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In a TikTok video from June, Charlene Kaye, an excellent guitarist and bass player, sits on a stool with an electric bass at a Guitar Center and plays Paul McCartney’s iconic riff from The Beatles’ “Come Together” — incorrectly. On purpose. Two men in flannel and sweatshirts quickly rush over to guitarsplain: “No, it’s bum, bum, ba, ba, DOO, bum.” “Yeah, there’s one other note.” “Higher.”
In this one-minute experiment, the artist and comedian demonstrated to her 71,400 followers how male guitarists often treat female guitarists, how music stores can be unexpected snake pits and why men have dominated the guitar market for decades. “I’m a millennial, so my haven after school was going to Guitar Center and playing all the guitars there for hours,” Kaye says. “I was a much worse guitar player back then, and I would always get looks from these dude-bros who were the gatekeepers of Blink-182 and John Mayer. I couldn’t be a girl in there without getting hit on or corrected.”
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But the guitar patriarchy is changing, Kaye says, and sales metrics in recent years bear her out. Guitar Center itself has been working, as the company’s vp of guitar merchandising Matthew Schneider puts it, to “make sure everybody’s treated nice.” During the pandemic, homebound would-be players shifted to purchasing new axes online, boosting industry sales and freeing women from having to interact with the so-called dude-bros in stores. According to the Fender Play app, 45% of new players in 2020 were female, a 15% increase from 2019. Last year, the number increased to 49%. “The growth is palpable and active,” says John Dolak of the National Association of Music Merchants.
Kaye acknowledges the 300-store Guitar Center, which she calls the “epicenter of white dude riffs,” has been improving its culture, including by spotlighting women players in catalogs and store windows. The retailer’s Hollywood store put on a splashy event in June to introduce Orianthi’s new Gibson SJ-200 and featured Joan Jett in TV ads and YouTube videos as a partner for the chain’s fall 2021 Guitar-A-Thon, among many other female-fronted events. In November, two months after singer Blu DeTiger became the first woman to collaborate with Fender on a signature bass, she posted a TikTok of an employee at Guitar Center, where she bought her first bass at age 7, helping her pull the instrument from the wall. “The store is for everybody, regardless of your skill level, regardless of your gender,” says Maria Brown, Guitar Center’s director of content, artists, events and social media. “It needs to be an open environment where it’s supportive for whatever you’re trying to check out and buy.”
For decades, the male-dominated guitar industry was much less inviting, female players say. Lzzy Hale, guitarist for hard-rock band Halestorm, recalls taking lessons at 16 from a male teacher, who told her mom afterwards, “I would love to teach your daughter, but traditionally, women don’t stick with it, so I don’t want to waste my time.” (Hale says her mom recalled years later that she dutifully “told him off.”) In the ’80s, when Sue Foley was starting her career playing biker bars, she says, “You’d just get dudes saying, ‘Show us your tits!’” But the veteran blues guitarist has older guitar-playing brothers and has never let such crude commentary bother her: “I always say, you’re going to get in the ring, you have to be ready for it. Don’t expect to get an easy ride. This is guitar. This is tough. It’s hard to play guitar, it hurts your fingers, there’s a lot of things about guitar that might trip up a girl who’s not used to that more rugged approach. You’ve got to be tough.”
The guitar industry, in general, has spent the last few years honoring women — and trying to attract them as customers. H.E.R. and Susan Tedeschi (Fender), St. Vincent (Ernie Ball) and Miranda Lambert (Gibson) are among the guitar heroines who’ve released signature models in recent years, and Gibson named Hale its first-ever brand ambassador in 2022. Dominating everything, as always, is guitarist Taylor Swift, whose “effect on society,” says Jim D’Addario, founder/board chairman of guitar strings company D’Addario, has been to see to it that “many more young ladies are picking up the guitar.”
According to Brian T. Majeski, principal at The Music Trades, which analyzes musical-instrument sales data, Swift-inspired female guitarists are part of a “wealth of anecdotal evidence indicating that numbers have been trending up the past decade.” NAMM’s Dolak adds, “Historically, the guitar-playing universe used to be dominated by men. However, these numbers have changed at a breakneck speed since the pandemic.”
Although the Music Trades Association projects 2025 global guitar sales to hit $19.9 billion, which would be an increase of 15.7% since the pandemic-boosted $17.2 billion in 2020, many in the industry fear revenue declines. “The industry is really kind of dormant, or actually declining 2% to 3% a year,” D’Addario says of musical instruments in general, explaining that guitar players who lose interest sell their instruments on eBay, where they compete with Fender and Gibson, rather than storing them forever in their basements and attics. Regarding guitars, Majeski adds, “The business is soft right now.”
So companies that make and sell guitars have emphasized women, in part for cultural and gender-equity reasons, but also in part to expand their business to a broader demographic. In 2022, Andy Mooney, Fender’s CEO, told Entrepreneur that the company experienced an uptick in guitar sales to women during the pandemic. “Women were buying guitars online because in the brick-and-mortar stores there was nobody to relate to, and they weren’t getting treated well,” he said at the time. Fender did not respond to interview requests for Mooney or other representatives, but the company has taken small steps to acknowledge women guitar players in recent years — like adding Tedeschi’s green model to its male-dominated signature collection in June.
Gibson, too, has featured women in recent campaigns, including its G3 mentorship and scholarship program, whose participants include many women. On a broad level, the iconic company known for masculine players such as Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page and The Who‘s Pete Townshend has been spelunking its history, focusing on unsung female Gibson players such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mary Ford, guitarist in a legendary ’40s duo with husband Les Paul. “When it comes to the guitar, men are expected to be good, and women aren’t expected to be good. That’s just been the way it is, for a long time,” says Emily Wolfe, a singer and guitarist who narrates an official Gibson video for the recent launch of Ford’s Les Paul Standard. “When you have a woman who’s really good at it, it’s like, ‘Yeah, we’ve been here for a long time — look at Mary Ford.’”
The concept of a pop superstar like Swift encouraging young women to pick up guitar is by no means new. Bonnie Raitt had this effect twice — first when she emerged as a folkie singer-guitarist in the early ’70s, then when she scored hits in the late ’80s. (Foley cites Jennifer Batten, Michael Jackson‘s lead guitarist, as a similar influencer for female players.) “The environment was always, ‘Men excel and women are stumbling along behind,’ but Bonnie Raitt was disproving every stereotype from day one,” says longtime blues guitarist Rory Block. “She was so dynamic and so strong, and I immediately said, ‘This is good, this is possible, women can do this.’ She paved the pathway for women — for me.”
But despite the influence of artists like Swift and the guitar industry’s appeals to female customers, social media has perhaps had the biggest impact on this sales demographic. Mallory Nees, senior social media manager for online musical-instrument retailer Reverb, says she took up guitar at age 11 in Whitewater, Wisc., where the local music store displayed posters exclusively of male stars.
It took a move to Chicago, as an adult, for Nees to learn about female players like St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker. Today, she says, girls and women everywhere can purchase instruments on Reverb and “improve their technique through YouTube videos and TikTok videos and creators that they trust and this whole ecosystem exists online anonymously and is fundamentally judgment-free, which was definitively not the case when I was learning to play.”
Elizabeth Heidt, Gibson’s chief marketing officer, adds that many women see YouTube and Instagram as a “safe space” for guitar playing, compared to music stores, which carry an “intimidation factor.”
“Those other spaces allow people the freedom to play, to share, to grow and see themselves,” she says. “That was a big shift.”
Hale explains the changing guitar culture a different way. “It was only a few short years ago I was playing festivals overseas, and I was the only woman on the bill,” she says. “We’re still losing some battles on the way, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
“This is our music,” Hale adds. “We’re not playing rock music [and] we’re not playing guitar because our boyfriends think it’s hot. We’re not doing it because we’re trying to prove something that girls can do. We’re doing it because we want to have ownership over the music that we love. We want to rage.”
Raphael Saadiq is partnering with the USC Thornton School of Music as the inaugural member of the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program, Billboard has learned exclusively. Under the leadership of dean Jason King in conjunction with key USC Thornton instructors, the Grammy-winning artist, songwriter, producer and instrumentalist (D’Angelo, Solange, TV series Insecure) will mentor students through spring 2025.
In this new role, Saadiq will work closely with the senior students in Thornton’s pop performance program to help them develop and refine their original songwriting and live performance skills. Also collaborating with Saadiq will be USC faculty member and artist/producer Tim Kobza. A special showcase featuring the student creatives will take place at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on March 9. Select USC Thornton students will have the opportunity as well to obtain additional firsthand experience in the creative process and music production by working with Saadiq at his esteemed Blakeslee Recording Studio.
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In the wake of earning four nominations in the upcoming 67th annual Grammy Awards for his contributions to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter — including album and song of the year (“Texas Hold ‘Em”) — Saadiq recently met and visited with the Thornton students. “I was thrilled to hang out with the Thornton music students and the faculty members who so graciously make this program work,” he tells Billboard. “I was surprised and somewhat nervous for a second; it took me back to my time as a student at YMP, the Young Musicians Program at the University of Berkeley, Calif.
“The students at USC had great questions, well-thought out and clever,” adds Saadiq, a founding member of the seminal ‘90s R&B band Tony! Toni! Toné! “That’s all I needed to hear to get my wheels spinning. The insights and experiences I’ve gathered could be beneficial as we share, grow and inspire each other. Here’s to the great exchange of ideas and the bright future we’re building. I look forward to the next wave of great musicians and songwriters at USC.”
Raphael Saadiq and Students
Dario Griffin/USC
Officially launching in 2025 under the direction of USC Thornton School of Music dean Jason King, the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program is an initiative designed to foster creative interaction between a wide-ranging group of distinguished music artists and Thornton students. Masterclasses, workshops, private instruction and public discussions are among the collaborative efforts comprising the initiative. As the announcement release further notes, each artist selected for the Creative Vanguard Program will “exemplify the following qualities: creative leadership; culture-defining impact; collaboration; interdisciplinary exploration; innovation and experimentation; and representation of musical continuum (artists whose work bridges the past, present and future of music).”
Additional members of the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program will be announced over the course of the year.
In announcing the program and Saadiq’s involvement, King stated, “Raphael Saadiq, in my opinion, is one of the MVPs of popular music of the last 40 years. He has excelled at incredibly high levels as a songwriter, as a producer, as a performer and so much more. He’s a visionary in the music industry, so what a joy to be able to bring him to meet the students, to work with the students who are graduating, to help them with their songs, to help them with their arrangements and their productions, and to be able to give them some guidance as they move into their professional careers post-graduation.”
Sean Holt, vice dean of USC Thornton’s contemporary music division and a musician/producer, added, “We’re just really excited tw have an icon like Raphael Saadiq work with us this semester, coming in to co-teach and co-supervise our seniors as they prepare for their senior showcase in the spring. The students got to meet Raphael not only as a maestro but as a fellow practitioner and a fellow traveler, and he shared so openly from the heart. It was so inspiring. We’re looking forward to his impact on our population as they get ready to make their final statement at their senior showcase.”
Over the past decade, vinyl has grown from a can-you-believe that comeback story to a serious business. Vinyl sales revenue in the U.S. grew 10% in 2023 to $1.4 billion, the same size as the market for Latin music. (The latter brings in far more money overseas. So, over the last few years, to feed demand, labels have started to release a growing array of products, from “collectible” color variations of hit pop albums to high-end products aimed at the audiophile market.
Rhino Entertainment, the catalog division of Warner Music Group, will announce today (Dec. 10) that it is launching a new premium reissue series, Rhino Reserves. The albums will retail for $31.98, with a level of quality higher than many reissues, for a price lower than higher-end audiophile reissues from Mobile Fidelity, which licenses albums from labels, or the company’s own Rhino High Fidelity albums. The first two albums, out Jan. 31 as part of Rhino’s annual Start Your Ear Off Right promotion, are Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel’s 1977 album Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs and New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint’s 1975 Southern Nights.
One impetus for Rhino Reserves is the success of Rhino High Fidelity, an audiophile line that sells for $39.98 online, in numbered editions of 5000 (although the company often releases more unnumbered albums, if demand is high). The High Fidelity releases are sourced from analog tape and pressed on high-quality vinyl, and a few have sold out, including box sets of Doors and ZZ Top albums.
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“This is High Fidelity without the bells and whistles,” says Rhino senior director of A&R Patrick Milligan. “But these are in retail,” unlike the Rhino High Fidelity releases, which are only sold online. Milligan says the series will be sourced from analog masters, with the same attention to detail as the High Fidelity Series, and that the records will be pressed at Fidelity Records Pressing, the new plant owned by company behind Mobile Fidelity reissues. (The High Fidelity series is pressed at Optimal, in Germany.) They will be cut by mastering engineer Matthew Lutthans, although the first two releases will be done by Chris Bellman.
There is already some competition at this level. Blue Note has done well with its audiophile Tone Poet jazz reissues, as well as a high-quality but lower-priced set of reissues. Mobile Fidelity, which has been releasing high-end reissues for decades, is now more active than ever, as is Analogue Production. Both of those companies license the rights to reissue albums from the labels that own the rights.
Rhino Reserves will not release albums on a particular schedule, and the hope is that it will feature some hard-to-find classics, like the first pair of reissues, both of which are beloved by crate diggers but hard to find in high-quality pressings. Reissue buyers seem to be becoming a bit more varied in their tastes, as the generation that grew up with songs from the sixties gives way to one raised on seventies and eighties music.
Apple Music is doubling down on its commitment to fuel Latin music’s global presence with the launch of its brand-new Apple Música Uno radio station, which officially went live on Tuesday (Dec. 10). The station will be free, with no subscription needed.
Música Uno is one of Apple Music’s three new global radio stations, the other two being Apple Music Club and Apple Music Chill. They joined the previously launched Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country radio stations.
Música Uno will have multiple on-air hosts — including radio personalities Evelyn Sicairos, who will host La Oficial Radio, and Lechero, who will helm ¡Dale Play! Radio — as well as exclusive special shows hosted by superstars Becky G, Rauw Alejandro and Grupo Frontera.
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“In the past we’ve been lucky to have the support of Zane [Lowe] and Ebro who’ve given us space in their shows, which aren’t necessarily Latin music shows, and that’s been great, but we need more spaces to tell the stories of many other Latin artists and for them to feel free to speak in Spanish or even Spanglish. Apple Música Uno is the place for that,” says Jerry Pulles, Latin music programmer at Apple Music. Over the past 10 years, Pulles has overseen the launch of several hosted shows, including the Apple Music 1 series La Fórmula Radio with El Guru, which is dedicated to Latin music.
Now, Música Uno will serve as a hub exclusively for all things Latin, covering every spectrum of the genre — from reggaetón to pop to Mexican music. “This radio station will allow us to continue building blocks with the artists we’ve supported since day one,” adds Marissa Lopez, Apple’s head of Latin music artist relations. “We’ve seen Latin music’s growth in real time, so this launch has been a long time coming.”
Rauw Alejandro
Apple Music Radio
The launch of Música Uno comes four years after Apple Music last launched a new radio station, when it introduced Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country. In this way, it’s hoping to tap into the growing popularity of Latin music as it continues to hit record-high revenues — largely led by paid streaming subscriptions. Over the past two years alone, a total of 134 Latin songs have reached Apple Music’s Global Daily Top 100 — up from 88 the previous two years, according to Apple. In the same time range, the number of música mexicana songs on the chart have more than quadrupled, up from 12 to more than 50.
“This was such a natural evolution for us,” Juan Paz, Apple Music’s global head of Latin music business, says of launching Música Uno. “Radio has always been the heartbeat of Apple Music, where we showcase the best and most relevant music and give artists a space for their creative output. With Apple Música Uno, we will continue to do just that, but in our language and with an opportunity for people all over the world to tune-in for free. Having this available for free globally is a truly exciting opportunity to continue to amplify what we do best — supporting artists and being at the forefront of culture.”
Since launching in 2015, Apple Music has made a name for itself in the industry as an artist-first service, and the launch of Música Uno aligns with that identity, says Patty Flores, head of U.S. Latin, music business partnerships at the company.
“By creating a space like this, we are filling a void where the artist is in charge of their own narrative. And a space where we lead by culture and human curation,” Flores says. “Our tagline roughly translates to the culture that moves you, and we really want to make this station come to life through the voices of our hosts and artists. Whether that is sharing track-by-track commentaries explaining the process and story behind new songs, or checking in to share influences or a special story behind their latest release, we want to tell those stories.”
Becky G
Apple Music Radio
Hosted by the Latin pop hitmaker, The Becky G Show will “give people a real sense of what life on tour is like — from the encounters with my incredible fans to the challenges, the highs, and everything in between,” says Becky G. “This show captures a special moment in my career, where I get to fully represent my culture and all the different layers that shape who I am.”
On Grupo Frontera’s show, meanwhile, the band says that “people will get to see us in a more relaxed environment, hanging out, goofing around and talking about music which is what we do in our regular lives. I think people are going to see that we are just a bunch of regular guys living our dreams. We had a lot of fun with our surprise guests.”
For Krystina DeLuna, Apple Music’s head of música mexicana editorial, Música Uno is an opportunity to continue the growth of a genre that was long considered niche. But today, thanks to a new generation of música mexicana hitmakers, that has totally changed. “The fact that this station is going to be global and free, that’s only going to help continue the conversation of taking música mexicana to the next level, which is what we’ve been trying to do for many years,” she says. “That’s why it was important to have Grupo Frontera host a show and have our playlist música mexicana playlist La Oficial come to life with a hosted show that will be focused on the culture, creating a safe space for artists to speak about their craft.”
The first song played on Música Uno when it launched Tuesday was Bad Bunny’s “El CLúB.” That marks a full circle moment for Apple Music, as the superstar launched the streaming service’s first Latin playlist, ¡Dale Play!, in 2018. “It’s a testament to the building blocks I mentioned before,” says Lopez. “Being there from the beginning of his career and seeing that growth. It’s just so exciting all around.”
CD Baby, one of the biggest do-it-yourself distribution services in the industry, laid off members of its creator services team last week, a source close to the matter tells Billboard. Responsible for providing customer support, this team is now being “consolidat[ed]” in an effort to “re-allocat[e] resources” within the company, says a spokesperson for CD Baby.
News of CD Baby’s employment cuts echo the recent news that Distrokid was placing 37 union employees responsible for quality control and customer service on “administrative leave.” These roles were to be outsourced to contractors, located internationally. Its other competitor, TuneCore, was recently sued by UMG in a landmark $500 million lawsuit for allegedly allowing its users to distribute songs that clearly infringed on UMG’s copyrights to streaming services.
Over the last year or so, a number of music businesses, even beyond the realm of DIY distribution, have restructured their companies, leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of music professionals on the search for new jobs. This year alone, UMG completely restructured its recorded music division, laying off hundreds of employees. WMG followed suit with similar restructuring of Atlantic Music Group and layoffs. WMG also shut down LEVEL, one of its distributors. In late 2023, BMG laid off “dozens” in its film/tv, theatrical and international marketing departments.
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A spokesperson for CD Baby replied to Billboard’s request for comment, saying: “In an effort to support the changing needs of artists and the industry, we are consolidating certain CD Baby functions within Downtown and re-allocating resources towards long-term growth opportunities. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the elimination of certain roles and positions at CD Baby. We want to recognize the achievements of these staff members during their tenure with CD Baby. Their dedication to innovation helped CD Baby to become a globally recognized leader in the distribution space. Going forward, we will stay committed to this music-first and pioneering approach, building the services that benefit artists today and in the future.”
CD Baby has helped independent musicians get their music out since its founding in 1998. In the intervening years, it has become one of the pioneers and leaders of the DIY distributor market, democratizing the music business and opening it up to musicians of all backgrounds. CD Baby, and the other services owned by its parent company AVL Digital Group, sold to Downtown Music Holdings in 2021 for a reported $200 million dollars. At the time, CD Baby’s then-CEO Tracy Maddux said of the deal: “This transaction will allow us to take the services we offer the independent music community to the next level.”
Sony Music pulled its catalog from the streaming service Boomplay on Monday (Dec. 9) due to late royalty payments, Billboard has confirmed. Several other prominent labels and distributors also confirmed to Billboard on Monday that they have not received recent royalty payments from the service. Additionally, a monthly payment report published by the distributor Symphonic […]
Hello, Cleveland! On Nov. 1, 1894, Billboard Advertising published its first monthly issue out of an Ohio office. Its goal: to demonstrate for advertisers “the efficacy of the bill board” (two words, even though the magazine’s name was one) and “maintain a high and exacting standard of excellence,” despite starting as a “journalistic youngster.” The nascent magazine was renamed The Billboard in 1897, nicknamed “Billyboy” by the 1910s and officially became Billboard in 1961. By then, the trade publication had become weekly, with a music business focus, and it was more about chart position than advertising placement. Even at 130, the only wrinkles are in our stories.
No Business Like Show Business
By 1900, The Billboard covered more than best (and worst) practices for bill posters, who early issues reported would glue ads on ash cans, piles of bricks and even, according to the first issue, a dead horse. (Are we kidding? Neigh.) Within a decade, carnivals, fairs and vaudeville productions took over Billboard’s pages; a music column started in 1905, and coverage of sheet music sales joined the chorus in 1913. “The Billboard has grown,” the magazine declared when it marked its 35th anniversary in 1929, “to include the entire world.”
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Over There
The Dec. 29, 1934, issue celebrated the publication’s 40th anniversary by hailing “the legion of true, sincere and loyal show-folk” who provided “continued support and favor.” Also, “It is our earnest wish to have an active part in a 50th Anniversary Number.” History had other plans: The Dec. 18, 1943, Billboard replaced its “Anniversary and Holiday Greetings” annual with an ad-free “Bondbardment” issue that urged advertisers to take the money “they would be spending” and buy “an extra war bond.” The next year’s issue followed suit.
The Same Old Song
By the time Billboard hit 75, music had become the publication’s primary focus, thanks in part to the Aug. 4, 1958, launch of the Billboard Hot 100. “This industry of entertainment is not an easy one to record; like the sky it is never the same two days running,” an editorial in the Dec. 27, 1969, issue observed. But “as one aspect of the business faded, decayed or lost its broad public, another has smartly taken its place.”
Computer Love
“Billboard Charts the Future,” declared the Dec. 15, 1984, issue — sometimes presciently. “Computers in the home will have a major impact on the entire retail industry, not just on music retailing,” predicted one article. “It would be possible to purchase an entire music collection without leaving home.” Other ideas weren’t ready for prime time: “Why not squirt radio broadcasting out on the coaxial cable network?” another piece suggested.
100, Pure Love
For its Nov. 1, 1994, 100th-anniversary special, “Billyboy” took a victory lap. “Billboard is peerless,” an article boasted. “No other publication has the sweep and continuity of Billboard’s coverage of movies, of television, of laser disc, of videocassettes — even of multimedia formats like CD-ROM.” Most of those formats sound like relics today, but the accompanying insight remains timeless. “History is typically made by amateurs,” an editorial said. “The boldest ideas regularly come from those who are oblivious to conventional solutions.”
Last April on a cool night in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Mumford & Sons played to a packed ballroom not far from the Mediterranean. It was the band’s first time performing in the country, but only those who got the invite knew the concert was even happening: The show was a private event put on for employees of a major tech company, which also footed the bill.
Corporate performances like these occupy a small but flourishing niche of the live events industry, with companies of all sizes lining up to book current superstars, legacy acts and emerging artists to play their conferences, retreats, holiday parties and more. These shows come with paydays ranging from merch trades to millions of dollars, with most big-name artists rarely receiving less than $50,000 per show. There can also be strings attached, as artists who play these shows work within corporate structures where expectations can be different from the standard festival appearance.
“I’ve been involved with a Snoop Dogg private show before and the client was like, ‘He can’t smoke weed,’” says corporate event producer and talent buyer Elana Leaf. “It was like, ‘He’s going to smoke weed. That’s just the way it is.’”
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This past year has been a strong one for corporate events, with this area of the industry not only finally back in full swing following the pandemic but reaching new heights. Beyoncé set a new precedent for these types of performances in January 2023 when she reportedly received $24 million to play the opening of a luxury resort in Dubai. This past July, the wedding of the son of Indian tech billionaire Mukesh Ambani, which made headlines for its opulence, included a performance by Rihanna. Sources with knowledge of this sector say that upon seeing these big performances and paychecks, more artists have been requesting to play corporate shows.
Based in Los Angeles, Leaf has been producing corporate concerts for events for nearly 15 years, working with companies ranging from family offices to international conglomerates to the city of Miami Beach. Regardless of size, though, the process of finding the right artist for each event is the same.
“To start, you have to have a dialogue with the client about who’s coming to the event,” says Leaf. “Age is important, economic level is important. Before you start suggesting artists, you’ve got to know who they’ll be playing for.”
Once the guest list is hashed out, Leaf and her client create a list of artists they think will fit the desired vibe. Leaf once produced a Super Bowl party for a media company at a private residence in Malibu, so it made perfect sense when she and the client booked The Beach Boys to sing “Surfin’ Safari” and other beachy hits while the crowd gazed out at the Pacific.
But the client isn’t necessarily always after a huge star. “A lot of companies come to us and ask if we can activate their entire conference, convention or event,” says Channing Moreland, co-founder of the app EVA, which registers emerging artists (along with speakers, celebrities and more) and corporate clients in search of entertainment and uses technology to match them for events. “Maybe there’s a place to have that closing night headlining show, but we also see [local and emerging artists playing] registration areas, general sessions, interactive experiences. There are so many opportunities to engage.”
Of course, not all artists are inclined to play corporate shows. “Some might think it’s selling out, or some might think they’re not going to be taken care of in the same way on-site at a private show as they would be by a promoter,” says Leaf. As such, she says good professional relationships and enticing, often creative offers are even more important in this area of the industry, as agents must be able to assure their client that the gig will be comfortable, worthwhile and valuable (or at the very least neutral) to their brand. (Most of the big talent agencies have departments focused solely on private shows like these.)
Naturally, money is a crucial part of the conversation, although the rate a company can offer isn’t always related to its size. “The good agents know that even though I’m coming in with a major tech company, that doesn’t necessarily equate to having the dollars,” says Leaf. “Sometimes smaller companies that really want to move the needle for their brand profile will come in with bigger cash offers, along with really creative ways to sweeten the pot.”
“Sweetening the pot” may involve flying the artist and their entourage to the show on the company’s private jet, or providing luxury accommodations and other perks. Sometimes an artist is simply eager to travel to an exotic destination where they might not otherwise tour. Or a company might make a donation to an artist’s charity of choice — an especially attractive option for corporations that can use this as a charitable giving tax write-off.
For one corporate client, Leaf was able to get their artist of choice involved by offering the artist the opportunity for their newly launched liquor brand to be the featured liquor at the event itself. “That’s what got them through the door,” she says.
But no matter the size of the artist, getting the gig (and the paycheck) can also involve agreeing to unusual requests. These can include morality clauses in which an artist must agree to omit curse words that may be in their lyrics. “You sometimes have to tell the artist they need to perform radio edits, which can be a challenging conversation,” says Leaf, who also recalls certain clients asking for approval of what an artist wears onstage. (Though “as a buyer, I will not push that,” she says. “Artists need to be artists, and what they wear is part of their art.”)
However, rising artists who are often more eager for exposure and a cash infusion may be more amenable to such requests.
“We know that you can’t just have someone get up on stage and start asking for tips, or cussing, or going through the buffet line,” says EVA co-founder Makenzie Stokel. “You need people that know this isn’t their party, but they’re going to make five or 10 times more than what they’d make at a bar gig.”
For Moody Jones, who DJs corporate events around the world and is also GM of dance music at EMPIRE, these gigs often have completely different goals than his regular club sets. “Your role is to get people’s heads nodding, and that’s as much as it goes,” he says. At a recent event he played for YouTube, “The mandate was, ‘We need an artist who doesn’t need the spotlight on them,’” he recalls. “It was a team-building event, so the last thing they wanted was for people to only be paying attention to the music. No one should be Shazam-ing anything.”
For most artists — and certainly the biggest ones — all the details about what they will and will not do are hashed out in the contract. “With the big agencies, once you’re contracted, the creative and business terms are set in stone not only to protect the artist but so there’s no ambiguity with my client,” says Leaf. Thus, every element — from what a company wants an artist to say (or not say) while onstage to whether or not they’ll take photos with execs in front of the company logo, to backstage meet and greets and providing signed merchandise — is determined ahead of time.
Leaf says these discussions often focus on if and how an artist will interact with a company’s product, whether that’s a cell phone, branded decor clothing item or other object. “It’s not always easy or appropriate-feeling to ask the artist to pick up a mobile device and carry it around,” says Leaf. “You have to work with the production company and the brand to figure out ways to seamlessly integrate the product. A lot of times you have agents and managers who are like, ‘They’re absolutely not going to touch the product.’” But given the rise of influencers, Leaf says brands have gotten “significantly more strategic” with devising product interactions that feel natural.
Generally, a company doesn’t ask for sign-off on an artist’s setlist, although negotiations can be more nuanced when dealing with legacy acts. “People want to hear the hits,” says Leaf. “They don’t necessarily want to hear new music, but sometimes it’s hard to say they can’t play new stuff they’re working on.” She says in situations like these, it’s necessary to have conversations with the client and artist to settle on a mix of music everyone feels good about.
Generally, say Stokel and Moreland of EVA, there’s been an uptick in corporate show requests following the pandemic as “companies are wanting more unique in-person engagements for people to really connect… Companies are asking, ‘How can we get them up and moving? How can we have a hit songwriter tell a story that feels like a keynote and is tied to music and drives emotion?” They say the return on investment on events is higher for companies when they offer more engaging programming.
After connecting over their love of live music as students at Nashville’s Belmont University, Moreland and Stokel created EVA to cater to rising artists. They found that companies often wanted local talent to make events feel authentic but didn’t know where to look. And the artists they knew were interested in making money from corporate gigs to help them pay for studio time, touring and life expenses.
They launched the app in 2019, quickly booking corporate events for ESPN, BMW and Arby’s. EVA has since grown to 10 employees and launched in Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Charlotte and New York. Notably, the company provides artists with the backend requirements necessary to play a corporate show. “These entertainers don’t carry $5 million in insurance, and to work with Amazon you have to have a certain level of COI,” says Moreland. “There has to be tax management, invoicing, payment processing, contracting and it has to be done at a certain level. That’s really what we unlocked.”
For some artists, the appeal of playing these shows also comes down to networking. Jones of EMPIRE recently played a robotics conference, an offer that gave him the chance to perform for “a room filled with people who are so ambitious and whose brains work in ways I’ve never thought of,” he says. Such gigs “might not do much for my status,” he continues, “but the people I meet there might open up my mind.” Generally, corporate events also carry less pressure, as the artist isn’t responsible for selling tickets or drawing an audience. “Like, I’m not bringing any more people to a robotics event,” Jones adds.
Not every act is built for these kinds of shows. “I think what stops a lot of artists from playing corporate gigs is ego because you’re not the center of attention,” Jones continues. “Or they just don’t have the confidence for it, because playing a sober event where everyone can see one another takes a different stage presence from being in a dark club with my sunglasses on smoking a vape and taking shots.”
The artists who do thrive in this world, however, can really hustle while also meeting interesting people and making a lot of money.
“Pitbull is a corporate juggernaut,” says Leaf. “He’s known to do great corporates and he just crushes across demographics.” She says Lionel Richie, Sheryl Crow and Dave Matthews Band are also active in this space given that their music is so broadly appealing. Other times, companies want to create prestige by booking the hottest niche artist of the moment. At events like SXSW or CES, where attendees have many options for how to spend their time, Leaf says companies “want to book a cool artist, because you want to be the cool party.”
But ultimately the end goal is the same, regardless of who’s playing.
“You want guests to walk away with an experience that’s special and doesn’t feel corny,” says Leaf. “Obviously the audience knows the artist was paid to be there, but you want it to feel authentic and like the artist wanted to be there — paid or not.”
This year, the two biggest players in live music, AEG and Live Nation, put energy and resources into making power sources at live events, and festivals in particular, cleaner and greener.
This largely took the form of batteries, with the option to use batteries to power not just the errant parking lot light but full mainstage operations becoming real with the evolution of technology, as driven by the electric vehicle industry.
The effect was felt at the highest levels, with Lollapalooza in August becoming the first major festival in the U.S. to power its mainstage using battery power. Meanwhile AEG/Goldenvoice, which has been experimenting with battery systems for a few years with lower-priority power needs, had a breakthrough year in 2024 through a hybrid system that uses industrial-tier batteries, clean generators, biodiesel, solar and grid power to dramatically reduce “scope 1” emissions at events. (“Scope 1” refers to the emissions created by power sources at the event itself, versus a scope 3 emission that would include carbon emitted by fan travel to and from shows.) The hybrid system from AEG/Goldenvoice saved the use of more than 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel (truly, stop for a second to consider how much that is) at its Portola Festival in San Francisco alone. This same system at Camp Flog Gnaw in L.A. in November ended up being, the company said, Goldenvoice’s “cleanest energy festival to date.”
What’s also encouraging is that huge and longstanding festival energy providers like CES Power are also looking at ways to implement battery systems and starting to shift inventory to include batteries.
These aren’t yet perfect systems. Batteries still must be charged by generators, with the standard diesel-chugging kind still primarily used for this charging. Plus, these systems are still more expensive than traditional power sources, which can make it hard for producers to use them even with the best intentions. But with industry leaders putting time, money and attention towards these projects, there’s reason to believe the trickle-down effect will happen in time as prices across the battery industry come down and technology advances.
When it comes to sustainability, there’s a lot of industry talk about freely sharing information about the stuff that’s working, given that this work is so important for the industry and humanity at large. And yet, one gets the sense that a competitive spirit is still driving some of this innovation within the perpetually-competitive live events world, which if true feels like a welcome battle to wage.
LONDON — ASM Global and the Music Venues Trust (MVT) are expanding their partnership and support to grassroots music venues and scenes in the U.K.
Starting in December, ASM Global, the venues and live entertainment giant, will strengthen its ties with the MVT through a number of new initiatives to help raise awareness and funds for the grassroots music scene where future stars start their live journeys.
Part of the new initiative will encourage music fans to learn more about the work the MVT does for the independent and emerging music scene, as well as opportunities to donate directly to the MVT both inside of the venues, or during the ticket onsale process.
In the U.K., ASM Global operates a number of large arenas, including London’s OVO Arena Wembley, the AO Arena in Manchester, Leeds’ First Direct Arena, the Utilita Arena in Newcastle and more.
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The two companies have collaborated previously across a number of topics, including training opportunities across health and safety, mental health and wellbeing and marketing. In 2023, Enter Shikari pledged £1 from every ticket sold on their U.K. arena tour to the MVT’s Lifelife fund, which included a show at the OVO Wembley. Next year, Katy Perry’s Lifetimes tour will hit the AO Arena in Manchester, with £1 from every ticket being donated to the MVT to distribute amongst their members.
This is the latest step by the entertainment and live industry to help tackle the growing problem of venue and nightclub closure. In 2023, the MVT reported that the number of grassroots music venues declined from 960 to 835, a fall of 13% and resulted in a loss of as many as 30,000 shows and 4,000 jobs.
Last month the British Government called upon the live music industry to introduce a voluntary levy on all tickets sold for stadium and arena concerts in the market to help support smaller venues. “We believe this would be the quickest and most effective mechanism for a small portion of revenues from the biggest shows to be invested in a sustainable grassroots sector,” the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said in a report on Nov. 14.
Some artists have taken it upon themselves to lead the conversation. In September, Coldplay announced that they would be donating 10% of all proceeds from their 10-night run at Wembley Stadium next August to the MVT and grassroots scene. Tickets for Sam Fender’s current run at arenas in the U.K. and Ireland – including ASM’s First Direct Arena in Leeds – include a similar £1 donation to the MVT.
Speaking to Billboard in September, Mark Davyd, CEO of the MVT, said that their door is very open to any artist or company on this topic. “I want this to become the new normal – I don’t think that’s stupidly ambitious. There are lots and lots of examples of industries – all properly functioning industries – to reinvest to get future gains. As soon as you start talking about it as an investment program into research and development, I don’t think companies should be resistant to that but should be thinking, ‘that makes perfect sense.’”