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Sony Music has created a new position of executive vp of AI, and hired former BPI CEO Geoff Taylor to take up the role, according to an internal memo obtained by Billboard. Taylor, who spent 15 years as chief of the British recorded music trade body, will report to Sony Music Entertainment COO Kevin Kelleher.
In the new role, Taylor will coordinate the major labelâs business efforts surrounding artificial intelligence, and coordinate across the global digital business and business and legal affairs division, according to the memo.
The move comes as the music business continues to grapple with the particular challenges that are beginning to arise through the proliferation of artificial intelligence in the digital world, particularly its effect on copyright and ability to be trained on existing musical compositions, among other issues. Battles have begun to pop up around AI-generated music on streaming services, and songs that have been released that mimic existing artists, producers and songwriters without their input or consent, with additional use cases popping up seemingly every day.
The position appears to be the first AI-specific executive-level role introduced by any of the major labels. Check out Kelleherâs memo below.
All,
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has great significance for the future of the music industry and, as a result, more focused attention on it is required.
Accordingly, we are delighted to share that Geoff Taylor will be joining us as our new Executive Vice President, Artificial Intelligence.
Reporting to me and working closely with our Global Digital Business and Business & Legal Affairs divisions, Geoff will align and help coordinate the work of every part of the business that touches AI.
Geoff brings to our company decades of music industry experience. Most recently, from 2007 to 2022 Geoff was the Chief Executive of the BPI, our UK Trade Body for recorded music, where he led the fight against piracy and fraud and advocated for the strategic importance of recorded music to jobs, investment and maintaining the UKâs global competitiveness. Prior to joining the BPI, Geoff was General Counsel and Executive Vice-President at our global recorded music trade body, the IFPI from 2005-2007.
In these roles, Geoff has worked with our company for several years and I am delighted he is joining to help us successfully navigate a key moment in the history of the music industry.
So please join me in welcoming Geoff to Sony Music and feel free to reach out to him with any questions you might have at [Sony Music Entertainment Email Redacted].
Kevin
Federal prosecutors are formally moving to seize R. Kellyâs money held by Sony Music and Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), saying it will be used to pay victims and fulfill outstanding fines.
Two years after they won a jury verdict convicting the disgraced singer of sex trafficking and racketeering, prosecutors in Brooklyn have asked a federal judge for so-called writs of garnishment against the label and publisher â court orders that would compel the two companies to hand over funds tied to Kelly.
Sony Music and UMPG are believed to be âin possession of propertyâ belonging to Kelly that could be used to pay down the $504,289 that he currently owes in victim restitutions and criminal fines, the feds argued.
Itâs unclear how much of Kellyâs funds each company currently holds. A court ruling in March disclosed that Kellyâs royalty account with Sony held $1,544,333 as of 2020.
Neither Sony Music nor UMPG immediately returned requests for comment on the filings.
After he was sentenced last summer to 30 years in prison on the sex trafficking and racketeering charges, Kelly was ordered to pay more than $480,000 in fines and restitution. After he was sentenced again in February on separate child pornography convictions in Illinois, another $42,000 was tacked on.
Thursdayâs filings are the latest efforts by the government to collect on those judgments. Last fall, prosecutors confiscated nearly $30,000 in Kellyâs prison commissary account. But the feds have competition for that money.
R. Kelly victim Heather Williams, who won a $4 million civil judgment against the singer, is also seeking to tap into the Sony Music account â as is Midwest Commercial Funding, a property management company that won a separate $3.5 million ruling against Kelly over unpaid rent at a Chicago studio.
In March, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Williams had priority to the funds over Midwest Commercial Funding because she was the first to properly demand the money from Sony. But that ruling left unclear whether sheâll enjoy similar priority over a slew of additional monetary penalties that Kelly owes to victims as a result of his federal criminal convictions.
Federal prosecutors in both Illinois and New York declined to comment on that decision at the time.
In a statement Thursday (June 1), Kellyâs lead attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, told Billboard that she and her client believe that the restitution order against him is incorrect and will be overturned on appeal. But she said they have âno opinionâ on prosecutors seeking to garnish funds held by Sony Music and UMPG.
Sony Music Group chairman Rob Stringer said on Tuesday (May 23) that the company is focused on the fight against low-quality content â which he called âthe lowest common denominatorâ â flooding top streaming platforms. âWe have to look after the premium quality artists at the top of our business,â Stringer said during a company-wide […]
Sony Music Corp. is in the process of helping Bad Bunny manager Noah Assad â the CEO of Latin music label and management company Rimas Entertainment â buy out his partner, Rafael Ricardo JimĂŠnez Dan, a former Venezuelan government official who has a 60% majority stake in the company, sources familiar with the matter tell Billboard.
Rimas â which manages, records and publishes Bad Bunny â also has a label and management roster that includes ArcĂĄngel, Eladio CarriĂłn, Jowell & Randy and Tommy Torres. The company was founded in 2014 in Puerto Rico and now has about 100 employees.
According to sources, Sony will participate in a buyout of JimĂŠnez, who has not been involved in running Rimasâ day-to-day operations since 2018. That will result in a reshuffling of the companyâs ownership and will likely leave Bad Bunny with an equity stake in the firmâ and either Assad, or the combination of Assad and Bad Bunny, with majority ownership.
However the deal is ultimately financed, Sony itself is expected to wind up with a significant minority share in Rimas, which it will assign to The Orchard, its rapidly growing music distribution and artists/label services powerhouse that currently distributes Rimas.
Billboard estimates that Rimas Entertainment â the record label and the management company â has a valuation above $300 million without including the companyâs publishing assets, which sources say are not currently being considered as a part of this transaction.
Assad and Jimenez, respectively, also have the same 40â60% ownership stakes in the music publishing assets, JimĂŠnez tells Billboard. The publishing company, which includes some Bad Bunny songs and was launched by Assad, JimĂŠnez and lawyer Carlos Souffront, is also up for sale. The sellers are seeking a $70 million to $75 million valuation for the overall publishing company, those sources add. As on the recorded music side, Assad plans to retain his stake in the song catalog, which means that the JimĂŠnez stake could potentially fetch $42 million to $45 million.
Assessing a valuation for the publishing deal is tricky, sources say, because many of Bad Bunnyâs songs are still widely popular, which makes it harder to calculate how much their plays will decay until they level off and become a predictable income stream, likely in a decade or two from now. As it is, the Rimas publishing portfolio âwhich is currently being administered by Universal Music Publishing Group â has about $5 million to $7.5 million in net publisher share (gross profit after paying songwriter royalties), a level it is expected to maintain over the next few years.
The music publishing portion of JimĂŠnezâs Rimas holdings have been shopped to private equity players, sources say, and there is currently no known buyer. Thatâs in contrast to the hoped-for sale of the label/management holdings, which appears to have only been offered to Sony. However, sources wonder if Assad has matching rights on the publishing assets, which means that he could also arrange a deal to buy the Jimenez publishing stake if he matches the highest offer.
JimĂŠnez is being represented for the expected publishing sale by Brian Richards, co-founder and managing partner of the investment advisory firm Artisan. On the record label/management side of Rimas, sources say JimĂŠnez is being advised by Mitchell, Silberberg & Krupp partner Joel Schoenfeld, the former general counsel of eMusic and BMGâs senior vp of business affairs before that;âŻand by Colin Finkelstein, the former CFO for EMI Music, who sometimes consults with investors on music assets and also owns and runs a few artist management firms.âŻ
Both deals are said to be very complex, and sources say they have been in the works for months â with some wondering whether the deals have been stalled due to friction between the two partners, JimĂŠnez and Assad.
Another looming issue may be how much financial capacity Sony Music Group has to close deals right now. As Sony negotiates the stake in Rimas, it is reportedly also in talks to acquire part â or possibly all â of the Michael Jackson estate in a deal that could carry a valuation of $1.5 billion to $2 billion.
The question is whether Sonyâs corporate leadership in Japan has signed off on the funding and the completion of both deals and if the costs involved in the deals might force Sony to choose to between them.
If both deals are completed, sources suggest that they would likely still need to be approved by regulators. Under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, as of Feb. 27, 2023, any merger and/or acquisition that has a transaction value of more than $111 million â or if the contemplated combined entity will have total assets of more than $445 million â must file and seek regulatory approval.
Assad, JimĂŠnez, Sony, Finkelstein, Schoenfeld and Richards either declined to comment or didnât respond to requests for comment.âŻ
Additional reporting by Alexei Barrionuevo
An R. Kelly victim who won a $4 million judgment against the singer will get first crack at pulling money from the singerâs royalty account with Sony Music â after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that her claims should take priority over a Chicago landlord thatâs also owed millions.
In a decision on Thursday (March 23), the state high court said Heather Williams was entitled to tap into Kellyâs account with Sony â valued at $1.5 million in 2020 â before Midwest Commercial Funding, a property manager that won its own separate $3.5 million ruling against Kelly over unpaid rent at a Chicago studio, can access it.
Williams filed a civil lawsuit against Kelly in 2019, alleging that when she was 16 years old, the singer lured her into his studio with promises that she could be in a music video and then repeatedly had sex with her as a minor. In 2020, she won a judgment of $4 million against Kelly on those accusations.
Thursdayâs decision upheld a lower courtâs earlier ruling that Williams â and not Midwest Commercial â should be given priority access to the royalties because she was the first to properly demand the money from Sony. That earlier ruling had ordered Sony to hand over to Williams âany funds currently in Kellyâs royalty account,â and to keep giving her his royalties until the judgment was paid off.
Disbursement of Kellyâs funds held by Sony has been paused while litigation has played out; itâs unclear how much money is now in the account. The company is not named in any lawsuits and is not accused of any wrongdoing. A rep for Sony declined to comment on the ruling or on the status of Kellyâs royalties.
Following Thursdayâs ruling, Kellyâs attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, tells Billboard that sheâs currently seeking to overturn the underlying $4 million judgment. She says the award to Williams â a so-called default judgment, meaning it was issued after Kelly failed to respond â ânever should have been entered.â
âIâve never in my career seen such a flouting of the rules to deny him even the opportunity to defend these civil cases, even when the courts were fully aware that Kelly was incarcerated, unrepresented at points, and facing multiple criminal indictments,â Bonjean says. âIndeed, much of these civil proceedings occurred without Kellyâs knowledge.â
But the $4 million judgment was already upheld once by an appeals court, and Bonjean said she faces an âuphill battleâ to overturn the judgment because of the actions of Kellyâs prior lawyers.
An attorney for Williams declined to comment on the litigation. An attorney for Midwest Commercial Funding did not return a request for comment.
Though Thursdayâs decision gave priority to Williams over Midwest Commercial Funding, itâs unclear whether sheâll enjoy similar priority over a slew of additional monetary penalties that Kelly owes to victims as a result of his federal criminal convictions.
After he was sentenced last summer to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking and racketeering in New York, Kelly was ordered to pay more than $480,000 in fines and restitution; after he was sentenced in February on child pornography charges in Illinois, another $42,000 was tacked on. Last fall, prosecutors confiscated nearly $30,000 in Kellyâs prison account in an effort to start paying those penalties.
A representative for the U.S. Attorneyâs Office in New York declined to comment on the impact of Thursdayâs ruling or the status of federal restitution efforts against Kelly. A rep for the Us Attorneyâs Office in Illinois did not immediately return a request for comment.
Harry Styles, Mariah Carey and big streaming gains helped Sony Music Entertainment finish 2022 with a bang. Stylesâ album Harryâs House and Careyâs typically strong holiday performance drove SMEâs revenues up 22.9% to 363.7 billion yen ($2.57 billion at quarterâs average exchange rate) in its fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 31, 2022.
Stylesâ 2022 release Harryâs House and 2019 album Fine Lines were among SMEâs top performing titles of the quarter. Careyâs âAll I Want for Christmas is Youâ topped the U.S. Hot 100 chart for four weeks (chart dates of Dec. 17, Dec. 24, Dec. 31 and Jan. 7). The company also pointed to strong sales and streams by Steve Lacyâs Gemini Rights, SZAâs SOS, Futureâs I Never Liked You, Chris Brownâs Indigo, Beyonceâs Renaissance and Bruce Springsteenâs Only the Strong Survive.
Quarterly operating income improved 14.3% to 63 billion yen ($445 million). Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were 80 billion yen ($565 million).
The recorded music divisionâs revenues improved 30.1% to 239 billion yen ($1.69 billion). Streaming revenue grew 33.2% to 159.1 billion yen ($1.12 billion) and accounted for 66.6% of recorded music revenue, up from 65% in the prior-year period. Download revenue, up 14.3%, accounted for just 4.7% of digital revenues compared to 5.5% a year earlier. Physical sales declined 6% to 31.1 billion yen ($219.1 million) and accounted for 13% of total recorded music revenue, down from 18%.
Publishing revenues increased 42.9% to 74.2 billion yen ($523.4 million) in the quarter. Within publishing, streaming revenue improved 59.8% to 41.6 billion yen ($293.3 million). Streamingâs share of publishing revenue grew to 56% from 50.1% in the prior-year period. Other publishing income rose 25.9% to 32.6 billion yen ($230.1 million).
Excluding foreign exchange and the visual media and platform segment, SMEâs recorded music and publishing divisions grew 10% in the quarter. That is a smaller improvement because changes in foreign exchange rates helped SMEâs yen-denominated results. From the end of 2021 to 2022, the value of the yen declined against the three main foreign currencies: -10% against the U.S. dollar, -6.9% against the euro and -1.8% against the pound.
The visual media and platform segment was a drag on earnings due to lower anime sales, however. The segmentâs revenue fell 16.3% to 47.4 billion yen ($334.7 million).
Looking ahead, the company maintained its forecast for full-year revenue at 1.37 billion yen (approximately $9.7 billion) at operating income at 265 billion yen (approximately $1.87 billion).
With 2022 now officially in the books, the U.S. market share report is in: with Bad Bunny, Lil Nas X and Harry Styles leading the way, it was a banner year for Sony Music, as it gained in both overall market share and, more drastically, in current market share on the leading Universal Music Group, narrowing the gap among releases less than 18 months old to 6.58% in 2022 â a chasm that stood at 13.7% at the end of 2021.
But there was good news for UMG, too, as Republic Records rode a red-hot fourth quarter â led by Taylor Swiftâs Midnights, the No. 2 album of all of 2022 despite only being released in October â to rank No. 1 among labels in current market share for the entirety of 2022, coming in at 10.38%. That makes it the only label to top double digits in the final ranking of the year. And UMG maintained a double-digit lead in overall market share over second-place Sony, leading 37.54% to 26.87% despite the latterâs gains throughout the year. Interscope Geffen A&M finished the year as the No. 1 label in overall market share once again, coming in at 9.63%, though it was down from the 10.08% share it held at the end of 2021.
Sonyâs overall market share grew 0.76% year over year — up to 26.87% in 2022 from 26.11% in 2021 — marking a big stride forward for the music group. That gain was largely at the expense of Universal Music Group, which dropped 0.66% year over year, from 38.20% in 2021 to 37.54% at the end of 2022. Meanwhile, Warner Music Groupâs market share grew from 16.06% in 2021 to 19.05% in 2022, though that is not an apples-to-apples comparison; this year, Warner-owned distributor ADA â which distributes dozens of independent labels â was factored into WMGâs market share, adding 2.96% to its total and accounting for almost all of Warnerâs jump. (The move more accurately aligns Warnerâs distributed market share with the other majors, which also include their distribution wings in their totals.) That switch also explains the commensurate dip for the indie sector, which fell from 19.63% in 2021 to 16.54% in 2022.
In current market share, Universal fell more than 4%, from 37.89% in 2021 to 33.57% in 2022, with all three other major players picking up that slack, led by Sony, which ballooned significantly almost 3 percentage points to 26.99% in 2022 — up from 24.19% in 2021. Warner â even taking into account the 3.32% in current share added by ADA â was also up, from 14.42% in 2021 to 18.30% in 2022 (an increase of 0.56% beyond the ADA bump), while the indie sector went from 23.50% last year to 21.14% in 2022, which is up 0.96% year over year when taking into account the loss of the ADA labels. Universal did, however, raise its catalog percentage from 38.33% in 2021 to 38.94% in 2022, while the other three all fell slightly.
Following Interscope in overall market share, Atlantic remained in second, at 8.89%, although it, too, was down slightly from 2021, when it posted a 9.17% overall share of the market. Republic ended the year in third â the only label in the top five to grow its overall market share year over year â with an 8.44% mark, up from 8.28% through the end of 2021, while Columbia (6.98%) and Capitol Music Group (6.40%) rounded out the top five. (A note on these labels: Interscopeâs market share includes Verve [0.85%]; Atlanticâs includes the now-combined 300 Elektra Entertainment Group [2.35%], which would have been good enough for ninth place on its own; Republicâs includes Island [1.51%], Cash Money [0.71%], Big Loud, Imperial and Mercury; Columbia includes some indie labels from distributor RED; and Capitol includes Virgin [1.78%], Motown/Quality Control [1.05%], Capitol Christian Music Group [0.61%], Astralwerks and Blue Note.)
In sixth, Warner Records â which includes Rhino, Warner Latin and a chunk of Warner Nashville in its market share â grew year over year, from 6.16% in 2021 to 6.35% in 2022, having steadily increased its share each quarter of the year. RCA, whose market share stands alone, did the same; the label came in seventh, growing in each quarter to a finish of 5.12% — up from 4.89% in 2021 — wrapping the year strongly with the four-week No. 1 run of SZAâs S.O.S. In eighth, Epic Records also picked up market share, rising to 2.63% in 2022 from a 2.38% share in 2021. Def Jam, in ninth, faltered to 2.07%, down from 2.25% in 2021; while Sony Nashville jumped into 10th, leapfrogging UMG Nashville by growing its market share from 1.99% to 2.04% year over year.
UMG Nashville dropped to 11th, slipping from 2.04% in 2021 to 1.85% in 2022, while Concord jumped from 13th (1.68%) in 2021 to 12th (1.73%) in 2022. Disney â with its early-year Encanto boost â was up to 1.60% in 2022 from 1.40% the year before, good for 13th, while Universal Latin (1.47%) and Sony Latin (1.24%) rounded out the top 15, both up from the year prior as well.
Republic had a big fourth quarter (9.57%), with four major releases â Stray Kidsâ Maxident, Swiftâs Midnights, Drake and 21 Savageâs Her Loss and Metro Boominâs Heroes & Villains, all of which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 â collectively topping the Billboard 200 for eight weeks. That helped boost its current market share from 8.77% through the first three quarters of the year to 10.38% by yearâs end, with that late push taking it to No. 1 among all labels in terms of current market share in 2022.
Atlantic, in second place in current share, essentially maintained its level from last year, coming in at 9.15% (from 9.16% in 2021), though it moved up one spot from third place; while Interscope dropped sharply, from a stellar 11.05% in 2021 to 8.72% in 2022, falling from first to third. Columbia and Capitol, in fourth and fifth, respectively, both fell in share, the former from 6.83% to 6.67% and the latter from 5.64% to 4.97%; while Warner and RCA, in sixth and seventh, both grew in share, the former from 4.48% to 4.86% and the latter from 4.37% to 4.65%.
Outside the top seven labels, there was a bigger shakeup in current market share. Epic Records moved up to eighth place, gaining from a 2.04% current share in 2021 to 2.23% in 2022, while Sony Nashville jumped up to ninth, growing to 1.89% from 1.59% in 2021. Alamo made the biggest leap, all the way up to 10th in current share in 2021 at 1.56% in its first full year as a standalone Sony Music label; in 2021, its share was split between UMG and Sony as it was sold midway through the year, making an apples-to-apples comparison difficult. BMG, in 11th, held steady at 1.42%, while Disney, perhaps unsurprisingly, surged into 12th, up to 1.36% year over year from 0.52% in 2021. Def Jam, however, saw its current share sink from 2.21% in 2021 to 1.27% in 2022, finishing 13th, while Sony Latin (1.24%) and UMG Nashville (1.23%) rounded out the top 15.
As is generally the case, catalog market share tracked similarly to overall market share, as older titles generally perform consistently as a percentage of the market year over year. But both UMG and the indie sector grew year over year, while Sony and Warner, the latter accounting for the ADA switch, were both down slightly as well.
On Monday (Dec. 19), Sony Music Entertainment (SME) shared a recap with the companyâs artists and earnings participants on the progress of its Artists Forward initiative, which encompasses SMEâs legacy unrecouped balances initiative, healthcare assistance, advances on projected earnings and more.
Notably, the recap offers never-before-reported stats on Sony Musicâs artist portal and real-time insights platforms. Introduced in 2019, the features offer music creators and their teams âbest-in-classâ payment capabilities and real-time updates on consumption of their music and audience engagement data. According to the company, artists and other earnings participants have withdrawn nearly $50 million combined from both the cash-out feature, which allows users to cash out payable monthly account balances, and the real-time advances feature, which allows users to receive advances on qualifying projected earnings.
Newly announced as part of the recap is Sony Musicâs recent introduction of healthcare advocacy services for on-roster and legacy artists in the United States, designed to make it easier for artists to navigate the process of obtaining and utilizing healthcare coverage, finding a doctor, managing healthcare bills and more. Since launching in the fall, the program has helped U.S.-based artists realize hundreds of thousands of dollars in healthcare cost savings, according to the company.
The label first introduced the Artists Forward initiative in June 2021 with its legacy unrecouped balance program, which waives the unrecouped balances of artists who signed to Sony Music prior to 2000 and have not received advances since that same year. The following month, the program was expanded to include songwriters, and this past May, Sony Music began offering eligibility on a rolling 20-year basis â meaning artists not initially covered by the program will become eligible once they hit the 20-year mark of signing with the label. According to the Dec. 19 recap, eligibility notifications recently began going out to the first group of qualifying artists and participants under the new criteria (those who signed with the label prior to 2001) in select markets around the world.
In September 2021, the company further expanded Artists Forward by launching âArtist Assistance,â an initiative covering mental health services for its artist roster. According to the Dec. 19 recap, over 100 artists globally have since been provided with information and support related to the program, with dozens across more than 12 countries having utilized these services to establish recurring sessions with a licensed therapist or receive in-the-moment support to deal with âacute issues.â
You can read the full recap here.
Nearly a year after Ultra Records founder Patrick Moxey sold his 50% share of the lauded dance imprint to Sony Music, the executive is being sued by the major label over his continued use of the âUltraâ trademark.
When Moxey sold his remaining stake in Ultra Records this past January, it marked a turning point in dance music history â giving Sony full control of the label it had previously held a 50% stake in. While Moxey parted ways with the imprint he founded in 1995, he held on to his other company, Ultra International Music Publishing, LLC. But in a complaint filed last month in New York, Sony Music argues he has no legal rights to use the âUltraâ name following the sale.
âNotwithstanding that Moxey received a substantial payment as part of the buyout, after which he ceased to have any involvement in the business of Ultra Records, he has sought to perpetuate the falsehood that he remains involved with Ultra Records by wrongfully continuing to use Ultra Recordsâ ULTRA trademark as part of his music publishing business,â reads the complaint, which was filed Nov. 11.
The complaint continues that under the terms of a 2012 agreement that marked Sonyâs acquisition of 50% of Ultra Records, âUltra International Music Publishing and its affiliates were only permitted to use the word âUltra; under license from Ultra Records. That license was terminated by Ultra Records following the buyout, effective March 29, 2022.â
The complaint goes on to state that Ultra Publishingâs continued use of the name is in violation of the Ultra Records trademark, noting that âNo written license agreement was ever executed between Ultra Records and Ultra International Music Publishing concerning the latterâs use of the ULTRA trademark.â
In a statement provided to Billboard, Sony Music states that âPatrick Moxey sold Ultra Records and the Ultra brand to Sony Music Entertainment in exchange for a substantial buyout payment, and now is perpetuating the falsehood that he remains affiliated with his former company by continuing to use the Ultra name in connection with the publishing operations he controls. These actions knowingly misrepresent his involvement with Ultra and are in clear violation of the trademark rights SME acquired in a mutually agreed upon transaction.â
While a representative for Moxey did not immediately return a request for comment, in a statement given to Music Business Worldwide, he claimed that Sony has âdone nothing but bully me from the day I sold them my record company. Ultra International Music Publishing has been an independent standalone business for over 20 years, which publishes songs co-written with Drake, Post Malone, Ed Sheeran, 21 Savage, Rihanna, Future, Kygo and many more.
âThe vast majority of our songs are not on Ultra Records or Sony [Music],â Moxey continued. âI have made it abundantly clear on numerous occasions in media interviews that Ultra International Music Publishing is completely separate from Ultra Records, and always has been. I have every right to use the name âUltraâ in connection with Ultra International Music Publishing, and wonât be intimidated by a massive global corporation.â
After leaving Ultra Records, Moxey announced a new dance label venture, Helix Records, which has since released music from Snakehips, Willy William and Two Friends. The imprint is a division of Moxeyâs longstanding hip-hop label, Payday Records. Both labels are distributed by Warner Recorded Musicâs indie services arm ADA Worldwide.
A new R. Kelly album titled I Admit It was uploaded to streaming services Friday (Dec. 9), but it didnât come from Kellyâs team or his label.
While the release credits Sony Musicâs Legacy Recordings as the label, a rep for Legacy Recordings said the company was not involved in the project. Furthermore, sources at Legacy say the album came as a total surprise and they are inquiring with streamers such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music about how the album was delivered to them.
The album was uploaded by Universal Music Group-owned distributor Ingrooves, leaving involved parties scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Once Ingrooves executives learned of the release, according to a source familiar with the situation, they set about requesting that streaming services pull the release. By 3 p.m. EST on Friday it was down.
Now, the source says, Ingrooves is in the process of investigating what went wrong internally and is severing a relationship with the label Real Talk Entertainment, which released the album on a sub-label called Legacy Recordings â the same name as Sonyâs imprint. Real Talk could not be reached for immediate comment.
In January 2019, Sony and Kelly agreed to part ways days after Lifetime released the Surviving R. Kelly documentary that detailed sexual misconduct allegations against the three-time Grammy-winning singer. Sony still represents Kellyâs catalog of music, however, including his early recordings under Zomba/Jive and then later RCA, both of which are Sony-owned imprints.
The 13-track project arrives as the disgraced R&B singer (real name Robert Sylvester Kelly) is serving a 30-year prison sentence after he was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York trial last June. In September, during another trial in his hometown of Chicago, Kelly, 55, was convicted of several child pornography charges.
The albumâs title track, âI Admit It,â was originally released as a 19-minute track on SoundCloud in 2018. It is now featured as three separate songs, each titled âI Admit It (I Did It),â at the end of the album which addresses the sexual abuse allegations against him over the last few decades and its virulent effects on his career.
Kellyâs attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, did not respond to Billboardâs request for comment by the time of publishing. But she told Variety earlier Friday that the singerâs team is not behind the release and that he âis having intellectual property stolen from him.â
The last studio album Kelly released was a holiday album titled 12 Nights of Christmas on Oct. 21, 2016. Itâs his final album on RCA Records before the label removed him in the wake of the Surviving R. Kelly doc.
This story is developing.