Business
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MUMBAI — India is driving Spotify’s international expansion, vaulting into the top five territories in total users for the platform after just four years of operation in the country.
“India is the single market that has contributed the most to our global growth over the last year,” says Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vp of markets and subscriber growth. The company’s user count in India has tripled over the last two years, according to Gyllenhammar.
Spotify did not provide numbers, but Comscore estimates the platform has about 55 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India, and Spotify is the country’s top audio-streaming service in terms of engagement, with nearly 10 billion tracks streamed in India in January alone, sources close to the company say. Last year, Spotify says, Bollywood playback singer Arijit Singh tallied more streams on the app than Beyonce. Then in January, Singh broke into the top 10 of Spotify’s Global Top Artists chart, even though most of his plays were in India.
Despite this, India is not a top five revenue market for the service, Gyllenhammar says, demonstrating the limits of the country — which has 1.4 billion people and is expected to soon pass China as the most populous nation — as a music market. Multiple factors are at play, including India’s significantly lower per-stream payouts, a resistance to paying for music subscriptions and the challenges of a market with two official languages and another 22 regional ones.
India was the 17th-largest recorded-music market in 2021 with $219 million in revenue, up 20% from 2020 and driven largely by streaming, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report. But at just $0.16, its per-capita music revenue is among the lowest in the world.
India’s economy is one of the world’s largest, but a 2022 report by the International Monetary Fund ranks its per-capita income at 140 out of 190 countries, which contributes to the problems streaming services have in getting more consumers to pay for subscriptions. A monthly Spotify subscription costs 119 rupees ($1.45) compared with $9.99 in the United States. Gyllenhammar says the service doesn’t plan to increase prices in India in the near future.
India’s streaming market is estimated to have over 300 million MAUs. (For comparison, there are 219 million in the United States.) When Spotify launched there in 2019, it was the eighth major audio-streaming service to enter a market ruled by local streaming services Gaana, JioSaavn and Wynk. Since then, it has overtaken Gaana, which has turned into a subscription-only service after talks for an acquisition by Wynk’s parent, the telco Bharti Airtel, fell through. JioSaavn, which saw an overhaul of its top management last year, has witnessed a fall in engagement.
Though JioSaavn and Wynk still have more MAUs than Spotify, 20.1% of respondents picked Spotify as their favorite music streaming service, compared with 4.9% who chose either JioSaavn or Wynk, in a study conducted last year by IFPI and the Indian Music Industry, the country’s recorded-music trade group. (YouTube topped the list with 46%.)
Spotify’s closest competition for engagement, according to industry insiders, is ByteDance-owned Resso, which officially launched in India in March 2020 as one of three test markets for the app outside of China. (Indonesia and Brazil are the others.) Resso, they say, has a stronger presence in smaller cities and tallies a similar number of streams. But it’s been growing at a slower rate than Spotify and has been affected by the loss of Sony Music’s catalog — which includes several hit Indian film soundtracks — after Sony removed its titles from the service in September.
Indian music executives say Spotify has better technology for generating algorithmic recommendations and playlist personalization — and that gives it an edge over domestic rivals. It also emulated its local competition by emphasizing the importance of regional-language music and by creating a generous ad-based tier.
In India, Spotify offers a mobile-only “mini” subscription where users pay 7 rupees ($0.09) per day. It offers ad-free music on phones, group listening sessions and downloads of 30 songs per device. There aren’t any restrictions on the number of songs free users can stream in the ad-based tier.
A Focus On Servicing Local Languages
Today, in addition to English, Spotify offers its service in 12 Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu. To focus on local languages, Spotify has had to customize its operations. “Until we came to India, most [of our] markets [were dominated by] one or two languages,” says Amarjit Singh Batra, GM/managing director for India. “The whole structure, from the teams to the way we work to how we look at recommendations, curation — every piece had to be re-looked at.”
Local content accounts for about 85% of listening on domestic platforms like JioSaavn and Wynk, for example, but initially only made up 20% to 30% of Spotify streams in the market. “When we launched, consumption looked very similar to many other countries globally, [which is] predominantly international English-language music,” Gyllenhammar says. Then Spotify pushed to expand its audience beyond India’s big cities, and today, out of Spotify’s 184 markets, India has the highest share of local consumption, at 70%.
During the pandemic, as competitors tightened their budgets, the Swedish company says it spent heavily on nationwide and region-specific advertising and marketing — including ads on broadcast and streaming TV. “We have never paid so much attention to marketing in any single market,” says Gyllenhammar. The platform has run marketing campaigns in Hindi and English, as well as the four main languages spoken in south India: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.
Spotify has also resisted pressure from labels to ensure their songs feature at the top of playlists, which music companies had come to expect from Indian platforms. “They keep looking at Spotify to be something like that,” says Padmanabhan “Paddy” NS, Spotify’s head of artist and label partnerships. Instead, Spotify realized early on the potential of independent and non-film music and showcased them through playlists and programs such as Radar. The strategy paid dividends during the pandemic when the closure of cinemas led to a paucity of new soundtrack releases, which local platforms had relied on.
Since it launched in the country, Spotify has more than doubled its number of India-based employees, Gyllenhammar and Singh say, and they’re planning to expand their India ad sales teams five-fold by the end of the year. (They decline to share how many people the company currently employs in India.)
While India is primarily a low-price, high-volume play for Spotify, the country offers tremendous growth potential. It has the second-largest share of internet and smartphone users in the world (after China), at about 658 million, though that’s just under half of its total population. (The United States and the United Kingdom both have 90% internet penetration.) “If you look at other sectors online, whether it’s in search or social media or e-commerce, [India is] a billion-dollar market for the global players,” Gyllenhammar says.
Singh Batra says Spotify’s focus over the next four years will be on reaching “a level where the audience for each and every core [Indian] language is able to say, ‘Spotify is for me, for my region.’” By focusing on regional-language listeners, Spotify aims to gain new consumers in smaller cities and rural areas, as well as by pulling customers from JioSaavn and Resso, which dominate those regions.
The company says it’s gaining subscribers in India at a faster rate than total users. In 2022, premium subscriptions grew by 85% and MAUs by 80% year on year. Spotify executives say they see India following the same growth path as Latin America, where the level of paid users is now about the same as the global average of 40%.
It took eight years after Spotify launched in Brazil in 2014 for the region to reach that 40% level, Gyllenhammar says. “It didn’t happen in the first four years,” he observes. “It happened during the second phase of those eight years. So similarly, for India, the next four years is a period where we will see improvement on this side.”
Nederlander Concerts promotes Jamie Loeb to senior vice president. In her new role, Loeb will continue to report directly to the chief executive officer Alex Hodges.
“From her first day at Nederlander Concerts, Jamie has been an incredibly strong leader,” said Hodges. “She has helped Nederlander Concerts maintain its position as one of the most important independent promoters in North America. She was instrumental in getting us through the height of the pandemic and a successful rebound last year with our return to a full schedule of performances.”
Loeb tells Billboard, “I have always been proud to be part of such a dynamic team that is dedicated to bringing exceptional live experiences to fans. I am honored and grateful for the opportunity to continue contributing to the growth and success of our company in this new role.”
Loeb joined Nederlander Concerts in 2008 as VP of marketing. She is responsible for the online development, marketing initiatives and promotional campaigns for Nederlander’s venues and its bookings at third-party facilities. With local, regional and national experience, Loeb creates innovative strategies and tour marketing campaigns, which integrate traditional and digital technologies resulting in a deeper connection between artists, their fans and ticket sales.
In 2020, she was honored as Women of Influence by VenuesNow Magazine.
During the pandemic, Jamie started volunteering with the National Independent Venue Association and played a key role in a number of projects, including the #SOSFEST — a three-day virtual festival with Foo Fighters, Miley Cyrus, The Roots, Reba McEntire, Leon Bridges, Dave Matthews, Little Big Town, G-Easy and Brittany Howard, which raised over $3 million for the NIVA Emergency Relief Fund.
Loeb and the NIVA team’s efforts led to Congress passing the $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, effectively saving the independent concert business from total collapse. Simultaneously, she and her team at Nederlander Concerts launched the innovative Drive-In OC series featuring Andrew McMahon, Kaskade, LP and comedy and movies at City National Grove of Anaheim. The series proved a great success, safely hosting over 80 drive-in events for over 65,000 fans while grossing over $4.1 million in ticket sales.
Prior to Nederlander, Loeb was the senior director of national tour marketing for Live Nation where she developed national tour marketing plans for Def Leppard, Avril Lavigne, Projekt Revolution and more. She also participates regularly on panels nationwide, including SXSW, Pollstar and the Aspen Live Music Conference, with digital marketing pioneers and other promoters in the industry.
Spotify is closing down its live-audio app Spotify Live, the streamer said Monday (April 3).
“After a period of experimentation and learnings around how Spotify users interact with live audio, we’ve made the decision to sunset the Spotify Live app,” a spokesperson for the platform said in a statement. “We believe there is a future for live fan-creator interactions in the Spotify ecosystem; however, based on our learnings, it no longer makes sense as a standalone app. We have seen promising results in the artist-focused use case of ‘listening parties,’ which we will continue to explore moving forward to facilitate live interactions between artists and fans.”
Spotify Live started as the sports-focused live-audio app Locker Room, which Spotify acquired in March 2021 when the streaming service purchased its developer, Betty Labs, for more than $65 million. At the time, the Clubhouse app was popular, and Locker Room was widely viewed as a competitor.
At the time of the acquisition, Spotify said it aimed to “evolve and expand Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans… We’ll give professional athletes, writers, musicians, songwriters, podcasters, and other global voices opportunities to host real-time discussions, debates, ask me anything (AMA) sessions, and more.”
Locker Room was relaunched as Spotify Greenroom in the summer of 2021. The following April, it was renamed Spotify Live and incorporated as a livestream function in the main Spotify app. To celebrate that iteration, Spotify Live streamed Swedish House Mafia’s Paradise Again album release party. But in a round of programming cuts in December, some of the live shows were shut down.
Spotify unveiled a host of new features in March — including a swipe-able vertical feed that will play previews of music and podcasts, a pre-save feature with “countdown pages” for upcoming releases, and “Clips,” which allows acts to post 30-second videos on their artist pages — that were widely viewed as an attempt to contend with a different competitor: TikTok. CEO Daniel Ek called these updates “the biggest” transformation Spotify has undergone in a decade.
Movie star Leonardo DiCaprio testified in federal court Monday morning (April 3) as part of a trial involving international money laundering, bribery and a prominent rap artist.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel — a founding member of the iconic 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees — is accused of funneling money from a fugitive Malaysian financer through straw donors to Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Five years later, prosecutors say he tried to squelch an investigation into that same financer under former President Donald Trump’s administration.
At the heart of the case is Low Taek Jho, usually known as Jho Low. He is accused of masterminding an international money laundering and bribery scheme that stole billions from the Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB.
DiCaprio’s connection with the case comes from his yearslong relationship with Low, who was one of the primary financers of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Low is currently a fugitive but has maintained his innocence.
According to the charges, Michel essentially became a conduit for Low’s pilfered millions and his attempts to influence the U.S. government. Prosecutors allege that from June to November 2012, Low directed more than $21.6 million to be moved from foreign entities to Michel’s accounts in order to funnel money into the 2012 presidential election. They say Michel then paid about 20 straw donors and conduits so they could make the donations in their names and conceal where the money actually came from, according to the indictment.
DiCaprio testified that he met and befriended Low at a birthday party in Las Vegas in 2010. “I understood him to be a huge businessman with many different connections in Abu Dhabi and Malaysia,” he said.
The 48-year-old Oscar winner answered questions on the witness stand calmly — occasionally deferring to a fuzzy memory on some details and dates. In addition to his relationship with Low, DiCaprio said he had known the defendant Michel since sometime in the 1990s when they met backstage after a Fugees concert.
Low was known for hosting lavish star-studded parties and group vacations on his private jet to events like the World Cup in Brazil. DiCaprio recounted one particular junket that involved flying to Australia to celebrate New Year’s Eve, then flying to Las Vegas to celebrate a second time in one day. Michel was present on some of these trips, DiCaprio said.
Low became a regular contributor to DiCaprio’s charitable foundation, and eventually Low floated the idea of providing the primary financing for The Wolf of Wall Street.
DiCaprio said he had Low’s funding and legitimacy carefully vetted before entering into a business relationship.
“I was given the green light by my team as well as my studio,” he said. “He was a legitimate business person wanting to invest in the movie.”
DiCaprio also recalled a “casual conversation” with Low in which Low told him he intended to make a large contribution to Obama’s re-election campaign.
“It was a significant sum — something to the tune of $20-30 million,” he testified. “I said, ‘Wow that’s a lot of money!’”
Lizzo and Amazon Studios have reached an extension on the singer’s first-look deal after the scorching success of her Emmy Award-winning show Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. Produced by Lizzo’s production company, Lizzo Bangers, and Amazon Studios, Watch Out for the Big Grrls notched three Emmys in categories including directing and picture editing and became the first streaming series to win the outstanding competition program category.
“Lizzo is one of the most exciting, creative, joyful artists in the industry, and the impact of her Emmy award-winning series Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls exceeded our every expectation,” said Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon and MGM Studios. “We are excited to continue our relationship with Lizzo and can’t wait for our global Prime Video audience to experience what’s next.”
“I’m thrilled to continue this partnership with the Amazon team after an incredible experience on season one of Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” said Lizzo. “I’ve witnessed lives change through this show, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue making space for even more Big Grrrls around the world to shine and break down barriers across this industry.”
After a successful first season, Lizzo is now searching for women who can sing and dance onstage. Those interested in applying can sign up here for casting. Along with nabbing Emmys, Watch Out for the Big Grrrls also received a fistful of wins at the Critics Choice Real TV Awards, Costume Designers Guild Awards, Hollywood Critics Association Television Awards, NAACP Image Awards and Producers Guild Awards.
WWE and the company that runs Ultimate Fighting Championship will combine to create a $21.4 billion sports entertainment company.
A new publicly traded company will house the UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment brands, with Endeavor Group Holdings Inc. taking a 51% controlling interest in the new company. Existing WWE shareholders will hold a 49% stake.
The companies put the enterprise value of UFC at $12.1 billion and WWE’s value at $9.3 billion.
The new business, which does not yet have a name, will be lead by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. Vince McMahon, executive chairman at WWE, will serve in the same role at the new company. Dana White will continue as president of UFC and Nick Khan will be president at WWE.
“Together, we will be a $21+ billion live sports and entertainment powerhouse with a collective fanbase of more than a billion people and an exciting growth opportunity,” McMahon said in a prepared statement Monday.
He also provided some idea of where the focus of the new company will be, saying that it will look to maximize the value of combined media rights, enhance sponsorship monetization, develop new forms of content and pursue other strategic mergers and acquisitions to further bolster their brands.
Ties already exists talent wise between WWE and UFC, with stars such as Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey crossing over between the two businesses.
The deal between Endeavor and WWE catapults WWE into a new era, after functioning as a family-run business for decades. McMahon purchased Capitol Wrestling from his father in 1982, and took the regional wrestling business to a national audience with the likes of wrestling stars such as Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The company, which changed its name to World Wrestling Federation and later World Wrestling Entertainment, hosted its first WrestleMania in 1985.
McMahon, in an interview with CNBC, addressed the notion that there was doubt among some WWE fans and industry experts that he would ever make a deal for the business. “It’s the right time to do the right thing. And it’s the next evolution of WWE,” he said.
The announcement of the WWE sale arrives after McMahon, the founder and majority shareholder of WWE, returned to the company in January and said that it could be up for sale.
Rumors swirled about who would possibly be interested in buying WWE, with Endeavor, Disney, Fox, Comcast, Amazon and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund all in the mix.
McMahon acknowledged to CNBC that there were several suitors for WWE, but that combining with Endeavor is the right move.
“It makes all the sense in the world for all these synergies that we have to extract all of the value that we can out of the marketplace,” he explained.
Media industry analysts viewed WWE as an attractive target given its global reach and loyal fanbase, which includes everyone from minors to seniors and a wide range of incomes.
The company held its marquee event, WrestleMania, over the weekend. Last year, WWE booked revenue of $1.3 billion.
The company is also a social media powerhouse. It surpassed 16 billion social video views in the final quarter of last year. It has nearly 94 million YouTube subscribers and has more than 20 million followers on TikTok. Its female wrestlers comprise five out of the top 15 most followed female athletes in the world, across Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, led by Ronda Rousey with 36.1 million followers.
WWE had more than 7.5 billion digital and social media views in January and February of this year, up 15% from the same time frame a year ago.
The new company plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the “TKO” ticker symbol. Its board will have 11 members, with six being appointed by Endeavor and five being appointed by WWE.
“We like the assets of UFC and also WWE in a world where linear TV is losing market share to streaming, thus live sport content is in high demand,” wrote Jeffries analyst Randal Konik said in a note to clients.
The transaction, which was approved by the boards of Endeavor and WWE, is targeted to close in the second half of the year. It still needs regulatory approval.
Shares of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., based in Stamford, Connecticut, are up 33% this year, but fell 5% at the opening bell Monday. Shares of Endeavor, based in Beverly Hills, California, slipped less than 1%.
On March 4, hundreds of metalheads stormed into Pierce the Veil’s pop-up store in Glendale, Calif., scooping up T-shirts, hoodies and other merchandise. In the process, they helped boost sales for an ostensibly dying product: compact discs. “Kids would look at the display and pick every single one of our records on CD,” says Michele Abreim, the band’s manager. “It definitely felt like CDs were a merch item, not just a means to listen to music.”
A relic of the record industry’s pre-Napster boom period thanks to megastars like *NSYNC, Britney Spears and Eminem, U.S. CD sales accounted for $13.2 billion in 2000, their peak year, according to the RIAA. But though the format has been in steady decline throughout the streaming era, retail, manufacturing and management sources say the digital discs have gained in popularity as keepsakes. More portable than vinyl albums and less affected by manufacturing delays due to supply chain issues, CDs are once again becoming merch table mainstays, and in the first 10 weeks of 2023, sales are up slightly over the same period last year, according to Luminate — 6.8 million in 2022 to 6.9 million, a 2.5% increase.
This growth could be a sign of a growing coolness factor, similar to the unexpected, and sustained, vinyl revival that began in the early 2000s, which is fueled by limited-edition releases pressed on colored vinyl and other bells and whistles. Taylor Swift took a page from that playbook when she put out Midnights CDs in different collectible colors last year, and BLACKPINK is among the many K-pop acts to sell elaborate CD box sets.
“There are ways to do CDs that are incredibly impactful,” says Carl Mello, brand engagement director for Newbury Comics. “You can get more revenue out of it, so it’s not like a ‘Will this do $7.99?’ thing. You’re selling a $30 thing that a customer will be really happy with.”
Bill Wilson, senior vp of operations and innovation for MNRK Music Group, which oversees 50 independent labels, says specialized CD-buying audiences are keeping the format afloat. “There are still pockets and subgenres of music [fans] — like metal — who like holding and cuddling CDs — and they’re not vinyl collectors,” he says.
For those who can’t afford box sets or to spend upwards of $20 for a standard-issue vinyl album, “the CD is a much more budget-friendly item,” says Tony van Veen, CEO of New Jersey-based vinyl/CD manufacturer Disc Makers, who crunched the latest RIAA sales data and found that vinyl album prices rose last year by 13.5%, to $29.65, while CD prices went up 15.3%, to $14.45. “Music fans are deciding with their wallets.” He adds that his company’s CD sales stabilized in 2022 after years of decline.
CDs are generally far cheaper than vinyl albums — especially classic-rock catalog releases, which labels occasionally put on sale in the format. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits goes for $13.99 on Amazon, compared with $28.31 for vinyl; a Foo Fighters Greatest Hits CD sells for $11.49, slightly more than half the $21.91 vinyl price.
Although pandemic-related manufacturing delays for vinyl are easing, they have prompted touring acts to stock their merch tables with CDs. “I had a conversation with somebody yesterday, and they’re about to go on tour,” says Ric Sherman, owner of The Production Department, a consulting company that works with artists, labels and record plants. “Trying to get vinyl on time was impossible, and they defaulted to CDs immediately.”
The profit margin for vinyl albums is slightly higher than CDs — a $15 CD would yield roughly $13.50 in profit; a $30 vinyl album, $15 — but Sherman adds: “Vinyl’s expensive to manufacture.” According to van Veen, 100 CDs cost $150 to manufacture, compared with $1,500 for 100 vinyl albums.
“If artists are touring, it’s easier to cart those around than vinyl,” says Mello. “There are utilities to it, for sure.”
Despite the small sales uptick so far in 2023, the 20-year decline in CD sales shows no sign of dissipating: Sales dropped from 40.6 million units in 2021 to 35.9 million last year, an 11.6% decrease, compared with a 4.2% rise in 2022 vinyl sales, according to Luminate. (That said, vinyl’s sales growth has slowed considerably from the 51% increase it logged in 2021.) Major labels are also reluctant to bet on CDs to drive significant revenue in the future. Says a major-label source: “I haven’t heard of the idea that somebody’s so committed to buying a physical product that they’re just going to move over to the CD if they can’t get a vinyl product.”
Then again, 35.9 million in annual sales is not nothing, and CDs will probably be around for a long time. “They’re highly valued and sought-after,” Mello says.
As reported April 2, 2023, Seymour Stein, Sire Records co-founder who signed Madonna, The Ramones & other legendary artists, died at age 80. Stein began his storied career in the music industry as a teenager at Billboard, where, as an intern after school, he contributed to the founding of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The following interview was conducted and originally published in 2015.
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“I look at my schooling as, in part, my early years at Billboard.”
That’s how Sire Records co-founder and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enshrinee Seymour Stein, who in January 2021 oversaw the relaunch of the Blue Horizon label in partnership with Fat Possum, recalled his industry education.
That upbringing included the unveiling of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the magazine’s Aug. 4, 1958, issue. At the time, Stein was a high school student eager to learn, and help shape, the music business, soaking up information firsthand from inside Billboard’s offices.
The Hot 100’s hot shot debut wasn’t front-page news, but it did make page two, in an editorial succinctly headlined “The Billboard Hot 100”: “On pages 36 and 37 of this issue, we are proud to present The Billboard Hot 100, the fastest, most complete and most sensitive index to the popularity of recorded music in America. This new chart feature, which each week will list the 100 most popular recorded sides, is a guide to potential, as well as the current hits.”
When the ranking premiered, ruled by Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool,” it encompassed “such factors as [radio] disc jockey plays, jukebox activity and record sales.” Today, airplay is still among the Hot 100’s data mix, with downloads continuing the form of record sales. Streaming is essentially a modern-era, digital jukebox, with clicks of a mouse having replaced the clicks of a mechanical arm selecting and dropping a 45 perfectly into place.
At the heart of the Hot 100’s launch was then-head of charts Tom Noonan, along with music-radio-TV editor Paul Ackerman and Stein. “Tom and Paul were great mentors to me,” says Stein. “It was such an honor when Tom asked me to help start the Hot 100.”
Similar to today, as Billboard wrote in its story unwrapping the first Hot 100, “Data is obtained and tabulated right up to deadline time” (with Luminate data figures having fueled the chart since 1991, and multiple streaming sources having joined in recent years). “Weighted factors in the carefully-designed formula result [in] the fastest and most complete guide to the national popularity of records.”
While the Hot 100 marks over six decades as the chronicle of American hits, Stein’s legacy has likewise become legendary. Sire’s first signee? Steven Tallarico. Then in a band called Chain Reaction, he’d change his name to Steven Tyler as frontman for Aerosmith. In 1975, Sire signed the Ramones and Talking Heads. The Pretenders followed in 1980 and Madonna in 1982. (“I realized, ‘This woman is smarter than all of us. Just get out of her way,’” Stein said of Madonna in 2012.) Other acts Sire signed in that formative era: Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths and Ice-T.
In 2005, Stein was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in its lifetime-achievement category. In 2012, he was honored as Billboard’s first Icon Award recipient, presented to him at the annual MIDEM industry gathering in Cannes, France.
Here, in Stein’s words (from an interview first published in 2015), is his recollection of how the Hot 100 originated, how it helped speed up the measurement of hits, thanks to the inclusion of radio airplay data, and the story of how the chart’s name was (possibly) chosen.
On the need for a then-new chart: “Back in the day, before the Hot 100, there were many different charts in Billboard reflecting the success of singles in the marketplace [including] Best-Selling Pop Singles in Stores, Jukebox Favorites, Most-Heard on the Radio and Sheet Music.
“Then, there was an overall chart which was called the Honor Roll of Hits. This was a [composition, not singles] chart, because back in those days, there were multiple versions of just about every song. Sometimes three or four or more were successful, like in the case of ‘Unchained Melody.’ To show the strength of the song, the Honor Roll of Hits would list the points of all versions to obtain a position.
“Back then, jukebox sales were enormous. If a hot artist, like Perry Como, Patti Page or Nat ‘King’ Cole, with a successful track record put out a new single, record stores knew how to order based on their recent sales. But, in the case of new artists, and there were a lot of them in those early days of rock & roll, stores had no way of being guided. More urgently, jukebox operators needed to know quickly to get these new records into their machines.
“It was the jukeboxes, in particular, that first instigated the need for a faster way of making the charts. Fortunately, this was around the same time as the dawn of top 40 radio, and the Hot 100 used radio playlists from across the country weighted by the size of the market to help compile this new chart.
“It wasn’t entirely error-free or 100 percent accurate; remember, this was [1958]. I was just 16, working at Billboard after school. From the time I was 9 years old, I knew I wanted to be in the music business.”
On Billboard’s editorial impact: “As important as the charts were, the Billboard review sessions that picked spotlight winners of the week were even more important. If a record was accorded a spotlight review, it could stir the sales upwards of 75,000 copies by jukebox operators alone in the first week. Before the Hot 100, the charts were so slow, the jukebox operators couldn’t wait for these records to prove themselves and had to go by the reviews in Billboard.
“Paul Ackerman invited me to attend these music review sessions on Wednesday nights and even provided me with a due-bill to stay at one of the hotels close to the Billboard offices and that way I could get up and take the subway to Lafayette High School in Brooklyn. It was at these sessions that I met people like Syd Nathan of King Records, Leonard Chess, George Goldner, Lew Chudd of Imperial, Herman Lubinksy of Savoy, Don Pierce of Starday and publishers like Freddy Bienstock and Al Gallico, to name a few.”
As for the name Hot 100? “I can only imagine that what the industry was looking for was a hotter, quicker way of getting chart information. Tom [Noonan] could have come up with the name. I certainly did not. It might have been one of the reporters, or Paul Ackerman. I just don’t remember. Then we added star performers to show quick movement upward, aka, bullets.
“Reaction was, of course, positive from every corner of the music business. These were still the early days of rock & roll. Mitch Miller and Hugo Winterhalter were still the heads of A&R of Columbia and RCA Victor, the two leading majors, and rooting for rock & roll not to happen. Milt Gabler over at Decca was the first of the majors to embrace rock & roll and it was Steve Sholes at RCA who arranged to buy Elvis Presley’s contract from Sun; but not without first taking the advice of Paul Ackerman.
“Record stores certainly reacted favorably and radio stations, too.
“Through the success of the chart, more execs were drawn up to the Billboard offices, often with their artists in tow, whether it was for a story or just to say thanks for acknowledging their No. 1 position.”
As Cindy Mabe officially takes the reins as chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN), she is pledging to make some changes that could radically grow the label she inherits from Mike Dungan.
In a staff memo titled “Our future starts today,” obtained by Billboard, Mabe — Billboard’s 2019 Country Power Players executive of the year — lays out several areas of expansion for the company.
Among her plans are to “dramatically expand our partnerships with independent labels and entrepreneurs.” Mabe states, “Inspiration and new ideas are coming from everywhere. Much of that innovation is coming from the independent sector, but by the same token there is so much more they could do if they partnered with us in key areas. Universal Nashville will actively take a role to position ourselves as the best partners to expand their growth and help develop and support these artists.”
She also vows to expand the label’s space in film and TV. “While we are the leaders in recorded music, I want us also to lead in the music-based film and TV space,” Mabe writes. “Our artists stories are powerful and not linear and so the means of telling their stories should have a wide reach. This means growing our presence in audiovisual to develop our Country culture and our artists stories in film and television.” She gives no further specifics, but UMG launched a film and TV studio in 2020.
As country music grows globally, Mabe also plans to take advantage of that explosion. “We will collaborate even closer (and more creatively) with our label colleagues around the world where we can leverage each other’s strengths to break artists who are either signed to their rosters or ours,” she writes. “There’s so much more we can do together.” Label artists like Keith Urban and Kip Moore already have considerable international followings.
Mabe ascended from president, a role she has held since 2014, to replace Dungan, who retired after 43 years in the music industry on March 31.
Mabe joined UMGN in 2012 as senior vp of marketing, leading marketing initiatives across Capitol Records Nashville, EMI Records Nashville, MCA Nashville and Mercury Nashville — UMG’s expanded suite of country labels following its acquisition of EMI. Prior to that, she spent five years at Capitol Records Nashville as senior vp of marketing.
UMGN is home to, among others, Urban, Carrie Underwood, George Strait, Parker McCollum, Little Big Town, Dierks Bentley, Priscilla Block and Brad Paisley. The company finished 2022 at No. 1 on Billboard’s year-end Top Country Labels chart.
Read Mabe’s memo is in full below:
Good morning team!
We have worked alongside each other and in the trenches together for a while now but today is my first day as Chair and CEO of UMG Nashville. It’s a responsibility that I do not take lightly. To succeed Mike – a mentor and one of the most accomplished executives in the history of Nashville – is humbling. And to be surrounded by our incredible, world class artists and to be working alongside you, the best team in Country music, and with Lucian’s unwavering support, is an honor that gives me a great sense of pride, responsibility and excitement.
It is with that sense of excitement, I want to share with you my vision of how we’re going to build on the incredible work that we’ve done together and position this company for creative and commercial growth in what is a rapidly changing and expanding market. This is the next era of Universal Music Group Nashville!
First, we’re going to continue to sign and develop the best artists in Country music. Our roster reflects what we value the most: GREAT ARTISTS. And with those artists we will push the boundaries and reach of Country music and widen our artistic lens by signing and developing artists who have important stories to share and who shape our culture no matter where they are from and whomever they are influenced by. Country is—and will remain—a genre of deep roots grounded in great storytelling and truth that incorporates creative influences across music styles and genres and fans everywhere have shown us they are open to what our evolving genre has to offer. From Nashville to the world.
Second, we will dramatically expand our partnerships with independent labels and entrepreneurs. The marketplace is in flux with innovation. Inspiration and new ideas are coming from everywhere. Much of that innovation is coming from the independent sector, but by the same token there is so much more they could do if they partnered with us in key areas. Universal Nashville will actively take a role to position ourselves as the best partners to expand their growth and help develop and support these artists.
Third, we will broaden our storytelling to include film and TV. While we are the leaders in recorded music, I want us also to lead in the music-based film and TV space. Our artists stories are powerful and not linear and so the means of telling their stories should have a wide reach. This means growing our presence in audiovisual to develop our Country culture and our artists stories in film and television.
Finally, we will collaborate even closer (and more creatively) with our label colleagues around the world where we can leverage each other’s strengths to break artists who are either signed to their rosters or ours. There’s so much more we can do together.
In my excitement, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what the next era of Universal Nashville is going to look like. I’ll be sharing more about all of these areas in the coming weeks and months, but I wanted you to get a sense of where we’re headed and how excited I am to be working with all of you in this next chapter.
Our future starts today. Let’s build it together!
Cindy
Billboard‘s Global Music Index rose 4.2% this week to 1,263.70, its high level in six weeks, as 14 of the 20 stocks in the index were in positive territory. The index’s most valuable companies were among the gainers: Universal Music Group was up 2.1%, Spotify improved 4.1%, and Live Nation climbed 6.1%.
With additional help from Warner Music Group (+5.9%) and Tencent Music Entertainment (+8.1%), the Billboard Global Music Index outperformed the major indexes. The S&P 500 rose 3.5% to 4,109.31 and the Nasdaq composite improved 3.4% to 12,221.91. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 rose 3.1%.
In the first quarter, the Billboard Global Music Index was up 8.2% overall.
Radio company Audacy was the greatest gainer of the week, improving 18.2% to $0.13. In a proxy statement filed March 24, Audacy said it will propose a reverse stock split at the company’s May 24 shareholder meeting. The New York Stock Exchange will initiate a delisting process for stocks that close below $1.00 for 30 consecutive trading days; Audacy’s share price has not exceeded $1.00 since July 5, 2022. A reverse stock split will reduce the number of outstanding shares. Since the value of the company is unaffected by the event, the reverse split will increase the share price.
Elsewhere, Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) improved 9.6% to $59.07. On Thursday (March 30), MSGE revealed its final plan to separate its live entertainment company from the rest of its businesses. On April 20, the current parent company will be renamed Sphere Entertainment Co. and be comprised of the state-of-the-art Sphere venue, MSG Networks and Tao Group Hospitality. That will leave a pure-play live entertainment company, MSG Entertainment, which includes such venues as Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.
Competing interests drove SM Entertainment shares higher in February and early March, but the stock has fallen 36.9% in the last three weeks after dropping another 13.1% this week. The K-pop company’s share price started the year at 76,700 won ($58.71) and surged to 114,700 won ($87.79) on Feb. 10 after HYBE acquired a 14.8% stake from SM’s founder, Lee Soo-man. By March 10, when HYBE and Kakao Entertainment were locked in a battle to become SM’s largest shareholder and lead the company’s expansion following its break from Lee, SM shares hit 147,800 ($113.13). Once Kakao Corp. and Kakao Entertainment’s tender offer expired on March 26, the share price plummeted. Still, SM Entertainment shares are up 21.5% year to date.