Business
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The board of directors at Universal Music Group (UMG) has extended the contract of chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge until May 1, 2028, the company announced Thursday (March 30).
The updated agreement transitions Grainge from an all-cash compensation package to one that combines cash and equity; the latter of these includes performance-based objectives that align with the interest of shareholders and correlate with the company’s long-term growth strategy. The majority of the compensation package’s value will be paid in UMG equity and performance-based stock options. As a result, Grainge’s annual salary will be reduced by more than two-thirds from his current salary, down to $5 million. He will be eligible for an annual bonus with a target of $10 million. The EBITA bonus from his previous contract has been eliminated, and he will only be entitled to the contingent bonus under his prior agreement on a pro rata basis until Friday (March 31).
The equity components of the compensation program include annual grants of $20 million, comprised of as much as 50% performance share units (PSUs), with annual PSU goals set by the board of directors; the remainder will be comprised of restricted share units (RSUs). Grainge will also receive a one-time transition equity award of $100 million, comprised of 50% RSUs and 50% performance stock options (PSOs). The PSOs will be paid out only if the company surpasses stock price hurdles — 1/3rd at 26.50 euros ($28.90), another 1/3rd at 30.00 euros ($32.71) and 1/3rd at 38.00 euros ($41.44) — within the term of the agreement.
UMG went public in September 2021 with a listing on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
“UMG is the world´s most successful music company and there are incredible opportunities ahead for a company with the right leadership and vision,” said UMG chairman of the board Sherry Lansing in a statement. “The UMG Board is resolutely committed to converting those opportunities and maximizing shareholder value for the long term. Only the right kind of chief executive can help achieve that goal and Lucian is just the one to do it. Through his clear vision and strong execution in building UMG into the industry leader, Lucian has also essentially created a new category of music company. This agreement is designed to drive both the sustainable success of UMG and long-term shareholder value.”
To align Grainge’s term as executive director and chairman/CEO with the term of the extended contract, the board will put forth a proposal to reappoint him as executive director for a term ending on May 1, 2028, at UMG’s 2023 general meeting on May 11; it will also seek approval for a supplement to UMG’s existing executive directors remuneration policy with respect to his new compensation.
Grainge got his start in the music publishing business in 1979 at age 18. He joined Universal Music in 1986 when he launched PolyGram Music Publishing in the U.K. and steadily climbed the ladder from there, rising to chairman/CEO of UMG’s international division in 2005 and chairman/CEO of UMG in 2011, succeeding Doug Morris. He placed atop this year’s Billboard‘s Power 100, marking his seventh appearance at No. 1 on the list; in 2020, he was named Billboard‘s executive of the decade.
In 2022, UMG’s overall revenues increased 21.6% to 10.34 billion euros ($10.96 billion), boosted by solid returns from recorded music subscriptions and streaming. It remains far and away the largest recorded music company by market share.
A founding member of the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees was enmeshed in political conspiracies involving millions of dollars in foreign money under two different U.S. presidents, federal prosecutors said as his trial got underway with opening statements Thursday (March 30).
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel 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 the financier and persuade then-President Donald Trump’s administration to return to China a “vocal critic of the government.”
“This is a case about foreign money, foreign influence and concealment,” said prosecutor Nicole Rae Lockhart. Michel pocketed over $100 million in the saga involving “political intrigue, backroom dealing … burner phones and lies,” she said.
Michel’s lawyers have previously said he is innocent and “extremely disappointed” in the charges, but the defense decided to wait to give its opening statement in the trial that’s expected to last weeks.
The Department of Justice says Michel conspired with Low Taek Jho, usually known as Jho Low. The fugitive financier is accused of masterminding a money-laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered billions from the Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB.
Looted money paid for jewelry and luxury art and helped finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street.
Low was once known for his business and social ties to American celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Leonardo DiCaprio, a possible witness in the case. During the 2012 presidential campaign, prosecutors allege Low directed more than $20 million to Michel, who concealed its origin by giving the money to straw donors to give to the Obama campaign. He later tried to lean on the donors to keep them from talking to investigators, Lockhart said.
In 2017, prosecutors say, the Grammy-winning rapper worked with a Republican “fixer” to try and shut down a U.S. investigation into Low and embezzlement from the Malaysian fund. He’s also accused of pushing the Trump administration to send a Chinese person who had fled to the U.S. back to China.
“It almost worked,” Lockhart said. “The defendant wanted money and was willing to break any laws necessary to get paid.”
The Justice Department last year announced charges against Low and two former Goldman Sachs bankers in the money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered money from the fund, which was created to spur economic development projects in Malaysia. Low is a fugitive but has maintained his innocence.
One of the bankers, Roger Ng, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this month for his role in the scheme.
Warner Chappell Music has renewed its publishing agreement with Grammy-winning producer MAG, a frequent collaborator of Bad Bunny. In 2022, MAG earned the No. 5 spot on Billboard’s all-genre Year-End Hot 100 Producers chart.
Australian musician Tash Sultana has renewed their publishing agreement with Kobalt. Sultana’s working relationship with Kobalt began in 2017, and the new deal will see Kobalt acting as Sultana’s publishing administrator, including global sync and creative services for future songs.
Wise Music Group has signed a co-publishing deal with influential Indian composer Ravi Shankar. The music company has also acquired Shankar’s archives, including many unreleased recordings and control of his record label East Meets West Music.
Position Music has launched a joint venture with Big Noise Music. Their partnership begins with first signee John “Feldy” Feldmann, a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter best known for his work with Avicii, Blink-182, 5 Seconds of Summer, Panic at the Disco! and more. Position Music will also now represent Big Noise Music’s publishing catalog for synchronization, including Mod Sun, The Used, The Wrecks, The Veronicas, girlfriends, Goldfinger, Escape the Fate, Arrested Youth among others.
Music rights investment company MusicBird has announced the new acquisition of Midge Ure‘s catalog. MusicBird now owns the writer’s share of publishing plus master recording and neighboring rights income on over 300 songs across his solo career as well as his work with Ultravox, Visage and more.
Jimmy Robbins has signed a worldwide publishing deal with Boom Music Group in partnership with Cinq Music Group. Robbins already 10 No. 1 songs under his belt as a songwriter, including hits with Kelsea Ballerini, Kenny Chesney, Maren Morris, Thomas Rhett, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert and more.
SILO: Music hosted its first Pop & Industry event MIND THE GAP on March 23rd in Los Angeles. The event featured performances from SILO: Music artists like Dan Caplen, Drew Love, Bernhoft, Kelsy Karter (who filled in for Paloma Faith) and Thutmose, who both performed songs curated by the music company for sync use.
IMPF has added Vistex, a company which offers a system to capture all contracts, metadata and royalty activity in a single place, to its “Friends and Supporters” category. Launched in 2021, this category was aimed at commercial companies that work to create transparency with the independent music publishing community worldwide.
Salt, a company which built a high-tech SaaS platform for processing and distributing rights holder royalties, has inked a 10-year deal with Dutch music society BumaStemra. Along with the announcement of the decade-long agreement, Salt has also announced its acquisition of Session, an app which “supports music creators from idea to release,” and has added ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus, who co-founded Session, to Salt’s board of directors.
Concord Music Publishing has signed Colony House vocalist Caleb Chapman to handle publishing for his future works worldwide.
Songtradr has completed its acquisition of U.K. digital music company 7digital, the company announced on Thursday (March 30).
When the deal was first announced on Feb. 8 prior to being finalized, 7digital said it planned to accept a bid worth 19.4 million pounds ($23.4 million), with its shareholders set to receive 0.695 pence ($0.84) per share in cash, a 114% premium over the prior day’s closing price.
Songtradr is a music licensing marketplace and distribution platform that matches rights holders with brands via a searchable database. 7digital offers a range of digital music services for businesses, including licensing, tracking, reporting and paying rights holders. It has integrated with over 300,000 labels and publishers and boasts a catalog of over 80 million tracks.
In a release, Songtradr states that the acquisition “solidifies” it “as a key leader in the business-to-business music industry, establishing the company as the only one-stop music solution for digital platforms and brands worldwide.” Among other benefits, Songtradr says the acquisition will expand its ability “to power user experiences” on digital platforms including social media, lifestyle apps and video games while “extending its reach into new markets” — all thanks to 7digital’s “highly scalable” music delivery platform and “comprehensive” music catalog. 7digital’s list of clients includes global brands like Pinterest, Barry’s and Triller.
In a statement, Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire said the 7digital acquisition will help it achieve its goal “to remove the friction and help deliver scalable solutions for the music industry while simplifying music use for enterprise brands and digital platforms.”
Added 7digital CEO Paul Langworthy, “Together, we will have an unparalleled combination of catalog, technology, and capabilities, allowing us to better serve our current clients and offer new enterprise clients an exceptional range of data, services, and opportunities.”
Since the company’s launch in 2014, Santa Monica, Calif.-based Songtradr has raised over $100 million to build a company focused on solving many of the inefficiencies in music licensing. It acquired AI metadata and music search company Musicube in 2022, music licensing agency Massive Music in 2021 and licensing agency Big Synch Music in 2019. In 2021, Songtradr established a global creative division headed up by industry veteran Amanda Schupf. The company currently has teams in 16 countries.
As announced last month, Langworthy and the rest of 7digital’s senior leadership team will join Songtradr, though interim chairman Mark Foster, CFO Michael Juskiewicz and all nonexecutive directors will step down. Songtradr will also repay 7digital’s £2 million ($2.14 million) revolving credit facility as well as two £500,000 ($536,000) loans. The company will continue operating 7digital’s London office for now.
The acquisition by Songtradr closes out an unstable period for 7digital, which in July 2019 faced the possibility of entering administration — or the U.K. equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy — unless it managed to raise £4.5 million ($5.5 million) in additional funds by the end of that month.
New Warner Music Group (WMG) CEO Robert Kyncl didn’t take much time to make an imprint on the company. On Wednesday (March 29), fewer than three months into Kyncl’s tenure, WMG announced it would lay off 270 employees, or 4% of its workforce.
The layoffs will save the company $22 million in fiscal year 2023 ending Sept. 30, 2023, and “$50 million on an annualized run-rate basis in fiscal year 2024,” according to an SEC filing released Wednesday. That’s equal to 4.2% of WMG’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2022.
Like many other companies, WMG is becoming more mindful of its resources as the music industry tries to extend an eight-year growth spurt. Prior to announcing the layoffs, WMG said a “financial transformation program,” to roll out in fiscal 2024, is expected to produce annual savings of “$35 million to $40 million once fully implemented,” CFO Eric Levin said on the company’s Feb. 9 earnings call. Universal Music Group’s Motown Records announced layoffs in February as the label was reintegrated under Capitol Music Group. Downtown Music Holdings, Spotify and SoundCloud have also reduced their headcounts in recent months.
WMG had “to make some hard choices in order to evolve” and position the company for “long-term success,” Kyncl wrote in a memo to employees. The cuts were thoughtful and purposeful, he added, not a “blanket cost-cutting exercise.” The layoffs “should be substantially completed by the end of the next fiscal quarter” ending June 30 and will result in cash expenditures of about $46 million by the end of fiscal 2024, according to the filing.
News of WMG’s layoffs didn’t sway investors, however. WMG’s share price rose just 0.6% to $32.63 on Wednesday despite the restructuring’s ability to improve its bottom line. Year-to-date, WMG’s share price has fallen 6.8% while overall stocks have broadly rebounded from a dismal 2022. The S&P 500 is up 4.9% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is up 13.9%. The New York Stock Exchange composite is down 0.4%.
While WMG will reduce headcount in some areas, the company is also building for the future — with an eye on tech. Kyncl, who quickly hired ex-YouTube executive Ariel Bardin for the newly created role of president of technology, said in his memo that WMG would be “reallocating resources towards new skills for artist and songwriter development and new tech initiatives.”
WMG expects to expand its gross margin by 50 to 100 basis points — equal to one-half to one percentage point — in fiscal year 2023. Aside from cost cuts, the nature of the changing music business helps the bottom line. WMG’s margins improve as it sells less of “margin-declining” physical product and “high-margin growing” digital business accounts for a larger share of its total revenue, Levin said at the Deutsche Bank 31st Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Feb. 28.
“We still see solid margin growth in 2023” despite declining ad-supported streaming revenues, Levin added. “When we see ad-supported start to stabilize and hopefully rebound and grow, it may create an environment for very favorable margins.”
Marshall Amplification, known for furnishing amps to a who’s who of rock stars, is being acquired by the Swedish tech company Zound Industries, Zound announced on Thursday (March 30). Zound had previously licensed the Marshall name for more than a decade and helped spread it around the world through popular headphones and speakers.
The new combined company will be dubbed the Marshall Group. Zound’s press release trumpeted that “on day one, Marshall Group revenues will be over $360 million with double-digit profitability.”
“Combining our strengths and unique positioning… will fuel our ambition to create premium, innovative, products and experiences for musicians and music lovers around the world,” Zound CEO Jeremy de Maillard said in a statement. “Zound has proven itself as a global, fast growing, and progressive company. With the Marshall Group, we are set to accelerate our profitable growth in a $100 billion market.”
“I am proud that this deal has finally been completed,” added Konrad Bergström, founder and board member of Zound Industries until 2018. “The success that we have achieved with the Marshall brand over recent years is soon going to be seen as having been the warm-up to a new British-Swedish headline act that is going to shake the tech and music industries to their foundations.”
Jim Marshall and his son Terry created the first Marshall amp in 1962, and the gear was subsequently popularized by rockers like Jimi Hendrix and The Who. “We have always looked for ways to deliver the pioneering Marshall sound to music lovers of all backgrounds and music tastes across the world,” Terry Marshall said in a statement. “I’m confident that the Marshall Group will elevate this mission and spur the love for the Marshall brand.”
The Marshall Family will be the largest shareholder of the Marshall Group, holding on to 24%.
Zound first started licensing the Marshall name back in 2010. “We brought the Marshall brand to over 90 countries through the headphones and the speakers,” de Maillard told The Verge. “So it became a much more known brand by the masses than it was before. Before it was the in-the-know, the musicians, people who were really into music who knew about the brand. But through this partnership, we’ve managed to touch a lot more people.”
“We’re very complementary to each other and this deal will enable us to bring together the full range of products and the entire consumer experience under one roof,” de Maillard added in a separate interview with Forbes. “It will allow us to be quicker with innovation and to have a deeper and more holistic connection with musicians and music lovers.”
BET has joined forces with iHeartMedia to bring over the award-winning radio show The Breakfast Club to its 2023 programming lineup. The famous show from New York’s Power 105.1 FM with personalities DJ Envy and Charlemagne Tha God will air a special televised edition for an hour beginning April 17 at 9 AM EST on BET and VH1, with episodes running Monday through Friday after that. Episodes from the week will be available to stream every Sunday on BET+.
“We’re thrilled to partner with iHeartMedia to bring The Breakfast Club and their unique brand of entertainment and cultural commentary to our audiences,” said BET CEO and president Scott Mills in a statement. “We recognize the show’s influence and popularity, and we are confident that the partnership will be meaningful to our viewers and to our partners. Hosts Charlamagne and DJ Envy are long time members of the BET and Paramount family, so we couldn’t be more excited to welcome The Breakfast Club home to BET.”
Adds iHeartMedia’s president of Entertainment Enterprises, John Sykes: “What began as a daily morning radio show over a decade ago in New York City has now become a cultural beacon across America. This new partnership with BET will expand the radio show’s reach to millions more watching on this iconic television network.
Since Angela Yee departed from the show last December, The Breakfast Club has enlisted celebrity guest co-hosts to occupy her spot, including Ray J, Jason Lee, Nene Leakes, and more. This also marks the BET’s first daily program since 2014 with 106 & Park.
The mother of Flo Rida‘s six-year-old son has filed a lawsuit against the owners of a rental property after Zohar P. Dillard was seriously injured in a March 4 fall from a fifth-floor window of her New Jersey apartment building.
According to People, Dillard’s mother, Alexis Adams, is named as a plaintiff in the negligence suit — along with her special needs son — in documents submitted to the Superior Court of New Jersey on Monday (March 27) against Pitch Perfect 74, LLC, Goldberg Management and others. The legal action came after the child was reportedly seriously injured in a fall in which he landed on a patch of concrete below the window; a spokesperson for Goldberg had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the suit at press time.
A spokesperson for Flo Rida (born Tramar Lacel Dillard) did not return Billboard‘s request for comment at press time; the rapper is reportedly not a party to the lawsuit.
According to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by New Jersey’s Daily Voice, Zohar suffered a shattered pelvis, left metatarsal fractures, a grade 3 liver laceration, internal bleeding and collapsed lungs in the incident and he remained in the ICU as of Wednesday (March 29). “As a single mom to a special needs child, this feels like a nightmare,” Adams told the Voice. “My heart is broken into a million pieces. It is devastating to see my child go through such pain and trauma knowing that this could’ve been avoided.”
Adams’ attorney, Steven P. Haddad, demanded a jury trial and claims the building’s managers are at fault for maintaining the building in a “negligent, careless and reckless manner creating foreseeable and dangerous conditions,” according to People. The suit claims that management installed “incorrect sized guards” on the windows on the fifth-floor apartment, “thereby breaching their duty of care.” At press time Haddad had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on the filing.
The suit is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages for Dillard’s current and future medical bills, legal feels and any ongoing and future medical and mental pain and suffering.
Last July, fans fumed over the high cost of Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing — the model that responds in real time to consumer demand and can cause prices to skyrocket, especially at on-sale — for Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s 2023 tour.
Then, in November, Ticketmaster’s presale for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour sold over 90% of the trek’s inventory — breaking the record for the most tickets sold in a single day by a touring artist — but online traffic stranded millions of infuriated fans in digital queues and caused website outages. Ticketmaster canceled the general on-sale for the remaining inventory, and Swift lambasted the company in a statement: “We asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand, and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
Soon, politicians were calling for accountability, and in January, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on competition within the ticketing industry, including whether the 2010 consent decree governing the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster has worked — or if the company has monopolized the sector.
Ticketmaster effectively controls major live-music events in many North American arenas and stadiums: It’s the primary ticketing system for 27 out of 32 NFL stadiums and Live Nation-promoted arena shows across the continent. But since its merger with Live Nation, viable alternatives have emerged.
“With ticketing systems, you may not know who they are, and that’s a good thing. Frankly, when a ticketing system makes the news, usually something went wrong,” says International Ticketing Association president/CEO Maureen Andersen, who adds that millions of tickets for music, sports and other live entertainment are sold every day on various platforms in North America without a hitch.
“There is a lot of ticketing technology available,” says Andersen. “A lot of ticketing companies [are] coming to the U.S. to test the waters and see what kind of market share they can get. That rings to me as healthy competition.”
Artists looking for ticketing alternatives in 2023 will fare better than Pearl Jam did nearly 30 years ago when the band tried — and failed — to route a tour without using Ticketmaster in protest of the company’s service fees. In December, country singer Zach Bryan released his album All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster (Live at Red Rocks) — the Denver-area amphitheater is ticketed by AXS, the Ticketmaster rival owned by the second-biggest North American promoter, AEG Presents — and took to social media: “I am so so tired of people saying things can’t be done about this massive issue while huge monopolies sit there stealing money from working class people.” Within weeks, he announced and sold out a 28-date tour, exclusively ticketed by AXS. “We sold all the tickets in 3 waves to actual fans, we hired teams to limit bots, and we sacrificed a lot of personal things to give real people, real seats,” Bryan posted afterward.
And in March, when fees for some dates on The Cure’s Ticketmaster-ticketed arena tour exceeded face-value prices, frontman Robert Smith called on the company to correct the matter — which it did in short order, issuing $10 credits to many purchasers.
Ticketing platforms in both the primary and secondary markets — which facilitate sales from rights holders and resale from other consumers, respectively — are experimenting with new features and working to keep prices in check. Billboard highlights some of the notable companies increasing competition in the sector.
AXS (primary and secondary markets)
Founded: 2011The Gist: Ticketmaster’s most significant U.S. competitor duplicates many of Ticketmaster’s strengths, including its ability to handle high-volume on-sales and a lottery system called Fair AXS. (AEG previously licensed Ticketmaster technology as a condition set by the U.S. Department of Justice in its approval of the 2010 Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, but used other software to build AXS.) Following the 2019 merger of AEG Facilities and SMG, AEG now owns, manages or operates more than 350 venues, many of which use AXS for ticketing.
CashorTrade (secondary)
Founded: 2009The Gist: With roots in the jam-band community, CashorTrade eschews a first-come, first-served model, instead allowing buyers to plead their case to sellers, who are required to upload receipts to prove they’re selling at face value. Buyers can’t offer more than face value for tickets but can “creatively barter,” most often by pitching trades of other concert tickets or artist merchandise, in order to be selected. After The Cure’s tour went on sale, the band publicly endorsed CashorTrade and Twickets, a U.K.-based resale platform operating in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, for resale of its tickets.
DICE (primary)
Founded: 2014The Gist: DICE entered the U.S. market in 2019 with a bold promise: to help eradicate scalping. Digital tickets are locked to a buyer’s smartphone, and back-end technology prevents the resale of tickets above face value. DICE also blocks tickets from the secondary market by allowing fans to return them to sold-out shows, which are then redistributed to customers on waitlists.
Lyte (supplementary)
Founded: 2013The Gist: Lyte works with primary ticketing platforms to eliminate scalping and get in-demand tickets to actual fans. Partners like See Tickets integrate Lyte’s technology to field ticket requests and credit card information prior to on-sales, allowing fans to return tickets that are then offered to preregistered fans at fair market price (which can exceed face value).
SeatGeek (primary, secondary)
Founded: 2009The Gist: SeatGeek established itself as a secondary ticketer similar to resale giant StubHub — and continues to expand its reach in that market, including through new resale deals with MLB and college-athletics ticketing giant Paciolan — but has since become the primary ticketer for a handful of NFL and NBA teams, Broadway theaters and other venues. (Major League Soccer and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center recently ended partnerships with SeatGeek in favor of Ticketmaster.) The ticketer also introduced SeatGeek Swap in 2021, which allows the return of eligible tickets, no questions asked, for credit at 100% of the purchase price.
See Tickets (primary, secondary)
Founded: 1991The Gist: Since opening a Los Angeles office in 2014, the U.K.-based ticketer has steadily grown, including working with boutique North American festivals and independent clubs and theaters. After becoming a National Independent Venue Association sponsor in 2020, See signed deals with 100 new indie venues and promoters in a 12-month period. The platform’s tools include fan-to-fan resale technology.
This story will appear in the April 1, 2023, issue of Billboard.
The first life of Justine Skye‘s “Collide” was that of a minor radio hit: It peaked at No. 38 on Billboard‘s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart. The single was rediscovered last fall, when hordes of TikTok users started to upload videos incorporating an altered version of the track — a sped-up remix that transformed the chilly, brooding single into something giddy and urgent.
TikTok trends were once believed to ensure streaming success; as the platform has expanded rapidly and splintered into niche communities, that is no longer the case. “More often than not, these records on TikTok tend to be insulated,” says Drew De Leon, president and partner at MPR Global, a marketing and distribution company. “One of the goals is always to take it off platform.” Part of De Leon’s mission was to push “Collide” on YouTube Shorts, the video streamer’s own short-form destination.
Skye’s other social media platforms were “more curated — her Instagram is more about her personality,” De Leon explains. “So our strategy approaching Shorts was to highlight all the fan content.” Starting in December, De Leon’s team uploaded seven clips a day to shorts, repurposing fan dance videos and iced beverage how-to’s. The deluge paid off: Skye had accumulated 263,000 YouTube subscribers between starting her channel in 2010 and December of 2022. In the next four months, her subscriber count nearly doubled, rising to 515,000. All the interest on various short-form video platforms helped drive streams to “Collide,” which earned a Gold certification in March, close to nine years after its release.
YouTube launched Shorts globally in the summer of 2021; music marketers have been trying to determine its value for pushing music ever since. As TikTok has become increasingly saturated with all kinds of promotion — not just from music labels but from deep-pocketed brands and Hollywood studios — it has become harder for artists and their songs to get attention, making it more important for marketers to identify viable alternatives.
On top of that, it usually pays to be an early adopter because there is less competition and YouTube is heavily invested in marketing the platform. “There’s this level of organic reach that you’re going to have for a limited amount of time,” says Brendan Kennedy, a digital marketer for Cinematic Music Group. The thinking is, “Let’s really ramp up, pump out content with a good strategy, and take advantage of this opportunity.”
YouTube unveiled a blizzard of statistics on Thursday (March 30) pointing to Shorts’ effectiveness as a marketing tool. Shorts are racking up more than 50 billion views a day (as of December); clips made by fans increased the average artist’s unique viewer total by more than 80% (in January); and artists who post Shorts weekly or more saw those posts drive more than 50% of their new subscriptions (also in January).
“We’re really seeing Shorts vastly increase the reach of an artist on the platform,” says Vivien Lewit, YouTube’s global head of artist partnerships. “We’re seeing it as an integral driver of audience growth.” YouTube also announced that it updated its “Analytics for Artists” tools to incorporate Shorts uploaded by fans in addition to clips uploaded by artists themselves.
Marketers are testing an assortment of strategies on the platform. While De Leon focused on highlighting user content — “fans wanted to see themselves participating,” in a trend, he says, and have that participation acknowledged by the artist whose music soundtracks that trend — Cinematic has also experimented with “repurposing the artist’s long form videos.”
“If an artist is putting out a music video, we’ll chop down the best parts of that, use them as Shorts, and stagger those uploads after the actual music video comes out,” explains Michael Epstein, another member of Cinematic’s digital marketing team. “We do the same with interviews. Just keep bringing people back. We’ve definitely seen that Shorts are one of the biggest drivers of actual artist channel growth,” spurring listeners to subscribe. (“A subscriber becomes a stickier fan,” Lewit notes.)
Cinematic is also “trying to build relationships with the emerging YouTube channels that are focusing on Shorts content,” Epstein continues. YouTube channels’ role in bringing new ears to music has never gotten the same level of attention as Spotify editorial playlisting or TikTok mega-influencers. But Epstein says “we’ve seen direct correlations with streaming consumption and growth just based on those uploads.”
Shorts doesn’t yet have the slam-dunk breakout artist story. But now that TikTok faces an uncertain future, with a bipartisan government coalition pushing for a ban or a sale, understanding the nuances of Shorts has taken on a new urgency. “Needless to say, we’re pushing all of our artists to start playing with it now just in case,” says one label executive. “If the TikTok ban happens, you’re really only going to have YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and potentially Snapchat as the places that have that high level of short-form content to discover,” Kennedy adds.
In a blog post on Thursday, global head of music Lyor Cohen highlighted the platform’s role in helping two massive hits — Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” and Oliver Tree and Robin Schulz’s “Miss You” — spread around the globe. In addition to Skye’s Shorts-boosted subscriber growth, Cinematic has seen Shorts drive listeners to rapper That Mexican OT.
“It has the potential to become a powerful feature,” Epstein says.