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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.
Ticketing company Dice raised $65 million from MUSIC, the holding company founded by music veteran Matt Pincus and LionTree, the company announced Wednesday (Aug. 23). Pincus, MUSIC’s CEO and a co-founder of SONGS Music Publishing, which was acquired by Kobalt in 2017, will join Dice’s board of directors.
Additional investors in the funding round include Structural Capital; Ahdritz Holding LLC, an investment vehicle for Kobalt Music founder Willard Ahdritz; Exor Ventures, a venture fund listed on the Euronext Amsterdam with a net asset value of €28.2 billion ($30.6 billion); and Mirabaud Lifestyle Fund, an investment fund of Mirabaud Asset Management that focuses on companies that address the needs of Millennials and Generation Z consumers.
While Dice is a relatively small player in a field filled with large competitors, Pincus considers Dice to be “a completely different business” than big platforms such as Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and AEG’s AXS. “Dice is a platform for fans,” he tells Billboard. Rather than create a standard ticketing platform, Dice built a platform used by those young consumers that attend concerts most frequently. “It’s a user-centric platform” people use to find shows, discover culture and lifestyle events in a new city and and compare activities with friends, says Pincus. “They made ticket-buying fun — which is really hard to do.”
“We’re investing heavily in building even more technology and this year alone we released over 60 new features for fans, venues and artists,” Phil Hutcheon, CEO and founder of Dice, said in a statement. “I’m excited that Matt (Pincus) has joined the board and we’re more focused than ever on our mission to get fans out more.”
The funding will help Dice launch in new cities and further its expansion in Europe and United States and support ongoing investment in product development. The London-based company believes it will serve more than 55,000 artists and over 10,000 venues, festivals and promoters this year across 30 cities in the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, India, Italy and Spain.
Ahdritz’s relationship with Hutcheon goes back to 2015. “Having started AWAL at that time, I needed so many more venues for all my acts to play,” Ahdritz said in a statement. “DICE delivers a transformative experience for all stakeholders – from fans to venues to artists and looked like the future for live music. DICE has come a long way on their vision, and today it’s even clearer that the live industry needs changing. I am excited to have the opportunity to be part of the company as an investor.”
“Structural Capital is very excited to be involved in helping DICE continue its success and future growth,” Kai Tse, Structural Capital co-founder and managing partner, said in a statement. “We believe DICE is a true industry innovator.”
Dice also announced the appointment of Ali Byrd as chief financial officer. Byrd was previously with healthcare technology company Olive and has held senior positions at Microsoft, Limewire and CoverWallet.
Warner Music’s affiliates in Canada and India are teaming up for 91 NORTH RECORDS, a joint venture with the aim of identifying and launching artists of South Asian heritage.
Said to be a first-of-its-kind JV, the new entity is guided by celebrated artist and producer Ikwinder “Ikky” Singh, who has chalked up more than two billion combined streams with such songs as Shubh’s “Baller”, Diljit Dosanjh’s “Chauffeur” and Sidhu Moose Wala’s “Bambiha Bole”.
Ikky, who launched his own label, 4N Records, in partnership with Warner Music and Coalition Music in 2021, serves as creative director for 91 NORTH RECORDS.
The venture launches to the public today (Aug. 23) with its first signings, Canadian-based Punjabi artists Karan Aujla and Jonita Gandhi, both of whom work closely with Ikky and A&R director Charlie B.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the blending of Indian and Western sounds into culturally impactful, innovative music,” Ikky comments in a statement. The new business “exists to elevate artists pursuing this fusion. Punjabi and South Asian music already competes worldwide, and I’m thrilled to collaborate with emerging talents, showcasing and amplifying what they have to offer. This is no experiment; it’s the future.”
91 NORTH RECORDS was presented Tuesday with a special event at Warner Music Canada’s offices in Toronto. Its name is a reference to India’s country code and Canada’s geographical location, and the logo is inspired by India’s national flower — the lotus.
“There is an incredible new generation of talent rising, influenced by their South Asian heritage, and we want to make sure these artists are represented both here and around the world,” comments Kristen Burke, president, Warner Music Canada. The label “allows artists to be truly authentic, and our global network gives us the opportunity to showcase their culture on a global stage.”
Adds Jay Mehta, managing director, Warner Music India: “This is certainly going to be a gamechanger initiative for artists who will now have global support from A&R, marketing, collaborations and more.”
Canada is home to almost 2.6 million people of South Asian heritage. Those expats have a “strong musical connection” with the subcontinent, reads a joint statement from Warner Music Canada and Warner Music India.
Punjabi-Canadian acts accounted for three of the top 10 tracks in India last year, according to data supplied by IFPI.
In two weeks, Oliver Anthony went from an unknown artist to the owner of the No. 1 track on the Hot 100 chart with the surprise hit “Rich Men North of Richmond” — and in the process went from earning less than $200 in weekly royalties to roughly $356,000 in his chart-topping week.
“Rich Men North of Richmond” generated an estimated $218,000 in royalties for both recorded music and music publishing from track purchases and on-demand audio streams in the week ended Aug. 17, Billboard estimates based on Luminate data. And because he owns his master – released through digital distributor Vydia – and publishing, Anthony will pocket all that money. The track, released through digital distributor Vydia, generated 147,000 track sales and 17.5 million audio on-demand streams over that time period. Luminate did not track any on-demand video streams for the recording. The track also earned Anthony a small amount of publishing royalties from 517 spins at radio.
After the unlikely, whirlwind week in America’s spotlight, Anthony’s long list of accomplishments include the first artist to debut a first Hot 100 chart entry at No. 1; No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs charts; the 23rd song to top both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts simultaneously (and the first to do so by a solo male); the first solo-written Hot 100 No. 1 since Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” in March and April 2022; and a rare independently released recording to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100.
The intense interest in “Rich Men North From Richmond” — it instantly found favor in conservative political circles and became a cultural lightning rod among liberals — bled over to the other 18 individually released tracks in Anthony’s catalog and generated an additional $139,000 from 73,000 track sales, 14.8 million audio on-demand streams, 658,000 on-demand video streams and 65,000 programmed audio streams. Anthony had four of the week’s top 10 track downloads: “Ain’t Got a Dollar” was a distant No. 2, “I’ve Got to Get Sober” was No. 5 and “I Want to Go Home” was No. 10. (Strong download sales also put “Ain’t Got a Dollar” and “I’ve Got to Get Sober” onto the Hot Country Songs chart.) In all, Anthony had 16 of the top 100 track downloads in the country last week.
Country music took the top three spots on the Hot 100 but took different routes to get there. Track purchases was the deciding factor in “Rich Men North of Richmond” beating out Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” and Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night.” “Fast Car” had just 10,000 track purchases, 7% as many as “Rich Men North of Richmond,” but its radio audience of 101.7 million was more than 100 times more than the 937,000 achieved by “Rich Men North of Richmond.” Combs’ “Last Night” had the most on-demand audio streams of the trio — 20.5 million to 17.5 million for “Rich Men North of Richmond” and 16.4 million for “Fast Car” — but the fewest track purchases with 6,000 and a radio audience — 70.5 million — about 69% the size the audience of “Fast Car.”
Daily data suggests Anthony’s hot streak will continue. This week’s track purchases of “Rich Men North of Richmond” may decline from last week but through the first two days of the tracking week purchased enough to likely give Anthony the top download for a second consecutive week. And with radio programmers following the lead of consumer purchases and streams, this week’s broadcast radio spins will easily top last week’s count. That’ll all mean more money for the independent artist — and plenty of leverage as he considers offers coming in from major labels “rushing” to sign him.
A decade ago, if you wanted to see your favorite K-pop act in concert, you probably had to travel to New York or Los Angeles to catch a rare U.S. appearance. At arena shows and the now-popular KCON festival, acts like BIGBANG and EXO were “doing insane numbers, but they were considered outsiders or outliers,” says Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based artist and label services agency. “A lot of these K-Pop tours were dismissed as being extremely niche; but to me K-pop was like the Grateful Dead.”
“It turns out,” adds Cho, “the new Asian market is Caucasian.”
Since BTS broke into the U.S. mainstream in 2017, followed by a wave of other K-pop chart-topping successes from such acts as SuperM, Stray Kids, BLACKPINK, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and, most recently, NewJeans, new touring opportunities are opening up and driving gigs — and business — to more markets across the United States.
For UTA agent Janet Kim, who’s helped the company expand its K-pop roster and represents acts including “Gangnam Style” icon PSY, the industry’s recognition of and focus on K-pop is capitalizing on a market demand “that has always been there” among Asian communities. The genre’s current expansion is now “opening so many doors for other Korean artists to come to the U.S. and have a real audience,” she says.
Such strong album sales put K-pop consumption (in terms of equivalent album units) up 43.9% year to date, which is better than Latin, country and the overall market. Within that, from January to July, K-pop on-demand audio streams in the United States are up 20.9% over the same period in 2022, according to Luminate. K-pop album sales are up 77% year to date, with most of that growth coming from physical sales, almost entirely CDs. From January through late July, five of the top 10 physical albums were from K-pop acts, according to Luminate.
That demand is translating to ticket sales. According to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore, a 2022 12-date arena tour by HYBE act Seventeen sold nearly 126,000 tickets and averaged $1.2 million a night in revenue. Stops on this tour included Vancouver, Canada, Fort Worth, Texas, and Atlanta, as well as other markets not previously known as genre strongholds. This past spring, BTS’ SUGA performed three sold-out shows in the Chicago area — an expanding K-pop market — and grossed more than $8 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.
“As we expanded into new and smaller cities, we found demand was often just as high, relative to population size,” says Ellen Kim, CEO of Subkulture Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based K-pop tour production company that launched in 2015 and produced four U.S. shows on BTS’ global Red Bullet tour. “In certain circumstances, we found that demand was higher in smaller markets than more established ones, which were perhaps seeing market fatigue due to an increasing number of artists and shows.”
A representative for the concert business department at HYBE pinpoints Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, Oakland and the whole of Texas as markets the Seoul-based company currently considers especially viable for its roster. Janet Kim at UTA is seeing emerging K-pop acts hold successful concerts in Puerto Rico, Nashville and San Diego which, she says, “were not typical stops on K-pop tours in the past.”
Globally, K-pop tours are, naturally, most robust in Asia, with the largest of them — like BLACKPINK’s 2022/2023 Born Pink World Tour — typically stopping in South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, China, The Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan. But international demand is growing — and not just in the States. Subkulture has recently expanded into Mexico and Canada, says Ellen Kim, with tour plans later this year for Europe and Latin America, which has been a K-pop touring destination since the mid-2010s, with acts most frequently playing in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Argentina.
K-pop U.S. tour legs are getting longer, too. Whereas they once averaged two to four shows in major markets, tours now average between eight and 12 shows in major and secondary markets, with many artists playing multiple nights in one city. In 2022 and 2023, K-pop artists SUGA/Agust D, TWICE, Stray Kids, SEVENTEEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER all launched arena and stadium tours that collectively hit such cities as New York, L.A. Atlanta, Seattle, Charlotte, Washington D.C., Houston, Fort Worth, Chicago, Oakland and Toronto. This fall, HYBE act ENHYPEN has scheduled arena gigs in Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Glendale, Ariz., among other cities.
Cho says data analytics tools like Chartmetric — which identifies artists’ streaming, social media and audience data by factors including location, gender, ethnicity and age — have proven especially helpful for artist teams to discover new fanbases while determining routing. He cites a sold-out Epik High show in April at a 3,000-capacity venue in Salt Lake City — typically considered a relatively sleepy B-level market — as an example of such data helping K-pop artists locate fans.
Many Korean labels and management companies are also currently paying to send their emerging acts to the United States in hopes of breaking them here before Asia, given the prestige fostered by making it in North America. “BTS demonstrated that formula,” says Janet Kim, “where they may not have been the biggest artists in Korea when first starting out, but they spent time and money coming to the U.S. and building their fan base and have done very well for themselves.”
“If an act can successfully do a U.S. tour, that leads to a world tour,” adds Cho. “It’s validation they’re going to have longevity and, hopefully, a legacy.”
While KCON has served as a Stateside launching pad for K-pop acts over the past decade, now their management companies and agents are eying marquee festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza and Governor’s Ball as crowning crossover achievements. Given that such shows put artists in front of huge crowds, they’re also major opportunities for fanbase development.
It’s a formula that worked for BLACKPINK, who in 2019 became the first K-pop girl group to ever play Coachella. Four years and a global pandemic later, the group headlined the 2023 edition last April. This summer, aespa made history as the first K-pop act to play both Governor’s Ball and Outside Lands and in August, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and NewJeans made their Lollapalooza debuts. (This appearance was NewJeans’ first U.S. festival performance, an achievement that happened the same week the group landed its first No. 1 — not to mention its first entry — on the Billboard 200 albums chart with its sophomore EP, Get Up.)
“Festival plays have really helped elevate credibility and the clout that K-pop has arrived,” says Cho. “It’s not just through grinding on tours no one knows about. Having big acts and emerging artists play festivals has really been helpful in landing K-pop as something less foreign and more fun.”
All the sources interviewed for this story said they predict K-pop will continue to grow in the United States. Supporting this, Ellen Kim at Subkulture says that younger fans are more open to non-English content than previous generations, while UTA’s Janet Kim says she’s seen a growing number of labels and A&R executives looking to take on K-pop projects. The HYBE rep says, too, that the many subgenres of K-pop represent pure potential, with these currently “untapped areas” likely to attract even more fans.
This expanding interest will only further fuel a touring market that used to feel “a lot more niche, like a community or cultural event,” says Janet Kim.
“Now,” she continues, “it’s just a pop show.”
Grammy-winning songwriting/production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis first met Clarence Avant — who died Aug. 13 at age 92 — in the summer of 1982 when they wrote a song for his Tabu Records act, The S.O.S. Band. They famously went on to work with A&M artist Janet Jackson, for whom they produced the blockbuster 1986 album, Control, and its 1989 follow-up, Rhythm Nation 1814, among others.
The hitmakers paid tribute to Avant in an interview.
Jam: We wrote “High Hopes” for The S.O.S. Band. But we didn’t produce it. When we met with Clarence, we told him that. And he was like, “Well if you were to produce it, what would it sound like?” So we played him a demo of the song and he loved it.
Lewis: Yeah, we told him that we would have put the chili sauce on it. He cracked up; he really loved that comment.
Jam: I didn’t know a whole lot about Clarence before that meeting. But my first impression is of him making me laugh because he called us two thugs: “Who are these two thugs coming in here?” He’d get on a phone call and be cussing everybody out. He was just a character, so funny. It was like being in a movie: two kids from Minneapolis sitting in suits and hats in 90-degree weather, here in L.A.’s high-powered music scene. We were a hilarious anomaly to him.
Lewis: He was definitely funny and animated. But I knew he was shrewd and smart by the way he conducted the meeting; it was so comfortable and easy. It was different from other meetings we’d had with people wanting to hire us. But what really struck me is when Clarence talked to us by himself, without our manager. And he told us, “You motherfuckers need to learn to count. In order to make things happen the right way, you’re going to need this and that.” When he gave us more than we’d asked for, it established a whole new paradigm for me. He helped us reevaluate and understand what our value was. He put the official rubber stamp on it.
Jam: I’m glad his story got told in the Netflix documentary The Black Godfather. It only scratches the surface of Clarence’s greatness and influence. It should be required viewing as there will never be another Clarence in the singular sense. But there will be from all the seeds that he planted: a bunch of people with Clarence characteristics that will power positive growth across entertainment and other areas.
Lewis: Coming up through the ranks, fighting for everyone’s diversity and equity, it was important for Clarence to teach. His obsession was to do the right thing and force people who didn’t to do the right thing. That was what Clarence was always about. He was never about the rewards in it. I think Clarence was definitely pleased with his life. He had a beautiful wife and beautiful kids. He created some beautiful music as a label owner; inspired and crafted some beautiful deals. How could he not feel good about that? All we really have at the end of the day is our relationships. The one way that you can judge a person is by their relationships. And Clarence touched so many people in a beautiful way. Whether they were record company owners, presidents or executives, artists, politicians or just regular people. He touched everyone in a positive way.
Jam: One of the things we always tried to remind him of, though, were the connections that he had made that then led to other things that he didn’t know about … we were able to connect the dots for him. Like, “Did you know this happened because of this thing that you did five years ago?” Because he was involved in so many things, he couldn’t keep track of everything that he had possibly done. But I totally agree that he felt very comfortable with what he had done [in his life]. There were just so many people and things that he affected.
Jam: Clarence and Jerry [Moss] were also really good friends. As partners [in A&M Records], Herb Alpert and Jerry were certainly a blueprint for Terry and myself. They started with a handshake like Terry and I did. I remember back around the Rhythm Nation days when there [were] a lot of crazy negotiations going on for us to do the record. Clarence called up Jerry and said let’s get this deal done. Give these guys a million dollars. And literally the next week, the deal was done and we were in the studio recording.
Lewis: Jerry was an incredible man. Both he and Clarence were part of an incredible era of human beings. But they live on through all of us.
Jam: Whenever we win an award, God would be the first person we thank. And the next person we thank would be Clarence Avant, who was the earthly god for us.
Lewis: There are no words that I could use to adequately express my personal feelings for Clarence. But I always do simply say he’s the greatest man I’ve ever known.
Idina Menzel parted with manager Scooter Braun at the beginning of the year, sources close to the situation tell Billboard, adding the actress and recording artist to the growing list of Braun’s clients who have recently departed his management company, SB Projects. Another source says the “amicable” split happened last year. Menzel announced she had […]