Business
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A man who unsuccessfully sued Cardi B after his giant back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped into one of her album covers has agreed to repay a whopping $350,000 in legal bills that the superstar spent defeating his lawsuit.
Months after a jury rejected Kevin Brophy’s case against Cardi, his lawyers told a federal judge Monday (June 12) that he would not only reimburse the money that the rapper had dropped on her attorneys but also voluntarily end his efforts to revive the case and waive any chance at a future appeal.
Why would he do all that? Possibly because Cardi’s lawyers were gearing up to formally demand that he repay her attorneys’ fees — a prize to which she was potentially eligible after beating his accusations in court. Under that process, Cardi and her pricey team of lawyers could have won even more than $350,000.
“The parties now have reached an agreement avoiding the necessity of defendants’ motion for attorney’s fees and application to tax costs,” the two sides wrote in Monday’s filing, hinting at the looming threat of such a fee motion from Cardi’s team.
Attorneys for both sides declined to comment on the agreement when reached by Billboard on Monday.
Brophy sued Cardi in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover of Cardi’s Gangsta Bitch. The image featured the then-rising star taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.
The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image Search, found one that fit (Brophy’s) and superimposed it onto the model’s body.
Brophy’s lawsuit claimed Cardi and others involved in the cover had used his likeness without his consent and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.” Cardi’s lawyers called the allegations “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown,” arguing that nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back.
During a four-day trial in October, Cardi took the stand to defend herself. When examined by Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, things repeatedly got heated between the two — so much so that at one point the judge cleared the jury, told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line” and threatened to declare a mistrial.
At the end of the trial, the jury agreed with the superstar’s defenses, clearing Cardi of all Brophy’s claims. Brophy later asked the judge to throw out the verdict for a lack of evidence, but the judge denied that motion in December. Brophy then filed a motion in January seeking a new trial, arguing that the star “engaged in theatrics” on the witness stand and deprived him of a fair trial.
Under Monday’s agreement, that motion will be withdrawn, and Brophy will “waive and irrevocably relinquish” any chance to challenge the verdict on appeal. In return, Cardi’s attorneys will similarly waive their right to file a motion formally seeking an award of attorneys’ fees.
In the two years that Cat Kreidich has served as president of Warner Music Group’s distribution company ADA Worldwide, she has focused on one overarching theme: reinvention.
The music industry veteran has spent the majority of her career in the distribution business. She first worked first at Caroline, then ADA, then at Sony’s The Orchard — where she spent eight years — before shifting to Sony’s catalog division for a little over a year in 2019. But when she returned to ADA as executive vp at the end of 2020, “It was invigorating,” she says, sitting in her office at WMG’s Manhattan headquarters. “I hadn’t expected to come back to ADA, but it makes perfect sense because the culture at Warner is very entrepreneurial. So coming back, to me, was an opportunity to make an impact on a company that I truly cared about.”
At the time, the distribution space was exploding. Consolidation, streaming and new players coming into the space were upending the status quo, and the business was moving faster, and with more volume, than ever before. ADA had a few specific challenges facing it in this new environment: a third-party company that handled its tech; a blurred line between ADA and Warner Music Group that made it sometimes unclear how services were handled; and the implosion of Direct Shot Distributing after Warner and ADA had shifted its physical business to the company — leading to supply-chain issues for vinyl and CDs even before the pandemic made that a larger issue.
Kreidich had spent eight years at The Orchard building its commercial insights team, integrating tech into how the company was expanding and parsing data to help optimize commercialization for the company’s label partners. So when it came to the issues that faced ADA upon her return, she had experience in addressing the problems. But just a few months into her tenure came another change: ADA’s then-president, Eliah Seton — whom she calls “a great advocate for me” — announced he was leaving the company. Just five months after coming in as executive vp, Kreidich became president of ADA.
Following that, Kreidich embarked on an overhaul of the company’s executive structure, bringing in a team she calls “the Avengers of Distribution.” That included Samantha Moore, who heads business operations and development; Adriana Sein, who oversees artist and market development globally; Cathy Bauer, who runs physical sales and marketing; Andrea Slobodien, ADA’s first-ever head of product and integration; and MaryLynne Drexler, who oversees business and legal affairs, among several others.
“We were really specific on how we were thinking about the kind of expertise that we wanted to be in the building,” Kreidich says. “And a lot of us are here because we believe that we can do it better [than the competition], and that opportunity to have that voice feels good.”
Now, after two years of reinvention, Kreidich has the team in place to continue to fine-tune ADA as a leader in the global distribution business, which is expanding by the day. The company has launched offices in Canada, Latin America, Japan and across Europe, among others, while WMG has acquired distributors Qanawat in the Middle East and Africori in Africa to further expand their distribution offerings there, too. “At Warner, we want to have an environment where creatives, entrepreneurs and artists at every stage in their career can thrive — where there are as many different avenues as possible into the WMG ecosystem,” says Warner Recorded Music CEO Max Lousada. “What Cat and the team at ADA are doing is an essential part of our ability to partner with the full spectrum of talent. She’s relentless in her passion for the indie community and her mission to empower ADA-supported artists and labels.”
Now, as ADA celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, Kreidich speaks to Billboard about the company’s reinvention over the past two years, what a distributor can offer in the current music business and ADA’s new brand. “I’m really proud of that and the work we’ve done because I think it really nails who we are now,” she says. “I believe in the culture and I have a real soft spot in my heart for it. So I’m happy to celebrate it.”
You’ve worked at Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony and now Warner again. What were some of the things you picked up at each of those places along the way?
I started my career at Universal Motown and then went on to Virgin, and the reason why I ended up at Caroline was because of the passion for the music and the labels. My passion was always to work with the music that I loved and identified with, so I think a big part of being at each of those places was really understanding culture and the culture of representing music from a lot of different backgrounds and styles. And I think the meaning that that has — when people come together to unite for independence and music that they actually care about in a very personal way, not just a professional way — is one of the biggest things I learned and I wanted to be around and create wherever I continued my career.
I certainly thought many times of diversifying, but I always came back to the landscape of independent labels and artists. And I think that landscape has changed dramatically over the years, and the needs have changed. So the other thing I learned was really that value for a client or a label or a partner doesn’t always look the same in distribution, and many times labels are so busy running their businesses that they don’t necessarily have time to stop and ask you what your value is. So it’s being able to creatively come up with different ways to look at the business, or different ways that a label might have not considered.
You came back to ADA at the end of 2020. What were those first couple months back like?
The first thing I did was come in and interview over 40 people in the organization, mostly at ADA, some at Warner, and asked them the same 10 questions. They were generally, “How do you feel about the business? What would labels say about us?” And then I gathered all of those answers and created a presentation for Eliah. Because I knew how I felt about the business, but I also really wanted to understand how people felt about the business, because I didn’t want to make assumptions. And I think that was a really powerful thing to do, and I think it also helped me to come back to ADA authentically and genuinely; I wasn’t just trying to come here and make it The Orchard, I was truly wanting to listen and hear what were the things that we needed to solve for.
What were the conclusions from that?
There was obviously a need for process and empowerment by technology. Our technology was a third-party company that was facilitating the relationship within Warner, so that sometimes [we] just didn’t talk to each other, as third-party companies do. There was also a need for us to differentiate what it is what we do as ADA and what it is Warner does. Having run commercial teams for most of my career, it was always something that people would talk about — “ADA uses Warner to pitch” — and that wasn’t necessarily the truth. But there were things that we needed to do better together and things that we needed to do on our own, and during that time what came out of those talks was, “We need to figure out where the lines were, and then reorient those lines to make the relationships better and more clear.”
You’ve spoken a few times that once you took over as president, you embarked on a “reinvention” of ADA. Why did it need one and how did you implement it?
Warner had not made the same tech investments or acquisitions that the other majors did. They had been growing their [distribution] business as it was in this very shared service mentality that had worked for a while, and I think there was an opportunity clearly to take advantage of more and more music in small corners of the world as more and more DSPs were saturating markets with subscriptions. So it was really about three things for me. It was about being an indie advocate — that education, that understanding and helping to define what it is we do and what it is Warner does with us. It was also bringing in a skill set that was different from what I had seen at other distribution companies.
And one thing I noticed throughout my career was always, labels, managers and artists want to have expertise, and more and more artists want to own their own rights and be in control of their businesses. And that expertise to understand how other people are doing things, especially around audience development, actionable commercial insights, whether it’s growing an artist or helping with travel or breaking an artist in other countries and bringing them back — that skillset of marketing and artist development doesn’t necessarily exist in full force at tech companies, because it’s just the nature of the game.
So we were really specific about the kinds of talent we were bringing in that was going to differentiate us as we built our tech. And that was really the third thing that was most important, not only for just the idea of getting a piece of content from here to the DSP and back but also just tools and tech that would help us communicate over time zones better, help us to ignite priorities without having to email something. So I think that advocacy and audience development and marketing from a global perspective and the tech piece were the three big things we were changing.
You had gone to work at Sony’s catalog division — then a pandemic happened, and you then came back to distribution. A lot of things changed in a very short amount of time. What did you feel like had to change here because of how many things in the industry had shifted?
The great thing is that ADA is a music company. But ADA needs to be empowered by those tools and technologies that allow communication to happen easily. You can do your business with a carrier pigeon, a rotary telephone and a Yahoo email address — you could get it done — but the truth is, if you don’t have to think about those things, there’s so much more you can do. And let’s face it: we are at a point in the evolution of music formats where there’s so much volume, [thousands of] new tracks are being uploaded, social media is ubiquitous. You don’t want to have to worry about whether something got there or came back or how it worked. So I think the tools, like delivery technology that works; a self-serve platform where you can find out the basic information so that when you’re getting on the phone with somebody you’re talking about things that matter; having the strengths and the ability to talk about artist development and commercial insights and data and how things are flowing — if you have those, then you have a really competitive organization.
You also focused a lot on global expansion and having representation in both emerging and new markets, but also places like Latin America. How did you prioritize all these things?
I’ll give credit to Alfonso [Perez-Soto], who is the emerging markets leader and is a tremendous business development person inside of Warner. That track was already full-blown and a part of Warner’s larger strategy. But the truth is that in places like the Middle East and Africa, those established businesses don’t exist from a record label standpoint, so investing in distribution companies that could develop over time was really a part of that strategy. For us, first and foremost, credit to Eliah — he was able to garner a budget way before I got here and really broke the ice and started bringing people in, and Latin America was obviously really relevant in the sector, and that was a territory he really doubled down in. So we have a significant amount of people in Latin America that are ADA and distribution-focused.
But then I would say what was most important with Alfonso was we acquired Qanawat, we acquired Africori, and there’s many more to come that have not been announced yet that we’re currently working on. Once you’re looking at acquiring companies, then you’re looking at prioritizing what’s going to be most important and most impactful when it comes to market share, what are the feature sets we have to build to make sure we’re giving these labels an equal if not better level of service than they’re already receiving, because it’s distribution deals — they can walk away. So for us, the experience we brought in, it was about understanding what we could ingest the quickest, and what was going to make the most impact. But as far as the acquisitions, they were really part of the larger Warner strategy, though they are the ADA teams.
As you guys continue to expand, what are the challenges and potential pitfalls?
I think the biggest challenge is that there is a lot of competition out there, and it’s hard to compete with rates and advances. There’s a lot of money being thrown around in the distribution market, because there’s venture capital companies, there’s a lot of tourists. So I think that the challenge of growing our business, being a successful distribution company globally and also in the U.S., is making sure that we’re doing smart deals and building our business and delivering value.
I also think ADA is back and revitalized and has a new perspective, especially in the U.S. business, and I think that’s new to people. And reintroducing ourselves and letting people know what we’re doing is best done through our successes. In places around the world we’ve hired some really amazing teams, and it feels different and cool and new because ADA didn’t always really exist in all these territories. And in the U.S., it’s more of an education process because there’s so much competition and because, you know, distribution — it’s the hot new thing. For me, I guess, I’m here because I’ve always loved it.
It’s interesting you brought it up in that way, because I feel like you hear that a lot in the catalog acquisition space — there’s outside money coming in, there are companies coming in that don’t have track records in the music business — I hadn’t thought about the parallels here, too.
And all of that is about to become independent. All of these companies buying music catalogs, they have to put them somewhere, and a lot of them are buying rights that haven’t reverted yet. So those catalogs are now moving around. There’s going to be even more infusion, and I think that there’s a real opportunity. I’m very happy for my experience at Sony catalog, because working catalog is not easy, and I’m hoping that there’s an opportunity for us to continue thinking about tools and tech that can optimize catalogs. Because catalog is more important than it ever was before, and you never know when it’s coming; you have to be proactively reactive. And it’s going to be an opportunity.
What do you look for in bringing on new label partners?
I think the most important thing that we look for is the ability to partner both ways. When we first started, it was really the idea of, “How can we use each other as strengths?” Because when it’s a one-way relationship, okay, it’s transactional and we’re a distributor and you’re a label. Value comes differently for every partner. But I think one of the biggest things is a label wants to know that you’re paying attention and are able to think of opportunity either before or maybe in a different place than they would think about opportunity. We try to be very strategic yet tactical when we do business reviews, and we leave it up to three to five key things that we have to do and be able to measure those things. So of course there’s planning and proactiveness that you can do. But there’s nothing better than getting a call from your distributor and them saying, “Oh my god, I just saw a spike, let’s do this.”
You’ve been president for two years now. When you look back, what are you most proud of in that time?
First of all my team. Bringing in the executives I have is probably the biggest highlight, and empowering them. Also launching Co-Op, which is our proprietary product for third-party labels and artists, which we launched in October. No small feat. And overall I would say the successes that we’ve been able to generate with Quevedo and Central Cee. We just had a No. 1 in India with the Sean Paul–Shaggy–Spice track [“Go Down Deh,”] that literally came from us seeing a spark and starting to work it locally. We just had a No. 1 with Ayliva in Germany that beat out Miley Cyrus. So we definitely have these big wins and I hope to have many more to talk about in the future, but it honestly couldn’t happen without the team that I brought in and the relationships that we created with the ADA folks that have been here before and the new folks that have come in. And I’m really looking forward to holding a global conference and getting everybody together. Being able to be together and appreciate that is what I hope to do for the entire organization.
Amid the sports memorabilia in Tim Leiweke’s office, there’s a small framed quote with the word “Motivation” at the top. Leiweke, the chairman/CEO of Oak View Group (OVG), is a 45-year veteran of the estimated global $25 billion concert industry who spent the pandemic building seven new arenas — five of which his company owns and operates — so he’s not one to hang inspirational thoughts from Wikiquotes on his wall. “Motivation” is followed by a question: “How does ASM differentiate itself from its main competitor, Oak View Group?”
The answer comes from Ron Bension, president/CEO of ASM Global, and the most salient part reads: “There are other companies that are noisier, but we’re managing more buildings, with more content from Live Nation and AEG than anywhere else in the world.”
Oak View Group and ASM are indeed competitors in managing facilities around the globe, and it’s important to know that ASM is co-owned by sports/live-entertainment company AEG, where Leiweke was CEO until his “mutually agreed upon departure” in 2013 from the company owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz. Leiweke, 66, says he wishes Anschutz “nothing but luck,” but he also says he carries a copy of Bension’s quote in his backpack and reads it before every presentation he makes. “Never piss off your competitor,” he says with a broad smile. “I thank Ron daily that he has decided it’s me that causes him success. Maybe that motivates me as much as it motivates him.”
In 2015, Leiweke partnered with multisector music magnate Irving Azoff to build a company that now manages approximately 500 facilities. OVG employs 5,000 people full-time (including Leiweke’s daughter, Francesca Bodie, who is president of business development), with another 35,000 part-time staffers.
The arenas OVG has built in the last 18 months include Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle; Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif.; CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore; and UBS Arena on New York’s Long Island. “We did it in the middle of COVID, inflation, rising interest rates, labor issues, political issues,” he says.
OVG is working on multibillion-dollar projects in Las Vegas; Manchester, England; and, in partnership with Live Nation, São Paulo, and Leiweke says it’s time for the music industry to recognize the crucial role companies like his play in fan satisfaction. “Everyone talks about the promoters, the agents and the managers,” he says. “The brick-and-mortars and the fan experience are equally important. We’re spending tens of millions on acoustics and air-handling systems that deal with things like COVID. And yet people underestimate our passion for how important that is to the live experience.”
“We did a lot of boxing in the AEG days,” Leiweke says. “I’ve got signed globes by Wladimir Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, Oscar De La Hoya. I don’t know how many gloves I have.”
Joel Barhamand
How did you get the Long Island Railroad to open a station at your UBS Arena?
Paid for it. Our landlord and our partner is the state of New York. We went through two governors and a lot of politics to get the deal done. If you look at all the other facilities in the New York area, except for [Madison Square] Garden, Citi Field was built with bonds issued by state and city authorities. The Meadowlands [in New Jersey] was paid for mostly by taxpayers’ dollars. Barclays Center [in Brooklyn] involved bonds. That’s the nature of many of these projects. We were private. Us and [New York] Islanders [co-owner] Scott Malkin put up $1 billion privately to build that arena. Of that billion, roughly $75 million was a cash contribution toward that light rail station. It’s about developing a private-public partnership that works for everybody, which enabled us to get a lot more done there than most anyone else.
The opening of that station has made going to UBS convenient and environmentally friendly. Did sustainability play a part?
We happen to be very sustainable around here. UBS is LEED-certified. Our goal is to make that a carbon-neutral venue within the next couple of years. Obviously, we had the first carbon-neutral arena ever in Seattle. You cannot be carbon-neutral if everyone is driving there for every event. So mass transportation was highly important to us, to get somebody from Penn Station or Grand Central [in Manhattan] in a 30-minute train ride. It was also highly important for the viability of that building in a very competitive marketplace for arenas. You’ve got Prudential Center [in New Jersey], Barclays, the Garden and you’ve got us. We’ve got to find a way to get people in and out without it having to be about the Long Island Expressway.
What is the strategy behind building in secondary and tertiary markets like Palm Springs, Calif.?
There are small markets and big markets, and a combination of those deals is smart. Partially because in North America, the majority of big arenas are owned or controlled by an NBA or NHL tenant. They’re greedy, and they have a strategic value within that market that we don’t have, which is, if you want me to keep this team here, you’ve got to help me build or take over this arena. We’re going to get a few of those — Seattle and New York are examples — but we also have to find either A markets that don’t have an anchor tenant, which are few and far between, or B markets. The business proposition in a B market is just as good as an A market because we can build an arena there for between $200 million and $300 million. I’m not going to get the 86 nights of music that I’m getting in Seattle, but Irving and I can live with 40 nights of music in Palm Springs. And then, we happen to have probably the most financially successful American Hockey League team there this year with the Coachella Valley Firebirds. The mix of those two means we get just as good a rate of return on every dollar I invested at Acrisure as we will in Seattle. We love these B markets because there’s 20 of them out there compared with half a dozen of the A markets.
You’re seeing a lot of growth right now. When does what you do plateau?
It won’t be in my lifetime. There are 50 markets in the world today that need new arenas, but only 20 of them will make sense. I’m very driven by the rate of return that we get on our investment. Irving, the employees and I own the majority of this company. I have an investment partner in Silver Lake, and I’m very driven to get them a healthy valuation on this asset one day because they put a lot of money into it.
Memorabilia from the arenas that OVG has built and the sports teams associated with them. From left: hockey pucks from Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken; a plaque from Baltimore’s CVG Bank Arena; a shovel from the groundbreaking for UBS Arena.
Joel Barhamand
You talk a lot about the importance of “alignment” with partners before the work starts. How has that benefited OVG beyond the seven arenas you’ve built?
In Seattle, Climate Pledge Arena was a 50-50 joint venture between us, [Seattle’s NHL team] the Kraken, and [the team’s majority co-owner] David Bonderman. David and I were aligned on that vision for the arena from day one — before he got the team.
That is a city-owned facility, and we continue to be good partners and good neighbors with Mayor Bruce Harrell, Governor Jay Inslee, and county commissioner Dowe Constantine. My brother deals with them every day on our behalf. We’re jumping into Memorial Stadium there because it’s the right thing to do for the city and the county and the school district. And so that alignment with the people I just mentioned has created a hell of an asset. Even though we privatized it, they own it. It has also created all kinds of other opportunities, including our new restaurant, event center and the bid we’re making on Memorial Stadium. And we’re just getting started.
How much of an advantage is it for you that, once you build these venues, you can then bring in Harry Styles or the Eagles because of your partnership with Irving Azoff?
At the end of the day, we’ve got no chips with anybody out there. We’re not promoters, which means we get along with everyone. Louis Messina is one of my best friends. We have known each other most of our adult lives. I have a great relationship with Michael Rapino and everybody else at Live Nation. I like Jay Marciano. I hired Jay. I should be able to get along better with Jay, but there are other relationships at play there. As great as it is to have Irving as my partner, he’s only part of the equation.
Arena builds are not your only business.
We do 16 different services. I probably have 40 people in this company that work with every promoter, including some that route Irving’s tours for him. What makes us dangerous is, we are everybody that wants us to come in and bid because we’ve spent $4 billion building arenas. We’re going to do it better because we’ve got real skin in the game. We raise the debt on each of these buildings through my daughter Francesca and her division. We do the food and beverage, parking. We have a division called GOAL where we learn how to operate buildings more sustainably each year and rate them annually. We have 150 people selling naming rights and sponsorships every day.
How important are VIP packages and services?
We sell premium — suites and club seats. Premium and hospitality are still a huge growth opportunity. We’re just closing a deal on Rhubarb Hospitality Collection, RHC. They’re a high-end catering, food and beverage company based in London, New York and Berlin. They have one of the top restaurants in New York, Peak at Hudson Yards. We’ve also brought on Christian Navarro from Wally’s Wine and Spirits [in Beverly Hills]. When people come into our VIP areas, we want to create a whole different level for them. RHC is my fourth food and beverage company.
You’ve got a massive development in Las Vegas.
The biggest bet we’ve ever made is our project in Las Vegas. You could add New York and L.A. together, and they don’t do as much live entertainment as Vegas. It’s the live-entertainment capital of the world. But let’s look at the venues. There must be 10 nice theaters on the Strip. You need good arenas, too. T-Mobile was my last deal at AEG. It’s a nice arena, but it pales in comparison to what we just built in Seattle, New York and Austin. How do you have the No. 1 live-entertainment marketplace in the world and its arena is not one of the 30 nicest arenas in the country? You’ll hear about this soon, but we have a lot of world-class partners, brands and entrepreneurs who have come together to build out a 100-acre campus that will be the destination for live entertainment, culture, the arts and hospitality.
What does your overseas strategy look like?
The majority of projects we’re working on are overseas, like São Paulo with Live Nation. Thirty million people live in São Paulo. It’s a great music market. Latin music and K-pop are the biggest industry influencers now. We are also highly focused on Singapore and Asia; Lagos, because look at the artists coming from Nigeria. That’s where you’ve got to go for live music and culture and arts. We have a partner from Nigeria to build the single best arena in all of Africa.
You’ve also got Co-op Live opening in Manchester.
That is the capital of the U.K. for live events. That arena is going to be a top five arena in the world. When I opened up Staples Center in 1999, Bruce Springsteen was my opening artist for two nights, and the first night he told everyone, “Why don’t you come out of those corporate boxes and join us.” He didn’t have a great experience. I was like, goddamn it, the Boss just ripped me a new one from the stage. What he told me after the Staples concert is, “Tim, I like hot, sweaty halls.” When he opened up the CFG Bank arena for us in April, I said to him, “You’ve been running around my brain for 25 years because I failed you miserably.” Co-op Live is going to be the first music-only arena that is a hot, sweaty hall, and yet it will have 32 points of destination — restaurants, clubs and VIP spaces. It’s the first time we said, make it about music — make the bowl perfect — and then we’ll shoehorn in whatever else is important outside the bowl. Make all of the people right on the artist so it’s a hot, sweaty hall. I think that arena is going to change our industry. We’re sniffing around in Barcelona and Madrid. We want to go to the great cultural markets of the world where they have arenas that are 30, 40 years old and make those the next flags for the company. We have $2 billion to $3 billion of additional investment coming outside of Vegas and the projects we’re building in the U.S.
What’s your perspective on the Taylor Swift ticketing issue that Live Nation encountered? What could it have done better?
Ticketmaster did nothing wrong on Taylor Swift except for handling the demand, and we all knew that was coming. In a perfect world Taylor, Louis Messina and Ticketmaster would go back, take those dates and spread out the on sales. But at the end of the day it’s the bots and the scalpers that broke that system down. Did Taylor get any money from all of those secondary companies? Not a penny. Did the arenas or stadiums? I’ve spent $4 billion. Why is it that I let a secondary company come into my arena and resell my tickets and keep those fees? It’s a crime.
What are you doing to solve scalping and secondary-market issues?
I’ve got some ideas. In Seattle, we cleansed our season ticket list, our premium list and our club seat list. We got rid of anyone that was a scalper or secondary company so they couldn’t use the right of first refusal on concerts to tie those tickets up. Second is the bots. If an artist wants to be protected, we have to create smart tickets. And one day, your tickets are going to be here. (Holds up his hand.) We use the Amazon “grab and go” using your hand system. It’s not perfected yet, but within two years, it’s going to be phenomenal. Then we’ll be able to put the ticket in there and work a deal between Ticketmaster and Amazon. Just as technology has created the problem, so technology will solve the problem.
There’s also an outcry against fees.
They want to come in and say get rid of fees, but the reality is the fees are split by everybody in the pool. The artist gets some of the fees. Yes, they do. The building gets some of the fees and the promoter gets some of the fees. The fees are shared. There is an economic universe out there of rebates and waiving rent and giving artists free nights in the arena. That’s all part of this ecosystem of sharing fees. Everyone tends to forget about that. Ticketmaster does not even make the majority of fees. It’s not the fees. Should we tell people what the fees are in advance? That’s a good idea. But at the end of the day, if we want to attack what ultimately creates the majority of problems that people like The Cure or Taylor Swift feels strongly about, then attack the secondary companies who have no skin in the game.
“Shaq is our partner,” Leiweke says of NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, whose Big Chicken franchise is among the concessions found at OVG venues.
Joel Barhamand
Do you think Congress is focusing on the right players then?
Congress can’t even get a budget passed. Can they please just go run the country. Do I think they could solve the ticketing problem? No. These are the people saying it’s all Ticketmaster’s fault. No. Come learn the business, and what we’ll tell you is that the very same lobbyists you’re listening to that wrote that bill that you want to pass — they’re the problem.
The lion’s share of an act’s income comes from live shows. How much longer can we look at the live business as this sort of unlimited resource for artists, and whose responsibility is it to foster new arena and stadium acts?
How long can we maintain this ratio? I think forever because as I said music is the essence of our life. The economics have shifted, but the demand for music, recorded music, hasn’t shifted. It’s streaming now, and the economics are different. But we now have more ability to get more music from more artists than ever before. That’s who’s developing the emerging artists, god bless them — those streaming services. Ironically, they took some of the economics out of what an artist makes but they’ve created tens of thousands of more artists now, and who would have ever guessed that today we’d be seeing these K-pop and Latino artists? I’m looking at some of the numbers we did for Grupo Firme and Rauw Alejandro. The amount of tickets that Latino artists sell is unheard of. The same with K-pop. We just did four nights of K-pop including Suga, and UBS sold out everything. We had record merchandise sales. We’re going to continue to see that, and I give a lot of credit to the streaming industry. That’s going to be the live pipeline. So, maybe the economics ultimately got kind of turned a little bit against the artist, but it’s created far more artists that can now go sell out arenas.
Will they come up through the clubs or go straight to arenas?
We have the theater alliance because I think that’s highly important. Clubs are highly important. Both Live Nation and AEG are doing a great job on clubs. I’m a huge fan of Bowery Presents, and we’d like to have a better relationship with them. We will one day when the personalities get shifted. Will we keep going at the rate we’ve been going the last two years? Probably not. We’re seeing record rates, and we see it again next year. Our bookings are very, very strong for next year. But this is going to continue for a while because people have pent-up demand and discretionary income. I also think people went through Covid and said I’m going to go live life. Well, music happens to be something that relates to everybody. So, this isn’t going to stop. We’ll continue to develop smaller venues like Acrisure, which is a huge stepping stone for a lot of Latino bands. Everyone was scared of that marketplace except for Paul Tollett. I’m like, Paul’s pretty smart. I’ll follow his lead.
The same goes for sustainability when it comes to venues and festivals. You seem to be doing a lot on that front, but whose responsibility is it?
Sustainability is the overriding factor of this company. We spent $150 million on sustainability in Seattle saving the roof. I floated that roof in the air for three years. Everyone thought build a new arena, but that is the greatest waste of our planet — new steel, new glass, new everything. I thought, what if we reuse stuff? The arena’s roof is historic. It was originally part of the Washington State Pavilion at the 1962 World’s Fair. We figured out how to float it in the air with temporary steel supports, and I reused the steel. Then we took the front of the building and built an atrium system and a people-moving system to get everyone up and down. Take the existing arena, tear it down, build a hole three times as large, go down, not up because I use less energy below ground level. I don’t have to spend as much money on heating or cooling. Then drop the roof back on. Everyone says, “Oh, the renovation.” I’m like renovation? This is $1.15 billion. Renovate my ass. The only thing that stayed was the roof, and then three of the four sides is the original glass from the 1962 World’s Fair. I preserved it, packed it, stored it for two years and then put it back on. Then I had to retrofit the glass with fiber for earthquakes because the earthquake standard has changed since 1962.
You and Irving Azoff were once rivals and now you’re partners. What does that say about the music industry?
Yo-yos. It’s up and down, up ad down. We were partners, then enemies, then partners. I’m hoping that cycle has played itself out completely. Michael Rapino and I fought aggressively against each other. We’re not best of friends, but I’d say in our business he’s one of the greatest partners I have. The music business is a unique business because everyone thinks they’ve got to be either best of friends or fighting each other. There’s no in-between. The drama in the music business is crazy. We’re drama free around here. Our job is to get along with everybody. That’s the good thing about being private. People say, “Do you get along with Phil?” I wish him nothing but the best of luck. Whatever AEG does, I’m proud that I hired the majority of those people. And guess what, whether they succeed or fail, it will have little impact on my company. The greatest drama I had in my life is when Irving and I were fighting each other because he’s formidable. I’m very happy he’s on my side of the equation.
A Grammy Award-winning composer has dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID, just a day before it had been set to go to trial — and weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action.
Maria Schneider spent years litigating her lawsuit, which claimed that YouTube had become a “hotbed of piracy” because it provided effective content tools only to “powerful copyright owners” like record labels and not to “ordinary owners” like artists and songwriters.
But on Sunday (June 11), with a jury trial scheduled to kick off on Monday morning), lawyers for both sides told a federal judge that they had agreed to end the case without a decision: “In light of the stipulation of dismissal of all claims with prejudice, the jury trial set for June 12, 2023, is vacated,” Judge James Donato wrote. “The case is closed.”
The sudden end to the case came just weeks after Judge Donato issued a crucial ruling that dramatically reduced the scope of the lawsuit: That Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies.
Schneider quickly moved to appeal that ruling and postpone the trial, arguing that it would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit. But a federal appeals court denied that motion on Friday.
Faced with a jury trial they had warned would be “enormously wasteful,” Schneider’s lawyers dropped their case. Neither side immediately returned requests for more information about how the resolution of the litigation was reached, including specific details about any kind of settlement agreement.
Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.
For its part, YouTube says it’s done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”
The case was filed as a class action, aiming to let potentially tens of thousands of aggrieved copyright owners team up to fight what Schneider’s lawsuit called “institutionalized misbehavior.” An expert retained by her legal team said the class could include between 10,000 and 20,000 rights holders.
But in a May 22 ruling, Judge Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns — and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rights holders would have widely different cases against YouTube.
Following that ruling, Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial. But at a hearing days after the decision, Donato said he would stick to the schedule: “I’m not going to do that. You got a trial set on June 12th. This is a 2020 case; OK. It’s showtime.”
In a June 5 emergency petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Schneider’s lawyers demanded the appeals court put the case on ice while she filed an appeal on the class certification issue. They argued that a “brief” pause would prevent the judge’s “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling from derailing a case with important implications.
“The named plaintiffs here joined the case to litigate class claims, and to vindicate their view that YouTube tramples on the rights of independent artists and smaller copyright holders overall, not just those of the individual plaintiffs,” her lawyers told the appeals court.
But in a ruling published on Friday evening, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments: “The court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal,” the court wrote. “Petitioners’ emergency motion for a stay is denied as moot.”
Schneider and her lawyers still could have proceeded to trial against YouTube, litigating the case simply on behalf of her and another plaintiff. But they had strongly indicated in court filings that they did not want to proceed to the trial without class-action status.
Femme It Forward, a female-led music and entertainment company, has partnered with Google Pixel to establish the Femme It Future Scholarship. Five mentees from Femme It Forward’s mentorship program for young women of color — Next Gem Femme — will be selected as recipients. The scholarship is being announced in conjunction with Femme It Forward opening the application window for the third year of its mentorship program.
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“This scholarship is our commitment to nurturing the next generation of female leaders who will shatter barriers, break stereotypes and create a future filled with equality and empowerment,” said Femme It Forward president/CEO Heather Lowery in a statement.
“Google Pixel is at the forefront of incorporating diversity and inclusivity in its technology and products. We believe that empowering young women with education and opportunities is the key to unlocking their limitless potential. By offering transformative scholarships and coveted mentorship opportunities, our partnership can create change together that empowers the next generation.”
“We’re thrilled to be partnered with Heather and the team at Femme it Forward,” added Ava Donaldson, Google’s senior marketing manager, U.S. Social, Influencer + Inclusion. “Our mutual mission is centered around helpfulness and supporting the advancement of underrepresented communities, especially women.”
Select students will also receive special care packages comprised of Google and other products sourced exclusively from women-owned businesses.
When Next Gem Femme begins its third year in September, it will be pairing mentors with more than 100 females pursuing undergraduate or graduate degrees or presently working in entry-level positions in the music and entertainment industries. As before, the program plans to award at least half of its mentee openings to students from historically Black colleges and universities.
Encompassing career pursuits such as marketing, publicity, live and touring, business development, talent management and artist relations, the program’s mentors come from various companies including Google, Amazon, Apple Music, CAA, Live Nation, NBC Universal, Netflix and YouTube. Among the female music industry executive mentors Republic Records executive vp Danielle Price, Warner Records senior VP of A&R Ericka Coulter, Virgin Music president Jacqueline Saturn and Roc Nation vp, marketing Bianca Edwards.
“Through powerful relationships and practical education, Next Gem Femme opens so many doors for young women of color, a group that has been overlooked for far too long,” noted Lowery. “We’re thrilled to launch our third year of the program and build on its amazing momentum as we continue leading necessary conversations about the need to improve workplace equity. This brilliant group of mentors will give remarkable young women the wisdom and tools to expand their talents, overcome setbacks and reach their potential.”
The application window for Next Gem Femme closes on Friday, June 16, 2023 (9 p.m. PT). For more information and to apply, visit femmeitforward.com.
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Jimmie Allen has been dropped by his record label BBR Music Group, the company confirmed to Billboard, just hours after a second woman sued the singer for sexual assault.
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“BBR Music Group has dissolved its relationship with Jimmie Allen, he is no longer an active artist on its roster,” said the label in a brief statement sent to Billboard. Variety first broke the news of BBR’s move and the second lawsuit Friday (June 9).
BBR Music Group had earlier placed Allen on suspension after he was previously accused of repeated rape and sexual harassment by a “Jane Doe” who had worked as a day-to-day manager at the singer’s former management company, Wide Open Music. In the wake of that May 11 allegation, Allen was also placed on suspension by his booking agency, UTA, and his then-management company, The Familie; while his public relations company, Full Coverage Communications, stopped working with him altogether. He was additionally dropped from the performer lineup at CMA Fest.
Allen has strongly denied the allegations from the first lawsuit, calling them “false” and vowing to “mount a vigorous defense” and “take all other legal action necessary to protect my reputation.”
In the suit filed Friday, an unnamed woman accused Allen of battery, assault and invasion of privacy. She claimed that after meeting Allen on a flight, she agreed to meet him in Las Vegas in July 2022. Among other claims, she alleged that while having sex with Allen in his Las Vegas hotel room, he ejaculated inside her without her consent and secretly filmed the encounter.
The woman further claims that, after being unable to fully delete the video from the sleeping Allen’s phone, she left with it and booked a new flight back to her home in Sacramento, where she reported the incident and turned the phone over to the local police department. The Sacramento police subsequently reported it to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, though Billboard‘s request for any public records linked to the report, submitted to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police through an online portal, was not immediately fulfilled.
The attorney who filed both cases, Elizabeth A. Fegan, said in a statement to Billboard that the new claims represented a “distinct pattern of behavior” by Allen and said she had “heard from others who share similar experiences.”
Allen’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on the second lawsuit. UTA and The Familie did not immediately respond to request for comment on whether their status with Allen had changed following the new charges.
Allen’s career had been on an upward trajectory since his first single for BBR, “Best Shot,” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in 2018. He scored two subsequent No. 1s with “Make Me Want To” and “Freedom Was A Highway” (with Brad Paisley), while “Down Home” reached No. 2. BBR was working Allen’s newest single, “Be Alright,” to country radio last month when the first lawsuit was filed, but stopped working it after the label suspended Allen. It reached No. 57 before quickly falling off the chart.
The Billboard Global Music Index improved 1.8% to 1,270.57 in the week ending June 9, marking gains in successive weeks and four out of the last six weeks. iHeartMedia was the index leader for the second straight week. Shares of the radio company were up 13.5% to $3.54 a week after rising 30.5%. Thirteen of […]
A Tennessee man pleaded guilty Friday to helping two other men charged with fatally shooting rapper Young Dolph in a daytime ambush at a Memphis bakery.
Jermarcus Johnson, 26, pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact. Judge Lee Coffee approved a plea deal with prosecutors, allowing him to avoid trial. He could testify at a future trial in the November 2021 killing of Young Dolph, whose real name was Adolph Thornton Jr.
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Johnson is the first of four defendants to plead guilty or be convicted in the Young Dolph shooting, which rattled Memphis and shook the entertainment world. The 36-year-old rapper, label owner and producer was buying cookies near his boyhood home in Memphis when he was gunned down by two men who drove up to the bakery in a stolen Mercedes Benz, authorities said.
Johnson acknowledged helping the two shooting suspects communicate by cellphone after the killing while they were on the run from authorities and helping one of them communicate with his probation officer after the killing.
During questioning by prosecutor Paul Hagerman, Johnson acknowledged taking possession of car a from shooting suspect Justin Johnson, his half brother. The car was not the one tied to the killing, Hagerman said. Jermarcus Johnson also identified a photo in which Justin Johnson was wearing the same clothing as one of the two shooters accused of gunning down Young Dolph the day the rapper was killed.
Hagerman said Jermarcus Johnson had no role in the actual killing of Young Dolph, but he was one of “multiple players” doing different things in connection with it.
Hagerman said after the hearing that dealing with a case with several defendants is “a little bit like chess.”
“You’ve got to set up your pieces,” he said.
Jermarcus Johnson was initially charged with the more serious offence of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, an indictment said. Jermarcus Johnson helped Justin Johnson communicate with the other suspect, Cornelius Smith, the indictment said.
Jermarcus Johnson’s lawyer, Josh Corman, told reporters his client was an unwilling participant who was dragged into the aftermath of the killing.
“Sometimes it’s one of those lessons of, you have to be careful who you know and who you associate with,” Corman said. “In this case, it was a half brother of his who showed up to his apartment one day and had a phone and a car.”
Justin Johnson and Smith have pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder. The fourth man accused in the indictment, Hernandez Govan, also has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. Govan is accused of arranging the killing.
A motive for the killing has not been disclosed.
Young Dolph was known in Memphis for his charitable works and his success as an independent musical artist and businessman. When he was killed, Young Dolph was in the city to visit a sick relative and hand out Thanksgiving turkeys at a church.
After his death, Memphis named a street after him and the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA honored him during a game. Murals of the rapper have been painted around the city and a pop-up museum featuring him was opened earlier this year.
The bakery, Makeda’s Homemade Cookies, became an impromptu memorial site for the slain rapper. It was closed for months after the shooting, but has since reopened.
Justin Johnson and Smith are being held in jail. Govan was given a $90,000 bond based on safety and health issues and he is on house arrest.
Johnson faces six to 12 years in prison at sentencing at a later date.
Ten years into his career, Lil Durk keeps putting up numbers. The Chicago rapper first broke onto the scene in 2013 from the drill scene in his hometown, before cycling through the Def Jam system and re-igniting his career a number of years later, landing his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 as a solo artist last year with 7220. But this week, he one-upped himself again: Durk’s new album, Almost Healed (Alamo Records), debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — behind heavyweights Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen — and became his fourth straight No. 1 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, moving 125,000 equivalent album units, his best mark of his career and the biggest debut week for a project on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart this year so far.
But that’s not all — Durk also landed his highest mark as a lead artist on the Hot 100, when his single “All My Life” feat. J. Cole debuted at No. 2 on the chart, matching the highest mark for each artist (Durk previously hit No. 2 as a featured artist on Drake’s “Laugh Now, Cry Later”) amid 15 songs he landed on the Hot 100 this week. It’s a high-water mark for Durk’s career in a number of ways — and the success helps his manager, Grade A Productions partner Peter Jideonwo, earn the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Jideonwo, who started working with Durk ahead of this album, talks about the work that went into making this a success, helping push Durk’s career forward after a decade in the game and the state of hip-hop in a year dominated by country, R&B and Latin music on the charts.
“We are sometimes too focused on the music and not everything else around it,” he says, eyes to the future. “Durk can be bigger than what we have just accomplished.”
This Week, Lil Durk’s Almost Healed debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 125,000 equivalent album units, the biggest week of his career as a solo act. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
Picking the right single. Making sure all the creatives were on point, picking the right directors, photographers, interviews as well as directing videos. Making sure features were completed. Introducing Durk to Dr. Luke, who helped create “All My Life.” “All My Life” was the first record me and Durk did together and “Stand By Me” was the second. Visiting all the DSPs ahead of time before the album came out. Creating outside-the-box marketing strategies to push the narrative of a new and better Durk.
Lil Durk performs during Future and Friends “One Big Party Tour” at United Center on Jan. 20, 2023 in Chicago.
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The album was set up by “All My Life” feat. J. Cole, which matched Durk’s all-time high on the Hot 100 when it debuted at No. 2. What did you do to help that song cut through immediately and debut so high?
The song was created by Durk, Luke and J. Cole. The first session I ever did for Durk was putting that record together. Durk and Cole had a relationship, but I had to follow up for over five weeks to get the verse from J. Cole. The video was shot by my production company and produced by me. Setting up Durk’s scholarship fund with Howard [University], meeting the Mayor [of Chicago] and doing positive things in the community, was what we had to do to make sure the record connected properly.
Almost Healed’s first week is also the largest debut week for a project on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in 2023. In a year where the top of the charts have been dominated by country, R&B and Latin music, is it tougher to break through with a hip-hop album, or do you just see these things as going in cycles?
Yes I think so; hip-hop is dying, unfortunately. I say so because we have lost Juice [WRLD], X[XXTentacion], Mac Miller, [Young] Thug to jail, careers like Boston Richey and Gunna tainted by snitching accusations. Our industry in is a self-inflicted turmoil that I do not see reversing anytime soon. We don’t have a stronghold of artists anymore and there is no togetherness. We are also dealing with over-saturation and not enough love shown to our currently-established artists. The only way to fix it is to reduce the amount of people making this music and for our current artists to think outside the box to create new sounds. Everyone makes the same music and the same topics — cars, money, clothes, girls — and that’s not going to take us far anymore. Especially when streamers like Adin Ross and Kai Cenat are pulling hundreds of thousands of kids for hours. They don’t have time to listen to new music, so if you are going to release music it needs to be undeniable or it will not sell.
Durk is now 10 years into his career, and still setting high-water marks in terms of first-week numbers and chart positions. How do you continue pushing his career forward in an era when so much is focused on the next new thing?
We are going to focus on pushing his sound to the next level. I am also focused on making him a household brand, bigger than music. We are sometimes too focused on the music and not everything else around it. Durk can be bigger than what we have just accomplished. Putting out this classic album was very tedious but we are ready to get into tech, gaming, sports, movies: all around new challenges which he hasn’t done yet. We are almost healed.
You’ve been a manager and a label executive in your career. How do you balance the expectations and demands from both?
The easiest way to put it is that I dedicate my life to my clients. I only touch what I love. I am answering these questions on my birthday instead of chilling. We are still working on new things every day, which excites me. I have also been lucky to mostly only work with artists who are signed to me; that has also made my life easy. The music industry is very difficult and the most important thing is to stay ahead of the curve.
How else are you guys planning on continuing to push this Durk project forward?
We are going to keep releasing new music videos. We have an arena tour coming up where we will be performing new records from the album. We are going to put out some new versions of the records, maybe we will get to hear the Kanye West mixes that Durk spoke about in an interview.
Previous Executive of the Week: Austin Neal of The Neal Agency
A federal appeals court has issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says blasting music with “sexually graphic” and “violently misogynistic” lyrics in a workplace could violate federal discrimination laws.
Reviving a lawsuit against an apparel company that played songs like Too $hort‘s “Blowjob Betty” and Eminem‘s “Stan” at a Nevada warehouse, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday (June 9) that the music had potentially created a “hostile or abusive environment” for female employees.
“Blasted from commercial-strength speakers placed throughout the warehouse, the music overpowered operational background noise and was nearly impossible to escape,” the appeals court wrote. “In turn, the music allegedly served as a catalyst for abusive conduct by male employees, who frequently pantomimed sexually graphic gestures, yelled obscenities, made sexually explicit remarks, and openly shared pornographic videos.”
The employer, S&S Activewear, argued the music didn’t constitute illegal bias under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, partly because it had been equally offensive to both men and women. And last year, a federal trial judge agreed, calling the case “fatally flawed” and dismissing it on those grounds.
But in Wednesday’s decision, the Ninth Circuit called that an “absurd interpretation” of the statute — and one that would create a “gaping hole” in discrimination law for any company that chose to be an “equal opportunity harasser.”
The appeals court said it was the first time it had ever ruled on the issue of “music-as-harassment” under the Civil Rights Act. But the judges said that sexist songs should be treated no differently than other situations where a workplace is “polluted with insult and intimidation.”
“[Female employees were] forced to tolerate the music and the toxic environment as a condition of continued employment,” the court wrote. “Whether sung, shouted, or whispered, blasted over speakers or relayed face-to-face, sexist epithets can offend and may transform a workplace into a hostile environment that violates Title VII.”
Importantly, Wednesday’s ruling does not say that S&S definitely violated the law; rather, it says the allegations against the company could have merit if they are eventually proven, and thus that the case should not have been dismissed so quickly. The case will now return to a lower court for more litigation and an eventual trial.
An attorney for S&S did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision.
The case was filed in 2020 by Stephanie Sharp and seven other women who worked at S&S’s Nevada warehouse. As examples of the music they were allegedly forced to listen to, they cited “Blowjob Betty,” including its lyrics about a woman “who dies because of swallowing semen in her windpipe.” They also cited “Stan” and its lyrics about “placing a pregnant woman in the trunk of a vehicle and then driving the vehicle into a river … for the purpose of drowning her.”
Though the songs at issue in the case were mostly hip-hop, Wednesday’s ruling reviving that lawsuit was careful to stress that it was not targeting rap music specifically.
“It is beyond our purview to pass judgment on the appropriateness of music in the workplace writ large,” the court wrote. “Nor is it our objective to ascribe misogyny to any particular musical genre.”
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, lead plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Mausert said he and his clients were “very pleased” with a ruling that used “common sense” to reach the right result: “This opinion will prevent a lot of sexual harassment at a multitude of workplaces,” Mausert said. “It is well written and is pretty much a tour de force of Ninth Circuit law.”
Read the Ninth Circuit’s entire ruling here: