- 2 days ago
We’re halfway through 2026, and the music industry has already had its fair share of headline-making moments. From Spotify's AI remix plans and Drake's surprise three-album drop to company mergers and antitrust battles, Billboard's business editorial team breaks down the biggest stories shaping the industry so far this year. They also revisit the predictions they made at the start of 2026 in an earlier episode of Billboard On The Record, revealing which have already come true, which surprised them and what they expect to happen next. Host Kristin Robinson is joined by Billboard executive editor of business Dan Rys, senior finance correspondent Elizabeth Dilts Marshall and senior legal correspondent Bill Donahue to unpack what these developments mean for artists, executives and the future of the music business.
Love what you hear? Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe so you never miss an episode of Billboard On The Record.
Love what you hear? Follow Billboard On The Record on Instagram, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Youtube @billboard so you never miss an episode.
Billboard On The Record is a podcast in partnership with SickBird Productions.
Host:
Kristin Robinson
Executive Producers:
Diona DaCosta
Jade Watson
Produced By:
Kayla Forman
Mateo Vergara
Edited By:
Rachel Derbyshire
Love what you hear? Don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe so you never miss an episode of Billboard On The Record.
Love what you hear? Follow Billboard On The Record on Instagram, TikTok, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Youtube @billboard so you never miss an episode.
Billboard On The Record is a podcast in partnership with SickBird Productions.
Host:
Kristin Robinson
Executive Producers:
Diona DaCosta
Jade Watson
Produced By:
Kayla Forman
Mateo Vergara
Edited By:
Rachel Derbyshire
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00:00The big question now is what is the judge going to do in terms of punishment for Live Nation?
00:00:04One of the big options that he has is to break up the company.
00:00:08I feel like it's really difficult to break up two companies after you allowed them to merge.
00:00:13It is historically very, very rare.
00:00:15I do not think that independent music companies should be worried.
00:00:18There is a lot of health in the independent music sector,
00:00:21and I also think that we're coming to a bit of a blurring of the lines of what we're even
00:00:26really talking about
00:00:27when we're talking about independent music.
00:00:28What is indie versus major?
00:00:30We're in the midst of this kind of shift here.
00:00:33Even within entertainment, music, for all of its incredible cultural impact,
00:00:40financially is still significantly smaller than other entertainment industries on a monetary basis.
00:00:47I'm not surprised that chaotic goods struck such a chord,
00:00:50because I think in the time period that we're in, everyone is obsessed with conspiracy theories.
00:00:56People don't believe anything anymore.
00:01:03We are midway through 2026, y'all, and so much has already happened in the music business this year.
00:01:08Drake released not one, not two, but three albums in one day.
00:01:13Spotify is building an AI music model for remixing and covers.
00:01:16An episode of this podcast went viral and led to a beloved indie rock band being called a psyop, of
00:01:22all things.
00:01:23And the merger of Concord and BMG is set to create what we're calling a new mini-major.
00:01:29And is it possible that Live Nation and Ticketmaster might actually get broken up now?
00:01:34I had to have my colleagues Bill Donahue, Liz Stiltz-Marshall, and Dan Rice back on the pod six months
00:01:40after their last appearance
00:01:41to talk through everything that's happened so far.
00:01:44All right, Liz, Dan, and Bill, welcome to On The Record.
00:01:47Welcome back, actually, my first returning guest.
00:01:50How are you guys doing?
00:01:51Great. Can't complain.
00:01:53Okay.
00:01:53Warmed up.
00:01:54All right, so we actually, for those who don't know,
00:01:58we convened at the beginning of this year to talk about what our predictions were for 2026.
00:02:03So we're here to do that again, but we're doing more of a mid-year check-in,
00:02:07and we're also going to share some of our predictions for later this year.
00:02:10But in case you didn't catch the last time, I'm going to have them introduce themselves again.
00:02:14So, Bill, take it away.
00:02:16Who are you?
00:02:17Who am I really deep down?
00:02:20I'm Bill Donahue.
00:02:22I am the senior legal affairs reporter here at Billboard.
00:02:25I write about big lawsuits and anything involving the music industry and lawyers.
00:02:30Amazing.
00:02:31Dan?
00:02:31My name is Dan Rice.
00:02:33I am the executive editor of business at Billboard,
00:02:36so I oversee all of our music business coverage.
00:02:39Amazing.
00:02:40Liz?
00:02:40I'm Elizabeth Diltz-Marshall.
00:02:43I cover financial news for Billboard,
00:02:45so I've been writing about all of the crazy amounts of mergers and acquisitions
00:02:50and smattering of catalog deals, but it's been busy.
00:02:54It has been busy.
00:02:55Okay, that's actually a perfect segue.
00:02:57So, we have the spin the record wheel, which we do at the end of every episode of On the
00:03:00Record.
00:03:01We have a bunch of different topics on here that we think are big topics for 2026.
00:03:07So, I'm going to spin this record, and then we're just going to take it topic by topic,
00:03:11one of those being all of these mergers that are happening.
00:03:14So, we'll see what it lands on.
00:03:16All right.
00:03:17I'm going to take these off one by one.
00:03:22Okay.
00:03:23Oh, this is one for me.
00:03:24Okay.
00:03:25So, UMG and Spotify announced a licensing deal for Spotify's forthcoming AI music remixing product.
00:03:31What do we know about this deal, and how does it fit to the overall AI music landscape?
00:03:36So, first of all, we don't know a ton about this deal, honestly.
00:03:40I think one of the big hallmarks that I've noticed reporting on AI for us is that all of these
00:03:45deals are purposely worded very vaguely,
00:03:48so as to not give too much away.
00:03:51I do think that is in part because everyone's still figuring out what AI licensing even is.
00:03:56They don't know.
00:03:56Yeah, so it's like brand new territory, but what we do know is that this will be for participating artists
00:04:04and songwriters.
00:04:05That was specifically worded in the press release that way.
00:04:08So, it does seem that UMG artists and songwriters will choose whether or not they participate,
00:04:15but that's about all we know.
00:04:17We know that Spotify is trying to launch this product sometime this year, but they haven't said when that's going
00:04:22to be,
00:04:23but we know that it's going to be AI remixes and covers.
00:04:26So, they're not making new music.
00:04:28They're just working with existing IP as kind of like a super fan product.
00:04:33And also, we know that this remixing product will be available for an additional cost on top of premium.
00:04:39So, if you just have Spotify premium, that's not enough to be able to access this.
00:04:44Could be costly.
00:04:46Well, so a couple of things, too.
00:04:47I think you kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of being, talking about how specific they
00:04:54were.
00:04:54Because you're right, these releases are worded vaguely, but they're worded very specifically vaguely.
00:05:00And as we've discussed several times, it's only in retrospect that we go back and we're like,
00:05:05oh, that actually meant this instead of that.
00:05:09And I think that goes back to something that I said when we were first on this podcast,
00:05:12which is that we're still developing language around AI and how we're talking about AI
00:05:18and how to be clear about what it is that we're talking about when we mention AI.
00:05:23And I think that that gets into the nitty gritty of the detail of this that we don't really know
00:05:29yet.
00:05:30I think it's also interesting from the, you know, who is the audience for these kind of services
00:05:36and like from a consumer-facing side.
00:05:38And it's something we've discussed a lot in meetings talking about, you know, the business of AI music.
00:05:45And I think coming from the Spotify side where you already have, you know, such a dedicated subscriber base,
00:05:52adding AI tools on top of that is an interesting way to look at it as opposed to, you know,
00:05:59these standalone services and whether or not that will really engage people in doing these remixes,
00:06:06doing that kind of stuff.
00:06:06You know, if you're in a platform where you're listening to music already and this is a thing you can
00:06:11do, sure.
00:06:12Are you going to seek it out as a standalone service?
00:06:16Yes.
00:06:17I bet they will offer it as both because they've...
00:06:21So kudos to Kristen first off because you kind of called this before you did.
00:06:27You were like, I wonder if they're going to work in AI as a way to like basically fend off
00:06:36what Suno kind of looked like
00:06:38maybe what it was trying to do.
00:06:39Like Suno was trying to create an environment where people would both create and consume in the same ecosystem.
00:06:49It's like basically not a worry if Spotify pulls this off.
00:06:53But it also goes to the segmentation, the customer segmentation that investors have been so eager to see the DSPs
00:07:01roll out
00:07:02and, you know, Spotify more than any.
00:07:05This is like they went down.
00:07:08They said it at Investor Day that they went down the road of what was going to get us to
00:07:13the premium subscriber customer behavior.
00:07:18Like who was going to be willing to spend the most?
00:07:21And what they were surprised by, they totally thought it was always going to be music.
00:07:24They always thought it was going to be offering that more premium listening experience, that better audio quality.
00:07:32But it turned out it was audiobooks and people willing to add on more hours to their audiobook subscriptions
00:07:42because they were hitting their monthly limit so frequently.
00:07:45So I think that's what makes me think that they're going to offer this as an add-on as well
00:07:50as a premium tier subscription.
00:07:51Interesting.
00:07:52Because they were saying at their Investor Day, they think that they could get up, you know, in some future
00:07:57capacity of Spotify subscription could cost as much as $100 a month.
00:08:02That's what they think people will be willing to pay.
00:08:05Well, we'll see about that.
00:08:06All of us just did the same noise.
00:08:08Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know about $100 a month, but I will say 15 hours of audiobooks is
00:08:13what they're offering right now.
00:08:14And I have hit that limit and considered before.
00:08:16Do I wait to the next month for it to all come back?
00:08:20And then I keep listening to my book?
00:08:22Or do I just do the add-on?
00:08:23So I do understand that the kind of add-on for audiobooks is really unlocking a lot of money for
00:08:29Spotify.
00:08:30I think it remains to be seen if people will do the same for AI music remixing.
00:08:36I do think, though, that Spotify is in a really good position right now.
00:08:40Kind of going back to what Bill said, there's a lot of companies in the AI music landscape right now.
00:08:46And this kind of gets to the second part of the question here.
00:08:49There's a lot of companies in the AI music landscape that are doing remixing products, remixing of existing IP.
00:08:55That is an uphill battle for several reasons.
00:08:58One of which is that there is a lot of competition right now.
00:09:01There's a lot of companies that are pursuing a very similar vision.
00:09:04But Spotify's big advantage is, one, they already have licenses with a lot of music companies.
00:09:10Sure, they need to get additional licenses for this AI product.
00:09:14But they already have the relationships.
00:09:15This is not a brand new startup.
00:09:17They have money to burn that some of these startups are probably not going to have.
00:09:22And additionally, people are already going to Spotify.
00:09:24Yeah, the music's already there.
00:09:26So that's the big thing.
00:09:26Yeah.
00:09:27I don't think that...
00:09:28Well, I think it will be hard to get people to go to a new platform, specifically just for AI
00:09:34remixing.
00:09:35One more thing I'll add to that is there's this whole debate that's kicked up.
00:09:40Actually, I believe starting on the podcast, when I spoke with Michael Nash, the chief digital officer of UMG,
00:09:46that they really want platforms that they work with for AI licensing to be walled gardens,
00:09:53which means to them that you cannot take these remixes and whatever you make with AI off of the platform
00:09:59that it came from.
00:10:00Right.
00:10:00And if you walled off...
00:10:03You know, if the walled garden is Spotify, you're already at the end of a destination where all the consumption's
00:10:08already happening.
00:10:09So I think that...
00:10:10That's an appealing walled garden.
00:10:11It's an appealing walled garden.
00:10:13Yeah, right.
00:10:14Yeah.
00:10:14So...
00:10:15Yeah.
00:10:15I think one of the key issues here goes back to what we were talking about in terms of participating
00:10:21artists, too.
00:10:23Like, you do need the artist to be on board, both because it's their music, their voice, their name and
00:10:31likeness,
00:10:32but also because they are going to want to see some benefit for exposing their work to the AI world.
00:10:39And that means money.
00:10:41And that means assurances.
00:10:43And that means a lot.
00:10:44And Universal and any label can basically bring everybody together and be like,
00:10:51hey, we've created this framework of a deal.
00:10:54You know, let's get to work and let's allow this to happen.
00:10:58But unless you have artists opting in and Universal can't do that and Spotify can't do that, unless the artists
00:11:06themselves see some benefit to doing this, then what is this tool actually going to look like?
00:11:12Yeah, I mean, and I think it's also always worth pointing out that it's not just the artists that need
00:11:17to opt in.
00:11:18It's also the songwriters.
00:11:19So it is very possible that a song could get where, you know, the artist is fine with it, but
00:11:25there's one of the five songwriters that's not OK with it.
00:11:28And that could halt one of the songs being part of this AI remix platform.
00:11:34So it's still an uphill battle for Spotify.
00:11:36There's still a lot that they need to do.
00:11:37They need to get licenses with other music companies, too.
00:11:40Again, going back to the songwriter thing, a lot of songwriters are, you know, on a track that is released
00:11:45by UMG on the recorded music side.
00:11:48You know, you could have five songwriters that are scattered between Cobalt, Warner Chapel, UMPG, etc.
00:11:54So you need to have licenses with all of them.
00:11:56And that was something that became crystal clear during the Universal TikTok standoff a couple of years ago.
00:12:02Yeah.
00:12:02When it was like, oh, all of the Universal music songs are going to come down.
00:12:06But then it was like Sony songs came down and Warner songs came down because of the publishing agreements.
00:12:11Yeah.
00:12:11And can you remind me on like who potentially could benefit from it?
00:12:15Like, could the songwriters get like, would it make a little bit more money for them in their pockets?
00:12:22Because I'm just thinking that, like, who are consumers actually going to remix on Spotify if you have this?
00:12:30It's going to be Taylor Swift.
00:12:31It's going to be those nine out of top ten selling artists that are all on UMG.
00:12:37It's not going to be the person who's got a thousand followers.
00:12:41But maybe could it also benefit them a little bit?
00:12:45Well, and I think it's interesting because I think if those top tier artists aren't opting into a deal like
00:12:51this,
00:12:52then that affects use case, right?
00:12:53I love the idea that maybe like they're all talking to each other and like forming a little union.
00:12:58The secret superstar group chat.
00:13:00But they could be good about it, you know?
00:13:02They could be like, Benito's like, I'm going to pull up.
00:13:05I'm going to pull up all the latents on yours.
00:13:06Like a dead end when you're looking for a particular artist is a very frustrating user experience
00:13:12when you're talking about music on a digital platform.
00:13:15Like and so if you get enough people opting out, it really impacts the user experience.
00:13:21Well, yeah, that was like early streaming.
00:13:23Like, you know, remember way back in the day when we all first signed up for places like Spotify
00:13:27and you go on there and you realize that some of your favorite albums are just simply not there yet.
00:13:31And it took years to get there.
00:13:32So I also do want to leave the door open to like maybe the first few years it's going to
00:13:37be really spotty,
00:13:37but it could end up being, you know, more of a comprehensive catalog to remix in the future.
00:13:44But I will say just to tie this up before we move on.
00:13:48Yes, songwriters could have new revenue streams appear from this.
00:13:52I think it's important to define what AI licensing looks like so far.
00:13:57And it seems like there's the training side or the input side and then the output side.
00:14:02And then and so on the input side, you know, you do need the songwriters and the artists to participate
00:14:10in the training.
00:14:11So there's there should be some form of income from that side.
00:14:13And then additional one on the output.
00:14:15I do believe artists will be paid more than songwriters, given they also have their likeness being used in this
00:14:24case,
00:14:24which songwriters are more behind the scenes.
00:14:26So I think there's a little bit more of a revenue stream on the output side for artists.
00:14:29But songwriters will they play a pivotal role in this licensing process and they will have new revenue streams.
00:14:37How much revenue remains to be seen?
00:14:39Like, is this worth taking the risk of, you know, some of your followers, if you're an artist or a
00:14:45songwriter being like,
00:14:46oh, so they're pro AI now for what, $20 a month?
00:14:51Like, you know, if there is a stigma to to AI.
00:14:53And I think that is going to be a thing we follow going forward that, you know, whether there's like
00:14:58a scarlet letter for being involved with AI.
00:15:01You saw this over the weekend with Martin Scorsese, right?
00:15:04He invested in an AI company.
00:15:05And all of a sudden, all of these people I saw on social media were like, oh, man, Scorsese is
00:15:10gone.
00:15:11Yeah.
00:15:12You hear it all the time.
00:15:13OK, I will move on because we could spend an entire episode talking about this one.
00:15:17I think we did this last time.
00:15:19Yeah.
00:15:19So I'm going to I'm going to keep us moving.
00:15:21Also, while while I'm doing this, Dan, could you explain your T-shirt?
00:15:24He wore a Lord of the Rings shirt last time and we have a new one.
00:15:27I got no cartography on this one.
00:15:28I mean, I got to I got to focus on my fits every time, you know, after the setting the
00:15:34bar the first time around.
00:15:36So as part of my job, I also oversee our executive of the week column.
00:15:41Very competitive.
00:15:42A coveted slot each week and just like, you know, focusing on a particular achievement in a given week and
00:15:52an executive who helps to make that happen.
00:15:54Luckily, I have a dog.
00:15:56His name is Paco.
00:15:57He is the executive of every week in your life, in my life.
00:16:01Yeah.
00:16:01He is one month away from being 14 years old.
00:16:05And that is an unbroken streak of executive of the week.
00:16:09An elder statesman.
00:16:10Dating back to well before the column was inaugurated.
00:16:13Beautiful.
00:16:14OK, so I spun the wheel again and we have one for Bill this time.
00:16:17Great.
00:16:18OK, so the biggest story in live music this year is the antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
00:16:24Cracking his knuckles.
00:16:25He's ready.
00:16:28Based on your reporting, do you think it's actually likely that these two companies could actually get broken up?
00:16:34So let's rewind a little bit.
00:16:37I think, you know, in case people aren't following along, a few years back, the DOJ sued Live Nation and
00:16:44Ticketmaster saying that they had violated federal antitrust laws, saying that they had become so big and so powerful that
00:16:50they controlled promotion and ticketing and venues that they were a monopoly.
00:16:56That they had crushed competition in the live music space.
00:17:00And, you know, that case went to trial in March and I was I was in the courtroom.
00:17:08It was going pretty well for the DOJ.
00:17:10And very abruptly, at the end of the first week, they struck a settlement, which was very surprising to everybody
00:17:17involved, including some of the lawyers in the room, didn't know, which was very funny.
00:17:24So it included, you know, there was like a two hundred and eighty million dollar payout.
00:17:30There was various like restrictions.
00:17:33They had to sell some of their venues.
00:17:35They had to open up their technology to competitors, but crucially, it did not include forcing Live Nation to sell
00:17:42Ticketmaster.
00:17:43A huge group of states filed this lawsuit alongside the federal government.
00:17:47And they said, if you're not going to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, this settlement doesn't work for us
00:17:51and we're going to keep going with the trial.
00:17:53And they did.
00:17:54And six weeks later, they were proven right because they won a jury verdict on all counts.
00:18:01It was a big loss for Live Nation.
00:18:02The big question now is, what is the judge going to do in terms of punishment for Live Nation?
00:18:08And going forward, one of the big options that he has is to break up the company, too.
00:18:14And that was what that was what the DOJ said when they filed the lawsuit.
00:18:17It's what all the states said when they said they were going to keep going.
00:18:20That is the goal.
00:18:20And that's what people who have criticized Live Nation for a long time have always said, that these two companies
00:18:26should not have been allowed to merge in the first place.
00:18:28And that the only way to fix the live music industry is to break them apart.
00:18:33But your question was whether or not that is actually going to happen.
00:18:36What do you think?
00:18:37I feel like it's really difficult to break up two companies after you allowed them to merge like this.
00:18:4216 years.
00:18:43Yeah.
00:18:43Yeah, it is.
00:18:45And it is it is historically very, very rare.
00:18:49And we you know, there are big examples of it.
00:18:52The AT&T was broken up in the 80s.
00:18:54And that's what led to all the telecom companies that we have now and all the.
00:18:57But, you know, there are big examples of it.
00:19:00But there are very few of them.
00:19:02And standard oil is one of the standard oil.
00:19:04But that's like, what, 100 years ago?
00:19:07We think of this like trust busting and, you know, breaking up these big companies.
00:19:11But to actually do it in the modern era is very, very rare.
00:19:15Microsoft lost a case like this and they ordered it broken up.
00:19:19It was overturned on appeal.
00:19:20Google lost a case like this.
00:19:22The judge didn't break them up.
00:19:24He didn't force them to sell Chrome or Android.
00:19:26So it is just a very, very rare outcome in a case like this.
00:19:31That doesn't mean it can't happen.
00:19:33The judge has it in his toolkit and he could say there's no other way to fix the market without
00:19:40doing this.
00:19:40And that's certainly what the states are going to argue is that there is this implicit power to these two
00:19:47companies being combined.
00:19:48This huge promoter and this huge ticketing company.
00:19:51We will we will see.
00:19:52But it's it's not a it's, you know, the weight of history is against that kind of thing happening.
00:19:56Interesting.
00:19:57OK, so what are some of the other punishments that could happen that might be a little bit more feasible
00:20:00for them?
00:20:01So in in antitrust terms, these are called behavioral remedies.
00:20:05If you really want to get into the get into the weeds parental, yeah, but, you know, it's restrictions on
00:20:11on their conduct.
00:20:13It's saying you can't peen a lot.
00:20:16You can't, you know, retaliate against venues that opt to not use Ticketmaster.
00:20:20It's some of the stuff that we saw in the settlement.
00:20:22You could say, well, you have to make your back end software easier to use so that if a venue
00:20:26is like locked into your system, they can still offer ticketing options in other ways.
00:20:32Because, you know, there's a lot of different things they can do, but and they and they work in a
00:20:38lot of cases, you know, so it's it's not like this is just break them up or nothing.
00:20:43But it's it's certainly like it will be a disappointment for a lot of people who think that, you know,
00:20:48who sort of conflate the idea of sky high tickets with Live Nation's dominance.
00:20:54And OK, so so you kind of are saying here that, like, basically the whole ticketing thing that we're all
00:21:00complaining about, the sky high prices and stuff, that's not going to just be fixed overnight by the resolution of
00:21:05this, probably.
00:21:06Certainly not. I mean, even if there is a even if they break up the companies, you know, structural remedies,
00:21:11which is what breaking up companies is called, again, to break into antitrust parlance is a blunt instrument.
00:21:17And judges are not economists. None of us know if that's going to fix the market. There are a lot
00:21:22of things. There is just sky high demand for these things.
00:21:24And, you know, is it do we need to rein in the secondary market? Do we need to do cap
00:21:29fees like they're doing in Canada?
00:21:31Like it's like there are lots of different ways that you can approach this. And no one knows if that's
00:21:36going to if like breaking these companies up is going to fix the market.
00:21:38The most likely outcome that you're talking about, could that spur more startups, you know, tech startups like Dice and
00:21:46Feet?
00:21:46Well, they were bought by Fever, so they're no longer. But like more little startups like that, that can maybe
00:21:54offer a little bit more variety in the market.
00:21:56That's certainly the goal.
00:21:58Do you think it would actually work?
00:22:00You know, I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, it's I think people look at what happened with Microsoft
00:22:06in the 90s, where people were very upset that they didn't break this company up and force them.
00:22:10You know, it would have been Windows on one side and all of the everything else on the other side.
00:22:15And people were very upset at the time. And in retrospect, experts who I talked to said, well, we didn't
00:22:21break them up.
00:22:22But the restrictions that we put into place did help companies like Facebook and Google and all these other companies
00:22:27that we now associate as giants of the tech industry.
00:22:31They were given the breathing space to to grow in that space.
00:22:34So whether or not you need the breakup to happen or you need behavioral remedies.
00:22:40Yeah, I think the goal is to to give smaller companies a chance to grow up in that space and
00:22:45compete with with Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
00:22:47All right. OK, let's spin the record once again.
00:22:50All right. You know, it's a little.
00:22:54Put a little. Yeah, craft. It's a craft here, guys.
00:22:58OK, this is one for Dan.
00:23:00OK, so Drake released three albums this year at once.
00:23:05Some fans believe that this was a way for him to get out of his deal with Universal Music Group.
00:23:09Is that true?
00:23:10Well, as you can imagine, nobody wants to talk about that.
00:23:17Journalistic due diligence means that, you know, we reach out to everybody on all sides and, you know, nobody wants
00:23:23to comment on contractual matters.
00:23:25But I think that if you take a step back and kind of look at what this what doing something
00:23:32like this means for Drake, who has now had a multi week number one for the first time since 2016.
00:23:41No, 2018, I think Scorpion, maybe.
00:23:43Yeah. And, you know, really showed that after last year, two years ago, that bruising battle with Kendrick Lamar, he
00:23:53is still a streaming juggernaut and he can still really command the attention of the entire music world.
00:24:00And I think that, you know, in a hypothetical where he is a free agent, that counts for a lot
00:24:08and that can really broaden his options.
00:24:11I mean, for the entirety of his career, he's been associated with the Universal Music Group.
00:24:15It's the biggest recorded music company in the world for one of the biggest artists in the world.
00:24:22You would think that's the place where he would want to be.
00:24:25However, he's currently suing them over an element of the Kendrick Lamar beef, which is ironic on several levels.
00:24:35But at the same time, you know, this type of statement, releasing three albums at once, like where this Iceman,
00:24:44the lead album, really has demonstrated so much staying power.
00:24:48It has lifted his entire catalog. It allows him to look around a broader landscape than just the record industry,
00:24:57if you'd think, if he is looking for his next big paycheck, right?
00:25:02That could come from a company that is not a traditional record company.
00:25:08Private equity?
00:25:09It could come from private equity. It could come from Live Nation, for instance.
00:25:13I mean, Jay-Z did that famous deal with Live Nation that led to the formation of Rock Nation.
00:25:20They're for the biggest artists in the world, especially over the last couple of years, as we've seen more money
00:25:27come into the music industry from many different places.
00:25:30It has really broadened the horizons of what an artist can look for in a contract for their career that
00:25:41is not just necessarily a recording contract in some ways.
00:25:44You know, you can look to the deal that The Weeknd did.
00:25:48You can...
00:25:49Like the catalog deal?
00:25:50Yeah.
00:25:50Well, and that's what I was going to say, is that at the very least, it gives him a ton
00:25:54of leverage to renegotiate, even if he wants to stay at Universal.
00:25:58It gives him a ton of leverage, because one of the things we talked about right when the lawsuit was
00:26:02filed, and there was much speculation about this, was, is he using litigation as a means of leverage?
00:26:09You know, with these, because it was very clear that his contract was coming up, and so I think the
00:26:15question of stay, but have more leverage, is a big part of this conversation.
00:26:22And, you know, we're always talking about ownership, right?
00:26:24He wants to own his masters.
00:26:27He has owned his masters since around 2018, when he did a big renegotiation with Universal.
00:26:33He does not own the masters to the beginning, the first couple albums of his career.
00:26:38He would certainly like to, and I think that there will be, that will be a big element of this
00:26:43as well.
00:26:44Okay, let's spin the record.
00:26:45This is another one for me.
00:26:47In March, an episode of On the Record with digital marketing firm Chaotic Good went viral, sparking a huge online
00:26:53conversation about whether or not fans can trust the internet,
00:26:56and what songs are trending through all of the various means of digital marketing sorcery that they are doing behind
00:27:03the scenes.
00:27:03Why do you think this episode in particular struck such a chord?
00:27:08Okay, so I'm not surprised that it struck such a chord, because I think in the time period that we're
00:27:14in, more broadly, as an American society,
00:27:19everyone is obsessed with conspiracy theories.
00:27:22People don't believe anything anymore.
00:27:26I think, like, the Epstein, all of the Epstein files are, like, a perfect example of people liking to understand
00:27:33or they want to sleuth out, like, what's happening beneath the curtain, like, behind the curtain, rather.
00:27:39What's going on with the most powerful people that we don't know about yet?
00:27:42And so learning that a lot of artists are using digital marketing companies and doing really savvy things, like, for
00:27:49example, they talked about narrative campaigns, which I think struck.
00:27:54I think it created the most discourse around that narrative campaigns would be if they got a bunch of accounts
00:28:00to comment on, you know, let's say you do an SNL performance as an artist to control the narrative that
00:28:06the SNL performance was good.
00:28:07They would send in a bunch of accounts to comment, this is the best SNL performance I've ever seen.
00:28:11And that just kind of boosts it in the algorithm.
00:28:14It keeps the sentiment high.
00:28:16That obviously was something that fans did not really realize was happening.
00:28:20And it's upsetting.
00:28:22And I understand that it's, like, you know, realizing that there are so many, you know, puppet mastering kind of
00:28:28techniques that are happening behind the curtain that they didn't know about already.
00:28:30So I'm not surprised that that struck such a chord, but I am struck by the scale.
00:28:36I'm still seeing stories come out about it.
00:28:39And not all of them properly said of the podcast, by the way.
00:28:41So work on that.
00:28:43I think it's striking that the initial kind of narrative that came out of that, not to use the word
00:28:49narrative again, but was, oh, my God, digital marketing is a psyop?
00:28:55Like, what are we talking about with the word psyop?
00:28:57That was bizarre to me.
00:29:00And then I think that people were also very confused because they genuinely liked the band Geese.
00:29:05Yes.
00:29:05Let me explain that for those who might have.
00:29:07Yeah, Geese was dragged into it unfairly.
00:29:08Okay, yeah.
00:29:08Let me explain that.
00:29:09First of all, is Geese a psyop?
00:29:11No, it's not.
00:29:12In my opinion, I think they're a really talented band.
00:29:16Cameron Winter is an incredible front man.
00:29:18And also, I've said this, I made a TikTok about this.
00:29:22These campaigns to boost songs do not work if the song is bad.
00:29:25I've had so many people at record labels and management companies tell me, we've tried campaigns like this, and the
00:29:33song never took off.
00:29:34As soon as they took the foot off the gas of the digital marketing spend and they stopped throwing fuel
00:29:39on the fire, it literally is fuel on a fire.
00:29:41So if the fire is burning, like it was for Geese, and then let's say they do a digital marketing
00:29:46campaign, that might help make the fire bigger, but it's not creating the fire itself.
00:29:51You still have to be good and still have something appealing.
00:29:53I think there's something so infantilizing about telling a bunch of people that, no, you didn't actually like this band.
00:30:01You were convinced by a nefarious black box to like this band.
00:30:07I think there was just a much more measured conversation to be had that quickly spun out of control because
00:30:12that's how the internet is now.
00:30:14Like you said, I think some people don't know that this stuff is happening, and that is an interesting thing
00:30:21for people to talk about.
00:30:22But the idea of whether or not it was a psyop or whether it was outside the realm of like
00:30:29the normal marketing tactics is like a totally different level than that sort of valuable conversation of like, should we
00:30:39be buying these kind of like comments and clipping and all that stuff?
00:30:44There was just like a middle ground that I think the conversation mostly avoided.
00:30:48So there's a really interesting tie-in here to one of your previous podcasts with the fabulous podcast you did
00:30:57with Kalshi.
00:30:58Oh, thank you.
00:30:59You were talking about narrative marketing as cranking up sentiment.
00:31:05So Sam Handel, who is the lead partner, I think is his title, at Dundee Partners.
00:31:13Dundee Partners is the primary backer or primary engineer behind Cord, which is a catalog acquisition entity that works with
00:31:24UMG.
00:31:26Sam founded a thing called Dataminer as his like first major success in his career.
00:31:33And Dataminer was the OG version of sentiment analysis, a tool that would basically look at what people were tweeting
00:31:42about and, you know, socializing on all of the platforms and then provide that sentiment index data to investment firms.
00:31:52And then you would act on that. You'd make investments in or against consumer products based on that.
00:31:57I think of consumer products is probably the most obvious, but like it worked for everything.
00:32:01It was a huge success.
00:32:03And so, you know, catalyzed this, you know, in some part catalyzed Sam's success and movement onwards into other things
00:32:10he did in music.
00:32:11But the new version of that is Kalshi, right?
00:32:14Like she was saying on your podcast that people are going, you can't trust maybe the original iterations of sentiment
00:32:24mining for investment decisions now because of things like narrative marketing.
00:32:29So you're now going to platforms like Kalshi to see what is actually like how big is the fire underneath
00:32:36that fuel?
00:32:36Yeah. She was saying also, I think this is a really good note that, you know, her take on prediction
00:32:42markets is that when you put your money where your mouth is, you're more likely to be honest.
00:32:46You actually believe it.
00:32:47You know, the pro use case of prediction markets.
00:32:50You've got a dog in the fight.
00:32:51Yeah.
00:32:51You have skin in the game.
00:32:52Yeah. So, yeah, that's super interesting.
00:32:55I mean, I think it's worth noting before we move on that basically the music industry is always trying to
00:33:00find ways to put a thumb on the scale and help artists succeed.
00:33:03Like the whole point of signing to a label or bringing people onto your team is to try to hopefully
00:33:08like have some advantage.
00:33:13So, unfortunately, this is, you know, the way that it works now.
00:33:15And I understand that it's upsetting to some people.
00:33:18But, you know, what they were doing in the radio promo days was way crazier.
00:33:22This is what I was going to say is that the idea that it is any worse than it ever
00:33:26was when in previous years when there was much more severe gatekeeping that just no one talked about because.
00:33:32And much more severe manipulation.
00:33:34And then the government got involved.
00:33:35The means of media distribution was so limited that if you think that people are being manipulated by this, they
00:33:40were being manipulated in much deeper ways previously.
00:33:42Well, and also just like kind of as a final point here, too, I think that there is a nuance
00:33:51to the idea that like if anyone thinks that this isn't how it happens for every artist that becomes successful
00:33:58in some ways.
00:33:59Like we talk all the time about 100,000 tracks a day being uploaded to streaming services.
00:34:04How is any artist supposed to cut through any volume of that if there isn't a record label or some
00:34:12other entity like pushing them in some way?
00:34:14And then to the point we were talking about before, the quality of the music has to take over, you
00:34:20know, like but there is no other way to do it.
00:34:23And I think that was some of the more nuanced takes immediately after the podcast where some people writing like,
00:34:29you know, this is eye opening, but like it is a reality of how the system works.
00:34:34And then everyone went ballistic after that.
00:34:37Eliza McLam, who's an independent artist, really helped propel the podcast conversation into a wider discourse with a sub stack
00:34:44story that she wrote.
00:34:45And I thought she had a really nuanced take.
00:34:47Yeah, that's kind of what I was referencing.
00:34:49Yeah, which was basically like, wow, this is crazy that this is what's happening behind the scenes.
00:34:53And then she kind of ended off by being like, if I had the ability to afford something like this,
00:34:58I probably would have to do it, too.
00:34:59Yeah.
00:35:00And it is unfortunate that although all the barriers to entry for the music industry have fallen in some ways,
00:35:08there are always new barriers that come up.
00:35:10And one of the barriers here is the pay barrier of being able to afford a company like Chaotica to
00:35:15help your music do better in an algorithmic setting that we're working in now.
00:35:20And everyone wants their art to be able to stand on its own and people to come to it naturally
00:35:24and organically.
00:35:25And that's just not how the world works.
00:35:27Yeah.
00:35:28OK, let's see what we got now.
00:35:30All right, Liz, we finally got one for you.
00:35:34OK, so between Downtown and Universal Music Group, BMG and Concord and Primary Wave and Cobalt, 2026 is a time
00:35:42of major consolidation in the music industry.
00:35:44Why is this happening now?
00:35:46So let's zoom out of our very insular, you know, music centric focus for a second and think about the
00:35:53broader world.
00:35:54What's going on?
00:35:55It's not great.
00:35:57Really?
00:35:58It's a war in Iran.
00:35:59There are, you know, multiple conflicts throughout, around the Middle East, around the world, around Latin America that are having
00:36:11substantial impacts, triggering greater volatility, impacts on the energy markets, impacts on the oil markets.
00:36:18And it has been true for some time now that there is more institutional investor capital in music than any
00:36:28other kind of capital.
00:36:32So institutional investor is like a catch all that always means the big banks, the endowments, the college, you know,
00:36:40college funds, pensions, teachers' pensions that are managed by states.
00:36:47All of these pockets, sovereign wealth funds, you know, these entities that are names you don't ever remember, but have
00:36:56hundreds of billions of dollars, sometimes trillions of dollars at their disposal.
00:37:01Zooming back into our music world.
00:37:04So if this is music, this is everything else, right?
00:37:07And then even within entertainment, music for all of its incredible cultural impact, financially is still significantly smaller than other
00:37:20entertainment industries on a monetary basis.
00:37:24So you can get a really good bank for your buck if you're a big, fat, huge institutional investor like
00:37:32GIC, who partnered with Sony to, you know, fuel more of their catalog investments or Michigan Teachers Fund, which has
00:37:43for many years through Great Mountain invested in Concord.
00:37:51And then, of course, BMG, which is this, you know, sort of interesting private company owned by Bertelsmann, which is
00:38:00still a family-controlled German media conglomerate.
00:38:07So those, we can use that example of those two.
00:38:09Why did that happen?
00:38:11They explored it a number of times.
00:38:14BMG and Concord.
00:38:15BMG and Concord had been, you know, exploring whether or not this would make sense.
00:38:18Two of the biggest independent labels in the world, yeah.
00:38:21So looking at the example of Concord and BMG specifically, this is not the first time that they'd explored a
00:38:28tie-up.
00:38:30Their relationship and how many times these companies have evolved in ownership and structure goes back decades.
00:38:37Dan knows the history well there.
00:38:40But when I interviewed Thomas Kosefeld, the CEO of BMG and soon to be of Bertelsmann, and Bob Valentine, the
00:38:48CEO of Concord, they said it actually went back to, like, the very first time that they met each other,
00:38:53which was a couple of years ago in, I believe, 2023.
00:38:57They both became CEOs on the same day.
00:39:02Previously, they were...
00:39:03Yeah.
00:39:03Wait, I did not know this.
00:39:04Yeah.
00:39:05It's a little...
00:39:07I feel like they're a good match, actually.
00:39:09They're both very tall.
00:39:10Yeah, and they're very finance-y.
00:39:12I feel like they would probably get along well.
00:39:14I'm not totally surprised on, like, a personal level.
00:39:16Yeah, on a strategic approach, on a temperament approach, I think they're a very good match.
00:39:22And, I mean, that goes to the core of the companies as well, which are very well-suited for each
00:39:28other.
00:39:29But, yeah, I mean, like, what we're seeing is the result of conversations that have evolved over years.
00:39:36And then there's just this moment where, because of all that's going on in the rest of the world, it's
00:39:41hyper-fueling activity and investment in music.
00:39:45Because music is cheaper and...
00:39:48Non-cyclical.
00:39:49Okay.
00:39:49It's that classic, which I remain, you know, my journalistic bias to be skeptical of everything makes me want to
00:39:58say that it's non-cyclical until it's not, you know?
00:40:01It's non-cyclical until there's that black swan event that means that the war in Iraq or in Iran also
00:40:09somehow impacts music.
00:40:11But for right now, there have been multiple test scenarios over the last decade in particular that lead investors to
00:40:18believe that when shit hits the fan elsewhere in the stock market or in the commodities, it somehow does not
00:40:24trickle back to music.
00:40:27I also think, just to add to Liz's point, you know, I mean, there's a lot more of this money
00:40:32coming into the music industry now because of what streaming has laid bare, which is predictable returns on listening to
00:40:39catalog.
00:40:40And I think that that's why this arms race of catalog acquisitions has really kicked off and has led to,
00:40:48finally, these tectonic plates shifting in the music business that we've seen this past, jeez, just six months.
00:40:55It's been crazy.
00:40:56Yeah. Well, okay. So I want to move on to the next question. I already pulled it off because it
00:41:02goes along with what Liz's question was. So, Dan, this one's for you. With so much consolidation in 2026, what
00:41:09does this mean for independent music and should independent music companies be worried?
00:41:14I do not think that independent music companies should be worried. And I don't think that they would want to
00:41:21be considered to be worried either. I think that there's a lot of health in the independent music sector. And
00:41:29I also think that we're coming to a bit of a blurring of the lines of what we're even really
00:41:36talking about when we're talking about independent music.
00:41:39And, um, this is something I've been talking about a lot in the backgrounds and, um, I would really love
00:41:44to get a story together on this. And so I guess I'll use this moment to say, I would love
00:41:50to, I think, I think that the music business needs to come together to talk about what we're talking about
00:41:57anymore, because what is indie versus major when you have a tie up such as Concord BMG?
00:42:03I mean, we talked about that being a quote unquote quiet major, um, just because they have so much catalog,
00:42:09um, and less emphasis on the frontline as much. Um, but I mean, there are now many companies that are,
00:42:18uh, raking in five, $10 billion a year or, or whatever it is. And, and like, these are gigantic companies
00:42:26and how are we calling them independent? How are we not calling these major companies? Um, which, so that's an
00:42:33aside.
00:42:33I do think that we need to kind of, uh, come up with a little bit more terminology there. Um,
00:42:38but is that our job?
00:42:40Well, I mean, as the sounding board for the music business, as the, um, first draft of history.
00:42:46Yeah. In the mirror to which they have to look. Um, I do think that to some degree it is,
00:42:51it is our place to, uh, create the environment where that conversation can happen.
00:42:57And, um, I just think that unfortunately the music business will never agree on anything. Um, so, uh, we'll have
00:43:04to, you know, come up with some terminology that works for everybody. But I do think that we are, we're
00:43:09in this, in the midst of this kind of shift here.
00:43:11Um, but to more directly answer the question, I, I don't think independents need to be worried. I think they
00:43:17have to some degree more options than ever. Um, I think that you can be just as nimble with a
00:43:23five person team as you can with a 5,000 person.
00:43:25Um, well, more nimble, obviously than a 5,000 person team, but you can get the job done with just
00:43:31a handful of people. Um, and it's just about how you do it, how you deploy your resources, how you're
00:43:37smart in the marketplace. And I think that there is a lot of space there.
00:43:42Yeah. That conversation has been had a lot with like individual creators and artists launching their own careers through technology
00:43:48and all that. But like the same thing applies to small companies and gives them the resources that they maybe
00:43:54wouldn't have had 15, 20 years ago.
00:43:55Yeah. More technological resources, more financial options than ever before.
00:44:00Yeah. I mean, I, yeah, to go along with all these points, I think we have also seen a lot
00:44:04of layoffs and, and restructuring within the major music companies and a lot of really talented people from those majors
00:44:09who have really been trained in how to build a superstar are now out on their own. And many of
00:44:15them are choosing the route of doing an independent label. Um, that being said, we could get into the weeds
00:44:21on if it's distributed by downtown, which is now part of UMG.
00:44:24Is it really an indie? There's some existential, um, uh, anxieties there. I think, um, legal anxieties. They were discussed
00:44:34a lot in the merger review, um, you know, which we talked, I think we talked about last time we
00:44:37were on this show.
00:44:38Yeah. Um, and I do think that, that, that exists. I think that exists more in music than I think
00:44:43in almost any other industry of that existential, like, no, I'm going to do it myself, like, you know, independent
00:44:49way. Um, but even still, there are still more, more options. Um, and to this point, technological, technological solutions than
00:44:58ever for that.
00:44:58Totally. If I could just chime in with one last thing on that. You said that no one in the
00:45:04music industry ever agrees on anything, which is so true, except scale.
00:45:09They pretty much across the board agree that in this day and age with as much music is being, is,
00:45:17as, is being uploaded every single day. You can't get through unless you have some component of scale, whether that's.
00:45:24Whether that's the breadth of UMG or the catalog of, you know, um, what, what Concord and, and BMG have
00:45:34built or Cobalt and primary wave teaming up to becoming the biggest publishing, uh, company in the world and independent,
00:45:44independent. Yeah. Music, excuse me. Um, yeah, you need to have that, that reach in some way to lost getting
00:45:50a massive investment from, um, uh, private equity.
00:45:54Firm and, and gold state, you know, like you got to do it some way. And, and, um, you know,
00:45:59the, the flip side of that is also like really what you need is brand loyalty, fan loyalty, you know,
00:46:05because there are so many different ways of, you know, from the artist perspective, um, making a living now. And,
00:46:11and, you know, you don't necessarily have to be the biggest thing in the world, but at the same time,
00:46:14there are these companies that are massive now. Um, but there's a lot of ways through.
00:46:19Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we have one final thing to go over. So this one is for Liz. Bill Ackman
00:46:28and his firm Pershing Square offered over $60 billion to buy Universal Music Group. Then in late May, Universal Music
00:46:35Group shareholders rejected this. First, catch us up on this and then tell us what seems to be Ackman's motive
00:46:42with this move.
00:46:43Bill Ackman has this reputation that precedes him. Whenever his, um, hedge fund investment firm Pershing Square comes into the
00:46:52room and invests in a company, whether it's, um, uh, you know, major fast food chain like Chipotle or Wendy's
00:47:00or hotel groups or, um, UMG in 2021.
00:47:06There's like an apprehension of like, Oh, we've got an activist in the room. Like, Oh, and Pershing always pushes
00:47:13back against that reputation. Um, and says, you know, look, that was what we did with Herbalife. Like that was
00:47:19a million years ago. It was more than a decade ago that we've, you know, sort of been painted with
00:47:23this moniker of an activist investor, but it sticks with you.
00:47:28And so there has always been a lot of handling, I think, for the UMG team, executive team, and for
00:47:40the other shareholders and for the board, um, in working with Pershing. Nonetheless, they have a lot to offer, not
00:47:47least of all in capital, but Bill Ackman was on UMG's board for a number of years.
00:47:52I go through all of this to say that it actually looked like he cared a lot about the company
00:47:57and that he really liked this company. There's a story that, um, Wall Street Journal had that after investing in,
00:48:05or maybe after just having some exploratory talks, um, Bill Ackman learned that his grandfather had written a song that
00:48:13was held by UMG.
00:48:15Like they had the rights to a song that his grandfather had penned, you know, decades ago. I think the
00:48:22song was something like, um, put your arms where they belong for they belong to me or something.
00:48:30Wow, that sounds like a 1940s smash hit.
00:48:32A publicist's dream, this, this situation.
00:48:35So, you know, it looked like he really cared about this company. And indeed, Pershing Square made two bids to
00:48:42really take over UMG. Um, and the first was through this really complicated maneuver proposed, you know, years ago, um,
00:48:51in that, that would have, um, been through Pershing's SPAC.
00:48:55And that was, um, they backed down from that after, like, they got some regulatory pressure. But then this most
00:49:01recent bid was, like, it was not an acquisition bid. It's, it's important to distinguish from.
00:49:08It was an offer to merge UMG with a Pershing vehicle and then use that opportunity basically to recapitalize the
00:49:18fund and recapitalize the company in a couple of ways by, like, eliminating a whole bunch of their stock, buying
00:49:24it back, thereby boosting the share price for most of the investors and then moving its listing to the United
00:49:31States.
00:49:31That's something he's, um, that's something he's wanted for ages. Um, and among a bunch of other initiatives that he
00:49:37said that the company ought to do.
00:49:39Most people did not really argue with the points that Ackman and Pershing made on why the company needs to
00:49:49change some really important things.
00:49:51However, they completely were against the way the structure really wasn't an acquisition bid. It wasn't a takeover offer where
00:50:05Pershing would become this majority or even largest shareholder.
00:50:12If the Pershing offer had gone through Pershing would have only controlled 11% of UMG stock.
00:50:18So that's kind of why, um, the Bollary group, uh, the head of that group said at their shareholder meeting,
00:50:26this was a takeover offer with our money, not their money.
00:50:32Yeah. And he's with shareholders money. And they were, they're the largest, largest shareholders. So it really mattered what they
00:50:39said.
00:50:40And so once, um, um, um, that shareholder encouraged rejection of this offer, the board acquiesced, rejected Ackman's offer.
00:50:51So ultimately, and then, you know, days later, Pershing moved to sell its $1.5 billion stake in, uh, UMG's
00:51:02stock.
00:51:02So fast forward, is this a win or a loss for Ackman and for you, for, um, um, um, Pershing
00:51:10square and for UMG still really uncertain.
00:51:16It's very clear. Uh, there's some estimates. I think wall street journal estimated that they're going to have, that Pershing
00:51:21will have something like a $600 million windfall from this.
00:51:24So that's, that's nice. That's a nice return on your investment. The question is, is it as good as he
00:51:32wanted? You know, it's always compared to what?
00:51:34So did that meet Pershing's initial investor expectations and their, their investors expectations? We don't know.
00:51:42Yeah. Um, for UMG, there's this conventional wisdom that they're happy to no longer be in the spotlight and, you
00:51:51know, have to manage the leadership of this headline grabbing investor and investment firm.
00:52:00However, now they have to sort of execute on all of the fairly reasonable points that were raised about why
00:52:07their publicly traded company is so underwhelmed, trading at such an underwhelming price.
00:52:12And this is an undoubtedly valuable company, well run.
00:52:17You know, why is it 18 euros price when it is, you know, something like 20, more than 20%
00:52:22under its IPO price?
00:52:24Yeah. I mean, that's a great point. And I do think one of the big outcomes that is like a
00:52:28very tangible outcome from what just happened here with Bill Ackman and Pershing Square is that UMG actually did move
00:52:35to sell half of their shares in Spotify, which is totally adopted one of those six point plan, you know,
00:52:41of Pershing's six point plan.
00:52:44That was like number three.
00:52:45They wanted to sell all of it, though, I think. Right.
00:52:47Oh, and they they know he wanted them to. Yeah, he wanted he wanted them to sell out of their
00:52:52Spotify stake because he was saying that they're basically getting no credit for having roughly, you know, this this three
00:53:00percent stake.
00:53:01I believe in Spotify, they're not getting any credit in their share price from investors.
00:53:04So get rid of it, offload it and cash out. But they would have missed the high side of Spotify
00:53:10stake. Right.
00:53:11Remember when Spotify was worth more than seven hundred, seven hundred dollars a share?
00:53:15It's not there anymore. So like you miss that opportunity.
00:53:18So this went to the other points that Ackman made of saying, like, your shareholder and, you know, investor management,
00:53:25investor relations team is.
00:53:28Has a lot to be desired from, you know, the CFO missed that high side moment to sell out of
00:53:32that Spotify stake.
00:53:34So. There are management questions here, financial management questions.
00:53:39Thank you for that, Liz. OK, so I feel like with that, we've gone over some of the biggest moments
00:53:43of 2026 so far.
00:53:45I want to quickly just hear rapid fire what you guys think are your big predictions for the next six
00:53:51months.
00:53:53OK, I can start us off.
00:53:56My very quick prediction is, you know, as of the last report from Luminate, over one hundred thousand songs are
00:54:03being uploaded to streaming services every day.
00:54:05They just have kept it kind of vague over one hundred thousand.
00:54:09I think whenever they decide to make another report, which will likely be at the end of this year, I
00:54:13think that is going to be much higher.
00:54:15I don't know how much higher, but given the amount of AI generated music that's ending up on streaming services
00:54:22today, I think we're going to get closer to like two hundred thousand.
00:54:25That's I don't know. So that's my prediction.
00:54:27It's frightening.
00:54:28Bill?
00:54:29I don't know that we see the the the much promised walled garden new Udio 2.0.
00:54:38Do we see that before the end of the year?
00:54:42You know, it's more of a question than a bold prediction, I suppose.
00:54:45But just putting a question out there.
00:54:47Yeah.
00:54:48Well, we just we've been sort of like, you know, it was there was so much to our point earlier
00:54:51about like the vague statements about all this stuff.
00:54:54It's like, you know, it's this is going to launch in twenty twenty six.
00:54:56We're going to see it at the beginning of the year or whatever.
00:54:58Like it's like we're still waiting for a lot of like hard answers on how these, you know, the the
00:55:04AI settlements struck by the majors in the last year are really going to work out.
00:55:09So I'll be interested to see what happens there.
00:55:11Yeah, I think it's going to take some time.
00:55:13I don't know how long.
00:55:14Dan, what's your prediction?
00:55:15I'd say two things quickly.
00:55:17One being I think that we will see a lot more clarity in the AI conversation.
00:55:21I think there's a lot of companies out there who are promising a lot of things and that are not
00:55:25really finding that there is an appetite for them.
00:55:28And I think we'll see them shift in more and maybe simply fritter away a little bit.
00:55:35And then the second thing is, you know, to the point of all of this consolidation thing, I mean, I
00:55:39think the deals have been done and now it's the hard work has to begin.
00:55:45And so I think you might see a period of pain layoffs can actually trying to make this work.
00:55:52And then it's prove it time.
00:55:54Yeah.
00:55:55OK, let's bring us home.
00:55:56I think that, unfortunately, the layoffs are going to be a next year story.
00:56:01I think that.
00:56:02You.
00:56:03Yeah, hopefully.
00:56:05I mean, hopefully they never come, but it's.
00:56:07It feels inevitable.
00:56:10It's just what always follows major merger.
00:56:13Yeah.
00:56:13I think that we so the first six months of this year were for from the financial seat were major
00:56:20mergers and acquisitions and major investment coming in and.
00:56:27More insurance money than ever before coming into this space.
00:56:31I think that we might before the end of the year see one at least one really blockbuster catalog sale
00:56:38six months ago when we were here.
00:56:41You asked me what we might see.
00:56:43And I was thinking, like, I don't know.
00:56:44We've heard a little bit about Metallica.
00:56:46That's apparently very much on the back burner.
00:56:52A lot of superstar artists who have never sold before are having exploratory talks because why wouldn't you if there's
00:57:00more money?
00:57:01Sloshing around music than ever before.
00:57:04So it's just takes one of them to be like, yeah, I can't turn that price down.
00:57:10Yeah.
00:57:10Garth Brooks, maybe.
00:57:11Garth Brooks.
00:57:11That was a report recently.
00:57:13A recent.
00:57:13A recent one.
00:57:15Yeah.
00:57:15We'll see.
00:57:16OK, so we end off every episode of On the Record with what would you cue?
00:57:20And so I've divided this up between the three of you.
00:57:24So each of you are going to answer one of these.
00:57:27So what would you cue?
00:57:29Dan, I'll start with you.
00:57:30What would you cue to take you back to your childhood?
00:57:35Well, being very young, I remember a lot of James Taylor and Carly Simon in the house.
00:57:45You and Garth Brooks.
00:57:47One and the same, really.
00:57:49But I would say the Allman Brothers band were another artist that really raised me, especially in my awakening to
00:57:57music and how it worked and playing music myself.
00:58:01I think that that always brings me back to being 14, 15 years old.
00:58:04Do you have a specific song?
00:58:06I mean, anything live, really, you know, from the Fillmore on.
00:58:11OK.
00:58:13OK, Liz, this one's for you.
00:58:15What would you cue to represent your favorite era of music?
00:58:19Sort of coming back to, you know, those 14, 13 year old years as well.
00:58:24I guess I was 11 when this came out.
00:58:26But Tonight Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins.
00:58:29I mean, I remember being at summer camp at like a local college in Chicagoland and just being like mesmerized
00:58:40watching the video, which I just learned was directed by Spike Jonze.
00:58:44So, cool.
00:58:46Not a surprise that it was so damn good.
00:58:48Love it.
00:58:49OK, Bill, for the final question, what would you cue to remember the best concert you've ever been to?
00:58:55I want to go with something more recent, but I will say I so I went to the very last
00:59:00Springsteen concert at the old Meadowlands, which was cool.
00:59:05And like at the time I grew up in Jersey, but I was never really like a big Springsteen guy
00:59:10and just sort of randomly got invited to this to the very last show at the old Meadowlands.
00:59:17And it was awesome.
00:59:20Like it was just it like opened my eyes to the whole world of Bruce and he's become like a
00:59:24big I'm like a big fan now.
00:59:26And so it's like a big part of my sort of like music, you know, fandom experience.
00:59:32But do I so I pick a pick a specific song?
00:59:35I'll go Jungle Land.
00:59:36Oh, yeah.
00:59:37Great pick.
00:59:38It's a nine minute epic.
00:59:39Nice.
00:59:40I love that.
00:59:41OK, well, Bill, Dan and Liz, thank you so much for coming back to On The Record.
00:59:46Thanks for having us.
00:59:47It was great.
00:59:48All right.
00:59:48Thank you so much to Dan Rice, Bill Donahue and Liz Dultz-Marshall for coming on the show for an
00:59:53extra special mid-year check in.
00:59:54And thank you for listening to this week's episode of On The Record.
00:59:57If you like today's show, give us a follow on Instagram or on our brand new TikTok page at Billboard
01:00:02On The Record, where you can find new clips of this show every single week.
01:00:06We also would appreciate it if you rated our show on your favorite podcast platform, because all of these things
01:00:11help On The Record grow bigger and better than ever.
01:00:14Again, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson.
01:00:16And actually, this is the final episode of season two of On The Record.
01:00:20So we will be back for an extra special season three with even more guests starting in September.
01:00:26I am so excited to see you then.
01:00:29Thanks for watching.
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