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If Helen Grant, the daughter of late Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant, is selling a 10% share of the band’s music assets, as reported by Music Week and The Times, she’s in for a very nice payout.
According to that article, Grant owns not only an interest in the band’s record catalog and song publishing catalog but also a 10% share in other rights including trademarks, merchandising and other business ventures. When he died in 1995, Peter Grant, who owned a 20% stake in the band’s music assets, appears to have split that stake evenly between Helen and her brother Warren, leaving each of them a 10% share.
While Led Zeppelin originally signed to Atlantic Records back in 1968, in 1975 the band started its own record label, Swan Song, and began issuing its music under that logo beginning with its fifth album, Physical Graffiti. Like other superstar acts of its day, the band later negotiated to obtain ownership of its entire recorded masters catalog, not just the Swan Song records, according to sources.
It’s unclear if Led Zeppelin still owns the rest of the Swan Song catalog, which includes albums by Bad Company, the Pretty Things and Maggie Bell — and, if it does, whether Helen Grant has a stake in that and is offering it up for sale, too. At the very least, according to the most recent filing containing a list of shareholders for Bad Company Entertainment, the Peter Grant estate has a 20% stake in that company as well. It’s unclear if that interest is a part of any contemplated sale.
The Music Week article reports that Helen Grant has hired Ian Penman of New Media Law to shop her share of the Zeppelin assets. Penmen didn’t respond to an e-mail request seeking to confirm the potential asset sale. Warner Music Group declined to comment, while queries to other possible press representatives for the band went unanswered.
According to a list of shareholders included in the last filing from Superhype Tapes Ltd — one of the dozen or so companies affiliated with the Led Zeppelin principals that have filings in Companies House (the U.K. equivalent of the U.S. SEC) — dated July 30, 2014, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page owns 80% of the shares of Led Zeppelin music assets, while Helen and Warren Grant own 10% each. However, in the company’s July 25, 2000, filing, Page and the estate of Peter Grant were each listed as having a 50% stake in the company, while Page and fellow Led Zeppelin members Robert Plant and John Baldwin [aka John Paul Jones], as well as Joan Hudson of the band’s accounting firm, were listed as directors of the company. It’s unclear how or when the percentages changed and if it occurred through a negotiation or an earlier buyout of a portion of the Grant estate’s share in the company.
It’s also unclear which Led Zeppelin assets fall under this company, although its incorporation document, filed in October 1969, states that it was established to manufacture, produce, buy, sell, exploit and deal in gramophone records, tapes, sound recordings and other sound bearing devices and musical instruments, among other possible business lines. On the other hand, as noted, Superhype Tapes appears to be one of about a dozen companies incorporated for Led Zeppelin that have listings in Companies House, although some of those listed companies are dormant. Consequently, it’s unclear which Led Zeppelin music assets fall under the control of Superhype Tapes.
Another Led Zeppelin-affiliated company, United Blag Productions, shows Helen Grant with a 10% stake, while the other three living Led Zeppelin members each have 22.5%, as do the Bonham heirs, collectively.
According to what appears to be incorporation papers for United Blag — filed under its previous name of Langwest on Aug. 16, 1974 — around the time of the formation of Swan Song, the purpose of the company was to act as managers for singers, musicians and other creative entertainers as well as to produce and distribute sound recordings of all kinds as well as handling pictures, films and TV show appearances of all kinds.
Regardless of the incongruent ownership stakes listed for the Led Zeppelin members for Superhype Tapes and United Blag Productions, it looks like Helen Grant is selling a 10% stake in the band’s assets controlled by those two companies, which would mean she is selling a passive royalty income stream.
Still, the iconic Led Zeppelin catalog remains a considerable economic driver — averaging just over 1 million album consumption units annually in the United States alone over the last three years. As such, Billboard estimates that the band’s master recordings catalog generates about $24 million in revenue annually and that after deducting for production and distribution, the band likely reaped about $21 million of that amount. If the recordings carried a 20 times multiple, that would give the Led Zeppelin recorded masters catalog a nearly $420 million valuation — 10% of which would be $42 million.
Meanwhile, Billboard estimates that the publishing catalog averaged about $10.4 million annually over the last three years. After deducting a 10% administration fee, that would leave $9.4 million in revenue for the band, which at a 25 times multiple would be worth about $235 million.
While that valuation uses a high multiple, which some music asset traders might question, that concern would likely be offset by the upside potential for generating additional revenue through synch licensing. While synch typically can comprise about 25% of a publishing portfolio’s revenue base, Led Zeppelin has been very selective in granting licensing opportunities, which likely has depressed the band’s overall publishing revenue. Billboard’s valuation model uses a much smaller percentage than 25% of revenue for synch royalties in extrapolating overall publishing revenue.
Regardless of the publishing catalog’s valuation, it’s unclear how Grant would be paid from that considering that the principal songwriters in the band likely each own their publishing, as well as their songwriter share.
On the other hand, it’s conceivable that the band, along with Grant, collectively owns its publishing, which would divide 50% among the four band members and the Grant heirs, leaving the other 50%, or $6.35 million, for the songwriters to split; or that Grant owned 20% of the publishing and the band members owned the remaining publishing stakes in each of the songs they composed. Either way, that could leave Helen Grant with a 10% stake in the publishing, or a 5% stake in the publishing revenue, resulting in a $15 million-$16 million valuation, if the Grant estate indeed does own a stake in the band’s publishing.
But Billboard could find no mention of a Grant ownership stake in the sole Led Zeppelin publishing company that appears to be an ongoing operation, Flames of Albion Music, listed at Companies House.
The last document for that company, filed on May 11, 2016, listed Page, Plant, Baldwin and the Bonham heirs — Patricia Bonham, Jason Bonham and Zoe Bonham — as shareholders, while neither of the Grant heirs are listed.
But there is still merch revenue, trademarks and likeness and image to consider. Billboard estimates that Led Zeppelin averages about $2 million in merch each year. At a 10-times multiple, that would arrive at a $20 million valuation, with a 10% stake translating to $2 million. (Collectively, Billboard‘s valuation for Led Zeppelin’s recorded music, publishing and merch is about $670 million.)
A third-party software provider is to blame for a major disruption to a ticket sale for six Taylor Swift shows in France, according to a statement issued by Ticketmaster France. “This morning’s sale was disrupted by an issue with a third-party vendor who is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” the company […]
Distribution company and payment platform Stem said on Tuesday it raised $250 million from Victory Park Capital to expand it’s popular advance check product. Stem first started offering the product in 2020 to artists at various career stages, including artists like Justine Skye, who used the capital as bridge financing when transitioning from a major […]
Sacré bleu! Ticketmaster France pressed pause on the presales for four Paris dates and both shows in Lyon for Taylor Swift‘s 2024 European Eras Tour.
“Some of you may be having issues with the site this morning,” the company tweeted on Tuesday morning. “We are working on it and will let you know.”
The four Paris dates at La Défense Arena on May 9, 10, 11 and 12, 2024 were set to go on sale today in two stages, with one sale for May 9 and 10 opening at 9 a.m. local time and another, for May 11 and May 12, due to start at 11 a.m. Sales for the two dates at Lyon’s Groupama Stadium, set for June 2 and 3, were due to begin at 1 p.m.
“We will keep you informed of the new on-sale time as soon as possible,” the company said. “All codes will remain valid.”
As in past presales, fans had to sign up in order to be put into a lottery for code to redeem for a shot at tickets. But shortly after the Paris sale had begun, “winning” fans began having problems and Ticketmaster suspended the presale, citing issues with the site.
Leading up to the sale, the company gave fans an idea of what to expect:
Tickets will be available for purchase via the website for access code holders on July 11, 2023. Tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis while currently available inventory lasts. It’s a simple, standard purchase process and the steps below will help you navigate your search and purchase.
If you are selected to receive an access code, you will receive an email and two SMS messages the afternoon before ticket sales begins on July 11 2023
The messages will include timing details and a link to where the on-sale will occur, and your unique access code.
Prepare for the sale by creating your customer account in advance if you don’t already have one. Sign-in to your Ticketmaster Account in advance. Know your Ticketmaster password, or reset your password in advance. For a faster checkout, make sure you have a valid credit card with updating billing information in your account.
The company did not respond to a request for details on the nature of the site outage.
Though “July 11” won’t carry the same stain as “Nov. 15” — the date Ticketmaster’s site buckled under the weight of millions of Swift fans trying to purchase initial U.S. Eras Tour dates — it remains another botched sale for a Swift sale for the ticketing giant.
Last week, Swift announced an additional 14 dates for her European trip next year, with Paramore opening all dates. Swift’s Eras Tour launched in Glendale, Arizona on March 17. She plays two nights at Denver’s Empower Field this weekend before heading to Seattle and the San Jose area later in July.
A Michigan judge narrowed the issues Monday in a dispute over Aretha Franklin’s estate, saying the only task for jurors is to decide whether a 2014 document handwritten by the Queen of Soul and found in couch cushions can be accepted as a valid will.
The stipulation was made by attorneys for Franklin’s sons before a jury was seated in Oakland County Probate Court.
Franklin died in 2018 at age 76. But five years later, the music superstar’s estate remains unsettled. A son, Ted White II, believes a 2010 handwritten will should mainly control the estate, but two other sons, Kecalf Franklin and Edward Franklin, are in favor of a 2014 document.
Both were found in 2019, months after Franklin died. The 2014 document was under cushions at Franklin’s home in suburban Detroit.
The brothers sat shoulder to shoulder behind their lawyers in Judge Jennifer Callaghan’s courtroom. Another brother, Clarence Franklin, is under a guardianship and apparently is not participating in the trial.
There are differences between the documents, though they both appear to indicate the sons would share income from music and copyrights, which seems to make that issue less contentious than a few others.
The 2014 version crossed out White’s name as executor and has Kecalf Franklin in his place. Kecalf Franklin and grandchildren would get his mother’s main home in Bloomfield Hills, which was valued at $1.1 million when she died but is worth much more today.
For five years, Aretha Franklin’s estate has been handled at different times by three executors, known under Michigan estate law as a personal representative. A niece, Sabrina Owens, quit in 2020, citing a “rift” among the sons.
The last public accounting filed in March showed the estate had income of $3.9 million during the previous 12-month period and a similar amount of spending, including more than $900,000 in legal fees to various firms.
Overall assets were pegged at $4.1 million, mostly cash and real estate, though Franklin’s creative works and intellectual property were undervalued with just a nominal $1 figure.
A Los Angeles judge says Lady Gaga is not obligated to pay out on a $500,000 “no questions asked” reward for the return of her stolen French bulldogs — at least not to a woman who was criminally charged over the violent 2021 incident.
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In a ruling Monday (July 10) reported by TMZ, Judge Holly J. Fujie dismissed a breach of contract lawsuit filed by Jennifer McBride, who pleaded no contest in December to receiving stolen property in connection with the gunpoint robbery in which Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Fischer was shot and nearly killed.
McBride had argued that Gaga’s offer of a reward was “unilateral” — meaning she had to pay up no matter the circumstances. But in Monday’s decision, Judge Fujie reportedly agreed with arguments from Gaga’s attorneys: That a criminal like McBridge could not “profit from her participation in a crime.”
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Monday.
McBride is one of five people charged over the Feb. 24, 2021, gunpoint dog-napping of Gaga’s bulldogs, Koji and Gustav. Prosecutors say the singer was not specifically targeted, and that the group was merely trying to steal French bulldogs, which can be worth thousands of dollars.
James Howard Jackson, the man who shot Fischer during the robbery, took a plea deal in December and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Days after the attack, it was McBride who returned the dogs to police, claiming she’d found the animals tied to a pole and asking about the reward. While police initially told the media that McBride appeared to be “uninvolved and unassociated” with the crime, she was later connected to the robbery and charged with one count of receiving stolen property and one count of being an accessory after the fact. In December, she pleaded no contest to the property charge and was sentenced to two years of probation.
But just two months later, McBride was back in court again — filing a civil lawsuit claiming she deserves the credit for returning the superstar’s bulldogs. The case argued Gaga made a binding “unilateral” offer to pay the reward in return for the safe return of the dogs, and that McBride had taken her up on the proposal by flipping on the men who actually committed the robbery.
“Plaintiff accepted defendants’ unilateral offer by contacting defendants, and delivering Lady Gaga’s bulldogs to defendants at the Los Angeles Police Department,” McBride’s lawyer, K.T. Tran, wrote in the lawsuit. “Plaintiff has fully performed her obligation under the unilateral contract.”
But Gaga’s attorneys quickly moved to end the case, arguing last month that it would be absurd to allow McBride to “profit from her participation in a crime” and “rewarded for her role in the conspiracy.”
“The law does not allow a person to commit a crime and then profit from it,” Gaga’s lawyers at the firm Gibson Dunn wrote in their filings. “This principle applies with extra force in this case because the theft of Defendant’s dogs was facilitated by a violent gun crime that left one man nearly dead.”
The board of directors at Gibson Brands has confirmed Cesar Gueikian as president/CEO of Gibson Brands. Gueikian, who previously served as brand president, was named as interim CEO following the exit of Gibson Brands’ former president/CEO, James Curleigh, in May. Gueikian joined Gibson in 2018 and has been instrumental in the resurgence of the instrument […]
DaBaby has been dropped from a copyright lawsuit accusing him and Dua Lipa of ripping off their smash hit “Levitating” from decades-old songs.
In an order Monday (July 10), a Manhattan federal judge granted a request by lawyers for L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer to voluntarily dismiss the rapper from their case, which claims Lipa’s massive hit infringed their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and their 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
The accusers did not explain why they were dropping their case against DaBaby (real name Jonathan Lyndale Kirk), who featured on a popular remix of Lipa’s song. But they made clear that the case would continue against Lipa herself and music companies involved in the song: “For the avoidance of doubt, plaintiffs maintain and do not hereby dismiss their claims against any other defendant in this matter.”
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An attorney for Brown and Linzer declined to comment on why they had dismissed DaBaby from the case. An attorney for DaBaby did not return a request for comment.
Brown and Linzer’s case, filed in March 2022, was one of two federal copyright lawsuits filed in quick succession over “Levitating” — a massive hit that spent 77 weeks on the Hot 100 and was named the No. 1 Hot 100 song of 2021. The case claimed the melody that starts just a few seconds into “Levitating,” when Lipa sings “If you wanna run away with me,” was a “duplicate” of a similar passage featured in the two earlier songs.
The other “Levitating” case, filed just days earlier by a reggae band named Artikal Sound System, claimed Lipa had lifted her song’s core hook from their little-known 2015 song “Live Your Life.” But the band dropped that lawsuit last month, just days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on whether Artikal could prove that Lipa ever even heard their song.
Though Brown and Linzer’s case will continue against Lipa, they could be facing a similar ruling soon.
Last summer, Lipa’s lawyers made the same arguments as they made in the Artikal case, saying the two accusers could not prove that she had ever had “access” to the earlier songs — a make-or-break requirement for any copyright lawsuit. Brown and Linzer’s attorneys have countered that their songs had millions of listens on internet platforms, giving the “Levitating” writers ample opportunity to hear them.
A ruling on that question is pending.
Seeing is believing for some investors in Sphere Entertainment Co., the developer of the new state-of-the-art venue, The Sphere, in Las Vegas. Shares of Sphere Entertainment soared 22.7% this week after the world saw the first videos of the dazzling display created by the 580,000 square feet of programmable LED “pucks” on Exosphere, the exterior […]
From ChatGPT writing code for software engineers to Bing’s search engine sliding in place of your bi-weekly Hinge binge, we’ve become obsessed with the capacity for artificial intelligence to replace us.
Within creative industries, this fixation manifests in generative AI. With models like DALL-E generating images from text prompts, the popularity of generative AI challenges how we understand the integrity of the creative process: When generative models are capable of materializing ideas, if not generating their own, where does that leave artists?
Google’s new text-based music generative AI, MusicLM, offers an interesting answer to this viral terminator-meets-ex-machina narrative. As a model that produces “high-fidelity music from text descriptions,” MusicLM embraces moments lost in translation that encourages creative exploration. It sets itself apart from other music generation models like Jukedeck and MuseNet by inviting users to verbalize their original ideas rather than toggle with existing music samples.
Describing how you feel is hard
AI in music is not new. But between recommending songs for Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlists to composing royalty free music with Jukedeck, applications of AI in music have evaded the long-standing challenge of directly mapping words to music.
This is because, as a form of expression on its own, music resonates differently to each listener. The same way that different languages struggle to perfectly communicate nuances of respective cultures, it is difficult (if not impossible) to exhaustively capture all dimensions of music in words.
MusicLM takes on this challenge by generating audio clips from descriptions like “a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff,” even accounting for less tangible inputs like “hypnotic and trance-like.” It approaches this thorny question of music categorization with a refreshing sense of self awareness. Rather than focusing on lofty notions of style, MusicLM grounds itself in more tangible attributes of music with tags such as “snappy”, or “amateurish.” It broadly considers where an audio clip may come from (eg. “Youtube Tutorial”), the general emotional responses it may conjure (eg. “madly in love”), while integrating more widely accepted concepts of genre and compositional technique.
What you expect is (not) what you get
Piling onto this theoretical question of music classification is the more practical shortage of training data. Unlike its creative counterparts (e.g. DALL-E), there isn’t an abundance of text-to-audio captions readily available.
MusicLM was trained by a library of 5,521 music samples captioned by musicians called ‘MusicCaps.’ Bound by the very human limitation of capacity and the almost-philosophical matter of style, MusicCaps offers finite granularity in its semantic interpretation of musical characteristics. The result is occasional gaps between user inputs and generated outputs: the “happy, energetic” tune you asked for may not turn out as you expect.
However, when asked about this discrepancy, MusicLM researcher Chris Donahue and research software engineer Andrea Agostinelli celebrate the human element of the model. They describe primary applications such as “[exploring] ideas more efficiently [or overcoming] writer’s block,” quick to note that MusicLM does offer multiple interpretations of the same prompt — so if one generated track fails to meet your expectations, another might.
“This [disconnect] is a big research direction for us, there isn’t a single answer,” Andrea admits. Chris attributes this disconnect to the “abstract relationship between music and text” insisting that “how we react to music is [even more] loosely defined.”
In a way — by fostering an exchange that welcomes moments lost in translation — MusicLM’s language-based structure positions the model as a sounding board: as you prompt the model with a vague idea, the generation of approximates help you figure out what you actually want to make.
Beauty is in breaking things
With their experience producing Chain Tripping (2019) — a Grammy-nominated album entirely made with MusicVAE (another music generative AI developed by Google) — the band YACHT chimes in on MusicLM’s future in music production. “As long as it can be broken apart a little bit and tinkered with, I think there’s great potential,” says frontwoman Claire L. Evans.
To YACHT, generative AI exists as a means to an end, rather than the end in itself. “You never make exactly what you set out to make,” says founding member Jona Bechtolt, describing the mechanics of a studio session. “It’s because there’s this imperfect conduit that is you” Claire adds, attributing the alluring and evocative process of producing music to the serendipitous disconnect that occurs when artists put pen to paper.
The band describes how the misalignment of user inputs and generated work inspires creativity through iteration. “There is a discursive quality to [MusicLM]… it’s giving you feedback… I think it’s the surreal feeling of seeing something in the mirror, like a funhouse mirror,” says Claire. “A computer accent,” band member Rob Kieswetter jokes, referencing a documentary about the band’s experience making Chain Tripping.
However, in discussing the implications of this move to text-to-audio generation, Claire cautions the rise of taxonomization in music: “imperfect semantic elements are great, it’s the precise ones that we should worry about… [labels] create boundaries to discovery and creation that don’t need to exist… everyone’s conditioned to think about music as this salad of hyper-specific genre references [that can be used] to conjure a new song.”
Nonetheless, both YACHT and the MusicLM team agrees that MusicLM — as it currently is — holds promise. “Either way there’s going to be a whole new slew of artists fine-tuning this tool to their needs,” Rob contends.
Engineer Andrea recalls instances where creative tools weren’t popularized for its intended purpose: “the synthesizer eventually opened up a huge wave of new genres and ways of expression. [It unlocked] new ways to express music, even for people who are not ‘musicians.’” “Historically, it has been pretty difficult to predict how each piece of music technology will play out,” researcher Chris concludes.
Happy accidents, reinvention, and self-discovery
Back to the stubborn, unforgiving question: Will generative AI replace musicians? Perhaps not.
The relationship between artists and AI is not a linear one. While it’s appealing to prescribe an intricate and carefully intentional system of collaboration between artists and AI, as of right now, the process of using AI in producing art resembles more of a friendly game of trial and error.
In music, AI gives room for us to explore the latent spaces between what we describe and what we really mean. It materializes ideas in a way that helps shape creative direction. By outlining these acute moments lost in translation, tools like MusicLM sets us up to produce what actually ends up making it to the stage… or your Discover Weekly.
Tiffany Ng is an art & tech writer based in NYC. Her work has been published in i-D Vice, Vogue, South China Morning Post, and Highsnobiety.