Power 100
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Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge is calling on music industry executives to come together to get artists paid. Last night (Feb. 1), Grainge addressed an audience of Billboard Power 100 honorees in Los Angeles with the hope that the most powerful business figures in the industry can come together on the side of creatives.
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“Our industry is entering a new chapter where we’re going to have to pick sides, all of us are going to have to pick sides,” Grainge said from the stage in Hollywood. “Are we on the side of FinTech [Financial Technology] and functional music, functional content? Or are we on the side of artistry, and artists?”
Grainge was the first executive to take the stage after Billboard editorial director Hannah Karp opened the ceremony and introduced Grainge who, once again, landed the top spot on the Billboard Power 100 list this year. Grainge takes the top spot as the leader of UMG which reported third-quarter earnings of 2.66 billion euros (approximately $2.9 billion), up 13.3% year over year in constant currency, a fifth-straight quarter of growth since the company spun off from Vivendi in fall 2021.
His call to action was based on the idea of disrupting the music industry, but from those who care most about it. “I’ve always seen opportunity in disruption. And for those of us that have been in the business, made our living out of music, boy have we seen an enormous amount of disruption,” said Grainge. “But the problem is that all too often we’ve let others disrupt our industry. But if we work together across the music community, we can disrupt the status quo instead. And that offers enormous opportunity for real music, real artists. Now, that’s what I call powerful.”
The executive was also quick to thank his colleagues at UMG and provided a shout out to its label Republic Records, which landed the No. 1 label of the year based on current market share. But Grainge’s short and poignant speech focused on his love of music and those who work on behalf of artists.
“Working on behalf of artists and working to grow this industry has been my life’s passion and I’ve been very lucky,” Grainge said. “I feel very strongly that if we’re to succeed, more than ever, we need to come together as an industry, to fight for artists, and for music.”
He continued: “Let’s focus our energy on rewarding those that make great music and those that made music great. Let’s break artists, fight to get them paid, and to give fans real joy.”
While accepting the UBS & Billboard Trailblazer Award at Billboard’s Power 100 Event at Goya Studios in Hollywood on Wednesday night (Feb. 1), Harbourview Equity Partners founder/CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares struck a somber note during an otherwise celebratory evening.
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“Harbourview has been a dream of mine for many years in the making, and I feel grateful that I’m able to do my life’s work,” said the executive, who has acquired nearly 40 catalogs since launching the company in October 2021. “However, at the same time I experience the joy of receiving the recognition, my heart is heavy. At first I could not really sort why, but as I prepared to board my flight to head out West, the words hit me, ‘I just want to get home.’”
Those words — spoken by Tyre Nichols, the Black man who died after being beaten by police officers following a traffic stop in Memphis on Jan. 10 — formed the crux of Clarke Soares’ brief speech, in which she also acknowledged other recent incidents of hatred, including mass shootings in California and the anti-Semitic vandalism of Jewish synagogues.
“Echoing in my head and in my heart, emotions ran deep as I thought of the last words of a young man 100 feet from his home, and I realized that over the last few weeks, as a country and as a community, we’ve beared witness to so much disregard and undervaluing of life,” Clarke Soares continued. “And so while I’m honored to stand before you today, I know our work at Harbourview will not be done until we use our power to trailblaze a path through music, storytelling and art that connects our collective humanity, humanizing each precious life, so that everyone makes it home to their families at night.”
Named one of Billboard‘s Change Agents in 2021 while serving in her previous role as founder/CEO of Tempo Music, Clarke Soares has consistently pointed to the importance of fostering diversity through her work — both in the staff she hires and the investments she makes. Before taking the stage, her efforts on that front were also highlighted by Wale Ogunleye, former football player and head of sports & entertainment at UBS, who presented Clarke Soares with the award while noting her “extremely diverse” team and “culturally…and musically diverse” portfolio of music catalogs.
Clarke Soares reiterated that overarching mission during her speech by invoking the phrase “Out of many, one people” — “a phrase we say at Harbourview, and we embody it if you look at our team,” she said. “And as a company, our trailblazing should not only be measured in the economic barriers that we break, but in the impact we have to be a place of hope without fear to tell stories that shape hearts and minds for love and humanity. And we ask all of you in this room, with all of your power, to join us in that journey.”
Clarke Soares was one of five individuals to accept awards at the high-powered event on Wednesday. Also honored were Noah Assad (executive of the year, presented by Bad Bunny); Avery and Monte Lipman, COO and CEO of Republic Records, respectively (label of the year, presented by Kim Petras); and HYBE chairman Bang Si-Hyuk (the Clive Davis visionary award, presented by Clive Davis and Scooter Braun).
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Bad Bunny was all smiles and nerves while presenting his longtime manager, Noah Assad, with the Executive of the Year award at Billboard‘s 2023 Power 100 event on Wednesday (Feb. 2) at Goya Studios.
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After being introduced by Leila Cobo, Billboard‘s Chief Content Officer Latin/Español, the global sensation, who typically opts to publicly speak in Spanish, decided to give English a try, lightheartedly joking with the crowd, “Tonight is a special night not because my friend is winning this award, it’s more because I’m making my first English speech ever.” He was met with supportive applause and cheers, with a handful of attendees encouraging him to speak in Spanish anyway. Nevertheless, El Conejo Malo found middle ground, sharing a heartfelt speech in a mix of both languages.
“I know my man doesn’t like this kind of thing — this attention, the speech, this corny s–t,” he said amidst laughter from the crowd. “This award means a lot to me, the same way that my own awards mean a lot for him. It’s because this award is the proof that I’m not working alone, that dreams come true, but it’s never only by yourself. It’s always about team work.”
Together, the dynamic Puerto Rican pair have achieved unprecedented heights in Spanish and English markets, including Bad Bunny’s first of two tours in 2022, El Último Tour del Mundo, boasting the top sales day for any tour on Ticketmaster (since Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s On the Run II tour went on sale in 2018), selling out nearly half a million tickets in less than a week. Four months after the tour closed, Bad Bunny commenced his World’s Hottest Tour stadium run, which made him the first artist to ever achieve separate $100 million-plus tours in the same calendar year. The global pop star’s 81 concerts in 2022 grossed $434.9 million, which marked the highest calendar-year total for any artist since the launching of Billboard Boxscore in the 1980s, posing it to become the biggest Latin tour ever.
“I came from a family of three brothers, I’m the oldest one,” Bad Bunny continued. “I never felt what it was like to have a big brother. So I want to thank Noah for being a friend, a partner and being like a big brother to me. I know that it’s tough, no soy facil, but I want to thank him for believing in me from the first day. Not just believing, but making those dreams and that vision real.”
Toward the end of his speech, the Puerto Rican phenomenon appeared to choke up under his sunshine-yellow New York Yankees fitted cap. “I want to thank him for inspiring me to dream bigger, to be a better person. To be more like you,” he directed to Assad. “There’s no big Bad Bunny superstar without Noah Assad. So if you ask me what it feels like to be the number one artist in the world, I have to say, I’m not. Noah is. We are the best. Lo mas hijo de p–a from Puerto Rico.”
As Bad Bunny foreshadowed in his sweet speech, Assad was a man of few words, more comfortable in the “big brother” role as Benito described it: in the wings cheering on his superstar friend. The pair shared a warm embrace before Bad Bunny playfully took the mic with him off stage to spare Assad the public speaking. “He had me crying in the corner,” Assad began. In the end, the mega exec offered a few profound words, shouting out his and Benito’s hometown of Carolina, Puerto Rico, and showering the rapper with praise, as the artist had just done for Assad.
“Everything we do, we do it to Puerto Rico, to the world. I’m honored to be the first Latin [to win this award] even though I don’t look like it,” he joked. “I want to thank Billboard. Billboard has always covered Latin. They never undervalue us in any way. They treat us as equal as the global American market. We have to be very grateful for that. At the end of the day, me and Bunny are products of thousands of people who work very hard on our island. All those walls they had to break down. There are a lot more stories to be told. This is only chapter one.”
Thanking his team back in Puerto Rico who couldn’t be at the event, Assad was brought to tears. “No one wins championships alone,” he says. “It kills me that [my team] isn’t here today. They’re everything.”
In 2023, Billboard introduces the Power Players’ Choice Award, a peer-voted honor chosen by Billboard Pro members to honor the executive they believe has had the most impact across the music business in the past year. After more than 1,500 votes cast across three rounds of voting, Pro members selected Brandon Silverstein, founder/CEO of S10 Entertainment, for this year’s award.
As a manager, Silverstein has helped build Anitta’s and Normani’s breakout careers, while moving S10 into publishing, recorded music and film/TV. Since expanding S10’s publishing venture with Avex USA last year, the company — Brandon Silverstein Publishing — now represents songwriters-producers-composers HARV (Justin Bieber’s “Peaches”) and Grammy winner Jasper Harris (Jack Harlow’s “First Class”), among others.
“Being recognized by the music industry as one of the most powerful and impactful executives is an absolute honor,” says Silverstein, who is a previous honoree on Billboard’s Latin Power Players and 40 Under 40 lists. “I’m proud of what we’ve built with S10 on a global level and the trust our artists and creatives have in me and my team.”
This story will appear in the Feb. 4, 2023, issue of Billboard.