• Tuesday, Mar. 19, 2024
Spotify paid $9 billion in royalties in 2023. Here's what fueled the growth
The Spotify app is displayed on an iPad in Baltimore, March 20, 2018. Since late last century and the early days of the web, providers of digital media like Netflix and Spotify have had a free pass when it comes to international taxes on films, video games and music that are shipped across borders through the internet. But now, a global consensus on the issue may be starting to crack. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

Spotify paid out $9 billion in streaming royalties last year, the streaming giant said Tuesday in its latest "Loud and Clear" report.

Spotify's fourth annual report, which originally launched in 2021 following criticism over its lack of transparency, noted record accomplishments, including the highest annual payment from any retailer to the music industry.

"This is everything we know about how much is being paid out, how many artists are achieving different levels of success," says Charlie Hellman, the vice president and global head of music product at Spotify. "So, everyone can have access to the information and be sort of up to date with the state of the industry."

According to the data, 1,250 artists generated over $1 million each in recording and publishing royalties in 2023; 11,600 generated over $100,000 and 66,000 generated over $10,000 — numbers that have almost tripled since 2017.

More than half of those 66,000 artists came from countries where English is not the primary language, the report says, reflecting an increasingly global music landscape.

And "indie" artists — the self-distributed, do-it-yourself acts and those on independent record labels, according to Hellman — accounted for $4.5 billion, half of all royalties paid out by Spotify.

"There are millions of people who've uploaded a song at least once but that doesn't really speak to whether they're an artist, or if they're doing this more as a hobby," Hellman says.

Spotify zooms in on artists that have "at least put up an album's worth of music once they seem to have some indication that they're trying to build a fan base." He estimates there are "about 225,000 professionally aspiring artists" on the platform.

"They have a little bit of a following. They might, you know, have gigs listed on Spotify or things like that," he says.

In December, Spotify announced it was axing 17% of its global workforce, the music streaming service's third round of layoffs in 2023 as it moved to slash costs while focusing on becoming profitable.

The previous month, Spotify announced it would eliminate payments for songs with less than 1,000 annual streams, starting in 2024.

"Songs that generate less than a thousand streams in a year would be generating pennies, a few cents in royalties," Hellman explains. "So what we're seeing was that there was an increasing amount of uploaders that had $0.03, $0.08, $0.36 sitting there."

For those DIY artists, there's a minimum threshold to withdraw money from a distributor — $5.35 at DistroKid and $1 at TuneCore, two such distributors — and Hellman argues the withdrawal fees would eclipse the royalties.

Spotify — and most other streaming services — pay royalties to the rights holders of the music on its platform, a number which is determined by "streamshare." That's calculated by adding up how many times music owned or controlled by a particular rights holder was streamed and dividing by the total number of streams in that market.

In short: Larger rights holders have a larger percentage of the market share. And a listener streaming an artist 25% of the time does not mean the act receives 25% of the listener's subscription fee.

"All those pennies sitting in bank accounts all over the place was siphoning money away from artists that were really doing this, as an aspiring professional," says Hellman of the decision. "And so, those royalties are now being put in the pot so that they can be redirected to artists that are getting more than a thousand streams a year."

  • Monday, Mar. 18, 2024
Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken" Oscars performance inspires huge jump in streams
Ryan Gosling performs the song "I'm Just Ken" from the movie "Barbie" during the Oscars on Sunday, March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

Can you feel the Kenergy?

Ryan Gosling's Oscars performance of the "Barbie" power ballad "I'm Just Ken" stole the show earlier this month. The popularity of his star-studded, Slash-soloing, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"-channeling set is still being felt.

Luminate, the industry data and analytics company, found that on-demand U.S. audio and video streams for "I'm Just Ken" topped three million streams in the week after the Academy Awards. That's a 422% increase from the prior week, when it had 600,000 streams.

Video made up a large portion of that jump: moving from 70,000 streams the week prior to 1.8 million.

That increase was felt across the music of "Barbie," but in smaller amounts: the full-film's soundtrack, "Barbie The Album," saw a jump of 23%, from 19 million to 23 million, and the Oscar-winning song, Billie Eilish and Finneas' "What Was I Made For?" saw an increase of 19% across U.S. audio and video streams, from 6.7 million to eight million.

With their win, Eilish, 22, became the youngest person to win two Oscars. The second youngest? Her brother Finneas, at age 26.

The Oscars' "I'm Just Ken" performance — which featured a stage full of "Kens" and Gosling serenading "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig and others — also saw big numbers on YouTube: two million views on the Oscars' official channel and 8.6 million on Atlantic Records' page — the major label that released "Barbie The Album."

The Oscars themselves saw a bump in ratings, also due to the popularity of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer." An estimated 19.5 million people watched the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on ABC, up 4% from last year — and the biggest number drawn by the telecast in four years.

  • Thursday, Mar. 14, 2024
Hans Zimmer talks about first North American tour dates in 7 years, the magic of composing for film
Composer Hans Zimmer poses for a portrait on July 10, 2019, at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. Zimmer’s film scores have soundtracked magic movie moments in “The Lion King," "The Dark Knight” and both new “Dune” movies, to name a few. This fall, the “Hans Zimmer Live” tour will hit U.S. and Canada, marking the first time Zimmer has performed in North America in seven years. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 

For generations, German composer Hans Zimmer 's film scores have soundtracked magic movie moments in "The Lion King," "Gladiator," the "Dark Knight" trilogy, and most recently, "Dune" and "Dune: Part Two." This fall, Zimmer will bring his award-winning scores to the live stage.

His "Hans Zimmer Live" tour, which sold out in Europe, will make its way to the U.S. and Canada this fall, marking the first time Zimmer has performed in North America in seven years.

The last time, as some fans may recall, was a 2017 Coachella performance.

Over Zoom from New York, Zimmer said he was inspired after "refusing to get onto a stage for 40 years" because of something his friends, The Smiths' Johnny Marr and Pharrell Williams, told him.

"You have to look your audience in the eye. You can't hide behind the screen forever. You know, you owe it to your, you know, audience," he says they told him. And after Coachella, he realized: "I can do this," he said.

Having done the run in Europe, "we're at the top of our game at the moment," he says of his orchestra.

Don't expect a traditional, classical music setting or a piano concerto — at "Hans Zimmer Live," there is no conductor, no sheet music in front of each musician, and not a single frame from any of the films he's referencing.

"I come from rock and roll and I believe in putting on a show," he says. "People stay with us because we give them an experience which they've never had before... Life is hard. Life is tough these days. And people worked hard to go to pay for these tickets, so we better pull off a show that is absolutely worthy of them coming and seeing us."

"Hans Zimmer Live" kicks off at the Gas South Arena in Duluth, Ga. on Sept. 6 and will hit 17 cities across the U.S. and Canada before concluding at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia on Oct. 6.

The tour includes stops in Hollywood, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Baltimore; Boston; Montreal and Toronto; Minneapolis; Chicago; Fort Worth, Texas; Denver; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Oakland, California, and Seattle.

Zimmer says attendees can expect a diverse audience. "I've looked out at the audience and there's a mom with her grandson sitting next to a guy with a mohawk, sitting next to a man in a business suit, sitting next to another bunch of, you know, bikers," Zimmer said. "So, it's not just multi-generational, it's multicultural."

In more ways than one: Zimmer's orchestra is from Ukraine; "Two weeks after the invasion started, we managed to get about half of them out of Odessa," he says. Lebo M, who sings "The Lion King" theme, was a political refugee from South Africa when Zimmer first met him. Pedro Eustache, his woodwind player, is from Venezuela, "and he thinks he can probably never go back home," says Zimmer.

"I have this very, very international group of players and ... part of what makes them such emotionally committed musicians is that they all have a story to tell you."

"Hans Zimmer Live," which has been recently rearranged, includes works from "Gladiator," "Pirates of the Caribbean," "The Dark Knight," "Interstellar," "The Lion King," "The Last Samurai," and "Dune."

"Each piece is connected with the adventure of actually creating it, the adventure of actually making that movie, the adventure of the collaboration, the adventure of, you know, 'How did we get here?", he says. "Where did this journey start? And how can we make sure that it never ends?

"Each one of those movies is painted in color and affected by what is going on around us. And they have all been extraordinary journeys."

All of these films and their scores are vastly different, but Zimmer's idiosyncratic approach and arrangements should be considered the connective tissue. That, and a certain je ne sais quoi that makes an effective — and affecting — score.

"You need to be committed. You need to be honest. You can't be sentimental," he says of a successful score. "The other thing is, it's the people who are performing it. Because if you think about it, the last actors that really get hired, the last actors that perform in a movie, are the musicians. So, I'm very careful about picking the people I work with."

  • Thursday, Mar. 7, 2024
Steve Lawrence, singer, entertainer and half of popular stage duo Steve & Eydie, dies at 88
Singer Eydie Gorme, with her husband Steve Lawrence, holds the Grammy she was presented as the top female vocalist of 1966 for her recording of "If He Walked Into My Life," at the Grammy Awards in New York on March 3, 1967. Lawrence, a singer and top stage act who as a solo performer and in tandem with his Gorme kept Tin Pan Alley alive during the rock era, died Wednesday, March 6, 2024 at age 88. Gorme died on Aug. 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

Steve Lawrence, a singer and top stage act who as a solo performer and in tandem with his wife Eydie Gorme kept Tin Pan Alley alive during the rock era, died Thursday. He was 88.

Lawrence, whose hits included "Go Away Little Girl," died from complications due to Alzheimer's disease, said Susan DuBow, a spokesperson for the family.

Lawrence and Gorme — or Steve & Eydie — were known for their frequent appearances on talk shows, in night clubs and on the stages of Las Vegas. The duo took inspiration from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and other songwriters.

Soon after Elvis Presley and other rock music pioneers began to dominate radio and records, Lawrence and his wife were approached about changing their style.

"We had a chance to get in on the ground floor of rock 'n' roll," he recalled in a 1989 interview. "It was 1957 and everything was changing, but I wanted to be Sinatra, not Rick Nelson.

"Our audience knows we're not going to load up on heavy metal or set fire to the drummer — although on some nights we've talked about it," he joked.

Although Lawrence and Gorme were best known as a team, both also had huge solo hits just months apart in the early 1960s.

Dionne Warwick, a longtime friend, said in a statement that Lawrence was "resting with comfort in the arms of the Heavenly Father. My heartfelt condolences go out." Carol Burnett, in a statement, called Lawrence one of her favorite guests on her variety show. "He was also my very close friend," she said. "He will always be in my heart."

Lawrence scored first in 1962 with the achingly romantic ballad "Go Away Little Girl," written by the Brill Building songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. Gorme matched his success the following year with "Blame It on the Bossa Nova," a bouncy tune about a dance craze of the time that was written by Brill hitmakers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

By the 1970s, Lawrence and his wife were a top draw in Las Vegas casinos and nightclubs across the country. They also appeared regularly on television, making specials and guesting on various shows.

In the 1980s, when Vegas cut down on headline acts and nightclubs became scarcer, the pair switched to auditoriums and drew large audiences.

"People come with a general idea of what they're going to get with us," Lawrence said in 1989. "It's like a product. They buy a certain cereal and they know what to expect from that package."

Lawrence launched his professional singing career at age 15. After two failed auditions for "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" TV show, he was accepted on the third try, going on to win the competition and the prize of appearing on Godfrey's popular daytime radio show for a week.

King Records, impressed by the teenager's strong, two-octave voice, signed him to a contract. His first record, "Poinciana," sold more than 100,000 copies, and his high school allowed him to skip classes to promote it with out-of-town singing dates.

After several guest appearances on Steve Allen's television show, Lawrence was hired as a regular. When the program became NBC's "Tonight" in 1954, he went with it, singing and exchanging quips with Allen. The series set the pattern for the long-running "The Tonight Show."

"I think Steve Allen was the biggest thing that happened to me," said Lawrence, who stayed with the show's host for five years, honing his comedic skills and attracting a wide audience with his singing. "Every night I was called upon to do something different. In its own way it was better than vaudeville."

Early in the series' run, a young singer named Eydie Gorme joined the cast. After singing together for four years, she and Lawrence were married in 1957.

Until Gorme's death, in 2013, they remained popular, whether working together in concert or making separate TV appearances.

His reasoning: "If we did television together all the time, why should anyone go see us in a club?"

He appeared in such shows as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Gilmore Girls," "Diagnosis Murder" and "The Nanny."

He and his wife did star together in "The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gorme Show" in 1958 and Lawrence had his own series, "The Steve Lawrence Show," in 1965.

He also made stage appearances without Gorme, including a starring role in a 1962 summer stock version of "Pal Joey." He made it to Broadway in 1964 — and earned a Tony Award nomination — in the musical "What Makes Sammy Run?" based on Budd Schulberg's classic novel about a New York hustler who claws his way to the top of the entertainment world.

Critics praised Lawrence but gave the play bad reviews. Still, it turned a profit, and insiders attributed its success to his performance.

Lawrence also had a few character roles in movies, most notably "Stand Up and Be Counted," "Blues Brothers 2000," "The Lonely Guy" and "The Yards."

Native-born New Yorkers, Lawrence and Gorme lived in a Manhattan apartment during their early years together. When the center of TV entertainment shifted to Hollywood, they moved to Beverly Hills.

Born Sidney Liebowitz in New York City's borough of Brooklyn, Lawrence was the son of a Jewish cantor who worked as a house painter. He began singing in his father's synagogue choir at 8, moving on to bars and clubs by his mid-teens. He took his name from the first names of two nephews.

He and Gorme had two sons, David, a composer, and Michael. Long troubled with heart problems, Michael died of heart failure in 1986 at age 23.

"My dad was an inspiration to so many people," his son David said in a statement. "But, to me, he was just this charming, handsome, hysterically funny guy who sang a lot. Sometimes alone and sometimes with his insanely talented wife. I am so lucky to have had him as a father and so proud to be his son."

This report contains biographical material compiled by former AP reporter Bob Thomas

  • Wednesday, Mar. 6, 2024
Prosecutors drop charges midtrial against 3 accused of possessing stolen "Hotel California" lyrics
Musician Don Henley leaves the courthouse in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

New York prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case midtrial Wednesday against three men who had been accused of conspiring to possess a cache of hand-drafted lyrics to "Hotel California" and other Eagles hits.

Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Aaron Ginandes informed the judge at 10 a.m. that prosecutors would no longer proceed with the case, citing newly available emails that defense lawyers said raised questions about the trial's fairness. The trial had been underway since late February.

"The people concede that dismissal is appropriate in this case," Ginandes said.

The raft of communications emerged only when Eagles star Don Henley apparently decided last week to waive attorney-client privilege, after he and other prosecution witnesses had already testified. The defense argued that the new disclosures raised questions that it hadn't been able to ask.

"Witnesses and their lawyers" used attorney-client privilege "to obfuscate and hide information that they believed would be damaging," Judge Curtis Farber said in dismissing the case.

The case centered on roughly 100 pages of legal-pad pages from the creation of a classic rock colossus. The 1976 album "Hotel California" ranks as the third-biggest seller of all time in the U.S., in no small part on the strength of its evocative, smoothly unsettling title track about a place where "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

The accused had been three well-established figures in the collectibles world: rare books dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi, and rock memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski.

Prosecutors had said the men knew the pages had a dubious chain of ownership but peddled them anyway, scheming to fabricate a provenance that would pass muster with auction houses and stave off demands to return the documents to Eagles co-founder Don Henley.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property. Through their lawyers, the men contended that they were rightful owners of pages that weren't stolen by anyone.

"We are glad the district attorney's office finally made the right decision to drop this case. It should never have been brought," Jonathan Bach, an attorney for Horowitz, said outside court.

Horowitz hugged tearful family members but did not comment while leaving the court, nor did Inciardi.

The defense maintained that Henley gave the documents decades ago to a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography and later sold the handwritten sheets to Horowitz. He, in turn, sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski, who started putting some of the pages up for auction in 2012.

Henley, who realized they were missing only when they showed up for sale, reported them stolen. He testified that at the trial that he let the writer pore through the documents for research but "never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell."

The writer wasn't charged with any crime and hasn't taken the stand. He hasn't responded to messages about the trial.

In a letter to the court, Ginandes, the prosecutor, said the waiver of attorney-client privilege resulted in the belated production of about 6,000 pages of material.

"These delayed disclosures revealed relevant information that the defense should have had the opportunity to explore in cross-examination of the People's witnesses," Ginandes wrote.

  • Monday, Mar. 4, 2024
Apple fined nearly $2 billion by the European Union over breaking competition laws for music streaming 
EU Commission vice president Margrethe Vestager addresses the media on Apple Music streaming services at EU headquarters in Brussels, Monday, March 4, 2024. Vestager addressed the media after the 27-nation bloc slapped a massive 1.8 billion fine on Apple for allegedly abusing its dominant position when it comes to music streaming services. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
LONDON (AP) -- 

The European Union leveled its first antitrust penalty against Apple on Monday, fining the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for breaking the bloc's competition laws by unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over rivals.

Apple muzzled app developers from telling users where they could go to pay for cheaper music subscriptions instead of paying through iOS apps, said the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive arm and top antitrust enforcer.

"This is illegal. And it has impacted millions of European consumers who were not able to make a free choice as to where, how and at what price to buy music streaming subscriptions," Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition commissioner, said at a news conference in Brussels.

Apple — which said it contests the decision — behaved this way for a decade, resulting in "millions of people who have paid two, three euros more per month for their music streaming service than they would otherwise have had to pay," she said.

The 1.8 billion-euro fine follows an investigation triggered by a complaint from Swedish streaming service Spotify five years ago. Since then, the EU has drawn up new regulations taking effect this week to prevent tech giants from cornering digital markets.

The EU has led global efforts to crack down on Big Tech companies, including three fines for Google totaling more than 8 billion euros and charging Meta with distorting the online classified ad market.

Apple, meanwhile, also is trying to resolve a separate EU antitrust investigation into its mobile payments service by promising to open up its tap-and-go mobile payment system to rivals.

The fine for the music streaming investigation is so high because it includes a big extra lump sum to deter Apple from offending again and to act as a deterrent to other tech companies from carrying out similar offenses, the commission said.

Apple hit back at both the commission and Spotify, saying it would appeal the penalty.

"The decision was reached despite the Commission's failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast," the company said in a statement.

It said Spotify stood to benefit from the EU's move, asserting that the Swedish streaming giant that holds a 56% share of Europe's music streaming market and that doesn't pay Apple for using its App Store met over 65 times with the commission during the investigation.

"Ironically, in the name of competition, today's decision just cements the dominant position of a successful European company that is the digital music market's runaway leader," Apple said.

Spotify said it welcomed the EU fine, without addressing Apple's accusations.

"This decision sends a powerful message — no company, not even a monopoly like Apple, can wield power abusively to control how other companies interact with their customers," Spotify said in a blog post.

The commission's investigation initially centered on two concerns. One was the iPhone maker's practice of forcing app developers that are selling digital content to use its in-house payment system, which charges a 30% commission on all subscriptions.

But the EU later dropped that to focus on how Apple prevents app makers from telling their users about cheaper ways to pay for subscriptions that don't involve going through an app.

The investigation found that Apple banned streaming services from telling users about how much subscription offers cost outside of their apps, including links in their apps to pay for alternative subscriptions or even emailing users to tell them about different pricing options.

"As a result, millions of European music streaming users were left in the dark about all available options," Vestager said, adding that the commission's investigation found that just over 20% of consumers who would have signed up to Spotify's premium service didn't do so because of the restrictions.

The fine comes just before new EU rules are set to kick in that are aimed at preventing tech companies from dominating digital markets.

The Digital Markets Act, due to take effect Thursday, imposes a set of do's and don'ts on "gatekeeper" companies including Apple, Meta, Google parent Alphabet, and TikTok parent ByteDance — under threat of hefty fines.

The DMA's provisions are designed to prevent tech giants from the sort of behavior that's at the heart of the Apple investigation. Apple has already revealed how it will comply, including allowing iPhone users in Europe to use app stores other than its own and enabling developers to offer alternative payment systems.

Vestager warned that the commission would be carefully scrutinizing how Apple follows the new rules.

"Apple will have to open its gates to its ecosystem to allow users to easily find the apps they want, pay for them in any way they want and use them on any device that they want," she said.

  • Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024
Don Henley says lyrics to "Hotel California" and other Eagles songs were always his sole property
Musician Don Henley leaves the courthouse in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. The Eagles co-founder testified this week in the criminal trial of three collectibles dealers charged with conspiring to own and attempt to sell handwritten draft lyrics to “Hotel California” and other Eagles hits without the right to do so. The men have pleaded not guilty. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

The lyrics to "Hotel California" and other classic Eagles songs should never have ended up at auction, Don Henley told a court Wednesday.

"I always knew those lyrics were my property. I never gifted them or gave them to anybody to keep or sell," the Eagles co-founder said on the last of three days of testimony at the trial of three collectibles experts charged with a scheme to peddle roughly 100 handwritten pages of the lyrics.

On trial are rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia connoisseurs Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski. Prosecutors say the three circulated bogus stories about the documents' ownership history in order to try to sell them and parry Henley's demands for them.

Kosinski, Inciardi and Horowitz have pleaded not guilty to charges that include conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property.

Defense lawyers say the men rightfully owned and were free to sell the documents, which they acquired through a writer who worked on a never-published Eagles biography decades ago.

The lyrics sheets document the shaping of a roster of 1970s rock hits, many of them from one of the best-selling albums of all time: the Eagles' "Hotel California."

The case centers on how the legal-pad pages made their way from Henley's Southern California barn to the biographer's home in New York's Hudson Valley, and then to the defendants in New York City.

The defense argues that Henley gave the lyrics drafts to the writer, Ed Sanders. Henley says that he invited Sanders to review the pages for research but that the writer was obligated to relinquish them.

In a series of rapid-fire questions, prosecutor Aaron Ginandes asked Henley who owned the papers at every stage from when he bought the pads at a Los Angeles stationery store to when they cropped up at auctions.

"I did," Henley answered each time.

Sanders isn't charged with any crime and hasn't responded to messages seeking comment on the case. He sold the pages to Horowitz. Inciardi and Kosinski bought them from the book dealer, then started putting some sheets up for auction in 2012.

While the trial is about the lyrics sheets, the fate of another set of pages — Sanders' decades-old biography manuscript — has come up repeatedly as prosecutors and defense lawyers examined his interactions with Henley, Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey and Eagles representatives.

Work on the authorized book began in 1979 and spanned the band's breakup the next year. (The Eagles regrouped in 1994.)

Henley testified earlier this week that he was disappointed in an initial draft of 100 pages of the manuscript in 1980. Revisions apparently softened his view somewhat.

By 1983, he wrote to Sanders that the latest draft "flows well and is very humorous up until the end," according to a letter shown in court Wednesday.

But the letter went on to muse about whether it might be better for Henley and Frey just to "send each other these bitter pages and let the book end on a slightly gentler note?"

"I wonder how these comments will age," Henley wrote. "Still, I think the book has merit and should be published."

It never was. Eagles manager Irving Azoff testified last week that publishers made no offers, that the book never got the band's OK and that he believed Frey ultimately nixed the project. Frey died in 2016.

The trial is expected to continue for weeks with other witnesses.

Henley, meanwhile, is returning to the road. The Eagles' next show is Friday in Hollywood, Florida.

  • Monday, Feb. 26, 2024
Don Henley tells court he never gave away drafts of "Hotel California" lyrics
Musician Don Henley leaves Supreme Court during lunch break, Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, in New York. The trial surrounding pages of draft lyrics to "Hotel California" and other Eagles hits is set to feature a star witness: Henley. The Eagles co-founder is scheduled to testify Monday at the criminal trial of three collectibles professionals. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

Don Henley never gave away handwritten pages of draft lyrics to "Hotel California" and other Eagles hits, he said Monday, calling them "very personal" in testimony that also delved into an unrelated piece of his past: his 1980 arrest.

Henley, the Grammy-winning co-founder of one of the most successful bands in rock history, is prosecutors' star witness in an unusual criminal trial surrounding about 100 legal-pad pages from the birth of a blockbuster 1976 album.

Henley says the documents were stolen from his barn in Malibu, California. He testified Monday that he was appalled when the material began turning up at auctions in 2012.

"It just wasn't something that was for public viewing. It was our process. It was something very personal, very private," he said. "I still wouldn't show that to anybody."

At issue are about 100 sheets of paper inscribed with lyrics-in-the-making for multiple songs on the "Hotel California" album, including "Life in the Fast Lane," "New Kid in Town" and the title track that turned into one of the most durable hits in rock. Famed for its lengthy guitar solo and puzzlingly poetic lyrics, the song still gets streamed hundreds of millions of times a year. The album is the third-biggest seller in U.S. history.

On trial are rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz and rock memorabilia specialists Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski. They bought the pages through writer Ed Sanders, who worked with the Eagles on a never-published band biography and isn't charged in the case.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to criminally possess stolen property. The men's lawyers maintain that Henley willingly gave the pages to the scribe and that nothing criminal happened at any point.

Defense attorney Jonathan Bach played tapes Monday of 1980 phone calls between Sanders and Henley, including one in which Henley said he'd "try to dig through" his legal pads full of lyrics drafts. The attorney showed Henley a shipping label showing that his property caretaker, at some point, sent Sanders a box. Its contents weren't listed.

Henley acknowledged that he didn't remember the entirety of his conversations with Sanders.

But the singer and artists' rights activist insisted he gave the writer only access to the lyrics pages, not possession of them. He said he told Sanders he could examine the documents, ideally in an attic apartment on the Malibu property, so the book could benefit from a firsthand view of "the time and effort that went into" writing Eagles songs.

Henley said he'd discussed sending music reviews and magazine clips to Sanders but didn't recall offering to send handwritten lyrics.

"You know what? It doesn't matter if I drove a U-Haul truck across country and dumped them at his front door," Henley said, his raspy drawl quickening. "He had no right to keep them or to sell them."

Sanders' 1979 book contract said any material furnished by the Eagles was deemed their property, Henley noted.

The defense had signaled that it planned to question Henley, 76, about how clearly he remembers an era when he was living in his own fast lane. In an apparent attempt to defuse some of those questions, a prosecutor brought up Henley's 1980 arrest.

Henley pleaded no contest in 1981 to a misdemeanor charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, after authorities found drugs and a naked 16-year-old girl suffering from an overdose at his Los Angeles home the prior November. He was sentenced to probation and a $2,500 fine, and he requested a drug education program to get some possession charges dismissed.

Henley testified Monday that he'd been depressed about the Eagles 1980 breakup and had sought "an escape" by calling for a sex worker that night.

"I made a poor decision, which I regret to this day," he said.

As for his memory, he said, "I can't tell you what I had for breakfast last Friday morning, but I can tell you where we stayed when we played Wembley in 1975 and we opened for Elton John and the Beach Boys," referring to London's Wembley Stadium.

He also offered glimpses into the Eagles' creative methods, as specific as where he bought his legal pads — a stationery store on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles' Sherman Oaks neighborhood — and why he alternates between cursive script and block lettering. The first is for speed, the latter usually for ideas "I might actually use," he explained.

When writing albums, he and late Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey rented a house and spent their days brainstorming song titles and concepts, each man with a guitar and a legal pad, Henley recalled.

"We had long talks about various ideas, sometimes philosophical discussions," Henley said. He identified a bit of Frey's writing on at least one of the disputed pages.

Sanders sold the documents in 2005 to Horowitz' company, which sold them to Kosinski and Inciardi. Kosinski has a rock 'n' roll collectibles auction site; Inciardi was then a curator at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In a 2005 email to Horowitz, Sanders said Henley's assistant had sent him the documents for the biography project, according to the indictment.

Henley reported them stolen after Inciardi and Kosinski began in 2012 to offer them at various auctions.

Henley also bought four pages back for $8,500 in 2012. He testified that he resented "buying my own property back" but saw it as "the most practical and expedient way" to get the auction listing taken down.

Kosinski's lawyers, however, have argued that the transaction implicitly recognized his ownership.

Meanwhile, Horowitz and Inciardi started ginning up alternate stories of how Sanders got hold of the manuscripts, Manhattan prosecutors say. At various points, the suggested sources included a backstage find, a gift from Frey and other explanations, according to the indictment.

Sanders contributed to or signed onto some versions, according to the emails. He hasn't responded to messages seeking comment about the case.

Kosinski forwarded one of the various explanations to Henley's lawyer and told an auction house that the rocker had "no claim" to the documents, according to the indictment.

Henley has been a fierce advocate for artists' rights to their work. Since the late 1990s, he and a musician' rights group that he co-founded have spoken out in venues from the Supreme Court to Congress about copyright law, online file-sharing and more.

Henley also sued over unauthorized use of some of his solo songs in a political ad and over some unrelated T-shirts emblazoned with a pun involving his name and an Eagles song. Both cases ended in settlements and apologies from the defendants.

  • Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024
Welcome to the "Hotel California" case: The trial over handwritten lyrics to an Eagles classic
From left, Glenn Horowitz, Craig Inciardi and Edward Kosinski appear in criminal court after being indicted for conspiracy involving handwritten notes from the famous Eagles album "Hotel California," July 12, 2022, in New York. On Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024, an unusual criminal trial is set to open over the handwritten lyrics. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
NEW YORK (AP) -- 

In the mid-1970s, the Eagles were working on a spooky, cryptic new song.

On a lined yellow pad, Don Henley, with input from band co-founder Glenn Frey, jotted thoughts about "a dark desert highway" and "a lovely place" with a luxurious surface and ominous undertones. And something on ice, perhaps caviar or Taittinger — or pink Champagne?

The song, "Hotel California," became one of rock's most indelible singles. And nearly a half-century later, those handwritten pages of lyrics-in-the-making have become the center of an unusual criminal trial set to open Wednesday.

Rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz, former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and memorabilia seller Edward Kosinski are charged with conspiring to own and try to sell manuscripts of "Hotel California" and other Eagles hits without the right to do so.

The three have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers have said the men committed no crime with the papers, which they acquired via a writer who'd worked with the Eagles. But the Manhattan district attorney's office says the defendants connived to obscure the documents' disputed ownership, despite knowing that Henley said the pages were stolen.

Clashes over valuable collectibles abound, but criminal trials like this are rare. Many fights are resolved in private, in lawsuits or with agreements to return the items.

"If you can avoid a prosecution by handing over the thing, most people just hand it over," said Travis McDade, a University of Illinois law professor who studies rare document disputes.

Of course, the case of the Eagles manuscripts is distinctive in other ways, too.

The prosecutors' star witness is indeed that: Henley is expected to testify between Eagles tour stops. The non-jury trial could offer a peek into the band's creative process and life in the fast lane of '70s stardom.

At issue are over 80 pages of draft lyrics from the blockbuster 1976 "Hotel California" album, including words to the chart-topping, Grammy-winning title cut. It features one of classic rock's most recognizable riffs, best-known solos and most oft-quoted — arguably overquoted — lines: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Henley has said the song is about "the dark underbelly of the American dream."

It still was streamed over 220 million times and got 136,000 radio spins last year in the U.S. alone, according to the entertainment data company Luminate. The "Hotel California" album has sold 26 million copies nationwide over the years, bested only by an Eagles' greatest hits disc and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

The pages also include lyrics from songs including "Life in the Fast Lane" and "New Kid in Town." Eagles manager Irving Azoff has called the documents "irreplaceable pieces of musical history."

Horowitz, Inciardi and Kosinki are charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property and various other offenses.

They're not charged with actually stealing documents. Nor is anyone else, but prosecutors will still have to establish that the documents were stolen. The defense maintains that's not true.

Much turns on the Eagles' interactions with Ed Sanders, a writer who also co-founded the 1960s counterculture rock band the Fugs. He worked in the late '70s and early '80s on an authorized Eagles biography that was never published.

Sanders isn't charged in the case. A phone message seeking comment was left for him.

He sold the pages to Horowitz, who then sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski.

Horowitz has handled huge rare book and archive deals, and he's been entangled in some ownership spats before. One involved papers linked to "Gone With the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell. It was settled.

Inciardi worked on notable exhibitions for the Cleveland-based Rock Hall of Fame. Kosinski has been a principal in Gotta Have It! Collectibles, known for auctioning celebrities' personal possessions — so personal that Madonna unsuccessfully sued to try to stop a sale that included her latex briefs.

Henley told a grand jury he never gave the biographer the lyrics, according to court filings from Kosinski's lawyers. But defense lawyers have signaled that they plan to probe Henley's memory of the time.

"We believe that Mr. Henley voluntarily provided the lyrics to Mr. Sanders," attorney Scott Edelman said in court last week.

Sanders told Horowitz in 2005 that while working on the Eagles book, he was sent whatever papers he wanted from Henley's home in Malibu, California, according to the indictment.

Then Kosinski's business offered some pages at auction in 2012. Henley's attorneys came knocking. And Horowitz, Inciardi and Sanders, in varying combinations, began batting around alternate versions of the manuscripts' provenance, the indictment says.

In one story, Sanders found the pages discarded in a backstage dressing room. In others, he got them from a stage assistant or while amassing "a lot of material related to the Eagles from different people." In yet another, he obtained them from Frey — an account that "would make this go away once and for all," Horowitz suggested in 2017. Frey had died the year before.

"He merely needs gentle handling and reassurance that he's not going to the can," Horowitz emailed Inciardi during a 2012 exchange about getting Sanders' "'explanation' shaped into a communication" to auctioneers, the indictment says.

Sanders supplied or signed off on some of the varying explanations, according to the indictment, and it's unclear what he may have conveyed verbally. But he apparently rejected at least the dressing-room tale.

Kosinki forwarded one explanation, approved by Sanders, to Henley's lawyer. Kosinski also assured Sotheby's auction house that the musician had "no claim" to the documents and asked to keep potential bidders in the dark about Henley's complaints, the indictment says.

Sotheby's listed the "Hotel California" song lyrics in a 2016 auction but withdrew them after learning the ownership was in question. Sotheby's isn't charged in the case and declined to comment.

Henley bought some draft lyrics privately from Gotta Have It! for $8,500 in 2012, when he also began filing police reports, according to court filings.

Defense lawyers claim Henley found starstruck prosecutors to take up his cause instead of pursuing a civil suit himself.

The DA's office worked closely with Henley's legal team, and an investigator even yearned for backstage passes for an Eagles show — until a prosecutor said the idea was "completely inappropriate," Kosinki's lawyers said in court papers.

Prosecutors have rebuffed questions about their motivations as "a conspiracy theory rather than a legal defense."

Last year, they wrote in court papers, "It is the defendants, not the prosecutors, who are on trial."

  • Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024
Emmy-nominated music supervisor Kier Lehman joins Radish Music
Kier Lehman
LOS ANGELES -- 

Radish Music is opening up a roster position for Emmy and Grammy-nominated music supervisor Kier Lehman, further propelling his growth in the advertising space.

A five-time winner of the Guild of Music Supervisor awards, Lehman has forged a decades long career across film and TV, with credits including everything from The Lego Movie to HBO’s Insecure, a show for which he earned an Outstanding Music Supervision Emmy nomination in 2020. His work on the Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse contributed to the soundtrack’s success, with its hit single “Sunflower” having just achieved double diamond status with sales of over 20 million units. The soundtrack earned a Grammy nomination in 2020.

Lehman has also built up a commercial portfolio, notably working with Radish Music’s founder Peymon Maskan on Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” and “The Rock x Siri Dominate The Day,” as well as completing projects for Spotify and Peloton.

In his new role, Lehman will continue his development in advertising, able to keep his focus on the creative thanks to the support of the Radish’s coordination, administration, account management, music strategy, and licensing services. 

Lehman commented, “I’ve known Peymon for close to 20 years, during which time we’ve become great friends and collaborators--we worked together on commercials while he was at TBWA\Media Arts Lab, and I hired him to music supervise a film while I was an executive at Sony Pictures. We have a similar ear for music and how it works combined with visual storytelling, and this feels like the perfect time to join forces again. Now I get the benefit of being able to plug into Radish’s existing experience so I can focus on bringing creative ideas and fresh perspective to advertising.”

Maskan added, “At the heart of Radish Music, we love to harness music to tell stories of all lengths--film, TV, commercial--which gives us access to music from both inside and outside the normal advertising channels. It’s super important to us that we’re constantly accessing new music sources to keep things fresh for our advertising clients. As a constant innovator with an impeccable ear, Kier’s the perfect fit, and we’re so excited to bring his sound to this side of storytelling. He’s also a great person, which is a prerequisite for anyone on the team.”

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