business
Apple Music Partners With ‘Verzuz’ to Simulcast the Battle Series & Offer On-Demand Streaming
Verzuz, the breakout live-streaming battle series co-helmed by legendary hip-hop producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, will now be available on Apple Music and Beats 1. Each battle will be simulcast live on the music streaming service for free, at the same time it streams on the Verzuz Instagram account. After the live battle, music fans will be able to relive the musical greatness by watching it on-demand via the series’ exclusive partnership with Apple Music. This Wednesday (July 22) will bring a face-off between Snoop Dogg and DMX, beginning at 5:00 p.m. PT. Before the big showdown — being billed as “the battle of the dogs” — fans can get ready by tuning in to the official Snoop Dogg and DMX Cheat Sheet playlist curated by Apple Music host Lowkey. Apple Musi...
UK Music Magazine ‘Q’ Folds After 34 Years Due to Pandemic
British music magazine Q is publishing its final issue on July 28. The beloved long-running monthly, which has been integral to U.K. rock and alternative scene, will cease publication after 34 years due to financial constraints caused by the coronavirus crisis. “We’ve been a lean operation for all of my tenure, employing a variety of ways to help keep our head above water in an extremely challenging print market,” wrote editor Ted Kessler in his final Q editor’s letter. “Covid-19 wiped all that out. I must apologise profusely for my failure to keep Q afloat.” Parent company Bauer Media listed Q for sale among several other titles in May, following a sharp decline in sales and advertising revenue during the pandemic. The publishing industry ...
Tones And I, Benee, Hayden James & More Top Yours & Owls 2021 Festival
BRISBANE — The end of the pandemic is still a long way off, but the summer festivals season is already starting to take shape Down Under. Tones And I, Benee, Cosmo’s Midnight and DMA’S lead the bill for the Yours & Owls 2021 fest, due to take place Jan. 23-24 in Stuart Park, Wollongong, about 90 minutes drive south of Sydney. Lime Cordiale, whose new album 14 Steps To A Better You, is the best-seller on Australia’s albums chart this week, is also booked for the show, alongside PNAU, Hockey Dad and many more. Yours & Owls is the festival template of the future or, more specifically, until a vaccine is widely available. With rigid quarantine restrictions placed on any visitors to these parts, international acts won’t be playing Australian stages anytime ...
Lime Cordiale Score First Australian No. 1, Juice WRLD’s ‘Legends Never Die’ Makes Big Chart Splash
Lime Cordiale land their first No. 1 in the Land Down Under, while Juice WRLD makes a big entrance with his posthumous album release Legends Never Die. Brothers Oli and Louis Leimbach, the backbone of Sydney indie-rock oufit Lime Cordiale, bow at the summit of the ARIA Albums Chart with 14 Steps To A Better You (Chugg Music/MGM), their sophomore set which contains three tracks from the 2019 Triple J Hottest 100 countdown: “Robbery” (No. 7), “Inappropriate Behavior” (No. 13) and “Money” (No. 32). Lime Cordiale’s chart effort easily beats the No. 79 peak of their debut LP Permanent Vacation, from October 2017. 14 Steps To A Better You is the tenth Australian No. 1 album on the ARIA Charts in 2020. Completing an all-Australian top two is DMA...
DJ Khaled Set for Top Debuts on U.K. Singles Chart
Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo are on track for a fourth successive U.K. chart crown with “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)”. But they’ve got a battle on their hands. The Kiwi producer and U.S. R&B artist lead the U.K. sales blast with their viral hit, which races to an early lead of 1,500 combined sales lead over Joel Corry & MNEK’s dance track “Head and Heart.” After 48 hours of the new chart week, “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” takes top spot on the Official Chart: First Look Top 20. “Head and Heart” is “catching up,” the Official Charts Company reports. If the pair can outpace the incumbent, it’ll be both artists’ first No. 1. Elsewhere, DJ Khaled is set to score the two highest new entries...
England to Allow Indoor Concerts Starting Next Month
Social distancing will be required as the country enters phase 4 of a five-stage reopening plan. Audiences who adhere to social distancing can return to indoor theaters, music and performance venues beginning Aug. 1, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Friday (July 17). The policy represents the fourth phase in the country’s five-stage reopening plan for live events. In the lead up to the August start date, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will conduct pilots of performances with socially-distanced audiences — including the London Symphony Orchestra at St. Luke’s London — using the findings there to inform final guidance for venues. The announcement notes that “audiences, performers and venues will be expected to maintain social distancing at all tim...
Universal Music Group Makes Election Day 2020 a Company Holiday
The measure sprang from a recommendation by the company’s recently-announced social justice task force. Universal Music Group is making voting easier for its U.S. employees by making Election Day 2020, Nov. 3, a paid company holiday. The company announced the news to staffers in an internal memo Friday (July 17) and obtained by Billboard. “After all, the right to vote is the very foundation of democracy — perhaps of freedom itself,” reads the memo, which notes that only 56% of eligible U.S. voters cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. “As Americans, we have fought long and hard to win the right to vote. It took 91 years after the Constitution was enacted until people of color won the right, and even then, it was only males. It took 143 years after the...
Here’s When Billboard’s New Bundle-Banning Chart Rules Will Go Into Effect
The biggest changes start in October, but as of now, no new ticket or merch bundles are being approved. Billboard has set start dates for new rule changes to its charts doing away with the controversial practice of “bundling” albums with concert tickets and merchandise to drive market share and music sales. The changes also affect instant digital sales attached to purchases for physical albums delivered at a later date. Effective immediately, Billboard will no longer approve any new album/ticket bundle offers; moving forward albums will only be counted if promoted as an à la carte add-on sale to a ticket purchase. For existing, approved offers with an album released on or before Oct. 8, 2020: Redemptions (sales) generated by offer will be accepted for duration of the tour...
Audio Engineer Kesha Lee in Atlanta, in a Pandemic: ‘I’m Getting to the Place Where I’m Wanting to Create’
Lee was planning to travel for audio engineer work when her car broke down — now, she’s collaborating with a local songwriter on her own music. Since getting her start through a chance meeting with Gucci Mane, Atlanta-based audio engineer Kesha Lee has worked on chart-toppers like Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” and Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” and is now the go-to audio engineer for rappers including Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert. She spent the past two-and-a-half years working on Uzi’s Eternal Atake album in the artist’s native Philadelphia, before it was released on March 6 — mere weeks before the near-national lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus began. As part of Billboard’s efforts to best cover ...
AEG Partners With Resorts World for New Las Vegas Theater: Exclusive
The 5,000-capacity Theatre at Resorts World Las Vegas will be used for concerts, residencies, conventions and sporting events. While all the world’s stages have been dark now for more than four months as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Las Vegas is plotting a course for the future. Come summer 2021, the city will welcome The Theatre at Resorts World Las Vegas, the first new-from-the-ground-up casino-resort in more than a decade. The Theatre is a joint development between Resorts World Las Vegas and AEG Presents — exclusively programmed and operated by Concerts West, a division of AEG Presents. Scott Sibella, president of Resorts World Las Vegas, and John Meglen, president and co-CEO of Concerts West, tell Billboard in an exclusive interview that The Theatre and its programming ...
Atlantic Records Launches Cross-Roster Voter Registration Initiative With HeadCount: Exclusive
“With the 2020 election shaping up to be the most consequential of our lifetime, it’s crucial,” says ATLVotes co-chair Jack Hedges. In January, a group of Atlantic Records employees including Canvasback label imprint vp of marketing Jack Hedges formed a company task force to develop a plan for utilizing Atlantic’s star-studded artist roster, which includes the likes of Cardi B, Ed Sheeran and Meek Mill, to encourage voter registration. A global pandemic later, “You can imagine, the ideas and plans we were formulating were very different from where we are now,” Hedges tells Billboard. But the goal — to inspire more young people to vote in both local and presidential elections — is as urgent as ever. That’s why today (July 16), Atlantic Re...
Live Nation Shares Bounce on Encouraging Vaccine Trial
Stocks of out-of-home entertainment companies got a boost from biotech company Moderna’s announcement on Tuesday. As markets reacted enthusiastically to a promising coronavirus vaccine trial, shares of concert promoter Live Nation leaped 12.2% to $52.09 on Wednesday (July 15) before closing at $51.84, up 11.7%. On Tuesday, biotech company Moderna published the results of an initial study for a coronavirus vaccine called mRNA-1273. The vaccine “elicits a robust immune response” in all trial participants, said chief medical officer Tal Zaks in a statement, and will enter the next phase — with approximately 30,000 participants — later this month. Jumps in other entertainment companies’ stocks reflect how desperate investors were for good news about markets brought to a...
