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Australia’s music industry is mourning the loss of Matthew Capper, the long-serving former managing director of Warner Chappell Australia, who died unexpectedly earlier this month following a surgical procedure.
Capper suffered a ruptured appendix in late December, and could not fight off the infection after the operation, reads a statement from his family.
A stalwart with more than 20 years’ service at Warner Chappell Australia, Capper led the business as managing director from 2010, until his departure in February 2024, part of a company-wide downsizing.
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Dan Rosen, president of Warner Music Australasia, remembers Capper as a top-notch executive, a good sport, and a great person. “He cared deeply about the songwriters he represented,” Rosen writes in a message to staff, The Music Network reports, “and his efforts to protect and celebrate their music made a lasting impact on Warner Chappell and the broader music community in Australia. He was above all else, in every interaction, a gentleman.”
In 2005, Capper became the youngest person ever appointed to the AMCOS board at the age of just 28. Two years later, in 2007, he became the youngest to join the APRA board, at 30. He remained a director on both boards until late February 2024, as well as serving as deputy chair of the AMCOS board from 2020-2024.
Friends, former colleagues and business rivals are paying their respects. “I’m completely shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of dear friend and colleague, Matthew Capper. I remember Matthew as an incredibly sincere, principled professional who was passionate about music publishing. He was self-deprecating, always loved a joke and enjoyed spending time with colleagues,” comments Dean Ormston, CEO of APRA AMCOS.
“He had great regard for the work of APRA AMCOS and was very proud of his long connection to the organization and staff. He will be sorely missed by us all, and our thoughts go out to his friends and family at this very difficult time.”
Jenny Morris, chair of APRA, says Capper’s death is a tough one for the industry. “We have had many losses from the music industry family in the last few years, all of which have been sources of great sadness, but Matt’s death has been a huge shock,” she remarks. “Matt was one of the most decent, wise and funny people and I feel very privileged not only to have known him, but to have had his friendship.”Capper, she continues, “worked with genuine care and a great amount of industry awareness on the APRA board, and on more than a few occasions sent supportive messages at just the right time. He was an empath as well.”
Through his career, Capper was a tireless advocate for the music publishers community. He was voted into the position as chair of the Australasian Music Publishers’ Association (AMPAL) in 2013, almost a decade after joining the trade body’s board, in 2004. Capper also represented AMPAL on the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) board, both as non-executive director and more recently as Treasurer, a position he was especially proud of. His involvement with ICMP extended to chairing its Australasia and Asia Regional Group.
“I was lucky to spend a lot of time with Matthew on the AMPAL, AMCOS and APRA boards, often travelling to Sydney together from Melbourne for meetings,” remembers Jaime Gough, chair of AMCOS. “Matthew was a true professional, a great mentor and sounding board. He was passionate about the songwriter and publisher members we represent, and a vocal advocate for their rights.”
Gough, managing director of Concord Music Publishing ANZ (formerly Native Tongue), continues, “I am still in a state of shock at Matthew’s passing. He had so much more to give to the music industry, many more meals to cook, and will be sorely missed. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.”
The late executive will not have a funeral, per his wishes.
Capper “reached some dizzying heights, and he met a lot of people that he greatly respected, even after meeting them,” reads the family statement. “We think he was quietly proud of his achievements. We certainly were. We’re also certain he thought he had a lot more work to do. Hopefully others have been inspired by him and can continue that.”
TikTok said Sunday (Jan. 19) it was restoring service to users in the United States just hours after the popular video-sharing platform went dark in response to a federal ban, which President-elect Donald Trump said he would try to pause by executive order on his first day in office.
Trump said he planned to issue the order to give TikTok’s China-based parent company more time to find an approved buyer before the ban takes full effect. He announced the move on his Truth Social account as millions of U.S. TikTok users awoke to discover they could no longer access the TikTok app or platform.
Google and Apple removed the app from their digital stores to comply with the law, which required them to do so if TikTok parent company ByteDance didn’t sell its U.S. operation by Sunday. The law, which passed with wide bipartisan support in April, allows for steep fines.
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The company that runs TikTok in the U.S. said in a post on X that Trump’s post had provided “the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans.”
Some users reported soon after TikTok’s statement that the app was working again, and TikTok’s website appeared to be functioning for at least some people. Even as TikTok was flickering back on, it remained unavailable for download in Apple and Google’s app stores. Neither Apple or Google responded to messages seeking comment Sunday.
The law that took effect Sunday required ByteDance to cut ties with the platform’s U.S. operations due to national security concerns posed by the app’s Chinese roots. However, the statute gave the sitting president authority to grant a 90-day extension if a viable sale was underway.
Although investors made a few offers, ByteDance previously said it would not sell. Trump said his order would “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect” and “confirm that there will be no liability for any company that helped keep TikTok from going dark before my order.”
“Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations,” Trump wrote.
It was not immediately clear how Trump’s promised action would fare from a legal standpoint since the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban on Friday (Jan. 17) and the statute came into force the day before Trump’s return to the White House.
Some lawmakers who voted for the sale-of-ban law, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, remain in favor of it. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas warned companies Sunday not to provide TikTok with the technical support it needs to function as it did before.
“Any company that hosts, distributes, services, or otherwise facilitates communist-controlled TikTok could face hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous liability under the law, not just from (the Justice Department), but also under securities law, shareholder lawsuits, and state AGs,” Cotton wrote on X. “Think about it.”
The on-and-off availability of TikTok came after the Supreme Court ruled that the risk to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighed concerns about limiting speech by the app or its millions of U.S. users.
When TikTok users in the U.S. tried to watch or post videos on the platform as of Saturday night, they saw a pop-up message under the headline, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.,” the message said. “Unfortunately that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”
The service interruption TikTok instituted hours early caught many users by surprise. Experts had said the law as written did not require TikTok to take down its platform, only for app stores to remove it. Current users had been expected to continue to have access to videos until a lack of updates caused the app to stop working.
“The community on TikTok is like nothing else, so it’s weird to not have that anymore,” content creator Tiffany Watson, 20, said Sunday.
Watson said she had been in denial about the looming shutdown and with the space time on her hands plans to focus on bolstering her presence on Instagram and YouTube.
“There are still people out there who want beauty content,” Watson said.
The company’s app also was removed late Saturday from prominent app stores. Apple told customers with its devices that it also took down other apps developed by ByteDance. They included Lemon8, which some influencers had promoted as a TikTok alternative, the popular video editing app CapCut and photo editor Hypic.
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates,” the company said.
Trump’s plan to spare TikTok on his first day in office reflected the ban’s coincidental timing and the unusual mix of political considerations surrounding a social media platform that first gained popularity with often silly videos featuring dances and music clips.
During his first presidential term, Trump in 2020 issued executive orders banning TikTok and the Chinese messaging app WeChat, moves that courts subsequently blocked. When momentum for a ban emerged in Congress last year, however, he opposed the legislation. Trump has since credited TikTok with helping him win support from young voters in last year’s presidential election.
Despite its own part in getting the nationwide ban enacted, the Biden administration stressed in recent days that it did not intend to implement or enforce the ban before Trump takes office on Monday.
In the nine months since Congress passed the sale-or-ban law, no clear buyers emerged, and ByteDance publicly insisted it would not sell TikTok. But Trump said he hoped his administration could facilitate a deal to “save” the app.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration with a prime seating location.
Chew posted a video late Saturday thanking Trump for his commitment to work with the company to keep the app available in the U.S. and taking a “strong stand for the First Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”
Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told CBS News on Sunday that the president-elect discussed TikTok going dark in the U.S. during a weekend call with Chinese President Xi Jinping “and they agreed to work together on this.”
On Saturday, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI submitted a proposal to ByteDance to create a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perplexity is not asking to purchase the ByteDance algorithm that feeds TikTok user’s videos based on their interests and has made the platform such a phenomenon.
Other investors also eyed TikTok. Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s former treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, also said last year that he was putting together an investor group to buy TikTok.
In Washington, lawmakers and administration officials have long raised concerns about TikTok, warning the algorithm that fuels what users see is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities. But to date, the U.S. has not publicly provided evidence of TikTok handing user data to Chinese authorities or tinkering with its algorithm to benefit Chinese interests.
The Music Sustainability Alliance announced Friday (Jan. 17) that its Music Sustainability Summit is being postponed amid the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires. Originally scheduled to happen on Feb. 3, the event will now be held on April 16 at L.A.’s Solotech Studios, the same location where it was originally set to take place. Programming for the […]
Led by SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment, K-pop stocks soared above other music stocks in a strong week for markets in general. SM, home to such artists as Red Velvet and aespa, rose 13.8% to 78,400 won ($53.76) after news broke on Wednesday (Jan. 15) that the company will introduce a new girl group on Feb. 24. Meanwhile, JYP gained 6.7% to 76,400 won ($52.39), while YG Entertainment and HYBE rose 5.6% and 3.7%, respectively.
The gains made by K-pop companies in recent weeks have outpaced the overall Korean stock market. In the week ended Jan. 17, the four South Korean music companies had an average gain of 7.5%, beating the 0.3% gain of the KOSPI composite index, a measure of all stocks traded on South Korea’s exchange. South Korean stocks have rebounded from their low points since a declaration of martial law by South Korea’s prime minister on Dec. 3 that caused political turmoil and instability in the country’s market. The four K-pop companies are up an average of 20.6% from each company’s post-Dece. 3 low point, while KOSPI has gained 6.9% since hitting a low point on Dec. 9.
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The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index rose 4.7% to 2,226.11, its second-highest mark since reaching 2,280.51 on Dec. 6 and the third-highest one-week gain in the last year. Only four of the index’s 20 stocks posted losses while the remainder finished the week in positive territory. Radio companies led the way with an average gain of 13.3%. Multi-sector companies (labels and publishers such as Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group) gained 4.3%. Live music companies followed with a 3.6% gain. Streaming companies had an average loss of 1.1%.
Stocks were helped by news that the consumer price index, a widely used measure of inflation faced by consumers, rose a lower-than-expected 3.2% in December. The producer price index, a measure of wholesale prices, also beat expectations by rising just 0.2% last month. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 2.4% to 19,630.20 and the S&P 500 had its best week since the presidential election, gaining 2.9% to 5,996.66. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 rose 3.1% to 8,505.22. China’s Shanghai Composite Index climbed 2.3% to 3,241.82.
iHeartMedia was the top music performer of the week, rising 23.9% to $2.33 in the absence of major news. The only significant public development was Barclays’s announcement through a regulatory filing on Friday that it increased its stake in the radio giant by 513% in the third quarter. Cumulus Media rose 9.1% to $0.84. The other radio company, satellite broadcaster SiriusXM, gained 6.9% to $22.27.
Spotify shares rose 5.7% to $485.53 on Friday after surpassing $500 per share on Thursday (Jan. 16) — marking only the second time Spotify shares have hit the $500 mark in intraday trading. Investors reacted positively to UBS increasing its Spotify price target on Wednesday (Jan. 15) to $540 from $485. Then on Friday, Wolfe Research downgraded Spotify to “peer perform” from “outperform,” helping Spotify shares fall 1%.
Concert promoter Live Nation rose 5.5% to $135.61. The stock peaked at $136.21 on Friday, its highest point since Dec. 17 and just 3.5% below its 52-week high of $141.18. Live Nation will co-produce the FireAid benefit concerts to benefit victims of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The Azoff family and AEG are also producers of the concerts, which will be held on Jan. 30 at the Kia Forum and Intuit Dome.
Abu Dhabi-based music streaming company Anghami was the week’s worst performer after dropping 10.3% to $0.70, while French music streamer Deezer fell 5.3% to 1.24 euros ($1.28) and LiveOne shares fell 1.7% to $1.18. LiveOne announced on Thursday that it has reached 500,000 Tesla users and projects to reach 550,000 Tesla owners — including 150,000 new ad-supported subscribers — by Feb. 1.
Bad Bunny‘s upcoming “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” summer residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico has officially sold out, according to a press release issued by the artist’s team on Friday (Jan. 17). Produced by Noah Assad Presents and Move Concerts, the 30-date stint, set to kick off July 11 and wrap Sept. 14, sold 400,000 tickets in just four hours through online and in-person sales across the island.
The announcement further states that while more than 2.5 million people registered for online pre-sale, Bad Bunny’s team “worked diligently” to eliminate 1.8 million scalpers and bots to “ensure Bad Bunny’s loyal fans were eligible for the pre-sale.”
The first nine shows, reserved exclusively for Puerto Rico residents, officially went on sale Wednesday (Jan. 15) at nine different locations throughout Puerto Rico, including Palacio de los Deportes in Mayagüez and Plaza del Mercado Río Piedras in San Juan. (The shows sold out that day.) Subsequently, Bad Bunny unveiled nine additional dates to the residency for a total of 30 dates at El Choli. Those 21 shows, which went on sale this morning, sold out in under four hours.
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The residency has also incorporated VIP concert and hotel experiences featuring a two-night hotel stay, premium tickets and limited edition VIP gift bags, among other elements. Offered through Vibee, more than 80,000 VIP packages have already been sold, with a limited number of VIP experiences remaining.
Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is no stranger to selling out tours or breaking records at the box office. His World’s Hottest Tour in 2022 grossed $314.1 million and sold 1.9 million tickets, breaking the record for the biggest Latin tour ever. That same year, Bad Bunny became the first Latin act, and first act who doesn’t perform in English, to finish atop Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart.
Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto Rico is in honor of his latest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which he released Jan. 5. The set debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, securing him his seventh top 10-charting set. Meanwhile, the LP opened at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Streaming Albums chart (dated Jan. 18), marking the largest streaming week for a Latin title in over a year. All 17 songs on the set entered the Billboard Hot 100, upping his career total from 98 to 113 and making him the first Latin artist to tally 100 career Hot 100 hits.
Though making and distributing music has become easier than ever, the number of tracks being uploaded to digital service providers has fallen — not increased — in the last two years.
In the first quarter of 2023, an average of 120,000 tracks were being uploaded to DSPs each day, up from 93,400 in 2022, according to Luminate. That number dropped to 103,500 for the full year of 2023 and fell further to 99,000 last year, according to the company’s recently released 2024 year-end report. Normally, a decrease in the amount of new music tracked by Luminate wouldn’t merit much attention. But a 4% annual decline in new tracks is notable when today’s creators have an unprecedented number of tools to make music — including easy-to-use digital audio workstations like BandLab and generative artificial intelligence apps such as Suno — and can tap into global distribution.
Music professionals Billboard spoke to for this story pointed to numerous possible explanations for the drop in new tracks, with anti-fraud measures being the most widely cited reason for the decline. Bad actors are known to upload large numbers of tracks through do-it-yourself distributors before hacking into users’ streaming accounts to stream the songs. Erik Söderblom, chief product officer for music distributor Amuse, cites Spotify’s policy changes announced in 2023 to discourage labels and distributors from uploading tracks used to inflate streaming activity for the drop. “It has been a successful way for both of them as a DSP and us as a distributor to discourage fraudulent actors who abuse the system by releasing and monetizing large volumes of audio files through artificial streams,” he says.
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Beatdapp, which can identify when users’ accounts are hijacked and turned into bot farms that unknowingly stream music, has seen fraud rates decrease on the platforms it works with, says CEO Morgan Hayduk. While a small 4% decline in the scheme of millions of new tracks suggests there’s still ample music for these bot farms to illegally stream, Hayduk believes the financial penalties are having their intended effect. “I do think the DIY space is taking their end more seriously and trying not to be a conduit for this,” he says.
French streaming service Deezer introduced an “artist-centric” royalty payout scheme in 2023 to combat fraud and prioritize professional music over “functional” music such as background noise and nature sounds. But given Spotify’s far larger user base, the platform’s anti-fraud measures get more credit for creating outcomes favorable to artists and record labels. For instance, in 2023, Spotify began levying penalties on music distributors and labels when fraudulent tracks they uploaded had been detected. As a result, experts tell Billboard, better policing at the source of the problem could have resulted in distributors being wary of working with some creators.
While the anti-fraud measures may have had the intended effect and prevented some tracks from being uploaded, DistroKid, another self-serve distributor of independent artists, actually sent more tracks to DSPs in 2024 than the prior year. “There wasn’t a decrease in tracks uploaded to streaming services through DistroKid in 2024,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Billboard. “The average number of tracks uploaded to streaming services each day steadily increased throughout the year.”
As for other, lesser factors, a likely candidate is Spotify’s 2023 decision to set a minimum threshold for royalty payouts at 1,000 streams. The policy received mixed reactions. Some critics called the threshold a penalty for developing artists who rely on royalties to help build their careers. But cutting off payments to the outer reaches of the long tail put Spotify in sync with major labels’ recent push for royalty accounting schemes that reward professional artists at the expense of, as Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge put it in 2023, “merchants of garbage.”
Ending the practice of cutting tiny royalty checks may help DSPs’ goal of prioritizing professional musicians over a sea of unwanted content, but “may also dishearten early-stage artists who struggle to grow their project,” says Söderblom. As a result, fewer uploads would mean fewer new tracks could enter Luminate’s database. Will Page, author of Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming Your Business, believes that the payout threshold likely had “a material effect on what Luminate gets to count.” After Spotify set a threshold for payouts at 1,000 streams, an artist would experience diminishing returns from uploading more unpopular music. According to Luminate, 93.2 million of the 202.2 million tracks in its database were streamed fewer than 10 times. Page, Spotify’s former chief economist, estimates that 99% of the 99,000 new tracks in 2024 made the recording artist less than $100 in royalties last year.
Anti-fraud measures and artist-centric royalty schemes may not account for all of the decline, though. Another factor could be a natural ebb in the supply of music. Söderblom sees 2022 as “a great year for DIY” because many artists had additional time to work on new music due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The combination of accessible music production and distribution tools and a more or less global lockdown led to a huge influx of releases,” he says. “As the world returns to normal, it seems natural to see the volume of new uploads decline.” The same could be true of video creators. Last week, MIDiA Research declared that “the pandemic-induced content creation boom has peaked” after time spent creating content such as YouTube videos dropped in the second quarter of 2024 — marking the first decline since 2021.
Similarly, the 120,000 tracks uploaded daily in 2022 may have marked a peak of musicians uploading their back catalogs to distributors. MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan has surveyed amateur and semi-professional creators for five years. “A lot of them are in their 40s and 50s, and probably a lot are people who have been playing in bar bands and whatever else,” says Mulligan. “And they say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these demos. Let’s put them on Spotify.’ And so, they had a lot of back catalog that hadn’t been digitized before to put up there.” Those tracks weren’t necessarily new, but they were new to DIY distributors and streaming platforms. Once the backlog runs out, these artists may not have any other recordings to distribute.
Yet another explanation is the rise of social media as a destination for new music. Music streaming platforms and DIY distribution have leveled the playing field and given every artist an opportunity to reach listeners around the world. Still, many artists have realized they aren’t the next Taylor Swift and can’t get much traction at services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Streaming can work wonders for big artists, but the promise of democratization “has lost a lot of sheen,” says Mulligan. Small artists who don’t attract a crowd at Spotify can use social media or user-generated platforms such as Audiomack to connect with listeners. “They would rather have a small fan base who they can interact with than a large audience they can’t interact with,” he says. “Add that with the remuneration issue and it’s a much less compelling premise to go on streaming now than it was three, four years ago.”
If Mulligan’s hypothesis is true, the artist-centric approach adopted by Spotify, Deezer and others could end up hurting its biggest proponents: the major labels. Streaming platforms have essentially told long-tail artists, “We’re not going to stop you from coming in, but you’re not really welcome,” says Mulligan, which he thinks could have unintended consequences somewhere down the road. “Stop a generation of artists coming in,” he says, “and there’s a really good risk that you’ll inadvertently stop a generation of fans coming in if those artists go elsewhere to build their fan bases.”
Live Nation’s Crew Nation nonprofit is stepping up to help music workers impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires.
The Crew Nation Global Relief Fund is committing $1 million to assist performing musicians, live music crew and live music industry workers affected by the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, it was announced Friday (Jan. 17). Live Nation established Crew Nation in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that limited work for live event professionals.
Crew Nation has opened applications for grants up to $5,000 for individuals currently employed within the industry who are facing displacement expenses due to mandatory evacuation orders, damage or loss. Those seeking support can apply for Crew Nation Fund grants here.
“L.A. is home to so many who help make live music possible,” said Live Nation Entertainment president/CEO Michael Rapino in a statement, “and Crew Nation is continuing its core mission of helping this hardworking community through unforeseen hardship.”
In addition, Live Nation is supporting impacted employees from its Los Angeles headquarters with direct relief through its Taking Care of Our Own program.
The live industry giant is also working alongside competitor AEG and the Azoff family to produce and promote FireAid, a benefit concert set for Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. The concert will take place at both the Intuit Dome and the neighboring Kia Forum, with performers including Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jelly Roll, Gwen Stefani, Tate McRae, Rod Stewart, Sting, Stevie Nicks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Green Day, Gracie Abrams, Joni Mitchell, Lil Baby, P!nk, Stephen Stills and Earth, Wind & Fire, with more to be added.
FireAid will be broadcast at select AMC Theatres and via Apple Music and the Apple TV App, Max, iHeartRadio, KTLA+, Netflix/Tudum, Paramount+, SiriusXM, Spotify, SoundCloud, Veeps, YouTube, and Prime Video and the Amazon Music Channel on Twitch. Viewers will be able to contribute to the fundraiser as they watch.
Since Crew Nation’s 2020 launch, the nonprofit has helped get assistance to more than 16,000 crew globally thanks to a $10 million contribution from Live Nation, supplemented by $8 million from artists, fans and industry partners. Anyone looking to support live music artists and crews through the L.A. wildfires can donate to the organization here.
Country radio is a notoriously tough nut to crack: Song campaigns can often last a year or more, and the journey to the top can be arduous — only to maybe taste a week or two at the summit. So when a song sticks atop the chart for a month or more, it’s worth noting.
That’s what’s happened with Koe Wetzel and Jessie Murph’s “High Road,” which this week spends its fifth week atop the Country Airplay chart — making it one of just six songs by artists with their first Country Airplay entries to spend five or more weeks atop the tally, and the first time two debutantes shared the honor. That’s a significant achievement on its own for RECORDS Nashville, the country imprint of Barry Weiss’ Columbia Records-affiliated label. But “High Road” reached the top immediately after a one-week No. 1 for George Birge with “Cowboy Songs,” another hit by the same label, giving RECORDS Nashville a run of six straight weeks atop the Country Airplay chart — and earning executive vp of promotion and commercial strategy Josh Easler the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Easler talks about the success of “High Road,” the difficulty of running two chart-topping radio campaigns simultaneously and how the Country Airplay format has evolved during the course of his quarter-century in the music business. “It’s been wild to watch the format diversify in sounds over the last 25 years, and especially in the last decade,” Easler says. “The radio side of things has changed so much it’s hard to even know where to start there.”
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This week, Koe Wetzel and Jessie Murph’s “High Road” spent its fifth consecutive week at No. 1 on Country Airplay. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?
The first key decision that led to “High Road” being a five-week No. 1 goes back to the summer when we agreed on a partnership with Columbia Records to be the promotion arm for this song at country radio. We are grateful that Ron Perry, Peter Gray and the leadership team at Columbia came together with Barry Weiss and trusted us to take this song to country radio. Another key decision was the timing for the record to peak. We knew that if we could get into No. 1 ahead of the holidays, we would likely have a multiweek run at the top due to how few playlist changes happen over the holidays. It worked out perfectly.
The run for “High Road” came immediately after another RECORDS Nashville release, George Birge’s “Cowboy Songs,” spent a week atop the chart, giving RECORDS six straight weeks at No. 1. How significant of an achievement is that for the label?
Having the songs go back-to-back was a very significant achievement for the label, especially because it was the first Billboard No. 1 for all of the artists. It’s certainly the greatest airplay achievement for RECORDS Nashville so far. No. 1 airplay singles are difficult, so having back-to-back No. 1s is really special.
How difficult is it to run concurrent radio campaigns at country radio for different artists like that?
Great question. Part of what made concurrent singles doable was how different the artists and songs are. Although George Birge and Koe Wetzel are both from Texas, they are very different, both sonically and where they are in their careers. Koe was already a headliner when this project came out. His footprint in the musical landscape was already significant, and this No. 1 is another chapter in a robust story. George, on the other hand, is emerging as one of the most consistent hitmakers at country radio after the success of “Mind On You” in 2023 and “Cowboy Songs” in 2024.
Overall, only six songs by artists with their first Country Airplay entry have spent five or more weeks at the top. Why is that such a difficult feat, and what goes into keeping a song atop that chart for so long?
Getting to No. 1 is difficult; staying there for five weeks is very difficult and only happens if the song is a true bonafide smash hit record. Power rotations at radio are sacred. If a record spends multiple weeks at No. 1 it means the stations are leaving it in power for a long time, and that only happens for big hit records. What makes staying there so difficult is how hot the country format is right now. There were multiple monster records last year in our format. We were fortunate to have the timing we did, and it’s a testament to country radio supporting one of the biggest hits of the year.
How has the Country Airplay format changed over the course of your career?
I started professionally in the country format in the late ‘90s. I’m a child of the ‘80s and grew up on the music. I loved it, but it was very “one lane” at the time. It’s been wild to watch the format diversify in sounds over the last 25 years, and especially in the last decade. The radio side of things has changed so much it’s hard to even know where to start there. The biggest change in my opinion is how we have fewer and fewer gatekeepers with each passing year. Radio, understandably, has consolidated and programmers oversee multiple radio stations.
Over the past few years, the country genre has seemed to explode in popularity in pop culture and globally. What do you think is behind that, and do you see it continuing?
It’s so exciting to see what is happening to country music right now. The range of sounds and artistry is phenomenal. I do think this trend will continue for a few reasons. One is country radio is becoming more diverse. It’s great to see country radio leaning into more and more music that is coming at them from all kinds of different places. It’s no secret that country consumers are historically late adopters to newer trends, and the consumer behavior is catching up to modern music discovery outside of radio as well.
The country consumer is getting younger as well. If you haven’t seen a good club show recently from an emerging act, I highly recommend it. We are about to release an album by a newcomer, Ty Myers (The Select on Jan. 24), and it’s going to explode. He’s already selling out significant venues and the audience is very young — it’s incredible. Lastly, the quality of music being made in the core country lane and “fringe” lanes is excellent. There is so much talent out there right now, and with a plethora of ways to discover music, I don’t see this trend slowing down anytime soon. The circle will remain unbroken.
Tekashi 6ix9ine has filed a lawsuit against LA Fitness, claiming the gym chain is legally responsible for a 2023 “violent assault” in which he was attacked in the sauna at one of the company’s South Florida locations.
In a complaint filed Wednesday (Jan. 15) in Florida court, the controversial rapper (Daniel Hernandez) says LA Fitness owes him more than $1 million in damages over the March 2023 attack by three assailants, which he says left him hospitalized.
Attorneys for Tekashi say the gym failed to prevent the attack, including by “failing to implement reasonable security measures” and taking other steps that might have stopped it.
“As a direct and proximate result of the negligence … Hernandez was brutally beaten, assaulted and robbed, suffered bodily injury and resulting pain and suffering,” his attorneys write.
In the days after the incident, three men — Rafael Medina Jr., 43; Octavious Medina, 23; and Anthony Maldonado, 25 — were arrested and charged with carrying out the attack. According to court records, both Medinas quickly reached plea deals with prosecutors and were released on probation; the charges against Maldonado were later dropped entirely.
In his lawsuit Wednesday, Tekashi said the assailants were members of the Latin Kings criminal gang — and that LA Fitness should have had measures in place to prevent entry of “affiliates of violent gangs” and people with “aggressive and dangerous propensities.”
“Defendant … knew or should have known that LA Fitness was located in an area where crime statistics, including violent crime, had increased substantially in recent years,” his lawyers write. “Defendant had a duty to adopt and implement reasonable security measures commensurate with all attendant circumstances, including the prevalence of criminal activity.”
A representative for LA Fitness did not immediately return a request for comment.
The 2023 attack was hardly Tekashi’s first dust-up with criminal gangs.
Once a rising star in the world of hip-hop and social media, Tekashi was charged in November 2018 with federal racketeering and murder conspiracy charges over his involvement with a New York street gang called Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. Prosecutors claimed the gang “wreaked havoc on New York City” by “engaging in brazen acts of violence.”
But just a day after being arrested, Tekashi cut a deal with federal prosecutors to flip on his crew in return for lenience. Taking the witness stand during a 2019 trial, he offered detailed and frank testimony about his involvement in the gang and his former gang mates.
Under the deal with prosecutors, Tekashi was sentenced to two years in prison and five years of supervised release. The sentence was set to run until July 2020, but Tekashi was released early, in April 2020, after his attorneys argued that the coronavirus pandemic posed an increased risk to him because he has asthma.
Tekashi recently spent another month in prison after prosecutors accused him of breaking the terms of his supervised release.
When Celia Cruz died in July 2003 at the age of 77, nearly 100,000 mourners paid their respects before her open casket viewing in Miami. In New York, Patti LaBelle sang at her memorial mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, then-Governor George Pataki declared “Celia Cruz Day,” more than 20,000 crowded the funeral home in the Upper East Side and a 30-block stretch of Fifth Avenue was shut down to accommodate thousands more. The death of the beloved “Queen of Salsa” from complications due to a brain tumor became an event as celebrated as her stunning performances during life.
Cruz, who defied Cuba’s communist government when she left her home country at the dawn of the 1959 revolution, also defied the odds of Latin music careers at the time by becoming the only Afro Latina singer to achieve enduring, global fame. Often compared to Ella Fitzgerald, Cruz recorded over 70 albums in a career that spanned three record labels, notching 28 entries on Billboard‘s Tropical Albums chart. More than 20 years after her death, she generated 64 million on-demand official streams in the United States in 2024, according to Luminate.
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Omer Pardillo — who became Cruz’s manager when he was in his 20s and is the executor of her estate — is a key reason the legendary artist remains relevant. When he was 17, he interned at RMM, the powerful tropical indie record label to which Cruz was signed, and worked on every aspect of her career. When Cruz left RMM, she named Pardillo her manager and executor.
“Even now, sometimes people tell me, ‘You got there at the very end [of her career],’” Miami-based Pardillo says. “But my loyalty was unconditional with Celia and something she saw from the very beginning.” That loyalty remains today. Since partnering with Loud And Live CEO Nelson Albareda in 2005, Pardillo has kept Cruz alive in the public eye with a U.S. postage stamp and a commemorative quarter, a Barbie doll, multiple exhibits, merchandise lines, a Telemundo TV series and even a namesake wine.
“I have these film reels because I’m in the process of digitizing footage of Celia from the ’60s and ’70s,” Pardillo says.
Alfonso Duran
Billboard spoke with Pardillo as he prepares to celebrate the centennial of the singer’s birth in 2025.
You are the executor of the Celia Cruz estate. What exactly does that entail?
I manage all assets that come into the estate — royalties, approvals from the labels, creative, productions, everything. As executor, I receive a percentage, and obviously, all the business deals I had or I bring, I charge 20%. The Loud And Live team, especially Nelson [Albareda], help me a lot. We did a deal with Mattel two years ago for a Celia Barbie; we put out a [Napa Valley-produced] wine to celebrate women; Celia was the face of Wells Fargo Bank for Hispanic audiences. One of the biggest achievements was our deal with the U.S. Mint. She’s the first Afro Latina on a coin and the first Latina artist on a coin. I always say Nelson invests 25 cents and gets a dollar in return. Sometimes I get carried away with nostalgia or feeling, and I’ll say, “We have to do something with this brand because they supported Celia once.” He makes me stop and analyze.
Was the U.S. Mint deal lucrative?
We don’t make money with the Mint. But the awareness of Celia Cruz through the coin has been incredible. The dollar is the most important currency in the world. And the fact that this woman — who was poor and Black and had to flee Cuba and was able to conquer the world with just her voice — is now on a U.S. coin is very relevant. Same thing with the Celia U.S. Postal Service stamp. They both have a huge sentimental value, but also economic, because thanks to the coin, for example, many other things have followed.
“This briefcase belonged to my grandfather, who carried it to work in New York,” Pardillo says. “Today, it serves as my lucky charm in the office.”
Alfonso Duran
Did Cruz own any of her catalog?
Not at all. That was her only mistake. Celia never owned anything. She recorded with Fania, which now is Craft; RMM, which is Universal today; and Sony. The best deal was Sony, where she was treated as an icon. It was different. The other deals were the kinds of deals from back then where they say, “Here’s X amount for a record deal, and we own everything forever.”
But Sony had great royalties, a great team behind Celia. We get royalties from Sony, Universal and Craft. I renegotiated royalties with Universal, Sony was always perfect, and Craft is something we’re working on. She’s collecting the same royalty they offered when she initially signed with them [decades ago]. Still, our revenue comes mostly from recording royalties and brand partnerships. We do three to four major partnerships a year. And on Spotify alone, we had 82.3 million [global] streams for the first six months of 2024. That’s not bad for an artist who’s been dead 21 years.
Have you tried to purchase her catalog?
No. It’s worth too much money.
It was recently announced that Hyphenate Media — Eva Longoria and Cris Abrego’s production company — was part of a group that acquired the rights to work on a movie about Cruz. What can you tell us about that?
I have three projects with Celia pending: a Broadway musical, a documentary and the film. I think in the next five years, we’ll accomplish all three. Hyphenate Media bought the rights for film and TV, and the estate was represented by Raymond García of Uncontained Media. Producer Gloria Calderón Kellett, who is Cuban American, is working on the film project. The film is very important because it will tell things she never told and were not in the [Telemundo] series. Issues with racism, for example, that she never shared with anyone. She always said the negative had to be locked away so they couldn’t cause more pain.
“This chair was used by Celia in her office for over 30 years.”
Alfonso Duran
What are the advantages and challenges of managing the estate of an artist like Cruz?
The big challenge is we don’t own the music rights. So anything related to music, we have to go to the labels. For example, if Mattel wants Barbie to sing “Quimbara,” they have to negotiate those rights with Craft. If I had the ownership of the masters, I could do so much. With the Fania catalog, for example, I can suggest, but I don’t own. It’s frustrating. The advantage is we’re dealing with an artist that was always very respected, and that respect is still the same. There’s a love and a connection with fans, which is very, very important.
What do you have in the works for Cruz’s centennial?
We’re in the process of closing several brand deals, including a major clothing retailer who will put out Celia apparel. We’re also in negotiations with a major restaurant brand. Mostly, we’re focused on concerts. We’re talking with different venues to produce Celia Sinfónica, a series of concerts with different symphony orchestras in different countries, for example. And there’s an upcoming Smithsonian Latino exhibit that opens in May. We’ve had 20 exhibits since Celia’s death, and the Smithsonian has 33% of her outfits, shoes, documents and wigs in their collection.
I have to imagine that with artificial intelligence and new technology, you’re getting requests to produce new songs with Celia’s voice. Recently, Cuban artist Yotuel used AI to add her voice to a new version of “Patria y Vida,” for example.
I approve any use of name, music or image. We have an attorney who sends out letters declining proposals all year long. We really look after that [intellectual property]. Otherwise, the brand will either disappear or will become too accessible. Yotuel’s song was the first time anything was done with AI and Celia’s voice, and I think it came out very well. But from there to a full album, I’m not there yet. I could rerecord the entire catalog, but I feel we’ll lose the essence. I’m told there are producers who can make it sound exactly the same, but it’s not exactly the same because she’s not here.
Cruz’s dedication, which is framed with her 1998 album, Mida Vida Es Cantar, reads: “To Omer Pardillo, the person I most admire for his talent, professionalism, and I love him because I’m his second mom.”
Alfonso Duran
It’s surprising to me that no other woman has emerged in the tropical music scene since Cruz’s death. Why do you think this is?
It has to do with how professional Celia was. She was fully focused on her career. She was very forward-thinking; she was so flamboyant, long before Lady Gaga. She was so humble, and yet she had a divine grace and a power onstage that I have yet to see again.
She was such a fashion icon, with her wigs and her fantastic, glitzy dresses. Did she ever consider doing a fashion line?
No. Celia modeled for Dolce & Gabbana, Thierry Mugler, Valentino. But she was very focused on her career and her voice, and she never thought of a business beyond her music. She always said, “My voice is my business, and I live for my voice.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.