Music Business News: United States

Universal Music: legal case over alleged damages in 2008 warehouse fire ‘meritless’

Response follows confirmation of lost recordings in new legal filing

Universal Music Group is now an $8bn-a-year company, as streaming revenues surge 21.5% in record 2019

Company now generates more than $11m every day from streaming

Downtown ups Andrew Sparkler to EVP, Global Business Development amidst raft of promotions and new hires

Bruce Lampcov also promoted, to SVP of Global Business Development

Primary Wave buys publishing and master royalty stream of Gasoline Alley, including works by Sublime

Gasoline Alley is an entity owned by music managers Arnold Stiefel and Randy Phillips

Amanda Samii named Senior Vice President of A&R for Capitol Records

Exec joins Capitol after 10 years at Kobalt Music Publishing

A year after trying to cut songwriters’ pay, Spotify boosts writer visibility with launch of pages feature

New feature wins praise from writers – but bad vibes still lurk in the background

Drake inks exclusive deal with social broadcasting platform Caffeine

Caffeine will live stream and co-produce Rap Battles in collaboration with Battle Rap platform, URL

Apple poaches Warner exec Jeff Bronikowski for Global Head of Music Strategic Initiatives role

The list of ex-Warner execs running music at digital services grows again