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Senior figures from Believe, Warner Music, Google/YouTube, AEG and Primary Wave are among the first wave of speakers confirmed for All That Matters 2023, set for this September in Singapore.
Among those VIPs are Denis Ladegaillerie, founder and CEO of Believe; Paul Smith, managing director, YouTube Music, APAC; Marshall Nu, COO, Asia, Anschutz Entertainment Group; and Arica Ng, president, Asia Pacific, Warner Chappell Music.
This year’s ATM celebrates its “coming of age” 18th edition. Artificial intelligence (AI) “will be a burning issue that will weave itself through a lot of our conversations,” reads a statement from organizers Branded, the full-service live media specialist.
More than 2,000 guests turn up in a regular year for the event, which creates an umbrella conference featuring complementary tracks of music, sports, gaming, marketing, digital, Web3, and arts, all under one roof.
Widely considered the most important music conference in Asia, All That Matters will once again be held at the Singapore Hilton Orchard from Sept. 11-13.
Confirmed speakers in the first round include reps from FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, Napster, The Raine Group, Microsoft, NODWIN Gaming, VSPO, Coca-Cola, Activision Blizzard, Mastercard, Animoca Brands, SoundCloud, Asia Sports Tech, World Federation of Advertisers, Enjinstarter and more.
The 2022 edition featured guest speakers Universal Music Group Lucian Grainge; Spotify’s global head of editorial Sulinna Ong; TikTok’s global head of music Ole Obermann; and Adam Wilkes, president, AEG Presents Asia Pacific, among others.
Earlier this year, the Singapore subsidiary of Nodwin acquired a 51% stake in Branded, bringing the confab and showcase event into the Nodwin Gaming family.
Click here for more on All That Matters.
Tory Lanez’s sentencing for shooting and wounding hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion was delayed on Tuesday. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Herriford accepted the defense’s request to delay Lanez’s sentencing, which is now scheduled for Aug. 7. Prosecutors are seeking a 13 year prison sentence and Lanez faces deportation to his native Canada. Herriford […]
The Silversun Pickups are returning to Southern California for their second visit in less than a year, performing at the new Bellwether music venue in Los Angeles on Sept. 27.
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The critically acclaimed LA-based indie rock group, led by vocalist and guitarist Brian Aubert, along with bassist Nikki Monninger, drummer Christopher Guanlao and keyboardist Joe Lester, are touring in support of their sixth studio album Physical Thrills. Released in August, Physical Thrills is Silversun Pickups second album produced by legendary American musician, songwriter, and record producer Butch Vig and is the third album to be released on their own label, New Machine Recordings.
Much of the music on Physical Thrills was written by Aubert during the pandemic and, earlier this month, the band announced the release their new EP Acoustic Thrills, featuring acoustic tracks from Physical Thrills: “Scared Together,” “Empty Nest” and “Alone on a Hill.”
“After building so many layers on the album it felt great to strip these songs down to their rawest form,” Monninger said in a press release announcing the album.
Yesterday, the Silversun Pickups announced a Sept. 29 concert at The Show inside of Agua Caliente in Rancho Mirage, Calif., near Palm Springs. Best known for their 2006 songs “Lazy Eye” and “Well Thought Out Twinkles” both of which made the top 10 of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 2007, and their 2009 track “Panic Switch,” Silversun Pickups last played Los Angeles on Oct. 3 at the Orpheum Theater.
The Bellwether, a 1,600-capacity GA venue and joint venture between leading U.S. indie concert promoter Another Planet Entertainment and Teragram Ballroom owner Michael Swier, opens July 11 with a show from Phantogram. Located at 333 S. Boylston Street, the Bellwether’s opening run of shows includes two performances from HAIM (July 17-18), three nights of Porter Robinson (July 28-30), three nights with Carly Rae Jepson (Aug 12-14) and two nights with Isiah Rashad, August 17-18.
For a complete list of shows at the Bellwether, click here. For Silversun Pickup tickets at the Bellwether on Sept. 27, which go on sale June 16, click here. For Silversun Pickup tickets on Sept. 29 at The Show, click here.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: A man who unsuccessfully sued Cardi B over an album cover agrees to repay her $350,000 legal bill; Kesha wins a major appellate ruling in her ongoing defamation battle with Dr. Luke; Dua Lipa’s copyright accusers drop their case for good; and much more.
Want to get The Legal Beat newsletter in your email inbox every Tuesday? Subscribe here for free.
THE BIG STORY: Don’t Mess With Cardi B (Or Her Lawyers)
Omar Little, the notorious Baltimore stick-up man who robs drug dealers on HBO’s The Wire, once famously said: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” Well, that same sentiment seems to be increasingly true about Cardi B and her team of lawyers: If you come at her, you better be sure you’re ready for the consequences.
Back in 2017, a guy named Kevin Brophy did exactly that, suing the superstar for millions in damages. His case claimed that Cardi had left him “humiliated” after an image of his enormous back tattoo was inadvertently photoshopped onto the “raunchy” cover of her debut mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1.
But now, six years later, it’s Brophy who’s paying Cardi, not the other way around.
Months after a federal jury rejected his lawsuit, Brophy agreed this week to hand over a whopping $350,000 in legal bills that the superstar spent defeating his case. He also agreed to voluntarily end his efforts to revive the case and waived any chance at a future appeal.
Why would he do all that? Go read our full story here to find out.
For Cardi, turning the tables on Brophy is just the latest financial trouncing of a legal opponent.
Late last month, a gossip blogger named Tasha K who made salacious claims against the rapper was forced to file for bankruptcy after Cardi B won more than $3 million in a defamation lawsuit against her. Shortly after Cardi won that verdict, she tweeted “imma come for everything” along with the acronym BBHMM — “bitch better have my money” — and then spent months chasing the cash, including seizing money from Tasha’s YouTube royalty account.
The takeaway? At least when it comes to legal matters: You come at the queen, you best not miss.
Other top stories this week…
KESHA v. DR. LUKE RULING – New York’s top appeals court handed a key victory to Kesha in her legal battle with Dr. Luke, making it more difficult for him to prove at a looming trial that she defamed the producer when she accused him of rape in 2014. The court said Dr. Luke was a “public figure,” meaning he will need to show that Kesha acted with “actual malice” when she made her statements — a notoriously difficult legal hurdle to clear.
DUA LIPA CASE CLOSED – A Florida reggae band called Artikal Sound System decided to drop its copyright case accusing Dua Lipa of copying her smash hit song “Levitating” from their earlier track. The move — a unilateral capitulation, not a confidential cash settlement — came just days after a federal judge cast serious doubt on whether Artikal would be able to prove that Lipa ever even heard the song she was accused of stealing.
JIMMIE ALLEN SUED AGAIN – The country star was hit with a second sexual abuse lawsuit, claiming he assaulted a woman in a Las Vegas hotel room and filmed the encounter without permission. The case came a month after Allen was accused of sexually harassing and raping a woman on his management team. Allen has strongly denied the allegations and has vowed to “mount a vigorous defense.”
TORY LANEZ SENTENCING – Los Angeles prosecutors formally asked a judge to impose a 13-year prison sentence on Tory Lanez after he was convicted last year of shooting Megan Thee Stallion, telling a judge that Lanez had “waged a campaign to humiliate and re-traumatize the victim” in the wake of the 2020 incident. Sentencing had been set for this week but was rescheduled to Aug 7.
MUSIC AS SEX DISCRIMINATION – The Ninth Circuit issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that said blasting music with “sexually graphic” and “violently misogynistic” lyrics in a workplace could violate federal discrimination laws. Reviving a case against a company that played songs like Too $hort‘s “Blowjob Betty” and Eminem‘s “Stan” at its Nevada warehouse, the court said the music potentially created a “hostile or abusive environment.”
COURT RIPS BAD SETTLEMENT – In another big music ruling, the Ninth Circuit overturned a class action settlement in a royalties lawsuit against the relaunched Napster, sharply criticizing an “unreasonable” deal that secured just $53,000 for songwriters while paying their lawyers a whopping $1.7 million in legal fees. The court said that paying attorneys “more than 30 times the amount that the class received” was likely to “make the average person shake her head in disbelief.”
YOUTUBE CASE DROPPED – Just a day before it had been set to go to trial, a Grammy Award-winning composer dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID. The ruling came weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action — a ruling the composer had said would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit.
ASTROWORLD GAG ORDER STANDS – A Texas appeals court refused to lift a strict gag order on the lawsuit over the deadly 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival. The court was unmoved by arguments from ABC News, which argued that the “sweeping” restrictions clearly violated the First Amendment’s protections on free speech and had created a “news desert” in which almost no reliable information about an important case is being shared with the public.
COVID RELIEF HIJINKS? The owners of a small Palm Springs, Calif., venue filed a lawsuit against Marc Geiger and his company SaveLive, claiming the former WME agent deceived them into accepting an investment in their venue during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a ruse to take over the business without paying a fair price.
New York’s top appeals court on Tuesday (June 13) handed a key victory to Kesha in her legal battle with Dr. Luke, making it more difficult for him to prove at a looming trial that she defamed the producer when she accused him of rape in 2014.
For years, Dr. Luke (full name Lukasz Gottwald) has claimed that the star legally defamed him with the “false and shocking” allegation that he drugged and raped her after a 2005 party, arguing she did so as leverage to secure a more lucrative deal.
But in a ruling on Tuesday, New York’s Court of Appeal ruled that Dr. Luke is legally a “public figure,” meaning he will need to show that Kesha (full name Kesha Rose Sebert) acted with “actual malice” when she made her statements — a notoriously difficult legal hurdle to clear.
“By 2014, when Gottwald initiated this defamation action, he was, by his own account, a celebrity — an acclaimed music producer who had achieved enormous success in a high-profile career,” the appeals court wrote. “He purposefully sought media attention for himself, his businesses, and for the artists he represented, including Sebert, to advance those business interests.”
To show that Kesha acted with “actual malice,” Dr. Luke will now need to prove at trial next month that she either knew her accusation was false or that she acted with a reckless disregard for the truth. That standard, created by the U.S. Supreme Court in a famous 1964 ruling for the New York Times, has made it extremely challenging for powerful people to file libel lawsuits in U.S. courts.
And that wasn’t the only win for Kesha in Tuesday’s decision. The appeals court also ruled that New York’s newly-enacted “anti-SLAPP” law applies to Dr. Luke’s case — meaning that if she beats the accusations, she can demand that he repay some of her legal bills.
“Sebert may assert a counterclaim under [the anti-SLAPP law] and, if successful, recover costs, attorney’s fees, and damages based on Gottwald’s continuation of this action following the [the statute’s] effective date,” the court wrote.
Though largely a victory for Kesha, part of the ruling did go in favor of Dr. Luke. The court largely refused to endorse Kesha’s arguments that many of the allegedly defamatory statements were shielded by so-called privileges — such as statements made ahead of litigation. For 20 of 25 such statements, the court ruled that a jury might side with Dr. Luke and find the statements fair game.
In a statement to Billboard, Dr. Luke’s lawyer Christine Lepera focused on those aspects of the ruling and said she and her team were still “fully confident that Mr. Gottwald will prevail at trial on his defamation claims.”
“We are pleased that the Court of Appeals agreed with Dr. Luke that the vast majority of Ms. Sebert’s statements are properly the subject of his defamation claim,” Lepera said. “Therefore, at trial, Ms. Sebert will be required to defend her harmful and long-standing press campaign against Mr. Gottwald.”
An attorney for Kesha did not immediately return a request for comment.
After nearly eight years of litigation, a trial in Dr. Luke’s lawsuit is scheduled to finally start on July 19. The trial had been repeatedly pushed back while both sides awaited Tuesday’s ruling by the Court of Appeals.
Read the entire ruling here:
In the desert east of Los Angeles, the new Acrisure Arena has defied critics and proved to be an oasis of entertainment in Coachella Valley.
Since opening in December, Oak View Group’s new 11,000-capacity venue in Palm Springs, Calif., has grossed $17 million in ticket sales from 10 reported shows, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, earning itself the title of North America’s third-highest-grossing arena under 15,000 seats, according to Billboard Boxscore’s 2023 midyear report. The arena actually had 17 shows during this period, and had it reported them all, its ranking on the Boxscore chart would have been even higher.
It’s an impressive launch, especially considering criticism it received that an arena of its size could not survive in the Coachella Valley, the geographic region of 370,000 residents anchored by Palm Springs in the north and Indio to the south. Not only was the valley already teeming with competitive options, from tribal casino showrooms to festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach, but Southern California was already home to three big-name arenas and an ultra-competitive concert market with little incentive for acts or tourists to make the two-hour drive down I-10 from Los Angeles for a show.
Midyear Boxscore charts are based on figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Eligible shows played between Nov. 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023.
First is Oak View Group’s relationship with OVG partner Irving Azoff, the super-manager whose ability to bring top-tier talent to the facility netted two shows by Harry Styles, a comedy double-header featuring Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, two shows from the Eagles and concerts by Taylor Dayne, Lizzo, Journey, Shania Twain and Jimmy Buffett. Adding American Hockey League home games from the Coachella Valley Firebirds, the Acrisure Arena has welcomed more than 430,000 people through its doors for 72 ticketed events since opening.
While Acrisure Arena is an open building that can work with any promoter, it enjoys a special relationship with Live Nation, which plans to continue to bring top contemporary tours to the venue, says GM John Bolton, who previously worked at SMG and managed the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. In the next six months, Live Nation is bringing some of its strongest tours to Palm Springs, including Peso Pluma (on July 8), Paramore (July 15), Dierks Bentley (Aug. 19), ODEZA (Sept. 20), Sting (Oct. 5), KISS (Nov. 1), Stevie Nicks (Dec. 5) and Madonna (Jan. 11, 2024).
“Part of our success booking artists is that many artists are playing Acrisure Arena on a separate leg of their tour months apart from their L.A. dates,” says Bolton. “There certainly are times when artists will play us after stopping in Orange County or Los Angeles, but in many instances, we’re booking artists as they come across the Southwest and then head into Las Vegas or the Central Valley, making the building very routable.”
Another factor in Acrisure Arena’s success is the building’s innovative, fast-paced, high-touch design. Most seats in the building are in the arena’s lower bowl, which has wide concourses that make moving around the building simple and dramatically decrease time spent waiting in line, thanks to innovative grab-and-go food catering stations. The dozen-plus food concepts inside the arena, as well as those located in an outside common space, feature only a few popular precooked items that reduce prep and wait time.
And while the Coachella Valley population is fairly small, Palm Spring’s year-round marketing efforts attract 14 million visitors to the region each year, including 3 million annually to Palm Springs, according to the city’s conference and visitor’s bureau, accounting for $7.1 billion in spending.
Those visitors include 450,000 Canadians who spend their winters in the area, many of whom support the arena’s Seattle Kraken minor league team, the Coachella Valley Firebirds. In the team’s first season, it reached the league championships and is currently facing the Hershey Bears in the finals. With a strong year-end calendar, Acrisure Arena will almost certainly land on the Boxscore year-end list and continue to chart new routes in and out of region, changing the way artists tour through the Southwest and generate revenue in the Golden State.
UnitedMasters is partnering with Nigerian producer Sarz on his 1789 imprint that aims to discover, develop and empower the next generation of African artists and producers, Billboard can exclusively announce today (June 13).
Sarz (real name Osabuhoien Osaretin) has produced records for some of the biggest African artists, such as Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage, and is responsible for spreading the Afrobeats sound to the U.S. and U.K. charts with hits like Drake, Wizkid and Kyla‘s “One Dance,” which became the most-streamed song on Spotify in 2016, and Lojay and Sarz’s “Monalisa,” which received a Chris Brown remix and has amassed 297.3 million official global on-demand streams through June 8, according to Luminate. He also won the producer of the year award at The Headies last year.
LV N ATTN, the parent project of “Monalisa” that Lojay and Sarz released in 2021, as well as WurlD and Sarz’s I LOVE GIRLS WITH TROUBL from 2019 fall under Sarz’s 1789 imprint, which he established in 2018 to discover and develop African artists and producers. (It symbolizes his birthdate: March 17, 1989.) Now, UnitedMasters is coming in to amplify the work Sarz has already been doing by providing its cutting-edge label services and digital distribution technology.
“Sarz, for the last five years, has been developing some of the biggest producers on the continent that have gone on to produce for the Wizkid’s, the Burna’s, the Tems’, the Lojay’s, etc. We wanted to be able to say, ‘How do we add value to you guys and help give you resources so that way you can ultimately develop the talent on the ground?’” David Melhado, vp of music at UnitedMasters, tells Billboard. “You can see why he’s able to spot talent when you hang out with him. His energy is infectious. He’s just doing what he wishes he had. There’s something so powerful in that where he’s like, ‘I’m paying it forward to these producers.’ He’s really creating a movement.”
“I met with David and Julian McLean [director of producer relations/editorial at UnitedMasters], and it just felt right. I could tell we shared the same vision and we’re very passionate about emerging talent,” Sarz tells Billboard, adding that he hopes his new strategic partnership with UnitedMasters will bring “more opportunities to the continent, bring more opportunities to Afrobeats artists and producers globally. I hope to be the bridge between an emerging artist and everything they desire globally.”
Those signed to 1789 will be able to access “everything that you would get from a major label, from marketing to digital marketing to playlist pitching and, when the time is right, we can scale up and do radio campaigns,” says Melhado. He adds that the partnership will also provide artists and producers “transparency around the money they make” through UnitedMasters’ mobile app, where “they’ll be able to see their streams in real time,” as well as “brand partnerships with some of the world’s biggest brands [NBA, ESPN, WhatsApp], and they all have ambitions to be a part of the global music conversation.”
Adds Steve Stoute, UnitedMasters CEO/founder, in a statement: “We are extremely excited to be in partnership with Sarz and 1789. Sarz, a true hitmaker, has a keen ear for talent and has proven that he cares deeply about the artist development process. Our shared mission in supporting artists from Africa through education and resources will empower them to unlock their true potential.”
United Masters began discussing how to enter the African music conversation two years ago, when Stoute sent Melhado Billboard‘s 2021 feature on Wizkid following the global success of his Tems-assisted smash “Essence.” Melhado told Stoute, “‘When it’s time for us to go expand to Africa, I got a big network there.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, you should go in December,’” Melhado recalls with a chuckle. Melhado and McLean ended up traveling to Nigeria in December 2021, where the two were hosted by Melhado’s good friend Bizzle Osikoya, a Nigerian A&R expert and music executive who founded the talent management and music services company, The Plug. “We went out to really see what the culture was, the music, the food, the fashion, the art, and really engulf ourselves in the community there but really try to figure out, ‘Where can we add value?’ We didn’t want to just go to Africa and throw money at it. We wanted to not be opportunistic from a perspective of, ‘Let’s just go sign some artists,’ but we wanted to be able to make sure that we were going to be really impactful and additive to the music scene there. We wanted to be able to find the right partner, and that’s ultimately what we did with Sarz.”
In 2015, the 34-year-old producer founded The Sarz Academy, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating African artists and producers and helping them launch successful careers. “I’ve always been passionate about helping people’s journeys, even unofficially I’ve mentored so many producers in the Afrobeats space before I thought about starting an academy,” he says. “It took me at least 10 years just grinding in the industry to find my position. And I thought, if I can mentor these guys, they could probably do it in two years or three years.” The academy’s esteemed alumni includes Kel-P, Legendury Beatz, P.Priime and Tempoe, who have gone on to work with Wizkid, Burna Boy, Rema, Fireboy DML, CKay, Angélique Kidjo and Teni, among many others. “I plan to break out of Africa. I am doing it for global Afro music,” P.Priime, a 2018 graduate of The Sarz Academy, told Billboard in 2020. Two years later, he was a part of the #YouTubeBlack Voices Songwriter & Producer Class of 2022 and earned credits on Wizkid’s Made in Lagos deluxe album that went on to receive a 2022 Grammy nomination for best global music album. Another 2018 graduate, Tempoe, went onto produce CKay’s “Love Nwantiti (Ah Ah Ah)” the following year, which has since garnered 2.46 billion official global on-demand streams and spent two weeks at No. 1 on Rhythmic Airplay.
After meeting Sarz through their mutual friend Osikoya in March 2022, Melhado and McLean traveled back to Nigeria this past October to witness The Sarz Academy firsthand. “He had producers and artists from all over Nigeria. There were artists that flew in from London, from Costa Rica, to Nigerians who came from Canada to be a part of this experience. They all lived in a house. And they just created some of the most amazing music that I’ve heard in a long time. The collaboration, the desire to get on, the hunger — all these kids had that. It was inspiring overall,” says Melhado. “At that moment, I knew that we had the right partnership and the right partner.”
Sarz says the music coming out of last year’s Sarz Academy will be compiled into an album that will be released next month. Three singles — “Jam One Kele” by Sarz, Millymay_pod, Gimba and Fxrtune; “Good to Me” by Sarz, Perfext and Gimba; and “Body Wicked” by Sarz and Millymay_pod — have already been packaged as The Sarz Academy Presents: Memories That Last Forever 2 and released under 1789 and UnitedMasters on DSPs last week. One of the artists, Gimba, was also recently featured on the single “Blessings” with DJ Tunez and Wizkid.
UnitedMasters’ partnership with Sarz includes supporting his endeavors at The Sarz Academy, as education is one of the company’s core missions, according to Melhado. “We didn’t just come into the business trying to tell everybody they needed to be independent. We had to walk them through what it is like to be independent, and for artists on the [African] continent, we want to be able to help artists with those tools and educate them,” he explains. “Our ambition is to be able to support these artists, see them at the beginning of their career and ultimately take them to global superstardom.”
The concert travel business, once a reliably modest slice of the estimated global $25 billion concert industry, is being primed as a potential growth category as promoters of all sizes look for new revenue sources to offset rising costs.
As the pandemic has receded and the demand for live entertainment has blossomed, inflation and scarcity have driven up expenses across the board, and the resulting rise in ticket prices is unlikely to cool soon — a recent report from the American Bus Association cited a driver shortage as part of the reason for higher costs and concluded another 7,300 drivers would need to be added to the 28,000 tour bus drivers now working just to meet current demand.
With already tight margins squeezed further, concert promoters are looking for new revenue streams. “Many are seeing the economic impact their events create within their community and realize they’re not participating in that upside, despite taking on the bulk of the risk with their event,” explains Daren Libonati, co-founder of Las Vegas-based Fuse Technologies, which partners with concert promoters to source and sell accommodations and VIP upgrades for their events.
Libonati, a longtime Vegas event veteran who has served as an executive at both MGM and the University of Nevada Las Vegas, wants to help music event organizers unlock “travel per caps,” a twist on the phrase “per caps,” the concert business measurement of the spending on food and beverage per patron at an event. Tapping into travel spending could unlock major value. A March study commissioned by Live Nation found that its marquee Lollapalooza festival generated $270 million for Chicago last year, with fans spending $48.5 million on hotels and over $80 million on food and beverage.
Libonati is just one of a half dozen entrepreneurs who believe that event producers who draw fans from around the world to festivals and concerts should share in the hotel and hospitality revenue those fans generate. These entrepreneurs include Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, whose company announced a new travel and hospitality firm, Vibee, in April, which is producing a premium cruise based on Electric Daisy Carnival called EDSea and was behind a Resorts World hotel takeover during the flagship dance festival in May. They’re bringing new ideas to market just as two of the biggest players in concert travel have either gone bankrupt or pulled out of the music travel industry.
Pre-pandemic, three types of businesses were involved in concert travel: destination festivals, mostly in Mexico and the Caribbean; high-end packaging as an add-on for domestic events; and music-driven cruises.
Demand for music-driven cruises has been stronger than prior to the pandemic, but those packages are difficult for promoters to make substantial margins on because of the high fixed costs of chartering vessels and hiring crews, as well as the pressure to keep prices low against competing cruise lines.Hotels have lower fixed costs than cruises and come with different expectations: Customers are used to paying a premium for hotel inventory during periods of high demand. That was what helped drive the success of two of the biggest concert travel companies during much of the last two decades, CID Entertainment and Pollen.
CID focused on creating destination events like Luke Bryan’s long-running Crash My Playa at Riviera Cancun in Mexico, as well as travel packages similar to those it put together for the Grateful Dead’s 2015 Fare Thee Well concerts in San Francisco and Chicago. Pollen helped expand hospitality and VIP offerings for events like Bestival, a four-day event held in the south of England.
Pollen, founded in 2014, raised over $200 million from venture capital investors. But the pandemic stalled business, and a series of last-minute cancellations — including a January 2022 J Balvin event in Cancun — cost the company dearly. By October 2022 Pollen had collapsed, owing nearly $100 million in debt.CID Entertainment, launched by Dan Berkowitz in 2007 and purchased by a private equity group in 2016, was merged with a number of sports travel companies in 2020 and eventually sold to entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, where it operates as OnLocation and focuses mainly on big-ticket sporting events like the Super Bowl.
With CID Entertainment and Pollen out, companies like 100x, which Berkowitz launched earlier this year, and Fuse see a gap in the market they can fill. Fuse has been racing to expand its white-label software systems, which make it easy to tack partner hotels and add-on VIP events to a festival’s website for sale, divide revenue and handle credential management and verification through an integration with the ticketing company. The revenue lift from packaging and bundling these items with ticket purchases would then be split with promoters.
Live Nation has made the fastest inroads into the space with Vibee. It launched as both a facilitator of high-end destination events, like the Nov. 9-12 Chasing Sunsets festival in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, headlined by Tiësto with prices (tickets and hotel included) ranging from $999 to $3,259, and an entrant into the hospitality business for Live Nation’s traditional headline concerts, offering hotel packages paired with VIP upgrades for U2’s U2:UV Achtung Baby shows at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. Those packages have already yielded a $20 million boost to revenue from ticket sales for Live Nation and its partners at the Sphere and the Venetian hotel, Rapino explained during a recent investor earnings call.“Vibee is a product where we looked at OnLocation and CID and others that were doing it,” Rapino said. “The challenge these other companies have is the expensive part: the rights. We don’t have that problem.” He added, “These are our rights. We can do it in-house. We don’t have to outsource it and split any of that upside with anyone else but our own businesses.”
That leaves the rest of the sector competing for non-Live Nation events, which by some estimates equals 40% to 50% of the business and billions of dollars in potential revenue. Berkowitz has not yet revealed his plans or business strategy for 100x, while Libonati says that for now, Fuse plans to focus on creating add-on packages for existing events.
Can either firm make enough money to survive without also operating as an event promoter? It will take the right combination of scale and volume, but given the rebound in travel spending across the board — and engagement of dedicated fans — it seems possible.
Danny Robson, co-founder of management firm Leisurely, believes the answer is yes if the artist controls the event. Robson’s client Rüfüs Du Sol sold an impressive 8,000 tickets for the Australian EDM trio’s Sundream festival — a four-day event in San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico, where prices ranged from $700 to $2,000 per person — without a promoter or any outside help.
“The same changes in the business that make destination events lucrative for promoters,” Robson says, “also make these types of events profitable for artists interested in cutting out the middleman.”
ASCAP has announced a number of new initiatives designed to help its members protect their copyrights and plan for the future of artificial intelligence.
The events start later this month, on June 21, with The ASCAP Experience, the performing rights’ organization’s annual event. As part of its full day of programming, ASCAP will include the panel Intelligently Navigating Artificial Intelligence, created to act as a state of the union for music AI, covering both how the technology could change music creation and consumption and how ASCAP is working to address these changes. Panelists include Lucas Cantor (composer, ASCAP Member), Rachel Lyske (CEO of DAACI) and Nicholas Lehman (Chief strategy and digital officer, ASCAP).
On July 19, ASCAP will host a half-day AI Symposium in New York City to dive even deeper into challenges and opportunities. Details of the event’s speakers will be announced soon.
In addition to the summer’s educational initiatives, the PRO is continuing ASCAP Lab Challenge, a fund started in 2019 to power innovation in music. In the past, ASCAP Lab has run an accelerator program in partnership with the NYC Media Lab, led by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, exploring new technologies such as the metaverse, augmented reality, spatial audio and computer vision and helping to incubate more than a dozen startups and university research projects.
This year, ASCAP Lab Challenge is focusing on AI, funding five startups that are looking to change the music industry in a positive way. As part of its investment, ASCAP will work alongside these recipients for 12 weeks to guide the development of their products and ensure they can benefit music creators.
Included in the 2023 Lab Challenge class is DAACI, a generative AI model that composes and arranges scores, particularly for video games and virtual reality; Infinite Album, a generative AI company that creates copyright-safe video game music that can react to game play in real time; Overture Games, a company which creates video games designed to encourage musicians to practice and avoid burnout using AI-powered pitch detection and visual feedback, gamifying the music education experience; Samplifi, which isolates auditory information for the benefit of hearing-impaired musicians; and Sounds.Studio, created by Never Before Heard Sounds, a browser-based music production platform that uses AI to help musicians create faster with tools like stem splitting, vocal conversion, timbre transfer and more.
Warner Music Group is getting its game on.
The major music company joins forces with Hello There Games, the Sweden-based game studio for the release of Invector: Rhythm Galaxy, a rhythm game soundtracked by 40 chart hits from the likes of PinkPantheress, Duran Duran, Charli XCX and others.
Slated to drop July 14, initially on PC, Invector: Rhythm Galaxy marks WMG’s first leap into games publishing.
This venture into gaming “showcases our commitment to reimagining the boundaries of music and how it is defined by artists and fans alike within our evolving ecosystem,” comments Oana Ruxandra, WMG’s chief digital officer and executive VP, business development.
Invector: Rhythm Galaxy is said to intertwine “the power of music with the interaction of gaming to build active, immersive experiences for fans and new revenue streams for WMG’s artists.”
Gaming and music are generations-long buddies. During the presentation of the IFPI’s Global Music Report in March of this year, WMG’s Simon Robson, president, international, Recorded Music, noted the industry has “done a great job looking at opportunities in fitness and the games sectors.”
WMG has worked with Peloton and invested in Web3 companies, including Roblox, and sees the alliance with Hello There Games as one that also plays in the music discovery space for gamers.
Hello There Games co-developed the Avicii Invector with the late Swedish EDM star, a game that features the tunes “What Would I Change It To,” “Pure Grinding,” “You Be Love” and more, and was originally built for the PS4.
Adds Oskar Eklund, CEO and founder of Hello There Games, “our unwavering passion for music and gaming fuels our drive. Many of our team members are talented musicians themselves.” Eklund continues, “We are so excited to bring this game to the next level with Warner Music Group and their amazing artists. We can’t wait for everyone to experience the magic of Invector: Rhythm Galaxy firsthand.”
Watch the trailer below.