Modern Sky from China teamed up with Steel Wool Entertainment out of California to bring the Strawberry Festival stateside. Kevin Morrow runs Steel Wool and used to handle touring stuff at Live Nation New York before starting his company over a decade ago. The deal stays vague on money but covers brand expansion, plus helping indie Chinese artists break into international markets.
Morrow spent three decades in the business working with acts like Anderson .Paak and Hayley Kiyoko. Modern Sky started in the late 90s and runs everything from publishing to venues under a lifestyle-focused business model. The founder Shen Lihui wants to swap Western music into China while pushing Chinese creativity outward, and Morrow said the festival...
Warner Music Group moved Craig Kallman into a Chief Music Officer spot after he spent almost 35 years at Atlantic Records, where he ran things as Chairman and CEO for two decades. The guy will keep signing artists to Big Beat, which he started back in the 80s, and those acts will get worked by Atlantic or Warner Records, depending on the situation. Robert Kyncl said Kallman shaped modern music and left his mark across the whole industry.
His first signing in the new gig is Elkan, who produced that Drake and PartyNextDoor track NOKIA. Kallman helped break artists like Bruno Mars and Cardi B while at Atlantic, and he even co-produced her billion-stream hit I Like It. The exec started as a Manhattan DJ before launching Big Beat as an...
Believe just scooped up ampd Method and brought its founder, Darya Pourshasb, on board as Chief Marketing Officer. She used to run premium content stuff at Spotify, where she apparently crushed over 300 campaigns for indie artists and labels, plus she did streaming partnerships at Sony before that. Denis Ladegaillerie from Believe said marketing has gotten messy and complicated, and they needed someone who gets how to actually grow audiences instead of just burning cash.
Pourshasb will handle strategy and execution for marketing services while building out catalog marketing across the company. She mentioned wanting to use data-driven campaigns to boost engagement and monetization for both new releases and older catalog material.
Spotify finally brought music videos to Premium subscribers across the US and Canada after testing the feature internationally since March. Charlie Hellman from the company said the rollout gives fans a better discovery experience while creating extra revenue for publishers and songwriters. The catalog stays pretty limited for the moment, with clips from artists like Ariana Grande and BABYMONSTER available to people paying about 12 bucks monthly.
The expansion happened after Spotify locked down licensing agreements with Universal, Sony, and Warner, plus deals with BMG and Kobalt that opened doors for audiovisual stuff. The streamer claimed users who watch a video after hearing a song are way more likely to stream that track again...
TikTok crowned KATSEYE as their Global Artist of the Year after the girl group pulled 30 billion views and 12 million user creations on the platform. The HYBE and Geffen joint project got Grammy nods recently, and HYBE's CEO said it proves their K-pop production system works outside Korea. Their tracks, Gnarly and Gabriela, blew up with dance trends that got millions of people making videos.
A 1962 song by Connie Francis called Pretty Little Baby became the Global Song of the Year with over 68 billion views from 28 million uses. The track hit streaming platforms hard and landed on Billboard charts after going viral, which got the 80-something singer to finally join TikTok and post about how wild it is that her old recording found a new...
beatBread just hit the 100 million dollar mark after funding over 1,700 deals with artists and labels spread across 42 countries since 2020. The platform gives advances on catalog music and unreleased stuff, with artists paying back from their streaming revenue on whatever timeline works for them. Tracy Maddux, who recently took over as interim CEO, said the milestone proves that independent musicians need alternatives while the industry keeps threatening their autonomy.
The catalog tied to these deals racked up almost 68 billion streams total, and 13.6 billion came from agreements signed just this year. beatBread already launched another 100 million dollar fund aimed at labels and distributors who want to dodge traditional financing...
Min Hee-jin is setting up her first boy group through her new company OOAK after bailing from HYBE-owned ADOR over that whole messy control dispute. The executive behind NewJeans told a YouTube channel she has zero interest in launching another girl group anytime soon, and auditions for the boy band project already got slammed with applications that forced organizers to shut things down early because they got overwhelmed.
She wants to shake up how the Korean industry works by pushing for shorter contracts instead of the multi-year deals that lock artists in. Min is still fighting HYBE in court over the value of her shares, which sits around 17 million bucks, and a ruling should drop early next year.
The timing lines up with Republic...
Matt Pincus and his Trust Records operation just locked down a major deal with Bad Brains that covers everything from their publishing and masters to their name and image rights. The Washington, DC legends formed back in the late 70s and basically invented this whole hardcore punk meets reggae thing that influenced everyone from Metallica to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their self-titled debut plus Rock For Light and a bunch of other classic albums, are part of the package.
Pincus made bank selling SONGS Music Publishing for around 160 million before starting Trust to preserve punk and hardcore catalog stuff. Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer will sit on an Artist Advisory Board to help steer the company's direction. The whole point is...
Republic Records just grabbed JYT, which is this five-person boy band that producer Freddy Wexler put together with teenagers aged 15 to 17. The group already had half a million followers before dropping any actual music, and their first track came out recently. Monte Lipman from Republic said they wanted to work with Wexler for like 20 years, and this is how it finally happened through his Wexler Records imprint.
The whole thing feels like labels are trying to copy what HYBE did with KATSEYE, which got Grammy nods after barely a year. HYBE's CEO basically said the pop group model died after the financial crisis because investors got scared of dumping money into acts that might not pay off. The kids trained with Justin Bieber's old...
