Business
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Warner Music Group reported quarterly revenue was up 6% as of Sept. 30, as the third-largest U.S.-based music rode a solid release slate that included the Barbie soundtrack, Zach Bryan and FIFTY FIFTY to eclipse $6 billion in overall annual revenue for the first time. WMG reported revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter rose to […]
YouTube is launching an experimental feature Thursday (Nov. 16) that will create artificial intelligence-generated voices of well-known artists for use in clips on YouTube shorts. The initial selection of acts participating in the program includes Charlie Puth, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, Demi Lovato, Troye Sivan, Charli XCX, Alec Benjamin and Papoose.
YouTube’s feature, called Dream Track, creates pieces of music — voice along with musical accompaniment — based on text prompts that are up to 30 seconds in length. For now, around 100 U.S.-based creators will have Dream Track access.
“At this initial phase, the experiment is designed to help explore how the technology could be used to create deeper connections between artists and creators, and ultimately, their fans,” according to a blog post from Lyor Cohen, global head of music, and Toni Reid, vp of emerging experiences and community.
The music industry has been wary of AI this year, but several prominent executives voiced their support for Dream Track. “In this dynamic and rapidly evolving market, artists gain most when together we engage with our technology partners to work towards an environment in which responsible AI can take root and grow,” Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement. “Only with active, constructive and deep engagement can we build a mutually successful future together.”
“YouTube is taking a collaborative approach with this Beta,” Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, said in a statement of his own. “These artists are being offered the choice to lean in, and we’re pleased to experiment and find out what the creators come up with.”
YouTube emphasized that Dream Track is an experiment. The artists involved are “excited to help us shape the future,” Cohen said in an interview. “Being part of this experiment allows them to do it.” That also means that, for now, some of the underlying details — how is the AI tech trained? how might this feature be monetized at scale? — remain fuzzy.
While the lawyers figure all that out, the artists involved in Dream Track sounded enthusiastic. Demi Lovato: “I am open minded and hopeful that this experiment with Google and YouTube will be a positive and enlightening experience.” John Legend: “I am happy to have a seat at the table, and I look forward to seeing what the creators dream up during this period.” Sia: “I can’t wait to hear what kinds of recipes all you creators out there come up with.”
While YouTube’s AI-generated voices are likely to get the most attention, the platform also announced the release of new AI music tools. These build on lessons learned from the “AI Music Incubator” the platform announced in August, according to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind. Through that program, “some of the world’s most famous musicians have given feedback on what they would like to see, and we’ve been inspired by that to build out the technology and the tools in certain ways so that it would be useful for them,” Hassabis explained in an interview.
He ticked off a handful of examples: An artist can hum something and AI-powered technology will create an instrumental based on the tune; a songwriter can pen two musical phrases on their own and rely on the tools to help craft a transition between them; a singer can come in with a fully fledged vocal melody and ask the tech to come up with musical accompaniment.
Finally, YouTube is rolling out another feature called SynthID, which will watermark any of the AI-generated audio it produces so it can be identified as such. Earlier this week, the platform announced that it would provide labels and others music rights holders the ability “to request the removal of AI-generated music content that mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice.”
Amid the offerings at the LA3C festival that took place in downtown L.A. this past weekend (Nov. 11-12), a presentation from the Saudi Arabia Music Commission put forth a broad view of the music industry currently being developed in the country.
Hosted by VIBE editor-in-chief Datwon Thomas, panelists included Paul Pacifico, CEO of the Saudi Music Commission; Ahmad Alammary, chief creative officer for the Saudi electronic music festival Soundstorm; Gigi Arabia, the founder/CEO of Saudi heavy metal organization Heavy Arabia; Mexican-American songwriter, producer and academic Fernando Garibay, who has worked in the Kingdom; and Saudi singer-songwriter Tamtam.
Saudi Arabia has seen significant social changes in the last decade, as the government has eased restrictions around formerly prohibited activities like playing music in public and co-ed gatherings. These new freedoms have helped lay the groundwork for the formation of a music industry, with the bulk of the panel discussion focused on how this industry is currently being built from scratch.
“We have huge pent-up supply of creativity and music,” said Pacifico, a Brit who joined the Music Commission as CEO in January 2023. “We have huge pent-up demand among audiences that have grown up wanting to go to festivals, concerts, events, to listen to music and enjoy themselves.”
“But we lack enablers,” Pacifico continued. “So over the next one year, three years, five years, it’s going to be all about building the structures that connect those dots that allow people to express themselves creatively and to build platforms that will enable Saudi artists to tell their stories in a way that will be heard around the world.”
“A lot of people working in the [global music] industry ask how we can fix our industry, or how we can rethink our industry,” added Garibay, “but I don’t think we’ve ever had in the history over the past 100 years a chance to think about, ‘How would you start over? How would you start from a new perspective?’”
The discussion emphasized that while Saudi Arabia does not yet have venues, a collecting society and other essential infrastructure, this clean canvas is allowing key players to, Alammary said, “shape it the way we want to learn from the lessons around the world and actually serve artists.”
Pacifico cited the major opportunities for artists in Saudi Arabia with respect to the country’s demographics, saying that “70% of the people are under 35 years old, and the country has 98% Internet penetration. So you have a young, connected, dynamic and unbelievably energized population.”
The panelists agreed that this audience and the emerging industry combined are creating huge opportunities for Saudi artists, as formerly underground scenes are coalesced and, as Alammary said, “unveiled.” These formerly underground scenes include those around genres like electronic music, the focus of the Saudi mega-festival Soundstorm that launched in 2019, along with hip-hop, heavy metal and more.
“All of the events took place in super unconventional places,” Arabia said of the Saudi metal scene before music-related restrictions were lifted. “We have something in Saudi called rest houses, little houses in the middle of nowhere for people to rest in if they’re going on a road trip, where events took place.”
“We’re still growing it event by event,” Arabia added in regard to the country’s current aboveground metal scene. “With the help of the Music Commission and its leadership, now we have been able to go and represent it in the genre globally.” She foresees Saudi Arabia becoming a “hotspot for metal heads” in a fashion similar to the Nordic region.
The Music Commission exists under the Saudi Ministry of Culture, a government entity focused on expanding the country’s entertainment sector through endeavors into music, sports, film and more. These entities exist as part of Vision 2030, the Saudi government’s plan, it says, to diversify the country’s economy, society and culture. (The LA3C panel did not touch on the challenges of building an industry amid the still-existing restrictions of the Saudi government, which does not protect freedom of speech and which, despite some recent advancements, still imposes myriad restrictions on women.)
“There’s an incomplete picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing,” Pacifico said of the country’s current industry, “But we see record labels coming up, we see management companies growing. The most amazing thing is the whole music industry is going through an accelerated time of massive change, and Saudi Arabia as a country is going through a massively accelerated time of change. So nothing’s taken for granted… and we can just think again about how to do things better, quicker, more efficiently.”
The presentation also included performances from Tamtam, Saudi pop artist Mishaal Tamer — who released his debut EP in 2020 via RCA Records and opened for OneRepublic on tour this past summer — and Riyadh-based producer and songwriter NTITLED.
LA3C was built to highlight communities creating culture around the world. LA3C created a paid partnership with the Saudi Music Commission to highlight the cultural shift in the commercial entertainment sector and with regional artists that have a presence in the United States and Saudi Arabia. LA3C is owned by Penske Media Corporation which is also the parent company of Billboard.
Attorneys for Eothen “Egon” Alapatt are firing 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.
MF Doom’s widow sued last month, claiming that Egon (a label exec and a former collaborator with the famed rapper) wrongfully took possession of the notebooks as Doom spent a decade in his native England ahead of his shocking death in 2020, and has refused to return them ever since.
But in a strongly worded response filed in court Tuesday (Nov. 14), Alapatt’s attorney, Kenneth Freundlich, sharply disputed those allegations, saying that the “frivolous” case contained “knowingly false statements” about his client.
“Plaintiffs’ complaint is the continuation of a year-long smear campaign filled with baseless and libelous attacks on Alapatt’s integrity and character,” Freundlich wrote.
Doom, whose real name was Daniel Dumile, traveled to the United Kingdom in 2010 to perform but was later prohibited from returning to the United States due to immigration issues. He remained overseas until his sudden passing on Oct. 31, 2020, at the age of 49, from rare complications related to blood pressure medication.
In her lawsuit, Doom’s widow, Jasmine Dumile Thompson, says that when the rapper left the country, he left behind a collection of 31 “rhyme books” in his Los Angeles studio. She says they include “musings and other creative ideations,” including original lyrics to released music, lyrics to unreleased songs and song ideas — a veritable treasure trove for Doom fans and hip-hop historians.
Thompson’s lawyers say that Alapatt “took advantage of Doom’s being out of the country” to buy the notebooks from his landlord for $12,500 without ever consulting the rapper. When Doom himself asked for their return, the lawsuit claims, Alapatt “delayed, obfuscated and deflected” and then ultimately refused to return them. And since Doom’s death, Thompson says Alapatt has made the “astonishing” demand that the notebooks must be donated to an archive — a choice that she says runs contrary to Doom’s wishes that they remain “secret and confidential.”
“Who is Alapatt to decide that the notebooks containing the personal and intellectual property of Doom, the rights to which are plaintiffs’ alone, must be donated to an archive against the will of the deceased artist and his surviving family?” Thompson’s lawyers wrote in their complaint. “Setting aside the fact that the notebooks were stolen, Alapatt’s arrogant paternalism and extreme tone-deafness in trying to dictate that the notebooks be donated is astonishing.”
In Tuesday’s response, Alapatt’s lawyers admit that he took possession of Doom’s materials but denied that Doom had actually been their legal owner when he died. The real owner, they say, was the studio landlord because the notebooks had been left behind at his property and a large amount of rent had been left unpaid. If not for Alapatt’s actions, his lawyers argued that the landlord “would have either sold or possibly destroyed the notebooks.”
“Contrary to the knowingly false statements contained in the complaint, Alapatt saved and preserved the notebooks after he purchased them from DOOM’s former landlord who owned and controlled the notebooks because DOOM had abandoned his studio and was in years’ long arrears on rent,” Freundlich wrote in the court documents.
Alapatt’s lawyers say he later repeatedly tried to make arrangements with Doom and his reps to return the materials during his lifetime, but that the artist had failed to follow up. At one point, his attorneys say, Doom “seemed to have completely forgotten his prior discussion with Alapatt” about returning the notebooks.
Tuesday’s response confirms one key allegation of Thompson’s lawsuit: That Alapatt had said he would only return the notebooks if a digital copy of them was donated to an archive. (In the filing, his lawyers say he suggested “the Cornell Hip-Hop Archive, the Smithsonian, or another accredited archive of their choosing.”)
But his lawyers argue that the request was a fair one because donating the materials would help protect “precious artifacts of hip-hop history” and allow “scholars and researchers to study DOOM’s creativity and further entrench his creative genius — not just in hip-hop but in American history.”
“Rather than accept Alapatt’s generous offer,” Freundlich writes in Tuesday’s filing, “plaintiffs chose to continue their hurtful, and defamatory attacks against Alapatt by filing this frivolous complaint.”
Attorneys for Thompson did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
Creative agency, record label and artist-services company Big.Ass.Kids has launched a new hub on its website called the Neighborhood, a sort of digital universe where artists, writers, music fans and music industry executives can meet, share their work, tap into creative and artist services and even buy and sell books and music.
The Neighborhood, which is live now on the Big.Ass.Kids website, is a fully-illustrated world with its own characters and storefronts, each of which represents a different functionality for the ecosystem that B.A.K. has created.
One storefront, called the B.A.K. Projects, is a home to showcase the company’s creative work, which has included campaigns for the new Rick Ross and Meek Mill album Too Good to Be True; work with Lion Babe, Smino and Bishop Nehru and MF Doom; and its label compilation, See You Next Year in partnership with Pigeons & Planes, which came out this year and was executive-produced by Mike Dean. (A second volume, due out next year, was recently recorded at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu.) Another, called Ralph’s Used & Rare Books, is a home for artist and executive interviews, industry guides for artists, music-inspired fiction writing and even actual used music book sales. A third, called the Music Man shop, showcases B.A.K.’s label releases, projects by the artists and executives they’ve worked with and audio interviews with artists and execs; it’s also a place for selling used vinyl. Each storefront has its own characters who live and work there, with their own back stories to tell.
Probably most significant for the industry are the Kat Cafe and The Playground. The Kat Cafe is home to B.A.K.’s artist services hub, where artists can go and browse through B.A.K.’s suite of services including management consultation, rollout support, tour management, synch licensing, artist development tools, content and design services, experiential marketing, brand partnerships and radio promotions from B.A.K.’s team. The Playground is a place where artists can find executives to help execute on the projects for which they need help, serving as a sort of vetted industry database for those looking to handpick their own teams based on their individual needs. (Conversely, it’s also a place where freelance industry executives can advertise their services.)
Big.Ass.Kids was formed in 2021 as a label and creative agency focused on collaborative projects, with its See You Next Year album in partnership with Pigeons & Planes and distributed by ADA featuring contributions from Ben Reilly, Teezo Touchdown, Ekkstacy, Wallice and more. The album rolled out with an intro by Dean and a partnership with Converse and will be the first in a series of collaborative albums that the company is aiming to release. On the agency side, B.A.K. worked on the Meek and Ross album through an interactive marketing plan involving a contest through which fans could win $50,000.
“We’ve been ideating on ways to become more impactful and disruptive since our launch,” founder and creative director le’Roy Benros told Billboard in a statement. “We’ve evolved into a creative ecosystem that supports and serves artists, creates moments and builds community. Our newly launched interactive Big.Ass.Kids neighborhood redefines how collaboration between artists and music professionals occur, creates unique ways for music discovery to happen; ultimately, it’s an exciting universe where music lovers, creatives and professionals can unite.”
Moises, an AI music and audio start-up, has partnered with HYPERREAL, a visual effects company, to create a “proprietary digital human asset” called Hypermodel. This will allow artists to create their digital versions of themselves for marketing, creative and fan engagement purposes.
HYPERREAL has already been collaborating with musicians since 2021, when he worked with Paul McCartney and Beck on their music video for “Find My Way.” In the video, Beck went undercover as a younger version of 81-year-old McCartney, using HYPERREAL to swap and de-age their faces.
Moises is a popular AI music and audio company that provides a suite of tools for musicians, including stem separation, lyric transcription, and voice synthesis.
According to the press release, Moises and HYPERREAL believe this collaboration will especially help the estates of legacy artists to bring the artist’s legacy “to life” and will allow artists to sing or speak in another language using AI voice modeling provided by Moises, helping to localize songs and marketing content to specific regions.
Translations and estate or legacy artist marketing are seen as two of the most sought after new applications of AI for musicians. Last week, pop artist Lauv collaborated with AI voice start-up Hooky to translate his song “Love U Like That” into Korean as a thank you to his steadfast fanbase in the region. This is not the first time AI has been used to translate an artist’s voice — it was first employed in May by MIDNATT, a Korean artist who used the HYBE-owned voice synthesis company Supertone to translate his debut single into six languages — but Lauv’s use of the technology was the first popular Western artist to try it.
Estates are starting to leverage AI as well to essentially bring a late artist back to life. On Tuesday, Nov 14, Warner Music announced plans to use AI to recreate the voice and image of legendary “La Vie En Rose” singer, Edith Piaf, for an upcoming biopic about her life and career. Over in Korea, Supertone remade the voice of late South Korean folk artist Kim Kwang-seok, and Tencent’s Lingyin Engine made headlines for developing “synthetic voices in memory of legendary artists,” like Teresa Teng and Anita Mui as a way to revive interest in their catalogs.
“Moises and HYPERREAL are each best-in-class players with a history of pushing creative boundaries enabled by technology while fully respecting the choices of artists and rights holders,” says Moises CEO Geraldo Ramos. “As their preferred partner, we’re looking forward to seeing the ways HYPERREAL, can leverage Moises’s voice modeling capabilities to add incredibly realistic voices to their productions.”
“We have set the industry standard and exceeded the expectations of the most demanding directors and producers time and time again,” says Remington Scott, founder and CEO of HYPERREAL. “In addition to Moises’s artist-first approach, the quality of their voice models is the best we’ve heard.”
Last spring, executives at Onex, AEG’s private equity partner in facility management company ASM Global, notified AEG leadership of their plans to trigger a clause in their agreement that allowed Onex to sell its 35% stake in ASM. Under the terms of the deal, AEG could either buy out Onex or match competing offers.
AEG officials instead elected to get out too, and over about half a year worked with Onex to identify a buyer for all ASM Global. On Nov. 3, Onex and AEG jointly announced that Legends Hospitality was buying ASM, the country’s leading venue management company.
Onex CEO Bobby Le Blanc told investors on a Nov. 10 earnings call that the decision to sell its ASM ownership stake for $2.3 billion was prompted by the company’s rebound in value, quickly recovering in the post-pandemic period after seeing its value dramatically drop when concerts shut down from 2020-2021 due to COVID-19.
The final sale price would double what ASM Global was worth in 2019 when AEG and Onex merged their SMG facility management holdings to create the world’s largest facility manager, Le Blanc confirmed.
Still, AEG’s decision to sell surprised many in the touring industry who had followed the company’s growth in that space.
For one, the sale made AEG a much smaller company, reducing its global footprint from 350 facilities under management to just nine — all of which AEG either owns or partially owns. And unlike Onex, as the world’s second largest concert promoter, AEG was able to enjoy significant synergies from owning ASM that other companies could not. AEG could more easily book its touring shows at ASM-managed facilities, expand its AXS ticketing platform to ASM-managed venues and sell sponsorships through its global partnerships division.
AEG and Onex merged their facilities holdings 14 months after Onex acquired SMG, AEG’s longtime facilities rival. In so doing, ASM Global became the world’s largest venue management company, with little to no competition for potentially large lucrative government contracts. Facility management has long been a predictable contracts business, in which city and county governments would pay SMG or AEG a fee to manage publicly owned venues and split any profits the private companies helped generate.
Merging the industry’s two largest competitors into ASM Global gave Onex and AEG unprecedented scale in the capital-intensive space and access to lucrative contracts. But the honeymoon didn’t last long. Oak View Group, which was founded in 2015 by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke — who made his own failed bid to buy SMG — began growing as a serious competitor, and peeled away a number of big-name management clients away including PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, the BOK Center in Tulsa and the sprawling McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. While the concert business’ post-pandemic boom has brought impressive profits, a source in facility management says that increased competition and inflation have been eating up ASM’s margins. Additionally, rising interest rates have made it difficult for firms like ASM to offer up capital investments in return for long-term management contracts, and much of the business’ growth was coming from new international venue projects, which were more costly to service.
Most recently, the bulk of AEG’s growth has been in its tour promotion business globally and through its theaters and clubs division. Since the end of the pandemic, both AEG and Live Nation have been looking to expand their network of smaller venues that they manage exclusively.
The company’s sweet spot is “locations with capacities of 1,500 to 5,000,” Rick Mueller, president of AEG Present North America, told Billboard last month. While most arena management deals do not include exclusive booking agreements because no single promoter can provide arenas enough content on their own to sustain a large facility, exclusively programming a club or theater can be much more profitable due to the leverage the contract holder has over other promoters wanting to book the venue, requiring promoters to cut them in on show deals. Now, AEG likely has more than an extra billion dollars to invest in this strategy, should it choose to do so.
Last spring, executives at Onex, AEG’s private equity partner in facility management company ASM Global, notified AEG leadership of their plans to trigger a clause in their agreement that allowed Onex to sell its 35% stake in ASM. Under the terms of the deal, AEG could either buy out Onex or match competing offers.
AEG officials instead elected to get out too, and over about half a year worked with Onex to identify a buyer for all ASM Global. On Nov. 3, Onex and AEG jointly announced that Legends Hospitality was buying ASM, the country’s leading venue management company.
Onex CEO Bobby Le Blanc told investors on a Nov. 10 earnings call that the decision to sell its ASM ownership stake for $2.3 billion was prompted by the company’s rebound in value, quickly recovering in the post-pandemic period after seeing its value dramatically drop when concerts shut down from 2020-2021 due to COVID-19.
The final sale price would double what ASM Global was worth in 2019 when AEG and Onex merged their SMG facility management holdings to create the world’s largest facility manager, Le Blanc confirmed.
Still, AEG’s decision to sell surprised many in the touring industry who had followed the company’s growth in that space.
For one, the sale made AEG a much smaller company, reducing its global footprint from 350 facilities under management to just nine — all of which AEG either owns or partially owns. And unlike Onex, as the world’s second largest concert promoter, AEG was able to enjoy significant synergies from owning ASM that other companies could not. AEG could more easily book its touring shows at ASM-managed facilities, expand its AXS ticketing platform to ASM-managed venues and sell sponsorships through its global partnerships division.
AEG and Onex merged their facilities holdings 14 months after Onex acquired SMG, AEG’s longtime facilities rival. In so doing, ASM Global became the world’s largest venue management company, with little to no competition for potentially large lucrative government contracts. Facility management has long been a predictable contracts business, in which city and county governments would pay SMG or AEG a fee to manage publicly owned venues and split any profits the private companies helped generate.
Merging the industry’s two largest competitors into ASM Global gave Onex and AEG unprecedented scale in the capital-intensive space and access to lucrative contracts. But the honeymoon didn’t last long. Oak View Group, which was founded in 2015 by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke — who made his own failed bid to buy SMG — began growing as a serious competitor, and peeled away a number of big-name management clients away including PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, the BOK Center in Tulsa and the sprawling McCormick Place convention center in Chicago. While the concert business’ post-pandemic boom has brought impressive profits, a source in facility management says that increased competition and inflation have been eating up ASM’s margins. Additionally, rising interest rates have made it difficult for firms like ASM to offer up capital investments in return for long-term management contracts, and much of the business’ growth was coming from new international venue projects, which were more costly to service.
Most recently, the bulk of AEG’s growth has been in its tour promotion business globally and through its theaters and clubs division. Since the end of the pandemic, both AEG and Live Nation have been looking to expand their network of smaller venues that they manage exclusively.
The company’s sweet spot is “locations with capacities of 1,500 to 5,000,” Rick Mueller, president of AEG Present North America, told Billboard last month. While most arena management deals do not include exclusive booking agreements because no single promoter can provide arenas enough content on their own to sustain a large facility, exclusively programming a club or theater can be much more profitable due to the leverage the contract holder has over other promoters wanting to book the venue, requiring promoters to cut them in on show deals. Now, AEG likely has more than an extra billion dollars to invest in this strategy, should it choose to do so.
The bitter legal battle between Sean “Diddy” Combs and alcohol giant Diageo over their soured tequila venture is going to be paused until at least next spring, an appeals court says.
In a ruling on Tuesday, a panel of judges on New York’s appellate division granted Diageo’s request for a so-called stay of the lawsuit, in which Combs accused the company of racism and failing to adequately support his DeLeon brand of tequila.
Diageo’s attorneys asked for the pause while they try to convince the appeals court to overturn a ruling this summer for Diddy and send the case to private arbitration, which would negate the need for continued litigation. Combs’ attorneys had called Diageo’s request a “desperate attempt to delay judicial scrutiny for its discriminatory conduct.”
Tuesday’s decision means any progress in the underlying case will be paused until at least April, which is when the appeals court said Diageo’s appeal must be ready to be heard.
Following the ruling, Combs’ attorney John Hurston told Billboard: “Once the appellate court considers the actual merits, we are confident that they will reach the same conclusion as two separate judges already: that Diageo can’t avoid a public trial.”
A spokeswoman for Diageo did not immediately return a request for comment.
Combs sued in May, claiming Diageo breached his partnership deal for DeLeon Tequila by failing to properly support the brand. But he also went a lot further than that, leveling accusations of racism and claiming Diageo had treated his product line “worse than others because he is Black.”
“Cloaking itself in the language of diversity and equality is good for Diageo’s business, but it is a lie,” Combs’ lawyers wrote. “While Diageo may conspicuously include images of its Black partners in advertising materials and press releases, its words only provide the illusion of inclusion.”
The case claimed that Diageo had “typecast” his DeLeón Tequila as a “Black brand” that could only be sold to “urban” consumers, harming its sales and leaving it lagging behind competing Diageo brands like Casamigos and Don Julio.
Diageo responded a month later, calling the lawsuit a “bad faith, sham action” filed by a star who had “amassed nearly one billion dollars” from their partnership but now wanted to “extract” billions more.
“These allegations are nothing more than opportunistic attempts to garner press attention and distract the court from the fact that plaintiff’s breach-of-contract claim is entirely without merit,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “Diageo categorically denies these accusations.”
Diageo demanded that the case be sent to private arbitration, citing a provision in Diddy’s partnership contract that they said required such disputes be handled out of court. The company argued that, if Diddy’s “inflammatory rhetoric” about racism was removed, the case was nothing more than a “garden variety” business dispute that must be arbitrated.
But in September, the judge overseeing the case rejected that argument, meaning the case would move forward in state court, with the trial open to the public.
Diageo quickly appealed that ruling, and asked for a stay to prevent the case from moving forward while the appeal played out. Without a pause, the company said it faced “irreparable harm” because it would be forced to “arbitrate and litigate the same issues at the same time.”
After Tuesday’s ruling granting that request, the case will not proceed until the appellate court rules on Diageo’s appeal. Tuesday’s order said the appeal must be “perfected for the April 2024 Term of this Court,” but it’s unclear if that means the case will be decided by then, or merely argued and briefed.
Michael Kushner, Atlantic Records’ executive vp of business & legal affairs/general counsel, will receive the 2024 Entertainment Law Initiative (ELI) Service Award, which is given each year to an attorney who has demonstrated a commitment to advancing and supporting the music community through service.
The award will be presented at the Recording Academy Entertainment Law Initiative event at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, two days before the 66th annual Grammy Awards. Michelle Jubelirer, Capitol Music Group chair/CEO, will deliver the keynote address.
“Michael’s dedication to the music industry and his service to the Academy’s Entertainment Law Initiative make him an exceptionally deserving recipient of the ELI Service Award,” Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said in a statement. “We look forward to celebrating his accomplishments at the 26th Annual ELI Grammy Week event, and hosting Michelle — a trailblazing woman in music — as the keynote speaker as we gather with the professionals and students making an impact in entertainment law.”
The recipient of the Service Award is selected each year by ELI’s executive committee.
Peter T. Paterno was the Service Award honoree earlier this year. Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, then newly inaugurated, gave the keynote address.
The ELI event will also celebrate the winner and two runners-up of the Entertainment Law Initiative writing competition, co-sponsored by the American Bar Association (ABA), which challenges students in Juris Doctorate (JD) and Master of Laws (LLM) programs at U.S. law schools to research a pressing legal issue facing the modern music industry and outline a proposed solution in a 3,000-word essay. A $10,000 scholarship is awarded to the author of the winning paper, and a $2,500 scholarship is awarded to two runners-up. The winning paper will be published in the ABA’s journal, Entertainment & Sports Lawyer.
The winner will also receive travel and tickets to Los Angeles to attend the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, MusiCares Person of the Year and the ELI event. The contest is open to JD and LLM candidates at U.S. law schools. Students have until Jan. 3, 2024, to enter the contest. See official rules, detailed prize packages and deadlines at recordingacademy.com/eli.
Individual tickets and a limited number of discounted student tickets to the ELI event will go on sale later this month.