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Blackstone doesn’t intend to increase its latest offer to acquire Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF), the London-listed investment trust it first launched a takeover bid for on April 20. The private equity firm said in a regulatory filing Tuesday (June 25) that the financial terms of its June 3 offer “are final and will not be […]
Billionaire hedge fund titan Steve Cohen‘s Point72 Asset Management has acquired a 5.5% stake in Sphere Entertainment Co, the MSG Entertainment spin-off company that owns the state-of-the-art Las Vegas Sphere venue. Point72 disclosed in a regulatory filing on Monday (June 24) that it acquired 1.56 million shares of Sphere Entertainment Co in the second quarter, […]
The business of music has transformed in the last two decades, driven by technology that shattered barriers to entry and creators’ determination to control their destiny. At the 66th Grammy Awards earlier this year, more than half of the nominees were independent. And it’s more than just business: the indie movement has enabled diverse voices that could not be heard previously to occupy their rightful place in the industry. This makes music, and our society, more egalitarian and better.
Whether blues, punk, hip-hop or country, America’s most recognizable music genres started out in the indie sector, and today the association I lead has more than 750 members across 35 states, and most of them are small businesses with less than 50 employees. As the music industry has changed, so have they.
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Yet, some of the most important players in the music ecosystem cling to a bygone era that was dictated by the motto, “Might Makes Right.”
Exhibit A is iHeartRadio. The corporate behemoth controls 860-plus stations across the country that play over 50 million songs a year. Those songs helped iHeart’s multiplatform group — covering broadcast radio and national sales — generate more than $2.4 billion in 2023 alone, according to its latest earnings report.
But iHeart is stuck in 1990. It doesn’t bother discovering new artists. Instead, it overplays the hits and milks classic songs that were released decades ago. Despite the growing movement to achieve economic justice, iHeart denies artists and labels payment for their work.
Take a moment to reflect on that. iHeart makes $12 billion a year playing music but refuses to pay the hard working and talented people who perform and produce the songs that are the reason consumers tune-in in the first place. In its desperate attempt to cling to the past, iHeart and lobbyist group the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have spent nearly $100 million since 2020 lobbying Congress and spreading campaign contributions around to maintain the unfair status quo.
iHeart is powerful. But it’s on the wrong side of history. And it’s about to face what it hates most: a public forum where broadcasters must defend their craven practices. On Wednesday (June 26), the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the refusal of broadcasters to pay music creators for their work.
Richard James Burgess speaks onstage during the GRAMMY Influencer Activation at GRAMMY House during the 66th GRAMMY Awards on Feb. 1, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Jerod Harris/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Of course, iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman won’t testify. He leaves the dirty work to the NAB. But that doesn’t matter. When the issue of compensation for AM/FM airplay is held in a public forum, broadcasters lose. That is why their lobbyists work so hard to prevent congressional hearings. But courageous members of Congress such as Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) are making sure there is a public debate. And they have a solution to ending the injustice: the American Music Fairness Act, which would grant an AM/FM performance royalty. This bill would bring AM/FM radio into the 21st Century, and finally grant American recording artists the same rights enjoyed by their counterparts in almost every other country on the planet.
In the last two decades, how we discover and listen to music has dramatically changed, and not just the move from vinyl records to streaming. We can now ask a device in our house, such as Alexa, to play music, and it does. Spotify and SiriusXM are now buttons next to AM/FM on the dashboard of our cars. Polling from 2020 found that of the people who regard staying up to date on new music as important to them, only 11% turn to AM/FM radio to do so. Even in my generation, that number is only 27%. OK, Boomers!
We need to update the laws to catch up to these changes. It makes no sense if, when driving, music creators heard on SiriusX are being compensated, but not if you hear them on an AM/FM station. If you listen to radio programming through the iHeartMedia app on your phone, through a smart speaker, or even in your car, iHeart has to pay creators too. That’s why they have their hand out to Congress asking for a mandate to keep AM radios in cars.
The American Music Fairness Act brings justice and balance to the industry. Music creators get paid for their work. AM/FM stations have to pay just like the streaming services. And, because the legislation protects truly local radio stations, most stations in the country would pay just $10 to $500 a year to play music.
I know independent music creators, who I represent as president and CEO of the American Association of Independent Music, could definitely use the income from those royalties. My members love partnering with true locally controlled community radio stations, but the behemoths usually don’t take their calls. There are hundreds of thousands of artists and other creators who hustle and struggle to make a living by giving us the music we love.
This approach is fair, it’s equitable, and it’s just. And iHeart hates it.
Broadcasters try to create as much fear, uncertainty, and doubt to avoid doing what’s right. They claim a $500 annual fee to play music would decimate stations’ ability to broadcast emergency communications – then they hike the annual dues it charges its members. They cling to the asinine rationale that the alleged promotional value of radio play justifies their immoral scheme. Worse, broadcasters claim they shouldn’t have to pay for the songs they play while demanding Congress get more money for them when their content is used by YouTube and other platforms.
Broadcasters do all of this with a straight face. But time is running out. When the arc of justice comes around, iHeart and the National Association of Broadcasters will learn they are on the wrong side of history.
Dr. Richard James Burgess is an acclaimed musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, composer, author, manager, marketer and inventor, who presently serves as the president and CEO of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM).
On Monday (June 24), the three major music companies filed lawsuits against artificial intelligence (AI) music startups Suno and Udio, alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.” Spearheaded by the RIAA, the two similar lawsuits arrived four days after Billboard first reported that the labels were seriously considering legal action against the two startups.
Filed by plaintiffs Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the lawsuits allege that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
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Hours later, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman responded to the lawsuit with a statement sent to Billboard. “Suno’s mission is to make it possible for everyone to make music,” he said. “Our technology is transformative; it is designed to generate completely new outputs, not to memorize and regurgitate pre-existing content. That is why we don’t allow user prompts that reference specific artists. We would have been happy to explain this to the corporate record labels that filed this lawsuit (and in fact, we tried to do so), but instead of entertaining a good faith discussion, they’ve reverted to their old lawyer-led playbook. Suno is built for new music, new uses, and new musicians. We prize originality.”
An RIAA spokesperson fired back at Shulman’s comment, saying: “Suno continues to dodge the basic question: what sound recordings have they illegally copied? In an apparent attempt to deceive working artists, rightsholders, and the media about its technology, Suno refuses to address the fact that its service has literally been caught on tape — as part of the evidence in this case — doing what Mr. Shulman says his company doesn’t do: memorizing and regurgitating the art made by humans. Winners of the streaming era worked cooperatively with artists and rightsholders to properly license music. The losers did exactly what Suno and Udio are doing now.”
Udio responded on Tuesday (June 25) with a lengthy statement posted to the company’s website. You can read it in full below.
In the past two years, AI has become a powerful tool for creative expression across many media – from text to images to film, and now music. At Udio, our mission is to empower artists of all kinds to create extraordinary music. In our young life as a company, we have sat in the studios of some of the world’s greatest musicians, workshopped lyrics with up-and-coming songwriters, and watched as millions of users created extraordinary new music, ranging from the funny to the profound.
We have heard from a talented musician who, after losing the ability to use his hands, is now making music again. Producers have sampled AI-generated tracks to create hit songs, like ‘BBL Drizzy’, and everyday music-lovers have used the technology to express the gamut of human emotions from love to sorrow to joy. Groundbreaking technologies entail change and uncertainty. Let us offer some insight into how our technology works.
Generative AI models, including our music model, learn from examples. Just as students listen to music and study scores, our model has “listened” to and learned from a large collection of recorded music.
The goal of model training is to develop an understanding of musical ideas — the basic building blocks of musical expression that are owned by no one. Our system is explicitly designed to create music reflecting new musical ideas. We are completely uninterested in reproducing content in our training set, and in fact, have implemented and continue to refine state-of-the-art filters to ensure our model does not reproduce copyrighted works or artists’ voices.
We stand behind our technology and believe that generative AI will become a mainstay of modern society.
Virtually every new technological development in music has initially been greeted with apprehension, but has ultimately proven to be a boon for artists, record companies, music publishers, technologists, and the public at large. Synthesizers, drum machines, digital recording technology, and the sound recording itself are all examples of once-controversial music creation tools that were feared in their early days. Yet each of these innovations ultimately expanded music as an art and as a business, leading to entirely new genres of music and billions of dollars in the pockets of artists, songwriters and the record labels and music publishers who profit from their creations.
We know that many musicians — especially the next generation — are eager to use AI in their creative workflows. In the near future, artists will compose music alongside their fans, amateur musicians will create entirely new musical genres, and talented creators — regardless of means — will be able to scale the heights of the music industry.
The future of music will see more creative expression than ever before. Let us use this watershed moment in technology to expand the circle of creators, empower artists, and celebrate human creativity.
Amid an ugly divorce case, Billy Ray Cyrus is now claiming in new court filings that he was abused physically, verbally and emotionally by his soon-to-be-ex-wife Firerose.
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A week after Firerose (Johanna Rose Hodges) accused Cyrus of “psychological abuse” during their short-lived marriage, the singer fired back with his own filing on Monday – not only “vehemently” denying her allegations, but leveling his own claims of abusive behavior against his estranged wife.
“Defendant’s allegations of abuse were only made to sensationalize her false complaints by using the word abuse,” Cyrus’ lawyers write. “While the plaintiff would acknowledge that he was certainly vocal, frustrated and angry with the defendant in May 2024, it is the plaintiff who, in fact, has been abused. Not only verbally and emotionally by the defendant, but PHYSICALLY.”
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Cyrus filed for divorce on May 22, citing “irreconcilable differences” and “inappropriate marital conduct.” The pair, who first started dating in 2022 after years of friendship, were married for only 7 months before the split.
The proceedings have since turned nasty. In a June 13 filing, Cyrus filed an emergency motion accusing Firerose of nearly $100,000 in unauthorized “fraudulent” credit card charges and seeking a temporary restraining order to stop her. Her attorneys later said the accusations were “untrue.”
Then in a June 14 response to the complaint, Firerose claimed that she had been the “victim of extreme verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse. She claimed that Cyrus had been “unpredictable and volatile” due to substance abuse, and had filed for divorce just a day before she had been scheduled to undergo a preventive double mastectomy.
In his response filing on Monday, Cyrus argued that Firerose had scheduled the “elective” surgery as part of an ongoing threat to use the surgery to “ruin his longstanding career in the entertainment industry” if he chose to file for divorce. He claims that she at one point made the threat explicit, allegedly saying: “If you even think about divorcing me right now, I will tell everyone that you did it because of the double mastectomy and your career will be over.”
An attorney for Firerose did not immediately return a request for comment.
This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.
This week: The world’s biggest music companies file lawsuits against AI music firms accusing them of stealing copyrighted music at “an “unimaginable scale”; a federal judge rules that Megan Thee Stallion didn’t copy her chart-topping “Savage” from an earlier song; the artist formerly known as Kanye West settles a copyright lawsuit filed by Donna Summer’s estate; and much more.
THE BIG STORY: Major Labels Sue AI Music Cos. Over Training
In the latest battle between the music industry and artificial intelligence firms, the three major music companies filed lawsuits against AI startups Suno and Udio over allegations that they copyrighted music to train their models on an “unimaginable scale.” Like numerous other copyright cases already filed by book authors, visual artists, newspaper publishers and other creative industries, the new lawsuits ask what could ultimately wind up being a trillion-dollar legal question: Is it copyright infringement to use vast troves of proprietary works to build an AI model that spits out new creations? Or is it just a form of legal fair use, transforming all those old works into something entirely new? The music business already picked that fight once, when major publishers sued AI giant Anthropic last year over its use of written lyrics to train AI models. (That case remains pending). But the new case, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, is the first to deal with sound and music itself, targeting two companies that are offering models that spit out full songs at the push of a button. Suno and Udio have quickly become two of the most important players in the emerging field of AI-generated music. Udio has already produced what could be considered an AI-generated hit song with “BBL Drizzy,” a parody track popularized with a remix by super-producer Metro Boomin and later sampled by Drake himself. And as of May, Suno had raised a total of $125 million in funding to create what Rolling Stone called a “ChatGPT for music.” In the new lawsuit, the record labels alleged that that success had been built on the backs of real human artists: “Since the day it launched, Udio has flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry as part of a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service. Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners.” For more, go read Kristin Robinson’s full story on the new lawsuits, complete with access to the actual complaints filed against Suno and Udio. And stay tuned to Billboard for more updates as the two cases unfold in the federal courts…
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Other top stories this week…
MEGAN WINS COPYRIGHT CASE – A federal judge ruled that Megan Thee Stallion didn’t copy her chart-topping song “Savage” from an earlier song, saying the songs were “qualitatively different” and that there was no evidence the superstar has ever even heard the little-known instrumental track. SUMMER SAMPLE SETTLEMENT – Ye (formerly Kanye West) finalized a settlement with the estate of Donna Summer to resolve a copyright lawsuit that accused him of “shamelessly” using her 1977 hit “I Feel Love” without permission in his song “Good (Don’t Die).” An attorney for the Summer estate confirmed to Billboard that the settlement did not include a license for West to legally re-release the offending track: “We got what we wanted.” YSL TRIAL DRAMA CONTINUES – Yak Gotti, one of Young Thug’s co-defendants in the YSL gang case in Atlanta, asked the Georgia Supreme Court to force Judge Ural Glanville to recuse himself from the ongoing trial, citing recent revelations about a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness. Gotti’s lawyers warned that the judge’s actions “offend public confidence in the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary.” ALBUM HACKING SUIT RESOLVED – Kelsea Ballerini reached a settlement to end her lawsuit against Bo Ewing, a superfan she had accused of hacking her and then leaking her unreleased album. Ballerini agreed to drop the case after Ewing promised to never again share or access the offending materials. MADONNA CASE CLOSED – Two Madonna fans dropped their lawsuit complaining about delayed starts to her concerts, but the star’s lawyers quickly clarified that the move was “not the result of any settlement.” Reiterating earlier claims that the lawsuit had been a “strike suit” aimed at extorting a settlement, Madonna’s attorneys say they might still seek legal sanctions against the lawyers who filed the “frivolous” case. PETTY DOC SPARKS LAWSUIT – A filmmaker named Martyn Atkins filed a lawsuitagainst Warner Music over the 2021 Tom Petty documentary Somewhere You Feel Free, claiming the movie featured 45 minutes of his copyrighted film footage of the late rock legend without permission or payment. Atkins claimed he had been “conned” into sharing the footage with the producers after they promised him the chance to direct the documentary.
JKBX, the music investment platform backed by Spotify and Red Light Management, said Tuesday (June 25) that yields on more than half the songs up for investment on the platform saw substantial increases in 2023. That’s evidence, the start-up’s execs say, that if it makes dollars, it makes sense.
Pronounced “jukebox,” JKBX’s first Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated offering went live in March, giving average Joe investors the chance to buy royalty shares that earn money when songs like Adele‘s “Rumour Has It” or Taylor Swift‘s “Welcome To New York” get played.
Ten of the 85 songs in JKBX’s initial offering generated yields of 5% to 9.6% percent in 2023, while total revenue for songs in the listing was up 9% in 2023 compared to 2022, the company said. While investors get paid dividends based only on income that JKBX has received since April 1, which excludes most of the 2023 reported income, the jump in yields makes the case that investors stand to earn tangible returns, JKBX executives say.
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The highest-earning song by 2023 revenues was OneRepublic‘s “Counting Stars”, which generated $376,750 in combined revenue from the songwriter’s share of composition rights and producer’s share of sound recording rights. That works out to a 5.5% yield per royalty share for composition and a 6.98% yield per royalty share for sound recording rights.
Another OneRepublic song, “If I Lose Myself,” along with “Wings” by Birdy, were among the songs with the highest per-royalty-share yields in 2023, at 9.66% and 7.71%, respectively. When the company launched, executives estimated investor returns of around 3.5%.
The 10 most popular songs to buy royalty shares in include Beyoncé‘s “Halo,” Ellie Goulding‘s “Burn” and “Lean On” performed by Major Lazer, MØ and DJ Snake, among others. The company declined to say what percentage of the royalty shares in the initial offering have sold.
JKBX is quick to caution that future returns are not guaranteed. The estimated yields are based on the last 12 months of income, and “variations in income are expected over the copyright lifespan of the asset,” the company says.
Institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds have led recent demand for investing in music assets because the yields on music rights are typically resilient during broader market downturns and the asset class offers low-risk returns compared to other alternative assets.
Institutional investors, private equity funds and high-net-worth individuals have poured billions into acquiring direct stakes in catalogs or backing companies that do, or into buying securities backed by catalogs held by music companies like Concord, Kobalt and Chord.
JKBX was founded in 2022 with the goal of bringing retail investors into the asset class by offering a cheaper, Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated way to invest in music. It officially launched in March of this year.
“JKBX empowers people to invest in music as a regulated security, bringing together investment fundamentals with true passion,” JKBX CEO Scott Cohen said in a statement. “I believe that the fans that helped make these songs successful should also have the opportunity to share in the wealth.”
Kelsea Ballerini has reached a settlement to end her lawsuit against a superfan she had accused of leaking her unreleased album, agreeing to drop the case after the alleged hacker promised to never again share the materials.
Ballerini sued Bo Ewing in April over accusations that he hacked her unfinished album and shared it with a fan club. The country star claimed Ewing — allegedly an ex-fan who had become disillusioned with her — had gained illegal “back-door access” to song still in production.
But Ewing’s lawyers quickly promised to stop sharing her songs and to name names of any people he’d already sent them to, suggesting he was unwilling to fight Ballerini’s lawsuit. And in a Monday filing signed by both sides, Ewing agreed to permanently be barred from leaking the star’s songs.
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“Defendant is enjoined from knowingly or purposefully accessing any unreleased recordings, unreleased performances, unreleased videos, or any other unreleased content created by, believed to have been created by, or otherwise associated with plaintiffs in any form,” the two sides wrote in a joint filing. “Defendant is enjoined further accessing any of the recordings that are the subject of this litigation and which defendant has affirmatively declared are no longer in his possession.”
In return for such an agreement, Ballerini asked the judge overseeing the case to dismiss her lawsuit permanently. Any other specific terms of the settlement, including potential monetary payments, were not disclosed in court filings. Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Tuesday.
Ballerini filed the case in April, claiming she had been the victim of a “nefarious digital attack” carried out by “unscrupulous individuals seeking attention.” The leak not only undercut “the most critical time” for an album’s commercial success, her attorneys said, but also deprived her of her artistic agency.
“Ms. Ballerini and her team are the only people who can say when the recordings are complete,” her lawyers wrote at the time. “Defendant’s actions have stripped plaintiffs of that right and caused the distribution of unfinished work that may not yet be up to plaintiffs’ high professional standards.”
Almost immediately, though, Ewing agreed to play ball with Ballerini’s attorneys. In a filing just days after he was sued, he agreed to be bound by a preliminary injunction that required him divulge who he has already shared them with and how he came into possession of her music.
“Defendant shall, within thirty days of entry of this order, provide plaintiffs with the names and contact information for all people to whom defendant disseminated the recordings,” the agreement reads. “Defendant shall use his best efforts to disclose to Plaintiffs from whom and by what means he obtained the recordings.”
The names of any alleged co-leakers were not disclosed in court filings, and it’s unclear if Ballerini will take further legal action against any others who may have been involved the alleged hack.
LONDON — Tom Kiehl has been announced as the new chief executive of UK Music, succeeding Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, who left the British industry trade body last year to work for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Kiehl has held the role of interim chief executive at UK Music since Njoku-Goodwin’s sudden exit in September. He has worked at the London-based umbrella organization, which represents all sectors of the United Kingdom’s music industry, since 2012 – initially working as director of public affairs before being promoted to deputy CEO in 2018.
In a statement announcing Kiehl’s appointment, UK Music said it had received more than 130 applications for the role and had carried out an “extensive recruitment process” to find its new CEO.
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“We are entering a critical new era of change for the music industry when the political landscape is also rapidly changing. At this important time, I’m confident Tom is the right person for the job,” said Tom Watson, UK Music Chair, in a statement.
Watson went on to say that Kiehl “will be a tireless advocate for our members and our sector – using his wide range of talents to drive UK Music to even greater heights.”
Kiehl’s promotion to the head of UK Music comes less than two weeks before the U.K. general election on July 4 when the country goes to the polls to elect a new government.
Last month, Kiehl called on the leaders of all the main British political parties to support the U.K. music industry’s role as a “key national asset” that is facing intense global competition.
To help grow the British music industry, which generated £6.7 billion ($8.2 billion) for the country’s economy in 2022 and supports 210,000 jobs, according to research commissioned by UK Music, the trade group wants policy makers to protect creators’ rights from being exploited by AI developers, as well as secure a cultural touring agreement with the EU to address many of the lasting issues caused by Brexit.
UK Music also wants the next government to introduce a new tax credit to increase U.K.-based music production and establish tighter regulations for secondary ticketing platforms.
Kiehl’s extensive experience of working with politicians and government officials means that he is well placed to try and achieve those aims. Prior to joining UK Music, the widely respected music executive worked in the Houses of Parliament for 11 years as a senior advisor and researcher for the Liberal Democrat party. More recently, Kiehl led a successful campaign to change planning laws to better protect grassroots music venues.
“It’s an immense privilege and great responsibility to take on the role of leading UK Music at such a pivotal moment,” said Kiehl in a statement.
The newly appointed CEO said he would continue to work with the organization’s members to lobby government officials for measures that would support the music industry “ranging from strong copyright protections and more music teachers, to key safeguards around AI and greater support for music freelancers.”
“My vision for UK Music is to build on our mission of bringing our sector together to speak with one voice and secure our place as the key organization that fuels the growth and prominence of the UK’s music industry,” said Kiehl. “We must be relevant, representative, and able to deliver for the sector in order to achieve this.”
Fly Me to the Moon,” “This Land Is Your Land,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” “Space Oddity” — the list reads like the top titles in a major music company’s catalog.
But it’s actually a list of just a few of the copyrights in the catalog of the quiet independent publishing giant TRO Essex Music Group. Founded in 1949 by Howie Richmond, a former press agent for the day’s biggest stars like Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa who went on to become a pioneering music publisher (and co-founder of the Songwriters Hall of Fame), today’s TRO Essex started under the name Cromwell Inc. and quickly grew into a collection of 22 publishing companies under The Richmond Organization (TRO) umbrella. It became a titan of indie publishing, particularly in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, finding success in jazz with Bill Evans and Alec Wilder, folk with Pete Seeger, Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, and rock with Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Marc Bolan of T. Rex, The Who and Pete Townshend.
At 75, TRO Essex is still going strong, managing its formidable catalog of publishing and recorded-music interests through its international offices in Hamburg, Germany; London; Paris; and elsewhere. After a few decades of taking on more of a catalog management role, TRO Essex is returning to frontline signings, using proceeds from past evergreens to fund new development.
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“For our 75th anniversary, we started to think about ways we could celebrate our past and move into our next chapter,” says Kathryn “Kathy” Ostien, COO of global music operations. “So we restructured and brought in a whole new A&R team. In 2023, we signed 26 new writers to the publishing catalog. We then launched a new record label called Shamus Records at the end of the year to manage their masters.”
This includes betting on albums arriving this year by newcomers of all genres, including alt-pop talent Sam Louis, indie pop artist Casii Stephan and jazz producer Matt Stevens.
The company is also rolling out the latest album installment in its series Evergreens Reimagined, under Shamus, enlisting its new talent to cover older hits. “It’s an exciting time,” Ostien says. “We are building fast on top of our already incredible base, but we are ready for the future, too.”
Kathryn Ostien
Sabrina Asch Photography
You look after such a rich back catalog, which you administer in-house. What is your strongest income stream?
I feel like it changes every five years, mostly because of the technology that we’ve seen. Obviously, it used to be CDs, tapes, LPs. Mechanicals were everything. Performance has always been strong, too. Overall, I think mechanicals have always remained very steady. Our most iconic catalogs continue to do well with mechanicals as well as synchronization.
When I first came to TRO Essex [in 2000], the synch market wasn’t much of anything. We were outsourcing it. Now it’s a huge amount of what we are doing — talking to the studios in Los Angeles, New York. Any type of synch is important for us — commercials, films, TV shows. The Hollywood strikes did not help last year.
Has synchronization risen now that the strikes are over?
We have definitely seen some nice pickup in the past few months.
Do certain genres in your catalog fare better for synch than others? I’ve heard rock is particularly of interest for synch.
I don’t know that I see it that way. There was a period in the early 2000s where rock was really, really desirable for commercials. Every ad agency wanted a Pete Townshend song. It ebbs and flows and all comes from the studios — sometimes they want hard rock, sometimes they want a standard. It depends. During COVID, we did really well with synch, ironically because we have a lot of wartime peace songs, hopeful songs. Everybody wanted that. It did well with commercials and productions during that time.
Your catalog includes some of America’s most essential protest anthems, and the last five years or so have seen the rise of several social movements. Do you look after those songs with particular care?
We do have a lot of protest songs. It’s interesting, especially with the political climate that we’ve had in the past several years. One of the things we take a lot of pride in is protecting those songs and making sure that they’re being used in the way that they were originally written — you always want to stay true to that. You want to keep songs like “This Land Is Your Land” within the time and [context] it was important. We also represent “We Shall Overcome,” which is very iconic. That song in particular is curated the most heavily because it’s so special to [the Civil Rights] movement.
How has the popularity of sampling, interpolating and more influenced your catalog in the last few decades?
Sampling really started taking off with hip-hop and rap in the late ’90s, and then it really took off in the mid-2000s. It has been great for our back catalog, though, to have new copyrights established on top of songs. A great example is how Joe Cocker’s “Woman to Woman” became 2Pac’s “California Love.” We work with a lot of hip-hop and rap managers to use some of these iconic songs and bring them to life.
The catalog market has been red hot for the last five or so years. Does TRO Essex ever try to acquire more catalogs?
We don’t do acquisitions — we’ve never needed to. We want to grow our company by following our own history, which was always based on discovering new, incredible songs that don’t have a home and seeing what we can do with them.
Was there a period where you completely stopped signing frontline acts? Or was it just a slowdown up until the founding of Shamus Records?
I don’t know if I would say it fully stopped, but [it slowed in] the ’80s to ’90s. This is a large catalog to manage independently. We’re trying now to restart that signing process.
Is there a particular identity you’re trying to build with the Shamus signees?
It’s still so new, and our team here is still so new. Mostly, we’re just trying to do what [founder] Howie [Richmond] did — find songs and acts that we like and see what we can do with them. I don’t know if we really have a brand in mind with our roster, but we were thinking that we wanted to bring some newer sounds to the catalog.
What is one of the most important things you can offer to an act looking to sign to Shamus Records/TRO Essex?
It’s an interesting time right now because metadata is everything. We feel that metadata management takes away from the creativity that writers and artists might have if they didn’t have to sit there and go through all these different portals to try to get their money. That’s something we excel at.
Having accurate and complete metadata — like the names of all the songwriters, the performing rights organizations and publishers they use — is important to keep track of as a publishing administrator. Do you think it is more important than ever to manage metadata closely to ensure you and your talent are paid?
Yes, exactly. We had to bring in new staff just to handle the metadata management. This is true for all publishers. It has been an incredible thing, what happened with [the Music Modernization Act] and the creation of the [Mechanical Licensing Collective]. The MLC has built this portal that so easily allows you to go match and claim royalties for your songs. It has really made it so much easier. There was nothing there before. It has made it much more universal and cleaner.
Doing administration in-house with the caliber of the catalog TRO Essex holds must be a lot of work. How do you keep up with it as an independent player?
It is one of the hard things about remaining independent because as the revenue increases, the administration costs increase as well, if you’re doing it correctly.
I’m sure anyone would be interested in buying or administering this catalog for TRO Essex. Why was it important to make sure that you are always independent, always doing your own administration despite the challenges that come with it?
I’m not the right one to speak about why we never sold, but the motivation was just never there for us. We’re proud of what we do. We’re strong. We’re financially very healthy. We don’t think anybody else knows these copyrights as well as us, and we’re good at what we do.
There are several emerging revenue streams in music, particularly in social media licensing. TikTok has made headlines this year for its strained negotiations with Universal Music Group. Are these sources of income good moneymakers for your catalog?
I haven’t seen that [TikTok payments] make a huge [boost] to us financially, but every way you can get a catalog out there is important, especially with a vintage catalog. It’s a new way to introduce it. We just need to be paid appropriately. We follow the guidance of the [National Music Publishers’ Association].
Another emerging area of the music business is artificial intelligence, which could provide risks and benefits to catalog holders. Some are even using AI to market catalogs. Do you have any estates interested in leaning into AI for this purpose?
There’s so much more to understand about AI. At this point, I don’t believe it affects us as greatly as it would probably some of the current recording artists, mostly because of the copying of the voices and likenesses. For us, our copyrights are much more secure bedrocks. It’ll be interesting to see how AI develops and what that true impact is on copyright. We haven’t had anyone really concerned from an estate or writer perspective. As I said earlier, though, every five years it seems there’s a sea change. We’re watching it.
Given that you have such a strong back catalog, it would be easy to say, “That’s it.” You’re just going to keep doing the administration and not push forward into signing new acts. Frontline is so risky. Why was it important to continue to sign new talent?
It’s a lot of work managing a catalog like this, and it presents different, evolving challenges around the world, so for a long time that’s what we did. However, looking at the 75th anniversary, we decided we wanted to breathe new life into it. We wanted to create these new covers, explore a new sound and see what we could do to reinvigorate it. While we were at it, we just thought, “OK, let’s see what else we can sign.” It’s an exciting time to celebrate this incredible history of the past 75 years and then look at the next 75 years with so much hope and excitement.
This story originally appeared in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.