Taylor Swift logs a third consecutive week atop the Official U.K. Albums Chart with Folklore (EMI), as Joel Corry and MNEK’s “Head & Heart” (Asylum/Perfect Havoc) locks-up a full month at No. 1 on the national singles survey. Swift’s latest set rules the current chart frame after blasting away the competition by a margin of 6,000 chart sales, according to the Official Charts Company. It’s the U.S. pop star’s fifth leader in the territory. Oxford four-piece Glass Animals score a career high with Dreamland (Polydor), new at No. 2. The LP easily eclipses the No. 23 best of their sophomore and most recent album, How to Be a Human Being, from 2016. Dreamland is the best selling vinyl title of the week. Heavy metal veterans Deep Purple enjoy a rare Top 5 appearance as Whoosh! (Ear Musi...
Taylor Swift holds onto her Australia chart crown as Folklore (Republic/Universal) holds off new releases from Luke Bryan and In Hearts Wake for a third successive week at No. 1 on the ARIA Chart. Meanwhile, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” (Atlantic/Warner) just misses out on a chart-topping bow on the national singles survey, as Jawsh 685 x Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” (Columbia/Sony) bags a sixth week at the summit. Folklore, which also rules the albums charts in the U.S. and U.K., should continue to chart high after its release on CD in Australia. It’s the only album this year to hold the ARIA No. 1 for more than two weeks. U.S. country star Luke Bryan has his third Top 10 as Born Here Live Here Die Here (Capitol/Universal) starts at No. 2, a new caree...
When Keiron Marshall was 15, he found his way out of a desperate situation with help from an unexpected source: Eric Clapton. The guitar great was host at the first gig Marshall ever went to, and he was joined on stage by Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, The Who’s Pete Townshend and Beatle Ringo Starr. Since then, London’s music scene has been a liferaft for Marshall, a musician who now runs a group of small concert venues with his wife. Growing up in south London, he’d endured racial slurs and regular beatings because of his Pakistani heritage. His uncle was killed in a racially motivated attack; his mother was a heroin addict. But the music scene they know and love may soon be unrecognizable because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has plunged the U.K. economy into its worst recession on ...
Over a Zoom video interview, Christopher “C.J.” Wallace, Jr. holds up his dad’s jersey that almost eclipses Wallace and the entire computer screen. “It’s a 5XXL,” Wallace tells Billboard. On the back of the jersey, ‘POPPA” is stitched in bright yellow letters against the hunter green fabric. The young entrepreneur was only five months old when his father, The Notorious B.I.G., was killed. Now 23, Wallace has finally done something he says he was “very scared of for the longest time”: releasing his own music, inspired by his dad’s. “I just avoided it because you don’t wanna mess up anything great,” says Wallace. Born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, Wallace has been in the process of building his own legacy with Think BIG — a social impact company that he co-founded with bu...
Crippled by venue closures, concert promoter MSG Entertainment’s fiscal fourth quarter revenue fell 96% to $9 million from $215.2 million for the same period a year earlier, according to financial results released Friday (Aug. 14). These aren’t the sort of numbers investors might have hoped for in the first full earnings report since MSGE spun off from the Madison Square Garden Company on April 20, but amid a pandemic that has shut down concerts since March perhaps there is some solace that this decline in revenue was still slightly better than the 98% drop Live Nation announced Aug. 5. Shares of MSGE dipped 4.7% to $67.99 at the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. In all, MSGE’s revenue for the full fiscal year, from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020, fell 27% to $762.9 million from $1 billio...
The manager of R. Kelly was charged Friday (Aug. 14) for allegedly making a threatening phone call to a Manhattan theater that was screening a docuseries about the sex abuse allegations against the musician. Donnell Russell, 45, was charged in two counts with threatening physical harm by interstate communication, and conspiracy to do the same, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York. The charges stem from an alleged Dec. 4, 2018 call Russell made threatening a shooting at NeueHouse, which thereby halted the screening of Surviving R. Kelly, according to authorities. Multiple victims featured in the docuseries were to attend the event. Surviving R. Kelly explores allegations that Kelly engaged in abusive sexual relationships with minor girls and adult women. He...
Harry Styles’ “Watermelon Sugar” took the top seed on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart this week to become his first No. 1 on the ranking, blasting from No. 7 the week prior. The track also charged up the Digital Song Sales chart 9-1, increasing 614% to 63,000 downloads sold in the week ending Aug. 6, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. And it rose 3-2 on Radio Songs, up 8% to 71.7 million audience impressions in the week ending Aug. 9. Explore the team of musicians, producers, engineers and more behind the track with recording credits provided by Jaxsta below. {“nid”:”9432725″,”type”:”post”,”title”:”How Harry Styles' \u2018Watermelon Sugar\u2019 Became His First No. 1 Single on the Hot 100″,...
South African business confidence recovered from a 35-year low in July, boosted by improving global economic activity, but the measure remained well-below average, over worries about the slow re-opening of the economy and soaring local infections. The post South African business confidence recovers from 35-year low appeared first on TODAY. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
Private equity firm the Yucaipa Companies have entered into a joint venture with K2 Agency, bringing renowned music agent John Jackson’s London-based booking outfit into the same company as the Yucaipa-owned Artist Group International. The partnership follows a recent announcement Yuciapa — the American firm founded in 1986 by Ronald Burkle — was partnering with Danny Wimmer Presents, North America’s largest independent festival producer. That deal came with the exchange for a minority stake in the concert promotion company. Yuicapa also operates booking agency X-Ray Touring as a joint venture with Paradigm Talent Agency and holds a minority stake in Primavera Sound and Primavera Pro. {“nid”:”8551642″,”type”:”post”,...
Spotify is backing Fortnite developer Epic Games in its new clash with Apple and the tech giant’s App Store, highlighting its own lawsuit over similar issues. After Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store on Wednesday because Epic Games had introduced a way for players to purchase its virtual “V-bucks” currency outside the payment marketplace, Epic Games filed a lawsuit that could have legal ramifications in the music industry. {“nid”:”9416468″,”type”:”post”,”title”:”Sony Takes Minority Stake in Fortnite Maker With $250 Million Investment”,”relative_path”:”\/articles\/business\/9416468\/sony-minority-stake-fortnite-maker-epic-250-million-investment\/”,”media”:{“width”:&...
In October 1988, Angie Roloff and her husband Ron opened Strictly Discs in Madison, Wisconsin, after Ron left a career in the biomedical research field to pursue his love of music full time. Nearly 31 years later, the couple made the difficult decision to shutter in-store operations due to COVID-19, roughly a week before Governor Tony Evers forced a mandatory shutdown of all non-essential businesses. Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned Evers’ stay-at-home order — ruling it “unlawful” and “unenforceable” — the Roloffs and their employees have reopened Strictly Discs in a limited capacity. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we will be speaking with Roloff regula...
Instagram last week launched a new short-video feature called Reels — capitalizing on demand in the market amid privacy concerns surrounding TikTok and a looming ban of the ByteDance-owned app — and it’s already facing troubles of its own. ReelzChannel says the feature’s name infringes on its longstanding trademark. The network, which launched in 2006, says it reaches more than 50 million homes in the U.S. The suit, which was filed Tuesday in Minnesota federal court, where the network’s parent company Hubbard Broadcasting is based, claims Reels usurps Reelz’ goodwill and is likely to confuse consumers. {“nid”:”9429589″,”type”:”post”,”title”:”Instagram Launches TikTok Competitor Reels”...