Record Labels
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Following her departure from longtime home Sony Music Nashville last year, Miranda Lambert has signed a new deal with Republic Records. Nashville’s Big Loud will provide country radio promotion and marketing efforts as part of its partnership with the Universal Music Group-owned label.
As the first salvo in the new deal, Lambert will release the new track “Wranglers” on May 3. It will mark her first new music since the release of her 2022 album, Palomino. “’Wranglers’ is a tale of a woman taking her power back. I think we can all identify with the character in this song, because we have all had a time in our life that we needed to find a way to find our strength and also get a little revenge on someone that did us wrong or hurt us,” she said in a statement. Lambert will likely premiere the song during the seven-time CMA female vocalist’s headlining Stagecoach Festival appearance this Saturday (April 27).
Lambert’s affiliation with Republic comes as the New York-based label has moved more into country music and further into its partnership with Big Loud; in March, Big Loud inked a multi-year distribution deal with Mercury Records/Republic for all of its acts. Previously, only releases by Big Loud acts Morgan Wallen, Lily Rose and Dylan Gossett had gone through the partnership. Notably, Gossett is signed to Big Loud Texas, an imprint Lambert and Jon Randall started last year through Big Loud.
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“Being in Texas with Jon, recording where I cut my teeth as a young artist, felt like coming home. I thought about the women — and men — who’ve lived, loved and found power in my music, and I wanted to get back to the root of those spaces,” continued Lambert, who is managed by Marion Kraft. “Talking to [Republic founder/chairman Monte [Lipman], [Republic founder/vice chairman] Avery Lipman and the team at Republic, as well as [Big Loud CEO] Seth [England] and the Big Loud folks who are leaning in, everyone understood my desires and vision for this next era of my music. Aligning like that is empowering; it gives you a license to really chase it. Signing with Republic has inspired me to find the sweet spot for me and all the people like me. I can’t wait for everyone to hear ‘Wranglers,’ and the rest of this record.”
“Miranda Lambert’s legacy as both a consummate storyteller and legendary performer speaks for itself. Her new music is spectacular and we are thrilled and honored to welcome her to Republic Records in partnership with Big Loud,” added Monte Lipman.
Lambert added that the move has been inspiring. “Having a new home has given me a hunger I didn’t realize I still had inside me,” she said. “This song feels like it could be on the same record as ‘Gunpowder & Lead’; it has that same fury. I can’t wait to get out there with this new label and this new music… Monte Lipman and his team fire me up!”
“Gunpower & Lead,” featured on Lambert’s second album, 2007’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, became her first top 10 hit on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
There’s no word on when Lambert will drop a new album, but Republic president/COO Jim Roppo said in a statement, “As she puts the final touches on her fantastic new body of work, it has all the hallmarks of her signature sound, yet she continues to push herself as a songwriter, producer and performer. We’re all at the beginning of a very special moment, and we’re grateful to be on this journey with her.”
Lambert, the most awarded artist by the Academy of Country Music Awards, recently wrapped her residency in Las Vegas and will be on the road through September, during which time she will headline several music festivals.
When Annie Ortmeier was appointed co-president at Triple Tigers in September, one of the programs she undertook was retooling Scotty McCreery’s online presence.
One person, rather than an independent firm, was devoted to the singer’s social media, and in the first six months, his email list doubled in size alongside growth in his streaming and his online followers. When McCreery received the trophy for CMT digital-first performance prior to the CMT Music Awards on April 7, it marked his first win at that ceremony in 12 years, and Ortmeier took it as a sign that their revised marketing efforts are working.
“We made voting a part of our social media strategies since the nominations came out,” she says. “I can’t help but think that had a lot to do with him winning that award.”
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Ortmeier and Warner Music Nashville co-president/co-chair Ben Kline are the first two country label heads whose paths to leadership included working full time in digital marketing. Ortmeier’s journey started in 2004 at CMT.com, where she ventured into ecommerce for CMT, VH1, VH1 Classic and Comedy Central. She segued into digital marketing for Universal Music Group Nashville.
Kline started more traditionally in the 1990s with the pop divisions of PolyGram and Island before joining UMGN in 1997, staying in Nashville for a dozen years. By the end of that run, new media had become part of his job title. He left to work for three years at InGrooves, a company focused strictly on distributing and marketing music online. It was a key piece of his development as a 21st-century music executive prior to his 2014 return to Nashville with WMN.
“Every decision we made [at InGrooves] was viewed through the digital lens, and we were raising money and going through a couple rounds of funding, and the conversations all were digital: ‘What’s the future? What’s next? What are the growth patterns?’” he recalls. “It was a digital-driven business, and you had to understand the ins and outs of how to speak to consumers and speak to partners in that space.”
Both Kline and Ortmeier first devoted their efforts to digital music and promotion full time in an era when CDs and airplay were still the primary vehicles for the country genre. Their early commitment to then-new platforms uniquely positioned them to take label reins once the industry’s drivers flipped.
“I was working in streaming when it was 15% of the business,” Ortmeier recalls of her earlier UMGN work. In more recent years, “it was 85% of the business. So it completely inverted.”
Label leadership has changed dramatically in Nashville. In the earliest years of the business, record company heads — including Chet Atkins at RCA, Owen Bradley at Decca and Ken Nelson at Capitol — tended to be producers. It made sense; labels earned their money by selling singles and albums that were exposed through radio, and producers generally had a handle on the sounds that worked on-air. But as the industry increasingly relied on the sales of more expensive albums, record companies more frequently gave the top position to promotion and marketing execs, including Joe Galante at RCA, Bruce Hinton at MCA and Rick Blackburn at CBS.
Now that artists and labels reach listeners through virtual platforms, the industry’s central companies are turning to people who were on the front lines as those new avenues emerged, providing more data than was ever available before. Understanding that information is key to every modern marketing plan. But knowing when to apply humanity to the numbers is just as important.
“Data can make smart people look dumb or make dumb decisions,” Kline reasons. “Analytics and data help inform, but it can’t be how your decisions are all based. Gut and instinct and knowledge and past experience — they all have to play a role.”
One of the key lessons of past experience, however, is that the past may not be much of a predictor for how to reach fans in the future. Taylor Swift famously built some of her earliest fan base on Myspace, which is now a quaint relic with outdated accounts. Luke Combs came to prominence by introducing his music on Vine, which was shut down in 2017.
“Whatever is working today, enjoy it today, because it may not work tomorrow with the digital world,” Kline says.
That same digital environment has radically changed the way that labels and artists find one another. In another era, artists’ consumer marketing started primarily after they signed a recording deal and started releasing music. Now the artist already has a fan base before labels will even consider a signing, and the act is usually savvier about how to interact with that audience. Thus, meetings with an artist in 2024 are different than they would have been in, say, 1994.
“They’re creating fans, they’re talking to them, they’re sharing music, they’re getting their music heard,” says Kline. “Think about the stories that artists bring by the time they go sign deals versus what it was 30 years ago. I mean, it’s unbelievable, so the conversation has to change.”
Similarly, that overall country audience is different. Streaming platforms make more artists and more genres available, so even core country listeners are likely to ingest a wider range of music. Similarly, the genre is accessible to a much larger slice of the population. Thus, the current Beyoncè moment is possible, in part, because of streaming. Cowboy Carter is connecting because she was able to harness her established audience in addition to appealing directly to country fans. Had she attempted to cross over in ’94, her primary options of exposure would have been late-night TV appearances, prominent in-store placement and whatever radio play she could muster. PDs who were protective of country’s identity would have felt reluctant to give a playlist slot to a pop singer who was likely to stick around for only one album.
“It does open up a consumer who never thought they were a country fan, much like Garth Brooks did 30-plus years ago,” Ortmeier suggests.
The shift to digital marketing and distribution in country directly aided the rise of Kline and Ortmeier to label leadership. Streaming is here to stay, so it’s a good bet that these two execs are setting what could be a long-term precedent.
“I do think,” predicts Ortmeier, “that there will be others behind us.”
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On Jan. 30, the day before Universal Music’s deal with TikTok lapsed, the company announced in an open letter that “we must call time out on TikTok,” for not paying rightsholders and creators enough. Universal immediately began removing its recordings from the platform — then, by the end of February, took down every composition to which it had some rights. Essentially, Universal went to war for the value of music, to benefit not only it and its artists and songwriters, it said, but the entire industry. And although the two other major labels declined to comment at the time, Primary Wave, Downtown and Hipgnosis publicly backed Universal, and in late March Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer told the Financial Times that he did not rule out taking the same action as Universal.
Not Taylor Swift, though.
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By April 11, a little over a week before the release of Swift’s new album —The Tortured Poets Department, which comes out April 19 — songs from Swift’s albums to which she owns the rights were available on TikTok. Which made for an uncomfortable conversation, you’d have to imagine — and that’s about all you can do, because neither Universal nor Swift’s representative would comment and TikTok could not be reached for comment.
It seems that Swift’s contract with Universal allows her to either license the recordings she owns herself or somehow opt out of label licensing policies, which is an unusual amount of independence. Usually acts with that kind of leverage choose to leave their music off of new services — the Beatles waiting to offer their music on the iTunes Store is the classic example — or strike some kind of exclusive deal, like Garth Brooks did with Amazon Music. It’s hard to think of another example where a label announced it was going one way and its biggest artist — although she hasn’t said anything about her decision — went another.
That’s a big deal. Eventually, Universal’s other megastars — think Morgan Wallen, Drake, or The Weeknd — might want that same freedom or start to think about using whatever freedom they already have. Some artists have more power than others, though: Swift’s contract is generally thought to be more like a distribution deal, where she owns her new recordings, including the Taylor’s Versions of her old albums, but licenses them to Universal. Also, with 18.9 million album consumption units in 2023, more than some divisions of major labels, she has more market power than any other artist.
Given TikTok’s relatively low payouts, many executives assume that Swift appreciates the platform’s promotional value, even though she doesn’t exactly need it — Tortured Poets would almost certainly be the biggest album of the year either way. There’s also speculation that she wants to reach out to younger fans with shorter attention spans.
This reasoning seems to go against Swift’s reputation for sticking up for the value of music more broadly, as she did when she declined to release her 1989 album on Spotify, pushed Apple Music to pay rightsholders for plays during the service’s free trial period and insisted that Universal pay artists their share of the proceeds from its Spotify stock sales whether their deals had recouped or not. “This is not about me,” she wrote about the Apple situation at the time, but rather about emerging artists. What happens to them now? It has even been suggested that Swift essentially crossed a picket line of sorts.
That’s a bit much. The concept of a picket line implies a situation in which people who are paid on a scale are bargaining collectively, and that’s not the case here. And it’s not Swift’s responsibility to fight for the overall health of the music business — she’s an artist and she’s already done far more than most. For that matter, there’s more to creators’ rights than the size of a check. If you think about the way Swift re-recorded her old albums, she may place as much value on control — not only how much she makes on an album, but who owns it, how they present it, and where and under what circumstances it can be heard. I’m not sure whether her decision about making her music available on TikTok is the right one, but I am completely positive that it’s not mine to make.
This is all based on the assumption that Swift’s agreement with TikTok is vaguely similar to the one labels have, but that may not be the case. If you think about Swift’s instinct for navigating the music business, her deal could be much better — perhaps with an advance or guaranteed minimum or other kinds of considerations. (Just to be clear, I have no idea.) If you were, or managed, an artist with that kind of market share, what would you ask for? And if you worked for TikTok, facing political pressure in the U.S., as well as a difficult negotiation with the biggest music company in the world, how much would you be willing to offer?
In the modern media business, market share doesn’t just create efficiency — it also offers important negotiating leverage, especially with technology companies that operate on a global scale. That’s why music and film companies are buying rivals, getting deeper into the distribution business, and pursuing growth so aggressively in the first place. Swift may be the only artist there is who can offer real scale by herself, built on recordings she owns herself, so labels don’t need to worry about this becoming a trend. But whatever Swift’s decision means for the industry at large, it seems somewhat inevitable that she would pursue, and at some point use, the power her market share gives her — just as the major labels do.
When Steve Stoute connected with Davido at his UnitedMasters SelectCon event last year, he didn’t flinch at the opportunity to build with the Afrobeats superstar; after their initial encounter, the executive visited Davido’s homeland of Lagos, Nigeria and dared the “Fall” singer to dream bigger. Stoute envisioned Davido, adept at crafting sugary melodies with a Nigerian flair, leading nothing less than a global takeover — not just as a premier artist but as a businessman.
Starting Wednesday (April 17), the three-time Grammy nominee will embark on a new chapter as a full-fledged executive, signing a deal with UnitedMasters (which recently launched in Nigeria) to start a new label, Nine+ Records. Stoute and Davido are clear that they won’t limit themselves to Afrobeats but will venture into the realms of hip-hop, R&B, Latin, country and more, casting a wide net for new talent.
“I think the music that Davido has been able to make, produce and share with the world has been amazing,” says Stoute. “For me, I think his connection between Nigeria and Atlanta, and everything he’s gone through has brought unique experiences that I can hear and feel through his lyrics and production. I didn’t even know that [at the time], I just knew there was something different about his sound and the way he structured his songs.”
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According to Stoute, it didn’t take much convincing: He sold Davido on the possibilities of building a label reminiscent of the hard-nosed rap imprints he witnessed first-hand in the ’90s and ’00s.
“There’s such a big opportunity globally and I see him as an entrepreneur that could build the next Bad Boy, the next Death Row and the next label that has significant impact like a Cash Money,” Stoute says. “[I told him to] forget everything you were doing before, let’s commit to building something in a joint venture and that’s the formation of Nine+ and UnitedMasters.”
Billboard spoke to Davido and Steve Stoute about their newly minted partnership, the importance of having a great team and more.
Davido, what made you decide to partner with UnitedMasters for your new label Nine+ Records?
Davido: Shout-out to big bro. There’s one thing that I’ll always love, which is nurturing new talent, bringing them up and helping them grow. I’ve been doing that since Afrobeats wasn’t even Afrobeats, since when you guys didn’t even know what it was. Since I came up from writing my first song, I’ve been helping my two cousins work on their music. I put them under my label, but it got to a point where I felt I needed some knowledge. I need some mentors to advise me. Some artists, all you need is one hit song and your life can change. Sometimes, when you get to that point, you don’t have anybody to advise you on how to move and get good paperwork done. I just felt like that was one thing Steve Stoute represents, and that’s helping the artists and making sure they know the best option when it comes to business. My job is obviously to bring the creatives and deliver, but I do need Steve’s vision on how I’m going to advise on these new artists.
Steve, speak to the tutelage you hope to instill in Davido from an executive lens with the years of experience you have under your belt.
There’s a thin line between what a talent and what an executive has to do. For a lot of talent, it’s very hard to be an executive or it’s hard for them to jump that fence. I’m gonna be there to help him because he comes from a lineage of very, very tight, philosophically sound businessmen.
His father was a G. His father was very special and talented. Davido is also very creative. It takes that sort of left brain and right brain to be a talented musician who could work with talent as well as be a business person. To be able to bring that together to build one of these legacy companies, the greatest artists always had that attribute. He has that attribute.
The best thing that I can do is, you use my experience as a veteran in this business to help put up some guard rails to keep him going because I want him to become the biggest artist in the world and continue his trajectory as an artist, but then build something that’s a legacy outside of that with Nine+.
Before this, I was the president at Interscope. When Jimmy [Iovine] built Interscope, it was all about these labels. Whether it was Pharrell’s label, Organized Noize, Timbaland, or Aftermath, these were labels that were built because Jimmy built The Ruff Ryders. Jimmy believed in that model. So I came from working with talent who had labels and I understand how to build that model just from that experience. I want to pass that along to this young entrepreneur, creative genius.
What’s the best advice you’ve gotten from Steve on accelerating as an executive and building out Nine+ on what you ultimately want it to become?
Davido: First of all, you gotta have a good team. There’s one thing I learned from Steve: I didn’t know you had to get all of this to get a label because where I’m from and where you record, there’s no office. Now…with Steve, we’re getting an office, we’re getting [a lot]. I have a studio and a headquarters, but it’s different from the way I’ve worked.
Steve Stoute: If you wanna scale, you gotta bring structure. He’s a super-talented guy. He’s gonna find talented people. There’s been a lot of people who are talented, but they didn’t have the business structure around them. They never got a chance to see the effects of their talents go all the way. It’s the guys who had structure with talent that were able to actually go all the way. My job is bring that structure to him and hopefully to his team.
He has a great team around him. He has a great team of people with chemistry. Chemistry is undervalued and underrated. It’s very important who you want to work with. We’re here to bring that structure and funding so he can do what he has to do. My job isn’t to go in there and A&R records. If I can get him in the room with the producers and the artists, and I can get it out the room, that’s my job. To get in the room and to get out.
Again, my experience in doing this for a while and being able to help bring that structure, whether it’s an office or not, is what I’m bringing to the table and I’m looking forward to working with him and building something that’s an aspect of his legacy.
With Nine+, are you looking to expand beyond Afrobeats?
Davido: Oh yeah, everything. R&B, trap, etc. Obviously, I’m going to start in Africa, but definitely yeah. I can see us going all the way. I don’t see why not.
Steve Stoute: Look, I told you, my man has roots in Atlanta and Nigeria. This is not going to be limited to anything. When you have creative people who can understand melodies, beats, rhythms and songs, whether it’s country music, trap music, hip-hop music, Latin music, none of these things are off-limits. I think we look at it as global music. I think Davido is a global superstar. He’s going to sell out Madison Square Garden like he sells out London, like he sells out buildings in Africa. That’s what he does. He wants to make global music, so we’re looking for artists that have that potential and it’s not limited to genre. It is limited to great music.
Joseph Oerke has been promoted to executive vice president, Decca Records U.S., the Verve Label Group announced on Tuesday (April 16). “I love classical music,” Oerke said in a statement. “In fact, I moved to New York to study oboe and got my first job in the gift shop at the Metropolitan Opera. I think […]
What a difference a year — or a couple of months with a massive label shakeup — can make.
The reorganization of the Universal Music Group that occurred in February — which loosely divided the music giant’s labels under two umbrellas, Republic Corps and the Interscope Capitol Labels Group (ICLG) — has created a new hegemony that effectively splits its industry-leading market share in half, meaning that Republic Corps’ Monte Lipman and ICLG’s John Janick sit atop label empires that, in a given week, can rival the Warner Music Group as a whole in terms of market share. (For Republic, given its partnership with Big Loud for Morgan Wallen and the eye-popping success of Taylor Swift and others, that was already the case at times last year.) In the first quarter of 2024, for example, both Republic Corps (13.69%) and ICLG (13.81%) put up current market share figures that are more than double the next-highest label from any other company.
Yet for comparison’s sake — and to get a sense of the trends in the market — we’ll set that reorganization aside for now, particularly as it happened in the midst of a quarter and thus doesn’t reflect the totality of the first three months of 2024. And even under the old alignment, Republic (which, even prior to the shift, encompassed Island, Big Loud, Mercury and Imperial) and Interscope (which similarly already included Geffen and Verve Label Group) still lead the pack for releases through the end of March.
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Republic, on the strength of enduring hit albums by Wallen, Swift, Drake and Noah Kahan, as well as the huge success of the new Ariana Grande album eternal sunshine, posted a 12.84% current market share (defined as albums released within the past 18 months), only marginally coming down to earth from the eye-popping 13.47% full-year current share it posted in 2023, and a slight uptick over the 12.45% first quarter it enjoyed last year. Meanwhile, Interscope’s 9.10% current share is a big jump from the 7.75% it posted in the first quarter of 2023, and up from the full-year 8.80% it posted last year, with the enduring success of Olivia Rodrigo and breakout singles from Xavi (“La Diabla” and “La Victima”), among others, helping boost its position.
But perhaps the biggest story of the first quarter of 2024 has been the smash success of Warner Records, which surged from seventh place in Q1 2023 (5.23% current share) all the way to third in Q1 2024 (6.41%), reflecting the remarkable success the label has had on the Hot 100 so far this year. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Teddy Swims’ Hot 100 No. 1 “Lose Control” and Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything” feat. Kacey Musgraves are all among the top five songs of the year so far, while Bryan’s 2023 self-titled album and his 2022 album American Heartbreak are both among the top 20 albums of the first quarter. Warner — whose market share includes catalog label Rhino as well as Warner Latin and parts of Warner Nashville — continued to build on its 2023 trajectory, when it finished with a full-year current share of 5.96%.
That surge pushed Atlantic Records down into fourth place, at 5.14% current share, a drop of more than 2% from the 7.22% it maintained in Q1 2023. Atlantic — which includes 300 Elektra Entertainment in its market share — did have a big hit from Jack Harlow, whose single “Lovin’ On Me” topped the Hot 100 for five weeks in the first few months of the year. Atlantic’s hold on fourth, however, was only 0.01% above RCA Records, which came in at 5.13%, as the enduring strength of singles by SZA, Doja Cat and Tate McRae, combined with a viral smash from Flo Milli (“Cruel Summer”), kept the label in fifth place, despite dropping from 5.76% in Q1 2023, when the SZA album had a lock on the top of the Billboard 200.
Sticking in sixth place is Capitol Music Group — whose market share still contains indie distributor Virgin, as well as Quality Control/Motown, Capitol Christian, Astralwerks and Blue Note — which posted a 4.71% current share, down from 5.56% in the first three months of 2023. Dropping to seventh is Columbia, which includes some labels from indie distributor RED in its market share, at 3.71%, down from 5.85% a year ago. Though, in this particular ranking, Columbia is an unfortunate casualty of the end-of-March cutoff date; Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter debuted the week after with the biggest first week of the year, which will be reflected in the second quarter. In eighth, Epic Records saw a big boost, posting a 2.99% share (up from 2.06% last year), though that also seems like it will be trending higher in Q2, with the twin Future/Metro Boomin albums still growing. Sony Latin (2.38%, up from 1.92%) and Sony Nashville (2.08%, down from 2.30%) round out the top 10 in current market share.
Among the label groups, UMG’s dominance continued, with its 33.90% current share ticking up slightly from 33.59% in the first quarter of 2023, while Sony Music Group’s 26.91% came in lower than last year’s 28.46% — again, likely a quirk of the calendar. Still, despite Warner Records’ individual surge, the Warner Music Group’s overall current share slipped to 15.98%, down from 16.81% in Q1 last year. (WMG’s market share still contains 1.09% from BMG, despite the latter announcing that it would be ending its distribution arrangement with Warner; projects that were in the works prior to the agreement ending are still going through the Warner system, a BMG spokesperson says.) The big beneficiary in current market share is the independent sector, which grew its mark from 21.15% in Q1 last year to 23.21% this year by distribution ownership, a significant increase. Both the independent release of the chart-topping Ye and Ty Dolla $ign album Vultures 1 and the huge success of Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine” contributed to the boost.
The numbers are more static when looking at overall market share, which includes back catalog, though the trends are still there: Universal (38.23%, up from 37.65%) and the indies (16.28%, up from 16.18%) both were up over Q1 2023, while Sony (27.23%, down from 27.62%) and WMG (18.26%, down from 18.55%) dipped. By label ownership, the independent sector remains larger than any individual major, accounting for 36.09% in overall market share, albeit down from the 37.38% it had in Q1 2023.
Among the individual labels, Republic’s huge current numbers pushed its overall market share above Interscope’s for first place, at 9.94%, up from 9.16% last year, while Interscope’s second-place showing at 9.85% still represented growth from its leading 9.44% last year. Atlantic’s strong catalog numbers meant that in overall share it remained in third place, at 7.65%, besting Warner Records, which jumped into fourth at 6.72%. Interscope, meanwhile, retained its top spot in catalog market share, at 10.09%, with Republic (9.03%) and Atlantic (8.43%) behind.
Bobo Producciones, the production and promotion company that for the past few years has produced the successful “90’s Pop Tour” in Mexico and the United States, this week expanded and launched new management, A&R and marketing departments in addition to a record label: Bobo Music.
“We are very excited about everything that is coming this year for our company. We continue to look for opportunities and expand strategically, especially in the Latin market in the United States,” Ari Borovoy tells Bilboard Español. The former member of pop group OV7 — which had its heyday in the 1990s — heads Bobo along with his brother, Jack Borovoy and Sonia Salvador.
For its expansion, the company brought in veteran music industry executives, including Humberto Calderón, who has headed marketing and A&R at BMG and Universal Music; Sabo Romo, the renowned musician, producer and founder of legendary rock band Caifanes; and Eliseo Reyna, who has been a key player in conceiving successful concept albums such as Rock En Tu Idioma and Rock En Tu Idioma Sinfónico.
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“Bobo’s strength and growth in Mexico, the United States, Spain and Latin America will be materialized with our offer of development and consolidation of artists,” says Calderón.
The team aims to develop new projects and expand marketing and production to strengthen the company’s work. Bobo has more than 15 years of experience in musical events and managing Mexican stars including Pedro Fernández, Lupita D’alessio and Sentidos Opuestos, among others.
The company’s most recent success is the 90’s Pop Tour, which last year toured 10 cities in the United States and Mexico, including a stop at Madison Square Garden. The tour has begun its sixth season, featuring Paulina Rubio on four dates, including a May 3 stop in Querétaro and another on May 18 in Mérida. The tour includes a cast of stars from the 90s, such as Caló, The Sacados, Magneto, Kabah, JNS, Ana Torroja, Mercurio and Sentidos Opuestos. In addition to performing their beloved hits that made history in Spanish language music, they also collaborate on new versions with their colleagues.
Lisa, the breakout singer, dancer and actress from the hugely successful K-pop group BLACKPINK, has signed with RCA Records for solo recordings, the parties announced Wednesday (April 10). The deal, a partnership between Lisa and her LLOUD Co. management and creative company with RCA, will allow her to retain ownership of her master recordings. In […]
It’s all about the artist, music executives say (and say and say). If you really look at the industry over time, though, it’s really all about the formats — the health of the business may have more to do with how people listen to music than what they actually listen to. For the last decade, that has been on-demand streaming, and the music business has boomed — from total revenue of $6.7 billion in 2014 to $17.1 billion last year, according to the late-March RIAA report. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the industry is worth almost double what it was at the beginning of the streaming boom. Internationally, the story is broadly similar — the business was worth $13 billion in 2014 and $28.6 billion last year, according to IFPI statistics.
In the U.S., at least, growth is slowing — revenue rose from $15.9 billion to $17.1 billion last year, and it hasn’t grown much in the last two years, accounting for inflation. The reason is simple: There are only so many streaming subscriptions to sell, and the U.S. now has a 12-month average of 96.8 million on-demand subscriptions in a country of 127 million households. It’s hard to know when we’ll reach Peak Subscription — 105 million in a year? 110 million in two? — but slower growth in the number of subscribers seems inevitable. This is one reason record companies are cutting back. It’s the end of hypergrowth for creators and rightsholders — at least in some places.
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Those places also include most of Europe, where the recorded music business grew 8.9%, according to the IFPI’s 2024 Global Music Report, compared with 7.4% in the U.S. and Canada. In the developing world, where the music business is much smaller, the figures tell a very different story: Asia was up 14.9%, with much of that growth coming from China, which was up 25.9%; Latin America grew for the 14th consecutive year, by 19.4%; and revenue from sub-Saharan Africa rose 24.7%. These increases are taking place in smaller businesses, but they mean that there’s plenty of room for growth — it’s just moving south and east.
We’ve all heard the simple and optimistic version of what comes next: Just wait until everyone in China, India and Brazil subscribes to a streaming service! (I hope they subscribe to Billboard Pro while they’re at it.) But this assumes a world where the global middle class continues to grow, trade and prosperity continue to expand, and developing economies stay relatively stable. Alas, as the small print says, past performance is not indicative of future results. Over the past two years, Russia has gone from a developing market into a geopolitical adversary, and tensions between the U.S. and China are heating up. (Whatever you think of globalization, it will be far worse in reverse.) If the U.S. forces a sale of TikTok, could China retaliate by imposing limits on American music? Could inflation in Latin America hurt consumer purchasing power in a way that stifles a streaming business that still depends more on advertising? Whatever happens is beyond the control of the music business. The potential is incredible — it’s just not reliable.
The truth is that there’s still plenty of opportunity in developed markets, including plenty of room to raise streaming subscription prices, but creators and rightsholders don’t have to just sit around and wait for that. Other opportunities are emerging, and growth could be fueled by licensing music for AI training, as well as for social media, video games, and the next iteration of the technology formerly known as the Metaverse.
Some of the most exciting opportunities might come from a traditional business model: Selling stuff. Yes, I know, it’s all so unbearably dreary compared to the “Free” future we were told to expect. But consider that, adjusted for inflation, the U.S. recorded music market is still only two-thirds the size of its 1999 peak. Back then — how old does that sound? — much of that revenue came from serious fans who bought a couple of albums a month instead of a couple of albums a year, mostly for more than the cost of a monthly streaming subscription today. Such dedication explains the fantastic growth in the vinyl market, which rose from $243.8 million in 2014 to $1.4 billion last year — almost a sixth the size of the music business of a decade ago in 2023 dollars. (I am proud to say that I have done my part.)
Sure, vinyl growth is slowing, too — the format isn’t for everyone and I am running out of shelf space myself, but consumers have demonstrated a willingness to spend more on their favorite artists, which is why music executives are so excited about superfans, which could be the most exciting opportunity available. The last decade of the music business was about making a hundred dollars a year from millions of people. The next 10 years will be about making millions — OK, probably thousands, but you get the idea — from hundreds of people. That won’t be easy, though. The music industry has always been, pardon the pun, a volume business. Making money from superfans requires finding that, figuring out what they want to buy, and marketing that, presumably online, better than live promoters or dedicated startups.
This could also solve one of the biggest problems with the recorded music business: it’s not making stars fast enough, and the new ones it has don’t shine for so many people. But what is a big problem in the hit-driven streaming business doesn’t matter so much when it comes to monetizing superfans — older acts still do big business, and there are riches in niches. From a financial perspective, K-pop is essentially a high-margin merchandise business focused on an audience that’s dedicated but not quite mainstream. And if labels are going to keep growing in the U.S. and Europe, at least some of their business might look a lot like that.
Beginning in September 2022, Ron Poore and his Atlantic Records radio promotions team emailed and called alternative-rock program directors for months to convince them to add Paramore‘s new single, “This Is Why,” to playlists. Their efforts paid off: The song hit No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart in February 2023. “You work that record for weeks and weeks and weeks, and all of a sudden it starts showing up in the research,” says Poore, then Atlantic’s senior vp of promotion, alternative and rock and a 21-year veteran of breaking radio hits by Death Cab for Cutie, Coldplay, Portugal. The Man and others.
“This Is Why” is an example of a classic record label promo story: an experienced major-label staff working radio connections to achieve chart success. But it didn’t end well for Poore. In February, Atlantic laid off Poore as part of an industry-wide downsizing that hit promo teams especially hard.
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“Five years ago, 10 years ago, it’s radio, radio, radio,” Poore says. “And now it’s the last thing we do at these labels.”
Layoffs at two of the top labels, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, began in February, affecting dozens of employees, many in traditional media positions such as publicity, marketing and radio. (Sources say similar cuts affected Sony Music Entertainment as well.) The layoffs have had little to do with the companies’ financial health: Universal earned $12 billion in revenue and $1.3 billion in net profit last year, and Warner said it is coming off its best quarter ever. But top executives from both labels announced they were adapting to a long-running industry shift towards new technology.
In a late February statement announcing layoffs of roughly two dozen staffers, Julie Greenwald, chairman/CEO of Warner-owned Atlantic Music Group, said, “The changes we’re making today are primarily happening in our radio and video teams.” And Lucian Grainge, Universal’s chairman/CEO, told staffers in January, before the latest layoffs, that the label would be “not just expanding geographically and leveraging new technologies” but “further evolve our organizational structure to create efficiencies in other areas of the business.”
From a practical standpoint, according to Diane Monk Harrison, a radio manager at Warner-owned distribution company WEA, who lost her job in mid-March, that meant the industry layoffs have been “disproportionately affecting radio promotion.” The broadcast business is shrinking: The biggest radio company, iHeartMedia, has been downsizing since the pandemic, including a recent wave in the last few weeks. That means fewer programmers exist for major labels to lobby for extra playlist adds. “Radio is still extremely important,” says Skip Bishop, a former longtime promotion executive at Sony and other labels who has been a consultant for more than a decade. “But it’s just an evolution. You don’t need six regionals, three nationals, two vps and an svp [at a label] when 20 to 45 people are making the decisions that 200 people used to make at radio.”
Adds a major-label source: “In the old world, you might have radio-promo people who were earning the same, or more, as the head of A&R. That’s not going to happen in the new world, for obvious reasons. What is happening is the labels are keeping the absolute very best radio people.”
As listeners have shifted away from old-school radio stations in favor of on-demand streaming, the radio business has declined: According to Nielsen Media Research data, weekly listenership dropped during the pandemic, from 89% of adult Americans in 2019 to 82% in 2022. The medium’s most resilient advertising area is in digital sales, a recent Radio Advertising Bureau and Borrell Associates study shows, and not in AM-FM airplay. “The only portion of radio that’s growing is not dependent on music,” says Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, an analyst group that focuses on media advertising and marketing. “I don’t think the record labels are daft of what has happened to the industry in terms of listeners, and they’re well aware of the aging nature of terrestrial radio programming.”
iHeartMedia has more than $5.2 billion in debt and has been laying off personnel over the last few years, including a wave of reported layoffs in early 2024. (Audacy, another broadcast giant, filed for bankruptcy in January, owing $2 billion in debt.) As the number of radio employees decreases, major label staff who attempt to influence them have made proportionate changes. “It makes sense to shrink your radio promotion when there’s less radio people to deal with,” says Don Cristi, a veteran radio programmer recently laid off as iHeartMedia’s senior vp of programming in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. “I dealt with way more ‘nationals’ in the last few years [from labels] than what used to be called your regional guy.”
And many independent artists are going around both labels and radio entirely, having “already done the heavy lifting” to break on TikTok and other social media, according to an indie R&B and hip-hop music executive. “Nothing will ever go back to the way it was just five years ago,” this person says. “A label may shift from promo field execs to mobile digital execs, just as radio is now relying on its digital real estate to generate additional revenue.”
Still, the radio business has shown resilience: 82% of U.S. listeners is no small number, and a recent Chartmetric study shows radio maintains a powerful ability to break hits. Stations aired 7.4 million songs roughly 102.4 times apiece, for a total of 755 million spins, in 2023, and the top 10 radio songs earned major streaming boosts. And while rock, pop and hip-hop artists have become less reliant on radio in recent years, some genres, including Latin and country, remain attached to radio. “Music companies continue to be very important strategic partners with the entire radio industry and there are no signs that is abating,” says Wendy Goldberg, iHeartMedia’s spokesperson, in a statement. “Labels rely on broadcast radio to break new artists, because in order to introduce new music to the masses, you need radio and its unparalleled reach.”
At many labels and artist management companies, radio and streaming teams are working in tandem, befitting the hit-breaking relevance of both media. “As for now, they’re both very valuable,” says Bob McLynn of Crush Music, which manages Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Sia and others and employs radio and label veterans on its promo staff. “You could argue [radio] is not what it was 15 years ago. When you got a hit on radio, that was the all-being. Sometimes you used to lead with radio, and now radio comes later.”
Robust radio promotion departments have been expensive for labels to maintain: It costs money to send employees from New York, Los Angeles or Nashville to build relationships with programmers throughout the U.S. Still, these departments are where labels keep “boots on the ground,” as Monk Harrison calls them: employees with an understanding of how fans in Omaha or Detroit discover artists, attend shows and follow local entertainment from concerts to sports. “Relationships are still key and no algorithm can replace that,” says David Linton, a former executive at Capitol, Island and Arista who is a program director with jazz station WCLK in Atlanta.
Ed Brennan, who was Atlantic’s vp of alternative promotion until he lost his job in late February, plans to use these kinds of relationships to build his own company, White Leather Projects, potentially focusing on artist management, tour marketing and radio promotion. In the meantime, he’s concentrating on more important issues. “The first thing I did when I got the phone call that my position was to be eliminated, I volunteered to chaperone my son’s field trip at school. He’s 8,” Brennan says. “I’m excited about the unknown future.”
Additional reporting by Gail Mitchell.