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Spotify reported its revenues rose 11% for the second quarter as surging monthly active users and growth in premium subscribers tamped down costs from staff cuts in the previous three months. The company’s total revenue €3.2 billion ($3.53 billion) was up 11% from the year ago quarter, or up 14% in constant currency, a measure […]
Jessica Simpson’s company is suing the owner of a small online apparel retailer called “Jessica’s Everything Shop,” claiming the woman rejected a settlement that would have allowed both Jessicas to “live and let live” and instead tried to win a cash payout.
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In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for the singer’s With You LLC say Simpson and her apparel collection have “always coexisted” with other women named Jessica — specifically name-dropping Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel and many other famous women with that name.
But Simpson’s lawyers say that Jessica Tirado and her “Everything Shop” have been improperly trying to secure their own exclusive trademark on “Jessica” without a surname — a step they say would cause “consumer confusion” and allow Tirado to unfairly sue Simpson over her longstanding use of the name.
When they reached out to resolve the problem without litigation, Simpson’s lawyers say they were met with an unreasonable demand for a “monetary payment to Ms. Tirado.”
“[With You] has a policy that it does not make any such payments, inasmuch as doing so invites ‘troll plaintiff’s attorneys’ to file claims against WY, believing that WY will, in each instance, pay monies,” Simpsons lawyers wrote in their Thursday (July 20) lawsuit.
Tirado’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday. A lawyer for With You LLC (a holding that owns Simpson’s trademarks and other intellectual property) also did not return a request for comment.
Simpson, 43, initially launched The Jessica Simpson Collection in 2005 with a partnership with shoe designer Vince Camuto, eventually growing into a company with a reported $1 billion in revenue by 2014. In 2021, after part-owner Sequential Brands Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Simpson spent $65 million to win back complete control of the brand.
Tirado’s website, meanwhile, currently hosts a store featuring “create your own” t-shirts with custom designs. One features an image of from the film Hocus Pocus with the text “Turns Out I’m 100% That Witch;” another features an image of Santa Claus with the text “Bitch Better Have My Cookies.”
In last week’s lawsuit, Simpson’s lawyers say they first flagged Tirado after she applied in 2021 at the federal trademark office to register the full name of her brand — “Jessica’s Everything Shop *JES*” — as a trademark for an online apparel store. But they say they tried, at first, to hash things out peacefully.
“Before taking any action with respect to Ms. Tirado’s trademark application, WY sought to work out a ‘live and let live’ … arrangement that would allow Ms. Tirado to proceed with her exploitation of her name ‘Jessica Tirado’ in a way that would never impede WY’s activities,” the lawyers for Simpson’s company write.
After such talks were unsuccessful, Simpson’s company filed a formal opposition at the trademark office, asking the agency to deny the application. In a copy of that filing obtained by Billboard, lawyers for Simpson’s company warned that consumers were likely to confuse the two “Jessica” trademarks.
In last week’s lawsuit, Simpson’s lawyers said that a lawyer for Tirado then responded to that opposition filing with a demand of his own.
“Ultimately, Ms. Tirado engaged legal counsel to represent her in the opposition, who responded and indicated that Ms. Tirado was willing to settle the matter with WY, but only if WY was willing to make a monetary payment,” Simpson’s lawyers wrote. “When Ms. Tirado’s counsel made clear that the matter would not settle absent a payment, and he began to run up legal costs … WY was left with no alternative but to protect its position by filing this lawsuit.”
Thursday’s lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages, as well as an injunction forcing Tirado to “phase out” her use of the “Jessica’s Everything Shop” name over the course of three months.
Executives from the Sphere Entertainment Co. — the entity behind the forthcoming new event space opening soon in Las Vegas — have unveiled its new Sphere Immersive Sound system, created in tandem with Berlin-based audio company Holoplot. The system will appear this fall as a key production component of the company’s new Sphere venue in Las Vegas, which opens Sept. 29 with its 25-date U2 residency.
Executives involved with the project, including Jim Dolan (executive chairman/CEO, Madison Square Garden Corp. and Sphere Entertainment Co.), David Dibble (CEO, MSG Ventures) and Roman Sick (CEO, Holoplot), demonstrated the audio system on site in Las Vegas for a small group of reporters on Thursday (July 20).
“I don’t care if you’ve seen U2 100 times,” Dolan remarked before an associate pressed play on recordings including the Irish band’s recent reimagining of its 1984 classic “Pride (In The Name Of Love).” “You’ve never seen and experienced this.”
For the Sphere team, Sphere Immersive Sound is the cornerstone — along with its 160,000-square-foot LED display plane, which remained off during Thursday’s demonstration — of its new 20,000-capacity venue, located near the Las Vegas Strip next to The Venetian. And, somewhat surprisingly, Sphere partnered with Holoplot for the project, rather than a more established player in the pro audio space.
According to Dibble, Sphere executives learned of the German company, founded in 2011, through its work outside of live entertainment: In December 2016, the startup deployed its patented 3D Audio-Beamforming technology in Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, Germany’s largest train station, to send multiple messages at the same frequency simultaneously to different parts of the facility.
Applied in a concert venue, this technology can ensure that listeners, regardless of location, hear identical mixes at identical volumes. Holoplot’s technology also harnesses algorithmic machine learning and environmental data collected in real-time by sensors throughout Sphere to further refine and standardize the sound ultimately heard by attendees.
HOLOPLOT
Sphere developed Sphere Immersive Sound to perfect audio for the venue’s specific acoustic space. “You’ll notice very few right angles here,” said Dibble, noting that for Sphere’s intimate, amphitheater-style seating, the company read from “the playbook from the ancient Greeks.” The seating format is key to Sphere’s appeal, but also created a monumental challenge. “How can we tackle acoustics in arguably the biggest nightmare seating format in live entertainment?” Dibble recalled the team wondering at the outset of the project.
That starts with approximately 1,600 permanently installed audio modules and 167,000 individually amplified speaker drivers, comprising hundreds of Holoplot’s X1 Matrix arrays, spread behind Sphere’s sprawling LED screen. As its name suggests, the X1 Matrix arrays combine the functionalities of vertical and horizontal line arrays, allowing users more control over where sound goes in a venue.
Like much of the Sphere project, audio design wasn’t conceived in a vacuum; an inevitable challenge of placing so much high-end audio equipment behind a state-of-the-art screen was ensuring the sounds produced wouldn’t distort visuals as they passed through the LED to listeners. The team wanted to “make the LED screen acoustically invisible,” Sick explained, hence the high number of small drivers spread across the screen’s large area, each producing a relatively small amount of audio to avoid disrupting Sphere’s video components.
That type of engineering trickery extends to the venue itself, including the seemingly-unremarkable black material covering every seat, which Dibble said has “the same audio-reflective value as human skin.” Acoustically, Sphere’s seats behave similarly regardless of whether they’re occupied by a body, which is further guaranteed by their perforated undersides.
For artists like U2, Sphere’s audio capabilities are nothing short of revelatory.
“The beauty of Sphere is not only the groundbreaking technology that will make it so unique, with the world’s most advanced audio system integrated into a structure which is designed with sound quality as a priority; it’s also the possibilities around immersive experiences in real and imaginary landscapes,” The Edge said in a statement. “In short, it’s a canvas of an unparalleled scale and image resolution, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
And according to Dibble, Sphere’s tools are also “intuitive, straightforward and, dare I say, easy.” The executive touted the notion of a “show on a stick,” where artists playing Sphere could effectively give the facility’s staff a thumb drive with specifics for their concerts and be up and running within minutes; sound engineers will even be able to bring in their own boards to interface with the system. It’s “not a heavy lift,” Dibble added.
But Sphere Immersive Audio’s richly detailed output also isn’t for the faint of heart. “Some artists will find it daunting,” Dolan said. “If you sing the wrong note, everyone’s gonna hear it.”
HOLOPLOT
While Sphere Immersive Audio has been customized and scaled for the Las Vegas venue, some artists have already used a version of the technology while performing at another venue in MSG’s portfolio, New York’s 2,600-capacity Beacon Theatre, which introduced it in August 2022 during a pair of solo concerts by Phish frontman Trey Anastasio.
Dibble expects MSG to implement the technology across its portfolio of venues, including its namesake arena — though, he concluded, “Let’s get this open first.”
Spotify said on Monday (July 24) it is raising the price of its premium individual plan by $1 in North America, Europe and Asia amid widespread calls from investors, analysts and the music industry to join other streaming platforms that have raised prices. “The market landscape has continued to evolve since we launched,” Spotify said […]
Sony Music Entertainment Germany and nonprofit artist association Music Women* Germany (MWG) have announced the winners of the 2023 Female* Producer Prize. The honor is designed to support and promote the careers of rising female-identifying producers across Germany.
The seven winners — Mimski, Evîn, Kota No Uta, Mona Yim, Aufmischen, Sheyda Minia and Just Honest — were selected from more than 150 applicants by a five-member jury. They will receive a support package consisting of production grants, vouchers for music equipment and a producer workshop at Sony Music Germany’s Circle Studios. They will also be added to the female producer register at Sony Music and NEUBAU Music Management, which will put them in touch with various labels and artists. Additionally, newly added partners Sony Music Publishing and the Female* Producer Collective will offer coaching sessions for the winners.
In addition to the seven selected applicants, a shortlist of 20 applicants will also be added to Sony Music and NEUBAU’s female producer register.
“The great response and the enormously high level of over 150 applications this year have not only shown how overdue the Female* Producer Prize was, but above all, how many highly competent and visionary female music producers there are out there,” said Jovanka v. Wilsdorf, jury member and initiator of the Female* Producer Prize, in a statement. “Visibility develops a radiance that creates measurable success.”
Added Sony Music Columbia Records Germany head of A&R Sarah Schneider, who also served on the jury: “More female and non-binary producers means more perspectives! This is again demonstrated by the outstanding quality of the many applications received. As a record label, we want to apply industry-wide approaches and tools to actively move forward to effect a change in the status quo.”
In addition to Wilsdorf and Schneider, the 2023 jury consisted of Novaa, a producer and finalist for last year’s prize; U.K. music producer, composer, sound engineer and sheWrites co-founder Charlie McClean; Pamela Owusu Brenyah, a freelance curator, creative consultant and project manager who serves as program curator of Musicboard Berlin and board member of Music Women Germany, among other roles; and music producer and songwriter Moses Schneider.
The Female* Producer Prize is supported by Reeperbahn Festival (sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media) and sponsored by Thomann, Ableton, NEUBAU, Female* Producer Collective, Sony Music and Sony Music Publishing.
The award ceremony and workshop will be held in Berlin on September 14.
You can read capsule descriptions of the winners below.
Mimski: Started producing in early 2022, first in Germany and then in England, where she received a warmer welcome as a female producer than in Germany. There she submitted a beat for the Novembars competition, which helped her breakthrough: her first track was played directly on radio shows. She is currently working on her first album, which will be released on the RUNTLIFE Records label and working on an EP with King Kashmere as well as a Female Force EP with several female rappers.
Evîn: A German/Kurdish singer and producer in alternative R&B. Her music combines elements from different genres like soul and hip-hop with her Kurdish roots, giving her a characteristic sound within the German scene. Emotions and experiences, as well as themes like escape, memory culture and belonging can be found in Evîn’s songs, which she writes and produces in her home studio in Berlin. April 2022 saw the release of Evîn’s debut EP, followed immediately by her second EP, It wasn’t even for you, in November 2022.
Kota No Uta: Singer-songwriter and producer who works mainly in the direction of jazz, soul and neo soul. In October 2022 she released her song “Autumn Leaves” in self-production. At the moment she is working on two releases with collaborators and her own EP.
Mona Yim: A Chinese-German music producer, singer and DJ from Hamburg, Germany. Her music combines emotional vocal hooks with her self-produced electronic productions inspired by UK garage, house and electronica as well as influences from her training as a classical violinist and performer. Her debut release in 2022 was followed by further releases on labels such as Ninja Tune and remixes for Glass Animals and DJ Seinfeld, among others. She has played venues such as O2 Academy Brixton, DGTL Festival, Printworks, KOKO and Warehouse Project.
Aufmischen: Producer who started her first steps in the music industry as a drummer, in her studies she wrote contemporary compositions for classical ensembles before she dedicated herself completely to pop music. In 2022 her productions can be heard on the album of poetry artist Dshamilja Roshani, the EP of pop singer Pieke and numerous singles of other artists. More releases are planned for this year, such as the album by artist Elay.
Sheyda Minia: Iranian-born artist who began playing the harp at the age of 8 and became a junior student at the Musikhochschule in Cologne at 13. At 16, she used her first self-earned money to buy an interface microphone and Logic music software so she could finally produce her own beats. At the end of 2021 she was discovered by Mehrzad Marashi the CEO of Impulse-Records GmbH, where she has been working as a producer ever since.
Just Honest: Music has saved producer Just Honest many times, so she had no choice but to bring her songs to life and produce them herself. Hoping to touch, heal and inspire the hearts of others. Her debut single, “Toxic Culture,” has already reached over 1 million streams, and her debut album, No Love No Hate, is about to be released.
Elon Musk said Sunday (July 23) that he plans to change the logo of Twitter to an “X” from the famous blue bird, marking what would be the latest big change since he bought the social media platform for $44 billion last year.
In a series of posts on his Twitter account starting just after 12 a.m. ET, Twitter’s owner said that he’s looking to make the change worldwide as soon as Monday.
“And soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote on his account.
The change isn’t surprising given Musk’s long history with the name “X,” says Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing consultancy Metaforce. The billionaire Tesla CEO tweeted last October that “buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app.”
Musk’s rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is commonly known as SpaceX. And in 1999, Musk founded a startup called X.com, an online financial services company now known as PayPal.
“Not sure what subtle clues gave it way, but I like the letter X,” Musk tweeted Sunday.
But the change on Twitter was met with sharp criticism on the social media platform.
The change will be very confusing to a huge chunk of the Twitter’s audience, which has been already souring on the social platform given a slew of other major changes Musk has made, Adamson said.
“They won’t get it,” he said. “It’s a fitting end to a phenomenal unwinding of an iconic brand and business.”
Earlier this month, Musk put new curfews on his digital town square, a move that met with sharp criticism that it could drive away more advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.
The higher tweet-viewing threshold is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an attempt to boost Twitter revenue. Revenue has dropped sharply since Musk took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to slash costs and avoid bankruptcy.
In May, Musk hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO.
Luring advertisers is essential for Musk and Twitter after many fled in the early months after his takeover of the social media platform, fearing damage to their brands in the enveloping chaos. Advertisers have cut back on spending partly because of changes Musk has made that has allowed for more hateful content to flourish and that has offended a wider part of the platform’s audience.
Musk said in late April that advertisers had returned, but provided no specifics.
Musk’s move to change Twitter’s logo to an “X” also comes as Twitter faces new competition from Meta’s new app, Threads, launched earlier this month. It has been seen as an alternative for those who have been upset with Twitter.
Threads is being billed as a text-based version of Meta’s photo-sharing app Instagram that the company has said offers “a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations.”
In the first five days of its launch, 100 million people had signed up for Threads, according to a post on Threads by Instagram head Adam Mosseri.
Charles “Chuck” Martin Flood Jr., a longtime Nashville business manager who served as a founding owner at FBMM, has died, Billboard has learned. He was 78. Flood was a prominent figure in Nashville for more than 40 years. Early in his career, Flood worked on the label side of the business, serving in A&R and […]
Shares of SiriusXM soared 49.1% this week due to a “short squeeze” related to a trading strategy involving its parent company, Liberty Media. The stock rose 49.1% to $7.08, turning an 18.7% year-to-date loss into a 21.2% year-to-date gain.
On Thursday (July 22), SiriusXM shares increased 42.3% as 128 million shares were traded — about 6.7 times the average daily trading volume. The price fell 9.3% on Friday to close at $7.08 as trading volume reached 132.9 million shares.
As an article at Barron’s explained, SiriusXM, a heavily shorted stock, has benefitted from investors taking a long position in Liberty SiriusXM Group — a tracking that includes SiriusXM — and a short position in SiriusXM. (A short position is a bet that a stock price will decline. A long position is a bet the stock price will increase.) Those positions would benefit if Liberty SiriusXM Group, viewed as an inexpensive alternative to SiriusXM, was able to narrow the gap to SiriusXM. But SiriusXM shares have risen in recent months, turning the short into a losing bet.
Investors who short a stock must buy back borrowed shares to cover their short position. When a stock has a small public float — as SiriusXM does — demand for a limited number of available shares can drive up the price. This isn’t happening just with SiriusXM: Heavily shorted stocks helped the stock market rally in the first half of the year. “As expected, shorts are getting squeezed in these losing trades and we are seeing short covering in these stocks — helping drive stock prices even higher alongside the momentum long buying we are seeing in these stocks,” Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of S3 Partners, told Yahoo Finance last week.
SiriusXM was — by far — the best-performing music stock this week, as the Billboard Global Music Index rose 6.8% to 1,447.32, bringing the year-to-date gain to 23.9%. Eight of the index’s 21 stocks were in negative territory, one was unchanged and 12 stocks posted gains this week.
French music streamer Deezer boasted the week’s second-biggest improvement after gaining 10.3% to 2.58 euros ($2.87). On Thursday, the company announced it had renewed its partnership with telecom company Orange, which will continue to drive customer acquisition in its home market. Under the new partnership, Deezer and Orange will offer new customers six free months of Deezer Premium.
Live music companies also had a good week. Shares of Sphere Entertainment Co. gained another 8.9%. German concert promoter CTS Eventim improved 6.9%. And Live Nation shares rose 2.5% after Oppenheimer initiated coverage of the company with a $110 price target, suggesting the stock has a 14% upside from its $96.84 closing price on Friday.
Spotify will raise the price of an individual subscription in the United States by $1 — from $9.99 to $10.99 — according to a report Friday (July 21) at the Wall Street Journal. The move has been widely expected by investors and analysts following numerous comments by Spotify executives about an eagerness to raise the […]
With Taylor Swift’s re-recorded version of Speak Now topping the Billboard 200 albums chart and achieving the biggest week of 2023, the singer has pitted her new versions against the original versions she released through Big Machine Label Group in 2010. That could be seen as another blow for Shamrock Capital, which purchased Swift’s Big Machine catalog in 2020. But if Swift thought her re-recordings would erode the performance of the Big Machine originals, she was wrong — for the most part. The original versions owned by Shamrock did well through 2022 and haven’t shown much clear evidence of attrition until 2023, according to Billboard’s analysis of Luminate sales and streaming data in the United States.
Through 2022, Swift’s Big Machine catalog has performed roughly in line with industry trends. Take Swift’s 2008 album Fearless, for example: It generated on-demand audio streams of 230.5 million in 2019 and 345.3 million in 2022 — an increase of 49.8% over three years. Had the album’s streams grown in line with the industry’s annual growth in on-demand audio streams — 48.3% from 2019 to 2022 —Fearless would have had 341.9 million on-demand audio streams. That’s only a 1% variation.
The original version of Swift’s 2012 album Red did even better than Fearless, generating 283.5 million on-demand audio streams in 2019 and 484.7 million on-demand audio streams in 2022, about 19% greater than what would be expected. Had the album’s streams grown in line with the industry’s annual growth in on-demand audio streams — 17.3% in 2020, 12.7% in 2021 and 12.2% in 2022 — Red would have had 420.6 million on-demand audio streams.
At the same time, Swift’s re-recordings have done phenomenally well. Since the beginning of 2021, the three Taylor’s Version albums have accounted for 3.88 billion on-demand audio streams to the original versions’ 2.86 billion on-demand audio streams. The actual numbers are even more skewed in the Taylor’s Versions’ favor since the re-recordings of Speak Now were released on July 7 of this year and have a brief streaming history. Since 2021, Red (Taylor’s Version) has generated 2.6 times more on-demand audio streams than the original version, while Fearless (Taylor’s Version) has about 1.9 times as many on-demand audio streams.
All the work Swift did to promote her re-recordings, as well as the success of her Republic Records albums and her current U.S. tour, may have also helped sales of the original Big Machine catalog. The original version of Red has sold more albums — 26,000 — through week 28 of 2023 than in all of 2022 and is already close to surpassing sales numbers for calendar years 2019, 2020 and 2021. Speak Now has also surpassed last year’s album sales and is on track to beat annual sales from 2019 to 2021.
Of course, Shamrock does not enjoy the spoils of the three albums of re-recordings. Through week 28 of this year, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) have sold 2.23 million units in the United States. But these couldn’t be considered sales that were lost to Shamrock. Whether or not Swift re-recorded the three albums, Shamrock would benefit only from the sales of the original versions. And so far, it doesn’t appear the Taylor’s Version albums are crowding those out.
Streaming is a different story, though. There is some evidence that the Taylor’s Version reissues have led to a decline in streams for the original Big Machine albums. In the 18 weeks before the release of Red (Taylor’s Version) on Nov. 11, 2021, the original version averaged 9.7 million on-demand audio streams per week. In the 18 weeks after Red (Taylor’s Version) was released, the original version’s weekly on-demand audio streams declined 41% to 5.7 million.
And despite putting up decent streaming numbers through 2022, the original versions of Fearless and Red have underperformed expectations in 2023. The overall market’s on-demand audio streams grew 13.5% in the first 28 weeks of 2023. Had Fearless matched the market’s growth, the album would have generated about 296 million streams through week 28. Instead, the original version of Fearless had roughly 162 million streams — more than 45% below expectations. Red performed better but was also off the market’s pace. Through week 28, the original version of Red had 181.6 million on-demand audio streams — about 14% below expectations.
While the original versions have held up fairly well in purchases and, until this year, on-demand audio streams, the biggest loss is probably the lack of synch opportunities. Swift’s re-recordings have been used in a Match.com ad in 2020 (“Love Story [Taylor’s Version]”), the movie Spirit Untamed in 2021 (“Wildest Dreams [Taylor’s Version]”) and the movie DC League of Super-Pets in 2022 (“Bad Blood [Taylor’s Version], the only song from the album 1989 that has so far been re-recorded).
Ultimately, however, Swift’s re-recordings may be more responsible for her consumption boom than the original Big Machine versions. Swift’s annual on-demand audio streams more than doubled between 2019 and 2022 — from 3.12 billion to 7.85 billion. If she continues her current pace, her on-demand audio streams will increase more than 74% in 2023. The re-recordings have added to the deafening buzz around her Republic Records albums. The Big Machine originals are merely along for the ride.
Shamrock did not respond to Billboard’s request for comment on this story.
