Business
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Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) has reached an agreement to sell its stake in the Tao Group chain of restaurants and nightclubs to global luxury lifestyle company Mohari Hospitality, according to a filing Monday (April 17).
MSGE will sell its 66.9% majority interest in Tao Group Hospitality for about $300 million, according to the filing. The deal, which values Tao Group at $550 million, is expected to close in May.
News of the planned sale comes just days before MSGE is expected to finalize the spin-off of its live entertainment business, a move that will separate the pure-play live music business from the company’s state-of-the-art Sphere venue in Las Vegas, sports television network and hospitality businesses.
The spin-off would have moved Tao Group Hospitality into the parent company, renamed Sphere Entertainment Co., along with the Sphere, the new Las Vegas venue currently under construction, and MSG Networks. The company said Monday that upon the deal’s close, it will “enter into multi-year agreements with Tao Group Hospitality for ongoing consulting, marketing, and support services at Madison Square Garden and Sphere in Las Vegas.”
MSGE bought a majority stake in Tao Group in 2017 and has since expanded it to include Hakkasan, Beauty & Essex and other restaurants for a total of more than 80 locations spread across 24 cities on four continents.
Founded in 2017, Mohari Hospitality is an investment company that owns stakes in the Waldorf Astoria in Miami, the 1 Hotel in Toronto, a luxury sustainability-focused resort in Costa Rica called the Peninsula Papagayo and the Ritz Carlton’s cruise line of custom yachts.
Equity holders in Tao Group Hospitality were advised by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Hughes Hubbard & Reed. Advising Mohari Hospitality were Moelis & Company and Kirkland & Ellis.
The long-running legal dispute between grunge icons Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, the widow of late lead singer Chris Cornell, has been resolved. According to a statement posted on the social media account of the band and Cornell on Monday morning (April 17) the agreement will pave the way for the eventual release of Cornell’s final recorded vocals with the group.
“Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, on behalf of the Estate of Chris Cornell, are happy to announce they have reached an amicable out of court resolution,” read the statement. “The reconciliation marks a new partnership between the two parties, which will allow Soundgarden fans around the world to hear the final songs that the band and Chris were working on. The two parties are united and coming together to propel, honor and build upon Soundgarden’s incredible legacy as well as Chris’s indelible mark on music history – as one of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of all time.
Two years after Cornell was found dead by suicide at age 52 in a Detroit hotel room on May 17, 2017, Vicky Cornell sued surviving band members guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd and the band’s longtime business manager. The suit claimed what she described as attempts to “strong-arm” her into turning over seven unreleased audio recordings made by the singer before his death by allegedly withholding royalties owed to the estate.
Two months later, the band sued Vicky Cornell claiming she had no right to withhold the tracks from what was expected to be the group’s final album. In March 2020 Soundgarden asked a judge to dismiss Cornell’s lawsuit on procedural grounds and then they countersued her in May of that year over the proceeds of a Jan. 2019 tribute concert; those claims were dropped in July 2020.
Cornell filed a second lawsuit in Feb. 2021 in which she claimed the living members undervalued her share of the group, which was filed by more back-and-forth over the band’s March 2021 demands that Vicky Cornell turn over the keys to the group’s social media accounts.
At press time no additional information was available on when the unheard music will be released.
See the joint statement below.
LONDON — Swiss-based tech company Utopia Music is undertaking a fresh round of job cuts, eliminating around 15% of its global workforce, co-founder and interim chief executive Mattias Hjelmstedt said in a memo to staff on Monday.
Hjelmstedt said the cost-trimming measures follow a review of the organization’s business and form part of an ongoing “strategic shift” towards a focus on delivering financial services for labels, publishers and distributors. Billboard understands that around 100 jobs are being cut.
In the staff memo, which has been seen by Billboard, Hjelmstedt says that Utopia’s distribution companies are not affected by the staff cuts. They include Proper Music Group, the United Kingdom’s leading independent physical music distributor, which provides distribution services for 1,000-plus indie labels and service companies, and Cinram Novum, which provides warehouse, fulfilment and distribution services to a range of labels, including UMG, Sony Music Entertainment and [PIAS].
Monday’s announcement is the second round of layoffs to take place at Utopia in the past six months.
In November, the Zug, Switzerland-based tech company cut its workforce by around 20%, representing about 230 jobs. That was followed by a restructuring of Utopia’s business into two separate divisions: Music Services and Royalty Platform in December and the exit of former CEO Markku Mäkeläinen in January. Earlier this month, U.K.-based Roberto Neri announced that he too was leaving his position as CEO of Utopia’s Music Services division to join French music company Believe.
The start of this year has also seen Utopia, whose motto is “Fair pay for every play,” divest two of the 15 companies it acquired over the past two years during a frenetic buying spree. On Feb. 7, Utopia announced that it had sold U.S.-based music database platform ROSTR — which has a directory of artists, managers, booking agents and record labels — back to ROSTR’s founders for an undisclosed sum.
Last month, French music company Believe acquired U.K.-based publisher Sentric, which represents more than four million songs and over 400,000 songwriters in more than 200 territories, from Utopia in a deal worth €47 million ($51 million). Utopia owned Liverpool-based Sentric Music Group — which also has offices in London, Hamburg, New York and Los Angeles – for just over a year before selling it to Believe.
“Today’s market requires that companies that embarked on a hiring spree during ‘hyper growth’ now restructure,” wrote Hjelmstedt. “We are a company that is not afraid to adjust when necessary. That means we take active decisions, however hard they may be, to ensure we can deliver our vision to serve the music industry.”
Hjelmstedt went on to say that adjusting to these strategic changes “has been a big, but necessary undertaking” that has optimized the company’s client offering “and already seen an uplift in customers.”
Referencing recent reports by Scandinavian news outlet Breakit that some Utopia employees had not been paid and the company’s Swedish arm, Utopia R&D Tech, owes 8 million SEK ($770,000) to the Swedish tax authorities, the CEO said “all outstanding tax debts have been cleared” and legacy issues regarding staff payments were “in the process of being cleaned up.”
“We continue to actively work on this process to ensure that we never find ourselves in this position again,” said Hjelmstedt, adding that the company – which had a workforce of around 1,000 employees internationally prior to sale of Sentric – will soon share information on “commercial initiatives, deals, and sales strategies” that will drive future revenue growth.
Read the memo in full here:
Dear Utopians,
Since taking on additional responsibilities as your Executive Chairman, I’ve been committed to sharing the steps we must take for Utopia to become a profitable and sustainable business. The new leadership team and I have had to make some important, and sometimes very tough, decisions as part of this ongoing process. Today I need to share news of that nature.
Together, we’ve very carefully reviewed our organization against our refocused product and commercial roadmaps, and specific needs, and must share the unfortunate news that, as part of this strategic shift, we need to say goodbye to around 15% of our Utopian colleagues. Our distribution companies are not affected by this review.
Thomas and I created Utopia by combining two of our great loves – music and technology – and we’ve built it together with you. That’s why this is the most difficult decision we’ve had to make so far, and I fully appreciate that after these past few months this will be hard to read. If you are one of the affected individuals: Please know that this is in no way based on your individual performance – we hired you because we value you and you are great at what you do – this is about doing what is necessary to secure the future of the company. We’re truly sorry to see you go and feel both humbled and grateful for all the amazing work you have done for Utopia.
It’s been very hard to see how Utopia was treated last year and you already know how I feel about decisions taken that put us in a difficult situation. Additionally, like the rest of the tech industry, we’re facing challenges brought on by changed market conditions. We’ve seen several waves of redundancies from companies large and small – Meta, for example, recently announced its “year of efficiency” to cater to its long-term vision. Today’s market requires that companies that embarked on a hiring spree during “hyper growth” now restructure. The likes of Spotify, Microsoft, and PayPal (and so many others) now need to adapt to the new reality of focused sustainable growth – just like we have to at Utopia. We are a company that is not afraid to adjust when necessary. That means we take active decisions, however hard they may be, to ensure we can deliver our vision to serve the music industry with technology for processing royalties, distributing music, and facilitating Fair Pay for Every Play while reducing complexity for our customers.
Adjusting to these changes has been a big, but necessary undertaking. We’ve sharpened our strategic focus these past three months through targeted sales (ROSTR and Sentric) – bringing in further capital as an additional benefit – and we appointed a new, mature leadership team that’s equipped to move Utopia towards profitability. We have optimized our offering and already seen an uplift in customers – we have strong products on the market that we will continue to improve, a top-of-the-line platform, a world-class distribution arm that represents 98% of UK labels (including all majors), and a plan to first break even and then grow even further, sustainably. The legacy from last year is in the process of being cleaned up. All outstanding tax debts have been cleared, including our financial obligations in Sweden. We continue to actively work on this process to ensure that we never find ourselves in this position again. We’re humbled and grateful to all of you who stepped up to support this large, strategic shift, and have shown patience while we do so.
Soon we will share more information on commercial initiatives, deals, and sales strategies that will drive Utopia’s revenue growth. But for now, let’s allow ourselves time to reflect and give the great people that will unfortunately have to leave us a proper goodbye. Some colleagues will receive difficult news and some will lose teammates and friends, so please be there for them.
I want to express my sincere apologies to everyone affected. Utopia was built to be a high-impact company and we have attracted extremely talented people who we truly appreciate and respect. That’s why this decision is so hard to make. I know you will have a lot of questions, please know that more information on next steps will be provided by the P&C team shortly.
Take care of yourselves and each other,
Mattias
A federal appeals has rejected a lawsuit claiming Live Nation was “stringing along” a country singer when the company considered – but ultimately passed on – her proposal for an all-female country music festival in Chicago.
Rae Solomon claimed the concert giant led her to believe it would invest in her idea – a “modern” riff on the famed Lilith Fair with a “predominantly country spin” – only to unfairly back out later. She says Live Nation then stole the concept when it organized an all-women day at 2019’s Lake Shake Festival.
But in a ruling Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that Live Nation had not made “any misrepresentations in its dealings with Solomon.” The court said Live Nation had offered only “sales talk, future intention, and opinion,” not concrete plans to work with her.
“An expression of interest in participating in a project is not a promise to do so,” the court wrote. “The statement represents nothing more than Live Nation’s interest in the project.”
All of Live Nation’s interactions with Solomon were “non-specific and noncommittal nature,” the court wrote, and the company “did not conceal its questions, doubts, or lack of commitment” to her project.
Solomon pitched the idea of her “Zenitheve” festival to Live Nation’s Women Nation Fund, a program that aims to help “underrepresented female entrepreneur” in the live music industry. And Live Nation’s interest was initially piqued; in early meetings in 2018, company reps told her that Zenitheve was “right down the fairway for the kind of stuff we’re interested in” and “exactly what the fund is set up for.”
But according to court documents, Solomon soon ran into hurdles. She envisioned a lineup including Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and other female country stars, but she had not actually booked artists to perform. And after meetings in which Live Nation suggested “keep[ing] the conversation going,” the company soon expressed serious doubts.
Michael Wichser, Live Nation’s senior vice president for mergers and acquisitions, said Solomon’s business plan was “lackluster” and “worried about Solomon’s abilities to obtain artists or get a team in place.” Live Nation’s chief communications officer Carrie Davis, meanwhile, thought her idea was not “compelling or unique” and noted that Solomon had not “confirmed any sponsorships or artists.”
A month after Live Nation formally passed on the idea, the company announced the plan for the all-women day at Lake Shake, a yearly country festival in Chicago. Solomon claims the move led her investors to pull out of Zenitheve, forcing her to halt the project.
She quickly sued, claiming Live Nation had made intentional and negligent misrepresentations to her and demanding more than $25 million in damages. Among other things, she claimed that Live Nation had acted the way that it did so that it could copy her plan.
But in Thursday’s decision, the Sixth Circuit said that motive was directly contradicted by the facts of the case.
“[Solomon] claims that Live Nation misrepresented any intention of working with [her] because it had only one motivation from the start: stringing Solomon along and stealing her idea,” the appeals court wrote. “That speculation, however, crumbles against Live Nation’s uncontradicted evidence that the organizer of the Lake Shake Festival, Brian O’Connell, had no knowledge of the Zenitheve proposal.”
Esteban Geller, who for nearly five years has led the marketing division at Sony Music U.S. Latin, has been promoted to the new position of general manager, Billboard has learned.
The Argentina-born Geller, based in Miami, will continue to report to Sony Music U.S. Latin president Alex Gallardo.
Geller was most recently senior vice president for artist relations & marketing for the label, working closely with superstar artists like Shakira, Maluma, Camilo, Rauw Alejandro, Wisin & Yandel, Manuel Turizo, Farruko and their teams. In his new role, he adds Puerto Rico and West Coast Operations to his purview, as well as radio/promotions and video commissioning.
“Esteban is one of the most dynamic, savvy, energetic, and enthusiastic executives in the business. He has played a key role in our expansion and the sustained success of countless acts,” said Gallardo in a statement. “He’s a true team player who doesn’t just envision big ideas; he actively executes them at the highest level.”
Highly-regarded among artists and management teams, Geller has gained a reputation as a tireless, proactive and solution-driven executive. His expertise comes from different fields. Prior to joining Sony Music in 2018, he worked with superstars Ricardo Arjona and Diego Torres (a Sony artists) and held jobs at event promoter Fenix Entertainment Group Latin America as well as MTV/Vh1 Latin America.
“It has been amazing to be part of Sony’s growth in the industry and I’m proud of what we have achieved over the past few years,” said Geller in a statement. “Every project is so important to us, and we approach each artist with the same care and diligence. Much appreciation to Alex and Afo [Verde, Sony’s CEO/President for Latin Iberia) who have entrusted me to not only develop music releases, but most important, artists careers.”
“New Home” is a pensive, wordless piano ballad — not the type of song that’s typically thought of as viral trend material on TikTok. But last month, Austin Farwell, who wrote and performed the track, noticed it appearing in a wave of videos. Many of these featured the actor Pedro Pascal munching peacefully on a sandwich — a snippet from the YouTube series Snack Wars — next to a block of text, something along the lines of “when you catch up with your friends and they’re all complaining about their trash men but you can’t relate cos your man is perfect and treats you like a princess every day.”
“I didn’t understand,” Farwell says. “I don’t know Pedro Pascal; I didn’t know why he was eating a sandwich. But if that’s the trend that people want to promote my music with, great.”
The Pascal videos were created using the program CapCut, which is owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. CapCut, which marketers joke is the new version of Apple’s Final Cut Pro, makes more advanced video editing techniques accessible to the masses, allowing clips like those with Pascal to be easily replicated and adjusted effectively with the click of a button. Chopping his calm chewing footage out of one video and into another is beyond many users’ technical ability. With CapCut, “you’re really not even editing, you’re choosing a template, adding something of your own, and the program is just generating this video for you,” says Abbey Fickley, a TikTok creator.
“They give you these slow motion effects, or make it go from blurry to super clear, or these glitchy cuts, which make the videos more dramatic,” Fickley continues. “That in turn makes the viewer more inclined to stay and watch it. It spices up your content — those editing features really do attract the viewer, instead of them just scrolling past it.”
Songs can be hitched to CapCut templates, so as they have proliferated on TikTok, they have become an important new area of focus for music marketers. “If you can match one of those [templates] to a sound that amplifies the video, or makes it more dynamic, then you suddenly have something that can act as a vessel for the sound to go viral,” explains Sanu Hariharan, co-head of music partnerships at Creed Media, a marketing company focused on Gen Z. “It’s been a really strong facilitator of user-generated content,” which is typically the metric that artist teams use to evaluate the success of marketing campaigns, especially on Tiktok but also on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
A major label executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity went further: “If you want to break a song on TikTok right now” — and everybody with commercial aspirations does — “you have to attach it to something from CapCut.” In recent months, these trends have helped drive listeners to “New Home,” Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” (currently No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100), a mash-up of Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood” (peaked at No. 58 on the chart dated March 22), Deftones’ “Change (In the House of Flies),” Hollywood Undead’s “Everywhere I Go,” and more.
CapCut launched globally in 2020, and it topped the app charts as early as 2021. Much in the same way that new music production tools like BandLab’s SongStarter have made it simple for those with minimal experience to create credible-sounding tracks, CapCut “makes it a lot easier for your everyday user to be able to create more polished videos,” says Jen Darmafall, director of marketing at ATG Group. “You don’t have to have a particular skill set when it comes to editing — there are templates on the platform for you to go and plug in what you want, whether it’s photos or videos or text overlays or transitions. That’s helped it skyrocket.”
In October, ByteDance made it even easier to jump between TikTok and CapCut: When users encountered a video on the former made with the latter, a new button allowed them to quickly start playing with the template on their own. Partly as a result of that change, “over the last six months or so,” clips made with CapCut are “in your face every day, non-stop, no matter what side of TikTok you’re on,” Darmafall says. CapCut clips are also peppering Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, further amplifying ByteDance’s influence in the social media market at a time when the company is facing intense scrutiny from the U.S. government.
Jess Keifer, director of digital strategy for Sony Music Nashville, noticed a CapCut trend set to “Fast Car” — a blurry scene, often accompanied by heart-warming text, that snaps into focus just as the singer up-shifts into the chorus — gain traction during the last week of March, leading to an “explosion” of similar TikTok clips. “It’s an easy source of inspiration for fans,” she says. Fickley hopped on the Combs trend and amassed a million views within two hours. “I’ve never had a video go viral that fast,” she says.
Much of TikTok’s appeal from the start has been that anyone can go viral, no matter how many followers you have or how long you’ve been using the platform. But to replicate the dance trends that were popular in the app’s early days, for example, a user either had to be good at dancing or comfortable with embarrassment. Neither are required to adjust a CapCut video template that riffs on Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard or the cartoon Tom and Jerry.
“As you hop on the trending templates, you’re gonna get more views and visibility, which is what we all want,” explains Tim Gerst, CEO of digital marketing agency Thinkswell. “And so it becomes about, how can you find ways to take your own music or the things that you’re working on and implement it into templates that are trending?”
CapCut templates are especially useful for music marketers because they often come with songs attached to them. “Some people are having these templates created specifically for their sound or for the artist’s song that they are promoting,” Darmafall says. “And some of them are scouring TikTok for CapCuts every single day, finding the most popular templates, and putting their song to it” — seeing if they can sway a trend in their direction. “It’s so easy to unlink a sound and link a new sound to it,” Darmafall notes.
A common critique of TikTok is that it elevates songs but not artists: Millions of users might get obsessed with a snippet of a track but not bother to even figure out what the singer looks like. One advantage of CapCut templates is that artists can quickly jump on a trend that might otherwise take off without them. “It’s great for artists because it saves them time,” says Cassie Petrey, founder of the digital marketing company Crowd Surf. “We try to encourage our artists to use them as it makes sense for their brand,” Keifer adds.
Hariharan points to a recent video from Rag’n’Bone Man, where the gravel-voiced balladeer posted his own version of a CapCut template that was both set to his track “Human” and also included footage of the singer spinning in place. The Rag’n’Bone Man video earned more than 12 million views, easily outstripping any of his other recent clips. “This is a way that artists themselves can get in on the action,” Hariharan says. “It allows them to kind of unlock another layer, feed themselves in, increase their overall recognizability.”
“This is just going to become more and more important for us to pay attention to,” Keifer adds.
Halsey and Capitol Records have parted ways, a representative for the singer confirmed to Billboard.
“After eight great years the decision to leave Capitol is bittersweet, but we are excited about exploring a new partnership and sharing new music with fans,” Halsey’s managers, Anti-Pop’s Jason Aron and Anthony Li, said in a statement provided on Saturday (April 15).
Capitol had not yet responded to Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.
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Variety published a statement from the label on the split, which was first reported by Hits: “Everyone at Capitol poured their hearts and souls into helping Halsey achieve their dreams and present their music to the world. We are incredibly proud of all we accomplished together and wish Halsey the very best in all their future endeavors.”
Halsey publicly spoke out against Capitol in May 2022, alleging that the label refused to release their next single, “So Good,” without a viral TikTok campaign attached to it. When her TikTok explaining the situation actually went viral, the artist grew more frustrated that the song wasn’t immediately given a firm release date.
The pop star had said, “My record company is saying that I can’t release it unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok … Everything is marketing and they are doing this to basically every artist these days. I just wanna release music, man. And I deserve better tbh.”
A Capitol Music Group spokesperson responded to Halsey’s posts at the time in a statement sent to Billboard: “Our belief in Halsey as a singular and important artist is total and unwavering. We can’t wait for the world to hear their brilliant new music.”
After the rocky road to release, “So Good” officially debuted in June 2022.
Most recently, in February, Halsey released a solo version of the Post Malone collab “Die 4 Me.”
Halsey’s latest full-length studio album, 2021’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Her previous efforts all reached No. 1 or 2 on the chart: 2015’s Badlands (No. 2), 2017’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (No. 1) and 2020’s Manic (No. 2)
The return of two highly popular dance artists has created new headaches for promoters dealing with increased public outcry over ticket scalping. Skrillex’s first show in nine years at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, and Pretty Lights’ comeback tour after a five-year absence have created supply and demand issues not often seen in the amphitheater and club space. That’s meant new challenges with how to deal with resellers buying tickets en masse and posting them online for profit.
Earlier this week, AEG Presents announced plans to reclaim tickets purchased by scalpers for a sold-out April 29 show by Skrillex at Red Rocks and resell them to fans through the Fair AXS ticketing platform, AEG’s own fan verification. Fair AXS requires fans to register in advance for high demand tickets, and like Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform, is designed to weed out scalpers.
The company is now weighing whether a similar plan to claw back tickets for the upcoming, sold-out Pretty Lights tour that kicks off Aug. 6 at the Mission Ballroom in Denver and sell those to fans through Fair AXS.
With the Skrillex concert, says AEG Presents co-president and senior talent buyer Don Strausberg, when the company scraped the sales data, it found instances of buyers who bought multiple tickets, exceeding the four-ticket limit on purchases and violated the terms of service for AEG-owned ticketing system AXS tickets. Those ticket purchases were then canceled, refunded to the originally buyer and put back on sale through the Fair AXS platform, a registration-based identity-verification system that helps concert promoters determine the likelihood that a ticket purchaser is a legitimate fan and not a ticket broker. (This verification system was recently utilized by Zach Bryan for his 2023 tour and requires fans to register in advance and provide their credit card information.) Strausberg says AEG is now considering whether to do the same for the Peaking Lights tour.
Strausberg didn’t identify how many Skrillex tickets were pulled back and sold through Fair AXS, but noted that demand for the April 29 show far exceeded supply at the world-famous 9,545-capacity venue.
“It’s time consuming,” to comb through all of the sales, and requires additional steps by both AEG and fans to register in advance for Fair AXS and to verify the accounts, Strausberg says, “but lately more people are asking for this.” Trying to identify individuals who violated AXS’s terms or service is “something we do without fail on nearly every large concert” says Strausberg, although the scale of unauthorized activity happening with the Skrillex show was larger than normal.
Scalping exists at every level of the concert business, but it’s much rarer to see high volume ticket scalping at smaller capacity venues like those on the Pretty Lights tour, where the artist is playing 3,500-size rooms. AXS ticketed 18 of the 24 shows on the Pretty Lights tour, totaling about 60,000 tickets total.
Lately, ticketing companies like Ticketmaster and AXS have become more effective at reducing the number of tickets that end up on the secondary market. That’s pushed some brokers into smaller capacity events, says a secondary market analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There’s much less opportunity at the club and theater level,” they add, where the majority of shows don’t sell completely sell out.
A legal cacophony is brewing in the City of Brotherly Love.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday, the Philly Pops accused the Philadelphia Orchestra of violating federal antitrust laws by abusing its control over local concert venues and ticketing services to try to crush its smaller rival.
“Defendants have engaged … in unlawful, anticompetitive and predatory conduct with respect to the Philly POPS for the purpose and with the intent to force the Philly POPS out of business so that Philadelphia Orchestra could eliminate the Philly Pops as a competitor in and monopolize the market for live symphonic popular concert music concerts in the Greater Philadelphia Metropolitan Area,” lawyers for the Pops wrote.
Philly Pops claims that it has long peacefully co-existed with the Orchestra, one of America’s so-called Big Five symphony orchestras. The Pops has played symphonic versions of Broadway show tunes, movie scores and popular music, while the Orchestra has stuck to classical symphonic – and the two have been “marketed to different potential patrons” and “attended by audiences with little duplication.”
But starting last year, Philly Pops says the Orchestra has been jumping into the pops space and trying to put its smaller rival out of business. The lawsuit claims that the Orchestra has done so mostly by abusing its merger with the Kimmel Center, the primary orchestra venue in the city and the ticketing service Ticket Philadelphia.
According to the lawsuit, the Orchestra “substantially and unreasonably” increased fees for the Pops to perform at the Kimmel Center and slowed down the sale of tickets to previously scheduled shows. It then hired a PR firm to “create media messaging” that the Pops would be absorbed by the Orchestra after the 2023 season.
When the Pops said it would not go along with such a plan, the Orchestra “summarily evicted the POPS from the Kimmel Center forcing the POPS to cancel and postpone its concerts [there] and scramble for different but substantially less viable indoor venues.”
In addition to naming the Philadelphia Orchestra-Kimmel Center, Inc. as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Matias Tarnopolsky, the company’s president and CEO.
In a statement to Billboard, a spokesperson for the Orchestra said: “We have just received the lawsuit, which was brought to our attention by the media. As the complaint has yet to be formally served, we will reserve comment until then and once it has been reviewed with counsel.”
Read the entire lawsuit against the Philadelphia Orchestra here:
Sony Music Entertainment and its Certified unit have partnered with Mass Appeal to unveil 50 product releases to commemorate HipHop50 through Legacy Recordings, Record Store Day, Vinyl Me, Please, Get On Down, Mobile Fidelity and Urban Outfitters.
By way of Legacy Recordings, fans will be able to enjoy “new physical configurations, first-time digital releases, and limited-edition vinyl from the genre’s most influential and indelible icons, including Big Pun, Cypress Hill, Nas, OutKast, Q-Tip, RUN D.M.C., Three 6 Mafia, Wu-Tang Clan and more.”
To kick off the celebratory rollout, Nas’ Made You Look: God’s Son Live 2002 will drop on April 22. The exclusive Record Store Day vinyl will highlight Nas’ historic performance at Webster Hall in New York. It’ll also be available to stream the day before. Following that release, on May 12, Run D.M.C.’s 1988 classic Tougher Than Leather will be released on black vinyl on Legacy Recordings to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Then, Nas will have another reason to celebrate as his lauded 2003 effort, The Lost Tapes, will receive a vinyl update on May 26. According to a press release, “Get On Down is releasing Nas’ The Lost Tapes on limited edition double colored-vinyl in a gatefold jacket with numbered OBI limited to 2000 units.”
Last January, SME and Mass Appeal announced their initial partnership. “Sony Music and Mass Appeal will work together to showcase the creative excellence of SME’s dynamic talent and their contributions to music history through original content, experiences, merch and product collaborations in connection with Mass Appeal’s campaign leading up to this key milestone in Hip Hop culture,” said the release.