Several more players in the independent music community have called on regulators to block the acquisition of Downtown Music Holdings by Universal Music Group (UMG) announced this week, arguing the deal “would seriously distort the global music market” and “reduce competition and the independents’ bargaining power.”

Virgin Music Group, which is owned by UMG, announced Monday (Dec. 16) that it had agreed to buy Downtown Music Holdings for $775 million in a deal that would beef up the music giant’s market share by absorbing Downtown’s stable of indie distributors, publishing and rights administrators including FUGA, CB Baby, AdRev and Songtrust. The deal came just two months after UMG acquired the remaining shares of indie label group [PIAS], including its services division, Integral — an agreement that was similarly criticized by indie trade groups, who have asked regulators to launch an investigation into the pact.

In a joint release Thursday (Dec. 19), several indie music leaders said the deal, if allowed to go through, would result “in fewer options for smaller companies to negotiate fair terms and compete on equal footing, leading to higher costs and less choice.”

“We are the global independent music community,” said Noemí Planas, CEO of Worldwide Independent Network (WIN), in a statement. “UMG trying to present this as an investment in the independent ecosystem is fooling no one. This is wealth extraction from the independents, another step in UMG’s relentless path to dominance and stifling competition. Independent music is the lifeblood of cultural innovation and market consolidation threatens the diversity that makes music so rich and compelling around the world. We call on regulatory bodies to block the deal.”

Also speaking out against the acquisition was A2IM CEO Richard James Burgess, who stated: “Universal Music Group’s acquisition of Downtown Music’s assets continues a troubling trend of consolidating independent music infrastructure, following acquisitions of InGrooves, MTheory, and PIAS. This increasing level of market concentration chips away at the competitive landscape, making it increasingly difficult for truly independent artists and companies to operate freely and equitably. These acquisitions risk silencing the independent voices that drive innovation and creativity in the music industry.”

Added Darius Van Arman, CEO of Secretly Distribution and co-founder of Secretly Group, “When near-monopolist Universal acquires Downtown, one of the largest independent music ecosystems, and does so in the name of independence, it cheapens what the word means. Market consolidation at this scale is not only anti-competitive, it is a fundamental threat to true independence.”

Virgin’s purchase of Downtown is just the latest in a string of similar acquisitions by major labels over the last several years. In 2024 alone, UMG acquired Outdustry, a label services and rights management firm that works across China, India, and other Asian markets; Thailand-based recorded music catalog RS Group; Nigerian record label Mavin Global; and a minority stake in U.S.-based Chord Music Partners, among others. Two years ago, Sony Music made a splash when it acquired AWAL and Kobalt Neighbouring Rights from Kobalt Music Group, followed by the more recent acquisitions of companies like Spanish label and distributor Altafonte and Greek independent label Cobalt Music. And Warner Music Group has snapped up minority stakes in European indie labels of late, including Dancing Bear Music (Croatia), NIKA (Slovenia) and Mascom (Serbia); it also fully acquired the Dutch label Cloud 9 Recordings in October.

“Whilst we are in favour of free enterprise, monopolies dominate market forces and remove the ability to compete,” said Maria Amato, CEO of Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR), in a statement on the Downtown deal. “There must be regulation to ensure that Universal who is already the largest music business in the world with a large stake in Spotify does not dictate prices and the ability for artists and labels to negotiate fair and equitable terms.”

“The recent acquisition by large corporations of companies that until recently were independent is a red alert for the entire global independent music community,” added Felippe Llerena, president of Brazilian trade association ABMI. “The Orchard, AWAL, Som Livre, Proper Music, Altafonte and now Downtown Music are examples of how multinational capital is reshaping the sector. ABMI believes that it is our duty to protect and promote an independent ecosystem, where artists, labels and companies can create freely and sustainably. Our fight is for the appreciation of music as art, culture and expression, not as a simple market product.”

In her own statement, Cecilia Crespo, GM of the association of Argentinian record labels ASIAr, said: “Concentration not only has a negative impact in the way platforms distribute royalties to artists and rights holders (based on market share), but also due to the unregulated use of data and intelligence from the analysis of the data and the behavior of all actors involved (artists, audiences, and users).”

On Tuesday (Dec. 17), several other indie music players came out in opposition to the Downtown acquisition, including indie labels trade body IMPALA, the U.K.-based Association of Independent Music (AIM) and global indie music publishers trade body IMPF.

UMG didn’t immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment on the latest statements of opposition.

It was a lit scene inside the Grammy Museum’s Clive Davis Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday evening thanks to an electrifying dynamo by the name of Doechii.

As Doechii walked onstage to an ear-deafening chorus of cheers and shout-outs, she was just as psyched as the packed theater as she immediately launched into a rocking and riveting 11-song set. Accompanied by DJ Miss Milan, Doechii powered and danced her way through a mini-concert that opened with “Persuasive” and included “Boiled Peanuts,” “Denial Is a River,” “Spookie Coochee,” “Nissan Altima,” “Boom Bap” and the moving yet affirmative “Black Girl Memoir,” a key audience favorite.

Before segueing into “Death Roll,” an excited yet humble Doechi took time out to directly address the audience, thanking her mom (who was in the audience) and her family, label home Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol Records, the Grammy Museum and the fervent fans in the room. “I’m so excited to be celebrating such an incredible year and a new era of hip-hop,” said the current four-time Grammy nominee.

The Tampa-born, Los Angeles-based artist was the perfect guest to close out the last edition of the museum’s American Express-sponsored Spotlight program for 2024. The rapper is coming off a banner year, capped by four Grammy nominations: best new artist, best rap performance (“Nissan Altima”), best remixed recording (the Kaytranada remix of “Ego”) and best rap album (Alligator Bites Never Heal) — the first female rapper to appear in that category since Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy in 2020. 

Prior to that, the self-anointed Swamp Princess spent the last 18 months cementing the foundation for her career breakthrough, including a performance on the main stage at Coachella; opening for Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour; touring with Doja Cat; and collaborating with JT on the popular Eurodance/hip-hop-fused “Alter Ego. In the wake of releasing her critically acclaimed mixtape Alligator in August, she guested on Tyler, the Creator’s latest album Chromakopia and performed at his recent music fest Camp Flog Gnaw.

Taking a brief pause after wrapping her set, Doechii returned for an illuminating and humorous conversation with four-time Grammy-winning rapper Killer Mike. During his initial pre-performance introduction, Killer Mike said in part, “She is an amazing representation of that swamp called Florida that’s given us talent in the artistic world from sculptor Augusta Savage to writer Zora Neale Hurston. She is a performer; a rapper rapping her ass off at a time where rap needs some rappers … an artist who I feel is the present, the future — and who’s going to change music forever.”

Here are five sound bites from the pair’s freewheeling conversation as well as insightful audience questions that touched on Doechii’s childhood, creative process, hard-won confidence and career advice, among other talking points:

What made her put her pure soul into a record: My confidence is truly built and nurtured. I wasn’t always this confident. I wasn’t always in environments that made me feel proud to be a dark-skinned, outspoken girl. So this confidence is truly built behind closed doors. My mother is a single mother of three girls, and she always told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world every single day. I’d leave that home environment with so much confidence, and then I would go to school and get bullied a lot. Eventually, I made a choice that I refuse to be anything but happy. I made a choice that I was going to be myself no matter what it took, no matter what anybody said about me. And that confidence I bring with me on this couch right now is the same confidence that I decided to pour into this project. I wanted to give people an audiovisual experience of what it’s like living in my skin, being in my life, what my brain moves like, what I think about, what I’m afraid of, what I love. And that’s also why I am extremely honored to be representing female rap in the hip-hop album category.

Her ultimate goal: The end goal, beyond the accolades, the money and everything, is I want the world’s next icon to be inspired by me. I feel like they’re out there. They’re watching my interviews, studying me and listening to my music. They’re watching me. So I have to be free. I have to try my best. I have to show up, because I just feel it. She’s out there watching me. And I don’t know if it’s me that’s watching me or if it’s literally somebody, but that’s what is driving me: somebody needs this.

Staying determined while navigating her career pathway: Well, one, it’s in you. It’s not on you. When I said that I want to be the best, it comes from a place of truly healthy competition. My family is very competitive so I’m extremely competitive in a healthy way. I talk about this often, but I miss that competitive sportsmanship in hip-hop where everybody wanted to be the best lyricist. They wanted to tell tstories in the dopest way. And they would battle each other through rap, because it makes you stronger. It makes all of you stronger. Like oh, he just did a double entendre. I’m gonna do a triple. I’m gonna do a quadruple. I like that. I want to be the best at my craft. I love this genre. I love music. I like making it.

Breaking down her writing process: A lot of my writing process, at least for my brain, is I have to move quickly. If I don’t move fast enough, doubt will come in and it’ll slow me down. If I don’t move on to the next line, I’ll be like, ‘Oh dang, that line wasn’t cool. Let me redo that again.’ So I like to literally time myself. I’ll set a timer for one hour and whatever you get that hour, that’s what you get, baby girl. Then you’ve got to move on. It forces you to be in the moment. It forces you to trust yourself. And I also tell myself this all the time: I have the right to suck right now. I have the right to not say something that’s cool, the right to be vulnerable, to be corny, whatever. I have the right to be whoever I am in this hour. Then I must move on.

Advice to creators crafting their careers while dealing with real life: Every creative reaches this point:  you have to eventually choose your art. You have to choose your art over whatever thing there is. If it’s a relationship that’s distracting you, you need to choose your art. I choose to record today. I choose to post today. I choose to keep going. I choose to instead of invest my money in that, I’ll invest my money in singing lessons. It’s all about your decisions at the end of the day. And I know it sounds cliche, but seriously, as a creative, you have to choose yourself over and over. Don’t allow yourself to come up with excuses that will stop you. You do whatever it takes, and you continue to work on yourself. Then when you get the thing (you’ve been working toward} there’s a whole other battle. And you have to choose yourself again.

If you were to meet De La Ghetto for the first time, he’d introduce himself by saying: “I’m De La Ghetto. I’m a rockstar!” The Puerto Rican star punctuated his words with a laugh, but he hit the nail on the head. 

While De La Ghetto, aka De la Geezy or simply Geezy, is known as a reggaetón icon with 18 years of hits under his belt, his range of action goes way beyond a dembow beat. Witness his most recent hits, which include dance anthem “Amaneció” alongside Quevedo and De la Rose, and a soulful cover of “Sweet Child of Mine.” Yes, you heard that right. 

Turns out De La Ghetto is a “Closet rockstar,” as he confessed during an intimate Q&A with Billboard’s Leila Cobo as part of the White Claw® Sessions Powered by Billboard, speaking before an audience of some 200 guests at the Surfcomber in Miami Beach. 

“When I first started reggaeton, I couldn’t say, ‘Yo I like Guns ‘N Roses, Metallica, Linkin Park. Nobody in the hood likes rock. That’s what I was told. When I was a kid I loved hearing all genres. Hip hop, classic rock, ballads. But from seven to 14, my passion was rock.”

That passion became reggaetón by accident, when he chanced on a reggaetón party in the neighborhood of La Perla in Puerto Rico. He grabbed a mic, started free styling, and next thing he knew, “Someone came up and said, ‘Zion is opening a label, and he needs artists.” 

Many hits and many years later, however, De La Ghetto does pretty much whatever he wants musically. While singles like “Sensación del bloque” and “Caile” (alongside Bad Bunny, Bryant Myers, Zion and Revol) have become reggaetón standards, new fare like “AMI Paris” and “TBFCK” explore genres like dance and EDM, or what he calls a “more Americanized reggaetón.” 

“With the way reggaetón is constantly changing, the future of reggaetón could be in rock ‘n roll. Now everybody is in the reggaetón salsa wave or dancehall. So, maybe in two, three years there could be more like a rock wave or a punk wave mixed with reggaetón,” he adds. 

In fact, he says, in his bucket list of possible collaborators is TImbaland –“I would love for him to produce a record for me. Push me to the next level,” he says—but also alt rocker Robi Rosa. 

Anything is possible, he adds. “My advice to young people? Just keep pushing, just keep pushing. Don’t be scared to be different, be unique. Now, with social media, you’re your own boss. What’s the worst that can happen? If they doin’t like your song, put out another one!” 

Watch the full interview — including stories behind collabs with Quevedo and Daddy Yankee, plus, De La Ghetto’s favorite and least favorite words and slang— above.

Over the past dozen years, vinyl records have grown from an indie-rock subculture to a significant, established part of the music business. In the U.S. alone, vinyl sales were worth $1.4 billion in 2023, more than CDs — and as much as Latin music — and they will probably be worth more than $2 billion worldwide by 2025.

As the market matures — and growth slows from spectacular to merely healthy — it’s also splintering. A part of the business once dominated by rock and reissues now looks more like the Billboard 200, and labels are releasing different kinds of records for different buyers — low-price products for big box retail, endless color variations for pop fans and, increasingly, high-end vinyl for audiophiles.  

The descriptions of these products makes them sound quite impressive — as do the prices. If the new Joni Mitchell vinyl reissues just aren’t good enough for you — and they are very good — $125 will buy you Mobile Fidelity’s UD1S 180g 45RPM SuperVinyl 2LP Box Set, pressed from “analog master to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe.” That’s about five times the price of most records. Mobile Fidelity is selling a few of Mitchell’s albums in that format, plus titles by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen and many more. It’s not the only company selling premium products, either: Analogue Productions is reissuing all the Steely Dan albums on 45rpm on UHQR vinyl for $150 each, plus putting out a treasure trove of deluxe Atlantic Records reissues to make the label’s 75th anniversary. (Both companies have been in business for some time.) The majors are doing this themselves, too. Back in 2019, Blue Note President Don Was launched the Tone Poet series, which reissues jazz records that sell for about $35. And in 2023, Rhino began releasing Rhino High Fidelity reissues of WMG albums, which it sells online for $40.  

All of these are marketed with the exacting specificity of supercar engines — it’s not just vinyl, it’s SuperVinyl! But how much better do they really sound — especially to an untrained ear on a home stereo? This is important to the music business — consumers will only buy so many $125 records if they don’t sound great. And I was also curious myself.  

Here I must confess that I’m enough of an audiophile to understand about half of the jargon above. Over the years, I’ve accumulated a few dozen audiophile records myself, including two Mobile Fidelity Linda Ronstadt records (fantastic), a CBS Mastersound version of Bridge Over Troubled Water (incredible), and the Craft Recordings Small Batch pressing of Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul (like being in the studio). Others were just very good — and not worth the money. And I had never really sat down and compared different versions of the same record in any disciplined way. So I decided to do so. A few caveats: I have no real audio expertise; I listened on a very good home stereo, and it doesn’t make sense to buy records like this unless you have one; your mileage may vary. Here’s what I found. 

I started with the Analogue Productions reissue of Steely Dan’s Aja because the album has a well-deserved reputation as a fantastic recording. I compared it to an early pressing I have, which is a detailed and vibrant record — it sounds great. This reissue just blew it away. The definition on the reissue was so impressive that on “Black Cow’ and “Deacon Blues,” I noticed sounds that I hadn’t really paid much attention to before. And while the older album sounded spacious, the new one sounded like I could point to which musicians were playing where. If you’re a Steely Dan fan, this is worth $150. If you’re not, this might make you one. It’s that good.  

The other Analogue Productions reissue I listened to, Otis Blue / Otis Redding Sings Soul, is part of the company’s Atlantic 75 Audiophile Series, and I compared it to my copy of the album that came in a 2017 box set of Redding’s mono studio albums. (I compared these reissues to records I happened to own.) The Analogue version was more detailed and transparent — specific sounds stood out more. But the reissue was of the stereo version of the album, on which Redding’s voice is on one side, and I found that my less detailed mono version had more punch. I prefer the reissue, but it’s a close call.  

The first new Mobile Fidelity album I played was Bob Dylan’s Good as I Been To You, which I compared to the 2017 European reissue. Neither record has much of a soundstage — it’s really just Dylan and his guitar — but the Mobile Fidelity version has more detail. For this album, though, that’s everything. Hearing Dylan’s fingers on the strings matters because the album is so intimate — it’s a portrait of a songwriter going back to the music that inspired him. The reissue makes a big difference. 

Then I tried Mobile Fidelity’s $125 pressing of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. It’s astonishing. From the opening strums of “All I Want,” I felt like I could better hear more details on a familiar recording. I compared it to my 2007 reissue, which I prefer to an early pressing I used to own. The 2007 pressing is a great record, with the depth and spaciousness this album deserves, and I don’t have a bad thing to say about it. But the Mobile Fidelity pressing offered more space and detail. Here, the deluxe version is better, but it’s hard to go wrong either way. 

Last I turned to two Rhino High Fidelity records. (Tone Poet pressings sound great, but I don’t have enough old jazz records to compare them to.) I’ve always been happy with the 2014 reissue of Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel, a quiet, clear pressing of a detailed recording. But the Rhino High Fidelity reissue blew it away: Details came out clearer, vocals emerged more forcefully, the music just seemed more lively. It just felt more there. Listening to the old record after the new one, it almost sounded veiled. Of all the records I played, this one delivered the biggest difference for the least amount of money. It’s a no-brainer. 

I found less of a difference between the Rhino High Fidelity version of the Stooges debut and my 2010 reissue. This is a less detailed recording than Grievous Angel, by design, and it should hit harder – and both versions did. The deluxe version sounded a bit more present, but only if you listened closely. To get another perspective, I also listened to a 2005 CD reissue of the album, which I kept because it came with a disc of extra tracks, and I immediately noticed that it sounded lousy — shrill, unexciting, and hard on the ears at any volume. Here, both vinyl versions are great.

Obviously, pricey records have a limited audience. But at a time when so many music executives are talking about “superfans,” this seems like a product category worth keeping an eye on.