Music branding” does not involve stamping horses with band logos (at least not yet). But it does apply to just about anything else in which a commercial entity — from Taco Bell to JPMorganChase — partners with an artist or music company.
Which is why, at the beginning of last year’s Brat Summer, Charli xcx appeared as a 3D hologram activated by White Claw drinkers who aimed their phones at a product logo; why Nike spent in the low seven figures to license Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” for a Super Bowl LIX commercial; why Will Ferrell sang a PayPal jingle set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”; and why Pinterest set up Coachella “manifest stations” filled with beauty products curated by singer Victoria Monét.
“It can be a tour sponsorship, a social media campaign, a tie-in with a brand’s philanthropic endeavor,” says Marcie Allen, president of MAC Consulting, who has been connecting artists with brands for 30 years and was one of 15 music industry experts who helped Billboard compile its first Branding Power Players list since 2019. “Brand partnerships are bigger than they have ever been because they give companies the ability to break through the noise.”
There are no metrics that quantify the overall music-branding market, because it’s so multifaceted — from the multimillion-dollar advertising synch business to singer-songwriter RAYE performing intimate concerts at Hilton hotel rooms, footage of which appeared in commercials and social media posts. That said, a hint of its scale can be found in the financial filings of the industry’s largest concert promoter, Live Nation, whose worldwide sponsorship revenue has grown from $590.3 million in 2019 to $1.2 billion in 2024. (Advertising and sponsorship amounted to just over 5% of Live Nation’s total revenue last year.)
“We’re seeing brands spending more in music than ever before,” says Russell Wallach, the promoter’s global president of media and sponsorship. He adds that Live Nation research shows 80% of its customers are “interested” in participating with brands at live events. “What brands are doing from an experiential standpoint has been significantly elevated over the last few years.”
Post-pandemic, according to Allen, brands have returned aggressively to the live space — like T-Mobile sponsoring this summer’s Post Malone-Jelly Roll tour.
The synch business, too, has more than rebounded since the pandemic: Global revenue amounted to $400 million in 2020, mostly due to production shutdowns, but it hit $632 million in 2023, according to IFPI. That’s an increase of 58%, from 0.4% of global recording-industry revenue in 2020 to 2.2%. (These numbers don’t include publishing, but they do include film/TV synchs in addition to advertising.) For this year’s Super Bowl, licensed songs cost between $400,000 and $2.5 million on the publishing side alone, music industry sources say, not counting the separate fees for licensing master recordings. According to Brian Monaco, Sony Music Publishing’s president/global chief marketing officer, 50% of this year’s Super Bowl ads, which cost brands a reported $7 million to $8 million apiece, employed synchs.
In the streaming era, brands and music companies are more efficient than ever in using data to align artists’ fan bases with companies’ target demographics, says Rich Yaffa, Universal Music Group’s executive vp of global brands: “When we partner with a brand, our goal is to make fans of our artists fans of their brands.”
Stephanie Miles, Wasserman Music’s head of music brand partnerships, says brands recently have become more willing to work on elaborate activations with artists. One act she declines to name spent months negotiating a fashion shoot and a live event to ensure both artist and brand emphasized the same regional market. “The days of receiving an opportunity that has been completely conceptualized by a brand, and the artist taking it as is, are long gone,” she says.
“Deals are definitely becoming more complicated and sophisticated,” adds Andrew Klein, managing director of AEG’s global partnerships. “It used to be [when] Coca-Cola’s coming out with a new product, [it would] just hand out the can [at concerts] and do a sampling program. They’re now trying to get a lot more return on investment. Yes, they want to sponsor the tour, but they also want to use the music for that artist in a campaign, use [their] name and likeness or tap into their social media.”
Will the good times in music branding continue? It’s hard to say, given President Donald Trump’s unsettling of the economy with layoffs, deportations, tariffs and threats of tariffs in the first weeks of his administration. “We’re starting to see a bit of a spend slowdown,” says Toni Wallace, partner and head of music brand strategy and partnerships at UTA. “There’s no question the demand and opportunity is there; it’s just ‘Let’s see how this first quarter goes.’ ”
It wasn’t long ago that artists, fearing claims of “selling out,” avoided collaborations with major corporations: In the late ’80s, after Pepsi landed Michael Jackson, Madonna and David Bowie in commercials and Whitney Houston sang a Diet Coke jingle, Neil Young responded with the scathing “This Note’s for You”: “Ain’t singing for Pepsi/Ain’t singing for Coke/I don’t sing for nobody/Makes me look like a joke.”
But things have changed: In 1999, Sting refashioned his “Desert Rose” music video into a Jaguar commercial; Bob Dylan licensed “Love Sick” to a Victoria’s Secret spot in 2004; an instrumental portion of Vampire Weekend’s 2019 “Harmony Hall” — an upbeat-sounding tune that nevertheless is about antisemitism — was used in a Choice Hotels TV plug; and last year, Megan Thee Stallion’s colorful 2024 Amazon Music ad included the original track “It’s Prime Day.”
“You had rockers who never wanted to be seen associated with anything: ‘It’s too commercialized,’ ” says Jeff Straughn, Primary Wave’s senior partner/chief brand officer. “Today, it’s ‘How can I sell it?’ ”
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
