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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.
Uber Eats’ commercial featuring Diddy, Montell Jordan, “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?),” the guy who sings “What Is Love,” an oddly-timed haircut and two pineapples may be the first clue that Super Bowl ads are going lighter in 2023 — a pattern reflected in the music synchs for the big game.
After three years of the pandemic, Jordan’s 1995 smash “This Is How We Do It” and Kelis’ 2003 hit “Milkshake,” both Universal Music Publishing Group synchs used in the Uber Eats spot, represent a shift from apocalyptic and inspirational Super Bowl commercials and soundtracks starring old-timey crooners and string sections to familiar, upbeat hits and plentiful comedy.
“Humor remains the dominant theme this year,” says Tom Eaton, senior vp of music for advertising for UMPG, which represents the Jordan and Kelis tracks and suggested them to the brand’s music supervisors. “There have been a few sentimental commercials, but the vast majority have trended towards humor — and music can be such an important aspect of creating that mood.”
“I haven’t seen that heightened seriousness, which I think is a good thing,” adds Keith D’Arcy, senior vp of sync and creative services for Warner Chappell Music, whose synchs at this year’s Super Bowl include DMX‘s “What’s My Name,” for a Downy spot starring Danny McBride. “The country is in a good place where we’re more inclined to want to laugh and celebrate.”
That means lots of feel-good tracks, many of which were released in the ‘90s – from “What’s My Name” and “This is How We Do It” to a Clueless throwback ad for Rakuten starring Alicia Silverstone and Supergrass‘ 1995 U.K. hit “Alright.” The ’90s trend may have begun last year with Doja Cat‘s cover of Hole‘s “Celebrity Skin” for Taco Bell, says Rob Christensen, executive vp and head of global synch for Kobalt, whose lone synch this year is soul singer Lee Fields’ “Forever” for pet-food brand The Farmer’s Dog. “The ’90s are back,” he says. “That seems to be around pop culture everywhere right now.”
“It’s cyclical,” adds Scott Cresto, executive vp of synchronization and marketing for Reservoir Media, which has three synchs, including a Pringles spot with Meghan Trainor singing Tina Turner‘s “The Best.” “Most folks’ favorite music is from [ages] 13 to 30. They’re down the line in their careers and making the decisions and picking their favorite songs.”
Although not all final synch tallies for nationally televised spots were available at press time — publishing execs say permissions and requests for songs were unusually late this year, including a rush job that came in from an agency this past Monday — Sony Music Publishing (SMP) scored the most with 15, UMPG had seven, Warner Chappell Music had six or seven, BMG landed five, Primary Wave and Reservoir had three apiece and Kobalt had one.
Despite inflation, layoffs, high interest rates and sporadic recession talk, synch rates were stable this year, according to publishers. “It’s in line with past Super Bowl campaigns,” says Marty Silverstone, partner/senior vp creative/head of synch for Primary Wave, whose synchs include Missy Elliott‘s “We Run This” for Google Pixel. Adds Dan Rosenbaum, vp of licensing and advertising, for BMG, whose synchs include Supergrass’ “Alright” and co-writes for Turner’s “The Best” and Elliott’s “We Run This”: “Recognizability is so important in commercial usage. If that song is going to work for them, they’ll pay the price.”
Super Bowl LVII is the first since Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” landed on Stranger Things in May 2022, became a No. 1 hit and unexpectedly dominated the synch business. Do publishers believe the big game, for which 30-second ads cost a reported $7 million, will have a similar impact for their songs? Yes and no.
“That Kate Bush song wasn’t well-known and the show blew it up. On the Super Bowl, they play it a little more safe by using more tried-and-true hits,” says Brian Monaco, president/global chief marketing officer for SMP, which represents Len‘s “Steal My Sunshine” (for a Sam Adams spot), Sarah McLachlan‘s “Angel” (Busch) and Olivia Rodrigo‘s “Good 4 U” (Pepsi). “On a TV show, it’s a little easier, because the fees are lower. If it doesn’t work, you’re on to the next one.”
Despite SMP’s success at landing Super Bowl synchs this year, Monaco’s staff was unable to successfully pitch one key artist: Bruce Springsteen, who sold his music rights to the company for a reported $550 million in 2021. “It just didn’t fit,” he says, while noting that even for a superstar like Springsteen, getting a Super Bowl synch is a coveted career highlight: “Everyone’s hope — every writer, every artist — is the Super Bowl platform. We need more big events like this to get more music played.”
Although Linda Ronstadt won’t receive any kind of windfall for landing her breakthrough 1970 hit “Long Long Time” in the latest episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, the singer tells Billboard: “I still love the song and I’m very glad that Gary will get a windfall.” She’s referring to Gary White, the songwriter who first played it for Ronstadt in 1969.
After the episode aired Jan. 29, Spotify tweeted that streams jumped 4,900% between 11 p.m. and midnight; across all services, the track’s on-demand streaming increased from 8,000 the day before the episode to 149,000 the day after, according to Luminate. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer hasn’t seen the episode, but first heard about the synch deal when her manager, John Boylan, told her after a friend informed him about it. “I don’t follow social media or streaming services very closely,” Ronstadt says by email.
In March 2021, Ronstadt sold her recorded-music assets, including royalty streams from her master recordings and ownership of some masters, to uber-manager Irving Azoff‘s Iconic Artist Group. “She’s not unhappy about it, believe me,” says Boylan, her manager of 20 years and a longtime producer who performed with Ronstadt throughout her career. “We sold her catalog. The last four or five years have been a complete tsunami of buyouts like this.”
The HBO-placement notoriety will help Ronstadt’s upcoming projects, Boylan says, including a planned biopic with James Keach, who produced the 2019 documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. Ronstadt has never owned the master for “Long Long Time,” Boylan adds, due to her Capitol Records contract. But it was her first Billboard hit, peaking at No. 25 and remaining on the charts for 12 weeks. (Neither White nor his publisher, Universal Music Publishing Group, responded to interview requests.)
Ronstadt, 76, who suffers from a brain disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy, which resembles Parkinson’s Disease, recalled the song’s history via answers to email questions. “I met Gary through guitarist David Bromberg, who took me to the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village to see Gary performing with [the late singer-songwriter] Paul Siebel. After the show, Gary played me ‘Long Long Time’ and I immediately wanted to record it,” she says. “It wasn’t a country song, wasn’t a folk song, or a rock song, but I thought it was a really good song.”
“Long Long Time,” which appeared three separate times in the The Last of Us episode, is the soundtrack for actors Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett’s first meeting, playing the song on a piano, kissing and starting a long-term relationship. It’s the latest in a string of streaming-TV catalog tracks to unexpectedly dominate pop culture, from Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” in last spring’s Stranger Things to the Cramps’ version of “Goo Goo Muck” in last fall’s Wednesday.
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett on The Last of Us.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Boylan recalls playing “Long Long Time” on acoustic guitar with Ronstadt during a 1970 Washington, D.C., rally before thousands of people. “I was nervous,” he says. “She held that crowd with just that voice and her acoustic guitar.”
The Last of Us is not the first “Long Long Time” revival. Harry Belafonte, Mindy McCready and Jerry Jeff Walker have covered it, and it was in movies and a 1975 episode of The Rockford Files. “I liked Gary singing it live,” Ronstadt says, “but I don’t know any other versions.”
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.
This year brought an endless supply of memorable music in TV and film — both through original creations and already-existent works. Disney’s Encanto led the Billboard 200 for nine nonconsecutive weeks, fueled by its Billboard Hot 100-topping hit, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” while films including Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis also spawned top 10-charting hits. Synch placements yielded similar massive and pop culture-defining moments — with the two most notable coming from the same show. The fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, broken up into two volumes, first led to the revitalization of both Kate Bush’s 1985 classic “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” and then Metallica’s 1986 single “Master of Puppets.” Following their appearances in the show, the former reached a No. 3 peak on the Hot 100 — a career-best for Bush — and the latter led to the group’s first No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart in its illustrious history.
Behind the placements is music supervisor Nora Felder, who in addition to her work on Stranger Things has previously worked on series including FX’s What We Do in the Shadows and Showtime’s Ray Donovan, and will contribute to the second season of Yellowjackets (also on Showtime). And though she tells Billboard “it’s literally impossible to keep up with the surge of music that comes in on a daily basis,” she’s found a knack for picking the perfect musical accompaniments to a show’s most pivotal moments, time and again.
Below, Felder reflects on why she thinks the synchs in season four struck such a resonant chord with viewers, what goes into landing a successful placement and more.
Nora Felder, winner of the Outstanding Music Supervision award for “Stranger Things,” attends the 2022 Creative Arts Emmys at Microsoft Theater on September 04, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Amy Sussman/GI
The reaction to Stranger Things‘ season four soundtrack — specifically “Running Up That Hill” and “Master of Puppets” — was massive. Looking back, how did that feel for you?
I’m not sure I have fully processed it yet. When I run into friends or associates that I don’t see on a regular basis, it seems everyone is still blown away by it because, inevitably, it’s one of the first things they want to talk about.
In the first season of Stranger Things, we had used The Clash’s song, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” across several episodes. Similar to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” the multiple uses of both songs became, in part, a bridge for forging bonds between our key characters, while also helping save [them] from malevolent forces in precarious life-threatening moments. After season one aired, The Clash’s song experienced a bit of a resurgence, so we definitely anticipated and hoped for a similar reaction to Kate Bush’s song. However, after “Running Up That Hill” aired and the reaction to it unfolded in real time, we were staggered and humbled by this beyond-next-level response. To think that a song which was released 36 years ago could outrun some of the top artists of today really felt like a true lightning-in-a-bottle moment that was a privilege to be a part of.
With the subsequent airing of “Master of Puppets,” we were a little more prepared and anticipated that the needle would move in a big way. Metallica’s song was hugely connected to our beloved new character, Eddie. In my mind, to love Eddie was to love “Master of Puppets” as its lyrics really spoke to the core of Eddie’s being. But to now see that the metal community has a budding new audience makes me personally very happy. Metal music has been misunderstood as “angry music” for decades. I’m thrilled that people are really listening now and frankly getting into it on a deeper level.
Do you have a favorite memory from working on this season?
Off the cuff, three moments stand out in my mind. First, watching Rob Simonsen conduct The London City Orchestra in real time — adding an overlay to the original recording of “Running Up That Hill,” which fans got to hear in completion during the monumental Max moment in episode four — was simply breathtaking.
Second, sitting in a small Netflix theater stage with my Stranger Things team working on a weekend, and watching Eddie’s monumental scene with “Master of Puppets” for the first time. The few of us who were in the intimate setting of that room felt as if we each were at the greatest rock concert in the world — and had front row seats.
Third, I’ve had many people reaching out through my socials or website sending videos of festivals and concerts around the world with young and old [people] dancing and singing, or performing “Running Up That Hill” and “Master of Puppets.” One that particularly touched me was from a teacher of a 6th grade class in Florida. She sent a video of her students swaying together and singing “Running Up That Hill” and congratulating me on my Emmy win. That profoundly touched my heart. The power of a great song is endless and can be ageless.
Why did the synch placements in this season of Stranger Things resonate so strongly?
I suspect that Stranger Things‘ loyal fan base of all ages just might feel that a piece of themselves is represented in these characters, as well as the story that unfolded this season. In recent years, I believe that for many there had been an overall sense of uncertainty and fear — as if there have been invisible dangers and monsters, if you will — looming over us. With that in mind, it makes sense that the Stranger Things songs — which evocatively amplify the plights and unique internal landscapes and circumstances of our characters — would resonate around the world just as strongly as the characters and stories themselves.
Why was 2022 such a big year for music in TV and film to make an impact on the charts and in pop culture?
I have been inclined to think that following the impact of the worldwide pandemic, many people have become more accustomed to staying home more often than not. Getting lost in and binging on visual media, and listening to music has been at its heights. It could then make sense that through one’s favorite and relatable shows or movies (particularly those that are music driven), audiences would come to rely on such outlets as a source for the discovery of music.
What determines if a song will land a memorable synch placement?
When I’m reviewing songs against picture, my selections for my filmmakers emerge solely from my feeling, intuition and understanding. I know no other way to explain it. I usually test drive quite a few options, and I select the ones that my gut tells me could bring one closer to the character and to the emotions that I think my filmmakers are trying to get across in a scene or a character’s performance. A song must enhance a scene or its character, not the other way around. The more memorable a cinematic moment is, the more likely it is that a song that was used to enhance that moment will become iconically memorable as well.
What can synch placements in TV and film can add to a character’s arc or a scene that dialogue — or visual media — may not be able to otherwise?
Adding a music element behind a character or story can help elevate a message in a way that words can’t. Adding a musicality and lyrics to tip an emotion sparks one’s senses in a very unique way. That’s the power of music. That’s not to say that music, whether it be score or a needle drop, is needed for every scene or story. Some scenes are impactful on their own and adding a musical element would be distracting.
What kind of lasting impact will the success of synch placements in season four be?
We generally strive to look at where we came from in order to form a better understanding of where we are going. Through the power of the Stranger Things story, fans latched on to “Running Up That Hill” [and] “Master of Puppets” and others and allowed these songs — decades after their release — to become a source of validation and strength today. I hope the lasting impact of this historical moment in music will be that people will remain open to all genres of music, no matter if the a song came out last week or centuries ago.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Dec. 10, 2022, issue of Billboard.
As 2022 comes to a close, the music business can look back on another hectic year: turnover at the top levels of several big companies; record-breaking successes in several sectors of the industry; and some major headlines coming from sometimes unexpected places, all of which captured the attention of the music business over the past nearly 12 months. Here are 10 big stories and trends that helped define the year in the industry.
The Executive Turntable
The end of the year is always time for turnover, and the final stretch of 2022 has seen more of that than usual. The biggest story of all, however, is a change atop the Warner Music Group, with Stephen Cooper exiting after a successful 11-year run that saw the major double its revenue and boost its market share while taking the company public once again. He’ll be replaced by YouTube’s Robert Kyncl in February, in a move that has been widely seen as a nod toward the tech-based present and future of the music biz, particularly at WMG. Though changes atop the major groups are relatively rare, that was far from the only transition this year: Def Jam, Island and Capitol all welcomed new chairmen/CEOs, with Tunji Balogun, the duo of Justin Eshak and Imran Majid and Michelle Jubelirer taking over the trio of UMG companies, respectively. John Esposito also is transitioning into a new chairman emeritus role at Warner Music Nashville, handing the day-to-day reins to his longtime heirs apparent Ben Kline and Cris Lacy, who will take over in January. Warner also integrated 300 Entertainment into the 300 Elektra Entertainment Group, with Kevin Liles in charge, then placed it under the umbrella of the newly-formed Atlantic Music Group, with Julie Greenwald at the helm. And just recently, Motown chairman/CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam surprised many in the industry by announcing her intention to step down, at a time when the label is in its best shape in years, with a successor yet to be named. The C-Suites have been spinning much more than usual this year.
The Ticketmaster-Taylor Swift Meltdown
Cross Taylor Swift, and her fans, at your peril. The biggest artist in the world, whose latest album Midnights easily cleared the biggest streaming week globally of 2022, had set a presale for her first tour in five years, with tickets slated to become available on Nov. 15 through Ticketmaster. But the company badly, and somewhat inexplicably, misjudged the level of demand that existed for Swift’s tour. Long wait times, astronomical prices and service outages tanked the pre-sale, with billions of bots, according to the company, flooding the site and resulting in 3.5 billion requests to access it — four times the previous high water mark. That resulted in millions of frustrated, ticket-less fans. Which would have been bad enough, if it didn’t spark a firestorm that has yet to abate and is showing no signs of doing so. (As Billboard’s Glenn Peoples wrote, “Ticketmaster is one of the few non-partisan issues in America in 2022.”) There is now a Justice Department investigation into whether Live Nation has abused its market share in the live business (which was said to pre-date the Taylor tour, though it came to light in the wake of the problem) and a Senate antitrust panel hearing on the docket, as well as several state-level probes, and a lawsuit from more than two dozen fans accusing the company of fraud and “anticompetitive conduct.” It’s unclear if changes are on the horizon, but it has proven a headache of massive proportions.
Top-Level Touring Success
The headlines have never been rosier: Live Nation and Ticketmaster reported record-breaking quarters. Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour became the first ever to average a $10 million gross per show. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour closed in on the record for highest-grossing tour of all time. In short, it was a great year to be in the live music business — if you’re one of the biggest artists or promoters in the world. For a lot of others, the outlook was much less rosy: a “nightmare” of supply chain issues, COVID-related cancellations and postponements, rising costs and routing difficulties all combined to make it much more difficult for a lot of artists to get back out on the road this year. It is, and will continue to be, a process to get back to normal.
Synchs On Fire
A well-placed synch has always been a big revenue driver, particularly for legacy acts, but this past year the combination of prestige television and the TikTok algorithm combined to super-charge some of the biggest synchs to not just big bucks, but new chart highs, too. This past year, the biggest story on this front was Kate Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill,” which received a high-profile synch in Stranger Things and simply took off, surging into the top five of the Hot 100, becoming the oldest song to reach No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart and returning to the top 10 of the Alternative Airplay chart after a record 28-year absence, while doubling its label revenue in the first two weeks after the series aired. And that wasn’t even the only Stranger Things-related synch to blow up: Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” ballooned 400% in streams in the days after its synch in the season finale. Songs featured in Euphoria, The Batman and Thor exploded in value, while the RIAA’s midyear report saw synch revenue growing faster than ever. Most recently, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” with a placement in Netflix’s Wednesday, saw its revenue grow more than 8,000% in a single week.
Ebbs and Flows of Catalog Market
The red-hot catalog market has been the talk of the business for almost half a decade at this point, but over the past year things started to change in some unexpected ways due to rising interest rates, the dwindling number of truly elite catalogs available and the faltering of some of the sector’s most prominent players. And still there were big wins, including Sting’s deal with UMPG that Billboard estimated could be worth well north of $300 million, Stephen Stills’ sale of a controlling interest in over 1,000 songs to Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group and UMG’s purchase of Frank Zappa’s catalog in the region of $30 million. Meanwhile, Brookfield dropped $2 billion into Primary Wave, which promptly acquired the catalogs of Joey Ramone ($10 million) and Huey Lewis & the News ($20 million). Concord swung a package deal for the Genesis catalog as well as those of its individual members for somewhere around $350 million, and new players like Litmus Music came into the market with $500 million to spread around (some of which just went towards Keith Urban’s master recordings). So despite a “challenging environment” and an end to the catalog “feeding frenzy,” there’s still a lot of juice left in those old songs (and a big Pink Floyd-sized catalog potentially in the offing).
The Rush Toward Services
While one sector of the business is running with arms wide open toward catalog ownership, another sector is running just as firmly in the opposite direction: toward services, or partnering with artists and labels to provide a backbone of support to help them achieve their goals without giving up ownership through distribution, marketing, publicity, promotions, royalty claiming and other services. The independent distribution space has generally been a viable business model for decades, but the rush into services ramped up in the past year. Companies like SoundCloud, TikTok, Tencent and Downtown embraced the shift with realigned business models, joining relatively new entrants to the space like UnitedMasters, Stem and Utopia. Many of the major labels (Interscope, Republic, 300) also launched their own distro subsidiaries in an attempt to grow their market share in an increasingly indie world. For some, however, the shift was less of a slam dunk than they may have envisioned, with a tough business model that relies on scale colliding with the increasingly-murky corners of the digital music industry –resulting in fraud, financial challenges and lukewarm responses from the market.
The Onset of Crypto Winter
Early in the year, Web3 projects exploded in what seemed like every sector of the music business, including all three major labels along with companies like Spotify, Coachella, Ticketmaster, Gibson, the Grammys and Death Row Records — not to mention artists like Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, Pharrell and Keith Richards. Universal launched an NFT band, Warner partnered with a slew of web3 companies, Snoop promised to buy Death Row and make it into an NFT record label; the possibilities seemed endless. But the seas proved to be much choppier than many had expected, and a series of selloffs and financial failures (as well as recession and inflation fears) brought in what many called the Crypto Winter, with sales and enthusiasm beginning to ebb as the year went on. By the time the second-biggest crypto exchange, FTX, spectacularly failed in November, there had been a 70%-80% cool-off in the market, to the point where the once-ubiquitous format seemed ready for another hibernation while the industry tries to figure out how best to take advantage of the new-ish technology. Expect the ebbs and flows to continue until we’re all in an acronym haze.
BTS Break Rattles Biz — And HYBE Stock
By just about any metric, BTS has been one of the biggest and most formidable acts of any genre in the past several years, racking up No. 1 hits, big-name collaborations, massive box office grosses and accounting for nearly one-third of the entire K-pop market in the U.S. since 2021, according to Luminate. So the group’s decision to take some time off for solo projects was a blow to the group’s management company, label and agency HYBE, which saw its stock, already down 45% for the year at that point, sink 27% in the week after the announcement. (Shares recovered a bit after closing at 145,000 won following the announcement, hitting a low of 107,000 on Oct. 13 and rebounding to 157,000 as of Dec. 12.) With the group members facing the prospect of mandatory service in the South Korean military, HYBE is facing an uncertain outlook for 2023, despite third-quarter growth and the possibility of positive returns from BTS members’ solo projects. For K-pop fans, however, there is room for other companies to step in: JYP Entertainment has had chart success with TWICE and Stray Kids multiple times this year, SM Entertainment’s BLACKPINK scored a No. 1 album in October and Big Hit Entertainment has generated success with Tomorrow X Together. While there’s plenty of opportunity in the K-pop market, the road ahead is uncertain for HYBE, a company that not too long again was a slam dunk.
Despite Complications, the Business is Thriving
It’s been a complicated year for the business overall, as the return from COVID has been trickier than expected, breaking new artists has become harder than ever and overarching financial issues like inflation and the possibility of a recession have cooled what had been a white-hot market. But despite those challenges, the music business has been growing on almost all fronts for another year. The touring business has already been covered here, but the U.S. recorded music business also saw on-demand audio streams surpass 1 trillion for the first time ever — representing a 611% increase from 2015, according to Luminate. Despite supply chain issues that continue to bedevil labels and manufacturers, vinyl sales passed $1 billion in revenue for the first time since the mid-1980s. At the midyear mark, they were up more than 22% — well before Taylor Swift’s Midnights set the record for largest vinyl sales week since Luminate began tracking data in 1991. Overall consumption is up another 9.2% year over year so far in 2022, with no signs of slowing down and with record companies increasing their guidance for investors in 2023. Amid cutbacks and hiring freezes in tech and media, the music business stil appears to be on strong footing.
It’s Still a TikTok World
Love it, hate it, rue its influence or spend hours scrolling it, the industry was as obsessed with TikTok in 2022 as it’s ever been, and the ByteDance-owned social streaming behemoth has leaned further than ever into its connections to the music biz — for better or worse, depending on whom you ask. The service has been behind the massive success of hits both old (Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” Frank Ocean’s “Lost”) and new (Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” Bebe Rexha and David Guetta’s “I’m Good”) while helping break new artists like Em Beihold and Cafuné. But the labels’ love affair with TikTok has, over the past year, cooled down, as breaking a hit has become more complicated and the marketing pluses that it offered have fizzled. A distribution play from the platform called SoundOn was met with a lukewarm response, while a ByteDance streaming service, Resso, has rolled out in select markets, with rumors that it could come to the U.S. soon — if TikTok can ease the concerns of U.S. officials. And that comes as the frustration over low payouts and song leaks have some executives warning of a repeat of the early days of MTV and YouTube, when music content was regularly used to promote a fledgling service without commensurate compensation. Still, the biggest song on the platform in 2022 — a nine-year-old track from Swedish sad boy Yung Lean — grew its stream count by over 1,000%, and TikTok is still the single biggest proving ground for singles in the current digital climate. What to make of TikTok in 2022? How about…everything?
In the latest example of a stellar synch bringing in a surprise windfall, The Cramps‘ 1981 psychobilly classic “Goo Goo Muck” has become a breakout hit over the past couple of weeks.
Since Netflix’s new Addams Family spinoff Wednesday debuted on Nov. 23, including the series’ titular heroine performing dance sequence set to “Goo Goo Muck”, the track has taken off on streaming services.
In the week following the show’s release, from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” was streamed on-demand over 2 million times in the U.S. — a more than 8,650% increase from the average 47 weeks before this year. That adds up to $11,089.85 in a single week for the Capitol Records master recording and $2,492.33 in publishing, according to Billboard estimates.
Those numbers dwarf the rest of the song’s 2022 activity — until the Wednesday dance sequence came out, “Goo Goo Muck” this year had generated a total of $130.21 per week for the master and $32.28 for the publisher. Thanks to the Wednesday synch, The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” earned in total almost 78% more money in a single week than it had for the entire year.
“It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” Jim Shaw, a member of the late country legend Buck Owens‘ Buckaroos, who happens to own the publishing, told Billboard last week.
Early streaming activity suggests “Goo Goo Muck,” a cover of a 1962 single by Ronnie Cook and the Gaylads, could potentially follow Kate Bush‘s renaissance when her minor 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” landed in Stranger Things and turned into a smash. “Goo Goo Muck” had 2,500 daily on-demand streams as of Nov. 22; by Dec. 1, the track jumped to more than 209,000 daily streams, according to Luminate.
The streaming boost for “Goo Goo Muck” is a bonus on top of the upfront synch fee — the amount of which is unknown — that would have been paid on both the master recording and the publishing for the song.
Capitol reps did not respond to an interview request, but Shaw, who runs the Buck Owens Foundation, said he scored the publishing rights after the original publisher, Dave Bell, felt guilty about owing his friend Shaw “a couple thousand dollars” and offered the song instead. (Bell, who died in 2013, owned a recording studio, label and publishing company in his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., and put out Cook’s original version of “Goo Goo Muck.”)
“It hasn’t really done much until recently,” Shaw says. “That’s what every songwriter, and publisher, hopes will happen. Anything they put on YouTube, they hope something goes viral.” If “Goo Goo Muck” goes full Kate Bush? “Well,” Shaw says. “[It] wouldn’t break my heart.”
Over the years, Jim Shaw had loaned his friend Dave Bell, a longtime producer, publisher and label owner in Bakersfield, California, a couple of thousand dollars for various ventures — bits and pieces at a time. “He was one of the guys who kept rolling the dice,” Shaw recalls. “He’d make a million, then lose a million. Very interesting guy.”
By 2002, Bell was starting to feel guilty about how much money he owed to Shaw, a veteran member of Buck Owens‘ Buckaroos who now runs the late country legend’s foundation. Bell proposed a unique deal: In lieu of cash, he gave Shaw publishing rights to the rockabilly song “The Goo Goo Muck,” co-written and recorded by local country singer Ronnie Cook and his band, the Gaylads, in 1962. “At the time, it was like magic beans,” Shaw says. “[Bell] had a lot of gospel songs. He’d become very religious, and that song didn’t fit into what he wanted to do.”
Shaw knew, of course, that The Cramps had released a classic new-wave psychobilly-punk version of “Goo Goo Muck” in 1981, but since then the band’s popularity had faded and he never expected it to amount to much of anything. In fall 2021, though, the producers for Netflix’s Wednesday series called to license the Cramps’ version for a synch. When the Addams Family revival came out Nov. 23, the series saw record-breaking viewership and the track took off, much like Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill” last spring in Stranger Things, shooting from 2,500 streams the day before the premiere to 134,000 five days later. “It’s a really amazing, fun little bonanza,” says Shaw, 76. “I wasn’t familiar with the show, but I was happy to make the deal, and caught by surprise on all this.”
Bell, who died in 2013, was a U.S. Navy veteran who evolved from directing a church choir to recording artists, including local symphonies and a pre-stardom Merle Haggard, for his Bakersfield-area studio and his Audan Records label. He also owned a couple of publishing companies, including Damosi, named after his wife and daughters. Not much is known about Cook, who wrote “Goo Goo Muck” with Ed James. “I really thought it was a fun little song — the Duane Eddy guitar and that sound,” Shaw says. “I don’t know what this leads to. I was thinking of Pulp Fiction. Remember some of the really cool songs that got dusted off?”
Shaw, who is on the board of directors for the Buck Owens Foundation and has written songs of his own for Garth Brooks and Tom Jones, among others, recalls the late Bell as a character who was both religious and “had a potty-mouth.” Says Shaw, with a laugh: “He said, ‘The problem in this world is that people don’t pay attention to the fucking Ten Commandments.’”
Although Bell had done “very well in his life” as a label and studio owner and song publisher, Shaw says, he hit a rough period in the early 2000s and his friend started loaning him $100 or $200 at a time. “It kind of accumulated, and he was telling me how badly he felt about it. He says, ‘I want you to have this song.’ I said, ‘OK, sure,’” Shaw recalls. “It’s really cool. That’s what every songwriter and publisher hopes will happen. It’s what everybody dreams.”
After Smallpools’ “Dreaming” popped up in the FIFA 14 soccer video game, singer Sean Scanlon noticed something had changed: his Los Angeles electro-pop band began booking more college gigs. The fans reacted differently, too. “We’d get to the soundchecks, and we’d have students who wouldn’t even know what our band was called go, ‘Yo, FIFA’s here!’” Scanlon says. “We’d kind of be branded with that. That was huge for popularity on the younger front.”
As the FIFA World Cup opens Sunday (Nov. 21) in Qatar, the 29-year-old video game franchise based on the international sport, which allows Playstation and Xbox users and others to simulate tens of thousands of real-life soccer stars, is maintaining its global popularity. The 2023 version is at No. 8 on the NPD Group’s list of the year’s global best-sellers, and the FIFA series has scored 325 million sales overall, according to Electronic Arts. This sales power has been a unique song-breaking opportunity for artists going all the way back to FIFA: Road to World Cup 98, which licensed Blur‘s woo-hooing “Song 2.”
Over the years, the game has used music synchs from Kasabian (whose “L.S.F.” appeared in the 2004 game, the first of many for the band) to Billie Eilish (“you should see me in a crown” was in FIFA 19) to Glass Animals (whose “Heat Waves” was in the 2021 game, then hit Billboard‘s Hot 100, where it rose to No. 1 in March). “You see a noticeable uptick in streams,” says Adam Faires, manager of U.K. electronic-music duo Jungle, whose “Busy Earnin’” was in FIFA 15 and has since streamed nearly 120 million times on Spotify and has 30 million YouTube plays. “You can almost pinpoint it to the exact moment that the game comes out.”
The game provides different looks for synchs — some artists hit the soundtrack, airing prominently throughout the game, some are in marketing trailers, and certain stars, such as Jack Harlow and Rosalía, design custom uniforms as kits to be unlocked during the game. “It’s a little ahead of the curve. They’ve done a great job of breaking artists over the years,” says David Nieman, Interscope Geffen A&M Records’ senior vp of sports and gaming, who has placed Tierra Whack, Louis The Child and other synchs in FIFA. “We see followers increase, we see streams increase, then we see other people wanting to license that song after FIFA is taking that risk.”
Game giant EA Sports launched FIFA in 1993 as an international counterpart to its American-focused Madden NFL franchise, but the soccer game didn’t turn into a song-breaking fixture until the early 2000s. That was when Steve Schnur, an early MTV programmer who’d been a promotions, marketing and A&R exec for Elektra and other labels, took over the music. Schnur’s vision was to turn FIFA into its own music company, scouting and breaking new acts.
“The producer at the time wanted to record a symphony to do an orchestral score,” Schnur recalls. He had grander visions. He instructed EA’s music staff: “We’re going to make the real estate of FIFA really important real estate, where people discover their next favorite band with no global barriers.” After that, FIFA soundtracks expanded, breaking tracks by artists old and new, including Ms. Dynamite, Avril Lavigne, The Dandy Warhols, Junior Senior and even Radiohead.
“All of the artists got it,” says Schnur, Electronic Arts’ worldwide executive and president of music. “They knew that they not only played games, but their audience played games.” Artists featured in FIFA often expanded their touring business, reaching “a huge part of the world that potentially terrestrial radio and streaming services don’t have the same impact,” says A/J Jackson, frontman for pop-rock band Saint Motel, which landed “My Type” in FIFA 15. “We noticed in our shows, especially in the U.K., we were getting football fans and hooligans jumping around and chanting their team name. It exposed us to a lot of new people.”
The FIFA game sound, as defined by Schnur and Electronic Arts music supervisors such as Cybele Pettus, has a “particular mix of that DNA,” including world, electronic, hip-hop and pop, says Jonathan Palmer, BMG’s U.S. senior vp of creative synch, who has placed many tracks in the game over the years. Looking at artists on this year’s soundtrack, including Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Biig Piig, Black Thought and Danger Mouse, he adds, “That’s a great day at Lollapalooza.”
When Palmer worked on synchs for Columbia a decade ago, he placed Foster the People‘s “Call It What You Want” in FIFA, which helped extend the band’s post-“Pumped Up Kicks” run. “This just felt like a good fit — not just for the tone and style for the music, but also for the fact that they’re massive football fanatics. It culturally made sense,” he says. “People were showing up at shows and telling the band, ‘I heard your song in the game.’ This was making a difference.”
There’s a killer on the loose in this week’s episode of Atlanta.
Titled “Crank Dat Killer,” the season’s sixth episode revolves around Soulja Boy’s 2007 hit single and dance craze “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” That song, which earned the rapper his first and only No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, is played at the very beginning of the episode — just before Young Thug’s “Tick Tock” is heard over the opening credits. Later, when Earn reveals that the eponymous Crank Dat Killer — a serial killer operating in the Atlanta area — preys on people who have previously recorded themselves dancing to the song, Al remembers that he, too, made a video to the hit and could be the killer’s next victim. He then calls Soulja Boy, whose cameo is backed by the rapper’s 2021 song “Whip It,” to ease his nerves.
Meanwhile, Earn and Darius try to buy a sold-out pair of sneakers from a local reseller who it turns out is not interested in taking their money. K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life” soundtracks that encounter, as the two men put aside their dignity for the shoes.
As Atlanta has evolved, music synchs have played a big role in the overall scene-setting of the show. Throughout the seasons, music supervisors Jen Malone and Fam Udeorji have chosen a variety of songs by old and new artists from various genres including OutKast, D4L, Gunna, Troye Sivan, Dua Lipa, Kodak Black, Jennifer Lopez and many more.
Atlanta airs on FX Thursday nights at 10 p.m. and is available to watch on Hulu the following day. Check out all of the songs used in season four so far below.
Episode Six, “Crank Dat Killer”
Soulja Boy, “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”
Young Thug, “Tick Tock”
Soulja Boy, “Whip It”
K-Ci & JoJo, “All My Life”
Episode Five, “Work Ethic!”
Anita Baker, “Sweet Love”
Janelle Monae, “I Like That”
Little Simz feat. Obongjayar, “Point and Kill”
Coco & Clair Clair, “Wishy Washy”
Episode Four, “Light Skinned-ed”
Dorothy Norwood, “Somebody Prayed For Me”
Chicago Mass Choir, “God Is My Everything”
Yolanda Adams, “The Battle is the Lord’s”
8Ball & MJG, “Top of the World”
The Ebony’s, “I’ll Try”
The Chi Lites, “I Want to Pay You Back (For Loving Me)”
Fivio Foreign & Polo G, “Bop It”
Gil Scott-Heron, “Save the Children”
Episode Three, “Born to Die”
Megan thee Stallion, “Money Good”
Al Green, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”
Kodak Black, “Let Me Know”
Episode Two, “The Homeliest Horse”
Ciara, “Ooh Baby”
Japanese Breakfast, “Kokomo, IN”
Young Stoner Life, T-Shyne, Lil Keed feat. Big Sean, “Warrior”
PinkPantheress, “Attracted To You”
Rick James, “Cold Blooded”
Episode One, “The Most Atlanta”
Chief Keef, “B—h Where”
Deborah Cox, “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here“
Pell, “Tew Much”
Sly & The Family Stone, “Runnin’ Away”