State Champ Radio News
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Trending on Billboard It’s not officially Grammy season until there’s some spirited debate about this year’s nominations — and here we are. On this week’s Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are chatting through the 2026 Grammy nominations, starting with the Big Four categories (album, record and song of the year, plus best new […]
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A flurry of earnings reports for the quarter ended Sept. 30 show a continued divide in the music landscape. Live music companies such as Live Nation and MSG Entertainment posted double-digit growth as concert demand surged, while HYBE and SM Entertainment also benefitted from strong concert revenues. Streaming also spiked once again, pushing Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG) to double-digit revenue growth. Legacy media didn’t fare as well, however: iHeartMedia revenue slipped slightly, while SiriusXM leveraged cost-cutting to compensate for flat revenue.
Here’s a running list, in alphabetical order, of the music companies that released earnings results (as of Nov. 11) for the quarter ended Sept 30, 2025.
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Cumulus Media: The radio company’s revenue fell 11.5% to $180.3 million and net loss grew to $20.4 million from $10.3 million in the prior-year quarter. The advertising business remains “challenging for legacy media,” CEO Mary Berner said. Broadcast radio revenue sank 17.2% to $115.0 million. Digital revenue fell 2.6% to $39.0 million, though it was up 8.4% if the loss of The Daily Wire and Dan Bongino aren’t counted. Check out our full radio earnings roundup here.
Deezer: Revenue dropped 1% to $154 million as gains from self-paying users almost offset losses in business-to-business subscribers. Direct subscribers grew in number to 5.5 million, up nearly 10%, and direct subscription revenue increased 1.6% to $103 million. Revenue from partnerships fell 12.6% to $42 million and subscribers from these partnerships dropped 24.5% from the prior-year quarter. Go to the full article for more details.
HYBE: Tours by BTS member Jin and groups SEVENTEEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER helped Q3 revenue rise 38% to $519 million, as strong concert revenue ($174 million) helped make up for recorded music’s 11.5% decline to $136 million. Operating loss was $30 million, a big turnaround from a $40 million operating profit a year earlier. More details in the full article.
iHeartMedia: CEO Bob Pittman was “pleased” with the performance and boasted of new partnerships with TikTok and Amazon Ads, which will expand the company’s podcast and advertising businesses, respectively. Revenue of $997 million was down 1.1% (up 2.8% excluding the prior-year period’s political advertising). Adjusted EBITDA was flat at $205 million. Podcast revenue jumped 22% to $140 million while the multi-platform group, which included broadcast radio, fell 5% to $591 million. Q4 guidance is a low-single-digit revenue decline. Find more details here.
Live Nation: As fans packed themselves into stadiums in record numbers, revenue rose 11% to $8.5 billion and adjusted operating income (AOI) grew 14% to $1.03 billion. Concerts revenue was up 11% to $7.3 billion. Ticketing revenue rose 15% to $798 million. Sponsorships revenue jumped 13% to $443 million. Importantly, increases in deferred revenue suggest Live Nation will experience additional growth into 2026. Read about the earnings here and check out Billboard’s follow-up article with additional details from the earnings call.
MSG Entertainment: Boosted by a record number of concerts at the Madison Square Garden arena, MSG Entertainment’s revenue jumped 14% to $158.3 million and adjusted operating income improved to $7.1 million from $1.9 million in the prior-year period. Revenue from concerts rose $8.3 million while sporting events revenue improved $6.8 million. Food and beverage revenue jumped 20%, or $3.9 million. Looking ahead, MSGE’s Christmas Spectacular, the company’s annual holiday production at Radio City Music Hall, is slated for 215 performances, up from 200 a year earlier.
Reservoir Media: Fiscal second quarter revenue of $45.4 million was up 7% organically, or 12% including acquisitions. Net income of $2.2 million was up from $0.2 million in the prior-year quarter. Music publishing revenue rose 8% to $30.9 million, while recorded music revenue jumped 21% to $13.0 million. The results prompted management to adjust upward its forecasts for full-year revenue and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
SiriusXM: The satellite radio company’s stock price jumped 10% after it raised 2025 guidance for revenue, EBITDA and cash flow. Although it reported a 1% dip in revenue, the company rebounded from a loss to produce net income of $297 million; while subscriber revenue was down, cost-cutting and layoffs helped offset the decline. Adjusted EBITDA fell 2.5% to $676 million. CEO Jennifer Witz said she is “confident” that improvements will allow the company to reach its target of $1.5 billion of free cash flow by 2027. Check out Billboard’s coverage for more details.
SM Entertainment: Led by concerts and music releases from aespa and NCT WISH, revenue rose 33% to $237.3 million. Operating profit jumped 262% to $35.6 million. Recorded music rose 33% $71.4 million, while new album sales grew to 5.42 million from 3.61 million in the third quarter of 2024. And concert revenue rose 38% to $38.7 million despite the company having fewer concerts compared to the prior-year period. Go to the full article for more info.
Sony Music: Rising streaming income and the success of the anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle helped Sony Music’s revenue jump 21% to $3.65 billion and operating income climb 28% to $776 million. Overall streaming revenues rose 12% in recorded music and 25% in the publishing division. Physical sales rose 6%. Looking ahead, Sony increased its full-year forecast for Sony Music’s sales by 6% to $13.3 billion. The full article has all the details.
Sphere Entertainment Co.: The Wizard of Oz and the Backstreet Boys boosted Sphere parent company’s revenue to $263 million and helped turn negative adjusted operating income (AOI) into $36 million of positive AOI. Oz has sold more than 1 million tickets to date, and showings of that title and other movies rose to 220 from 207 in the prior-year quarter. The Sphere segment itself posted an operating loss of $84 million — a $40 million improvement from a year ago. More details in the full article.
Spotify: The audio giant’s subscribers rose 12% to 281 million and gross margin improved by 56 basis points — 0.56 of a point — to 31.6%. Those improvements led revenue to increase 12% to $5 billion and gross profit to grow 9% to $1.84 billion. “We have the tools we need — pricing, product innovation, operational leverage, and eventually the ads turnaround — to deliver both revenue growth and profit expansion,” said CEO Daniel Ek. Check out our full story on the earnings release and our follow-up article with details from the earnings call.
Universal Music Group: In another strong quarter, UMG posted a 10.2% revenue gain (in constant currency) to $3.5 billion. EBITDA rose 11.6% (also in constant currency) to $694 million and EBITDA margin ticked up to 22.0% from 21.6%. Recorded music subscription revenue, a closely watched metric, rose 8.6% while other streaming revenue was flat at $394 million. Go to the full article for all the details and check out the follow-up article for more insights.
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Radio companies had mixed results in the third quarter in their efforts to build digital businesses, cut costs and manage a decline in broadcast advertising dollars as consumers shift to newer entertainment platforms.
iHeartMedia’s consolidated revenue of $997 million was down just 1.1%, well within the company’s guidance of a low single-digit decline. Excluding the impact of political advertising in the prior-year period, revenue was up 2.8%. CEO Bob Pittman said during the company’s earnings call on Monday (Nov. 10) that the advertising environment is “pretty good” and iHeartMedia is “not feeling anything” related to the U.S. government shutdown.
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An operating loss of $116 million stemmed from a $209 million impairment charge related to the value of iHeartMedia’s FCC licenses. Excluding the impact of the write-down and other extraordinary items, adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a common measure of profitability from ongoing operations, was flat at $205 million.
The multi-platform division, which includes iHeartMedia’s broadcast and network businesses, had revenue of $591 million, down 4.6% due to lower political advertising and what the company called “uncertain market conditions.” Adjusted EBITDA of $119.2 million marked an 8.3% decrease from the prior-year period, despite lower employee compensation costs.
The digital audio group, which includes podcasts, had revenue of $342 million, up 14%, and adjusted EBITDA of $130.3 million, up 30.3%. Podcast revenue increased by 22% to $140 million.
Based on trends for the top advertisers and advertising agencies, Pittman said he has “confidence” that the multi-platform division will return to revenue growth. “We’re feeling similar momentum to what other ad-supported companies have discussed right now: Spending is holding up, and discussions with advertisers are positive,” he noted on the company’s earnings call. Although iHeartMedia has not felt any impact from the government shutdown, Pittman conceded it “does add a level of uncertainty.”
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iHeartMedia said it remains on track to create $150 million in annual cost savings in 2025. In addition, the company took steps in the third quarter to save an additional $50 million in 2026, which COO/CFO Rich Bressler said will come mainly from the multi-platform division.
Looking ahead, iHeartMedia expects fourth quarter revenue to be down in the low single digits. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $200 million to $240 million, down from $246 million in the prior-year quarter because of political advertising in the 2024 election year. The multi-platform division is expected to be down in the low single digits. Digital revenue is expected to grow in the high single digits, and podcast revenue specifically is expected to grow in the mid-teens.
Cumulus Media, the country’s third-largest radio broadcaster by revenue, reported that third-quarter revenue fell 11.5% to $180.3 million. CEO Mary Berner cited a “challenging” advertising environment and touted Cumulus’s efforts to cut costs and employ AI to improve efficiency. Broadcast revenue plummeted 17.2% to $115.0 million. Digital revenue fell 2.6% to $39.0 million but would have grown 8.4% without the losses of The Daily Wire and conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who left podcasting to become the deputy director of the FBI. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA fell to $16.7 million from $24.1 million a year earlier.
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Townsquare Media faced “numerous headwinds,” CEO Bill Wilson said in a statement, but the company met its previous guidance on revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Revenue dropped 7.4% to $106.8 million and would have dropped 4.5% if political advertising were excluded. Adjusted EBITDA fell 13.5% to $3.4 million.
iHeartMedia shares fell 6.0% to $4.29 on Tuesday (Nov. 11) following the earnings announcement on Monday afternoon. The stock had jumped 55.9% in the week ended Nov. 7 following a report that the company was in talks with Netflix to distribute its podcast content.
Cumulus Media shares soared 31% to $0.135 the day after the company released earnings on Oct. 30. The stock has since lost all of those gains and more, however, and closed at $0.10 on Tuesday (Nov. 11).
Townsquare Media shares fell 11.3% to $5.42 on Monday following the quarterly earnings report. The stock rose 0.6% to $5.45 on Tuesday.
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Lightning in a Bottle dropped their 2026 lineup early this year, with the event’s organizers presenting a major bill for the fest this May.
Leading the lineup are art electronic legends Empire of the Sun, Dutch phenom Mau P (whose August track “Tesla” is currently at No. 1 on Dance/Mix Show Airplay), hard techno arbiter Sara Landry, bass OGs Zeds Dead, UK D&B legends Chase & Status, R&B queen Tinashe, UK fav Barry Can’t Swim and Brazilian whirlwind Mochakk.
Beyond that, the bill features Of the Trees, Billboard’s September Dance Rookie of the Month Jigitz, Overmono, Daily Bread, Lee Burrdige, Hot Since 92, Nia Archives, Dimension, Alleycvt, Jayda G, and many more. See the complete lineup below, with this lineup poster’s design nodding to the festival’s longstanding Mixtape stage, where DJs play classic cuts on cassette all weekend long.
Additionally, after first collabing with legendary L.A. club night A Club Called Rhonda last year, the party will be back for another takeover at the Crossroads Stage, with the longstanding D&B party Respect DnB, the party Baile World and afrobeat/amapiano/dancehall party FMLY BZNS all also hosting nights at Crossroads. LiB will also, as always, host myriad talks, workshops and yoga sessions over the weekend.
Lightning in a Bottle 2026 will mark the 23rd edition of the independent festival. It happens over Memorial Day weekend, May 20-24, 2026 at Buena Vista Lake near Bakersfield, Calif.
Tickets for for the fest go on sale on Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. PT.
Lightning in a Bottle 2026
Courtesy Lightning in a Bottle
Trending on Billboard Modern parents know all too well how difficult it can be to tear their kids and their tablets apart — and that’s exactly what the new Toy Story 5 teaser (soundtracked by INXS) touches on. In a 50-second preview released by Pixar on Tuesday (Nov. 11), Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Mr. Potato Head […]
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With the release of A Very Awesome Yo Gabba Gabba! Christmas! holiday album and ahead of its season two debut in early 2026, season one of the reboot series Yo Gabba Gabbaland! is available to stream on Apple TV for subscribers only.
How to Watch Yo Gabba Gabbaland! Online for Free
A subscription to Apple TV can give you access to stream Yo Gabba Gabbaland! online. Apple TV is ad-free and goes for $12.99 per month, or $99 per year. You can watch everything the streamer has to offer, including original titles, such as Pluribus, The Morning Show, For All Mankind, Severance, Long Way Home and Long Way Up, Servant, Silo, Invasion, Foundation, Lessons in Chemistry, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Masters of the Air and more.
The service also includes music documentaries and programming, like 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, K-Pop Idols, Carpool Karaoke and others. Apple TV has access to live sports, including Friday Night Baseball.
Not a subscriber? Sign up for a seven-day free trial to watch Yo Gabba Gabbaland!.
Created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, Yo Gabba Gabbaland! is a reboot series of Yo Gabba Gabba! with host Kammy Kam taking over for DJ Lance Rock. It features the original Gabba friends, Muno, Foofa, Plex, Brobee, and Toodee. The reboot series features musical guests, including Flea, Diplo, Betty Who, Thundercat, The Linda Lindas, Kurt Vile, Miyavi and others.
You can watch Yo Gabba Gabbaland! season 1 on Apple TV now, while season two is set to drop starting on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. . You can watch for free with a seven-day free trial. In the meantime, watch the trailer for season one below.
Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.
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A$AP Relli has abandoned plans to retread his shooting claims against A$AP Rocky at a second trial early next year, telling Billboard through a lawyer that he’s instead “focusing on rebuilding his life.”
Rocky (Rakim Mayers) was acquitted at a criminal trial this past February of shooting Relli (Terrell Ephron), his childhood friend and onetime A$AP Mob collaborator, in 2021. Relli brought an assault lawsuit in 2022 seeking financial damages from the star rapper over the same alleged incident.
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The civil case was scheduled to go to trial in January, with Relli facing a lower burden of proof than the one prosecutors failed to meet in their criminal case against Rocky. But an attorney for Relli, Aaron Morris, tells Billboard on Tuesday (Nov. 11) that his client has decided to drop the assault claims.
“At this point, he’s ready to simply move on from the shooting,” Morris said. “The ordeal has been a nightmare for him, and the statements calling him a ‘liar’ and worse effectively eliminated his chances of a career in the industry.”
Morris said his team will file court papers officially dismissing the assault lawsuit later this week. Relli is still pursuing a separate defamation lawsuit against both Rocky and his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, over press interviews in which they called the shooting claims “extortion” and a “get-rich-quick-scheme.” Relli alleges these statements harmed his reputation and career as an artist manager.
“He’s going to litigate the defamation action because of the damages it caused, but as to the shooting, he’s thankful he wasn’t hurt worse and is focusing on rebuilding his life,” says Morris.
Rocky’s reps did not immediately return a request for comment.
Rocky and Relli were involved in a now-infamous altercation near a Hollywood hotel in November 2021. Relli alleges Rocky fired a handgun at him twice during the argument, while the rapper maintains it was a prop gun filled with blanks.
Prosecutors charged Rocky with two felony assault counts in 2022. The Grammy-nominated Harlem rapper rejected a plea offer from prosecutors and went to trial, risking a maximum of 24 years in prison if convicted. Rocky’s bet ultimately paid off, with a Los Angeles jury fully acquitting him of both counts.
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During last year’s Wicked press tour, Ariana Grande earned viral moments at the drop of a hat — and one of her funniest clips found her somewhat playfully challenging the validity of the 1969 moon landing during a Vanity Fair lie detector test. Back on the promotional circuit for Wicked: For Good, Grande encountered the moon landing question a second time, with co-star Bowen Yang lobbing the inquiry instead of Cynthia Erivo.
“I feel like we have some air to clear,” Grande said as she got hooked up to the polygraph. “That moon thing doesn’t sit well with me. I think sometimes I get nervous. Is it picking up truth or lie, or is it picking up waves of panic? The moon landing has happened! And f— off if it didn’t!”
After Yang reminded Grande that her last moon landing answer was ruled “inconclusive,” he asked the “Twilight Zone” singer a second time. She responded, “I wanna move past it,” before her Wicked: For Good co-star asked if she believed Gayle King and Katy Perry went to the moon earlier this year. “No, because they didn’t,” she replied. “They orbited the Earth… or went for a few minutes up and down.”
While Grande was correct in this specific instance (the Blue Origin crew went 60 miles above the Earth), Yang continued his intergalactic line of questioning, asking Grande if she would sing for her “fellow travelers,” as Perry famously did, should she ever have the opportunity to visit space. “No, I wouldn’t sing in space,” she promptly responded. “I wouldn’t do that trip, personally. I do love space, but I’m staying right here for now. I think it makes sense. I’ll look from my yard or from a plane, not breaking certain layers.”
Like any great investigator, Yang gave Grande a brief break to talk about potentially confronting impersonators before returning to the moon. “Do you believe that there is a flag planted on the moon?” he asked, to which Grande replied, “Bowen… I hear both arguments. The truth is: I don’t give a rat’s ass! I’m worried about Earth, goddamn it! We’re burning alive! We’re killing each other! Can we worry about Earth for five minutes? Who gives a f— about the moon and the flag! How did you get me here again? You guys!”
Safe to say, Grande handled this lie detector test a bit more smoothly than the last one. And she also got a chance give some of the Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live star’s energy right back to him. “Did you enjoy kissing me?” Ariana asked in reference to the smooch the pair shared during a 2024 SNL episode. “It was the only time I kissed someone where a crowd screamed in horror, so I think I liked it?”
Taking it one step further, Grande then asked if she was a better kisser than Sydney Sweeney, whom Yang kissed in another SNL episode. “You were,” he replied. “Because she and I did it in a very rushed way. We had an intimacy coordinator, lovely woman, who was like ‘Keep the lips closed, no tongue,’ and I was like ‘Got it.’”
Grande and Yang’s lie detector marathon arrives just over a week before Wicked: For Good, the sequel to 2024’s Oscar-winning Wicked, hits theaters on Nov. 21. Alongside favorites from the Broadway musical’s second act like “For Good” and “No Good Dead,” the show’s legendary composer, Stephen Schwartz, penned two new songs for the Jon M. Chu-helmed film. Grande’s Glinda will perform “The Girl in the Bubble,” while Erivo’s Elphaba will sing “No Place Like Home.” Last week, Grande, Erivo and the entire Wicked cast mounted a television special titled Wicked: One Wonderful Night to celebrate the release of Wicked: For Good.
Check out Grande and Yang’s complete lie detector test below.
Trending on Billboard Sabrina Carpenter‘s years-in-the-making Alice in Wonderland project is finally happening, with the pop star recently inking a deal to produce and star in a musical film for Universal Pictures in collaboration with Lorene Scafaria. As reported by multiple outlets on Tuesday (Nov. 11), Carpenter is moving forward with the major studio picture […]
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A new lawsuit alleges Downtown Music Holdings threw a licensing partner under the bus as a “sacrifice” to lessen regulatory scrutiny of its controversial acquisition by Universal Music Group (UMG).
The $375 million complaint, filed on Monday (Nov. 10) in Manhattan federal court, centers on Downtown’s relationship with YouTube music provider Blast Off Media. According to the lawsuit, Downtown unlawfully ended its distribution contract with Blast Off — and destroyed an entire music catalog in the process — over concerns regarding the European Commission’s review of Downtown’s proposed $775 million merger with UMG’s Virgin Music Group.
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“This case exemplifies precisely the type of conduct that opponents of the UMG/Downtown acquisition warned about: a major-label-owned entity destroying an independent operator’s business when it became inconvenient, using pretextual compliance concerns as cover for bad faith economic motivations,” writes Blast Off’s lawyer, JP Kernisan of Quinn Emanuel.
In a statement provided to Billboard on Tuesday (Nov. 11), a Downtown spokesperson said the company properly terminated the Blast Off contract upon realizing that Blast Off’s music catalog was being “widely leveraged to monetize reused or unlicensed content on YouTube.”
“We will defend ourselves vigorously against these baseless and frivolous claims,” the Downtown spokesperson added.
Blast Off’s business model centers on a library of roughly 800 free backing tracks on YouTube. The company allows creators to add these songs to their videos, then runs advertisements on the content and shares music royalties with the creators. Blast Off signed a distribution deal with Downtown in August, tapping the indie music heavyweight to run point on monetizing its sound recordings and navigating YouTube’s copyright claims process.
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But Downtown ended the contract after little more than a month in early October amid what it said were concerns about supposed copyright infringement in videos that used Blast Off’s music. However, Blast Off alleges in Monday’s lawsuit that this was an “absurdly disproportionate” reaction to just two user-generated videos that were flagged and quickly dealt with.
“Defendants failed to identify any wrongdoing by Blast Off as opposed to by third-party content creators over whom Blast Off has no control [and] ignored Blast Offs extensive good-faith compliance efforts, including proactive identification and removal of problematic content and implementation of Al-powered monitoring systems,” reads the complaint.
Blast Off alleges that Downtown’s “true motives” in terminating the contract were tied to regulatory approval of the UMG merger; according to the complaint, Downtown needed to maintain favorable “compliance optics” to get the deal through.
“Any issues with its key platform partner YouTube — whether legitimate or not — could negatively impact the acquisition,” writes Blast Off’s counsel. “Downtown preemptively chose to sacrifice Blast Off’s rights rather than work through routine compliance matters out of an abundance of caution to protect its larger financial interests during a sensitive period.”
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The “catastrophic” result of all this, claims the lawsuit, is that Downtown has since delisted the entire Blast Off catalog from YouTube. This is allegedly depriving Blast Off of more than $40,000 in revenue per day — and worse, the company says, its music library now carries a “permanent stigma” and will never bounce back to its original worth.
Blast Off estimates its financial damages to be at least $375 million, citing a $250 million valuation for its catalog before the delisting. The company is accusing Downtown of fraudulent inducement and breach of contract, among a slew of other civil claims.
Downtown’s spokesperson denies all of Blast Off’s allegations and maintains that the contract termination was “appropriate and necessary” after they “determined that BlastOff Media’s content was in flagrant violation of YouTube’s terms of service.”
According to Downtown’s reps, the issues with Blast Off went far beyond just two YouTube videos, as the lawsuit claims. They say instead that Downtown determined, via a thorough review, that a significant amount of the videos incorporating Blast Off’s music were unoriginal or unlicensed, and that, in some cases, the music was embedded inaudibly, thus monetizing ineligible video content in violation of YouTube’s content policy.
“Downtown is proud to uphold the highest trust and safety standards on behalf of our clients, our partners and the broader industry,” said the company’s spokesperson. “This includes our role as one of the founders of the Music Fights Fraud Alliance, which was launched to help combat content abuse, including the parasitic exploitation exemplified by Blast Off Media.”
