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There won’t be a quick end to a nasty lawsuit pitting members of the Isley Brothers against each other over the trademark rights to the band’s name.
In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Thomas M. Durkin refused to dismiss Rudolph Isley’s lawsuit, which accuses brother Ronald Isley of improperly attempting to secure a federal trademark registration on the “The Isley Brothers” – a name Rudolph claims is supposed to be jointly owned.
Lawyers for Ronald had argued that the case should be tossed out because Rudolph surrendered any control over the name when he left the band. But in a ruling that noted the “unique circumstances” of band-name disputes, the judge said it could move forward toward trial: “Defendant’s motion is denied.”
Barring a settlement, the ruling means the case will head into discovery, in which both sides will gather evidence to support their arguments, and then to an eventual jury trial. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Thursday.
Band names are a constant source of trademark disputes, typically among various current and former members who disagree about who has the right to keep using a famous title. Who truly constitutes the band? Is it the members, or an LLC that owns the rights to the name? Is it the original lineup, or the one that produced the biggest hits?
Journey, Stone Temple Pilots, Jefferson Starship, the Rascals, the Ebonys, the Commodores and the Platters have all resorted to such litigation over the years. Members of the Beach Boys spent more than 10 years fighting over their name, before a settlement was reached in 2008. And Morris Day recently had an ugly fight with the Prince estate over the trademark rights to his band name, The Time.
In the case of the Isleys, Rudolph claims that since the 1986 death of their third brother O’Kelly Isley, he and Ronald have been the equal co-owners of the group’s intellectual property. Ronald sees things differently, claiming the “Isley Brothers” trademarks are the property of those who have actually been using a name – and that Rudolph has not performed with the band since 1986.
Rudolph sued Ronald in March, asking a judge to declare that the trademark rights to the name are “jointly owned by plaintiff and defendant equally.” He also wants a ruling that forces Ronald to explain how he has “exploited” the trademark and to share any revenue derived from it.
In Wednesday’s decision, Judge Durkin ruled that Rudolph’s allegations, if later proven true, would mean that he continued to have rights to the name. “Plaintiff’s contention is that when he ceased performing, he did not leave the group, but instead took on the sort of continuing managerial role that creates a continuing ownership right in the mark,” the judge wrote.
In doing so, Judge Durkin recounted many previous rulings on the “unique circumstances of individual members’ rights to a musical group’s trademark.” In one case among members of The Platters, a court ruled that bandmates typically “do not retain rights to use the group’s name when they leave the group.” But in another case, a court ruled that a singer from the doo-wop group Vito & the Salutations continued to hold rights to the name because he maintained a “behind-the-scenes role” after leaving the band.
Rudolph says he took a similar “active” role in the Isley Brothers after he stopped performing, including playing a key role in securing a multi-million dollar publishing deal in 2018 and helping to negotiate the use of the band’s iconic song “Shout” for a commercial during the Super Bowl in February.
“Plaintiff’s allegations regarding his activities on behalf of the group are more like those in [the Vito & the Salutations case] than [other musicians] who left their musical groups entirely and did not allege any continuing role,” Judge Durkin wrote.
The ruling means the case will head into discovery, in which both sides will gather evidence to support their arguments, and then to an eventual jury trial. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Thursday.
Ambrosia Healy and Dennis Dennehy’s first meeting wasn’t quite storybook perfect.
It was a stormy day backstage at the Tibetan Freedom Concert at Washington, D.C.’s Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in June 1998. Healy and Dennehy were already aware of each other — but they weren’t fans. Dennehy, then handling publicity at Geffen Records, had a roster that included Britpop band Embrace, and the band’s legendary manager, Jazz Summers, had recently suggested bringing Healy, a talented indie publicist he was working with, into the fold to take the lead for the act’s press.
To put it mildly, Dennehy wasn’t thrilled. When an indie is brought in to supplement a label representative’s work, he says, it implies, “You’re not doing your job” — and anyway, he still insists he’d “gotten Embrace under control” on his own.
Meanwhile, shortly before the concert, Healy had called Dennehy to discuss a different artist. Her star client, Dave Matthews Band, was playing two stadium gigs supported by Dennehy’s Geffen act Beck, and she wanted to review photo logistics. Still stinging from the Embrace episode, he rebuffed her. “I was like, ‘This guy f–king sucks!’ ” Healy recounts. By the time Summers introduced them backstage at RFK Stadium, they were primed for conflict.
“You were kind of an a–hole!” Healy insists today. “No, you — that’s not true at all!” Dennehy protests with a bit of dramatic flair. “You gave me the brushoff!” Twenty years later, he hasn’t quite given up on this point, though their circumstances have, to say the least, changed: In what feels like a plot twist out of a music industry romcom, Healy and Dennehy have now been married for 14 years. “It’s like [When] Harry Met Sally, without the friendship,” Healy says with a laugh.
We’re sitting on this July afternoon at Farm Club, a hip farm-to-table restaurant in Northern Michigan, where the couple, who are based in Los Angeles, own a home in the Traverse City area. They’ve been tagging in and out of here to piece together a summer for their 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son; Dennehy arrives a few minutes late, having driven directly from Cherry Capital Airport after flying in from New York that morning, and in a few days, Healy will return to L.A. for work. Understandably, both publicity lifers seem mildly apprehensive about being the subjects of a profile rather than playing their usual roles as seasoned pros ensuring an artist’s interview doesn’t go awry. When we order a round of pilsners, Dennehy half-jokingly quips, “That’s off the record!” Healy overrules him.
Over three decades in music publicity, Dennehy and Healy have guided scores of culture-shifting artists’ careers, as well as those of executives at the highest echelons of the business. “It’s a real name-check of major music industry events,” reflects Dennehy, 56, as he begins to unspool his history with Healy, 55; names like Jimmy and Coran (Iovine and Capshaw) pop up casually as supporting players in the couple’s personal story. From digital piracy to the pandemic, the pair has seen — and helped shape the messaging around — widespread change in the business, even if, as Healy puts it, “what’s needed [from publicists] has always been the same.”
Since 2014, Healy has served as executive vp/head of media strategy and relations at Capitol Music Group. Dennehy has been chief communications officer at AEG Presents since 2019, when he left Interscope Geffen A&M after 20 years. Together, they’ve navigated a turbulent, demanding music industry, and though their relationship has created conflict between them countless times — over Saturday Night Live bookings, magazine covers, Grammy campaigns and lots more — working in the same field, and the mutual understanding that has brought them, has strengthened their bond. “It’s not all kill or be killed,” Healy says. “In fact, the kill or be killed, that’s just the nature of what we do. But my greatest ally? I’m married to my greatest ally.”
Technically, Dennehy and Healy first crossed paths three years before their Tibetan Freedom Concert run-in, at South by Southwest (SXSW) in 1995. At the Austin Convention Center, Dennehy, who had just moved to L.A., spotted Healy and asked his then-Geffen colleague Jim Merlis, “Who is that woman? She’s very attractive.” Merlis didn’t know, so Dennehy later “did the brush-by” and saw her tag: “Ambrosia Healy, Ambrosia Healy PR.”
Both had established themselves in music publicity in the early 1990s. Though Healy might’ve seemed destined for the music business (her father, Dan Healy, was a sound engineer for the Grateful Dead for most of its career), she had settled in Boulder, Colo., with plans to become a teacher. While working as a cocktail waitress — and handling publicity — at the Fox Theatre, she saw Dave Matthews Band when it passed through the venue on its first tour west of the Mississippi in 1993; when DMB returned to town a few months later, she met its manager, Coran Capshaw, who asked her to do the band’s publicity. After graduating college, Dennehy had landed in New York with record-industry aspirations, and a short spell doing publicity at an indie German metal label led him in 1992 to the Geffen Records publicity job he would hold for the rest of the decade.
As Dennehy puts it today, he and Merlis “thought we knew everybody. You know, you’re in New York, you’re young, you’re…” “Full of yourself,” Healy deadpans. When he saw in the SXSW guide that she was from Boulder, his spirits fell: “I just closed it, and I was like, ‘Aw, I’m never going to meet her.’ ”
But by the late ’90s, Dennehy’s and Healy’s social and professional circles began to converge. Healy moved to New York in 1997, and though Dennehy was out west for his Geffen job, he kept his apartment in Manhattan, where he regularly spent a week per month. “All of a sudden, we’re having lots of mutual friends in New York, and so our paths started to cross,” Healy says. “Every time I’d be like, ‘Ugh.’ Like, ‘That guy is so mean. He’s so rude. I don’t want to be around him.’ ”
“And that’s what I thought about her,” Dennehy says. “ ‘What is her deal?’ ”
For professionals in other fields, a shared occupation might well be the perfect grounds for a meet-cute — but the very nature of music PR prevented that for the two young publicists. “Even your best friends, in what we do, are your competitors,” Dennehy says.
One of those best-friend competitors was Sheila Richman, then working in publicity at Island/Def Jam, who rented a house with Dennehy and longtime Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine in La Quinta, Calif., for Coachella 2001. Healy, also a close friend of Richman’s and Fine’s, was in town, too, and they all met for dinner the night before the festival.
“I get there and that mean guy” — Dennehy — “is there,” Healy says. “And over the course of that dinner in April 2001…”
“And into the evening,” Dennehy interrupts.
“No, it was the dinner,” Healy says. “It started with dinner.”
“I know,” Dennehy says. “We sat around talking for…”
“I was like, ‘Oh, no. I — I love him,’ ” Healy says. (Dennehy: “I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome!’ ”) “We were sitting next to each other. I asked him for one of his shrimp from his shrimp cocktail as a flirting move and he let me have it. Cut to years later, I know he really doesn’t like to share his shrimp cocktail.” (On the other hand, when Dennehy plucks a crouton from Healy’s salad shortly after they tell this story, it goes unacknowledged.)
“I remember them talking all night and really hitting it off,” recalls Richman, now executive vp of publicity at Atlantic Records. “As the weekend progressed, it seemed like they were falling for each other. It seemed like it made total sense.”
Austin Hargrave
Even so, the weekend didn’t cement their romance; they would date on and off for two monthslong stints before encounters at a fortuitous Big Hassle Media holiday party in December 2003 — where Dennehy recalls thinking, “I need to get back together with Ambrosia Healy,” when he saw her — and the subsequent Grammys brought them together for good. Following short periods at Shore Fire Media and Marty Diamond’s Little Big Man agency, Healy moved to L.A. to run publicity for Capitol Records, where clients included an ascendant Coldplay. Dennehy, meanwhile, joined Interscope Geffen A&M following Geffen’s 1999 merger with Interscope, where, among other things, he was soon running point on PR for one of the world’s biggest artists, Eminem; by 2002, he was head of IGA’s publicity department.
“Think we were competitors before?” Healy says. “We now have identical jobs.”
Saturday Night Live is a sore spot for the couple. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s — with Dennehy at Interscope and Healy at Capitol, then an indie, then Capitol Music Group — they would often compete for the same bookings. For years, he says, “For one of us to win, the other one had to lose.”
“If I call Dennis, Ambrosia will typically let him do his thing and obviously hear what’s going on,” says SNL coordinating producer Brian Siedlecki, who has worked at SNL since the mid-’90s and booked the show’s music for almost that long. “If I call Ambrosia and he’s sitting there, he’ll be screaming the names of his artists in the background while I’m trying to have a conversation with her.”
In early 2014, Healy got Bastille on SNL before Dennehy scored a booking for The 1975 (“Made me insane,” he says), and in fall 2018, she booked Maggie Rogers, then just bubbling up and without an album out, over Dennehy’s priority, Ella Mai, who had scored two huge Billboard Hot 100 hits in the preceding months. “We were in a full-on brawl,” he says.
“It was quiet around our house for a couple days,” Healy recalls. “That was the time I was like, ‘If you don’t get it, aren’t you happy I get it?!” “And I was like, ‘No, I want somebody I don’t know to get it!’ ” Dennehy retorts. (Ultimately, they both got their SNL wishes: Mai played the show just two weeks after Rogers.)
By the ’10s, Dennehy and Healy — who bought their house in L.A.’s Hancock Park in 2006 and got married in early 2009 — had established a clandestine but (mostly) compassionate rhythm. “There are times we’re on the phone and the other one’s listening and you’re like, ‘What are you doing here? Get out of the room,’ ” Dennehy says. “Especially before we had kids, there were like two silos in our house. We always had to be two rooms away from each other.”
“It’s a mutual understanding,” Healy says. “These are our livelihoods. We have to be trusted by our employers. There were things we couldn’t talk about.” Or, as Dennehy puts it, “It’s a little cloak and dagger. It’s a little Mr. & Mrs. Smith in our house sometimes.”
Finding that balance took trial and error. In early 2008, a lawyer working with Dennehy needed to contact a prominent magazine editor (even today, they can’t share specifics, but Healy calls it a “cease-and-desist situation”) who Dennehy knew was a personal friend of Healy’s. Without explanation, he asked her for the editor’s number — “Back then, you didn’t have everyone’s cellphone number,” she clarifies — and, assuming good faith, she gave it to him. Backstage at a taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Healy received a call from the editor explaining a lawyer had just called.
“We hadn’t just been dating, we had been dating for a long time,” Healy says, adding that Dennehy explained himself at the time by saying he was under pressure from his colleagues and was willing to do what he had to — even betraying the trust of the person he shared a home with — to get it done. “That was a big line crossed,” she continues. “We haven’t had many of those.”
“But you learn from that,” Dennehy adds. “You figure out how far you can push things.”
Their periodic conflicts make for good stories, but the couple are emphatic about the overall benefits of their shared profession. In no small part, that’s because while their styles differ — they agree that Healy is more methodical while Dennehy is, in her words, “a vibe guy” — they see the job similarly.
“What both of them share [is] they don’t do press. They tell stories,” says Jim Guerinot, who as manager of Nine Inch Nails worked with Dennehy (before the band left Interscope in 2007) and later Healy. “Some people just carpet-bomb the press. Both of them were always very clear about forcing the artist into having a vision for the story that they want to tell and then telling that story.”
That extends to the demands of the gig itself. “We understand what the pull of the job is and where you need to be at a certain time,” Dennehy says, recalling an ex who “couldn’t comprehend why I was at CBGB’s until three in the morning every night.” When his and Healy’s newborn daughter was just a few weeks old, she understood when Dennehy had to fly to Dublin to shoot a U2 magazine cover: “She’s like, ‘Yeah, you have to go.’ ”
Both now laugh about their years facing off in label PR. Dennehy’s pivot into the live space was unexpectedly tumultuous — less than a year after assuming his AEG role, he ended up navigating the biggest calamity that sector has ever faced, the coronavirus pandemic. But they’re noticeably relieved that his new gig has helped ease their professional tensions.
“We’re not competing anymore,” says Dennehy before Healy cuts in: “Actually, it’s kind of more fun than it has ever been.”
This story will appear in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
One recent Sunday, Shore Fire Media founder and CEO Marilyn Laverty was paddleboarding when she experienced a publicist’s worst nightmare: She dropped her cellphone in New Jersey’s Shark River inlet and watched it slowly sink, rendering her incommunicado. “Carrying a phone when you’re paddleboarding isn’t really necessary or advisable,” Laverty admits now. But as a publicist, she adds, “I’m more comfortable with it on my person.”
Consider it an occupational hazard. Laverty has navigated the often murky waters of public relations for over 45 years — expanding from handling iconic artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello to representing venues, tech companies, streaming services, documentaries, entrepreneurs and even athletes.
After trying her hand at journalism — her first job out of Cornell was as an editorial assistant at the Ithaca (N.Y.) Journal — and deciding it wasn’t for her, she joined Columbia Records’ publicity department as an assistant in 1977. She briefly jumped to RCA before returning to Columbia in 1979, ultimately rising to vp and running the publicity department. In 1990, with assurances from Springsteen’s and Wynton Marsalis’ managers that they would continue working with her, she struck out on her own, starting Shore Fire in her Brooklyn Heights apartment.
Like most publicists, Laverty is much more comfortable pitching her clients than talking about herself. She answers questions cautiously and deliberately and suggests specific angles — like focusing more on Shore Fire’s present (say, exciting new clients like best new artist Grammy winner Samara Joy) than its past, or highlighting her 45-person staff rather than herself (including her executive team of senior vps Mark Satlof — her second hire in 1990 — Rebecca Shapiro, Matt Hanks and Allison Elbl, all of whom have their own high-profile clients and oversee various staff or operations in Shore Fire’s Brooklyn Heights headquarters or its offices in Nashville and Los Angeles).
That same strategic focus and attention to detail has made Shore Fire one of the leading independent PR firms of the last 30 years and Laverty the only indie publicist with whom Springsteen has ever worked. “We and Marilyn have been a match for the last 40 years,” says his manager, Jon Landau. “She has no agenda except for the artists, is a master communicator, is entirely networked, is respected in all corners of the industry and is not shy when — tactfully — disagreeing with management. In fact, she can be incredibly stubborn, but she’s usually — not always! — right.”
How soon after you launched Shore Fire in 1990 were you sure you would make it?
From the start I knew it would work. We had a lot of great artists and we grew slowly. We never had to have layoffs because we grew too quickly. Starting in my apartment was definitely cost-conscious, but within two years we moved to an office in Brooklyn Heights, and after a few years [we] moved to our current space and have been there now for 25 years.
What is something you learned in your early days from a client or mentor that has stuck with you?
Being able to work with [Springsteen] at the beginning of my career was the greatest lesson in knowing yourself. He’s not only one of the most incredible artists of our era, but he knows who he is like no one else. He doesn’t focus on what other artists get. He is really pursuing his own vision and his own way. It has been a lesson that I’ve taken to everybody I’ve worked with, to try to get them to articulate their personal vision and try to honor it with everything we do.
Last November, his comments to Rolling Stone about dynamic pricing for his current tour, and how high some prices were, generated some controversy. Do you prep him for such interviews?
We always let Bruce know in advance about the overall content of an interview, and Bruce always answers questions entirely on his own. I think the thing people love most about Bruce Springsteen is his honesty, his realness. He’s like that in interviews, too. He says what he thinks. It’s honest, not tailored to get a certain response. It’s direct. I respect that.
How has your evolution into so many different areas of PR come about?
One of Shore Fire’s greatest strengths is our brainpower with all 45 staffers. There’s a lot of variety within our roster, and it’s constantly changing because it really reflects not just me and my tastes, but the whole collective. There are so many staff who’ve been with the company over 10 years, over 20 years, but it’s very exciting when the new staff are telling us what they care about and bringing in clients. We’ve developed the roster around the interests of the staff.
Marilyn Laverty photographed on August 15, 2023 at Shore Fire Media in Brooklyn Heights.
Meredith Jenks
Addressing allegations of misconduct is common for artists now. How does Shore Fire handle those situations?
I think all of us publicists are facing some cases of cancel culture on an individual basis, [but] my idea is to try to work with artists who are — it may sound Pollyanna-ish — really good people. We focus on artists who are more known for their artistry than their behavior.
In 2019, Dolphin Entertainment, which also owns PR firms 42West and The Door, purchased Shore Fire. Why was it the right time to sell?
I met [Dolphin founder] Bill O’Dowd through [attorney] Don Passman, who has been a [Shore Fire] client. Bill shared his vision for building a great supergroup of companies. As PR changes more each year, we really become marketers as much as media hunters, and I felt that there would be something very dynamic with working with Bill and with these companies.
How has your role changed since the acquisition?
How we handle our campaigns [and] how we shape our roster are entirely up to us. I’m still bringing in clients, but at the same time, I’m devoting a lot of energy building collaboration within the companies right now, figuring out how we can work together and how our artists can benefit from their clients and vice versa.
Does a positive album review still matter at a time when everyone on social media can weigh in?
Holy cow. I remember when every campaign you had to get a review in Stereo Review and High Fidelity. A great review or an appearance on a morning or latenight TV show are still goals, but nowadays, we’re also putting together ideas for promotional events and partnerships. We call publicists “storytellers” nowadays and maybe that seems like a funny term, but by creating opportunities for artists to be seen at events or creating partnerships, you’re also telling their story.
Speaking of telling stories: Shore Fire differentiates itself from other PR companies by generating intriguing storylines on pitches, like, “This ambient artist gave NFL star Aaron Rodgers tips for his dark retreat.” [Shore Fire used this subject line recently in a pitch for artist East Forest.] How do those come about?
We have a Slack channel devoted entirely to subject lines. We frequently will put subject lines up to a vote, and we share success stories because it’s very competitive getting your message out there. Our success with artists is built over the course of months, but you can only build a story if people are paying attention.
This story will appear in the Aug. 26, 2023, issue of Billboard.
More than $500,000 in R. Kelly’s royalties held by Universal Music Group must be handed over to Brooklyn federal prosecutors to help pay his victims, a judge ruled Wednesday.
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Two years after a jury convicted the singer of sex trafficking and racketeering – and a year after she sentenced him to 30 years in prison — Judge Ann Donnelly signed a so-called writ of garnishment directing UMG to hand over $520,549 in his publishing royalties to pay restitution and criminal fines.
Prosecutors had moved to seize royalties held both by UMG and by Sony Music Entertainment, Kelly’s former label. But because UMG’s account held enough to cover the entire penalty (UMG disclosed to the judge it was holding $567,444) prosecutors said Wednesday they would drop their request to tap Sony’s account.
That doesn’t mean Sony will be keeping Kelly’s funds, though. The label, which held more than $1.5 million in Kelly royalties as of 2020, is facing other demands to access that money – to an abuse victim who won a $4 million civil judgment, as well as a Chicago landlord that’s owed $3.5 million.
Federal prosecutors in Chicago, who won a separate conviction against Kelly on child pornography charges, could also seek to collect money, either from Sony or from the remaining funds in UMG’s account. Kelly owes $42,000 in fines and restitution in that case.
A spokesman for UMG declined to comment. A spokesman for Sony did not return a request for comment.
After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was convicted in New York in 2021 on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges stemming from accusations that he orchestrated a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. Last summer, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
In September 2022, he was convicted in Chicago on separate of federal charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex. Kelly was sentenced to 20 years on those convictions in February, but he will serve nearly all of the time simultaneously with the earlier 30-year sentence.
Kids’ audio platform Yoto, which is behind the screen-free Yoto Player and Yoto Mini, signed an industry-first agreement with Universal Music Group (UMG) to bring music titles and artists from its labels and catalogs to the platform for the first time. Founded by Ben Drury and Filip Denker, Yoto allows children to access music without being exposed to advertising or unsuitable content. The UMG partnership kicked off this month with the launch of Queen’s Greatest Hits: Volume 1 as a “Yoto Card.” That will be followed in the coming months by releases from artists like Bob Marley & the Wailers and labels including Motown Records and Disney Music Group. The Queen cards will be available on Yoto webstores in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union; Yoto Amazon stores in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada; and the Queen online store.
Round Hill Music acquired Linus Entertainment, the Canadian independent music company that includes the recording and publishing catalogs of Borealis Records, Mummy Dust Music, Solid Gold Records, Stony Plain Records, The Children’s Group and True North Records, as well as the distribution company Independent Digital Licensing Agency Inc (IDLA). The acquisition encompasses over 3,000 songs and more than 20,000 master recordings. It includes recordings from Buffy Sainte-Marie, Gordon Lightfoot and Taj Mahal, among many others.
Reservoir Media and PopArabia jointly acquired the catalog of Cairo-based content production and distribution company RE Media, encompassing sub-labels Moseeqa and Moseeqa TV and several of RE Media’s owned and operated YouTube channels. The acquisition includes more than 6,000 recordings and compositions from artists such as Amr Diab, George Wassouf, Dalida and Mohamed Mounir. Reservoir and PopArabia additionally acquired the master and publishing rights for the catalog of Egyptian rap duo El Sawareekh.
Timbaland acquired a stake in lifestyle and vinyl brand 12on12, where he will serve as a strategic partner and curator. According to a press release, 12on12 allows “cultural icons” to curate soundtracks of 12 songs “that have inspired, affected and influenced them,” which are then pressed on 12″ vinyl. Timbaland is currently working on his own 12on12 release that will drop at the beginning of next year. His Verzuz partner Swizz Beatz previously acquired a stake in the company in February 2022; since then, 12on12 has expanded into releasing limited edition fine art prints and lifestyle pieces featuring co-curators’ artwork. The company has already collaborated with Run DMC, Swizz Beatz and Travis Scott x Saint Laurent, among others.
Apple Podcasts added several new hosting providers that will support Delegated Delivery, which allows creators to publish subscriber episodes directly from their participating hosting provider dashboard. The new partners are Audiomeans, Captivate, Podbean, Podspace and Transistor, all of which will support Delegated Delivery by the end of 2023. Elsewhere, the company revealed an exclusive integration with Linkfire, which is expanding into podcasting this fall with a toolkit built specifically for podcasters. Using that toolkit, podcasters on Apple Podcasts will have the ability to generate an unlimited number of smart links with landing pages for their podcasts and measure how listeners engage with them using the Linkfire Insights dashboard.
The Salzburg Festival is making its operas, orchestral concerts, lieder recitals and chamber music exclusively available on the recently launched Apple Music Classical streaming platform. More than 100 such recordings are already available at launch.
Matthew Berry‘s fantasy sports and sports betting media company FantasyLife closed a $2 million dollar friends and family round from investors including John Legend, YouTube co-founder/former CEO Chad Hurley and Wasserman Media Group chairman/CEO Casey Wasserman, among many others. Hurley, Wasserman and The SpringHill Company co-founder/CEO Maverick Carter (also an investor, with LeBron James’ LRMR Ventures) will also join the FantasyLife advisory board. Fantasy Life additionally announced new partnerships with brands including Epic Seats, Webex by Cisco and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Believe‘s global dance and electronic imprint b:electronic signed Berlin-based house and techno label mobilee records and Feathers & Bones, the new label from electronic artist Rodriguez Jr.
The Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University and E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt’s TeachRock education program announced they would team up to help teachers bring American popular music into the curriculums of classrooms across the United States. Future collaborations will include teacher workshops, student internships, seminars and conferences, curriculum development and joint research activities. The efforts between the two organizations will begin at Asbury Park Middle School and High Schools in New Jersey with the Harmony Student Wellness Program, which uses “popular music as a springboard” for lessons around self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision-making and social awareness, according to the TeachRock website.
Absolute Label Services partnered with Prestige Management for the release of Busted’s forthcoming Greatest Hits 2.0 compilation. Absolute will provide a range of services for the release, including distribution, marketing and project management. The album compiles newly-recorded versions of all of Busted’s biggest hits, fan favorites and live staples, with deluxe formats featuring a number of previously unreleased collaborations with artists including McFly, James Arthur, You Me At Six, The Vamps, Bowling For Soup, Dashboard Confessional, Deaf Havana, Wheatus and Charlotte Sands.
SYDNEY, Australia — A new chapter unfolds for Australia’s music community with the activation of Creative Australia, the centerpiece of the federal government’s National Cultural Policy, Revive, which its architects hope will turn Australia into a music powerhouse.
On Thursday (Aug. 24), as the Creative Australia Act 2023 came into effect, federal minister for the arts Tony Burke officially unveiled Creative Australia and its new board, led by chairman Robert Morgan and deputy chair Wesley Enoch.
Creative Australia is an expanded and modernized Australia Council for the Arts which, Burke says, “will bring the drive, direction and vision that Australian artists have been calling out for.”
The government agency’s CEO Adrian Collette will chair the newly-appointed Music Australia council, an eight-strong board of artists and music industry experts, which includes legendary concerts promoter Michael Chugg and was unveiled earlier in the week.
“Pleasingly,” comments Evelyn Richardson, CEO of Live Performance Australia, “Creative Australia comes to life with the restoration of funding that was lost under the previous government’s budget cuts in 2014, as well as new initiatives such as Music Australia and Creative Workplaces.”
To fully “realize its ambition and promise,” she continues, “it will be important that current and future governments are committed to greater investment in our cultural and creative industries through Creative Australia.”
The music industry has long advocated for a new body to help Australia’s commercial music sector reach new heights at home and abroad.
When Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor government was formed in 2022, ending the nine-year administration of the center-right Liberal Party, hope turned to action.
In the months that followed the federal election, Burke welcomed key representative bodies of the Australian contemporary music industry leaders to consult on the policy, from which Revive was shaped.
In January, prime minister Albanese presented Revive to the industry and the public, and with it, the promise of a new Music Australia, a reimagined national music development agency that would support and invest in the development of Australian contemporary music.
The policy is an ambitious year-long action plan, structured around five interconnected pillars and underpinned by a commitment for new, additional investment totaling A$286 million (US$202 million) — record levels of arts funding. Music Australia alone is funded to the tune of A$69 million ($44 million) over four years.
The establishment of Music Australia is a “landmark moment for Australia’s music industry,” says Dean Ormston, CEO of APRA AMCOS. “It represents for the first time in the nation’s history that we have had a long-term commitment from government to work in partnership with industry to make Australia a music powerhouse,” he adds.
“We look forward to working with Music Australia chair and Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette and the rest of the council to fully realize the cultural, economic and social benefits of a vibrant, healthy and sustainable music industry accessible to all Australians, and the world.”
The Creative Australia Bill, which lays the legal framework for the existence of Music Australia, passed parliament and was enshrined into law in June. Today’s development was a formality, but an important one.
“Now it all comes down to execution,” comments ARIA and PPCA CEO Annabelle Herd. “Now is the time to think big, consult wide, and deliver the solutions that Australian recording artists and industry professionals deserve; restoring the infrastructure to help them achieve sustainable careers at home and providing a greater platform for them to reach new audiences by cutting through an increasingly saturated market.”
Australia’s contemporary music industry, she continues, “is an incredible incubator for world-class talent. But for the world to discover that talent, we need the right strategic support and investment. There’s no time to waste.”
Work is “already underway” to establish Music Australia and Creative Workplaces within Creative Australia, reads a statement from the Creative Australia office.
In 2024, the inaugural First Nations-led board will be established, building on the Australia Council’s 50-year history of investment in First Nations Arts and Culture. And in 2025, Writers Australia will be established.
Read the full National Cultural Policy here.
Music Australia Council:Fred Alale, co-founder and chair of African Music and Cultural Festivals Inc.Lisa Baker, manager of creative cultural development, City of PlayfordDanielle Caruana (Mama Kin), artist and founder/director of The Seed FundMichael Chugg, founder of Chugg EntertainmentPetrina Convey, owner and director of UNITY. MgmtFred Leone, artistNathan McLay, CEO of Future ClassicDr Sophie Payten (Gordi), artist
Australia Council Board of Creative Australia:Adrian Collette AMRobert Morgan (Chair)Wesley Enoch AM (Deputy Chair)Rosheen GarnonStephen FoundChristine Simpson Stokes AMPhilip WatkinsAlexandra DimosCaroline BowditchCourtney StewartKitty TaylorLindy LeeCaroline WoodAmanda Jackes
BMI has accepted an offer to sell to New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm that has been quietly looking at music assets over the last few years, according to sources. It’s unclear if the deal has been signed yet.
Sources suggest that New Mountain Capital will pay about $1.7 billion for BMI which claims $145 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in its first year acting as a for-profit entity, which was announced last October. That suggests that BMI — aka Broadcast Music Inc. — is trading on a nearly 12 times EBITDA multiple. Since BMI has no debt, it’s likely that New Mountain Capital will use a healthy level of debt to finance the deal.
According to New Mountain Capital’s website, the firm has $40 billion in assets under management and chases a “growth-oriented, value-add investment approach, rather than reliance on excessive risk, as the best path to high and consistent long-term returns.” The firm has made investments in such industries as software, business services, information and data, logistics and financial services among a few other sectors.
Besides New Mountain, sources say, bidders included Apollo Global Management, Brookfield Asset Management and its music investment Primary Wave, and RedBird Capital Partners. New Mountain and Brookfield/Primary Wave became the finalist, until BMI accepted New Mountain’s offer. Moreover, sources add that Moelis & Co. has been acting as an advisor to New Mountain while BMI has acknowledged that it hired Goldman Sachs to explore a strategic partnership.
BMI first put itself up for sale last year and at the time said it was switching from a not-for-profit operation to a for-profit company. In its fiscal 2022, before it switched to a for-profit entity, BMI reported that it collected $1.573 billion, while distributions totaled $1.471 billion. While the company has stated that the move is being made to benefit its affiliates and will allow the company to spend more money on developing technology and infrastructure so it can better services and songwriters, the strategy shift has caused consternation among songwriters and publishers.
Last week, a group of songwriters and creative advocates wrote a letter to BMI asking how such a move would benefit songwriters and questioning whether the profit would come at the expense of songwriter payments. The groups that signed the letter were Black Music Artists Coalition; Music Artists Coalition; Songwriters of North America; SAG-Aftra and Artists Rights Alliance.
Since its formation in 1940, BMI has been operating as a not-for-profit organization, paying out all of the money it collects to songwriters and publishers, even though it was a private company. In response to the songwriter and creator organization letter, BMI president Mike O’Neill said that because of its first year acting as a for-profit entity, it has allowed the company to upgrade its services portal, including new dashboards, among several other initiatives. He also said in pursuing a BMI sale, the company “would ensure that any partner embraces our mission of prioritizing the interests of songwriters, including their financial success.
BMI declined to comment for this story, and other firms mentioned didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment or couldn’t be reached.
Abu Dhabi-based streaming company Anghami received a $5 million investment from the venture capital arm of the Saudi Arabia media company SRMG, the companies announced in a joint statement Monday (Aug. 21).
The largest publicly traded media company in the Middle East and North Africa region, SRMG is the publisher of Arabic and English-language international and business newspapers like Asharq Al-Awsat, Arab News and Aleqtisadiah. In June, SRMG partnered with Billboard to launch Billboard Arabia.
As the region’s most popular music streamer, Anghami has reported rapid growth since going public on the Nasdaq in early 2022 and said it expects to become profitable this year. With SRMG’s investment and appetite to be a destination for artists, the deal will “bolster Anghami’s growth trajectory through its extensive media reach, content library, and portfolio of leading assets in audio/podcasts,” according to the statement.
In March, Anghami said its revenue grew by more than 35% to $48 million in 2022, driven by a 21% year-over-year uptick in paid subscribers to 1.52 million, according to preliminary unaudited results. Anghami claims 120 million registered users overall.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains one of the world’s fastest-growing sectors for music, with revenue from recorded music climbing by nearly 24% in 2022, according to the IFPI.
Founded in 2012, Anghami has expanded its business beyond streaming to include in-house productions, branded music and video content, concerts, podcasts and a record label for Arab artists.
Anghami CEO/co-founder Eddy Maroun called the investment a milestone for his company that will allow it to “unlock further opportunities to champion the music ecosystem.”
“We have continually evolved to meet our audience’s changing demands and support the region’s rising entertainment and music industry,” Maroun said in the statement. “This partnership will propel regional artists to greater heights, expand their global reach, and create new touchpoints for our users and artists alike.”
On Aug. 14, days after Oliver Anthony performed before thousands at the Morris Farm Market in Currituck County, N.C., Mike “Moose” Smith did something he hadn’t done in 40 years. The program director for 97.3 The Eagle, in nearby Norfolk, Va., aired the unknown singer-songwriter’s viral smash — “Rich Men North of Richmond” — once every hour. “That was called the Special Oliver Anthony Rotation,” Smith says. “My general manager called on Sunday and said, ‘What do you know about this guy?’ My music director was on vacation. I hand-scheduled it.”
“Rich Men,” a twangy country-folk song recorded on a single microphone somewhere on Anthony’s land in Farmville, Va., rails against high taxes and “the obese milkin’ welfare” and has become a conservative anthem, championed by Joe Rogan, Breitbart and country star John Rich. In the week of Aug. 17, it streamed 17.5 million times and sold 147,000 downloads, according to Luminate. Based on downloads and streaming alone, the song debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s all-genre Hot 100 chart. Some country radio stations have picked “Rich Men,” giving it 553,000 airplay audience impressions despite zero promotion the week of Aug. 17. From Aug. 18 to Aug. 21. If the radio-playlist trend continues, the track should make its debut on Billboard’s Sept. 2 Country Airplay chart.
Few radio stations, including 97.3 The Eagle, add new artists to their playlists — especially those with no label promoting it– but listeners were calling in to request Oliver’s track. “It makes it hard to ignore,” Smith says. “If our audience wants it, it’s our job to give it to them.”
Not every station has succumbed to the viral hype. The song has a rickety feel — not exactly a seamless transition from the slick Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs hits atop Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. And “Rich Men” has been politically divisive, with progressive pundits decrying its conservative populism. Bruce Logan, operations manager for Hubbard Radio in West Palm Beach, Fla., hasn’t added it to his stations’ playlists. “We are talking about how we should approach it. It’s unusual,” he says. “In theme, it is certainly working man/woman blue-collar, which the format has a long history with. Sonically, it is closer to bluegrass than mainstream country.”
In San Jose, Calif., streaming-only country station KRTY hasn’t picked it up, either, because the track is unfamiliar and Anthony has no experience as a recording or touring artist. The station seldom jumps on hyped-up hits from American Idol or The Voice, according to GM Nate Deaton, its general manager.
“From a radio standpoint, that kind of thing is not really what we do best. I’ve never been big on the following-the-trend thing,” Deaton says. “We’ve always played songs we’ve believed in, too, and I’m not necessarily sure I believe in this song. I’m not necessarily sure it’s better than what I’m playing. Whose place do I take in the playlist?”
But some stations, big and small, have been comfortable with Anthony’s organic, do-it-yourself stardom, adding “Rich Men” to playlists within weeks of its release. Several stations owned by radio chain Audacy, including KMLE Country 107.9 in Phoenix and 100.7 The Wolf in Seattle, have given the track more than 25 spins apiece since it first aired Aug. 14. Stations owned by iHeartMedia and Cumulus have jumped on it less frequently, according to Mediabase. (An Audacy rep declined comment; iHeart’s rep did not respond to a request.)
Although he did not respond to follow-up questions about adding the song to stations’ playlists, Charlie Cook, vp country for broadcast chain Cumulus, said in a statement: “Americans are looking for answers to problems they encounter every day. While this song doesn’t offer solutions to those problems, it does verbalize the issues and has given listeners an opportunity to hear about their frustrations in a collective situation. Most of them can say, yeah, that’s how I feel, and they become part of a bigger movement to help them have a voice.” Just a few Cumulus stations have added “Rich Men,” beginning with New Country 101.Five in Atlanta, which spun it six times from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21.
In Santa Maria, Calif., Sunny 102.5 quickly added “Rich Men” on a “light” rotation of 20 spins per week — shortly after airing Jason Aldean‘s just-as-hyped-and-divisive track “Try That In a Small Town” (and, in the early 2000s, music by The Chicks after right-wing listeners burned the country trio’s CDs for criticizing President Bush and the Iraq War).
“If you don’t play it, you’re censoring the airwaves, I say,” says Jay Turner, program director for the station owned by smaller California-and-Southwest chain American General Media. “We’ve gotten very little, if any, pushback on either Jason Aldean or ‘Rich Men.’ None at all. I can’t see anybody pushing back on ‘Rich Men,’ because it’s real. It’s $5.25 to buy gas in Santa Barbara.
“My guess is it’s going to flash fast and it’s going to end fast. Stations aren’t going to be playing it forever. It’s not going to be in malls,” Turner continues. “It just sounds like hillbilly hick stuff. You put it up against a Maren Morris record, or a pop record, it sounds like you’ve gone back 30 years in time. But it’s a freaking great song. He’s pouring his heart out.”
The orders are detailed and easily located on X, the app formerly known as Twitter: “We need to tackle Amazon, iTunes and [the French music service] Qobuz expeditiously.” For each platform, instructions describe a strict purchase regimen. “One copy per version with new card/payment method/new email, new IP address.” Anyone hoping to execute this plan properly must plan ahead. “You will need to have multiple new emails, prepaid debit cards like the Cash App card… eGift cards you can buy at different Wifi locations, cafes, gym[s], friends’ and neighbor[‘s] homes.”
Rotating through multiple burner emails, cards and IP addresses — this sounds like the stuff of an elaborate digital scam. In fact, it’s a plan to maximize sales of a recent single (that wasn’t named in the thread). Blueprints like this one, itemized and exacting, are increasingly common on social media and in fan forums, disseminated over the years by fans devoted to BTS, Nicki Minaj, Blackpink, Harry Styles, and more.
Their popularity demonstrates a fundamental shift in the role that charts play in the modern music landscape. Before the advent of social media, “the charts were primarily an industry concern,” says Adam White, who served as the Billboard editor in chief for a time in the 1980s. “And the industry — retailers, record companies, radio stations — were in a position to shape and influence those charts.”
But in recent years, superfans have commandeered efforts to boost their favorite acts’ chart performance. “Fans have become very savvy about how the industry is creating these metrics,” says Michelle Cho, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto who studies fandom and Korean culture. “They will take the time to try to figure out what they need to do to protect their artists from losing some of the visibility that they think their artists deserve.”
That impulse often sets passionate fandoms on a collision course with any music industry body charged with measuring listener activity. In recent months, zealous fans have individually bought a great many digital downloads of the same song — a splurge that actually doesn’t count towards the chart, because there is a limit on the number of purchases from a single consumer that are eligible each week. Still, the strategy in part prompted Billboard to change its chart rules earlier this summer: The rankings now exclude downloads from artists’ web stores, which usually operate with far less limitations than iTunes or Amazon.
Devout listeners also sometimes play their favorite artists’ songs in ways that run afoul of the streaming platforms’ rules. Last summer, for example, an internal SoundCloud email reviewed by Billboard noted that “Bad Decisions,” BTS‘ collaboration with Benny Blanco and Snoop Dogg, was the most popular track in the U.S. that week on the platform. But the same email noted that the song “exhibits suspect play patterns suggestive of abuse.” (SoundCloud declined to comment.)
“The DSPs have to regulate their platforms, cap streams per user, and it creates these battles with the fanbases,” says one former Spotify employee. “Various K-pop fanbases, for example, at most moments hate Spotify, because they think that Spotify is scrubbing too many streams off of the overall stream counts.” (Spotify did not respond to a request for comment. Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, declined to comment.)
Coming up with creative ways to manipulate listening platforms — and the charts they report to — used to be the specialty of record companies. Before 1991, Billboard‘s sales charts were compiled by calling up a panel of retailers and simply asking what titles were selling. “Record labels and distributors routinely used strong-arm tactics and bribery to sway the process in their favor,” The New York Times reported in 2001. Geoff Mayfield, then director of charts at Billboard, told the paper that “one distribution company president complained that some of his employees spent two and a half work days per week trying to influence how stores reported.”
The Soundscan system — now known as Luminate — was implemented in 1991, bringing a new level of rigor to chart-data collection by tracking the bar codes of CD sales. But that didn’t stop labels from attempting to tilt the charts in favor of their acts. “You build a better mousetrap and all of a sudden the mouse starts finding ways to get around your trap,” SoundScan co-founder Michael Shalett said in 1996.
At the time, fervent fans did what they could to impact charts, but their means of doing so were limited. They could buy multiple copies of a CD, though that quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. And for charts like the Billboard Hot 100 that combine sales and airplay, they could try to increase spins by calling into a radio station and requesting a song.
Fans’ leverage over the charts has increased exponentially since then. Social media makes it far easier to mobilize a large number of geographically dispersed fans around a common goal. And now that the charts incorporate streaming, everyone with access to a phone or computer can listen during every waking hour — and set a service to keep playing music when they’re asleep, too. “It enables each individual fan to intervene in different ways,” Michelle Cho explains. “You can use your time.”
Many modern fandoms are now doggedly fixated on — and vocally competitive about — commercial statistics. K-pop fans appear especially effective at organizing around achieving specific chart goals. “When K-pop came in, it was like nothing that any chart-juicing machine had ever done before,” according to the former Spotify employee. “Just on a completely different scale and level.”
Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based artist and label services agency, says that, “for many K-pop acts, measuring ‘success’ has become a straight up numbers game.” He compares the “massive mobilization of top tier K-pop fan-clubs” to “the impressive precision of an elite military operation.”
This mobilization process can also resemble a music-industry version of the political action committees (PACs) that draw scrutiny in the U.S. every election year. Fans often raise money online to buy extra copies of albums or singles and then disburse the cash among other fans to make those purchases, usually with the explicitly stated goal of pushing a release up the chart. These groups routinely tweet that they have amassed pools of tens of thousands of dollars at a time.
There’s no way to tell where the funds originate, even when @JiminFunds tweets “we received [an] $18,420 generous donation from Chinese fans.” While there are rules dictating where PACs are allowed to raise cash, there are none governing the use of internationally-raised money for purchases impacting U.S. music charts. Still, using funds from abroad to signal demand domestically makes it hard to accurately judge the popularity of a given track Stateside.
It’s difficult to quantify the effect that the fundraising and donations have on a single’s chart position. However, it’s notable that when artists with passionate, organized fanbases debut high on the chart, they often do so on the strength of download counts that are wildly above the industry average.
While the Hot 100 takes into account downloads, streams, and airplay, downloads have not been the dominant driver of singles’ success since 2014. During the first half of 2023, the average Hot 100 entry owed less than 4% of its chart points to downloads. Nicki Minaj‘s recent top 10 hits, in contrast, generated between 25% and 41% of their chart points from downloads. Beyoncé and Britney Spears have also managed to reach download percentages comparable to Minaj’s within the last year on a release apiece.
These efforts pale when compared to top 10 debuts from K-pop, which routinely rely on downloads to account for more than 50% of chart points. Earlier this year, Jimin drew close to 80% of the chart points for “Like Crazy” from downloads. (In 2021, RM from BTS said that “if there is a conversation inside Billboard about what being No. 1 should represent, then it’s up to them to change the rules and make streaming weigh more on the ranking.”) No one has topped Jimin’s mark in recent history on a top 10 debut, though Jason Aldean came close, earning 76% of his chart points from downloads the week he debuted at No. 2 with the controversial “Try That in a Small Town.”
The music industry’s future appears increasingly wrapped up in those listeners who also happen to be big spenders. The growth of streaming is slowing. Superfans, however, shell out “80% more money on music each month than the average U.S. music listener,” according to Luminate’s recent mid-year report. A recent email from the company cited that 80% statistic again, adding that it “provides excellent opportunities for merch upsell to this valuable group.”
Labels have taken note. Earlier this year, prominent executives — including Michael Nash, Universal Music Group’s executive vp of digital strategy, and Robert Kyncl, Warner Music Group’s CEO — said that they hope a new streaming model will offer more ways to harness superfans’ spending power. In May, for example, Kyncl told analysts that he had assembled a team to focus on four initiatives, one of which was “evolving our products to better monetize the artist and songwriter superfan relationship.”
“It’s one thing to get into certain artists because you like their style,” Michelle Cho says. “It’s another where you feel a responsibility to caretake — your efforts are an act of reciprocal support. That idea, even if in some cases it’s illusory, is a really potent one for motivating more investment, engagement, and commitment on the part of fans.”
This can work out well for labels, especially if they can come up with new ways for fans to signal their allegiance that align with chart rules. It’s common now to see artists release multiple alternative versions of a song — often halfway through a week when they’re looking for a sales boost down the final stretch. A more extreme version of this takes place on the Billboard 200 albums chart, where artists are boosting their performance — and revenue — by releasing numerous variants of elaborate packages designed to encourage multiple purchases.
K-pop leads the way here, though other artists are quickly catching up. Take the group NewJeans, who recently debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 2nd EP ‘Get Up’. There are more iterations of the Get Up CD — 14, with different packaging individualized to different group members and randomized branded merchandise inside — than there are minutes of music on the disc, which runs 12:13. Fans who feel the urge to “caretake” will happily scoop up multiple copies, stimulating sales.
These developments mean that labels no longer have to spend half of every week trying to influence the charts, as they did in the old days. They just have to give the most hardcore fans more ways to spend money — money that might not even be theirs.