Gracie Abrams, Thomas Rhett, Aaron Dessner and Leon Bridges are performing at this year’s National Music Publishers’ Association annual meeting on Wednesday (June 11) at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The event, which acts as a state-of-the-union for music publishers, has continued to integrate more songwriters into the event in recent years to honor the talents that publishers serve every day.
Abrams and Dessner are part of a special segment of the meeting, dedicated to the Billboard Songwriters Awards, a collaboration between Billboard and the NMPA which was rescheduled from GRAMMY week due to the Los Angeles wildfires. Abrams is set to receive the Breakthrough Songwriter Award to account for her fast-growing career as an artist, and Dessner will be given Billboard‘s Triple Threat Award for his success as a songwriter, producer and musician. Though to pop fans Dessner might be best known for his work producing and writing with Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, Ed Sheeran and Abrams, he is also lauded in the indie rock space as a longtime member of the band The National. Both are set to perform.
Additionally, the NMPA is giving out awards of its own. It’s Non-Performing Songwriter Award this year is going to Rhett Akins, and as part of that honor, his son, Thomas Rhett, will perform a medley of his father’s vast country catalog, which includes songs like “Dirt On My Boots” by Jon Pardi, “Honeybee” by Blake Shelton, “I Don’t Want This Night To End” by Luke Bryan, “Small Town Boy” by Dustin Lynch, “Look What God Gave Her” by Rhett, and many more.
The NMPA’s Songwriter Icon this year is Kacey Musgraves, and Bridges is flying in to pay tribute to Musgraves by performing a rendition of two of her songs.
The NMPA Annual Meeting, which is attended by a who’s who of the music publishing business, will also feature a keynote conversation with Oliver Schusser from Apple Music, and an address from the organization’s CEO/president David Israelite this year. Typically, Israelite’s speech includes a major announcement about new action the NMPA is taking to protect publishers and their writers. Last year, Israelite took on Spotify for cutting payments to publishers by about 40% that year through a multi-faceted attack plan, which is still on-going. He has also used the stage to announce lawsuits against Roblox, Twitter and more for using publishers’ copyrights without a license in previous years.
In 2024, the NMPA gave the Songwriter Icon award to Lana Del Rey and the Non-Performing Songwriter Icon award to Savan Kotecha, who has written hits like “Azizam” by Ed Sheeran, “God Is A Woman,” “Break Free” and “Break Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” by Ariana Grande, “I Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd, “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction and more.
