Publishing
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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.”
Seeker Music has acquired the publishing rights to Marcos “Kosine” Palacios’ catalog, including his share of hits like “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj, “Birthday Cake” by Rihanna, “DANCE (A$$)” by Big Sean as well as the soundtracks he wrote for FOX’s Empire and Star and his work as half of the production duo Da Internz. Additionally, Kosine has been named Seeker’s first-ever Samplémoose ambassador.
The Samplémoose platform is a key part of the company’s strategy to boost the profile of its catalog by offering select producers, artists and songwriters access to an easy-to-clear, curated selection of loops, beats and flip-starts made out of the company’s songs. Already, Samplémoose efforts have led to the creation of Coco Jones’ song “Double Back,” which flips “Rain” by SWV. Other flips from Seeker’s catalog include Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song” (flipped from J-Kwon’s “Tipsy”), Chris Brown’s “Freak (from Nelly’s “Air Force Ones”), Teyana Taylor’s “Freak” (from Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me”), and IVE‘s “All Night” featuring Saweetie (from Icona Pop’s song of the same name).
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Through his new ambassadorship, Kosine will spearhead the expansion of more Samplémoose initiatives. Last week (April 10-12), the producer put together a songwriting camp with Seeker called Samplémoose Sessions, which brought together nearly two dozen music creators to flip songs from Seeker’s catalog. Some of the songs used at the camp included Christopher Cross’ “Sailing” and “Arthur’s Theme”; The Go-Go’s‘ “We Got The Beat,” Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” and Fantasia’s “When I See U.”
Seeker Music, which was founded in 2020 by songwriter and entrepreneur Evan Bogart, takes a creative and active approach to catalog management, treating older songs with the same approach as its new, frontline releases. To date, the company has acquired catalogs from artists such as Run The Jewels, Teddy Geiger, Jon Bellion, John Ryan, Plested and MoZella. Its frontline publishing roster includes Kito, Robopop, Sofía Valdés and K Sotomayor, while its frontline label roster includes Kareen Lomax, CARR, Dead Pony, Latroit, ONR and Fourth Daughter.
“In joining forces with Seeker Music and the Samplémoose initiative, I feel a profound sense of alignment with a team that not only values the legacy of music but also pioneers new pathways for creativity and innovation,” said Kosine in a statement. “This partnership marks a significant milestone in my career, offering a unique platform to reimagine the classics while nurturing the next generation of talent. I’m thrilled to embark on this journey, blending tradition with innovation, and to contribute to the music industry in a way that resonates across generations.”
Evan Bogart added: “When we started acquiring catalogs at Seeker, I only was interested in songs I wish I wrote, or projects I wish I had worked on, and that’s hands-down, undeniably Kosine’s body of work. Me and Kos go way back and have been collaborating on music for almost 15 years. Now, we get to write our next chapter together, working closely on Samplémoose, and investing in each other, in ways a publishing company and producer haven’t before. It’s a major honor to have this opportunity to build with him.”
After a disastrous couple months, Hipgnosis Songs Fund (HSF) has agreed to a $1.402 billion takeover from rival Concord Chorus.
In a statement issued early Thursday (April 18) to the London Stock Exchange, the deal values each Hipgnosis share at £0.93, a premium of roughly one third the royalty fund’s shareprice at the close of trading on Wednesday.
“The board is pleased to announce and unanimously recommend this US$1.4 billion offer for Hipgnosis from Concord,” comments Robert Naylor, chairman of Hipgnosis. The acquisition, he continues, “represents an attractive opportunity for our shareholders to immediately realize their holding at a premium, mitigating the risks we see ahead to achieving a material improvement in the share price.”
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HSF has been in the doghouse since a failed investors continuation resolution in October 2023, and a partial catalog sale — effectively a vote of no confidence in both the previous board and the investment advisor, Hipgnosis Song Management.
Matters took another turn last month when HSF, which has amassed a catalog that includes stakes in songs by Neil Young, Justin Bieber, Journey, Lindsey Buckingham, Blondie, Justin Timberlake and many other artists and writers, cut the value of its portfolio by more than a quarter and told investors that it does not intend to recommence paying dividends “for the foreseeable future” as it focuses on paying down debts.
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Compiled by the board’s lead independent adviser, Shot Tower Capital, the report found that Hipgnosis Song Management, run by Hipgnosis founder and music manager Merck Mercuriadis, materially overstated the fund’s revenue and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and supported catalog acquisitions with financial analysis that failed to meet “music industry standards.”
HSF itself overstated the scope of its music assets, the report noted, in disclosures to investors and regulators. And in a pitch last September to investors to sell some 29 catalogs to a sister Hipgnosis company, the fund included a better-than-could-be-expected post-deal valuation, the report found.
Following completion of the acquisition and a short transition period, reads a statement to the London Stock Exchange, it is expected that Concord will take over the management of Hipgnosis’ assets, adding to a business that, since 2015, has completed more than 100 transactions across recorded music, music publishing and theatricals, US$2.8 billion spending spree.
The Hipgnosis board, Naylor continues, is confident that Concord is the “right owner” to take on the Hipgnosis catalogue and manage it in the interests of composers and performers.
The offer has been unanimously recommended by its board and has the support of 29.38 per cent of their shareholders, comments Bob Valentine, CEO of Concord, controlled by investor Alchemy Copyrights. “We believe we are offering a fair price for Hipgnosis’ catalogues and music assets, giving its shareholders the opportunity to realize their investment at a significant premium to the prevailing share price in cash.”
Concord’s leadership identifies Hipgnosis’ assets as further means to grow its business and scale and leverage its operations.
Primary Wave has partnered with Neil Sedaka to acquire a stake in the star’s master and publishing rights. Regarded as perhaps the world’s first-ever teen pop star, Sedaka began his career in 1957 and went on to pen hits like “Love Will Keep Us Together,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Laughter in the Rain,” “Calendar Girl,” “Oh! Carol” and “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.”
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Sedaka has earned his fair share of accolades over the years, including five Grammy nominations. He has been inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was one of the first musical guests on Saturday Night Live.
After getting his start as one of the top acts of the late 1950s, he pivoted to focusing his efforts on writing hits for other artists, including Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, The Monkees and The Fifth Dimension.
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During the height of the British Invasion, he continued to hone a strong fanbase in the UK, and in the early 1970s was re-introduced to American audiences by Elton John, who signed Sedaka to his new label Rocket Records. As he gained acclaim through songs like “Bad Blood” and “Laughter in the Rain” under the Rocket deal, one of his early songs, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,” was re-released as a ballad to great success, becoming the second song in history to make the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 for two versions of the same song. Plus, Captain and Tennille won Record of the Year for “Love Will Keep Us Together,” which was co-penned by Sedaka.
A classically trained Juilliard graduate, Sedaka embraced his roots in the 21st century, composing symphonies and piano concertos like “Joie De Vivre” and “Manhattan Intermezzo,” both of which were recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London.
This deal encompasses Sedaka’s entire catalog, including all compositions written by him and all recordings performed by him. Other legendary artists have also performed and recorded his works, including Elvis Presley, Connie Francis and Abba. While these recordings are not part of the deal, Primary Wave still benefits on the publishing side, given Sedaka’s writing credits.
Primary Wave, known as an active and creative catalog buyer and publisher, will help boost Sedaka’s works with the help of its in-house marketing, digital strategy, licensing, synch and film/tv production teams.
“I am thrilled to be entering into this partnership with Primary Wave – an organization that I have long-admired for their unwavering commitment and dedication to the artists they represent,” says Sedaka of the deal. “After almost 70 years in the music business, I’ve gotten pretty good at separating the big talkers from the real deals, and Larry and his team at Primary Wave are about as real deal as it gets. I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship that will allow me to work side by side with this amazing organization and finally give my extensive collection of songs the attention and exposure it deserves.”
Madeline Boyd, Primary Wave’s finance & investments manager adds, “We are thrilled to welcome Neil Sedaka into the Primary Wave family. As both a singer and songwriter, Neil has created an iconic catalog that has transcended decades and genres. We look forward to continue creating new opportunities for his timeless songs together.”
Tega Ethan, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Nigeria, and Taylor Zickfoose, a 28-year-old native of Washington state, are the inaugural recipients of the Bob Dylan Center songwriter fellowship.
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An initiative of Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) and BDC in Tulsa, OK, each fellowship includes a $40,000 project stipend, public engagement and presentation opportunities, dedicated time in the Bob Dylan Archive to study the legendary artist’s creative process, roundtrip airfare to Tulsa and accommodations, mentorship from the music publishing giant’s songwriters and executives, recording time, and more.
The two winners were selected by global panel of leading artists and songwriters, including Juliette Armanet, Patty Griffin, John Mellencamp, Carla Morrison, and Nas, and reviewed by executives at BDC and UMPG.
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“Songwriters trying to make a go of it in the modern music business need the kind of encouragement and support that this fellowship provides,” comments Mellencamp in a statement. “I congratulate Tega and Taylor on being the first two recipients, and hope they write some great songs during their time in Tulsa.”
Nearly 600 works were submitted from around the world, organizers say, based on the criteria that applicants were 18 years or older and unsigned to a publishing agreement of any kind at the time of the Fellowship start date, May, 1, 2024.
Announced last August, the fellowship is to be awarded each year to two standout talents, through an initiative that identifies, mentors and develops rising talent, doing so with the resources of the BDC.
The selection process, explains BDC creative services manager Zac Fowler, “was immensely difficult, yet enjoyable the whole way through.” Adds Fowler, “We’re excited to host Tega and Taylor in Tulsa, and look forward to hearing the music they each create during their year spent focusing on songwriting here.”
The application window for the 2025-2026 fellowship is expected to open later this fall. For more information, visit bobdylancenter.com/songwriterfellowship.
Warner Chappell Music has entered an agreement to administer Electronic Arts‘ music library. One of the world’s largest gaming companies, Electronic Arts is home to titles like The Sims, Medal of Honor, Madden NFL, Apex Legends and more. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news EA Worldwide executive and […]
UMPG has signed Andrea Bocelli to a global publishing deal through its Classics & Screen department. Under the new agreement, the major publisher will represent Bocelli’s future works as well as his latest album, A Family Christmas.
Dua Lipa‘s media and management company Radical22 has signed a global administration deal with Warner Chappell Music. The agreement follows last year’s news that the pop star has acquired her publishing outright.
Position Music has signed a global publishing agreement with Tinashe. As part of the deal, Position will also administer the publishing rights to the singer’s latest album, BB/ANG3L, as well as future releases.
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1916 Enterprises has jointly signed producer Anthoine Walters (Drake, Post Malone, Brent Faiyaz) to a publishing deal with Heavy Duty. 1916 also signed producer, songwriter and artist Matt Wills to a joint publishing agreement with Billen Tedd/Milk + Honey U.K.
Universal Production Music‘s sample discovery and licensing platform, Usample, announced the addition of new sample pack albums from popular composers like Nicholas Britell, Clint Mansell and Isobel Waller-Bridge.
Bella Figura Music has closed a significant equity and funding round to expand its music catalog. The round was led by private equity firm Freshstream with co-investment from Canadian pension fund OPTrust, a strategic family office and leading Dutch private equity investor. Bella Figura was launched in 2023 and has purchased a number of catalogs in the last six months, including those of Jeff Silverman (Adele, Aloe Blacc, Lee Fields) and Adrian Wright of The Human League.
Young Guns Publishing has extended its worldwide exclusive publishing deal with songwriter Ben Stennis. A writer for some of country’s biggest hitmakers — including Morgan Wallen, Bailey Zimmerman, Jason Aldean, Florida Georgia Line, Tim McGraw, Jake Owen, Justin Moore, High Valley and Ronnie Dunn — Stennis has been with the publisher for the last 10 years.
Warner Chappell Music has signed rising R&B artist Maeta to a global publishing deal. The agreement follows a breakthrough year for the singer, who hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart for two weeks with her single “Through the Night” featuring Free Nationals.
Barry Weiss’ Bossy Songs has signed “Austin” co-writer Cheyenna to a global publishing deal. Apart from co-penning Dasha‘s viral country-pop hit, Cheyenna has also collaborated with artists including GAYLE, BIZZY, Semler and Los Stars.
Blake Morgan‘s ECR Music Group has launched a new global partnership with Sony Music Publishing as well as Meridian, an artist services imprint.
Reservoir has signed indie rock singer-songwriter Katie Pruitt to a global publishing deal through its joint venture with One Riot. The agreement will include Pruitt’s upcoming album Mantras and future works.
Kobalt has signed Australian singer/songwriter Kita Alexander to a worldwide publishing deal. The news follows Alexander’s debut album YOUNG IN LOVE, which was released last month via Warner Music Australia.
Wise Music Group has signed Swedish composer Jacob Mühlrad to a new publishing agreement through Bosworth Music GmbH. Mühlrad’s back catalog will be represented by Gehrmans for Scandinavia and the Baltic States and by Bosworth Music for the rest of the world. Future works will also be administered by Bosworth worldwide.
Lately, most Western songwriters want to work with K-pop or J-pop acts. But Beckuh Boom — the American songwriter behind hits for BLACKPINK and Twice — remembers when that wasn’t the case. “When I started taking trips to Seoul back in 2012, everyone I talked to about it kind of laughed at me or just didn’t get it,” she says. “They’d say, ‘Why would you waste your time? They’re not even close to the biggest market.’”
It took the global breakthroughs of Korean acts like BTS and BLACKPINK and Japanese acts like XG a few years later for Western talent to take the songwriting opportunities in Asia’s two largest pop markets as seriously as Boom had. Now, they are among the most lucrative and sought-after gigs in the global publishing business, drawing in top American hitmakers like Ryan Tedder, Victoria Monet and Jacob Kasher “JKash” Hindlin.
But to land a hit in Korea or Japan, Western songwriters have to conform to the local ways of doing business, and both markets have clear distinctions from the American industry. Typically, this involves English-language demos being funneled to a native, local-language songwriter, who then re-writes or translates most, or all, of the original lyrics into Korean or Japanese, earning them a songwriting credit in the process. Some sources estimate that roughly 80% of K-pop songs and 30%-40% of J-pop songs released today have ties to American or other Western sources — usually with totally different lyrics.
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“When demos are sent to Korean labels, they are almost always in English,” says Kevin Woo, a former K-pop idol who now works as a songwriter and has translated English demos into Korean. “That’s how we first hear the songs as artists and idols — in English. Then we pick whichever track we vibe with, and then they get that song translated into Korean.” Japanese music executives say this is similar to how it works in J-pop.
This is a fast-growing part of the job description for Korean or Japanese writers, as more songs are imported from Westerners each year. Naoki Osada, founder/CEO of Avex USA, the Japanese entertainment powerhouse’s American branch, says that since he started in the Japanese music industry 20 years ago, the number of songs written by Americans has more than doubled.
To adapt these English-lyric pitches, Young Chance, a Korean songwriter and producer, says “we usually keep the title of the song from the demo, but then when we translate, we take a different perspective on the same title.” In Japan, where speaking English as a second language is less common and there is less emphasis on capturing a global audience overall, it is even more important to rework the words of a Western demo to fit the needs of the local listener.
Common words and phrases like “let’s go” or “boom,” or slang like “Westside,” which are often derived from American rap music, might still make the cut in a K-pop or J-pop song, but that’s about it. Unless, of course, it’s a song intended to be a Western crossover hit, like BTS’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Dynamite” or BLACKPINK’s “Ice Cream” featuring Selena Gomez — both of which were penned entirely by Americans and kept in English.
Chance says he recently finished a “word-for-word English translation” that is coming out with a “major Korean act” soon, but says this approach to re-writing is far less common, given the difficulties of fitting the same story and meaning into the same meter and rhyme as before. Because Western songwriters now expect their lyrics to be tossed almost entirely, lyric writing is not highly emphasized when writing pitches for K-pop and J-pop.
There are other distinctions between K-pop and Western songwriting. Torsen Ingvaldsen, an independent A&R who is part of the growing class of middlemen that connect Western writers to Korean idols, says translated K-pop songs often also edit out explicit words or inappropriate themes. This, he says, is due to the young age of the average K-pop superfan, as well as cultural differences — though Jung Kook’s recent, sexually-charged single “Seven” may foreshadow changing attitudes towards explicit themes in Korea.
On the business side, Western songwriters know that when they pitch Korean and Japanese labels, they will have to give up a significant amount of publishing to local lyricists that they will likely never meet or work with directly. In Korea, it’s common to give up 12.5% to the person who re-writes the lyrics. “Sometimes they ask for a little more, but this is almost such a hard and fast rule it is often not even negotiated,” says Mary Megan Peer, CEO of peermusic, an indie publisher with offices in Korea and Japan. In Japan, however, 50% is typically expected, due to differences in the publishing industries of Western countries and that of Japan.
“In Japan, publishing is completely divided into two halves: one lyric, one melody,” says Osada. “Copyright ownership is 50/50 and it is fixed.” In America, songwriters are often also the producers — crafting lyrics, melody and track — and they work on all three elements with other creatives in the same session. In Japan, songwriters and producers take a much different approach. “There are three roles: one is the producer, who is also called the ‘track maker’ or arranger,” says Osada. “Some topliners do lyrics and melody, but there are people that exist who only write lyrics. Each of the three works alone in their own room by themselves, and then they send the completed demo. It’s not like Western writers where they all work together.”
The Korean publishing business lies somewhere in the middle, given its stronger and longer-term ties to Western music. There is still a clear distinction between the roles of producer and songwriter, like in Japan, and toplining is a major focus of the Korean songwriter’s vocation, but the way lyrics are weighted is not the same.
Western songwriters largely believe these opportunities abroad are well worth it, even though up to half of their publishing is given away. In a time when the popularity of streaming has undercut songwriters’ potential earnings in the United States and other Western nations, pop audiences in Korea and Japan still purchase full albums, physically and digitally, meaning “the publishing money [in Korea and Japan] really is unlike anything else for a writer,” says Ingvaldsen.
But why do Japanese and Korean labels use so many songs from Western songwriters when their local industries are thriving? First, J-pop and K-pop have always found inspiration from American music, especially bubblegum pop and rap, so many believe working with Western — especially American — talent is a natural fit. Taking foreign pitch records also might increase a K-pop or J-pop act’s ability to capture the attention (and dollars) of the music market abroad as well as at home.
Ingvaldsen also personally believes that there’s a “lack of songwriters locally. I’ve found there’s only a few major [Korean] songwriters that participate on everything from every major label.” Osada says that in Japan the cohort of working songwriters is “more condensed for sure.” He adds it’s a more “hidden role” in Japan’s industry as well. “I see big differences in the personality of writers there and in the U.S. In the U.S. there are writers that are almost like artists — very creatively outgoing, outspoken. Japanese writers and producers are introverts.”
A Seoul-based songwriter, who wished to remain anonymous, echoes that sentiment. “There’s not a lot of Korean writers that actually work on the big hit songs — that goes to the Western industry,” he says. “The big labels work with [fewer] Korean songwriters.”
And this trend shows no signs of stopping, as the biggest Japanese and Korean labels continue to strengthen their ties to the West, particularly in the United States. Hajime Harada, an A&R at Avex USA, says that “since I started at Avex USA in 2022, the percentage of U.S. songs that have landed with Japanese artists has easily doubled.” His boss, Osada, believes this is thanks to Avex’s increasing investment in their American outpost in West Hollywood, Calif. Korean music companies have also aligned closer with the Western music business: In late March, HYBE struck a new distribution deal with Universal Music Group, while JYP has a partnership with Republic and Starship Entertainment has a deal with Columbia, to name a few.
Nascent AI technology might also present more opportunities for lyric rewrites in the future. Woo was recently hired by AI voice synthesis start-up Hooky and American pop artist Lauv to translate the singer-songwriter’s new single “Love U Like That” into Korean. Woo then sang his own Korean version of the tune and Lauv’s voice was mapped on top of it using Hooky’s technology as a way to cut down on the difficult process of Lauv learning Korean pronunciation. “I think these kinds of opportunities will grow for [bilingual songwriters] in the future as AI grows,” says Woo.
Osada could see it working for Japanese audiences, too, who have appreciated Japanese translations of K-pop in the past and may be open to AI making those translations more commonplace. “I think there’s some market there,” Osada says. “Japanese people see lyrics as a very important factor in enjoying songs, so I think local-language translation could help.”
As the music market becomes increasingly global, publishing professionals are confident the trend of pitching Western records to Eastern talent will keep expanding, with some even looking to China and India as possible future frontiers. “The money [in exporting pitch records] is just too good to ignore,” says Ingvladsen.