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Three years after Downtown Music sold its 145,000-song catalog — including works performed by Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Beyoncé — the president of its publishing division says it makes more money than it did when it owned copyrights.
That reveal comes amid Monday’s announcement that Universal Music Group’s Virgin Music Group is buying Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in an all-cash deal expected to close by mid-next year.
Emily Stephenson, who since 2023 has been president of Downtown’s suite of publishing companies (Downtown Music Publishing, Songtrust and Sheer), says her division will generate more than $200 million in revenue in 2024, a 40% increase from last year and a higher gross than it had in 2020, the year before Concord bought its catalog.
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“We are in the middle of extreme growth mode right now,” says Stephenson, who has overseen client acquisition, business development, A&R, rights management and client services for Downtown since March 2023.
Since Stephenson took the lead, the publishing division has signed deals with indie rockers The National, Spirit Music Group and Peso Pluma’s Double P Records. According to the company, it now serves some 2 million songwriters and clients in over 60 countries — more than 40% of them outside the United States — manages over 1.5 million copyrights and has distributed over $100 million in royalties through Songtrust.
Access to additional funds has helped. In May, Downtown announced it secured another $500 million in credit from Bank of America — on top of its previous $200 million credit facility — to finance advances.
“We have been earnestly and aggressively putting that money to work,” Stephenson says, by offering competitive advances without forcing independent creators to give up any rights. As a result, “We think we’re growing at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the industry,” she says.
That growth is one of Downtown’s draws. The combined market share held by independent distribution and music companies — i.e. non-major labels and self-releasing artists — rose to 36.7% in 2023, up from 28.6% in 2015, according to MIDiA Research. As a result, the majors have made acquisitions and investments to defend their market share. Downtown’s scale and position of dominance in this segment made it an attractive way for UMG to grow.
However, Downtown’s growth has also led to customer complaints of long wait times at Songtrust and concerns that the platform is becoming more exclusive. Stephenson says there are no plans to restrict who can sign up for Songtrust, adding that over the past year, Songtrust has cut the average response time to customer complaints from 33 days to 17 hours.
Stephenson, 35, has spent more than a decade at Downtown and previously served as Downtown Music vp of business operations, and she says roughly 70% of the managers in her division have similarly long tenures.
That experience has helped with client retention and led to facilitating opportunities. This past summer, “Parade” by French composer Victor le Masne, a Downtown client, became the official theme song for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. This holiday season, the team landed Griff’s cover of the Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory classic “Pure Imagination” in Target’s Christmas campaign.
“We are the only player doing this at scale for indie songwriters globally,” Stephenson says. “I think our future is bright.”
A version of this story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
New year, new Madonna music! The Queen of Pop took to Instagram on Monday (Dec. 16) to reveal that she’s been in the studio with DJ, songwriter and producer Stuart Price. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Working on new music with Stuart Price. these past few […]
Songwriter, producer and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder is set to receive an Honorary Clio Music Award at the 2025 Clio Music Awards at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Jan. 30. The award celebrates Tedder’s creative legacy and enduring impact on popular culture.
Tedder has collaborated with such artists as Adele, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Leona Lewis, Justin Bieber and Lil Nas X. Tedder’s influence also extends to global brand campaigns for Sprite, Hertz and Samsung.
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Tedder, 45, has received three Grammy Awards, all for album of the year, for his work on Adele’s 21 and 25, and Swift’s 1989. He has been nominated for 11 Grammys total so far – 10 for production work for other artists and one as an artist (best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals for Timbaland’s “Apologize,” on which OneRepublic was featured).
OneRepublic has had four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – “Apologize” (No. 2 in 2007), “The Good Life” (No. 8 in 2011), “Counting Stars” (No. 2 in 2014) and “I Ain’t Worried” (No. 6 in 2022). In addition, Tedder has had one top 10 hit under his own name, Far*East Movement’s Rocketeer” on which he was featured (No. 7 in 2011).
“We’re thrilled to honor the unparalleled contributions of Ryan Tedder, alongside an exceptional lineup of Grand Clio Music Award winners and special guests,” Michael Kauffman, executive director of Clio Music, said in a statement. “As we celebrate during Grammy week in Los Angeles, it’s the perfect moment to recognize the groundbreaking creativity and cultural impact that drives our industry forward.”
Clio Music, founded in 2014, is one of five verticals developed by the Clios to celebrate creative excellence in a specialized field. The Clios were founded in 1959 to celebrate creative excellence in advertising around the world.
ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” resides in the penthouse of both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts for an eighth week. The song debuted as the stars’ second leader on each survey.
Plus, six seasonal songs decorate the rankings’ top 10s, while ROSÉ adds a second concurrent and third total Global Excl. U.S. top 10 with the debut of “Toxic Till the End” at No. 6. The song is from the BLACKPINK member’s first solo album, Rosie, which launches at No. 3 on the U.S.-based Billboard 200.
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The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
“APT.” rules the Global 200 with 147.7 million streams (down 1%) and 18,000 sold (up 4%) worldwide Dec. 6-12. The hit now claims eight of the top nine global streaming weeks among songs released in 2024:
224.5 million, “APT.,” ROSÉ & Bruno Mars, Nov. 2
207.5 million, “APT.,” Nov. 9
176.8 million, “Fortnight,” Taylor Swift feat. Post Malone, May 4
162.2 million, “APT.,” Nov. 16
160.6 million, “APT.,” Dec. 7
149.9 million, “APT.,” Dec. 14
147.7 million, “APT.,” Dec. 21
146.4 million, “APT.,” Nov. 23
132.7 million, “APT.,” Nov. 30
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” holds at No. 2 on the Global 200. Released in 1994, the song has spent a record 18 weeks at No. 1 dating to the chart’s start (five each over the 2023 and 2022 holidays and four in both the 2021 and 2020 holiday seasons).
Four other carols rank in the Global 200’s top 10: Wham’s “Last Christmas” (11-4), Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (6-5), Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (8-6) and Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” (13-10). The songs have hit respective Nos. 2, 2, 4 and 5 highs.
Plus, Lady Gaga and Mars’ “Die With a Smile” dips 3-4 on the Global 200, following eight weeks at No. 1, the most for any song this year, beginning in September. It drew 120.6 million streams (up 5%) worldwide in the latest tracking frame and has tallied over 100 million streams globally in each of the last 15 weeks, the longest such streak since the chart began.
“APT.” concurrently tops Global Excl. U.S. with 129.9 million streams (down 2%) and 12,000 sold (down 3%) outside the U.S. Dec. 6-12.
“Die With a Smile” holds at No. 2 on Global Excl. U.S.. following eight weeks at No. 1 starting in September; Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” repeats at No. 3, having spent a record-tying 13 weeks at No. 1; Wham’s “Last Christmas” keeps at No. 4, after reaching No. 2; and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” lifts 6-5, following three weeks at No. 1 in August.
ROSÉ’s “Toxic Till the End” debuts at No. 6 on Global Excl. U.S. with 50.4 million streams and 4,000 sold outside the U.S. The BLACKPINK member achieves her third solo top 10 on the chart; the quartet and members Jennie and LISA as soloists have each notched four top 10s, while the act’s Jisoo has scored one top 10 solo.
Meanwhile, three more holiday hits make sleigh rides through Global Excl. U.S. top 10: Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (10-8); Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (16-9); and Sia’s “Snowman” (12-10). The songs have reached highs of Nos. 3, 5 and 4, respectively.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated Dec. 21, 2024) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, Dec. 17. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Over the years, as Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist and producer Alissia was growing her career, she started hosting kickbacks at her New York-based studio called The Spaceship. She’d invite artists, musicians and DJs in hopes that they would connect – and maybe even collaborate.
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“Organically, I would invite people to come through, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, send me a playlist of this.’ And then they would connect and exchange numbers,” she says. “Nowadays, features happen by sending a track through text or email. We were losing a little bit of that humanness and that magic that happens when you really get to know the person and vibe.”
But last year, her gatherings outgrew The Spaceship; in June 2023, Alissia expanded the series into an exclusive party called Boogie Nights, with its first edition launching at New York’s Virgin Hotel. “There’s a photo booth, there’s little popcorn holders. There’s logos and stickers, and it’s all disco balls. There’s a Le Freak C’est Chic Martini,” she says. “I wanted to make it a cute, elevated experience.”
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Alissia and Anderson .Paak
Kathy Rosario
Inspired by Studio 54, Boogie Nights became the grooviest alternative option for creatives in the music and fashion industries, who were craving something more meaningful than the club scene but still wanted to be outside. Boogie Nights has since become one of the hottest tickets in town, with just five gatherings happening so far, including this February during Los Angeles’ Grammy week (held at the West Hollywood EDITION hotel) and most recently this September for New York Fashion Week (held at the event’s PUBLIC hotel homebase).
“At the last Boogie Nights [during NYFW], Ravyn Lenae sat in and we did a song that’s coming out that we did together,” says Alissia — adding that a goal is to feature new music that recently dropped or is just about to. And prior to that, Alissia’s frequent collaborator Anderson .Paak (who spins vinyl as DJ Pee Wee) had A-list guests like Lucky Daye and Leon Thomas dancing under the 400 disco balls that cover the ceiling of Los Angeles’ Sunset at EDITION during her pre-Grammy party earlier this year.
As for the upcoming Grammys? Alissia confirms she plans to bring Boogie Nights back to LA, previously telling Billboard: “LA is the perfect place, Grammys is the perfect time.”
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 all this week — having already revealed our Honorable Mentions, our Comeback of the Year and our Rookie of the Year artists all last week, and our No. 10 Greatest Pop Star earlier today. Now, at No. 9, we remember the year in Billie Eilish — who continued one of the great pop star runs of the past decade with a year that felt like her really coming into her own in particularly new and rewarding ways.
By January 2024, Billie Eilish had already accomplished more in roughly five years than most pop stars do in a lifetime. The numbers spoke for themselves; since her breakthrough in 2019, the singer accrued 7 Grammys, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a No. 1 single alongside four other top 10 hits on the Hot 100, two No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200 and a sold-out arena tour. By practically every metric, Eilish had more than earned her place in the pantheon of modern pop greats.
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Where others might have rested on their laurels, Eilish spent her 2024 cementing her status as a leading artist of her generation while creating her own version of pop stardom. The scrappy, goth-core teenager who took over the world in 2019 was gone, replaced by a young woman finally starting to find her footing in a turbulent world.
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It helped that the start of her year saw spillover success from an otherwise-quiet 2023. Even in an off-cycle year, the singer-songwriter unleashed the languishing ballad “What Was I Made For?” from the Barbie soundtrack, capturing a world-worn sense of ennui that could have easily eluded a 21-year-old pop singer-songwriter. For her existentialist efforts, Eilish was rewarded, taking home two more Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar in 2024, breaking new records with each respective award.
But Eilish had no intention to spend her 2024 victory-lapping. After spending the better part of two years battling writer’s block with her collaborator and big brother Finneas, Eilish found her sound — not quite the brooding alt-pop experimentation of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, nor the melodic, torch-bearing introspection of Happier Than Ever, but a nebulous middle ground between the two — and announced the impending release Hit Me Hard and Soft in April. There would be no singles, no previews, no teases: As she told Rolling Stone, “every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it.” Instead, she insisted, the fans would just have to wait and listen.
It was clear from that first listen that Eilish’s subversive strategy was paying off. While critics praised both of the singer’s previous LPs for their emotional frankness, Hit Me landed haymakers of honesty across each of its 10 tracks, as Eilish dissected body dysmorphia (“Skinny”), disconnection (“Chihiro”), unreciprocated affection (“The Greatest”) and the obsessive attention of fans (“The Diner”) — all topics she’d touched on before, but never with this level of in-depth self-awareness. Meanwhile, Finneas’ production took everything that worked on her last two projects, blended it all together and added in new shades to create an isolated sonic universe for Hit Me to occupy. There’s a reason both Billie and Finneas compared her album to Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die and Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory — Hit Me Hard and Soft was, in fact, an “album-ass album.”
From the word go, it became readily apparent that the album hit hard, not soft, with fans. For the first time in her career, Eilish debuted every song from the album on the Hot 100, all of them within the chart’s top 40. She also sold a career-high 339,000 units in one week. Yes, Hit Me did become her first album not to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — but when you consider her competition was Taylor Swift’s monolithic The Tortured Poets Department, still selling 378,000 units in its fifth of 17 total weeks (and counting) atop the chart so far, it becomes clear how huge Hit Me Hard and Soft truly was.
One of the biggest stories to come out of the album’s release week, though, was the official first single announced after its release — the sexy, sapphic “Lunch.” Bearing a similar sonic bravado to her lone Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Bad Guy,” the song’s sweltering bassline kicks up under Eilish’s casually confident croon, as she opines about the pleasures of … well, pleasure. “I could eat that girl for lunch/ Yeah, she dances on my tongue/ Tastes like she might be the one,” she winks on the track. After a rocky coming out in late 2023, here was Eilish taking control of the narrative, setting the record straight (well, you get it) and saying exactly how she felt about the women around her. Plus, the fans were clearly eating “Lunch” up — the song bowed at No. 5 on the Hot 100, the highest debut on the chart in Eilish’s career.
It wouldn’t be the last time Eilish waxed poetic about the art of femme-focused seduction in 2024 either — months later, on a blockbuster remix of Charli XCX’s Brat deluxe track “Guess,” Eilish would double down as she complimented her love interest’s underwear, before slyly looking to her collaborator: “Charli likes boys, but she knows I’d hit it.” Both “Lunch” and “Guess” became key fixtures in what observers referred to as the sapphic pop renaissance of the summer, where women singing about their love for women took over the cultural conversation. As artists like Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp dominated the festival circuit, Eilish’s odes to flirtation and feasting flitted around the Hot 100’s top 40.
Yet the great benefit of Eilish’s release strategy had yet to fully pay off. As “Lunch” and most of the rest of Hit Me’s songs moved down the charts in the weeks following their release, one song began to slowly glide up the charts. It wasn’t ambient, slap-bass featuring “Chihiro,” the song Eilish had filmed a music video for and signaled as her followup single — rather, the lovestruck, ‘80s-tinged “Birds of a Feather” emerged from the nest, gradually soaring up the Hot 100.
“Birds,” by almost every measure, is unlike other Billie Eilish songs. Over plinking synths and low-key acoustic guitar strums, a smitten Eilish sings about an uncomplicated, eternal kind of love — the kind of love that, in so many of her other songs, had notably eluded her. Gone are the sneaky, off-kilter production tricks from breakout When We All Fall Asleep, now replaced by a simple melody. Even Billie’s vocals evolve throughout the song; her signature airy head-voice shifts down into a stunning, full-throated belt by the song’s conclusion.
Perhaps that’s why fans became so enamored with the track. The song quickly found an audience on TikTok, soundtracking thousands of videos celebrating users’ friendships and relationships, as Eilish’s voice promised that she couldn’t “change the weather,” but that “if it’s forever, it’s even better.” Even though the track wasn’t necessarily intended to be a single, the fans had spoken: by July, the label had officially serviced the the track to radio as the album’s second official single. “Birds” quickly rose to No. 1 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart in August, where it’s ruled for a combined 18 weeks and counting. After giving a beachside performance of the song for the Olympic handover celebration in August, the song continued climbing up the Pop Airplay chart until it reached No. 1 in September, where it earned an eight-week stay at the summit. After the release of the track’s paranormal video at the end of September, “Birds” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100, become one of Eilish’s career-defining hits.
It’s fitting that Eilish earned her latest breakout track without meaning to – that seemed to be her standard mode of operations over the last year. The singer had insisted since her breakthrough that she had zero interest in being a role model for her fans — after all, she was still figuring out how to live her life, how could she be expected to show others how to live theirs? Even this year, she continued to point out that she will not be the new poster child for mental health issues or queer identity (both more than fair decisions on her part, considering both issues are intrinsic to her private life).
But Eilish did spend much of 2024 making good use of her platform to try and leave the world a better place than she found it. Where the music industry has been found to be extremely lacking on environmental issues, Eilish spoke up about how she and her team placed sustainability at the forefront of her career. The singer called out the industry standard of releasing multiple vinyl variants to drive sales as “so wasteful,” especially with the lack of using recycled materials when it comes to vinyl. When the 2024 presidential election rolled around, Eilish threw her weight behind Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, praising her advocacy not only for the environment, but for women’s issues, LGBTQ+ rights and more.
Even as December rolls around, Eilish is still reaping the rewards of her big year. A July performance of her song “Wildflower” sprouted up all over TikTok, sending the song back into the top 40 before falling off for the holiday season. The album — which remains in the Billboard 200’s top 10 six months after its release — also earned Eilish a massive 7 Grammy nominations for 2025, including album of the year.
Yet for all of her massive career wins in 2024, it’s her personal journey to self-discovery this year that might best reflect Eilish’s place in our current pop culture discourse. For the first time since she blasted into the public eye as the chaotic, feisty, goth girl next door, the singer-songwriter seems to have found the lane that she is most comfortable in — one where she’s not limited by the perceptions put upon her by anyone other than herself. In the choose-your-own-adventure book that is the modern music industry, Billie Eilish finally seems to have found a storyline of pop stardom that she can work best with; it just so happens that she wrote this one herself.
Check back tomorrow for our Nos. 8 and 7 Greatest Pop Stars, and stay tuned all week as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23!
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One of country music’s favorite holiday traditions airs on TV tonight with Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry. The annual musical event features some of the biggest stars in country music performing in front of a live audience at Nashville’s famed Grand Ole Opry House.
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Want to watch the Christmas special? Here’s what you need to know.
How to Watch Christmas at the Opry 2024 on TV
Little Big Town‘s Christmas at the Opry airs tonight, December 16 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. You can watch the 2024 Christmas at the Opry special on TV through your local NBC affiliate.
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How to Stream Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry Online
You can also watch Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry online without cable by streaming it through a live TV service, like DirecTV Stream, Fubo, or Hulu + Live TV. All three streamers carry a live feed of NBC so you can watch Christmas at the Opry live online.
Use this free trial to DirecTV Stream to livestream Christmas at the Opry online for free. Your free trial lasts for five days, so you can use it to test out all of DirecTV Stream’s offerings to find the plan that works best for you.
We also like Fubo, which offers a live NBC feed that you can use to watch the Little Big Town special online without cable. Grab this 7-day free trial to Fubo to stream the holiday show for free. Fubo’s free trial includes free DVR, so you can record the broadcast to watch back later.
Following its live broadcast on December 16, the special will be available for streaming on Peacock the next day. Peacock subscribers can log into their account to stream Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry on-demand. Not a subscriber? Sign up for Peacock here, with plans from $7.99/month.
Who Is Performing at Christmas at the Opry 2024?
In addition to Little Big Town, this year’s Christmas at the Opry event features performances from Dan + Shay, Kelsea Ballerini, Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, Kate Hudson, Kirk Franklin and Orville Peck. The holiday special features a mix of solo performances, duets and special collaborations on both festive hits and fan favorite songs.
Little Big Town’s hosting gig comes on the heels of their 25th anniversary as a group. The country four-some also released their first holiday album in October, appropriately titled, The Christmas Album.
Chappell Roan gave a standout performance on Saturday Night Live when she served as musical guest in November, but according to the pop star, the live showcase was seconds away from a fashion disaster.
While speaking to Nardwuar for a life-spanning interview published Monday (Dec. 16), Roan opened up about the major wardrobe malfunction that occurred just moments before she went on stage at 30 Rock to sing “Pink Pony Club,” for which she wore a custom white-jeweled floor-length gown. The look — which she complemented with her signature drag glam and faux hips — looked flawless on screen, but that’s only because of some quick thinking from the SNL costumers, Roan says.
“It ripped all the way down the back right before I walked on stage,” the “Hot to Go” singer told Nardwuar, pointing to her neck and lower back to demonstrate how long the tear stretched. “I had to have SNL‘s in-house seamstress … I was sewn into the dress because it ripped all the way down.”
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Roan also performed her unreleased song “The Giver” on the John Mulaney-hosted episode. The country track is expected to appear on the VMA winner’s highly anticipated sophomore album, which will follow her Billboard 200 No. 2 breakout LP The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
While speaking to Nardwuar, Roan also touched on her recent Grammy nominations, growing up in Missouri, giving a guest lecture on queer identity to Harvard medical students and taking inspiration to work with drag queens on tour from Orville Peck. Plus, the “Good Luck, Babe!” hitmaker detailed meeting Billboard‘s latest cover star Tyler, the Creator, at this year’s Austin City Limits, where both artists performed in October.
“He’s awesome,” she said of the “Sticky” rapper. “He was hiding in the shadows as I got offstage. He was just kind of lurking over in the corner, and my tour manager was like, ‘Hey, Tyler wants to meet you.’ He gave me a lot of good advice about paparazzi — I don’t have paparazzi, but when I do — I took notes. And he thanked me for speaking up about some stuff that I spoke up on.”
Watch Roan’s interview with Nardwuar above.
In July, six women — Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Ariana Grande and Charli XCX — cracked the top 10 of the Billboard 200, the first time that had happened since 2019. And when Grammy nominations were announced Nov. 8, six of the eight slots for record, album and song of the year were headlined by women — the second year in a row women had such high representation in the major categories. Women artists are ruling pop music in 2024.
At the major companies that power these superstars, however, women have been leaving powerful roles — moves that have rattled other women fighting for inclusion and influence at the top of the business. Between Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music and Warner Music Group (WMG) — the three major music companies — there were four labels that started this year with women CEOs: Capitol Music Group’s Michelle Jubelirer, Atlantic Music Group’s Julie Greenwald, Epic Records’ Sylvia Rhone and UMG Nashville’s Cindy Mabe. Eleven months later, that number has dropped: Rhone, who is also one of very few Black CEOs in the major label system, is the only one left at the coastal majors. And a number of other women left music’s C-suites this year as part of major-label restructurings that impacted both genders.
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It hasn’t been all bad news for women execs: Mabe is still in place at UMG Nashville, and Taylor Lindsey, who had been vp of A&R, will take the chairman/CEO role at Sony Music Nashville at the top of 2025. But the high-profile departures have shaken the confidence of many women music executives, says a high-ranking woman in the industry: “It makes them nervous because people like Julie Greenwald didn’t take shit from anybody. And the message is, ‘Oh my God, look at that. If they can let Julie Greenwald go, anybody can go.’”
The CEOs of the industry’s biggest streaming services, promotion companies and most agencies, meanwhile, are all men; many distribution CEOs are, too. Publishing and Nashville both fare better, but the industry is largely led by men in the top jobs. Most of the top indie labels are led by men as well.
Jubelirer, Greenwald, Rhone, Mabe and former Motown CEO/chair Ethiopia Habtemariam, who left her role at the end of 2022 and was not replaced, either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Despite the varied reasons for these departures, the decline in the number of women among music’s top ranks marks a step backwards during a decade that started with the Black Lives Matter movement and the major music companies pledging to better embrace diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. As Andreea Gleeson, CEO of TuneCore, puts it, “There’s not a full effort being made and that’s really dangerous. To drive meaningful change in the diversity of your company, you need to be committed to it. That starts at the top.”
Natalie Prospere, founder and CEO of the label, publishing and live events company Friends Only, says she hasn’t been surprised by the recent exits. “I knew this was going to happen. Nobody actually wants to stand for anything other than posting a black square on your Instagram.”
There are still many women in COO, president, GM and other chief-level or department-head roles across the major label system. But the actual CEOs are still almost all white men. According to Believe, Tunecore and MIDiA Research’s fourth annual “Be The Change” women’s equality in music study, in 2024, 49% of women also believe that the music industry is still “generally discriminative” based on gender. The study also found that women in music are twice as likely as men to discover they are paid less than colleagues in the same or similar roles.
“When you see the scarcity of female executives in the music industry, coupled with the way female executives are treated, how, as a young woman in the industry, can you not question your ability to succeed?” says a female former label executive.
At the labels, Jubelirer was the first to go this year. In February, amid reports that Capitol and its parent company UMG were restructuring, Jubelirer stepped down from her post, which she held since the end of 2021, as Capitol’s first female CEO in its entire 80-year history. Had she stayed, Jubelirer would have been effectively demoted, moved from being the head of her own family of record labels and reporting straight to UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, to being under the umbrella of the newly formed Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG) and reporting to ICLG chairman/CEO John Janick. She was replaced by Tom March, a British-born executive who most recently led Interscope offshoot Geffen Records.
Then, in September, Greenwald announced her exit from her role at Atlantic Music Group, a company she co-led for 20 years, the latter two as its first female CEO in its own 70-plus-year history, amid a similar restructuring in WMG’s recorded music division. She was replaced by Grainge’s son, Elliot Grainge, the founder/CEO of WMG-acquired label 10K Projects.
These high-profile exits come two years after Habtemariam, chair/CEO at Motown, stepped down from her post when rumors began to circulate that Motown would lose its status as a standalone label and would be reintegrated under Capitol Music Group, which ultimately did happen. While the label’s profitability during Habtemariam’s tenure is unclear, Habtemariam took Motown’s U.S. current market share from 0.85% to 1.30%.
The recent executive departures are even more troubling to some women in the industry given the challenges these women had faced getting to their top posts in the first place. When Steve Barnett retired as Capitol Music Group CEO at the end of 2019, Jubelirer, an attorney who worked her way up over a decade to become COO of Capitol, was believed by many to be the next in line. Instead, the role was given to Capitol Records president Jeff Vaughn. (Under Vaughn, Capitol’s current market share dipped from 7.36% in 2020 to 5.64% in 2021. He was replaced by Jubelirer in less than a year). While market share cannot tell the full story of Capitol Music Group financials at the time, Jubelirer then grew CMG market share by almost a full percentage point from 2022 to 2023.
While Mary Rahmani, CEO and founder of Moon Projects, a joint venture label/publisher with Republic Records/Warner Chappell Music, says she came up in the major label business around “lots of women assistants and coordinators,” there were not many women executives to look up to. “If there were any, they were specifically in PR, radio and sync. I didn’t really see many badass women A&R or marketing executives, and I always wished there were more examples for me.”
Years later, when Rahmani was on maternity leave with her first child, she was cut from the major label she worked for during a sweep of layoffs. Reflecting on the experience now, she says it “wasn’t personal,” but feels motherhood is often a reason why it’s harder for women to climb up the ladder in the way men, even men who have children, do. “It’s for sure a big reason. I think a lot of women in the mid-level phase take a step back once they have a family.”
At Billboard’s Women in Music event in March, Jubelirer accepted the award for Executive of the Year and highlighted another way women face extra adversity in the workplace: their presentation. “Women, do these comments sound familiar?” Jubelirer addressed the crowd. “‘You’re too emotional.’ ‘You don’t have to be so direct when you talk.’ We all know that’s code for ‘Stop being a bitch.’ ‘You should smile more.’ … We know that it takes quite a bit of fortitude to present our true selves in the workplace and rebel against those stereotypes that have been expected of women.”
In some other areas of the music business, women fare better in their share of CEO roles. Though it’s far from gender parity, the publishing sector is a bright spot. Many of publishing’s most respected leaders are women, including Universal Music Publishing Group’s CEO/chair Jody Gerson, who has held her post for a decade, and Warner Chappell’s COO/co-chair Carianne Marshall at the majors and Reservoir Media’s founder/CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi and Peermusic’s CEO Mary Megan Peer at the large independents.
“It’s likely a result of a positive feedback loop,” says Khosrowshahi of the publishing sector. “As more women rise to the top of various publishing entities, that leads to the success of more women [beneath them].”
Ironically, though women artists in country music struggle to make their voices heard on country radio, the presence of female CEOs and chairs is stronger in Nashville. Today, all three major labels in town have women in their highest ranks: Mabe is chair/CEO of UMG Nashville, Lindsey is soon to become chairman/CEO of Sony Nashville, and Cris Lacy is co-chair/co-president of Warner Music Nashville.
The C-suites at the majors do have women among their ranks: Alamo, ICLG, The Orchard and Verve all have women COOs in Juliette Jones, Annie Lee, Colleen Theis and Dawn Olejar, respectively; Julie Swidler is general counsel at Sony Music and Erica Bellarosa holds the same title at Atlantic Music Group; Republic Records counts Wendy Goldstein as president/chief creative officer and Donna Gryn as chief marketing officer; Capitol (Lilia Parsa), Columbia (Jenifer Mallory), Virgin (Jacqueline Saturn), Interscope (Michelle An, Nicole Wyskoarko), Atlantic (Lanre Gaba), 10K Projects (Molly McLachlan), 300 Entertainment (Rayna Bass), ADA (Cat Kreidich) and EMPIRE (Tina Davis) all have women with president or co-president titles; and high-ranking women can be found across the corporate majors and individual labels.
But the path to the chief executive’s office remains an especially challenging one — and even then, some women CEOs say they still feel excluded from the conversations, meetings or other gatherings where decision-making happens in their organizations.
When Greenwald was named Billboard’s 2017 Women in Music Executive of the Year, she spoke of how she hoped her platform could lead to more women executives in the next generation. “I love all the women here who put their hands up and say, ‘Listen, at some point I want your chair,’” Greenwald said. “I want someone to come take this chair. I want women to come in with a tape measure.”
The independent music sector has offered executives like Rahmani, Gleeson, Khosrowshahi, Prospere and Milana Rabkin Lewis, co-founder/CEO of STEM Disintermedia, another path, thanks to the growth of indie music’s market share both in the U.S. and abroad. For Rabkin Lewis, who got her start at UTA before founding the distributor/label, she says she wanted to run her own independent company because “I could be more in control. I also wanted to set a new example, and I wanted to create my own path, which potentially had [fewer] road bumps and hurdles than the perceived corporate path.”
Still, a high-ranking female music executive says it’s essential for the next generation to see women in CEO and chairwoman roles at the major labels specifically because “power comes in P&L responsibility, and there’s a scarcity of women at major labels who have P&L responsibility.” Another adds, “The major labels are the front lines… They’re the ones that set the tone for how the industry is going to proceed.”
Representatives for UMG, WMG and Sony declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment.
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 all this week — having already revealed our Honorable Mentions, our Comeback of the Year and our Rookie of the Year artists all last week. Now, at No. 10, we remember the year in Jelly Roll — a late-blooming country superstar whose compelling hits, winning personality and relatable story helped him become one of the most unavoidable artists of 2024.
When he wasn’t taking his now-famous daily cold plunge in an ice bath, Jelly Roll was everywhere in 2024.
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Even if you can’t hum “I Am Not Okay,” which reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the closest Jelly Roll got to a pure pop hit this year, you’re still likely aware of the gregarious rapper-turned-country artist through his sheer ubiquity. Jelly Roll, who turned 40 on Dec. 4, performed on no fewer than 10 collaborations from across the musical spectrum in 2024, alongside the wide-ranging likes of Eminem, Falling in Reverse, Jessie Murph, OneRepublic, Machine Gun Kelly, Halsey, Post Malone, Dustin Lynch and Brooks & Dunn. He also landed three No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for the second year in a row, and topped both the Hard Rock Songs and Mainstream Rock Airplay charts.
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Here’s what it was like to be Jelly Roll in 2024: During one weekend in early February, he paid tribute to Bon Jovi at the 33rd annual MusiCares Person of the Year gala, followed by performing at the illustrious pre-Grammy gala hosted by Clive Davis the next night. And then to cap off the weekend, he also sang at the Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for two trophies and met his longtime crush, Taylor Swift.
Or fast forward to September, where in one four-day span he played his first-ever (sold-out) show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The next day he headlined the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park in the afternoon and was the musical guest on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Then two nights later, he not only performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but he also got coveted couch time on the late night show, an indicator of his celebrity status.
Jelly Roll scored wins across the board as an entertainer in 2024. He may not have taken home any Grammys in February (he’ll get more chances in 2025 after being nominated for two Grammys in November), but the 2024 People’s Choice Awards named him male country artist of the year in February. In April, he snagged both best new artist (pop) and best new artist (country) at the iHeart Awards, and in April, he was the big winner at the CMT Music Awards, winning all three awards he was nominated for, including video of the year (“Need a Favor”)
The winning streak continued in May, two weeks after he had played Stagecoach for the first time (and paid tribute to Toby Keith by performing “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” with T-Pain), when he took home music event of the year for “Save Me” with Lainey Wilson at the ACM Awards. “This song saved me,” he said during his acceptance speech, which reflected his painful past. “I was in a dark place. I thought I would die and go to jail, and I’m standing here today an ACM Awards winner.”
He also won on the health front, losing 100 pounds in a journey he documented on social media (including the daily plunges), and undergoing major dental surgery. It felt like everything he did – no matter how large or small — made the news, from testifying before a Senate committee on the fentanyl crisis and revealing that he and wife Bunnie XO were trying to expand their family via IVF to announcing he regretted getting most of his plentiful tattoos or surprising kids running a lemonade stand with a $700 donation.
He also made musical strides on both the large and small screens, contributing “Dead End Road” to the Twisters: The Album and “Run It” as the only original song in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the third installment of the popular franchise. Meanwhile, new song “Get By” became the ESPN college football anthem for the 2024-25 anthem and “Dead End Road” and “Liar” served as the official theme songs for the WWE SummerSlam, with Jelly performing the atter at the event.
When it seemed like it couldn’t get better, Jelly Roll performed with his hero, Eminem in June at Live From Detroit: The Concert at Michigan Central. They sang “Sing for the Moment,” and a month later, Jelly Roll appeared on “Somebody Save Me” on Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady album.In September, he joined Eminem (via projection) to help open the VMA Awards when the rapper performed a medley of “Houdini” and “Somebody Save Me.”
On Aug. 27 in Salt Lake City, Jelly Roll kicked off his first headlining arena tour. The Beautifully Broken show was part concert/part gospel revival and fully sold out. The tour perfectly set up the Oct. 11 release of his album of the same name, the follow up to 2023’s Whitsitt Chapel, which came out through a new partnership between BMG and Republic. Like its predecessor, the set examined issues close to his heart, including addiction and mental health, that resonated with his growing millions of fans. His hard work paid off: Jelly Roll landed his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums, with sales of 161,000 units sold moved in its debut week,, according to Luminate.
Two nights before Thanksgiving, Jelly Roll wrapped his tour, which grossed $79.3 million and sold 685,000 tickets over 56 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Without even pausing to indulge in some turkey, two days later, Jelly Roll crashed Lainey Wilson’s halftime performance at the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving, for a powerful take on their Country Airplay-topping duet, “Save Me.”
Just as he was seemingly everywhere, Jelly Roll and his music were seemingly for everyone — especially anyone who has ever felt alone or desperate and yearning for redemption. Even The Rock declared that Jelly Roll’s music had helped him through rough times. Though his upbeat demeanor shone through every viral interaction, Jelly Roll’s music was still infused with a questioning darkness that lingers from his teens and 20s spent incarcerated and his 30s struggling to break through musically. But far from being depressing, it’s music that looks at frailties and imperfections not as weaknesses, but part of what makes us gloriously human and unites us.
Though it hardly feels possible, next year seems like it could get even bigger for the country superstar, as he ascends to festival headliner and stadium tour status. Already on the books: he will headline Stagecoach in April and then head out on The Big Ass Stadium Tour with Post Malone. In other words, look for Jelly to keep on rolling in 2025.
Check back for our No. 9 artist, to be revealed later today, and stay tuned all week as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23!