spotify
Investors seeking shelter from the chaos unleashed by President Trump’s often incoherent tariff policy can find safety in companies without direct exposure to tariffs or the teetering advertising market. And music, especially digital music, will be able to weather the storm, say many analysts — with one major exception.
To understand what people are thinking about tariffs’ impact on the business world, look no further than stock prices. The performance of various music-related stocks reveals how investors are betting that economic uncertainty will affect various companies.
Many stocks — especially those of companies traded on U.S. exchanges — have taken a hit as investors fled for safer alternatives. The Nasdaq and S&P 500, U.S. indexes, are down 6.2% and 6.7%, respectively, since April 1, the day before President Trump announced his tariff plans. Elsewhere in the world, indexes have generally performed better. South Korea’s KOSPI is down just 2.0%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 is off 3.5%. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 is down 4.2%. Germany’s DAX has lost 5.9%.
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Within music, companies that get most of their revenue from streaming are faring relatively well. Since April 1, Spotify and Deezer have each gained 4.0%, two of the better showings for music stocks. Cloud Music improved 3.9%. Tencent Music Entertainment, on the other hand, has fallen 15.1%, although its share price remains up 8.1% year to date.
Record labels and publishers have also been holding up well, in relative terms, particularly outside the U.S. Since April 1, shares of Universal Music Group (UMG) — which is headquartered in the U.S. but trades in Amsterdam — and Warner Music Group (WMG) are down 8.0% and 7.1%, respectively. Reservoir Media lost 3.0%. K-pop companies — much like South Korean companies in general — have fared well. Since April 1, SM Entertainment has gained 7.9%, YG Entertainment is up 1.1% and JYP Entertainment has gained 0.7%. HYBE fell 3.4%.
UMG and WMG’s post-tariff declines are slightly greater than the drops in the Nasdaq and S&P 500 of 6.7% and 6.2%, respectively. But both UMG and WMG had strong starts to 2025, and their year-to-date losses of 4.5% and 6.1% are far better than the S&P 500’s 10.2% drop and the Nasdaq’s 15.7% year-to-date decline.
Some live music companies’ stocks have been resilient, too. Live Nation shares are down 3.7% since April 1, while German concert promoter CTS Eventim is up 3.2%. Sphere Entertainment Co., owner of the Sphere venue in Las Vegas, is an exception. Sphere Entertainment shares have plummeted 23.1% since President Trump’s tariff announcement, a far more significant drop than the stocks of other companies — Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts — that rely on consumers’ willingness to part with their money in Las Vegas.
For many U.S. media stocks, the direct impact of tariffs is “relatively muted,” wrote Citi analysts in an April 7 report, as many of the companies rely on discretionary spending, not ad revenue. Apple and other tech companies, for example, got an exemption from the 145% tariffs on Chinese imports but must still pay the blanket 20% tariff. Companies that get much of their revenues from subscriptions — Netflix, Spotify, UMG and WMG — will be less impacted.
Music streaming, most notably subscription services, is considered by equity analysts to be safe from whatever tariff-induced economic chaos awaits the global market. “Digital goods are unaffected by tariffs,” wrote TD Cowen analysts in an April 14 investor report. Subscription services, they argued, provide enough bang for the buck, and customers have such an emotional attachment to music that subscribers are unlikely to leave in “meaningful” numbers if the economy goes south.
Streaming and subscription growth slowed in 2024, but many analysts expect improvements to come from a regular drumbeat of price increases, renewed licensing deals and super-premium tiers. That said, analysts believe that Spotify’s latest licensing deals with UMG and WMG, and upcoming deals with other rights holders, better reward labels and publishers for price increases. As a result, TD Cowen slightly lowered its estimates for Spotify’s revenue, gross profit margin and operating income in 2025. Likewise, in an April 4 note to investors, Guggenheim analysts lowered their estimate for Spotify’s gross margin in the second half of 2025.
Companies reliant on advertising revenue will also take an indirect hit. Citi estimates that $4 trillion of imports could generate $700 billion in tariffs and reduce personal consumer and ad spending by 1.9%. Tariffs have ripple effects, too. Because household net worth and personal spending are highly correlated, says Citi, the recent declines in stock prices could reduce personal and advertising spending by 3.0%.
Consumer spending is at the heart of the concert business, but analysts agree that fans’ affection for their favorite artists protects live music from economic downturns. As a result, Live Nation has “less risk than the average business that depends on discretionary spending,” according to TD Cowen analysts.
Advertising-related businesses aren’t so lucky, though. As tariffs raise prices and household wealth declines, personal spending also declines, and, in turn, brands pull back on their advertising spending. Investors’ expectations for advertising-dependent businesses were apparent before April but have become clearer since President Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement. iHeartMedia, which closed on Thursday (April 17) below $1.00 per share for the first time since June 4, 2024, has dropped 35.3% since April 1 and fallen 50.3% year to date. Cumulus Media has fared even worse, dropping 47.5% since April 1 and 62.7% year to date. Townsquare Media has fallen 12.8% in the tariff era and 23.8% year to date.
J.P. Morgan analysts believe iHeartMedia’s full-year guidance of $770 million is “somewhat optimistic” given economic uncertainties and ongoing pressures in the radio business. It forecasts full-year EBITDA of $725 million — nearly 6% lower than iHeartMedia’s guidance. If things wind up going more the way J.P. Morgan predicts than iHeart, it would be a big blow to the company and an unfortunate bellwether for the already struggling radio business. While other music industry sectors look to ride out the tariffs at least in the shorter term, the economic uncertainty introduced by the Trump administration may only hasten radio’s ongoing decline.
As Billboard has noted numerous times in recent weeks, investors are attracted to music assets because they are counter-cyclical, meaning they don’t follow the typical ups and downs of the economy. Consumers will, by and large, stick with their music subscription services and continue going to concerts. But by introducing the tariffs, the Trump regime exposed one of radio’s greatest weaknesses as a business: a greater exposure, due to its reliance on advertising, to the state of the wider economy.
Billboard
Last month, Billboard was invited to the Spotify offices in Downtown Los Angeles to meet its top editors and curators and get an inside look at how Spotify’s playlists come together, genre-by-genre. And leading that team is Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at Spotify. Over time, Ong has held a variety of roles at companies like Live Nation, Sony BMG Music and French streaming service Deezer, before joining Spotify in 2019. After coming aboard, she served as its Head of Music (UK) and Head of Artist and Label Services (UK) before taking the helm of editorial.
In her role, Ong has worked to evolve what playlists can be — from launching the ephemeral and personalized options like Daylist and AI DJ, to further building out the worlds of longstanding flagship playlists RapCaviar and Today’s Top Hits. These days, most of all, Ong is interested in adding more context to the playlists, as she senses Spotify users becoming increasingly interested in having more of a human touch to those listening experiences.
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To explain her strategy with Spotify’s editorial in 2025, Ong sat down with Billboard for an extended interview to explain her stance on AI music in playlists, changing user behavior, future growth markets and why she wants to bring her team of editors into the spotlight more than ever.
What are some of your goals for Spotify’s editorial team in 2025?
We’re thinking about how to make the playlists more engaging, and we think it’s a combination of short-form video and editorial. We refer to our roles as editorial, but they also involve curation. Editorial is the storytelling, the context: “Why is this important? Why is it culturally relevant?” The curation is, “What song? What artist?” There’s an art to combining both. As we look to the future, the editorial side is becoming even more critical. We are doubling down as human music editors in music discovery and trend forecasting in 2025.
What will this editorial short-form look like? And is it something that’s interactive, allowing for comments, likes, etc.?
We format this in what we call editorial Watchfeeds. That will include written track commentary, editor videos and more. We’ve been thinking about how do we incorporate social and community elements? Whether that’s commenting, liking — it’s a combination of all those things.
Spotify used to have more social-like features, like the direct message feature, which has since been removed. Do you see this move towards more social elements as a way to retain users in-app?
We want to broaden the ecosystem. We want to have our users spend as much [time] as possible and interact with one another as well. One of the editorial Watchfeeds that we did, as an early example to test the hypothesis, was Carl Chery [head of urban editorial] during the Drake–Kendrick battle. We kept getting asked, especially Carl, about what was happening. It was all coming so fast. So we did an editorial Watchfeed where we explained it in sequence. That did really well. Some of the feedback from users was, “I didn’t have to go elsewhere to find this information.” That was really interesting for me.
Why did you decide that short-form video was the right way to editorialize these playlists?
In a world where people’s attention spans are short, it made sense. Are users really going to sit and watch a 30 minute diatribe monologue before getting into the playlist? That’s not realistic.
TikTok, Reels and Shorts have been in the short-form video space for years now. Is Spotify getting on this trend too late?
We’re not a social media platform. This is a tool to expand the storytelling experience of the music and the recommendations, which is why it’s not all short-form video. It’s just one part of our toolkit. Text and track commentary is also something we want to do, so it’s not all short-form video content.
For a long time, it was Daniel Ek’s goal to make Spotify the destination for audio. More recently, that goal has expanded to video. The Watchfeed is not the first time Spotify has experimented with video. What have you learned from previous successes and failures with video on Spotify?
We experimented with longer-form video a few years ago, and it didn’t really connect. I think actually podcasts were something that were really interesting for us to watch. It was interesting to see how core video actually ended up being to the podcast experience and the podcast audience. Yes, podcasts are longer-form, but might that be interesting for a playlist experience to try some kind of video for editorializing? I come back to editorializing because that’s what podcasts do — they provide context on a topic. We thought the next step is to do that for music. It’s not exactly the same experience, it’s not like for like, but there are components of that technology that became Watchfeed.
Until now, Spotify’s curators have largely worked anonymously. Why change that?
A lot of thought went into it. When you think about the era that we’re in in terms of AI and machine learning, people want to know — is this AI or human? What’s your point of view? AI doesn’t have a point of view. We found that people actually are interested about the people behind the playlist.
Over the couple of years, Spotify has leaned into cutting edge tech-driven features like Daylist or AI DJ. In 2025, though you’re leaning into editorializing playlists. How do you see the balance between human and algorithmic aspects of playlisting today?
They live together. I’ve never seen it as an either/or situation. I think you need both and both have unique strengths. Over time the editorial role has grown. But we are still focused on the strengths of each and combining the two.
AI has played a key role in some of your newer features, like AI DJ, but how does the editorial team treat generative AI music that ends up on Spotify? Do you have any rules against playlisting it?
We are focused on human artists and the music they create. That is what we feel is really important. We did curate, though, Kito’s track [“Cold Touch”] that used Grimes’ AI voice on it. But Kito is a bonafide artist that had the blessing of another artist to use her AI likeness and voice. That is different to us. But we think very thoughtfully about our focus on supporting real, human artists. To this point so far, I have not seen a generative AI artist or track take off. That’s not to say that it won’t happen in the future, but right now, that’s not what we’re seeing.
What markets do you think will grow significantly in the next few years?
India will only be a more important player. Same with Southeast Asia. It’s interesting to look at Southeast Asia because we see Western artists actually getting their foothold in countries like the Philippines. In general, local-language content continues to grow.
I’ve been asking all of your editors the same question: What is the most common misconception about the role of a Spotify curator?
There are two. There’s that we are in service to labels and we curate what we’re told; that can’t be further from the truth. There’s an editorial independence that the editorial team has. The second misconception is that you can pay to get on an editorial playlist. I still see people claiming that they can get you on one for a price. It’s a scam. We have a code of ethics for our editors.
What are some things that are part of your code of ethics, and has your code of ethics evolved over time?
We have strict rules to protect our editorial independence, like if we get invited to a gig or a festival, and there’s an offer to cover our flights or travel, we’re not allowed to accept. If there is a reason, a business reason, for us to be there, Spotify will cover our travel. We don’t want to be beholden to anyone. And we are constantly reviewing [our code of ethics]. It’s a yearly process of, like, “Do we have the right guidelines and guardrails in place?”
There are reports that there is a super-premium tier on the way for Spotify users willing to pay an extra subscription cost. In return, they will receive new features. Are there any extra editorial offerings in the upcoming new tier?
I don’t have any info to share with you other than what you already know. We are obviously always thinking about what superfans want and what would entice them to go onto that super premium tier, but I’ve got no details to share.
Dating back to a Music Business Worldwide story in 2016, there have been reports that Spotify has used company-owned music or so-called “fake artists” or “ghost artists” in its playlists, like Peaceful Piano or Ambient Chill. Those allegations resurfaced this year in the book Mood Machine. Can you provide any comment or clarification on those allegations?
My team curates purely editorial lists. We curate playlist music from artists. Our team doesn’t touch that.
How much creative freedom do editors actually have? How often do they get the ability to go with their gut?
They’ve got a lot of freedom to do that, but you do need to critically explain why you believe in something. There’s a balance between our personal tastes and what we think will resonate with a listener. You need to understand the shift between the two. As an editor, it’s important to understand what your biases are and make sure you are not curating with bias. What I mean by that is overdoing it because I really love this artist, or [underdoing it] because I don’t. That’s why we also curate in groups, so we challenge each other. “Why is that there? Why is that not there?” It’s actually part of our training.
It sounds like the playlists operate in a tier structure. Like, an artist can get on Fresh Finds, and if it does well, then maybe the artists get onto All New Indie next. Is that right?
Yes, we have a playlist pyramid. It’s like working an artist up through the ecosystem. You can’t slam an artist into a big flagship. There needs to be a strategic approach as to how you introduce someone to a new audience.
When Spotify’s social media accounts started posting about the editorial team’s song of the summer predictions in 2024, global head of editorial Sulinna Ong noticed a lot of commenters asking the same question: Is this artificial intelligence? “I actually went in and said, ‘I can assure you we’re not AI,’ ” she says, adding that she then found herself wondering, “Do people care whether it is [AI]?” The answer was a resounding yes. Ong recalls commenters were overjoyed to be able to identify her as a warm-blooded source of the faceless predictions. The reaction amounted to a collective “This is great. You’re human!”
Having focused on high-tech improvements to playlisting over the last few years, such as the AI DJ that subscribers can utilize and improved personalized Daily Mixes, Daylist and other features, Ong says she realized listeners value human input and connection more than ever and decided to recalibrate the “equilibrium” between AI and Spotify’s flesh-and-blood tastemakers.
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“A big tenet of editorial is this idea of reflecting culture and also being able to propel culture forward,” says J.J. Italiano, head of global music curation and discovery.
As a result, Spotify’s editorial team is leaning further into its top playlists with new “Watchfeeds” — written and video content that contextualizes its choices. There’s also more freestyling involved, such as the throwback songs that Spotify head of urban music, editorial Carl Chery slips into RapCaviar on Thursdays, or the newsletter that head of indie/alternative Lizzy Szabo writes for Lorem. Ong says interactive elements such as likes and comments may be added in the future.
To further individualize their work, Spotify’s editorial team came together for a photo and spoke to Billboard about their backgrounds, their work and their favorite music. “We know that cultural knowledge is really important. AI and machine learning excel in passing large data sets and scaling, but when it comes to cultural understanding, that’s where human editors really excel,” Ong says. “But we are still focused on the strengths of both [tech and human features] and combining the two.”
Sulinna OngGlobal head of editorial
Sulinna Ong
Yuri Hasegawa
Raised in the United Kingdom, Iran and Australia, Ong caught the music bug when she heard Kim Gordon singing Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing” as a 13-year-old. She worked in a wide array of roles for Live Nation, Sony BMG Music and French streaming service Deezer before joining Spotify in 2019. Prior to assuming her current position in 2021, Ong served as the streaming platform’s U.K. head of music and U.K. head of artist and label services.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Misfits 2.0, Liminal.
What are your 2025 goals for the editorial team?
We’re thinking about how to make the playlists more engaging, and we think it’s a combination of short-form video and editorial. We refer to our roles as editorial, but they also involve curation. Editorial is the storytelling, the context: “Why is this important? Why is it culturally relevant?” The curation is, “What song? What artist?” There’s an art to combining both. As we look to the future, the editorial side is becoming even more critical. We are doubling down as human music editors in music discovery and trend forecasting in 2025.
Until now, Spotify’s curators have largely worked anonymously. Why change that?
AI doesn’t have a point of view. We found that people actually are interested about the people behind the playlists.
Read Ong’s full interview here.
Carl CheryHead of urban music, editorial
Carl Chery
Rebecca Sapp
After working at hip-hop magazine XXL, Chery joined Beats Music in 2012, which was folded into Apple Music in 2014. He oversaw hip-hop and R&B at both streaming services before moving to Spotify in 2018, where he leads curation for its urban music playlists, including RapCaviar.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Locked In, Gold School.
What trends are you spotting?
I’m interested in seeing what happens with sexy drill. Drill’s been around for a long time, and it keeps morphing. If you go back five years, that’s when it really broke through with Pop Smoke and Fivio [Foreign] and the Brooklyn drill scene. Part of the conversation around drill is that its subject matter is so hardcore it’s potentially [limiting the style]. But sexy drill has a lot of appeal. I’m keeping an eye on whether this is going to finally break through as the sound du jour in hip-hop.
What are some common misconceptions about Spotify editors?
Some people think playlisting is based on favors. They don’t pitch songs based on their merits or performance. They think building a relationship with editors enhances their chance of getting playlisted. That’s never been the case. [Others] think that playlisting is based on personal taste. Technically, it doesn’t matter if we like it. One of the most important qualities for editors is to be objective, [though] this doesn’t mean that personal taste doesn’t come into play. The sweet spot is when you get to support something that is at the intersection of your taste and what the audience likes.
Ronny HoHead of dance & electronic, editorial
Ronny Ho
Yuri Hasegawa
Though Ho booked concerts and hosted radio shows in college, she first worked in investment banking, and her initial job at Spotify was in business development. During her first years at the company, she got to know the members of the editorial team because she sat next to them. After moving to Spotify’s music team as a business manager, a role opened up in editorial, and she was given a tryout despite her unorthodox résumé.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Tech House Operator, Marrow.
Given the global popularity of dance, how do you coordinate with curators around the world to make the best playlists?
We have global curation groups. Dance was one of the first ones that started. It happened naturally with us just reaching out to curators in other markets to see what they’re seeing. We talk now on a weekly basis about new music coming out, trends that are popping off, local subgenres or communities we find interesting.
How are you discovering music for your playlists?
It’s a mix. We get inbound pitches from the Spotify for Artists pitch tool, but I am also going to shows all the time. A lot of DJs are rinsing tracks that aren’t released yet live. I’ll watch and see what the reaction is. If there’s something that really hits with a fan base, I’ll make note of it. Also, I look on the internet.
J.J. ItalianoHead of global music curation and discovery
JJ Italiano
Yuri Hasegawa
Italiano entered the music industry as an artist manager, then shifted his focus when he took a job as head of streaming at talent agency YMU in 2016. He joined Spotify’s editorial team the following year.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Lorem.
How do you curate New Music Friday?
New Music Friday is a bit like the newspaper. We’re trying to create opportunities for people to discover new stuff that we think they will like so, yes, there’s going to be a handful of high-profile releases that you would expect. Then everyone from their respective genres comes together and brings the tracks they think are most relevant, as well as their favorite songs. Through a process of democracy and a little bit of chaos, we get it out the door.
How do you compile Spotify’s biggest playlist, Today’s Top Hits?
One of the core tenets is that it is not a chart. Yes, we want them to be 50 of the biggest songs that week, but we’re also looking at user behavior. We look at all other playlists — how songs perform with different audiences. It’s more of a science than an art, but it is still both.
Does anyone listen to songs submitted through the pitch tool?
We get pretty decent coverage by humans. There’s over 100 people at Spotify whose job it is to listen to music. We use a combination of the tools we’ve built to sort through it and hiring the right people. Also, we pay attention to songs over time and can identify things that are trending upward or being saved a lot post-release.
Alaysia SierraHead of R&B, editorial
Alaysia Sierra
Yuri Hasegawa
After cutting their teeth as a playlist curator for Apple Music, Sierra was recruited by former Apple Music colleague Carl Chery to spearhead R&B curation.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Riffs and Runs.
What’s the process of making a playlist?
A few years ago, I noticed there was a sound that emerged out of trap-soul, like Bryson Tiller, PartyNextDoor, Brent Faiyaz. Mostly, when people think of R&B they think of women, but this subgenre of R&B caters to men. I thought, “How do I create a space for them to lean into their R&B-loving?” So we created DND, or Do Not Disturb, to feature that laid-back, masculine feel. I wrote up my ideas, what artists would make sense in the space, what it would look like and presented it.
What changes have you brought to R&B playlists?
When I came in here, I felt like there could be a fresher perspective to R&B that can cater to the TikTok era. There’s a romanticization of ’90s and pre-’90s R&B, but there are all these kids coming up who love and are inspired by the genre. I wanted to evolve R&B at Spotify to showcase that the genre can be so many things today.
Any emerging trends you are particularly excited about?
I’m really excited about U.K. R&B right now. Streaming has globalized music, and I think it’s given a lot of opportunity to that scene. We show that scene on Riffs and Runs.
John SteinHead of North America, editorial
John Stein
Yuri Hasegawa
With almost 12 years at Spotify under his belt, Stein has been involved with playlisting from the beginning. He joined Spotify when the streaming platform acquired his previous employer, the now-defunct curation app Tunigo. Stein and his team became the curators of Spotify’s Browse page, and he worked his way up to his current position.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Fresh Finds.
How has Spotify’s editorial playlisting evolved?
Back in those early days, we were very broad — much more moods- and moments-focused. There was a real emphasis on being an alternative to terrestrial radio. We wanted to introduce some new options: “Let’s think about activities and curate for those in addition to genres.” Over time, we created strong flagship genre playlists to be anchors, but we’ve also wanted to build out spaces that hit other moments in people’s lives — hopefully pushing forward the idea of blending genres.
What’s the balance of data and human curation in playlists today?
We’re coming to a point where the algorithmic side and the human side are coming together in a really balanced, beautiful way. As a company, we’re trying to embrace the fact that AI is really good at scale and serving you what we know you already like. But [identifying] moments of surprise and serendipity and cultural awareness is really difficult for it. You need a human editor to contextualize it in a way that brings emotion to it.
Lizzy SzaboEditorial lead, indie/alternative
Lizzy Szabo
Yuri Hasegawa
Szabo got her start in music as an agent’s assistant before becoming the executive assistant for former Spotify global head of creator services Troy Carter. She wrote an essay asking to move to the editorial team and detailing what she could do to expand the company’s playlists. It worked: Szabo became an editorial coordinator and worked her way up to helm the service’s indie and alternative coverage.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
All New Indie, Wine Bar.
How do you define the term “indie”?
More and more the question is, “What even is genre?” So we try to think in terms of audiences. With All New Indie, Lorem and those playlists, we are really fluid. Some weeks we question, “Is Caroline Polachek pop or indie?” You can make the case for either, but [we conclude] she would likely work best in indie.
With smaller artists, how do you balance human curation and metrics?
It is a challenge because it feels like there’s a new breakthrough every week in indie. It’s hard to predict. When we’re looking at priority releases for the year, the truth is you might not know. Someone could come along in two months that’s going to change the game. What’s incredible about something like the Fresh Finds program is that it encourages us to go with our guts on the really tiny stuff and have somewhere to put it [for] an audience craving music discovery.
Antonio VasquezHead of U.S. Latin, editorial
Antonio Vazquez
Courtesy of Spotify
A 15-year music business vet, Vasquez began his career doing digital marketing for legacy musicians in Mexico City as social media and Facebook advertisements began to take off. Spotify then hired him as its first editor on the Mexico team. After a year, he moved to New York to start a U.S. Latin team. He’s now based in Miami.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Fuego, Hanging Out and Relaxing.
How does the Latin editorial team work?
On the U.S. Latin team, we have a small but mighty team of three people. We have balanced our skill sets and music expertise to make sure we are covering the most Latin genres as possible. Antonella [Bocaranda] handles pop and tropical music. DC [Daniel Calderon] has his ear to the ground in Los Angeles with all things música mexicana. We always make sure that everyone has a bit of say in editorial decisions so we don’t fall [victim to] bias. Almost all priority markets in [Latin America] have their own editors locally. We work closely with them almost every day to exchange music and create a strategy.
What’s a Latin trend you’re tracking?
We’re starting to see stronger local scenes. So we need to be communicating even more across countries to make sure we are aware of what’s happening.
What’s a common misconception about Spotify editors?
That everything is data-driven. That really takes away from the heart and soul we put into our playlists every day.
Cecelia WinterEditorial lead, pop
Cecelia Winter
Yuri Hasegawa
Winter got her start in the music curation business with Spring, an app founded by elite runners that gave music fans song recommendations based on how fast they wanted to work out. After working as YouTube’s pop editor, she joined Spotify’s editorial team in 2023.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Pop Sauce.
How do you define “pop” music?
Pop, by its traditional definition, wouldn’t allow space for smaller artists, so we are really working to create spaces where artists who are making music that sounds pop — hook-driven and following a certain structure — can grow and find their audience. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. Pop music is not as tied to commercial success as it once was either. There’s top 40, which skews pop, but those metrics of success are not accessible to the vast majority of pop musicians. [With playlists] there is now an emerging mid-tier.
What is a market that tends to lead to pop trends that later emerge in the United States?
There’s a lot of interesting music coming out of the Nordics, and there are a lot of interesting stories where American or British artists who have trouble [breaking through] in their home market really explode in the Nordics first. We saw that with Benson Boone. Our editor in the Nordics flagged him really early on.
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Something went wrong with Spotify this morning, leading to a widespread outage of the streaming service that impacted its desktop and mobile apps, as well as its web player, on a global scale for several hours. According to the company, the issues were not due to a security breach. The platform appears to be returning […]
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Spotify is a dominant force in the music and audio streaming space and owns a large market share of users who enjoy the service. On Wednesday (April 16), however, Spotify found itself trending on X after users complained of the service going dark on them and sparking complaints.
As of this writing, Spotify still appears to be down, and neither the Web nor mobile versions are working. We even tried the desktop app, and that too was not responsive. Taking a look at Downdetector, it appears the service went out around 8 AM ET this morning with nearly 50,000 users reporting an outage.
Via the Spotify Status account on X, the service’s teams are aware of the issues and have posted a message.
“We’re aware of some issues right now and are checking them out!” read their reply on X.
In the comment section of Downdetector, some are reporting limited functionality, but overall, most are saying that all forms of the service are inaccessible at the moment.
While the company addresses the issue and gets the fix going, we’ve scoured X for some replies regarding the outage of the audio streaming service. According to some of the replies we’ve seen, some people felt inconvenienced by the service interruption.
Check out those replies below.
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Photo: SOPA Images / Getty
Led by Spotify and Live Nation, music stocks surged on Wednesday (April 9) after the U.S. Treasury placed a 90-day pause on most tariffs and recaptured some of the losses from the chaotic previous week.
A week after losing $12 billion in market value, Spotify was one of the top-performing music stocks of the week, gaining 8.0% and offsetting most of the previous week’s 10.3% decline. A 9.8% gain on Wednesday helped improve the streaming company’s two-week loss to 3.1%.
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) gained 4.6% to 2,362.78 on Wednesday’s 90-day tariff pause. That welcome news recaptured only a fraction of the previous week’s losses, however, and music stocks were hurt by a weakened U.S. dollar and growing fears the U.S. could slip into a recession. After losing 8.2% in the previous week, the index’s two-week loss stands at 4.0%.
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U.S. markets rebounded after a miserable week. The Nasdaq rose 7.3% to 16,724.46, bringing its two-week loss to 3.5%. The S&P 500 rose 5.7% to 5,363.36, giving it a two-week decline of 3.9%.
Many markets outside of the U.S. were down, however. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 dropped 1.1%, giving it a two-week loss of 8.0%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index was down 1.3%, adding to the previous week’s 3.6% decline. China’s SSE Composite Index dipped 3.1% a week after falling 0.3%.
Music streamer LiveOne was the week’s biggest gainer after jumping 18.0% to $0.72. The company’s preliminary results for fiscal 2025 released on Monday (April 7) showed the music streaming company had revenue of more than $112 million, while subscribers and ad-supported listeners surpassed 1.45 million. Even after the large increase, LiveOne shares have fallen 47.4% year to date.
Live Nation, which jumped 7.2% to $129.52 this week, is the only music company to post a gain over the past two weeks. The concert promoter’s share price dropped 3.4% the previous week but, with the help of a 10.9% jump on Wednesday, recovered well enough for a two-week gain of 3.6%.
Record labels and publishers finished the week in the middle of the pack. Warner Music Group fell 1.5% to $29.03, bringing its two-week decline to 8.0%. Universal Music Group was down 1.6%, giving it a two-week decline of 10.7%. Reservoir Media rose 0.7% to $7.10, giving it a two-week deficit of just 2.1%.
Sphere Entertainment Co. is one of the worst-performing music stocks over the past two weeks with an 18.5% decline. The company’s shares finished the week up 1.3%, barely offsetting the previous week’s 19.5% decline. A spike on Wednesday was partially offset by declines of 4.3% and 7.7% on Tuesday (April 8) and Thursday (April 10), respectively.
Most radio companies, which are heavily exposed to slowed advertising spending during recessions, had another down week. Cumulus Media dropped 22.5% to $0.31, bringing its two-week loss to 34.0%. iHeartMedia fell 4.2%, which took its two-week decline to 29.9%. Townsquare Media was down 4.9% this week and 13.6% over the past two weeks. Satellite broadcaster SiriusXM, which was upgraded by Seaport to buy from neutral, gained 2.6% this week, narrowing its two-week loss to 12.0%.
The two Chinese music streaming companies on the BGMI fared poorly despite the recoveries by Spotify, LiveOne and Deezer, which gained 2.3%. Tencent Music Entertainment fell 5.5% to $12.24 but was likely helped by Nomura initiating coverage this week with a buy rating and a $17.20 price target. Cloud Music shares dropped 5.7% to 141.50 HKD ($18.24).
K-pop companies, which bucked the downward trend the previous week, posted declines as well. SM Entertainment fell 8.2%, HYBE dropped 8.1%, JYP Entertainment sank 5.8% and YG Entertainment dipped 4.1%.
Billboard
Billboard
Billboard
Interest in superfans and their revenue potential has become so strong that market research firms and equity analysts are digging into the topic. This week, Bernstein released a report on music streaming services’ potential moves and MIDiA Research released a new report about music streaming pricing strategy.
For the uninitiated, a music superfan has been defined by Luminate as those fans who interact with artists and their content in multiple ways, including streaming, social media, physical music purchases and buying merchandise. These superfans make up 19% of U.S. music listeners, according to Luminate, and are more likely than the average fan to buy physical music, spend more on music, discover new music, connect with artists on a personal level and participate in fan communities.
Efforts are well underway to tap into superfans. Labels and artists employ e-commerce to sell merchandise, LPs and CDs directly to consumers, circumventing traditional retail channels and building a direct billing relationship with the most valuable fans. Startups such as EVEN and Fave — Sony Music and Warner Music Group are investors in the latter — are focused on connecting artists with their most fervent supporters. Given the multi-billion-dollar size of the music streaming market, though, Spotify’s plan to launch a superfan tier could be the most impactful play.
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Bernstein’s “Superfan Economics 101” report argues that a super-premium tier will help music streaming platforms achieve “sustained success in an increasingly competitive environment.” Analyst Annick Maas sees superfan-focused products as a function of the shift from mass consumption to direct-to-consumer tactics. Reaching out to smaller subsets of a larger audience, he writes, allows a streaming platform to “create a sense of belonging for its subscribers” and increase loyalty and engagement. That an equity analyst would highlight superfans in a report to investors speaks to the revenue potential in targeting subsets of consumers and the likelihood that publicly traded companies will make superfans a larger priority.
MIDiA Research also added to the superfan knowledge base this week by releasing a report based on a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers. The main takeaway is that MIDiA found widespread interest in paying a higher price for a streaming service with additional features: Just under three-quarters of people surveyed have “some level of interest” in paying for a super-premium tier as an add-on to the basic subscription plan.
Exactly what people are willing to pay varies greatly, though: 22% of respondents are willing to pay an additional $1.99 per month fee while 10% are willing to pay an additional $13.99, more than double the current $11.99 price for an individual subscription.
To give an idea of the amount of revenue at stake, consider that there was an average of 100 million subscribers of subscription music services in the U.S. in 2024 who paid an average of $8.91 per month, according to the RIAA. (That figure does not include limited-tier subscriptions such as ad-free internet radio.) Those 100 million subscribers generated $10.69 billion over the year, which works out to $106.87 per subscriber per year.
If 10% of those 100 million subscribers — which include student and family plans in addition to standard individual plans — paid more than double the current price, total revenue would increase 10.8% to $11.76 billion, equal to $117.56 per subscriber annually or $9.80 per month. The 10.8% revenue growth is equal to $1.15 billion of incremental royalties.
The RIAA’s average revenue per user (ARPU) of $8.91 for 2024 is lower than the $11.99/$12.99 price being charged for the most popular individual plans, suggesting the 100 million subscribers figure includes many student and family plans. So, to measure the effect of the price increase on the RIAA’s ARPU, I multiplied ARPU by the ratio of the super-premium individual plan ($12.99 + $13.99) to a standard individual plan ($12.99).
So, without an increase in the number of subscribers or a price hike, doubling the fee for a tenth of subscribers would deliver a 10.8% revenue boost. Not all of those consumers would jump to the super-premium tier at once, however, meaning a double-digit increase in subscription revenue would accrue gradually over multiple years.
Charging an additional $1.99 super-premium fee on top of a standard subscription price would result in an incremental $334 million. Total revenue would increase 3.1% to $11.02 billion and ARPU would rise from $8.91 to $9.18.
Another option to expand the subscription base is a low-priced, “subscription-light” tier that incorporates advertising into paid subscriptions. Music streaming subscriptions have kept advertising out of their paid products, but there have been suggestions — namely from Goldman Sachs analysts who prepare the influential Music in the Air report — that a subscription-light tier that includes ads could help expand the subscription market.
Paid video subscriptions used to be a respite from the advertising world, but advertising has become well established on video platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. Amazon Prime now inserts ads in movies, and Netflix and Hulu offer a low-cost, ad-supported option to make their products palatable for more price-conscious consumers.
But MIDiA’s survey suggests a subscription-light option is unpopular. About three-quarters of respondents who aren’t currently subscribed to a music streaming service aren’t interested in starting. This sizeable group of consumers doesn’t listen to music often enough to pay, or they find the current prices too high. Excluding the 100 million U.S. subscribers, there are approximately 188 million Americans aged 13 or older who do not subscribe to a streaming service (there are 51.9 million people under 13). Based on MIDiA’s findings, roughly 141 million of them aren’t interested in paying for a subscription. For them, there’s also YouTube and ad-supported radio.
What’s more, a subscription-light offering could be problematic. MIDiA found that ad-supported paid streaming attracted interest only “at very low price points” and warned it could harm overall subscription revenues by cannibalizing normal subscription tiers. With paid subscriptions currently creating the majority of U.S. recorded music revenue, and with subscription growth playing a prime role in Wall Street’s expectations for music companies, both platforms and labels may be unwilling to put that revenue at risk by offering a less expensive choice to millions of consumers who may soon be looking for ways to tighten their belts.
Spotify customers in the Benelux countries will be paying more for their subscriptions after the streaming company raised prices in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In both the Netherlands and Luxembourg, an individual subscription plan increased to 12.99 euros ($14.73) from 10.99 euros ($12.46). A family plan jumped to 21.99 euros ($24.94) from 17.99 euros […]
Music stocks were battered this week after President Donald Trump unveiled the tariffs that will be applied to imported goods from around the world.
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI) fell 8.2% for the week ended Friday (April 4), marking the largest single-week decline in the index’s two-and-a-half-year history. Among the 17 stocks that posted losses, eight declined by 10% or more, and one — iHeartMedia — far surpassed a 20% decline. Of the 20 stocks on the index, only three South Korean K-pop companies posted gains for the week.
Markets around the world experienced large declines in the wake of the tariffs. In the U.S., the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 10.0% and the S&P 500 dipped 9.1%. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 slipped 7.0%. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index fell 3.6%. China’s SSE Composite Index declined just 0.3%.
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SM Entertainment was the top performer of the week with an 8.3% gain, besting JYP Entertainment’s 3.3% increase and HYBE’s 2.3% improvement. No other music stock finished the week in positive territory, although French company Believe came close with a 0.1% decline.
Spotify fell 10.3% to $503.30, erasing approximately $12 billion of market value. While most stocks cratered on Thursday (April 3), Spotify had fared relatively well by losing just 1.2%. But Spotify shares fell 9.9% on Friday (April 4), paring down the once high-flying stock’s year-to-date gain to 7.9%.
Like Spotify, Tencent Music Entertainment bucked the downward trend on Thursday by suffering only a minor loss, but declined 9.5% on Friday, dropping 9.9% to $12.95.
Radio companies, which are heavily dependent on advertising revenue, were among the most affected stocks. iHeartMedia shares fell 26.8% to $1.20, bringing its year-to-date decline to 43.7%. Cumulus Media dropped 14.9% to $0.40. SiriusXM declined 14.2% to $19.51.
Live entertainment stocks were also hit hard. Sphere Entertainment Co., owner of the Sphere venue in Las Vegas, fell 19.5% to $26.74, mirroring sharp declines in gaming companies reliant on travel to Las Vegas such as Wynn Resorts (down 14.9% this week) and Caesars Entertainment (down 9.7%). Sphere announced on Friday that it has two new experiences in production: The Wizard of Oz at Sphere and From The Edge, a film about extreme sports.
Madison Square Garden Entertainment dropped 11.9% to $29.71, widening its year-to-date loss to 17.2%. Live Nation had been up 7.7% through Wednesday (April 2) but finished the week down 3.4% after losing a combined 10.3% over Thursday and Friday. German concert promoter CTS Eventim fell just 6.2%.
Music stocks started 2025 well, but concerns about tariffs have wiped out the index’s early gains. The BGMI has lost 18.0% of its value since Feb. 14 and has declined in five of the previous seven weeks. Halfway through February, the index had gained nearly 30% in the first six weeks of the young year. By Friday, that year-to-date gain was down to 6.3%.
Billboard
Billboard
Billboard
For years, Spotify’s founder and CEO, Daniel Ek, has aimed to make the streaming service “the world’s number one audio platform.” Between its music, podcast and audiobook offerings, and its formidable market share, it arguably has become just that.
But there’s one form of audio that the service is less excited about: noise. Also referred to as “non-artist noise content,” “non-music,” “functional music” (a commonly used term that some disagree with), and more by Spotify and music industry skeptics, these tracks capture sounds like wind, bird calls and white noise, and have become popular for listeners to stream, often for hours on end, while they sleep, focus, relax or meditate.
As streaming services become increasingly interested in changing their royalty models, these noise tracks have provoked debate between those who believe the content has value and those who feel it takes away from traditional musicians. And as Spotify and Deezer lead the charge, creating new policies that lower the money-making potential of noise, could penalizing this form of audio free up new money for musicians and help curb artificial streaming?
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In early 2023, Lucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group, drew attention to the topic when he began to speak out against noise tracks regularly. “Our industry is entering a new chapter where we’re going to have to pick sides, all of us are going to have to pick sides,” he said at Billboard’s Power 100 event that February. “Are we on the side of…functional music, functional content? Or are we on the side of artistry and artists?”
Those who work in the noise space, however, don’t see the debate as that black and white. “I hate that stance,” says Jordan Smith, co-founder of Arden Records, a label which puts out lo-fi, ambient and field recordings. “We’ve done a lot of nature stuff, including a project with the National Parks, where we’ve released nature sounds. Our artists will go on a hike and field record it. They’ve spent time, effort and energy into that. They shouldn’t be penalized because it’s a different way of listening.”
Some have even dedicated their life to this work. Birmingham, England-born Martyn Smith, for example, has recorded and released 30,000 hours of nature sounds, dating back to the mid 1960s, to streaming services. Smith and his team see it as a method of environmental conservation, given that so many of these habitats were destroyed or permanently altered after Smith recorded them. “When you get to dip your toe into a different world and see people who are committing so much time and energy to [these field recordings], it’s genuinely awe-inspiring,” Smith’s collaborator, Robert Shields, told Billboard previously.
Others don’t have such lofty, artistic goals with noise tracks. One music industry professional, who spoke to Billboard under the condition of anonymity, puts out white noise to make money on the side while working a traditional music job. While they admit they’ve been exploiting the streaming model, ultimately, they say, “Who am I to say what audio is valuable to a Spotify user and what isn’t? Maybe white noise is the only way that person can fall asleep.”
Grainge and others, like Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, see this form of content not as a value add or an artistic endeavor but as a way of siphoning money away from their businesses. “It can’t be that an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof,” Kyncl told investors in 2023. The noise issue has become one of the points of attack in Grainge’s “Streaming 2.0” plan, which aims to revise streaming royalty models to unlock more money for “professional artists” — like the ones signed to major label groups. Along with downgrading the value of noise, it also includes other suggestions, like implementing a threshold of minimum streams to qualify for monetization and penalizing fraudulent activity.
As the CEO of the largest music company in the business, Grainge has gotten his plan implemented at multiple services already, including Spotify and Deezer. While streamers are largely neutral about where they send appropriate royalty payments, as long as it abides by their guidelines, it matters much more to label bosses, who depend on the growing size and proper allocation of the royalty pool.
It’s hard to gauge exactly how much money has been paid out to noise content creators over the years, but its popularity is undeniable. On Apple Music, the playlist “Rain Sounds” is its third most popular offering. In a quick glance on Spotify, one of many tracks featured on its “White Noise 10 Hour” playlist has 226 million Spotify streams and counting.
To combat the amount of money flowing toward this content, Deezer has elected to remove user-uploaded noise content altogether from its service, instead offering company-owned, company-made noise offerings that do not generate royalties. Spotify took a different approach. While it has allowed outside noise tracks to stay on the service, it downgraded royalty-earning potential by 80% in late 2023.
According to a Spotify blog post about these rules, “functional genres…[are] sometimes exploited by bad actors who cut their tracks artificially short — with no artistic merit — in order to maximize royalty-bearing streams… The massive growth of the royalty pool has created a revenue opportunity for noise uploaders well beyond their contribution to listeners.”
While many publicly celebrated these changes, others quietly worried about it. For David Green, founder/CEO of Ameritz, an instrumental record label that has also released field recordings, “When [Spotify’s new rules around noise] were announced last year, there was a bit of fear across all providers. I think it was across the board. You’d be surprised how many providers do this type of [noise content].” Like the anonymous industry professional, many who dabble in noise recordings do it to earn additional income on the side of more traditional music industry work. “Then there was the fear of, ‘Maybe this detection won’t be as accurate as it should be,’” says Green, and it could accidentally pick up music too, especially more experimental ambient works.
For decades, musicians on the cutting edge have experimented with the sometimes-blurry line between music and noise. Musique Concrète, for example, is an experimental form of music that dates back to the 1940s and uses a compilation of raw, found audio to create a sound collage. Ambient musician TJ Dumser, who releases under the moniker Six Missing, says he doesn’t like the idea of people playing the system with white noise, but adds, “I think the only concern for me is, ‘Where is the line? How do we draw the line from noise, ambient and even noise rock? Who is to say what’s not music to somebody else?’”
But one year in, Green says Spotify’s tool seems to be accurate at drawing that line between noise and music. Spotify confirmed to Billboard that to monitor and filter noise tracks effectively it uses Sonalytic, an audio detection technology it acquired in 2022 that can identify songs, mixed content and audio clips, as well as track copyright-protected material. A Deezer spokesperson confirmed that it has an “algorithm that has been specifically trained to detect non-music noise tracks,” but that the company also can manually whitelist tracks that could be detected as noise but actually are experimental music.
While this battle over noise content hit a fever pitch in 2023, determining the value of alternative forms of audio has been a much longer-running challenge for streaming services. In 2014, independent funk band Vulfpeck released Sleepify, a silent album, to Spotify. The band’s frontman, Jack Stratton, then asked fans to stream the 10-track album on repeat overnight while sleeping to fund the band’s upcoming tour. After the project earned an estimated $20,000, Spotify removed the project, saying it violated its terms of content.
The hope is that, over time, these increasingly stringent policies against silent and noise tracks will put more money into musicians’ pockets. Spotify estimates that its new streaming policies, including but not limited to royalty reductions for noise, will lead to an increase of $1 billion available to artists in its royalty pool over the next five years.
When asked for comment about whether or not these policies had their desired effects yet, just over one year in, both Spotify and Deezer have positive, but mixed, results. A Spotify spokesperson said these rules have decreased Spotify’s issues with spam and artificial streaming from noise and decreased the number of short noise tracks. A representative for Deezer says, “The level of fraud, at least in terms of number of attempts, is not directly connected to our catalog cleaning efforts. However, we have seen that fraud has decreased on Deezer between 2023 and 2024.”