business
Warner Music’s Social Justice Fund Sets Event to ‘Spark New Ideas’ Among Grantees
The Warner Music Group/Blavatnik Family Foundation Social Justice Fund announced a fourth set of grantee partners on Monday, as well as a first-ever event bringing together current recipients as part of a mission to “spark new ideas and drive collaborative change advancing racial justice.” WMG/BFF SJF’s inaugural ‘Grantee Convening’ event takes place this Thursday and Friday (June 16-17) and will include virtual sessions for grantees, a private reception, and three livestreamed events covering such topics as grant making, media messaging and the larger dialogue on global justice. Convening grantees, who were announced in January, include ARRAY, Bard Prison Initiative, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Brazil Human Rights Fund, Girls Make Beats, Highlander Center, Manos Visibles, A New Way For...
Halsey Responds to Nanny’s Wrongful Termination Lawsuit, Calls Claims ‘Baseless’
Halsey is facing a new lawsuit that claims the star fired their nanny after she requested time off for a medical procedure, but the singer is calling the case “baseless.” In a complaint filed Thursday (June 9) in Los Angeles court, former nanny Ashley Funches claims the “Without Me” singer forced her to work “around the clock on consecutive days with little to no day of rest” and failed to pay overtime – and then fired her when she sought time off for medical care. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Plaintiff sent defendants a text message informing defendants that plaintiff may need to undergo a medical procedure that would require her to take a leave of absence from work,” attorneys for Funches wrote in their complaint. “A few days late...
R. Kelly Should Get 25 Years in Prison, Federal Prosecutors Say
Federal prosecutors in New York told a judge Wednesday (June 8) that R. Kelly should go to prison for more than 25 years following his conviction last year on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. The singer, they said, “avoided punishment for them for almost 30 years and must now be held to account.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news After decades of accusations of sexual misconduct, Kelly was convicted in September on nine counts related to accusations that the singer orchestrated a long-running scheme to recruit and abuse women and underage girls. He plans to appeal the verdict, but not before he’s sentenced on June 29. In a brief filed Wednesday, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn urged Judge Ann M. Donnelly t...
Spotify Lays Out Roadmap to Higher Margins: Here’s the Plan
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and a parade of top executives had a simple message for investors in a live-streamed presentation from New York on Wednesday (June 8): Our margins will be better. Although the company has communicated its long-term vision through quarterly earnings calls, press releases and occasional Wall Street conferences, it hasn’t gathered the investment community for a meaningful conversation since going public in 2018. “I’m not sure that journey’s very well understood,” said Ek. “And, frankly, we probably haven’t done a very good job explaining it.” Despite posting 24% revenue growth in both 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, the company’s share price is down 51.7% in 2022. As CEO, Ek’s job on Wednesday was to captain the nearly four-hour presentation communicating to investor...
The Azoff Company Launches Giant Music Record Label With First Release
Giant Music is officially in business. The label, a venture from Irving Azoff and his son Jeffrey Azoff, has launched in earnest with an announcement Wednesday (June 8) that Atlanta-based trap artist SwaVay has signed to Def Jam Recordings through Giant Music. The first song, “JUGG,” leads the act’s forthcoming project Almetha’s Son with release details to be announced soon. This partnership appears to be a one-off deal with Def Jam, and whether Giant Music will continue a relationship with Def Jam or its parent company Universal Music Group is yet to be seen. [embedded content] Giant Music is being run by Shawn Holiday, the former co-head of Columbia Records’ urban music division who also held a dual role at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where he worked with Travis Scott and Cardi B, am...
Frank Ursoleo, Longtime BMG Exec & Iconoclassic Records Founder, Dies at 65
Frank Ursoleo, a former sales and marketing executive who held numerous label and distribution positions in the BMG network of companies before becoming the president of his own company Iconoclassic Records, died unexpectedly in his Cape Cod, Mass. home on May 5. He was 65. “Frank’s passion and knowledge, developed through decades of deep listening, found its fullest expression at Iconoclassic Records,” according to a tribute from Iconoclassic Records president Jeremy Holiday, who joined the label in 2021. “Here, he reissued Laura Nyro’s mid and late career work, to bust the myth that she peaked early.” Ursoleo, who graduated from Boston College, began his music industry career working at the Strawberries music chain. According to his LinkedIn profile, Ursoleo went on to be a sales represe...
Microsoft-Made Glass Encoded With Thousands of Songs Headed to Doomsday Vault in Norway
LONDON —A Norwegian company that is planning to create a doomsday vault to preserve the world’s most important music works has partnered with Microsoft on what it calls a “paradigm-breaking” storage solution capable of holding recordings for many thousands of years. Oslo-based Elire Group teamed up with the tech giant to come up with a “proof of concept” silica glass platter that can be used as a medium for storing master-quality digital copies of music recordings, which are burnt into the glass using state-of-the-art laser optics. Elire plans to initially store the glass capsules in a dedicated space inside the Arctic World Archive, an existing underground storage facility located on a remote arctic island midway between Norway and the North Pole. Opened in 2017, the Arctic World Archive ...
Songtradr Acquires AI Metadata & Music Search Company Musicube
B2B music company Songtradr has acquired Musicube, an AI metadata and music search company that helps match music to content and a brand’s target audience. Using neural networks and proprietary AI, Musicube’s software is delivered via web widgets and an API that offers metadata at scale for labels, publishers, music supervisors and more. It also allows customers to search for tracks, playlists and artists based on audiences, moods, genres, vocal features, instruments and tempo. With the acquisition, Songtradr expands its portfolio of tech-enabled music solutions, which also include music technology and data companies Tunefind and Pretzel, both of which the company purchased last year, and Jaxsta, which Songtradr invested in back in 2020. “Musicube has approached audio analysis from an enti...
‘Patriotic’ Russian Musicians Are Cashing In on Putin-Backed Concerts
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to deep division among local musicians. While critics of the war have trouble playing shows — or are voluntarily refusing to do so — supporters of the invasion are cashing in by playing government-sponsored “patriotic” concerts. With Europe’s largest conflict since World Word II now passing 100 days, throughout April and May, dozens of concerts have been organized across Russia by local authorities to support the Russian “military operation” in Ukraine. Artists participating in those shows were paid sizable fees by local authorities. The folk rock band Pelageya collected 3 million rubles ($49,000) for participating in a patriotic music festival in Stavropol, South Russia, on May 1, and singer Denis Maidanov was paid 2.5 million rubles ($40,000) for taki...
Elon Musk Says Twitter ‘Actively Resisting’ Terms of Merger Deal, Threatens Termination
In a letter sent to Twitter Monday morning, an attorney for Elon Musk wrote that the company “is actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” in regards to a dispute over spam accounts, and threatened to terminate the deal. The letter, sent by a lawyer for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom, follows a weeks-long back and forth between Musk and the company regarding how many active users of the service are real people, as opposed to bots or spam accounts. Musk, who declined due diligence early in the process, has since requested further data from the company, and also tweeted that the deal was “on hold,” although behind the scenes work appears to have continued since then. The letter says that the company sent over information to...
JPMorgan secures DeFi partnership in Singapore as crypto giants leave for Dubai
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is partnering with JPMorgan Chase to lead a pilot program exploring the DeFi niche The move is an initiative to explore the economic potential and value-adding use cases of crypto by the central bank of Singapore The project involves creation of tokenised bonds and deposits in a liquidity pool for DeFi applications The Monetary Authority of Singapore recently announced Project Guardian, a pilot digital asset program to examine the potential of tokenisation of bonds on public blockchains. The project intends to establish a liquidity pool of tokenised bonds and deposits. Involved would be trusted financial players who will serve as trust anchors, including JP Morgan Chase & Co, DBS Bank Ltd, and digital asset venture Marketnode. Project Guardian ...
Kenyan-based energy company offers bitcoin miners reserve geothermal power
The country’s biggest energy producer is luring bitcoin miners as it seeks to be a trailblazer in the continent’s growing crypto space The company also hopes to capture the attention of top mining firms in Europe and America that could tap the massive reserves within the country Crypto mining has come under harsh criticism for the massive electricity used to generate new coins and verify blockchain transactions. The annual energy consumption in the crypto mining industry is estimated to be nearly 119 Terawatt hours. This, if quantified, exceeds the energy consumption of the Netherlands, with only about 30 other countries having a higher consumption, according to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (CBECI). KenGen, an energy producer in Kenya, has seen an opportun...
