Business
Page: 48
In early December, Island Records co-chairmen/co-CEOs Justin Eshak and Imran Majid traveled to the north coast of Jamaica to visit the 87-year-old founder of the label they now run, Chris Blackwell. The executives were coming off one of the best years in Island’s recent history, and three weeks before their visit, two of Island’s recent breakthroughs, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, both scored Grammy nominations in the categories of record, song and album of the year and best new artist — the first time in history a label had two acts nominated for each of those honors in the same year.
That wasn’t the reason for the trip, however. It was about “respect,” Majid says. The two had visited Blackwell at his Goldeneye resort in 2021, before they officially took over Island at the beginning of 2022, to meet him and pay homage to the institution he had launched in 1959, which became the label home of Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens and Grace Jones.
Trending on Billboard
This time, “It kind of felt like visiting family or a friend,” Eshak says. “As opposed to last time when we were like, ‘Oh, f–k!’ ”
During those three years, Eshak and Majid have taken Island from a label with an illustrious past but moribund present to one of the premier destinations for artists to break — and 2024 was when it all came together. First came Carpenter, who scored her first top 40 hit on the Hot 100 in January with “Feather” before steadily building momentum through the spring. “Espresso,” her first top 10, followed, and by June, Carpenter had her first No. 1 with “Please Please Please.” At the end of August, her album Short n’ Sweet debuted atop the Billboard 200.
Roan’s ascent was almost simultaneous, fueled by strong word-of-mouth and a series of increasingly bigger festival appearances that crested in the summer, when her single “Good Luck, Babe!” reached No. 4 on the Hot 100; her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, climbed into the top five of the Billboard 200; and she broke an attendance record for her Lollapalooza performance in Chicago. So when the Grammy nominations arrived, Island’s chief executives were not surprised. “Once the two of them started to control the zeitgeist,” Eshak says, “it just felt like the appropriate result.”
From the outside, the rise of the two artists — one a former Disney star who refashioned herself through clever live shows and radio, the other a budding queer pop icon who had been dumped by the major-label system early on and rebooted her career by touring and building a fan community — appeared to have reached that point through different paths. Eshak and Majid don’t see it that way. “You almost had to be at the shows before the success to understand,” Majid says. “That was what we bet on really early — [they were] artists that had such an engaged fan base from touring, streaming almost came secondary to that. At one point we were like, ‘Once this hits the masses, it could have a global impact.’ ”
By mid-2024, the narrative was set: Carpenter and Roan were leading a roster of artists who built cross-sectional fan bases that pushed beyond typical genre or cultural tropes. And for the first time in years, Island Records had returned to the roots Blackwell had nurtured in the latter half of the 20th century — a label where artists felt comfortable, heard and supported, and where good music was more important than commerciality.
Which is not to say that Island hasn’t succeeded commercially. The label ended 2024 with a 2.49% current market share — quadrupling the 0.62% it had in 2023. Island’s market share is included under Republic Records, but broken out on its own, it is the ninth-best of last year despite a wide reorganization at Universal Music Group in February that included extensive layoffs that affected all labels at the company.
Eshak and Majid’s greatest achievement, then, was to take a label with 30 dedicated employees (sharing some services like radio and marketing within REPUBLIC Collective) and create a culture that let its artists and staff flourish creatively, commercially and artistically.
They are now reaping the rewards. As 2024 wound down, new signees Gigi Perez and Lola Young landed their first Hot 100 hits, “Sailor Song” at No. 22 and “Messy” at No. 54, respectively.
Now, some in the industry are comparing Eshak and Majid’s success to that of John Janick’s at Interscope, which has turned young artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo into superstars at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to break artists.
The trick is to maintain that success and future-proof against inevitable cold streaks. “What humbles you is when you think you have magic and it doesn’t work,” Majid says. “Justin and I are fortunate that we have 20 years of experience of what we think the right attitude to have is and what is not.”
“We just feel like there’s a new wave of artists that fit our ethos and that we can plug into what we do and give them a bespoke campaign,” Eshak says. “And we feel like we have the team. It felt really great going to Jamaica. Imran and I were sitting there like, ‘Our team’s got this.’ ”
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
AXS, AEG’s ticketing and event access platform, is launching a new global biometric authentication feature for its mobile app across all smart phone devices. The technology marks the first time a ticketing smart phone app utilizes biometric security features, such as fingerprint or facial recognition, to provide users with a secure way to access their […]
Perplexity AI has presented a new proposal to TikTok’s parent company that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The proposal, submitted last week, is a revision of a prior plan the artificial intelligence startup had presented to TikTok’s parent ByteDance on Jan. 18, a day before the law that bans TikTok went into effect.
The first proposal, which ByteDance hasn’t responded to, sought to create a new structure that would merge San Francisco-based Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business and include investments from other investors.
Trending on Billboard
The new proposal would allow the U.S. government to own up to half of that new structure once it makes an initial public offering of at least $300 billion, said the person, who was not authorized to speak about the proposal. The person said Perplexity’s proposal was revised based off of feedback from the Trump administration.
If the plan is successful, the shares owned by the government would not have voting power, the person said. The government also would not get a seat on the new company’s board.
ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately responded to a request for comment.
Under the plan, ByteDance would not have to completely cut ties with TikTok, a favorable outcome for its investors. But it would have to allow a “full U.S. board control,” the person said.
Under the proposal, the China-based tech company would contribute TikTok’s U.S. business without the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app, according to a document seen by the Associated Press. In exchange, ByteDance’s existing investors will get equity in the new structure that emerges.
The proposal seems to mirror a strategy Steven Mnuchin, treasury secretary during Trump’s first term, discussed Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures — that a new investor in TikTok could simply “dilute down” the Chinese ownership and satisfy the law. Mnuchin has previously expressed interest in investing in the company.
“But the technology needs to be disconnected from China,” he added. “It needs to be disconnected from ByteDance. There’s absolutely no way that China would ever let us have something like that in China.”
The Perplexity proposal comes as several investors are expressing interest in TikTok. President Donald Trump said late Saturday that he expects a deal will be made in as soon as 30 days.
On a flight from Las Vegas to Miami on Air Force One, Trump also said he hadn’t discussed a deal with Larry Ellison, CEO of software maker Oracle, despite a report that Oracle, along with outside investors, was considering taking over TikTok’s global operation.
“Numerous people are talking to me. Very substantial people,” Trump said. “We have a lot of interest in it, and the United States will be a big beneficiary. … I’d only do it if the United States benefits.”
Under a bipartisan law passed last year, TikTok was to be banned in the United States by Jan. 19 if it did not cut ties with ByteDance. The Supreme Court upheld the law, but Trump then issued an executive order to halt enforcement of the law for 75 days.
Trump, on Air Force One, noted that Ellison lives “right down the road” from his Mar-a-Lago estate, but added, “I never spoke to Larry about TikTok. I’ve spoken to many people about TikTok and there’s great interest in TikTok.”
TikTok briefly shut down in the U.S. a week ago, but went back online after Trump said he would postpone the ban. Trump had unsuccessfully attempted a U.S. ban of the platform during his first term. But he has since reversed his position and has credited the platform with helping him win more young voters during last year’s presidential election.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20, along with some other tech leaders who’ve been forging friendlier ties with the new administration.
Congress voted to ban TikTok in the U.S. out of concern that TikTok’s ownership structure represented a security risk. The Biden administration argued in court for months that it was too much of a risk to allow a Chinese company to control the algorithm that fuels what people see on the app. Officials also raised concerns about user data collected on the platform.
However, to date, the U.S. hasn’t provided public evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or allowing them to tinker with its algorithm.
Universal Music Group and Spotify have struck a new direct deal, impacting both the company’s recorded music and publishing royalty rates, the companies announced today (Jan. 26). In a statement, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said that the deal is “precisely the kind of partnership development [UMG] envisioned” as part of its idea for “Streaming 2.0,” the company’s proposed changes to revamp streaming royalty rates and improve remuneration for its artists on streaming platforms.
Under the new agreement, UMG and Spotify “will collaborate closely to advance the next era of streaming innovation,” according to a press release. “Artists, songwriters and consumers will benefit from new and evolving offers, new paid subscription tiers, bundling of music and non-music content, and a richer audio and visual content catalog,” the press release continues. The deal also includes continued protection for UMG through Spotify’s fraud detection and enforcement systems.
Importantly, the agreement includes a direct deal between Spotify and Universal Music Publishing Group, the first direct deal between Spotify and a publisher since the passage of the Music Modernization Act in 2018. One top publishing executive tells Billboard that this change “sounds like Spotify is raising the white flag” about the so-called “bundling” dispute which has soured relations between many publishers, writers and Spotify since it launched last year. In March, Billboard reported that Spotify’s payments to music publishers and songwriters would be cut significantly to account for Spotify bundling in audiobooks as part of its premium tiers. Instead of paying out royalties for these tiers purely to music publishers and writers, Spotify began splitting the payments between music and books publishers.
Trending on Billboard
Billboard estimated the losses to be about $150 million in the first year the bundled audiobooks took effect. Now, nearly a year later, Universal Music Publishing Group appears to be back in a better position with Spotify. One source familiar with the deal said it has improved royalty payments for UMPG songwriters, although the two companies declined to state the specifics of how the new publishing royalty model (or the one for recorded music) works.
“Spotify maintains its bundle, but with this direct deal, it has evolved to account for broader rights, including a different economic treatment for music and non-music content,” a Spotify spokesperson clarified in a statement to Billboard.
“[This deal] makes sense,” the publishing executive tells Billboard. “[Spotify is] despised in the songwriting industry. Their main competitor, Amazon, has already left them isolated and alone. And they claim to want to expand into more videos but can’t get deals done. It was monumentally stupid for them to put themselves in this position but perhaps they are finally trying to get out of the bind they put themselves in.”
Grainge said, in his complete statement about the deal, “When we first presented our vision for the next stage in the evolution of music subscription several months ago — Streaming 2.0 — this is precisely the kind of partnership development we envisioned. This agreement furthers and broadens the collaboration with Spotify for both our labels and music publisher, advancing artist-centric principles to drive greater monetization for artists and songwriters, as well as enhancing product offerings for consumers.”
“For nearly two decades, Spotify has made good on its commitment to return the music industry to growth, ensuring that we deliver record payouts to the benefit of artists and songwriters each new year,” Spotify founder/CEO Daniel Ek said in a statement. “This partnership ensures we can continue to deliver on this promise by embracing the certainty that constant innovation is key to making paid music subscriptions even more attractive to a broader audience of fans around the world.”
Paul McCartney is speaking out against proposed changes to copyright laws, warning that artificial intelligence could harm artists.
The British government is currently considering a policy that would allow tech companies to use creators’ works to train AI models unless creators specifically opt out. In an interview with the BBC, set to air on Sunday (Jan. 26), the 82-year-old former Beatle cautioned that the proposal could “rip off” artists and lead to a “loss of creativity.”
“You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off,” McCartney said. “The truth is, the money’s going somewhere… Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote ‘Yesterday’?”
The U.K. Labour Party government has expressed its ambition to make Britain a global leader in AI. In December 2024, the government launched a consultation to explore how copyright law can “enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training” while also ensuring “AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content,” according to the Associated Press.
Trending on Billboard
“We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job,” McCartney told the BBC. “So you know, if you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.”
The Beatles’ final song, “Now and Then,” released in 2023, utilized a form of AI called “stem separation” to help surviving members McCartney and Ringo Starr clean up a 60-year-old, low-fidelity demo recorded by John Lennon, making it suitable for a finished master recording.
As AI becomes more prevalent in entertainment, music and daily life, the debate around its impact continues to grow. In April 2024, Billie Eilish, Pearl Jam and Nicki Minaj were among 200 signatories of an open letter directed at tech companies, digital service providers and AI developers. The letter criticized irresponsible AI practices, calling it an “assault on human creativity” that “must be stopped.”
Investors are betting there’s more gas in Spotify’s tank as the streaming company’s stock price reached an all-time high of $511.98 on Friday (Jan. 24) and finished the week at a record closing price of $510.43, up 5.1% from the previous week. Friday’s closing price valued the company at $101.6 billion, an increase of $5 billion in one week.
Spotify shares are off to a fast start in 2025 — rising 14.1% over the 15 trading days so far — after gaining 138.1% in 2024. The Stockholm-based streaming company is forecasting 665 million monthly active users, an increase of 25 million from the prior quarter, and 260 million premium subscribers, up from 252 million in the third quarter. Spotify’s fast-rising stock price mirrors the improvement in the company’s gross margin, which is forecasted to be 31.8% in the fourth quarter, up from 31.1% in the previous quarter.
Live Nation shares rose 3.8% to $140.74 on Friday, falling just shy of the all-time high of $141.18 reached on Nov. 25, 2024. On Thursday, Evercore raised its Live Nation price target to $160 from $150.
Trending on Billboard
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index rose 3.5% to a new record of 2,303.31, bringing its gain in 2025 to 8.4%. That’s more than double the year-to-date gains of the S&P 500 (up 3.7%) and Nasdaq composite (up 3.3%). A dozen of the 20 music stocks finished the week in positive territory, with three exceeding 5% gains. Of the eight stocks that lost ground, just one fell more than 2%.
The week’s greatest gainer was Chinese music streamer Tencent Music Entertainment, which rose 7.4% to $11.59. On Tuesday (Jan. 21), Morgan Stanley upgraded Tencent Music to “overweight” from “equal weight.” K-pop company SM Entertainment also did well, gaining 7.1% to 84,000 won ($58.76), bringing its year-to-date increase to 11.1%.
Cumulus Media finished the week at $0.88, up 4.8%. The radio company’s shares soared nearly 17% on Thursday (Jan. 23) following news that Matthew Blank resigned from the Cumulus board and was replaced by Steven Galbraith, managing director of Kindred Capital Advisors and among the largest Cumulus shareholders.
SiriusXM shares fell 1.4% to $21.96. On Thursday, Morgan Stanley lowered its price target on the company to $21 from $23. SiriusXM has fallen 3.7% year-to-date and has lost 58.9% over the last 52 weeks.
The worst performer of the week was Deezer, which fell 7.3% to 1.15 euros ($1.21). Deezer shares have fallen 46.5% over the last 52 weeks and are already down 14.2% in 2025.
Stocks performed well globally as earnings season got off to a strong start. According to FactSet, 80% of companies that reported earnings thus far have exceeded expectations, beating the 10-year average of 75%. In the United States, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite each gained 1.7%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index improved 0.5% to 2,536.80. China’s Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.3% to 3,252.63. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 increased less than 1%.
SiriusXM kicks off music companies’ earnings releases on Thursday (Jan. 30). Elsewhere, Spotify announced its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 4 while Warner Music Group follows on Feb. 6.
Dancefloors are often said to “writhe,” “bounce,” “jump” and “sweat.” But only a select few lightly sway with the rise and fall of ocean waves.
Electronic music festivals at sea have been part of the U.S. live music ecosystem for more than two decades, ever since the inaugural Groove Cruise embarked in 2004 with 125 people on a chartered party boat from New York. In the 21 years since, Groove Cruise has grown to host thousands of attendees on increasingly larger ships, with another trio of other dance cruises later sailing into frame.
Holy Ship, created by HARD Events founder Gary Richards, began in 2011, while Richards launched his second dance cruise, Friendship, in 2023. Insomniac Events took full control of Holy Ship in 2017 after Richards left HARD and Insomniac’s parent company, Live Nation. (After several sailings, Insomniac turned Holy Ship into an on-land event called Holy Ship Wrecked in 2020.) Meanwhile, Insomniac’s newer cruise, EDSea — a play on the name of Insomniac’s flagship festival EDC Las Vegas — embarked on its maiden voyage in 2023.
Trending on Billboard
Each of these events offers sun, fun and nonstop music, although each differs slightly in the style of dance music it offers, the crowd it draws and the destination to which it sails. Still, with these events being roughly similar, are there enough fans to fill each boat?
“I was very concerned when [Holy Ship] launched in 2011,” says Jason Beukema, the founder of Groove Cruise and the company that produces it, Whet Entertainment. But after attending the first Holy Ship to assess the competition, he found “there just wasn’t a lot of crossover” in the crowds. And despite often happening within weeks of each other, both Holy Ship and Groove Cruise sold out in subsequent years.
Similarly worried about the 2023 launch of EDSea, Beukema also took part in that inaugural voyage and again witnessed a different demographic, finding that Groove Cruise attracts an older and more gender-balanced crowd. He says having a trio of cruises on the market in 2023 and 2024 has even been good for Groove Cruise, “because it’s brought a lot of eyeballs to the cruise festival game in the dance music space. There’s a lot of people that go on the other cruises, learn about us and end up on Groove Cruise.”
“I agree that the dance cruise market is big enough for all of us,” says Insomniac Events founder Pasquale Rotella. “Each event attracts its own audience and offers a unique perspective on what a music cruise can be.”
Three similar events may seem inconsequential in the busy dance festival market. Cruises, however, are a different proposition given that they require a greater investment from attendees, who aren’t just paying for a ticket but an entire travel package that includes entry, lodging and in some cases food and drinks. (These latter two amenities vary by package.) Given that many attendees don’t live in South Florida — where all of the cruises now take off from — most also pay for flights. Notably, each cruise goes on sale nearly a year in advance to give attendees time to get on long-term payment plans.
For Friendship, packages start at roughly $1,800 for the five-night event. Groove Cruise 2025, which sold out, offered packages starting at $950 for its four-night voyage, while the four-night EDSea 2024 started at $1,555. (Prices vary by how many people are in a cabin and where the cabin is on the ship.) “The cruise market naturally attracts a different audience due to its higher price point and all-inclusive experience,” says Rotella.
Friendship 2024
OHDAGYO
But many who have gone on one of these voyages will argue it’s money well spent. Cruises are enticing in that they give fans a tropical vacation fused with a festival and the chance to rub elbows with their favorite artists while on the boat. And these boats, with their myriad restaurants, bars and pool areas, are often more convenient than a typical show.
“To build a festival site [on land] you’re considering traffic patterns, where people are eating and where they’re using the bathroom,” says Richards. “You’re basically herding human beings, and it kind of sucks. But a ship is the perfect place for three or four thousand people. You can walk out of your room at four in the morning and there’s a party going on. You don’t have to drive. You’ve got a nice bathroom in your room. You’ve got food at the restaurants. You’ve got all these clubs. A ship is the perfect venue.”
Beukema says Groove Cruise attendees have a 70% return rate. Friendship also draws many of the same people year over year, says Richards, who is focused on bringing in new attendees for 2025 given that they’ve chartered a bigger and more upscale boat (via Norwegian Cruise Line) than in years past.
Music cruises are, of course, not unique to the dance genre. For years, cruise lines and production companies specializing in concerts at sea have drawn all flavors of artists and fans to come sail away. But dance music has carved out an especially strong niche in the cruise world, as the genre’s typically hard-partying fans flock to events that can effectively go 24 hours a day.
“You go to the city of L.A. saying you want to put 4,000 people somewhere for a show and [there are so many regulations],” says Richards. “But you get on the ocean, and we can rip at five in the morning. The captain will turn the boat to get the sunrise just right for us.”
Beukema helped create the format in 2004. Wanting to get paid to go on vacation, he took a course at the International Tour Management Institute in the Bay Area and shortly thereafter secured a boat for 125 friends. The party grew over time, and seven years later he chartered his first full-fledged cruise ship, with Norwegian Cruise Line as a partner. Whet Entertainment has since done $100 million in revenue from 28 ship charters across multiple genres including dance, rock, salsa and country.
In terms of partnering with the cruise lines, Beukema cites “a lot of variables,” like pricing and what vessel will offer the best guest experience (Groove Cruise now costs eight figures to produce). He says that generally, music cruises are attractive to cruise lines because they’re usually more profitable than standard cruises that host the general population.
On Thursday (Jan. 23), Groove Cruise set sail from Miami to Labadee, Haiti on Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Sea, a 6,780-capacity ship that’s one the world’s largest passenger vessels currently in service — which makes the sold-out Groove Cruise 2025 “the largest music cruise of any genre in history,” says Beukema. Meanwhile, Friendship sails from Miami on Feb. 22 with a lineup that includes Disclosure, Duck Sauce and Anderson .Paak performing as DJ Pee.Wee.
Last November, Insomniac’s second annual EDSea sailed from Miami to the Bahamas with a lineup featuring Sara Landry, Mau P and Dillon Francis. Rotella says that after years of planning, “2023 felt like the right moment” to launch the cruise “because we had seen the growing enthusiasm for destination events for quite a while.”
Insomniac produced both EDSea and Holy Ship Wrecked in 2023, with the latter event happening from 2020-2023 after Holy Ship changed formats to a land-based festival at resorts in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Rotella says this change “allowed us to expand the experience” of Holy Ship and made the event “more accessible to fans who prefer not to cruise.” While Holy Ship Wrecked didn’t happen in 2024, he says Insomniac does “have future plans [for the event] that I look forward to sharing more about when the time is right.” EDSea, on the other hand, “is here to stay,” and it even expanded to include an additional day in 2025.
EDSea 2024
Taylor Regulski
With each happening in the fall and winter months when festival season is slower, this cruise trinity helps fill in the calendar for promoters and artists. The premise is particularly attractive for fans in cold weather climates looking for a mid-winter getaway.
Organizers take different approaches to booking artists for cruises. Groove Cruise lineups focus on house, techno, melodic techno and trance, with this year’s bill spanning those genres via headliners Eric Prydz, Nicole Moudaber, James Hype and Seven Lions, along with more than 100 other acts. Most stay for the entire cruise, although Prydz will only be on board the day he’s playing.
EDSea also makes it possible for artists to get on and off the ship mid-sail, with new acts joining at docking destinations while others disembark. Rotella says this model “keeps the lineup dynamic and ensures a constantly evolving experience for headliners.” (Insomniac refers to attendees of all its events as “headliners.”)
Meanwhile, “my whole thing is that you can’t leave,” Richards says of his belief that artists staying onboard for the duration maximizes the vibe, the community feel and the likelihood of special impromptu moments as artists jump on each other’s sets. But this ask also makes booking slightly harder, as some artists worry about losing out on revenue while their calendars are blocked during the cruise. “Guys I used to have on the ship for $200 are now getting $500,000 a night to DJ,” Richards says. “They want to come, but I just can’t pay that.” This year, he’s focused his lineup on big stars like Disclosure along with crucial underground acts from around the world, which is why he’s calling this sailing “International Waters.”
Once on board, Beukema says Groove Cruise is more or less ”96 hours of nonstop music” played across 13 onboard stages, along with beach parties, with each edition hosting DJ-led daytime activities along with theme parties. Groove Cruise leans especially hard into aspects of “transformational festival” culture by offering activities like journaling, meditations, panel discussions on mental health and a celebration of life where attendees can honor people they’ve lost. (Beukema says he also married eight couples during Groove Cruise 2024.) Groove Cruise is also heavily focused on philanthropy, with Whet Entertainment’s attendant 501(c)3 nonprofit annually donating supplies to schools, orphanages and more in communities where cruises dock. It’s helped build homes for families in Cabo San Lucas and the Bahamas and also brings cruise attendees on land for volunteer opportunities like beach cleanups and construction projects.
While dance cruises are dynamic in what they offer, Rotella says they’re also “more challenging to produce” than on-land events, given the limited window of time they have to get the ship ready after passengers from the last cruise disembark. Load-in for a land-based festival typically runs between days and weeks; cruises can offer far less. And while land events operate with trucks and forklifts, onboard gear must be moved by hand. Rotella also cites “much stricter” safety standards on the ship, “with anchoring and load capacities carefully calculated in advance with limited options for last-minute adjustments.” He adds that “another layer of difficulty comes from the strict manifests for equipment and personnel. Every item and individual must be documented ahead of time, with no room for late additions.” Despite the logistical challenges, he says, “the payoff is unparalleled when we finally set sail.”
Richards agrees. “There are so many things you can do at this kind of an event that’s not like a festival. Like, when you go to the bathroom, I can pick the music in the toilet that you’re listening to. We can put chocolates from DJ Pee.Wee on your pillows. I have your full attention for five days.”
Brace yourself, ultra-patriotic protectionists: English-language music from countries such as the U.S. is losing market share around the world — and even in its home markets.
Despite the U.S. owning the world’s most powerful culture machine, people in other countries want to listen to music performed in their native languages. According to Luminate’s 2024 year-end report, music from the U.S. and other English-speaking countries accounted for a lower share of global premium streams in 2024 than the prior year. The United Kingdom had the biggest drop in market share, falling 0.47 percentage points to 8.59%, while the U.S. dropped 0.44 points to 44.29% and Canada fell 0.39% to 3.34%.
In the Philippines, where English is spoken by roughly half of adults, music from the U.K. and U.S. were the biggest losers of market share while local Filipino music gained an astounding 3.32 points. In Japan, where local music has always outperformed English-language music, local music gained 1.35 points while the U.K., U.S. and Canada all lost market share. In Brazil, home to a thriving local music scene, homegrown music gained 0.78 points while the U.K. and Canada both lost market share.
Trending on Billboard
The shift away from English-language music isn’t happening only in countries where English is not the primary language. In the U.S., homegrown music lost 0.2 percentage points of market share. The same dynamic is seen in the U.K., where homegrown music lost 2.7 percentage points. In English-speaking Australia, music from Australia, the U.S. and Canada all lost market share.
So where did English-language music’s market share go? Mexico was the country of origin with the biggest market share increase in 2024, rising 0.88 percentage points to 4.69% of global premium streams. Brazil owned the second-largest increase, rising 0.33 points to 4.47%. India, which has a distinct local music market and a large diaspora, was third, increasing 0.21 points to 1.42%.
Often, a historical connection between countries could help explain the increasing popularity of one country’s music. In the U.S., music from neighboring Mexico, a major cultural influence for regions far beyond the border states, was the top gainer with an increased market share of 0.56 percentage points. In the U.K. and Australia, both members of the Commonwealth, music from another Commonwealth nation, India, gained 0.13 points and 0.16 points, respectively. Importantly, people of Indian ethnicity account for 2.9% of the U.K.’s population and 3.1 % of Australia’s population.
Local music is also thriving in France, a country not singled out in Luminate’s report. Azzedine Fall, Deezer’s direct of music & culture, says more musical genres performed in French are hitting the charts in the country. “[French-language] rap music is still dominating everywhere in the charts, but we have room for artists doing this kind of Ed Sheeran kind of stuff,” he says. “There is Pierre Garnier, for instance. He’s like the French version [of Ed Sheeran], and it’s kind of a new trend, like the return of pop rock music.” French-language rap has been popular for decades, adds Fall, but pop rock music performed in French is a newer phenomenon: “You would never hear someone doing rock in French 30 years ago.”
The rise of local music in the streaming era is a relatively new phenomenon that was described in a 2023 paper by Will Page and Chris Dalla Riva titled ‘Glocalisation’ of Music Streaming Within and Across Europe. Glocalization—a portmanteau of “global” and “localization”—explains how local music became more successful in a globalized, digital economy. In streaming’s early days, English-language music often dominated charts at the expense of local artists. In 2012, local artists accounted for less than a fifth of the top 10 songs in Poland, France, the Netherlands and Germany, according to the paper. But a decade later, local artists owned 70% of the top 10 in Poland, Italy and Sweden and 60% in France (but just 30% in the Netherlands and 20% in Germany).
The trend toward successful local music is likely to continue, says Romain Vivien, global head of music & president, Europe at Believe. The tools available to music producers “allow for more creation, faster and wider distribution to reach audiences more directly and accurately, and for a wider and more diverse artist community,” he says. It’s a perfect recipe for local labels and producers who create music in many different genres, says Vivien, “while bigger and more global structures sign fewer artists, across fewer genres and invest a lot to try to make them global stars.”
That’s not to say music from the U.S. has fallen out of favor. Artists from the U.S. still had the largest global market share of premium streams in 2024 at 44.29%, and the U.S. ranked No. 1 on Luminate’s Export Power Score, a measure of a country’s ability to export music globally. In fact, the U.K. and Canada rank No. 2 and No. 3 on Export Power Score, topping No. 4 South Korea and No. 5 Germany. The U.S. also gained market share in some places, too, albeit in primarily English-speaking countries: U.S. music rose 2.4 percentage points in the U.K. and 1.7 percentage points in Australia. English-speaking Ireland also gained share in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, likely because of Hozier’s global hit “Too Sweet” (which was the No. 8 song globally in 2024 with 1.71 billion on-demand audio streams, according to Luminate).
As in years past, English-language music also dominated the Luminate report’s lists of top albums and songs. The lone non-English language song to appear in a top 10 list was “Gata Only” by Chilean artist FloyyMenor. The track was a worldwide hit and had great success in the U.S., too, reaching No. 27 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and topping Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart for 14 weeks in 2024 en route to ranking No. 1 on the year-end Hot Latin Songs list.
Still, the slight decline in English-language music marks a sharp contrast with present-day “America first” jingoism. Changes in music technology mean U.S. music won’t crowd out local music in other countries, and a catchy song can become popular anywhere in the world. Politicians can build a border wall, but they can’t stop music from coming in.
Deezer, a leading French streaming service, says that roughly 10,000 fully AI-generated tracks are being delivered to the platform every day, equating to about 10% of its daily music delivery.
This finding emerged from an AI detection tool Deezer developed and filed two patent applications for in December, the company says. Now, the service is developing a tagging system for the fully AI-generated works it detects in order to remove them from its algorithmic and editorial recommendations and boost human-made music.
According to a press release, Deezer’s new tool can detect AI-made music from several popular AI music models, including Suno and Udio, with plans to further expand its capabilities. The company notes that the tool could eventually be trained to detect from “practically any other similar [AI model]” as long as Deezer can gain access to samples from those models — though the company also says it has “made significant progress in creating a system with increased generalizability, to detect AI generated content without a specific dataset to train on.” It has additional plans to develop the capability to identify deepfaked voices.
Trending on Billboard
Deezer is the first music streaming platform to announce the launch of an AI detection tool and the first to seek a concrete solution for the growing pool of AI music accumulating on streaming platforms worldwide. Given that AI-generated music can be made much more quickly than human-created works, critics have expressed concern that these AI tracks will increasingly take away money and editorial opportunities from human artists on streaming services.
Among those critics are the three major music companies — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — which collectively sued top AI music models Suno and Udio for copyright infringement last summer. In their complaint, the three companies said Suno and Udio could generate music that would “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
“As artificial intelligence continues to increasingly disrupt the music ecosystem, with a growing amount of AI content flooding streaming platforms like Deezer, we are proud to have developed a cutting-edge tool that will increase transparency for creators and fans alike,” says Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer. “Generative AI has the potential to positively impact music creation and consumption, but its use must be guided by responsibility and care in order to safeguard the rights and revenues of artists and songwriters. Going forward we aim to develop a tagging system for fully AI generated content, and exclude it from algorithmic and editorial recommendation.“
“We set out to create the best AI detection tool on the market, and we have made incredible progress in just one year,” says Aurelien Herault, Deezer’s chief innovation officer. “Tools that are on the market today can be highly effective as long as they are trained on data sets from a specific generative AI model, but the detection rate drastically decreases as soon as the tool is subjected to a new model or new data. We have addressed this challenge and created a tool that is significantly more robust and applicable to multiple models.”
Marilyn Manson will not face criminal charges from Los Angeles prosecutors following a four-year investigation into allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault, the city’s District Attorney said Friday.
Nathan J. Hochman, elected in November, said his office had decided that the statute of limitations had expired for any domestic violence charges against the rocker (Brian Warner), and that they simply could not prove a sexual assault charge in court.
In a brief statement, Hochman said prosecutors “recognize and applaud the courage and resilience of the women who came forward” and thanked them for their “cooperation and patience.”
“While we are unable to bring charges in this matter, we recognize that the strong advocacy of the women involved has helped bring greater awareness to the challenges faced by survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault,” Hochman said.
In a statement to Billboard, Manson’s attorney Howard King said: “We are very pleased that, after a thorough and incredibly lengthy review of all of the actual evidence, the District Attorney has concluded what we knew and expressed from the start – Brian Warner is innocent.”
Manson has faced a slew of allegations of sexual wrongdoing over the past several years, including from his ex-fiance Evan Rachel Wood, who alleged that the rocker “started grooming me when I was a teenager and horrifically abused me for years.” He also faced claims from former assistant Ashley Walters, model Ashley Morgan Smithline and two Jane Doe accusers.
Manson has denied all of the allegations, and many civil lawsuits filed against him have since been dropped, dismissed or settled. He later sued Wood for defamation over her accusations, but a judge dismissed much of the case in 2023. Manson eventually dropped the case in November and agreed to pay Wood $327,000 in legal fees.
In early 2021, Los Angeles County detectives said they were conducting a criminal investigation and eventually served a search warrant on Manson’s West Hollywood home. The identities of Manson’s accusers in the criminal case have not been disclosed, but Game of Thrones actor Esmé Bianco publicly shared last year that her allegations against him were part of the criminal probe.
In October, then-District Attorney George Gascón said that “new evidence has emerged within the last few weeks” and that his office was pursuing “new leads” that would add to the “already extensive” case file they had amassed. But just weeks later, Hochman was elected.