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Alec Benjamin (“Let Me Down Slowly”) signed with Range Media Partners‘ music division. The singer-songwriter is ramping up for the release of his third studio album, which is slated for release on Elektra next year. “Coal” singer-songwriter Dylan Gossett signed with UTA for global representation in all areas. Gossett also recently signed to Big Loud […]
LONDON — Representatives of the creative industries are urging legislators not to water down forthcoming regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence, including laws around the use of copyrighted music, amid fierce lobbying from big tech companies.
On Wednesday (Dec. 6), policy makers from the European Union Parliament, Council and European Commission will meet in Brussels to negotiate the final text of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act – the world’s first comprehensive set of laws regulating the use of AI.
The current version of the AI Act, which was provisionally approved by Members of European Parliament (MEPs) in a vote in June, contains several measures that will help determine what tech companies can and cannot do with copyright protected music works. Among them is the legal requirement that companies using generative AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude 2 (classified by the EU as “general purpose AI systems”) provide summaries of any copyrighted works, including music, that they use to train their systems.
The draft legislation will also force developers to clearly identify content that is created by AI, as opposed to human works. In addition, tech companies will have to ensure that their systems are designed in such a way that prevents them from generating illegal content.
While these transparency provisions have been openly welcomed by music executives, behind the scenes technology companies have been actively lobbying policymakers to try and weaken the regulations, arguing that such obligations could put European AI developers at a competitive advantage.
“We believe this additional legal complexity is out of place in the AI Act, which is primarily focused on health, safety, and fundamental rights,” said a coalition of tech organizations and trade groups, including the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which counts Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Meta among its members, in a joint statement dated Nov. 27.
In the statement, the tech representatives said they were concerned “about the direction of the current proposals to regulate” generative AI systems and said the EU’s proposals “do not take into account the complexity of the AI value chain.”
European lawmakers are also in disagreement over how to govern the nascent technology with EU member states France, Germany and Italy understood to be in favor of light touch regulation for developers of generative AI, according to sources close to the negotiations.
In response, music executives are making a final pitch to legislators to ensure that AI companies respect copyright laws and strengthen existing protections against the unlawful use of music in training AI systems.
Helen Smith, the executive chair of IMPALA. /
Lea Fery
Helen Smith, executive chair of European independent labels group IMPALA, tells Billboard that the inclusion of “meaningful transparency and record keeping obligations” in the final legislation is a “must for creators and rightsholders” if they are to be able to effectively engage in licensing negotiations.
In a letter sent to EU ambassadors last week, Björn Ulvaeus, founder member of ABBA and president of CISAC, the international trade organization for copyright collecting societies, warned policymakers that “without the right provisions requiring transparency, the rights of the creator to authorise and get paid for use of their works will be undermined and impossible to implement.”
The European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA), International Federation of Musicians (FIM) and International Artist Organisation (IAO) are also calling for guarantees that the rights of their members are respected.
If legislators fail to reach a compromise agreement at Wednesday’s fifth and planned-to-be-final negotiating session on the AI Act, there are a number of possible outcomes, including further ‘trologue’ talks the following week. If a deal doesn’t happen this month, however, there is the very real risk that the AI Act won’t be passed before the European parliamentary elections take place in June.
If that happens, a new parliament could theoretically scrap the bill altogether, although executives closely monitoring events in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, say that is unlikely to happen and that there is strong political will from all sides to find a resolution before the end of the year when the current Spain-led presidency of the EU Council ends.
Because the AI Act is a regulation and not a directive — such as the equally divisive and just-as-fiercely-lobbied 2019 EU Copyright Directive — it would pass directly into law in all 27 EU member states, although only once it has been fully approved by the different branches of the European government via a final vote and officially entered into force (the exact timeframe of which could be determined in negotiations, but could take up to three years).
In that instance, the act’s regulations will apply to any company that operates in the European Union, regardless of where they are based. Just as significant, if passed, the act will provide a world-first legislative model to other governments and international jurisdictions looking to draft their own laws on the use of artificial intelligence.
“It is important to get this right,” says IMPALA’s Smith, “and seize the opportunity to set a proper framework around these [generative AI] models.”
In April, Grimes encouraged artists to make music using her voice — as replicated by artificial intelligence-powered technology. Even as she embraced a high-tech future, however, she noted that there were some old-fashioned legal limitations. “I don’t own the rights to the vocals from my old albums,” she wrote on X. “If you make remixes, they may get taken down.”
Artificial intelligence has dominated the hype cycle in 2023. But most signed artists who are enthusiastic about testing out this technology will have to move cautiously, wary of the fact that preexisting contracts may assert some level of control over how they can use their voice. “In general, in a major label deal, they’re the exclusive label for name, likeness and voice under the term,” says one veteran manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Labels might be mad if artists went around them and did a deal themselves. They might go, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we have the rights to this.’”
On the flip side, labels probably can’t (or won’t) move unilaterally either. “In our agreements, in a handful of territories, we’ve been getting exclusive name, image, likeness and voice rights in connection with recordings for years,” says one major label source. That said, “as a practical matter, we wouldn’t license an artist’s voice for a voice model or for any project without the artists being on board with it. It would be bad business for us.”
For the moment, both sides are inching forward, trying to figure out how to “interpret new technology with arcane laws,” as Arron Saxe, who manages several artists’ estates, puts it. “It’s an odd time because the government hasn’t stepped in and put down real guidelines around AI,” adds Dan Smith, general manager of the dance label Armada Music.
That means guidelines must be drawn via pre-existing contracts, most of which were not written with AI in mind, and often vary from one artist to the next. Take a recent artist deal sent out by one major label and reviewed by Billboard: Under the terms, the label has the “exclusive right to record Artist Performances” with “performance” broadly defined to include “singing, speaking… or such performance itself, as the context requires.” The word “recording” is similarly roomy: “any recording of sound…by any method and on any substance or material, whether now or hereafter known.”
Someone in this deal probably couldn’t easily go rogue and build a voice-cloning model on newly recorded material without permission. Even to participate in YouTube’s recently announced AI voice generation experiment, some artists needed to get permission in form of a “label waiver,” according to Audrey Benoualid, a partner at Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light. (In an interview about YouTube’s new feature, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind, said only that it has “been complicated” to negotiate deals with various music rights holders.) Even after an artist’s deal ends, if their recordings remain with a label, they would have to be careful to only train voice-cloning tech with material that isn’t owned exclusively by their former record company.
It’s not just artists that are interested in AI opportunities, though. Record labels stand to gain from developing licensing deals with AI companies for their entire catalogs, which could in turn bring greater opportunities for artists who want to participate. At the Made on YouTube event in September, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said it’s the label’s “job” to make sure that artists who lean into AI “benefit.” At the same time, he added, “It’s also our job together to make sure that artists who don’t want to lean in are protected.”
In terms of protections, major label deals typically come with a list of approval rights: Artists will ask that they get the chance to sign off on any sample of their recordings or the use of one of their tracks in a movie trailer. “We believe that any AI function is just another use of the talents’ intellectual property that would take some approval by the creator,” explains Leron Rogers, a partner at Fox Rothschild.
In many states, artists also have protection under the “right of publicity,” which says that people have control over the way others can exploit their individual identities. “Under that umbrella is where things like the right to your voice, your face, your likeness are protected and can’t be mimicked because it’s unfair competition,” says Lulu Pantin, founder of Loop Legal. “But because those laws are not federal, they’re inconsistent, and every state’s laws are slightly different” — not all states specifically call out voices, for example — “[so] there’s concern that that’s not going to provide robust protection given how ubiquitous AI has become already.” (A lack of federal law also limits the government’s ability to push for enforcement abroad.)
To that end, a bipartisan group of senators recently introduced a draft proposal of the NO FAKES act (“Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe”), which would enshrine a federal right for artists, actors and others to take legal action against anyone who creates unauthorized “digital replicas” of their image, voice, or likeness. “Artists would now gain leverage they didn’t have before,” says Mike Pelczynski, who serves on the advisory board of the company voice-swap.ai.
While the entertainment industry tracks NO FAKES’ progress, Smith from Armada believes “we will probably start to see more artist agreements that are addressing the use of your voice.” Sure enough, Benoualid says that in new label deals for her clients, she now asks for approval over any use of an artist’s name, likeness, or voice in connection with AI technology. “Express written approval should be required prior to a company reproducing vocals, recordings, or compositions for the purpose of training AI platforms,” agrees Matthew Gorman, a lawyer at Cox & Palmer.
Pantin has been keeping an eye on the way other creative fields are handling this fast-evolving tech to see if there are lessons that can be imported into music. “One thing that I’ve been trying to do and I’ve had success in some instances with is asking the rights holders — the publishers, the labels — for consent rights from the individual artists or songwriter before their work is used to train generative AI,” she says. “On the book publishing side, the Authors Guild has put forth language they recommended are included in all publishing agreements, and so I’m drawing from that and extending that to songwriting.”
All these discussions are new, and the long-term impact of AI-driven technology on the creative fields remains unclear. Daouda Leonard, who manages Grimes, is adamant that in the music industry’s near future, “the licensing of voice is going to become a valuable asset.” Other are less sure — “nobody really knows how important this will be,” the major label source says.
Perhaps Grimes put it best on X: “We expect a certain amount of chaos.”
Paul Hitchman has been promoted to COO at AWAL, the company announced Tuesday (Dec. 5). Hitchman is based in AWAL’s London office, where he oversees the independent distribution and label division’s U.K. team and international offices along with its global operations. He will continue reporting to CEO Lonny Olinick, with whom he works closely, along […]
Spotify shares jumped 7.5% on Monday (Dec. 4) following news the company will lay off 17% of its global workforce. CEO Daniel Ek called the layoffs a “crucial step” in a wider effort to be “relentlessly resourceful.” The layoffs amount to roughly 1,500 staffers based on the company’s recent disclosure of having 9,241 full-time employees. […]
TikTok announced that it will bring its in-app ticketing feature, a collaboration with Ticketmaster, to an additional 20 countries on Monday (Dec. 4).
The feature allows artists to put Ticketmaster event links in the clips they post on TikTok, making it easy for their followers to click and buy tickets in the app. TikTok started testing the feature in the U.S. in August 2022.
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The two companies didn’t share any information about the results of the test, though they said Niall Horan, The Kooks, Burna Boy, and Shania Twain have all tried it out. TikTok opened access to the feature this week to certified artists in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, Germany, France, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Spain and Sweden.
In a statement, Michael Chua, Ticketmaster’s vp global business development and strategic partnerships, said the partnership will allow artists to “easily connect their content to event discovery and ticket purchase in-app making it easier than ever for fans around the world to experience their favorite artists live.”
“By enabling fans to buy tickets directly through TikTok, we’re giving artists the opportunity to reach ticket buyers in a whole new way,” added Michael Kümmerle, TikTok’s global music partnership development lead. “We hope to deliver further value to all artists throughout all stages of their careers and provide more opportunities for a growing fanbase.”
TikTok has been busy rolling out features lately. Last week, the platform added official artist labels (available once a user has released four songs) and a “new” tag that can be used to highlight an act’s latest release (14 days before the song comes out and for another 30 days after it drops). “These features can deepen engagement whilst creating unique opportunities for fans to connect with their favorite artists in meaningful ways, driving music discovery on the platform,” said Paul Hourican, TikTok’s global head of music partnerships and programming, in a statement.
Going once.
Going twice.
Julien’s Auctions is SOLD on Nashville.
Nothing has been finalized, but the California-based auction house is planning to open a Music City office in 2024, after generating closing bids estimated at nearly $9.5 million for music memorabilia during a week at the Hard Rock Café in November.
The week included Music Health Alliance’s (MHA) fourth annual Lyrics for a Cause benefit auction, with Julien’s playing middleman on Nov. 14 for the sale of 57 autographed guitars and documents featuring song lyrics. To cite three examples: A guitar featuring Keith Urban’s signature alongside the words from “Blue Ain’t Your Color” netted $7,800; a “Girl Crush” guitar autographed by The Love Junkies — songwriters Hillary Lindsey, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna — brought another $1,950; and a “wait in the truck” guitar inked by HARDY and Lainey Wilson earned $4,445.
Julien’s followed Nov. 15-17 with its Played, Worn, & Torn Rock ‘N’ Roll: Iconic Guitars and Memorabilia Auction. Among more than 1,000 sales, an Eric Clapton guitar went for $1.3 million, a pair of Kurt Cobain’s jeans scored $476,000, and a signed Elvis Presley karate certificate pulled in $5,850. That auction also included a smattering of country items: a stage-worn Dolly Parton cape, $10,160; a Hee Haw contract signed by Johnny Cash and June Carter, $2,222.50; and Jerry Lee Lewis’ cowboy boots, $1,625.
Julien’s founder/president Darren Julien and founder/executive director Martin Nolan anticipated Nashville would have a significant regional draw for in-person bidding, on top of its online activity, and it played out even better than expected.
“People came from Missouri, Georgia, Alabama and Illinois just to see [the auction],” Nolan observes. “There’s definitely a huge interest here.”
Julien’s is already planning another Nashville-based auction in May, but it’s also scouting locations for an office, believing the market is underserved for celebrity sales. The company plans initially to staff with just one or two people who would utilize strong local connections to bring sale items to the public. The employees wouldn’t be expected to know how to price prospective memorabilia at the start; Julien’s has 30-plus employees in Gardena, Calif., and some of them can offer that expertise as the new Nashville team gets its bearings and Julien’s, if its plan works, ingratiates itself in the market.
A “Girl Crush” guitar autographed by The Love Junkies — songwriters Hillary Lindsey, Liz Rose and Lori McKenna — recently brought in $1,950.
“It’s a contemporary recording community across all different genres of music,” says Nolan. “Obviously, it has a very rich musical heritage, and that sort of fits squarely into our growth plans.”
Julien’s is celebrating its 20th anniversary, having entered the auction market shortly after the largest celebrity memorabilia houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, paid over $550 million apiece to settle a price-fixing case. Julien’s aggressively pursued the potential of online bidding, allowing buyers from around the globe to compete with in-person customers. The technology was comparatively primitive at the time — a seven-second delay in digital bids affected the proceedings, and Nolan remembers his Blackberry ran out of juice in the inaugural sale during that pre-smartphone era.
The company also put a premium, Nolan maintains, on more personalized service with high-profile clients who come with their own set of expectations.
“Cher wants her design one way, Barbra Streisand wants it another way, and Don McLean has another idea and Janet Jackson has another idea, and Ringo Starr,” says Nolan. “The big auction houses don’t have the resources to sit down with a celebrity and hold hands and walk them through the process and make it seamless for them.”
The stars deserve that kind of treatment, Nolan suggests.
“They’ve been hugely successful marketing geniuses in their own right,” he says. “There’s a fan base worldwide that wants to own something representing their life and career.”
Julien’s has made believers of MHA through its work on the agency’s Heal the Music fundraising auctions.
“In the last four years, Julien’s Auctions has not only elevated Music Health Alliance’s Lyrics for a Cause benefit auction to unprecedented heights through their global audience, they also seamlessly fused historical accuracy, integrity, and respect into the fabric of our mission to #HealTheMusic,” says MHA auction producer Colleen Hoagland. “Julien’s commitment to the minute details coupled with a passion for our cause has turned fundraising into an art form.”
Establishing a stronger foothold in Nashville’s music community — particularly in country — would expand on Julien’s existing cultural connections. The company regularly holds auctions focused on pop music, TV and movies, sports and art.
Upcoming auctions include 1,000-plus lots of memorabilia from the collection of ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill Dec. 7-9 in Dallas; a Robots, Wizards, Heroes & Aliens event Dec. 14-15 in Hollywood featuring items associated with such franchises as Breaking Bad, Harry Potter and Batman; and a Dec. 16-17 sale of materials from The Big Lebowski.
Julien’s does get its fair share of pushback. When the company approached Parton about selling off some of her personal artifacts, she initially rebuffed the offer, reportedly telling them, “I’m not dead yet.” But there are other reasons for celebs to part with their history, Nolan insists, such as raising money for charity, downsizing and connecting with members of the fan base.
Beyond the headline-making million-dollar guitars, auctions often include smaller-priced items that are obtainable for fans of more modest means. As an example, photos, signed letters and several awards all went for less than $500 at a 2022 Kenny Rogers auction.
In its way, Nashville’s best-known export — country music — is a perfect fit for Julien’s.
“We’re all nostalgic,” says Nolan. “We’re all buying into something [from] our youth or a life stage when we got married, or first kid, or we were graduating college — whatever it is, it harks back to that time. We want to own the toys from that era. And that’s what we’re selling.”
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Team,
Over the last two years, we’ve put significant emphasis on building Spotify into a truly great and sustainable business – one designed to achieve our goal of being the world’s leading audio company and one that will consistently drive profitability and growth into the future. While we’ve made worthy strides, as I’ve shared many times, we still have work to do. Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities.
This brings me to a decision that will mean a significant step change for our company. To align Spotify with our future goals and ensure we are right-sized for the challenges ahead, I have made the difficult decision to reduce our total headcount by approximately 17% across the company. I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions. To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.
For those leaving, we’re a better company because of your dedication and hard work. Thank you for sharing your talents with us. I hope you know that your contributions have impacted more than half a billion people and millions of artists, creators, and authors around the world in profound ways.
I realize that for many, a reduction of this size will feel surprisingly large given the recent positive earnings report and our performance. We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025. Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. While I am convinced this is the right action for our company, I also understand it will be incredibly painful for our team.
To understand this decision, I think it is important to assess Spotify with a clear, objective lens. In 2020 and 2021, we took advantage of the opportunity presented by lower-cost capital and invested significantly in team expansion, content enhancement, marketing, and new verticals. These investments generally worked, contributing to Spotify’s increased output and the platform’s robust growth this past year. However, we now find ourselves in a very different environment. And despite our efforts to reduce costs this past year, our cost structure for where we need to be is still too big.
When we look back on 2022 and 2023, it has truly been impressive what we have accomplished. But, at the same time, the reality is much of this output was linked to having more resources. By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient. We need to be both. While we have done some work to mitigate this challenge and become more efficient in 2023, we still have a ways to go before we are both productive and efficient. Today, we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact. More people need to be focused on delivering for our key stakeholders – creators and consumers. In two words, we have to become relentlessly resourceful.
I know you will all be anxious to hear the next steps about how this process will work. If you are an impacted employee, you will receive a calendar invite within the next two hours from HR for a one-on-one conversation. These meetings will take place before the end of the day on Tuesday, and while Katarina will provide more detail on all of the specifics, please know the following will apply to all of these bandmates:
Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure.
PTO: All accrued and unused vacation will be paid out to any departing employee.
Healthcare: We will continue to cover healthcare for employees during their severance period.
Immigration support: For employees whose immigration status is connected with their employment, HRBPs are working with each impacted individual in concert with our mobility team.
Career Support: All employees will be eligible for outplacement services for two months.
For the team that will remain at Spotify, I know this decision will be difficult for many. Please know we are focused on treating our impacted colleagues with the respect and compassion they deserve.
Looking Ahead
The decision to reduce our team size is a hard but crucial step towards forging a stronger, more efficient Spotify for the future. But it also highlights that we need to change how we work. In Spotify’s early days, our success was hard won. We had limited resources and had to make the most of every asset. Our ingenuity and creativity were what set us apart. As we’ve grown, we’ve moved too far away from this core principle of resourcefulness.
The Spotify of tomorrow must be defined by being relentlessly resourceful in the ways we operate, innovate, and tackle problems. This kind of resourcefulness transcends the basic definition – it’s about preparing for our next phase, where being lean is not just an option but a necessity.
Embracing this leaner structure will also allow us to invest our profits more strategically back into the business. With a more targeted approach, every investment and initiative becomes more impactful, offering greater opportunities for success. This is not a step back; it’s a strategic reorientation. We’re still committed to investing and making bold bets, but now, with a more focused approach, ensuring Spotify’s continued profitability and ability to innovate. Lean doesn’t mean small ambitions; it means smarter, more impactful paths to achieve them.
Today is a difficult but important day for the company. To be very clear, my commitment to our mission and belief in our ability to achieve it has never been stronger. I hope you will join me on Wednesday for Unplugged to discuss how we move forward together. A reduction of this size will make it necessary to change the way we work, and we will share much more about what this will mean in the days and weeks ahead. Just as 2023 marked a new chapter for us, so will 2024 as we build an even stronger Spotify.
– Daniel
An appeals court upheld the disorderly conduct convictions Friday (Dec. 1) of actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and lying about it to Chicago police.
Smollett, who appeared in the TV show Empire, challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois Appellate Court.
Smollett had reported to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack by two men wearing ski masks. The search for the attackers soon turned into an investigation of Smollett himself, leading to his arrest on charges he had orchestrated the whole thing.
Authorities said he paid two men whom he knew from work on Empire, which filmed in Chicago. Prosecutors said Smollett told the men what slurs to shout, and to yell that he was in “MAGA Country,” a reference to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
A jury convicted Smollett in 2021 on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, a charge that can be filed in Illinois when a person lies to police.
He now will have to finish a 150-day stint in jail that was part of his sentence. Smollett spent just six days in jail while his appeal was pending.
Lawyers for Smollett, who is Black and gay, have publicly claimed that he was the target of a racist justice system and people playing politics.
“We are preparing to escalate this matter to the Supreme Court,” Smollett spokeswoman Holly Baird said, referring to Illinois’ highest court and also noting that the opinion at the appellate court wasn’t unanimous.
Appellate Justice Freddrenna Lyle would have thrown out the convictions. She said it was “fundamentally unfair” to appoint a special prosecutor and charge Smollett when he had already performed community service as part of a 2019 deal with Cook County prosecutors to close the case.
“It was common sense that Smollett was bargaining for a complete resolution of the matter, not simply a temporary one,” Lyle said.
Special prosecutor Dan Webb was appointed to look into why the case was dropped. A grand jury subsequently restored charges against Smollett in 2020, and Webb concluded there were “substantial abuses of discretion” in the state’s attorney office during the earlier round.
Smollett was not immune to a fresh round of charges, appellate Justices David Navarro and Mary Ellen Coghlan said in the majority opinion.
“The record does not contain any evidence that (prosecutors) agreed Smollett would not be further prosecuted in exchange for forfeiting his bond and performing community service,” they said.
Shares of iHeartMedia got a boost from the sale of its stake in BMI, rising 7.9% to $3.00 and making the radio giant the best-performing music stock of the week.
The company announced on Monday (Nov. 27) that it expected to receive approximately $100 million from the sale of BMI to New Mountain Capital. With a current market capitalization of just $423 million, the $100 million pre-tax windfall could provide a boost to a stock that has fallen 51.1% this year. iHeartMedia’s announcement said the company plans to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes, “which may include the repayment of debt.” At the 2023 Wells Fargo TMT Summit on Wednesday, CFO Rich Bressler told investors, “You should assume that we will reduce debt with it.”
The BMI sale follows iHeartMedia’s announcement in its third-quarter earnings that it has paid off $519 million of debt since the second quarter of 2022. In the third quarter, the company retired $89 million in principal balance for $65 million cash, according to its Q3 2023 investor presentation. Debt reductions to date are expected to save the company about $43 million in annual cash interest. Additional debt redemptions aided by the BMI sale will further reduce interest expenses and help its bottom line while the advertising market recovers. “I think we’re in terrific shape from the liquidity generation and free cash flow,” Bressler said on Wednesday, “and also in terrific shape to be able to take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace to improve the capital structure.”
The Billboard Global Music Index dropped 0.2% to 1,449.08 as nine of the 20 stocks finished the week in positive territory, 10 stocks posted losses and one was unchanged. Year to date, the index has gained 24.1%.
The week was notable for the unremarkable movements — either positive or negative — in most stock prices. In the absence of earnings results or major news releases, the biggest companies on the Billboard Global Music Index were confined to a narrow band of results. Warner Music Group shares rose 3.8% to $34.59, Universal Music Group gained 1.5% to 24.60 euros ($26.80), Spotify fell 0.5% to $180.75 and Live Nation dropped 3.9% to $84.23.
Anghami, the Abu Dhabi-based music streamer, had the index’s largest drop, diving 18.1% to $2.30. Still, the company’s share price is up 44.2% year to date and has gained 129% since receiving a notification, from the Nasdaq Stock Market in October, regarding its stock’s closing price falling under the $1.00 per share threshold for 30 consecutive days. Companies whose stocks fall below $1.00 for extended periods face being de-listed from the exchange.
While music stocks dropped slightly, some major indexes finished the week at new highs. On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 0.8% to 4,594.63, its highest mark of 2023 and its best showing since March 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a collection of 30 blue-chip companies, rose 2.4% to a new all-time high of 36,245.50. The Nasdaq composite gained 0.4% to 14,305.03 — nowhere close to its all-time record of 16,057.44 set in 2021 but close to its 2023 high of 14,446.55 set on July 19. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 gained 0.5% to 7,529.35. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index grew 0.3% to 2,505.01.