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Digital music piracy still plagues global music creators, with criminals employing new tactics like “bulletproof” internet service providers, but it is not as much of a problem as copyright infringement of film and television content, according to a new report from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).
The USTR’s annual report on “Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy” (NML) lists seven websites that pose a threat to music industry creators, the same number as in 2022. Those websites engage in stream-ripping, torrent hosting or illegal downloading of pre-release or newly released digital albums.
The latest USTR report highlights new infringement tactics and growing concerns about how social networking sites like Russia’s VKontakte (VK) and Tencent Music Entertainment’s WeChat in China are facilitating the sale of copyright-infringing or counterfeit products.
While the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented spike in online piracy — music, film, television, publishing and software all saw higher levels in 2022 compared to 2021 — music experienced the lowest increase, according to a study by Muso, a U.K. company focused on measuring global piracy, which the USTR highlighted in its report.
Data from Muso determined that from January to August 2022 there were 141.7 billion visits to piracy websites, a 21.9% boost over the same eight-month period in 2021. The most dramatic increase came from film piracy, which grew 49.1% year-on-year. Music saw the lowest increase at 3.87%.
The USTR stresses, however, that while progress has been made in forcing some sites to remove pirated content, the introduction of streaming platforms and their widespread adoption has changed the way media is consumed and done little to stem overall piracy levels, especially for audiovisual works.
“Despite expectations that streaming would help combat piracy, the illegal distribution and consumption of high-quality video content has remained prevalent,” the NML report states.
Reacting to the Notorious Markets list, Mitch Glazier, chairman/CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said it “shines a much-needed spotlight on the devastating impact of copyright theft on American creators.” He adds that “copyright enforcement is necessary to protect livelihoods.”
New to this year’s report are concerns about an increase in piracy sites utilizing “bulletproof” Internet service providers (ISPs) to facilitate their infringing activities. Bulletproof ISPs are characterized by terms of service that often explicitly advertise leniency in allowing their customers to upload and distribute infringing content.
While right holders have expressed concerns about bulletproof ISPs for several years, in 2022, several submissions noted that the growing reliance by pirate sites on such ISPs made it increasingly difficult for right holders to remove infringing content.
Among the bulletproof ISPs being used by music piracy operations is Amarutu, which provides offshore hosting for criminal activity and ignores takedown requests, the USTR says. The dedicated server page of Amarutu’s website advertises that “DMCA messages will be forwarded to the client for resolution but in most cases action is not required.” Amarutu reportedly has an office location in Hong Kong and is registered in Seychelles, with data centers in the Netherlands, the USTR says.
While most of the sites impacting music creators were the same this year, the USTR notes that MP3juices, a stream-ripper, relocated to host Cloudnet in Singapore last year. The website extracts audio from YouTube videos and allows users to download an mp4 file of the audio, often an unlicensed copy. Right holders say MP3juices has attempted to subvert their efforts to demote it in search engine rankings by creating new domain names that reappear at the top of search results.
The USTR once again included Russian social networking and music streaming site VK in its notorious markets report. VK, Russia’s most-visited website, reportedly facilitates the distribution of copyright-infringing files, including thousands of videos and e-books identified by the U.S. film and publishing industries each month. The site allows users “to easily upload video files, including infringing content” and to stream it through an on-site video player, the USTR says.
As Billboard reported in December, following the pullout of most of the global music industry from Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine last year, VK has returned to pirating music. Dozens of albums from Western artists, including from Taylor Swift (signed to Universal Music Group’s Republic) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (on Warner Music Group’s Warner Records), have become available for download.
Complicating matters, last month Belarus adopted a law that essentially legalizes piracy of music and other forms of copyrighted entertainment, which could make it a hotbed for piracy well beyond its borders — and possibly encourage Russian lawmakers to pass a similar law there.
In this year’s report, the USTR also highlights NewAlbumReleases, which previous NML reports said ran out of the Czech Republic but which uses reverse proxy services to mask its location. The website makes its infringing content available for download on “cyberlockers” like Rapidgator, another “notorious market,” according to the USTR.
Also making the list again is FLVTO, a stream-ripping site known to be operated by Russian national Tofig Kurbanov, which has been a thorn in the side of U.S. labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). A U.S. district judge last year approved an order for Kurbannov to pay $83 million in damages for circumventing YouTube’s anti-piracy measures and infringing copyrights of audio recordings, but he has appealed the judgment.
Rounding out the list of music-creator threats are torrent sites Rarbg, known to have operated out of Bulgaria, and 1337x, which utilizes reverse proxy services to mask the location of its hosting servers. Variants of 1337x have been subject to blocking orders in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal and the U.K.
This year’s NML report identified a new issue, stating that over the past three years, it has identified a growing concern from rights holders about the proliferation of counterfeit sales facilitated by “social commerce platforms” (social media platforms with integrated e-commerce ecosystems). The concern has coincided with the continued growth of e-commerce and the increased movement of many physical sellers to predominantly online platforms.
Rights holders state that while certain social commerce platforms have taken steps to implement anti-counterfeiting policies, many others still lack adequate anti-counterfeiting policies, processes and tools such as identity verification, as well as effective notice and takedown procedures, proactive anti-counterfeiting filters and tools and strong policies against repeat infringers.
While not calling out music specifically in this newer trend, the USTR names Tencent’s WeChat as one problematic platform. Although described by Tencent as a “social communication tool and information publishing platform,” WeChat provides an e-commerce ecosystem that facilitates the distribution and sale of counterfeit products to users of the overall WeChat platform,” the USTR says in its report. Central to the issue is the growing popularity of WeChat’s short video function, “Channels,” to advertise counterfeit goods directly to consumers, who can purchase the counterfeits featured in the videos via a “shopping cart” functionality in the WeChat app.
Tencent’s efforts to combat counterfeiting with respect to WeChat “have been inadequate,” the USTR says. Rights holders have complained to U.S. officials about the lack of cooperation from WeChat in supporting criminal investigations of counterfeit sellers. “WeChat points to collaboration with law enforcement and regulatory authorities but asserts privacy and data security laws prevent certain disclosures of information,” the USTR says in the NML. (Tencent owns Tencent Music Entertainment, which licenses Billboard China).
President Biden urged Congress to “crack down on excessive online concert, sporting event, and other entertainment ticket fees” on Wednesday (Feb. 1), according to a statement from the White House. Biden’s call for action came roughly a week after Live Nation Entertainment faced scathing critiques from both Democratic and Republic senators during a Senate Judiciary hearing.
Speaking with his competition council, Biden said that Congress “should lower the huge service fees that companies like Ticketmaster slap onto tickets for concerts or sporting events that can easily add hundreds of bucks to a family’s night out,” according to The New York Times. “It’s a basic question of fairness,” he added.
President Biden’s interest in curbing ticket fees is part of the Junk Fee Prevention Act, which he discussed with his competition council Wednesday. The act takes aim at four types of excessive fees that cumulatively “cost American consumers billions of dollars a year.”
“Many online ticket sellers impose massive service fees at check-out that are not disclosed when consumers are choosing their tickets,” the White House noted in a statement. These fees make attending live events prohibitively expensive in some cases: “A family of four attending a show could end up paying far more than $100 in fees above and beyond the cost of the tickets.”
As a result, “the President is calling on Congress to prohibit excessive fees, require the fees to be disclosed in the ticket price, and mandate disclosure of any ticket holdbacks that diminish available supply.”
In addition to limiting ticket fees, the Junk Fee Prevention Act also aims to eliminate “airline fees for family members to sit with young children,” “exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone, and internet service” and “surprise resort and destination fees.”
Ticket fees were just one of several topics that came up during the Senate Judiciary hearing last month, which also explored the Taylor Swift ticket sale fiasco, whether Live Nation bullies its competitors and the extent to which the company acts as a monopoly. Joe Berchtold, Live Nation’s president and chief financial officer, told lawmakers that his company wasn’t as powerful as critics were making out and argued that “ticketing has never been more competitive.”
The hearing almost immediately caused ripples in the live music industry. The following day, Ineffable Music Group announced that it would no longer collect 20% of touring artists’ merchandise sales at the 10 venues it owns or operates. “Any action we can take to help to insure a healthy, vibrant concert ecosystem is important,” Ineffable Music Group CEO Thomas Cussins told Billboard at the time.
In late 2020, when Eyeball Records co-owners Zac Nadile and Alex Saavedra decided to put out small runs of cassette tapes for indie artists like one-man synth band N8NOFACE and Canadian hip-hop producer blackwinterwells, they called around to see who made these plastic throwbacks. They wound up with quotes from five different companies — all of whom turned out to be brokers leading to the same manufacturing source.
“It’s a man-behind-the-curtain-type deal,” says Saavedra.
“I’m imagining total Wizard of Oz things, like dude in a basement bought the final manufacturing for cassettes in the ’80s, and finally, his time has come,” Nadile adds. “Like the dude who bought a Gremlin, and finally it’s worth money.”
While that isn’t exactly the truth about the cassette manufacturer, Nick Keshishian of ENAS Media, it’s not far off. As cassettes have come back over the past seven years — from 81,000 U.S. sales in 2015 to 440,000 last year, a 443% increase, according to Luminate — a small number of manufacturers, including ENAS, have capitalized on the mini-boom after either anticipating or lucking into the market.
Keshishian opened his Pasadena, Calif., company in 1985, at first making blank cassettes for churches to record sermons to distribute to their congregations. As cassettes grew into one of the music industry’s major formats — growing from 61 million unit sales in 1978 to 450 million in 1988, according to the RIAA — he expanded in the spiritual-music market and began working with independent record labels, first manufacturing tapes, then expanding to CDs.
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
Even through the record industry’s shift from selling physical units to downloads and streaming, sales remained strong until 2017, when Keshishian’s customers in the religion and education industries finally gave up on CDs and sales declined. Keshishian closed that year — for one month. Then, he says, “Everybody was calling and asking for cassettes, so I reopened.”
The cassette market has slowly come together to meet the unexpected demand. Splashy names such as Taylor Swift and Maren Morris have put out larger runs, as has My Morning Jacket, which recently released 1,000 cassettes. Megan Thee Stallion also recently released 10,000 tapes, while Charlie Kaplan‘s Tapehead City label, run out of his New York apartment, recently helped Death Row Records sell nearly 20,000 combined cassette reissues of classic albums by 2Pac, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Keshishian, Kaplan and others who work in the space say the demand is similar to the vinyl market in the mid-2000s. “It’s tough. The distributors aren’t fully set up for cassette. Some are. It’s limited,” says Kaplan, who goes by the nickname Charlie Tapes. “It’s not set up quite as organized as vinyl. It’s a little bit more scrappy.”
In addition to ENAS Media, top cassette manufacturers include National Audio Company in Springfield, Mo., and Recording the Masters (RTM) in France. National Audio has been operating since 1968 and reacted to the cassette revival of the past seven years by recovering equipment from closed manufacturers such as Ampex in Opelika, Ala. The company wound up reconditioning massive machines, like one that is 63 feet long, weighs 20 tons and is “built to last,” according to National Audio owner Steve Stepp, who has worked at the company since the beginning and took it over from his late father. After music cassettes died in the late ’90s, National Audio kept busy with cassettes for instructional materials, spoken-word bibles and Library of Congress work until indie bands and labels came calling as early as 2006. “Suddenly, we were back in business,” Stepp says.
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
RTM, based in Avranches about 220 miles west of Paris, has made magnetic tape for nearly a century, focusing recently on studio reel-to-reels and credit-card strips. But after a group of European investors, some of whom ran indie labels, bought the company a year and a half ago, the new owners are “actually making it a proper music company,” says Neal Birnie, RTM’s London-based creative director, who also runs labels Day Dreamer and Night Dreamer, which represent jazz musicians Gary Bartz and Maisha, among others.
ENAS’ Keshishian is the most reclusive of the cassette manufacturers. “He just gets the job done, and really professional, like no filter,” says Matthew McQueen, founder of Los Angeles indie label Leaving Records. “There’s not a lot of frills with Nick’s stuff.” Born in Armenia, Keshishian came to the U.S. with his family, looking for opportunity, in 1978. As he learned to speak English, he played a couple of instruments in a band specializing in Armenian, Greek, Russian and Spanish songs, and found work at a cassette company — a vocation he has continued ever since. “That’s what I live off,” he says.
Some in the record business consider cassettes a fad — reps for all three major labels did not respond to interview requests. “There’s a small and dedicated cohort of people that buy it and enjoy it. I don’t see it ever taking a major share of the market again,” says Ben Swanson, COO of Secretly Group, which has put out small cassette runs for Mitski, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver and about two-thirds of the top independent label’s overall releases. “We’ll do anywhere from 200 to 1,000 copies, depending on the artist. Kind of meeting the fans where they are.”
But the cassette business is stronger than the Luminate numbers suggest, according to Greg Frehner, co-owner and president of Toronto-based duplication.ca, since much of the market is due to indie bands selling tapes at merch tables, which are often not counted. Unlike ENAS and RTM, which manufacture the blank magnetic tape (a.k.a. “pancakes”), duplication.ca buys the non-magnetic tape components, assembles the cassettes and sells them to bands and labels. Frehner estimates the company ships 1 million units yearly, in part due to major-label orders. “It’s becoming a routine activity now, for some of them,” he says. “It’s been a steady increase.”
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
Cassettes cost anywhere from $3-7 apiece, depending on how elaborate and artistic buyers want to get, according to Stephanie Hudacek, president of Soundly, a Nashville distributor that puts out tapes by My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers, Major Lazer, Maren Morris and others. Customers can experiment with printed “J-Cards” containing liner notes and photos, and, like Swift, Megan the Stallion and other stars recently, order plastics of different colors. A reason for the recent boom, Hudacek says, is slower vinyl turnaround times due to pandemic supply-chain issues. “It’s just cool to have a thing,” she says.
“It’s still a novelty-niche item. [With] these cassette-duplication services, the minimum run is 50 tapes, so you can experiment. It’s an accessible entry-level point for artists and labels,” McQueen adds. “I still get questions: ‘Why are you making tapes? I still have a bunch of tapes in my attic.’ But it’s more cost-accessible. And I love the sound quality and personal touch.”
Dry January seems like it’s everywhere, doesn’t it? At the top of every new year, the subject dominates social media posts and conversations with friends over mocktails. In 2022, an estimated 35% of Americans abstained from alcohol for the month of January — an increase from 21% in 2019.
After Dry January is over, many people will pour a drink in celebration of their achievement, while others may choose to make abstaining from alcohol a more permanent lifestyle. But for many Americans, the problem of addiction is more serious. More than 14 million adults in the United States have alcohol use disorder, and each year, we lose nearly 100,000 people to alcohol-related causes.
The music industry — known for “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” — is among those hardest hit. A 2020 research project involving Tulane University found that a staggering 56% of music industry professionals cite problematic substance use. And we’re all familiar with the countless stories of artists who have tragically lost their lives or felt like they couldn’t return to the stage as they battled their addiction.
Now, the music industry is beginning to take the lead in supporting people in addiction recovery through community and empowerment, with musicians, fans, industry executives and crew showing what’s possible with innovative new solutions that go beyond the traditional recovery model.
Sadly, conventional approaches to addiction are not solving the problem at the same pace it’s growing. Despite the best of intentions, these traditional approaches can lead to feelings of shame and exclusion; many people in recovery say treatment programs can be too much sitting around and talking about their weaknesses. They can also feel isolating, and loneliness is one of the worst problems someone struggling with addiction can face. Because of this, there’s a negative stigma surrounding people in recovery.
But Dry January shows us something different. Instead of fostering isolation, it creates community, and it feels empowering because “everybody’s doing it,” It’s also inclusive of people who have challenges with substance use as well as those who don’t. There’s no demarcation: “We’re all in this together.” You feel freer to plan fun, sober activities with others. And whether you’re out socially or at a work event, you don’t have to make excuses for not drinking. People openly share how good they feel and how they’re gaining from it, not what they’re giving up.
It begs the question: What if this was how we supported people in recovery all year round? In music, at least, it’s a question that’s now being answered by a number of artists, companies and organizations.
The Warped Tour provided mental health and sobriety support on the road throughout, including bringing along a sober coach as a guide to artists and crew in recovery. This not only allowed the tour to help those who were trying to stay sober but also offered services to those whose habits were starting to affect their well-being before it became a larger issue.
Last year, Danny Wimmer Presents joined forces with 1 Million Strong, an initiative driven by Stand Together and The Phoenix (one of the most innovative recovery programs in the country) to create sober-supportive spaces or “wellness retreats” — for people in recovery and others — at last year’s Bourbon & Beyond Festival and the Louder Than Life Festival. In October, The Chainsmokers did the same at their concert at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater.
This isn’t about turning the industry sober. It’s about giving people a better path to truly living in recovery so they can bring their best selves to music — allowing everyone to benefit from their unique contributions.
It’s clear that people across the music industry see the urgent need for something new. And perhaps it’s not surprising to see how the industry is uniquely able to offer it.
Just like the best aspects of Dry January, perhaps there’s no greater force on Earth than music at fighting isolation with community, overcoming shame by tapping into inner strength and beating stigma with self-expression and pride.
Colette Weintraub is the head of Stand Together Music, working alongside the music industry to co-create solutions around addiction recovery, education, free speech, and ending the war on drugs.
Kevin Lyman, best known as the creator of the Vans Warped Tour, has shaped youth culture for over 40 years with his award-winning expertise in the music and entertainment industry as well as business and philanthropic ventures.
A federal appeals court has upheld Raphy Pina’s conviction on a federal gun charge, ruling that prosecutors had “overwhelming” evidence that the star music manager illegally owned firearms despite a previous felony conviction that barred him from doing so.
Lawyers for Pina (full name Rafael Antonio Pina-Nieves) had challenged the 2021 guilty verdict by arguing that the judge who oversaw the trial had allowed inadmissible testimony that had a “devastating impact” on the jury’s ability to fairly decide the case.
But in a decision Monday (Jan. 30), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the government had provided “overwhelming” evidence that Pina owned guns. The unfair testimony might have been “highly prejudicial,” the court said, but added it was ultimately harmless because Pina likely would have been convicted without it.
Crucially, the appeals court cited a tapped phone call in which Pina himself was caught talking to an associate about a safe holding “my guns, rifles, bullets.” In that recorded call, the court said Pina “left no doubt” that the safe “contained guns and bullets that were his.”
A representative for Pina, a 44-year-old veteran music executive who manages Daddy Yankee, did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
Though it upheld one of Pina’s convictions, the appeals court overturned another one — ruling that prosecutors failed to prove that he had illegally owned an automatic weapon. The court said there was clear evidence that Pina owned the gun, but not that he had been aware that it had been illegally modified into a fully automatic weapon — a key requirement under the law.
“While Pina-Nieves does not dispute that the evidence suffices to show that he constructively possessed the weapon … we do not see how a rational juror could make the requisite inference that Pina-Nieves knew that this weapon had the characteristics of a machinegun,” the appeals court wrote, using Pina’s full surname.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.
Pina was indicted in August 2020, accused of possessing two handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition despite the fact that he was barred from doing so because of his 2016 conviction on federal fraud and money laundering charges. Prosecutors separately alleged that one of those guns was a Glock pistol that had been “modified to fire fully automatically with a single pull of the trigger” — making it an illegal automatic weapon.
Following a December trial in San Juan, Pina was convicted on both charges. In May, he was sentenced to 41 months (3 years and five months) in prison and ordered to pay a $150,000 sanction.
Despite Monday’s partial reversal, it’s unclear if Pina’s prison sentence will be reduced. When he was sentenced in May, the judge ruled that he was sentenced to the full 41 months “as to each count 1 and 2” but that the two sentences would be “served concurrently with each other.”
Read the entire decision here:
Although Linda Ronstadt won’t receive any kind of windfall for landing her breakthrough 1970 hit “Long Long Time” in the latest episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, the singer tells Billboard: “I still love the song and I’m very glad that Gary will get a windfall.” She’s referring to Gary White, the songwriter who first played it for Ronstadt in 1969.
After the episode aired Jan. 29, Spotify tweeted that streams jumped 4,900% between 11 p.m. and midnight; across all services, the track’s on-demand streaming increased from 8,000 the day before the episode to 149,000 the day after, according to Luminate. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer hasn’t seen the episode, but first heard about the synch deal when her manager, John Boylan, told her after a friend informed him about it. “I don’t follow social media or streaming services very closely,” Ronstadt says by email.
In March 2021, Ronstadt sold her recorded-music assets, including royalty streams from her master recordings and ownership of some masters, to uber-manager Irving Azoff‘s Iconic Artist Group. “She’s not unhappy about it, believe me,” says Boylan, her manager of 20 years and a longtime producer who performed with Ronstadt throughout her career. “We sold her catalog. The last four or five years have been a complete tsunami of buyouts like this.”
The HBO-placement notoriety will help Ronstadt’s upcoming projects, Boylan says, including a planned biopic with James Keach, who produced the 2019 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. Ronstadt has never owned the master for “Long Long Time,” Boylan adds, due to her Capitol Records contract. But it was her first Billboard hit, peaking at No. 25 and remaining on the charts for 12 weeks. (Neither White nor his publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, responded to interview requests.)
Ronstadt, 76, who suffers from a brain disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy, which resembles Parkinson’s Disease, recalled the song’s history via answers to email questions. “I met Gary through guitarist David Bromberg, who took me to the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village to see Gary performing with [the late singer-songwriter] Paul Siebel. After the show, Gary played me ‘Long Long Time’ and I immediately wanted to record it,” she says. “It wasn’t a country song, wasn’t a folk song, or a rock song, but I thought it was a really good song.”
“Long Long Time,” which appeared three separate times in the The Last of Us episode, is the soundtrack for actors Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett’s first meeting, playing the song on a piano, kissing and starting a long-term relationship. It’s the latest in a string of streaming-TV catalog tracks to unexpectedly dominate pop culture, from Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” in last spring’s Stranger Things to the Cramps’ version of “Goo Goo Muck” in last fall’s Wednesday.
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett on The Last of Us.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Boylan recalls playing “Long Long Time” on acoustic guitar with Ronstadt during a 1970 Washington, D.C., rally before thousands of people. “I was nervous,” he says. “She held that crowd with just that voice and her acoustic guitar.”
The Last of Us is not the first “Long Long Time” revival. Harry Belafonte, Mindy McCready and Jerry Jeff Walker have covered it, and it was in movies and a 1975 episode of The Rockford Files. “I liked Gary singing it live,” Ronstadt says, “but I don’t know any other versions.”
EMPIRE is pushing further into clubland, with big ambitions for helping DJs and producers get paid.
Today (Feb. 1), the San Francisco-based label announced that Moody Jones will step into the newly created general manager of dance role. Jones was previously EMPIRE’s svp of digital & creative, a position from which he worked across genres including dance projects by artists like The Martinez Brothers and Santino Le Saint.
Jones tells Billboard that this position will allow EMPIRE to “prioritize our expansion in this scene.” Jones’ new role follows EMPIRE’S acquisition of Claude VonStroke‘s storied Dirtybird label last October, with Jones adding that EMPIRE Dance is currently in talks with other labels and properties and “are open to other opportunities including catalog acquisitions.” Jones — a 2022 Billboard Indie Power Player honoree — will lead a dance team made up of the Dirtybird team, along with a team of new hires.
In this new role, his day-to-day involves signing artists, working on reintroducing songs from the EMPIRE catalog, and developing ways to incorporate dance strategies into the company’s daily priorities. Most crucially though, is time spent “getting obsessed with artists that deserve more exposure and figuring out where EMPIRE Dance can add value to them,” Jones says.
“The music industry has been evolving over the last five years and the dance labels haven’t caught up yet,” Jones says. “Our goal is to improve dance artist and label deals and reintroduce strong communities. DJs and dance artists have gotten used to making pennies on their music and making majority of their income on touring, which unfortunately means less quality time in production and more negative impact on their mental and physical health. I’m trying to help artists turn the pennies they are making on music into profits to better their livelihood.”
While EMPIRE has previously worked largely in genres like hip-hop and Latin, it’s bringing a significant competitive edge to the dance space. The company has its own publishing division and boasts “our own distributor so we have better data insights and audience analytics that empower us and our artists to make more proactive decisions,” he says.
EMPIRE also has its own studios, synch and partnership team and international staff in more than a dozen cities to help with regional rollouts.
“Moody has been an integral part of EMPIRE’s growth over the years,” EMPIRE CEO Ghazi adds in a statement. “As we expand into Dance, I’m confident in Moody at the helm with his ability to identify and develop artists that are impacting culture.”
Maria “Mechas” Mercedes Montejo has joined Sony Music Latin-Iberia as managing director of the Andean region (which includes Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), Billboard has learned. She replaces Adriana Restrepo, who has joined the leadership team of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI.
Montejo will report directly to Damián Amato, who is overseeing Sony Music Latin’s now unified South American operations. The Buenos Aires-based executive, who’s been with Sony Music for the past two decades, was previously general director for the southernmost cone of the regional including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
“This new structure is part of our ongoing transformation efforts to make Sony Music the most dynamic, efficient and nimble organization that can respond quickly to the needs of a dynamic and ever-changing industry”, Afo Verde, chairman & CEO of Sony Music Latin-Iberia, said about the leadership shakeup.
Verde added: “I am very grateful to Adriana for all her efforts and contributions to this important part of our region, both artistically and commercially. Fortunately, we have a strong successor in Mechas, who has broad experience in the industry and the Andean region. I am confident that she will build upon the success and trajectory of the region. I’m also grateful to Damian for taking on this broader role. Without a doubt the artists, Mechas and the incredible Andean team will enjoy and benefit from his leadership.”
Before joining Sony Music, Montejo was the general manager for Warner Music Latin, where she “leveraged her experience and insight” of the Latin American music industry, according to a statement.
Producer Alex Garza and music executive Gerardo Vergara have joined Estrella Media Music Entertainment (EMME), the Los Angeles-based company tells Billboard.
In his role, Garza — who founded Arpa Music Publishing, where he represents artists such as Espinoza Paz, Horacio Palencia and Joss Favela — will oversee music production and publishing and serve as an in-house music producer.
As director, Vergara will manage the roster, catalog, and business opportunities for EMME, as well as new artist signings and development. Having worked in the industry for over 15 years, he’s helped develop the careers of regional Mexican music artists such as Gerardo Ortiz and Luis Coronel. He was previously gm of Green Dream, the management and social media company behind Pepe Aguilar.
“Adding Gerardo and Alex to EMME is the completion of our dream team,” said Eddie Leon, executive vp of radio programming and events for Estrella Media who also oversees EMME. “Both bring a wealth of knowledge and contacts within the music industry that will help in our development of the next Regional Mexican stars. In addition, they will be instrumental in managing Estrella’s IP from its numerous series, events, and awards shows. EMME will give artists, songwriters, and composers a unique and culturally relevant path to develop their talent, fan base and culture.”
The multi-platform media company’s music division launched in April with longtime radio programmer and television personality Pepe Garza as head of content development and A&R. EMME includes a label and publishing arm and aims to “develop the next generation of Latin music stars.”
Dr. Dre’s solo debut album, The Chronic, is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a special re-release on Interscope Records and a return to streaming services after nearly a year away. “I am thrilled to bring The Chronic home to its original distribution partner, Interscope Records,” says Dre in a press release, adding that working with the label “to re-release the album and make it available to fans all over the world is a full circle moment for me.”
Steve Berman, vice chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, expressed similar excitement, saying: “Dr. Dre is without a doubt one of the most iconic and groundbreaking artists in the modern era. He has also used his platform to fuel some very impactful philanthropic efforts that will ensure his legacy is felt for generations to come. Dre’s solo career all started with the The Chronic, one of the most celebrated recordings of all time. To have this album at Interscope once again where we work with Dre and his amazing team at Aftermath day in and day out is incredibly gratifying for me personally and all of us at Interscope.”
Earlier this month, Billboard reported that Dre sold his music assets to Universal Music and Shamrock Holdings for a deal estimated to be $200 million. According to sources, the assets include mainly passive income streams, such as artist royalties from two of his solo albums and his share of N.W.A. artist royalties; his producer royalties; and more. The Chronic had long been available on streaming services but was pulled, along with several other Death Row classics, after Snoop Dogg purchased the label early last year.
Considered one of the most storied albums in hip-hop, The Chronic had a splashy debut on the Billboard 200, entering the charts at No. 3. Released in 1992 on Death Row Records / Interscope, Dre’s magnum opus earned three Hot 100 top 40 hits, “most notably “Nothin’ But a “G” Thang,” which peaked at No. 2.
John Janick, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, said: “From my first day at Interscope the significance of Dr. Dre as a foundational artist at this label was incredibly important to me. We take our responsibility to Dre and his amazing body of work very seriously and we are honored to work closely with him on this re-release of one of the most important albums of all time.”