JYP Entertainment
Shares of Spotify rose 8.0% to $365.00 this week to lead all music stocks in a week the Billboard Global Music Index reached a new high and many of its largest components posted mid- to high-single digit gains.
The Swedish music streaming giant was boosted by a report by Pivotal Research Group that increased its price target to $510 from $460 and reiterated its “buy” rating. Spotify’s intraday high of $368.29 on Thursday set a new 52-week high for the stock and was its best mark since Feb. 21, 2021.
Spotify led the 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) to a record high 1,873.87, up 4.1% for the week, as ten of the stocks posted gains this week, nine lost value and one was unchanged. After a 4.8% drop the week ending Sept. 6 and stagnating since March, the BGMI has gained 7.4% in the last two weeks and raised its year-to-date gain to 22.2%—more than two percentage points above the gains of the Nasdaq composite (up 19.6%) and the S&P 500 (also up 19.6%).
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Stocks generally had a good week after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday a rate cut of half a percentage point, the first time the central bank lowered the overnight borrowing rate since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors had expected the Fed’s move, though, and had priced the effect of a rate cut into stock prices. Still, the Nasdaq composite climbed 1.5% to 17,948.32 and the S&P 500 rose 1.4% to 5,702.55. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index improved 0.7% to 2,736.81 and China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.2% to 2,736.81. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 fell 0.5% to 8,229.99.
Warner Music Group gained 4.9% to $30.44. WMG’s Atlantic Music Group laid off about 150 people Thursday as part of a restructuring plan that began in February. The week’s intraday high of $30.88 was WMG’s highest price since reaching $32.34 on July 24. The company also announced in an SEC filing this week it secured a $1.3 billion term loan that will be used to repay an existing loan and pay associated fees and expenses.
Live Nation shares also gained 4.9% to $103.65 and brought its year-to-date improvement to 10.7%. Thursday’s intraday high of $105.42 was its highest mark since April 1 and less than $2 below its 52-week high of $107.24. The concert promoter scored a win in Portland, Ore., this week after the city council upheld an August decision to allow the development of a 3,500-capacity music venue that will be operated by Live Nation.
Two other promoters also posted gains this week. MSG Entertainment, rose 4.6% to $42.16, while CTS Eventim improved 1.2% to 87.90 euros ($98.23). Another live entertainment company, Sphere Entertainment Co., dropped 2.7% to $41.09.
K-pop companies’ modest decline was an improvement from their consistently steep drops in recent weeks. The four South Korean companies had an average loss of 1.2% this week. HYBE fell 2.4%, JYP Entertainment dipped 1.2%, YG Entertainment slipped 0.9% and SM Entertainment lost 0.2%. After surging in previous years, the quartet has an average year-to-date loss of 40.4%.
Universal Music Group fell 3.6% to 22.75 euros ($25.42) following its Capital Markets Day on Tuesday. Analysts generally felt UMG set reachable financial targets and presented a believable roadmap about its strategy for the next four years. The Amsterdam-listed company laid out a strategy to achieve 8% to 10% cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) for its subscription revenue and above 7% CAGR for total revenue.
Music streamer LiveOne had the biggest decline of the week, dropping 6.1% to $1.38. That put shares of LiveOne into the red for 2024 with a 1.4% year-to-date loss.
An absence of major artist activities caused revenue at K-pop company JYP Entertainment to fall 36.9% to 95.7 billion won ($69.8 million) from the same period a year ago, the company announced Tuesday (Aug. 13). Although JYP saw gains from global streaming, album sales declined 82% to 13.6 billion won ($9.9 million), and albums’ share […]
K-pop label JYP Entertainment is launching a Latin music division that will focused on developing artists for the Spanish language market, the company tells Billboard. The subsidiary’s first project is an audition show called L2K that will “discover, train and launch” the next global Latin girl group — essentially a Latin sequel to JYP’s audition […]
Chinese music streaming service provider NetEase Cloud Music entered a licensing agreement with K-pop label JYP Entertainment, granting it the right to digitally distribute JYP’s catalog in China. JYP artists include J.Y. Park, TWICE, Stray Kids, BOY STORY, ITZY, Yao Chen and NMIXX.
TikTok announced a partnership with European ticketing provider CTS Eventim through which artists can now promote their live dates in their TikTok videos and sell tickets via the CTS Eventim platform. The feature is available to any certified artist on TikTok in Germany, with additional markets to follow.
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Warner Music South East Europe launched Balkan Electro, a new EDM-focused label, in collaboration with Ensis Records. Through the deal, Ensis artists can be distributed, upstreamed and marketed through the new label. Warner Music Poland will also collaborate to sign new local talent to Balkan Electro, which will additionally team with Amsterdam-based Spinnin’ Records and the dance-focused teams at Warner Music Central Europe and Warner Music France. The first releases on Balkan Electo are Prisko and TBX’s “Back to 95” (April 19), Melli’s “Losing My Mind” (April 26) and Kevin’s Palacios and Jordan’s Grace’s “Bright As You” (May 10).
The City of El Paso has approved a $30.9 million performance-based incentive agreement to support the creation of Notes Live‘s new $80 million, 12,500-capacity open-air amphitheater in El Paso, Tex., to be named the Sunset Amphitheater. According to a press release, the project will support more than 2,000 direct and indirect jobs with the potential to generate a $5.4 billion impact for the El Paso community. Construction is slated to begin in late 2024 with an opening set for early 2026.
Concert discovery app Songkick teamed up with Black music and culture ticketing and marketing company Shoobs in a deal that will see Songkick list and promote Shoobs events to its 155 million users via its app, website and eCRM. The partnership is designed to boost the visibility of Black culture events and performers including Afro Nation Portugal, Burna Boy and Piano People in the Park.
Ticketing company AXS acquired a majority stake in WRSTBND, a provider of access control, credentialing and point-of-sale solutions for live events and venues. WRSTBND will use the investment to grow its capabilities and offerings to clients while integrating AXS’ Mobile ID technology with WRSTBND’s ecosystem. “[WRSTBND’s] hardware and software technology combined with the scale of AXS’ premier festivals and live event clients, including Coachella, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest, and Hyde Park BST will create the most seamless and cutting-edge access and payment solutions available anywhere,” said AXS chief strategy officer Marc Ruxin in a statement.
Celebrity Coaches, which provides transportation and logistics for live events, acquired Nashville-based entertainment coach leasing company Moonstruck Leasing. The acquisition will add several luxury Prevost motorcoaches to Celebrity’s existing fleet. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO), an international performing rights organization, partnered with music recognition technology company Audoo to implement its Audoo Audio Meter in select public spaces and retail locations in urban areas across Ireland, with plans to expand it to all business types in the country. The partnership is designed to help promote a more accurate and transparent breakdown of royalty distributions to music creators by recognizing background music being played via Audoo Audio Meteres and reporting the data back to IMRO. Business owners in Ireland can request an Audoo Audio Meter free of charge.
Private equity firm PAI Partners acquired a majority stake in Audiotonix, which designs, engineers and manufactures professional audio mixing consoles, production software and ancillary products. Investment house Ardian (which acquired Audiotonix in March 2020) will retain a minority stake alongside Audiotonix management. The U.K.-headquartered Audiotonix specializes in designing, engineering and manufacturing products that help enable high sound quality for several formats, including concerts, theater shows and sporting events. Its products have been used on tours by artists including Coldplay and U2 as well as at the Super Bowl and Sphere in Las Vegas.
RoEx, a tech startup driving intelligent audio production tools, was awarded a 250,000 pound ($313,000) grant by national innovation agency Innovate UK as part of a funding competition called Creative Catalyst: AI in the Music Industry. The grant will support the research and development of RoEx’s new model, ProStyle, which will provide a platform for mix engineers to partner with RoEx to train a machine learning model that captures their individual mixing style, thereby allowing them to monetize their sonic identity. Through this, the goal is for musicians and creators to have the ability to mix tracks in the engineer’s style using ProStyle.
Full-service entertainment marketing company FlyteVu and Club CMO, a community of more than 1,500 chief marketing officers across 30 cities globally, struck a partnership through which FlyteVu will offer Club CMO members “backstage” access — both in-person and virtually — to FlyteVu-marketed sports, music and pop culture events. Through the partnership, Club CMO members will be offered a closer look at FlyteVu’s industry expertise and knowledge, which they can then take back to their own organizations.
K-pop giant JYP Entertainment has signed a multi-year global strategic pact with Live Nation to produce tours for all artists on JYP’s roster, it was announced Monday (Nov. 13). Under the deal, Live Nation will produce tours for established JYP artists including TWICE, Stray Kids, iTZY, Xdinary Heroes (XH) and NMIXX as well as emerging […]
Shares of K-pop companies sank this week following news that a member of K-pop ground EXO is leaving SM Entertainment for a different agency. According to reports, D.O. will leave SM Entertainment for a new agency being established by his longtime manager. D.O.’s contract expires in early November, SM Entertainment said in a statement, and the artist “will continue with his EXO activities with SM” but pursue acting and other activities through the new agency.
SM Entertainment shares fell 9% to 113,400 won ($83.93). Shares of YG Entertainment, home of girl group BLACKPINK, dropped 9.3% to 53,700 won ($39.74). Shares of JYP Entertainment, home of Stray Kids and Twice, plummeted 11.1% to 100,900 won ($74.67). HYBE, home to BTS and Tomorrow X Together, fell 8.2% to 224,500 won ($166.15). Shares of Kakao Corp. dropped 9.6% to 39,050 won ($28.90). Kakao and its subsidiary Kakao Entertainment own 40% of SM Entertainment’s common stock. Earlier this year, Kakao Entertainment formed a North American joint venture with SM Entertainment.
With all K-pop stocks moving in synch, investors appear to be concerned that the established agencies could be threatened by upstarts. Because Korean companies have far smaller rosters than publicly traded Western music companies such as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Believe, any one departure can have an outsized impact. When BTS announced it planned to go on hiatus, HYBE’s share price dropped nearly 25% the following day.
Separately, the chief investment officer of Kakao, Bae Jae-hyun, was charged with manipulating SM Entertainment’s stock price in connection with Kakao’s bidding war against HYBE over SM Entertainment in the first quarter of the year. According to Bloomberg, the executive was arrested Thursday for buying 240 billion won ($178 million) worth of SM Entertainment shares in an effort to disrupt HYBE’s tender offer.
Despite the week’s heavy losses, K-pop stocks are among the best performing music stocks in 2023. Through Friday, HYBE, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment have gained an average of 37.1% year to date. JYP Entertainment leads the four companies with a year-to-date improvement of 48.8%.
The 21-stock Billboard Global Music Index fell 3.1% to 1,313.44, lowering its year-to-date gain to 12.5%. It was the biggest one-week drop for the index since July and just the seventh time this year the index dropped by more than 3% in a week. Losses were widespread and only four of the 21 stocks posted gains.
Stocks generally had a miserable week. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite index fell 3.2% and the S&P 500 declined 2.4%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 dropped 2.6%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index sank 3.3%. As the first wave of companies released third-quarter earnings this week, one of the standouts was Netflix. The streaming video giant gained 16.1% on Thursday after announcing it added 9 million subscribers in the quarter and will raise prices in the U.S., U.K. and France.
Anghami was the index’s greatest gainer for the second straight week after increasing 16.6% to $0.96. Last week, shares of the Abu Dhabi-based music streamer jumped 18% after the company received a written notification from the Nasdaq Stock Market on Oct. 12 regarding its closing share price falling below $1.00 for the previous 30 days. On Tuesday, Anghami issued a press release to reveal the Nasdaq Stock Market issued a written notification notifying the company it is not in compliance with the exchange’s requirement that listed companies maintain a minimum market value of $15 million. Anghami fell below the $15 million threshold from Aug. 29 to Oct. 10. Anghami has until April 8, 2024, to regain compliance.
Hipgnosis Songs Fund gained 4.9% to 0.775 GBP ($0.94) this week despite dropping 9.3% on Monday following news the company canceled a planned dividend payment. As the week progressed, the London Stock Exchange-listed company’s stock price steadily increased and was helped by the board of director’s announcement on Thursday of a strategic review to help calm investors’ nerves. After Monday’s decline, the share price rose 15.6% through Friday (Oct. 20) to reach its highest closing price since Oct. 3. At the company’s annual meeting on Oct. 26, shareholders will vote to approve a $440 million catalog sale intended to reduce the share price’s discount to Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s net asset value. Shareholders will also vote on a continuation resolution.
For some music companies, 2022 was the payoff for weathering the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. When business returned that year — sometimes in record-setting fashion — these companies rewarded their executives handsomely, according to Billboard’s 2022 Executive Money Makers breakdown of stock ownership and compensation. But shareholders, as well as two investment advisory groups, contend the compensation for top executives at Live Nation and Universal Music Group (UMG) is excessive.
Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promotion and ticketing company, rebounded from revenue of $1.9 billion and $6.3 billion in 2020 and 2021, respectively, to a record $16.7 billion in 2022. That performance helped make its top two executives, president/CEO Michael Rapino and president/CFO Joe Berchtold, the best paid music executives of 2022. In total, Rapino received a pay package worth $139 million, while Berchtold earned $52.4 million. Rapino’s new employment contract includes an award of performance shares targeted at 1.1 million shares and roughly 334,000 shares of restricted stock that will fully pay off if the company hits aggressive growth targets and the stock price doubles in five years.
Live Nation explained in its 2023 proxy statement that its compensation program took into account management’s “strong leadership decisions” in 2020 and 2021 that put the company on a path to record revenue in 2022. Compared with 2019 — the last full year unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic — concert attendance was up 24%, ticketing revenue grew 45%, sponsorships and advertising revenue improved 64%, and ancillary per-fan spending was up at least 20% across all major venue types. Importantly, Live Nation reached 127% of its target adjusted operating income, to which executives’ cash bonuses were tied.
The bulk of Rapino’s and Berchtold’s compensation came from stock awards — $116.7 million for Rapino and $37.1 million for Berchtold — on top of relatively modest base salaries. Both received a $6 million signing bonus for reupping their employment contracts in 2022. (Story continues after charts.)
Lucian Grainge, the top-paid music executive in 2021, came in third in 2022 with total compensation of 47.3 million euros ($49.7 million). Unlike the other executives on this year’s list, he wasn’t given large stock awards or stock options. Instead, Grainge, who has been CEO of UMG since 2010, was given a performance bonus of 28.8 million euros ($30.3 million) in addition to a salary of 15.4 million euros ($16.2 million) — by far the largest of any music executive.
This year, shareholders have shown little appetite for some entertainment executives’ pay packages — most notably Netflix — and Live Nation’s compensation raised flags at two influential shareholder advisory groups, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, which both recommended that Live Nation shareholders vote “no” in an advisory “say on pay” vote during the company’s annual meeting on June 9. Shareholders did just that, voting against executives’ pay packages by a 53-to-47 margin.
Failed “say on pay” votes are rare amongst United States corporations. Through Aug. 17, just 2.1% of Russell 3000 companies and 2.3% of S&P 500 companies have received less than 50% votes on executive compensation, according to executive compensation consultancy Semler Brossy. (Live Nation is in both indexes.) About 93% of companies received at least 70% shareholder approval.
ISS was concerned that the stock grants given to Rapino and Berchtold were “multiple times larger” than total CEO pay in peer group companies and were not adequately linked to achieving sustained higher stock prices. Additionally, ISS thought Live Nation did not adequately explain the rationale behind the grants.
To determine what Rapino, Berchtold and other executives should earn, Live Nation’s compensation committee referenced high-earning executives from Netflix, Universal Music Group, SiriusXM, Spotify, Endeavor Group Holdings, Fox Corporation, Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. and Paramount Global. Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos were paid $51.1 million and $50.3 million, respectively, in 2022. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslov made $39.3 million in 2022 — including a $21.8 million cash bonus — a year after his pay totaled $246.6 million, including $202.9 million in stock option awards that will vest over his six-year employment contract. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel and executive chairman Patrick Whitesell received pay packages worth $308.2 million and $123.1 million, respectively, in 2021 thanks to equity awards tied to the company’s IPO that year (the received more modest pay of $19 million and $12.2 million in 2022).
Some companies in the peer group didn’t fare well in “say on pay” votes in 2023, though. Netflix, got only 29% shareholder approval in this year’s say-on-pay advisory vote after Hastings’ and Sarandos’ compensations both increased from higher stock option awards while the company’s stock price, riding high as COVID-19 lockdowns drove investors to streaming stocks, fell 51% in 2022. Warner Bros. Discovery’s 2022 compensation squeaked by with 51% shareholder approval.
Minutes from UMG’s 2023 annual general meeting in May suggest many of its shareholders also didn’t approve of Grainge’s compensation. UMG’s 2022 compensation was approved by just 59% of shareholders, and the company’s four largest shareholders own 58.1% of outstanding shares, meaning virtually no minority shareholders voted in favor.
UMG shareholders’ votes could be meaningfully different next year. Anna Jones, chairman of the music company’s remuneration committee, said during the annual meeting that in 2024, shareholders will vote on a pay package related to Grainge’s new employment agreement that takes minority shareholders’ concerns from the 2022 annual meeting into consideration. Grainge’s contract lowers his cash compensation, and more than half of his total compensation will come from stock and performance-based stock options.
Other companies in Live Nation’s peer group received near unanimous shareholder approval. SiriusXM’s 2022 executive compensation received 98.5% approval at the company’s annual meeting. Paramount Global’s executive compensation was approved by 96.4% of its shareholders. Endeavor didn’t have a “say on pay” vote in 2023, but a year ago, it’s sizable 2021 compensation packages were approved by 99% of voting shareholders.
As the radio industry came back from pandemic-era doldrums, two iHeartMedia executives — Bob Pittman, CEO, and Richard Bressler, president, CFO and COO — were among the top 10 best-paid executives in the music industry. It was new employment contracts, not iHeartMedia’s financial performance, that put them into the top 10, however. Both executives received performance stock awards — $6.5 million for Pittman and $6 million for Bressler — for signing new four-year employment contracts in 2022. Those shares will be earned over a five-year period based on the performance of the stock’s shareholder return. Neither Pittman nor Bressler received a payout from the annual incentive plan, however: iHeartMedia missed the financial targets that would have paid them millions of dollars apiece. Still, with salaries and other stock awards, Pittman and Bressler received pay packages valued at $16.3 million and $15.5 million, respectively.
Spotify co-founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon once again topped the list of largest stockholdings in public music companies. Ek’s 15.9% stake is worth nearly $4.8 billion while Lorentzon’s 11.2% stake has a market value of nearly $3.4 billion. Both Ek and Lorentzon have benefitted from Spotify’s share price more than doubling so far in 2023. In September 2022, the inaugural Money Makers list had Ek’s stake at $3.6 billion and Lorentzon’s shares at $2.3 billion.
The billionaire club also includes No. 3 HYBE chairman Bang Si-hyuk, whose 31.8% of outstanding shares are worth $2.54 billion, and No. 4 CTS Eventim CEO Klaus-Peter Schulenberg, whose 38.8% stake — held indirectly through his KPS Foundation non-profit — is worth $2.25 billion. They, too, have benefitted from higher share prices in 2023. Last year, Bang’s stake was worth $1.7 billion and Schulenberg’s shares were valued at $2.1 billion.
These top four shareholders and three others in the top 10 have one important thing in common — they are company founders. At No. 5, Park Jin-young, founder of K-pop company JYP Entertainment, owns a $559 million stake in the label and agency he launched in 1997. Another K-pop mogul, No. 8 Hyunsuk Yang, chairman of YG Entertainment, owns shares worth $199 million in the company he founded in 1996. And No. 9 Denis Ladegaillerie, CEO of 18-year-old French music company Believe, has a 12.5% stake worth $112.7 million.
Live Nation’s Rapino again landed in the top 10 for amassing a stockholding over a lengthy career, during which he has helped significantly increase his company’s value. Rapino, the only CEO Live Nation has ever known, took the helm in 2005 just months before the company was spun off from Clear Channel Entertainment with a market capitalization of $692 million. Since then, Live Nation’s market capitalization has grown at over 20% compound annual growth rate to $19.1 billion. Rapino’s 3.46 million shares represent a 1.5% stake worth $291 million.
Selling a company that one founded is another way onto the list. Scooter Braun, CEO of HYBE America, has a 0.9% stake in HYBE worth $69.8 million. That’s good for No. 10 on the list of executive stock ownership. Braun, HYBE’s second-largest individual shareholder behind chairman Bang, sold his company, Ithaca Holdings — including SB Projects and Big Machine Label Group — to HYBE in 2021 for $1.1 billion.
These rankings are based on publicly available financial statements and filings — such as proxy statements, annual reports and Form 4 filings that reveal employees’ recent stock transactions — that publicly traded companies are required by law to file for transparency to investors. So, the list includes executives from Live Nation but not its largest competitor, the privately held AEG Live.
Some major music companies are excluded because they are not standalone entities. Conglomerates that break out the financial performance of their music companies — e.g., Sony Corp. (owner of Sony Music Entertainment) and Bertelsmann (owner of BMG) — don’t disclose compensation details for heads of record labels and music publishers. Important digital platforms such as Apple Music and Amazon Music are relatively small parts of much larger corporations.
The Money Makers executive compensation table includes only the named executive officers: the CEO, the CFO and the next most highly paid executives. While securities laws vary by country, they generally require public companies to named executive officers’ salary, bonuses, stock awards and stock option grants and the value of benefits such as private airplane access and security.
And while Billboard tracked the compensation of every named executive for publicly traded music companies, the top 10 reflects two facts: The largest companies tend to have the largest pay packages and companies within the United States tend to pay better than companies in other countries.
The list of stock ownership is also taken from public disclosures. The amounts include common stock owned directly or indirectly by the executive. The list does not include former executives — such as former Warner Music Group CEO Stephen Cooper — who are no longer employed at the company and no longer required to disclose stock transactions.
Shares of Cumulus Media gained 9.7% this week, the leading stock in the Billboard Global Music Index and one of only four stocks in the 21-company index to end in positive territory Friday (June 23).
Overall, the Billboard Global Music Index declined 3.5% to 1,287.41 — more than double the 1.4% declines of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Music stocks were more in line with the Nasdaq when the overpowering effects of a small number of tech companies are removed, however. That’s because a few powerhouses — such as Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon — often account for a large fraction of the Nasdaq’s gains. To that point, QQQE, an exchange-traded fund that gives equal weight to 100 Nasdaq stocks, declined 2.9% this week.
In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 declined 2.4%. South Korea’s KOSPI index fell 2.1%. Central banks in England, Turkey and Norway raised interest rates this week. Investors can reasonably expect more rates hikes in the United States, too. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday the central bank may continue to raise rates — there have been 10 since March 2022 — but “to do so at a more moderate pace.” When central banks raise interest rates, stocks tend to fall because businesses and consumers are expected to cut back on spending and higher rates make bonds relatively more attractive to stock returns.
Cumulus Media improved to $3.40 a week and a half after the company announced it will sell about 1.75 million Class A common shares — nearly 10% of outstanding shares — at $3.25 per share in a modified Dutch auction that closed on June 9. While the sale will gross about $5.7 million, not including fees and expenses, the final result was well below the company’s goal to sell up to $10 million of shares as part of a previously announced $50 million share repurchase plan.
Shares of French music streaming company Deezer gained 3.6% to 2.32 euros ($2.54), bringing the stock’s year-to-date loss to 20.5%. U.S. streaming company LiveOne gained 3.3% to $1.58. Year-to-date, LiveOne has gained 145.3%. The only other company with a week-over-week improvement was South Korea’s HYBE, which improved 1.2% to 301,000 KRW ($236.91).
The other three Korean music companies declined this week: SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment each fell 5.6% and JYP Entertainment dropped 3.5%. Still, K-pop has been a resounding success for investors in 2023. Led by JYP Entertainment’s 93.7% year-to-date gain, the four Korean companies’ stocks have risen an average of TK% in 2023.
One company, Anghami, was unchanged and the index’s other 16 stocks were in negative territory this week. MSG Entertainment had the Billboard Global Music Index’s largest decline after dropping 17.1%. Sphere Entertainment Co., which spun off MSG Entertainment in April, intends to sell part of its 33% stake in MSG Entertainment. The news dropped the live entertainment company’s share price 12.1% on Wednesday. At Friday’s closing price, Sphere Entertainment’s sale of 5.25 million shares would gross about $170 million that could help fund the state-of-the-art Sphere at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas that’s set to open in September.
Three years after initially teaming up, JYP Entertainment, Imperial and Republic Records are going all in on their strategic global partnership, with the three companies now set to collaborate across the entire JYP Entertainment roster, Billboard can reveal.
According to a press statement, the enhanced label partnership will include worldwide distribution of artists and catalogs, A&R, marketing and business development.
While the Republic/Imperial push already powers JYP groups TWICE, Stray Kids and ITZY, the expanded deal includes newer acts like girl group to watch NMIXX and rock band Xdinary Heroes. JYP Entertainment currently houses nearly a dozen acts, with many members of its groups also active as soloists under the label.
Billboard first broke the news in early 2020 of JYPE and Republic linking to grow TWICE’s presence in the United States. Since then, the K-pop girl group has not only seen massive growth, most recently earning their highest chart position and biggest sales week ever in the United States when Ready to Be debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Last year’s expansion, which brought boy band Stray Kids and female quintet ITZY into the fold, has resulted in two No. 1s on the Billboard 200 for the former and a top 10 album on the chart for the latter. And in July, TWICE member Nayeon became the first-ever K-pop soloist to enter the top 10 of the Billboard 200 with her debut solo album, IM NAYEON: The 1st Mini Album.
Prior to its Imperial/Republic partnership, JYP had a global digital and physical distribution deal with The Orchard that was struck in 2019.
“It has been a continuous journey of astonishing achievements through the strengthening of mutual trust as loyal partners,” said JYP Entertainment CEO Jimmy Jeong. “The expansion of this partnership between these leading music companies will sculpt the next vision of K-pop, opening up a new chapter together.”
Republic Records founder/CEO Monte Lipman added, “This partnership was born out of mutual respect and admiration. We recognize the incredible opportunity to be at the forefront of the next K-pop explosion. The potential is limitless.”
Next up for JYP, Republic and Imperial is the Friday (June 2) release of Stray Kids’ new full-length album, 5-Star, which could become the boy band’s third consecutive No. 1 on the Billboard 200. A teaser video of the group’s upcoming single, “S-Class,” has amassed about two million views on YouTube since its May 29 release.
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