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Dolly Parton has long poured her time and talents into Nashville, and now she’s doing it again. The Dollywood Company, a joint venture between Parton and Herschend Enterprises, has acquired a downtown office and retail building located at 211 Commerce Street in Nashville, the company has confirmed to Billboard. “Since the pandemic, commercial real estate […]
Live Nation has expanded its partnership with SoLa Impact’s SoLa Foundation, funding a major investment in SoLa’s second state-of-the-art youth center in L.A. and a program that will provide fully subsidized educational and workforce training opportunities in music and technology.
The touring giant has agreed to finance the completion of the new campus, which will be named SoLa Tech and Entertainment Center Powered by Live Nation. Opening in early 2025, the new 8,500-square-foot technology and entertainment center will be located on the ground floor of the “Crenshaw Lofts,” SoLa Impact’s new 195-unit workforce and affordable housing development located near Crenshaw and Leimert Blvds.
The center will host the 18-week Live Nation Next Gen Program, which offers paid apprenticeships for historically excluded youth (ages 16-21) from South L.A. The program helps students explore entertainment and production careers and learn directly from Live Nation staff and executives about various aspects of live entertainment — from booking to marketing to operations and more. The program, which will work in partnership with Live Nation’s School of Live, will culminate with the group promoting, ticketing and producing a community concert.
“We are incredibly inspired and encouraged by Live Nation’s continued partnership and their commitment to diversity and inclusion in the live music industry and beyond,” said Sherri Francois, SoLa Impact’s chief impact officer and executive director of the SoLa Foundation. “This is another amazing example of the power of mission-aligned corporate and nonprofit partners working together with focus and determination to solve seemingly intractable challenges.”
The new SoLa Tech and Entertainment Center Powered by Live Nation will service more than 1,000 students annually, with a long-term goal to close the socio-economic access gap for careers in the entertainment, science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) fields. Within the music sector, students will also be trained in the business and technology of the live entertainment industry, audio engineering and recording, coding, 3D modeling and animation, graphic design, digital content creation, entrepreneurship, and practical life and career skills. The center will also be a space for cultural, economic and civic events for the wider community.
“Live music isn’t a standard part of most schools and colleges, even though it continues to be a growing industry,” added Michael Rapino, president/CEO of Live Nation Entertainment. “By partnering together with SoLa, kids learn the business of music and we help them get first-hand experience, which unlocks a whole new world of careers, which has been incredible to be part of.”
SoLa Tech and Entertainment Center Powered by Live Nation, set to open in early 2025 in South LA.
Courtesy Live Nation
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) has announced its new Supplemental Matching Network, which consists of five companies that specialize in data matching. This is aimed to help The MLC continue to up its match rate, which is currently at 90%. (According to The MLC, the match rate is defined as the percentage of total royalties processed that were able to match to a registered work in its database.)
The first five companies included in the Supplemental Matching Network are Blokur, Jaxsta, Pex, Salt and SX Works (a SoundExchange company). The list of companies that are part of the network may grow in the future to continue to bolster The MLC’s matching process. The MLC conducted qualitative evaluations of these vendors before choosing to partner with them, including testing the products through pilot programs as well as a “Request for Information.” This is the same process that The MLC has used for other strategic vendors.
While these five vendors will all provide key data to The MLC, the companies do not specifically address the most difficult songs to match: those created by DIY, unsigned songwriters, many of whom are still unaware of The MLC.
“We conducted an extensive due diligence process to select the initial set of vendors for our Supplemental Matching Network,” says Andrew Mitchell, head of analytics & automation at The MLC. “These vendors bring complementary technologies and capabilities that can be effectively leveraged to serve our members. This network reflects our ongoing commitment to evolve in innovative ways to best achieve The MLC’s mission.”
The MLC is a non-profit organization based in Nashville. It was formed as part of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), a landmark law that created a new blanket license for musical work mechanical royalties that greatly simplified the music licensing process for digital services like Spotify, Apple Music and more. It passed in 2018.
Previously, the industry operated on a piecemeal licensing system that was complicated for the services and also the music business, leading to a pool of over $400 million in unallocated streaming royalties because the compositions’ owners couldn’t be found. (This is colloquially known in the business as “black box” money, although The MLC uses the term “historical unmatched royalties.”) The MLC was tasked to implement and administer this new blanket license and distribute the money in this stagnant royalty pool. It officially opened its doors on Jan. 1, 2021.
Learn more about the five new vendors below:
Blokur
A music data and licensing platform that works with music rights owners and online platforms to connect music and companies providing online experiences. It is built on data matching and rights identification technology to ensure accurate payment.
Jaxsta
Jaxsta is a database for music credits, sourced from the official owners of that data. This includes record labels, distributors, publishers and industry associations. It provides recording matching services for PROs, MROs, CMOs and publishers, helping identify recordings to their underlying musical works. They assist in collecting payment for mechanical, performance and synch royalties.
Pex
Pex specializes in content identification and UGC data powering copyright compliance. Pex’s music recognition technology (MRT) is designed to identify works at scale, including modified audio, live versions and cover versions, so rightsholders can capitalize on all of the content they own.
Salt
Salt is a digital royalty collection platform that helps music societies streamline their disjointed music rights and royalty systems into one global network. Salt processes usage, matches ownership and calculates distributions, providing societies with matching and royalty–processing infrastructure
SX Works Global Publisher Services
SX Works Global Publisher Services, a SoundExchange company, provides administration solutions to music publishers, self-published songwriters and organizations who own, represent and/or engage with music to manage their repertoire across the music ecosystem. SX Works’ team and technology provides partners with access to metadata designed to ensure that musical works can be accurately licensed, identified and paid for their usage.
Lil Durk is facing a lawsuit that claims he signed deals with two different entities for the same song rights — a move that one of the buyers now calls a “manifest fraud.”
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Dec. 6) in Manhattan federal court, a fintech firm called Exceed Talent Capital says Durk (real name Durk Derrick Banks) agreed to grant the company the recording royalties from his song “Bedtime” even though he had already signed an exclusive deal with Sony’s Alamo Records.
“Despite defendants’ unambiguous contractual representations and warranties regarding their rights in the Banks recording, Exceed has now learned that Banks previously had assigned to a third party the exact same rights,” the company’s lawyers wrote.
The lawsuit claims that the move by Durk — who reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 earlier this year with his “All My Life” — caused Exceed to incur more than $12 million in damages.
“As defendants have failed and refused to acknowledge any responsibility for their intentional misrepresentations and material contractual breaches, let alone take action to rectify the same, Exceed was compelled to bring the present action to obtain legal redress,” the company wrote.
According to the complaint, Exceed agreed to pay Durk $600,000 for the recording rights to “Bedtime.” The company says it wanted to package Durk’s track into a fractional investment vehicle, which would allow investors to buy the right to receive ongoing royalties to the song.
“Where I’m from, few own anything,” the rapper said in a press release announcing Exceed’s royalties investment product. “As The Voice of the Trenches and for my label OTF, I’m always looking for ways to expand and give back to my people. Exceed makes it possible for my fans to become part of my team and share in our success together.”
But in May, Exceed received a cease-and-desist from Alamo. The label informed the fintech firm that Durk was “signed to an exclusive recording agreement with Alamo” and that he did not possess the right to sell his recording royalties to anyone.
“Rather, as Alamo informed Exceed, Alamo possesses those (and a number of further) exclusive rights pursuant to an agreement that Alamo entered into with Banks [in 2021], well over a year before defendants entered into, respectively, the [agreement with Exceed].”
Exceed says it demanded that Durk either fix the situation or refund $450,000 that had already been paid, but that he “utterly ignored” those requests. The lawsuit says the debacle forced Exceed to cancel the sale after it had already “expended significant time, effort and financial resources” in getting it approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Exceed was compelled … to return the funds that had been invested by third parties in the Offering, further significantly damaging Exceed’s reputation and relationships with its partners and investors,” the company wrote.
Hal Leonard has combined with Muse Group, which is home to digital music tools like MuseScore, Ultimate Guitar and Audacity. Hal Leonard is known as one of the world’s leading brands in sheet music and music education materials. As part of the deal, the two brands will retain their respective headquarters in the USA and Cyprus and their distinct operations. The deal was supported by Francisco Partners, an investor who recently purchased Kobalt and AMRA and has also invested in Native Instruments, iZotope, JKBX and more. Now, musicians can look forward to digitized and interactive formats of Hal Leonard’s arrangements and content via Muse platforms.
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Universal Music Publishing Group has signed Danny L Harle to a global publishing administrative agreement. News of the deal comes just after the release of “Houdini” by Dua Lipa, which he co-wrote and co-produced alongside Kevin Parker, Dua Lipa, TK. He is also a trusted collaborator of Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, Flume, Clairo, Rina Sawayama, PinkPantheress, Lil Uzi Vert, Nile Rogers, Elton John, Shygirl and more, and is up for his first Grammy this year for his contributions to Desire I Want To Turn Into You by Polachek.
Pulse Music Group has joined with Dan Wilson (Adele, Taylor Swift, Weezer, Celine Dion, Nas, Panic! At the Disco, John Legend, Keith Urban) to launch Supermoon Songs. A publishing joint venture, Pulse co-CEO Scott Cutler and vp a&r Annie Aberle played key roles in facilitating the partnership. Wilson’s manager Jim Grant and business partner Rick Markowitz are also co-founders with Dan in Supermoon Songs. The first signing is artist Paul Dally.
Reservoir and Mushroom Music have jointly signed grentperez to a global publishing deal, including his full catalog and future works. Reservoir will work collaboratively with the leading Australia/New Zealand music publishing on all creative and administrative aspects of grentperez’s writing career.
Primary Wave has acquired the master royalties and writer’s share of publishing royalties from Marillion’s Derek “Fish” Dick in a new deal. Best known for 80s hits like “Kayleigh,” “Lavender” and “Incommunicado,” dick was the band’s primary singer and lyricist.
Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Music have jointly signed Driver Williams to a publishing agreement. A songwriter for Eric Church, Luke Combs, Jason Aldean, Morgan Wallen, Jon Pardi, Lainey Wilson, Jackson Dean and others, Williams is also a talented guitarist, holding the position of Church’s lead guitarist since 2005.
Kobalt has signed New Zealand artist and producer 9lives to a global publishing administration deal, including sync and creative services for his existing catalog and future releases. A favorite of artists like Trippie Redd, Rico Nasty, JELEEL!, and more, his production has earned him two No. 1s on Spotify’s viral songs chart.
Universal Music Publishing Group has formed a joint venture with DnB Allstars, a London-based label and events company that specializes in drum and bass music. Notable artists to emerge from DnB Allstars include Vibe Chemistry and Alcemist, and the new JV will include writers like Grace Barton, Elipsa, and Tsuki.
Next Era Music Publishing will now partner with Downtown Music Publishing to streamline the collection and administration of its clients. Representing 45 songwriters and over 7000 titles, Next Era’s catalog will use Downtown for admin globally, apart from Korea and China.
Warner Chappell Music has signed Conexión Divina (Liz Trujillo, Sandra Calixto, and Ashlee Valenzuela), a Gen Z all-female sierreño group, to a global publishing agreement. The news comes just after Conexión Divina’s nomination for Best New Artist at the 2023 Latin Grammy awards.
Brill Building Publishing has signed artist and songwriter Brando to a co-publishing agreement. An independent publishing outfit out of Los Angeles, helmed by executive Benjamin Groff, Brill Building’s signees are administered through Kobalt.
Paul Vogel will step down as Spotify’s chief financial officer on March 31, 2024, the company announced Thursday (Dec. 7). As the streaming giant searches for a replacement, Ben Kung, vp of financial planning and analysis, will take on expanded responsibilities to support “the company’s realignment of its financial leadership team,” the announcement stated. Vogel […]
Universal Music Group (UMG) is proposing a $250 million music and educational complex in Nashville‘s Berry Hill area at a site covering 4.15 acres, including several buildings on Columbine Place and E. Iris Place. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news A rendering of the mixed-use development shows […]
Music tech company Splice has partnered with Billboard to exclusively release key data about what sounds have trended among their usership over the last year. This is the first time the company has made their end-of-year data public.
Since its founding in 2013, Splice has offered music makers a constantly evolving sound library of millions of samples and loops for royalty-free use, ranging widely from kick drum to kopuz (a Turkish string lute) samples. Its sounds are widely used by producers of all sizes — from hobbyists in their bedrooms to the talents making Hot 100 hits with Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift and Travis Scott.
Splice has users in virtually every country around the world, but it is particularly popular in its top ten markets: U.S., U.K., Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Italy and India. 44% of its registered users identify as Gen Z.
To organize its ever-growing library, Splice uses a tagging system, adding genre and subgenre signifiers to help users find the sample they need. Some sounds have multiple genre tags. As the company’s creative director of Splice Sounds, Jay “Capsun” Pulman, explains, “when we have sample packs that are released that are tagged as K-pop, for instance, the vast majority of the time, they’ll be made by an artist, producer, or songwriter who is actively involved in K-pop in some way. They’re involved in that scene. The samples come out of the genre, as opposed to tagging every sound that could be used from Splice and made into K-pop.”
In sharing this data, Pulman, says the company can shine a light on the “very starting point of music making…It shows us the start point of where eventual trends bubble, even before getting to see [the trends] in mainstream hits.”
African Music
Most notably, downloads for sounds tagged as “amapiano,” a South African dance music genre often featuring log drums, are up 826% year-over-year. Its searches are up 309%, and it is trending in 17 cities. In Los Angeles, the highest trending city for the genre, its growth is up 1,003% year-over-year. It is also popular among Atlanta producers, surging 956% in the city this year.
According to Pulman, the discrepancy in downloads versus searches for amapiano suggests that users might not know to look up this nascent genre by name through their search bar. However, they’re still gravitating towards it when it’s featured in other ways on the site. On the Splice home page, the Splice team often creates groupings of sounds for different genres, moods and other categories to entice users to download sounds.
In the last year, African music has become popular on the Billboard charts as stars from the continent like Rema, Burna Boy, and Tems, crossed over into the American mainstream. “Calm Down” by Rema, with an assist from popstar Selena Gomez, peaked at No. 3 this year on the Hot 100 and even made the difficult move to No. 1 on the pop radio airplay chart for five straight weeks. In an acknowledgment of African music’s growth, Billboard launched a dedicated U.S. Afrobeats chart in association with Afro Nation, and Billboard reporters Heran Mamo and Dan Rys frequently cover the latest in the genre with their monthly roundup, Afrobeats Fresh Picks.
Amapiano’s growth on Splice represents the continued proliferation of African music globally. To further fuel growth in trending genres, Pulman says Splice’s Sounds team watches their data carefully and hires musicians native to those genres to amass more authentic samples for the platform to offer its users.
Meanwhile, sounds that are tagged as “afrobeats” or “afropop” have declined by 45%, particularly in African metropolises like Lagos, Nigera. Splice believes this is because “users want authentic sounds from more specific Afro genres rather than generic samples that fall under a larger umbrella.”
Hip-Hop / Rap
Hip-hop remains the most popular genre on Splice, accounting for 19% of total downloads. Still, the genre is down 11% from 2022. This may foreshadow continued difficulties for hip-hop music on the charts. This year was widely considered to be an especially stagnant year for the highly-streamed genre, and that was reflected on the Billboard charts: August 2023 marked a full year since a rap song had been No. 1 on the Hot 100 – the first time this has happened in 23 years.
Splice has found that downloads of trap sounds are down by 14% globally since last year, even in the genre’s birthplace of Atlanta, where those downloads fell by 20%. (Meanwhile, Atlanta saw a 50% growth in techno downloads, a 21% growth in dubstep, and a 20% growth in soul).
Still, 86% of Splice users downloaded a hip-hop sample in 2023, and 57% of Splice users told the company in a recent survey that hip-hop interests them most when searching for samples. Pulman adds that producers who are making hip-hop, for example, might use sounds tagged as other genres in eventually creating hip-hop songs.
Phonk
This year, Splice introduced a tag for phonk music, and so far, the genre has seen growth of 1,246% year-over-year to more than 1 million downloads since the tag first became available. (This percentage is available because Splice says it has retroactively applied the “phonk” tag to older sounds in its catalog, created prior to the tag). Phonk samples are trending primarily in cities like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, and Seoul. The new genre, which sounds like slowed down Memphis rap samples set to lo-fi beats, is especially well-known among gamers and car enthusiasts who are passionate about “drifting.” It is often used by those communities to soundtrack their social media videos. While phonk still isn’t well-known among the general public, it’s gained a much wider reach this year, thanks in part to its inclusion on the latest Fast and Furious mixtape, which was released alongside the franchise’s 10th movie earlier this year.
Electronic / Dance
Dance music genres saw a comeback this year on Splice. The company says drum & bass was one of the fastest growing genres this year, ranking as the 10th most downloaded genre in 2023 with 85% growth year-over-year. Jersey Club, a fast-paced subgenre that fuses elements of house and rap, also saw major growth with a 178% increase in downloads year-over-year. It’s trending in Nashville and six other cities.
Sounds tagged as “U.K. garage” are trending in nine cities Pulman says that while “it’s a fairly niche genre, it has made its way into larger genres like K-pop, for instance.” It also made its mark on Western pop through the work of PinkPantheress.
Various subgenres of house are also growing in popularity on Splice. Downloads for house samples are up 27% overall, and searches for the genre are up 17%.
K-Pop
Sounds tagged as “K-pop” have declined 17.97% on Splice in 2023, but the company states that this “may not be indicative of the genre itself declining,” given that K-pop is an amalgamation of various influences spanning from U.K. garage to trap.
In Seoul, the epicenter of the K-pop industry, Splice has seen sounds from amapiano, phonk, Jersey club, Baltimore club, U.K. garage and big room house trend in the last year.
Latin
Despite breakout stars like Peso Pluma and Grupo Frontera hitting the charts this year, Splice has not seen a notable uptick in the use of regional Mexican samples, including the subgenres ranchera, norteño, banda and mariachi. Splice says this is likely because most regional Mexican music makers do not heavily rely on sampling.
Reggaeton sounds saw 23% growth in downloads year-over-year, making it the 29th most downloaded genre on the platform. Reggaeton’s top city on the platform is Los Angeles, where the genre grew 26% year-over-year.
Sounds tagged as “baile funk,” or “funk carioca,” has also grown this year by 107% globally. This is likely thanks to exposure on TikTok with viral hits like “Automotivo Bibi Fogosa” by Bibi Babydoll, Dj Brunin XM, and KZA Produções and “Tuburao Te Amo” by Dj LK da Escócia, Tchakabum and MC Ryan SP. Downloads for the genre have grown especially quickly in Sao Paulo (92%), Mumbai (179%), Tokyo (81%), and Guadalajara (888%).
Country
Country music is not considered a sample heavy genre, but it is still growing among Splice users. Over the last year, Splice saw downloads for sounds tagged as “country” grow by 67%, while searches are up 21%. This mirrors the genre’s growth on the Hot 100 this year as country hitmakers like Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs, Jason Aldean and Zach Bryan became mainstream stars.
BERLIN — Deutsche Grammophon marked its 125th anniversary in Berlin last night (Dec. 6) at the first of three concerts to celebrate the classical music label’s legacy, as well as its current stars. At the city’s storied Konzerthaus, new signing Joana Mallwitz conducted her orchestra; violinist Bomsori Kim and cellist Kian Soltani performed Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Triple Concerto, and Bruce Liu played the German master’s Choral Fantasy. Liu, one of the label’s rising stars, in 2021 won the International Chopin Competition.
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The Berlin concert will be followed by concerts in Philadelphia and Seoul. The U.S. event, on Dec. 9, will feature María Dueñas, Hélène Grimaud and Moby, who has recently released some work on the label; and in South Korea, on Dec. 15, Vikingur Ólafsson will perform the “Goldberg Variations.”
“To this day, Deutsche Grammophon is home to the biggest classical stars of their time,” said Frank Briegmann, chairman and CEO of Universal Central Europe and Deutsche Grammophon, at a reception before the concert. “It is the guardian of a cultural treasure of incredible proportions.”
Deutsche Grammophon, a cultural institution in the classical music world, is the oldest operating record company. It was founded in 1898 by Emile Berliner, a German Jew who moved to the U.S. and in 1887 patented the “Gramophone,” a technology for recording and reproducing sound by engraving and tracing it with a stylus – initially on a cylinder and then on a flat disc. After licensing the rights to manufacture his invention, he sent his nephew, Joseph Sanders, to open a German subsidiary, which severed its relationship with the parent company in 1914.
In 1941, the company was purchased by Siemens & Halske, a corporate ancestor of today’s Siemens company. Over the next two decades, Deutsche Grammophone became known for its distinctive yellow logo and high-fidelity classical music recordings that were marvels of technology at the time and are still considered iconic today. As its rival recording companies shifted toward pop, Deutsche Grammophone focused on classical, and then also contemporary music. In 1962, Siemens formed a joint venture with the Dutch company Philips to run the company that became PolyGram International – which in 1999 was purchased by what was then the parent company of Universal Music Group and merged with it.
The company’s catalog, reputation and logo still endure, and about a year ago it launched Stage+, a high-fidelity subscription streaming service that includes access to performances on video. The label’s anniversary concerts will be shown on the service.
“Nothing has changed,” said label president Dr. Clemens Trautmann, referring to the company’s record for using the new technology of the time. “And everything has changed.”
Channel Tres, Lizzy McAlpine and SG Lewis have all left their manager, Talya Elitzer, and Godmode, the boutique firm she co-founded, sources tell Billboard.
Channel Tres is now co-managed by William Robillard-Cole (Kaytranada) and Jerry Edouard (Saint Mino), sources tell Billboard. McAlpine has found a new manager in Molly Clark, who was formerly her day-to-day manager at Godmode and has now left the company as well, sources also say.
Elitzer declined to comment on the departures. The artists and their new managers also declined to comment.
Elitzer co-founded the independent firm in the early 2010s with producer Nick Sylvester. Prior, she worked as an A&R at Capitol Records. Channel Tres signed with Godmode for management in 2018. Last September, Godmode partnered with RCA to sign the artist to a major label deal. Since then, he has released one EP, this year’s Real Cultural Shit. His new single, “Walked In The Room,” arrives Thursday (Dec. 7).
Lewis and McAlpine both signed on as management clients this year, in April and May, respectively, on the heels of major successes. SG Lewis released his second album AudioLust & HigherLove in January, which featured Channel Tres, Tove Lo and others. It peaked at No. 13 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
As for McAlpine, her breakout hit, “Ceilings,” marked her Hot 100 debut in February. By March, it became her first No. 1 on a Billboard chart, summiting Alternative Streaming Songs. This September, she collaborated with Noah Kahan on a duet rendition of his song “Call Your Mom,” while in October she joined Reneé Rapp on stage to perform “For Good” from Wicked.