business
The Ledger: For Streamers, Does Catalog Size Matter?
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 millions of songs are uploaded to streaming services yearly and no one listens, do they make a sound? Yes and no. Someone — but not many people — listens to most every track. But few tracks could be called popular by any definition. Spotify’s catalog grew from 70 million to 82 million tracks in 2021, according to the company’s last two annual reports. That works out to an average of 33,000 per day. Some of its competitors grew faster and further, according to figures in public reports and press releases. Apple Music shot up from 70 million in January 2021 to 90 million in November 2021. YouTube Music also took a big ...
60 Minutes feature on El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach will air Sunday
60 Minutes, the CBS news show that has been running since 1968, will feature El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach in a new episode airing April 10. According to a Friday post from 60 Minutes’ Twitter account, the investigative news show will air a segment on the crypto-friendly area of El Zonte, a village located in El Salvador, where residents and visitors have been able to use Bitcoin (BTC) to pay for anything from utility bills to tacos. Sharyn Alfonsi, a journalist and correspondent for the show, interviewed Mike Peterson, one of the people who funded the project and encouraged crypto adoption among residents. How did a town in El Salvador become known as Bitcoin Beach? Sunday, Sharyn Alfonsi meets with Mike Peterson who helped make it happen. pic.twitter.com/tHaHsTKFx1 — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes...
Marquetta Moore Joins Penske Media as Head of Talent Curation and Bookings
Marquetta Moore has joined Penske Media Corporation as head of talent curation and bookings across all PMC brands. Moore will initially focus on curating and programming artist talent for PMC’s inaugural LA3C music and culture festival, which is set for Dec. 10 and 11 at Los Angeles State Historic Park. She will also work with PMC brands to secure talent and lead programming for future events and live experiences. “Having the opportunity to curate the talent for LA3C in its launch year is a dream,” Moore said in a statement. “As a long time Angelino, I am passionate about highlighting the incredibly rich and diverse talent of the city and feel so inspired by the mission of the festival. I am also so thrilled to join PMC, working with such world-class and iconic brands.” Brooke Jaffe, ...
Justin Bieber’s Vocal Producer Sues Scooter Braun for Breach of Contract
Chris “Tek” O’Ryan, a music producer who specializes in tuning vocals so that they sound pristine on recordings and during performances, filed a lawsuit against Justin Bieber‘s manager Scooter Braun and the company JRC Entertainment on Thursday (April 7), alleging that Braun “reneged” on a deal to pay the producer for his work on Bieber’s tracks. O’Ryan claims that he was promised a point — 1% of the master recording revenue — on dozens of Bieber songs he helped produce starting in 2018. But in the filing in Los Angeles Superior Court, O’Ryan’s attorneys allege that Bieber’s representatives subsequently backed out of this agreement. As a result, the producer is suing Braun for breach of contract, promissory estoppel and intentional interference with contract. “Having now been effectively c...
Executive Turntable: 10K Names SVP of Biz Development; MRC Live Taps Creative EVPs
Sam Cohen was promoted to senior vp of business development at 10K Projects, where he’ll continue to work with the label’s roster while also looking to expand its partnerships with creators; he’ll additionally focus on the 10K Ventures initiative, which backs early-stage founders that integrate within the music ecosystem. He can be reached at sam@10kprojects.com. Stephen Hill and Rob Bagshaw were both appointed to the role of executive vp of creative at MRC Live & Alternative. Hill will lead creative on all existing tentpole shows (Academy of Country Music Awards, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, Streamy Awards) and select projects in development; Bagshaw will lead creative for new franchises, helping identify formats and shepherd projects from dev...
Robinhood rolls out wallets to 2M waitlisted users, plans to integrate Lightning
Cryptocurrency and stock trading app Robinhood will roll out its digital wallet feature for 2 million additional users. In a Thursday announcement at the Bitcoin 2022 Conference in Miami, Robinhood chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada said eligible customers who had been on the waitlist for the digital wallet — more than two million people — can now send and receive cryptocurrencies. In addition, the platform is planning to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network to reduce the time and cost of transactions as well as their carbon footprint. Super pumped to announce on the #Bitcoin2022 stage that @RobinhoodApp has rolled out wallets access to the nearly 2 million people on the WenWallets waitlist. — Aparna Chennapragada (@aparnacd) April 7, 2022 According to Robinhood, the crypto wall...
Parcast Union Reaches Tentative Deal With Spotify, Management on First Contract
Seemingly averting a threatened strike, a union at Parcast has reached a tentative agreement with Spotify and Parcast management on a first contract covering the podcast studio’s content writers, fact-checkers, producers, researchers and other workers. The Parcast Union — which is affiliated with the Writers Guild of America, East — announced the deal on Wednesday night, their final day of bargaining with the music streaming giant and the Spotify-owned podcast studio, and are not yet disclosing terms of the tentative agreement. “After months of regular meetings, late-night emails, private calls, & full unit efforts, we’re proud to announce we have a deal,” the union tweeted on Wednesday night. “We couldn’t have done it without the consistent support of our colleagues. It’s been a worth...
Record Label Market Share Q1 2022: Interscope Leads, Indies Gain, Disney Surges Into Top 10
We don’t talk about Bruno, but Disney is giving the music business something else to talk about: its impressive new share of the market. As 2022 got underway, the soundtrack to Encanto, the Disney film that was released over the holiday season, saw its Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned collection of songs become the biggest album of the year so far in the first quarter stemming from Dec. 31, 2021 through March 31, 2022. The success of the soundtrack — the first album of 2022 to pass 1 million equivalent album units, according to Luminate, formerly MRC Data — has had a tangible effect on the market share rankings for Q1, as the Disney Music Group surged into the top 10 of overall market share, the most significant of several moves atop the rankings compared to Q1 last year. Interscope/Geffen/A&...
Twitter Is Testing an ‘Edit’ Button
Twitter tweeted Tuesday that it is indeed working on a way for users to edit their 280-character messages, although it says the project has nothing to do with the fact that edit-function fan Elon Musk was just revealed as the company’s largest shareholder and now sits on its board. Twitter said it will test the feature in its paid service, Twitter Blue, in the coming months. It said the test would help it “learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible.” So it may be a while before most Twitter users get to use it, if they ever do. Twitter spokesperson Catherine Hill declined to say whether an edit feature might be rolled out for all users. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Many Twitter users — among them, Kim Kardashian, Ice-T, Katy Perry a...
WMG Canada Offices Relocating to Downtown Toronto in 2023
Warner Music Group is relocating its Canadian businesses to The Well, a newly-constructed building in downtown Toronto. Beginning in March 2023, WMG employees from Warner Music Canada, Warner Chappell Music Canada and Sodatone (a predictive A&R and marketing intelligence platform) will move into the new office, which will include a recording studio, performance space, songwriting rooms and content creation workrooms. The relocation comes as part of WMG’s Future of Work project, which aims to improve the company’s office spaces globally and better align with hybrid working models. Located at 410 Front Street West in downtown Toronto, The Well “offers a curated collection of premium and new concept retail, commercial, dining, and wellness businesses, as well as office and residential spa...
Spotify’s Discovery Mode Under Scrutiny by Congress (Again)
Members of Congress are once again taking aim at Spotify’s controversial Discovery Mode feature, which allows artists and labels to receive a lower royalty rate on select tracks in exchange for higher priority in the platform’s algorithms. In a letter obtained by Billboard, dated March 29, 2022 and addressed to Spotify founder, CEO and chairman Daniel Ek, Reps. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Judy Chu (D-CA) and Tony Cardenas (D-CA) – co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Multicultural Media – express concerns that Discovery Mode “lacks transparency” for both artists and consumers and ask the company to publish “on a monthly basis the name of every track enrolled in the program” and the agreed-upon discounted royalty rate for each. Variety first reported on the letter. “Choosing to accept...
Boba Network to prioritise Ethereum’s computational constraints with a $45M funding
The $45 million Series A round was completed in the fourth quarter of last year via a token sale The hybrid computing platform aims to resolve the ignored scalability aspect of Ethereum – its computational limitations Ethereum overlay solution Boba Network has announced that it completed a $45 million Series A raise during Q4 of 2021. With a valuation of $1.5 billion, Boba has joined the ranks of unicorns within this nascent space. Without a lead investor, the hybrid computing platform enjoyed broad participation, with investors ranging from industry-native venture funds to celebrity figures. Infinite Capital, Crypto.com, Kinetic Capital, Huobi, Hack VC, BitMart, Will Smith, Keisuke Honda, and Paris Hilton were all involved. The network said that funding for the Series was secured via a to...
