State Champ Radio Business
Page: 512
LIVERPOOL, U.K. — On Saturday, 26 music acts from Europe, Israel and Australia — many dressed in a dazzling display of outlandish outfits — will take the stage at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena to compete in the Grand Final of what can justifiably call itself the biggest music competition in the world: the Eurovision Song Contest.
When it comes to music television shows, Eurovision, taking place this year in Liverpool on behalf of war-torn Ukraine, dwarfs them all. More than 161 million people across 34 countries watched last year’s show, held in Turin, Italy and won by Ukrainian rap-folk band Kalush Orchestra, an increase of 7 million viewers (4.5%) from 2021, according to organizers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
In audience terms, that puts Eurovision ahead of the Super Bowl, the biggest annual U.S. television event, which drew 113 million TV and online viewers for February’s contest. Comparing to awards shows, 12.5 million viewers tuned into this year’s Grammy Awards, a rise of 31% year-on-year, while 2022’s MTV Video Music Awards averaged 3.9 million viewers, up 3% on the prior edition. This year’s Brit Awards, the U.K.’s biggest music awards show, also drew a television audience of just under 4 million.
While many viewers in the United States and United Kingdom have long regarded Eurovision as little more than a kitsch joke with novelty costumes, the song contest’s enormous audience gives it an unrivaled reach as a marketing platform, making the competition – famous for introducing ABBA to the world — an increasingly attractive launching pad for record labels to develop artists.
Netflix 2020 musical comedy film “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams, further elevated the event’s international profile, introducing its idiosyncrasies to a wider global audience.
But it was the success of Italian rock band Måneskin, whose international career exploded after winning 2021’s contest with “Zitti e buoni” (Shut up and behave) that “changed the game completely” in how executives and labels approach the competition, says Andrea Rosi, CEO of Sony Music Italy, which counts Måneskin on its roster.
Earlier this week, the Italian act played a sold-out show at London’s 20,000-capacity The O2 arena, while the band’s most recent album, Rush!, topped the charts in multiple countries and debuted at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 in January – Måneskin’s highest ever U.S. chart placing.
In the past, Eurovision “was not so important for the Italian market,” and there were some years when it was not televised in Italy at all, says Rosi. “Now the picture is completely different. National television is giving much more space to the [competition] and it brings massive exposure to the artists [taking part] across the world.”
Italy’s entry in Eurovision’s 67th edition, which wraps up Saturday, is Marco Mengoni, already an established star in his home country, who came seventh in the competition 10 years ago and is signed to Sony Music Italy. Rosi is confident that Mengoni’s song, “Due Vite” (Two Lives), a soaring orchestral ballad sung in Italian, will help open up new markets for the artist.
Ahead of the competition, which kicked off Tuesday with the first of two semi-finals, Sony Music Italy worked with its international label partners to devise an extensive marketing campaign to build Mengoni’s profile in Europe. Last month, he played club dates in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. A larger follow-up European tour, promoted by Live Nation, is scheduled for the fall. This summer, Mengoni will play a series of sold-out stadium shows in Italy, wrapping July 15 at Rome’s Circus Maximus.
Since being selected in February to represent his home nation at Eurovision, Mengoni’s “Due Vite” has topped the charts in Italy and, says Rosi, is now “starting to have traction” in other European countries, including Germany and Switzerland. “It’s been a long time [since] an Italian pop artist has been successful outside Italy,” he says. “We have big hopes for Marco.”
As one of the so-called ‘big five’ countries taking part in Eurovision, Italy’s entry automatically qualifies for a place in Saturday’s grand final because of their broadcaster’s financial contributions to the event. The rest of the big five is made up of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain, while Ukraine also receives a free pass as last year’s winner. In total, 37 countries are taking part in Liverpool across two semi-finals and the main show.
Among this year’s favorites to win is Sweden’s Loreen, who won the competition in 2012. Her 2023 Eurovision entry “Tattoo” has earned around 20 million combined views on YouTube. (The singer’s official Eurovision video has 3.8 million views).
Another hotly tipped act is Finnish rapper Käärijä, whose catchy entry “Cha Cha Cha” has generated around 15 million combined views on YouTube, by Billboard’s calculations. Since being first released in January, the song has been streamed more than 18 million times and has become “the biggest phenomenon ever in Eurovision history in Finland,” says a spokesperson for Warner Music Finland.
The publicity has given a massive boost to Käärijä’s profile. At the start of the year, the artist had around 1,500 followers on TikTok. Following the first semi-final on Tuesday, that number had grown to just under 100,000. Monthly listens on Spotify have jumped from just under 50,000 in January to 1.2 million.
Käärijä is one of four Warner Music entries in this year’s contest – the others being Austria’s Teya & Salena’s “Who The Hell Is Edgar?”, Reiley’s “Breaking My Heart representing Denmark and Polish singer and model Blanka, whose song “Solo” marks her debut for the label. Since its release in November, “Solo’s official video has had 23 million views, while Spotify streams have crossed 10 million — largely fueled by the publicity from Eurovision.
Hubert Augustyniak, head of non-urban A&R at Warner Music Poland, is confident that competing in the competition can help break Blanka outside her home market, where, he says, Eurovision has already made her a “really well-known” star.
“It is not easy to do international marketing when you are a Polish label,” says Augustyniak, “so this is a huge opportunity for us.”
Asake leans back in his chair, phone glowing in the darkened studio, as Olamide hunches over his right shoulder. Suddenly, the engineer signals, and the backbone of a song swirls through the speakers while Asake begins teasing out melodies and lyrics in Yoruba, a language of his native Nigeria. The engineer cuts, rewinds and plays, and the loop once again floods the vacuum-like silence that envelops a recording studio.
Outside the room, the building is bubbling with activity and energy as artists, songwriters and engineers mill about, playing unreleased records and eating from a buffet of Nigerian food — smoked mackerel, okra soup, goat, garlic shrimp and crab — prepared by local chefs. But this is not West Africa; it’s San Francisco, at the new studio headquarters of Bay Area-based music company EMPIRE. In early March, EMPIRE was in the midst of a two-week writing camp for three of its biggest Nigerian talents: budding Afrobeats superstar Asake, his YBNL Nation label boss and Nigerian music legend/mogul Olamide and Fireboy DML, another emerging YBNL/EMPIRE artist, whose 2021 single, “Peru,” was remixed with Ed Sheeran and exploded into a global hit. “Peru” was the first song Fireboy created at EMPIRE’s studios near San Francisco’s Mission District, which the company just expanded and overhauled into a first-class, multipurpose creative hub.
The studio is now the epicenter for all that EMPIRE intends to be: a fully operational label group that can sit at the top table alongside the majors and compete at the highest levels of the global music business and beyond — TV, film, podcasts, gaming, social media, nightlife and more. And it’s currently the platform for one of EMPIRE’s biggest achievements: The company is among the foremost global distributors of Afrobeats, the umbrella term for a variety of musical genres emerging from sub-Saharan Africa, where recorded-music revenue has ballooned 34.7% year over year, according to IFPI, the fastest pace in the world.
“The music that they’re making here is, honestly, the most culturally important thing I’ve done in my entire career, and I’ve been in the music business since I was 14,” says EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi while walking through the space. “These guys are the kings of where they come from, and they’re about to be the kings of everywhere if we keep doing what we’re doing. It’s phenomenal to see what’s happening.”
From left: Ghazi, Asake and Fireboy DML on February 27, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp in San Francisco.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
EMPIRE’s dominance in Nigeria, in particular, is immense. On the country’s TurnTable Charts, EMPIRE ended 2022 with the top three artists (Asake, Burna Boy and BNXN), the top two songs (Kizz Daniel’s “Buga,” and Asake and Fireboy’s “Bandana”) and the top album (Asake’s Mr. Money With the Vibe), while also earning the distinctions of top label and top distributor for the year. At one point, EMPIRE artists held the top slot on the Nigeria 100 for 26 consecutive weeks, and an EMPIRE song was No. 1 for 35 weeks over the course of the year. (The song Asake recorded in San Francisco was released in April as “2:30” and became his ninth No. 1 on the Nigeria 100.) EMPIRE’s relationship with Olamide and YBNL, which began in 2016 before being formalized as a partnership in early 2020, has given it both credibility and a draw to attract artists, and has become a significant success story in the region.
“They are a major organization in Nigerian music,” says Ayomide Oriowo, co-founder/head of operations of TurnTable Charts. “After 2019, when they did the deal with Olamide, they capitalized on that and became a bigger deal. It was also at the moment when the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ [movement] was really taking off. So the timing worked for them, and it was just perfect. Word travels fast when you’re an artist — this idea of, ‘They have the power to get us here.’ ”
Now the challenge is to replicate that success elsewhere — in the Middle East/North Africa region, in the Asia-Pacific, in South America and beyond — without losing the drive and identity that Ghazi and his company have cultivated over the past 13 years.
The evening runs late — it’s past 10 p.m. — but suddenly, the room is buzzing with energy, and everyone moves into the building’s marble-floored lobby. After a beat, Ghazi brings Fireboy in to surprise him with an RIAA platinum plaque for “Peru” as the staff gather around, taking photos and popping champagne. “This is the first platinum plaque we hang on the wall here for a song that was created here — the first of many,” Ghazi says amid the jubilation.
Later, he takes a more reflective tone. “It’s like a zenith point in my life,” he says. “It brought me all the way back to my beginning: in a studio, making a record, and then taking that record and putting it into a company that was a culmination of many years; to be able to put out that record and market it, promote it, distribute it, manufacture it and create accolades and international nominations. And then that record became the record that made a bunch of other African artists say, ‘I want to go to the studio where this was made. I want to have that same experience and that same magic.’ ”
Two days later, Ghazi is sitting at a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown San Francisco near the EMPIRE offices, explaining how he built a company that credibly grew into its name.
EMPIRE’s realm is not limited to West Africa — over the past decade-plus, it has also become one of the Bay Area’s biggest and most successful homegrown music companies. Half of its nearly 200 employees are based in the city (a distinction Ghazi is particularly proud of), and it’s a significant player in the independent hip-hop scene across the United States, which provided the fertile ground from which the company was born. Having its headquarters in Ghazi’s hometown has given EMPIRE a domain of its own, along with access to the best minds in technology and media that flock to Silicon Valley.
Ghazi launched EMPIRE in 2010 as a tech-first digital distributor amid the fervor of Digital Music Industry 2.0 zeal then sweeping through the Bay. He had started working at Ingrooves in 2006, which had an office down the street; IODA, which eventually merged with The Orchard, was in the same building; farther down the hallway, two guys were building Twitter. Additionally, SoundCloud, Pandora, Rdio and Mog (which, after several iterations, morphed into what became Apple Music) all had offices in San Francisco.
Ghazi had essentially come up within the cultures of two of his home city’s best exports: first as a recording engineer turned studio owner, working with some of the legends of Bay Area hip-hop, and then building servers for computer companies in Silicon Valley.
“I’d be at my Silicon Valley job from 9 to 6, and then I would jump in the car and drive an hour through traffic straight to the studio, order pizza to the studio, then work there until three, four in the morning,” he says. “Then I would go home, take a shower, sleep like four hours and go right back to my Silicon Valley job. I would sleep in my car on lunch breaks and put my pager on vibrate so it would wake me up. Then I’d go right back to work.”
Ghazi photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
That background — a base in tech, plus deep connections to the Bay’s hip-hop scene — led him to Ingrooves, which was trying to break into the rap market. But after three years navigating the company’s bureaucracy while continuing to run a studio, Universal Music Group (UMG) bought half of Ingrooves (it now owns the company outright), and Ghazi left to form EMPIRE. Early on, he relied on his connections to make not just new releases available, but also offer rappers’ catalogs digitally, sometimes for the first time — and to get them paid monthly, rather than quarterly or not at all. The ability to move quickly, with one-off nonexclusive deals and a client-friendly front end, helped the company expand rapidly through word-of-mouth, first through the Bay, then down to Los Angeles — where EMPIRE put out indie albums by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q and Anderson .Paak — then to Houston and beyond.
EMPIRE truly began making its mark in 2016, when it distributed D.R.A.M.’s hit “Broccoli,” which was picked up by Atlantic Records, and the Fat Joe and Remy Ma record “All the Way Up”; both songs earned Grammy nominations. The following year, it released XXXTentacion’s debut album, 17, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has racked up 3.5 million equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate. Without much fanfare, the company had become a hip-hop heavyweight, filling in the gaps that the traditional industry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, serve: the up-and-coming artists who hadn’t yet caught the majors’ eyes and veteran acts who had phased out of the hit-driven system.
At the same time, the industry was shifting. Apple Music had debuted in 2015, streaming had finally begun to return the music business to growth, and EMPIRE’s flexible offering forced rival music companies, including the major-label groups, to offer deals with similar terms and services as they competed for talent. Suddenly, the label pipeline burst into a fire hose, and everyone wanted in on the nimble, flexible and global distribution model that EMPIRE had made its bread and butter. New companies like UnitedMasters, Stem and Create popped up with seed money to buy into the distribution market; labels launched distribution-first imprints (Capitol’s Priority, Republic’s Imperial); and streaming services and social media companies like SoundCloud and, briefly, Spotify began offering independent artists the ability to distribute their music through them. Before long, it seemed that almost every label had a distribution-first option, while the label groups beefed up their own offerings, flooding the zone that EMPIRE helped establish.
“Now every major has an EMPIRE quote-unquote system, where they try to implement that,” says CSH Management’s Kenny Hamilton, who has had several clients work with EMPIRE over the years. “But it’s not the same relationships; it kind of sounds like they’re just trying to find the next quick thing that they can upstream to a major system, but you’re really not doing artist development. At EMPIRE, that’s what they do. They’re patient with the artists, and if they see promise and they believe in it, then they put their all into it as well. It’s often imitated but never duplicated.”
From left: Edgar Esteves of Blank Square Productions, Tina Davis, Ezegozie Eze of EMPIRE and Dayo Ademola Ayoyemi of Salpha Energy at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa on April 24, 2023 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Tuhenye Dan Muatjitjeja
As the industry started to shift toward the EMPIRE model, EMPIRE itself was moving toward the one used by major-label groups, incorporating A&R, marketing, PR, promotions and social media into its offerings on top of pure distribution and starting to provide label deals and joint ventures. In 2018, EMPIRE struck a nonexclusive deal with UMG to distribute select UMG artist projects; in 2019, it added a vertical to handle original content, which now includes several high-traffic Instagram accounts and a music video department, and expanded into Nashville, the United Kingdom and Europe. By 2020, EMPIRE had started a merch operation by acquiring a majority stake in Top Drawer Merch/Electric Family, then officially announced a publishing division, which had already been informally part of the company for several years. The studio technically opened in 2019, but because of the pandemic and continued expansion and renovations, it is only now becoming the one-stop content shop that Ghazi had envisioned.
“I’m a practice-makes-perfect type of person,” he says. “I always knew the intention was to be a label, but I knew I couldn’t be a label without taking a lot of shots. If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you’ve got to take a lot of shots, find your technique and the right approach.”
The right approach, at this point, is there; the goal — a full suite of music and cultural offerings — within sight. All of which has brought the kind of attention Ghazi has instinctively shied away from over the years. The offers to sell, to divest, to assume the final form of what it means to be a Major Label in the Traditional Sense is not something he’s interested in. He owns the company outright, has it rooted in his home city and has no investors or board of directors to answer to — only his staff of 200 around the world and, most importantly, his artists. Still, the questions and offers persist.
“I would call it a tug of war,” he says. “I’ve always been a firm believer that attracting too much attention sometimes gets you off your A-game. But, I also understand the balance of, every once in a while, you’ve got to shine a spotlight on something for people to see the magic.
“It was always about autonomy; if you go to my office right now, behind my desk there’s a sign on my floor, written in Arabic. It says, ‘Freedom.’ I just always wanted the freedom to just be my own man.”
The summer of 2016 was dominated by Drake’s single “One Dance,” featuring Wizkid and Kyla, which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the entirety of June and July, making Wizkid the first Nigerian artist to chart on, let alone top, the tally. At the same time, EMPIRE made another subtle move, one that would pay off years later: getting into business with one of Nigeria’s biggest talents, Olamide.
Today, the 34-year-old rapper, singer, songwriter, producer and YBNL Nation founder has cemented his legacy on his native continent. For nearly 15 years, he has been a prolific artist and executive, helping shape the sounds of hip-hop and Afrobeats, and growing into one of the pillars of modern West African music while championing and boosting a number of young artists along the way, through features or label deals.
“Olamide is almost like a street hero,” says Phiona Okumu, Spotify’s head of music, sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s him understanding the best of American, Western hip-hop culture, but also understanding the grace and vibrancy of where he is from and bringing it together and making it so palatable that’s been his main influence. He’s able to spark a star, he’s able to hear a sound, and he’s able to make it go.”
Olamide in the San Francisco studio on February 20, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
By 2016, streaming services began to slowly open on the continent. IFPI didn’t even begin tracking revenue in Africa until the last few years. In 2019, South Africa ranked No. 31 among countries tracked by IFPI in recorded-music revenue, at $59.9 million; the entirety of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, lumped together, came in at No. 59, at $4.3 million. (IFPI has not released hard figures since.)
“While we were growing up in Africa, all an artist depended on was shows,” says Mobolaji Kareem, EMPIRE’s regional head of West Africa, as he stands in Studio C with YBNL Nation head of brand and talent management Alex Okeke and DJ Enimoney, Olamide’s DJ and brother. “From 2010, 2011, until 2016, all of it was free music on SoundCloud, Audiomack. We dropped things on Twitter. Streaming money started coming around maybe 2016; if Apple Music was around in 2010, we’d be doing like a billion streams right now.”
Olamide broke onto the scene in 2010, primarily as a rapper, mixing English and Yoruba, and signed to a label called Coded Tunes, through which he distributed music and made songs available as ringtones. In 2012, he left that label and launched YBNL Nation, distributing his own music through telcos, as was standard in Africa at the time, and YBNL artists through Bolaji’s Ingle Mind distribution company, which also handled music by the likes of Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage. Olamide signed rising artists such as Lil Kesh, Adekunle Gold and Viktoh while steadily putting out his own music and being a hands-on label executive. By 2016, Olamide was out of his telco deal and began working with Bolaji, who had started using EMPIRE’s distribution framework to expand his artists’ reach beyond Africa.
At the time, the two sides didn’t know each other. EMPIRE was distributing around 500 projects a month, and Ghazi was more focused on building its label structure than dealing with distribution; Bolaji was working through an intermediary to release his artists’ projects through the EMPIRE system. That was the state of affairs for several years until 2018 or 2019, when the numbers began to change. “The money kept getting so much every year. At some point, Ghazi just said, ‘F–k it, who is this boy from Africa? This artist that is making up to like $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month out of Africa with no marketing, no pitch, nothing?’ ” Bolaji says. “They had to fly down.”
Ghazi remembers it a little differently. “One day, Tina [Davis, EMPIRE’s vp of A&R] runs in my office and is like, ‘Yo, there’s this dude from Africa on the phone right now, and I don’t know what he wants because he’s screaming at me. You need to help me deal with this,’ ” he recalls. “So I get on the phone, and if I remember correctly, it was like a payment issue — something went wrong with their account, we didn’t respond fast enough or whatever. We fixed it. And then right around that same time, Nima [Etminan, EMPIRE’s COO] came into my office and was like, ‘Man, I think we should go meet these people.’ ”
Nima Etminan photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
It was a fortuitous meeting — and a well-timed one. Ghazi and Etminan flew to Lagos, Nigeria, and met with Olamide, Bolaji and Okeke, who introduced them to the Nigerian music scene and some of its leading figures, including then-Universal Music Nigeria GM Ezegozie Eze. “Us being personally there was a big deal,” Ghazi says. “Because most people were just sending out reps or just hiring somebody locally to deal with it. We were running around all week, concert to concert, festival to festival, visiting other people’s houses; we went to Fela [Kuti]’s shrine; we were all over the place. We were learning about the country and the music infrastructure. And it was very gratifying that we were received the way we were received, like we’re family. That made me go 10 times harder.”
“Olamide didn’t come to meet EMPIRE. EMPIRE came to meet Olamide,” Bolaji stresses. “And that was how we started EMPIRE Africa, through YBNL. So one of the things I tell people is, ‘The catalog for EMPIRE Africa sits on YBNL.’ Because if YBNL wasn’t making that much money, [EMPIRE] wasn’t going to see Africa that early.”
Within months, EMPIRE had hired Bolaji and Eze to run EMPIRE Africa, an informal entity that was officially incorporated and announced in 2022, with YBNL as its centerpiece. The timing, once again, was fortuitous: After the first seeds of a breakthrough with “One Dance,” momentum had gradually built for a global Afrobeats movement, with artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Mr Eazi, Savage and Nasty C making gains on the Billboard charts year by year. But it was during the pandemic, just as EMPIRE was putting down roots in Lagos, that Afrobeats truly crossed over into the United States, with Wizkid’s “Essence,” featuring Tems, which ultimately peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 and ruled the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart for 27 weeks.
“When things like this happen, it’s almost like a domino effect — that sets off the labels, and they get interested and curious about who can be next in terms of what the sound is like,” says Spotify’s Okumu. “All of the major labels were in the space before EMPIRE, and all of them had the same interests, the same pursuits — they all wanted the next big African star. But EMPIRE focused on A&R, and that is incredibly important when you have an emerging genre. I feel like that was the win in the joint venture between EMPIRE and YBNL.”
California State Assembl ymember Matt Haney presents Fireboy DML, Asake, Olamide and EMPIRE with a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California for their contributions to Afrobeats worldwide and their work in San Francisco
Daniel Aziz
It has also been reflected in the numbers. In 2021, recorded-music revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew 9.6%, according to IFPI, with ad-supported streaming revenue up 56.4%. That number exploded in 2022, with overall revenue up 34.7% — the only region globally with growth north of 30% — taking over as the fastest-growing region for recorded-music revenue in the world. IFPI opened its first African office in mid-2020, reflecting the continent’s growing importance and potential, and all three major labels now have presences in West Africa and South Africa. In the United States, seven of the top 10 on-demand streaming songs Luminate classified under “world music” — which encompasses several African genres, as well as genres like K-pop — were by West African artists in 2022.
IFPI regional director of sub-Saharan Africa Angela Ndambuki says she expects that massive growth to continue at the same rate this year. “With the digital growth and the advances in technology and new platforms coming in, we’re able to see the labels investing even more, and their presence in the region helps drive the development of those scenes,” she says. “And that then creates a healthy music market.”
In the summer of 2021, Fireboy came to San Francisco for the first time to record in the EMPIRE studio. The young Nigerian singer had signed to YBNL in late 2018 and released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, in November 2019 through YBNL/EMPIRE, then a second, Apollo, the following year. “He came to just record for a few days or a week, and we brought in three or four different producers and writers, and he wasn’t very used to having writers. He’s used to doing all his own stuff,” Davis recalls, sitting in the expansive Studio A. “So it was new for us because he hadn’t recorded here, and it was new for him because he had never been to San Francisco.”
“Peru” emerged from that session the following summer, with its lyric “I’m in San Francisco jammin’,” and almost immediately took off in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The remix with Sheeran was released on Christmas Eve 2021, which propelled it even further. “That record was a way for us to show people that we could break a record outside of Africa and make it larger than just a record for the club and for the diaspora,” Davis says. “But what it taught the African team is that you don’t give up on a hit. I think it just opened it up for people to recognize how much we care about it, and it also gave us a bar to reach.”
Tina Davis photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
EMPIRE has grown beyond its YBNL foundations in West Africa. Acts like Daniel, Wande Coal, BNXN, L.A.X., Navy Kenzo and Black Sherif on its roster are expanding the limits of the Afrobeats, amapiano, highlife, fuji and Afropop genres, among others, while the company also distributes Burna Boy in Africa. (Atlantic is Burna’s label stateside, and Warner distributes his music outside of Africa.) And Asake, who officially signed to YBNL/EMPIRE in mid-2022, lit the Afrobeats world on fire with his debut album, Mr. Money With the Vibe. Released last October, it immediately topped the Spotify and Apple Music charts, and has accrued 197.5 million streams in the United States, according to Luminate. Meanwhile, streams for Asake, Fireboy and Olamide have grown more than 500% outside of Africa on Apple Music, according to the company, which greatly over-indexes in African music streams compared with competitors.
That doesn’t mean EMPIRE has cornered the market. Wizkid, Davido, Tems and rising star Libianca are all signed to RCA in the United States; CKay is distributed by Warner in partnership with local indie label Chocolate City, while Omah Lay goes through Sire; UMG’s Virgin distributes Rema’s “Calm Down,” while Larry Jackson’s new venture, gamma, has its African distribution rights, and Def Jam just signed Gold. As the industry’s attention has shifted to opportunities on the continent, the competition has gotten fierce — but EMPIRE’s reputation has allowed it to keep building organically in the region. “EMPIRE’s a family, and all the other labels are labels,” says Okeke. “That’s the difference.”
Now EMPIRE’s task is to build upon that success and keep expanding its dominion — not an easy task in a globalized climate sagging under the weight of an increasing amount of new music every day. The company has already established an operation covering the Middle East/North Africa, bringing on Spotify’s Suhel Nafar to oversee it. It is also making inroads in South Africa and recently hired people in Tokyo to oversee efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil to begin developing a foothold in South America. In each new region, EMPIRE is looking to build on the model that worked so well in West Africa, making strategic hires based on partnerships with well-connected industry players in local markets rather than signing artists to fit a sound. And even as that old Digital Music Industry 2.0 has long since drifted away from the Bay, relocating to the likes of L.A. and New York, EMPIRE has remained in San Francisco. “We’ve plotted a lot of dots on the map, and I want to plot more dots and create more connectivity, more brainpower,” says Ghazi.
YBNL Founder and CEO/Artist, Olamide, and EMPIRE Founder and CEO, Ghazi, present Fireboy DML with RIAA Platinum Plaque for his hit single “Peru”.
Daniel Aziz
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-April, Ghazi pulls over to the side of the road to explain, over the phone, the next iteration of the vision. He’s about to fly to Johannesburg, then drive to Botswana, then return to the Bay for a few days with his family before another trip down to Rio de Janeiro — around the world and back again. “When you watch those movies from 15, 20 years ago and they put a globe up on the screen and then they push a button, and all the lines fly around the globe and connect to all the different epicenters? It’s kind of like that,” he says.
Which is to say, the journey may have hit one zenith, but that has only established a new jumping-off point, a new foundation on which to build. “You’re always trying to go to greater heights, right? Man makes it to the moon, now you want to make it to Mars,” he says. “As long as we live limitless and we continue to chase ourselves rather than other people, I think that we’ll be OK. We’re already successful; this already looks like success. It’s just, how do you breed more success?”
The answer? In the studio. After the plaque presentation in March, a half-dozen A&Rs and engineers piled back into Studio C to gush over the record that Fireboy made the night before, which has a first verse; an epic, soaring hook; and a second verse left open — maybe for a stateside collaborator, or a fellow Afrobeats star, or maybe for Fireboy himself to finish off. Pop star names are tossed around, and a particular alt-R&B singer is mentioned. But one A&R stands up indignantly, voice rising above the others: “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he says to quiet the crew before adding nearly incredulously: “Did Bob Marley get someone else to put a second verse on ‘I Shot the Sheriff’? This is all you!” The feeling is euphoric, the room is filled with laughter, the possibilities endless. The beat comes back in: rewind, cut, play, forget about the time. The vibe is here; the night is far from over.
This story will appear in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.
After months wrestling over the fate of milions of unsold Yeezy shoes, Adidas said Thursday it will sell a portion of its remaining inventory and donate the proceeds to charitable organizations.
The German sportsware company cut ties with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, in late October, following his antisemitic comments on social media and in interviews. Since then, the fate of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of the unsold Yeezys, a lucrative sneaker line launched with Ye, has been up in the air.
At Adidas’ annual shareholders meeting, CEO Bjorn Gulden said the company had spent months trying to find solutions. He said the company spoke to nongovernmental organization and groups that were harmed by Ye’s comments and actions.
“Burning those shoes cannot be the solution,” Gulden said, adding that Adidas will try to sell part of the remaining Yeezy inventory and “donate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.”
Exact details of the plan — including how many shoes will be sold and the timeline of selling them — were not disclosed. Gulden said the company will provide updates as it moves forward.
The move comes as Adidas is trying to stage a comeback and move beyond the Yeezy partnership. Cutting ties with Ye has cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars — contributing to a loss of 600 million euros ($655 million) in sales for the last three months of 2022, helping drive the company to a quarterly net loss of 513 million euros.
Adidas reported 400 million euros ($441 million) in lost sales at the start of 2023, the company announced last week.
Net sales declined 1% in the first quarter, to 5.27 billion euros, and would have risen 9% with the Yeezy line, the company said. It reported a net loss of 24 million euros, a plunge from a profit of 310 million euros in the same period a year ago.
Operating profit, which excludes some items like taxes, was down to 60 million euros from 437 million euros a year earlier.
Meanwhile, Adidas is also facing a class-action lawsuit from investors who allege the company knew about offensive remarks and harmful behavior from Ye years before terminating its pact with him. Adidas has pushed back on the allegations made.
Still, Gulden reminded investors that the nine-year partnership between Adidas and Ye was “sensational.”
While he noted that Ye is a difficult person, “he’s the most creative person in our industry,” Gulden said. “He created a model with Adidas that was sought after around the world.” But he added, “We lost that in a month.”
Mary Rahmani, the founder of Moon Projects and former director of music content and artist partnerships at TikTok, has joined Songfluencer and its parent company, Genni & Co., as a strategic advisor, Billboard can reveal.
Songfluencer is a social media marketing agency for the music industry that has led digital marketing campaigns for artists including Samara Joy and Wet Leg. Genni & Co. is also home to the marketing technology service Genni, social media competition platform Preffy and short-form content agencies Genni Agency and YO SUZY!
In her new role, Rahmani will provide insights and guidance to both companies based on her robust background in music and technology.
“If you have been at the intersection of creators and music over the last few years, it would be difficult to not bring up Mary Rahmani,” said Songfluencer CEO/founder Johnny Cloherty. “We are very proud to be working with her and excited to learn from her expertise.”
“Johnny has been behind some of the most exciting trends in music and short-form video, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with him and adding my own perspective to his business,” added Rahmani.
Rahmani’s Moon Projects is described as a multi-disciplinary firm that provides curation, strategy and digital consulting services for musicians and brands. It’s also a joint venture music publishing company with Warner Chappell Music and a joint venture record label with Republic Records. Moon Projects is home to “Numb Little Bug” singer/songwriter Em Beihold.
Albert Piedrahita was appointed director of national publicity at Universal Music Latino, while Sebasti Daneilas was upped to manager of publicity. Piedrahita has been key in developing and leading communications strategies in both the Latin and general market, including campaigns for Karol G, Jhayco and Feid. Daneilas, who will report to Piedrahita, will continue managing and supporting communications strategies for the roster. Piedrahita can be reached at albert.piedrahita@umusic.com.
David Ecker was named label development manager at Exceleration Music, while Rachel Cunningham joined the company to lead fan engagement and commerce. Ecker, who boards Exceleration after spending eight years on Spotify’s artist and label partnerships team, will play a crucial role in managing day-to-day relationships with Exceleration’s family of label and artist partners. Cunningham will lead the development of audience growth and e-commerce strategy to drive Exceleration’s direct-to-fan business, including the development of online stores and the building and rollout of the company’s marketing technology stack. She comes from Gimme Radio, where she served as head of fan engagement & e-commerce marketing.
Andrew Ellis joined Ground Control Touring, bringing with him acts including Manchester Orchestra, Men I Trust, New Found Glory, The Front Bottoms, Alkaline Trio, Thrice, Bayside, Cults and Senses Fail. His longtime associate, Gabe Sunshine, will join him at the company’s New York office. Ellis can be reached at ellis@groundcontroltouring.com.
Whitaker Elledge was promoted to GM/senior vp of artist development at Dualtone Music Group, up from his previous role of vp of artist development. Based out of Nashville, Elledge will now oversee all Dualtone staff and daily operations, including continuing to lead all album rollouts, marketing campaigns, teams and spends against budget performance. He will be the point person for all artists and their teams through album cycles as well as third-party team members.
Joanna Noyes was promoted to senior vp of global marketing & brand strategy at The Orchard; she was previously vp of brand marketing and communications. She will now oversee global marketing and brand strategy in over 45 markets globally, leading a team of over 40 employees.
Otto Price joined WME as an agent in the Christian music department at the company’s Nashville office. He joins the agency from Square One Creative Group, where he worked as a producer, arranger, composer and musician; he previously worked in A&R at Warner Music Nashville’s label group. In his new role, he will oversee the daily touring, TV, literary and sponsorship opportunities for artists as well as bookings in international territories. Price can be reached at OPrice@wmeagency.com.
Kirsty McDonagh joined Various Artists Management as senior manager. Based in London, McDonagh joins the firm from Insanity Group, where she spent eight years. In her new role, she will be working day to day with Tom Grennan, Melanie C, Caseyette, Kingdoms, Rndmbeats and Liv Dawson. McDonagh can be reached at Kirsty@variousartistsmanagement.com.
Elon Musk said Thursday he has found a new CEO for Twitter, or X Corp. as it’s now called — and it’s a woman. He did not name her but said she will be starting in about six weeks.
Musk, who bought Twitter last fall and has been running it since, has long insisted he is not the company’s permanent CEO. The Tesla billionaire said in a tweet Thursday that his role will transition to being Twitter’s executive chairman and chief technology officer.
In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying the social media platform for $44 billion, he told a Delaware court that he does not want to be the CEO of any company.
While testifying, Musk said “I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time.”
More than a month later, he tweeted in December: “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.” The pledge came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in a Twitter poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by.
In February, he told a conference he anticipated finding a CEO for San Francisco-based Twitter “probably toward the end of this year.”
Shares of Tesla rose about 2% Thursday after Musk made the announcement. Shareholders of the electric car company have been concerned about how much of his attention is being spent on Twitter.
Last November, he was questioned in court about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in the trial in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to his potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company.
Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer. Musk also said at the time that he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been nearly six months since he said that.
Musk’s tenure at Twitter’s helm has been chaotic, and he’s made various promises and proclamations he’s backtracked or never followed up on. He began his first day firing the company’s top executives, followed by roughly 80% of its staff. He’s upended the platform’s verification system and has scaled back content moderation and safeguards against the spread of misinformation.
Bantering with Twitter followers late last year, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.”
“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted at the time.
Country music star Jimmie Allen‘s label BBR Music Group has suspended him following allegations of sexual assault in a lawsuit filed Thursday (May 11) by his ex-manager.
“In light of today’s allegations against Jimmie Allen, BBR Music Group has decided to suspend all activity with him, effective immediately,” says a statement from the label. That includes ceasing radio promotion on his current single, “Be Alright,” which climbs 59-57 on this Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated May 13.
The move came hours after news broke that Allen was facing a lawsuit that claims he repeatedly sexually harassed and raped a woman on his management team — and that his management company then fired her when she complained.
In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Tennessee federal court — first reported by Variety and independently obtained by Billboard — an anonymous “Jane Doe” accuser says that Allen “manipulated and used his power” over her job as a day-to-day manager in order to “sexually harass and abuse her” over a period of 18 months from 2020 to 2022.
“Plaintiff expressed in words and actions that Jimmie Allen’s conduct was unwelcome, including pushing him away, sitting where he could not reach her, telling him she was uncomfortable and no, and crying uncontrollably,” the woman’s lawyers write in the complaint. “However, Allen made clear that plaintiff’s job was dependent on her staying silent about his conduct.”
In a statement to Billboard, Allen admitted to a sexual relationship with his accuser but denied all allegations of wrongdoing and vowed to defend himself against the lawsuit.
“It is deeply troubling and hurtful that someone I counted as one of my closest friends, colleagues and confidants would make allegations that have no truth to them whatsoever,” Allen says. “I acknowledge that we had a sexual relationship — one that lasted for nearly two years. During that time she never once accused me of any wrongdoing, and she spoke of our relationship and friendship as being something she wanted to continue indefinitely.”
“Only after things ended between us, did she hire a lawyer to reach out and ask for money, which leads me to question her motives,” Allen’s statement continues. “The simple fact is, her accusations are not only false, but also extremely damaging. I’ve worked incredibly hard to build my career, and I intend to mount a vigorous defense to her claims and take all other legal action necessary to protect my reputation.”
Allen’s attorney did not immediately return an additional request for comment on BBR Music Group’s decision to suspend its relationship with the star.
The complaint also names management firm Wide Open Music and founder Ash Bowers, claiming they did not do enough to protect their employee from it from Allen’s abusive behavior. When the woman formally disclosed that she had been “raped and sexually abused” by the star, her lawsuit says that Wide Open Music and Bowers then fired her in retaliation.
In his own statement sent to Billboard, Bowers strongly denied the allegations. He said Wide Open Music had learned of Allen’s abuse on Oct. 4, 2022, and had “immediately ended our professional relationship” at that point.
“Any assertion that she ever raised the existence of a sexual or physical relationship between Mr. Allen and her (or that Wide Open Music or I was aware of any such relationship) before October 4, 2022 is patently and objectively false,” Bowers said.
Bowers also denied that the lawsuit’s claim that the accuser had been terminated in retaliation: “Once WOM no longer managed Mr. Allen, that role was gone and, furthermore, WOM has transitioned out of artist management completely to development and publishing. Accordingly, any claim that our professional relationship with her ended due to retaliation is also false.”
In her lawsuit, Allen’s accuser makes graphic and disturbing allegations of sexual assault.
She says the star began by repeatedly sexually harassing her, “making comments about her status as a single female, her innocence, and how hot she looked” and asking her “personal sexual questions,” including whether or not she was a virgin.
According to the lawsuit, she later began to receive unwanted touching and hugging. Then, after a taping of American Idol, she says Allen sexually assaulted her while she was “incapacitated and incapable of giving consent.”
“While she only drank a couple of glasses of white wine, plaintiff does not remember anything after dinner that evening — she lost consciousness and awoke naked in her hotel room several hours later, with Jimmie Allen insisting she take Plan B as soon as possible,” her lawyers say, referring to a brand of morning-after contraceptive.
The lawsuit claims that the abuse then continued after that first incident in many additional ways.
“When plaintiff drove Allen to and from events, he sexually abused her at red lights, in green rooms, on airplanes, and in other places she was required to be to support him at events,” her lawyers say. “He raped her in private while choking her. He videotaped multiple sexual encounters in order to blackmail her to stay silent.”
Months later, when Doe says she was “on the verge of a nervous breakdown and considered committing suicide,” she claims she finally disclosed the alleged abuse to Bowers and asked to be reassigned to a different artist. After allegedly telling her, “I can’t hear any more of this,” Bowers then allegedly texted her that she would be placed on leave.
“On or about October 17, 2022, Bowers texted plaintiff stating, ‘[W]e are still unwinding things with Jimmie. Until that process is complete — we need you to continue to stay/work from home. We will update you once that’s completed,’” her complaint reads. “On October 26, 2022 … WOM terminated Plaintiff.”
In technical terms, Thursday’s lawsuit includes claims of battery, assault and false imprisonment against Allen; multiple claims of negligence against Wide Open Music and Bowers; and claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress and violations of federal sex trafficking statutes against all three.
The case was filed by attorney Elizabeth Fegan, who has previously represented victims of disgraced executive Harvey Weinstein and Dr. George Tyndall, a campus gynecologist at the University of Southern California accused of sexually abusing hundreds of patients.
Allen, a Delaware native, was slated to give the commencement address at the University of Delaware tomorrow (May 12), but has been replaced by Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester. According to a press release from the University, Allen informed the University he would no long be able to participate in the ceremony.
Assistance on this story provided by Jessica Nicholson.
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information. (edited)
LONDON — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to a rapid exodus of global music companies from Russia. All three major labels say they ceased operations there. So did touring giant Live Nation and streaming platforms Spotify, TikTok, Deezer and Amazon Music. Paris-headquartered Believe, however, publicly pursued a different path, and a year later is still operating in Russia — releasing, distributing and promoting new music by local artists and labels on Russian streaming platforms Yandex. Plus, VK Music and Zvuk.
Executives at rival music companies have privately expressed outrage, accusing Believe of exploiting the sudden breakup of Russia’s music market — the 13th largest in 2021, generating $328 million in revenue that year, according to IFPI — to gain market share in the absence of Western competitors.
Denis Ladegaillerie, Believe’s founder and CEO, denies that charge and says the major labels and platforms are being hypocritical for criticizing how the French company is operating in Russia. Believe’s ongoing presence in the country “is really not an economic decision,” he tells Billboard in a rare interview addressing the issue. “We are not looking at building or growing or extracting value [in Russia].”
Following the start of hostilities, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group said they stopped distributing and promoting new releases in Russia. If new titles are being made available on local streaming services, the majors say, it’s through piracy.
The Believe CEO is skeptical about those assertions and defends his company’s continued presence in the isolated nation. “What I see is that all global artists are still available on all local platforms [in Russia],” Ladegaillerie says, noting that YouTube and Apple Music are also still active in the market, albeit in a reduced capacity. “So, my question is: ‘You’ve pulled out of Russia? Really?’”
After Billboard discovered in December that Russian streaming service VK was allowing users to upload albums from major label artists like Taylor Swift (UMG’s Republic Records) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (Warner Music), all three major labels declined to comment; labels body IFPI did not condemn the apparent copyright violations, nor confirm if they or its label members had issued takedown orders to VK.
Ladegaillerie says Believe, for its part, has “very strictly” abided by all international sanctions placed against Russia since the start of the war — “both in law and spirit” — and has halted all new investments in the now-isolated country. “Our No. 1 priority, both in Russia and Ukraine, has been to protect our teams locally and support our artists,” he says.
Despite those claims, Believe’s revenue from Russia, where it retains just over 40 employees, has been growing. Combined revenue from Russia and Ukraine rose 9.9% to 57 million euros ($62.5 million) in 2022, according to the company’s year-end financial figures. (That was 7.5% of Believe’s overall revenue.)
While the economic sanctions against Russia were meant to starve the country of funds and further isolate it from the world financial system, they have been limited in scope and hundreds of Western companies continue to operate in the country. Global music companies have not completely extracted themselves from the country, either. Universal Music and Warner Music — which had the largest presence in Russia among the majors, with almost 100 employees — continue to pay their staff and maintain offices there, although they say those offices have been effectively closed since the war started.
In September, Sony Music announced it had decided “to exit the Russian marketplace completely” and was transferring its Sony Music entity there to a fully independent local company that would only represent locally signed artists. “As the war continues to have a devastating humanitarian impact in Ukraine, and sanctions on Russia continue to increase, we can no longer maintain a presence in Russia, effective immediately,” Sony Music said in a statement at the time.
YouTube continues to operate in Russia in compliance with U.S. sanctions but has suspended ads and monetization features (Russian creators can still make money from ads and other monetization products shown to users outside of the country). The Russian subsidiary of YouTube parent company Google filed for bankruptcy last year after authorities seized its bank account, making it impossible to pay employees, suppliers and vendors, a YouTube spokesperson tells Billboard.
Apple Music is still available in Russia, although there are fewer subscription payment options, as MasterCard and Visa cards issued by Russian banks can no longer be used to pay for subscriptions. Music from the major labels that left Russia is not available. (An Apple Music spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.)
The French government of President Emmanuel Macron, for its part, has supported Believe’s decision to “maintain links” with Russia, Ladegaillerie says. That rings true for other French companies, which established deep ties with Russia in the wake of the Cold War. In March, French retailer Auchan said it planned to open a new store in Russia, doubling down on its brick-and-mortar presence in the market. And auto maker Renault, which is 15%-owned by the French state, has been scrambling to restart its assembly lines in Russia, where it owns the country’s biggest car maker, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In fact, French companies are among Russia’s biggest foreign employers, providing more than 150,000 jobs across a range of sectors that include energy, food products and wholesaling, according to figures from the French Economy Ministry.
The situation “is not black and white, it’s grey,” Ladegaillerie says. He identifies Believe’s humanitarian support for Ukraine — which includes donations and regularly publishing a playlist of Ukrainian artists — as part of the “difficult” balance his company is trying to maintain in Eastern Europe. “We realized that different countries have different perspectives on the situation but that’s really the line that we are trying to navigate.”
Additional Reporting By Vladimir Kozlov
A federal judge has approved a $25 million settlement struck by vinyl producer Mobile Fidelity to resolve accusations that the company’s pricey “all analog” records were secretly created using digital methods, overruling objections from some customers that the settlement was “tainted by the stink of collusion.”
Though the deal would allow tens of thousands of MoFi customers to secure full refunds, some consumers argued that the deal was unfair — claiming it had been reached through a “reverse auction” in which MoFi bargained with “ineffectual” plaintiff’s lawyers to find the cheapest settlement possible.
But in a ruling Tuesday (May 9), U.S. District Judge James L. Robart rejected those claims and preliminarily approved the settlement deal. He said the agreement would likely fairly compensate any MoFi buyers who had been misled, and that there was no concrete evidence of impropriety in how it had been reached.
“The undisputed facts demonstrate that proposed settlement is not the product of a reverse auction or otherwise the result of collusion,” the judge wrote, saying it appeared to have been reached via “arm’s length negotiations” between attorneys for MoFi and the plaintiffs.
Among other things, the challengers had argued that the settlement’s payouts were insufficient based on how much they might have won at trial. But Judge Robart said those arguments ignored key factual details about how MoFi’s records were produced — and that such claims were at times “nonsensical.”
In a statement to Billboard, MoFi lead counsel Joseph J. Madonia said: “We appreciate the court’s ruling, which supports all of our claims that there was no reverse auction or collusion. As always MoFi continues its commitment to provide the best-sounding records possible.”
Attorneys for the consumers who challenged the settlement did not immediately return a request for comment.
The scandal at MoFi first erupted last summer, after Phoenix-area record store owner Mike Esposito posted a pair of videos to YouTube alleging that the company’s “all-analog” and “triple analog” records were in fact partially created using so-called direct stream digital technology. In one of the videos, MoFi’s engineers appeared to confirm that some digital tech had in fact been used in production.
As reported by The Washington Post, the digital revelations created “something of an existential crisis” in the analog-obsessed vinyl community. In a statement in late July, MoFi apologized for using “vague language” and for “taking for granted the goodwill and trust” of its customers: “We recognize our conduct has resulted in both anger and confusion in the marketplace. Moving forward, we are adopting a policy of 100% transparency regarding the provenance of our audio products.”
But the apology wasn’t enough to avoid litigation. In early August, a pair MoFi customers named Stephen J. Tuttle and Dustin Collman filed a proposed class action in Washington federal court, claiming the company’s analog branding had been “deceptive and misleading” and had duped them into paying premium prices. Four more cases were later filed in other federal courts by other groups of buyers.
In January, MoFi decided to settle the case. Calling the deal “a fair compromise,” the company agreed to let consumers either secure a full refund or keep their albums and instead take a 5% cash refund or a 10% refund in credit. The agreement would cover all customers nationwide, and the total money that could be paid out was “expected to be over $25 million.”
But some of the consumers who filed those other lawsuits quickly threw up red flags about the deal. They said the settlement was insufficient, struck without their input by bad lawyers who simply wanted a payout: “Despite this clear abdication of their duties to class members, counsel … are now trying to ram an inadequate, collusive settlement through this court.”
In Wednesday’s ruling, however, Judge Robart said those allegations had little basis. He pointed out there was “no evidence” that MoFi had “shopped” the case in search of a settlement — and that the plaintiffs’ lawyers had actually capped their own fees lower than necessary.
“This is one of the lower proposed fee awards this court has encountered in a class action settlement,” the judge wrote.
Following this week’s ruling, the settlement must still be granted final approval; during the process, the aggrieved MoFi buyers will still have additional chances to object to the terms of the deal or to opt out of it entirely. A hearing on final approval is tentatively set for October.
In a statement to Billboard, Duncan C. Turner — lead counsel for the customers that settled with MoFi — praised the judge’s decision: “There was never any substance to the intervenors’ made-up collusion story. The settlement terms are sound and fair, so we will be turning our attention to executing the notice program and getting the class members their compensation.”
Universal Music Group shareholders approved on Thursday (May 11) the 2022 compensation packages for CEO Lucian Grainge and his deputy, Vincent Vallejo, plus a special $100 million stock option awarded to Grainge to stay on the job for five more years.
The company did not immediately disclose the percentage of votes cast in support of the advisory vote on the pay packages or other voting items at its annual general meeting held in the Amsterdam, and the meeting was live-streamed only to registered shareholders.
Since the global financial crisis, these kinds of annual meetings become a stage for shareholders to express their gripes about a company’s policies or performance. The vote of support for the world’s largest music company’s pay practices comes despite criticism raised by influential shareholder advisory groups, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, who had advised investors to reject Grainge’s pay packages.
Shareholders approved Grainge’s 2022 pay, which totaled more than 47 million euros (roughly $50 million), and re-appointed him as executive director, along with Sherry Lansing and Luc van Os as non-executive directors. Entertainment mogul Haim Saban was also appointed as non-executive director.
Shareholders declined to reappoint Anna Jones as a non-executive director, and her current term will run until the company’s next annual meeting in 2024.
Shareholders also approved a final 2022 dividend payout of 0.27 euros per share, which investors will receive in June. The vote brings UMG’s full year 2022 dividend to 0.51 euros per share.
In an April report, ISS recommended shareholders vote against UMG’s 2022 remuneration policy, saying the pay packages were out of step with industry standards in part due to “excessive” base salaries. That Grainge’s total pay was 12.4 times higher than the median of peers “raises substantial concerns,” ISS wrote.
Grainge’s 2022 pay package included a base salary of about 15.4 million euros and short-term incentives totaling 28.77 million euros, including a portion equivalent to 1% of UMG’s consolidated earnings before interest, taxes and amortization (EBITA) that was part of an agreement reached prior to UMG going public.
In its annual report, the company says that full-time UMG employees receive an average of 142,039 euros annually,up from 131,961 euros in 2021.
The board explained its reasoning for the remuneration for its executive directors saying that Grainge was a one-of-a-kind executive, and that certain incentive payments were due to legacy arrangements agreed to before the company went public.
In the proposed future pay agreement, which was part of an extension of Grainge’s contract through May 2028, the board said it did away with the incentive that paid Grainge 1% of UMG’s consolidated EBITA. In addition, the new agreement transitions Grainge from an all-cash compensation package to a combination cash and equity package “with a broad set of performance-based objectives aligned with shareholders’ interest and corresponding to the company’s long-term growth strategy.”
UMG ended the European trading day up 0.43% at 18.79 euros ($20.52).
Universal Music Publishing Group has signed Yahritza to a global publishing deal. As part of Yahritza Y Su Esencia, a sibling trio which has helped ushed Regional Mexican into the mainstream, she is one of Mexico’s most sought after stars.
Blackx, a new Asia-focused music fund, has acquired a catalog 230 songs from Frances Wang, a notable Taiwanese songwriter. Songs included in the deal span 30 years of work, including hits performed by Faye Wong, A-Mei, Jeff Zhang Xin Zhe, Oaeen, Eason Chan, Wan Fang and Tiger Huang Xiao Hu. This is one of Blackx’s first purchases in Asia. The fund launched in September 2022 with an initial $100 million in financing.
UMPG Germany has signed Berlin-based artist and songwriter Chris James to a worldwide publishing deal. As co-writer on “Komet” (Apache 207 and Udo Lindenberg), his work holds the honor of being the longest running #1 German-language song in 16 years, according to a press release. Most recently, he was listed as a co-writer on Jimin’s recent K-pop smash “Like Crazy” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Universal Music Publishing UK has signed LF System, a chart-topping producer duo, to a global publishing deal. Comprised of Conor Larkman and Sean Finnigan, the duo is a top name in international dance music. Their song “Afraid to Feel” recently topped the UK Singles Chart for eight consecutive weeks.
Sony Music Publishing has signed 1da Banton, a Nigerian songwriter, artist and guitarist, to a global publishing agreement. He recently gained international acclaim with his song “Miss You” with Tungevaag, and his next EP is set to release next month, featuring 255, Rugged and Pimp.
Warner Chappell Music has signed a worldwide publishing deal with Spanish singer-songwriter Ana Mena. With nearly six million monthly listeners on Spotify, Mena’s “Música Ligera” won song of the year at Los40 Music Awards 2022. Most recently, she released her second studio LP Bellodrama, which follows her 2018 debut album Index.
Warner Chappell Music has signed Nia Archives to a worldwide publishing agreement. A DJ, producer and singer-songwriter, she won Best Electric/Dance Act at the MOBOs, Best Producer at the NME Awards, named Introducing Artist of the Year by BBC, and was shortlisted for the Rising Star Award at the BRITs 2023.
Universal Music Publishing Classics and Screen has signed Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts and rising Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón to exclusive worldwide publishing deals. As part of the agreements, Universal’s Classics & Screen division also acquired Puts’ compositional catalog.
Angry Mob Music Group has signed UK-based Richard Walters to a worldwide co-publishing agreement. Currently signed to Nettwek Music Group on the label side, Walters next single is out May 26th. As a songwriter, he has worked alongside Joe Henry, Alison Moyet, Solomun, 3LAU, Sony Fodera, Sultan + Shepard, and more.
Warner Chappell Music has joined with Matchless Publishing and Artist Development to sign a global publishing deal with Nashville-based singer, songwriter and producer Dan Pellarin. Pellarin has co-written with acts like Filmore, Atlus, and Savage Hands.
Warner Chappell Music and Cornman Music have teamed up to jointly sign Graham Barham to a global publishing deal. A Nashville-based newcomer, he first gained attention with his popular track “Preachers Need People.”
Creative Nation, an independent music company, has signed Nashville-based songwriter and producer Oscar Charles to a publishing deal. He has written songs with Chase Rice, Elvie Shane, Boy Named Banjo, Madeline Edwards, Hannah Dasher and more. He has released songs with Carly Pearce, Charlie Worsham and Jacob Powell, among others.
