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The 65th annual Grammy Awards took place Sunday night (Feb. 5) in Los Angeles and included plenty of shockers in the top categories, as Harry Styles, Lizzo and Bonnie Raitt took home album, record and song of the year honors, respectively. But the fourth major category, best new artist, also served up a surprise, as Bronx-born, 23-year-old jazz singer Samara Joy took home the honor following the breakthrough success of her debut album for Verve Records, Linger Awhile.
Joy was understandably thrilled when taking the podium to accept the honor from last year’s recipient Olivia Rodrigo, thanking her family, fans and fellow nominees when making her speech. “To be here because of who I am — all of you have inspired me because of who you are, you express yourself for exactly who you are authentically,” she said. “So to be here by just being myself, by just being who I was born as, I’m so thankful.”
After the ceremony, Joy also sent a statement to Billboard. “Music has been in my family for generations. Singing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember,” she said. “So to be able to represent a genre as rich as jazz while honoring the musical legacy in my family is a true blessing. I’m so thankful to everyone for their support and I hope I continue to make my family proud.”
For Verve, Impulse! and Verve Forecast president Jamie Krents, the moment was the culmination of another huge year at the Grammys, coming on the heels of the massive success of Verve artist Jon Batiste last year, who took home a surprise album of the year honor. “I won’t say I couldn’t believe it, but it did feel like a dream, because she’s been working really hard,” says Krents on Monday. “Even for a 23-year-old who has a lot more energy than me, she’s worked incredibly hard and she does it the right way. She’s gracious and she’s really appreciating the ride.”
Joy’s win for best new artist also continues a strong recent track record for Verve in the highly-competitive best new artist category, with Arooj Aftab nominated last year and Tank and the Bangas receiving a nod in 2020, giving it three nominees in four years — not bad for a label that rarely dips a toe in the mainstream. And Verve’s other wins were spread across several genres as well: Samara Joy also won for best jazz vocal album, while Madison Cunningham took home best folk album, Renée Fleming And Yannick Nézet-Séguin earned best classical solo vocal album, Time for Three won best classical instrumental solo and Kevin Puts was awarded best contemporary classical composition. And it’s those wins across the board of which Krents is most proud. “This is what it’s all about for us,” he says. “Getting this kind of recognition and seeing these artists be called out for doing superb work. I’m really pleased.”
Congrats on these wins. What did you think of the evening?
It was kind of like a dream. As deserving as these artists are, it’s really competitive. We’re a label that’s extremely artist-development focused, and we had a great year last year with Jon Batiste, who was very nominated going into it, and we were optimistic — certainly in the case of Samara, in the jazz category in which she was nominated, we felt like she had a great shot, and we were pleased that she won, and same with Madison. But you just never know. These are high integrity categories, where every artist — I mean, in folk, you had Judy Collins, and she’s a legend. So you just never know.
I left the pre-telecast already feeling elated that Madison and Samara had both won. And then with best new artist, there were so many nominees and it was such a disparate group of acts, it was sort of hard to know which way the voting would go — indie rock, to Wet Leg, who are amazing? Would it go R&B? I just think Samara’s had a very very fast rise to prominence, and she really deserves it. I think people connect with her voice, but I also think people connect with her, and I think she articulated that well in her speech. She really emphasized the fact that this means a lot to her because she’s putting herself out there. She’s not a construct, she’s somebody who’s gone to school for this, she spent half of her life last year on the road and is really doing this organically, and I think that’s really gratifying, to be part of that, when you know you’re making music that isn’t chasing trends, that is about letting these artists evolve. We were thrilled.
What was going through your head when Samara won best new artist?
It was so reminiscent to me of when Jon Batiste won album of the year last year, where it was like, “Wow, this artist shocks the world, I don’t think the Vegas odds were saying this would happen.” But at the same time, it was just like, all of this talk about making these awards more transparent and fair and reflecting what our world looks like now, this is a great, affirming moment. And also, this should be a snapshot of an artist at the beginning of a great career, and that fits her. That’s exactly where she is. Best new artist should be that — someone who’s really breaking through on their own terms and with authenticity, and she is. I’ve worked at Verve for over two decades, and a voice like this just does not come along [often]. When you have artists in the catalog like Ella [Fitzgerald] and Billie Holliday and Nina [Simone], you can’t just sign a jazz artist lightly, because those comparisons are going to come. There’s nothing we can do about it, and she’s risen to it.
So what was going through my head was, if there was any 23-year-old in the world who deserves it, it’s this woman. She’s putting in the work and she respects her audience and she really deserves this. She’s been a really good partner. She absolutely appreciates why we ask her to do all of the things that we do. And that’s part of it, too. She’s been really open to strategy and to opportunities. And she’s a huge focus. It’s self-fulfilling.
People are comparing Samara’s win to Esperanza Spalding, who surprised everyone by winning the category in 2011.
I think that’s kind of reductive, in the sense that these are both female jazz artists coming from the jazz space. I mean, I get that, but it’s also very different. In Samara’s case, she’s so young, and this happened, I think, faster for her than the cadence of Esperanza’s journey to best new artist. But I can understand it — the surprise to many people, and any time a jazz artist — whether it’s Herbie Hancock winning album of the year in the 2000s or Stan Getz winning album of the year in 1965 — there’s always a gasp in the theater.
But musically, she and Esperanza are very, very different. At that point, you might as well compare her to Muni Long or some of these other nominees. She loves TikTok and she loves Beyoncé, and as much as she loves jazz, she’s also a very normal 23-year-old woman. She’s not just one thing. So I get the comparison — and she loves Esperanza — but I just don’t think we’re following any sort of Esperanza template. I think those comparisons happen because they’re both jazz, or jazz-adjacent, artists winning that award. But it’s like how [Samara] gets a lot of comparisons to Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald — I also understand why those come, but I feel confident saying that she’s got her own voice and her own road here.
You guys had a great year last year with Jon, but Verve has had a pretty great run in recent years in the best new artist category, with Samara, Arooj Aftab last year and Tank and the Bangas a few years before that all getting nominated. What do you attribute that to?
This is the thing that I’m most proud of. All of the awards are wonderful, but best new artist, when you’re a record label with a legacy like Verve, whether you’re talking about Ella or the Velvet Underground, this is about artist development, being a place for artists who are maybe a bit left of center, or who aren’t on what the current trend is, and then giving them the chance and supporting them to really evolve and develop. And that takes patience and resources and it’s very international, because we live in that world and all of these artists do really well outside the U.S. But the fact that we have had these nominations and Samara’s win in the best new artist category is the most validating thing, I think, for Verve. Because every label talks about artist development — if you sat in on any A&R pitch to sign any artist, no one’s gonna say, “Well, you’ve got one chance and that’s it.” Everyone says it, but I feel like this is a little bit of proof of concept that we mean it, that we’re good at it and that we bring that value. Ultimately, it’s the artists who achieve it, but we’re there to amplify what they do with a strategy that does get that kind of recognition.
I wish Madison had won it earlier in her career — I don’t want to leave her out of the story, because winning her first Grammy and doing an incredible performance, she just released a song with Remi Wolf — Madison’s also on this trajectory where everyone who owns an instrument knows she’s incredible, but she’s now starting to transcend that and people are starting to realize what a good songwriter she is, and her music is really connecting with an audience outside of the choir she’s been preaching to. So she’s also someone who’s got a different future than she maybe had two years ago. But to get back to your question, the best new artist story for Verve, and having three nominations in the last four years, if someone were to ask me what I feel best about at Verve, I would probably cite that.
Madison won for best folk album, Samara won also for best jazz vocal album and you had winners in three different classical categories. What do these wins say about what you guys are doing at the label?
I’ve been at Verve for a long time, and there have been different iterations of Verve, and I’m really grateful that at this point we’re so supported. Universal’s a big company, the number one music company quantitatively. But you don’t need Verve to compete with our sister labels who are signing the [biggest] artists. Verve is the home for eclectic music at Universal. And I think these wins across a disparate group of categories shows we have a fluency and a value in all of those areas, but mostly it’s about the fact that there’s no template. Whether you’re a classical artist coming through Decca or Deutsche Gramophone, or a singer/songwriter or indie type of artist like Kurt Vile or Madison coming through that side, or you’re Samara Joy and in my opinion the greatest jazz singer out there, we bring you some value and we can help you and support you and help amplify your vision. And if you’re more mainstream or more in that game, Universal has lots of great options for you there, too, with places like Capitol and Interscope and Republic.
But Verve exists to serve a different agenda. It’s a business — we still have to keep the lights on, and these artists all have careers and a commercial aspect to what they do — but I think something like the Grammys showing that yesterday, it highlights that. That’s what we’ve built this company to be. We’ve staffed the company so that we have the right people to help these real, generational artists, artists that make timeless music, not making records that only sound topical today. It’s artists making records like those that we’re proud to have in our catalog, from Coltrane to Oscar Peterson to Nina Simone to the Velvet Underground. We’re still making records that will be resonant long after I work there.
“We’re back!” Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said to a round of applause, opening the first UMG Grammy week artist showcase in three years due to the pandemic. “A lot has happened in these last three years, but today is about the music.”
UMG’s pre-Grammy artist showcase at Milk Studios has always been about the emerging artists that are coming through the ranks at Universal Music Group in a given year, and the performances are a highly-anticipated event each year. But the pandemic meant that this year’s was the first since 2020, and this edition also included highlights from a series of forthcoming docu-films that the company is set to release.
Grainge spent a few moments in his opening remarks shouting out the artists who were set to perform, as well as those in attendance, which included Elton John, Jon Batiste, Sabrina Carpenter, Yo Gotti, Niall Horan, Fletcher, Ice Spice, Queen Naija and Natalie Jane. “We all know the extraordinary power of music; it touches each of us,” he said. “Music’s power increases in a socially conscious way whenever artists use their talents to promote positive change in our community. When we at UMG employ the vast reach and resources of our company to support our artists in their efforts to promote change, the power of music blossoms even more.”
He then introduced a video that focused on Billie Eilish and her mother’s efforts to address climate change and promote sustainability with her tours and the way she lives her life, as well as UMG’s own efforts to promote sustainability and limit their carbon footprint and waste. Then Grainge introduced Eilish herself, who came out and accepted UMG’s Amplifier Award for her efforts.
“I do as much as I can — I feel like I can always do more — but I feel very impressed and excited that you guys are actually making this a priority and thinking about it and doing your part to support me,” Eilish said while accepting the award. “I would just say I’m really thankful — I feel really seen right now. I spend a lot of my time feeling really anxious because I don’t feel like a lot of people, and especially people in the business, care very much, and it’s really nice to see that this is happening and that you guys do. And I just wanted to say, everyone in this room, we can all do our part. I know a lot of you got some money in your f—in’ pocket, so you can use it for good things and not stupid things,” she added, laughing. She then thanked her mother, and continued, “I’m always trying to think of how to do things in the least wasteful ways possible, and it’s shocking how little I feel that gets reciprocated, and it makes me feel like nobody’s doing anything. So it’s nice to see that you are, and I’m really thankful.”
Then the performances got underway, beginning with Kim Petras, who sang her song “brrr” before bringing out Sam Smith for their chart-topping collaboration “Unholy.” Verve Records artist — and best new artist nominee at this year’s Grammys — Samara Joy then came out to perform a beautifully jazzy “Sweet Pumpkin,” with her vocals taking things to the next level with her trio on stage, and GloRilla hit the stage with highly energetic performances of her songs “Tomorrow” and “FNF.”
Elton John then emerged from the crowd to introduce Stephen Sanchez, a young singer and guitarist signed to Republic Records. John thanked the Universal staff — the label group that he’s been with his entire career — before noting how when he was a young artist he benefited from and valued the support he got from established artists who reached out to him and encouraged him. He then turned his attention to Sanchez, who he compared to Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson. “I am so thrilled to see this boy, at 20 years of age, taking the reins and writing this great song — he’s gonna be a big, big star,” John said. “I really think he’s the bee’s knees.”
Sanchez then played “Evangeline” and “Until I Found You,” two songs with his retro feel, adding that he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk on stage instead of just performing — “It feels like I broke into a party I’m not supposed to be at,” he joked — and thanking Elton before walking off to a big ovation. Singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith got a huge ovation as well, with the crowd audibly gasping at her vocal performances of brand-new, unreleased track “Best Friend Breakup” and her breakout hit “Fingers Crossed.” And Universal Music Latino signee Feid brought a Latin presence to the afternoon, with guitar-rocking performances of “Tengo Fe” — “the song that changed my life while we were in lockdown,” he noted — and “Porfa.”
Def Jam signee Muni Long showcased her powerful vocals and impressive range with the new, unreleased song “Made for Me,” a gorgeous ballad that will be included on her upcoming debut album, which she added she’s still working on, before shimmering on her own breakout hit from last year, the sultry “Hrs and Hrs.” And TDE/Capitol artist Doechii wowed those in attendance with a breathlessly insistence dance set of “Persuasive” and “Crazy” that packed raw energy into every second of her performance.
The show didn’t just contain performances, but was also an opportunity for Universal to preview three new documentaries that it will be releasing in the coming months, including Love to Love You, a Donna Summer doc directed by her daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, as well as Roger Ross Williams, that will arrive on HBO in May, and a Paul McCartney documentary directed by Morgan Neville focusing on his post-Beatles career in the 1970s, when he had to reinvent himself with his solo work and his band Wings, that is called Man on the Run and will be released in 2024.
Batiste was also on hand to speak about an upcoming documentary that follows his life for the past year, called American Symphony, that explores the emotional highs of his big Grammy wins last year, when he took home album of the year, and the devastating lows of his wife’s cancer battle, a film that he says became about a lot more than he originally envisioned while he worked on his next musical project.
“Making things is difficult. Being an artist is vulnerable process, it’s a vulnerable existence. It takes so much to express the truth of how you feel, where you’re from, to connect to the universal humanism, humanity, that everyone has from the beginning of time until now,” Batiste said, also praising director Matthew Heineman. “It’s like you’re connected to a source that exists on a plane that you can’t see but we can all feel. It’s just as real as this table, just as real as anything. And I really believe the process of that is a messy process. You gotta scrap with it a little bit. You gotta roll around. You gotta get a handle on it. I wanted to make a film that captured the process of it all — a lot of unprecedented moments in my life over this year, highs and lows, intense highs and very intense, near tragic, lows.”
The showcase ended with a surprise set from Shania Twain, whose new album Queen of Me came out this past week. The Canadian icon performed a stripped down “You’re Still the One” and an abbreviated honky tonk “That Don’t Impress Me Much” — complete with a tweak of a lyric to “OK, so you’re Lucian Grainge” — before grabbing an acoustic guitar for “Honey I’m Home.” Twain’s appearance capped an afternoon of star-studded performances, showcasing that UMG has another new crop of young stars with bright futures ahead.
BMG signed a Senegalese rapper from Paris that Universal Music Group had dropped because of Holocaust-denying and antisemitic lyrics — but executives in Berlin ultimately pulled the plug on releasing his music at the last minute, according to a report in The New York Times published Friday (Feb. 3).
In internal documents obtained by The Times, in 2021 BMG’s French division weighed the financial benefits of signing the rapper, Freeze Corleone, against his history of hate speech, and decided to sign him so long as his connection to the German label would remain secret. In previous songs, the rapper had questioned the Holocaust and compared himself to Adolf Hitler. In one 2018 song featuring Corleone, “KKK,” he raps about “Nazi vehicles” and says he’s “determined with lotta ambitions nigga, like the young Adolf.”
In 2020, Universal Music France released Corleone’s La Menace Fantôme (The Phantom Menace), which went double platinum in France and included lyrics in songs like “Tarkov” that mention a “fraternity like Aryans” (though with no explicit mention of Jews). Despite the album’s success, a week after it began distributing LMF, in September 2020 the label said it was cutting all ties with him because the album had “revealed and amplified unacceptable racist statements.”
After UMG dropped him, the 30-year-old rapper, whose real name is Issa Lorenzo Diakhate, Tweeted “finally free.”
Then in 2021, BMG’s French team proposed signing Freeze Corleone, who was becoming increasingly popular in the Parisian hip-hop scene. In internal emails and memos reviewed by The Times, French label executives at BMG noted the artist was “France’s fastest growing artist in the last 2 years” and would thus “really help us meet our revenue target.” But the executives, Sylvain Gazaignes, the French operation’s managing director, and Ronan Fiacre, the head of A&R, also noted the controversy around the 2020 UMG release.
“In order to mitigate the risk of possible controversy,” BMG executives wrote in an internal memo reviewed by The Times, their contract would ensure the label had the right to approve his lyrics. The memo also said the contract should keep BMG’s involvement with the rapper’s career hidden. There should be “no BMG logo anywhere on the release,” Dominique Casimir, BMG’s chief content officer, said in an email she sent to a BMG lawyer and other executives, according to The Times.
BMG signed a one-album deal with Freeze Corleone worth about $1 million in October 2021, according to The Times. About three weeks after signing the deal, Casimir decided to cancel the contract the day before the release of “Scellé part. 4,” Corleone’s first single from the album, titled Riyad Sadio. The decision came after Casimir’s German team had completed a review of Freeze Corleone’s past lyrics and told the French team they needed to end the relationship with the artist, a person familiar with the matter confirms to Billboard. (An undisclosed settlement was paid to Freeze, the source says.)
Freeze Corleone has two entries on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart — “Freeze Rael,” which spent one week on the chart in September of 2020 at No. 176, and “Mannschaft,” billed as SCH featuring Freeze Corleone, which landed at No. 167 in April of 2021.
In a statement sent to Billboard, BMG says “today’s New York Times story confirms that as soon as senior BMG executives became aware of the historic allegations against the artist, it ended their relationship. No record was released. BMG stands firm against anti-Semitism and hate.”
For Berlin-based BMG, the incident is the second such situation in the past five years involving an artist known to have music containing antisemitic lyrics. In 2018, a controversy exploded over an album BMG released by two German rappers, Kollegah and Farid Bang. The album, Jung Brutal Gutaussehend 3 (Young Brutal Good-Looking 3), contained lyrics like “make another Holocaust, show up with a Molotov,” but nevertheless became a hit.
Antisemitism is a particularly sensitive issue for the label’s parent company, media giant Bertelsmann, which in 2002 apologized for its past ties to the Nazi regime after an independent commission of academics the company hired found it had thrived during World War II by producing antisemitic material and Nazi propaganda. Bertelsmann previously had claimed to have played an active role in the Nazi resistance.
Casimir, who was promoted in May to the CCO post and given a seat on BMG’s board (and was recently named to Billboard’s 2023 Power 100 list), also oversaw the signing of the controversial German rappers as managing director for Germany at that time.
After BMG decided to drop him, Freeze Corleone released his album independently. Two employees in France involved in the Freeze Corleone signing — who “believed in the artist” – have since left the company but were not fired, the source familiar tells Billboard. Gazaignes remains a top executive in the French division.
From 2001 to 2004, the music industry produced a steady stream of new artists with big hits: At least 30 first-timers landed in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 each year. In 2022, only 12 new acts managed the feat (plus a pair of songs from the Encanto cast). “This is the hardest time to break through and market music,” one manager tells Billboard.
It’s not for lack of trying: In recent years, labels have been signing acts at whirlwind speed, yet this surge of new signings hasn’t yet amounted to a surge of new stars. And some executives worry that the dry spell is partly due to the recent wave of signings, claiming that the majors have inked deals at a rate beyond their ability to provide service.
“The over-signing of [the] COVID [era] is now a pain point at every label,” says one manager with multiple acts on majors. If staff growth doesn’t keep up with roster growth, artists don’t necessarily get the care they need to level up. “No one has enough product managers. So they’re all getting crushed.”
“It is not humanly possible for a product manager — the person responsible for the story of the artists, the story of the music — to creatively, strategically and efficiently implement marketing for 20 artists at one time,” says Craig Baylis, a former major-label product manager who runs the boutique publishing company Eighth & Groove. Record companies often “aren’t getting the best out of [their staff] because they are ramming them with all of these artists that they’re not even getting the chance to know.”
All the major-label groups have broken new artists in the last few years, of course, whether it’s Olivia Rodrigo (Universal Music Group), Steve Lacy (Sony Music) or Zach Bryan (Warner Music Group). In a January letter to staff, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge reaffirmed the company’s commitment to this task, writing, “We diligently work, day in and day out, to break our artists and songwriters.” While speaking with investors last year, Sony Music chairman Rob Stringer said “creative staff,” which encompasses A&R, marketing, product managers and artist relations, had increased at a faster rate than artist roster size, helping launch new acts onto the streaming charts.
Roster size numbers are difficult to come by, but in 2017, a study organized by the RIAA found that major labels had signed 658 artists that year, up from 589 in 2014. Although the RIAA hasn’t released a follow-up, many lawyers and executives say the rate of signings has climbed since that report. Two senior executives believe the number of deals is now as high or higher than it has ever been; Sony Music told investors that new signings rose 32.4% between 2017 and 2021.
The recent wave of signings is in part a byproduct of streaming becoming the main revenue source at the majors. The biggest streaming services pay rights holders according to their share of total plays on the platform. But low-cost distribution has brought a “vast and unnavigable number of tracks” into the music ecosystem, as Grainge put it in his staff memo. Streams for those tracks eat into big record companies’ piece of the pie. If tens of thousands of new tracks are added to streaming services daily, “then [major-label] market share is going to be diluted by default,” Stringer explained last year.
Signing more is a way of fighting back. “For major labels, independents and distributors, it’s all about volume of signings now,” says Andreas Katsambas, who was a senior vp at BMG before joining the analytics company Chartmetric as president/COO.
This puts major labels in a bind: They need to sign and release more to keep market share up, but this makes it harder for each artist signed to get the attention they need to break through.
“Intelligent marketing is not going to be a facet of developing artists today if record companies are going to continue doling out artists, singles and projects at the frequency that they do,” says Baylis. “There is a high level of fatigue that product managers are experiencing.”
A former major-label employee who left to go into management agrees that product managers and marketers tend to be “completely overworked.” “A digital person may have 60 projects,” he adds. “It’s crazy.”
Mike Caren, founder of the publishing company and independent label APG (and former president of global A&R at WMG), points out that “even the best marketer is limited by the number of hours in the day and days in the week.” He adds: “Executing an artist’s vision is time-intensive, and the best artists challenge their teams with unique ideas that take a lot of time to properly deliver. Capacity is a key metric to determine when choosing a label or team.”
This may be especially true today, when the ability to grow audiences seems increasingly like the most important service a label can offer. Artists no longer need to turn to majors for national and international distribution or studio-quality recording equipment; now, anyone can get those things from their laptop while sprawled on the couch. Instead, “gaining awareness is the most challenging thing for anyone that releases music,” Katsambas says. “Awareness more than anything else, and then engagement and retention.”
Are those goals compatible with high-volume signing? “It’s hard creating a game plan for longevity for some of these artists that are really talented and deserving,” Baylis says, “because executives are charged with just feeding the beast called the DSPs.”
David Bither has something on his mind. Sitting at his desk at the Warner Music Group’s midtown Manhattan offices, he pulls up a recording he heard the night before on SiriusXM’s Beatles Channel: accomplished jazz pianist Brad Mehldau performing his solo interpretation of “I Am the Walrus,” off his upcoming album of Beatles covers out Feb. 10. It’s the last minute of the song Bither keeps coming back to: how Mehldau teases out the melodies, takes the song to new places that seem at once completely disconnected from the acid-infused silliness of John Lennon’s original and at the same time still retaining its pop essence.
It’s a Friday afternoon, which in these post-pandemic days means there are few, if any, others in the building. But Bither is here, as he has been for decades, manning the ship for Nonesuch Records’ eclectic, intensely artistic roster of musicians. His office is bursting with vinyl records, and plaques and posters line the walls and the floor: Emmylou Harris, the Velvet Underground, Steve Reich, artists who have influenced him deeply, on both a personal and professional level. It’s no wonder his focus is, at all times, on the music, which filters out through his open office door into the building’s hallways.
That focus on the music, and the wildly different ways that music can be expressed, has paid off more than ever this year: at the upcoming 65th annual Grammy Awards, Nonesuch — the label at which Bither has worked officially since 1995, unofficially since 1986, and of which he became president in 2017 — received 15 nominations, the most in the label’s 59-year history. And those nominations run the gamut of genres: rock (The Black Keys), blues (Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal), folk (the Punch Brothers), jazz (Cécile McLorin Salvant; and Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride & Brian Blade), contemporary instrumental (Mehldau), chamber music (Caroline Shaw), historical (the 20th-anniversary edition of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) and bluegrass (Molly Tuttle). Reflecting the label’s dedication to presentation, both musical and physical, there were nominations for producer of the year, non-classical (Dan Auerbach), best arrangement, instruments and vocals (McLorin Salvant) and best album notes (Bob Mehr for the YHF box; Fernando Gonzalez for Astor Piazzolla box set The American Clave Recordings). Most shocking of all, there was a best new artist nomination for Tuttle, the first bluegrass artist to ever receive such recognition.
It’s an impressive haul for a label that employs just 12 staffers in the States and three in the U.K., and one that rarely, if ever, traffics in the music mainstream. But it’s also a testament to Bither’s role as a figure who, as his predecessor Bob Hurwitz did before him, stands up and provides a platform for artists to express themselves in many forms, regardless of how many streams they may rack up or records they may sell.
“It’s just keeping your ears open to what’s going on and realizing there’s a lot of doors out there to open, and to be open to that and be casting the net as wide as we can,” he says, reflecting on the breadth of those nominations. “But with the kinds of music we’ve been involved in, I don’t think that 20 years ago we could have been nominated in all those categories. They didn’t all exist then, but we weren’t making records in all those places. Now, I don’t think there’s a category that would be off-limits to us.”
Nonesuch has rarely been beholden to a specified lane. Founded in 1964 by legendary executive Jac Holzman as a budget classical label, the imprint was led for more than a decade by Tracey Sterne, who established its classical bonafides while expanding into indigenous music from around the world. The label was sold to Warner in 1970 and, in 1984, was shifted to fall under Elektra Records boss Bob Krasnow, who hired Hurwitz to run a newly-reimagined Nonesuch — one that quickly expanded into a home for contemporary composers, jazz artists and musicians from all over the world. Bither, who had a background in music journalism and performance arts centers like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was working at WMG parent Warner Communications at the time and established a rapport with Hurwitz and his marketing chief Peter Clancy — enough so that when Krasnow needed a new head of international for Elektra, Hurwitz recommended Bither, despite the fact that he had no experience in the record business.
“There were a few eyebrows raised for sure, and I give Bob Krasnow credit forever for taking that risk,” Bither says. “They would do conventions every year of all the labels with presentations, and I was at the big international meeting at Montreux within two weeks; I didn’t even know what was coming out on Elektra. We went on a road show to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, and I was going to be presenting Elektra’s 1987 slate of releases. So that’s how I got started.”
Bither learned quickly, and after a few years running international he shifted to domestic marketing, then to the GM role, working on projects for Metallica, Tracy Chapman and 10,000 Maniacs, among others. But he had maintained an informal advisory role at Nonesuch, with Hurwitz sliding him $1 a year for his input prior to him taking the Elektra job and Bither bringing artists to Nonesuch over the years. So when Warner went through an executive upheaval in the mid-1990s, Hurwitz brought Bither on full-time — a partnership that continues to this day, even as Hurwitz stepped back into a chairman role in 2017 and relinquished the label presidency to Bither.
That period coincided with some of the most significant Nonesuch deals in the label’s history: partnering with World Circuit Records to release three albums from the Buena Vista Social Club that collectively sold millions worldwide, in a deal that came about after Hurwitz asked Bither what music was emanating from his office that particular day; signing Harris and Laurie Anderson, artists from the major label system who needed a creative outlet to explore different forms of expression; bringing on the Black Keys and Wilco, two acts who would make a significant impact on rock and alternative music; and putting out Brian Wilson’s SMILE, the culmination of a 50-year journey to release one of music history’s most mythical projects. Nonesuch became a home for artists who wouldn’t fit anywhere else, who had something to say beyond the ordinary.
“Maybe because of my international background, but the idea of this music coming from all these different places felt like there was a home for a lot of different ideas at Nonesuch,” Bither says. “It was different than what the bigger, mainstream labels were doing. And that was the mission: it was the mission when Bob started, and it’s the mission 40 years later, to try to do those things. We’re not gonna compete with the big labels; it’s not what we do. But I think there are a lot of other opportunities, maybe more than ever now, because of the way that the business has evolved, for music that’s real, that has original voices.”
“The label is that most old fashioned of labels, in a very good way — one that seeks to follow an artist as they grow and change, rather than depend on the quick hit,” says Rhiannon Giddens, who has worked with Nonesuch since the beginning of a career that has spanned country, folk, bluegrass, soul, Gospel, jazz, R&B, operas and ballets. “It’s hard to imagine another home that would let me be me so completely. David has been an incredible support, sounding board and just all-around excellent friend to me, through the ups downs and sideways of my weirdo career, and I simply wouldn’t be where I am today without him.”
Those real, original voices and musicians are on display with Nonesuch’s Grammy nominees this year — beginning with Tuttle, the uber-talented guitarist, singer and songwriter who had recently become the first woman to win guitarist of the year at the International Bluegrass Music Association awards when Bither met her in 2019 in Manhattan. Her album with her band Golden Highway, Crooked Tree, brings bluegrass into the modern conversation, with lyrics that reflect a 2022 reality rather than a century-old art form, and with musicianship that is mind-spinning. (“When I met David Bither, we instantly connected, and I was struck with how much thought and care he puts into the albums that Nonesuch releases,” says Tuttle. “I have loved being part of such a diverse and brilliant family of musicians [and] I’m looking forward to working alongside the Nonesuch team for many years to come.”) But while Nonesuch had hoped for a best bluegrass album nomination, her nod for best new artist came as a shock.
“Did we think she was going to be best new artist? We didn’t think that the day the nominations were announced,” Bither says. “But she had something special, and it’s going to be really exciting to see what comes next. I’ve come to understand — having sat at the Grammys now for many years with artists and others — how much it means to the artists. It’s attached surgically to their names forever after. I think Molly Tuttle’s name will mean something that it didn’t mean six weeks ago, and that will inform everything that happens with the next record. The sky’s the limit, and what she’s now earned is the ability to decide for herself. It’s about her as an artist, not about figuring out a lane for her to drive in and continue driving there.”
There is something to the longevity of Nonesuch’s mission, as well as the long-standing leadership guiding it, that tends to bring artists back. Ry Cooder has worked with the label since the Buena Vista days in the late 1990s; Brad Mehldau has worked with them since 2004. The Black Keys had their pick of any label in the world when they signed with Nonesuch in 2006, and after 17 years, 18 Grammy nominations and seven wins, they’re still here. Wilco spent a decade at the label before heading out to form their own operation, but when it came time to set up the 20th-anniversary box set of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, they came back to Nonesuch to get it done.
“There was no way if we had done this ourselves that it would have come out nearly as good, or nearly as expansive, nor would it have gotten the treatment in the media that Nonesuch was able to get,” says Josh Grier, Wilco’s former lawyer and current manager. “They could have made this a lot simpler for themselves and probably still sold a fair amount of records and made some money, and they went a lot further than that. Jeff [Tweedy], like most musicians, doesn’t like looking back; he likes to focus on his new records. David made it seem fresh and showed a lot of energy for the project that got Tweedy back engaged. It’s kind of nice to come back after 20 years and see the same guy sitting at the desk.”
A lot has changed since Bither first worked at Nonesuch; the shift from sales to streaming, for one thing, as well as the tastes of the mainstream. (The nature of streaming services, which cater principally to mega-hit singles, has made it more difficult to break through the noise, he notes.) But the label is still managing to thrive as it comes up on its 60th anniversary next year, and this coming weekend’s Grammys could be a capstone for a place that continues to thrive with its particular sense of artistic taste, in an ecosystem that isn’t necessarily set up to reward it.
“I don’t do interviews very often, because it’s not about us, it’s about all these artists that we’re here to support,” Bither says. “But it did feel now that because of all these nominations, it does say something about us as a label that I think is important to be said. And you know, these are not easy times for the business. We’re all struggling to be heard over the din of the 100,000 tracks a day being uploaded. But I think there will always be a place for what we do. We’ve never looked at it as being a niche, we’ve looked at it as being about a certain kind of quality. And the world of music is a big world.”
In late 2020, when Eyeball Records co-owners Zac Nadile and Alex Saavedra decided to put out small runs of cassette tapes for indie artists like one-man synth band N8NOFACE and Canadian hip-hop producer blackwinterwells, they called around to see who made these plastic throwbacks. They wound up with quotes from five different companies — all of whom turned out to be brokers leading to the same manufacturing source.
“It’s a man-behind-the-curtain-type deal,” says Saavedra.
“I’m imagining total Wizard of Oz things, like dude in a basement bought the final manufacturing for cassettes in the ’80s, and finally, his time has come,” Nadile adds. “Like the dude who bought a Gremlin, and finally it’s worth money.”
While that isn’t exactly the truth about the cassette manufacturer, Nick Keshishian of ENAS Media, it’s not far off. As cassettes have come back over the past seven years — from 81,000 U.S. sales in 2015 to 440,000 last year, a 443% increase, according to Luminate — a small number of manufacturers, including ENAS, have capitalized on the mini-boom after either anticipating or lucking into the market.
Keshishian opened his Pasadena, Calif., company in 1985, at first making blank cassettes for churches to record sermons to distribute to their congregations. As cassettes grew into one of the music industry’s major formats — growing from 61 million unit sales in 1978 to 450 million in 1988, according to the RIAA — he expanded in the spiritual-music market and began working with independent record labels, first manufacturing tapes, then expanding to CDs.
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
Even through the record industry’s shift from selling physical units to downloads and streaming, sales remained strong until 2017, when Keshishian’s customers in the religion and education industries finally gave up on CDs and sales declined. Keshishian closed that year — for one month. Then, he says, “Everybody was calling and asking for cassettes, so I reopened.”
The cassette market has slowly come together to meet the unexpected demand. Splashy names such as Taylor Swift and Maren Morris have put out larger runs, as has My Morning Jacket, which recently released 1,000 cassettes. Megan Thee Stallion also recently released 10,000 tapes, while Charlie Kaplan‘s Tapehead City label, run out of his New York apartment, recently helped Death Row Records sell nearly 20,000 combined cassette reissues of classic albums by 2Pac, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Keshishian, Kaplan and others who work in the space say the demand is similar to the vinyl market in the mid-2000s. “It’s tough. The distributors aren’t fully set up for cassette. Some are. It’s limited,” says Kaplan, who goes by the nickname Charlie Tapes. “It’s not set up quite as organized as vinyl. It’s a little bit more scrappy.”
In addition to ENAS Media, top cassette manufacturers include National Audio Company in Springfield, Mo., and Recording the Masters (RTM) in France. National Audio has been operating since 1968 and reacted to the cassette revival of the past seven years by recovering equipment from closed manufacturers such as Ampex in Opelika, Ala. The company wound up reconditioning massive machines, like one that is 63 feet long, weighs 20 tons and is “built to last,” according to National Audio owner Steve Stepp, who has worked at the company since the beginning and took it over from his late father. After music cassettes died in the late ’90s, National Audio kept busy with cassettes for instructional materials, spoken-word bibles and Library of Congress work until indie bands and labels came calling as early as 2006. “Suddenly, we were back in business,” Stepp says.
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
RTM, based in Avranches about 220 miles west of Paris, has made magnetic tape for nearly a century, focusing recently on studio reel-to-reels and credit-card strips. But after a group of European investors, some of whom ran indie labels, bought the company a year and a half ago, the new owners are “actually making it a proper music company,” says Neal Birnie, RTM’s London-based creative director, who also runs labels Day Dreamer and Night Dreamer, which represent jazz musicians Gary Bartz and Maisha, among others.
ENAS’ Keshishian is the most reclusive of the cassette manufacturers. “He just gets the job done, and really professional, like no filter,” says Matthew McQueen, founder of Los Angeles indie label Leaving Records. “There’s not a lot of frills with Nick’s stuff.” Born in Armenia, Keshishian came to the U.S. with his family, looking for opportunity, in 1978. As he learned to speak English, he played a couple of instruments in a band specializing in Armenian, Greek, Russian and Spanish songs, and found work at a cassette company — a vocation he has continued ever since. “That’s what I live off,” he says.
Some in the record business consider cassettes a fad — reps for all three major labels did not respond to interview requests. “There’s a small and dedicated cohort of people that buy it and enjoy it. I don’t see it ever taking a major share of the market again,” says Ben Swanson, COO of Secretly Group, which has put out small cassette runs for Mitski, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver and about two-thirds of the top independent label’s overall releases. “We’ll do anywhere from 200 to 1,000 copies, depending on the artist. Kind of meeting the fans where they are.”
But the cassette business is stronger than the Luminate numbers suggest, according to Greg Frehner, co-owner and president of Toronto-based duplication.ca, since much of the market is due to indie bands selling tapes at merch tables, which are often not counted. Unlike ENAS and RTM, which manufacture the blank magnetic tape (a.k.a. “pancakes”), duplication.ca buys the non-magnetic tape components, assembles the cassettes and sells them to bands and labels. Frehner estimates the company ships 1 million units yearly, in part due to major-label orders. “It’s becoming a routine activity now, for some of them,” he says. “It’s been a steady increase.”
Cassette Production
Courtesy of National Audio Company
Cassettes cost anywhere from $3-7 apiece, depending on how elaborate and artistic buyers want to get, according to Stephanie Hudacek, president of Soundly, a Nashville distributor that puts out tapes by My Morning Jacket, The Avett Brothers, Major Lazer, Maren Morris and others. Customers can experiment with printed “J-Cards” containing liner notes and photos, and, like Swift, Megan the Stallion and other stars recently, order plastics of different colors. A reason for the recent boom, Hudacek says, is slower vinyl turnaround times due to pandemic supply-chain issues. “It’s just cool to have a thing,” she says.
“It’s still a novelty-niche item. [With] these cassette-duplication services, the minimum run is 50 tapes, so you can experiment. It’s an accessible entry-level point for artists and labels,” McQueen adds. “I still get questions: ‘Why are you making tapes? I still have a bunch of tapes in my attic.’ But it’s more cost-accessible. And I love the sound quality and personal touch.”
EMPIRE is pushing further into clubland, with big ambitions for helping DJs and producers get paid.
Today (Feb. 1), the San Francisco-based label announced that Moody Jones will step into the newly created general manager of dance role. Jones was previously EMPIRE’s svp of digital & creative, a position from which he worked across genres including dance projects by artists like The Martinez Brothers and Santino Le Saint.
Jones tells Billboard that this position will allow EMPIRE to “prioritize our expansion in this scene.” Jones’ new role follows EMPIRE’S acquisition of Claude VonStroke‘s storied Dirtybird label last October, with Jones adding that EMPIRE Dance is currently in talks with other labels and properties and “are open to other opportunities including catalog acquisitions.” Jones — a 2022 Billboard Indie Power Player honoree — will lead a dance team made up of the Dirtybird team, along with a team of new hires.
In this new role, his day-to-day involves signing artists, working on reintroducing songs from the EMPIRE catalog, and developing ways to incorporate dance strategies into the company’s daily priorities. Most crucially though, is time spent “getting obsessed with artists that deserve more exposure and figuring out where EMPIRE Dance can add value to them,” Jones says.
“The music industry has been evolving over the last five years and the dance labels haven’t caught up yet,” Jones says. “Our goal is to improve dance artist and label deals and reintroduce strong communities. DJs and dance artists have gotten used to making pennies on their music and making majority of their income on touring, which unfortunately means less quality time in production and more negative impact on their mental and physical health. I’m trying to help artists turn the pennies they are making on music into profits to better their livelihood.”
While EMPIRE has previously worked largely in genres like hip-hop and Latin, it’s bringing a significant competitive edge to the dance space. The company has its own publishing division and boasts “our own distributor so we have better data insights and audience analytics that empower us and our artists to make more proactive decisions,” he says.
EMPIRE also has its own studios, synch and partnership team and international staff in more than a dozen cities to help with regional rollouts.
“Moody has been an integral part of EMPIRE’s growth over the years,” EMPIRE CEO Ghazi adds in a statement. “As we expand into Dance, I’m confident in Moody at the helm with his ability to identify and develop artists that are impacting culture.”
Maria “Mechas” Mercedes Montejo has joined Sony Music Latin-Iberia as managing director of the Andean region (which includes Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela), Billboard has learned. She replaces Adriana Restrepo, who has joined the leadership team of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI.
Montejo will report directly to Damián Amato, who is overseeing Sony Music Latin’s now unified South American operations. The Buenos Aires-based executive, who’s been with Sony Music for the past two decades, was previously general director for the southernmost cone of the regional including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay.
“This new structure is part of our ongoing transformation efforts to make Sony Music the most dynamic, efficient and nimble organization that can respond quickly to the needs of a dynamic and ever-changing industry”, Afo Verde, chairman & CEO of Sony Music Latin-Iberia, said about the leadership shakeup.
Verde added: “I am very grateful to Adriana for all her efforts and contributions to this important part of our region, both artistically and commercially. Fortunately, we have a strong successor in Mechas, who has broad experience in the industry and the Andean region. I am confident that she will build upon the success and trajectory of the region. I’m also grateful to Damian for taking on this broader role. Without a doubt the artists, Mechas and the incredible Andean team will enjoy and benefit from his leadership.”
Before joining Sony Music, Montejo was the general manager for Warner Music Latin, where she “leveraged her experience and insight” of the Latin American music industry, according to a statement.
Dr. Dre’s solo debut album, The Chronic, is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a special re-release on Interscope Records and a return to streaming services after nearly a year away. “I am thrilled to bring The Chronic home to its original distribution partner, Interscope Records,” says Dre in a press release, adding that working with the label “to re-release the album and make it available to fans all over the world is a full circle moment for me.”
Steve Berman, vice chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, expressed similar excitement, saying: “Dr. Dre is without a doubt one of the most iconic and groundbreaking artists in the modern era. He has also used his platform to fuel some very impactful philanthropic efforts that will ensure his legacy is felt for generations to come. Dre’s solo career all started with the The Chronic, one of the most celebrated recordings of all time. To have this album at Interscope once again where we work with Dre and his amazing team at Aftermath day in and day out is incredibly gratifying for me personally and all of us at Interscope.”
Earlier this month, Billboard reported that Dre sold his music assets to Universal Music and Shamrock Holdings for a deal estimated to be $200 million. According to sources, the assets include mainly passive income streams, such as artist royalties from two of his solo albums and his share of N.W.A. artist royalties; his producer royalties; and more. The Chronic had long been available on streaming services but was pulled, along with several other Death Row classics, after Snoop Dogg purchased the label early last year.
Considered one of the most storied albums in hip-hop, The Chronic had a splashy debut on the Billboard 200, entering the charts at No. 3. Released in 1992 on Death Row Records / Interscope, Dre’s magnum opus earned three Hot 100 top 40 hits, “most notably “Nothin’ But a “G” Thang,” which peaked at No. 2.
John Janick, chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M, said: “From my first day at Interscope the significance of Dr. Dre as a foundational artist at this label was incredibly important to me. We take our responsibility to Dre and his amazing body of work very seriously and we are honored to work closely with him on this re-release of one of the most important albums of all time.”
MUSIC, a holding company co-founded by SONGS Music Publishing founder Matt Pincus, has invested in LVRN (Love Renaissance), the Atlanta-based label and management company behind R&B recording artists Summer Walker, 6lack and BRS Kash.
The investment values LVRN at more than $100 million. Pincus declined to reveal the amount of the investment but disclosed to Billboard that he’s invested a total of $80 million across four deals — including Kobalt, U.K.-based ticketing company Dice and Mayk.it, an AI generative platform — in amounts ranging from $10 million to $40 million. The size of the LVRN investment is “over the midpoint of that range,” he says.
LVRN is expected to use the new capital to expand benefits and programs for its employees while continuing to expand internationally, with a focus on the U.K. and West Africa.
LVRN was founded in 2012 by Georgia State University students Carlon Ramong, Justice Baiden, Junia Abaidoo, Sean Famoso McNichol and Tunde Balogun. Its management clients include dvsn, a Toronto R&B duo signed to Drake‘s OVO Sound label. LVRN’s label is distributed through Universal Music Group’s Interscope Records. It also has a publishing partnership with Warner Chappell Music.
Pincus says he was attracted to LVRN for its combination of youth and experience. “They’re just really good,” he says of LVRN’s founding team. “Young and seasoned is really hard to find.” The co-founders, who were joined by former Capitol Music Group executive Amber Grimes as executive vp/gm in 2022, have built solid relationships throughout the industry, he adds. “They’ve done a good job at championing their artists but also getting people to champion them because they’re good people.”
Pincus’s MUSIC, a joint venture with merchant bank LionTree, with additional backing from JS Capital Management and Schusterman Family Investments, raised $200 million in May 2022.
Previously, Pincus founded SONGS Music Publishing, which was acquired by Kobalt Capital for a reported $160 million in 2017.
Balogun cited Pincus’s entrepreneurship as a crucial factor in his involvement with LVRN. “His hard-earned expertise makes him a very valuable resource for LVRN and we are so fortunate to have him play a role in our continued expansion,” he said in a statement. “This infusion of capital will empower us to continue to expand our operations globally and support local Black-founded businesses as we do so.”