United Kingdom
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The U.K. live music industry enjoyed a post-pandemic boom in 2022, resulting in a windfall for the country’s economy, according to new figures published Tuesday (July 18).
According to a new report from umbrella trade organization UK Music, more than 37 million people attended live concerts and festivals in the country last year, contributing £6.6 billion ($8.6 billion) to the local economy. It was the first full calendar year that the U.K. live music industry was open for business after months of intermittent COVID-19 restrictions led to the cancellation of thousands of concerts.
The report, called “Here, There and Everywhere,” also found that the resurgence of live music events such as the Glastonbury Festival — which returned in 2022 after two years away — and sell-out tours by big-name artists like Harry Styles, Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy helped attract more than 14 million international and domestic tourists to British gigs last year, reports UK Music.
Included among the 14.4 million “music tourists” — which UK Music defines as someone who has traveled at least three times the average commuting distance for their region — were 1.1 million overseas visitors.
Overall, the report found that more than 30 million people went to concerts in the United Kingdom last year — spanning everything from arena shows to tiny grassroots gigs — while 6.5 million music fans attended festivals.
“Here, There and Everywhere” is UK Music’s first report measuring the economic benefits of music tourism since its 2020 “Music by Numbers” study, meaning that accurate comparable numbers for preceding years are not available. According to 2020’s “Music By Numbers” report, which covered the prior 12 months, 33.7 million people attended U.K. live music events in 2019, including around 850,000 overseas visitors, contributing £4.7 billion ($6.1 billion) to the economy.
In 2022, 56,000 jobs were sustained by live gigs, said the London-based organization. The £6.6 billion ($8.6 billion) in music tourism spending for the year encompasses money spent on ticket sales, food and beverage sales, merchandise, venue parking, camping fees, accommodation, travel and additional spending outside of venues.
On a regional basis, London was the United Kingdom’s most popular destination for attending gigs, drawing 4.9 million music tourists who contributed £2 billion ($2.6 billion) in spending. The North West of England, a region which includes the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, was the second most popular destination for traveling music fans, with 1.9 million people visiting for live shows and spending £696 million ($907 million).
UK Music chief executive Jamie Njoku-Goodwin said in a statement that last year’s figures were a “testament to just how important a thriving musical ecosystem is for our towns and cities,” but warned that the sector still faces huge challenges as it continues its post-COVID-19 recovery.
“With a venue closing every week, one in six festivals not returning since the pandemic, and many studios facing huge economic pressures, it’s vital that we protect the musical infrastructure that does so much for our towns and cities,” added Njoku-Goodwin, citing research from the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) and Music Venue Trust (MVT).
LONDON — Global hit records by Harry Styles, Glass Animals and Ed Sheeran, coupled with the popularity of U.K. acts in emerging markets like the Middle East and Africa, helped British music exports climb to a record high of £709 million ($910 million) in 2022, according to new figures released by labels trade body BPI.
The London-based organization says 2022’s export tally is the highest annual total since BPI began analyzing labels’ overseas income in 2000. Last year also marked the ninth consecutive year of growth in U.K. music export trade revenues, which slumped to just over £200 million ($254 million at today’s exchange rates) in 2007.
BPI, which represents over 500 independent labels, as well as the U.K. arms of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, says the consistent year-on-year rise puts the country’s record industry on track to exceed £1 billion ($1.27 billion) in annual music exports by the end of the decade.
Driving last year’s 20% growth was a combination of globally successful British artists and the strong value of the U.S. dollar and other foreign currencies against the pound sterling.
British singer-songwriter Harry Styles’ hit single “As It Was” was the world’s most-streamed song in 2022, according to Luminate data cited by BPI, while Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” was number two. Other songs by U.K. artists in the year-end global top 10 included Elton John and Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)” and Ed Sheeran’s “Shivers.”
In total, around 450 U.K. artists accumulated more than 100 million global streams last year, up from almost 400 in 2021, BPI reports. That list includes Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Calvin Harris, Coldplay, Dave and Sam Smith, as well as veteran acts The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Queen. Overall, British artists claimed more than a quarter of the 50 most-streamed songs on Spotify in 2022.
Worldwide, consumption of British music increased in every region last year, says BPI, with export revenues rising 11% in Europe and up 28% in North America (equivalent trade values were not provided). The fastest-growing regions for U.K. music exports were Africa (up 48%) and the Middle East (up 59%).
On a country-by-country basis, all but one of the U.K.’s leading music export markets recorded a rise in export sales, including the U.S. – the leading international market for British acts – where revenues grew 28% to £292 million ($371 million). The second biggest country for U.K. music sales is Germany, where revenues climbed 4% to £58 million ($74 million), followed by France (up 15% to $54 million).
In line with the past several years, the U.K.’s share of the global recorded music market remains around 10%, reports BPI, despite the growing international popularity of music acts from Latin America and Asia, particularly South Korea.
In a statement, BPI interim chief executive Sophie Jones said the continued success of U.K. labels and artists overseas was “an exceptional achievement in the face of unprecedented competition on the global music stage, both from long-established and rapidly-expanding new music markets.”
The U.K. is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the U.S. and Japan with sales of just over $1.8 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2022 Global Music Report.
LONDON – Key players from the United Kingdom’s music industry have pledged to improve the digital metadata for song recordings to help ensure that artists and rightsholders are paid fairly.
Under the voluntary two-year agreement published Wednesday (May 31) by the U.K. government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), the U.K. industry commits to progressively improve metadata for new music recordings and to accurately award credits on streaming services.
Signatories include representatives of major and independent record labels, publishers, creators and streaming services. Trade bodes BPI —which represents more than 500 labels, including the U.K. arms of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — and the Association of Independent Music (AIM), which acts on behalf of U.K. independent record labels and music companies, are among the music groups backing the pledge
The U.K. government also says that it will be setting up a new working group with music business stakeholders “to explore and consider industry-led actions on remuneration for existing and future creators” over the coming weeks. The working group will review a range of issues facing creators and rightsholders, says the IPO, including the impact of artificial intelligence.
“The U.K. is a hotbed for world-beating musical talent but as technology advances we need our thriving music industry to continue to offer viable career opportunities,” John Whittingdale, a U.K. government minister for the creative industries, says in a statement.
Whittingdale calls the metadata pact a “landmark agreement” that will help ensure musicians “in the digital age are fairly credited and compensated for their contributions and creativity.”
As streaming has grown to become the dominant mode of music consumption globally, the need for accurate metadata — the descriptive data underlying music recordings detailing who contributed what to a song’s creation and who owns it — has grown in importance in determining who gets paid what share of a track’s streaming royalties. But digital platforms, artists and rightsholders have complained that streaming metadata is often incomplete or inaccurate, which delays payments to songwriters and labels.
“Currently a fraction of recordings being streamed properly credit the people that wrote and published the song,” says Graham Davies, CEO of U.K. songwriters trade group The Ivors Academy, which has also signed the metadata agreement.
In 2021 the Ivors Academy estimated that at least £500 million ($625 million) in global streaming royalties a year were being wrongly allocated or not being paid at all due to missing or incomplete metadata. In a statement, Davies says the pledge “gives us the first proper step on a journey of closing the metadata gap.”
Sophie Jones, BPI interim CEO, says she hopes the agreement will lead to “immediate improvements” in the “speed and accuracy of songwriter payments.”
Other music groups and companies backing what is officially titled the United Kingdom Industry Agreement on Music Streaming Metadata include The Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA), whose members include streaming services; Hipgnosis Songs Fund; the Music Publishers Association (MPA); Musicians’ Union (MU); Featured Artists Coalition (The FAC) and U.K. collecting societies PRS for Music and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL).
Wednesday’s metadata agreement is the latest in an ongoing series of government-led interventions into the U.K. music industry that spun out of a Parliamentary inquiry into the economics of the music streaming business.
That initial review concluded in July 2021 with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Select Committee calling into question the major record labels’ dominance of the industry and branding the global streaming model as unsustainable in its current form, saying it “needs a complete reset.”
Since then, the government has initiated multiple investigations and inquiries into the U.K. music industry, including a market study review of the record business by the U.K. competition regulator. That ended in November when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) determined that low returns from streaming for most artists “are not the result of ineffective competition” between the three major labels.
Last year the British government set up two working groups – led by the IPO and made up of industry stakeholders — looking at issues raised by the Parliament probe. One focused on metadata, which has now concluded. A second working group is looking at improving transparency around licensing and royalties for artists. The IPO says it is due to publish the second group’s findings, including a code of practice, in the coming months.
LIVERPOOL, U.K. — On Saturday, 26 music acts from Europe, Israel and Australia — many dressed in a dazzling display of outlandish outfits — will take the stage at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena to compete in the Grand Final of what can justifiably call itself the biggest music competition in the world: the Eurovision Song Contest.
When it comes to music television shows, Eurovision, taking place this year in Liverpool on behalf of war-torn Ukraine, dwarfs them all. More than 161 million people across 34 countries watched last year’s show, held in Turin, Italy and won by Ukrainian rap-folk band Kalush Orchestra, an increase of 7 million viewers (4.5%) from 2021, according to organizers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
In audience terms, that puts Eurovision ahead of the Super Bowl, the biggest annual U.S. television event, which drew 113 million TV and online viewers for February’s contest. Comparing to awards shows, 12.5 million viewers tuned into this year’s Grammy Awards, a rise of 31% year-on-year, while 2022’s MTV Video Music Awards averaged 3.9 million viewers, up 3% on the prior edition. This year’s Brit Awards, the U.K.’s biggest music awards show, also drew a television audience of just under 4 million.
While many viewers in the United States and United Kingdom have long regarded Eurovision as little more than a kitsch joke with novelty costumes, the song contest’s enormous audience gives it an unrivaled reach as a marketing platform, making the competition – famous for introducing ABBA to the world — an increasingly attractive launching pad for record labels to develop artists.
Netflix 2020 musical comedy film “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga,” starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams, further elevated the event’s international profile, introducing its idiosyncrasies to a wider global audience.
But it was the success of Italian rock band Måneskin, whose international career exploded after winning 2021’s contest with “Zitti e buoni” (Shut up and behave) that “changed the game completely” in how executives and labels approach the competition, says Andrea Rosi, CEO of Sony Music Italy, which counts Måneskin on its roster.
Earlier this week, the Italian act played a sold-out show at London’s 20,000-capacity The O2 arena, while the band’s most recent album, Rush!, topped the charts in multiple countries and debuted at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 in January – Måneskin’s highest ever U.S. chart placing.
In the past, Eurovision “was not so important for the Italian market,” and there were some years when it was not televised in Italy at all, says Rosi. “Now the picture is completely different. National television is giving much more space to the [competition] and it brings massive exposure to the artists [taking part] across the world.”
Italy’s entry in Eurovision’s 67th edition, which wraps up Saturday, is Marco Mengoni, already an established star in his home country, who came seventh in the competition 10 years ago and is signed to Sony Music Italy. Rosi is confident that Mengoni’s song, “Due Vite” (Two Lives), a soaring orchestral ballad sung in Italian, will help open up new markets for the artist.
Ahead of the competition, which kicked off Tuesday with the first of two semi-finals, Sony Music Italy worked with its international label partners to devise an extensive marketing campaign to build Mengoni’s profile in Europe. Last month, he played club dates in France, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. A larger follow-up European tour, promoted by Live Nation, is scheduled for the fall. This summer, Mengoni will play a series of sold-out stadium shows in Italy, wrapping July 15 at Rome’s Circus Maximus.
Since being selected in February to represent his home nation at Eurovision, Mengoni’s “Due Vite” has topped the charts in Italy and, says Rosi, is now “starting to have traction” in other European countries, including Germany and Switzerland. “It’s been a long time [since] an Italian pop artist has been successful outside Italy,” he says. “We have big hopes for Marco.”
As one of the so-called ‘big five’ countries taking part in Eurovision, Italy’s entry automatically qualifies for a place in Saturday’s grand final because of their broadcaster’s financial contributions to the event. The rest of the big five is made up of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain, while Ukraine also receives a free pass as last year’s winner. In total, 37 countries are taking part in Liverpool across two semi-finals and the main show.
Among this year’s favorites to win is Sweden’s Loreen, who won the competition in 2012. Her 2023 Eurovision entry “Tattoo” has earned around 20 million combined views on YouTube. (The singer’s official Eurovision video has 3.8 million views).
Another hotly tipped act is Finnish rapper Käärijä, whose catchy entry “Cha Cha Cha” has generated around 15 million combined views on YouTube, by Billboard’s calculations. Since being first released in January, the song has been streamed more than 18 million times and has become “the biggest phenomenon ever in Eurovision history in Finland,” says a spokesperson for Warner Music Finland.
The publicity has given a massive boost to Käärijä’s profile. At the start of the year, the artist had around 1,500 followers on TikTok. Following the first semi-final on Tuesday, that number had grown to just under 100,000. Monthly listens on Spotify have jumped from just under 50,000 in January to 1.2 million.
Käärijä is one of four Warner Music entries in this year’s contest – the others being Austria’s Teya & Salena’s “Who The Hell Is Edgar?”, Reiley’s “Breaking My Heart representing Denmark and Polish singer and model Blanka, whose song “Solo” marks her debut for the label. Since its release in November, “Solo’s official video has had 23 million views, while Spotify streams have crossed 10 million — largely fueled by the publicity from Eurovision.
Hubert Augustyniak, head of non-urban A&R at Warner Music Poland, is confident that competing in the competition can help break Blanka outside her home market, where, he says, Eurovision has already made her a “really well-known” star.
“It is not easy to do international marketing when you are a Polish label,” says Augustyniak, “so this is a huge opportunity for us.”
LIVERPOOL, U.K. — The Eurovision Song Contest 2023 kicked off Tuesday with a jubilant party of elaborate PVC costumes, soaring rock ballads and cheesy Euro pop, as contestants competed in the first of two semi-finals to determine which 20 acts would move on to Saturday’s Grand Final.
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The semi-final at the 11,000-capacity M&S Bank Arena, standing on Liverpool’s waterfront next to the River Mersey, marked the official start of the annual competition. The 10 acts moving on were Croatia, Moldova, Switzerland, Finland, Czechia, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, Serbia and Norway. That means the Netherlands, Malta, Latvia, Ireland and Azerbaijan were eliminated.
The United Kingdom is hosting this year’s Eurovision Song Contest – famous for introducing ABBA to the world – on behalf of war-torn Ukraine, which won last year’s competition with “Stefania” by Ukrainian rap-folk band Kalush Orchestra (the U.K. finished second through Sam Ryder’s “Space Man”).
It is the first time that the U.K. has held the contest in 25 years with Liverpool – whose illustrious music history includes The Beatles and Echo & the Bunnymen — fully embracing its role as host city.
Memorable highlights (although not always for the right reasons) included Croatia’s Let 3, who stripped down to their underwear as they wielded giant missile props for their song “Mama ŠČ!”, and Israel’s Noa Kirel with her marauding dance pop track “Unicorn.”
Some of the night’s biggest cheers went to two of this year’s favorites to take home the main prize: Sweden’s Loreen, who won the competition in 2012 and performed “Tattoo” on Tuesday; and Finnish rapper Käärijä, who sung his catchy song “Cha Cha Cha,” semi-topless, wearing only black spiky trousers and bright green Incredible Hulk-style sleeves.
In a mid-show interval of the two-and-a-half-hour show Rita Ora also performed a medley of her biggest hits, including singles “Anywhere,” “I Will Never Let You Down” and Praising You.”
Other non-competition performers included Liverpool singer Rebecca Ferguson and Ukraine’s Alyosha in a duet of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World,” which they dedicated to refugees who had been forced to leave their country.
The semi-final was hosted by British TV personality and singer Alesha Dixon, “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham and Ukrainian singer Julia Sanina — who opened the show with her band The Hardkiss. It was broadcast live on television in the U.K. and throughout Europe.
In total, 37 countries are taking part in this year’s contest. Ukraine automatically qualifies for the final as 2022 winners, as do the so-called ‘big five’: the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain, who all get a free pass to the main show because of their financial contributions to the event.
Viewers in participating countries vote to decide the winner, although people can’t vote for an act from their own country. The second semi-final takes place on Thursday when another 16 acts will perform.
In the runup to the competition, Liverpool has been transformed into a vibrant display of Eurovision banners and Ukrainian flags.
Ahead of Thursday’s semi-final, the English National Opera put on a free show at the purpose-built fan village on Liverpool’s Pier Head, where they were joined by a series of former Eurovision contestants, including singer Ruslana, who won for Ukraine in 2004, and international opera stars who performed classical arrangements of some of the contest’s past hits.
“I bring one message: Listen my sisters and brothers, we need to stop this bloody terrible war as soon as possible,” Ruslana said. “And I ask you, just help Ukraine to win. Because we are fighting for freedom. We are fighting for light. The light of human heart.”
LONDON — Mariah Carey, Lewis Capaldi and Sam Smith are among the recipients of the new BRIT Billion award, which recognizes artists who have surpassed one billion career streams in the United Kingdom.
U.K. labels trade body BPI, which also runs the Brit Awards, is naming the honorees, using the Official Charts Company to verify the data. Certification is based on tracks being streamed on music services like Spotify and video platforms such as YouTube where an artist has appeared either as the main performer or as a featured artist.
Around 140 acts have passed the one billion U.K. streams milestone to date, but BPI has only named 13 recipients of the award initially, a spokesperson tells Billboard. The other artists are ABBA, Coldplay, Whitney Houston, AJ Tracey, Headie One, Anne-Marie, Ellie Goulding, George Ezra, RAYE and Rita Ora.
BPI says the United Kingdom is the first country in the world in the streaming era to run a certifications scheme that recognizes an artist’s success across their entire career and multiple projects, as opposed to individual recordings.
Carey said in a statement that she was honored to be one of the first recipients of the BRIT Billion award and thanked her U.K. fans “for their endless and enduring support.”
Capaldi said in a statement that he was “buzzing,” adding that “never in a million years did I think any of this stuff would happen, but now [that] it is I will gladly accept each and every award.”
The new sales certification category recognizing one billion career plays reflects how streaming has completely upended the recorded music industry over the past decade.
Previously, the biggest sales awards issued in the U.K. were platinum, granted to albums that sell 300,000 chart equivalent units, and multi-platinum (multiples of 300,000 sales). Below that is gold (100,000 sales) and silver (60,000 sales). For singles, platinum recognizes 600,000 chart equivalent sales. Gold is 400,000 and silver is 200,000.
Those totals are, however, dwarfed by the huge number of streams that the world’s biggest artists increasingly generate with many acts racking up millions and, in some cases, hundreds of millions of streams every year. But artists must generate several multiples of more streams to make the same money they made per unit in the physical era.
In November, Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” overtook Ed Sheeran‘s “Shape Of You” to become the most-streamed song of all time in the U.K. with over 600 million audio and video streams, according to the Official Charts Company. George Ezra’s “Shotgun” has been streamed just under 500 million times since its release in 2018, reports BPI, which first began certifying silver, gold and platinum-selling records in 1973.
The labels trade body says the number of audio music streams in the U.K. crossed 160 billion last year with streaming now accounting for more than 85% of all U.K. music consumption.
“For a recording artist, there can be few greater sources of pride than having a platinum or gold disc on their wall,” Sophie Jones, BPI chief strategy officer/interim chief executive, said in a statement. “But in an era when success in measured in the hundreds of millions and indeed billions of streams, it was clear that we needed a new and additional way to recognize and celebrate outstanding achievement in recorded music.”
LONDON – Vinyl sales generated more money for record labels and artists than CDs for the first time in more than three decades in the United Kingdom last year, helping drive a 4.7% rise in overall music revenue, according to annual figures from labels trade body BPI published Thursday (March 9).
In 2022, sales of vinyl LPs climbed 3.1% year-on-year in the U.K. to £119.5 million ($142.4 million) and now account for over half (55%) of all trade revenues from physical sales. The last time vinyl revenues eclipsed CD sales in the United Kingdom, BPI says, was in 1987 when Michael Jackson’s Bad was the year’s best-selling album and Rick Astley had the best-selling single of the year with “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
In total, 5.5 million vinyl LPs were sold in the United Kingdom last year. That marks the highest level of vinyl purchases in the country since 1990, according to BPI figures released in January measuring music consumption. The best-selling vinyl titles in the U.K. in 2022 were Taylor Swift’s Midnights, Harry Styles’ Harry’s House and Arctic Monkeys’ The Car.
Despite the ongoing vinyl revival, overall revenue from physical formats was down 10.5% to £216 million ($258 million), with CD sales slipping 24% to £89 million ($107 million).
Offsetting that decline was 6.3% year-on-year growth in streaming revenues, which climbed to £885 million ($1 billion) and accounted for 67% of U.K. recorded music revenues in 2022 — up from 66.2% the 12 months prior. Vinyl sales made up 9% of the market in terms of annual trade revenues, while CDs accounted for 7%.
Breaking down streaming revenue, paid subscriptions generated £763 million ($910 million), up 4.8% on 2021, while ad-funded revenue grew by more than a fifth (22%) to £63 million ($75 million). Digital download sales fell 17.5% to £28 million ($33 million).
Synch revenues were up even more sharply, rising 39% year-on-year to £43 million ($51 million), while public performance income spiked 23% to £143 million ($170 million).
Total U.K. recorded music sales — comprising digital and physical revenues, public performance rights and synch — climbed 4.7% to £1.32 billion ($1.57 billion) in 2022. That marks a rise of 36% over the past five years, according to BPI, as well as the eighth-consecutive year of growth.
The United Kingdom is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the United States and Japan with sales of just over $1.8 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2022 Global Music Report. (BPI’s year-end sales figures are based on pound sterling, rather than the far stronger U.S. dollar, hence the perceived decline in overall revenues when BPI’s figures are converted into dollars at a constant currency basis).
“2022 was another great year for British music, but we must guard against any complacency in the face of growing challenges and keep promoting and protecting the value of music,” BPI chief strategy officer and interim CEO Sophie Jones said in a statement. She also called upon the U.K. music community to work together to “create the impetus” for further growth and “futureproof the success of British music in an increasingly competitive global music market.”
As previously reported, British artists accounted for the top 10 biggest-selling singles in the U.K. last year (either as the lead or as a featured artist) for the first time since year-end charts were introduced more than 50 years ago. Leading the pack was Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” which topped the U.K. singles chart for 10 consecutive weeks (it also spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100) and was streamed more than 180 million times in the country.
Joining Styles in the U.K. top 10 was Ed Sheeran, Cat Burns, Glass Animals, Lost Frequencies & Calum Scott, LF System, Sam Fender and Kate Bush, whose 1985 track “Running Up That Hill” spent three weeks at No. 1 following its high-profile Stranger Things synch; it was streamed 124 million times in her home country last year.
Styles also landed the year’s best-selling album with his third studio set, Harry’s House, making him the first artist to have both the United Kingdom’s top single and top album since Lewis Capaldi in 2019. Sheeran’s = (Equals) and Swift’s Midnights were the year’s second and third-best-selling albums.
LONDON — A proposed hike in U.S. visa fees, which could take effect as early as this November, would have a “deeply damaging” effect on touring artists from other countries by more than doubling their costs, says a leading British music industry trade group.
The proposal from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, announced in early January, would raise the rates for O and P visas for working entertainers in the U.S., including musicians playing festivals, concerts or label events.
U.K. Music, which represents the country’s recorded and live music industries, is protesting the fee hike, including a $600 “asylum program fee,” a new charge USCIS has proposed adding for U.S.-based employers, which the U.K. group says would raise total visa fees by more than four times their current levels. The trade group, which says the U.S. visa process is “already long, complex and prohibitively expensive” for many musicians, has asked British officials to lobby against the increases.
“The visa process for U.S. musicians entering the U.K. to work is far simpler and less costly,” the group says in a statement, “and we believe that this should be reciprocated by the U.S.”
Under USCIS’s proposed new rates, a concert promoter who employs an international musician qualifying for an “O” visa to tour the U.S. would pay $1,055, rather than the current fee of $460, an increase of 129% — or 260% with the proposed $600 asylum program fee. For the “P” visa classification for touring musicians, the U.S. employer’s fee would jump from $460 to $1,015, or 121% — plus the $600 fee, which would add up to a 251% spike.
A USCIS spokesperson tells Billboard the increases would not affect musicians themselves, but rather their U.S. employers, including promoters, club owners, labels or festival producers. International artists reps say employers are likely to pass these fee increases onto the artists — and possibly to consumers as higher-priced tickets —making it more challenging to tour crucial American concert venues.
“It leaves our artists in a state of paralysis,” says Courtney Askew-Conti of Verdigris Management, which represents U.K. bands Hot Chip and Jungle, adding that the fee increase “feels like the final nail in the coffin” after Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. government is proposing the new fees to allow USCIS to “more fully recover operating costs for the first time in six years” and to “support the administration’s effort to rebuild the legal immigration system,” the agency’s director, Ur M. Jaddou, said in a January statement.
“For artists who are established, it’s an annoyance,” says Michael Lambert, whose management company A Modern Way represents Idlewild, We Were Promised Jetpacks and other Scottish bands. “There will be a lot of artists in that emerging to mid-level stage that just decide that they can’t afford to do it.”
While “some cases might be reasonable, this gigantic increase seems unreasonable,” says Rita Sostrin, a Los Angeles immigration lawyer who represents international artists trying to obtain O and P visas. “It’s just not the right way, to do this broad-brush increase for everyone.”
The USCIS rep stresses that the fee changes are not final, and the comment period is open through March 13. “If organizations have those concerns, that’s what they should be submitting,” the spokesperson says. “This is just a proposed rule.”
U.K. trade groups are particularly concerned about how the changes will affect artists during a period when gas prices, supply-chain issues and other lingering COVID-19 effects are making it challenging for club-and-theatre-level artists to tour international markets, including the U.S.
For U.K. artists, the U.S. is the second-largest touring market after Europe. Even before the proposed price hikes were announced, rising costs were already leading British artists to pull U.S. shows. In April, Mercury Prize-winning rapper Little Simz cancelled an 11-date U.S. tour, citing the financial unviability of the undertaking as an independent artist.
A survey conducted by two other U.K. trade bodies, Music Managers Forum (MMF) and the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), found that 70% of their members believe the increased visa charges would mean they could no longer afford to tour the U.S.
Primary Talent International has announced a surprise decoupling with Creative Artists Agency, less than a year after CAA acquired the UK booking agency through a blockbuster $750 million purchase of its parent ICM Presents in June.
ICM Presents bought the 30-year old booking agency in March 2020, just days before international concert touring was suspended for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That acquisition — in which Primary would retain its name and office — came just months after ICM Partners sold a minority stake in the agency to private equity firm Crestview Partners.
When ICM acquired Primary Talent, ICM CEO Chris Silbermann noted that the 32-year-old company, with clients including The 1975, The Cure, Lana Del Rey, Noel Gallagher, Jack Harlow, alt-J, Dropkick Murphys and Patti Smith, “greatly enhances our ability to serve our clients on a global scale, through added resources, support and even greater opportunities,” noting the agency’s reputation for being “fiercely independent, which we love about them.”
Silbermann added: “We are honored that they believed we were the right partners to help take their clients and their agency to the next levels of success, while retaining their brand and management identity and philosophy.”
Primary Talent asked for a split from CAA in order to “re-establish Primary’s independent status,” one source tells Billboard. Shortly after closing the ICM deal last year, CAA laid off 105 ICM Presents employees from different parts of the company.
An agreement to terminate the coupling was finalized earlier this year in a deal led by Primary Talent managing partner and CEO Matt Bates along with former ICM founding partner and COO Rick Levy. Veteran agent Ben Winchester will continue to serve as a board member along with Bates and Levy.
As part of the new management configuration, the agency has promoted Primary agents Laetitia Descouens, Sally Dunstone, Martje Kremers and Ed Sellers to partner status. They will be joined by veteran agent Simon Clarkson, who will be based in Los Angeles. The agency, which currently numbers 35 employees, expects to announce additional agents to their growing ranks in the coming weeks.
“The pandemic changed the landscape of the music touring business, and we felt it was beneficial to return to our roots as the UK’s largest independent music talent agency,” said Bates. “Adding to the strength and experience of the original Primary agent team, we are excited to bring aboard the next generation of talented agents to join as founding partners. In this new incarnation, Primary will be even better positioned to support the evolving careers of our artists and guide them wherever needed.”
LONDON — Security services could have prevented a suicide bomber from killing 22 people in a terror attack outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017 if they had acted swiftly on key intelligence, a public inquiry has found.
The chair of the inquiry, John Saunders, says there was a “realistic possibility” that the bomber could have been stopped from carrying out the atrocity if British security service MI5 had acted decisively upon on two pieces of intelligence that they received in the months leading up to the attack. The significance of that intelligence, Saunders notes, “was not fully appreciated at the time.”
A 207-page report, published Thursday (March 2), details the radicalization of bomber Salman Abedi but does not disclose details of either piece of intelligence, citing national security reasons. It does, however, state that neither piece of intelligence was shared by MI5 with counter-terror police — a failing that Saunders calls “a further example of a communication breakdown” between security agencies.
The inquiry found that an MI5 officer, identified as Witness C, failed to write a report on the second piece of intelligence on the same day MI5 assessed it and did not discuss it with colleagues. That delay “led to the missing of an opportunity to take a potentially important investigative action.”
Abedi flew from Libya to Manchester on May 18 — four days before he detonated a homemade explosive device in the foyer of Manchester Arena (now known as the AO Arena) at the end of Grande’s sold-out show. Twenty-two people died in the terror attack, the youngest aged 8 years old. Hundreds of people were injured, many of them children.
The report contends that had MI5 taken the intelligence more seriously Abedi could have been stopped at Manchester Airport upon his return from Libya and followed to his car where he had stored his explosives.
In a press conference in Manchester on Thursday, Saunders said the “failure by the security service to act swiftly enough” had contributed to a “significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack.”
The inquiry chair went on to say that while “it is not possible to reach any conclusion on the balance of probability” as to whether the bombing would have been prevented, he believed “there was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack.”
The report also found that Abedi’s family held “significant responsibility” for the radicalization of both him and his brother, Hashem Abedi, who was sentenced in the U.K. in 2020 to a minimum of 55 years for his role in the murders.
Thursday’s report is the third and final set of findings to come out of the public inquiry into the terror attack. The U.K. Home Secretary launched the inquiry in October 2019 with its first hearings taking place in Manchester in September 2020. In total, more than 250 witnesses gave 194 days of oral evidence, although much of the evidence from MI5 and counter-terror police officers was heard in secret.
The inquiry’s two previous reports have focused on how emergency services responded to the attack and whether police and concert security should have done more to prevent the bombing.
Families of the victims called the failures exposed in Thursday’s report “unacceptable” and a “devastating conclusion” to the inquiry. “Those killed and injured in this murderous attack had every right to feel safe and protected, but as this inquiry has demonstrated, they were failed at every level — before, during and after this horrific attack,” said Richard Scorer, principal lawyer at Slater and Gordon, reading out a statement on behalf of 11 of the victims’ families.
Andrew Roussos, the father of 8-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos, who was one of the 22 victims, said the security services’ actions amounted to a “cataclysmic failure.”
“The fact that MI5 failed to stop [Salman Abedi] despite all of the red flags available demonstrates they are not fit to keep us safe and therefore not fit for purpose,” said Roussos.
Following the report’s publication, MI5’s director general, Ken McCallum, said he was “profoundly sorry” that the security service did not prevent the attack. “Gathering covert intelligence is difficult,” McCallum said in a statement, “but had we managed to seize the slim chance we had, those impacted might not have experienced such appalling loss and trauma.”