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Ron and Angie Roloff, owners of Madison, Wis.-based record store Strictly Discs, have sold the business after 35 years.
Stepping in as the store’s new president/owner is Rick Stoner, who takes over following an 18-year marketing agency career. The Roloffs will continue in their day-to-day roles through the end of 2023 before assuming an advisory relationship with Strictly Discs starting next year as they transition into retirement.
“Angie and I are grateful to our staff and customers, who we’ve had the privilege to work with for 35 years,” said Ron in a statement.
Stoner has served in several vp-level leadership, business development and digital and event marketing roles at prominent consumer brands. He’s a 2006 University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate and a board member at Communications Arts Partners (CAPs), an alumni organization that supports the university’s communications arts department.
“I’ve been a Strictly Discs customer since I was a student here in Madison,” said Stoner in a statement. “I view the store as everything right about the culture of the Madison community and look forward to maintaining that presence. Entrepreneurship has long been a destination for me and my family. Owning Strictly Discs is a dream come true. I can’t wait to meet our dedicated and loyal customers and get to work with our team to grow the business.”
The acquisition includes nearly half a million records, carefully curated over close to four decades. The business will maintain an e-commerce presence, which Stoner views as a key area for growth initiatives such as a subscription-based record club as well as pop-up, event-based record stores.
In June 2024, Strictly Discs is slated to open a second retail location in nearby Cambridge, Wis. in a space that hosts the majority of the store’s inventory.
Several Strictly Discs employees will remain with the business following the transition. They include 14-year employee Evan Woodward, who leads the buying team and works the front counter, as well as assistant manager Mark Chaney. Joining the team are Dru Korab, a record collector, DJ, media production professional and Stoner’s college classmate who will step into a part-time operations role in addition to his minority investment in the business. Also holding a minority investment is Stoner’s friend Kyle Nakatsuji, founder/CEO of Clearcover, principal at American Family Ventures and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
Opened in 1988, Strictly Discs was a subject of Billboard’s “In a Pandemic” series from 2020-2021. During this time, Angie discussed the challenges she and Ron faced and the creative solutions they employed at the store during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Angie tells Billboard that an evaluation of Strictly Discs’ worth, performed during the pandemic, “planted the seed” that ultimately led her and Ron to sell the business. After listing it in early May, they were approached by Stoner in June; a letter of intent was signed in July. The deal finally closed on Oct. 31.
Starting next year, Ron will continue on with the store in an outside buying capacity, while Angie will serve as the “boots on the ground” for the Milwaukee-based Stoner when he’s not in Madison, she says. “We’re invested in his success because we’ve lent him money as part of this process,” Angie continues. “So we’re definitely not leaving and we’ll be available to him really in any capacity that he needs us for.”
Angie says Stoner brought a good mixture of knowing what made the business work while proposing solid ideas about where it could grow: “He already understood that the things that have made Strictly Discs successful are the people and the product and certainly the experience. I think he respects all of that, and he knows that there are areas that he wants to grow the business but he doesn’t want to fundamentally change what we’ve already done.”
At the heart of Strictly Discs’ more than three-decade run is a love story: Angie and Ron met at Strictly Discs in 1994, when Angie was a customer and Ron was working the front counter. In the years since, says Angie, the store has become their baby.
“We don’t have kids and so it’s kind of like Strictly Discs takes that place,” Angie says, adding that with both she and Ron being “super high-strung type A personalities,” even while on vacation, they would end up talking about the store. “That’s the part of it that I’m looking forward to having go away,” she says.
In September, the singer-songwriter Zach Bryan scored his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. He chose not to put out any singles to hype up Zach Bryan in the weeks leading up to its release. “We decided we weren’t dropping any singles for this album because it’s a cohesive project, and that’s the way it needs to be viewed,” says Stefan Max, Bryan’s co-manager and a former major-label A&R executive.
Bryan scored a Billboard Hot 100 hit anyway — “I Remember Everything,” his collaboration with Kacey Musgraves, debuted at No. 1 — but that was just the cherry on top of a winning rollout. “I don’t know how many albums I’ve made at major labels over the last 15 years that have gone on to be incredible, but the label would delay its release because they’re like, ‘We need a big single,’ ” Max explains. “Everything was so singles-driven. Now we’re like, ‘Do we have a good album?’ Then we can build our campaign around that.”
For much of the 21st century, the music industry narrative has been that the album is dying. First came the MP3, which allowed fans to cherry-pick their favorite songs to download. Then came the rise of streaming services, which meant that fans didn’t even have to download music to assemble their personal playlists. They were followed by TikTok, which can transform scraps of songs into hits before they are even finished — rendering a whole three-minute track superfluous and making an album feel like an unnecessary extravagance.
Looking around the pop music landscape today, though, it’s hard to find an artist who is having sustained impact solely on the strength of hit singles. Bryan, Rod Wave, Taylor Swift and Peso Pluma have all commanded attention and chart achievements by releasing albums that listeners engage with from start to finish and return to week after week.
“Albums feel really significant right now,” one senior label executive says. “It’s what a lot of people talk about. It’s what is really driving a lot of discovery.”
In truth, the demise-of-albums lament was probably exaggerated in the first place. That conversation “was always overdone,” says Jeff Vaughn, founder and CEO of Signal Records. “The album represents a definitive artistic statement, and I think fans crave it.”
“We are in an era where individual pieces of music get exposed more readily and more easily than an entire body of work, which speaks to why people think of this as a singles era,” adds Jonathan Tanners, who manages production duo Take a Daytrip and rapper TOBi, among others. Despite that perception, Tanners continues, “We, as an audience, still have a deep reverence for boldness of vision. If you are reaching the [Mount] Rushmore of artistic and commercial heights, you’re making great albums.”
Still, few would deny that the industry was extraordinarily singles-minded in the early years of TikTok, which really took hold in 2019 and 2020. Executives now speak about that era as if emerging from a long hangover. “The period we just went through created a bit of an emptiness that allowed fewer true artists to be seen because labels were following the viral hits,” says Scott Cutler, a songwriter and CEO of Pulse Music Group, which operates a publishing company as well as a recently launched label operation. “Kids burn through those viral songs really fast.”
Signing the artists behind a lot of those viral tracks was not a successful long-term business proposition for many labels. “If somebody’s playing basketball and they make an incredible half-court shot, an NBA scout’s not like, ‘You’re the next LeBron James!’ ” says Jeremy Maciak, a manager and former major-label A&R executive. “That’s what was happening.” Few of the artists who got deals from viral singles were able to repeat the feat.
Backlash to viral-single fever isn’t the only factor boosting the album’s status. The return of the vinyl LP as a commercial tool is also helping. Vinyl sales have grown steadily for 17 years, but jumped by a stunning 46% in 2020 and 51% in 2021, according to Luminate. The increased prevalence of vinyl records can’t help but reinforce the idea that an entire collection of songs represents something significant and worth shelling out $20 to $30.
Luminate determined that 50% of LP buyers don’t have a turntable, which underlines this point even further. They see value in owning an album they can’t even play. Travis Scott’s Utopia is one of the year’s top sellers, boosted by more than 340,000 album sales, without an enduring hit single. Lana Del Rey hasn’t had a top 40 hit as an unaccompanied solo artist in nearly a decade, but she has sold over 500,000 vinyl LPs and more than 145,000 CDs this year.
Vinyl releases aren’t necessary to build an audience devoted to albums, though. Rising rapper Yeat has amassed more than 1.8 billion streams this year, according to Luminate; he doesn’t have a single top 40 hit as a soloist, yet his fans press play on his releases and just keep listening.
Another artist with an impressively dedicated following among music streamers is the rapper Rod Wave, who recently eked out a narrow victory over Doja Cat to spend a second week atop the Billboard 200 with Nostalgia — his third straight No. 1 album. That week, Rod Wave’s biggest single was at No. 33 on the Hot 100, while Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” was No. 1, demonstrating that a big hit may not be enough to send an album to the top.
In this environment, a new term is becoming more and more popular: “world-building,” industry jargon meaning that, for an artist to be successful, listeners need to care about something beyond a 15-second snippet of music on social media. “I don’t think the difference is between people who make albums and people who make singles,” Tanners says. “The difference is between people who have the vision to create unified worlds and people who are either not interested in that or not capable of that.”
“People want to invest in artists who are building their own worlds,” says Ashley Calhoun, president of Pulse Music Group. “There is a real appetite for that coming back around.”
And albums are more conducive to that world-building process, Vaughn notes. “It’s very difficult to do that just around a single,” he says. “Around a more complete artistic statement, all of a sudden the cover art is special, there are experiential events you can do, there are partnerships with brands. You can actually telegraph: ‘This is coming, here’s why it’s important,’ and that’s how you take the next step.”
It’s not lost on music executives how old-fashioned this sounds. Much of the industry bent itself out of shape trying to get singles to pop on TikTok because it seemed like a cheat code — overnight virality as a substitute for the yearslong, painstaking work of building a fan base. But after all those contortions, many of the same old principles still apply.
“Great artists always move albums and move tickets,” Vaughn says. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
While Spotify is planning to start penalizing labels and distributors for egregious instances of streaming fraud, Apple Music quietly rolled out its own strengthened fraud protections — including hitting repeat offenders with “financial adjustments” — more than a year ago, according to an email obtained by Billboard that the platform sent to music industry partners in March. Apple Music’s internal metrics indicate that the policy has already led to a 30% drop in streaming manipulation.
In the March email, the streamer defines manipulation as “the deliberate, artificial creation of plays for royalty, chart, and popularity purposes” as well as “the delivery of deceptive or manipulative content, like an album of 31-second songs.” “In October [2022], we launched new tools and policies designed to prevent stream manipulation on Apple Music,” the email explains. “Since we launched the new tools, manipulated streams have accounted for only 0.3 percent of all streams.”
That 0.3 percent figure is lower than the stats cited by some of Apple Music’s rivals. A Spotify spokesperson told a Swedish newspaper earlier this year that “less than one percent of all streams on Spotify have been determined to be tampered with,” while Deezer has said that it finds 7% of plays to be fraudulent. (This comparison only goes so far, though, because each service might define fraud differently, and not all of them have ad-supported tiers.)
In a statement, an Apple Music spokesperson said the platform “takes stream manipulation very seriously. Apple Music has a team of people dedicated to tracking and investigating any instances where manipulation is suspected. Penalties include cancellation of user accounts, removal of content, termination of distributor agreements, and financial adjustments.”
When Apple Music emailed industry partners in March, the streaming service noted that “despite the low percentage [of fraud], manipulation remains a widespread and persistent problem: That 0.3% of streams came from more than 85,000 albums across hundreds of record labels.”
As a result, the email indicates the company outlined a sharper anti-fraud policy in October 2022, promising to take “remedial actions against content providers with repeated and significant stream manipulation.” This means of incentivizing reform has worked for some — half the distributors that were flagged for fake streaming have reduced manipulation on their content by over 45%, the company said.
To help labels and distributors figure out where fraud is occurring, Apple Music’s email says the platform started sending daily reports detailing “a content provider’s albums with streams held in review.” “After each review,” the email goes on, “we remove manipulated streams and release legitimate plays. At the end of each month, content providers also receive a report with all excluded streams.” (Spotify has now also ramped up the reporting it provides to labels and distributors, according to one executive at a distribution company, “adding a new dimension of seeing repeat offenders.”)
“This all happens before Apple Music pays royalties and tabulates charts,” the email noted. “We block wrongdoers from the primary advantages of stream manipulation and redirect royalties to valid plays of content.”
The last six months have seen a flurry of companies committing publicly to fraud mitigation. More than half a dozen distributors formed “a global task force aimed at eradicating streaming fraud” in June. And when Deezer announced a new partnership with Universal Music Group in September, Michael Nash, UMG’s executive vp and chief digital officer, promised that “fraud and gaming, which serves only to deprive artists their due compensation, will be aggressively addressed.”
An affiliate of private equity firm STG completed its acquisition of Avid Technology in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion. The acquisition, previously announced on Aug. 9, was approved by Avid stockholders on Nov. 2. Under the terms of the deal, Avid stockholders will receive $27.05 per share. Avid common stock ceased trading prior to the opening of trading on Nov. 7 and will no longer be listed on the Nasdaq. Avid will operate as a privately held company and remain headquartered in Burlington, Mass. “By becoming a private company, we believe Avid will be able to achieve the speed of innovation, scale and performance required for us to continue leading the industry forward,” said Jeff Rosica, Avid’s CEO/president, in a statement. “Combined with their significant operational and financial resources, STG brings deep investment experience in the technology sector that will accelerate the achievement of Avid’s strategic vision, building on the momentum of our successful ongoing transformation achieved over the past several years.”
Global content studio The North Road Company is partnering with Two One Five Entertainment — a company co-founded by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter of The Roots — after acquiring a significant stake in the company. The deal establishes creative coordination between the two companies, with North Road planning to finance future Two One Five film, TV and other creative projects to scale the company. “Although we’ve had success thus far, finding an investor and strategic partner like North Road will have an immediate impact on our business, as their superior production capabilities will help us significantly increase our output,” said Questlove in a statement. “Additionally, the capital they are committing provides us the flexibility to independently fund creative ideas, grow our executive team and truly scale the business.”
The Anaheim Ducks and Honda Center announced a partnership with The Offspring to commemorate the 30th anniversary of both the Ducks and Honda Center as well as the band’s breakthrough album, Smash. The collaboration will encompass several crossovers during the Ducks’ 30th anniversary season and beyond, including “Come Out and Play Night with The Offspring” on Feb. 9, 2024. The night will include appearances from the band — which hails from Orange County — along with limited edition and co-branded merchandise. Fans will also receive exclusive perks and rewards during Friday night games at Honda Center throughout the Ducks’ 30th anniversary season. Additionally, the band and the Ducks have teamed up to create Puck Punks: The Offspring Powerplay Hits, a limited-edition vinyl set that will go on sale in the Ducks Team Store on Feb. 9, with a number of copies signed by members of The Offspring and Ducks players to be made available. All proceeds raised will benefit the Anaheim Ducks Foundation.
Universal Music Group India and leading Indian talent management company REPRESENT struck a strategic partnership that will give the REPRESENT roster access to Universal Music Group’s global footprint across distribution, publishing, brands and more to help boost REPRESENT artists’ growth and reach worldwide. The companies will collaborate on artist development and fan engagement, among other areas. REPRESENT artists who will be distributed and supported under the partnership include Anuv Jain, MC Stan, Zaeden, Lost Stories, Yashraj, Hanita Bhambri, Akanksha Bhandari, Kamakshi Khanna, Saahel, Savera, Kayan, OAFF and Jai Dhir.
Icelandic-Chinese artist, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Laufey has extended her deal with label partner AWAL following the successful release of her album Bewitched, which debuted at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 in September. Laufey is nominated for best traditional pop vocal album at next year’s Grammys and is in the middle of a sold-out North American tour.
GoldState Music, a new company launched last year by Charles Goldstuck that was formed to create a diversified portfolio of music copyrights and sound recordings, announced a “significant” investment and a new partnership with funds managed by Flexpoint Ford Asset Opportunities. The investment will help accelerate GoldState’s acquisition of music intellectual property assets, including full catalogs, influential copyrights, master recordings and publishing rights. As part of the deal, GoldState will source new catalog acquisitions and manage the licensing, synchronization and administration for the existing and acquired copyrights. According to a press release, in its first year of operation, GoldState acquired music rights from several artists and songwriters “spanning multiple genres, geographies, and asset types.”
The Daouda Leonard-founded music tech studio CreateSafe raised a $4.6 million seed funding round to launch TRINITI, a generative artificial intelligence music platform designed to make it easier for artists and rights holders to license and monetize their data in generative AI models while offering a platform to manage consent, credit and compensation. TRINITI was previously utilized by Grimes (Leonard’s management client) to distribute works using a cloned version of her voice to all major streaming services; according to a press release, more than 1,000 songs have been created since the project’s launch. TRINITI includes personalized AI tools with an attribution engine that can take the input of voice, sound, writing and imagery to communicate an artist’s musical and artistic vision. The funding round was led by cryptocurrency and blockchain tech investment firm Polychain Capital, with additional backing from Crush Ventures, Anthony Saleh, Paris Hilton (11:11 Media), MoonPay, Chaac Ventures, Unified Music Group and Dan Weisman (vp at Bernstein Private Wealth Management).
10K Projects struck a joint venture with Loaf Boyz Ventures, the record label of rapper Moneybagg Yo. The first release under the deal was YTB Fatt’s first mixtape, Who Is Fatt, which dropped in August. Other projects set for release under the deal include a Loaf Boyz compilation album and new music from Memphis-based rapper Kevo Money. Moneybagg Yo’s solo work will continue to be released through Yo Gotti’s CMG label. This marks the first deal for 10K since it became a standalone label within Warner Music Group.
Virgin Music Group signed a global agreement with Latin independent labels Machin and Equinoccio Records. Founded by Mexican singer, songwriter and producer Pepe Aguilar, both labels have a focus on the Regional Mexican genre. Machin Records is home to Angela Aguilar, Leonardo Aguilar and Irany & David, while Equinoccio is home to Pepe Aguilar.
Online design platform Canva launched a popular music library that will give users to access 60-second clips of commercially released songs for personal use in videos, social media posts and more through partnerships with Warner Music Group (including Warner Chappell Music and Warner Recorded Music), Merlin and more than a dozen other labels and publishers in deals announced earlier this year. Available songs include works by artists including Michael Buble, Vance Joy, Kenya Grace and Curtis Mayfield, all of whom will earn royalties when clips of their songs are used in Canva designs. The newly expanded music library is available to Canva Pro and Education subscribers, with access to small enterprises using Canva for Teams and Nonprofit users to follow, in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Music finance firm Sound Royalties announced a new “working relationship” with entertainment banker David Innes, according to a press release. Under the agreement, Innes’ new venture, On the Money Entertainment Advisory and Consulting, will support Sound Royalties “by amplifying its networking reach among music creatives and expanding its new business pipeline,” the release adds.
Spatial web technology company Cosmic Wire partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to create innovative experiences for CAA clients using spatial and immersive technology. The companies will additionally work together to innovate sponsorship opportunities for corporate brands in virtual environments.
Music rights and metadata management software platform Orfium partnered with Japanese anime music company Bandai Namco Music Live. Under the deal, Orfium will manage, optimize and monetize Bandai Namco’s repertoire using its AI-based rights management software. Bandai Namco Music Live represents more than 3,000 creators and is behind such anime titles as the Love Live! series, Violet Evergarden, One-Punch Man and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
SoundCloud announced a partnership with A&R executive Randall “Sickamore” Medford, who partnered with SoundCloud on IIIXL Studio, a new Brooklyn-based enterprise that will be dedicated to signing and developing New York artists for SoundCloud’s artist development program. The first IIIXL artist-in-residence is Liim. Through the collaboration, Sickamore will connect talent with SoundCloud’s artist partnerships division, which will offer white-glove creative and marketing resources to chosen artists and their teams. A monthly New York hip-hop showcase is also forthcoming.
Also at SoundCloud, the streaming platform partnered with sleep, meditation and relaxation app Calm to introduce new mental health and wellness benefits for artists. Under the deal, SoundCloud Next and Next Pro artists will have access to exclusive offers for Calm through SoundCloud’s existing member benefits program, including free trials and 50% off Calm Premium.
Bonsai, a platform that helps recording artists engage with and monetize their superfans, announced integrations with Discord, YouTube and Instagram allowing fans to directly interact with their favorite artists. Bonsai’s core feature lets artists invite their fans to participate in “asynch AMAs,” through which fans use Bonsai to ask artists questions. Artists can then record audio responses for their fans, which are then paired with visual generative art to form a “bonsai” that gets delivered to fans via text, email and — with the new deals — Discord, Instagram and YouTube.
We Are Giant — a new platform that helps artists amplify their direct-to-fan relationships by hosting licensed listening parties for new music and unreleased demos, exclusive livestreams, interactive chat rooms with the musicians and more — formally announced its launch while announcing an $8 million funding round from investment management platform Sterling Partners. We Are Giant is led by founder/CEO Andy Apple, who previously served as an investor at VC firms Sound Ventures and Wavemaker Partners in addition to a tenure at JPMorgan. Also on the leadership team is Dan McComas (previously at Reddit), who serves as vp of products & community.
If you were thinking about selling unauthorized Rod Wave merch outside one of his concerts, you might want to think again.
The “Rags2Riches” rapper won a federal court order Tuesday empowering law enforcement to seize bootleg merchandise sold outside his Charlotte concert on Wednesday, regardless of who was selling it.
“The United States Marshals Service and state and local law enforcement officers may seize and impound any infringing merchandise (i.e. unauthorized goods bearing the full name Rod Wave) that is found for sale between 3:00 PM on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 and 3:00 AM on Thursday, November 16, 2023 and is within 5 miles of the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.”
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Wave is the latest artist to turn to the courts to fight fake merch. Metallica‘s authorized vendor filed a similar case in October to quash bootleggers at two St. Louis shows, and SZA won a similar seizure ruling ahead of a September show at TD Garden in Boston. Post Malone, Cher, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Bruno Mars, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Jimmy Buffet, Aerosmith, Dead & Co. and many others have filed similar cases, which argue that such unauthorized gear violates artists’ trademarks as well as their likeness rights.
Those cases – and the legal bills it takes to fight them — are a sign of just how valuable concert merch has become to artists. According to data from atVenu, the average concertgoer spent $8.16 on t-shirts, posters and other goods in 2022, a 46% leap from what they spent back in 2019. The average show brought in a whopping $20,778 in gross merch sales.
Restraining orders and injunctions typically require a plaintiff to identify who they’re targeting – a fundamental legal safeguard designed to allow an accused party to defend themselves. But like other judges in previous fake merch cases, Judge Kenneth D. Bell ruled the order should apply to any “John Doe” bootleggers who show up at the venue.
“It is impossible to identify potential defendants until they have already begun to infringe upon Mr. Green’s trademarks, at which point he will have suffered irreparable injuries,” the judge wrote. “The lost profits at even one venue may be significant. Counsel has stated that it is impossible to identify defendants in advance and difficult even to ascertain their identities when confronted at the venue.”
The judge included key limits in his ruling. He required Wave to post a $5000 security bond to cover any merchandise that was wrongfully seized, and said that any alleged bootleggers should be “immediately served” with the lawsuit and “given a receipt if merchandise is seized.” Such defendants can then challenge the order in court
But Judge Bell also paved the way for Wave to win a more-expansive injunction that “reaches beyond Charlotte,” banning bootleggers and allowing for seizures at “future stops on his tour.” A hearing on such an order is set for later this month, where Wave himself must be present and his lawyers will “bring representative samples of any seized merchandise.”
A spokesperson for Wave (born Rodarius Green) declined to comment when asked by Billboard on Thursday about the order and how it had been used at Wednesday’s concert.
Up-and-coming Mexican singer/songwriter Angel Sandoval has signed a multi-year global publishing agreement with Kobalt. This will be the first publishing agreement for the 23-year-old artist, who earlier this year, won his first SESAC Latin Music award for “Si Ya Hiciste el Mal,” which was recorded by Luis R. Conriquez and Jessi Uribe. Explore See latest […]
Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, praised YouTube’s AI-powered voice generation experiment, which launched this week with the participation of several Warner acts, including Charlie Puth and Charli XCX, during a call with financial analysts on Thursday (Nov. 16).
Kyncl proposed a thought experiment: “Imagine in the early 2000s, if the file-sharing companies came to the music industry, and said, ‘would you like to experiment with this new tool that we built and see how it impacts the industry and how we can work together?’ It would have been incredible.”
While it’s hard to imagine the tech-averse music industry of the early 2000s would’ve jumped at this opportunity, Kyncl described the YouTube’s effort as “the first time that a large platform at a massive scale that has new tools at its disposal is proactively reaching out to its [music] partners to test and learn.” “I just want to underscore the significance of this kind of engagement,” he added. (He used to work as chief business office at YouTube.)
For the benefit of analysts, Kyncl also outlined the company’s three-pronged approach to managing the rapid emergence of AI-powered technologies. First, he said it was important to pay attention to “generative AI engines,” ensuring that they are “licensing content for training” models, “keeping records of inputs so that provenance can be tracked,” and using a “watermarking” system so that outputs can be tracked.
The next area of focus for Warner: The platforms — Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and more — where, as Kyncl put it, “most of the content… will end up because people who are creating want views or streams.” To manage the proliferation of AI-generated music on these services, Kyncl hoped to build on the blueprint the music industry has developed around monitoring and monetizing user-generated content, especially on YouTube, and “write the fine print for the AI age.”
Last but certainly not least, Kyncl said he was meeting with both politicians and regulators “to make sure that regulation around AI respects the creative industries.” He suggested two key goals in this arena: That “licensing for training [AI models] is required,” and that “name, image, likeness, and voice is afforded the same protection as copyright.”
Warner Music Group reported quarterly revenue was up 6% as of Sept. 30, as the third-largest U.S.-based music rode a solid release slate that included the Barbie soundtrack, Zach Bryan and FIFTY FIFTY to eclipse $6 billion in overall annual revenue for the first time. WMG reported revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter rose to […]
YouTube is launching an experimental feature Thursday (Nov. 16) that will create artificial intelligence-generated voices of well-known artists for use in clips on YouTube shorts. The initial selection of acts participating in the program includes Charlie Puth, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, Demi Lovato, Troye Sivan, Charli XCX, Alec Benjamin and Papoose.
YouTube’s feature, called Dream Track, creates pieces of music — voice along with musical accompaniment — based on text prompts that are up to 30 seconds in length. For now, around 100 U.S.-based creators will have Dream Track access.
“At this initial phase, the experiment is designed to help explore how the technology could be used to create deeper connections between artists and creators, and ultimately, their fans,” according to a blog post from Lyor Cohen, global head of music, and Toni Reid, vp of emerging experiences and community.
The music industry has been wary of AI this year, but several prominent executives voiced their support for Dream Track. “In this dynamic and rapidly evolving market, artists gain most when together we engage with our technology partners to work towards an environment in which responsible AI can take root and grow,” Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement. “Only with active, constructive and deep engagement can we build a mutually successful future together.”
“YouTube is taking a collaborative approach with this Beta,” Robert Kyncl, CEO of Warner Music Group, said in a statement of his own. “These artists are being offered the choice to lean in, and we’re pleased to experiment and find out what the creators come up with.”
YouTube emphasized that Dream Track is an experiment. The artists involved are “excited to help us shape the future,” Cohen said in an interview. “Being part of this experiment allows them to do it.” That also means that, for now, some of the underlying details — how is the AI tech trained? how might this feature be monetized at scale? — remain fuzzy.
While the lawyers figure all that out, the artists involved in Dream Track sounded enthusiastic. Demi Lovato: “I am open minded and hopeful that this experiment with Google and YouTube will be a positive and enlightening experience.” John Legend: “I am happy to have a seat at the table, and I look forward to seeing what the creators dream up during this period.” Sia: “I can’t wait to hear what kinds of recipes all you creators out there come up with.”
While YouTube’s AI-generated voices are likely to get the most attention, the platform also announced the release of new AI music tools. These build on lessons learned from the “AI Music Incubator” the platform announced in August, according to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google Deepmind. Through that program, “some of the world’s most famous musicians have given feedback on what they would like to see, and we’ve been inspired by that to build out the technology and the tools in certain ways so that it would be useful for them,” Hassabis explained in an interview.
He ticked off a handful of examples: An artist can hum something and AI-powered technology will create an instrumental based on the tune; a songwriter can pen two musical phrases on their own and rely on the tools to help craft a transition between them; a singer can come in with a fully fledged vocal melody and ask the tech to come up with musical accompaniment.
Finally, YouTube is rolling out another feature called SynthID, which will watermark any of the AI-generated audio it produces so it can be identified as such. Earlier this week, the platform announced that it would provide labels and others music rights holders the ability “to request the removal of AI-generated music content that mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice.”
Amid the offerings at the LA3C festival that took place in downtown L.A. this past weekend (Nov. 11-12), a presentation from the Saudi Arabia Music Commission put forth a broad view of the music industry currently being developed in the country.
Hosted by VIBE editor-in-chief Datwon Thomas, panelists included Paul Pacifico, CEO of the Saudi Music Commission; Ahmad Alammary, chief creative officer for the Saudi electronic music festival Soundstorm; Gigi Arabia, the founder/CEO of Saudi heavy metal organization Heavy Arabia; Mexican-American songwriter, producer and academic Fernando Garibay, who has worked in the Kingdom; and Saudi singer-songwriter Tamtam.
Saudi Arabia has seen significant social changes in the last decade, as the government has eased restrictions around formerly prohibited activities like playing music in public and co-ed gatherings. These new freedoms have helped lay the groundwork for the formation of a music industry, with the bulk of the panel discussion focused on how this industry is currently being built from scratch.
“We have huge pent-up supply of creativity and music,” said Pacifico, a Brit who joined the Music Commission as CEO in January 2023. “We have huge pent-up demand among audiences that have grown up wanting to go to festivals, concerts, events, to listen to music and enjoy themselves.”
“But we lack enablers,” Pacifico continued. “So over the next one year, three years, five years, it’s going to be all about building the structures that connect those dots that allow people to express themselves creatively and to build platforms that will enable Saudi artists to tell their stories in a way that will be heard around the world.”
“A lot of people working in the [global music] industry ask how we can fix our industry, or how we can rethink our industry,” added Garibay, “but I don’t think we’ve ever had in the history over the past 100 years a chance to think about, ‘How would you start over? How would you start from a new perspective?’”
The discussion emphasized that while Saudi Arabia does not yet have venues, a collecting society and other essential infrastructure, this clean canvas is allowing key players to, Alammary said, “shape it the way we want to learn from the lessons around the world and actually serve artists.”
Pacifico cited the major opportunities for artists in Saudi Arabia with respect to the country’s demographics, saying that “70% of the people are under 35 years old, and the country has 98% Internet penetration. So you have a young, connected, dynamic and unbelievably energized population.”
The panelists agreed that this audience and the emerging industry combined are creating huge opportunities for Saudi artists, as formerly underground scenes are coalesced and, as Alammary said, “unveiled.” These formerly underground scenes include those around genres like electronic music, the focus of the Saudi mega-festival Soundstorm that launched in 2019, along with hip-hop, heavy metal and more.
“All of the events took place in super unconventional places,” Arabia said of the Saudi metal scene before music-related restrictions were lifted. “We have something in Saudi called rest houses, little houses in the middle of nowhere for people to rest in if they’re going on a road trip, where events took place.”
“We’re still growing it event by event,” Arabia added in regard to the country’s current aboveground metal scene. “With the help of the Music Commission and its leadership, now we have been able to go and represent it in the genre globally.” She foresees Saudi Arabia becoming a “hotspot for metal heads” in a fashion similar to the Nordic region.
The Music Commission exists under the Saudi Ministry of Culture, a government entity focused on expanding the country’s entertainment sector through endeavors into music, sports, film and more. These entities exist as part of Vision 2030, the Saudi government’s plan, it says, to diversify the country’s economy, society and culture. (The LA3C panel did not touch on the challenges of building an industry amid the still-existing restrictions of the Saudi government, which does not protect freedom of speech and which, despite some recent advancements, still imposes myriad restrictions on women.)
“There’s an incomplete picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing,” Pacifico said of the country’s current industry, “But we see record labels coming up, we see management companies growing. The most amazing thing is the whole music industry is going through an accelerated time of massive change, and Saudi Arabia as a country is going through a massively accelerated time of change. So nothing’s taken for granted… and we can just think again about how to do things better, quicker, more efficiently.”
The presentation also included performances from Tamtam, Saudi pop artist Mishaal Tamer — who released his debut EP in 2020 via RCA Records and opened for OneRepublic on tour this past summer — and Riyadh-based producer and songwriter NTITLED.
LA3C was built to highlight communities creating culture around the world. LA3C created a paid partnership with the Saudi Music Commission to highlight the cultural shift in the commercial entertainment sector and with regional artists that have a presence in the United States and Saudi Arabia. LA3C is owned by Penske Media Corporation which is also the parent company of Billboard.