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UTA has signed country singer-songwriter Dalton Dover to its roster for global representation in all areas, the agency tells Billboard.
Last month, it was announced that Dover signed with UMG Nashville’s Mercury Nashville imprint. He’s aligned with Sony Music Publishing Nashville as well as Droptine Music Publishing, which was launched by Nashville music industry veteran Jim Catino. Dover continues to be represented by Charly Salvatore at Underscore Works.
(L-R): Jeffrey Hasson (Co-Head of UTA Nashville), Matthew Morgan (Partner & Co-Head of UTA Nashville), Scott Clayton (Partner & Co-Head of Global Music, UTA), Charly Salvatore (Founder & Manager, Underscore Works), Dalton Dover, Josh Garrett (Music Agent, UTA), Brett Saliba (Music Agent, UTA).
Courtesy Photo
Dover’s most recent song, “Damn Good Life,” which dropped in September, followed previous releases including “You Got a Small Town” and “Baby I Am.” He was Billboard‘s Country Rookie of the Month in February.
“I’ve had the Hot Country playlist from Spotify on my phone for a while. My friends have it, everybody has it,” Dover told Billboard at the time. “The coolest thing is you can hear Miranda Lambert, Luke Combs — and then you can hear my songs. Coming from where I’m from, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen.”
Dover first came to attention when he appeared on Season 16 of The Voice in 2019, earning a chair turnaround from coach Blake Shelton. From there, he developed his fanbase via his #CatchMeOffGuard series on TikTok, which drew praise from artists including Jimmie Allen, Luke Combs and more. This summer, he graduated to opening for Combs at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and performed a seven-date run of concerts at various Shelton’s Ole Red locations around the country.
Dover is currently opening shows on Priscilla Block‘s Welcome to the Block Party tour and will make his Grand Ole Opry debut on Dec. 3.
SM Entertainment, home of such K-pop groups as NCT 127, SuperM and Girls’ Generation, had revenue of 238.1 billion KRW ($165 million at the Sept. 30 exchange rate) from July 1 to Sept. 30 — up 65.4% year-over-year and a 29.1% improvement from the previous quarter, the company announced Monday (Nov. 14).
Operating margin — operating profit as a percentage of revenue — improved to 12.5% in the third quarter of 2022, up from 6.9% in the prior-year period. Net income was 29.2 billion KRW ($20.2 million), up 129.5% year-over-year and 15% higher than the second quarter.
The company’s multi-pronged business, which generates revenue across all facets of its artists’ careers, improved across the board: Recorded music revenues grew 46.6% to 135.1 billion won ($93.6 million). SM Entertainment’s album sales improved from 3.25 million units in the prior-year period to 4.7 million units. It had two standout releases in the quarter: NCT 127’s 2 Baddies peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and Aespa’s Girls: The 2nd Mini Album topped Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart.
Concert revenues climbed to 10.9 billion won from virtually nothing a year ago. In the quarter, Revenue from appearances — including television, advertising and events — grew 96.4% to 24.3 billion KRW ($16.8 million). Licensing revenue improved 76.1% to 26.4 billion KRW ($18.3 million).
Revenue at SM Entertainment’s subsidiaries grew 119.5% to 136.9 billion KRW ($94.9 million). These companies include Dream Maker, a Hong Kong-based concert booking agency; SM Culture & Contents, a content production and advertising business; and Keyeast, a Korea-based merchandising and licensing business. According to the release, these subsidiaries benefitted from the reopening of domestic and international touring and increased demand for advertising promotion and business-to-business travel.
Several SM Entertainment artists are on tour in the fourth quarter: NCT 127 has nine dates in Korea, U.S., Thailand and Indonesia; Super Junior has six concerts in Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Ryeowook and NCT Dream have six and five concerts in Japan, respectively.
The company’s fourth-quarter release schedule includes new mini albums by Chen, BoA and Red Velvet and Red Velvet member Seulgi. Red Velvet’s Feel My Rhythm album peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Global Excl. US chart in April; it also landed on the Indonesia Songs (No. 3), Malaysia Songs (No. 5), Phillippines Songs (No. 15) and Taiwan Songs (No. 16) charts. The group’s The ReVe Festival: Finale EP reached No. 40 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart in January 2020.
SM Entertainment’s shares rose 0.5% on Monday to 65,800 KRW. Down just 11.3% in 2022, SM Entertainment’s share price has fared better than Korean music companies HYBE (down 61.2%) and YG Entertainment ( down 26.4%) but lags behind JYP Entertainment (up 12.0%), home of Twice, Stray Kids and iTZY.
SM Entertainment’s shares rose 19% on Sept. 16 after the company announced would prematurely end a contract with a production company owned by the company’s founder and largest shareholder, Lee Soo-man. Its share price, however, has fallen 14% since then.
Liberty Media Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) launched by John Malone’s Liberty Media a couple of years ago in hopes of finding at least one takeover target, has taken a key step towards closing down the financial vehicle.
On Monday, a virtual special meeting of stockholders voted in favor of the move by approving updates to its certificate of incorporation, which allow it “to unwind and redeem all of its outstanding public shares prior to Dec. 30,” which is “in advance of the contractual termination date of Jan. 26, 2023.”
Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei told the online meeting that his company — which owns the Atlanta Braves and the Formula One race car circuit among other media and entertainment assets — looked at around 140 companies in all as potential acquisitions, without identifying who they were. He added a picky Liberty Media saw no targets worth pursuing for a merger.
Maffei added Liberty Media had been working amid an industry backdrop where financial markets had turned down. That made financing any potential transaction more difficult and jumping through regulatory hurdles for a time extension to work out taxation issues more challenging.
“Frankly, getting an extension wasn’t worth it, given we had nothing on the table that was attractive enough for us to take us look,” Maffei told investors about the decision to wind up the SPAC.
SPACs, or “blank check companies,” have been a popular vehicle in recent years, including for former top media executives, including James Murdoch and former Walt Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, to raise cash and hunt for acquisitions. But stock market volatility, macroeconomic uncertainty and the disappointing performance of some SPACs, along with other factors have led to questions about the outlook for SPACs.
Liberty Media Acquisition (LMAC) had announced the special meeting in October, detailing the challenges of its management team, led by Maffei, in finding a suitable merger deal.
“Since its IPO on Jan. 23, 2021, LMAC’s management team has employed a broad set of search criteria for potential target business combinations and evaluated more than 140 such target companies,” the firm said back then. “In evaluating these businesses, management remained focused on finding fair valuations amid volatile market conditions. LMAC’s management has observed what it believes were high valuations in 2021, a declining IPO market in 2022 and significant public and private market volatility, which have prevented the company from securing an opportunity that it believes will offer a compelling return on investment for its stockholders. In light of these circumstances, LMAC has determined that it is not feasible to complete an initial business combination (or enter into an agreement in principle with respect to an initial business combination) by Jan. 26, 2023.”
LMAC also noted “recent changes in U.S. tax law” that “could create corporate-level tax liabilities in connection with stockholder redemptions following year-end.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Touring can be a tough way to make a living these days, but for Arlo Guthrie, playing live comes with certain medical benefits that aren’t available in retirement.
“There’s nothing like playing before a live audience,” says the prolific songwriter, activist and storyteller who suffered a series of strokes in 2019 and decided to retire in 2020 as the pandemic shuttered the live music industry. Now, after three years resting at his home in Berkshire County, Mass. with wife Marti Ladd, the couple decided that “I could recuperate better in front of a live audience, rather than just sit at home, and both agreed I should get back out there as part of my rehabilitation.”
Today, Guthrie is sharing the details of his recovery plan, embarking on a four-city storytelling theater tour titled “Arlo Guthrie – What’s Left Of Me – A Conversation With Bob Santelli,” featuring the executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. The tour is spread out so that each show is at least one week apart, making travel an easy back and forth trip from his home in western Massachusetts.
“I didn’t really retire from the gigs. I retired from getting to them. I’m retired from seven-hour rides in a tour bus,” Guthrie tells Billboard. The first show in the series will take place at Boston’s Schubert Theater on April 1, followed by The Egg in Albany, NY on April 21; The Pollock Theater at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey on April 28; and The Spruce Peak PAC in Stowe, Vermont on May 27.
“What’s Left Of Me” was booked by Guthrie and Ladd’s new production company Gut3 Productions. Ladd is the director of set design for the series and has created an intimate setting with a backdrop of Arlo’s heroes and mentors hanging within a living room environment. The couple met 20 years ago in Woodstock and married in December 2021. For “What’s Left of Me,” Guthrie will talk about his life as a touring artist, his memories of his famous father Woody Guthrie and his wildly entertaining tales from the road. Guthrie has performed at Carnegie Hall, the 1967 Newport Folk Festival and the original Woodstock festival in 1969 and has released 32 acclaimed albums over his six-decade career. “What’s Left of Me” also includes rarely seen video footage along with an audience Q&A and snippets of his past performances.
Guthrie says the stroke has affected his ability to perform music and says the series is not a music show with some conversation sprinkled in between songs.
“It’s a conversation between two people with maybe some music included,” he notes. “I would rather have it that way. There may be some young people who have no idea who I am, but who got dragged to these events by overenthusiastic friends or parents, or even grandparents and you’ve got to reeducate people and tell them where you’ve been and who you’ve been and make it as much fun as possible.
That includes telling the story of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,” a 18-minute monologue that’s both a celebration of Thanksgiving and a not-so-subtle protest piece against the Vietnam War. The talking, satirical format was unusual when it was released in 1967 and still occasionally befuddles folk music fans.
“In 1967, I was beginning to tell my stories on stage and somebody yelled out, ‘shut up and sing,” he jokes “After ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ came out, I was back in Chicago and I was singing songs and somebody yelled ‘shut up and talk.’”
While Guthrie is still affable and gregarious six decades into his career, he’s also become an outspoken advocate and proponent for folk music and the genre’s legacy. His father Woody is one of the most significant and recognized American folk artists of the last century and Arlo has received multiple awards and accolades for his work in folk music, which he insists is more of a musical movement than a genre.
“The great folk musicians all learned how to play music the same way — on acoustic instruments in their houses. That’s the kind of music that I was brought up with. That’s the kind of music my father played. That’s the kind of music I taught my kids to play. It’s music you can take to any country in the world and sing or play with anyone – even those you may not be able to talkto. You may not even be able to say hello, but you can sit down and play something together. That to me, is really always been at the heart of what folk music is,” Guthrie explains.
“That to me is what folk music is,” he continues. “It’s how you learn music. It’s not the sound of it. It’s not the look of it. You don’t need a fancy hat for it. You don’t need lights or amplification. You don’t need anything besides experience and the will to learn how to play.”
For more on “What’s Left Of Me” and to purchase tickets, visit: www.gut3.me
Last year, Milana Rabkin Lewis, co-founder and CEO of the distribution company and payment platform Stem, was among those who read a series of frustrated tweets from the rapper Meek Mill. “I haven’t got paid from music, and I don’t know how much labels make off of me!” Mill wrote in a since-deleted thread. “How much have you spent on me as an artist? How much have you made off me as an artist?”
“Why can’t he know that?” Rabkin Lewis asks. The problem has frustrated her since she was an agent at United Talent Agency and saw “just how messy the whole process” of royalty accounting was. “We were working with major artists who realized they had no visibility into when they were going to get paid and how unrecouped they were,” she recalls.
Part of the reason she started Stem in 2015 was to provide artists with more transparency. Now Stem is debuting Royalty Services, which aims to distill labyrinthine Excel spreadsheets into digestible dashboards and will be available to labels outside of Stem’s distribution network. (Some of the major labels also have their own version of a dashboard, though managers say they can be tough to navigate.) Users can view summaries of overall costs, earnings and recoupment status. They can drill down into more granular data — to determine which streaming platform or track is generating the most money, for example — with a click. And the process of linking bank accounts and sending money to partners is straightforward.
“It’s easy to see which song is doing the most each month on which platform, how much you’re making, when you will recoup,” Rabkin Lewis says. Stem’s chief product officer Brendan Kao calls the new dashboard “the next step in our mission to improve financial clarity for the entire music industry” for both labels and artists.
Royalty accounting has been a source of artist frustration for about as long as there has been a music industry. “The mystique of the music business is that, though profits are huge, accounting is incomprehensible,” CBS boss Walter Yetnikoff wrote in his memoir. Another company hoping to inject more transparency into an industry known for opacity is CreateSafe, which made a Record Deal Simulator freely available online so artists can input their advance, recording and marketing costs and get a rough estimate of how many streams they need to generate to recoup their deal.
If anything, royalty accounting has only become more complicated in today’s digital environment. Artists often release more music with more partners than in the past and work with more producers. And revenue comes from multiple streaming services as well as platforms like TikTok and Twitch. “We’re also seeing this trend of the admin and the responsibility of paying people out going more downstream,” Rabkin Lewis adds. “Motown pays out Quality Control, for example, but there are so many layers of people that need to get paid after that,” from artists to producers to engineers, and “often the people downstream from the major have no software.”
Quality Control has also started using Stem’s technology, as has Fool’s Gold. Rabkin Lewis says she hopes to have 50 clients by the middle of 2023. “Stem’s software makes royalty data easy to read to the point that I actually want to log in myself to look at trends,” Quality Control co-founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee said in a statement. “With any other solution, I would wait for my team to generate a report and then wait again while they pull the important details out of a massive spreadsheet.”
Justin Blau, best known as the DJ-producer 3LAU, is the founder of Blume Music, another label that quickly signed on to use Royalty Services. “We used to hire an accounting firm,” Blaus says. “We’d send them everything, they’d send paperwork back, and then we’d send payments manually to each rightsholder.” This system was “inefficient,” Blau continues, to the point that it was “just obnoxious.”
He was quick to sign up for Stem’s new product: “A lot of artists have been waiting for this.”
Later this month, Chris Cobb, longtime independent operator of revered Nashville music venue Exit/In for nearly two decades, will conclude his work at the 51-year-old music venue due to the lease ending at the conclusion of 2022, as Nashville-based development firm AJ Capital Partners (which purchased the Exit/In property in 2021) are set to begin overseeing operation of Exit/In.
“It looks like 51 years of local, independent ownership and operation have come to an end,” said a statement from Chris and Telisha Cobb. “We are humbled to host this last run of concerts with friends from many eras gracing our stage again. There have been too many incredible moments to count over the 18 years we’ve stewarded Exit/In. It’s an incredibly special place that we are so fortunate to have been a part of.”
The final 2022 concert at Exit/In is slated for Nov. 23, with the second of a pair of shows from Diarrhea Planet.
A statement from AJ Capital Partners, which recently moved its headquarters from Chicago to Nashville, provided to Billboard says, “The Exit/In will remain open, as it has under the stewardship of dozens of operators over the past 51 years, as its irreplaceable self: an iconic Nashville venue and gathering place for music lovers from all over. We spent the last year securing historic protections for this special and sacred space, which we’re committed to preserving while providing some long overdue physical improvements. We look forward to the next half-century of moments and memories, and to announcing 2023 show dates very soon.”
In 2021, AJ Capital filed a request to designate the Exit/In as a historical landmark, and historic overlays were approved for a section of the property this year.
Last year, the Cobbs launched a GoFundMe campaign with the aim of purchasing Exit/In, shortly after the venue went under contract. The fundraiser received over 4,000 donations and accumulated over $270,000 from supporters. In his statement, Cobb said that the money will be donated to National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and to Music Venue Alliance (MVAN).
Exit/In, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, opened in 1971 and is located at 2208 Elliston Place, as the anchor of “The Rock Block,” which over the years has been home to businesses including The End, Elliston Place Soda Shop and The Gold Rush. Exit/In quickly became known for the diverse slate of artists who have performed there — with many of their names scrawled on its Wall of Fame at the front of the building. Those artists have included Billy Joel, Etta James, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Paramore, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chuck Berry, The Allman Brothers Band, Jason and the Scorchers, Cage the Elephant and R.E.M., among many others.
Jimmy Buffett was the first performer at the venue when it opened in 1971.
The Rock Block was commemorated with a historical marker in 2020.
This past summer, the second-largest U.S. bank, Bank of America, looked at how its customers’ spending on entertainment for the month of May compared with a year ago. What researchers found was surprisingly positive for the touring industry, and there are signs the good news is holding steady, at least for now.
Spending on concert, theater and movie tickets in May was up across all income groups. Moderate- and high-income earners — households bringing in over $50,000 and over $125,000 in annual income, respectively — exhibited the most pent-up demand, with spending levels up more than 40% in May compared with May 2021.
Demand among lower-income consumers — households earning less than $50,000 a year — was up almost as much, rising roughly 38% year to year.
In October, Bank of America surveyed its customers again to ask if they expect to increase spending in the next 12 months in a number of categories including in-home entertainment. With inflation cutting into or erasing most Americans’ pandemic cash buffers, credit card spending is on the rise, and with companies proactively laying off staff in anticipation of a recession, 21% said they plan on reducing what they spend on in-home entertainment either moderately or significantly in the next 12 months. (Sixty percent said they planned no change to their spending.)
Bank of America does not have current data on whether consumers plan to cut back on concerts and other entertainment outside their homes, so the live-music industry will have to hope that consumers will pare down their audio and video streaming service subscriptions so that they can continue seeing their favorite acts at local venues while enjoying their concession fare and buying merchandise.
Goldman Sachs analysts expect they will. Although they predict growth in the global live-music industry to slow somewhat next year, they forecast it will still put up a 4% compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2030.
In 2022 so far, the industry has seen 5% growth in revenue despite a number of high-profile tour cancellations. Growth this year is on par with the 5% compound annual growth rate the industry experienced from 2007 to 2019.
Looking at the numbers on a more granular level reveals that the global live-music industry grew most sharply between 2007 and 2009 at the onset of the global financial crisis.
During that time, industry revenue rose from $17 billion in 2007 to over $20 billion in 2009, according to research by Goldman Sachs. But between 2010 and 2015, the industry had several years of essentially no growth as the effects of the crisis — unemployment above 10%, nationwide foreclosures — caused deep financial pain.
Even then, the live-music industry grew overall by roughly $3 billion, from $22 billion to $25 billion, during that period of austerity.
Music is often called recession-proof, and while that may hold true, the touring industry feels vulnerable, given the on-again, off-again reality that artists, promoters, venues and their support have had to contend with through the pandemic. For now, industry experts say consumers continue to spend, the industry’s revenue will continue to grow, and even in a worsening economic climate, the shows will go on.
When Live Nation reported $1.8 billion in first-quarter revenue in May, CEO Michael Rapino told investors, “Artists are back on the road and fan demand has never been stronger.” But while the concert business has largely returned to financial health in 2022 after a wobbly recovery last year, a number of acts eager to get back on the road and tap back into their primary income stream have instead found prohibitive costs that would significantly eat into or eliminate profits. And that has left them frustrated, if not furious, that the bullish picture painted by promoters and venues has eluded them.
A confluence of devastating economic factors — gas prices, artists flooding venues to make up revenue lost in the pandemic, airport chaos, supply chain shortages for tour buses, drivers, crew and equipment — has throttled even the heartiest of touring acts, especially indie artists. “The smaller shows are getting annihilated,” says Brian Ross, manager of Thievery Corporation, Guerilla Toss and Forty Feet Tall. He estimates net tour profits dropped 10% to 15% in spring and summer due to higher expenses.
Since Rapino’s rosy report in the spring, numerous previously successful touring acts have canceled shows for a variety of reasons, from COVID-19 to mental health to expenses, including Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Ringo Starr, Jimmy Buffett and Animal Collective. “It’s pretty bad out there,” says Tom Windish, the Wasserman agency head of A&R who represents Billie Eilish, Tove Lo, Viagra Boys and others. “A lot of bands are going out on tour thinking they’re going to make money, and they came home and lost money.” Before the pandemic, Windish adds, many artists made their take-home pay on the “last 20% of the revenue — and now that 20% goes away.”
“It’s an extraordinarily challenging time,” says Joady Harper, founder and CEO of Rocky Road Touring, agent for U.K. bands The Mission, The Chameleons and Theatre of Hate, which postponed their 32-date triple bill club and theater tour until fall 2023 due to exorbitant costs and difficulties procuring visas. “Everybody’s sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs and counting their pennies, because the income they thought they’d have for that period just isn’t there.”
For Harper, whose company represents more than 50 acts, 2022 began in a “high spot,” with artists excited to hit the road post-quarantine and fans buying plentiful tickets. Then Russia invaded Ukraine, gas prices and plane fares shot up, and many tours were “no longer financially viable.”
“All of that on top of the already-tapped mental, spiritual, physical and emotional resources of just having made it through the past few years,” Santigold posted on Facebook in September when she announced she was canceling her tour. “Some of us are finding ourselves simply unable to make it work,” she wrote, striking a chord with frustrated musicians.
With a larger number of acts booked into a pandemic-reduced number of venues, the concert business’ supply-and-demand mechanics have shifted as well. An act that drew 1,000 fans to a show might now wind up with 800 people, according to David T. Viecelli, Chicago agent for Pavement, Joanna Newsom, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Wire. “There’s too much going on, and people aren’t going to four shows a week anymore,” he says.
Even for largely sold-out tours like Pavement, the no-show rate has spiked due to illness or fear of it, which means a drop in merchandise sales, he adds. “It kind of hits you from all sides.”
In order to stay on the road, artists are strategically cutting costs. Ann Henningsen, who manages singer-songwriter Chris Berardo, says he has been performing more frequently with his acoustic trio than his preferred six-man rock band. Ross says Guerilla Toss has cut down on hotels. Sam Luria, who manages New Zealand’s Broods, says the duo’s lighting director programs the technology remotely rather than traveling with the crew. “You’re getting a pretty similar outcome,” he says, “but saving a good amount of money.”
One solution is that bands who might have been poised for headlining tours are pairing with others — Bodysnatcher is opening for Hatebreed, for example. “Maybe you’re not going to sell the same level of merchandise you would, but eventually you will,” says Scott Givens, senior vp of rock and metal at MNRK, the label representing Bodysnatcher. “You don’t want anybody losing money.”
Givens is optimistic the touring economic storm will pass, hoping for a broader recovery in the world economy. “We’ll be fine,” he says. Jeff DeLia, manager of The Blind Boys of Alabama, A.J. Croce and others, acknowledges the financial pain but adds that his clients remain upbeat, telling him, “We know this isn’t going to last, and we’ve just got to fight through these things.”
Less than a year after the final coronavirus restrictions were dropped on concert capacity and attendance, the country’s largest two concert promoters are forecasting record sales in 2023 across a broad swath of building categories and genres. Although another promoter says he’s concerned the future is not nearly as bright for new acts.
Live Nation’s chair for global touring, Arthur Fogel, says his company has seen “absolutely no diminishment in sales” since the full-scale return of concerts and believes there is still significant growth opportunity for the company’s top-line touring acts to command record grosses.
Likewise, AEG Presents president for North America Rick Mueller says that ticket sales for shows already on sale in 2023 indicate record revenue and attendance at every capacity level in the concert space, “from [13,000-capacity] Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, N.Y., to the [500-capacity] Roxy in Los Angeles. We’re going to make a little more next year and work a lot harder for it,” he says, predicting that staffing and supply chain shortages will remain substantial challenges.
“I used to think oversaturation was the biggest threat to the industry, but I no longer believe that bears out,” Mueller adds. His counterpart at Live Nation, Fogel, agrees, noting that less than 1% of events promoted by Live Nation were canceled in 2022.
Neither executive believes economic headwinds from prolonged inflation will significantly diminish sales or lead to a short-term rollback on prices for big-ticket tours, like Bruce Springsteen’s 2023 Live Nation run. “The level of spending around the show hasn’t changed,” says Fogel.
He also says that the top 20 stadium and arena tours “at any given time” are now more diverse than ever, representing multiple genres across multiple demographics. For example, Bad Bunny’s El Último Tour del Mundo tour is the highest-grossing Latin outing in Billboard Boxscore history.
Independent promoter Jim Cressman, founder and owner of Canada’s Invictus Entertainment, says that Live Nation and AEG’s bullish outlook for 2023 is good news for the concert business but worries there’s not enough entry points for new fans or new bands.
“The added expenses that artists have because of inflation and rising energy costs make the economics very difficult for developing acts,” he says, echoing the complaints of indie managers. Cressman recommends that these artists connect early with sponsors to underwrite their tours. “Before the pandemic, sponsors provided a nice income bump,” he says. “Now, they’re critical to covering your costs.”
Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean have reached a settlement with two little-known Detroit rappers, ending a lawsuit claiming the hip-hop superstars ripped off an earlier song with their 2020 collaboration “Go Crazy.”
In a lawsuit filed in July, Duawn “Go Hard Major” Payne and Harrell “H Matic” James claimed that Megan’s song sounded so much like their 2012 track “Krazy” that there was no way it had been created independently without illegal copying.
But just four months later, attorneys for the pair of accusers notified a federal judge Friday (Nov. 11) that the two sides had “reached an agreement in principle to settle their dispute in its entirety.”
The public filing did not disclose any terms of the agreement, like whether any money would exchange hands or songwriting credits would be altered. Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for more details.
“Go Crazy,” released on Stallion’s 2020 debut album Good News, didn’t chart as a single, but the album spent 75 weeks on the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 2 in December 2020. The song featured both Big Sean and 2 Chainz, though the latter was not named in the current lawsuit.
In their July 25 complaint, Payne and James claimed that various aspects of “Krazy” and “Go Crazy” are “nearly identical,” including the wording of the chorus, melodic and harmonic sequences and the use of cadence.
“An average lay observer would recognize the infringing work as having been appropriated from [‘Krazy’] because of the striking similarity between the two compositions and the way in which they are performed,” said the complaint.
Since “Krazy” was never released by a label, the attorneys for the two accusers made a creative, hyper-local argument for why Stallion or Big Sean had enough “access” to the song that they were able to copy it — a key requirement in any copyright infringement lawsuit. They said Payne and James had performed the song in “West Detroit hip hop clubs and bars” where Big Sean — a Motor City native — had frequently gone. The pair also sold “thousands of physical copies of CDs” in the parking lots of those same clubs, their lawyers argued.