State Champ Radio synchs
The Rights, a synch licensing clearance platform, launched publicly on Tuesday (April 16) following a beta test period that involved participation from two major music companies, Kobalt Music Group and Believe. Founded by a team of synch and licensing veterans with funding from a motley cast of investors, executives and entrepreneurs, the company is trying to build a better mousetrap that simplifies a time-consuming process and, possibly, reduces the threat from emerging technology.
Created in partnership with Dequency, a blockchain-based synch licensing company, The Rights purports to be a useful tool to handle the increasingly high volume of synch licensing requests from small productions like limited-release films, podcasts, content creation and concert footage. The goal is to make the process easier at scale by allowing a track with multiple rights holders to be cleared in a single transaction.
“We can match the agility of production music libraries and one-stop catalogs, yet offer the pricing flexibility, consent rights and customized terms required to maintain the premium value of commercial music,” said Tres Williams, founder/CEO of The Rights, in a statement.
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Williams is a former executive vp of business affairs at iHeartMedia who had similar duties at Thumbplay, a subscription music streaming service acquired by Clear Channel — later renamed iHeartMedia — in 2011. Williams is joined at The Rights by president Keatly Haldeman, who is founder/CEO of Dequency as well as co-founder/CEO of Riptide Music Group; and chief business officer Scott Marshall, another former executive at both iHeartMedia and Thumbplay.
The Rights has raised $7.5 million to date from the likes of film and TV production company Spyglass Media Group; Endeavor Entertainment; venture capital firm Borderless Capital; blockchain developer Algorand; Grit Capital Partners; iHeartMedia chairman/CEO Bob Pittman; and Elon Musk’s siblings: entrepreneur Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk, the latter a filmmaker and co-founder of video streaming platform Passionflix.
Despite an explosion in opportunities for placement in streaming content, synch license revenue has grown at a slower rate than subscription streaming royalties. The global synch license market, as measured by the IFPI, grew 4.7% to $632 million in 2023 — a figure that covers recorded music only, not music publishing, and excludes production music libraries. That’s less than half the 11.2% growth in subscription revenue. In the United States, synch revenue grew 7.4% to $411 million last year, according to the RIAA, well behind the 10.6% growth in subscription revenue.
Now, synch licensing faces a threat from the sudden rise of artificial intelligence-created music. The Rights warns that AI-created music could grow into a multi-billion-dollar business in less than a decade, “siphoning revenue away from the artists and writers of the world’s most-desired songs,” it said in a press release. While technology has transformed everything from music distribution to marketing, the process of clearing synch licenses remains “untouched by tech efficiencies,” Haldeman said in a statement. “Our goal is to create infrastructure for the industry to make the clearance process smooth for both rights holders and licensees.”
When 21-year-old singer ericdoa released the song “ >one” last March, he had an unusual collaborator: Valorant. That’s not another artist; it’s a popular shooter game that attracted millions of players in February. Riot Games, the company behind Valorant, used “ >one” — which references the game in its lyrics — in a trailer that introduced a playable character named Gekko. The track is now ericdoa’s second-most-popular song on Spotify, with over 36 million streams.
“That was a huge spiritual win,” says Maria Egan, global head of music and events for Riot Games. “Can we do that over and over again?” she asks. “How do we unlock our platform and other gaming platforms to be the new place that new artists can find audiences?”
It’s a question often asked in the music business as well. In recent years, the industry has struggled to find reliable ways to ensure that its songs reach a wide listenership. The gaming community is massive, youthful and interested in music — in other words, an ideal target for labels. Yet there have been few notable recent instances of games helping new artists break through or driving music discovery on a mass scale.
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“Like music, gaming is global and has significant cultural relevance, but scalability at this intersection is still a challenge,” says Geoff Sawyer, an agent in gaming and esports at UTA. “Players and revenue are scattered across an endless web of product categories and consumer affinities, and not all in one big bucket. While there are incredibly cool, bespoke integrations happening between games and musicians, the music industry would need to upend its licensing model to truly achieve scale in this category.”
In truth, gaming does not need more labels’ music to thrive — the gaming industry earned around $184 billion in 2023, dwarfing music (around $26 billion, according to the IFPI). As one prominent music tech executive puts it, “the business model for games doesn’t need to support music.”
And even within the popular games that foreground music, space remains highly competitive. “There are still a limited amount of slots in FC, a limited amount of slots in NBA 2K,” says Steve Schnur, president of music for Electronic Arts (EA).
The music industry would presumably benefit if there were more games with more slots for its songs. But gaming executives say the opaque licensing system makes this unlikely. “Every time I speak to a games publisher, they’ve always got at least one horror story about trying to navigate music rights,” says Ben Sumner, managing director at Feel for Music, which helps games and brands with music supervision.
One recording may have multiple master owners and writers, each of which could work with a different publishing company, and gaming companies have to get everyone’s approval. Vickie Nauman, who has licensed music for many games in addition to founding the music-tech consultancy CrossBorderWorks, once had to get 143 agreements complete to clear 20 songs.
This may simply take too long for a game’s timeline, explains Gavin Johnson, director of sync and partnerships at the electronic music label Monstercat. “Typically a game developer is creating content that’s quarterly or bi-weekly or even weekly,” he says, especially in the world of “live services games,” which are free to play and dynamic, updated on the fly to rejuvenate player interest and maintain consistent engagement. (Several of the most popular games of 2023 — as measured by monthly active users — were live service games, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Minecraft.)
In addition, the music industry usually requires large upfront payments to license songs. “Incorporating music is often an experiment for games, and they don’t want to pay millions of dollars for an experiment,” says Alex Tarrand, co-founder and COO of STYNGR, a company that offers games precleared music.
Between multiple rights holders impacting timelines and steep up-front fees, many game developers find it far easier and more fiscally prudent to commission music in-house. “If anything creates more cost in ways that aren’t really driving what a game is going after, they tend to think, ‘We probably shouldn’t be spending time and resources on that,’” gaming consultant Toa Dunn says.
Tarrand’s company STYNGR is working to reduce the friction between gaming and music companies by putting blanket licenses in place with all the major labels and publishers so game developers can come to STYNGR and pull music into their titles. Instead of paying STYNGR upfront, developers cut revenue-sharing deals.
Another company, Game Over, takes a very different approach, targeting gamers who watch live-streams on Twitch or enjoy gameplay montage videos on YouTube or Instagram. This allows them to sidestep the industry “arm-wrestling match” around rights altogether, according to partner Zach Katz. Labels are “still in the mindset that winning in the gaming space is tied to interacting with the [gaming] platforms,” Katz says. In his view, that’s “a mistake.” “The victory is ultimately to get the gaming audiences” and serve them music, which can be done in other places where gamers congregate.
Still, executives in both music and gaming dream of more in-game opportunities. “Licensing needs to be made easier and more scalable for games so that it’s not only huge franchises that can do it,” says BandLab CEO Meng Ru Kuok.
“What I’m hoping to do is create a dialogue where we can understand that, although synch relationships bear enormous amount of fruit, they still are limiting us,” Schnur adds. “Let’s take a look at what the term ‘synch’ means and what it should mean going forward.” He acknowledges, however, that music rights holders may be content with the current system — and wary that any calls for change could disguise a campaign to undervalue music.
For now, many creative ideas to bring more music into gaming “are just not coming to market,” Nauman says, “because of rights issues.”
At the end of BMW’s new Super Bowl ad, actor Christopher Walken sits down to dine at a restaurant and finds Usher at the next table. They (and a waiter) wind up saying “yeah!” to each other a few times, and for this, publishers for each of the six songwriters on Usher’s 2004 smash “Yeah!” get to split a huge sync payment — even though not another word or any melody from the song is performed during the one-minute spot.
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“We, of course, smiled, and said, ‘You bet, we’ll license this to you guys,’” says Brian Monaco, president/global chief marketing officer for Sony Music Publishing (SMP), which represents James Phillips, one of six writers on “Yeah!” “It was a full fee, like they were using the entire song.” Pamela Lillig, vp of sync licensing for BMG, which represents co-writers J. Que, LaMarquis Jefferson and Sean Garrett, adds that BMW wouldn’t have had to pay the fee if random actors were saying “yeah” in an ad, but “because Usher’s in it, they felt they probably should.”
“Yeah!” — as well as Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s 1970 soul classic “Express Yourself,” which plays throughout the BMW spot — is one of many big, easily recognizable tracks used in Super Bowl advertisements this year. Dove soap licensed “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” (from the Annie soundtrack); Budweiser brought back its Clydesdales for a spot containing The Band‘s “The Weight”; Volkswagen celebrated its 75-year history in the United States set to Neil Diamond‘s “I Am . . . I Said”; and a Popeyes ad includes “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and DJ Snake and Lil Jon‘s “Turn Down for What.”
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“The majority of songs used for us this year are catalog songs,” says Tom Eaton, senior vp of music for advertising for Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), which represents the Band and Diamond catalogs. “They create an immediate impact.” Adds Patrick Joest, head of sync for Hipgnosis, which owns stakes in Heart‘s “Barracuda,” used in a Hyundai commercial, and “Turn Down for What”: “What you’re seeing this year is people are going for the sure shots.”
Super Bowl ads are one of the most lucrative showcases for publishers’ nearly $1.5 billion-per-year synch business each year. According to synch sources, 2024 fees have ranged anywhere from $150,000 to more than $1 million. Last fall, when Hollywood writers and actors were still striking and placing songs for TV and film was paused for the foreseeable future, the beginning of the Super Bowl song-licensing season came as a welcome relief. “It was looking a little shaky,” says Scott Cresto, executive vp of synchronization and marketing for publisher Reservoir, which has a stake in Coi Leray and David Guetta‘s “Make My Day,” used in an E-Trade spot for this year’s game. “In the last quarter, all of our top 20 synchs were ads. It definitely helped our numbers.”
UMPG (whose catalog includes The O’Jays‘ “Love Train,” used in a Coors Light spot, and Perry Como‘s “Round and Round,” for Lindt Chocolate) has 18 synchs during this year’s Super Bowl. Sony landed 14 and Warner Chappell Music had 12 (including “Express Yourself”), while BMG had five, Kobalt four, Reservoir three and Hipgnosis two. (Billboard tallies in-game, national ads that appear during the CBS broadcast.)
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For recent Super Bowls, according to Rich Robinson, Warner Chappell’s executive vp of global synchronization and media, multiple ads used original “sound-design” instrumentals, as opposed to traditional song synchs that generate robust licensing fees for publishers. This year, the pendulum has swung back to the familiar. “It feels like a return,” Robinson says. “Almost every one we’ve licensed is a version of a really well-known hit.”
Still, a minority of Super Bowl LVIII ads showcase newer songs and stars: Ice Spice‘s “Deli” (UMPG) soundtracks an ad for Starry soda and Maizie’s 2021 track “Dumb Dumb” (BMG and SMP) is in an Uber Eats spot. And prolific songwriter Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic received a request this past Monday (Feb. 5) from a T-Mobile contact and wrote a new song, “Try,” in an hour, then submitted it as a voice memo. The ad will broadcast during the Super Bowl. “He works fast,” says Sony’s Monaco.
“There’s a mad rush sometimes. It’s super last-minute,” adds Lisa Bergami, vp of creative sync for Kobalt, whose Super Bowl placements include Flo Rida‘s “Good Feeling,” used in a Veozah menopause medication spot. “Some [advertisers] have gone a million rounds and ended up going with the song they wanted at the beginning. There isn’t much of a rhyme or reason.”
For Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles fans — and any football lover, really — last year’s Super Bowl LVII was a thrilling, down-to-the-wire classic. But as the game, airing on FOX Sports and tied at 35, cut to commercial break at the two-minute warning, tense viewers might’ve felt an unexpected wave of calm. The buttery-smooth lick from “Hungersite,” one of the most popular tracks by the exploding jam band Goose, played as the stressed visages of head coaches Andy Reid and Nick Sirianni gave way to ads.
“It was so surreal to hear our song during the Super Bowl,” Goose singer-guitarist Rick Mitarotonda tells Billboard. “We are very thankful to FOX Sports for supporting what we do and exposing so many bands in the genre to the masses.”
Goose posted the snippet to Instagram and reached out to FOX Sports to express its gratitude — all in a day’s work for Jacob Ullman, FOX Sports senior vp of production and talent development, and Jake Jolivette, a producer at the network. Through their production roles on NFL games, Ullman and Jolivette have caught the attention of astute listeners with secondslong jam band synchs — from titans like the Grateful Dead and Phish to cultier acts like Umphrey’s McGee and moe. — for the past several years.
Ullman, 50, saw his first Dead show at age 12 when his father took him to see the band at Southern California’s Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in 1985. Jolivette, 49, got into the band as a Midwestern college student, attending his first show in 1992 (three years before Jerry Garcia died); his college years also coincided with Phish’s rise, and the Vermont band’s “communal” shows hooked him. “It’s almost like going to a live sporting event,” he observes.
Ullman began working at FOX Sports when the network launched in 1994, and Jolivette landed there a decade later. The former recalls the thrill of synching a jam-adjacent artist early on: When he integrated Dave Matthews Band’s “Tripping Billies” into a hockey broadcast in 1996, he was amazed “that you can collide your work life, your passion for sports and your passion for music in one place.” But FOX Sports wouldn’t become known for its sly jam band integrations until years later, after Ullman and Jolivette had both risen through the ranks and found themselves working together on NFL and NASCAR broadcasts.
For many viewers, the first clue that the FOX Sports edit bay might be tie-dye-friendly came during 2017’s Super Bowl LI, in a produced pregame video narrated by actor Ving Rhames introducing the competing New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. Jolivette used Audioslave’s “Cochise” for the Patriots — and Phish’s exuberant “Tweezer Reprise” for the Falcons. Phish frontman Trey Anastasio and the band’s former longtime road manager, Brad Sands, watched the show, and a screenshotted text thread between them circulated on jam-loving corners of the internet. (Sands said, “Falcons have to win now right?” and Anastasio agreed.) “I love ‘Tweezer.’ I love how it builds,” says Jolivette before adding with a chuckle, “Mind you, my editor hated the song — but I still got it in.”
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In 2018, FOX Sports inked a five-year deal with the NFL to air Thursday Night Football, and Ullman and Jolivette became heavily involved in the broadcasts. That’s when their jam band synchs really took off. “We’d sneak a couple of [songs] in there — all of a sudden, you’re getting texts,” says Jolivette with still-palpable amazement. “That’s when I figured out that this was something that was brewing that people could hear.”
When the pandemic hit, Ullman, who had hung out with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir at NASCAR events over the years, convinced the musician through his manager to record a solo performance of the national anthem for the late-March 2020 broadcast of an iRacing Pro Invitational simulated race. Later that year, Ullman and Jolivette’s colleagues Joe Carpenter (senior audio engineer) and Bryan Biederman (director) — fellow FOX Sports Deadheads who work on the network’s MLB broadcasts — integrated a slew of Dead songs into the 2020 World Series. Sensing the public’s interest, FOX uploaded a supercut of the synchs — among them “Shakedown Street,” “Sugar Magnolia” and “Althea” — to its social media, with corresponding game footage nested within the band’s iconic “Steal Your Face” logo.
“Between that and what we were doing on Thursday Night Football, that year was probably where a lot of this exploded,” Ullman says. It was a feedback loop of sorts: The more FOX Sports integrated jam bands, the more positive reinforcement it received.
Still, in the tricky world of TV licensing, the network’s ’heads need supportive — or at least tolerant — colleagues to facilitate clearances. For that, they work with a team that includes vp of music Nicole de la Torriente-Nelson, who leads negotiations with publishers and labels, and associate director Yvonne Wagoner, who prepares approved playlists for broadcast teams. Wagoner collaborates with crews to construct eclectic playlists — an amalgam of current hits, old classics, songs for specific situations like scoring and situational matches for game location and weather — and solicits requests. While some core songs remain throughout a season, there’s also turnover, and Wagoner refers potential new songs to de la Torriente-Nelson and her colleagues, who secure the applicable rights. Licensing terms vary, but songs are often cleared for a season’s entirety, with fees paid out on a per-use basis (the higher-profile the game, the higher the synch rate).
Take FOX Sports’ week 15 Buffalo Bills-Dallas Cowboys broadcast. Jolivette wanted to use a song by Buffalo jam band moe. for the Bills home game, so he asked Wagoner to clear the group’s “Happy Hour Hero.” She passed along the request to de la Torriente-Nelson, whose team secured the rights, and Jolivette and senior audio mixer Jamie McCombs — not a jam fan per se, though he admits Jolivette has “turned me on to some really good stuff” — prepped the few seconds that would ultimately air. Late in the first quarter of the Dec. 17 game, with the Bills up 7-0, “Hero” led into a commercial break. Watching was moe. guitarist Al Schnier, who posted a video of his TV screen to Instagram with the caption “Bills + moe. + winning = Happy Hour Hero.”
Integrations like that really are by jam band fans, for jam band fans. Ullman’s team doesn’t feel bound to the Dead or Phish, or even to the most popular tracks in their respective discographies; in the Jan. 14 Dallas Cowboys-Green Bay Packers playoff game, FOX Sports used the Dead’s “Saint of Circumstance” and Phish’s “Axilla,” hardly the best-known songs by either group. Jolivette and his colleagues seek out the best secondslong snippets, wherever they may come from. As he explains of “Saint of Circumstance,” “The part we use, it hits. If you’ve seen that in concert, you know that’s one of the great transitions. That, to me, is what makes that a great song to use.”
And in the ultimate validation of their work, one of their heroes is returning the fandom. “When you think about it, the music we make isn’t unlike a sporting event,” Weir, who was spotted with the FOX Sports team on the sideline at January’s NFC Championship game, tells Billboard. “On a good night, you don’t really know where it’s going to go — and getting wherever it’s going is going to be different every time to boot.”
This story will appear in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Few TV series show off their creators’ favorite songs and artists as explicitly as Billions, which outfits its characters in Metallica and Slayer T-shirts, makes a point of airing a Bob Dylan song every season, lovingly quotes Bruce Springsteen lyrics and integrates rapper Killer Mike into elaborate storylines. Writer and co-creator Brian Koppelman has a history in the record business, having worked A&R for Elektra in the late ’80s, then as a senior vp for EMI in the ’90s; he and longtime friend and co-creator David Levien unashamedly plug their influences into the show, through synchs, character development and dialogue.
As the show winds down — the 10th episode of the seventh and final season airs Sunday on Showtime — the showrunners discuss their musical choices, and clearing the rights for them, in a call from their New York-area homes.
Brian, I’ve spoken with your father, the late record executive Charles Koppelman, a couple of times, including once about how rich the business had become during the CD boom in the ’80s and ’90s. What do you recall about working at labels at that time?
Koppelman: My father’s love of music was something that, despite his success and his business-side accomplishments, he would always default to. The thing that mattered to him was the music and I grew up listening to music through that prism. Even when I went off on my own and started finding my own enthusiasm, I would never forget the way he would look and sway to music when he was listening to it. When I was an A&R executive, my attention was with the artists and the songwriters and the people making the records. That’s what engaged me, so I can’t even speak to what the economics were like.
In episode 10 of this season, two characters quote Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” and debate the song’s meaning. How much of that sort of thing in Billions is based on real conversations about music?
Koppelman: David and I have been best friends since we were 14 or 15. We’ve probably been on every side of the conversations [about] these artists that are referenced in the show. If you’re a serious music fan, you’re not just listening to it, you’re thinking about it and talking about it and arguing about it.
Levien: Early on, we got a few notes to the effect of, “Why are there so many pop-culture references? I don’t think people really talk that way.” We were saddened by that, because we do think people talk that way.
Koppelman: One of the absolute highlights for us, in an earlier season, is a moment where a character sings a line from “Atlantic City,” in an episode called “Chicken Town.” We needed to get Bruce Springsteen’s permission. We heard he was on vacation somewhere and read the scene outside and personally approved it. For us guys who know “Nebraska” by heart and spent countless hours at his concerts, that just meant the world to us.
How challenging is it to get the rights for well-known songs, like Billy Joel’s “I Love These Days”?
Koppelman: [Music supervisor] Jim Black is the person who goes out and gets the clearances. The fact that Dave and I have a deep well of relationships in the business has been helpful a few times along the way, if there happens to be something that is tricky. We had many conversations with some folks in Billy Joel’s camp. That process has been incredibly smooth for us the entire run. Early on, we couldn’t get a Zeppelin song, but then, the next season, we did. Their process was so particular. You have to show everything.
In episode 3, you use KISS’ “A World Without Heroes” — not the best-known KISS song. What made you choose it, and what was the band’s reaction?
Koppelman: That song has always meant a lot to me. It’s co-written by Lou Reed, and his songs, both with the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, have been in the show in meaningful ways. “A World Without Heroes,” off their [1981] album Music From “The Elder” — often that album is looked at as this moment in KISS’ career where they took a risk that backfired. But there are a couple of real gems on that record.
Levien: We don’t know exactly what their response was outside of the approval. We didn’t get any personal anecdotes that it meant anything to anybody.
Koppelman: Because we were on strike, we couldn’t promote the show, and it was important to us to keep fealty with our guild. [The Hollywood writers’ strike ended earlier this month after 148 days.] Normally, when that episode hit, [we] would have been on social media talking about the song and interacting with KISS people. But we couldn’t respond. If they would tweet at us or write on Instagram, we had to let it go. If it weren’t for the strike, I would have engaged with [KISS members] Paul [Stanley] and Gene [Simmons] in some public forum encouraging KISS to talk about the song. But that wasn’t able to happen.
“Blind Willie McTell,” used in episode 8, when several main characters are at a shady, ritualistic meeting of political donors, is my favorite Bob Dylan song. Because it’s not as well known, does that make it less expensive, or easier to clear the rights?
Levien: We had a Dylan song in a big spot in every season — “Visions of Johanna,” and “Like a Rolling Stone” ending a season. With this one, even though it’s on a bootleg album, we’ve listened to it for years. The dark tone that gets at the heart of the corruption of the United States is so palpable on that song, even though he’s talking about a different era. It just seems so apt today. With the backdrop of all those privileged elite people playing those games with everybody’s lives, it just felt like the right choice.
Koppelman: [Dylan’s manager] Jeff Rosen, who obviously was involved in executing that sale of the rights, loves the show and expressed to us early on that he liked the way we used the songs and that we should not hesitate to ask whenever we wanted to. Even when they sold the catalog, it was clear to us that everyone understood the way we were using these Bob Dylan songs was something that worked for everybody.
Levien: There were a few times we wrote personal notes to the artists about what the song meant to us. Jim would come to us and say, “This one might be a little more challenging” and “share your personal connection.”
Example?
Koppelman: We wrote to Neil Young and explained why “Old Man” was a perfect song for the moment [in Season 5] and what the point of the scene was and immediately got a yes.
After the Billy Joel ballad dominates episode 9, in Episode 10, you start with the Jam and end on Slayer. Why “Reign In Blood”?
Koppelman: Every single season, Axe [Bobby Axelrod, the central billionaire] has worn a heavy-metal T-shirt and that band’s song has played. In Season 1, it was Metallica, in season 2, it was Megadeth. The way the song is used in this episode just felt right to us. Sometimes it isn’t really an intellectual process, it’s about a feeling.
We’re almost out of time. What’s different about working in the music business vs. the movie business?
Koppelman: Well, I’m 57. I was 29 back then. I did leave that business at 29. I don’t feel like an answer I give you in 30 seconds is going to speak to that.
Let’s end on a different note: How would you say the musical tone of this final season is unique?
Koppelman: You’re trying to distill it to its essence — who these characters are, strip stuff away.
Levien: And you’re running out of spots, and you want to use spots with maximum impact like [the Clash’s] “London Calling” [which closed the season 7 premiere], or a lesser-known one like [Jackson C. Frank’s] “Blues Run the Game” that we were carrying around forever. Spots were finally showing themselves where we could use these songs.
If you’re looking for growth in the U.S. recorded music industry, there are two clear bright spots in the maturing streaming market. But they each come with caveats and considerations.
From the looks of the RIAA’s midyear report, released Monday (Sept. 18), music subscription services and synchronization royalties — two of the biggest drivers of U.S. recorded music’s gains in the first half of 2023, according to the RIAA — should continue going strong through the end of the year.
For subscriptions, revenue increased 12.4% to $4.97 billion over the first six months of the year and accounted for 84% of the industry’s $710-million year-over-year improvement. The number of subscribers grew at a slower rate, though — 6.4% to 95.8 million — which suggests a saturated market where new subscribers are becoming harder to find. (The RIAA provides the average number of subscribers during the six-month period, not the number on the final day of the period.) The fact that revenue outgrew subscribers shows that streaming companies are now finding growth through price increases instead. In 2022 and early 2023, Apple Music and Amazon Music raised prices on individual and family plans. Over that same time, the average revenue per subscriber per month increased from $8.19 in the first half of 2022 to $8.65 in the second half of 2023, according to the RIAA’s numbers.
Streaming revenue’s resilience amid price increases “actually underscores the point that music continues to be the most under-monetized form of entertainment,” says Golnar Khosrowshahi, CEO of Reservoir Media, “and can certainly withstand a price increase structure that has some rhythm to it.” Right on cue, Deezer added to a steady drumbeat of pricing updates when it announced on Thursday (Sept. 21) a second price increase in France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands on top of hikes in 2022.
Spotify’s price increase — individual plans up $1 to $10.99 per month and family plans up $2 to $16.99 per month — was announced in July and should give a boost to streaming revenues in the second half of the year. Spotify previously stated that its limited price increases had not created a material amount of customer churn, and Deezer’s decision to again raise prices bolsters Khosrowshahi’s belief that consumers are able to withstand slightly higher prices without canceling their subscriptions.
Revenues from synchronizations — when music is licensed for audio-visual works such as advertisements, movies, TV shows and video games — grew 25.1% to $222.7 million and accounted for 6% of the $710 million of total revenue growth. Synchronizations have been on a roll since the pandemic helped create a boom in licensing opportunities. The latest mid-year improvement follows a 29.9% gain in the first half of 2022 and a 24.8% improvement in calendar year 2022.
The Writers Guild of America strike that began on May 2 hasn’t hurt synchronization revenues — yet. “I’m encouraged right now,” says Tyler Bacon, president/CEO of Position Music. “My team is busy.” So is Jedd Kantrancha, chief commercial officer of Downtown Music Publishing. Kantrancha says August was Downtown’s best month for the number of synchronizations of 2023 and its third-best month ever.
“One of the biggest things that I’m seeing is just more and more partners and people in the space who have a music budget, who want to learn and want to be educated about how to use music,” says Kantrancha. “I’m doing more uses now with people who haven’t licensed music before than I have in years. And I think that that’s definitely something that relates to the lift [in synchronization revenue] that you’re seeing. There are more people out there exploring how to license music.”
This sort of boom, however, will eventually be hampered by the strikes — it’s just a matter of when.
Many believe the lag from the start of the strike — which reduces the number of post-production opportunities to match music to film and TV shows — to a synchronization slowdown won’t be felt until early 2024. Film and TV studios have “a lot of stuff in the pipeline” that will provide synchronization opportunities through the end of the year despite the strike, says Kantrancha.
That won’t decimate the sector, though. Even after a slowdown from the strike is eventually felt, companies can shift their resources to other opportunities. “We’re highly focused on advertising, and the strike doesn’t affect that,” says Bacon. “Video games, we’re very deep in, and the strike doesn’t affect that.”
Just before the restaurant opens in Season 2 of FX’s hit show The Bear, chef de cuisine Sydney Adamu releases nine episodes of built-up tension by declaring, “Let it rip!” – and AC/DC‘s “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” explodes into the foreground. For executive producer Josh Senior, securing the song promised some metaphorical bloodshed of its own — but the process turned out to be far easier than expected.
“Everybody I’ve ever talked to about licensing music always told me AC/DC was hard to get, hard to pay for, hard to contact, hard to deal with. And we knew we wanted that song,” he says. “They ended up being amazing and awesome. But the hype was intimidating.”
The Bear is known for its musical needle drops. Rather than relying on music composed for the series, the show uses mostly familiar rock and pop songs to illustrate characters, moods and relationships. That gives it a sort of instant familiarity — but also makes the music-licensing process more complicated. Senior says most of the memorable tracks used on Season 2, such as R.E.M.‘s “Strange Currencies,” Lindsey Buckingham‘s “Holiday Road” and Liz Phair‘s “Supernova,” were easy to clear. But Senior, creator-executive producer Christopher Storer and producer Tyson Bidner, who do not maintain a separate budget for licensing songs (as is the case with most shows), had to “press every penny into place,” especially in the frantic last few weeks of production, he says.
In the end, they were able to license every song they wanted, from the season-opening Bruce Hornsby & The Range track “The Show Goes On” to Taylor Swift‘s “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” — with one crucial exception, as Senior says, in a phone interview from New Jersey that covers some of the songs used in Season 2.
What was the most difficult song to clear?
An example I haven’t spoken about is the BoDeans song “Still the Night” — not a typical Christmas song. We thought it fit really well for the story we were trying to develop. It turns out that “Still the Night” has quite a few writers on it. I couldn’t find [drummer and co-writer] Guy Hoffman to save my life. We took time to do that, though. If you have a year, you probably can do anything; you have six months, you can probably do most things. Our entire show life-cycle is about three and a half months, from the first day of prep to the thing going on TV. Maybe four. So everything’s an emergency. You get a countdown clock in the back of your head. The theme of the show really does come through to the way the show’s made. That was one that came down to the wire, but we ended up working it out.
For the “Fishes” episode, you used 17 songs, many of them holiday-related. Did you avoid the Christmas classics and use lesser-known tracks for creative reasons, or to save money, or both?
That episode was one of the last episodes for us to lock and finish. Working with our producer Tyson Bidner to press every penny into place was a big part of those last few weeks. We preemptively made three swaps in [that] episode to songs we didn’t think were possible, but either we had already licensed from that record label, or we had worked with that artist and we felt they were more attainable. We were able to get everything we wanted.
Did it help with Season 2 permissions that the show was already established and had a widely viewed first season?
There’s an argument you can make now. For Season 1, we were able to look at the data carefully and closely and see the lift in artists whose music we licensed and their numbers, streams, record sales, ticket sales. A lot of them saw significant growth. This time around, we were able to not just beg and plead but use metrics and data: “Hey, look, there’s a 300% lift on ‘Strange Currencies’ after we put it in the trailer for the show. This is the type of thing we could do if you work with us.”
You used multiple versions of “Strange Currencies” prominently throughout the season. What were the R.E.M. people like to work with?
We had worked with R.E.M. in Season 1. We got to meet them through their management and we were able to point to things that worked out well in the past in terms of numbers. They liked what we did. We viewed “Strange Currencies” like a theme for the entire season, and each of our characters are dealing with loss of love or the acceptance of love, particularly in the Carmy and Claire storyline. We think it represents something potentially beautiful and hopeful and mellow. When we contrast that with Christmas dinner at the Berzattos [in a stormy episode six], it’s clear that Carmy isn’t ready for that yet. The R.E.M. team was kind enough to allow us to use the original, the incredible Scott Litt remix and an unreleased demo.
Was Taylor Swift’s “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” difficult to license, for the scene of Richie triumphantly singing the song in the car?
No. A lot of people ask that question and I wonder why they’re asking. Her team was like, “Great. This is cool. How much money do you have? You have that much money? Let’s go.” She was exceedingly generous and cool with one of our actors singing along to the song. Those are things that sometimes people just say no to, and that was probably one of the easiest songs to clear.
Any songs you wanted but weren’t able to get?
I don’t want to answer that question right now, because I think I’m going to get those songs next season. I’m sorry!
What about other stories you can share about journeying through the music business to use a song?
In the third episode, there’s a Stevie Wonder demo that we were chasing for a while that we feel like we got close to, but we weren’t able to fully paper. We had conceived a scene around that song. That episode has two big montages in it. One was originally set to a Stevie Wonder song that was perfect, that Ayo [Edebiri, who plays Sydney] had picked. It’s her episode, we felt really strongly about honoring her wishes to include that music — and we weren’t able to get it. We ended up rejiggering a few things and restructuring the episode ever so slightly and pulling two different songs in — “Future Perfect” from The Durutti Column and “Make You Happy” by Tommy McGee. It ended up working really well.
Why couldn’t you get the Wonder song? And can you name it?
I won’t name the song, but there were just some ambiguous rights about the master side. It was a demo that wasn’t released on much — just a B-side of a record.
Do you ever use covers if you can’t get the rights to an original?
We just try and pick the music that we like. You’ll see a lot of live versions — a live Otis Redding song, a live Wilco song, a live Neil Finn song, a live Van Morrison song. You’ll find obscure tracks from Italian artists in the sixth episode.
It can’t hurt that those live versions are cheaper to license than the versions we all know, right?
One hundred percent. And they are different enough for you to think about them a little. There’s the music you hear in Walgreens and CVS. While we were making the show, I heard “Love Story” by Taylor Swift everywhere I went. It was following me around. But her version, I wasn’t hearing everywhere. Being able to use that was just such a nice little nuance.
If Netflix, HBO, Disney, The CW and others slash their budgets for TV and movie content, as they’ve been suggesting for more than a year, the music industry could take a hit in the steady song-placement business that generates hundreds of millions of dollars annually for rightsholders.
“We’ve been in a boom period. Cutting back on production would cut down on that revenue, for labels and publishers,” says Kier Lehman, a music supervisor who works on Abbott Elementary and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. “It’s a pretty direct effect.”
After the COVID-19 quarantine ended, the decrease in demand helped create some problems for the streaming business. That has created challenges for the video streaming business: Netflix’ spending on content declined in 2022, after company officials announced a “pulling back”; HBO Max removed dozens of streaming titles last summer to cut costs; and Disney announced $5 billion in cuts two months ago, including 7,000 jobs, although newly returned CEO Bob Iger has emphasized streaming growth. The CW, Showtime and others have also removed content or cut costs.
“We’re trying to be smart about it and prudent in terms of pulling back on some of that spend growth to reflect the realities of the revenue growth,” Spencer Neumann, Netflix’s CFO, said last year.
So far, executives at labels and publishers – which generally split revenue from synch licenses 50-50 – say they haven’t noticed a change in licensing volume or rates, but in a wobbly economy beset with entertainment layoffs, they’re bracing for a harder business. “The idea of less content is always going to be a concern for us,” says a source at a major label. “If there’s going to be a slowdown in content production, it’s going to be a slowdown in music usage — it’s definitely something we’d be keeping an eye on.”
While its impact won’t be felt for a while, the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike has already pushed the pause button on numerous productions, including Stranger Things, Saturday Night Live and Loot.
Synchs have been a remarkably consistent revenue stream for the record business over the last five years, as Netflix, Hulu, HBO and others competed for viewers and created a content boom. Synch revenues for recorded music hit $285.5 million in 2018 and, after a slight dip, rose to $318 million last year. (Publishing revenue has been even more robust in recent years, growing from $696 million in 2018 to more than $1.2 billion in 2021, according to the National Music Publishers Association; synch makes up nearly 26% of that total revenue.) Synch executives at labels and publishers say they’re preparing for more challenging times. “I don’t think anybody’s not going to be affected by cutbacks,” says Oscar Martinez, creative director for film, TV and Hispanic advertising with publisher peermusic. “We expect to feel a little bit of it.”
How will labels and publishers contend with content cuts once they kick in? “We have a plan in place,” Martinez says, predicting a pivot to placing music in games such as Fortnite and FIFA. “There’s still content being made and opportunities to be had.”
Amy Hartman, svp of creative services for film and TV music at Spirit Music Group, adds that the publisher is emphasizing “budget-friendly” moves — remixing classic hits such as Billy Squier’s “The Stroke” for the Air trailer, and encouraging songwriters to create originals that can be licensed more affordably than familiar hits. “That’s one way we can make up loss of synch revenue,” she says.
Sara Torres, sync and licensing supervisor for ASAP Clearances, which works with labels and publishers to clear songs, suggests the number of scripted shows may decline in favor of reality shows — which tend to use more tracks on tighter budgets. A scripted show might blow its budget on one big song, by, say, the Beatles, then try to round out its song lineup with more affordable music by indie artists or “library music.” The reality shows Torres works with have “most favored nations” clauses, so all synchs receive the same fees. “There’s always a whisper of cutbacks with any network, so you just have to be ready,” she says.
For now, label executives say they’re not worried about content cutbacks or more inflexible network demands for lower rates. “It’s business as usual. It’s not doomsday,” says Esther Friedman, Sony Music Publishing’s svp of creative marketing for film and TV, although she adds: “This could be a different conversation in six to nine months.”
Those who work every day with production companies say labels and publishers should prepare for cutbacks. “You might be looking at the same amount of TV shows, but they have less episodes,” says Justin Kamps, music supervisor for Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton. “That is rough for everyone involved.”
At least to some extent, any decrease in production would hurt the music business at least somewhat. “If there are fewer shows, there will be fewer places to place music,” says Lindsay Wolfington, a veteran music supervisor whose current shows include Netflix’ Virgin River and Starz’ The Venery of Samantha Bird: “That’s just a fact.”
The last time film and TV screenwriters went on strike, for a hundred days in the winter of 2007 and 2008, production on shows and movies abruptly shut down, advertising plunged and pink slips were passed out. Freelance music supervisors like Julie Glaze Houlihan, whose credits include Malcolm in the Middle and Roswell, also felt the pain.
“My husband and I both were independent music supervisors, so the money just fell. We struggled,” she recalls. “We had savings and we dipped into it. We had three small children. It was a difficult time.”
Unlike actors, directors, music editors and other unionized professionals who would still receive contractual benefits in the event of a strike, music supervisors are a largely freelance group of specialists who lack employer-provided healthcare, paid leave and safety protections. So the supervisors are more vulnerable than many of their colleagues if the Writers Guild of America follows through with a walkout when its members’ contract with studios and networks expires May 1.
“We all care about the writers getting a fair deal. We’re all in it together,” says Houlihan, who recently supervised music for Glass Onion and is working on upcoming ESPN and MGM+ docuseries. “But if they strike, it’ll affect all of us. Other people have some type of safety net and we have nothing.”
The Writers Guild unions, east and west, represent 11,000 movie and TV writers and began negotiations March 20 for a three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Few expect a fast resolution over issues like higher compensation, more contributions to health and pension funds and improvements in workplace standards. Anticipating a strike, studios are rushing production schedules for existing shows.
A strike “would definitely be scary,” says Justin Kamps, who works on Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton. “If you can’t get the scripts written and the shows brought into post-(production), there’s not much you’re going to be doing as a supervisor. You’re going to be out of luck.”
A prolonged strike could narrow the opportunities for music synchs in shows and movies, which generated $318 million in 2022, or 2% of overall revenue, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. “The most obvious point is that if there is a strike, it’s going to put a hold on shows being put out, which means there’s no music being requested for shows,” says Sara Torres, synch and licensing supervisor for ASAP Clearances, which clears songs for TV.
Uncertainty has kicked in. “I’ve been meeting on a new project and they have been in a holding pattern, waiting to see what happens. They are not able to actually hire anybody until that is sorted out,” says Kier Lehman, a music supervisor whose recent works include Abbott Elementary and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. “Without having new things starting, it definitely would affect us and our income — if it goes on for a long time, I could see it having a big effect.”
Like everybody in Hollywood, music supervisors are scrambling to figure out where the money might come from in the event of a strike. Houlihan doubles as a music editor, an industry with its own unions, so she expects to receive certain benefits no matter what. Torres’ company emphasizes reality shows, which surged in the ratings during the last strike (including, notably, Donald Trump’s The Celebrity Apprentice); she suggests reality shows might temporarily dominate the synch business and indie artists might have more opportunities to place songs.
“People are always looking for music,” she says. “It’s just being able to pivot.”
Music supervisors are not unionized, but last October, a group of Netflix supervisors filed to certify their union with the National Labor Relations Board, seeking representation with the labor union the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE. Netflix opposed the move and the NLRB’s decision is pending. (Netflix reps did not respond to inquiries.) If the board rules in the supervisors’ favor, they can negotiate a contract with the streaming giant — “which would make a great precedent,” says Lindsay Wolfington, a music supervisor for shows including Virgin River and The Venery of Samantha Bird and has been active in the Netflix unionization efforts.
Laura Webb, who frequently works with Wolfington, says the supervisors want more reliable payment deliveries, cost-of-living increases and healthcare and retirement and pension plans — as opposed to relying on the gig economy. “We’re not paid by the studios that would allow us to have the same safety net that most employees get,” adds Joel High, president of the Guild of Music Supervisors. “We don’t have health insurance through anybody. We don’t have a 401(k). We’re basically left to our own devices, working from show to show and studio to studio.”
Supervisors say they’ll keep working on shows after writers have finished their work. “Most of our job is post-production, so hopefully things don’t change that much,” says Webb, who works on Wolf Pack, Monster High the Movie Sequel and others. Adds Lehman: “If there was a show that was already written, and just being finished, that becomes the complicated issue.”
For now, music supervisors remain hopeful the writers and studios will come to an agreement and avoid a strike, even as unionization is gathering momentum in the U.S., with workers from Amazon to YouTube Music filing for certification. “If there’s an atmosphere to strike in, it would be now,” Houlihan says. “Go, writers! I hope they don’t have to strike.”
On Thursday (March 9), the RIAA released its annual year-end report on recorded music revenues in the U.S., with an encouraging top line: In 2022, total revenue was up 6% to $15.9 billion, with paid subscription and wholesale revenues each surpassing $10 billion for the first time. That marks the seventh straight year of growth for an industry that at this point is far removed from the doldrums of the early part of the century.
In fact, the industry could credibly be a little underwhelmed by the rate of growth, as the 6% figure is the lowest percent increase across those seven years — and the only time other than pandemic-affected 2020 (+9.2%) that growth has fallen below double digits during that period. In actual figures, it’s the smallest increase ($900 million) year over year since 2016, when the business grew 11.4% and added $700 million.
There are plenty of other interesting takeaways to discern from digging through the RIAA’s report. Here are four (plus one bonus item!) that stand out.
Paid Subscriptions — Anything to Worry About?
Both the average number of paid subscribers (those subscribing to full-catalog services like Apple Music or Spotify’s paid tier) and the revenue from full-catalog paid subscriptions grew at much slower rates, both in percentage terms and in actual numbers, than in recent years. The former metric showed an increase of 8 million subscribers (9.5%; 84 million in 2021 to 92 million in 2022), while the latter metric reflected an increase of $600 million (7.2%; $8.56 billion to $9.17 billion). As with the overall growth rate for the industry, that’s the first time in several years that those figures grew by less than double-digit percentages. So, is it anything to worry about, when looking at how much growth there is left in the paid streaming business?
Not necessarily. For one thing, between 2018 and 2022, paid subscribers (up 96.2%) and revenue from full-catalog subscriptions (up 93.6%) have grown fairly in line with each other, and the revenue per subscriber has averaged $98.92 over that period of time (pandemic-affected 2020 was an outlier year, at $92.35). In 2022, the average revenue per subscriber was $99.77, which was down from $101.94 in 2021 but not out of line with the overall average.
That number should be expected to grow, given price increases by Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer in the past year and the increasing pressure on Spotify to boost its price higher than $9.99/month, where it has stayed since entering the U.S. in 2011. This will be something to keep an eye on as the year progresses, as strategies shift from gaining subscribers to getting more out of those who do subscribe, given that a ceiling on the number of subscribers could be coming into view (for context, the U.S. government counted 124 million households in the latest census).
Another reason for optimism: The above numbers don’t include limited-tier subscription revenue — things like Amazon Prime and fitness apps like Peloton — which crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2022. Since 2020, when the pandemic led to a home fitness app craze and resulted in additional areas of limited music subscription beyond the traditional paid streaming realm, limited-tier subscription revenue has grown 47.7%. As more licensing opportunities arise, that sector should continue to contribute meaningful revenue moving forward.
Ad-Supported Streaming Takes a Hit
Ad-supported on-demand streaming revenue reached $1.8 billion in 2022, accounting for 11% of the overall revenues for the business last year. But growth was just 5.5% over 2021 — a big reality check after the category grew 46.7% in 2021 over pandemic-affected 2020 and 16.4% at the mid-year mark of 2022. Even in 2020, when the world essentially came to a standstill for several months, year-end ad-supported streaming revenues grew 16.8%, up $170 million — higher than the $95 million gain seen in 2022.
The advertising slump last year was certainly a blow to U.S. industries, with layoffs across the music and tech landscapes in particular. Many companies cited “economic headwinds” due to a combination of factors, including the war in Ukraine, rising interest rates, inflation and the threat of recession as companies scaled back spending that had ballooned coming out of the pandemic and readjusted forecasts for an uncertain future. All of that certainly played a part. But since 2018, ad-supported on-demand streaming revenue grew 137%, becoming an increasingly large part of the overall pie. In comparison, 5.5% is likely a disappointing number to many in the industry.
Vinyl, Vinyl, Vinyl
Another year, another big headline involving vinyl’s 16-year winning streak: For the first time since 1987, the number of vinyl LPs sold in the United States (41 million) surpassed the number of CDs sold in the calendar year (33 million). Vinyl sales reached $1.2 billion in 2022, up 17.2%, while CD sales plummeted once again, decreasing 17.6% to $482 million. Despite the eye-popping vinyl revenue numbers, however, actual unit sales only rose 3%, meaning that the price of vinyl is getting more expensive. In 2021, the average vinyl record cost $26.12; in 2022, that number rose to $29.65. There’s plenty to unpack there, including increased production costs and inflation.
Another notable development in the vinyl craze that has sharpened in recent years is the shifting market share among vinyl retailers. As far back as 2015, when the industry started to emerge from its nadir, the market was dominated by indie records stores (45.42%), internet/mail order sellers like Amazon (32.88%) and chain stores like Best Buy (15%), according to Luminate. By 2018, indie stores and Amazon sales had essentially settled into a market share tie — each at 41% — while the Best Buys of the world had shrunk to just north of 10%.
But beginning in 2019, a fourth player began to emerge: Mass merchant stores like Walmart and Target, which dramatically expanded their inventories. As a result, their market share went from less than 1% in 2015 — accounting for some 7,000 sales — to 10.19% in 2019 and 14.75% in 2021, with sales of 6.1 million units. While the market share economics have shifted during that time, sales have continued to increase for each sector across the board. In short, part of what has been driving the boom has been sheer visibility in some of the biggest stores in the country, which has correlated to more sales, and thus more visibility, and around and around we’ve gone. (For those curious, in 2022 indie stores accounted for 48.1% of the market, having reclaimed their dominant position as the country emerged from the pandemic.)
The Synch Explosion
In the past few years, more and more songs have caught huge waves due to synchs in popular TV shows and films. Think Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” following its Stranger Things placement, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” following its Wednesday placement and Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down The Line” from Euphoria, to name a few. That seems to have stemmed from the explosion of content, as the streaming wars in TV/film world heated up during that time — with Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and the rest all throwing money around to reel in subscribers. The RIAA numbers back that up: In 2022, synch revenue grew 24.8%, from $306.5 million to $382.5 million, marking a gigantic jump. In fact, from 2020 to 2022, synch revenue jumped 44.2%, outpacing the industry at large (which was up 30.3% in that span).
Will that upward trend continue? It’s unclear. The TV/film streamers have publicly cut back their content spends in the past six months as the battle for market share and subscribers veered into profligacy and waste, while corporations looked to reel in costs amid the broader economic landscape. But it’s possible those gains are here to stay, even if they regress a bit. One music group executive recently told Billboard that in addition to the big four streamers (Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube), Netflix was quickly becoming a fifth major source of revenue thanks to a combination of direct synch payments and the long tail of streams that result from a high-profile placement. That’s something to keep an eye on moving forward.
Bonus Takeaway — Ringtones!
Finally, a small bonus addition from a personal favorite aspect of the RIAA report. The mid-to-late-2000s were, of course, a time of great uncertainty and anxiety in the recorded music business, as piracy and digital music chipped away at a once-dominant physical sales format. At their height in 2007, ringtones and ringbacks were able to plug the gap to the tune of $1.1 billion, according to the RIAA. (That would be around $1.6 billion today.) So, how much money did ringtones and ringbacks generate in 2022?
$11 million!
Please, RIAA, continue printing this as a line in every report, no matter how small the figure gets. While it’s currently the smallest line item by revenue in the entire report, I cherish it more than all the others.
