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SM Entertainment, home to such K-pop stars as aespa and RIIZE, promoted Tak Young-jun to co-CEO alongside existing CEO Jang Cheol-hyuk, the company announced Wednesday (March 27). Tak was also named executive director of the company’s board. Tak, who joined SM Entertainment in 2005, has served as COO since May 2023. Prior to that, he […]
Back in the 1980s and even the 1990s, Spanish artists like Raphael, Julio Iglesias and Camilo Sesto were hugely popular both in Latin America and among U.S. Latin audiences — a situation replicated in the 1990s and 2000s by the likes of global superstars like Mecano and Alejandro Sanz, both of whom hailed from Spain. […]
The Brooklyn Paramount, Live Nation‘s new 2,700-capacity venue in downtown Brooklyn, opens its doors Wednesday (March 27) with its first show: A headlining performance by Damian and Stephen Marley.
The concert kicks off an inaugural season at the venue that will bring artists including PinkPantheress, Oneohtrix Point Never, Waxahatchee, Norah Jones and Sting to its stage in the coming months.
For Live Nation, Brooklyn Paramount fills a gap in the New York market between the promoter’s two 1,100-capacity clubs, Manhattan’s Irving Plaza and Brooklyn’s Warsaw, and its 3,500-capacity outdoor venue, The Rooftop at Pier 17.
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“It was my journey for the last 10 years, finding this exact capacity within our pipeline of venues in New York City, because it was the one that we were missing,” says Stacie George, senior vp of Live Nation Northeast. “Now we have a home for artists in between those two stages [of development].”
The Brooklyn Paramount concourse.
Evan Joseph
The addition of Brooklyn Paramount to Live Nation’s portfolio allows the promoter to better compete with AEG and its regional affiliate The Bowery Presents, which operates three venues across the city — Webster Hall, Brooklyn Steel and Terminal 5 — that range in capacity from 1,500 to 3,000, as well as Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s Beacon Theatre (2,900 capacity). And, taken in conjunction with Live Nation’s Manhattan clubs Mercury Lounge and Bowery Ballroom, which hold about 250 and 600, respectively, Brooklyn Paramount now creates a clear path for an artist in Live Nation’s ecosystem from small rooms all the way up to the 5,000-capacity Central Park Summerstage, with which the promoter inked an exclusive booking partnership in late 2022.
“We want an artist, manager, agent to feel that we invest in their artist all the way from the beginning,” George says. “We want to grow with your artists and continue to give them amazing venues to play at. Your hope is always that you retain that relationship and that history.”
That doesn’t only apply to artists “on their way up” to the arena level but “on their way down”: “We want to be with them across their full journey and long musical career,” George says.
Brooklyn Paramount’s concert space from the back of its floor.
Evan Joseph
Brooklyn Paramount’s new chapter is just the latest in its rich, nearly century-long history. First opened in 1928, the venue hosted seminal artists including Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly throughout the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Long Island University (LIU) purchased the space in 1954 and, shortly after, converted it to a gymnasium. Nearly a decade ago, LIU began working to renovate the dormant theater; the venue’s re-opening is the culmination of a five-year planning, design and construction process by Live Nation.
For George, one of Brooklyn Paramount’s strongest assets is its location, which is immediately accessible by several subway lines and the Long Island Rail Road. And she expects the venue’s fusion of old Brooklyn history — its Rococo ceiling is among the many design details the renovation preserved — and modern amenities to attract fans and artists alike. For the former, the venue offers multiple high-end cocktail bars and a VIP balcony and lounge (Ella’s, taking its name from Fitzgerald). For the latter, Brooklyn Paramount provides spacious artist accommodations with showers, a workout space and even a game room with Pac-Man and a pinball machine.
From a production standpoint, the theater has parking space for three buses. “In New York, that’s a luxury,” George says with a laugh. “Half the time the buses have to drive to, like, New Jersey to park at a Walmart, because they can’t park in front of the venue.”
Ella’s VIP lounge at Brooklyn Paramount.
Evan Joseph
In terms of booking, Brooklyn Paramount plans to continue to program a spectrum of genres in keeping with its initial calendar and to satisfy the diverse clientele it’s courting. While the venue was designed primarily as an all-general-admission space, some shows, like the multi-night runs by Jones and Sting, will be seated. Brooklyn Paramount has already announced more than 60 shows through October, and George says it has locked in an additional 50 that have yet to be unveiled.
Several hundred guests received a first look at the venue — “this beautiful masterpiece,” as George puts it — on Tuesday night at its re-opening preview party, with live music including a DJ set by St. Vincent in Ella’s. “Seeing people walk in and just have that ‘wow’ moment — that’s exciting,” George says.
A rapper popular on TikTok must pay Sony Music more than $800,000 in damages for using a copyrighted sample without permission, a federal judge ruled Wednesday (March 27), saying that the big fine would teach him a six-figure “lesson” about “carefully selecting the materials included in his raps.”
Sony sued Trefuego (real name Dantreal Daevon Clark-Rainbolt) in 2021, accusing him of using a “blatant” sample from a 1986 Japanese instrumental song in his “90mh” — a track that Sony claimed had been featured in 155,000 TikTok videos and streamed 100 million times on Spotify.
After struggling to locate him, a federal judge ruled last year that the 20-year-old rapper had, in fact, infringed Sony’s copyrights. And in a follow-up ruling Wednesday, that same judge ordered him to hand over a whopping $802,997 — covering roughly $700,000 he earned in profits from Spotify and other platforms, and approximately $100,000 he would pay Sony in licensing fees.
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“The court hopes this case will serve as a $802,997.23 lesson for defendant in carefully selecting the materials included in his raps,” U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman wrote in his decision.
The judge also ordered Trefuego to pay ongoing royalties, including a 50% cut of publishing revenue and a 20% cut of recording revenue, and to repay $2,230 in legal costs incurred by Sony.
“Sony pursued a reasonable, non-frivolous claim to vindicate infringement of its copyrighted work,” Judge Pittman wrote. “Some may query the wisdom of pursuing a claim against a relatively small fish like Trefuego, but that fact does not render Sony’s motivation improper or their lawsuit unreasonable.”
Sony has been chasing Trefuego in some form since January 2021, when the company notified him that it believed “90mh” was built on an illegal sample of “Reflections,” a 1986 song by Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata. After filing takedown requests in August 2022 to get the song pulled, Sony finally launched its lawsuit that December.
In its complaint, the label pointed out that Hinata’s song had seen a recent surge of popularity after an appearance in Netflix’s 2020 film Tigertail and placement on popular ambient music playlists on Spotify.
“Trefuego brazenly sought to ride the coattails of Hinata’s creativity and popularity without regard to the United States copyright laws or the rights of plaintiffs,” the label’s attorneys wrote at the time. “He used and copied plaintiffs’ work without so much as asking, or paying a cent to plaintiffs, and he continued to exploit that music despite plaintiffs’ demand that he stop.”
Sony’s lawsuit took a bizarre detour last year when Judge Pittman ruled that the label could forgo traditional methods of contacting Trefuego and instead simply send him direct messages on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Soundcloud. In doing so, the judge ruled that Sony had made “extensive efforts” and “gone to great lengths” to find Trefuego in real life, including “seven separate attempts” to serve him and hiring a private investigator.
In one particularly notable effort, Sony’s representatives apparently went “to his mother’s house on Mother’s Day in hopes that he would be there to celebrate with her” but still came up empty: “Sadly, he was not there, and his own mother claimed she did not know who he was,” the judge wrote.
With those procedural issues settled, Judge Pittman ruled on the case in November — and sided decisively with Sony. Though the judge noted that the case pitted “one of the largest international entertainment conglomerates on the planet” against “a twenty-year-old kid,” he ruled that the David-and-Goliath posture would not protect Trefuego from liability.
“To quote ’90mh’, this case involves a young man who was ‘too focused on getting dough’ to understand the broader implications of purchasing a creative work without proof of originality or license-to-use,” the judge wrote in his November decision. “To quote ‘90mh’ again, Trefuego likely imagined Sony wouldn’t ‘really want smoke’ enough to prosecute this claim. But they did.”
Neither Trefuego nor a spokeswoman for Sony Music responded to requests for comment.
Ariana Grande is the latest singer-songwriter to get her own “Written By” playlist on Spotify. The playlist includes Grande’s biggest hits, including “7 Rings,” “Thank U Next,” “Dangerous Woman” and “we can’t be friends (wait for your love,)” as well as songs she has written for other artists. The playlist shines a light on Grande’s talents in […]
Attorneys for Madison Square Garden executive James Dolan are firing back at a lawsuit that alleges he pressured a masseuse into unwanted sex while his band was touring with the Eagles, calling his accuser an “opportunist” who is “looking for a quick payday.”
In a motion filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, Dolan’s lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, in which a woman named Kellye Croft claims that Dolan coerced her into “unlawful and unwelcome sex acts” on repeated occasions during the 2013 tour.
Arguing that the allegations were “completely manufactured,” Dolan’s attorneys told the judge that it is “an unfortunate truth that some men, by virtue of their status, have become targets for opportunists looking for a quick payday.”
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“If this case were to proceed … plaintiff would be exposed as such an opportunist, and her claims would be soundly rejected for the lies that they are,” Dolan’s attorney lead counsel E. Danya Perry wrote. “But this action should never reach that stage, as plaintiff’s complaint is entirely deficient.”
Dolan is the majority owner/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a live music giant that operates the famed New York City arena in addition to Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the Las Vegas Sphere and other prominent venues.
Croft sued him in January, claiming she had been hired to serve as a massage therapist for Glenn Frey during the 2013 tour, on which Dolan’s band (JD & The Straight Shot) opened for Eagles. She says she thought the job was the “opportunity of a lifetime,” but that she quickly realized the real reason she was there: “Dolan was extremely assertive, and pressured Ms. Croft into unwanted sexual intercourse.”
The lawsuit also claimed that Dolan later facilitated an incident in which Croft was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer whose many sexual assault allegations helped spark the #MeToo movement in 2017. Dolan previously served as a director at The Weinstein Company, and the lawsuit claimed that the two moguls were “close friends and business partners.”
In Monday’s response, Dolan’s attorneys took particular exception to the Weinstein allegations, calling them “scandalous and irrelevant” claims that had been designed to compensate for flaws in the case: “This transparent reliance on headline-grabbing, yet legally baseless, accusations of liability-by-association cannot save plaintiff’s case.”
Dolan’s motion also argued that the inclusion of Weinstein was actually a “fatal” weakness in one part of the case. They claimed that bankruptcy proceedings for The Weinstein Company resulted in a court order releasing all former directors from allegations that they aided and abetted Weinstein’s conduct — one of the claims leveled against Dolan in the complaint.
In a response statement on Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Douglas Wigdor called Dolan’s argument “shameful” and said his client had not participated in or benefited from the Weinstein bankruptcy, or even been notified of it.
“To somehow suggest that Dolan should receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card for his alleged intentional acts of trafficking our client, shows the extent to which he is willing to go to avoid having to defend the facts of our case,” Wigdor wrote.
Separately on Monday, attorneys for companies owned by music executive Irving Azoff also filed their own response to the case. While the lawsuit mostly centered on Dolan’s alleged conduct, it also accused the Azoff Company of violating federal sex trafficking laws by “facilitating Dolan’s behavior.”
In their motion, Azoff’s attorneys demanded not only that the claims be dismissed, but that Croft and her lawyers be legally sanctioned for filing “frivolous and vexatious” allegations without any real evidence to support them.
“As was explained to plaintiff’s counsel before the suit was commenced, the Azoff entities have never participated in any sex trafficking venture, and the complaint does not allege a single fact plausibly or remotely suggesting otherwise,” wrote the Azoff Company’s attorney Daniel Petrocelli.
“The decision by plaintiff and her counsel to include [such claims] in a federal pleading with nodiligence or investigation in order to publicly and falsely charge the Azoff Entities with despicable, illegal conduct fully justifies the imposition of … sanctions.”
In one portion of Croft’s complaint, her lawyers included a photograph of Dolan, Azoff and Weinstein standing together in 2015, saying that “these men were close to one another, and thus almost certainly knew details about each other’s personal lives.”
But in Monday’s motion seeking to dismiss the case and punish Croft’s lawyers, Azoff’s attorneys called the inclusion of Weinstein in the complaint a “gratuitous and unavailing” tactic that had been designed to prove “guilt-by-association” in the absence of any real evidence.
“Grasping at straws, plaintiff tries to link Weinstein to the Azoff entities by a single photo of Dolan, Weinstein, and Irving Azoff at an advertising trade conference in 2015,” Petrocelli wrote. “Awarding the Azoff entities their reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs in bringing this motion would deter plaintiff’s counsel from asserting such baseless, bad faith claims in the future.”
In his statement Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Wigdor called those arguments “meritless” and reiterated the allegations against Azoff’s companies: “We look forward to defeating these motions and moving forward with this litigation.”
The RIAA’s release of 2023 revenue figures show U.S. record labels are increasingly reliant — possibly too much so — on paid subscriptions for both revenue and revenue growth. While consumers continue to pay for premium streaming services, ad-supported on-demand streaming is languishing and newer platforms like TikTok provide more promotion than they do royalties.
The top-line takeaway of the RIAA’s 2023 report is that the U.S. market grew 7.7% to $17.12 billion, an improvement from the 6.6% uptick seen in 2022. Without adjusting for inflation, 2023 revenue was about 17% above the CD-era peak of $14.6 billion set in 1999, marking the ninth straight year of revenue growth after the U.S. market bottomed out at $6.95 billion in 2014. After nearly a decade of gains, the record business is healthy and stable.
But look over the RIAA’s report and you’ll see the U.S. market is missing the dynamism it could — and wants to — have. The revenue mix doesn’t have the diversity of past years. It’s not for lack of effort: Record labels are partnering with AI startups, licensing music to social media platforms and looking for new ways to engage with big spending superfans. But emerging categories remain just that — emerging — while other categories don’t yet provide much of a revenue boost. On-demand streaming turned around the industry, made music into an appealing asset class for investors and allowed handfuls of companies to go public. But where does it go from here?
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Here are five takeaways from the report.
The U.S. market is more reliant on paid subscriptions than ever.
Revenue from paid subscriptions from premium music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music totaled $10.15 billion and accounted for 59.3% of total recorded music revenues in 2023, an increase from 57.8% in 2022 (and far higher than percentages seen during the preceding years: 57.2% in 2021, 57.4% in 2020, 53.4% in 2019 and 47.3% in 2018). But U.S. labels were even more reliant on subscriptions for revenue growth, with paid subscriptions accounting for 79.4% of that growth in 2023. Ad-supported streaming — services such as TikTok and Facebook — grew 21.5%, or $56.2 million, but accounted for only 4.6% of annual growth.
New subscribers are harder to find.
For all the growth attributable to subscription services over the last decade, it might not be enough for some markets. As Billboard noted on March 15, SNEP, France’s recorded music trade group, warned that revenue growth from subscriptions “is slowing down here while our market is far from having reached maturity.” Fortunately for the United States, subscription penetration has surpassed 50% of U.S. internet users, according to MusicWatch. But the 2023 RIAA figures suggest streaming services have already picked the low-hanging fruit and will need new products to attract new customers. With far fewer new subscribers in 2023 than in previous years, labels were fortunate that Spotify raised the price for its standard individual plan in 2023. After adding 7.6 million subscribers in 2022 and 8.5 million in 2021, the U.S. market added just 5.2 million in 2023. That’s a sharp drop from the 15.1 million new subscribers gained in 2020 when pandemic restrictions caused an uptick in both music and video on-demand streaming services. Price increases by Spotify in July and Amazon Music in both January 2023 and August helped average monthly revenue per user improve to $8.74, up from $8.35 in 2022.
Advertising has stumbled.
A few years after advertising revenue surged, ad-supported streaming’s strength is probably its potential to convert some free users into paying customers. Ad-supported, on-demand streaming revenue rose just 2.3% in 2023, an even worse showing than the 3.5% improvement in 2022. Things looked much better a couple of years ago after ad-supported, on-demand streaming revenue jumped 46.7% in 2021 following a slowdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ad-supported on-demand streaming actually did better in pandemic-stricken 2020, rising 32.2% even though the bottom fell out of the ad market when brands braced for a recession by curtailing their ad spending. It was a remarkable turn of fortune for the promise of ad-supported music; after Spotify’s ad-supported revenue jumped 81% in 2021, CEO Daniel Ek said the growing online ad market bode well for India, Indonesia and other developing markets where Spotify operates. Since then, however, subscriptions — especially in mature markets like the United States — have carried the load for Spotify and others.
Social media is growing fast but remains small.
The highest growth rate of any category in 2023 came from “other ad-supported streaming,” which includes relative newcomers to licensing agreements such as TikTok. Other ad-supporting streaming jumped 21.5%, to $317.7 million, making the category about 75% as valuable as the fast-declining download and ringtone category (which was down 12.2% last year). The downside is that the category remains a small part of labels’ business:. Last year, other ad-supported streaming accounted for less than 5% of total revenue growth — about 6% as much as subscription services.
Physical sales were dependable, not explosive.
Both LPs and CDs had double-digit growth in 2023 — 10.3% for LPs and 11.3% for CDs — as physical formats benefitted from enthusiasm for vinyl collectibles and K-pop fans’ penchant for buying multiple CD variants of new releases. Total physical revenue increased by $181 million, or 10.5%, to $1.91 billion, and it has grown 66% since 2018. That more than compensated for the $60 million decline in legacy digital formats such as track and album downloads and ringtones. Still, vinyl and CD sales accounted for 14.8% of 2023’s revenue gains compared to subscriptions’ 79.4%.
With performances by Lizzo, Queen Latifah, Ben Platt and Cynthia Erivo, plus appearances by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, a fundraiser for Joe Biden at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday (Mar. 28) in New York could jump-start the incumbent’s so-far minimal public support from Democratic-leaning music stars for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
“You’ll see more of that in the next couple of months,” predicts Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and a longtime Democratic-leaning political analyst, referring to support from artists for the Biden campaign.
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It’s still early in the presidential campaign, but at this point, Biden’s endorsements from top music stars are a shadow of those he received in 2020, including from Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Madonna, Ariana Grande, Cher and Melissa Etheridge. James Taylor and Lenny Kravitz performed at late-2023 fundraisers for the incumbent president, but beyond that, artists have mostly been silent.
That’s partially by design. Campaign representatives say the most impactful time for celebrity endorsements is late summer and fall, when more voters are paying attention to the election. A prime example of this timing was Bruce Springsteen‘s narration of an ad about Biden’s hometown, Scranton, Pa., that came out on Halloween 2020. “When it comes to celebrities, as you get closer to the election, more [of them] get engaged,” says Chris Korge, national finance chairman for the Biden Victory Fund. “Some help us with fundraising, others help us with grassroots and campaign events.”
But several Democratic supporters in the music business say they’re concerned about the lack of stars’ involvement in the election thus far. Part of that has to do with an uneventful primary season, with little rivalry within the candidates’ parties — President Obama drew early support from artists and celebrities when he was battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but not as much in 2012 when he was an incumbent running essentially unopposed. “I would not be surprised [by] a very high level of engagement as time goes on,” says Cliff Chenfeld, who founded Razor & Tie Records and created Kidz Bop and hosts events for Democratic candidates. “But I’ve seen two or three shows a week this year and I have yet to hear one artist mention one word about anything political or topical. I’ve heard somebody say, ‘Wow, we could be in for a tough year,’ but I haven’t really heard anything beyond that.”
In 2020, as was the case with Obama in 2008, Biden was the “change” candidate — an alternative to a Republican president after years of policies that were largely unpopular among young voters, on topics ranging from climate change to LGBTQ rights. Due to a primary battle that year with a more progressive rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden had to wait a few months for artists to support his candidacy. As late as August of that year, John Legend, Andra Day and Dave Matthews were among his few prominent music-star supporters.
Eventually, artists lined up to support Biden in 2020, but the president faces stronger headwinds among progressive artists and young voters in 2024, due in part to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. “I understand the frustration. He’s older, he hasn’t gotten any more inspiring and the idea that [he’ll be] a transitional candidate to bridge the gap from one generation to the next, that’s obviously not ringing true,” says Jordan Kurland, manager for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service who has organized top artists on behalf of Democratic candidates. “But I’m voting for him because he’s our candidate, and obviously I’m going to choose democracy over what comes next under Trump. And I do think [Biden] has done a good job.”
Some Democrats in the music business say both of Biden’s campaigns, unlike Obama’s in 2008 and 2012, haven’t spent much time on outreach to music stars and their representatives. But they encourage the campaign to deploy artists with dependable fan bases in swing states from Pennsylvania to Arizona as quickly as possible. A music-business source who worked with the Biden campaign in 2020 on planning events and generating artist support came away frustrated: Biden campaign reps, he says, were “not enthusiastic four years ago, I can tell you that much. I have no reason to think they’re going to be more enthusiastic now.” The source adds that he wishes this year’s Biden campaign was “further ahead” in working with politically engaged artists.
Biden’s campaign plans to employ a celebrity-heavy “surrogate” program to oversee its artist outreach, as it did in 2020 when Olympic figure-skating champion Michelle Kwan served as director. Although that program has yet to kick in, many in the music business are confident the campaign won’t need to take elaborate measures to garner artist support. “You always hear about malaise and unenthusiasm,” says Peter Shapiro, a New York concert promoter and 20-year board member for Headcount, a nonpartisan group that has registered 1 million voters since 2004. “We always see it ramp up. People will realize the choices in front of them are significant.”
Several Biden supporters in the music business say that even if Democratic-leaning artists are hesitant to wholeheartedly endorse the president, they can speak in favor of down-ballot candidates or issues like abortion or climate change. Or they can criticize former President Donald Trump, who has artist supporters of his own, including conservative musicians Kid Rock and Jason Aldean.
Will any of it matter? In 2016, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Springsteen, Katy Perry and other music stars performed at Hillary Clinton rallies days before the election, and she lost. “Will Taylor Swift save Joe Biden? Will she be that magic bullet that will save him from being six points down from Donald Trump?” Rosen asks facetiously.
“Let’s be realistic — most artists are not going to change a single person’s vote,” Rosen adds. “What they do is draw a crowd for voter registration and raising money. That’s what all campaigns want them for.”
CTS Eventim, the German concert promoter and ticketing company, surpassed 2 billion euros in annual revenue for the first time in 2023. Revenue jumped 22% to 2.36 billion euros ($2.53 billion at the average exchange rate in 2023) while normalized earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew 32% to 501.4 million euros ($542.7 million).
Earnings per share increased by a third to 2.86 euros ($3.05) from 2.12 euros ($2.29) in 2022. In light of the record performance, the company’s executive board and supervisory board will propose at the annual shareholders meeting a dividend of 137.3 million euros ($148.7 million at the current exchange rate). The largest dividend payment in CTS Eventim history is equal to 50% of net income.
”These excellent results are proof that live entertainment is once again driving the arts and creative sectors,” said CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg in a statement. “We owe this primarily to the creativity of the artists who delight their fans around the world day in, day out. It is also thanks to the countless promoters who, with their boldness and entrepreneurial spirit, stage events and create unforgettable experiences. And last but not least, our team and our technologies ensure that live cultural events can thrive and that everyone involved can make a living from their work.”
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Live entertainment revenue rose 18.9% to 1.68 billion euros ($1.82 billion). The company experienced higher costs in 2023 and “partially” passed on those costs to the market, Schulenberg wrote in the annual report. As a result, normalized EBITDA dropped 1.8% to 117.0 million euros ($126.6 million). The company cited a boost it received from new North American partnerships with Mammoth and AG Entertainment, created to sign international acts for U.S. and global tours. Another collaboration, The Touring Co, a partnership with promoter Walter McDonald announced in December 2023, will help CTS Eventim’s expansion in North America in 2024.
In the ticketing segment, revenue rose 32% to 717.3 million euros ($776.4 million) and EBITDA jumped 47% to 384.4 million ($416.1 million). The number of internet tickets sold rose 19.6% to 82.9 million from 69.3 million in 2022. The company touted its ticketing platform’s reliability in handling heavy demand for concerts by Taylor Swift, Rammstein, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Apache 207 and Paul McCartney. International expansion also provided a lift to ticketing growth: In 2023, CTS Eventim, along with Sony Music Latin Iberia, acquired ticketing companies Punto Ticket in Chile and Teleticket in Peru.
CTS Eventim’s annual results are further proof the concert business has been booming since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. The company’s total revenue was 63.4% higher than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic temporarily halted the touring industry. Last year’s live entertainment revenue was 70.1% above 2019 and ticketing revenue was 48.9% greater. While CTS Eventim has grown by nearly two-thirds since before the pandemic, its growth rate is about a third lower than Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter and ticketing company, which grew revenue by 93.9% from 2019 to 2023.
In 2024, CTS Eventim expects “a moderate rise” in total revenue and believes EBITDA will remain at the level seen in 2023. Demand is “rising continuously,” wrote Schulenberg, and the company expects the recent decline in inflation to provide “new, consumption-driven impetus for growth in the future.”
Shares of CTS Eventim rose 5.1% to 77.50 euros ($83.96) on Tuesday (Mar. 26). The stock gained 5.0% in 2023, slightly below the 8.0% increase of the MDAX, an index of stocks traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Here is a recap of some financial metrics for CTS Eventim’s 2023 earnings results:
Revenue of 2.36 billion euros ($2.53 billion)
Normalized EBITDA of 501.4 million euros ($542.7 million).
Ticketing revenue of 717.3 million euros ($776.4 million) and EBITDA of 384.4 million ($416.1 million).
Concert revenue of 1.68 billion euros ($1.82 billion) and EBITDA of 117.0 million euros ($126.6 million).
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A legal battle between Michael Jackson’s mother and his estate over a massive deal; a ruling on Metallica’s COVID lawsuit that quotes Taylor Swift; a new first-of-its-kind statute in Tennessee aimed at AI-generated deepfakes; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Jackson Family Feud
Fifteen years after Michael Jackson’s death, his mother is locked in an increasingly acrimonious legal battle with his estate – and, as of last week, with her own grandson, too.
The trouble started last year, when Katherine Jackson filed legal objections to an unspecified transaction that had been proposed by the estate. The disputed deal wasn’t explicitly named in filings, but it appears to be the estimated $600 million catalog deal with Sony Music that was first reported by Billboard last month. A judge rejected those complaints in April 2023, but Katherine is now battling to overturn that ruling at a California appeals court.
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Why the sudden flashpoint last week? Because Katherine is asking the estate to pay for the legal bills she’s incurred while litigating her objections – a request that drew sharp rebukes.
One came from Michael’s son, Bigi Jackson, who says that Katherine’s ongoing objections to the Sony deal are a “waste” of time and that it would be “unfair” to force him and his siblings to foot the bill for them. Another came from estate executors John Branca and John McClain, who say the estate has already paid the elder Jackson more than $55 million since Michael’s death and shouldn’t have to pay for her “frivolous” appeal.
Go read our full stories on Bigi’s objections and the executors’ pushback, and stay tuned for how it all shakes out…
Other top stories this week…
METALLICA, COVID AND… TAYLOR? – Judges can be Swifties, too. In an unusual ruling that quoted from Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” a California appeals court rejected a lawsuit filed by the band Metallica that demanded its insurance company pay for more than $3 million in losses stemming from concerts that were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The case is one of numerous lawsuits, many of them unsuccessful, that have aimed at forcing insurance companies to pay for losses caused by pandemic cancellations.
DIDDY’S HOUSES RAIDED – Law enforcement agents reportedly searched homes owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs in Los Angeles and Miami as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation led by federal prosecutors in New York. The federal raids came amid a flurry of civil sexual abuse lawsuits against the hip-hop mogul – allegations Combs has strongly denied. It’s not clear whether the rapper himself is the target of the federal investigation.
NEW AI VOICE STATUTE – Tennessee enacted first-in-the-nation legislation aimed at protecting musical artists and other individuals from so-called deep fakes that are generated by artificial intelligence – an issue that’s been top of mind for the industry since a fake Drake song went viral last year. The new law – the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security, or ELVIS, Act – updates the state’s existing rules on image and likeness rights, explicitly including a person’s voice for the first time.
PYRRHI© VICTORY? – Six months after Sam Smith and Normani beat a copyright lawsuit claiming they had stolen elements of their 2019 hit “Dancing With a Stranger” from an earlier track, a federal judge refused to force their accuser to reimburse the legal fees they spent litigating the case — a bill the stars say exceeded $700,000. While unsuccessful, the judge ruled that the case was “neither frivolous nor objectively unreasonable.”