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Harry Styles and Kid Harpoon are each nominated for three 2023 Ivors, as are Cleopatra Nikolic and Dean “Inflo” Josiah Cover, making them this year’s most honored songwriters.
The Ivors Academy announced the nominations for The Ivors 2023 with Amazon Music on Tuesday (April 18). The awards recognize outstanding British and Irish songwriters and composers across nine categories.
Styles and Harpoon are nominated for songwriter of the year with Amazon Music. They are also nominated in two categories for co-writing Styles’ global smash “As It Was” with Tyler Johnson – best song musically and lyrically and PRS for music most performed work.
Styles indirectly factors into a fourth nomination this year. He starred in the film Don’t Worry Darling, which netted a nomination for best original film score for composer John Powell.
“Inflo” and Nikolic are competing with “As It Was” for best song musically and lyrically as the co-writers of SAULT’s hit “Stronger.” They are also nominated twice for best album, for their work on Little Simz’s No Thank You alongside Little Simz and SAULT’s 11 alongside Jamar McNaughton and Jack Peñate.
In the PRS for music most performed work category, Ed Sheeran makes history as “Bad Habits” is nominated again after winning the award last year. He is the first artist to achieve this feat in this category. Sheeran’s follow-up hit “Shivers” is also nominated in the category this year.
Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” is nominated in that same category 37 years after the track was nominated for best contemporary song. The song experienced a global resurgence after being featured in the hit TV series Stranger Things.
A total of 72 individual songwriters and composers received Ivor Novello nominations this year, with 54% of those being nominated for the first time.
The songwriter of the year with Amazon Music category recognizes British or Irish songwriters or songwriting teams for outstanding bodies of commercially successful songs released in 2022. This year’s nominees are Florence Welch (Florence + the Machine), the only individual songwriter nominated in the category this year; Styles & Harpoon; Rhian Teasdale & Hester Chambers (Wet Leg); George Daniel & Matty Healy (The 1975); and Central Cee & Young Chencs.
Knucks receives two nominations for best contemporary song, for his track “Leon the Professional” with co-writers Venna and Toshifumi Hinata and for his feature on Kojey Radical’s “Payback,” which also credits Swindle.
British duo The Flight (consisting of Joe Henson and Alexis Smith) received two nominations for best original video game score. They are nominated for composing the Batman-inspired Gotham Knights and for co-composing the critically acclaimed Horizon Forbidden West, alongside Joris de Man and Oleksa Lozowchuk.
Since its inception in 2020, the rising star award with Amazon Music has championed Britain and Ireland’s most promising songwriting talents. This year’s nominees are Cat Burns, Ines Dunn, tendai, venbee and Victoria Canal. Previous winners are Mysie, Willow Kayne and Naomi Kimpenu.
Tom Gray, chair of The Ivors Academy, said in a statement, “The music nominated for an Ivor Novello this year is testament to the power and range of British and Irish songwriting and screen composing. It’s a superlative list and on behalf of The Ivors Academy, I’m delighted to congratulate every writer nominated for their craft and achievements.”
Winners will be revealed at The Ivors with Amazon Music at Grosvenor House in London on Thursday May 18.
As previously announced, Sting will become a Fellow of the Ivors Academy, the highest honor the Academy bestows. Ivor Novello Awards will also be presented for the outstanding song collection, special international award, visionary award with Amazon Music and PRS for music icon award.
Here’s a complete list of The Ivors 2023 nominations:
Songwriter of the year with Amazon Music
Central Cee and Young Chencs
Florence Welch
Harry Styles and Kid Harpoon
Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers
George Daniel and Matty Healy
Best contemporary song
“Cold Summer”; written by Wesley Joseph and Leon Vynehall; performed by Wesley Joseph
“Escapism”; written by 070 Shake, RAYE and Mike Sabath; performed by RAYE & 070 Shake
“Hide & Seek”; written by Owen Cutts, P2J, PRGRSHN and Stormzy; performed by Stormzy
“Leon the Professional”; written by Knucks, Venna and Toshifumi Hinata; performed by Knucks
“Payback”; written by Knucks, Kojey Radical and Swindle; performed by Kojey Radical feat. Knucks
Best song musically and lyrically
“As It Was”; written by Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson and Harry Styles; performed by Harry Styles
“Best Day of My Life”; written by Laurie Blundell and Tom Odell; performed by Tom Odell
“Complex”; written by Katie Gregson-Macleod; performed by Katie Gregson-Macleod
“King”; written by Jack Antonoff and Florence Welch; performed by Florence + The Machine
“Stronger”; written by Dean “Inflo” Josiah Cover and Cleopatra Nikolic; performed by SAULT
PRS for music most performed work
“As It Was”; written by Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson and Harry Styles; performed by Harry Styles
“Bad Habits”; written by FRED, Johnny McDaid and Ed Sheeran; performed by Ed Sheeran
“Heat Waves”; written by Dave Bayley; performed by Glass Animals
“Running Up That Hill”; written by Kate Bush; performed by Kate Bush
“Shivers”; written by Johnny McDaid, Kal Lavelle, Steve Mac and Ed Sheeran; performed by Ed Sheeran
Best album
11; written by Dean “Inflo” Josiah Cover, Jamar McNaughton, Cleopatra Nikolic and Jack Peñate; performed by SAULT
No Thank You; written by Dean “Inflo” Josiah Cover, Little Simz and Cleopatra Nikolic; performed by Little Simz
Skinty Fia; written by Grian Chatten, Thomas Coll, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Carlos O’Connell; performed by Fontaines D.C.
Some Nights I Dream of Doors; written by Barney Lister and Obongjayar; performed by Obongjayar
The Car; written by Alex Turner; performed by Arctic Monkeys
Best original film score
Avatar: The Way of Water; composed by Simon Franglen
Death on the Nile; composed by Patrick Doyle
Don’t Worry Darling; composed by John Powell
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris; composed by Rael Jones
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain; composed by Arthur Sharpe
Best television soundtrack
Bad Sisters; composed by PJ Harvey and Tim Phillips
Elizabeth: The Unseen Queen; composed by David Schweitzer
The Midwich Cuckoos; composed by Hannah Peel
The Responder; composed by Matthew Herbert
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe; composed by Harry Escott and Ben Pearson
Best original video game score
Gotham Knights; composed by The Flight
Horizon Forbidden West; composed by Joris de Man, Oleksa Lozowchuk and The Flight
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope; composed by Gareth Coker, Grant Kirkhope and Yoko Shimomura
Rising star award with Amazon Music
Cat Burns
Ines Dunn
tendai
venbee
Victoria Canal
HYBE announced Monday (Sept. 17) that a dozen solo artists and music groups on the SM Entertainment roster will join its global fan community platform, Weverse, in September. Those artists, who have not yet been named, will move to Weverse from SM’s own fan community platform, Kwangya Club.
In addition to connecting with fans via services including Weverse Live, the 12 SM artists will also be featured on the e-commerce platform Weverse Shop, where fans can buy albums and official merchandise.
The Weverse deal derives from a platform partnership struck between HYBE, SM and Kakao Entertainment in March after HYBE fell short of its mission to purchase a controlling stake in SM. HYBE, home to K-pop superstars BTS, was blocked in its efforts by rival bidder Kakao, a South Korean tech company that owns Monsta X‘s label Starship Entertainment and Korean music streaming platform Melon. The battle ended when HYBE agreed to sell its entire SM stake to Kakao; days later, it sold 1.66 million SM shares to Kakao for 248.8 billion won ($191.8 million), amounting to 44% of its total shares in the company and increasing the stake of Kakao Corp. and its subsidiary, Kakao Entertainment, to nearly 40%. HYBE retains an 8.8% stake in SM.
Later in March, SM appointed Jang Cheol-hyuk as the company’s new CEO, succeeding outgoing CEO Lee Sung-soo, and named a new board as the company vowed to improve corporate governance and its production system, which had fallen behind rivals like HYBE in recent years and led to investor scrutiny.
Weverse claims approximately 65 million subscribers across 245 countries and regions globally.
Warner Music México has announced the launch of Gorgona, a label which will be “completely” run and managed by women, and will also be focused on promoting women talent.
According to a statement issued by the company Wednesday (April 12), the “historically low” presence of women in key senior industry roles initially led to the formation of Warner Music México’s Gender Equality Committee, comprised exclusively of women across the organization. Then came the idea of creating a label in which all roles — from songwriting to digital music services — would be executed by women.
The creation of Gorgona — a creature who is a protective deity of women according to Greek mythology is — led to their first songwriter’s camp attended by Ali Stone, Erika Vidrio, Escarlata, Ingratax, Marian Ruzzi, and other artists, producers and songwriters.
“The atmosphere in our first camp was very friendly because everyone felt that their opinions and voices were validated in the studio,” says Andrea Fernández, A&R manager at Warner Music Mexico and the label’s creative leader. “They had practically never attended a camp where the participation of women was greater than that of men. We came out with a network of creative women who were able to get to know themselves and their work and produced spectacular songs.”
“Cypher 1: Ella”, which dropped on International Women’s Day, was the first release under Gorgona. A collaboration between singers and emcees Mabiland, Emjay, Mare Advertencia and Delfina Dib, the alternative, urban-leaning song was produced by Maria Vertiz, mixed by Marcella Araica and mastered by Natalia Schlesinger.
The underrepresentation of women in the industry in Mexico reflects the reality of music in general. A report on inclusion issued by The University of California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative earlier this year found that women have been woefully underrepresented across the recorded music industry.
The number of women with producer credits continues to be low. In 2022, only 3.4% of producers were women across all songs included on the year-end Hot 100 chart, according to the report, which examines the gender of artists, songwriters and producers across all 1,100 songs included on Billboard’s Hot 100 year-end charts spanning from 2012 to 2022. Moreover, women represented only 30% of the 160 artists on the Hot 100 year-end chart, while men made up 69.4% and artists who identified as non-binary made up less than 1%.
While Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” continues its rule atop the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts – it’s now up to 10 weeks at No. 1 on each tally – activity throughout the surveys shows a variety of artists making impacts. One of those is Peso Pluma, who blasts into the top 10 of both April 8-dated rankings for the first time.
“La Bebe,” by Yng Lvcas and Peso Pluma, climbs to No. 6 on Global Excl. U.S. and No. 7 on the Global 200. In the week ending March 30, the reggaetón track drew 61 million streams, up 90%, according to Luminate. It’s the first global chart entry for YNG Lvcas. For the latter, it builds upon many months of momentum.
Peso Pluma first reached the global charts with “Siempre Pendientes,” a collaboration with Luis R Conriquez. That song spent three weeks on both lists last September, peaking at No. 155 on Global Excl. U.S. and No. 174 on the Global 200.
The track dropped off both charts seven months ago, but Peso Pluma now counts six songs on each April 8-dated global ranking, none lower than No. 60. And while that haul started just two-and-a-half months ago with the debut of “AMG” with Gabito Ballesteros and Natanel Cano, the best could be yet to come.
Just last week, “Ella Baila Sola” with Eslabon Armando debuted in the top 20 of both charts; it jumps to No. 11 on this week’s Global 200 and No. 12 on Global Excl. U.S. One spot away from becoming his second top 10 in two weeks, rising into either charts’ upper echelon would mark the first time a Mexican act would double-up in the same week.
Further, “El Azul,” Peso Pluma’s collaboration with American producer Junior H, zooms to No. 53 on Global Excl. U.S. and No. 59 on the Global 200. Rising 39 positions on the former chart and 42 on the latter, the song nears each list’s top 40, on track to become Peso Pluma’s sixth title to reach the region.
Peso Pluma has buffed up his global portfolio in 2023 with a wide range of collaborations, but his solo prowess shouldn’t be underestimated. “Por Las Noches” is his first solo chart hit, holding in the top 40 of the Global 200. And even his top 10 duet with Yng Lvcas shows evidence of his contribution to the song’s high rank: “La Bebe” originated as a solo Yng Lvcas track, released in 2021. Picking up momentum at the top of the year, the song hit both global charts, climbing among the lower half of each list last month. The remix featuring Peso Pluma arrived March 17, propelling the song from No. 103 to No. 21, and now to No. 7 on the Global 200, and similarly from No. 74 to No. 6 across two weeks on Global Excl. U.S.
Peso Pluma’s wide-ranging global success can, in part, be attributed to his musical flexibility. Most of his globally charting hits fit the mold of regional Mexican tradition, while “La Bebe,” his first top 10, aligns with reggaetón. Both have become increasingly popular, both globally and in the U.S., where he counts five songs on this week’s domestic-based Billboard Hot 100.
And while reggaetón might first appear to be the more U.S.-friendly genre with its production sharing elements with American pop and hip-hop, it’s one of Peso Pluma’s regional Mexican tracks that leads the way on the Hot 100. “Ella Baila Sola” hangs at No. 31, over “La Bebe” at No. 34. This week, All of his regional Mexican songs skew 27-28% of their worldwide streams from the U.S. and 72-73% international, while “La Bebe” splits 22% U.S. and 78% beyond.
As for Peso Pluma’s global standings, all five of his charting regional Mexican songs rank among the top 10 of Billboard’s Mexico Songs chart, logically enough, but don’t appear on any other Hits of the World tallies. “La Bebe,” however, with its top 10 placement on both global charts, finds itself on rankings for Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in addition to its No. 1 status on Mexico Songs.
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.”
MUMBAI — India is driving Spotify’s international expansion, vaulting into the top five territories in total users for the platform after just four years of operation in the country.
“India is the single market that has contributed the most to our global growth over the last year,” says Gustav Gyllenhammar, Spotify’s vp of markets and subscriber growth. The company’s user count in India has tripled over the last two years, according to Gyllenhammar.
Spotify did not provide numbers, but Comscore estimates the platform has about 55 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India, and Spotify is the country’s top audio-streaming service in terms of engagement, with nearly 10 billion tracks streamed in India in January alone, sources close to the company say. Last year, Spotify says, Bollywood playback singer Arijit Singh tallied more streams on the app than Beyonce. Then in January, Singh broke into the top 10 of Spotify’s Global Top Artists chart, even though most of his plays were in India.
Despite this, India is not a top five revenue market for the service, Gyllenhammar says, demonstrating the limits of the country — which has 1.4 billion people and is expected to soon pass China as the most populous nation — as a music market. Multiple factors are at play, including India’s significantly lower per-stream payouts, a resistance to paying for music subscriptions and the challenges of a market with two official languages and another 22 regional ones.
India was the 17th-largest recorded-music market in 2021 with $219 million in revenue, up 20% from 2020 and driven largely by streaming, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report. But at just $0.16, its per-capita music revenue is among the lowest in the world.
India’s economy is one of the world’s largest, but a 2022 report by the International Monetary Fund ranks its per-capita income at 140 out of 190 countries, which contributes to the problems streaming services have in getting more consumers to pay for subscriptions. A monthly Spotify subscription costs 119 rupees ($1.45) compared with $9.99 in the United States. Gyllenhammar says the service doesn’t plan to increase prices in India in the near future.
India’s streaming market is estimated to have over 300 million MAUs. (For comparison, there are 219 million in the United States.) When Spotify launched there in 2019, it was the eighth major audio-streaming service to enter a market ruled by local streaming services Gaana, JioSaavn and Wynk. Since then, it has overtaken Gaana, which has turned into a subscription-only service after talks for an acquisition by Wynk’s parent, the telco Bharti Airtel, fell through. JioSaavn, which saw an overhaul of its top management last year, has witnessed a fall in engagement.
Though JioSaavn and Wynk still have more MAUs than Spotify, 20.1% of respondents picked Spotify as their favorite music streaming service, compared with 4.9% who chose either JioSaavn or Wynk, in a study conducted last year by IFPI and the Indian Music Industry, the country’s recorded-music trade group. (YouTube topped the list with 46%.)
Spotify’s closest competition for engagement, according to industry insiders, is ByteDance-owned Resso, which officially launched in India in March 2020 as one of three test markets for the app outside of China. (Indonesia and Brazil are the others.) Resso, they say, has a stronger presence in smaller cities and tallies a similar number of streams. But it’s been growing at a slower rate than Spotify and has been affected by the loss of Sony Music’s catalog — which includes several hit Indian film soundtracks — after Sony removed its titles from the service in September.
Indian music executives say Spotify has better technology for generating algorithmic recommendations and playlist personalization — and that gives it an edge over domestic rivals. It also emulated its local competition by emphasizing the importance of regional-language music and by creating a generous ad-based tier.
In India, Spotify offers a mobile-only “mini” subscription where users pay 7 rupees ($0.09) per day. It offers ad-free music on phones, group listening sessions and downloads of 30 songs per device. There aren’t any restrictions on the number of songs free users can stream in the ad-based tier.
A Focus On Servicing Local Languages
Today, in addition to English, Spotify offers its service in 12 Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu. To focus on local languages, Spotify has had to customize its operations. “Until we came to India, most [of our] markets [were dominated by] one or two languages,” says Amarjit Singh Batra, GM/managing director for India. “The whole structure, from the teams to the way we work to how we look at recommendations, curation — every piece had to be re-looked at.”
Local content accounts for about 85% of listening on domestic platforms like JioSaavn and Wynk, for example, but initially only made up 20% to 30% of Spotify streams in the market. “When we launched, consumption looked very similar to many other countries globally, [which is] predominantly international English-language music,” Gyllenhammar says. Then Spotify pushed to expand its audience beyond India’s big cities, and today, out of Spotify’s 184 markets, India has the highest share of local consumption, at 70%.
During the pandemic, as competitors tightened their budgets, the Swedish company says it spent heavily on nationwide and region-specific advertising and marketing — including ads on broadcast and streaming TV. “We have never paid so much attention to marketing in any single market,” says Gyllenhammar. The platform has run marketing campaigns in Hindi and English, as well as the four main languages spoken in south India: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.
Spotify has also resisted pressure from labels to ensure their songs feature at the top of playlists, which music companies had come to expect from Indian platforms. “They keep looking at Spotify to be something like that,” says Padmanabhan “Paddy” NS, Spotify’s head of artist and label partnerships. Instead, Spotify realized early on the potential of independent and non-film music and showcased them through playlists and programs such as Radar. The strategy paid dividends during the pandemic when the closure of cinemas led to a paucity of new soundtrack releases, which local platforms had relied on.
Since it launched in the country, Spotify has more than doubled its number of India-based employees, Gyllenhammar and Singh say, and they’re planning to expand their India ad sales teams five-fold by the end of the year. (They decline to share how many people the company currently employs in India.)
While India is primarily a low-price, high-volume play for Spotify, the country offers tremendous growth potential. It has the second-largest share of internet and smartphone users in the world (after China), at about 658 million, though that’s just under half of its total population. (The United States and the United Kingdom both have 90% internet penetration.) “If you look at other sectors online, whether it’s in search or social media or e-commerce, [India is] a billion-dollar market for the global players,” Gyllenhammar says.
Singh Batra says Spotify’s focus over the next four years will be on reaching “a level where the audience for each and every core [Indian] language is able to say, ‘Spotify is for me, for my region.’” By focusing on regional-language listeners, Spotify aims to gain new consumers in smaller cities and rural areas, as well as by pulling customers from JioSaavn and Resso, which dominate those regions.
The company says it’s gaining subscribers in India at a faster rate than total users. In 2022, premium subscriptions grew by 85% and MAUs by 80% year on year. Spotify executives say they see India following the same growth path as Latin America, where the level of paid users is now about the same as the global average of 40%.
It took eight years after Spotify launched in Brazil in 2014 for the region to reach that 40% level, Gyllenhammar says. “It didn’t happen in the first four years,” he observes. “It happened during the second phase of those eight years. So similarly, for India, the next four years is a period where we will see improvement on this side.”
SEOUL — South Korea’s SM Entertainment appointed Jang Cheol-hyuk as the company’s new CEO on Friday (March 31), as the K-pop giant vowed to turn over a new leaf by bringing on a fresh leader and board of directors. Jang succeeds outgoing CEO Lee Sung-soo.
“I feel a great responsibility to assume the position as a CEO when SM is about to take a big leap forward,” said Jang in a statement. “We will establish a sound [and] transparent governance structure and faithfully implement the SM 3.0 strategy so that SM can become a fan-and shareholder-centered global entertainment leader.”
The landmark corporate shakeup is part of SM’s bid to improve corporate governance as well as its production system, which in recent years lagged behind rivals and invited investor scrutiny. Friday’s appointments also put an end to the weeks-long drama that gripped the K-pop world, pitting industry giants HYBE, home to boyband BTS, and South Korean tech giant Kakao against each other.
A certified accountant and professional manager, Jang joined SM in early 2022 as CFO and has been involved in creating the blueprint for SM’s future. Dubbed SM 3.0, the plan is to diversify the company’s artist portfolio and delegate more creative control away from the single-pipeline structure helmed by SM founder Lee Soo-man.
For years, Lee hasn’t had an official role at SM — which developed K-pop groups EXO, NCT and Girls’ Generation — but he had nearly unchecked powers as its largest shareholder. He was being paid millions of dollars a year in production fees, a setup that ended late last year following a shareholder revolt.
At Friday’s meeting, Kim Kyung Wook, a former SM CEO and now shareholder, pressed the agency to recoup the production fees, but outgoing CEO Lee Sung-soo — who is Lee Soo-man’s nephew — said the company was not ready to consider that step.
Cracks began to show at SM in February after management, without Lee Soo-man’s approval, signed a partnership deal with Kakao. The founder retaliated by selling most of his shares to HYBE and laying the groundwork for a possible merger between the two largest K-pop agencies.
Friday’s shareholder meeting had been hyped as a spirited battle between HYBE and Kakao before HYBE abruptly threw in the towel last week and ceded some of its SM shares to its rival.
Together with subsidiary Kakao Entertainment, Kakao has now secured nearly 40% of shares in SM, becoming the company’s largest stakeholder. Jang Yoon-Joong, executive vp/global strategy officer at Kakao Entertainment, as well as Align Partners CEO Lee Changhwan — who led the shareholder revolt — have now joined the board as non-executive directors.
Three SM executives, including incoming CEO Jang, were also appointed to the board, while five outside directors were also approved: Kim Kyu-Shik, chairman of the Korean Corporate Governance Forum; Kim Tae-him, attorney at Pyeong San Law Firm; Moon Jungbien, professor at Korea University Business School; Lee Seung-min, partner at Peter & Kim; and Sung M. Cho, CEO of music analytics company Chartmetric.
Before BTS conquered the world, Lee Soo-man was the most famous face of K-pop in Korea for reasons both good and bad. He has been lauded as a visionary but criticized for his harsh treatment of trainees and artists. While he treated stalwart artists like family, keeping them on the roster even after their career peaks, he also was accused of excessive control over the acts’ professional and personal lives. He has also been convicted of embezzlement, though he later received a presidential pardon for his contribution to K-pop.
Lee Soo-man still holds over 3% of SM’s shares but hasn’t disclosed his future plans regarding the company. A representative sent to Friday’s meeting on his behalf stayed silent at the gathering.
“Today marks an end of an era at SM, a company I founded in my name,” said Lee, in a statement emailed to reporters shortly before the shareholder meeting. While not commenting directly on the proceedings, he said he was staying outside the country and is “deeply immersed in the world of global music.”
LONDON — French music company Believe is making inroads into the publishing business by acquiring U.K.-based publisher Sentric, which represents more than four million songs and over 400,000 songwriters in more than 200 territories.
Under terms of the deal announced on Thursday (March 30), Believe is acquiring full ownership of Sentric Music Group from Utopia Music, with the transaction valuing Sentric at €47 million ($51 million), Believe says in a press release.
(Utopia Music declined to comment).
Believe founder and CEO Denis Ladegaillerie says in a statement that the takeover of Sentric is the company’s “first step” in the “roll-out of a global and comprehensive publishing offer.”
It is the second time in just over a year that ownership of Liverpool-based Sentric Music Group — which also has offices in London, Hamburg, New York and Los Angeles — has changed hands.
In February of 2022, Utopia, a Zug, Switzerland-headquartered fintech company, acquired Sentric amid a frenetic buying spree that saw Utopia acquire 15 companies over a two-year period.
Sentric’s existing leadership team, led by CEO Chris Meehan, will continue to lead the business, says Believe. Paris-based Believe, which has 1,650 employees in more than 50 countries, says the combination of its digital music expertise and global network with Sentric’s industry-leading technology will develop “a comprehensive solution for songwriters and publishers at all levels.”
Believe’s move into publishing follows recent investments the company has made in Europe, India and Asia to further expand its global footprint. They include partnerships with French pop label Structure, Indian label Panorama Music and Germany-based Madizin Music.
Last year also saw Believe make strong gains in some key European countries and eat into the major record labels’ share of the recorded music market. In France, Believe says it was the second-largest music company in digital local repertoire in 2022. In Germany, it claims to have been the third-largest recorded music company for local repertoire in the streaming market, and the market’s second-largest company in hip-hop.
In total, Believe, which acquired the TuneCore distribution platform in 2015, worked with 1.3 million artists last year, either directly or through record labels, with annual revenues rising 31.8% year-on-year to 760.8 million euros ($723.5 million), according to the company’s year-end financial results, published earlier this month.
The company says its acquisition of Sentric will help drive future growth by enabling it to capture a slice of the growing music publishing market. In 2021, global publishing royalties to songwriters and composers grew by 7.2% to €8.5 billion ($9.2 billion), according to the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies’ (CISAC).
The Sentric deal also strengthens Believe’s TuneCore business offering, which provides worldwide digital distribution to independent and self-releasing artists. Believe says 23% of TuneCore’s subscribers already use Sentric’s publishing service. Moving forward, says Believe, Sentric will offer publishing services to all clients within the Believe Group.
“The growth and digital transformation of the songwriters’ market is opening-up many opportunities,” says Ladegaillerie.
For Utopia Music, the future appears cloudier with its sale of Sentric following a period of intense change at the fintech company.
In November, Utopia cut its workforce by about 20%, or about 230 jobs, followed two months later by CEO Markku Mäkeläinen exiting the company and founder and executive chairman Mattias Hjelmstedt taking over as interim chief executive. In February, Utopia said it had sold U.S.-based music database platform ROSTR — which has a directory of artists, managers, booking agents and record labels — back to ROSTR’s founders for an undisclosed sum.
At the time, Hjelmstedt told Billboard that the sale of ROSTR was part of a company-wide refocus on its core financial services business and that the company had recently completed a fresh investment round. (He declined to discuss the size of investment or investors).
However, on Wednesday, Scandinavian news outlet Breakit reported that some Utopia employees have recently gone unpaid and the company’s Swedish arm, Utopia R&D Tech, owes 8 million SEK ($770,000) to the Swedish tax authorities. (Music Business Worldwide was the first to report Breakit‘s story).
In response, a spokesperson for Utopia told Billboard that the company’s “strategic transition” was in response to “current changes in the market landscape,” adding that it is focusing on profitability and growth.
“It has not been an easy journey, but we are very positive about Utopia’s future and look forward to continuing what we are here to do — support the music industry with digital solutions for managing, monitoring, and processing royalties, and distributing the music we all love to listen to,” the Utopia rep said.
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.”
Russian authorities have put a member of the Pussy Riot punk group on a most wanted list for criminal suspects as the Kremlin works to stifle political dissent.
Russian news outlet Mediazona discovered an entry for Nadya Tolokonnikova in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted individuals on Wednesday (March 29). The entry, also reviewed by The Associated Press, said Tolokonnikova faces criminal charges, but it didn’t specify what the charges are.
Tolokonnikova became widely known for taking part in a 2012 Pussy Riot protest inside Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. She spent nearly two years in prison.
Earlier this month Russia’s top human rights lawyer, Pavel Chikov, said a criminal case had been launched against Tolokonnikova on the charge of offending religious believers’ feelings, which became a criminal offense in Russia after the 2012 Pussy Riot protest.
Tolokonnikova has left Russia. In 2021, the Russian government designated her as a “foreign agent,” a label that brings additional government scrutiny and carries pejorative connotations that can discredit the recipients.
Russian authorities have applied the designation to independent media outlets and opposition activists.
It was announced last week that Pussy Riot will receive the 2023 Woody Guthrie Prize, with Tolokonnikova telling Billboard after the announcement: “It feels fitting to be awarded in the spirit of Woody, I think he would love Pussy Riot’s anti-fascist message.”