business
Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Set For Big Opening Sales Week In U.K.
TayTay is blowing away her rivals in the U.K. chart race. Taylor Swift’s surprise album release Folklore (EMI) has raced to the lead of the midweek chart, and is outperforming the rest of the Top 5 combined, the Official Charts Company reports. Swift’s eighth and latest album was the most downloaded and streamed LP over the weekend, according to the OCC, and is on track to become the pop star’s fifth U.K. No. 1 following Red (2012), 1989 (2014), Reputation (2017) and Lover (2019). As previously reported, three songs from the new set are tracking for Top 10 debuts on the Official U.K. Singles Chart, led by “Cardigan” at No. 4 (“Exile” with Bon Iver is at No. 7 on the Official Chart Update and “The 1” starts at No. 9). Folklore should enjoy another chart punch in months to come when it’...
Juice WRLD’s ‘Legends Never Die’ Rises to No. 1 In Australia
Juice WRLD’s posthumous album Legends Never Die (Interscope/Universal) climbs to the chart summit in Australia, as Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” (Columbia/Sony) enters a fourth consecutive week atop the national singles survey. Legends Never Die, which has ruled the albums chart on both sides of the Atlantic, now completes the job in Australia where it rises 3-1 in its second week. It’s the second posthumous hip-hop LP to top the survey in three weeks, following the No. 1 entry of Pop Smoke’s Universal set Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon (it improves 4-3 on the current frame). Lighting up the Australian tally is Gaslighter (Columbia/Sony), The Chicks’ first album release in 14 years. The American country trio (formerly The Dix...
Taylor Swift Set to Land Three ‘Folklore’ Tracks In U.K. Top 10
Taylor Swift’s isolation album Folklore is ready for a chart party in the U.K. No less than three songs from it are on track for Top 10 debuts on the Official U.K. Singles Chart, based on early sales and streaming activity. The single “Cardigan” (EMI), which was accompanied with an official music video, is on target to snare the week’s highest new entry. It’s at No. 4 on the Official Chart First Look, based on 48 hours of data. Also, Swift’s “The 1” is at No. 5 and “Exile,” her duet with Bon Iver, is at No. 7. If all three hold inside the Top 10, it would lift the pop star’s tally of U.K. Top 10s to 16. Taylor’s eighth studio album arrived with just 24 hours’ notice, and judging by the reaction from fans and critics, it couldn’t have come soon enough. Folklore has sold over 1.3...
Ellie Goulding’s ‘Brightest Blue’ Bows at No. 1 In U.K.
Ellie Goulding bags her third U.K. No. 1 album with Brightest Blue (Polydor), while “Head & Heart” skips past “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” to give Joel Corry and MNEK their first leader on the national singles chart. Goulding’s collab-stacked new album bows at the summit of the Official U.K. Albums Chart, eclipsing the No. 3 peak of its processor, Delirium from 2015, and equaling the feats of her debut Lights from 2010 and its followup Halcyon from 2014. Brightest Blue features a collaboration with the late rapper Juice WRLD, whose posthumous album Legends Never Die (Interscope), slips 1-2 on the current tally, while Bob Dylan’s former leader Rough And Rowdy Ways (Columbia) bounces 16-4 following its release on vinyl. The Chicks complete their comeback with a top...
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...
