business
Brazilian Funk Powerhouse KondZilla Launches Twitch Channel With Exclusive Deal
The arrangement — which involves exclusive music, video and gaming content — follows the Twitch deal with rapper Logic earlier this week. Brazilian funk music company KondZilla, which operates one of the biggest YouTube channels in the world, has signed a partnership with Twitch to operate a channel on the streaming platform, in one of the first major deals Twitch has done with an international artist or label. Under terms of its deal, KondZilla is providing exclusive music, gaming, video and podcast content, including live remixing of video game tracks produced by DJs on Kondzilla Records, Andre Izidro, head of marketing and intelligence at KondZilla, tells Billboard. The Twitch channel will promote games, chats and feature funk music and stars from KondZilla, such as Mc Jotta...
Congress Introduces Another Bill to Save Independent Music Venues
The ENCORES Act would provide relief in the form of tax credits on ticket refunds. A new bill in the House Representatives aims to keep struggling independent music venues afloat during the ongoing pandemic. Introduced Thursday by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), the Entertainments New Credit Opportunity for Relief & Economic Sustainability (ENCORES) Act would allow venues to recoup some of the losses they have experienced from issuing ticket refunds for canceled events by providing a tax credit for 50% of the value of those refunded tickets. To qualify under the proposed legislation, venues must be in the business of promoting, producing or managing live concerts, comedy shows, sporting events and live theatrical productions and have 500 or fewer employees. They must ...
Governor Makinde tasks schools to teach agric as business to steer youths’ interest
Oyo State governor, Mr Seyi Makinde, has identified the imperativeness of tweaking the curriculum of secondary schools towards the teaching of agriculture as a business. Makinde made this call at the launch of Start Them Early Programme (STEP) in Oyo State and the inauguration of STEP Agribusiness Facility at Fasola Grammar School, Oyo, on Thursday. He noted that such teaching of agriculture as a business right from primary and secondary schools will enable people to, from young ages, possess practical entrepreneurial training and knowledge of modern agriculture practice. Speaking further, he stressed that the teaching of agribusiness, from the cradle, will help diversify the typical picture in the minds of young people of an older man or woman back bent, tilling the soil with a hoe or att...
Stakeholders advocate efficient fiscal policy for oil, gas sector
Stakeholders in the oil and gas sector have called for proactive fiscal policy in the petroleum industry to fast track investment and infrastructure development in the country. The stakeholders disclosed this at the Virtual workshop on Leveraging Fiscal Regulations to Attract Investments in the Petroleum sector, on Thursday. Mr Osten Olorunsola, Chairman, Energy Institute Nigeria, said that the oil and gas sector in Nigeria needed a lot of investment to meet with the current global challenges. He stated that globally, the industry had witnessed decline in product demand and low price regime, adding that only low cost molecules would be able to make it in the market. Olorunsola said that the sector in Nigeria needed to transform to meet with current trend as the sector was not buoyant as pe...
TikTok Establishes $200M Fund to Pay Creators
“TikTok has grown to become a source of income and opportunity for creators and their families — and we couldn’t be more encouraged by their success.” Over the past two years, short-form video app TikTok has become a gold mine for talent: Popular creators like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae have turned their accounts into full-blown careers, signing with Hollywood’s biggest agencies and raking in money from record labels to promote songs. Now, TikTok is helping more creators make money on the platform with the introduction of its $200 million Creator Fund, which will “encourage those who dream of using their voices and creativity to spark inspirational careers,” TikTok U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas wrote in a company blog pos...
Bloodshot Records Staffers Claim Co-Owner Botched Royalty Payments, Warn of Potential Sale
“Nothing is more important to me than making sure all accounting is entirely accurate,” co-founder Nan Warshaw responded in a statement to Billboard. In March 2019, Bloodshot Records co-founder Nan Warshaw announced her resignation from the Chicago-based independent country label after Bloodshot artist Lydia Loveless accused Warshaw’s partner of sexual misconduct. The plan was for co-founder Rob Miller to buy Warshaw’s 50% share in the company. But more than a year later, artists and staff members at Bloodshot, home to acts like Jason Hawk Harris and ROOKIE, say the label’s issues are far from resolved. On Monday, the entire non-ownership Bloodshot staff sent a letter to every artist on the roster, warning them that because Miller could not pay fair ...
Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: ‘We Employ a Lot of People … I Paid 10,000 People Last Year’
Steven Severin, co-owner of Neumos in Seattle, says indie clubs contribute $35 billion to the music industry and that needs to be recognized with government funding during the crisis. As co-owner of Seattle’s popular independent venue Neumos in Capitol Hill, Steven Severin has been a staple in the Seattle music industry for more than 20 years. Roughly 10 years ago, he helped create the Seattle Nightlife and Music Association to bring together the area’s live event insiders, and for the past 16 years has helped run Neumos with its sister club Barboza and the accompanying Runaway bar. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover the coronavirus pandemic and its impacts on the music industry, we will be speaking with Severin every two weeks to chronicle his experience throughou...
Annie Ross, Grammy-Winning Jazz Singer, Dies at 89
Annie Ross, the dexterous jazz singer and leading practitioner of the art of “vocalese” heard on her signature song, “Twisted,” has died. She was 89. Ross died Tuesday at her home in Manhattan of complications from emphysema and heart disease, her former manager, Jim Coleman, told The Washington Post. Ross performed with fellow vocalists Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks in the acclaimed jazz trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross from 1957 to 1962. They made dozens of instrumental classics their own and recorded several albums, starting with 1957’s Sing a Song of Basie, which employed overdubs to multiply their voices. In 1952, Ross and vocalist King Pleasure had teamed on an album for Prestige that included “Twisted,” her treatment of saxophonist Wardel...
Academy of Country Music Launches ACM:The Hub Site With Artist Chats & At-Home Performances
The site features new series “ACM Wine Down Wednesday” and “The ACM Weekly.” The Academy of Country Music has launched a new website called ACM: The Hub, which features artist conversations, at-home acoustic performances, access to artist merchandise and weekly ACM-curated playlists. ACM: The Hub was developed in response to COVID-19 freezing the concert and festival world. When the academy recognized that artists were turning to live performances via web streams to stay connected with their fans, it developed The Hub to curate artist content in one place. “The academy’s goal is to help fans and artists connect during these quarantined times [in which there are] no live shows.” said Damon Whiteside, the academy’s CEO. “We want to provide fans with a dedicated place to see t...
Spotify and Universal Music Group Ink Licensing Deal, Expanding Label’s Role as ‘Early Adopter’ of Tools
Spotify and Universal Music Group have finalized a new and expanded multi-year global licensing agreement. As part of the arrangement, announced Wednesday (July 22), the label group deepens its role as an early adopter of Spotify’s marketing tools and other tech features that both parties hope will foster more impactful connections between fans and artists in innovative ways. “With this agreement, UMG and Spotify are more aligned than ever in our commitment to ensuring the entire music ecosystem thrives and reaches new audiences around the globe,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, UMG chairman and CEO, in a statement. “Given our commitment to innovation and early adoption of music technologies, and Spotify’s leadership in the development of forward-thinking tools, our ...
Canceled Virgin Fest Sues WME, Demands Agency Return $6M Artist Deposits
Virgin Fest is suing talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment for failing to return artist deposits paid in advance of the now-canceled June 6-7 event in Los Angeles. The deposits totaled $6 million for performers Lizzo, Ellie Goulding, Kali Uchis and others to reserve their availability for the inaugural festival in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, which was scrapped in May due to the coronavirus pandemic. The contract Virgin Fest signed with WME included a force majeure provision that outlined that the money would have to be returned in the if any “act beyond the reasonable control of the producer, which makes the performance impossible, unfeasible or unsafe,” according to court documents filed Friday and reviewed by Billboard. The concert promoters say that the...
Mitch Slater, Concert Promotion Pioneer, Dies at 59
The Delsener/Slater Presents co-founder was a longtime associate of concert business consolidator Robert Sillerman. Mitch Slater, an industry pioneer who helped shape the modern concert promotion business, died on Tuesday after an extended illness. He was 59. “Our bond was as strong as it gets,” Slater’s older brother, former Capitol Records CEO Andrew Slater, tells Billboard. “When he started out in music, I said, ‘If you could be half as good in business as you are as a brother, you’ll be a great success.’ And he far exceeded that mark.” In 1988, Slater partnered with Ron Delsener to form Delsener/Slater Presents, which became one of the most successful independent concert promotion companies in the U.S. “As brilliant as Ronnie was, Mitch brought some real business acumen to it,” s...
