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In March of 2022, Epic Games, best known as the maker of Fortnite, acquired Bandcamp, a crucial commerce platform for independent musicians. While the purchase surprised the music industry, the marriage ultimately proved short-lived: Bandcamp was acquired again on September 28, this time by the licensing platform Songtradr.
Bandcamp is widely loved for its role in the indie music community, and in an interview, Paul Wiltshire, CEO of Songtradr, was eager to assuage any fears about the company’s new owner. “We think Bandcamp is a great platform as it is,” he says. “There’s not a need to change it into anything other than what it is.”
The plan for now, he continues, is “introduce the opportunity of licensing” to Bandcamp artists who are interested in seeding their music to various brands and platforms. “We think that alone is a really big piece, and we want to get that right,” Wiltshire adds. “That will create a lot of opportunity for the independent market and the artists on there.”
Before we get into the Bandcamp acquisition, can you explain what Songtradr does?
The genesis of Songtradr was to build a platform that made licensing easier for both sides of the marketplace. On one side, you have artists, songwriters, and also labels and publishers; on the other side it’s brands, agencies, games, apps, platforms, anyone who uses music in content, film, TV, etc. The problems associated with licensing are mainly due to fragmentation — both publishing and recording rights need to be licensed whenever you legitimately license a track. And so there’s inherent fragmentation, because much of the time there’s a publisher, and there’s a label and they’re two different parties. The same thing happens with independents, where they co-write with two different people. We wanted to build a platform that solved the rights fragmentation and brought parties together so that they could transact together.
Are there specific areas of licensing you focus on?
Where we’ve focused over the last five years in particular is music for brands and advertising agencies. We work with so many of the Fortune 500 brands around the world; we’ve got teams across Europe and Asia and Americas and Australia. We try to provide a complete solution for brands — everything from understanding the sonic architecture of that brand, to working with composers to make the right music for a campaign, to licensing music at scale if they want music for everyday use with their social media campaigns, right through to their licensing of famous track.
The second vertical we focused on was games, apps and platforms because they have a lot of technical challenges. With digital platforms, it’s more complicated. If we think about brands as being one to one, licensing one track to an ad campaign, platforms and games is like 1000s to one — many tracks being used in a game, app, or platform. We wanted to solve the big problems associated with that.
What led you to the Bandcamp acquisition?
Our strategy around M&A up until Bandcamp has been buying companies that really marry that vision of simplifying licensing. The strategy around Bandcamp was: We’re seeing a trend in the market where music is becoming increasingly important in brands and games and fitness apps and meditation apps, all these different touchpoints. And we’ve seen an increased trend in brands in particular: They want to know about the artist who’s behind the music.
We’ve built technology around being able to best match the right music to a brand or to a customer. How do we ensure the right music is used in an advertising campaign or in a game that aligns with the target audience, whether it’s the gamer or the customer that’s watching the advertisement?
We look at Bandcamp and it’s the largest independent music community in the world. You could argue SoundCloud is, but that’s more than just an independent artist community — there are a bunch of other things as well. Bandcamp legitimately has that core independent artist market. We looked at the business model, and we love the business as it is; there’s no plans to change the existing model. What we wanted to do was connect licensing to the Bandcamp offering.
This would be an opt-in only basis for the artists so that they continue to control their rights and control their destiny. Licensing is not for every artist, and we want them to be able to choose what they want to participate in. An artist on Bandcamp can not only sell their vinyl, their T-shirts, their digital album, but they can also have the opportunity to license music into multiple different areas.
We’ve seen what happens when an independent artist has a license it can be quite transformational in terms of streaming numbers. We’ve licensed music to TikTok and suddenly an artist has blown up unexpectedly because brands got ahold of it. We really believe in licensing as being a key driver for your expanded awareness of an artist’s career.
Can you explain a bit more how that tech works matching brands to songs?
We bought an AI company called Musicube last year. They scan the audio file and they create metadata points that describe it in simple terms like mood, BPM, that fairly obvious stuff. But they went a degree further: We can now predict the audience that would most align with sections of the song right down to like small fractions, like five seconds. We can look at a track using a computer amd in milliseconds understand, ‘that chorus is going to be awesome for a 18 to 23 year old female on the east coast, the United States who likes the following things.’
How does that help on the licensing side?
When you have millions of tracks, it helps us figure out, what do we pitch, what do we place, what do we suggest to a brand? If we’re using creativity on the one hand and data in the right hand we argue we get a better result than just objectivity or just data. We use the tech to help choose the music.
We will be creating a user experience that gives them the option — do you want to have your music participate in this system? That’ll be the music that we start to curate and pitch.
We want to be very clear to Bandcamp artists: They will always have the choice of where their music goes. Licensing is quite a steep learning curve for many — what does it mean, what are all the different opportunities, some are paying pennies, some are paying a huge amount. There’s a lot to unpack, so we know that’s going to be a careful learning process and it will take time to properly communicate.
My impression was that Bandcamp got a big bump in engagement during Covid. Has that continued?
Just speaking from a very on-high view from the detail that I have, there was a quite a significant bump up during that period. But it looks like there’s been a step-up that was sustained, and it’s continuing [at a level higher than it was]. More awareness was raised of what Bandcamp is; there are more fans and more artists using it. That period educated the market to be more self-sufficient online, to do more online, to make passive income a reality without being wholly reliant on their performance. It’s one of the few blessings of that period.
Songtrader is very supportive of the artist community and I come from that background. I was a songwriter and record producer after I tried to be an artist for a few years. We are musicians. It’s important that the Bandcamp audience knows that that’s where we come from, that’s what we believe in.
We really want to protect the value of music rights. We’re not trying to package up a bunch of music and sell it cheaply. That’s not what we do. We’re very much into increasing the value of music for all so when someone licenses music, they get a better result because they’ve licensed something that’s actually on brand that actually suits their time. And on the other side, that music is properly paid for and it attracts the right fees.
Benji and Joel Madden, the creative forces behind pop punk outfit Good Charlotte, successful music management outfit MDDN and streaming service Veeps are launching their most ambitious project yet.
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Today the famous music brothers are launching Veeps All Access, a new Live Nation-backed online video subscription service built atop the Veeps live-streaming infrastructure developed and launched by the Maddens in 2018 and acquired by Live Nation in January 2021. All Access is a shift for Veeps, which has operated as a pay-per-view business up until now, charging customers to access live and on-demand streams by artists like Southern rockers Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown or soul and R&B star Miguel, typically priced between $9.99 to $14.99.
All Access will grant fans access to all live shows streamed through Veeps as well on-demand content, special artist exclusives and original programing including the newly greenlit “Sidehustles” and “Artist Friendly,” Joel Madden’s music interview podcast-turned-video talk show, premiering tomorrow (Oct. 4) with Brandon Boyd of Incubus.
The price of All Access is $11.99 per month or $120 for annual pass, which is in line with other popular streaming services like Disney Plus which increases from $10.99 per month to $13.99 per month on Oct. 12, or Paramount Plus, which is now bundled with Showtime at $11.99 per month. Veeps also has struck early partnerships deals with Samsung, Ticketmaster, and Verizon and will be available on the Veeps app on iPhone, Android, Apple TV or Roku service.
Veeps All Access will kick off today with the premiere of The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie’s sold-out show from AZ Financial Theater, October and November will feature performances from a wide range of artists, including Run The Jewels, performing a special 4-night series live from the Hollywood Palladium October 11-14, pop acts Macklemore, Jessie Ware and Chappell Roan; hard rock, indie and alternative acts A R I Z O N A, Bad Omens, Bishop Briggs, Boys Like Girls, Misterwives, Nothing But Thieves, Senses Fail, Frank Turner and Waterparks; shows from rap and soul artists like OhGeesy, Flatbush Zombies, Kiana Ledé and Phabo and country artists such as Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean and Shane Smith & The Saints. New shows will be added weekly.
Joel Madden tells Billboard that the mission of Veeps has always been to connect fans who can’t attend a concert with their favorite artists, even if the artist is not touring in their city or the show is already sold out. He adds that by providing an affordable subscription option, Veeps is also helping Live Nation drive most artist discovery, connecting fans with a wider range of artists and their fan communities.
Veeps All Access will also include a wealth of archived content from artists including 5 Seconds of Summer, Aerosmith, Amy Winehouse, Dierks Bentley, Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry, J Balvin, Lainey Wilson, Mumford & Sons, Muse, Niall Horan, Norah Jones, Poppy, PVRIS, Rage Against the Machine, Rolling Stones, Shania Twain, Slipknot, Sting, The Killers, The Smashing Pumpkins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs,= and more. Veeps will be powered by a show recommendation engine and nearly all concerts are delivered with spatial sound capabilities and high-quality 4K streaming.
Joel said partnering with Live Nation on the project has been critical to the company’s expansion, noting “If we call anyone inside Live Nation for help, we get support and access to a great group of people.”
Benji Madden added “there’s a lot of generosity with their resources and experience,” noting that “It’s taken a lot of investment build out a Netflix-style experience, but it’s important because everyone involved in this project believes that the future of live entertainment is access.”
That means reaching the far corners of the globe where bands don’t always tour — or finding a way for a fan that can’t be at the show to “have the same access that fans expect for their sporting events,” Joel Madden said. “We know that music fans are going to expect access more and more access with artists and we know that Live Nation is the right partner for to provide that access.”
Kyle Heller, co-founder and chief product officer at Veeps tells Billboard “one of the things that has blown us away on this journey is the attention a viewer pays to a Veeps show. We live in a world of 15-second clips, short-form videos, and quick 20-minute episodes dominating the landscape but when people switch Veeps on it’s not unusual for them to watch 2+ hours of content, uninterrupted. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino added, “Live performances have a unique magic, and Veeps has done an incredible job bringing fans that experience in their homes. All Access is giving fans a new way to discover music and artists another marketing platform that will only continue to fuel the demand for live with an even bigger world of concerts at our fingertips.”
Subscription plans will initially be available in the U.S. with international expansion planned to meet Veeps’ global usership. Learn more and sign up at veeps.com.
In 2020, amidst the pandemic, Nick Maiale started thinking about the music industry beyond titles and company affiliations. Having spent over a decade working in music, including at the Music Business Association and Music Biz Conference, he felt inspired to promote more than professional development — he wanted to advocate for personal growth, too.
Through his work, Maiale was consistently meeting impressive and driven young professionals, but a throughline started to emerge. “After listening to [so many] stories of working in the industry and feeling the limitations [of it], I asked myself ‘How can I help add value to these people’s lives?’…Our business is so fast-paced and revenue driven that we don’t always get the opportunity to step back and get to know people for who they are — and this leaves us placing strong emphasis on job titles, company affiliation and status,” he says. “The answer was clear: build a company that helps my community navigate the industry.”
By the end of 2020, Maiale had launched jump.global, a “community-first” company that manages music business executives. And come November, it will host its first annual summit in Los Angeles. “I started to think about this around the same time I thought about starting the company as a whole,” says Maiale, who serves as founder/CEO. “ I thought it would take place somewhere like Wyoming with 30 people in a cabin — but here we are, about to welcome a much larger number than that to Los Angeles in just a month.”
Held Nov. 12-14 at The LINE Hotel, conversations will largely avoid hot topics like AI and streaming and instead center on stress management, burnout prevention, resilience in the music business and more. Speakers include J Erving (founder of Human Re Sources and executive vp at Sony Music), Moody Jones (GM of dance at EMPIRE), Fadia Kader (executive vp/GM at Venice Music) and Gwen Bethel Riley (senior vp of music/head of content partnerships at Peloton).
“The topics we are covering at the summit are necessary to work in any industry or simply just to exist: leadership, effective communication, stress management, pivoting, financial literacy,” says Maiale. “Imagine a music industry where more people are trained on different personality types, emotional intelligence, how to deal with conflict in the workplace, how to manage their money and how to really address and support mental health.”
Perhaps the best evidence of the need for such a summit is also the biggest challenge in launching it: “Getting people to focus on themselves, as opposed to their work,” says Maiale. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but we believe that as a community, we can all make the music business more human.”
Fittingly, attendee badges will solely list their first and last names, with no companies or titles to be found.
Registration and more information on the jump.global annual summit can be found here. The event kicks off Nov. 12 with a NO EGO Welcome Party.
On July 19, Songtrust sent an email — part update, part apology — to the 350,000 songwriters who use the publishing administration company to collect their songwriting royalties. Songtrust’s message pointed to friction in this process: “slower registration timelines” for songs, which in turn would slow the flow of income, plus a “slower response rate” for writers who believed they were missing money or had other questions.
The slow-down had a few causes, wrote Downtown Music Publishing president Emily Stephenson, including “new leadership,” a new “organizational structure,” and the implementation of Know Your Customer-style registration and payment processes to combat “increased fraud in the music industry.” (Downtown Music Holdings owns Songtrust.) “We recognize that these changes have caused frustration,” she added.
Four former Songtrust employees believe these delays have their roots in plans the company put into motion before this year. The ex-employees describe Songtrust as a “pioneering” organization that did something no company managed to do before: Offer professional-level publishing administration services to small, independent songwriters. “Before Songtrust,” Stephenson tells Billboard, “there was really no way for them to collect mechanical royalties.”
The global publishing system was developed over decades to serve the needs of several thousand writers, not several hundred thousand. “The problem with music publishing,” according to one former employee, “is that scaling is nearly impossible because it’s kind of like an archaic, dark art.”
So as music creation exploded and Songtrust was “trying to sign so many people” starting at the end of 2019 and into 2020, a second former employee explains, “the technology couldn’t keep up with the volume.”
At times, former employees say, that volume — of both new songwriters and new compositions — simply grew faster than the company could handle. (Songtrust is almost certainly not the only organization that has had trouble keeping up with the surge in music creation.) “Making the promise to help the little guys and then not following through on the best technology and best employees and resources — that’s where they f—ed up,” adds a third former employee. “That’s just not a feasible business model.” (Half a dozen former employees spoke in total, all on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating former colleagues.)
Downtown Music executives disagree. “As the music industry grew, Songtrust grew, and we’re evolving to better serve independent songwriters,” Stephenson says. In a post-interview email, Songtrust executives added that despite “temporary delays in responding to writer inquiries,” the company “has continued to process and pay out royalties accurately and on time to all clients who have submitted accurate tax and payment information.” Multiple songwriters who spoke to Billboard about payment difficulties would take issue with that statement.
“All Songwriters Deserve Publishing Administration”
Traditional music publishing companies focus on just a slice of the world’s songwriters — the top earners. One publishing administration executive says it’s not even worth it for his organization to work with “the bottom 80%” of clients because the cost of doing so would exceed the revenue collected.
Songtrust launched in 2011 with the belief, as Stephenson puts it, “that all songwriters deserve a publishing administration solution.” The company has paid out more than $130 million in royalties so far, according to Downtown Music Holdings president Pieter van Rijn, and 2023 payouts are on pace for “another record year.”
To collect publishing royalties, most songwriters either sign with a publisher or a publishing administrator. Otherwise, it’s possible to register songs with both a performance rights organization (PRO) and a mechanical rights organization, but Songtrust facilitates what would otherwise be a complex, time-consuming process for a one-time fee of $100 per writer, plus 15% of the royalties it collects.
In many cases, that may not amount to much; although some independent songwriters earn enough publishing income to live on, many earn next to nothing. And while there may be less money in this part of the market, the administrative work can be just as complicated, if not moreso. “It is a laborious task to onboard and disseminate music publishing information, particularly with DIY artists who are disadvantaged because they don’t have the knowledge base to understand the questions you’re even asking,” says Jeff Price, founder of another publishing administration company, Word Collections.
So it’s not surprising that former Songtrust employees say writers often make mistakes when registering their songs — claiming 100% ownership of a co-write, for example. Also, since it was relatively easy to sign up for Songtrust’s services, “if someone wants to register fraudulent things, they have the tools,” explains one former employee.
Fraud is a concern across the publishing sector. “If you do not register your songs with a PRO, someone else will within a few months, almost guaranteed,” according to one label founder who also oversees a publishing operation for the acts he signs. “Artists don’t know what publishing is to begin with, and there’s a lot of confusion and disinformation, [creating] a perfect recipe for fraud. This problem is only getting worse, especially for international artists finding success for the first time in the global marketplace.”
In the case of Songtrust, a former employee says that fraud on the platform — such as users registering songs they didn’t write — “creates distrust” with some of the societies charged with collecting royalties around the world. “That was happening to a big extent,” the former employee continues.
There were also times, former Songtrusters say, that the societies simply didn’t have the technology to keep up with the number of songwriters it was representing — and that some of the societies focused their resources on the big writers and publishers who generate more revenue. “At scale, issues of bandwidth and efficiency are always a challenge when you have software-based rights administration,” a veteran rights administration executive says.
Songtrust is in “daily communication with our partners at the collecting societies,” Stephenson says. “We maintain a very positive relationship with them and we’re constantly looking with them to improve the way we can support songwriters.”
In a post-interview email, Songtrust executives added that “the fact that [publishing administration] is a complex business does not change our belief that it is a worthwhile, meaningful service” for the long tail of songwriters.
“There Are Always Issues”
At the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, former employees say Songtrust amped up its efforts to sign more songwriters, which taxed the company’s internal systems. (Around the same time, Downtown Music also went on a buying spree, acquiring the distributor CD Baby in March 2019 and the tech and services company Fuga in January 2020.)
One former employee says that the company “really put their money into marketing.” The mindset, according to this person, was “let’s make us as shiny and inviting as possible on the front end, but we’re not going to fix any of the backend technology.”
In another former employee’s view, Songtrust was “not prioritizing actually doing the job that we’re supposed to be doing” — registering and paying songwriters. A third former employee says simply, “if you invite too many people to your house, it’s gonna fall apart.”
Stephenson rejects the idea that the company was too focused on growth. Downtown Music executives also pushed back on former employees’ accounts of technical troubles. “Technology was not the issue” for Songtrust, van Rijn contends. “Based on the input of societies, we did improve our KYC [know your customer] and registration and data processes,” he notes. “Part of that is technical. Part of that is operations.” Van Rijn also points out that the $130 million Songtrust has paid out to date is money that “otherwise may not have found its way to the songwriter community.”
The fact that small, independent songwriters have the means to collect royalties is fairly new; the publishing business wasn’t built for a world in which anyone can write a song on an app, upload it right away, and immediately start earning money around the world. Some amount of friction is inevitable when so many songwriters need to be integrated into the intricate, infamously opaque global music publishing system.
“When you have outcomes that you don’t like as a customer, or even as a partner, it’s easy to talk about incompetence,” says the veteran rights administration executive. “The reality is that these are the outcomes based on the way rights administration happens in the world.”
Some of the challenges faced by Songtrust are “endemic” in publishing, says Price, the Word Collections founder. The administration executive agrees: “Whether you’re a big company or a small one, there are always issues. It’s just that you’re going to get way more issues the bigger you are.”
Sphere Entertainment Co. shares rose 11.1% to $41.99 on Monday (Oct. 2) — and reached a high of $43.59, up 17.3% from Friday’s closing price — after the world got its first glimpses of the revolutionary concert venue over the weekend. The $2.3 billion venue opened on Friday (Sept. 29) with the first of 25 […]
Banned Books Week is here, and while book lovers everywhere rally against the censorship of our cherished stories, musicians like Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel and Yola have added their names to the chorus of celebrities and activists in an open letter condemning the ominous threat of book bans. This impassioned message — led by the iconic LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow fame and propelled by moveon.org — boldly declares about book bans that “It’s only a matter of time before they target other forms of art, expression, and entertainment.”
This point is exactly what I was afraid of as I began working on my latest album, FREADOM: Songs Inspired by Banned Picture Books, and the reason why I want to get more musicians on board to join the movement against book bans.
As a Manhattanite, I wear many hats: touring musician, recording artist, early childhood music educator and mom to an eight-year-old bookworm. Over the past year, I’ve taken a dive deep into the disheartening world of book bans, especially books removed from school and library shelves. My connection to this issue deepened when I discovered that some of my daughter’s beloved books, including Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o and Alma and How She Got her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal, had been taken away in my own home state of Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis and spearheaded by his supporters in the right-wing group Moms for Liberty.
In the 2021-22 school year, First Amendment advocates PEN America reported that a shocking 317 children’s picture books were banned. Most of these silenced stories belong to BIPOC authors, LGBTQIA+ individuals, books with Jewish themes or stories representing diverse cultural backgrounds. The fact that even our youngest readers aren’t spared is truly devastating. Picture books and children’s music go hand-in-hand for young kids to learn about the world around them and build empathy for others.
When I set out to create songs for FREADOM, I naively thought that only books were under threat from modern censorship, though I vaguely knew about the mid-20th century “banning of immoral music” as it pertained to censorship of jazz and rock & roll due to “provocative” dancing or promoting social change. Growing up in the 1980s, while devouring the shelves of CDs at my local Miami music store, I recall the infamous black and white Parental Advisory labels placed on the plastic because of explicit content. I honestly thought music censorship was a thing of the past and we were collectively cool when it came to free music (and I’m not talking about the Napster kind.)
When I recently visited the PEN America offices, I was shocked to learn about an elementary school in Waukesha, Wis., where they banned a performance of the song “Rainbowland” by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus for violating their “controversial content policy.” Over the summer, the school board controversially dismissed first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel for daring to speak out against the musical ban — exercising her First Amendment rights outside of school hours on social media. Teachers in that district are also barred from wearing rainbows, discussing gender pronouns or even mentioning the word “anti-racist.”
As a lyricist, educator, and mother, I can confidently say that there’s nothing controversial about “Rainbowland” and its removal may be seen as an actionable blueprint from the right and a glimpse of what’s coming our way in the land of the “free.”
Book bans are just one piece of a larger plan to dismantle our education system and undermine the core of our democracy one art form at a time, all under the guise of “protecting children.” By standing idle and failing to protect our First Amendment rights now, we are heading on a bleak path forward. It’s only a matter of time before they come after our music, just as they’ve come after our bodily autonomy and voting rights.
Musicians, I urge you to join me in the fight against book bans, defending our First Amendment rights and safeguarding the personal freedoms of all Americans. Come stir up good trouble and take a stand! “We will not be banned!”
Singer/songwriter Joanie Leeds won a 2020 Grammy Award for best children’s album and in her new album, FREADOM, released Sept. 15, she and her band take on book banning through eight original songs that amplify love and inclusion.
Ed Sheeran’s years-long copyright battle — over whether he copied “Thinking Out Loud” from Marvin Gaye’s iconic “Let’s Get It On” — isn’t over just yet.
Although one of Sheeran’s accusers dropped their case last month, a separate set of plaintiffs filed their opening salvo at a federal appeals court on Friday (Sept. 29), setting the stage for years more litigation and a ruling that could revive the case against the pop star.
“The district court’s erroneous decisions should be reversed, and appellant’s case restored so that it can proceed to trial,” Sheeran’s accusers wrote in their opening brief to the appeals court.
Sheeran was first sued over “Thinking Out Loud” by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. It was that long-running case that culminated in a May jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing. Last week, Kathryn Griffin Townsend’s lawyers dropped their efforts to overturn that verdict, ending that leg of the legal battle.
But Sheeran has long faced a separate, closely related case filed by an entity called Structured Asset Sales (owned by industry executive David Pullman) that controls a different one-third stake in Townsend’s copyrights. In May, weeks after the big jury verdict, a federal judge tossed out that case, too, ruling that it was seeking an “impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block.”
Unlike Griffin, however, Structured Asset Sales seems ready for a long appellate battle.
In their opening brief Friday at the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit, Structure Asset Sales’ lawyers cited a wide range of supposed errors by Judge Louis Stanton in that May ruling dismissing the case, including his decision about “musical building blocks.”
But they mostly focused on what they said was a far more basic error: that Judge Stanton refused to let them cite the famous recorded version of “Let’s Get It On” in making their case. Instead, the judge ruled that Structured Asset Sales owned only the rights to a “deposit copy” — the basic notation filed at the Copyright Office decades ago to secure a copyright registration. That erroneous holding, the company’s lawyers said, “severely” limited their rights and unfairly hurt their ability to win the case.
“Musical notation is a way of trying to capture the ephemeral in the physical, but it is and has always been limited in its ability to capture every nuance of the work,” Structured Asset Sales’ lawyers wrote. “Deposit copies do not, and were never meant to be, a limitation on the scope of the copyright they represent.”
Structure Asset Sales’ lawyers also called into question the timing of Judge Stanton’s ruling, which came just weeks after the jury verdict in the Griffin case and seemingly reversed his own previous decision that the case would need to go to trial. In an unusual flourish, the company’s lawyers said the judge’s logic was “a mystery.”
An attorney for Sheeran did not immediately return a request for comment. Sheeran’s legal team will file their own appellate brief in the months to come.
Latin music consumption is growing almost twice as fast as the overall music consumption in the U.S., driven largely by Latin music super fans and by the growth of regional Mexican music, according to Luminate’s most recent research on Latin music.
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Unveiled at a Monday morning (Oct. 2) session during Latin Music Week 2023 presented by Luminate CEO Rob Jonas, Luminate’s research also found an unlikely discovery platform for Latin music: WhatsApp. A whooping 73% of Hispanic listeners use WhatsApp, 265% more than the general population.
Luminate’s numbers once again underscored the impressive growth of Latin music consumption. For example, in the first 34 weeks of 2022, there were 47.4 billion on demand audio streams. For the first 34 weeks of 2023, that number had jumped to 57.9 billion streams, a 22.2% upward change that far surpasses the 13.3% growth registered for the industry overall. All told, Latin is now the 5th largest major music genre in the U.S., behind only the big four core genres: R&B and Hip-Hop, pop, rock and country.
Latin music is also seeing consumption growth outside Latin pockets. A stunning 40% of all U.S. listeners report listening to music in languages other than English; and among those languages, the most listened to — after English — is Spanish. While 93% listen to music in English, roughly 23% of listeners will listen to music in Spanish.
Likewise, while the English language share of streaming in the U.S. –- as measured by the top 10,000 most streamed tracks of the past 12 months — has dipped slightly by 4% in the past year, streaming of Spanish language tracks has increased by 3.5%.
A key driver to the growth are Latin super fans. According to Luminate’s data, they spend 120% more per month on music related activities than other fans, and 30% more than U.S. super fans.
“The trends we saw starting in 2022 have accelerated and developed the growth of Latin music,” says Jonas. “We initially saw a lot of growth in streaming, but now, that growth translated to revenue. In 2023, it’s definitely been exceeding expectations.”
You can access Luminate’s full report here.
The Japanese entertainment company that has acknowledged its founder sexually assaulted hundreds of boys over the span of half a century, took a new name on Monday: Smile-Up. It also vowed to focus on compensation for victims of the abuse.
Tokyo-based Johnny & Associates, founded in 1975, will eventually fold, but its performers can join an independent company that is being set up, said Noriyuki Higashiyama, the company’s new leader and a former star at Johnny’s, as the company is known.
Higashiyama, tapped last month to head the old Johnny’s, will now be president of both Smile-Up and the new company. The new company’s name will be put to public vote by Johnny’s fans.
“All things with the Johnny’s name will have to go,” Higashiyama told reporters at a Tokyo hotel. “A wounded heart isn’t easy to heal. Compensation on its own will never be enough.”
In recent months, dozens of men who were performers and backup dancers as teens and children at Johnny’s have come forward, saying they were sexually assaulted by Johnny Kitagawa.
Kitagawa, who died in 2019, was never charged.
So far, 325 people have applied to the company’s compensation program, and that number may grow. Payments will begin next month, Higashiyama said. How the monetary amount will be decided was not yet clear.
Last month, Kitagawa’s niece Julie Keiko Fujishima resigned as chief executive at Johnny’s and apologized for his past. She still owns 100% of the unlisted company but will not be part of the new unnamed company, whose capital structure is still being worked out.
Fujishima did not appear at Monday’s news conference and had a letter read aloud. The letter said she was “brainwashed” by her mother Mary, who insisted Kitagawa was innocent, even after the Japanese Supreme Court ruled two decades ago that the sexual allegations against him were accurate.
“I want to erase all that remains of Johnny from this world,” she wrote. “I do not forgive what Johnny has done.”
Some victims say they have suffered for decades in silence, unable to confide in family or friends, while experiencing flashbacks.
Most of the attacks took place at Kitagawa’s luxury apartment, where several youngsters were handpicked to spend the night. The following morning, he would thrust 10,000 yen ($100) bills into their hands, according to various testimony.
Rumors about Kitagawa were rampant over the years, with several tell-it-all books published. A recent U.N. investigation has said that the number of victims is at least several hundred, and called on the Japanese government to act. When BBC did a special on Kitagawa earlier this year, the scandal jumped into the spotlight.
Mainstream Japanese media have come under serious scrutiny for having remained mum about Kitagawa, apparently afraid of his influence and ability to deny access to his stars.
Now, some TV broadcasters and programming have done an about-face to shun Johnny’s stars. Major companies have also recently announced they will stop using them in advertising.
In a related development, several victims met with lawyers, feminists and Johnny’s fans to work together in pushing for legal changes so civil damages can be pursued after the current limit of 20 years. The criminal statute of limitations is now 15 years.
Attorney Yoshihito Kawakami said children often don’t understand what happened, and the changes will allow victims to seek damages from Johnny & Associates.
Japan raised the age of sexual consent from 13 to 16 only this year. Japanese media reports say Kitagawa often purposely picked on 13-year-olds, although his victims have been as young as 8.
The company has promised it will compensate victims “beyond the scope of the law. ”
“Some perpetrators are living their lives as though nothing happened. That causes great pain to the victims,” said Junya Hiramoto, who heads a group of Johnny’s victims.
The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of alleged sexual assault, but Hiramoto and others in the case have chosen to identify themselves in the media.
“By coming together, we can grow into a bigger force and move toward hope,” he said.
Nine months before Live Nation made the headline-grabbing decision to cut merch fees at 77 of its clubs and theaters across the country, Ineffable Music Group did it first. Now, the company’s CEO, Thomas Cussins, has a piece of advice for other independent venue owners and operators concerned that the concert giant is using this tactic to curry favor with artists and agents and squeeze out their businesses: Everything will be OK.
“Merch money is not what is going to keep us in business,” says Cussins, whose company oversees 10 venues across California, including The Catalyst Club in Santa Cruz, the Ventura Music Hall in Ventura and the Golden State Theatre in Monterey. “What causes independent venues to go out of business is the one in 10 shows where venues pay way too much relative to the draw and end up losing everything they made on the previous nine shows.”
Cussins made the decision to stop charging acts performing at his venues a cut of their merch sales — a standard industry practice — while watching a Jan. 24 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Ticketmaster. Cussins says it was members of the band Lawrence’s testimony about how much bands rely on merch money for touring that moved him to change the company’s policy: “It is money that most directly gets into the band’s pocket and the idea that we were taking away from that did not sit right with me.”
Since then, he says the decision has not hurt his business “at all.”
Still, independent venues remain concerned about what Live Nation’s new “On the Road Again” program will mean for them — how can they compete with the deals Live Nation is offering? The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) released a statement on Wednesday (Sept. 27) following the news, saying, “Temporary measures may appear to help artists in the short run but actually can squeeze out independent venues which provide the lifeblood of many artists on thin margins.”
Thomas Cussins
Daniel Swan
The statement continued, “The initiative announced yesterday may seem like a move to follow the lead of some independent venues. It is not that. Instead, it appears to be a calculated attempt to use a publicly-traded conglomerate’s immeasurable resources to divert artists from independent venues and further consolidate control over the live entertainment sector. Such tactics threaten the vitality of small and medium-sized venues under 3,000 capacity, many of which still struggle to keep their doors open.”
A NIVA member since 2020, Cussins says he understands why some NIVA members may be upset that Live Nation’s policy might put pressure on their businesses. But, he adds, eliminating merch fees is a net positive for the entire live music ecosystem — one where everyone is benefiting.
“It’s difficult to operate a single venue in a market against Live Nation,” says Cussins. “Venues are low-margin businesses. I’m not here to say that no one should charge merch fees. What I am here to say is that it is my opinion that if you waive those fees, it is an overall healthier ecosystem and you will actually do better in business because you are doing something that makes the process easier.”
What was your reaction when you heard the news that Live Nation was going to waive merch fees for artists?
I was ecstatic. It’s something I’m very passionate about because it fosters a healthier concert ecosystem.
Were you worried about the financial hit Ineffable would take when you decided to eliminate merch fees at Ineffable venues?
No, because merch money is not what is going to keep us in business. What causes independent venues to go out of business is the one in 10 shows where venues pay way too much relative to the draw and end up losing everything they made on the previous nine shows. I think it’s more productive spending one’s time fostering a healthier ecosystem where everybody has a chance to make money. To me, that means not taking artists’ merch money and artists taking more door deals, where the artist has an opportunity to make the most money.
But is that realistic? For many artists, taking a door deal with no guarantee is too risky.
Correct. Some can’t take that risk. But many other artists understand they can make more money on a door deal and lower the risk the venue faces. For independent venues to be healthy, we need volume, which means we need bands to be healthy and touring and making enough money to support themselves. And the money made from merch most directly affects their ability to be out on the road and do well.
What is your reaction to the statement NIVA issued, saying the On the Road Again program is just an attempt to squeeze out indie venues?
They’re doing what they think is in the best interests of their members. We’re members of NIVA and they have done an incredible job for our business. I’m a huge fan. But my take is that merch money is not what’s going to keep these independent venues in business. What’s going to keep them in business is a healthy concert ecosystem, where we’re keeping the bands healthy and keeping them on the road with deals that are fair so that everyone can make a few bucks and eat at the table together and nobody is gouging the other person.
What is the biggest challenge facing artists on the road right now?
It is the travel costs — the price of gas, vehicle rentals, the price to pay crews. If you are going out there and you are doing the same business and your costs have increased 30%, how can you possibly make that up? You might just not tour. I know a lot of bands that have told me they were doing 80 dates a year and now they just want to do 40. They just want to pick the 40 best markets. That hurts independent small businesses. I’m seeing that firsthand. Artists that are in the prime of their career saying, “I want to work less, but each one has more meaning.” And I can’t blame them. But if they can do a longer tour and amortize those costs and play those small secondary markets, then I can be their partner on the ground in markets where I operate venues and keep my hands out of their merch money.
What advice do you have to other venues considering dropping their merch fees?
It’s not one-size-fits-all and it might not be the right solution for everyone. But I am so happy that we made that move — not only from an ethos standpoint, financially as well. It has not hurt me at all.