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TikTok on Monday asked the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to block the federal law that would ban the popular platform in the United States unless its China-based parent company agreed to sell it.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance urged the justices to step in before the law’s Jan. 19 deadline. A similar plea was expected from content creators who rely on the platform for income and some of TikTok’s more than 170 million users in the U.S.
The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
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The case could attract the court’s interest because it pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.
The request first goes to Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees emergency appeals from courts in the nation’s capital. He almost certainly will seek input from all nine justices.
On Friday, a panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied an emergency plea to block the law, a procedural ruling that allowed the case to move to the Supreme Court.
The same panel had earlier unanimously upheld the law over a First Amendment challenge claiming that it violated free speech rights.
Without a court-ordered freeze, the law would take effect Jan. 19 and expose app stores that offer TikTok and internet hosting services that support it to potential fines.
It would be up to the Justice Department to enforce the law, investigating possible violations and seeking sanctions. But lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the Justice Department might pause enforcement or otherwise seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences because President-elect Donald Trump pledged during the campaign that he would “save TikTok.”
Trump takes office a day after the law goes into effect.
The Supreme Court could temporarily put the law on hold so that they can give fuller consideration to First Amendment and other issues.
On the other hand, the justices could reject the emergency appeal, which would allow the law to take effect as scheduled.
The case has made a relatively quick trip through the courts once bipartisan majorities in Congress approved the law and President Joe Biden signed it in April.
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.
Three years after Downtown Music sold its 145,000-song catalog — including works performed by Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Beyoncé — the president of its publishing division says it makes more money than it did when it owned copyrights.
That reveal comes amid Monday’s announcement that Universal Music Group’s Virgin Music Group is buying Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in an all-cash deal expected to close by mid-next year.
Emily Stephenson, who since 2023 has been president of Downtown’s suite of publishing companies (Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust and Sheer), says her division will generate more than $200 million in revenue in 2024, a 40% increase from last year and a higher gross than it had in 2020, the year before Concord bought its catalog.
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“We are in the middle of extreme growth mode right now,” says Stephenson, who has overseen client acquisition, business development, A&R, rights management and client services for Downtown since March 2023.
Since Stephenson took the lead, the publishing division has signed deals with indie rockers The National, Spirit Music Group and Peso Pluma’s Double P Records. According to the company, it now serves some 2 million songwriters and clients in over 60 countries — more than 40% of them outside the United States — manages over 1.5 million copyrights and has distributed over $100 million in royalties through Songtrust.
Access to additional funds has helped. In May, Downtown announced it secured another $500 million in credit from Bank of America — on top of its previous $200 million credit facility — to finance advances.
“We have been earnestly and aggressively putting that money to work,” Stephenson says, by offering competitive advances without forcing independent creators to give up any rights. As a result, “We think we’re growing at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the industry,” she says.
That growth is one of Downtown’s draws. The combined market share held by independent distribution and music companies — i.e. non-major labels and self-releasing artists — rose to 36.7% in 2023, up from 28.6% in 2015, according to MIDiA Research. As a result, the majors have made acquisitions and investments to defend their market share. Downtown’s scale and position of dominance in this segment made it an attractive way for UMG to grow.
However, Downtown’s growth has also led to customer complaints of long wait times at Songtrust and concerns that the platform is becoming more exclusive. Stephenson says there are no plans to restrict who can sign up for Songtrust, adding that over the past year, Songtrust has cut the average response time to customer complaints from 33 days to 17 hours.
Stephenson, 35, has spent more than a decade at Downtown and previously served as Downtown Music vp of business operations, and she says roughly 70% of the managers in her division have similarly long tenures.
That experience has helped with client retention and led to facilitating opportunities. This past summer, “Parade” by French composer Victor le Masne, a Downtown client, became the official theme song for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. This holiday season, the team landed Griff’s cover of the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory classic “Pure Imagination” in Target’s Christmas campaign.
“We are the only player doing this at scale for indie songwriters globally,” Stephenson says. “I think our future is bright.”
A version of this story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
In July, six women — Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Ariana Grande and Charli XCX — cracked the top 10 of the Billboard 200, the first time that had happened since 2019. And when Grammy nominations were announced Nov. 8, six of the eight slots for record, album and song of the year were headlined by women — the second year in a row women had such high representation in the major categories. Women artists are ruling pop music in 2024.
At the major companies that power these superstars, however, women have been leaving powerful roles — moves that have rattled other women fighting for inclusion and influence at the top of the business. Between Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music and Warner Music Group (WMG) — the three major music companies — there were four labels that started this year with women CEOs: Capitol Music Group’s Michelle Jubelirer, Atlantic Music Group’s Julie Greenwald, Epic Records’ Sylvia Rhone and UMG Nashville’s Cindy Mabe. Eleven months later, that number has dropped: Rhone, who is also one of very few Black CEOs in the major label system, is the only one left at the coastal majors. And a number of other women left music’s C-suites this year as part of major-label restructurings that impacted both genders.
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It hasn’t been all bad news for women execs: Mabe is still in place at UMG Nashville, and Taylor Lindsey, who had been vp of A&R, will take the chairman/CEO role at Sony Music Nashville at the top of 2025. But the high-profile departures have shaken the confidence of many women music executives, says a high-ranking woman in the industry: “It makes them nervous because people like Julie Greenwald didn’t take shit from anybody. And the message is, ‘Oh my God, look at that. If they can let Julie Greenwald go, anybody can go.’”
The CEOs of the industry’s biggest streaming services, promotion companies and most agencies, meanwhile, are all men; many distribution CEOs are, too. Publishing and Nashville both fare better, but the industry is largely led by men in the top jobs. Most of the top indie labels are led by men as well.
Jubelirer, Greenwald, Rhone, Mabe and former Motown CEO/chair Ethiopia Habtemariam, who left her role at the end of 2022 and was not replaced, either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Despite the varied reasons for these departures, the decline in the number of women among music’s top ranks marks a step backwards during a decade that started with the Black Lives Matter movement and the major music companies pledging to better embrace diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. As Andreea Gleeson, CEO of TuneCore, puts it, “There’s not a full effort being made and that’s really dangerous. To drive meaningful change in the diversity of your company, you need to be committed to it. That starts at the top.”
Natalie Prospere, founder and CEO of the label, publishing and live events company Friends Only, says she hasn’t been surprised by the recent exits. “I knew this was going to happen. Nobody actually wants to stand for anything other than posting a black square on your Instagram.”
There are still many women in COO, president, GM and other chief-level or department-head roles across the major label system. But the actual CEOs are still almost all white men. According to Believe, Tunecore and MIDiA Research’s fourth annual “Be The Change” women’s equality in music study, in 2024, 49% of women also believe that the music industry is still “generally discriminative” based on gender. The study also found that women in music are twice as likely as men to discover they are paid less than colleagues in the same or similar roles.
“When you see the scarcity of female executives in the music industry, coupled with the way female executives are treated, how, as a young woman in the industry, can you not question your ability to succeed?” says a female former label executive.
At the labels, Jubelirer was the first to go this year. In February, amid reports that Capitol and its parent company UMG were restructuring, Jubelirer stepped down from her post, which she held since the end of 2021, as Capitol’s first female CEO in its entire 80-year history. Had she stayed, Jubelirer would have been effectively demoted, moved from being the head of her own family of record labels and reporting straight to UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, to being under the umbrella of the newly formed Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG) and reporting to ICLG chairman/CEO John Janick. She was replaced by Tom March, a British-born executive who most recently led Interscope offshoot Geffen Records.
Then, in September, Greenwald announced her exit from her role at Atlantic Music Group, a company she co-led for 20 years, the latter two as its first female CEO in its own 70-plus-year history, amid a similar restructuring in WMG’s recorded music division. She was replaced by Grainge’s son, Elliot Grainge, the founder/CEO of WMG-acquired label 10K Projects.
These high-profile exits come two years after Habtemariam, chair/CEO at Motown, stepped down from her post when rumors began to circulate that Motown would lose its status as a standalone label and would be reintegrated under Capitol Music Group, which ultimately did happen. While the label’s profitability during Habtemariam’s tenure is unclear, Habtemariam took Motown’s U.S. current market share from 0.85% to 1.30%.
The recent executive departures are even more troubling to some women in the industry given the challenges these women had faced getting to their top posts in the first place. When Steve Barnett retired as Capitol Music Group CEO at the end of 2019, Jubelirer, an attorney who worked her way up over a decade to become COO of Capitol, was believed by many to be the next in line. Instead, the role was given to Capitol Records president Jeff Vaughn. (Under Vaughn, Capitol’s current market share dipped from 7.36% in 2020 to 5.64% in 2021. He was replaced by Jubelirer in less than a year). While market share cannot tell the full story of Capitol Music Group financials at the time, Jubelirer then grew CMG market share by almost a full percentage point from 2022 to 2023.
While Mary Rahmani, CEO and founder of Moon Projects, a joint venture label/publisher with Republic Records/Warner Chappell Music, says she came up in the major label business around “lots of women assistants and coordinators,” there were not many women executives to look up to. “If there were any, they were specifically in PR, radio and sync. I didn’t really see many badass women A&R or marketing executives, and I always wished there were more examples for me.”
Years later, when Rahmani was on maternity leave with her first child, she was cut from the major label she worked for during a sweep of layoffs. Reflecting on the experience now, she says it “wasn’t personal,” but feels motherhood is often a reason why it’s harder for women to climb up the ladder in the way men, even men who have children, do. “It’s for sure a big reason. I think a lot of women in the mid-level phase take a step back once they have a family.”
At Billboard’s Women in Music event in March, Jubelirer accepted the award for Executive of the Year and highlighted another way women face extra adversity in the workplace: their presentation. “Women, do these comments sound familiar?” Jubelirer addressed the crowd. “‘You’re too emotional.’ ‘You don’t have to be so direct when you talk.’ We all know that’s code for ‘Stop being a bitch.’ ‘You should smile more.’ … We know that it takes quite a bit of fortitude to present our true selves in the workplace and rebel against those stereotypes that have been expected of women.”
In some other areas of the music business, women fare better in their share of CEO roles. Though it’s far from gender parity, the publishing sector is a bright spot. Many of publishing’s most respected leaders are women, including Universal Music Publishing Group’s CEO/chair Jody Gerson, who has held her post for a decade, and Warner Chappell’s COO/co-chair Carianne Marshall at the majors and Reservoir Media’s founder/CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi and Peermusic’s CEO Mary Megan Peer at the large independents.
“It’s likely a result of a positive feedback loop,” says Khosrowshahi of the publishing sector. “As more women rise to the top of various publishing entities, that leads to the success of more women [beneath them].”
Ironically, though women artists in country music struggle to make their voices heard on country radio, the presence of female CEOs and chairs is stronger in Nashville. Today, all three major labels in town have women in their highest ranks: Mabe is chair/CEO of UMG Nashville, Lindsey is soon to become chairman/CEO of Sony Nashville, and Cris Lacy is co-chair/co-president of Warner Music Nashville.
The C-suites at the majors do have women among their ranks: Alamo, ICLG, The Orchard and Verve all have women COOs in Juliette Jones, Annie Lee, Colleen Theis and Dawn Olejar, respectively; Julie Swidler is general counsel at Sony Music and Erica Bellarosa holds the same title at Atlantic Music Group; Republic Records counts Wendy Goldstein as president/chief creative officer and Donna Gryn as chief marketing officer; Capitol (Lilia Parsa), Columbia (Jenifer Mallory), Virgin (Jacqueline Saturn), Interscope (Michelle An, Nicole Wyskoarko), Atlantic (Lanre Gaba), 10K Projects (Molly McLachlan), 300 Entertainment (Rayna Bass), ADA (Cat Kreidich) and EMPIRE (Tina Davis) all have women with president or co-president titles; and high-ranking women can be found across the corporate majors and individual labels.
But the path to the chief executive’s office remains an especially challenging one — and even then, some women CEOs say they still feel excluded from the conversations, meetings or other gatherings where decision-making happens in their organizations.
When Greenwald was named Billboard’s 2017 Women in Music Executive of the Year, she spoke of how she hoped her platform could lead to more women executives in the next generation. “I love all the women here who put their hands up and say, ‘Listen, at some point I want your chair,’” Greenwald said. “I want someone to come take this chair. I want women to come in with a tape measure.”
The independent music sector has offered executives like Rahmani, Gleeson, Khosrowshahi, Prospere and Milana Rabkin Lewis, co-founder/CEO of STEM Disintermedia, another path, thanks to the growth of indie music’s market share both in the U.S. and abroad. For Rabkin Lewis, who got her start at UTA before founding the distributor/label, she says she wanted to run her own independent company because “I could be more in control. I also wanted to set a new example, and I wanted to create my own path, which potentially had [fewer] road bumps and hurdles than the perceived corporate path.”
Still, a high-ranking female music executive says it’s essential for the next generation to see women in CEO and chairwoman roles at the major labels specifically because “power comes in P&L responsibility, and there’s a scarcity of women at major labels who have P&L responsibility.” Another adds, “The major labels are the front lines… They’re the ones that set the tone for how the industry is going to proceed.”
Representatives for UMG, WMG and Sony declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge says Sean “Diddy” Combs can’t prove that prosecutors leaked the infamous 2016 surveillance video of him assaulting his former girlfriend Cassie – and is refusing to launch an investigation into his claims that the government is waging a “campaign” of such leaks.
In an order issued Monday, Judge Arun Subramanian denied Combs’ request for discovery and an evidentiary hearing into those allegations. Combs had argued that prosecutors were using media coverage to “taint the jury pool” and deprive him of a fair trial.
Most notably, the judge said that Combs had failed to show that government agents leaked the Cassie video, saying the accused mogul “doesn’t point to any sound basis for this conclusion.”
“Combs never considers the possibility that many people beyond Victim-1 and government agents likely had access to the video, including Combs’s team (who paid security officers at the Intercontinental Hotel “$100,000 in cash to destroy” the video) and hotel employees and contractors,” the judge wrote.
Though he denied the request from Combs’ legal team, the judge also reiterated previous warnings to prosecutors to closely safeguard grand jury materials and avoid sharing other improper information with the press.
“The court is sensitive to Combs’s concern about the publication of stories claiming to disclose inside information about this case from unnamed ‘federal law enforcement sources who are involved in the investigation,’” the judge wrote.
“The court has already taken steps in this regard, and it is open to tailored applications for relief as this case continues,” the judge added. “The court once again reminds the government and its agents that if specific information comes to light showing that they leaked prohibited information, action will be taken.”
Combs was indicted in September, charged with running a sprawling criminal operation aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.” The case centers on elaborate “freak off” parties in which Combs and others would allegedly ply victims with drugs and then coerce them into having sex, as well as on alleged acts of violence to keep victims silent.
A trial is currently set to start on May 5. If convicted on all of the charges, Combs faces a potential life prison sentence.
The star’s legal team has spent months seeking to have him released on bail until the start of the trial. But after multiple failed attempts, his attorneys on Friday dropped their appeal of the bail issue, meaning the hip-hop mogul will remain behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until the trial kicks off.
In October, Combs’ attorneys warned the judge that there had been “a series of unlawful government leaks” in the case, leading to “damaging, highly prejudicial pre-trial publicity that can only taint the jury pool and deprive Mr. Combs of his right to a fair trial.”
The filing called the Cassie video – a clip that made headlines when CNN first aired in May — the “most egregious example” of such leaks, arguing it had been done in order to “mortally wound the reputation and the prospect of Sean Combs successfully defending himself.”
“Rather than using the videotape as trial evidence, alongside other evidence that gives it context and meaning, the agents misused it in the most prejudicial and damaging way possible,” Diddy’s lawyers wrote at the time. “The government knew what it had: a frankly deplorable video recording of Sean Combs in a towel hitting, kicking and dragging a woman in full view of a camera in the hallway of the hotel.”
In a response weeks later, the government sharply denied those claims – and accused Combs’ lawyers of using such allegations as a ploy to “suppress a damning piece of evidence.”
“Without any factual basis, the leak motion seeks to suppress highly probative evidence … by claiming that it was grand jury material leaked by government agents,” prosecutors write. “But, as the defendant is fully aware, the video was not in the Government’s possession at the time of CNN’s publication and the Government has never, at any point, obtained the video through grand jury process.”
Universal Music Group’s Virgin Music Group said on Monday it agreed to buy Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million cash in a deal that will bolster the world’s largest music company’s slice of the independent music segment. Founded in 2007 in New York, Downtown Music Holdings is the parent company of the direct-to-creator distributor CD Baby, […]
At the start of 2024, Chappell Roan was a rising pop singer-songwriter with a core but mighty following. She had released her debut solo album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023 to critical appreciation but not much commercial fanfare. By February, she kicked off Olivia Rodrigo’s North American arena tour as its opening act and soon after booked a few appearances at the biggest U.S. music festivals including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, mostly on afternoon side stages.
Yet the April release of her stand-alone single, “Good Luck, Babe!,” coincided with Roan’s album flying into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 as her back catalog quickly populated the Billboard Hot 100. By the time of her previously booked festival gigs, her name had become synonymous with pop stardom — and she used each set to prove why, showcasing her undeniable stage presence and audacious wardrobe at every stop.
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Apparently, behind the scenes, Roan was just as astonished. “In the moment, it was all so fast that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about what the f–k was going on,” says Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, with a laugh. “We were so focused on moving to the next thing that we didn’t have a moment to process.”
Chappell Roan’s “Eat Me” outfit at Coachella in April.
Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
By July, when the organizers for Chicago’s Lollapalooza witnessed her outsize crowds at festivals like Governors Ball and Boston Calling, they met to hastily figure out how to accommodate the throng of fans Roan would inevitably assemble at their own event. “It became a safety concern more than anything else,” says Huston Powell, a promoter at C3 Presents, the company responsible for booking the iconic Chicago festival. “There’s an egress-ingress point to the left of the stage that she was going to be playing, and we knew that the number of people wanting to see her could cause a massive traffic jam on that hill. On the main stages, we had a layout that could handle more people with more barricading, so we decided to move her set.”
Ultimately, Roan’s Lollapalooza performance broke an attendance record for the largest day crowd ever seen in the event’s 30-plus-year history — without a headline billing. And while Powell can’t offer a specific number of people in the audience for the star’s headline-making set, he can confirm what he saw with his own eyes. “There were at least three or four other acts playing at the same time, and the crowd is usually somewhat evenly split between the stages. But just by the sheer appearance, looking around at the number of people in the park and the people you could eyeball at other stages, the vast majority were watching Chappell’s set. We anticipated it would be big, but this completely exceeded expectations.”
Dan Nigro, Roan’s producer-collaborator, explained to Billboard in June that her path to the center of the cultural zeitgeist proved that nothing is more powerful in the industry than good buzz.
“The fact that she’s so phenomenal live means people are finally able to see in real time how good she is. That then becomes this word-of-mouth thing, and it’s wonderful to see her have such old-school success,” he said. “She’s so good at what she does that the system is working again. It really is that simple.”
Her wrestling outfit at Lollapalooza.
Erika Goldring/WireImage
Roan herself told Billboard in 2022 that her career lives and dies by the success of her live performances. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the live show is where the heartbeat of the project is,” she said. “Luckily, it’s my favorite part of what I do.”
Part of her runaway success on the festival circuit came largely thanks to Roan’s maximalist costuming, a running feature along her path to pop stardom. When she started headlining her own tours in 2023 — following the release of her now-Grammy-nominated debut album — Roan decided to create themes for every show, encouraging fans to dress up along with her. Webb says they kept that trend going for Roan’s festival performances, commissioning eye-catching, distinct costumes for every gig. “I think we did 16 different looks all told for these festivals,” she says.
Whether Roan was dressed as a giant pink butterfly at Coachella (in a loving tribute to Deee-Lite’s Lady Miss Kier), the Statue of Liberty at Governors Ball or a professional wrestler at Lollapalooza, she thrived when embracing the outsize nature of her job, creating headlines around her phenomenal costuming and anticipation for what would come next. Webb points out that it’s a tried-and-true method for pop stars, with artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry building their own fame with dazzling outfits at the outset of their careers.
“I think it’s the zeitgeist of it all — it’s knowing that this is supposed to be fun,” she says. “It felt like there hadn’t been a pop star in a really long time to have people wanting to see a live-performance look as much as they do with her.”
Her Statue of Liberty costume at Governors Ball in June.
Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images
With that anticipation came unprecedented crowds. Powell saw the numbers Roan drew at Boston Calling and Coachella, which helped his team plan ahead. When an act dropped out the weekend before Austin City Limits in September, C3 Presents promoter Amy Corbin says the festival seized the opportunity to place Roan’s performance on its main stage as well. “When it happens, we look at ways to adjust programming to ensure we are delivering the best fan and artist experience,” Corbin tells Billboard. For the second time this year, Roan’s set drew “the largest crowds in the sunset slot in ACL Fest history,” she says.
Roan’s festival season has since ignited conversations in the live industry about how to recapture the energy that she — and her fans — brought. “We’re all trying to find the next Chappell Roan,” Powell says. “I think sometimes bands worry about what time of day they play and where they play — but if anything, this showed that if you’re hot enough, audiences will come no matter what.”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Merlin, which oversees digital licensing for the independent sector, has outlined its position on the use of music in training artificial intelligence in a new memo.
Like many organizations in the music industry, Merlin supports “AI products that aid human creativity, or provide new opportunities for artists to create and collaborate in developing new original works,” wrote the organization in a mission statement shared with Billboard. But it strongly opposes “any product, regardless of its purpose, that has been trained on Merlin members’ music without permission.”
Sony Music and Warner Music Group, among others, made similar announcements earlier this year, warning AI companies not to harvest their data for training purposes. But Merlin’s statement on Friday suggests that its members are even more vulnerable than the major labels.
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“These are not multinational corporations,” Merlin notes. “They are often small businesses operating in support of artists who shape contemporary culture around the world, and who are trying to earn a living in an increasingly challenging environment. Unlicensed use of these artists’ work creates a genuine and imminent threat to artists’ livelihoods and the livelihoods of those who work to support them.”
Like Merlin, most — if not all — music industry rightsholders believe that AI companies should license their music if they want to use those catalogs of recordings to develop song generation technology. Statements from a number of AI companies, however, indicate that they aren’t interested in paying. They often argue that training their models fall under “fair use,” the U.S. legal doctrine that allows for the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain situations.
But Merlin hit back against this argument on Friday: “Taking someone else’s creative work — without permission, without compensation, and with the specific purpose of using that work to create new works that are substitutional for the original — is inherently not fair use,” the statement reads.
“AI companies and their investors would, we assume, look to copyright and other IP law to protect against any unauthorized uses of their technology,” Merlin continued. But ironically, “AI companies are rightly protective over their models and proprietary software, yet some seem to view other people’s intellectual property as ‘free data’ to feed their algorithm.”
Read Merlin’s full memo below.
Merlin is the independents’ digital licensing partner. Merlin’s primary function is to enable innovative and properly-compensated uses of its members’ music. This is clearly demonstrated by the partnerships Merlin has in place with so many of the world’s leading digital services.
All of our partnerships have one thing in common: our partners value music. While our partnerships have evolved over the years, they respect the human artistry involved in creating music and the financial investment needed to nurture, distribute and market it. The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) does nothing to change that.
Merlin and its members have always embraced and adapted to technological change, while ensuring that the value of human creativity is respected. Artistic expression is a fundamental part of what makes us human. The ability to create, appreciate, and enjoy art, in all its forms, is foundational to the human experience. Music, in particular, brings people together, evokes emotions, and helps us express thoughts and feelings.
Merlin recognises the enormous power of AI and its benefits to the creative community and society as a whole; but, if AI is left unregulated, the impact on the creative industries and, by extension, global culture will be devastating.
Merlin believes that, when developed and implemented responsibly, AI technologies can be additive to the creative landscape. AI products that aid human creativity, or provide new opportunities for artists to create and collaborate in developing new original works, are products that Merlin supports. Merlin and its members are ready to partner with AI companies that want to be on the right side of history – those that are willing properly to compensate Merlin members for use of their repertoire and to include appropriate guardrails to protect Merlin members’ rights.
However, Merlin cannot support any product, regardless of its purpose, that has been trained on Merlin members’ music without permission.
Merlin’s members, and the independent labels they represent, number in the thousands. These are not multinational corporations. They are often small businesses operating in support of artists who shape contemporary culture around the world, and who are trying to earn a living in an increasingly challenging environment. Unlicensed use of these artists’ work creates a genuine and imminent threat to artists’ livelihoods and the livelihoods of those who work to support them.
It has been suggested that training of AI models on artists’ work without permission should somehow be considered “fair use”. We believe it is the exact opposite of fair, both morally and legally.
The legal test for fair use involves four criteria, relating to the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyright work, the amount used, and the effect upon the market or value of the copyright work. Unlicensed commercial AI models fail on all four. Any AI company that trains its models by scraping the internet for copyright-protected sound recordings is making unauthorized reproductions of entire copyright works. Invariably, these copies are used for commercial purposes, and the AI-generated sound recordings resulting from the models pose a significant threat to the market for Merlin artists’ copyrighted sound recordings by creating directly competitive digital music files. There is much talk about these uses being fair merely because the outputs are “transformative”, but even transformative uses need to take into account the impact on the original works, and the extent to which they are substitutional for the original. In the case of AI-generated music, the substitutional impact is obvious.
Taking someone else’s creative work – without permission, without compensation, and with the specific purpose of using that work to create new works that are substitutional for the original – is inherently not fair use.
In seeking to license their music, Merlin members and their artists are not leveraging their copyrights to gain an unfair advantage. They are doing their best to earn a living and to protect rights in their expressive works. This is no different to how AI companies and their investors would, we assume, look to copyright and other IP law to protect against any unauthorized uses of their technology. AI companies are rightly protective over their models and proprietary software, yet some seem to view other people’s intellectual property as “free data” to feed their algorithm.
It is Merlin’s position, and that of its members, that any and all uses of Merlin member repertoire for training, development or implementation of AI models and related purposes requires explicit written authorization from Merlin or the applicable Merlin member. Merlin’s policy is clearly displayed on its website at https://merlinnetwork.org/policy-on-ai/.
If you are a responsible AI company that seeks to use independent music to train a model, or to offer a product or service that is additive to the music ecosystem and has intrinsic creative benefit to music creators, please contact us at ResponsibleAI@merlinnetwork.org.
Jay-Z’s attorneys have written a letter to a New York courthouse revealing that the rapper intends to “immediately” file a motion to strike a recent complaint accusing him of raping a teenager 24 years ago.
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In the letter obtained by Billboard, the legal team cited a new NBC report on Friday night (Dec. 13), in which the accuser — identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed against Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) and Diddy — recalled the “catastrophic event,” while also acknowledging a number of inconsistencies in her original account. “I have made some mistakes,” she shared, noting that while she still stands by her accusations, there are a few details that are unclear.
One of the inconsistencies is that the woman originally said her father picked her up after the assault, but he denied that. She also claimed she spoke to singer Benji Madden at the event, though he wasn’t in New York at the time of the party.
The letter from Jay-Z’s attorney took aim at Doe’s attorney Anthony Buzbee. “Given today’s relevations, Mr. Buzbee almost certainly failed to undertake a reasonable inquiry into the facts before filing the complaint,” the message reads. “He should never have brought the claims.”
The letter concludes by noting that Jay “intends to file immediately a motion to strike the first amended complaint.”
In a press statement, Jay-Z echoed the sentiments of his attorney. “Today’s investigative report proves this ‘attorney’ Buzbee filed a false complaint against me in the pursuit of money and fame. This incident didn’t happen and yet he filed it in court and doubled down in the press. True justice is coming. We fight FROM victory, not FOR victory. This was over before it began. This 1-800 lawyer doesn’t realize it yet, but, soon.”
His lawyer Alex Spiro added, “It is stunning that a lawyer would not only file such a serious complaint without proper vetting, but would make things worse by further peddling this false story in the press. We are asking the Court to dismiss this frivolous case today, and will take up the matter of additional discipline for Mr. Buzbee and all the lawyers that filed the complaint.”
Over the weekend, Jay-Z was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty alongside Diddy. The shocking civil case was filed by an anonymous accuser and Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, whom Jay called a “deplorable human.”
The rapper also denyied all of the allegations against him when news broke. “You have made a terrible error in judgement thinking that all ‘celebrities’ are the same,” Jay-Z said. “I’m not from your world. I’m a young man who made it out of the projects of Brooklyn. We don’t play these types of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children, you seem to exploit people for personal gain. Only your network of conspiracy theorists … will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable. I look forward to showing you just how different I am.”
Jay-Z continued: “My only heartbreak is for my family. My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs has dropped his appeal to be released on bail, according to court documents filed on Friday (Dec. 13). The voluntary dismissal means the hip-hop mogul will remain behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until the start of his criminal trial in May. “Mr. Combs does not seek to appeal […]
K-pop stocks rebounded this week from a slump caused by the country’s political turmoil. HYBE, which was also dragged down by news of an investigation of its chairman, Bang Si-Hyuk, regarding the company’s 2020 initial public offering, led the group of South Korean music companies by gaining 8.7% to 205,500 won ($143.16), bringing the stock back to its level from one month ago. Elsewhere, YG Entertainment gained 7.2% to 48,250 won ($33.61) to recapture losses from the previous three weeks while SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment had smaller improvements of 3.3% and 2.6%, respectively.
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) dropped 1.6% to 2,243.59, marking its first weekly decline in seven weeks. After reaching record highs in each of the previous five weeks, the index was overcome by the losses among 13 of its 20 stocks. The BGMI fared worse than many major indexes. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3% and the S&P 500 fell 0.6%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 lost 0.1%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index gained 2.7% while China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.4%.
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The week’s biggest gainer was Abu Dhabi-based music streaming company Anghami. In the absence of any market-moving news or regulatory filing, the company’s shares spiked 17.4% on Tuesday (Dec. 10) on heavy trading volume. On an average day, 80,000 shares of Anghami trade hands. But nearly 3.5 million shares — 5% of the company’s shares outstanding — were traded on Tuesday, and another 616,000 shares exchanged hands over the next two days.
Other than Anghami and K-pop stocks, only two companies posted gains this week. Universal Music Group, the index’s second-largest company, gained 4.6% to 24.46 euros ($25.69), its best closing price since it lost 24% following second-quarter earnings on July 25. Warner Music Group improved 0.3% to $32.52.
Spotify, the hottest music stock of 2024, had a losing week for the first time since September. The streaming company’s share price dropped 3.1% to $483.31, finishing the week 4.6% off its all-time high of $506.47 set on Dec. 4. Still, investors have renewed faith in Spotify after the company improved its margins and bottom line while maintaining the same rapid growth rate before it laid off nearly a quarter of its workforce in 2023. Spotify shares are up 157.2% year to date and the company’s market capitalization briefly surpassed $100 billion a week ago.
Live Nation shares fell 0.6% to $135.95 despite more analysts raising price targets on the concert promoter’s share price this week. Wolfe Research increased its price target to $160 from $152. JP Morgan upped its price target to $150 from $137. And Roth MKM raised Live Nation to $152 from $132. Live Nation’s stock is up 45.2% year to date and is one of the best performers on the BGMI.
SiriusXM had the week’s biggest loss after dropping 14.8% to $24.11. On Tuesday, the company announced guidance for 2025 revenue that would represent a 2% decline from full-year 2024 revenue guidance. The company also revealed it is doubling down on in-car listening and refocusing on satellite radio after its year-old streaming app delivered disappointing results. Following the news, Seaport Global lowered its recommendation on SiriusXM’s stock to “neutral” from “buy.”
In other stock moves, German concert promoter CTS Eventim fell 4.9% to 34.37 euros ($36.10). The company announced this week that it acquired a 17% stake in French ticketing company France Billet. Lastly, New York-based live events company Madison Square Garden Entertainment dropped 8.5% to $34.37 and radio giant iHeartMedia was down 12.3% to $2.29.