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We help brands connect with customers via music in a variety of innovative ways - at music festivals we enlist performing artists to create branded content, integrate advertisers into existing record label events or in the case of Austin City Limits 2023, build our own mini-festival for a partner brand. Reviewing some highlights from last year, we are incredibly thankful and humbled that Chevron tapped BYGMusic to create a bespoke branded event in Austin from the ground up - supporting the Texas launch of their new loyalty app. The event, combined with artists creating content on social media, effectively connected the brand to music and music fans in Texas and drove consumer behavior via music with a positive business impact. #advertising #marketing #media #socialmedia #socialinfluence  #influencermarketing #music #musicmarketing #musicbusiness #musicindustry #livestream #branding #brandedcontent #contentmarketing  #musicstreaming #musicmatters #socialstrategy #socialmediatrends #social #emergingartists #digitalmarketing

With Coachella’s 2nd weekend now at a close and the tents being brought down, many are wondering about the reasons behind their reported lowest ticket sales in 10 years.   At Savanta, we polled 2,000 U.S. consumers on live events, Coachella, and personal spending to gain an insight on what seems to be a broader trend.   Our research suggests the lack of interest could be reflective of a shift in value perception, with 69% of respondents naming price as a most important factor when deciding to attend a music festival. This trend seems to be rooted in a current cutback on consumer spending, with 45% of respondents reported to be spending more on essential items (i.e. utilities and health care) while 44% indicated they’re spending less on non-essential items (i.e. eating out). Check out my article below! https://lnkd.in/eU6fcH3i

The generation that spends the most money on concerts in the US? It's not millennials, it's Gen Z. In Q2 2024, U.S. Gen Z spent an average of $38 on concerts and festivals, the most ever. Gen Z is starting to realize the appeal of live concerts. Gen Z is also the biggest consumer of K-pop. You don't need to do any math to see the future of K-pop. https://lnkd.in/gTFDW9gG

New Post: Inside the Fastest-Growing, Most Complicated Sector of the Music Business - https://lnkd.in/gZP8Y-kf - For the past several years, the organizations that collect public performance royalties have been growing far faster than most of the music business, especially in Europe. Revenue at the French collective management organization SACEM rose 34% in 2022, while its UK counterpart, PRS for Music, doubled its revenue since 2014. The growth is fast enough to make the whole alphabet soup of initials exciting to the point of attracting investment-backed rivals to the traditional nonprofits — think BMI, which just took on outside investment, or Kobalt’s AMRA.  Related SACEM Revenue Rose 5% to Record $1.6B in 2023 06/05/2024 Until about a decade ago, the traditional collective management organizations, known as CMOs, licensed rights within a given territory for compositions played in public — at concerts, in stores and restaurants, on television and radio, and eventually from streaming services. (Some also collect for mechanical rights or neighboring rights and remit that to rightsholders through related organizations.) And while European CMOs still do that, for the last decade they have also competed against one another to represent and license online rights in Europe and some other territories (not including the U.S.). This has made the most complicated part of a complex business even harder to understand, since it allows publishers and songwriters to assign different kinds of rights in different territories to different CMOs. In the U.S., for example, songwriters can join ASCAP or BMI, then assign certain rights in other territories to different organizations, in order to collect that money directly instead of indirectly, although only very successful creators tend to do this.   As the pandemic subsided in 2021, CMO growth turned to hypergrowth, fueled by increases in online revenue, the reopening of restaurants and stores, and the roaring comeback of the concert business. The annus mirabilis was 2022, especially for the European societies that represent the most U.S. repertoire: SACEM grew 34%, PRS 23%, Sweden’s STIM 20% and Germany’s GEMA 13%. Now growth is coming down to earth, but it’s still healthy — last year, revenue grew 5% at SACEM (where distributions grew 19%), 12% at PRS, 8.4% at GEMA and 14.2% at STIM. So I was eager to write a column about how important this is for songwriters and the music publishing business that supports them, what this means for the future, and how creators can figure out which CMO would be the best for them. Instead, I ended up spending a few days staring into an aby

New Post: Why Are IFPI & MIDiA’s 2023 Revenue Figures So Far Apart? The Answer Lies in ‘Expanded Rights’ - https://lnkd.in/g_89jjHN - The IFPI’s annual figure for global recorded music revenue, announced Thursday (Mar. 21) for 2023, is the gold standard for tracking the health of the music business. It’s the number most often cited in corporate reports, market research and media articles. It’s also a bit outdated.  Traditionally, record labels have sold and streamed music, secured synch licenses and collected performance and neighboring rights royalties. But a modern record label also collects expanded rights revenues — from multi-right, 360-degree recording contracts — by taking a share of artists’ income from merchandise, touring and branding, among other sources. Those expanded rights revenues aren’t part of the IFPI’s annual revenue tally, but MIDiA Research includes that — and more — in its annual estimate.   Related IFPI Global Report 2024: Music Revenues Climb 10% to $28.6 Billion 03/22/2024 MIDiA’s more fulsome figure for global recorded music revenue in 2023 was $35.1 billion, nearly 23% higher than the IFPI’s $28.6 billion. According to MIDiA, which tells Billboard its estimate came from publicly available information and interviews, expanded rights revenue totaled $3.5 billion in 2023.   Some expanded rights revenue is in plain sight. Universal Music Group, for example, took in 706 million euros ($764 million) of merchandising revenue from Bravado, its wholly owned merchandise company, in 2023. For other companies, expanded rights are harder to pin down. Warner Music Group had $744 million of artist services and expanded-rights revenue in 2023. WMG’s expanded rights includes merchandising, VIP ticketing, fan clubs, concert promotion and management, according to its latest quarterly report.     Neither global revenue figure is right or wrong; they’re just different. The IFPI’s revenue figures reflect how labels monetize the rights associated with master recordings through sales, streaming and licensing. MIDiA’s revenue figure acknowledges the role of record labels has expanded far beyond monetization of masters.   Even the term “expanded rights” is problematic because it suggests merchandise and branding isn’t central to a record label’s mission. That isn’t necessarily the case in 2024. Consider the wave of K-pop companies expanding globally out of South Korea. HYBE, home of boy band BTS, is a hybrid record label, talent agency and management company with a slow, painstaking artist development process and a business model that captures far more than recorded music sales. In 2023, 55% of HYBE’s revenue ca

🎤 Are Concerts Really Just for Fans? Or a Strategy for New Audiences? In my latest blog, I explore the dual purpose of concerts—rewarding long-time fans while strategically expanding an artist's reach to new listeners. Using case studies from Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour, Billie Eilish at Coachella, Coldplay's Music of the Spheres Tour, and Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, I dive into the balance between fan loyalty and audience growth. 🎟️ Whether you're a dedicated fan or a casual listener, concerts have something for everyone. Read more and find out why this balance is key to an artist’s long-term success! 👉 https://lnkd.in/djbCp-ER #MusicIndustry #Concerts #FanEngagement #AudienceGrowth #Marketing #LiveMusic

Interesting article in the Observer on how women are changing music management.

“Legendary rock band KISS are selling their song catalog, name, image and likeness — including their face paint designs — to music investment firm Pophouse Entertainment. Pophouse confirmed the deal in a statement obtained by MBW on Thursday (April 4) following reports by Bloomberg and The Associated Press. While the company did not disclose the size of its investment in KISS, the news outlets reported it to be worth more than USD $300 million. In addition to KISS’ brand name, catalog and intellectual property, the agreement also covers KISS’ artist share of the master recordings and publishing rights. Pophouse’s vision extends far beyond simply acquiring a catalog of iconic songs like Rock and Roll All Nite and I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night. The company also intends to preserve KISS’ “iconic music, enigmatic personas, and expressive imagery for generations to come.” #KISS #Pophouse #ABBA #Avatars #Brand #Branding #Artists #Live #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #ImageRights #DigitalRights #IP #IntelectualProperty #MusicPublishing #Music #MusicBusiness #Musica #MusicIndustry #Musique #Musik #MusicBiz #LikenessRights

New Post: Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota on Indie Challenges, Helping Startups & Bringing More Value to Music - https://lnkd.in/gqvvwTtM - When Jeremy Sirota signed on as CEO of indie digital rights nonprofit Merlin in January 2020, he had already spent years championing the independent music community.  After starting his career as a tech lawyer in the mid-2000s, Sirota worked for nine years at the Warner Music Group at WEA and ADA, helping to distribute WMG’s affiliated indie-label partners. He then moved to Facebook Music, where he was independent label lead for its business and partnerships team. That experience gives him the perspective needed to assist Merlin’s 500-plus members representing 30,000-plus label partners in more than 70 countries in navigating an increasingly complex digital world.  Over the past four years, he has worked to set those labels — which collectively represent some 15% of the global recorded-music market — on a course to optimize partnerships that increasingly power the business. They include expanded alliances with Meta and YouTube; deals with SoundCloud, for its fan-powered royalties structure, and Deezer, for its “artist-centric” royalties plan; and a new initiative, Merlin Connect, that grants select tech startups a license for its members’ catalogs to help educate those new companies about music usage on their platforms while getting Merlin’s labels and their artists paid.  Related Merlin Launches New Initiative to Help Emerging Tech Platforms License Indie Music 06/05/2024 Since Sirota became CEO, Merlin has added more than 100 members and launched a mentorship program, Merlin Engage, which pairs women music executives with the next generation of female industry leaders. He’s also debuted Merlin Insights, launched in April to help parse the avalanche of data that indies must process. And as the sector grows globally, Sirota says he’s focused on how to best superserve Merlin’s labels. “There are a lot of ways we think about growth,” he explains. “The most important are ‘Am I driving more value to my members? Am I helping support their ability to be independent? And am I helping to shape a future where artistry, authenticity and creativity can thrive?’ ”  Have you brought in new members and territories this year? Our growth is about making sure that our values are held by the members who join. This year, 11 new members have joined Merlin, including Artist Partner Group, UNIFIED and Rostrum Pacific. We’ve grown the team to deliver on white-glove support. That involves three things: automate as much as possible; communicate; and collaborate more efficiently and effectively

New Post: The 100 Greatest Songs About the Music Industry: Staff List - https://lnkd.in/g_Uehi-b - Is it as universal a song subject as love, as timeless as dancing or partying, as relatable as heartbreak or misery or anger? Not quite — but for the actual recording artists behind the songs, it’s the one topic that they’re pretty much guaranteed to have a surfeit of experience in, the one that they can be trusted as an authority on to at least some degree: the music industry itself. For as long as the music industry has existed, artists have been writing, recording and performing songs about the business that birthed them. Some of them are explicitly biographical, some of them written more in abstract. Some of them offer direct commentary, some of them just present the facts (as the artist sees them) and lets the listener come to their own conclusions. Some of them are highly critical and pissed off about the state of things, some of them… well, we wouldn’t say we can name a ton of songs that are all about how swell things currently are in the music biz — at least that aren’t being bitterly sarcastic about it — but there are some that are less explicitly fire-and-brimstone, anyway. And as a staff of writers and editors who spend our lives covering all the happenings of the music industry, we have to admit that these songs hold a somewhat special place in our hearts (particularly the ones that mention Billboard by name, natch). We might not share the exact experiences of the artists themselves — sometimes we may even come from the exact other side of their experience — but we’ve seen enough of the business to at least know and understand what they’re talking about, and often to be able to lend a sympathetic ear to their plight. And if the song happens to be a jam even apart from its insider insight, even better, of course. Here are the Billboard staff’s picks for the 100 greatest songs ever written about the music industry, ranging from classic rock staples to ’90s hip-hop cautionary tales to pop club-slayers from this very year. Some of them tell entire stories about the industry, some of them only memorably glance at in passing, some are told wholly in allegory — but all of them leave you just a little bit wiser and a little more understanding about this thing of ours. - #news #business #world #jobs #school #passion