What the biggest music industry deals of 2025 lacked in star power, they made up for in sheer size: The top five transactions announced in the first half of the year include three items over $1 billion, with the smallest coming in at $450 million. Notably, the list doesn’t include the starriest deal of the year so far: Taylor Swift’s purchase of her Big Machine master recordings. Swift’s reclamation of her first six albums attracted more media attention than any other music business deal so far this year, but with a smaller price tag than the top five, it’s left to vie for a spot on the year-ending top 10 (or more) list.
Last year, music companies made numerous noteworthy acquisitions, including Sony Music’s purchase of Queen’s catalog for $1.27 billion; Universal Music Group’s deals for [PIAS] and Downtown Music Holdings (which hasn’t closed and is being reviewed by the European Commission); Blackstone’s $1.6-billion acquisition of Hipgnosis Songs Fund; and New Mountain Capital’s purchase of BMI for between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion. The live sector was also active, with Legends picking up ASM Global from AEG for $2.3 billion and KKR buying Superstruct for $1.39 billion.
Lacking super-sized catalog acquisitions, Billboard’s list of the largest deals announced in the first half of 2025 is instead dominated by fundraising to enable the purchase of music rights. Two of the five deals involve asset-backed securities (ABSs), a type of debt that allows an owner of large, diversified music catalogs to finance its borrowings with royalties from its catalogs and which has become increasingly common in the music business. Several companies have raised money through ABSs since 2022, including Concord, Kobalt, Hipgnosis Song Management, HarbourView Equity Partners, Chord Music Partners and Influence Media.
Other than Swift’s purchase of her masters, there were numerous other noteworthy catalog deals that fell short of making the top five. Sony Music Publishing acquired Hipgnosis Songs Group for an undisclosed amount that Billboard nonetheless believes is safely below the threshold to make this list. And in March, Create Music Group acquired the catalogs of deadmau5 and his label, mau5trap, followed in April by its purchase of indie electronic label !K7.
Check out the top five deals from the first half of 2025 below.
THE BIG STORY: Sean “Diddy” Combs was convicted on Wednesday (July 2) of illegal prostitution but acquitted of more severe sex-trafficking and racketeering charges, a significant legal victory for the disgraced rap mogul who faced up to life in prison if found guilty on all counts.
The jury deliberated for two days before finding Combs guilty of transporting girlfriends and male escorts across state lines for drug-fueled sex marathons called “freak-offs.” But they were not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this conduct occurred as part of a criminal enterprise or that Combs’ alleged victims – singer Cassie Ventura and an anonymous woman known as “Jane” – were coerced into the sex parties.
The verdict came as a shock to many who’ve been following Combs’ stunning fall from grace that began when Ventura brought a bombshell civil lawsuit against him in 2023. Combs quickly settled with Ventura for $20 million, but a deluge of similar lawsuits followed. The civil litigation onslaught then turned into a criminal investigation, and Combs was indicted and arrested last year.
We at Billboard have been all over the story, covering everything from how Combs nabbed this partial victory to what comes next.
Hours after the verdict was reached, Judge Arun Subramanian rejected Combs’ request to go home on bail while he awaits sentencing. The judge said Combs is still a danger to society despite his acquittal on the more serious charges, relying on the fact that the defense admitted the rapper’s history of domestic violence throughout the trial.
The next step for Combs is sentencing, scheduled for Oct. 3. He faces up to 20 years for the two prostitution counts, but court papers estimate that the recommended guidelines range will come out to somewhere between two and five years in prison. If he’d been convicted on all charges, he would have faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of life behind bars.
Combs’ lawyer Mark Agnifilocelebrated the verdict in no uncertain terms, calling it “a victory of all victories for Sean Combs and our legal team.” Agnifilo also hinted that his team will appeal the counts of conviction after sentencing, telling reporters, “We are not nearly done fighting.”
Legal experts told Billboard that factors influencing the jury’s partial acquittal verdict may have included prosecution errors, like trumped-up charges and missing witnesses, as well as the defense’s shrewd decision to admit domestic abuse from day one.
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Other top stories this week…
CAR SEX CLAIMS – A federal judge denied a motion by Megan Thee Stallion and her management company Roc Nation to dismiss claims that the rapper forced cameraman Emilio Garcia to watch her have sex in a moving car while on tour in Ibiza, Spain. The judge said Garcia, who is gay, sufficiently alleged that Megan wouldn’t have subjected a straight employee to the same treatment. Megan and Roc Nation, who’ve vehemently denied the claims and called Garcia a “con artist,” did get a small win in trimming some ancillary claims from the lawsuit.
DOLL DO-OVER – A federal judge reduced T.I. and Tameka “Tiny” Harris’ $71 million jury verdict over claims that toymaker MGA’s line of “O.M.G.” dolls copied their real-life teen pop group OMG Girlz, saying the rapper and his wife didn’t prove they deserve $53 million in punitive damages. The judge said that while a jury correctly found that MGA’s dolls stepped on protected properties of the OMG Girlz, there was no evidence that the infringement was deliberate. The long-running dispute is now on track for a retrial — the whopping fourth time the case will go before a jury.
BIG TIME BRAWL – Sony Music Entertainment was hit with a lawsuit from Scott Fellows, creator of the Nickelodeon series Big Time Rush. The complaint alleged that when the TV show’s eponymous boy band, Big Time Rush, reunited four years ago and struck a deal to go independent from Nickelodeon and Sony, the label deliberately structured the agreement so that Fellows would not receive a 3.75% cut of touring profits he’d gotten in the band’s original heyday.
TAX TRIUMPH – The Help Independent Tracks Succeed (HITS) Act, the long-in-the-works legislation that would allow musicians to deduct 100% of their production expenses in the year they’re incurred, was finally passed by Congress and signed into law as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The milestone was quickly celebrated by longtime bill supporters, including Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr., A2IM president/CEO Dr. Richard James Burgess and NITO president Wayne Forte.
The Boy Is Back: Why a Summer of Drake Might Be What Hip-Hop Needs
07/07/2025
During a recent Adin Ross stream, the Toronto rapper was FaceTiming with Internet comedian BenDaDonnn and streamers from Brazil when the topic came up. “Should we get a streamer plane to Wireless for everybody? Should I get a big jet?” he asked the popular streamer before Adin agreed and mentioned that he’ll stream on the plane if it happens. Drake then replied, “So then, tell me the flight manifest and I’m gonna get the jet.”
In other Drake news, he dropped “What Did I Miss” on July 4 weekend — the lead single from his upcoming album Iceman — along with an hourlong stream where he teased some unreleased songs. The single addresses some of the public fallouts he had with friends like NBA players DeMar DeRozan and LeBron James due to his Kendrick Lamar feud.
The new project doesn’t have an official release date yet, but on the aforementioned livestream, Drake said it will be coming soon and he signed off an autograph with “Iceman 2025.”
You can watch the full Adin Ross stream here. The conversation with Drake is around the 3:10 mark.
Two Saturdays ago, three of Jim Roppo’s kids fired up KPop Demon Hunters during its opening weekend on Netflix, unaware that their dad, the Chairman/CEO of Republic Records, had anything to do with the movie or its soundtrack. Then, they watched it again. And again.
“My kids watched this movie three-and-a-half times in 24 hours,” Roppo tells Billboard of his 12-year-old, 13-year-old and 15-year-old children. And the next day, they started blasting the songs from the soundtrack.
Roppo noted this behavior from “my own little home test-market group,” he says with a laugh, while also seeing how well KPop Demon Hunters was performing on Netflix, and the eyebrow-raising early streaming numbers from the soundtrack. Before the end of the weekend, “I started ringing all the alarms across the company, with all of our partners and teams,” recalls Roppo — what once had piqued the interest of his family was quickly becoming a global smash.
Since that opening weekend, millions of new viewers have watched KPop Demon Hunters, an animated musical about a fictional K-pop girl group, HUNTR/X, who secretly slay demon spirits when they’re not dazzling arena audiences. Two and a half weeks after the film was released on June 20, KPop Demon Hunters remains atop Netflix’s global top 10 movies list. And its soundtrack, which was released simultaneously, has surged higher on the Billboard 200, debuting at No. 8 and moving up to No. 3 in its second week, with 62,000 equivalent album units — a 97% increase from Week 1 to Week 2, according to Luminate.
When a soundtrack to an animated musical displays that type of growth, the culprit is usually a standout song or two — think “Let It Go” from Frozen. But KPop Demon Hunters is a phenomenon more reminiscent of 2021’s Hot 100-blanketing Encanto soundtrack, with seven songs from the soundtrack appearing on this week’s chart, led by the HUNTR/X anthem “Golden” at No. 23 and “Your Idol,” from their villainous boy band counterpart Saja Boys, at No. 31. Both songs have hovered near the top of daily U.S. and global streaming listings for days, but so have HUNTR/X’s hammering opener “How It’s Done,” the sticky-sweet boy band song “Soda Pop” and the pivotal ballad “What It Sounds Like,” all of which are currently in the top 11 of Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA chart.
“It’s seven or eight songs deep — not just in America, and not just on one platform,” Roppo says of the set’s bench depth, also nodding to the strength of the two songs from K-pop superstars TWICE that appear on the soundtrack. “There’s no one who could tell you they predicted this.”
That includes Ian Eisendrath, the film’s executive music producer. “I’ve always believed in the songs, and thought they would pop,” Eisendrath says, “but not like this.”
Eisendrath says that the music for the Sony Pictures Animation and Netflix film was developed over a three-year period, after being approached by Sony Motion Pictures Group’s music president Spring Aspers for the project. A veteran music director for film, TV and theater — with credits ranging from Disney’s recent Snow White remake to Broadway’s Come From Away — Eisendrath says that he was already a big K-pop fan, and felt like the “high-drama” music would naturally translate to an animated musical.
“It just felt so cinematic, so big,” he says. “The production is immense, intense and multi-layered, and that’s the kind of sound you want in a film.”
He worked closely with film co-directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans — and several K-pop songwriters and musicians — to capture that gravity in the film’s various songs. Instead of functioning as the vision of a lone creative steward a la Alan Menken or Lin-Manuel Miranda, the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack was assembled by a sprawling team of pop and K-pop studio experts — including The Black Label’s Teddy Park, 24, IDO, Jenna Andrews and Stephen Kirk — and vocal talents behind HUNTR/X (EJAE, Audrey Nuna, REI AMI) and Saja Boys (Andrew Choi, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee and Neckwav).
Across all of the musical players, the goal was the same: create K-pop songs that could work within the Demon Hunters narrative, and stand on their own outside of the story. “The songs were always functioning in both aspects,” Eisendrath explains, “as truly relevant K-pop songs, created by K-pop makers, that add to the overall narrative within the film, and as singles that are just universal pop songs.”
As the film and its music were being finalized, Republic Records was made aware of the project roughly a year ago, according to Roppo, thanks to Savan Kotecha, the veteran pop producer-songwriter (One Direction, Ariana Grande) now serving as the head of the newly formed label Visva Records. Sony Pictures’ Aspers originally brought KPop Demon Hunters to Visva, and Kotecha looped in Republic to partner on the soundtrack. “The vision behind the film and the uniqueness of the music felt electric from day one,” Kotecha says in a statement.
Meanwhile, TWICE was looped into the project thanks to Republic’s partnership with JYP Entertainment Corporation on the best-selling K-pop girl group’s studio output. In addition to TWICE’s previously released song “Strategy” appearing on the soundtrack, the group recorded their own version of the HUNTR/X diss song “Takedown,” and their group moniker appears in the film multiple times. “It meant a lot to all of us, says Eisendrath, “when they were willing to sign on and sing one of these songs — that felt like such an authentication of what we were doing.”
Upon the film’s June 20 release, Roppo says that the soundtrack’s cross-platform activity reminded him of Encanto becoming a home-video sensation during the pandemic. As such, the entire Republic promotional apparatus sprang into action. “We’ve built a machine to not only detect these early signals, but maximize opportunities very, very quickly,” he says.
Following the soundtrack’s second-week streaming explosion, Republic hustled to have “Golden” impact top 40 radio stations on Tuesday (July 8), as the song “that we feel has the most mainstream pop opportunity and appeal,” says Roppo. Multiple physical versions of the soundtrack are now available for pre-order, as is a 7-inch single featuring both versions of “Takedown” that ships later this week. And Roppo says that the team is discussing potential remixes of “Golden,” with some “A-list remixers” in play for a new version of the soundtrack’s biggest hit so far.
The summer of KPop Demon Hunters is just getting started, considering the global enormity of Netflix — which has an estimated 300 million viewers — and the fact that, unlike viral synchs from Stranger Things and Wednesday in recent years, the music appears throughout a 100-minute family film instead of showing up multiple episodes into an adult-leaning series. Yet Roppo says that some of the most encouraging internal data points he’s seen about the film is its viewership in the 18-to-44 demographic — as well as its appeal with viewers who did not previously watch any K-pop content on the platform.
“It has crossed the rubicon globally,” says Roppo. “This is not a K-pop phenomenon. Now, it’s a pop culture phenomenon.”
XIN Liu is getting ready to go on her XANADU 2.0 tour, and she shares how she has been preparing her choreography, blending ethnic elements into her tour along with performances at Coachella and HITC, producing her album, ‘O,’ her parents’ reaction to “Dad, What Are You Doing?” and more!
XIN LIU:
Hello Billboard! I’m XIN LIU. It’s been two years since ‘XANADU 1.0.’ During this time, for ethnic culture, I’ve gained clearer, deeper insights thanks to my IP, ‘XIN’S WORLD,’ where I explored hometown traditions in all fields – dance, music, embroidery. So this year will feature more ethnic elements. The stage design is far more dynamic now. We added catwalks to get closer to the audience. The visuals are also more direct and bold, reflecting the richness of my inner world. There’s definitely a suit-clad character dancing. I’d love to include an eight-pointed star. It symbolizes ethnic motifs. Also, a silhouette singing. The ‘XANADU’ album has an embroidery theme, so this needle will “thread” through the concert’s narrative. I come from a place with diverse ethnic cultures, it’s innate. I’ve always loved these elements, but now I fuse them with modern expressions, as the saying goes, “Ethnic is universal.” I hope audiences worldwide can see and hear China’s cultural essence, that’s what I hoped to achieve. I’m a meticulous planner, without it, I’d feel insecure. I’m probably planning next year’s work already. I only share things when fully prepared, releasing unfinished work feels irresponsible. I have intense OCD, especially about aesthetics perfection, everything I see must align with my vision. When something falls short of my standards it becomes an impassable roadblock, yet when certain details become truly unmanageable I learned to let go, to embrace others’ perspectives, only then can I move forward. I want to share this thought with everyone, you must let certain things go.
Everything about Kelly Osbourne’s engagement ring was meant to “bee.” In a sweet video, Sid Wilson took fans behind the scenes of how he procured a unique band for his fiancée — revealing that he took inspiration from none other than the late Joan Rivers when honing the design.
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Kelly Osbourne & Slipknot’s Sid Wilson Get Engaged at Ozzy’s Final Black…
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In the clip posted Monday (July 7) to Instagram, the Slipknot musician works closely with designer Pascal Mouawad on creating a custom diamond ring. “I want it to be a special thing, not just something that anyone could have,” Wilson says in the video.
“I have a nickname for Kelly, and it’s ‘honeybee,’” he continues during his consultation with Mouawad. “And coincidentally, a friend of hers, Joan Rivers, used to call her this. I didn’t know this. It’s like an amazing coincidence.”
Wilson adds, “It’s because she would buzz around and spread all of this good energy around like a bee.”
Rivers and Osbourne cohosted Fashion Police together for years. After the sharp-tongued comedian died at the age of 81 in 2014, Osbourne said on Talk Radio 1210, “That woman loved me and took a chance on me in a way that no one I’ve ever worked with has … She became the grandmother I’ve always wanted and never had and one of my best friends.”
With that special connection in mind, Mouawad came up with an 18K yellow-gold ring decorated with white and yellow diamonds that form a honeycomb pattern. When Wilson sees the ring for the first time in the video, he covers his mouth in awe.
“It’s, like, blinding,” he says of the massive middle diamond. “It sparkles — she’s going to love that. Oh my God, I’m getting married. This is crazy.”
After decades of friendship, Wilson and Osbourne starting dating around January 2022. The couple got engaged at Ozzy Osbourne’s final Black Sabbath concert on July 6.
