Music Business News: North America

1.4m viewers watched Kiswe’s pay-per-view virtual concerts in 2020

Company's platform supported virtual events from BTS and Justin Bieber in 2020

Jim Griffin, a former Geffen Records and Warner Music exec, joins Pex as Vice President of Digital Rights

He has also been a consultant and advisor to Nokia, WIPO and SoundExchange

DistroKid inks partnership with music streaming and discovery platform Audiomack

Integration lets DistroKid users distribute music directly to their artist profile on Audiomack

Madison Beer to debut Immersive Reality virtual concert made in Unreal Engine on TikTok Live

Virtual event takes place in a full digital recreation of the Sony Hall concert venue in New York

Warner’s ADA Latin inks global deals with several prominent Latin music labels and artists

Among them are EDM veteran Toy Selectah’s Worldwide Records and Los Angeles indie label Cosmica Records

YouTube’s TikTok rival Shorts arrives in the US

Launch partners include Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Merlin, 300 Entertainment, Kobalt

How many artists are generating $50k+ a year on Spotify? Over 13,000.

New Loud & Clear site sees Spotify pull back the curtain on the truth about streaming economics

EMPIRE hires Elliott Peters as VP of Global Business Development, promotes Mike Gallegus to VP of Business and Legal Affairs

Peters has previously worked for SoundCloud, Apple and Warner Music