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Bill Ackman Firm Calls Lawsuit Focused on UMG Investment Effort ‘Fatally Flawed’
The failed deal put a spotlight on PSTH’s structure as a blank check company, formally termed a SPAC, or “special purpose acquisition company.” SPACs typically function like reverse initial public offerings: They raise money as a public shell company ahead of time, and then use those funds to acquire a private company and thus take it public. But PSTH took a slightly different route, using the money it had raised from investors in an effort to buy shares of UMG. Filed in August by an investor, the case claimed that PSTH was not actually a SPAC at all. Claiming the company had only purchased securities, the lawsuit said the company was more akin to a traditional investment firm, like a hedge fund. As a result, the lawsuit said PSTH ought to be regulated under a differ...
HYBE’s Quarterly Earnings Get Boost From Ithaca Holdings as BTS Concerts Await
Content featuring BTS and management fees from Ithaca’s clients helped generate record revenue in the third quarter. It took a coalition of songs, artists and merchandise — plus a big acquisition — to help Korean music company HYBE, the home of BTS, recover from a fourth straight quarter without touring revenue. BTS’ hit “Butter” and revenue from Ithaca Holdings, which HYBE acquired in April, helped the company post record quarterly revenue of 341 billion KRW ($288 million) in Q3, up 79.5% from the prior-year period, the company announced on Thursday (Nov. 4). HYBE held up remarkably well while the pandemic has brought its concert business, historically a major money-maker, to a complete standstill. Concerts accounted for 29% and 33% of HYBE...
Judge Rules LiveXLive Investor Fraud Lawsuit Can Move Forward
Iser conceded in a July court filing that some of the representations made by Ellin were false, writing “had LXL obtained the rights to stream any major music festivals, such festivals not only would have been listed on LXL’s website so its subscribers could pay LXL to view the festivals, but there would have been press releases and/or disclosures of such streaming rights in LXL’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.” In court Thursday, Iser argued that Schnaeir was an accredited investor who had worked as a licensed securities broker for over 20 years and should have done a more thorough job conducting due diligence. If Ellin’s statements about the IPO or representations about his plans to merge LiveXLive with SFX and Quello had been true...
Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss Make Music History In ‘Story of A&M Records’ Series: Watch the Trailer
A&M was masterminded by a pair boasting complementary skills (Alpert, a great jazz trumpeter, and Moss, the businessman), who trusted their gut instincts. Their lifetime achievements were recognized in 2006, when Alpert and Moss were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with duties performed on the night by one of their signings, Sting of The Police. “Whether they were totally obscure or fabulously successful,” reads an essay on the pair, published by the Rock Hall, “they always recorded acts that they believed in.” Episode One of Mr. A & Mr. M airs on Dec. 5, and traces the early days of the label, which, like so many other great creative endeavors, began life in the humblest of beginnings: a garage in Los Angeles. A week later, on Dec. 12, tune ...
Bruce Springsteen In Talks to Sell Recorded Music Catalog to Sony Music
The Springsteen album catalog, which has racked up 65.5 million sales in the United States according to the RIAA website, and which includes the 15-times platinum Born In The U.S.A. and the five-times times platinum The River, still has plenty of firepower, as his music has generated 2.25 million album consumption units in the U.S. since the beginning of 2018, according to MRC Data. While Springsteen has long been associated with Columbia Records and Sony Music, he was among a handful of superstar artists like Garth Brooks, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and other Sony artists Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson who all managed to win back ownership of their recorded masters in the last decades of the 20th century. But now seems to be the perfect time for artists who own their copyrights to cas...
Ticketek Unveils ‘World First’ Integrated Mobile Ticket and Vaccination Check-In
The check-in upgrade gets its first proper consumer trial from this Thursday, beginning with the Kennedy Oaks Day at Flemington Racecourse, through a partnership with the Victorian government. With that particular experience, guests at Ticketek venues can verify their check-in and vaccination status at bag check, by way of a deep-link into the Service Victoria app. The one-stop will be rolled out across Ticketek venues in other Australian states in the coming weeks, a spokesman confirms, and concerts will come on line in due course. Ticketek’s upgrade is a timely one. Restrictions are currently being eased across New South Wales and Victoria, Australia’s two biggest states, after their respective populations nudged past the 80 per cent double-dose vaccination milestone. By hitting those bi...
Utopia Music Acquires Lyric Financial Amid Surge of Investment in Independent Music
Utopia Music’s strengths play well with Lyric Financial’s data analysis to determine the amount of financing it can provide an artist. Its core product is an online platform for creators, rights holders and collection societies that tracks global usage data and maximizes a catalog’s revenues — its tagline is “fair pay for every play.” A separate service for investors helps them value and assess risk when acquiring a recording or publishing catalog. In September, Utopia acquired artificial intelligence startup Musimap to improve recordings’ metadata — information about performers, songwriters and rights owners that requires accuracy for the parties to be paid properly. Investors and the companies they back are increasingly funding artists who look to Chance the Rapper, who put three a...
Tim Sweeney’s ‘Beats In Space’ Radio Show Moves to Apple Music
Both Sweeney and the guest’s DJ mixes will then be available on the Beats In Space show page, along with on-demand guest interviews. Sweeney’s debut guest is English electronic artist Planningtorock, with their mix featuring music from their 2021 EP Gay Dreams Do Come True, along with edits they’ve done for Romy and Lady Gaga and favorite tracks by Jimmy Somerville, Arca and more. Influenced by the UK’s pirate radio culture, Sweeney began Beats in Space in 1999 while a student at NYU, with his program giving a platform to the then almost entirely underground world of techno, house, ambient and more. He’s done more than 1,000 episodes of Beats In Space since the show’s launch, with guests throughout the years including stars like Gerd Janson, Carl Cra...
WME Music Co-Head Scott Clayton Is Leaving for UTA
The powerhouse Nashville agent who reps John Mayer and Kings of Leon was promoted to help lead WME’s music division in June 2020. Powerhouse agent Scott Clayton has left WME and is heading over to United Talent Agency, sources tell Billboard. In June 2020, Clayton was promoted to co-head of WME’s music division along with Kirk Sommer in Los Angeles and Lucy Dickins in London when Marc Geiger and Sara Newkirk Simon left the roles. This is the second major move in recent years for the Nashville-based agent who represents John Mayer, Zac Brown Band and Kings of Leon. In 2017, Clayton rocked Nashville when he quit CAA to work for cross-town rival WME. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving ...
Live Nation Selling Collectible Ticket Stub NFTs for Swedish House Mafia Tour
Live Nation is launching the platform for Swedish House Mafia‘s “Paradise Again” tour, which opens in Miami on July 29, 2022, with tickets now on sale. Fans will be able to view, share, gift, trade, and even resell their NFT stubs on Livenation.com. Just don’t try to use the NFTs to try and get into the show, company officials explain in a press release — “these are collector items and will not replace the digital tickets needed to physically enter the show.” “Our Live Stubs product brings back the nostalgia of collecting ticket stubs while also giving artists a new tool to deepen that relationship with their fans and we can’t wait to see what the creativity of this community dreams up as it grows,” says Michael Rapino, Live Nation president a...
The Deals: A$AP Ferg Joins Roc Nation; UTA Music Signs Dillon Francis
Dillon Francis has signed with UTA Music to oversee the DJ’s film, television and alternative media pursuits in addition to his international touring business in Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Francis will continue to be represented by Canopy Media Partners and TMWRK. Having just put out his fifth record Happy Machine, Francis is working on endeavors outside of music, penning scripts for his animated series titled Gerald’s World, which is currently in development. He is also putting together a treatment for a show about his alter-ego DJ Hanzel. Big Loud Records has signed rising country singer Jake Worthington to its growing lineup of artists. Worthington, who emerged as a finalist on NBC’s The Voice in 2014,...
‘Easy’ Money: Adele’s Return Lifts Her Entire Streaming Catalog
Yet Adele’s blockbuster return has been different than her peers’ major debuts in one significant way: her one new song is causing all her older songs — yes, all of them — to dramatically surge on streaming platforms as well. As “Easy On Me” crowns the Hot 100 in its first full week of release (the single debuted at No. 68 on last week’s chart based solely on its first five hours of availability), listeners have also flocked to her old albums. For the week ending Oct. 21, the total U.S. on-demand streams for Adele’s 2008 album 19, 2011’s 21 and 2015’s 25 increased a whopping 93% to 11.34 million streams, 79% to 25.86 million and 93% to 33.39 million, respectively, compared to the prior week, according to MRC Data. Multiple songs earned even greater streaming i...
