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Taylor Swift has reached an agreement with two songwriters to end a five-year long copyright lawsuit claiming she stole the lyrics to “Shake It Off” from an earlier song about “playas” and “haters,” resolving one of the music industry’s biggest legal battles without a climactic trial or ruling.
In a joint filing made on Monday in California federal court, attorneys for both Swift and her accusers – songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler – asked a judge for an order “dismissing this action in its entirety.” Before the deal, a trial had been scheduled to kick off in January.
The public filings did not include any specific terms of the apparent settlement, like whether any money exchanged or songwriting credits would be changed. Attorneys for both sides and a rep for Swift did not immediately return requests for comment.
The agreement means a sudden end for a blockbuster case that seemed headed toward the next landmark ruling on music copyrights. Following legal battles over Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” the case against Swift posed fundamental questions about the limits of copyright protection, with her lawyers arguing that the accusers were trying to “cheat the public domain” by monopolizing basic lyrical phrases.
Hall and Butler first sued way back in 2017, claiming Swift stole her lyrics to “Shake It Off” from their “Playas Gon’ Play,” a song released by R&B group 3LW in 2001. That was no small accusation, given the song in question: “Shake It Off” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2014 and ultimately spent 50 weeks on the chart, a mega-hit even for one of music’s biggest stars.
In Hall and Butler’s song, the line was “playas, they gonna play, and haters, they gonna hate”; in Swift’s track, she sings, “‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” In their complaint, the duo said Swift’s lyric was clearly copied from their song.
In the years since, Swift’s attorneys repeatedly pushed to dismiss the case, arguing that a short snippet of lyrics about “players” and “haters” was not creative or unique enough to be covered by copyrights. They cited more than a dozen earlier songs that had used similar phrases, including 1997’s “Playa Hater” by Notorious B.I.G and 1999’s “Don’t Hate the Player” by Ice-T.
Swift initially won a decision in 2018 dismissing the case on those grounds, with a federal judge ruling that Hall and Butler’s lyrics were not protected because popular culture in 2001 had had been “heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters.” But an appeals court later overruled that decision, and a judge ruled last year that the case would need to be decided by a jury trial.
“Even though there are some noticeable differences between the works, there are also significant similarities in word usage and sequence/structure,” the judge wrote at the time.
More recently, Swift’s team again asked the judge to dismiss the case, this time making a new argument: That documents turned over during the case had revealed that Hall and Butler voluntarily signed away their right to file the lawsuit in the first place.
In an August filing, Swift’s lawyers said the documents proved that Hall and Butler had granted their music publishers the exclusive rights to bring an infringement lawsuit over the song, meaning they lacked the legal standing to do so. Her lawyers said the pair had even emailed their publishers – Sony Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing Group, respectively – asking for permission to sue, but that both companies had refused the request.
“After their music publishers refused to assign to plaintiffs the claim they assert in this action, their manager unsuccessfully lobbied a United States Congressman to get a House sub-committee to intervene,” Swift’s lawyers alleged in the filing.
That motion was still pending when Monday’s settlement was filed.
Given how hard nightlife was hit during the pandemic, with many clubs closing permanently, industry insiders are pleasantly surprised with its 2022 comeback. JoJo Walker, director of programming at New York’s Avant Gardner and Brooklyn Mirage, attests that the industry is generally doing “amazingly well,” even though “it’s more challenging now than ever before.”
As clubs reopened amid the lingering pandemic in mid-2021, venues scrambled to get DJs back behind the decks to play for fans eager to return to dancefloors. “2021 was a free-for-all because everybody wanted to party,” says Walker. “People were willing to pay high ticket prices, and the wheel was being fed from all angles.” This competitive market boosted DJ fees, which in many cases increased up to 20% for club and festival sets. But now, fees remain lodged at these higher rates even as demand has declined, creating headaches for dance promoters who are also navigating inflation’s effects on nightlife.
“It’s not just that artists are being greedy,” says Walker, “but for them to do what they need to in terms of traveling and making a living, they need to have their costs covered: flights, hotels, cars. Those costs are being passed on to the promoter, and now there’s not a wealthy part of the wheel that can be taken from.” Walker adds that many DJs are touring less after enjoying the pandemic’s slowed pace, prompting agents to negotiate higher paychecks for the shows these artists do play.
Promoters have had to get creative in order to turn a profit. Walker is currently structuring artist deals that involve a lower flat rate and a per-ticket bonus, which incentivizes DJs to promote their shows, as their final rates are relative to those shows’ success. Given that she books for multiple venues, along with the annual 100,000-person electronic festival Electric Zoo (owned by Avant Gardner), Walker also has the dexterity to offer multishow contracts, creating an advantage over promoters booking a single room.
Brig Dauber, entertainment director at long-standing Los Angeles club Avalon, says the venue has “kept on step” with new fee expectations while working harder to determine which artists are most viable in the current market. This year, Avalon has skewed toward theme-based nights centered on certain genres and musical eras to “diversify the patronage and avoid the risk of not actualizing profit versus artist fee.”
But whether booking a tiny space or an 8,000-capacity club like Brooklyn Mirage, the surge in venue overhead is resulting in consumers having to deal with higher ticket prices to cover costs. Walker says fans “can’t necessarily afford to go out in the same way they used to, so they’re much more selective about the shows they do attend.” This scrupulousness has created a major increase in week-of and day-of ticket sales, which in turn fosters even less certainty among promoters.
And yet, Walker remains confident things are heading in the right direction. “I feel like among everyone working in the industry there’s a lot of optimism that this will balance out. It’s just going to take some time.”
This story originally appeared in the Dec. 10, 2022, issue of Billboard.
Tory Lanez and Los Angeles prosecutors on Monday will finally kick off a closely-watched jury trial over whether he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, with a potential 22-year prison sentence looming for Lanez if convicted.
After a week of jury selection, prosecutors will make opening statements in their effort to convict Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) of three felony charges over the July 2020 incident, in which the rapper allegedly shot Stallion in the foot during an argument after a pool party in the Hollywood Hills.
Lanez has maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to all three charges – and publicly implying that Stallion is lying about the shooting. Stallion (born Megan Pete) has been steadfast against such pushback, writing in a New York Times op-ed that “even as a victim, I have been met with skepticism and judgment.”
The trial will center on the early morning of July 12, 2020, when Stallion, Lanez and Stallion’s friend Kelsey Harris were driving in an SUV following a party at Kylie Jenner’s house. According to prosecutors, after an argument broke out, Megan got out of the vehicle and began walking away, then Lanez shouted, “Dance, bitch!” and began shooting at her feet.
Lanez has suggested on social media that he was romantically involved with both women, which led to the altercation. Stallion has strongly denied this.
Immediately after the incident, Stallion initially told police officers that she cut her foot stepping on broken glass, but days later alleged that she had suffered a gunshot wound. After media outlets reported that Lanez had fired the gun, Stallion directly accused him in an August 2020 Instagram video.
In October 2020, Lanez was charged with one count of assault with a firearm and another gun possession charge. At a December 2021 hearing, a Los Angeles judge allowed the case to move forward to a trial. A new charge, discharging a firearm with gross negligence, was added last week. Lanez has pleaded not guilty to all three counts.
The upcoming trial will feature testimony from a number of high-profile witnesses, including from Stallion herself and Kelsey Harris. Also taking the stand could be Jenner and Corey Gamble, Kris Jenner’s boyfriend who was also allegedly at the party. Peterson might take the stand himself, but putting a defendant on the stand is always a gamble for defense attorneys.
The government is expected to wrap up its case by Friday and turn over the proceedings to Lanez’s attorneys. The trial is expected to run into next week.
For the government, prosecutors Kathy Ta and Alexander Bott will handle the case. Though Lanez has been represented by celebrity attorney Shawn Holley throughout the case, attorney George Mgdesyan handled last week’s proceedings and appears to be set to take lead at the trial.
BRISBANE, Australia — George Ash is stepping down as president of Universal Music Australia and New Zealand.
In a surprise announcement that hit inboxes as the music industry settled in for the first day of the working week, Universal Music Group announced Ash would retire from his position at the end of the year.
“The time is right for me to step down from Universal,” says the outgoing executive in a corporate statement. “I feel confident that with the brilliant leadership group we have now, the organization will continue to grow and thrive.
New Zealand-born Ash will leave UMA as part of a “long-planned personal decision to focus on new goals and projects,” reads the statement, “whilst leaving the company under the leadership of a new generation of executives, who will continue to build on the legacy of creative and commercial success that has flourished during his tenure.”
With Ash at the helm of the Sydney-based business, UMA helped establish the careers of a long list of artists from these parts, including Lorde, Baker Boy, Amyl and The Sniffers, Tame Impala, Gotye, Dean Lewis, Troye Sivan and many others.
“Under George’s leadership, the UMA team has delivered countless local and international artist successes in this incredibly dynamic market,” comments Lucian Grainge, chairman and CEO, Universal Music Group. “We are grateful to George for his dedication to, and passion for, our artists, and for the historic achievements of UMA during his tenure.”
A musician early in his career, Ash relocated to Australia in 2001 to become managing director at UMA, and was promoted to president in 2010, with duties for Universal Music’s companies on both sides of the Tasman. In 2013, he added duties for the Asia Pacific region.
During his tenure, Ash also served a member of the ARIA board and as chairman of Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) board.
Prior to his move west, Ash enjoyed stints at BMG NZ and PolyGram in his homeland, and was instrumental in the creation of MCA Geffen, Universal Music’s first operations in New Zealand, back in 1995.
In an internal message to staff, seen by Billboard, Ash writes: “Having been with the company for nearly three decades, the time feels right. I am so confident in, and proud of, the brilliant leadership team we have in place, as well as the positive changes we have made in the past couple of years, and I am excited to see the company, staff, labels, and artists continue to grow and thrive in the years ahead.”
The company is “filled with exceptional people, and it has been a privilege to share this journey with you all. My heartfelt thanks go to Sir Lucian Grainge for his incredible support and guidance, and to Boyd Muir, with whom I have worked since the very beginning of my time at UMG.”
As previously reported, Ash last year initiated an investigation into workplace culture at UMA, following allegations of inappropriate behavior within its ranks. Ash tapped Darren Perry at law firm Seyfarth Shaw, to conduct a probe into workplace culture, after a string of allegations emerged online and an internal complaint was lodged with HR.
“After 35 years working in music, my love for it has not diminished,” comments Ash in his message to staff on Monday (Dec. 12), “and I’m as excited for the future as I was back then, when I was working the nightshift in the Polygram pressing plant in Wellington.”
A successor will be announced “at a later date,” reads a statement.
Read Ash’s message to staff:
Dear colleagues,
I am writing to let you all know that I will be stepping down from my role as President of UMA at the end of the year.
This is something that I have been planning for a long time, as I still have many areas of personal interest and passions that I want to explore.
Having been with the company for nearly three decades, the time feels right. I am so confident in, and proud of, the brilliant leadership team we have in place, as well as the positive changes we have made in the past couple of years, and I am excited to see the company, staff, labels, and artists continue to grow and thrive in the years ahead.
I am also proud of the role that I have played in transforming UMA into the market-leading music company. It has been an honor to work with so many talented and creative artists, including Lorde, Baker Boy, Amyl and The Sniffers, Tame Impala, Gotye, Hayley Westenra, Wolfmother, Dean Lewis, Hilltop Hoods, Troye Sivan, Empire of the Sun, A.B. Original, Tina Arena, Havana Brown, The Presets, Boy & Bear, Powderfinger, Bernard Fanning, Sarah Blasko, Tkay Maidza and countless others, especially those that we have helped introduce to new audiences around the world. It has also been a pleasure to welcome so many of UMG’s international artists to our shores, and to help them achieve great success here.
This company is filled with exceptional people, and it has been a privilege to share this journey with you all. My heartfelt thanks go to Sir Lucian Grainge for his incredible support and guidance, and to Boyd Muir, with whom I have worked since the very beginning of my time at UMG.
My adoration, respect and gratitude go to so many of my colleagues here in Australia, New Zealand and around the world. I have so many fond memories, favorite shows, and most of all friendships from my time here.
After 35 years working in music, my love for it has not diminished, and I’m as excited for the future as I was back then, when I was working the nightshift in the Polygram pressing plant in Wellington.
My enduring thanks and admiration.
Few things faze Noah Assad, Bad Bunny’s manager. But even he admits that launching a stadium tour barely three months after an arena tour was a bit daunting.
“We knew it was going to be a learning experience and something none of us had done before,” Assad says now, “but we went for it and worked through it with the help of old and new partners and set new industry standards.”
Bad Bunny ends the year as the top touring act of 2022, grossing $373.5 million from 1.8 million tickets across 65 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore, and that number doesn’t even include his last 20 Latin American stadium shows. This makes Bunny — born Benito Martinez Ocasio — the first act who doesn’t perform in English to ever top the year-end tally.
World’s Hottest Tour broke venue revenue records in 12 of the 15 U.S. markets that it hit, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., and New York, where he played Yankee Stadium. All told, the North American leg of tour averaged $11.1 million per show – the biggest per-show average gross by any artist in any genre in Boxscore history (dating back to the late 1980s).
Bunny also became the only artist to ever launch separate tours each topping $100 million in the same calendar year. His stadium tour launched after he played his 35-date El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, an arena tour that earned $116.8 million from 35 shows.
So, how did an artist who only records in Spanish, who is signed to an independent label and has only been five years in the market achieve this feat? To find out, Billboard spoke with agents, promoters and producers to piece together the ingredients of Bunny’s spectacular touring success.
The seeds for World’s Hottest Tour, which ends with sold out shows Friday (Dec. 9) and Saturday (Dec. 10) at Mexico city’s Estadio Azteca, were sown April 15, 2021, when tickets went on sale for Bunny’s April 2022 arena tour. The tour sold out in a matter of hours, says Jbeau Lewis, one of Bunny’s agents at UTA, with some 200,000 to 300,000 people in virtual queue in individual arenas trying to score tickets, and it became clear how much demand there was for Bad Bunny concerts.
“I remember vividly Noah having a discussion that day and saying, ‘We have to hold some stadiums for next year.’ We saw the unprecedented demand for [2022 arena tour] Ultimo Tour del Mundo,” says Lewis. “And knowing that tour was going to be nine months away and that Benito had plans to release more music, the only way to provide enough supply to alleviate the demand was to move to bigger venues. And that’s when we started working on it.”
Last year Assad signed on with Henry Cardenas of Cardenas Marketing Network (CMN), Bunny’s longtime promoter who was already doing his arena tour who’d been booking him since he played 1,000-people club shows back in 2017 and 2018 in cites like New York and Miami. Cardenas brought in Live Nation, which has vast experience with stadiums, as his partners in the U.S.
In the U.S., the biggest challenge was not the prospect of selling out stadiums; Lewis felt very confident that wouldn’t be an issue if they stuck to those markets where Bunny had strongest demand. Scheduling was the problem, given that the tour was being booked just 15-16 months in advance, and MLB and NFL teams already had dates locked down. Assad and Bunny were also adamant that he not play more than two dates per city, so fans wouldn’t think that one market was preferred over another.
In the end, they settled on 15 U.S. cities and tickets went on sale before the tour design even was finalized, something tour producer Roly Garbalosa says is unusual. “Normally for a tour this big, you design, then look for the markets. Not here. Here we just went.”
Bad Bunny hit road Aug. 5 with a massive production hauling his massive “beach,” palm trees, LED screens and of course, the contraptions needed for his flying stunt, where he gets on top of a small island with a palm tree and soars over the crowd, singing all the way. While a typical tour will take about 20 cargo trucks, Bunny traveled with up to 36, carrying 100 tons of equipment. While CMN and Live Nation promoted the entire U.S. trek of the tour, in Latin America CMN took over seven concerts. The others went to independent promoters Assad has long worked with in the past, including Bizarro in Chile, Westwood Entertainment in Mexico and Dale Play in Argentina.
“Noah has a code of honor,” says Fede Lauria, the founder of Dale Play, who promoted Bunny’s two shows at Velez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires. “I promoted Benito’s first tour here in Luna Park in 2016. This time, it’s been the biggest production I’ve ever done. We sold 90,000 tickets, but I would have sold 900,000. We sold out in half an hour. I had over a million people in virtual line trying to buy tickets.”
For Latin America, Bunny again insisted on his no more than two shows per city rule. He also insisted that his show had to be exactly the same as what his fans saw in the U.S. This is easier said than done. Usually, promoters will pay artists their guarantee plus the cost of local production. But Bunny couldn’t rely on local production for such a technically complicated show. Many countries and venues simply don’t have the equipment necessary to replicated what can be done in state-of-the-art stadiums in the U.S. And many local promoters can’t afford to pay the costs of importing production and still break even, especially in countries that are suffering from massive devaluation. So, instead of modifying the show to meet local production standards, “He took all his equipment, put it inside a 747 jet, and took it with him,” Cárdenas says. “And he paid for that.”
Even then, says Garbalosa, adjustments were required. Bunny’s flying stunt in the U.S. is done commonly by hitching the equipment to the lights and towers. Because many stadiums in Latin America don’t have that capability, “We had to rent cranes and place them outside the stadium,” says Garbalosa.
Bunny traveled through Latin America with the 747 cargo jet for his more than 100 tons of equipment; a passenger jet for his 130-plus crew and personnel and a private jet for himself and his immediate five-to-six-person team. And he paid those costs.
“No other artist does that,” says Cárdenas.” I will say it in plain English: He’s the only artist who invests that kind of money in his production in Latin America.”
What that decision translates to is less money for the artist. Shows in the U.S. make more because ticket prices are higher and the cost of production, in this case, can be far less.
“But he said, my fans deserve the same show,” Cárdenas says. “It will pay off in the future.”
In some ways, you could say it’s already paying off.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” adds Garbalosa, the production manager. “I’ve never worked with an artist that creates this kind of frenzy.”
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.
If the 2010s were the decade that established streaming as the de facto way that most people enjoy music, the 2020s will be the decade the platforms’ royalty rates took a leap forward.
For much of streaming services’ existence, the industry has tried to gently balance the need to foster growth with the need to generate something close to subsistence-level income for creators and rights holders. If rights holders squeeze too tight, they could strangle the life out of the companies they depend on to carry them in a post-CD, post-download world. Too loose a grasp on streaming platforms would mean the spoils of technological disruption would remain with tech companies.
The process requires patience. With social media apps, licensing deals start small, with lump-sum payments rather than percent-of-revenue royalties while the fledgling platform builds a sustainable business model. Because licensing deals are renewed every three years, rights owners endure long waits to secure better terms that will result in more royalties. It will take a few cycles for a platform to generate meaningful royalty income for its label partners.
This year, there were numerous developments that point to better royalty rates in 2023 and beyond. They have different degrees of certainty, however. Higher subscription prices are sure to move the needle and result in higher payouts to artists and labels. Whether artists and labels will finally get paid for terrestrial radio play in 2023 is less certain, although the mood in Washington D.C. seems favorable. And with the authors of Chokepoint Capitalism, Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin, currently making the media rounds, and the Federal Trade Commission cracking down on companies that take advantage of gig workers, the plight of creators in today’s digital economy is getting mainstream attention (my colleague Rob Levine brought attention to tech companies’ value destruction in his book, Free Ride, a decade ago).
Congressional Bill to Get Artists & Labels Paid for Radio Airplay Clears Critical House Vote
12/09/2022
Music subscription price increases
Artists have wanted a raise from streaming services for years. Part of the problem is how royalties are calculated — a pool of money is split according to the number of times the tracks were played. That puts album-oriented artists at a mathematical disadvantage to mainstream artists in popular genres like pop and hip-hop. Another common complaint is that streaming services have barely raised their subscription prices for more than a decade. With prices flat, the best way to improve streaming royalties is to attract more subscribers. Keeping subscription fees relatively affordable, especially when Netflix and other video streaming services routinely hiked their prices, ensured customer acquisition would continue. Affordable family plans, which cover up to six people for 50% more than an individual plan, helped attract customers and reduced churn — but didn’t help artist payouts. Finally, this year Amazon, Deezer, YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music) and Apple Music announced broad price increases to individual and family plans. Spotify has hinted it will follow with price hikes of its own in 2023. The financial impact could be massive: A modest increase of $1 per month for individual plans and $2 per month for family plans in mature markets — less in developing markets with lower prices — would easily generate many hundreds of millions of incremental subscription royalties, which totaled $12.3 billion in 2021, according to the IFPI.
A TikTok subscription service
TikTok doesn’t pay much in royalties, but it plays an outsized role in cultural trends — the app has over 1 billion active users and is especially popular with Gen Z consumers. That has changed the balance of power in music streaming. “The major streaming platforms are reacting to culture now rather than driving it,” Tatiana Cirisano, music industry analyst and consultant for MIDiA Research, recently told Billboard. In that light, news that TikTok is working to expand its Resso subscription service (it’s available only in Indonesia, Brazil and India) is a big deal. Currently, TikTok creates impressions and demand for music that has downstream effects on other platforms — see a TikTok video, listen to the entire track at Spotify, YouTube Music or Apple Music. But if TikTok owned both the short-form video platform and the subscription platform, it could better convert that initial interest into downstream listening while eroding the influence of the Spotifys and Apple Musics of the world. More importantly, a TikTok subscription service would help change TikTok’s status as a royalty underperformer.
Subscription streaming rates
Publishers and songwriters will get a slight raise in subscription streaming royalty rates over the next five years due to a settlement reached in August by the National Music Publishers’ Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Digital Media Association. The headline royalty rate will go from 15.1% of revenue in 2023 to 15.35% in 2027. That’s not a huge gain, but it’s an improvement. The settlement could help in other ways, too. Streaming services were able to get favorable terms for bundles and free trials that allow them to get more subscribers into the ecosystem. That would help songwriters and publishers by increasing the number of subscribers — the major driver in streaming royalty growth — as they enjoy modest annual increases in royalty rates.
Inflation adjustments to noninteractive streaming rates
Each year, the rate paid by noninteractive streaming platforms in the U.S. is adjusted to account for inflation over the previous year. In 2023, artists and labels will get a raise due to inflation rates that reached a 40-year high in 2022. (The rates increased 7.1% for subscription plays and 9.1% for ad-supported plays.) In years past, noninteractive streaming services such as Pandora were a more significant part of artists’ and labels’ incomes. That gave extra weight to the decisions of the Copyright Royalty Board and changes in the per-play streaming rates. Now, on-demand services like Spotify and YouTube dominate the streaming landscape and noninteractive webcasting has diminished in value and relevance. Still, Pandora’s ad-supported listening hours fell only 5% year over year in the third quarter of 2022 — to 2.75 billion — and it paid out $921 million in royalties in the first nine months of the year. Above all, a raise is a raise.
Terrestrial radio royalties
Legislation that would pay artists and labels for airplay on U.S. terrestrial radio was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday (Dec. 7). With only a month left in the current Congress, Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he’s confident the bill could make it through the next Congress (that could be 2023 or 2024). While this isn’t the first legislation to address the lack of a performance right, the AMFA arrives at a time when lawmakers — in D.C. and elsewhere — have taken an interest in creators’ ability to make a living in the streaming age. Outgoing House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler has shown concern about a “race to the bottom” in streaming royalties, for example, and U.K. lawmakers examined the equitableness of streaming royalties paid to artists in that market. Passage of an AMFA-like law, or a settlement with radio broadcasters, would be a huge coup for artists and labels who get only promotion from radio airplay while radio stations are obligated to pay songwriters and publishers. In fact, U.S. radio royalties would be two — not one — new stacks of money. That’s because the lack of a performance right for broadcast radio in the U.S. means European countries withhold royalty payments from American artists for performances on their soil, SoundExchange CEO Michael Huppe explained in a recent Billboard op-ed.
Not long ago, a placement on Spotify’s RapCaviar or Apple Music’s Today’s Hits playlists could ignite a single’s streaming numbers overnight. “Today’s Top Hits [32 million followers on Spotify] used to be the holy grail,” says one manager of several major-label acts. “Or even Pop Rising [2.7 million] — it was like, ‘If a song got on Pop Rising, it’s going to get to Today’s Top Hits and do 5 million streams a week.’ ”
But in 2022, the manager continues, “it doesn’t feel like that’s the case.” This realization is growing around the music industry. “The Spotify and Apple editorial playlists don’t have as much punch” as they did, agrees Kieron Donoghue, founder of Humble Angel Records and former vp of global playlists strategy at Warner Music Group. “The major streaming platforms are reacting to culture now rather than driving it,” adds Tatiana Cirisano, music industry analyst and consultant for MIDiA Research.
In a statement to Billboard, Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at Spotify, countered that the platform’s “top five editorial playlists are followed by more than 80 million listeners — they’re wildly popular.” She added that the overall audience for playlists is larger than ever, “these listeners have increasingly diverse tastes, Spotify is meeting that consumer demand, and, as a result, more artists are being discovered.” A representative for Apple Music declined to comment for this story.
But managers sound nearly misty-eyed when they reminisce about the streams that some editorial playlists once generated. “There used to be a world where an unknown artist would get the cover of the Fresh Finds playlist [on Spotify] and they would get between 60,000 and 100,000 streams a week,” says one manager who works primarily with developing acts. “Now you’re looking at more like 15,000 to 20,000 streams a week.”
“Does Today’s Top Hits move the needle as much now as it did four years ago?” one senior label executive asks. “No.” The difference is especially stark, he adds, if you’re not near the top of the playlist.
Label executives say the change in firepower of marquee editorial playlists is caused in part by the increased emphasis on personalization, especially at Spotify, which encourages users to play music similar to what they’ve streamed — in essence, burrow deeper into their own tastes — rather than pushing all listeners to play the same tracks. The shift is also a reflection of the growing power of apps like TikTok in music discovery: “The pie of ‘discovery market share’ has become more fragmented,” according to Daniel Sander, chief commercial officer of music marketing technology company Feature.FM. The gatekeepers who program editorial playlists are ceding ground to user-generated content on short-form-video platforms.
There are exceptions: Managers say some of Spotify’s editorial playlists in Southeast Asia, for example, still have oomph, as does the phonk playlist, which launched earlier this year and caters to a rising subgenre of dance music popular in Eastern Europe. (Beneficiaries include dhruv, who has 7.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and Kordhell, with 12.7 million.) But executives maintain that many of the big-name editorial collections are not magnifying songs the way they once did.
Some of that decline is due to changes at the streaming services. In 2019, Spotify took playlists like Beast Mode and Chill Hits, which previously had been the same for all listeners, and personalized them “for each listener based on their particular taste,” according to a company press release. (This change did not affect playlists like RapCaviar, Baila Reggaeton, and Today’s Top Hits.)
Spotify found that this had two effects: Listeners tuned in to personalized collections for longer, and the streaming wealth was spread across more acts — raising “the number of artists featured on playlists by 30% and the number of songs listeners are discovering by 35%,” according to one 2021 announcement.
In her statement, Spotify’s Ong noted that “listener habits have become increasingly diverse, so our playlist strategy has expanded to accommodate that.” She says personalized editorial playlists are responsible for “a third of all new artist discoveries on Spotify.”
TikTok, which now spurs a lot of music discovery, embraced personalization from the beginning. Users marvel at how well the app seems to anticipate their tastes: “Everything on TikTok feels like it was meant especially for you,” says one music executive.
Short-form-video platforms like TikTok have also fundamentally altered the timeline of a hit. “With the rise of TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, artists can play song snippets or behind-the-scenes content and drive fans to take action — discovery is happening before your song would even be able to be put on an editorial playlist,” says Sander.
In addition, TikTok rejuvenates catalog tracks — ranging from Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (released in 1977) to Thundercat’s “Them Changes” (2017) — and pushes them back on to the charts, defying many marquee editorial playlists’ emphasis on front-line releases. “The path of a hit has changed,” says one major-label executive. The major streaming platforms “haven’t built anything to adjust to that.”
As a result, the power of streaming-service gatekeepers has eroded. “You’re going to find the next curator on TikTok,” says one A&R consultant at a major label. The mantle of the editorial playlisters has been taken up partly by remix-focused accounts on TikTok, which release sped-up or slowed-down versions of sounds that millions of users incorporate into their own videos.
User-generated content is “what’s driving TikTok and driving the charts,” says Kuok Meng Ru, CEO of music technology company BandLab. “People feeling involved gets them more excited.”
And there’s no way to be involved with editorial playlists other than hitting the “like” button. “We’re seeing in consumer surveys how much Gen Z really does want to actively participate in music — not just listen and consume passively, but make their own videos, remix the song, create their own content on top of it,” Cirisano adds. “The major streaming services don’t offer that.”
After years of trying to clean up its act and shed its reputation as a major source of pirated music, Russian streaming service VK is allowing users to upload albums released on major record labels that exited Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
A search by Billboard on Dec. 7 found that dozens of albums from major labels were were available to all VK users and could be found using the service’s search tool. They included Taylor Swift‘s Midnights, released by Universal Music Group’s Republic Records, and Red Hot Chili Pepper‘s Return of the Dream Canteen, a Warner Records Music release.
VK did not reply to Billboard‘s request for comment.
Global labels body IFPI in London did not immediately condemn the apparent copyright violations, nor confirm if they or its label members had issued takedown orders to VK in recent days. “We’re continuously monitoring the situation in Russia with regard to unauthorized services and will take appropriate action as necessary,” an IFPI spokesperson said.
Sony, Warner and Universal all declined to comment. “It’s disappointing and wrong but comes as no surprise considering [Russia’s] current lack of respect for rights or the rule of law,” one senior industry executive told Billboard.
Courtesy Photo
Just some of the pirated Taylor Swift music featured on VK.
Courtesy Photo
Launched as VKontakte in 2007 in St. Petersburg, VK offers music and other features of a social media platform. As of last month, it was the sixth most-popular web site in Russia, according Similarweb, a website tracking company. It is the second most-popular platform offering music in Russia after Yandex.Music.
In the first quarter, VK had 73.4 million monthly average users and a global audience of 100.4 million. The platform offers both an ad-sponsored model and a subscription service with 3.5 million subscribers, according to the most-recent data available. (Before pulling out, Spotify reportedly had 600,000 paid subscribers in Russia.)
VK’s history of piracy is well noted. When VK emerged as Russia’s response to Facebook, it had a feature that Facebook didn’t — a tool allowing users to upload music tracks that immediately became available to all other users.
That feature was, arguably, one of the reasons why VK quickly became popular with younger users. However, it also made the social network an archenemy of international major labels who accused it of facilitating online piracy.
A range of lawsuits were brought against VK, but the company stood its ground, claiming it had no technical capability to control user-generated content but was willing to remove any copyrighted content at rights holders’ request. The problem was that if a pirated music track was removed, another copy of it would be almost immediately added by another user.
For a while, courts accepted VK’s argument about its inability to control user-generated content, but an array of lawsuits eventually forced VK to sign licensing deals with the majors and the streaming platform got rid of user-generated pirated music a few years ago.
Then in March, in support of Western sanctions to penalize Russia for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Sony, Warner and Universal said they were suspending operations in Russia, and their new releases were no longer available on VK. That same month, Amazon, Deezer, Spotify and TikTok either closed their Russian offices or stopped trading in what was previously the 13th largest music market. (YouTube, for its part, suspended all monetization programs for users in Russia in March.) Among major global music providers, only Believe, the French music distributor, has continued to operate in Russia, saying in September that it was doing so “to support its artists, labels and protect its people’s safety as well as ensure access to music production and distribution.”
The pullout by the global music industry slowed the legal development of a market that Spotify, in particular, had targeted as a key country in its expansion into Eastern and Central Europe. Russia was the fastest-growing market among the global top 20 both in 2019 and 2020, when it produced $328 million in recorded-music revenue, a 58% increase over 2020, according to IFPI.
Some Russian officials have called for a regulation that would permit the use of music and movies whose rights holders have left Russia. The most popular proposal was that all royalties owed to foreign rights holders who left Russia would be held in a dedicated account in Russian rubles and then distributed at some point in the future. Nothing concrete has been done in that area so far, but the Russian government has authorized imports of products by companies which left Russia. They cannot be technically sold in Russia, but they are imported via third countries.
Under current Russian law, the use of music or movies without permission from rights holders remains illegal.
Additional Reporting By Richard Smirke
Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd and dozens of other celebrities are facing a new class action alleging they were secretly paid to “misleadingly” promote NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, leaving investors with “staggering losses.”
In a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for a pair of consumers claimed that Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs Inc. perpetrated a “vast scheme” in which they “discreetly” paid “highly influential celebrities” to pump up the value of the NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
“Defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales,” the lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. “The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions … were able to artificially increase the interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs…, causing investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”
Though this “conspiracy” eventually “raked in millions” for the various defendants, the lawsuit said investors in Bored Ape and other NFTs “were left with staggering losses.”
Yuga Labs and reps for Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd also did not return requests for comment.
The case is the latest over celebrity endorsements for cryptocurrencies and NFTs, which soared in value during 2020 and 2021 but have taken a bruising as the economy has slowed in 2022.
In January, investors sued Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and others earlier this year for promoting the cryptocurrency EthereumMax. And last month, after the spectuacular collapse of crypto company FTX, investors filed a similar suit against Larry David, Tom Brady, Giselle Bündchen, Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry.
But such cases could be facing legal headwinds. The lawsuit against Kardashian and others over EthereumMax was dismissed by a federal judge on Wednesday, who said the conduct raises “legitimate concerns” about online “snake oil,” but that investors must still be expected to “act reasonably before basing their bets on the zeitgeist of the moment.”
Notably, that case was filed by the same lawyer, John T. Jasnoch of Scott + Scott, who filed the new case on Thursday against Yuga Labs. The new case was brought by Adonis Real and Adam Titcher, two consumers who say they bought NFTs, on behalf of potentially thousands of other buyers.
The new lawsuit centers on an alleged partnership between Yuga and music industry bigwig Guy Oseary – longtime manager to Madonna, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers and others – in which they aimed to “leverage their vast network of A-list musicians, athletes, and celebrity client” to promote Bored Ape and other offerings.
The plaintiffs claim that this was achieved via MoonPay, a crypto platform in which Oseary’s venture capital firm had allegedly invested. Since the celebrity defendants were also allegedly investors in MoonPay, the lawsuit claims Yuga and Oseary used it “as a covert way to compensate the Promoter Defendants for their promotions of the BAYC NFTs without disclosing it to unsuspecting investors.”
Oseary did not immediately return requests for comment on the allegations.
Read the entire complaint here:
AEG Presents, a global leader in concert promotion and artist development, on Thursday (Dec. 8) announced an official strategic partnership with K-pop touring and marketing company Powerhouse.
The two live music companies, which have worked together on many successful K-pop artists over the past 13 years, will collaborate on all aspects of the live K-pop business including touring, production, marketing and media across every level.
“In the course of last two decades, K-pop has grown to be one of the most popular genres in the global music industry.,” says C.S. Hah, Powerhouse chief executive and president. “The K-pop market has proven its depth and width to be more matured than ever, and I hope our launch of this formal partnership with AEG Presents can help K-pop grow to reach new horizons across the regions.”
AEG Presents and Powerhouse started their successful relationship in 2010, producing the SM Town concert at Staples Center, regarded as the first blast of K-pop in the U.S. and selling out 12,500 tickets in a matter of minutes. Since then, the two companies have collaborated on historic K-pop tours including two for BTS — the 2017 Wings arena tour in North America and the group’s Love Yourself arena world tour the following year — as well as MONSTA X’s massive 2018 The Connect world tour.
“C.S. Hah and Powerhouse have a track record that speaks for itself,” commented Gary Gersh, AEG Presents president of global touring and talent. “Powerhouse has tapped into what’s becoming an ever-expanding international market for K-Pop, and we are thrilled to build upon an already strong foundation between the two companies.”
Added Adam Wilkes, president and CEO, AEG Asia Pacific: “Powerhouse and AEG Presents have a great history together, and our collaboration has only become more extensive as the barriers continue to evaporate between global music markets. This feels like a logical progression in our ongoing partnership.”
Over the last five months, Powerhouse and AEG Presents have produced and promoted four massive tours for some of the most popular K-pop groups: BLACKPINK, Tomorrow X Together, ENHYPEN and ATEEZ. This year, BLACKPINK sold out 14 North American arenas, plus an additional 10 in the U.K. and Europe. Tomorrow X Together performed eight sold-out shows in two months. ENHYPEN sold out seven arenas in October 2022, and ATEEZ sold out 11 arenas on their North American tour which ended earlier this month. All four of those artists expect to tour the rest of the world in 2023.