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The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online.
This was a year without splashy public offerings, like Universal Music Group’s last year and Warner Music Group’s the year before. Some of the biggest rights acquisitions of all time — for Bob Dylan’s and Bruce Springsteen’s recordings and publishing, and David Bowie’s publishing took place in those years, too. And the time when the biggest companies in the business could acquire their rivals may be over for the time being as well.
Rising interest rates put a chill on the catalog acquisition market and brought down valuations, but there was no shortage of investors for a seemingly never-ending supply of creators willing to take advantage of the streaming boom to part with their catalogs. The list of deals that didn’t even make this list includes various rights for the music of The Ramones, Justin Timberlake, Keith Urban, Louis Prima, Swedish House Mafia, Future and Blake Shelton.
Only two of the last year’s top 10 deals — ranked by dollar amount — didn’t involve a catalog changing hands. One was a reverse merger that made French streaming company Deezer a publicly traded company, while he other was Spotify’s latest acquisition to further its goal of becoming a one-stop destination for audio.
Concord sells asset-backed securities ($1.8 billion)
This month, Concord priced the biggest music-related asset-backed securitization in history: $1.8 billion of senior notes backed by a diversified catalog of music publishing and recorded music rights valued at $4.1 billion. Apollo’s Capital Solutions business structured the transaction and formed an investor syndicate led by Apollo-managed funds. JP Morgan was the co-structuring agent. Music-backed securitization was made famous in 1997 with $55 million of asset-backed securities, commonly referred to as Bowie Bonds, supported by royalties from Bowie’s recorded music catalog. Concord’s offering was significantly larger and diverse than Bowie’s: The catalog behind Concord’s bonds includes compositions and recordings by Phil Collins, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Daft Punk, Miles Davis, Imagine Dragons, Pink Floyd, Cyndi Lauper, Little Richard and James Taylor.
Brookfield Asset Management Invests in Primary Wave ($1.7 billion)
The biggest music industry deal of the year by dollar amount was something of a surprise. The 100-year-old Canadian asset manager Brookfield’s decision to put $1.7 billion into Primary Wave, an active buyer of music rights for nearly 17 years, came during a lull in the market. Rising interest rates were making music rights a less attractive investment, headline-grabbing acquisitions had slowed since the Fed began hiking rates in March and possible changes to tax treatment of catalog sales in 2022 culminated a busy 2021. Brookfield wasn’t discouraged by market forces, though. The two companies spent six months hashing out a deal, Brookfield managing partner Angelo Rufino told Billboard. Brookfield was attracted to Primary Wave’s model of employing marketing and branding experts to build the value of its acquisitions. He called Primary Wave CEO Larry Mestel “the best I’ve ever seen at leveraging brand extensions to supercharge the growth of these assets.”
Kobalt sells majority interest to Francisco Partners ($750 million)
Kobalt has been selling off assets left and right in recent years. It sold its two investment funds that owned music assets — one went to Hipgnosis Song Management for $323 million in 2020, the other to KKR and Dundee Partners for $1.1 billion in 2021 (which resulted in the Chord Music Partners bond offering this year, see below) — and Sony Music purchased Kobalt’s independent distributor and label services provider, AWAL, as well as its neighboring rights business. These moves allowed Kobalt to pay off its debt and finish 2021 with $315 million in cash. This year, Kobalt sold a piece of itself when tech-focused investment firm Francisco Partners, along with Dundee Partners and Matt Pincus’ MUSIC, bought a majority stake in the company for $750 million.
KKR sells asset-backed security ($732.5 million)
The technical sounding Hi-Fi Music IP Issuer II L.P., Series 2022-1, was a bond offering by Chord Music Partners in February, backed by a music catalog valued at $1.13 billion. What the bond lacked in curb appeal it made up for in sheer dollar volume after raising $732.5 million for Chord Music Partners, a venture of KKR Credit Advisors and Dundee Partners. The music publishing catalog behind Hi-Fi Music offering — about 62,000 titles in all — was purchased from Kobalt three months earlier. The According to a report by ratings agency KBRA, the Hi-Fi offering is backed by over 65,000 compositions and master recordings and related assets and includes artists and songwriters such as The Weeknd, Maroon 5, Childish Gambino, Dua Lipa, Mumford & Sons and Stevie Nicks.
Concord acquires Genesis, Phil Collins and Mike + The Mechanics rights ($335 million to $375 million)
Phil Collins’ and Genesis’s The Last Domino tour, which concluded at London’s O2 Arena in March, was a reminder of how beloved the 71-year-old Collins remains 47 years after he took over vocal duties when original Genesis singer Peter Gabriel departed in 1975. In that warm afterglow, Concord acquired the recording catalogs and music publishing rights of Collins, as well as Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford for the years they were in Genesis and Mike + The Mechanics, for something in the range of $335 million to $375 million. (Former Genesis members Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett did not participate in the deal.) Collins’ solo material, focused on a string of four multi-platinum albums from 1981 to 1989, has 403 million streams in the U.S. this year (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate. In addition, Collins’ catalog has nearly 311,000 airplay spins this year. The acquisition includes Collins’ signature solo hit “In The Air Tonight,” from the 1981 album Face Value, that counts for more than a quarter of his year-to-date on-demand streams, and “That’s All,” a No.6 hit on the Hot 100 from the 1983 album Genesis. “Everyone at Concord feels the weight of the cultural significance of this remarkable collection of works,” Concord president Bob Valentine said when the deal was announced.
Sting sells entire publishing catalog to Universal Music Group ($360 million)
Universal Music Group isn’t the most active buyer of music catalogs, but it makes a splash when it decides to pull the trigger. In 2020, it purchased Bob Dylan’s publishing catalog for an estimated $400 million. In February, UMG acquired Sting’s entire publishing catalog, including his compositions with The Police (Sting was the sole songwriter of the group’s most popular songs, such as “Roxanne,” “Every Breath You Take,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”) as well as his solo material (“Fields of Gold,” “Englishman in New York,” “Shape of My Heart,” “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free”). Because UMG already has the master recordings to both the Police and Sting’s solo releases, buying the publishing catalog brings both rights under one roof. That should facilitate licensing and enhance UMG’s ability to generate income from the catalog. Billboard believes Sting’s representatives were shopping the catalog with a $360 million price tag, making the deal the largest for a single artist in 2022. Across both the Police and Sting’s solo releases, the catalog generated 469 million on-demand streams in the U.S. in 2022 (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate.
HarbourView Equity Partners acquires SoundHouse ($325 million)
HarborView Equity Partners burst onto the music business scene in 2021, led by founder and CEO Sherrese Clark Soares, an alum of Morgan Stanley and Providence Equity Partners-backed Tempo Music, and $1 billion backing by Apollo Global Management. Among its initial deals were the publishing catalog of Latin star Luis Fonsi that includes a share of the global hit “Despascito,” the master recording income of country star Brad Paisley, the publishing catalog of country group Lady A and the publishing catalog of Dre & Vidal, the songwriting and production duo who has worked with Alicia Keys, Justin Bieber and Mary J. Blige. HarborView’s biggest-single acquisition is an unknown name with considerable star-power: SoundHouse, the owner of about 20 master recording catalogs and the assets of indie contemporary Christian label InPop. That gave HarborView the rights to some master recordings by the likes of Tech N9ne, Trey Songz, George Jones, Whiskey Myers and Tenth Avenue North. Billboard estimates the deal was worth about $325 million. SoundHouse’s 2021 income was said to be about $24 million.
Sony Music acquired Som Livre ($255 million)
Brazil’s largest domestic record label hit the market as its parent company, Grupo Globo, went through organization restructuring. Announced in 2021, Sony Music’s acquisition Som Livre was finalized in Feb. 2022 after Brazilian regulators said there would be “low market concentration and low barriers to entry” from the merger, despite Sony already having the top record label market share in Brazil and Som Livre being third behind Universal Music Brasil. Som Livre is home to more than 80 artists, including sertanejo act Jorge & Mateus, forró star Wesley Safadão and rising stars like Israel & Rodolffo. Domestic music accounts for 70% of total music consumption in Brazil, the world’s 11th largest recorded music market in 2021, according to the IFPI.
Sony Music acquired Bob Dylan’s recorded music catalog ($200 million)
Thirteen months after Universal Music Group acquired Bob Dylan’s songwriting catalog, Sony Music picked up the bard’s recorded music catalog. Sony has not disclosed the terms of the transaction, but Billboard estimates the catalog generates roughly $16 million per year globally and is worth $200 million or more. The catalog covers all of Dylan’s recordings — 39 studio albums and 16 compilations in the Bootleg series — as well as unreleased material that could be released on future collections. (Separately, Primary Wave acquired Dylan’s share of the master and neighboring rights royalties from the Traveling Wilburys supergroup.) It makes sense that Dylan’s recordings ended up with Sony. The artist spent almost his entire career at Columbia Records, save two albums, Planet Waves and Before the Flood, both released by David Geffen’s Asylum Records in 1974 but distributed by Sony for decades. Dylan’s catalog amassed 313.5 million on-demand streams in 2022 (through Dec. 8), according to Luminate, and provides Sony with ample opportunities for licensing for film, television and advertisements (Airbnb used his track “Shelter From The Storm” from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks in a television ad this year). He used his return to Columbia in 1974 to gain ownership of his recordings, according to Dylan: A Biography by Bob Spitz.
Universal Music Group acquires Neil Diamond Catalog ($145 million)
In February, Universal Music Group announced a deal to acquire Neil Diamond’s song and master recording catalogs, reuniting Diamond’s non-UMG work with music released through UMG’s MCA Records during the artist’s successful 1968 to 1972 streak. Diamond’s catalog includes “Sweet Caroline,” “Cracklin Rosie” and “Forever iIn Blue Jeans.” His songwriting catalog includes compositions for other artists that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees (1966); “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” by Barbra Streisand (1978, co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman); and “Red, Red Wine” by UB40 (1988). Additionally, the recording of “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” by Urge Overkill has an indelible place in pop culture for its use in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 movie Pulp Fiction. The trove of material included 110 unreleased tracks, an unreleased album and archival video. The deal also includes the rights to release any future music by Diamond should he return to the studio. Billboard estimates the deal was worth about $145 million.
Deezer’s reverse merger with SPAC I2PO ($143 million)
Deezer was one of two music companies to go public in 2022 through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in April before the SPAC craze fizzled in the second half of the year. (The other was Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based streaming service. A third, wholesale distribution giant Alliance Entertainment, plans to complete a reverse merger with Adara Acquisition Corp.) The reverse merger with French company I2PO, which traded on the Euronext Paris exchange, provided Deezer with 135 million euros and valued Deezer at 1.08 billion euros ($1.17 billion at the time). The money came through a PIPE (private investment in public equity) subscribed by most of Deezer’s existing shareholders, including Access Industries, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, French telecom company Orange, Kingdom Holdings, Eurazeo and Xavier Niel. After investors poured money into blank check companies in 2020 and 2021 in pursuit of companies to take public, SPAC deals are increasingly rare these days. Among the many SPACs to end their search and return funds to shareholders are Music Acquisition Corp, which raised $230 million in Feb. 2021, and Liberty Media’s $575 million Liberty Media Acquisition Corporation.
Spotify acquired audiobook distributor Findaway ($122 million)
Findaway was neither Spotify’s priciest acquisition — it paid more for podcast companies The Ringer and Gimlet and tech platforms Anchor and Megaphone — nor was it the splashiest deal the music streaming giant has made in its roughly 15-year history. But buying the Ohio-based audiobook distributor was a pivotal moment in the company’s years-long transition from a music platform to a broader audio platform. With its share price down 68.1% year to date and investors anxious for profits, Spotify is betting that being a single destination for all things audio is a better strategy than focusing solely on music. The more ways Spotify can keep people listening, the idea goes, the longer consumers will engage with the platform , which in turn will funnels more people from the free version to the subscription service. Plus, audiobook margins are about double what Spotify gets for licensing music. Audiobooks also fit neatly with Spotify’s ongoing battle with Apple over the latter’s 30% share of in-app purchases and subscription revenue. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s PR push in recent months has been aided — and overshadowed — by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s public takedown of Apple over the same in-app fees.
Over the past three years, the music business has become less dependent on the biggest hits, which account for a smaller share of total streams than they once did. Not in December, though. Holiday music is dominated by a relatively small number of big recordings — Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” — and that hasn’t changed since 2019.
So far this season, through Dec. 8, the top 50 holiday songs accounted for 34.3% of all streams from the top 10,000 holiday tracks — the exact same percentage as when Billboard looked at holiday music in Dec. 2019. The share of the top 100, at 46.1%, is just slightly lower than the 46.6% share from 2019 while the shares of the top 250, 500 and 1,000 are all less than one percentage point lower than three years ago.
That’s not surprising. Holiday listening is dominated by a small number of recordings that have become enduring favorites. Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” has reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 every year since 2019. The order of the next few songs hasn’t changed either: Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock,” Burl Ives’ “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and Andy Williams’ “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Other than “All I Want for Christmas,” all of them were recorded before 1964.
New holiday tracks have a hard time breaking through. At 28 years old, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” is an outlier among tracks that are usually 50 years or older. “Last Christmas” by Wham!, currently fifth in on-demand audio streams, is a relatively youthful 36. At Nos. 8 and 12, Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” are the babies of the top 10.
Pop music has no use for such tradition, or centrality – especially now that personalization has reduced the number of plays track get from prominent placement on streaming-service playlists. From 2019 to 2022, the share of the top 10,000 on-demand streaming songs devoted to the top 50 went from 10.3% to 5.8%. The share of the top 250 went from 25.5% to 17.5% during that same period, while the share of the top 1000 went from 49.2% to 41.6%.
Christmas is one of the few times – perhaps because most people spend it with friends or family – when we all listen to the same songs.
Since the business of holiday music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas seasons past. This piece, about a Hannukah compilation, originally ran in 2019.
Two years ago, Verve Forecast approached Grammy-winning music supervisor Randall Poster (Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Irishman) with a proposition: curate and produce a Hanukkah album. “I had just finished doing the soundtrack to the movie SuperFly with Future, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a great follow-up: Hanukkah,’ ” recalls Poster, who grew up celebrating the holiday. He started reaching out to friends and collaborators, “convincing them that I wasn’t kidding.”
But it wasn’t until longtime pal Jack Black sent in two recordings — one of which was actually a Passover song — that Poster felt he had the foundation for an album. “Jack gave us the substance, so everything [else] would feel like it was part of a whole.” The additional song ended up inspiring the title of Hanukkah+ (out now, and on vinyl Dec. 13), which boasts a mix of covers and original music from the likes of HAIM and The Flaming Lips.
Randall Poster
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for SXSW
The market for Christmas music is massive. What was the strategy behind putting out a Hanukkah album?
It’s not an easy thing. It doesn’t have the built-in Christmas music collectors, so we talked about trying to have a longer view — there’s an evergreen quality to it. But also, making it available at nontraditional retailers, like all of the synagogue gift shops, and seeing if we can make contact with the built-in audiences that the various artists on the record have [helped].
How did you ensure it wouldn’t come off as parody?
Probably the most famous Hanukkah song at this point is Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song.” That’s why I was searching for a spiritual component, which allowed me to approach artists who weren’t Jewish, who had no real sense of the holiday or the history. I tried to find balance, because I wanted to have some of that silly, joyful element.
Was it tough to get artists onboard?
It’s not an easy one where you can say, “Hey, let’s do ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside,’ ” and set the stage for somebody to just come in and sing. My hope is if this goes well, maybe next year we do another five songs and just add to it. One person that I really wanted to get — he said he would but just got caught up in the sweep of his new record — was Ezra Koenig.
Hanukkah+
Courtesy Photo
Why such fondness for Hanukkah?
It was always the fun Jewish holiday, really. And as far as the musical repertoire [went], “The Hanukkah Song” was pretty much the favorite, or “Dreidel Dreidel.” I had a sense of it being a musical holiday, though there aren’t that many to choose from.
What will success for the album look like to you?
To tell you the truth, I feel like it already is a success. For me as a Jew, it was important to focus on more of the spiritual component, and I think we’ve captured that. I’m waiting for my rabbi to hear it.
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Billboard boasts a long list of big-name alumni, having helped launch the careers of power players like legendary executives like Seymour Stein and Jerry Wexler, record producer Israel Horowitz, songwriter Kara DioGaurdi and author and filmmaker Nelson George, to name a few.
But in the music publishing sector, one of the best-known alumni is Susan Butler, a former music attorney who wrote for Billboard from 2004 to 2008 before striking out on her own to launch an intensively researched newsletter called Music Confidential in the year she left.
For 14 years, Butler has kept it very confidential — she personally approves subscription requests, denying access to other journalists and excommunicating subscribers who share the letter without permission. But now, in her first book — entitled Groove Found: Susan’s Business Journey, available at most eBook stores — Butler reveals the story of how she started selling her unique analysis and created what’s become a must-read newsletter PDF for music publishing executives around the world.
Butler’s highly personal memoir offers a window into what it takes to start and build a business — and while she doesn’t reveal the type of market-moving insights she sells in her newsletter, her devoted fans will enjoy the behind-the-scenes look at her shoestring operation, while budding entrepreneurs will likely come away inspired to dream big and strike out on their own, too.
Courtesy Photo
Beyond building her business, the book also covers how Butler built the lifestyle that she wanted for herself. In it, she describes her travels, during which she’s visited many places she longed to see around the world. She just returned from a nine-country trip, including her new favorite place to hike — Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, as described in a blog on her groovefound.com website.
In her own inimitable writing style, Butler remains true to form as the author of a publication called Music Confidential; other than her own family, almost no one discussed in the book are is named. She takes that journalism tactic to the extreme, refraining from naming one of the places she sometimes hangs her hat in for weeks and even months at a time — a house in France that’s merely identified as “The House With A Name.”
So I was going to lead my questions with why did you write this book but when I got near the end, I see your mother — on what would sadly be her deathbed — said she wants you to write a book about the lifestyle you built. But was there another impetus to author the book?
Well, that was part of why I wrote the book, but it’s also about what was going on during the pandemic, right? The pandemic caused a lot of changes. So I really wanted to inspire readers who are frustrated with any part of their lives to take a close look inside themselves, at their memories and their dreams, and to then look around to see the possibilities for change. And then to move on to imagining how they might turn dreams into realities. I had that tattoo burnt onto my shoulder: first dream and then reality.
For a lot of people in the world, their frustrations exploded during the pandemic. But my frustrations exploded a decade ago, so I was actually ready for the pandemic in that I could work remotely and also work while traumatic things are happening around me. Because of the pandemic, people were then experiencing a lot of things I experienced. So I wanted to share that with people and hopefully inspire them.
One thing you definitely made me aware of is how my inability to do public speaking has hurt my career. So thank you very much for that.
But that’s the whole point. You can still reimagine your career, even now. I was not 20 years old when I started this Music Confidential business 14 years ago. That’s why even in the first chapter, I relayed how I was feeling so tired and wondering do I really have the energy to do this — start my own business? But then I recalled in growing up, I had learned more about my future in business from competing in horse shows than I did in school. So in the first chapter, I share how I imagine this horse race, which actually inspired my business model. It shows that we just need to really tap into our past experiences and find ways out of our frustrations and it doesn’t matter how old you are.
How would you describe your book?
So it’s a memoir, but it’s not really about me. The way I see it is it’s a true story about reshaping expectations. So a creative person can figure out a way to turn that creativity into business, and feel really good about a life that doesn’t separate work from a life with friends and family, but kind of brings it all together. But it’s not a “how-to” book; it’s not a music business book.
It’s about, ‘how can I can tell a story that helps readers learn from their life?’ So at the end, hopefully people will think and learn how to reshape things and expectations for themselves because that’s what it’s about for me. We are all always either driven by — or we’re fighting against — expectations we have for ourselves, or expectations other people have for us. About a decade ago, I chose to reshape expectations, and came up with my own definitions and rules for business journalism, for business relationships, for business models. I got [past] all those expectations that I just found so frustrating to try to live with.
And that move left you in a better place apparently?
Look, we create our work lives, and when we find a way to blend all parts of our lives with what we really want out of life, we feel better about ourselves. And we all know, when we feel better about ourselves, everything and everyone around us benefits in the long run, right? This story is how I figured out a way to do that.
Who should read this book?
I hope to inspire readers who are frustrated with any part of their lives. And you have done an audiobook version too?
Yes, and that was interesting. I created a recording studio in my small closet at home to get better sound quality. For example, during one recording session it started thundering so I had to stop until the next morning, but then there’s the damn birds chirping so loud. The microphones are so sensitive that if your stomach makes any noises, they pick it up. I had to make sure that all background noise was eliminated so it took quite a while sitting in my closet to get it done. And in order to record the audio version, I learned all the software to record and edit it. And I even mastered the recording myself. So that was an interesting experience.
How are you distributing it?
The e-book version I distributed myself. I did all the research into ebook distribution and audiobook platforms. There are a lot of blogs out there of self-published people who did their own distribution. Music Confidential has paying subscribers in 47 countries, and there is no single platform that could reach all those countries. So after researching it, I had to figure out how many countries and which countries Amazon, Apple, and Google Play are in. I had to do the combination of the three to reach all my subscribers. For the audiobook version I used a distributor, Findaway Voices, which Spotify acquired last year so now the audiobook is on, I think, 21 retail platforms, including Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Amazon — and 14 libraries.
You also wrote about how feng shui plays into your business model. What’s that about?
It’s about how our surroundings are — that really impacts us. During the pandemic, people were working from home and then eventually some are going back into their offices. So if we’re working in a cubicle, an elegant office, in your home, or on a train with your laptop, I think it’s really important that we acknowledge that surroundings are going to impact how well we do and how content we are. I found that I write better at night, so I put up all these pictures that I have of Northern Lights that I have from Lapland [Finland] as described from my experiences there in the book. I recreated my office space so that now I am always working at nighttime, which has helped me in writing.
You hardly talk about your life as a lawyer in the music industry, even though you go back to certain instances here and there. I would have been interested in reading about that period, too.
Well, maybe that’s the next book. Who knows? But so many people who have written memoirs about being in the music business tell me that their books didn’t sell very well—unless you’re really well known.
Let’s talk about your approach with names, or rather not using them. Are the readers supposed to guess who the music executives you mention are? Why did you take that approach?
Because I’m a journalist. And nobody’s ever on the record.
There are editors who will tell you that is not a good way to do journalism. But I rely on anonymous but knowledgeable informed sources all the time to get the real deal.
That’s part of my business model. It’s called Music Confidential for a reason. If I don’t reveal names, we get to talk about the real issues. And the reader can be confident that the sourcing is from someone in the industry who has direct knowledge of the situation. Is the reader going to learn more because somebody’s name isn’t there? Yes. Besides, not naming names in a book— that gets people talking, right?
What’s next, another book?
Oh, yeah, definitely. I just got back in September, from going with my niece, cycling down the Danube. I ended up going to nine countries. And you know, now I’m starting my Summit in Rio de Janeiro in April. The following week, I have another summit in Geneva. I’m starting a number of research projects. I have set up the website, groovefound.com, and I put one post up on it but that was ages ago. I’ll start blogging about experiences on there. And then, you know, at some point, I’ll turn that into something, another book, another audiobook. See where it goes from there.
Okay, finally before we wrap this up, I have one complaint—not about your book but about you. How is it that I had to read this book to learn about your proclivity towards buying fedoras? How come I’ve never seen you in a fedora?
You’ve never seen me in one? Oh my gosh, I must have 60 of them.
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top ten places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about the changes in the music business that have made the genre so important, was originally published in 2019.
Five months ago, during the dog days of summer, Sony Music executive Lyn Koppe was already running a 15-person meeting to prepare for Christmas. It wasn’t her first that year, either. Koppe, executive vp global catalog for Sony’s Legacy Recordings, leads a team that every January begins planning how to promote the year’s holiday releases, as well as the company’s evergreen seasonal music. As the sun shone down on Sony’s Manhattan offices, which overlook Madison Square Park, the group tossed around ideas by phone with executives from TikTok and members of Mariah Carey’s management team on how to promote the 25th-anniversary reissue of Carey’s Merry Christmas. Someone from management suggested looping in Carey, whom Koppe says is “very hands-on” about marketing — “the look and feel, timing and strategy.” And, within minutes, the five-octave alto herself had joined the call to chime in on the best way to promote the reissue.
“I think there were a few jaws on the floor,” says Koppe, recalling her TikTok counterparts’ reaction to Carey’s cameo at the meeting. But there was a lot at stake: The singer’s iconic Christmas album has become an annuity for her and Sony, a blue-chip property in a holiday recorded-music business that was worth $177 million in 2018 in the United States alone, estimates Billboard.
Carey understands that even the most enduring albums need promotion. So Koppe’s team of music elves — which included executives from marketing, publicity, A&R and product management — worked with Twitter to create an exclusive video of Carey reading fans’ tweets about her holiday music. They created a video skit to go with an enhanced version of the album for Spotify. And by fall, they were promoting the Last Christmas soundtrack — which includes the Wham! single the movie is named after, as well as other songs by the late George Michael, who was the songwriter of the duo — and working to maintain the visibility of time-honored seasonal hits by Andy Williams, The Ronettes and Elvis Presley. “We make sure they’re not forgotten about,” says Koppe.
This year, at least, there’s little danger of that. For about a century, the business of Christmas music was defined by holiday purchases, which meant that hit recordings were enormously profitable the year they were released but didn’t generate much revenue after a couple of years. Few record stores stocked much older Christmas music, and terrestrial radio doesn’t pay to use recordings in the United States. But because streaming monetizes the ongoing consumption of music rather than an initial purchase, it has changed the concentrated business of Christmas music even more dramatically than the rest of the industry. These changes have also amplified the cumulative advantage of the classic holiday recordings that come up first in search results — whether typed in or voice-requested.
Although it’s hard to get exact figures for the holiday music business, the most popular recordings in the genre generate far more revenue than they did a decade ago. “Last Christmas” by Wham! sold 81,000 tracks in the United States in 2008 — and sold and streamed the equivalent of 706,000 last year, according to Nielsen Music. Older recordings are getting more popular, too: Andy Williams’ “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” the third-most-popular holiday recording of 2018, sold 52,000 tracks in 2008 and streamed and sold the equivalent of 839,000 last year. Overall, holiday music accounted for 0.89% of on-demand streams in 2015 and 1.11% last year — and during that time, the overall revenue from on-demand streaming rose from $1.57 billion in 2015 to $5.5 billion in 2018, according to the RIAA.
Most of this Christmas cash goes to a relatively small number of rights holders. Last year, the top 50 holiday recordings accounted for 35.3% of all holiday streaming, while the top 50 pop tracks accounted for just 12% of streaming in that genre. Half of the top holiday track streams go to the top 252 recordings, while half of pop streams go to the top 613 pop tracks. At the top, the rewards are considerable — the top holiday recording of 2018, Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” was streamed almost a quarter as much as the year’s top pop song. But the No. 100 holiday recording on streaming services was streamed less than 10% as much as the No. 100 pop track.
To get a sense of just how much streaming has changed this part of the business, consider that some of the most popular holiday recordings weren’t easily available on traditional CD albums a decade ago. The second-most-popular holiday song in 2018 was “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, a 1950s country artist who aside from that track sold the equivalent of 1,000 albums, including downloads and streaming. Some holiday hits by famous artists weren’t even available on albums: Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” the Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas” and Bruce Springsteen’s live recording of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” were issued as singles, though they’re all available now on compilations.
At a time when streaming is ruled by pop and hip-hop from the past two decades, the list of the top 100 holiday tracks is dominated by the original versions of classic songs, recorded by artists that younger listeners aren’t familiar with: Williams, Helms, Burl Ives (“Have a Holly Jolly Christmas,” the No. 5 most popular holiday recording of 2018) and Gene Autry (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” No. 9). Helms’ version of “Jingle Bell Rock” is more than 12 times as popular as the second-biggest version, by Hall & Oates. Perhaps it is because holiday music is so associated with tradition, “I don’t know of a rerecording that outperforms the original,” says SiriusXM director of programming Jess Besack.
These songs are like blue-chip stocks: uncool but no less valuable for it. And they’re likely to grow in value, along with streaming revenue in general. “Christmas hits,” says Koppe, “are the gifts that keep on giving.”
Christmas music has been a significant part of the music business for as long as there has been one — and some of the same songs have been popular since the days of wax cylinders. The first known Christmas recording is “Jingle Bells,” cut by the banjo player Will Lyle in 1889. In 1905, Victor Records had a hit with “Silent Night, Hallow’d Night,” an English version of the German hymn “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” Thirty years later, Bing Crosby made the song an even bigger hit, which was included on the 1940 Decca compilation An Album of Christmas Music — the Now That’s What I Call Christmas! of the 78 rpm era.
Over the next few years, Crosby helped make Christmas big business. His 1942 recording of “White Christmas” sold 600,000 copies that year and 2 million in 1943, according to Crosby biographer Gary Giddins, and it is said to have sold over 50 million copies worldwide — making it the biggest single ever. That recording, plus another take on “Silent Night” and other songs, were released as the Crosby album Merry Christmas, a version of which is still in print today.
Rock changed pop culture, but singers like Presley embraced the season, too: The most popular holiday LP in the United States is his Christmas Album, which has been certified 17-times platinum in various versions. It includes a rendition of “White Christmas” that upset songwriter Irving Berlin so much that he asked radio stations not to play it.
As pop music continued to evolve, Christmas repertoire did too. Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’,” released by Mercury Records in 1979, was the first rap single to go gold, with sales of 500,000 (see story, below). In 1987, Run-D.M.C. hit No. 78 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Christmas in Hollis,” which sampled Clarence Carter’s 1968 soul single “Back Door Santa.” Other holiday music sounded less like the songs on the pop charts: Producer Chip Davis’ new age project, Mannheim Steamroller, hit No. 50 on the Billboard 200 in 1984 with Christmas, and it went on to release 38 holiday albums that all together account for 21.6 million album-equivalent units.
Although streaming has boosted the holiday music sector even more than the overall industry, it’s harder than ever to score a Christmas hit that remains popular year after year. It’s one thing for a new tune to sell, or stream, in its initial year of release — but quite another to show up on the chart every year, like Carey does. “Getting a big hit with a new Christmas song is gold when it happens,” says Kevin Gore, president of global catalog at Warner Music Group (WMG). “But it’s not easy.”
Some acts score with new versions of classics: Pentatonix had 19 of last year’s 200 most popular holiday streaming tracks, and Michael Bublé had the second-most-popular versions of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” But the original recordings are usually far more popular, at least partly because streaming algorithms have turned their familiarity into advantageous positioning. “Original recordings, with years of thumbs-up and listens, definitely tend to rise to the top of our Christmas and holiday stations,” says Alex White, vp music programming and curation at Pandora.
That’s an understatement: Since most streaming services tend to recommend songs that are already popular, especially in response to general search queries like “Christmas music,” Billboard’s Holiday 100 chart has less turnover than the Supreme Court.
For hits that break through, though, the payoff can be extraordinary. Last year, Ariana Grande’s original 2014 track “Santa Tell Me” garnered 82.9 million streams, more than any other original holiday song released this decade. The second-most-popular was Justin Bieber’s “Mistletoe,” also an original, with 58.5 million. Because streaming-service algorithms tend to reinforce popularity, a bit of luck and the right promotion could keep them high on the chart for years to come.
Even by the standards of pop music, holiday hits are unpredictable. Among this year’s candidates: Keith Urban’s “I’ll Be Your Santa Tonight,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Digital Song Sales chart; the Jonas Brothers’ “Like It’s Christmas,” which reached No. 25 on the Holiday 100 when it came out and was streamed 12.7 million times in the first three weeks following its release; and Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm,” which debuted on the Dec. 21 Hot 100. All three are upbeat, with the cozy but celebratory feel of holiday classics. “The Jonas Brothers song captures the good feel of a modern Christmas classic,” says Jeff Moskow, head of U.S. A&R for the Now That’s What I Call Music series, who slotted it after Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” on Now’s Christmas playlist on Spotify.
Even if a song doesn’t outlast December’s snowmen, it could still help the artist that recorded it. Holiday releases are an easy way to keep performers visible at the end of the year, which can only help merchandise sales. “It’s an always-on music business,” says Jay Gilbert, co-founder of Label Logic, a company that provides marketing services for labels and managers. “You need to keep your audience engaged.” And the popularity of Christmas movies means that holiday music often scores lucrative synch placements.
Sometimes, new Christmas songs that debut without much fanfare maintain their popularity surprisingly well. Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” peaked at No. 42 on the Hot 100 when it arrived in 2014 and improved to No. 33 in 2018. Similarly, Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” peaked at No. 78 when it was released in 2013 and rose to No. 44 last year. “I don’t know why some songs stick and some don’t,” says Moskow.
As in the rest of the music business, popularity depends significantly on playlist placement — for both new and old material. Consider “Driving Home for Christmas” by British musician Chris Rea, an original song he wrote that hit No. 11 on the U.K. singles chart in 1988. It took over a decade for it to become a Christmas staple in the United Kingdom, and it’s now on Spotify’s Christmas Hits playlist — even though Rea hasn’t had a song on a U.S. chart since 1990, and most listeners are probably unfamiliar with him. “A song like Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ is experiencing a lot more discovery than it would have in a different era,” says WMG’s Gore.
No one wants to leave discovery to chance though, even for established classics. So executives who don’t have stars like Carey to work with are getting creative. Warner made a video for a new recording of “White Christmas” by Bublé, and Universal Music Group’s UMe catalog division hired studios to make animated clips for nine of its classic holiday recordings, including Dean Martin’s “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and The Jackson 5’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“We recognized that there’s an opportunity to develop and extend engagement with our holiday catalog to an underserved audience that primarily accesses music through YouTube,” says UMe president/CEO Bruce Resnikoff. So far, the 1.4 million YouTube views that Frank Sinatra’s “Jingle Bells” racked up in the three weeks between Nov. 4 and Nov. 25 represent a 220% increase over the same period last year.
To younger YouTube users, some of these songs may sound as quaint as the animation looks. But Christmas music has always been driven by collective nostalgia — listeners want a version of “White Christmas” just like the one they used to hear. “If a customer requests a holiday song simply by song title, they likely expect and enjoy the classic recorded version as a return,” says Karen Pettyjohn, senior music curator at Amazon Music.
The more customers enjoy those results, of course, the more likely streaming algorithms are to keep offering them. Which means that songs like Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” could remain popular as long as Christmas itself.
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of Billboard.
Much has been written about Bad Bunny‘s remarkable year, but he’s not the only Latin artist who made headlines in 2022. From Karol G‘s record-setting tour to Coachella featuring the most Latin acts ever on the lineup to Daddy Yankee‘s manager going to prison, the year was chock-full of big news in Latin music. Here are the 10 stories that helped define the genre’s biggest year yet.
Year of the Bunny
With a smash-hit album and two back-to-back, record-breaking tours this year, Bad Bunny redefined success for a modern Latin artist. The Puerto Rican hitmaker had his biggest year to date, finishing out 2022 as Billboard’s top artist of the year and releasing the first all-Spanish album (Un Verano Sin Ti) to be ranked No. 1 on the Billboard 200 year-end albums chart. He also finished as the year’s top touring act — making him the first Latin act to do so — with a total gross of $373.5 million from 1.8 million tickets sold across 65 shows (the combination of El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo and World’s Hottest Tour). But the superstar wasn’t done yet, as year-end tracking ended while he was still in the middle of the Latin American leg of World’s Hottest Tour. After finally wrapping that run on Dec. 10 in Mexico City, he closed 2022 with a record-breaking $435 million in tour grosses on the Billboard Boxscore charts. Named Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally for the third consecutive year and Apple Music’s 2022 artist of the year, Bunny’s genre-hopping Un Verano Sin Ti also made history last month when it became the first Spanish-language album ever to be nominated for the Grammy Award for album of the year.
That One Time Latin Music Surpassed Country
In its first streaming week in May, Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti (which spent 13 nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200) accounted for 18% of all U.S. Latin on-demand streams, pushing the genre’s streaming market share past country for the first time ever and resulting in its highest streaming week to date with over 1.8 billion weekly ODA streams. That’s bigger than any weekly streaming total for the country genre so far, according to Luminate.
Karol G Sets New Touring Record
This year, Colombian powerhouse Karol G made touring history with her ambitious $trip Love Tour. The trek finished its run as the highest U.S.-grossing tour ever by a female Latin act, grossing $69.9 million and selling 410,000 tickets across 33 shows in North America, according to Billboard Boxscore. With $Trip Love, the “Provenza” singer surpassed the totals earned by Jennifer Lopez‘s $50 million grossing It’s My Party World Tour in 2019 and Shakira‘s 2018 El Dorado World Tour, which grossed $28.2 million. Karol’s AEG-produced arena tour followed last year’s Bichota Tour — the superstar’s first-ever headlining trek in the U.S. — which grossed $13.4 million and sold 192,000 tickets across 26 shows in North America.
Postponed Tours
Not all Latin touring efforts ended in success stories. J Balvin, Anuel AA and Ozuna postponed their 2022 tours for a multitude of reasons, from production challenges to personal matters. In April, just seven days before his CMN-produced Jose tour was set to kick off, Balvin took to social media to deliver the news of its cancellation to his millions of followers. “COVID has caused some unforeseen production challenges, and I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise of giving you the absolute best show possible, he wrote in English and Spanish. In July, Anuel announced that he was rescheduling the Las Leyendas Nunca Mueren U.S. tour — presented by CMN and slated to kick off in August — to 2023. In a statement, the Puerto Rican artist explained that he was pushing back the tour to focus on personal matters. “I’ve been thinking that I need to take some time to recharge my batteries,” he said, noting his desire to “reorganize” his personal life and career. (New dates have already been announced for next year.) On the other hand, Ozuna — who announced dates for the U.S. leg of his OzuTochi Tour in May — postponed without giving an official explanation. His and Balvin’s tours have yet to be rescheduled.
One Latin Executive Goes to Prison, Another is Due in Court in 2023
In May, Daddy Yankee and Natti Natasha’s manager Raphy Pina was sentenced to three years in prison for illegal possession of firearms. The veteran music executive and producer, who also founded Pina Records in 1996, is currently serving his time in federal prison in Florida. Also making headlines for his legal woes in 2022 was DEL Records CEO Angel del Villar, who was arrested in June for alleged shady dealings. Currently released on bond, del Villar is charged with “conspiring to violate the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act,” according to an official statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and “conducting business with a Guadalajara-based concert promoter with ties to Mexican drug cartels.” DEL Records is the indie regional Mexican label that’s home to the chart-topping group Eslabon Armado, who in May made history when their album Nostalgia became the first Mexican music album ever to hit the top 10 on the Billboard 200. If convicted of violating the Kingpin Act, Del Villar — whose trial is expected to begin in October 2023 in Los Angeles — could face a statutory maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison.
A Shakeup in Jenni Rivera’s Estate
Earlier this year, Jenni Rivera’s daughter Jacqie Rivera took over as head of her mother’s estate — replacing her aunt Rosie Rivera, who had been at the helm since the regional Mexican singer’s untimely death in December 2012. Since taking over, Jacqie tapped Izabel Nicholas as general manager for Jenni Rivera Enterprises, while Oswaldo Rossi has remained the estate’s lawyer and Entotal Agency is handling artist management. When Rivera died ten years ago, at age 43, she was the single most successful woman in regional Mexican on the Billboard charts, boasting over 26 entries on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart. Most recently, Rivera’s children (Chiquis, Jacqie, Michael, Jenicka and Johnny) released “Misión Cumplida,” a song written by their mother in 2008. The song is part of Rivera’s forthcoming album — set to be released by Sony Music U.S. Latin — that will include other unreleased songs the Rivera estate discovered after her death.
Close to That Billion-Dollar Mark
U.S. recorded music revenues were up in the first half of 2022, according to the RIAA, growing 9% in the first six months of the year — but Latin music far surpassed that percentage increase, with revenue growing 23% in the first half of the year for a total of $510 million. Latin music is now on course to generate over $1 billion in the U.S. by year’s end. According to the RIAA’s Latin-specific report, shared exclusively with Billboard Español, music streaming formats were the “fundamental growth driver,” comprising a staggering 97% of total Latin music revenues. Among total streaming revenues, paid subscriptions comprised the biggest source of sales at 71% — accounting for 69% of overall Latin revenues at $350 million.
A Very Latin Coachella
From Karol G to Anitta to Nathy Peluso to Grupo Firme, Latin artists took over Coachella this year. The 2022 edition of the festival — which returned to Indio, Calif. in April after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic — doubled the number of Latin acts from the 2020 roster with more than 20 multi-genre Latin artists. The move reflected the overall demand for Latin artists and the success Latin acts enjoyed once live events resumed. According to data from concert discovery app Bandsintown, between Jan. 2019 and Jan. 2022, the interest of live music fans in the top 16 Latin artists on Coachella’s 2022 lineup grew by 533% on the platform. This included Grupo Firme, who alone saw a 5,294% growth in fan interest on Bandsintown during that timeframe. This year, Firme made history by becoming the first banda to ever perform at Coachella, while Anitta became the first Brazilian to perform a set on the fest’s main stage.
Latin Goes Global
Latin music had a banner year not only in the U.S. but in other markets including Europe, where Latin acts are finally seeing a breakthrough. Artists such as Bad Bunny, Karol G, Rosalía, Maluma, Anitta and Camilo are spearheading the globalization of Latin music on the continent, making inroads in a market that was slow to latch on to the genre just a few years ago. Global touring powerhouse Rosalía has earned $28.1 million (so far) and sold 343,000 tickets across three continents on her Motomami world tour, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, landing her at No. 7 on the year-end Top Latin Tours chart. Also going global was Mexican crooner Marco Antonio Solís, who toured Europe for the first time, holding shows in Paris, Madrid and London as part of his Que Ganas De Verte world tour. Additionally, Camilo had a historic and record-breaking performance in front of the iconic Puerta de Alcalá in Madrid in September, drawing a crowd of more than 80,000 fans.
‘90s Nostalgia
Last year, Los Bukis reunited after 25 years to embark on their historic Una Historia Cantada stadium tour, presented by Live Nation — ultimately landing the group at No. 6 on Billboard’s Top Tours of 2021 with a total gross of $49,667,153. In 2022, they returned with a second leg of the tour, during which they played two back-to-back shows at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. At that venue, the group gathered 100,000 fans over two nights, breaking their previous record at the venue set in 1995. The success of the Los Bukis reunion started something of a nostalgia-driven movement in Latin music this year. This trend included the inaugural Bésame Mucho festival, which took place at Dodger Stadium on Dec. 3 with a ’90s-’00s-inspired lineup of pop, regional Mexican, merengue, cumbia and rock-en-español artists — and sold out in just 12 minutes. This coming February, a ’90s Latin pop concert featuring Magneto, Kabah, Caló, Sentidos Opuestos and more is slated to take place at Los Angeles’ YouTube Theater.
It was a year in which Rammstein blasted plumes of fire from a backpack, The Weeknd destroyed a miniature city in a hurricane of black smoke, Pepe Aguilar sang on horseback amid Aztec warriors and equestrian acrobats and Elton John gave a “Rocketman” tour of space from a video screen that bled into the stage. artists provided fans with endless stadium explosions and other over-the-top spectacles. Even though Inflation and supply-chain issues considerably jacked up expenses for 2022’s biggest tours, cutting corners was not an option. “It’s really important that we don’t short-change anybody,” David Furnish, John’s husband and manager, told Billboard in November, just before the singer’s final U.S. farewell tour show.
And in 2023, stars who continue or return to stadiums after emerging from COVID-19 quarantine are unlikely to scale down. “Our show is evolving,” Aguilar says from his Mexico City home. “Once I experimented with it, it’s hard to go back.”
Here are the stories behind five other ground-breaking concert special effects in 2022:
Bad Bunny’s floating dolphins and live-video merry-go-rounds
Befitting the year’s highest grossing tour, Bad Bunny went big with stadium special effects. The giant dolphins floating above the crowds were the most instantly eye-catching, but Bunny also integrated video into the shows in new ways. During “Callaíta,” he built on the merry-go-round imagery of his 2019 video and projected a 3-D live feed of his performance, as well as captured shots of individual fans and other elements of the show, into the frames of the rotating structure on stage. “There’s a lot more to it than meets the eye,” says Adrian Martinez, creative director for Sturdy, the production company that created much of the tour’s visual imagery. “A lot of shows just use loops and clips here and there and kind of just repeat. We wanted to make sure people were looking at something new pretty constantly.”
Coldplay’s LED spheres
After Coldplay‘s designer approached Frederic Opsomer with the idea for a new effect— hovering spheres festooned with LED strips— his staff at PRG Projects began two months of problem-solving. First, they considered “hardshell with a trussing system inside.” But that could have required seven or eight trucks with a crew of more than 60, which was unsustainable given the band’s mandate to be environmentally conscious. “We have to come up with another way,” Opsomer, PRG’s vp of global scenic, told the staff. So they concocted inflatable spheres, tested lightweight fabric coatings and determined they could fit in a fractional portion of a truck with just one crew member for maintenance. After accounting for rainy and windy stadium conditions, they built structures for the tour that began in March and tested them in factory settings, but didn’t feel fully comfortable until they lit up in bright colors on the first date. “How did we celebrate?” Opsomer asks. “I think we had a big smile on our face.”
Kendrick Lamar’s shadow play
During Kendrick Lamar‘s The Big Steppers tour, which ran from June to December, the rapper hunched over with his microphone, creating a big-screen shadow during “Count Me Out” with arrows wedged into Shadow Kendrick’s back when they did not actually appear in Real Kendrick’s back. “It’s this little photogenic moment that plays with reality,” says Mike Carson, one of the tour’s show designers and show directors, who helped coordinate choreographers, directors, lighting designers and video programmers to make it work. “It’s like a magic track. I read reviews and people describe what it is and still can’t pinpoint how he did it.” (Watch the whole show here.)
Adele’s piano on fire
It was Adele‘s idea last May to light her piano aflame during “Set Fire to the Rain.” That prompted five months of designers and crew members plotting and building a faux white Yamaha grand piano that bursts into flames while Adele sings during a manufactured rainstorm at her Caesars Palace residency in Las Vegas. Those flames spread more than 100 feet across the stage, part of an effect that involves a high-tech fire suppressant and huge troughs of water. The piano, says Paul English, Adele’s production manager, is “like a bath. It contains a load of water, so there’s a moment where [the piano] falls over and the water spills out. Then it sets itself on fire.” The flames heat up to 300 degrees, which means everything around it is at risk of melting or burning – which requires an elaborate rain “curtain” to keep in check. “So, yeah, it’s been challenging,” English adds.
Lady Gaga’s flaming cannons
For her Chromatica Ball stadium tour that kicked off this summer, Lady Gaga contrasted a brutalist-architecture set design inspired by 1920s German expressionism with non-stop explosions. Her “cold, very stark feel” in the set created a gray landscape that allowed her longtime production designer, LeRoy Bennett, to go crazy with orange-and-yellow pyro, aided by Rammstein’s special-effects company, FFP. (The flaming cannons are technically known in the special-effects industry as “liquid flame giga,” or LFGs.) “We’ve always had some pyro here and there, but never really went full-on big metal or Rammstein-style flames,” Bennett says. “She loves those kinds of effects. She’s a big fan of fire and the power and drama of it.”
Since the business of Christmas music is growing so fast – it occupies five of the top 10 places on the Billboard Hot 100 this week – we are re-presenting some of our stories from Christmas past. This piece, about the role streaming playlists play in this growing sector, originally ran last year
If you search “Christmas 2021” on Spotify, the top result will be a massive playlist—124 tracks and six hours long—that opens with Queen’s “Thank God It’s Christmas,” then dips into a range of old and new holiday songs from Bing Crosby, Katy Perry, Ella Fitzgerald, Kacey Musgraves and others before landing on “I Want You Home (#heimnachten),” a track from last year by European relative unknowns Bowie & Pyrah. It’s not user-generated. Rather, it’s carefully curated by Universal Music Group, using “data, insight, analytics,” according to Mike Biggane, UMG’s executive vp music strategy and tactics.
“Our hope is somebody’s going to discover our playlists by the holidays, put it on and just let it go,” he says. “They won’t have the urge to change.”
The holiday-music streaming season, which unofficially begins the day after Halloween, is big business for labels. Last year, Universal’s more than 500 holiday playlists, created by 200 curators in 67 countries, generated over 120 million streams from Nov. 1 to Dec. 21, according to Biggane. In the CD era, some 20 years ago, labels’ fourth-quarter strategies centered on turning superstar releases into stocking stuffers. Now that streaming accounts for 83% of industry revenue, as of 2020, however, holiday-music clicks are a bigger focus of fourth-quarter plans. Holiday music generated $177 million for the U.S. music industry in 2018, Billboard estimates.
Vinnie Freda, a former Warner and Universal digital music executive, isn’t surprised by UMG’s six-hour playlist since holiday music is often a lean back and listen experience. “People put that stuff on repeat,” he says, adding that it’s a win when listener can essentially set it and forget it, that’s a win. “Generally, Christmas music is fungible: ‘If I can get you to listen to this thing for the next six hours, that means you’re not listening to Sony Music.’”
Because the holiday-music streaming numbers are so massive, labels now have year-round project teams and staff to promote catalog evergreens, from the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas to Bing Crosby’s Christmas Classics to Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift to You. They also encourage contemporary stars to record new holiday albums, like Dolly Parton’s A Holly Dolly Christmas last year or Kelly Clarkson’s recent When Christmas Comes Around, whose “Christmas Isn’t Canceled (Just You)” went viral and generated 1.5 million Spotify plays and 1.2 million YouTube views by early December.
Ariana Grande performs “Last Christmas” and “Santa Tell Me” during the taping of the Disney Parks “Frozen Christmas Celebration” TV Special in the Magic Kingdom Park at the Walt Disney World Resort on Dec. 9, 2014 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
Mark Ashman/Disney Parks via GI
Even if a recent recording gets lost amid the annual avalanche of holiday content, its use in a Christmas movie or TV special could promote streaming for years to come. Amazon Music has noticed recent streaming spikes for Faith Hill’s “Where Are You Christmas,” from the 2000 soundtrack to the Jim Carrey movie Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, as well as Ariana Grande’s 2014 single “Santa Tell Me.” “Holiday music can grow,” says Karen Pettyjohn, Amazon Music’s senior music curator. While new releases are expected to deliver instant hits, “that same expectation doesn’t apply here, because it’s about nostalgia and memory.”
In the few days before Christmas 2020, Alexa requests for festive songs on playlists like Merry Mix totaled more than 15 million per day. “People use it to soundtrack things, like a party or gingerbread-house making,” says Pettyjohn. “It’s long listening and it’s lean-back listening.” Adds Universal’s Biggane: “Voice is a major driver of streams for us, and our artists understand what a huge opportunity holiday music is for them.”
Craft Recordings, the catalog label owned by Concord Recorded Music, doesn’t have to do much to market its biggest holiday release, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. According to Concord’s vp streaming Andrew Woloz, however, label reps try to ensure Guaraldi (and Craft’s other holiday songs), wind up on important streaming playlists. Sometimes that’s as simple as a label-generated playlist, like Jazz Christmas. It can also be a matter of finding the right playlist title to activate in response to a keyword in a common Alexa request. “People tend to search what they want to hear thematically. They drink hot chocolate, they sit by the fire, they’re wearing sweaters,” says Woloz. “You hone in on those words and build in those schematics.
“Holiday is such an evergreen genre, so catalog will take up so much of the real estate,” he adds. “New songs, even if they don’t hit an algorithm this year, maybe they’ll hit a wave in years to come. Artists have to keep feeding the content machine.”
Labels tend the content machine as well. Concord’s Craft, for example, pitches holiday music to music-streaming products like workout giant Peloton, which has a roster of holiday-themed classes and a new Holiday Collection playlist; Sony studies voice-activated streaming requests, looking at how to combine music with popular Alexa games or place strategic Amazon Music advertisements. And every label focuses on pitching holiday songs to top playlists, from Spotify’s Christmas Classics, which has 2.3 million likes, or Amazon Music’s Merry Mix, which hit the streaming service’s list of the top 10 playlists after launching in November.
Sony Music’s holiday-music project team is 10-15 employees, drawn from the company’s content, A&R, marketing and international departments. Unlike the project teams that focus on Valentine’s Day and Halloween, the holiday-music team works year-round, with one exception. “They have January off,” says Lyn Koppe, executive vp global catalog for the label’s catalog division, Legacy Recordings. “It’s not like on Halloween, suddenly we say, ‘We better start thinking about Christmas!’ We think about Christmas all year. We gather data and learn from it and experiment.”
Read more about the Booming Business of Christmas Music here.
Sameen Singh was named chief strategy officer & chief digital officer at 88rising, reporting to CEO and founder Sean Miyashiro out of Los Angeles. Singh will lead global strategy, negotiate partnerships, further digital business development and shepherd inorganic growth in the role. He will also lead the development and implementation of strategic initiatives and commercial innovation. Singh comes to 88rising from Create Music Group, where he served as chief strategy officer for two years. He can be reached at sameen@88rising.com.
Capitol Music Group (CMG) has promoted six employees in its marketing departments. They are: Jessica Eason to vp of marketing for Capitol Records; Zoe Gillespie to vp of brand partnerships and strategy for CMG; Kate Haffenden to vp of international marketing for CMG; Chris Kershaw to vp of marketing for Capitol Records; Byron Miller to vp of commercial marketing, streaming strategy (urban) for CMG; and Alex Williams to vp of gaming strategy & business development for CMG. Eason can be reached at jessica.eason@umusic.com, Gillespie can be reached at zoe.gillespie@umusic.com, Haffenden can be reached at kate.haffenden@umusic.com, Kershaw can be reached at chris.kershaw@umusic.com, Miller can be reached at byron.miller@umusic.com and Williams can be reached at alex.williams5@umusic.com.
Kurt Deutsch was named senior vp at Warner Music Entertainment & Theatrical Ventures, a newly created role. Deutsch will oversee the development of new theatrical productions and investments while continuing to be a connector with songwriters, artists and catalogs via collaborations with Warner Chappell Music and the various Warner Music Group (WMG) labels. He will continue to work closely with songwriters he has signed or re-signed to Warner Chappell, including Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty, Joe Iconis, Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss, Alan Menken, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Eddie Perfect and Shaina Taub. Deutsch, who has been with WMG since 2017, will continue to be based in New York and report to Warner Music Entertainment (WME) president Charles Cohen. The theatrical music label he founded, Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight, will continue as part of WMG’s portfolio of labels.
Universal Music Group (UMG) hired Alvaro Galbete-Velilla as senior vp of new business, a new role that will see him develop opportunities in the Web3 and metaverse sectors as well as other emerging areas of digital development for the label. He joins the company from SoundCloud, where he was director of business development. UMG also promoted Kristen Bender to senior vp of digital innovation strategy & business development; she will continue to play an important role in implementing digital business partnerships with UMG operating units and directing UMG’s engagement with entrepreneurs worldwide. Her previous title was senior vp of business development & strategy. Both executives are based in Los Angeles.
Rachel Chernoff was named senior vp of data science & analytics at Sony Music Entertainment (SME), a newly created role; she was previously senior vp of partner development at the company. Based in New York, Chernoff will lead a newly formed team that brings together the global digital business (GDB) group’s strategic analytics and data science functions to continue growing SME’s data capabilities across the globe. Chernoff will work in partnership with the SME partner development, global product and sales & analytics teams to enhance and develop analytic- and science-based tools, techniques and expertise supporting the needs of Sony Music’s labels and businesses around the world. She will also lead the evolution of SME’s data capabilities with external partners globally. She reports to Dennis Kooker, president of global digital business at SME.
BMG appointed Pierrot Raschdorff as senior director of global diversity, equity and inclusion out of Berlin. In the role, Raschdorff will be responsible for developing and accelerating BMG’s global DE&I goals, working with international teams across the company’s 12 core music markets. He joins from Penguin Random House — also a division of BMG’s parent company Bertelsmann — in Germany.
Beau Benton was promoted to senior vp of media & operations at Republic Records. Benton, who will oversee operations for Republic in Los Angeles in the new role alongside co-president Wendy Goldstein, will continue handling media strategy and orchestrating campaigns for Republic artists. He will also serve as the liaison for internal Los Angeles team communication overall.
Karl Skoog joined Amuse as CMO, tasking him with leading the Swedish music company’s marketing and communications teams with a focus on global growth. Skoog was previously CMO at both Fotografiska and NGO The Swedish Brain Foundation. He has also worked at Tele2 and EMI Music Publishing. Skoog can be reached at karl@amuse.io.
Range Media Partners hired Jared Cotter as vp of A&R and Federico Morris as director of A&R. Both will join vp of A&R Sam Drake in supporting Range Music’s management talent, label joint venture with Capitol Music Group/Virgin Music & Artist Label Services and Range Music Publishing. Colter arrives from his multi-faceted entertainment company The Heavy Group. He will continue to manage Bazzi and co-manage clients Rose Betts, Ben Kessler, Boston & Pat, Veyah and Jay Sean with Jeremy Skaller while working to expand Range’s roster of artists on the label side. Morris most recently served as publishing A&R and manager at Electric Feel Entertainment. Cotter can be reached at jcotter@rangemp.com and Morris can be reached at fmorris@rangemp.com.
PPL named Titania Altius as head of member services and Dan Millington as senior vp/head of client services. Altius will oversee the delivery of the member services team’s operational activity and build and foster productive working relationships with PPL’s key stakeholders and industry partners around the world to develop the organization’s neighboring rights collections and distribution service. Millington will lead PPL’s member relationship management and recruitment to its international collections service. Both Altius and Millington will report to chief membership & people officer Kate Reilly. Altius can be reached at titania.altius@ppluk.com and Millington can be reached at daniel.millington@ppluk.com.
Naomi Asher was named vp of songwriter services and neighbouring rights at Sony Music Publishing UK. In her new role, Asher will be the go-to contact for SMP UK’s catalog songwriters and clients and will be tasked with expanding opportunities and driving success for their songs both locally and internationally. She will also continue overseeing the company’s neighbouring rights division. She will remain in the company’s London office, reporting to SMP UK co-managing directors David Ventura and Tim Major.
Rhea Ghosh was promoted to chief marketing officer at copyright protection service Cosynd, where she will lead all marketing and communications initiatives and consumer brand strategy. She will also head up Cosynd’s advocacy efforts with its partner network, which includes CD Baby, A2IM, the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Repost by SoundCloud, Symphonic Distribution, BookBaby, DiscMakers, AdRev, Soundrop and BeatStars. She joined the company in 2020. Ghosh can be reached at rhea.ghosh@cosynd.com.
Artist manager Keith Hagan joined MNRK Music Group, bringing his clients The Afghan Whigs, Robert Finley, Cymande, Ondara, The Whitmore Sisters and The Mastersons to the company. Hagan will be based in New York, reporting to MNRK president & CEO Chris Taylor. He most recently founded and led Skylark Artist Management. Hagan can be reached at khagan@mnrk.com.
Kate Loesch was named senior director of creative at Kobalt. The Los Angeles-based executive will sign artists and writers and with the global creative roster at Kobalt. She arrives at the company from Capitol Records, where she served as director of A&R.
CAA promoted Kate Arenson and Ron Jordan to agents in the music touring department. Jordan will continue working with ARDN, Jean Deaux and tobi lou, among others. (via THR)
Glenn Briffa was named CFO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, effective immediately; he’s served as interim CFO since July. His responsibilities include overseeing the organization’s financial, information technology and office administration functions.
Arno Van Berkel was appointed managing director at Fruits Music, a music and tech company specializing in music playlist promotion. He started his new role on Jan. 23. Van Berkel — who joins Fruits Music from Warner Chappell Music, Benelux, where he served as managing director for 15 years — will be based at the company’s headquarters in Oosterhout, Netherlands and report to Fruits Music founder & CEO Stef Van Vugt.
Centricity Music hired three new employees: Tyler Osswald as digital marketing manager, Sarah Shinn as marketing manager of radio and Camy McCardle as senior manager of finance/business affairs.
Violinist/composer Curtis Stewart has been named artistic director at the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), effective immediately. Stewart will overlap with outgoing artistic director Derek Bermel, who is concluding his 10-year tenure but will remain on ACO’s board of directors. In the position, Stewart will be tasked with conceiving, curating, selecting and programming ACO performances, readings, recordings and other programs. He is also responsible for creating programming that expresses the ACO vision, developing and maintaining relationships with individual and institutional artistic partners and setting the artistic strategy for the organization in partnership with ACO president Melissa Ngan. He will additionally work with ACO director of artist equity Garrett McQueen to offer artistic oversight to the organization’s EarShot composer advancement initiatives. Stewart can be reached at curtis@americancomposers.org.
Full Coverage Communications named Melissa O’Toole as director and Avery Robinson as senior publicist in Los Angeles. O’Toole has worked at companies including 42West, Scoop Marketing and ID PR along with several talent agencies and record labels. Robinson joins from BECK Media & Marketing. The company also announced the signing of several new clients, including Adam Lambert, Alicia Keys, Kid Harpoon, The Kid LAROI, Little big Town, Michael Buble, Ozuna and TXT.
Songwriters have something to celebrate this holiday season. Though it seemed rulings on royalty rates for the period of 2018-2022 (Phonorecords III) and 2023-2027 (Phonorecords IV) would not receive final judgement by the Copyright Royalty Board in time for Christmas, there is finally clarity about at least one type of royalty. The board on Friday (Dec. 16) accepted a proposed settlement to hike the royalty rate for U.S. mechanicals for physical products (like vinyl records, CDs, cassettes), permanent downloads, ringtones and music bundles.
Taking effect on Jan. 1, 2023, as part of Phonorecords IV, songwriters will earn 12 cents per track or 2.31 cents per minute of playing time or fraction thereof, whichever amount is larger for physical products and permanent downloads. This will also include inflation-based adjustments for subsequent years of the rate period, a major change for composers who have historically been locked into stagnant penny rates for sales, despite the increasing cost of living. Ringtones will remain at the same rate as they were previously, and the money earned for each element of a music bundle will be decided according to the rates for that element.
The new ruling today approves what is known as “Settlement 2,” which was formed by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), as well as the major music companies: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group earlier this year.
As the name of the settlement implies, there was one that preceded it. In 2021, the same parties proposed “Settlement 1” which would have upheld the long-standing 9.1 cent penny rate for physical goods and permanent downloads. That proposed settlement was sent to the Copyright Royalty Board judges for approval last year, but it triggered backlash among some in the independent writer community.
The 9.1 cent rate has been in effect since 2006 and has not risen with inflation. George Johnson, an independent songwriter who often pushes back against settlements at the Copyright Royalty Board in favor of higher rates, and other interested parties objected to continuing this 9.1 cent rate for another five year period. They also noted other issues with Settlement 1, like the lack of adjustments for inflation, and questioned a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the major labels and the NMPA, which could have provided waivers on late fees the U.S. Copyright law allows when payment deadlines are missed.
In response to concerns, The CRB judges concluded the proposed settlement did not provide a reasonable basis for setting statutory rates and terms as stated in proposed settlement 1.
For many years, the CRB rate proceedings have primarily focused on achieving fair compensation for streaming rates. In 2021, audio digital services paid out about $1.3 billion to publishers and songwriters, according to data from the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
While sales formats comprise roughly 15% of the recorded music market, the NMPA estimates those formats produce just 5% of U.S. publishing royalties. If streaming continues to grow at its current pace, some say that within three years these sales formats that are covered by the subpart B configurations might only account for 1% of publishing royalties.
The NMPA has also pointed out in the past that rate litigation is expensive — often in the tens of millions of dollars — as a reason why they have focused on fighting for high streaming rates rather than what formats are covered by subpart B, noting that the cost of litigation could end up equaling or outweighing whatever additional money a higher subpart B hike could achieve.
In Friday’s ruling, however, the court notes that the royalties generated by vinyl, CDs, downloads and other formats covered in subpart B “should not be treated as de minimis, or as a ‘throw away’ negotiating chip to encourage better terms for streaming configurations.” They also noted the improvements to Settlement 2 as “distinguishable” from the first proposed settlement.
The event marks the biggest rate increase for songwriters for physical goods and permanent downloads in almost two decades.
Now, just one final step remains: the register of copyrights has to check and make sure this is compliant with the copyright statute, and if approved — which is typical — this will go into effect at the top of the year. However, participating parties also have 30 days to file an appeal to the CRB’s determination.