industry’s thorniest legal subjects, as AI-powered tools have made easier than ever to convincingly mimic real artists.
The issue exploded onto the scene last year, when an unknown artist named Ghostwriter released a track called “Heart On My Sleeve” that featured – ironically – fake verses from Drake’s voice. Since then, as voice-cloning has proliferated on the internet, industry groups, legal experts and lawmakers have wrangled over how best to crack down on it.
It’s not as simple as it might seem. Federal copyrights are difficult to directly apply, since cloned vocals usually feature new words and music that are distinct from existing copyrighted songs. The publicity rights cited by the estate are a better fit because they protect someone’s likeness itself, but they have historically been used to sue over advertisements, rather than over creative works like songs.
Faced with that legal uncertainty, the recording industry and top artists have pushed for new legislation to address the problem. Last month, Tennessee passed a statute called the ELVIS Act that aims to crack down on voice cloning by expanding the state’s publicity right laws beyond just advertisements. Lawmakers in Washington DC are also considering similar bills that would create new, broader publicity rights at a federal level.
In Wednesday’s letter, however, the estate said that California’s existing publicity right laws clearly outlaw something as blatant as Drake’s use of Tupac’s voice in “Taylor Made.” King argued that the song had caused “substantial economic and reputational harm” by creating the “false impression that the estate and Tupac promote or endorse the lyrics for the sound-alike.”
The estate also argued that the song was likely created using an AI model that violated the estate’s copyrights by “training” on existing recordings of Tupac’s music. The legality of using copyrighted “inputs” is another difficult legal issue that’s currently being tested in several closely-watched lawsuits against AI developers, including one filed by major music publishers.
“It is hard to believe that [Tupac’s record label]’s intellectual property was not scraped to create the fake Tupac AI on the Record,” King wrote, before demanding that Drake also provide “a detailed explanation for how the sound-alike was created and the persons or company that created it, including all recordings and other data ‘scraped’ or used.”
Wednesday’s letter also pointedly highlighted that Drake himself has made previous objections to the use of his own likeness by others. In addition to last year’s incident surrounding “Heart on My Sleeve” — which was quickly pulled down from the internet — King pointed to a lesser-known federal lawsuit in which Drake’s attorneys accused a website of using his image without authorization.
“The [“Taylor Made Freestyle”] has generated well more than one million streams at this point and has been widely reported in the general national press and popular entertainment websites and publications,” the estate wrote. “Without question, it is exponentially more serious and damaging than a picture of you with some other people on a low volume website.”
In its closing paragraphs, the letter demanded written confirmation by noon Pacific on Thursday that Drake’s representatives were “expeditiously taking all steps necessary to have it removed.”
“If you comply, the estate will consider whether an informal negotiation to resolve this matter makes sense,” King wrote. “If you do not comply, our client has authorized this firm to pursue all of its legal remedies including, but not limited to, an action for violation of … the estate’s copyright, publicity and personality rights and the resulting damages, injunctive relief, and punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.”
The cloudy future of Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) became clearer on April 18, when the embattled company’s board of directors publicly supported a $1.4 billion takeover bid by Concord, followed two days later by a $1.5 billion offer by investment giant Blackstone.
Regardless of the buyer, an acquisition would mark an end to the 5-year-old London Stock Exchange-listed company and give shareholders an offramp after HSF faced questions about its operational acuity and, most recently, alleged evidence of accounting missteps that overstated both revenue and its portfolio’s valuation.
Concord’s offer is a 32.2% premium over HSF’s closing price on April 17, but the board said it would support Blackstone’s offer — which represents a 41.8% premium — if the asset manager makes it official.
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Blackstone’s bid for the publicly traded music rights company wasn’t a surprise: It owns two other entities under the Hipgnosis name. Blackstone is the majority owner of the public fund’s investment adviser, Hipgnosis Song Management (HSM), and it funds Hipgnosis Songs Capital (HSC), a private music rights fund operated with HSM that has its own portfolio of music rights from such stars as Justin Bieber and Kenny Chesney. Sources say Blackstone’s private fund, HSC, is worth upwards of $700 million. HSM has the right to buy HSF’s portfolio if its advisory agreement is terminated — and Blackstone and HSM “will vigorously protect its interests should the company purport to terminate the [investment advisory agreement],” according to a statement issued by HSM on April 22. “We will use all means necessary to defend our contractual position and interests.”
Neither HSF nor HSM responded to requests to comment for this story.
When investors vote on a proposed acquisition at HSF’s June 10 board meeting, a majority of stock- holders representing at least 75% of voting rights must approve the deal. Before Blackstone’s offer, Concord’s bid had the support of shareholders that own 29.4% of the company’s equity.
Any offer would free the fund and its investors from a serious bind. Once a freewheeling darling of the music business that acquired rights to music by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young and Shakira, the company suffered from a struggling share price, the cancellation of the dividend and — the coup de grace — an unflattering due diligence report by investment bank Shot Tower Capital released March 28 that found the company’s investment adviser, the Merck Mercuriadis-led HSM, committed a series of missteps. Among them: HSM “materially overstated” annual revenue by improperly accounting for revenue and missed growth forecasts on 75% of the fund’s catalogs by an average of 23% annually, and the investment adviser overstated the amount of control that HSF has over the rights it had acquired. The latter conclusion is key to the value of HSF’s portfolio because owning a song’s copyright is more valuable than owning a writer’s or producer’s share of the royalties it generates.
As a result of its findings, Shot Tower lowered HSF’s portfolio value by 26%, from $2.62 billion to $1.95 billion.
“Shareholders are going to vote for whichever [bid is] the higher,” says Josh Gruss, co-founder and CEO of Round Hill Music, who until last November, ran Round Hill’s rival publicly listed music royalty fund. (Concord bought that public fund last year, and Gruss became a Hipgnosis shareholder a few months later.) “I think investors have been through such a roller coaster most of them just want their money back.”
HSM’s response to the Shot Tower report, which was issued the same day, claimed that aspects of it were “factually inaccurate and misleading.”
Not surprisingly, several of HSF’s largest and most long-lasting investors were angered by the report’s findings. Investment managers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to comment publicly before the next board meeting, said that the report’s findings presented extraordinary examples of gross incompetence and “myriad” accounting issues.
Stifel analyst Sachin Saggar, who raised red flags about the company’s accounting and valuation as far back as 2021, says the Shot Tower report revealed “a catalog of errors” that should have been prevented by the layers of protection — a board of directors, an independent auditor, internal systems and adherence to accounting principles — typically afforded to investors.
“If you had a half-decent board at [the initial public offering], you [could] have stopped some of these things happening very easily because they’re quite obvious and they were well-flagged by us three years ago.”
Merck Mercuriadis on Feb. 8, 2021 in Los Angeles.
Spencer Lowell
While the offers could be the answer to HSF’s financial straits, if the Concord bid gets accepted, one question remains: What becomes of Mercuriadis, who is the founder and public face of Hipgnosis, the chairman of HSF’s investment adviser and, until recently, the cocksure self-appointed spokesman for the red-hot song catalog sales market?
The Shot Tower report reinforced doubts that the board can continue to work with Mercuriadis and his team — one investor deems the relationship “broken down” — although parting with him is easier said than done.
Terminating the investment adviser’s contract without cause would give HSM a termination fee and, more critically, an option to buy the entire portfolio at whichever is highest: fair market value, a third party’s bid or the company’s market capitalization.
According to the April 18 announcement, Concord would take over management of HSF’s assets after “a brief transition period” during which Mercuriadis’ HSM remained the investment adviser. The announcement stated that the two sides have not yet begun discussions about terminating the investment advisory agreement.
Matt Hose, a London-based equity analyst for Jefferies, says the HSF board “is trying to highlight that Merck was incompetent so they can terminate [the investment adviser] with cause and not pay out the fees.” He adds that this strategy would prevent Mercuriadis from “stopping the board from selling the portfolio in the open market and getting full value.”
Removing the investment adviser would be an unusual outcome. Hose says he has never seen an investment manager terminated for cause in the 15 years he has covered investment trusts.
HSF’s largest investors support terminating the investment adviser’s contract, but they were reticent to say that the board can prove it has sufficient reason to fire HSM “with cause.”
“People are pretty fed up with the [investment adviser] as a result of this [report],” one investment manager says. “There are some quite extraordinary allegations in this report. I don’t think I’ve seen accusations of gross incompetence laid out in this way. I’ve seen accusations of fraud, but not this.”
Hose points out that, counterintuitively, HSF’s stock price rose 10% on the day the Shot Tower report was released.
“Shareholders want termination for cause because it’s the cleanest exit. Whether they’re going to get it or not — that’s the question.”
If the board moves to terminate the investment manager with cause, investors say Mercuriadis and Blackstone may fight it in court. In such a scenario, they say the two sides would probably settle with HSF for a lump sum of money but not the right to buy the portfolio. They note that a prolonged court battle would bring Blackstone the kind of negative headlines it’s known to avoid.
Other catalog portfolio managers say, bad press be damned, Blackstone will not give up its right to HSF’s quality assets.
“The underlying assets are solid, whether they paid one turn or two turns too much,” says David Schulhof, CEO of music-focused exchange traded fund MUSQ.
A Blackstone acquisition, on the other hand, would be the best outcome for Mercuriadis, as HSM would continue to oversee the portfolio. Regardless of how the aftermath plays out, half a dozen HSF investors and analysts said they cannot see Mercuriadis and HSM remaining the investment manager of a publicly traded fund or the fund continuing as a publicly listed entity.
“It has to spin into a sale at this point,” Round Hill’s Gruss says. “It’s clear that even before these announcements shareholders were hell bent on removing Blackstone as the investment adviser, through legal means or otherwise. It’s a much more elegant solution for shareholders to just sell.”
Despite the enduring value of much of HSF’s portfolio, the board is telling shareholders that a quick sale is their best option. In its April 18 announcement, the board indicated that accepting Concord’s bid would “[mitigate] the risks we see ahead to achieving a material improvement in the share price.” Other than an outright acquisition, it warned, “all alternative options carry significant risks, uncertainties and limitations.”
A version of this story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Fifty years ago, Steven Gaines, a New York Sunday News rock ‘n’ roll newspaper columnist, lined up to ask the Beatles‘ John Lennon a question during a press event for the musical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band On the Road. Gaines blurted out, “Hi, John, does seeing Sgt. Pepper’s being made into an off-Broadway show make you feel old?” Lennon responded acerbically: “I don’t need that to make me feel old, mate. Next!”
It was a humiliating moment for Gaines, and he wandered off. Peter Brown, the Beatles‘ former day-to-day manager and president of the Robert Stigwood Organization, which produced the show, noticed Gaines’ dejection, invited him to talk in a nearby lounge, and the pair became lifelong friends. Later, using Brown’s connections, the duo spent much of 1980 recording exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Beatles insiders such as Apple Corps’ Neil Aspinall and publisher Dick James. The transcripts became the basis for their 1983 best-seller The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles.
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Reading like a “paperback pulp novel,” as Rolling Stone declared, the book contains revelatory allegations such as Lennon’s brief sexual relationship with the Beatles’ late manager, Brian Epstein, and Lennon and Ono’s journey through heroin addiction. When the book came out, McCartney burned it in his fireplace, and his late wife, Linda, photographed the destruction. Now that Brown and Gaines have released the full transcripts from those 1980 interviews in a new book, All You Need Is Love: The Beatles In Their Own Words, which is out now, Gaines tells Billboard by phone from his East Hampton, N.Y., home that the first book may have been “polarizing,” but it’s based on talks with reliable — and comfortable — sources such as a jovial, weed-smoking McCartney.
Billboard: Why put this book out now, 41 years after the publication of The Love You Make?
Steven Gaines: I had the tapes in a bank vault for 40 years while we tried to figure out what to do with them. I wanted there to be full access to the tapes for historians, for the public. Peter and I, getting up in years, decided we had to make a decision now. Publishers were interested. We didn’t do it for the money, because there’s not a huge amount of money involved.
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My favorite detail in the book is “Dalí’s coconut” — a $5,000 gift Lennon commissioned for Starr in which the surrealism master Salvador Dalí created what appeared to be half a coconut lined with a sponge and “a long, curly black hair that he’d plucked from his mustache, he claimed, although I had my suspicions,” as Brown writes in the book.
A young man working for the Beatles in New York, Arma Andon, came in from America, because Dalí wanted to be paid in cash, and you couldn’t bring cash, especially in American dollars, out of England. He went out with Peter Brown and Dalí and his wife Gala to dinner. When it was over, Salvador Dalí asked Arma Andon if he’d like to go with him to a whorehouse. We didn’t put that in the book because it had nothing to do with the Beatles.
The other weird thing was … the hair in the coconut. We don’t know if Dalí got that from his mustache or his pubic hair. John wanted so badly to give Ringo something special, because Ringo felt so maligned and [like] such an outsider and they didn’t appreciate his drumming. When Peter showed it to John, they wet the hair, and the hair curled up, or straightened out, or — I forget what it did. John loved it so much. I forget what they gave Ringo instead. Ringo never knew about the coconut.
I was surprised at the bluntness of your questions, especially to McCartney: “Rock ‘n’ roll bands had a reputation for being bad on the road, like tying groupies to bedposts and f—– them with a fish. But you guys were supposed to be celibate.”
It was one of the things I always wondered about. They were always painted as such angels. Then, of course, there was Hamburg [where the Beatles performed in Germany in the ’60s] and all the hookers. It really shocked me that Paul said there were lots of girls on the road. Why hadn’t any of them come forward?
Paul invited me and Peter to his house in Sussex for the weekend. Paul whispered to me, “Do you smoke grass?” I said, “Not since I’ve been here.” He said, “I’m not allowed to smoke in the house because of the kids and because I’ve been arrested. Let’s go out in my car and we’ll drive around and smoke a joint.” We got into his Mini, the fanciest Mini I’d ever seen. He put one joint on the dashboard of the car.
Then the second joint fell down around the windshield-wiper defroster slot. Paul said, “Oh, no, no, no, they’ll find it, they’ll pull me over for a ticket, and Linda, and they’ll find it! We’ve got to get it out of there.” So we pulled over to the side of the road. We opened up both the doors to the car. He got some screwdrivers out of the bonnet and we started unscrewing the dashboard. His neighbors were walking down the street: “Having car trouble, Mr. McCartney?” “Oh, no, that’s OK, that’s fine, thank you very much.” We never found the joint. We screwed everything back together.
That was my experience in the interview: He was really shockingly forthcoming.
For decades, Yoko Ono was said to have broken up the Beatles, but the studio footage in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back suggests it was really about business — particularly regarding Allen Klein, whom Lennon wanted to hire as manager, while McCartney and others disagreed. All You Need Is Love indicates all these reasons are true, and others as well.
The first thing was that Brian [Epstein] died. He was the glue that held the Beatles together. Then the guys were getting tired of each other. They couldn’t go out on the street, they were the most famous people on earth, everything they did, every gesture, everything they said, was blown up, and they could only see each other, and it created tremendous tension.
If the feelings behind them weren’t so bad, they maybe would have solved those financial problems. There is a moment in Get Back when John and Yoko go over to speak with Peter Brown. Peter says, “Allen Klein is here,” and John and Yoko say, “Oh, when can we see him?” Peter says, “He’s at the Dorchester [Hotel in London], you can see Allen Klein tomorrow.” What they do behind everyone’s back is call the Dorchester and see him that night. And he brainwashes them. He made everything worse. He picked at all the scabs. He made the Beatles fight with each other.
How did you and Peter come up with this arrangement to write together?
In 1980, I was broke and down and out and unhappy and miserable in New York. He was living in Laguna Beach in a penthouse on a cliff. He said, “You’ve got to get out of New York. Stay here for a while.” It was glorious, and I said, “What about that book now?” He said, “Let’s write a proposal.” Then it exploded. We got $250,000 for the hardcover rights, $750,000 for the paperback rights. It went on and on until we had almost $2 million in advances. The problem was, it was too honest, it was too direct and the Beatles fans weren’t ready for it. But everybody’s grown up now. They’re ready for All You Need Is Love.
The 2024 IMS Ibiza conference began today (April 24) on the event’s namesake island electronic music mecca. The conference’s program includes three days of talks on multiple facets of the electronic music business, including streaming, labels, AI, wellness, the island clubbing economy and much more.
As is tradition, IMS started today with an introduction from the event’s founders, including BBC Radio legend Pete Tong, followed by the presentation of the annual IMS Business report, which looks at the trends, growth sectors and general health of the global electronic music industry.
Marking its tenth edition this year, the report was authored by MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan and is available here. Generally, the 2024 report found significant growth areas along with a higher year over year valuation of the industry as a whole. It also offered insights on the general music industry landscape, stating that “after a slower 2022, the global recorded music market returned to strong growth in 2023, up 10%.”
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These are ten key findings from the 2024 report.
1. Spotify Gained Market Share, But Totaled Less Than a Third of The Global Streaming Market
The global streaming market currently has a whopping 713.4 million total subscribers, with this subscriber base growing by 14.4% between the third quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023. This equates to 90 million added subscribers, which is 6.5 million more subscribers than were added over the same period a year earlier.
The report finds that Spotify remained the largest DSP, increasing its global share to 32% in the third quarter of 2023. Tencent Music Entertainment remained the third largest, overtaking Amazon Music in the third quarter of 2022. Meanwhile, Chinese platform NetEase Cloud Music also had strong growth and helped contribute to significant growth for the whole of the Chinese streaming market.
2. Revenues Grew Strongly Across The Industry, Especially In the Live Sector
Revenues of 15 of the world’s biggest music companies – across labels, publishers, DSPs and the live sector – grew by 18% in 2023, for a total value of $75.9 billion. “While less than the post-lockdown boom growth of 2022,” the report states, “this is still strong.”
2023’s largest growth sector was live, a function of the fact that “lingering pent-up lockdown interest fostered increased demand, and tickets were both more expensive and sold in larger quantities.” The growth of live was followed by growth of DSPs, which grew by 16% over the last year.
3. Major Labels Dominated, But Lost Market Share To New-Generation Labels
While record labels across the board experienced strong growth in 2023, “non-majors grew the fastest.” More specifically, major labels grew by 7% overall in 2023, with the publicly traded non-majors like HYBY and Believe growing by 17%. Additionally, 57% of HYBE’s revenue was in non-recorded products, compared to 23% for WMG.
“HYBE and Believe grew the fastest,” the report states, “representing the spearhead of a new generation of record labels that pursue revenue streams closely aligned with the dynamics of today’s fan and creator centered music business.”
4. The Top 10 Markets For Electronic Music As Determined By Monthly Spotify Listeners Are:
Germany
United States
Australia
United Kingdom
Brazil
India
Mexico
South Africa
Canada
France
Per the report, Australia is a standout on this list, as the country has 10 times more electronic music listeners than the entire country has people. (In the United States, this ratio is closer to 1:1.) Mexico, India and Brazil represent the newer wave of global electronic music markets, with listener numbers smaller than each country’s total population, which suggests that electronic music culture is still securing a foothold in these territories.
South Africa is also a standout, with nearly twice as many electronic listeners as people. The country’s strong listening figures, the report says, “reflect the degree to which South Africa has built its own electronic scenes and culture.”
5. Electronic Music’s Online Fandom Surged In 2023, Outperforming Other Genres
The genre gained significant followers across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Spotify, and saw vastly more follower growth than rock, hip hop and Latin. This online expansion saw electronic’s following surpass that of rock on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Meanwhle, while hip-hop remains the dominant streaming genre, electronic is getting closer to the stream counts of Latin and rock.
6. Ibiza Clubs Are Still Booming Post-Pandemic
Clubs on the island continued their post-pandemic rebound, with Ibiza club ticketing revenue reaching €141 million (approximately $150 million) in 2023, up 14% from 2022 and 76% from 2019. “The strength of demand,” the report states, “was illustrated by the fact that average ticket prices increased from €44 in 2022 to €51 in 2023.”
In 2019, total ticket revenue across clubs on the island was €80 million ($85 million), with an average of 123 events per venue over the course of the season. In 2023, ticket revenue was €141 million ($150 million), with 147 events per venue.
7. Tech House Remained The Most Popular Dance Genre on Beatport
Like last year, tech house was the digital download platform’s most popular genre. This year, Afro House shot up from being in the 18th spot in the first quarter of 2022 to the ninth spot in the third quarter of 2023. The report notes that this rise “coupled with the rise of South Africa as a leading Spotify market for electronic music, further points to the rising importance of sub-Saharan Africa in electronic music culture.
Beatport’s ten most popular electronic subgenre’s overall were:
Tech House
House
Techno (peak/driving)
Melodic House & Techno
Drum & Bass
Dance/Electro Pop
Deep House
Minimal/Deep Tech
Progessive House
Afro House
8. SoundCloud Maintained Its Position As a Home For Electronic Music
Electronic music genres grew by 24% on SoundCloud in 2023, the second successive year this has happened. The platform is forecasted to have at least another 10% growth of the genre, with the report stating that “SoundCloud is both consolidating and expanding its long-term position as one of the global homes of electronic music fan communities.”
9. There’s an Apparent Perception Gap Regarding The Industry’s Gender Equality Advancements
In a survey of members of the Association For Electronic Music and IMS delegates, 82% of respondents said that the industry was doing well on gender issues related to diversity of lineups and employees. But a survey of male, female and gender expansive industry members found that women and gender expansive creators were more likely than men to be “interrupted, excluded, questioned and judged unfairly.”
Additionally, a tendency among women to undervalue their contributions is reflected in a industry pay gap, with women creators nearly twice as likely as men to discover they are being paid less than their peers in the same or similar roles.
10. The Global Electronic Music Industry Was Worth $11.8 Billion In 2023
Particularly significant growth happened in festivals and clubs, with this sector representing nearly half of the industry total. Recording and publishing were also significant contributors, with music hardware and software making up the next biggest segment — around a quarter of total — although growth in this hardware and software sector was relatively slow in 2023.
Given this $11.8 billion valuation, the report states that “the global dance music business is now firmly in its post-pandemic growth phase.”