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Last year, studio and production house OBB Media teamed up with iHeart to produce the annual Jingle Ball TV Special, the annual holiday event that airs on ABC each year as a two-hour broadcast. Featuring performances from some of the top artists in the business, the special is culled from the two live Jingle Ball holiday concerts held in New York and Los Angeles. Last year’s special, which aired Dec. 21, 2023, on ABC, landed as the No. 1 TV program among adults aged 18-49 and No. 2 overall on the night that it aired, with 9.5 million people tuning in — a 500% increase over the year prior. That marked the highest total viewers for the special since 2013.
This year, OBB and iHeart teamed up once again for Jingle Ball, which aired Wednesday (Dec. 18) on ABC and is now available to stream on Hulu. Featuring performances by the likes of Shaboozey, Benson Boone and Gracie Abrams, the special aimed to not only be a showcase for performances but an engaging presentation that went beyond just a filmed concert into “an experience and a show,” OBB Media founder/CEO Michael D. Ratner tells Billboard. 

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Jingle Ball isn’t OBB’s only foray into the music world. This year alone, the OBB’s live division (the company also houses TV, film, music video, studio and branded content wings) produced a concert film for The Kid LAROI, the Hulu live special on the iHeart Music Festival, and, most recently, Sabrina Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas Netflix special, which highlighted the breakout star’s holiday fruitcake EP (which subsequently landed in the top 10 of the Billboard 200) as well as performances by Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Tyla, Shania Twain and more. And all that helps make Ratner Billboard’s Executive of the Week.

Here, Ratner discusses OBB’s work on Jingle Ball, the Carpenter special and what film and TV content can do for an artist’s career. “There’s a lot of clutter in the market,” Ratner says, “and content can be an incredibly powerful differentiator in helping artists pop, especially as the creation of content has become completely democratized.”

This week, OBB and iHeart worked to produce the annual Jingle Ball TV special, which aired Dec. 18 and is now streaming. What key decision did you make to help make that happen?

Audiences don’t just want a concert, they want an experience and a show. OBB partnered with iHeartRadio to make sure that the two-hour special is dynamic, funny, tells a story, brings you closer to the artist and, most importantly, delivers great music.

What stood out to you the most about working on this year’s event?

I really think this year’s show represented the next wave of incredible talent stepping into the spotlight — from Gracie Abrams to Tate McRae, Shaboozey, The Kid LAROI and Benson Boone, it was a really exciting group. Also, filming live in arenas is always invigorating, and it was exciting to film the L.A. show in the brand-new Intuit Dome. 

You guys also worked on Jingle Ball last year, which was the No. 1 rated TV program among adults (18-49) and No. 2 overall on the night when it aired. What did you learn from working on it last year that you were able to apply to this year, and how did you do things differently?

Last year we saw social media engagement for the show spike about 10 times more than the prior year, so we leaned into that even further this year, focusing on cutting more social clips to engage individual fanbases and help build a community-watching experience. Also with the Thanksgiving break falling a week later this year, our turnaround time to deliver the special after the L.A. and New York shows was shrunk to four days — and it’s already a quick turnaround — so we were even more efficient and streamlined on the backend to navigate editorial, artist approvals and delivery. 

You guys also produced Sabrina Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas special on Netflix. How did that come together, and what was that like behind the scenes?

We’re constantly trying to push the boundaries and think about innovative ways to collaborate with exceptional talent. We — and specifically Simone Spira, who is a production and development executive here — had the idea internally at OBB to do a holiday variety music special with Sabrina, as we all loved the fruitcake EP and knew she could carry her own, given her authentic love of the holidays and that she could dance, sing, act and do it all. This all proved to be true as the show is everywhere — it’s dominating the internet, Sabrina surprised fans at the NYC premiere which was awesome, she was on Colbert, and it even made the SNL Weekend Update, which was a personal favorite moment for me, as I grew up watching SNL all the time. 

How important can a TV special be for an artist’s career?

Incredibly important. But it’s not just the TV special — content that brings you closer to your fans and your community is an essential companion piece to the music. Whether it’s a TV special, thoughtful social content, or anything in between, content is going to continue to be a larger piece of an artist’s strategy. There’s a lot of clutter in the market and content can be an incredibly powerful differentiator in helping artists pop, especially as the creation of content has become completely democratized. 

How important is music to what OBB Media does?

OBB is a storytelling company and we love making projects that are culturally relevant. Musicians have always been and continue to be key tastemakers and culture creators, so music is a key fixture in everything we do.

What’s next for you guys?

We have a VR special coming out on Meta Quest on Dec. 27 starring Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, which we filmed at the Forum during the SWEAT Tour. We love working on music projects in all of these different formats and mediums, and I think it’s a testament to how music is the throughline no matter how technology, viewing patterns and audience behaviors evolve. We’re also filming more of our Billions Club series with Spotify, and we’re excited for some major episodes with incredible artists that are coming soon. Looking ahead to 2025, we have some really big stuff coming that we can’t talk about quite yet, but stay tuned.

A year ago, SiriusXM launched a new streaming app filled with original and licensed content from its satellite radio service and set the price at $9.99 — far below the roughly $16 average monthly revenue it takes in per satellite subscriber. The hope was that a relatively affordable price and an improved app would help SiriusXM reach younger consumers and expand beyond its core in-car satellite radio listeners.  
The new app was “just the beginning,” CEO Jennifer Witz said at the time, adding that SiriusXM would “continue to iterate and develop our product offerings throughout the next year and beyond as we strive to deliver our subscribers the best listening experience on the go, in the car, and wherever they choose to tune in.” The company’s satellite radio business was built on vehicles. If you buy a new or used car, you’ll likely get a free SiriusXM trial that’s extremely effective at convincing people to subscribe once their trial is over. The new streaming app was intended to attract people who would listen outside of the car.  

But selling the radio experience in a smartphone app didn’t go well. As it turns out, the streaming app hasn’t produced a good return on marketing spending, Witz said on Tuesday (Dec. 10). Appearing at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, the executive cited “slow progress” in turning free trials into long-term retention. As a result, SiriusXM has already cut back its marketing spend on the app and expects to have fewer streaming trials — and thus fewer subscribers — in the future. That was a worse assessment than what Witz delivered on SiriusXM’s Aug. 2 earnings call. At that time, when asked about conversion rates for the app, Witz said they had been “challenged” but maintained positivity, adding that there had been some “positive results” with first-time trial adopters and that the company was “confident” it could attract “a different audience” that will be “incremental” to the existing car-based business.  

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Now, after its underwhelming experiment with the app, SiriusXM will, in Witz’s words, be “leaning into our strengths.” In other words, the company is putting its focus back on satellite radio and the in-automobile listening experience. In alignment with that strategy, the company also announced the departure of Joseph Inzerillo, the chief product and technology officer who played an instrumental role in the app’s launch. 

For all the strengths of the app — curated stations, celebrity musician stations, a smorgasbord of audio programming — the company gave up its competitive advantage when it tried to compete outside of satellite radio and the automobile. After all, the company is the lone satellite radio operator and, given the cost and complexity of launching satellites into orbit, has the market to itself. But when leaving the safety of satellite, it’s hard to beat Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and Amazon Music at their own game. These are streaming-native platforms built for consumers’ desire for interactivity, while SiriusXM’s app attempts to fit a one-way satellite radio experience into a two-way, interactive medium. In the end, paid radio turned out to be a tough sell to a generation that has grown up on on-demand streaming. 

So, SiriusXM is going to focus on what it does best, and in-car listening gives the company a huge audience to work with. It currently has 33 million subscribers and, according to MusicWatch’s Russ Crupnick, reaches 65 million total listeners. In an email to Billboard, radio consultant Andy Meadows said he believes “SiriusXM is better suited to compete for those coveted in-car listeners so [Tuesday’s announcement] makes sense from that standpoint.” Crupnick also sees in-car listening as a point of strength for SiriusXM, pointing to the uniqueness of the SiriusXM product as a distinct advantage. “The ease of use, breadth of content, and curation position them as far superior to terrestrial radio, and in a different place than music streaming or podcasts,” he says. 

Building on in-car satellite listening, the SiriusXM streaming app will become more of a complementary product. “There is real opportunity with 360L,” said Witz on Tuesday, referring to the company’s in-car platform that serves as a dual satellite radio/streaming product. Because 360L includes streaming, it allows SiriusXM to serve personalized — a.k.a. more lucrative — ads and provide more targeted — a.k.a. more expensive — ads for advertisers.  Of the app, she said it can provide data that helps SiriusXM determine spends on programming that resonates with listeners, given that satellite receivers are a one-way technology that doesn’t provide granular insights into listening behaviors. Similar to 360L, the app can also provide targeted advertisements.

For customers, bundling satellite and streaming costs as low as $25 per month. That’s about double the cost of an individual Spotify subscription, but SiriusXM subscribers can withstand the price. According to Witz, platinum satellite subscriptions, which cost upward of $29 per month, account for “about a third” of the current subscriber base. And providing the best of satellite and streaming will help SiriusXM compete with a “newer breed of streaming products” on Americans’ car dashes, says Meadows. “Anything SiriusXM, and traditional radio for that matter, can do to look, sound and function better across all devices is in their best interest long term.” 

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’ sequel to the 2019 blockbuster Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix, is how available to stream on Max. Phoenix reprises his Oscar-winning role as Arthur Fleck/Joker alongside Lady Gaga‘s Harley Quinn for a music-heavy second installment of the Joker adaptation.

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Learn how to stream Joker 2: Folie à Deux below.

Here’s How to Stream Joker: Folie à Deux

Ready to dive back into the world of Todd Phillips’ Joker? Subscribe to Max to watch Joker: Folie à Deux available to stream on Friday (Dec. 13). Starting at $9.99/month with ads or $16.99/month without ads, subscribers gain access to a vast library of binge-worthy originals, must-watch movies and family-friendly programs from Warner Bros. Discovery. Sign up on Max.com or through Amazon Prime Video here.

For visual connoisseurs, the streaming service also offers an ultimate ad-free tier with programming in crispy 4K Ultra HD for $20.99 per month.

Subscribe now to stream hit shows like Penguin, House of the Dragon, The White Lotus, Euphoria, The Last of Us and other movies and original content on Max. You’ll also find music documentaries and biopics such as Elvis, Amy, Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, and the TV series Rap Sh!t.

Want even more content? Max also offers streaming bundles with Hulu and Disney+ starting at $16.99/month. Sign up here to watch Joker 2 online in addition to all of Hulu’s on-demand content.

Set two years after the original film, Joker: Folie à Deux finds Fleck incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, awaiting trial for murder. As he struggles with dual identity and newfound fame as the villainous DC character, Fleck meets the love of his life Harley Quinn (Gaga). The two plot an escape from Arkham as they descend into madness in this moody crime drama filled with eye-catching musical numbers.

The cast also stars Oscar nominees Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener, alongside Zazie Beetz, reprising her role from the first movie.

Watch the trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux below.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Elton John: Never Too Late celebrates the extraordinary 50-year career of one of the biggest names in pop and rock music. Streaming exclusively on Disney+, the documentary gives fans a peek at the legendary singer’s life behind his rhinestone-encrusted glasses, as he prepares for his farewell live concert at Dodger Stadium, the same venue of his iconic 1975 performance.

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Directed by R.J. Cutler and John’s husband/manager David Furnish, the film is jam-packed with unseen footage, rare interviews and an array of Elton’s greatest hits as he explores the inspiring full-circle journey of his career. In his own words, he recounts the many struggles he’s faced early on in life, to his rise to fame and career-defining sold-out shows. So get your sequined Dodgers uniform on and enjoy this look into one of music’s biggest acts.

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Check out how to stream the documentary below.

How to Watch the Elton John: Never Too Late Documentary

Elton John: Never Too Late is exclusively streaming on Disney+ starting Dec. 13. If you’re already a member, just log in to your account and simply press play.

Not subscribed? The streaming platform offers a variety of subscription options starting at just $9.99/month, which grants you access to the entire Disney+ library, including the Elton John: Never Too Late documentary, original and exclusive content from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and more.

Some notable programs to instantly add to your watchlist include Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour concert film, Dancing With the Stars, She-Hulk, Lightyear, Turning Red, Andor and more.

Ditch the ads with Disney+’s premium plan for $15.99/month, or consume even more content with a mix of bundle options that include Hulu and ESPN+ starting at $10.99/month. If you’re interested in live TV, you can even bundle with Hulu + Live TV. Sign up for the bundle plan here or below.

To get hyped for the documentary, check out the trailer for Elton John: Never Too Late below.

Since the Kendrick Lamar–Drake beef broke into the mainstream earlier this year, the six tracks at the heart of the rap battle have generated nearly $15.4 million in streaming, digital sales and publishing revenue in the United States through the week ending Nov. 21, according to Billboard estimates based on data from Luminate. Kendrick’s “Not […]

While Afrobeats has been hailed as Africa’s biggest cultural export, its growth on the continent is also cause for celebration.
The 2023 and 2024 IFPI Global Reports revealed Sub-Saharan Africa was the fastest-growing region in the world, with this year’s report documenting a 25% rise in music sales largely driven by increased adoption of paid subscription services (up by just under a quarter). And no other streaming service has been as innovative and effective at expanding their reach on the continent as Audiomack. 

The company has been applauded for bolstering artists with user-friendly promotional and analytics tools while providing fans with a solid discovery experience, and its unparalleled work in Africa has been critical in the rise of Afrobeats and other genres on the continent. Audiomack opened its first African office in Lagos, Nigeria in 2020 and made three key hires, including Charlotte Bwana, who officially joined the company as head of media and brand partnerships and has since risen to vp of marketing, EU, Africa & MENA. 

Bwana had been living in Nigeria at the time and working in Audiomack’s ambassador program, where she met with and onboarded artists onto the platform and continued expanding its Afrobeats division through social media marketing, idea generation, playlist curation and outreach to major labels, artist managers, booking agents and more. Once travel was allowed after the pandemic, Bwana “literally backpacked across Africa – Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa – doing Audiomack masterclasses, meeting artists and teaching them Audiomack one-on-one but also about the entertainment business,” she tells Billboard. “Somebody said to me, ‘A lot of companies are companies in the cloud, but you are a company that exists, we can actually meet you and shake your hand and call you on the phone. The difference between you and many other streaming companies is your availability.’” 

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Bwana emphasizes that that “human touch” element has significantly helped scale Audiomack, which is the No. 1 music streaming app on Apple’s App Store in 22 African countries — including Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — and the No. 1 music streaming app on the Google Play Store in Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. According to the company, in Nigeria alone Audiomack boasts 15.3 million monthly active users and 4.9 million daily active users and has racked up 58 billion total Afrobeats streams since 2020. 

While the streamer hasn’t added more offices on the continent outside of its Lagos headquarters – which now has 12 people across its social media, graphic design, curatorial, business development and content operations departments – it has deployed ambassadors in additional countries like Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Those ambassadors help Audiomack better navigate the African market with “ideas of which artist is popping, which sound is buzzing in this territory, what the scene is like [and] what artists should we be focusing on,” Bwana explains.   

Audiomack has also had to focus on tackling two key issues that hinder the platform’s mission to democratize streaming on the continent – the first being accessibility. “In Africa, before we talk about affordability of music, we have to talk about accessibility. A lot of people couldn’t access music in the first place, and Audiomack opened that door… and reshaped the landscape of the African music industry,” Bwana says. 

In 2021, the streaming service partnered with MTN Nigeria, the fastest 5G network in West and Central Africa, to introduce the Audiomack+MTN Data Bundle program. Through the program, the company offered the more than 76 million MTN subscribers tailored data bundles, allowing them to stream unlimited music and access Audiomack content without the hassle of data charges. This year, the partnership expanded with the Audiomack+ subscription program, which offers MTN subscribers seamless access to premium Audiomack content – including uninterrupted streaming and offline downloads – through three flexible subscription plans. “We have a monthly subscription, a weekly subscription and a daily subscription, because we figured that people sometimes just buy premium for the day,” says Bwana, adding that 41% of Audiomack users use MTN. “They don’t need it for a month, or they can’t afford to pay that for the month. But if a big artist drops an album today, and they just want to listen to the album, they just pay for premium for the day.”  

Still, Africa’s low internet penetration rate poses a problem for users without MTN coverage. According to the International Telecommunication Union’s Facts and Figures 2024 report, just 38% of the continent is able to use the internet, while only 11% have access to a 5G network. Bwana notes that offline downloads are “everybody’s favorite feature” on the app, with Audiomack reporting 1.9 billion offline downloads since 2020. “You’re able to listen to the music on the go whenever you’re not connected,” she says. “This is a premium feature for many DSPs, and for us, it’s a feature that you still can access on the ad-based tier.” 

Charlotte Bwana

Courtesy of Charlotte Bwana

This gets to the second major hurdle Audiomack has been tackling: payment. While the company is making sure its different subscription models are suitable for African users’ limited internet access, it’s also ensuring the payment methods are just as convenient. “In Africa, [there are] 54 different countries, and you’re working with many currencies. As you’re scaling a business, you have to figure out how to accommodate the entire continent,” says Bwana. “Seventy percent of the population [in South Africa] is banked, so they have access to credit and credit cards, and they can pay for stuff online. Then you go to Kenya, where everybody uses mobile money. With every country that I’ve been to, not only am I talking to the artists to market them and create content, but I’m also talking to telcos and fintechs and trying to figure out payment systems so we can make it seamless for people to pay for music.”   

Last year, Audiomack partnered with Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payment network, to leverage its expertise in secure and reliable payment processing so artists can “monetize their art effectively,” Audiomack CEO/co-founder David Macli said in a press statement. Audiomack can reach even more users in Africa via seamless payment options, including bank transfers, local cards and mobile money. This year, the company also partnered with Carry1st, Africa’s leading mobile games and digital content publisher, to tap into its proprietary payment solution, Pay1st, so consumers can purchase their subscriptions using local payment methods including mobile money, popular digital wallets and bank transfers. “A lot of people on Audiomack are Gen-Z, they’re in that age where they’re discovering music but they’re also gaming,” says Bwana. “We were thinking of how do we bridge the gap between music and gaming, and also, how do we make sure that the artists are earning more royalties and being discovered even by the gamers.” 

Outside of accessibility and affordability, artist discovery is another one of Audiomack’s priorities. The platform has been identifying the continent’s rising stars before they gain global recognition through Keep the Beat Going, an annual campaign that focuses on amplifying artists’ profiles and introducing them to new global markets through billboards in major cities, playlists, digital ads, creator workshops and more. Since its launch in 2022, Keep the Beat Going has highlighted 72 artists from Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, including Ayra Starr, Burna Boy, Rema and Uncle Waffles. 

Aside from artists, Audiomack is also keeping its fingers on the pulse of new trends coming out of the continent. Bwana believes Nigerian street pop is the “next big thing,” as evidenced by Asake and Seyi Vibez’s success on the platform. The latter is the most streamed artist in Nigeria, accumulating 1.4 billion plays on Audiomack since 2020, while the former is a close second with 1.2 billion plays. To date, Asake’s 2023 album Work of Art is the most streamed Afrobeats album on the platform with 476 million plays, while his hit “Lonely at the Top” from the album is the most streamed Afrobeats song on Audiomack with 87 million plays. 

“We have a lot of people achieving their first hundred thousand or million streams on Audiomack,” says Bwana. “[We’ve] accommodated both listeners and artists, and this is what really sets us apart from a lot of the other streaming platforms.”   

For the first time since the Oscars were first televised in 1953, the 2025 edition of the granddaddy of all award shows will stream live on Hulu for all subscribers, in addition to airing live on ABC. Many award shows, even those still airing on broadcast networks, have taken on streaming partners in recent years. […]

Sony Music pulled its catalog from the streaming service Boomplay on Monday (Dec. 9) due to late royalty payments, Billboard has confirmed. Several other prominent labels and distributors also confirmed to Billboard on Monday that they have not received recent royalty payments from the service. Additionally, a monthly payment report published by the distributor Symphonic […]

If it seems like everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped, the streaming service’s data-driven annual recap of listening habits, it’s because everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped. That says a lot about its effectiveness and its value to the company.  
The streaming platform’s personalized year-end recap is unmissable this time of year. Mashable began prepping its readers back on Nov. 19. A week later, Spotify heightened expectations by advising users to update the Spotify app to the latest, Wrapped-ready version. When Wrapped finally appeared on Wednesday (Dec. 4), there was an onslaught of media coverage. Billboard even got into the Wrapped coverage, revealing Chappell Roan’s top artists and songs on Spotify in 2024 (Ariana Grande and Heart’s “Barracuda,” respectively).   

With so much media coverage, some of it is bound to carry a grousing, annoyed tone. “Hate your Spotify Wrapped?” Rolling Stone asked, “You’re not alone.” “Sorry, parents,” The Washington Post lamented, “it’s actually your kids’ Spotify Wrapped.” Vogue turned Wrapped into a frank self-examination in an article titled “I love Spotify Wrapped so much I hate it.” For people whose Spotify Wrapped “suck[ed],” Pocket-lint suggests ways to “fix it” in 2025. The Huffington Post’s compilation of the “funniest” tweets about Wrapped was filled with only mildly humorous complaints.  

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In contrast, articles about Wrapped’s peers came and went without anything close to the same level of media hullabaloo. The annual recaps of Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music received basic coverage at mostly tech-oriented publications but didn’t elicit the kind of longwinded pop culture essays that Wrapped conjures up every year. Apple Music Replay received run-of-the-mill articles such as “Apple Music’s yearly recap is finally available in the app” at tech news site The Verge. When TechCrunch covered the launch of Amazon Music’s 2024 Delivered, the headline referred to it as Amazon’s “take on Spotify Wrapped” lest nobody know what they were talking about. YouTube Music Recap launched on Nov. 25 to little media coverage.  

For its part, Spotify contributed to the media overload by building a 2024 Wrapped microsite and posting 10 Wrapped-related press releases on launch day. Wrapped itself introduced new innovations in 2024, including a personalized Wrapped podcast featuring two AI hosts and the Your Music Evolution Playlist, a personalized playlist that tracks a user’s different musical interests and phases throughout the year. Wrapped has become such an important event that Spotify hosted a pre-release press briefing that featured talks by executives across the company. As Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify software engineer and author of the book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changed Music, told Billboard via email, “nothing else they do gets as much marketing/branding energy put into it.”  

Wrapped especially shines in the awareness it attracts on social media. At the end of every Wrapped recap, Spotify offers personalized badges that flood X, Instagram and TikTok — the latter two benefitting from integrations announced in November that make it easier to share content. In this way, Wrapped turns its users into “active brand advocates on social media,” as one academic study put it. Or, as another paper phrased it, Spotify turns its users into “free labour” to help market its product. “For Spotify, it is 100% a brand-visibility moment,” says McDonald. “Social virality is the only metric the company cares about. The viral attention does help with user retention and reactivation, but the virality itself is the thing they’re measuring.”  

More than an effective marketing ploy, Wrapped has turned into a competitive advantage in a business where standalone music streaming services desperately need one. A company has a competitive advantage when it creates more economic value than its competitors. Economic value is the difference between the perceived value of the product and the costs required to produce the product. Some brands are able to charge a premium because they have succeeded, through the quality of the product and the effectiveness of marketing, in convincing consumers their product is worth more. Food made with better ingredients commands a price premium, for example. Sometimes differences in perception of value come down to marketing. The difference between luxury clothing brands’ prices can be explained by amounts spent on splashy advertisements and celebrity endorsements, not just the cost of materials and labor.   

Unlike streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services, which attract viewers mainly through exclusive programming, music streaming platforms have — for the most part — the same content and must find other avenues to attract and retain customers. Amazon Music Unlimited, for example, is cheaper for members of Amazon Prime. Apple Music benefits from being part of the Apple entertainment ecosystem and Apple’s ownership of music identification app Shazam. YouTube Music gets its subscribers through YouTube, the most popular streaming app in the world. Spotify, a standalone company, can’t match Amazon’s low price, Apple’s omnipresence or YouTube’s ubiquity.  

Instead, Spotify competes on product features it develops in-house. Launched in 2015, Discover Weekly, a personalized playlist filled with recently released tracks, was so popular that people who streamed their Discover Weekly playlists streamed twice as much as people who didn’t. A product that popular helps give Spotify an advantage over its larger competitors. Discover Weekly was launched the same year Apple launched Apple Music. Although many onlookers expected Apple would crush Spotify, Spotify has consistently maintained a sizable lead in market share, and innovation played an important role in holding off behemoths like Apple and Amazon. As Will Page, former Spotify chief economist, put it in his 2021 book Pivot, Discover Weekly “create[d] a moat to protect Spotify’s castle.”

Wrapped follows in Discover Weekly’s footsteps as a moat-building product innovation. The key is Spotify’s ability to get its listeners to talk about Wrapped. One study found that Spotify Wrapped was more effective than Apple Music Replay in users’ willingness to create user-generated content (i.e. share Wrapped on social media). That’s gold in a business where consumers can choose between a number of fairly identical substitutes with similar features. Anything that increases engagement and prevents users from leaving for Apple, Amazon or YouTube is valuable. In that sense, developing a product that becomes a part of the cultural zeitgeist, like Wrapped, is perhaps the biggest competitive advantage a streaming service can have.

Attorneys in the music industry are a competitive bunch. They vie for high-performing clients and duel with each other over deal points; battle is in their blood. 
Perhaps unexpectedly, a number of these attorneys have joined forces recently, unified by a common goal: Getting their producer clients paid for their contributions to Vultures 1, the first of two 2024 albums from Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign. 

Since its February release, Vultures 1 has earned more than 817,000 album equivalent units in the U.S., according to Luminate — including over 1 billion on-demand streams — and a Grammy nomination for the hit “Carnival.” But more than 10 producers on the album do not have signed agreements in place with Ye, meaning they are unable to collect fees, as well as potential producer royalties and publishing income, for their work. And several of the producers who worked on Vultures 2, which came out in August, share the same unpaid fate as their colleagues who worked on the first installment.

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“We have clients who’ve produced music on the Vultures album(s) and have still not been paid for their services even though both albums have been released,” Bob Celestin, a music attorney, told Billboard via email. “Presently, we have no idea when payment will be made, which is so unfortunate and unfair. You would think Ye would be more sensitive to this issue because he is a producer.”

“We’ve had trouble receiving a producer agreement from Ye,” adds Brittney Trigg, another lawyer who represents a producer on Vultures 1. A representative for the star did not respond to a request for comment.

This problem continues to plague the music industry at its highest levels. Jason Berger, a partner at Lewis Brisbois, estimates that in “nine out of 10 deals, the producer has not been paid the day the music comes out.” And due to the volume of new releases, the high number of collaborators on some albums, shrinking major-label staffs, and the mercurial nature of superstars — who have to sign off on producer agreements even if they are running around the world on tour — Celestin says that producers often don’t get paid for a year or more after albums come out. 

“The more convoluted the system gets, the less money comes down to the people that are actually making the product,” says Nima Nasseri, who manages the producer Hit-Boy. (Hit-Boy was not involved with Vultures 1.) “Why do people have to fight to get paid?” Nasseri asks.

In Ye’s case, five lawyers with clients on Vultures 1 say that getting them compensated for their work has been even more challenging than usual.

The superstar has cycled through at least two attorneys to help with clearances and is now relying on a third, the lawyers says. Longtime Ye associate 88-Keys was initially involved in negotiations with producers; more recently, Matt Geffen from the Revels Group has taken on a prominent role. (Geffen did not respond to a request for comment.) On top of that, Ye also changed distributors, leaving Label Engine, which is owned by Create Music Group, in favor of Too Lost. (Vultures 1 and 2 were released independently.)

In a typical distribution deal, artists are responsible for clearing songs and disbursing royalties to collaborators. Distribution companies are usually shielded from legal liability, though many offer tools to help streamline the royalty splitting process once clearances are completed.

Still, earlier this year, attorneys for a number of producers on Vultures 1 banded together, coordinating their efforts via a group chat, to draft threatening legal letters to send to Create, since no royalties were flowing to their clients. They hoped that, in a relatively small industry that places a premium on maintaining good relationships, their collective weight might convince Create to try to help them. (A representative for Create declined to comment.) Before the messages could be sent, however, Ye switched distributors. 

The producers on Vultures 1 may find cold comfort in the fact that even Atlantic Records — the label to which Ty Dolla $ign is signed — is having a tough time getting paid, according to a source close to the situation. (West alluded to this in an Instagram post in September.) The source says Too Lost is now holding money for Atlantic and other rights holders and working with Ye’s team to clear the records accordingly. Representatives for both Atlantic and Too Lost declined to comment.

The challenges that producers face in getting paid in a timely manner seem all but certain to persist. “The industry’s ‘back of house’ infrastructure really isn’t designed to handle dozens of producers and other collaborators on a single project,” says Tim Kappel, an entertainment attorney. “There are inevitably going to be delays even when everyone is operating in good faith. Throw in a few bad actors here and there, and it’s easy to understand why producers are feeling aggrieved.” 

The sad truth is that producers can’t do much to redress those grievances. They have very little leverage once they have turned over the files containing the music that will appear on an artist’s album. 

At this point, “we have no recourse besides to try to sue [Ye],” says one attorney with a client on Vultures 1. “But that’s costly.” And, as another music lawyer points out, “Legal claims against Ye don’t really seem to go anywhere.”

In situations where producers are frustrated because they haven’t been paid for their work, their representatives often “threaten to file a takedown notice on the recording,” according to Kappel. “But this is inappropriate since the DMCA takedown process can only be used to report copyright infringements,” he continues. “There is simply no cause of action for infringement among co-authors.” There have been several attempts to take down tracks on Vultures 1, all unsuccessful, according to multiple lawyers with knowledge of the back-and-forth behind the scenes. 

Some producers who contributed to the album did receive deal offers from Ye’s team this fall. However, those offers were buyouts, according to multiple attorneys, meaning the producer would accept a flat fee and not receive any royalties if the album recouped its costs. Recoupment may be out of reach — as Ty Dolla $ign told Billboard in June, Vultures 1 is “a very expensive album” recorded between Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Still, buying out producers in this fashion is atypical, and multiple lawyers for Vultures 1 producers rejected the offers. 

Sources close to Ye now believe he is planning to release another album soon, meaning that the star could put out three uncleared projects in a single year. “It’s a mess,” says one attorney involved with Vultures 1 clearances. “I just keep going back to that word.”