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Don Henley, Sheryl Crow, Sting and a slew of other musicians are throwing their support behind a new federal copyright rule aimed at making sure that songwriters who regain control of their music actually start getting paid their streaming royalties after they do so.
As first reported by Billboard in October, the U.S. Copyright Office wants to overturn a policy adopted by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (which collects streaming royalties) that critics fear might lead to a bizarre outcome: Even after a writer uses their so-called termination right to take back control of their songs, royalties may continue to flow in perpetuity to the old publishers that no longer own them.
In a letter Thursday organized by the Music Artists Coalition, more than 350 artists, songwriters, managers and music lawyers urged the Copyright Office to grant final approval for the proposed rule, warning that “music creators must not be deprived of the rights afforded to them by copyright law.”
“We stand together in support of USCO’s rule and believe that anything contrary would undermine the clear Congressional intent to allow songwriters, after an extended period of time, to reap the benefit of the songs they create,” the signatories wrote to the Copyright Office.
“It is simple, a songwriter who validly terminates a prior grant is the correct recipient of royalties,” the group wrote. “A publisher whose grant was terminated – and has received the benefit of the songwriter’s work for decades – is not the proper or intended recipient of these royalties.”
To fully understand the legal complexities of the Copyright Office’s proposed rule and what it might mean for songwriters, read this explainer.
Thursday’s letter, also signed by Bob Seger, Maren Morris, John Mayer, Dave Matthews, members of the Black Keys and others, came on the final day of the so-called “comment period,” in which outside groups could submit their opinion on the Copyright Office’s proposed rule.
The letter was the product of a call for signatures by the Irving Azoff-led Music Artists Coalition, which, along with other groups like Songwriters of North America, the Black Music Action Coalition and the Nashville Songwriters Association International, helped raise the alarm about the issue and spurred the Copyright Office to take action last year.
“Too often, music artists are quietly stripped of their rights,” Azoff said in a statement to Billboard announcing the letter. “But, today, the industry stood up to say ‘Not on our watch!’ We applaud the Copyright Office for its proposed rule. This rule should pass unamended and without delay.”
The Copyright Office introduced its new rule in October, saying the MLC’s policy had been based on an “erroneous” understanding of the law that created ambiguity about who should be receiving streaming royalties after a songwriter invokes their termination right and regains ownership of their music. Ordering MLC to “immediately repeal its policy in full,” the new proposal would make clear that when a songwriter takes back their music, they should obviously start getting the royalties, too.
In a message to members ahead of Thursday’s letter, MAC offered a plain-English explainer of the complex legal mechanics at play in the situation. The group urged its members to help end what it believed amounted to a loophole in the system created by 2018’s Music Modernization Act, warning that it could defeat the very purpose of both the new law and termination.
In an interview with Billboard, Susan Genco, co-president of The Azoff Company and a leader at MAC, said the group’s call to action – and the letter that came from it — was an example of how songwriters have become better mobilized after years of being “kept in the dark” on complicated policy matters that could have adverse effects.
“This is a big part of our role, to figure out which issues impact music creators the most, prioritize them, and then explain them to the community,” Genco said.
“We tried to paint a very clear picture for them,” added Jordan Bromley, a prominent music attorney and another key member of MAC, in the same interview. “Oh you think you’re getting your streaming mechanicals back through termination? Think again.”
In addition to advocating for the new rule, Thursday’s letter also came with something of a warning. The final sentence, separated into its own paragraph, read: “Any view opposing the USCO’s rule is a vote against songwriters.”
While not outright oppositional, the Copyright Office has received pushback on the proposed changes from the National Music Publishers’ Association. In a Dec. 1 submission, the group said it supported the overall goal of the new rule, but warned that the agency’s proposed approach “may have far-reaching and unintended consequences” and would likely lead to litigation in other spheres. Among other issues, the group said the rule must not apply retroactively.
“The breadth of the USCO’s legal reasoning in the [proposed rule] seems likely to increase legal uncertainty and questions,” the NMPA wrote. “This uncertainty will almost definitely raise the likelihood of litigation … including litigation concerning past payments made in accordance with what was then industry custom and practice.”
The NMPA instead advocated for “a consensus-based legislative solution” that would be passed by Congress, which it said could be narrower and more “carefully crafted” to avoid the problems the group has with the Copyright Office’s legal analysis.
In a statement to Billboard, NMPA president David Israelite stressed the industry group was aligned with songwriters on the ultimate policy goal.
“We strongly support songwriters receiving all mechanical royalties after a termination and have been working towards crafting legislation to ensure that outcome for years alongside the major songwriter groups,” Israelite said. “While not a concrete legislative remedy, our comments reflect our support for the Copyright Office’s proposed rule and offer ways to make that rule even more robust and less susceptible to legal challenges.”
The text of the Copyright Office’s proposed rule is available in its entirety on the agency’s website. The public comment period ended on Thursday, but all submitted comments will be made public on a public docket. The agency will review all comments and issue a final rule in the months ahead.
Read the entire letter sent to the Copyright Office on Thursday here:
De La Soul has made a career of being ahead of the pack. The legendary New York hip-hop trio’s debut album 3 Feet High and Rising was beloved upon its 1989 release because of its hippy-esque, hyper-positive approach and unpredictable sampling, often being cited as the genesis of what’s referred to as “alternative hip-hop.” De La also co-founded the Native Tongues collective, alongside like-minded groups the Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, and kicked off what the group referred to as the “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” (short for DA Inner Sound, Y’all) in rap – though they would move beyond that early sound and image in acclaimed subsequent releases like 1991’s De La Soul is Dead and 1996’s Stakes Is High.
So when music industry red tape and sample clearances prevented their all-time great catalog from becoming available on digital marketplaces and streaming services, their modern-day accessibility suffered in a way unfitting of their massive legacy. Still, the trio continued to make their presence felt in other, less-conventional spaces.
In 2009, they connected with Nike to release Are You In?, an album that was part of the company’s Original Run series. Five years later, the group celebrated the 25th anniversary of 3 Feet High, by making nearly their entire catalog up to that point — six albums between 1988 and 2001 — available for free download, essentially bootlegging their own music. And in 2015, they launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their ninth album, the live band-backed …and the Anonymous Nobody. They’ve stayed busy on the road, while also making a huge crossover appearance on Gorillaz’ Grammy-winning 2005 smash “Feel Good Inc.,” and most recently scoring a major synch for their 3 Feet single “The Magic Number” in the 2021 blockbuster Spider-Man: No Way Home.
But in 2021, the rights to De La Soul’s former label Tommy Boy were acquired by the music rights firm Reservoir Media — with whom the group secured a deal to retrieve their masters, finally giving them the ability to re-release their music on their own terms. Now, their first six albums will all be available on streaming platforms (along with exclusive merch, vinyl, CDs and cassettes), via their label AOI, distributed by Chrysalis Records. The campaign starts on January 13, with “The Magic Number” being made available for streaming and their website hosting a 7″ vinyl and cassette single for sale — and the group’s first six albums are scheduled to arrive in full on streaming on March 3.
Billboard spoke to two-thirds of the group, Posdnous and Dave, about the path to getting control of their music, whether or not they think hip-hop is currently accommodating veteran artists, and their take on the 21 Savage and Nas debate over “relevance.”
What happened within the last year or two years that made it possible to finally reach the point where the albums are coming out?
Posdnous: When the catalog got back in the hands of the original owner, Tom Silverman, he was in the process of clearing things and trying to get the music up. But he basically wanted for us to pay for old debts, that would have obviously been written off. That stalled it for the next three or something years after he got the music back. He wanted to put it back up, but we didn’t want to put it up until worked out a better deal.
I’m not trying to be correct and political; I wish that man no harm in his life. And I don’t mean physically, I mean in terms of his name. At one point, people could feel like that was being tarnished; there were a lot of fans who loved us and were disrespecting him in comments, and that wasn’t what we were trying to do at all. We just wanted to benefit from our work. It almost felt like we were being erased from history, because our music wasn’t up.
When Reservoir acquired it, they worked out what we needed to be worked out, which was great. But once it got into our hands, along with Reservoir assisting us, once again, there were a lot of samples and things that needed to be taken care of. It was long, but it wasn’t grueling. What’s great is that a lot of these owners, writers, and publishers were De La Soul fans, and they had publicly understood what was going on. They were happy to see that was in our hands now, and when we went to try to clear things, everyone pretty much came to the table to really work it out and get it done.
It was a long journey when we got to this point, but it was still a great journey to see that people were willing to help. People weren’t trying to make it that hard for us. And we got to really revisit a lot of the albums, which brought about a lot of great memories.
As outsiders, a lot of those conversations seem to focus on the ultimate goal of acquiring the masters. But for you guys, it sounds like acquiring the masters is where everything began, not where it started.
Dave: Yeah, it actually did begin at that point. You think that you own your stuff and that now it’s on cruise control, waiting for the checks to come in. But it is not that way at all. There’s a lot to do. Maybe you’re lucky and you don’t have to clear samples, maybe you don’t have to broker deals with different publishers, and there’s no one around to claim anything or to risk anything. But we had a job to do.
If we didn’t have the help of Reservoir, who picked up the project and is collaborating with us to do this release, I don’t know where we would turn to. It would have been even more work. So you do need collaborators, you do need help, you do need to rework back into the system and not necessarily be the lone commissioner of this project. You need allies, you need companies to work with, you need people to hire, and we learned a big lesson from that. It definitely wasn’t just, “We got our masters back!” It ain’t that.
With this music coming out again, you’ve got diehard fans who’ve been around the whole time who are going to finally have it on streaming, as well as fans who have wanted to hear your music but didn’t have the opportunity because it wasn’t on DSPs, and people who have rarely known much about you at all. How do you plan to reach out to all these newer fans?
Posdnous: We’re blessed to have people even feel that this is classic music, that it was very important to different references within the timeline of hip-hop. All I’m trying to say is that it’s still a part of what we were already doing. If we’re rolling with the Gorillaz, all those fans have been De La fans. If we never missed as one of the longest-touring groups in hip-hop from almost 15 years ago, we’re already seen as a generational group.
Our fans passed us down to their children. We always have people say, “I found out from you from my uncle, my brother, my moms.” So as much as our music needed to be up in this digital world, the people who were touched by our music made sure that it didn’t lose a beat in their life, and they made sure people around them learned about it.
In my DMs, a person was like, “Yo, after [“The Magic Number” appeared in Spider-Man: Long Way From Home], I couldn’t find it, then my grandfather pulled out his [record] and showed me.” I know my age, but I still feel like I’m cool as s–t, so this is weird that I could be a grandfather. [Laughs.] But it’s all coming together, and it’s great that the music that needs to be up [on streaming] will be there.
Usually, when we’re speaking about acts in hip-hop that have been out for a long time, we don’t even speak about them in terms of getting new fans; we just think about them in terms of catering to the fans that they’ve already had. Is finding new fans something that you guys find important?
Dave: I wouldn’t say important. But the opportunity for people to hear this thing regardless of what they know about it, and maybe inspire some kid that wants to be different or sound odd, and gain fans at the same time, it’s something that we appreciate and want to happen. It isn’t really about, “We got to do something for these people who’ve never heard our music,” it’s just that the exposure could open so much more. We want people to hear it, and maybe run off and do something amazing that’ll impress us, and it keeps going back and forth.
We’ve always talked about the lopsided aspect of hip-hop. I think hip-hop has a sound right now that needs balancing. It’s important to us that we create balance and pull people in and make this thing bigger and better. And if our music can be a part of that, then yeah, we’re trying to do that.
Over the past five to six years, there are more rappers in their mid-to-late 40s who are still making great music — whether it’s Hov, Nas, Busta. But I feel like your music had already matured considerably by the first Art Official Intelligence album in 2000. Rap has long been criticized for not respecting its veterans enough. Where do you think hip-hop is now in terms of respecting the artists who have actually paid their dues?
Posdnous: I still think it has a ways to go. We learn from our own elders — when you really think about it, my elder was like a Melle Mel, he was maybe 17 when he started what he was doing. Now, in this friendly competition – when it was friendly, it was still about, “I’m better than you.” There’s a level of respect that sometimes is not really there fully. Because we just really gotta learn to respect ourselves, to respect each other, and didn’t respect the entire craft. But as a group, we’re blessed to be here.
I feel the majority of our music fits into something that feels timeless. There always will be a reason to say “One Love,” and you can hear all these great Bob Marley records. There’s always a reason to say “Fight the Power.” So these things that, unfortunately, still exist in the world, the music will be relevant to it. And I think that it’s the same with us. There’s always a level of understanding yourself, individualism, “Me, Myself, and I”; there’s a reason for those albums and those in those worlds to exist.
What I’ve actually loved and appreciated about some of the younger guys, they’re really honest and saying, “Even I don’t see myself talking about popping bottles, bugging out, and drinking lean when I’m 31.” They’re thinking of it like, “This s–t is just a way to get me to where I need to be. So when it’s over, all these business moves I made, I’m good.” But it is good when you can see those same people respect what has gotten them there.
I don’t think that hip-hop is the only victim. We use the internet all day long, and no one would necessarily care who created the internet. I think hip-hop is the same way. I tell younger kids, “When it comes to some street s–t, though, you respect who Al Capone is. That’s the same reason you should respect who Kool Herc is. These people helped create this tool that you use to better your life.”
Along with all of the incredible music you guys did for the first six albums, you guys have been responsible for a couple of my favorite moments in the past 10 years. One of them is when you guys basically bootlegged your own catalog. What was that experience like, and what did you learn from it that you can apply to this experience of putting it back out on streaming?
Posdnous: I’m not sure what the other guys would say, but I didn’t really learn anything. It’s what I already knew. And I feel like I could say that about the rest of the group. We knew how much people wanted and needed this music. Without the music even being up, we were still blessed to be a group that was always afforded or awarded the opportunity to travel all over the world. Everywhere we go, there was people who are so grateful for us to be there, letting us know, “but d–n, where’s your music?”
And we were trying our best to explain to Warner, who was in control of our music at that point, “Yo, it’s really in your best interest, along with us, to figure this out.” Because people wanted it. They were mad. But what was great about it was it helped them to see the data, that “yo, we really should be working to get this s–t out.” So it wasn’t a learning experience (for us). It was helping other people who needed to know to learn that we were still valuable to this culture.
You guys also had the Kickstarter campaign for the album …and the Anonymous Nobody. What was that process like doing for the first time, and being able to connect with your fans directly versus working with a label?
Posdnous: There were way more pros than cons. The cons, for me, were the phone calls that we spent working and figuring all that out man, they were long. And like you said, we’re men who have families and other responsibilities, along with just the responsibilities of being De La Soul. I almost felt — and I know Dave has said this as well — like, “Yo, are we begging for money?”
When we started this process of working on the album, we were working on a conventional De La album in the sense of producers getting us beats and we write rhymes over them. That was happening, and that album was going to be called You’re Welcome. But we just started working on this band project, and it just took on such a refreshing level to our creative psyche. Even friends of ours in the industry who happened to work at labels, they were like, “Yo, we’ll give you money for this.” So it wasn’t even like there wasn’t interest in putting out this album with labels. But it was a level of understanding that maybe we should put it out ourselves. So that took a lot of time to understand what Kickstarter was and how it’s being applied. It was a learning process, and it was fun learning it.
I feel weird asking this, just because you’re about to re-release six albums at once. But where are you guys with new music? You’ve spoken about the album with Primo and Pete Rock; I saw Prince Paul speak about work on a new De La album…
Posdnous: We definitely have a lot of work to do. We definitely want to get something done with Paul. What Paul was just referring to was the work he was putting in and helping us with the older catalog. So it’s not like we were working on new projects, but we’ve all discussed that as well. With Premo and Pete Rock, it’s the same thing. We were so drawn into what to do with this [release of the older material]. And then if there’s times where if we don’t have a lot on our table, we were like, “Let’s get up.”
But maybe Preem had too much to do, or then Pete was running the world doing what he had to do. We were just so at a point – and I know De La is [at that point] – of just wanting it to sound the way it needs to sound. So we was willing to keep trying to put in the work to get the right music. We have a few, and we just need a few more. [sighs] I really want that to come out, God willing. Me and Preem actually spoke about two weeks ago when I was in New York. “Come through, let’s try to cook some stuff up.” So hopefully we can get that done soon. A Gangsta Grillz with Drama would hit too, I would love to do that. So there’s a lot of things that I would love to see done. With new music, for me, it’s always about new along with what’s classic, what’s timeless.
Funny enough, Yasiin was around us not too long ago, he was always saying that, “As a musician, I just always want to put music out. I want to put something to something.” I was like, “Yeah,” and I totally agree. That’s why you always see me pretty much [recording] out of the group. I’m always featuring on something else, keeping the pen sharp and my mind moving with doing music.
There was a big conversation recently about 21 Savage and Nas, and the idea of “relevance.” They already worked out any misunderstandings there may have been, and made a song together. But I think that De La is interesting, in the sense that the music has lived on, and you’ve also done things that have kept you relevant – whether it’s releasing all your music that I mentioned before, the Kickstarter campaign, or your song appearing in the Spider-Man movie. Should relevance be a conversation for older artists, or is it just something you’ve done well?
Posdnous: Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, relevance will always be a conversation. But what is your checklist on why or what makes you relevant? My son is 17, and he has learned why Martin Luther King Jr. is relevant. But he can see a kid next to him from another culture, another race, who doesn’t find no relevance. They may know who he is, but they can just be like, “aight.” But does that stop Martin Luther King from being relevant? My son is perceived as African-American, but I understand why he immediately can click into it and some people won’t.
Same with music. I may see the name De La here and there, but that may not hold relevance to me, because I’m from the Bay, and they don’t mean something to me the way the OG E-40 means something to me. I could care less about sea moss when I was younger, I would never touch that s–t; now, I can’t go a day without my sea moss. [Laughs.]
Something can come into your life and you’ll be like, “D–n, I was really trying to like stay away from it. This is great.” I’ve had the biggest De La fans be like, “Yo, man, I can’t front, that [1993 album] Buhloone Mindstate, I wasn’t f–king with that when it came out.” And guess what? They can turn around now and be like, “now that I’m in my late 30s, this Buhloone Mindstate hits different now!” Things are meant to find people. I think that everything can stay in a place where it will hold its relevance to who it needs to hold it to. Some people will join in, some people will never join in, but you can’t let that s–t bother you, man.
The 21 thing was taken out of context, but a lot of young people try to shoot that gun at the OG, because the people who love the OG are so quick to down the young people on what they’re doing. But people around them are making them feel that since they’re young, what they’re doing doesn’t mean anything to the culture. And I feel that is 100% wrong. I didn’t sound like Kool G. Rap, I didn’t sound like Run-DMC. But you’re not going to tell me I didn’t know everything about Kool G. Rap and everyone else who was down with him, and I didn’t need someone trying to tell me to take my “Flower Power” s–t and get the f–k out the way. So you got to just kind of let these kids be who they are.
I do feel that a lot of the content can be poisonous; it can be unhealthy if that’s all you’re listening to. So if we have a problem with that, I as the OG shouldn’t have a problem talking with these younger kids and hanging with them. But to make them feel bad when they’re just using what they’re given? I’ve always grown up to be the type of person who is like, “Maybe I should have been did a better part, maybe Native Tongues should have been a better part.” I think that’s a better way to approach it, than to act like these kids landed from a whole ‘nother planet to f–k up hip-hop.
Looking back at your catalog and seeing that it’s about to come out again now, is there anything that you’ve done that you think would be seen differently if it dropped now versus when you dropped it before?
Dave: I think 3 Feet High and Rising, as much as people might claim it to be a hip-hop masterpiece – it’s a hip-hop masterpiece for the era in which it was released. I think the element of that time of what was taking place in music, hip-hop, and our culture, I think it welcomed that and opened up minds and spirits to see and try new different things. I think releasing 3 Feet High and Rising right now, even to maybe the age group that was listening back then, I think hip-hop as a whole just wouldn’t get it. I think hip-hop would possibly look at it as obnoxious, soft, that kind of thing.
But I think it’s also because where we’re at in hip-hop right now, hip-hop is about what you got on, who you’re impressing, what can you do, how much you got, how much you’re spending, and how much is in that bag that you got around you? I don’t think the impact of what 3 Feet High and Rising and what it meant back then would mean anything now. I feel like there are people who will get it, but I don’t know if there’s that acclaim to it in this day and age if it was something we’d never heard before.
I think the innocence that we had back then was brave, but we were in a time where innocence was so cool. Not sampling James Brown, but sampling Liberace; I think it was shocking [when] we came out [that] we sampled Liberace. I don’t know if it’d impact the same way [now].
I was thinking yesterday about something I think I’ve taken for granted with De La: How have you three stayed together all this time?
Dave: Man. It ain’t easy, but it’s the reality, it seems like. Even during the pandemic, I think there were talks of doing solo albums, or feeling like one person might want to record something at home and start working. There’s always been talk about stuff like that, Mace and Pos pushing me, like, “Yo, do a record.” We support each other in those ideas –, but at the same time, I think the magic really happens when it’s the three of us. I’m not trying to crack that formula, and I don’t think anyone else is, either.
When you get mad, and somebody blew your high, and maybe even somebody might feel disrespected – when those things happen, they’re real. We might not speak to each other for three weeks or months. But at the end of the day, when you’re craving that magic, that high that we get, you revert back to brothers and family. It’s like, “Yo, I think we need to talk about what happened.” For the sake of getting that feeling back, that’s really it. I think everybody could move on and do their own thing, and maybe not do their thing at all and just chill. But the magic happens with us three on the phone, in the same conversation, in the room together, in the studio, and hanging out on the tour bus. That’s where the magic happens, so that’s why we’re still here. We don’t want to interrupt that magic.
If a new group was asking you guys for advice on how to stay together, what would you say?
Dave: Fight, but remember that you’re fighting for the team. Even if you don’t agree, you’re fighting to get your point across for the team, not for you personally. Sometimes, we hold our tongue and we’re not as honest as we could be. One person is talking to someone else in the group, and they become allies. Taking one person’s problem and going to talk to his or her group of friends over here, and that becomes some sort of animosity.
Nah, man. I say this because many of my friends are people I know in the industry, and that’s how the breakups happen. Sometimes it’s about money, but then there’s an element of: We don’t get along because we haven’t been honest with each other. Get through that honesty, move on, and keep going – because it feels good going. Fight it out, get it all out, and come back know
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Source: Al Pereira / Getty
Some good Hip-Hop news at the top of 2023. De La Soul’s catalog of classic music, most of which has been missing from streaming services for years, will finally be available in March.
The group—Dave (fka Trugoy The Dove), Posdnous and Mase—announced on Tuesday (Jan. 3), that their music would be on streamers starting March 2. The date happens to coincide with the anniversary the Long Island Hip-Hop group’s landmark debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.
“The Reservoir and Chrysalis teams have worked with De La Soul, and their record label, AOI, to bring their music to digital streaming services,” said De La in a statement, as reported by Variety. “Reservoir is pleased to share that De La Soul’s first six albums, ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ (1989), ‘De La Soul Is Dead’ (1991), ‘Buhloone Mindstate’ (1993), ‘Stakes Is High’ (1996), ‘Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump’ (2000), and ‘AOI: Bionix’ (2001), will be available to fans everywhere March 3rd, 2023, on the 34th anniversary of the release of their debut album, ‘3 Feet High and Rising.’”
De La Soul’s catalog was largely absent from streaming services due to sample clearance issues. However, in 2021, their catalog on Tommy Boy Records was acquired by Reservoir Media, which has been at work to finally make De La’s music available on services like Spotify and Amazon Music. But that took longer than expected with initial reports saying the music would land back in November 2021.
Read more about De La Soul’s triumphant return to streaming at Variety.
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It has been 10 years since Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views. In addition to pushing K-pop into the global stratosphere, the vibrant video (now with more than 4.6 billion views, as of Dec. 2022) kickstarted the video-streaming platform’s official Billion Views Club — which has grown to become a landmark achievement for artists and industry leaders alike.
Over 300 music videos have entered the club since its inception in 2012 and several have surpassed Psy’s history-making visual. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” reigns as the most-viewed music video on YouTube, crossing 8 billion views just five years after its release. Also lapping Psy are Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” with 5.8 billion views, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” featuring Charlie Puth with 5.7 billion views, and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” featuring Bruno Mars with 4.7 billion views, all as of Dec. 2022.
A number of superstar musical acts have had multiple videos surpass a billion views — including Justin Bieber, Adele, Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift. Colombian singer-songwriter J Balvin has entered the Billion Views Club 12 different times, making him the artist with the most videos in the coveted club.
In 2022 alone, more than 50 music videos earned their first billion views. While some musical acts made their triumphant return to the Billion Views Club, others earned their first entries ever. The Weeknd added his fifth video with a billion views thanks to “Save Your Tears,” less than two years after its premiere. On the other hand, Cyndi Lauper reached the milestone for the first time with “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” 39 years after its initial release (though it wasn’t uploaded to YouTube until 2009).
To celebrate a decade of billions, Billboard revisits all 51 music videos to enter YouTube’s Billion Views Club in 2022 below.
TOKYO — For non-Japanese music artists, Japan’s decades-long obsession with physical media has meant they must grapple with legacy strategies for getting attention in the world’s second-largest market — such as landing on a major Japanese TV show or getting CDs into a large brick-and-mortar retailer.
Now, new digital opportunities are emerging that could make it easier. A three-year-old YouTube channel, The First Take, is at the forefront of breaking new artists in Japan and nudging a market long allergic to the internet toward digital music consumption. The channel has featured a handful of big Western artists in 2022, including Harry Styles, who appeared in June to sing “Daughters” from this year’s Harry’s House, and Avril Lavigne, who in September offered up a stripped-down version of “Complicated.”
Launched in late 2019, The First Take now boasts more than 7 million subscribers. It landed its first viral videos with five episodes featuring singer-songwriter LiSA, who performed the opening theme to the anime series Demon Slayer. But it was in the early months of the pandemic when the channel — like other digital entertainment in Japan — surged in popularity.
Digital music sales, which have grown for eight straight years in Japan, jumped 13% to 89.54 billion yen ($660.3 million) in 2021 over 2020, while physical music consumption, which has fallen over the past three years, dipped slightly by 0.4% to 193.64 billion yen ($1.43 billion), according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan. (Physical sales still comprised 68.4% of total sales, easily the highest level of any major music market.)
Fresh-faced artists stepping up to the mic on The First Take to show off their skills — such as Yoasobi, Yuuri and DISH//— have gone on to top the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and produced videos with over 100 million views. They’ve done so primarily through digital and streaming channels, reflecting a shift in how listeners receive J-pop domestically.
When the team started work on the channel in 2019, “what we wanted to create was something you couldn’t see on TV, or more detailed than what you would see on a weekly music show,” says channel producer Makoto Uchida. They drew inspiration from NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts series and Germany’s Colors. “We decided to shoot it from the side, rather than the front, so that it felt like you were in the studio, getting a peek of the artist at work.”
They leaned into this sense of intimacy by positioning The First Take as, well, a first take, capturing whatever the artist sings into the microphone, with errors and emotion on full display. Channel director Naoko Furukawa says that early on, driving this point across to participating artists proved most challenging, as many came in assuming they would have the chance to redo performances.
Soshi Sakayama from The First Take
Kazuki Nagayama
The First Take saw a substantial increase in views, with uploads featuring young creators like DISH// and Yoasobi, who went from fledgling J-pop names to chart toppers, particularly on subscription services such as Spotify.
The First Take is among the first major music efforts in Japan to use streaming data to target the show’s main demographic of 20- and 30-year-olds, and to determine when artists should perform, says team member Kazuto Fushimi.
“The data shows that Japanese people listen to music by seasons,” Fushimi says. “I used that to cast songs that would fit well for this project at certain times of the year.”
Even after Japan loosened COVID-19 restrictions later in 2020, The First Take morphed into an internet-era version of weekly TV shows like Music Station, a music program featuring live performances that started airing in Japan in 1986. It has added a news platform, podcast and live concerts, and has also tried to bring in artists from other markets, initially from China and other Southeast Asian countries.
“We used anime and anime songs to get attention from those markets,” says Fushimi. “They weren’t made explicitly for foreign audiences, but we always made sure to put subtitles and other things so that everyone could follow along too.”
K-pop group Stray Kids was the first non-Japanese artist to appear on The First Take, in the spring of 2020. Fushimi says many new viewers came to the clip via Twitter, where fan communities were sharing it and explaining what The First Take was. The Korean act has appeared on the channel two more times since, which has further boosted their video views on YouTube. “The more that they’ve appeared, the more likely they are to appear on the ‘related’ videos list, which leads to more fan engagement,” Fushimi says.
Other K-pop acts have appeared on the channel since — most recently, burgeoning girl group Kep1er — as have acts from other parts of the continent, including a recent turn by Taiwanese artist WeiBird.
The team’s focus didn’t move beyond the region until this past summer when they landed Styles in June and started looking outside Asia to the West. The team put together English-language promotional materials for Twitter, knowing that it would get them new looks from abroad. Fushimi says Styles’ appearance generated the most tweets about any artist on The First Take to date. (The First Take’s producers declined to share how the Styles collaboration specifically came together.)
“Compared with Japanese artists, foreign artists really are quick about recording – they don’t take much time for rehearsals, they just jump right in,” Furukawa says. “Harry Styles only took 10 minutes after he showed up to the studio to do the actual recording.”
Lavigne’s video followed several months later, attracting over 7 million viewers (boosted by a domestic love for her music that has endured for decades), and offering The First Take another opportunity to tip-toe toward Western attention.
“It’s hard to export J-pop to the world,” Fushimi says, “but we want to use The First Take as a bridge to introduce great Japanese artists to the world.”
ReoNa from The First Take
Kazuki Nagayama
The Cramps‘ 1981 recording of “Goo Goo Muck” became an out-of-left field success story in November after its use in a dance scene in the hit Netflix series Wednesday helped a new generation discover the song, first released in 1962 by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads.
Music trends, created by viral hits on TikTok and YouTube, are unpredictable, though. As soon as “Goo Goo Muck” was enjoying its newfound fame, along came “Bloody Mary,” a deep cut from Lady Gaga‘s 2011 album Born This Way. Fans inspired by the Wednesday scene uploaded videos of themselves performing the dance to TikTok and other platforms, but many swapped out the audio of “Goo Goo Muck” with a sped-up version of “Bloody Mary” — including Gaga herself after the singer caught onto the trend.
Lady Gaga may have stolen some of The Cramps’ thunder. As weekly growth of on-demand streams of “Goo Goo Muck” slowed — from 177% to 7% in the last two weeks — on-demand streams of “Bloody Mary” increased 88% to 43.1 million in the week of Dec. 9. About 89% of the streams came from video platforms, namely YouTube, where the sped-up version of the recording is used in videos of people recreating the Wednesday dance scene.
Still, “Goo Goo Muck” is having a fairy tale of a fourth quarter. Between Nov. 18 to Dec. 16, its weekly U.S. on-demand streams increased about 200 times, from 31,000 to 6.1 million. Download sales were strong enough to put “Goo Goo Muck” at No. 25 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart for the week of Dec. 10. “It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” Jim Shaw, owner of the song’s publishing rights, previously told Billboard.
Both tracks also got a boost from being featured on some major playlists. On Nov. 30, Spotify added “Goo Goo Muck” to its Big on the Internet playlist, which has nearly 3 million followers, and on Dec. 6 it added the track to its Teen Beats playlist, which boasts over 1.8 million followers, according to Chartmetric. “Bloody Mary” is also featured on both playlists and is currently the leadoff track on Teen Beats.
Exactly one decade ago, on Dec. 21, 2012, Psy‘s “Gangnam Style” made history as the first music video to reach 1 billion YouTube views. As a result, YouTube’s Billion Views Club was born. A way to celebrate official videos that have achieved peak virality, the club is now home to over 300 music videos, including many of the most iconic hits from the past 10 years — from Adele‘s “Hello” to Luis Fonsi‘s “Despacito” feat. Daddy Yankee.
But how much do artists get paid for crossing the billion-view threshold for a music video on YouTube? The royalties are dependent on a few factors. Label affiliation, location and type of view affect these rates significantly. For example, artists signed to major labels — which represent the vast majority of members of the Billion Views Club — earn higher rates on the platform than those who are unsigned or affiliated with an indie label.
But location is possibly the biggest determining factor of all: in the U.S., rates are generally higher than in other countries. So while an official YouTube music video for a major-label artist could generate a blended average of $0.0038 per stream in the U.S., globally — which is how YouTube counts its views — Billboard estimates that rate at $0.0026 per stream. YouTube Premium video streams (views from customers who subscribe to YouTube’s ad-free video-watching tier) are also higher than plays from users on the ad-supported tier, both in the U.S. and globally.
Consequently, for major-label artists, 1 billion video streams on an official music video would generate about $2.6 million globally. That’s, of course, before the label takes their cut of royalties, which varies widely based on each artist’s individual deal, and before the artist takes into account what, if anything, they owe to their featured artists or producers on the track.
For non-official videos that use music — like a user-generated video of someone’s visit to the zoo, set to a song by a major-label artist — that global blended stream estimate would drop down to $0.0021, given lower payouts on UGC videos and the over-indexing of UGC viewership vs. that of official videos. So for a major-label song on YouTube that generates 1 billion views across all videos that use it, the label and artist would generate closer to $2.1 million.
Of the more than 300 music videos on YouTube to hit 1 billion views, the fastest to reach the benchmark is “Hello” by Adele, which took just 88 days from release to amass such a viewership. Next is a tie between “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran and “Despacito,” both of which took 97 days. The third and fourth places on the list are also both held by Spanish-language songs, with “Mi Gente” by J Balvin and Willy William earning the title in 103 days and “Échame La Culpa” by Luis Fonsi and Demi Lovato taking 111 days.
Additional Reporting by Ed Christman.
Preview
This time every year, enduring favorites by Mariah Carey, Brenda Lee and Bobby Helms rise to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 as Americans turn to holiday streaming playlists and Christmas-focused radio stations. However, these evergreens, celebrating the biggest Christian holiday of the year, are more secular than in years past.
It used to be that contemporary takes on traditional songs about the birth of Christ — “Little Drummer Boy,” “Joy to the World,” “Silent Night” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” — were among the most popular holiday songs. Listeners enjoyed Nat King Cole’s “O Come All Ye Faithful” as much as his version of “Deck the Halls.” Kenny Rogers had a popular take on “Mary, Did You Know?,” first recorded in 1991 by Michael English of the Christian group the Gaither Vocal Band. Martina McBride’s rendition of “O Holy Night,” a Christmas carol from the 1840s, was among the top 100 holiday songs.
In 2022, as streaming playlists drive listening, the top 100 holiday songs are more likely to conjure images of Santa, sleigh bells and cold weather than a baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Through Dec. 8, religious music had only a 4.4% share of the top 100 holiday songs’ total consumption — tied with 2021 for the lowest since 2010, according to a Billboard analysis of Luminate data. The top religious song since the first week of November, “O Come All Ye Faithful” by Nat King Cole, ranks only No. 50, the lowest for a No. 1. religious song since 2010. “Mary, Did You Know?” by Pentatonix ranks a mere No. 68 and Rogers’ version of the song has fallen to No. 255.
In terms of market share, religious holiday songs peaked in 2015 with 18.2% of the top 100 holiday tracks’ total consumption, which measures digital downloads and streaming. Vocal group Pentatonix owned six of the 13 religious songs in the top 100 holiday tracks, including No. 3 (“Mary, Did You Know?”), No. 25 (“Little Drummer Boy”) and No. 30 (“White Winter Hymnal”). The combined consumption of two versions of “Mary, Did You Know?” by Jordan Smith (No. 2) and Pentatonix (No. 3) that year was 17% greater than that of the No. 1 recording, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Religious songs captured the most number of spots in the top 100 in 2013, with 14 of the top holiday songs for the final two months of the year being religious in nature. There were two versions of “The Little Drummer Boy,” by Pentatonix (No. 3) and Harry Simeone Chorale (No. 74). Recordings of “Silent Night” by Kelly Clarkson (No. 21) and The Temptations (No. 44) were popular at the time. There were four versions of “O Holy Night” in the top 100: Celine Dion (No. 48), Mariah Carey (No. 77), Martina McBride (No. 96) and Pentatonix (No. 97). And Amy Grant’s original song “Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song)” ranked No. 82.
To categorize holiday music as secular or religious, Billboard considered each track’s lyrical content. Religious songs contain references to Biblical characters (e.g., Jesus, God or the Virgin Mary) or Christian themes (the nativity scene). Billboard counted Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukuh Song” as religious for its references to Judaism. A song like “Hallelujah,” written by Leonard Cohen and covered countless times by the likes of Pentatonix and Carrie Underwood, has a religious-sounding title but is classified as secular.
How holiday music is consumed — like all music — has changed over the years. From 2015, when religious holiday music reached its peak market share, to 2022, downloads’ contribution to total consumption of the top 100 holiday songs dropped from 49% to just 1.4%. This year, numerous religious songs, including For King & Country’s “Little Drummer Boy” and Lauren Daigle’s “Light of the World,” have relatively strong download sales but too few streams to make the top 100.
Radio stations favor a different slate of religious holiday songs than streaming platforms, such as versions of the 1962 song “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood and Whitney Houston that fall outside of the top 100 holiday streaming recordings. Traditional songs like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” recorded by the likes of Barenaked Ladies and Mannheim Steamroller, consistently perform well at U.S. radio. “Songs like ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ and ‘The First Noel’ still test equally well for us,” says Tom Poleman, chief programming officer for iHeartMedia, in an email to Billboard.
But the data show U.S. radio airplay of holiday music has also become more secular in recent years. In November and December of 2015, there were 16 religious songs in the top 100 holiday recordings as measured by spins. The top religious recording, “The Little Drummer Boy” by Harry Simeone Chorale, ranked No. 25 and was closely followed by two versions of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” by Houston and Bing Crosby at No. 33 and No. 34, respectively. Rogers’ and Pentatonix’s covers of “Mary, Did You Know?” also ranked in the top 100.
This year, through Dec. 8, there were only 6 religious songs in the top 100, and the top track, “The Little Drummer Boy” by Harry Simeone Chorale, had fallen to No. 72. Christian artist Amy Grant still makes the top 100, but her versions of “Winter Wonderland,” “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Sleigh Ride” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” have performed better than her top religious song, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
The final rankings could have more religious songs come Christmas, however. Radio stations tend to play religious-themed songs more often as Christmas nears, says Sean Ross, author of the Ross on Radio newsletter. That would mean tracks such as “The First Noel” by Andy Williams and “Joy to the World” by Nat King Cole, both top 100 tracks in 2021, could get more plays and rise through the ranks in the coming week.
Spotify has promoted longtime employee John Stein to head of North America, editorial, the company announced on Tuesday (Dec. 20). He reports directly to Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at the streaming service.
Stein joined Spotify in 2013 after the streamer acquired his previous company, the playlisting firm Tunigo. Prior to his promotion, he worked as lead of music culture and editorial, overseeing strategy and curation for Spotify’s U.S. editorial playlists and becoming a strong voice on the company’s editorial team and the music team as a whole.
In 2018, Stein co-created Spotify’s successful genre-less playlist Pollen, which today boasts more than 1.3 million likes on the platform. Due to Pollen’s phenomenal success, the streaming service began leaning into the concept of playlist-as-brand and eventually introduced other similar playlists, including the pop-leaning Lorem (more than 969,000 likes) and the Nordic region-focused Oyster (more than 102,000 likes).
With his promotion, Stein has three new direct reports on his team. They include Rachel Whitney, head of Nashville, editorial; Antonio Vasquez, head of U.S. Latin, editorial; and Ronny Ho, head of dance and electronic development, editorial. The trio joins Stein’s existing team, which includes Ehis Osifo, editor, editorial partnerships; Jess Huddleston, editorial lead, Canada with her direct reports Marc Matar, junior editor, Canada and Karla Moy, editor, Canada; Talia Kraines, senior editor, United States with her direct reports Fredrik Fencke, editor and Lulu Largent, junior editor; and Elizabeth Szabo, senior editor, along with her direct report William Nellis, junior editor, North America.
Wednesday is officially a smash. The Netflix show, which premiered Nov. 23, has climbed the ranks since its release and has become the third most watched show on the streaming platform after Stranger Things and Squid Game, but for the show’s composer Danny Elfman, the success came as a major surprise.
Speaking alongside Phoebe Bridgers for an interview with NME published Friday (Dec. 16), the composer — well known and loved for his work on The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Alice in Wonderland and more — spoke about what it was like working on Wednesday and how he feels about the show resonating with the masses.
“Wednesday was just fun. I grew up on The Addams Family, but I really also dug the Charles Addams cartoons even more so, so for me, it was like a well known kind of character, so to do a variation [of Wednesday] it was just fun,” Elfman said.
When the interviewer asked if the show’s success came as a surprise to him, the composer replied, “Yeah, completely. But you gotta realize, I’m surprised by anything I do having any success. When Batman came out, I was composing to a cut that was so dark on the video I could barely even tell what was happening at the time. I thought this was going to be a little cult film at best, and so the fact that it was a big hit — that shocked me and surprised me. I thought Wednesday would be like Batman: I thought it was going to be a little cult thing.”
Wednesday has been quite the opposite of “a little cult thing” — the show’s synch of The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” drove up on-demand streams of the track to more than 2 million in the U.S. in the week of Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, a more than 8,650% increase from the average 47 weeks before this year. And though Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” was not featured in the show, it also gained 2 million streams thanks to the show’s corresponding TikTok dance trend.
Watch Elfman talk about Wednesday in the video above.