Business
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In 2000, after Larry Magid sold his Philadelphia promotion company Electric Factory Concerts for an undisclosed sum, the buyer, Robert Sillerman, called at 12:30 a.m. to congratulate him. Then Sillerman said, “Now you congratulate me.”
“OK, congratulations on what?” Magid asked Sillerman, his new boss.
“Well, we merged,” Sillerman said.
Sillerman, then executive chairman of SFX Entertainment, was referring to his company’s $4.4 billion dollar sale to San Antonio, Texas-based broadcast behemoth Clear Channel Communications, which he’d finished at almost exactly the same time he bought Magid’s company. Thus, Magid would become an employee not of SFX, but Clear Channel, for the next five years — a period that was not easy for Magid, who had been Philly’s top independent promoter since roughly 1968, when he opened the Electric Factory club with a Chambers Brothers show. “It just seemed to be a struggle,” he recalls. “There were a lot of meetings, none of which we were used to.”
All this took place 25 years ago this week — Clear Channel’s purchase of SFX was announced Feb. 29, 2000 — and it would change the concert business forever. For decades, the live industry was ruled by unaffiliated local promoters like Magid, who ran their cities like local cartels as rock’n’roll evolved from tiny events to stadium concerts. Sillerman had spent the past three years buying out those local promoters — an acquisition spree that included big names like the late Bill Graham’s company in the Bay Area (for a reported $65 million), Don Law‘s company in Boston ($80 million) and lesser-known indies such as Avalon Attractions in Southern California ($27 million). The result was a consolidated behemoth that guaranteed advance payments of up to millions of dollars for top artists to do national tours, prompting promoters to raise prices for tickets, parking, food and alcohol to pay for their costs — all of which has become standard industry practice for concerts over the ensuing 25 years.
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Then Sillerman turned around and sold everything to Clear Channel.
By that point, the concert business no longer operated as a collection of regional fiefdoms — in which Bill Graham Presents and its Bay Area competitors competed for, say, a U2 date — but as a central entity in which SFX booked U2’s entire U.S. tour. In 2000, SFX was to promote 30 tours, from Tina Turner to Britney Spears to Ozzfest, “light years beyond what any other company has ever attempted,” Billboard reported at the time. “It has become nearly impossible for a major act to tour without SFX being involved in some way.”
“What [Sillerman] accomplished revolutionized the business. It was probably the biggest impact in the industry since the Beatles,” recalls Dennis Arfa, longtime agent for Billy Joel and others, who sold his talent agency to SFX and worked there for several years. “Bob took the business from a millionaire’s game to a billionaire’s game. From the street to Wall Street.” (Sillerman died in 2019.)
Sillerman’s sale to Clear Channel offered an even more tantalizing promise for the concert business: linking hundreds of top radio stations with top promoters and venues — “taking advantage of the natural relationship between radio and live music events,” Lowry Mays, Clear Channel’s chairman and CEO, said at the time of the sale.
But the venture ultimately failed. Many of the SFX promoters never felt they fit in at San Antonio-based Clear Channel. “We knew we were dealing with a very conservative family out of Texas — that was people’s main concern,” recalls Pamela Fallon, who’d worked with Boston promoter Don Law when SFX bought his company, then became a Clear Channel senior vp of communications. “We were pretty footloose and fancy-free in the concert business.”
Clear Channel’s meetings-heavy corporate culture reflected Mays, a former Texas petroleum engineer who, by 2000, had expanded the company from a single station in the early 1970s to a media giant with 867 radio stations and 19 TV stations, a robust billboard business and a weekly consumer base of 120 million. Along the way, Mays helped build conservative talk radio, using Clear Channel-owned syndicate Premiere Radio Networks to expand the reach of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger and other right-wing hosts.
In 2001, writing in Salon, former Billboard reporter Eric Boehlert, later a progressive media critic, called Clear Channel “radio’s big bully.” In 2003, U.S. Senators questioned Mays about Clear Channel’s business practices during a committee hearing on media consolidation; the Eagles’ Don Henley showed up to accuse Clear Channel of strong-arming artists to work with the company, as opposed to its competitors. John Scher, a New York promoter who did not sell to SFX, Clear Channel or Live Nation, adds today: “The merger with Clear Channel, in some markets, was the death knell to local promoters: Sell to Clear Channel, or not be able to do any significant marketing with their radio stations.”
But the Clear Channel vision of combining radio with concerts had a fundamental flaw: It may have violated antitrust laws, as a rival Denver promoter claimed in a 2001 lawsuit, alleging the company blacked out radio airplay for artists who booked tours with Clear Channel rivals. (The parties settled in 2004.)
Other flaws in the “mega-merger,” as Billboard referred to it in a March 2000 front-page headline, were less public. In every market, according to Angie Diehl, a longtime marketing exec for promoters, who worked for both SFX and Clear Channel at the time, there were multiple competing radio stations that could present a concert. There were also multiple competing rival concert promoters. Clear Channel aimed to lock down all of these entities in one city so the company could control all the marketing, advertising and promotion of, say, U2.
“But there’s only one U2,” Diehl says. “The artist still dictates what they want. If you want U2 to play for you, and U2 says, ‘Well, we want KROQ to present the show,’ that’s who’s going to present the show.” Arfa adds that the combined company “never quite lived up to its synergistic ambitions.”
Perhaps recognizing this reality, Clear Channel spun off its concert division in 2005 — which would come to be known as Live Nation, led by Michael Rapino, a Canadian promoter who’d also sold his company to SFX. At first, despite emerging as the world’s biggest promoter, Live Nation struggled with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt — $367 million from the initial Clear Channel spin-off, growing to $800 million due to venue-maintenance fees over the next few years. But Rapino steered the promoter into a merger with ticket-selling giant Ticketmaster in 2008, providing crucial cashflow for years to come. “Until the Ticketmaster merger, I don’t think it made any money,” Scher says, adding that he used to book 30 to 40 New York arena shows per year, but industry dominance among Live Nation and top rival AEG has forced him to downsize to three or four. “They are formidable adversaries.”
In the long run, Live Nation solved a problem that the short-lived, SFX-infused Clear Channel Communications never quite figured out. (Clear Channel Communications renamed its radio operation iHeartMedia in 2014; Mays died in 2022.) So despite the promise — and the fears — that Clear Channel would take over the concert business and shut out competition, it was actually what came before and after the $4.4 billion acquisition that proved far more significant. Before the acquisition, SFX was the entity that expanded concert promotion from regional to national; after the acquisition, Live Nation made the concert industry more profitable than ever.
The promise of Clear Channel “synergy,” during its concert-industry excursion from 2000 to 2005, never fully paid off. “The idea was they were going to be able to promote all our concerts over their radio stations,” recalls Danny Zelisko, a Phoenix promoter who sold his company, Evening Star Productions, to SFX. “But at Clear Channel, [promoters] were the stepchild in the backseat. We were almost a dirty word. There was never anything about bringing the radio and the concerts together. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Shareholder advisory groups Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis advised Warner Music Group investors to vote against the election of certain board members at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday, including Val Blavatnik and Lincoln Benet.
The groups say that insider status — Val is the son of WMG owner Len Blavatnik, and he sits on the executive compensation committee — and WMG’s multiple classes of stock present risks for outside investors. WMG says its focused on creating value for all its investors and that most of its directors are independent should allay any investor concerns.
Investor opposition to these directors’ election would need the support of Len Blavatnik to succeed. His Access Industries and its affiliates own more than 70% of WMG’s stock controlling more than 97% of the voting power in WMG. Nonetheless, ISS and Glass Lewis’s concerns put a spotlight on the corporate governance requirements WMG can skirt by being a controlled public company.
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For example, WMG is listed and trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange and is exempt from NASDAQ’s requirement that companies traded on its exchange have a majority of independent board members appointed to the committee that decides executive compensation.
A spokesperson for WMG says, “We welcome input from our shareholders, with a governance structure that goes beyond what is required of controlled companies, including the majority of our directors being independent. Our board and management team are focused on creating long-term value for all investors.”
Shareholder advisory groups like ISS and Glass Lewis exist to research publicly traded companies’ proxy statements and make voting suggestions for investors ahead of annual shareholder meetings. Both groups say in their 2025 benchmark policy guidelines that they broadly support board independence, but they agree controlled companies should be exempt from certain requirements, such as having an independent executive compensation committee, because “controlled companies serve a unique shareholder … whose voting power ensures the protection of its interests,” Glass Lewis’s policy states.
Glass Lewis advises against voting for the election of Val Blavatnik, 27, in its report because of his status as an insider on the compensation committee. Val holds the title of senior director, business development of Warner Chappell Music, and he was elected to WMG’s board in April 2023.
As the chief executive of Access Industries, Glass Lewis considers Lincoln Benet, 61, an affiliate and non-independent board member, and they advise against voting for his election because WMG’s multi-class share structures gives him disproportionate voting rights.
In its report, ISS advises voting against the of seven of WMG’s 11 board members—Val Blavatnik, Lincoln Benet, Len Blavatnik, Donald Wagner, Noreena Hertz, Ynon Kreiz and Cecilia Kurzman. For Val Blavatnik, Benet and Wagner, it raises similar concerns to Glass Lewis about their seats on certain board committees as non-independent members. For the remainder of the directors, ISS raises concerns about their support for a “dual class structure that is not subject to a reasonable time-based sunset provision.”
It also advises voting against Len Blavatnik because “his ownership of the super voting shares provides him with voting power control of the company.”
ISS has advised voting against the majority of WMG’s board members for at least the past three years, and it has taken similar stances against the election of board members of Meta and Alphabet.
Five out of WMG’s 11 board members, or 55%, are independent, including its chairman, nominating and corporate governance committees.
It is worth noting that the WMG chief executive Robert Kyncl’s total compensation of $18.6 million declined 9% from the year prior.
Starting Tuesday (March 4), SiriusXM will deliver the sounds of Tomorrowland and the global dance scene with a new channel curated by the team at the Belgian mega-festival festival.
One World Radio will be featured within the SiriusXM app and feature music programmed by the team that curates Tomorrowland’s One World Radio internet radio station, with the SiriusXM channel to offer new music and live DJ sets from Tomorrowland festivals including the flagship event in Boom, Belgium, along with Tomorrowland Winter, Tomorrowland Brasil and more.
SiriusXM’s One World Radio channel will be an extension of Tomorrowland’s pre-existing One World Radio feed, but will be curated a bit differently and customized to the SiriusXM audience.
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“We are really excited about hearing the nearly unlimited Tomorrowland archives, giving SiriusXM listeners a peak into past vibes of the legendary two-weekend festival in Belgium,” Geronimo, SiriusXM’s Vice President of Music Programing, tells Billboard.
Aside from regularly scheduled and rotated music, the channel will also feature exclusive song cuts from previous festivals. “You’ll be able to hear the crowd reaction which really put you in the moment,” Geronimo continues. “It’s truly a place where the global dance community comes together and enjoys each other. Dance music is really about fun, love, positivity and enjoying life and each other and One World Radio captures this essence perfectly.”
The channel will feature music spanning the two decades of Tomorrowland history and span the spectrum of electronic music sounds. The “main thing is to give people a good time and spread positive vibes, without necessarily being bound to a genre,” says Bram Franssen, station lead at the pre-existing One World Radio and curator for the new SiriusXM channel.
With the launch, One World Radio joins SiriusXM’s suite of dance channels that include BPM, Diplo’s Revolution, SiriusXM Chill, Studio 54 Radio, Utopia and more.
“We’re excited to not only hear classic archived Tomorrowland sets but also what One World Radio has for the future,” says Geronimo. “The world outside of North America has historically been a step ahead when it comes to dance music and emerging genres, and One World Radio on SiriusXM will help bridge that gap.”
Juanita Stephens, a barrier-breaking music industry veteran who helmed media and artist relations departments at major labels such as Warner Bros., MCA and Polygram, died March 1 in Atlanta after a lengthy battle with cancer.
Stephens’ industry background also includes a tenure with Bad Boy Worldwide. After that, the well-respected executive launched her own media and publicity firm, JS Media Relations, with bases in New York and Atlanta. Under that banner, she helped oversee the solo career of Grammy-winning artist Bobby Brown.
“Juanita Stephens was a true trailblazer — one of the first Black female executives to shatter barriers in the music industry,” veteran entertainment attorney and longtime friend Rev. Dr. Denise J. Brown tells Billboard.
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Founder of the faith-based entertainment content incubator Oikeo Ministries, Brown (no relation to the singer) also remembers Stephens as “a consummate professional and relentless perfectionist. She never accepted ‘no’ as an answer, fiercely championing every artist and project she believed in. Her impact was profound, her presence commanding and her legacy unshakable. The industry has lost a pioneer, and she will be deeply missed.”
Stephens was born in New York’s Spanish Harlem, moving with her family to Queens as a young child. Her initial entry into the music business occurred in 1987 when she joined MCA Records as assistant to the vp of publicity, longtime friend Katie Valk. With no prior record company experience, Stephens learned the ropes by helping to organize national and international campaigns for a roster of pop, heavy metal and country artists that included superstars such as Elton John, Dolly Parton and The Kinks.
Later tapped as director of publicity by the heads of MCA’s Black music division, Jheryl Busby and Louil Silas, Stephens oversaw campaigns for Bobby Womack, Patti LaBelle, New Edition, Jody Watley and The Jets, among others. From there, Stephens became the first Black female vp of publicity and artist development appointed at MCA, working with Bobby Brown along with a multi-genre roster that included hip-hop, alternative, jazz, gospel and reggae acts.
In a comment sent to Billboard, Bobby Brown notes, “Juanita was a beautiful and gifted sister. We had decades of memories, and I could always count on her wisdom and kindness. I love you, Juanita. You will be deeply missed.”
After MCA, Stephens segued to similar senior executive-level posts with Polygram in 1992, Warner Bros. Records (now Warner Records) in 1995 and then Bad Boy Worldwide in 1998. She exited the in-house label publicity circuit to establish JS Media Relations in 2000; its clients included Charlie Wilson and Tito Jackson.
Through JS Media Relations, Stephens handled publicity for tours featuring LaBelle and Stephanie Mills in addition to Brown and Wilson. Among the various media events with which JS Media Relations collaborated were the BET Awards, American Music Awards, Trumpet Awards, VH1 Music Awards and the Otis Redding 70th Birthday Tribute.
Drake has reached a settlement with Texas-based iHeartMedia in his ongoing legal dispute over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” according to court records.
In November, Drake filed a legal petition in Bexar County, Texas, where San Antonio is located, alleging that iHeartMedia had received illegal payments from Universal Music Group to boost radio airplay for “Not Like Us.” UMG is the parent record label for both Drake and Lamar.
The petition, a precursor to a potential lawsuit, had sought depositions from corporate representatives of both companies.
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In a court document filed Thursday, attorneys for Drake said the rapper and iHeartMedia had “reached an amicable resolution of the dispute” but did not offer any other information.
“We are pleased that the parties were able to reach a settlement satisfactory to both sides, and have no further comment on this matter,” Drake’s legal team said in a statement.
In an email Friday, iHeartMedia declined to comment on the settlement.
The claims against UMG remain active, and a hearing on a motion by UMG’s lawyers to dismiss the petition was scheduled to be held Wednesday in a San Antonio courtroom.
Drake has alleged UMG engaged in “irregular and inappropriate business practices” to get radio airplay for “Not Like Us.” The petition also alleges that UMG knew “the song itself, as well as its accompanying album art and music video, attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake, by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts.”
An email to a UMG representative seeking comment was not immediately answered.
In January, Drake filed a defamation lawsuit in federal court in New York City against UMG over what he alleges are false allegations of pedophilia made in “Not Like Us.” Lamar is not named in the lawsuit.
The feud between Drake, a 38-year-old Canadian rapper and singer and five-time Grammy winner, and Lamar, a 37-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner who headlined the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 9, is among the biggest in hip-hop in recent years.
The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter Monday to iHeartMedia’s CEO and chairman, Robert Pittman, saying the commission is looking into whether the audio company is forcing musicians to perform at its May country music festival in Austin for reduced pay in exchange for favorable airplay of their songs on iHeart radio stations.
“We look forward to demonstrating to the Commission how performing at the iHeartCountry Festival – or declining to do so – has no bearing on our stations’ airplay,” iHeart Media said in a statement. “We do not make any overt or covert agreements about airplay with artists performing at our events.”
This article was originally published by The Associated Press.
Former Atlantic Music Group chairman/CEO Julie Greenwald is being welcomed as executive-in-residence at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music (CDI) at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for the spring 2025 semester, it was announced on Monday (March 3).
In the role, Greenwald will present marketing case studies, hold workshops on business plan development, curate a series of conversations with music industry executives and participate in A&R pitch sessions with students. She will hold office hours at the institute’s Brooklyn campus.
Over her career, Greenwald has played a role in the success of superstars such as Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Cardi B, Charli XCX and Twenty One Pilots, among many others. After attending Tulane University, followed by a stint teaching in the New Orleans public school systems in the Calliope projects through Teach for America, she started her music industry career as Lyor Cohen‘s assistant at Rush Management. Three months later, she was named promotions coordinator at Def Jam Records, where she rose through the ranks. Following the merger of Def Jam, Island and Mercury Records, she and Cohen built Island Def Jam Music Group. She was named Billboard‘s Women in Music executive of the year in 2017.
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“I have always been so fortunate to get my unequal fair share of talented interns from NYU,” said Greenwald in a statement. “I am thrilled to have this opportunity to work so closely with not only the students, but the incredible faculty at the Clive Davis Institute.”
Record producer Nick Sansano, who serves as associate chair, director of production curriculum and co-director of the musicianship and performance curriculum at the Clive Davis Institute, said in a statement that Greenwald’s “presence at CDI is incredibly meaningful in so many ways. As a groundbreaking woman executive in the music business, she is a source of inspiration for the next generation of industry leaders. As one of the most successful music business executives of all time, she is a unique source of a breadth of professional wisdom. Julie has been very clear that she is doing this for no other reason than to pass on all she can to our students; like all laudable teachers, she is setting the groundwork to enable long-term success for our students, and the music making industry at large. Julie won’t be using a textbook, she is the textbook.”
In August, Greenwald announced she would step down from her role at Atlantic Music Group, where she was succeeded by Elliot Grainge following a major restructuring at Warner Music Group.
Employees of DistroKid are still working without a contract 10 months after they voted to unionize — and now their union is hoping to raise awareness of their plight after more than 40% of the company’s staff was terminated and their jobs outsourced to the Philippines late last year.
Bill Bores, chapter president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communication Workers of America Local 15 (NABET-CAW) — the union representing the DistroKid employees — estimates that 37 jobs were lost in the recent purge at the New York-based company, which operates virtually with nearly all employees working from home.
At the time of the layoffs, DistroKid management said the cuts were part of a larger effort to fix issues around customer service, specifically “by expanding to 24/7 customer service with faster response times.” The company mostly serves independent artists, acting as a digital music distribution service to help musicians upload and monetize their music through sites like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music. The site was valued at $1.3 billion in 2021 following a recapitalization deal with New York investment firm Insight Partners and reportedly has a customer base of two million artists.
In April, more than 63% of DistroKid employees voted to unionize with NABET-CAW, and the victory was later certified by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Company management and union officials even sat for their first collective bargaining session in July, but talks have been slow due to a lack of availability to meet, says Bores.
“We finally got something on the calendar with them for October, when the company’s attorney called me and said they’re going to fire half the unit,” says Bores, referring to the 37 employees who were initially placed on “administrative leave” before being terminated. Bores says many of the terminated employees had backed the union efforts and that many had worked in both customer and artist services roles. The employees were eventually replaced by a support team operating out of the Philippines, managed by offshoring company Concentrix.
“My union knows that company very well because they have been involved in providing scabs and people to cross picket lines and thwart union drives,” Bores says. ”So not only did they lay off American workers who are unionizing, they sent their work to the Philippines to workers there that make very little compared to the workers here in New York.”
In a statement to Billboard, DistroKid officials defended the staffing change, writing, “DistroKid remains focused on delivering a best-in-class support experience for independent artists worldwide. Since initiating our ramp-up to 24/7 support late last year, artist response times have improved by 74% over the past three months and 90% year-over-year. In the coming weeks, we’ll also roll out live chat for the highest-volume categories, further enhancing accessibility and efficiency for artists everywhere. Achieving this level of service required making difficult decisions that impacted valued team members, and we are deeply grateful for their contributions.”
Former employee Wilson Rahn, a customer service employee who lost his job during the October purge, says DistroKid’s claims don’t align with what he experienced at the company.
“My perception is that they were not bargaining in good faith,” says Rahn, who is still looking for work. “I worked on their customer support funnel, made it faster and more effective and had a record of showing that I was succeeding in that. So my firing is pretty clearly, in my opinion, just because I was vocally supportive of the union.”
Bores has filed four complaints against DistroKid with the NLRB but said the labor body has effectively been rendered powerless by President Donald Trump. On Jan. 27, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the board with only two members — one below the minimum number needed to legally function. The firing has left the NLRB unable to certify union elections or hear complaints from workers. Without an enforcement option from the federal government, Bores says there is little his union can do to force DistroKid back to the bargaining table aside from applying public pressure campaigns.
In the worst-case scenario, says Bores, DistroKid could hold out until the one-year anniversary of the unionization vote, at which point it would be legally allowed to challenge the union’s right to continue representing employees. But he says he’s hopeful it won’t come to that and that the two sides will have a final contract ready to sign by next month.
The Billboard Live Stage is coming to Canada, and it will happen at the site of NXNE’s most beloved performances.
On June 12, 2025, Billboard Canada will present a performance of major chart-topping artists, culminating in a highly anticipated headlining performance by a global music icon. The show will take place at Sankofa Square (formerly Yonge-Dundas Square), the bustling public square at the heart of downtown Toronto.
It’s a fitting return to the place where NXNE presented some of its biggest shows on the festival’s 30th anniversary, and it marks the festival’s first show in partnership with Billboard Canada and its parent company, ArtsHouse Media Group.
“For 30 years, NXNE has been a defining force in Canada’s music landscape, championing talent and shaping the future of live performance,” said Amanda Dorenberg, CEO of ArtsHouse Media Group and Billboard Canada, in a statement. “As Billboard Canada and ArtsHouse Media Group continue to support music’s evolution, we’re proud to celebrate NXNE’s 30th anniversary with the Billboard Live Stage at Sankofa Square, further extending its legacy by giving artists a platform to reach new audiences and make a global impact.”
NXNE is no stranger to the square. It’s been the site of performances by massive acts including The National, The Flaming Lips, Sloan, multiple members of Wu-Tang Clan, Devo, Ludacris and many more, including a legendary blowout free public performance by Iggy Pop & The Stooges in 2010. The festival’s history goes way back to the opening of the public square, remembers co-founding NXNE president/CEO Michael Hollett.
“We were honoured to present the first ever concert in the Square when Gord Downie [of the Tragically Hip] played NXNE in 2003 and we had the biggest crowd ever for Iggy and the Stooges in 2010,” he says. “With Flaming Lips, St. Vincent, Raekwon and so many great shows, we have a great history at Yonge and Dundas, and we are thrilled to return on our 30th anniversary to the freshly named Sankofa Square to again bring incredible, free live music to the city and the world.”
The show will take place on Thursday (June 12). As previously announced, NXNE will also be home to this year’s Billboard Canada Power Players event.
NXNE has already unveiled its first wave of showcasing artists, which includes more than 100 emerging acts from Canada and across the globe. The festival will take over 23 venues throughout Toronto. – Richard Trapunski
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Drake & PARTYNEXTDOOR Debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums Chart with ‘$ome $exy $ongs 4 U’
Drake is back on top of the world — or, at least, the CN Tower.
The Toronto superstar and his collaborator PARTYNEXTDOOR have the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart dated March 1 with their new R&B album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.
It’s Drake’s first full-length release since his reputation took a beating during his beef with Kendrick Lamar in 2024. The latter went on to win record and song of the year at the 2025 Grammys for his Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” which went to No. 1 in Canada when he performed it at the Super Bowl halftime show.
The joint album has flooded the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 this week, with every single one of the album’s 21 songs charting on the tally, as they did on the U.S. Hot 100.
The upbeat flip phone nostalgia track “Nokia” is charting highest at No. 5, followed by the high energy (and disconcertingly titled) “Gimme A Hug” at No. 10.
While Drake is leading the albums chart, Kendrick has fallen off the top of the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, where his song “Not Like Us” rose to No. 1 for the first time last week. On the Hot 100 in the U.S., Kendrick Lamar’s SZA collab “Luther” has the top spot, but on the Canadian Hot 100 for the week dated March 1, No. 1 belongs to Bruno Mars and ROSÉ’s “APT” — a new peak for the song in its 18th week on the chart.
Read more on the Canadian charts here. – Rosie Long Decter
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Allison Russell Affirms the Power of Community at Montreal’s Folk Alliance International
For Allison Russell, the 37th Folk Alliance International conference was a homecoming.
The annual gathering, which takes place in a different city each year, took over Montreal’s downtown Sheraton Centre from Feb. 19 to 23.
The Nashville-based singer-songwriter gave the conference’s keynote presentation in conversation with NPR’s Ann Powers — which, for the Grammy-winning singer, meant returning to her hometown of Montreal. At a conference themed around the idea of illumination, Russell was a beacon of light.
Russell opened the keynote by sharing that as a teen, she would sleep in the pews of a cathedral less than a kilometre away from the conference centre where the gathering was held. Her high school was just down the road, too.
“We bring with us every version of ourselves,” Russell said. “All the ages of myself are so present in this town.”
But Montreal wasn’t the only home Russell returned to, as the conference has also been a constant for the singer-songwriter across more than two decades of her professional music career.
Speaking with Billboard Canada after the keynote, Russell recalls that her first Folk International Alliance conference was the 2001 edition in Vancouver. At the time, she was a roadie for Canadian folk group The Be Good Tanyas, who were having a breakout year.
“I was still in the closet as a songwriter,” she remembers.
That conference was where Russell would meet JT Nero — her partner in life, child-rearing and music-making. And now, 24 years later, she’s one of Canada’s most celebrated contemporary songwriters.
Russell was still coming down from Hadestown, the musical she’s been starring in on Broadway — 15 weeks, 8 shows a week, without missing a day — when she landed in Montreal. At the conference, she spoke about the danger that comes from living in denial of trauma and hardship on a micro and macro level.
“We are going through a phase of unfortunately a fascist resurfacing, rooted in fear, rooted in denialism, rooted in trying to hide the past or re-write it instead of simply facing it,” she said in her keynote. “Nothing can be changed unless it’s faced.”
She linked the current American administration to her performance in Hadestown, a musical about an authoritarian leader who builds a wall to keep newcomers out.
“These fearful demagogues who root their hoarding of power in fear, in othering, in scapegoating,” she said, “they are not originals. They are following a very, very boring and terrible playbook.”
Russell currently has a third solo album in the works, with singles coming soon. Titled In The Hour of Chaos, Russell says it’s an album for her community, inspired by mutual aid during tough times. In the studio with Nero and her Returner collaborators, she says she’s having a blast working on new material.
“It’s my community that has been uplifting and upholding me,” she says. “I hopefully do the same for them.”
Read more from Russell’s Folk Alliance International keynote and interview with Billboard Canada here. – RLD
HYBE shares closed the week up 4.9% to 245,500 won ($167.94) after the company teased the return of BTS in 2025 during its fourth-quarter earnings release on Tuesday (Feb. 25), effectively leading a strong week for K-pop stocks amid an overall down period for both music stocks and markets in general. Among other K-pop companies, YG Entertainment gained 8.8%, JYP Entertainment improved 2.4% and SM Entertainment rose 0.9%.
HYBE partially attributed its 38% decline in 2024 operating income to the BTS hiatus that began in 2023 when several of the group’s members were forced to step away to complete South Korea’s required military service. But the company said it believes operating profit will improve in 2025 “through the comeback of 21st-century icons BTS” and payoffs from investments in the company’s social media-superfan platform, Weverse.
The K-pop giant’s revenue increased 4% to $1.58 billion last year, with recorded music revenue, the company’s largest source of income, dipping 11.3% but concerts revenue jumping 25.6% as the number of performances rose from 125 in 2023 to 172 in 2024. HYBE’s South Korean labels generated 15% more streaming revenue internationally even as streaming fell 17% at home. Revenue from U.S. labels (Big Machine and Quality Control) fell 16%.
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) had more losers than winners this week as it fell 2.3% to 2,613.79. Just seven of the index’s stocks finished in positive territory, and outside of K-pop stocks, none gained more than 2%.
Markets had a rough week owing to inflation and recession fears. Amidst talks of U.S. tariffs on foreign imports, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now predicting U.S. gross domestic product, a measure of the country’s economic activity, will decline 1.5% in the first quarter. The S&P 500 finished the week down 1.0% to 5,954.44 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite, weighed down by Nvidia’s weaker-than-expected first-quarter guidance, fell 3.5% to 18,847.28. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was an outlier, gaining 1.7% to 8,809.74. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index sank 4.6% to 2,532.78. China’s SSE composite index dropped 1.7% to 3,320.90.
Live Nation shares fell 4.1% to $149.48 — the concert promoter’s second consecutive weekly decline. Wolfe Research lowered its Live Nation price target to $165 from $175 and Citigroup raised Live Nation to $175 from $163. Despite those declines, the company’s shares are up 10.6% year-to-date and 47.5% over the last 52 weeks.
Universal Music Group (UMG) and Warner Music Group (WMG) fell 4.2% and 4.2%, respectively, with UMG slated to report fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday (March 6). Sphere Entertainment Co., which reports quarterly earnings on Monday (March 3), dropped 7.0% to $46.90, lowering its year-to-date gain to 2.8%.
Chinese music streamer Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) fell 15.3% to $14.40. On Friday (Feb. 28), the company announced a change on its board of directors, as Matthew Yun Ming Cheng retired from the board and was replaced by Wai Yip Tsang, the current financial controller of Tencent Holdings. In announcing Tsang’s appointment, Cussion Pang, executive chairman of Tencent Music Entertainment, said Tsang’s “deep financial background, extensive experience and business insights will be a tremendous asset to TME.”
iHeartMedia shares fell 15.3% on Friday and ended the week down 16.1% following the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release on Thursday (Feb. 27). The radio company said it expects first-quarter revenue to fall in the low single digits and forecasts full-year revenue will be flat compared to 2024.
The largest decline of the week came from Cumulus Media, which fell 20.0% on Friday and finished the week down 19.1% after the radio company released fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday. Cumulus’ revenue fell 1.2% in the fourth quarter and was down 2.1% for the full year.
Though the RIAA has yet to release revenue numbers for recorded music in the U.S. in 2024, early returns from a handful of international markets are in — and they show that digital revenue maintained or gained momentum last year while physical sales slowed from 2023.
In Germany, the world’s fourth-largest recorded music market, total revenue grew 7.8% to 2.38 billion euros ($2.53 billion) in 2024, trade group Bundesverband Musikindustrie announced earlier this week. That was an improvement on the 6.3% gain seen in 2023 and the 6.1% gain in 2022. Notably, audio streaming, which accounted for 78% of total revenue, grew 12.6% to 1.86 billion euros ($1.98 billion), an improvement on the 7.9% gain in 2023 but below the 14.0% spike seen in 2022.
The full year ended with the same momentum Germany established in the first half of 2024. Through June, total revenue was up 7.6% and audio streaming was up 12.7%, while physical sales — which were down 11.9% through June — improved in the second half of the year, leading to a less-drastic 7.4% drop below 2023 revenue.
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On the physical front, Germany’s vinyl sales improved 9.4% to 153 million euros ($163 billion) in 2024, accounting for 6.4% of total revenue — though they cooled a bit from 2023, when sales increased 12.6%. However, CD sales fell 17.1% to 207 million euros ($220 million) last year, a markedly steeper decline than the 5.9% drop seen in 2023.
In Spain, recorded music revenue grew 9.4% to 569 million euros ($606 million), according to Promusicae, the country’s trade association for the record industry. That was down from growth rates of 12.4% and 12.3% in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Audio streaming totaled 376 million euros, up 14.1% year over year, and accounted for 66% of total revenue. But just as in Germany, physical sales plummeted. Total physical sales fell 13.3% to 54 million euros ($57 million), with vinyl sales sinking 4% after jumping 19.4% in 2023. Meanwhile, CD sales dropped 25.4%, a much sharper decline than in 2023 (when they were down 1.3%) and comparable to 2022 (down 29.2%).
The Spanish market slowed considerably in the second half of the year, leading to end-of-year gains that were six to seven percentage points lower than mid-year results. Through June, total revenue was up 16.6%, while the year finished with a smaller 9.4% gain. Digital revenue fell from an 18.8% gain at the mid-year mark to a 12.6% gain at the end of the year, and vinyl sales were up 11.9% in June but finished the year down 4% — a nearly 16-percentage point swing.
In Japan, the world’s second-largest recorded music market, physical audio sales rose 2% to 148.96 billion yen ($985 million), a worse showing than in 2023 (when they were up 8%) and 2022 (up 5%), according to the RIAJ. And physical music video sales fell 21% to 90.5 billion yen ($598 million), which brought the total physical market down 8% from 2023.
The RIAJ has not yet published year-end digital numbers, though total digital revenue was up 5% and streaming revenue was up 7% through the third quarter. Japan is unlike most music markets in that physical formats remain the dominant moneymakers. Through September, streaming revenue accounted for 35% of total revenue while physical sales — mostly audio formats — accounted for the remaining 65%.
In the U.S., another data point arrived Thursday (Feb. 27) when ASCAP announced that revenue increased 5.7% to $1.84 billion in 2024, with domestic royalties up 5.3% to $1.4 billion and foreign receipts growing 6.8% to $483 million.
As for U.S. recorded music numbers, RIAA figures are likely to be released in March, assuming the organization sticks to prior timings of its release. Mid-year RIAA data showed the U.S. market increased 3.9% to $8.69 billion, with paid streaming improving 5.1% to $5.22 billion. Physical revenue rose 12.7% and was driven by a 17% increase in vinyl sales. Year-end numbers should benefit from Spotify’s U.S. price increase in July.
The IFPI’s release of 2024 global figures, with a country-by-country breakdown, will offer a more complete picture of global trend lines and reveal how the U.S. fared against other nations. That report is typically released each March.