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During his tenure at Google in the early 2000s, Shuman Ghosemajumder‘s official title was global head of product, trust and safety. But he also acquired a snazzier moniker, “click fraud czar,” thanks to his efforts to combat bad actors who try to fake online activity to inflate advertising payouts.
“It was very surprising to us, almost 20 years ago, when we saw organized crime getting involved with online fraud,” Ghosemajumder says. “Ever since then, I’m never surprised: The idea of cybercrime or online fraud coming from an individual hacker sitting in their bedroom hasn’t been the case for basically 30 years.”
Criminal interest in a different type of click fraud drew the attention of the music industry this week, when the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet published a piece alleging that the country’s gangs use streaming manipulation as a way to launder money earned via illicit activities. “Spotify has become an ATM for them,” an anonymous police investigator told the paper.
“That article appears to point to a really kind of ingenious way of laundering money,” says James Trusty, a former federal prosecutor who worked on cases involving both computer fraud and money laundering. “It seems to me to be a fairly invisible process right now, and that poses serious challenges to law enforcement.”
“It’s the usual chase,” he adds. “The robbers come up with something new, and the cops eventually catch up.”
In a statement to Svenska Dagbladet, a rep for Spotify told the paper that “manipulated streams are a challenge for the entire industry,” one that the platform “is working hard to combat” via “market leading” technology. On top of that, the rep said Spotify has discovered no evidence that it is being used as a money laundering tool.
If additional criminal activity is discovered on streaming platforms, could that bring new pressure to the music industry to address streaming fraud — something many believe is long overdue?
The article arrives at a time when executives from around the music industry are calling for better monitoring of the streaming ecosystem. “As an industry, we need to do more to harden the defenses of platforms and deter bad actors from using music streaming for criminal purposes,” Beatdapp co-CEOs Morgan Hayduk and Andrew Batey said in a statement. (Beatdapp makes fraud detection technology.)
Svenska Dagbladet‘s report is hardly the first time connections have been drawn between criminals and the music business. Industry history books are sprinkled with gangsters, especially in the earlier decades before it consolidated and became increasingly corporate. In one of the most infamous episodes, the longstanding practice of paying for airplay drew government scrutiny after a 1986 NBC report linked prominent radio promoters with members of the mafia.
But the resulting investigation ended up having little impact and ultimately fizzled out. In the book Hit Men, which catalogs this period, Fredric Dannen wrote that the lesson for the record business was that “the government is incapable of sending any major music industry figure to jail.” Paying for airplay continued unchecked for more than a decade.
The practice of paying for artificial streams has only recently drawn public criticism in the U.S. music industry. Streaming manipulation has the potential to distort market share calculations and steer money away from the hardworking artists who are not gaming the system. Both Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge and Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer have expressed concern about fraud in calls with financial analysts this year.
“Once someone like Lucian Grainge makes a statement about it, it’s necessarily going to get more prominence,” says one streaming service executive who agreed to speak about manipulation on the condition of anonymity. “That’s not to say we weren’t dealing with it behind the scenes before Lucian was making statements. But now there is broader recognition of the scope of the problem and the impact that it has on revenues and royalties that should be, but have not been, paid through to legitimate artists.”
Potential connections between streaming manipulation and criminal elements were raised last year at a pair of music industry panels, first at South by Southwest and then at the Music Biz conference. Michael Pelczynski, who was then SoundCloud’s vp of strategy, participated in both discussions. “We were able to see signs of such activity” by collaborating with Pandora/SiriusXM and the cybersecurity company HUMAN, he says. “The benefit of creating a coalition with a third party was they could puzzle together certain patterns that we as individual platforms could not.”
Streamers try to work backwards from anomalies in the data, trawling for “potential bad actor networks,” as Pelczynski puts it, and trying to prevent them from “migrat[ing] from platform to platform.” Svenska Dagbladet took a different approach, speaking to several criminals who claimed to have direct knowledge of the laundering scheme.
The paper reported that Swedish gangs take criminal profits, convert them into cryptocurrency, use that to buy fake streams for artists they’re connected to, and then collect the royalties. They lose some money in the process by paying for fake streams, but the royalties they extract from the music industry are now “clean” — they can’t lead back to anything gang-related.
“There is always a cost in money laundering,” Trusty explains. But even if it’s a really high transaction cost, it still puts you in a position where you have untraceable, usable profit. And so the key for any real money laundering operation is volume. The article seems to be pointing out that this is something that’s kind of an institutional mechanism for these gangs.”
Trusty was not surprised to hear about the results of Svenska Dagbladet‘s reporting. “Anytime you have technological developments, somebody’s going to figure out a way to take advantage of those in a bad way,” he continues. “It’s eventually in the industry’s interest to lean forward and figure out how to work with law enforcement to close this gap that’s being exploited.”
PodcastOne debuted its long-awaited listing Friday (Sept. 8), with officials from parent company LiveOne ringing the opening bell on the trading floor of the NASDAQ to celebrate what CEO Rob Ellin says is first ever spinoff of a minority stake in a publicly traded company. Shares of the new LiveOne subsidiary Courtside Group, better known as PodcastOne, fell 45% shortly after trading opened, dropping from $8 per share to close at $4.39.
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The tumble came amid growing criticism of one of PodcastOne’s acquisition targets — California-based Kast Media — by major podcasters like comedian Theo Von who accused Kast of failing to pay out $4 million in advertising fees collected by Kast on behalf of its podcaster clients.
In a video viewed more than 1 million times, titled “This Man Defrauded Our Podcast,” Von alleges that Kast Media founder and CEO Colin Thomson did not pay his show This Past Weekend with Theo Von for the advertisements it sold and booked for Von’s show. Von claimed This Past Weekend eventually cut ties with Kast Media, only to later be approached by Thomson and Ellin and was told on a phone call, “If you come over to our new network PodcastOne, we’ll pay some of what you’re owed in stock,” Von said, adding “it felt like to me they’re trying to leverage our podcast and other podcasts to then make their stock do well and if that happens, then we’ll get a share of our money.”
Von told viewers he declined the offer.
Ellin addressed the Kast Media scandal on Friday during a post-market opening interview with Yahoo News. He noted that PodcastOne is no longer hiring Thomson to join his the publicly traded company, but noted he hoped to help creators hurt by the Kast Media controversy.
“We’ve bought a distressed asset called Kast Media, a very distressed, troubled asset (that) owed a lot of money to its podcasters and couldn’t really afford to pay them. And the banks pulled out. And that host pulled out. So we acquired those and have added some very serious revenues to it,” he said.
Von isn’t the only podcaster to go public about the Kast Media scandal. Pro Wrestling podcaster Jim Cornette and cohost Brian Last have detailed their own experience with Kast Media and PodcastOne in a series of at least seven podcast episodes over the last two months. Former Sirius XM host Jason Ellis has also spoken out against Kast Media in a recent viral video.
Von said he will continue pursuing Thomson for the money he is owed by Kast Media.
“You f—ed with the wrong rat, homie” Von said while a picture of Thompson aired on the screen. “You can’t get me to shut up.”
Thomson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
As the music streaming business matures, the way people listen to music could determine how artists get paid. Sitting back and letting a streaming service choose a song will result in a lower royalty than choosing the song yourself, if this week’s news of a new streaming model is any indication.
It’s not a phobia toward algorithms that’s driving the change. Rather, the approach rewards those artists who create the most active engagement. Songs that play in the background are deemed to be less valuable.
On Tuesday, French music streamer Deezer and Universal Music Group announced a partnership to reinvent how Deezer calculates UMG’s streaming royalties. The partnership will “[reduce] the economic influence of algorithmic programming” and reward “engaging content” with greater royalties, according to the companies’ press releases.
When they say, “algorithmic programming,” they mean the streaming service’s personalized recommendations about what song will play next. That’s a more passive, lean-back approach to listening than hunting and pecking on the app’s user interface to choose a song.
At some point between the launch of internet radio platforms and the present battle for better royalties, passive listening got a bad rap. What has the world come to, some people fret, when dreaded algorithms are deciding what music gets heard? What gives an algorithm such an important role in determining how royalties will be paid?
But algorithms are a common way to stream music. When given an on-demand streaming service, people often let an algorithm do the hard work of picking the next song. A 2021 MusicWatch survey found Spotify Premium users spent 25% of their time in “lean-back” listening rather than “lean-in” listening. That figure rose to 31% for Apple Music users and 32% for Amazon Prime Music users. In all, 48% of time spent listening to music was “lean back” listening on streaming services, broadcast radio and satellite radio.
Algorithms also drive helpful products such as Spotify’s Discover Mode, a promotional tool that allows artists and labels to find new listeners in return for a lower royalty rate. It works by increasing the likelihood a song will be recommended to a listener. It’s popular, too. From the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022, Discovery Mode had a 98% customer retention rate, Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s vp/global head of music product said during the company’s 2022 investor day presentation.
When a streaming service does personalization well, it adds great value to a listening experience. Pandora was revolutionary when it launched in 2005 because it had a spooky sense of what people wanted to hear. Its Music Genome Project, a proprietary technology that classifies recordings’ various musical traits, gave it the ability to pick the right songs based on a history of giving other songs a “thumb up” or “thumb down” vote. Pandora took away the effort in digging for songs and provided a much broader catalog than broadcast or satellite radio.
Today’s music streaming services are superior to their predecessors — and their own previous iterations — specifically because they have mastered passive listening. Consider how far Spotify has come since it was launched. Spotify used to recommend songs based on a user’s social network — kind of an “if your friend likes it, you’ll like it” approach to song-picking. But it wasn’t a good listening experience. Spotify’s decision to acquire music intelligence startup The Echo Nest in 2014 was the cornerstone for a new approach to providing a personalized listening experience.
The proliferation of smart speakers only adds to the need for algorithmic listening. About two-thirds of U.S. smart speaker owners wanted to own the devices to discover new songs, according to a 2022 Edison Research survey, and their share of time spent listening to audio through a smart speaker increased 400% over the previous five years. The joy of owning a smart speaker is allowing the device and streaming service to do all the work — it’s passive listening at its best.
Most Americans use their favorite streaming service when doing things around the home such as cleaning, relaxing, cooking, eating and entertaining guests, according to the same MusicWatch study. Most people stream music when exercising. More than half of people also use their favorite streaming service when driving, although satellite and broadcast radio were preferred in the car over streaming. Streaming service Songza, acquired by Google in 2014, was built on the premise that people chose music for moods and activities. That approach to curation has since been adopted by most — if not all — streaming services.
The UMG-Deezer partnership is evidence that background listening is on its way to getting a demotion. Deezer will remove tracks of white noise, which account for 2% of its streams, from the royalty pool. That leaves more royalties for professional artists who depend on streaming to earn a living. Throughout the year, UMG has been calling out “functional music” — a term that has come to mean low-cost or generic music built for moods or activities — and drawing a distinction between artists who draw people to streaming services and sounds that people play in the background.
Taylor Swift and Drake may rule the charts, but functional music is mainstream, too. Of U.S. music streamers who listen to playlists, many of them listen to playlists for white noise (36%), rain sounds (45%) and relaxation (61%), according to a 2023 MIDiA Research survey. In recent years, streaming services have broadened their playlists and radio stations to address the fact that consumers want a variety of sounds.
Artists with small followings will get less, too. Deezer will “boost” the royalties of “professional” artists with at least 1,000 streams per month by a minimum of 500 unique listeners. That will relegate hobbyists and artists early in their career development to a different tier. Exactly how many artists will be affected isn’t clear, but Deezer says just 2% of artists on the platform have more than 1,000 monthly unique listeners.
UMG and Deezer aren’t exactly taking an innovative stance, however. The music industry — at least in the United States — has already determined that active, on-demand listening is more valuable than passive, non-interactive listening. The Deezer-UMG partnership merely codifies for an on-demand service what is standard at internet radio. In the United States, non-interactive internet radio streams from the likes of Pandora pay 0.24 cents per ad-supported stream (and 0.3 cents per subscription streams). That’s less than any on-demand stream from a premium streaming service such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music.
In effect, a streaming service pays less for non-interactive streams because it gives the listener less value than on-demand services. To qualify for the lower royalty rate, a non-interactive streaming service cannot have the same robust features as an interactive one. At Deezer, a listener can stream any song from any artist any number of times. They can listen to playlists and build playlists, too. They can listen to songs shared by friends through SMS or social media. That’s all lean-in listening, and it’s more valuable because people will pay $11 a month to do it.
Until now, on-demand services’ standard pro-rata model hasn’t separated passive from active listening. When labels negotiated licensing deals with streaming services, they have always treated one stream the same as any other stream. A stream from a user-curated playlist is treated the same as a stream from an algorithmically created radio station. Whether the listener actively hits the play button to listen to a particular track isn’t taken into account. Right or wrong, that’s how the pie has been divvied up.
A couple of decades into the life of the pro-rata system, Deezer shows there is a greater willingness to treat active listening differently than passive listening. MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan called this demotion “a very welcome and long overdue move” that will “disincentivis[e] the commodification of consumption by rewarding active listening.” There’s certainly a logical argument to be made here: The artists people actively seek out arguably provide the most value — give the streaming service the most foot traffic, so to speak — while less popular artists play the important but less financially valuable role of giving breadth and depth to music catalogs.
Time will tell if and how other streaming services follow Deezer’s lead. An alternative already exists: In 2022, Warner Music Group adopted the user-centric model that SoundCloud rolled out to independent artists the prior year. That system pays royalties based on an individual subscriber’s listening rather than pooling all subscribers’ fees into a larger pool. So, a subscriber who listens to out-of-the-mainstream or independent artists is assured their money is not going to popular artists.
Over the next few years, labels and services are likely to experiment with different approaches to calculating streaming royalties. But regardless of how the dust settles, streaming services and rights holders should respect what passive listening brings to their listeners.
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Amazon may be a one-stop shopping destination for everything from new beauty products to shapewear deals and more. But now, the retailer is dipping into movie theaters with a new service called Prime Premiere — and no, it doesn’t involve streaming through Prime Video.
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Moviegoers, this one’s for you! Prime Premiere will provide free early screenings to Amazon movies before it drops onto streaming. Below we break down everything you need to know about the new service and the additional perks that come with it.
What is Prime Premiere?
Amazon’s new service is providing Prime members with free advance screenings of new Amazon movies and series on the big screen. Tickets to premieres will open a week in advance of the Prime Premiere date and will include up to two free tickets at select theaters for one night only. Screenings will begin at 7 p.m. local time with check-in opening at 6:15 p.m. local time.
How does Prime Premiere work?
If you have a Prime membership, you can take advantage of the new service for no additional cost. All you have to do is visit the Prime Premiere website one week before the screening to reserve your tickets. Click on the desired movie you want to see, choose how many tickets you want (up to two max) then follow the Amazon login instructions to finish securing your tickets. A PDF with your tickets will then be available to download.
Everything is free including any promotional giveaways included with the screening. You’ll even be able to take advantage of free concessions (a small popcorn and small soda or water).
Tickets are also based on general admission, which means it’s on a first come, first serve basis.
Don’t have a membership? Amazon offers a 30 day free trial, which includes fast and free shipping on millions of items and Prime Video, which you can access via the app or online at Amazon.com.
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$14.99/month after 30 days free
Along with access to Prime Premiere, you’ll also be able to take advantage of the vast library of offerings from Prime Video including original and exclusive TV series and movies such as The Summer I Turned Pretty, Good Omens 2, Daisy Jones & The Six, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Knock at the Cabin, Citadel, Invincible: Atom & Eve, The Boys, Reacher, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and The Wheel of Time.
Prime members can also add on premium channels like Paramount+, Max and Starz, and preorder rent and/or buy digital copies of blockbuster movies like Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse, Barbie and The Little Mermaid.
Students can also take advantage of a special Student Prime membership offered at half off with a 6-month free trial beforehand.
What movies and TV series are coming to Prime Premiere?
Coming soon to Prime Premiere are a mix of highly-anticipated movies and TV series you can mark on your calendar including Sitting in Bars With Cake, A Million Miles Away and Gen V season one.
More movies and series are expected to be released throughout the year, so be sure to check back on the site for more exclusive showings.
Deezer plans to implement a new streaming model with Universal Music Group later this year — a step that Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira called “the most ambitious change to the economic model since the creation of music streaming and a change that will support the creation of high-quality content in the years to come.”
In an announcement on Wednesday (September 6), Deezer said it would roll out this “artist-centric” system in the French market starting in the fourth quarter of 2023. The new model aims to reward artists and songs that are driving listener engagement while also de-prioritizing white noise and other “functional” audio. “The sound of rain or a washing machine is not as valuable as a song from your favorite artist streamed in HiFi,” Folgueira declared.
As part of the new model, plays racked up by “professional artists” — which Deezer defines as acts with more than 1,000 streams per month spread across 500 unique listeners — with a “double boost.” (The announcement did not define what that “double boost” entails.) Similarly, songs that are driving listener engagement — the metrics for measuring this were also undefined — will receive the same bump.
In addition, Deezer plans to replace “non-artist noise content” — the sounds of whales or washing machines — with its own functional music, while also excluding this audio from the royalty pool so that payouts to raindrop recordings don’t come at the expense of payouts to singer-songwriters. “We are now embracing a necessary change, to better reflect the value of each piece of content and eliminate all wrong incentives,” Folgueira said in a statement. “There is no other industry where all content is valued the same.”
“With this multi-faceted approach, music by artists that attracts and engages fans will receive weighting that better recognizes its value, and the fraud and gaming, which serves only to deprive artists their due compensation, will be aggressively addressed,” added Michael Nash, UMG’s evp and chief digital officer. He also noted that the model may change in the future: “As the ever-evolving music landscape continues its rapid transformation, UMG and Deezer will rigorously address the impact of these changes as we incorporate new insights from data analysis and fine-tune the model, as appropriate.”
UMG’s quest for a new streaming ecosystem has been a major talking point for the company since January. That month, in a letter to staff, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge called for the development of “a model that will be a win for artists, fans, and labels alike, and, at the same time, also enhances the value proposition of the [streaming] platforms themselves, accelerating subscriber growth, and better monetizing fandom.”
Since then, UMG announced partnerships with both Tidal and Deezer to try to determine what that model might look like. Streamers can do “a better job of monetizing these high integrity, high intense artist-fan relationships,” Nash told financial analysts in March. “We’ve been speaking with platforms… about the enhancement of offers to the consumer that reflect the engagement with artists that are really driving the economic models of the platform.”
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, however, appeared less enthusiastic about implementing a major change to the streaming model during an earnings call in July. “Most studies we’ve done on this [show] that even if you change it to a user-centric or an artist-centric approach, it seldom leads to these gigantic differences that most people perceive it to do,” he said.
“But we’re always open to hearing how we can make the system [fairer] to more artists,” he added.
Apple Music is doubling down on classical music with the acquisition of Swedish label BIS Records.
Following the launch earlier this year of its standalone app Apple Music Classical (AMC), the tech giant makes its move for BIS, a classical specialist which has operated since 1973.
The acquisition ticks several boxes for both parties.
For BIS, the timing, and its new teammates, were right. “A few days ago BIS Records turned 50 years old and I am immensely proud of what our small team of people has accomplished during this half-century,” writes BIS founder Robert von Bahr in a blog post.
Its strong suit, “while paying our dues to the core repertoire,” he continues, “has been to nurture young classical artists and interesting living composers and to safeguard the musical treasure that we all represent long into the future. It is to that end that, after much careful consideration, and having just turned 80, I am excited to announce the rather momentous news that we have made the decision to become part of the Apple family.”
For Apple, the hardware colossus with a market cap that’s fast approaching $3 trillion, its latest purchase is a statement of intent. Classical music is hot right now, the newest member of its family comes bearing the goods, with a catalog of contemporary composers and early music. And Apple wants ownership.
Apple made its splash in the classical water with the March launch of AMC, stemming from its August 2021 acquisition of Primephonic.
The new app, Apple boldly declared at the time, was the “ultimate classical experience” with the “largest classical music catalog,” boasting over 5 million tracks and works from new releases to recognized masterpieces.
The game is changing, fast. Last November, Deutsche Grammophon launched a new standalone streaming service, Stage+, catering to its own catalog and that of Decca Classics. And, recently, Universal Music Group bought Hyperion Records, and announced its asset would finally enter into the streaming age.
Following the latest transaction, BIS will become part of Apple Music Classical and its artist services service Platoon. Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed. At the time of writing, BIS Recordings were available on Apple’s DSPs and eClassical.
Von Bahr and his staff won’t be going anywhere. “As proud as I am of this milestone,” he writes, “I am even more proud of the fact that the entire personnel of BIS, including me, have been retained. We all look forward to a future, filled with new music and artists in golden sound from this increased force in classical music.”
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Spotify is currently testing a feature that would put song lyrics on the app behind a paywall for free users, the company has confirmed to Billboard. “At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests, some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an […]
Taylor Swift‘s “Cruel Summer” is the latest song to enter Spotify’s Billions Club. The music streaming service announced on Sunday (Sept. 3) that the hit single from the pop superstar’s 2019 album, Lover, has surpassed 1 billion streams. “It’s been no cruel summer for @taylorswift13 this year,” potify wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Congratulations on […]
Streaming service Slacker is looking to become the fifth music company to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC — and the clock is ticking. Its owner, LiveOne, has signed a letter of intent to combine Slacker, which it estimates will have a valuation of $160 million, with Roth CH Acquisition V Co.
But like many other SPAC deals, Slacker’s merger with Roth has faced challenges. For starters, many of Roth’s shareholders have opted not to take part in the Slacker deal. Roth experienced $93 million in redemptions in the second quarter, according to its latest 10-Q filing, as shareholders opted for a $10 redemption value rather than roll the dice on a music streaming company that expects to finish 2023 with 3.75 million free and paying users. That leaves Roth with $26.4 million to contribute to Slacker once the deal is done.
To shore up support ahead of a merger, Roth entered into non-redemption agreements with shareholders representing 2 million shares. Those shareholders agreed not to redeem public shares and will receive a payment of 4 cents per share per one-month extension, according to a Roth filing with the SEC.
Starting a SPAC gives the founders a limited window to put investors’ money to good use or return the funds to shareholders. Running out of time to close a deal with Slacker, in May, Roth received shareholder approval to extend the merger deadline by up to six months. The extension ends Dec. 4 — barely more than three months away. “It seems [like a] very tight [timeline],” says Megan Penick, an attorney at Michelman & Robinson. “I mean, conceivably they could still complete it. It just seems that they must still be conducting their due diligence and coming to terms on how the deal is going to be structured.”
A SPAC effectively puts the cart before the horse: It raises money through an initial public offering (IPO) before setting about finding an appropriately sized, high-growth company to take public. (Pursuing a target before the IPO, as Digital World Acquisition Corp. did with Donald Trump’s Truth Social, is against the rules.) The target company is spared the long and costly process typically incurred when taking a company public. The SPAC founders get a stake in the post-merger company and investors benefit when the post-merger stock rises above the redemption price. The number of SPAC IPOs jumped from 55 in 2019 to 610 in 2021, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, while money raised increased from $14 billion in 2019 to $160.8 billion in 2021.
Overall, however, SPACs have failed to live up to their lofty expectations. “Too many SPACs, not enough suitable targets,” says Penick. After 265 SPACs closed mergers in 2021, only 187 did so in 2022. And while there were 100 SPAC deals in the first half of 2023, the value of the deals amounted to just one-tenth of the deals closed in the first half of 2021, according to S&P Global.
Faced with a shortage of good candidates, many SPACs have opted to dissolve and return capital to shareholders. Music Acquisition Corporation, co-founded by former Geffen Records president Neil Jacobson, dissolved in 2022 after raising $230 million in a 2021 IPO. Liberty Media did the same with its SPAC, Liberty Media Acquisition Corp., in November, more than two months before the deadline to complete a deal or return to shareholders the $575 million it raised in an IPO. “Frankly, getting an extension wasn’t worth it, given we had nothing on the table that was attractive enough for us to take [a] look,” said Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei.
Perhaps the biggest problem with SPACs is they haven’t been a good investment for the original investors. Abu Dhabi-based music streamer Anghami has fallen 91% to 89 cents since merging with Vista Media Acquisition Corp. in February 2022. French music streamer Deezer has fallen 76% to 2.06 euros since merging with IPO2 in July 2022. And New York-based publisher and label Reservoir Media has fallen 43% to $5.45 since merging with Roth CH Acquisition II — the same team behind the SPAC that intends to merge with Slacker — in July 2021. All three stocks had a $10/10 euro IPO price.
Worse yet, Alliance Entertainment ended up trading over the counter in February after a high number of redemptions left its partner SPAC, Adara Acquisition Corp, with just $1.7 million to contribute to the merged company — probably not enough to cover investment banking and legal fees for the transaction. That also left Alliance short of the New York Stock Exchange’s float requirements. “The issue of having enough market volume and enough market cap to remain a listed security is a challenge that a lot of SPACs run into,” says Michael Poster, an attorney at Michelman & Robinson. Alliance has dropped 75% to $2.02 since it merged with Adara in February.
Slacker didn’t respond to a request for comment on the deal.
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.
UFC Fight Night is going international this weekend with matches taking place in Paris on Saturday (Sept. 2). Entering the ring for the main card event will be heavyweights Ciryl Gane and Serghei Spivac as well as the co-main event Manon Fiorot vs. Rose Namajunas (flyweight). ESPN+ will be streaming the fights exclusively, but you have a few streaming options to make sure you don’t miss the action.
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Since UFC Paris will be taking place overseas, match times have been adjusted with the main card event taking place at 3 p.m. ET and preliminary matches will start at 12 p.m. ET.
Besides Gain vs. Serghei, you can also tune into Manon Fiorot vs. Rose Namajunas (flyweight), Benoit Saint Denis vs. Thiago Moises (lightweight), Volkan Oezdemir vs. Bogdan Guskov (light heavyweight), William Gomis vs. Lucas Almeida (featherweight), Yanis Ghemmouri vs. Caolan Loughran (bantamweight), Morgan Charriére vs. Manolo Zecchini (featherweight), Taylor Lapilus vs. Muin Gafurov (bantamweight), Nora Cornolle vs. Joselyne Edwards (bantamweight), Zarah Fairn vs. Jacqueline Cavalcanti (bantamweight), Ange Loosa vs. Rhys McKee (welterweight) and Farid Basharat vs. Kleydson Rodrigues (bantamweight).
Keep reading to learn how to watch UFC Fight Night: Gain vs. Serghei.
How to Watch UFC Fight Night: Gain vs. Serghei
ESPN+ and any streamer with access to ESPN will be airing UFC Paris. For those with cable, just check with your provider to see what channel ESPN is on.
Already subscribed to ESPN+? Just log into your account and you’ll be able to watch the fights for no additional cost. If you don’t have a subscription you’ll need one in order to catch all the action. While the streamer doesn’t have a free-trial, it does offer a budget-friendly plan of $9.99/month, which gives you access to the streamers full library of content including exclusive coverage of sporting events and more.
ESPN+ $9.99/month
ESPN+ is home to exclusive live events, dozens of sports series, TV shows and groundbreaking originals from the top names in sports including The Captain, America’s Caddie, Man in the Arena With Tom Brady, More Than an Athlete With Michael Strahan, Our Time: Baylor Basketball, Al Davis vs. The NFL, Vick, Be Like Water, Breakaway, the entire 30 for 30 series and other original content like UFC fights, including the upcoming UFC Paris matches.
For additional savings, consider bundling ESPN+ with Hulu and Disney+ or you can check out Hulu + Live TV for access to hundreds of channels including ESPN, Starz, Showtime and more.
Looking for other streaming options? You can tune in through Philo, Vidgo, DirectTV Stream and Sling TV for live and on-demand streaming, including ESPN and other sports channels, in addition to DVR recording. If you’re streaming outside the U.S. then make sure to use ExpressVPN.