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Spotify won a ruling Wednesday dismissing a lawsuit from the Mechanical Licensing Collective that accused the streamer of unfairly slashing royalty rates, with a federal judge ruling that Spotify’s move was supported by “unambiguous” regulations.
The MLC sued last year, claiming Spotify had “unilaterally and unlawfully” chosen to cut its music royalty payments nearly in half through bookmaking trickery – namely, by claiming that the addition of audiobooks to the platform entitled the company to pay a lower “bundled” rate.
But in her decision on Wednesday, Judge Analisa Torres said that federal royalty rate rules clearly allowed Spotify to legally claim the lower rate, rejecting MLC’s argument that the company was not actually offering a “bundle” of services.
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“Audiobook streaming is a product or service that is distinct from music streaming and has more than token value,” the judge wrote, alluding to the specific wording of the federal rule. “Premium is, therefore, properly categorized as a Bundle.”
A spokeswoman for the MLC did not immediately return a request for comment on the ruling.
The MLC, which collects streaming royalties for songwriters and publishers, filed its lawsuit in late May — a week after Billboard estimated that Spotify’s move would result in the company paying roughly $150 million less over the next year. In its complaint, the MLC claimed Spotify was “erroneously recharacterizing” the nature of its streaming services to secure the lower rate.
“The financial consequences of Spotify’s failure to meet its statutory obligations are enormous for songwriters and music publishers,” the group’s attorneys wrote at the time. “If unchecked, the impact on songwriters and music publishers of Spotify’s unlawful underreporting could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
At issue in the lawsuit is Spotify’s recent addition of audiobooks to its premium subscription service. The streamer believes that because of the new offering, it’s now entitled to pay a discounted “bundled” royalty rate under the federal legal settlement that governs how much streamers pay rightsholders.
In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Torres agreed. She said the rules required only that Spotify offered a different service and that it provided users with more than “token value” – and that the addition of audiobooks was clearly covered by those terms.
MLC’s attorneys had argued that audiobooks were that kind of “token” non-factor, since Spotify didn’t raises prices when it added them and only a small proportion of subscribers actually listen to them. MLC had claimed Spotify added the books was merely a “pretext” to cut rates for music.
Spotify moved to dismiss the case in August, calling it “nonsensical” and “wasteful.” The company’s attorneys blasted the MLC’s argument that the audiobooks were aimed at a legal loophole, saying it “profoundly devalues the contributions of the tens of thousands of book authors.”
In her decision on Wednesday, Judge Torres sided with Spotify’s argument. Though she said the new offering might strike ordinary consumers as more of a “two-for-one deal” than a traditional bundle, she said Spotify’s addition of the books had clearly brought more than nominal value to its users.
“MLC cannot plausibly claim that having access to audiobooks is not something of intrinsic and monetary value to many, even if only a fraction of Spotify’s millions of Premium subscribers may take advantage of it,” the judge wrote. “The court can draw only one conclusion: that 15 hours of monthly audiobook streaming is a product or service that has more than token value.”
If anything, Judge Torres said, Spotify had “likely paid more in royalties to MLC than it was otherwise required to pay” because it did not immediately claim bundled status after introducing the audiobook feature.
In addition to dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Torres did not give MLC a chance to refile the case, saying the law was clear and that amending the accusations would be futile. The group can still challenge the ruling at a federal appeals court, however.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, a Spotify spokesperson said the company was “pleased” with the court’s decision: “Bundle offerings play a critical role in expanding the interest in paying for music and growing the pie for the music industry. We know the regulations can be complex, but there’s plenty of room for collaboration—and our recent deal with [Universal Music Publishing Group] shows how direct licenses can create flexibility and additional benefits.”
A series of special performances will highlight the 67th Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday (Feb. 2), including a salute to the life and legacy of Grammy legend Quincy Jones, tributes to the spirit of Los Angeles, which is beginning the long process of rebuilding after devastating wildfires, and the annual In Memoriam segment.
Brad Paisley, Brittany Howard, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, current Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, Herbie Hancock, Jacob Collier, Janelle Monáe, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Sheryl Crow, St. Vincent and Stevie Wonder are set to appear in these segments.
Jones, who died in November at age 91, won 28 Grammys across six different decades, from the 1960s to the 2010s. He was a friend and mentor to generations of talented artists, including Hancock, Wonder, Legend and Collier. He won just about every award the Recording Academy has to give, including a trustees award in 1989 and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
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Live from Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and hosted by Trevor Noah, Music’s Biggest Night will be broadcast live on Sunday, Feb. 2, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBS. The show will also be available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.
Previously announced performers include Benson Boone, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, Doechii, RAYE, Sabrina Carpenter, Shakira and Teddy Swims.
The 67th Annual Grammy Awards will be produced by Fulwell 73 Productions for the Recording Academy for the fourth consecutive year. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins are executive producers.
Prior to the telecast, the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony will be broadcast live from the Peacock Theater at 12:30 p.m. PT and will be streamed live on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel and the Grammy website.
Justin Tranter, a Grammy nominee for song of the year for co-writing Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe,” is set to host the Premiere Ceremony. Tranter also hosted last year’s Premiere Ceremony, where the vast majority of Grammys are presented.
The opening number on the Premiere Ceremony will feature a performance by current nominees Yolanda Adams, Wayne Brady, Deborah Cox, Scott Hoying, Angelique Kidjo, and Taj Mahal. Six other current nominees — Joe Bonamassa, Joyce DiDonato, Béla Fleck, Renée Fleming, Muni Long and Kelli O’Hara — are also set to perform, as is Grammy-winning contemporary classical composer Kevin Puts.
This year’s Premiere Ceremony, to be held at Peacock Theater at the LA Live complex in Los Angeles, will stream live at 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT on the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel and on the Grammy website.
As announced last week, this year’s Grammy telecast will carry an added sense of purpose: raising additional funds to support Los Angeles wildfire relief efforts and honoring the bravery and dedication of first responders. Since launching the Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort to Support Music Professionals last week, the Recording Academy and MusiCares have raised and pledged more than $4 million in emergency aid to music people affected by the wildfires.
On Grammy Sunday, fans can access exclusive behind-the-scenes Grammys content, including performances, acceptance speeches, interviews from the Grammy Live red-carpet special, and more on the Grammy website.
From the late 1990s into the 2000s, “VH1 Save the Music” was a household name known for its annual Divas Live benefit concerts featuring such bold-faced icons as Aretha, Whitney, Mariah and Celine. But by the end of the 2010s, following the television network’s pivot to reality series like Love & Hip-Hop and Basketball Wives, the branding no longer made sense.
“In 2019, it was pretty clear strategically that going forward, the VH1 brand was not going to be part of our future,” says Henry Donahue, executive director at the Save the Music Foundation. As a result, “VH1” was dropped from the organization’s name that same year.
Far from being a disaster, unbundling from VH1 gave Save the Music new life, says Donahue — and in 2025, it’s arguably doing better than ever. According to Donahue, Save the Music’s annual operating budget in 2018 — the year before the VH1 name was dropped — was $4.7 million. Last year, that number had risen to nearly $11 million, including more than $1 million from a new $10 million endowment fund that the foundation formally announced on Wednesday (Jan. 29). (Save the Music notes the 2024 numbers are still unaudited.)
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The fund, of which $4 million has already been raised, will “ensure the cultural institution’s sustainability and long-term support for music education,” according to a press release. Notably, the endowment coincides with a formal split from Save the Music and VH1’s longtime corporate parent Paramount Global (formerly Viacom), though the entertainment giant has pledged an initial six-figure donation.
The breakup had been a long time coming. In the five years since it dropped the VH1 branding, Save the Music has substantially reduced its dependence on Paramount after the company opted to move away from social responsibility initiatives, the foundation says. By 2024, 95% of Save the Music’s organizational budget came from non-Paramount sources, with notable backers including tech and music industry behemoths like TikTok, Live Nation, Meta, Amazon and AEG Presents.
The split from Paramount marks the end of a long and productive relationship. Since it was founded by then-VH1 president John Sykes in 1997, Save the Music has donated more than $75 million worth of instruments and technology to over 2,800 school music programs in more than 300 districts across the U.S. and improved the educational fortunes of countless under-resourced students.
Sykes tells Billboard that the foundation came about after he visited Brooklyn elementary school P.S. 58 as part of a “principal for a day” initiative and, while sitting in on the school’s music class, “saw these kids playing their instruments [that] were held together with tape, literally tape, and strings missing on violins, and they didn’t care. They were so, so excited and so connected to the music… they had no idea that the instruments they were playing were falling apart.”
While speaking with the music teacher, Sykes (now president of entertainment enterprises at iHeartMedia and chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) learned that the music program would likely have to close down for lack of funds. “And I said, ‘Well, how much do you need?’” he remembers. “And she said, ‘Well, a lot — $5,000.’ I said, ‘You got it.’”
Sykes was particularly encouraged by something else the teacher said: That the children who played instruments tended to earn better grades in math and English. Around the same time, he read a magazine article that described how music “helps wire a kid’s brain.”
“I said, ‘Oh, my God. This is bigger than one school. This could impact the country,’” he says. “And VH1 was a national channel. So I went back to our team and I said, ‘We’re going to adopt more schools across the country and partner with our cable systems to raise money and start using the power of VH1’s reach to go and influence local governments not to cut music programs. And we’re going to raise money to fund those programs.’”
Soon enough, Save the Music had equipped roughly a dozen New York schools with musical instruments. When Sykes put in a personal call to President Bill Clinton, who had famously played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show during the 1992 election campaign, Clinton agreed to donate one of his saxes to an underprivileged school in Washington, D.C. When the President sent First Lady Hillary Clinton to hand the instrument over, says Sykes, “It became a national story.”
The foundation was formally unveiled in April 1997 during that year’s VH1 Honors awards show, which raised $150,000 for the organization and featured callouts from A-list artists touting the importance of music education. The following year, VH1 Divas Live — a once-annual concert special benefitting the foundation — was launched with Dion, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain and Gloria Estefan and became a phenomenon, grabbing big ratings and even selling albums. (A series of commercially-released VH1 Divas albums sold a combined 1 million copies in the U.S., according to Luminate.)
In its current iteration, Save the Music makes a capital investment in between 100 to 150 school music programs in the U.S. every year, says Donahue. The foundation identifies districts to support via a rubric that looks at two primary factors: economic need, which accounts for everything from median income and racial demographics to free and reduced lunch rates; and readiness and willingness of the district to work with them, including by providing a certified music teacher. They also look at scale, preferring projects that allow them to target “30 or 50 or 100 schools all at once” in a district or a region, says Donahue.
The gradual de-coupling from Paramount brought opportunities and funding Save the Music otherwise wouldn’t have had. In 2021, the new paradigm “was validated,” Donahue says, when the foundation received a $2 million grant from MacKenzie Scott — the co-founder of Amazon and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos — “which we never would have gotten had we been VH1 Save the Music.”
The shift away from Paramount also allowed Save the Music to become much more responsive to communities’ needs, says Donahue. “[We wanted to] push towards a strategy where our work was much more community based,” he says. “So we were listening to the people in the communities that we served, as opposed to taking direction from the corporate parent or however we fit into the corporate strategy.”
Save the Music’s sought-after post-VH1 program is the J Dilla Music Technology Grant, which invests in music technology curriculums and equipment for elementary, middle and high schools in an effort to help train the next generation of producers, engineers, songwriters, DJs and more. Chiho Feindler, who has served as Save the Music’s chief program officer since 2008, says the grant allows kids to be trained early in the kind of behind-the-scenes jobs that can lead to real careers.
“We often talk about everybody wants to become the Jay Z…but there are a thousand other jobs behind that that can be equally, if not more satisfying,” Feindler adds.
“[It’s] our most-demanded program,” Donahue says of the J Dilla grant, which has gone to more than 100 schools, including “35 or 40” just during the 2024-25 school year. “That’s the thing that schools now ask about most often and it’s the thing that people in the music industry ask about most often.”
A more recent focus has been expanding the foundation’s grants for Latin music programs to encompass additional genres and styles beyond mariachi — another result of the new freedom and depth of engagement with communities made possible by the gradual split with Paramount. “Mariachi is really a small part of the Latin community,” says Feindler, “[but] mariachi is not a solution for all of the Spanish-speaking community.” (Full disclosure: Billboard recently hosted a fundraiser via Instagram for Save the Music’s “Miami Saves Music” project, which is aiming to invest in instrumental and music tech programs for roughly 100 public schools in Miami-Dade County by 2027.)
Feindler adds that Save the Music is also looking to offer more support to preschool and elementary school-aged music programs by providing kid-friendly instruments like xylophones and drums after focusing “for the longest time… on more of the band and stringed [instruments],” she says.
Another new initiative was announced on Wednesday: a giveaway campaign hosted on the charity platform Propellor that will allow fans to bid on more than a dozen auction items from artists including Sabrina Carpenter, The War and Treaty, Blake Shelton and Patti LaBelle to support the foundation.
Though Save the Music is far from its nationally televised Divas Live days, it still attracts A-list talent. In 2023, Ed Sheeran teamed with the foundation to surprise five schools with “pop-up” classroom visits while donating a portion of the proceeds from digital album sales from his Autumn Variations album, along with 100% of the ticket proceeds from an Amazon Live performance, to the organization. Last year, Save the Music also secured the support of Jelly Roll, who visited and performed at his former high school in Antioch, Tenn., and made a substantial donation to the foundation. And in October, Maren Morris, Brittney Spencer and Live Nation Women’s Ali Harnell were honored at Save the Music’s Hometown to Hometown benefit in Nashville, which raised more than $300,000 for music education programs in under-resourced public high schools.
With or without Paramount, Save the Music will continue to endure, says Sykes, because at heart it’s not just about learning to play an instrument but about giving kids a chance at carving out a successful path in life.
“This is not just, ‘Junior is happy because he’s playing the flute or the violin,’” he says. “That kid’s going to go to college, that kid’s going to do better, that kid’s going to stay in school, that kid’s going to feel better about himself or herself. There’s so many different positive outcomes of music education.”
Newly minted Academy Award nominee and Emmy-, Grammy- and Tony-winning actress Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), actress-director Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One), Emmy-nominated industry veteran Marla Gibbs (227) and Emmy-nominated creator, writer and-producer Raamla Mohamed (Reasonable Doubt) are 2025’s honorees for the ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood Awards. The 18th annual gala will take place Feb. […]
Audacy president/CEO David Field is stepping down, with current Audacy board member Kelli Turner to serve as interim president/CEO, effective immediately. A search is underway for Field’s permanent successor, the company said on Wednesday. Field has served as president of Audacy since 1998, and added CEO duties to his role in 2002. He will continue […]
Few people have had a better start to 2025 than Imogen Heap. Over the past few weeks, the pioneering producer and songwriter has scored her first-ever chart hit with “Headlock” – lifted from 2005’s spellbinding LP, Speak For Yourself – and has found herself receiving “dozens upon dozens” of collaboration requests, she tells Billboard UK over the phone.
A combination of TikTok and a feature on viral psychological horror game Mouthwashing may be helping “Headlock” scale the charts – it currently stands at No. 98 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has cracked the top 40 in the U.K. – but it’s a newfound appreciation for Heap’s groundbreaking approach to pop music that has summoned an increasingly feverish Gen Z audience.
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Across social media, younger listeners have recently become enamored with Heap’s theatrically layered vocals and expressive production style, as well how she popularized the use of the vocoder. They are also coming to gauge the extent of her influence on global superstars such as Ariana Grande, FKA Twigs and Billie Eilish. “Imogen Heap was lowkey mother to every 2010s pop girl,” reads a comment on a decade-old clip of Grande performing with Heap’s ingenious wearable instrument, the MiMu gloves.
In 2010, Heap became the first woman to win a Grammy for engineering, while her music has since been sampled extensively by Grande (“Goodnight N Go,” “Eternal Sunshine”), as well as rappers including A$AP Rocky and the late Mac Miller. Following the release of 2014 album Sparks, however, she has aligned her output with developing technological initiatives in order to make the industry more accessible, she says. Recently, there’s been the launch of data solution Auracles, while Heap has also spent the past few years working on Mogen, an AI assistant that she hopes will deepen her creative process in the studio.
Her journey hasn’t all been art and reverence. Heap contended with a plethora of major label battles during her time in electronic duo Frou Frou, and a currently oversaturated streaming market, she says, has occasionally discouraged her from releasing new music. Since she spent time enjoying “solo jam sessions” during lockdown, however, she has slowly begun to emerge renewed: “I realized how much I needed to be back at the piano. I started to feel more free and open,” she says.
This sense of levity has been amplified by the slow-burn success of “Headlock,” an achievement that has coincided with the song’s rights reverting back to Heap, after a 20-year license to Sony. In the coming months, she is planning to start collaborating with fans via livestream, alongside deepening her unique sound world and learning more about herself. It’s a time of rejuvenation and opportunity – with Heap preparing to set out on a more experimental path than ever before.
Below, Heap talks with Billboard about her recent “Headlock” success, working on Auracles and Mogen, being an influence on younger artists and much more.
When did you first notice that “Headlock” had started taking on a life of its own?
There’s a new type of energy this time. For so long, [my career] has been about sharing ideas like Auracles and hoping to kickstart something new for the music industry. This [virality] feels like a nice balance that’s happening in return, and I’m excited about the opportunities it’s giving me. I love taking a wildcard and running with it.
I don’t have TikTok and I don’t really understand it. I’ve never really gone into this world of hyper-fast, collaborative music but I do think that it’s amazing. I’ve instead become obsessed with blockchain, and more recently, AI, while keeping my head down for the past 10 years. I haven’t wanted to add to the problems of the music industry, and contribute to things that make sense for me.
How does it feel to look back at your earlier music, revisiting those thoughts and emotions with the perspective you have now?
I’m just really, really happy. I love that record [Speak for Yourself]. It changed the course of my independence: I was able to be free of any debts or labels; I remortgaged my flat at the time. I came off Island Records with Frou Frou and it wasn’t so great. They did an absolutely terrible job of marketing our records, as they decided that the Sugababes were worth all their money or something, meaning our record [2002’s Details] got no love. It’s really sad, you know — they just couldn’t be bothered.
So, I wanted to come out of that deal, and I said, “Please just let me go. I want to do a record independently and I think I can do it.” Back then, we didn’t have Patreon or Kickstarter, so I was left with the question of where to get the money from. I would walk into banks and ask for the loan to make a new record, and they would say, “Yeah, sure, but what’s your job?” I would have to say, “This is my job, here’s the records I have made and here’s how much more money I’d make if I did it independently.”
I would soon learn that if you went independent and did these discussions yourself, and you found your marketing people, everything just opened up. It was just a myth that you needed a label to make something happen.
You have amazing vocal control on “Headlock.” Do you have any rituals as far as keeping it in shape?
I’ve never done any vocal exercises, and the only thing that kept my voice good was the fact that I was using it almost every day. Recently I haven’t been — it’s not as strong at the moment. But as I’m seeing my monthly streams grow and grow, I have started to consciously sing more: When there’s nobody in the house, I’ll sing from my lungs in the shower!
For some time, I didn’t want to sing, as I couldn’t live with putting music out in an industry that doesn’t support its artists. “Headlock” is doing its thing, and for the first time, I’m seeing crazy numbers from streaming income [at 17 million monthly listeners] – that’s never happened to me before. I’m really grateful to be able to put it into Auracles, but generally [the streaming model] doesn’t really work. Instead, I’ve wanted to invest my time in something that did make sense, so then I could relax and make absolutely tons of music and feel like it’s doing something to empower others.
Dozens of artists have covered or sampled your work over the years. In particular, Ariana Grande has repeatedly spoken of your influence on both her career and personal music fandom. Do you feel a kinship with her?
I appreciate Ariana to the point where I get teary even talking about her. She is so f–king busy, right – I thought the [Wicked] film was brilliant – but she remains consistently kind, thoughtful and open. Recently, I reached out to thousands of people ahead of an Auracles launch. When I spoke to Ariana about it, she was like, “Whatever help you need, let me know.” Having that support from someone who is so high-profile and influential made me feel really validated. People say, “Oh God, I am so busy” – but they can’t possibly be as busy as Ariana Grande!
The other day I was walking around and thinking to myself, “I’m going to write a song about her one day.” I really am. I am so grateful she found a connection with my work, and she has been so nice about what it means to her — and in a way, I want to repay that.
No matter how big she gets, or how many things have happened to her – I mean, just look at [the] Manchester [attack] for f–k’s sake – she remains a shining light and is so pure, funny and bright. Ariana is so genuine; there’s not many people you can point to who send such a great message and energy out there.
You’ve been working on Mogen and Auracles for a good while now. Are there any other creative models today that you see now as you did AI two years ago – ideas with potential that musicians are only beginning to scratch the surface of?
Oh God, there’s so many! I find the rate of innovation around AI and visual media to be breathless. Every single day there are these insane developments, it’s blowing my mind. There’s so many things you can do that don’t involve sitting at a computer, typing away. The thing which makes me nervous is the covenants; there’s all this amazing video, art and poetry being generated by AI as well as music, but you know, creators need to be credited and they need to tell us where they’re training [the data] from.
There’s some cultural suspicion around the use of assistive AI in music, but you have always seemed to approach it positively. How has it felt to open up the discussion with those who may hold different views?
I think as long as we get the ground layers right, and we build from a bedrock which is supportive, then we can grow great things off of that together. If we build off a very shaky, unstable, permissionless system, which is currently what it is, then we’re going to create chaos.
But I guess I am positive, because there are lots of things to be positive about. The more worried people are, the more negative energy will go out and come back into these things, it’s just a law of attraction. I think it’s really important to enjoy this kind of unstoppable force of creativity because that’s how humans survive and evolve – through collaboration. We need to find this common ground where we feel that humans are supporting the system consciously, so that it doesn’t create tension.
Do you still believe that music can make a difference in these troubling times?
Yes, undeniably so! Music makes a difference in the world every single second of every single day. When you’re creating music, and even when you’re listening to music, all the structures of how we understand our reality disappear. Those tiny moments of ephemeral, continuous flow and presence offer us the pure sense of being in the moment; not having to think about material practices and money. That’s why music is just so powerful.
What headspace are you hoping to enter your next era in?
I’m in a really good place. I think before, I felt like I had control in my life, which is a complete fantasy. Every single day, things happen and impact your life to the point that you don’t really have control. That’s been the big shift that’s happened for me in the last couple of years: in order to do anything in the future, you have to do it now.
The other day, I chatted to ChatGPT, and I said, ‘Can you find me a Tai Chi master in my area?’ It came up with this person who I then met the other day – and that just feels amazing! The future is in our minds, in our history books, it’s in our predictions, but it isn’t real life. This is all there is.
I’ve been embracing an element of stillness. When something is hyper-good or hyper-bad, I try to regulate that, so the waves of feeling and emotion become less overwhelming. It’s really embracing what’s manageable: what’s happening here, what’s happening now.
While some artists shoot to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart with their debut efforts, it sometimes takes years — or decades — to hit No. 1 for the very first time. In the first quarter of the 21st century, we’ve seen a who’s who of acts with illustrious careers on the Billboard […]
Before the first note is played at FireAid on Thursday (Jan. 30), more than $60 million dollars will have already been raised from ticket sales and sponsorship dollars for wildfire recovery and prevention efforts from the fires that have ravaged the Los Angeles area. Add to that the donations from viewers watching live on more than 25 streaming outlets that will be matched dollar for dollar by Steve and Connie Ballmer and the event will undoubtedly raise tens of millions of dollars more for the cause.
The Los Angeles concerts will feature Billie Eilish, Earth, Wind & Fire, Gracie Abrams, Jelly Roll, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Lil Baby, Olivia Rodrigo, Peso Pluma, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Sting and Tate McRae at the Intuit Dome, while Alanis Morissette, Anderson .Paak, Dave Matthews and John Mayer, Dawes, Graham Nash, Green Day, John Fogerty, Joni Mitchell, No Doubt, P!nk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stephen Stills, Stevie Nicks, and The Black Crowes will take the stage at the Kia Forum.
The idea for the benefit, which was announced three days after the catastrophic fires that have destroyed more than 22,000 homes started on Jan. 7, was born after Shelli Azoff called Los Angeles Clippers CEO Gillian Zucker to see if they could hold a benefit at Intuit Dome, home to the Clippers. So many artists volunteered to play that the concert quickly overflowed to the Kia Forum.
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Irving Azoff, who is producing the event with his wife Shelli and his family in conjunction with Live Nation, talked to Billboard on Tuesday night as he headed to the Kia Forum to watch the two Stevies — Nicks and Wonder — rehearse. In addition to talking about the shows’ logistics, he primarily wanted to express his extreme gratitude to the Ballmers, the artists and nearly 40 sponsoring partners who have made the event possible.
It’s really remarkable how fast this has come together.
After the fires started, Shelli says we’ve got to do something. Some else says the only thing we know how to do is put on shows. Shelli calls Gillian, she offers us Intuit and it’s off to the races…So many [artists] volunteered that we knew we could do both [venues]. You don’t want to tell people no and obviously the ability to raise more money when you got two going instead of one is even greater.
At any point did you think, “Let’s move it to Sofi Stadium” or add a third location, given how many artists were eager to play?
Look, there were three pieces to this: There’s the live gate and the corporate sponsorship for the live gate, which, I’m happy to say, is already north of $60 million. The sponsorships, which Scott Sonnenberg at the Clippers organization and Dan Griffis and his team at Oak View, went out and, they’ve done just an incredible job. People just called and said, “Can I [help]”? But we also knew that this is about helping everybody and getting everybody together so everybody can begin to heal and enjoy this wonderful music to try and get everybody a bit back on track. We knew from the start we wanted to do a modern digital telethon where you text to donate. Ballmer offers the building and the Clippers organization is picking up the expenses so every single dollar of ticket money is going to the charity and with Steve and Connie matching anyone that gives money during the telethon, no, we never thought about Sofi, nor should we.
Rod Stewart was the first artist to volunteer to play, right?
Rod was first in, then Stevie Nicks called me personally and she was second in.
Were you surprised by the sheer number of artists who wanted to donate their time?
I’m not surprised because musicians are among the most caring, heartwarming, giving people in the food chain. So, no, I wasn’t surprised–delighted, but not surprised… It’s not just the money raised; we’re going to create a worldwide consciousness for what these fires really were. [Executive producer] Joel Gallen has put together [segments] with some incredible footage from KTLA of the survivors and fire people. It’s a different kind of show.
You’ve got nearly 40 sponsors. Can sponsors still come on?
We sold out earlier today. Every suite is gone, and all the sponsorships are gone. A lot of sponsors said, “Here, just take our money.” We said, “Tickets should come with that. You want to give us back the tickets for first responders and people that lost their homes?” And many of them did that. I think about 2,500 impacted first responders and homeowners or more will be in the two rooms. Many of [the sponsors] are using their suites. Everybody did what they felt was right. I would guess that for a one-night event in the music business, it’s probably the biggest sponsorship haul in history. We were talking about it today. We don’t think anybody’s come anywhere close. We get the credit for getting the ball rolling, but then the community really took over.
What role is Live Nation playing?
[Live Nation president of California Region] Geni Lincoln–like my wife and daughter Allison and many others–has been working 18 hours a day. [Live Nation CEO] Michael Rapino is an executive producer with Shelli and myself and Gillian Zucker and Joel Gallen. He’s been on calls all day and all night. We’re all out raising money. We’re all out putting it all together. Live Nation has been incredible. I’m just so proud of them and their team and what they brought to the party.
What has been the biggest challenge for you logistically?
Look, it’s rock and roll. What can go wrong will go wrong. Since we’re trying to go back and forth between the arenas most of the night for the telecast, the biggest challenge is going to be that we don’t have technical issues that delay anybody getting on the stage at the right times.
What can fans expect from the sets?
Most people are doing two to three songs. A few are doing four. After it was already on sale and [artists] are all set, then other [artists] called. Since all the slots were gone and God knows how long the show is going to be–right now it’s five-and-a-half hours–[we said], “It’s too late to add you to the bill and we don’t have a slot, but how would you like to go do XYZ with such and such an artist?” I think there’s a good half dozen really surprise moments.
In Tuesday’s New York Times article, you and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason went out of your way to say you and the Feb. 2 Grammys are not competing with each other even though the shows are only a few days apart.
We’re not in any sort of competition. They’re an award show. They’re a broadcast television show. We wanted to make this a streaming telethon, meaning a digital streaming moment, right? We didn’t do any over-the-air broadcast. Granted, we’re going to have our moments to tell the story of some of the people impacted by the fires, but this is more like a stream from a music festival. It’s not an award show. They’re two very separate things. I’m on the board of [Recording Academy charity] MusiCares and I hope our board will see fit to give some of the money that we’re making to MusiCares.
How did you pick the date?
We looked at other dates. Remember, our show because we’re trying to solicit donations from consumers– unfortunately, people don’t have a big, long attention span–you want to get up while the fires are still fresh in everybody’s mind. It was kind of guesswork as to when the weather was going to turn and they were going to get control of the fires. We couldn’t go next week because it’s the Super Bowl and we didn’t want to go anywhere near Super Bowl week. And the following week we didn’t have building availability. We didn’t try to go, “Oh, let’s go Grammy week.” Nearly all of the people that are involved either live in LA or have an LA connection, so it wasn’t, “Oh, everybody’s in town for the Grammys. It’s easy to book.” Most of the people would have been here three weeks from now that are here now, so it’s just the way it fell in place.
Was there any thought of going on a broadcast outlet or was it always streaming?
When it became obvious that we were going to do 27 performers, there was no way. You’re not going to put a five-and-a-half hour show on broadcast television.
You’ve already raised more than $60 million. What do you hope the total will be?
We’re already grateful for what we have. I mean, there’s never been a fundraising effort on streamers like this, so I can’t even begin to think about… we’re going to be happy whatever it is. It’s kind of new territory. The outpouring is historic, but, unfortunately, so are the fires.
Audiences can tune into FireAid on a number of platforms, including iApple Music, AppleTV, DIRECTV, MyFree DIRECTV, DIRECTV STREAM, and DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS, Disney+/Hulu, FanDuel, iHeartRadio, KTLA+, Max, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix/Tudum.com, Paramount+/Pluto TV, Peacock/NBC News Now, Prime Video and the Amazon Music Channel on Twitch, SiriusXM’s “LIFE with John Mayer” channel, SoundCloud, TikTok, Veeps, X, and YouTube. Some outlets are also making donations, including DirectTV, which announced it was donating $1 million to FireAid.
Additionally, several AMC Theater and Regal Cinemas will host screenings of the event, which can also be heard on iHeartRadio’s more than 860 radio stations, digital platforms and iHeartRadio app.
Sponsoring partners include Kaiser Permanente, Live Nation, Scopely, American Express, AT&T, Capital Group, Netflix, Snap Inc., U.S. Bank, UBS, Venmo, and Visa Foundation. Gold Partners are DIRECTV, Goldman Sachs, Intuit, Starbucks, YouTube, and the Verizon Foundation.CalHOPE, Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, JPMorganChase, Salesforce, Schuman Family Foundation, SiriusXM, Sony Honda Mobility, Spotify and TikTok.
For donations and concert information, go to FireAidLA.org or @FireAidLA.
Billboard is making its way back to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, for three star-studded concerts from March 13 to 15.
Billboard THE STAGE at SXSW will take place at the the iconic Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park, and will kick off Thursday (March 13) with a performance by Texas native and country superstar Koe Wetzel. The fun continues Friday (March 14) when Música Mexicana stars Grupo Frontera — also Texas born and raised — take the stage. The final evening, Saturday (March 15), is presented by Carnival Cruise and will feature a high-energy performance from dance music artist John Summit.
More performers will be announced in the coming weeks.
Carnival Cruise Line will provide pedicabs to transport guests to and from THE STAGE, and will also host a one-of-a-kind Celebration Key experience in The Paradise Zone that features a tropical-themed bar, a snack cart and custom photo opportunities. Additionally, Azzaro Parfums is hosting an immersive fragrance sampling station.
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“Billboard has always been at the forefront of celebrating the artists and moments that shape the global music landscape, and this year at SXSW, we’re continuing that tradition with a unique concert series that highlights the diversity of today’s music scene,” Hannah Karp, Billboard’s editorial director, said in a press statement. “From country to Música Mexicana and electronic dance music, Billboard THE STAGE will bring unforgettable live performances to Austin to enhance the SXSW experience and connect music fans with the artists they love.”
Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park will host a ticket pre-sale for all three days of the event starting on Thursday (Jan. 30) at 9 a.m. CT using an exclusive venue code. General admission tickets go on sale the next day via Ticketmaster here at 9 a.m. CT, with a number of tickets reserved for existing SXSW Platinum and Music Badge holders, as well as SXSW Music Festival wristband holders.
Billboard is also partnering with REVERB again to provide a lucky music fan with the chance to win an all-expense-paid VIP trip to SXSW. Participants can enter to win by making a donation to REVERB through Prizeo, which will support REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project, which works to reduce carbon emissions within the music industry. The prize also includes a meet-and-greet with Koe Wetzel, side-stage viewing, round-trip airfare for two, three nights of hotel accommodations and a signed merch pack. To enter the contest, visit prizeo.com/Koe.
Billboard will report live throughout SXSW. Be sure to follow along on billboard.com and on social media (@billboard) for the latest news and announcements.
Billboard’s parent company PMC is the largest shareholder of SXSW and its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
As the music industry prepares to celebrate at the 67th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday (Feb. 2), the latest report from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative suggests that things for women in music are holding steady but not moving forward. The study is based on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 chart and Grammy nominations in key categories.
After documenting significant change for women last year, the Spotify-supported study finds that there was little movement in 2024. Women comprised 37.7% of artists across the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart last year, which is a bit better than 2023 (35%) and a significant improvement from 2012 (22.7%). More than a third (38.9%) of individual artists on the year-end chart were women, compared to 40.6% in 2023 and 35.8% in 2012.
“Women artists in 2024 saw little change,” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “In fact, it is the number of men that has declined while the number of women in 2024 was consistent with prior years. This suggests that it is fluctuations in the number of men, not gains for women that is driving these findings. For those interested in seeing change in the music industry, this is not a sign of progress.”
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The percentage of women songwriters on the year-end Hot 100 chart in 2024 was 18.9%, which was similar to the percentage in 2023 (19.5%) and significantly higher than the 11% of songwriters in 2012 who were women. Whereas women of color were responsible for the gains seen for women in 2023, this was not the case in 2024. Last year, the number of women of color represented on the year-end chart as songwriters dipped while the number of white women songwriters increased. Just over half (54%) of those songs featured at least one woman songwriter, on par with 2023 and significantly higher than 2012.
“While there may be movement in the independent space, the songs and charts evaluated represent the agenda-setting music that has the greatest opportunity to launch and grow a career,” said Dr. Smith. “Until the people in the executive ranks and A&R roles take seriously the lack of women in the industry, we will continue to see little change.”
Looking to producers of popular songs in 2024, once again there was no increase for women. A total of 5.9% of producing credits on the Hot 100 year-end chart were held by women, compared to 6.5% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2012. And of the 14 women producers on the year-end chart in 2024, only two were women of color. Across all 13 years of the study, 93.3% of songs lacked any women producers.
“Behind the scenes, women have not lost ground since the gains we saw last year,” said Dr. Smith. “However, the numbers are not growing. Programs like Be The Change, Keychange, She Is The Music, Spotify’s EQL, Women’s Audio Mission, and others are supporting talented women who are ready to take on opportunities. These numbers can continue to grow if the industry looks to these organizations and the many qualified women ready to work as songwriters and producers.”
Artist race/ethnicity was also assessed in the report. The percentage of artists of color (what the study calls “underrepresented artists”) on the year-end chart in 2024 (44.6%) fell significantly from 2023, when the number stood at 61%. Despite the decline, the percentage of artists of color remained on par with the proportion of the U.S. population that is people of color. Additionally, it was still meaningfully greater than 2012 (38.4%).
The drop affected both men and women of color, though the decline for women was steeper. In 2024, 40.8% of all women artists were women of color, while 46.9% of men were men of color. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of women on the popular charts were women of color (64.9%) as were more than half of men (59.4%).
The report also assessed Grammy nominations in the six categories that comprise the General Field: album, record and song of the year, best new artist, and producer and songwriter of the year, non-classical. According to Annenberg, just under a quarter (22.7%) of all nominees in these categories in 2025 were women, similar to 2024 (24%) and significantly greater than 2013 (7.9%).
The Annenberg analysis counts all nominees in album and record of the year, not just artists; in those two categories, producers, engineer/mixers and mastering engineers are nominated alongside artists. (There are no so-called “supplemental” nominees in the other four categories named above.)
This year, female solo artists took four of the eight nominations for best new artist, the same as last year. But last year, a male/female duo (The War and Treaty) was also nominated. That represents a slight drop for women this year, but women still had parity.
In song of the year, the number of female songwriters who are nominated inched up this year, from eight last year to nine this year.
Annenberg reports that the one nomination for a woman in the producer of the year, non-classical category represented a significant jump, as Alissia is only the second woman to be nominated in the category since the study began tracking nominations. (Linda Perry was nominated in the category six years ago.)
Meanwhile, four of the five nominees for songwriter of the year, non-classical this year are women: Jessi Alexander, Amy Allen, Jessie Jo Dillon and RAYE. The only male nominee is Édgar Barrera. This compares to just one female nominee last year.
“The Recording Academy has demonstrated that it can recognize the contributions of women to the music industry—this is clear through the increase we observed last year and that it has continued into this year,” said Dr. Smith. “The challenge now is to continue that growth and to see more women receiving acknowledgement of their talent and effort through awards like the Grammys, particularly for women in producing roles.”
The latest report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative can be found here.