In today’s CMU Daily: A booming live music sector and continued growth in the digital music market both contributed to an €830 million increase in royalties collected by the world’s songwriter collecting societies in 2023, according to the latest Global Collections Report published by CISAC 

Also today: Black Lives In Music launched a new anti-racism code for the music industry at WOMEX this week and previewed new software which will help music companies track their diversity and inclusion work; Diddy’s legal team have written another letter to the court about the gagging order they want issued restricting what anyone involved in the criminal case against the musician can say in public

Plus: With the second edition of the Agents x Managers conference close, Matt Hanner, founder of live agency Runway, sat down with CMU’s Sam Taylor to talk about what being a live agent means today, not checking email at weekends, and why he wants his team to make more money than he does

Live music booming, but songwriters still not feeling the benefits of streaming, say latest CISAC stats

Songwriter collecting societies brought in 7.6% more money last year, with total worldwide revenues of €11.75 billion, according to CISAC. That’s up around €830 million compared to 2022, with the boost driven by a booming live music sector, alongside steady growth in digital.  

The live sector at large has now fully recovered from the COVID pandemic, meaning that the royalties received by writers and publishers from the performance of music hit €3.06 billion, a 21.8% increase on 2022, and 12.7% more than in 2019. Performance revenues obviously took a major hit during the pandemic as live music shutdown and businesses that play music in public couldn’t open. 

“The live and public performance income stream has bounced back buoyantly”, says Gadi Oron, Director General of CISAC, which brings together stats from all the songwriter societies around the world in its ‘Global Collections Report’. 

That means, he goes on, “for the first time, the amounts collected by CISAC societies for background music, live concerts, exhibitions and entertainment exceeded their 2019 pre-COVID level, fuelled by the growing number of live concerts and tours around the world”. 

It was live music in particular that had a good year. While live and public performance income at large was up 21.8%, a review of 100 societies discovered that “collections from live concerts and festivals grew 36.5%, and public performance licensing revenue rose by a smaller 10.9%”. 

While live and public performance had impressive growth, it is the third biggest revenue generator overall...

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Matt Hanner, founder of live agency Runway, on this year’s Agents x Managers Conference

After last year’s sold-out inaugural event, Runway - the independent live music booking agency founded by Matt Hanner - is returning to London’s Rich Mix with its Agents x Managers Conference on 4 Dec.

Born out of what was initially an internal training session, Hanner started the event to help people understand the modern ecosystem that drives live music. “I wanted to do something that gave people the broader strokes, to help them see how the landscape is as an independent company. As an agency we have to have conversations that span a fairly broad arena. We might be working with smaller teams, and so we have to have a good idea of what’s going on out in the wider world”. 

A big part of the motivation for the conference is a desire to “foster better agent and manager relationships”, says Hanner. “I think managers want more from us - as independent agents, working with independent teams, I thought it was really valuable to try and give people a broader understanding of what was going on”.

“Two years ago we staged the first event as a training day for our team”, continues Hanner. “We booked some speakers for what was meant to be a team day and got carried away, really. It turned into a mini conference”. 

“What we inadvertently created was this forum where you could bring independent managers and agents together, to get into the middle bit of the venn diagram of the issues that are relevant to both sides - both in terms of live and careers, but also in terms of people and professionals”.

That foundation laid the groundwork for last year’s bigger event...

Black Lives In Music launches anti-racism code for the music industry

Black Lives In Music has launched a new Anti-Racism Code Of Conduct for the music industry described as a “game-changing initiative” that aims to “create a future where equity is the standard”. 

Informed by the organisation’s ‘Being Black In The Music Industry’ survey, which “found conclusive evidence supporting the long-held beliefs about racial discrimination in the industry”, the code sets out to “create an ecosystem within music in which no individual, group or organisation experiences discrimination or acts in a discriminatory manner on the basis of race”.

The code was launched at the WOMEX conference in Manchester, where BLiM also previewed EquiTrack, a new software that will help music companies to measure the success of their diversity and inclusion efforts.

That software, says the organisation’s co-founder and Director Of Operations Roger Wilson...

Diddy lawyers say gagging order should restrict any government investigator with access to the case files 

Lawyers working for Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs have written to the New York court that is overseeing the criminal case against the musician about the gagging order they want issued. That gagging order will restrict what people involved in the case can say in public and the letter sets out the Combs team’s disagreement with prosecutors on how it should be worded. 

The letter says that it would have been better if Combs’ lawyers had been able to submit a joint proposal with prosecutors for how the gagging order should work but, “after extensive back and forth”, the two sides “were unable to reach agreement”. 

And yet it’s increasingly urgent that a gagging order is put in place, the letter argues, because people working at the US government’s Department Of Homeland Security continue to leak information about the case to the media, which risks stopping Combs from receiving a fair trial. 

The letter cites a recent article in Deadline where an unnamed “law enforcement source with knowledge of the case” commented on efforts by Combs’s team to identify the people who have accused the musician of sexual assault as part of the criminal case. “This is all about shaming the alleged victims”, the anonymous source was quoted as saying, adding “they’ll try anything”. 

It also references some recent CNN reports, in which sources said...