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While radio may no longer be the only game in town when it comes to promoting and playing music, its importance is still outsized, according to Nielsen’s newly released Audio Today 2023 report focused on Hispanic consumers.
According to the report, which took into consideration listening by adults (18 plus) in more than 250 U.S. markets, radio reaches 94% of Latins every month, more than any other linear or digital media platform. That includes live and time-shifted TV (85%), smartphones (89%) and PCs (67%).
In terms of audio services only, the difference is stark. While radio reaches 94% of Hispanic adults 18 plus, its closest competitor, YouTube Music, reaches 44%, followed by Spotify (31%), Pandora (23%), Amazon Music (15%), Apple Music (14%) and satellite radio (11%).
And while listening numbers for radio’s competitors vary between age segments, radio consistently reaches 90% or more of listeners across demographics. Among the 18-34 demo, for example, it reaches 91% of listeners, followed by YouTube Music at 44% and Spotify at 41%.
That dominance also holds true among non-Hispanic listeners, though it’s a little less pronounced. Radio reaches 90% of all non-Hispanic listeners 18 plus (compared to 94% for Hispanics) and 82% of non-Hispanics 18-34 (compared to 92% for Hispanics).
Radio additionally leads in terms of listening time. The “share of ear time” for radio among adults 18 plus is 30%, followed by streaming audio at 21%.
Radio’s massive consumption comes down to accessibility and culture, says Stacie de Armas, Nielsen’s senior vp of diverse intelligence & initiatives.
“Radios’ reach is exceptional and always has been,” notes de Armas, who says the numbers weren’t surprising for her. “In fact in the past 10 years, it’s only dropped three percentage points. And that means that radio is a deeply embedded part of Hispanic life. It’s accessible everywhere, and a very important part of the Latino experience in a way I don’t see replicated in other groups. Radio serves a unique role in the lives of Hispanics. Radio is local. It gives people touchpoints into what’s happening.”
Accessibility has also given radio staying power among Hispanics, and it has a major bearing on the strength of YouTube Music, one of the first platforms to offer a multiplicity of content in Spanish.
Historically, says de Armas, Spanish language television has long been a part of the Hispanic experience in the United States with Univision and Telemundo. But cable was inaccessible for many people because the consumer had to pay, and there was an additional cost for Spanish programming. YouTube, on the other hand, was free, as long as you had Internet access.
“So, a lot of shifting went to YouTube. It was very easy to introduce YouTube Music,” says de Armas, noting that Hispanics spend 51% of their TV viewing on streaming, and 16% of that streaming comes from YouTube (although Netflix is a close second at 13.1%).
By the same token, Pandora is the third most listened-to option (after radio and YouTube) among the 35-49 and 50 and over segment of the Hispanic population because it was the first audio streaming service to focus on Spanish. But it doesn’t have the same accessibility as radio or YouTube.
Despite the numbers demonstrating radio’s continued reach, the format has been all but dismissed by some in recent times — in part because it wasn’t as measurable as other platforms. But, says de Armas, when advertisers make the effort to measure radio’s audience, they see results. “There’s engagement potential there that’s being lost on brands that are under-utilizing radio,” she says.
It’s not lost on the user, however.
“Community engagement is key,” de Armas says. “The cultural connection with radio hosts, for example, which fosters a sense of community. There’s a trust factor we’re underestimating, and I don’t think it exists in the same way with streaming platforms. And there’s also nostalgia and habit.”
Regional Mexican star Carin León signed an exclusive global publishing agreement with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), Billboard has learned. A leading force in the música mexicana genre, the Sonora-born singer-songwriter has established himself as one of Mexican music’s most versatile and eclectic artists today recording in norteño, banda, R&B and pop. “There is no […]
Entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) will relocate its Nashville office in late 2025, occupying nearly 75,000 square feet across two floors in the mixed-used district Nashville Yards, being developed by Southwest Value Partners and AEG.
CAA’s new Nashville office, located at 955 Church Street in Nashville, will feature indoor-outdoor work spaces, listening lounges, private terraces on each floor, three levels of dining, retail and entertainment space, as well as meeting hubs and a large outdoor vegetated deck overlooking Nashville Yards. CAA employees will enjoy access to open plazas, courtyards, and green spaces; ample parking, valet, and executive car services; and proximity to the luxury Grand Hyatt Nashville and newly renovated Union Station Nashville Yards.
“Guided by our colleagues in Music, CAA opened our first office in Nashville in 1991, immediately making an impact on Music City that continues today,” said Howard Nuchow, co-head, CAA Sports, in a statement. “With more than 3,400 employees across 25 countries, CAA’s track record of success and growth in the representation of entertainment and sports talent and brands has solidified our leadership position around the world. The move to Nashville Yards demonstrates our commitment to Nashville and the Southeast, while providing our employees, clients, and guests an inspiring environment that captures the spirit of Nashville, one of the most significant sports and entertainment destinations in the world.”
CAA’s Nashville operations currently include more than 130 employees working in music touring, music brand partnerships, music marketing, digital media, sports, brand consulting, property sales, and CAA ICON. In the past year alone, CAA has booked top tours for Tim McGraw, Shania Twain, Keith Urban, Willie Nelson, Zac Brown Band, The Chicks and Carrie Underwood. The company has also worked to aid in raising up a new crop of headliners including Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Brett Young, Kelsea Ballerini, Carly Pearce, Whiskey Myers and Koe Wetzel, while expanding its roster with new signings including 49 Winchester, Warren Zeiders, Hailey Whitters, Luke Grimes, Wyatt Flores, Priscilla Block, Dylan Marlowe and Larry Fleet.
Grammy winners Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall have partnered with Big Loud Records to launch their own imprint, Big Loud Texas. Lambert and Randall will be directly instrumental in signing and developing artists on the roster. Meanwhile, Randall will serve as president of A&R for the imprint, while also contributing as a producer.
“As a teenager chasing my dreams in the honky-tonks of Texas, Nashville seemed so far away,” Lambert said in a statement. “Every time I’m back home I get to hear the incredible talent our state produces, and I feel a responsibility to help get more of those Texas voices heard. I’m really excited to team up with my buddy Jon Randall and Big Loud to do just that. Get ready, y’all – we’re bringing even more Texas to town!”
“When I was a kid playing in bands and kicking around Texas, I knew that making music was all I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Randall added. “Since then, I’ve gotten to play with so many of my heroes produce legends and friends and travel all over the world… but all those roads lead right back home. I feel very blessed to share this full circle moment with one of my best pals, Miranda Lambert, and help some other dreamers chase their song around the world.”
Longtime friends and creative allies, Lambert and Randall collaborated on 2021’s Grammy-nominated The Marfa Tapes, alongside fellow Texas singer-songwriter Jack Ingram. Randall also served as a producer alongside Lambert and Luke Dick on her 2022 album, Palomino. A Grammy, CMA and ACM Award-winner, Randall has spent three-plus decades in the music business seemingly doing it all as a solo artist, guitarist, songwriter and critically acclaimed producer. In addition to his longstanding relationship with Lambert, he has written with and for artists including Guy Clark, Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire and many others, plus produced projects for Dierks Bentley, Parker McCollum, Dwight Yoakam, Jack Ingram, Pat Green and more.
“I’ve admired what Miranda and Jon have done – both as musicians and as champions of young talent – for many years, so it’s an honor to join forces in this way,” Big Loud CEO/partner Seth England said in a statement. “One of the most important things to us at Big Loud is to align with cultural camaraderie. Texas exudes that spirit and no one knows that better than Miranda and Jon.”
Big Loud Records is also home to Morgan Wallen, who has had a stellar year, dominating the Billboard Hot 100 with “Last Night” and the Billboard 200 with One Thing at a Time. The label’s roster also includes Lauren Alaina, HARDY, ERNEST, Hailey Whitters, MacKenzie Porter, Larry Fleet, Charles Wesley Godwin, Stephen Wilson Jr., Dallas Smith, Maggie Rose, Griffen Palmer, Shawn Austin, Lily Rose, Jake Worthington, Ashley Cooke, Lauren Watkins and Zandi Holup.
Big Loud Records was honored as the No. 1 Billboard Hot Country Songs label in 2021 and 2022. Big Loud’s executive team has earned recognition as part of the Billboard 40 Under 40: svp / GM Patch Culbertson (’22), svp of radio promotion Stacy Blythe (’21) and CEO / partner Seth England (’14). Additionally, members of the Big Loud brass — partners England, Moi and Craig Wiseman, as well as Adams, Blythe and SVP of Marketing Candice Watkins — have been honored as Billboard Indie Power Players and Billboard Country Power Players. England was named the inaugural peer-voted Country Power Players’ Choice Award recipient, an industry-wide nod honoring the executive that voters believe made the most impact across the country music business over the past year.
After seven years working for regional Mexican indie labels — including DEL Records and most recently AfinArte Music — and helping grow the música mexicana genre, industry veteran Maria Inés Sánchez has been appointed Sony Music Latin’s new vp of West Coast operations.
Based out of Los Angeles, Sánchez, who began her career over two decades ago with stints at Sony and Universal, will report directly to Esteban Geller, general manager of Sony Music U.S. Latin, and oversee a team that includes other new hires such as Gonzalo Herrerias, senior director A&R and label manager Juan Tapia.
With Sánchez’s appointment, the label doubles down on its dedication to support the genre, which has seen extraordinary global growth this past year alone. “Sony Music Latin is really committed on continuing this explosion,” Sánchez tells Billboard. “The commitment being that we have to support a new generations of artists and help develop them because these young artists will only continue to fuse and evolve the sound, which has helped the genre grow.”
With indie labels mainly driving the the genre’s surge, Sánchez says the key to keep pushing the genre forward will be creating key alliances between major labels and indies. Sony Music Latin has already entered partnerships with labels such as Lumbre Music (Yahritza y Su Esencia) and Rancho Humilde (Fuerza Regida).
“We saw Mexican music grow because artists started to collaborate,” explains Sánchez. “It’s the same thing if companies start joining forces. Major labels like Sony, we can reach a broader spectrum of the business in general. We have eyes where indie’s perhaps don’t with offices internationally, which help export the music and work in other key markets such as Latin America and Spain.”
It aligns with how Sony U.S. Latin president Alex Gallardo visualizes the label’s role in regional Mexican music today. “We want to be the best possible partner for any artist, label, manager, or any Mexican music project, for this we have reinforced the West Coast team, and we have a clear vision to take Mexican music as far as possible,” says Gallardo.
Sony U.S. Latin also has an alliance with Sony Music Mexico to work both countries, Mexico and the United States, as a “single market,” Gallardo explains.
Adding that, ultimately, the plan is to break regional Mexican music beyond those two countries and enter new markets throughout Latin America and Spain. “We have already taken steps like getting Christian Nodal to sell out a WiZink Center in Madrid for 15,000 people … In countries like Colombia, Chile or Spain [the genre] is entering little by little and I believe that the strength of Sony in all these markets should be focused on bringing this wonderful music that is coming out of this new wave of artists.”
Naming Sánchez as vp of West Coast operations, a role previously served by Manny Prado (now at Interscope), means having someone who has a “very complete vision of both the business and Mexican music” having experience in both indie and major labels. Plus, having a woman in charge is something that “makes us very happy,” adds Gallardo.
“As a woman, I bring passion and conviction to a genre that I respect and love,” says Sánchez. “I’m committed to keep fueling this música mexicana explosion and impacting on a bigger level.”
Shares of SiriusXM gained 20.1% this week following the company’s third-quarter earnings on Tuesday (Oct. 31) that showed the satellite radio company, which also owns music streamer Pandora, was more profitable despite flat revenue and small losses of self-pay satellite and Pandora subscribers.
Shares of SiriusXM rose to $4.95, its highest closing price since Aug. 3. With the help of a 155,000 increase in promotional subscribers, the company’s total satellite radio subscribers were flat at 34 million. Revenue was unchanged from a year ago at $2.27 billion, but SiriusXM’s net profit grew nearly 50% to $363 million.
Investors will be watching intently next Wednesday (Nov. 8) when SiriusXM unveils a new streaming app as well as in-car innovations and new programming. “This leading content and upcoming product upgrade will be paired with our unmatched business model, which we expect to continue delivering significant and growing free cash flow in the years ahead,” said CEO Jennifer Witz during Tuesday’s earnings call.
The 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index gained 6.9% to 1,394.40, its best week-on-week performance since the index gained 7% in the week ended Nov. 25, 2022. Last week, the index almost fell into correction territory — a 10% decline from its recent high — but this week’s gains reduced the deficit to the high of 1,447.32 (week ended July 21) to 3.7%.
Eighteen of the index’s 20 stocks finished the week in positive territory. Of the two stocks to decline this week, Hipgnosis Songs Fund dropped only 0.8% while Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 15.9%.
Led by SiriusXM, the index’s three radio stocks had an average weekly gain of 13.3%. iHeartRadio, the largest radio company in the United States, gained 16.8% to $2.50. The company will report quarterly earnings on Tuesday (Nov. 9). Cumulus Media shares improved 2.9% to $4.91. Additionally, the index’s four live music companies gained an average of 8%, while record labels and publishers as well as streaming companies had average one-week gains of 3.8%.
Round Hill Music Royalty Fund was removed from the index this week after the completion of its $468 million acquisition by Concord. At the acquisition price of $1.15 per share, the London-listed Round Hill Music Royalty Fund gave investors a 47.4% year-to-date return.
Stocks everywhere enjoyed a strong week as the U.S. Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, leading investors to predict the central bank would forgo further rate hikes. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 5.9% and the S&P 500 gained 5.2%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 rose 1.7%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index gained 2.8%.
Live Nation shares rose 10.9% after the company’s third-quarter results on Thursday showed that the company hit all-time records in revenue and adjusted operating income (AOI). Total revenue reached $8.2 billion, up 32% year over year, and AOI rose 35% to $836 million. Ticketmaster revenue grew 57% to $833 million in the third quarter. Through mid-October, Ticketmaster sold 140 million tickets to Live Nation events — more than the 121 million sold in full-year 2022.
Even though consumers are feeling pinched by inflation, demand continues to be strong across venue sizes and geographies, according to president/CEO Michael Rapino. “I have weekly booking calls with the over 40 presidents around the world and we talk about from clubs up to stadiums and festivals,” Rapino said during Thursday’s earnings call. “We have not seen anything taper off in any sense.”
Other stocks surpassing a 10% gain were Chinese music streamer Cloud Music, which gained 12.7% to 96.35 HKD ($12.31), and New York-based Reservoir Media, which gained 12.1% to $5.95. Reservoir Media will release its latest quarterly results on Tuesday (Nov. 7).
Most tracks on Spotify will not be eligible to receive royalties based on the company’s proposed royalty scheme that will go into effect in 2024. That’s because a track must reach a threshold of 1,000 streams within 12 months to receive royalty payouts, according to an article this week written by Kristin Graziani, president of music distributor Stem. A source with knowledge of the plan confirmed the details to Billboard.
According to Spotify’s Loud & Clear website, 37.5 million tracks had surpassed 1,000 all-time streams as of 2022. That’s out of a catalog of 100 million tracks at the end of 2022, per Spotify’s 2022 annual report. In other words, almost two-thirds of Spotify’s catalog has never reached the 12-month minimum stream count to be eligible to receive royalties. Given that’s all-time streams since the company launched in 2008, it stands to reason that fewer yet will reach 1,000 streams within a 12-month period.
While this 1,000-stream threshold affects a large number of tracks, it doesn’t impact much of Spotify’s royalties to creators and rights holders. Implementing the threshold will shift about 0.5% of Spotify’s royalty pool to more popular tracks, a source tells Billboard. That was equal to about $46 million in royalties in 2022, based on Spotify’s $9.27 billion cost of sales that year, which represents virtually all royalty payouts.
Tackling fraudulent streams could have a larger impact than a minimum threshold. Spotify’s new royalty scheme also imposes financial penalties for music distributors and labels when fraudulent activity has been detected on tracks they uploaded. That should incentivize distributors to locate and remove fraudulent tracks before they can get to streaming platforms.
Various estimates put fraudulent tracks’ share of listening — at Spotify and elsewhere — at 3% to 10% of total streams. With the 2022 global streaming market valued at $17.5 billion, according to the IFPI, up to $1 billion worth of streaming royalties globally is ending up in the wrong hands. Removing those fraudulent streams from eligibility means all other tracks will receive a greater share of the royalty pool.
French music company Believe would get a “significant double-digit” percentage growth in its market share at Deezer under the company’s new artist-centric royalty scheme, Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie said during the company’s Oct. 24 earnings call. The bulk of that impact comes from fighting streaming fraud and abuse, said Ladegaillerie, adding that Deezer has a “much higher” level of streaming fraud and abuse than Spotify and Apple Music. In contrast, he added, changing how royalties are allocated to artists would impact an “extremely marginal” amount of royalties.
A cleaner, easier way to improve all artists’ royalties — one resisted by streaming services until recently — is to raise subscription prices. Every time a streaming service raises fees by 10% — such as Spotify going from $9.99 to $10.99 per month in the U.S. in July — the royalties earned from those subscribers increase a commensurate amount. Deezer has raised its price twice in less than two years. Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube Music have also raised prices in the last year.
In a year that’s been dominated by familiar albums and re-releases at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, this week served up a refreshing new No. 1: veteran punk rock band blink-182, which returned with the album One More Time and scored its first placement atop the tally with its original lineup — Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker — since 2001.
The album’s coronation was not a flash-in-the-pan, news cycle nostalgia play. Instead, it was the result of a year-long reunion and rollout plan that included a massive world tour, a string of singles and a behind-the-scenes video series with hundreds of thousands of views that both allowed the band’s original fans to get a glimpse inside the lives of their longtime heroes and brought in new fans drawn to the group’s irreverent humor and oddball visuals. For a group that came of age in the heyday of MTV — and was well-known for its provocative and hilarious music videos — the visual element was a key part of re-engaging that fan base, helping earn Columbia Records senior vp of video production Saul Levitz the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Levitz breaks down the content plan behind the group’s big comeback, the nostalgia factor of a beloved band’s reunion, how the visuals reflected the music and more. “We wanted to bring context and emotion to every visual,” Levitz says. “Whether it be the album trailers or music videos, we needed to bring the audience into the cathartic moment that the band was going through.”
This week, blink-182’s One More Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the group’s first No. 1 with its original lineup since 2001. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
We wanted to bring context and emotion to every visual. Whether it be the album trailers or music videos, we needed to bring the audience into the cathartic moment that the band was going through. When Ron [Perry, Columbia chairman/CEO] first sent across the song “One More Time” I cried every time I listened to it and felt the visuals needed to match this place it was taking the listener. Both because the band was processing their own lives with a directness they hadn’t before and also because it’s a universal message that can be applied to any relationship that has gone silent due to ego, mismanagement, or just time letting it slip away.
blink obviously has been around a long time, but it had been years since they released an album. How did you approach the content given that history?
There’s always a pull between nostalgia and making things feel fresh and modern. The modern approach usually wins out because no artist wants to rest on their laurels when rolling out new music. But this time it felt more appropriate because the band was acknowledging their past in a way that confirmed a lot of what the fan base had been thinking in their heads but never heard them say to each other. Never had I seen the fan base live vicariously through each member’s journey. They saw a piece of themselves in Tom, Mark or Travis’s personal journey, so we had to acknowledge that and not make it seem like it didn’t mean anything.
blink’s original incarnation was also at the height of the music-video era, and many of their videos are iconic. How did you balance that track record with bringing in new elements for this project?
Oh man, this is the best part of the job — living up to expectations and a visual history. We literally went inside so many of these iconic music videos for the “One More Time” video so this process was less about living up to those videos and more about celebrating them. There is so much expectation for their videos to be funny and self-aware. The band wanted to push beyond this expectation, though. Their personalities have also evolved so much that as soon as something felt too much like something the old blink-182 would do it stopped feeling fresh. But trust that Tom kept things OG on set with the humor and personality that people remember the band for.
This album also had an extended rollout, with the first single being released a full year before the album. How did that help you develop and roll out the content for it?
Being on the “EDGING” set was a revelation. The band hadn’t played together in forever, and even though they were playing to track there was something so clear about how they all locked in musically together and how their personalities melded together to create this nexus of what the band was. I remember being on set and thinking, “How could these guys ever have not been together?” It seemed so effortless and perfect the way they complemented each other through friendship and music. And Cole Bennett did a tremendous job with the video having the POV of a younger fan who has embraced the band’s legacy and sees their influence on a ton of new artists in genres you wouldn’t expect. It’s rare that you have a gap this long between a first single and then the album, but it certainly made us realize early the power the band had in this trinity coming together.
In a way, this entire project could be seen as a throwback: an extended rollout strategy, big radio singles, a major tour around the world and a beloved rock band topping the charts. What’s the significance of that in this era of the music industry, when things are often on much tighter timelines and rock rarely reaches No. 1?
I attribute the success as much to the music just being f—ing great and everyone seeing a part of themselves in the journey of these three individuals that come together and put aside their differences and find that spark again that made them special and unique and beloved. It was amazing to have the amount of time needed to get everything right, and that is rare nowadays, but without those other elements being in place the time is irrelevant. This album is less about the story of rock returning and more about how the audience can see themselves within artists that share so much of themselves and their journey. If you can make them cry, you’ve got something.
Offering a preview of arguments the company might make in its upcoming legal battle with Universal Music Group (UMG), artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic PBC told the U.S. Copyright Office this week that the massive scraping of copyrighted materials to train AI models is a “quintessentially lawful.”
Music companies, songwriters and artists have argued that such training represents an infringement of their works at a vast scale, but Anthropic told the federal agency Monday (Oct. 30) that it was clearly allowed under copyright’s fair use doctrine.
“The copying is merely an intermediate step, extracting unprotectable elements about the entire corpus of works, in order to create new outputs,” the company wrote. “This sort of transformative use has been recognized as lawful in the past and should continue to be considered lawful in this case.”
The filing came as part of an agency study aimed at answering thorny questions about how existing intellectual property laws should be applied to the disruptive new tech. Other AI giants, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google and Stability AI all lodged similar filings, explaining their views.
But Anthropic’s comments will be of particular interest in the music industry because that company was sued last month by UMG over the very issues in question in the Copyright Office filing. The case, the first filed over music, claims that Anthropic unlawfully copied “vast amounts” of copyrighted songs when it trained its Claude AI tool to spit out new lyrics.
In the filing at the Copyright Office, Anthropic argued that such training was a fair use because it copied material only for the purpose of “performing a statistical analysis of the data” and was not “re-using the copyrighted expression to communicate it to users.”
“To the extent copyrighted works are used in training data, it is for analysis (of statistical relationships between words and concepts) that is unrelated to any expressive purpose of the work,” the company argued.
UMG is sure to argue otherwise, but Anthropic said legal precedent was clearly on its side. Notably, the company cited a 2015 ruling by a federal appeals court that Google was allowed to scan and upload millions of copyrighted books to create its searchable Google Books database. That ruling and others established the principle that “large-scale copying” was a fair use when done to “create tools for searching across those works and to perform statistical analysis.”
“The training process for Claude fits neatly within these same paradigms and is fair use,” Anthropic’s lawyers wrote. “Claude is intended to help users produce new, distinct works and thus serves a different purpose from the pre-existing work.”
Anthropic acknowledged that the training of AI models could lead to “short-term economic disruption.” But the company said such problems were “unlikely to be a copyright issue.”
“It is still a matter that policymakers should take seriously (outside of the context of copyright) and balance appropriately against the long-term benefits of LLMs on the well-being of workers and the economy as a whole by providing an entirely new category of tools to enhance human creativity and productivity,” the company wrote.
Global Citizen and pgLang have teamed up to create a new touring circuit throughout Africa titled Move Afrika: A Global Citizen Experience. To kick off the initiative, Kendrick Lamar will headline Move Afrika: Rwanda at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, on Dec. 6. Lamar’s pgLang company will serve as the Curator of Move Afrika […]