Streaming Brought Record Growth to the Music Business — TikTok and A.I. Need to Get It Right: Guest Post by RIAA CEO Mitch Glazier

Recasting roles in movies and television shows is often a risky move among loyal fans.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Warner Chappell Music has renewed its global publishing deal with producer Marco “MAG” Borrero. A frequent Bad Bunny collaborator, MAG produced 15 of the 23 tracks on the blockbuster album “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which led to his 2022 Variety Hitmakers honor and his No. 1 position on Billboard’s Year-End Hot Latin Song Producers chart. “Un Verano Sin Ti” became the first all-Spanish album to top the year-end Billboard 200 chart as well as earn a nomination for Album of the Year Grammy award. The Brooklyn-born, Puerto Rican-Dominican producer was mentored by Max Martin — the most successful songwriter-producer of the past 25 years — and over the course of his career has also collaborated with Rauw Alejandro, Arcángel, Bebe Rexha, Imagine Dragons, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Scott Borchetta — founder of Big Machine Label Group, the company that originally signed Taylor Swift — was involved in an accident Sunday while racing in the Trans Am Series. According to a statement from the label, he was taken to the hostpital for examination and is currently in stable condition. His wife, Sandy Spika Borchetta, who is also an executive VP at the company, and other family members are with him. “We ask everyone to please respect the Borchetta family’s privacy during this time,” the announcement concludes. Borchetta had to be extracted from his car after it went off course in the high-braking Turn 1 of the 12-turn course, according to a report on the TobyChristie.com website. Shortly after the accident, the Trans Am broadcast team reported, “I can tell you [Scott] is okay. He is conscious, and he’s been talking to his team, but he is on his way to the hospital. It was a big hit, but I am glad to say he is now in good care and being taken to the hospital.”

hardly any of his congressional allies – including prominent figures like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene – were in attendance at Mar-a-Lago for the big day.

Richard Madeley was grilled about whether he'd join I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! 's All Stars on Monday's Good Morning Britain. The presenter, 66, was forced to leave the ITV show early in 2021 after he was taken to hospital.

On Friday, March 24, 03 Greedo will share his first project since leaving prison in January after serving less than five years of a 20-year sentence. Halfway There, a 33-track mixtape the L.A.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Jay-Z’s net worth has soared to $2.5 billion, according to a new Forbes report published Friday. While the report is slim on details, it notes that the fortune of the man born Shawn Carter 53 years reached far beyond music. “Even in a year without a tour or album release, Jay-Z mints millions from his Armand de Brignac champagne and D’Usse cognac,” it says. “The Brooklyn-born rapper was crowned hip-hop’s first billionaire by Forbes in 2019, thanks to a sprawling and diversified empire,” noting assets from his Roc Nation entertainment and sports empire to a fine-art collection including works by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Sony Music has dissolved the long-running Arista Nashville imprint, a rep for the company confirms to Variety. The news was first reported in Country Aircheck‘s newsletter. Most of the artists will be absorbed into Sony Music Nashville, with Nate Smith is going to RCA Nashville and Old Dominion and Megan Moroney moving over to Columbia Nashville. Brooks & Dunn is the most famous artist on the label, having been one of its cornerstone acts since 1991, but the duo is not a going concern on the recording front. Apart from a retrospective/duets project three years ago, they have not issued an album of new material since 2007.

Country music stars Orville Peck, Mickey Guyton and Jimmie Allen are the judges for “My Kind of Country”, a new Nashville-themed music competition series streaming on Apple TV+, executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and Kacey Mulgraves.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Global recorded-music revenue growth slowed down dramatically in 2022 but still was up 9% according to the year-end report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s released Tuesday. While 2021 saw an 18.5% growth, largely due to an increase in streaming numbers as the world waited at home for the pandemic to lift, a growth in global streaming numbers powered the past year’s lift, which showed total trade revenues for year at $26.2 billion. Subscription audio streaming revenues increased by 10.3% to $12.7 billion, and there were 589 million users of paid subscription accounts at the end of 2022, according to the report.  Total streaming (including both paid subscription and advertising-supported) grew by 11.5% to reach $17.5 billion, or 67% of total global recorded music revenues, according to the IFPI, which represents more than 8,000 record company members worldwide.

El Gordo y la Flaca,Marc Anthony and his new bride Nadia Ferreira supported Puerto Rico. The model’s baby bump looked too cute! A post shared by ElGordoyLaFlaca (@elgordoylaflaca)Puerto Rican host Carlos Adyan posed with the newlyweds and they were all smiles.

Nicola Petlz Beckham has shared her hope of starting a family in the future, almost a year after marrying Brooklyn Beckham in a star-studded ceremony in Florida. The actress married Brooklyn, the eldest son of former England footballer David Beckham and Spice Girl and fashion designer Victoria Beckham, in a Palm Beach ceremony last April.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Amazon Music has announced the launch of two new weekly flagship music series: the hip-hop-focused “Rotation Roundtable” and the Latin/pop culture show “La Semanal Live.” “Rotation Roundtable,” premiering March 15, comprises a hybrid Twitch livestream and 90-minute podcast experience inspired by Amazon Music’s “Rap Rotation” and “R&B Rotation” playlists. It is hosted by journalist and executive producer Speedy Morman, Power 105.1 host/ producer Nyla Symone, “On the Radar” creator Gabe P and veteran journalist Rob Markman. Each episode will feature a “Big Questions” segment meant to incite discourse about current events in hip-hop. The show will also consist of “Hot Takes,” guest interviews, and a debate segment fueled by chat participation.

Katie Reul editor Quinta Brunson, the Emmy award-winning creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” will transition from a classroom to a live studio audience with her hosting debut on “Saturday Night Live” on April 1. Lil Yachty has been named as the episode’s musical guest. Brunson’s first appearance on the show could coincide with the a potential strike set by the show’s post-production editors. The strike comes after calls for NBCUniversal to pay editors industry standard rates and provide appropriate health benefits. The editing crew organized with the Motion Picture Editors Guild, which is part of IATSE Local 700, in order to negotiate a contract with NBCUniversal in October of last year. An agreement has yet to be reached. Now, the post-production team of “SNL” has set a deadline of April 1 for an agreement to be reached, at which point they will boycott working on the show.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Over the past couple of years, virtually every conversation about the challenges facing artists in the music-streaming economy has had one proposed quick fix: Raise subscription prices. As Milana Lewis, CEO of the distribution and payments platform Stem, told Variety last summer, “The price of everything else on earth is going up, and they all keep finding new ways to make subscriptions cheaper” via family and student plans, bundling and other initiatives. Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer have already done so, but others remain with the same $10 U.S. monthly price as when they started. New Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl brings a view from the other side to the top of the music industry: He was head of business for YouTube — where he led a sea change in the streaming giant’s relationship with the music industry by, guess what, introducing a paid music subscription service — and at Netflix, where he presided over the company’s shift from DVDs to streaming.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor The U.S. recorded-music industry reached an all-time high of $15.9 billion in 2022, marking the industry’s seventh consecutive year of growth. While overall streaming growth has been leveling off in recent years, with 92 million paid U.S. subscriptions, it’s clearly continuing to grow and fuel the market while the steady resurgence of vinyl continues. Collectively accounting for 84% of total revenues, streaming continued to be the largest driver with paid subscriptions, ad-supported services, digital and customized radio, social media platforms, digital fitness apps and others, according to the report. Paid subscriptions were up 7% to a record high revenue of $13.3 billion. Revenues grew 8% to $10.2 billion, passing the $10 billion mark for the first time.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Spotify announced Wednesday that its all-time payouts to music-rights holders are approaching $40 billion. The company said it pays out nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music back to the industry, the announcement continues. It generates its music revenue from two sources: subscription fees from its Premium platform paying subscribers, and fees from advertisings on music on its Free tier. These rights holders include record labels, publishers, independent distributors, performance rights organizations and collecting societies, the announcement detailed. It is important to note that the payments go to rights holders first — which is rarely the artist or songwriter —which then take their fee or percentage and pay the creators their share.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor ASCAP, the only remaining not-for-profit performing rights organization in the U.S., announced that its 2022 annual revenue surpassed $1.5 billion for the first time, which fueled record royalty distributions to ASCAP’s songwriter, composer and music publisher members. Collections totaled $1.522 billion in 2022, an increase of $187 million or 14% over the previous year. According to the announcement, ASCAP’s strategic growth plan, launched in 2015, has resulted in a 6% compound annual growth rate for total revenues, and a 7% compound annual growth rate for total distributions to members.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor K-Pop is facing a “very clear slowdown in growth” that has inspired his company’s expansion efforts in the U.S., Bang Si-Hyuk, chairman of HYBE, the company behind bands including BTS and other acts, told CNN’s Richard Quest in an interview published Sunday, as HYBE seeks to expand its holdings in the South Korean music market by acquiring a large stake in competitor SM. The genre, which has boomed globally over the past five years, “is not as hot in the market as you might perceive,” Bang said. “Globally, it’s not occupying much of the market. On the other hand, Latin music and Afrobeat are very rapidly growing. So being where we are, it is more urgent to increase the exposure. … Looking at our export indicators and streaming growth, the slowdown in growth is very clear.”

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor It was billed as a celebration of “the life and legacy of the late David ‘Trugoy the Dove’ Jolicoeur and the influence and impact of De La Soul,” but of course “The D.A.I.S.Y. Experience” ended up being a lot more than that. It was a musical wake for De La co-founder Dave “Trugoy” Jolicoeur, who died less than a month ago; it was a family reunion for the people around the long-running group and their literal families; and it was a long, long overdue celebration of the release on streaming services of the group’s first six albums — most notably, their culture-shifting 1989 debut, “3 Feet High and Rising,” which changed the sound and face of hip-hop, making it psychedelic, funny, suburban, stoner and fun in ways that the art form, which previously had been almost entirely aggressive and street, had not previously been. De La’s first six albums had been caught in a legal morass for more than two decades (head here for more on that), and it’s finally over.