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As broadcasters begin assembling in Nashville this morning (Feb. 28) for the Country Radio Seminar, expect a lot of talk. About talk.
Radio personalities’ importance has been on the decline for decades. They used to pick the music on their shows. That privilege was taken away. Then many were encouraged to cut down their segues and get to the music. Then syndicated morning and overnight shows moved in to replace local talent.
But once the streaming era hit and started stealing some of radio’s time spent listening, terrestrial programmers began reevaluating their product to discover what differentiates it from streaming. Thus, this year’s CRS focus is talk.
“That’s what’s so important about this year,” says iHeartMedia talent Brooke Taylor, who voicetracks weekday shows in three markets and airs on 100 stations on weekends. “The radio on-air personality is sort of regaining their importance in the stratosphere of a particular station.”
Taylor will appear on a panel designed for show hosts — “Personal Branding: It’s Not Ego, It’s Branding!” — but it’s hardly the only element geared to the talent. Other entries include “On Air Personalities: The OG Influencers,” a research study about audience expectations of their DJs; a podcasting deep dive; and four different panels devoted to the threats and opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI).
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As it turns out, artifice is not particularly popular, according to the research study “On Air Talent and Their Roles on All Platforms,” conducted by media analytics firm Smith Geiger.
“Americans have very mixed feelings about AI,” says Smith Geiger executive vp of digital media strategies Andrew Finlayson. “This research proves that the audience is very interested in authentic content and authentic voices.”
Not to say that AI will be rejected. Sounds Profitable partner Tom Webster expects that it will be effective at matching advertisers to podcasts that fit their audience and market priorities. And he also sees it as a research tool that can assist content creation.
“If I’m a DJ and I’ve got a break coming up, and I’ve pre-sold or back-sold the same record 1,000 times, why not ask an assistant, ‘Give me something new about this record to say’?” Webster suggests. “That’s the easy kind of thing right there that can actually help the DJ do their job.”
CRS has been helping country radio do its job for more than 50 years, providing network opportunities, exposure to new artists and a steady array of educational panels that grapple with legal issues, industry trends and listener research. In the early 1980s, the format’s leaders aspired to make country more like adult contemporary, offering a predictable experience that would be easy to consume for hours in an office situation. The music, and radio production techniques, became more aggressive in the ’90s, and as technology provided a bulging wave of competitors and new ways to move around the dial, stations have been particularly challenged to maintain listeners’ attention during the 21st century.
Meanwhile, major chains have significantly cut staffs. Many stations cover at least two daily shifts with syndicated shows, and the talent that’s left often works on multiple stations in several different markets, sometimes covering more than one format. Those same personalities are expected to maintain a busy social media presence and potentially establish a podcast, too.
That’s an opportunity, according to Webster. Podcast revenue has risen to an estimated $2.5 billion in advertising and sponsorship billing, he says, while radio income has dropped from around $14 billion to $9 billion. He envisions that the two platforms will be on equal financial footing in perhaps a decade, and he believes radio companies and personalities should get involved if they haven’t already.
“It’s difficult to do a really good podcast,” Webster observes. “We talk a lot about the number of podcasts — there are a lot, and most podcasts are not great. Most podcasts are listened to by friends and family. There’s no barrier to entry to a podcast, and then radio has this stable of people whose very job it is to develop a relationship with an audience. That is the thing that they’re skilled at.”
That ’80s idea of radio as predictable background music has been amended. It’s frequently still “a lean-back soundtrack to what it is that you’re doing,” Webster suggests, though listeners want to be engaged with it.
“One of the people in the survey, verbatim, said it’s ‘a surprise box,’ ” Finlayson notes. “I think people like that serendipity that an on-air personality who really knows and understands the music can bring to the equation. And country music knowledge is one of the things that the audience craves from an on-air talent.”
It’s a challenge. Between working multiple stations, creating social media content and podcasting, many personalities are so stretched that it has become difficult to maintain a personal life, which in turn reduces their sources for new material. Add in the threat of AI, and it’s an uneasy time.
“What I see is a great deal of anxiety and stress levels, and I don’t know how we fix it,” concedes Country Radio Broadcasters executive director R.J. Curtis. “There’s just so much work put on our shoulders, it’s hard to manage that and then have a life.”
Curtis made sure that CRS addresses that, too, with “Your Brain Is a Liar: Recognizing and Understanding the Impact of Your Mental Health,” a presentation delivered by 25-year radio and label executive Jason Prinzo.
That tension is one of the ways that on-air talent likely relates to its audience — there are plenty of stressed, overbooked citizens in every market. And as tech continues to consume their lives, it naturally feeds the need for authenticity, which is likely to be a buzzword as CRS emphasizes radio’s personalities.
“Imagine having a radiothon for St. Jude with an AI talent,” Taylor says. “You’ll get a bunch of facts, but you’ll never get a tear. You’ll never get a real story. You’ll never get that shaky voice talking about somebody in your family or somebody that you know has cancer. The big thing that just will never be replaced is that emotion.”
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ASCAP collections grew 14.1% to $1.737 billion in 2023 and payouts to songwriters and publishers increased 14.7% to $1.592 billion, the performance rights organization reported Wednesday (Feb. 28). Those figures represent a record year for ASCAP in both revenue buckets, as well as all-time highs for any U.S. performance rights organization ever, ASCAP claimed.
The last time BMI revealed its annual financials — for the year ended June 30, 2022 — the PRO reported collections of $1.573 billion and pay outs of $1.471 billion. BMI did not disclose any full-year financial information in its most recent annual report for its fiscal year ended June 30, 2023, and is not likely to disclose any financial information going forward, since it’s now owned by institutional investor New Mountain Capital and will be operating on a for-profit basis. ASCAP now stands as the only U.S. PRO operating on a not-for-profit basis.
ASCAP’s collections break down to $1.327 billion domestically (up 12.7% from the year prior), and $410 million internationally (up 19.2%). For distributions, ASCAP paid out $1.217 billion domestically (up 16.1%), and $375 million internationally (up 10.3%).
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“ASCAP’s mission and not-for-profit business model are more important now than ever before, as artificial intelligence transforms the music landscape, and the need for legislative advocacy to protect creators in DC has never been more important,” ASCAP chairman and president Paul Williams said in a statement. “ASCAP will always be a champion for the humans who create music and demand transparency and fair payment from those who exploit our work. ASCAP makes it possible for our songwriter and composer members to write the next song, to earn a living and to support their families. No one else in the industry has the backs of songwriters like ASCAP.”
In announcing its financial results, the organization pointed out that unlike its competitors, ASCAP has no debt, no shareholders, no private owners and no private equity investors. In other words, ASCAP’s music creator and publisher members are the sole beneficiaries of ASCAP’s financial success.
Moreover, it noted that a democratically elected Board of Directors composed of music publishers and music creators sets the royalty distribution rules and cost allocations based on follow-the-dollar principles. It is the only U.S. PRO that makes those distribution rules publicly available on its website providing transparency to its membership.
“We are delivering industry-leading technical innovation, legislative advocacy and revenue growth that solely benefits our members, not outside investors or shareholders,” ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews said in a statement. “As we like to say, private equity never wrote an iconic love song which is why we fight purely for songwriters, composers and publishers, not for those who use creators and their works of art for their own profits or to secure their own debt. ASCAP differs from others because our mission and purpose is clear and unique.”
In looking at new technology, the PRO reported that in 2023 its board of directors adopted six principles to guide its response to the technology and later submitted them on behalf of members to a U.S. Copyright Office study on generative artificial intelligence. And it reported it had held some AI symposiums for members.
During the year, ASCAP membership grew by 66,000 new members bringing total membership to 960,000 members. Some of those new members included PinkPantheress, Jack Antonoff, Tyla, and Jared Leto and Shannon Leto of 30 Seconds to Mars, as well as art-pop singer-songwriter Caroline Polachek, alt-rocker d4vd, jazz vocalist Samara Joy, country genre bender Jessie Murph, dark balladeer Chappell Roan, post-punker ThxSoMuch and writer-producer Alexander 23, among others
Moreover, the organization says its song catalog now includes 19 million copyrights that consists of music from the likes of Beyoncé, Billy Joel, Cardi B, Dua Lipa, Garth Brooks, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, Lil Baby, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mariah Carey, Olivia Rodrigo, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Usher, among others.
Getting back to the financial numbers, ASCAP notes that since the launch of its strategic growth plan in 2015, its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for total revenue through 2023 has increased to 7%, and the CAGR for total distributions over the same time period rose to 8%.
Moreover, ASCAP reported that in 2023, audio streaming revenue rose 21%, general licensing revenue rose 23%, radio revenue rose 10% and audio-visual revenue rose 3% as compared to 2022. However, ASCAP didn’t break out the specific revenue numbers like it used to in the years preceding 2015, the last year that ASCAP provided extensive insight into its financials.
As a percentage of revenue, overall ASCAP paid out 91.7% of collections in 2023, which implies expenses accounting for 8.3% of revenue. Yet, ASCAP executives also say the organization’s pays out nearly 90% of collections, which means overhead amounts to a little bit more than 10% of revenue.
In any event, ASCAP claims its 90 cents payouts on every dollar of collections yield “the highest value exchange applied to the lowest overhead rate provided to creators and publishers of any U.S. PRO.”
When Uber Eats used mazie‘s “Dumb Dumb” in a commercial that played during the last Super Bowl, she ordinarily would have used the sought-after synch to promote the 2021 song relentlessly to her 375,000 TikTok followers. But her label, Goodbye Records, is distributed through Universal’s Virgin Music Group, which pulled its music from the social media platform at the beginning of February after negotiations for a new licensing deal fell apart. “It’s insane,” mazie says. “My song was just in a Super Bowl commercial, and I have to repromote it [by] using other people’s ripped versions of my song on the platform.”
The singer-songwriter, whose track went viral last year and says it “changed my life in every single way,” is one of many frustrated developing artists signed to or distributed by the world’s largest music company. They all have similar complaints: Their label contacts have spent years instructing them to focus the bulk of their marketing efforts on TikTok and its 1 billion-plus monthly active users. With their music no longer on the platform, they are scrambling for alternate ways to be heard.
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“A lot of us are left at the drawing board again, especially when we’ve gotten an artist over the anxiety of putting themselves out there on TikTok,” says Sabrina Finkelstein, manager of Los Angeles singer Kristiane. “Now that that’s gone, it brings you almost to square one.”
Kristiane is signed to Fader, a label distributed by UMG’s Virgin Music Group, so she’s building buzz for her upcoming Stray Dog EP by deemphasizing TikTok and talking to fans on Instagram Broadcast Channels and other platforms. “We’re putting up lost-dog posters all over New York and other cities,” says Finkelstein, who is also A&R director for the Sony Music-owned RECORDS label. “Small things you can do to bring it off TikTok and into the real world.”
Springfield, Mo., folk-country band Pawns or Kings can no longer post its 2022 track “Anymore” on TikTok, because Universal bought its distributor, Ingrooves, and merged it with Virgin Music Group — even after singer Edward Stengel spent $7,000 of his own money on a video. “That song was always our spearhead song,” says Stengel, who is still promoting the track on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram while posting older material released through independent label ONErpm on TikTok. But Pawns or Kings’ early music is darker than its current work, Stengel says, which makes the stopgap strategy “an abrupt pivot” for the band’s image.
Canadian rapper bbno$ says his 2021 track “Edamame,” which has nearly 426 million Spotify plays, was “having a moment” on TikTok when the UMG ban took effect. The artist had licensed the song to mTheory’s distribution division for a five-year period — the same mTheory that UMG acquired in 2022 (putting its top executives in charge of Virgin). “I’m actually fully independent. It was just this one deal that looped all the songs together, and I got fucked,” says bbno$, who is considering altering the song with pitch-correction and wild sound effects — such as the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants repeating, “I’m ready!” — to avoid detection from digital sweeps.
L.A. rock band Dead Posey, which released its single “Zombies” just days before the ban, sped up its songs on TikTok by 5% — an effective solution, although artists can’t link unofficial songs to official Spotify streams. “It has not been taken down,” says singer Danyell Souza, whose label, Position Music, has a Virgin distribution deal. Adds guitarist Tony Fagenson: “We’re hopeful this resolves soon in a favorable way to artists. In the meantime, we have to play some tricks to keep using this platform.”
UMG-signed and -distributed artists are also turning to their most potent asset on TikTok: fans. One of Kristiane’s followers recently posted a lip-sync video to a concert track, declaring, “At least UMG can’t take away my live audios.” Finkelstein is supportive of this approach. “No matter what, the fans are going to find a way to share their artists’ music and support them,” she says. “There are ways around it.”
This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
A U.S. District Court judge is allowing a shareholder lawsuit against Live Nation to move forward, denying the concert promotion giant’s motion to dismiss it in a decision handed down Friday (Feb. 27).
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The case involves how much the company should have to disclose about ongoing public pressure from federal authorities and how much of its financial success it should attribute to its dominant market share in the concert industry — as opposed to demand for concert tickets or the strength of its business.
Shareholders Brian Donley and Gene Gress are suing Live Nation over drops in its share price from February 2022 to November 2023 that they say were brought on by the company’s “false and misleading statements and omissions” within its annual earnings reports — specifically regarding the company’s alleged “anticompetitive behavior and cooperation with regulators.”
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The lawsuit did not reveal any new antitrust allegations against Live Nation, nor did it detail any new antitrust investigations into the company by regulators. Attorneys for the shareholders instead focused on boilerplate language within the company’s shareholder report and argued that it should have spent more time talking about the threat a federal antitrust investigation posed.
In siding with the shareholders, Judge Kenly Kiya Kato took issue with how the company described its success, noting in a 13-page ruling that she believed that Live Nation’s “failure to include specific facts and details about their presence and control of the live entertainment industry” in its annual report didn’t paint the full picture. Kato wrote in her ruling that the company’s claim that 2022 revenue growth “was a reflection of the quality of the Ticketmaster platform and its continued popularity with clients across the globe” was “misleading” because it failed to mention that “Ticketmaster controls ticket distribution for over 70% of major concert venues,” and “77% of the top 100 amphitheaters worldwide.”
Kato also wrote that Ticketmaster’s claims that its success was based on the superiority of its ticketing systems was in part a false claim because it omitted criticism from competitors who testified against the company in front of the U.S. Senate in early 2023.
Since it merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, Live Nation has faced antitrust complaints over the company’s size and market share from competitors, politicians including Senators Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal, and consumer advocates. Scrutiny of the company increased in 2019 when officials with the Department of Justice opted to extend a decade-old consent decree against it, and then ramped up again following the high-profile 2022 crash of Taylor Swift’s Ticketmaster sale for her Eras Tour.
Since 2022, Live Nation has not been notified that it’s the subject of any legal action by the Department of Justice and has written in its annual disclosures that it cooperates with all federal and state authorities, operates in a highly competitive marketplace and attributes its revenue growth at the end of 2021 to an increase “in events and higher ticket sales.”
Attorney Laurence M. Rosen, representing several shareholders in the class action lawsuit, said Live Nation’s answers contradict June 2023 reports from Politico and CNBC that the company was “allegedly stonewalling” a Senate subcommittee led by Senator Blumenthal that was seeking documents from the company about how it operated its concerts division.
Live Nation countered that Blumenthal was misrepresenting the dispute, that it had already handed over thousands of documents and was contesting demands for confidential information that included private details about how much artists earned from touring. In its response to the Senate committee, the company argued it would only hand over the documents if confidentiality protections were put in place. While Live Nation’s attorneys viewed the disagreement as insignificant, Rosen argued that the objection meant the company was “not cooperating fully with the ongoing DOJ and Senate Subcommittee investigations,” an attorney for the shareholders wrote.
Live Nation declined to comment for this story.
Beyoncé‘s “Cuff It” vanished from TikTok on Tuesday (Feb. 27), the latest casualty of the platform’s stand-off with Universal Music Group (UMG).
“Cuff It” is not alone. Harry Styles‘ recordings are no longer available, SZA‘s recordings are gone, except for her new single “Saturn,” and most of Bad Bunny’s music is missing as well — even though none of these artists are signed to UMG labels.
When negotiations between UMG and TikTok fell apart at the end of January, official recordings made by UMG artists like Taylor Swift and Drake swiftly disappeared from the platform. After a grace period, songs that were penned in part by UMPG’s songwriters are now suffering the same fate.
“Cuff It” is one of many Beyoncé songs that features a contribution from a songwriter signed to Universal Music Publishing Group — in this case, Raphael Saadiq. UMPG’s roster also includes artists Styles, Rosalía, SZA, Bad Bunny and Steve Lacy for their songwriting credits. In the U.S., UMPG touches 20% to 30% of the music on TikTok, according to a rep for the platform. The rep declined to comment further.
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UMPG also declined to comment for this story. In a letter to songwriters earlier this month, the publisher said, “TikTok insists on paying our songwriters at a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social media platforms pay — and without any material increase from our prior agreement… This is unacceptable.”
Tension between the music industry and TikTok has been growing for years. Many executives still believe it is the most effective platform for marketing music, even if it is maddeningly hard to influence.
At the same time, many around the music industry argue that TikTok does not pay enough to use the music that helped it become such a wildly popular app. (The music-tech company Pex found that 85% of TikTok videos incorporate music.) Late in 2022, UMG CEO Lucian Grainge noted that a value gap was “forming fast in the new iterations of short-form video.”
In a statement to Billboard at that time, TikTok global head of music Ole Obermann emphasized that the platform was not a music streaming service: “Our community comes to TikTok to watch videos, not to listen to full-length tracks.” He added, “We’re proud of the partnerships we are building with the industry and artists, and we are confident that we are enhancing musical engagement. That translates directly to more financial and creative opportunities for music creators.”
The simmering tension boiled over in late January. In an open letter, UMG announced that its negotiations with TikTok had fallen apart. “TikTok proposed paying our artists and songwriters at a rate that is a fraction of the rate that similarly situated major social platforms pay,” UMG wrote. The record company accused TikTok of trying to “intimidate us into conceding to a bad deal that undervalues music and shortchanges artists and songwriters as well as their fans.”
TikTok responded by saying that UMG was pushing a “false narrative.” It’s “sad and disappointing, that [UMG] has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters,” TikTok continued.
The estate of Donna Summer filed a copyright lawsuit against Kanye West on Tuesday (Feb. 27), accusing him of “shamelessly” using her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” without permission in his song “Good (Don’t Die).” Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In a complaint filed in Los Angeles […]
A federal jury in Brooklyn on Tuesday (Feb. 27) found two New York City men guilty in the 2002 murder of Run-DMC‘s Jam Master Jay, setting the stage for potential decades-long prison sentences.
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Following a three-week trial, the jury returned guilty verdicts against both Karl Jordan, Jr., 40, and Ronald Washington, 59, who were charged in 2020 with the rap pioneer’s long-unsolved killing in Queens.
The convictions came after prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses to the stand to prove their case, in which they accused Jordan and Washington of killing the rapper as payback after he cut them out of a cocaine deal. The defense called just one witness of their own: an expert on memory.
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“This case is not complicated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Artie McConnell said during his closing arguments last week. “It’s about greed, it’s about money, it’s about jealousy.”
Following Tuesday’s conviction, Jordan and Washington each face a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. They will be able to challenge the verdict, first to the judge and then to a federal appeals court, but such appeals face long odds.
Attorneys for both defendants and the prosecution did not immediately return requests for comment on the verdict.
Run-DMC, a trio consisting of Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, is widely credited as one of the most influential early acts in hip-hop history. The trio’s 1985 release, King of Rock, was hip-hop’s first platinum album, and the group’s 1986 cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Jay’s shocking killing, on Oct. 30, 2002, had long been one of hip-hop’s famous cold cases, joining the unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. Though witnesses were in the room when the murder happened and police generated a number of leads, no charges were filed until August 2020, when prosecutors finally unveiled the case against Washington and Jordan.
Over the three-week trial, prosecutors told jurors that Jay had turned to the drug trade as Run-DMC’s popularity had waned. They argued that Washington, a childhood friend, and Jordan, Jay’s godson and neighbor, had helped Jay sell the drugs, but eventually plotted his murder after he allegedly cut them out of a deal.
Jurors heard testimony from two alleged eyewitnesses, Uriel “Tony” Rincon and Lydia High, who say they were in the studio on the night of the shooting. Rincon identified both men and named Jordan as the shooter; High identified Washington and said he had been joined by an unknown shooter. Both said they had withheld such information from investigators for years for fear of retaliation.
As is common in criminal cases, neither Washington nor Jordan testified in their own defense. Their attorneys called only an expert witness to testify on human memory, who told the jury that memories can fade and change over time and can be affected by stress.
The jury began deliberating on Thursday (Feb. 22) before being dismissed for a three-day weekend. They initially resumed deliberations on Monday (Feb. 26), but then were ordered to restart from scratch after a juror was excused because they claimed they could not be impartial.
Sentencing and post-trial motions will take place in future proceedings. Jay Bryant, a third man allegedly involved in the killing who prosecutors charged with murder last May, will have a separate trial later this year.
Beyond Tuesday’s guilty verdict, the case over Jay’s killing could have a lasting effect on the law.
In a ruling near the beginning of the trial, the federal judge overseeing the case ruled that prosecutors could not cite violent rap lyrics written by Jordan as evidence against him. Warning that “music artists should be free to create without fear that their lyrics could be unfairly used against them,” the judge said such materials should only be used as evidence if they have a clear and direct connection to the crime at issue in the case.
The ruling came amid a broader debate over the use of rap lyrics in criminal trials, a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from the music industry and efforts by lawmakers to stop it. A high-profile gang trial in Atlanta, in which prosecutors are using Young Thug’s lyrics against him, has drawn particular scrutiny to the issue.
HarbourView Equity Partners, which has emerged as a leading buyer of R&B/hip-hop music assets, announced that it has acquired select songwriting and publishing assets of Full Force, the music group and production team whose credits include UTFO’s “Roxanne Roxanne;” the Backstreet Boys‘ “All I Have to Give You;” Rihanna’s “That La, La La;” and their own “Ain’t My Type of Hype.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Besides the above songs, Full Force discovered Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, which went on to release hits like “I Wonder If I Can Take You Home” and “All Cried Out” — both of which were on the latter group’s debut album, a collaboration credited to Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force.
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“The repertoire of Full Force defined a generation of Pop / R&B / Hip Hop with writings spanning NSync, BackStreet Boys, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam not to mention their own legacy as artists,” HarbourView Equity Partners CEO/founder Sherrese Clarke Soares said in a statement. “As exceptional songwriters, producers, and musicians, they’ve seamlessly weaved creativity and innovation into timeless tunes, collaborating with some of the most prominent icons of our generation.”
According to the announcement, Full Force’s “unique ability to seamlessly blend R&B, hip-hop, pop and dance elements in both their own performances and work with other artists…has left an enduring legacy and impact on the fabric of the music landscape.”
In a statement on the deal, Brian B-Fine George of Full Force said, “Full Force is excited to be working with Harbourview, a company with a vision that’s right on trend with the future, and very dedicated to expanding the reach of our extensive song catalog.”
HarbourView Equity’s other R&B/hip-hop acquisitions include select music assets by Nelly, Wiz Khalifa and Jeremih; and the publishing catalog of songwriting and production duo Andre Harris and Vidal Davis, better known as Dre & Vidal, among others.
The company describes itself as a “multi-strategy, investment firm focused on investment opportunities in the entertainment and media space. Its asset portfolio features thousands of titles spanning numerous genres, eras, and artists, amounting to a diversified catalog of over 28,000 songs across both master recordings and publishing income streams.”
The announcement further describes HarbourView as striving “to be the standard for excellence and integrity in investing in assets and companies driven by premier intellectual property, with experience in and around esoteric asset classes, including in music, film, TV, and sports.’’
Cynthia Katz and Heidy Vaquerano from Fox Rothschild LLP served as legal counsel to HarbourView for this transaction. Full Force was represented by Karl Guthrie at The Guthrie Law Firm and JAM at Tompkins Farm Music Inc.
On Feb. 15, a snippet of Post Malone singing along to a forthcoming collaboration with Luke Combs surfaced on TikTok. Post Malone is signed to Mercury/Republic Records, Universal Music Group labels, and UMG’s catalog has been unavailable on TikTok since the start of February. This means that preexisting videos made with his hits now play without sound, and users can’t make new clips with his recordings. The video of Post Malone lip-syncing to the track was originally posted on Instagram Reels, but it migrated to TikTok anyway — most clips do — and the audio remained unmuted, skirting the UMG ban because the song has not been officially released.
“We can still use the platform to tease new music because until the master hits TikTok, nothing will happen” to it, says Tim Gerst, CEO of Nashville-based digital marketing agency Thinkswell. “We’re not really going to change our strategy much.”
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Artists silenced by the UMG-TikTok impasse have used this and other workarounds during the first month that they’ve been walled off from what is arguably their most effective marketing tool. Indeed, digital marketers say they haven’t noticed an exodus from the platform after the negotiations between the two companies fell apart.
“Artists impacted by this are just being more creative on TikTok about how they’re getting music out,” Shopkeeper Management digital marketing manager Laura Spinelli says. “People are doing acoustic versions of songs; they’re changing up the tempo [so that songs don’t trigger TikTok’s sonic fingerprinting system]; they’re talking around it.
“It’s not, ‘TikTok’s gone, so I’m going to go on [YouTube] Shorts,’ ” Spinelli continues. “It’s, ‘The masters are gone from TikTok; how can I still get my music out?’ ”
While there are plenty of digital platforms that artists can use to market their music, the reality is none have been able to consistently replicate TikTok’s impact over the past four years. “There’s really no other comparable digital marketing strategy or platform for exposure of new music,” says Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of Black 17, The Orchard’s top label on TikTok. “Trends are tied to songs on TikTok in a unique way. On Reels and Shorts, the audience cares less about the song, more about the video content.”
“TikTok is No. 1 for music discovery,” adds Johnny Cloherty, co-founder of digital marketing company Songfluencer. “These other platforms don’t lead to consumption the same way TikTok does.”
It’s also not clear that Reels and Shorts are even trying to challenge TikTok in the way they once did. When the two platforms were launched in 2020, they both seemed positioned to compete for TikTok’s market share — the app had recently been banned in India, and President Donald Trump was threatening to do the same in the United States.
In the years since, however, “both of these products, which came out as TikTok competitors, have evolved,” says another digital marketer who has worked with artists and brands. “They’re different from what they were, and the focus of the companies behind them have shifted.”
The digital marketer points to a recent blog post in which YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that “YouTube’s next frontier is the living room,” suggesting the platform was increasingly interested in competing with a company like Netflix rather than other purveyors of short-form video. “It might not be what you’d expect,” Mohan wrote, “but people like watching Shorts on their TVs.”
Reels and its parent company, Meta, have also made significant changes over the last 12 months. In 2023, the company shut down the bonus system it had put in place to financially incentivize creator activity. (That program seemed like another attempt to compete with TikTok, which had announced its own $200 million creator fund in 2020.) A couple of months later, Meta launched another platform, Threads. Just as Reels once seemed aimed at capitalizing on the misfortunes of TikTok, the timing of Threads’ arrival seemed an attempt to capitalize on the troubles of Elon Musk’s X; Meta’s new platform also appeared to signal a shift in company priorities.
Even so, most artists have been, at a minimum, cross-posting TikTok clips to Shorts and Reels for several years, eager to find exposure wherever they can get it.
Shorts has helped artists grow their subscriber numbers on YouTube, and subscribers can be monetized in other ways. Harrison Golding, who oversees digital marketing for EMPIRE, has seen it function as “a discovery tool in countries where YouTube is their primary streaming platform,” like India.
Reels is still an engine for increasing followers as well. “If you want to grow on Instagram right now, Reels is the way to do that,” Spinelli says. In addition, manager Tommy Kiljoy says Reels helped drive listeners to his client ThxSoMch’s latest release, “Hide Your Kids,” as well as Sawyer Hill’s “Look at the Time,” which recently topped Spotify’s Viral 50 chart in the United States.
But “we see more trends on TikTok,” says Hemish Gholkar, a digital marketer who works with all of the major labels. “We hardly see trends to a record on Reels or Shorts.”
While UMG’s catalog remains officially unavailable on TikTok, it has always been the case that any user can upload audio to the platform. Many viral trends start thanks to unofficial bootlegs, and “some artists are just putting up songs as original sounds,” according to Nima Nasseri, a former vp of A&R strategy for Universal Music Group.
Artists “are speeding up their songs a little bit, doing different edits,” and posting them on TikTok, Kiljoy notes. “I’ve seen people lean into [the absence of the music] more than anything and get a rise out of it.” (UMG artists’ music may also be still available if they collaborated with an act on another label: TikTokers can find Drake rapping on Travis Scott’s “Meltdown,” for example.)
In addition, artists have devised ways to keep seeding their music without the official recording. Singer d4vd, whose breakout hits got traction on TikTok and led to a record deal with UMG’s Darkroom/Interscope Records, recently posted a video labeled “d4vd songs that sound better live,” which shows him performing “Leave Her,” his latest release.
Gerst has had success promoting his clients’ older music in cases when it was recorded outside of the UMG system. “We’re going back and pushing a bunch of the back-catalog content,” Gerst says. A video his team posted soundtracked by “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” Brad Paisley’s goofy tribute to fishing, amassed over 30 million views across TikTok and Reels. The song was originally released through Sony in 2001, but a throwback that’s earning millions of views still keeps Paisley top of mind for fans as he moves towards a new album.
Even UMG artists who have expressed disappointment that their music isn’t available on TikTok keep posting anyway. “Two massive companies deciding what goes on with people’s art; it’s a bit f—ing daft,” artist Yungblud said in a TikTok video after the negotiations crumbled. “Everything can be taken away at the touch of a button.”
Still, he continues to post every few days, uploading a mix of onstage and backstage videos, an acoustic performance of “When We Die (Can We Still Get High?)” and interview footage. The same goes for Muni Long, who posted an interview to TikTok in which she called her music’s absence from the platform “a bummer,” and another clip of a group of fans screaming along to her single “Made For Me” at a basketball game.
The stand-off between UMG and TikTok is about to enter a new phase where any songs that have contributions from Universal Music Publishing Group songwriters disappear from the platform, meaning artists and marketers will have to adjust once again. “We’re not going to abandon TikTok,” Gerst says. “We’re just going to find new ways to do it.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A federal appeals court overturns a $1 billion verdict won by the major labels over internet piracy; Kanye West blasts Adidas for selling “fake Yeezys” while also “suing” him; Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler wins the dismissal of one of his sexual abuse cases; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Billion-Dollar Piracy Verdict Gone – For Now
One billion dollars – with a “B.” Back in 2019, that’s the massive sum that a federal jury ordered Cox Communications to pay to Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group after concluding that the internet service provider had turned a blind eye to infringement by its users.
Piracy is no longer the existential threat it was once for the music industry. But in the mid-2010s, it was still a big deal — so much so, that music companies began suing ISPs to force them to take action. In 2018, the Big Three filed such a case against Cox, claiming that it had essentially helped its subscribers illegally share more than 10,000 of their copyrighted songs.
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ISPs are usually shielded from lawsuits over infringing conduct by their users, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its system of so-called safe harbors. But the judge overseeing the case ruled that Cox had forfeited the DMCA’s protections by failing to terminate subscribers who had repeatedly pirated music. Stripped of immunity, Cox was ordered to pay the labels more than $99,000 for every song its users infringed — one of the largest ever awards in an intellectual property lawsuit.
Cox appealed the case, arguing that it was “unprecedented in every way” and would require ISPs to cut off vital internet access based on unproven accusations of piracy. The labels said it was a fair punishment for a company that had allegedly avoided the problem for fear of losing money.
After more than four years of waiting for a ruling (so long that file-sharing has become something of antique topic) a federal appeals court finally weighed in this week — overturning the huge verdict, but leaving Cox still facing the potential for massive damages. Go read the full story to find out more.
Other top stories this week…
IS ADIDAS SUING YE? – Kanye West took to Instagram to blast Adidas for “suing him” at the same time that it was selling “fake Yeezys” to consumers: “Not only are they putting out fake colorways that are non-approved, they’re suing me for $250 million.” So is Adidas really suing him? The answer is … complicated.
MORE DIDDY ALLEGATIONS – Sean Combs was hit with another abuse lawsuit, this time by a producer named Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones Jr. who says the rapper sexually assaulted and harassed him. But the case also includes more bizarre allegations, claiming that Diddy and others participated in a “RICO enterprise” – civil allegations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal law that’s more often used in criminal cases against mobsters and drug cartels. Combs’ lawyer Shawn Holley told Billboard that the claims were “pure fiction” filed by a man “shamelessly looking for an undeserved payday.”
…AND A NEW RESPONSE – Days earlier, Combs also filed his first legal response to one of his earlier abuse cases, in which a woman claims that he “sex trafficked” and “gang raped” her when she was a 17-year-old girl in 2003. In the filing, Combs told a federal court that the allegations are “fictional”; among other things, Diddy’s lawyers said the case was filed so late that it violates his constitutional right to defend himself.
EAGLES’ STOLEN NOTES TRIAL – Don Henley took the stand in an ongoing criminal trial of three memorabilia sellers who prosecutors claim tried to sell stolen draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits. The accused defendants claim Henley willingly gave the pages to a journalist decades ago, meaning they were never stolen. But in his testimony, the rock legend said he only gave the writer access, not possession: “You know what? It doesn’t matter if I drove a U-Haul truck across country and dumped them at his front door. He had no right to keep them or to sell them.”
STEVEN TYLER RULING – A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 1975, ruling that she had waited too long to bring her case. Jeanne Bellino sued the rocker in November under New York’s “lookback” law that allows abuse victims to sue over decades-old claims. But the judge ruled that her allegations — forcible kissing and groping — were not covered by the law because they did not present a “serious risk of physical injury.”
NICKELBACK CASE DISMISSED – A federal appeals court rejected a copyright lawsuit that claimed Nickelback ripped off its 2006 hit “Rockstar” from an earlier song called “Rock Star,” ruling that the band can’t be sued simply for using “clichés” and “singing about being a rockstar.”
IDOL PRODUCER SUED AGAIN – Former American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe was hit with another sexual assault lawsuit, this time by an unidentified woman who claims he forcibly touched her in 2016. Lythgoe was already facing an earlier lawsuit from Paula Abdul over two separate alleged incidents of sexual assault.