Business
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Shares of SiriusXM gained 20.1% this week following the company’s third-quarter earnings on Tuesday (Oct. 31) that showed the satellite radio company, which also owns music streamer Pandora, was more profitable despite flat revenue and small losses of self-pay satellite and Pandora subscribers.
Shares of SiriusXM rose to $4.95, its highest closing price since Aug. 3. With the help of a 155,000 increase in promotional subscribers, the company’s total satellite radio subscribers were flat at 34 million. Revenue was unchanged from a year ago at $2.27 billion, but SiriusXM’s net profit grew nearly 50% to $363 million.
Investors will be watching intently next Wednesday (Nov. 8) when SiriusXM unveils a new streaming app as well as in-car innovations and new programming. “This leading content and upcoming product upgrade will be paired with our unmatched business model, which we expect to continue delivering significant and growing free cash flow in the years ahead,” said CEO Jennifer Witz during Tuesday’s earnings call.
The 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index gained 6.9% to 1,394.40, its best week-on-week performance since the index gained 7% in the week ended Nov. 25, 2022. Last week, the index almost fell into correction territory — a 10% decline from its recent high — but this week’s gains reduced the deficit to the high of 1,447.32 (week ended July 21) to 3.7%.
Eighteen of the index’s 20 stocks finished the week in positive territory. Of the two stocks to decline this week, Hipgnosis Songs Fund dropped only 0.8% while Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 15.9%.
Led by SiriusXM, the index’s three radio stocks had an average weekly gain of 13.3%. iHeartRadio, the largest radio company in the United States, gained 16.8% to $2.50. The company will report quarterly earnings on Tuesday (Nov. 9). Cumulus Media shares improved 2.9% to $4.91. Additionally, the index’s four live music companies gained an average of 8%, while record labels and publishers as well as streaming companies had average one-week gains of 3.8%.
Round Hill Music Royalty Fund was removed from the index this week after the completion of its $468 million acquisition by Concord. At the acquisition price of $1.15 per share, the London-listed Round Hill Music Royalty Fund gave investors a 47.4% year-to-date return.
Stocks everywhere enjoyed a strong week as the U.S. Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, leading investors to predict the central bank would forgo further rate hikes. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 5.9% and the S&P 500 gained 5.2%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 rose 1.7%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index gained 2.8%.
Live Nation shares rose 10.9% after the company’s third-quarter results on Thursday showed that the company hit all-time records in revenue and adjusted operating income (AOI). Total revenue reached $8.2 billion, up 32% year over year, and AOI rose 35% to $836 million. Ticketmaster revenue grew 57% to $833 million in the third quarter. Through mid-October, Ticketmaster sold 140 million tickets to Live Nation events — more than the 121 million sold in full-year 2022.
Even though consumers are feeling pinched by inflation, demand continues to be strong across venue sizes and geographies, according to president/CEO Michael Rapino. “I have weekly booking calls with the over 40 presidents around the world and we talk about from clubs up to stadiums and festivals,” Rapino said during Thursday’s earnings call. “We have not seen anything taper off in any sense.”
Other stocks surpassing a 10% gain were Chinese music streamer Cloud Music, which gained 12.7% to 96.35 HKD ($12.31), and New York-based Reservoir Media, which gained 12.1% to $5.95. Reservoir Media will release its latest quarterly results on Tuesday (Nov. 7).
Most tracks on Spotify will not be eligible to receive royalties based on the company’s proposed royalty scheme that will go into effect in 2024. That’s because a track must reach a threshold of 1,000 streams within 12 months to receive royalty payouts, according to an article this week written by Kristin Graziani, president of music distributor Stem. A source with knowledge of the plan confirmed the details to Billboard.
According to Spotify’s Loud & Clear website, 37.5 million tracks had surpassed 1,000 all-time streams as of 2022. That’s out of a catalog of 100 million tracks at the end of 2022, per Spotify’s 2022 annual report. In other words, almost two-thirds of Spotify’s catalog has never reached the 12-month minimum stream count to be eligible to receive royalties. Given that’s all-time streams since the company launched in 2008, it stands to reason that fewer yet will reach 1,000 streams within a 12-month period.
While this 1,000-stream threshold affects a large number of tracks, it doesn’t impact much of Spotify’s royalties to creators and rights holders. Implementing the threshold will shift about 0.5% of Spotify’s royalty pool to more popular tracks, a source tells Billboard. That was equal to about $46 million in royalties in 2022, based on Spotify’s $9.27 billion cost of sales that year, which represents virtually all royalty payouts.
Tackling fraudulent streams could have a larger impact than a minimum threshold. Spotify’s new royalty scheme also imposes financial penalties for music distributors and labels when fraudulent activity has been detected on tracks they uploaded. That should incentivize distributors to locate and remove fraudulent tracks before they can get to streaming platforms.
Various estimates put fraudulent tracks’ share of listening — at Spotify and elsewhere — at 3% to 10% of total streams. With the 2022 global streaming market valued at $17.5 billion, according to the IFPI, up to $1 billion worth of streaming royalties globally is ending up in the wrong hands. Removing those fraudulent streams from eligibility means all other tracks will receive a greater share of the royalty pool.
French music company Believe would get a “significant double-digit” percentage growth in its market share at Deezer under the company’s new artist-centric royalty scheme, Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie said during the company’s Oct. 24 earnings call. The bulk of that impact comes from fighting streaming fraud and abuse, said Ladegaillerie, adding that Deezer has a “much higher” level of streaming fraud and abuse than Spotify and Apple Music. In contrast, he added, changing how royalties are allocated to artists would impact an “extremely marginal” amount of royalties.
A cleaner, easier way to improve all artists’ royalties — one resisted by streaming services until recently — is to raise subscription prices. Every time a streaming service raises fees by 10% — such as Spotify going from $9.99 to $10.99 per month in the U.S. in July — the royalties earned from those subscribers increase a commensurate amount. Deezer has raised its price twice in less than two years. Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube Music have also raised prices in the last year.
In a year that’s been dominated by familiar albums and re-releases at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, this week served up a refreshing new No. 1: veteran punk rock band blink-182, which returned with the album One More Time and scored its first placement atop the tally with its original lineup — Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker — since 2001.
The album’s coronation was not a flash-in-the-pan, news cycle nostalgia play. Instead, it was the result of a year-long reunion and rollout plan that included a massive world tour, a string of singles and a behind-the-scenes video series with hundreds of thousands of views that both allowed the band’s original fans to get a glimpse inside the lives of their longtime heroes and brought in new fans drawn to the group’s irreverent humor and oddball visuals. For a group that came of age in the heyday of MTV — and was well-known for its provocative and hilarious music videos — the visual element was a key part of re-engaging that fan base, helping earn Columbia Records senior vp of video production Saul Levitz the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Levitz breaks down the content plan behind the group’s big comeback, the nostalgia factor of a beloved band’s reunion, how the visuals reflected the music and more. “We wanted to bring context and emotion to every visual,” Levitz says. “Whether it be the album trailers or music videos, we needed to bring the audience into the cathartic moment that the band was going through.”
This week, blink-182’s One More Time debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, the group’s first No. 1 with its original lineup since 2001. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
We wanted to bring context and emotion to every visual. Whether it be the album trailers or music videos, we needed to bring the audience into the cathartic moment that the band was going through. When Ron [Perry, Columbia chairman/CEO] first sent across the song “One More Time” I cried every time I listened to it and felt the visuals needed to match this place it was taking the listener. Both because the band was processing their own lives with a directness they hadn’t before and also because it’s a universal message that can be applied to any relationship that has gone silent due to ego, mismanagement, or just time letting it slip away.
blink obviously has been around a long time, but it had been years since they released an album. How did you approach the content given that history?
There’s always a pull between nostalgia and making things feel fresh and modern. The modern approach usually wins out because no artist wants to rest on their laurels when rolling out new music. But this time it felt more appropriate because the band was acknowledging their past in a way that confirmed a lot of what the fan base had been thinking in their heads but never heard them say to each other. Never had I seen the fan base live vicariously through each member’s journey. They saw a piece of themselves in Tom, Mark or Travis’s personal journey, so we had to acknowledge that and not make it seem like it didn’t mean anything.
blink’s original incarnation was also at the height of the music-video era, and many of their videos are iconic. How did you balance that track record with bringing in new elements for this project?
Oh man, this is the best part of the job — living up to expectations and a visual history. We literally went inside so many of these iconic music videos for the “One More Time” video so this process was less about living up to those videos and more about celebrating them. There is so much expectation for their videos to be funny and self-aware. The band wanted to push beyond this expectation, though. Their personalities have also evolved so much that as soon as something felt too much like something the old blink-182 would do it stopped feeling fresh. But trust that Tom kept things OG on set with the humor and personality that people remember the band for.
This album also had an extended rollout, with the first single being released a full year before the album. How did that help you develop and roll out the content for it?
Being on the “EDGING” set was a revelation. The band hadn’t played together in forever, and even though they were playing to track there was something so clear about how they all locked in musically together and how their personalities melded together to create this nexus of what the band was. I remember being on set and thinking, “How could these guys ever have not been together?” It seemed so effortless and perfect the way they complemented each other through friendship and music. And Cole Bennett did a tremendous job with the video having the POV of a younger fan who has embraced the band’s legacy and sees their influence on a ton of new artists in genres you wouldn’t expect. It’s rare that you have a gap this long between a first single and then the album, but it certainly made us realize early the power the band had in this trinity coming together.
In a way, this entire project could be seen as a throwback: an extended rollout strategy, big radio singles, a major tour around the world and a beloved rock band topping the charts. What’s the significance of that in this era of the music industry, when things are often on much tighter timelines and rock rarely reaches No. 1?
I attribute the success as much to the music just being f—ing great and everyone seeing a part of themselves in the journey of these three individuals that come together and put aside their differences and find that spark again that made them special and unique and beloved. It was amazing to have the amount of time needed to get everything right, and that is rare nowadays, but without those other elements being in place the time is irrelevant. This album is less about the story of rock returning and more about how the audience can see themselves within artists that share so much of themselves and their journey. If you can make them cry, you’ve got something.
Offering a preview of arguments the company might make in its upcoming legal battle with Universal Music Group (UMG), artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic PBC told the U.S. Copyright Office this week that the massive scraping of copyrighted materials to train AI models is a “quintessentially lawful.”
Music companies, songwriters and artists have argued that such training represents an infringement of their works at a vast scale, but Anthropic told the federal agency Monday (Oct. 30) that it was clearly allowed under copyright’s fair use doctrine.
“The copying is merely an intermediate step, extracting unprotectable elements about the entire corpus of works, in order to create new outputs,” the company wrote. “This sort of transformative use has been recognized as lawful in the past and should continue to be considered lawful in this case.”
The filing came as part of an agency study aimed at answering thorny questions about how existing intellectual property laws should be applied to the disruptive new tech. Other AI giants, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google and Stability AI all lodged similar filings, explaining their views.
But Anthropic’s comments will be of particular interest in the music industry because that company was sued last month by UMG over the very issues in question in the Copyright Office filing. The case, the first filed over music, claims that Anthropic unlawfully copied “vast amounts” of copyrighted songs when it trained its Claude AI tool to spit out new lyrics.
In the filing at the Copyright Office, Anthropic argued that such training was a fair use because it copied material only for the purpose of “performing a statistical analysis of the data” and was not “re-using the copyrighted expression to communicate it to users.”
“To the extent copyrighted works are used in training data, it is for analysis (of statistical relationships between words and concepts) that is unrelated to any expressive purpose of the work,” the company argued.
UMG is sure to argue otherwise, but Anthropic said legal precedent was clearly on its side. Notably, the company cited a 2015 ruling by a federal appeals court that Google was allowed to scan and upload millions of copyrighted books to create its searchable Google Books database. That ruling and others established the principle that “large-scale copying” was a fair use when done to “create tools for searching across those works and to perform statistical analysis.”
“The training process for Claude fits neatly within these same paradigms and is fair use,” Anthropic’s lawyers wrote. “Claude is intended to help users produce new, distinct works and thus serves a different purpose from the pre-existing work.”
Anthropic acknowledged that the training of AI models could lead to “short-term economic disruption.” But the company said such problems were “unlikely to be a copyright issue.”
“It is still a matter that policymakers should take seriously (outside of the context of copyright) and balance appropriately against the long-term benefits of LLMs on the well-being of workers and the economy as a whole by providing an entirely new category of tools to enhance human creativity and productivity,” the company wrote.
Global Citizen and pgLang have teamed up to create a new touring circuit throughout Africa titled Move Afrika: A Global Citizen Experience. To kick off the initiative, Kendrick Lamar will headline Move Afrika: Rwanda at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, on Dec. 6. Lamar’s pgLang company will serve as the Curator of Move Afrika […]
Lawyers often say that bad facts make bad law – meaning that unusual or unlikely details of a case can shape precedent in unpredictable ways. But bad facts can also make for bad contracts, to judge by the contractual restrictions on re-recording that major labels may be adopting in the wake of the success of Taylor Swift‘s “Taylor’s Version” of her albums.
Re-recording restrictions, a common contractual provision that has been part of record deals for decades, are intended as a kind of post-term noncompete. Their understandable economic purpose is to stop an artist from re-recording songs released under a contract that has run its course in order to benefit a subsequent label – and let the subsequent recording compete with the original without a comparable investment. Under that logic, the reasonable duration of a re-recording restriction would be a few years, as was the practice before the “Taylor’s Version” releases came out. It’s harder to justify locking up artists for a protracted period that might be longer than the duration of the original recording agreement.
That duration could be limited, too, by a potential legal challenge. Both the federal government and many states restrict the enforceability of noncompete clauses in employment agreements, particularly when they limit economic freedom. (Examples include California Business and Professions Code Section 16600, and the recently passed New York Senate Bill S3100A, which New York governor Kathy Hochul is expected to sign.) Next year, the Federal Trade Commission will vote on banning noncompete clauses in employment agreements altogether. Labels often say that recording artists aren’t employees, but that wouldn’t necessarily put these kinds of restrictions above the fray – especially if they last longer than seems reasonable.
Few artists re-record anything, and those who do usually only revisit one or a few hits, maybe their biggest album at most, and that’s more likely if there’s a contractual dispute. It’s unprecedented for a significant artist to re-record his or her entire catalog, repackage each album and promote their rerelease – particularly when the original hit releases are still readily available. That requires motivation. Or, in Swift’s case, perhaps, frustration. But in a “Taylor’s Version” world, who wants to be the one who let it happen again?
Chris Castle
Laura Lee Nall Photography
Without getting into the he-said-she-said of the sale of Big Machine, including Swift’s recording catalog, it’s important to note that it was an unusual case. So, it’s worth asking if there’s a lower-risk alternative.
If a label is going to sell a living artist’s entire catalog – or sell a company whose value is dominated by that catalog – the safe thing to do might be to offer the artist a chance to bid on it. Or, failing that, at least consult with the artist to create a comfortable situation, even if that requires additional assurances or an additional payment. If you think it’s only necessary to do the minimum, look at what can happen with an overly legalistic approach. To artists like Swift, these recordings are their life.
Changing the recording agreement template to try to guarantee an outcome may backfire. “Taylor’s Version” simply isn’t a normal situation – it’s one that involved the world’s most popular artist, who is as attached to her catalog as any performer, plus just as business-savvy as most executives. It’s a situation that was almost impossible to anticipate – so making contracts even more one-sided may not help. Instead, a change like this could draw the attention of President Biden’s FTC, which seems to have an abiding interest in noncompete clauses. Especially if a number of competitors just happen to push the same contractual change at the same time.
If labels must have extended re-recording restrictions, couldn’t they add a sweetener, such as offering living artists a right to match the highest bid if their recording catalogs are ever sold individually, or a blocking right over the buyer or something similar? Alternatively, they could also just leave things be.
An overreaching re-recording restriction could also provoke retaliation from artists’ lawyers. They could make leverage points like post-term marketing restrictions and audits more important deal points in order to fight restrictions. That means disfavored buyers might have to wonder how hard it could be to get the approvals they need, or how much they would like continual audits. And in cases where artists are also principal songwriters, buyers could also have trouble clearing song rights, especially for new purposes like AI.
Some labels may be less concerned with expanding this restriction than they are with winning a competitive negotiation to sign a new artist. And if a competing label agrees to a shorter restriction, it could be an easy compromise that would cost little or nothing.
There’s always a temptation to add restrictions to contracts, but in this case, the exercise could backfire. Labels might be advised to be careful what they wish for.
Chris Castle is an Austin-based lawyer. He represents artists, publishers, songwriters and startups on commercial and public policy matters.
Apple reported a blowout quarterly earnings report, with its serviced division (which includes Apple TV+, Apple Music and other media-related offerings) hitting another new record with $22.3 billion in revenue.
That was up from $19.2 billion a year ago, and from $21.2 billion in its last quarter.
In total, Apple delivered revenues of $89.5 billion in its fiscal Q4, with profits of $23 billion, reflecting strong demand for its iPhone line.
“Today Apple is pleased to report a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record in Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “We now have our strongest lineup of products ever heading into the holiday season, including the iPhone 15 lineup and our first carbon neutral Apple Watch models, a major milestone in our efforts to make all Apple products carbon neutral by 2030.”
Apple is seeking to improve its revenues and margins in its services business, raising prices on Apple TV+ and other subscription offerings last month. Apple TV+ now costs $9.99 per month, though it is also included in the Apple One subscription bundle, which includes products like Apple Arcade, Apple News, and extra cloud storage.
“We achieved all time revenue records across App Store, advertising, Apple Care, iCloud, payment services and video, as well as the September quarter revenue record on Apple Music,” Cook added on the earnings call.
As for Apple TV+, Cook touted Martin Scorsese’s new movie Killers of the Flower Moon, and noted the awards that ths ervice has garnered.
“We’re telling impactful stories that inspire imagination and stir the soul,” Cook said. “Making movies that make a difference is also at the heart of Apple TV+, and we were thrilled to produce Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a powerful work of cinema that premiered in theaters around the world last month.”
Apple CFO Luca Maestri added on the call that Apple’s services division now has “well more than one billion” subscribers.
Also on the call, Cook confirmed that the company is investing significantly in generative artificial intelligence: “Obviously we have work going on, I’m not going to get into details about what it is because as you know, we don’t we really don’t do that,” Cook said in response to a question from an analyst. “But you can bet that we’re investing, we’re investing quite a bit. We’re going to do it responsibly. And you will see product advancements over time where those technologies are at the heart of them.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s Friday! That means another spin around the Executive Turntable, Billboard’s comprehensive(ish) compendium of promotions, hirings, exits and firings — and all things in between — across the music industry.
Guitar Center tapped longtime board member Gabriel Dalporto to be the musical instrument re-and-etailer’s new CEO, effective immediately. The appointment follows the sudden departure of Ron Japinga, who joined the company in 2014 and has served as CEO since 2016. The company gave no reason for Japinga’s exit but did stress that he will no longer serve as a member of the board. Other changes in the offing include the return of Tim Martin as chief financial officer and the appointment of Ken C. Hicks as chairman of the board. Dalporto most recently served as CEO of online education platform Udacity, and he previously served in various senior roles at online lender LendingTree. He has been a member of the company’s board of directors since 2018. Leading that board, effective immediately, will be Hicks, currently the executive chairman of Academy Sports. Additionally, Martin is back in the CFO spot, which he occupied from 2012-2022. (He spent his break from slinging guitars as COO and CFO of Torrid Holdings, a direct-to-consumer apparel brand specializing in plus-size clothing.)
Sean Michael Gross, the head of WMG’s classical music unit in the UK, has added North America to his remit. As vice president of Warner Classics UK & North America, Gross will split his time between London and the States, and continue to report to Warner Classics president Alain Lanceron. The California native joined Warner in 2021 and in that short time has grown the label’s market share and workeed with a roster that includes Fatma Said and Abel Selacoe, among others. Prior to joining WMG, Gross accumulated professional credits at IMG Artists, 21C Media Group and Askonas Holt. “Sean has been a tremendous asset to our global Classics team in the last couple of years,” said Lanceron. “He is always at the forefront of change in the classical music sector, taking an innovative approach that embraces the future.”
The Orchard‘s largest office outside of NYC has given its co-leaders some title bumps. Effective immediately, Ian Dutt has been elevated from managing director to president of UK operations, while Chris Manning will now put managing director, UK and Europe on his business cards instead of general manager. Both are based in London — where they oversee a team of 150-plus employees and will continue to lead global efforts and day-to-day operations for the Sony-owned distribution company. Dutt joined Orchard in 2016 as part of its merger with Sony RED UK, where he was MD. Manning began his Orchard journey in 2008 and has held a plethora of positions there including label and operations manager, and senior director of international operations. They’ll continue to report to Colleen Theis, president and COO. “Ian and Chris will continue to spearhead operations for our artist and label partners, expand our network, and seek out amazing independent talent in our second biggest market,” said Theis. “Together, they are an unparalleled team who work tirelessly to connect our clients from the region to audiences worldwide.”
Bay Area indie label, publisher and distributor EMPIRE elevated industry veteran Elliott Peters to general counsel. Peters, who joined the company in 2020 and was most recently svp of global business, will now oversee EMPIRE’s legal and business affairs and be the fine print point person for all deals with DSPs and retailers. Prior to EMPIRE, Peters spent nearly two years as vp of business and legal affairs at SoundCloud, and before that held executive roles at RDIO — as it was being sold to Pandora — and Apple. He kicked off his music industry career in 2000 at Warner Music Group and over the course of 10 years at the major, rose to svp of head of digital and legal affairs. “Elliott has been tremendous in helping EMPIRE scale globally,” said EMPIRE CEO and founder, Ghazi. “As we continue to enter new markets around the world, Elliott will spearhead our efforts worldwide.”
Laura Mendoza joined Sony Music Publishing as managing director of its Colombia office, effective immediately. She’s based in Bogotá and reports directly to Jorge Mejia, Sony Music Publishing president & CEO, Latin America and U.S. Latin. A creative executive with 20-plus years in the music industry, Mendoza most recently served as head of label and artist solutions Central America, Andean & Southern Cone Region at Believe Distribution Services. Prior to that, she worked at Altafonte Music Network and at EMI Music Colombia. In her new role at Sony Music Publishing, she’ll be responsible for overseeing SMP Colombia’s business operations and advancing its growth initiatives, working closely with the company’s Latin America and U.S. Latin teams, as well as industry partners across the region. “It is an honor to work alongside so many talented professionals across the company,” Mendoza says. “Both the challenge and the opportunity of developing the careers of such a fantastic roster will allow me to contribute to a better industry and to the growth of SMP songwriters globally.” –Sigal Ratner-Arias
ICYMI: BMG terminated about 40 employees on Oct. 27, including executive vp of global repertoire Fred Casimir and senior vp of global repertoire Jason Hradil. The cuts effectively halted its international marketing department for recordings as well as its Modern Recordings label … Sounds Australia veteran Esti Zilber will take the reins at the national music export body, succeeding Millie Millgate as executive producer.
Kobalt promoted Sean Dishman to senior director of creative. The Los Angeles-based exec has clocked nine and a half years at the publishing administration company and was most recently creative director, having signed acts such as Madison Cunningham, Mac DeMarco, Jamila Woods, Poppy and Magdalena Bay, as well as some of Kobalt’s more whimsically named clients like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. Kobalt also credits Dishman with major assists in releases by Lil Yachty, The Wombats and Yeek, among others. “[Dishman’s] knowledge & passion for music spills over into all that he does for our clients,” glowed Jamie Kinelski svp and head of West Coast creative. “His impeccable taste makes him a valued member of our global creative team, and I am thrilled to see continued growth at Kobalt.”
Nashville-based writer/artist development company Eclipse Music Group promoted Penny Gattis to partner. As a co-owner, Gattis will continue overseeing the publishing division, while taking on an expanded role in the overall strategic direction of the firm, including the Eclipse Management and Penumbra Records divisions. Gattis joined Eclipse as general manager of publishing in 2020 and has since been instrumental in earning cuts with artists including Morgan Wallen, Luke Bryan and Jake Owen, as well as sync placements with brands including Lexus, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Gattis’s career also includes time at Round Hill Music, BMI and Tom-Leis Music. “Penny has the perfect combination of creativity, tenacity and relationships to support our creative clients and to advance Eclipse to the next level,” said Kurt Locher, principal of Eclipse Music Group.
Entertainment business management firm FBMM has named Jen Conger and Erica Rosa as owners. Conger has expertise in royalty analysis, domestic and international touring, sponsorship and endorsement deal negotiations, commercial insurance and estate planning. She oversees over $90 million in revenue each year on behalf of her clients. Conger also became the first female associate business manager in the firm’s history, and five years later, was promoted to business manager. Rosa joined FBMM as the firm’s first full-time royalty employee and was named vp, royalties and contract compliance in 2021. From 2020 to 2023, she relocated to Los Angeles to help establish the company’s Los Angeles office. Rosa has played an essential role in multiple eight- and nine-figure catalog sales and also oversaw unpaid royalty recoveries and prevention of loss revenues of over $200 million.
Blue Raincoat Music, an artist management, publisher and label all rolled into one, increased it London office by four in one fell swoop. Founded in 2014 by Robin Millar and former Chrysalis CEO Jeremy Lascelles, the Reservoir-owned company welcomes…
Dan Walton, project manager of catalogue reporting to Dermot James. Previously a product manager at Demon Music Group.
James Batsford, project manager reporting to Dermot James. Previously a freelance label consultant, but before that managed releases at Domino Records.
Ben Asplin, copyright manager of commercial music operations reporting to Tina McBye. Previously a royalties manager at BMG.
Tian Anderson, artist management assistant reporting to Amy Frenchum and Rupert King.
SMACK added Jaice Cousins as digital coordinator. The Ohio native and Belmont University graduate previously served as product data management coordinator for Warner Music Group. In her new role, Cousins will oversee SMACK’s social media management across all digital platforms, as well as contributing to marketing campaigns and strategy for SMACK clients including Walker Hayes, Kylie Morgan and Jenna Davis. Cousins will report to director of marketing and artist development Molly Bouchon.
“Outlaws & Mustangs” singer Cody Jinks has put together a new, independent team as he gears up for the release of his next album in 2024. The team includes Malia Barrett (president, Late August Records), Amber Dee (director of tour marketing), Joe Greenwald (vp of radio and streaming, Late August Records), Logan Hacker (day to day manager), Keith Kilgore (tour manager) and Liz Slyman (director of marketing). Jinks said in a statement, “As my team and I traverse the next part of this journey, it’s hard not to think that now I am truly more independent than ever. That is exciting.”
Point72 Ventures hired Brett Kernan as a new advisor at the investment firm. Since its 2016 launch by New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, Point72 has invested in 120-plus fintech, enterprise and consumer companies, including Range Media, Mirror and Hook. According to Kernan, he holds the distinction of being employee #1 at music tech company Splice, where he handled music partnerships for over seven years before co-founding early-stage investment group Wave7, where he has served as individual advisor for Soundful and JioSaavn.
The MAP Fund, a financial supporter of original live performance projects across the United States and its territories, appointed David Blasher as executive director. He had been interim executive director since the beginning of the year. Prior to joining MAP Fund, Blasher was director of global legal operations and innovation at NBCUniversal. MAP Fund also appointed Meital Waibsnaider as its new board chair and Ron Ragin as the inaugural director of programs.
Multi-discipline AI company Futureverse announced that Artist Partner Group founder and CEO Mike Caren has joined as a founding partner of its text-to-music venture called JEN. Expected to release in early 2024, Jen can form up-to three minute songs as well as help producers with half-written songs through offering ‘continuation’ and ‘in-painting’ as well. Other JEN principles include Futureverse co-founders Shara Senderoff and Aaron McDonald, as well as Alex Wang, the company’s head of AI research.
Last Week’s Turntable: Three Six Zero Adds Caron Veazey as Partner
Concord announced the completion of its $468 million acquisition of the Round Hill Music Royalty Fund on Thursday (Nov. 2), officially completing the year’s biggest catalog deal. The deal includes over 150,000 songs, among them works by The Beatles and tunes recorded by Elvis Presley, Meatloaf, James Brown and Billie Holiday, but also marked a pivotal moment for publicly traded royalty funds and Concord’s scale of business.
Concord CEO Scott Valentine, who succeeded Scott Pascucci in February, spoke to Billboard about the deal, what it says about the state of the music royalties market and how Concord plans to deal with the headwinds that currently face the music industry.
On Oct. 31, you closed the acquisition of Round Hill Music Royalty Fund. Why was it attractive to Concord and what does it say about the state of the song catalog market?
When you look at the landscape of acquisitions of scale and quality, [Round Hill’s] assets had been on our radar for a while. Our view was that the stock price of the company wasn’t giving the appropriate fair value to what the assets were worth. Josh was one of the early proponents of the notion of music assets as financial assets. We have similar backgrounds, having started in investment banking. The quality of assets that Round Hill had accumulated was remarkable, in terms of the breadth, the genres and the ability for these assets to be used in film and television. There are Beatles songs in here for God’s sake. I’m referring to these things as assets. They’re works of art, really, that have stood the test of time from a revenue perspective.
You’ve indicated that this deal counters the broader narrative that the music royalty market has deflated over the last year or so. Why?
Our deal proves that from an institutional perspective the underlying value of copyrights is still there. We’ve just gone through the first-ever cycle of price increases at the DSPs. It seems, knock on wood, that the impact on churn has been within the tolerance levels [of customers]. You have continued growth in countries around the world that have never in the history of the music business been significant sources of legitimate revenue. We are now expecting fairly regular price increases [by the DSPs] in mature markets. So, if you believe in the long-term trends that suggest the value of music should increase over the mid-term. Then, as institutional investors, it comes down to what is your time horizon?
But with Concord acquiring one publicly listed music royalty fund, and Hipgnosis investors voting to possibly wind up the Hipgnosis Songs Fund, doesn’t this spell the end of the publicly traded music royalty fund experiment?
The story isn’t written yet on Hipgnosis. Their shareholders and board still have time to [explore options]. The thing that strikes me about the commentary around Hipgnosis has been the fundamental belief by shareholders in the underlying value of the assets it owns. Shareholders rejected the sale of those assets because they seemed to fundamentally believe the value of those assets was greater than [what they could get in that) proposed in the sale.
The question is whether a publicly traded fund is or isn’t the right vehicle to access returns. We’ve tapped the asset-backed securities space and have done very well. There is certainly private investment happening and it continues to happen. I still see significant institutional interest in this space. We are still getting inbound requests from artists, managers, etcetera, asking us to look at assets for sale. The underlying market for assets is robust. Because interest rates have gone up, the high end of the price scale has come down. But there is still plenty of activity where the prices make sense.
How do you view Concord’s creative mission and direction?
We built the company over time around our catalog. We have an extraordinary catalog of works that span over a century. Because we’ve been financed by pension funds and institutional investors, the cash flow of the catalog and investing in catalogs has been part of how we grow the company. But I’m keenly focused on the notion that we are not a fund. We are a fully functional organic music company. You can’t be a music company without creating new art and discovering new artists and exposing those new artists to the world. They will create the next remarkable piece of art that 50 years from now people talk about buying. Concord has the scale now and the relationships to be a leader in catalog acquisition and exploitation but also front-line investment. And on the music publishing side, we have really grown that business over the last three to four years. We have the writers of some of the largest songs in the world. One of ours co-wrote most of the last two Harry Styles records. On the recorded side, we’ve always been in more niche genres — jazz, bluegrass, adult contemporary. We have not been in the front-line pop business or R&B or hip-hop. Those genres have always been the domain of the majors. It’s because it takes a significant amount of marketing expenditure and recording…. That said, we’re now the size that we can compete occasionally to get a few artists in those genres. I think it’s important to grow that business.
We have seen layoffs hit different music companies over the last 18 months. Do you feel your team is in good shape? Are you looking to make any pivots in strategy or structure?
From a senior exec position, [former chief label officer] Tom Whalley stepped back, so we had to find a replacement. That’s why we got Tom Becci. Because he is taking on this new role, there is a little bit of tweaking that will go on — the integration of frontline and catalog. How people report up through the recorded music division and how people spend their time may take some tweaking. But it’s a structural shift —reporting changes. I feel like we’ve always thought about the business and growth in a careful way so that we hopefully did not over hire or put people in situations where, if there was a retrenchment in the business, we had challenges. I don’t see the need for wholesale changes or layoffs in the near term.
What is the thinking behind putting frontline and catalog under the same roof?
From our perspective, the issue with catalog versus frontline is you’re really talking about a relationship with an artist. If we have an artist on one of our frontline labels who also has catalog, having two different divisions working that artists’ life work creates some weird, unintended division when the artist is hoping to have one team of people. So, it’s an alignment to get into the way the artist is thinking about their own work. There is an industry tendency to spend a lot of work on an artist’s latest album for good reason. But in the world we live in today, an artist’s older works can be reactivated very quickly in tandem with the release of a new album. We hired Tom largely because he’s had a little bit of everything. He has worked in catalog, frontline at Universal, in management. He’s got perspective from all these different angles.
What is happening with Concord’s theatrical division?
We own Rodgers and Hammerstein. We rep 30,000 theatrical rights. It’s a sneaky, large part of our business. It’s a very interesting corner of our business that we’ve built through acquisitions in the last five years. We did those acquisitions [starting in] 2018, and the challenge has been that a lot of our business is licensing to schools and universities that were impacted during Covid. We were also a producer in Hadestown, and an investor in Some Like It Hot. We are continuing to invest in new shows on Broadway and repping works that are going out on tour. There is a fair amount of investment going on there.
What are revenues going to come in at this year?
I think we’re going to come in around the mid-$600 million range. We’ve been growing pretty consistently.
How much debt does the company carry?
The ABS was $1.8 billion and then we just did the separate tranche with Apollo for $500 million. We have a revolver as well with a consortium of banks. I don’t remember that balance, but we did not use up all of our dry powder [on the Round Hill deal]. One of the reasons we wanted to do the initial bond offering with Apollo was that we thought there was an opportunity to go back to the market when we wanted to finance acquisitions. We think there is going to be a rinse and repeat component to our access to that market.
Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler is facing a second lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a minor decades ago, this time by a woman who says he forcibly kissed and groped her in New York City in 1975.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Nov. 2) in New York court, former teen model Jeanne Bellino says she has suffered “severe and permanent emotional distress” over the incidents, which allegedly occurred over a single day in the summer of 1975 when she was 17 and Tyler was 27.
“By 1975, Tyler had acquired wealth, stature, and power as a result of his career and status as a rock star,” Bellino’s lawyers write. “Tyler used his power, influence, and authority, as a well-known musician to sexually assault Plaintiff.”
In her lawsuit, Bellino claims that she and a friend had arranged to meet Aerosmith in Manhattan. While they were allegedly walking down Sixth Avenue with his entourage, she says Tyler pushed her into a phone booth.
“While holding her captive, Tyler stuck his tongue down her throat, and put his hands upon her body, her breasts, her buttocks, and her genitals, moving and removing clothing and pinning her against the wall of the phone booth,” her lawyers write. “As Tyler was mauling and groping Plaintiff, he was humping her pretending to have sex with Plaintiff.”
During the incident, Bellino says she could feel that “Tyler’s penis was erect and it was evident to her as he rubbed it against her that he was not wearing underwear and wearing thin pants.”
Because she was “relying upon her friend for transportation,” the woman’s lawyers say, a “dazed, confused, and shocked” Bellino continued with the group to the Warwick Hotel, where the band was allegedly staying.
“At the hotel, they entered through a bar entrance and there, Steven Tyler again pinned Plaintiff against the wall, put his tongue down her throat and started humping Plaintiff, simulating sex,” the lawsuit says.
Tyler then allegedly left and returned to his room, telling Bellino he would call her up later. Sitting in the lobby “sobbing and afraid,” she alleges that a call eventually came, but she says she instead fled the hotel with the help of a doorman and a sympathetic cab driver, who took her home to Queens. She claims she “immediately shared the horror she suffered with her sister, still crying uncontrollably.”
“As a result of the sexual assault, Plaintiff was hospitalized and medicated,” her lawyers write. “Plaintiff has continued to require medication to cope with the sexual assault and has suffered long term physical injury associated with the trauma.”
A rep for Tyler did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
The new case comes just under a year after Tyler was sued by Julia Holcomb, who claims that the rocker repeatedly assaulted her for three years starting in 1973, when she was just 16 years old. Holcomb claims to be the girl Tyler referred to in his memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?, when he wrote he “almost took a teen bride” and convinced her parents to grant him guardianship over her.
“She was 16, she knew how to nasty, and there wasn’t a hair on it,” Tyler wrote in the book passage that’s quoted in the lawsuit.
Tyler has denied the accusations and moved to dismiss the case in April. However, his arguments raised eyebrows at the time, as one of his defenses was that he was immunized against the allegations because he had been granted legal custody over Holcomb.
Like Holcomb’s case, Bellino’s new lawsuit cites a so-called look-back law that allows alleged victims to bring cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Bellino cites the Gender Motivated Violence Act, which was amended last year to add a two-year lookback window that began on March 1.
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.