Over her  20-plus-year career, Tracy Gardner has seen her fair share of technological disruptions in the music business. “I started right when illegal downloads took over,” she says of her entry into the industry as an intern at what was then Warner Bros. Records (now Warner Records). 

As TikTok’s global head of music business development — a position she has held since February — Gardner is now running point for the biggest disruptor of the industry over the last five years. The Brooklyn Law graduate, whom ByteDance recruited in 2019 after six years in the legal affairs and business development departments at Warner Music Group, took over from Ole Obermann — whom she also worked with at WMG — when he departed for Apple Music. 

In her new role as the platform’s chief liaison with the music industry, Gardner oversees deals with labels, publishers and the TikTok commercial music library and works closely with the platform’s strategy, finance, artist services, product and ad sales teams. 

Her promotion comes at a fitful moment for TikTok, as ByteDance and the Trump administration are reportedly finalizing a deal that would result in a consortium of U.S. investors acquiring a majority stake in the app. Gardner was not able to comment on that process or how it might affect her division. But in this interview — her first since assuming her current role — she asserts that nearly two years after Universal Music Group temporarily pulled its artists’ music from TikTok over a breakdown in licensing negotiations, and the social media platform shifted label licensing away from Merlin, which licenses digital companies on behalf of over 30,000 indie labels and distributors, “We’re in a great place with the music industry. It’s a dynamic partnership that, as TikTok evolves quickly, has an impact on how we’re looking at deals, how we work with partners and what they want to get from a partnership with us.”

At Warner, you were on the other side of the negotiating table with ByteDance. How did that experience affect how you conduct your job now? 

Mainly, it was great to come from the perspective of being at a label and a rights holder. [TikTok] was still relatively new when I got there, and we had to build the infrastructure and collaborate with other teams at ByteDance. A lot of our music team came over from either other DSPs [digital service providers] or labels, so there was a very good base to help the product teams, who don’t have music experience, understand what these rights holders expect from tech partners and what their artists are looking for.

What did you learn from watching Ole Obermann? 

Ole and I worked together at Warner. Often people in business development [at music companies] come from one of two paths: f inancial or legal backgrounds. I was fortunate that Ole came from a more numbers- based, financial background, whereas mine was legal. He forced me out of my comfort zone. I wanted to look at the term sheet, and he told me, “You have to focus on the numbers. The numbers don’t lie.” Then we both moved to TikTok, and he [built] a great infrastructure of how the team operates, how we present budgets and how we work with senior management. 

How have you tailored your current role to your perspective and experience? 

Ole was overseeing both recorded music and publishing, while I was more in day-to-day operations on the recorded-music side working with artists. So when I took on this new job, I said, “Why don’t we apply the best practices we have for artists to songwriters?” One thing that we’re particularly proud of is the songwriter feature we launched earlier this year [enabling songwriters to tag songs they’ve written in the music tab of their account]. The songwriters are really enjoying being able to step out from behind the curtain and get the acknowledgment that they deserve. We plan to roll that out more broadly. 

TikTok increasingly has prioritized e-commerce with the TikTok Shop. How is your team working with artists there? 

We are working with the e-commerce teams at the labels as well as our own. One thing we’re seeing is old vinyl sells. Even though people don’t have record players, they view these albums as collectibles. We also see great success when an artist does a livestream. We did one with Lizzo that was quite successful and one with the Jonas Brothers. 

TikTok has hosted a number of intimate pop-up events recently for artists’ top fans. Ones with Miley Cyrus and Ed Sheeran come to mind immediately. This is an interesting move to me because you are a social media platform. You want to engage fans online. Why did you want to take people off their phones and get them outside with artists?

Music discovery starts on TikTok — discovery, promotion and fandom grows here, and we view it as a flywheel. After discovering a song, we then help to promote it with some of the campaigns that we do, then we tie that to the “Add to Music App” function so that you can listen on your streaming service. We’re see that what we do moves the needle on streaming, which then leads to charts, which then leads to increased fandom. 

We thought that there would be a great opportunity to bring this to real life, to invite the fans that have the greatest engagement with an artist on TikTok to come see the artist in person, even if it does mean going off the platform for a bit. What I thought was beautiful about the Miley event at Chateau Marmont, was that the people there were so impassioned that they started posting so much about it. Even though I wasn’t there, they made me feel like I’d actually experienced it. Right now, we’re finding a way to create joyful intimate moments and creating them in a way that encourages fans to film and to bring them back onto TikTok. 

After a song goes viral on TikTok, it often ends up doing really well on streaming services. For a while, TikTok was building its own streaming service, TikTok Music. Why was it shut down last year? 

It was just a decision of priorities. We were trying to grow it for quite some time, and the decision was made: “You know what? Out of all the things we’re doing, this is not succeeding at the level we want. Let’s focus on other areas.” It was an awesome service and it really tied in all the great parts of TikTok, but it was just a decision by management.

TikTok recently let go about 15 people from the U.S. and Latin American music teams, and layoffs are forthcoming in the United Kingdom. Some are interpreting this as a sign that the company is backing away from its partnerships with the music business. 

As so many other big companies have recently done — Amazon announced a big round of layoffs, for instance — organizational changes are due to changes in structural needs. Companies can grow very quickly and then must reassess what’s best for them. There is definitely no change in the priority around artist services and artist relations. For us, it’s business as usual.

How are you reassuring the music industry that you remain committed to the partnerships and plans you already made? 

We’re telling them it’s business as usual, and our valued industry partners remain the highest priority. We just want to focus more on the core priorities for artists and songwriters to help drive the value on the platform. 

How is TikTok ensuring artists have safeguards against artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes? 

We ask that users tag anything that’s AI-created. Aside from that, I don’t think the industry has a quick solution right now to identify those and take them down. If someone notifies us, our trust and safety team will take them down if needed. But it is a very interesting time right now. 

AI-generated songs have appeared on the TikTok and Billboard charts. Are you pursuing any policies that would bar AI music on your platform and charts? 

It’s uncharted territory. Even with U.S. Copyright Office guidance that works must have sufficient human contribution to be protected, what does that mean? There’s such a wide span from a song being totally created by AI to one that’s created by a human with just one or two AI contributions. How do we decide when it’s such a gray zone? So I don’t think we’ve made a decision on that yet, and I don’t think a lot of the DSPs have either. 

If AI-generated music starts performing well on TikTok, could it diminish the leverage rights holders have in negotiations with you? 

I don’t think it would have any impact. We’re all aware that AI music is out there, and some exceptions have risen on the charts, but it would not at all impact the value that we see in our partners and how our deals with them are structured.

What are some best practices for artists seeking to gain an audience on TikTok? 

The beauty of it is that any song has a chance to go viral. It just depends on how the billions of people on the platform react to the song. Oftentimes, I’m asked, “Do you have to be really leaned in?” It depends. A great example is Connie Francis. Her song “Pretty Little Baby” blew up this year. She wasn’t on the platform at the time. Eventually she did get on, which was great, but this music resonated [on its own].

Before the 59^th annual  CMA Awards take place Nov. 19, ABC will pay tribute to some of country music’s leading names with Center Stage: Countdown to the CMA Awards — Special Edition of 20/20, which will air Nov. 18 evening.

Hosted by former CMA Awards host, Luke Bryan, the special will feature Kenny Chesney as he revisits the lower Broadway venues he first played when he arrived in Nashville, as well as talks about his new book, Heart Life Music, which tops two New York Times Best Sellers lists this week.  

Below, Billboard exclusively premieres the trailer for the special , which will air from 10:07 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST and then streams the next day on Disney + and Hulu.

In the trailer, Chesney talks about getting his start. “I started playing in clubs, that’s where I learned how to connect with an audience,” he says. “I sat and played four hours a night with a tip jar in front of me. God, it was so much fun.”

The special will also celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry with Lauren Alaina, Gabby Barrett, Dan + Shay and Russell Dickerson.

Additionally, the program will include appearances from Jelly Roll, Megan Moroney, Ashley McBryde and Keith Urban, as well as the some of the nominated pairings for the CMA Awards’ musical event of the year: Blake Shelton and Post Malone, Carrie Underwood and Cody Johnson and Ella Langley and Riley Green.

The CMA Awards airs broadcasts live from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, starting at 8 p.m. EST on ABC and is available next day on Hulu.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but none of the artists who performed at Ozzy Osbourne‘s all-star final Back to the Beginning gig this summer were paid to be there. They did it for the love of the game, and their love of the late metal icon.

Wife/manager Sharon Osbourne revealed the generosity of Ozzy’s peers in this week’s episode of The Osbournes podcast, the family’s first sit-down chat since Ozzy’s death on July 22 at 76 years old, just weeks after the historic gig. “We paid the cost of bringing everybody in, everybody out, accommodation, everything,” said Sharon about the all-day July 5 gig at Villa Park in Ozzy’s hometown of Birmingham, England that featured sets from Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Pantera, Alice in Chains Anthrax as well solo and Black Sabbath sets featuring Ozzy. “[And] no one got paid. Nobody asked for a penny. They gave their time, their efforts, everything for free. People were just, oh God, so generous.”

Sharon also clarified reports about how much the show raised for charity based on what the family said were erroneously inflated figures provided by the show’s musical director, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, in an Instagram post in which he claimed it would donate around $190 million to charities including the Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospital and Cure Parkinson’s.

Son Jack said there was an “awful lot of bulls–t that went out” about how much the concert raised for charity. Veteran manager Sharon added, “If one show could have raised… I mean, it was up to, like $190 million. It’s, like, any artist, just do one big show, film it and you can retire just on one show. No, it was nowhere near, and I wish that it was, but we are living in reality, in the real world.”

Sharon revealed that the show raised around $11 million for charity given the enormous cost of flying everyone in and out, putting them up and mounting the ambitious show that will be the subject of the upcoming 100-minute concert film Back to the Beginning: Ozzy’s Final Bow, which is slated for theatrical release early next year.

Watch the Osbournes discuss the generosity of the Back to the Beginning participants below.

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

This week: It’s Over and out for Summer Walker with the third and final album in her signature series, Kelsea Ballerini is taking stock of things with a new EP and Miley Cyrus rises from the ashes with a big soundtrack single.

Summer Walker, Finally Over It

It’s been a four-year wait — but Finally Over It is, well, finally here. The third and presumed final entry in R&B star Summer Walker’s Over It series, the follow-up to 2021’s Still Over It features 18 tracks spread over two discs, and follows a wedding theme — with the two discs titled “For Better” and “For Worse,” and the album art and visuals seeing Walker marrying an elderly white man, implying a hard exit from the world of dating and unsatisfying romantic relationships. The star-studded album features guests ranging from old collaborators Chris Brown, Bryson Tiller and 21 Savage to new friends Sailorr, Brent Faiyaz and Doja Cat, but Walker is arguably still best keeping it simple and solo, as on the unequivocal “No” and the wrenching “Situationship.”

Kelsea Ballerini, Mount Pleasant

Two years after her well-received Rolling Up the Welcome Mat EP — and one year after the full-length Patterns — country star Kelsea Ballerini is back playing the mini-album game with the six-track Mount Pleasant. The abbreviated release is meant “to capture a moment in time,” says Ballerini in a statement, with “six songs I’ve written throughout the summer, marking a chapter of heavy self-examination, longing and stepping further into who I am as a 32-year old woman.” The EP moves quickly but hits hard, with songs of jealousy, heartbreak and frustration written with Ballerini’s typically vivid detail and delivered with her usual bite and tenderness.

Miley Cyrus, “Dream as One”

Miley Cyrus has expressed a particular connection to the themes of the upcoming Avatar sequel Fire and Ash, after losing her Malibu home in the 2018 Woolsey Fire: “Having been personally affected by fire and being rebuilt from the ashes, this project holds profound meaning for me,” Cyrus shared on Instagram, thanking director James Cameron “for the opportunity to turn that experience into musical medicine.” She does so this week with the new ballad “Dream as One,” a stately anthem of love and endurance that refuses to ascribe the concept of “home” to any particular building or place, as Cyrus sings to her partner: “You are my home/ No matter where I go.”

Lewis Capaldi, Survive EP

It’s been a big moment for U.K. pop in the past couple months, with the global breakout of Olivia Dean, a big new RAYE. hit and the return earlier this week of Charli XCX, with two new songs from her upcoming soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation. Into this moment steps Lewis Capaldi, the formerly Billboard Hot 100-topping singer-songwriter and supreme balladeer — who took the better part of the last two years on a break from touring and recording, for the betterment of his mental health — with his four-track Survive EP. There’s no major swerves with the new release — “It’s…… songs,” was Capaldi’s helpful description of the EP on The Graham Norton Show — but it is rousing with its pervasive sense of perseverance, even through heartbreak on the climactic lighter-waver “Almost.”

Jessie Murph, Sex Hysteria (Deluxe)

July’s Sex Hysteria album marked something of a commercial breakthrough for Jessie Murph, making the top 10 of the Billboard 200 — helped by the success of breakout single “Blue Strips.” This week, the retro-minded 15-track set gets an eight-track bonus disc on the set’s official deluxe edition. The new tracks include the gently soulful and rueful “I Stay I Leave I Love I Lose,” the Amy Winehouse-like, hungover and heartbroken “Easy Sunday Living” and the previously released kiss-off “I’m Not There for You” — already another Hot 100 hit for Murph — and should get fans who’ve finally calmed down from the original Hysteria all good and bothered again.

Dominic Fike, “White Keys”

The always-buzzy Dominic Fike has a big weekend coming up, making his debut as one half of Geezer (alongside Kevin Abstract) at Tyler, The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival. In advance of the performance, Fike today shares “White Keys,” a new-old song that was a formerly unofficially released fan favorite, produced by John Cunningham. “I had forgot about this song and the internet somehow dug it up for me,” Fike commented on the playfully shuffling, lightly forlorn mini-banger in an IG post announcing its release. Abstract showed up in that post’s comments to proclaim: “gay boy returns.”