Record Labels
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Riser House Records has signed LANCO, welcoming the group to its artist roster. Known for the two-week No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit “Greatest Love Story,” from the group’s 2018 debut album Hallelujah Nights, LANCO also earned an Academy of Country Music Award for new duo or group of the year, in addition to nominations […]
Warner Music Group executive vp/CFO Eric Levin reiterated the label’s call for streaming services to raise their prices while speaking at a conference hosted by JP Morgan Chase & Co on Monday (May 22).
Levin, who worked at HBO between 1988 and 2002, told the group of investors and Wall Street analysts that, unlike streaming services, the cable network almost annually raised prices during that period because the company knew customers wanted its content enough to pay a premium.
“I think and I am hopeful now that much of the [streaming] industry has done a round of rate increases successfully…that they start to understand that the industry can bear it,” Levin said.
Levin’s comments echo WMG CEO Robert Kyncl‘s previous call to streaming company hold-outs to raise prices, delivered during a wide-ranging presentation in March that touched on WMG’s growth strategy if streaming growth slows as well as its light release schedule in the first two quarters.
An increase in music streaming revenue, the main driver behind WMG and other major music companies’ double-digit growth in recent years, is expected to decline from 10% growth in 2024 to 3% growth in 2029, according to a recent presentation by MIDiA Research. That projection, which is far gloomier than Goldman’s forecast for a 12% compound annual growth rate for streaming revenue until 2030, prompted several questions to Levin about WMG’s streaming revenue expectations and how it may grow even if the streaming engine slows.
“We still have a lot of conviction that streaming has a lot of growth,” Levin said while noting that growth may come from a series of drivers.
“When we went public three-ish years ago, our growth story really revolved around subscription streaming,” he said. “Now … it includes ad-supported streaming [and] emerging [sources] of streaming, social, fitness, gaming, etc. So the facets of growth have really diversified.”
The industry has seen steady growth in subscription streaming since roughly 2015, and growth in that area remains present in all economic forecasts, Levin added.
Other revenue drivers like ad-supported streaming, he continued, are more impacted by “cyclicality based on slowdowns when the economy slows and rapid recovery when the economy is solid.”
Emerging sources of streaming revenue, such as from social media and short-form video apps, have significant growth potential, Levin said, because “you have potential for multiple products per person in a home — people have multiple social media accounts in one home.”
This month, WMG reported its second straight quarter of basically flat recorded music revenue, driven by a slower first half of the year for music releases. Recorded music streaming revenue declined nearly half a percent from the prior year due to the light release schedule.
Pressed to provide greater detail around why the company is experiencing a modest release slate this year, Levin said the May 5 release of Ed Sheeran‘s – (pronounced Subtract) is expected to be the first in a slate of upcoming releases by prominent artists — and indeed, the company is already showing signs of a second-half rebound. Still, he acknowledged WMG has lost ground to its competitors.
“We lost a little bit of momentum, but we fully expect to get it back,” Levin said.
Terrace Martin — the artist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for working with Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and Robert Glasper, among others — announced a partnership between BMG and his Sounds of Crenshaw label on Monday (May 22). The results will be six jazz albums, with the first of which is due out this summer. According […]
Andrea Ganis, a 43-year veteran of Atlantic Records and the label’s first president of promotion, announced Thursday she is leaving the company. In a memo to staff, the glass ceiling-breaker graciously thanked her staff (“you are all warriors”) and bosses, including former CEO Doug Morris (“my mentor”) and current chiefs Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald (“they… have the courage to take chances”).
Ganis joined Atlantic in 1980 as a secretary (“yes, we were called that”) and worked her way up to president of national promotion by 1988. Two years later she was named a senior vp and in early 1996 was elevated to executive vp. In 2019, Ganis was promoted to the then-newly created role of president of promotion, overseeing all promotion activities pertaining to Atlantic and its subsidiaries, as well as serving on the company’s leadership team.
“Andrea is a force of nature and a legend in the promo universe,” said Kallman and Greenwald at the time. “She’s been a rock star at Atlantic for nearly four decades and the godmother to countless career-defining records.”
Ganis recounted her early days at the historic label in a lengthy message to colleagues, first picked up by Variety.
“I couldn’t believe my good fortune to then get a job at the mighty Atlantic Records led by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun,” she wrote. “I started in January of 1980 and thanks to his and Jerry Wexler’s unparalleled A&R acumen, got to work with many of the greatest artists on the planet and, amazingly, helped them reach even greater heights. Working with baby bands and developing artists brought its own joys, particularly when they too achieved new heights and we helped them realize their own dreams. I found all of it incredibly inspiring and still do — I will always get a rush from the many songs I hear for which I can claim ‘I worked that record.’”
As one of the first women to head a major-label promotion department, Ganis has been a regular honoree in Billboard’s Women In Music issue. In 2011, her “continued focus on teamwork, strategic planning, creativity, innovation and humor in an ever-challenging environment” was credited for big wins that year with Bruno Mars and others. In 2017‘s list, she noted that “artist development is in Atlantic’s DNA” when calling out a roster that included Cardi B, Charlie Puth and Portugal. The Man. In 2020, her 40th year at the label, she and her staff were feted after Atlantic overdelivered across genres from a roster including Lizzo, Jack Harlow and Coldplay.
Read her message to staff below:
With 15,877 days at Atlantic including 2,262 add dates under my belt, Malcolm Gladwell and his 10,000 hours got nothing on me.
So yes, its my time to say to all of you goodbye for now. After 43+years at Atlantic, I can truly say I have had the greatest ride of all time. Every era had its own magic and though the work was hard, it was also incredibly exciting, tremendously rewarding and quite fabulous in every way—an understatement if there ever was one.
I was one of the original glass ceiling girls who started as a secretary (yes, we were called that) and worked my way up to President of Promotion—not bad for a girl who went to college with the largest record collection of anyone, leaving 4 years later with an even larger one!
I started out like all of you—with a great love of music. Ironically, how I was exposed to it became my lifelong career—through the radio…..WNEW, WLIR and WHFS were responsible for my initial musical discoveries—whatever I heard I usually purchased. In junior high and high school I bought my albums at Korvettes—a discount store near where I grew up; they knew me by name and I came in every week like clockwork hungry for music of every genre. BTW, they were 3 for $10.00 then and I continued those purchases throughout my college days in Washington DC negotiating for the same price—ah promotion already in my blood!
I was lucky enough to be brought up in a musical era that was diverse in every way. FM radio was free form and callout research did not exist. Though there was no social media and bands were far more mysterious then, I became totally immersed in the music and culture enhanced by radio, word of mouth, concerts and clubs, Rolling Stone magazine, conversations with record store personnel and anything I could pick up from other members of my musical community. And the best part was the music scene was remarkably prolific populated by bands whose work was not only unique but identifiable by the first note. Like you, I was addicted to all of it.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune to then get a job at the mighty Atlantic Records led by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun. I started in January 1980 and thanks to his and Jerry Wexler’s unparalleled A&R acumen, got to work with many of the greatest artists on the planet and amazingly, helped them reach even higher heights. Working with baby bands and developing artists brought its own joys, particularly when they too achieved new heights and we helped them realize their own dreams. I found all of it incredibly inspiring and still do—I will always get a rush from the many songs I hear for which I can claim “I worked that record”.
And even now, so many years later, the joy of hearing the song on the radio for the first time brings me to tears…this will forever be a constant and knowing how much effort it took to create that moment makes it all the more special. Seeing any act we’ve been a part of perform in any arena for sure will make me cry, particularly when the fans sing every word.
My tremendous thanks to Julie and Craig who continue to guide with intelligence, vision, honesty and heart. They lead by example and continue to have the courage to take chances. Always a shout out to my mentor, Doug Morris, who believed in me and saw the potential to what I could become.
Which brings me to promotion….a land that I love. I was a solid athlete in my formative years and it taught me the importance of teamwork, a lesson I swear is one of the great keys to success….yes, a village indeed. So to be given the opportunity to grow from a young team member to leading the greatest squad there is for as long as I have has been a dream come true.
Throughout all these years I’ve worked with so many wonderful, smart, talented people on the record, radio and management sides and I thank each of you for helping me learn and grow—I hope I’ve done the same for you.
To my current team—my colleagues but better still, close wonderful lifelong friends, I can’t begin to express the love and respect I have for each of you—we have changed culture one spin at a time! You are all warriors and the best there is at getting the job done.
It has been an honor and a privilege to carry the promotion torch for Atlantic Records. We are a skillful, smart, strategic, creative, word-is-our-bond kind of crew, who always took the time to laugh, even at our own expense. Continue to turn no’s into yesses, stay passionate and in the toughest of times, know you’ve got this.
Long may we all run—
Andrea
Ineffable Records, the label division of Ineffable Music Group, has announced the appointment of Diego Herrera as director of Business Development. Herrera joins the leading independent reggae label after close to a decade at Pandora, where he played a pivotal role in music curation, specializing in pushing forward reggae, dancehall, soca, and other Caribbean genres. […]
Will Ward‘s global management, production, publishing and business development company Fourward has now launched a record label, Billboard can reveal. Dubbed Fourward Records, the label has already signed buzzy folk-pop artist Brenn! under a licensing and partnership agreement with Justin Lubliner‘s Dark Room imprint (via Interscope Records), as well as indie-rock band Sarah and the […]
Plans change. Dinner, vacation, date night… leadership transitions at music companies. BMG announced Wednesday it is shortening its long-term succession plan for longtime CEO Hartwig Masuch, with Thomas Coesfeld, the company’s chief financial officer, assuming the role July 1 instead of New Year’s Day.
The Bertelsmann-owned company said Masuch is leaving “at his own request and on the best of mutual terms,” with the longtime CEO explaining the handover between Coesfeld and himself has “gone so smoothly” that he decided to move up his exit date by six months. (In January, Masuch, 69, explained that he wanted to retire before turning 70.)
Masuch will remain in an advisory role after the transition until 2026, the company said.
“Hartwig has written many chapters in BMG’s success story, which Thomas will now continue,” said Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe in making the updated announcement, adding that “as CFO, he got to know BMG well, drove forward its digital orientation, and invested considerable funds in the acquisition of music rights. I am certain that BMG will continue to grow under [his] leadership.”
Coesfeld was named deputy CFO at BMG in October 2021 before taking over as CFO the following spring. He previously served as chief strategy officer on the executive committee of the Bertelsmann Printing Group, a division of BMG’s parent company Bertelsmann. He began his career in 2014 as a management consultant at McKinsey in Munich.
Upon taking the top office at BMG, Coesfeld will also become a member of Bertelsmann’s Group Management Committee (GMC), which advises the Group Executive Board.
Replacing Coesfeld as CFO will be Mathis Wolter, who joins from Bertelsmann-owned RTL Group, where he has been senior vice president of controlling and investment for over three years. Prior to that, Coesfeld was svp of controlling and reporting at BMG. Joining Coesfeld and Wolter on the BMG Executive Board will be Sebastian Hentzschel (promoted from chief technology officer to chief operations officer), Dominique Casimir (chief content officer) and Nikola Holle-Spiegel (chief human resources officer).
Also joining BMG’s top management team is Alberto Chullen Llamas, arriving from Bertelsmann Education Group to be executive vp of investments to focus on future catalog acquisitions at the label. “After 45 acquisitions in 2022 alone, acquisitions remain central to BMG’s growth into 2023 and beyond,” said Coesfeld. “We are delighted to have secured the services of such a heavy-hitter as Alberto from within the Bertelsmann family, and one who knows BMG well.”
Coesfeld added, “We have a strong team at the helm of BMG… Together we will drive the company’s progress, and I very much look forward to working with them all. I would like to thank Hartwig Masuch for handing over a company which is both highly creative and successful. Hartwig’s clear focus on building a company which works for artists and songwriters has resulted in a globally relevant music company which has redefined what a music company can be in the streaming age.”
Hartwig Masuch
Barbara Dietl
Masuch joined Bertelsmann in 1991, overseeing Germany, Switzerland and Austria as part of BMG Music Publishing’s first incarnation. In 2008, he advised Bertelsmann when the company sold its share of Sony BMG Music Entertainment to Sony in 2008, and soon, helped start BMG Rights Management — which later became BMG.
Under Masuch’s leadership, BMG has grown to be the fourth-biggest recorded music and publishing company in terms of revenue, trailing only the three majors.
In March, the label and publisher reported that it generated 866 million euros ($912.6 million) in 2022 compared to 663 million euros in 2021 ($784 million) — an increase of 30% year-over-year. The company’s publishing division, which makes up 60% of BMG’s revenues, grew by 26% to 518 million euros ($546 million) on new hits by Bebe Rexha and Lewis Capaldi, and catalog works by Blondie and Nirvana.
In recent years, BMG has acquired music rights from The Pointer Sisters, Peter Frampton, Harry Nilsson, Simple Minds, Tina Turner and Mötley Crüe, among others, and through a partnership with KKR the company has acquired catalogs from John Legend and ZZ Top. On the label side, BMG has signed Duran Duran, Santana, Bryan Adams, Maxwell and Louis Tomlinson. BMG has also moved into the live business, first by acquiring a majority stake in German live music promoter Undercover GmbH in 2020 and later with a similar alliance with KARO Konzert-Agentur Rothenburg GmbH, the organizer of the German Taubertal-Festival. The company also oversees Berlin’s historic 1,600-capacity Theater des Westens.
“BMG has set sales records in recent months, signed outstanding artists, acquired iconic music rights catalogs and developed new lines of business,” Hartwig said. “The values of transparency, service, and fairness are now an inseparable part of what has become the company’s DNA, much respected by the entire music industry. So I’m leaving on a high note – and in the firm conviction that with Thomas Coesfeld and his management team, a new generation will successfully lead the music company into a new era.”
The Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) unveiled a tepid assessment of the music industry’s progress toward addressing historical racism and inequity on Monday (May 15). The organization expressed particular concern about Universal Music Group’s commitment to the cause and the live music sector’s lack of “attent[ion] to Black professionals.”
The BMAC established its “Music Industry Action Report Card” in 2020 “to keep tabs on the promises music companies made in the wake of The Show Must Be Paused” — noting that real progress is unlikely without some type of accountability mechanism. The latest edition of the report, authored by Naima Cochrane, concludes that the music business outlook was “not negative.”
“Why that phrasing?” the report asks. “Because it’s not ‘all good,’ either.”
The report notes that “for the most part, companies that outlined measurable goals and plans in 2020 and 2021 have either continued in forward progression or at least held the line.” But BMAC points out that “there is a history of music companies… being called out for unfair, unjust, or otherwise imbalanced practices.” In the past, when “public pressure rescinds… things revert to how they were before, if not worse.” The report wonders: Is history set to repeat itself?
The BMAC report assesses each music company’s commitment to a more diverse industry according to four criteria: Corporate commitments, partnerships and giving; company representation on a senior level; internal culture and business practices; and transparency and public accountability.
The BMAC praises Sony Music (which earned grades of A, B, B and B+ in the four categories, respectively) and Warner Music Group (A, B, B, B) for “sharing more info about the makeup of their staff by gender, age, and race/ethnicity.” But the report expressed “concern” about Universal Music Group (B-, B+, C+, C), the biggest of the major-label groups.
While the report notes that UMG’s “Taskforce for Meaningful Change was a strong presence in the conversation around justice and change” in 2020 and 2021, the BMAC states that “the group’s presence and visibility felt significantly diminished in 2022.” Why the sudden change? Firstly, the report questions the sudden departure of Ethiopia Habtemariam, “a significant leader,” who unexpectedly left Motown in November.
The BMAC also calls out Capitol Music Group’s “massive cultural blunder” and “especially egregious misstep” with the virtual rapper FN Meka, who was widely viewed as perpetuating racist stereotypes and subsequently dropped from the label’s roster. (“We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it,” Capitol said in a statement at the time.) “The project was a perfect illustration of how music companies have historically commodified a distilled or skewed version of Black culture without including Black decision-makers and/or voices in the process,” the BMAC writes.
In addition to evaluating the major label groups, the BMAC scrutinized the Recording Academy (B, B+, B, B) — which it praises for working “to increase diversity in the voting membership and remove the more opaque aspects of Grammy voting” — and streaming services: “Amazon Music stood out this year for its visible representation among senior staff and its partnerships.” The BMAC also notes approvingly that Spotify has been “diligent in the execution of [its] BLK 5-Star Strategy for diversity, inclusion, and combating inequity.”
In the live music business, where “Black people were systematically shut out for decades,” the BMAC observed that “the impact of that exclusion still reverberates both in offices and on tours.” Promoting diversity “needs to be as much of a concentrated focus at [live music] companies as it is on the record music side,” the BMAC argued. The talent agencies UTA, CAA and WME/Endeavor were all given grades of “needs improvement,” as was AEG Presents. Wasserman and Live Nation were deemed “satisfactory.”
Finally, the BMAC turned its attention to radio, which continues to adhere to “genre lines” that limit the “visibility and opportunity for both our Black artists and Black executives,” according to the report. “The media conglomerates that control the majority of the pop and urban airwaves still have an enormous impact on artist success but also still operate on often arbitrary and outdated music standards,” it continues. BMAC added that “radio is on watch.”
The latest Music Industry Action Report Card acknowledged that “racism, a 400+ year-old disease, will not be cured in 24 months.” “However,” it continues, BMAC hopes that “through music’s reach, power, and influence, the industry can set a new standard of inclusion, diversity, and equity.”
A move by Barry Weiss to reconfigure ownership over his RECORDS label has resulted in deal that buys out his former partners with a new going-forward joint venture directly between him and Sony Music, sources say.
Weiss — the former Jive/Zomba impresario — launched RECORDS in 2015 with his then-partners at the SONGS publishing firm, Matt Pincus and Ron Perry, and in 2017 they soon entered into a joint venture with Sony Music for the label. That deal was renewed for another three years in 2020, but with that arrangement coming to term Weiss and his original partners recently hired Artisan’s Brian Richards to selectivity shop for a new equity partner. The original 2017 deal, sources say, had a buy/sell mechanism in place that when it expired, either partner — Sony or the original RECORDS founders — could chose to buy out the other partner. While that mechanism never officially kicked in, sources say that if Sony decided to trigger the buy/sell option, Weiss and his partners apparently wanted to be prepared.
By the end of 2022, sources say, RECORDS was generating about $20 million in annual revenue and the original partners were seeking a valuation above $100 million. The label’s roster and catalog includes music from 24K Goldn and Noah Cyrus, who each have racked up over 1 million album consumption units in the U.S.; rapper Nelly’s 2021 country-crossover album Heartland, which is approaching 600,000 album consumption units in the U.S.; and the Labrinth-Sia-Diplo collaboration LSD and Stella Lennon, who are each approaching 500,000 album consumption units in the U.S.
As part of the deal, Sony now owns outright that part of the RECORDS catalog and all of its other masters from the original joint venture, although Weiss and his team will continue to work those records. Meanwhile, the recent singings that sources say are likely part of the new joint venture owned collectively by Sony and Weiss, include Matt Stell, who has scored two No. 1 records at country radio — the double platinum “Prayed For You” and the platinum “Everywhere But On”; former Band Perry member Kimberly Perry, whose “If I Die Young Pt. 2,” is just hitting country radio; and iCandy, whose “Keep-Dat-N—a” has become a TikTok hit.
As one source puts it, “while RECORDS may have been slow-going at the start, Weiss did a really nice job of building up the label and creating a valuable business.”
The search for a new equity partner received a number of interested offers from suitors that were said to be in the ballpark of the asking price. But it turned out that Sony — which sources say also had matching rights — came up with the most attractive offer and a deal was struck, one that had the added advantage of likely being the easiest deal to make since Sony was already familiar with the label.
In the original joint-venture deal with Sony from 2017, the major became RECORDS’ majority owner with a stake slightly over 50%. Of the remaining stake, sources say Weiss had the largest remaining equity piece, around 25% to 30%. Perry had the second largest stake, while Pincus — who originally had the largest stake at the label’s founding — had been left with the smallest slice of equity.
The new deal, according to sources, sees a 50/50 partnership between Sony and Weiss, with Pincus and Perry bought out completely from RECORDS as they received their second payday from selling a stake in the label to Sony. Moreover, even Weiss received a payday by cashing out his stake in the original joint venture, besides the new joint-venture deal, those same sources say.
While Pincus and Perry are no longer owners in RECORDS, Perry is chairman and CEO of Columbia Records, the distributing label for many of the releases from RECORDS, so he will still be involved in the label he helped found.
In the last six months, this marks the third deal involving music assets in the Sony Music Group orbit that were or are up for sale, either wholly or in partially, where the company has moved aggressively to keep — or try to keep — the music assets under its umbrella.
Two other deals that are likely still up in the air but close to fruition involve Rimas Entertainment and the Michael Jackson Estate. In the former situation, Sony is helping Noah Assad to buy out his partner in another deal that will rejigger the ownership structure of that company; while in the latter deal, Sony is negotiating to purchase outright the Jackson estate but the executors want to keep their hand in running that operation, according to sources. No formal announcements have been made for either deal.
Weiss and Pincus didn’t respond to requests for comment, while Sony Music declined to comment.
Asake leans back in his chair, phone glowing in the darkened studio, as Olamide hunches over his right shoulder. Suddenly, the engineer signals, and the backbone of a song swirls through the speakers while Asake begins teasing out melodies and lyrics in Yoruba, a language of his native Nigeria. The engineer cuts, rewinds and plays, and the loop once again floods the vacuum-like silence that envelops a recording studio.
Outside the room, the building is bubbling with activity and energy as artists, songwriters and engineers mill about, playing unreleased records and eating from a buffet of Nigerian food — smoked mackerel, okra soup, goat, garlic shrimp and crab — prepared by local chefs. But this is not West Africa; it’s San Francisco, at the new studio headquarters of Bay Area-based music company EMPIRE. In early March, EMPIRE was in the midst of a two-week writing camp for three of its biggest Nigerian talents: budding Afrobeats superstar Asake, his YBNL Nation label boss and Nigerian music legend/mogul Olamide and Fireboy DML, another emerging YBNL/EMPIRE artist, whose 2021 single, “Peru,” was remixed with Ed Sheeran and exploded into a global hit. “Peru” was the first song Fireboy created at EMPIRE’s studios near San Francisco’s Mission District, which the company just expanded and overhauled into a first-class, multipurpose creative hub.
The studio is now the epicenter for all that EMPIRE intends to be: a fully operational label group that can sit at the top table alongside the majors and compete at the highest levels of the global music business and beyond — TV, film, podcasts, gaming, social media, nightlife and more. And it’s currently the platform for one of EMPIRE’s biggest achievements: The company is among the foremost global distributors of Afrobeats, the umbrella term for a variety of musical genres emerging from sub-Saharan Africa, where recorded-music revenue has ballooned 34.7% year over year, according to IFPI, the fastest pace in the world.
“The music that they’re making here is, honestly, the most culturally important thing I’ve done in my entire career, and I’ve been in the music business since I was 14,” says EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi while walking through the space. “These guys are the kings of where they come from, and they’re about to be the kings of everywhere if we keep doing what we’re doing. It’s phenomenal to see what’s happening.”
From left: Ghazi, Asake and Fireboy DML on February 27, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp in San Francisco.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
EMPIRE’s dominance in Nigeria, in particular, is immense. On the country’s TurnTable Charts, EMPIRE ended 2022 with the top three artists (Asake, Burna Boy and BNXN), the top two songs (Kizz Daniel’s “Buga,” and Asake and Fireboy’s “Bandana”) and the top album (Asake’s Mr. Money With the Vibe), while also earning the distinctions of top label and top distributor for the year. At one point, EMPIRE artists held the top slot on the Nigeria 100 for 26 consecutive weeks, and an EMPIRE song was No. 1 for 35 weeks over the course of the year. (The song Asake recorded in San Francisco was released in April as “2:30” and became his ninth No. 1 on the Nigeria 100.) EMPIRE’s relationship with Olamide and YBNL, which began in 2016 before being formalized as a partnership in early 2020, has given it both credibility and a draw to attract artists, and has become a significant success story in the region.
“They are a major organization in Nigerian music,” says Ayomide Oriowo, co-founder/head of operations of TurnTable Charts. “After 2019, when they did the deal with Olamide, they capitalized on that and became a bigger deal. It was also at the moment when the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ [movement] was really taking off. So the timing worked for them, and it was just perfect. Word travels fast when you’re an artist — this idea of, ‘They have the power to get us here.’ ”
Now the challenge is to replicate that success elsewhere — in the Middle East/North Africa region, in the Asia-Pacific, in South America and beyond — without losing the drive and identity that Ghazi and his company have cultivated over the past 13 years.
The evening runs late — it’s past 10 p.m. — but suddenly, the room is buzzing with energy, and everyone moves into the building’s marble-floored lobby. After a beat, Ghazi brings Fireboy in to surprise him with an RIAA platinum plaque for “Peru” as the staff gather around, taking photos and popping champagne. “This is the first platinum plaque we hang on the wall here for a song that was created here — the first of many,” Ghazi says amid the jubilation.
Later, he takes a more reflective tone. “It’s like a zenith point in my life,” he says. “It brought me all the way back to my beginning: in a studio, making a record, and then taking that record and putting it into a company that was a culmination of many years; to be able to put out that record and market it, promote it, distribute it, manufacture it and create accolades and international nominations. And then that record became the record that made a bunch of other African artists say, ‘I want to go to the studio where this was made. I want to have that same experience and that same magic.’ ”
Two days later, Ghazi is sitting at a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown San Francisco near the EMPIRE offices, explaining how he built a company that credibly grew into its name.
EMPIRE’s realm is not limited to West Africa — over the past decade-plus, it has also become one of the Bay Area’s biggest and most successful homegrown music companies. Half of its nearly 200 employees are based in the city (a distinction Ghazi is particularly proud of), and it’s a significant player in the independent hip-hop scene across the United States, which provided the fertile ground from which the company was born. Having its headquarters in Ghazi’s hometown has given EMPIRE a domain of its own, along with access to the best minds in technology and media that flock to Silicon Valley.
Ghazi launched EMPIRE in 2010 as a tech-first digital distributor amid the fervor of Digital Music Industry 2.0 zeal then sweeping through the Bay. He had started working at Ingrooves in 2006, which had an office down the street; IODA, which eventually merged with The Orchard, was in the same building; farther down the hallway, two guys were building Twitter. Additionally, SoundCloud, Pandora, Rdio and Mog (which, after several iterations, morphed into what became Apple Music) all had offices in San Francisco.
Ghazi had essentially come up within the cultures of two of his home city’s best exports: first as a recording engineer turned studio owner, working with some of the legends of Bay Area hip-hop, and then building servers for computer companies in Silicon Valley.
“I’d be at my Silicon Valley job from 9 to 6, and then I would jump in the car and drive an hour through traffic straight to the studio, order pizza to the studio, then work there until three, four in the morning,” he says. “Then I would go home, take a shower, sleep like four hours and go right back to my Silicon Valley job. I would sleep in my car on lunch breaks and put my pager on vibrate so it would wake me up. Then I’d go right back to work.”
Ghazi photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
That background — a base in tech, plus deep connections to the Bay’s hip-hop scene — led him to Ingrooves, which was trying to break into the rap market. But after three years navigating the company’s bureaucracy while continuing to run a studio, Universal Music Group (UMG) bought half of Ingrooves (it now owns the company outright), and Ghazi left to form EMPIRE. Early on, he relied on his connections to make not just new releases available, but also offer rappers’ catalogs digitally, sometimes for the first time — and to get them paid monthly, rather than quarterly or not at all. The ability to move quickly, with one-off nonexclusive deals and a client-friendly front end, helped the company expand rapidly through word-of-mouth, first through the Bay, then down to Los Angeles — where EMPIRE put out indie albums by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q and Anderson .Paak — then to Houston and beyond.
EMPIRE truly began making its mark in 2016, when it distributed D.R.A.M.’s hit “Broccoli,” which was picked up by Atlantic Records, and the Fat Joe and Remy Ma record “All the Way Up”; both songs earned Grammy nominations. The following year, it released XXXTentacion’s debut album, 17, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has racked up 3.5 million equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate. Without much fanfare, the company had become a hip-hop heavyweight, filling in the gaps that the traditional industry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, serve: the up-and-coming artists who hadn’t yet caught the majors’ eyes and veteran acts who had phased out of the hit-driven system.
At the same time, the industry was shifting. Apple Music had debuted in 2015, streaming had finally begun to return the music business to growth, and EMPIRE’s flexible offering forced rival music companies, including the major-label groups, to offer deals with similar terms and services as they competed for talent. Suddenly, the label pipeline burst into a fire hose, and everyone wanted in on the nimble, flexible and global distribution model that EMPIRE had made its bread and butter. New companies like UnitedMasters, Stem and Create popped up with seed money to buy into the distribution market; labels launched distribution-first imprints (Capitol’s Priority, Republic’s Imperial); and streaming services and social media companies like SoundCloud and, briefly, Spotify began offering independent artists the ability to distribute their music through them. Before long, it seemed that almost every label had a distribution-first option, while the label groups beefed up their own offerings, flooding the zone that EMPIRE helped establish.
“Now every major has an EMPIRE quote-unquote system, where they try to implement that,” says CSH Management’s Kenny Hamilton, who has had several clients work with EMPIRE over the years. “But it’s not the same relationships; it kind of sounds like they’re just trying to find the next quick thing that they can upstream to a major system, but you’re really not doing artist development. At EMPIRE, that’s what they do. They’re patient with the artists, and if they see promise and they believe in it, then they put their all into it as well. It’s often imitated but never duplicated.”
From left: Edgar Esteves of Blank Square Productions, Tina Davis, Ezegozie Eze of EMPIRE and Dayo Ademola Ayoyemi of Salpha Energy at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa on April 24, 2023 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Tuhenye Dan Muatjitjeja
As the industry started to shift toward the EMPIRE model, EMPIRE itself was moving toward the one used by major-label groups, incorporating A&R, marketing, PR, promotions and social media into its offerings on top of pure distribution and starting to provide label deals and joint ventures. In 2018, EMPIRE struck a nonexclusive deal with UMG to distribute select UMG artist projects; in 2019, it added a vertical to handle original content, which now includes several high-traffic Instagram accounts and a music video department, and expanded into Nashville, the United Kingdom and Europe. By 2020, EMPIRE had started a merch operation by acquiring a majority stake in Top Drawer Merch/Electric Family, then officially announced a publishing division, which had already been informally part of the company for several years. The studio technically opened in 2019, but because of the pandemic and continued expansion and renovations, it is only now becoming the one-stop content shop that Ghazi had envisioned.
“I’m a practice-makes-perfect type of person,” he says. “I always knew the intention was to be a label, but I knew I couldn’t be a label without taking a lot of shots. If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you’ve got to take a lot of shots, find your technique and the right approach.”
The right approach, at this point, is there; the goal — a full suite of music and cultural offerings — within sight. All of which has brought the kind of attention Ghazi has instinctively shied away from over the years. The offers to sell, to divest, to assume the final form of what it means to be a Major Label in the Traditional Sense is not something he’s interested in. He owns the company outright, has it rooted in his home city and has no investors or board of directors to answer to — only his staff of 200 around the world and, most importantly, his artists. Still, the questions and offers persist.
“I would call it a tug of war,” he says. “I’ve always been a firm believer that attracting too much attention sometimes gets you off your A-game. But, I also understand the balance of, every once in a while, you’ve got to shine a spotlight on something for people to see the magic.
“It was always about autonomy; if you go to my office right now, behind my desk there’s a sign on my floor, written in Arabic. It says, ‘Freedom.’ I just always wanted the freedom to just be my own man.”
The summer of 2016 was dominated by Drake’s single “One Dance,” featuring Wizkid and Kyla, which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the entirety of June and July, making Wizkid the first Nigerian artist to chart on, let alone top, the tally. At the same time, EMPIRE made another subtle move, one that would pay off years later: getting into business with one of Nigeria’s biggest talents, Olamide.
Today, the 34-year-old rapper, singer, songwriter, producer and YBNL Nation founder has cemented his legacy on his native continent. For nearly 15 years, he has been a prolific artist and executive, helping shape the sounds of hip-hop and Afrobeats, and growing into one of the pillars of modern West African music while championing and boosting a number of young artists along the way, through features or label deals.
“Olamide is almost like a street hero,” says Phiona Okumu, Spotify’s head of music, sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s him understanding the best of American, Western hip-hop culture, but also understanding the grace and vibrancy of where he is from and bringing it together and making it so palatable that’s been his main influence. He’s able to spark a star, he’s able to hear a sound, and he’s able to make it go.”
Olamide in the San Francisco studio on February 20, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
By 2016, streaming services began to slowly open on the continent. IFPI didn’t even begin tracking revenue in Africa until the last few years. In 2019, South Africa ranked No. 31 among countries tracked by IFPI in recorded-music revenue, at $59.9 million; the entirety of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, lumped together, came in at No. 59, at $4.3 million. (IFPI has not released hard figures since.)
“While we were growing up in Africa, all an artist depended on was shows,” says Mobolaji Kareem, EMPIRE’s regional head of West Africa, as he stands in Studio C with YBNL Nation head of brand and talent management Alex Okeke and DJ Enimoney, Olamide’s DJ and brother. “From 2010, 2011, until 2016, all of it was free music on SoundCloud, Audiomack. We dropped things on Twitter. Streaming money started coming around maybe 2016; if Apple Music was around in 2010, we’d be doing like a billion streams right now.”
Olamide broke onto the scene in 2010, primarily as a rapper, mixing English and Yoruba, and signed to a label called Coded Tunes, through which he distributed music and made songs available as ringtones. In 2012, he left that label and launched YBNL Nation, distributing his own music through telcos, as was standard in Africa at the time, and YBNL artists through Bolaji’s Ingle Mind distribution company, which also handled music by the likes of Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage. Olamide signed rising artists such as Lil Kesh, Adekunle Gold and Viktoh while steadily putting out his own music and being a hands-on label executive. By 2016, Olamide was out of his telco deal and began working with Bolaji, who had started using EMPIRE’s distribution framework to expand his artists’ reach beyond Africa.
At the time, the two sides didn’t know each other. EMPIRE was distributing around 500 projects a month, and Ghazi was more focused on building its label structure than dealing with distribution; Bolaji was working through an intermediary to release his artists’ projects through the EMPIRE system. That was the state of affairs for several years until 2018 or 2019, when the numbers began to change. “The money kept getting so much every year. At some point, Ghazi just said, ‘F–k it, who is this boy from Africa? This artist that is making up to like $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month out of Africa with no marketing, no pitch, nothing?’ ” Bolaji says. “They had to fly down.”
Ghazi remembers it a little differently. “One day, Tina [Davis, EMPIRE’s vp of A&R] runs in my office and is like, ‘Yo, there’s this dude from Africa on the phone right now, and I don’t know what he wants because he’s screaming at me. You need to help me deal with this,’ ” he recalls. “So I get on the phone, and if I remember correctly, it was like a payment issue — something went wrong with their account, we didn’t respond fast enough or whatever. We fixed it. And then right around that same time, Nima [Etminan, EMPIRE’s COO] came into my office and was like, ‘Man, I think we should go meet these people.’ ”
Nima Etminan photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
It was a fortuitous meeting — and a well-timed one. Ghazi and Etminan flew to Lagos, Nigeria, and met with Olamide, Bolaji and Okeke, who introduced them to the Nigerian music scene and some of its leading figures, including then-Universal Music Nigeria GM Ezegozie Eze. “Us being personally there was a big deal,” Ghazi says. “Because most people were just sending out reps or just hiring somebody locally to deal with it. We were running around all week, concert to concert, festival to festival, visiting other people’s houses; we went to Fela [Kuti]’s shrine; we were all over the place. We were learning about the country and the music infrastructure. And it was very gratifying that we were received the way we were received, like we’re family. That made me go 10 times harder.”
“Olamide didn’t come to meet EMPIRE. EMPIRE came to meet Olamide,” Bolaji stresses. “And that was how we started EMPIRE Africa, through YBNL. So one of the things I tell people is, ‘The catalog for EMPIRE Africa sits on YBNL.’ Because if YBNL wasn’t making that much money, [EMPIRE] wasn’t going to see Africa that early.”
Within months, EMPIRE had hired Bolaji and Eze to run EMPIRE Africa, an informal entity that was officially incorporated and announced in 2022, with YBNL as its centerpiece. The timing, once again, was fortuitous: After the first seeds of a breakthrough with “One Dance,” momentum had gradually built for a global Afrobeats movement, with artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Mr Eazi, Savage and Nasty C making gains on the Billboard charts year by year. But it was during the pandemic, just as EMPIRE was putting down roots in Lagos, that Afrobeats truly crossed over into the United States, with Wizkid’s “Essence,” featuring Tems, which ultimately peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 and ruled the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart for 27 weeks.
“When things like this happen, it’s almost like a domino effect — that sets off the labels, and they get interested and curious about who can be next in terms of what the sound is like,” says Spotify’s Okumu. “All of the major labels were in the space before EMPIRE, and all of them had the same interests, the same pursuits — they all wanted the next big African star. But EMPIRE focused on A&R, and that is incredibly important when you have an emerging genre. I feel like that was the win in the joint venture between EMPIRE and YBNL.”
California State Assembl ymember Matt Haney presents Fireboy DML, Asake, Olamide and EMPIRE with a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California for their contributions to Afrobeats worldwide and their work in San Francisco
Daniel Aziz
It has also been reflected in the numbers. In 2021, recorded-music revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew 9.6%, according to IFPI, with ad-supported streaming revenue up 56.4%. That number exploded in 2022, with overall revenue up 34.7% — the only region globally with growth north of 30% — taking over as the fastest-growing region for recorded-music revenue in the world. IFPI opened its first African office in mid-2020, reflecting the continent’s growing importance and potential, and all three major labels now have presences in West Africa and South Africa. In the United States, seven of the top 10 on-demand streaming songs Luminate classified under “world music” — which encompasses several African genres, as well as genres like K-pop — were by West African artists in 2022.
IFPI regional director of sub-Saharan Africa Angela Ndambuki says she expects that massive growth to continue at the same rate this year. “With the digital growth and the advances in technology and new platforms coming in, we’re able to see the labels investing even more, and their presence in the region helps drive the development of those scenes,” she says. “And that then creates a healthy music market.”
In the summer of 2021, Fireboy came to San Francisco for the first time to record in the EMPIRE studio. The young Nigerian singer had signed to YBNL in late 2018 and released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, in November 2019 through YBNL/EMPIRE, then a second, Apollo, the following year. “He came to just record for a few days or a week, and we brought in three or four different producers and writers, and he wasn’t very used to having writers. He’s used to doing all his own stuff,” Davis recalls, sitting in the expansive Studio A. “So it was new for us because he hadn’t recorded here, and it was new for him because he had never been to San Francisco.”
“Peru” emerged from that session the following summer, with its lyric “I’m in San Francisco jammin’,” and almost immediately took off in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The remix with Sheeran was released on Christmas Eve 2021, which propelled it even further. “That record was a way for us to show people that we could break a record outside of Africa and make it larger than just a record for the club and for the diaspora,” Davis says. “But what it taught the African team is that you don’t give up on a hit. I think it just opened it up for people to recognize how much we care about it, and it also gave us a bar to reach.”
Tina Davis photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
EMPIRE has grown beyond its YBNL foundations in West Africa. Acts like Daniel, Wande Coal, BNXN, L.A.X., Navy Kenzo and Black Sherif on its roster are expanding the limits of the Afrobeats, amapiano, highlife, fuji and Afropop genres, among others, while the company also distributes Burna Boy in Africa. (Atlantic is Burna’s label stateside, and Warner distributes his music outside of Africa.) And Asake, who officially signed to YBNL/EMPIRE in mid-2022, lit the Afrobeats world on fire with his debut album, Mr. Money With the Vibe. Released last October, it immediately topped the Spotify and Apple Music charts, and has accrued 197.5 million streams in the United States, according to Luminate. Meanwhile, streams for Asake, Fireboy and Olamide have grown more than 500% outside of Africa on Apple Music, according to the company, which greatly over-indexes in African music streams compared with competitors.
That doesn’t mean EMPIRE has cornered the market. Wizkid, Davido, Tems and rising star Libianca are all signed to RCA in the United States; CKay is distributed by Warner in partnership with local indie label Chocolate City, while Omah Lay goes through Sire; UMG’s Virgin distributes Rema’s “Calm Down,” while Larry Jackson’s new venture, gamma, has its African distribution rights, and Def Jam just signed Gold. As the industry’s attention has shifted to opportunities on the continent, the competition has gotten fierce — but EMPIRE’s reputation has allowed it to keep building organically in the region. “EMPIRE’s a family, and all the other labels are labels,” says Okeke. “That’s the difference.”
Now EMPIRE’s task is to build upon that success and keep expanding its dominion — not an easy task in a globalized climate sagging under the weight of an increasing amount of new music every day. The company has already established an operation covering the Middle East/North Africa, bringing on Spotify’s Suhel Nafar to oversee it. It is also making inroads in South Africa and recently hired people in Tokyo to oversee efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil to begin developing a foothold in South America. In each new region, EMPIRE is looking to build on the model that worked so well in West Africa, making strategic hires based on partnerships with well-connected industry players in local markets rather than signing artists to fit a sound. And even as that old Digital Music Industry 2.0 has long since drifted away from the Bay, relocating to the likes of L.A. and New York, EMPIRE has remained in San Francisco. “We’ve plotted a lot of dots on the map, and I want to plot more dots and create more connectivity, more brainpower,” says Ghazi.
YBNL Founder and CEO/Artist, Olamide, and EMPIRE Founder and CEO, Ghazi, present Fireboy DML with RIAA Platinum Plaque for his hit single “Peru”.
Daniel Aziz
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-April, Ghazi pulls over to the side of the road to explain, over the phone, the next iteration of the vision. He’s about to fly to Johannesburg, then drive to Botswana, then return to the Bay for a few days with his family before another trip down to Rio de Janeiro — around the world and back again. “When you watch those movies from 15, 20 years ago and they put a globe up on the screen and then they push a button, and all the lines fly around the globe and connect to all the different epicenters? It’s kind of like that,” he says.
Which is to say, the journey may have hit one zenith, but that has only established a new jumping-off point, a new foundation on which to build. “You’re always trying to go to greater heights, right? Man makes it to the moon, now you want to make it to Mars,” he says. “As long as we live limitless and we continue to chase ourselves rather than other people, I think that we’ll be OK. We’re already successful; this already looks like success. It’s just, how do you breed more success?”
The answer? In the studio. After the plaque presentation in March, a half-dozen A&Rs and engineers piled back into Studio C to gush over the record that Fireboy made the night before, which has a first verse; an epic, soaring hook; and a second verse left open — maybe for a stateside collaborator, or a fellow Afrobeats star, or maybe for Fireboy himself to finish off. Pop star names are tossed around, and a particular alt-R&B singer is mentioned. But one A&R stands up indignantly, voice rising above the others: “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he says to quiet the crew before adding nearly incredulously: “Did Bob Marley get someone else to put a second verse on ‘I Shot the Sheriff’? This is all you!” The feeling is euphoric, the room is filled with laughter, the possibilities endless. The beat comes back in: rewind, cut, play, forget about the time. The vibe is here; the night is far from over.
This story will appear in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.