business
Roblox Raises $520M From Warner Music Group and Others
Warner Music Group has been focused on growing its footprint in gaming for some time. “Ultimately, everything is going toward gaming, and we want to make sure we’re capturing value within it. It’s the future of entertainment,” Oana Ruxandra, Warner Music Group’s chief digital officer, told Billboard last September. The music industry has certainly been flocking toward gaming platforms over the past year, with Travis Scott pulling in 27.7 million participants during his Fortnite in-game performance last April, kicking off a wave of artists looking to set up virtual concerts on similar platforms. Roblox launched its first virtual concert in November, with a virtual concert by Lil Nas X that racked up 33 million views. “COVID has supercharged the demand for 2D and 3D live streaming even...
Grammys’ Rescheduled Date Conflicts With Screen Actors Guild Awards
“We announced the same date for the SAG Awards last July with the intent to give the greatest possible scheduling consideration for other awards shows. We expect the same consideration from sister organizations throughout the industry.” This is the second year in a row that there was a scheduling conflict involving these two shows. Last year, the 26th Annual SAG Awards were originally scheduled for Jan. 26, 2020. But when the Grammy Awards were announced for the same date, SAG-AFTRA moved the SAG Awards a week up, to Jan. 19. Last year’s scheduling conflict was of course pre-COVID-19. This year’s conflict is a direct result of the chaos that the pandemic has caused in every aspect of American life, including a logjam of award shows. Yesterday, the Recording Academy was gearing up to announ...
Sokoto border communities warned against aiding smuggling
Border communities in Sokoto State have been warned against aiding the smuggling of illicit items into the country. The Area Comptroller of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Abdulhamid Ma’aji, gave the warning at Illela during a sensitisation meeting held Tuesday with youths and community leaders at Illela town, a border community in the northern state. The border post was among four major international borders announced for reopening by the Federal Government in late December 2020. Ma’aji, while officially reopening the border’s gate, described the event as a remarkable day, urging the people to observe all the guidelines layout by the Ibrahin l Government. According to him, ‘now that these borders have been reopened, I want you to note that those illicit items that have been prohibited rema...
Neil Young Sells 50% of Song Catalog to Hipgnosis
“I built Hipgnosis to be a company Neil would want to be a part of,” Mercuriadis said in a statement. “We have a common integrity, ethos and passion born out of a belief in music and these important songs… This is a deal that changes Hipgnosis forever and it’s a dream to welcome Neil, Frank, Bonnie and the team to the Hipgnosis family.” Young had been managed for decades by Elliot Roberts, who passed away last year. His affairs are now handled by Frank Gironda, an associate of Roberts who was mentioned in the announcement, as was Bonnie Levitan, another member of Young’s management team. Young, 75, has been releasing projects from his archives for the past few years, and in 2020 he put out two such sets, plus a 10-CD box set, Archives Volume II: 1972-1976. The terms of this deal were...
Alibaba Group To Shutter China’s Xiami Music Service
Xiami is one of the smaller digital music services in China. While user numbers are not publicly available, Xiami’s music penetration was less than 2% in 2019, with about five million Monthly Active Users in mainland China, according to local Chinese reports. The country’s biggest streaming platforms are QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing, all owned by tech giant Tencent Music Entertainment Group. Collectively those four services have more than 800 million users, says Tencent. Tencent’s biggest competitor is NetEase Cloud Music, operated by Chinese internet company NetEase, which claims to have more than 600 million registered users. Xiami and NetEase Cloud Music cut a deal in 2018 for the streaming services to share libraries and grow their respective repertoires — a move seen a...
World Bank predicts 4% global economic growth, 1.1% for Nigeria in 2021
ABS-CBN The World Bank says global economy is expected to grow by 4 per cent in 2021, assuming an initial COVID-19 vaccine rollout becomes widespread throughout the year. It said this in a statement issued in Washington D.C. on Tuesday at the presentation of the January 2021 Global Economic Prospects. It added that the said recovery would likely be subdued unless policy makers moved decisively to tame the pandemic and implement investment-enhancing reforms. The bank also said that growth in Sub-Saharan Africa was forecast to rebound moderately to 2.7 per cent in 2021, while Nigeria’s growth was expected to resume at 1.1 per cent. For the region, it said that while the recovery in private consumption and investment was forecast to be slower than previously envisioned, export growth was expe...
Pep Guardiola confident Kevin de Bruyne will commit future to Manchester City
Pep Guardiola expects Kevin De Bruyne to commit his long-term future to Manchester City despite reports the Belgium midfielder’s contract talks have stalled. De Bruyne’s current contract runs until 2023, but City have already offered him a new deal. That contract extension remains unsigned amid claims De Bruyne was “disappointed” City’s offer did not significantly improve his reported salary of £280,000 ($380,000) per week. De Bruyne, voted the PFA Player of the Year last season, is said to want a deal that reflects his status as one of the world’s best midfielders and vice-captain of the club. Despite those issues, City boss Guardiola remains confident De Bruyne’s future will be at the Etihad Stadium. “I am pretty sure he will stay but at the same time we have to respect the process,” Gua...
Alexander Wang responds to sexual assault claims
Fashion designer Alexander Wang is facing accusations of sexual assault, prompted by claims from Owen Mooney, a male model who, in early December, shared an encounter on TikTok that he’d had with Wang in 2017 at a nightclub. In the video, Mooney said: “I was by myself at one point, and this guy next to me obviously took advantage of the fact that no one could fucking move, and he just started touching me up, like, fully up to my leg, in my crotch. And then I looked to my left to see who it was, and it was a really famous fashion designer, and I just couldn’t believe that he was doing that to me.” Though Mooney initially did not disclose a name, in a subsequent post he revealed the person to be Wang. Soon after, eight men and trans women also shared stories of lewd behavior by Wang, accordi...
Taylor Swift’s ‘Evermore’ Set For Return to U.K. No. 1
Styles, meanwhile, could earn a new chart high with Fine Line (Columbia), up 10-2 on the sales blast. The former One Direction singer’s sophomore album is enjoying a boost thanks to the release of “Treat People With Kindness,” the video for which features Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. At the midway point in the chart cycle, the top five is rounded out by titles from Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia via Warner Records), Little Mix (Confetti via RCA) and Queen’s Greatest Hits (Virgin) juggernaut, which has logged 276 weeks on the chart and is recognized as the U.K.’s best-selling album of all time. The late British-born hip-hop artist MF Doom could enter the Top 40 for the first time with his 2004 album Madvillainy with Madlib (Stones Throw), which currently sit at No. 30. Doom (re...
The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ Rules U.K.’s 2020 Year-End Chart
The Canadian artist was aggrieved to have been overlooked from the shortlist for the 2021 Grammy Awards, but he’s clearly embraced by music fans on the other side of the Atlantic (nominations for the 2021 Brit Awards, set to take place on May 11, have yet to be announced). Another artist who’s warmly received in the U.K. is Tones And I, the Australian singer and songwriter whose 2019 hit “Dance Monkey” swung in at No. 2 on The Official Top 40 biggest songs of 2020. Tones (real name Toni Watson) ruled the chart for 11 weeks with “Dance Monkey,” setting a new record for a solo female artist. The one-time busker’s viral hit was also the No. 2 most-streamed song of the year, behind only “Blinding Lights,” the OCC reports, and the fifth-ranked digital download. SAINt JHN’s “Roses” comes in at N...
Craig David Recognized In Queen’s New Year Honours List
The 39-year-old singer is one of Britain’s most successful male solo artists of the millennium, with 23 U.K. top 40 singles, including two No. 1s (“Fill Me In” and “7 Days”), and a pair of No. 1 albums. In the U.S., David has twice cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard 200 and he has landed three songs on the Hot 100 chart, including a career-best No. 10 with “7 Days”. Among his career trophies are three Ivor Novello Awards and a brace of MTV Europe Music Awards. Meanwhile, Lester is made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), a British order of chivalry rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organizations, and public service outside the civil service. Based in London, the JEM Artists founder and CEO receives the ...
UMG Beefs Up Leadership in Africa, Promoting Sipho Dlamini to CEO Role
All three executives will work closely with UMG’s French-speaking operations principally in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon, which are overseen by Franck Kacou, directeur général, Universal Music Africa. The strengthening of its Africa leadership team is the latest move in Universal’s big bet on the continent. With an emphasis on A&R, UMG has been aggressively expanding its operations in Africa. Rather than licensing or distributing existing indie labels, Universal has invested in building lasting local infrastructure, including establishing divisions in Nigeria and South Africa, such as Def Jam Africa, which is focused around hip-hop, Afrobeats and trap. In 2018, UMG became the first major label to license its catalog to Boomplay, Africa’s largest local streaming platform. (In Sub...
