HYBE Corporation, the label and management home of K-pop superstars BTS, turned in revenues of $158.7 million and a profit of $14 million in the first quarter of 2021, the company announced Tuesday (May 4).
Without tours or big music releases, HYBE needed gains in what it calls “artist indirect involvement” for a 29% jump in revenue compared to the first quarter of 2020. Merchandising, licensing, content and fan club revenues rose 123% while “artist direct-involvement” — recorded music and concerts — fell 24%.
These positive first-quarter results don’t, however, come close to the company’s impressive previous quarter, Q4 2020. Then, still without touring income, HYBE produced livestreamed concerts and had strong music sales — 159% greater than 2021’s first quarter — and closed 2020 with quarterly revenue of $278 million and a $23.7 million profit.
HYBE didn’t provide guidance on concert revenue in 2021, saying “with pandemic conditions still in place, forecasts are still unclear on the possibility of in-person concerts in the second half of this year.” In the meantime, HYBE said it will offer more livestream concerts and “other diverse content.”
Much of the earnings release focused on HYBE’s acquisition of Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, which was announced April 2, noting it was the the largest acquisition “in history for a Korean entertainment company and the first acquisition of an international label.” It outlined how the deal helps HYBE’s “fandom expansion,” as HYBE calls it: Ithaca increases HYBE’s YouTube subscribers from 120 million to 290 million and social media followers from 440 million to 1.26 billion. HYBE plans to take Ithaca artists onto its WeVerse platform, which had 4.9 million monthly active users in the first quarter.
HYBE’s earnings presentation also laid Ithaca’s business segments: SB Projects is talent management; Big Machine is the record label and publisher; Silent Content Ventures houses premium content such as TV shows, documentaries, movies and other content that can now leverage HYBE artists; and Venture & Consumer houses “consumer brands based on artist IP.”
In March, HYBE changed its name from Big Hit Entertainment and restructured itself into three segments: Big Hit Music houses the labels BELIFT Lab, Source Music, PLEDIS Entertainment and KOZ Entertainment; HYBE IP and HYBE 360 encompasses HYBE Edu and Superb; and WeVerse is HYBE’s social media platform that had 4.9 million monthly average users during 2021’s first quarter, up from 2.4 million a year earlier.
Except for the total revenue figures, the below metrics are provided in Korean won (KRW) and can be converted at $1 to 1,125.9 won.
Financial metrics:
Revenue streams metrics:
Guidance for Q2 2021:
Stock market:
Nothing is safe from the flames in DJ Khaled’s new “Every Chance I Get” video, featuring Lil Baby and Lil Durk.
In the red-hot clip, Lil Baby and Lil Durk rap their verses while cars burn and lightning strikes around them. Despite the chaos, the trio of Baby, Durk and Khaled also manage to turn the destruction into a party, surrounded by beautiful women and bottles of booze.
“Every Chance I Get” is from Khaled’s 12th studio album, Khaled Khaled, which arrived last week along with a music video for “Sorry Not Sorry,” featuring Nas, Jay-Z and James Fauntleroy. The first two singles from project arrived simultaneously in July 2020: “Popstar” and “Greece,” both featuring Drake.
Watch the latest Khaled Khaled visual below:
Tommy West, a music producer, singer and songwriter who played a major role in the short-lived career of musician Jim Croce, died of complications associated with Parkinson’s disease, his family said. He was 78.
West died Sunday in hospice care.
Born Thomas Picardo Jr. in Jersey City, New Jersey, he developed his musical talents after his family moved to Neptune, according to his friend Mike Ragogna.
“His musical career began in 1958 as co-founder of the doo-wop group, The Criterions, with childhood friend and future Manhattan Transfer founder, Tim Hauser,” Ragogna said.
West had met Croce while both were students at Villanova University in 1961.
West and Terry Cashman co-produced three albums for Croce in the early 1970s, which went on to platinum status. You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Life and Times and I Got a Name included the Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle.” You Don’t Mess Around With Jim topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for five consecutive weeks in early 1974. “Leroy Brown” received a Grammy nomination for record of the year for both Croce and Cashman & West.
Croce was killed in a plane crash in Louisiana at age 30 in 1973.
In 1972, Cashman & West had a top 30 hit on the Hot 100 as recording artists. The single, “American City Suite,” was a three-part suite that ran 7:44. They released it on Dunhill/ABC, which was Croce’s record label.
The team also wrote songs for the television musical sitcom The Partridge Family, featuring David Cassidy and his stepmother Shirley Jones.
West partnered with Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM Records in Nashville in the 1980s to produce for country artists including Holly Dunn and Judy Rodman.
In his later career, West operated his Somewhere in New Jersey studio from inside a barn in the northern part of the state.
He is survived by his wife, a daughter and two stepsons.
His funeral will be private, his family said.
Bruce Springsteen has won the 2021 Woody Guthrie Prize, which is given to an artist seen as carrying on the spirit of the folk singer whose music focused on the plight of the poor and disenfranchised.
Guthrie, who grew up in Okemah, Oklahoma, was one of the most important figures in American folk music and penned hundreds of songs, including some that The Boss has performed over the years.
“Woody wrote some of the greatest songs about America’s struggle to live up its ideals in convincing fashion,” Springsteen said in a statement Tuesday (May 4). The New Jersey rocker called Guthrie, who died in 1967 at age 55, “one of my most important influences.”
Springsteen and previous prize recipient Pete Seeger performed Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” at Barack Obama’s 2009 presidential inauguration.
Deana McCloud, who heads the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, said in a news release that, “As an observer of the human condition and a reporter about the plight of common people, Bruce Springsteen is a true child of Woody Guthrie.”
“The Woody Guthrie Center is proud to present Bruce with this well-deserved recognition for his lifetime of speaking for the disenfranchised and inspiring generations to find the power of their own voices,” she added.
Joan Baez, Chuck D, John Mellencamp, Norman Lear, Kris Kristofferson and Mavis Staples are among the past recipients of the award.
Springsteen will be honored during a virtual ceremony on May 13.
Rapper YFN Lucci is among a dozen people charged in a wide-ranging indictment in Atlanta targeting alleged members of the Bloods gang.
A Fulton County grand jury on Friday handed up the 105-count indictment that resulted from a six-month investigation, Atlanta Police Deputy Chief Charles Hampton said at a news conference Tuesday. It includes racketeering, aggravated assault, murder, gun, armed robbery, property damage, theft and gang-related charges.
“We are serious about the violence in Atlanta,” Hampton said. “We are serious about holding people accountable.”
The indictment alleges that each of the 12 people charged is associated with sub-groups of the national Bloods gang. It says they had connections and relationships to each other and accuses them of committing a wide variety of crimes to protect and enhance the gang’s reputation and to gain and maintain control of territory.
YFN Lucci, whose given name is Rayshawn Bennett, is charged with racketeering, violating the state’s anti-gang law, felony murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.
Atlanta police previously announced murder charges against Bennett in January, saying he was the driver in a December gang-related drive-by shooting that left one man dead. The felony murder charge in last week’s indictment is based on that incident.
“He’s not guilty of any crime that’s referenced in the previous charge and now in this indictment,” Bennett’s lawyer Drew Findling said in a phone interview.
The indictment says one of the Atlanta gang sub-groups of the Bloods, known by the initials YFN, was “centered around” Bennett.
“The YFN studio located on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta is a central point for the group and a notorious stronghold. YFN has continued to attract additional associates as Bennett gained notoriety,” the indictment says.
“He’s absolutely not a gang member, and this indictment — neglectfully or purposely — fails to say that Mr. Bennett is a nationally and internationally recognized musical artist,” Findling said.
Among Bennett’s biggest hits is the 2016 song “Key to the Streets” featuring the Atlanta rap group Migos.
The indictment also cites social media postings by Bennett and others, as well as song lyrics, alleging they are proof of gang involvement and other criminal activity.
“To sit and analyze somebody’s social media account and to try to somehow find some evidence of a crime is ridiculous when people are just really expressing themselves through social media,” Findling said.
