Business
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The Isley Brothers are headed to court over the trademark rights to the band’s name.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Chicago federal court, Rudolph Isley accused his brother Ronald Isley of improperly attempting to secure a federal trademark registration on the “The Isley Brothers” – even though the name is supposed to be jointly owned.
“Counsel for defendant Ronald Isley has asserted in correspondence that defendant alone has exclusive ownership of the [trade]mark,” Rudolph’s lawyers wrote in their complaint. “These assertions … are false.”
The lawsuit claims that Ronald, “acting without the knowledge or approval of Rudolph,” applied in 2021 at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register “The Isley Brothers” as a trademark under his name alone. The agency approved the application and registered the trademark last year.
In filing the case, Rudolph is asking a judge to declare that the trademark rights to the name are “jointly owned by Plaintiff and Defendant equally.” He also wants a ruling that forces Ronald to explain how he has “exploited” the trademark and to share any revenue derived from it.
An attorney for Ronald did not immediately return a request for comment.
Band names are a constant source of trademark disputes, typically among various current and former members who disagree about who has the right to keep using a famous title. Who truly constitutes the band? Is it the members, or an LLC that owns the rights to the name? Is it the original lineup, or the one that produced the biggest hits?
Journey, Stone Temple Pilots, Jefferson Starship, the Rascals, the Ebonys, the Commodores and the Platters have all resorted to such litigation over the years. Members of the Beach Boys spent more than 10 years fighting over their name, before a settlement was reached in 2008. And Morris Day recently had an ugly fight with the Prince estate over the trademark rights to his band name, The Time.
In the case of the Isleys, Rudolph claims that since the 1986 death of their third brother O’Kelly Isley, he and Ronald have been the equal co-owners of the group’s intellectual property. He says that arrangement is formalized in two overlapping holding companies, Isley Brothers Royalty Venture I SPC Inc. and Isley Brothers L.L.C.
“Both plaintiff and defendant are currently 50% owners of all rights and interests of the group, with neither party having the authority to enter into deals concerning the group or the exploitation of the mark without consent of the other party,” Rudolph’s lawyers wrote.
Ronald’s lawyers see things differently. In back-and-forth legal correspondence sent before Monday’s case was filed, his attorneys had argued that the “Isley Brothers” trademarks are the property of those who have actually been using a name – and that Rudolph has not performed with the band since 1986.
“Rudolph has not used the mark in approximately thirty-six (36) years,” Ronald’s lawyer, Navarro W. Gray, wrote to his brother’s attorneys in a January letter. “Thus, Ronald’s profits from the business endeavors he has sought and created for himself, in relation to The Isley Brother’s brand, are not to be shared as he has been the party actually using the mark in commerce.”
Read Rudolph Isley’s entire complaint here:
Duars Entertainment, the indie label, management, booking and publishing company that handles Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro, Cauty and Sie7e, among other artists, has formally launched a new events production company, Duars Live.
Duars Live is led by Duars Entertainment founder Eric Duars Pérez, along with veteran Puerto Rican promoter Paco López as co-producer, Orlando “Chispa” Acosta as stage manager, Omar Rodríguez as head of pre-production and Alexis Soto as production manager.
The launch of Duars Live formalizes an event production and concert promotion operation that Duars Entertainment las long had in place, but is now ready to expand. A catalyst was Alejandro’s “Saturno” tour, which kicked off in March and will play over 70 dates around the world, making stops in 34 North American arenas, 19 European arenas and 17 Latin American arenas. Duars Live is producing the tour in partnership with Outback Presents.
“Producing events is my real passion” says Duars, who began managing Alejandro several years ago and eventually signed him to his label, Duars Entertainment (which now releases his music via a joint venture with Sony Music Latin). “At some point in my career I had the opportunity to manage artists and release music, but I feel like in an odd turn of events, life has led me back to event production which I am totally enjoying now.”
In hiring touring veterans as his support staff, Duars was also aiming at sustained growth of his company overall. “I want to develop people within my structure so that in 10 years they can function without me,” he says. “I want to grow, sign artists, do more projects. My goal is, literally, to grow.”
In addition to Rauw Alejandro’s tour, Duars Live is also producing two shows at Coliseo de Puerto Rico by reggaetón star De La Ghetto and will soon launch another major tour.
China’s leading music streaming company Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) reported on Tuesday a 9.3% decline in the company’s annual revenues last year, as falling earnings from its social entertainment services business compounded a decline in monthly active users on its music platform.
TME’s total revenues fell to RMB 28.34 billion (USD $4.11 billion) in 2022 from RMB 31.24 billion 2021, with revenues for the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31 having fallen by 2.4% to RMB 7.43 billion ($1.08 billion) compared to the fourth quarter in 2021.
TME, which owns streaming platforms QQ Music, Kugou and Kuwo, plus karaoke app WeSing, said revenues from its social entertainment services and others fell 19.8% in 2022 to RMB 15.86 billion ($2.30 billion). The number of paying users fell 24.3% due to the macroeconomic environment, competition from other platforms and COVID-19, the company said.
Revenues from music subscriptions rose 18.6% to RMB 8.70 billion ($1.26 billion) helping TME’s online music services revenues to increase overall by 8.9% to RMB 12.48 billion ($1.81 billion) for 2022. The number of paying subscribers grew by 22.7%. However, average revenue per user was slightly lower — RMB 8.6 in 2022 compared to RMB 8.9 in 2021 — due to higher marketing costs, and the number of mobile monthly active users (MAU) of its online music division fell 7.8% to 567 million in the fourth quarter.
“During the fourth quarter, as a result of macro headwinds, increased competition from other platforms and the surge in COVID cases social entertainment services MAUs and paying users declined year over year,” said Tony Yip, TME chief strategy officer, on a call discussing the company’s earnings on Tuesday.
China’s late-year increase in COVID cases as it loosened pandemic restrictions and increased competition also led to the year-over-year decline in online music mobile MAUs, Yip said.
Declining social entertainment services revenues held one benefit for TME: lower revenue sharing fees in 2022. That contributed to a savings of more than RMB 2.27 billion, as its cost of revenues for the year fell 10.4% year-over-year to RMB 19.57 billion ($2.84 billion).
This helped TME achieve an operating profit up nearly 17% to RMB 4.44 billion ($644 million) in 2022. Operating income is the income that remains after accounting for nearly all costs of doing business.
TME expects 2023 total revenues and profitability to be up from last year, and for the share of quarterly revenues coming from online music services will exceed those coming social entertainment services at some point this year as they continue to achieve “high quality growth in both subscription and non-subscription revenue,” Yip said.
Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s 2022 Highlights:
Mobile monthly active users (MAU) for its online music division fell 7.8% to 567 million in the fourth quarter 2022 from 615 million in the fourth quarter 2021
Mobile MAU for social entertainment fell 16.6% to 146 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 from 175 million in the fourth quarter 2021
Paying users of TME’s online music platform rose 16.1% to 88.5 million in the fourth quarter 2022 from 76.2 million in the fourth quarte 2021
Paying users of TME’s social entertainment platform fells 15.6% to 7.6 million in the fourth quarter 2022 from 9 million in the fourth quarter
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Cardi B’s $4 million defamation verdict against a gossip blogger who made salacious claims on YouTube about drug use, STDs and prostitution.
In a five-page decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected an appeal from Tasha K, who had claimed that the massive verdict against her was the result of “very lopsided presentation of evidence to the jury.”
The appeals court ruled that Tasha K (real name Latasha Kebe) had failed to properly make that argument to the trial judge, meaning she forfeited the right to do so before an appeals court.
“Defendant Latasha Kebe asks for a new trial, saying that there was insufficient evidence for the jury verdict against her,” the appeals court wrote. “But as she all but admits, she didn’t make either of the required post-verdict motions in the district court.”
Tasha’s attorneys had also argued that the judge overseeing the trial withheld key evidence that might have helped her beat Cardi’s accusations, but the Eleventh Circuit rejected that argument, too.
“She never tells us where in the 5500-page record the district court’s alleged errors can be found,” the appeals court wrote. “Because Kebe’s brief falls well short of what we require, she has abandoned this argument.”
Cardi B (real name Belcalis Almánzar) sued Tasha in 2019, over what the rapper’s lawyers called a “malicious campaign” on social media and YouTube aimed at hurting Cardi’s reputation. The star’s attorneys said they had repeatedly tried – and failed – to get her to pull her videos down.
One Tasha video cited in the lawsuit includes a statement that Cardi had done sex acts “with beer bottles on f—ing stripper stages.” Others videos said the superstar had contracted herpes; that she had been a prostitute; that she had cheated on her husband; and that she had done hard drugs.
Following a trial in January, jurors sided decisively with Cardi B, holding Tasha liable for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They awarded more than $2.5 million in damages and another $1.3 million in legal fees incurred by the rapper. Judge William Ray later issued an injunction forcing her to pull the videos from the internet.
Tasha appealed that verdict last summer, arguing in her opening appellate brief that Judge Ray withheld key details from jurors and the verdict was the result of a “very lopsided” trial. She’s vowed to keep fighting the case “all the way to the Supreme Court if need be,” even if it “takes years” to do so.
Following Tuesday’s decision, a trip to the Supreme Court would be the procedural next step, but it’s unclear if Tasha will actually do so. The high court hears only a tiny fraction of the cases it is sent, and Tasha’s appeal does not likely present the kind of close questions that the justices typically want to tackle.
Tasha’s attorney did not return a request for comment on Tuesday’s ruling.
The status of the $4 million damages award is also unclear. In September, Cardi’s attorneys warned Judge Ray that Tasha might use the delay caused by her appeals to avoid paying.
“This is more than a hypothetical concern in this case,” attorney Lisa F. Moore and Cardi’s other lawyers at the time. “During the litigation, Kebe bragged publicly that she had taken steps to insulate herself from a judgment. And there have been recent online reports that Kebe has moved from Georgia to avoid enforcement of the judgment.”
A month later, Judge Ray ruled that Tasha would need to either immediately pay Cardi B, or secure a bond covering the entire amount while she appeals. It’s unclear if she ever did either.
The Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF), established 75 years ago and still one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, has announced its funding support allocation for the upcoming fiscal year.
“We were going to go to $3 million and now we’re looking at moving it to $3.3 million from the fiscal year that begins May 1,” says MPTF Trustee Dan Beck. That’s up from the current fiscal year, when the Fund distributed over $2.7 million in grants.
The New York City-based non-profit supports a wide array of admission-free events and initiatives aimed at enriching lives and uniting communities through music. In April, the trust fund aims to support over 250 live music performances in celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month, and later will be partnering with local businesses and organizations in events celebrating Juneteenth, as well as providing support for the Chicago Lyric Opera, the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans, the Make Music Alliance and the Broadway League’s annual Curtains Up! event held in Times Square.
The MPTF receives funding from the three major labels, as well as Walt Disney Records, and works closely with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM).
The numbers from the fund’s current fiscal year, ending April 30, are impressive; across North America, it helped pay for 1,200 concerts in parks and public spaces, 400 music events at schools, over 1,000 performances at senior centers and over 1,300 live virtual music events. These 3,500-plus performances, covering all genres, drew over 1 million people in total across in-person and virtual events, according to the fund. All performances must be free to the audience, with MPTF paying union musicians for their work at these events.
Confirming this, Beck says, “They’re all free, and that’s a requirement that has been part of the trust fund since the beginning. It all has to be admission free, can’t be tied to any other material event or political rally or anything like that. It must be something that’s…for the good of the community and to get the musicians paid a fair wage.”
To receive funding for an event, local unions apply to the MPTF for a grant to stage a musical performance and line up a local sponsor to match the grant to provide a fair wage payment for the musicians performing. In some instances, MPTF approaches unions and offers a themed event concept to bring to their local markets, but in most cases, the unions and their matching grant partners choose which union musicians and events their efforts will back.
“A lot of times it’s the municipal government or the Parks Department, or an Arts Council in the local city” that co-sponsor events, says Beck, who has been with the fund for 10 years. Beck was president of V2 Records North America before the turn of the century and also spent over two decades with Epic Records prior to that, rising to senior vp of sales and marketing, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Beck says MPTF proactively supports local unions’ efforts to organize community performances. “We monitor the budget limits and rules and try to help the locals successfully access our funds equitably and fairly,” he says, adding that events funded by the organization run the gamut. “Some locals have 30 members. Others have thousands. We are working with full orchestras and solo musicians.”
The funding that the MPTF distributes to local unions in the United States and Canada comes from a negotiated agreement between the labels and the AFM known as the Sound Recording Labor Agreement. That agreement, based on the labels’ annual sales and streaming revenue, calls for those companies to funnel payments directly to three funds: the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund; the Sound Recording Special Payments Fund; and the Music Performance Trust Fund.
Beck is bullish about this year’s prospects. In addition to musical performances, the organization aims to fund over 500 music education programs in 2023-24 through partnerships with national and local organizations such as Save the Music and Young Audiences Arts for Learning. As part of its educational efforts, it will fund a minimum of $150,000 to be awarded to students in the fall of 2023 through its two scholarship programs, Music Family Scholarship and Music’s Future Scholarship. Last year, more than 90 Music Family Scholarships were given to AFM musicians with family members attending college, while 30 Music’s Future Scholarships went to music students unaffiliated with the union.
On the live performance front, the organization says it will bolster its signature national MusicianFest initiative that brings live music to senior citizens, a segment of society that has been strapped by fixed incomes, inflation, immobility and the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 virus.
While MPTF prefers the local unions to bring in a local funding partner, when the organization is trying to raise its funding distribution outlay, “we have selected certain times where we’ll go to the union locals and say, ‘Look, we will fund 100% if you have something for Black History Month,’” says Beck. For Juneteenth, MPTF did an event with Broadway League, funding a 12-piece band performance in Times Square. “Then we got to thinking about it and [said], ‘Hey, why don’t we take that and offer a Juneteenth event out to all the locals?’ And the response was just great,” Beck adds. “We’ll be doing that again; we will start that offer for Juneteenth literally the day after Jazz Appreciation Month ends.”
While things are looking good going forward, Beck says that MPTF faced major challenges when the pandemic hit — though Beck notes that it also created new opportunities for the fund, with livestreamed performances via Facebook coming to the rescue. “It didn’t matter what type of music someone played, we were able to crank up the livestream thing,” he says. “We have a small staff [of five], I was stunned that we could actually do it. Thankfully, our little grant management team that coordinates all the grants did a remarkable job working with each other. There are 175 union locals across North America, and we were generally working with half of them.”
Certainly, the parent umbrella union’s participation and support remain crucial. Ray Hair, international president of the AFM, said in a statement provided to Billboard that “MPTF is well-positioned to expand its mission throughout the U.S. and Canada for many years to come.” Other prominent supporters include the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), whose chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier and COO Michele Ballantyne said in a joint statement: “RIAA Members are honored to support this dynamic, living testament to the tapestry of American music.”
Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, also weighed in with a statement to Billboard regarding the MPTF, saying, “Your commitment towards supporting musicians, making music a part of every child’s life, and adding to public knowledge about music, is unmatched.”
Beck feels his music industry experience has been beneficial in handling the demands of his position. He recalls working in the major label distribution branch system pre-2000 when those companies had sales offices “around the country, and each had a special relationship with their accounts and with the markets that they worked in. I find that’s kind of very similar to what the union locals are like.”
For his part, Beck is just happy to serve. Referencing the Fund’s mission statement, he sees music as a unifying and healing force.
“I’m very grateful that opportunity came my way,” he says. “Where I am in life, there’s no better way to do things than to be working with people who are trying to make some nice community events happen. As divided as people can be, you put them in a little park together [for a musical event] and they all seem to have a good time and speak nicely to everybody else.”
Global music sales rose for the eighth consecutive year in 2022, with recorded music revenues growing in every world market and across almost all formats, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) “Global Music Report 2023.”
Total revenues climbed to $26.2 billion, a rise of 9% on the previous year. Although that rate of growth is half 2021 year’s rise, when revenues were up 18.5% year-on-year, IFPI said it was still the fourth highest growth level the recorded music business has seen this millennium.
The leading driver of growth was a 10.3% rise in paid-for streaming subscription revenue, which totaled $12.7 billion last year. IFPI reports there were 589 million users of paid subscription accounts at the end of 2022, up from 523 million in the previous 12 months and 443 million in 2020.
Streaming (including paid subscription and advertising-supported) now accounts for 67% of sales across the music industry, up from 65% in 2021 and 62% in 2020, although rate of growth is slowing.
In 2021, streaming revenues rocketed 24% to $16.9 billion. Last year, total revenues streaming revenues increased 11.5% to $17.5 billion.
Despite the dominance of streaming, physical music formats continue to be resilient with CD and vinyl revenues increasing for a second consecutive year — albeit at a slower rate than 2021’s 16.1% rise, fueled by a post-pandemic boom in home music purchases — to $4.6 billion, up 4% on the prior year.
Within physical music revenues, last year’s growth in CD sales proved to be a fleeting uplift with revenues falling 0.4% in 2022. Vinyl revenues shot up 17.1% (IFPI did not provide revenue numbers for CD or vinyl sales).
In terms of market share, physical accounted for 17.5% of the overall market last year (down from 19.2% in 2021) with Asia generating almost half (49.8%) of all global revenues for physical music sales.
Performance rights revenue climbed 8.6% to $2.5 billion, representing 9.4% of global revenues, while sync income was up 22.3% to $0.6 billion, representing 2.4%.
Downloads and what IFPI classifies as other (non-streaming) digital formats was once again the only format channel to record a decline, falling 11.7% to $900 million and representing just 3.6% of the global market.
As per previous year’s reports, IFPI uses current exchange rates when compiling its Global Music Report, restating all historic local currency values on an annual basis. Market values therefore vary retrospectively as a result of foreign currency movements, says IFPI, which represents more than 8,000 record company members worldwide, including all three major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
Thanks to sustained growth in streaming, global recorded music revenues have now reached their highest level since 1999 — when music sales totaled $22.3 billion – on an absolute dollar basis, not accounting for inflation, reports IFPI. Piracy and declining physical sales saw the market bottom out at $13.1 billion in 2014.
“Record companies’ investment and innovation has helped make music even more globally interconnected than ever,” said IFPI chief executive Frances Moore in a statement, accompanying the report.
As the music economy grows, however, “so too do the areas in which record companies must work to ensure that the value of the music artists are creating is recognized and returned,” Moore warned.
Referring to the ongoing threat of music piracy, she said the challenges for record companies, artists and creators are “becoming increasingly complex as a greater number of actors seek to benefit from music whilst playing no part in investing in and developing it.”
Writing in the report’s foreword, Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge said “to succeed, music’s future must be artist-centric.” He called on the industry to focus on building a “robust, growing and sustainable music ecosystem” in which “creators of all music content, whether in the form of audio or short-form video, are fairly compensated and can therefore thrive for decades to come.”
IFPI’s Global Music Report 2023 Topline Figures:
Global music sales up 9% to $26.2 billion
Streaming subscription revenues up 10.3% to $12.7 billion
Total streaming revenues (including paid and ad-supported) up 11.5% to $17.5 billion
Physical revenues up 4% to $4.6 billion
Performance rights revenues rise 8.6% to $2.5 billion
589 million paid music subscribers
Streaming’s share of global music sales: 67%
In terms of world markets, the U.S. retains its number one position with music sales growing 4.8% and exceeding $10 billion in recorded music sales for the first time.
Japan holds steady in second place with sales growing 5.4% in 2022. The third and fourth-biggest markets for recorded music remain the United Kingdom (+5.4%) and Germany (+2.2%), respectively.
The rest of the top 10 is made up of China (+28.4%), which becomes a top five global market for the first time, France (+7.7%), South Korea, Canada (+8.1%), Brazil (+15.4%) and Australia (+8.1%).
IFPI said that music sales were up in all 62 of the global markets it tracks. The organization’s free-to-access report does not provide market-by-market revenue breakdowns.
On a regional basis, it was a similar story with revenues from the U.S. and Canada region up 5%, while Latin America – where streaming now accounts for 85.2% of the market — saw growth of 25.9%
The fastest-growing market region in 2022 was Sub-Saharan Africa, which recorded a 34.7% rise in music sales, largely driven by the booming music market in South Africa, where sales were up by more than 30% year-on-year.
Revenues in Middle East and North Africa, last year’s fastest growing region, rose by almost 24%, driven almost entirely by streaming, which has 95.5% share of the region’s recorded music market – the highest share for any region worldwide, reports IFPI.
Revenues in Europe, the second-largest recorded music region in the world after the U.S. and Canada, grew by 7.5% — compared to the prior year’s growth rate of 15.4% — driven by gains in Europe’s three biggest markets, the U.K., Germany and France. Asia grew by 15.4%.
Bad Bunny has been hit with a $40 million lawsuit by an ex-girlfriend who alleges he used a voice recording of her uttering the now-famous catchphrase “Bad Bunny Baby” in two of his songs without her consent.
The lawsuit, filed by Carliz De La Cruz Hernández in Puerto Rico, claims that she never legally agreed for her voice recording to be used in Bad Bunny’s songs, live performances, radio, television or any other form of media. She alleges that his use of the recording constitutes a violation of moral rights under U.S. copyright law — under which sampling any amount of a sound recording requires a license — and a similar law in Puerto Rico known as Ley de Derechos Morales de Autor. She also claims that it violates the Ley del Derecho sobre la Propia Imagen, or right to self-image, with De La Cruz Hernández arguing that the unauthorized use of the recording commercially exploits her voice and identity.
According to the filing, De La Cruz Hernández and Bad Bunny (born Benito A. Martinez Ocasio) began their relationship in 2011 when they both worked at the Econo Supermarket in Vega Baja, Benito’s hometown in Puerto Rico. At the time, the then-aspiring artist was constantly churning out tracks — and according to De La Cruz Hernández, he often asked for her opinion on his music. She would offer feedback in addition to helping him organize his performances, rundowns and contracts, according to the complaint.
In 2015, at Benito’s request, De La Cruz Hernández says she recorded the phrase “Bad Bunny Baby” via the voice memo app on her phone. The future tagline first publicly appeared on the 2016 track “Pa’ Ti” featuring Bryant Myers, on which De La Cruz Hernández argues that her voice was used without her legal authorization and without credit. Her voice can be heard at the start of the Latin trap song and again at the 2:40 mark.
De La Cruz Hernández’s voice is again featured on the track “Dos Mil 16″ off Bad Bunny’s blockbuster 2022 album, Un Verano Sin Ti, also without her authorization, the complaint states. She claims that Bad Bunny’s representatives sent her a contract on May 5, 2022, the day before the record’s official release, offering her $20,000 for the use of her voice. The next day, before reaching any settlement, the album dropped with “Dos Mil 16” on the tracklist, she alleges.
“Dos Mil 16” peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at No. 16 on the Hot Latin Songs chart. The track has more than 60 million views on YouTube.
De La Cruz Hernández is also suing Rimas Entertainment, the label that released both “Pa Ti” and Un Verano Sin Ti.
Billboard reached out to Rimas and Bad Bunny for comment but did not hear back at press time.
The country’s two leading concert companies, Live Nation and AEG, are at odds over how Congress should address the future of ticketing after a disagreement over Taylor Swift’s record-breaking The Eras Tour.
Long before the pop star’s Nov. 15 sale dominated the news cycle, where hundreds of thousands of Swift fans experienced service disruptions that kept them from buying the tickets they wanted, the two companies had signed an agreement that many thought might take AEG out of the ticketing business entirely. In 2021, when AEG announced that its facility management division ASM had struck a deal to make Ticketmaster its preferred ticketing partner, many assumed that meant the company was on the way to shutting down its own ticking platform, AXS Tickets.
Instead, ASM’s contract with the Live Nation-owned Ticketmaster would pave the way for an expansion of AEG’s AXS, thanks to a provision in Ticketmaster’s exclusive agreement that granted AEG the right to use AXS to sell tickets to AEG-promoted shows at ASM venues, sources tell Billboard. AEG tours like Kane Brown, Elton John and Luke Combs could opt out of using Ticketmaster when playing ASM-client venues such as Soldier Field in Chicago, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis and Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., and use AXS instead. This marked the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, potentially allowing hundreds of arenas, stadiums and performing arts centers to use AXS for the first time, like the new Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — the highest grossing stadium on Billboard’s 2022 year-end Boxscore chart.
The provision was a sort of double victory for AEG, Live Nation’s leading competitor: The company was able to leverage its control over 350 ASM venues to get those clients large payouts for re-signing with Ticketmaster without forsaking its own ticketing service. AEG officials had also hoped this might mark the beginning of a more open ticketing ecosystem away from the sorts of exclusive deals that have helped Ticketmaster gain such dominance in the space. But less than two years later, AEG and Live Nation find themselves at odds, divided over the handling of Swift’s The Eras Tour.
AEG is now refusing to join a coalition of music companies supporting Live Nation’s Fair Ticketing campaign, a piece of proposed anti-scalper legislation born out of the bot attack on Ticketmaster’s Nov. 15 presale for Swift’s tour. While Universal Music Group, Red Light Management, Irving and Jeffrey Azoff, and all four major talent agencies are backing the FAIR Ticketing reforms to ban scalping practices like “speculative” ticket selling and mandating all-in pricing across all ticketing marketplaces nationally, AEG has been taking a different approach to what they see as some of ticketing’s biggest problems. Sources tell Billboard that AEG executives have been quietly lobbying the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts to lock up the ticket market as a possible violation of its consent decree governing its merger with Live Nation in 2010. AEG leadership is also lobbying politicians to include restrictions on such exclusive ticketing practices in new legislation that could be introduced as soon as this week.
Sources say Live Nation executives have been careful not to engage with AEG publicly about its exclusivity agreements. Privately, they have accused AEG of trying to have it both ways, accepting the money that comes with exclusive ticketing contracts, while trying to expand AXS ticketing beyond the ASM deal into all NFL stadiums ticketed by Ticketmaster.
“This is a bad look for them,” one source at Ticketmaster tells Billboard.
Since Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 and AEG launched its own ticketing platform in 2012, both companies have found they can earn more from the concerts they promote if they also control the ticketing, collecting more fees for themselves, while keeping data generated by the concert in house. The additional revenue for a promoter like AEG could be substantial, especially for an artist like Swift, who sold a total of 2.4 million tickets for The Eras Tour.
With Swift’s tour, sources say AXS was expecting to handle some of the ticketing under the ASM-Ticketmaster provision, since AEG was a co-promoter with partner Messina Touring Group. ASM managed five stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek, and sources say AXS officials were hoping its ties to the tour could lead to it getting some, if not all of the tour. Except that Ticketmaster executives said their exclusive contracts with more than a dozen NFL teams (and the venues they own) superseded AXS’ claim. Under that reading of the deal, two of the 12 ASM dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.
Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter. According to a source, AEG executives have since spoken with the Department of Justice, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.
Relations only worsened in the days following The Eras Tour presale. After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and cited the company’s arrangement with AEG in response to claims of monopolistic behavior. “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond with a statement, saying the promoter had no choice but to use Ticketmaster. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” an AEG spokesperson said. “We didn’t have a choice.”
AEG hopes its private lobbying of politicians and anti-trust officials will lead to regulatory change that could include abolishing exclusive ticketing contracts in the United States and ultimately move toward an industry more similar to Europe, where promoters generally don’t sign exclusive ticketing deals and work with multiple partners to sell tickets.
Despite the disagreement, the ASM-Ticketmaster deal remains in place, and AEG officials have had success convincing buildings like the Greek Theater in Los Angeles and the Quicken Home Arena in Cleveland to avoid exclusive ticketing agreements and remain open to multiple systems.
Live Nation and AEG declined to comment for this story.
Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees the tech giant said it would lay off in January. The company’s workforce doubled during the pandemic, however, in the midst of a hiring surge across almost the entire tech sector.
Tech companies have announced tens of thousands of job cuts this year.
In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company’s annual planning process completed this month led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas.
“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.
The job cuts announced Monday will hit profitable areas for the company including its cloud computing unit AWS and its burgeoning advertising business. Twitch, the gaming platform Amazon owns, will also see some layoffs as well as Amazon’s PXT organizations, which handle human resources and other functions.
Prior layoffs had also hit PXT, the company’s stores division, which encompasses its e-commerce business as well as company’s brick-and-mortar stores such as Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and other departments such as the one that runs the virtual assistant Alexa.
Earlier this month, the company said it would pause construction on its headquarters building in northern Virginia, though the first phase of that project will open this June with 8,000 employees.
Like other tech companies, including Facebook parent Meta and Google parent Alphabet, Amazon ramped up hiring during the pandemic to meet the demand from homebound Americans that were increasingly buying stuff online to keep themselves safe from the virus.
Amazon’s workforce, in warehouses and offices, doubled to more than 1.6 million people in about two years. But demand slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. The company began pausing or cancelling its warehouse expansion plans last year.
Amid growing anxiety over the potential for a recession, Amazon in the past few months shut down a subsidiary that’s been selling fabrics for nearly 30 years and shuttered its hybrid virtual, in-home care service Amazon Care among other cost-cutting moves.
Jassy said Monday given the uncertain economy and the “uncertainty that exists in the near future,” the company has chosen to be more streamlined.
He said the teams that will be impacted by the latest round of layoffs are not done making final decisions on which roles will be eliminated. The company plans to finalize those decisions by mid to late April and notify those who will be laid off.
MUMBAI – Spotify has removed Indian record label Zee Music Company’s catalog after negotiations for a renewal of their licensing agreement fell through, Billboard has learned. As a result, the No.1 track on Spotify in India over the past two weeks, “Apna Bana Le” from the soundtrack to the 2022 Hindi film Bhediya, is no longer available on the platform.
“Spotify and Zee Music have been unable to reach a licensing agreement,” Spotify says in a statement sent to Billboard. “Throughout these negotiations, Spotify has tried to find creative ways to strike a deal with Zee Music and will continue our good faith negotiations in hopes of finding a mutually agreeable solution soon.”
Anurag Bedi, the chief business officer at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, declined to comment.
Apart from Spotify, Zee Music Company is also absent from Gaana, which it disappeared from in 2022 only a few months before the Indian audio-streaming platform became a subscription-only service.
On March 14, the last day its releases could be streamed on Spotify, Zee Music had over two dozen tracks on Spotify’s Daily Top 200 Songs chart for India. These included long-running Bollywood hits such as “Maiyya Mainu” from Jersey (2022), the title tracks from Kalank (2019) and Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas (2019), “Makhna” from Drive (2019), “Namo Namo” from Kedarnath (2018) and “Zaalima” from Raees (2017).
The label’s catalog also includes soundtracks to films distributed by sister company Zee Studios, such as the 2018 rom-com Veere Di Wedding and the 2019 hip-hop-centric Gully Boy.
Zee Music Company, which is part of the Zee Entertainment Enterprises media conglomerate, is one of India’s largest domestic record labels. Its YouTube subscriber base of 93.6 million makes it the second most-subscribed-to Indian music channel after global leader T-Series, which boasts 239 million subscribers.