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Spotify’s new royalties model will be a subject of discussion when IMPALA’s board meets later this month.
In a brief statement, the Brussels-based independent music companies association announced it was canvassing its member views on the proposed changes, detailed for the first time in a blog post published on Tuesday (Nov. 21).
“Our focus is and will remain ensuring a fair, diverse and sustainable music ecosystem for all,” reads the trade body’s message, “as set out in our 10-point plan to make the most of streaming, which was released two years and a half ago and was updated earlier this year.”
The board of IMPALA is scheduled to meet next Thursday, Nov. 30.
With its post, Spotify confirmed the broader music industry’s worst-kept secret by sharing details of a three-pronged royalties model, which would funnel more money to popular artists, labels and distributors, lift the streaming threshold, while putting the clamps on streaming fraud.
Among the changes touted by Spotify: tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months in order to generate recorded royalties; labels and distributors will fined per track when “flagrant artificial streaming is detected” on their content; and functional content — think rain noises, whale sounds, recordings of wind rustling the leaves— will be significantly devalued, and its minimum track length increased to two minute into order to be eligible to generate royalties.
By tackling these issues that account for just a “small percentage of total streams,” Spotify reckons, its new policing of content “now means that we can drive approximately an additional $1 billion in revenue toward emerging and professional artists over the next five years.”
IMPALA’s voice has been front and center in the debate for a “fairer, more dynamic” streaming market.
In April, IMPALA published an updated version of its 10-step plan to “make the most of streaming,” which proposed various changes to how digital royalties are allocated, including attaching a premium value to tracks that the listener has sought out, a so-called “Fan Participation Model” whereby artists and rights holders could generate incremental revenue within digital services through offering special features and extra tracks, higher share for master rights and more.
Later, in September, IMPALA raised concerns over the new “artist-centric” streaming model being rolled out by Deezer and Universal Music Group (UMG), warning of a potential “two-tier” music market that unfairly disadvantages indie artists and labels.
The European trade body represents nearly 6,000 independent companies, labels and national associations, including Beggars Group, Cooking Vinyl, Epitaph and PIAS Music Group.
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: Sean “Diddy” Combs is accused of rape amid an ongoing wave of music industry sexual abuse lawsuits; Shakira settles her $15 million tax evasion case on the eve of trial; UMG defeats a lawsuit filed by artists over its lucrative ownership stake in Spotify; and more.
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THE BIG STORY: Diddy Sued As Music #MeToo Wave Continues
Following a string of abuse cases against powerful men in the music industry, Sean “Diddy” Combs was sued by R&B singer and longtime romantic partner Cassie over allegations of assault and rape — and then settled the case just a day later.
In a graphic complaint, attorneys for Cassie (full name Casandra Ventura) claimed she “endured over a decade of his violent behavior and disturbed demands,” including repeated physical beatings and forcing her to “engage in sex acts with male sex workers” while he masturbated. Near the end of their relationship, Ventura claimed that Combs “forced her into her home and raped her while she repeatedly said ‘no’ and tried to push him away.”
Combs immediately denied the allegations as “offensive and outrageous.” He claimed Cassie had spent months demanding $30 million to prevent her from writing a tell-all book, a request he had “unequivocally rejected as blatant blackmail.”
Read the full story on the lawsuit here.
Just a day after it was filed, Combs and Ventura announced that they had reached a settlement to resolve the case. Though quick settlements can happen in any type of lawsuit, it’s pretty unusual to see a case with such extensive and explosive allegations end just 24 hours after it was filed in court. “I wish Cassie and her family all the best,” Combs said in a statement. “Love.”
Both sides quickly put their spin on the settlement. A former staffer at Cassie’s law firm sent out a statement arguing that the quick resolution was “practically unheard of” and suggesting it showed the “evidence against Mr. Combs was overwhelming.” Combs’ lawyer, Ben Brafman, put out his own statement reiterating that a settlement — “especially in 2023” — was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing.”
Read the full story on the settlement here.
The case against Combs is the most explosive sign yet that, six years after the start of the #MeToo movement, the music industry is currently experiencing something of a second iteration.
Sexual assault lawsuits were filed earlier this month against both former Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow and label exec Antonio “L.A.” Reid, and in October longtime publishing exec Kenny MacPherson was sued for sexual harassment. Before that, sexual misconduct allegations were leveled at late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun; Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter; singer Jason Derulo; and ex-Kobalt exec Sam Taylor.
Many of the recent cases have been filed under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, a statute that created a limited window for alleged survivors to take legal action over years-old accusations that would typically be barred under the statute of limitations. With that look-back period set to end on Thursday (Nov. 23), more cases could be coming in the next few days. Stay tuned…
Other top stories this week…
UMG WINS CASE OVER SPOTIFY STAKE – A federal judge dismissed a class action against Universal Music Group that challenged the fairness of its 2008 purchase of shares in Spotify. The case, filed by ’90s hip-hop duo Black Sheep, accused the company of taking lower-than-market royalty rates in return for a chunk of equity that’s now worth hundreds of millions. But the judge ruled that such a maneuver — even if proven true — wouldn’t have violated UMG’s contract with its artists.
A$AP ROCKY TO STAND TRIAL – A Los Angeles judge ruled that there was enough evidence for A$AP Rocky to stand trial on felony charges that he fired a gun at a former friend and collaborator outside a Hollywood hotel in 2021. The 35-year-old hip-hop star’s lawyer vowed that “Rocky is going to be vindicated when all this is said and done, without question.”
SHAKIRA SETTLES TAX CASE – The Columbian superstar agreed to a deal with Spanish authorities to settle her $15 million criminal tax fraud case that could have resulted in a significant prison sentence for the singer. After maintaining her innocence for five years, Shakira settled on the first day of a closely-watched trial: “I need to move past the stress and emotional toll of the last several years and focus on the things I love,” she said.
ROD WAVE MERCH CRACKDOWN – The rapper won a federal court order empowering law enforcement to seize bootleg merchandise sold outside his Charlotte, N.C., concert, regardless of who was selling it. He’s the latest artist to file such a case to protect ever-more-valuable merch revenue following Metallica, SZA, Post Malone and many others.
MF DOOM NOTEBOOK BATTLE – Attorneys for Eothen “Egon” Alapatt fired back at a lawsuit that claims he stole dozens of private notebooks belonging to the late hip-hop legend MF Doom, calling the case “baseless and libelous” and telling his side of the disputed story.
“THE DAMAGE WILL BE DONE” – Universal Music Group asked for a preliminary injunction that would immediately block artificial intelligence company Anthropic PBC from using copyrighted music to train future AI models while their high-profile case plays out in court.
DIDDY TEQUILA CASE – In a separate legal battle involving Diddy, a New York appeals court hit pause on his lawsuit against alcohol giant Diageo that accused the company of racism and failing to adequately support his DeLeon brand of tequila. The court stayed the case while Diageo appeals a key ruling about how the dispute should proceed.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has won the dismissal of a closely-watched class action that challenged the fairness of its 2008 purchase of shares in Spotify — a case that accused the company of taking lower-than-market royalty rates in return for a chunk of equity that’s now worth hundreds of millions.
The lawsuit, filed last year by the members of the ’90s hip-hop duo Black Sheep, claimed that UMG had secured its now-lucrative stake in the then-nascent streamer by signing an “undisclosed, sweetheart deal” that left artists underpaid to the tune of $750 million. UMG has called the claims “patently false.”
In a decision Monday (Nov. 20), U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon ruled that even if UMG had taken below-market royalty rates from Spotify in return for equity, doing so would not have breached its contracts with artists — which give the music giant “unfettered discretion” to license its recordings as it sees fit.
“Plaintiffs argue that UMG exceeded the bounds of its discretion under the contract by making an undisclosed licensing deal in exchange for Spotify stock, for which UMG is withholding artists’ rightful share … of the proceeds UMG reaped,” the judge wrote. “But they do not square that conclusion with UMG’s unlimited right to license their work.”
Black Sheep members Andres “Dres” Titus and William “Mista Lawnge” McLean sued in January, claiming Universal acted in “bad faith” when it secretly acquired a 5% stake in the “fledgling streaming service” in 2008 for just a few thousand dollars. The real payment to Spotify, the lawsuit claimed, had been UMG’s willingness to accept “substantially lower royalty payments” — an arrangement that benefited UMG and Spotify but “shortchanged artists” and “deprived” them of fair royalties.
“Universal concealed from artists that it acquired Spotify stock and that royalty payments were depressed as a result,” lawyers for the duo wrote in their complaint. “Over time, the value of the Spotify stock that Universal improperly withheld from artists has ballooned to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
When the case was filed, Universal called the claims “patently false and absurd.” In later court filings, the company flatly denied the core allegation: “UMG disputes that the equity stock acquired in 2008 was part of the consideration that Spotify provided for a license to UMG’s music catalog.”
Reps for both UMG and Black Sheep did not return requests for comment on Tuesday.
The major music companies all acquired equity in Spotify during the streamer’s early days. According to a 2018 report by Music Business Worldwide, the then-Big Four music companies (Universal, Warner, Sony and EMI) plus Merlin paid just €8,804 total for a combined 18% of the streamer divvied up between them. The role that royalty rates played in that deal, and whether artists would eventually see some of the profit, was hotly debated for years.
After Spotify went public in 2018, it started to become clear just how valuable those stakes had become. Sony Music sold 50% of its shares for $768 million in April 2018, followed by Warner selling its entire stake for $504 million in August 2018. Both later made good on previous pledges to disburse some of the proceeds to artists, although reportedly with differing stipulations.
Universal has yet to sell its shares in Spotify, but it made a similar pledge in March 2018. Later that year, when Taylor Swift signed with the company, she reportedly required that UMG further promise to distribute the money to artists regardless of unrecouped balances — meaning artists will be paid regardless of whether they still owe the label money.
But in their lawsuit, Black Sheep argued that such promises were not good enough. They said Universal had already wronged many of its artists in one of two ways — simply by taking lower rates and thus reducing their royalty payments, or by failing to disburse the profits of their equity stakes as royalties.
In Monday’s ruling dismissing the case, Judge Rochon said she did not even need to decide whether or not those allegations were true. Instead, she simply ruled that even if they were true, Universal would still not have violated its record deal with Black Sheep.
“The contract’s plain language does not support plaintiffs’ theories,” the judge wrote about the allegedly reduced rates, noting that the deal gave UMG the “sole, exclusive and unlimited right” to license the recordings. “Given this wide discretion, there is no basis upon which to find that UMG breached the contract by accepting a lower royalty from Spotify.”
Judge Rochon also rejected the argument that UMG should have accounted for the equity profits when paying artists, saying the contract only requires payment for revenue that is “solely attributable” to their specific songs.
“Plaintiffs cannot directly trace UMG’s alleged acquisition of Spotify stock to the use or exploitation of their work alone,” the judge wrote. “UMG did not breach the contract by failing to account for its value when paying Plaintiffs their royalties.”
Even beyond the merits of the lawsuit, the judge also said she would have dismissed most of it for a far simpler reason: That it had been filed far past the statute of limitations. If the case had moved forward, Rochon said it only would have applied to royalty payments made after January 2021, not those reaching back all the way to 2008.
Over the last several years, artists, record labels and streaming services have been doubling down on one of the longtime staples of the music, and particularly live music, business: merch. And there’s good reason for that: As Spotify’s global head of music, Jeremy Erlich, tells Billboard, the company estimates that the music merch business is worth around $8 billion globally. And with streaming now far and away the dominant form of music consumption, merchandise has increasingly become the go-to way to express fandom at a time when purchasing music has become a decidedly niche activity.
In recent months, Amazon Music has been doubling down on its merch efforts, partnering with the likes of Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Rauw Alejandro and Doja Cat on exclusive merch related to tours (and, in Carey’s case, the year-end holidays). Over the past month, Spotify has also expanded deeper into the merch business — both with a new, dedicated hub for artist merch, which it announced earlier this year, and a new capsule collection that debuted in the past few weeks featuring exclusive one-off drops by the likes of Peso Pluma, Rosalía, Daft Punk, Tyler, the Creator and Tems.
This marks the latest foray into the merch space for streaming market leader Spotify, which has offered artists various ways to promote their own merchandise on their artist pages for several years via partnerships with Merchbar and Shopify. The capsule collections, which are being white-labeled through a partnership with Sony-owned merch company Ceremony of Roses, represent the latest evolution of the Spotify strategy: Erlich tells Billboard they’re “part of a pyramid of merch offers and services that we can provide for artists and fans,” aligning with the company’s stated goal of helping artists make a living from their work.
“Now that we have the merch hub, there’s a destination for people to go [to], and what we’re testing out now is the ability to create unique pieces for the fans and super fans, which have elements of streetwear culture with drops and limited quantities and more ways for people to feel they’re getting a unique experience and a unique product,” Erlich says. “This is step two of a multi-step journey; it’s a pretty limited drop with only five artists, limited quantities, but it’s also helping us really learn the best ways to partner with artists, but also the best ways to contact our users and help them enjoy this.”
The capsule collection was intentionally limited to five artists, all of whom (with the exception of Pluma) had a pre-existing relationship with Ceremony of Roses. That allowed Spotify to test-drive the new feature in a limited capacity with a collection of artists who have a distinct image and track record in the fashion-merch world. Spotify is also using its Fans First tech to drive the drops, which allows an artist’s biggest fans, in terms of listening engagement, first dibs at the exclusive collections — a tactic the company has employed with ticket offerings and other exclusives in the past. Erlich says the company is trying to establish how to use, but not over-use, the Fans First feature “to find out what works in what ways.”
The collections were jointly designed through a collaborative partnership between the artists, Spotify and Ceremony of Roses, the latter of which handled the logistics of production and shipping. As Ehrlich noted, they’re also tapping into the rarities and exclusives elements of streetwear culture, which he acknowledges is “not necessarily native to what Spotify does normally.” It’s what he sees as part of the learning process as Spotify continues to deepen its forays into the merch space.
“Our plan is to go do this again in Q1 with another set of artists, maybe in a more fashion-facing line, and we’ll have learned a lot by then,” Ehrlich says. “It’ll become our primary method to drop exclusive merch throughout 2024 while we find ways to integrate commerce better in-platform. In 2025, hopefully, you’ll see much more integrated and seamless commerce on-platform around merch. And from the moment that we do that, then we can turbocharge the scale with which we do it.”
For Spotify, the merch space offers an additional revenue stream for both artists and itself, as it builds on the back of its first quarterly profit in over a year in Q3, as price hikes and user growth helped tip it into the black. Adding more integration into its sales offerings — ironic as it is for a company that is so associated with helping the music business move on from a music sales model — is what Erlich sees as the present and future of the hybrid model.
“Whether it’s tickets, concerts, physical goods, fans want to express fandom in different ways and that’s a great thing. And the ability to use our streaming platform and data to identify fandom and be much more targeted in what you’re offering is the competitive advantage that we have given our scale and knowledge,” he says. “So I’m excited for us to do more a la carte, but it’s around this expression of fandom rather than access to music.”
Functional content — think rain noises, whale sounds, recordings of wind rustling the leaves and the like — will be significantly devalued under Spotify‘s new royalty system: Plays of this audio will generate one fifth of the royalties generated by a play of a musical track, according to a source with knowledge of the streaming service’s new policy.
In response to a request for comment, a Spotify spokesperson pointed Billboard to the streaming service’s blog post from Tuesday (Nov. 21). The blog notes that, “over the coming months,” Spotify will “work with licensors to value noise streams at a fraction of the value of music streams.” The blog does not say what the fractional amount will be.
Spotify’s decision to count functional content at 20% of the rate for music tracks is the culmination of nearly a year’s worth of bad press for rain sounds and the like. While this type of audio is often used for the seemingly innocuous purpose of relaxing after a long and stressful day, Spotify wrote on its blog that the space is “sometimes exploited by bad actors who cut their tracks artificially short — with no artistic merit — in order to maximize royalty-bearing streams.”
This initiative, says Spotify’s blog post, is intended to free up “extra money to go back into the royalty pool for honest, hard working artists.”
As a result, some of the most powerful executives in music have launched a sustained assault on rain and its various non-musical cousins over the course of 2023. “It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof,” Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl told analysts in May.
Two months later, Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge told analysts that streaming services must ensure that “real artists don’t have their royalties diluted by noise and other content that has no meaningful engagement from music fans.” He later amped up the rhetoric by describing companies that upload this content as “merchants of garbage” that were “flooding the platform with content that has absolutely no engagement with fans, doesn’t help churn, doesn’t merchandise great music and professional artists.”
When UMG rolled out a new royalty system with Deezer in September, the streaming service said it would replace “non-artist noise content” with its own functional music, while also excluding this audio from the royalty pool. “The sound of rain or a washing machine is not as valuable as a song from your favorite artist streamed in HiFi,” Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira said. Deezer said plays of rain, washing machines and other non-music noise content counts for roughly 2% of all streams.
Spotify did not provide a comparable number in its blog post. It is taking one other step to limit the impact of functional content on the royalty pool: To generate royalties, a functional audio track must be longer than two minutes.
“These policies will right-size the revenue opportunity for noise uploaders,” Spotify wrote. “Currently, the opportunity is so large that uploaders flood streaming services with undifferentiated noise recordings, hoping to attract enough search traffic to generate royalties.”
BMI is being sold to a New Mountain Capital-led shareholder group in a deal that is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2024, a company spokesperson confirmed with Billboard.
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While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the buyer announced that as part of the deal BMI’s current shareholders will allocate $100 million of the sale’s proceeds to songwriters and publishers affiliates “in recognition of [their] creativity.” That planned payout will adhere to BMI’s distribution methodologies.
The deal still needs to be approved by the broadcaster shareholders that have long owned the performance rights organization and will also need regulatory approval.
“Today marks an exciting new chapter for BMI that puts us in the best possible position to stay ahead of the evolving industry and ensure the long-term success of our music creators,” BMI president and CEO Mike O’Neill said in a statement. “New Mountain is an ideal partner because they believe in our mission and understand that the key to success for our company lies in delivering value to our affiliates.”
As part of the agreement, New Mountain is reserving additional capital to fund growth investments and technology enhancement to help BMI’s long-term plan to maximize distributions for its affiliates and improve the service it provides to songwriters and publishers.
“BMI has been a trusted guide and champion of music creators from the beginning, and we are privileged to work with the company and its 1.4 million affiliates to build on that incredible legacy,” New Mountain managing director Pete Masucci said in a statement. “There are numerous growth opportunities ahead for BMI with significant potential to generate more value for the work of its songwriters, composers and publishers. We look forward to working together alongside Mike and his team to capitalize on those opportunities for the benefit of all BMI stakeholders.”
In emphasizing the buyer’s commitment to investment in next generation technology platforms, New Mountain director Mike Oshinsky said in a statement, “There is tremendous opportunity to modernize this critical part of music infrastructure and ensure that long term royalty collections for songwriters, composers and publishers continue to grow. With our support, BMI is ideally positioned to drive this transformation as the only PRO in the world to combine an open-door policy to all music creators with the innovation and commercial drive of a for-profit business.”
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC served as financial advisor to BMI and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP served as its legal advisor. Moelis & Company served as financial advisor to New Mountain, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP served as its legal advisor. As part of New Mountain’s investment, CapitalG will also invest a passive minority stake in BMI.
The digital age has democratized both the production and the distribution of music, but getting paid for it, especially on the songwriting side, is still confusing. Some of the information gets complicated – neighboring rights don’t actually involve the rights of neighbors, for example – and much of it is biased.
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Now the Music Rights Awareness Foundation, a Sweden-based nonprofit founded by ABBA songwriter Björn Ulvaeus, producer-songwriter Max Martin and songwriter Niclas Molinder, has teamed up with WIPO – the World Intellectual Property Organization, which operates as part of the United Nations – have teamed up to create CLIP (“Creators Learn Intellectual Property”) a website that will educate songwriters.
“I know firsthand how important it is for creators to know and manage their IP rights,” Ulvaeus said in the announcement. “Today, it is an essential foundation for a successful career in the music industry.”
Music Rights Awareness launched years ago, with the mission to empower songwriters with knowledge about the business. But CLIP, which offers an array of information and resources, took some time. “We started this work four years ago but the actual platform took a bit over a year,” Molinder told Billboard. “The audience is music creators around the world, but the plan is to grow it to creators in other areas.”
Billed as offering “everything you need to know about your rights as a creator” and introduced by Ulvaeus in a video, the site offers explanations of rights that are accessible as well as smart. The resources on songwriting, for example, include information about composers, topliners, arrangers, as well as explanations of their rights and how they interact.
The site is in English, but there are also plans to translate it into the five other official UN languages – Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.
WIPO plays a largely unseen but important role in regulating patents, trademarks and copyrights – although mostly as a place where treaties can be negotiated, rather than as a top-down lawmaker. It often plays a role in explaining intellectual property but rarely in such an accessible way.
“Creators draw on their talent and artistic vision to give us music, art, song and dance,” said WIPO director general Daren Tang in the announcement. “We must do what we can to ensure they are recognized and fairly rewarded, so that they can thrive in their work and contributions to society.”
Ulvaeus, Martin and Molinder are also behind the app Sessions Studio, free software that allows music creators to assign and track songwriting credits to make sure they get paid. But CLIP and the Music Rights Awareness Foundation operate separately.
Brazilian DJ, producer and entrepreneur Vintage Culture has signed with WME for global representation.
Known for creating house and techno blends, Vintage Culture has played festivals including Coachella and Tomorrowland and recently completed the second year of his residency at Hï Ibiza. This year, he also launched Vintage Is a Festival, an event that has rolled out to five major cities in Brazil and will hit São Paulo next month. He founded his own record label and festival brand, Só Track Boa, and also has a partnership with electronic music and lifestyle brand Born of Music Addiction.
Earlier this year, Vintage Culture announced his forthcoming debut album and released “If I Live Forever” featuring Izzy Bizzu, the first single off the LP. Elsewhere, he’s collaborated with and remixed artists including the late Maxi Jazz, Rufus Du Sol, John Summit, Meduza, The Martinez Brothers & Louie Vega, Diplo, Roland Clark, Aurora, Sonny Fodera, Claptone, James Hype, Annabel Englund and Solardo.
Vintage Culture is managed by Guga Arthuri at Entourage Management and Jay Pidgeon at Purple Wall Management.
Country singer-songwriter Charlie Worsham signed with UTA for global representation in all areas. Worsham is signed to Warner Music Nashville, which released his latest project, the EP Compadres, in October. He continues to tour as part of Dierks Bentley’s band and was recently nominated for the CMA award for musician of the year.
Nettwerk signed a trio of new artists: singer-songwriter-guitarist Lily Meola (America’s Got Talent), singer-songwriter-producer Bryce Fox and Scottish duo SAINT PHNX (brothers Alan and Stevie Jukes). Meola is managed by Blaike Ford and Jordy Dettmer at Range Media Partners and Jeffrey Evans and Jackson Lauer at Buskin Entertainment, with booking by Corrie Martin at Wasserman; her A&Rs at Nettwerk are Eric Robinson, Marshall Altman and Meg Tarquinio. Fox is managed by Scott Sheldon, Berko Pearce and Peyton Marek at RM 64; his Nettwerk A&Rs are Dan Fraser and Mark Jowett. Saint Phnx are managed by Marc Fineman and Hannah Coles at Fine Group Entertainment and Alistair Goldsmith at Chosen Music, with booking by Tom Windish at Wasserman. Their Nettwerk A&R is Eric Robinson.
Country artist LECADE (real name Cade Brinkley) signed with 10th Street Entertainment (which also represents Bailey Zimmerman) for management. An independent country artist with hip-hop roots, LECADE released his debut album, Chasing Ghosts, in 2022. He is signed to Big Machine Records, which recently released his debut on the label, “Next Town Over.” Elsewhere, he’s represented by Joey Lee, Alex Luebbert and Kevin Meads at WME for booking and FBMM for business management.
U.K.-based brother-sister duo Wasia Project (William and Olivia Hardy) renewed their label deal with AWAL, which will release their upcoming debut album. The alt-pop duo previously released their debut EP, how can i pretend?, which featured the single “ur so pretty.” They are managed by Rob Swerdlow and booked by Tom Windish and Zac Bluestone at Wasserman Music for the United States, where they’re planning to headline shows next year.
Boeckner, the new solo project from Daniel Boeckner (who has played in Wolf Parade, Operators, Divine Fits and Handsome Furs), signed with Sub Pop for the release of his debut album in early 2024. He is booked by in the United States by Trey Many at Wasserman and in Canada by Steven Himmelfarb at The Feldman Agency.
Rapper TyFontaine signed with MNRK Music Group, which will release his new mixtape, 264, on Dec. 1. He joins MNRK after a period of releasing music independently; he was previously signed to Internet Money. His new single, “DOS,” is a collaboration with Summrs, Joony and TTM Dawg. He is managed and booked by Taryn “P” Smith.
Genre-fluid artist GARZI signed with Sumerian Records, which dropped his new single, “GrowinUp” featuring Memphis May Fire’s Matty Mullins. He is managed by Sean Chapman and Sid Sodin at The Sakai Group; his booking agent is Daniel McCartney at UTA. GARZI was previously signed to Outlast Records, an imprint of Sumerian.
Loren Kramar signed to Secretly Canadian, which released his latest single, “Hollywood Blvd.” He is booked by Erik Selz at Arrival Artists.
Suhel Nafar understands the impact that music can have around the world.
Born in Lod — a city about 25 miles from Jerusalem — to Palestinian parents, Nafar learned English by listening to Dead Prez, 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. The influence of these artists was so strong that in the late 1990s, he — along with his brother Tamer Nafar and their friend Mahmoud Jreri — started the first Palestinian hip-hop group, DAM.
“Listening to hip-hop and seeing music videos of artists being chased by police and feeling their oppression and their anger without knowing what they were talking about because I didn’t speak English — I felt they were talking about me,” Nafar tells Billboard over Zoom from Lod in late October.
He spent 20 years touring the world with DAM, whose lyrics focused on such topics as inequality and oppression. Through his travels, he saw a need in the market and is now working behind the scenes to fill it.
“There aren’t enough of us,” Nafar says, “Arabs, Muslims, brown people and people of color in the music industry to support the artists in the region and around the world.”
Nafar started working on videos, films and other jobs that focused on artists in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, which includes the Middle East, and helped its music scene coalesce. He moved to the United States in 2013 and taught as an artist in residence at New York University and, in 2018, began a three-year stint at Spotify. There, he helped establish WANA content on the platform and worked in its artist and industry partnerships division.
As vp of strategy and development at EMPIRE, where Nafar started in early 2021, he is leading the company’s expansion into the WANA region, which is rich with talent. Nafar says the generation of musicians he is fostering can help heal “the wound” inflicted by the conflicts there and their far-reaching repercussions.
He sees “glocalization” — global music genres such as pop and hip-hop adapted to WANA cultures — as the ideal delivery system and cites “Rajieen,” a direct response to the crisis featuring 25 WANA artists as an example. Nafar says the song and its powerful video have reached almost 10 million streams across all platforms.
What is EMPIRE’s West Asia and North Africa strategy?
I decided to move to EMPIRE because I felt that the technology of Spotify is great but that artists needed more behind-the-scenes support. [I needed] to be closer to artists and work with them on strategy. As a person that had the artist background, the [digital service provider] background and the content creation background, I thought I would help artists more from the label side.
At EMPIRE, I handle the strategy and development for the region. It means working with a lot of artists on signings and signing labels as well. I’m also developing the market. There’s a gap [in the WANA region] because we don’t have enough people behind the scenes. We don’t have enough managers. We don’t have enough labels.
How does EMPIRE’s independent approach to business influence your efforts?
My whole idea was how I could create a more independent mentality for others so that they could create their own EMPIREs and build their own rosters and executive teams. We signed a lot of labels from the region, along with good people who love music and are just missing skills, or people who have the skills but are missing people to be on their team. We’re providing this infrastructure to a lot of people here.
You’re saying that you’re building the industry itself, to a certain extent.
It’s supporting to amplify what’s already there more than building, I would say.
Nafar says he received this relief of Handala, a national symbol of the Palestinian people, “from a group of kids who attended one of my music and film workshops,” which he conducted in impoverished neighborhoods and refugee camps in Palestine.
Amir Nafar
What have been your biggest successes so far?
The number of female artists we have is amazing. We had at least four Arab female artists on Spotify’s Times Square billboard. My team and I are supporting voices of females from Morocco, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and the diaspora. This type of excitement inspires other female artists to grow. I’m really proud of that.
Who are some Arab artists you’re most excited about?
Maro is a half-Lebanese, half-Ukrainian artist who speaks Arabic, English, French, Ukrainian and Russian and can sing in every language. He was raised in Beirut, where he grew up playing guitar in the streets as a busker. When there was violence in Lebanon, he had to move to Norway … We got an opportunity to bring him to the U.S., where he’s living now.
What about hip-hop artists?
MC Abdul, a 15-year-old kid from Gaza, is a genius who started rapping when he was 9. He learned English from hip-hop and speaks it better than a lot of Americans I know. A few months ago, we finally got him out of Gaza and flew him and his dad to San Francisco on an artist visa. He performed an amazing show there for over 20,000 people. He was in the studio and taking meetings to start his album rollout and was supposed to come back to Gaza [a few] weeks ago. Then the whole situation started, so he couldn’t go back to his family.
Another artist I love is Soulja, a rapper from Sudan. When the war in Sudan happened, we had to help him escape from Sudan to Egypt, and now he’s in Saudi Arabia. His recent release, “Ayam,” is a breakup song where he’s telling his love he doesn’t want to see her anymore, but his love is actually Sudan. He wrote it the day he escaped and was almost killed.
Name one of the women artists you’re supporting.
Nai Barghouti is another amazing artist. She’s a traditional Palestinian folk artist who recently did a song with Skrillex, “Xena.” Her vocal skills are unbelievable. Sometimes we’re like, “Are you human?” Because sometimes it feels like her voice is just an instrument. We’re working on a few projects with her.
Developing Arab artists and promoting the region globally must feel like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
There are people who’ve been in this field before me that did a lot of great work and other cultures that inspired us a lot. My days at Spotify inspired me so much because I worked closely with the Latin team, the Afro team, the Desi team. I watched how K-pop started from the early stages. I just localized what I learned from all those different cultures.
Amir Nafar
How have things shifted since the recent conflict started? What are your workdays like?
Artists are not feeling like they want to release music. That’s the biggest hit. The department I’m running [went from releasing] at least 20 songs a week to almost no songs. The first week, it was the shock of “What the fuck is going on?” and then canceling shows. A lot of festivals all around the Arab world were canceled.
As an artist myself, this is not the first time I’ve gone through it. There have been many times when we were about to drop an album, then Israel invaded Gaza, or there was some protest, or people were getting killed. We learned how to maneuver in these unfortunate situations.
What’s the first move in that maneuvering?
Before business is people. A lot of it is mental support because many artists are going through a lot of emotional pain right now. Everyone knows someone in Gaza. Every family knows a family. I know a hip-hop producer in Gaza that lost his entire family.
If this becomes a long war, how do you foresee it affecting your business?
Music is like history books. The artists will be the ones telling the stories. They will document what’s happening better than the Western media. They will do better songs than Taylor Swift and not do a post about Taylor Swift’s bodyguard. I just hope this won’t get to a point when it’s normalized and [people] will forget about it.
The story of Taylor Swift’s bodyguard returning to Israel to serve in the Israel Defense Forces was widely covered by the media, including Billboard. What are your thoughts on that story?
From my perspective, showing how cute this bodyguard is [who is] going to join the army is not something to make cool at a time when thousands of kids are being killed. [Humanitarian organizations] consider the IDF an illegal army that has done a lot of illegal activities. We as people who are working for music and culture should be uplifting the voices that would heal this wound and not say, “Look at this Taylor Swift bodyguard.”
Is there anything else you would like to say?
I wish this interview was in a different time [with me] talking more about the business. I actually almost canceled because it’s overwhelming watching my family and friends going through genocide. I want to represent the new generation and the music that is fucking amazing; not the situation where there’s an oppressor bombing families as we speak.
I also want to say that from a music and culture perspective, we’re entering a very unique era of the glocalization of a new generation. The culture is morphing. There isn’t one culture anymore. There’s no one genre anymore. This is the voice that I would like to amplify more than anything.
Amir Nafar
Dubai-based entertainment streaming platform OSN+ has purchased a majority stake in Nasdaq-listed music streaming service Anghami, forming a powerful media partnership in the growing MENA media landscape. OSN, a subsidiary of Kuwait holding company Kuwait Projects Company, known as KIPCO, said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it will “inject up to USD $50 million” into the Abu Dhabi-based Anghami.
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According to a joint announcement, the merging of the two homegrown platforms will “leverage Anghami’s strong tech stack” and catalog of 100 million songs with OSN+’s Netflix-like library of premium video content to forge a “unique digital streaming experience with AI-driven hyper personalization that prioritizes recommendations based on user preference.”
KIPCO’s OSN Group puts Anghami’s valuation at $3.65 per share and said the music streaming will maintain its listing on Nasdaq, where in morning trading has skyrocketed up around 43% to $2.26. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Once all the i’s are dotted, OSN Group will own a majority stake in Anghami, which was founded in 2012.
In March, Anghami said its revenue grew by more than 35% to $48 million in 2022, driven by a 21% year-over-year uptick in paid subscribers to 1.52 million. Anghami claims to have 120 million registered users overall, up significantly from the 75 million it boasted in 2021.
Combined at closing, the companies say they’ll start with this venture with “more than 2.5 million paying subscribers with over $100 million in revenue.”
Anghami co-founder Elie Habib will be CEO of the fused streaming companies, though OSN’s linear TV business will be run independently by that group’s CEO, Joe Kawkabani.
“Joining forces with OSN+ is a leap in Anghami’s journey to reinvent entertainment in the Arab World,” said Habib. “We’re bringing together technology, music and video to build a comprehensive media ecosystem. It’s a chance to deepen our connection with our users and to create something they will truly love.”
The pair-up comes just a few months after Anghami received a $5 million investment from the venture capital arm of the Saudi Arabia media company SRMG. And in October, Anghami fought off a warning from Nasdaq after its stock price dipping below $1.00 for an extended period. At the time of the warning from Nasdaq, Anghami shares were at $0.82 apiece.
OSN+ offers movies and TV series, including both original and third-party content, and is available in 22 countries, including Algeria, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. As of April filing with the SEC, Anghami said it had 47 telco partnerships across the Middle East and Northern Africa and licensing deals with major Arabic and international music labels including Rotana Music, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Merlin, among others.
“This is a major milestone in OSN’s journey as we continue to scale up our streaming business. Combining OSN+ content with Anghami’s technology enables us to deliver the best of entertainment all in one place for our customers, ensuring we are continuously evolving our offering to meet their needs. As two home-grown entities with an unmatched understanding of the local market, we are confident that this new offering will change the face of the regional streaming landscape.”