South Arts, a nonprofit arts organization based in Atlanta, will award grants ranging from approximately $25,000 to $40,000 to 52 jazz artists, all summed-up $2 million to dozens of musicians like Damon Locks, Jaimie Branch, and Kip Hanrahan. Matty Karas compares this amount to hundreds of millions of dollars being paid out to pop and rock stars for their back catalogs: "Which of these sounds like the more meaningful contribution: the one designed to enrich music's one percenters and Wall Street speculators, or the one designed to support the ongoing, life-affirming work of music's vibrant middle class? Which will result in the creation of better music? Which will do more to sustain that creation, and enrich the rest of us, in the years ahead?".

Primary Wave has acquired a stake in the company owned by the estate of the legendary Bing Crosby, in a deal "estimated in excess of $50 million’, AP News reports. This deal includes the Bing Crosby Archives, featuring thousands of recordings by Bing Crosby and other artists, many of which have never been released. Terms of the deal include artist royalties from master recordings featuring Crosby’s performances, writer royalties from songs written by Bing Crosby, his rights in the film 'White Christmas', as well as other film, radio, and television productions. In addition, Primary Wave has acquired a stake in his name, likeness, and rights of publicity.

"The giants of the financial world are now really waking up to the modern music business’s true value – and they’re throwing billions at it", Music Business Worldwide writes announcing a major shift in music rights. New York-based investment management titan Apollo Global Management is investing up to $1 billion in HarbourView. Investment company Blackstone is about to launch a new joint entity with Hipgnosis, that will have a billion dollars or significantly more to spend on music copyrights. KKR (& Co Inc) – which already has an existing billion-dollar investment vehicle in music running with BMG – has a portfolio of assets under its management worth $234 billion.

Sony Music and Warner Music published their UK gender pay gap reports, revealing a mean average gender pay gap in 2020 (as of April 5, 2019) of 26.0% and 31.5% at the two companies, respectively, Music Business Worldwide reports. It's slowly closing, but it's still a crevasse - last year it was 29.1% at Universal Music, 20.9% at Sony Music and 38.7% at Warner Music. The mean average ‘gender pay gap’ reflects what the average female employee earns versus the average male employee at each company.

Tina Turner has sold the rights to her music catalogue - share of her recordings, her music publishing writer’s share, neighboring rights and name, image, and likeness - to BMG, in the biggest single-artist rights acquisition for the German company. MBW believes that this acquisition is in the $50 million-and-above category.

Warner Music Group boss Steve Cooper revealed a stunning stat about this second, less talked-about area of the business – a stat that, according to MBW’s calculations, suggests this is a sector already worth a billion dollars in annual revenue for the global music rights industry. Cooper confirmed that Warner Music Group’s recorded music operation has a present run-rate of $235 million per year in revenue from Facebook, TikTok, Peloton and Roblox.

Universal Music Group's opening price on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange today was over a third bigger than the reference price that Vivendi confirmed previously of €18.50 ($21.7) which would have valued UMG at €33.5 billion (approx. $39bn), Music Business Worldwide. It means that as of this week, UMG has a €25.25 ($29.63) share price, which translates to a colossal valuation of €46.3 billion or $54.3 billion for the world’s biggest music rightsholder. UMG largely bids au revoir to former Paris-based parent Vivendi, which now owns just 10% of UMG, while a Tencent-led Consortium owns 20%. Pershing Square Holdings Ltd also owns 10%, and French businessman ex-Vivendi Chairman Vincent Bolloré’s ‘Bolloré Entities’ owns 18.0%.

"It’s worth repeating: the song is the currency of our business. Yet the songwriter — who delivers the most important component to the success of a record company, publisher, promoter, manager, agent, music venue, radio station, broadcaster et al – is the lowest paid person in the economic equation. An equation that has made the modern music industry a juggernaut" - Hipgnosis Fund's Merck Mercuriadis writes in an open letter to the music industry, and then he scores comparing this to sports: "Imagine in football or basketball if athletes that were responsible for a league’s success were the worst paid people in the economic equation". Music Business Worldwide published the whole letter.

Portishead's cover of Abba's 'SOS' has earned 500 percent more through new Spotify "fan-powered” royalty model, when compared with other streaming platforms, Pitchfork claims. The new model, unveiled by the company back in March, directs royalties due from each subscriber only to the artists they are currently streaming – a system backed by independent artists, as well as advocates for a fairer streaming model. This is in contrast to the pro-rata model utilised by streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, where royalty payments from users’ subscriptions are distributed in accordance with which artists have the most plays.

Anghami is a music streaming service based in the Middle East, namely Abu Dhabi, serving mostly the Middle East. "It has 70 million registered users and nearly 60 million songs in its library. It’s also set to be the first Arab tech startup to go public on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange. Anghami’s trajectory has also been something of a case study in how the global music industry is being slowly transformed from outside its core centers of New York, Los Angeles, and London". Rest of the World brings the whole story.