Business
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Shares of SM Entertainment gained 15.3% this week, making the K-pop company the greatest gainer among the 21 music stocks in the Billboard Global Music Index. Although the company wasn’t the subject of any significant news items that typically affect share prices — earnings, investments or partnerships — its shares nonetheless rose to 117,600 KRW ($92.07), bringing the year-to-date gain to 53.3%.
It’s not just SM Entertainment, though. K-pop is booming in 2023. Shares of the index’s other South Korean music company, HYBE, gained 6.1% this week and have gained 71.5% in 2023. Outside the index, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment have gained 100.6% and 88.4%, respectively, year to date.
With 16 of its 21 stocks in positive territory this week, the Billboard Global Music Index improved 5% to 1,334.28, its best one-week performance since November. The biggest contributors to the index’s value posted strong single-digit gains. Spotify improved 6.3% to $159.99, Universal Music Group gained 3.8% to 20.16 euros ($22.11) and Warner Music Group jumped 9.3% to $27.16. Meanwhile, Live Nation gained 7.2% to $90.18 and on Thursday (June 15) closed above $90 for the first time since Sept. 15.
Two other stocks had double-digit gains this week. Streaming company LiveOne added 13.3% to $1.53, bringing its year-to-date gain to 137.6%, while Sphere Entertainment Co. climbed 10.9% to $29.29. Since Sphere separated from MSG Entertainment’s concert promotion business on April 20, its shares have gone up more than 14%. On Sept. 29, U2 will launch the MSG Sphere at the Venetian with a residency that extends through Dec. 16.
While stocks were generally up this week, music stocks fared better than the major indexes. The S&P 500 gained 2.6% to 4,409.59, its best week since March. The Nasdaq composite improved 3.2% to 13,689.57, also marking its best week since March. Outside the United States, South Korea’s Kospi index dropped 0.6% to 2,625.79, while the FTSE 100 in the U.K. gained 1.1% to 7,642.72.
German promoter and ticketing company CTS Eventim had the week’s largest decline at 18.2%, making it the only music stock on the index with a double-digit loss. As Billboard reported on Wednesday, the German company’s share price fell precipitously in the two days following a critical segment on the German public television show ZDF Magazin Royale.
Michael Jordan is finalizing a deal to sell the majority share of the Charlotte Hornets, the franchise announced Friday, leaving the 30-team NBA without any Black majority ownership.
Jordan is selling to a group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall, the Hornets said. Plotkin has been a minority stakeholder in the Hornets since 2019. Schnall has been a minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks since 2015 and is in the process of selling his investment in that team.
It’s not clear how long the process of selling will take to be finalized by the NBA’s Board of Governors. Jordan plans to keep a minority stake in the Hornets, the team he bought in 2010 for about $275 million.
Jordan’s decision to sell ends his unsuccessful 13-year run overseeing the organization.
“In the same way that it’s wonderful that one of our greatest, Michael Jordan, could become the principal governor of a team, he has the absolute right to sell at the same time,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month at the NBA Finals. “Values have gone up a lot since he bought that team, so that is his decision.”
In that same news conference at the finals, Silver said the Board of Governors are focused on diversity in ownership groups.
“I would love to have better representation in terms of principal governors,” Silver said. “It’s a marketplace. It’s something that if we were expanding that the league would be in a position to focus directly on that, but in individual team transactions, the market takes us where we are.”
The sale price was not immediately announced; ESPN, citing sources, said the franchise was being valued at $3 billion. The most recent sale of an NBA team came when Mat Ishbia bought the Phoenix Suns, a deal that when struck in December valued that franchise at $4 billion.
Jordan declined comment on the sale through his spokesperson, Estee Portnoy.
For as great as Jordan was on the court — national champion at North Carolina, two-time Olympic gold medalist, six-time NBA champion and in the never-ending conversation for best player ever — the Hornets never reached a championship level during his time as the owner.
Charlotte went 423-600 in his 13 seasons in charge, the 26th-best record over that span. It never won a playoff series in that time and hasn’t even been to the postseason in the last seven seasons.
Other members of the new potential Hornets ownership group — pending the approval — are recording artist J. Cole, Dan Sundheim, Ian Loring, country music singer-songwriter Eric Church, Chris Shumway and several local Charlotte investors, including Amy Levine Dawson and Damian Mills.
Along with the Hornets, HSE ownership includes the NBA G League’s Greensboro Swarm and NBA 2K League’s Hornets Venom GT, as well as managing and operating the Spectrum Center, each of which is included as part of the sale.
When Jordan, who grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, purchased majority ownership in the team, it created a great amount of buzz.
But the Hornets’ struggles and inability to turn things around bothered Jordan. The first inclination that he was looking to get out of the NBA ownership business came in 2020, when he sold a minority stake to Plotkin and Sundheim.
The Hornets are coming off an injury-plagued 27-55 season and hold the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft. Victor Wembanyana is expected to go first overall on Thursday night, leaving Charlotte with the choice of either G League star guard Scoot Henderson or Alabama’s Brandon Miller.
Charlotte’s biggest star is LaMelo Ball, and the team still has some decent foundational parts to build around including Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington and Mark Williams, the team’s starting center who played well last year as a rookie.
Jordan was often criticized as an owner for not spending enough in free agency to make the Hornets competitive.
He took over a team in 2010 that had won 44 games the year before but had been swept by the Orlando Magic in the first round.
It went downhill from there.
Charlotte — still the Bobcats at the time — was 34-48 in its first year under Jordan and then an NBA-worst 7-59 the following year. But despite the abysmal record, Charlotte failed to land the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft lottery and Anthony Davis.
Charlotte got back to the playoffs in 2013-14 but was swept by the Miami Heat. Two years later, the Hornets won 48 games but lost again to the Heat in the first round, this time in seven games.
In the seven years since, Jordan’s Hornets have had only one winning season and have twice exited early in the play-in tournament as the 10 seed.
Charlotte has not won a playoff series since the 2001-02 season and has never won an NBA championship
Daddy Yankee, Karol G and dozens of other artists are asking a federal judge to toss out a sprawling copyright lawsuit that claims “Despacito” and hundreds of other reggaeton tracks infringed a single 1989 song, arguing the accusers are “effectively claiming ownership of an entire genre of music.”
The case, filed by Jamaican duo Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, claims that their 1989 song “Fish Market” has been sampled or interpolated into more than 1,800 songs in the years since it was released — and that each one amounts to an act of copyright infringement.
But in a motion filed Thursday (June 15), attorneys for the accused infringers finally struck back — arguing that after “30 years of inaction,” Clevie & Steely were unfairly trying to monopolize a whole style of popular music.
“Plaintiffs [are] effectively claiming ownership of an entire genre of music by claiming exclusive rights to the rhythm and other unprotectable musical elements common to all ‘reggaeton’-style songs,” wrote lawyers from Pryor Cashman, the same law firm that just won Ed Sheeran’s big trial with similar arguments.
First filed in 2021, the enormous lawsuit names more than 150 defendants, including “Despacito” stars Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber as well as Bad Bunny, Anitta, Pitbull, Karol G, Ricky Martin, El Chombo and many other artists, plus units of all three major music companies. The case claims that “Fish Market,” and several other songs that directly copied it, formed the basis for the “dembow” rhythm that’s been used in countless reggaeton songs in the years since.
But in Thursday’s response, lawyers from Pryor Cashman (who represent 89 of those defendants) said the size of the case had made it a procedural disaster — a confusing mess in which nobody knows exactly what they’re accused of doing wrong. Without those specific allegations, they said Clevie & Steely had failed to satisfy “the fundamental elements of a copyright infringement claim.”
“The [complaint] is a ‘shotgun pleading’ filled with conclusory allegations that lump defendants together, making it impossible for Defendants to determine what each is alleged to have done, what works are at issue and what in those works is allegedly infringing,” the attorneys wrote.
The lawyers for Daddy Yankee and the other defendants also sharply criticized the length of time that elapsed before bringing the case. The U.S. Supreme Court has said that copyright cases can usually be filed even decades later, but Thursday’s filing said that Clevie & Steely’s case pushed that system to its breaking point.
“Plaintiffs neither filed any action nor registered any copyrights until 2020 — at least thirty years after the creation of the works,” the lawyers for the accused artists wrote. “These failures constitute misleading inaction, during which an entire genre of reggaeton music developed, which plaintiffs now claim to own.”
An attorney for Clevie & Steely did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
Despite being filed in 2021, the case over “Fish Market” is still in the earliest stages, thanks in no small part to the procedural complexity of a lawsuit involving scores of defendants and hundreds of songs. If Thursday’s motion is denied, the case will proceed into discovery, where both sides will exchange evidence, and head toward an eventual trial. But such a resolution could still be years away.
Beyoncé’s career is filled with chart-topping albums, momentous concerts and her marriage to another musical trailblazer, Jay-Z. But recently, the “Cuff It” singer’s most unusual contribution to society might be her impact on Sweden’s stubbornly high inflation rate.
When Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour launched with two dates at Stockholm’s 46,000-capacity Friend Arena in May, it contributed about 0.2 percentage points to Sweden’s inflation rate for the month. “It’s quite astonishing for a single event,” Michael Grahn, chief economist for Sweden with Danske Bank, told the Financial Times. Termed the “Beyoncé blip” by Grahn, the small impact to Sweden’s overall appreciation in prices was caused by the singer’s fans’ buying up hotel rooms and spending money in restaurants.
The combination of relatively cheap tickets and a strong U.S. dollar — 9.3% more valuable to the Swedish kroner compared to the prior-year period — made Sweden an attractive alternative for Beyoncé fans priced out of concerts closer to home. That helped cause Sweden’s inflation rate — a staggering 9.7% compared to just 4.0% in the U.S. — to land half of a percentage point higher than expectations.
An influx of Americans is hardly the sole reason prices were stubbornly high in Sweden last month. As Forbes pointed out, Sweden’s inflation rate was plenty high before Beyoncé’s Stockholm concert, and one musician could only have a small impact relative to other factors such as food and non-alcoholic beverages (+14.8%) and furnishings and household goods (+10.4%).
Still, it says a lot about ticket prices — and U.S. consumers’ stomach for them — that Stockholm was a viable alternative for some Americans. The Beyoncé blip isn’t the first we’ve heard about her fans’ reaction to high prices for in-demand tickets. Buzzfeed wrote an article back in February about some sticker-shocked fans’ decision to travel great distances to save money. One Las Vegas-based Beyoncé fan told the outlet she couldn’t get into a Ticketmaster presale and ended up spending $300 on a Stockholm show instead. Another American fan said she purchased a floor seat in Stockholm for just $95.
Post-pandemic, artists are less shy about charging their fans higher prices for primary tickets. Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift are among the superstar artists who have elevated tickets’ face value, rather than let ticket scalpers capture the premium on the secondary market. Although Springsteen had kept prices relatively low throughout his career, tickets for the best seats on his 2023 tour, which went on sale last summer, cost upwards of $5,000. Tickets for U.S. dates for Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour typically cost $350 for decent seats, Billboard reported in May. There’s a large variation by city, too. Currently, the cheapest tickets available on SeatGeek for her tour range from $57 in Louisville, Ky., to $90 in Minneapolis, to $145 in Pittsburgh. Larger markets are far more expensive: Ticket prices start at $270 in East Rutherford, N.J., outside of New York City; and $282 in Philadelphia.
Every consumer has a breaking point, however, and people will take more affordable options when given the chance. Ticket buyers facing sky-high prices need only a passport and time off work to see a superstar at — compared to the United States — bargain prices. A person with frequent flier miles and hotel points to burn can easily get a vacation and a concert in a historic European city cheaper than a concert alone at home.
This presents an opportunity. Why not music tourism when medical tourism is a long-standing tradition?
Health care might be the only aspect of the U.S. economy with a lower public sentiment than concert tickets. Medical tourism is an established industry because healthcare costs are notoriously steep in this country. For patients who don’t mind travel and trust the level of care provided in other countries, elective surgeries can be obtained far more affordably outside the United States, in countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica and Thailand. South African companies sell package vacations that include plastic surgery and a safari. As long as you need the procedure, you might as well enjoy yourself!
Live music companies are already looking to capture a share of music fans’ travel budgets. As my colleague Dave Brooks reported this week, the concert business has put a renewed focus on destination events. Not content with capturing fans’ spending for tickets and concessions, promoters are increasingly interested in grabbing a share of the hotel and hospitality spending when fans travel for concerts and festivals. To that point, in April Live Nation announced a new travel and hospitality firm, Vibee, which offers “curated music experiences in the most sought-after destinations in the world,” according to its website.
Increasingly, going to concerts is more like taking a vacation. A Live Nation study found that fans attending Lollapalooza in Chicago last year spent about $49 million on hotels and over $80 million on food and beverages. Indeed, multi-day festivals, with their VIP packages and high-priced perks, have more in common with an overseas trip than a weeknight concert at a nearby amphitheater. Over time, if enterprising companies can create the right products and services, music tourism could be more than a financial blip, and — as these companies see it — Beyoncé fans might wind up paying you twice.
The production company founded by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, is splitting ways with Spotify less than a year after the debut of their podcast Archetypes.
It is unclear why the podcast, hosted by Meghan, is leaving the platform but Spotify and Archewell Audio said in a joint statement that the decision was mutual.
Archewell landed a multiyear partnership with Spotify in 2020 to create podcasts and shows that would tell stories through diverse voices and perspectives.
The podcast premiered in August last year with tennis great Serena Williams as a guest and it was an instant hit.
It topped Spotify charts in seven countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., and it won the top podcast award at the People’s Choice awards last year.
“I loved digging my hands into the process, sitting up late at night in bed, working on the writing and creative. And I loved digging deep into meaningful conversation with my diverse and inspiring guests, laughing and learning with them, and with each of you listening,” Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, said at the time.
The show also had as guests Mariah Carey, Trevor Noah, Mindy Kaling and Paris Hilton.
Tech companies have been cutting costs in a rough economic environment and Spotify has not been immune. Six months after announcing that it would cut 6% of its global workforce, or about 600 jobs, Spotify said last week that it was trimming another 200 jobs.
The company said at the time that it would be combining podcast networks Parcast and Gimlet into its Spotify Studios operation.
Prince Harry has been at the High Court of London this month. He is accusing the publisher of the Daily Mirror of using unlawful techniques on an “industrial scale” to score front-page scoops on his life. The Duke of Sussex became the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.
Luke Combs has driven his “Fast Car” to the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 – and Tracy Chapman is riding shotgun.
The surprise success of Combs’ cover has been a minor windfall for Chapman, the sole songwriter of the 1988 hit from her breakthrough debut album. Billboard estimates that Combs’ version has generated about $500,000 in publishing royalties globally from its March 17 debut through June 8. Chapman alone is pocketing a sizable portion of that total.
Most of the royalties have come from 154 million U.S. on-demand audio streams from services such as Spotify and Apple Music from March 17 to June 8, according to Luminate. During that period, “Fast Car” also had 6 million video streams and 28 million programmed audio streams in the United States. The track has also been purchased 86,000 times, while the album on which it appears, Combs’ Gettin’ Old, has been purchased 68,000 times in both digital and physical formats. The United States accounts for more than three quarters of the song’s global consumption — a high ratio not atypical for a country artist.
What’s more, Combs’ success with “Fast Car” has also given Chapman’s original recording a boost. Weekly consumption — measured by track sales and streaming converted into equivalent track units — increased 44% since Combs’ version was released, while average weekly radio spins improved about 11%. That’s resulted in a boost in U.S. recorded revenues of about $54,000, with $13,000 coming from publishing royalties, Billboard estimates. (Warner Music Group’s Elektra Records, not Chapman, owns the recorded music rights.) Interest in Chapman herself appears to have increased, too: U.S. Google searches for the singer almost tripled from the weeks ended March 18 to June 3, according to Google Trends.
“Fast Car,” the first single for Chapman’s eponymous debut album, has been covered by the likes of Sam Smith, Khalid, Black Pumas and English producer Jonas Blue, whose dance version reached No. 2 on The Official U.K. Singles Chart and No. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016. But in the United States, Combs’ version became the most successful to date by reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 (dated June 17), surpassing Chapman’s original which reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1988, and helped her debut album reach triple platinum within a year of its release.
Combs’ “Fast Car” peaked at No. 1 on the Country Digital Song Sales chart (dated June 10) and No. 2 on the Country Streaming Songs chart (dated April 29). It also reached No. 6 on the Country Airplay chart (dated June 17) in just its eighth week on the tally and hit No. 2 on the Hot Country Songs chart (dated May 6), which combines radio airplay and streams. North of the U.S. border, “Fast Car” reached No. 2 on the Canadian Digital Song Sales chart (dated May 6), No. 5 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 chart (dated May 27) and No. 36 on the Canada All-Format Airplay chart (dated June 10).
Tracking the ownership of “Fast Car” is like a brief lesson in the history of major publishing dealmaking of the last four decades. Chapman signed a publishing deal with SBK Entertainment prior to signing with Elektra Records in 1987. SBK was acquired by EMI Music Publishing in 1989. Citi took control of EMI in 2011 after private equity firm Terra Firma defaulted on its debt from a 2007 acquisition. A consortium of investors led by Sony Music Entertainment acquired EMI Music Publishing in 2012. In 2018, Sony Corporation bought out the remaining 60% of EMI Music Publishing. But the rights to “Fast Car” reverted to Chapman a few years ago, according to a Sony Music Publishing spokesperson. As sole owner of the songwriting and publishing rights, Chapman can pocket all royalties generated from “Fast Car” and other songs in her catalog, less any fees paid to a third party for administration services.
“Fast Car” is a rarity in an age of sampling, interpolations and Taylor Swift’s re-recordings. Outside of holiday music, cover songs rarely appear in the top 10 of the Hot 100 singles chart. In fact, the last time a cover entered the top 10 of the Hot 100 was Anna Kendrick’s version of “Cups,” a folk song written in 1931 and recorded by Hendricks for the movie Pitch Perfect that reached No. 6 in 2013. Prior to “Cups,” two cover versions from the TV show Glee appeared in the top 10: “Don’t Stop Believin’” (originally by Journey) in 2009 and “Teenage Dream” (originally by Katy Perry) in 2010. Chapman earns some royalties when “Fast Car” is sampled or used in an interpolation – Chris Brown‘s 2017 song “Runaway,” for example — but she keeps 100% of the songwriting and publishing royalties of cover songs.
As Jelly Roll himself told it in his recent Billboard cover story, it was attending church with his daughter that inspired the raw, career-defining record Whitsitt Chapel. The rising Tennessee artist has become a sensation over the past two years building up to this release, with a number of accolades that have burgeoned his career and his story.
But this record was that final piece of the puzzle, and its artistic merits were matched by its commercial performance: The album debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums and, with 90,000 equivalent album units, became the largest week for an initial entry on Top Country Albums since the chart transitioned to a consumption-based methodology in February 2017.
As BMG Nashville president Jon Loba puts it, that’s down to Jelly Roll and the work he put into the music. But the success nonetheless earns Loba the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Loba talks about the build-up to the album, the strategies the label used to maximize its impact and where they can go from here in building Jelly Roll’s career. “Going forward we will continue giving Jelly his creative and artistic freedom, while we continue to work on building the connection to new audiences and nurture the connection with his existing audience,” Loba says. “It’s really that simple. When you have your first experience or interaction with Jelly, you have a strong desire to go deeper — and tell others about him.”
This week, Jelly Roll’s Whitsitt Chapel debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and topped both the Rock & Alternative and Country Albums charts. What key decision did you make to help make this happen?
It of course all starts with the music. Jelly turned in an absolutely epic record that we have no doubt will stand the test of time. I think we will look back two decades from now and see this as the album that fully revealed the depth, texture, intellect and heart of Jelly Roll. The biggest decision I made was getting out of Jelly’s way and trusting him to turn in such a masterpiece. Initially, we had a collection of absolute slam dunk, commercial country hits Jelly wrote and was ready to record. After he attended his daughter’s church one Sunday, however, he called me up to say he felt the deep need to scrap all those songs and go on a musical and spiritual journey with his next record. We knew we had hit singles lined up, but I heard the conviction in his heart about this alternate path. His manager John Meneilly and I always say, “When in doubt, trust Jelly,” and that’s what we did. We didn’t know what this album would be, but we wanted to support him and his creativity. It turned out to be not only the right thing artistically but the right thing commercially.
The album had the biggest opening week for a first entry on the Top Country Albums chart since it went to a consumption-based methodology in 2017, almost tripling the previous record. How did you build the momentum leading up to this release?
Once you meet him, you are a fan for life. The buzz on Jelly started with “Save Me” and grew with “Dead Man Walking” and “Son of a Sinner,” so the commercial credibility was there to begin with. Our partners were really interested in his music and curious about him as we communicated how special he was. Once they met him one on one, it was a game changer. When you spend time with Jelly, you immediately root for him and want to create opportunities, which they did. Importantly, when they created those opportunities, Jelly always delivered for them and, in turn, [they] wanted to create more. Ultimately, the opportunities for his singles grew organically into opportunities for his album release.
What was your sales approach for this record?
First and foremost, making sure our partners heard the entire project well in advance. We knew the music would speak for itself and afterward our partners immediately came back to us with new creative opportunities for exposure. Wherever possible, we wanted Jelly to present it first-hand, to talk about his motivation and journey in creating Whitsitt Chapel. We also know Jelly has a passionate and committed fan base, so we wanted to be sure we had a strong focus on physical, as they are collectors… more so than most country consumers.
Jelly Roll’s music crosses several different genres, and Whitsitt Chapel is the latest in a line of albums that have reached the top echelon of both the Country radio charts and the Rock & Alternative radio charts. How do you work the same songs differently at different formats?
We don’t work them much differently. When Jelly and I first met, he had many questions about where his music would fit. He had a strong desire to have his music heard and accepted in the country genre, but he also wondered if some of it could work in rock and top 40. I was really firm in telling him not to worry about genres. All he needed to do was keep making music that connected with hearts and minds — music that saves and changes lives. You see examples of that at every Jelly show as you talk to his fans. He has this ability to connect with a wide variety of audiences because of his truth and willingness to be extremely open and share it. I said it in that first meeting, and I feel it even more strongly now: Jelly transcends genres. He is on the path to becoming a cultural icon.
Jelly Roll’s success has been considered one of the best examples of artist development in recent years. How do you continue to build on that in his career going forward?
We would love to take credit for Jelly’s artist development, but that wouldn’t be honest — Jelly is responsible for his artist development over the years of making music, touring and speaking his truth. We were fortunate that before us, there had not been a full team out there strategically telling his story, introducing him to partners and passionately laying down in the road for him as we asked for exposure opportunities. Going forward we will continue giving Jelly his creative and artistic freedom, while we continue to work on building the connection to new audiences and nurture the connection with his existing audience. It’s really that simple. When you have your first experience or interaction with Jelly, you have a strong desire to go deeper — and tell others about him.
Jason Ellis joined independent dance music label Armada Music as global senior A&R director. Ellis will also serve as an acquisition consultant for BEAT Music Fund, the company’s recently launched dance music investment arm. Based in London, Ellis will be responsible for sourcing and developing up-and-coming talent while consulting on future BEAT acquisitions. He joins […]
The suspect in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub is expected to strike a plea deal to state murder and hate charges that would ensure at least a life sentence for the attack that killed five people and wounded 17, several survivors told The Associated Press.
Word of a possible legal resolution of last year’s Club Q massacre follows a series of jailhouse phone calls from the suspect to the AP expressing remorse and the intention to face the consequences at the next scheduled court hearing this month.
“I have to take responsibility for what happened,” 23-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich said in their first public comments about the case.
Federal and state authorities and defense attorneys declined to comment on a possible plea deal. But Colorado law requires victims to be notified of such deals, and several people who lost loved ones or were wounded in the attack told the AP that state prosecutors have given them advance word that Aldrich will plead guilty to charges that would ensure the maximum state sentence of life behind bars.
Prosecutors also recently asked survivors to prepare for the June 26 hearing by writing victim-impact statements and steeling themselves emotionally for the possible release of the Club Q surveillance video of the attack.
“Someone’s gone that can never be brought back through the justice system,” said Wyatt Kent, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday in Club Q when Aldrich opened fire, gunning down Kent’s partner, Daniel Aston, who was working behind the bar. “We are all still missing a lot, a partner, a son, a daughter, a best friend.”
Jonathan Pullen, the suspect’s step-grandfather who plans to watch the upcoming hearing on a livestream, said Aldrich “has to realize what happened on that terrible night. It’s truly beginning to dawn on him.”
Aldrich faces more than 300 state counts, including murder and hate crimes. And the U.S. Justice Department is considering filing federal hate crime charges, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing case. It’s unclear whether the anticipated resolution to the state prosecution will also resolve the ongoing FBI investigation.
Some survivors who listened to the suspect’s recorded comments to the AP lambasted them as a calculated attempt to avoid the federal death penalty, noting they stopped short of discussing a motive, put much of the blame on drugs and characterized the crime in passive, generalities such as “I just can’t believe what happened” and “I wish I could turn back time.” Such language, they said, belied by the maps, diagrams, online rants and other evidence that showed months of plotting and premeditation.
“No one has sympathy for him,” said Michael Anderson, who was bartending at Club Q when the shooting broke out and ducked as several patrons were gunned down around him. “This community has to live with what happened, with collective trauma, with PTSD, trying to grieve the loss of our friends, to move past emotional wounds and move past what we heard, saw and smelled.”
Terror erupted just before midnight on Nov. 19 when the suspect walked into Club Q, a longtime sanctuary for the LGBTQ community in this mostly conservative city of 480,000, and fired an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle indiscriminately. Disbelief gave way to screaming and confusion as the music continued to play. Partygoers dove across a bloody dance floor for cover. Friends frantically tried to protect each other and plugged wounds with napkins.
The killing only stopped after a Navy petty officer grabbed the barrel of the suspect’s rifle, burning his hand because it was so hot. An Army veteran joined in to help subdue and beat Aldrich until police arrived, finding the shooter had emptied one high-capacity magazine and was armed with several more.
Aldrich, who since their arrest has identified as nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them, allegedly visited Club Q at least six times in the years before the attack. District Attorney Michael Allen told a judge that the suspect’s mother made Aldrich go to the club “against his will and sort of forced that culture on him.”
Allen also has said the suspect administered a website that posted a “neo-Nazi white supremacist” shooting training video. Online gaming friends said Aldrich expressed hatred for the police, LGBTQ people and minorities and used anti-Black and anti-gay slurs. And a police detective testified that Aldrich sent an online message with a photo of a rifle scope trained on a gay pride parade.
Defense attorneys in previous hearings have not disputed Aldrich’s role in the shooting but have pushed back against allegations it was motivated by hate, arguing the suspect was drugged up on cocaine and medication the night of the attack.
“I don’t know if this is common knowledge but I was on a very large plethora of drugs,” Aldrich told the AP. “I had been up for days. I was abusing steroids. … I’ve finally been able to get off that crap I was on.”
Aldrich didn’t answer directly when asked whether the attack was motivated by hate, saying only that’s “completely off base.”
Even a former friend of Aldrich found their remarks to be disingenuous. “I’m really glad he’s trying to take accountability but it’s like the ‘why’ is being shoved under the rug,” said Xavier Kraus, who lived across the hall from Aldrich at a Colorado Springs apartment complex.
The AP sent Aldrich a handwritten letter several months ago asking them to discuss a 2021 kidnapping arrest following a standoff with a SWAT team, a prosecution that had been dismissed and sealed despite video evidence of Aldrich’s crimes. In that case, just months before the Club Q shooting, they threatened to become “the next mass killer” and stockpiled guns, ammo, body armor and a homemade bomb. The incident was livestreamed on Facebook and prompted the evacuation of 10 nearby homes as authorities discovered a tub with more than 100 pounds of explosive materials.
The alleged shooter, who lived with their grandparents at the time and was upset about their plans to move to Florida, threatened to kill the couple and “go out in a blaze,” authorities said. “You guys die today and I’m taking you with me,” they quoted the suspect as saying. “I’m loaded and ready.”
The charges were dismissed even after relatives wrote a judge warning that Aldrich was “certain” to commit murder if freed. District Attorney Allen, facing heavy criticism, later attributed the dismissal of the case to Aldrich’s family members refusing to cooperate and repeatedly dodging out-of-state subpoenas.
In response to AP’s letter, Aldrich first phoned a reporter in March and asked to be paid for an interview, a request that was declined. They called back late last month, days after prosecutors wrote in a court filing that there was “near-unanimous sentiment” among the victims for “the most expedient determination of case-related issues.”
In a series of six calls, each limited by an automated jail phone system to 15 minutes, the suspect said: “Nothing’s ever going to bring back their loved ones. People are going to have to live with injury that can’t be repaired.”
Asked why it happened, they said, “I don’t know. That’s why I think it’s so hard to comprehend that it did happen. … I’m either going to get the death penalty federally or I will go to prison for life, that’s a given.”
While the AP normally would not provide a platform to someone alleged to have committed such a crime, editors judged that the suspect’s stated intent to accept responsibility and expression of remorse were newsworthy and should be reported.
Former Club Q bartender Anderson was among survivors who told prosecutors they wanted a fast resolution of the criminal case.
“My fear is that if this takes years, that prevents the processing and moving on and finding peace beyond this case,” he said. “I would love this wrapped up as quickly as possible under the guarantee that justice is served.”
President Joe Biden announced a major accomplishment in his battle against ticketing junk fees Thursday (June 15), but the impact is likely to be minimal.
After meeting with executives at Ticketmaster, SeatGeek and Dice, among others, those companies agreed to adopt all-in ticket pricing for their sales. For Ticketmaster, that will specifically impact shows at the more than 250 venues owned by parent company Live Nation in the United States — not all its ticketing clients.
The companies’ commitments to all-in pricing are part of a larger effort under the Biden administration and the Federal Trade Commission to reign in billions of dollars in junk fees charged to consumers by banks, hotel companies and entertainment groups. And while the buy-in from some of the world’s largest ticketing companies is an important milestone, the voluntary change will likely only impact a small percentage of tickets and give ticket sellers who conceal add-on fees to consumers until the end of the checkout process a competitive advantage over firms who display the full price at checkout.
The limited impact of Thursday’s announcement underscores the challenges lawmakers face as they attempt to come up with legislative fixes for the ticketing industry in the wake of disruptions to Taylor Swift’s high profile Eras tour. While politicians like Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have pointed the finger at Ticketmaster’s dominant market share, a growing coalition of music industry insiders under the #FixTheTix banner have blamed scalpers for the disruptions to the Taylor Swift sale and continued bot attacks on the ticketing industry.
While much of the battle between Ticketmaster and secondary sites like Stubhub and SeatGeek comes down to fundamental disagreements over artists’ rights to control their tickets and consumers’ rights to buy and sell tickets at whatever price the market will bear, the elimination of last minute fees added to tickets at checkout — sometimes as high as 25% to 35% of the face value of the ticket — had support from both primary and secondary ticket sellers.
In order for the all-in pricing to work, however, most experts agree that it must be mandated by law. Otherwise, many ticketing companies, sports teams and venues are unlikely to voluntarily change their pricing policy out of concern it could be a competitive disadvantage for their facility.
Even Thursday’s commitment from Ticketmaster has no impact on the hundreds of sports venues that sell millions of tickets to games and concerts each year. That’s because Ticketmaster cannot force teams within National Hockey League, National Basketball Association and National Football League to adopt all-in pricing at their stadiums and arenas, despite holding the exclusive ticketing rights to approximately 80% of the teams within those three leagues.
The same goes for the hundreds of independently owned venues for which Ticketmaster provides ticketing services.
Looking at the top 40 venues on Billboard‘s midyear Boxscore charts, while most are ticketed by Ticketmaster, none are owned by parent company Live Nation and none of the facilities will initially offer all-in pricing on their websites or ticket sales pages under the new commitment. The same goes for the hundreds of tours Live Nation promotes as well. That’s because standard ticketing contracts allow venues — and not Ticketmaster or other ticketing companies — to decide how tickets are sold, how much money in fees is added to a ticket, and how and when the breakdown between face value and add-ons like facility fees are displayed to consumers.
Studies show that ticketing companies that don’t use all in pricing have a competitive advantage over companies that show the full price of a ticket upfront. A consumer study by Stubhub in the 2010s shown that fans were more likely to purchase a ticket, even if it had a higher checkout price, if the initial price they were shown was lower than comparable tickets on other websites prices
“Live Nation’s promise today to give Americans price transparency at their venues is encouraging, but we need all-in pricing at all venues, for all live events, and on all ticket selling services now,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) wrote in an email to Billboard, noting his bill, the BOSS and SWIFT ACT legislation would “mandate in law all-in pricing for true transparency.”
“Not until every seller offers all-in pricing can consumers get the comparison shopping experience for tickets that they deserve,” he wrote.
Critics of the BOSS and SWIFT ACT argue that while the legislation does improve transparency, it includes protections for ticket scalpers that would make it impossible for artists to protect their concert tickets from price gauging.
“Live Nation is proud to provide fans with a better ticketing buying experience,” said Tom See, president of Live Nation’s Venue Nation, in a statement. “We have thousands of crew working behind the scenes every day to help artists share their music live with fans, and we’ll continue advocating for innovations and reforms that protect that amazing connection.”
Stephen Parker, executive director of the National Independent Venue Association, told Billboard in an email, “Up-front pricing should be the start of comprehensive ticketing reform that protects consumers from price gouging and deceptive practices by predatory resellers.”
“We applaud the President for today’s meeting and look forward to working with his Administration and Congress to make comprehensive, bipartisan ticketing reform a reality,” Parker continued.
The National Independent Talent Organization, a group representing independent talent booking agents, applauded the voluntary change at Ticketmaster, but noted the change was “an important first step.”
“Until Congress acts to eliminate excessive fees and secondary ticketing is carefully regulated,” the organization said in a statement, “millions of consumers will still be the victim of predatory ticketing practices.”