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Universal Music Group and Spotify are in “advanced talks” over a high-priced, superfan tier of the streaming service that offers a better user experience than the standard subscription plan. The status of the negotiations were revealed by UMG CFO Boyd Muir on Tuesday during the company’s Capital Markets Day presentation in London. That a Spotify […]
Jelly Roll and mgk are helping Spotify launch its new vodcast series Countdown To, which offers viewers a behind-the-scenes introduction to artists’ upcoming projects as they count down to album launch day.
In July, Spotify expanded its Countdown Pages tool, which helps artists and their fan bases gear up for album launches by allowing listeners to preview tracklists, watch clips, acquire artist/album merch and see a timer count down the seconds until album launch.
With Countdown To, artists sit down with their fellow artists, album collaborators, family members and friends to dive into a new album’s music, themes and inspirations. The interview-spearheaded series is located on the artist’s Countdown Page, while the full video will be available as a vodcast episode on Spotify, and on Spotify’s YouTube page.
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The inaugural episode features Jelly Roll in conversation with mgk, as the countdown ticks to the release of Jelly Roll’s upcoming album Beautifully Broken on Oct. 11. Jelly Roll and mgk previously teamed up for the song “Lonely Road.”
“I felt early in this writing process, it was becoming my journal of mental health,” Jelly Roll said, adding, “It’s the longest time I’ve took writing a single project… I really wrote this record hoping that people would feel that they were spoken for. What I hear the most from people is, ‘Man, this song says what I can’t.’ And that sticks with me, dude… That’s what I want them to get from this album.”
They also discussed how they went from enemies to friends, with mgk saying, “So, our beginnings were interesting,” and sending Jelly Roll into a deep laugh. “It is so funny how much I love you now,” said mgk, “because like, God, I hated you so much back then.”
Jelly replied with a laugh, “I was just a spiteful, bitter f–kin’ dude, you know what I’m saying?” adding, “I explain this to people and they don’t understand the concept because of our age now. Whenever I talk to my daughter, I’m like, ‘You gotta understand there was only like seven white rappers on Earth at this time, so it was so competitive when you was in that pool, that we were kind of automatically forced against each other anyways.”
“For sure,” mgk said. “You’re bred to hate each other.”
“And you were just like, just skinny and handsome,” Jelly Roll said. “So I was like, I was just a hater. I was just a hater, dude! It’s hard to grow up in front of the whole world.”
“This might be one of my favorite mgk disses, was, ‘F–k Machine Gun Kelly and his mohawk,’” mgk said, eliciting more laughs from Jelly Roll. “Because you just had this Southern drawl on your voice, where you didn’t say ‘mohawk,’ you said ‘mo-hawck.’ And that mohawk, dude, my mohawk was f–kin’ just a nice, eight inches of just egg whites and cheap hairspray…”
Jelly Roll’s song “I Am Not Okay,” featured on Beautifully Broken, is currently at No. 9 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart. Meanwhile, the album shares its name with Jelly Roll’s just-launched arena tour, which also features openers Warren Zeiders and Alexandra Kay.
Jelly Roll also talked about the struggle of balancing life on the road with being there for his family, and the two also discussed the ever-broadening reaches of country music, and compared the widening borders of rock and country.
“Countdown To is the latest effort in our ongoing commitment to spotlight artists and their new music on Spotify,” Sarah Patellos, head of Spotify Music Studios, said in a statement. “Working with director Karam Gill and mgx creative, these intimate conversations are shot documentary-style to really get to the root of each artist’s creative journey.”
See Jelly Roll and mgk’s discussion below:
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Spotify has defeated a long-running lawsuit that claimed Eminem’s music was streamed illegally “billions” of times on the platform, winning a ruling that sharply criticized the rapper’s publisher for filing the case in the first place.
Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, sued Spotify in 2019, claiming the streamer had made hundreds of the rapper’s songs available without proper licenses. That included mega-hits like “Lose Yourself,” which has been streamed more than 1 billion times on the service.
But in a decision last month, a federal judge dismissed those accusations entirely, ruling that Eight Mile had essentially manufactured a lawsuit for its own gain. The publisher knew for years that its songs were being played on Spotify, the judge wrote, but had chosen to do nothing in order to build a more lucrative legal case against the streamer.
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“Eight Mile Style was not a hapless victim,” Judge Aleta A. Trauger wrote. “While Spotify’s handling of composer copyrights appears to have been seriously flawed, any right to recover damages based on those flaws belongs to those innocent rights holders who were genuinely harmed, not ones who, like Eight Mile Style, had every opportunity to set things right and simply chose not to do so for no apparent reason, other than that being the victim of infringement pays better than being an ordinary licensor.”
An attorney for Eight Mile Style did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision. Eminem himself was not involved in the case.
At the center of the long legal battle is the chaotic system that governed streaming royalties in the U.S. for much of the 2010s, in which streamers like Spotify often failed to pay the proper rights holders. That messy situation was mostly fixed by the 2018 enactment of the federal Music Modernization Act (MMA), which created a single blanket license for streamers to pay.
The MMA largely immunized streamers like Spotify from lawsuits over past misdeeds, wiping the slate clean if they paid for the blanket license and complied with other requirements. But a year after the statute was enacted, Eight Mile sued anyway — arguing, among other things, that the landmark law itself was unconstitutional because it violated due process and negated the company’s copyrights.
In her ruling last month, Judge Trauger entirely avoided those lofty constitutional questions about the MMA, saying she would leave them “for a future case involving an appropriate plaintiff.” But like other aspects of her ruling, she suggested that “teeing up a constitutional showdown” had been another “strategic” decision by Eight Mile aimed at securing a bigger payout.
“The MMA framework was the culmination of what may have been one of the most high-stakes policymaking efforts in the history of copyright, and whether that framework survives has implications for the economy of music that go far beyond the rights of any individual artist, even a popular one like Eminem,” the judge wrote. “A lawsuit that imperiled the MMA could cost Spotify a great deal more than any one artist could ever claim — and could, potentially, justify a more generous settlement.”
In technical terms, Judge Trauger’s ruling cited the legal doctrine of equitable estoppel, which bars litigants from behaving unfairly to win advantage in court cases. In applying that rule to Eight Mile, she said the publisher “improperly chose the cultivation of infringement damages over the proper functioning of the copyright system.”
Eight Mile clearly knew that some of its most valuable IP was being used by Spotify, the judge wrote, and the entire lawsuit could have been avoided if Eight Mile had “simply sent a single, clear cease-and-desist letter.” But she said the company instead “simply allowed its rights to be violated.”
“If Eight Mile Style had come forward to contest the status quo, it would have brought this situation to a much quicker end, but it did not,” Judge Trauger wrote. “The only plausible reason for this course of action is that … allowing infringement to continue on a large scale is more economically beneficial to the purported victim than the licit streaming economy would be.”
Even if Eight Mile’s accusations against Spotify had been legally valid, the judge ruled that the damages wouldn’t have been Spotify’s to pay. Instead, she ruled that the liability would have belonged to Kobalt, because the company had signed a licensing deal with Spotify for the Eminem songs at issue and had agreed to indemnify the streamer for any such legal problems.
As it was, that question was largely moot because the judge had mostly rejected Eight Mile’s lawsuit. But she ruled that Kobalt would likely need to cover Spotify’s legal expenses incurred in defending the lawsuit — likely a sizeable sum after five years of litigation. That issue will be subject to future proceedings.
A representative for Spotify did not immediately return requests for comment. A representative for Kobalt declined to comment.
When Michael “Mike” Smith was indicted Wednesday (Sept. 4) over allegations that he used an AI music company to create “hundreds of thousands” of songs and then used bots to artificially earn $10 million in streaming income since 2017, prosecutors claimed that some of the money flowed back to that AI music company. The indictment also claimed that Smith was in consistent contact with its CEO — but it never revealed their names.
ASCAP/BMI Songview records and the MLC database indicate that Alex Mitchell, CEO/founder of popular AI music company Boomy, is listed as the co-writer on at least hundreds of the 200,000 plus songs that are registered to Smith. Boomy also released a song, “This Isn’t Real Life,” jointly with Smith, CVBZ and Stunna 4 Vegas.
In a statement to Billboard, Mitchell says: “We were shocked by the details in the recently filed indictment of Michael Smith, which we are reviewing. Michael Smith consistently represented himself as legitimate.”
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The indictment alleges that around 2018, “Smith began working with the Chief Executive Officer of an [unnamed] AI music company and a music promoter to create thousands of songs that Smith could then fraudulently stream.” Within months, the CEO was allegedly providing Smith with “thousands of songs each week.”
In June 2019, the indictment says that Smith reported to the AI music CEO and the promoter that “we are at 88 million TOTAL STREAMS so far!!!” Smith explained to the CEO and promoter that his streams were earning about $110,000 per month and that the two men were each receiving 10% of the proceeds. Smith later asked the AI CEO to provide him with another 10,000 AI songs so that he could “spread this out more” with his streams. The indictment states that this was “to evade detection from streaming platforms.”
Eventually, according to the indictment, Smith entered a “Master Services Agreement” with this AI music company that supplied Smith with 1,000-10,000 songs per month. The deal stated that Smith would have “full ownership of the intellectual property rights in the songs.” In turn, Smith would provide the AI company with metadata and the “greater of $2,000 or 15% of the streaming revenue” he generated from the AI songs.
“Keep in mind what we’re doing musically here… this is not ‘music,’ it’s ‘instant music’ ;)” the AI CEO wrote to Smith in an email that was included in the indictment.
Mitchell’s publisher is listed as Songtrust, a publishing administration company owned by Downtown, which typically earns a percentage of signees’ royalties in exchange for services. Smith’s publisher, Smithhouse Music Publishing, also lists Songtrust as its point of contact on Songview.
A representative for Songtrust declined Billboard’s request for comment. However, a source close to the matter tells Billboard that Smith and Mitchell’s Songtrust deals were terminated more than a year ago.
While it is not unheard of for an AI company to be approached by customers who are looking to buy a large number of songs, multiple AI music executives tell Billboard that it is common to know why the customer wants the tracks and to do “KYC,” or “know your client,” checks to ensure they are above board.
Typically, customers for large sums of songs tend to be companies that are seeking cheap music alternatives, often for social media content. Other requests tend to come from unknown individuals outside of the U.S., especially streaming fraud hotspots like Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and Brazil. These parties are often denied. Two sources say it’s surprising to see a CEO’s name listed in the credits as a songwriter when these transactions occur.
Boomy has been at the forefront of AI music since its infancy. Records vary as to when Boomy launched in beta, with some online sources saying 2018 and others saying 2019. It officially debuted in 2021, according to an announcement from Axios. The company claims on its website to have made over 20 million AI-generated tracks to date.
Boomy has also won the respect of the music industry establishment. For years, Boomy was distributing many of its AI tracks through a partnership with New York-based music services giant Downtown. Though this partnership was in place during the same time frame as Smith’s alleged fraudulent activities, it is unclear if any of Smith’s allegedly fraudulent AI tracks were distributed through Downtown. The indictment does state, however, that Smith used two distributors to upload content from 2017-2024, one based in New York and one based in Florida.
In May 2023, Boomy told users via Discord that Spotify had shut down its ability to upload songs to the DSP and that some of their released tracks had been removed. “This decision was made by Spotify and Boomy’s distributor in order to enable a review of potentially anomalous activity,” Boomy said at the time. Spotify later confirmed that the “anomalous activity” was related to possible streaming fraud detected on certain tracks. A Spotify spokesperson said at the time, “Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”
In fall 2023, Boomy announced that it had partnered with fraud detection company Beatdapp to combat streaming manipulation. A month later, Boomy also announced that it had reached a new distribution partnership with ADA Worldwide, a company under the Warner Music Group (WMG) umbrella.
WMG is one of Boomy’s top investors, making both a pre-seed round as well as a seed round investment. Other Boomy investors include Sound Media Ventures, First Check Ventures, Intonation Ventures, Future Labs, Boost VC and Scrum Venture, according to Crunchbase.
According to Songview and the MLC database, the same tracks that list Smith and Mitchell as co-writers also list a music industry veteran named Bram Bessoff, founder of promotional platform Indiehitmaker. Typically, these tracks allocate 10% of publishing ownership and royalties to Bessoff, which matches the amount the indictment indicates was paid to the unnamed promoter. Bessoff’s publisher is listed as Songtrust as well. (A source close to the matter says Bessoff’s deal with Songtrust was also terminated more than a year ago).
Bessoff declined Billboard’s request for comment, citing his cooperation in the ongoing investigation.
By the mid-2010s, the power of the playlist — the Spotify playlist to be exact — loomed large in the music business: Everyone knew a spot on Rap Caviar could mint a rap hit overnight; a placement on Fresh Finds could induce a label bidding war; and a lower-than-expected ranking on New Music Friday could ruin a label project manager’s Thursday night.
But in the 2020s, challengers — namely TikTok, with its potent and mysterious algorithm that serves social media users with addictive snippets of songs as they scroll — have threatened Spotify’s reign as music industry kingmaker. Still, Spotify’s editorial playlists remain one of the most important vehicles for music promotion, and its 100-plus member global team, led by its global head of editorial Sulinna Ong, has evolved to meet the changing times.
“Our editorial expertise is both an art and a science,” says Ong, who has led the company through its recent efforts to use technology to offer more personalized playlist options, like its AI DJ, Daylist and daily mixes. “We’re always thinking about how we can introduce you to your next favorite song to your next favorite artist. How do we provide context to get you to engage? Today, the challenge is cutting through the noise to get your attention.”
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In conversation with Billboard, Ong talks about training the AI DJ with the editors’ human expertise, using playlists to differentiate Spotify from its competition and looking ahead to Generation Alpha (ages 0-14).
I’ve seen such a shift in the editorial strategy at Spotify in the last couple years. Daylist, personalized editorial playlists (marked by the “made for you” tag), daily mixes, AI DJ and more. Did those inspire your team to push into these personalized editorial playlists?
To start off, it’s useful to zoom out and think about how people listen to music. The way people listen to music is fluid and curation and editorial has to be fluid as well. We have to understand the changes.
Curators have always been at the core of Spotify’s identity, right from the early days of the company. Back in 2012, Spotify’s music team started with three editors, and it quickly grew to more than 100 around the world today. These curators started by curating what became known as our flagship editorial playlists — Today’s Top Hits, Rap Caviar, Viva Latino. Over time that expanded to playlists like Altar, Lorem, Pollen, etc. Those are all still important.
But around 2018, editors made their first attempts to bridge human curation from our flagship editorial playlists with personalization engines. 2018 is the year when the technology arose with personalization and machine learning to open up these possibilities. At that time, we started making more personalized playlists where the tracks fit with an overall mood or moment curated by editors but varied for each listener — like My Life Is A Movie, Beastmode, Classic Roadtrip Songs. Editors will select a number of songs that they feel fit that playlist. Let’s say for example we have 200 songs selected, you might see the 100 of those that are most aligned with your taste.
Discover Weekly and Release Radar are tailored to listener activity and have been around much longer. Did those inspire your team to push into these personalized editorial playlists around 2018?
Yes, exactly. Algorithmic playlists, like Release Radar [and] Discover Weekly, we found that users liked them [and] that inspired us to then work with the product teams and ask, “What is the next step of this?” Spotify has more than 500 million users. We knew that it would keep growing and as a human curator, you can’t manually curate to that entire pool. Technology can fill in that gap and increase our possibilities. A lot of times, I see narratives where people call this a dichotomy — either playlists are human-made or machine-made. We don’t see it that way.
In 2024, personalization and machine learning are even more important technologies for streaming music and watching content. We’ve kept investing in cutting-edge personalization and it’s making a real impact — 81% of our listeners cite personalization as their favorite thing about Spotify. Our static editorial playlists are still very powerful, but we also have made these other listening experiences to round out the picture.
How someone listens is never one thing. Do you only want to watch movies? No, you want to watch a movie sometimes; other times you want to watch a 20-minute TV show. We have to understand the various ways that you might like to [listen].
Daylist, for example, is very ephemeral. It only exists for a certain amount of time. The appeal is in the title — it also really resonates for a younger audience.
Did your team always intend that Daylist, which often gives users crazy titles like “Whimsical Downtown Vibes Tuesday Evening,” could be shareable — even memeable — on social media?
Absolutely. It’s very shareable. It’s a bite-sized chunk of daily joy that you get that you can post about online.
It reminds me of the innately shareable nature of Spotify Wrapped.
There is a lineage there. It is similar because it’s a reminder of what you’re listening to. But it’s repackaged in a humorous way — light and fun and it updates so it keeps people coming back.
How do you think Spotify’s editorial team differentiates itself from competitors like Apple and Amazon?
Early on, we understood that editorial expertise around the world is really valuable, and it was needed to set us apart. So we have editors all around the world. They are really the music experts of the company. They are focused on understanding the music and the cultural scenes where they are.
We have what we call “editorial philosophy.” One of the tenets of that is our Global Curation Groups, or “GCGs” for short. Once a week, editors from around the world meet and identify tracks that are doing well and should flow from one market to another. We talk about music trends, artists we are excited about. We talk about new music mainly but also music that is resurfacing from social media trends.
This is how we got ahead on spreading genres like K-pop seven years ago. We were playlisting it and advocating for it spreading around the world. Musica Mexicana and Amapiano — we were early [with those] too. We predicted that streaming would reduce the barriers of entry in terms of language, so we see genres and artists coming from non-Western, non-English speaking countries really making an impact on the global music scene.
How was the AI DJ trained to give the commentary and context it gives?
We’ve essentially spun up a writers’ room. We have our editors work with our product team and script writers to add in some context about the artists and tracks that the DJ can share with listeners. The info they feed in can be musical facts, culturally-relevant insights. We want listeners to feel connected to the artists they hear on a human level. At the end of the day, this approach to programming also really helps us broaden out the pool of exposure, particularly for undiscovered artists and tracks. We’ve seen that people who hear the commentary from DJ are more likely to listen to a song they would have otherwise skipped.
When Spotify editorial playlists started, the cool, young, influential audience was millennials. Now it’s Gen Z. What challenges did that generational shift pose?
We think about this every day in our work. Now, we’re even thinking about the next generation after Gen Z, Gen Alpha [children age 14 and younger]. I think the key difference is our move away from genre lines. Where we once had a strictly rock playlist, we are now building playlists like POV or My Life Is A Movie. It’s a lifestyle or an experience playlist. We also see that younger listeners like to experiment with lots of different listening experiences. We try to be very playful about our curation and offer those more ephemeral daily playlists.
What are you seeing with Gen Alpha so far? I’m sure many of them are still on their parents’ accounts, but do you have any insight into how they might see music differently than other generations as they mature?
Gaming. Gaming is really an important space for them. Music is part of the fabric of how we play games now — actually, that’s how these kids often discover and experience music, especially on Discord and big MMOs — massive multiplayer games. We think about this culture a lot because it is mainstream culture for someone of that age.
Gaming is so interesting because it is such a dynamic, controllable medium. Recorded music, however, is totally static. There have been a few startups, though, that are experimenting with music that can morph as you play the game.
Yeah, we’re working on making things playful. There’s a gamification in using Daylist, right? It’s a habit. You come back because you want to see what’s new. We see the AI DJ as another way to make music listening more interactive, less static.
Spotify has been known as a destination for music discovery for a long time. Now, listeners are increasingly turning to TikTok and social media for this. How do you make sure music discovery still continues within Spotify for its users?
That comes down to, again, the editorial expertise and the GCGs I mentioned before. We have 100-plus people whose job it is to be the most tapped-in people in terms of what’s happening around the world in their genre. That’s our biggest strength in terms of discovery because we have a large team of people focused on it. Technology just adds on to that human expertise.
Back when Spotify playlists first got popular, a lot of people compared the editors to the new generation of radio DJs. How do you feel about that comparison?
It’s not a one-to-one comparison. I can understand the logic of how some people might get there. But, if I’m very frank, the editorial job that we do is not about us. Radio DJs, it’s all about them, their personality. It’s not about them as a DJ or a front face of a show. Not to be disparaging to radio DJs — their role is important — it’s just not the same thing. I don’t think we are gatekeepers. I say that because it is never about me or us as editors. It’s about the music, the artist and the audience’s experience. It’s very simple: I want to introduce you to your next favorite song. Yes, we have influence. I recognize that in the industry. It’s one I take very seriously. That’s a privilege and a responsibility, but it is not about us at the end of the day.
This story was published as part of Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up for ‘Machine Learnings,’ and Billboard’s other newsletters, here.
TikTok creates viral hits. YouTube is unparalleled in its ubiquity. But music subscription services pay the bills.
More than three out of every five dollars earned by U.S. record labels in the first half of 2024 — 60.2% to be exact — came from premium subscription services, according to the RIAA’s mid-year report. That marks the first time subscriptions exceeded a 60% share of total revenue, topping the 59.5% share in the first half of 2023 and the 59.3% mark for full-year 2023.
Ad-supported on-demand streaming, on the other hand, has lost momentum, growing just 2.5%, half the rate of paid subscriptions. The slowdown has been dramatic: Three years ago, advertising revenue rebounded from a pandemic slowdown by surging 54.1% in the first half of 2021 and another 17.7% in the first half of 2022. Its share of total industry revenue — 10.4% — has slipped, too, from 10.5.%, 11.3% and 10.5% in the three preceding first-half periods.
Other ad-supported segments also lag paid subscriptions’ growth rate. SoundExchange distributions, which include some ad-supported streaming as well as royalties paid by satellite radio subscribers, rose just 3.8% to $517 million. Other ad-supported streaming, which covers services not operating under statutory licenses, fell 1.5% to $155 million.
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The situation around advertising is worse than the numbers might suggest. Ad-supported, on-demand streaming isn’t confined to services such as Spotify’s free tier and YouTube. A new generation of platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, are grouped into this category, too. Without these emerging platforms, ad-supported streaming would look even worse off.
For an industry that must constantly seek growth, advertising is too small to play the role. In the most recent quarter, Spotify got 12% of its revenue from advertising — both music and podcasts — compared to 88% from subscriptions. Even if advertising becomes a bigger part of the business, CEO Daniel Ek said during the company’s April 23 earnings call, it won’t be a major factor in helping the company reach 20% revenue growth. “Anything we can do on our subscription side will obviously materially outperform any improvement on the ad side,” said Ek.
Free music has played an important role in building today’s music ecosystem, though. In 2009, author Chris Anderson followed The Long Tail with a lesser-known book titled Free that promoted the notion that not charging for digital goods can be a wise strategy. While The Long Tail was a smash success, Free never rose to the same level of renown. But Anderson’s idea proved to have merit. The same year Free was published, Spotify launched a “freemium” music streaming service in the United Kingdom—the world’s third-largest music market—that utilized a free, ad-supported tier intended to drive listeners to the paid version. Ad-supported royalties were miniscule, but it worked as planned. Free listening turned out to be an effective tool to attract customers that would, at some point in the future, become some of Spotify’s 246 million subscribers.
The growth potential for the subscription business lays outside the U.S. Globally, subscription streaming accounted for 48.9% of recorded music revenue in 2023, according to the IFPI, more than 11 percentage points below the share in the U.S. (The RIAA reports retail value in the U.S. while the IFPI reports wholesale values for each market.) Worldwide subscription penetration is only 15%, Warner Music Group CFO Bryan Castellani noted during an Aug. 7 earnings call, “and there’s a lot of headroom to go from 800 million subscriptions today to well over a billion over the next five years.”
The future may be a combination of free and subscription. In May, Sony Music Entertainment CEO Rob Stringer called for streaming platforms to charge users of ad-supported tiers a “modest fee” to make free streaming “more than a marketing funnel” to attract customers. Stringer also called on short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to step up their payments to rights owners. “More and more, these are primary consumption sources, and they need to be valued accordingly,” he said.
With subscriptions now exceeding 60% of U.S. revenue and advertising losing share, free platforms will likely come under more pressure to deliver more royalties. Until that happens, though, expect the industry to increasingly put its hopes for revenue growth in subscriptions.
Spotify is demanding that a federal judge toss out a lawsuit filed by the Mechanical Licensing Collective over royalty rates, calling the case “nonsensical” and “wasteful.”
The MLC sued earlier this year, claiming Spotify had “unilaterally and unlawfully” chosen to cut its music royalty payments nearly in half through bookmaking trickery – namely, by claiming that the addition of audiobooks to the service entitled the company to pay a lower “bundled” rate.
But in a motion to dismiss filed in court Tuesday, Spotify calls those claims “meritless and wasteful” – arguing that making hundreds of thousands of audiobooks available to subscribers was not a “token” gesture aimed at reducing music royalties.
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“MLC’s position is nonsensical and factually unsupportable,” Spotify’s lawyers write. “And it profoundly devalues the contributions of the tens of thousands of book authors whose works are available with a Spotify Premium subscription—from literary luminaries, to mainstays on best sellers lists, to up-and-coming writers who are finding their audience.”
The MLC, which collects streaming royalties for songwriters and publishers, filed its lawsuit in late May — a week after Billboard estimated that Spotify’s move would result in the company paying roughly $150 million less over the next year. In its complaint, the MLC claimed Spotify was “erroneously recharacterizing” the nature of its streaming services to secure the lower rate.
“The financial consequences of Spotify’s failure to meet its statutory obligations are enormous for songwriters and music publishers,” the group’s attorneys wrote at the time. “If unchecked, the impact on songwriters and music publishers of Spotify’s unlawful underreporting could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
At issue in the lawsuit is Spotify’s recent addition of audiobooks to its premium subscription service. The streamer believes that because of the new offering, it’s now entitled to pay a discounted “bundled” royalty rate under the federal legal settlement that governs how much streamers pay rightsholders.
In Tuesday’s motion, Spotify’s lawyers strongly defend that interpretation. They argue that the market for audiobooks has attracted “billions in consumer dollars” and that adding books was the kind of valuable new perk that had been intended to be covered by the lower bundled rate.
“At the heart of this dispute is an easily answered question: Is audiobook streaming distinct from music streaming, offering greater than token value?” the company’s lawyers write. “The answer is indisputably yes, and there is no need for federal court litigation to confirm it.”
The rule at issue says that streamers can use the bundled rate if they offer “one or more other products or services having more than token value.” Claiming that more than 200,000 audiobooks does not qualify under that rule is “baffling,” Spotify’s lawyers write.
“The creative output of these authors is not merely of ‘token value’,” Tuesday’s filing says. “Acceptance of that unassailable, commonsense proposition should end this meritless and wasteful litigation.”
MLC’s attorneys will file a formal response to the motion in court in the coming months. In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, the group said: “The MLC’s general practice is not to comment publicly on pending litigations. That said, we would reiterate that we take the enforcement obligations assigned to us by Congress extremely seriously and would refer you to the complaint we filed in this matter for more details regarding our position on this matter.”
Sony Music Masterworks acquired a majority stake in Black Sky Creative, a company that produces immersive entertainment, experiential retail and live experiences for IP and brands. Black Sky will become part of Masterworks’ live division and focus on creating scalable experiential properties across music, film/TV, gaming and more. Black Sky founder Jeff Delson will continue leading the company’s day-to-day operations, while his partners Lee Rosen and Shannon Ramirez will work to develop new projects for Masterworks in close collaboration with Masterworks president Mark Cavell.
Independent label Oh Boy Records inked a worldwide distribution deal with Secretly Distribution. Oh Boy Records was founded in 1981 by singer-songwriter John Prine and continues to be run by the late artist’s family. Oh Boy’s catalog includes albums from Prine, Kelsey Waldon, Swamp Dogg, Alice Randall and Arlo McKinley. Oh Boy artist Dan Reeder’s album Smithereens and music from folk trio Palmyra will be among the first new Oh Boy titles to be handled by Secretly Distribution’s global team and distribution network. – Jessica Nicholson
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Audio Chateau Records, the new label launched by Audio Up Media, raised $4.5 million in funding from investors including Glen Barros, Gillian Hormel and Jonathan Schulman. The label also announced part of its leadership team, with Baros (a managing partner at Exceleration Music) and Schulman acting as Audio Chateau’s first appointed board members. Elsewhere, Grayson Flatness (formerly of Sounds Good) joins Audio Chateau as an A&R consultant and Kate London has been named head of legal & business affairs, a role she also serves at Audio Up Media. Audio Chateau’s artist roster includes Grupo Linea, Uncle Drank, Randy Savvy of the Compton Cowboys and Maejor Audio Sunshine, described in a press release as a “health and wellness supergroup” that features Audio Up founder Jared Gudstadt along with artists Maejor and Bipolar Sunshine.
ADA partnered with former Hall of Fame athlete and banker Travis Wilson‘s FTS Global Management to provide global distribution for FTS’ artists, including The Game, Eric Bellinger and Konshens.
Resale marketplace Tixel partnered with Stuart Galbraith‘s U.K. concert and festival promoter Kilimanjaro Live. Through the deal, Tixel will provide Kilimanjaro with tools that enhance transparency and fairness, including dynamic pricing and secure resale options for fans, while offering insights into Kilimanjaro’s customer base. “We are thrilled to announce Tixel as our partner on a number of KMJ shows,” said KMJ Entertainment head of partnerships Elliott Brough in a statement. “This collaboration marks our first steps towards offering safe ticket resale for fans who can’t attend and ensuring that live music enthusiasts are not exploited by touts. Partnering with Tixel not only provides us with valuable data but also opens up opportunities to develop unique strategies for our future events. “
Spotify partnered with anime brand Crunchyroll, which will now have custom “Curated by Crunchyroll” playlists within Spotify’s Anime hub as well as a “dedicated shelf of content” within the hub, including Crunchyroll podcast Crunchyroll Presents: The Anime Effect. The hub will also boast an editorially curated lineup of playlists including Anime Now, Anime on Replay and Women of Anime. “We are thrilled to partner with Crunchyroll to bring listeners a new curation of anime music to explore,” said Kyota Onishi, Spotify’s head of music in Japan, in a statement. “On Spotify, global streams of anime have surged over the past few years, and we hope the Anime hub will become an indispensable part of anime culture.”
French streamer Deezer signed a multi-year joint distribution partnership with global sports streaming service DAZN. Starting in France, Deezer users will be offered premium access to DAZN, with DAZN offering similar access to Deezer users later in the year. Through the agreement, both companies will collaborate through marketing initiatives and create co-branded sports and music experiences. A global expansion is planned down the road, starting with Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Synchtank, which provides asset, rights and royalty software for the music business, struck a partnership with AI-based stem separation and lyric transcription company AudioShake. Through the deal, Synchtank users will be able to create AudioShake stems directly within their workflows that can then be used for remixes, immersive mixing, fan engagement and more. “Sync deals move fast, and in this industry it’s critical for artists and labels to act quickly,” said AudioShake co-founder/CEO Jessica Powell in a statement. “AI stems help prevent rightsholders from missing out on opportunities and revenue in sync, marketing, or fan engagement. Partnering with Synchtank allows us to bring high-quality sound separation directly into the workflow of rightsholders globally.”
Virgin Music Group partnered with Riot Games to release the soundtrack album for season 2 of the Riot Games animated series Arcane on Netflix. Virgin will distribute the album globally with the exception of China, where Tencent will distribute. The Emmy-winning Arcane, whose first season debuted on Netflix in November 2021, centers on two champions from Riot’s League of Legends game. Season 1 featured Imagine Dragons’ “Enemy” as its theme song, with the overall soundtrack racking up more than 5.6 billion global streams, according to a press release. Season 2 is set to debut in November, with the soundtrack album dropping sometime this fall.
After fully embracing Charli XCX’s Brat summer, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for president has taken Harris’ connection to the pop singer one step further by sponsoring Spotify’s official “This is Charli XCX” playlist.
Listeners on Spotify’s free, ad-supposed tier will now see an ad running on the playlist stating that the content is presented by the Harris/Walz campaign — effectively promoting the campaign for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Spotify’s free users will see the ad on both mobile and desktop versions of the Spotify app.
The two-and-a-half hour, career-spanning playlist boasts some of Charli XCX’s best-known songs, including “Guess” featuring Billie Eilish, “Speed Drive” from the Barbie soundtrack and “Boom Clap” from 2014’s sucker.
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According to Spotify’s advertising policy, the streaming service sells political ads in the U.S., U.K. and India only and has done so for a number of years.
The fine print states that ads are limited to those placed by candidates; political parties; political committees; any entity registered or reporting under any federal, state or local campaign finance law; or other entities sponsoring ads on behalf of any of the above-listed categories. The ads may feature a candidate for elected office; a current elected officeholder; or a ballot measure, proposition or initiative. It adds that the title sponsor (in this case, the Harris/Walz campaign) is not the only sponsor and other ads may be heard during a listening session.
The Harris/Walz ad began running at midnight on Monday (Aug. 19) and is slated to end on Sunday night (Aug. 25). Spotify did not respond to a question asking whether Charli XCX had to sign off on the ad.
Other U.S. political campaigns that have run ads on Spotify this year include those of Sherrod Brown, Eric Hovde, Sandy Pensler, Rick Scott, Elissa Slotkin and Tim Sheehy.
Though Charli XCX has not commented on the ad buy, the singer has previously declared her support for Harris. On July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris, the pop star posted “kamala IS brat” on X (formerly Twitter). The KamalaHQ X page has also leaned in, with the home page displaying “kamala hq” in the Brat album’s signature lime green color.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday night at Chicago’s United Center with performances from artists including Jason Isbell, Mickey Guyton and James Taylor.
Billie Eilish is officially Spotify‘s most streamed monthly artist, the streaming platform announced on Monday (Aug. 19), replacing The Weeknd at the summit. The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) showed his support for Eilish last week, when she was nearing his record. “Let’s go !” he wrote alongside a series of heart, prayer and line […]