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Russian authorities arrested four men suspected of carrying out the attack on a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133 people, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday (March 23) in an address to the nation. He claimed they were captured while fleeing to Ukraine.
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Kyiv strongly denied any involvement in Friday’s assault on the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, and the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate claimed responsibility.
Putin did not mention IS in his speech, and Kyiv accused him and other Russian politicians of falsely linking Ukraine to the assault to stoke fervor for Russia’s war in Ukraine, which recently entered its third year.
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U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the claim by the IS affiliate that it was responsible for the attack, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. U.S. intelligence agencies gathered information in recent weeks that the IS branch was planning an attack in Moscow, and U.S. officials privately shared the intelligence with Russian officials earlier this month, the U.S. official said. The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence information and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Putin said authorities detained a total of 11 people in the attack, which also injured more than 100 concertgoers and left the venue on Moscow’s western rim a smoldering ruin. He called it “a bloody, barbaric terrorist act” and said Russian authorities captured the four suspected gunmen as they were trying to escape to Ukraine through a “window” prepared for them on the Ukrainian side of the border.
Russian media broadcast videos apparently showed the detention and interrogation of the suspects, including one who told the cameras he was approached by an unidentified assistant to an Islamic preacher via a messaging app and paid to take part in the raid.
Russian news reports identified the gunmen as citizens of Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia that is predominantly Muslim and borders Afghanistan. Up to 1.5 million Tajiks have worked in Russia and many have Russian citizenship.
Tajikistan’s foreign ministry, which denied initial Russian media reports that mentioned several other Tajiks allegedly involved in the raid, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Saturday’s arrests.
Many Russian hard-liners called for a crackdown on Tajik migrants, but Putin appeared to reject the idea, saying “no force will be able to sow the poisonous seeds of discord, panic or disunity in our multi-ethnic society.”
He declared Sunday a day of mourning and said additional security measures were imposed throughout Russia.
The attack, the deadliest in Russia in years, is a major embarrassment for the Russian leader and happened just days after he cemented his grip on the country for another six years in a vote that followed the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet times.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who have relentlessly suppressed any opposition activities and muzzled independent media, failed to prevent the attack despite the U.S. warnings.
The assault came two weeks after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a notice urging Americans to avoid crowded places in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large Moscow gatherings, including concerts. Several other Western embassies repeated the warning. Earlier this week, Putin denounced the warning as an attempt to intimidate Russians.
Investigators on Saturday combed through the charred wreckage of the hall for more victims, and authorities said the death toll could still rise. Hundreds of people stood in line in Moscow to donate blood and plasma, Russia’s health ministry said.
Putin’s claim that the attackers tried to flee to Ukraine followed comments by Russian lawmakers who pointed the finger at Ukraine immediately after the attack. But Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied any involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Moscow of using the attack to try to build support for its war efforts.
“We consider such accusations to be a planned provocation by the Kremlin to further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russian society, create conditions for increased mobilization of Russian citizens to participate in the criminal aggression against our country and discredit Ukraine in the eyes of the international community,” the ministry said in a statement.
Images shared by Russian state media showed emergency vehicles still gathered outside the ruins of Crocus City Hall, which could hold more than 6,000 people and hosted many big events, including the 2013 Miss Universe beauty pageant that featured Donald Trump.
On Friday, crowds were at the venue for a concert by the Russian rock band Picnic.
Videos posted online showed gunmen in the venue shooting civilians at point-blank range. Russian news reports cited authorities and witnesses as saying the attackers threw explosive devices that started the fire, which eventually consumed the building and caused its roof to collapse.
Dave Primov, who survived the attack, told the AP that the gunmen were “shooting directly into the crowd” in the front rows. He described the chaos in the hall as concertgoers raced to escape: “People began to panic, started to run and collided with each other. Some fell down and others trampled on them.”
After he and others crawled out of the hall into nearby utility rooms, he said he heard pops from small explosives and smelled burning as the attackers set the building ablaze. By the time they got out of the massive building 25 minutes later, it was engulfed in flames.
“Had it been just a little longer, we could simply get stuck there in the fire,” Primov said.
Messages of outrage, shock and support for the victims and their families have streamed in from around the world.
On Friday, the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack and underlined the need for the perpetrators to be held accountable. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned the terrorist attack “in the strongest possible terms,” his spokesman said.
IS, which lost much of its ground after Russia’s military action in Syria, has long targeted Russia. In a statement posted by the group’s Aamaq news agency, IS’s Afghanistan affiliate said it had attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk.
On Saturday, the group issued a new statement on Aamaq saying the attack was carried out by four men who used automatic rifles, a pistol, knives and firebombs. It said the assailants fired at the crowd and used knives to kill some concertgoers, casting the raid as part of IS’s ongoing war with countries that it says are fighting Islam.
In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt.
The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union.
The group’s Afghanistan affiliate is known variously as ISIS-K or IS-K, taking its name from Khorasan Province, a region that covered much of Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia in the Middle Ages.
The affiliate has thousands of fighters who have repeatedly carried out attacks in Afghanistan since the country was seized in 2021 by the Taliban, a group with which they are at bitter odds.
ISIS-K was behind the August 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport that left 13 American troops and about 170 Afghans dead during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal. They also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in Kerman, Iran, in January that killed 95 people at a memorial procession.
On March 7, just hours before the U.S. Embassy warned about imminent attacks, Russia’s top security agency said it had thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an IS cell and killed several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days before that, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia, in Russia’s Caucasus region.
Nine sites that were selling fraudulent streams have been taken offline, according to IFPI and Music Canada.
IFPI, the worldwide recording industry association, and Music Canada, a trade group that represents major Canadian labels, filed a legal complaint with the Canadian Competition Bureau against the sites, accusing them of selling false plays and streams to manipulate streaming service data. The nine connected sites, the most popular of which used the domain name MRINSTA.com, have since gone offline (though you can still see them via the Wayback Machine).
“Streaming manipulation has no place in music,” stated Lauri Rechardt, the IFPI’s chief legal officer. “Perpetrators and enablers of streaming manipulation cannot be allowed to continue to divert revenue away from the artists who create the music.”
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As streaming has grown in popularity, so have efforts to game services’ royalty models. Vancouver-based fraud detection software company Beatdapp estimates that as many as 10% of music streams are fake. Fake streams are often generated through streaming farms, which use bots to automatically stream particular songs and boost their stats.
Canada recorded 145.3 billion streams in 2023. – Rosie Long Decter
Warner Music Canada’s Head of A&R Leaves to Start New Management Company, SWING
It was only January of this year that Victoria, B.C. pop-funk artist Diamond Cafe announced his signing to Warner Music Canada. Now, George Kalivas, the man who signed him, is breaking off on his own to manage him — and building a whole new company around the singer.
SWING is launching as a Toronto-based management company with Diamond Cafe as its first artist, though Kalivas says the eventual plan is to “evolve into a full-service record label in no time.”
Kalivas started in marketing at Warner Canada seven years ago, handling domestic artists signed to the label and international releases signed to subsidiaries like Atlantic and 300. But he had “one foot in A&R,” he says, which became official two years ago when Kristen Burke became label president.
His first signing was Crash Adams, a Canadian pop duo known for viral TikTok trends. After the joint launch of 91 North Records by Warner Canada and Warner India, Kalivas helped sign the label’s second artist, AR Paisley. A long-simmering Canadian rapper, Paisley hit the top 10 of the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 this year with “Drippy,” a posthumous collaboration with the late Punjabi-Canadian superstar Sidhu Moose Wala.
But it was Diamond Cafe who made him realize the time was right to strike off on his own, Kalivas says. “I haven’t seen a triple threat artist like him — writer, performer and producer — in 15 years,” he says. “He’s next level.”
As publishing and song catalogues become a major money-maker in the music industry, artists like Diamond Cafe who can work both in front of and behind the scenes are getting scouted heavily. For SWING, it’s enough to structure a whole new company around. – Richard Trapunski
Texas Songwriter Livingston Debuts on the Canadian Hot 100 With ‘Shadow’
Texas singer-songwriter Livingston is making a splash on the Canadian charts this week.
The 21-year-old has landed on the Canadian Hot 100 for the first time, with his single “Shadow” debuting at No. 100. The ominous tarck, which finds Livingston warning about the dangers we pose to ourselves, shows off his belt and falsetto over keyboard stabs and jittery percussion. “Shadow” is also performing well on the iTunes charts and has gathered over a million YouTube views since its Mar. 7 release.
Livingston’s new album, A Hometown Odyssey, also found a spot on the Canadian Albums chart this week, debuting at No. 92. Livingston first gained popularity as a teenager on TikTok during the pandemic and signed shortly thereafter with Elektra records. His website states that he “reclaimed his independence” from his major label deal a year ago; Hometown Odyssey is independently released.
Independence seems to suit Livingston well. Though he isn’t charting on the U.S. Hot 100 or Billboard 200 yet, sometimes rising American artists — like Benson Boone — perform better in Canada before gaining steam in the United States. – Rosie Long Decter
Annalisa arrives at the appointment in high boots and a black tracksuit with the hood pulled over her head. She enters the headquarters of her record company, Warner Music Italy, trying not to be recognized by anyone. She comes out in a D&G sporty tracksuit and heeled boots, with perfectly combed red hair and impeccable makeup. She has a bit of fever but one couldn’t tell.
This is Annalisa. Confident, professional, a perfectionist. In Italy she achieved exceptional results: 36 platinum records, in 2023 she stayed ten consecutive weeks in the top 10 of the singles chart and was the only female solo artist in the annual top 10. At Sanremo 2024 she finished third with her song “Sincerely,” which followed a particularly successful period of her career that began in September 2022 with the single “Bellissima.” This period was characterized by a more electronic sound, accompanied by freer and sexier image and lyrics.
After the Global Force Award she received at Billboard Women in Music 2024, honored by Billboard Italy, it’s time to fully understand Annalisa (born in 1985 in Carcare, Liguria), going back to her beginnings. She has a degree in physics, but did she ever think about a career in that field? “Never. I’ve always wanted to pursue a career in music, ever since I was a little child,” she says. “I grew up in a small town and my parents are two very rigorous people, both teachers. They pushed me to look for a plan B. They always supported me, but with realism.”
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Is physics close to music somehow?
I liked it a lot, although I could have chosen to study something more related to music. But I needed an alternative. There are connections with music, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t have liked it so much: first of all, the fact that it leads you to analyse what’s in front of you. I do it a lot, starting from myself and my sensations. This is how my creative process was born. I always asked myself a lot of questions.
When did you realize you had an innate sense for music?
Since I was two or three years old, because I always sang and was always the first to throw myself into all the school plays. I think it’s also genetic. My mom teaches English but also plays music and sings beautifully. Among her relatives there are many musicians, but no one has ever made it a profession.
You said that all your songs, even the happy ones, are born from doubts and questions. Can you give us an example? It’s definitely not the case of “Sincerely,” because those lyrics aren’t particularly cheerful.
No… [laughs] That’s a song full of shadows but dressed up to seem shiny – a bit like me. An example is “Mon Amour,” because it was born from many questions: why can’t we be as free as we want, in love and in the rest our lives? Why should people judge the others if this freedom doesn’t even concern them? I believe that the goal of music, especially pop, is to instill doubts and convey messages with simplicity and lightness.
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Has that happened to you or is it something you feel like doing for what you see around you?
It’s more about seeing what happens to others, although each of us has felt limited and judged for something at some point.
Has the theme of freedom always been fundamental for you, or has it acquired more importance in the last period, from “Mon Amour” onwards?
I’ve always held it dear, but it emerged more from that song onwards. With the work in the studio in recent years I have learned to bring it out at its fullest.
Is it the cause you feel like fighting for the most?
Yes, I prefer to talk about a broad topic like freedom because everything comes from there – even wars and oppression. From the freedom to experience sexuality as one wants, one arrives at the freedom to live in a country without being oppressed.
It is known that you are never satisfied with the results you obtain. What would you have done differently in this last period?
I always think I could have handled situations better and I could have done more on stage, in general. I think I could have rested an hour more, so I would have been more effective, like for interviews. At the Sanremo Festival, for example, things are always exaggerated. Those are tiring days. Almost a month has passed and I’m still trying to recover, but I already have to focus on my future plans.
Annalisa
Nicholas Foals/Billboard Italy
Do you already have ideas for the tour?
Of course. I will soon start the rehearsals with the dancers. Then I’ll return to the recording studio as soon as possible. I always take note of my ideas because I want to be ready.
Do you want to involve some new producers or songwriters?
No, I have a team I have always worked with, namely Paolo Antonacci and Davide Simonetta. With them I created some magic, it is a rare and precious gift. The main point of the songs is that they have to be true. Sometimes, if there isn’t a relationship as strong as ours, they are not. They can be beautiful but perhaps won’t last over time.
What songs from the past are light and deep at the same time?
Nada’s “Amore Disperato”: light but eternal. Loretta Goggi’s “Maledetta Primavera”: we all sing it when we hear it. All Raffaella Carrà’s songs, which always have a message. This is the history of Italian music.
How much do the places where you live – Milan, Genoa and Carcare – influence you?
Milan is the city of music: it is essential to be there. Even though many people today say it can be dangerous, I like living in a buzzy neighborhood where things happen. Genoa is also a city of lights and shadows, even more than Milan. It has incredible places of tradition and history, but also unsafe alleys. And then there is the sea. For me it is a poetic place, of great inspiration. Most of my musical ideas are born there. I must also mention Savona. It is a seaside city, smaller, but it lacks nothing. It’s not rough like Genoa, it’s simpler. There I had my first musical experiences, I participated in the first music contests with my band. And then there is my hometown, Carcare.
You were the only female solo artist included in the top 10 of the most successful singles in 2023 in Italy. The female presence is always small and is a symptom of a much broader problem within the music industry: that of violence, which is not only physical but it is also psychological, economic, of exclusion and abuse. Has this ever happened to you?
I have never suffered harassment of any kind, fortunately. What I can denounce is the immense effort to gain credibility. There continue to be preconceptions about what is considered suitable for a woman or for a man. However, with a bit of pride I can say that I have seen some things change since I started.
Is there more awareness?
I believe that the effort that I and my generation made is useful to the next one – the effort to make others accept the fact that I write songs myself or that I judge things from a technical point of view. Little by little these prejudices will be overcome.
Are there any younger artists you particularly like?
Madame. I appreciate her credibility and the technical aspects of his work. I hope she passes the baton to those who will come after her.
Annalisa
Nicholas Foals/Billboard Italy
Several gunmen burst into a big concert hall on the edge of Moscow on Friday and sprayed visitors with automatic gunfire, injuring an unspecified number of people and starting a massive blaze in an apparent terror attack days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on the country in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the raid, the worst terror attack in Russia in two decades that came as the fighting in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the attack as a “huge tragedy.”
Russia’s top domestic security agency, the Federal Security Service, said there are dead and wounded but didn’t give any numbers.
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Russian news reports said that the assailants threw explosives, triggering a massive blaze at the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow. Video posted on social media showed huge plumes of black smoke rising over the building.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a concert of Picnic, a famed Russian rock band, at the hall that can accommodate over 6,000 people. Russian news reports said that visitors were being evacuated, but some said that an unspecified number of people could have been trapped by the blaze.
The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired at visitors.
Extended rounds of gunfire could be heard on multiple videos posted by Russian media and Telegram channels. One showed two men with rifles moving through the mall. Another one showed a man inside the auditorium, saying the assailants set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly in the background.
More videos showed up to four attackers, armed with assault rifles and wearing caps, who were shooting screaming people at point-blank range.
Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region, said he was heading to the area and set up a task force to deal with the damage. He didn’t immediately offer any further details.
Russian media reports said that riot police units were being sent to the area as people were being evacuated.
Russian authorities said security was tightened at Moscow’s airports and railway stations, while the Moscow mayor cancelled all mass gatherings scheduled for the weekend.
White House National Security Advisor John Kirby said Friday that he couldn’t yet speak about all the details but that “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
“Our thoughts are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack,” Kirby said. “There are some moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who haven’t gotten the news yet. This is going to be a tough day.”
The attack followed a statement issued earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged the Americans to avoid crowded places in the Russian capital in view of an imminent attack, a warning that was repeated by several other Western embassies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in the March 15-17 presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, earlier this week denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians.
A group of companies representing Spotify, Deezer, Epic Games and others, applauded the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple on Thursday (March 21), calling it a “strong stand against Apple’s stranglehold” on mobile apps.
“[Apple] stifles competition and hurts American consumers and developers alike,” Rick VanMeter, executive director for The Coalition for App Fairness (CAF), said in a statement. “As this case unfolds in the coming years more must be done now to end the anticompetitive practices of all mobile app gatekeepers.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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In its sweeping lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal court on Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Apple violated antitrust laws by undermining apps and products that could compete with Apple or that could make customers less reliant on its iPhone systems, such as its digital wallet.
The U.S. case follows similar legal actions brought against Apple in the European Union, the United Kingdom and Asia, and it addresses some of the Apple policies that Spotify founder/CEO Daniel Ek has railed against for years.
“There’s global consensus that Apple’s abuses of its monopoly power have stifled innovation and threaten the digital economy,” Avery Gardiner, a lawyer and competition policy advocate for Spotify, wrote on X. “The DOJ case makes it clear that Apple harms the developers and creators who are hard at work to build the very best products and services for consumers.”
Both CAF and Gardiner acknowledged the DOJ’s case will take time to have any impact, and they urged Congress to pass The Open App Markets Act, a bill Ek has lobbied for since it was introduced in August 2021.
The Open App Markets Act would bar Apple, Google and other app stores with more than 50 million users from forcing app developers to use their payment systems as a condition of distribution. It would also block app store owners from punishing app developers if they extend deals to customers or offer their app for lower prices elsewhere.
Ek has argued that Apple and others act as anti-competitive gatekeepers because the terms required for inclusion in their app stores prevent Spotify and others from telling consumers about potentially cheaper bundle options, like Spotify’s duo and family plans. Currently, Spotify has to send customers to its website to sign up for those plans.
The Justice Department’s case also seeks for Apple to loosen restrictions on its messaging tools and to add features to the Apple wallet. Gardiner and CAF praised the case for what they described as an attempt to level the playing field.
“Competition is the foundation of innovation, and [this case] represents the latest step in the fight for a fair and competitive internet,” Gardiner wrote.
China‘s Tencent Music Entertainment Group saw its profit jump 36% to 5.22 billion yuan ($735 million) in 2023 as growth in paid subscriptions helped offset mixed results in its social media business, according to an earnings filing on Tuesday (Mar. 19). The leading music streaming company in China — Tencent Music operates QQ Music, Kugou […]
When video-blogger Martina Sazunic moved from Seoul to Tokyo in 2016, she was shocked to learn that — unlike in South Korea — using music by some of Japan’s biggest pop stars on her YouTube channel was not permitted. Doing so, she quickly learned, would result in the offending video being taken down at the request of the rights holder.
“In [South] Korea, the record labels were open to uploading music videos and that encouraged people to share and spread Korean music. At the same time in Japan, labels refused to upload their music,” says Sazunic, a Canadian expat, who has spent 15 years producing content for YouTube and since 2021 has run the popular lifestyle channel King Kogi (188,000 subscribers), featuring videos about her adopted homeland.
For many years, local labels were reluctant to upload official music videos on YouTube through fear of cannibalizing physical sales and would only release truncated versions of songs on the platform. Use of sound recordings in user-generated content would, for the most part, be blocked and taken down. The rising popularity of streaming in the world’s second-biggest recorded music market — worth $2.7 billion in 2022, according to IFPI, behind only the United States — has, however, been transformative, leading local labels and management companies to pivot away from blocking songs on UGC platforms and towards licensing and monetizing them.
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“It’s been an uneasy process for consumers in Japan and that’s entirely down to Japanese rights holders, but the market is moving wholeheartedly into embracing music usage on UGC,” says Rob Wells, chief executive of Los Angeles-headquartered Orfium, one of several international tech firms now fighting it out to grow their share of the country’s emerging, yet potentially huge, UGC music market.
At present, UGC monetization is in its infancy in Japan, says Wells, but he predicts the market will rapidly grow over the next five years to deliver rights holders the kind of returns they already receive from other major music territories.
In 2022, Alphabet-owned YouTube says it paid out a record $6 billion to the music industry, although executives in Asia tell Billboard that only around 5% of that total — around $300 million – went to rights holders in Japan. That’s despite YouTube being the most popular video platform in the country with over 70 million monthly active users (YouTube declined to comment when contacted by Billboard for this article).
The main reason why Japan’s digital music market lags behind other countries is down to stakeholders’ historic desire to protect the enduring popularity of physical music formats, primarily CDs and music DVDs/Blu-ray discs, which accounted for 66% of revenues in 2022, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ).
Digital’s share of the market is fast-growing though with streaming revenues rising 25% year-on-year to 93 billion yen ($618 million) in 2022, fueled by increased consumer take up of subscription services during the pandemic. That same year, overall digital music sales exceeded 100 billion yen ($665 million) for the first time since the RIAJ began tracking the data in 2005.
In response to the changing market, many of Japan’s leading labels and management companies (which often own the master recording rights for their acts) are rushing to partner with copyright technology companies to track and monetize the use of their content online.
Orfium, which generates income for clients by tracking and monetizing the use of music in broadcast and UGC platforms, has been active in Japan since 2022 when it acquired social media firm Breaker and is now one of the biggest operators in the local market. Others include Los Angeles-based PEX, Swiss-based Utopia Music, Spain’s BMAT and California-based Vobile.
French Music company Believe began operating in Japan last year and recently launched PLAYCODE, a new imprint dedicated to championing Japanese hip-hop acts. Prior to the company entering the market, Erika Ogawa, general manager of Believe Japan, said YouTube was being “under-utilized” by the music industry in Japan.
“It has untapped potential, particularly in terms of monetization, audience engagement and artist development which should be exploited by leveraging all its capabilities,” said Ogawa last year in a blogpost.
“I see Japan as being a huge opportunity for us and the wider industry,” says Wells, who served as Universal Music Group’s president of global digital business before joining Orfium in 2017. The company now has over 700 employees across nine territories in Europe, Asia and the U.S.
Wells says the company’s clients in Japan, which include Warner Music Japan, Victor Entertainment and leading music and entertainment company Avex Inc, have seen a 77% year-on-year rise in the number of YouTube UGC views being monetized with revenues growing 34%. (Wells declined to provide equivalent financial figures. Globally, Orfium says it generated more than $200 million in incremental revenue in 2022. Notable U.S. clients include Sony Music Publishing, Warner Music Group, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt, Ingrooves and Hipgnosis.)
In recent months, the company has ramped up its operations in Japan, signing a deal with JASRAC, Japan’s largest collective management organization. It has also started working with entertainment company Bandai Namco Music Live, a leading player in the Japanese anime music market that represents an extensive catalog of more than 100,000 sound recordings and compositions, as well as more than 3,000 digital creators, including many YouTubers and Virtual YouTubers — a popular trend in Japan where online creators use virtual avatars and are known as VTubers.
The Bandai Namco deal marks Orfium’s entry into the global anime market — a rapidly growing sector that generated almost $25 billion in 2023, according to Morgan Stanley Research, and is projected to rise to over $35 billion within the next three years. The rising global prominence of Japanese anime opens up opportunities for the country’s creators of anime music, says Alan Swarts, CEO of Orfium Japan. Anime ranks as one of the continent’s most popular music genres behind only pop and Enka (traditional Japanese music), with 11 of last year’s top 30 songs in Japan being either anime theme songs or anime related. Anime titles in Bandai’s catalog include the hugely popular Love Live series, One-Punch Man and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Swarts points to last year’s launch of a new weekly global chart by Billboard Japan, ranking the top 20 Japanese songs based on streaming and/or sales activity from more than 200 international markets, excluding Japan, as a significant development in the country’s music business that has heightened local labels’ focus on reaching global audiences.
“For a long time, Japan was a very insular physical-based market. That’s now changed and within Japanese music companies there is a big push to go global and make Japanese music as a big as Latin and K-pop has become outside their native territories,” says Swarts. “Utilizing streaming services and UGC platforms like YouTube will be key towards achieving that aim.”
“For us, Japan is the jump off point – the gateway to the rest of Asia,” says Wells. “People will soon realize that there are no more blocks on them being able to share music on these [UGC] platforms and that will quickly accelerate the growth.”
The Oak View Group (OVG) will soon enter a key phase of its long-planned pivot to international markets with the opening of Coop Live in Manchester, United Kingdom, next month.
After its record post-pandemic run — which included opening seven arenas in 16 months, including Climate Change Arena in Seattle, UBS Arena in New York and Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif. — the Tim Lewieke-led management and development company will transition from U.K. venue developer to U.K. venue operator in one of Europe’s largest concert and live entertainment economies.
First Manchester, then the world, says Francesca Leiweke-Bodie, OVG’s COO (and Leiweke’s daughter). She explains the United Kingdom will be the launch point for expanding the company’s private-public partnership model, which looks to government groups to aid in land acquisition in exchange for fully private financing and development work. Leiweke-Bodie says the model is key to driving expansion opportunities into Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where huge gaps in the world’s touring infrastructure prevent popular arena and stadium tours from accessing hundreds of millions of fans.
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Billboard recently caught up with Leiweke-Bodie to discuss the opening of Coop Live and detail OVG’s near-term expansion plans around the globe.
Why did OVG decide to begin their international expansion efforts with the Manchester project?
London and the U.K. have always been a frontrunner for where we as a company want to plant a flag and show the other countries and municipalities that we’re speaking to about public-private partnerships and prove what is possible when the private sector can step in and invest. That doesn’t happen as much overseas, where the market is really heavily driven by municipal financing. Having this project in the U.K., a $375 million privately funded arena with huge community support and more than $1 million going back to the local business — when other potential partners come to Manchester and see what we are doing, there is no doubt that we’re the real deal and will deliver on our promises.
What’s the biggest challenge OVG faces in its efforts to expand internationally?
I think the hardest thing to come by, whether it’s domestically or internationally, is land. We want to build in the urban core. We want to be where the fans want to be — in the city centers. We can do everything else. We’ll build it. We’ll finance it. We’ll book it. We’ll take the risk. But the partnership that we’re always looking for is the land opportunity. Most of these cities are much older than the United States with dense urban cores that we can’t even fathom. To find four or five acres available to build these types of projects with access to public transit is the crux of what we’re trying to create with these city partnerships. There’s also inbound opportunities from local owners and developers that see an opportunity to take land that they might have identified for retail and say, “Let’s rethink this.”
Once the Manchester facility opened, what’s next for OVG?
Hamilton, Ontario is next. It’s an existing 18,000-seat arena we’ve already started work on, taking the building down to its studs and [which] will reopen in late April. It’s the first project in Toronto that was a public-private partnership and ultimately became a renovation project, but it’s effectively a new arena. In North America, there’s only a few strategic markets left where one could make a really big difference with another arena. But overseas, we have a tremendous amount of opportunity because of the growth internationally of global music, from American country music to Latin.
What other metropolitan characteristics appeal to OVG?
Countries or cities that not only attract from surrounding countries but serve as the point of destination for a much broader area. One example is Sao Paulo in Brazil. From a financial perspective, Sao Paulo is an incredible point of destination for not only Brazil, but for Latin America. That’s why we want to plant our flag there because it doesn’t have an arena. Vienna, Austria is the same thing. You know, it is central to continental Europe. You can get to it from six different countries via car. We have about two dozen cities like that we’ve identified.
How does programming and booking drive the OVG strategy?
That’s such a key element. The first domino that we were really thinking about and analyzing from a construction and design perspective is making sure that the building is both turnkey and equipped with all acoustic treatments and back-of-house amenities to accommodate major tours. We talk to local promoters, and figure out what is coming in the rider and work with our partners at the building to alleviate costs. Arenas have to compete with the stadium shows and we have to make the economics work so we’re really looking at the take-home revenue for an artist to make sure that their touring costs are competitive and can exceed the expectations of fans and market partners.
The global record business will soon pop the champagne to celebrate another year of streaming-led revenue growth, judging from the handful of individual country revenue figures for 2023 made public so far this year. The IFPI won’t release its 2023 report until Thursday (Mar. 21), but major markets such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Japan have already released data that shows 2023 produced another bumper harvest for record labels.
But while streaming continues to push markets in positive directions, growth has slowed, and revenue in some markets remains well below the levels of the CD era. Worse yet, some countries may have insufficient streaming growth to get back to earlier peaks.
SNEP, the recorded music trade group in France, issued a stark warning this week when it announced that the country’s 2023 revenue rose a respectable 5.1% to 968 million euros ($1.05 billion at the average exchange rate in 2023). But even though digital revenue rose 8.8% to 620 million euros ($671 million) and streaming revenue climbed 9.2%, a 10% increase in subscription streaming revenue “remains too weak to fully fuel the development of the market even though it is the primary source of value creation,” SNEP wrote in its 2023 report.
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France might reasonably be expected to be faring better in 2024. The country was the sixth-largest recorded music market in 2022, according to the IFPI, and is the home of Deezer, an early entrant to the music subscription market. But in 2023, France had only a 16% penetration rate for paid subscribers, according to SNEP, “one of the lowest among the main music territories. The growth in revenue from these subscriptions is slowing down here while our market is far from having reached maturity.” This isn’t a brand-new concern: SNEP sounded the same alarm a year ago.
So, while streaming is creating new opportunities globally for labels, publishers and creators, it hasn’t grown enough to help France recapture revenue lost during the fall of the CD in the 2000s. France’s revenue of 968 million euros in 2023 was 25% below the 1.3 billion euros of revenue it enjoyed in 2002. In contrast, the U.S. market’s $15.9 billion in recorded music revenue was well above the peak of the CD era, $14.5 billion, set in 1999, according to the RIAA.
Elsewhere, some major recorded music markets have announced decent gains in 2023 without voicing the kind of dire warning seen in France.
The German recorded music industry grew 6.3% in 2023, the BVMI announced Mar. 6. Digital revenue grew 8.4% and accounted for 81.5% of total revenue. Audio streaming rose 8.4% and accounted for 74.8% of the total market and 92% of digital revenue. Physical sales accounted for 18.5% of total revenue and rose 0.1% from 2022. CD sales dropped 5.9% but accounted for 11.3% of total revenue and about 61% of physical revenue. Vinyl sales grew 12.6%.
Spain’s recorded music market grew 12.3% to 520 million euros in 2023, Promusicae announced Tuesday (Mar. 12). Streaming grew 17.3% to 398.6 million euros ($432 million) and accounted for 77% of total revenue, which was a remarkable 150% higher than the low point of 159.7 million euros ($212 million) in 2013. But, like France, Spain has yet to match its peak revenue from the CD era. Last year’s revenue was on par with the 475 million euros ($534 million) seen in 2005, itself a sharp decline from revenue that surpassed 700 million euros ($630 million) in 2001.
Aside from SNEP in France, only the BPI in the United Kingdom sounded an alarm of any sort. The market’s recorded revenue rose 8.1% in 2023 to a record 1.43 billion pounds ($1.78 billion), the organization announced Thursday (Mar. 14), with streaming revenue increasing 8.4% to 962 million pounds ($1.2 billion) and accounting for 67.4% of total revenue, up from 67.3% in 2022 and well above the 8.6% seen a decade earlier. But BPI CEO Dr. Jo Twist cautioned not to take the growth for granted and emphasized the need for “significant label investment” to keep the market prosperous.
There’s a reason the kind of gains music markets are seeing currently might not feel like unqualified success stories: inflation. Adjusted for inflation, revenue in France last year was actually 48% below 2002; and in 2022, the United States was 38% below its 1999 peak.
These major markets’ failure to return to CD-era highs helps explain the music business’s unprecedented land rush as companies invest in developing markets in search of export-ready artists and untapped streaming potential. Both majors and independents are investing in Africa, the Middle East/North Africa, Asia and South America — regions with large populations, under-monetized streaming markets and exportable music that could generate royalties in Western countries.
Those developing markets, and some major ones like the United States and United Kingdom, helped global recorded music trade revenue reach a new high of $24 billion in 2021, surpassing the $23.2 billion from 1999 (unadjusted for inflation). While both the United States and United Kingdom surpassed their CD era peaks in 2021 (without adjusting for inflation), some other major markets are still trying to recapture their glory days. Growth-minded companies in those markets may have to look beyond their borders to get there.
Billboard Power Players is expanding to Canada for the first time in 2024, nominations have now officially opened via this nomination form.
For its relative size, the country has produced some huge international success stories over the last decade, with artists like Drake, The Weeknd, Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber and Tate McRae making big waves on the world stage.
That’s the case behind the scenes, too, including previous Power List honourees like Kristen Burke, the president of Warner Music Canada and the only female head of a major label in Canada; Wassim “Sal” Slaiby of The Weeknd’s XO Records and the founder of Universal Arabic Music; and Michael Rapino, the Canadian-born president and CEO of Live Nation who finished fourth on the recently revealed 2024 Power 100 list, behind only Taylor Swift and the global CEOs of two major labels.
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Billboard Canada Power Players, however, will be the first time the award will be exclusive to Canadians or those who’ve made an impact in Canada’s music industry. – Richard Trapunski
New U.S. Visa Fees Could Prove Costly for Canadian Musicians
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has published its final rule updating visa fees in several categories, along with a Frequently Asked Questions page summary.
Overall, creative arts petitioners will be hit with higher costs, increased petition prep requirements, and lengthier times for premium processing. This will affect Canadian and other musicians, as well as art workers, travelling across the border to play in the U.S.
After consultation with stakeholders including the American Federation of Musicians, final fees have been reduced from the initial amounts proposed by the Department of Homeland Security for nonprofits and certain small businesses with 25 or fewer employees.
The new fees, though, could prove costly for Canadian musicians, for whom crossing the border is a necessary part of a music career.
The fee increases were originally for early 2023, but will now take effect on April 1, 2024. – David Farrell
Music Declares Emergency Will Host a Climate Summit in Halifax Ahead of the Juno Awards
Music Declares Emergency (MDE) Canada is looking to spark conversation about the climate crisis at this year’s Juno Awards. Ahead of the ceremony on March 24, the advocacy organization will host a Mini Music Climate Summit at the Halifax Central Library, on March 22, to promote the need for climate action in the music industry.
The free, one-day event will consider topics such as sustainable transportation, carbon calculation, merch and food, and much more, providing an opportunity for industry members to share best practices and develop strategies around curbing emissions in the industry. MDE Canada previously held Canada’s first Music Climate Summit in Toronto in 2022.
The climate summit accompanies MDE Canada’s Climate Emergency Concert on March 17 in Halifax, where artists like Talia Schlanger and Jenn Grant will pay tribute to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, two Canadian musicians who have used their platforms to promote environmental awareness. – Rosie Long Decter
Last Week ‘In Canada’: No to ‘Laughs,’ But Yes to Women in Music