State Champ Radio United Kingdom
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LONDON — The 2023 Brit Awards drew its biggest television audience in three years with 3.9 million viewers watching the show on Saturday Feb. 11, a rise of more than 1 million on the previous year, according to U.K. broadcaster ITV.
The 43rd edition of the Brits, the U.K.’s biggest music awards show, featured live performances from Harry Styles, Stormzy and Sam Smith & Kim Petras, among others, and was staged on a Saturday night for the first time in the Brits’ history.
The move from the Brits’ traditional mid-week slot to the weekend had the positive impact organizers were hoping for with the show — hosted by Mo Gilligan and broadcast live from London’s The O2 arena — drawing an average audience of 3.3 million viewers over its two-hour running time, peaking at 3.9 million. ITV says another 780,000 people watched the show via its on-demand streaming app ITVx.
In comparison, last year’s ceremony was watched by 2.7 million television viewers in the U.K., down from 2.9 million in 2021 — the Brits’ lowest-ever TV audience, according to industry publication Broadcast.
Despite this year’s ratings upturn, Saturday’s show is still the Brits’ third-smallest TV audience, failing to surpass the 4.4 million viewers that watched in 2020, and some distance behind the ceremony’s peak popularity at the turn of the millennium when around 9 million people would regularly tune in.
There are, nevertheless, positives that labels trade body BPI, which organizes the Brits, can take away from this year’s event. Saturday’s broadcast – where Styles enjoyed a clean sweep, winning all four awards for which he was nominated – attracted a 53% audience share of 16-34 year-olds, up from last year’s 33% share, according to ITV.
Music performances and show highlights streamed on the Brit Awards 2023 official YouTube channel have additionally generated around 3 million views in total in the 24 hours after the event, according to Billboard’s calculations.
The Brit Awards’ other digital partners include Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube Kids, Vevo and fan engagement platform Filmily, while Saturday’s show was live-streamed internationally on YouTube. BPI is due to release its digital audience figures later this week.
LONDON —Throughout its five-decade history, the Brit Awards, the U.K.’s biggest music awards show, have produced many headline-grabbing moments — from Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker wiggling his butt at Michael Jackson in 1996 to Adele flipping the bird at TV executives for cutting off her acceptance speech in 2012 — and featured unforgettable performances from Amy Winehouse, Stormzy, Dave, Kanye West and the Spice Girls.
But like other entertainment awards shows, such as the Grammys and Academy Awards, the Brits are being forced to radically reinvent themselves to combat falling TV ratings and retain relevance with young music fans. Last year’s ceremony was watched by 2.7 million television viewers in the U.K., down from 2.9 million in 2021 — the Brit’s lowest-ever TV audience, according to industry publication Broadcast.
To try to arrest that slide, this year’s show at London’s O2 Arena takes place on a Saturday night for the first time in the Brit Awards’ 46-year history.
Organizers are hoping the move will breathe new life into the iconic ceremony, which this year has weathered controversy over a lack of female nominees; it will feature performances by Lizzo, Harry Styles, Lewis Capaldi, Stormzy, Sam Smith and Kim Petras.
“There’s been a desire [within the industry] for the Brits to be on a Saturday night for some time,” says Sophie Jones, chief strategy officer and interim CEO of labels body BPI, which runs the Brit Awards. “This year the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place, and it feels like a very exciting premium place for us to be.”
As in previous years, the two-hour show will be broadcast live on ITV in the U.K. The U.K. version of The Masked Singer, which is broadcast in the slot that precedes this year’s Brit Awards show, attracted 6.3 million viewers to last year’s season finale, according to ITV.
Outside the U.K., the 43rd edition of the show (The first ceremony took place in 1977, though the Brit Awards didn’t become an annual event until 1982) will be livestreamed internationally on YouTube for the 10th consecutive year, while a 60-minute red carpet show hosted by Nella Rose and Michelle Visage will be streamed on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The Brit Awards’ other digital partners include TikTok, YouTube Kids, Vevo and fan engagement platform Filmily.
Social media and digital platforms have enabled the Brit Awards to reach a far larger and younger global audience than it has ever reached on terrestrial television, says Jones. She points to 44 million views on the Brit Awards’ official YouTube channel for 2022’s performances and highlights, with more than 1 million people watching the accompanying red carpet show — marking a 25% jump from the previous year. Last year also saw 1.6 million visitors to BRITs World on Roblox.
The show’s continued importance to the U.K. record industry is illustrated by the spike in sales that winning acts and performers often experience. In the four days following 2022’s event, audio streams of songs performed on the night collectively increased 55% with 3.3 million additional streams, according to BPI data tracking. The highest uplift was for Ed Sheeran’s “The Joker and the Queen,” which saw a 699% increase in post-show streams.
“The shared experience moments that awards shows create are really special and the Brits still does that,” says Jones. “It’s a really important calling card for how much talent there is in the U.K.”
Lack Of Female Artists Sparks Backlash
In addition to battling falling TV viewership, the Brit Awards have increasingly found themselves caught up in controversies of their own making. This year’s nominations provoked a fierce backlash from artists and fans when they were announced on Jan. 12 because no female artists were named in the gender-neutral best artist category.
BPI says the lack of female nominations is a result of the strict eligibility criteria and relative shortage of high-profile British female stars putting out new music in 2022. The Brit Awards scrapped best male and best female awards last year in favor of gender-neutral prizes.
To be eligible for the best artist prize, an artist must have achieved at least one top 40 album or two top 20 singles in the U.K. over a 12-month period. Out of the 71 U.K. stars eligible for the award, only 12 were women — a list that includes Charli XCX and Florence + the Machine.
From that 71, a panel of around 1,200 voters — made up of artists, industry executives, journalists and retailers — pick their top five in order of preference. This year’s five nominees are Harry Styles, George Ezra, Stormzy, Central Cee and Fred Again.
“Clearly, it’s disappointing not to see any women nominated in the new gender-neutral category [but] it’s important we recognize the process by which those decisions are made,” Jones tells Billboard. She says that compared to 2022, when Adele won best artist and women or female-fronted acts won 10 out of 15 awards, the past 12 months have “seen fewer high-profile female artists within the release cycle and that has played itself through in the qualification list.”
In the wake of this year’s backlash, Jones says BPI will conduct a post-show review of its nominations criteria, eligibility thresholds and voting processes “looking at different potential approaches… to make sure that the awards are fully representative and celebrate success.” She says there are no plans to return to male and female categories for the best artist award but adds that nothing is “off the table.”
“Everything is in the mix, and it would be right and proper of us to think about this from all angles and make sure that we are making the right decision, whatever that might be,” says Jones.
Despite the all-male best artist list, organizers point to the high number of female artists in the running for other prizes on Saturday night. They include alternative rock band Wet Leg, who received four nominations; Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, both nominated in the international artist and international song categories; and Nova Twins, who are competing against Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, Bad Boy Chiller Crew and Wet Leg for best group. In total, 42% of this year’s nominations went to female artists or female-fronted bands, compared to 46% last year, says BPI.
The London-based organization previously became embroiled in controversy in 2016 when no Black artists were nominated in any major categories, provoking the viral hashtag #BritsSoWhite. Since then, BPI says there have been widespread changes to its voting academy, which this year was made up of 52% women and 31% from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds.
A nine-person Brits Committee — made up of two-thirds women, highlights BPI — oversees the Brit Awards. This year, Damian Christian, managing director of Atlantic Records U.K., makes his bow as committee chair, replacing Polydor’s Tom March who held the role in 2022. (Each of the three major labels takes turns leading the committee, rotating every three years.)
Those structural reforms have helped make the event far more representative of the U.K. music scene, say organizers, with recent editions seeing hip-hop stars Stormzy, Dave and Little Simz take home major prizes and deliver some of the event’s most-talked-about live performances.
LONDON — Madison Square Garden’s plan for a “next generation” 21,500-capacity concert venue in London won another key endorsement this week when a planning committee approved the development, despite strong objections from residents and rival live events company AEG.
On Tuesday, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) granted MSG a 25-year advertising license subject to a five-year review. Now, London Mayor Sadiq Khan needs to approve the project — called MSG Sphere London — before work can begin. In rare instances, government ministers can also intervene and suspend planning applications.
New York-based Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSG) first submitted plans for the venue in March of 2019. Since then, the company has encountered sustained opposition from councilors and residents who are concerned it will blight the area with noise and light pollution.
MSG is proposing to build the arena on a five-acre plot of land in Stratford, East London, adjacent to the Olympic Park and would be located just five miles away from the 20,000-capacity The O2 arena, the U.K.’s top grossing venue, which is operated by AEG.
The MSG Sphere in Las Vegas, under construction.
Courtesy Photo
The design of the MSG Sphere London mirrors the spherical crystal ball design of the MSG Sphere at The Venetian in Las Vegas — due to open later this year at a cost of $1.8 billion — and measures 90 meters (295 feet) tall by 120 meters (394 feet) wide. Its exterior will be covered in a programmable skin of more than one million LED lights, which will primarily be used for showing videos and advertising.
The LLDC had provisionally approved the venue last March, but the committee still needed to sign off on several aspects of the planning process, including MSG’s strategy for managing the Sphere’s controversial advertising display.
The proposed arena still doesn’t have a price tag, and MSG said in its most-recent quarterly earnings, filed in November, that there is no “definitive timeline” for its construction.
Opponents of the venue are calling on Khan to block the development. AEG says it was “dismayed” by the committee’s decision to give MSG Sphere London the go ahead.
“We call on the Mayor of London to uphold his election promise to do what’s best for Londoners, including the residents of [the London Borough of] Newham who are having this huge development forced on them, by directing refusal of the planning application,” AEG says in a statement.
AEG says MSG Sphere London’s LED illuminated exterior “was conceived for the heart of Las Vegas” and is “at a wholly unprecedented scale for London and totally out of keeping with the surrounding area.”
Campaign group StopMSGSphere, who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, and several local councilors have urged the Khan to quash the development, which would be MSG’s first venue outside of the United States.
Following the ruling, a spokesperson for MSG — whose portfolio includes New York’s Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Forum in California — said the company ”remains committed to bringing MSG Sphere to London” and promised the venue would create “thousands of jobs and [generate] billions of pounds for the local, London and U.K. economy.”
MSG says it will provide blackout blinds to homes located within 150 meters (492 feet) of the new London arena and will run a telephone line for residents to register any complaints.
Should it get the go ahead, MSG Sphere London will be one of the U.K.’s biggest indoor concert venues with a scalable capacity of up to 17,500 seated, or 21,500 with a mixture of seated and standing. That exceeds the U.K.’s two biggest existing arenas, London’s The O2, which has a maximum capacity of 20,000, and Manchester’s AO Arena, which holds up to 21,000 people.
Construction is currently underway in Manchester on what will be the U.K.’s biggest indoor music venue, the 23,500-capacity Co-op Live being developed by the Oak View Group, which counts Harry Styles as an investor. It is set to open in December.
LONDON — A U.K. Parliament committee is calling on the British government to address the “pitiful” returns that many artists and creators earn from music streaming and says it should develop and implement a “wide-ranging national strategy for music.”
A report from The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee published Friday (Jan. 13) urges the government to take a “more proactive strategic role” in the music industry to help ensure creators and performers receive a greater share of streaming revenue.
The report doesn’t go into detail about what form an overarching national music strategy would take. But it nevertheless recommends it be developed and overseen by the DCMS and looks at the impact of new digital technologies on musicians, songwriters and composers, as well as the U.K. industry’s potential for growth.
Taking such an approach could help address many of the issues caused by the government’s current approach to policymaking for the music business, which sees policy and trade negotiations handled by multiple different government departments and, says the report, is “too scatter-gun to be effective.”
The DCMS Committee’s recommendations come 18 months after it published a damning report in July 2021 on the economics of music streaming that called into question the major record labels’ dominance of the industry — and how they leverage that market power at the expense of artists, songwriters and independents. It concluded by saying that the global streaming model is unsustainable in its current form and “needs a complete reset.”
In response to that report, the U.K. competition regulator carried out a market study review of the record business. It ended in November with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) surmising that low returns from streaming “are not the result of ineffective competition” between the three major labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.
The British government has also set up a number of working groups — led by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and made up of industry stakeholders — to look at issues raised in the Parliament probe, including problems around transparency and metadata.
Reviewing the progress that has been made since July 2021, the DCMS committee commended the government and IPO for the work and research it has undertaken but said that more still needs to be done on core issues, such as creators’ share of streaming royalties.
In particular, the committee recommends the IPO establish working groups to look specifically at remuneration and performer rights, with greater involvement from government officials and ministers. It also says there needs to be greater transparency around membership of the working groups, agendas and deadlines, none of which are currently made publicly available.
“Over the last 18 months the Government has made some welcome moves towards restoring a proper balance in the music industry, but there is still much more to do to ensure the talent behind the music is properly rewarded,” Damian Green MP, acting chair of the DCMS Committee, said in a statement.
Green says too many musicians and songwriters are frustrated at receiving “pitiful returns” from streaming and says the government “now needs to make sure it follows through on the work done so far to fix the fundamental flaws in the market.”
The committee has also requested that the three major labels provide it with evidence of the royalties they have distributed to legacy artists under the various unrecouped advances programs introduced over the past two years.
Sony Music Group was the first to announce, in June 2021, that it would start paying royalties to artists with unrecouped advances from pre-2000 record deals. Warner Music Group followed in February 2022 and Universal Music Group in March 2022.
A spokesperson for the DCMS committee says that while it has no formal powers to compel businesses to provide them with information, businesses are expected to comply with the request. The government now has two months to respond to the committee’s recommendations and outline any actions it will be taking. (The DCMS committee, which is made up of 11 members of Parliament, is responsible for monitoring the policies and practices of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and its associated bodies, including the BBC.)
Responding to Friday’s report, David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition, and Annabella Coldrick, chief executive of the Music Managers Forum, said they “wholeheartedly” welcomed Parliamentary support for improved remuneration and contractual rights.
“Our organizations are in complete alignment with other creator bodies on the need for greater fairness, transparency and remuneration.” Martin and Coldrick said in a joint statement. “These issues are not going away, and neither are we.”
A spokesperson for U.K. labels trade body BPI thanked the committee for highlighting “the positive steps that the industry has taken” since its original 2021 report but cautioned against any calls for sweeping government reforms.
“At a time when the global music market is more competitive than ever,” the spokesperson says, “public policies must be firmly rooted in driving sustainable growth across the entire U.K. music ecosystem.”
LONDON — As the world’s first purpose-built recording complex, Abbey Road Studios has a long and storied history of pioneering technological innovation.
Opened in 1931, No. 3 Abbey Road is indelibly associated with The Beatles, who recorded most of their catalog there and named their 1969 album after the tree-lined road in London where the studios are located. The first ever stereo music recording also happened there, in 1934, and artificial double tracking was invented in the studios three decades later. Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse and Adele have laid down tracks at Abbey Road, which has also recorded movie scores for blockbusters such as Return of the Jedi, Raiders of The Lost Ark and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Today, the studios remain a popular destination for recording artists, composers and orchestras, and thousands of tourists make the pilgrimage to the English Heritage-listed site every year to recreate the image of John, Paul, George and Ringo striding on the nearby pedestrian crossing, immortalized on the Abbey Road album cover.
Abbey Road’s illustrious history is profiled in a new documentary, If These Walls Could Sing, directed by Paul McCartney’s daughter Mary McCartney, which premiered globally on Disney+ on Friday (Dec. 16).
But it’s no longer only musicians making noise inside the famous facility.
Since being acquired by Universal Music Group in 2012 as part of its £1.2 billion (then equivalent to $1.9 billion) deal for EMI, a steady flow of tech entrepreneurs, researchers and developers have also been interfacing with Abbey Road, enticed less by its cutting-edge recording facilities than by its burgeoning success as a technology hub through its Abbey Road Red program.
Launched in 2015 and billed by the studio as Europe’s first music-focused technology incubator, Abbey Road Red — named after the studios’ REDD mixing consoles used by The Beatles — is now building momentum in the hyper competitive music tech space. In February, Apple acquired London-based AI Music, which was part of Abbey Road Red’s 2017 intake, for an undisclosed sum.
Other Red alumni include music video licensing platform Lickd, which has signed deals with Universal, Warner Music Group and Merlin to provide their catalogs to online content creators — and last year secured around $7 million in funding with Warner Music and Fortnite creator Epic Games among the investors.
In March, AI-augmented adaptive music platform LifeScore Music, which was part of Abbey Road Red’s 2019 cohort, raised £11 million ($14 million) in Series A funding, with Warner again providing financial backing. Another graduate of the program, London-based Audoo, which tracks music played across public performance locations, counts among its investors ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and Paul McCartney’s MPL Group.
Of the 19 businesses that have been enrolled on the incubator so far, two have folded while 17 have raised over $80 million among them. Collectively, the 17 companies are valued at more than $325 million based on their investment rounds, says Abbey Road Studios.
At the time UMG took over the facility, Abbey Road had been losing money for years. Like many other prestige recording studios, it was finding its business under threat from bedroom producers and micro-studios able to create professional-sounding songs at a fraction of the cost.
That prompted its new owners to begin diversifying the studio business to attract a wider range of clients. In 2017, UMG opened two smaller, less-expensive-to-hire studios, the Gatehouse and the Front Room. Abbey Road Institute, a specialist music production school, opened the same year as Red. In addition to running a start-up incubator program, Red is carrying out research around immersive spatial audio listening.
Isabel Garvey, managing director of Abbey Road Studios, says the Red program has transformed how the facility is perceived by executives both inside and outside the music business. It’s “not just a room for hire,” she says.
The Beatles pose outside Abbey Road Studios in London.
Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/GI
“There’s a wonderful halo effect from Red in terms of being at the forefront of technology and being able to share that with the artists in the studios and share that with our parent company,” says Garvey.
Like other tech incubators, Abbey Road Red provides early-stage companies with access to the studio’s experts and facilities, including mentorship advice around business development, brand partnerships, securing finance and commercial strategy. It also enables start-ups to tap into UMG’s global network and consult with senior management and label execs, as well as with other major and independent labels and publishers.
In return, Universal receives a 2% equity stake in each business it backs and a participation right to invest in the company’s future financing rounds. By comparison, Y Combinator, a successful Silicon Valley start-up accelerator that gave early backing to Airbnb, Dropbox and Twitch, invests $500,000 in every company that enrolls in its three-month program in return for 7% equity. LA-based TechStars’ music tech accelerator program, which counts Warner Music, Sony Music Entertainment and Concord among its partners, offers start-ups up to $120,000 of investment for 6% equity.
James Shannon, co-founder of metaverse platform XONE, which joined the Red program in July, says the incubator’s close integration with the world’s biggest music company distinguishes it from other accelerators and provides a “fast-track towards getting a product into market.”
Neither UMG nor Abbey Road Studios gives start-ups any capital investment as part of the incubation process, although Garvey says it is an idea under consideration to grow the division.
Abbey Road Red currently takes on between four and eight businesses each year with each intake lasting six months. Last month, DAACI, a tool that uses AI to assist composers, became the 19th start-up to join Red. Start-ups can apply to Abbey Road for consideration, although the majority are scouted through the team’s technology network and connections.
“We set out to find the best quality start-ups that bring value back to the music industry, whether that’s [a platform] that helps artists get paid or new technology that empowers them to create,” says Karim Fanous, innovation manager at Abbey Road Red.
Following Abbey Road Red’s lead, other music companies, as well as UMG, have ramped up their presence in the tech incubator space.
In 2017, Universal launched a tech incubator program, Accelerator Engagement Network, followed a year later by the Capitol Innovation Center, which is housed in Hollywood’s historic Capitol Studios. In 2018, Warner Music Group announced a multi-million-dollar seed stage investment fund called WMG Boost, while Sony Music Brasil recently launched a digital accelerator program to drive artificial intelligence innovations.
“We are meaningfully thinking about where the music business is going in the future,” says Garvey. “That really excites artists, the industry and the people that come through the doors every day.”
LONDON — Less than a year after being appointed chief executive of the Association for Electronic Music, Silvia Montello is exiting the global trade body to become CEO of AIM, the London-based Association of Independent Music.
Montello takes up the new post on Jan. 31. She will succeed Paul Pacifico, who leaves AIM later this month to head up the Saudi Music Commission, where he will be responsible for developing and championing the music sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In April, the London-based Montello was appointed the first female CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM). The New York-headquartered non-profit organization, founded in 2013, represents the interests of over 250 electronic music companies across 25 countries.
Montello’s appointment as CEO of AIM — which represents more than 1,000 U.K. indie labels, artists and music companies, including Beggars Group, Domino, Warp and Ninja Tune — comes on the back of another strong year for independent labels and artists in the United Kingdom. According to labels trade body BPI, independently released music made up 29% of the U.K.’s recorded music market in the first 10 months of 2022, up from 27% for the whole of 2021 — when total recorded music sales reached £1.3 billion ($1.6 million) in the U.K. — and an increase of 30% from 2017, when independents claimed a 22% share.
Independently released albums that have topped the U.K. albums chart this year include Arctic Monkeys’ The Car, Wet Leg’s self-titled debut, Fontaines D.C.’s Skinty Fia and rapper Central Cee’s 23.
“The growth of the indie sector has been fantastic to see and what’s really exciting about it is the rise in grass roots independent artists who are self-releasing and creating their own teams and finding ways of being able to build their own fanbase,” Montello tells Billboard.
Despite the growth, it remains difficult for many DIY and independent artists to make a decent living from streaming alone, she says, echoing well-publicized discontent from the creator community over low returns from music streams.
In her new role as CEO of AIM, Montello — who has been an active member of the U.K. trade body for several years — says she will continue the organization’s push for an “equitable and fair” split of streaming revenues but will also focus on educating and training independent artists and businesses about how they can monetize their art in the fast-changing music ecosystem.
“Looking outside of the reliance on just the major streaming platforms is going to be more of a significant conversation and trend going forward,” she says, citing the metaverse, Web3 and growth of neighboring rights revenues as potential avenues for artists to maximize their future earning potential.
“We always need to be looking forward and making sure that we’re trying to anticipate where there may be new opportunities for our members, but also anticipate where there may be challenges arising and making sure that we’re up to speed with everything,” says Montello.
Prior to heading AFEM, Montello held senior executive roles at the U.K. arm of Universal Music Group, where she worked as director of catalog marketing between 2006 and 2010, and BMG, where, according to her LinkedIn profile, she served as group senior vp of recordings operations and integrations from 2014 to 2016. She was subsequently appointed senior vp of operations at the then-Kobalt-owned artist services company AWAL, a post she held from 2017 to 2020.
More recently, Montello held senior posts at music rights data platform Blokur and Audio Network, a U.K.-based creator and publisher of music for film, television and digital content. Since 2011, she has also acted as CEO of Voicebox Consulting, which has worked with music companies and charities that include BMG, PIAS and the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Montello co-founded and is director of #remarQabl, an electronic music label services and publishing company that champions female, LGBTQ+ and underrepresented artists, and is a trustee for U.K. charity Help Musicians.
In a press release announcing Montello’s appointment, AIM chair Nadia Khan called the executive a “fantastic leader” whose “extensive industry background, contact base, business development skills, passion for diversity and inclusion, and vision for the future bring renewed leadership to AIM.”
Association for Electronic Music co-founders Ben Turner and Kurosh Nasseri congratulated Montello on what they called a “landmark appointment” for both her and the genre of electronic music.
“It is amazing to see an organization as influential as AIM looking to our sector and actually to our own trade body AFEM for their next leader,” Turner and Nasseri say in a statement. They thanked Montello for “her valuable input into AFEM in her short time with us” and said the organization has begun the process of recruiting a new CEO to succeed her.
Montello says she looks forward to “really getting under the skin of AIM” and doing all that she can to make the independent music business flourish, help artists avoid burnout and add to the “richness and diversity” of music coming out of the United Kingdom.
“Because if we don’t have that from the independent sector, where a lot of the creativity comes from the grass roots, the margins and underrepresented groups who have got something to say,” she says, “then all music lovers are going to miss out.”
LONDON — The U.K. competition regulator has ruled out making further interventions in the music business and says that low returns from streaming, which songwriters and artists have expressed concerns about, are not being driven by the major labels’ dominance of the market.
In its final 165-page report into the U.K. music business, published Tuesday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) says, however, that it is a matter for policymakers to determine whether current streaming revenue splits are “appropriate and fair” and if “wider policy interventions are required.” To that end, the regulator says it will share its final findings with the British government.
The CMA’s final 165-page report into the U.K. music business shows that consumers have greatly benefited from streaming, with the monthly price of streaming subscriptions falling by more than 20% in real terms between 2009 and 2021 due to not keeping pace with inflation. The monthly cost of an individual subscription to Spotify has remained £9.99 ($12.00) for the past decade.
At the same time, there’s been a huge rise in the amount of music that is available to consumers, from both paid subscription services and free ad-supported streaming, making it increasingly harder for all but the most popular artists to reach large audiences and earn a decent income.
In 2021, more than 138 billion music tracks were streamed in the U.K., yet less than 1% of all artists achieve more than one million streams per month, according to the CMA’s research. That level of streams would earn an artist around £12,000 ($14,500) per year after record company and streaming service deductions, says the regulator. The CMA found that over 60% of streams were of music recorded by only the top 0.4% of artists.
“We heard from many artists and songwriters across the U.K. about how they struggle to make a decent living from these [streaming] services,” says Sarah Cardell, interim chief executive of the CMA. Despite empathizing with creators’ “understandable concerns,” Cardell says the watchdog’s findings show that low returns for the majority of artists “are not the result of ineffective competition” between the three major record labels — Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group – which make up 75% of the U.K.’s recorded music market (independents account for the remaining 25%).
As a result, further intervention by the CMA “would not release more money into the system that would help artists or songwriters,” says Cardell. Therefore, the watchdog will not carry out a ‘phase 2’ full market investigation of the U.K. streaming business over competition concerns, which could have lasted up two years. Instead, it will share its findings with government policy makers for them to consider whether “additional action is needed to help creators,” says Cardell.
The regulator also warned that it may be forced to intervene in the future if the streaming business changes in a way that harms consumers’ interests. Determining factors identified by the CMA include mergers or acquisitions that could lead to a “substantial lessening of competition,” music companies prohibiting innovations that would benefit music fans and significantly higher streaming subscription prices.
The conclusions released Tuesday were a follow-up to an interim report released in July, in which the CMA said that streaming was working well for consumers. The regulator examined the integral role that services like Spotify and YouTube play in the booming music economy — and how those spoils are shared with creators. Just under 50 parties submitted written evidence to CMA officials as part of the study, including all three major labels, Google and independent music companies Believe, Beggars Group and Merlin.
Responding to artist concerns around how little they earn from music streaming, the CMA says its analysis of the market found that “neither record labels nor streaming services are likely to be making significant excess profits that could be shared with creators.”
According to its most recent earnings report, Universal Music Group’s revenue grew 13.3% to 2.66 billion euros ($2.75 billion) at constant currency in the third quarter of 2022. The world’s largest record label reported growth across all segments, including a 10.1% rise in recorded music revenue. UMG’s total revenues for 2021 were 8.5 billion euros ($10.1 billion) with net income of 1.271 billion euros ($1.51 billion) on an adjusted basis.
Sony Music reported on Nov. 1 that its quarterly revenues had risen 5.9% year-on-year to $2.58 billion (¥359.3 billion), with recorded music revenue up 14.2% to $1.62 billion (¥224 billion) in the same period, driven by growth of its subscription streaming income. Last week, Warner Music Group announced its quarterly revenues rose 16% at constant currency (9% as reported) to $1.5 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Sept. 30.
Despite the concentrated nature of the market, outcomes for artists as a whole seem to be improving, the CMA says. Between 2012 and 2021, the average gross royalty rate increased from 19.7% to 23.3% and artists now have far greater choice over the type of deal available to them, ranging from traditional label deals to DIY distribution or artist and label service type deals. The CMA report also notes that the proportion of record contracts where labels own copyright of recordings in perpetuity fell from 66% to 26.4% in that same nine-year period.
Reaction among U.K. music trade groups to the CMA’s final report was mixed. A spokesperson for labels trade body BPI welcomed the regulator’s decision not to proceed with a full market investigation and said the study reinforces its view that the future health of the music industry is dependent on labels continuing to invest in artists.
Graham Davies, chief executive of songwriters and composers group The Ivors Academy, took an opposing view, saying that the current music streaming business “is concentrating earnings to an unsustainable extent” and “rewards few music creators.” He said government intervention is needed “to fix streaming.”
LONDON — More people around the globe are listening to licensed music services than ever before, but piracy continues to have a harmful impact on creators’ careers, according to a new report from international trade body IFPI measuring global consumption and listening habits.
IFPI’s “Engaging with Music 2022” study reveals that music consumers are spending on average 20.1 hours listening to music weekly, a 9% increase from 18.4 hours in 2021.
The London-based organization found that 46% of the 44,000-plus music fans it surveyed for the report listen to their favorite artists through a premium subscription streaming service such as Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Music, either using their personal subscription or via a shared account. That number rises to 74% when ad-supported music streaming is factored in alongside paid subscriptions.
Those streaming service numbers are slightly down from IFPI’s 2021 figures — when about 47% of respondents used a paid subscription service and 78% of people said they used either ad-supported or paid streaming – but IFPI says any decreases are the result of a change in accounting methodology, rather than a drop in real terms.
In this year’s report, the adoption of subscription streaming services is highest among younger listeners, with 54% of 16–24-year-olds and 56% of 25-34-year-olds surveyed saying they use subscription music platforms. Usage drops to 26% in the 55-64-year-old age bracket.
The top five countries where people spent the most time listening to music through a subscription streaming service were Sweden (56% of people surveyed), the United Kingdom (52%), the U.S. (51%), Germany (51%) and Mexico (50%). (Overall, IFPI reports a 10% rise in time spent listening to music on paid streaming services compared to the prior year.)
The IFPI report was compiled by surveying internet users aged 16-64 between June and September across 22 countries, including the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Mexico. Collectively, these markets accounted for more than 89% of global recorded music revenues in 2021, according to this year’s IFPI Global Music Report.
Writing in the study’s foreword, IFPI chief executive Frances Moore says the report’s findings show “how music engagement is thriving, driven by new genres [and] new formats,” as well as the global value of music, “and the need to protect and support it.”
Video-Based Music Consumption Dominates
Of those surveyed in the “Engaging with Music 2022” report, more than three-quarters say they consume music in multiple formats. On average, people use more than six different methods to engage with music, the most popular being video streaming, says IFPI.
Of the people surveyed, 82% said they regularly consume music through video streaming services like YouTube. Audio streaming was the second most popular listening format, followed by radio listening, and then short-form video formats such as TikTok. Meanwhile, 32% of respondents said they had watched a music concert livestream in the last month with more than half (58%) having recently watched a music-focused TV show or film.
Driven by the huge global popularity of TikTok, which says it has over one billion monthly active users, half of those surveyed said they use short-form video apps with 63% of respondents saying music is a key factor in choosing what content they consume on the platforms. South Africa and Mexico were the countries with the highest percentage of short-form video app users (both 78%), followed by Brazil (71%) and Argentina (66%), reports IFPI.
Pop was named as the most popular music genre globally, followed by rock, hip-hop/rap, dance/electronic, and Latin. When it comes to physical music, 12% of the people surveyed had bought a CD within a month of submitting their responses and 8% had purchased a vinyl record.
Survey data from China and India is not included in the main report’s global figures because IFPI says the size of the countries would have a “considerable impact on the weighted average figures used.” The listening study contains separate reports looking at music consumption in China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria. Results from Indonesia and Nigeria were also not included in the global round up as they were included in the survey for the first time this year.
In China, 96% of people surveyed use licensed music streaming services with 94% using short form video platforms. In India, 88% of respondents use music streaming services with 65% consuming short-form video.
Despite the growth in global music listening, the availability of unlicensed repertoire continues to pose a serious threat to the future health of the record industry, says IFPI. It found that almost one in three respondents (30%) admitted to using unauthorized or unlicensed methods to listen to or download music.
Stream-ripping sites remain the most popular way for consumers to access copyright-infringing music, IFPI found, with 40% of 16-24-year-olds confessing to using them. Almost one in five people (17%) said they had used an unlicensed mobile app to illegally download music.
Responding to its findings, Moore said IFPI will continue to fight against all forms of music piracy “to ensure that those seeking to profit from unlicensed and unauthorized music cannot threaten the vibrancy of a music ecosystem that is essential to artists and fans.”
LONDON — One of the 22 people killed in a suicide bomb attack outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017 would probably have survived had it not been for “significant failures” by the emergency services responding to the atrocity, a public inquiry has found.
John Atkinson, 28, died on May 22, 2017, when bomber Salman Abedi detonated a home-made explosive device in the foyer of Manchester Arena (now known as the AO Arena) at the end of a Grande’s sold-out show. More than 800 people were injured in the terror attack, many of them children.
An 884-page report detailing the emergency services response to the attack, published on Tuesday (Nov. 3), found that Atkinson, a caregiver for adults with autism, could have survived the attack “if given prompt and expert medical treatment.”
Instead, Atkinson, who was standing only six meters (nearly 20 feet) away from the bomber when he detonated his device at 10:31pm U.K. time, suffered severe injuries to his legs. He had to wait 47 minutes before he was treated by paramedics and then went into cardiac arrest and died on the way to the hospital.
“It is likely that inadequacies in the emergency response prevented his survival,” the report concluded.
The report is the second of three being produced by the public inquiry from the U.K. Home Secretary, which began in 2019.
The chair of the inquiry, John Saunders, said many things went “badly wrong” in how the emergency services responded to the attack, including “significant failings by a number of organizations in preparation and training” for such an emergency. On the night of the bombing, the national terror threat level in the U.K. was severe, meaning an attack was highly likely.
While praising the heroism of the first responders and citizens on the scene, Saunders identified “very significant” failures by Greater Manchester Police and an “unduly risk-averse” approach from the fire service. He also cited substantial problems with how the North West Ambulance Service handled the emergency, as well as serious failings by British Transport Police.
“Some of what went wrong had serious and, in the case of John Atkinson, fatal consequences for those directly affected by the explosion,” said Saunders. He concluded that none of the other 20 victims could have survived their injuries from the explosion and “inadequacies in the [emergency service] response did not fail to prevent their deaths.”
The report is highly critical of Greater Manchester Police for failing to declare a major incident in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. Two of the department’s most senior officers were on duty that night but made “no effective contribution to the emergency response.”
There was “non-existent” communication between emergency service senior offices and “individual failures” that further undermined the joint response, the report stated.
Only three paramedics entered the arena’s foyer to help the injured following the explosion. Fire officers took more than two hours to arrive at the scene after senior officers wrongly believed they were attending a marauding terror attack and it was not safe to send in firefighters – a delay that Saunders said was “serious and unacceptable.” Their presence would have resulted “in the safer and faster extraction of the severely injured” to another location where they could receive proper clinical care, he said.
The inquiry also found that there was a “remote possibility” that eight-year-old Saffie‐Rose Roussos — the youngest victim of the attack — could have been saved “with different treatment and care.” Roussos drifted in and out of consciousness for 26 minutes after the bomb blast and was able to give her name to the first member of the public who helped her, but no tourniquets or leg splints were applied to her injuries.
She was subsequently carried out of the foyer and taken to a hospital, where trauma doctors were unable to save her.
Following the report’s publication, David Russel, chief fire officer for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, apologized for what he called a “wholly inadequate and totally ineffective” response that “will forever be a matter of deep regret.”
In all, the report makes 149 recommendations, including requiring first aid training for all police officers and firefighters and more regulation and enforcement to improve the standard of healthcare services at public venues.
The public inquiry’s first report into the terror attack, published last June, looked at whether police and security should have done more to prevent the bombing. It found that arena operators SMG, security company Showsec and the British Transport Police, who were responsible for policing the area where the bomb exploded, were “principally responsible” for missed opportunities to prevent or minimize the “devastating impact of the attack.”
The third and final report will focus on the radicalization of Salman Abedi and what intelligence services knew about him and his family. The bomber’s brother Hashem Abedi was sentenced in 2020 to a minimum of 55 years for his part in the bombing.
“Nothing will ease the pain of the families of those killed during the cowardly terrorist attack at Manchester Arena,” U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak said on Twitter on Tuesday after the report’s release. “It is my solemn commitment to the victims, survivors and their loved ones that we will learn from the lessons of this inquiry.”
LONDON — Paul Pacifico, the outgoing CEO of the U.K.’s Association of Independent Music (AIM), has been hired to head the Saudi Music Commission, which is responsible for developing and championing the burgeoning music sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Pacifico takes up the post in January. He will succeed Mohammed Al Mulhem, who is listed on the Saudi Music Commission website as the incumbent chief executive.
The Saudi Music Commission was established by the Ministry of Culture in 2020 as part of a wider push to grow Saudi Arabia’s economy and status as a high-end global tourist destination.
The commission says its objective is overseeing the development of Saudi’s music market through building world-class infrastructure, providing universal access to music education, empowering music artists and creating job opportunities in the country, which has a population of 35 million.
Specific market data for Saudi Arabia’s music industry isn’t currently available, with IFPI grouping the country within its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regional statistics. According to IFPI’s latest Global Music Report, MENA was the fastest-growing region in 2021, with recorded music trade revenues growing by 35% to $89.5 million.
International artists have, however, often faced strong criticism for performing in Saudi Arabia and helping promote a country widely accused of human rights abuses.
Last year, the Human Rights Foundation and the fiancée of murdered Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi led calls for Justin Bieber to cancel his headline performance at a concert in the Red Sea city of Jeddah to mark the end of the Formula One season.
Despite public pressure for Bieber to pull out, the concert went ahead on Dec. 5, with R&B singer Jason Derulo also performing at the show. In 2019, Nicki Minaj canceled her appearance at a concert in Jeddah. At the time, Minaj said she was boycotting the show in support of women’s rights, gay rights and freedom of expression.
Only a few years ago, concerts were banned in Saudi Arabia, where ultraconservative norms prevailed, and unmarried men and women were segregated in public spaces. That changed with the appointment of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017, who has introduced sweeping reforms to modernize the country, attract foreign investment and create jobs for youth.
MDLBEAST Soundstorm, the biggest music festival in the region, launched in the capital city of Riyadh in 2019, while its latest edition set to take place Dec. 1-3 with performances by DJ Khaled, Post Malone, Bruno Mars, Wizkid, David Guetta, Marshmello, Tiësto and Carl Cox, among others.
“It is truly remarkable to see the level of support and the pace of change within Saudi Arabia as it builds a strong music sector for all to participate in,” Pacifico said in a statement announcing his appointment. He called the opportunity to help further develop the market a “huge privilege” and said he was looking forward to working with colleagues to “build a vibrant, inclusive and effective music sector.”
It is not known if Pacifico will relocate from the U.K. to Saudi Arabia when he takes up his new post.
In August, Pacifico announced he was stepping down as CEO of AIM after six years at the head of the organization, which represents more than 1,000 independent labels, artists and music companies, including Beggars Group, Domino, Warp and Ninja Tune.
Pacifico’s term as CEO officially ended on Oct. 31, but he is continuing in the role until the end of the year when his successor takes over.
Key achievements from Pacifico’s two-term tenure include last year’s Music Climate Pact, an industrywide initiative to decarbonize the record business backed by all three major labels and dozens of indies.
Pacifico is an associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain and is featured in Billboard’s 2022 International Power Players list. He spoke on behalf of the indie sector during last year’s U.K. Parliament probe into music streaming. And during Brexit negotiations and the COVID-19 pandemic, he petitioned the British government for greater support for independent musicians and music companies.
Prior to joining AIM in 2016, Pacifico served as CEO of the UK’s Featured Artist Coalition and founding president of the International Artist Organisation.
