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For the last week, the most talked-about song in the music business has been “Heart on My Sleeve,” the track said to have been created by using artificial intelligence to imitate vocals from Drake and The Weeknd and uploaded to TikTok by the user Ghostwriter977. And while most reactions were impressed, there was a big difference between those of fans (“This isn’t bad, which is pretty cool!”) and executives (“This isn’t bad, which is really scary!”). As with much online technology, however, what’s truly remarkable, and frightening, isn’t the quality – it’s the potential quantity.
This particular track didn’t do much damage. Streaming services pulled it down after receiving a request from Universal Music Group, for which both Drake and The Weeknd record. YouTube says the track was removed because of a copyright claim, and “Heart on My Sleeve” contains at least one obvious infringement in the form of a Metro Boomin producer tag. But it’s not as clear as creators and rightsholders might like that imitating Drake’s voice qualifies as copyright infringement.
In a statement released around the time the track was taken down, Universal said that “the training of generative AI using our artists’ music” violated copyright. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Whether that’s true in the U.S. depends on whether training AI with music qualifies as fair use – which will not be clear until courts rule on the matter. Whether it’s true in other countries depends on local statutory exceptions for text and data mining that vary in every country. Either way, though, purposefully imitating Drake’s voice would almost certainly violate his right to what an American lawyer might call his right of publicity but a fan would more likely call his artistic identity. There are precedents for this: A court held that Frito-Lay violated the rights of Tom Waits by imitating his voice for a commercial, and Bette Midler won a similar lawsuit against Ford. Both of those cases involved an implied endorsement – the suggestion of approval where none existed.
The violation of an AI imitation is far more fundamental, though. The essence of Drake’s art – the essence of his Drakeness, if you will – is his voice. (That voice isn’t great by any technical definition, any more than Tom Waits’ is, but it’s a fundamental part of his creativity, even his very identity.) Imitating that is fair enough when it comes to parody – this video of takes on Bob Dylan‘s vocal style seems like it should be fair game because it’s commenting on Dylan instead of ripping him off – but creating a counterfeit Drake might be even more of a moral violation than a commercial one. Bad imitators may be tacky, but people tend to regard very accurate ones as spooky. “Heart on My Sleeve” isn’t Drake Lite so much as an early attempt at Drakenstein – interesting to look at, but fundamentally alarming in the way it imitates humanity. (Myths and stories return to this theme all the time, and it’s hard to think of many with happy endings.) Universal executives know that – they have talked internally about the coming challenges of AI for years – which is why the company’s comment asked stakeholders “which side of history” they want to be on.
This track is just the sign of a coming storm. The history of technology is filled with debates about when new forms of media and technology will surpass old ones in terms of quality when it often matters much more about how cheap and easy they are. No one thinks movies look better on a phone screen than in a theatre, but the device is right there in your hand. Travel agents might be better at booking flights than Expedia, but – well, the fact that there aren’t that many of them anymore makes my point. Here, the issue isn’t whether AI can make a Drake track better than Drake – which is actually impossible by definition, because a Drake track without Drake isn’t really a Drake track at all – but rather how much more productive AI can be than human artists, and what happens once it starts operating at scale.
Imagine the most prolific artist you can think of – say, an insomniac YoungBoy Never Broke Again crossed with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Then imagine that this hypothetical artist never needs to eat or sleep or do anything else that interferes with work. Then imagine that he – or, really, it – never varies from a proven commercial formula. Now clone that artist thousands of times. Because that’s the real threat of AI to the music business – not the quality that could arrive someday but the quantity that’s coming sooner than we can imagine.
It has been said that 100,000 tracks get uploaded to streaming services every day. What happens once algorithms can make pop music at scale? Will that turn into a million tracks a day? Or 100 million? Could music recorded by humans become an exception instead of a rule? In the immediate future, most of this music wouldn’t be very interesting – but the sheer scale and inevitable variety could cut into the revenue collected by creators and rightsholders. The music business doesn’t need an umbrella – it needs a flood barrier.
In the long run, that barrier should be legal – some combination of copyright, personality rights and unfair competition law. That will take time to build, though. For now, streaming services need to continue to work with creators and rightsholders to make clear the difference between artists and their artificial imitators.
Fans who want to hear Drake shouldn’t have to guess which songs are really his.
For the Record is a regular column from deputy editorial director Robert Levine analyzing news and trends in the music industry. Find more here.
The annual IMS Ibiza dance music industry conference launches today (April 26), marking the opening weekend on the famed Spanish clubbing mecca.
IMS Ibiza 2023, the dance second largest conference after Amsterdam’s ADE, is expecting roughly 1,300 delegates from around the world at the luxe Destino Pacha Ibiza resort, which IMS is once again taking over for the three-day event. Co-hosted by dance world legend Pete Tong and BBC Radio 1 DJ and dance producer Jaguar, IMS 2023 is happening April 26-28 with a cavalcade of artists, agents, managers, journalists, managers, label owners and more, altogether representing a flurry of companies including YouTube, Tunecore, Deezer, BBC Radio 1, WME, Wasserman, Beatport, Ultra Music Publishing, the Association For Electronic Music and more.
The intensely robust IMS 2023 schedule — “An absolute monster in terms of curation and the level of speakers coming,” says IMS co-founder Ben Turner — features more than 130 keynotes, discussions, parties, workshops and networking events happening at Destino and satellite locations. Naturally, these include the island’s prestige clubs including Amnesia and Hï, along with the historic Dalt Villa, a UNESCO world heritage site that will once again become a rave during the IMS closing party.
But while the conference will span many topics, Turner anticipates the practicalities and legalities of artificial intelligence to be a major topic of conversation as the music industry at large grapples with how to not just profit from AI, but to understand its potential and sustainably contain its capabilities.
“Electronic music culture has been driven by independence from its roots,” Turner says, “and I think that’s still is a core component of why we’re different… I think our industry is in the best position to embrace AI, because of that independent spirit and that understanding of ownership of IP, and how ownership of masters and publishing gives you more freedom to experiment with this stuff — whereas the majors are just going to do what they always do, which is freak out and shut all the doors.”
IMS will also once again feature the presentation of its annual business report, which surveys the health of the dance music industry across sectors including streaming and live events, and which serves as an industry tool to determine growth sectors. For the first time this year, the report has been prepared by MIDiA Research, and will find new focuses in music publishing and the creator economy, “which around electronic music is obviously huge,” says Turner. This year’s report also reflects “a huge bounce back” of the industry following the pandemic, with this year’s report reflecting 2022 metrics.
IMS Ibiza 2022
Courtesy of IMS Ibiza
Also new this year is IMS’ partnership with Beatport, the digital download platform that acquired a 51% majority stake in IMS this past January. With conferences typically presenting slim margins and IMS’ 2022 partnership with Pollen falling through in the wake of that company’s collapse, the Beatport sale has allowed IMS to create a new level of financial solvency.
“Being really honest about it,” says Turner, “we nearly didn’t survive the pandemic. We had to do refunds, we didn’t have a show for three years, we had zero income coming in, we had to cut overhead, we had to cut our small but core team. There was a big question of, ‘Can we still do this? Can we afford to still do this? And can we afford to risk doing this?’”
Turner emphasizes that he and the other IMS founders are maintaining organizational and curatorial control the conference, that Beatport can help IMS grow and that the IMS team has “been really encouraged and feel extremely supported by them.”
But while the Beatport acquisition is presenting new opportunities, it also came with baggage due to a 2022 VICE article alleging sexism, racism and a toxic work culture within Beatport. Following Beatport’s acquisition of IMS, longstanding music industry diversity and inclusion advocacy group shesaid.so announced — after a seven year partnership with IMS — that it would be putting a “temporary pause” on its participation in IMS this year. (Read shesaid.so’s complete statement on the topic.)
So too did U.K. advocacy group Black Artist Database, which suspended its partnership with Beatport last August. The organization also recently released a statement that it would not be sending any members to IMS 2023. In an April 13 statement, IMS noted that the conference “understands and respects the need to make such decisions and will continue to remain strong supporters of both organizations and the values that they stand for. Our continued, long-term, widely-acknowledged commitment to diversity, inclusion and equality in all its intersections is demonstrated in our 2023 programming and it remains a core tenet of our ethos.”
“We understand why they needed to make their statements, Turner says. “Our door is always open, and we hope that we can work with both organizations in the future. I don’t see why that can’t happen. I think there needs to be dialogue between all of the parties, I don’t think this gets resolved any other way than people communicating and trying to understand each others perspective.”
“I’m on a mission is to help make dance music a more equal place that is representative of minorities, while supporting emerging artists,” IMS co-host Jaguar adds. “I’m really proud of the work we are doing alongside Ben and the IMS team to achieve this at the summit.” She adds that “It wouldn’t feel right to go into this week without extending my love, support and solidarity to Black Artist Database and shesaid.so, who will sadly not be present at IMS this year. What [they] both stand for is incredibly close to my heart and so important.”
While IMS delegates largely arrive from throughout Europe, Turner reports “a growing number of hardcore American attendees,” a demographic he attributes to the fact that “there isn’t a conference with a narrative left around the business of electronic music in America.” (IMS did host a one-day event in Los Angeles for five years, during the apex of the EDM boom.) He says if IMS is to add another event to its schedule, it will be in the U.S.
“I think we’re globally-minded in our output, but I do think America has its own set of issues, its own dialogue, its own need for its own Summit, no question. Because America is so big, and there’s an inward looking industry, quite a lot of people don’t think much beyond America in terms of their travel or their even in some cases, their ambitions. There’s a very strong home grown scene that deserves to have its own moment.”
For this week, though, the moment will once again be in Ibiza. Billboard will be reporting from the conference this week.
Boundary-pushing pop artist Grimes has left Columbia Records, according to a source from the label. The singer’s longtime manager, Daouda Leonard, confirmed the news.
The Canadian musician signed with Columbia in March 2021, marking her first major label deal after releasing five albums on independent labels prior. Geidi Primes and Halfaxa both arrived in 2010 on Canadian indie Arbutus Records, while her last three albums — Visions (2012), Art Angels (2015) and Miss Anthropocene (2020) — were released on 4AD.
Visions hit No. 98 on the Billboard 200 and No. 17 on Billboard‘s Top Alternative Albums chart. Art Angeles landed at No. 36 on the Billboard 200 and topped the Top Alternative Albums chart. And Miss Anthropocene hit No. 32 on the Billboard 200, No. 4 on Top Alternative Albums and No. 1 on the Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart.
Grimes has long teased her forthcoming sixth album, BOOK 1, offering many status updates during her time at Columbia. Last fall she even shared on social media that the project was done and may be released in two parts.
“Album is done we’re mixing. My friend and I. perfected the last song in the plastic surgery clinic cuz they wouldn’t let me leave and we were laughing that this was the most Hollywood moment of all time. I have 20 songs so maybe BOOK 1 and BOOK 2? Deciding format/ tracklist,” she wrote on Twitter.
Last month, Grimes offered a sneak peek into the long-awaited album during her performance at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival. During the set, she also unveiled her latest venture, ELF.TECH, an app and web-based operating system, as well as unveiled Grimes Gen 1 Avatars, the first series of her own virtual artificial intelligence avatars.
Over the weekend, Grimes took to Twitter to voice her support of A.I. Posting a screenshot of an article about fake hits by Drake and The Weekend, made using A.I., Grimes wrote: “I’ll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty. I have no label and no legal bindings.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said Tuesday (April 25) that, contrary to the widespread backlash artificial intelligence (AI) tools have faced, he’s optimistic the technology could actually be a good thing for musicians and for Spotify.
While acknowledging the copyright infringement concerns presented by songs like the AI-generated Drake fake “Heart on My Sleeve” — which racked up 600,000 streams on Spotify before the platform took it down — in comments made on a Spotify conference call and podcast, Ek said AI tools could ease the learning curve for first-time music creators and spark a new era of artistic expression.
“On the positive side, this could be potentially huge for creativity,” Ek said on a conference call discussing the company’s first-quarter earnings. “That should lead to more music [which] we think is great culturally, but it also benefits Spotify because the more creators we have on our service the better it is and the more opportunity we have to grow engagement and revenue.”
Ek’s entrepreneurial confidence that AI can be an industry boon in certain instances stands in contrast to a steady campaign of condemnation for generative machine learning tools coming from Universal Music Group, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and others.
At the same time, companies including Spotify, Warner Music Group, HYBE, ByteDance, SoundCloud and a host of start-ups have leaned in on the potential of AI, investing or partnering with machine learning companies.
The industry is still sorting the ways in which AI can be used and attempting to delineate between AI tools that are helpful and those that are potentially harmful. The use case presenting the most consternation uses a machine-learning process to identify patterns and characteristics in songs that make them irresistible and reproduce those patterns and characteristics in new creations.
Functional music — i.e., sounds designed to promote sleep, studying or relaxation — has become a fertile genre for AI, and playlists featuring AI-enhanced or generated music have racked up millions of followers on Spotify and other streaming services. This has led to concerns by some record executives who have noted that functional music eats into major-label market share.
For Spotify’s part, in February the platformSpotify launched an “AI DJ,” which uses AI technology to gin up song recommendations for premium subscribers based on their listening history, narrated by commentary delivered by an AI voice platform.
“I’m very familiar with the scary parts … the complete generative stuff or even the so-called deep fakes that pretend to be someone they’re not,” Ek said on Tuesday’s episode of Spotify’s For the Record podcast. “I choose to look at the glass as more half-full than half-empty. I think if it’s done right, these AIs will be incorporated into almost every product suite to enable creativity to be available to many more people around the world.”
Annual revenue for Round Hill Music Royalty Fund grew 32% to $32.4 million in 2022, driven by strong performances of the Guernsey-based company’s rights management and synchronization business, coupled with underlying growth in the global recorded music industry, according to year-end financial results published Tuesday (Apr. 25).
Income from music publishing rights grew 12% year-on-year to $17 million, a rise of 12% on 2021, accounting for 69% of Round Hill’s annual revenue. Master rights revenues, derived from music streaming, CD and vinyl sales and downloads, grew by 70% to $10.9 million.
The fair market value of Round Hill’s portfolio — which includes the rights to over 120,000 songs across 51 catalogs, including tracks by Celine Dion, Bush, The Offspring, Carrie Underwood, The Supremes, Wilson Pickett and Whitesnake — was up 13% year-on-year to $602.6 million.
Economic net asset value also increased 13% to $519.6 million. The valuations are based on a report by the company’s independent valuer, Citrin Cooperman, and a second independent valuation by FTI Consulting, says Round Hill.
Almost half (44%) of the company’s publishing revenue came from performance rights royalties generated by music being played on radio and television, live concerts or in public spaces such as shops, bars and restaurants, Round Hill said.
Breaking down the company’s publishing revenue, more than a quarter (27%) was generated by synch deals, including the placement of “All by Myself,” by singer-songwriter Eric Carmen, in advertisements for Adobe Photoshop; Spacehog‘s “In the Meantime” featuring in the trailer for Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3; and Alice In Chains‘ “Rooster” being spotlighted in the Netflix series Super Pumped.
Speaking of Alice in Chains, Round Hill — which is listed on the main market of the London Stock Exchange — acquired a majority share of the band’s publishing catalog, neighboring rights and master recording rights from remaining living members Jerry Cantrell, Sean Kinney, Mike Inez and William Duvall in February. The estates of the late singer Layne Staley and late bassist Mike Starr sold their rights and income streams to Primary Wave at the same time.
The start of last year also saw Round Hill acquire master and publishing rights to the catalog of David Coverdale, the Whitesnake frontman and former lead singer of Deep Purple. In its financial results, Round Hill says the two acquisitions marked “the full deployment” of the $85 million the company raised through a share placement in July 2021.
In total, Round Hill said it successfully placed 560 songs across a range of high-profile films, television series and brand campaigns last year, fueling 33% year-on-year growth in synch revenues.
New two-year license agreements with TikTok and Meta on more favorable terms in 2022 also contributed to the strong financial results, generating higher digital revenues in the second half of last year, the company said.
Josh Gruss, CEO of Round Hill Music, tells Billboard the company’s strong financial results are attributable to its “very in-demand repertoire” and an experienced team of 70 employees in the U.S. and Europe, including London, Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, “sweating that repertoire really hard.”
Going forward, he says, the focus is on narrowing the gap between Round Hill’s economic net asset value of $519.6 million and its current stock price, which was trading at between $0.64 and $0.66 on Tuesday. In terms of new catalog acquisitions, Gruss says Round Hill will have to raise more equity before it can make “meaningful” additions to its portfolio and adds that the company will remain focused on songs recorded and released in the early 2010s and before.
“We like to be really conservative in how we approach acquisitions and the problem we have with younger music is that it’s just really hard to forecast how those songs pan out over the next 10 years,” says Gruss. “Good music is timeless and it’s really important that we have timeless music. We don’t want to have the flavor of the [month] — a song that’s going to be popular today, but gone tomorrow. You can make a big mistake in those type of investments.”
“We are living in an electronic age and electronics is changing the world.” This bold-for-the-time declaration, from the June 24, 1967, issue of Billboard, came from an unlikely source: Limeliters banjo player Alex Hassilev. For an acoustic musician, he was savvy about electronics: Over the years since, we’ve gone from classical compositions played on synths to music created by artificial intelligence. What’s next? Just ask ChatGPT!
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Come On, Moog!
A year after the Summer of Love, Billboard hailed the age of computer love. The Oct. 12, 1968, issue predicted that “computers would someday allow operators to obtain overnight, or at least weekly, reports of record popularity on jukeboxes.” A month later, Billboard reported that “[a]n electronic Bach album is being issued by Columbia Masterworks this month,” which “employs a specially adapted Moog synthesizer as its musical instrument.” That recording, Wendy Carlos’ groundbreaking Switched-On Bach, became “only the second classical record in history to sell more than 1 million units,” according to the June 8, 1974, issue.
Speaking on the Moog in the Dec. 20, 1969, issue, jazz drummer Chico Hamilton opined, “it’s up to the listener to decide if it’s music or not,” but quipped, “some people turn electricity off.”
Synths In the Key of Life
While the Sept. 30, 1972, Billboard reported that skeptics saw synthesizers as merely a “cheaper alternative to a real string section,” the Sept. 9, 1973, issue proclaimed that keyboards were now the “hot instrument” thanks to synthesizers becoming an “integral part” of Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. By the late ’70s, Giorgio Moroder taught the Moog to move, and the July 30, 1977, issue praised the “incessant, spacey, machine-like beat” on Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”
One-Way Ticket
Synths were inescapable on the Billboard Hot 100 by the time of the March 24, 1984, issue, and Billboard ran a prescient headline with a phrase from Steve Jobs: “Computers Bound to Become ‘The Second Telephone.’ ” Another piece in the same issue covered the rise of “computerized [ticket-selling] outlets like Ticketron, Bass, Select-A-Seat, Ticketmaster and others,” noting that “the logistics of selling tickets becomes smoother; the service charge, however, is divvied up between more parties.”
Prog Rock and Prog-ROM
After Peter Gabriel released the musical computer game XPLORA1, the Jan. 8, 1994, Billboard hailed him as “the first major pop artist to actively participate in the creation of an interactive CD-ROM title integrating substantial amounts of music, video, still photos, text and ‘virtual touring.’ ” Not everyone was ready to get with the program, though. “We don’t see the point of participating in something if ‘the medium is the message,’ ” said The Cure’s Robert Smith about E-CDs in the Aug. 17, 1996, issue. “It’s an interesting idea, but is that art in itself?”
AI Think, Therefore AI Jam
A feature on digital recording in the Oct. 9, 1993, issue addressed fears of “sterile” mixes and “computer control supplanting the human touch.” “There is nothing spookier than facing something totally unfamiliar,” said producer John Hampton. “[But] you can let technology do so much of the work for you that you can sit back and look at the big picture.” A Berklee dean agreed: “What computers in general have done, is allowed us to take our minds off the mundane and concentrate on the creative.”
The same concern came back in a piece in the March 18, 2017, Billboard, which pointed out that “for songwriters, the subject of artificial intelligence is an especially fraught one.” The beat goes on, in other words — even if technology helps create it.
A version of this story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Attorneys for Ed Sheeran and his copyright accusers sparred before a Manhattan federal jury Tuesday morning, kicking off a closely-watched trial over whether his “Thinking Out Loud” infringed Marvin Gaye‘s famed “Let’s Get It On.”
With Sheeran himself watching impassively, attorney Benjamin Crump repeatedly told the jury to use their “common sense” to see that the pop star had stolen the “magic” from the earlier song.
“If you remember nothing else about this case, simply remember it is about giving credit where credit is due,” Crump said during his opening statement, occasionally speaking directly to Sheeran just feet away.
Teasing testimony that will unfold during the trial, Crump said he would show jurors “smoking gun” evidence: a much-debated video of Sheeran toggling between the two songs at a concert.
“That concert video is a confession,” Crump said.
Firing back for Sheeran was attorney Ilene Farkas, who told the jury during her own opening statements that Sheeran had “independently created” his song. And more importantly, she said, the only overlap with “Let’s” were his use of “exceedingly common musical building blocks” that cannot be “monopolized” by his accusers.
“Plaintiffs do not own them, because nobody does,” Farkas said. “All songwriters draw from this same basic toolkit.”
Ed Sheeran arrives at Manhattan Court to testify on the copyright trial where he is accused of copying Marvin Gaye’s song, in New York, United States on April 25, 2023.
Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via GI
She said her clients had been “wrongly accursed of taking something they did not take,” and warned jurors that a verdict for Sheeran’s accusers would “change the what that songwriters are able to write.”
“We ask you not to let that happen,” Farkas told the jury.
Tuesday’s opening statements mark the start of a long-awaited trial in a copyright lawsuit filed way back in 2017 by heirs of Ed Townsend, Gaye’s longtime producer who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On,” over Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” — a commercial and critical success that hit No. 2 on the Hot 100 before winning the Grammy Award for song of the year.
The case claims that Sheeran infringed copyrights by stealing the “heart” from one of the most “instantly recognizable songs in R&B history.” But the pop star’s lawyers say he simply used commonplace musical elements that are free for all to use.
The trial, taking place at the U.S. federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, kicked off Monday with jury selection on Monday before actually getting under way with opening statements on Tuesday. Testimony is expected to run at least through Friday, meaning a verdict could arrive Friday or early the following week.
Testimony will continue on Tuesday afternoon, potentially with Sheeran himself taking the witness stand.
If found liable, Sheeran could be facing millions in potential damages. After a jury ruled that the 2013 megahit “Blurred Lines” had infringed Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ultimately ordered to pay a $5 million judgment, plus ongoing royalties from their song.
New Oreleanians traveling along US Route 90 may not suspect that the revered Caesars Superdome is on the cusp of a renaissance.
Since 2020, the nearly 50-year-old stadium has been going through a $450 million renovation, scheduled to conclude by the end of next year. According to Evan Holmes, general manager at Caesars Superdome, Smoothie King Center and Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District (LSED) Properties for ASM Global, as the Louisiana State University Tigers exited the building having clinched their fourth national football championship earlier this April, contractors were making their way in to pop off old ceiling tiles and get to work.
The multi-phase, multi-year renovation has been moving forward since then — with minimal impact on events at the nearly 75,000-capacity venue — as the Superdome’s managers look to improve the guest experience and modernize amenities, without replacing the building’s architectural characteristics.
“A lot of communities would kill to have something like [the Superdome], let alone something like this, for 50 years,” says Holmes.
The exterior of the Superdome will remain unchanged, while the interior concourse is being expanded. Roughly 80,000 sq. ft. of ramps on each level – previously used for ingress and egress – are being pulled out and replaced with staircases to make wider concourses, with enhanced food and beverage options, more restrooms and better merchandise stations. The building has new field level suites that open to the endzone — “If [New Orleans Saints running back] Alvin Kamra scores a touchdown, he’s liable to jump on your lap,” says Holmes — and a field level club for games and private events, eight viewing decks with standing room overlooking the field with up-to-date ADA accommodations. So far, the East side of the building has undergone its renovations — and, by the 2024 Saints season, the West side will be completed, with new grab-and-go concessions and a new atrium.
Working behind the walls for four years is a herculean task, but pales in comparison to the cost of a new NFL stadium. (The NFL’s newest stadiums, Allegiant in Las Vegas and SoFi in Los Angeles — both opened in 2020 — have cost roughly $2 billion and $5 billion, respectively). The $450 million renovations are being funded by the State of Louisiana, the LSED and the New Orleans Saints, subsequent to the team’s new lease agreement. By not closing the venue for renovations, the Superdome will hold on to valued college football events like the Sugar Bowl and the Bayou Classic, as well as Essence Fest, which brings half a million attendees to New Orleans.
Gensler/Trahan Architects
If you’re building a new stadium, “you’re missing those big, high-impact events in the market. So, the hotels aren’t having that content, the restaurants don’t have [that content],” says Holmes. “There’s a cascading list of reasons why it makes sense for us not to take the building down.”
In addition to keeping tenants and established events, updating the building means hanging on to “the skin,” as Holmes calls it, of the storied venue. The Superdome has hosted seven Super Bowls, as well as concerts from The Jacksons, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Buffet, Willie Nelson, Al Green, The Temptations, The Rolling Stones, Prince, Whitney Houston, KISS, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and many more legendary artists.
Holmes explains that the renovation is not to change the look of the Superdome or generate exorbitant amounts of money for the team, but to make a better overall experience for fans. “You’re competing for these big events and we think the Superdome, especially after this renovation, can do all the things that these other buildings can do operationally,” he says. “It may not have all the brand-new bells and whistles that they may have, but functionally we can do it all. We’ve got character that other buildings wish they had.”
Caesars Superdome will once again host the Super Bowl in 2025 (it was originally scheduled to host the 2024 Bowl, but the schedule conflicted with New Orleans’ world-renowned Mardi Gras), just as the building celebrates its 50th anniversary. “It’s not just a football stadium,” says Holmes. “It means a lot of things to a lot of people, so we want to celebrate that.”
Live Nation’s new destination festival company Vibee has partnered with LN-owned dance promoter Insomniac to launch Tiësto | ‘Chasing Sunsets’ taking place Nov. 9-12 in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
Headlined and curated by Dutch DJ and dance legend Tiësto, the four-day event will include multiple performances from the Grammy Award-winning artist along with sets from yet-to-be announced acts, plus beach activities, local cultural excursions and more.
The weekend’s home base and headline venue will be ME Cabo, a five-star resort located on the beach, near the marina in Cabo San Lucas. Guests heading to ‘Chasing Sunsets’ will also be met with pool parties, exclusive cocktail parties, a special “Drive into Sunset” set by Tiësto and additional weekend events at Cabo hot spots Mango Deck, Funky Geisha, Taboo and SUR. Attendees can customize their getaway with high-end add-ons including a “Taste of Mexico Brunch” with Tiësto, boat parties, jet skiing, parasailing and tequila tastings.
Tiësto | ‘Chasing Sunsets’ will be the first of many collaborations between Vibee and Insomniac, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
“Through their exclusive worldwide agreement to produce customized experiences and festival integrations, Insomniac and Vibee will bring even more unique events to their communities and amplify the fan-to-artist connection,” a press release announcing the partnership explains.
More information on packages and pricing can be found here.
Keep your eye on us!” declares New Orleans music entrepreneur Nate Cameron Jr. “We’re in a very unique renaissance now.”
Cameron, a co-founder of the New Orleans creative collective glbl wrmng and tour/space production manager for the Grammy Award-nominated group Tank and the Bangas, gives a shoutout to the global music community with an enthusiasm that reflects the current upbeat mood in New Orleans music industry circles.
Such excitement is sparked in part by the emergence of a sophisticated music business infrastructure in a city where that essential knowledge has been conspicuously absent in the past. Despite the abundant talent in New Orleans — one of the world’s great musical locales — this shortcoming previously made some view it as something of a business backwater. As a result, hometown musicians missed many lucrative national-level opportunities and were vulnerable to industry exploitation.
Many New Orleans artists who sought to bolster their careers by connecting with respected professionals felt that they had to relocate to New York, Los Angeles or Nashville — and some pros who stayed home came to feel stigmatized for hailing from New Orleans. “I know someone in the music business here, now, who has an L.A. phone number so that people from out of town will take him seriously — and that is just bananas,” says Melissa O’Brien, producer of NOLA MusicCon, the music business conference that will return for a second annual in-person event Oct. 24-27.
“Many people think of New Orleans music exclusively in terms of its historic traditions, especially from the classic R&B era of Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Dr. John, The Neville Brothers and Irma Thomas — the ‘giants’ of New Orleans R&B. And we have The Radiators, who are like our own Grateful Dead,” says Quint Davis, producer-director of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which runs April 28-May 7. “But I think people need to understand that New Orleans music is not frozen in time, that another generation of younger artists has emerged who are commercial and hot and rocking. They are very innovative and forward-thinking, and they are building high-profile, nationally successful careers — artists such as Trombone Shorty, Jon Batiste, Big Freedia, Galactic, The Revivalists, Tank and the Bangas, Boyfriend, Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk. In contemporary jazz, there’s Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison and Terence Blanchard playing a role on the national stage. The list goes on and on in all genres. This exciting surge of fresh creativity is important for the global music business to understand about New Orleans today.
“There is now a significantly increased level of management,” Davis continues, “that can lead artists into making wise career choices; getting good publishing deals, which was lacking here for years; getting good record deals; and all the other career benefits that come with having national-level, nationally respected, well-connected, competent professional management people, such as Dino Gankendoff and Rueben Williams. There are good, new recording studios here as well. It has taken a long time for the highest standard of business infrastructure and technology to come to New Orleans. Now we have a lot of it, and that is a very promising recent development.”
David Shaw and Ed Williams of The Revivalists perform during the 2022 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival at Fair Grounds Race Course on May 07, 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage
Today, the word is out that local musicians can acquire essential business acumen without leaving town. Jonathan McHugh, the Hilton-Baldridge eminent scholar and chair of music industry studies at the city’s Loyola University, is “enthusiastic about the opportunities to be a filmmaker, record producer, publisher and music supervisor here. I’m invigorated by the potential to help [continue to build] the industry here and supply it with great young talent entering the workforce.”
Reid Wick, senior manager of membership and industry relations with the Recording Academy in New Orleans, explains that “over the last 15-plus years, many of us in the music industry here, with the support of the Recording Academy, worked to establish an impressive set of incentives for music industry growth. The state of Louisiana now has the strongest suite of incentives in the country, which includes investor rebates for recording and touring projects, as well as the growth of music jobs via payroll tax incentives.
“Additionally, we have garnered support from the economic development, tourism and government sectors to give the local music industry a seat at the table … These developments have led to the creation of the New Orleans Music Economy initiative, working with the international consulting firm Sound Diplomacy, under the auspices of [the economic development agency] Greater New Orleans Inc. We have been able to raise the awareness of the economic impact and importance of the local music industry as a true industry, as well as a cultural driver of the city’s overall economic health and well-being.”
Greater New Orleans Inc. vp of communications Matt Wolfe agrees. “The next step for the city is to execute on the business side of the industry — managing intellectual property, legal work, marketing, record labels, tour coordination and the other services that artists utilize in their growth trajectory,” he says. “The opportunity is here for the majors to capitalize on a market where artists already come to write and record.”
Walt Leger, president/CEO of New Orleans & Company, the city’s tourism board, credits this new climate to, in one word, “partnerships. I think what you are seeing is planning and ideation around the music business and its development happening in a very collaborative spirit, with higher education, the business community and state and local leadership.”
Nicholas Payton of the Nicholas Payton Trio performs during the 2022 Newport Jazz Festival at Fort Adams State Park on July 29, 2022 in Newport, Rhode Island.
Douglas Mason/GI
Cameron explains, “The global music business needs to know that New Orleans today is as vital, unique, innovative and modern as it has always been. At the core, New Orleans music has always been known for having genre lines that are blended by people from different cultures and different communities. The most promising recent development is the intentionality of our leading artists not only working together, collaborating with each other on music, collaborating with each other on tours, and collaborating on business ventures and properties, but also the spirit of fellowship and collaboration leading artists and cultural bearers and influencers, having the intentionality of bringing along the younger generations. We have a lot of young artists who are authentic to New Orleans, but they’re also very plugged into the national and international mix.”
Reid Martin, owner of New Orleans-based artist services firm MidCitizen Entertainment, is pleased that “we have some of the best business incentives in the country.” Recently, Louisiana launched the MIC’D UP (Music Industry Career Development University Partnership) program. To offer a $15-per-hour internship, “the state pays half of the wages, so the private business only has to [pay] $7.50 an hour,” he says. “At the end of the year, the hope is that the participating companies hire their interns, thus creating a new full-time, music industry job in New Orleans, and start the process all over again the next year with a new intern.
“In addition to this program,” adds Martin, “we have two sets of tax incentives, the qualified music company tax credit and the qualified entertainment company tax credit, that give tax breaks to companies that hire three employees at $35,000 per year [the QMC credit] or five employees at $45,000 per year [the QEC credit].”
Historian, educator and event planner Melissa A. Weber points out that local artists can benefit from “several endeavors that are invested in educating musicians about the business of music,” she says. “My favorites include workshops and legal clinics presented by the Ella Project, a nonprofit that offers pro bono legal assistance, arts business services and advocacy to the local cultural community; the New Orleans Music Economy Initiative, a project of Greater New Orleans Inc., focusing on intellectual property management and a competitive economic development strategy for New Orleans music; and Loyola University New Orleans’ Music Industry Studies program, which allows students to work with producers, managers, attorneys and other music business professionals.”
New Orleans’ brick-and-mortar facilities, large and small, also inspire enthusiasm. Since opening in 1975, Caesars Superdome has hosted The Rolling Stones; the Ultimate Event bill of Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and Sammy Davis Jr.; the Essence Music Festival; and the Bayou Country Superfest headlined by George Strait and many others. The iconic stadium is in the home stretch of a multiyear (2020-24) upgrade of its physical spaces and technology. “We’ve got character other buildings wish they had,” says Evan Holmes, GM of Caesars Superdome, the adjacent Smoothie King Center and LSED Properties.
Big Freedia performs at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, on Saturday, May 7, 2022, in New Orleans.
Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Robert Mercurio, bassist for Galactic — the band that bought renowned nightclub Tipitina’s in late 2018 — says that, for promising new developments, “one of the best things is that we have a record-pressing plant in the city limits now, New Orleans Record Press, vinyl only. I feel like this has opened up the window for artists to have easy access to the most popular album format and actually make some real money from their music.” Since launching in late 2020, Tipitina’s Record Club has released albums, many of them archival, by Dr. John, Ernie K-Doe, Danny Barker, Donald Harrison, Fats Domino, Johnny Adams, Etta James, Trombone Shorty and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band with Dizzy Gillespie and James Booker, with more on the way.
And PJ Morton — a Grammy-winning musician, vocalist, songwriter, producer and label owner — is proud to announce that “we just [began] renovating the historic Dew Drop Inn, a place that brought so much talent to town years ago. I feel that it’ll be that same type of go-to club now.” From the mid-’40s through the late ’60s, the Dew Drop was one of the most important venues for classic New Orleans R&B performed by masters including Allen Toussaint, Earl King and Huey “Piano” Smith.
New Orleans’ newfound business climate doesn’t mean the city has become too serious or lost its charm. As music, sports and entertainment banker Charles Gaspard of First Horizon Bank says, “I know everyone says this about their hometown, but there is something about New Orleans that you just can’t find anywhere else. There’s a magic to this city. A dysfunctional magic, maybe, but a magic nonetheless. It’s in our architecture, it’s in our food, it’s in the people, it’s even in the potholes, and it lingers in the air as thick as the year-round humidity. It seeps into the sounds mastered here and feeds the creativity of the artists that welcome our beautifully chaotic energy.”
New Orleans native, NPR journalist and author Gwen Thompkins feels that the city “is as it ever was — a wellspring of tremendous talent with multiple opportunities every day to hear live music worth listening to.” She notes that the public radio station WWOZ-FM (90.7) makes on-air announcements every other hour about upcoming concerts. “Those announcements usually take more than five minutes to deliver because of the sheer number of performances,” she says. “Musicians here are both singular and awe-inspiringly collaborative. They play well with others, cross-pollinating in ways that musicians in other locales often do not. Players known mostly for their work in funk, for example, will perform live with others known for contemporary jazz. A bounce artist will organize a gospel music concert for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Other artists may explore the connections between jazz and opera, or join hip-hop, electronica and the musical traditions of the city’s Black Masking Indians. Singer-songwriters and avant-garde artists have standing dates in clubs around town.
“And, most importantly,” adds Thompkins, “many artists here shoulder the responsibility of tutoring younger generations in the city’s music traditions — from early jazz to hip-hop, to bounce and R&B. The city is, and has always been, a giant incubator of talent.”
As Cameron says, “It’s a new day for New Orleans, an exciting new day for our culture, in a way that our ancestors never could have imagined.”
Contributor Ben Sandmel produces the oral history/interview venue at New Orleans’ Jazz Fest, produced and played drums on the Hackberry Ramblers’ Grammy-nominated Deep Water and wrote Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans.
This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023, issue of Billboard.
