Excited to share that I started a new chapter with @USportsEnt as Sr. Director of Business Ops!
So thankful to @RiceAthletics for all the lessons learned, experience gained, and life-long friendships made over the last ~3 years.
Here’s to my basketball only era 😆
Sad that I won’t be attending #NACDA/#NACMA this year :(
For the newbies, everyone from the industry is all in one place which is rare, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there🤝🏽
For my friends attending, have to best time but don’t make me too jealous that I’m not there😂
Taylor Swift’s record contract could lead to millions of dollars being paid to artists as UMG prepares to sell half of their equity stake in Spotify.
When Swift signed her contract in 2018, she negotiated a clause stating that any sale of UMG’s Spotify shares would result in a distribution of money to their artists, non-recoupable.
Her “non-recoupable” clause ensures that artists receive that money even if they still owe advances to the label that signed them.
(https://t.co/a6vxKX98qo)
Universal Music is selling $1.4 billion in Spotify shares. It paid nothing for them. Spotify handed the shares over in 2008 just for letting Spotify play music, and the deal was set up so almost none of that money would ever reach the artists who made the music. Taylor Swift's 2018 contract changed that.
Back in 2008, Spotify was a small Swedish startup that needed songs to play. The big record labels had the songs. They had no reason to hand them over cheap, so the two sides cut a deal. Spotify gave them shares. The labels gave Spotify the right to play their music. Universal walked away with 5%. That stake later grew to 7% when Universal bought EMI and rolled EMI's 2% into its own. Then it drifted back to 3% as Spotify took on more investors and shrank everyone's slice. At today's prices, 3% of Spotify is worth about $2.7 billion. Universal sat on those shares for 18 years and never sold a single one. Until yesterday.
Most artists never see royalty money. When a label signs you, it pays you an advance to live on while you make the album. It also covers your studio time, your music videos, your marketing, your tour. All of those costs go on a tab. The label keeps every dollar your music earns until you clear that tab. Berklee, the music school in Boston, says as many as 96% of major-label artists never earn enough to clear it. They stay in the red their entire careers.
Sony moved first in 2018. It sold half its Spotify shares for $768 million and paid $250 million directly to its artists in cash, no matter how much each one still owed. Warner followed a few months later. It sold all of its Spotify shares for $504 million and said $126 million would go to its artists too. Warner played it differently. Most of that money went to pay down what those artists already owed, instead of putting fresh cash in their pockets.
Taylor Swift was negotiating her own deal with Universal that same year. She refused to sign unless Universal put the Sony version of the rule in her contract. Cash to artists, no matter what they owed. She wrote at the time that the clause "meant more to me than any other deal point." Universal had said publicly in March 2018 it would share Spotify money with artists. But it had not put the cash-not-credit rule in writing. Swift's contract, signed eight months later, did.
Universal is finally selling. Hundreds of millions of dollars in cash are about to land in artists' bank accounts, including artists who have spent years or decades in the red and would otherwise get nothing from a sale like this.
Most of those artists have never met Taylor Swift. All of them benefit from a single line she insisted on eight years ago.
Get ready Tributes! The Hunger Games is coming in a stunning collector’s edition on 11/3. This must-have edition features an exclusive Q&A from Suzanne Collins, a foil slip-case, elaborate endpapers, spectacular stenciled edges, and more. Find out more: https://t.co/zdGKctOpLi
just days after the announcement that they would be the crew taking on this mission.
Little Jennifer would never believe me if I said these type of opportunities were in her future, but life has different plans sometimes. So blessed 🤍
#NASA#ArtemisII#FinalFour#Artemis2
Following the successful completion of the @NASA@NASAArtemis II mission, I figured I’d share my picture with the four astronauts that executed this mission with precision and grace.
I had the pleasure of meeting Christina, Victor, Reid, and Jeremy at the Final Four in 2023 -
A historic moment in Lake Charles ⭐
After more than 40 years of shaping McNeese, Bridget Martin is named Director of Athletics, the first woman in program history to hold the role.