Hipgnosis, the catalog company with rights to songs by artists including the Red Hot Chili Peppers that became the face of music-as-an-asset-class for Wall Street investors, is being renamed Recognition Music Group, the company said on Wednesday (March 12).

The new name covers what was previously three separate companies that each had Hipgnosis in the name: Hipgnosis Songs Fund, a publicly traded music royalty investment fund formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange; Hipgnosis Songs Assets, a privately-held royalty fund backed by Blackstone; and Hipgnosis Song Management, the investment manager previously run by founder Merck Mercuriadis that worked to generate a return on the song rights held in the catalog funds.

Mercuriadis did not respond to a request for comment.

Since Blackstone acquired Hipgnosis’s public fund for $1.47 billion and Mercuriadis stepped down from his role as chair of the investment manager last year, the company decided it was time to shed the old name, CEO Ben Katovsky tells Billboard.

Recognition’s portfolio of publishing and master recording rights to some 45,000 songs include stakes in megahits like Shakira‘s “Whenever, Whereever,” The B-52s’ “Love Shack,” Fleetwood Mac‘s “Go Your Own Way” and Diana Ross‘ “I’m coming out.” A video made by the company to promote its new name to its roughly 40 employees weaves together lyrics from these and other songs in its portfolio to send a message that despite their history as separate entities, the Hipgnosis companies are meant to “get together,” even if one almost went its “own way” during Blackstone’s billion-dollar bidding war with Concord. Nearly a year after it consolidated ownership, Blackstone and Katovsky “want the world to know” this is a new company.

“It’s impossible not to have those songs resonate in your mind,” Katovsky says from Recognition’s London offices. He tells Billboard that the new name refers to “a combination of how easy it is to recognize those songs day to day and also to recognize the talent of the artists and songwriters and musicians who made those songs.”

Qasim Abbas, Blackstone’s head of tactical opportunities international, the division of the global financial fund that owns Recognition, said in a statement that last year showed “strong investor conviction in this asset class.”

“The company is now set to build on its position as a leading independent investor in music rights; owning and managing an incredible portfolio of songs and recordings,” Abbas added.

Hipgnosis was known for acquiring dozens of catalogs a year between 2018 and 2021, earning it a reputation of contributing to a run-up in the market for music royalties. In contrast, Recognition intends to be a “selective buyer” of music rights, Katovsky says.

“Our ambition is to continue to grow the portfolio, and we already have scale as a business,” Katovsky says. “The scale allows us to invest … but it also means we’re not under any pressure to deploy capital.”

Recognition’s portfolio remains heavily weighted to publishing rights, which comprise roughly 80% of its assets; the remainder are mostly master recording rights. Blackstone still owns Hipgnosis Songs Group, the subsidiary that has housed Big Deal Music’s administration business since Hipgnosis acquired the independent publisher in 2020. The company has said the division is under strategic review, and Recognition is now looking to partner with publishers and music companies for the administration of its assets.

“Recognition Music will be a very collaborative player in this space in ways that it was not historically,” Katovsky says. “We want to work with other partners in this industry to do that.”

Spotify released its annual Loud & Clear report on Wednesday (March 12), trumpeting the growing number of musicians earning robust royalty income from the platform, along with its users’ increasingly global listening patterns.

“The number of artists generating $10,000, $100,000, and $1 million dollars on Spotify alone has at least tripled since 2017,” says Sam Duboff, the platform’s global head of marketing and policy, music business.

And those artists are coming from a wider variety of countries. “Ten years ago, you probably had to be singing in English and maybe Spanish to have a really high ceiling,” Duboff adds. “Now we see eight languages where songs are generating $100 million a year [in royalties] just on Spotify” — not only English and Spanish, but also German, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Korean and Italian. In addition, “the majority of artists generating significant revenue on Spotify have the majority of their royalties coming from outside their home market.”

Perhaps more than past iterations of Loud & Clear, the latest report aimed to push back on popular complaints about the streaming era.

One frustration voiced frequently about streaming is that the platforms’ payouts have crippled most aspiring artists’ ability to build a career. Last year, for example, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) introduced the Living Wage for Musicians Act in the House of Representatives; the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW), which helped draft the act, said it was necessary because “artists continue to be underpaid, misled and otherwise exploited by streaming platforms.” Across the Atlantic, members of the European Parliament also called on the music industry to explore “fairer models of streaming revenue allocation.”

Spotify has a sunnier view of the streaming economy: Loud & Clear notes that “more artists than ever before are generating royalties at every career stage.” The company argues that much of the discontent with the modern music landscape stems from the fact that an unprecedented number of people are uploading music to streaming services, and “the sheer volume of uploaders means the fraction [of acts] who find success appears smaller over time.”

On Spotify, the number of artists making at least $10,000 grew nearly 8% in 2024, to 71,200, according to the platform’s data, while the number of acts making at least $100,000 from Spotify increased a similar percentage, rising to 12,500. 

Those royalty-income brackets on Spotify grew faster than total music consumption in the U.S. last year (5.6%, according to Luminate) but not as fast as they did in 2023. “There are always fluctuations,” Duboff says. He is unconcerned by chatter about streaming growth tapering off, especially in the U.S. and Western Europe. “We still see a ton of growth in mature markets,” he says. “We also see a lot of really exciting growth in emerging markets.”

Another idea targeted by Loud & Clear as a “misconception”: the notion of per-stream payouts. “One of the top conversations we have with artists is about this perception of our per-stream rate,” Duboff explains. “The way you hear people on social media talk, you’d think every streaming service pays out based on per-stream rate.

“But no major streaming service pays out based on a fixed per-stream rate,” Duboff continues. “Every major streaming service pays out based on stream share,” meaning the royalty pool is divided up according to rights holders’ portion of total streams. 

Duboff hopes that Loud & Clear can start to “demystify the idea of stream share” and “help artists think through the actual ways in which royalties are generated.” Though it’s possible that, even after thinking this through, acts might still advocate for alternative payout methods, like the user-centric model that was in vogue a couple of years ago. The Living Wage for Musicians Act proposed to fund additional royalty payments — one penny per stream partially generated by charging an extra fee for every streaming subscription — on top of the current payout system. 

Spotify also hopes to change perceptions about its highest earners. “When I ask people what type of artist would be generating $1 million a year just from Spotify, the first assumption is it’s the biggest stars with the biggest hits,” Duboff says. “The second thing we hear a lot is, ‘It’s just a lot of legacy acts who were popular decades ago.’ The third is that it must be American, Canadian and Western European artists.”

Spotify’s data flies in the face of those assumptions, according to Duboff. For the second year in a row, 80% of the $1 million earners — close to 1,500 artists — never had a track crack Spotify’s Global Daily Top 50, he says, and more than half of them started their career after 2010. Plus, those acts sing or rap in 17 different languages.

With “momentum on Spotify, you have access to hundreds of millions of listeners all over the world,” Duboff adds, “and the revenue that they bring in.”

There is so much pressure on pop stars to simultaneously evolve as artists while retaining what made them a beloved musician in the first place. And somehow, in that unforgiving landscape, Lady Gaga managed to thread the needle with her seventh studio album, Mayhem, and create a project that both honors the past and moves toward the future.

On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking all about Mayhem and sharing our favorite tracks on the no-skips pop project.

Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on Kendrick Lamar’s GNX returning to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while his “Luther” duet holds steady atop the Billboard Hot 100. Plus, Blackpink’s LISA notches a top 10 debut on the Billboard 200 with her first solo full-length studio album Alter Ego, while Gracie Abrams gets her first No. 1 on the Pop Airplay chart with “That’s so True” and Elton John extends his record for the most top 10s on the Adult Contemporary chart with his latest single, the Brandi Carlile collab “Who Believes in Angels?”

The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)

The U.K. streaming market rose to record levels in 2024 as it crossed the £1 billion ($1.28 billion) revenue barrier for the first time, according to annual figures from labels trade body BPI published Wednesday (March 12). 

Subscription, ad-supported and video-streaming revenue totaled £1.02 billion ($1.3 billion) to make up 68.1% of the country’s recorded music revenue, a rise of 5.7% compared to the previous year. In an accompanying statement, the BPI suggested that the increase is in part the result of multiple streaming platforms raising their subscription prices.

Combined with sales of physical music and digital downloads, along with synch and public performance revenue, the U.K. recorded music market saw total revenue rise 4.8% to £1.49 billion ($1.9 billion), marking a decade of continuous growth. The report notes that since 2014, annual streaming revenue has increased by more than 800% to become the dominant format for recorded music in the U.K.

The 2024 revenue figure is the highest ever achieved in the U.K. in one year. However, after adjusting for inflation, annual revenue is still hundreds of millions of pounds lower compared to where the music industry should have been in real terms since 2006, the first year when public performance and synch were included in the annual total, reports the BPI.

Breaking down streaming revenue, ad-supported streams enjoyed the biggest annual growth in the market last year with an 8.9% increase to £77.9 million ($100 million). However, paid subscriptions to services such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and YouTube continue to make up the vast majority of total streaming revenue, bringing in £875.5 million ($1.13 billion) in 2024.

Although the physical market generated more revenue in the U.K. than in any year since 2017, growth slowed last year despite high vinyl and CD sales of new albums by artists including Coldplay (Moon Music), Sabrina Carpenter (Short n’ Sweet) and Taylor Swift (The Tortured Poets Department). Total revenue from vinyl, CD and other physical music formats increased by 1.3% in 2024 to £246.5 million ($317.9 million) after climbing 12.8% the year before. Within this, revenue generated by vinyl LPs rose by 2.9% to £145.7 million ($188.2 million), while CD revenue fell by 0.5% in 2024 to £96.7 million ($124 million).

Despite slowing growth in physical formats, the BPI attributed the continued strength in vinyl partially to the enthusiasm of new generations of music fans. In 2024, eight of the year-end top 10 across vinyl were current records, led by Chappell Roan (The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess), Charli XCX (Brat) and Fontaines D.C. (Romance). In 2014, half of the top 10 sellers were catalogue titles.

At the start of the decade, CD revenue in the U.K. suffered from a series of year-on-year double-digit percentage declines, but over the last three years, it has stabilized. Like vinyl, the CD market is led by new releases.

Elsewhere, public performance revenue climbed 5.6% year-on-year to £161.7 million ($206.5 million), while synch revenue ended the year with a new annual high of £43.9 million ($56.7 million).

In terms of individual songs, four singles generated more than 200 million audio and video streams last year: Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” with 233.1 million streams, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” with 219.3 million streams, Carpenter’s “Espresso” with 202.8 million streams and Teddy Swims‘ “Lose Control” with 201.6 million streams. Kahan and Carpenter’s tracks each spent seven weeks atop the Official U.K. Singles Chart, while Boone enjoyed two weeks atop the summit. Swims, meanwhile, peaked at No. 2 but earned the most-downloaded single of 2024 in the U.K., with 67,000 units sold.

More than a dozen other tracks scored over 100 million audio and video streams in the U.K. in 2024. These included “Stargazing”, the breakthrough hit by BRITs Rising Star 2025 winner Myles Smith, as well as releases by fellow British artists Cassö, RAYE, D-Block Europe (“Prada”), and Artemas (“I Like The Way You Kiss Me”). 

Despite gains in each area of the U.K. recorded music market, Dr. Jo Twist, BPI’s CEO, stressed the importance of raising awareness around the government’s potential future approach to generative artificial intelligence training. At present, a data mining exception to copyright law is being discussed, meaning that AI developers could use songs for AI training in instances where artists have not “opted out” of their work being included. 

Last month, over 1,000 artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Annie Lennox and Hans Zimmer, contributed to a new “silent” album to protest this proposal. Titled Is This What We Want?, the album featured recordings of empty studios. In an accompanying statement, the use of silence was said to represent “the impact on artists’ and music professionals’ livelihoods that is expected if the government does not change course.”

“After a decade of growth, it is all too easy to take for granted the success of UK recorded music and the vital role record businesses play in this, underpinned by copyright, by investing billions to nurture and promote diverse talent from across the UK,” said Twist in a statement. “But in the face of intensifying global competition, it’s essential they’re empowered by a supportive policy environment to keep British artists on the world’s top step.

“Crucially, this requires the exciting potential of AI to be realised by the government safeguarding the UK’s gold-standard copyright framework and not siding with global big tech at the expense of human artistry and our world-leading creative industries,” Twist continued.