Music Biz Features

Hartwig Masuch discusses finding greater equality for artists, the chances of an IPO and why the company’s landmark deal with Tina Turner is only the beginning

For many artists, concert merchandise is an essential lifeline. Now, live music is finally coming back — but thanks to the pandemic, merch is more rare and expensive than ever

Following years of scrutiny and a recent firestorm of much-needed change at the Academy, the 2022 showrunners must get this one right. Here’s how they plan to do it

A behind-the-scenes look at how the musicians behind Alter Ego’s CGI avatars will compete to wow judges Grimes, willi.i.am, Alanis Morissette, and Nick Lachey

The arrival of Universal Music Group on the stock market on Tuesday (September 21st) is going to be a big-money affair — for the record company as well as its rivals

Strange Fruits, which has a distribution deal with Warner Music Group’s ADA, is racking up massive play-counts with 30-second rain recordings. Onlookers in the music industry are not pleased

The supermogul and record chief Clive Davis has forged an empire of music’s top-billing artists. At nearly 90, why can’t he retire — or let the past go?

Interpolation-loving artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Ava Max, and Doja Cat are leading a radical shift in the way the music industry thinks about catalog usage. How far can the trend go?

There is no obvious party in the music industry who is willing to play judge and jury when it comes to the catalogs of individuals accused of, or even convicted of, criminal behavior

“In the music industry, two plus two doesn’t equal four,” says Tedder, whose band, OneRepublic, just released its first album in five years. “It equals banana.”

Inside the pain, sacrifice, and ultimate triumph of motherhood in music, a relentlessly male industry that discourages time off and asks female artists to tour while 38 weeks pregnant

Artists and showrunners are adopting vaccine requirements amid a surge in cases from Covid’s Delta variant, but live music’s 2021 return looks shaky regardless: “It’s been in the back of everybody’s mind watching the numbers”

D minor plays on our rawest emotion — but in contemporary music, even the most somber of artists tend to avoid it

The German capital has been hosting thumping raves to incentivize young people, whose infection rates are higher than average, to get their Covid-19 jabs

Celebrity snaps used to result from hostile stalking. Now, thanks to Instagram and a pandemic, Hollywood’s paparazzi industry is flourishing off pre-planned “candids” organized by stars themselves

The music-streaming service didn’t delight investors with its latest quarterly financial results — but still has a chance to return to its roots of innovation and originality before it’s too late

The round-the-clock livestream competition Song House Live — basically the twisted love child of The Real World and Songland — will offer a Capitol Records label contract to one winner

The wild boom and bust of art NFTs made many onlookers wary of blockchain-based technology — but new developments in gaming, ticketing, and music royalties reveal NFTs’ true power

Platforms of the so-called “passion economy” tell us everyone can make bank. The reality of this scam is nowhere more evident than in the numbers out of the music industry

In the post-quarantine rush back to concerts and live music, venue calendars are filling up with superstars and baby bands are falling to the wayside: “It’s a lot of chasing dead ends”

Companies like Audio Up, which wrote a fictional origin story for Lava Records’ Hero the Band, want to take music podcasts and turn them into intellectual-property empires

The world’s biggest music rightsholder will soon be owned by a panoply of players. One of them wants to keep its costs in check

“We’re up to our necks in water waiting for help. And they just don’t see it,” says a Montana venue owner who’s waiting for aid from the federal government

Live-music professionals who work with Green Day, James Taylor, and others share their thoughts as Covid restrictions ease and the concert business gets back into gear

The exec scaled up Peloton’s cult-favorite “Artist Series,” and is now looking to bring celebs into the fitness company as guest instructors

“I want the weird side projects and meandering pieces,” says the wellness app’s music executive, who recently turned major pop hits into hourlong sleep remixes

Superstars like Kanye West and Taylor Swift have bashed lopsided label deals — and a new generation of artists is vying to recalibrate music’s balance of power

Meet our special project delving into the next era of the global hitmaking business, featuring over three dozen interviews with music’s brightest artists and entrepreneurs

Malik, who’s been busy in quarantine designing holograms for musicians like Lil Nas X, believes AR is the next frontier of music

The in-demand songwriter has had no shortage of “holy-shit moments” in her career: ““It didn’t feel real and still doesn’t feel real”

“Saweetie the mogul will be noticed worldwide,” promises the singer, actor, CEO, activist, gamer, fashionista, and branding expert

Onwusa, the first black person to ever curate Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, is making the case for Public Enemy, Aretha Franklin, and N.W.A. as rock icons

The Indian-American music executive, who grew up on Led Zeppelin and Van Halen, is beating major streaming services at their own game

“On a good day, I’m speaking to every single corner of the world, making sure that everybody understands that [Africa] is not a trend for us”

“If there’s human beings on this Earth, they’ll be coming to see music in the Caverns 10,000 years from now,” pledges the Tennessee venue owner

Buying a concert ticket — an experience filled with bots and hidden fees — can be nightmarish. Ant Taylor has a plan to wipe the entire thing and start anew

The young producer, who’s behind hundreds of tracks for the likes of Drake and Travis Scott, is an outlier in the music industry in every way

“I don’t think people have realized how much the tech community has deconstructed the creation of music,” says the music salesman, who is now gearing up to acquire entire music companies

The duo made the Record Deal Simulator, a deceptively simple, Pandora’s-box-opening website that lets artists predict their leverage with record labels

“The frozen pizza industry has just skyrocketed through Covid!” muses the branding star, who orchestrates wildly inventive partnerships for everyone from Billie Eilish to Post Malone

An entertainment attorney has put forth a bold new proposal of a government-run streaming service. The music industry — reeling from the embattled pandemic year — may just be on board

“I don’t want anybody to die feeling like they’re forgotten and that they don’t matter,” says the Apple Music host, who spotlights overlooked artists of color in country music

The efforts to combat the music industry’s “unfortunate blight” of streaming manipulation have fallen to a woman unafraid of battle

The rapper once crowned “King of the Teens” is now building an empire out of Twitch, Discord, and crypto

The tech-obsessed RAC went from making mixtapes out of radio broadcasts to becoming the music industry’s go-to crypto expert

The smash-hit writer conceived a four-times-platinum song while still a student at NYU, “typing back and forth with the writers during my physics class”

“I really miss watching an artist and their albums shift and change with each one,” says the filmmaker, who will seek out artists with rich personal stories in her new role heading a record label

David Geffen’s legacy label has a new chief, who’s got a nose for hugely promising rap and R&B records

The blockchain expert went from fetching tuna sandwiches for Clive Davis to designing NFTs for stars like Kings of Leon

“We’re back at a place where we have to create the new generation of superstars,” says the newly promoted label chief

The multi-hyphenate, who has mastered the art of the TikTok hit, is now literally writing the book on virality

A data-driven look at the niche genres next poised for world domination

The new era of business is all about democratizing hitmaking. Beloved by big-money investors and sharp-eyed entrepreneurs, here are the music industry’s rising powers

Indie artists dwarf label-signed artists by sheer numbers — so why hasn’t the onslaught of DIY music killed the record label yet?

“I think we’re headed deeper into tribalism. I think artists will decide that a company or algorithm shouldn’t decide for you what you should or shouldn’t see”

“The next revolution is going to be in the creator space, where there are millions of kids making music in their bedrooms,” says the multi-hyphenate artist

“It may not be that insane to think that the old model is dying and more artists going forward will hold onto their IP, and that the industry will operate in more of a VC structure,” say the brothers behind Good Charlotte

The perdurable music mogul on true entrepreneurship, the pitfalls of viral hits, and what defines success

At the classical conservatory, students are encouraged to adopt an “artist as citizen” ethos — but heated clashes over proposed tuition hikes have called that philosophy into question

“So is it that some black lives [matter] but doesn’t include mine?” White says a year after her dispute with the former Lady Antebellum. “When does my life and what I’ve worked for matter?”

Lyor Cohen says YouTube, once the main target of the music industry’s ire, can soon offer the biggest payouts of any digital music service. We crunched the numbers, and they are on his side

Concert tech zoomed ahead during the Great Pause — and it’s going to keep growing by leaps and bounds. Inside the future of stagecraft

As the giants of classic rock contemplate retirement, music execs are dreaming up increasingly bold new ways to eke value out of their brands, images, and back catalogs

Stalled grants and the return of big competitors are forcing America’s beloved stages into further crippling debt. “It’s like sitting at a red light and watching cars zoom right by us,” says one venue owner

In the controversy over streaming economics, warring factions of the music industry are bickering over how to move pennies around a plate, rather than how to expand the size of the shared meal

“I’m still trying to figure it out,” says the prolific songwriter and producer about the sweet sauce of making a modern music hit

The songwriter and OneRepublic frontman has announced an NFT drop for Tuesday night

Make sure to read the fine print on any concert tickets this summer

Live Nation hosted 40,000 concerts in 2019. How will it get back to that number — and what else is in store for the concert giant in the post-pandemic future?

The American Rescue Plan will not only benefit state and local governments and small businesses, but professional musicians hoping to retire at some point in their lives

The DJ, and his label, believe that in-game concerts and auditory exclusives are the “evolution of how people are discovering music”

Analysts suggest that the world’s biggest music rights-holder could be worth three times its current public valuation

The 20-year-old self-made millionaire discusses learning how to write music, using TikTok to open doors, shedding haters, and “submerging” herself in art

Showrunner Ben Winston chats about “that Beyoncé moment,” BTS’s performance, the importance of not censoring artists like Cardi B and Lil Baby, and why TV ratings don’t accurately reflect the awards ceremony’s success

“You want to get paid for the fact that they’re spinning your record — not the fact that someone thinks they’re spinning someone else’s record,” says Hipgnosis CEO Merck Mercuriadis

Without tours, Pale Waves and Zara Larsson’s crew leader works at a mass vaccination center in Scotland: “It’s the camaraderie, being part of a team, working toward the same goal — I have that again”

With Covid-19 stranding the concert industry in a limbo for a year now, artists from Martha Reeves to Tech N9ne, along with behind-the-scenes workers, reflect on an unprecedented twelve months

Shawn Mendes, Grimes, and Tory Lanez are just a few celebrities who’ve jumped aboard the crypto train to release exclusive digital goods — turning the Internet into a futuristic, fine-art auction house on crack

“I’m hoping this opens up the door for a lot more that happens for people that look like me,” says the new chief executive, who will report directly to Sir Lucian Grainge at Universal Music

Artists including Billie Eilish, BTS, and Taylor Swift will perform in a circle of five stages with masked crew at the center — in a ceremony that first-time showrunner Ben Winston calls “part Grammys, part Abbey Road studio session”

Most large-scale concerts and tours in the U.S. cannot return until 2022. “You can’t do Swiss-cheese routing. If it’s got holes in it because certain states haven’t opened up, it’s not going to work,” says one live music exec

James Taylor, Elton John, Graham Nash, Brian Wilson, Willie Nelson, David Crosby, John Fogerty, Loretta Lynn, and Kiss’ Paul Stanley have all got the jab

Partial-capacity shows are not economical for most concert halls or musicians, and politicians who pretend otherwise are failing to understand the way the live music industry operates

The Oregon-based rock band, which launched its own coin last month, explains how artists can use crypto to build the ultimate fan club

Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine on why they’ve sold a controlling interest in their intellectual property to a new company led by Irving Azoff — and how they hope to celebrate their 60th anniversary

“She’d look you in the eyes, and your only response was ‘Yes ma’am,’” one lobbyist says of the late Motown legend’s efforts for artists’ rights

Universal is sitting on billions of dollars in Spotify stock. If it sells its stake today, it will trigger a massive payout for artists — but that’s not the only reason it should cash out

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts envision a future where artists are paid fairly, the secondary ticketing market is no longer ravaged by scalpers, and the value of digital memorabilia soars

The deal, which is one of the biggest acquisitions in music in recent years, is really about the unstoppable explosion in DIY indie artists

The rapper is furious over the Robinhood-Reddit-GameStop saga: “The little guys are left holding the bag”

From Spotify payouts to YouTube’s global user base, the music industry is rife with misinformation. Let’s set the record straight

Musicians are cashing in on their catalogs to the tune of millions. What’s driving the trend? Which artists and songwriters have sold their rights — and what does it mean?

KKR’s re-entry into the music business, buying the copyrights of OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder in an unusual direct acquisition, signals a new wave of Wall Street interest in an area financial giants have ignored for years

Only white artists were nominated for Best Children’s Album — and three of them have asked to be taken off the ballot. Artists of color in children’s music are fed up with the genre’s homogeneity: “It’s like being served a baked potato with fries and hash browns on the side,” says one black artist

Amazon Music agreed to pay $300 million for a podcast company. Why didn’t it want to spend the money on a music deal — like, for instance, the acquisition of Taylor Swift or Neil Young’s music catalog?

From six-figure TikTok snippets to virtual-reality stardom to Travis Scott McNugget pillows, here are 12 ways the bizarre year upended the music industry — setting artists and fans up for an even wackier 2021

Beatport’s acquisition of Loopmasters may have just fired the starter pistol on an acquisition frenzy in sector of “sample packs,” plugins, and other modern technologies that have become key to music production

After a bruising 10 months of Covid shutdown, live music businesses — not to mention artists and fans — are hoping concerts and tours can return in the spring of 2021. But is it a pipe dream?

Labels are trying to use TikTok to launch a new song into the Christmas music canon

This company fires up hits for everyone from Dua Lipa to Shawn Mendes and Ozzy Osbourne. Its cofounders break down how they built the powerhouse