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Samantha liked that attending Electric Forest took some planning – that it wasn’t one of those festivals that a person just attended on a whim.
“You can’t just buy tickets the night before and decide you’re going the next day – it’s more complicated than that. There’s camping, there’s travel, there’s making sure all of the LED lights on your outfit have the right batteries and are still working from last year,” she said, laughing.
In the 12-month span between Electric Forest 2023 and 2024, which ran June 20-23, Samantha (not her real name) left a “toxic” relationship and was involved in a serious car accident that required intensive physical therapy making it very difficult to walk or stand for long periods of time.
“Knowing that I had to heal my body in order to attend my tenth Electric Forest is what got me through my physical therapy,” she told Billboard. “After the year I had, there was no f***ing way I was going to miss the festival.”
Samantha was one of more than 50,000 fans who attended this year’s sold-out Electric Forest festival in Rothbury, Mich. Produced by AEG and Insomniac on the grounds of the Double JJ Ranch, the 13-year-old event has remained the largest camping festival in the jam and electronic music scene, an impressive feat in a market saturated with smaller, low-cost options targeted at casual fans.
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“Our success begins and ends with the community of fans and supports that make Electric Forest a regular part of their lives,” says Alicia Karlin, vp of global touring and talent at AEG Presents, who serves as the talent buyer for the festival.
That’s impressive considering how much the festival has moved away from the Electric Forest model. A decade ago, festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo were compelled to offer camping because attendees needed a place to stay for three days. But the shift toward urban centers, and the increasing costs of providing tens of thousands of fans with bathrooms, showers, trash collection and access to medical care has made camping costs prohibitive for many event organizers.
Electric Forest, on the other hand, is 99 percent camping and located in a fairly remote part of the state – the city of Rothbury, which hosts the festival, has a population of less than 450 residents. Attendees bring everything they need for the festival – from camping gear to food and luggage, undergoing rigorous security checks and driving as much as 500 miles in each direction.
Electric Forest 2024
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And while most festivals rely on their headlining artists to move tickets, this year’s festival featured Pretty Lights, Subtronics, Excision, The Disco Biscuits, Umphrey’s McGee and two sets from String Cheese Incident. Moreover, Electric Forest sells out the bulk of its annual tickets before the lineup is announced.
“We have 10 stages and a huge creative team and cast,” Karlin tells Billboard. “The agents and managers we work with trust us to put their artists in the best light and we’ve gotten to a point where many artists black out the entire weekend to play the festival and then attend the show the rest of the week.”
Two of Electric Forest’s biggest draws are the Sherwood Forest and Dream Emporium, each enhanced with actors and volunteers and hundreds of set pieces and custom art displays that change from year to year.
Much of the art pieces featured at Electric Forest are commissioned by the festival, explains Brad Lyman, Electric Forest production manager and creative director, who said the event receives more than 60 commission requests per year and accepts about 5 new pieces including a new Ocular organ delivered for 2024.
The Sherwood Forest separates the festivals main stages and camping areas with dozens of different areas and hidden pockets waiting to be discovered, from a field filled with hammocks to a small chapel where weddings are performed and walkways decorated by hundreds of Thai parasols.
The festival’s complex lightning and laser design is handled by Felix Lighting of Los Angeles while the festival’s walk-through experience – the Dream Emporium, is managed onsite by a team of creative professionals led by Suzanne Down.
“It’s kind of a choose your own adventure,” explains Down, who welcomes visitors to the Dream Emporium into a small lounge set up for UFO karaoke into a mirrored infinity tunnel designed to look like a 1970s car wash. Visitors wander the maze-like complex and stumble upon a skating rink wither roller skates available for rental, an indoor lake with a yacht and a punk dive bar that doubles as a wrestling ring.
Many artists get their start at Electric Forest playing one of the outdoor activations, Karlin explained, or even playing one of the late-night parties within the campground that often draw thousands of fans.
“There is always something to discover wherever you go, and fans tell us they really enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to discover something new each year,” Karlin explains. “That’s what motivates us as well. There’s a tremendous amount of time and resources that goes into Electric Forest but hearing these positive stories from fans year after year really puts it all into perspective.”
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Elon Musk & X have filed a lawsuit against advertisers he claimed colluded to boycott the social media platform.
According to reports, tech billionaire Elon Musk and the parent company of the social media platform X, formerly Twitter filed a lawsuit in a Texas federal court against the World Federation of Advertisers claiming these companies colluded to boycott the platform. The suit also names other companies such as Mars, Unilever, CVS, and Dutch clean energy firm Orsted. “This is an antitrust action relating to a group boycott by competing advertisers of one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States,” the suit reads.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino informed subscribers of the lawsuit in a video and letter posted to X, formerly Twitter, stating that the advertisers were harming “the marketplace of ideas” with their actions. The suit also named the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM as a defendant claiming they were “discontinuing entirely or substantially reducing their previously substantial advertising purchases.” The company seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages, alleging the boycott is still ongoing. “By sharply curtailing its revenues, the boycott has reduced X’s ability to invest in new or improved functionality, thus harming the consumers who use X’s platform.”
The lawsuit comes after an investigation was initiated by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee last month, which heard testimony from those companies involved. “The extent to which GARM has organized its trade association and coordinates actions that rob consumers of choices is likely illegal under the antitrust laws and threatens fundamental American freedoms,” its report read. Musk infamously told advertisers at the DealBook Summit last November who had begun to withdraw after his acquisition of X in 2022 to leave, saying: “Somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising?! Blackmail me with money? Go f–k yourself. Go. F–k. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.” Companies cited the rise of racist and anti-Semitic content on the platform as a major reason for their exit.
Warner Music Group’s stock was up around 3% Wednesday (Aug. 7) as investors optimistically received its fiscal third-quarter earnings report, which showed that streaming revenue continues to grow for the third-largest major music company.
On a call discussing the company’s earnings, Warner Music Group (WMG) CEO Robert Kyncl answered questions and shared his perspective on Spotify’s bundling controversy; discussed what WMG is doing to get more mileage out of its catalog; and shared a broad update on the company’s previously-announced $200 million cost savings/reinvestment plan — while remaining mum on the more recent executive restructure that’s been reverberating through the music industry since last week.
See below for three major takeaways from the call.
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Bundling is not inherently bad
Overall streaming revenue was up 5% for Warner this quarter, with recorded music streaming revenue up 8.7% — reflecting growth in subscription revenue of 7%. While that was welcome news to investors, the subject of Spotify’s contentious decision to bundle music and audiobooks — allowing them to qualify for the lower mechanical royalty rate reserved for bundles under the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) Phonorecords IV agreement — did not go unmentioned. But in his opening remarks and later, during a Q&A period with analysts, Kyncl said the company derives its streaming earnings from a diversity of partners and appeared to tamp down talk of the controversy that erupted over the bundling policy.
“I know that investor attention has recently been focused on the dynamics between labels and DSPs, with some speculating that we’re adversaries playing a zero-sum game. That’s simply not the case,” Kyncl said. “We’re actively engaged with our partners around ways to drive growth for all of us. Streaming dynamics remain healthy … with plenty of headroom for subscriber growth in both established and emerging markets … across multiple partners. Also, price optimization and improvements in the royalty models will provide ongoing opportunities for additional growth.”
Kyncl went on to note that bundling, which could result in lower payments to songwriters, has been used in other industries, like TV, for the purpose of market expansion. “The job of wholesalers like the music companies is to ensure that the sanctity of our pricing are in line with each other. You can expect us to pursue that strategy,” Kyncl said. “As it relates to CRB, I don’t see it as something that will persist in the long term.”
Radio silence on executive restructuring
WMG executives did not directly discuss the internal restructuring plans made public last week, which led longtime co-leader of Atlantic Records and Atlantic Music Group chairman/CEO Julie Greenwald to announce she was stepping down on Tuesday (Aug. 6). During his opening remarks, Kyncl did highlight the “commercially and creatively … successful” partnership between WMG and 10K Projects — whose CEO/founder Elliot Grainge has been picked to succeed Greenwald — by noting English-Cypriot singer-songwriter Artemas’ single “I Like The Way You Kiss Me,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Global Excl. U.S. chart in April.
However, Kyncl did share details about a restructuring plan he mentioned on WMG’s last earnings call, which included selling the entertainment websites Uproxx and HipHopDX — with the overall goal to increase investment in music, technology and new skill sets and deliver $200 million in savings by the end of fiscal 2025.
“The majority of changes have already been implemented,” Kyncl said. “We are laying a strong foundation to accelerate our progress and yield greater value over time. We made improvements to our royalty systems and the tools used to identify unclaimed revenue, we overhauled our global supply chain, unlocking our ability to scale our third-party distribution business, and we’ve transformed our proprietary tools that identify fan trends while building new ways to engage with super fans.”
Catalog optimization is a major priority
One area where Kyncl is investing in technology is through a project he says is aimed at increasing the “performance of catalog…across all of our DSPs.”
Speaking of recent spikes in streaming for artists in Warner’s “deep” catalog — like Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman — as well as “shallow” catalog like Ed Sheeran, Kyncl said generating continued digital success stories for those acts is a top priority.
“We have a project on this across our technology and business teams to move down the entire catalog and make sure it’s properly optimized for streaming and on every large DSP,” he said on the call. “All of this augments our marketing campaigns against catalog which we have done in the past and continue to do and we’re applying more and more frontline focus on catalog.”
In early 2021, Wasserman Music’s Tom Schoeder met with a rising electronic producer at the artist’s London studio. There was buzz around the producer, who had pivoted to making his own music after working the boards for artists like Ed Sheeran, but he wasn’t famous yet, and Schroeder was cautious.
“There was an assumption from the industry and other agents that this was going to be a runaway success,” Schroeder recalls. “I said to [some of these people], ‘You’re thinking the wrong way. No one really cares what producers do, you’ve got to work out what your story is.’”
Luckily, the nascent artist – the now globally-famous Fred again.. – had already figured out the narrative. In the studio, he showed Schroeder short videos of mundane scenes on his phone – the cleaning crew at a stadium, friends with their children – that he had scored with his music, giving the visuals a poignancy they wouldn’t have had on their own. The videos, he explained, would be the basis for the intimate feel and life-as-seen-through-a-phone-screen look of his shows. He also laid out his plan for using social media to engage with fans in a casual, conversational way and then leverage this connection to create momentum around live events.
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“It was like, ‘Wow, this guy isn’t just an incredible musical genius, he’s thinking way beyond that,” says Schroeder, the executive vp/managing executive of Wasserman Music U.K., who signed Fred again.. in August 2021. “You could see the ambition. The confidence was something like I’d never seen before.”
In the three years since, this plan – leveraging an ongoing discourse with fans into excitement around new music and mold-breaking live shows – has led to one of the most innovative and successful touring strategies in electronic music and the broader live music ecosystem. Amid his rise, Fred again.. has played increasingly large festival sets – including headlining slots at Coachella 2023, Glastonbury 2023 and Bonnaroo 2024 – along with historically long residencies at key venues and increasingly big and culturally resonant “pop up” shows that Fred himself announces just days before they happen.
His last pop up – a June 14 show at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum – was announced with just four days notice. It went on to sell 65,100 tickets and gross $6.4 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. The Rolling Stones are the only act with a bigger reported gross at the venue.
“He’s completely changed the game, and the scale only comes later. It’s almost secondary,” says Schroeder of these pop-up performances. “Now he’s changed the game with stadiums, but he changed the game from the start.”
Pent-Up Demand
It was a kind of kismet that Fred again..’s music – emotive, hooky and extremely current sounding electronic productions – gained traction during the pandemic, when live shows were impossible. When audiences could finally see Fred in concert, the pent-up energy created demand. Fred’s first U.S. performances were a pair of buzzy, sold-out shows at 500-capacity Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles in December 2021. That same week in L.A., he played his first U.S. pop-up at a Mid-City Chinese restaurant.
“It was 75 people in a restaurant, but everyone in Los Angeles was talking about it the next day,” says Wasserman senior vp Evan Hancock, who along with Schroeder and senior vp Ben Shprits make up the Fred again.. team at Wasserman. “We just tried to do that again and again.”
The interest around these early shows culminated in a pair of packed, sweaty sets at Coachella 2022, where the earnest sentimentality of the music and relatable iPhone bric-a-brac visuals whipped up big feelings for a crowd that was gathering for the first time since the pandemic. Things leveled up again in July 2022, when Fred’s euphoric set for online streaming platform Boiler Room went viral.
At this point, many artists would announce a major tour. That wasn’t Fred’s plan. “Do I think he’s ever going to put up a predictable tour nine months in advance?” says Schroeder. “No. I can’t see it. Why would he? What he wants to do is things that have never been done before.”
The team leaned into their pre-existing model, playing festival sets in Europe and the U.S. along with sold-out, multi-night runs at venues including Los Angeles’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery in September 2022 and three nights at New York City’s Terminal 5 that October. In early 2023, Fred, alongside friends and fellow producers and performers Skrillex and Four Tet (both also Wasserman clients) created an electronic scene frenzy when they played three pop-up shows in London and a few in New York ahead of a February 15 announcement that they’d be playing a headlining set at Madison Square Garden three days later. That show sold out in two minutes.
“Everyone in London, everyone in Sydney, everyone in Tokyo knew what had happened in New York,” says Schroeder. “We realized we could create these iconic moments and if we executed them at 10 out of 10, we didn’t have to replicate them, because they resonated everywhere.”
“Creating Moments In The Now”
The team agrees that the most crucial element of these pop-ups is less their size and more their immediacy. To wit, on Oct. 27, 2022, Fred announced he was riding a bike through London’s Hyde Park while playing his new album on portable speakers and that fans were welcome to ride with him. Hundreds of people turned up.
“What Fred’s doing is creating moments in the now,” says Schroeder. “He’s not having this ten-month delay [between putting shows on sale and playing them] where people can split up with their girlfriend or change their musical taste. He is living in the moment at a time when society is living in the moment much more than it used to, because the world is more uncertain than it was pre-pandemic. The world has moved to, ‘What are we doing next week?’, not ‘What are we doing next year?’, and Fred’s the best example of it.”
On June 1, Fred again.. and Skrillex sold 25,000 tickets for a show at the San Francisco Civic Center Plaza that was announced four days before it happened and was the first music event to take place at the government run space in years. At one point during the day they went on sale, 65,000 people were in the digital queue trying to buy them. When Fred landed in Australia this past February, 125,000 people attempted to buy tickets for his pop-up at the Sydney Opera House, which holds 2,250. Another seven pop-ups around the country created a sort of national hysteria akin to Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket lottery. “I mean obviouslyyyy we didnt come all this way for one show….” Fred wrote on Instagram when announcing the events, which all sold out in minutes.
The team and most any fan who’s been part of it will attest that the last-minute aspect is part of the thrill. “There’s an excitement in making yourself available, changing your plans for Friday, hunting a ticket down, refreshing Fred’s socials to see what the clues are,” says Schroeder. “What we have with Fred is what I call active engagement, where fans are trying to find from out from Fred what’s about to happen, versus him presenting what’s about to happen.”
But the shows are planned well in advance. Another Planet Entertainment, the team’s partner on the June 1 San Francisco event, applied for the permit in February after Fred’s team reached out about doing an outdoor event in the city. Another Planet‘s president of concerts & festivals Allen Scott says that while producing the show was “definitely a workout” – given that the stage had to be built late at night so as not to not disrupt business at City Hall – the fact that tickets would sell out immediately “was the most known variable in the equation” based on Fred’s touring history and the “pent up demand” for the artist in the Bay Area. He says Mayor London Breed even had a watch party for the show on her balcony at city hall.
Meanwhile, while fans were only given four days notice for the L.A. Coliseum show (though Fred teased it by having “Los Angeles, June 14” printed in the liner notes of the vinyl for his Tiny Desk Concert, released a week prior to the event), it was on the calendar a year out. With these tentpole events in place to work around, the team was able to arrange unannounced Fred sets at EDC Las Vegas in May and Glastonbury in June.
All of this hype also helps feed the model’s residency element. In the fall of 2023, Fred played five shows at London’s Alexandra Palace, three at Forrest Hills Stadium in New York and nine at Los Angeles’ Shrine Expo Hall – the most consecutive shows a single artist has ever performed at the latter two venues.
“I think we originally proposed five or six Shrines,” says Hancock, “and Fred came back and said eight, then 20 minutes later came back and said nine.” Fred announced the shows on his Instagram, and all of them sold out within days. (The final Shrine show was announced the day of.) The Forrest Hils run grossed $2.9 million and sold 42,300 tickets, while the Shrine shows grossed $2.2 million and sold 45,000 tickets, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore.
Still, says Hancock. “I’m not going to say that in the weeks and months leading up I wasn’t like, “What the f— are we doing?”
“Absolutely Huge Risk”
After all, Fred’s rapid growth appears to violate one of the key rules of agenting – when it comes to developing new talent, don’t skip steps. Most agents agree it’s not wise to go from night clubs to stadiums; long-term careers are built with the help of audiences who invest in artists. While hype tends to fade quickly, building a long-term fan base is a slow burn, and most of live music’s largest players are used to moving at a slower pace.
“I’ve been an agent a long time, and we’re used to doing things in a particular way, and the infrastructure around us is used to doing things in a particular way,” says Schroeder, “and at the front of it you’ve had Fred going, ‘I don’t care that that’s how it’s done. I want to do it differently.’”
A crucial element has thus been finding partners who are willing to take, says Schroeder, the “absolutely huge risk” inherent in announcing very big shows at the very last minute and many shows at the same venue all at once with no traditional marketing – “because your marketing means absolutely nothing, because it’s all him,” Schroeder adds. “And you’re going to have to cut a really tough deal, because he’s the hottest act in the world.”
The Wasserman teams also credits the “hive mind” of the entire Fred again.. team, which they say works more collaboratively than many artists they’ve seen. This all-hands-on deck mentality has involved Fred himself speaking with the mayor of Perth, the head of the NYPD and the San Francisco mayor’s office to help coax certain permissions for shows, like taking over control of the lights on San Francisco City Hall for the show. “He’s so confident in his vision for what he wants to do that he’s positive that if he can explain what he wants to do, ultimately they will let him,” says Shprits. “And ultimately that’s what happens.”
“Fred is changing how people see touring and how agents and promoters approach touring, and he’s unsettling a system that’s been in place for 50 or 60 years and turning it on its head,” Schroeder continues. “It’s a complete game changer that the industry isn’t talking about, because they can’t talk about it, because it’s so challenging to them and the status quo.”
Growing Influence – and Future Plans
But conversations on how other artists can replicate the model are currently happening, Schroeder says, “in every single planning meeting that you ever have about every artist.” It’s not a model most artists can pull off, although one can see the appeal, given that it cultivates incredible hype while also offering a solution to the longtime dilemma of artists, and particularly electronic artists, burning out with nonstop touring. “Fred wants a life,” says Schroeder. “He’s never going to do 250 shows a year, so it’s about making very, very special moments… This isn’t a model that’s appropriate for many artists, but it has completely shifted the game.”
But despite the success, the team still sees huge room for growth. Thus far Fred hasn’t played in Asia, has only done a handful of shows in South America, has done just two short runs through Europe and has focused his U.S. touring largely on the coasts. The latter is about to change; on Monday (August 5), he announced the Places We’ve Never Been Tour, which will follow the Sept. 6 release of his fourth studio album, ten days, and take him to stadiums and amphitheaters in the Midwest, northwest and southern U.S. and into Canada this September and October. (The run includes two-night stints in Denver, Seattle, East Troy, Wisconsin and Toronto.) On Instagram, Fred noted that additional dates will be added to this run – and given his track record, it also seems likely that pop-up shows will be incorporated into this and future runs as the touring footprints continues expanding.
“I think Fred is enormously underplayed,” says Schroeder. “Are we going to be able to go to all these countries we haven’t been to? A million percent, and I can’t wait to do it.”
Even before President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, extremely online millennials and Gen Zers had started posting memes on social media in support of Vice President Kamala Harris, who many hoped (and assumed) would take over for Biden after his disastrous debate performance in late June. And after Harris replaced him as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, it seemed the entire internet became completely coconut-pilled.
Along with traditional text- and image-based memes — which are nothing new — musical memes have also proliferated on short-form video sites like TikTok, Reels and Shorts, with users mashing up Harris quotes with popular songs using AI or more traditional methods of remixing. But these playful — or, in some cases, just plain strange — songs are more than just digital fun and games. The overwhelmingly pro-Harris memes are reaching millions of potential voters, and might help Harris mobilize the previously discouraged young voters she needs in order to win in November.
One audio, which has over 1.1 million likes on TikTok, pairs Harris’ memeable quote “do you think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” with the instrumental for “360” by Charli XCX. Another pitch-alters the same Harris quote over “The Star-Spangled Banner.” One anti-J.D. Vance audio pastes the Republican VP candidate saying “I’m a Never Trump Guy” over “Freek-a-Leek” by Petey Pablo. (After that clip went viral, the @KamalaHQ account also made its own video using the sound.)
There are also pro-Harris AI tracks, like one that replaces the lyrics to a Beyoncé song to make Queen Bey seemingly sing “you exist in the context of all in which you live,” another heavily memed Harris quote. A different AI track splices a Harris soundbite over DJ Johnrey’s viral track “Emergency Budots,” with an AI deepfake video of Harris and Pete Buttigieg dancing under a palm tree.
Beyond its political ramifications, this content also offers a glimpse into the future of music — one where we don’t just play our music, but where we play with it. In a sense, it’s the culmination of a trend that’s been brewing for decades. As music lovers have embraced sampling, remixing, the digital audio workstation, the Splice royalty-free sample library, Kanye West’s stem player and sped-up/slowed-down song edits, they’ve demonstrated a desire to have more control over static recordings than the traditional music consumption provides. And AI innovations can help to further facilitate this customizable listening experience.
Some music AI experts, including Suno’s CEO Mikey Shulman, are betting on a future where “anyone can make music” at the click of a button — and that everyone will want to. Often, I’ve heard folks who espouse this view of AI music compare it to photography, given photography is an art form which went from being something conducted by trained professionals in proper studio settings to being a ubiquitous activity aided by smartphones.
These entrepreneurs aren’t totally misguided — it’s clear based on user interest in Suno and Udio that there is a place for songs that are completely new and individual. But right now, it seems predictions about this technology’s role in the future of music consumption are too bullish. Music fans still crave familiarity, community and repetition when listening to music. It’s also scientifically proven that it takes multiple listens to form bonds with new songs — which is way more likely to happen with hit songs by artists you know and love, rather than individualized AI-generated tracks.
Instead, I think the average music listener will be way more interested in using AI to tweak their favorite hits. Listeners could use AI stem separation tools to create more bass-heavy mixes, for example, or some form of AI “timbre transfer” to make a song’s guitars sound more like a Les Paul than a Stratocaster (you could also go even further and change a guitar to be an entirely different instrument), or AI voice filters to change the lyrics of a song to include their best friend’s name.
Of course, there are still serious legal hurdles to customizing copyrighted sound recordings and songs if users share them publicly. Right now, any of the artists whose songs were used in these pro-Harris remixes could get them taken down upon request, citing copyright infringement. The NMPA has also expressed that it is willing to fight back against Spotify if it ever rolled out customizable song features on its platform. In a cease and desist letter, the NMPA warned the streaming service, saying, “We understand that Spotify wishes to offer a ‘remix’ feature…to ‘speed up, mash up, and otherwise edit’ their favorite songs to create derivative works. Spotify is on notice that release of any such feature without the proper licenses in place from our members may constitute additional direct infringement.”
So for now, edited songs will remain on social media platforms only, at least until they receive takedown requests. Still, consumer interest in music customization is only growing, and the popularity of pro-Harris campaign remixes serve as proof.
This analysis was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.
Expanding on their track record of throwing dance-music events in singular spaces around Los Angeles, dance music event promoter Stranger Than has announced it will soon host a series of shows in a repurposed supermarket.
The space will serve as a temporary venue for a four-month run of shows happening September through December, with the lineup thus far featuring parties by Boiler, Carl Craig and Moodymann performing as Detroit Love, Floating Points, Orbital, Luciano, Nico Moreno, Adam Ten and Mita Gami, an afterparty for the Mayan Warrior crew’s Oct. 26 show, a Daytime Warriors party and an event from the Pizzaslime collective. Additional programming will be announced in the coming weeks.
The space, a former California Market in Koreatown, can hold between 1,200 to 3,200 attendees and has also hosted traveling exhibitions. Called The Supermrkt, the venue was soft-launched as a dance space this past May with a 14-hour set from Gordo that started at 6 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m., with organizers planning to continue these daytime hours for some of its upcoming shows. Daytime shows will capitalize on the building’s unique architecture and natural lighting effects courtesy of the sun, while also offering a workaround to the city’s often truncated club hours.
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Gordo plays Supermarkt in May
Victor Hofer
“With L.A.’s time restrictions, it’s really become the city of daytime parties,” Stranger Than founder Tal Ohana tells Billboard. “In the dance music world especially, we find it’s hard for attendees, DJs and ourselves to keep up with the rest of the world’s electronic music scenes where clubs stay open until the morning hours.
“While we can still have eight-plus hour daytime parties in open air parks and outdoor spaces with large dance floors,” he continues, “permitting and neighborhood compliances make it difficult to really tap into the early morning parties that are found in other electronic hotspots globally. With the new space, we wanted to introduce this element to L.A.’s party scene.”
Ohana adds that this flexible schedule will also allow multiple events to happen in the venue during a single day.
The Supermrkt follows Stranger Than shows that have happened at locations including Cabrillo Beach and downtown’s El Pueblo de Los Angeles, with the team focused on unique locations for one-off shows that have been almost entirely outdoors. That changes with The Supermrkt.
“Indoor locations for one-off events at large capacities are very difficult to come around in L.A.,” says Ohana. “There are many safety requirements and regulations that are hard to find for a property with one large room that is also available and empty for production of this type.
“The Supermrket provides a large indoor event space, unique architecture and most importantly a venue that is naturally beautiful for both day and night events,” he continues, adding the venue “will provide a space that is thoughtfully curated towards our house and techno music scene, more specifically aiming to provide elements not typically found in L.A. for fans in the lane.
And after years of producing one-off around town, Ohana says The Supermrkt is “absolutely is a precursor to a permanent venue by Stranger Than.”
The Supermrkt
Courtesy Photo
Peso Pluma‘s Double P Records has signed a global administration deal with Downtown Music Publishing, Billboard has learned.
Serving as the global admin for the label’s publishing arm, the company will also provide sync placement across Double P Records’ current and future releases as well as administration for Peso Pluma’s own publishing interests, including his latest double album, Éxodo, which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200.
The label and publisher was founded in April 2023 by Peso and his manager George Prajin. Besides Peso, it’s also home to Música Mexicana singer-songwriters Jasiel Nuñez, Tito Double P and Estevan Plazola. “We are looking forward to joining forces with Downtown and continuing to grow our partnership,” Prajin, CEO of Prajin Parlay and co-founder of Double P Records, said in a statement. “I am confident that together we are going to do great things.”
While Peso is not the first regional Mexican act to join Downtown’s roster (including Luis R Conriquez and Código FN), the partnership reflects the ever-growing overall interest in a genre that’s seen exponential growth in the past year alone, in part spearheaded by Peso Pluma. Regional Mexican music is now the largest Latin subgenre in the U.S., according to Luminate’s 2024 Midyear Music Report.
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Mexican music’s growth is something Ben Patterson, Downtown Music’s president of artist & label services, has been keeping an eye on, while also “tripling” his staff focused on the genre. “First and foremost by investing in the clients,” he says about adapting to the changing landscape. “By making resources — financial, creative and human — available to support the global demand. Ensuring we remain as responsive and reactive as we can be in creating commercial support, audience growth that is organic and ad-driven and marketing strategies that fit the label, artist or project. This is a full company focus.”
The deal, adds Jedd Katrancha, chief commercial officer of Downtown Music Publishing, “reimagines what independent music culture can be like — it’s modeling a future of a lot of other artists and songwriters.” Most recently, Katrancha and his team scored Peso’s “TEKA” an Apple TV placement for the 2024 Leagues Cup between MLS and Liga MX.
“That’s what we’re excited about, to bring in mainstream global brands that are looking at what Peso is doing and wanting to be a part of if in a really authentic way,” he says. “That’s really encouraging and we’re just scratching the surface.”
As the nation focuses on Tim Walz, the newly named vice presidential running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, a look into his record as Minnesota’s governor reveals that he recently signed a bill designed to protect concertgoers from junk fees and fraud. This past May, Walz signed a bill that increased transparency for […]
Boosted by double-digit growth in recorded streaming and helped by major releases from Beyoncé and Future & Metro Boomin, Sony Music said on Tuesday that total revenue grew 23% to 442 billion yen ($2.7 billion) during its fiscal first quarter, which ended June 30.
Sony’s operating income improved 17% to 86 billion yen ($534 million) and adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) jumped 30% to 108 billion yen ($671 million). Adjusted OIBDA margin improved to 24.4%.
Both of Sony’s music divisions — recorded music and publishing — posted similarly solid year-over-year gains during the period, resulting in the ninth consecutive year of growth on the recording side and 11th straight year of gains for publishing.
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Recorded music revenue increased 26% to 299 billion yen ($1.8 billion), with subscription and ad-supported streaming up 19% to 197 billion yen ($1.2 billion) and accounting for roughly 66% of that recorded segment tally. Physical revenue sunk 5.6% to 24 billion yen ($150 million), year over year, while Sony’s “other” category — lumping merchandise, live performances and licensing revenue from synch, public performance and broadcast — jumped 81% to 73 billion yen ($453 million).
Sony said some of its top sellers for the fiscal quarter were Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER, Future and Metro’s WE DON’T TRUST YOU, Travis Scott’s UTOPIA and SZA’s SOS. Some non-all-capped wins included Luke Combs’ Gettin’ Old, 21 Savage’s american dream and Doja Cat’s Scarlet.
Music publishing revenue rose 28.7% to 97 billion yen ($602 million). Streaming revenue climbed 36% to 56.5 billion yen ($351 million), while publishing’s “other” category grew 19.7% to 40.1 billion yen ($249 million) when compared to the year-ago period. The company disclosed that as of March 31, its publishing division either owned or administered approximately 6.24 million songs, an increase of 14% in the last two years.
Sony Music’s visual media and platform revenue declined 7.1% to 39.7 billion yen ($246 million). The segment includes mobile gaming, software for PCs and game consoles, and software development contracts.
Looking ahead, Sony Music Entertainment raised its forecast for full-year revenue by 3% to 1.7 trillion yen (approximately $11.5 billion) with a projected operating income increase of 5% from the previous forecast in May to 20 billion yen.
Warner Music Group reported on Wednesday strong streaming revenue growth and keeping a lid on its costs helped offset declines in merchandise and physical music sales in the company’s third fiscal quarter.
Quarterly net profit rose nearly 14% to $141 million from $124 million in the third quarter last year. Overall revenue fell by 1% to $1.554 billion from $1.564 billion in the year ago quarter due to the roll off of BMG’s distribution deal and a difficult comparison to the year-ago quarter, which included a $7 million benefit from the Copyright Royalty Board in Phonorecords III.
The company’s digital revenue and streaming revenue were up 4.7% and 5.5% respectively, as subscription revenue grew 7%. Recorded Music streaming revenue increased 5.0%, and music publishing streaming revenue increased 7.9%.
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“Our strong subscription streaming growth in [the third quarter] was driven by the performance of our music and healthy industry trends,” Warner Music Group chief executive Robert Kyncl said in a statement. “We’re nurturing the next generation of artists and songwriters, creating fresh impact for our iconic catalog, and working with our partners to increase the value of music. Our commitment to long-term artist development, combined with a flatter structure in recorded music, will enable us to super-serve talent and set WMG up for sustained future growth.”
WMG’s operating income jumped 10% to $207 million in the quarter from $189 million in the third quarter last year. Adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization (OIBDA), which measures profitability over a specific period of time, rose 6% to $316 million from $297 million in the prior-year quarter.
Revenue from WMG’s recorded music division fell by 2% to $1.251 billion from $1.282 in the year-ago quarter. This was due in part to the exiting of BMG as a client, which resulted in $26 million less revenue, and a “renewal with one of the Company’s digital partners” which created an additional $3 million drage on recorded music streaming revenue, the company said.
BMG began winding down its distribution agreement with WMG’s ADA last September to move control of its 80 billion-stream digital business in-house.
Physical revenue fell by 4.8% because of release timing and a tough year-ago comparison, the company said. Artist services and expanded-rights revenue fell by 27.1% mainly due to lower merchandising revenue.
Revenue from WMG’s music publishing division rose by 8% to $305 million from $283 million in the year-ago quarter.
Topline Results:
Total revenue 1% to $1.554 billion in the third fiscal quarter 2024 from $1.564 billion in the same period last year.
Net income rose 14% to $141 million from $124 million in the third quarter 2023.
Recorded music revenue fell by 2% to $1.251 billion from $1.282 billion in the third quarter 2023.
Music publishing revenue rose 8% to $305 million from $283 million in the third quarter 2023.