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Austin Neal‘s year-old booking agency — The Neal Agency — has named Adi Sharma as a co-head and agent, and has added “Fall in Love” hitmaker Bailey Zimmerman, Canadian country artist Josh Ross, and indie artist mike., as well as lifestyle brand Stevenson Ranch to the roster.
These additions expand the agency’s roster, which already reps Morgan Wallen, HARDY, ERNEST, Chase Rice, Ashland Craft, Riley Green, John Morgan, Lauren Watkins and Seaforth, to a dozen clients.
The Neal Agency celebrated its one-year anniversary in December 2022 and has nominations at the upcoming CMA Touring Awards, including talent agent of the year (Austin Neal).
“It’s surreal to think this time last year we only had two employees, other than myself, and no office. Going into 2023, I am able to walk into a full office of 12 each morning – which is both humbling and exciting,” Neal said via a statement. “Adding Adi’s leadership to that mix will allow the company and our culture to reach new heights in our sophomore year. We are all so excited to be able to work with one of the brightest young agents in this business who will undoubtedly help lead the company going forward.”
“Austin and I have known each other since I moved to Nashville and we have always had a very like-minded approach to supporting and growing artists’ careers,” Sharma added via a statement. “To see what he and this team have built in the span of a year is inspiring. I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this rapidly growing team, to work with one of the best agents in the business, and to help the company continue to grow into the future.”
This year will mark more successful tours for the company, as Wallen’s One Night at a Time World Tour makes its way to Australia, the United States and Canada, including over 20 stadium shows along the way. ERNEST, who notched his first headlining tour last fall, will join Wallen on all of his 2023 dates.
Additionally, HARDY’s the mockingbird & The Crow Tour will launch Feb. 16 and is sold-out across 19 cities. Meanwhile, Rice’s Way Down Yonder Tour has 36 dates set through the summer. Seaforth will set out on their first headlining tour in 2023, with their 23-date About Time Tour.
The Neal Agency team (Pictured L to R: Hank Wiehebrink, Simone Chretien, Juliette Edwards, Haley Teske, Evan Kantor, Austin Neal, Andrew Greene, Kelly Sherin, Kolby Vetter, Adi Sharma, Marisa Mineo, Spencer Foote)
Tiia Sparzak
Veteran manager/label executive Greg Ham has launched artist development company one:eight entertainment, with Christian music icon Steven Curtis Chapman as his first signing.
Ham was previously a partner in the MWS Group, and the clients he shepherded there — Michael W. Smith, reigning Gospel Music Association artist of the year CeCe Winans, Gotee Records newcomer Joseph O’Brien and Olympic gold medalist Scott Hamilton — will move to one:eight entertainment. Producer Robert Deaton, who was previously managed by Ham outside the MWS Group, will also be under the one:eight umbrella, as will worship leader Charity Gayle.
The idea for the new company began percolating when MWS partner Chaz Corzine exited early last year to become the founding executive director of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Nashville’s Belmont University. Corzine co-founded the MWS Group in 2009 and had served as Smith’s manager for 38 years.
“Chaz left a year ago now and it was Michael and me,” says Ham, a veteran executive whose extensive resume includes serving as former president/CEO of ForeFront Records. “As we were going through the year, we were saying, ‘I think there’s an opportunity to grow this thing more, but we’ve got to retool it a little bit.’”
The result is one:eight entertainment and the new business association with Chapman. “I’ve been a friend and a huge fan of Greg Ham for many years,” says Chapman, whose current single, “Don’t Lose Heart,” is currently No. 9 on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart. “There’s nobody smarter or more full of integrity and I’m very blessed and honored to be a part of this exciting new season for Greg and the awesome team at one:eight entertainment.”
Chapman was previously managed by the Stable Collective, a company he launched in 2017 with artist manager Mark Mattingly. Mattingly joined radio station K-LOVE and Air1 Media Networks last October as executive director of live events and sponsorships.
Ham says the name one:eight entertainment was inspired by the Jan. 8 birthday he shares with Elvis Presley and David Bowie and also his favorite scriptures. “Three of my favorite verses that are foundational to me are 1:8 verses,” he shares. “That’s Daniel 1:8, which is ‘Daniel purposed in his heart’ and it’s a cool story. I consider that foundation[al]. And then Joshua 1:8, which is ‘Be strong and courageous,’ and Acts 1:8, which is ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you’ — so to me power from above to bring hope to the world. We are an artist/creative development company with global perspective and those three verses are at the very core.”
Though Chapman and Smith are two of the Christian industry’s all-time most successful male artists, Ham doesn’t see representing both as a conflict. “Maybe 20 years ago yes, but today it makes sense because to me it’s more complementary than competitive,” he says. “Steven and Michael being under the same umbrella says something very special to me to the younger generation that this is something to aspire to where two competitors can be served under one entity and the unifying nature that it shows.”
The music livestreaming app Sessions, founded by former Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, has “shut down,” according to LinkedIn comments from multiple former employees. “Christmas came with the unexpected news that Sessions is going out of business,” one engineer wrote this month.
These comments were echoed elsewhere on LinkedIn. “This morning we were informed that Sessions would be closing their doors permanently,” another former employee wrote. A software engineer attributed the company’s closure to “difficult circumstances.” An artist shared a screenshot of an Instagram message from the platform saying that it had shuttered as of Dec. 19.
That artist tells Billboard he had money waiting for him on the platform when it shut down; others voiced similar complaints on social media. Westergren and former employees did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sessions launched in April 2020. In interviews at the time, Westergren said that livestreaming lacked “marketing and monetization” opportunities. Seven months after launching, the company announced a $75 million fund to market artists’ livestreams. “The larger the fanbase [of an act using Sessions], the larger the marketing spend” to promote their performance, Westergren said.
Any level of artist could apply to stream a performance on Sessions, which said it hosted more than 500 acts a week across more than 200 countries. These acts could choose whether or not to charge a price for watching; viewers could also pay extra to send special emoticons. Sessions took 30% of all revenue brought in through the site, while 70% went to the artist. (Though the revenue split for the Sessions app was different: 40% to the artist, 30% to Apple for its App Store tax, 30% to Sessions.) Westergren said that a professional musician could bring in more than $20,000 from a livestream performance, while amateurs could collect as much as $700.
Sessions was one of many livestreaming companies that launched when COVID-19 temporarily shuttered venues. “Every day, another livestreaming company joins the fray,” Westergren acknowledged in 2020. But as clubs and arenas re-opened, fans were eager to get back to live shows; in August, Live Nation announced that it had already sold more tickets in 2022 than it did in all of 2019. On top of that, 2022’s economic climate proved difficult for all sorts of tech companies; even behemoths like Meta laid off workers.
As former Sessions users began figuring out that the platform was no longer running, they commiserated on social media and looked for new places to try to find fans. “I’m going over to Twitch now,” one wrote on Instagram. “Good luck everyone.”
Amid a wave of Afrobeats artists making inroads on the U.S. charts and American radio in the past few years — headlined by the likes of Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tems, among others — came Rema, the young Nigerian singer signed to Jonzing World and Mavin Records based out of Lagos. Having built a following locally, Rema — who refers to his music as Afrowave — began putting out a series of EPs in 2019 and 2020, landed a spot on the FIFA ’21 soundtrack and nabbed some fashion and branding partnerships as well as higher-profile collaborations with some of Nigeria’s up and coming artists.
But when he finally released his debut album, Rave & Roses, in March 2022, Rema’s star began exploding not just in Africa but around the globe. His album, which was critically well-received, became the launching pad for a tour that stretched into Europe and North America, while his single “Calm Down” began making inroads at DSPs and across the internet. But in August 2022, that buzz erupted after Selena Gomez hopped on the remix to “Calm Down.” Rema’s star then began an inexorable rise: The song debuted at No. 91 on the Hot 100 after its release and it has continued growing ever since, topping the Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart for 19 straight weeks, reaching a current high of No. 46 on the Hot 100 and, most impressively, reaching No. 1 on the Global Ex-U.S. chart this week. That success helps Mavin Records COO Tega Oghenejobo earn the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Oghenejobo breaks down how he and Mavin helped Rema grow from local Nigerian singer into one of the most in-demand Afrobeats artists around, how the Gomez collaboration came together and how his team has helped the song continue building, nearly a full year since its initial release — particularly impressive at a time when songs move so quickly in the modern music industry. “We stayed focused, paid attention to the details, got down and did the hard things needed to give the song a more viable shelf-life,” he says. “We connected with the music industry in every city we’ve been to, and religiously attended to the media rounds. It’s a lot of effort and hard work from everyone involved. We are proud, we are happy for the fans who are having a good time with the song, and we keep going.“
This week, Rema’s “Calm Down” remix feat. Selena Gomez topped Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Chart for the 19th straight week, and just reached No. 1 on the Global Ex. U.S. chart. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
As a label, one of our most important ideals is critical artist development with long-term success in mind. This is the foundation of our earliest work with Rema. After the first year together with him, the world saw his potential just as we did, and his debut project was one of last year’s most anticipated Afrobeats projects. The remix came at the perfect time. We wanted to consolidate on the earlier traction the song had in territories like France and the Netherlands and give the song more life globally. Some of the key decisions that enhanced that success is our aggressive response to the early rollout efforts, and in how we worked with our amazing distribution partners at Virgin Music. They rolled out innovative campaigns in a timely manner and simultaneously with our own marketing efforts as well. The process was made even more seamless by Selena Gomez and her brilliant team at Interscope. Also, it is one thing to have a great song, it is another thing to be able to make it connect with a live audience. Rema’s Rave and Roses Tour of Europe and North America was a great success. Our agency partners WME and CAA were phenomenal in aiding the smart routing of Rema’s performances. The artist’s connection with the creator community on social media, engaging with UGCs, were also key to the song’s success.
The song was originally from Rema’s album Rave & Roses, out last March. How did the remix come together, and what kind of effect has it had?
Let me start by saying, incredible album by the way. So many gems in that project, and we are really excited about people discovering them. On the remix, shout out to our team, to Rema, the good people at Virgin Music, and of course, Selena Gomez and Interscope. The process of creating the song was seamless — as it often is when both artists love the song. Shooting the video and putting it out was our collective work and I am very proud we could make it work despite the complexity in the teams’ schedules. Strategically, Selena Gomez is one of music’s biggest stars and a collaboration with her is sure to expand the song’s reach even more. As expected the song has added new feats for both artists. It’s the No. 1 song on the Billboard Global Ex. U.S. chart — first time for both artists. Same with its place as the No. 1 song on Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Chart. This is stunning for us, for Rema and for the culture.
How have you kept the song not just relevant, but continuing to grow for so long, particularly in an era when songs move so quickly?
Honestly, It took a village to keep the momentum going. There is the critical role Rema played with his tour of Europe, North America and Africa. Taking the music across new territories, connecting with new cultures. There is also the creator community — influencers and dancers using the song on TikTok, Reels and on Snapchat. The DJs who keep spinning it, radio, TV and the DSPs who love the song and just keep showing support. All the teams involved — Mavin Records, Jonzing World, Virgin Music and Interscope — have been amazing too. We stayed focused, paid attention to the details, got down and did the hard things needed to give the song a more viable shelf-life. We connected with the music industry in every city we’ve been to, and religiously attended to the media rounds. It’s a lot of effort and hard work from everyone involved. We are proud, we are happy for the fans who are having a good time with the song, and we keep going.
Rave & Roses was technically Rema’s debut, but he’s been building steadily over the years, including with some collaborations and inclusion on a FIFA soundtrack. How have you helped guide his growth to the point where the album was critically embraced when it was released, and the song has become a massive global hit?
Developing and activating new artists is always an exciting challenge for us at Mavin. There was no doubt about Rema’s talent from the start. But as they say, talent without hard work is nothing. There were a lot of things we still had to get right. His branding was important, his sound, his stage presence and a host of other things that needed attention. Rema is an interesting act to work with because he has a vision of how he sees himself. We at Mavin consider ourselves architects who can collaborate and execute this shared vision, and we were able to properly position him and his brand leading up to the project.
In his first year, we established his sonic versatility. We let the world understand that this is an artist with the ability to create new sounds and penetrate new markets. We had a phenomenal first year. We had three EPs in his debut year, and we kept working, recording and creating music. Brands like FIFA saw the potential and we had a great partnership. Rave & Roses was one of the most anticipated debut albums on the continent. We were patient in our approach and so was Rema. When the time came to put it out, we came on strong. “Calm Down” was the project’s lead single — and what a lead single that is!
How have you helped build Rema’s profile globally? And what deals have you made to help facilitate that?
From the onset, we were working on making a global superstar. His branding was made to be relatable with global audiences while retaining the fundamentals of what made him African. His sound is the same. He juxtaposes elements of western music with Afrobeats, interpolates languages and creates an experience that is enjoyable for both local and global fans. Everyone can enjoy a bit of Rema — and that is the charm. As we mentioned earlier, the collaboration with FIFA was great. We also had Beats on board, then Meta, Snapchat, Pepsi, HP. In fashion, we worked with Bohooman, Places+Faces, Jumpman and many others. These are brands that appeal to a young global audience and to Rema himself. They were a perfect fit for his profile and his trajectory.
With Wizkid, Burna Boy and now Rema breaking into the Hot 100, why do you think African artists are starting to see significant levels of success in the U.S.? And where do you see this going moving forward?
It takes tenacity, hard work and innovation. The sound has always been good, and we got even better. The industry is bigger. More competition, more investment, more collaboration, more access. It was only a matter of time and I am glad we are here. The U.S. audience is perhaps the most dynamic and experimental in the world. We can see how big K-pop and Latino music is here. The ambition is to have that level of success. To make more people fall in love with African music. The potential is immense. We will grow even bigger. As I often say, we are just scratching the surface. We used to dream of this, but now it’s time to put in work to properly represent the culture and connect with more listeners in the U.S.
LONDON — A U.K. Parliament committee is calling on the British government to address the “pitiful” returns that many artists and creators earn from music streaming and says it should develop and implement a “wide-ranging national strategy for music.”
A report from The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee published Friday (Jan. 13) urges the government to take a “more proactive strategic role” in the music industry to help ensure creators and performers receive a greater share of streaming revenue.
The report doesn’t go into detail about what form an overarching national music strategy would take. But it nevertheless recommends it be developed and overseen by the DCMS and looks at the impact of new digital technologies on musicians, songwriters and composers, as well as the U.K. industry’s potential for growth.
Taking such an approach could help address many of the issues caused by the government’s current approach to policymaking for the music business, which sees policy and trade negotiations handled by multiple different government departments and, says the report, is “too scatter-gun to be effective.”
The DCMS Committee’s recommendations come 18 months after it published a damning report in July 2021 on the economics of music streaming that called into question the major record labels’ dominance of the industry — and how they leverage that market power at the expense of artists, songwriters and independents. It concluded by saying that the global streaming model is unsustainable in its current form and “needs a complete reset.”
In response to that report, the U.K. competition regulator carried out a market study review of the record business. It ended in November with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) surmising that low returns from streaming “are not the result of ineffective competition” between the three major labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
The British government has also set up a number of working groups — led by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and made up of industry stakeholders — to look at issues raised in the Parliament probe, including problems around transparency and metadata.
Reviewing the progress that has been made since July 2021, the DCMS committee commended the government and IPO for the work and research it has undertaken but said that more still needs to be done on core issues, such as creators’ share of streaming royalties.
In particular, the committee recommends the IPO establish working groups to look specifically at remuneration and performer rights, with greater involvement from government officials and ministers. It also says there needs to be greater transparency around membership of the working groups, agendas and deadlines, none of which are currently made publicly available.
“Over the last 18 months the Government has made some welcome moves towards restoring a proper balance in the music industry, but there is still much more to do to ensure the talent behind the music is properly rewarded,” Damian Green MP, acting chair of the DCMS Committee, said in a statement.
Green says too many musicians and songwriters are frustrated at receiving “pitiful returns” from streaming and says the government “now needs to make sure it follows through on the work done so far to fix the fundamental flaws in the market.”
The committee has also requested that the three major labels provide it with evidence of the royalties they have distributed to legacy artists under the various unrecouped advances programs introduced over the past two years.
Sony Music Group was the first to announce, in June 2021, that it would start paying royalties to artists with unrecouped advances from pre-2000 record deals. Warner Music Group followed in February 2022 and Universal Music Group in March 2022.
A spokesperson for the DCMS committee says that while it has no formal powers to compel businesses to provide them with information, businesses are expected to comply with the request. The government now has two months to respond to the committee’s recommendations and outline any actions it will be taking. (The DCMS committee, which is made up of 11 members of Parliament, is responsible for monitoring the policies and practices of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and its associated bodies, including the BBC.)
Responding to Friday’s report, David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, and Annabella Coldrick, chief executive of the Music Managers Forum, said they “wholeheartedly” welcomed Parliamentary support for improved remuneration and contractual rights.
“Our organizations are in complete alignment with other creator bodies on the need for greater fairness, transparency and remuneration.” Martin and Coldrick said in a joint statement. “These issues are not going away, and neither are we.”
A spokesperson for U.K. labels trade body BPI thanked the committee for highlighting “the positive steps that the industry has taken” since its original 2021 report but cautioned against any calls for sweeping government reforms.
“At a time when the global music market is more competitive than ever,” the spokesperson says, “public policies must be firmly rooted in driving sustainable growth across the entire U.K. music ecosystem.”
After managing the late Jeff Beck for more than five years (not to mention decades spent promoting him), Harvey Goldsmith will be the first to tell you the revered guitarist was “always difficult.” But that’s also what Goldsmith feels made Beck so special.
“He was different from the rest,” the veteran British music impresario tells Billboard about Beck, who passed away Tuesday (Jan. 9) at the age of 78, shortly after contracting bacterial meningitis. “He wanted to do things differently. He was never quite satisfied with what he was doing. He was always looking to better himself. He never though he was at his best; he always thought he could do better whilst everybody else was sitting there with their mouths open, blown away [by Beck’s playing].”
Goldsmith managed Beck’s career from late 2008 until 2013, but he began working with him during the late 1960s, promoting shows by the original Jeff Beck Group fronted by Rod Stewart. He brought Beck into projects such as the Secret Policeman’s Other Ball for Amnesty International during 1981 and the ARMS Charity Concerts to combat multiple sclerosis two years later. Goldsmith also worked with Mick Jagger on his late ‘80s solo tour, with Beck — who’d played guitar on both of Jagger’s albums up to that point — initially being part of the band.
“Mick one evening phoned up Jeff and started to go through the set,” Goldsmith says. “Jeff said, ‘I’m not gonna play Keith Richards’ parts on Stones numbers. I don’t care what we play, but I’m not doing that.’ Mick was a bit taken aback by it, and Jeff just pulled out. That was the nature of the beast; he was a perfectionist. He wanted to do it his way.”
It was during late 2008 that Beck approached Goldsmith about managing him, through a mutual friend. “Jeff said, ‘I feel that I’m kind of underrated and not really recognized the way I feel I should be,’” Goldsmith recalls. The promoter knew part of the solution right away. “I said, ‘Listen, I’m happy to help you, but you’re not exactly over-prolific in [touring]. If you’re prepared to get out there, I can help you…not only play but in this day and age but do some promotion as well, talk about it.’ He said, ‘yeah, I’m ready for it,’ and that’s how it started.”
One of Goldsmith’s first orders of business was Live at Ronnie Scott’s, an album and DVD recorded during November at the famed London club. Neither he nor Beck were happy with the sound on the project so Goldsmith put a hold on its release until Beck could remix it to his satisfaction.
“He spent the whole of Christmas into the new year and completely remixed it,” Goldsmith says. “When it was done, I said, ‘Are you happy now?’ He said, ‘yes’ and we put it out and [people] were completely blown away that he was gonna do promotion, ’cause he just didn’t talk to anybody — certainly not the press.
“But that was Jeff. He was a lone wolf in what he wanted and often they didn’t listen to him, and he got very upset about it. So we started this pathway of him working, doing shows, doing promotions, doing radio, starting to build him up again.”
Not surprisingly, Goldsmith amassed memories during his tenure managing Beck, among them the all-star tribute concert for Les Paul during June 2010 at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York, which was preserved as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Party live album the following year. “David (Bowie) and I were friends, and he came to the show and sat down with myself and my wife and said to me, ‘I’ve always wanted to write with Jeff,’” Goldsmith recalls. “I said, ‘Well, now’s the time.’ They corresponded a bit but then Bowie went on to something else and then got sick, so it never happened.”
During 2010 Goldsmith also proposed that Beck play some tour dates with Eric Clapton, his predecessor in The Yardbirds and a friendly rival among the guitar-playing elite. “I said, ‘You’d have to open ’cause Eric’s got a much bigger stature, but you’ve got the room to deliver what you want to deliver,’” Goldsmith says. “We didn’t do many [shows] but they really were a highlight. They were fantastic. Every night Eric would stand on the side of the stage and just say, ‘I can’t beat this. I can’t beat this. I can’t beat this.’ It was really funny. That’s who [Beck] was. He was the guitarist’s guitarist. Every guitarist on the planet loved him.”
Prince was among them, apparently. At the 2011 MusiCares Person of the Year gala honoring Barbra Streisand, where Beck performed with LeAnn Rimes, Goldsmith found himself brokering a conversation — of sorts — between Beck and Prince, who was seated at the same table along with Lea Michele and Misty Copeland. “[Beck and Prince] were looking at each other and nodded,” Goldsmith says. “I went over and introduced myself to [Prince] and said, ‘I did some show for you in London. Say hello to Jeff.’ He said, ‘hello’ and they sat opposite each other at the table, not saying a single word.
“Jeff said, ‘What do I do,’ and I said, ‘Someone’s got to break the ice here. Maybe you should sit next to him and see where you get to. Jeff sat down and Prince said, ‘I love your music and I’d like to do some tracks with you.’ Jeff said, ‘That’d be great.’ Then [Prince] said, ‘I’d love to do some tracks with you,’ and Jeff said, ‘OK, great.’ Then [Prince] said, ‘I’d love to do some tracks with you,’ a third time.’ Very bizarre. And that was the whole conversation. I tried really hard to get the chat going, and all I got out of him was he’d like to do some tracks with him. It was hysterical.”
Toward the end of his managing tenure, Goldsmith was negotiating for Beck and Stewart to reunite for another album after a friendly meeting before a Beck performance at the El Dorado Night Club in Los Angeles. “Rod’s people were closing a deal with Universal to do a series of solo albums. I said to Rod, ‘You’ve done enough of this with orchestras — to get together and do something really down and dirty with Jeff would be fantastic.’ [Stewart] agreed with me,” Goldsmith says. “We spent a good six months planning to do an album together in 2013 and Rod was really up for it, his voice was really strong. The next thing I know I got a call from Universal: ‘We’d rather not do this album.’ I was personally gutted by that, and Jeff was extremely pissed off, as you can imagine.”
Despite Beck’s famed truculence, Goldsmith says there was also a tremendous warmth and empathy that’s been seldom revealed. “He was an amazingly good-natured soul who was a magnet for people in trouble,” Goldsmith says. “He was a good listener and was always helping people. For some reason, people he knew, when they got themselves in a mess — they didn’t know what to do with their music or their career or things in their lives — they would go see Jeff and he’d chat with them. They came away like they’d just been to see the guru.”
And Goldsmith was privy to Beck’s almost equal passion for vintage cars, which he calls the guitarist’s “real love.” “Nothing intrigued him more than tinkering about with oil on all of his fingers and a spanner, trying to put together another classic car,” Goldsmith says. “He literally could take a car and break it down into nuts and bolts and screws and pieces of metal, laid out on the floor, and build a car from scratch. That’s special.”
Goldsmith and Beck had their own falling shortly after that, over a variety of business, creative and philosophical differences. He nevertheless says his time managing the guitarist was “an amazing experience,” and when the two last saw each other during early 2020, “we chatted, hugged, so on and so forth.” He learned about Beck’s death shortly after it happened but was asked not to say anything until after the family made the announcement.
“He was a lovely, lovely guy — just a special character who had the most unbelievable talent,” Goldsmith says. “He really will be…well, he is sorely missed by everybody, already.”
Graham Rothenberg was named partner at entertainment marketing agency The Syndicate, with his title elevated to president & general manager. Rothenberg, who has been with the company for 18 years, has served as general manager since 2018. He will now lead the agency alongside partners Jon Landman, Tracey Zucatti and Chris Elles. During his tenure, he has been a key force in campaigns including the Interpol “Big Shot City” exhibit and Panic! At The Disco’s crop circle tour announcement.
“I’ve known Graham for over 20 years and have watched him grow from College Radio Music Director (WICB) to College Radio Promoter at The Syndicate to becoming our General Manager and now being elevated as our President and a Partner of the company,” said managing partner/CEO Jon Landman in a statement. “Graham’s leadership and creativity have been instrumental in advancing our organization to new levels while staying true to the grassroots connection to music and artists on which we founded the company. As we enter our 25th year of The Syndicate, we can’t wait for what’s on the horizon.”
Rothenberg added, “It’s an immense honor to be named Partner at The Syndicate, a company I’ve been privileged to grow with over the past 18 years. Starting as a college radio promoter back in 2004, I’ve been able to watch The Syndicate evolve into the unique agency it’s become today. I’m extremely excited to work even more closely with Jon, Tracey, and Chris while continuing to lead our incredible staff in moving culture forward and helping our clients achieve their most creative goals.”
Jackie Augustus joined Spotify‘s artist partnerships team to lead country and folk artist partnerships for the streamer. Augustus, who was named to Billboard‘s Country Power Players list in 2022, most recently served as strategic partner manager of music at Instagram.
Chris Schuler was named vp of promotion at Capitol Records Nashville where he will lead the promotion team previously headed up by Bobby Young. He most recently served as vp of promotion at Arista Nashville. Schuler can be reached at chris.schuler@umusic.com.
Sherry Lansing was designated chairman of the board on Universal Music Group‘s board of directors, effective Jan. 10. Lansing, a retired film studio executive who previously served as CEO at Paramount Pictures and president of production at 20th Century Fox, succeeds Judy Craymer, who retired from the position to focus on her film and theater production projects.
Jitze de Raaff was appointed president of CTM Entertainment, effective Jan. 1. He was previously managing director of CTM Publishing and Music in the Benelux region. De Raaff, also co-shareholder of the company, will now be responsible for all other CTM activities in addition to music. He will additionally play a bigger role in the company’s international expansion alongside CTM CEO André de Raaff. He can be reached at Jitze.deRaaff@ctm.nl.
BMG appointed Stefan Lehmkuhl programmer for Berlin’s historic 1,700-seat Theater des Westens, which the company announced it had leased for two years last September. Lemkuhl has curated and produced music events including Melt Festival and Lollapalooza Berlin for two decades. He will be joined by event producer Parker “Pansy” Tilghman.
Randy Reyes was promoted to senior director of rhythmic promotion at Atlantic Records. Reyes has worked in rhythmic and pop mix show promotion at the label for the past nine years.
Tvg hospitality, founded by Ben Lovett of Mumford & Sons, named Jayne Davis COO and Katie Millar gm of the Orion Amphitheater. The New York-based Davis arrives from OTG Management where she served as senior vp of operations development, while Millar previously served as manager at Paramount Fine Foods Centre & Living Arts Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
James Ainscough was appointed to the role of CEO at the Royal Albert Hall, where he will lead the execution of the venue’s post-pandemic business plan; he previously worked at the Hall from 2008 to 2017 as director of finance and administration and then as COO. He joins in late spring 2023 from the charity Help Musicians, where he currently serves as CEO. Ainscough replaces Craig Hassall, who stepped down from the CEO role last month. COO Dan Freeman will continue serving as interim CEO until Ainscough officially joins.
Mandy McCormack was named executive vp/marketing & partner strategy for Trisha Yearwood, Inc. In her enhanced role as part of Yearwood’s management team, McCormack will manage brand partnerships, oversee marketing plans, seek out new business ventures and provide strategic consultation in all aspects of the country star’s business. McCormack most recently served as senior vp of radio promotion & marketing/artist strategy at Garth Brooks’ Pearl Records and Team TY (Trisha Yearwood). McCormack can be reached at mandy@trishayearwoodinc.com.
Tristra Newyear Yeager was named chief strategy officer at music/tech PR firm Rock Paper Scissors (RPS), while Travis Feaster was named new business manager at the company. Newyear Yeager, who has been with RPS for 17 years, was previously director of strategy and will now oversee PR and client services and guide strategic planning at the firm. Feaster was most recently national sales manager at Boutique Amps Distribution.
Jayne Hamblin was named manager of management and records at Creative Nation, where she will oversee the day-to-day responsibilities for Creative Nation’s artist clients while serving as a liaison between them and outside partners. Hamblin can be reached at jayne@creativenationmusic.com.
BMG Rights Management is facing a new lawsuit claiming the publisher has failed to pay royalties from Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars‘ smash hit “Uptown Funk” to the families of late members of the Gap Band who are credited as co-writers on the song.
In a complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court, the heirs of Robert and Ronnie Wilson claim that BMG breached a 2015 deal that was inked because “Uptown Funk” incorporated elements of the Gap Band’s 1979 song “I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops Upside Your Head).”
“Despite its obligations to account for and pay to plaintiffs their share of all income received from the Uptown Funk musical composition, BMG has refused and failed to provide either the funds due to plaintiffs or an accounting despite plaintiffs’ repeated demands,” the lawsuit says.
A rep for BMG did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations on Friday. Mars and Ronson are not accused of any wrongdoing and are not named in the lawsuit.
In a statement, Wilson family attorney Michael Steger told Billboard that his clients had been “working for years” to receive credit for their contributions to “Uptown Funk” and had been “left with no choice but to pursue litigation to protect their rights.”
As reported by Billboard at the time, the songwriting credits to “Uptown Funk” were suddenly amended in 2015, months after the song was released. After the owners of “Oops Upside Your Head” filed a claim against the song on YouTube – and in the cautious aftermath of a blockbuster infringement verdict over Robin Thicke‘s “Blurred Lines” — the five co-writers of the Gap Band song were each given 3.4% stakes in the then-new track.
The new case was filed by Linda Wilson, the widow of Ronnie Wilson, and by Robin Lynn Wilson, LaTina Wilson and Robena Wilson, the heirs of Robert Wilson, over those two late band members’ respective 3.4% stakes. The other three members who received such stakes are not involved in the case.
In their complaint, the Wilson heirs called the new allegations of non-payment against BMG “yet another chapter in a long-running series of disputes” over the hit song, which spent 14 weeks atop the Hot 100 and 56 total weeks on the chart.
They aren’t wrong. In the years after “Uptown Funk” was released, at least three lawsuits were filed claiming Ronson and Mars stole elements from earlier songs. One case involved the 1983 song “Young Girls” by the band Collage; another centered on the 1980 funk song “More Bounce to the Ounce” by the band Zapp; the third alleged they copied material from the 1979 classic “Funk You Up” by The Sequence.
All three cases were later dropped or settled.
Read the entire new lawsuit against BMG here:
Tim Leiweke’s Oak View Group has created the entertainment industry’s first paid membership-based theater network, signing iconic venues like New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and Orange County’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts as its first clients. Led by executive director Noël Mirhadi, a longtime music agent in the performing arts and theater space, the new Theater Alliance is modeled after OVG’s Arena Alliance and Stadium Alliance and is being developed to utilize the collective strength of its members to scale up booking, routing and sponsorship sales.
The Theater Alliance will have 18 members in total representing 39 performance spaces including the Madison Square Garden-owned Beacon Theater and Chicago Theater, the ACL Live at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas; the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, the Portland’5 Centers for the Arts and Stifel Theatre in St. Louis.
Each venue is independently run, Mirhadi explains, and “will work with OVG as an extension of their team with the two main pillars being programming and sponsorship opportunities.” That includes working with OVG’s Joe Giordano, vice president overseeing the Theater Alliance and Arena & Stadium Alliance, to identify and expand booking opportunities to more member venues, as well as offer sales and development resources not always available at arts organizations.
“Theaters serve as the heartbeat of their community. I understand and appreciate this sentiment having started as a musician and having gone on to dedicate my professional life and career to music and the arts,” Mirhadi said. “I’m thrilled to have joined Oak View Group as we create and launch our new Theater Alliance, which will support these critically important institutions and help them continue to thrive. ”
Having a presence in the theater world has long been a priority for Leiweke and Chris Granger, president of OVG 360, the company’s venue services division. Besides viewing theaters as an important development platform for the company’s many arena clients, Grangers says the formation of the Theater Alliance is a major opportunity to bring together the country’s leading art institutions.
“At OVG, we not only want to support venues, artists and our corporate partners, we also want to be good stewards of the communities that we’re in,”Granger tells Billboard. “We want achieve success through the arena and stadium alliances, and now the Theater Alliance, by bringing together like-minded venues to book together, sell together, buy together, think together and brand together.”
Granger says that facilities will pay a “mid-six figures” annual contribution for their membership in the theater alliance and that members must make a multi-year commitment to the invitation-only Theater Alliance when they commit to join.
“Our goal is to not just to help our members work in concert to improve their operations and overall guest experience, but, perhaps more importantly, to creatively elevate the arts and attract a new generation of theatergoers from within their communities, because we are all better when the arts thrive,” Granger added.
OVG will announce the inaugural members of the Theater Alliance, which also include the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Boston’s Boch Center, the First Interstate Center in Spokane, Loew’s Jersey Theater, the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, the Paramount Theatre in Denver, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, during the Association for Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference opening session today.
“The demand for the Theater Alliance was certainly amplified coming out of the pandemic.” Giordano says. “Performing arts venues across the nation, which are traditionally costly to operate, all face similar challenges. The Alliance, under Noël’s outstanding leadership, is eager to continue building the network of top venues in first tier markets to help them meet and exceed their programming and budgetary goals, and bring opportunities to the table that they didn’t even know were possible.”
More information at OakViewGroup.com
With Tuesday’s flurry of festival lineups — including Boston Calling, Bonnaroo, Sonic Temple Festival, and, finally, Coachella — the 2023 North American festival season formally kicked off, and music fans can expect more announcements to follow.
This figurative ringing of the bell is typically reserved for Coachella (and Coachella alone), which usually announces its lineup the first week of January. But when Los Angeles-based concert promoter Goldenvoice didn’t deliver on time — for unexplained reasons — it left some executives wondering what to expect from potential ripple effects throughout the festival circuit.
That’s due to Coachella’s contracts and stature in the business. Coachella’s artist contracts come with radius clauses that give the Southern California festival first right to announce its artist lineup in the region. As such, festivals have worked out a largely unspoken schedule for announcing their lineups after Coachella goes first, and then navigating similar first-announce and radius clauses other major festivals may have.
In this case, Live Nation-owned festivals Boston Calling and Bonnaroo booked 070 Shake, Sofi Tukker and Knocked Out, who were playing Coachella as well. Both lineups were slated to drop on Jan. 10 — but with the morning of the 10th approaching and no Coachella lineup announced, agents for the acts had to check in with Goldenvoice to let them know about the Bonnaroo and Boston Calling announcements.
Making things more complicated was that both Live Nation-owned festivals, along with the Danny Wimmer Presents-owned Sonic Temple Festival in Columbus, Ohio, had coordinated their lineup announcements to take place hours apart on Jan. 10 at the request of the Foo Fighters, who wanted a somber announcement surrounding their return to the stage following longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins’ death last March.
Goldenvoice president/CEO Paul Tollett told the agencies there was no problem with the lineup announcements happening before Coachella, and a small dustup was easily avoided. The episode, however, is illustrative of how a small group of concert promoters, powerful booking agents and contract attorneys regulate and protect the music festival industry.
At the top of that system is Coachella, a cultural and economic juggernaut that sells more than $100 million worth of tickets each year over two weekends in mid-April, making it the first major festival to take place each year. In order to protect the massive investment in artist fees it pays each year, AEG-owned Goldenvoice requires artists to sign radius clauses agreeing not to announce their participation in festivals that take place in California, or in states neighboring California, until after their performance at Coachella. Artists participating in festivals in states not neighboring California generally only have to wait until after the Coachella lineup announcement before publicizing their involvement in other events.
Today, most major festivals use radius clauses to restrict participating artists from performing at competing events that fall too close geographically or chronologically. Managing this complex web of obligations and radius clauses typically falls on an artist’s booking agent, who negotiates the agreements between festivals and artists while managing their client’s radius clause obligations throughout the touring cycle.
In order to avoid violating each other’s radius clauses, since 2014, festivals that take place in the first part of the year have worked on a schedule starting in the first week of January for announcing their lineups. From 2014 to 2020, the lineup for Coachella was announced during the first week of January. But for the last two years, following the pandemic and the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 festivals, Coachella’s lineup announcement hasn’t taken place until the second week of January, causing minor delays to festival lineup announcements that have traditionally followed Coachella.
While some of Coachella’s critics say the festival’s pole position in the lineup announcement hierarchy affords Goldenvoice far too much power over smaller festivals, one booking agent told Billboard that Tollett is “exactly the type of person you want in that position.”
“He wants to protect his event, which he spends tens of millions of dollars on each year. He’s first in line because his event is the major festival each year,” says the agent. “But if he needs a little more time to announce his festival, he’s going to accommodate the requests of any festival he impacts. He’s fair and always does the right thing.”