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Few things have captured the cultural zeitgeist in 2023 more than Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s film based on the classic Mattel toy that has become a $1 billion-movie since its release in July. But anyone who has seen the movie can attest that it’s more than just a comedic sendup or a feminist film lacing into cultural stereotypes of the past half-century — it’s also a deeply musical film, with songs by Lizzo, Matchbox 20 and others playing central roles in how the story plays out.
So it naturally follows that the soundtrack, with original songs by Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj, and more, would make waves as well — though perhaps few people predicted it would do this well. Three weeks after the soundtrack’s release, the album remains at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, while three of its singles — Dua’s “Dance The Night,” Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and Ice Spice and Nicki’s “Barbie World” — are in the top 15 of the Hot 100, and the top 10 of the Billboard Global 200. And that sustained success helps earn Atlantic Records West Coast president and Barbie soundtrack album co-producer Kevin Weaver the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
The Barbie soundtrack isn’t Weaver’s first film success — he’s also been heavily involved in the soundtracks for The Greatest Showman, Suicide Squad, Daisy Jones & The Six, Birds Of Prey, Furious 7, The Fault in Our Stars and The Fate of the Furious, among others. But the Barbie film and soundtrack has captured the world’s collective attention in ways that none of those others truly have.
Here, Weaver discusses the impact of the film and its music, how Warner Music Group leveraged an all-hands-on-deck strategy to market it around the world and how the music played such a central role in the film itself. “The fact that Greta saw this film almost as a musical, and was so involved with the soundtrack, was an absolutely critical factor in how and why the music worked so well,” he says.
This week, the Barbie soundtrack spends its third week in the top five of the Billboard 200, with three of its songs in the top 15 of the Hot 100. How did this project come together, and what were the particular difficulties in pulling it off?
We had been tracking the development of the film for a few years and had frequent conversations with Warner Bros. and Mattel about partnering on the soundtrack. Once Greta and Noah [Baumbach] became attached to the project and Margot [Robbie] and Ryan [Gosling] were cast as Barbie and Ken, we aggressively started to put the pieces together. We try to start early on these types of projects, so we can actively contribute to how music shapes the project and vice versa. This was similar to when we worked on The Greatest Showman where we had a deal in place before the film was even officially greenlit by the studio.
The Barbie movie has become a cultural phenomenon. What have you guys done to market the soundtrack alongside that?
The music and our singles really helped fuel the cultural phenomenon months before the film had even opened. We were out with our singles, videos, social content, partnerships and strategy starting in late May. It felt critical to us that the soundtrack was an integral part of the overall campaign’s DNA. Our partners at Warner Bros. and Mattel really leaned into the music by incorporating it into every aspect of Barbie media and marketing in a truly unprecedented manner. The level of collaboration on this project and working with such smash records was the initial driving force behind this success.
The album didn’t just resonate in the U.S. — three of its songs are in the top 10 of the Global 200 chart, including two (Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and Dua Lipa’s “Dance The Night”) in the top three. What did you do to help market this release beyond the U.S.?
We enlisted our entire global marketing machine at WMG in a way that I have never experienced before. Very early on, Max [Lousada] and Julie [Greenwald] deemed the album a “Superstar Level Release” where each single got our most coveted “track of the week” priority assignment. This means that every track had every possible lever pulled behind it, in every territory throughout the globe. We also had every marketing team throughout the world working hand in hand with their local counterparts at Warner Bros. and Mattel. By doing this, we unlocked every co-op marketing opportunity across all three companies, including digital partnerships, media, physical retail, in-theater and anything else you could imagine.
How have you guys been able to tap into the craze around the various merchandising tie-ins with the movie?
We have some co-op products with Mattel, plus more in the works for later this year. Mattel helped us tremendously with our vinyl and CDs at all major retailers around the world. We were also able to work together on all of their key Barbie promotions, which gave the soundtrack massive additional visibility in the marketplace.
Given how music plays such a central role in the film, how closely did you work with the film team and the movie studio on the soundtrack?
We worked in lockstep with the filmmakers, Mark Ronson, and the music supervisor, George Drakoulias. We were given the opportunity to see scenes from the film very early on while Greta was still in the beginning stages of assembling the director’s cut. This enabled us to come up with creative ideas and strategize with Greta as she was making the film. From that point on, we would all speak and text daily with bi-weekly creative calls. We constantly passed ideas back and forth, showed artists and writers scenes from the film and shared music for review as soon as a new demo or mix came in. Everyone provided feedback in real time. The fact that Greta saw this film almost as a musical, and was so involved with the soundtrack, was an absolutely critical factor in how and why the music worked so well.
You’ve worked on several huge soundtracks in the past several years, including The Greatest Showman and several Fast & Furious films. What did you learn from those that you applied to this, and how was this one different?
First and foremost, I always do what is best for the movie. You have to let the music become a character in the film with its own voice. If you super-serve the creative needs of the movie as the basis for everything, then the songs become a true extension of the film as opposed to an afterthought. With this clear directive, we work with artists who align with the overall aesthetic tone of the movie, and then hone in on hit records.
How have you been able to keep the momentum on this release going?
It’s the gift that keeps on giving. We worked intentionally early on to create our own brand with this music and have continued to market it past the film’s release just like we would with any other superstar artist. Greta made a masterpiece and now we get to continue to grow this music outside of the four walls of the film, which helps both the film and our music brand continue to flourish. We get to come up with new creative ideas every day while having fun building upon what we’ve already been able to accomplish.
Every aspect of this project has been a dream and I couldn’t be more grateful to the entire team at Atlantic, the global teams at WMG, our creative partners, Greta, Mark, George and the filmmakers, as well as our partners at Mattel and Warner Bros. Every single thing we have done here has gone against the grain and we are thankful to have had enormous support in an unprecedented capacity by all involved.
Last Week’s Top Executive: Cactus Jack GM David Stromberg
Jerry Moss once spent a day in Athens, Greece, screaming at the heads of the world’s top electronics companies during a Billboard music-industry convention. It was 1981. Sony’s Norio Ohga and Philips’ Jan Timmer were trying to persuade record executives to switch from their beloved LP to this new, high-tech “compact disc,” and Moss, co-founder of storied indie A&M Records, which would break Janet Jackson, Sting, Soundgarden and Blues Traveler, led the opposition.
Moss, who died Thursday at 88, believed CDs “would kill the industry because the perfect digital master would invite and facilitate piracy,” according to John Nathan‘s 1999 book, Sony.
As I was researching this subject for my own book, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, I had to verify this claim. Nathan described a mob of outraged record execs chanting, like soccer hooligans, a “slogan that sounded like a Madison Avenue nightmare”: “The truth is in the grooves!”
This was the generous and magnanimous sales expert who was endlessly patient with his artists, willing to lose money on an album to advance a long-term career, whom Sting would describe as an “elder brother, a wise head, a man’s man and a mensch”?
I was sure Moss would be too embarrassed to rehash this history, because, eventually, the CD helped him and his partner, trumpeter Herb Alpert, become super rich, selling A&M to PolyGram for $500 million in 1989. (That’s $1.23 billion in today’s dollars.) But the exec who co-founded A&M with Alpert in a garage in 1962, after selling the master for Alpert’s Tijuana Brass instrumental “Tell It to the Birds” for $750, quickly agreed to a phone interview – and a wonkier follow-up later.
“I made a bit of a small statement at the meeting,” understated Moss, who at the time of our interview was running his post-A&M label, Almo Sounds, which had signed Gillian Welch as well as Garbage and Imogen Heap. “I liked the hardware and the whole ease of the CD, and I generally applauded the idea that Sony and Philips were getting together on this one piece of machinery.
“But,” he added, “I thought they could have done something to stop piracy.”
On Second Thought…
What finally turned Moss around was the economics of the CD. The price of vinyl records was stuck at $8.98 — and after Tom Petty threatened to affix a huge “$8.98!” sticker on his 1981 album, Hard Promises, his own label, MCA, and the rest of the industry were blocked from raising prices. The CD allowed A&M to “charge a multiple for this thing,” Moss said. Also, retail stores were charging labels for advertising — a “mighty blow,” Moss called it. After disco crashed in 1979, LP sales plunged. “Retailing and selling became very pinched,” he added.
“The retailers wanted more and artists and producers wanted more for what they were doing. The record companies were getting squeezed further and further,” Moss went on. “And here comes the CD.”
The shiny, futuristic format was in high demand, and retailers were willing to buy it from labels for $10 wholesale, far higher than the LP, then sell it to customers for $16.
“So A&M, after just a tiny bit of study, decided this was going to be our future,” Moss said.
Like the bigger labels, A&M had to find plants to manufacture the CD, quickly making a deal with a German company. And the CD, to which Moss had been so screamingly opposed in 1981, made A&M profitable beyond anything Alpert and Moss had once imagined: “The company was a different company from 1979 to 1989, certainly.”
A Bittersweet Sale
Alongside Alpert and the late Gil Friesen, then the day-to-day operations exec who referred to himself as the ampersand in A&M, Moss decided they had no choice but to sell the company they loved. Music stars in the late ’80s and early ’90s were demanding multimillion-dollar advances, and, as an indie, A&M couldn’t compete with bigger labels for the up-front guarantees. The trio stayed on for a couple of years after the sale, but PolyGram had a mandatory retirement age of 61. In 1991, Moss found himself with a new boss, Alain Levy, who became PolyGram’s worldwide president and CEO, and, Moss recalled, “wasn’t laughing at my jokes.”
(In 1998, PolyGram was sold to Seagram, which merged it with Universal Music Group, today the world’s biggest label.)
“I don’t regret selling, because I felt we had nothing but to do that. There was no alternative. We would have had to have gotten a lot smaller, and gotten our investment in different, other ways,” Moss told me. “I can’t say I’m sorry I sold A&M. I will say I’m sorry I had to leave.”
If you give a hoot about feel-good songs on TikTok, there’s a solid chance you’ve heard Paul Russell’s “Lil Boo Thang” by now. A full version of the infectious song, which interpolates “Best of My Love” by The Emotions, has been cleared for landing and is set for release on streaming services at midnight on Friday (Aug. 18). Billboard has also learned that Arista Records has officially signed Russell, a Texas native now based in Los Angeles, ahead of the song drop.
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The proof of “Lil Boo Thang”’s virality is in the stats. Russell teased a 21-second snippet of the track via TikTok on June 28, with the post garnering over 5.3 million views and launching over 55,000 “creations” from new fans who’ve paired it with everything from clips of their dogs to best-friend tributes to fitness milestones. Russell later repurposed the post on Instagram Reels, where he reeled in another 10.4 million views.
In six subsequent TikTok posts that included the song, with lyrics like “Tell ‘em you found a lil’ something too fresh” and the folksy “I don’t give a hoot what your dude say,” Russell has generated another 4 million views and dozens of comments with varying versions of “Dude, drop the full version now!!!“. (He again cloned these follow-ups on Reels, bringing in millions more listens for the song clip.)
The infectiousness of “Lil Boo Thing” owes quite a bit to the legendary bounce of “Best of My Love,” a disco-funk anthem written by Maurice White and Al McKay of Earth, Wind & Fire that spent five weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 and was The Emotions’ biggest hit.
Courtesy Photo
The full version of “Lil Boo Thang” (see the single cover, right) has received 20,000 pre-saves to date.
“First and foremost, ‘Lil Boo Thang’ is meant to be a good time,” said Russell ahead of the full track release. “When I wrote it, I was stressed out on a Thursday afternoon, so I just turned on some of the music that makes me happy and imagined that I was celebrating something. I think what makes the song special is the fact that so many of us are ready to just forget about whatever is happening around us and enjoy the good things in life — not just thinking back to good times in the past but creating new ones in the present day.”
The Cornell graduate has nearly 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, with 14 million streams for his 2022 single “Ms. Poli Sci” and 7.3 million for 2021’s “Hallelujah.”
Check out the TikTok post that started it all:
Over the past week, Oliver Anthony has summited the music charts, thanks to his viral hit “Rich Men North of Richmond,” which highlights working-class frustrations (and, in some of its most controversial lyrics, the country’s welfare system) and has been met with both intense praise and backlash.
The song first gained national attention late last week, when RadioWV’s YouTube live video for the song began gaining millions of views (that YouTube post now has more than 16 million views). By the end of Aug. 11, “Rich Men North of Richmond” topped the iTunes country chart, and since then, “Rich Men” has soared to the top of the all-genre iTunes chart. According to Luminate, the daily official on-demand U.S. streams for “Rich Men North of Richmond” grew to over 3 million on Tuesday (Aug. 15). The song also resides at No. 1 on the Spotify Top 50-USA chart, as of Wednesday afternoon (Aug. 16).
The song and YouTube video gained traction initially, in part, through various media personalities who shared the video, including John Rich, Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh, as well as Barstool Sports and conservative outlet Breitbart posting it on social media.
The consumption of Anthony’s music extends beyond “Rich Men.” His song “Ain’t Gotta Dollar” is currently No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 chart, with five of his other songs resting in the chart’s top 10 on Wednesday afternoon, as of publishing.
These numbers have swiftly led to an industry feeding frenzy for Anthony, with one label head telling Billboard, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.”
Anthony acknowledged the rush of record labels trying to sign him on Wednesday, when he posted on social media to let his followers know about a show this coming Saturday at Eagle Creek Golf Club and Grill in Moyock, North Carolina.
“We are working on a full line up of shows with bigger accommodations in the near future,” Anthony wrote on his official music Facebook page. He also noted, “Everyone in the ‘industry’ is rushing me into signing something, but we just want to take things slow right now. I appreciate your patience.”
Elektra Entertainment has promoted Jacob Fain to executive vice president and head of A&R at the Warner Music-owned label unit. The Los Angeles-based Fain joined Elektra in late 2020 and was most recently senior vp of A&R and head of the label’s data and analytics team. He’ll continue to report directly to Elektra president Gregg […]
It didn’t take long for news of a lawsuit against Lizzo to put a dent in her sales and streaming activity. Multiple metrics — such as on-demand audio streams and Instagram followers — reveal a small but noticeable fan backlash in the week following news that the singer was sued in a Los Angeles court by three tour dancers who claimed the “Special” singer subjected them to sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.
From August 1 — the day the lawsuit became public — to August 8, Lizzo’s daily U.S. on-demand audio streams fell 21.7% while her daily U.S. track sales have declined 35%, according to Luminate.
Almost half of the decline in U.S. track sales appears to be the result of a drop-off in sales of “Pink,” Lizzo’s contribution to the Barbie: The Album soundtrack. Excluding “Pink,” Lizzo’s track sales declined 19.3% from August 1 to August 8. The decline in her on-demand audio streams excluding “Pink” was unchanged at 21.7%.
The cumulative loss over the seven-day period is relatively minor: about 6 million on-demand audio streams with a royalty value of roughly $10,000 to her record label, according to Billboard’s estimate. Smaller yet is the cumulative decline in royalties from track sales of roughly $1,000 over the same period.
The financial damage would be far greater if Lizzo’s streams and sales continue to be impacted by the controversy. The lawsuit could remain in the public spotlight for some time: The attorney representing the three plaintiffs claims to have received “at least six other inquiries” from people with similar stories regarding their employment by Lizzo. If her U.S. sales and streams continued at the current rate, the cumulative decline in U.S. royalties from streams and track sales would amount to about $89,000 over the first 30-day period and $320,000 over a 90-day, three-month period.
Although her streaming numbers dropped considerably, Lizzo lost just 0.1% of her Spotify followers, amounting to roughly 6,000 of her 5.6 million followers, in the seven days after news of the lawsuit broke. But the singer took a bigger hit on social media. In the week after the lawsuit, Lizzo’s Instagram followers fell 1.7% to 13.4 million while her TikTok followers declined 0.7% to 26.8 million, according to Chartmetric.
Social media numbers fall when services occasionally remove fake followers, but “it is highly unusual to see these simultaneous declines in follower accounts on multiple services,” says Chaz Jenkins, Chartmetric’s chief commercial officer. Artists’ followers tend to increase steadily over time. In fact, before the lawsuit, Lizzo’s Instagram never declined more than 0.1% over any seven-day period in 2023. .
Seeing some fans’ reaction to Lizzo’s lawsuit recalls how Doja Cat lost about 600,000 Instagram followers in roughly two and a half weeks, according to Chartmetric, after the rapper traded barbs with her fans. She received none of the groundswell of support that Jason Aldean experienced after CMT’s decision to pull the video for his song “Try That in a Small Town” sparked a national conversation. From July 1 to August 10, Aldean’s YouTube subscribers grew by 10.9% to 2.7 million, his Instagram followers increased 5.9% to 4.3 million and the track went to No. 1 on the Hot 100. But, as Kanye West’s rebounding music consumption suggests, listeners may not stay mad for long.
Longtime music executive Steve “Steve-O” Carless has partnered with Warner Records on a joint partnership to start his label Defiant Records. Carless, who is president of A&R at Warner, told Billboard that creating Defiant was a “lifelong mission.”
“I just believe in achieving what you set out to do no matter the risk, test, or obstacle,” he said. “It’s important to be brave and intentional to not lose sight of that. I wanted this to be representative of the career I’ve been privileged to have and also speak to the artists who dream to create their story on their own terms, who aren’t scared to be who they are unapologetically.”
Defiant Records houses burgeoning acts, including Bandmanrill, Sha EK, and McVertt, who teamed to craft the bulky 27-track project The Defiant Presents: Jiggy In Jersey. Executive produced by McVertt (who co-produced Lil Uzi Vert’s Hot 100 top 10 hit “I Just Wanna Rock), Bandmanrill and Sha EK thrive in a playground where Jersey Club and drill music coexist. Having previously worked with Pusha T, Big Sean and the late Nipsey Hussle, among many others, Carless believes his experience will come in handy when building out the careers of his signees.
“I truly believe that my experience affords these artists an opportunity and mentorship that’s hard to duplicate,” Carless relayed to Billboard. “I have 10,000 hours of experience in management, A&R, digital, and promotions. I’ve been inside a record company for my whole career and have simultaneously operated outside of those buildings as well. I’ve helped build brands and companies and also understand the agency piece of it thoroughly. I think all of that super-serves these artists in a way that can create more unexpected opportunities and expedited learning because it’s a unique situation here at Defiant Records.”
Regarding plans to grow Defiant Records into a powerhouse, Carless has a simple rinse-and-repeat strategy he thinks will be the blueprint for his label.
“The plans are simple, be authentic and detailed. We set attainable goals, achieve them, and repeat. We will always be the best in our space. The name of the game is to be consistent and curate our big-picture and individual stories simultaneously. Our focus has primarily been YouTube because it’s the most current breeding ground for global talent, and we’ve signed each one of our artists based on their following on the platform.”
Stream The Defiant Presents: Jiggy In Jersey below.
Long before signing Nirvana and the Foo Fighters to their respective record labels and, later, becoming AEG Presents’ global touring and talent president, Gary Gersh was a devoted The Band fanatic. While working at Licorice Pizza in California, he saw the influential rock ‘n’ rollers perform numerous times, and as a young Capitol Records employee, he befriended Robbie Robertson, who died Thursday at 80, during The Band’s The Last Waltz farewell concert.
By phone from a Minneapolis airport, Gersh recalls his early encounters with The Band; coaxing Robertson into recording his 1987 self-titled solo debut while working as a Geffen Records A&R man; and long conversations with the guitarist and songwriter in Woodstock, N.Y.
How did you come to be involved with The Last Waltz?
I was a young guy starting out, and The Band were on [Capitol] and doing their thing when they decided The Last Waltz would be the last show. I get up there for rehearsals, and for the show itself, and it was monumental. I watched Robbie in the middle of it all, being different than a musician — he was always talking to cameramen and Mr. [Martin] Scorsese [who directed the 1978 film documenting the event]. It was a beginning of an education. Robbie helped raise me and I was fortunate to have somebody so unbelievably talented and so beautiful as a human being teaching me so much.
What moment do you remember most from that concert?
Robbie was front and center in a way he had never been seen before. Not necessarily the most important member, because the beauty of The Band was the quality of the whole and everybody mattered, but Robbie was the star on screen. Because of the way everything was captured, all of a sudden people were seeing this guy as one of the greatest live guitarists that ever lived.
How did you get to Capitol Records back then?
Gary Gersh photographed on Oct. 21, 2019 at AEG Presents in Los Angeles.
Sally Peterson
I had come from a chain of record stores, Licorice Pizza, and Capitol was my first record-company job. The Band had put out a Christmas song [“Christmas Must Be Tonight,” recorded in 1975 and, released two years later] as a single, and I was crazy for it. I was just this guy at the record label, at the very, very bottom, jumping up and down and screaming about The Band. They weren’t the biggest priority at the time, because they weren’t the biggest band, but, to me, they were the most influential band in American music. I saw them play at the Santa Barbara Bowl when I was in my late teens and it was probably well over 100 degrees. Robbie was dressed up in a suit and they were all just dying from the heat, but there they were, just being The Band, and they crushed every time I saw them.
You helped him make Robbie Robertson — how did that come about?
One of the first things I did as an A&R guy was sign Robbie and talked him into making solo records, which, at the time, he wasn’t thinking of doing. I said, “You can’t stop making music. You can do whatever else you need to do, but you can’t stop making music.” I kind of didn’t know what I was talking about, but I think he got that I could be a partner on the ride.
What was making that album like?
He was developing what he wanted his sound to be while we were working on the record. I had always known that [producer] Daniel Lanois was the guy to make the record, and Robbie knew it but had never met him. They hit it off famously. … Daniel pushed Robbie in ways I’m not sure had ever happened before. Robbie had always written multiple verses and had extra lyrics from all the songs. I had never seen that before. There were whole verses being moved in a way that took all of us to see and help develop.
Was there a moment that stands out from that process?
When the first solo album was finished, we mixed the record with [engineer] Bob Clearmountain at Bearsville Studios [in Woodstock, N.Y., site of many Band recordings], which Robbie obviously had a real history at. The day we got to Woodstock, we got a six-pack and he took me over to Big Pink, and we sat on the curb, and I just started asking questions. He was one of the greatest storytellers, whether he was talking about a meal at dinner or a film or music. He talked about how, once they got into the house, they started writing songs from fragments of things. And how Robbie thought each piece was like an actor in a play or a movie, and how they would come and go in a way that made it so cinematic.
When was the last time you saw him?
I talked to him a few weeks ago — he knew my family and knew my wife, and we had young kids and were starting to raise a family, and he had already had one.
Anything else you’d like to add?
He introduced me to so many people — so many musicians — that I had never thought in my life I would know. But he felt it would be part of my education. Van Morrison was just on the music system here [at the airport]. I remember meeting Van because Robbie introduced me to him when they were working on a song [“Wonderful Remark”] for the [1983] King of Comedy soundtrack. I hear things and I’m just reminded everywhere I go. I think that’s the way it is with great teachers. It never leaves you.
Ivan Cornejo has signed a record deal with Interscope Records, the Universal Music Group-owned label announced today (Aug. 10). The música mexicana singer-songwriter had been signed to indie label Manzana Records since 2021.
The 19-year-old artist went from social media phenomenon to chart-topping artist when he topped Billboard‘s Latin Songwriters chart dated Oct. 30, 2021 thanks to his hit sierreño anthem “Está Dañada,” which then became only the second regional Mexican song to enter the Hot 100 tally. The track later got a remix featuring Jhayco. Last year, he scored his first No. 1 on the Regional Mexican Albums with his sophomore album, Dañado, and he won new artist of the year the 2022 Billboard Latin Music Awards.
“I am really excited to begin this new chapter of my career,” Cornejo said in a statement. “It’s been a long road even though my career is young and we have built a really strong foundation up until now. I am looking forward to working with John and Nir and the entire team at Interscope to continue to build and take my project to the next level.”
Cornejo made his Lollapalooza debut on Aug. 5, where he officially kicked off his Terapia Tour, which will make stops in major cities such as New York, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston before wrapping up with two back-to-back shows in Chicago on Nov. 16-17.
“At Interscope we have always been attracted to artists who move culture, and Ivan has already proven he is on that path,” said John Janick, chairman and chief executive officer of Interscope Geffen A&M Records. “He is absolutely one of the most exciting new artists in music and we are looking forward to working with him and his team on the next chapter of his incredible career.”
“Ivan is truly a special artist, a songwriter of depth and a masterful live performer,” said Nir Seroussi, Interscope executive vice president, who oversees Interscope’s efforts in Latin music. “In a very short time he built a passionate and loyal fanbase which has propelled him up the charts. We’re so proud that he’s chosen Interscope as his new creative home.”
Ivan Cornejo’s move from an indie Latin label to a mainstream label comes just two months after Interscope signed Karol G, joining a roster of Latin acts that include Kali Uchis, Cuco and Bad Gyal, among others.
Universal Music Group is in the early stages of talks with Google about licensing artists’ voices for songs created by artificial intelligence, according to The Financial Times. Warner Music Group has also discussed this possibility, The Financial Times reported.
Advances in artificial-intelligence-driven technology have made it relatively easy for a producer sitting at home to create a song involving a convincing facsimile of a superstar’s voice — without that artist’s permission. Hip-hop super-fans have been using the technology to flesh out unfinished leaks of songs from their favorite rappers.
One track in particular grabbed the industry’s attention in March: “Heart On My Sleeve,” which masqueraded as a new collaboration between Drake and the Weeknd. At the time, a Universal Music spokesperson issued a statement saying that “stakeholders in the music ecosystem” have to choose “which side of history… to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.”
“In our conversations with the labels, we heard that the artists are really pissed about this stuff,” Geraldo Ramos, co-founder and CEO of the music technology company Moises, told Billboard recently. (Moises has developed its own AI-driven voice-cloning technology, along with the technology to detect whether a song clones someone else’s voice.) “How do you protect that artist if you’re a label?” added Matt Henninger, Moises’ vp of sales and business development.
The answer is probably licensing: Develop a system in which artists who are fine with having their voices cloned clear those rights — in exchange for some sort of compensation — while those acts who are uncomfortable with being replicated by technology can opt out. Just as there is a legal framework in place that allows producers to sample 1970s soul, for example, by clearing both the master and publishing rights, in theory there could be some sort of framework through which producers obtain permission to clone a superstar’s voice.
AI-driven technology could “enable fans to pay their heroes the ultimate compliment through a new level of user-driven content,” Warner CEO Robert Kyncl told financial analysts this week. (“There are some [artists] that may not like it,” he continued, “and that’s totally fine.”)
On the same investor call, Kyncl also singled out “one of the first official and professionally AI-generated songs featuring a deceased artist, which came through our ADA Latin division:” A new Pedro Capmany track featuring AI-generated vocals from his father Jose, who died in 2001. “After analyzing hundreds of hours of interviews, acappellas, recorded songs, and live performances from Jose’s career, every nuance and pattern of his voice was modeled using AI and machine learning,” Kyncl explained.
After the music industry’s initial wave of alarm about AI, the conversation has shifted, according to Henninger. With widely accessible voice-cloning technology available, labels can’t really stop civilians from making fake songs accurately mimicking their artists’ vocals. But maybe there’s a way they can make money from all the replicants.
Henninger is starting to hearing different questions around the music industry. “How can [AI] be additive?” he asks. “How can it help revenue? How can it build someone’s brand?”
Reps for Universal and Warner did not respond to requests for comment.