business
FaZe Clan Goes Public After Completing SPAC Merger
FaZe Clan, the esports collective and youth culture brand that’s received investment from an array of heavy hitters in the music business, went public on the Nasdaq exchange Wednesday (July 20). The listing follows the completion of FaZe Clan’s special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger with 150 Merger Corp., an affiliate of B. Riley Financial. The combined company has been renamed FaZe Holding and will trade under the ticker symbol FAZE. On its first day, the stock finished down more than 24% to $9.88 after debuting with a share price of $13.07. It’s rebounded slightly to $10.19 in after-hours trading. With a fan network of roughly 500 million across social platforms, according to the company, FaZe Clan has drawn a number of high-profile investors from the music industry, including...
Crypto firms facing insolvency ‘forgot the basics of risk management’ — Coinbase
Department heads at Coinbase have weighed in on the market downturn amid solvency concerns around Three Arrows Capital, crypto lending firm Celsius, and Voyager Digital, saying the crypto exchange had “no financing exposure” to the companies. In a Wednesday blog post, Head of Coinbase Institutional Brett Tejpaul, Head of Prime Finance Matt Boyd, and Head of Credit and Market Risk Caroline Tarnok said Coinbase had not engaged in the “types of risky lending practices” exhibited by Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and Voyager, claiming the firms were examples of practicing “insufficient risk controls.” According to the trio, crypto companies faced the possibility of insolvency caused by “unhedged bets,” large investments in Terra, and overleveraging with venture capital firms. “The issues here ...
SoundCloud, Warner Music Group Strike Deal on Fan-Powered Royalties
SoundCloud has finalized a deal with Warner Music Group that would allow WMG’s artists with songs on the SoundCloud platform the ability to get paid based on the number of individual users streaming their music, rather than by market share of total streams, sources tell Billboard. The revenue model is part of SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered Royalties initiative, which it launched last March with the aim of re-tooling how the platform doles out streaming revenue to rights holders and providing more detailed data to help support independent artists on the platform. In practice, it allows independent creators who own their rights and upload their works to SoundCloud through its Repost system the ability to get paid according to how many fans stream their music, rather than the current industry stand...
HarbourView Acquires Stake in Hollywood Undead Royalties
HarbourView Equity Partners has acquired an undisclosed stake in the royalty income streams of the band Hollywood Undead’s music publishing and recorded masters catalog from the group’s first four studio albums, which were released by the Universal Music Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Hollywood Undead’s UMG albums include the platinum-certified Swan Songs and the gold-certified American Tragedy. The Los Angeles-based band issued the former album, its debut, in 2008, while American Tragedy hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in April 2011 and its followup, Notes From The Underground, reached No. 2 in January 2013. Since 2008, the band’s entire catalog — the four UMG albums, as well as three subsequent albums for BMG — has generated activity totaling 4.3 million album consumption un...
YouTube Creators Can Now Link Their Shopify Stores to the Platform
YouTube creators and merchants will now have the ability to link their Shopify stores to their YouTube channels via a newly announced partnership between the two platforms. Revealed Tuesday (July 19) in a blog post by YouTube VP of Shopping Product David Katz, the partnership will allow creators to display their Shopify-listed products across their YouTube channels while benefitting from Shopify’s real-time inventory syncing “so that viewers are never disappointed to find a product out of stock,” Katz wrote. Additionally, creators can enable checkout directly from YouTube so users can purchase items without ever leaving the platform. “Shopify is the commerce infrastructure of the internet, powering millions of independent businesses all over the world,” said Shopify VP of Product Kaz Nejat...
Netflix’s Better-Than-Expected Subscriber Forecast is Good News for Music Streamers
Investors have reason to feel upbeat about subscription businesses after Netflix revealed better-than-expected quarterly results on Tuesday (July 19). Netflix subscribers dropped 970,000 subscribers to 220.7 million in the second quarter — it warned in April that it expected to lose as many as 2 million subscribers — and forecast a 1 million-subscriber gain in the third quarter. Analysts polled by Refinitiv expected Netflix to lose an average of 1.84 million subscribers in the second quarter, according to Reuters. The good news caused Netflix’s share price to quickly rise 8.2% to $218.15 in after-hours trading on Tuesday, up from $201.63 on Monday, when shares gained 5.6%. Still, Netflix shares are down 66.5% year to date through Tuesday. Tuesday’s announcement was also good news for other...
UTA Nabs Private Equity Investment From EQT to Fuel Expansion
A fund operated by the private equity firm EQT Partners has made a strategic investment in talent agency UTA, in a deal the agency says “will help fuel the next phase of investments in talent, innovation and international expansion.” EQT will become the largest outside shareholder in UTA in the acquisition, which will also see the firm acquiring stakes from some of UTA’s existing investors, including Investcorp and PSP Investments. UTA partnership and leadership will remain the controlling shareholders of the agency. Specific terms of the deal, including valuation, were not disclosed. However, everyone at UTA is expected to benefit financially from the investment. UTA has been on something of an acquisition spree in recent months, acquiring the strategic advisory firm MediaLink, the U.K. l...
Christie’s launches venture fund aimed at Web3 and blockchain investments
Christie’s, the auction house known for its sales of art and luxury items, has launched an investment fund to support emerging companies with technology enabling “seamless consumption of art.” In a Monday announcement, the auction company said the fund, Christie’s Ventures, will financially support firms in Web3, “art-related financial products and solutions,” and technology related to art and luxury goods. According to Christie’s, its first investment will be in LayerZero Labs, a company developing solutions for enabling omnichain decentralized applications, allowing a more seamless transfer of assets between blockchains. “We will focus on products and services, which can solve real business challenges, improve client experiences and expand growth opportunities, both across the art ...
Anitta Takes a Stand on Brazil’s Presidential Election – And Her Influence Could Help Sway Voters
With fewer than three months to go before the next presidential elections in her country, megastar Anitta has officially declared her support for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-wing former Brazilian president who is leading in the polls against far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Anitta stated her position on Twitter on Monday (July 11), two days after a leftist official supporting da Silva, the Workers’ Party candidate who is better known as Lula, was brutally murdered at his own birthday party by a Bolsonaro supporter in the state of Paraná in the country’s south. “If there had been no murder involved … I’d say that the stupidity of these people is almost funny. But it’s not. It’s frightening,” Anitta tweeted, referencing Bolsonaro supporters. “I’m not a Worker’s Party supporter, and ...
Pantera’s 2023 Reunion Tour to Include Zakk Wylde and Anthrax Drummer Charlie Benante
Guitarist Zakk Wylde and Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante will join Phil Anselmo and Rex Brown this summer to tour as Pantera, headlining a number of major festivals across North America and Europe and staging some of their own headline concerts, a source close to the group tells Billboard. The lineup has been given a green light by the estates of the band’s founders, Vincent “Vinnie Paul” Abbott and “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, as well as Brown, who last year said Wylde wouldn’t tour with a reunited Pantera if that were to happen. It’s unclear what changed his mind. Wylde has long been the consensus fill-in for “Dimebag” Darrell due to his relationship with the Abbott brothers and his success and stature in hard rock and heavy metal. Wylde is lead guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and the founder o...
Ye ‘Weaponized Fame’ to Stiff Production Company $7M, Lawsuit Claims
Ye (Kanye West) is facing a new lawsuit that claims he owes $7.1 million in unpaid fees to a production company that worked on his Donda 2 release show as well as his canceled Coachella performance. In a complaint filed Thursday (July 14) in Los Angeles court, attorneys for Phantom Labs say the design and production firm “faithfully performed” the work requested by Ye, deploying “countless hours of in-house talent” and also making advanced payments to numerous other vendors. “Event after event, Ye and his representatives promised that if Phantom continued work on the budgeted and approved projects, Phantom would be paid promptly for the balance and the new work,” wrote Howard King, a well-known entertainment attorney who is repping Phantom. “More recent events have made clear that defendan...
TikTok to Add Content Ratings on Videos With ‘Overtly Mature Themes’
In an effort to prevent potentially disturbing or “overtly mature” material from reaching users under the age of 18, TikTok will begin adding content scores to videos as part of a new feature meant to emulate ratings used in the film, TV and gaming industries. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news According to a blog post shared on Wednesday, TikTok will begin rolling out an early version of the feature in coming weeks and place a “post unavailable” message to block out videos that are age restricted. To determine which videos fall into that restricted category, TikTok will assign a “maturity score” based on the video’s “thematic maturity” levels. “When we detect that a video contains mature or complex themes, for example, fictional scenes th...
