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Global music sales grew for the ninth consecutive year in 2023, with recorded music revenues increasing in every market and region, and across almost all formats, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) Global Music Report 2024.
Total revenues climbed to $28.6 billion, a rise of just over 10% on the previous year, and the second highest growth rate on record after 2021’s 18.5% year-on-year spike.
2023’s total sales figure is the highest level since 1999 — when IFPI first started compiling global music revenues and sales totaled $22.2 billion — on an absolute dollar basis, not accounting for inflation. Piracy and declining physical sales saw the market bottom out at $13 billion in 2014.
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Driving last year’s growth was an 11.2% rise in paid streaming subscription revenue, which totaled $14 billion, up from $12.7 billion in 2022, and accounted for almost half (48.9%) of global music sales.
The rise in global paid streaming revenue comes after many of the leading streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Deezer, all raised their subscription prices in key territories over the past 12-18 months. For the majority of streaming services, the hikes were their first price rises since launching more than a decade ago.
Despite the rising cost for consumers, the number of music streaming subscribers continues to grow globally, with IFPI reporting that the number of paid subscriptions to streaming services surpassed 500 million for the first time in 2023.
When shared usership and family accounts are considered, there are now more than 667 million users of paid subscription accounts globally, says the London-based organization, up 13% from the 589 million recorded in the previous 12 months.
Total streaming revenues, comprising of paid subscription and advertising-supported tiers, rose 10% to $19.3 billion to make up 67% of worldwide recorded music sales, roughly flat with last year’s share of the market.
Nevertheless, streaming’s year-on-year growth continues to slow as a result of its already high penetration of the global music market. In 2021, total streaming revenues spiked 24% year-on-year. In 2022, the rate of growth had more than halved to 11.5%.
Sales Up Across All Formats
Although streaming continues to dominate global music revenues, 2023 also saw strong gains in physical record sales and performance rights revenues. Combined CD and vinyl revenues grew for a third consecutive year to $5.1 billion, up 13% on 2022’s total, with Asia generating almost half (49%) of all physical revenues worldwide.
IFPI attributed the region’s continued dominance of the physical market to strong sales of K-pop acts such as boyband Seventeen, who topped IFPI’s 2023 global album charts with FML and also had the year’s eighth best-selling album with follow-up set SEVENTEENTH HEAVEN.
In terms of market share, physical accounted for just under 18% of the overall market last year, marginally up from 17.5% in 2022 but still down on 2021’s share.
Performance rights revenue, meanwhile, climbed 9.5% to $2.7 billion, representing 9.5% of global revenues, while sync income was up 4.7% to $632 Million, representing 2.2%.
The only formats to record a decline in 2023 were digital downloads and what IFPI classifies as other (non-streaming) digital formats, which fell by 2.6% to $900 million, representing just 3.2% of the global market.
“The figures in this year’s report reflect a truly global and diverse industry,” said IFPI chief financial officer and interim joint head John Nolan in a statement accompanying the report.
Nolan said the strong rise in paid streaming subscribers worldwide, as well as services’ price increases, contributed “significantly” to overall revenue growth. He also said the music industry’s recovery from its lows of a decade ago wouldn’t have been possible without “record companies’ sustained investment in artists and their careers.”
According to IFPI figures, record companies invest $7.1 billion each year globally in A&R and marketing alone. They are also paying out more money than ever before to artists, said IFPI, with label payments to musicians increasing by 96% between 2016 and 2021, versus a 63% rise in record company revenues.
No Change in the Global Top 10 Music Markets, With U.S. Still On Top
In terms of world markets, IFPI said that music revenues were up in all of the 58 markets it tracks, with the U.S. retaining its long-held No. 1 position with music sales growing 7.2%, compared to 4.8% growth last year.
Japan holds steady in second place with sales growing 7.6% in 2023. The third and fourth-biggest markets for recorded music remain the United Kingdom (+8.1%) and Germany (+7%), respectively.
The rest of the top 10 is made up of China (+25.9%), representing the fastest rate of increase in any top 10 market, followed by France (+4.4%), South Korea (percentage not provided), Canada (+12.2%), Brazil (+13.4%) and Australia (+11.3%). (IFPI’s free-to-access report does not provide market-by-market revenue breakdowns).
Those cross-market gains are mirrored on a regional basis with revenues from the U.S. and Canada region up 7.4%.
Combined, the U.S. and Canada region accounts for almost 41% of global recorded music revenues, reports IFPI, while Latin America — where streaming makes up 86% of the market — saw growth of 19.4%, far outpacing the global growth rate and representing the 14th consecutive year of revenue growth in the region.
Europe remains the second-biggest region for music sales, accounting for more than a quarter (28%) of global revenues and growing 8.9% year-on-year. In third place is Asia, where revenues rose by almost 15% in 2023, driven by strong gains in physical and digital sales.
Once again, the fastest-growing market region was Sub-Saharan Africa, which recorded a 25% rise in music sales, largely driven by increased take up of paid subscription services (up by just under a quarter) and the thriving South African music market, which grew by almost a fifth and contributed more than three quarters of the region’s revenue.
Revenues in the Middle East and North Africa, where streaming holds a 98% share of the recorded music market, rose by almost 15%.
(IFPI uses current exchange rates when compiling its Global Music Report, restating all historic local currency values on an annual basis. Market values therefore vary retrospectively as a result of foreign currency movements, says IFPI, which represents more than 8,000 record company members worldwide, including all three major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.)
Transformation Underway
Present at the Global Music report’s launch in central London were senior executives from all three major labels, as well as Konrad von Löhneysen, founder and director of Germany-based independent Embassy Of Music. Leila Oliveira, president of Warner Music Brazil, also participated in the event via video call from Rio.
Reflecting current industry trends, the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the record business, and particularly risks around generative AI, was a key topic of conversation among the speakers.
“The reality is that we’re at the beginning stages of another transformational event for the music industry,” said Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business at Sony Music Entertainment.
“While I’m enthusiastic about where the evolution will lead, it is essential that we find new products and new business models around these technologies to ensure the future of human creativity can be invested in, and that creators can be rewarded,” Kooker said.
He subsequently warned: “We must also fight the position that too many companies want to take to ignore copyright and intellectual property rights, and use our content without permission or without proper compensation.”
Adam Granite, executive vp of market development at Universal Music Group, said that while AI used “in the service of artists is wonderful,” AI that uses musicians’ work “without authorization and compensation is not.”
“We believe it’s perfectly possible to develop and adopt AI technology while also ensuring artists rights are protected,” said Granite, citing UMG’s recent partnerships with Roland Corporation and YouTube on AI initiatives as industry-led developments that give “artists a seat at the table and will help safeguard their rights” as more AI products enter the music business.
Shares of Abu Dhabi-based music streaming company Anghami soared 59% on Wednesday (March 20) after an SEC filing showed media company MBC Group has taken a 13.7% stake in the company. Anghami rose as high as $1.79 before closing at $1.59. Trading volume spiked to 11.3 million shares, over 300 times its daily average.
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Saudi Arabia-based MBC Group bills itself as “the largest and leading media company in the Middle East and North Africa.” Founded in London in 1991 as a satellite TV channel, MBC Group’s properties now include 13 free-to-air TV channels, three radio stations and Shahid, a leading Arabic streaming platform. MBC Group also owns MBC Studios, a content production house, and MBC Academy, an educational and training platform.
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The two companies already had a marketing partnership that renewed in 2022. The partnership gives Anghami exposure across MBC Group’s programming. MBC Group “create[s] new opportunities for rising music talent,” Fadel Zahreddine, Group Director of Emerging Media at MBC GROUP, said at the time, “and we continue to inspire upcoming musicians by encouraging platforms like Anghami to give them the creative space to publish their premium music content.”
Investors appeared to take MBC Group’s ownership stake as a positive sign that Anghami would have the financial and promotional resources to build a profitable business. Anghami shares have fallen 86% since its Feb. 4, 2022 debut on the Nasdaq. The company was warned by the Nasdaq exchange in Nov. 2023 for trading under the $1 threshold for the previous 30 days. The Nasdaq gives companies 180 days to regain compliance or face delisting from the exchange. Anghami said it would “consider available options to cure the deficiency,” including a reverse share split.
Wednesday’s closing price is well below the valuation of two recent investments in Anghami, however. Anghami received a $5 million strategic investment from SRMG in Aug. 2023 that valued Anghami at $2.50 per share. A Nov. 2023 deal with OSN Group that valued Anghami at $3.65 per share — and caused Anghami’s share price to jump 97% to a 52-week high of $3.11 — will provide Anghami with the OSN+ video streaming platform and result in an investment up to $50 million.
Anghami shares traded as high as $16.80 in April 2022 but have fallen 86% below the $11.00 closing price on its first day of trading on Feb. 4, 2022, after merging with Vistas Media Acquisition Company, a special purpose acquisition company. In the 55 trading days in 2024, Anghami has closed below $1.00 29 times.
In the first nine months of 2023, Anghami had 1.73 million subscribers and adjusted revenue of $30 million, up 8% year over year. The company has not yet announced full-year 2023 results.
If you believe everything you read — and the state of U.S. politics suggests that, unfortunately, many people do — private equity has replaced money as the root of all evil. The truth, as usual, is a bit more complicated.
The latest piping hot take comes from The New York Times opinion section, in a piece that argues that “private equity is destroying our music ecosystem.” (No, not the ecosystem!) The problem seems to be that private equity, which often loads companies up with debt and can be unrealistic in its goals for returns — this much is true, although it’s not clear that public companies or other sources of capital are better — is “gobbling up the rights for old hits and pumping them back into our present.” This sounds downright grotesque, what with the gobbling and the pumping and so on, but it’s really just an ostentatious way to say that companies with money are buying creators’ rights as an investment.
This is bad for the ecosystem, the Times says, because the investors behind these deals — the most prominent example in the piece is Primary Wave’s purchase of 50% of Whitney Houston’s music and other rights — promote the songs they own in a way that somehow squeezes out new music. If that’s the case, though, they’re doing a terrible job of it. In 2023, a full 48% of U.S. on-demand audio streaming came from music released between 2019 and 2023, according to Luminate. A Billboard analysis of 2021 music consumption in the United States showed that music from after 2010 accounted for 78.7% of on-demand streaming, music released in or after 2000 accounted for 90% and all music recorded before 1980 accounted for fewer streams than Drake.
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This idea that new music is losing ground to old songs seems to come from a misunderstanding of catalog music, which consists of tracks released more than 18 months ago. The market share of catalog has never been higher — it was 72.6% last year, up from 65.1% in 2020, and it was much lower before streaming took off. But while many people associate catalog with classic rock — AC/DC, the Eagles and the ’60s and ’70s acts that dominated the category in the CD era — that’s an outdated idea. The music that drives this category isn’t that “deep catalog,” but rather what many executives call “shallow catalog” — releases from the last five or 10 years, often from artists who are still active. Some journalists see the size of some private equity deals and jump to the conclusion that classic rock is killing new music. Even by music business standards, though, this is bad math. When it comes to on-demand streaming, Drake isn’t only bigger than the Beatles — he’s more popular than all the music from the ’60s, plus the ’70s and the ’50s, combined.
The Times opinion essay gets the trend backward: Private equity doesn’t make songs popular, it buys songs that are steady in the popularity they already have. Even before music streaming got big, some investors realized that classic songs generate steady royalties that are far less vulnerable to market cycles than most assets. U.S. songwriters got more interested in selling their rights after 2006, when the IRS began to treat income from catalog sales as a capital gain, which is subject to a lower tax rate than personal income from publishing royalties. Streaming simply smoothed out the peaks and valleys of reissue revenue into predictable returns that appeal to investors — especially for songs that have stood the test of time.
Although private equity invests in song catalogs, it rarely manages them, and most of the executives who do come from the music business. (At least some of what they do now is not so different from what they did then.) For that matter, most of the ways the opinion piece says investors are “building extended multimedia universes around songs” aren’t quite as new as they seem. The Monkees and Alvin and the Chipmunks were both “multimedia universes” in their day, as was Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley PTA,” a country hit (for Jeannie C. Riley) that inspired a movie, a TV show, Spanish and Norwegian translations, and a sequel song. Nicki Minaj built her hit “Super Freaky Girl” around Rick James’ “Super Freak” — with encouragement from the 50% owner Hipgnosis Songs Fund, according to the Times — but James’ song was the basis for a hit back in the CD era. Remember “U Can’t Touch This?” Hammer time?
The radical thing about on-demand streaming is that most of the music ever made is now easily available, in a way that its popularity can be measured by consumption rather than purchase. And it has become clear that music from the last few years is more popular with listeners than industry executives thought, especially relative to brand-new and older music. When older songs do blow up big on streaming services, it often has less to do with promotion than serendipity — Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” returned to the Hot 100 in 2020 after a TikTok video of a skateboarder went viral and Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill hit No. 3 two years later after Stranger Things music supervisor Nora Felder decided it would be the perfect song to use as a plot device. And although many adults consider those songs classics, one reason they became hits again is that, from the perspective of younger fans, they are new. Isn’t this a good thing?
There are plenty of problems with streaming, including its low payments to most creators and the difficulty of breaking new acts. But neither of these has anything to do with private equity — the first comes from the way royalties are distributed and the reluctance of consumers to pay more for subscriptions, while the latter has more to do with how hard it is to stand out amid the sheer volume of new music that comes online every day. More serious discussion about these issues is important, but lamenting the fact that important creators earn so much money for the rights to their work isn’t the right way to start it.
Another Planet Entertainment is opening a new 2,150-capacity venue in Sacramento in early 2025, company president of concerts & festivals Allen Scott announced today (March 20), establishing a foothold in one of California’s fastest-growing metro markets. Named Channel 24 because of both its proximity to the Sacramento and American rivers, and its location on 24th […]
In an unusual ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a California appeals court has rejected Metallica’s lawsuit demanding that its insurance company pay for more than $3 million in losses stemming from concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision, issued Monday (March 18) by California’s Court of Appeal, said that six COVID-cancelled 2020 shows in South America were not covered by Metallica’s insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London, thanks to a clear exclusion in the contract for any losses stemming from “communicable diseases.”
The legendary rock band had argued the case should have gone to trial, since a jury could have decided that non-COVID reasons led to the cancellations. But Justice Maria Stratton, improbably citing Swift, said it was “absurd to think that government closures were not the result of Covid-19.”
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“To paraphrase Taylor Swift: ‘We were there. We remember it all too well,’” the justice wrote. “There was no vaccine against Covid-19 in March 2020 and no drugs to treat it. Ventilators were in short supply. N-95 masks were all but non-existent. Patients were being treated in tents in hospital parking lots. The mortality rate of Covid-19 was unknown, but to give just one example of the potential fatality rate, by late March, 2020, New York City was using refrigerated trucks as temporary morgues. People were terrified.”
Metallica’s case is one of many that have been filed by musicians, venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by the outbreak of COVID-19, which led to months of severe travel restrictions, forced closures and bans on large gatherings.
But like Metallica’s case, the majority of those lawsuits have thus far been won by insurers. Many policies included express carveouts for problems caused by diseases, like the one in the band’s contract; other policies, like many for brick-and-mortar businesses, often required “physical damage” that’s tricky to show with a pandemic shutdown.
The biggest such case in the music industry is a sweeping lawsuit filed by Live Nation, seeking coverage from Factory Mutual Insurance Co. for more than 10,000 shows (encompassing a whopping 15 million tickets) that were canceled or postponed during the pandemic. After a judge refused to dismiss Live Nation’s allegations in 2022, the case remains pending.
Metallica sued Lloyd’s of London in June 2021 after the insurer refused to cover their losses stemming from the South American tour, which had been set to kick off on April 15, 2020, but was postponed when the governments of Argentina, Chile and Brazil imposed strict restrictions amid the worsening pandemic.
Court documents show that in May 2020, the band submitted a loss of $3,234,569 stemming from the cancelled shows, covering things like $184,996 in payroll for retained crew members. But citing the disease exclusion, the insurer quickly denied the claim: “Unfortunately we have to advise that no coverage is afforded for this matter under this Policy,” the company wrote in a June 2020 response letter.
In December 2022, a Los Angeles judge rejected Metallica’s case and the various arguments for why Lloyds should have paid for the concerts — including ruling that the cancellations were caused by travel restrictions that were “a direct response to the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic.”
Appealing that decision, Metallica argued that a jury might have found a different cause for the concert cancellations. The band’s attorneys pointed to the fact that venues later reopened and the shows were performed in 2022, “despite the ongoing presence of COVID.”
But in her ruling Monday, Justice Stratton said that argument missed the mark. With the advent of vaccines and more information, “much had changed” by the spring of 2022.
“People were in a position to make a more accurate cost-benefit analysis of restrictions versus potential illness,” the justice wrote. “The fact that governments chose to lift restrictions at that point, two years after COVID-19 was first discovered, does not in any way call into question their reasons for imposing travel restrictions early in the pandemic.”
The judge also rejected various other arguments from Metallica, like the claim that the policy did not cover COVID cancellations because it did not specifically use the term “virus”: “The insurance policy definition of communicable disease does not refer to any pathogens nor does it limit the exclusion to only those communicable diseases caused by specific pathogens.”
Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment.
The National Music Publishers’ Association’s SONGS foundation has announced its latest board of directors, including both songwriters and publishing executives.
The SONGS (Supporting Our Next Generation of Songwriters) Foundation was founded by the publishing trade organization in 2015 as a way to support aspiring songwriters, offering scholarships and direct financial assistance to help kickstart their careers in addition to other partnerships. With the new board, the foundation announces that it will be centering its focus in the coming year on helping songwriters with mental health, wellness and financial advisory services.
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Artist and songwriter Jewel will be returning to the board this year. She will be joined by fellow songwriters and new members Justin Paul and Benj Pasek (Kobalt), Dan Wilson (UMPG), Lauren Christy (Reservoir), Allison Russell (Concord), Jordan Reynolds (Warner Chappell), Gaby Moreno (peermusic) and CAM (Sony Music Publishing).
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The executives joining the board include some of the biggest names in the publishing business, some of which are already part of the NMPA‘s board of directors. Those include Sony Music Publishing chairman/CEO Jon Platt, Warner Chappell Music co-chair/COO Carianne Marshall, Reservoir founder/CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi, peermusic president/COO Kathy Spanberger, BMG executive vp/general counsel Keith Hauprich, Concord chief publishing officer Jim Selby, Kobalt head of creative Alison Donald, and Universal Music Publishing Group executive vp/co-head of A&R Jennifer Knoepfle. The NMPA’s leadership team of president/CEO David Israelite, executive vp/general counsel Danielle Aguirre and senior vp of external affairs Charlotte Sellmyer will retain their seats on the board.
“We are thrilled to bring together this level of talent, experience and insight onto one board for the sole purpose of helping songwriters,” said Israelite, who is also the president of the SONGS Foundation, in a statement. “The foundation has achieved a great deal, but there is so much more we can and will do for creators with the guidance of this unparalleled group.”
The board will officially launch during its annual fundraising golf tournament in Los Angeles on April 15.
There is no shortage of AI voice synthesis companies on the market today, but Voice-Swap, founded and led by Dan “DJ Fresh” Stein, is trying to reimagine what these companies can be.
The music producer and technologist intends Voice-Swap to act as not just a simple conversion tool but an “agency” for artists’ AI likenesses. He’s also looking to solve the ongoing question of how to monetize these voice models in a way that gets the most money back to the artists — a hotly contested topic since anonymous TikTok user Ghostwriter employed AI renderings of Drake and The Weeknd‘s voices without their permission on the viral song “Heart On My Sleeve.”
In an exclusive interview with Billboard, Stein and Michael Pelczynski, a member of the company’s advisory board and former vp at SoundCloud, explain their business goals as well as their new monetization plan, which includes providing a dividend for participating artists and payment to artists every time a user employs their AI voice — not just when the resulting song is released commercially and streamed on DSPs. The company also reveals that it’s working on a new partnership with Imogen Heap to create her voice model, which will arrive this summer.
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Voice-Swap sees the voice as the “new real estate of IP,” as Pelczynski puts it — just another form of ownership that can allow a participating artist to make passive income. (The voice, along with one’s name and likeness, is considered a “right of publicity” which is currently regulated differently state-to-state.)
In addition to seeing AI voice technology as a useful tool to engage fans of notable artists like Heap and make translations of songs, the Voice-Swap team also believes AI voices represent a major opportunity for session vocalists with distinct timbres but lower public profiles to earn additional income. On its platform now, the company has a number of session vocalists of varying vocal styles available for use; Voice-Swap sees session vocalists’ AI voice models as potentially valuable to songwriters and producers who may want to shape-shift those voices during writing and recording sessions. (As Billboard reported in August, using AI voice models to better tailor pitch records to artists has become a common use-case for the emerging technology.)
“We like to think that, much like a record label, we have a brand that we want to build with the style of artists and the quality we represent at Voice-Swap,” says Stein. “It doesn’t have to be a specific genre, but it’s about hosting unique and incredible voices as opposed to [just popular artists].”
Last year, we saw a lot of fear and excitement surrounding this technology as Ghostwriter appeared on social media and Grimes introduced her own voice model soon after. How does your approach compare to these examples?
Pelczynski: This technology did stoke a lot of fear at first. This is because people see it as a magic trick. When you don’t know what’s behind it and you just see the end result and wonder how it just did that, there is wonder and fear that comes. [There is now the risk] that if you don’t work with someone you trust on your vocal rights, someone is going to pick up that magic trick and do it without you. That’s what happened with Ghostwriter and many others.
The one real main thing to emphasize is the magic trick of swapping a voice isn’t where the story ends, it’s where it begins. And I think Grimes in particular is approaching it with an intent to empower artists. We are, too. But I think where we differentiate is the revenue stream part. With the Grimes model, you create what you want to create and then the song goes into the traditional ecosystem of streaming and other ways of consuming music. That’s where the royalties are made off of that.
We are focused on the inference. Our voice artists get paid on the actual conversion of the voice. Not all of these uses of AI voices end up on streaming, so this is important to us. Of course, if the song is released, additional money for the voice can be made then, too. As far as we know, we are the first platform to pay royalties on the inference, the first conversion.
Stein: We also allow artists the right to release their results through any distributor they want. [Grimes’ model is partnered exclusively with TuneCore.] We see ourselves a bit like an agency for artists’ voices.
What do you mean by an “agency” for artists’ voices?
Stein: When we work with an artist at Voice-Swap we intend to represent them and license their voice models created with us to other platforms to increase their opportunities to earn income. It’s like working with an agent to manage your live bookings. We want to be the agent for the artists’ AI presence and help them monetize it on multiple platforms but always with their personal preferences and concerns in mind.
What kinds of platforms would be interested in licensing an AI voice model from Voice-Swap?
Stein: It is early days for all of the possible use cases, but we think the most obvious example at the moment is music production platforms [or DAWs, short for digital audio workstation] that want to use voice models in their products.
There are two approaches you can take [as an AI voice company.] We could say we are a SaaS platform, and the artist can do deals with other platforms themselves. But the way we approach this is we put a lot of focus into the quality of our models and working with artists directly to keep improving it. We want to be the one-stop solution for creating a model the artist is proud of.
I think the whole thing with AI and where this technology is going is that none of us know what it’s going to be doing 10 years from now. So for us, this was also about getting into a place where we can build that credibility in those relationships and not just with the artists. We want to work with labels, too.
Do you have any partnerships with DAWs or other music-making platforms in place already?
Pelczynski: We are in discussions and under NDA pending an announcement. Every creator’s workflow is different — we want our users to have access to our roster of voices wherever they feel most comfortable, be that via the website, in a DAW or elsewhere. That’s why we’re exploring these partnerships, and why we’ve designed our upcoming VST [virtual studio technology] to make that experience even more seamless. We also recently announced a partnership with SoundCloud, with deeper integrations aimed at creators forthcoming.
Ultimately, the more places our voices are available, the more opportunities there are for new revenue for the artists, and that’s our priority.
Can some music editing take place on the Voice-Swap website, or do these converted voices need to be exported?
Pelczynski: Yes, Dan has always wanted to architect a VST so that it can act like a plug-in in someone’s DAW, but we also have the capability of letting users edit and do the voice conversion and some music editing on our website using our product Stem-Swap. That’s an amazing playground for people that are just coming up. It is similar to how BandLab and others are a good quick way to experiment with music creation.
How many users does Voice-Swap have?
Pelczynski: We have 140,000 verified unique users, and counting.
Can you break down the specifics of how much your site costs for users?
Pelczynski: We run a subscription and top-up pricing system. Users pay a monthly or one-off fee and receive audio credits. Credits are then used for voice conversion and stem separation, with more creator tools on the way.
How did your team get connected with Imogen Heap, and given all the competitors in the AI voice space today, why do you think she picked Voice-Swap?
Pelczynski: We’re very excited to be working with her. She’s one of many established artists that we’re working on currently in the pipeline, and I think our partnership comes down to our ethos of trust and consent. I know it sounds trite, but I think it’s absolutely one of the cornerstones to our success.
As artificial intelligence and its potential effects on creativity, copyright and a host of other sectors continues to dominate conversation, the Universal Music Group and electronic instruments maker Roland Corporation have teamed up to create a set of guidelines that the companies published under the heading “Principles for Music Creation With AI.”
The seven principles, or “clarifying statements,” as the companies put it, are an acknowledgment that AI is certainly here to stay, but that it should be used in a responsible and transparent way that protects and respects human creators. The companies say that they hope additional organizations will sign on to support the framework. The seven principles, which can be found with slightly more detail at this site, are as follows:
— We believe music is central to humanity.
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— We believe humanity and music are inseparable.
— We believe that technology has long supported human artistic expression, and applied sustainably, AI will amplify human creativity.
— We believe that human-created works must be respected and protected.
— We believe that transparency is essential to responsible and trustworthy AI.
— We believe the perspectives of music artists, songwriters, and other creators must be sought after and respected.
— We are proud to help bring music to life.
The creation of the principles is part of a partnership between UMG and Roland that will also involve research projects, including one designed to create “methods for confirming the origin and ownership of music,” according to a press release.
“As companies who share a mutual history of technology innovation, both Roland and UMG believe that AI can play an important role in the creative process of producing music,” Roland’s chief innovation officer Masahiro Minowa said in a statement. “We also have a deep belief that human creativity is irreplaceable, and it is our responsibility to protect artists’ rights. The Principles for Music Creation with AI establishes a framework for our ongoing collaboration to explore opportunities that converge at the intersection of technology and human creativity.”
Universal has been proactive around the issue of AI in music over the past several months, partnering with YouTube last summer on a series of AI principles and an AI Music Incubator to help artists use AI responsibly, forming a strategic partnership with BandLab to create a set of ethical practices around music creation, and partnering with Endel on functional music, among other initiatives. But UMG has also taken stands to protect against what it sees as harmful uses of AI, including suing AI platform Anthropic for allegedly using its copyrights to train its software in creating new works, and cited AI concerns as part of its rationale for allowing its licensing agreement with TikTok to expire earlier this year.
“At UMG, we have long recognized and embraced the potential of AI to enhance and amplify human creativity, advance musical innovation, and expand the realms of audio production and sound technology,” UMG’s executive vp and chief digital officer Michael Nash said in a statement. “This can only happen if it is applied ethically and responsibly across the entire industry. We are delighted to collaborate with Roland, to explore new opportunities in this area together, while helping to galvanize consensus among key stakeholders across music’s creative community to promote adoption of these core principles with the goal of ensuring human creativity continues to thrive alongside the evolution of new technology.”
Spotify paid out $9 billion in music royalties in 2023, with $4.5 billion going to independent artists. That huge pool of money is divvied up amongst hundreds of thousands of artists — some wealthy enough to live without royalty checks while many others need streaming to help keep their lights on.
The number of artists who made at least $10,000 in royalties from Spotify rose 16% to 66,000, according to the company’s latest Loud & Clear report released Tuesday (Mar. 19). That was twice the growth rate in artists earning at least $10,000 as the 8% uptick seen in 2022 when that number rose to 57,000.
The number of artists who reached other thresholds also increased at a higher clip in 2023 than in 2022. Last year, the number of artists who made $100,000 from Spotify in 2023 rose 15% to 11,600, compared to 10,100 the prior year, when the number was up 6%. And there were 1,250 artists who generated over $1 million from Spotify in 2023, an 18% increase from 1,060 in 2022 when the $1 million club grew by just 2%.
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The company’s fourth annual Loud & Clear report provides an update on the company’s goal of allowing 1 million creators the opportunity to make a living from their art, a statement that goes back to CEO Daniel Ek at the company’s 2017 investor day presentation. How much an artist requires to pay the bills will vary by country, but it’s safe to say Spotify isn’t allowing 1 million artists to quit their day jobs and be working musicians.
Nevertheless, the number of artists who made what could be called a substantial amount of royalties on the platform continues to grow. The number of artists who made $10,000 from Spotify (66,000) last year was 2.8 times the 23,400 who reached that level in 2017. Compared to 2017, the number of artists who reached the $100,000 threshold in 2023 (11,600) was 2.7 times higher; and the number of artists who earned $1 million (4,300) last year was also 2.7 times higher. Over that period, Spotify’s annual revenue grew 3.2 times, rising from 4.1 billion euros ($4.6 billion) to 13.2 billion euros ($14.3 billion), according to the company’s financial statements.
By Spotify’s own estimate, the universe of working musicians is much larger than the 66,000 artists who earned $10,000 last year. The company says there are 225,000 emerging or professional recording artists globally. Separately, 235,000 artists have released at least 10 songs in their careers, a group that averages at least 10,000 monthly listeners.
Loud & Clear makes a point of highlighting how independent artists can make a living from streaming royalties. Last year, a quarter of the 66,000 artists in the $10,000 club were self-distributed through do-it-yourself platforms such as DistroKid and TuneCore. Unlike artists signed to record labels, self-distributed artists can pocket the entirety of their streaming royalties minus any distribution fees. Artists signed to labels may make more overall than independent artists, but they earn a fraction of the total receipts and must repay advances and marketing and promotion expenses.
Another Loud & Clear point of emphasis is that streaming is benefitting artists around the world. Indeed, the global nature of streaming platforms means music can easily travel from any corner of the globe to a mature streaming market where a high proportion of paid subscribers provides attractive royalties compared to ad-supported platforms. Of the 66,000 artists who generated at least $10,000 in Spotify royalties in 2023, more than half are from countries where English is not the first language. That’s not surprising given that Spotify is available in 184 countries and territories and has a major presence in large markets — such as India, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and France — with strong local, non-English music scenes.
To get a sense of which artists might be in Spotify’s $1 million club, Billboard examined a list of Luminate’s top 1,000 U.S. artists ranked by audio on-demand streaming. The list includes some young artists who have found success in the streaming era — such as Jelly Roll (No. 66), The Neighbourhood (No. 102) and PinkPantheress (No. 144) — and rely on streaming royalties more than more established artists with greater touring success.
Many of the top streaming artists are older musicians who earn far more from touring than streaming royalties: Fleetwood Mac (No. 54), George Strait (No. 97), AC/DC (No. 110), Elton John (No. 125), P!nk (No. 128), Billy Joel (No. 169), Journey (No. 172), Motley Crue (No. 395) and Garth Brooks (No. 489), among many others.
The top 1,000 list also includes bands that broke up long ago or haven’t released new music in decades: the Beatles (No. 49), Queen (No. 87), Nirvana (No. 112), Creedence Clearwater Revival (No. 134), Led Zeppelin (No. 151), Abba (No. 318), Bee Gees (No. 328), The Smiths (No. 341) and the Grateful Dead (No. 444). Those music royalties are undoubtedly welcomed, but these artists are certainly secure financially without them.
Other top-streaming artists are deceased: Juice WRLD (No. 15), 2Pac (No. 89), Frank Sinatra (No. 109), Elvis Presley (No. 146), Notorious B.I.G. (No. 150), Bob Marley (No. 167), Johnny Cash (No. 245), Dean Martin (No. 336), Prince (No. 362), Jimmy Buffet (No. 425), Tom Petty (No. 428), David Bowie (No. 441) and John Denver (No. 470).
Some artists don’t even pocket their Spotify royalties because they’ve sold their rights to investors. Katy Perry (No. 82) sold her recorded music catalog to Litmus Capital. Kenny Chesney (No. 157) sold a majority stake in his recorded music catalog to Hipgnosis Song Management. Jason Aldean (No. 50) sold a portion of his recorded music catalog to Spirit Music Group. Primary Wave acquired a 50% stake in Whitney Houston’s master recording revenue. The list of contemporary artists who sold their publishing rights is long; the list also includes Future (No. 12), Bruno Mars (No. 57), Imagine Dragons (No. 58) and Metro Boomin (No. 132).
Artists in the $1 million club are outliers, however. Anyone fortunate enough to be earning $1 million a year from Spotify already makes a good living from touring, merchandise, sponsorships and other areas. The point of Loud & Clear is to highlight the financial opportunities Spotify provides to those artists the report calls the “most dependent on streaming as part of their livelihood.” For that middle class of artists, streaming pays much better than it used to. While only a small fraction of 1 million artists can say they make a living from Spotify, the number rises every year.
Six months after Sam Smith and Normani beat a copyright lawsuit over their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger,” a federal judge is refusing to force their accuser to reimburse their legal fees — a bill the stars say exceeded $700,000.
Smith and Normani have argued that they shouldn’t be forced to foot the huge bill they incurred fending off the “frivolous and unreasonable” lawsuit, which claimed the duo had copied a little-known 2015 song of the same name when they created “Dancing.”
While U.S. District Judge Wesley L. Hsu dismissed the lawsuit last year, he ruled Monday (Mar. 18) that the case was not so completely baseless as to warrant punishing the accuser with paying the stars’ massive legal bill.
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“Plaintiff’s claims were neither frivolous nor objectively unreasonable,” the judge wrote, calling the lawsuit a “close and difficult case” on a “contentious area of copyright law.”
Attorneys for Smith and Normani had argued that the lawsuit was merely a “gamble,” filed against the stars with “hopes for a massive payout.” But Judge Hsu said Monday there was “no evidence” of such ill intent by the accusers.
The case was filed in 2022 by songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi, who claimed that “Dancing” was “strikingly similar” to their 2015 same-named track. In their complaint, they said it was “beyond any real doubt” that the song had been copied.
But in September, Judge Hsu said it was, in fact, very much in doubt. Granting Smith and Normani’s motion for an immediate ruling ending the lawsuit, the judge said the songs simply were not similar — and he criticized the plaintiffs for manipulating them to make them appear more alike.
“Permitting copyright plaintiffs to prevail … by rotating chords, recalibrating the tempo, and altering the pitch of a defendant’s song so that it sounds more similar to the plaintiffs’ would lead courts to deem substantially similar two vastly dissimilar musical compositions,” the judge wrote at the time.
Unlike most forms of American litigation, winners in copyright lawsuits are often able to legally recover the money they spent on lawyers fighting the case. Judges grant such requests in cases where a lawsuit shouldn’t have been filed or was litigated too aggressively, and fee awards can serve as a powerful deterrent against future questionable lawsuits.
In an October motion seeking $732,202 in fees, attorneys for Smith and Normani argued that Vincent, Miranda and Banlaoi’s case had been exactly the kind of pointless lawsuit that needs to be deterred. They argued that the songwriters and their lawyers had used aggressive tactics to advance faulty copyright claims that would be bad for all musicians.
“Plaintiff sought to monopolize unprotectable elements that are common property to all,” Smith and Normani’s lawyers wrote at the time. “Claims like Plaintiff’s here threaten to cheat the public domain and curtail the creation of new works.”
But in Monday’s ruling, Judge Hsu was not persuaded. He called Smith and Normani’s arguments “generic reasoning” that would lead to many such awards in future copyright lawsuits.
“Yes, Plaintiff’s counsel aggressively litigated the case,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff’s conduct in this litigation does not rise to the level that calls for deterrence.”
Judge Hsu did rule that Smith and Normani could recover their legal “costs” from the plaintiffs, but such awards are typically far smaller than awards of attorney’s fees. In earlier court filings, attorneys for Smith and Normani calculated such costs at $10,173.
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday (Mar. 19).