Music Business News: North America

Valeisha Butterfield Jones appointed Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for The Recording Academy

Exec was formerly the Global Head of Inclusion for Google

Warner inks exclusive global distribution deal with children’s entertainment giant Mattel

Deal will see WMG's Arts Music division act as the sole distributor of Mattel’s catalog of more than 1,000 songs

Mechanical Licensing Collective makes five new leadership appointments

New hires will lead key posts including education and outreach, marketing, and customer experience

Pro Music Rights launches music licensing dashboard and reporting system

Company also plans to launch an updated Rights Holder Dashboard

Artists can now pitch for songs from BMG songwriters as company opens up ‘myBMG’ app

Artists can submit written briefs or videos to BMG’s roster of songwriters

TikTok crosses 2bn downloads, after racking up 500m in just 5 months

TikTok reaches huge milestone amid COVID-19 crisis

Daniel Ek says Spotify’s subscription growth is increasing. But that’s not true in monetary terms.

It all depends on whether you're counting heads, or you're counting money

The music business has so much to learn from Epic Games

From online retailing to virtual humans... the Fortnite maker is one step ahead on it all