The 3 Biggest Stories in Music: Bieber’s Payday, Ye’s Comeback, and $64B for Universal Music Group

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the business behind Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance, Ye’s successful mini comeback in Los Angeles, and Bill Ackman’s $64B bid to buy UMG (02:29). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about Hollywood’s letter opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger (22:40). Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Lucas Shaw Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Matt Pevic Theme Song: Devon Renaldo This episode is brought to you by AMC+. Start your free trial today at join.amcplus.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Town is presented to you by AMC Networks.
0:08.7	Billy Magnuson and Zach Galfinacus star in the new series The Audacity on AMC and AMC Plus.
0:15.1	Influence rises, people unravel, and CEO meltdowns are business as usual among Silicon Valley Elite,
0:21.6	executive produced by Jonathan Glasser, a writer-producer of succession and better call Saul.
0:26.4	Watch new episodes of The Audacity, Sundays exclusively on AMC and AMC Plus.
0:32.9	It is Monday, April 13th.
0:35.6	So how much is the world's largest music label worth?
0:39.2	About $60 billion, according to Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor, he and his
0:43.9	Pershing Square capital, would like to engineer a deal to buy Universal Music Group,
0:49.0	home to Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Kendrick, they've got the Beatles now, Justin Bieber,
0:53.5	more than 30% of the market for recorded music,
0:57.0	plus a huge music publishing unit. That $60 billion number would be a valuation, a huge premium on what
1:03.2	UMG currently trades at, but why? What is his interest here? And what does it say about the overall
1:08.7	trajectory of the music business?
1:13.4	Ackman has been pretty interested in UMG for years now.
1:14.3	He was even on the board.
1:19.6	But he says, quote, UMG's stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business.
1:22.7	And importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.
1:26.5	Hmm, okay.
1:29.7	Lots to discuss there. And it's one of a bunch of interesting music topics going on right now. There's Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
1:35.7	He's been trying a comeback tour from quasi-cancellation after his outbursts about Hitler and
1:41.6	releasing a song called Heil Hitler. Yes, that happened. He apologized
	...

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