HYBE America has unveiled HYBE Label Service (HLS), its first global division dedicated to supporting HYBE artists in international markets. The new unit will unify global operations across distribution, manufacturing, and marketing & promotion (M&P), with the goal of expanding the reach and impact of HYBE’s roster.

To lead HLS, HYBE America has promoted Ryan Hyeong Woo Noh to chief business officer. Formerly the company’s chief strategy officer, Noh will oversee core business operations from HYBE’s Los Angeles headquarters, reporting to HYBE CEO Jason Jaesang Lee and HYBE America CEO Isaac Lee. Since joining HYBE in 2022, Noh has played a key role in the company’s growth, bringing more than 15 years of experience in entertainment and gaming — including senior leadership positions at Nexon US Holdings, where he led international business development and managed post-merger integration.

HLS is structured into two core divisions: Global Distribution and Global M&P. Mike Rittberg has been appointed president of global distribution, responsible for strategic release planning and catalog management. Rittberg previously served as COO of Big Machine Label Group (BMLG), where he led marketing and streaming initiatives. Mark Flaherty joins as president of Global M&P, tasked with leading global marketing strategies. Flaherty’s career spans major labels like Warner Records, Interscope, and Sony Music, as well as entrepreneurial ventures such as Fanatical Music & Marketing, where he helped expand Southeast Asian talent globally, including the girl group Bini.

HYBE executives emphasized the strategic importance of HLS in expanding global reach and supporting artists, with Lee calling the launch a “pivotal moment” in the company’s global strategy. “By centralizing our essential global support functions and bringing in top-tier leaders like Mike Rittberg and Mark Flaherty, we are providing our artists with an unparalleled platform for continued worldwide success,” he said.

Noh emphasized strengthening connections between HYBE’s regional capabilities and “our powerful partners while enabling our artists and labels to more seamlessly reach and engage with audiences across different markets worldwide.”

Rittberg praised HYBE’s innovative approach to global music, saying it is “redefining what’s possible in global music,” while Flaherty added he was excited to help “stretch the boundaries of what a global music company can be.”

The launch of HLS follows the recent departure of Scooter Braun as CEO of HYBE America. Braun had overseen acquisitions including BMLG and Quality Control Music, each purchased for $300 million.

HYBE plans to expand HLS into additional regions, reallocating resources to reinforce its global presence. The initiative highlights the company’s ongoing push toward long-term international artist development. HYBE America, a subsidiary of HYBE Corp., operates a portfolio that includes Scooter Braun Projects, BMLG and Quality Control Music.

During a recent gym visit, Jim-E Stack heard “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” start to play, and it walloped him in the middle of his workout session.

“I was like, ‘Agh.’ It really makes me emotional,” he says of the remix to Charli xcx’s brat standout, which he co-wrote. That reaction was nothing new for him: When Charli and Lorde performed it together at Coachella in April, he nearly cried.

When the remix arrived in June 2024, Stack and Lorde were halfway through creating the latter’s own album, Virgin. “How open and honest and personal [Lorde] is on that verse — that’s something we were channeling the whole time in the album,” he says of her fourth full-length. “So when she got to share some of that, it was like, ‘Holy s–t. We are onto something.’ It was reaffirming.”

Virgin, which Stack co-wrote and co-produced in its entirety alongside Lorde, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 following its June release. The album was heralded as Lorde’s most personal project to date, with the singer examining and untangling gender roles, body image issues and her sexuality. As for Stack, the album bumped him into a new stratosphere as a studio guru — one who had racked up credits with HAIM, Empress Of and Kacy Hill, but never a pop star of Lorde’s acclaim.

Stack, 33, has played the long game throughout his career, since landing his first major credit in 2017 on HAIM’s “Want You Back.” Along with his work on Virgin, his breakthrough this year is top-lined by another personal triumph: co-producing Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable with the band’s frontman, Justin Vernon.

“I remember when Justin and I first worked [together], we were messing around for i, i, his [2019] fourth album, and I was totally bummed to not contribute to that,” Stack recalls. “But I remember a friend telling me, ‘I bet more will come of that than you can even imagine right now.’ And he was totally right.” In a full-circle moment, Stack invited Danielle Haim to join his sessions with Vernon, resulting in her two features on Sable, Fable, “I’ll Be There” and “If Only I Could Wait.”

His other credits this year — with artists including Dominic Fike, Aminé and Dijon — are also representative of the yearslong friendships he formed after moving to Los Angeles in 2016. And now, he finds himself among a crop of fellow creatives, including Dijon and Mk.gee, all of whom are allowing jagged production elements to bleed into their pop music — and cut into the mainstream. “I think there is this new guard right now,” Stack says. “There are times when people, myself included, feel like nothing cool is coming out, and this is not one of those times.”

Born James Stack in San Francisco, he expressed an interest in music from a young age. In high school, he formed a jazz band with his best friends, and at New Orleans’ Loyola University, he surrounded himself with other aspiring musicians. In 2012, he moved to Brooklyn and released his first EP as an artist himself but found the city to be isolating both creatively and personally. After four years, he relocated back to the West Coast, this time landing in Los Angeles — and into a budding community of artists, songwriters and producers.

One of them was Dan Nigro, the future Grammy Award-winning collaborator of Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan. “He was the first person I worked with in L.A.,” Stack recalls. “He was always doing his thing and staying true to that, and that led to some of the most impactful music of our time being made. He’s shown me that if you commit to yourself, commit to who you naturally are, you’re going to get to those places.”

That approach helped inspire Stacks’ own breakout second album, 2020’s self-released Ephemera, which he says “is randomly, for so many people I work with, my calling card.” The experimental pop album features Bon Iver, Dijon, Empress Of and others and helped establish Stack as a collaborator who not only has great taste but is unafraid to redefine popular music.

It’s exactly what drew Lorde to Stack when she reached out to him in 2022 while rehearsing for her Solar Power tour. “We met, talked for a while and really got along,” Stack says. “The things we were into and our visions of music, it was clear we could do something special together… A big green flag for me with her was that she was just willing to take risks.” It wasn’t until over a year later that they started working on what would become Lorde’s fourth album.

Virgin “does have this very raw, jagged sound, and the edges aren’t super sanded… and I credit [Lorde] so much for advocating for it,” he says. “I think there were times I felt like, ‘We’re working on this big pop album. Is this insane we’re not cleaning everything up?’ ”

Bon Iver’s Sable, Fable — which debuted atop multiple Billboard charts including Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Alternative Albums and Americana/Folk Albums — was recorded in a similar fashion. A favorite memory of Stack’s from those sessions is when he “haphazardly” banged out the drums for “Day One” in about five minutes — replacing the more “tasteful” versions he had worked on far longer.

Both Lorde and Bon Iver have received Grammy nods for album of the year in the past, and with Virgin and Sable, Fable as potential contenders this year, Stack may wind up on the shortlist for producer of the year, non-classical. “Of course there’s some fantasy about that… I would be lying if I said I didn’t want any accolade,” he says. Still, he feels he’s at a point of reflection as a transformative year winds down. “I’ve definitely needed a bit of a beat after everything that’s come out to get back in the studio on my own and discover new tools, put myself in some weird zones,” he says.

And while he “definitely” wants to make another solo album, he’d never cancel a session for it — causing any potential headway to often be put on pause. He’d never pass up time with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, for example, with whom Stack has worked on “a fair amount” over the past year. Stack has also been working with rising pop artist Dora Jar, whom he says “has such a distinct voice in her writing and guitar playing.”

And if there’s one element Stack hopes his discography can be identified by, it’s that kind of human touch — especially today, he says. “In this age where we have all the technology we could ever want and with [artificial intelligence], you can make perfect stuff,” he says. “How do we humanize things? Well, you don’t actually craft it to make it human. You just be you and hit ‘record.’ “

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.

After being uplifted throughout her career by the LGBTQ+ community, disco-pop star Sophie Ellis-Bextor is making sure that the community knows she stands firmly with them in a new interview.

In an interview with The Independent published Sunday (Oct. 5), the “Murder on the Dancefloor” hitmaker spoke out about the state of politics surrounding the trans community in 2025, sharing her disdain at seeing increased attacks against the community, especially in online spaces. Speaking specifically about those spreading transphobic views online, Ellis-Bextor said she was dismayed at the fervor with which many of them spoke.

“These people make trans people their whole personality and spend their entire day checking their socials and being angry, whereas trans people themselves just want to be under the radar and live their lives,” she explained. Her fears are confirmed by the data. A February study found that instances of hate speech on X rose by roughly 50% in the months after Elon Musk purchased the platform in 2022.

Ellis-Bextor continued, adding that movements such as Pride felt more vital than ever. “There was a time when Pride felt like a celebration of all the shoulders that people were able to stand on, but now it feels like it’s an absolute political necessity,” she said. “I suppose you have to be optimistic that things will get better again, but I do get very down about it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the singer explained that she’s had to deal with people in her personal life turning on the trans community over the course of the last few years. “I had one of my girlfriends go on quite a weird flip, and it was really affecting me,” she explained. “And you definitely do need to assert that you feel really differently, and then just find ways to support what you believe is being on the right side of history.”

The interview comes a few weeks after the release of Ellis-Bextor’s new album Perimenopop, the singer’s return to disco-pop after the runaway success of her song “Murder on the Dancefloor” in 2024 thanks to its prominent sync in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Ellis-Bextor spoke to Billboard that year about earning her first Billboard Hot 100 entry thanks to the film. “My relationship with the song is great, I perform it all the time — it’s been the song that people associate the most with me,” she said. “But to have it having this little wild adventure on the charts is actually bonkers.”

Four Nashville music industry veterans have joined forces with the launch of a multi-faceted company built around the belief of putting artists, unbridled creativity and faith-based perspectives at its core.

Executives Josh Bailey, Jeremy Holley, Rod Riley and Josh Thompson have teamed for the Franklin, Tenn.-based label By Design, which falls under a larger ecosystem which blends label, publishing and a nonprofit initiative under one roof. That ecosystem also includes By Design music publishing, as well as Archetype Music, a music rights holding company acquiring faith-based music rights, including masters and publishing. The artist-first ecosystem also includes Blueprint, a nonprofit aimed at helping creators build healthy, sustainable careers.

The label’s initial artist roster reflects that mission, led by country artist Frankie Ballard, pop-folk artist Zoe Levert and singer-songwriter Alex Jude. Ballard, who notched three No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart before stepping back to recalibrate his artistic mission, is preparing to release new music and embark on the next phase of his career. Levert, who reached the Top 12 on NBC’s The Voice, has since relocated to Nashville to continue refining her sound.

“For us, it’s finding artists that aren’t afraid to talk about their faith, but also have a real desire to create art that goes beyond maybe the traditional realms of genres or sub-genres,” Holley says. “I think all three of the artists that we’ve partnered with so far have that ability. They are creating music and art that doesn’t fit into a mold.”

All four execs’ careers include time in various label roles, converging with time at Word Entertainment. Bailey spent more than two decades at Word Entertainment and Capitol CMG, working in A&R and with artists including For King & Country and Anne Wilson. Following work at Word and Warner Music Group, Holley launched pop culture agency FlyteVu. Riley co-founded Fervent Records with his wife Susan and then sold the label to Word and led Word as CEO, before moving into rights acquisitions. Thompson worked in various label roles at Word before leading Futureshirts through a time of acquisitions, client/team growth, and expanded services.

That combined industry experience and perspective from Bailey, Holley, Riley, and Thompson informs By Design’s creator-first approach.

“Our priority is to find the right listeners for the right songs,” Bailey says. “So if that means radio, go to radio. If that means a really deep social strategy, go to socials.”

The company emerges as faith-based music has surged in consumption over the past few years, spearheaded by music from artists such as Forrest Frank, Brandon Lake, Elevation Worship, Jon Reddick, Lauren Daigle and Josiah Queen.

“In the last four or five years with streaming taking over and how the business has changed, it’s opened the door for a lot more freedom for artists to create great art that lives in a lot of different spaces,” Thompson adds. “You see some of the breakout things that are coming from the Christian space, that they are making music that doesn’t sound anything like Christian music sounded before and they are having success with that. There’s less rules in what we’re doing.”

The company’s nonprofit arm Blueprint, aims to address artist well-being from the outset.

“I think that there’s a lot of places for artists to go when something goes wrong, and there are certainly amazing organizations that care for artists in Nashville and beyond,” Riley says. “But for us, it’s like, ‘What are we doing for the artist that’s 20 years old that we are signing?’ How are we educating them on what’s to come and how are we getting ahead of those things from the get-go? With Blueprint, there will essentially be a cohort of talent that gets into the program, and it will be around a six-to-12-month long program that is about learning who you are and why. And there will be partnerships with people like Porter’s Call or Onsite, where there may be bigger needs, but our goal is to just shepherd artists through that program and teach them.”

Ahead, By Design’s leaders are focused on more ways of helping to shift the paradigm when it comes to business deals impacting artists, songwriters and other creators.

“This is about all those that are part of making great music, and we want to do what we can to help and nurture that,” Riley says. “We’ve signed a few writers and are in the middle of a few deals. There’s some other things down the road as we get into this, that we’ve already started dreaming on, of how do we throw a few grenades in how this whole thing works and do things a little bit differently, that maybe other labels and publishing companies aren’t doing.”