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New York University (NYU) and Sony Corporation have announced the launch of a new institute at the school through which students will have access to Sony audio technology, be given real-world opportunities and more.
Formally dubbed the Sony Audio Institute for Music Business and Technology, the institute will be based within NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, whose leadership and faculty co-created it alongside Sony’s personal entertainment business. Through the partnership, students enrolled in Steinhardt’s music business and music technology degree programs will have access to Sony audio technology, including 360 Reality Audio and the 360 Virtual Mixing Environment — both of which will be outfitted in the newly-named Sony Audio Institute Studio at NYU’s Brooklyn campus.
NYU’s Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL) will also receive input from Sony researchers and engineers in conducting its research on music and audio technologies. Current areas of focus at MARL include music and auditory perception and cognition; machine listening and music information retrieval; spatial and immersive audio; and music in the health and rehabilitation sciences.
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The institute will additionally offer workshops, internships and special events to students, while NYU venues “will present student-driven programming that bridges the gap between academic learning and real-world industry experiences,” offering students “a platform for hands-on innovation and collaboration,” according to a press release.
Through the institute, NYU will also establish a scholarship program to assist undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students at NYU Steinhardt “who demonstrate financial need and academic merit with a preference for students who have an interest in pursuing research or careers in the audio industry,” the release adds.
The institute, which has been established for an initial 10-year term, is set to open this spring, with NYU Steinhardt clinical professor and music industry veteran Larry S. Miller serving as inaugural director. Miller will also continue serving as the director of the music business program at NYU Steinhardt until fall 2025.
“It is an honor to establish this collaboration with New York University, one of the world’s premier music schools, renowned for its long-standing legacy of producing some of the audio industry’s top talent,” said Kimio Maki, president/CEO at Sony Corporation, in a statement. “Through this collaboration, we look forward to inspiring creativity for the next generation of music creators and witness how their artistry will influence the music industry for years to come.”
NYU president Linda G. Mills added, “We are excited and grateful that Sony has chosen NYU Steinhardt to collaborate on this important initiative, which will create new opportunities for our amazingly talented students through scholarships, internships, research fellowships, and other unrivaled experiences. This forward-looking initiative will not only create new opportunities for creative expression, it will give our students a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing industry. I’d like to thank the team at Sony and everyone at NYU who worked tirelessly to make this dream a reality.”
Miley Cyrus seems unlikely to immediately escape a copyright lawsuit filed over allegations that her Grammy-winning “Flowers” infringed the Bruno Mars song “When I Was Your Man.”
A Los Angeles federal judge “repeatedly indicated” at a live court hearing Monday that he would likely deny a motion to dismiss the case filed last year by attorneys for Cyrus, according to a report by Rolling Stone.
In that motion, the singer had argued that the plaintiff in the case – not Mars himself, but an financial entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought out the rights of one of his co-writers – lacked the necessary legal “standing” to pursue its claims.
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But at the hearing, Judge Dean D. Pregerson appeared skeptical, according to RS – at times seeming to endorse arguments from Tempo’s lawyers that granting the motion would gut longstanding music industry practices. He reportedly asked Cyrus’ lawyer why anyone would buy partial shares in songs “knowing they could never enforce it” without the consent of all the other songwriters.
The judge did not immediately decide the motion at Monday’s hearing and will instead issue a written ruling in the weeks or months ahead.
“Flowers,” which spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100, has been linked to “Your Man” since it was released in January 2023. Many fans immediately saw it as an “answer song,” with lyrics that clearly referenced Mars’ song. The reason, according to internet sleuths, was that “Your Man” was a favorite of Cyrus’ ex-husband Liam Hemsworth – and her allusions were a nod to their divorce.
When “Flowers” was first released, legal experts told Billboard that Cyrus was likely not violating copyrights simply by using similar lyrics to fire back at the earlier song – a time-honored music industry tradition utilized by songs ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” to countless rap diss records.
But Tempo sued in September, claiming “Flowers” had lifted numerous elements beyond the clap-back lyrics, including “melodic and harmonic material,” “pitch ending pattern,” and “bass-line structure.” Tempo, which had purchased a fractional share in the song from co-writer Philip Lawrence, argued it was “undeniable” that Cyrus’ hit “would not exist” if not for “Your Man.”
In her first response in November, attorneys for Miley said that the total lack of involvement from Mars and the song’s two other co-writers was not some procedural quirk in the case, but rather a “fatal flaw” that required the outright dismissal of the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff unambiguously [says] that it obtained its claimed rights in the ‘When I Was Your Man’ copyright from only one of that musical composition’s four co-authors,” wrote Peter Anderson, the star’s lead attorney. “That is a fatal and incurable defect in plaintiff’s claim.”
In a statement at the time, Tempo Music lead counsel Alex Weingarten told Billboard that the argument from Cyrus was “intellectually dishonest” and that the group clearly had standing to pursue the lawsuit: “They’re seeking to make bogus technical arguments because they don’t have an actual substantive defense to the case.”
If the motion is denied, lawyers for Cyrus will likely shift focus to those substantive arguments. In previous filings, they have argued that the two songs have “striking differences” and that any similarities are not covered by copyright law: “The songwriter defendants categorically deny copying, and the allegedly copied elements are random, scattered, unprotected ideas and musical building blocks.”
When Luke Combs’ team won road crew of the year at the CMA Touring Awards on March 3, it marked a passing of the baton — or, more accurately, a passing of the road case — as Combs’ crew took control of a trophy that Chris Stapleton had carted around the country and across the Atlantic during 2024.
Last year marked the first time that the Country Music Association honored an entire crew, and Team Stapleton decided during a post-awards celebration to take the award out where it had been won: on the stages, on the highways and in the back of semi-trucks that took the All-American Road Show from Nashville to the people.
The trophy was unloaded at every venue and placed somewhere on, or near, the stage as a reminder to all of Stapleton’s employees of the reputation they had created. The crew of the year hardware visited the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, The O2 in London and the set of NBC’s Saturday Night Live in New York, just to pick out a few spots on its itinerary.
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“They can never change that,” tour manager Jason Hecht says. “We’re always the first name on the trophy. For us, that’s a very cool thing, and to get to carry it around, and hopefully set a little bit of a precedent, that was definitely a really big sense of pride for us.”
Stapleton’s team had pride in the gig before there was ever a trophy to recognize it. The team had to have been working hard to get that first crew award in a line of work that’s grueling at its very foundation.
“A lot of these people are up at 6 a.m., 7 a.m. — first people in the door, and they’re not walking out until you’ve got doors closing, sometimes in the morning with trucks rolling away,” says Stapleton’s manager, Red Light Management’s Clay Hunt. “There’s ebbs and flows throughout the day, but this is really long, hard work.”
If they do that work correctly, most of the concertgoers won’t give a thought to the quasi-miracle that took place in the venue, as a stage was constructed and complicated sound and lighting was installed all on the day of that particular show.
“I always kind of look at it like a sports official, a referee,” Hecht says. “If somebody’s saying your name, then something’s gone wrong. By definition, your job is to be in the shadows and to stay out of the way.”
The work is likely appreciated most by Stapleton who, along with his wife/band member, Morgane Stapleton, makes it a point to look after their team. She insisted on having a women’s bus for the female members of the crew, they remember employees’ birthdays with gifts and celebrations, and when several on the team came down with an illness during their recent Australian tour, they didn’t even ask about what kind of expenses might be involved in their recovery. They made sure the employees got medical attention, a place to recuperate and plane tickets to catch up to the tour once they had rebounded.
That kind of attentiveness is not surprising for Stapleton. When he left the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards in Frisco, Texas, he saw the roadies hard at work and picked up a blower to help clean up confetti. He is known, according to his team, to greet the local crew at the end of a show and recognize their role in his success as they prepare to tear it all down.
“I like to play music,” Stapleton said when his team won the crew of the year honor. “Everybody [involved] helps me do that every night in ways that would not be possible in any way, shape or form if everybody wasn’t at the top of their game.”
The CMA rules around the crew of the year trophy don’t allow consecutive wins, though individual members of a team can still collect honors. Two Stapleton employees — tour videographer/photographer of the year Andy Barron and backline technician of the year Derek Benitez — were with Stapleton in Australia and unable to claim their awards in person this year. But the team watched a CMA livestream of the event from Down Under and saw the owner of Stapleton’s PR firm, Sacks & Co.’s Carla Sacks (who also reps Combs), win publicist of the year. Sacks was visibly emotional.
“I really was very overcome in a way I didn’t expect in that room,” she allows. “To look out at that community of people that rarely wants, or gets, the spotlight, and then to be recognized by those peers, hit me in a way I wasn’t really prepared for.”
In the days after his win, Barron kept at the job in Australia and New Zealand, a camera in his hands every day, constantly looking for new angles on the same songs and the same people as he documents Stapleton’s work for social media and for posterity. Even as he moves about the arenas and amphitheaters, he’s cognizant that after the artist and crew head for the next city, they leave an impression behind them.
“We want every person who’s working at the venue — the promoter, everyone involved at the place that is opening their doors up to us — we want them to be excited when we’re coming back,” Barron says. “We’ve just always treated every show like that, and everyone on our team has the same mentality.”
Mirroring the one-nighters that it represents, the crew of the year trophy moves on after one year to its next recipient, though it will still carry a plaque with Stapleton’s name — and the names of each of his team members — as Combs takes it back on the road. In some cases, the award will revisit concert halls where Stapleton carted it in 2024. But it’s certain to expand its travels with Combs’ entourage.
“We’re excited for the Luke Combs team and for them to continue on,” Hunt says. “It sounds like they’re going to try to carry on the tradition.”
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl says the major is willing to forgo buying an indie distributor if it can achieve the same long-term gains by building in-house what would likely cost hundreds of millions to acquire.
“I’ve looked at all distribution companies over the last 18 months … and what I can tell you is that we’re not willing to grow this at all costs,” Kyncl said. “We have an incredible technology team … and they have been building features already for a year and a half. This way you get to the same outcome much more efficiently.”
The Warner Music Group (WMG) head made the comments during a wide-ranging conversation at a Morgan Stanley conference last week that touched on tech improvements and the motivations for WMG’s management overhaul last September, as well as the company’s deal with Spotify and Kyncl’s conviction that there is still room to raise streaming subscriptions prices in the U.S. and elsewhere.
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Kyncl, whose comments on mergers and acquisitions have been under a microscope since WMG abandoned a bid to acquire Believe last April, admitted that building technology in-house will take longer and doesn’t come with the immediate market share gains that accompany an acquisition.
The new hires and organizational changes Kyncl oversaw in the past two years are aimed at increasing WMG’s market share, he says. Under Ariel Bardin, who joined WMG in February 2023 as president of technology, the company has been working to fix the “boring things” in its core tech and digital supply chain to “ensure the stability of systems and [make] sure they could handle much higher volume for the future” without adding staff. It has also worked on WMG’s artist-focused tech services, like its client portal and the pipelines that can accelerate royalty payments.
Several rounds of staff cuts and a full-blown corporate reorganization removed multiple layers of management, giving Kyncl more direct contact with leaders like Alejandro Duque, president of Warner Music Latin America, and Elliot Grainge, the new CEO of Atlantic Music Group.
The company reported in February that these moves freed up money for investments — such as the $450 million acquisition of Tempo Music‘s catalog — and helped Atlantic claim a half-a-percentage point market share expansion.
Another of Kyncl’s hires, Carletta Higginson — the former Google executive who was hired as chief digital officer — was key to WMG’s direct deal with Spotify, which Kyncl says included assurances of more frequent price increases that distributors can profit from.
“In an industry where we are all tied at the hip together, it is important to approach it collaboratively and build for the future together,” he said. “We have a healthy set-up together with incentive to grow.”
Saying that WMG’s market share has improved since he joined the company, Kyncl called out promising upcoming releases from Ed Sheeran and Lizzo that are scheduled to come out later this year. Because more than half of WMG’s revenue comes from outside the U.S., Kyncl said the company’s global market share, particularly in certain countries, is as important as its U.S. numbers.
For the third straight year at the annual Morgan Stanley event, Kyncl sounded an optimistic note on streaming subscription prices thanks to “the incredible resilience of music.”
“I think there’s quite strong evidence that there’s a lot of room to grow on pricing, especially in … mature markets,” he said.
The legal battle over whether Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On” has reached the U.S. Supreme Court more than a decade after Sheeran’s hit was released.
In a petition filed last week, a company that owns a stake in the rights to Gaye’s 1973 song urged the justices to overturn a November ruling by a lower appeals court, which said Sheeran had done nothing wrong and that the two tracks shared only “fundamental musical building blocks.”
The company, Structured Asset Sales (SAS), says that the ruling unfairly restricted its allegations to written sheet music rather than all elements included in Gaye’s iconic recorded version. That thorny issue, which has also cropped up in other major cases over “Blurred Lines” and “Stairway To Heaven” in recent years, must finally be resolved by the high court, the company says.
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“The rights of thousands of legacy musical composers and artists, of many of the most beloved and enduring pieces of popular music, are at the center of the controversy,” SAS’s lawyers write in the petition, filed with the high court Thursday (March 6).
Such an appeal, known as a petition for a writ of certiorari, faces long odds. The Supreme Court takes less than 2% of the roughly 7,000 cases it receives each year, hearing only the disputes it deems most important to the national legal landscape.
Sheeran has faced multiple lawsuits over “Thinking,” a 2014 track co-written with Amy Wadge that reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and ultimately spent 58 weeks on the chart. He was first sued by the daughter of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the famed 1973 tune with Gaye. That case ended in a high-profile jury verdict that cleared Sheeran of any wrongdoing.
Thursday’s petition came in a separate case filed by SAS, an entity owned by industry executive David Pullman that controls a different stake in Townsend’s copyrights to the legendary song. That suit was rejected in November by the federal Second Circuit appeals court, which said the lawsuit was essentially seeking “a monopoly over a combination of two fundamental musical building blocks.”
“The four-chord progression at issue—ubiquitous in pop music—even coupled with a syncopated harmonic rhythm, is too well-explored to meet the originality threshold that copyright law demands,” the appeals court wrote. “Overprotecting such basic elements would threaten to stifle creativity and undermine the purpose of copyright law.”
Appealing that ruling to the Supreme Court last week, attorneys for SAS argued the lower court had botched the case by relying only on the “deposit copy” — a bare-bones written version of music sent to the U.S. Copyright Office for many old songs. Doing so was not only legally erroneous but also out of step with reality, the company’s lawyers wrote.
“Nobody who understands the music industry would ever suggest that songwriters consult the deposit copies on file with the Copyright Office as part of their creative (or clearance) process,” SAS wrote to the justices. “To the extent they are aware of the music that preceded them, it is from hearing it on the radio, in movies, television and—for the last quarter century—the Internet.”
That ruling was even more legally problematic, SAS’s lawyers write, because it came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision last year that said courts should afford less deference to legal guidance from federal agencies. By siding with Sheeran — and an agency interpretation from the Copyright Office — SAS says the lower appeals court “openly defied this Court.”
Sheeran’s attorneys can file a response brief in the weeks ahead. The court will decide whether or not to hear the case at some point in the next several months.
Venue impressario Peter Shapiro is at it again with a new live music project, announcing Monday (March 10) the launch of Garcia’s, a first-of-its-kind jazz and super club in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood that was built and designed in honor of legendary Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia.
Shapiro has long collaborated with original members of the iconic 1960s band through projects like the Fare Thee Well concerts honoring the band’s 50th anniversary; he also worked as the long-time promoter for late Grateful Dead founding member Phil Lesh. For the new club, he has enlisted the help of Garcia’s family members, including his daughter Trixie Garcia, who said the inspiration for Garcia’s was “a live music club with a comfortable atmosph
The 300-capacity concert venue will feature a full bar and restaurant, says Shapiro, adding that the concept for Garcia’s comes from iconic old supper and jazz clubs of yesteryear, including New York’s Birdland, Harlem’s esteemed Bill’s Place or the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans.
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It’s a different vibe,” says Shapiro, creator of the Brooklyn Bowl venue chain and owner of the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., and the Bearsville Theater near Woodstock, N.Y. “The club is a big open room and it kind of feels like a high-end Vegas-style supper club. It’s a got dark, red and sexy ambiance and most people will be seated in booths, but there will be some [general admission] space for standing on the outer edge for those who want to dance. For some music fans, they’ll travel to Chicago for a show and it’s going to feel like a bucket list experience. But we will also have regulars who come each night for the vibe. Music fans will love Garcia’s — they will feel like this place was built for them.”
Peter Shapiro
Joshua Skolnik
Veteran Chicago promoter Michael Berg has joined the project to support its bookings and management, with an initial lineup that includes the Blind Boys of Alabama, Grace Potter and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The venue will open March 21 with Lesh’s son, Grahame Lesh, playing with his band alongside Nashville improvisational standout and “cosmic country” creator Daniel Donato.
Garcia’s was designed by Bob Quellos of local Chicago architectural firm fc STUDIO alongside designer Tristam Steinberg. The duo developed the venue with art and designs that draw inspiration from Garcia’s life in California and his prominence in psychedelic culture. Garcia’s is decorated throughout with Garcia’s original artwork, as well as previously-unseen family portraits and posters and imagery celebrating Garcia’s favorite films, books and records.
Garcia’s “Spain meets San Francisco” menu was developed by Lowder-Tascarella Hospitality Group with a focus on American comfort food. The kitchen will be led by executive chef Ivy Carthen and the beverage program will be led by award-winning mixologist Chris Lowder. Cocktails will include a tequila-soda called “Mission In The Rain” and a White-Russian variant called “Russian Lullaby”, both honoring his Garcia’s career.
Garcia’s will be powered by Meyer Sound, and performing artists will all have access to a full multitracking and live-streaming setup. The club will feature a full backline, a new Yamaha DM7 console and a state-of-the-art lighting package to enhance the vibe.
A full list of shows can be found below. More at GarciasChicago.live.
Garcia’s
Courtesy Photo
After a difficult 2024 in which a number of major festivals closed their doors for good, Coachella sales were down and Burning Man didn’t sell out, WME global head of festivals Josh Kurfirst says, “Protecting the health of the festival business has become central to everything we do.”
“It’s no longer an incoming call business,” says Kurfirst, the son of Gary Kurfirst, former manager of Talking Heads, the Ramones, Blondie, The B-52s, Jane’s Addiction and Garbage. Early on, the job of most festival agents, Kurfirst explains, was to field offers from festival talent buyers for artists on the WME roster, negotiate where the artist’s name would appear on the festival poster and review daily ticket sales drops. But as the market matured and evolved, he instructed his staff to get more aggressive about pitching WME acts to prospective buyers and finding opportunities for them to bookend tours and live shows around festival appearances.
“Everything is strategic,” he says. “It’s not, ‘Let’s just throw 300 bands on this festival because it’s easy.’ We don’t do things easy.”
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Despite the cancellations of such once-popular festival brands as Faster Horses, Sick New World, Something in the Water and Alter Ego, Kurfirst and his team have plenty of success stories to tell. This year, his team helped land Zach Bryan his first headliner date atop the Stagecoach festival, secure newcomer Benson Boone a top slot on the Coachella lineup, book The Killers as headliners for Lollapalooza and secure headliner slots for Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier and Queens of the Stone Age at Bonnaroo.
2024 was a tough year for festival sales. What happened?
First, it’s important to acknowledge that the festival market has significantly increased in size in the last decade. When I first started, there was a smaller group of giant festivals that had most of the market share. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of a middle tier, a lower tier, a genre-specific tier and a lifestyle branch of festivals. And those have taken some market share away from the crossover contemporaries — the Coachellas, the Lollapaloozas and the Bonnaroos of the world. There’s really something out there for everyone now as long as you’re willing to travel. Look at Morgan Wallen’s new Sand in My Boots festival on the same site as the old Hangout Festival, which had been a steady market for years. Some years it sold out. Some years, it came close, but it never blew out on the on-sale. All of a sudden, Wallen comes in and launches his own festival on the site and it sells out instantly.
Atop a bowl of all-access festival and tour laminates, Kurfirst displays a copy of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s Music in the ’80s book, open to a shot of the Talking Heads, whom his father, Gary, managed.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
What did Wallen do differently from Hangout Festival?
Instead of trying to create an event that appealed to as many people as possible, Wallen created an event that overdelivered to his fan base. He rebranded the festival under his own name and booked more than a dozen similar artists that he believes will connect with his fans. [This year’s lineup includes Bailey Zimmerman, Post Malone, Wiz Khalifa and The War on Drugs.] If you’re a fan of Morgan Wallen, then you won’t want to miss out on the Sand in My Boots festival. And, by the way, if you live in the Southeast, it might be your only chance to see him play this year.
How are overall festival sales so far, compared with 2024?
Last year was interesting. It wasn’t just straight down. It was choppy water. This year is still early. Most of the festivals just announced their lineups, and from what I’m hearing, it’s been positive. The overall market feels like a bounce-back year, and a lot of that has to do with the headliners. We’ve had a solid crop emerge — Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier, for instance. To a young artist like Olivia, these festivals mean something. It’s a notch on her belt and a way to do something in her career that she hadn’t done before.
Kurfirst’s mother, Phyllis, created this framed collage that, in addition to ticket stubs from concerts that Gary promoted, depicts (clockwise from top) Phyllis and her pet huskies; Gary and Phyllis at his parents’ house; and at their alma mater, Forest Hills High School.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
How do you judge success at WME?
It’s not based on quantity or how many festival slots WME artists are on. We’re very selective. We’re building careers. And we want to make sure when it’s our clients, they’re in the right cycle in terms of their music cycle. Typically, that means the artist has new music ready for the fans to discover and plans for either touring or other dates that they want to build momentum behind. They’re going to play the right slot, they’re going to get the right billing, they’re going to get the right money. That’s the time to play the festival. If any of those things are off, we’ll just do our own thing — meaning, we’ll work with a promoter, headline our own tour and continue building their hard-ticket business, which is incredibly important for all our artists.
Are festivals still a healthy launching pad for an artist’s career?
They are a good developing mechanism for new artists, but again, it has to be the right moment. I don’t know that it would make sense to just throw a new artist that doesn’t have any music out on a festival [stage] at 12:30 p.m. when the doors open. That’s a wasted booking. It would be better for that artist to be in cycle, have music out, have some press, garner some reviews ahead of time, so people actually have the ability to do their research and [want to] show up in front of their stage.
Pillows commemorating Madison Square Garden shows by artist clients whom Kurfirst represents in addition to overseeing WME’s festival division.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
The festival market has had an uptick in cancellations in recent years. In that environment, how does WME maintain a positive relationship with promoters?
We look at the promoters as our partners. They’re not on the other side of the table; they’re on the same side of the table. We want them to succeed, and we have their backs. In return, they have our backs, too.
What does it mean to have each other’s backs?
With festivals, artists sometimes have to cancel. Sometimes they get sick, they break a leg, the album gets pushed. Sometimes it’s our clients. Sometimes it’s clients from other agencies. What we do in those situations is we don’t bury our heads in the sand. If it’s a Saturday at 3 p.m. or 7 p.m. or 7 a.m., we’re there for our buyers to fill that slot that suddenly becomes open. And because we book things through one point of contact, the buyer only has to contact one person at WME. That’s his partner, his festival agent, and that festival agent then canvasses the entire roster and can come back with real-time avails within hours.
Kurfirst with his four kids, from left: Landon, 17; Ariela, 11; Eden, 11; and Lucas, 21.
Courtesy of Josh Kurfirst
Are you bullish on the long-term prospects of the festival business?
It’s a very Darwinian environment out there and the strong will survive. There are times where we have to have tough conversations with our promoter partners and come to a fair settlement where our clients feel good, but where we don’t put the promoter out of business. Because that doesn’t help anyone. Make no mistake: When we do a deal, our clients are entitled to 100% of the money if a festival cancels due to poor sales. There are some reasons why a promoter can cancel, like a pandemic. But in most cases, if a festival is canceled, it’s due to poor sales or some sort of promoter breach, and our clients are entitled to 100% of the money. It’s our job to come up with a fair settlement where the client feels good and the promoter is able to get back up on their feet.
What’s one of the most important lessons your father taught you?
He taught me that loving what you do is the single most important decision we make as adults. If you don’t, you can’t bring passion to the job every day. He also taught me about not trying to be someone else. Don’t just go with the trend. He equated that in how he chose the artists he wanted to work with, whether it be the Talking Heads, the Ramones, The B-52s, the Eurythmics, Jane’s Addiction and Mountain. These bands weren’t genre-defining — they invented their genres.
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
For the first time in the history of Billboard’s Publishers Quarterly rankings, Warner Chappell swept the Hot 100 Songs, Top Radio Airplay and Country Airplay charts in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Although the music publisher’s Nashville division typically places first or second on the Country Airplay chart, this is the first time it has topped the Hot 100 publishers ranking and the first time since the third quarter of 2019 that it ranked No. 1 on the Top Radio Airplay list.
Warner Chappell had a stake in 64 songs and a 25.29% market share on the Radio Airplay list, and 49 songs and a 23.62% market share on the Hot 100 Songs list, including the No. 1 song of the quarter for both charts: “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey. The publisher is also home to the No. 1 Top Radio Airplay songwriter for Q4 of 2024, Amy Allen, who wrote Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and six other charting tracks.
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Sony Music Publishing, which was the No. 1 radio and Hot 100 publisher for the third quarter of 2024, ranked second on both charts, with 63 songs on the radio list (a 24.10% market share), and 58 on the Hot 100 (22.68%). Its top song for both charts was also “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”
Universal Music Publishing Group finished third for both the Hot 100 (19.92% market share, 44 songs) and Top Radio Airplay (16.79% market share, 42 songs) charts in the fourth quarter and also held a piece of the Shaboozey smash. With nine songs on the Hot 100 — but none in the top 10 — Kendrick Lamar was the No. 1 songwriter on that chart, thanks to the ongoing success of “Not Like Us.”
Kobalt comfortably finished fourth — the best performance by an independent publisher — on both fourth-quarter charts, twin rankings it frequently holds on these lists. The publisher’s radio airplay market share was 12.81%, and it has 10.89% on the Hot 100. Its biggest songs of the quarter were “Too Sweet” by Hozier (No. 2 on Top Radio Airplay) and “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars (No. 2 on the Hot 100).
BMG ranked fifth on both charts, rising two spots from its radio airplay ranking in third quarter 2024 and up one from its Hot 100 ranking in the same quarter.
From there, the rankings on the radio airplay and Hot 100 charts diverge. This is, in part, due to the rise of Christmas music on the Hot 100 while pop radio continued to play perennial hits during the holiday season. Holiday publisher St. Nicholas ranked sixth on the Hot 100 and peermusic ranked ninth, both thanks to their share of top Christmas songs — “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee (St. Nicholas) and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams (peermusic).
The bottom of the Hot 100 top 10 also held a surprise: OuttaHere is the name under which singer-songwriter Gigi Perez publishes her work. The viral success of her “Sailor Song” makes her the first self-published artist to land on the chart since Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” put her Purple Rabbit Music on the ranking in 2023 and 2024.
A version of this story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
In 1997, David Bowie did something unusual: Rather than sign a standard recording contract, he entered into a licensing agreement with EMI America. Under the terms of the deal, the label would have the rights to more than two dozen of the star’s albums for 15 years, but after that period, those rights reverted back to Bowie. For much of music industry history, this sort of arrangement was rare. “I was at [Bowie’s label] EMI then,” recalls Tim Mandelbaum, an entertainment attorney. “For 99% of the artists on the roster, the label owned the recordings in perpetuity.”
Bowie was once the exception that proved the rule. But today, many artists demand license deals at the start of their career. “If I have an artist with a couple different labels that are interested, it’s fairly easy for them to retain copyright,” says Craig Averill, a music lawyer.
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This is a relatively recent shift, and its long-term impact on the major labels’ business remains unclear. Signing artists to traditional deals, where labels gained ownership of their recordings in perpetuity, allowed the record companies to amass large catalogs which gave them immense power in any subsequent music licensing negotiations — with streaming services, for example. “These labels were built on owning these copyrights,” says Larry Katz, who has spent more than 30 years practicing law in the music industry. “This is a really significant transition: The model going forward is they’re basically renting music for a license period.”
“How sustainable is that over time?” Mandlebaum wonders. “If the majority of deals become agreements where the labels don’t own the recordings and they revert to the artist at some date in the future, what does that mean for the continuing growth of the catalogs that have enabled the majors to remain dominant?”
Songs released in the last five years accounted for nearly 50% of on-demand streams in the U.S. in 2024, according to Luminate’s year-end report. Licensing deals also became increasingly common over the same time period, so presumably a solid chunk of the tracks in that 50% could revert to the artists that made them, slipping out of major label control.
Record companies have been forced to offer artists license deals because these acts can build fan bases and accomplish so much today on their own. The length of the license varies according to how much leverage the artist has. In many cases, “Labels will try to get at least 20 years,” according to Carron Mitchell, a partner at Nixon Peabody.
But if they want an act badly, they make exceptions — Loren Wells, a partner at Wells & Kappel, recently fielded a 10-year license as an opening bid from a major label that hoped to win over one of his clients. “I like the license to be as short as humanly possible,” says Audrey Benoualid, a music attorney. “I try to keep it below 10 years if I can.”
This usually does not mean that the artist gets to sign a license deal and strut away, recordings in hand, a decade later. The license period often kicks in nine to 12 months after the act releases their final album under the agreement. If it takes them five years to turn in the three records they owe the label, for example, the clock on the license doesn’t start counting down until around year six. This is still a significant improvement over a perpetuity deal, though: Under the U.S. Copyright Act, artists who signed away their recordings for life get a chance to regain these rights after 35 years, but only Stateside, not internationally.
In most license deals, acts with little commercial success are unlikely to get their recordings back — the rights only revert to the artist if they recoup their expenses. Depending on the deal they negotiated, though, “they may be able to buy themselves out,” says Ray Garcia, a partner at Rimon Law, “either by paying off the unrecouped balance or 110% or 120% of what’s unrecouped.”
Even when labels have to give out licenses, they have ways of holding on to recordings for longer. “They’ll try to build in options where at the end of the initial period, they can re-license the rights for five or 10 more years by paying an advance equal to several years’ worth of net profits,” says Jonathan Altschul, another music lawyer. Labels also try to insert “matching rights” into the initial deal, according to Josh Binder, a partner at Rothenberg Mohr & Binder, “so that whatever the artist’s next deal is, the original label gets a chance to match it.”
Even so, it is safe to assume that more artists have license deals with major labels now than at any point in the history of the music industry. Altschul “can’t remember the last time” he has ceded ownership of rights when negotiating a recording agreement for an artist client.
The major labels’ business has changed significantly in recent years, and it’s possible that the shift toward licensing deals might not matter much to them. “These are public companies now, and their duty is to their shareholders,” Wells explains. “Quarterly earnings reports have outsized importance. If that means licensing the track for 10 years [to boost those earnings], sure — whatever it takes to keep shareholders happy.”
While songs released in the last five years accounted for nearly 50% of on-demand streams in the U.S. in 2024, that trend has been relatively constant since 2020, according to Luminate data. And during that period, tracks that came out in the last 15 years make up close to 80% of on-demand U.S. streams. If this pattern holds in the future, and the majors continue to obtain licenses that last 15, 20, or 25 years, attorneys say the labels will still hold sway over most premier artists’ catalogs during their peak streaming years — that crucial time when the music is generating the most income.
Record companies could face a challenge, though, if several successful artists with short-term license agreements decide to take their catalogs elsewhere when their deals are up. Oren Agman, an entertainment attorney who worked for a major before founding his own law practice, believes that “license deals definitely have a negative impact on the labels’ business.” He estimates that a record company could collect “millions” in additional royalty income from a popular album in a perpetuity deal compared to a 10-year license agreement.
However, as Mandelbaum puts it, moving a catalog “is a gigantic pain” for an artist, “and some inefficiencies and loss of income occur during that switchover” — it’s often easier for a star to stay put and work with the team that is already managing their music, paying out producers and songwriters. On top of that, Mandelbaum points out that “the incumbent label can offer things to the artist that nobody else can offer.” In exchange for extending the license, for example, the record company can improve the artist’s cut of profits on the music they’ve already put out.
Still, as license deals become more common and license periods decrease, labels will have to return to the negotiating table earlier, and with less leverage than they had in the days of perpetuity deals. “An artist who signed a deal when they could barely pay rent gets a second chance at valuing their music,” says Lulu Pantin, a music lawyer. “The artist may have learned how the industry works, have a proven track record of financial success, and be in a position to make new demands in order for the label to keep earning on the original songs.”
In a license-happy world, Altschul predicts that the recorded side of the music business may start to look more like the music publishing industry. “We saw a wave of acquisitions in publishing over the last three to five years,” he says. “In many cases, that was because artists had either retained partial ownership of their publishing catalogs or had gotten reversions.”
“I suspect that 10 or 15 years down the line, we may see that happen more with recorded music,” Altschul continues. “Labels will have to write big checks to reacquire the rights.”
Live Nation, Sphere Entertainment Co. and MSG Entertainment stocks fell this week as markets were hurt by fears about the impacts of U.S. tariffs, ongoing inflation and government layoffs.
Live Nation, which reported record full-year results on Feb. 20, dropped 11.0% to $127.51, erasing the stock’s entire year-to-date gain. Sphere Entertainment Co. dropped 18.8% to $35.45 following the company’s quarterly earnings on Monday (March 3). MSG Entertainment slipped 7.7% to $31.86.
U.S. stocks had their worst week in months. The Dow slipped 2.1%, the S&P 500 dropped 3.1% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.5%. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 dipped 1.5%.
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On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the U.S. economy would go through an adjustment period with less government spending. “The market and the economy have just become hooked,” he said. “We’ve become addicted to this government spending, and there’s going to be a detox period.”
Doubts about live music’s ability to sustain growth in the current economic climate were captured in a CFRA analyst’s note. “Live entertainment and exorbitant ticket prices have raised investor concerns whether record demand will recede with a rising household cost of living and lower consumer confidence,” analyst Kenneth Leon wrote in a March 5 note to investors.
Nevertheless, Leon maintained its $135 price target and upgraded Live Nation shares to “hold” from “sell.” The company, he added, “is a market leader in tickets and continues to fund large capital expenditures to expand its own venues.”
Sphere Entertainment Co. shares fell 13.6% on Monday (March 3), the day the company released quarterly earnings, and slipped another 6% through Friday (March 7). Revenue fell 2% to $308.3 million from the prior-year period, although revenue for the Sphere venue was up 1%. At the company’s MSG Networks division, revenue dropped 5% and its $34.2 million operating profit turned into a $35 million operating loss.
Numerous analysts made downward revisions to their Sphere models after the earnings release. Benchmark dropped its price target to $35 from $36. JP Morgan cut its price target to $54 from $57. And Seaport cut its earnings-per-share estimate for the current quarter to -$2.03 from -$1.66.
Other companies in the live entertainment space also declined. MSG Entertainment fell 7.7%, Vivid Seats dropped 3.9%, Eventbrite dipped 2.1% and German concert promoter CTS Eventim lost 0.6%. Many other companies that depend on consumer discretionary spending also fell this week, including Expedia Group (down 6.9%), Hyatt Hotels (down 3.7%) and cruise operator Carnival Corporation (down 13.7%).
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) dropped for the third consecutive week, falling 6.3% to 2,449.61. Although the index is up 15.3% year to date, it has fallen 11.1% in the last three weeks. Most of the index’s most valuable companies were among the week’s winners. Other than Live Nation, none of the 13 stocks that lost ground are among the index’s most valuable companies — with one major exception.
Spotify, the BGMI’s largest single component, dropped 12.6% to $531.71, putting the stock 18.5% below its all-time high set on Feb. 13. With a market capitalization of roughly $105 billion, Spotify is large enough to influence the fortunes of an index that contains 19 other stocks. Despite having a few off weeks, however, Spotify is the best-performing music stock of the last year and has gained 14.0% year to date.
Universal Music Group (UMG) shares rose 6.8% on Friday following the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release on Thursday (March 6), though itended the week up just 3.3%. Warner Music Group appeared to benefit from investors’ enthusiasm about UMG’s earnings as its shares rose 2.0% to $34.39.
iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman caused his company’s stock to spike 23% on Thursday after an SEC filing revealed the executive purchased 200,000 shares. Investors noted the CEO’s optimism in his company’s future, and the stock ended a downward slide to finish the week up 3.4% to $1.83.
The week’s biggest gainer, Chinese music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), rose 9.2% to $13.31. TME benefitted from a surge in Chinese stocks as comments made during the country’s parliamentary meetings this week fueled optimism that the government will provide stimulus for Chinese technology companies. The company will release fourth-quarter earnings on March 18.
Cumulus Media was the week’s biggest loser after dropping 27.8% to $0.52. The company revealed on Friday that it received a warning from the Nasdaq stock exchange that it faces a de-listing for failing to meet the minimum shareholders’ equity threshold of $10 million.