Welcome to Music Enterprise Worldwide’s weekly round-up – the place we ensure that you caught the 5 greatest tales to hit our headlines over the previous seven days. MBW’s round-up is supported by Centtrip, which helps over 500 of the world’s best-selling artists maximize their earnings and cut back their touring prices.
This week introduced two large tales involving Common Music Group. On Tuesday (March 26) South Korea-based leisure big HYBE introduced that it has struck an expanded long-term settlement with UMG.
The deal supplies UMG with unique distribution rights for HYBE’s music for the following 10 years and likewise sees UMG put money into – and additional collaborate with – HYBE’s world superfan and D2C platform, Weverse.
In the meantime, on Thursday (March 28), UMG introduced one other expanded deal, this time with audio streaming big Spotify. In line with the businesses, they are going to collaborate on “new promotional and social instruments” for UMG artists on the Spotify platform.
Moreover, a brand new settlement with Common Music Publishing Group (UMPG) will allow Spotify to distribute music movies within the US.
Additionally this week, a rapper referred to as Trefuego was ordered by a court docket in Texas to pay over $800,000 in damages to Sony Music for utilizing an unlicensed pattern in his TikTok hit 90mh.
Elsewhere, citing an interview with Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe, The Monetary Occasions reported that the European media big is contemplating a merger for its music division BMG.
Plus, the Board of Administrators of Paris-born music firm Imagine formally invited Warner Music Group to submit “a binding, unconditional and totally financed provide” for Imagine.
HYBE has struck what it calls an expanded long-term settlement with Common Music Group (UMG).
The deal supplies UMG with unique distribution rights for HYBE’s music for the following 10 years.
The even larger information? The deal may also see UMG put money into – and additional collaborate with – HYBE’s world superfan platform, Weverse. (Sources inform MBW that UMG has made a minority funding in Weverse as a part of the brand new partnership.)
In line with the 2 firms’ announcement on March 26, the “partnership will assist improve the expansion” of Weverse in North America…
The most important music enterprise story to this point this 12 months is Common Music Group’s very public falling out with social video app TikTok.
However there’s one other broadly used app that has a really totally different relationship with UMG, the world’s greatest music rightsholder. As of this week, that relationship can be getting a lot nearer.
UMG has simply introduced an enlargement of what it calls its “strategic relationship” with Spotify.
In January final 12 months, MBW broke the information that Sony Music had filed a copyright infringement lawsuit towards Trefuego, a rapper behind TikTok hit 90mh.
Sony Music’s lawsuit accused Trefuego, inside 90mh, of “the flagrant and deliberate infringement” of each the sound recording and underlying composition within the 1986 observe Reflections, launched by Japanese composer Toshifumi Hinata (Hinata). (Sony Music Leisure owns copyrights within the sound recording;, whereas Sony Music Publishing’s copyrights cowl the composition).
As we defined in our report on the time, the observe went viral on TikTok and YouTube and racked up over 170 million Spotify streams. As we famous then, Sony had a robust case: It’s laborious to mistake a sped-up key violin motif from Hinata’s observe showing, looped repeatedly, in 90mh.
The result of the case has now been determined, and, based on the court docket, Trefuego has to pay up. In a judgment issued in a Texas court docket on Wednesday (March 27), Trefuego (Dantreal Daevon Clark-Rainbolt) was ordered to pay Sony Music $802,997.23 in damages…
Is Warner Music Group really going to launch a $1.8 billion+ takeover bid for Imagine? We’ll know inside 13 days.
On Monday (March 25), the Board of Administrators of the Paris-born music firm formally invited Warner Music Group to submit “a binding, unconditional and totally financed provide” for Imagine.
Imagine’s Board has given WMG just below two weeks to take action, asking that the latter firm submit its provide no later than April 7, 2024.
That might be exactly one month after WMG introduced publicly (on March 7) that it was probably occupied with making a bid for Imagine…
