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Tory Lanez said Wednesday (Dec. 21) that he will not take the witness stand in his own defense in the trial over whether he shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot, signaling the end of testimony in the week-long trial and setting the stage for jurors to begin deliberating on a verdict.
Putting a defendant on the stand to be cross-examined by prosecutors is a big gamble in any criminal case, and Lanez’s attorneys opted not to do so — resting their case without giving Lanez a chance to personally persuade jurors that he didn’t pull the trigger the night Megan was shot.
“I will not testify,” said Lanez, sitting beside his father, to Judge David V. Herriford.
During Wednesday morning’s proceedings, it was also revealed that Jaquan Smith, Lanez’s driver who was present the night of Megan’s shooting, would similarly not be testifying. Smith, who could have provided eye-witness testimony to the incident, had been present at the courthouse earlier in the day.
With no testimony from Lanez or Smith, both the prosecution and the defense will proceed to make their closing arguments later in the day on Wednesday. After that, the case will be submitted to the jury, with a verdict expected as early as Wednesday evening.
Lanez stands accused of three felony counts over the July 12, 2020 incident, during which prosecutors say he yelled “Dance, b—-” and shot at Megan’s feet, striking her at least once. If convicted on all three counts, he faces up to 22 years in prison. His lawyers have steadfastly maintained his innocence, suggesting throughout the trial that the trigger might instead have been pulled by Kelsey Harris, Megan’s former friend and assistant who was also in the vehicle that night.
Kicking off Dec. 12, the trial has seen gripping testimony from Megan herself, who recounted the alleged shooting, pinned the blame on Lanez and said, “I wish he had just shot and killed me.” Harris — expected to be a star witness for the prosecution — also took the stand, but she largely failed to re-affirm previous statements pinning the blame on Lanez. Then on Friday (Dec. 16), prosecutors played recordings of Harris’ earlier statements, in which she clearly stated that Lanez had shot the Grammy-winning rapper and then tried to buy both women’s silence with million-dollar bribes.
Back in court this week, jurors heard confusing and contradictory testimony from Sean Kelly, a man who allegedly saw the entire incident from his nearby home. Expected to be a key witness for Lanez’s defense team, Kelly told jurors that he saw Harris violently grappling with Megan outside the vehicle, but that he also saw a man matching Tory Lanez’s description holding a gun. Bizarrely, he then later said he never actually saw a gun at all.
Smith, the driver of the vehicle, could have provided additional perspective as the only other person present during the incident — and the only one who has never been suggested to have been involved in the shooting. But like Lanez, he was never placed on the witness stand on Wednesday.
Speaking to Billboard during the recess, Lanez attorney George Mgdesyan said he’d wanted Smith to testify, but that procedural wrangling and the possibility of a delay that could have forced jurors to return after Christmas prevented him from taking the stand.
This is a developing story and will be updated later on Wednesday with more information from the afternoon’s proceedings.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job.
Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by.
“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”
Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk’s run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public.
He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that Twitter is taking too much of his attention.
Some of Musk’s actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and turned off users. They include laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators and disbanding a council of trust and safety advisors that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform.
Musk, who also helms the SpaceX rocket company, has previously acknowledged how difficult it will be to find someone to take over as Twitter CEO.
Bantering with Twitter followers last Sunday, he said that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted.
As things stand, Musk would still retain overwhelming influence over platform as its owner. He fired the company’s board of directors soon after taking control.
Exactly one decade ago, on Dec. 21, 2012, Psy‘s “Gangnam Style” made history as the first music video to reach 1 billion YouTube views. As a result, YouTube’s Billion Views Club was born. A way to celebrate official videos that have achieved peak virality, the club is now home to over 300 music videos, including many of the most iconic hits from the past 10 years — from Adele‘s “Hello” to Luis Fonsi‘s “Despacito” feat. Daddy Yankee.
But how much do artists get paid for crossing the billion-view threshold for a music video on YouTube? The royalties are dependent on a few factors. Label affiliation, location and type of view affect these rates significantly. For example, artists signed to major labels — which represent the vast majority of members of the Billion Views Club — earn higher rates on the platform than those who are unsigned or affiliated with an indie label.
But location is possibly the biggest determining factor of all: in the U.S., rates are generally higher than in other countries. So while an official YouTube music video for a major-label artist could generate a blended average of $0.0038 per stream in the U.S., globally — which is how YouTube counts its views — Billboard estimates that rate at $0.0026 per stream. YouTube Premium video streams (views from customers who subscribe to YouTube’s ad-free video-watching tier) are also higher than plays from users on the ad-supported tier, both in the U.S. and globally.
Consequently, for major-label artists, 1 billion video streams on an official music video would generate about $2.6 million globally. That’s, of course, before the label takes their cut of royalties, which varies widely based on each artist’s individual deal, and before the artist takes into account what, if anything, they owe to their featured artists or producers on the track.
For non-official videos that use music — like a user-generated video of someone’s visit to the zoo, set to a song by a major-label artist — that global blended stream estimate would drop down to $0.0021, given lower payouts on UGC videos and the over-indexing of UGC viewership vs. that of official videos. So for a major-label song on YouTube that generates 1 billion views across all videos that use it, the label and artist would generate closer to $2.1 million.
Of the more than 300 music videos on YouTube to hit 1 billion views, the fastest to reach the benchmark is “Hello” by Adele, which took just 88 days from release to amass such a viewership. Next is a tie between “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran and “Despacito,” both of which took 97 days. The third and fourth places on the list are also both held by Spanish-language songs, with “Mi Gente” by J Balvin and Willy William earning the title in 103 days and “Échame La Culpa” by Luis Fonsi and Demi Lovato taking 111 days.
Additional Reporting by Ed Christman.
Preview
Is this finally the year that Christmas music streaming is cannibalizing holiday music sales? The raw numbers appear to suggest that’s the case, and some music industry execs have taken notice.
Since 2017, seasonal music album sales — physical formats and digital downloads — have dropped 61.8% to 1.44 million copies (so far) in 2022, as of Dec. 8. That’s down from 4.1 million copies in 2017, even though album sales are essentially at the same level of 90.55 million copies this year versus 91.64 million back then, according to Luminate data up to Dec. 8.
What’s more, seasonal music has held steady during that time, at 6.41 million album consumption units so far in 2022 versus 6.24 million album consumption units in the comparable 49-week year-to-date period of 2017, with an overall annual average coming to 6.3 million album consumption units during that five-year period. But within that, as you might expect, streaming has more than doubled, from 3.2 billion in overall holiday song streams, as of the 49th week of 2017, to 6.68 billion holiday song streams so far this year.
“This might be the year that streaming is impacting Christmas sales,” says one major label executive.
But while music wholesalers concede that the genre is not having the greatest holiday season in terms of sales, they counter there’s another reason this year’s numbers are sluggish. They argue 2022 is missing a key ingredient that in the past has proved to be a big catalyst for the overall genre during the holidays: a big, new Christmas album that drives traffic and fuels sales across the entire genre.
“While a lot of the new albums are doing fine and have done a decent volume, not one of them has been a breakaway hit,” says Alliance Entertainment senior vp of purchasing and marketing Laura Provenzano. In years past, big holiday music albums came from the likes of Josh Groban and his Noel album, which scanned 3.7 million album copies in its debut year of 2007 and now totals 6.32 million album consumption units in the U.S.; Michael Buble‘s Christmas, which scanned 2.45 million copies in its release year of 2011 and a total of 4.5 million album consumption units to date; or, going back further, Kenny G‘s Miracle, the Holiday Album, which scanned nearly 3 million copies in its 1994 debut. Those albums really stoked the genre’s sales numbers in the years they were released.
Besides lacking a big album this year, music merchandisers say the complexion of physical sales has changed, with more titles coming out in the expensive vinyl format while budget-priced CDs’ role in driving holiday sales has faced diminished floor space in discount department stores. So while merchants are realizing more revenue-per-copy thanks to vinyl’s popularity, they’re also seeing a drop in CD unit sales because of a squeeze on budget floor space.
“Some key retailers have pared back their presence in the budget business; there are fewer $5 bins on the sales floor nowadays,” offers Provenzano. Meanwhile, as more holiday albums come out on vinyl, “now that a lot of holiday music has a higher price point, it is no longer as much of an impulse item,” Provenzano adds.
For example, as of week 49 of 2017, physical holiday and seasonal album sales totaled 2.987 million copies, with 100,000 courtesy of the vinyl format. As of the 49th week of this year, total physical sales were 1.142 million, of which 637,000 were in the CD format and 503,000 vinyl, according to Luminate.
Music is generally considered impervious to economic downturns, but that doesn’t mean all genres are immune to the threat of recession, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, music merchandisers say. While vinyl has been growing in leaps and bounds, when it comes to holiday music, shoppers are much more price sensitive these days, agrees All Media Supply music buyer Joe Pica.
Music retailers and wholesalers say that even if turns out to be a softer year for holiday music, many perennial Christmas titles are still selling consistently, if not as much as they once were; and that some of the new albums are doing pretty well too. The new releases they point to are Lindsey Stirling‘s Snow Waltz, which so far this year has generated 37,000 units — 25,000 physical copies — since its October release; and her 2017 collection Warmer In the Winter, which has generated 25,000 album consumption units so far this year and 455,000 units — 176,000 physical — since its release. Other new releases include the Bocelli’s A Family Christmas at 66,000 album consumption units — including nearly 52,000 physical copies — since its October release; and the Backstreet Boys‘ A Very Backstreet Christmas, which has so far accumulated 57,000 album consumption units, of which 38,000 are physical copies.
If only, music merchandisers lament, there was that one big album emerging from the pack. In fact, merchandisers were hoping the Backstreet Boys album would fill that role since it was initially going to be paired with a Dec. 14 special on ABC. But that show was pulled due to allegations that singer Nick Carter raped a 17-year-old girl during a 2001 tour — an accusation which he has denied. That news initially broke on Dec. 8.
A look at daily sales for that title for the last two weeks shows that the album is still selling at about the same pace, ranging from 1,100 to 1,400 copies daily through Dec. 12, with the exception of a 7,000 album consumption unit bump on Dec. 5. But even though its sales and streaming activity appears to be holding despite the allegations, the album is unlikely to enjoy a windfall in incremental sales that the holiday TV special would have delivered had it aired.
Besides new releases, other Christmas albums issued over the last few years — including Dolly Parton‘s A Holly Dolly Christmas — are also still generating healthy activity. Kelly Clarkson‘s When Christmas Comes Around has generated nearly 51,000 album consumption units, of which 15,000 copies are in physical formats, amounting to 106,000 units overall since its release in Oct. 2021; while Carrie Underwood‘s My Gift has garnered 46,000 album consumption units so far this year, of which 17,000 are physical, and 628,000 album units since its 2020 bow.
Meanwhile, Pentatonix has built up a strong holiday brand through six seasonal albums, which so far this year have garnered 251,000 album consumption units including 28,000 units from its latest effort, Holidays Around the World. However, only 10% — or 25,000 units — are physical copies. Trans-Siberian Orchestra is another holiday music brand still putting respectable numbers up on the board, as its four genre albums this year have collectively achieved 111,000 units in album consumption activity, of which nearly 28,000 are physical copies.
But even with that showing from current artists like Underwood, Clarkson and Pentatonix, plus legacy artists like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Ingram Entertainment’s head of sales and marketing Steve Harkins wonders if we are seeing a changing of the guard in the holiday genre. For instance, the holiday seasonal album chart for the week ended Dec. 8 shows that albums from Christmas perennials from the last 50 years, like Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis and Burl Ives, collectively have only four albums in the top 25 of the Dec. 8 chart; and another six albums in the second half, from Nos. 26 to No. 50.
“We have always relied on the old staples, but now we are seeing more contemporary artists moving up into the top spots on the holiday charts; it could be a generational transition,” says Harkins. “Some of the crooners are being replaced. We are selling less units from them, although they do still sell steadily.”
Others disagree with that assessment, saying that while the old guard may not sell as well as they used to, they still do well, according to Provenzano. Or as All Media’s Pina puts it, “Are the kids today buying Bing? I find that hard to believe. But we still sell plenty of Alabama‘s Christmas album and other [perennial] holiday sellers keep plodding along.”
While the rise of newer holiday music may be true so far this year for the seasonal album chart, it’s not so for the overall holiday/seasonal song streaming chart. Of the top 25 in that chart, only three songs — Ariana Grande‘s “Santa Tell Me” at No. 6, Pentatonix‘s “Hallellujah” at No. 17 and Sia‘s “Snowman” at No. 20 — are from the last 10 years. That’s down from the prior year, when four songs within a 10-year release window made the Top 25 year-to-date holiday songs in the period ending Dec. 2, 2021. In fact, this year only 22 songs in that chart’s top 100 have been released in the last 10 years, and overall, only 34 of the top 100 holiday season songs were released in the current century. As for new holiday tunes released this year, only four songs made the top 100 holiday season songs as of Dec. 9, with Lizzo‘s “Someday At Christmas” showing the most activity at No. 55.
Some holiday classics remain strong sellers year in and year out, and some even grow stronger every year. Alliance’s Provenzano wonders how many copies of the Vince Guaraldi Trio‘s A Charlie Brown Christmas the industry can sell every year. Since 2017, that title has grown every year, from 76,000 album consumption units to nearly 191,000 units as of the 49th week of each subsequent year. This year represents its strongest frame yet, with the album up slightly from 189,000 last year, which was better than 2020 (164,000), 2019 (134,000) and 2018 (88,000).
But other traditional big holiday sellers, like the Mannheim Steamroller albums — consisting of nine studio and four compilation or live albums dating back to the late 1980s that have collectively amassed 23 platinum awards from the RIAA — have slowed down considerably. This year, that catalog has generated about 75,000 album consumption units so far, and of that only a little more than 3,000 were physical sales.
Still, the labels haven’t given up on their perennial sellers. They’ve begun boosting sales of various titles by refurbishing those albums, in some cases adding bonus tracks like the eight extras on Holly Dolly Christmas; or issuing the albums in different colored vinyl like with the Vince Guaraldi Trio classic. Up in Brighton, Mass., Newbury Comics buyer Larry Mansdorf says the latter LP is the chain’s No. 3 selling album — overall, not just seasonal — thanks to the chain carrying the album in green-swirl vinyl.
Still, unless holiday season album sales rebound, the major labels might begin to pare back their offering, says one label executive working in catalog. As it is currently, about 2,300 holiday Christmas titles are still in print, including about 400 that are also available in the vinyl format, wholesalers say.
“This may be the year we look at our Christmas title range and see what’s worth keeping in physical print,” the label executive says.
TAIPEI — Back in the early 2000s, Taiwanese artists such as Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai dominated Chinese-speaking markets throughout Asia, creating a golden era for Taiwanese pop music. While some, like Chou, continued to be influential, other music stars from the island disappeared from the public eye amid increasingly fierce competition from Japan, South Korea and mainland China.
Two decades years later, Taiwanese artists are making a comeback, as TV variety shows and music platforms in mainland China, in a wave of nostalgia rife with political undertones, have pushed their re-emergence. In May, over 100 million people watched re-screenings of Chou concerts from his 2013 and 2019 world tours as part of Tencent Music Entertainment’s Live Concert Series — a record for online concerts that emerged during the pandemic.
That same month, Cyndi Wang — the now 40-year-old Taiwanese singer dubbed the “Sweetheart Goddess” for her sugary pop songs — topped a Chinese music chart after her appearance on the variety show Sisters Who Make Waves. Nine of her songs from the early 2000s took over Chinese streaming site QQ Music’s “rising hits” chart for about a week. Wang’s fans called to buy shares of Mango TV, the station broadcasting the show, and threatened to dump shares if she was eliminated from the show, according to Weibo posts.
“Her appearance on the variety show and the need for entertainment during pandemic lockdowns created the hit,” says Shao I-Te, former China representative of Channel V and general manager at EMI Music China. “It’s a sense of nostalgia. Her fans who have the most purchasing power are now in their 30s, and artists like Cyndi Wang are like a symbol of their youth. With her, everyone starts to miss the good old days of the millennium era.”
Yet with tensions between Taiwan and Beijing’s communist government mounting once again, Wang’s sudden return to fame has also drawn online criticism in mainland China. After former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s visit to Taiwan in August, netizens accused Wang of not supporting the “one China” principle after she initially failed to share a propaganda post from CCTV (Chinese state television) on social media site Weibo which declared “there is only one China in the world.”
Wang was among about 30 Taiwanese artists, including Chou and Tsai, that people online called out for not supporting the statement without hesitation. (She later reposted the CCTV message on Weibo and expressed support for the “one China” principle, which then generated criticism from Taiwanese citizens.)
China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, while Taiwan has its own constitution and democratically elected leaders. China has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control and has held military drills in the air and seas around Taiwan, including the firing of ballistic missiles after Pelosi’s visit.
The Rise and Fall of Taiwanese Music in Mainland China
Taiwan’s pop music export wave started in the 1980s when Teresa Teng swept mainland China by storm. Then Jacky Cheung‘s 1993 album The Kiss Goodbye sold 1.36 million copies in Taiwan and over 4 million copies in greater China — sales that surpassed U.S. album sales for Madonna and Bruce Springsteen around that time, which helped entice global record companies to enter the Asian market.
Universal, Warner, Sony, EMI and BMG established their Asian hubs in Hong Kong, bringing capital and production technology and further spreading the influence of Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop music across Asia.
After the financial crisis in 1997, Hong Kong’s economy struggled, and a group of newcomers appeared in Taiwan. In 2001, Shao’s Channel V named Chou best male singer; it was the first time someone replaced Hong Kong’s Four Heavenly Kings in this award category. Since then, artists such as F4, Mayday, Tsai and Singaporean artists Stefanie Sun and JJ Lin — who went to Taiwan to jumpstart their careers — started to influence the next decade’s music.
“People born from 1980 to 1995, this entire generation has become an important generation supporting these singers, who have purchasing power and great acceptance of pop music, and with their help, these artists created the music taste of a generation,” Shao says.
In 2004, during the Taiwanese golden age, Wang performed her hit “Love You” on the Sisters Who Make Waves variety show. But after the global financial downturn of 2008, and the rise of China’s economy that followed, the fortunes of Taiwanese artists began to change.
Cyndi Wang attends a press conference to promote her new album on December 16, 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan of China.
Visual China Group via GI
Around 2010, Chinese internet giants Tencent, Netease, Alibaba and Baidu kicked off an era of online music streaming that created a more distinct mainland Chinese market, which made it tougher for Taiwanese and Hong Kong pop music to break into China.
By 2018, despite a history of rampant piracy, China had grown into the seventh-largest music market in the world with $531.3 million in total revenues that year, according to IFPI. (Taiwan, which has 23.5 million people — a small fraction of China’s 1.4 billion — has held around No. 25 the past few years.)
“Taiwan continues to breed contemporary pop acts but with reduced probability of success in the mainland market,” says Xing Xiaole, French music distributor Believe’s Beijing-based head of artist services for China. He says that’s because Taiwanese artists have struggled to adapt to the distinct ecosystem of Chinese social and advertising platforms, and had to endure travel and group gathering restrictions during the pandemic.
Xing, who also deals with Taiwanese clients, says the biggest Taiwanese music influence in mainland China today comes from indie bands such as the jazz-influenced synth-pop group Sunset Rollercoaster and The Chairs, which releases songs written in English, Mandarin, Japanese and the Taiwanese dialect.
But the rise of mainland China’s market means that Chinese-speaking musicians can no longer rely on Taiwan as a starting point to become as influential as before. Some of them choose to head west to China. And when tensions flare between China and its island neighbor, they often get tangled up in the political wrestling across the Taiwan Strait.
In the 1980s, the Taiwanese government used Teresa Teng’s love ballads, which were popular across China and then banned by communist Beijing, in anti-communist propaganda broadcasts.
The Chinese government, for its part, often requires artists to toe the party line, including referring to Taiwan as being part of China. Taiwanese singers whose careers are based in China have been invited to attend CCTV’s New Year’s Gala to spread pro-unification thoughts.
“There’s always been a red line for Taiwanese artists in mainland China, ever since the 1980s,” Shao says. “What the new generation of artists can do is draw from their everyday experiences and create music that can connect with the world.”
Sean Kelly, an alleged eye witness to the 2020 incident in which Megan Thee Stallion was shot, offered confusing and contradictory testimony Tuesday (Dec. 20) about what really happened, saying he never actually saw a gun — but also that he saw a man matching Tory Lanez’s description holding one, and that Megan’s former friend and assistant Kelsey Harris may also have fired.
During the seventh day of the blockbuster trial, Kelly (a key witness for Lanez’s defense team) testified that when he first looked outside his home on the night of the incident, he saw Megan and Harris kicking and punching each other outside of a vehicle. “They were pulling their hair and hitting each other. It was quite violent,” he told Lanez’s attorney George Mgdesyan.
Shortly after a man matching the description of Lanez’s driver Jaquan Smith got out of the car and attempted to separate them, Kelly says he heard a shot fired. He said a man matching Lanez’s description then exited the car, leading to a scuffle between all four people — and that four or five more shots then rang out.
Lanez’s defense team has suggested throughout the trial that Harris, not Lanez, potentially pulled the trigger, partly based on an earlier interview Kelly gave to them in Jan. 2021. In confusing testimony that repeatedly contradicted itself, Kelly didn’t offer much clarity on that point. The alleged witness, who called 911 but never identified the shooters on that call, first said he “never saw a gun” and “just saw flashes” and that he believed one of the women fired it — before later appearing to confirm that he saw Lanez (referred to as “the shorter guy”) holding the weapon.
“Did you see the shorter guy with a gun in his hand?” asked Mgdesyan.
“Yes,” answered Kelly.
Later in his testimony, Kelly said he witnessed three of the people beating one of the women in the street as she was curled in a ball, before hearing the man matching Smith’s description say, “The cops are coming!” He then said he saw someone in the group pick the woman up — at which point he believed the group was going to attempt to throw her into a nearby creek. “It appeared to me they were trying to kill her. Dragged her across the street and picked her up,” he said.
Kelly became visibly agitated during cross-examination from the prosecution, when he once again testified that he saw the man matching Lanez’s description shooting the gun, saying “the short guy was agitated; he got out of the car. His arm was stretched out and he was firing everywhere. Four or five shots.” At this point, Lanez, wearing a white turtleneck under a white jacket, looked on sternly, his eyes bulging as he listened to Kelly’s testimony.
During the redirect with Mgdesyan, Kelly once again appeared to contradict his own version of events, stating, “I believe the girl [Harris] fired the first shot.”
Kelly’s testimony came more than a week into a closely-watched trial over the July 12, 2020 incident, during which prosecutors say Lanez yelled “Dance, b—-” and shot at Megan’s feet, striking her at least once. He’s charged with three felony counts — assault with a firearm, gun possession and discharging a firearm with gross negligence — and could face as much as 22 years in prison if convicted.
The first week of the trial saw gripping testimony from Megan herself, who recounted the alleged shooting, pinned the blame on Lanez, and said, “I wish he had just shot and killed me.” Later in the week, Harris — expected to be a star witness for the prosecution — largely failed to re-affirm previous statements pinning the blame on Lanez. But on Friday (Dec. 16), prosecutors played recordings of those earlier statements, in which Harris clearly stated that Lanez had shot the Grammy-winning rapper and then tried to buy both women’s silence with million-dollar bribes.
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Rodrigo Nieto-Galvis, the vice president and team lead in Miami for the Entertainment Banking division of City National Bank, is well aware that the Latin music industry works differently than any other genre, which is why he’s sharing his knowledge and expertise with independent and emerging artists who want to learn how to manage their money properly.
“It’s important to understand that usually an entertainer is self-employed,” he tells Billboard. “They don’t have constant earnings. They are easily exposed to lawsuits. They have international residency with income in multiple jurisdictions. And it’s really difficult to predict the future of their careers and their income.”
In this episode of Billboard‘sLatin Hitmaker podcast, Nieto-Galvis elaborates on five common mistakes artists make with their finances and how they can be fixed or avoided overall.
On building your career as a business: “You know, as an artist, sometimes they want to focus on their craft, on their art, on their music, but they also have to be the CEOs or of their careers. They need to manage their careers as a business […] and there’s something also that you may not be savvy in every area of a business, so you need to surround yourself with the right team. You need a lawyer, you need an accountant, you need a business manager who understands and can help you with your growth.”
On managing expenses: “You need to open an entity and you need to divide your personal income and expenses by your corporate income and expenses. Otherwise, your income is going to become your pocket money, and that’s not something that you want. You shouldn’t be mixing this type of income and expenses and also […] something very important as well is to not leave money on the table. So what that means is when you are negotiating contracts and deals, bring your lawyer, you know, bring somebody to understand these contracts and also sign contracts with every member of your team just to avoid future litigations.”
On creating a budget plan: “So the first thing that you need to do as an artist is creating a plan at a budget for the year. you need to know what will be resources you need to achieve the goals that you are trying to reach. Right. So like have a plan for 12 years. What are the resources that you’re going to need if you buy that car? If you can buy that boat, is that going to affect the plan? Are you still going to have the resources to achieve those goals? Right. So so again, the third issue is the area of problems is managing your expenses, having a budget, having a plan.”
On understanding taxes: “You really need to have an accountant that understands not only your business but the fact that you work in multiple jurisdictions, in multiple countries. So what we’re talking about is getting the right advice, or also there are elements such as the CW, tax exemptions, which are only for international artists.”
On protecting your savings: “Avoid getting into investments that you don’t understand and actually, the final component on that aspect is also to pay attention to estate planning. Like what’s the legacy that you’re going to leave, how you’re going to be providing to your loved ones once you are not here anymore. So you pay attention to those areas.”
Listen to the full episode of Latin Hitmaker here:
City National Bank Member FDIC. City National Bank is a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada. ©2023 City National Bank. All Rights Reserved. City National Bank does business in the state of Florida as CN Bank
In the recent article “What Happens To Songwriters When AI Can Generate Music,” Alex Mitchell offers a rosy view of a future of AI-composed music coexisting in perfect barbershop harmony with human creators — but there is a conflict of interest here, as Mitchell is the CEO of an app that does precisely that. It’s almost like cigarette companies in the 1920s saying cigarettes are good for you.
Yes, the honeymoon of new possibilities is sexy, but let’s not pretend this is benefiting the human artist as much as corporate clients who’d rather pull a slot machine lever to generate a jingle than hire a human.
While I agree there are parallels between the invention of the synthesizer and AI, there are stark differences, too. The debut of the theremin — the first electronic instrument — playing the part of a lead violin in an orchestra was scandalous and fear-evoking. Audiences hated its sinusoidal wave lack of nuance, and some claimed it was “the end of music.” That seems ludicrous and pearl-clutching now, and I worship the chapter of electrified instruments afterward (thank you sister Rosetta Tharpe and Chuck Berry), but in a way, they were right. It was the closing of a chapter, and the birth of something new.
Is new always better, though? Or is there a sweet spot ratio of machine to human? I often wonder this sitting in my half analog, half digital studio, as the stakes get ever higher from flirting with the event horizon of technology.
In this same article, Diaa El All (another CEO of an A.I. music generation app), claims that drummers were pointlessly scared of the drum machine and sample banks replacing their jobs because it’s all just another fabulous tool. (Guess he hasn’t been to many shows where singers perform with just a laptop.) Since I have spent an indecent portion of my modeling money collecting vintage drum machines (cuz yes, they’re fabulous), I can attest to the fact I do indeed hire fewer drummers. In fact, since I started using sample libraries, I hire fewer musicians altogether. While this is a great convenience for me, the average upright bassist who used to be able to support his family with his trade now has to remain childless or take two other jobs.
Should we halt progress for maintaining placebo usefulness for obsolete craftsmen? No, change and competition are good, if not inevitable ergonomics. But let’s not be naive about the casualties.
The gun and the samurai come to mind. For centuries, samurai were part of an elite warrior class who rigorously trained in kendo (the way of the sword) and bushido (a moral code of honor and indifference to pain) since childhood. As a result, winning wars was a meritocracy of skill and strategy. Then a Chinese ship with Portuguese sailors showed up with guns.
When feudal lord Nobunaga saw the potential in these contraptions, he ordered hundreds be made for his troops. Suddenly a farmer boy with no skill could take down an archer or swordsman who had trained for years. Once more coordinated marching and reloading formations were developed, it was an entirely new power dynamic.
During the economic crunch of the Napoleonic wars, a similar tidal shift occurred. Automated textile equipment allowed factory owners to replace loyal employees with machines and fewer, cheaper, less skilled workers to oversee them. As a result of jobless destitution, there was a region-wide rebellion of weavers and Luddites burning mills, stocking frames and lace-making machines, until the army executed them and held show trials to deter others from acts of “industrial sabotage.”
The poet Lord Byron opposed this new legislation, which called machine-breaking a capital crime — ironic considering his daughter, Ada Lovelace, would go on to invent computers with Charles Babbage. Oh, the tangled neural networks we weave.
Look what Netflix did to Blockbuster rentals. Or what Napster did to the recording artist. Even what the democratization of homemade porn streaming did to the porn industry. More recently, video games have usurped films. You cannot add something to an ecosystem without subtracting something else. It would be like smartphone companies telling fax machine manufacturers not to worry. Only this time, the fax machines are humans.
Later in the article, Mac Boucher (creative technologist and co-creator of non-fungible token project WarNymph along with his sister Grimes) adds another glowing review of bot- and button-based composition: “We will all become creators now.”
If everyone is a creator, is anyone really a creator?
An eerie vision comes to mind of a million TikTokers dressed as opera singers on stage, standing on the blueish corpses of an orchestra pit, singing over each other in a vainglorious cacophony, while not a single person sits in the audience. Just rows of empty seats reverberating the pink noise of digital narcissism back at them. Silent disco meets the Star Gate sequence’s death choir stack.
While this might sound like the bitter gatekeeping of a tape machine purist (only slightly), now might be a good time to admit I was one of the early projects to incorporate AI-generated lyrics and imagery. My band, Uni and The Urchins, has a morbid fascination with futurism and the wild west of Web 3.0. Who doesn’t love robots?
But I do think in order to make art, the “obstacles” actually served as a filtration device. Think Campbell’s hero’s journey. The learning curve of mastering an instrument, the physical adventure of discovering new music at a record shop or befriending the cool older guy to get his Sharpie-graffitied mix CD, saving up to buy your first guitar, enduring ridicule, the irrational desire to pursue music against the odds (James Brown didn’t own a pair of shoes until he 8 years old, and now is canonized as King.)
Meanwhile, in 2022, surveys show that many kids feel valueless unless they’re an influencer or “artist,” so the urge toward content creation over craft has become criminally easy, flooding the markets with more karaoke, pantomime and metric-based mush, rooted in no authentic movement. (I guess Twee capitalist-core is a culture, but not compared to the Vietnam war, slavery, the space race, the invention of LSD, the discovery of the subconscious, Indian gurus, the sexual revolution or the ’90s heroin epidemic all inspiring new genres.)
Not to sound like Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto, but technology is increasingly the hand inside the sock puppet, not the other way around.
Do I think AI will replace a lot of jobs? Yes, though not immediately, it’s still crude. Do I think this upending is a net loss? In the long term, no, it could incentivize us to invent entirely new skills to front-run it. (Remember when “learn to code” was an offensive meme?) In fact, I’m very eager to see how we co-evolve or eventually merge into a transhuman cyber Seraphim, once Artificial General Intelligence goes quantum.
But this will be a Faustian trade, have no illusions.
Charlotte Kemp Muhl is the bassist for NYC art-rock band UNI and the Urchins. She has directed all of UNI and The Urchins’ videos and mini-films and engineered, mixed and mastered their upcoming debut album Simulator (out Jan. 13, 2023, on Chimera Music) herself. UNI and the Urchins’ AI-written song/AI-made video for “Simulator” is out now.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings, and all the fun stuff in between. This week: Gunna takes a plea deal to escape the sprawling case against Atlanta rap crew YSL, the Tory Lanez/Megan Thee Stallion trial continues with blockbuster testimony, Metallica loses a battle with its insurance company, and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Gunna Pleads Guilty, But Says He Won’t Flip
With a trial looming in less than a month, the rapper Gunna bowed out this week from the closely-watched criminal case against members of the Atlanta rap crew YSL, reaching a deal with prosecutors that will allow him to end his “personal ordeal” while seemingly still not cooperating against Young Thug or the other defendants.The chart-topping, Grammy-nominated rapper (real name Sergio Kitchens) took a so-called Alford plea — a maneuver that allows a defendant to enter a formal admission of guilt while still maintaining their innocence. After pleading guilty to the single charge he was facing, he was sentenced to five years in prison but immediately released because he was credited with one year of time served, while the rest of the sentence was suspended.Gunna’s plea deal will allow him to exit a sweeping criminal case filed in May by Fulton County prosecutors, who claimed YSL was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life,” but a violent Atlanta street gang called “Young Slime Life.” Listing dozens of individual allegations (including murder, carjacking, armed robbery, drug dealing and illegal firearm possession), the case accused Young Thug (real name Jeffery Williams) and 27 others of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a state version of the more famous federal RICO statute that’s been used to target the mafia. Such laws make it easier for prosecutors to sweep up many members of an alleged criminal conspiracy based on smaller “predicate acts” that aren’t directly related.A plea deal for Gunna made sense. The rapper was facing only a single charge and was named in only nine of the 191 predicates that make up the YSL RICO case — and most of those were either problematic references to his music or linked to an earlier case in which he eventually pled guilty to having illegally tinted windows. By way of comparison, Young Thug is facing several other separate criminal charges over guns and drugs and is named in substantially more of the RICO predicates.But such a deal was always going to raise heated debate about the touchy subject of snitching — about whether Gunna had won his freedom by promising to cooperate with prosecutors against Young Thug and the other defendants. In his own statement announcing the deal, the rapper strongly denied any such arrangement.“While I have agreed to always be truthful, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have NOT made any statements, have NOT been interviewed, have NOT cooperated, have NOT agreed to testify or be a witness for or against any party in the case and have absolutely NO intention of being involved in the trial process in any way,” Gunna wrote.The situation is a little more complicated. In footage of the plea hearing, Gunna acknowledged that YSL was both “a music label and a gang,” and that he had “personal knowledge that members or associates of YSL have committed crimes in furtherance of the gang.” He also acknowledged that if called by any party in the case, he would be required to testify “truthfully.” But he also reserved his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself and, in texts released on social media this week, Gunna’s lawyer made clear that if subpoenaed, the rapper would indeed “take the 5th and not testify.”The trial against Young Thug and the rest of the defendants is set to kick off Jan. 9, so stay tuned.
Other top stories this week…
TORY LANEZ TRIAL CONTINUES – The criminal trial over whether Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion in the foot ran all week long, featuring blockbuster testimony in which Megan herself recounted the alleged shooting and said, “I wish he had just shot and killed me.” Later in the week, the rapper’s former friend and assistant Kelsey Harris — expected to be a star witness for the prosecution — largely failed to re-affirm previous statements pinning the blame on Lanez. But then on Friday (Dec. 16), prosecutors played recordings of those earlier statements, in which Harris said Lanez had shot the Grammy-winning rapper and then tried to buy both women’s silence with million-dollar bribes. The trial continues and, though a verdict was expected this week, it’s unclear if the case is moving fast enough to get there.LIVESTREAM FIASCO – Nearly two years after Marc Anthony was forced to cancel his highly-anticipated “Una Noche” livestream concert at the last minute, event promoter Loud and Live Entertainment filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Maestro, the streaming platform that hosted the show. Loud and Live says Maestro assured them its technology could “automatically scale” to accommodate over 100,000 ticketholders, but had suffered a “complete collapse” when users tried to log on, causing “significant economic losses.”METALLICA LOSES INSURANCE BATTLE – A California judge ruled that Metallica’s insurance company (a unit of Lloyd’s of London) doesn’t need to pay for six South American concerts that were canceled when COVID-19 struck, thanks to an exclusion in the policy for “communicable diseases.” The case is one of many that have been filed by music venues, bars and other businesses seeking insurance coverage for harm caused by COVID-19 — and one of many that have been decided in favor of insurance companies.DEVIL IN THE DETAILS FOR MGK – Citing the name of Machine Gun Kelly’s 2019 album Hotel Diablo, lawyers for the superstar last week quietly launched a legal battle to block the television network Fox from securing a trademark registration on the term “Diablo” — the name of an anthropomorphic dog character on Fox’s animated sitcom HouseBroken. Kelly’s attorneys, who are currently seeking to trademark a wide range of terms linked to the star, argued that Fox’s “Diablo” was “confusingly similar in overall commercial impression” to “Hotel Diablo” and must be refused.ULTRA V. ULTRA – Nearly a year after Ultra Records founder Patrick Moxey sold his 50% share of the lauded dance imprint to Sony Music, the major label sued him for trademark infringement over his continued use of the “Ultra” name. When Moxey parted ways with the imprint, which he founded in 1995, he held on to another company called Ultra International Music Publishing, but the new lawsuit from Sony claims he has no legal rights to use the “Ultra” name following the sale: “He has sought to perpetuate the falsehood that he remains involved with Ultra Records by wrongfully continuing to use Ultra Records’ ULTRA trademark.”
This time every year, enduring favorites by Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee and Bobby Helms rise to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 as Americans turn to holiday streaming playlists and Christmas-focused radio stations. However, these evergreens, celebrating the biggest Christian holiday of the year, are more secular than in years past.
It used to be that contemporary takes on traditional songs about the birth of Christ — “Little Drummer Boy,” “Joy to the World,” “Silent Night” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” — were among the most popular holiday songs. Listeners enjoyed Nat King Cole’s “O Come All Ye Faithful” as much as his version of “Deck the Halls.” Kenny Rogers had a popular take on “Mary, Did You Know?,” first recorded in 1991 by Michael English of the Christian group the Gaither Vocal Band. Martina McBride’s rendition of “O Holy Night,” a Christmas carol from the 1840s, was among the top 100 holiday songs.
In 2022, as streaming playlists drive listening, the top 100 holiday songs are more likely to conjure images of Santa, sleigh bells and cold weather than a baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Through Dec. 8, religious music had only a 4.4% share of the top 100 holiday songs’ total consumption — tied with 2021 for the lowest since 2010, according to a Billboard analysis of Luminate data. The top religious song since the first week of November, “O Come All Ye Faithful” by Nat King Cole, ranks only No. 50, the lowest for a No. 1. religious song since 2010. “Mary, Did You Know?” by Pentatonix ranks a mere No. 68 and Rogers’ version of the song has fallen to No. 255.
In terms of market share, religious holiday songs peaked in 2015 with 18.2% of the top 100 holiday tracks’ total consumption, which measures digital downloads and streaming. Vocal group Pentatonix owned six of the 13 religious songs in the top 100 holiday tracks, including No. 3 (“Mary, Did You Know?”), No. 25 (“Little Drummer Boy”) and No. 30 (“White Winter Hymnal”). The combined consumption of two versions of “Mary, Did You Know?” by Jordan Smith (No. 2) and Pentatonix (No. 3) that year was 17% greater than that of the No. 1 recording, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Religious songs captured the most number of spots in the top 100 in 2013, with 14 of the top holiday songs for the final two months of the year being religious in nature. There were two versions of “The Little Drummer Boy,” by Pentatonix (No. 3) and Harry Simeone Chorale (No. 74). Recordings of “Silent Night” by Kelly Clarkson (No. 21) and The Temptations (No. 44) were popular at the time. There were four versions of “O Holy Night” in the top 100: Celine Dion (No. 48), Mariah Carey (No. 77), Martina McBride (No. 96) and Pentatonix (No. 97). And Amy Grant’s original song “Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song)” ranked No. 82.
To categorize holiday music as secular or religious, Billboard considered each track’s lyrical content. Religious songs contain references to Biblical characters (e.g., Jesus, God or the Virgin Mary) or Christian themes (the nativity scene). Billboard counted Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukuh Song” as religious for its references to Judaism. A song like “Hallelujah,” written by Leonard Cohen and covered countless times by the likes of Pentatonix and Carrie Underwood, has a religious-sounding title but is classified as secular.
How holiday music is consumed — like all music — has changed over the years. From 2015, when religious holiday music reached its peak market share, to 2022, downloads’ contribution to total consumption of the top 100 holiday songs dropped from 49% to just 1.4%. This year, numerous religious songs, including For King & Country’s “Little Drummer Boy” and Lauren Daigle’s “Light of the World,” have relatively strong download sales but too few streams to make the top 100.
Radio stations favor a different slate of religious holiday songs than streaming platforms, such as versions of the 1962 song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood and Whitney Houston that fall outside of the top 100 holiday streaming recordings. Traditional songs like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” recorded by the likes of Barenaked Ladies and Mannheim Steamroller, consistently perform well at U.S. radio. “Songs like ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ and ‘The First Noel’ still test equally well for us,” says Tom Poleman, chief programming officer for iHeartMedia, in an email to Billboard.
But the data show U.S. radio airplay of holiday music has also become more secular in recent years. In November and December of 2015, there were 16 religious songs in the top 100 holiday recordings as measured by spins. The top religious recording, “The Little Drummer Boy” by Harry Simeone Chorale, ranked No. 25 and was closely followed by two versions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Houston and Bing Crosby at No. 33 and No. 34, respectively. Rogers’ and Pentatonix’s covers of “Mary, Did You Know?” also ranked in the top 100.
This year, through Dec. 8, there were only 6 religious songs in the top 100, and the top track, “The Little Drummer Boy” by Harry Simeone Chorale, had fallen to No. 72. Christian artist Amy Grant still makes the top 100, but her versions of “Winter Wonderland,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Sleigh Ride” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” have performed better than her top religious song, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
The final rankings could have more religious songs come Christmas, however. Radio stations tend to play religious-themed songs more often as Christmas nears, says Sean Ross, author of the Ross on Radio newsletter. That would mean tracks such as “The First Noel” by Andy Williams and “Joy to the World” by Nat King Cole, both top 100 tracks in 2021, could get more plays and rise through the ranks in the coming week.