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Longtime entrepreneur and executive Richard Stumpf has announced the launch of Hawkeye Music Publishing, a new firm that both signs active songwriters and acts as the dot connector between teams looking to sell music catalogs with their strategic partner Round Hill Music.
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Previous to his new firm Hawkeye, Stumpf found success as an executive at Imagem Music and Cherry Lane Music. More recently, he was the founder and CEO of the indie publisher of Atlas Music Publishing which guided Van Halen, Brandi Carlile, Counting Crows, Dan the Automator, Sean Garrett, Ashley Gorley, and the Al Jackson Jr. catalog (“Let’s Stay Together”) as clients. Eventually, the firm caught the attention of HYBE’s Ithaca Holdings and sold to the Korean music giant at the start of 2019. As part of the sale, Stumpf agreed to stay on as CEO until January 2021, which he did. (The rest of the original Atlas team also departed in 2021).
Since then, Stumpf has taken an advisory role, helping a number of tech companies looking to break into the music business, including Right Box and MerchCat, and lent his expertise to catalog buyers or administrators like Pythagoras Music Fund, GoldState Music and Round Hill Music.
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“What was clear to me working alongside tech and catalog companies was that there is an enormous and growing appetite for copyrights – both from a consumer and ownership perspective,” says Stumpf. “I wanted to put myself in a position where I could bring relationship driven catalog business to a home where I knew the music would be treated with the utmost respect and at the same time have a partner who could assist in administering Hawkeye, which would be dedicated to active writers. I found that strategic partner in Round Hill Music. Josh [Gruss, founder of Round Hill] and his team exemplify what it means to be a proactive partner who puts the music and writers first.”
Hawkeye Music Publsihing has not signed its first active songwriter yet, but it has already assembled a team of advisors across the music industry to, as Stumpf puts it, “provide expertise across several sectors of a constantly evolving and overlapping music space.” This list includes Ann Mincielli (Grammy-winning engineer, co-founder of She Is the Music), Gruss (founder/CEO of Round Hill), Sean Garrett (producer/songwriter), Barry Ehrmann (founder/video producer Enliven Entertainment), Brandon Young (head of music affairs, Activision Blizzard), Chris “Coach” Rodriguez (assistant program director/ dj for 107.1 The Peak) Julio Guiu (president of Clipper’s Music Group) and Amy Berkholtz (digital media Strategist).
“This advisory team shares my reverence for the songwriter and the creative process. They are a group that fully embrace innovation,” says Stumpf. “I’m humbled and excited by their participation.”
Adds Gruss, “Rich is a real music guy with a lot of creative ideas about maximizing value for copyrights and writers. He’s a respected industry vet that I’m happy to have working alongside Round Hill Music. We’ve already been able to welcome Warren Haynes as a Round Hill Music client and are grateful to Rich for the introduction and endorsement.”
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The National Music Publishers’ Association’s (NMPA) model TikTok license, which is used by a number of the independent music publishers, will expire at the end of April, and there are no ongoing negotiations between the NMPA and TikTok to renew it.
That means that starting May 1, more songs will be removed from TikTok, joining the millions that have already been removed from the Universal Music Group’s catalog earlier this year. At the end of January, licensing negotiations between UMG and TikTok collapsed, resulting in UMG’s decision to pull its music off the platform. In an open letter sent to artists and songwriters, the company lamented that TikTok failed to pay the “fair value” for music. It also noted other concerns with the platform, including AI concerns and artist safety. TikTok replied within hours, calling UMG’s letter a “false narrative” and that it was “sad and disappointing that [UMG] has put their own greed above the interests of their artists and songwriters.”
It is unclear how widespread the impact of the NMPA’s lapsed license will be. A TikTok spokesperson claims that only a small percentage of its overall music library used the model license and that they are not sure TikTok users will even notice the removals. The spokesperson adds that TikTok is in talks with a number of the publishers who used the NMPA license about getting an individual license, including a few of the larger players that use the NMPA model license. TikTok declined to provide further details.
The NMPA is also tight-lipped about the size of this impact, given the decision of whether or not to individually renew TikTok licenses for May 1 is in the hands of its members, not the NMPA. While the NMPA cannot disclose which independent music publishers use its model license for TikTok, it appears that it is a popular option, used by a large number of firms, ranging from tiny boutiques to sizable independents. The major publishers and some large indies negotiate directly with TikTok already, but the NMPA’s TikTok model license exists as a service largely to help the smaller publishers who would have less negotiating power or resources to get the license on their own.
The NMPA also has model licenses with the other social media networks available to its members, including YouTube, Meta and others, and the organization says it will continue to offer these other model licenses to members. X, notably, is absent from this list because it does not pay for music that appears on its platform. The NMPA has been asking X to license and pay for music for years to no avail, leading the trade organization to launch a $250 million lawsuit against X in June 2023.
The NMPA’s decision to pull out of TikTok should come as little surprise. NMPA president and CEO David Israelite has been supportive of UMG, and its publishing company and NMPA member UMPG, and its choice to leave TikTok since the beginning. Right after UMG announced its exit, Israelite offered a statement, saying “it is extremely unfortunate that TikTok does not seem to value the music creators that fuel its business.”
On Feb. 2, Israelite gave a speech at the Association of Independent Music Publishers Grammy week event, announcing that the NMPA’s license was set to expire at the end of April. “I’m only going to say two things about TikTok: the first is I think music is tremendously important to the business model of TikTok, and, secondly, I am just stating the fact that the NMPA model license, which many of you are using, with TikTok expires in April,” he said at the time.
On March 5, the organization sent a letter to its members, explaining that the NMPA did not foresee renewing its license with TikTok and told members using their model license to negotiate directly with TikTok if they wanted to continue to be on the platform. Since then, the organization has not returned to the negotiating table with TikTok.
In a statement, TikTok said, “We have direct deals in place with thousands of music publishers — including NMPA members — and we will continue to engage with the entire publishing industry to help make their songs available on TikTok.”
Armada Music‘s BEAT Music Fund has acquired Cloud 9 Music, an Amsterdam based music publisher. As part of the acquisition, the teams of Armada Music’s existing publishing company, Armada Publishing B.V., and Cloud 9 Music will merge to form Armada Music Publishing. The company’s BEAT Music Fund is dedicated to building a catalog of dance and electronic classics and now, after its purchase of Cloud 9, is well on its way. Its catalog now includes Armin van Buuren’s Grammy Award-nominated “This Is What It Feels Like,” “Reality” by Lost Frequencies and Da Beatfreakz’ co-written share in “Prada” which was originally performed by Cassö, D-Block Europe, and Raye.
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Pulse Music Group has launched a new publishing venture with singer, songwriter and producer Jon Bellion. Called Beautiful Mind, the new publisher will be helmed by Bellion and his longtime manager Matt Maschi as CEO. Louis Coppola will handle day-to-day operations. Along with the news of his new company and its staff, Pulse and Bellion have announced that Beautiful Mind has signed artist, songwriter, and Bellion collaborator Elijah Noll to the company.
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Warner Chappell Music and ICE have extended and expanded their multi-territory digital partnership. As part of the deal, WCM will move all online processing from other European digital licensing administration partners to ICE. This follows a thorough 10 month review by WCM which assisted its existing providers and new entrants to figure out the solution that best serves its songwriters.
Warner Chappell Music has signed the Red Clay Strays to a global publishing deal. After independently releasing their 2022 album Moment of Truth, the band broke through on TikTok, eventually landing the single “Wondering Why” on the Hot 100 chart. Now they are ready to take their career to the next level. Along with their new WCM publishing deal, the group also signed a label deal with RCA Records.
5 Alarm Music (a large indie production music library and a subsidiary of Anthem Entertainment) has entered a new exclusive partnership with Paramount to launch the program First Time Composer (“FTC”) with Paramount Music’s Anita Chinkes Ratner and Rochelle Holguin Capello leading the charge. The program begins with a writing camp at Sound Factory in Los Angeles from April 25-26. 14 participants will be split into four groups, each paired with a 5 Alarm producer who can guide the newcomers through the process of writing to specific song briefs.
BMI has launched a new royalty dashboard for songwriters and composers, providing more transparency into performance royalty earnings. The move is part of the newly for-profit PRO’s broader growth plan to enhance customer service. Now, BMI’s affiliates can have a fully interactive view of royalty statements and can view their top performing titles, search individual works, monitor quarterly and annual earnings trends, explore international earnings and more.
Concord Music Publishing has extended its agreement with Jeremy Lutito. Along with his publishing deal, which encompasses both his back catalog and future works, Concord and Lutito are also launching Mezzanine, a joint venture under which Lutito will sign and develop up and coming writers at Concord. The first Mezzanine signing is Jon Class, a frequent Lutito collaborator.
Spirit Music Nashville has renewed its deal with artist/writer Tim Montana. The news follows Montana’s recent breakthrough at rock radio, notching his single “Devil You Know” on both Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay charts.
Sony Music Publishing Nashville has signed Randall King to a new publishing agreement. With songs like “You In A Honky Tonk” “Hey Cowgirl” and “Mirror Mirror,” King is known for bringing tried-and-true Texas twang to Nashville.
Major Bob Music has signed a management and publishing deal with Leah Blevins. The singer-songwriter has built a following in Nashville for her unique sound and her touring chops. Over the last few years, the artist has toured with Lainey Wilson, Marcus King, Flatland Cavalry, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John Oates, Amanda Shires, The War And Treaty and more.
Global Music Rights (GMR), the boutique performing rights organization, has reached a settlement in its copyright infringement lawsuit with Vermont Broadcast Associates. As part of the settlement, VBA has secured a long-term GMR license and settled for its past alleged infringements.
Primary Wave Music strikes a deal to acquire Neil Finn’s music publishing catalog and writer’s share of public performance for his work with Crowded House, the legendary Kiwi artist’s folk-rock favorites.
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Songs included in the deal are the classics “Better Be Home Soon,” “Weather With You” and “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” a Billboard chart leader.
Through the partnership, announced this week, Primary Wave Music will also represent Finn’s solo material.
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“I look forward to seeing Primary Wave’s plan for the ongoing care of my songs. I am confident they see the body of my work as music that matters,” says Finn in a statement. “This deal has been a good while in the making and feels right.”
The New Zealand-born and based artist is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary songwriters in the game, and is a member of the ARIA Hall of Fame.
“We are thrilled to welcome Neil Finn to Primary Wave,” adds Primary Wave’s David Weitzman. “Not only is he a master songwriter, he is the songwriters’ favorite songwriter. We look forward to working closely with Neil and his great team at Shelter Management on the next stages of his storied career.”
The alliance is announced ahead of Crowded House’s eighth studio album Gravity Stairs, set for release May 31 through a new recording deal with BMG.
Finn co-founded Split Enz, an important alternative rock outfit that landed hit after hit in Australia and New Zealand, prior to their dissolution in 1984.
From its embers, Finn formed Crowded House. A U.S. breakthrough happened in April 1987 when “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” recorded by the classic lineup of Finn (singer, songwriter, guitar), Nick Seymour (bass) and the late drummer Paul Hester, peaked at No. 2 back.
The song made a mighty comeback last year. Thanks to a sync to an episode of the rebooted detective classic Magnum P.I., “Don’t Dream It’s Over” powered to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart.
Crowded House was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2016, in recognition of a glorious career during which they’ve sold more than 10 million albums, collected 13 ARIA Awards, and five ARIA No. 1 albums.
Their 2010 hits compilation Recurring Dream also topped the Official U.K. Albums Chart and is one of four Crowded House album to crack the top 10 in that territory.
Gravity Stairs is the followup to Dreamers Are Waiting, which peaked at No. 2 in Australia, No. 6 on the Official U.K. Chart, and won best adult contemporary album at the 2021 ARIA Awards.
Founded in 2006, Primary Wave Music is one of the world’s leading independent publishers, representing music from the likes of Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Nicks, James Brown, The Doors, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, Smokey Robinson, Whitney Houston and many others.
Fifty years ago, Steven Gaines, a New York Sunday News rock ‘n’ roll newspaper columnist, lined up to ask the Beatles‘ John Lennon a question during a press event for the musical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band On the Road. Gaines blurted out, “Hi, John, does seeing Sgt. Pepper’s being made into an off-Broadway show make you feel old?” Lennon responded acerbically: “I don’t need that to make me feel old, mate. Next!”
It was a humiliating moment for Gaines, and he wandered off. Peter Brown, the Beatles‘ former day-to-day manager and president of the Robert Stigwood Organization, which produced the show, noticed Gaines’ dejection, invited him to talk in a nearby lounge, and the pair became lifelong friends. Later, using Brown’s connections, the duo spent much of 1980 recording exclusive interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Beatles insiders such as Apple Corps’ Neil Aspinall and publisher Dick James. The transcripts became the basis for their 1983 best-seller The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles.
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Reading like a “paperback pulp novel,” as Rolling Stone declared, the book contains revelatory allegations such as Lennon’s brief sexual relationship with the Beatles’ late manager, Brian Epstein, and Lennon and Ono’s journey through heroin addiction. When the book came out, McCartney burned it in his fireplace, and his late wife, Linda, photographed the destruction. Now that Brown and Gaines have released the full transcripts from those 1980 interviews in a new book, All You Need Is Love: The Beatles In Their Own Words, which is out now, Gaines tells Billboard by phone from his East Hampton, N.Y., home that the first book may have been “polarizing,” but it’s based on talks with reliable — and comfortable — sources such as a jovial, weed-smoking McCartney.
Billboard: Why put this book out now, 41 years after the publication of The Love You Make?
Steven Gaines: I had the tapes in a bank vault for 40 years while we tried to figure out what to do with them. I wanted there to be full access to the tapes for historians, for the public. Peter and I, getting up in years, decided we had to make a decision now. Publishers were interested. We didn’t do it for the money, because there’s not a huge amount of money involved.
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My favorite detail in the book is “Dalí’s coconut” — a $5,000 gift Lennon commissioned for Starr in which the surrealism master Salvador Dalí created what appeared to be half a coconut lined with a sponge and “a long, curly black hair that he’d plucked from his mustache, he claimed, although I had my suspicions,” as Brown writes in the book.
A young man working for the Beatles in New York, Arma Andon, came in from America, because Dalí wanted to be paid in cash, and you couldn’t bring cash, especially in American dollars, out of England. He went out with Peter Brown and Dalí and his wife Gala to dinner. When it was over, Salvador Dalí asked Arma Andon if he’d like to go with him to a whorehouse. We didn’t put that in the book because it had nothing to do with the Beatles.
The other weird thing was … the hair in the coconut. We don’t know if Dalí got that from his mustache or his pubic hair. John wanted so badly to give Ringo something special, because Ringo felt so maligned and [like] such an outsider and they didn’t appreciate his drumming. When Peter showed it to John, they wet the hair, and the hair curled up, or straightened out, or — I forget what it did. John loved it so much. I forget what they gave Ringo instead. Ringo never knew about the coconut.
I was surprised at the bluntness of your questions, especially to McCartney: “Rock ‘n’ roll bands had a reputation for being bad on the road, like tying groupies to bedposts and f—– them with a fish. But you guys were supposed to be celibate.”
It was one of the things I always wondered about. They were always painted as such angels. Then, of course, there was Hamburg [where the Beatles performed in Germany in the ’60s] and all the hookers. It really shocked me that Paul said there were lots of girls on the road. Why hadn’t any of them come forward?
Paul invited me and Peter to his house in Sussex for the weekend. Paul whispered to me, “Do you smoke grass?” I said, “Not since I’ve been here.” He said, “I’m not allowed to smoke in the house because of the kids and because I’ve been arrested. Let’s go out in my car and we’ll drive around and smoke a joint.” We got into his Mini, the fanciest Mini I’d ever seen. He put one joint on the dashboard of the car.
Then the second joint fell down around the windshield-wiper defroster slot. Paul said, “Oh, no, no, no, they’ll find it, they’ll pull me over for a ticket, and Linda, and they’ll find it! We’ve got to get it out of there.” So we pulled over to the side of the road. We opened up both the doors to the car. He got some screwdrivers out of the bonnet and we started unscrewing the dashboard. His neighbors were walking down the street: “Having car trouble, Mr. McCartney?” “Oh, no, that’s OK, that’s fine, thank you very much.” We never found the joint. We screwed everything back together.
That was my experience in the interview: He was really shockingly forthcoming.
For decades, Yoko Ono was said to have broken up the Beatles, but the studio footage in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back suggests it was really about business — particularly regarding Allen Klein, whom Lennon wanted to hire as manager, while McCartney and others disagreed. All You Need Is Love indicates all these reasons are true, and others as well.
The first thing was that Brian [Epstein] died. He was the glue that held the Beatles together. Then the guys were getting tired of each other. They couldn’t go out on the street, they were the most famous people on earth, everything they did, every gesture, everything they said, was blown up, and they could only see each other, and it created tremendous tension.
If the feelings behind them weren’t so bad, they maybe would have solved those financial problems. There is a moment in Get Back when John and Yoko go over to speak with Peter Brown. Peter says, “Allen Klein is here,” and John and Yoko say, “Oh, when can we see him?” Peter says, “He’s at the Dorchester [Hotel in London], you can see Allen Klein tomorrow.” What they do behind everyone’s back is call the Dorchester and see him that night. And he brainwashes them. He made everything worse. He picked at all the scabs. He made the Beatles fight with each other.
How did you and Peter come up with this arrangement to write together?
In 1980, I was broke and down and out and unhappy and miserable in New York. He was living in Laguna Beach in a penthouse on a cliff. He said, “You’ve got to get out of New York. Stay here for a while.” It was glorious, and I said, “What about that book now?” He said, “Let’s write a proposal.” Then it exploded. We got $250,000 for the hardcover rights, $750,000 for the paperback rights. It went on and on until we had almost $2 million in advances. The problem was, it was too honest, it was too direct and the Beatles fans weren’t ready for it. But everybody’s grown up now. They’re ready for All You Need Is Love.
Poems Publishing is just getting started, but the idea of the company has been in the making for over a decade. The new boutique publisher, based out of a midcentury modern house in Encino, Calif., was founded by a team of executives from all areas of the publishing business. Stefan and Jordan Johnson, who found Grammy-winning success as the writing/production duo The Monsters & Strangerz (Maroon 5’s “Memories”; Dua Lipa’s “Break My Heart”; Justin Bieber’s “Ghost”), always wanted to start a publishing company with their brother, Christian, a former vp of A&R at Big Deal Music and Hipgnosis. But for the past decade, they had been waiting for the right situation to come along.
That situation finally materialized a few years ago when the brothers discussed their aspirations with Mega House Music’s co-founders David Silberstein and Jeremy Levin, who have managed The Monsters and Strangerz for about 10 years. Together, the group teamed up with Mega House president Haley Evans and manager Laura Higbee to launch Poems with the goal of offering high-touch service and creative mentorship in fair deals that “everyone can feel good about,” says Jordan.
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The company started slowly with the signing of one emerging singer-songwriter, Ella Boh, two years ago. Now, Poems is ready to expand. With a current roster of four — Boh, as well as Jack LaFrantz, Isiah Tejada and Jackson Foote — and an exclusive administration deal with Kobalt, Poems is seeing success with Benson Boone’s current Billboard Pop Airplay No. 1 “Beautiful Things,” which was co-written by LaFrantz (who is administered through a prior deal with Position Music), and “Love On” by Selena Gomez which was co-written and co-produced by Tejada (along with Stefan and Jordan).
“It’s really validating for us as a new publishing company,” says Silberstein of his writers’ recent breakthroughs. “It’s great to have songs at radio, performed by artists we love. It just makes us hungry for more. We’re trying to stack up those BMI and ASCAP awards.”
Why did it feel like this was the right time and the right situation to start a new publishing company?
Silberstein: Over the last 15 years, we’ve had a number of people approach us about different ventures. The Monsters and Christian have as well. It just never felt right. About two or three years ago, we started talking with Stefan, Jordan, Christian, Haley and Laura about forming a publishing company. We learned from our vantage point as managers that there’s a lot of value in having creatives involved at the publishing company that can provide mentorship and feedback that some executives might not have. We also know that Christian had been wearing the publisher hat for years and had a lot of valuable experience there. Our thought was instead of trying to do it all independently of each other, we could pull it all together and try to offer the greatest creative service of all publishers. Our goal is to be the No. 1 creative service publishing company.
Jordan: It was always our plan to start a publishing company some day. We’ve been working with Mega House for 10 years now, and when we started talking about the idea with them, it felt right to have them as partners. It helps Stef and I stay in the studio. We needed other members on the team who weren’t stuck in sessions eight hours a day.
Stefan and Jordan, you have had plenty of success creatively, and as Jordan said, your creative process can take up easily eight hours a day already. Why did you want to get into the business side?
Jordan: We’ve been through deals ourselves and seen what it’s like to not get the best end of the deal. We thought it’d be great to create a company where we can help the next generation of writers with their goals and with deals everyone can feel good about. It’s great to be in a place now where our success is not all just predicated on us being in the studio and writing songs. We can have more impact.
Stefan: There are some producers and writers that have created publishing companies that will far outlast them as a producer and writer and continue to create opportunity and help people’s dreams come true. We really love seeing the impact that’s possible.
What songwriter- or producer-led companies do you admire?
Stefan: Prescription Songs [founded by Dr. Luke], MXM Music [founded by Max Martin], Nice Life [founded by Ricky Reed], Pulse [founded by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, Josh Abraham] — those are all amazing companies that provide amazing service. Some of them are even so big now that some people don’t realize that it started with one producer or writer.
Jordan: We love the idea of it feeling like an entity of its own. It’s not the Monsters’ publishing company. It’s a company that we are partners of, and we help in any way we can.
David and Jeremy, why was it important to have your longtime management clients as part of this founding team at Poems?
Levin: Having the Monsters on board is great. They can answer a lot of questions for whoever is signed to us from a creative perspective. They’re professionals in the truest sense of the word. Partnering with them was really natural and a great way to continue our relationship with them forever.
Silberstein: A lot of the places we are beginning to pitch songs to as songwriter managers are to the producers — when the producers have control or executive production credit on the project. The Monsters are just the highest echelon of producers and have access to top projects and also to all their peers of other great producers and great artists. It will bring great mentorship and opportunities for the roster.
All of you have creative and A&R backgrounds. What are you looking for in potential signees to build this roster?
Christian: We’re building a roster from scratch so the person side is important. You want to develop a community. The best thing that can happen is that you build your roster and the roster is its own self-sustaining thing. Where the writers are bringing each other into sessions and looking out for each other.
Levin: As a foundation for us, we want to have writers and producers across genres and with different skill sets so that we have diversity across the board.
Silberstein: When an opportunity comes in, we don’t want to be like, “Oh, we have five people for this.” Maybe just one or two. We want to build the right community within the publishing company so there’s no feeling of competition for the same things.
Jeremy and David, you have been managing songwriters and producers for over a decade. I often hear that managers end up picking up a lot of the creative and A&R work for publishers these days, especially when the A&Rs at the publisher have too many songwriters to keep up with. Did that prior experience help your transition to working as a publisher?
Silberstein: As managers, we always took the approach that, even though there are many incredible publishers, whatever the publisher did was going to be icing on the cake. We always had the mentality that as managers we would have to do it all, whether that’s setting up sessions, pitching songs — the things that publishers do. If we have a great publishing partner, that’s great, but we are going to service our clients regardless. We definitely take this mentality into our role as publishers now. We take this role super seriously because we’ve seen both the good and bad. There’s some incredible individual publishers who are just slapped with a 50-person roster, and it’s no fault of their own that they can’t service them fully.
Management companies that expand into publishing or records often sign whoever they manage to their new label or publisher. Do you plan to do this with your Mega House roster?
Levin: I don’t think there’s anything super wrong with that model, but it’s not something we’ve done a lot of. We try to keep them separate if we can.
Silberstein: We’ve found it’s the most impartial to represent somebody just as a manager and then try to help them negotiate a publishing deal with you as well.
You had a huge success recently with your signee Jack LaFrantz, who is the right-hand man for Benson Boone and co-wrote on his breakout hit “Beautiful Things.” What does this early win mean for Poems?
Silberstein: It’s really special for Poems, and I feel so proud and happy for Jack. It’s cool to see a writer as kind and talented as him have their first hit. It’s even cooler that Jack and Benson have been working together since Benson’s earliest days. They believed in each other through the years and stuck together.
Levin: Jack is so talented musically, and he’s one of those rare people that when you meet them you fall in love with them right away. He’s got a magnetic aura to him. The second we had a meeting with him, we knew he was great.
What’s the value of choosing a boutique, songwriter-led publisher like Poems over a large indie or major publisher?
Stefan: You can be at any one of the majors, and you can have a go-to person that’s really amazing. I don’t want to downplay what any one of the bigger publishers does, but with a boutique like us the engagement you’ll get is very high. We have more people on our team right now than we have writers because we want to provide the highest level of service, and we want to build our roster right. We’ve all been in the game long enough to know what a good and bad publisher does.
Jordan: Because of the way the team is rounded out, there’s always going to be somebody on the team who has the answer to a question or the expertise needed.
Christian: We will only grow very deliberately — that’s one of the words that we use frequently. When we sign, it is with intentionality, and songwriters can expect the service that comes with that.
Hipgnosis Song Management (HSM), the investment advisor for the troubled music royalty fund Hipgnosis Songs Fund that has come under scrutiny for its handling of accounting issues, released a statement Monday (April 22) saying it has “repeatedly been blamed for many issues affecting the [Songs Fund] which were not HSM’s responsibility” and that it “will vigorously protect its interests should the [Songs Fund board] purport to terminate” it as investment advisor.
The statement comes after a wave of headlines in the past month dating back to the March 28 release of a report by Shot Tower Capital which alleged that HSM, as investment advisor for Hipgnosis Songs Fund — which owns full or partial rights to song catalogs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira and Neil Young, among others — overstated its revenues, the scope of its assets and its earnings in disclosures to investors and regulators. That followed a vote last October in which shareholders first rejected a proposed sale of some of the fund’s song catalog and a subsequent vote of no to continuation — the equivalent of a vote of no confidence — in the fund’s previous board and its investment advisor HSM, prompting the formation of a new board with a new chairman, Rob Naylor. (Merck Mercuriadis, the founder of the fund, moved from CEO of HSM to chairman in February.)
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In the past few days, two potential takeover bids have been submitted to the board of Hipgnosis Songs Fund: one from Concord at $1.4 billion and the other from Blackstone, which is the majority owner of HSM, at $1.5 billion. The initial Concord bid suggested that the publishing company would take over management of the fund’s catalog from HSM, which would require 12 months’ written notice; a fee equal to one year of services; and, at the end of that year, allowing HSM to exercise a call option to buy the portfolio’s assets by outbidding any competing offer, according to previous filings.
In the new statement, HSM indicates that it would exercise that call option if it becomes necessary.
“Based on extensive legal advice we are confident that the [Songs Fund] has no legal grounds to terminate our relationship without being subject to HSM’s contractual rights contained in the [investment advisory agreement, or IAA],” Hipgnosis Songs Management’s statement reads. “HSM has explained this in detailed legal correspondence with the [fund]. The [fund] has not responded to HSM on the legal arguments it has presented.
“HSM will vigorously protect its interests should the [fund] purport to terminate the IAA,” the statement continues. “We will use all means necessary to defend our contractual position and interests. It is important that shareholders, songwriters and artists understand that HSM has acted appropriately and professionally in our role as Investment Advisor and fully in accordance with the IAA.
“To be clear, were the [fund] to purport to terminate the IAA and/or hand HSM’s responsibilities under the IAA to a third party, HSM and its majority shareholder are fully resolved to protect all of our rights under the IAA, including the right to exercise the call option to acquire the [fund]’s assets.”
Earlier today, the board of Hipgnosis Songs Fund said that, were Blackstone to officially file its $1.5 billion bid to take over the company, it would support that option over the Concord bid from last week. And given Blackstone’s majority ownership of HSM, it would presumably follow that HSM would then continue in its role as investment advisor, meaning HSM would not have to exercise its call option in the end. The Blackstone bid is effectively the same as the call option.
Further bids may still arise as the situation continues to unfold. The next step would be a June 10 meeting in which shareholders would vote on approval of any bid that formally comes in.
Warner Chappell Music is moving all of its European online processing to ICE. After a 10-month review, the publisher is expanding its partnership with ICE, a joint venture of GEMA, STIM and PRS for Music that serves as a hub for publishing licensing, collections and payment processing for online uses of compositions in Europe and other markets.
A decade ago, the European Union opened the song-licensing market in Europe to competition by allowing any collective management organization (CMO) to license music for online uses across various markets. In other words, while the German CMO GEMA would maintain its offline monopoly in Germany, for example, it would compete with other CMOs to represent songwriters, publishers and other societies for online uses of their work. In practice, the serious competition takes place between the French CMO SACEM and ICE, a joint venture of GEMA, STIM (Sweden) and PRS for Music (U.K.). Other markets have opened to competition as well, although the U.S. is not one of them.
Universal Music Publishing Group works with SACEM, and ICE also works with Sony Music Publishing through SOLAR, which administers the company’s Anglo-American catalog. Warner Chappell had spread its rights over several different processing companies, but this deal means that all of its business in Europe, as well as some other markets, will go through ICE.
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Although the scope of writer and publisher deals with CMOs vary, this one only involves processing, since Warner Chappell does its own licensing.
“In today’s digital music market, there are vast volumes of data to process, and we need to work with a reliable partner to ensure we’re delivering best-in-class service,” Warner Chappell co-Chair and CEO Guy Moot said in the announcement of the deal. “ICE has always proved to be an innovative and flexible partner, so we’re delighted to expand our relationship with them.”
The deal represents a significant, but not unexpected, win for ICE. “It’s a significant decision and we’re committed to continuing to deliver the best services on the market,” ICE chief commercial officer Ben McEwen said in the announcement. “Specifically in the area of online processing, we have led the way with initiatives such as multi-stage invoicing to maximize claims, alongside many other innovations in matching, reporting and quality assurance.”
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Spotify will be raising prices for its premium subscription in five markets later this month and do the same in the United States at an unspecified time later this year. For about $1 to $2 extra per month, depending on the market, premium users will receive audiobooks alongside podcasts and ad-free music listening in their subscription — but the change will have a knock-on effect for mechanical royalty rates for songwriters and publishers.
Once the price increases are launched, all premium subscribers will automatically be subject to the new offering unless they manually change their subscription tier. While the increased price will result in Spotify getting increased revenue, a representative for Spotify believes it also qualifies the popular premium tier for a discount on its royalty rate on U.S. mechanicals because it is now considered a “bundle,” similar to how Amazon bundles Prime and Amazon Music and Apple bundles Apple Music and Apple News.
“Spotify is on track to pay publishers and societies more in 2024 than in 2023,” a Spotify rep said, citing the company’s Loud and Clear report that says the streamer has paid nearly $4 billion to publishers, PROs and collection societies in the last two years.
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“As our industry partners are aware, changes in our product portfolio mean that we are paying out in different ways based on terms agreed to by both streaming services and publishers. Multiple DSPs have long paid a lower rate for bundles versus a standalone music subscription, and our approach is consistent,” the company added. Though Spotify premium users have already gotten access to audiobooks on the service since October for no additional charge, the company clarified to Billboard that its re-classification of the tier as a “bundle” is not retroactive to when it began testing audiobooks but only begins when the subscription price increases.
Music publishers have made it clear they are not going to accept the change without a fight. David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), called out the service for the move, saying that “it appears Spotify has returned to attacking the very songwriters who make its business possible.” He went on to add that the company’s attempt to “radically reduce payments” to publishers and songwriters is “a cynical and potentially unlawful move.” If it is determined that Spotify’s move is not properly categorized as a bundle, the trade organization says it will consider “all options,” including the MLC or publishers taking Spotify to court or before the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), the entity that sets mechanical royalty rates for streaming in the United States. “We will not stand for their perversion of the settlement we agreed upon in 2022,” he warned.
Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) took to Instagram, urging their followers to cancel their subscriptions: “NSAI, along with the the @nmpaorg, is contemplating our next steps to fight this move. Stay tuned, but in the meantime remember they are doing all this in the worst possible show of disrespect to the songwriters who make them billions.”
Songwriters of North America CEO Michelle Lewis shared the perspective of songwriters, telling Billboard, “We are disappointed, but not surprised, to see Spotify once again on the forefront of finding ways to pay songwriters less. This reclassification, which we see as a deliberate misclassification, dangerously undermines the good faith of the last CRB settlement. It’s also duly noted that it is always the same company leading in this way.”
Phonorecords IV Settlement
Every five years, the CRB reconsiders the royalty rate for mechanicals in the United States. It is a complex, multi-pronged formula, setting the rate that each streaming service must pay to publishers and songwriters based on a number of contingent factors, including the subscription price, the amount the service pays to record labels and more. There are other caveats to consider when setting the rate based on how the user is subscribed with their streaming service, including whether the music was streamed on a free, ad-supported tier or on a paid, premium tier and whether the user is subscribed to the service through a bundle of other products.
In late 2022, NMPA, NSAI and Digital Media Association (DiMA) jointly announced that they had come to a voluntary settlement about what the U.S. mechanical royalty rate would be for the period of 2023-2027 (also called Phonorecords IV or “Phono IV”).
Even though the changes to the way bundling worked were considered a concession to streaming services, many in the music business celebrated the Phono IV settlement as an overall win, especially because the previous five-year rate (Phono III) was fought over for years, causing confusion over rates in the interim. When it was announced, the NMPA touted the Phono IV settlement as delivering the “highest rates in the history of digital streaming,” and many felt it signaled a new era of cooperation between streaming services and the music business. Israelite says now in his statement that Spotify’s latest move to bundle audiobooks “ends our period of relative peace.”
How Bundling Affects Mechanical Revenue
Even though the price of Spotify premium is rising, that additional revenue does not benefit songwriters and publishers. Now that premium is considered a bundled service with audiobooks, some of the subscription price is owed to book publishers and authors to license their works, too.
Mechanical revenue for bundles is calculated by seeing what audiobooks are valued at as a standalone offering ($9.99) and weighing that against the price of the premium bundle offering ($10.99), according to Phonorecords IV. The value of music is found by dividing the total premium price ($10.99) by the two services (audiobooks only and premium) together ($21), which results in music being valued at about 52% of the total bundle, or around $5.70 per subscriber.
How Bundling Affects the Total Content Cost
The first step in calculating the mechanical royalty rate a streaming service owes to songwriters and publishers is to find the “all-in pool.” This is the greater of either the headline rate (which ranges from 15.1% for 2023, 15.2% for 2024, 15.25% for 2025, 15.3% for 2026, and 15.35% for 2027) of Spotify’s revenue (which is now lowered to around $5.70 per subscriber) or the percentage of total content cost (TCC), a.k.a. what royalty Spotify pays to labels.
Previously, Spotify premium qualified for the full rate of the lesser of 26.2% of TCC for the period or $1.10 per subscriber. Now, after deciding to change its premium offering to include audiobooks, Spotify argues it qualifies as a “bundled subscription offering,” which moves its rate down to 24.5% of TCC for the accounting period.
Regardless of whether Spotify calculates its royalties due to songwriters and publishers based on the percentage of TCC or the headline rate, both options are affected by Spotify reclassifying premium as a bundle. One source close to the matter tells Billboard that Spotify has been paying based on the TCC recently.
In January 2023, when Los Angeles-based songwriter David Arkwright accepted his Roc Nation-signed colleague Natania Lalwani‘s invitation to visit her home city of Mumbai, he thought, “Let’s go see India! This could be fun.” The next thing he knew, he was commuting two hours a day through heavy traffic to work 18-hour studio sessions all month with the singer-rapper King, whose 2022 hit “Maan Meri Jaan” has 446 million Spotify streams.
“King walked in, and he started to sing,” recalls Arkwright, who wound up taking two additional trips to India last year to work on King’s October album New Life. “We just went, ‘Aaaaaand we’re writing.’ After that, it was like, ‘Hi, nice to meet you.’”
With its population of 1.4 billion, India is one of the biggest potential international markets for streaming hits — and it’s just emerging as a music business powerhouse after years of dealing with online piracy and stream-ripping. So top publishers are funding trips for veteran Western songwriters like Arkwright to combine their pop skills with regional stars. And it’s not just India. In October, publisher Warner Chappell sent U.S. country songwriters to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for a camp that generated potential hits for top regional sertanejo stars. And U.S. songwriters have spent the last decade traveling to South Korea and Japan, working with regional labels to write K-pop and J-pop hits.
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“With the way socials are going, the world is such a smaller place, whether we’re talking Korea or India or Brazil,” says J.Que Smith, a Grammy-nominated L.A. songwriter who has co-written for Beyoncé and Justin Bieber and recently penned Japanese girl group XG‘s hit “Shooting Star.” “Thirty years ago, we weren’t really caught up on what India was doing, and India didn’t know what we were doing. But now that’s very different.”
For decades in the record industry, the only Western stars who could break internationally were those who could ship physical records to far-away countries — from Cheap Trick in Japan to Michael Jackson in Europe. In the streaming era, that has changed. K-pop stars, as well as Latin-music breakouts like “Despacito,” have demonstrated that international successes can emerge from anywhere, not just North America or Europe. Coachella showed this international breadth in April with headliners such as Mexico’s Peso Pluma and Carin León, South Korea’s ATEEZ and LE SSERAFIM, Colombia’s J Balvin, Argentina’s Bizarrap and South Africa’s Tyla, says Marc Geiger, the former William Morris head of music who is now head of SaveLive, which invests in independent live music clubs. “Music has turned into the Olympics,” Geiger says.
Roughly 14 years ago, Harvey Mason, Jr., a producer and songwriter who has worked with Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Justin Timberlake, accepted an invitation from South Korea’s SM Entertainment to work with a half-dozen other Los Angeles songwriters to crank out what became hits for K-Pop groups like Girls’ Generation and EXO. “We kind of just did what we did and took their sounds and took our sounds and put them together,” recalls Mason, now CEO of The Recording Academy, who continues to collaborate with K-pop artists. “New music markets are being developed and becoming more healthy and vibrant. Look at Africa — you’ve got 1.4 billion people on the continent, and they consume so much music. As the infrastructure of the industry starts to build, you’re going to see regional hits becoming just as important as hits in the U.S.”
India is perhaps the most fertile region for music-streaming opportunity: Total streams in 2023 were more than 1 trillion, second only to the U.S., according to Luminate, and the country ranked first in volume growth, well outpacing the U.S., Indonesia and Brazil. Then again, a monthly Spotify account in India costs roughly $1.42, so the revenues for artists, labels and other rightsholders aren’t yet as robust as they are in the U.S. and elsewhere. “The revenue generated for a track always depends on where it is streamed and what the end-user is paying for the subscription in that specific geography,” says Ludovic Pouilly, senior vp of music industry relations for Deezer, a streaming service available in more than 185 countries (though not in India).
In 2023, Asian recorded-music revenue increased 14.9%, according to IFPI, its fourth straight year of double-digit growth, while revenues in the Middle East and North Africa rose 14.4% and Latin America’s 10-year boom continued with a 19.4% jump. Major music companies are making heavy investment bets in these regions — Sony Music bought top Brazilian indie label Som Livre for $255 million in 2021, for example, to try to dominate the world’s ninth-largest music market, whose revenues increased 13.4% in 2023, according to the IFPI.
For publishers, the world market has become so robust that many are making like Arkwright and Smith and supplementing their song-royalty income from once-reliable U.S. markets with suddenly-reliable work in Asia and Brazil. “Five years ago, pop songs were huge in America, and it was easy to export our writers. It’s a bit harder now, because there’s a local hip-hop culture where Nordic writers are not as good to be in,” says Lars Karlsson, managing director of Warner Chappell Music Scandinavia, a region famous for pop mega-songwriters such as Sweden’s Max Martin. “It’s beautiful to have emerging markets open up for us.” Adds Ryan Press, Warner Chappell’s North American president: “For a while, it felt like you had to have success in the U.S., and that dictated everything. Now that’s not the case.”
In 2022, Universal Music Publishing Group launched an A&R team, the Global Creative Group, to plan cross-cultural collaborations such as a recent K-pop songwriting camp in Los Angeles and a country-and-Latin-music camp in Mexico City. It sent Elena Rose, a Venezuelan-American songwriter from Miami who co-wrote last year’s Becky G–Karol G hit “Mamiii,” to Morocco to collaborate with singer-songwriter Manal — and wound up with a duet and a reworked album. “It wasn’t like, ‘We’re going to send our Western producers to colonize some unsuspecting territory,’” says David Gray, the UMPG exec who leads the group. “It was, ‘We’ve got a great Latin artist and a great artist in Morocco, let’s put them together.’ This is not about imposing Western creative styles onto another country.”
Dominated by the Bollywood film industry and plagued for years with online piracy, India has struggled to develop its own recorded-music business, despite a period of Indipop and Punjabi pop hits in the ’80s and ’90s. But Universal and Sony have had offices in India for years, and Warner Music expanded its presence there in 2020, installing Jay Mehta as managing director; earlier this year, Reservoir Media signed publishing deals, including catalogs and future works, for Indian rappers MC Altaf and D’Evil. India is the 14th-biggest music market, increasing revenues by 15.3% in 2023.
Over the last few years, according to New Delhi-born singer-songwriter Subhi, the music business in India has broadened from strict Bollywood-industry guidelines to artists and music companies with a broader palette to create songs. That shift has led to more regional hits — and interest from major record labels and publishers, and more collaborations, like a songwriting camp Subhi attended through Anara Publishing and a co-writing session with a U.K. producer she’d met at a separate camp. “It’s a huge market to cater to, but also, slowly, we’re building an audience for independent music,” says Subhi, who is based in L.A. and Chicago. “It’s only the beginning.”
A regional star in India, King is a “sign that Indian music will have an increasing impact and influence on the global charts,” as the general manager of his label, Warner Music Middle East, said in 2023’s IFPI report. Now that King’s 2020 hit, “Tu Aake Dekhle,” has scored 395 million Spotify plays, Bhavy Anand, one of his managers, says, “We’ve been getting a lot of attention from international songwriters and publishers and media houses. This was unheard-of three years, four years [ago].”
Working with Warner’s Mehta, King’s team saw an opportunity to cross over from regional hits to international stardom, and recorded a new version of “Maan Meri Jaan,” with vocals in both Hindi and English. The label contacted Lalwani, the Mumbai-born songwriter who lives in Los Angeles. “I wanted to make it very effortless — Hindi and English isn’t something that’s always put together,” Lalwani says. Later, the label enlisted a U.S. pop star, Nick Jonas, to add duet vocals for the new version released in April.
For Arkwright, collaborating with artists outside North America and Europe is a crucial way to diversify his songwriting business. “People there are doing things that no one is doing here. I want to partner with those people,” he says. “I wish it could be like in the ’80s, where you could have a Michael Jackson B-side and buy a house in Malibu. But you have to look at things differently. You have to look at new and emerging markets.”
