Business

As the sex trafficking trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs kicks off with jury selection in New York this week, radio DJs have all but dropped the Bad Boy Records founder’s catalog from their airwaves, Luminate data reviewed by Billboard shows.

Songs by Puff Daddy, P. Diddy and Diddy accrued just 1,671 airplay spins year to date, an 86% decline from the same time frame last year when the artists’ catalog racked up 11,870 airplay spins, according to Luminate. For a comparison, Diddy collaborator and Bad Boy artist Notorious B.I.G.’s catalog accrued 63,390 spins since the start of the year, Luminate data shows.

The decline in commercial radio play doesn’t just reflect a public turn away from the artist who is accused of running a large-scale criminal operation for his own “sexual gratification.” It also means the artist’s catalog could generate less than the $3 million in revenue that Billboard estimates it generated annually from master recording and publishing revenue from streams, sales and radio airplay between 2021 and 2023.

Representatives for Diddy did not respond to requests for comment.

Revenue from music streaming subscriptions is still the most significant source of income for music companies, artists and other owners’ music rights. However, commercial radio play remains a significant source of income for the publishing side, sources said.

“For a mature catalogue, such as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs … that portion of income impacted by a sharp decline in radio airplay is limited to 6 percent to 9 percent of total publishing royalties,” says Barry Massarsky, a partner at Citrin Cooperman and head of the firm’s music and entertainment valuation practice. Massarsky cautioned that only the catalog’s publishing revenue can be analyzed because there is no entitled performance right for sound recordings played on U.S.  commercial radio.

In the United States, the performance rights organizations ASCAP and BMI pay a base rate of roughly 50 cents to publishing companies per radio spin. As radio airplay can influence stream counts, there is a residual paid out on the master recording royalties that brings the total payment per airplay stream to roughly $1. Popular songs can earn additional bonus money.

While the Diddy catalog’s airplay spins did not put him within reach of any bonus money — bonuses are typically paid out for songs that top 135,000 spins in a quarter — Billboard estimates his catalog’s publishing revenue was $10,200 less for the first 16 weeks this year compared to last year. If Diddy’s songs continue to generate the same average per-week-radio airplay spins they did at the start of the year — an average of 117 per week — it would mean a year over year decline of $34,300 compared to last year.

As of June 2024, Diddy owned his master recording catalog and publishing, which Billboard estimated earned about $2.4 million in master recording revenue and $600,000 in publishing revenue annually for the years from 2021 to 2023. Diddy’s share was $2.625 million in each of those years, Billboard estimated. Those estimates do not include credits and royalties for music assets beyond his own artist catalog.

It is unclear to what extent the accusations and lawsuits against Diddy may have contributed to the decline in airplay because airplay spins for his catalog rose for roughly the first four months of both 2023 and 2024, when several allegations that would later lead to lawsuits were already public.

Last year, Diddy’s catalog had the best start of the year in terms of airplay spins that it has had for any similar 16-week period since 2020, when the catalog accrued about 7,700 airplay spins. The second best 16-week period for Diddy’s catalog in terms of airplay spins was the start of 2023, when the catalog racked up nearly 11,000 spins.

Despite the decline in airplay, Diddy’s catalog remains popular on streaming platforms, though streaming activity during this period was almost half of what it was last year and was the lowest for this period than during any of the past five years.

In the first 16 weeks of this year through April 24, Diddy’s catalog accumulated roughly 29 million U.S. on-demand streams compared to nearly 52.7 million U.S. on-demand streams for the same period in 2024. The only other start-of-the-year stretch over the last five years when Diddy’s catalog had such a low stream count was in 2020, when it racked up 29.7 million on-demand streams from Jan. 1, 2020, to April 23, 2020.