Empire
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EMPIRE is not for sale, said company founder/CEO Ghazi at the Trapital Summit on Thursday (Oct. 3) in Hollywood.
While appearing on a panel titled “The Rise of Independent Music” at the inaugural edition of the conference, Trapital founder Dan Runcie played a short game of over/under with Ghazi, asking the EMPIRE head how many calls he’d recently received about selling the label/distributor.
“You run a music company that has done well from a business perspective and many companies that are your peers in this space are being acquired, they are selling, they are raising money,” Runcie said, adding that EMPIRE is an attractive company to acquire at the moment. He then asked Ghazi if he had received over or under four phone calls in the last 12 months poking around to see if he would sell or allow investment.
“I haven’t gotten any phone calls,” Ghazi said sternly to the audience. “Because everybody knows I’m not for sale. Period. I am dead serious. I am living my purpose. There’s no price on that.”
The declaration comes as independent music distributors like Stem, Downtown, ONErpm and Believe have begun fundraising and exploring acquisitions from major music companies and other investors. Earlier this year, Warner Music Group looked into acquiring Believe (talks between the two ultimately fizzled out) and later hired Goldman Sachs banker Michael Ryan-Southern to lead its search to buy a distributor.
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While EMPIRE would be an ideal acquisition target for the majors or private equity, Ghazi said that’s not an option.
“I’m one of the very few people that I don’t give a s— about money. I care about money that I can share with other people within the livelihood that I get to create,” Ghazi said at the one-day conference. “I used to tell people when I started EMPIRE, ‘I want to be the Robin Hood of the music business.’ And I think that I’ve stuck to my principles. People will always poke around and it never gets to me.”
Ghazi explained that he has brushed off any inquiries that have come his way and has tried to keep his eye on the prize. “We’re helping thousands of people. We’ve created micro-economies all across this planet we call Earth and, for me, there’s nothing more special than that,” he added.
The EMPIRE CEO’s declaration comes as client Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” continues its No. 1 streak on the Billboard Hot 100 with 12 weeks at the summit to date.
“Did you ever think that one of the biggest songs you would have would be a country song?” Runcie asked during the conversation.
“I didn’t think it wouldn’t be,” Ghazi responded. The CEO went on to explain that about five years ago, EMPIRE set out to find stars and that in every genre they explored — including hip-hop, country and Afro music — they found someone special. “A lot of it just has to do with having the right taste, your thumb on the pulse and approaching the culture with understanding what they’re trying to do,” he said.
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” updates a long-standing country music tradition — drowning one’s sorrows in whiskey — by way of J-Kwon’s 2004 rap hit “Tipsy.” The first time the singer played it for his label, EMPIRE, one question was top of mind for those in attendance: “Everybody was like, ‘When are you going to country radio?’” recalls EMPIRE CEO Ghazi.
In Ghazi’s view, that was a “very limited” plan. He had a more ambitious one: Push the song to multiple formats simultaneously. “For a record like that,” he says, “it’s a no-brainer.” Shaboozey released “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” in April; within a month, EMPIRE was promoting it to five different segments of the airwaves.
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Radio promotion is traditionally expensive, which is why it’s one of the last frontiers in the music industry that is still dominated by the major labels. Yet “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” released by an independent, recently became the first single in history to crack the top 10 on Billboard’s Country Airplay, Pop Airplay, Adult Pop Airplay and Rhythmic Airplay charts. (Adult pop is like regular pop but more sedate, while rhythmic usually mixes rap, R&B and some dance music; the rankings are based on airplay from a panel of stations in each format.)
“It’s important that Shaboozey has been able to show that you can do that as an independent artist,” says Heather Vassar, senior vp of operations for EMPIRE in Nashville. “We had several offers from majors who wanted to work the record, and it was really important that we were able to stay true to how we operate” — and scale the charts without their help. All that airplay counts towards the Hot 100, which Shaboozey has topped twice in non-consecutive weeks; notably, when “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” rebounded to No. 1 on the latest ranking, it was down in streams and sales, but up 11% in radio audience.
Songs that do well in multiple spaces on the airwaves usually unite coalitions of similar-minded formats. Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” and The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” for example, both hit No. 1 at pop, adult pop and adult contemporary. “Typically pop will share a lot with adult contemporary,” says Tom Poleman, chief programming officer at iHeartMedia. “It’s a similar group [of listeners], just an older demographic.”
The biggest R&B hits, however, tend to amass a different base of support. Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I.’s “Blurred Lines” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” both massive radio hits, reached No. 1 at adult R&B, mainstream R&B/hip-hop, rhythmic and pop.
EMPIRE, which has been traditionally strong in hip-hop and Afrobeats, will often promote songs to mainstream R&B/hip-hop, rhythmic and pop, according to Ghazi. But Shaboozey’s combination of formats is unusual. Only 13 songs have ever appeared on all four of the charts where he is now romping inside the top 10.
Country radio in particular has faced criticism in recent years for being unwilling to support songs by women or Black artists. Despite this history, 30 stations played “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” in April before EMPIRE sent the track to country programmers on May 3. “The streaming numbers were undeniable, but I was wondering how long it would take to convince a terrestrial country radio program director” to play the track, says Johnny Chiang, lead programmer for country music at SiriusXM and Pandora. “I am pleasantly surprised that they got it pretty quick.”
EMPIRE brought in Magnolia Music, an indie promotion company that has worked with the singer Randy Houser, to handle its country radio campaign. “Country radio, respectfully, always wants loyalty from artists,” Vassar says. “There was curiosity — is this one-and-done? Is Shaboozey going to go elsewhere [and stop paying attention to country radio] after this?”
Not everyone was concerned, though. For Tim Roberts, Audacy’s vp of country, Shaboozey “was already accepted by a bunch of country artists, so it just seemed natural” to play him. He first learned about “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” from a DJ who told him it was filling the floor at Coyote Joes, a country nightclub outside of Detroit, where Roberts also serves as a brand manager for WYCD. Two Audacy stations, KMLE and WPAW, were among the first prominent supporters of the song.
To quell other programmers’ anxieties, EMPIRE played them the rest of Shaboozey’s album, which has plenty of country signifiers, from pedal steel guitars to a sample of a horse neighing. In addition, Vassar says, the label introduced the singer to programmers when they were able to, “so they can understand the world that he’s building.” Roberts met Shaboozey the week of the Academy of Country Music Awards; the singer Jelly Roll brought him out during a performance at Billy Bob’s.
After EMPIRE officially started pushing “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” to country radio in May, 43 more stations threw it into their playlists immediately, including 38 owned by iHeartMedia. The format accounts for more than 20% of the single’s airplay so far, second only to top 40.
Shaboozey’s efforts to conquer pop and adult pop were aided by the fact that those formats have been more receptive to country songs recently — last year, Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” and Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” both crossed the divide. That sound “has been working at the top 40 format,” says Matt Johnson, program director for WPLW. “And when you combine that with a feel-good song as the weather is getting sweltering, that’s a recipe for a summertime hit.”
iHeartMedia felt similarly. “We got really aggressive at pop on that song because we saw it taking off,” Poleman says. Pop stations now account for more than 40% of Shaboozey’s airplay.
While there has been common ground recently between country and pop-adjacent formats, it’s still rare for country and rhythmic stations to share tracks. “Sometimes programmers follow the rulebook too much where it’s like, ‘This song doesn’t fit the normal criteria of what a rhythmic record should sound like,'” acknowledges Jonathan Steele, brand manager for KKFR in Phoenix. “I listen to everything and ask, is this going to alienate our audience? With Shaboozey, I knew my audience was going to get that hook stuck in their head.”
The rhythmic format was slower to welcome “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” relative to country and pop. But the track kept showing up on Shazam charts in places like Columbus, Ohio, where Chris Harris oversees WCKX, another rhythmic outlet. He started playing Shaboozey’s single in May, and he now has his eye on another alcohol-fueled country-rap fusion, Moneybagg Yo’s “Whiskey Whiskey,” a collaboration with Wallen.
Harris also “took a gamble” at his mainstream R&B/hip-hop station, WIZF, and added “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” there recently. “We got a great response,” he says. But this is the one format EMPIRE targeted where “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has faltered, failing to get near the upper reaches of the chart.
Still, “Next week, we should be top five at four formats,” Ghazi says. “I’m going to take a stab at going No. 1 at all four. Why not?”
The year so far has served up a number of intriguing new artist stories, with the likes of Benson Boone, Chappell Roan and Tommy Richman soaring to the top region of the charts for the first time. But perhaps no artist has had a more historic rise in 2024 so far than Shaboozey, whose “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” became his first-ever No. 1 song on the Hot 100 this week — a huge achievement for the artist, his team and his label partner, EMPIRE.
The achievement comes more than a month after the release of Shaboozey’s latest album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, which debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, easily the best mark of his career. But its significance goes well beyond that. After two guest spots on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album helped introduce him to a mainstream audience, Shaboozey released “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and saw it become the first song in history to reach the top 10 of the Country, Pop, Adult Pop and Rhythmic Airplay charts — a true testament to its cross-genre, or even genre-less, appeal — while making him the first Black man, and second Black artist overall after Beyoncé earlier this year, to top both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts.
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It’s also a big milestone for EMPIRE, which launched its Nashville division in 2019 and started working with Shaboozey a few years ago. After releasing his Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die album in October 2022, EMPIRE threw the weight of the company behind the singer, bringing in the full force of its marketing, A&R and global teams, as well as devising the radio strategy that helped to deliver such a historic result. And the achievement helps make EMPIRE COO Nima Etminan Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, Etminan, who alongside company founder/CEO Ghazi has built EMPIRE into an indie powerhouse for more than a decade now, talks about the company-wide strategy to help boost Shaboozey’s work, as well as what the recent achievements for his music mean for the industry and for EMPIRE itself. “We’re scratching the surface of an artist with immense talent, depth and longevity,” Etminan says of Shaboozey. “He’s got stories to tell, emotions to share and hearts to touch. I believe that we will be seeing him play arenas across the globe for many years to come and I’m excited to be there for it every step of the way.”
This week, Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” reached No. 1 on the Hot 100. What key decision did you make to help make that happen?
Shaboozey’s project has been an “all hands on deck” experience at EMPIRE. A key decision was to involve every department in every territory early on — they all played a role in this record in one way, shape or form. It’s hard to pinpoint specific decisions with a song this big; it’s a culmination of efforts.
This is Shaboozey’s first No. 1 single, after you guys have spent the past few years working with him. How have you helped him develop to get to this point, and how did you help push the song to these heights?
We saw potential in Shaboozey since our first meeting with him. He was passionate, talented and had a clear vision of what he was trying to achieve, but was still navigating his path to success in this industry. One of the key decisions was made after the release of Boozey’s first album with EMPIRE called Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die — he and his manager Abas Pauti called me in late 2022 trying to figure out next moves and we decided to bring him closer into the core EMPIRE umbrella. His potential as a global star was starting to be apparent and we brought in marketing and A&R resources from our San Francisco headquarters to complement what our Nashville team was doing on the ground. We strategized closely with his managers Abas and Jared [Cotter] and the upward curve began with the release of “Let It Burn” in the fall of 2023. It became clear we had something very special on our hands and the building started to rally around him.
This achievement also comes five years after EMPIRE launched its Nashville division. How have you built up and grown that aspect of the business, and how do you continue to support it moving forward?
Our Nashville division got its start somewhat serendipitously in 2019 with Willie Jones. Willie was not active at the time and didn’t have any music outside of an old X Factor audition video that had went viral some years back. He was a Black country artist with an incredible voice and Ghazi and I decided to take a chance and do a deal with him. From there, we started to assemble a staff on the ground and slowly made a name for EMPIRE in Nashville — brick by brick. Ghazi firmly believed that country music was going to follow in urban music’s footsteps with just a few years’ delay — and he was right. The town was ripe for new energy and we were quickly able to sign an impressive roster of artists and developed some amazing talent on both the record and the publishing side. We’ve been pushing Nashville for five years and are planning on continuing to do so.
Shaboozey is the first Black man, and second Black artist overall after Beyoncé earlier this year, to top both the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts. What is the significance of that for you guys and for him?
It’s a sign of the times — genres are merging, styles are blending and the audience’s music taste is broader than ever. Artists don’t need to be put in boxes — whether it be by race, genre or eras. Good music is good music and the listeners largely get to dictate the charts.
The song is the first in history to reach the top 10 of the Country, Pop, Adult Pop and Rhythmic Airplay charts. What was your guys’ radio strategy?
There were many, many doubters of our ability to work this record at radio. The industry loves telling independents that there’s a ceiling to what they can do on their own and this was no different. We were told it can’t be done, and as we like to do, we proved them wrong. We’ve assembled a fantastic team that we had full faith in — and they delivered.
This achievement is also a capstone for an incredible first half of the year for Shaboozey overall, with his two guest spots on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and the No. 5 debut of his own album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going. How do you push things forward from here?
As cliche as it may sound, this is just the beginning for Shaboozey. The album has a lot of life left in it and some incredible songs that we will work. We’re scratching the surface of an artist with immense talent, depth and longevity. He’s got stories to tell, emotions to share and hearts to touch. I believe that we will be seeing him play arenas across the globe for many years to come and I’m excited to be there for it every step of the way.
You’ve been with Ghazi basically since the beginning of EMPIRE, helping to build this company. What does it mean for you guys to achieve this No. 1?
My path started in hip-hop. I started off as a fan of rap music in Germany, where I grew up, launching DubCNN, a platform focused specifically on West Coast hip-hop. That is what brought me to California, building friendships with some of my favorite artists growing up, and meeting Ghazi in 2008 via Daz Dillinger. My only goal at the time was to find a way to make a decent living doing something in music. No. 1 Billboard records were not on my radar — I liked underground music and I loved to help new artists gain an audience. But I saw the potential of what were doing when I watched Kendrick Lamar go from an unknown mixtape artist when I first interviewed him in 2007, to becoming a household name after his EMPIRE-released Section.80 and ultimately the biggest rapper in the world.
Ghazi and I share a passion for culture, authenticity and doing good business. What matters the most to us is doing things with integrity and leaving a legacy behind that we can be proud of. There’s a lot of foolishness that goes on in this industry; I’ve seen it from afar and I’ve experienced it firsthand. If we weren’t going to do it our way, we’d rather not do it at all. Shaboozey’s success is exactly that. He’s been through the major system, he’s seen behind the curtain, and partnering with someone like him, who shares similar values and ethics, and taking a record all the way to the top is extremely gratifying. However, I’d be lying if I said it was a goal I thought about or set out to achieve — I never chased awards, charts or any sort of outside validation. But I’m grateful for it when it happens.
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After five years of success as an artist at EMPIRE, Babyface Ray looks to take the next step and evolve into an executive. Today (April 26), Ray announces the partnership between his label, Wavy Gang, and EMPIRE, allowing him to sign and develop talent.
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Ray’s first two signings are Samuel Shabazz and Rally.
“I appreciate the partnership with EMPIRE. We have been partners for the last couple of years, and I’m excited for the next chapter with them and my label Wavy Gang Entertainment,” Ray tells Billboard. “I appreciate the team over there. Ghazi, Nima, Tina, Ari and everyone who has had an impact on my career. It’s time to embark on this chapter.”
Ghazi Shami, CEO and founder of EMPIRE expressed excitement about teaming up again with Ray and watching him leap forward to become an industry executive. “Me and Ray locked in seven years ago. I watched him build his career brick by brick. I’m honored to further our partnership together. His trajectory is limitless. Wavy Gang for life,” he says.
Not only is Ray celebrating the newly minted partnership with EMPIRE, but he’s also savoring his newest accolade: a certified RIAA-gold plaque for his song “Ron Artest,” which features 42 Dugg—his first.
With momentum on his side, Ray looks to ramp up the intensity with his weekly installment of “Face Fridays.” His newest song, “Glory,” is befitting, highlighting the wins in Ray’s life and his gratitude. “You startin’ your discipline, you’re having your business, you’re stackin’ your chips / I’m writing my goals down, I’m knockin’ them all down, I’m scratchin’ the list,” he raps on the BrentRambo and LulRose produced song.
Check out the “Glory” video below.
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Suhel Nafar understands the impact that music can have around the world.
Born in Lod — a city about 25 miles from Jerusalem — to Palestinian parents, Nafar learned English by listening to Dead Prez, 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. The influence of these artists was so strong that in the late 1990s, he — along with his brother Tamer Nafar and their friend Mahmoud Jreri — started the first Palestinian hip-hop group, DAM.
“Listening to hip-hop and seeing music videos of artists being chased by police and feeling their oppression and their anger without knowing what they were talking about because I didn’t speak English — I felt they were talking about me,” Nafar tells Billboard over Zoom from Lod in late October.
He spent 20 years touring the world with DAM, whose lyrics focused on such topics as inequality and oppression. Through his travels, he saw a need in the market and is now working behind the scenes to fill it.
“There aren’t enough of us,” Nafar says, “Arabs, Muslims, brown people and people of color in the music industry to support the artists in the region and around the world.”
Nafar started working on videos, films and other jobs that focused on artists in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region, which includes the Middle East, and helped its music scene coalesce. He moved to the United States in 2013 and taught as an artist in residence at New York University and, in 2018, began a three-year stint at Spotify. There, he helped establish WANA content on the platform and worked in its artist and industry partnerships division.
As vp of strategy and development at EMPIRE, where Nafar started in early 2021, he is leading the company’s expansion into the WANA region, which is rich with talent. Nafar says the generation of musicians he is fostering can help heal “the wound” inflicted by the conflicts there and their far-reaching repercussions.
He sees “glocalization” — global music genres such as pop and hip-hop adapted to WANA cultures — as the ideal delivery system and cites “Rajieen,” a direct response to the crisis featuring 25 WANA artists as an example. Nafar says the song and its powerful video have reached almost 10 million streams across all platforms.
What is EMPIRE’s West Asia and North Africa strategy?
I decided to move to EMPIRE because I felt that the technology of Spotify is great but that artists needed more behind-the-scenes support. [I needed] to be closer to artists and work with them on strategy. As a person that had the artist background, the [digital service provider] background and the content creation background, I thought I would help artists more from the label side.
At EMPIRE, I handle the strategy and development for the region. It means working with a lot of artists on signings and signing labels as well. I’m also developing the market. There’s a gap [in the WANA region] because we don’t have enough people behind the scenes. We don’t have enough managers. We don’t have enough labels.
How does EMPIRE’s independent approach to business influence your efforts?
My whole idea was how I could create a more independent mentality for others so that they could create their own EMPIREs and build their own rosters and executive teams. We signed a lot of labels from the region, along with good people who love music and are just missing skills, or people who have the skills but are missing people to be on their team. We’re providing this infrastructure to a lot of people here.
You’re saying that you’re building the industry itself, to a certain extent.
It’s supporting to amplify what’s already there more than building, I would say.
Nafar says he received this relief of Handala, a national symbol of the Palestinian people, “from a group of kids who attended one of my music and film workshops,” which he conducted in impoverished neighborhoods and refugee camps in Palestine.
Amir Nafar
What have been your biggest successes so far?
The number of female artists we have is amazing. We had at least four Arab female artists on Spotify’s Times Square billboard. My team and I are supporting voices of females from Morocco, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and the diaspora. This type of excitement inspires other female artists to grow. I’m really proud of that.
Who are some Arab artists you’re most excited about?
Maro is a half-Lebanese, half-Ukrainian artist who speaks Arabic, English, French, Ukrainian and Russian and can sing in every language. He was raised in Beirut, where he grew up playing guitar in the streets as a busker. When there was violence in Lebanon, he had to move to Norway … We got an opportunity to bring him to the U.S., where he’s living now.
What about hip-hop artists?
MC Abdul, a 15-year-old kid from Gaza, is a genius who started rapping when he was 9. He learned English from hip-hop and speaks it better than a lot of Americans I know. A few months ago, we finally got him out of Gaza and flew him and his dad to San Francisco on an artist visa. He performed an amazing show there for over 20,000 people. He was in the studio and taking meetings to start his album rollout and was supposed to come back to Gaza [a few] weeks ago. Then the whole situation started, so he couldn’t go back to his family.
Another artist I love is Soulja, a rapper from Sudan. When the war in Sudan happened, we had to help him escape from Sudan to Egypt, and now he’s in Saudi Arabia. His recent release, “Ayam,” is a breakup song where he’s telling his love he doesn’t want to see her anymore, but his love is actually Sudan. He wrote it the day he escaped and was almost killed.
Name one of the women artists you’re supporting.
Nai Barghouti is another amazing artist. She’s a traditional Palestinian folk artist who recently did a song with Skrillex, “Xena.” Her vocal skills are unbelievable. Sometimes we’re like, “Are you human?” Because sometimes it feels like her voice is just an instrument. We’re working on a few projects with her.
Developing Arab artists and promoting the region globally must feel like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
There are people who’ve been in this field before me that did a lot of great work and other cultures that inspired us a lot. My days at Spotify inspired me so much because I worked closely with the Latin team, the Afro team, the Desi team. I watched how K-pop started from the early stages. I just localized what I learned from all those different cultures.
Amir Nafar
How have things shifted since the recent conflict started? What are your workdays like?
Artists are not feeling like they want to release music. That’s the biggest hit. The department I’m running [went from releasing] at least 20 songs a week to almost no songs. The first week, it was the shock of “What the fuck is going on?” and then canceling shows. A lot of festivals all around the Arab world were canceled.
As an artist myself, this is not the first time I’ve gone through it. There have been many times when we were about to drop an album, then Israel invaded Gaza, or there was some protest, or people were getting killed. We learned how to maneuver in these unfortunate situations.
What’s the first move in that maneuvering?
Before business is people. A lot of it is mental support because many artists are going through a lot of emotional pain right now. Everyone knows someone in Gaza. Every family knows a family. I know a hip-hop producer in Gaza that lost his entire family.
If this becomes a long war, how do you foresee it affecting your business?
Music is like history books. The artists will be the ones telling the stories. They will document what’s happening better than the Western media. They will do better songs than Taylor Swift and not do a post about Taylor Swift’s bodyguard. I just hope this won’t get to a point when it’s normalized and [people] will forget about it.
The story of Taylor Swift’s bodyguard returning to Israel to serve in the Israel Defense Forces was widely covered by the media, including Billboard. What are your thoughts on that story?
From my perspective, showing how cute this bodyguard is [who is] going to join the army is not something to make cool at a time when thousands of kids are being killed. [Humanitarian organizations] consider the IDF an illegal army that has done a lot of illegal activities. We as people who are working for music and culture should be uplifting the voices that would heal this wound and not say, “Look at this Taylor Swift bodyguard.”
Is there anything else you would like to say?
I wish this interview was in a different time [with me] talking more about the business. I actually almost canceled because it’s overwhelming watching my family and friends going through genocide. I want to represent the new generation and the music that is fucking amazing; not the situation where there’s an oppressor bombing families as we speak.
I also want to say that from a music and culture perspective, we’re entering a very unique era of the glocalization of a new generation. The culture is morphing. There isn’t one culture anymore. There’s no one genre anymore. This is the voice that I would like to amplify more than anything.
Amir Nafar
Aluna is one of the dance world’s strongest voices for the representation of Black artists, and this week she’s continuing the mission with the launch of her own label, Noir Fever.
Launched in partnership with Empire, Noir Fever will be a home for dance music created by Black artists, with a focus on Black women and LGBTQ+ artists.
“I started Noir Fever records as a key component to my 360-degree strategy of making sustainable and effective change to the future of Black dance music, an idea which was birthed as a response to my own letter to the Dance music industry in 2020,” Aluna said in a statement.
“Investment in the recording side is essential to fostering emerging talent, and by focusing on black women and the queer community I can ensure that everyone is being uplifted,” the statement continues. “This label will work in tandem with my events company so that those who I am opening doors for are not simply walking into another closed door, I’m trying to create a path not an opportunity to slip through a crack.”
The label’s first release is “Pain & Pleasure,” a vibey jam from Moonshine, a Montreal collective of musicians, DJs, dancers and visual artists. The track features the Juno Award-nominated, Somali-Canadian artist Amaal Nuux, Portuguese-Angolese artist Vanyfox and Aluna herself. Listen to it below.
Noir Fever has also appointed Adam Cooper as creative director. Cooper is a strategist, creative director and DJ based in Los Angeles, born in Trinidad & Tobago and raised in Caracas/Venezuelaas well as Brooklyn.
Of the launch, EMPIRE Dance’s director of operations/A&R Deron Delgado said in a statement: “Beyond her extraordinary achievements and remarkable talent, Aluna has consistently championed diversity and inclusion in the music industry, principles that have been ingrained in the very fabric of EMPIRE since our inception over a decade ago. Our shared values and objectives align seamlessly, making this collaboration a natural synergy that promises to elevate music, events, and art to a broader global audience. We are truly excited to be part of showcasing the exceptional talent that Noir Fever is bringing to the masses.”
The label launch follows the release of Aluna’s second solo album, MYCELiUM, released this past July via Mad Decent.
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Audius, a blockchain-based streaming platform, launched its music marketplace in beta on Wednesday (Nov. 1), meaning that its user base — which has ranged between 4 and 7 million in recent months — can now send direct payments to their favorite artists.
“We were a marketplace for engagement and attention,” Roneil Rumburg, co-founder/CEO of Audius, tells Billboard. “But talk to any artists — what’s top of mind for them is, ‘How am I going to pay rent next month?’ This feature allows them to make the following they have a financial asset. There’s a structure to monetize via Audius now rather than just building a fan base.”
More than 40 acts, including RAC, Matt Ox and Cheat Codes, will participate in the beta program, which Audius hopes to roll out widely in the first quarter of 2024. Artists can set prices for fans to stream a previously unreleased demo or download stems to participate in a remix competition, for example. And fans can pay artists more than that price if they’re particularly excited about an offering.
“What we heard [from users] is they were looking for a deeper way to engage with artists,” Romburg explains. He likens allowing them to tip extra on top to “the behavior pattern you see from the folks who buy vinyl even though they don’t have a record player at home — they want to support that artist.” (Users are further incentivized to support artists via a matching program: If an act sells access to a track for $1, for example, that act and the purchaser each get 1 $AUDIO tokens, which helps them gain more voting power on the community-run platform.)
Implementing a monetization option has also allowed Audius to build new bridges to the traditional music industry for the first time. “This monetization feature set saw fairly broad buy-in,” Rumburg says. The platform is partnering with DistroKid, allowing a large number of independent acts the option to put their music on Audius, and Beatport, an important hub for the dance music community. In addition, Audius is announcing its first set of label partners, a group that includes EMPIRE, Nettwerk Music, Circus Records and Anjunadeep, among others.
Rumburg cautions that “the way the deals with the labels coming on are structured, it’s not like their whole catalog gets shoved into Audius.”
“Uploading the same music that’s available everywhere else probably wouldn’t work,” he continues. “Where we’ve had the most success is when artists are sharing weird, different things that they probably wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with their broader fan base. Something like sharing early draft versions of future content to get feedback — the most highly engaged part of the fan base loves that s—.”
But under the new deals, Romburg adds, “When content is shared on Audius that’s owned by a label, the payments will flow correctly.”
A new social action platform, ShowUp, wants to make it easy for artists to integrate activism into album releases, touring strategies and other components of their work.
Launching Monday (Aug. 28), ShowUp connects artists with organizations supporting the causes they care about in order to create, support and scale activism in the music industry. The platform is currently linked with more than 300 hand-selected nonprofit organizations across climate justice, social justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ activism and more. (Using a broader search, users can access more than 1.7 million international organizations.)
ShowUp will be activated by artists as the demand for projects that incorporate activism grows within the industry and among fans. This connection to artists is being facilitated by ShowUp’s partners at launch: ADA Worldwide, Downtown, EMPIRE, The Orchard and Symphonic Distribution.
“Ultimately, ShowUp is an artist services tool, and collectively our partners act as a broadcast point for us to over 100,000 artists and growing,” says ShowUp co-founder/CEO Mat Hall. “ShowUp provides timely and forward-thinking, actionable information and tools to our partners to inform and activate artists.”
Hall continues, “How can artists help our neighbors in Maui? What local organizations can artists support during Hispanic Heritage Month? How can an artist support women’s reproductive health in Mississippi? The teams and leaders we work with daily at our partners help us identify artists across their roster interested in this work and help shape the campaigns we create.”
ShowUp also makes it possible for qualifying artists to select an organization to dedicate a portion of their royalties to via a new release or catalog track. Admin for this function happens seamlessly through existing split-share technology on each partner’s backend.
ShowUp will also provide artists with data regarding who gave what, where and when so that artist teams can identify the activism-oriented segments of their fanbases.
“Our goal isn’t to turn every artist into an activist,” says Hall. “This work isn’t for everyone. However, we do want to make sure that any artist practicing activism, or who may be inclined to do so, has the tools and support so that, when they decide to speak out about what’s important to them, their message reaches the broadest possible audience and drives the greatest financial impact possible to the communities and concerns they are supporting.”
Hall adds that this goal makes label and distribution partners essential to ShowUp’s work.
“Providing a scalable platform for artists to raise awareness and engagement while delivering impactful, measurable results for causes they support enhances our value proposition in meaningful ways,” The Orchard president/COO Colleen Theis adds in a press release. “We are proud to partner with ShowUp to make advocacy and fundraising integral components of The Orchard’s client offering.”
“We all know ‘why’ this work is imperative, but many of us get lost at ‘what’ and ‘how,’” added ADA Worldwide president Cat Kreidich. “ShowUp helps answer these questions, and has been a valuable and practical starting point for our artists and teams as we all consider our potential for impact.”
Added Downtown Music Holdings chief commercial officer Tracy Maddux: “Activism is becoming an increasingly important part of how creators interact with their audience and the world around them. ShowUp provides them a platform to do this authentically and effectively and Downtown is a proud partner in helping make their voices heard.”
“Integrating the ShowUp platform allows our artists to seamlessly support the things that matter to them,” said EMPIRE chief product officer Stephen White. “When artists make these commitments, our artist teams have an incredibly powerful new marketing tool that not only drives advocacy and fundraising, but new channels of fan and streaming engagement. Everyone benefits.”
Independent Bay Area-based label, publisher and distributor EMPIRE has promoted industry veteran Tina Davis to the role of president, the company announced today (June 21). Davis, who most recently worked as EMPIRE’s senior vp of A&R, will continue to lead the company’s vast and varied A&R efforts while also getting involved in day-to-day operations and […]
Bay Area-based record label, distributor and publisher EMPIRE has named Alexandra Moore its new chief business officer, the company announced today (June 14). In her new role, Moore will be leading business and revenue-driving initiatives, overseeing content distribution, e-commerce, business development, mergers and acquisitions and the company’s international expansion, which has recently extended to Japan, […]