Spotify Generated $4.5 Billion for Independent Artists and Labels in 2023

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Fifty may be the new forty in some areas of life, but popular music isn’t one of them. With very few exceptions, pop musicians make their most vital work in their twenties and early thirties, and even if they continue to perform to sold-out arenas into their eighties, as the Rolling Stones have, the fans are largely indifferent to their new music and just want to hear the hits — leading to the seemingly counterintuitive situation of artists with sold-out tours connected to new albums that are, comparatively anyway, flops.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music For their headlining set opening the Rolling Loud California festival in Los Angeles on Thursday night, Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign merely stood onstage for an hour while pre-recorded music from their already released first album played over the loudspeakers. While the wording in the official announcement of the late-added performance was unspecific — “Vultures headlining new Thursday night,” the since-deleted post read — it’s safe to say that most people expected the duo, who have been working together under the name Vultures, to at least deliver vocals.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Jennifer Lopez has canceled seven dates of her first North American tour in five years, in support of her new album “This Is Me… Now” and its pair of companion films. The dates spanning Aug.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music After months of it simply being called “DL3,” Dua Lipa has revealed the title, cover, tracklist and release date of her third full-length album.Titled “Radical Optimism,” the album will be released May 3 and consists of 11 songs, including the two preliminary singles, “Houdini” and “Training Season.” In an intriguing twist on the title, the cover art features the singer in the water, just feet away from a shark. The singer also unveiled a rather startling new look in a new promotional photo where her eyebrows are barely visible (although her eyebrows appeared to be perfectly normal when she announced the album in a brief Instagram Live appearance on Wednesday afternoon).

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The standoff between Universal Music Groupand TikTok over royalty payments and AI policies has resulted in a near-complete blackout of all music owned, distributed and published by the company on the platform — the videos are still there, but the music is muted. Yet new songs by UMG artists, including Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello and Niall Horan could be found on TikTok at the time of this article’s publication. How and why is that happening? While reps for UMG and TikTok declined comment, and an explanation of the platform’s logistics and process quickly devolves into a mind-melting blizzard of jargon and abbreviations, here’s a vast oversimplification of a couple of possibilities.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As the vast reorganization of Universal Music Group’s labels continues, as expected, the company’s East Coast operations are uniting under the Republic Corps umbrella. The move reflects the company’s reorganization of its labels under the domains of Republic’s Monte Lipman (East Coast) and Interscope’s John Janick (West Coast).

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As the standoff between Universal Music Group and TikTok over royalties, AI and other matters continues to boil amid angry words from both sides — and the National Music Publishers Assn. stating last weekthat it does not plan to renew its license with the platform — the official trade group for independent publishers has weighed in with its own advice.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The Love Rocks NYC Benefit Concert has become an annual New York tradition and Thursday night’s show at the Beacon Theatre was one of the best on record, raising $3.8 million for the God’s Love We Deliver charity with performances and/or appearances from Dave Grohl, the Black Keys, Hozier, Nile Rodgers, Tom Morello, Don Felder, Bettye LaVette, Joss Stone, Allison Russell, Emily King, Marcus King, Lucius, Larkin Poe, Trombone Shorty, Luke Spiller, Quinn Sullivan, and Bernie William. This year’s concert raised $3.8 million, which will allow God’s Love We Deliver to serve 380,000 meals for New Yorkers living with severe illnesses.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran talent agent Fatmata Kamara has joined Independent Artist Group, the agency’s Head of Global Talent, Andrew Rogers, announced on Friday.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music It’s been a very quiet three-and-a-half years for Ariana Grande — quiet for one of music’s biggest stars, anyway — and a bit of an adjustment for fans. She’d been almost ubiquitous, catapulting into her musical career at a superhuman velocity in 2013 and releasing six albums in just over seven years — a fierce clip for anyone whose name doesn’t include the words Swift or Prince — while touring constantly, launching multimillion-dollar brands, racking up 14 songs with a billion-plus streams on Spotify alone, and establishing herself as one of the most formidable presences on social media.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music It’s no surprise that British-Ghanaian R&B singer/songwriter Raye was the center of attention at last weekend’s BRIT Awards — she won a record six trophies at the British Grammy-equivalent ceremony, including Best Artist, Album of the Year and Song of the Year, and during her acceptance speeches made empowering statements like “I’m in control — I’m my own boss.” Yet obscured in all the headlines was the strong business statement she made on behalf of fellow songwriters, calling for them to receive a share of the master recording income of the songs on which they’re credited. Multiple other participants receive such shares — “points on the master” — including artists, labels, producers and others, but not songwriters.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Veteran singer and Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry has entered into a partnership with Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists Group “to develop and expand the renowned artist’s musical legacy to new generations of fans,” according to the announcement. The deal sees the company acquiring 50% of Ferry’s sound recording, publishing, and name, image and likeness rights from his solo work and Roxy Music catalog, which reaches back to the group’s galvanizing 1972 debut album and includes such hit songs as “Love Is the Drug,” “More Than This,” “Avalon,” “Virginia Plain,” “Dance Away,” “Slave to Love” and more.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Even amid the literally thousands of Lou Reed cover versions that have emerged over the past half century — by everyone from David Bowie to Patti Smith to R.E.M. to Beck , it’s hard to imagine a more fitting musical tribute than Keith Richards covering “Waiting for the Man,” the 1967 song that heralded not just the Velvet Underground’s arrival, but a whole new realm of ultra-real, novelistic songwriting in rock music.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The bruising battle over royalties between Universal Music Group and TikTok entered a new and more severe stage in the early hours of Tuesday as songs published by UMG began to be removed from the platform. The standoff, which began earlier this month, initially saw recordings owned by UMG removed from the platform, but now is extending to a much larger number of songs by including those published by the company.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As expected, Atlantic Music Group announced on Monday that it will be laying off around two dozen people, with the majority coming from the radio and video departments. In an internal memo to the company’s staff obtained by Variety, chairman-CEO Julie Greenwald said Atlantic will be “bringing on new and additional skill sets in social media, content creation, community building and audience insights” in an effort to “dial up our fan focus and help artists tell their stories in ways that resonate.” The move reflects similar ones at the major labels recently, as they recalibrate to meet the leveling-off of streaming growth.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Universal Music Group has announced a majority investment in the Nigeria-based Afrobeats powerhouse label Mavin Global (Mavin). The label, based in Lagos, is home to such hits as Rema’s “Calm Down” — the Selena Gomez-featuring remix of which was No. 12 on Variety’s 2023 Hitmakers chart and is the most-viewed video on YouTube by an African artists — and other artists including Ayra Starr, Ladipoe, Johnny Drille and more.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Live Nation had another record year in 2023 as multiple superstar acts toured the world and live entertainment returned in earnest after the pandemic shut it down for nearly all of 2020 and 2021. The world’s largest live-entertainment company saw revenue of $22.7 billion, up 36% from 2022, pointing to record attendance, ticket sales and sponsorships. Adjusted operating income was $1.86 billion, up 32% year-over-year.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Long-running, Grammy-winning rock band Kings of Leon are starting off 2024 with a bang, announcing that they have signed with Capitol Records, which will release their forthcoming ninth full-length studio album, to be followed by a major world tour. The album, titled “Can We Please Have Fun,” was produced by Harry Styles/ Florence and the Machine collaborator Kid Harpoon (who, with partner Tyler Johnson, was Variety’s Hitmakers 2022 Producer of the Year), is due on May 10 and is preceded by the lead single “Mustang,” available now. The song recalls the innovative and idiosyncratic sound of the group’s 2004 breakthrough album, “Aha Shake Heartbreak.” The group’s world tour, produced by Live Nation in North America, will hit 26 cities across the U.S.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Chan Marshall — a.k.a Cat Power — is one of the most distinctive singers of her generation, emerging from the indie-rock scene of the early ‘90s to become a unique artist fusing a multitude of styles that range from rock to folk to low-key soul, in a long string of albums that alternate between originals and covers. Raised in Georgia, Charlyn Marshall (Chan is a childhood nickname that is pronounced “Shawn”) relocated to New York in the early ‘90s and was adopted by the city’s indie-rock community, releasing a string of increasingly strong albums.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music On Tuesday, March 5, Foo Fighters will perform at a private concert in Washington, D.C. hosted by Power to the Patients, a non-profit fighting for a more affordable, accessible, and equitable healthcare system through price transparency. Veteran rappers Fat Joe, who has spearheaded music’s awareness of the organization, and Chuck D will also be in attendance.