State Champ Radio Business
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Just days after Atlantic Records and the estate of its late co-founder Ahmet Ertegun were hit with a sexual assault lawsuit filed by a former employee, the entities are now facing a second complaint detailing similar allegations of abuse –– only this one casts a wider net.
On Sunday (Dec. 4), Dorothy Carvello – a former A&R executive with the label and author of music-industry expose Anything for a Hit – filed suit against Atlantic, the label’s parent company Warner Music Group, Ertegun’s estate, former Atlantic co-CEO & co-chairman Doug Morris and former chairman and CEO Jason Flom. In the exhaustive complaint, Carvello alleges she was “horrifically sexually assaulted” by Ertegun and Morris and that Atlantic, WMG and Flom (then an Atlantic vp) enabled the abuse.
“During her employment at Atlantic Records from 1987 through 1990, Ms. Carvello was subjected to persistent and pervasive nonconsensual and forcible sexual contact, degrading sexual innuendo and insults, and outrageous ‘tasks’ for the sexual gratification of executives at Atlantic Records,” reads the complaint, which was filed in New York Supreme Court. “These injuries inflicted and abetted by Defendants include several sexual assaults and batteries, among other sexual misconduct, harassment, and discrimination, as well as intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.”
The complaint goes on to claim that her treatment at the hands of Ertegun (who died in 2006) and Morris was enabled by the other defendants, who went about “creating, maintaining, and perpetuating the toxic workplace culture in which such sexual assault was permitted, thereby inflicting extensive emotional distress as well.”
Carvello’s lawsuit was made possible by New York’s Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which created a one-year period beginning Nov. 24, 2022, allowing alleged victims of abuse to take legal action against their perpetrators in the state even if the statute of limitations on their claims had expired. Jan Roeg. the former Atlantic talent scout who filed the sexual misconduct suit against Atlantic and Ertegun’s estate last week. took action under the same law. More music industry cases are also expected to be filed under the ASA over the next year.
The claims by Carvello are not new, though this is the first she’s sued over her allegations. In her memoir Anything for a Hit (now being adapted for a docuseries), the former executive detailed how, while working as Ertegun’s assistant and later as Atlantic’s first female A&R executive, she was allegedly frequently sexually abused and harassed by Ertegun.
The new lawsuit covers much of the same ground, charging that Ertegun, along with Morris and other Atlantic executives, “treated the company, its corporate headquarters, recording studios, and—even its corporate helicopter—as places to indulge their sexual desires. Employees like Ms. Carvello were the collateral damage of this toxic workplace culture.” It goes on to allege that when Ertegun and Morris’ abusive behavior was reported within the company, victims were “routinely paid settlements with corporate funds in exchange for signed non-disclosure agreements.”
Carvello, who was hired by Atlantic in April 1987 at age 24, first worked as Ertegun’s secretary but claims she also provided significant assistance to Morris during that time. After bringing Skid Row to Atlantic, Carvello was promoted to an A&R role.
Throughout her time there, Carvello claims that she and other female employees “were routinely exposed to Mr. Ertegun masturbating, including during work as he dictated correspondence to Ms. Carvello.” Among other claims, she also alleges Ertegun stored sex toys in her office cabinet without her consent; that Ertegun and other executives watched pornography in the office, including in meetings; and that Ertegun once directed Carvello to pick up used sex toys in his office and wash them.
The complaint goes on to allege a number of other abusive incidents involving Ertegun, including a claim that he “sexually attacked” her in a nightclub in Allentown, Pa., during a Skid Row concert and again during a subsequent helicopter ride back to New York City.
In the course of these alleged ncidents, Carvello says that Ertegun “grabbed and squeezed” her breasts, “clawed at the bike shorts she was wearing under her skirt and pulled them down to access her underwear, scratched the left side of her abdomen and caused her to bleed, violently attempted to remove her underwear, bruised her, and exposed her vagina to all and sundry.” She further alleges that while begging for help from Flom and others present during the attacks, “they simply looked on and laughed.” Ertegun additionally claims that Ertegun once fractured her forearm after slamming it forcefully onto a table.
Carvello also claims harassment and abuse at the hands of Morris, who was running the label with Ertegun at the time. While working as his de facto secretary, she claims Morris would “forcibly kiss” her on the face and touch her inappropriately on a daily basis while “constantly” commenting on her body and appearance. She also claims that on multiple occasions, both Morris and Ertegun would suggest that Atlantic would pay for her to get breast augmentation surgery.
In addition to claims that Flom enabled Ertegun and Morris’ abuse, Carvello accuses the then-vp of harassing her during a meeting, saying he requested, in front of other executives, that she sit on his lap. According to the lawsuit, she says this incident led her to write a memo to Morris complaining about the “blatant sexual abuse” at Atlantic headquarters in September 1990 and asking him what he was planning to do about it. One day later, she alleges, she was fired.
Though she was subsequently hired at WMG imprint Giant Records, Carvello claims Morris “was not done retaliating” against her and had her fired from Giant as well. “Her loss of two consecutive jobs and the damage to her reputation was permanent,” the complaint reads. “But for Mr. Morris’ vengeful and retaliatory actions, Ms. Carvello would still be working in the music industry, and likely would be working under the WMG umbrella with [now-CEO and chairman Craig] Kallman,” who Carvello claims she was instrumental in bringing to the label in the early 1990s.
Later in the complaint, Carvello alleges that in February 1998, while unexpectedly seated next to Ertegun at Clive Davis’ annual “Grammy Eve” party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the executive continued his pattern of abuse. During that incident, Carvello alleges Ertegun “shoved his hand between” her legs and “forcibly pulled and ripped at her underwear, injuring” her vagina. After allegedly fighting him off and threatening him “in full view of the dinner guests” at the event, Carvello claims Ertegun “sought her out again” at the same event and told her to meet him at his hotel, The Peninsula.
Carvello is suing on seven counts: battery constituting forcible touching (against the Ertegun estate, Morris, WMG and Atlantic); battery constituting sexual abuse (against the Ertegun estate, Morris, WMG and Atlantic); attempted battery constituting forcible touching (against Flom, WMG and Atlantic); battery constituting sexually motivated felony (against the Ertegun estate, WMG and Atlantic); and, against all defendants, criminal and civil conspiracy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress. She is asking for monetary compensation as well as exemplary and punitive damages “in an amount to be determined at trial.”
In a statement to Billboard, a Warner Music Group spokesperson said that the company and Atlantic “take allegations of misconduct very seriously,” while stressing that Carvello’s allegations stem from an era decades in the label’s past.
“These allegations date back 35 years, to before WMG was a standalone company,” the statement reads. “We are speaking with people who were there at the time, taking into consideration that many key individuals are deceased or into their 80s and 90s. To ensure a safe, equitable, and inclusive working environment, we have a comprehensive Code of Conduct, and mandatory workplace training, to which all of our employees must adhere. We regularly evaluate how we can evolve our policies to ensure our work environment is free from discrimination and harassment.”
Representatives for Morris and Flom did not immediately respond to Billboard’s requests for comment. A representative for Ertegun’s estate could not be located for comment.
Over the past several years, Carvello has been a relentless voice calling for accountability in the music industry over what she alleges are longstanding patterns of abuse and attempts to silence victims. In October 2021, she revealed she had purchased shares in all three major record companies — UMG, WMG and Sony Music Entertainment’s parent company, Sony Inc.) — with the intent of becoming an activist shareholder “to bring more transparency to the music industry,” she told Billboard at the time.
This past September, Carvello stepped up her efforts by sending a letter to board members at WMG requesting records relating to the company’s investigations into previously reported sexual misconduct claims and royalties accounting. She noted at the time that she intends to ask questions of the other labels as well, though there are differing regulations and laws that pertain to Universal and Sony, given that the former is a publicly-traded company in Amsterdam and Sony is incorporated in Japan; only WMG is a publicly-traded company in the U.S.
In the years since her ill-fated stints at Atlantic and Giant Records, Carvello has worked as an independent public relations consultant, including for some major label executives, though — responding to a perception by some label insiders that this represents a conflict of interest given her activist work– she claims she was paid out of the executives’ own pockets and not by the record labels themselves. In April, she founded the Face the Music Now Foundation, an organization “established to highlight sexual abuse and harassment in the music industry, demand accountability and change, and pave the way for survivors to tell their stories and reclaim their lives,” according to a press release.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man who shot Lady Gaga’s dog walker and stole her French bulldogs last year took a plea deal and was sentenced to 21 years in prison on Monday (Dec. 5), officials said.
The Lady Gaga connection was a coincidence, authorities have said. The motive was the value of the French bulldogs, a breed that can run into the thousands of dollars, and detectives do not believe the thieves knew the dogs belonged to the musician.
James Howard Jackson, one of three men and two accomplices who participated in the violent robbery, pleaded no contest to one count of attempted murder, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
Jackson and others drove around Hollywood, the city of West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley on Feb. 24, 2021 “looking for French bulldogs,” prosecutors said previously. They found Lady Gaga’s dog walker, Ryan Fischer, with the pop star’s three pets.
Jackson shot Fischer during the robbery, during which two of the dogs were taken. A nearby doorbell camera recorded the dog walker screaming “Oh, my God! I’ve been shot!” and “Help me!” and “I’m bleeding out from my chest!”
Fischer later called the violence a “very close call with death” in social media posts. The dogs were returned several days later by a woman who was also charged in the crime.
Jackson also admitted the allegation of inflicting great bodily injury and to a prior strike, the DA’s office said Monday. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
“The plea agreement holds Mr. Jackson accountable for perpetrating a coldhearted violent act and provides justice for our victim,” the office said in a statement.
Lady Gaga’s representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.
Guns N’ Roses has an appetite for litigation.
The iconic ’80s rock band is suing a gun retailer that’s using the name “Texas Guns and Roses,” arguing that the name infringes the band’s trademark rights — and that they especially don’t want to be associated with firearms or “polarizing” political views.
In a complaint filed Thursday (Dec. 1) in Los Angeles federal court, GNR said the Houston-based retailer — operating under the corporate name Jersey Village Florists LLC — is clearly using the name to dupe consumers into thinking the band had somehow endorsed the business.
That would be bad no matter what the company was selling, but GNR’s lawyers said it was “particularly damaging” to the band “given the nature of Defendant’s business.”
“GNR, quite reasonably, does not want to be associated with defendant, a firearms and weapons retailer,” wrote the band’s lawyers, hailing from the law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP. “Furthermore, defendant espouses political views related to the regulation and control of firearms and weapons on the website that may be polarizing to many U.S. consumers.”
According to GNR’s lawsuit, Texas Guns and Roses claims to sell actual roses on its website, but the band says it’s all a ruse: “This is a contrivance to purportedly justify defendant’s wholesale appropriation of the ‘Guns N’ Roses.”
In addition to trademark infringement, the band accused Texas Guns and Roses of so-called trademark dilution — a form of legal wrongdoing where someone uses your trademark in such a way that can “tarnish” its value. Linking a brand name to undesirable associations like a dangerous product or offensive views can form the basis for such claims.
Jersey Village Florists could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.
It’s not the first time Guns N’ Roses has taken legal action over its name. Back in 2019, the band filed a similar trademark infringement lawsuit against Colorado craft brewery Oskar Blues after it launched a “Guns ‘N’ Rosé” ale. (The case quickly settled.) And in 2020, the band successfully petitioned the U.S. trademark office to block the grocery chain Aldi from registering “Sweet Cheddar of Mine” as a trademark for cheese.
HOUSTON (AP) — An attorney for a man accused of fatally shooting rapper Takeoff last month said Monday that the musician’s death outside a Houston bowling alley was a tragedy but that her client says he’s innocent of the crime.
Patrick Xavier Clark, 33, made a brief court appearance in which prosecutors and his defense attorneys agreed to hold a bond reduction hearing on Dec. 14. Clark was arrested on a murder charge last week and is jailed on a $2 million bond.
Clark, handcuffed and dressed in orange jail clothing, did not say anything during Monday’s hearing. Letitia Quinones, one of Clark’s attorneys, told reporters after the hearing that Clark is feeling “nervous and he’s concerned” because “he’s being charged with something that he believes he’s innocent of, so how would anyone do in that type of circumstance?”
Prosecutors declined to comment Monday.
Takeoff, 28, was shot in the head and back as more than 30 people were leaving a private party at the bowling alley. Houston police said at a news conference Friday that the gunfire followed a disagreement over a “lucrative” game of dice around 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, but that Takeoff was not involved and was “an innocent bystander.”
Police have said another man and a woman suffered non-life-threatening gunshot injuries, and that at least two people opened fired. Police said investigators are still trying to track down witnesses.
Born Kirsnick Khari Ball, Takeoff was the youngest member of Migos, the Grammy-nominated rap trio from suburban Atlanta that also featured his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said last week that investigators didn’t know whether Clark was invited to the party or if he knew Takeoff. Clark works as a DJ, according to court records.
Asked Monday if Clark knew Takeoff, Quinones said, “We really don’t want to go into the facts at this point.”
She said that Takeoff’s death was a “tragedy and it’s happening well too often in our communities.”
“There is a lot of investigation that needs to be done. … So, we just ask that everyone keep an open mind and let the system do its part and let the Constitution do its part and that is, right now he’s innocent until he’s proven guilty,” Quinones said.
Court records indicate Clark was arrested as he was preparing to leave the country for Mexico after getting an expedited passport and that he had a “large amount” of cash.
Quinones said that Clark had been planning to go to Mexico on a vacation but had canceled his trip before his arrest.
“He wasn’t trying to go anywhere,” Quinones said.
Migos first broke through with the massive hit “Versace” in 2013. They had four Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, though Takeoff was not on their multi-week No. 1 hit “Bad and Boujee,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert. They put out a trilogy of albums called Culture, Culture II and Culture III, with the first two hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
In the weeks before his death, Takeoff and Quavo put out Only Built for Infinity Links. Takeoff hoped the joint album would build respect for his lyrical abilities, telling the Drink Champs podcast, “It’s time to give me my flowers.”
By the early 1990s, Fleetwood Mac was running on fumes. The group’s 1990 album, Behind the Mask, peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200, and Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie, who died on Nov. 30, hinted that they were done touring.
Then the band got some valuable exposure from an unlikely place: Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. As Clinton told Billboard, a supporter who drove him to an event in Los Angeles suggested that he use the song and “I knew it was a brilliant idea.”
At the time, with George H. W. Bush in the White House after eight years of Ronald Reagan, the song was like a breath of fresh air: Upbeat, optimistic, and full of the rock n roll sensibility that Clinton symbolized as the first Baby Boomer to serve as president. Clinton himself was a musician – a saxophone player good enough to perform on The Arsenio Hall Show as well as a fan, so it made sense to have a song that reflected his perspective.
“Honestly, Bill and Hillary [Clinton], that was one of their favorite songs,” remembers Paul Begala, the chief strategist of the 1992 campaign who became a counselor to the president after he won. “He had grown up with dreams of becoming a musician and he loved that band.”
In some ways, “Don’t Stop,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1977, wasn’t an obvious choice. “Once I got in the race,” Clinton told Billboard, “some of my staff tried to get me to go with a more current song.”
But it worked.
“That song encapsulated everything,” Begala tells Billboard. “He started insisting we play it at every rally – he just loved it. He also loved that Garth Brooks song ‘We Shall Be Free,’ but he settled on ‘Don’t Stop’ because of the message.”
Some of that was the implication that the future belonged to the Baby Boomers. “His conception of Bush was that he was a good man but his time had come and gone,” Begala says. Some of that involved the concept of “future preference,” an idea Clinton learned about from his Georgetown University professor Carroll Quigley.
Quigley “said that America became the greatest nation in history because our people had always embraced two important ideas: that tomorrow can be better than today, and that every one of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so,” Clinton said. “’Don’t Stop’ captured the sentiment perfectly with both its lyrics and its upbeat, simple melody.”
Fleetwood Mac appreciated his use of the song, and the Rumours-era lineup – Nicks, McVie, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham – reunited to play its first show in six years at Clinton’s inaugural ball. That seems to have boosted the band’s sales, and the Feb. 6, 1993, issue of Billboard reported that the band’s Greatest Hits jumped from No. 30 to No. 11 on the Catalog Albums chart, while Rumours debuted on that chart at No. 36.
By 1997, the band’s classic lineup was back together again – first for a show that was recorded for the live album and TV special The Dance, then for a tour that ran through much of that year. The next year, Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
In January 2001, Fleetwood Mac reunited to perform at a farewell party for Clinton on the White House lawn. “On one of his last days as president, the staff organized a farewell party on the South Lawn and the band surprised him,” Begala remembers. “I introduced Fleetwood Mac and they started playing ‘Don’t Stop’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” The band played an 11-song set.
“It was one of the most amazing moments of my life,” Begala says.
Clinton told Billboard that he would always be grateful to Christine McVie and her bandmates for letting him use the song, reuniting to play his inaugural ball and “for giving me a lifetime of great music and memories, and, of course, for that roadmap to the future.”
Critics who complain that all country music sounds the same should check out the artist rosters at the genre’s most successful labels, teeming with what appears to be a broader range of artists than at any time in history.
Warner Music Nashville (WMN) recently signed Giovannie & The Hired Guns, a rock band with country and Tejano shadings; and Madeline Edwards, whose blend of country storytelling with pop and R&B sonics is an engaging test of stylistic boundaries. Big Machine’s 19-year-old Kidd G fuses twang and hip-hop with a rebel flare. And Universal Music Group’s Boy Named Banjo and The War and Treaty weave bluegrass/Americana and soul/gospel elements, respectively, into their own left-of-center takes on country.
The proliferation of boundary-pushing artists for the future represents a distinct philosophical change for Nashville labels who historically have played it safe, routinely stocking their rosters with acts that fit established norms. In one of the most-derided examples, country followed its golden era of the early 1990s with “hat acts,” overloading the system with male country artists whose sound and imaging were clear attempts to copy the successes of Garth Brooks, George Strait and Alan Jackson.
“We tend to chase the path of least resistance,” Universal Music Group Nashville (UMGN) president Cindy Mabe says. “A lot of times there’s money that follows that, but what happens is you end up alienating audiences that don’t want to hear just that. There has to be more than one thing happening, [with] appeal for more than one audience. That’s how we grow.”
This expansive approach to rosters is part of an uphill climb for country music, which was considered a Southern-based niche genre for rural white audiences in its infancy. Over time, the size and location of that audience has changed — it remains a dominant force in farming communities across the United States, though its largest fan cluster is likely in the suburbs.
A ream of cultural, technological and organizational changes have required the business to rethink its parameters, widening the potential definition of the format as well as the makeup of its target audience.
“Things that might have been considered left of center, even just two years ago, would be considered more mainstream now,” says WMN senior director of A&R Stephanie Davenport, “because I think our fan base’s horizons have broadened quite a bit.”
Indeed, new and recently developed acts across rosters include trap-country figure Blanco Brown (Broken Bow), pop/R&B-flavored Tiera Kennedy (Valory), bilingual duo Kat & Alex (Sony Music Nashville), piano-based/pop-influenced Ingrid Andress (WMN), multigenre singer/songwriter BRELAND (Atlantic/WMN), moody and elegant music-maker Sam Williams (Mercury Nashville), rock-shaded Elvie Shane (Wheelhouse) and rock-/hip-hop-threaded Lily Rose (Big Loud).
Plenty of developments influenced that level of musical fence-busting:
• Country’s wide-ranging sound: The current chart accommodates Carrie Underwood’s arena-rockish “Hate My Heart,” Kane Brown’s slow-jammin’ “Thank God” and Parker McCollum’s solid country “Handle on You,” so there’s precedent for roster variety. “There’s been a lot of diversity of sound on country radio, and the things that you hear back-to-back-to-back are more varied than you’d hear on top 40,” says WMN senior director of A&R Rohan Kohli. “So I think the signings are a reflection of the diversity that we’ve been hearing for a while.”
• The proliferation of radio chains: When country stations were locally owned, management tended to be more provincial about the genre. Now that chains frequently have programmers overseeing four or more formats, radio is more receptive to artists such as Jelly Roll or Dan + Shay working beyond their home base. “A big hit for one of those executives is something they’re going to be aware of,” says Big Machine Label Group president/CEO Scott Borchetta. “You don’t have to go and reeducate everybody because it’s the same people.”
• DIY technology: With budding artists able to learn music-making at home and promote themselves on social media, a la UMGN’s Priscilla Block, they arrive in the business with built-in knowledge that makes them less apt to bend to accepted norms than previous generations. “We don’t try to fit any of our artists into a box,” Kohli says. “We tell them to go make the music, and we’ll follow it.”
• Digital consumption: Streaming sites have given the consumer easy access to music on country’s margins, allowing fans to find outside-the-box artists such as Corey Kent or Bailey Zimmerman, while they’re still indie acts, forcing labels to be more nimble in reacting to the marketplace.
• Precedent-setting change artists: A wide range of acts — from Willie Nelson to Chris Stapleton to Florida Georgia Line — have made the mainstream bend to their style instead of conforming to the format’s preexisting sound. The genre has been rewarded for pushing the limit in the past: Sound-alikes, as in the hat-act era or the bro-country era, have actually hurt the format, and the business is more committed to widening the playing field instead of just staying inside of it.
• Better inner-division cooperation: Music can still get lost, but the Nashville offices of major labels and publishers are generally working better with coastal pop divisions. That means greater potential for nontraditional acts, which also makes them less risky to sign.
• Expanding demographics: Music Row is more interested than ever in expanding its core audience, intent on attracting more young fans and minorities, especially Blacks and Latinos. In particular, the increase in Black artists — most of whom blend country and R&B influences — means more acts are stretching the sound of the genre.
• Faster trends: In the entire 1980s, country had two trends: the Urban Cowboy movement and New Traditionalism. The last 10 years have seen bro-country, Motown country, boyfriend country, ’90s retro country and, now, the lightly produced, gruff Yellowstone country (think Warren Zeiders and Zach Bryan). The format changes quicker than ever, and labels have to be prepared to shift with it. “If you don’t diversify in some regard, you’re going to have to scrap a whole roster really quickly,” Mabe says. “You have to have a vision of where you’re going.”
• The next big thing: While ’90s-style country and Yellowstone country are current, labels are already looking to the future, unpredictable as it is. “We always are fighting to stay on the edge of what’s next,” Borchetta says. “You want to be early, you want to figure out if there’s more to it than just a TikTok moment. You’re always looking for the next one that has all the right parts and pieces or could grow the right parts and pieces.”
Ultimately, those new artists are stepping into a genre that already has consistent hitmakers with Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert and Keith Urban. Thus, predicting the format’s future direction is only part of the challenge; the new acts also have to be capable of making a difference when matched against the genre’s established voices.
“New artists are competing against artists who’ve had many, many No. 1s,” Davenport says. “It’s not enough to have a good story. You have to have the best story as new artists.”
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Global venue development company Oak View Group is expanding its DEI commitments with the new supplier diversity program. The initiative – which has launched a pilot program with Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, Moody Center in Austin, UBS Arena in New York and Miami Beach Convention Center – will help facilitate the use of minority-owned suppliers at all 400 OVG affiliated venues in the coming year.
Starting in January, company wide OVG will work to identify and increase sourcing from suppliers that are at least 51% owned, operated and managed at least 51% by a non-white minority, a disabled person and/or a woman. OVG currently recognizes a wide range of diverse certifications that include minority businesses, women, veterans, LGBTQ+, disabled persons, and other local city certifications. The program aims to foster economic inclusivity by making OVG’s supply chain more diverse by encouraging the use of vendors that are historically overlooked.
OVG is seeking suppliers in several fields including food and beverage, security, technology, construction, marketing, public works and various forms of consulting. Suppliers can confirm their minority-owned status through over a dozen certification outlets including Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Women Business Enterprise (WBE) and Small Business Administration 8(a).
Founded in 2015, OVG has grown to work with more 400 venues worldwide and financed over $5 billion in capital currently deployed for new development projects. The size of the growing company may seem counterintuitive to working with small businesses, but OVG’s vp of diversity, equity, inclusion Dr. Debonair Oates-Primus tells Billboard the company is rolling out toll kits to help facilitate engagement with smaller businesses around the world.
“So much of the training is mindset shift. We have to make this really intentional,” says Oates-Primus of the new requirement for OVG venues. “I have to educate [OVG staff] on the bias that diverse businesses face. We had to make some changes to our valuation process to our criteria to our expectations of diverse businesses due to things like not having as much access to capital and not having access to networking opportunities to grow at a pace that we might think they need to be in order to with a company like ours.”
The initiative will evaluate diverse businesses by their capacity and where they can succeed within the OVG chain, as well as key difference that make businesses standout such as cost savings, reduction in delivery or setup times, value-added services, product/services quality, and sustainability.
Interested suppliers can fill out a questionnaire on each venue’s site that will give the local OVG venue an idea of what each small business can provide, but Oates-Primus explains that entities that are too small to address needs with OVG could also be connected with other large companies. If a business is too small, “let’s pair them with a larger business,” says Oates-Primus. “Let’s do some mentoring and coaching. So much of supplier diversity is just we’re not going to use a one size fits all rule. We can’t. That’s how bias creeps into every structure.”
As the initiative continues to roll out to OVG venues, the company plans to create benchmarks to help it succeed. Oates-Primus is aware that some areas are less diverse and will make the recruitment more difficult for venue operators and plans to tailor the tool kit to specific regions based on data being collected by the pilot venues.
“I don’t want any of the venue operators or leaders to feel like this has been forced upon them,” Oates-Primus tells Billboard, explaining that additional resources will be allocated to train and help venues. “I am doing a tour of all our leadership meetings, vice president meetings to let the leaders know all the ins and outs of the program so they also become champions of this for their teams.”
The OVG supplier diversity form can be found here.
More than two dozen Taylor Swift fans are suing Live Nation over Ticketmaster’s botched sale of tickets to her Eras tour last month, accusing the company of “anticompetitive conduct,” fraud and other forms of wrongdoing.
In a complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles court – the first known lawsuit over the fiasco – attorneys for the Swift fans called the sale a “disaster” and pinned the blame on Ticketmaster, which they called a “monopoly that is only interested in taking every dollar it can from a captive public.”
“In markets without a singular, monopolistic company, charging prices and fees like Ticketmaster would be impossible,” lawyers for the fans wrote. “And Ticketmaster does not do anything to justify these higher costs. Ticketmaster’s service is not superior or reliable; the massive disaster of the Taylor Swift presale is evidence enough of this.”
In addition to antitrust violations, the lawsuit accused Ticketmaster of intentionally misleading fans ahead of the sale – both by offering more presale codes than it had tickets to sell, and by allowing bots and scalpers into the sale. And because of the company’s unfair control over the secondary resale market, the Taylor fans say Ticketmaster was “eager to allow this arrangement.”
“Ticketmaster claimed that only those with codes would be able to join the presale, but millions of buyers without codes were able to get tickets,” the accusers wrote in the lawsuit. “Many of those without codes were scalpers, and Ticketmaster benefited from scalped tickets as they must be resold on Ticketmaster, who gets an additional fee.”
The new lawsuit came three weeks after the infamous Nov. 15 presale, which saw widespread service delays and website crashes as millions of fans tried – and many failed – to buy tickets for Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour.
Ticketmaster has apologized to fans and pinned the blame on a “staggering number of bot attacks” and “unprecedented traffic.” But that explanation has seemingly not been enough for many of the company’s critics, who have resurfaced longstanding complaints about the outsized power Ticketmaster and Live Nation have wielded in the market for live music since they merged in 2010.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill have called for renewed antitrust scrutiny, and news broke days after the presale that the U.S. Department of Justice had already been investigating Live Nation for potential antitrust violations. Attorneys general in a number of states have also launched their own probes, looking to see whether any state-level consumer protection or antitrust laws were breached.
The new lawsuit echoed those gripes, saying that artists like “have no choice but to work through Ticketmaster” and that “virtually all major music concert ticket sales” are handled by the service. The company then leverages that control to dominate secondary ticket re-sales, the Taylor fans allege, giving the Ticketmaster an incentive to allow bots and scalpers into presales.
“Ticketmaster has stated that it has taken steps to address [scalping], but in reality, has taken steps to make additional profit from the scalped tickets,” lawyers for the Taylor fans wrote. “Ticketmaster forces purchases of tickets from its site to use only Ticketmaster’s Secondary Ticket Exchange for the resale of those tickets. Ticketmaster then gets the higher fees paid by fans who have no choice but to pay for the ‘right’ to use the Ticketmaster Secondary Ticket Exchange platform.”
Whether such claims will be legally successful remains to be seen. Proving that a company violates antitrust laws is no easy task, and linking those supposed violations to actual harm suffered by the spurned Swift fans will be equally difficult.
A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.
SoundCloud has linked up with Third & Hayden, the Atlanta management and services company founded by music exec Kei Henderson, for a joint venture, the companies announced today (Dec. 5). The new venture will see Third & Hayden signing new acts to its label and developing them with the help of SoundCloud’s services division, which will provide marketing, A&R, distribution and promotion support, as well as financial backing.
The first two acts to sign to the new venture are Los Angeles singer/songwriter Jordan Hawkins and Atlanta-based rapper Key!.
The deal is the latest for SoundCloud’s new roster initiative, which has previously inked a joint venture with Quality Control’s Solid Foundation Management to work on new acts and signed distribution deals with Lil Pump, Tekno and Aly & AJ to release forthcoming projects. Henderson, meanwhile, has an extensive background as a manager over the past decade, beginning with Key! 10 years ago, who then introduced her to 21 Savage in the mid-2010s; Henderson would go on to co-manage Savage for several years as he rose from the mixtape circuit into one of the most influential rappers of the past half-decade. Henderson then co-founded SinceThe80s, a joint venture with Motown/Capitol Music Group, where she first worked with Hawkins, and founded Third & Hayden, which also manages artists like Asiahn, Ben Reilly and Kenneth Whalun, among others.
“We want artists to find success as independents to set the foundation for long-term careers and move through their careers with leverage, and creative control. What we were able to build with 21 Savage early and again with SinceThe80s is the blueprint for the way we’re working with our artists and I’m so thankful to have been a part of both of these brands from the start,” Henderson said in a statement announcing the deal. “SoundCloud is typically one of the first touch points for indie artists and I feel a great part of my career has been brand building with artists from day zero — for this reason they’re the best partner for what we’re building. We’re being intentional on ground up development.”
In an interview with Billboard, Henderson further broke down the reasoning for going with SoundCloud, after previously working through Distrokid and then Epic Records for 21 Savage and with Motown/Capitol with SinceThe80s.
Kei Henderson
Courtesy Photo
“I think it was the understanding that building isn’t an overnight thing,” she said. “It will allow me to fund their careers from a startup level in a way that includes advances, recording budgets and marketing budgets. We’re always gonna be scrappy and resourceful, but it’s always nice to have a little bit of money to be able to do certain things with. So we’ll be able to activate digitally a little more than we would be able to as a completely unfunded independent, and I like that, and it also allows me to have access to a full team. Because the team they’re hiring at SoundCloud looks like a label, but not everybody is from a label background, so the thinking is a little bit different and the approach to how we market an artist is a little bit different.”
In the past few years, SoundCloud has pivoted its business model away from being solely a streaming platform and more towards becoming first a distributor, then towards full-service artist and label support, a shift that is concurrent with similar moves across the industry. The company has also introduced user-centric royalties, what it calls Fan-Powered Royalties, that pay artists based on the number of streams that they accrue rather than through market share of total streams; in July, SoundCloud struck a deal with the Warner Music Group to allow the major’s artists to get paid in that way on its platform, in addition to indie artists.
“Kei has a proven track record of finding and fostering the next generation of talent, so partnering with Third & Hayden was simply the right fit,” SoundCloud’s global senior vp/general manager Jessica Rivera said in a statement. “We’re excited about developing this joint venture with such a respected industry leader and creative who shares SoundCloud’s dedication to providing solutions and empowering artists as they take their careers to the next level on their own terms.”
In addition to the joint venture, Henderson recently opened console by 2NDBDRM in Atlanta, a record shop, listening room and retail space in the city’s Ponce City Market for artists and music fans in the city to have a community space to come together, which will feature some small-scale performances and in-store appearances, consistentl with her idea of wanting to grow artists’ careers not just digitally, but through live events and in-person experiences.
“I don’t think what works for one artist works for every single artist, so we do take into consideration how the artist wants to build their career over a long period of time,” Henderson says about the approach the label will take. “Some artists may feel like, after three projects, I want to go to a major, and that’s perfectly fine. So I want to leave it open-ended: whatever you want to do, let’s put a team around the artist that gets us to that long-term goal.”
Overall, Henderson says, the goal is to build an actual audience for artists, a prospect increasingly difficult in a TikTok world where virality can mean a record deal, but not necessarily a dedicated fan base. “I think what we’re missing in the industry as a whole is, everyone’s in such a hurry to get their money back, and I get that from a business perspective,” she says. “But from a manager perspective, it’s like, some of you want to get your money back but you’re not actually building a fan base or building a connection between the fan and the artist. And sometimes that takes a little bit longer to get it done properly.”
Universal Music Group (UMG) will expand its early career development program, Bonus Tracks, to Atlanta’s Frederick Douglass High School and through Motown Museum’s Hitsville NEXT in Detroit in the coming spring semester, the company tells Billboard. Last spring, UMG completed its first year in New York at Brooklyn’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH).
Bonus Tracks is dedicated to discovering and developing a diverse set of future executive talent by giving students in grades 11 and 12 the opportunity to learn about the music industry through immersive programming while being provided with transferrable skills. During the multi-week program, participants attend weekly meetings at a UMG label with executives from all areas of the company, including creative, marketing, commercial partnerships and promotion.
UMG has also created the Bonus Tracks Scholarship Award, a college scholarship that will be given to one Bonus Tracks student in each city who are recognized for their community leadership, commitment to academic excellence and completion of the program, including the presentation of their capstone project.
The Bonus Tracks program was launched in 2019 in partnership with Capitol Music Group (CMG) and the Compton Unified School District at Dominguez High School in Los Angeles. It later expanded to Nashville through Capitol Christian Music Group and Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet High School. It was founded by Brian Nolan, executive vp and executive vp of marketing at Motown; Patrick Stephens, manager of brand partnerships at CMG; and Micah Ali, president emeritus of the Compton School District.
“We’re excited to see Bonus Tracks continue to expand and look forward to bringing the program to students in Detroit and Atlanta,” said Nolan. “We knew Bonus Tracks could thrive and scale in the most meaningful ways in order to reach the next generation of music industry leaders. I am grateful to Micah Ali for his partnership in this incredible journey and to UMG for fully embracing and supporting the vision of the program: inspiration, education, and pathway.”
“Bonus Tracks has always been about giving students the opportunity to learn about career pathways in a way that meets their passion for music and curiosity about the industry,” added Ali. “As this program moves into its fifth year, I’m incredibly honored to continue to expand this program to reach students across the country.”
“Motown Museum’s Hitsville NEXT is devoted to supporting creativity in today’s young artists, entrepreneurs and changemakers,” said Robin Terry, chairwoman and CEO of the Motown Museum. “Partnering with Bonus Tracks is a perfect reflection of our mission. We can’t wait to work with the entire Detroit Public School system and grow this great program in our community.”
“With Atlanta being the music capital of the south, Frederick Douglass High School has produced some of the most famous music industry icons such as T.I., Lil Jon, and Killer Mike, to name a few, said Erika Y. Mitchell, a school board member of Atlanta Public Schools. “Bonus Tracks will create pathways for our students to learn about the music industry’s business, provide mentorships with music executives, and allow our students post-graduation to have access to internships at Universal Music Group or receive a scholarship toward college.”
Mitchell added that she’s “looking forward to expanding” the Bonus Tracks program to Atlanta’s Benjamin E. Mays High School “in the near future.”
“It is critically important for UMG to provide early career opportunities as an investment in the future of this industry, both from a business and fan perspective,” said Natoya Brown, senior vp of people inclusion and culture at UMG. “Bonus Tracks is a way to begin discovering and cultivating the next generation of music industry leaders.”
