No-holds-barred comedian and expert provocateur Katt Williams is testing limits again. The 52-year-old is debuting a live comedy special, Katt Williams: Woke Foke, as part of Netflix Is a Joke Fest. You can bet on just about anything happening except the predictable — that isn’t Williams’ style.
A comedy legend, Williams performed his first stand-up show when he was still a teenager and got his own special in 2006 with The Pimp Chronicles Pt. 1, in which he memorably donned a green velvet blazer and riffed on how “weed is getting stronger every two weeks.” He’s also appeared in movies like Friday After Next and Norbit and TV series including The Boondocks and Atlanta.
He’s developed a fast-talking, sharp comedic style, observing the American social and political landscape, and he’s always been a crowd favorite. In his most recent special, World War III, Williams took aim at conspiracy theories and joked about “truth, lies, chicken wing shortages, and the war on drugs.” Woke Foke comes from the production company Dakota Pictures and is directed by Troy Miller.
The legend will debut his live comedy event during Netflix Is a Joke Fest 2024.Netflix revealed Katt Williams’ upcoming comedy special “Woke Foke” will stream live on the platform next month.
The show will take place at Inglewood’s YouTube Theater as part of the Netflix Is A Joke Fest.
The streaming giant made the announcement in a post to Instagram on Friday.
“Katt Williams is going LIVE on Netflix. What could possibly happen???” the caption reads.
The show’s announcement comes months after Williams’ viral interview with Shannon Sharpe on his “Club Shay Shay” podcast.
In the two-part episode, the “Friday After Next Star” didn’t hold back when he slammed big names in Hollywood.
He made fiery comments about Cedric the Entertainer, Michael Blackson, Kevin Hart, Steve Harvey, Rickey Smiley, Diddy, Jonathan Majors, Ludacris, Taraji P. Henson, Tyler Perry and more.
“Katt Williams: Woke Foke” will stream live on May 4 at 7:00 p.m. PST.
Netflix is a Joke Fest takes place from May 2 to May 12.
Other comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Trevor Noah, Ali Wong, Craig Robinson, Dane Cook, David Letterman, Chelsea Handler, Chris Rock will also participate in the event. Some will take over major Los Angeles landmarks like the Hollywood Bowl, The Greek, The Dolby, The Forum, The Palladium, Orpheum Theatre, The Wiltern, The Hollywood Improv, Largo, Laugh Factory and The Comedy
Grainge and UMG, having partnered with Diddy on the project, are alleged to have sponsored and participated in these activities, thus being complicit in a situation deemed harmful and unlawful. In response, representatives for UMG and Grainge have issued a firm rebuttal against the claims posited by Lil Rod’s counsel, Tyrone Blackburn.
“I sent him a letter detailing the falsity and legal baselessness of his claims and allegations against our clients, demanding that he dismiss the claims against our clients with prejudice,” Sir Lucian Grainge’s lawyer, Donald Zakarin of Pryor Cashman, explained.
Utilizing new and improved artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance their suggestions, streaming platforms are most likely going to follow initiatives like Spotify’s AI DJ, assessing listeners’ musical preferences but also factors like geographical location, time of day, current weather conditions at that location, and more. All of this to bring users the most precise and personalized music recommendations, ever.
In addition, streaming services will most likely get an influx of AI driven content, which could be a new challenge for companies that lack a human element. AI assisted music production will also open up a whole new world of possibilities for artists, cutting down the time it takes to produce a new track and get it out to the world.
DIY DistributionAs the streaming market evolves, more DIY distribution companies will continue to evolve as well. That means standards and policies may change, but a greater emphasis on KYC (Know Your Customer), i.e. the standards that better help companies understand who/where their customers are and protect them against fraud and corruption, will get more attention this year, too.
The industry as a whole has been cracking down on fraud more than ever, and will continue now in 2024. For example, last year Symphonic, along with CD Baby and its parent company Downtown, TuneCore and its parent company Believe, DistroKid, UnitedMasters, EMPIRE, and Vydia as well as Digital Service Providers Spotify and Amazon Music all came together to form an anti-fraud alliance called, Music Fights Fraud.
Specifically built to work on eradicating streaming fraud across the industry, this alliance is just one of the solutions in action this year (and hopefully for many more to come).
DSP ChangesRemember those industry shaking changes Spotify made back in November? Those changes may trickle down and be adopted across other DSPs , too. In case you missed those updates, here’s a quick rundown to catch you up…
- Tracks must reach at least 1,000 streams on a 12 month trailing period in order to generate royalties. (Any track that has streamed less, will not receive a royalty.)
- Charging labels and distributors per track when flagrant artificial streaming is detected on their content.
- Increased minimum track length of functional noise recordings to two minutes in order to be eligible to generate royalties. (“Functional” genres include white noise, nature sounds, machine noises, sound effects, non-spoken ASMR, and silence recordings.)
(That’s not all though. Be sure to check out, “Our Take on Spotify’s Latest Royalty Model Overhaul” to learn everything this means for you and the industry as a whole.)
In the meantime, we believe it’s possible that other DSPs will implement their own variations of these. While some of these may seem like a benefit, it will remain to be seen if it truly means that indies will get more income or if it will more-so go to the majors.
Social Media 🤝 StreamingThe impact social media has on artists big and small is no groundbreaking news, but the way it has become an integral part of the artist journey and its relation to streaming success is worthy of a mention here. For example, TikTok and Instagram have become the ultimate hubs for music promotion, launching artists into the limelight through behind-the-scenes looks, exclusive content and more. Social media as a tool for improved streaming success is a trend that will undoubtedly continue through 2024 and beyond.
In Conclusion…2024 is all about growth. Whether last year was your year or not, this year brings a whole new opportunity to evolve into the next step of your career with an arsenal of industry tools to guide you through, found right here on the Symphonic Blog. Knowledge is power, and we do our best to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry to provide you with everything you need to thrive independently.
Last year was brutal for the media business, as nearly every major entertainment and technology company fired employees. This year is shaping up to be more of the same.
More than a dozen major corporations across technology, finance and media announced major job cuts this past week, including Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Unity Software Inc. Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, plans cuts in the first quarter. Animation studio Pixar will let staff go in the second half. All told, media companies have fired more than 70,000 employees since the start of last year, according to Vivek Couto at Media Partners Asia.
Not all of these are for the same reasons. Unity over-hired during the metaverse hype cycle. Alphabet is focusing its attention on artificial intelligence. Amazon’s live streaming site Twitch still loses a lot of money. So does its Hollywood studio, which also has lots of extra staff following the acquisition of MGM.
Amazon video chief Mike Hopkins has one main priority: make the business financially sustainable. (I wrote about a few ways that Hollywood might fix its broken business model for the latest issue of Businessweek.)
While Hollywood has its share of challenges, many of these companies are doing fine; let’s not worry about Alphabet or Amazon just yet. In some cases, their primary businesses (search, e-commerce, music streaming) aren’t growing as quickly as they once were, and investors are demanding higher profits. That means cutting back on side projects that drain resources, or finding new ways to make money from them.
This week, we’ll dive a little deeper into what’s behind some of the recent cuts in music. But first, some (mostly) good news…
Five things you need to know
- Microsoft just surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the world.
- Warner Bros. sold 22 million copies of Hogwarts Legacy, which made it the best-selling video game of the year.
- The NFL increased its TV ratings across every major window. The league also explained why it put a playoff game only on Peacock.
- ESPN’s move into gambling is off to a good start.
- The director of Parasite has called for an investigation of South Korean tabloids after the apparent suicide of one of the movie’s stars.
The music industry needs a new growth story
For the last several years, Universal Music Group Chief Executive Officer Lucian Grainge has gathered hundreds of music industry heavyweights on the Saturday before the Grammys to tout his company’s rising stars.
Acts from across the Universal family play a few songs for technology executives, advertisers and the press. Past participants include Migos, Maggie Rogers and Stephen Sanchez. The star-studded event is a showcase for rising talent, but it has doubled as a testament to Grainge’s power and a declaration that the music industry, once crippled by piracy, is again flush.
But Universal is skipping the showcase this year, opting for a slimmed-down affair tailored to brands. The optics of throwing such a lavish affair aren’t great when you are about to fire hundreds of employees, the largest bloodletting at the company since it went public a couple years ago.
While the cuts have been rumored for months, they still shook many in the business. After a brutal start to the millennium, the music industry has been growing for nine years thanks to streaming. Universal, the home of the Weeknd, Taylor Swift and Drake, is the industry’s dominant company. Just last week, Grainge told his colleagues that “UMG is the most successful company in the history of the music industry.”
So why is such a successful company firing so many employees?
The streaming boom is starting to slow. While Universal is still growing, its sales increased just 3% in the third quarter. Year over year, its sales growth has slowed five quarters in a row (See the chart below.) If you adjust for currency fluctuations, growth in 2023 was about half of what it was in 2022. Better, but still slowing.
Universal Music's Growth Slows
The largest music company grew revenue at a slower pace in 2023 than the prior two years.
Investors in public companies don’t like slowing growth, and Grainge has to answer to those investors since he took the company public in 2021. (His investors include hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, the Bollore family and an affiliate of China’s largest music company, Tencent Music Entertainment.)
Grainge has seen the trend lines and worked to get ahead of it, pushing streaming services to change how they compensate artists under a plan he’s dubbed artist-centric royalties. The specifics of the plan were pretty fuzzy at first, but they have largely boiled down to getting the services to crack down on fraud and give top artists a larger share of revenue.
That campaign has begun to work, as many streaming services have adopted some of the measures. Spotify Technology has adopted new rules that may disqualify more than 80% of the songs on the service from making money, my colleague Ashley Carman wrote this week.
But these adjustments are limited. They don’t help the music industry grow. They reallocate 5% to 10% of sales to professional artists from fraudsters, amateurs and white noise. That amounts to a couple billion dollars industrywide. Good, but not transformative.
Grainge said as much in a recent letter to staff, in which he stressed a different opportunity to grow the pie — making more money from the most-ardent fans. That could mean selling more merchandise, special-edition albums or just doing what the South Koreans do.
The biggest looming threat (and opportunity) for the music business may be artificial intelligence, and Grainge has been participating in a New Yorker story on what could be the industry’s next Napster moment.
But neither of these ideas is likely to produce a huge windfall in the next year or two, which means Grainge and his peers need another move. Their playbook looks similar to what we are seeing across industries, especially in Hollywood.
They fire staff. (Warner Music Group already fired staff last year.) And they raise prices. Or, in the case of a record label, you ask streaming services to raise their prices. Investors seem to like what they see. Universal Music Group shares are up about 15% over the last year and ticked up on the news of the job cuts.
The best of Screentime (and other stuff)
- ESPN Used Fake Names to Secure Emmys for College GameDay Stars
- Sony Lands Surprise Box Office Hit With Anyone But You
- Coq Au Pepin: The Art of the Chicken
- Dealmakers Are Liking the M&A Vibes Right Now
- Disinformation Floods Taiwan Ahead of Election
The world is listening to less music in English
Speaking of the music industry, Luminate released its year-end report this week, and I figured I would cherry-pick some of the most interesting points.
English-language music is losing share. Its share of global music listening has declined by 12 percentage points in just a couple of years. That is thanks to the rise of local music in a lot of countries. But it’s not just a foreign phenomenon. English-language music is losing share in the US, mostly to Spanish. (It still accounts for 89% of listening here, compared with 55% globally.)
Could India top the US? The fastest-growing music market in the world is India. That is based on consumption, not dollars. Excluding China, it’s the No. 2 streaming market in the world, and will probably pass the US in the next year or two.
South Koreans buy but don’t stream. South Korean acts accounted for seven of the 10 best-selling CDs in the US, but less than 1% of all listening.
Taylor Swift, my lord. Swift accounted for 1.8% of all music consumption in the US. One out of every 78 songs streamed last year was a Swift song. She also accounted for five of the year’s 10 biggest album, two of its biggest singles and seven of the best-selling vinyl records. (She didn’t have the No. 1 album of the year; that was Morgan Wallen.)
The craziest stat of all? There are 45.6 million tracks that generated ZERO streams last year. There were 10 tracks that had more than 1 billion.
Tom Cruise has a new home … maybe
Cruise signed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, the terms of which were vague. He is still working on the latest Mission: Impossible film, which is due out next year.
Cruise could make his next project for Warner Bros., or he could make it for Universal Pictures, where he’s also attached to a project. Paramount, where he has made most of his recent movies, is in the very early stages of developing another Top Gun. But that won’t be his next movie (barring a miracle). It took him three decades to make the last sequel.
The No. 1 movie in the world is…
The Beekeeper. The latest Jason Statham movie grossed about $37 million worldwide, edging out Mean Girls thanks to a stronger showing abroad. Mean Girls, an adaptation of a musical based on a movie, is the top movie in North America.
The No. 1 streaming TV show in the world is…
Reacher. The Amazon show was the top program in mid-December, per Nielsen. If you want to understand what kinds of shows work on Amazon – and what kinds of shows Amazon would like to make – please look at Reacher.
Deals, deals, deals
- Major League Baseball rejected Amazon’s bid to invest in the bankrupt owner of several regional sports networks.
- A merger of two of India’s largest media companies is in jeopardy.
- OpenAI is in talks to pay several major publishers for the right to use their works.
- Hollywood’s actors union signed its first AI voice work deal.
- Netflix’s advertising tier now has 23 million users, up 8 million from a couple months ago.
Weekly playlist
I didn’t enjoy Saltburn the movie. But Saltburn the soundtrack? Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s addictive Murder on the Dance Floor, first released in 2001, is climbing the charts because of the movie.