Business
Page: 383
During the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) annual meeting on Wednesday, the trade organization announced its latest board of directors.
The latest executive board includes: Jody Gerson (Chair and CEO, Universal Music Publishing Group), Keith Hauprich (general counsel and executive vp, business and legal affairs, North America, BMG), Laurent Hubert (CEO, Kobalt), Carianne Marshall (co-chair and COO, Warner Chappell Music), Jon Platt (chair and CEO, Sony Music Publishing), Jim Selby (chief publishing executive, Concord).
Other board members include: Marti Cuevas (founder and president, Mayimba Music), Justin Kalifowitz (executive chairman, Downtown Music Publishing), Golnar Khosrowshahi (founder and CEO, Reservoir), Jody Klein (owner and CEO, ABKCO), Kenny MacPherson (CEO, Hipgnosis Songs Group), Chip McLean (svp, head of business affairs and business development, Disney Music Group), Larry Mestel (founder and CEO, Primary Wave), Michael Molinar (general manager, Big Machine Music), Jeff Pachman (general manager, Domino Publishing), Ralph Peer II (executive chair, peermusic), Irwin Robinson (vp, Richmond Organization), Jon Singer (chairman, Spirit Music Group).
The 20-member board comprises an executive board featuring leaders from the six largest companies according to revenue from the previous year, a general board of 12 additional publishing leaders, and two songwriters representing creatives’ point of view. To represent songwriters, the board elected Laura Veltz to replace Liz Rose, who recently reached her term limit of four years. Ross Golan is returning as the other songwriter representative.
Domino’s Pachman is this year’s only new publisher to join the board, replacing Leeds Levy.
All board members receive equal voting power and will meet four times annually to oversee the activity and budget of the NMPA. The board plays a major role in determining the legal actions of the trade organization, which is known to fight aggressively for fair pay and licensing for compositions.
This year, the NMPA is focused on new legal action it is taking against Twitter, which was also announced at Wednesday’s event. According to the complaint, the NMPA — along with over a dozen of music publishers — is suing Twitter over allegations of widespread copyright infringement, seeking as much as $255 million in damages.
Billboard is introducing a peer-voted award to run alongside its annual R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players list of the genres’ most influential executives. This new R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players’ Choice Award will honor the executive in the genres whose peers believe has had the greatest impact across the music business over the past year, from recording and publishing […]
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and many liberal Democrats have two things in common, and perhaps only two: They hate the way concert and sports ticket sales work — specifically the company selling most of them, Ticketmaster — and they love Taylor Swift. Or, at least, they acknowledge that ingratiating themselves to Swift’s fan army as she sells out stadiums in their states is an efficient way to build up constituent support.
Over the past couple of months, Cruz, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Massachusetts Sen. John Velis (D-Hampden and Hampshire) and others have presented a variety of bills intended to reform the ticket-selling business, invoking Swift and fans’ displeasure with Ticketmaster’s Eras Tour on-sale fiasco in November, when more than 100,000 fans were kicked out of the online sale queue. Following a Senate subcommittee hearing focused on Ticketmaster in January, politicians clearly see positioning themselves against the ticketing giant and attaching themselves to Swift’s millions of passionate fans as a winning combination. They’re even naming their bills after her.
“There’s a growing awareness of the problem, and the Taylor Swift concert debacle played a part in focusing a lot of attention on the issue,” Cruz tells Billboard, adding that his 12-year-old daughter recently attended an Eras Tour show.
That debacle, Ticketmaster declared at the time, was due to unprecedented levels of illegal bots attacking the online sale. But that claim did little to satisfy fans and politicians, who during a January Senate hearing instead chose to focus on monopolistic behavior by Ticketmaster and its owner, promoter Live Nation, often referencing Swift lyrics between swipes at the company. Since then, the rhetoric has changed slightly. While politicians continue to scrutinize the concert giant — Klobuchar says the Department of Justice is investigating Live Nation and Ticketmaster for possible violations of their 2010 consent decree — senators and congresspeople at federal and state levels are proposing solutions to potentially more manageable issues.
In Massachusetts, Velis and his co-sponsor, Rep. Dan Carey (D-Easthampton), have introduced what they nicknamed the “Taylor Swift bill,” which aims to abolish hidden ticket fees and require sellers such as Ticketmaster and SeatGeek to disclose service charges and costs upfront. A similar law already exists in New York state, and Live Nation actually supports the issue — including it in the company’s own proposed legislation outline. “Taylor Swift obviously sells out every concert,” Velis says, “but she’s also got this support ecosystem that lends itself to, ‘If you want to do something about this, why not use something that’s absolutely going to get the public’s attention?’”
But at a time when opposing Ticketmaster is good politics, one source in touring suggested politicians do not want to be seen aligning with the corporate giant. That political strategy may even be holding back legislation on other subjects where there’s popular consensus. Other bills, like the one Klobuchar and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced in April, limit exclusive deals with venues and therefore more directly target Ticketmaster.
Velis said he and Carey plan to meet with Ticketmaster executives in the coming weeks to discuss their bill. “The more you can firm up a piece of legislation to get rid of unintended consequences, you’re better off,” Velis says. “That being said, as it relates to just telling a consumer, ‘This is what you’re going to spend if you want to go to this concert’ — I can’t think of anything remotely close to approaching how someone can convince me that’s not a good idea.”
To help wade through the many different pro-Swift, Ticketmaster-targeting bills out there, here’s a rundown of what they each intend to achieve — and what each legislator gets out of sponsoring them:
Unlocking Tickets Markets Act, in the U.S. Senate
Gloria Trevi will not renew her contract with Universal Music Latino after 15 years with the label, Billboard Español can exclusively report.
The Mexican superstar will now be an independent artist through her own company, Great Talent Records, Trevi’s publicist, Mayna Nevarez, confirmed. She has also signed a new distribution deal with Tango, and another one with ByteDance’s SoundOn for TikTok.
Furthermore, she has an agreement with Live Nation for an upcoming U.S. tour.
“This new stage is very exciting for me,” Trevi said in a statement to Billboard Español. “With our label, I will be able to have more investment, open new markets and work with dream collaborations. I love being the head of my own label now, Great Talent Records.”
On Friday (June 16), Trevi’s fans will be able to hear her first independent release, “Medusa,” a techno dance beat track produced by Dabruk, Manu Chalud and Alcover that will be available on all digital platforms.
During her years with Universal Music Latino, Trevi, known for classics like “Pelo suelto” and “Dr. Psiquiatra”, reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Latin Albums chart with Gloria (2011), El Amor (2015), Inmortal (2016) and Versus (2017), the latter a joint album with Alejandra Guzmán.
Prior to Universal Music Latino, Trevi was previously with Sony BMG Mexico (1989-2004) and Univision (2005-2008).
The news of Trevi’s departure from Universal comes amid a wave of other major Latin music artists switching labels. On Wednesday (June 14), Billboard exclusively reported that Spaniard star Alejandro Sanz left Universal and joined Sony Music. And in April, Anitta and Warner Music Group announced their separation; the Brazilian star subsequently signed with Republic Records and will work closely with Universal Music Latino.
Lawyers for Sony Music Entertainment have spent months trying to find a TikTok rapper who the label is suing for copyright infringement, even going to his mom’s house on Mother’s Day “in hopes that he would be there to celebrate with her.” Now, a judge now says they can just slide into his DMs.
In an order issued Wednesday, Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that Sony had exhausted all reasonable routes to locate Trefuego — the artist behind a popular TikTok song called “90mh,” which Sony claims features a “flagrant” unlicensed sample from an earlier song.
Faced with that situation, the judge said Sony’s lawyers could instead reach out to his Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Soundcloud accounts, which have remained active since Sony filed its lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs have shown that serving process via these social media platforms will be reasonably effective in giving Trefuego notice of this suit,” Judge Pittman wrote.
Sony has been pursuing Trefuego in some form since January 2021, when the company notified him that his “90mh” — a track that’s been featured in 155,000 videos on TikTok and streamed 100 million times on Spotify — was built on an illegal sample from Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata. After filing takedown requests in August 2022 to get the song pulled, Sony finally launched a lawsuit in December.
Wednesday’s ruling highlights the extraordinary lengths that litigants like Sony must sometimes go to “serve” filings on opponents — a key procedural requirement in any lawsuit.
The same problem recently confronted lawyers repping Kanye West, who desperately wanted to drop the embattled rapper as a client but couldn’t find him to do so. And NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal spent months avoiding a lawsuit over his endorsement of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX — only to finally be located and served at a Heat-Celtics game last month.
In his decision on Sony’s case, Judge Pittman said the company’s lawyers had made “extensive efforts” and “gone to great lengths” to find Trefuego. They made “seven separate attempts” to serve him with the lawsuit, the judge said, including hiring a private investigator and scouring his social media pages.
In one particularly notable effort, Sony’s reps went “to his mother’s house on Mother’s Day in hopes that he would be there to celebrate with her” but still came up empty: “Sadly, he was not there, and his own mother claimed she did not know who he was,” the judge wrote.
A typical alternative to in-person service would be to print a notice of the lawsuit in the local papers — the same thing that Kanye’s estranged lawyers wanted to do in his case. But in Wednesday’s decision, Judge Pittman said that “modern problems require modern solutions.”
“This court has concerns as to whether SoundCloud and TikTok rapper extraordinaire Trefuego is a regular reader of the Fort Worth Star Telegram or that he regularly visits the information tab of Fort Worth’s city website,” the judge wrote.
Judge Pittman ruled that Sony could instead use “certain social media accounts” that “most certainly belong to the young bard.” Trefuego’s Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and SoundCloud pages all “appear to be substantially active,” the judge said, and indicate that he is a “frequent user” of those platforms.
Ahead of the decision, Sony had offered one other digital alternative: to email the rapper’s manager, with whom Sony had correspondence over the unlicensed sample before it resorted to litigation. But the judge rejected that route, noting that “all lines of communication have ceased” with the manager since the filing of the case.
“Given his own mother’s willingness to deny her relationship to him, it is not unlikely that his manager would also willingly delete emails or continue to ignore them,” the judge wrote. “Because communications through this line have proven futile already, the Court will not grant service through this already explored dead-end avenue.”
RIOTUSA, the hitmaking producer behind Ice Spice, has signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music, Billboard can reveal.
“Warner Chappell showed me respect and made me excited to build,” said RIOTUSA in a statement. “Ryan [Press, president, North America at Warner Chappell Music] values my vision and goals as a creative, and I know what he’s brought to the table for other artists. I want to inspire others to chase their dreams, and Warner Chappell will help me achieve those goals.”
Press added, “Riot has quickly become one of the most exciting and in-demand producers to emerge from New York’s legendary hip-hop scene. He’s creating hit after hit with Ice Spice, and we’re super lucky to get to support him at this stage of his journey. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of hip-hop’s biggest music producers during the early stages of their careers, and I know Riot is well on his way to being one of the best producers of his generation.”
During his interview for Ice Spice’s Billboard cover story in May, RIOTUSA said he started making beats on GarageBand at 10 years old and was inspired by his father — WQHT (Hot 97) New York DJ/radio personality DJ Enuff — to chase his own musical dreams. In 2021, he began producing songs for Ice Spice, whom he met while attending State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase. He has since played a key role in her rapid rise to fame.
RIOTUSA produced Ice Spice’s breakout, gold-certified single “Munch (Feelin U)” and executive produced Like..?, the 2023 EP that featured the track. Like..?, which reached No. 5 on Billboard‘s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, also contains the hit singles “In Ha Mood” and “Gangsta Boo” (featuring Lil Tjay), the latter of which became Ice Spice’s career-first Billboard Hot 100 entry.
RIOTUSA has since earned credits on two top 10 hits on the Hot 100: Taylor Swift‘s “Karma” remix featuring Ice Spice (No. 2), which he co-wrote, and “Princess Diana” by Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj (No. 4), which he produced. He has also topped Billboard‘s R&B/Hip-Hop Producers chart for one week, the Rap Songwriters chart for two weeks and the Rap Producers chart for four weeks.
“After he scored multiple Billboard Hot 100 entries and radio hits, we knew it was the right time to find a publishing admin partner to support RIOT’s works in syncs, licensing, and collection,” said James Rosemond Jr., CEO/founder of Mastermind Artists and manager of both RIOTUSA and Ice Spice. “Ryan Press understood RIOT’s goals, vision, and worth, and this next chapter with Ryan and the global Warner Chappell team, as part of our extended family, is only going to amplify RIOT’s reach and raise his efforts to another level in this competitive space.”
In addition to his other credits, RIOTUSA produced Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj’s upcoming “Barbie World” track with Aqua from Barbie: The Album, the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming big-screen feature Barbie. The track is slated for release on June 23 with an accompanying music video.
L.A. Live’s 7,100-seat venue will no longer be called the Microsoft Theater, officially changing its name to Peacock Theater after NBCUniversal’s premium streaming service as part of a multi-year naming rights agreement with property owner AEG.
The entertainment district’s 40,000 square foot open-air plaza, formerly known as XBOX Plaza, will now be known as Peacock Place. The agreement, brokered by AEG Global Partnerships, establishes Peacock as the exclusive streaming partner of L.A. Live.
The name change comes a year and a half after anchor arena Staples Center changed its name to Crypto.com Arena in a landmark deal valued at $700 million over 20 years.
Kelly Campbell, president of Peacock at NBCUniversal, commented that the agreement brought “all the elements of our brand to life with the millions of fans who visit L.A. Live each year.” Nick Baker, chief operating officer of AEG Global Partnerships, noted the “content within the Peacock platform is ideal for our audiences and the synergies between both organizations around our variety of events is limitless.”
Lee Zeidman, president of Crypto.com Arena, Peacock Theater and L.A. Live, added, “We are looking forward to the opportunity to collaborate with Peacock to create new content and programming to complement our existing roster of amazing concerts, awards shows and special events we are known for at all of our iconic L.A. Live venues.”
With the comprehensive new agreement, Peacock will have an enhanced brand presence across L.A. Live, including significant interior and exterior signage at Peacock Theater, fixed signage at Peacock Place, a branded content studio and customized fan activations and brand integrations throughout select premium locations of the sports and entertainment district.
Peacock will also engage fans via signature digital signage elements, including a brand-new, dedicated LED marquee at the corner of Figueroa and Olympic Blvds., one of downtown L.A.’s busiest intersections. With this new signage, Peacock can highlight its latest content including key series premieres, promotions and special events taking place at L.A. Live over the course of the partnership. Once complete, the largest of the two new signs will measure more than 29 feet high and 56 feet wide. The second will stand at more than 29 feet high and 88 feet wide, providing Peacock with premium exposure to millions of people each year. The signs will connect at the corner, with one facing Figueroa and the other facing Olympic and will remain a permanent fixture at L.A. Live for the length of the partnership.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is hosting executives from Live Nation, Airbnb and other companies at the White House on Thursday to highlight his administration’s push to end so-called junk fees that surprise consumers. Biden prioritized the effort to combat surprise or undisclosed fees in his State of the Union address and has called […]
BMG acquired the recording catalog of British band (and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers) The Hollies. The deal includes over 20 studio, compilation, live and tribute album titles and rarities that are wholly owned by the group, including Evolution and Butterfly (1967), Hollies Sing Dylan and Hollies Sing Hollies (1969), Confessions of the Mind (1970); Distant Light (1971), Romany (1972), Out on the Road (1973); Hollies (1974), Another Night (1975), Write On and Russian Roulette (1976), Hollies Live Hits (1977), A Crazy Steal (1978), Five Three One – Double Seven O Four (1979), Buddy Holly (1980), and Then, Now, Always (2009). The agreement encompasses eight of The Hollies’ most-streamed tracks, including “Carrie Anne,” “King Midas In Reverse,” “Jennifer Eccles,” “On A Carousel,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” and “The Air That I Breathe,” as well as the group’s cover versions of “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” (Bruce Springsteen), “Boulder to Birmingham” (Emmylou Harris) and “Say It Ain’t So, Jo” (Head).
Soundtrack Your Brand, a global music streaming service for businesses, announced a $15 million pre-growth round led by Matt Pincus‘ MUSIC in partnership with Liontree, JS Capital Management and Schusterman Family Investments. The round also included funding from music investors Dundee Partners and was supported by all major existing Soundtrack Your Brand investors including Balderton Capital, Fuel Venture Capital, Industrifonden, Telia and DIG. The investment will allow Soundtrack Your Brand to “double down” on its go-to-market strategy, according to a press release. Along with MUSIC’s investment, Pincus will join Soundtrack Your Brand’s board. In 2024, the company plans to raise an additional growth round.
ADA Worldwide partnered with Rostrum Records to distribute the indie label’s entire catalog and new releases. Recent Rostrum releases include Fat Nick’s “Songs on the Radio” and DC The Don’s “Funeral” as well as new music from Alé Araya and Brevin Kim. Forthcoming releases include music from Fat Nick, Lou Phelps and My Favorite Color.
Yoto, an audio platform for kids that’s behind screen-free portable audio players the Yoto Player and Yoto Mini, signed a deal with Warner Music Group that will make music from some of WMG’s artists available on the players. The partnership kicks off in June with music from Super Simple Songs, a popular YouTube channel boasting original children’s songs and traditional nursery rhymes that’s been distributed by WMG’s arts music division since 2020. Next year, Yoto will create “cards” featuring music from a curated group of WMG’s pop, rock and soul artists.
Believe signed a marketing and distribution deal with Global Records Germany, the new Berlin branch of independent label Global Records. The first release under the agreement is “Party Songs” by Gamuel Sori & INNA, which dropped June 9.
German television personality Jan Böhmermann appears to have single-handedly knocked more than 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) from the market value of CTS Eventim after he criticized the concert promoter and ticketing company on his late-night talk show ZDF Magazin Royale on German public television on Friday.
According to various media reports, Böhmermann, in a 23-minute news-styled feature, bemoaned the company’s dominant market position in promotion and ticketing and a lack of transparency about the fees added to tickets. “Eventim is practically the German event industry,” the satirist said (as translated to English) He singled out the company’s re-sale platform, fanSale, which allows ticket holders to sell tickets at a premium to their face values. “Why fight the black market when you can earn money yourself?” he asked.
Böhmermann also said that CTS Eventim received 15 million euros ($16 million) of COVID-19 economic aid from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. In total, the company received 272 million euros ($295 million) in economic aid from Germany and elsewhere from 2020 to 2022, according to the company’s financial statements. He noted that a director, Juliane Schulenberg, is the daughter of CTS Eventim founder and chairman Klaus-Peter Schulenberg. She has been a member of the CTS Eventim’s supervisory board since May 2016, according to the company’s website.
“Unfortunately, many facts are twisted and not the truth,” a CTS Eventim spokesperson told Billboard in an email. While Böhmermann suggested Juliane Schulenberg influenced COVID-19 aid received by CTS Eventim, the company’s spokesperson says she “had no professional position in this regard and therefore no influence.”
ZDF Magazin Royale made a significant impact when the market opened after the weekend. Shares of CTS Eventim fell 8.9% on Monday and another 7.5% on Tuesday, bringing the two-day decline to 15.7% — a 1.07 billion euros ($1.15 billion) decline in market capitalization. After a 0.8% gain on Wednesday, shares of CTS Eventim were up 1.3% year to date.
CTS Eventim is the largest concert promotion and ticketing company in Europe and had revenues of 1.9 billion euros ($2 billion) and sold 69 million tickets online in 2022. Its portfolio includes EDM promoter ALDA Germany; the Rock am Ring and Rock im Park festivals; numerous ticketing brands; EMC Presents, a partnership with U.S. tour promoter and producer Michael Cohl; and Eventim Live Asia, a partnership with former Live Nation executive Jason Miller based in Singapore.
U.S. audiences will recall a similar segment about the country’s dominant ticketing company, Ticketmaster, by comedian John Oliver on his HBO show Last Week Tonight in 2022. Oliver touched on the same themes brought up by Böhmermann: market dominance, rising ticket fees and ownership of a secondary market that profits from in-demand tickets’ re-sale values. Oliver had a negligible effect, however, as the share price of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, dropped just 0.5% the day after the episode aired. A chance of government intervention has given Live Nation investors pause on numerous occasions, however, such as politicians’ criticism of Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift pre-sale in November and a 2018 New York Times article about Live Nation’s alleged anticompetitive business practices.
Just as Live Nation and Ticketmaster are under constant scrutiny in the U.S., CTS Eventim routinely falls into the crosshairs of consumer advocates and government regulators. In February, more than 1,500 consumers in Germany had joined a model declaratory judgment against CTS Eventim filed by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. The consumer advocacy group alleges the company did not refund ticketing fees for cancelled events. In 2018, CTS Eventim’s share price fell as much as 10% after Germany’s Federal Supreme Court ruled the fees charged for printing out tickets ordered online were illegal. Also in 2018, the German Federal Cartel Office banned CTS Eventim from having exclusive ticketing agreements with promoters and box offices. In 2017, the Cartel Office blocked CTS Eventim from acquiring promoter and booking agency Four Artists, which a German court upheld the following year.