- 11 minutes ago
What does it really take to cover, analyze and predict the biggest moves in the music industry at Billboard? Dan Rys, executive editor of business, Elizabeth Dilts Marshall, senior finance correspondent and Bill Donahue, senior legal correspondent, sit down with Kristin Robinson on Billboard On The Record to give listeners a peek inside the newsroom that tracks the stories shaping music today. They share their biggest coverage moments of 2025, from Taylor Swift reclaiming her catalog and Shaboozey tying the Hot 100 record to Diddy’s legal battles and leadership changes at Island Records. The team also weighs in on what’s next for the industry, including AI’s role in songwriting, major catalog sales, evolving marketing strategies and predictions for lawsuits, acquisitions and chart-topping hits. Listeners get a behind-the-scenes look at how Billboard decides what matters, what’s trending and how the team interprets the moves that will define music in 2026.
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00:002026 is here y'all and i have a lot of questions about where the music industry is going to go
00:05will an ai song crack the hot 100 what record label will dominate this year and can spotify
00:11and the music industry ever figure out how to get along we're here to talk about all of that
00:15and more on our first episode back for the new year liz dan and bill welcome to on the record
00:25thank you for having us thanks for being here so to kick off i feel like we need to explain
00:30one thing that's very important which is what dan decided to wear today i i'm sure there's
00:34some people who are just listening to this and can't see it um i don't know what you're talking
00:39about we we did discuss briefly uh wearing matching t-shirts but we just kind of couldn't pull it
00:44together in time so i decided to wear this which is from my understanding the oldest known map of
00:50the contiguous united states focusing on the rohan and gondor regions oh okay of course i did explain
00:57to dan that my all my lord of the rings apparel was at the dry cleaner yeah but just tough timing
01:03really you know yeah when it came down to it were you going to come as like gandalf himself yeah are
01:09you reading my text how did you know that i had the whole beard it was great okay well to get started
01:14here today so this is going to be a conversation all about predictions and questions that we have for
01:182026 but i thought we'd start by just talking about 2025 a little bit since that just ended and
01:25i'm still thinking about a lot of the stuff that we were working on then and a lot of that stuff is
01:29going to carry on and into 2026 liz i'll start with you can you tell me about one of the biggest
01:34stories that you worked on in 2025 yeah so i cover financial news for billboard a lot of catalog deals
01:40a lot of mergers and acquisitions and the main blockbuster story was actually like
01:48one afternoon's worth of work for us and it was probably taylor swift buying back the rights to
01:53her catalog um yeah i say it was a small story because it was just the final you know event of
02:02like this 10-year saga that she is has gone through but it was really significant because it's been such a
02:10critical story for billboard to cover over the years like one of the major salvos in her war to to get
02:16back her rights and to publicize that she wanted to own all of her music she did like from the stage
02:22of our of billboards women in music event and she was wearing that famous dress the white dress that
02:28has the the lyrics of her songs from her early albums she consolidated ownership and in doing it
02:36put a bow around this whole saga making it work out for her happily and according to the people who sold
02:42the shamrock holdings they said it worked out for them too so do you think that they would admit if
02:48it didn't work out though like i feel like everyone in catalog deals likes to talk about how good it was
02:52for everyone totally but this was one of those funny moments where taylor's power worked it in a
02:59counterintuitive way taylor's camp uh helped us understand that um she paid basically the sale
03:06price for it so not a premium not a dollar extra that looks like it probably wasn't the case but you
03:15know nobody's actually gonna say they made a profit off of it yeah i mean i think that what's so
03:20interesting about this deal is that it really was the awakening for the general public about catalog deals
03:26this is not something that anyone cared about no i shared this with you guys earlier but like
03:31it was a friday when that news broke and it was right before noon and i live on a very quiet block
03:37on the upper west side and i'm no kidding like people started blasting cruel summer out their windows
03:43when they had a new york times alert that taylor swift bought back the rights to her for six albums if
03:49you need an example of how powerful taylor swift is uh you know she made regular people understand the
03:55distinction between compositions and sound recordings and master recordings and the value of yeah yeah
04:01i was listening back to her podcast with travis kelsey and it was so interesting hearing her explain it
04:07and she explained the difference between masters and composition in a very succinct way i was like
04:12she's probably had to do this a million times and so have we yeah it's our struggle yeah but that's
04:19a great one liz um dan what about you what's the what's one of the big stories that you covered in 2025
04:25so i'm currently the director of business news but before that i covered the record labels um for
04:31half a decade or more um and so two of the stories that i wrote in early 2025 were sort of two companies
04:39that really were coming into their own one being island records and the other being empire empire story
04:46was a cover story that was uh focused on their founder and ceo ghazi who is just coming into this period
04:54where with zada shibuzzi had just tied the then record although mariah carey broke it um with all
05:00i want for christmas is with is you um but shibuzzi with a bar song tipsy had just tied the then record for
05:06longest uh reign at number one on the hot 100 um which was really like a crowning achievement of what
05:13ghazi had built with empire um and that's continued throughout 2025 and into the early part of this year and then
05:22it's been island really um with this this latest um kind of leadership group that had come in uh
05:28justin ishak and imran majid who had come in as co-ceos and really from sabrina carpenter
05:37to chapel rhone that really really blew up in 2024 into 2025 um both of them had been nominated in
05:44all four of the big four categories of the grammys in early 2025 which is something that had never
05:49happened before for any one label and then they've really continued that in throughout 2025 as well
05:55with olivia dean and lola young now who both this year are nominated for best new artist um and it's
06:03pretty rare for any label to have two best new artists nominees two years in a row um and then
06:10sabrina also got nominated for album of the year and one of my favorite stats uh is she is just the
06:17fifth artist since 1980 to have album of the year nominations in back-to-back years wait really yeah
06:24seems crazy taylor has done it a couple times kanye did it um lady gaga did it with the fame and the
06:31fame monster i kind of feel like that's cheating a little bit but what do i say um and then billy joel
06:36i believe wow that's interesting i mean it's it is really interesting to see how fast fortunes can
06:43change for labels i feel like we weren't talking too much about island just even a few years ago
06:48and now it's something we talk about all the time and all their continued success i've been really
06:53watching remy wolf she's one of my favorite artists she's also on island i i'm like waiting on her big
06:58moment she definitely has a huge fan base already but i think that they still have plenty of artists
07:04like on the bench that are ready to go into like the gg perez would be another yeah the last dinner party
07:09yeah and they've really leaned into this partnership with capital uk um where which is
07:15the label in obviously in england that had signed olivia and lola initially um and last dinner party
07:22actually so they have a really good kind of transcontinental thing going on too and bill what
07:27about you what was your big story of 2025 you'd like to highlight so i'm the legal reporter here at
07:32billboard um covering any big legal battles between uh you know record labels and big stars and um
07:41there was you know i think there were probably cases that were that were a bigger deal to the
07:45industry itself than this but the biggest story by far was the diddy case um it it's sort of hard to
07:53to get bigger than that you know this global tabloid sensational story about this guy who was
07:59really one of the most powerful people in the music industry for for 25 years and and
08:03an artist an iconic artist and uh you know a producer and everything else and
08:08business icon i mean yeah right right ciroc and all that and and then it all came crashing down and
08:14and he got these um you know it first started with the civil lawsuits and then it it blossomed into
08:19this uh criminal indictment uh accusing him of racketeering and sex trafficking and a lot of really
08:24heinous stuff and um it was just i mean it was a circus i was down at the courthouse for the trial
08:30and i was sitting like three rows behind him in the courtroom it was there was there was like a 700
08:37person line to get into the building it was sort of a sensational story and um just to watch it play
08:42out and to see how it all shook out which is you know he was convicted but but they the prosecutor
08:48just sort of overshot on the case and now we're into the appeal so it's a big case to watch in in
08:542026 as well um it was just it was a massive massive story for 2025 okay well i'll throw in my
09:00biggest story of 2025 as well because i think we have to mention it um at some point we always have
09:06to talk about ai um and that's something that i reported on a lot this year so to bill i've honestly
09:12everyone's reporting on it at this point it's become such a big story it used to be a niche thing
09:16it's not anymore uh we needed your tutelage so many times this year on deadline it honestly
09:22started as a sub beat for you yeah it's just like a very small thing while you were doing the
09:27publishing beat and then at some point those two things flipped yeah yeah yeah i mean it started as
09:33something that i took interest in because i thought that this was really going to affect the songwriting
09:38process which um songwriters are signed to publishers if you're uh someone who isn't super
09:42familiar with music business terms um so i kind of saw it as like a songwriting story and a creativity
09:48story um and it's i mean it's transformed from there into being the biggest disruptive force this
09:53industry has seen in a decade um nothing this big since probably the dawn of streaming i'd say yeah
10:00money maker for establishment and and yeah and so in 2025 i think the big story around ai i think there's
10:09like two different things i could say but one is that we're finally getting to a place where music
10:14companies are coming to the table with ai companies and forming licenses i think 2024 was the year of
10:21uh penalizing ai companies from the music business perspective so filing lawsuits like universal music
10:28group warner music group and sony music coming together and suing suno and udio that was the big case of
10:332024 we're starting to see the resolution of that in 2025 late 2025 um warner has made a deal with
10:41suno so that settles their part of the lawsuit umg and sony are still pursuing the lawsuit but
10:46i feel like it's only a matter of time before we see more headlines around that yeah um and then
10:52uh udio suno's competitor has also made a deal with universal and with warner so sony's still pursuing
10:59their part of the lawsuit but for the most part things seem to be wrapping up and people seem to
11:04be finding solutions that they're okay with or things that they can at least live with for the
11:08next few years i mean i could talk about this all day um but let's get to 2026 and some questions that
11:14we have for 2026 so um i got this beautiful vase from target this morning the target in times square
11:20shout out it's open like basically 24 hours it's beautiful this time i got a brita filter from there
11:25it was fantastic great i mean it was convenient it was convenient so i just have a bunch of strips
11:30of paper with questions on it and we're just going to go around and everyone's going to select a question
11:35and we're just going to talk through our thoughts on it so who knows if our predictions will come true
11:40i do think we're pretty well informed between all of us having a finance reporter a label reporter
11:44a legal reporter and i like a publishing ai reporter so yeah okay let's go for it
11:50okay this continues the ai debate which is will an ai song crack the hot 100 this year so i guess
11:59i'll start off on this one i think yes i think it will i think all sorts of charts whether it's
12:06billboard or otherwise are you're going to see more and more ai songs that we are charlie kirk song
12:11that ended up on the top of the spotify viral 50 i mean it's it's going to keep happening and
12:18eventually there's going to be an ai song that ends up gaining enough mainstream popularity that
12:22it does end up on the hot 100 but i will say i think it's important to distinguish that this could
12:28be a fully ai generated song or just a regular artist maybe that we all know and love who starts using ai
12:36and is being honest about it um and using ai as an assistive tool i could see something like that
12:42happening so i think there's two elements to this one is that in most of the charts that we've seen
12:48these ai assisted songs show up in are download charts what you had said um not many people are
12:54downloading those and yeah those that those tend to have a very low threshold of a couple thousand
12:58downloads um and they don't appear on the streaming charts or the hot charts or anything like that that
13:04that uh blend metrics and it's harder to get on well at the same time i think all it really takes is one
13:12of those internet phenomenons that all suddenly blow up and that you know all of a sudden there's so
13:17much interest and then that boosts streaming and then you'll start to see them these songs kind of
13:22pop up on charts that eventually will i i agree with you wind up on the hot 100 at some point what
13:28kristen said about you know the idea of whether people are going to be honest about this and that if
13:33it's if you know the extent to which you use it it raises difficult questions about whether you can
13:38have any rights to your song if you used uh ai to write big portions of it and what's to stop people
13:46from just simply not disclosing that and um so i think it raises really difficult questions even
13:52from like a rhetorical standpoint of how we refer to this music as ai it's just blending and becoming
13:58impossible to know i think is going to be a thing we see in 2026 do you think we'll see any more labels
14:05sign more admittedly ai artists the way we saw hallwood media sign zania monet so that's a really
14:14good it's a really good point and i mean i think it goes back to the the lawsuits with suno and udio
14:20which to this point it seems have uh blocked out the major labels at least from from engaging with those
14:28kinds of um artists while their parent companies are involved in the litigation against them as those deals
14:34get settled i think some of those shackles kind of come off those guardrails kind of come up and i
14:40think you will see who is opportunistic about it or who wants to take you know some sort of moral stand
14:47on behalf of their own human artists or i mean i think there's a lot of different outcomes that you
14:52could see and that there are so many different labels operating under different models with different
14:56goals that you know there will be a lot of different differentiation there also what's the hold up why is umg not
15:05why are they still well warner went with suno and nobody else has so it'll be interesting to see in
15:11the next couple months if umg and sony come to the table with suno my thoughts um behind that is
15:19suno got a much more you could argue an advantageous deal than udio did so these deals are not created
15:26equal i think it's very easy to read the headlines and not read past it and think that okay they're just
15:31settling they probably got similar terms they're similar companies udio agreed when they worked
15:36with universal universal is the first one to do the deal with udio udio agreed to completely pivot
15:41its company from being one that creates songs that are totally new at the click of a button
15:47to pivoting their service to only using licensed material they are going to relaunch it's going to
15:52be a walled garden you can't take songs out of udio anymore whereas right now you can download
15:57download them and upload them to streaming services do whatever you want to them and also
16:01they're not making brand new songs you get to remix and play with licensed pre-existing songs from that
16:08the labels provide them um that you could argue really put some handcuffs on udio and some of the
16:15stuff that they were able to do before suno on the other hand is not really having to change its service
16:20based on its deal with warner it seems like warner was more willing to kind of go with the flow with
16:26suno yeah i imagine that the hold up behind the scenes with umg although i am not privy to those
16:32conversations would be that umg would probably prefer a deal that's closer to udio and suno is
16:37maybe not down for that well and from a just from a from a negotiation leverage standpoint suno has
16:43struck this deal with warner and they you know presumably want to get full licensing they want to get sony
16:49sony and umg in the you know in the ecosystem as well umg has a lot of leverage to just hold out
16:56and you you can't really get the full product across the finish line until you have all three
17:01we've seen that with music tech over and over and over again over the last 20 years it's sort of an
17:06all-or-nothing proposition totally and um so in a lot of ways umg and sony have a lot of leverage to
17:13sort of get better terms you know i don't have any inside info there but um uh so i i could see
17:19it dragging out for a while just to as the negotiations go forward well and i think what's
17:24interesting is that that that was so it became so apparent when um tick tock and universal had their
17:31showdown at the beginning of 2024 i believe it was where universal pulled its music off of tick tock
17:37and it wound up affecting a lot of artists and songwriters who were signed to sony and warner
17:43because especially on the publishing side there's a lot of overlap between all of those companies
17:49there's a lot of songwriters on every pop song yeah exactly those songwriters are all signed to
17:52different companies yeah so if one company is pulling out that affects the other two companies
17:57on the other side if one company is opting in that also affects the other two companies and so i think that
18:02that became very apparent in that deal and that's it's still a dynamic that's very um at play here
18:08as well so let's move to the next question should we just talk about ai for the entire show i know
18:12i know this is like all of my episodes okay all right what do we have something do you want me to
18:17take this or uh yeah take it okay great pass it down the line i'm excited to have it drake's lawsuit
18:23against umg over not like us was one of the biggest stories of 2025. where do things stand now and
18:28how is it going to play out in 2026 so this was one of my biggest stories of the year it was drake
18:35uh filing a defamation lawsuit against umg who is his label uh yes his label in his long time home where
18:42he was as successful as you could be and um uh filed a lawsuit against them over kendrick's not like us
18:50which was a massive hit it was a as big as you can get it was song and record of the year for the
18:57grammy's it was the centerpiece of the super bowl halftime show it's much it's hard to get much bigger
19:01than that song you know they're playing the the three core song in baseball stadiums on the organ
19:05like everyone knows this song um so he it had a very famous line that said that uh that drake was
19:12a pedophile and um he filed a lawsuit not against kendrick but against umg saying that the label had
19:20not only defamed him by releasing the song at all but by boosting it into what it became which was this
19:26massive massive cultural moment and um i think the biggest thing when i think about the lawsuit is
19:33is the amount of shock that we had when it first happened which dan and i were in the office and we
19:37got rumors that there was something like this coming and i i said to him there's no way that this happens
19:44there's no way that someone in the middle of a of a rap in a in a diss track beef you know files a
19:51defamation lawsuit against someone it would be reputational self-immolation right much less the
19:57whole hip-hop aspect of it which is like you're in the middle of a of a gigantic rap beef like yeah
20:02yeah you don't just get the lawyers involved exactly but then here we are it happened unsurprisingly
20:09drake took some hits in you know reputationally for doing this that it people ridiculed what he was
20:15doing and said that this was not this was antithetical to hip-hop and um we were talking
20:20about authenticity before hip-hop is another genre that that you know authenticity and realness is
20:25such an important part of it and so he took this reputational hit and then he lost the lawsuit which
20:31the judge ruled as many people expected that this is not the kind of thing that you can file a defamation
20:37lawsuit over you can typically sue for defamation over a statement that can be proven true or false
20:44and that excludes things that are opinion i you know if i say or expressions of art right right
20:51and like if i said kristen stinks there there's not which i would never say to be clear for the
20:57record you can't prove that true or false it's just a statement of opinion and that's what this you know
21:01this judge said here when you're making these hyperbolic statements especially in the context of a rap
21:06battle people are not expecting the what she said was sober facts they're expecting you to just say
21:12ridiculous things to insult the other person so um that was why she dismissed the case and um
21:19now here we are heading into 2026 and drake is appealing the case uh keeping it going
21:26not letting it die not letting it die um which you could you know you can discuss the the pr angle of
21:31it uh till you're blue in the face but he has an interesting legal case which is
21:35you know this is the the big question is did the average listener think that he was really calling
21:42you know that kendrick was really calling him a pedophile was he saying you are a pedophile or was
21:47he saying you know some more amorphous hyperbolic thing and i think a lot of people would say that he
21:55was just calling him a pedophile so i it's it's you get into i think that and that's what what drake's
22:01lawyers are going to argue which is that um there are big first amendment reasons for why you want
22:07to be really light light touch with with bringing defamation lawsuits in against works of art yeah but
22:13that in this context maybe people really took it as as a direct statement of fact that's what they're
22:20going to argue before the appeals court and we'll see we'll see how that goes i just feel like in rap
22:24music the rap industry has been fighting for so long to make sure that rap lyrics are not used in
22:31court against a rapper to allow rappers to freely express themselves to brag to make up stories to
22:37say whatever they want in their art and not be seen as having actually committed a crime or um whatever it
22:44is and this just kind of if drake were to win that just totally takes that back like what does he want
22:49does he want umg to not release uh to to censor one of their artists right and and that's where
22:55another aspect of it which was just so unbelievable i think about it was that you know he and kendrick
23:02are both signed to universal if he's saying you should censor a song like not like us he's inviting
23:07censorship of himself as well and to your point that whole argument about the use of lyrics in in
23:14criminal cases has been such a huge deal and i don't think anyone in the creative community would
23:21ever support the idea that what you say in a song could be used against you in a criminal proceeding
23:27and this just flies in the face of that and it's just so just bizarre i will i will uh tie us up here
23:33with uh the the yes the the issue of rap on trial has been a really really big issue that i've been
23:39covering for a really long time and um back in 2021 or 2022 um there was a letter written by signed by
23:48many many prominent artists uh saying that that rap music should not be treated literally and that it
23:54should be taken as a form of art and should not be used in court drake was one of the signatories of
24:00that letter which which was brought up in the case so all the legal experts who have really
24:06followed that issue closely have weighed in on this case exactly like you just did so um yeah it's a
24:12it's a fascinating case and a good one to watch in 2026. dan how about you pull another question for
24:182026. this is such a nice boss i know thank you target targets are sponsored today no they're not
24:27specifically the times square target um will universal's downtown acquisition go through and what
24:33does that mean for indie music so to quickly describe this universal music groups uh version
24:39music group division is uh in the process of acquiring downtown music group which is one of
24:45the biggest indie distribution companies um which also has several other different divisions that work
24:51that deal in publishing and rights management um huge company massive yes uh deal is 775 million
24:59has been met with vehement opposition from the independent music community which is focused on
25:07the idea of the broader idea in the industry of consolidation um there has been a bit of an
25:13arms race towards uh vacuuming up market share um from some of the majors and the independent community
25:21has essentially looked at this deal as if you take another independent distributor off the market
25:27off from our options we suddenly don't have many other options to get our music to market without
25:35dealing with some of the major labels it in some capacity and that is a business um concern of theirs
25:43that is an ideological concern of theirs um indie versus major and there is um a competition concerns with
25:50that um which you can yeah speak to part of as well that's the the front side of their argument and then
25:59the nugget of their argument that actually has regulators interested and that actually might shape the outcome
26:06of this deal making it not an entire buyout but a buyout of most of downtown just not all of it
26:13is uh that they the indie organizations said but wait also this one company within downtown curve uh
26:22royalty systems has specific access to data that we provided as clients that if umg were to acquire
26:32that as part of this entire buyout that'll put it upstream from us so not just it essentially makes
26:38it a vertical monopoly i'm sorry not entirely a vertical monopoly but it gives it a a lever above
26:48all of them to know the pipeline of new music coming out further advantaging their they're giving
26:54them a better competitive edge because basically if you know who's um paying royalties out to whom then
27:00you know who your clients are your um partners are and you can go and poach them and that's what european
27:07regulators say okay actually that specifically is probably problematic they've spent like six months
27:14looking into it and it looks like they might force a sale of curve for the deal to get approved and so
27:21the other side of that is universal saying you know we are very separate from virgin virgin saying that they
27:28will that if they were able to acquire downtown everything would be you know managed separately there
27:34would be a firewall there you know don't worry about the data basically they've also said it doesn't
27:38matter that much to them in the big picture they still want downtown you know like there's so much
27:42more that they could do yeah yeah they they want it for market share um purposes they um want to grow
27:50their distribution um operations especially as that seems to be where the industry has been going for a
27:56while towards these you know non-exclusive distribution deals um as to the question is whether or not it will
28:04go through i think probably but to liz's point there will have to be some divestments and whether that
28:11is that one division or universal having to sell off other parts of things or whatever um i do think
28:18that they will find a way to make it happen however as even as that brings one indie distribution
28:26company under the purview of the majors i don't necessarily think that the sky is falling there
28:31because it does leave this big uh market opportunity and there are other distribution
28:37companies that have not yet come to the united states or that haven't necessarily um gotten into
28:43the white glove service of indie distributor indie label distribution instead of just artist distribution
28:50it does provide an opportunity for other companies to come in and be like we'll take this this
28:56segment we'll help you out now here let's see how this kind of develops moving forward okay liz you pick one
29:07i don't like that one can i pick
29:12um oh oh and i got one from me how will the catalog market change and what major catalogs will be up for
29:19sale apart from taylor the other massive catalog sale deal that happened in 2025 was the weekend
29:26um and this was really a work in progress it was a long-term search for both the right deal
29:34and the right partners and to their credit um able to spy and sal slaby his long-term manager and and the leader
29:44of his you know really his business um empire they found the right deal like they've they're very happy with the outcome
29:51so they sold the weekend uh we can't say it was a straight sale it was a structured partnership
30:02where the artist received financing um in the form of a royalty-backed note which is basically a private
30:13loan from a swiss private credit company called partners group never heard of them but remember that
30:20name because they're very important behind the scenes they are almost almost partner corp yeah designs
30:27to be behind the scenes there yeah very swiss uh and that so that was a part of it but then it got
30:34somewhere in the ballpark of like 750 million dollars worth of financing basically to consolidate his
30:42catalog and put it in a thing put it in a holding company that he
30:50and that the weekend and uh lyric capital jointly manage god this is a really complex yeah it's a
30:58totally new structure and way about thinking for an artist that is very pro artist he's getting
31:06exactly what he wants he didn't sell his assets outright he consolidated ownership of them lost
31:13maybe he might have lost some share but by doing it with a captive partner in this way he will forever
31:23have say over the the what his what's done with his music right a seat at the table yeah and a seat and a
31:32stake yeah so do you think more artists that have leverage like that are going to follow suit exactly i
31:38think that more artists who know what their work is worth um are going to leverage that we have
31:46like big picture factors here you have with generation z the most financially literate generation ever
31:53particularly in in the united states and you have the most affluent generation ever in north america
32:01gen z yes doesn't feel that way i know i know that's another problem we're working on it on behalf
32:09of gen z these are just factors that contribute to the average working artist having more information
32:15about how to make their money make their art make more money for them and i think you're going to see
32:22them bringing that leverage and that that know-how to more conversation so that's going to change the
32:28catalog market big picture the other thing is is the money you know where's the money coming from
32:32and what form is it coming from coming in now it's no longer just straight private equity at all that's
32:38like so three years ago um it is it and it and it is now reaching the level of funny money it is
32:46tens of billions flowing in a single quarter wow uh i would just like to thank liz for not using the
32:54word unique there in describing that that deal because as you guys well know unique is a band word
33:00um under my purview at billboard oh and the other catalogs that might come up for sale
33:06are maybe metallica this year been told a very big uh metal catalog definitely more current
33:16chart-topping country artists um because they have you know maybe some some of the the unique
33:22mock wow one of a kind say one of a kind
33:29just the ways that nashville business works like it is such a more um business forward genre
33:37because you've worked with professional songwriters for all these people know the value of their works
33:41and they they monetize that so that they can go out and do more work um and k-pop you're gonna see
33:48a big k-pop sale but i can't say which wow she has some off-record information clearly
33:54okay wait pass pass me the vase are we going vase or vase i you know what i call it a jug i think
34:02that's insulting for this one okay we're gonna pull like one more and then i think we'll move on
34:07um so i'm gonna cheat here okay i'm gonna cheat here and see which one's the best wow the integrity of
34:15the vase is being challenged here this group has done a really good job at speaking quickly
34:21i know um hopefully y'all have enjoyed your sound bite the depth of our conversation um okay so this
34:26is one for bill what will happen with the doj's lawsuit against ticketmaster i think everyone cares
34:32about that so yeah i mean this is the thing we've been talking about since 2010 since they
34:36you know since live nation and ticketmaster merged it's this big gripe that live nation and
34:42ticketmaster run the whole live music industry is sort of the popular perception among some people
34:46and um two years ago in 2024 we saw the doj at a moment where i think there was the political
34:54sentiment to do it um go after them very aggressively in court and file a lawsuit an antitrust lawsuit
35:00seeking to break up the company so time flies uh two years later we are getting to the make or break
35:06moment of the case uh live nation has filed their brief saying this case should not go to trial that
35:12you spent two years digging through all of our records our emails everything and you didn't find a
35:16whole lot um doj begs to differ and says that they can prove that that you know for instance if you
35:23don't use uh uh ticketmaster as your exclusive ticketing agent at your venue that you will get fewer
35:30shows from live nation they say they can make that case in court so um the judge will decide that
35:36in the coming weeks or months and then we will get a trial in march uh and it's a huge case because
35:43it's not just a huge case for the music industry it is um and you know there's other cases that have
35:47been brought against live nation by the ftc over their ticketing practices with scalpers and all this
35:53stuff so there's a big you know the big moment for live nation but it's a big case for
35:58competition law in america in general you know the the government has in this modern you know
36:05tech era they have tried to go after they went after google they went after meta they're going
36:11after apple right now they're trying to rein in these giant giant monolithic tech companies that have
36:18grown up over the last 25 years and they've had kind of mixed results with it and um so this is
36:24another big inflection moment of can the government effectively police the way that companies grow and
36:31the way that companies dominate the markets that they're in so we will see what happens but it's
36:35a really really big case i'm really interested to see where that goes especially in march when that
36:40trial starts yeah we will see okay so that concludes our questions and predictions for 2026
36:45now we're going to quickly go through some of our ins and outs for 2026 so something that you're going to
36:50uh see as um in and out i don't know how to describe that any better okay the take on the new year's
36:59resolution kind of thing yeah exactly exactly okay so liz let's start with you what's your in and you're
37:05out for 2026 um in more artist involved catalog deals more of these structures that are not vanilla at all
37:20that keep the artist in control of what's done with their music my out hybe america maybe i think
37:29they're gonna have a they have had a rebuilding phase i think it's still continuing um hybe is so
37:37influential still in south korea and k-pop but they've had a lot going on there too
37:44um with leadership issues regulatory issues investigations they pivoted and focused a lot on
37:53latin america and they are having some wins there but i think that let's wait and see um 2026 might be
38:00a build year well they just hired a new president as well yeah ethiopia and you know she's a great
38:07leader as well um and i think that we'll you know coming into any company it takes a while you know
38:13yeah planting the seeds probably 2026 maybe we see something 2027 that's great liz dan what about you
38:20what are your ins and outs of 2026 so my end was something that we had talked a little bit about
38:26earlier which is just more nuanced language around how we talk about a and ai and music um because i think
38:33that it's become very clear in listening to certain people talk about ai whether or not they really
38:41understand what they're talking about um i think even at the beginning of 2025 you could speak a lot
38:47more in generalities and people would be like oh yeah yeah definitely and i think as the year has progressed
38:52and certainly now as we're going into 2026 um it takes a lot more nuance to talk about wait what are
38:59we talking about when we're talking about ai and music and we have that discussion in the newsroom
39:03yeah about how to put it in headlines how to put it into stories and in what language we're using yeah
39:08yeah and you know whether it's ai assisted fully ai generated how do we know those things you know and
39:14you know what you were saying earlier too bill about like are people going to disclose these things
39:19and how does that get murkier as we go and i think that one of the things that you know obviously we
39:25focus on a lot is language and how we talk about things and i think that there will have to be a
39:30lot more nuance in that uh with that going to 2026 and then and then my out is just not caring about
39:37what other people think anymore maybe that's just me just a personal thing that's just a personal thing
39:42um it's certainly why i wore my uh contiguous map of the united states sweatshirt today if you were
39:50worried about what i thought i think it looks great man thanks man i really appreciate that you
39:54know like thank you so uh but i don't care about what yeah because that is out to be clear that is
39:59out yeah so okay bill what about you in and out 2026 my in is opting out and my out is opting in
40:09okay all right for those who don't speak this language please explain what that means uh this
40:16is a reference to i i'm being a little ridiculous but it's a reference to the settlements that were struck
40:21over ai the ai music platforms and when these deals were reached there was a lot of talk of
40:28we're going to have opt-ins and we're going to have the artists are going to have full control it's
40:33it's great for everybody no one is is going to lose here it's going to be great and and no one is going to
40:39do anything that they don't want to do because they're going to opt in exactly choose to be a part
40:44and that everyone if you do opt-in you'll be paid and there was just a lot of vague language because you
40:49know that is how things work when you're working on in frameworks but i think the thing that we're
40:54going to see in 2026 is uh the devil is always in the details and we're gonna have to figure out
41:02the actual legal mechanics of how this works in terms of how do you opt out how do you opt in what
41:08exactly are you opting out of the training data set are you opting out of having your name used in
41:13the outputs are you how do you audit the the extent to which your music was used is it a one-time
41:18licensing fee is it an ongoing thing all of these things are going to have to be dealt with
41:24by fleets of lawyers and uh it's going to be dealing with dusty contracts that you're going
41:30to have to break out of paper out of cardboard boxes that never foresaw any of this so um i think
41:37that uh the big in for me is that there's going to be some disputes over how exactly this works once
41:42the artists and their reps really start thinking about this these deals that were struck by the big
41:47companies how does this affect me and how do i deal how do i interface with it and i i think that
41:53we're gonna i you know i don't i don't want to be cynical i don't want to be a doomsday person but i
41:57think we're gonna we're gonna get some disputes there's gonna be some friction over how it works
42:00okay so i'll end off with uh my ins and outs my in is that i think that people are going to put more
42:06and more marketing money and marketing dollars towards real life events i think that in an age of ai
42:12when we can't really trust what we're seeing online i think that people are going to really
42:17yearn for live events special experiences with artists in person pop-up events that kind of stuff
42:23so i i see more of the marketing budgets going there additionally my out is related to that i think that
42:31tick tock fan pages are a little bit on the outs it's not that i think that people are going to stop
42:36doing them and what what i mean when i say this is um if i'm an artist team i would create a bunch
42:43of fan pages for my artist and run them as if i'm a fan but really i'm part of the artist team
42:48so i can recirculate interview clips and a classic business tactic right astroturfing yeah yeah like
42:54astroturfing i think that that's still going to be popular but i think that a lot of fans have caught
42:58on to this tactic and are familiar with it now um we heard a lot of people talk about like somber doing
43:04it um he's an artist who's really digitally savvy and whenever fans get fatigued by a marketing tactic
43:11it's probably time to start moving towards something else yeah um so that's my in and out but
43:16i have like a hot take wow i think there's going to be an artist that uses this fad of prediction
43:26markets as part of their rollout in some way and i i bring this up here because bill
43:35um as legal reporter i'm wondering if you feel like that's possible and also if an artist could
43:41get themselves in a lot of trouble jumping on the trend of calci and polymarket and you know all that
43:48stuff yeah i mean if you certainly if you give people advance notice and then they make a bunch of
43:52money like if you manipulate those market i mean it would if it was if you were dealing with a
43:57publicly traded company and you were part of the the regulatory regime that exists there and you were
44:02talking about shares of a company it would just be insider trading uh so there's a lot of ways you
44:07can get in trouble um doing that uh you know you could you could certainly do it i'm sure if people
44:12were like oh everyone's speculating about when drake's album will come out and people are gambling on
44:17that but if if the artists themselves get involved and you know are making any money on that and then
44:23decide when to drop the album yeah it's a legal minefield uh so yeah i just okay like to explain
44:29like my thought process on this well obviously prediction markets are like everywhere i i just
44:34looked at some last night it was super depressing actually definitely in the midst of a major marketing
44:39campaign right now in 2026 is a casino for sure and i mean i just think entertainment is like the
44:45perfect play i mean sports betting has been such a big thing over the last few years
44:49when's it going to come time when people are really leaning into entertainment and trying to also
44:53transform it in the same way we've also heard conversations over the last few years about the
44:57idea of monetizing super fandom and people have struggled to do that i i don't know maybe if it
45:03doesn't come from the artist is is there i don't know some way to encourage fandoms to
45:09place bets i mean you can definitely see an outcome where there's a cal she bet on who's going to be the
45:14super bowl yeah yeah probably is um yeah i think that there's so i'm curious about what the actual
45:22lawsuit would look like because this is a cal she for example is all the definition of this
45:29is a private market so you if the okay drake in hypothetical drake gets involved and says
45:41i'm starts sprinkling easter eggs about when his next album might come very intentionally to this
45:47audience of investors on investors better on cal she and one party loses a lot of money that party
45:58sues the other like class action of people that like how does it even what does this lawsuit even look
46:04like well i'm sure you sign i'm sure it's a private market do you have a case i'm sure you sign a very
46:09aggressive when you use these platforms i'm sure there's a huge waiver of like you know that dealing
46:14with sort of like an end user license agreement once again read the addendum read the fine print
46:20um so you know potentially users are signing away their right to do this kind of stuff i'm sure there's
46:25an arbitration agreement that says you have to deal with it through private arbitration not through a
46:29lawsuit but um you know it just there's a reason why we wrote insider trading laws and uh now we've
46:37turned the entire and you know there's a reason why why sports gambling is very is a very highly
46:43regulated industry um you know what all that crazy small print that you every time you see a gambling
46:48ad is because there are serious regulatory regimes in every state where that has legal gambling so um
46:56yeah i don't know it's a mess i don't know exactly what it would look like but i certainly if i was an
47:00attorney advising a uh artist about you know doing that kind of campaign i would say be very careful
47:10yeah i i well i just wanted to raise it as a hot take i was thinking about it last night and i was
47:13like that is monetizing super fandom i guess it's gonna it's gonna happen someone's gonna figure it
47:18out i don't know what it's gonna look like but just placing it here y'all come back to on the record in
47:23like a year or so and i will say i told you so yeah i'll come back um okay so how i end every
47:31episode of on the record is i ask my guests to make me a playlist and so i'm going to have each of
47:36you take i usually have people pick three songs but since i have three guests i'm gonna have each
47:41of you pick one song um so it's all based on the same prompts every time the first prompt is a song
47:49that you can no longer gatekeep and i'm gonna throw it to dan because dan knows a lot of niche
47:53songs so give us something good um when kristen was setting me up with this she referenced specifically
47:59that uh i have been listening to nothing but african music for about half a decade now if not
48:06longer exclusively uh and i'm not sure if i gatekept this because i really i tweeted a lot about it before
48:13i left twitter like three or four years ago it might be like the last tweet that i had done but there
48:18was a song um i want to say 2021 um from these three guys in lagos nigeria uh called don't call
48:25me um it's by lil kesh featuring zina leeski and produced by young john and it is the first time
48:33i heard it i was like this might be the best song i've ever heard in my life it was i spent the entire
48:38rest of the year going around saying this is the best song of the year this is the best song of the
48:42year uh it's been four years and i think it's still the best song of the year
48:46um and it's just like there's just like a bounce to it there's an unbridled joy to it i think all
48:53three of them are amazing artists in and of their own in their own right and um just having them on
49:00that song it's just it just brings a smile to my face every time i hear it so it's called don't call
49:04me okay we'll definitely have to look that up and then another one of my prompts is a favorite
49:09throwback so i'm gonna give that one to liz so a song that's over 10 years old oh leaving the entire
49:14world's catalog of music just to narrow it down i had a throwback but it was not that throwbacky i
49:21guess it was only like five years old i was gonna say okay near catalog yeah we can okay you can do
49:26that you can do that um raul alejandro's uh todo de ti nice which is just such a it's just such a fun
49:35upbeat song i actually found it this is super lame of me um not super lame because leila cavo and the
49:43billboard espanol team are supreme experts in the genre of all things latin but i got it i i was like
49:49i'd never heard this song before until i listened to it on billboards billboard latin's best 50 latin
49:57pop songs news you can use baby that's a great pick that's a great pick um and then finally
50:05a guilty pleasure i'm gonna throw that to bill so um i i would you you told us what these like
50:11broad prompts were and i was thinking about like so much of my it's a hard question for me because so
50:17much of my uh my music consumption i feel like is is has some level of guiltiness to it uh there's just
50:23like a lot of shame um carry a lot of this with you yeah i see um but so there were a lot of options
50:28to pick from but uh but i would say okay so i'm gonna go with uh the goo goo dolls uh iris which um
50:39yeah um because beautiful christian so i really great quick anecdote it was this is a big story this
50:45is a big song from my wife and i and uh we wanted them to play it at our wedding and we wanted them to
50:50play it for the last song and so we told you wanted the goo goo dolls to play it we wanted johnny
50:54resnick to show up at our wedding uh you have to get like a rain machine to rain on him while he's
50:59singing um so we asked the band to play this as the final song and they shot us an email like three
51:03weeks before the wedding and they were like everything looks good we're not gonna play iris
51:07and we were like we're like no yeah no you have to be clear your wedding band not the goo goo
51:11yeah no no our wedding band our like three-piece wedding band so we uh we get on the phone with
51:17them we're like you have to like it's it's it's our song you gotta play it and uh the guy goes
51:22you're aware that that that that song has like a seven-piece string ensemble in it right and we're
51:29like yes and he's like we can't do that where there's there's three of us so uh we finally i was
51:34like dude play the recording we don't care play it and it all played and it was great so um wait so
51:40did the band end up playing the band played and they just played the recording in the background and
51:43it's sort of i mean everybody was in the bag by that point anyway so uh you know it was fine so
51:49uh it was great everyone had a drunken sing-along to uh iris as as one should at their wedding that's
51:55beautiful okay perfect place to end it dan liz and bill thank you so much for coming to on the record
52:00we'll have to have you back at the end of 2026 to see if we're right about any of this thank you so
52:05much to dan rice bill donahue and liz diltz marshall from my team for joining me today to talk about the
52:102026 year ahead now it's time to dive into our charts roundup to learn more about this week's
52:17biggest movers and shakers here is the top 10 on the billboard hot 100 chart for the week of january 24th
52:25coming in at number 10 this week is opalite by taylor swift nine is folded by kaylani
52:32eight this week is back to friends by somber
52:41seventh is end of beginning by joe
52:46in the sixth slot is choose in texas by ella langley five is ordinary by alex warren
52:54fourth is man i need by olivia dean
53:03in the third position is golden by huntrix
53:09second this week is the fate of ophelia by taylor swift
53:14and finally the number one on the billboard hot 100 chart for the week of january 24th
53:19it's i just might by bruno mars for its first week at number one thanks for listening to this
53:25week's episode of on the record if you like today's show please give us a follow on instagram at
53:30billboard on the record where you can find new clips of our show every single week we'd also
53:35appreciate it if you give our show like a rating a like a thumbs up all those good things they really
53:40help a show like ours to grow and to reach new people again i'm your host kristen robinson and tune in
53:46next week for another peek behind the curtain of the music business i'll see you then
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