State Champ Radio Business
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“I hope you feel so proud, and I’m sure you might feel a little scared, too,” said Maggie Rogers as she gave a wisdom-filled commencement address in May at Radio City Music Hall to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts class of 2025 — the school from which Rogers graduated in 2016.
“A lot of speakers might tell you that they remember how you feel,” Rogers added. “But I was sitting where you were sitting just nine years ago, so when I tell you that, I promise that I mean it.”
Nine years ago, Rogers also appeared in Billboard for the first time, on the opening page of the 2016 Top Music Business Schools list. She was shown in a photograph with Pharrell Williams, whose astounded reaction to her self-released track “Alaska” went viral on YouTube and ignited her career straight out of the Tisch School’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.
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For more than a decade, Billboard has been spotlighting schools that are educating the next generation of music industry leaders, as well as the artists and producers who recognize the importance of the business skills that these schools teach.
Billboard chooses its top music business schools based on industry recommendations, alum information provided by honorees from our multiple power lists, years of reporting on educational options and information requested from the schools themselves. We invite selected schools to tell us what makes their program unique, to boast about accomplished alums and to describe specific courses, events and speakers. (This year, the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts claims the coolest campus visit, as LIPA founder Paul McCartney hosted Bruce Springsteen, who took part in an hourlong Q&A session with students in June.)
The schools here are not ranked; they are listed alphabetically. “Rankings have created an unhealthy obsession with selectivity,” former U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a 2023 speech. Despite moves to downsize the U.S. Department of Education, that federal agency still hosts a free, online college scorecard that provides quantitative information to complement the qualitative profiles on our list, including specific data on college costs, graduation rates, employment and student debt.
Acknowledging college costs and debt, Billboard has opted to emphasize more affordable public colleges and universities, which now make up one-third of this list. We also continue to recognize historically Black colleges and universities such as Howard University and Tennessee State University and to add schools from outside the music industry’s capitals, such as the newly included University of Georgia in Athens.
What Rogers said she would have told her younger self upon graduating nine years ago certainly also applies to those now searching for schools to start their music careers — on or off the stage.
“I’d remind her that two artistic careers will never be the same and that numbers do not matter — what matters is how you make people feel,” Rogers said. “I’d tell her that the people you do this with — and how you define what it means to live a beautiful life — matter more than anything. The world is waiting for you and all of the beautiful things you will create.”
Abbey Road InstituteLondon
The Abbey Road Institute offers its students an intensive music production and sound engineering diploma, which, as closely as possible, replicates the experience of working in the music and audio industry. The school prepares graduates to build their careers as professionals in music and pro audio. Its core program is the Advanced Diploma in Music Production and Sound Engineering, which includes an in-depth music business module that covers management, A&R, marketing, synch, licensing and much more. The new Dolby Atmos Mixing for Music course is taught by Grammy Award-winning engineer James Auwarter. More than 90% of graduates are in music- and audio-related work within six months of graduation. The institute now has affiliated programs worldwide and is on track to open campuses in Mumbai, India, and Los Angeles.
Alum: Producer-engineer-mixer Gil Portal at RAK Studios, whose credits include work with Disclosure, Coldplay, Shaznay Lewis, J Balvin, Usher and DJ Khaled.
American UniversityWashington, D.C.
Housed within American University’s Kogod School of Business, the Business and Entertainment Program offers a core business background while students specialize in the entertainment industry with classes primarily taught by industry veterans. Kogod added a focus on artificial intelligence to every class this year, and many speakers at the fourth annual Artist Rights Symposium — including SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeff Bennett — addressed topics surrounding AI and name, image and likeness rights. Each year, students head to New York and Los Angeles to visit business management firms, agencies and other entertainment companies. On campus, recent speakers include Lionsgate chairman/chief creative officer Kevin Beggs, Academy Award winner David Dinerstein and Kogod alums working at Live Nation, United Entertainment Group Worldwide, CAA and the three major music groups. Recent graduate placements include eight students hired at business management firm FBMM and 12 students hired at major agencies.
Faculty: New program director Linda Bloss-Baum also teaches a class where students attend SXSW and the National Independent Venue Association conference and help promote a showcase.
Auburn UniversityAuburn, Ala.
Auburn’s Department of Music established a music business minor in 2023, and the late-2024 completion of a state-of-the-art recording studio located within the Music Studies complex is the latest enhancement to the Music Studies Program, which offers courses taught by instructors with real-world experience. Students are introduced to all aspects of the music business, from labels and publishers to touring and concert promotion, with an emphasis on a global/entrepreneurial perspective. Speakers including Universal Music Publishing Nashville CEO Troy Tomlinson and former Warner Music Nashville A&R executive vp Scott Hendricks keep the conversation fresh. While the Music Business Program is relatively new, Auburn University grads include Apple CEO Tim Cook and executives working at companies such as WME, Sony, The Trenches Collective, Sun Records and Sweet Talk Publicity.
Course: Record Company Procedures gives students the experience of working for a record company by forming a label, working with an artist from a designated artist pool and creating a marketing, sales and media plan all while staying within a designated budget.
Baldwin Wallace UniversityBerea, Ohio
Located just 15 minutes from Downtown Cleveland, Baldwin Wallace offers a bachelor of arts in music industry and, in 2021, was invited to become an educational affiliate of the Grammy Museum. Last fall, music industry students had the opportunity to attend the Disney+ live production of the induction ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; in the spring, they traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with staff from NPR’s Tiny Desk, Live Nation and the RIAA. On campus, students this year were visited by NPR senior podcast operations specialist Darius Cook and Music Asset Management founder and CEO Mary Jo Mennella, and students also benefit from internship experiences with local partners including Blossom Music Center and Beachland Ballroom & Tavern.
Course: Music Licensing and Placement, taught by music supervisor Joe O’Riordan, delves into practical elements of song placement for film, TV and commercials. O’Riordan has placed songs for projects such as MTV’s Ridiculousness and Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules.
Belmont University (Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business)Nashville
Belmont’s Curb College this year is opening a 17,000-square-foot facility on Music Row to house songwriting rooms, listening spaces, live-sound classrooms and student lounges. The college offers internships, unique projects and A-list guest speakers. Case in point: Ed Sheeran spoke to a songwriting class in the spring, sharing new songs, critiquing student work and participating in a Q&A. And Kelsea Ballerini dropped in with producer Alysa Vanderheym, A&R lead Kelly Bolton and the songwriters she collaborated with on her album Patterns. Curb’s program is enhanced by semester-long trips to New York and L.A. and leads to a bachelor of business administration. Alums include Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Ashley Gorley and Hillary Lindsey, and John Zarling, co-founder of Results Global, whose clients include Dolly Parton, Megadeth and Trisha Yearwood.
Course: Through a partnership with Dolly Parton; her management company, CTK Enterprises; and the team behind Dolly: A True Original Musical, Belmont this spring launched Dolly U, comprising four courses including Dolly Parton: Icon & Influence, which featured lectures and interviews with members of Parton’s team and even a surprise conversation with Lainey Wilson.
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Australia’s creative industries are savoring a “significant” victory, as the federal government stamps out controversial proposals that would weaken copyright law in the AI age.
A slew of tech companies had lobbied for an amendment to Australia’s Copyright Act, outlined in Harnessing Data and Digital Technology, the Productivity Commission’s interim report which recommended a new fair dealing exception to allow for text and data mining (TDM).
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Should the tech sector get its wishes, warned reps from the across the cultural communities, the exemption would enable AI specialists to rip copyright-protected works without permission or payment for training their platforms. The end result would crater the music space, creatives have said, and would legitimize the industrial-scale theft of music and other cultural and creative sector intellectual property.
That worst-case scenario isn’t going to happen.
Earlier today, Oct. 27, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland confirmed the government has no plans to water-down existing copyright protections, essentially burying talk of a TDM exception.
“There is a body of work to do around what the copyright environment looks like in the AI world, but we are making it very clear that we will not be entertaining a text and data mining exception,” Rowland told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s AM on Monday.
“And this is fundamental to their right as people who are generating works to ensure that they are fairly remunerated for that and that there are fair terms of use.”
Music industry bodies, including ARIA, PPCA and APRA AMCOS, welcomed the decision.
“This is a significant moment for Australian creators and our cultural sovereignty,” says Dean Ormston, CEO of APRA AMCOS. “The Australian Government has recognized that Australia’s world-leading licensing framework is the pathway to ethical AI development, not a barrier to innovation.
“For far too long, the tech sector has made the false claim that Australia’s copyright framework is preventing AI development in Australia. This lobbying narrative has been thoroughly debunked.”
The industry, he continues, is “ready to work constructively to develop practical licensing solutions. This is everyday business for us. It’s time for tech companies to stop delaying and start licensing discussions covering both the input and output of creative materials in AI platforms.”
The government has made the right call, adds Annabelle Herd, CEO of ARIA and PPCA. “This decision reinforces Australia’s commitment to its artists and creative industries, ensuring that consent, control, and compensation remain at the heart of copyright in the age of artificial intelligence. It recognizes the inherent value of Australian creativity and culture, including First Nations Culture. It recognizes that copyright and IP laws are the foundation of the creative economy, the digital economy, and the technology industry.”
As Australian artists struggle to be seen and heard in the all-access streaming world, the government’s decision, Herd reckons, was a “commonsense” one, by backing the rights of artists, authors, creators, and rights-holders “over a small group of large, powerful tech companies.”
The Australian Society of Authors chimed in, too. “This represents a clear message from government that creators should be paid for their work,” says ASA CEO Lucy Hayward. “It’s also an important acknowledgement of the value of Australian stories and storytellers, and a vital first step in redressing the harm that has been caused by what has been called ‘“’the greatest act of copyright theft in history’.”
Screenrights, which provides licensing services for film, TV and radio, shared a joint statement with the Australia New Zealand Screen Association (ANZSA) and Screen Producers Australia (SPA). “We welcome the Attorney’s announcement ruling out a Text and Data Mining (TDM) exception,” it reads. “Australia’s Copyright Act is fit for purpose. This is a sensible and pragmatic decision that allows for innovation and creativity to progress hand-in-hand for the benefit of rights holders, creators, AI developers, and the Australian public and audiences.”
When the Productivity Commission’s report dropped in August, the music industry brought turned words into action. Then out came some of its big guns, including the likes of ARIA Award winners Missy Higgins and The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, Kate Ceberano, and Midnight Oil frontman and former Labor frontbencher Peter Garrett, who described the recommendation as “shameful.”
Even Spotify distanced itself from the tech giants, siding instead with the artist community, and pointing out that “musicians’ rights matter. Copyright is essential.”
In September, a delegation of industry professionals and high-profile artists, including Holly Rankin (Jack River), Adam Briggs, and Paul Dempsey, attended a Senate committee hearing, where they appealed for stronger copyright protections. Their comments, it would appear, hit their mark.
The next step, industry leaders say, is to ensure these principles are applied in practice, and that the government doesn’t dilute copyright protections.
The battle is won, but the fight goes on. The Copyright and AI Reference Group (CAIRG) reconvenes this week in the capital to examine key policy issues as AI technology develops.
“We will be in Canberra to make the case for keeping Australia’s cultural sovereignty intact,” Herd insists. “We will be there with artists and industry leaders to ensure creators’ voices shape the future of copyright and technology.”
Billboard reached out to the Tech Council for comment.
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Buoyed by news that The Wizard of Oz surpassed 1 million tickets sold and $130 million in sales since its Aug. 28 debut, Sphere Entertainment Co. shares rose 14.5% to a new all-time high closing price of $67.24. The film has helped send Sphere Entertainment’s stock price into a new stratosphere. Shares of the Las Vegas venue’s parent company are up 58.4% year to date and have gained 56.4% since Sphere debuted its revamped version of the classic film.
While some music stocks had big gains this week, the 19-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) fell 1.4% to 2,845.60, marking its fifth consecutive losing week. Three music companies had stock gains over 10%, but they are relatively small compared to the index’s largest companies, Spotify and Live Nation, both of which lost ground this week. Foreign exchange rates also played a role in the BGMI’s poor performance despite numerous music stocks posting gains. In the last week, the euro fell about 0.3% against the U.S. dollar while the Korean won lost approximately 1.2%.
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Spotify had the week’s biggest loss after falling 3.8% to $645.78, bringing its five-week decline to 12.1%. Numerous analysts expect the company to raise U.S. subscription prices by early 2026, which would provide further margin improvement and help deliver streaming royalty growth to rights holders. Investors appear not to be taking a possible price increase into account yet, though. The Stockholm-based streaming company will announce third-quarter earnings on Nov. 4.
Live Nation shares slipped 1.5% to $152.86. Although the stock is up 18.0% in 2025, it has fallen 12.0% over the last six weeks. On Wednesday (Oct. 22), Deutsche Bank lowered its price target to $173 from $175. Then on Thursday (Oct. 23), Citi lowered its price target to $181 from $195.
LiveOne rose 23.3% to $5.55. The music streaming company announced on Monday (Oct. 20) that it plans to launch a subsidiary in Africa, LiveOneAfrica, in partnership with Virtuosity Music Group. “Through this partnership, we’ll connect LiveOne’s technology and artist ecosystem with one of the most vibrant creative markets in the world,” CEO Robert Ellin said in a statement.
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Anghami rose 0.4% to $2.85. On Wednesday (Oct. 22), the company announced it will issue 2.38 million shares of common stock to satisfy the convertible debt held by OSN Streaming Limited. Anghami’s share price fell 5% following the news but recovered on Thursday and Friday.
K-pop stocks were in the black this week. HYBE jumped 6.9%, JYP Entertainment rose 6.1% and SM Entertainment increased 1.5%. YG Entertainment rose just 0.6%.
Inflation data announced Friday showed a modest increase to 3%, leading to a jump in stock prices as investors anticipated a pending interest rate cut by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The economy hasn’t fallen apart despite reports of growing auto reposessions and a never-fail sign of tightening budgets: a surge in sales of Hamburger Helper.
In the U.S., the Nasdaq composite index rose 2.3% to 23,204.87 and the S&P 500 improved 1.9% to 6,791.69 — both record highs. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 gained 3.1% to 9,645.62. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index soared 5.1% to 3,941.59 and hit an all-time high on Friday. China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.9% to 3,950.31.
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Taylor Swift is breaking multiple Billboard chart records in Canada.
As with many of the artist’s recent releases, Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has been a blockbuster success since its release on Oct. 3.
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According to new data from Universal Music Canada, Luminate and Billboard Canada chart performance, in its first week of charting, Showgirl was the biggest album debut in the country for Swift in the modern streaming era — or for any artist.
The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart, her 15th No. 1 on the chart. With this milestone, Swift is now tied with Canadian icon Celine Dion for the most No. 1 albums of all time in the country and is the only non-Canadian artist to reach that mark.
Swift’s last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, stayed at No. 1 for 12 weeks. Showgirl’s win continues Swift’s streak of 14 consecutive studio albums debuting at No. 1, beginning with 2008’s Fearless and including the four “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings: Red, 1989, Fearless and Speak Now.
Showgirl has now cemented Swift as the sole artist with all top 5 of the highest album debuts in Canada in the streaming era (since streams began contributing to Billboard chart performance in the early 2010s).
On last week’s Billboard Canadian Hot 100, the week of Oct. 18, the top 12 entries were all of the album’s 12 tracks. The album’s lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” hit No. 1 and has become the most-streamed song in a single day and a single week in Canadian history.
The Life of a Showgirl reportedly amassed over 1.5 billion global streams, securing the largest debut of 2025.
This isn’t the first time Swift has broken records in Canada — last year’s The Tortured Poets Department and her Post Malone-featuring single “Fortnight” earned similar chart records. At this point, Swift is competing with herself.
Read more here.
Samantha O’Connor Joins MRG Live as Senior Talent Buyer, Will Continue to Lead RAPSEASON
Samantha O’Connor has been appointed as MRG Live’s senior talent buyer.
The music industry executive will continue to lead RAPSEASON, Canada’s biggest hip-hop concert and culture promoter.
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O’Connor previously led the brand in her last role as talent buyer at INK Entertainment. In her new role at MRG, she will continue to grow the RAPSEASON brand and promote shows across the country.
Founded in 2015, RAPSEASON has presented concerts with a-list artists including Future, Central Cee, Cardi B, Post Malone, Summer Walker and Daniel Caesar, to name just a small sample. Now, RAPSEASON moves from INK to MRG, one of the country’s largest independent concert and live event companies.
“With the support and resources of MRG Live, I’m excited to continue growing the RAPSEASON brand, not only in Toronto, but nationally and internationally,” says O’Connor. “This next chapter offers an incredible opportunity to expand our reach, connect with new audiences, and spotlight the talent that drives the culture forward.”
Under O’Connor’s leadership, RAPSEASON is set to be introduced to new markets across its network throughout Canada. Currently, The MRG Group owns and operates 14 properties in Canada, including Toronto’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre and Adelaide Hall, Vancouver’s Vogue Theatre and The Revelry in Kelowna, British Columbia, and produces over 1,000 live shows annually through MRG Live. RAPSEASON branded content will also be integrated with the company’s media publication, Beatroute.
“Samantha O’Connor has proven a great astuteness in securing top-tier, identifying emerging talent and continuing to build the RAPSEASON brand,” shares Matt Gibbons, president of The MRG Group. “We are looking forward to both her and the brand’s further growth as they both integrate into our global network, our resources and our overall strategic approach.”
Read more here.
Ms. Lauryn Hill Embarking On Intimate Cross-Canada Tour
Ms. Lauryn Hill is making her return to Canada.
Independent, female-led promoter F7 Live announced the news, sharing the details of Hill’s tour, which kicks off this fall. The legendary American R&B singer and Fugees member is set to perform eight cross-country shows in intimate venues as part of her Artist In Residence tour.
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The tour kicks off in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Nov. 19 at Burton Cummings Theatre, with further stops in Vancouver, Hamilton, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa.
This marks Hill’s return to Canada since 2023, when she performed at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena and Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 25th Anniversary Tour. The rest of the North American shows came to a quiet ending after Hill cited vocal issues.
Since then, Hill has performed various pop-up shows, joining son YG Marley at this year’s Coachella, turning it into a Fugees reunion with Wyclef Jean. In July, she performed with Drake during day one of his three-day stint at the U.K. Wireless Music Festival. They debuted a mashup of “Ex Factor” and “Nice For What,” the former of which is sampled on Drake’s 2018 Scorpion track.
These shows will be at more intimate concert hall and theatre venues, including the iconic Massey Hall in Toronto.
Read more here.
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The Velvet Sundown is an AI-generated rock four-piece that captured worldwide attention in June after word of the surreptitiously computer-made music spread online. The music is a mix of classic rock, folk and psychedelic Americana. The album’s surrealist artwork evokes Salvador Dali during a stint in the high desert of the American Southwest. The band came replete with an AI-generated press photo and a halfway believable bio.
News of The Velvet Sundown’s AI origins spread like wildfire, and U.S. on-demand streams quickly jumped to approximately 140,000 per week, according to Luminate. The dramatic rise revealed strong curiosity about a band with a fully formed concept but no human creativity. Interest reached a fever pitch the following week when weekly on-demand streams jumped to 760,000. That turned out to be the band’s high-water mark.
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Streaming activity dropped 25% the following week, and another 7% the week after. Then interest in The Velvet Sundown fell off a cliff. Weekly streams plunged 48%, then 34%, and then another 25%. Six weeks after hitting its streaming pinnacle, The Velvet Sundown’s weekly on-demand streams were just 15% of its peak number. In another nine weeks, those streams were just 7% of the peak week.
The band’s Google search traffic followed a remarkably similar trajectory. The number of searches for “The Velvet Sundown” peaked the same week that on-demand streams did, and then steadily dropped.
When plotted on a chart, The Velvet Sundown’s weekly U.S. on-demand streams and U.S. Google search traffic look like one-half of a seismometer after a massive earthquake. A sharp peak of curiosity — measured in streams and searches — was followed by a cliff of disinterest.
The shape of the curve says a great deal about both The Velvet Sundown and AI music in general. If AI music is fortunate enough to find an audience, it won’t be easy to keep listeners engaged. Maintaining and building an audience is the domain of record labels, artist managers and armies of service providers and consultants. People see chart positions, news appearances and social media mentions, but they don’t see the behind-the-scenes blocking and tackling that creates all that visibility. The Velvet Sundown had the benefit of being one of the first AI artists most people encountered. Once that novelty wore off, it was left to compete with far more organized, more resourceful artists.
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Enter Xania Monet, an AI-based R&B artist who signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Hallwood Media in September. Monet is the creation of Mississippi artist Telisha Jones, who used AI music platform Suno to create songs based on lyrics she penned herself. Monet could have had an experience similar to The Velvet Sundown’s, but she took a different path.
When Billboard broke the news about Monet’s signing, a wave of media attention drove her on-demand streams and Google search traffic to a peak in mid-September. The week after the peak, Monet’s streams fell 24% — remarkably close to The Velvet Sundown’s 25% decline after its peak week. That could have been the beginning of a steep drop following the height of the public’s curiosity. Instead, Monet’s weekly streams stopped their downward decline and leveled off over the last three weeks. So why didn’t Monet suffer the same fate as The Velvet Sundown?
Velvet Sundown, Xania Monet
Billboard
A week after Monet’s streams hit their apex, Hallwood Media started securing radio play for her songs. In the first week — when her streams fell 24% — Monet’s songs were played just twice on broadcast radio, according to Luminate. But weekly spins rose to 109 the next week, then climbed to 423 and 485 in the next two weeks. By the most recent week (the period ended Oct. 16), Monet had something The Velvet Sundown didn’t: an aggregate radio audience of more than 1 million listeners.
Placed side by side, the charts representing The Velvet Sundown and Xania Monet show the difference between existing outside of the traditional music business and operating within it. Radio play helped turn Monet away from the cliff of disinterest and put her on a different trajectory. Without promotion, both radio and digital, it can be exceedingly difficult for any artist to maintain momentum — much less one created with AI.
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A Jamaican man who allegedly stole and resold more 900 tickets to Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour has pleaded guilty to a New York criminal charge.
Tyrone Rose, 20, was arrested in March over allegations that he used backdoor access as an employee of a StubHub contractor to steal the pricey tickets, before forwarding them to a Queens-based accomplice who resold them for more than $635,000 in illegal profit.
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At a court hearing Thursday (Oct. 23), Rose pleaded guilty to a single count of grand larceny in the second degree over the alleged scalping scheme, while a sentencing hearing on that charge was set for January. Rose could face up to 15 years in prison.
The guilty plea was likely part of a deal under which prosecutors could recommend less than the maximum. Rose was also charged with five additional counts, including computer tampering, money laundering and conspiracy, which were not included in Thursday’s guilty plea.
Swift’s Eras Tour wrapped up last year with a record-breaking haul of more than $2 billion in face-value ticket sales over a two-year run that featured 149 stops in 51 cities across 21 countries. Massive demand for tickets led to a chaotic presale in November 2022, sparking calls for ticketing reform; it also created an infamously pricey secondary market, with even basic seats selling for thousands.
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The Eras Tour has also been big business in the courtroom. Swift fans filed class actions against Ticketmaster over the presale, and the Federal Trade Commission is suing a ticket broker for allegedly using bots to buy tickets that it resold for more than $1 million in profit. Just this month, an angry Swiftie sued StubHub for giving her “inferior” seats after she dropped $14,000 on Eras tickets.
In March, Queens prosecutors charged Rose with stealing more than 900 Eras tickets while working at a StubHub contractor in Jamaica called Sutherland. He allegedly abused his position to access a restricted area of StubHub’s network that houses URLs for event tickets that have already been sold, then re-directed them to New York-based co-conspirators who resold them for a windfall.
“These defendants tried to use the popularity of Taylor Swift’s concert tour and other high-profile events to profit at the [expense] of others,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said at the time. “They allegedly exploited a loophole through an offshore ticket vendor to steal tickets to the biggest concert tour of the last decade and then resold those seats for an extraordinary profit.”
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StubHub was not accused of any wrongdoing. When Rose was arrested, the company said it had promptly reported the scheme to both Sutherland and to law enforcement when uncovered, and had replaced or refunded all affected orders. Sutherland was also not accused of any wrongdoing.
Both an attorney for Rose and a spokesperson for the Queens DA did not return requests for comment on the guilty plea on Friday (Oct. 24).
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Muni Long’s former managers are suing the singer for refusing to pay more than $600,000 worth of promised fees, though the Grammy-winning R&B star’s team calls the claims “unfounded.”
Long (Priscilla Renea Hamilton) is facing breach of contract claims from Ebony Son Entertainment, the Atlanta-based management company run by Chaka Zulu and Jeff Dixon. The duo is best known for managing Ludacris, with whom they started the record label Disturbing Tha Peace in 1998.
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Ebony Son claims in a Thursday (Oct. 23) federal court complaint that Zulu and Dixon’s hard work was instrumental to Long’s success, including her win for Best R&B Performance at the Grammy Awards this year. But Long fired her managers in January and now owes hefty commissions from live shows and recording and writing gigs, according to the complaint.
“Defendant Priscilla Renea Hamilton is publicly known as the musical artist ‘Muni Long’ but her less well-known performances are as a serial grifter,” reads the lawsuit. “After taking the benefit of plaintiff’s elite and highly sought-after management services for more than a year, Muni Long shamelessly reneged on her promises to pay plaintiff the agreed-upon, customary percentage of revenue she earned, and only earned because plaintiff assisted in obtaining those engagements.”
Long’s team denies the claims as “unfounded” in a statement to Billboard on Friday (Oct. 24). The team says it’s “deeply unfortunate that the matter could not be resolved privately and professionally,” claiming Long made “good faith” settlement offers even though “no formal contract ever existed” with Ebony Son.
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“The situation has been particularly distressing, as it involves the same team that took possession of the artist’s phone and sought to have her involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, despite medical confirmation that she was suffering from a Lupus flare-up,” says Long’s team in the statement. “All appropriate avenues are being pursued to ensure that the truth is fully and fairly defended. The artist hopes this underscores the importance to all those in creative fields to safeguard their personal and professional boundaries and be discerning about those they trust to represent them.”
Zulu and Dixon have been battling with Long in court since July, when the managers first leveled allegations over the unpaid commissions in a California state court complaint. That state court case was withdrawn just days before Ebony Son took the claims to federal court.
Long broke onto the R&B scene in 2022 with her hit single “Hrs and Hrs,” which spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at No. 16 on the chart. She signed with Def Jam Recordings that year, and “Hrs and Hrs” won the Grammy for Best R&B Performance at the 2023 ceremony.
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According to Thursday’s lawsuit, Long had her first meeting with Zulu and Dixon at New Orleans’ ESSENCE Festival of Culture in July 2023. During this meeting, the managers say, Long allegedly agreed to pay the duo 20% of all her gross revenue and reimburse all management-related expenses.
Zulu and Dixon say they began putting in work for Long “within days of being hired,” ensuring that her 2024 album Revenge was released before the Grammys cutoff date. This made it possible for Long to win another Best R&B Performance Grammy that year for her song “Made for Me,” the lawsuit claims.
The managers allege Long paid her required commissions and reimbursements for over a year, but that she “purportedly became unhappy” with the amount of the fees and ultimately stopped all payments in October 2024. In January, they say she officially cut ties with Ebony Son.
“Plaintiff, who worked tirelessly to advance Muni Long’s career, [has] secured over $5 million in revenue for defendants to date,” says the complaint. “But as to a significant percentage of this revenue, defendants have failed to pay plaintiff the corresponding commission payments as required by the agreement.”
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Zulu and Dixon claim Long owes more than $600,000 worth of commissions and expenses from the money she made via live shows, a $1 million ASCAP publishing deal, songwriting agreements with Shenseea and Tiwa Savage, and features on tracks by Teddy Swims and Toosi.
The lawsuit says Long also owes fees on other sources of revenue that Zulu and Dixon have not yet been able to fully audit, including the money she made opening for Chris Brown on the 11:11 Tour in 2024.
Unrelatedly, Zulu was criminally charged with murder in 2022 for shooting a man during an altercation in Atlanta. The charges were later dropped after prosecutors determined that Zulu was acting in self-defense.
Trending on Billboard Unit1 Studio has entered the scene as an independent producer of avatar concerts, backed by a roster of seasoned industry figures. The company is betting on advances in visual effects and AI-driven CGI to deliver hyper-realistic artist avatars more quickly and affordably, reimagining iconic live performances for modern audiences while addressing the […]
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Bruce Springsteen and Sony Music had different reasons for signing on to Deliver Me From Nowhere, the new biopic starring Jeremy Allen White as the Boss.
“I’m old. I don’t give a f–k what I do anymore,” Springsteen told Time. “As you get older, you feel a lot freer.” And while Sony was willing to do whatever Springsteen wanted to do, the label had other considerations, too: Its publishing company paid $500 million for Springsteen’s catalog in 2021, and one of the most powerful weapons it can deploy to boost streaming and revenue is a star-studded film. “The biopic is the cherry on top of the sundae, if you will,” says Sony marketing exec Monica Cornia. “Films bring more awareness to the artist brand and fans to the funnel.”
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Cornia, senior vp of marketing and partnerships for Sony’s Commercial Music Group, adds that the late-2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the 2022 Elvis Presley biopic Elvis “created a new baseline for streaming” both artists’ catalogs. They had “double-digit growth post-release and have sustained elevated streaming levels to date,” adds a Sony rep.
Deliver Me From Nowhere focuses on 1982’s Nebraska — not the most commercial of Springsteen’s albums. But the star power from The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Succession‘s Jeremy Strong as his manager, Jon Landau, will “create a huge cultural moment,” says Cornia, which Sony can use as “the initial exciting point for us to start to lean in.”
Over the past five years, the music business’ most successful songwriters have sold their catalogs (and sometimes other assets) for astronomical sums. In 2020, Dylan received a reported $300 million to $500 million for the publishing of his 600-plus songs, and Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, James Brown and many others followed with deals estimated between $90 million and $250 million. “Everybody who’s acquiring a catalog is looking for opportunities to find new audiences and tap into a fanbase that’s already engaged,” says Sophia Dilley, executive vp of Concord Originals, the indie-label division that co-produced last year’s HBO doc Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A., about the storied Memphis recording home of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others. “A natural place to do that is within the documentary or biopic space.”
After its November 2018 premiere, Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody biopic hit more than $1 billion worldwide in box-office sales over just five months, increasing the value of the band’s publishing and recording catalogs. In 2024, Sony purchased them for $1.27 billion.
Jeremy Allen White and Bruce Springsteen are seen on the set of “Deliver Me From Nowhere” on November 4, 2024 in Bayonne, New Jersey.
Bobby Bank/GC Images
Two months before the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen’s catalog streamed 15 million times per week. Afterwards, it spiked to nearly 62 million, and settled by the end of 2018 to 38.2 million, according to Luminate. By comparison, Dylan’s catalog drew 7.1 million weekly streams two months before A Complete Unknown, spiked to 19.5 million after the biopic and dropped to 12 million in February, also according to Luminate.
It isn’t just the biopic itself that sets the streaming bar higher for iconic artists like Queen, Dylan, Presley and Springsteen — it’s the marketing campaign and social-media activity surrounding the films. In Springsteen’s case on Friday (Oct. 24), the heavily advertised Deliver Me From Nowhere arrives with a new release geared to superfans, the five-disc box set Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, which includes Springsteen’s long-awaited electric version of the album and a performance film. “Our goal is to take advantage of the moment, but also to make sure we’re consistently marketing the catalog and the artist going forward,” Cornia says.
Concord, like many labels and publishers, plans similarly broad marketing campaigns for its upcoming biopics on Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (release date unknown) and R&B keyboardist and Beatles collaborator Billy Preston (sometime in 2026). “The risk is it doesn’t have the longevity you want it to,” Dilley says, “But in the immediate, it definitely has an impact, because you’re spending money on a campaign, which helps audience awareness.”
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The timing of Deliver Me from Nowhere and A Complete Unknown, after the Springsteen and Dylan catalog sales, is probably not coincidental, according to Alaister Moughan, founder of Moghan Music, a London-based company that specializes in valuations of publishing catalogs. Major artists who sell catalogs, and top companies that spend big money to buy them, are highly aware that a well-timed biopic can improve the songs’ future value. “The past five years in particular, when an artist is looking to sell their catalog, they’ve been quite strategic,” he says. “They’re tying in, ‘We’ll be interested in a biopic.’”
Still, the focus on the lesser-known Nebraska, rather than, say, Springsteen’s later blockbuster Born in the U.S.A., which made him a worldwide star, suggests Springsteen and the filmmakers are not focused on quick streaming revenue. “Maybe it’s more of a long-term view,” Moughan adds, “rather than, ‘We want the Bohemian Rhapsody of Springsteen this year.’”
Trending on Billboard
Bryan Andrews’ vitriol is going viral. The up-and-coming country artist’s song, “The Older I Get,” contains lyrics in its verses that take on big pharma, corporate greed and un-Christ-like Christians. But it’s the bridge that has drawn the most attention, as he makes references to the Jeffrey Epstein files (“Raise your right hand / plead the Fifth / Tryna cover up names on a list / lie and say that it doesn’t exist”), ICE (“Heaven help you if you’ve got brown skin”) and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (“Watch ‘em starve on Gaza Strip”).
“The Older I Get” originally came out in June. But in mid-October, a tirade Andrews delivered on social media propelled the song into virality: this week, it debuts at No. 3 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales and No. 8 on the overall Digital Song Sales chart while Andrews debuts at No. 16 on the Emerging Artists chart.
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His outburst, which he titled “Crash Out,” features a camo-wearing Andrews seated in his truck, ranting about ICE agents “carting them off in the back of U-Hauls…and the worst part is I have to watch some of you cheering it on like you’re watching a f-cking football game,” saving his ire for people who call themselves Christians who applaud these actions. “I started writing songs about this sh-t because I’m not oblivious to the platform I have,” the Carrollton, Missouri native continues, adding he knows it’s risky for his career to be so outspoken, especially in the often conservative country community, but he feels he has no choice but show “what side of history he’s on.” The reel has garnered more than 7.5 million views on Instagram alone, and proved an effective — if unintended — marketing tactic for the song. And that success earns Andrews’ manager, 10 and 8 Management owner Nicholas Mishko, the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Mishko, who began managing Andrews almost two years ago after one of the former pipe welder’s songs popped up in his TikTok feed, discusses the song’s success, and gives some context to Andrews’ rise and his signing with Disruptor/Sony five months ago. “Bryan has been creating music for about five years,” Mishko says. “TikTok proved to be a pivotal moment in his career, allowing his music to reach a national audience, open new doors and pursue music full time.” A number of high-profile music executives liked Andrews’ post, which Mishko says, “has opened doors for conversations and opportunities that weren’t possible before.”
The song originally came out in June, but exploded around two weeks ago after Andrews’ “Crash Out” social media post. How were you building the song the past four months until then?
We were building the song through TikTok and Instagram, steadily gaining momentum with each viral moment. We also shared the track with key influencers early on, which helped generate press and expand its reach.
How has it helped spread the word given the celebrities like Mark Ruffalo have liked and commented on Andrews’ post? How are you tying that back to the music?
The attention from high-profile celebrities has helped bring Bryan’s music to audiences who might not have discovered it otherwise. Each repost, share, like or comment generates conversation and drives new listeners to the song and his other work.
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It’s not until two-thirds through “The Older I Get” that Andrews gets overtly political with the bridge that alludes to the Epstein list, “brown skin” and Gaza. Was there any thought to making a version without those references?
The song was largely complete before Bryan wrote that bridge. He added those verses after seeing current events unfold. Those experiences inspired him to address issues and bring awareness.
Andrews posted that people were upset by “Crash Out,” “especially in the country music space.” Was it mainly country music fans or did you hear from people in the country music industry?
The backlash mostly came from fans who felt the song challenged their expectations of country music. We also heard from a few people within the industry, though it was never overwhelming. Overall, the reaction showed that the song was sparking conversation and engaging people with the issues Bryan wanted to highlight.
Andrews signed with Disruptor/Sony in April and you led with “Blue,” which was a much more traditional, though biting, country song about a broken heart, as opposed to something political. Why?
The song highlights Bryan’s songwriting and storytelling, making it a strong introduction for a wider audience. Disruptor’s team, especially Adam Alpert and Julie Leff, has been fantastic to work with, emphasizing from day one that their artists should feel in control of their art. They were fully on board with this first release.
What are your radio plans for “The Older I Get?”
Right now, our focus is on building strong momentum online, letting Bryan’s songs gain traction with fans and influencers. From there, we’ll evaluate whether and how to approach radio, using the buzz as a foundation for any future push.
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On YouTube, so many of the comments are from people who say they hate country music, but they love this song. How are you capitalizing on those new fans?
One of the top comments we’ve seen across platforms is, “I don’t listen to country, but I do now because of you.” We are engaging those new fans by highlighting the song across social platforms and encouraging them to explore more of Bryan’s music. By sharing behind-the-scenes content, stories about the songs and interactive posts, we’re turning casual listeners into loyal fans. It’s exciting to see new fans coming into country music and discovering a side of the genre they haven’t experienced before.
Does he follow “The Older I Get” with another political song or something more traditional?
Bryan has been country his entire life. I have been to his hometown and seen the small-town, blue-collar farming community he grew up in. He is living that life, and with this next song, he is showing listeners that he truly is a country artist and that his authenticity is undeniable.
Are you waiting for the White House to take notice and comment, as they have on Zach Bryan’s song, “Bad News?”
I’m always curious to see who is commenting and what they’re saying, and it’s clear the song has sparked meaningful conversation across a wide audience.
