State Champ Radio Business
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Tracy McKnight is joining BMI as vp of creative, film, TV & visual media. In the role, McKnight will lead the day-to-day functions of the department while identifying and signing new affiliates to BMI and cultivating relationships with the company’s roster of film, TV and visual media composers. Additionally, she will help develop programs and events that support career development while providing opportunities to highlight the work of BMI’s composers. She is based out of BMI’s Los Angeles office and will report to BMI executive vp of creative & licensing Mike Steinberg; she assumes the role on Jan. 23. McKnight most recently oversaw the film score acquisition department at Wise Publishing.
Riccardo Loda was promoted to head of A&R at Warner Chappell Music (WCM) Italy; he was previously A&R manager. Based in Milan, he’ll report to WCM president of Southern Europe Santiago Menéndez-Pidal.
Anton Powers joined Sony Music Entertainment’s Ministry of Sound Records as head of A&R. Powers joins the label following three years at Warner Records. He reports to Columbia Records UK president Dipesh Parmar.
Sam Jackson was named controller at BBC Radio 3, succeeding Alan Davey, who will step down from the position in March after eight years. In the role, Jackson will drive creative and managerial responsibility for running Radio 3 while delivering on the annual classical music festival BBC Proms. He was most recently executive vp of global classics & jazz at Universal Music Group. Jackson begins his new role in April, reporting to BBC director of music Lorna Clarke.
Tracklib hired Michael Cassidy as chief product and technology officer and tapped Andreas Liffgarden (Soundtrack Your Brand) to serve as an advisor on the company’s board. Cassidy formerly served as chief innovation officer at FUGA and was a consultant on strategy and technology for Downtown Music Holdings.
Adrian Karvinen was appointed vp of music business & partnerships at Web3 entertainment company Hume, which creates virtual artists. Karvinen will be tasked with building partnerships with brands and artists for the company’s so-called “metastars.” He was most recently director of North America and head of crypto-integration and catalog acquisitions for AI music company Snafu Records.
Nicholas Brema was promoted to business manager at Leftbrain. He can be reached at nbrema@useleftbrain.com.
Lily Collins was named account manager at Milestone Publicity in Nashville; she was formerly associate publicist. She can be reached at LCollins@MilestonePublicity.com.
Tenasie Courtright joined Jody Williams Songs as creative coordinator. Based in Nashville, she previously worked as a brand ambassador for Simple Logistics Solutions. She can be reached at tenasie@jodywilliamssongs.co.
Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog.
It’s one of the company’s biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
He said the layoffs reflect a “rigorous review” carried out by Google of its operations.
The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said. He said he was “deeply sorry” for the layoffs.
Regulatory filings illustrate how Google’s workforce swelled during the pandemic, ballooning to nearly 187,000 people by late last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019.
Pichai said that Google, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, was “bound to go through difficult economic cycles.”
“These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” he wrote.
There will be job cuts in the U.S. and in other unspecified countries, according to Pichai’s letter.
The tech industry has been forced to freeze hiring and cut jobs “as the clock has struck midnight on hyper growth and digital advertising headwinds are on the horizon,” Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Taz Koujalgi and John Katsingris wrote Friday.
Just this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts, or nearly 5% of its workforce. Amazon said this month its cutting 18,000 jobs, although that’s a fraction of its 1.5 million strong workforce, while business software maker Salesforce is laying off about 8,000 employees, or 10% of the total. Last fall Facebook parent Meta announced it would shed 11,000 positions, or 13% of its workers. Elon Musk slashed jobs at Twitter after after he acquired the social media company last fall.
Those job cuts are hitting smaller players as well. U.K.-based cybersecurity firm Sophos laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase cut 20% of its workforce, about 950 jobs, in its second round of layoffs in less than a year.
“The stage is being set: tech names across the board are cutting costs to preserve margins and get leaner” in the current economic climate, the Wedbush analysts said.
Employment in the U.S. has been resilient despite signs of a slowing economy, and there were another 223,000 jobs added in December. Yet the tech sector grew exceptionally fast over the last several years due to increased demand as employees began to work remotely.
CEOs of a number of companies have taken blame for growing too fast, yet those same companies, even after the latest round of job cuts, remain much larger than they were before the economic boom from the pandemic began.
A court in India has ordered internet service providers to block access to 20 sites that were used to illegally download audio and video streams in India from platforms like YouTube, the IFPI says.
The civil ruling, published in the High Court of Delhi on Jan. 12, was the first such action in India to tackle the practice of stream-ripping, one of the country’s most rampant forms of piracy. The 20 blocked sites collectively received nearly half a billion visits last year from users based in India, according to the IFPI, which coordinated the action with the Indian Music Industry (IMI) on behalf of Sony Music India, Universal Music India and Warner Music India.
The labels told the court that the “rogue websites” were providing services in which copyrighted content on various platforms, primarily YouTube, could be downloaded in mp3 or mp4 format by copying the link in the space provided in the websites. Because the details of the websites’ real administrators are masked, the plaintiffs’ lawyer argued it would be impossible for them to pursue the websites in separate proceedings regarding individual copyrighted content.
Justice C Hari Shankar, who wrote the order, directed India’s government to issue a notification calling upon the various Internet service providers to block access to the websites in India. (The court order reviewed by Billboard says there are 18 defendants, but IFPI says the decision targets 20 infringing websites and more than 50 urls.)
In India, websites are regularly blocked on the basis of copyright infringement using Section 69A of the Information and Technology Act 2000 (as amended in 2008), Information Technology Rules 2009 and civil procedure rules, the IFPI tells Billboard.
“We welcome this decision and the strong message it sends to operators of stream ripping sites, wherever they may be based, that we are prepared to take the appropriate action against them,” Frances Moore, IFPI’s chief executive, says in a press release.
“Given that it’s the first time a website blocking order has been granted against stream ripping websites, this precedent is an important step in the right direction for the Indian recorded music industry,” Blaise Fernandes, IMI’s president and CEO, says in the same release.
Digital music has been leading the way in the rapid growth of India’s music market, which booked $219 million in recorded music revenues in 2021, up 20.3% from 2020. Streaming, which grew by 22.5% in 2021, now represents 87% of total trade value in the 17th-largest music market, according to IFPI’s Global Market Report.
But the IFPI notes that a study last year found that India still has a rate of piracy more than twice that of most major music markets, with 73% of internet users using unlicensed or illegal methods to listen to music, compared to a global average of 30%. Intellectual property rights theft “is like a cancer,” Fernandes wrote in a 2020 op-ed. “You need both palliative care via social messaging, as well as chemotherapy via the Indian Penal Code or laws that keep up with the needs of India’s digital requirements.”
Beyond India, the recording industry has stepped up efforts to crack down on stream-ripping websites. Courts and authorities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Ecuador, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Peru, Russia and Spain have all issued decisions over the last few years ordering service providers to block customers’ access to such websites, the IFPI says.
U.S. music companies have also battled stream-rippers, who are often based outside the country. In a case brought by more than two dozen record labels, a U.S. magistrate judge in Alexandria, Va., recommended in December 2021 that the operator of two Russian stream-ripping sites, Tofig Kurbanov, pay $82.9 million in damages for circumventing YouTube’s anti-piracy measures and infringing copyrights of audio recordings.
Kurbanov’s piracy operation drew more than 300 million global users to the sites from October 2017 to September 2018 alone, the court said. (U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton accepted the $82.9 million recommendation last February. In March, Kurbanov told the court he would appeal the judgement.)
As the streaming market has grown globally, the IFPI has also helped coordinate court and police actions to shut down sites peddling fake streams in major recording markets like Brazil and Germany, which are artificially juicing the success of songs and albums.
In France, the fifth-largest music market, a study released this week by a French government organization found that one billion streams — or between 1% to 3% of all streams in the market — were fraudulent in 2021. The report, which analyzed data from Spotify, Deezer and Qobuz, notes that “the methods used by fraudsters are constantly evolving and improving,” and that “fraud seems to be getting easier and easier to commit.”
Subscribers to Amazon Music Unlimited in the U.S. and U.K. will have to pay a higher price for the on-demand streaming service starting in February. According to Amazon’s customer service pages in both countries, subscribers to both individual and student plans will begin paying more starting Feb. 21.
In the U.S., Amazon Music Unlimited will increase from $9.99 to $10.99 for individual subscribers and climb from $4.99 to $5.99 for subscribers to the student plan. Likewise, U.K. prices will increase from 9.99 pounds to 10.99 pounds for individual subscribers and from 4.99 pounds to 5.99 pounds for student subscribers.
The e-commerce giant’s decision follows Apple’s move in October to charge higher prices for Apple Music as well as other cloud-based entertainment platforms and services. Apple Music also raised individual subscriptions from $9.99 to $10.99 per month in the U.S. It also increased the price of family plans, which offers up to six accounts under a single subscription, from $14.99 to $16.99 per month. Deezer, a small player in the U.S., raised the price of individual plans to $10.99 per month in 2022.
In May 2022, Amazon raised the price of Amazon Music Unlimited for Prime subscribers from $7.99 to $8.99 per month, and from $79 to $89 annually.
Spotify, the largest music subscription service, could soon follow suit. On the heels of Apple’s announcement, CEO Daniel Ek said during the company’s Oct. 25 earnings call that a U.S. price increase “is one of the things we would like to do.” Spotify has not raised its standard price from $9.99 since launching in the U.S. in 2011.
Emmy Lovell was named global head of music at SoundCloud, the company announced Thursday (Jan. 19).
In the role, Lovell will lead SoundCloud’s global music strategy and oversee its artist and label relations as well as its commercial label partnerships teams. She joins SoundCloud from Napster, where she most recently led the Napster app relaunch as interim CEO; prior to that, she was the company’s chief strategy officer. Based in London, she’ll report to SoundCloud chief content and marketing officer Lauren Wirtzer-Seawood.
“Emmy is the consummate music executive,” said Wirtzer-Seawood in a statement. “Her passion for the business and deep expertise in partnering with artists at all stages of their careers is critical as we continue to pioneer the future of fandom and unlock the full potential of the artist and fan relationship on SoundCloud.”
Lovell’s hire comes amid a company revamp that has seen SoundCloud working to reinvent itself as a distribution and artist and label services operation. Last year, the company struck a joint venture with Quality Control’s Solid Foundation, launched SoundCloud for Artists and signed direct partnerships with artists including Lil Pump, Tekno and Kelow LaTesha while also beefing up its artist partnerships team with the hires of Jessica Rivera and Maurice Slade. But it also experienced setbacks; in August, the company announced it would be cutting 20% of its workforce, with a rep stating the layoffs were “due to a significant company transformation and the challenging economic and financial environment.”
Elsewhere, SoundCloud partnered with the music collaboration and data management tool Session, acquired music AI company Musiio and signed a global licensing deal with Warner Music Group that adopted the user-centric “fan powered royalties” model — a switch from the pro-rata model traditionally utilized by streamers.
In addition to Napster, Lovell previously served as executive vp of WEA, part of Warner Music Group’s artist and label services arm, and also had stints at EMI Music, Bauer Media and the BBC.
“SoundCloud’s influence in pop culture is felt globally and their fast-paced and progressive approach to challenging the status quo in the music industry is refreshing,” said Lovell. “I look forward to working with Lauren and the team to continue the brilliant and innovative work SoundCloud has already done to create connection between their vibrant artist and fan communities.”
Texas promoter Edwin Cabaniss with Kessler Presents has announced plans to restore Dallas’ Longhorn Ballroom. The notorious nightclub was once owned by Chicago mob associate Jack Ruby, who famously shot and killed John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as he left Dallas Police headquarters on Nov. 23, 1963.
The Longhorn opened in the 1950s as singer Bob Wills’ Ranch House. It was later operated by recording artist and record label boss Dewey Groom through the ’60s and ’70s, hosting concerts by Nat King Cole, Patsy Cline, T- Bone Walker and many more.
Cabaniss plans to incorporate the venue’s long history when it reopens this spring, in part with the original museum-style display cases built into the walls. The venue has traded hands a number of times in recent years and closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These cases include everything from Tex Ritter’s suit to James Brown’s robe; an extraordinary collection of guitars from artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette, and BB King,” according to a press release announcing the reopening plans.
“As a 5th generation Texan, I know how important the return of the Longhorn Ballroom is to Texas in general and to Dallas specifically,” says Cabanis. “The lore is real. The floors have secrets and the walls have memories. And we’re excited to tell these stories with each show we present.”
Cabannis previously restored The Kessler Theater in Dallas and The Heights Theater in Houston.
In a statement, Dallas mayor Eric Johnson added that the venue is “a monument to our city’s rich music history,” calling the project “a wonderful opportunity to help preserve a piece of our past.”
For grand opening details and lineup announcements, visit longhornballroomdallas.com.
Josephine Vaccarello, a 25-year veteran of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp., has been promoted to the role of executive vp, live.
In the new role, Vaccarello will lead MSG’s live entertainment bookings business at all the company’s venues, which include New York’s Madison Square Garden, The Theater at Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and Beacon Theatre. Vaccarelllo takes on the new role after serving as senior vp, MSG Live, in which she booked concerts, comedy, special events and residencies including Billy Joel, Harry Styles at Madison Square Garden and Jerry Seinfeld’s Beacon Theatre residency.
She will also be responsible for booking residencies at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas, which is set to open in the second half of 2023. Vaccarello started at the company in 1998 as an administrative assistant.
“Throughout my 25 years at this Company, I’ve had unique opportunities to grow and evolve my career within the organization, and I’m honored to take on this elevated leadership role, particularly as MSG Entertainment expands its live entertainment business. We have a lot of big ideas for the future that will make an indelible mark on live entertainment and I’m looking forward to continuing to create iconic moments with artists for our fans in New York, Chicago and soon, Las Vegas,” Vaccarello said.
She will report to James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of MSG Entertainment, in addition to his position as executive chairman of AMC Networks.
“Over her tenure at MSG Entertainment, Josephine has been instrumental in growing our live event business by pursuing innovative opportunities including multi-night bookings and unique residencies, and bringing unforgettable events featuring the world’s biggest artists to our venues,” Dolan said. “In this new leadership role, I am confident she will continue to raise the bar within the live entertainment industry by leveraging her unparalleled relationships and expertise across our portfolio and in booking our newest venue – the state-of-the-art MSG Sphere.”
This story was originally published on THR.com.
Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Football Club has a new naming rights partner for its 22,000-seat stadium. As of today, the Downtown L.A. venue will be renamed BMO Stadium. It has been known as Banc of California Stadium since opening in 2018.
BMO is a financial services provider in North America with more than 500 branches and digital banking services in all 50 U.S. states. The newly formed partnership supports the U.S. expansion pillar of BMO’s North American growth strategy.
“Our partnership with BMO unites two organizations that share a vision and commitment to be leaders and forces for good in our community,” LAFC co-president and CBO Larry Freedman said in a release. “BMO Stadium is the premier outdoor arena in the Heart of Los Angeles, having established itself as a world class sports and entertainment venue that hosts iconic concerts, events and top-level soccer. We are excited to begin our partnership with BMO, and to welcome our fans, supporters and the people of the city of Los Angeles to BMO Stadium.”
The first open-air stadium built in the city of Los Angeles since 1962, BMO Stadium has hosted major events such as the 2022 MLS All-Star Game, the 2023 MLS Cup and numerous concerts and festivals featuring artists such as The Killers, Imagine Dragons, BLACKPINK, Twice, Santana, Guns N’ Roses, Armin Van Buuren, Rufus Du Sol, Kygo, Maroon 5, Iron Maiden and System of a Down.
BMO Stadium is home to the 2022 MLS Cup and Supporters’ Shield Champions LAFC team, as well as the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) Angel City Football Club (ACFC). ACFC made its NWSL debut last season and led the NWSL in attendance in 2022, averaging more than 19,000 fans per game for its inaugural season. ACFC is also led by one of the largest women-led ownership groups in professional sports, aligning with BMO’s long-standing commitment to equity in sports, according to the financial provider.
“BMO is thrilled to forge this partnership with LAFC,” said BMO chief strategy and operations officer Cameron Fowler. “Through BMO Stadium, we will share our passion for soccer and commitment to the Los Angeles community while bringing to life our Purpose, to Boldly Grow the Good in business and life. We look forward to supporting LAFC and its fans this season and beyond.”
More than 1 billion music streams in France — or between 1% and 3% of all streams in the country — were detected to be fraudulent in 2021, according to a report released this week by a French government organization that analyzed data from Spotify, Deezer and Qobuz.
If the report’s number were to hold true for the worldwide music market — which the IFPI valued at $16.9 billion in 2021 — that would mean approximately $170 million to $510 million of streaming royalties are being misallocated globally. This is roughly in line with a 2019 estimate of $300 million lost to streaming fraud cited during Indie Week.
The Centre national de la musique (CNM), an organization created by the French government in 2020 that operates under the Ministry of Culture, found that fraud is widespread in France, the fifth-largest music market, to a sobering degree: “Irregularities are spotted” on both major-label and independent releases, national and international albums, old catalog and fresh new singles alike, the CMN says in its 56-page study. “The methods used by fraudsters are constantly evolving and improving,” it notes, “and fraud seems to be getting easier and easier to commit.”
The genres which had the highest percentage of fraudulent streams detected in the CNM’s report were background music (4.8% on Deezer) and non-musical titles (3.5%). While the raw number of fraudulent streams detected was highest in rap — the most popular genre in France — that represented just 0.4% of overall plays in the genre on Spotify and 0.7% on Deezer.
CNM’s report appears to be the first country-wide investigation of streaming fraud. “We’re happy with the effort by the CNM and the French government as a whole to look into this and take it seriously,” says Morgan Hayduk, founder and co-CEO of Beatdapp, a Canadian company that provides fraud detection software to streaming services, labels, and distributors. “This issue deserves the weight and attention that they gave to it.”
CNM’s report comes with several caveats, however. The organization’s data does not include information from Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon, who declined to share information about fraud on their platforms. According to a recent estimate from MIDiA Research, those three services account for slightly more than 35% of global streaming subscriptions. (MIDiA did not share country-level figures.)
In addition, Hayduk says, the report only looks at country-level data. This means it does not account for VPN usage that allows fraudsters to mask their country of origin.
Bad actors committing streaming fraud often “rotate through multiple countries redirecting traffic constantly,” says Andrew Batey, Beatdapp’s other co-CEO. “It’s not uncommon when we find fraud cases to see 15 devices spreading plays across 30 countries.” To catch that, he says, “you need a global view.”
Fraudulent streams, once defined by former Napster executive Angel Gambino as “anything which isn’t fans listening to music they love,” have become a major topic of music industry concern in Germany, France and Brazil. That’s because undetected fraudulent streams can impact market share calculations and divert money from honest artists.
The countries have taken different approaches to combat this fraud. The IFPI led a legal effort to shut down German websites that offered streams for cash starting in 2020. The organization made the case that manipulating play counts allows artists to create a false impression of popularity, ultimately misleading consumers and violating Germany’s Unfair Competition act.
In Brazil, law enforcement worked in conjunction with Pro-Música, IFPI’s Brazilian affiliate, to shut down 84 stream-boosting sites in the country in 2021. Prosecutors there argued that sites that offered fraudulent streams were violating Brazil’s Consumer Defense Code and treated the activity as a criminal act.
Brazil’s coordinated effort — dubbed Operation Anti-Doping — determined that the fraudulent streams were actually being generated outside of Brazil, illustrating the limitations of a single-country approach to fraud reduction. “No company in Brazil has the technology to make these fake streams,” Paulo Rosa, Pro-Música’s president, told Billboard in 2021. “This technology comes from websites hosted in Russia.”
The U.S. industry has historically appeared less bothered by streaming fraud — or at least less willing to acknowledge its existence publicly, with executives and streaming services reluctant to discuss the subject. This may be starting to shift, however. At a Music Biz panel in May, SoundCloud vp of strategy Michael Pelczynski noted that the current streaming ecosystem is rife with “very prevalent fraud and abuse,” and that this activity has “cultural ramifications.” When undetected fraudulent streams “start influencing the way we measure the success of music, we are literally supporting inauthenticity,” Pelczynski said.
The CNM appeared heartened by the fact that, since the summer of 2021, it has seen “the growing mobilization of platforms, distributors and producers” worried about fraud, resulting in the creation of “dedicated teams” and the outlay of increased resources to battle “manipulation.”
But there remain several key challenges when attempting to tackle fraud. The lack of transparency from some streaming platforms, and the inability to push toward assembling a comprehensive global data set, means that the scale of the problem is still unknown.
What’s more, as the CNM points out, it’s nearly impossible to punish those engaged in fraud because they are rarely identified. The penultimate section of the report lays out potential legal remedies that could be used to fight fake streams in France — if authorities were able to prove that bad actors violated laws related to illegal hacking or unfair business practices. They include fines of up to 300,000 euros ($324,000) and prison sentences of up to five years for perpetrators.
The CNM pledged to release a follow-up report in 2024.
TuneCore and Sentric Music Group have renewed and expanded their long-term partnership. The refreshed deal will allow TuneCore’s DIY musicians to use Sentric’s technology and direct global collection network to increase revenue opportunities. The original partnership was formed in 2018, allowing TuneCore artists to submit unlimited songs for a one-time $75 set-up fee and 15% commission with the option for synch services as well.
Big Machine Music — a subsidiary of HYBE America — has signed Troy Cartwright to an exclusive co-publishing deal. Last year, the Texas-born artist was named On the Horizon Artist by SiriusXM channel The Highway. As a songwriter, he has already written with Ryan Hurd, Josh Abbott Band, Nickelback and more.
Warner Chappell Music has signed an agreement with Truth or Dare Publishing to co-develop select artists from the Truth or Dare Management Projects roster. Led by Missi Gallimore, Truth or Dare Publishing’s client list features KK Johnson of Track 45, Ben Roberts of Carolina Story, Mary Gauthier, Abbey Cone and Sam Williams (grandson of Hank Williams).
Bucks Music Group has signed New Zealand-born Molly Payton to an exclusive publishing deal in the U.K. and Europe. She remains signed to Mushroom Music Publishing, which has a longstanding relationship with Bucks, for the rest of the world.
