Author: Rap Hooks

Warner Music Group plans to cut annual costs by $300 million through a combination of layoffs and chopping expenses related to administration and real estate, according to a memo from CEO Robert Kyncl to staff on Tuesday (July 1).

“Many changes will be implemented in the next three months, with the remainder in fiscal 2026,” Kyncl wrote. Staff cuts will account for $170 million of the planned reductions.

In the memo obtained by Billboard, Kyncl called this “the remaining steps in our plan to help future-proof the company and unlock the next era of growth,” indicating that this would be the end of a series of rounds of layoffs the company has implemented in the past few years.

“I know that this news is tough and unsettling, and you will have many questions,” he added.

Kyncl indicated that the money freed up through these cuts will be reinvested in A&R — “a more holistic and targeted approach to partnering with the world’s greatest musical talent” — and M&A. To that latter point, earlier today, WMG announced it was launching a $1.2 billion catalog acquisition venture with Bain Capital. 

WMG has undergone multiple waves of layoffs since Kyncl took the helm at the start of 2023. The company announced a 4% staff cut that March, and a 10% cut the following year. Atlantic Records was then hit with significant layoffs in September.

While the company’s current market share initially dipped — falling from 17.26% halfway through 2023 to 15.68% halfway through 2024 — it has since started to rebound, climbing to 16.38% through June 26 of this year. WMG’s overall market share is up as well, from 18.22% midway through 2024 to 18.71% so far in 2025. 

That has been reflected on the Billboard charts as well. Atlantic signee Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” has spent four of the past five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while earlier this year Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” spent five non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 (co-released by Atlantic and Universal-owned Interscope).

In his memo, Kyncl said these gains are evidence that the company’s strategy of becoming “more effective and more efficient” is “gaining momentum.”

“Our artists have held half of the Top Ten on the Spotify Global chart for the past 10 weeks and nailed the No. 1 spot for all but four weeks of 2025,” he wrote. He also called out “new highs” on the publishing side of WMG’s business.

Read Kyncl’s full memo below.

Hi everyone, 

Two years ago, we began to transform our company; not just to tinker around the edges of an old model, but to build a fast, innovative, and collaborative organization that reflects how music moves in the new world. 

Today, our strategy is gaining momentum. Our artists have held half of the Top Ten on the Spotify Global chart for the past ten weeks and nailed the No. 1 spot for all but four weeks of 2025. These aren’t just the biggest hits in the world today; they’re our evergreen catalog of the future. At the same time, we’re starting to see better progress in our global recorded music market share, while hitting new highs in music publishing. These wins are powered by our ability to become simultaneously more effective and more efficient… allowing us to invest in great talent, boost our star-making expertise, and deepen our world-building capabilities. 

Building on this success requires us to keep evolving. Today we’re announcing the remaining steps in our plan to help future-proof the company and unlock the next era of growth. Specifically, we’ll be reducing our annual costs by ~$300 million as we reinvest in the business: ~$170 million through headcount rightsizing for agility and impact, and ~$130 million in administrative and real estate expenses. Many changes will be implemented in the next three months, with the remainder in fiscal 2026.

I know that this news is tough and unsettling, and you will have many questions. The Executive Leadership Team has spent a lot of time thinking about our future state and how to put us on the best path forward. You’ll be hearing from your local leaders as soon as possible about your area of the company and your role within it. We’re communicating this now so, as we move through the process, we can be as thoughtful and open as possible with all of you. These decisions are not being made lightly, it will be difficult to say goodbye to talented people, and we’re committed to acting with empathy and integrity.

As we evolve, we’ll be focused on these core drivers of our success:

We’re putting more money behind the music… via a new growth plan.

A&R: Working with the ELT, we’ve sharpened our investment criteria… a more holistic and targeted approach to partnering with the world’s greatest musical talent, across (i) the most culturally potent and highest potential repertoire centers, (ii) globally managed off-roster catalog, and (iii) music publishing. 

M&A: We also have an ambitious M&A pipeline, especially for timeless catalogs. Our acquisitions of Tempo and start-up RSDL are good signposts of how we intend on growing both our copyrights and our capabilities. And, as you’ve seen today, we’ve announced an exciting venture with Bain Capital that adds up to $1.2 billion to our catalog purchasing power across both recorded music and music publishing.

We’re becoming a stronger, leaner company… for greater cut-through. 

TEAM: Our faster, more agile teams of local experts will be backed by a strengthened suite of services across Marketing, Distribution, Catalog, and Merchandising & Direct-to-Fan. This aligns our collective efforts with our clearest priorities, making it easier for great artistry and ideas to shine through. Our recent changes at LATAM and Atlantic Records, following the long-term rejuvenation of Warner Chappell and Warner Records, prove that teams can get leaner, deliver massive No. 1s, and win market share… all at the same time.   

TECH: We’ll continue to prioritize better digital tools for artists, songwriters, and employees. For example, we’ll expand the rollout of the WMG Pulse app and add more features to give artists and songwriters insights, while landing the benefits of our financial transformation initiative as well as a vastly improved supply chain and data infrastructure. By simplifying how we work, our WMG One platform will enable deeper focus, stronger collaboration, and more powerful outcomes.

In an ever-changing industry, we must continue to supercharge our capabilities in long-term artist, songwriter, and catalog development. That’s why this company was created in the first place, it’s what we’ve always been best at, and it’s how we’ll differentiate ourselves in the future.

As we implement these changes, we promise to communicate with you regularly. Thank you for your patience and support for one another. We’ve got some remarkable music coming, and I know that whatever challenges we’re navigating, your commitment to our artists and songwriters is unwavering. 

Thank you,

Robert

Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t exactly get what he bargained for when he invited a fan on stage at a recent concert.

As has become tradition at Green Day concerts, the frontman handed over one of his acoustic guitars Monday (June 30) to a lucky fan plucked from the audience in Luxembourg, giving him the chance to perform alongside the band on “Good Riddance.” But in clips captured from the show, the fan instead starts playing the wrong chords as Armstrong looks visibly confused.

“You told me you could play this one!” the musician quips, attempting to help the fan out by reminding him of the proper key.

Then, the fan started playing the chord progression of Oasis’ biggest hit, “Wonderwall.” Realization dawning on his face, Armstrong took the guitar back from the fan, who was quickly ushered offstage by a member of the crew.

“Oh, f–k!” Armstrong says in the clip. “Nice try, nice try.”

The interaction comes amid Green Day’s The Saviors Tour, which kicked off in May 2024. It marks just the latest viral moment from the trek, with Armstrong recently making headlines for flipping off a concertgoer for seemingly spraying him with a water gun during the show.

The band has also been playing a number of festivals in 2025, appearing at Coachella, BottleRock and Download Festival in the U.K. The latter was particularly memorable as Armstrong paused the performance to call out the United States government, telling the crowd: “Donald Trump and his administration is a fascist government. And it’s up to us to fight back.”

In May, Armstrong and his bandmates were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “I hope everybody comes here and takes pictures for as long as you want to and as long as you can,” bassist Mike Dirnt said during the ceremony. “We’ll never say ‘thank you’ enough.”

Maesic had been making electronic music for the better part of a decade when he met Diplo at a club in France. The French producer later DM’d Diplo, asking if he could send over his unreleased music who told Maesic to pass it to his A&R. Maesic sent the files, then waited a year for a response. But when the answer came, things moved fast.

“He was like, ‘Yo bro, the music is fire,’” Maesic recalls the A&R saying. He also told Maesic that Diplo was playing that night in St. Tropez, a short drive from where Maesic was then staying.

“So I drove over there, and I met Diplo for the first time,” he says. “The meeting was short, but it was really good.”

The two artists began working together over email, then text, and in September of 2023, Maesic flew to Los Angeles for a studio session at Diplo’s house in Malibu. He didn’t know it was a test, but after the session was over, he was told he’d passed.

“The [A&R] John [Connolly] was like, ‘We wanted to see how you were in studio, because it’s really important, the human side of the of the music production. You you had a great vibe. You’re perfect.”

Thus began a working relationship that’s resulted in Maesic collaborating on hits including Major Lazer and Jung Kook’s 2023 track “Close to You” and Diplo and Jessie Murph’s “Heartbroken,” among a long list of ghost productions and collabs Maesic has done with other artists. Out in Malibu, Maesic and Diplo often start their work days with a game of pickleball and a sauna session before heading to the studio.

But the biggest perk has been the experience and connections. Maesic calls the last two years “a snowball effect.” Living in L.A. has connected him with the city’s (and Diplo’s) sprawling network of artists, with Maesic spending a lot of time with L.A. scene stalwarts like Wax Motif and Dillon Francis. A meeting with Anyma at a club in Ibiza also lead to Maesic’s credit on Anyma’s May album The End of Genysis.

But happily, his biggest success has been his own. After making the track in his Paris living room, Maesic released his breakout single “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” in March. Lyrics about life optimization tips — “if you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV,” demands vocalist Salomé Das — are fused with a simmering beat.

“My roommate showed me the ‘life is simple’ sample and said, ‘You should do a song with these,’” he recalls. “So I put those vocals on my beat, and it sounded really good.” Maesic sent the song to Diplo, who told him the chords sounded like Marshall Jefferson’s 1986 house classic “The House Music Anthem (Move Your Body)” and that he should try to mix the two vocals. So he did, “and it sounded really good.”

Maesic had already released a six-song string of tracks on Helix Records, the label founded by Patrick Moxey in 2022. As it turned out, Jefferson’s catalog is published through Helix’s affiliated company, Payday Music Publishing, so Helix sent it to Jefferson for clearing and Jefferson sent back a few tweaks. French producer Bob Sinclar, a friend of Maesic’s, also gave a few arrangement suggestions.

But by this point point, he’d “heard it so many times I didn’t know if it was good or not anymore.” So he also sent it to his friend Hugel, the star French producer. “He was like was like, ‘Bro, this is a hit.’” Hugel was right. Upon release, “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” started getting roughly 4,000 streams a day, then 50,000 a week. All the artists involved in the song seeded it out to the dance community ahead of release, with Helix’s global promo teams working it with partners at DSPs, radio, and beyond.

A clip of dance legend Fatboy Slim playing the song then went viral this past spring, and then Helix commissioned a post from TikTok-er Crazy Auntie Ann, who’d already posted a video dancing to “Move Your Body” and was a longtime fan of Jefferson’s original. Maesic and Jefferson also created content together ahead of the release date, with all of these moments ultimately sending the song to No. 1 on Beatport’s Afro-house chart and putting it at No. 4 on the Beatport Top 10. Maesic says the track is now averaging 300,000 streams a day.

The success has changed his life. “I’ve been making music for a lot of people in the background for so long, and this is finally giving light to my artist project and to Maesic,” he says. “I get like, five texts a day, like people in a coffee shop in Guatemala or at the gym in Ibiza, being like, ‘They’re playing your song.’ People send me vocals wanting to collab. It feels really good.”

He’s been working towards this success since he got into dance music in 2013, when he was in his early teens and Martin Garrix released his era-defining smash “Animals.” Maesic, born Emeric Boxall, not only loved the song, but was inspired by the fact that Garrix was famously just 16 years old when he made it.

Maesic started tinkering on a DAW and absorbing the big room house of the era via the internet, becoming a fan of artists such as Steve Aoki, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Tiësto. He started remixing their music and releasing his edits on SoundCloud, sometimes putting up his bootlegs even before the originals were released, a clever move he used to gain traction. His parents and music teacher encouraged him, and by the time he was 16 — he’d done an official remix of Maroon 5’s 2017’s “Cold.” Then at 18, he signed with Universal Music France, where he produced dance pop aimed at radio, a sound he says, “I don’t relate to today, but which got me playing shows and festivals.”

After his tenure with the label ended, he spent time in Paris before temporarily moving to Miami, where, he says, “I knew no one.” But a producer he’d met in France owned a studio in town and, through that connection, Maesic started ghost producing for artists across hip-hop, reggaetón, electronic and beyond. “I learned so much and met so many people during those two years,” he says. He then returned to France committed to working on his own project, a moment that coincided with the rise of Afro and Latin house, sounds Maesic started producing in with a focus on making music to play during his shows. This was around the time he linked with Diplo.

When he talks to Billboard over Zoom, Maesic’s momentum is obvious. Funny and engaging, he takes the call in the sunshine from an outdoor cafe in Corsica. Tomorrow he’ll fly to a show in Ibiza, then in France, then South Korea, Bali, Serbia’s EXIT festival and beyond, with the run eventually landing him at Burning Man at the end of the summer and more shows unrolling from there. For someone who, at 25, has already been working at music for roughly half his life, he seems genuinely gobsmacked by — yet also zen about — how it’s all going.

“I try to enjoy the process and the path, because you can get caught up so quickly in like ‘What’s next song? What’s the next show? What’s next thing?’ I used to be like that. Now, I try to take a deep breath in and enjoy the cities I’m traveling to what’s happening in each moment.” (In terms of what’s next musically, however, a trio of remixes of “Life Is Simple (Move Your Body)” have been released throughout June, with the most recent by French producer Trym out today, June 30.)

Maesic’s humanistic approach to his career also applies to the studio, where he focuses on genuine connections. “Being a producer is like being a vibe creator too,” he says. “I’m emotional and hyper-sensitive, so I feel like I feel the emotions and the vibe of people in the studio and know what to tell them and how to get the best out of them. Makes jokes, talk with people, make them feel good.”

Embodying genuine humanity amid an industry moving at warp speed seems to be setting Maesic up for a fruitful future. His career so far is not just a testament to talent and hard work, but also that being a good hang is both a nice way to live and a competitive advantage.

“It’s like a shortcut in some ways,” he says, “because you just become friends and create relationships with people, and that opens doors.”

A paparazzo and photo agency have dropped lawsuits alleging Jennifer Lopez infringed their copyrights by posting pictures of herself outside a Golden Globes pre-party to Instagram and X without paying to license the images.

Federal court notices from Saturday (June 28) say photographer Edwin Blanco and agency BackGrid USA are voluntarily dismissing the pair of lawsuits they brought against Lopez last month. These types of dismissals are often the result of settlements, though it’s not clear whether the pop singer and actress paid to get the cases dropped.

The lawsuits centered on two images of Lopez standing outside the Amazon MGM Studios x Vanity Fair Party at Los Angeles’ swanky Bar Marmont the night before the Golden Globe Awards in January.

A lawyer for Blanco and BackGrid, who own the photos, claimed Lopez posted them to both her Instagram and X pages on Jan. 5 without permission. This supposedly set off a spate of reposts from fan pages and fashion brands, including the designer of a faux fur coat Lopez was wearing in the pictures.

Blanco and BackGrid’s attorney said he contacted Lopez’s team about the alleged copyright infringement soon after these posts went up. They had “fruitful discussions” about a monetary settlement, the lawyer claimed, but failed to reach a deal before the lawsuit was filed.

The legal complaint accused Lopez of willful infringement under the federal Copyright Act, carrying possible damages of up to $150,000 per photo.

The lawyer for Blanco and BackGrid and reps for Lopez did not immediately return requests for comment on Monday (June 30).

It’s quite common for celebrities to be sued for posting paparazzi photos of themselves on social media. Major artists, including Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, have settled similar lawsuits in the last few years, and Robin Thicke was sued for the same thing earlier this month.

As Billboard wrote in 2022, U.S. copyright law is on the side of photographers and image licensers. Though it may seem odd, celebrities do not automatically co-own images of themselves and therefore don’t have the right to repost them for free.

Last week, Billboard staff unveiled its favorite songs of 2025 so far. Now, it’s your turn.

With year-defining hits from Kendrick Lamar and SZA, Doechii, Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, Sabrina Carpenter and dozens more artists, it’s difficult to choose. So many tracks have made statements in 2025, from younger artists such as Lola Young and Addison Rae finding breakout moments — thanks to splashy releases “Messy” and “Headphones On,” respectively — to established stars like Lorde and Bon Iver making comebacks with new LPs Virgin and Sable, Fable multiple years after they last dropped albums.

The year so far has also been full of chart-toppers that have been nearly unshakeable in their runs at No. 1. Dot and SZA’s “Luther” spent an eye-popping 13 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, while Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” ruled the listing for five weeks before that. Going into the second half of 2025, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” is the track to beat; the TikToker’s breakout smash has reigned at the chart’s summit for four nonconsecutive weeks, interrupted only by Carpenter’s “Manchild” debuting at No. 1 earlier in June.

If the amount of good music that has emerged from 2025 so far is any indication, the next six months will also be full of high-quality new releases. But for now, Billboard wants to know what you think of this year’s releases thus far (after checking out our ranking of the 50 best tracks here). Vote for your favorite song of the year so far below.