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Moon Projects, a new label and creative agency, has expanded into the songwriter side of the business by launching a co-publishing partnership with Warner Chappell Music. Called Moon Projects Publishing, it is the second joint venture started with a major music corporation for the Mary Rahmani-founded start-up, founded in 2021. Earlier this year, their Republic Records-partnered label operation saw major success with signee Em Beihold, the then-unknown pop act whose song “Numb Little Bug” hit No. 1 on both Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay and Emerging Artist charts.
Rahmani, who is known as TikTok’s first-ever music hire, hopes to build out her newly founded Moon Projects as an artist services company adept at meeting the challenges of the modern day music industry. This includes offering label or publishing services through their jvs as well as creative agency assistance, providing curation, strategy and digital consulting for short-form video content to artists hoping to tap into the creator economy.
To date, Moon Projects Publishing has not signed any songwriters, and artists who signed to the Moon Projects label will not necessarily sign for publishing as well. Em Beihold, for example, recently announced her signing to Sony Music Publishing, but for the eventual members of its roster, the new publishing arm will combine “white-glove service and personal attention” common with boutique publishers with the “resources of one of the biggest music publishers in the world,” says the company in a statement.
“Mary and Moon Projects have a unique and innovative approach in this space. We’re excited to partner with them as they move into the music publishing side of the business. We look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together for songwriters and artists at all stages of their careers.” – Warner Chappell Music SVP of A&R and Venture Partners Rich Christina
“Warner Chappell Music is a true industry leader in music publishing and rights management. I am honored to be working with them in this joint venture,” added Rahmani. “Publishing was built to serve artists at every stage of their career by providing innovative and equitable catalog management strategies. I’m so excited to usher in this new era of Moon Projects, and to open up even more opportunities to work with the artists we care about and believe in. With the support of Warner Chappell Music, Moon Projects will continue to establish itself as a place where artists can grow and thrive.”
A new New York City law requiring employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings has officially gone into effect this week, with music companies hiring in the city mandated to comply. On the first day of the law, a picture of at least one of the major music companies’ salary ranges has come into focus.
The day the law went into effect, several companies were criticized for overly-broad salary ranges that effectively subverted the point of the regulation, which was designed to give prospective employees insight into what they could be expected to earn at different companies in the city and address salary discrepancies between men and women and for people of color. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, posted reporting and producing jobs with ranges between $40,000 to $160,000; tech jobs at Amazon were anywhere from $88,400 to $185,000; while Citigroup initially posted some job openings as between $0 and $2 million, before revising them to a range of $59,340 to $149,320.
Among the three major labels, only Warner Music Group (WMG) seems to have complied with the law as of yet. The company has 11 listed job openings on its website across its three locations in New York City, though 10 of them relate to its Spring 2023 WMG Emerging Talent Associate Program, a part-time paid internship program that lists a range from $15 to $30 an hour for between 20 and 25 hours per week. Its final opening, for a digital marketing and content creation manager, is listed at between $58,500 and $70,000 annually.
Sony, meanwhile, has more than 40 openings in its New York locations across all its operations, though not all positions appear to have salary ranges listed; most appear to ask the applicants for a desired salary target, as part of a standard-issue form through LinkedIn. (The law allows companies 30 days to comply after a complaint is registered before facing penalties. A rep for Sony tells Billboard the company will be complying.) It does list starting salaries for its fellowship program, a 24-month position with a starting salary of $70,000 per year.
Universal Music Group has some 16 openings across various divisions in New York, many at its merchandising division Bravado. Though each posting promises a “competitive compensation package including salary, benefits and generous 401k savings plan with company matching,” none lists a salary range. (A rep for UMG did not respond to a request for comment.)
In the independent sector, several New York-based companies have also listed ranges. Concord, for example, has three non-internship positions available in New York: a publishing paralegal ($70K-$80K); a publishing sync manager ($55K-$65K); and a director of business and legal affairs for publishing ($100K-$125K). BMG has two open New York-based positions: an investments/M&A manager ($80K-$90K) and a senior marketing manager ($70K-$80K). Roc Nation has two music-related New York-based openings: one for a senior director of event sponsorships ($135K-$180K) and one for a senior director of music partnerships ($135K-$170K). A senior coordinator position overseeing royalties and income tracking at Kobalt pays between $45,600 and $57,000 in New York City.
Businesses with three or fewer employees and temp agencies are not subject to the new requirement.
Former Warner Music Group executive and the Orchard co-founder Scott Cohen said on Tuesday (Nov. 1) he is taking a new job as chief executive officer of a fintech platform aimed at selling fractional shares in song catalogs.
Cohen, who stepped down from his role as chief innovation officer at WMG in September, said the aim of the new venture is to “fractionalize ownership of music royalties.”
Fractional shares are a familiar concept in finance, and brokerages like Robinhood and Fidelity Investments sell them as a way to buy a slice of a share for less than the price of the whole stock. The market for buying and investing in music publishing rights has traditionally been open to only the world’s largest music companies and, more recently, money managers.
Introducing fractional shares could change that by making it possible for more smaller investors to participate alongside the deep-pocketed private equity funds and major labels.
In an email to Billboard, Cohen said has already secured rights from major artists and catalogs, and his team is now working to build the platform’s technology.
“We have a very aggressive timeline,” said Cohen, declining to provide a specific date when the venture would launch to outside investors.
Prior to joining WMG in 2019, Cohen founded the Orchard with Richard Gottehrer in 1997 and built it into the largest independent distributor on iTunes when the download platform launched in 2003. Cohen and Gottehrer sold the Orchard to Dimensional Associates, the private equity arm of JDS Capital Management, the same year, and subsequently expanded into video, music licensing, marketing & analytics, royalty collections, sports media, neighboring rights and more.
In 2015, Sony Music Entertainment bought out Dimensional Associates for $200 million, and in 2017 merged it with RED into a single global distribution entity operating under the Orchard brand.
While Cohen’s new venture has not yet settled on a name, he described its aspirations and potential as “transformational” for the music industry.
“I am only interested in doing things at scale,” Cohen wrote.
Universal Music Group, Hipgnosis Songs Fund and other music stocks got a much-needed boost on Tuesday (Oct. 25) following news of Apple Music’s price hike, as investors bet it would trigger a wave of streaming subscription cost increases.
Universal Music Group’s stock closed 11.6% higher, Hipgnosis Songs Fund Ltd ended up 7.8% and Korean music companies SM Entertainment and HYBE finished the trading day 4.8% and 4.4% higher, respectfully, on Tuesday. On Monday, Apple announced that it was raising the standard U.S. and U.K. individual plan price to $10.99 from $9.99.
This 10% price hike — Apple’s first — comes amid high inflation and a darkening economic environment in many global markets. If Apple can raise prices at a time like this, that is a sign the music industry can charge more without turning off consumers, Wall Street analysts said.
“We see this as a further signal of the stickiness of music streaming subscriptions even in a weaker macro environment and believe the major markets will be able to absorb higher prices without leading to meaningfully higher churn,” Lisa Yang, Goldman Sachs’s head of European media & internet technology equity research, wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday.
“We believe that other major DSPs will likely follow suit with similar price increases in the near future, implying further potential upside to our music industry forecasts.”
Competitors Spotify and Amazon Music have already raised prices in some markets. Amazon Music raised the price of its unlimited individual plan for Prime members to $8.99 from $7.99 earlier this year.
Spotify, which will report earnings later Tuesday, raised the cost of its individual plans in the Nordics in 2021, although its standard plan for U.S. subscribers remains at $9.99.
“Despite positive management commentary around churn (with regards to recent price increases on certain plans/regions) as well as management’s views on pricing power over the long term, Spotify has highlighted the broader macro environment as a key consideration in terms of implementing price increases in the near term,” Yang wrote.
Apple’s price increase could also have positive impacts on the majors because companies like UMG and Warner Music Group typically get 65% of music-related revenues from streaming companies with a “high incremental margin,” Goldman estimates.
Music stocks have suffered in 2022 as the major U.S. market indices have fallen around 20% so far this year.
UMG’s share price of 21.10 EUR ($21.01 US) is down nearly 14% year to date, Hipngosis Songs Fund Ltd traded at 91.06 penny sterling ($1.03 US) and is down 28% so far this year. Meanwhile, Warner Music Group’s stock traded at $27.16 US, off almost 37% year to date.