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The T.J. Martell Foundation for Cancer Research, which is in the midst of rebuilding after the organization’s former executive vp/GM Melissa Goodwin was found to have embezzled $4 million from the music industry-supported charity, has named Warner Music Group chairman emeritus John “Espo” Esposito the new chairman of the board of trustees.
“We got the double whammy of the COVID pandemic and somebody being a bad actor,” says Esposito, who stepped down as chairman/CEO of Warner Music Nashville on Dec. 31 and wanted to devote some of his newfound time to good works. “I felt qualified with my knowledge of the organization and passion for them to do what I could to help get us back on track.”
Esposito’s initial term is for two years. He succeeds Universal Music Group general counsel and executive vp Jeffrey Harleston, who will now serve as executive chairman.
Esposito, who has served as a T.J. Martell Foundation trustee since 2006 but has supported the organization since 1997, adds, “Obviously, I’m not going to do that single-handedly, but I felt like I could use my leadership skills to help us in so many ways.”
Former consultant Lynn-Anne Huck, who took over as acting CEO in 2020 after initially conducting the review that unearthed Goodwin’s improprieties, is now the permanent CEO of the Nashville-based organization.
Courtesy of T.J. Martell Foundation
Formed by record executive Tony Martell in 1975 following the death of his son, T.J., from leukemia, T.J. Martell holds multiple annual charitable events, auctions and campaigns in tandem with the music community in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville, Miami and other cities. It has raised more than $280 million in support of medical research grants at leading U.S. institutions and helped secure more than $1 billion in additional research funding.
T.J. Martell is additionally preparing for its 45th annual New York Honors Gala, the organization’s first since 2019. Held at Cipriani 42nd Street, the June 13 event will honor Warner Records co-chairman and CEO Tom Corson with the Lifetime Music Industry award, Def Jam Recordings chief creative officer and executive vp Archie Davis with the Rising Music Superstar Award and songwriter Shane McAnally with the Spirit of Music Award.
Esposito takes over a charity that was roiled by Goodwin’s actions. According to federal charging documents, from July 2018 to April 2020, she used a company credit card to purchase approximately $3.96 million in concert and sporting event tickets, including for Lady Gaga, Celine Dion and the Super Bowl. She also bought plane tickets, alcohol and hotel stays. Goodwin turned some of the items over to the owner of a charity auction business to resell but kept the money instead of turning it over to the charity.
Prosecutors also say she falsified credit card statements, created fake expense reports and replaced the ticket expenses with other vendor names to make the charges appear to be legitimate foundation expenses. Goodwin, who cooperated with federal prosecutors, pled guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to four years in prison in August. The Foundation is the plaintiff in four other suits relating to Goodwin’s malfeasance — including one against its former accounting firm — that are all in the discovery stage.
Under Harleston and Huck, the organization put safeguards in place to assure supporters and donors that what happened under Goodwin won’t happen again. “Lynn-Anne created a 28-page policies and procedures manual for financial transactions,” Esposito says. “We’re probably going above and beyond on a consistent basis.”
“If you go to our website,” Huck says, “you’re going to find more information than almost any other non-profit. We are absolutely transparent with everything.” The website includes IRS 990 Forms going back to 2017, as well as independent audit reports.
According to its latest 990 form, T.J. Martell, a registered 501 (c) corporation, ended 2021 with net assets of $1.045 million. Like many organizations, it took a hit during the pandemic; its net assets on its 2019 990 form were listed as $3.35 million. Despite that drop as well as Goodwin’s actions, Huck says the organization was able to fulfill all of its 2019 promised grants going into 2020 before the pandemic hit. It will resume grant-giving this year.
Esposito, Huck and the trustees have also done outreach to rebuild trust brick by brick. “To get people back in the boat, every quarter I had a list of about 250 donors and friends, and either myself or [other key T.J. Martell board members] would just get on the phone and answer questions,” Huck says. “’What are we doing?’ ‘How are we going to make sure this never happens again?’ So by the time [Goodwin] was charged last year, everybody knew. We kept them in the light all along.”
T.J. Martell’s first event in 2023 occurred during Grammy Week in Los Angeles when it held its Best Cellars dinner. Similar events to be held in Nashville, Napa, Atlanta, Houston, Washington, D.C. and Cleveland this year will pair a four-course gourmet meal with wines provided by some of the country’s most distinguished wine collectors. The Los Angeles event, which was held Feb. 2, netted $600,000 for the organization, far beyond its original budget of a “few hundred thousand,” Esposito says.
“The love in that room and the enthusiasm in that room, it was like we were back in 1999. It was a great feeling,” Esposito says. “So, I’m feeling very confident that as long as we take all the right steps, we’re going to build this thing to a really good place.”
The organization is also looking at ways to broaden its outreach by spreading into other areas — part of a strategy to cut down on the number of events it holds each year. In 2018, T.J. Martell held 32 events that raised over $4 million. With this year’s seven Best Cellars dinners, it hopes to raise $3 million. Ideas include creating marathon teams that raise money for T.J. Martell, as well as increasing planned giving by individuals and estates and increasing branding and sponsorship possibilities. “It’s tapping into cash that makes the events far more productive and our not being so dependent on 30 events in a year,” Esposito says.
By relying less on staff-intensive events, Esposito and Huck hope to keep their personnel numbers down. In 2019, T.J. Martell had 25 full-time employees but now has only three. As the organization revs back up, they say they will judiciously hire more staffers based on need.
As Esposito delves into his role, he says the two words he uses to sum up T.J. Martell 2.0 are “transparency and enthusiasm… I yearn for us to be transparent on a profound level. And every philanthropic organization relies on enthusiasm, and 2023 is the year we’re building enthusiasm back and I’m thrilled that I’m already feeling it,” he says. “I can only imagine as we start getting events like the gala under our belt that people will be saying, ‘They’re back and better than ever.’”
Independent Brooklyn venue Elsewhere is taking a new approach to ticket buying for loyal patrons. Starting today, the multi-room venue is widely launching its membership program, which ranges from $2 to $30 a month and provides tiered benefits including free entry to shows, access to the venue’s Discord and new music discovery.
Freaks With Benefits, the cheapest tier at $2 a month, provides free coat check, the ability to skip the line and access to the venue’s member-exclusive Discord channels, along with other perks. Sonic Explorer — which costs $6 a month — provides half off an unlimited number of tickets for the member and a guest, plus the perks from Freaks With Benefits. For $30 a month, the Patron Saint membership provides free entry to shows and parties, half-off tickets for a guest, reserved tickets for sold-out shows, free merch and all other previously mentioned tier benefits.
The “unlimited” free or discounted entry included in the two higher-priced tiers does come with an asterisk: Members must make a reservation in advance to reserve those tickets and are subject to “space permitting.” The reservation option is built into the backend of Elsewhere’s website and allows members to reserve up to eight events at a time. The venue has been beta testing the membership program since November — 600 people applied for the first 50 slots in just 48 hours — says Elsewhere co-founder Jake Rosenthal. “A big part of testing it was really about figuring out what is this special math where enough people feel like they’re getting enough access or that it feels very valuable,” he says. The limited reservations help members prioritize shows and keep them from “parking” on any and every show, which Rosenthal says wouldn’t be sustainable.
“There’s no limit to the number of events you can go to discounted or free,” Rosenthal explains, “There’s only the fact that like, if there’s an event several months out that you want to unequivocally park a reservation on, then you have to spend one of your reservations. But if you want to go to Elsewhere every night [without a reservation], you could do that unlimitedly for forever.”
The new program helps drive more customers to the venue, which means more artist discovery, more bar and merch sales and better-attended shows, says Rosenthal. While the price reduction on tickets for members means less money for the artists if shows sell out (roughly 15% of shows meet this criterion, according to Rosenthal), the venue only holds a small percentage of the room for membership reservations and artists are made aware of the program in their contracts.
“For 85% of our events, the incentive of the artist and Elsewhere is quite aligned,” says Rosenthal. The idea is, “How can we incentivize people to show up to those events that they otherwise probably would not have come to because they’re unfamiliar with the artist, for example. Another reason could be that $30 was too much to check something out that they’re on the fence about.”
As Rosenthal puts it, the membership program is less a money-making venture — or about providing velvet-rope treatment to VIPs — than it is about building community. That’s a longstanding goal for he and Elsewhere co-founders Dhruv Chopra and Rami Haykal-Manning, who have been tied to the DIY underground music scene in Brooklyn for years; the three ran the venue Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg before it closed in 2015 and opened Elsewhere, which hosts upwards of 600 shows per year, in 2017. The memberships are also a way to acknowledge the price pressure that many are facing in New York and around the world.
“If you’re someone who is coming to Elsewhere once a month, twice a month or up, you’re already doing your part supporting the music scene in our community and you shouldn’t have to spend $30 five or six times a month to be at Elsewhere,” says Rosenthal. “It’s built with that ethos first, which is connecting our community more tightly and making it cheaper to come more often.”
TikTok said Wednesday that every account held by a user under the age of 18 will have a default 60-minute daily screen time limit in the coming weeks. The changes arrive during a period in which there are growing concerns among different governments about the app’s security.
Families have struggled with limiting the amount of time their children spend on the Chinese-owned video sharing app.
Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok said in a blog post Wednesday that when the 60-minute limit is reached, minors will be prompted to enter a passcode receive a passcode and make an “active decision” to keep watching. For accounts where the user is under the age of 13, a parent or guardian will have to set or enter an existing passcode to allow 30 minutes of extra viewing time once the initial 60-minute limit is reached.
TikTok said it came up with the 60-minute threshold by consulting academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Social media executives, including those from TikTok, have been called before Congress to explain how they are preventing harm for young users.
TikTok also said Wednesday that it will also begin prompting teens to set a daily screen time limit if they opt out of the 60-minute default. The company will send weekly inbox notifications to teen accounts with a screen time recap.
Some of TikTok’s existing safety features for teen accounts include having accounts set to private by default for those between the ages of 13 and 15 and providing direct messaging availability only to those accounts where the user is 16 or older.
TikTok announced a number of changes for all users, including the ability to set customized screen time limits for each day of the week and allowing users to set a schedule to mute notifications. The company is also launching a sleep reminder to help people plan when they want to be offline at night. For the sleep feature, users will be able to set a time and when the time arrives, a pop-up will remind the user that it’s time to log off.
Outside of exorbitant use by some minors, there are growing concern about the app around the world. The European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Council have banned TikTok from being installed on official devices.
That follows similar actions taken by the U.S. federal government, Congress and more than half of the 50 U.S. states. Canada has also banned it from government devices.
Even as the U.S. advertising market’s slowdown stunted iHeartMedia’s post-pandemic recovery, the company posted record revenue of $3.9 billion in 2022, up 9.9% from 2021, the company announced on Tuesday (Feb. 28).
“The macro economic conditions are certainly impacting the entire advertising marketplace,” CEO Bob Pittman said during Tuesday’s earnings call. “Even the podcasting industry is not immune to some effects of the advertising slowdown.”
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $950.3 million, up 17.2% year over year. That’s the second-best adjusted EBITDA in the company’s history following 2019 when the company hit $1 billion. Annual free cash flow of $259 million was also the second-best in history after reaching $400 million in 2019.
Podcasts, the company’s fast-growing segment, generated revenue of $358.4 million in 2022, up 41.9% from the prior year. The high-growth podcasting business could benefit from what Pittman called “a transition toward more rational behaviors” in spending. Pittman didn’t point to any specific company, but an era of big spending on podcast content deals appears to be over at Spotify, where chief content officer Dawn Ostroff recently left the company and the head of audio talk shows and partnerships, Max Cutler, also departed. “I think there were people who thought they were buying [market] share, but were really buying losses,” he said.
Digital revenue other than podcasts improved 14% to $663.4 million. Broadcast radio, by far iHeartMedia’s biggest revenue source, grew 4.1% to $1.89 billion. Network revenue was flat at $503.2 million. Revenue from sponsorships and events climbed 17.9% to $189 million. Revenue from the audio and media services group jumped 22.7% to $304.3 million.
In the fourth quarter, iHeartMedia’s revenue grew 6% year over year to $1.13 billion, the high end of guidance of 2% to 6%. Adjusted EBITDA was $316 million, in the middle of its guidance range of $305 million to $325 million. Both revenue and adjusted EBITDA hit record highs for any quarter in the company’s history.
Although the company started 2022 strong, “increased volatility and uncertainty” moderated annual results, Pittman said. Some of that slowdown was “self-inflicted,” he admitted. During the fourth quarter, iHeartMedia put greater emphasis on “sales initiatives and commission structures on targeting certain incremental revenue streams,” he explained. “In retrospect, we believe those decisions had a negative impact on our revenue growth and margin for the quarter.”
As a result, iHeartMedia has “initiated steps to realign” its focus on “higher-margin digital revenue opportunities,” said Pittman. “We believe we’ll start seeing the positive impact of those adjustments in both revenue growth and margins as early as Q2.”
Downtown Music Services has inked a global distribution, creative marketing and synch licensing deal with Natanael Cano‘s record imprint, Los CT, it was announced Monday (Feb. 27). The label’s current roster includes Gabito Ballesteros, Alejandro Buelna, Tyan G and more.
Under the deal, Downtown Music Services will be responsible for all aspects of global distribution, creative marketing and synch for Los CT. This includes providing listeners with access to new music releases, securing strategic marketing and synch opportunities and ensuring that Los CT artist releases are available on all major digital streaming platforms.
Cano launched Los CT last year amid a public dispute with his former label, Rancho Humilde, as an opportunity to continue broadening the Mexican music style he’s been actively internationalizing.
“I am always very happy to work with people who supported me from the beginning,” Cano said in a press release. “Now being able to distribute my music with some of the same people who always believed in me, I am extremely grateful and motivated to continue giving my all alongside the Downtown Music Services team.”
Downtown Music Services vp of A&R Latin, Ray Tapia, worked side by side with Cano’s manager, Ramon Emilio Hernández, to make this partnership a reality. A subsidiary of Downtown Music Holdings, Downtown Music Services offers bespoke distribution, publishing administration, creative marketing and finance solutions to entrepreneurial creators and their partners.
Tapia said, “We are thrilled to partner with Natanael Cano and the Los CT record label team. The Mexican music scene is undergoing a transformation with an increasing number of collaborations and a growing number of artists attracting millions of monthly listeners. This genre remains one of if not the most independent, and we are super excited to have the opportunity to contribute to its success. ¡Ánimo!“
“We have been working on this for a minute and I am really excited about this partnership and how we are helping put this new era of the culture out there,” added Hernández. “There is so much promising talent in this space and we look forward to working with some of these artists and the team at Downtown Music. They really knew the genre, the music and understood our goals from the beginning.”
This year, Cano has achieved three entries on the Billboard Global 200 chart, including “AMG” with Gabito Bastelleros and Peso Pluma which hit No. 35 on the tally. He’s also scored two entries on the Billboard Hot 100.
Evan Rachel Wood is strongly denying allegations that she “manipulated” Ashley Morgan Smithline into making allegations of rape against Marilyn Manson.
Days after Smithline made those explosive accusations, Wood filed her own declaration in Los Angeles Court on Monday (Feb. 27), saying she had proof that it was Smithline who had first contacted her with accusations against Manson (real name Brian Warner), not vice-versa.
“I never pressured or manipulated Ashley Morgan Smithline to make any accusations against plaintiff Brian Warner, and I certainly never pressured or manipulated her to make accusations that were not true,” Wood wrote in the filing.
Wood attached screenshots of purported text message conversations, including one in which Smithline told her “I have no reason to make this up!” Another set of messages read: “Just know you set me free. By listening. I love you.”
“Ms. Smithline has always told me that she was abused by Mr. Warner,” Wood wrote.
Smithline and Wood are two of several women to accuse Manson of serious sexual wrongdoing over the past two years. After Wood posted her allegations to Instagram in February 2021, lawsuits quickly followed from Smithline, Manson’s former assistant Ashley Walters, Game of Thrones actress Esmé Bianco and two Jane Doe accusers.
Manson has denied all of the allegations, and the cases by Smithline, Walters and Bianco have since been dropped or dismissed. Now, Manson is pursuing his own defamation lawsuit, claiming that Wood and another woman, Illma Gore, had “secretly recruited, coordinated, and pressured prospective accusers to emerge simultaneously” with false accusations against him.
In a filing last week in that defamation case, Smithline made her bombshell accusations about “manipulation” against Wood: “I succumbed to pressure from Evan Rachel Wood and her associates to make accusations of rape and assault against Mr. Warner that were not true.”
In a response on Monday, Wood’s lawyers submitted Wood’s declaration stating that she had never coerced Smithline. They also filed formal arguments urging the judge to ignore Smithline’s new declaration, calling it nothing more than a “bad-faith attempt” by Manson’s lawyers to save his “meritless” defamation lawsuit against Wood from being dismissed.
“Documented evidence shows that it was Smithline who reached out to Wood about plaintiff’s abuse more than a year before Smithline now claims defendants somehow convinced her that she was abused,” Wood’s lawyers wrote.
In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday in response to Wood’s new filings, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “It is unsurprising that Evan Rachel Wood is desperately fighting to keep Ashley Smithline’s testimony out of court – because she knows the truth will expose her plot to manipulate the women who trusted her in order to destroy Brian Warner.”
On top of denying Smithline’s accusations about manipulation, Monday’s filings from Wood and her attorneys also came with explosive new allegations of their own.
In a separate declaration, a supposed friend of Smithline named Karl Neilson stated that he was in possession of a voicemail from July 2022 in which Smithline had told him that Manson’s lawyer, King, had improperly reached out to her directly to discuss the case — and that she was worried he was trying to get her to flip on Manson’s other accusers.
“I have not called back, obviously. Obviously, it’s very clear that a lawyer legally shouldn’t and can’t call me without calling my lawyer directly,” Smithline allegedly said in the voicemail to Neilson.
“The only reason why he would be calling me at all, a week ago, and leaving a message is that he thinks I’m the weak link, and he might want to settle with me to turn on the other girls, and say that it was all, like, a ruse,” Smithline allegedly said in the voicemail to Neilson.
In his statement to Billboard on Tuesday, King flatly denied that he had improperly reached out to Smithline.
“I never discussed Ashley Smithline’s claims against Brian Warner until after she had reached out to me and terminated her counsel,” King said. “Moreover, when Ms. Smithline recently spoke with me for almost two hours, we taped the conversation in full and that recording proves that every single thing in her declaration was taken from her words, not mine.”
Action sports producer Nitro Circus and Round Room Live today announced a multi-year global partnership that will see the Travis Pastrana-led Nitro Circus Live tour return to North American arenas this fall for the first time in five years — just in time for the brand’s 20th anniversary.
Since 2018, Nitro Circus Live has mostly operated as an outdoor event, held at stadiums and festivals like 2019’s Gnarlytown festival in San Pedro, California. Under the partnership with Round Room, the event will return to indoor venues in North America, including arenas like the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The touring show’s main attraction is the Giganta Ramp, a massive 70-foot portable ramp used to launch motocross, BMX bikes and homemade vehicles like an ironing board on wheels.
Launched in 2003 by Pastrana — who raced in the coveted Daytona 500 on Feb. 19 and came in 11th place — as a straight-to-DVD series chronicling Pastrana’s extreme motocross stunts and action sports costars, Nitro Circus would find a television home on Fuel TV in 2006 before landing on MTV in 2009. In 2010, Australian motorsports promoter Michael Porra would launch the Nitro Circus Live tour with partner Andrew Edwards (Porra sold a piece of the company to Raine Group in late 2013). Nitro Circus was eventually rolled up with several other action sports brands and renamed Thrill One in 2020, before being sold off to Fiume Capital and Juggernaut Capital Partners in a $300 million deal last summer.
“Since 2003, Nitro Circus has stunned fans across the globe with a kinetic mix of boundary-breaking world’s firsts alongside outrageous comedic moments,” a press release announcing the agreement reads. “Nitro Circus has showcased a collection of action sports’ best athletes and biggest stars in packed venues worldwide, including dual BMX and scooter threat Ryan “R-Willy” Williams, pioneering WCMX rider Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham and many more. Now these fun-loving daredevils are back with an electrifying new live show celebrating two decades of pushing the limits, featuring huge never-before-done tricks and a host of new crazy contraptions.”
Joe Carr, CEO of Thrill One Sports and Entertainment, said, “This partnership allows us to elevate our production value, increase our show output, and bring Nitro to new markets around the world.”
Pastrana added, “I’m so pumped to see Nitro celebrate by going back under the big top and bringing the party to arenas worldwide. Everyone on the crew is ready to send it bigger than ever before.”
Round Room Live was founded by industry veterans Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden and currently produces Blippi: The Wonderful World Tour, Blippi The Musical, Baby Shark Live!, Peppa Pig Live and more. Last year, Round Room completed a management buyout of its lead investor eOne in a deal backed by Manhattan West, a Los Angeles-based strategic investment firm.
“We are very excited to partner with the Nitro Circus team and this incredibly insane group of athletes, to bring Nitro Circus and its high-adrenaline style of entertainment back to arenas in 2023”, said Shaw. “This tour promises to be the most exciting and electric live action sports production in the world – and we can’t wait for our audiences to see what we’ve been building.”
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: Lady Gaga somehow finds herself on the receiving end of a lawsuit over the theft of her French bulldog, Adam Levine accuses a classic car dealer of selling him a fake Maserati, one of Marilyn Manson’s accusers recants her abuse allegations, and much more.
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THE BIG STORY: Lady Gaga Sued Over Dog Theft Reward
A woman named Jennifer McBride says she deserves a huge reward for returning Lady Gaga’s bulldogs after they were stolen at gunpoint – even though she was also convicted of a criminal charge in connection with the high-profile dognapping.
In a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles, McBride demanded that Gaga hand over a $500,000 reward she offered for the safe return of the dogs after the violent 2021 incident. It was McBride, after all, who delivered the dogs to the Los Angeles Police Department two days after Gaga’s dog walker Ryan Fischer was shot and nearly killed.
But there’s one small detail McBride’s lawyers left out of the complaint: In December, she pleaded no contest to receiving stolen property in connection with the dognapping, receiving a sentence of two years of probation.
McBride’s lawyers say it doesn’t matter: That Gaga made a binding “unilateral” offer to pay the reward in return for the safe return of the dogs with “no questions asked” — and McBride took her up on the proposal when she did so. Whether that argument will fly before a judge remains to be seen.
For a full breakdown of McBride’s case — including her full complaint and her arguments that she “fully performed her obligation” to Gaga — go read our entire story here.
Other top stories this week…
ADAM LEVINE’S FAKE MASERATI – Attorneys for Adam Levine filed a lawsuit claiming that a classic car dealer defrauded him by selling him a fake version of an uber-rare Maserati worth a whopping $850,000. The star’s attorneys say the seller took “active steps” to conceal red flags about the car, like phony stamped markings on its chassis.
MARILYN MANSON ACCUSER RECANTS – Ashley Morgan Smithline, a woman who previously sued Marilyn Manson for sexual assault, filed an explosive new document stating that her allegations against the rocker were untrue. Instead, Smithline claimed she had been “manipulated” by Manson’s ex-girlfriend, Evan Rachel Wood. A rep for Wood strongly denied the allegations.
ARREST WARRANT FOR KODAK BLACK – A Florida judge issued an arrest warrant for Kodak Black for failing a drug test while on bail for a drug charge. The rapper, facing trial over an oxycodone trafficking charge, allegedly failed to appear for a scheduled drug test in February and then days later submitted a sample that tested positive for fentanyl.
PRE-TRIAL SHOWDOWN OVER SHEERAN TAPE – Lawyers for Ed Sheeran’s copyright accusers fired back at the star’s efforts to ban an infamous YouTube clip from an upcoming trial over whether “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” calling the video “among the most important and critical evidence in this case.”
NIPSEY HUSSLE KILLER GETS 60+ YEARS – A Los Angeles judge sentenced Eric Ronald Holder Jr. to at least 60 years in prison for gunning down rapper Nipsey Hussle. Holder was convicted in July of premeditated murder over the March 2019 shooting at a Los Angeles strip mall.
LIL PEEP WRONGFUL DEATH CASE SETTLED – The mother of late rapper Lil Peep reached a settlement in her wrongful death lawsuit against her son’s former label and management company, First Access Entertainment (FAE). The lawsuit claimed that Peep’s management team provided him with drugs and kept pushing him to perform even though he was “barely able to communicate.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ACCUSER SAYS NICK CARTER AIMS TO “SILENCE” HER – Shannon “Shay” Ruth, a woman suing Nick Carter over accusations that he raped her in 2001, blasted the Backstreet Boys member for filing a defamation countersuit against her. In a so-called anti-SLAPP motion, Ruth said Carter’s countersuit had “no other purpose than to harass, intimate, and potentially silence plaintiff.”
FESTIVAL ORGANIZERS GO TO PRISON – Aaron McCreight and Doug Hargrave, two former Iowa tourism executives, were each sentenced to more than a year in prison after pleading guilty to bank fraud charges related to Newbo Evolve, a failed 2018 music festival headlined by Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson. The pair admitted to lying to a Cedar Rapids bank about projected ticket sales to secure more funding, even as the event appeared headed toward big losses.
BRONX RAPPER CHARGED WITH MURDER – Bronx drill rapper Kay Flock was charged by federal prosecutors with murder and racketeering along with seven other members of two Bronx street gangs, stemming from seven shootings in New York between June 2020 and February 2022. Flock faces a “mandatory life in prison or death” if convicted.
KELLY AVOIDS LENGTHY ADD-ON SENTENCE – A federal judge in Chicago sentenced R. Kelly to 20 years in prison for his convictions of child pornography and the enticement of minors for sex, but said the singer would serve all but one year simultaneously with an earlier 30-year sentence imposed last year on separate racketeering charges. The upshot is that Kelly is facing 31 years total and will be eligible for release at around age 80.
The Recording Academy has appointed Nzinga “Zing” Shaw as chief DEI officer. She reports directly to Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr., while vp of DEI Ryan Butler reports to her.
Shaw oversees diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across all areas of the Recording Academy, including internal and external programs, organizational and staff culture, membership, awards and related initiatives.
“I am thrilled to introduce Zing to the Recording Academy as our Chief DEI Officer,” Mason said in a statement. “Her groundbreaking work in the DEI field speaks for itself and we are excited to see how she’ll amplify the Academy’s commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment and drive positive change throughout the organization.”
“I am proud to join the Recording Academy and work with a talented team of leaders to cultivate a culture of inclusion that fosters different points of view and empowers diverse colleagues,” Shaw said in a statement. “The organization has made incredible strides in diversity, equity and inclusion over the last few years, and I look forward to being part of the Academy’s continued commitment to supporting both our internal stakeholders and the music community at large.”
With direct support from Butler and Ricky Lyon, manager of DEI, Shaw is responsible for ensuring that diversity and inclusion are core business values and those standards are demonstrated throughout the organization.
Shaw is known for her pioneering DEI work with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, launching the MOSAIC symposium (Model of Shaping Atlanta through Inclusive Conversations), and making the Hawks the first professional sports team to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community. Additionally, Shaw was the first chief DEI officer at three top organizations: Edelman, Starbucks and the National Basketball Association.
In addition to serving on the board of trustees of Fisk University, the board of directors of ColorComm, and the board of advisors of Arctos Sports Partners, Shaw was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter to serve a six-year term on the board of councilors of the Carter Center.
Shaw holds a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College and a master’s from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a study abroad scholar at Oxford University in the U.K.
French music streaming company Deezer reported on Tuesday that its 2022 revenues rose 13% to 451 million euros ($478 million), as the company reduced its losses by 18 million euros ($19.1 million) through a combination of growth through partnerships and eliminating marketing spend.
The company reported its adjusted gross profit rose 16% to 98 million ($104 million) euros in 2022 versus 2021 on greater margin improvement. The 18 million euros ($19.1 million) the company reported in savings came partly from growth — Deezer grew its top line by 51 million euros ($54 million) and improved gross margins by 30 million euros ($32 million) — and partly from reducing its marketing spends in certain emerging markets.
For years since its 2007 launch, the Paris-based company angled to gain customers by partnering with telecommunications companies. But under new chief executive Jeronimo Folgueira, Deezer has focused on a business-to-business (B2B) approach, aiming to gain more streaming users in major markets through partnerships with companies that already have established customer bases.
That piggy back approach — which is already in place with Sonos in the United States, RTL in Germany and DAZN in Italy — allows Deezer to reach prospective customers in major markets without investing to build a brand first. Folgueira, who joined Deezer in June 2021, says 2022’s earnings show the strategy has legs, and he expects his company to generate revenue growth of more than 10% in 2023 as they work toward achieving profitability by 2025.
“All of the ground work on B2B that we’ve been doing is starting to pay off,” Folgueira tells Billboard. “Those deals are just the beginning. We want to enter markets through partners, and we are targeting the United Kingdom and other major European markets like Spain.”
Last year, Deezer partnered with German broadcast giant RTL Deutschland to deliver music and video content over the app RTL+ Musik, putting Deezer in a position to compete in the crowded streaming space in the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music market, and it teamed up with the Italian sport subscription streaming platform DZAN.
This year, Deezer struck a long-term agreement with the U.S. speaker and hardware company Sonos to power its Sonos Radio and subscription service Sonos Radio HD, a deal that will extend Deezer’s reach to 16 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Deezer remains strongest in France, where it is bundled with telecom company Orange and has 4.4 million subscribers, and in Brazil, where it partnered with TIM Celular in 2016 and has 2.7 million subscribers, according to company filings. Worldwide, Deezer has 9.4 million subscribers compared with Spotify’s 195 million subscribers and 273 million free (ad-supported) users, while TME has 82.7 million paying subscribers, according to the companies’ latest earnings reports.
The company was among the first DSPs to raise prices last year when it upped the price for an individual plan to 10.99 euros ($11.66) per month from 9.99 euros ($10.60) and family plans to 17.99 euros ($19.09) per month from 14.99 ($15.91).
Those hikes helped deliver a 14.3% increase in the company’s average revenue per user (ARPU) in 2022. Deezer had 9.4 million subscribers as of Dec. 31, 2022, down 2.2% from a year earlier.
“On the year as a whole, there was basically no impact on churn despite a roughly 10% price increase,” Folgueira says. “People are willing to pay more for proper quality music.”