Business
Page: 25
Assembling a show for the technological mecca that is Las Vegas’ Sphere is a head-spinning process for any artist and their team. But CAA agent Ferry Rais-Shaghaghi and Sphere Entertainment vp of live Erin Calhoun worked side by side to help create the buzzy, boundary-pushing run by melodic techno artist Anyma, who became the first electronic act to play the venue when he kicked off a residency there in late December that ran through early March.
Booking an electronic artist had been a priority, particularly given that the right artist would, Calhoun says, “be able to leverage all of Sphere’s experiential technologies in a new, compelling way.” Anyma (born Matteo Milleri) had been on the Sphere team’s radar for years, and over time, it became clear that his international appeal, futuristic music and strong preexisting visual identity made the Italian American artist the perfect choice.
Rais-Shaghaghi says that for him and the rest of Anyma’s team, Calhoun became “the point person for us to navigate everything.” In the year or so it took to produce the show — titled Afterlife Presents Anyma ‘The End of Genesys’ — Calhoun and Rais-Shaghaghi formed, he says, “an incredible business relationship that became a friendship with someone we trusted and felt comfortable going to and having the difficult conversations we needed to have.”
Trending on Billboard
Through these conversations, the team created huge and viral moments, like the scene where a character falls through space, creating a wild, lightly dizzying effect for the audience. They also made a pair of cello-playing robots that helped bring Anyma’s melodies to life. Calhoun says such elements “highlighted the way technology combines with artistry to make for an unforgettable experience.” Milleri developed the visual feast of a show himself alongside Anyma’s longtime visual creative director/lead computer graphics artist Alessio De Vecchi and head creative Alexander Wessely.
Rais-Shaghaghi and his team leveraged their network and hype around the residency to book support acts — “We looked at them more as guests,” he says — for the run that included Peggy Gou, John Summit, Solomun, Amelie Lens, Charlotte de Witte and Tiësto, giving each night a mini-festival feel.
And when issues inevitably arose during production, Rais-Shaghaghi says Calhoun “would always help us in navigating it within her ecosystem and [figuring out] how we could get to the finish line. Erin is firm, but she knows how to get the results she needs without burning bridges. She’s also really good at being a team player, understanding the artist’s creative process and direction and being the voice between the artist and the owner of [Madison Square Garden] in finding that middle ground.”
“We were completely aligned on the overall goal here: to blow everyone away with stunning visuals, next-level sound and an unparalleled live experience,” Calhoun adds. “Every move we made was side by side, which is how we approach every artist playing our venue. The vision is led by the artist, and we do everything we can to make it happen. Ferry is so passionate and was hands-on throughout the entirety of the run.”
This shared mission was ultimately a huge success, with the 12-night residency drawing more than 200,000 fans from around the world. The first eight dates alone sold 137,000 tickets and grossed $21 million, although Rais-Shaghaghi says money is ultimately beside the point.
“Obviously, as agents, we have to look at how we make our clients win financially,” he says, “but more so, it’s about how we can do things where the promoter wins, the fans win and the artists feel that they created an experience that had a high impact.”
This show is clearly one such instance. “From the performers onstage to the fans in the crowd,” Calhoun says, “everyone wanted more, more, more.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Universal Music Group has announced the expansion of two of its most storied labels — Deutsche Grammophon and Blue Note Records — into greater China, marking a significant move to tap into the country’s rapidly growing classical and jazz music scenes.
“At UMG, we are committed to supporting the development of diverse music cultures around the world,” said Adam Granite, UMG’s executive vice president of market development. “The launch of Deutsche Grammophon China and Blue Note Records China reflects this vision in action and marks a meaningful step forward in the evolution of our multi-label operations in the market.”
Announced at an event in Shanghai this week, Deutsche Grammophon China will focus on discovering and promoting new classical talent across China, plus provide artists with access to UMG’s global resources, including recording, international promotion and touring. Chinese musicians Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and Long Yu will serve as artistic advisors, guiding the label’s artistic direction.
Trending on Billboard
DG China’s debut release, Bach: The Cello Suites by acclaimed cellist Jian Wang, is set for May 23. Additionally, DG China will collaborate with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra to record and release the complete Shostakovich Symphonies by 2029, celebrating the orchestra’s 150th anniversary.
Dr. Clemens Trautmann, president of Deutsche Grammophon, highlighted the label’s growing presence in China over the past decade and noted that the partnership with Blue Note and the involvement of international artists underscore UMG’s global reach and creative ambition. “We are proud to co-invest in the future generation of outstanding classical performers from Greater China, together with our esteemed colleagues at UMGC to foster the success of amazing new talent across recording, touring and brand partnerships,” Trautmann said.
Stacy Yang, Timothy Xu, Dr Clemens Trautmann and Adam Granite in Shanghai.
Courtesy Photo
Blue Note Records China is set to champion original jazz talent within the country, beginning with its inaugural signing: INNOUT, an avant-garde duo known for fusing improvisation, modern jazz, and experimental soundscapes. This partnership underscores the label’s commitment to bold, boundary-defying artistry.
BNRC is also partnering with JZ Music, a key player in China’s jazz scene, to promote live performances, tours, and festivals.
Don Was, president of Blue Note Records, praised INNOUT’s visionary talent and expressed excitement about launching the label’s Chinese chapter with their music. “Xiao Jun and An Yu are two of the most talented and visionary musicians I’ve ever met,” Was said. “Their music is going to ‘blow people’s minds’ all over the world. It’s a thrill and an honor to be able to launch Blue Note Records China with their music.”
A group of legal scholars say Drake’s lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” is “dangerous” because it will have a “chilling effect” on hip-hop and encourage prosecutors to use rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases.
Filed in January, Drake’s case claims that UMG defamed him by releasing Lamar’s scathing diss track, which tarred the Canadian rapper as a “certified pedophile.” He says that millions of people took that lyric literally, severely harming his reputation.
But in a legal brief filed in the case on Wednesday, a group of professors from the University of California, Irvine School of Law say that Drake’s argument is “not just faulty—it is dangerous.”
Trending on Billboard
“Drake’s complaint rests on the assumption that every word of ‘Not Like Us’ should be taken literally, as a factual representation,” professors Charis E. Kubrin, Jack Lerner, Adam Dunbar and Kyle Winnen write in the court filing. “[We] urge this court to recognize the danger that assumption poses.”
Diss track lyrics are a creative artform that are understood by listeners not as “factual arguments or a series of news reports,” the professors write, but as “hyperbole, bluster, and demonstrations of disrespect” that are “designed to entertain and impress their audience.”
The professors warn that the consequences of endorsing Drake’s literal interpretation of Kendrick’s lyrics would extend far beyond his case – including to the long-controversial practice of using lyrics as evidence in criminal cases against rappers.
“When courts ignore rap music’s history and artistic conventions, the effect is to deny rap the status of art and instead to flatten lyrics into literal confessions or statements of specific intent,” write the UCI professors. “This problematic treatment has introduced racial bias and unfair prejudice in countless criminal cases [and] has created a demonstrable chilling effect across the industry.”
The use of rap music as criminal evidence has been widely criticized, both because it threatens the right to free speech and can sway jurors by tapping into racial bias. One empirical study – authored by Kubrin and Dunbar – found that listeners who viewed violent song lyrics responded more negatively if they believed they came from a rap track than if they were told the exact same lyrics came from a country or heavy metal song.
Over the past few years, the practice has drawn backlash from the music industry and led to efforts by lawmakers to stop it, including a landmark California statute. But it has persisted in high-profile instances – including Young Thug’s gang case in Atlanta and briefly in Lil Durk’s federal murder-for-hire case.
Moving to dismiss Drake’s lawsuit, UMG has argued that Lamar’s lyrics are “rhetorical hyperbole” — the kind of statement that might sound bad but cannot actually be proven false. Since defamation only covers false assertions of fact, statements of hyperbole can’t form the basis for such cases.
In making that argument, UMG has pointed to Drake’s own public support for a 2022 petition criticizing prosecutors for using rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases. That letter, also signed by Megan Thee Stallion, 21 Savage and many other stars, criticized prosecutors for treating lyrics as literal statements of fact.
“As Drake recognized, when it comes to rap, ‘the final work is a product of the artist’s vision and imagination,’” UMG’s lawyers write. “Drake was right then and is wrong now.”
A rep for Drake’s legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on the arguments made by the professors.
LONDON — A number of vital grassroots music venues in the U.K. are set to come under shared ownership in the second phase of a new community-led project.
The Music Venue Properties, the Charitable Community Benefit Society (CBS) created by Music Venue Trust (MVT), seeks to protect grassroots venues by placing them into community ownership and outside of commercial leases with landlords.
Seven grassroots music venue will be included in the next phase of the project: Esquires, Bedford; The Sugarmill, Stoke-on-Trent; The Joiners; Southampton, The Croft, Bristol; Peggy’s Skylight, Nottingham; The Lubber Fiend, Newcastle; The Pipeline, Brighton. The community share offer, which will open on May 15, 2025 and close on July 31, 2025.
The first phase of the Own Our Venues initiative ran in 2023, and raised £2.88m ($3.83m) to secure the ownership of a number of venues across the U.K., including The Bunkhouse in Swansea, Wales, and The Snug in Atherton, England.
Trending on Billboard
An accompanying press release says that the scheme offers a “cultural lease,” that far exceeds the traditional 18 month commercial lease that these venues must operate within. The statement adds, that these cultural leases “ensure fair, sustainable rent, annual contributions toward essential maintenance, and ongoing support in areas such as financial sustainability and operational best practice.”
Ricky Bates, venue operator of The Joiners, Southampton said of the next phase of the program, “We welcome Music Venue Properties’ ownership of our building as the only real solution to securing one of the most important live music venues in the UK. For almost 60 years, The Joiners has been a vital part of the UK touring circuit and a creative cornerstone of Southampton, but today its future is uncertain. Our lease expires this year, our landlord is retiring and, while the venue is rich in history, the building is over 200 years old and in need of care.
“In today’s economy, it simply isn’t viable for us as individuals to purchase the property but, with the support of the Own Our Venues campaign and the wider music community, we can secure The Joiners for the next 60 years and beyond. Be part of this historic moment—get involved and help protect grassroots music for generations to come.”
It’s the latest move by the U.K. music scene in the fightback against closures of independent venues and to support grassroots musicians. On Wednesday (May 14), the team behind The Leadmill in Sheffield, England said that their eviction appeal had been unsuccessful and that they have three months to vacate the premises. The building’s landlord, the Electric Group, runs a number of venues in the U.K. already, including London’s Electric Brixton, Bristol’s SWX and Newcastle’s NX. Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp and Coldplay are among the legendary artists to play The Leadmill over the years.
With more than 2,000 attendees converging on Atlanta for the annual Music Biz conference at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel and Convention Center Galleria, Music Business Association president Portia Sabin opened day 2 by reminding everyone of the “guiding belief” behind the Music Business Association and its conference — while revealing the conference will return to Atlanta next year.
“We’re all better together,” Sabin proclaimed. “We know we can achieve success and overcome any challenge in our way when we come to the table with open minds, foster collaboration, and develop solutions that truly support one another.”
Sabin pointed out that the music industry has become truly global in the past several years and, corresponding to that, international music companies now comprise one-fifth of Music Biz’s membership. What’s more, she said 15% of the attendees at this year’s conference (which runs from May 12-15) are from outside the U.S: “That’s 250 individuals, representing 168 companies and over 30 countries, ranging from Vietnam and Australia, to Japan and Egypt,” she said.
Trending on Billboard
In order to better represent its membership and the global music industry, “we’ve embraced this shift by hosting our virtual Passport series — free webinars that dissect issues in music markets across the globe — as well as expanding our traveling Roadshow series with our first international event in Toronto this past March,” Sabin added.
Finally, Sabin pointed out that in preparing to hold the conference in Atlanta over the last year, Music Biz hosted a number of mixers and meetups to “build relationships with Atlanta’s vibrant music business community. Most recently, we partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Entertainment and Nightlife for an event at City Hall, to connect local & global music professionals and preview some of the programming we offer at our conference.”
After holding the convention for the last 10 years in Nashville, the Music Biz conference is going on the road again, just like its antecedent organization, the National Assn. of Recording Merchandisers, did for decades by moving the annual convention to various cities. However, Sabin revealed that Atlanta will host the convention again next year, too, while thanking the city and the hotel for supporting it.
“Thank you to the team here at the Renaissance for making this year’s event possible, and to the city of Atlanta for being such gracious hosts ever since we announced plans to bring our conference here in 2025 and 2026,” Sabin said at the beginning of her remarks to attendees.
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura wrapped up her direct testimony against the rap mogul on Wednesday (May 14), telling jurors that Combs threatened to blow up Kid Cudi’s car and revealing the dollar amount of a bombshell settlement that set off the sex-trafficking probe.
Ventura, an R&B singer who dated Combs on and off for 11 years, is the star witness in Combs’ criminal trial. She’s been on the witness stand since Tuesday (May 13), testifying that Combs physically abused her and forced her to have sex with male escorts during drug-fueled events known as “freak offs.”
In her final day of direct testimony, Ventura reportedly told the jury that Combs became enraged when he discovered she was dating Cudi (Scott Mescudi) in 2011, according to The New York Times, which also reported that Ventura testified that Combs lunged at her with a wine opener and threatened to release freak off videos and hurt both her and Mescudi.
Ventura also said that Combs threatened to blow up Mescudi’s car, the Times reports, and that she soon broke things off with Mescudi out of fear.
“Too much danger, too much uncertainty of what could happen if we continued to see each other,” Ventura reportedly testified.
Ventura alleged in a November 2023 civil lawsuit that Mescudi’s car did, in fact, explode in his driveway a short while after Combs’ threats. Combs has not been officially linked to the incident.
Ventura’s civil lawsuit, the first major public accusation against Combs, was also a key topic during her final day of direct testimony. Though Combs settled with Ventura after a single day, the case sparked the criminal probe that led to the current trial and a deluge of other civil sex abuse lawsuits against Combs.
The dollar amount of Ventura’s settlement was kept confidential and long unknown to the public. But according to the Times, Ventura revealed for the first time during her testimony Wednesday that the settlement amounted to $20 million.
Ventura is scheduled to undergo cross-examination by Combs’ lawyers starting Thursday (May 15). The trial could last up to two months total.
SoundCloud CEO Eliah Seton has today (May 14) published an open letter clarifying the company’s position on AI.
This letters follows backlash that happened last week after AI music expert and founder of Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, posted about SoundCloud’s terms of service quietly changing in February 2024 to allow the platform the ability to “inform, train, develop or serve as input” to AI models.
In his letter, Seton repeats what SoundCloud shared in a statement last week, noting that the platform “has never used artist content to train AI models. Not for music creation. Not for large language models. Not for anything that tries to mimic or replace your work. Period. We don’t build generative AI tools, and we don’t allow third parties to scrape or use artist content from SoundCloud to train them either.”
The letter then goes on to directly address the 2024 Terms of Services changes, which were done, Seton writes, “to clarify how we may use AI internally to improve the platform for both artists and fans. This includes powering smarter recommendations, search, playlisting, content tagging and tools that help prevent fraud.”
Trending on Billboard
But he acknowledges that “the language in the Terms of Use was too broad and wasn’t clear enough. It created confusion, and that’s on us. That’s why we’re fixing it.” He write that the company is revising the Terms of Use to make it “absolutely clear” that “SoundCloud will not use your content to train generative AI models that aim to replicate or synthesize your voice, music, or likeness.” He notes that the Terms of Service updates will be reflected online in the coming weeks.
Seton adds that given the rapidly changing landscape, “If there is an opportunity to use generative AI for the benefit of our human artists, we may make this opportunity available to our human artists with their explicit consent, via an opt-in mechanism. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we have a responsibility to give our human artists the opportunities, choices and control to advance their creative journeys.”
Finally, he notes that the platform is “making a formal commitment that any use of AI on SoundCloud will be based on consent, transparency and artist control.”
Read his complete letter here.
After taking a few years off, the irreverent and one-of-a-kind podcast Promoter 101 is back and dropping hot takes on the concert business like it’s 2018 all over again.
Understanding why music manager Luke Pierce and Live Nation promoter Dan Steinberg revived their podcast is nearly as complex as understanding why they stopped in the first place. When they shelved the show in 2020, shifting priorities and the increasingly complicated post-pandemic concert industry played a major role. But what surprised Steinberg most was that no one stepped in to capitalize on their absence.
“We thought that we’ve been talking for quite a while, and maybe there was another voice; maybe if we got out of the way and somebody else wanted to speak up and fill that void,” Steinberg says.
Trending on Billboard
But no one did — and Steinberg and Pierce believe that’s partly because the concert business has only grown more complex in the wake of the pandemic, especially with the rise of dynamic pricing and nine-figure tour grosses. While they plan to keep the show’s popular interview format, they also intend to dive deeper into topics like ticket pricing and the reasons behind the sharp rise in concert costs in the post-pandemic era.
“I think it’s a mistake to say the promoters are outpricing the market,” Steinberg said. ” I think the managers are setting the prices. The artist may say they want more money, but I think that call is usually the manager, and it’s their job to direct that, and most artists leave that to the manager and the agent to figure out. I don’t know the promoters that want a more expensive ticket — more often, the promoter is trying to bring the ticket price down.”
Pierce added that there’s a “good swath of working artists that have priced themselves out of the middle class of live music.”
In the months immediately following the reopening of concert venues, fans were spending significant money on concerts and live experiences, making up for time lost during the pandemic. That period was followed by what Pierce calls a “burnout period” that’s happening “right now.”
“While fans return to some of their pre-pandemic behaviors, you know, artists continue to kind of tour at peak levels, and I think that will cause some problems with soft tours and unsold inventory,” he said. The result is a “top-heavy touring ecosystem, where the middle is kind of getting squeezed out a little bit, and I think it’s something artists and their teams really need to be cognizant of.”
The pricing problem will become more acute in the next 24 months based on what happens with the economy, Pierce adds, noting that “we just saw GDP figures come out, and the contraction of the U.S. economy is certainly not a great sign. Paying attention and making adjustments to your business is prudent right now.”
“Put more simply, the demand in the post-pandemic environment was enormous because we couldn’t do anything for a while, and we got free money from the government for a little bit, and nowhere to spend it,” Pierce says. “But that has to reset somewhere along a sensible trend. And I think it’ll be challenging for some people to figure out what that looks like.”
Steinberg notes that while the festival market will need to make some adjustments to navigate a tough economic climate, he remains optimistic about its long-term potential.
“Festivals are not done, it’s just a competitive space,” Steinberg says. “And they’re for younger people. And so there’s always going to be a cooler festival with a more cutting-edge lineup. But festivals can come back from a bad year. Coachella had some rough years, but they came back. Bonnaroo definitely had some tougher years, but they have come back. It’s very cyclical.”
One real challenge festivals face, Pierce notes, is “headliner fatigue, due to a lack of inventory of headliners.” Artists can make more money touring, especially artists playing arenas and stadiums, where they can deliver “the exact experience they want their fans to have, and that’s a better business decision for them, top to bottom.”
Steinberg and Pierce plan to release one new Promoter 101 episode each month and have launched a refreshed brand identity, complete with updated logos and artwork, to mark their return. Their comeback episode, No. 230, features interviews with Paladin Artists agents Steve Martin, Andy Somers and Chyna Chuan. The latest episode is available now at promoter101.net.
Justin Baldoni’s lawyers claim Blake Lively asked Taylor Swift to delete text messages and used “extortionate threats” to try to get a statement of support from the pop superstar in the It Ends With Us legal battle — accusations, attributed to an anonymous source, that Lively’s lawyers say is “categorically false.”
The salacious allegations come in a court filing Wednesday (May 14) from attorney Bryan Freedman, who represents Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios in litigation with Lively over dueling claims that include allegations of sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation.
On Monday (May 12), Swift’s longtime lawyers at the firm Venable told a judge that Baldoni sent them a subpoena for no good reason. Now, Freedman claims he actually does have a good reason: he wants to dig into accusations from an unnamed source that Lively tried to engage in “witness tampering and evidence spoliation” to get Swift on her side in the case.
Trending on Billboard
“The Wayfarer parties’ counsel are informed and believe, based on information from a source who is highly likely to have reliable information, that (i) Ms. Lively requested that Taylor Swift delete their text messages; (ii) Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr, counsel for the Lively defendants, contacted a Venable attorney who represents Ms. Swift and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that, if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively’s possession would be released,” writes Freedman.
“The Wayfarer parties’ counsel are further informed and believe that a representative of Ms. Swift addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats in at least one written communication transmitted to Mr. Gottlieb,” Freedman continues. “It is those communications that the Wayfarer parties seek to obtain by way of subpoena, as they would evidence an attempt to intimidate and coerce a percipient witness in this litigation.”
Freedman’s letter does not identify his anonymous source or explain how this person allegedly came to know about Lively and her attorney Michael Gottlieb‘s communications, nor does it cite any evidence. Freedman did not immediately return a request for more details.
Gottlieb quickly released a fiery statement denying the claims on Wednesday.
“This is categorically false,” Gottlieb writes. “We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality. This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties’ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process.”
Gottlieb adds that his team “will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”
Reps for Swift did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Swift’s camp previously criticized Baldoni for trying to drag her into the dispute, saying she had no involvement in It Ends With Us and that her name was being thrown around to “draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”
Lively alleges in the case that Baldoni, her co-star and director on the movie released last summer, sexually harassed her on set and then orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her after she complained.
Swift was brought into the fray when Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation and claimed that the actress leveraged her relationship with a “megacelebrity friend,” presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us.
Baldoni’s legal filing includes text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by “Ryan and Taylor,” seemingly referencing Swift and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her “most trusted partners” and compared them to the “dragons” in the show Game of Thrones.
“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni’s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”
At the Music Biz 2025 conference in Atlanta, the “Let’s Get Physical” segment opened with a panel featuring Luminate’s director of partnerships, Chris Muratore, who shared the latest industry insights around the continued success of Record Store Day.
One of Muratore’s slides pointed out that in the last 10 years, there have only been a dozen weeks in which album sales reached the 1 million unit mark, and Record Store Day was responsible for five of those weeks, with most of the other million-selling weeks coming during the year-end holiday season.
Staying with the panel’s theme of updating the industry on “Indie Retail Sales Data,” Muratore explained how Luminate — which shares a parent company with Billboard, Penske Media — has evolved its approach since partnering with StreetPulse to gather data from independent record shops.
Trending on Billboard
Muratore — who was joined by Coalition of Independent Music Stores executive director Andrea Paschal and StreetPulse CEO John Weston on the panel — began with a brief history lesson, explaining how Luminate’s predecessor, SoundScan, first began tracking indie retail data back when physical music was the only game in town. At the time, around 300 independent stores reported sales. However, the weighting system used to extrapolate sales for the entire indie sector hadn’t been updated since it was first implemented in 1991.
When Luminate began its collaboration with StreetPulse in 2024, it was only after it had made the controversial decision to end weighting for indie stores at the end of 2023, resulting in widespread industry resistance.
By June 2024, Luminate struck a deal to collaborate with StreetPulse on collecting indie retail sales data and assembled a dedicated data team to develop a new, more flexible and efficient weighting model to replace the outdated system. As part of the partnership, Luminate initially gathered sales reports from 200 indie stores, with the number growing to around 250 stores by the end of 2024, according to Muratore.
For her part, Paschal acknowledged that Music Biz president Portia Sabin “was very involved in bringing us all together.”
Muratore noted that, through its partnership with StreetPulse, Luminate continues to expand its network of reporting stores, now surpassing 400 locations contributing sales data. “We think we have identified another 100-plus stores to bring on by the end of the year, so we will have over 500 stores reporting sales,” he said.
In order to get to 500 stores, Weston thanked labels and distributors for pointing out retailers that should be added. Then, speaking to store owners, he pointed out that one of the challenges is that every store owner runs their business “a little different.” “There is a reason you are called independent because you are all different,” he noted. “So if you are not reporting to us and want to, we need to know what kind of POS system you have.”
While Luminate may reach 500 reporting stores — roughly one-third of the estimated 1,500 independent U.S. shops selling new physical music — by year’s end, that one-third likely represents about two-thirds of total physical sales volume. Conversely, the remaining two-thirds of stores that aren’t yet reporting likely account for just one-third of the volume. “That’s because we know who the tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 stores are,” Muratore explained.
Also, as Luminate and StreetPulse add stores, the new weighting system is flexible enough to accommodate the new ones coming on without distorting the sales picture.
Using the new weighting system, Luminate apparently backfilled the weighted numbers back to the beginning of last year because Muratore reported that in 2024, while physical sales were 77.8 million, the largest segment was indie retail, which collectively sold 23 million album copies of vinyl and CDs, representing 36% of physical sales.
Breaking it down, Muratore noted that of the 44.4 million vinyl albums tracked by Luminate in 2024, independent retailers accounted for 17.3 million — roughly 36%. And indie retail continues to gain ground, particularly in vinyl sales: In just the first four months of 2025, indie stores were responsible for 5.7 million of the 13.1 million vinyl units sold, representing 44% of total sales, he said.
As for CD sales, last year indie stores collectively accounted for 5.4 million of total U.S. sales of 32.9 million CD copies, or 17% of CD sales. So far this year, indie stores account for 1.8 million units of the 8 million CD sales recorded so far — or 22% of CD sales.
Focusing on Record Store Day, Muratore emphasized the importance of recognizing who’s buying physical music today. Unlike the early days of the vinyl revival, he noted, it’s no longer just older people driving sales of physical music — and Record Store Day clearly reflects that shift.
Muratore reported that the top three Record Store Day 2025 titles were Taylor Swift’s “Fortnight” single featuring Post Malone, which led with 59,000 copies sold; Malone’s Tribute to Nirvana with 12,000 copies; and Gracie Abrams’ Live From Radio City Music Hall, which moved 11,000 units.
Muratore further emphasized the shift toward a younger demographic in physical music buying, noting that a recent Luminate consumer survey found that 25% of vinyl purchasers are under the age of 25. He went on to urge labels and music distributors to make sure “they put the right product out for who the consumer is for physical,” adding that the younger physical music buyers wanted Swift and the Wicked soundtrack album.
“We have to pay attention to who is showing up in the stores because it has changed drastically,” Muratore said. “If there were more allocation, this could have been the biggest Record Store Day ever.”