business
The Ledger: Royalty Growth Requires Changing More Than How They’re Calculated
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. If The Beatles wrote a song about music royalties, the band would sing about a “Long and Winding Road” to higher subscription fees and better pay for artists and labels. The music subscription business model has become the record industry’s main breadwinner since launching in the early 2000s. But for two decades, many artists and rights holders have bristled at the royalty rates paid by streaming services. Some rates have improved: ad-supported royalties grew as online advertising matured. Royalties from subscription services have less wiggle room for change, however. The biggest innovation is a change in how to divvy a...
U2 to Perform First Concerts at MSG Sphere in Las Vegas
U2 will be the first group to perform at the MSG Sphere at The Venetian in Las Vegas when the $1.8 billion arena opens next year, multiple sources tell Billboard. The performances will be the first dates of a multi-show residency by the band at the high-tech arena, which is being built by Madison Square Garden Entertainment chairman James Dolan near the Venetian off the Las Vegas Strip. Officials with MSGE describe the MSG Sphere at The Venetian as the next generation of live entertainment, offering fans a multi-sensory experience of sound and light inside the largest spherical structure ever created. For concerts, the MSG Sphere at The Venetian can hold 20,000 standing spectators or 17,500 seated guests, with 23 VIP suites. The Sphere will include 160,000 square feet of video vi...
NFT sales will fund the restoration of physical monuments in Ukraine
The Ukrainian government will be using the proceeds of sales from an online nonfungible token, or NFT, museum to restore artwork in the real world. According to a Friday announcement and information shared with Cointelegraph, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said the government’s Meta History Museum of War platform, aimed at preserving the timeline of major events in Russia’s war with Ukraine, raised 803.28 Ether (ETH) — roughly $1.3 million at the time — through NFT sales. The ministry said proceeds from the sales will go toward “the restoration of Ukrainian cultural institutions,” many of which have been damaged or destroyed by missile attacks from Russia. “During the six months of the war in Ukraine, the Russians destroyed hundreds of our museum...
Zipmex resumes withdrawals for trade wallets
Cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex has resumed withdrawals from its trade wallet after two days, but said transfers, deposits and trade will continue to be disabled from its Z Wallet. In a Friday announcement, Zipmex said its Thailand-based users could make withdrawals from its trade wallet, with the function expected to be “re-enabled this evening” for clients in other countries. The crypto exchange has had withdrawals disabled since Wednesday, citing a “combination of circumstances” beyond its control, including the recent market volatility. “Ever since the black swan events surrounding the crypto space Zipmex has retrieved the majority of our funds and assets that were historically deposited with our deployment partners and have been actively working to resolve the situatio...
Epidemic Sound Sues Meta For $142M, Says Instagram and Facebook Stole Hundreds Of Songs
Meta Platforms Inc. is facing a lawsuit that claims its Facebook and Instagram platforms “intentionally and brazenly” stole hundreds of songs from Swedish production music label Epidemic Sound, encouraging their users to upload more than 50,000 infringing videos every day. Repped by attorneys at the top music law firm Pryor Cashman, Epidemic says the social media giant is offering nearly 1,000 of the label’s songs through its “Music Library” for users to add to their video uploads, but that Meta has refused to secure copyright licenses for that music — and has ignored the company’s repeated demands that it do so. “Perhaps Meta is hoping to get away with it for as long as possible,” Epidemic’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday (July 20) in San Francisco federal court. “Perhaps Me...
Australia’s Splendour in the Grass Cancels Day 1 Due to ‘Significant Weather System’
BRISBANE, Australia — After two editions were wiped out by the pandemic, the first day Splendour in the Grass 2022 was sunk by Mother Nature. Inclement weather turned the site into a quagmire on the eve of this year’s show, held July 22-24 in Byron Bay, the picturesque beach town at the most easterly point of Australia. By midday on Friday (July 22), the grounds were deemed to be unmanageable. “In the interest of patrol safety and in consultation with all relevant emergency services,” reads a statement from Splendour organizers, “we have decided to err on the side of caution and cancel all performances on the main stages today only.” The reason: a “significant weather system” currently sitting off the country’s east coast which “may reach land later today, bringing more rainfall.” Statemen...
BMG Acquires Jean-Michel Jarre’s Music Publishing Catalog
BMG will represent Jean-Michel Jarre’s entire music publishing catalog in what’s said to be the biggest single deal ever struck by the music company in France. BMG said Thursday that it is acquiring the electronic music pioneer’s decades-deep works, an arrangement that brings in such classic albums as Oxygene and Equinoxe, together with Jarre’s writer’s income stream. BMG previously acquired the sound recordings of Jarre’s first three albums when it bought independent record label Francis Dreyfus Music in 2012. Jarre is a giant in his field. Born in Lyon, France, the electronic music composer has 21 albums to his name, several of them stone-cold classics, including his 1976 album Oxygene, its followup Equinoxe, 1981’s Magnetic Fields and 1984’s Zoolook. Career album sales top 85 mill...
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...
