Music publishers are continuing to fight Peloton over how it uses music in its workout classes. On Thursday, the National Music Publishers’ Association filed a request to amend its complaint to now seek $300 million in damages after discovering an additional 1,200-plus songs that Peloton had allegedly used but not paid artists for, including Ray Charles’ recording of “Georgia On My Mind” and the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There”.
“Since filing this lawsuit we have now discovered more than double the number of songs for which the plaintiffs’ songwriters were never paid by Peloton. The fact that Peloton has gone this long without proper music licenses is astounding,” NMPAPresident and CEODavid Israelite said in a statement.
The request for increased damages comes right as Peloton prepares to go public. On Tuesday, the company set a share price range of $26 to $29 for its IPO, which would value it at around $8 billion, double its current valuation set by private investors.
In its registration filing, the company noted that music was an “important element” to its content and also a particular business risk: “We depend upon third-party licenses for the use of music in our content. An adverse change to, loss of, or claim that we do not hold necessary licenses may have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.”
The fitness company rose in popularity thanks to its instructors mixing bike and treadmill workouts to pop hits. The cohort of music publishers first filed suit against Peloton in March and the company subsequently removed some classes from its service. Now, the NMPA is asking the courts to consider its amended complaint now that it has uncovered more songs used by Peloton.
The New York-based company plans to fight the lawsuit, calling the NMPA “anti-competitive.”
“This platform could only have been developed with the close collaboration of our trusted music partners, which include all of the major labels, major music publishers and performance rights organizations, among many others,” the company said in a statement. “We will continue to defend ourselves against claims made in this matter and look forward to pursuing our counterclaims.”
I’m a San Francisco-based staff writer for Forbes with a focus on Uber, the sharing economy, and startups. I previously worked for Business Insider, Gigaom, and Wired. I also spent a year as newspaper designer for Gannet. I’m a native of Atlanta, Georgia and a proud graduate from Indiana University’s journalism school. Email me story tips at bcarson [at] forbes.com or follow me on Twitter @bizcarson
CNBC’s Julia Boorstin joins “Closing Bell” to report the latest news from Peloton as music publishers seek $300 million from the company in damages for wrongly using songs in its workouts.
Deep inside a hilltop hideaway on the outskirts of Las Vegas, an elusive engine of perpetual motion thrums to a beat: not in mechanical form, but in the person of Steve Aoki. The 41-year-old DJ has just returned to his high-desert lair after a gig in Houston, one of 200-plus shows he’s played over the past year. Aoki celebrates being home by diving into a pit full of blue foam cubes in his basement for a moment—but only a moment—before heading back to his studio.
“As long as my train is moving and the momentum is going, I’m good,” Aoki says. “And because I know that, I don’t stop. Because the second I do this and I’m like, ‘I’m just going to chill,’ someone else is going to jump on my train and start driving.”
Thanks to his insatiable appetite for performing—as well as his music and fashion ventures, plus endorsements with Samsung, Diesel and the airline ANA—Aoki ranks No. 4 on Forbes’ annual list of highest-paid DJs, pulling in $30 million pretax over the past 12 months. He has built an empire on more than just cash earnings: Aoki’s realm includes the record label Dim Mak; a museum-level collection of art in his home, including works by Kaws and Banksy; investments in clothing (Vision Street Wear) and esports (Rogue); and stakes in companies from Uber to SpaceX.
As his career took off in the early aughts, Aoki found himself spending only 50 days a year at his $1.1 million, 3,000-square-foot-home in the Hollywood Hills. So at the end of 2013, around the time he inked a residency deal at Hakkasan in Las Vegas, he made the move to Sin City. Aoki bought his current, 16,000-square-foot mansion for $2.8 million in an all-cash short sale—though it would take more than that to complete his dream house.
“It wasn’t like a custom home where I could just step in and I’m like, ‘Okay, everything’s here, I don’t need to worry about anything.’ I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a choice, I have to, so let’s get crazy,’” he says—and he shelled out $5 million to remake the property to his exact specifications. Now? “It’s like my brain is this house.”
Welcome to Aoki’s Playhouse—welcome to his brain.
Long before he became an electronic cash king, Aoki spent a summer as a teenager peeling onions at Benihana in Dallas—his father, Rocky Aoki, founded the restaurant chain in 1964. Though the younger Aoki soon realized that his passion lay in music, his experience provided a valuable entrepreneurial foundation.
“You can’t just go from zero to 100 just because your dad owns the business. You’re going to ruin the whole business,” he says. “The very important lesson for me is that you have to have the discipline to learn all the different facets.”
When Aoki founded Dim Mak in 1996, he did exactly that, involving himself in everything from visiting vinyl pressing houses and negotiating with distributors to keeping the books and spending time in the studio with his artists. He went on to boost acts like the Kills and Bloc Party before releasing his solo debut, Wonderland, in 2012, just in time to catch the electronic dance music (EDM) wave as it washed across the United States.
“Before then, people were just going into these clubs, the DJ was hidden in the back corner,” Aoki recalls. “But when that shift happened where you went to the club to see the DJ … that was a critical change
Steve Aoki’s very first job had nothing to do with Dim Mak or Benihana: as a 10-year-old he sold hats at a Southern California flea market on weekends. “I only worked there one day,” he says. “I was awful selling hats. [My boss] just was like, ‘Here’s 20 bucks—get out of here.’”
For his next gig, Aoki worked at a video game arcade—a passion that lingers to this day. A self-proclaimed Street Fighter junkie before graduating to three-dimensional games, Aoki was a founding partner of the esports team Rogue in 2016 before selling a chunk of his stake to industry giant ReKTGlobal last year (neither Aoki nor the company would discuss figures).
His investment also proved to be an incredible cheat code for new games that capture his attention. “I invite team Rogue over here so they can help beat very difficult bosses,” he says.
Rogue is one of many business ventures into which Aoki has plowed the fruits of his musical labor—$155 million before taxes over the past seven years, by Forbes’ estimate. He also boasts an expansive portfolio of startups and has poured additional resources into his clothing brand, which shares the name of his record label. Launched in 2014, Dim Mak is equal parts Los Angeles skater punk and high fashion, with a touch of kung fu tossed in: Its namesake is the signature move of Bruce Lee, a childhood hero of Aoki.
One of the first things you see when you walk into Aoki’s Playhouse is his giant Banksy installation: a python, perhaps a dozen feet long, that appears to have swallowed Mickey Mouse whole. The piece debuted at Banksy’s Dismaland, a dystopian theme park exhibition staged in the United Kingdom four years ago, before Aoki purchased it and brought it to his living room. It’s part of a vast collection that’s easily worth millions, though some pieces, like the two-headed monster mural by Los Angeles artist Neck Face isn’t exactly a liquid asset. No matter: “I’m not moving,” he says. “This is my home.”
Behind the Banksy in his living room, floor-to-ceiling windows open up onto a golf course far below—and beyond that, the shimmer of the Las Vegas skyline—which Aoki will soon soar over in a helicopter en route to his headlining set at Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), the annual EDM festival attended by nearly 500,000 people this year. He’s still one of the biggest attractions in a lineup that includes dozens of DJs, including twentysomething stars like Alesso and Martin Garrix.
“Steve’s longevity is a function of being to adapt to changing tastes while broadening out his demos,” says Randy Phillips, chief of the EDM festival company LiveStyle. “He also has that star personality which resonates well in the age of social media.”
The morning after EDC, Aoki rolls into the convention center at Planet Hollywood on the Vegas Strip, right on time for a comic book signing. Never mind that he didn’t get home until well after three o’clock in the morning—and promptly went back into his studio to work on more music—there’s a bionic sort of energy to him. “I’m not sure how much sleep he’s on right now,” says his manager, Dougie Bohay. “But it’s not a lot.”
And he’s already focusing on his next big project—early next year, Aoki will release his next album, Neon Future IV. Not that he needs the money.
“At the end of the day, besides having whatever I have in the bank or whatever great investments I’ve worked, the things I create and that I offer to people, that is where I feel the most appreciation about my purpose of life,” Aoki says. “I want to have the appreciation. I’m always yearning for it.”
Zack O’Malley Greenburg is senior editor of media & entertainment at Forbes and author of three books, including Empire State of Mind: How Jay-Z Went From Street Corner To Corner Office. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Billboard, Sports Illustrated, Vibe, McSweeney’s and others. In a decade at Forbes, Zack has investigated topics from Wu-Tang Clan’s secret album in Morocco to the return of tourism in post-conflict Sierra Leone to the earning power of Hip-Hop’s Cash Kings, writing cover stories on subjects ranging from Richard Branson to Ashton Kutcher to Katy Perry. A recovering child actor, Zack played the title role in the film Lorenzo’s Oil (1992) and arrived at Forbes in 2007 after graduating from Yale with an American Studies degree. For more, follow him on Twitter, Facebook, newsletter and via www.zogreenburg.com. Got a tip on a music, media & entertainment story? Send it over via SecureDrop. Instructions here: www.forbes.com/tip
Famous first as a singer, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, age 31, has since evolved into a style icon and makeup entrepreneur—and soon she’ll be the first black woman in charge of a major luxury fashion house. All those efforts add up to a $600 million fortune, making her the wealthiest female musician in the world, ahead of the likes of Madonna ($570 million), Céline Dion ($450 million) and Beyoncé ($400 million).
Most of that comes not from music but from her partnership with LVMH, the French luxury goods giant run by billionaire Bernard Arnault. Rihanna (pronounced “Ri-ann-ah,” not “Ri-ah-nah,” as she recently clarified) and LVMH co-own the makeup brand Fenty Beauty. It launched in September 2017 at Sephora, another LVMH brand, and online at FentyBeauty.com, quickly becoming a viral success. Fenty Beauty racked up a reported $100 million in sales in its first few weeks, propelled by Rihanna’s fame and 71 million Instagram followers.
The entire personal care industry in America has grown huge in recent years. According to Grand View Research, it could swell to more than $200 billion in sales by 2025, up from closer to $130 billion in 2016. The market saw a record 134 M&A deals last year, including P&G’s $250 million purchase of 10-year-old First Aid Beauty. Perhaps the most telling data point: 11 of the 80 women on Forbes‘ list of the Richest Self-Made Women made their money in beauty or skin care products. Many did what Rihanna did, turn to the low-cost marketing opportunity presented by social media. That works best for existing celebrities, as Kylie Jenner and her Kylie Cosmetics proved out, who can push their new products at their existing followers.
Fenty Beauty has differentiated itself in another way, releasing 40 shades of foundation, far more than the handful of hues sold by other brands. “It challenged the standard convention that you only needed a very defined set of shades to satisfy a market,” says Stephanie Wissink, a research analyst at Jefferies. “Not only did [Fenty Beauty] achieve meaningful sales, but it potentially changed the industry permanently.”
Sales continue to soar. Fenty Beauty generated an estimated $570 million in revenue last year, after only 15 months in business. The entire operation is worth, conservatively, more than $3 billion. Forbes estimates thatLVMH owns an estimated 50% of it, while Rihanna has about 15%, a figure a spokesperson for the artist disputed but wouldn’t clarify further.
The Barbados native, who overcame hardships including an abusive addict father and a well-publicized assault by then-boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009, also co-owns the Savage X Fenty lingerie line with Los Angeles-based online fashion firm TechStyle Fashion Group and has millions in earnings from her career touring and releasing as a singer, which make up the rest of her fortune.
Her empire continues to grow. In May, LVMH and Rihanna announced Fenty, a new clothing house that will make high-end clothes, shoes, accessories and jewelry.
“They extended the offer to me and it was a no-brainer because LVMH is a machine,” Rihanna told The New York Times Style Magazine. “Bernard Arnault was so enthusiastic; he trusted me and my vision.”
The fashion line, which launched online in May, includes sizes up to U.S. 14, embodying the same inclusive ideal of Fenty Beauty. It will exist under the same umbrella as famous brands such as Dior and Givenchy, marking LVMH’s first new house in more than 30 years.
“What Fenty Beauty did to beauty, Fenty lifestyle is going to do to fashion,” says Wissink. “It’s going to raise the bar for what it looks like to build a brand that’s inclusive, game changing, global and iconic.”
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Back in 2015, when Katy Perry appeared on the cover of Forbes after earning $135 million in a single year, she knew she’d secured her place in the pop star firmament and wouldn’t ever have to worry about fading into oblivion. “I don’t feel like my career is a ticking time bomb,” she said. “I don’t feel like I’ll always have to be feeding the meter of show business. I got my spot, yo.” Three years later, Perry has proved herself right: She’s the highest-paid woman in music, pulling in $83 million pretax during our scoring period…………..
Sarah Joyce (born 3 June 1979), better known by her stage name, Rumer, is a British singer–songwriter. Her stage name was inspired by the author Rumer Godden. Rumer’s voice has been described by The Guardian and many others as being reminiscent of Karen Carpenter. Supported by leading music industry figures including Burt Bacharach, Jools Holland and Elton John, Rumer was nominated for two Brit awards on 13 January 2011. She has performed at several festivals such as Glastonbury Festival. Her latest album This Girl’s In Love: A Bacharach and David Songbook was released in November 2016.
Under the name of Sarah Prentice, Sarah sang with a moderately successful London-based folk/indie band called La Honda between 2000 and 2001.In 2004, she formed the band Rumer & The Denials and released an early version of “Come To Me High” on 7″ in 2007. Their MySpace page, now closed, included an acoustic recording of “Slow”, which was included on the compilation album A Very Magistery Valentine.
A collection of material was recorded in 2008 with Rory Moore under the title of Stereo Venus. This was aimed at television and film and was originally distributed in Europe. An album was released in 2012 entitled Close To The Sun and the band played support for Saint Etienne. The material was also released under her real name, Sarah Joyce in South Korea in April 2010 as Coffee And Honey.
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Blake Tollison Shelton (born June 18, 1976) is an American country singer, songwriter and television personality. In 2001, he made his debut with the single “Austin“. The lead-off single from his self-titled debut album, “Austin” spent five weeks at number one on the BillboardHot Country Songs chart. The now Platinum-certified debut album also produced two more top 20 entries (“All Over Me” and “Ol’ Red”). Although the album was released on Giant Records Nashville, he was transferred to Warner Bros. Records Nashville after Giant closed in late 2001.[citation needed]
As of June 2017, Shelton has charted 33 singles, including 24 number ones, 17 of which were consecutive. The 11th No. 1 (“Doin’ What She Likes”) broke “the record for the most consecutive No. 1 singles in the Country Airplay chart’s 24-year history”. He is an eight-time Grammy Award nominee.
Shelton is also known for his role as a judge on the televised singing competitions Nashville Star, Clash of the Choirs, and The Voice. He has been on The Voice since its inception, and in six of fifteen seasons (2–4, 7, 11, 13), a member of his team has won. From 2011 to 2015, Shelton was married to singer Miranda Lambert.
