State Champ Radio Business
Page: 508
How magical would it be if we listened to music and music listened back to us?” asks Philip Sheppard, the co-founder/CEO of Lifescore, a U.K. startup that creates soundtracks tailored to users’ functional needs, from sleep to focus to fitness.
Though the premise sounds like science fiction, a number of new companies are already working with technology that attunes music to listeners’ movements in video games, workouts, virtual reality — even the aesthetics of their Snapchat lenses. Much as a film composer accentuates pivotal moments in the story with perfectly timed swells and crescendos, these innovations are being used to create bespoke soundtracks in real time.
One of the most fertile testing grounds for “dynamic” or “personalized” music, as it is called, is the gaming sector. Gamers tend to be avid music fans who stream songs an average of 7.6 hours a week — more than double the rate of the average consumer, according to MIDiA Research — and for some time now, game developers have linked players’ in-game movements to changes in lighting, setting and other parameters to enhance their storytelling.
David Knox, president of Reactional Music, the maker of an interactive music engine for video games, says “the final frontier for innovation in gaming is music.” Until recently, video-game music has consisted of loop-based scores or licensed tracks. Because of its repetitiveness, Knox says many users mute game soundtracks in favor of Spotify or Apple Music.
To compete with this, Knox says Reactional’s “rules-based music engine” applies the same reactive technology used in gaming graphics to the soundtrack, enabling, for example, a player in a first-person-shooter game to fire a gun in time with the beat of a song. As the technology evolves, Knox says soundtracks could transform to reflect the state of a player’s health or the level of danger.
This same technology could work with augmented reality and the so-called metaverse. Minibeats, a company that creates social media lenses with interactive musical elements, is in the process of incorporating dynamic music technology, which it calls “musical cameras,” into its AR filters for Snapchat. For one of its first launches, Minibeats partnered with Rhino and Stax Records in February to promote the 30th anniversary of the release of Booker T. & The M.G.’s’ “Green Onions.” One Minibeats filter turns users’ heads into green onions and allows them to control when the song’s signature Hammond organ riff courses through body and facial movements. Another filter morphs users’ faces into spinning vinyl records, allowing them to control when the song’s guitar and keys start and stop by opening and closing their mouths.
When imagining the future of dynamic music, Mike Butera, the company’s founder and CEO, says Disney’s Fantasia comes to mind. The ambitious 1940 film, which mixes animation and live action and features Mickey Mouse in his iconic sorcerer’s hat, syncs vibrantly colored dream-like visuals with a score that enhances what’s transpiring onscreen. “Imagine if we transformed your day-to-day life into something like that?” Butera says. “The mundanity of drinking coffee, walking the dog and driving to work [turned] into something [that] can be soundtracked with your own personal score that you control, whether that’s through a phone camera or AR glasses.”
These startups all claim that they have received only glowing feedback from the music business so far, and many have formed key partnerships. Hipgnosis recently announced a deal with Reactional Music to help bring its catalog of hit songs to the startup. Bentley and Audi have made deals with Lifescore to get dynamic soundtracks into cars, and Warner Music Group counts itself as an investor as well. Minibeats says it’s “in discussion with all the major labels,” though beyond its Rhino-Stax partnership, the company declined to disclose more details.
These emerging capabilities are typically powered by artificial intelligence to adapt recorded music to malleable experiences, but unlike other AI companies trying to create machine-made music with the touch of a button, these dynamic music startups either license preexisting, human-made songs or commission composers to create new or more dynamic compositions.
Lifescore pays composers to record a number of separate elements of a song, known as “stems,” and then, Sheppard says, its technology works with the resulting audio files like “shuffling a deck of cards,” assembling newfound arrangements in configurations intended to support a user’s need for focus while studying or working, for example, or sleep.
In the case of preexisting tracks, companies like Minibeats partner with Audioshake, a firm that uses AI to break down songs into individual, standardized stems, so that they can easily manipulate a song’s instrumental mix — guitar, drums, vocals, etc. — in real time. Audioshake’s proprietary technology is especially helpful in the case of older recordings in which the copyright owner no longer has the stems.Audioshake founder/CEO Jessica Powell says one reason she thinks the music industry has embraced this innovation is its potential to spur music discovery. “I think the same way TikTok pushes new songs, gaming — as well as other use cases — have enormous potential to introduce people to music,” whether that be a catalog track or a new release.
Though this technology is new, interactivity has been long seen as a way to create powerful bonds between fans and songs. Powell points to popular video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band as successful examples. Karaoke is another. One could even point to the more recent novelty of stem players, like those Ye peddled during the release of his album Donda 2, as a way of engaging listeners. At a time when much of music discovery is passive — scrolling TikTok, streaming an editorial playlist or turning on the radio — musical interactivity and now personalization promises a stronger bond.
Knox at Reactional says interactive music also has economic potential. In-game purchases — which allow players to buy customizable elements like cars, weapons and outfits — dwarfed global recorded-music revenue in 2020, with players spending $97 billion in-game compared with music’s $35.9 billion (retail values), according to MIDiA Research. “In the same way you put hooks into a game, allowing someone to pay to change their appearance at a certain point, a game developer working with us could create a hook that unlocks access to the Reactional platform, letting players buy their favorite songs,” he says.
Since at least the advent of the transistor radio, consumers have used music to soundtrack their lives, but until recently, personalization of those soundtracks was limited to song selection and playlist curation. The songs themselves were unchangeable. Those on the forefront of dynamic music contend that it marries recorded music with the goose bumps-inducing, real-time experience of listening to something live.
“You know how you listen to a live performance, and the musicians are influenced by your energy in the room?” asks Erin Corsi, director of communications for Lifescore. “That’s what this is. Though this also feels like something new, it feels like we are finally able to get back to how music started.”
Andrea Ganis, a 43-year veteran of Atlantic Records and the label’s first president of promotion, announced Thursday she is leaving the company. In a memo to staff, the glass ceiling-breaker graciously thanked her staff (“you are all warriors”) and bosses, including former CEO Doug Morris (“my mentor”) and current chiefs Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald (“they… have the courage to take chances”).
Ganis joined Atlantic in 1980 as a secretary (“yes, we were called that”) and worked her way up to president of national promotion by 1988. Two years later she was named a senior vp and in early 1996 was elevated to executive vp. In 2019, Ganis was promoted to the then-newly created role of president of promotion, overseeing all promotion activities pertaining to Atlantic and its subsidiaries, as well as serving on the company’s leadership team.
“Andrea is a force of nature and a legend in the promo universe,” said Kallman and Greenwald at the time. “She’s been a rock star at Atlantic for nearly four decades and the godmother to countless career-defining records.”
Ganis recounted her early days at the historic label in a lengthy message to colleagues, first picked up by Variety.
“I couldn’t believe my good fortune to then get a job at the mighty Atlantic Records led by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun,” she wrote. “I started in January of 1980 and thanks to his and Jerry Wexler’s unparalleled A&R acumen, got to work with many of the greatest artists on the planet and, amazingly, helped them reach even greater heights. Working with baby bands and developing artists brought its own joys, particularly when they too achieved new heights and we helped them realize their own dreams. I found all of it incredibly inspiring and still do — I will always get a rush from the many songs I hear for which I can claim ‘I worked that record.’”
As one of the first women to head a major-label promotion department, Ganis has been a regular honoree in Billboard’s Women In Music issue. In 2011, her “continued focus on teamwork, strategic planning, creativity, innovation and humor in an ever-challenging environment” was credited for big wins that year with Bruno Mars and others. In 2017‘s list, she noted that “artist development is in Atlantic’s DNA” when calling out a roster that included Cardi B, Charlie Puth and Portugal. The Man. In 2020, her 40th year at the label, she and her staff were feted after Atlantic overdelivered across genres from a roster including Lizzo, Jack Harlow and Coldplay.
Read her message to staff below:
With 15,877 days at Atlantic including 2,262 add dates under my belt, Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours got nothing on me.
So yes, its my time to say to all of you goodbye for now. After 43+years at Atlantic, I can truly say I have had the greatest ride of all time. Every era had its own magic and though the work was hard, it was also incredibly exciting, tremendously rewarding and quite fabulous in every way—an understatement if there ever was one.
I was one of the original glass ceiling girls who started as a secretary (yes, we were called that) and worked my way up to President of Promotion—not bad for a girl who went to college with the largest record collection of anyone, leaving 4 years later with an even larger one!
I started out like all of you—with a great love of music. Ironically, how I was exposed to it became my lifelong career—through the radio…..WNEW, WLIR and WHFS were responsible for my initial musical discoveries—whatever I heard I usually purchased. In junior high and high school I bought my albums at Korvettes—a discount store near where I grew up; they knew me by name and I came in every week like clockwork hungry for music of every genre. BTW, they were 3 for $10.00 then and I continued those purchases throughout my college days in Washington DC negotiating for the same price—ah promotion already in my blood!
I was lucky enough to be brought up in a musical era that was diverse in every way. FM radio was free form and callout research did not exist. Though there was no social media and bands were far more mysterious then, I became totally immersed in the music and culture enhanced by radio, word of mouth, concerts and clubs, Rolling Stone magazine, conversations with record store personnel and anything I could pick up from other members of my musical community. And the best part was the music scene was remarkably prolific populated by bands whose work was not only unique but identifiable by the first note. Like you, I was addicted to all of it.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune to then get a job at the mighty Atlantic Records led by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun. I started in January 1980 and thanks to his and Jerry Wexler’s unparalleled A&R acumen, got to work with many of the greatest artists on the planet and amazingly, helped them reach even higher heights. Working with baby bands and developing artists brought its own joys, particularly when they too achieved new heights and we helped them realize their own dreams. I found all of it incredibly inspiring and still do—I will always get a rush from the many songs I hear for which I can claim “I worked that record”.
And even now, so many years later, the joy of hearing the song on the radio for the first time brings me to tears…this will forever be a constant and knowing how much effort it took to create that moment makes it all the more special. Seeing any act we’ve been a part of perform in any arena for sure will make me cry, particularly when the fans sing every word.
My tremendous thanks to Julie and Craig who continue to guide with intelligence, vision, honesty and heart. They lead by example and continue to have the courage to take chances. Always a shout out to my mentor, Doug Morris, who believed in me and saw the potential to what I could become.
Which brings me to promotion….a land that I love. I was a solid athlete in my formative years and it taught me the importance of teamwork, a lesson I swear is one of the great keys to success….yes, a village indeed. So to be given the opportunity to grow from a young team member to leading the greatest squad there is for as long as I have has been a dream come true.
Throughout all these years I’ve worked with so many wonderful, smart, talented people on the record, radio and management sides and I thank each of you for helping me learn and grow—I hope I’ve done the same for you.
To my current team—my colleagues but better still, close wonderful lifelong friends, I can’t begin to express the love and respect I have for each of you—we have changed culture one spin at a time! You are all warriors and the best there is at getting the job done.
It has been an honor and a privilege to carry the promotion torch for Atlantic Records. We are a skillful, smart, strategic, creative, word-is-our-bond kind of crew, who always took the time to laugh, even at our own expense. Continue to turn no’s into yesses, stay passionate and in the toughest of times, know you’ve got this.
Long may we all run—
Andrea
As Asian pop acts have established a greatly increased presence in U.S. popular music over the past five years, one sector of the industry has long proven the most difficult to impact on a consistent level: pop radio.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
While BTS smashes like “Dynamite” and “Butter” stand as exceptions, top 40 stations have generally shied away from the latest offerings from Asian pop collectives, even as those groups rack up seven-figure streaming numbers and headline arenas in the States. BLACKPINK, for instance, has only notched one non-collaborative single on Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart to date (“Pink Venom,” which peaked at No. 32 last year), while groups like TWICE, Loona and (G)I-dle have only been able to achieve fleeting appearances on the tally.
Yet a pair of English-language singles from the relatively new collectives FIFTY FIFTY and XG are not only turning into profile-boosting breakthroughs for each – they’re receiving real, growing radio play as well.
The K-pop quartet FIFTY FIFTY has seen its dreamy bubblegum track “Cupid” and its accompanying English-language version “Cupid – Twin Version” explode over the course of the spring. As “Cupid” rises two spots on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 chart to No. 17, the single also debuts at No. 36 on the latest Pop Airplay chart.
“Cupid” is gaining serious steam at radio, with the girl group’s track registering 1,700 total plays across U.S. terrestrial and satellite radio in the week ending May 11, according to Luminate. That number represents a 228% jump from the prior week, and “Cupid” has now earned 2,400 total plays.
Meanwhile, XG, the seven-member Japanese girl group that debuted under the XGALX label last January, has yet to hit the Hot 100 with its slinky, rhythmic electro-pop track “Left Right” — but as of now, the song is an even bigger radio hit than “Cupid” in the U.S. In its tenth week on the Pop Airplay chart, “Left Right” reaches a new peak, climbing two spots to No. 27.
The single – which XG’s Jurin told Billboard in January is “about our commitment to move forward, the only direction we know” – earned 3,000 radio plays in the week ending May 11, a 7% increase from the previous week. To date, “Left Right” has scored 20,000 total radio plays.
Both groups are capitalizing on the radio exposure: XG released a “Left Right” remix featuring Jackson Wang and Ciara earlier this month, and are slated to perform at the Head in the Clouds festival in New York this weekend. And FIFTY FIFTY announced a partnership with Warner Records last month — suggesting that, even as “Cupid” pushes up to No. 3 on the Global 200 chart, the four-piece will have an expanded focus in the United States in the coming months.
In order to meet the growing demand for physical music and video in the United Kingdom, Utopia Music has entered a long-term contract with DP World for a £100 million ($124.8 million), 25,000-square meter warehouse in Bicester, United Kingdom. The new warehouse will feature technologically advanced solutions, including high-density storage and robotic transfer of product, to enable the efficient distribution of over 30 million units a year across the United Kingdom and export markets. Stock will be moving from Utopia Distribution Services’ current warehouse in Aylesbury, United Kingdom (inherited from physical distributor Cinram, whose assets were acquired by Utopia in 2022) to the new facility over the summer.
Swedish Web3 music company anotherblock has raised €4 million ($4.34 million) in an investment round led by Stride.VC and joined by Swedish House Mafia member Axwell (whose Swedish House Mafia partner, Steve Angello, previously invested in the company). The money will be used to help anotherblock scale globally and make its product available to a wider range of artists, producers and record companies.
Seeker Music has acquired the masters and publishing catalog of Charlotte Caffey — lead guitarist, keyboardist and primary songwriter for The Go-Go’s. Caffey wrote some of the group’s biggest hits, including their breakthrough song, “We Got the Beat,” as well as “Head Over Heels,” “Vacation,” “How Much More” and “Turn To You.” Caffey has also written songs for artists including Keith Urban (“But for the Grace of God”) and her Go-Go’s bandmate Belinda Carlisle, as well as songs for film and TV including the theme song for the Clueless TV series. The deal was brokered by veteran record executives Michael Rosenblatt and David Simone.
300 Entertainment has partnered with Florida-based imprint Remain Solid, founded by manager and executive 100k Track, for a label joint venture. The first artist signed under the deal is Brooklyn-based rapper BreezyLYN, who released the remix to her single, “Bad Bitches” featuring Lola Brooke and Kali, earlier this month.
Songtradr announced a partnership with TikTok around the video-sharing platform’s Commercial Music Library. Under the deal, Songtradr is now a certified “Subscription Sound Partner,” supplying music for the Commercial Music Library, which gives businesses, organizations and creators access to pre-licensed, rights-safe music for organic content and paid advertising.
Music technology companies Tuned Global and Revelator struck a partnership that will allow digital service providers and other Tuned Global customers to enable artists to mint and distribute music releases as NFTs directly on Web2 streaming platforms using Revelator’s Web3 tech. “These NFTs will coexist with traditional streamed music, enabling fans to enjoy digital collectibles and actively engage with token gated content, while providing artists with blockchain-based payment opportunities through smart contracts,” according to a press release announcing the deal. Added Revelator CEO/founder Bruno Guez: “This partnership lets music lovers collect NFTs in fan-friendly ways where they are already experiencing music. Fans won’t need to mess with wallets or special Web3 players, or even leave their favorite music platform. They’ll pay with a credit card. This access and ease will open up new revenue streams for artists, as more fans jump in.”
AI music startup AudioShake announced a $2.7 million seed funding round led by Indicator Ventures, with participation from Precursor Ventures and Side Door Ventures. Also taking part in the round are Metallica-backed Black Squirrel Partners, AJR, Google’s Black Angel Group, peermusic, Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg, S-Curve Records CEO Steve Greenberg and Crush Ventures, the venture arm of Crush Music, among others. Audioshake’s B2B deep learning technology deconstructs audio into stems so that they can be made available for new uses across music, film, dubbing, transcription, synthetic voice and more. The company has worked with departments from all three major labels as well as publishers including Primary Wave, Hipgnosis, Spirit, peermusic, Concord, Downtown and Reservoir.
Unitea, a Miami-based engage-to-earn music platform, has raised a seed round of $7 million led by 1st Class Guernsey, Chaos Capital and Fuel Venture Capital. The funds will be used to further expand the platform’s capabilities within the music industry and beyond. The platform allows users to share music and create content to earn digital tokens, called Karma, that can be redeemed for exclusive rewards including custom digital assets, concert tickets and artist meet-and-greets. The company’s board of directors includes Pitbull and Claude VonStroke.
Freshsound, a self-serve licensing platform for commercially released music, closed a €2 million ($2.17 million) seed funding round that will support the company as it seeks to expand internationally while continuing to grow in the Nordic market. The new investment comes less than a year after the company’s pre-seed funding round worth €1.3 million ($1.41 million). The latest investment round was led by Zenith Venture Capital and Aligned. Founded in 2021 by Stevie Gyasi and Sara Larsson, Freshsound boasts a dynamic pricing model that gives clients instant quotes for any use and the ability to license their music for commercial purposes.
CD Baby and creator copyright protection platform Cosynd have expanded their existing partnership with the integration of Cosynd’s Copyright Registration API into the CD Baby platform, which allows artists to register copyrights and establish legal ownership over their work.
Music, entertainment and technology platform LiveOne struck an exclusive content distribution deal with OTT Studio, a streaming technology platform and connected TV (CTV) app publisher. Under the deal, LiveOne will serve as OTT Studio’s exclusive music streaming provider, delivering LiveOne’s 600 radio stations via OTT’s Music Plus application. The agreement will expand the distribution of LiveOne’s audio and entertainment content to an additional 47 million CTVs in North America via LG’s webOS and Vizio’s SmartCast platforms.
SiriusXM announced a multi-year extension and expansion of their services agreement with Mercedes-Benz, under which the automaker is expected to make the installation of SiriusXM a standard feature on Mercedes-Benz models available in the United States, starting with model year 2024 vehicles. SiriusXM’s “most advanced audio entertainment experience,” SiriusXM with 360L, is also expected to be included in future Mercedes-Benz models, according to a press release.
Lyric licensing and data solutions company LyricFind signed an agreement with GEMA, Germany’s mechanical and performance rights society, in a further expansion of LyricFind’s international footprint.
Back in 2021, a major label kicked off a radio promotion campaign for a song from an arena-selling act. One of the label’s early moves was to earmark payments to an independent radio promoter tied to a pair of stations in the Northeast, as documented in an invoice reviewed by Billboard. During the chart week before the date of the invoice, the radio-tracking service Mediabase recorded no plays of the single in question on WXRV (Boston) and WNCS (Montpelier, Vermont). The following week — the invoice, which allocated $750 to the first station and $500 to the second, was dated to that Monday — spins increased markedly, rising by at least 15 on both.
This invoice is one of 14 obtained by Billboard from three different executives — one from a major label, one at an independent label and one who works in radio promotion — all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about radio promotion activities. (To preserve that anonymity, Billboard agreed not to identify the acts on these invoices.) These documents from 2021 and 2022 are detailed, containing the artist name, the single name, the radio station and the “rate” for each.
The invoices show how payments — which range from several hundred dollars to $1,500 — move from labels to one independent promoter, Jeff Deane, who runs the company Jeff Deane and Associates, apparently resulting in spins at specific stations. Analyzing Mediabase data shows that in the week those payments are invoiced, plays for the songs in question increased at the stations specified in 28 out of 30 cases. Deane’s practices have concerned some in the music industry, who appealed for government intervention last year, according to two sources.
All the invoices made out to Deane that were obtained by Billboard include the inscription, “Nothing of value was or will be given to a radio station or radio station employee in exchange for airplay.” Deane and one of his employees did not respond to multiple requests for comment — by email, phone, and two letters in the mail — about how his business works. Representatives for the three major label groups declined to comment.
The Federal Communications Commission allows paying for airplay as long as those payments are “disclose[d]… at the time material is aired and identify who is paying for it.” It’s unclear if any disclosures were made in the 30 cases documented on the invoices. In a statement to Billboard, Ed Flanagan, general manager of WNCS, said that “when WNCS or WXRV broadcasts programming that is sponsored by a third party, it is the practice of the station to ensure that such sponsored programming is broadcast in compliance with the FCC’s rules on sponsorship identification.”
In addition, following a mid-2000s investigation into radio promotion by the New York Attorney General’s office, then overseen by Eliot Spitzer, all the major labels agreed to certain business reforms. Key among them was not to use “commercial transactions,” “advertising,” or “nominal consideration,” among other things, “in an explicit or implicit exchange, agreement, or understanding to obtain airplay or increase airplay.”
Gabriel Rossman, a professor of sociology at UCLA and the author of Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us About the Diffusion of Innovation, agreed to review redacted versions of the invoices and accompanying Mediabase reports for Billboard. “We see this pattern between the invoices and the Mediabase reports that JDA gets paid to promote a particular song on a particular station, and then in the week that follows the spins go up,” he says.
Rossman says that Deane’s activities could be aboveboard. “Is there a way to do that legally?” he asks. “In theory, you could do that by making a really good press kit or a really good PowerPoint [about how great the song on the invoice is]. If you had to bet, that’s probably not what happened. But in theory, that’s what the job of an independent promoter is: to give a very compelling endorsement. The evidence I saw doesn’t yet exclude the possibility that the promotional efforts they’re doing are legal.”
Independent Promotion
Independent promoters are a longstanding feature of the music industry. At any given time, label promotion departments are working multiple singles across a variety of radio formats — pop, alternative, or adult contemporary, for example — with the goal of pushing those songs up each format’s chart so that more listeners hear them. There are hundreds of stations that need to be called and persuaded to play a track. But there is only so much time in the day, so labels hire middlemen who typically have experience with and relationships in individual local markets to augment their own efforts. These are known as independent promoters.
“Some independent promoters enjoy exclusive arrangements with particular radio stations and are guaranteed regular, direct access to the programmers responsible for the all-important playlists,” the New York Attorney General’s office explained in documents from 2005 related to its radio promotion investigation. “… Other independent promoters, referred to as ‘retainer indies,’ are hired to promote a particular song and are paid a flat fee for the life of the project.”
Deane is one of several current indie promoters who works by establishing these “exclusive agreements” with stations, radio veterans say. In a 2013 lawsuit Deane filed against a radio company, Apex Broadcasting, the promoter’s attorney described the way he relies on “longstanding radio relationships to help artists receive meaningful radio airplay.” The mechanism that allows Deane to deliver that airplay for clients is partially outlined in the lawsuit: He “enters into exclusive agreements — having mostly one-year, but occasionally two-year, terms — with radio stations or entities that own and operate radio stations.” (Deane’s suit alleged that Apex breached its exclusive agreement with him; the dispute was later settled and the case dismissed with prejudice.)
“Deane secures promotional support for the radio stations he represents” in exclusive deals, “helping those stations garner listener loyalty, higher ratings, and increased advertising revenue,” according to documents the promoter’s attorney filed in the Apex Broadcasting suit.
This support is increasingly valuable to stations, especially in small markets, radio sources say, because they have lost a lot of the advertising dollars that traditionally kept them afloat. Over-the-air ad revenue fell by more than 40% between 2005 and 2020, according to a 2021 FCC filing from the National Association of Broadcasters.
In court filings from 2021, another independent promoter allegedly acknowledged that he had been paying “a budget set at $200,000” annually for three radio stations in California and Las Vegas. (That promoter said he “has not, did not, and never will participate in payola, and maintains full compliance with the FCC and regulations of the record industry.”) One radio executive who worked at a station in a deal with Deane said those exclusive agreements land the station “six figures a year.”
Promoters also stand to benefit financially from setting up these exclusive relationships. In the Apex Broadcasting suit, Deane’s attorney said that stations in contract with him turn over “first access to their playlist data, which Deane then analyzes for, and discusses with the record labels, who retain Deane to promote their artists’ music.” In a 2013 email that was part of the Apex suit, he said he worked with 50 stations in this fashion.
Overnight Spins
In some cases documented on the invoices, the label payments occur at the start of a radio campaign. Last year, for example, an invoice indicates that a label made payments to Deane tied to multiple stations, including WRTT (Huntsville, Ala.), KAZR (Des Moines, Iowa) and WFXH (Savannah, Ga.), for a platinum-selling rock band. In the 48 hours following the date on the label’s invoice, each of those stations started to play the band’s single, according to Mediabase data. Another band sent Deane a similar invoice in 2021 for the station KYMK (Lafayette, La.); Mediabase data show that the group earned its first spin on that station two days after the date of the invoice. (Employees of these four stations did not respond to email requests for comment.)
The timing of the plays is notable. The majority of them occurred overnight between midnight and 6 a.m., when few listeners are tuning in, according to information from Mediabase.
This is not a new phenomenon: The New York Attorney General’s office noted in 2005 that the major label groups aim “to generate additional spins detections by the airplay monitoring companies, even if the spins occur in the dead of night when relatively few people are listening to radio. Nighttime spins may still prove effective as a means to improve chart positions” — especially on charts that only rank songs by spins, rather than by audience impressions.
In a 2014 lawsuit Deane filed against another radio company, Advanced Media Partners, that also alleged breach of contract, his attorneys wrote that part of their agreement involved “provid[ing] designated overnight programming hours to JDA, which would then enable JDA to fund the promotional budget Defendants demanded, and realize substantial revenue from its record label clients.” Deane was allotted “the overnight hours of 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. on Saturday (Friday night) and Sunday (Saturday night) and from 12:00 a.m. (midnight) to 5:00 a.m. on Monday through Friday (Sunday – Thursday nights) to facilitate… interaction with record labels,” according to the lawsuit.
Deane’s interest in the overnight hours is well known enough in radio circles that it was the butt of a joke in the trade publication Hits Daily Double. “I just offered a roll of toilet paper to a PD [program director] for an add,” Hits wrote during the early days of the pandemic. “On Amazon, most paper products, if you can find them, are going for more than a Jeff Deane overnight five-spin special.”
Rossman, the UCLA professor, says that “if you’re trying to get something to rise in the charts, that’s exactly what you would do: Do whatever you could to get a song played in small markets overnight, because that’s the part [of the day] that people care the least about [what’s playing], and so [it] should be the easiest to influence.”
The New York Attorney General
Independent radio promotion has periodically come under scrutiny for its ties to payola, which was regulated by Congress in 1960.
Apex alluded to payola in its 2013 response to Deane’s lawsuit: “In the course of communicating with Deane and the record labels for promotion, Apex Broadcasting also learned that Deane’s practices violated industry standards, and Apex Broadcasting’s instructions, concerning radio promotion.” In emails that were part of the lawsuit, Deane’s attorney hit back, criticizing the company for “coyly suggesting my client engaged in payola — both in the Apex relationship and at some unspecified time in the past” but “refusing to provide any alleged facts.”
While Deane was not mentioned in the 2005 documents summarizing the Attorney General’s investigation, Spitzer’s office zeroed in on the activities of some independent promoters: “In an effort to dodge the payola laws, record labels and radio stations have also enlisted the services of so-called independent promoters… who act as conduits for delivery of the labels’ ‘promotional support’ to the stations and help perpetuate the fiction that this support is not actually being delivered by the labels in exchange for airplay and therefore does not violate the payola statutes.”
Spitzer subsequently imposed strict conditions on independent promoters’ activities when they worked with major labels: Record companies “shall not provide any item of value to an independent radio promoter to be distributed to Radio.” (Again, this language is echoed on Deane’s invoices: “Nothing of value was or will be given to a radio station or radio station employee in exchange for airplay.”)
On top of that, any indie promoters working with the majors are required to regularly certify in writing that they are complying with the rules laid out by Spitzer’s office. When Spitzer announced the implementation of these business reforms, he called them “a model for breaking the pervasive influence of bribes in the industry.”
But there is some disagreement about their ongoing effectiveness. Last year, frustrated music executives secured another meeting with the New York Attorney General’s office, now led by Letitia James, to complain about the practices of some independent promoters, according to two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
During a meeting that included Elinor Hoffman, chief of the New York Attorney General’s antitrust bureau, and Jane Azia, chief of the New York Attorney General’s bureau of consumer frauds and protection, music executives mentioned Deane and others by name, according to sources present, alleging that their activities violated the terms of the settlement agreements. (James herself was not in the meeting.) And they asked the New York attorney general to investigate independent promotion’s links to payola, as Spitzer did nearly two decades ago.
The New York Attorney General’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Ruling on a case that record labels and publishers have called “critical to the American music industry,” the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday that Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyrights when he used her images of Prince to create one of distinctive screen prints.
By a seven to two vote, the high court ruled that Warhol did not make legal “fair use” of photos of Prince snapped by Lynn Goldsmith, a trailblazing rock-and-roll photographer who also captured images of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen.
Attorneys for the late artist has warned that creators must be able to re-use earlier works and that a loss would “chill” creativity. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that Warhol had used the photo for a largely the same commercial purpose as Goldsmith – and had offered little compelling reason for doing so.
“Lynn Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists,” the justice wrote.
The ruling is the first time in more than three decades the justices have ruled on how creative works are covered by fair use. The last time the court did so was a landmark 1991 decision upholding 2 Live Crew‘s bawdy parody of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman.”
Ahead of the decision, the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers’ Association had urged the court to adopt Thursday’s more limited vision of fair use. They said the outcome of the case was “critical to the American music industry,” warning that sampling and interpolation might have been regarded as legal fair use under Warhol’s “wide and manipulable” approach.
Warhol created his images in 1984 as artwork for a Vanity Fair article called “Purple Fame,” a sarcastic ode to the then-rising star. To do so, he used a portrait of the star taken in 1981 by Goldsmith. Vanity Fair licensed her image for use in the magazine, but Warhol also created more than a dozen other versions, which were later sold to collectors, displayed in museums and licensed for use without the her consent.
When Prince died suddenly from a drug overdose in 2016, Condé Nast magazine re-used Warhol’s image on the cover of a tribute issue – a prominent display that caught Goldsmith’s attention. After she threatened to sue the Andy Warhol Foundation for copyright infringement, the group filed a preemptive lawsuit to prove that the works were legal.
In 2019, a federal judge ruled that Warhol’s images had “transformed Prince from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.” Such “transformative use” is often the key question when courts decide if something counts as a legal fair use.
But in 2021, a federal appeals court overturned that decision, sending the case to the Supreme Court. The court said that merely adding Warhol’s “signature style” to Goldsmith’s image had not created something “fundamentally different and new.”
In Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. In a 38-page opinion, Justice Sotomayor repeatedly stressed that the two images had been used for largely the same purpose – to illustrate a magazine with an image of Prince.
“If an original work and secondary use share the same or highly similar purposes, and the secondary use is commercial, the first fair use factor is likely to weigh against fair use, absent some other justification for copying,” the justice wrote.
With such similar purposes, the justice said that simply wanting to offer a new “meaning or message” wasn’t enough on its own.
“Copying might have been helpful to convey a new meaning or message. It often is,” the justice wrote. “But that does not suffice under [fair use]. Nor does it distinguish [Warhol] from a long list of would-be fair users: a musician who finds it helpful to sample another artist’s song to make his own, a playwright who finds it helpful to adapt a novel, or a filmmaker who would prefer to create a sequel or spinoff, to name just a few.”
Read the Supreme Court’s entire decision here.
A Florida man who testified against three former friends who murdered rising rap star XXXTentacion during a robbery five years ago will spend the next two years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday (May 17).
Circuit Judge Michael Usan sentenced Robert Allen to seven years in prison, with credit for the five years he has already spent at the Broward County jail. He will then spend 20 years on probation. He could have received a life sentence.
Allen, 27, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree murder and testified earlier this year against Michael Boatwright, 27, Dedrick Williams, 27, and Trayvon Newsome, 25. They were convicted of first-degree murder in March and sentenced to life in prison.
During the monthlong trial, prosecutors linked Allen, Boatwright, Williams and Newsome to the June 18, 2018, shooting outside Riva Motorsports in suburban Fort Lauderdale through extensive surveillance video taken inside and outside the store. They stole $50,000 and made cellphone videos hours after the shooting showing them flashing fistfuls of $100 bills.
XXXTentacion, whose legal name was Jahseh Onfroy, had just left Riva Motorsports with a friend when an SUV swerved in front of him and blocked his BMW.
Surveillance video showed two masked gunmen emerging and confronting the 20-year-old singer at the driver’s window, and one shot him repeatedly. They then grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag containing cash XXXTentacion had just withdrawn from the bank, got back into the SUV and sped away. The friend was not harmed.
Boatwright was identified as the primary shooter with Newsome being identified as the other gunman. Williams was the group’s leader and the driver of the SUV.
Allen testified that the men set out that day to commit robberies and went to the motorcycle shop to buy Williams a mask. There they spotted the rapper and decided to make him their target. Allen and Williams went inside the shop to confirm it was him. They then went back to the SUV they had rented, waited for XXXTentacion to emerge and ambushed him.
Last year, Pandora started to get suspicious about the streaming activity of a prominent act. “This is a top artist by every measure,” George White, senior vp of music licensing at SiriusXM and Pandora, said during a panel at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17). Some of the interest from Pandora users was clearly genuine. But at the same time, the platform picked up “abnormalities” — “lots of quick skips,” White noted, and “very unusual ratios of radio listening to premium listening” — along with “social media sites actively posting tutorials for how to game the Pandora system and teaching potential users how to drive those streams even higher.”
“This is challenging and more difficult to detect because it’s under a background of legitimate activity,” White continued. And he said that Pandora is seeing more of this type of behavior around “established artists.”
White was one of 11 different speakers across a two-hour, three-panel fraud extravaganza — which covered a lot of ground, jumping from bot farms all the way to thieves falsely claiming publishing ownership on songs to collect money that belongs to someone else — at Music Biz. The tone stayed upbeat, though the message was glum and occasionally paranoia-inducing, with lots of talk about cybercriminals hacking into the accounts of innocent unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes.
“We’ve been seeing lately that as technology advances, the fraud is supercharged,” said Mona Simonian, a partner at the entertainment law firm Pryor Cashman. It’s important that “people start really recognizing how much money is at stake here,” she added. And as Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s former “click fraud czar” (real title: head of global product for trust and safety), put it: “It’s always a little bit scary before you get your arms around the problem.”
While some panels stay general, these three sessions (an interview with Ghosemajumder about the ubiquity of fraud, “52 Flavors of Fraud,” and “Fraud Use Cases: What Can We Do?”) brought some hard numbers to a fraud conversation that often remains frustratingly diffuse, because the behavior is difficult to quantify. White had his Pandora case study. And Andrew Batey, co-founder and co-CEO of the fraud detection company Beatdapp, came armed with numerous examples and a boatload of graphs.
There was the account that recorded 33,500 plays in one week. (“The average user has a few hundred to a thousand plays a week,” Batey said.) There was the user with 96 devices “playing from 47 cities in 17 countries in the same week,” a geographical impossibility for even the most devoted jet-setter. There was the group of thousands of accounts all targeting the same songs with 155-ish plays a week, and the batch of 53,000 accounts playing around a dozen acts to camouflage the one artist whose numbers they’re actually trying to inflate.
If this behavior continues undetected, it represents “billions [of dollars] that are being sucked out of this industry,” Batey said. This sentiment was echoed by Christine Barnum, chief revenue officer of CD Baby: Fraudsters are “diluting the pool for everyone.” (She spoke about ways for companies to improve their fraud detection capabilities on a budget, including using ChatGPT to help write programs that can detect anomalous activity.)
Why the upbeat mood, despite the grim news? For years, many music executives, especially in the United States, were unwilling to publicly acknowledge that fraud was a problem. The fact that there was a 120-minute block — enough time to watch two episodes of Succession, quipped Beatdapp co-founder and co-CEO Morgan Hayduk — devoted to the topic at a major music business conference is indicative of an attitude shift. “I’m so happy there’s a room full of people talking about fraud,” Barnum said.
White was similarly optimistic. While recent studies have concluded that around 80% of fraud is financially motivated — grifters running bot networks to white noise recordings, for example, rather than the work of actual artists — White said, “We’ve seen enormous strides in identifying that [activity] really early.”
“I won’t say that’s in control; it’s an issue that requires ongoing investment,” he added. “But it’s at least something we feel like we have a handle on.”
In a presentation at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17), MIDiA Research’s Tatiana Cirisano revealed the company’s predictions about the future of music streaming. Namely, the firm suspects that music streaming revenue growth, which has been in the double digits for years, will slow to the single digits, eventually cooling off from about 10% growth in 2024 to 3% growth in 2029.
“We’re in a crazy time for competing for consumer attention,” said Cirisano during the presentation, titled Where Does Streaming Go From Here? She noted that after the pandemic subsided, content providers of all kinds — from music to gaming to video — have had to accept that more traditional, in-person activities are absorbing large amounts of time for consumers once again. “The era of build it and they will come is starting to come to a close,” she continued. “You need to give people reasons to spend time on your platform.”
As part of the return to in-person experiences, MIDiA Research has found that background consumption of entertainment is on the rise, with 18.1 hours of background consumption in the first quarter of 2021 having escalated to 20.6 hours in the second quarter of 2022.
Traditional streaming services — Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and other competitors — also face competition for users’ attention from “non-[digital service provider] streaming,” or platforms where music is part of the experience but not its sole focus, such as Peloton and TikTok. “We are starting to learn that non-DSP streaming is not just additive, it might actually also diminish the cultural capital of [traditional] streaming,” said Cirisano.
While the cultural capital of streaming reached a fever pitch as Spotify editorial playlists, like Rap Caviar and New Music Friday, became many listener’s go-to source for music suggestions, MIDiA’s data suggests that that “soft power” is starting to wane, giving way to sites like TikTok which promote what Cirisano called “lean-through” music consumption.
This can be a positive thing, she explained. While “lean back,” or background, consumption — such as pre-programmed playlists and radio play — is on the rise, young people are also more likely than ever to not just “lean forward” (meaning they program what music they listen to themselves) but to “lean through,” which Cirisano defined as creating social content, curating content and re-creating content with music. MIDiA has found that the average 16 to 19-year-old spends 3.7 hours per week creating content as of the fourth quarter of 2022. More than ever, young people want to be actively playful and interactive with their music, not just listen to static playlists on streaming — though that form of listening will still surely persist.
To Mark Mulligan, MIDiA’s founder, this is a repeat of history, said Cirisano. Prior to recorded music, live bands’ music would be impacted by the audience in front of them. Now, this has taken on a new form in the age of social media, AI and at-home recording technology, signaling a return to interactivity present throughout the long history of music — and marking a change in appetite from the “isolating” and “hyper-personalized” nature of today’s popular music streaming services. “This new generation wants to be more actively involved in music… I think you’re going to have an advantage if you’re an artist that is comfortable engaging with your fans,” said Cirisano.
MIDiA Research has also found that with the emergence of hyper-personalized algorithms on streaming and social platforms, listenership fragments significantly. This leads to superstars having less of an impact, making it harder for that class of artists to earn a fruitful living from just streaming alone. In tandem with creating content and forging brand partnerships, however, these bigger names can capitalize on their fandom. This atomization of the mainstream is also pushing DSPs to differentiate themselves by, for example, focusing on genre, like Apple Music Classical, or targeting audiophile listeners, like Tidal.
In the future, MIDiA’s data suggests that next-generation platforms will create three-sided marketplaces that operate as self-contained virtuous circles. Audiences will consume music, some fans in the audience will also create using the music, and that consumption and participation will signal the algorithm and distribute the music to new fans.
UPDATE: This story was updated May 17 at 7:59 p.m. ET to note that music streaming revenue growth — not music streaming subscription growth, as incorrectly stated in a previous version of the story — is expected to fall to 3% by 2029. It was also updated to note that background consumption of all entertainment, not just music, is on the rise.
Montana became the first state in the U.S. to enact a complete ban on TikTok on Wednesday when Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a measure that’s more sweeping than any other state’s attempts to curtail the social media app, which is owned by a Chinese tech company.
The measure, which is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2024, is expected to be challenged legally and will serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America that many national lawmakers have envisioned.
“Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” Gianforte said in a statement.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter argued that the law infringes on people’s First Amendment rights and is unlawful. She declined to say whether the company will file a lawsuit.
“We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana,” Oberwetter said in a statement.
Keegan Medrano, policy director for the ACLU of Montana, said the Legislature “trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment.”
Some lawmakers, the FBI and officials at other agencies are concerned the video-sharing app, owned by ByteDance, could be used to allow the Chinese government to access information on American citizens or push pro-Beijing misinformation that could influence the public. TikTok says none of this has ever happened.
When Montana banned the app on government-owned devices in late December, Gianforte said TikTok posed a “significant risk” to sensitive state data. More than half of U.S. states and the federal government have a similar ban.
On Wednesday, Gianforte also announced he was prohibiting the use of all social media applications tied to foreign adversaries on state equipment and for state businesses in Montana effective on June 1. Among the apps he listed are WeChat, whose parent company is headquartered in China; and Telegram Messenger, which was founded in Russia.
The legislation, drafted by the attorney general’s office, easily passed through Montana’s GOP-controlled Legislature.
Gianforte had wanted to expand the TikTok bill to include apps tied to foreign adversaries, but the legislature did not send the bill to him until after the session ended, preventing him from offering any amendments.
Montana’s new law prohibits downloads of TikTok in the state and would fine any “entity” — an app store or TikTok — $10,000 per day for each time someone “is offered the ability” to access the social media platform or download the app. The penalties would not apply to users.
Opponents consider the measure to be government overreach and say Montana residents could easily circumvent the ban by using a virtual private network, a service that shields internet users by encrypting their data traffic, preventing others from observing their web browsing. Montana state officials say geofencing technology is used with online sports gambling apps, which are deactivated in states where online gambling is illegal.
TikTok, which has said it has a plan to protect U.S. users, has vowed to fight back against the ban, along with small business owners who said they use the app for advertising to help grow their businesses and reach more customers.
The app’s fun, goofy videos and ease of use has made it immensely popular, and U.S. tech giants like Snapchat and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, see it as a competitive threat.
Though many lawmakers in Montana have been enthusiastic about a ban, experts who followed the bill closely said the state will likely have to defend the legislation in court.
NetChoice, a trade group that counts Google and TikTok as its members, called the bill unconstitutional.
“This is a clear violation of the Constitution, which prohibits the government from blocking Americans from accessing constitutionally-protected speech online via websites or apps,” Carl Szabo, who serves as the group’s vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.
Officials are also bound to receive criticism from advocacy groups and TikTok users who don’t want their favorite app to be taken away. TikTok has been recruiting so-called influencers and small businesses who use the platform to push back on a ban. But others who haven’t been part of an official campaign coordinated by the company are also worried about what lawmakers are doing.
Adam Botkin, a former football player and recent graduate at the University of Montana, said it was a scary time for him as a content creator in Montana. The 22-year-old has nearly 170,000 followers on TikTok, where he mostly posts short videos of himself performing football kicks.
He says he sometimes makes “tens of thousands” of dollars per month from brands looking to market their products on his social media accounts, including Instagram, where he has roughly 44,000 followers.
Botkin says most of his income comes from Instagram, which is believed to be more lucrative for content creators. But he has to grow his following on that platform — and others — to have the same level of popularity that he does on TikTok. He says he’s trying to do that, and won’t try to circumvent the TikTok ban by using a VPN.
“You got to adapt and evolve with how things move,” Botkin said. “So, if I have to adapt and move, I’ll adapt.”
Chatter about a TikTok ban has been around since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump attempted to bar the company from operating in the U.S. through an executive order that was halted in federal courts. President Joe Biden’s administration initially shelved those plans, but more recently threatened to ban the app if the company’s Chinese owners don’t sell their stakes.
TikTok doesn’t want either option and has been clamoring to prove it’s free of any Chinese government interference. It’s also touting a data safety plan it calls “Project Texas” to assuage bipartisan concerns in Washington.
At the same time, some lawmakers have emerged as allies, arguing efforts to restrict data harvesting practices need to include all social media companies, not just one. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked a bill in March that would ban TikTok nationally, saying such a move would violate the Constitution and anger the millions of voters who use the app.
Montana’s TikTok ban also comes amid a growing movement to limit social media use among kids and teens and, in some cases, impose bans. Several bills circulating in Congress aim to get at the issue, including one that would prohibit all children under the age of 13 from using social media and require permission from a guardian for users under 18 to create an account.
Some states, like Utah and Arkansas, have already enacted laws that would hinge social media use on parental consent and similar bills are in the works in other states. Last year, California enacted a law that would require companies to beef up data protection practices for children and offer them the highest privacy settings.
