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Tyga‘s 2018 summer smash “Taste,” featuring Offset, becomes his first diamond-certified record by the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA announced on Tuesday (Sept. 24). Diamond certification is given to artists whose songs have moved 10 million units. According to the RIAA, one equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand […]
It won’t be hard for Kid Cudi to pursue happiness on Friday (Sept. 13) because his 2008 breakout debut hit “Day ‘N’ Nite” is now a diamond-certified record by the Recording Industry Association of America. The diamond certification is given to artists whose songs have moved 10 million units. Plus, Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness,” featuring […]
The U.S. recorded music market grew a little bigger in the first half of 2024 — but not by much. The retail value of total industry revenue reached $8.65 billion, according to RIAA figures released Thursday (Aug. 29), thanks mainly to a modest gain in streaming revenue and a jump in vinyl sales.
While the period’s revenue is a record for the first half of a year, it marked just a 3.9% gain from the prior year’s period. The U.S. market has returned to a more workmanlike trajectory, putting high-single digit and double-digit gains in the rear-view mirror. By contrast, revenue was up 8.8% and 9.0% in the first half of 2022 and 2023, respectively. In the first half of 2021, as paid and ad-supported streaming benefitted from pandemic-era lockdowns that drove consumers to their devices, revenue rocketed 27.0%.
Vinyl EP and LP sales totaled 24.3 million units, up 10.7%, and were valued at $739.9 million, up 17%. Other physical formats gained, too, but the distance between them and vinyl grew larger. CD sales improved just 0.3% to $236.7 million. The other category—encompassing cassettes, CD singles, vinyl singles, DVD audio and SACD—improved 66.6% to $13.2 million.
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Physical sales increased its percentage of total revenue to 11.4% from 10.5% in the prior-year period and 10.2% in the first half of 2022. Vinyl has doubled its share of the market in five years, reaching 8.5% of total U.S. revenue — up from 4.2% in the first half of 2020.
Streaming still dominates industry revenue and provided the single-biggest dollar gain of all the categories. Total streaming revenue grew 3.8% to $7.3 billion and accounted for 84.1% of total revenue, equal to the year-ago period. Paid subscription revenue hit $5.23 billion, up 5.1%, leading all streaming categories by a wide margin. The average number of subscribers reached 99 million, up just 2.6%, suggesting record labels benefitted from price increases by Spotify and other services.
Other streaming segments had a smaller impact or lost ground over the past year. Limited-tier paid subscription revenue dropped 4.1% to $503 million. (Limited-tier services have limited catalogs, interactivity restrictions or other factors that differ from premium subscription plans.) Ad-supported, on-demand revenue rose 2.5% to $899 million. SoundExchange distributions were $517 million, up 3.9%. Other ad-supported streaming—statutory streaming services not distributed by SoundExchange—fell 2.7% to $159.1 million.
Download sales, once the cornerstone of the U.S. market, declined in share for the 14th straight year and amounted to just 2% of industry revenue. Total download sales fell 15.8% to $189.7 million. Track and digital album sales fell 16.1% and 18.5%, respectively. Ringtones and ringbacks dropped 51.1% to $2.9 million. The other digital category, which includes kiosks and music video downloads, grew 22.0% to $17.1 million.
Synchronization royalties dropped 9.8% to $200.9 million, a sharp contrast to sizable gains of 25.3% and 29.9% in the first half of 2022 and 2023, respectively.
In a statement, RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier highlighted revenue reaching a record $8.7 million and the evolving music ecosystem. “Spanning multiple licensing avenues from fitness apps to short-form video, artists and labels are embracing innovation with responsible partners so more Americans can engage with their favorite music however, whenever and wherever they choose,” he said. “This sustained growth fuels innovation and reflects music’s incredible value, laying the foundation for a healthy creative ecosystem where artists’ and songwriters’ visions can flourish over generations.”
Alicia Keys‘ 2007 hit “No One” becomes her first solo diamond-certified record by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), she announced on Friday (Aug. 16). “A song that is there for us when we need it most. Singing this song, together, all over the world is magical each and every time. Thank you for […]
As country music consumption on streaming services has surged in recent years, so has the slate of country songs reaching the coveted milestone of being certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), signifying 10 million units moved (with each permanent digital download counting as one unit, while 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams count as one unit).
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Luke Combs notched the 10th and 11th country singles to earn Diamond status from the RIAA, with his songs “Hurricane” and “When It Rains It Pours.” These are added to his previous RIAA Diamond-certified song “Beautiful Crazy,” which reached the milestone last year, making Combs the country artist with the most Diamond-certified singles.
RIAA Chairman & CEO Mitch Glazier said in a statement, “The power of artists’ voices and their ability to create connections with fans through music resonates across live shows and playlists that builds community and shapes culture. RIAA has the honor of celebrating the impact of those moments, and today we acknowledge the 10th (and 11th) country singles to earn Diamond recognition for US sales and streams — each surpassing 10 million. Congratulations to these amazing artists and incredible label partners who continue serving hits to loyal fans and those just discovering them!”
In addition to Combs, the country artists who have had songs reach the RIAA Diamond milestone include Lady A, Kane Brown, Brett Young and Darius Rucker.
During a celebration held in Nashville in March to celebrate the Diamond certification for Brett Young’s “In Case You Didn’t Know,” the singer-songwriter stated, “This has truly been the song that keeps on giving. As grateful as I am to this song, and what it is meant to my career, I’m even more grateful to all the people behind the scenes that works so hard to make sure it would be the successful. I think we all had high hopes, but never imagined this song earning an RIAA Diamond certification. Thank you to everybody that came out, and everybody that had a hand in all of the success.”
Notably, the Bebe Rexha/FGL hit “Meant to Be,” which is certified Diamond by the RIAA and topped the Hot Country Songs chart for 50 weeks (and rose to No. 2 on the Hot 100), is classified in the pop genre in the RIAA’s tally, while the Diamond-certified Lil Nas X/Billy Ray Cyrus collaboration “Old Town Road” is classified in the country genre in the RIAA’s tally — based on how the songs were classified when submitted for certification. There are, of course, more country songs on the cusp of being added to the Diamond club, such as Morgan Wallen’s “Whiskey Glasses,” which is currently certified 9x Platinum by the RIAA. Meanwhile, songs from Taylor Swift, pre-pop stardom ascension, are also close in the running, such as “Love Story,” which has been certified 8x Platinum.
Here, we look at the 11 country songs that have earned the Diamond certification distinction from the RIAA, starting with the most recently certified.
Luke Combs, “When It Rains It Pours”
Luke Combs has made a habit out of making history during his near-decade in the spotlight since breaking through with his multi-week No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit “Hurricane” in 2017. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Now, the two-time CMA entertainer of the year winner has […]
AI has incredible promise and music creators are first in line exploring just how far these tools and innovations can take us.
At the same time, like every new technology, AI has risks and music creators are also first in line working to ensure it develops in lawful, responsible ways that respect individual autonomy and extend human creativity and possibility.
Yet today, a year and a half after the first mass market AI services were released, we still don’t know whether the promise or the peril of AI will win out.
Too many developers and investors seem to see a zero sum game – where AI behemoths scrape artists’ and songwriters’ life’s work off the internet for free and without any opportunity for individual choice, autonomy, or values. Where most of us see music, art, and culture to be cherished, they see soulless data to copied, “tokenized,” and exploited. Where most of us look to collaborate and reach for new horizons, they prefer to exploit art and culture for their own narrow gains. On the road to society’s AI future, it’s their way or no way.
At the top of the list of irresponsible developers are two music generation services, Suno and Udio, who claim to offer the ability to generate “new” music based on simple text prompts – a feat that’s only possible because these models have copied and exploited human-created music on a mass scale without authorization. Both have clearly chosen the low road of secretive, unconsented scraping and exploitation of copyrighted creative works instead of the high road of licensing and partnership.
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To address this egregious conduct, a group of music companies have today filed lawsuits against Suno and Udio in federal court in Boston and New York City, respectively. These lawsuits seek to stop the companies’ industrial scale infringement and steer generative AI back onto a healthy, responsible, lawful path.
Suno and Udio clearly recognize the business risks they are taking, going to extreme lengths to avoid transparency and refusing to disclose even the most obvious facts about how they have exploited copyrighted works or to even show us what works they have copied and used. If they really believed their own “fair use” rhetoric, if they really believe what they are doing is legal, would they work so hard to hide the ball?
The worst part is, these are multi-million dollar companies funded by the deepest pockets in the world who know the long term value music brings to their projects and who can well afford to pay fair rates for it; they just don’t want to. They willingly invest mass sums in compute and engineering, but want to take the most important ingredient – high quality human creativity – for free.
It’s a deeply shortsighted gamble – and one that has a track record of failing to deliver. Early internet services who relied on similar arguments and failed to get permission before launching are the ones who flamed out most spectacularly. Meanwhile digital streamers that partnered with artists and rightsholders to gain permission and innovate a healthy, sustainable marketplace together are today’s leading global music services.
And it’s totally unnecessary. Music creators are reaching out and leaning into opportunities in AI that support both innovation and the rights of artists and songwriters and have extended the hand of partnership and licensing to responsible AI companies.
In the last year, Sony, Warner and Universal have used creative AI tools to deliver breathtaking new moments with iconic artists including The Beatles, Roberta Flack, and David Gilmour and the Orb, all with appropriate partnership and consent. Music companies have partnered with ethical cutting-edge AI firms like BandLab, Endel and SoundLabs. And singer/songwriter Randy Travis used AI to record his first new song since largely losing his voice after a 2013 stroke.
But AI platforms should not mistake the music community’s embrace of AI as a willingness to accept continuing mass infringement. While free-market partnerships are the best path forward, we will not allow the status quo scraping and copying of artists’ creative legacies without permission to stand unchallenged. As in the past, music creators will enforce their rights to protect the creative engine of human artistry and enable the development of a healthy and sustainable licensed market that recognizes the value of both creativity and technology.
Generative AI has extraordinary promise. But realizing it will take collaboration, partnership, and genuine respect for human creativity. It’s time for AI companies to choose – go nowhere alone or explore a rich, amazing future together.
Mitch Glazier is Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The three major music companies filed lawsuits against AI music companies Suno and Udio on Monday, alleging the widespread infringement of copyrighted sound recordings “at an almost unimaginable scale.” The lawsuits, spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), arrive four days after Billboard first reported the news the labels were seriously considering legal action against the two start-ups.
Filed by plaintiffs that include Sony Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the lawsuits allege that Suno and Udio have unlawfully copied the labels’ sound recordings to train their AI models to generate music that could “saturate the market with machine-generated content that will directly compete with, cheapen and ultimately drown out the genuine sound recordings on which [the services were] built.”
“Building and operating [these services] requires at the outset copying and ingesting massive amounts of data to ‘train’ a software ‘model’ to generate outputs,” the lawyers for the major labels explain. “For [these services], this process involved copying decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings and then ingesting those copies [to] generate outputs that imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings.”
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“Since the day it launched, Udio has flouted the rights of copyright owners in the music industry as part of a mad dash to become the dominant AI music generation service,” the lawsuit against Udio reads. “Neither Udio, nor any other generative AI company, can be allowed to advance toward this goal by trampling the rights of copyright owners.”
The lawsuit is seeking both an injunction to bar the companies from continuing to train on the copyrighted songs, as well as damages from the infringements that have already taken place. Neither Suno nor Udio immediately returned requests for comment on Monday.
Suno and Udio have quickly become two of the most advanced and important players in the emerging field of generative AI music. While many competitors only create instrumentals or lyrics or vocals, Suno and Udio can generate all three in the click of a button with shocking precision. Udio has already produced what could be considered the first AI-generated hit song with the Drake diss track “BBL Drizzy,” which was generated on the platform by comedian King Willonius and popularized by a Metro Boomin remix. Suno has also achieved early success since its December 2023 launch, raising $125 million in funding from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.
Both companies have declined to comment on whether or not unlicensed copyrights were part of their datasets. In a previous interview with Billboard, Udio co-founder David Ding said simply that the company trained on “good music.” However, in a series of articles for Music Business Worldwide, founder of AI music safety nonprofit Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, found that he was able to generate music from Suno and Udio that “bears a striking resemblance to copyrighted music. This is true across melody, chords, style and lyrics,” he wrote.
The complaints against the two companies also make the case that copyrighted material was used to train these models. Some of the circumstantial evidence cited in the lawsuits include generated songs by Suno and Udio that sound just like the voices of Bruce Springsteen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Jackson and ABBA; outputs that parrot the producer tags of Cash Money AP and Jason Derulo; and outputs that sound nearly identical to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Green Day’s “American Idiot,” and more.
In a recent Rolling Stone profile of Suno, investor Antonio Rodriguez admitted that the start-up does not have licenses for whatever music it has trained on but added that it was not a concern to him. Knowing that labels and publishers could sue was just “the risk we had to underwrite when we invested in the company, because we’re the fat wallet that will get sued right behind these guys… Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it. I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”
Many AI companies argue that training is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine — an important rule that allows people to reuse protected works without breaking the law. Though fair use has historically allowed for things like news reporting and parody, AI firms say it applies equally to the “intermediate” use of millions of works to build a machine that spits out entirely new creations.
Anticipating that defense from Suno and Udio, the lawyers for the major labels argue that “[Suno and Udio] cannot avoid liability for [their] willful copyright infringement by claiming fair use. The doctrine of fair use promotes human expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain, limited circumstances, but [the services] offe[r] imitative machine-generated music—not human creativity or expression.”
News of the complaints filed against Suno and Udio follow up a previous lawsuit that also concerned the use of copyrighted materials to train models without a license. Filed by UMG, Concord and ABKCO in October against Anthropic, a major AI company, that case focused more specifically on copied lyrics.
In a statement about the lawsuits, RIAA CEO and chairman Mitch Glazier says, “The music community has embraced AI and we are already partnering and collaborating with responsible developers to build sustainable AI tools centered on human creativity that put artists and songwriters in charge. But we can only succeed if developers are willing to work together with us. Unlicensed services like Suno and Udio that claim it’s ‘fair’ to copy an artist’s life’s work and exploit it for their own profit without consent or pay set back the promise of genuinely innovative AI for us all.”
RIAA Chief Legal Officer Ken Doroshow adds, “These are straightforward cases of copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale. Suno and Udio are attempting to hide the full scope of their infringement rather than putting their services on a sound and lawful footing. These lawsuits are necessary to reinforce the most basic rules of the road for the responsible, ethical, and lawful development of generative AI systems and to bring Suno’s and Udio’s blatant infringement to an end.”
The Weeknd, Madonna and Playboi Carti‘s “Popular” just got a whole lot more popular: The song has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. According to the RIAA, platinum certification for a song recognizes 1 million units certified in the U.S. for a song, and one unit equals either one permanent download […]
Latin music revenues in the United States continue to hit an all-time high, exceeding the $1 billion mark for a second year in a row on the wings of 16% growth that outpaced the overall market.
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According to the RIAA’s year-end Latin music report for 2023, total revenue jumped from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $1.4 billion in 2023, with the genre’s overall share of the total music market lifting from 7.3% in 2021 to 7.9%. In 2021, the revenue totaled to $881 million with an overall share of 5.9%.
“Latin music has exploded in the U.S. over the last decade as a new generation of stars boosts the genre and streaming puts this dynamic sector at everyone’s fingertips,” says Rafael Fernandez Jr., RIAA senior VP of public policy & Latin music. “No longer limited by language, access or outdated assumptions – Latin artists are shaping our culture as fans gravitate towards the spirit of this music, propelling faster growth than all other listening and expanding our horizons further every year.”
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Months earlier, the RIAA’s mid year report had already suggested that Latin music revenues would reach a record high, driven by the success not only of Karol G — who made history last year with Mañana Será Bonito — but also a new wave of música mexicana acts such as Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida and Eslabon Armado who have also helped usher in a record year for regional Mexican music.
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“At the same time, there are opportunities for more fans to subscribe to paid streaming services and Latin vinyl sales to spin up even higher, finding different ways of connecting and inspiring unforgettable moments together as artists and labels offer up new sounds and songs,” adds Fernandez Jr.
Streaming makes up a stunning 98% of Latin music revenue, accounting for more than $1.3 billion, up 17% over 2022. Within that, paid subscriptions were the biggest growth driver, contributing more than two thirds of total revenues and posting growth of 21% to $915 million; last year, the total earnings from streaming was $758 million.
Another big contributor to growth was ad-supported on-demand streams (from services like YouTube, Vevo and the free version of Spotify), underscoring how important video is to the Latin fan. Revenue from this space grew 10% to $336 million.
Revenue from digital services like Pandora and SiriusXM increased 5% to 77 million, making up 6% of streaming earnings for Latin music. Conversely, permanent downloads yielded a mere 1% of revenues for Latin music in 2023, falling 15% versus the year prior to $10 million, comparable to the 12% drop for digital downloads in the market overall.
Although physical format sales slightly increased in 2022, this time CDs dropped down 49% to $2 million while vinyl albums decreased 25% to $7 million, the latter accounting for less than 1% of Latin music revenue in the U.S.
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