business
The Changing World Of: Record Label Streaming
In 1999, Pavement put out the single “Spit On a Stranger,” pairing it with the B-side track “Harness Your Hopes” as a CD-only release. A decade later, in 2008, the band’s 1997 album Brighten The Corners was released in expanded form to digital retailers like Apple’s iTunes Store, complete with bonus tracks and B-Sides from those sessions, including “Harness Your Hopes,” which appeared digitally for the first time. And that’s where the journey for many of those songs would have ended: as footnotes and rarities for collectors and superfans. But the rise of streaming and social media changed all that. In 2017, for reasons that are still a little mysterious to both the band and its label Matador, “Harness Your Hopes” began to explode on Spotify, leaping into the top spot among Pavement’s most-...
Did Angel Olsen Just Show the Music Industry How to Make Vinyl Green?
Could there be a simpler way for the music industry to go green? While acts like Coldplay and Justin Bieber have been focused on bicycle-powered stadium shows and kinetic dancefloors, for her new album Big Time (out Friday on Jagjaguwar) Angel Olsen took a more straightforward approach that’s replicable for artists of all sizes. Each vinyl or CD copy of the album purchased from her label’s website has carbon offsets built into the pricing, meaning the environmental impact that went into producing — and will go into consuming — the vinyl album (for $1 each) or CD (50 cents each) is effectively neutralized. All the proceeds from these surcharges go to Native, a public benefit corporation specializing in carbon offsets, which will use the money to purchase carbon offsets supporting the Medfor...
Just A Gent Signs Global Administration Deal With Angry Mob
Australian electronic artist and producer Just A Gent is the latest addition to the Angry Mob Music Group roster, Billboard can exclusively reveal. Hailing from Newcastle, New South Wales, the electro music-maker (real name Jacob Grant) has been releasing music as Just A Gent since 2013, and has amassed more than 300 million streams with such cuts as “Limelight (NGHTMRE Remix),” “Rolling Dice,” “The Change (featuring DMA’S) [Remix],” “Iris in the Dark,” and others. His 2016 cover of Kid Cudi’s “Day N Nite” for triple j’s Like A Version series has garnered almost 3 million plays. [embedded content] Over the years, he’s had nods from some of the top guns in electronic music, from Skrillex to Diplo, Dillon Francis, What So Not, and others, and dropped his debut full-length album project Plane...
Event & Arena Marketing Conference Returns to Honor SoFi Stadium’s Vanessa Kromer
The Event & Arena Marketing Conference is returning after a two-year pandemic pause. This year, EAMC will honor Vanessa Kromer from SoFi Stadium with its top honor — the 2022 Gigi Award of Excellence — named after the late Gigi Pilhofer, one of the conference’s founders. Kromer is the former EAMC president and a Hall of Famer currently serving as senior director of publicity at SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater and Hollywood Park in Inglewood, Calif., and has actively contributed to the conference for more than 20 years. Kromer previously worked at Nederlander Concerts in Los Angeles. During her tenure at EAMC, she has hosted conferences in Anaheim (1999) and Los Angeles (2015), served as the president and v.p. of agenda, served as a board member, and created the EAMC Awards. Kosha Irby fr...
Sevenn Files Copyright Claims Against Alok in Brazilian Court
Dance music producers Sean and Kevin Brauer are formally pursuing copyright claims for 19 songs they say they worked on for the Brazilian DJ Alok over five years, for which they say they were denied proper credit. In a filing in a São Paulo civil court last month, the Brauer brothers, who have performed as the dance duo Sevenn, say they want the court to initiate a technical review of the authorship of the releases, which include some of Alok’s better-known songs, including “Favela” featuring Ina Wroldson, Alok and his brother Bhaskar’s “Fuego,” and a remix of Mick Jagger’s “Gotta Get A Grip.” The songs were produced while the Brauers — who are Brazilian-American dual nationals — were living mostly in Brazil, but their Rio de Janeiro-based attorney Eduardo Senna says that the brothers coul...
Facebook’s Longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg Steps Down
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, is stepping down. Sandberg has served as chief operating officer at the social media giant for 14 years. She joined from Google in 2008, four years before Facebook went public. “When I took this job in 2008, I hoped I would be in this role for five years. Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday. Sandberg has led Facebook — now Meta’s — advertising business and was responsible for nurturing it from its infancy into an over $100 billion-a-year powerhouse. She’s leaving Meta in the fall and will continue to serve on the company’s board. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in his own Facebook post that Javier Olivan will serve as Meta’...
MoneyGram partners with Stellar to build a stablecoin-fiat transfer platform
The US-based financial service company is intent on capitalising on emerging market’s potential as most remittance recipients are out of the country The growth in demand for stablecoins matched with the increase in supply over the past year could be a likelihood of success The cross-border payments and money transfer giant MoneyGram has revealed its ambition to bridge the gap existing between traditional finance and crypto by providing money transfer services. The firm announced on Sunday a strategic partnership with the Stellar blockchain to build a platform that will allow users of the Stellar wallet to send the USD Coin to other users who can then cash out in fiat. This stablecoin-based platform provides users an avenue to convert stablecoins to fiat currencies. In an interview with Blo...
Warren ‘Waz’ Costello, Mushroom Group Label Veteran, Dies After Battle With Illness
Warren “Waz” Costello, a kingpin of Australia’s independent label industry, died Sunday (May 29) after a battle with cancer. He was 64. Costello co-founded Liberation Records with the late Mushroom Group founder Michael Gudinski, and remained one of Gudinski’s closest and most trusted allies until his own passing in March 2021. The Mushroom family is “deeply saddened by the passing of Warren Costello after a long battle with illness,” reads a statement from the indie music company. Since joining the label division “he has been an essential fabric of life at Mushroom. He was a true music man, a beloved friend to our artists and integral to the success of our business over the past three decades,” the message continues. “Warren was renowned for his positive energy, integrity and family value...
Huobi Global acquires Latin American crypto exchange Bitex
Late last week, Huobi Global announced that it completed an acquisition of digital currency trading platform Bitex with the terms of the agreement remaining undisclosed. Bitex, founded in 2014, operates primarily in the Latin American countries of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay – a stage Huobi is keen to take root in. The former will retain its branding and management as part of the arrangement with the leading crypto global crypto entity. Huobi reported a growth in crypto and adoption rate in Latin America of 1,370% rise between 2019, when it launched Huobi Argentina, and 2021. The Bitex website shows that the exchange supported more than 15 stablecoins and several fiat currencies. “Since Huobi Group first entered the Latin American market, we have seen rema...
The Kid LAROI Reunites With Scooter Braun for Management
After parting ways last year, The Kid LAROI has re-upped with Scooter Braun for management. The Australian star previously partnered with Braun in June 2021 before leaving SB Projects last September to join Adam Leber’s Rebel Management roster. The Kid LAROI then split with Leber’s team last month. A source tells Billboard that LAROI and his mother, Sloane Howard, re-approached Braun, and a deal was finalized a week ago. After the singer previously left SB Projects due in part to Braun’s lack of direct involvement, the source says Braun will now oversee all aspects of the hitmaker’s career. During The Kid LAROI’s previous stint with Braun, the singer-songwriter linked up with another SB superstar, Justin Bieber, for the synth-pop single “Stay.” The song became LAROI’s first No. 1 hit on th...
Monthly Report: VC firms pumped funds into crypto and Web 3 despite May being harsh to investors
Hong Kong-based BABEL Finance hits a $2 billion valuation following latest funding Gaming portal and game creator Kongregate tables a blockchain game development fund with Immutable X Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz plans to heavily support start-ups in the blockchain space by allocating significant investments Israel-based StarkWare sets out to advance its ecosystem with new capital backing The first four months of 2022 appeared to bear the worst of the year in the crypto market, but the slump in Q1 is nothing close to the bloodbath witnessed this month. The total cryptocurrency market capital fell from $2.18 trillion at the start of the year to $1.755 trillion by the end of January. It briefly recovered at the beginning of February before charting successive days abo...
The Ledger: Sony Music’s Cautious Catalog Approach & Other Investor Call Highlights
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. Sony’s annual investor presentation was a rare opportunity for Rob Stringer, chairman of Sony Music Group and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, to go on record on the important financial issues of the day. Any analyst or investor listening in got some helpful insight into Stringer’s thinking about how Sony spends money and what will account for future revenue growth. Stringer’s presentation recapped Sony Music’s fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, as well as its double-digit growth over the previous five years. Revenues were up $3 billion since 2017, profit margins have improved and streaming now accounts for 70% of total ...
