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Usually, when one says a label dominates an album chart, that means it has most of the top ten — seven, for example, or maybe sometimes eight. This week in Germany, however, UMG has all 10. This seems to be the first time this has happened in Germany, although it is hard to say this […]
BERLIN — After introducing himself in German — a daring act for a foreigner — Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl said a few words about why he was so excited to be at the opening of the company’s new Berlin office. “The world is noisier than ever,” he said, just as the roar of nearby S-Bahn made it so, but there was considerable excitement about the music coming out of Germany. He shared one example: “Komet,” a recent hit by veteran rock artist Udo Lindenberg and rapper Apache 207 that has broken chart records.
While the German music business has historically been divided among its major cities, Berlin is emerging as the country’s music capital, and although Warner’s German headquarters will remain in Hamburg, it celebrated the opening of its new Berlin office with a big party. (The new office is for both Warner Music Central Europe and Warner Chappell Music Germany.) Next week, during the Reeperbahn Festival, the company will have a second “hauswarming” party at its remodeled Hamburg offices.
“We see this new space, alongside our revitalised Hamburg headquarters, as a sign of our commitment to local players in the creative and cultural scene,” said Doreen Schimk, co-president of Warner Music Central Europe, who spoke in German. “It shows the importance of Berlin as a European metropolis and a location for the music industry.”
Fabian Drebes, also co-president of Warner Music Central Europe, spoke about how the new building would serve as a “new creative hub with possibilities for events, concerts and more to support our national and international artists.”
Lars Karlsson, Managing Director Warner Chappell Music GSA & Nordics, Doreen Schimk, Co-President Warner Music Central Europe, Natascha Augustin, Vice President Warner Chappell Music Germany, Fabian Drebes, Co-President Warner Music Central Europe
Doering Agency
Warner occupies the top floor of the Schicklerhaus, a late-19th-century building near the Jannowitzbrücke S-Bahn stop, a block from the River Spree, not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city. These days, it’s about a mile from AEG’s Mercedes-Benz Arena. It’s a sleek, modern office, with prime roof space that overlooks the river. As about 500 partygoers mingled on the roof and a terrace, a drone hovered overhead taking photos. German artists attending included Peter Schilling, Katja Krasavice, and Shirin David.
“The music industry is of increasing importance for Berlin,” said Franziska Giffey, a deputy mayor for business, energy and labor. Speaking in what she called “Berlinish” — a mix of German and English that’s increasingly popular in a city filled with newcomers from all over the world – she said that music business jobs increased by 700 to about 6,800 this year, and that Warner would add another 150.
“Without the scene of such a vibrant city, we wouldn’t be the No. 1 publisher,” said Natascha Augustin, vp of Warner Chappell Music Germany. Warner Chappell leads the German music publishing business partly because of Augustin and her signings in German hip-hop. She told a story about starting out with a small Berlin office, moving to a slightly bigger one, and ending up here.
“Berlin,” said Lars Karlsson, managing director of Warner Chappell Music Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and Scandinavia, “is one of the most important cultural cities in the world.”
Sony Music Entertainment Germany and nonprofit artist association Music Women* Germany (MWG) have announced the winners of the 2023 Female* Producer Prize. The honor is designed to support and promote the careers of rising female-identifying producers across Germany.
The seven winners — Mimski, Evîn, Kota No Uta, Mona Yim, Aufmischen, Sheyda Minia and Just Honest — were selected from more than 150 applicants by a five-member jury. They will receive a support package consisting of production grants, vouchers for music equipment and a producer workshop at Sony Music Germany’s Circle Studios. They will also be added to the female producer register at Sony Music and NEUBAU Music Management, which will put them in touch with various labels and artists. Additionally, newly added partners Sony Music Publishing and the Female* Producer Collective will offer coaching sessions for the winners.
In addition to the seven selected applicants, a shortlist of 20 applicants will also be added to Sony Music and NEUBAU’s female producer register.
“The great response and the enormously high level of over 150 applications this year have not only shown how overdue the Female* Producer Prize was, but above all, how many highly competent and visionary female music producers there are out there,” said Jovanka v. Wilsdorf, jury member and initiator of the Female* Producer Prize, in a statement. “Visibility develops a radiance that creates measurable success.”
Added Sony Music Columbia Records Germany head of A&R Sarah Schneider, who also served on the jury: “More female and non-binary producers means more perspectives! This is again demonstrated by the outstanding quality of the many applications received. As a record label, we want to apply industry-wide approaches and tools to actively move forward to effect a change in the status quo.”
In addition to Wilsdorf and Schneider, the 2023 jury consisted of Novaa, a producer and finalist for last year’s prize; U.K. music producer, composer, sound engineer and sheWrites co-founder Charlie McClean; Pamela Owusu Brenyah, a freelance curator, creative consultant and project manager who serves as program curator of Musicboard Berlin and board member of Music Women Germany, among other roles; and music producer and songwriter Moses Schneider.
The Female* Producer Prize is supported by Reeperbahn Festival (sponsored by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media) and sponsored by Thomann, Ableton, NEUBAU, Female* Producer Collective, Sony Music and Sony Music Publishing.
The award ceremony and workshop will be held in Berlin on September 14.
You can read capsule descriptions of the winners below.
Mimski: Started producing in early 2022, first in Germany and then in England, where she received a warmer welcome as a female producer than in Germany. There she submitted a beat for the Novembars competition, which helped her breakthrough: her first track was played directly on radio shows. She is currently working on her first album, which will be released on the RUNTLIFE Records label and working on an EP with King Kashmere as well as a Female Force EP with several female rappers.
Evîn: A German/Kurdish singer and producer in alternative R&B. Her music combines elements from different genres like soul and hip-hop with her Kurdish roots, giving her a characteristic sound within the German scene. Emotions and experiences, as well as themes like escape, memory culture and belonging can be found in Evîn’s songs, which she writes and produces in her home studio in Berlin. April 2022 saw the release of Evîn’s debut EP, followed immediately by her second EP, It wasn’t even for you, in November 2022.
Kota No Uta: Singer-songwriter and producer who works mainly in the direction of jazz, soul and neo soul. In October 2022 she released her song “Autumn Leaves” in self-production. At the moment she is working on two releases with collaborators and her own EP.
Mona Yim: A Chinese-German music producer, singer and DJ from Hamburg, Germany. Her music combines emotional vocal hooks with her self-produced electronic productions inspired by UK garage, house and electronica as well as influences from her training as a classical violinist and performer. Her debut release in 2022 was followed by further releases on labels such as Ninja Tune and remixes for Glass Animals and DJ Seinfeld, among others. She has played venues such as O2 Academy Brixton, DGTL Festival, Printworks, KOKO and Warehouse Project.
Aufmischen: Producer who started her first steps in the music industry as a drummer, in her studies she wrote contemporary compositions for classical ensembles before she dedicated herself completely to pop music. In 2022 her productions can be heard on the album of poetry artist Dshamilja Roshani, the EP of pop singer Pieke and numerous singles of other artists. More releases are planned for this year, such as the album by artist Elay.
Sheyda Minia: Iranian-born artist who began playing the harp at the age of 8 and became a junior student at the Musikhochschule in Cologne at 13. At 16, she used her first self-earned money to buy an interface microphone and Logic music software so she could finally produce her own beats. At the end of 2021 she was discovered by Mehrzad Marashi the CEO of Impulse-Records GmbH, where she has been working as a producer ever since.
Just Honest: Music has saved producer Just Honest many times, so she had no choice but to bring her songs to life and produce them herself. Hoping to touch, heal and inspire the hearts of others. Her debut single, “Toxic Culture,” has already reached over 1 million streams, and her debut album, No Love No Hate, is about to be released.
Despite a challenging economy and the lingering effect of the pandemic on the concert business, the German collecting society GEMA took in 1.178 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in revenue in 2022, a 13% increase over 2021. This year, for the first time, the organization’s distributions will exceed a billion euros.
“This is a record result,” said GEMA CEO Harald Heker in a statement. “The resurgence of events and music performances means a relief for our members after three hard years.”
Some of this increase reflects the continued growth of streaming, but some of it is due to the recovery from the pandemic.
GEMA collections from public music performances, its biggest category of revenue, grew to 357.5 million euros ($381.6 million), up 43.7% over 2021 (but still below the 407.4 million euro high of 2019). Online, the organization’s third biggest category, grew to 301.3 million euros ($321.6 million), up 26.5% over 2021. (Radio and television collections, the second biggest category of revenue, dropped 3.9% to 325.1 million euros [$347 million].) The amounts of money GEMA collects from levies on computers and items with blank memory, as well as from physical goods, both declined – by 27.7% and 9.2%, respectively.
GEMA is one of the first international collecting societies to announce its 2022 results, but its counterparts are expected to report good years as well, for some of the same reasons. Last month, ASCAP reported a 14% increase in collections over 2021, to $1.52 billion. (Collecting societies report their results differently, so exact comparisons can be difficult.) While organizations struggled to maintain revenue during the pandemic, the comeback of the concert business – and public life in general – should now boost all of them.
GEMA’s good news comes at an interesting time for the organization. As the 2014 EU directive on collecting societies continues to push them into competition with one another online, GEMA has emerged as one of the bigger and more successful organizations. In addition to its own operations, GEMA operates the online licensing and collecting hub ICE with STIM (Sweden) and PRS for Music (UK). Heker has led GEMA since 2007 and is expected to retire by the end of the year, and there is talk that GEMA will name its next CEO by summer.
Like many collecting societies and organizations of publishers and songwriters, GEMA believes that music-streaming is unfair to their side of the business, and rewards labels and artists disproportionately.
“The trend towards streaming must not lead to authors’ rights being undermined,” Heker said in the same statement. “GEMA’s most important task is and remains to stand up for fair remuneration in all areas and thus at the same time to secure conditions for a lively and diverse musical and cultural landscape.”
German record label and publisher BMG had its biggest year in its 15-year history, the company reported Thursday (March 30), saying 2022 revenues were up more than 30% on strong publishing and recorded music growth and the half a billion invested in music catalogs and artists signings.
BMG reported that it generated 866 million euros ($912.6 million) in 2022 compared to 663 million euros in 2021 ($784 million). The company’s publishing division, which makes up 60% of BMG’s revenues, grew by 26% to 518 million euros ($546 million) on new hits by Bebe Rexha and Lewis Capaldi and iconic works by Blondie and Nirvana.
BMG’s recorded music business, which contributes 40% of the company’s overall revenues, grew by 38% to 348 million euros ($367 million) on collaborations from Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood and the continued streaming strength of Rick Astley‘s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
With financial backing from its parent company Bertelsmann and $1 billion joint investment partnership with private equity firm KKR, BMG launched an “investment offensive” in 2022, in the words of Bertelsmann. BMG spent more than 509 million euros ($536 million) signing publishing deals with artists like Elvis Costello and Halsey and acquiring 45 catalogs including rights to works by Peter Frampton, John Lee Hooker, Primal Scream and Simple Minds. In August, BMG announced it acquired the German indie label Telamo, expanding its footprint in the world’s fourth largest music market.
BMG executives said the company is on target to achieve its financial goal of generating one billion euros in revenue starting in 2024.
BMG chief executive Hartwig Masuch attributes the record-setting year for revenues to the company’s investments in technology and services to set it apart with artists and focus on “known quantities” of successful music.
“Our strategic differentiation is focusing on the repertoire that grabs more and more share from consumers, which is established repertoire, known quantities,” Masuch tells Billboard. “And in attracting artists, the focus on qualitative differentiation when it comes to accounting, servicing, our daily role, (is) a strategic differentiation between our major competitors and BMG.”
Masuch, who has led BMG since its launch in 2008, is stepping down at the end of this year, leaving the top job to his current chief financial officer, Thomas Coesfeld.
Coesfeld, who has played a key role in BMG’s catalog acquisition strategy, said the company’s investments last year will “bear fruit in the years to come.”
“Why we are focused on iconic artists is because we are firm believers in the cultural relevance — the earnings permanence,” Coesfeld says. “These returns are stable, less volatile and growing because the streaming environment is still growing a lot — less than in the last two years, but still growing. Our strategy is keep going because we are firm believers that this is the right thing to do.”
BERLIN, Germany — The German music market is doing wunderbar. It grew 6.1% in 2022 over the previous year, to 2.07 billion Euros ($2.19 billion), according to the BVMI, the country’s recorded music trade organization. That’s the fourth consecutive year of growth for the market, as well as the first time in 20 years that the business – valued on retail revenue, including VAT – exceeded two billion Euros.
Although Germany came late to streaming, which didn’t overtake the country’s physical sales until 2018, digital accounted for a full 80.3% of retail revenue in 2022, and streaming came in at 73.3%. Total physical sales accounted for 19.7% of revenue.
The CD is still much healthier here than in most other markets, accounting for a full 12.9% of revenue, which makes it the industry’s second most important product after streaming.
Downloads, which never took off in Germany to the extent that they did in most other European markets, accounted for just 2.2%. Other digital revenue, including video streaming, added up to 4.8% of revenue.
Streaming is gaining fast, too: it grew by 14% compared to 2021, while CD sales declined 17.1%.
Within the physical market, vinyl still lags behind CDs, at an even 6%. That’s a significant difference from the U.S., where vinyl sales revenue long since surpassed that of CDs. (Music DVDs and Blu-ray videos accounted for half a percent of revenue, while other physical products accounted for 0.3%.) As in the U.S., vinyl sales are still growing — they were up 6% by revenue — but not as much as in 2021, when they grew 20.1%.
“The fact that the German music industry has taken the 2 billion Euro mark for the first time in two decades is good news of far more than symbolic value,” said BVMI chairman and CEO Florian Drücke. “Looking at streaming, it will be exciting to see how the price increases we have seen recently from the first providers will now play out in the wider market and also how short form videos will be able to monetize even more.”
BERLIN — Universal Music Group Germany made a distribution deal with the rock band Weimar — then dropped it this week after an article in German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the group has ties to the right-wing scene in Germany and that at least one of its members previously performed in a neo-Nazi band.
The group’s lyrics refer to violence and portray the media as “bought puppets” as well as wolves and rats — echoing anti-Semitic imagery used by the Nazis. At least one member of Weimar previously played in a band with outright racist and anti-Semitic lyrics, according to Der Spiegel. Another member, Christian P., has been accused of illegally possessing weapons and spreading neo-Nazi propaganda, according to Der Spiegel. Universal has said that Christian P.’s name wasn’t on the band’s recording contract and his exact role in the group is unclear — partly because the band often performs and poses for photographs in masks.
The group’s album came out in May and went to No. 5 on the German albums chart, and its website lists spring tour dates. The band did not respond to an inquiry from Billboard sent to its Twitter account.
“Based on the information we recently learned from a journalist’s inquiry, we terminated our relationship with Weimar, which consisted of distribution of one album,” Universal Music Group says in a statement. “That has been stopped with immediate effect. The information that has come to light made clear that any relationship with the band was absolutely unacceptable to us and inconsistent with our values. We feel deceived by the band. If we knew then what we know today, we would never have released the album in the first place.”
UMG’s decision comes one week after The New York Times revealed how German label BMG signed a rapper known to have Holocaust-denying and anti-Semitic lyrics, Freeze Corleone, to a one-album deal in 2021 and then abruptly terminated the relationship the day before BMG was due to release the project’s first single. BMG executives had debated internally the pros and cons of signing the French artist and had known that UMG had signed and then dropped Corleone in 2020 after distributing his previous album, La Menace Fantôme (The Phantom Menace), for a week. BMG executives in Berlin ultimately overruled their French team after thoroughly reviewing his older music.
In the case of Weimar, several members come from the neo-Nazi scene in the state of Thuringia, according to Der Spiegel. Konstantin P., who Der Spiegel says goes by the name Till Schneider in Weimar, was previously in Dragoner, a neo-Nazi band that recorded songs that denied the Holocaust.
Dragoner was watched by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence organization charged with protecting German democracy. Steffen P., who Der Spiegel says goes by the name Kurt Ronny Fiedler in Weimar, came to the attention of Thuringian law enforcement when he attended a right-wing concert in 2005.
It’s unclear what Christian P’s role in the group is, but Der Spiegel says he has known both Steffen P. and Konstantin P. for years, and that they previously played together in the group Uncore United, which has songs that sound similar to those of Weimar. Christian P. has been accused of illegal weapons possession and “forming armed groups.” Der Spiegel says that in 2002 he released an album under the name Murder Squad that featured a swastika on the cover and included anti-Semitic lyrics that denied the Holocaust took place — both of which could make it illegal to distribute in Germany.
Weimar’s relationship with Universal was a one-album distribution deal through the band’s label, Harder Entertainment. The article in Der Spiegel suggests that the deal might have been made by the manager of Frei.Wild, a band from South Tyrol, Italy, that has been associated with right-wing imagery but has distanced itself from right-wing politics. UMG did not comment on this at publication time.
BERLIN — It is Rammstein’s time to shine on this year’s German sales charts.
The veteran hard rock band had the best-selling album in Germany in 2022 with Zeit (which literally means “time”), according to GfK Entertainment, which tracks music sales and streaming in the German market. The most popular single was “Layla,” by DJ Robin & Schürze.
GfK’s “Official German Charts” count streams, downloads and physical sales – which can still be significant in Germany – plus airplay for singles. The annual charts count music consumption from the 50th week of 2021 to the 49th week of 2022.
Like last year, Universal Music Group dominated the market with the four top albums – Zeit, Helene Fischer’s Rausch at No. 2, ABBA’s Voyage at No. 3 and Taylor Swift’s Midnights at No. 4. Two of those – Rausch and Voyage were also on last year’s charts where Fisher’s album also came in at No. 2.
Universal also had the No. 7 album, Kontra K’s Für den Himmel, durch die Hölle. The top three singles were “Layla,” “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals – boosted to No. 2 by TikTok two years after its release – and “Beautiful Girls” by Luciano at No. 3. UMG also had the No. 9 single, “Cold Heart,” by Elton John and Dua Lipa.
Two of the other top 10 albums were international hits from Sony Music Entertainment – Harry Styles’ Harry’s House at No. 5 and Adele’s 30 at No. 10. The company also had Roland Kaiser’s Perspektiven at No. 9.
The two other top 10 albums came from Warner Music Group. A career-spanning collection from the veteran German punk group Die Toten Hosen came in at No. 6, while Ed Sheeran’s = – released last year – was at No. 8.
Sony scored three of the top 10 singles – “As It Was” by Harry Styles at No. 6, “Where Are You Now” by Lost Frequencies & Calum Scott at No. 7, and “Wildberry Lillet” by Nina Chuba at No. 10. Warner scored two of the top 10 singles – “abcdfu” by gayle and “Shivers” by Ed Sheeran. The remaining single, the No. 8 “Sehnsucht” by the German rapper T-Low and the production duo Miksu and Macloud, came out on the independent label Future.
LONDON — Deezer has always been the streaming service that charted its own path. After launching in 2007 — a year before Spotify debuted — the Paris-based company rapidly opened its service in over 180 countries; but, unlike Spotify, which focused on one or two markets at a time, Deezer avoided the biggest markets, like the United States and Japan, for many years. But now that the number of on-demand music subscription services has boomed, Deezer has struggled to keep up with its rivals.
New CEO Jeronimo Folgueira, who took over in June 2021, hopes to change that. Deezer is shifting from targeting small and emerging territories to renewing its focus on large and established music markets, where consumers are more willing to pay for subscriptions. In August, Folgueira forged a partnership with German broadcast giant RTL Deutschland to deliver music and video content in a single app — RTL+ Musik — putting Deezer in a stronger position to compete with Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, China’s Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) and YouTube Music.
Folgueira calls the RTL tie-up a “transformative” deal that gives Deezer the scale it needs to break into Germany, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music market, with revenue of $1.6 billion in 2021, up 12.6% from 2020, according to IFPI. “In those markets where we have the right partner and the right distribution strategy, our product is second to none,” says Folgueira.
But in the increasingly crowded streaming business, Deezer, which counts Warner Music Group owner Access Industries among its biggest shareholders, is fighting an uphill battle to unseat Spotify. Deezer’s strategy seems more about becoming a “second-tier player that is strong where first-tier players are not,” says Mark Mulligan, analyst at MIDiA Research. While it was “once incumbent,” along with Rhapsody, “it is now challenger, and it has honed its strategy accordingly.”
Deezer is strongest in France, where it is partnered on bundle deals with telecom company Orange and has 4.4 million subscribers, and in Brazil, where it partnered with TIM Celular in 2016 and has 2.7 million subscribers, according to company filings. Worldwide, Deezer has 9.4 million subscribers compared with Spotify’s 195 million subscribers and 273 million free (ad-supported) users, while TME has 82.7 million paying subscribers, according to the companies’ latest earnings reports.
While Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music don’t regularly announce user numbers, last year Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, said the service had surpassed 50 million paying subscribers worldwide. The last time Apple issued any data for its service was in 2019, when it said it had over 60 million subscribers worldwide; Amazon Music said it had more than 55 million subscribers globally in January 2020 but has not updated that figure since.
Rapidly growing TikTok dwarfs them all, with the social media app boasting over 1 billion active monthly users, many of whom use music in their videos. Streaming executives will watch closely what ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, does next. The Beijing-headquartered company is understood to be in talks with labels about expanding its subscription-based music streaming service Resso — currently available in India, Indonesia and Brazil — to more than a dozen new markets ahead of a global rollout. (Verified profiles with the username “TikTok Music” have appeared on social media platforms in recent months advertising “a new way to experience music.”)
For Deezer, strategic partners like RTL Deutschland, which says it reaches 99% of the German population through its 15 TV channels and numerous radio, print and digital outlets, are the key going forward, says Folgueira. “RTL has to compete with Netflix, Apple and Amazon,” he says. “We compete against Spotify, Apple and Amazon. Together, we can compete much better and have a proposition that is equal or better.” Deezer is seeking strategic partners in other big markets, he says, including the United States (where it launched in 2016), the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
Engineers at Deezer and RTL spent a year developing the RTL+ Musik app, which combines music streaming with film, TV and news content and costs 9.99 euros ($9.84) for the first six months, then rises to 12.99 euros ($12.80) per month. RTL, which is owned by BMG parent company Bertelsmann, says it has 3.4 million paying subscribers for its lower-priced, video-only RTL+ streaming service but believes it can quickly grow its premium subscriptions through music.
This year’s merger with I2PO, a special purpose acquisition corporation that raised 275 million euros ($282 million) in a 2021 initial public offering, gives Deezer the funding it needs to execute the plan, says Folgueira. Still, as it tries to make its strategic pivot, Deezer faces strong market headwinds and an uncertain investment environment for music streaming.
Since its rocky debut on the Euronext Paris exchange in July 2021, Deezer’s share price has plummeted almost 60% and now hovers around 3.5 euros (it closed at 3.42 euros on Nov. 8). Spotify shares have tumbled 74% over the past year, to $73.44 on Nov. 7, as investors soured on streaming following a pandemic-related boom. (Spotify’s all-time high closing share price was $364.59, set on set on Feb. 19, 2021.)
“There is a growing acceptance among investors that the boom period for streaming investments is drawing to a close,” says Mulligan. He predicts streaming services will continue to represent long-term value but “will be less interesting to certain kinds of investors, which may weaken overall demand and thus push down share prices.”
Folgueira points to Deezer’s midyear financial results — revenue grew 12.1% (up 9.9% at constant currency) from the prior-year period to 219 million euros ($218 million) — as evidence that the company is well positioned to survive and grow within the fast-changing music streaming market. (Since the interview, Deezer released its third quarter earnings on Oct. 27, showing revenue up 13.8% and 11.4% at constant currency.) “For the last 10 years, streaming companies have prioritized growth over profitability,” says Folgueira. “That will start shifting now, and we will all focus more on profitability going forward.”