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One of Ibiza‘s most fabled clubbing institutions is under new ownership.
As was rumored this past summer, Pacha Group — which includes the Ibiza flagship club, two hotel island hotel properties and clubs in Barcelona and Munich — has been acquired by FIVE Holdings, the Dubai-based hospitality and real estate group. FIVE encompasses a namesake hotel brand with two locations in Dubai and a property in Zurich, with a third Dubai property currently under construction.
FIVE Hospitality and The Pacha Group CEO Aloki Batra tells Billboard that FIVE’s acquisition of The Pacha Group is worth approximately $330 million, and that conversations regarding the sale started nearly two and a half years ago at an event in Mykonos.
The Pacha Group was previously owned by the private equity firm Trilantic Capital Partners, which acquired the brand in 2017. A representative from Trilantic declined to comment on the sale.
Batra says that as part of the transfer of ownership, Pacha Ibiza will see some light changes, including improvements to the lighting system, slightly expanded VIP areas, enhanced production elements and improvements to the club’s “digital footprint” including systems to track attendance through NFT wristbands.
“If [you’ve] been to been to five or six shows, the next time you show up, we should know that. Now it’s just blind,” says Batra. “[We plan to] increase the quality of experience by getting to know our fans a lot better and then [determining] how we can engage with them and make them feel special.” Batra adds that there’s been a “full continuity” of staff at the club amid the change in ownership.
Batra says FIVE is also looking at ways to revive the club’s longstanding record label, Pacha Recordings with pre-recorded DJ sets delivered to fans globally on DSPs.
“[We’re] definitely looking at that that very seriously,” Batra says. “We have this rich legacy and need to take it ahead for the digital age and the customer of today. I think that’s a huge opportunity for us, and it’s great for the fans, because we intend to bring your favorite club closer to you.”
While programming at the club will remain largely the same — including Solomun’s iconic Sunday night residency — Batra says the plan is to also make offerings “a bit more reggaeton-ey” for the 2024 season. “There’s a lot of demand for it and we’re looking to address that demand,” he says, noting that Maluma and J Balvin have previously performed at Pacha Ibiza. “We want to be well represented in the reggaeton world… We think there’s definitely a trend in that direction.”
The acquisition marks FIVE’s first properties in Ibiza, with the deal also encompassing the resorts El Hotel Pacha Ibiza and Destino Pacha Ibiza. Located approximately 15 minutes north of the club, this latter property will see a series of what Batra calls “significant upgrades” and officially become a FIVE branded property in 2025.
He says that while the Ibiza market is highly competitive, visitors to the island now often come more and stay longer, creating opportunities for property owners. He adds that the same demographic that visits FIVE resorts in Dubai are also likely to travel to Ibiza.
Pacha Ibiza opened in 1973 and, 50 years later, hosts some of the biggest DJs in the world. Batra emphasize that while other clubs in the market offer “a show with a big DJ set” Pacha is still focused on throwing “a party with the DJ right at the center.”
To wit, FIVE will maintain Pacha’s ” bohemian artistic direction…[The plan is] not more pyrotechnics as far as we’re concerned,” says Batra. “We’re more about the party, the atmosphere and enhancing that experience [and not having] people pull out their mobile phones for the entirety of the set.”
“We’re buying into a real legacy,” Batra adds. “It’s one of the greatest entertainment brands out of Europe at the forefront of dance music and culture. The relationship between the success of Ibiza and the success of Pacha is very intertwined; I think it’s almost a definitive story of Ibiza… So it’s very exciting to have an opportunity to be part of this great story and navigate it into a blissful future.”
Hipgnosis Songs Fund has announced a last-second delay in publishing interim results for the six months ended Sept. 30, citing concerns over its valuation following a series of hiccups for the Merck Mercuriadis-led company.
The fund, which owns full or partial rights to the song catalogs of artists ranging from Justin Bieber, Neil Young, Bruno Mars, Jimmy Iovine, 50 Cent, Shakira, Blondie, Justin Timberlake, Lindsey Buckingham and many more, was scheduled to publish it financial results on Tuesday (Dec. 19) but now expects to announce on New Year’s Eve, according to a regulatory filing.
In explaining the delay, the Hipgnosis board said the valuation it received from an independent firm was “materially higher than the valuation implied by proposed and recent transactions in the sector,” namely two deals involving itself: a proposed $417.5 million sale of 29 catalogs to Blackstone-backed Hipgnosis Songs Capital, a price reflecting a 24.3% discount from a valuation dated March 31, and last week’s sale of 20,000 “non-core songs” to an undisclosed buyer for $23.1 million, which it said reflects a 14.2% discount on the songs’ valuation as of early fall.
Due to the disparity between the independent valuation and the “implied” one tied to recent trends and proposed sales, the board sought advice from its in-house investment advisor, Hipgnosis Song Management Limited, which delivered a “heavily caveated” opinion that led to the board’s concerns as to the valuation of HSF listed in the interim results scheduled to be disclosed today.
Hipgnosis is comprised of three companies: Hipgnosis Song Management, Hipgnosis Songs Capital and Hipgnosis Songs Fund. The latter of the three has been mired in controversy in recent months after it was announced that the London-listed trust would not pay its investors a dividend because of new, lower projections for revenue. On Oct. 26, investors of the fund overwhelmingly demanded structural changes to the music rights company, with more than 80% of Hipgnosis investors voting in favor of the board drawing up “proposals for the reconstruction, reorganization or winding-up of the company to shareholders for their approval within six months.”
Last month the company announced that the fund will not declare dividends before the new fiscal year, which begins next April, in order to ensure it has enough on its balance sheet to pay contractually-mandated catalog bonuses.
Investors are still processing the news, with the company’s stock only slightly down, roughly 2%, in mid-day trading on the London Stock Exchange.
When Frances Moore started in the Brussels office of The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in 1994 as regional director for Europe, the trade organization represented six major labels that made most of their money selling CDs – and mostly in Europe and the U.S. When she retires at the end of this year, she will leave a business with three majors that’s truly global and focused on streaming. In between, Moore scored some of the key policy wins that made that happen, especially since ascending to the top job in 2010. She also transformed IFPI into a global force and served longer as CEO than any of her predecessors.
Moore started just as the major labels and other media companies began pushing for laws to protect digital content – an effort that ultimately resulted in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S., and the 2001 Copyright and Information Society Directive in the European Union. One of her major achievements was IFPI’s passage of the 2019 copyright directive that addressed some of its shortcomings by tightening up some of the safe harbor rules that created a “value gap” between what rightsholders made from licensed services like Spotify and what they got from user-upload-fueled services like YouTube. In between, she led IFPI efforts to extend the term of copyright protection for recordings in Europe and establish a public performance right for recordings in China, plus strengthened IFPI’s operations in markets that barely existed when she started at the organization three decades ago.
You announced in July that you would retire at the end of the year, but some executives can’t quite picture that – you have a reputation for working extremely hard. What are your plans?
I can’t really picture me retiring, either! Come the first of January, I’ll tell you the answer. I’ll take a rest at the beginning and see what happens afterwards.
You’re leaving an organization that’s much more international than the one you joined in 1994.
When I joined, the two big markets were Europe and the U.S., and the bulk of the industry’s revenues came from those two places – the other territories were much smaller. But IFPI was always an international organization: There was already an office in Hong Kong and two small offices in China, so it was more a question of how you brought everyone together.
You started in Brussels and played a major role in building up the organization there.
There was a Brussels representation [when I started] but they didn’t really have U.S. [style] lobbying and that’s what I brought to build a campaign for the [2001] copyright directive. Back in the ‘90s, Europe had a lot to learn about lobbying. I remember suggesting to one of the major national groups that they bring in a lobbyist and they were shocked. It was as if I had suggested bringing in a lady of the night. Lobbying wasn’t seen then as a clean profession.
You started at IFPI right before the first copyright directive and one of your big accomplishments as CEO was to get the 2019 copyright directive passed. That was supposed to address some of the issues with the first one, but the implementation of it in different EU countries has varied. How do you see that?
For the first copyright directive, we built something at the European level that we never had before – we had 32 organizations working together from books, film, music, you name it. In implementing the WIPO treaty, we had a good, strong directive that let companies go online with confidence. When it came to the second one, the issue was what we called ‘the value gap’ [the difference between what it cost companies to license content and how little some of them were paying to use it]. Companies were doing deals with one hand tied behind their back. That was a hard campaign to fight, not because of the arguments – people could see that – but because we had huge opponents. Now some of these companies we work with and they’re a part of the success of the music industry. But as far as EU Parliament, they said this was the hardest-fought campaign they ever had to deal with. Luckily, they came through in the end.
In theory, you got what you needed. But the directive was implemented quite poorly in some countries, especially Germany.
There are 27 countries and there’s one that hasn’t implemented it yet – Poland. But Donald Tusk [who became Polish Prime Minister on December 13], will make sure it’s implemented. In most countries, it has been done faithfully. In Germany and in Belgium, we had problems and we’re taking it to court. But it was a signal more than anything else. To some degree, once it was adopted, the tech companies realized that they had to do what it was asking for.
What do you consider your biggest accomplishment?
I think my biggest accomplishment was putting together an A-level team. I don’t like the cult of personality – everything we do, we do as a team.
Your job is like herding cats – there are the national recording business organizations and the major labels – now small, medium, and large. It’s a very tough act to follow.
The job isn’t to be an expert in legal policy – the job is to hold the ball tight and keep running forward. There’s a global search [for a successor] and I think we’ll be able to announce the person shortly, and I wish that person all the best. The most important thing is that the companies speak with one voice – then everything else becomes easier.
Frances Moore and Taylor Swift
Dave J Hogan/Getty Images
You’ve had support on policy issues over the years from some very famous artists. Did you ever get starstruck?
I’m a Scottish rationalist – I don’t do starstruck. We have this program, Friends of Music, when artists come to the Parliament and they perform, and it moves you. I remember Jamie Cullum was performing in Strausberg [Germany] and at one point he stopped playing on the keys of his piano and just strummed on the wood. It was pure music. I don’t get starstruck but I get impressed beyond belief with talent.
You are leaving an organization that’s much more diverse than the one you joined in 1994. For example, you have women regional directors in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Latin America. Was that a priority for you?
That was the state of the world [in 1994] – it wasn’t just the recording industry. In my case, there was never a point of saying I’m going to recruit a woman – you can only put together an A-level team if you choose the best candidates. We have six regional teams, and three are led by men and three are led by women. That’s balanced but not deliberately balanced – it just worked out that way.
What’s going to be the most important priority for your successor?
AI, because if you don’t get it right, it could decimate the industry. That’s the big one. There are some technology companies saying that there are text and data mining exceptions and we fit in there, so we don’t have to respect copyright. Wrong.
The European Union is looking into whether Elon Musk’s online platform X breached tough new social media regulations in the first such investigation since the rules designed to make online content less toxic took effect.
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“Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said Monday in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The Commission will now investigate X’s systems and policies related to certain suspected infringements,” spokesman Johannes Bahrke told a press briefing in Brussels. “It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.”
The investigation will look into whether X failed to do enough to curb the spread of illegal content and whether measures to combat ” information manipulation,” especially through its crowd-sourced Community Notes fact-checking feature, were effective.
The 27-nation EU also will examine whether X was transparent enough with researchers and will look into suspicions that its user interface, including for its blue check subscription service, has a “deceptive design.”
“X remains committed to complying with the Digital Services Act, and is cooperating with the regulatory process,” the company said in a statement. “It is important that this process remains free of political influence and follows the law. X is focused on creating a safe and inclusive environment for all users on our platform, while protecting freedom of expression, and we will continue to work tirelessly towards this goal.”
A raft of big tech companies faced a stricter scrutiny after the EU’s Digital Services Act took effect earlier this year, threatening penalties of up to 6% of their global revenue — which could amount to billions — or even a ban from the EU.
The DSA is a set of far-reaching rules designed to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content that’s either illegal — such as child sexual abuse or terrorism content — or violates a platform’s terms of service, such as promotion of genocide or anorexia.
The EU has already called out X as the worst place online for fake news, and officials have exhorted owner Musk, who bought the platform a year ago, to do more to clean it up. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, quizzed X over its handling of hate speech, misinformation and violent terrorist content related to the Israel-Hamas war after the conflict erupted.
Each week we’ll be sharing the most important news from the north with Canada’s top music industry stories, supplied by our colleagues at Billboard Canada.
For more Canadian music coverage visit ca.billboard.com.
PARTYNEXTDOOR’s Decade-Old Track Tops Canada’s TikTok Year-End
Every year, TikTok takes a look back at the songs and creators that made a mark on the year. At times, it feels like an alternate dimension.
The most popular TikTok song in Canada this year belonged to PARTYNEXTDOOR – no doubt a major hip-hop and R&B artist. However, the version of the Canadian star’s 2014 song “Her Way” that tops the list is not the original, but a sped-up version attached to a dance challenge.
“The song’s accelerated tempo seemed to resonate perfectly with the fast-paced, dynamic nature of TikTok,” says Kat Kernaghan, Head of TikTok Music Canada. “It’s not just about consuming the music; it’s about actively participating in the creative process.”
Many of the biggest songs on the social media platform were the ones that people interacted, memed and played with the most. That can resurrect an older song, like Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat,” which was released over a decade ago in 2012.
Here’s the full list of most popular songs on TikTok in Canada this year:
When it comes to the most popular artists on TikTok in Canada this year, it’s an interesting mixed bag. Tate McRae is on the list after a year that saw her transcend social media onto the stage of SNL and the cover of Billboard. Artists like Lauren Spencer Smith, Alexander Stewart and Faouzia made intimate and emotional music that people related to so much they had to use the sound. Others, like Tiagz, blurred the lines between “creator” and “artist,” making content designed to go viral first, then chart later.
Find the full list here.
Why Changes Could Be Coming to Montreal’s Music and Noise Laws
Montreal venue owners have been making noise about existential threats to their businesses. Now, the City of Montreal says a new nightlife policy will make changes to how noise is regulated in the city.
On Nov. 20, Sergio Da Silva incited a conversation about noise complaints when he posted a screenshot of a message recently received by Turbo Haüs, a long-running rock venue he co-owns located in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles entertainment district.
In French, the message informs Turbo Haüs that they may be subject to a fine of up to 12,000 Canadian dollars ($8,950) because noise from the venue was audible in a nearby residential region.
Turbo Haüs is far from the only venue affected by noise complaints in Montreal.
Prominent venue The Diving Bell Social Club, is currently preparing to close down this month, in part due to complaints the venue says they’ve received from a neighbouring landlord.
Responding to questions about noise complaints, Julien Deschênes — a political aid for the City of Montreal — tells Billboard Canada that a new nightlife policy is currently under development at the city, and should be ready for city council approval in January. The policy, Deschênes says, will seek to implement the “agent of change” principle, which puts the burden on new buildings that go up near commercial establishments to adapt to the existing noise in the area and not vice versa.
Deschênes says that the specific framework is not yet finalized, but that the policy will aim for implementation in the Ville-Marie borough, home to Turbo Haüs, as well as Plateau-Mont-Royal, where The Diving Bell is located.
Montreal has a reputation for supporting arts and culture — launching the careers of Canadian stars like Kaytranada and Grimes just in the last decade — but as rents rise, new developments go up, and the city landscape changes, artists and cultural workers are raising concern about the future of the city’s venues. READ MORE
SOCAN Foundation Announces Winners for 2023 Black Canadian Music Awards & Young Canadian Songwriters Awards
The SOCAN Foundation has announced the five winners of its fourth annual Black Canadian Music Awards, a group of rising talents in Canada’s music industry. Toronto hip-hop artist DVBLM; R&B singers Liza, Savannah Ré, and Myles Castello; and genre-hopping NAIIM take home $10,000 each as this year’s winners, with support from Sirius XM.
The awards, which were announced on Dec. 12, seek to recognize Black creators from all over the country. They’re determined by a jury of Black artists and industry experts from a pool of applicants.Honourable mentions for this year’s awards went to Eleanor, Tona, Kirk Diamond & FINN, Mah Moud and Ryan Ofei.
The SOCAN Foundation also just announced winners for another awards program: the Young Canadian Songwriters Awards.
The winners include seventeen-year-old Sofia Kay, who recently helped K-POP group Tomorrow x Together hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, co-writing their single, “Sugar Rush Ride.”
The winners of that award are:
Andelina Habel-Thurton for “Le grand retour de l’insomnie”
Brighid Fry (a.k.a. Housewife) for “Matilda”
Elizabeth Royall,for “Numb”
Fin McDowell for “People I Barely Knew”
Sofia Kay, for “Fuu”
READ MORE
It’s a big day for Billboard Arabia, a partnership between media giant SRMG and Billboard, with the launch of both a new website and the platform’s first two global charts tracking popular music from the Middle East/North Africa (MENA).
Billboard Arabia made its official debut in June, eyeing to be the premiere global destination for artists with Arab roots. Since then, the platform has built up a sizable audience across social media, and with its website (check it out here), now has a home for evergreen content and timely news on latest releases, plus video, reviews and interviews with top artists, as well as exclusive coverage of regional and global events.
The website will notably spotlight the region’s musical legends and emerging stars with digital cover stories, celebrating the diversity of the Arab music landscape.
Central to the Billboard Arabia site — and any other platform bearing the Billboard name — are the authoritative charts that will live there. Launching this week are two global flagship charts: the Billboard Arabia Hot 100 and the Billboard Arabia Artist 100. The Hot 100, showcasing the most streamed Arabic songs, kicks off with a brace from Sherine Abdel Wahab (“Kalam Eneih” at No. 1 and “El Watar Al Hassas” at No. 2). The chart’s inaugural top five is filled out by tracks from Al Shami, Ayed and ElGrandeToto. The Artist 100 highlights the most popular Arab artists, with Sherine Abdel Wahab at No. 1, followed by ElGrandeToto, Marwan Pablo, Amr Diab and Ahmed Saad rounding out the top five.
Billboard Arabia
Utilizing data from top digital streaming platforms such as Spotify, Anghami, Apple Music, YouTube and others, covering 200-plus territories, the charts are designed to reflect Arab music listening globally and not just in the MENA region. Starting in early 2024, Billboard Arabia will introduce eight genre-specific charts to showcase the diversity of Arab music, including Khaleeji, Egyptian, Magharabi, Levant, Arabic HipHop, Arabic Indie, Shelat, and Mahraganat.
These weekly charts will be released on the Billboard Arabia website and social media platforms every Thursday.
Billboard Arabia will also introduce other Billboard franchises to the MENA market, the fastest-growing region according to IFPI, including a Billboard Arabia Music Awards and Arabic Music Week, among others.
“This marks an exciting new chapter in the region’s music infrastructure, establishing a centralized platform to spotlight the thriving Arab music scene,” said Rami M. Zeidan, managing director of Billboard Arabia. “By continuing to elevate fan engagement and commemorate the evolution of Arab music, Billboard Arabia is committed to providing both established and new Arab artists and genres access to the global music market. Already, we’ve seen an increasing number of collaborations between Arab stars like Mishaal Tamer, Nancy Arjam, and Myriam Fares with global icons like Marshmello, Nicki Minaj, and Maluma. Billboard Arabia aims to further enhance this with the launch of our website and charts.”
Billboard president Mike Van added: “Billboard Arabia symbolizes the beginning of a new era—one where Arab artists are heard around the world. Our commitment to ensuring artists have a platform to resonate and engage with music fans has always defined Billboard, and we look forward to bringing this same passion to Billboard Arabia.”
Billboard Arabia is now live on its website and across X, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube — all at the @billboardarabia handle.
More people around the globe are listening to licensed music services than ever before — and are doing so via a growing number of different platforms — but piracy continues to divert cash from creators’ pockets, while a majority of music fans think that artificial intelligence (AI) should not be used to clone music artists’ voices without authorization, according to a new consumer survey from international recorded-music trade organization IFPI.
IFPI’s “Engaging with Music 2023″ study reveals that music consumers are spending on average 20.7 hours listening to music weekly, up from 20.1 hours in 2022 – or the equivalent of an extra 13 three-minute songs per week.
The London-based organization found that 73% of the 43,000-plus music fans it surveyed listen to their favorite artists through subscription or ad-supported audio streaming service such as Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music, down slightly from last year’s figure of 74% (IFPI says that the small decrease is down to a change in accounting methodology, rather than a drop in real terms). The proportion of paying subscribers rises from 46% in 2022 to 48% this year.
Audio subscription services are the most used format, accounting for around a third (32%) of music fans’ weekly listening time, closely followed by video streaming via platforms like YouTube or TikTok, which make up 31% of consumption.
On average, people now use more than seven different methods to engage with music, reports IFPI, with other popular formats including radio listening (17%), purchased music (9%) and attending live concerts (4%).
In line with previous years, the adoption of subscription streaming services is highest among younger listeners, with 60% of 16–24-year-olds and 62% of 25-34-year-olds surveyed saying they use subscription music platforms. Usage drops to 28% in the 55-64-year-old age bracket, although consumption is up year-on-year across all age demographics.
Among 16-24-year-olds, short form video platforms such as TikTok are listed as the most popular way that they engage with music on a daily basis, followed by audio subscription streaming services and then video streaming formats like YouTube.
The top five countries where people spent the most time listening to music through a subscription streaming service were Sweden (61% of people surveyed), Mexico (57%), Germany (55%), the U.S. (53%) and New Zealand (52%), with the United Kingdom dropping out of the top five.
Overall, IFPI reports a 7% year-on-year rise in time spent listening to music on paid streaming services – a slower rate of growth than the 10% rise in listening time in 2022.
Artificial Intelligence and the Persistent Piracy Problem
For the first time, IFPI’s research team asked music fans for their views on how they think artificial intelligence will impact on the industry. Nearly eight in ten (79%) said that human creativity is essential to the creation of music and 74% of respondents said that AI should not be used to clone or impersonate music artists without authorization.
The vast majority of people surveyed supported the need for AI systems and developers to be transparent and clearly identify any training data they have used to create new music works, which is one of the key provisions of the recently agreed EU AI Act.
The IFPI report was compiled by surveying internet users aged 16-64 between August and October across 26 countries, including the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
Collectively, these markets accounted for more than 91% of global recorded music revenues in 2022, according to this year’s IFPI Global Music Report. IFPI says the report is the largest music survey of its kind ever conducted.
In terms of genres, pop remains the most popular type of music globally, followed by rock, hip-hop/rap, dance/electronic and Latin. On average, music fans said that they listened to more than eight different genres of music with local-language genres such as K-pop in South Korea or Amapiano in South Africa increasingly popular in domestic markets.
Writing in the study’s foreword, IFPI chief executive Frances Moore says its findings demonstrate how the music industry has evolved to give “artists more opportunities than ever to find audiences,” who are in turn “discovering and engaging with more music in an increasing number of ways.”
Nevertheless, music piracy remains an ongoing issue that has “a severe and direct impact on royalties,” warns Moore. Of those surveyed, 29% of respondents said that use unlicensed or illegal methods to listen to or obtain music, down slightly from the previous year.
Stream-ripping sites remain the most popular way for consumers to access copyright-infringing music, IFPI found, with 41% of 16-24-year-olds confessing to using them. One in five people (20%) said they had used an unlicensed mobile app to illegally download music.
The listening study also contains separate reports looking at music consumption in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Vietnam.
In China, which last year overtook France as the fifth-biggest music market worldwide with revenues of $1.2 billion, 96% of people surveyed said they now used licensed music streaming services with the total number of hours spent listening to music each week increasing to just under 30 hours among respondents.
Despite the rapid growth in streaming in China, 75% of people surveyed said that they still used unlicensed or illegal ways to access music, demonstrating that piracy remains a serious issue in the world’s most populous country.
Responding to the report’s findings, Moore said that tackling all forms of copyright infringement on a global basis would continue to be a priority for IFPI to “ensure the most secure digital environment possible for music creators and fans alike.”
Legislators have provisionally agreed to sweeping new laws that will regulate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe, including controls around the use of copyrighted music.
The deal between policy makers from the European Union Parliament, Council and European Commission on the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act was reached late on Friday night in Brussels local time following months of negotiations and amid fierce lobbying from the music and tech industries.
The draft legislation is the world’s first comprehensive set of laws regulating the use of AI and places a number of legal obligations on technology companies and AI developers, including those working in the creative sector and music business.
The precise technical details of those measures are still being finalized by EU policy makers, but earlier versions of the bill decreed that companies using generative or foundation AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude 2 would be required to provide summaries of any copyrighted works, including music, that they use to train their systems.
The AI Act will also force developers to clearly identify content that is created by AI, as opposed to human works before they are placed in the market. In addition, tech companies will have to ensure that their systems are designed in such a way that prevents them from generating illegal content.
Large tech companies who break the rules – which govern all applications and uses of AI inside the 27 member block of EU countries — will face fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover. Start-up businesses or smaller tech operations will receive proportionate financial punishments, said the European Commission.
Governance will be carried out by national authorities, while a new European AI Office will be created to supervise the enforcement of the new rules on general purpose AI models.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen called the agreement “a historic moment” that “will make a substantial contribution to the development of global rules and principles for human-centric AI.”
Responding to the announcement, Tobias Holzmüller, CEO of German collecting society GEMA, said the deal reached by the European government was a welcome “step in the right direction” but cautioned that its rules and provisions “need to be sharpened further on a technical level.”
“The outcome must be a clearly formulated transparency regime that obliges AI providers to submit detailed evidence on the contents they used to train their systems,” said Holzmüller.
Representatives of the technology industry, which had lobbied to weaken the AI Act’s transparency provisions, criticized the deal and warned that it was likely to put European AI developers at a competitive disadvantage.
Daniel Friedlaender, Senior Vice President of the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which counts Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Meta among its members, said in a statement that “crucial details” of the AI act are still missing “with potentially disastrous consequences for the European economy.”
“The final AI Act lacks the vision and ambition that European tech startups and businesses are displaying right now,” said CCIA Europe’s Policy Manager, Boniface de Champris. He warned that, if passed, the legislation might “end up chasing away the European champions that the EU so desperately wants to empower.”
Now that an political agreement has been reached on the AI Act, legislators will spend the coming weeks finalizing the exact technical details of the regulation and translating its terms for the 27 EU member countries.
The final text then needs to be approved by the European Council and Parliament, with a decisive vote not excepted to take place until early next year, possibly as late as March. If passed, the act will be applicable two years after its entry into force, except for some specific provisions: bans will apply after six months while the rules on generative AI models will begin after 12 months.
In a statement, international recorded music trade organization IFPI said the first-of-its-kind legislation provides “a constructive and encouraging framework” for regulation of the nascent technology.
“AI offers creators both opportunities and risks,” said an IFPI spokesperson, “and we believe there is a path to a mutually successful outcome for both the creative and technology communities.”
Each week we’ll be sharing the most important news from the north with Canada’s top music industry stories, supplied by our colleagues at Billboard Canada.
For more Canadian music coverage visit ca.billboard.com.
Online Streaming Act hearings
For the last few weeks, a who’s who of stakeholders in Canadian music and media have been appearing before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) — from rights manager SOCAN to Spotify, Sirius XM and even UFC. The occasion is Bill C-11, a.k.a. the Online Streaming Act, which will update Canada’s Broadcasting Act for the first time in decades. The hearings will continue until Friday (Dec. 8).
It’s a major deal for the Canadian music business, whose system of CanCon requirements and public funds have built an industry that can compete — or at least not crumble — in a market dominated by American media to the south. This first round of hearings are focused on major streaming platforms like Spotify and YouTube and potential regulations and monetary contributions they may have to make in order to continue operating in Canada.
“We hope that the CRTC will lean into this idea that it’s a once-in-a-generation regulatory process,” says Patrick Rogers, CEO of Music Canada, which represents the major label. “There are a lot of big questions: Who gets regulated? Who pays? How much? Who has access to the money? Now is when we’re going to figure it out.”
A worry among many is that too much financial regulation of big American tech companies could cause them to scale back their investment in Canada. Something similar recently happened with Bill C-18, in which Meta chose to block all Canadian news rather than pay for it. In Spotify’s hearing, company executives — who have an office in Toronto — said that compelled spending could affect their existing Canadian investments.
“The objective here should be: how do we build a stable, viable, resilient, equitable, middle class of artists and thriving Canadian-owned businesses and the music space that can compete globally?” says Andrew Cash, president and CEO of the Canadian Independent Music Association. READ MORE
How Quebec markets its music to the world
M for Montreal festival took place from Nov. 15-18, bringing Canadian and international visibility to Quebec music and artists. That’s an important objective in Quebec, where francophone music is marketed as much to France and globally as to the rest of Canada, which is divided by language.
According to the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles québécoises (SODEC), one of the festival’s main financial partners, M for Montreal is a significant market. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity to check the interest of foreign professionals in very particular artistic proposals whose potential is not yet known internationally,” says Élaine Dumont, general director of international affairs, exportation and marketing of Cinema at SODEC.
For her, events like M for Montreal are a fantastic way to gauge interest in Quebec musicians. “They are at home with their audience, so they can give the best of themselves, and that is precious,” says Élaine Dumont.
Similarly, SODEC supports collective presence, which means making sure Quebec artists and music industry professionals are represented at festivals worldwide. “We collaborate with M for Montreal, Mundial Montreal, FME, POP Montreal, for example, so that they send professionals internationally,” she adds. Thus, M for Montreal participates in events such as South by Southwest in Texas, Reeperbahn Festival in Germany, The New Colossus in New York and The Great Escape Festival in England.
“The festival has a good network in France, Germany, the UK, the US, and the rest of Canada,” notes programmer Mathieu Aubre. And because the French market is not approached like that of Francophone Africa, for example, SODEC, with an annual budget of over $4 million for the export of Quebec music, also offers specific support to territories. “We distribute various aids that allow us to take risks, support artists’ careers and develop audiences outside Quebec and internationally,” says Dumont. READ MORE
Diljit Dosanjh to play the biggest Punjabi concert outside of India
Diljit Dosanjh is set to make history next year with a just-announced performance at Vancouver’s BC Place on April 27, 2024 — the country’s first-ever Punjabi stadium show. With a capacity of 54,500, it’s expected to be the largest ever Punjabi music performance outside of India.
The BC Place announcement caps off a banner year for Dosanjh. This summer, he became the first artist to perform a fully Punjabi set at Coachella and in September, he released his latest album, Ghost, blends smooth R&B, moody trap and laid-back pop. The album spent seven weeks on Billboard’s Canadian Albums chart, peaking at No. 5. His collaboration with Sia, “Hass Hass,” also went to No. 37 on the Canadian Hot 100.
Speaking to Billboard Canada for a cover story about the popularity of Punjabi music in Canada, talent buyer Baldeep Randhawa recalled taking a job at Live Nation with a goal of supporting South Asian music. At the time, he hinted at big things to come with Dosanjh and said he had already shown there’s a major market for Punjabi music in Canada.
“I told them I was gonna prove the concept, book a 500 cap[acity] room and eventually go bigger,” Randhawa said.
When only a couple of months later, Live Nation booked Dosanjh, Randhawa learned he could skip right over the 500 capacity rooms and book arenas. Dosanjh performed at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, then a sold-out show at Vancouver’s Rogers Arena — which has a capacity of 18,000 — in June 2022.
Dosanjh is a superstar, but he’s not the only Punjabi artist making waves in Canada. Dosanjh collaborator Ikky recently announced a headline tour visiting five Canadian provinces in February 2024. READ MORE
BERLIN — Deutsche Grammophon marked its 125th anniversary in Berlin last night (Dec. 6) at the first of three concerts to celebrate the classical music label’s legacy, as well as its current stars. At the city’s storied Konzerthaus, new signing Joana Mallwitz conducted her orchestra; violinist Bomsori Kim and cellist Kian Soltani performed Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Triple Concerto, and Bruce Liu played the German master’s Choral Fantasy. Liu, one of the label’s rising stars, in 2021 won the International Chopin Competition.
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The Berlin concert will be followed by concerts in Philadelphia and Seoul. The U.S. event, on Dec. 9, will feature María Dueñas, Hélène Grimaud and Moby, who has recently released some work on the label; and in South Korea, on Dec. 15, Vikingur Ólafsson will perform the “Goldberg Variations.”
“To this day, Deutsche Grammophon is home to the biggest classical stars of their time,” said Frank Briegmann, chairman and CEO of Universal Central Europe and Deutsche Grammophon, at a reception before the concert. “It is the guardian of a cultural treasure of incredible proportions.”
Deutsche Grammophon, a cultural institution in the classical music world, is the oldest operating record company. It was founded in 1898 by Emile Berliner, a German Jew who moved to the U.S. and in 1887 patented the “Gramophone,” a technology for recording and reproducing sound by engraving and tracing it with a stylus – initially on a cylinder and then on a flat disc. After licensing the rights to manufacture his invention, he sent his nephew, Joseph Sanders, to open a German subsidiary, which severed its relationship with the parent company in 1914.
In 1941, the company was purchased by Siemens & Halske, a corporate ancestor of today’s Siemens company. Over the next two decades, Deutsche Grammophone became known for its distinctive yellow logo and high-fidelity classical music recordings that were marvels of technology at the time and are still considered iconic today. As its rival recording companies shifted toward pop, Deutsche Grammophone focused on classical, and then also contemporary music. In 1962, Siemens formed a joint venture with the Dutch company Philips to run the company that became PolyGram International – which in 1999 was purchased by what was then the parent company of Universal Music Group and merged with it.
The company’s catalog, reputation and logo still endure, and about a year ago it launched Stage+, a high-fidelity subscription streaming service that includes access to performances on video. The label’s anniversary concerts will be shown on the service.
“Nothing has changed,” said label president Dr. Clemens Trautmann, referring to the company’s record for using the new technology of the time. “And everything has changed.”