business
Brad Paisley, Lady A Sell Music Rights to HarbourView
In another move reflecting its diversified genre approach to music acquisitions, HarbourView Equity Partners has entered the Nashville scene in a big way with new investments in Brad Paisley and Lady A‘s catalogs. Paisley, who has won three Grammy awards and has generated activity totaling 17.4 million album consumption units in the U.S., has sold his music royalty income stream to his master recording catalog to HarbourView. Beyond his successful music career, Paisley remains in the spotlight most recently thanks to his involvement in Nationwide Insurance advertising campaigns and due to his partnership with Boot Barn for the Moonshine Spirit clothing line. His last studio album was Love and War in 2017, which reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart and peaked at No. 1 on Top Country Al...
Swedish House Mafia Cancels More Shows
Swedish House Mafia has canceled five more shows on its upcoming 2022 Paradise Again arena tour on Friday (July 22). The newly canceled shows include July 31 at the Amway Center in Orlando, Aug. 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York, Aug. 9 at TD Garden in Boston, Aug. 11 at Verizon Arena Washington D.C. and Aug. 17 in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. Many arena acts are facing sluggish ticket sales, especially at the arena level where a number of first-time tours are playing to half-empty houses. Festivals too have struggled amid a wave of oversaturation and reduced consumer spending. Editor’s note: This story is in the process of being updated. [flexi-common-toolbar] [flexi-form class=”flexi_form_style” title=”Submit to Flexi” name=”my_form” ajax=R...
Top Bruce Springsteen Ticket Prices Fueled Rage, But the Average Cost Wasn’t So High
Bruce Springsteen fans had a rough introduction to the world of dynamic ticket pricing Wednesday (July 20), as many logged into Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform to buy tickets for his upcoming tour with the E Street Band and experienced sticker shock at the cost of the best seats. Those prices – which climbed into the thousands of dollars, as widely reported – represented about 1 percent of the tickets listed on the Ticketmaster Verified Fan sale, but they became a sore point for fans who felt that they no longer had a shot at great seats after years of loyalty to the Boss. By selling high-priced platinum tickets, Ticketmaster argues, the company can prevent the best seats from being bought and resold by scalpers. That money can instead go to Springsteen. However, this only works when ...
Swedish House Mafia Cancels More Shows Due to Poor Ticket Sales
Swedish House Mafia has canceled five more shows on its upcoming 2022 Paradise Again arena tour on Friday (July 22) after months of anemic sales, despite promoter Live Nation’s best efforts to move tickets at discounted rates. The newly canceled shows include July 31 at the Amway Center in Orlando, Aug. 2 at Madison Square Garden in New York, Aug. 9 at TD Garden in Boston, Aug. 11 at Verizon Arena Washington D.C. and Aug. 17 in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. The tour’s poor ticket sales and struggles to generate interest have been widely known in the live music business, and many arena acts are facing sluggish ticket sales, especially at the arena level where a number of first-time tours are playing to half-empty houses. Festivals too have struggled amid a wave of oversaturation and redu...
Board urges Bank of Central African States to introduce common digital currency: Report
The Bank of Central African States, or Banque des États de l’Afrique, which serves Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo, could be closer to releasing a central bank digital currency reportedly at the urging of its board. According to a Friday report from Bloomberg, the board sent an email calling for the regional bank to introduce a digital currency in an effort to modernize payment structures and promote regional financial inclusion. The Central African Republic, or CAR, passed legislation adopting Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender in the country in April, but has not recognized a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Nigeria’s central bank was one of the first in the region to launch a CBDC called the eNaira in October ...
The Ledger: Royalty Growth Requires Changing More Than How They’re Calculated
The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. If The Beatles wrote a song about music royalties, the band would sing about a “Long and Winding Road” to higher subscription fees and better pay for artists and labels. The music subscription business model has become the record industry’s main breadwinner since launching in the early 2000s. But for two decades, many artists and rights holders have bristled at the royalty rates paid by streaming services. Some rates have improved: ad-supported royalties grew as online advertising matured. Royalties from subscription services have less wiggle room for change, however. The biggest innovation is a change in how to divvy a...
U2 to Perform First Concerts at MSG Sphere in Las Vegas
U2 will be the first group to perform at the MSG Sphere at The Venetian in Las Vegas when the $1.8 billion arena opens next year, multiple sources tell Billboard. The performances will be the first dates of a multi-show residency by the band at the high-tech arena, which is being built by Madison Square Garden Entertainment chairman James Dolan near the Venetian off the Las Vegas Strip. Officials with MSGE describe the MSG Sphere at The Venetian as the next generation of live entertainment, offering fans a multi-sensory experience of sound and light inside the largest spherical structure ever created. For concerts, the MSG Sphere at The Venetian can hold 20,000 standing spectators or 17,500 seated guests, with 23 VIP suites. The Sphere will include 160,000 square feet of video vi...
NFT sales will fund the restoration of physical monuments in Ukraine
The Ukrainian government will be using the proceeds of sales from an online nonfungible token, or NFT, museum to restore artwork in the real world. According to a Friday announcement and information shared with Cointelegraph, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said the government’s Meta History Museum of War platform, aimed at preserving the timeline of major events in Russia’s war with Ukraine, raised 803.28 Ether (ETH) — roughly $1.3 million at the time — through NFT sales. The ministry said proceeds from the sales will go toward “the restoration of Ukrainian cultural institutions,” many of which have been damaged or destroyed by missile attacks from Russia. “During the six months of the war in Ukraine, the Russians destroyed hundreds of our museum...
Zipmex resumes withdrawals for trade wallets
Cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex has resumed withdrawals from its trade wallet after two days, but said transfers, deposits and trade will continue to be disabled from its Z Wallet. In a Friday announcement, Zipmex said its Thailand-based users could make withdrawals from its trade wallet, with the function expected to be “re-enabled this evening” for clients in other countries. The crypto exchange has had withdrawals disabled since Wednesday, citing a “combination of circumstances” beyond its control, including the recent market volatility. “Ever since the black swan events surrounding the crypto space Zipmex has retrieved the majority of our funds and assets that were historically deposited with our deployment partners and have been actively working to resolve the situatio...
Epidemic Sound Sues Meta For $142M, Says Instagram and Facebook Stole Hundreds Of Songs
Meta Platforms Inc. is facing a lawsuit that claims its Facebook and Instagram platforms “intentionally and brazenly” stole hundreds of songs from Swedish production music label Epidemic Sound, encouraging their users to upload more than 50,000 infringing videos every day. Repped by attorneys at the top music law firm Pryor Cashman, Epidemic says the social media giant is offering nearly 1,000 of the label’s songs through its “Music Library” for users to add to their video uploads, but that Meta has refused to secure copyright licenses for that music — and has ignored the company’s repeated demands that it do so. “Perhaps Meta is hoping to get away with it for as long as possible,” Epidemic’s lawyers wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday (July 20) in San Francisco federal court. “Perhaps Me...
Australia’s Splendour in the Grass Cancels Day 1 Due to ‘Significant Weather System’
BRISBANE, Australia — After two editions were wiped out by the pandemic, the first day Splendour in the Grass 2022 was sunk by Mother Nature. Inclement weather turned the site into a quagmire on the eve of this year’s show, held July 22-24 in Byron Bay, the picturesque beach town at the most easterly point of Australia. By midday on Friday (July 22), the grounds were deemed to be unmanageable. “In the interest of patrol safety and in consultation with all relevant emergency services,” reads a statement from Splendour organizers, “we have decided to err on the side of caution and cancel all performances on the main stages today only.” The reason: a “significant weather system” currently sitting off the country’s east coast which “may reach land later today, bringing more rainfall.” Statemen...
BMG Acquires Jean-Michel Jarre’s Music Publishing Catalog
BMG will represent Jean-Michel Jarre’s entire music publishing catalog in what’s said to be the biggest single deal ever struck by the music company in France. BMG said Thursday that it is acquiring the electronic music pioneer’s decades-deep works, an arrangement that brings in such classic albums as Oxygene and Equinoxe, together with Jarre’s writer’s income stream. BMG previously acquired the sound recordings of Jarre’s first three albums when it bought independent record label Francis Dreyfus Music in 2012. Jarre is a giant in his field. Born in Lyon, France, the electronic music composer has 21 albums to his name, several of them stone-cold classics, including his 1976 album Oxygene, its followup Equinoxe, 1981’s Magnetic Fields and 1984’s Zoolook. Career album sales top 85 mill...
