In the two days following Sly Stone‘s death on June 9, streams for the Sly & the Family Stone catalog skyrocketed a whopping 685% compared to the stream count on June 8, the day prior to his passing — though his estate won’t reap all of those royalties, as Stone sold off a good chunk of his music intellectual property rights to music asset investors. 

The Michael Jackson estate, which acquired Stone’s publishing catalog back in the 1980s, cemented its global ownership in a 2019 deal that saw it acquire a majority interest in songs eligible for revision/termination rights for Sly & the Family Stone’s catalog in the U.S. At the time, sources suggested that deal left Stone with an undisclosed minority stake in his publishing catalog. 

For the Jackson estate, the 2019 deal allowed it to retain ownership of Stone’s songs — for which Stone had begun filing copyright termination notices in anticipation of his U.S. publishing rights coming up for reversion — beginning in 2024. (U.S. Copyright law allows creators of music released beginning in 1978 to file termination notices and regain U.S. ownership of their songs and/or masters after a 35-year period, while music recorded before 1978, like most of the Stone catalog, is eligible after a 56-year term.) Notably, if Stone had followed through on those termination notices and not sold the U.S. rights, the Jackson estate would still have owned Stone’s publishing rights outside the U.S. — although there’s currently a court case challenging that interpretation of copyright law.

Subsequent to all that, the Jackson estate sold 50% of most of Jackson’s recorded music assets to Sony Music, in a deal that included the Stone catalog. Meanwhile, the writer’s share of Stone’s songs was acquired by Primary Wave in 2018.

Sly & the Family Stone’s sales and streaming activity was meager in the days preceding Stone’s death, with hardly any album sales and averaging some 217,000 daily on-demand streams. But from June 9 through June 15, album consumption units increased to more than 1,000 units daily, or a 505.7% increase. Within that, on-demand streams jumped to 901,000, a 314.3% increase, according to preliminary Luminate data.

Looking at the band’s numbers on a weekly basis, in the six weeks before the week of his death, the catalog averaged less than 2,000 album consumption units a week, but in the week of his deal and the following week, his catalog activity averaged nearly 7,000 album consumption units, or an increase of 316.6%. Meanwhile, streams increased from an average of about 1.47 million streams per week in the six weeks prior to his death to an average of 4.9 million on demand streams, up 231%, for the week of his death and the subsequent week ending June 19.

Sly & the Family Stone’s catalog has averaged about 68,000 album consumption units annually over the last three years in the U.S. Within that, it averages about 73 million streams annually, while global streams, including the U.S., come in at about 136 million, according to Luminate. Consequently, Billboard estimates that the band’s catalog brings in about $1.2 million annually, but considering the catalog also enjoys a lucrative stream of synchronization uses and even samples, it might even be generating between $1.5 million and $2 million annually. It’s unclear what’s going on with Stone’s recorded masters royalties, but it’s likely the other band members are still being paid their share of Sly & the Family Stone royalties from the band’s records, as is Stone’s estate.

On the other hand, Sylvester Stewart (Stone’s real name) was the solo songwriter on all of the band’s recordings, except for the occasional cover song. Billboard estimates that the publishing royalties from the masters and other publishing licensing generate about $700,000 a year off his masters, but when cover versions, samples and synchronization are also added in, Stone’s publishing catalog probably generated about $1 million to $1.5 million annually over the last three years. As Stone was the sole songwriter for the band, all of this publishing revenue flows to the Jackson estate/Sony Music, while the writer’s share of royalties goes to Primary Wave.

Van Toffler, who helped build the VMAs into a pop-culture phenomenon, is returning to the show via a multi-year deal with his studio, Gunpowder & Sky. They will serve as producers of the 2025 show, which is set for Sept. 7, alongside production company Den of Thieves.

Toffler’s mission, according to a statement, is “to bring back the edge, spontaneity and punch that made the VMAs the most talked-about annual event.” The plan is “to supercharge the show from a single night into a week-long, multiplatform celebration of music and music videos leading up to the main event.”

CBS will present the 2025 Video Music Awards for the first time. The show will air live coast-to-coast from UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., on Sunday, Sept. 7 (8:00-11:00 p.m. ET/5:00-8:00 p.m. PT), and stream on Paramount+. The CBS broadcast will also simulcast on MTV with a one-hour live pre-show to air across Paramount Media Networks.

In the run-up to the 2025 Video Music Awards, MTV plans to air a week of 24/7 music videos, both classic and current across MTV2, MTV Live and MTV Classic. Past VMA winners and top MTV personalities will return to curate and spotlight their seven favorite music videos of all time.

“The VMAs have always been where music and spectacle collide, and no one embodies that spirit more than Van Toffler,” Paramount co-CEOs Chris McCarthy and George Cheeks said in a statement. “Bringing Van back to the VMAs, along with Gunpowder & Sky, is about reigniting the rebellious soul of the show with a week-long music immersion and delivering global moments that are impossible to ignore.”

“We’re not just producing a show,” Toffler said in a statement. “We’re launching a celebration of music that spans one week, every screen and every generation. Music has always been the heartbeat of the VMAs, but the show’s soul comes from its willingness to break rules, embrace unpredictability and reflect the times. This is about honoring that spirit while blowing open what’s possible across every format.”

Toffler, 66, joined MTV in 1987, six years after the network’s launch. He was president of Viacom Media Networks Music & Logo Group at Viacom from March 2008 to April 2015. In January 2016, together with Floris Bauer and Otter Media, he formed Gunpowder & Sky, a digital content company aimed at millennials.

Gunpowder & Sky (where Toffler is CEO) has built a portfolio across film, TV, VR, podcasts and digital series. The company’s credits include Audible’s Words + Music, Spotify’s Drawn & Recorded, Amazon’s Seismic and YouTube’s Released, as well as documentaries on artists ranging from Sheryl Crow to Lil Peep and films such as Her Smell, Lords of Chaos and Hearts Beat Loud.

The 2024 VMAs delivered its biggest multi-network audience in four years (up 25% year-over-year) and ranked as the most social VMAs in history, with 66.7 million social interactions.

Megan Thee Stallion hosted last year’s VMAs, which aired on Sept. 11, 2024, from UBS Arena. Taylor Swift was the top nominee with 12 nods and the top winner with seven Moon Person trophies, including for artist of the year and video of the year for “Fortnight,” a collab with Post Malone. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” won song of the year, en route to a Grammy win for best pop solo performance.

Toffler and Gunpowder & Sky join an already-stacked lineup of pros heading up the 2025 Video Music Awards. The show is executive produced by Bruce Gillmer and Den of Thieves co-founder Jesse Ignjatovic. Barb Bialkowski is showrunner. Alicia Portugal is co-executive producer. Jackie Barba is executive in charge of production. Wendy Plaut is executive in charge of celebrity talent. Lisa Lauricella is executive in charge of music talent.

While Marilyn Manson is currently scheduled to kick off the European leg of his One Assassination Under God tour in Brighton, England, this October, a senior member of Parliament is urging local officials to cancel the show.

Earlier this month, senior MP Siân Berry penned an open letter to Brighton and Hove City Council leader Councillor Bella Sankey, asking her and the council to cancel Manson’s upcoming performance at the city-owned Brighton Centre on Oct. 29. In her letter, Berry cites the “multiple allegations of sexual assault, grooming and domestic violence” leveled against Manson over the last few years.

Manson — whose offstage name is Brian Warner — was named by actress Evan Rachel Wood as her alleged sexual abuser in February 2021, leading to more women coming forward and sharing similar stories of alleged abuse from Manson. A number of women have filed suit against Manson for alleged abuses ranging from sexual assault, harassment and grooming. The shock rocker has denied all allegations.

In her open letter, Berry detailed immediate concerns she shares with her co-signees, including that the show’s age restrictions “means children as young as 14 can attend.” While she acknowledged that prosecutors in Los Angeles announced in January that Manson won’t face criminal charges due to the expiration of the statute of limitations on domestic violence charges, she added multiple policies the city council could use to justify canceling Manson’s performance, including a 2024 document from the city saying the council was “committed to listening and responding to the needs of survivors in our city.”

“Many survivors in Brighton and Hove, and organizations supporting them, will have very serious concerns about this booking and its impact on other people visiting the city centre, local residents and the wider community,” Berry wrote. “Freedom of expression is an important principle that should be defended, including in relation to artists, but there is an obvious risk to community cohesion and the council has separate equalities obligations to foster good relations between people who share protected characteristics and people who do not share them.”

Berry added that members of the cabinet previously acknowledged that the performance was “problematic,” but said they would not consider canceling the show. She still urged them to reconsider.

“The level and nature of the accusations against Warner are concerning enough alone, but so too is the message sent out by providing a platform for this individual, at our city’s biggest publicly owned venue, and what this will mean to survivors,” she said. “We believe a solution must be found and that, despite these difficulties, the Council should act in line with its obligations to our values and the serious concerns around public safety and community cohesion.”

Billboard has reached out to Manson’s representatives for comment. Read Berry’s full open letter on her website.

Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.

Roy Woods is thriving.

“The energy’s high right now. I feel back in motion after a couple of years – it feels like I pressed the restart button,” he tells Billboard Canada.

The Toronto R&B singer and rapper released his new EP, Dark Nights, in April, and it showed off a new side of the OVO Sound-signed artist.

At nine tracks, Dark Nights is a bold and unfiltered reflection on betrayal, heartbreak and emotional survival. It debuts a more vulnerable side of the Toronto singer-songwriter, who opens up about some of the darkest moments he’s faced – and how he has learned to live through them.

With such complex emotions on the line, Woods took his aptly titled EP and created a short film based on the project’s major themes. The 20-minute short film premiered June 12 at NXNE, followed by a Q&A with Billboard Canada’s National Editor Richard Trapunski.

“My manager, Banks, and I wanted to show this type of pain in a different way than the traditional music videos,” Woods shares. “We wanted to showcase the art in a different light.”

Before the EP’s release, he recalled having initial conversations about the short film at the top of the year. Woods and his collaborators noted that the tracklist flows into one another, boldly telling a story from start to finish.

“There’s so much depth in the songs,” he explains.

While Woods had dabbled in acting as a child, making a short film was completely new territory. The project took four days to film and consisted of all-day shoots – not to mention managing a robust cast and crew. Yet, he fondly recalls the experience. “The energy was on 10. There was a lot of excitement, and everybody was ready to do the best job possible.”

With dreamy nighttime hues and dimly lit rooms, Dark Nights follows Woods through a relationship that transforms into a complicated dynamic that includes betrayal, unplanned pregnancy and big existential questions. Based on a true story, Woods channels somber energy and anguish in his first major acting role.

He cites the darker, moody era of late 2010s Toronto R&B music as inspiration. “We didn’t bring it back, but kind of reignited the flame. We stay true to its essence and bring it in a modern light,” he says. “We wanted to stay true to that Roy Woods aesthetic.”

He describes the aforementioned artistic vision as “late night driving R&B moody music, that’s balanced with songs that are good for parties and good vibes.” It’s an energy Woods has mastered in his almost-decade-long career.

In 2015, Woods signed with Drake’s OVO Sound record label and skyrocketed onto the scene mere months later when his track “Drama,” from his debut EP, Exis, was released in collaboration with the beloved Toronto rapper. The EP peaked at No. 27 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, marking his first placement on the chart. Woods continued on an upward trajectory, as his following full-length efforts, Waking at Dawn and Say Less,also earned him spots on the Billboard 200 and Canadian Albums charts.

“I’m so grateful for my music to reach those heights. When it happened, it made me realize that I was an artist of this calibre,” Woods explains. But it doesn’t change how he approaches his current work. “Because if I did, then I’m chasing something that doesn’t feel true to me. Those songs were created by me expressing, writing and feeling good about making music, with no pressure to make it.”

Woods cites Drake and PartyNextDoor as two of his biggest influences, so he feels lucky to be their label-mate. Of his relationship with OVO, Woods praises the record label for their mentorship and guidance, which has kept him away from the shifting, often pressured expectations of emerging in the music industry.

“I didn’t want to change who I was in the music that I make. At OVO, we’re keen on making music that is true to ourselves and the people around us,” he shares.

Now, 10 years on, the concept of embarking on a creative project with no expectations became a mainstay for Dark Nights — the EP and the short film. “This music that I’ve been making lately, and now the short film feels so good because I’ve been in the moment. I’m creating to create, [and] I’m loving it. I’m having fun with it again.”

He credits this flexibility to his “very personal” relationship with fans. “I’m so grateful to [them] because they stand by me, learning, growing and loving myself now compared to the person and the artist that I was earlier in my career,” Woods says.

Although he’s Brampton-born, Woods’ love extends to Toronto, the city he came up in. “I receive a lot of respect when I’m in my city. The love is always different than any other place,” he explains. “I’m learning that I’m an important figure to not only the area I grew up in, but the entire city of Toronto.”

Now that Woods has pressed the restart button, he assures listeners that he isn’t going anywhere. With aspirations to stay in his acting bag, he’s going to continue exploring creative projects outside of music. “We’re flooding the gates. You’re gonna get annoyed with Roy Woods, and that’s what I want right now. I’m going all the way, you know? Godspeed.”

This article was originally published by Billboard Canada.

On Friday (June 20), French streaming service Deezer launched its latest tool to combat what it calls the “spamming of AI-generated songs.” Now, the service will tag every song it identifies as fully AI-generated so that users have transparency when they find the content on the service. 

The tagging tool is the latest in a series of announcements from Deezer about how AI-generated music is increasing rapidly on its service — and causing harm in the process. According to Deezer, up to 70% of the streams generated on fully AI-generated tracks are deemed fraudulent or artificial. 

Deezer began sounding the alarm in January, when it reported that its proprietary AI detection tool identified that 10% of songs uploaded to Deezer daily were fully AI-generated. While the company says it has no issue with human artists using AI as part of their creative process, the purely AI-generated songs tend to be used to spam the platform or siphon royalties away from human artists. To combat this, Deezer began removing fully AI songs from their recommendations. 

Then, in April, Deezer claimed the figure nearly doubled, reporting that 18% of daily uploads were fully AI-generated. In a new interview with Billboard, Deezer director of research Manuel Moussallam attributes that jump to two key reasons: the further adoption of AI music tools like Suno and Udio; and, simply, the fact that “our data got better.”

“Part of the stuff we were catching as AI-generated in January, we weren’t totally sure about, so we were very conservative in the numbers we reported. We didn’t want any false positives,” Moussallam explains. “I think the 18% [figure] is actually much more accurate and closer to what we actually saw from January, but still, that number is increasing.” 

While most of its competitors have not yet taken a public stance on AI-generated music or created any rules specifically to tackle issues it may present, Deezer believes there’s no way to ignore what is happening. In a new interview with Billboard, chief innovation officer Aurelien Herault, along with Moussallam, explains that the clock is ticking: “At some point, the industry will need to make a decision on this because AI music will exist forever now. There’s no going back.”

You’ve both said before that your team had a lot of conversations with the music business about the rules you were developing at Deezer before you launched them. Have you had those same conversations with AI companies, like Suno or Udio?

Herault: Not officially. We are in touch with some of the researchers who work there because we go to the same conferences, but no, we didn’t make contact. Actually, I don’t think they care a lot about us being able to detect their outputs because the issue is on our side, because people are using these tools massively to spam our catalog. 

Are you starting to see patterns of how people are using AI content for spam? For example, are most people creating multiple accounts and hopping between them to spread out their mass uploads? Are they artificially running up the streams?

Herault: What I can say is that they are creative.

Moussallam: Well, not creative on the music side, but on the spam side? Very creative.  

Herault: The reason why we got worried about AI-generated music in the first place is that it’s really close to the fraud behavior we were already seeing. You create a lot of accounts. You deliver a massive amount of albums every day. 

Moussallam: I think maybe the only new phenomenon we see from AI music is it can also be used for impersonation. You take one artist that streams a lot and then try to create stuff that resembles the style of that artist. That’s quite worrying on our side.

Herault: They even try to deliver these songs on official artist pages. That’s why it’s important to combine our AI efforts with our fraud detection system to avoid this kind of behavior.  

Take me back to when you first discovered how much AI-generated content was being uploaded to Deezer and why you decided to devote so much time and so many resources within the company to work on this issue.

Moussallam: I think it dates back to maybe 2022 when the first large open-source generative models were released within the scientific community. It was before you had commercial models available, and we had a chance to play with it ourselves. Over time, we started to see momentum with these models. Soon they could generate full songs, which was not possible a few years before. 

Obviously, when Suno launched, it was a huge moment. The first thing we did was to go on the platform and download a few songs that people were sharing over there, and then, using fingerprints, we were able to check whether people were also distributing these AI songs into our catalog. We soon found out that, yeah, they were. Back then, we had no idea of the amount, but we knew it was happening. It was really important for us to quantify this phenomenon, and this is what led us to actually researching it. 

It took us a few months, and we finally found a system to identify the scale. Eventually, we felt confident enough to share the number in January. We had to double-check a lot, and to make sure we didn’t have too many false positives. We knew that would be a huge problem. We only communicated to the general public once we were confident. 

Herault: Today, we are talking about AI detection, but we’ve seen the same spam and artificial streaming behavior with other kinds of content on Deezer, like public domain songs, noise and rain sounds. So we’ve been developing tools to understand what is on our platform before AI came along. It’s been 12 years now of research and development, so that’s why we can react pretty quickly when new developments occur. 

I often hear mixed reviews about the products that are on the market right now that claim they can detect AI-generated music — and, even more controversially, can attribute AI-generated music back to the songs that inspired it from the training data. I imagine you’ve had folks doubt how good your tools are. How do you assure them of their accuracy?

Herault: We made a lot of presentations to the music industry, showing our results. And we also published a paper in the scientific community, so it’s accessible to everyone. 

Moussallam: In the first paper we published, we stated that this problem cannot totally be solved by our tool. If anything, we are the most in doubt about our own technology because we did the work — we know exactly how limited it is. This is still an open problem, and it is still easy to bypass our detector. 

Herault: That’s why we share data. We want to open the discussion. We explained to the industry that we cannot solve everything, but we can solve part of the problem with these tools. 

How feasible is AI music attribution right now? 

Moussallam: It’s impossible to know if we’re going to be able to do it. It’s a really fast-moving and exciting field, so we want to dive into that. But this is going to take years, probably. The only thing I’m sure of is that there is nothing on the shelf right now that’s able to do this in a satisfactory manner.

One debate I hear in the music tech world is whether or not this flood of AI-generated music is going to be a serious burden for streaming services, in terms of servers and storage space. Someone at a rival music streamer told me they don’t think this is a real concern. Others believe it is. What is your take? 

Herault: This is a serious topic for us, and we already removed some content that was using too much space — because it’s not only an economic issue, it’s also an ecological one. Do we need to store all this content so we all have the same catalog and all have a copy of the same things? It’s really a question worth thinking about, and we already have had some discussion to remove some content, especially because a lot of content is not listened to at all. 

That sounds like an issue that streaming services are going to have to face, then.

Herault: Not only music streaming, I mean, there’s all kinds of AI-generated content — images, audio, video. It’s everything. 

Moussallam: Audio is actually not such a big file to store when you compare it to movies or some images. 

I always wonder whether younger generations will care whether or not their music came from an AI model or a person. It’s hard for us to wrap our heads around, but if these kids are raised on AI content, maybe their listening habits are different from ours. Have you taken this into account when deciding how you want to treat AI music on Deezer?

Moussallam: It’s an amazing research question, but it’s one which doesn’t have an answer yet. I think a lot of people are wondering if we are seeing a shift in terms of the relationship that people have to music. It also raises the question of, why do people love music in the first place? Do you need to have a human relationship, either directly or indirectly, to music to attach meaning to it? I believe a lot of people need that. But I am not sure what people are going to do in the future.