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Spotify Stock Price Hits New All-Time High
What recession? The leader in the fast-growing music streaming market, Spotify reached an all-time high of $354.60 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, and closed at $353.48, up 7% from Thursday’s closing price and up 12.2% for the week. At Friday’s high, Spotify’s enterprise value rose to roughly $66.1 billion. Why the investor enthusiasm? An obvious factor is Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich’s price target hike from $357 to $428 on Wednesday. But a number of factors have had investors excited about the stock over the past year: It is the leader in music streaming and is aggressively expanding its podcast business, most notably with the strong — although controversial — launch for the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Plus, limited pricing experiment...
Gibson Acquires Iconic Amp Manufacturer Mesa/Boogie
Under the terms of the acquisition, Smith will join Gibson as master designer and “pioneer of Mesa/Boogie.” “At Gibson we are all about leveraging our iconic past and leaning into the innovative future, a quest that started over 100 years ago with our founder Orville Gibson,” said Gibson Brands president and CEO James “JC” Curleigh. “Today this quest continues with the addition of Mesa Boogie into the Gibson Brands family, along with the visionary leadership of Randy Smith and his Team who, for the past 50 years, have created an iconic and innovative brand that has stood the test of time. This is a perfect partnership based on our collective professional experiences and passion for sound.” “I’m 75 years-old and still at work every day,&...
Harry Styles’ ‘Fine Line’ Leads 2020’s Record-Breaking Year for Vinyl Album Sales in U.S.
Strikingly, overall album sales, across all formats (CD, digital album, vinyl LP, cassettes, etc.) had their smallest yearly decrease since 2015. In 2020, total album sales fell just 9.2% to 102.4 million – the first time yearly sales dropped by less than 10% since 2015, when volume fell by just 6% (aided by huge sales for Adele’s 25 album). Overall album sales have been falling steadily since 2012, as consumers increasingly turn to streaming services to enjoy music. Vinyl LP sales accounted for over a quarter of all album sales in 2020: 26.9% (27.54 million of 102.4 million). Notably, vinyl LP sales comprised a robust 40.5% of all physical albums sold in the U.S. in 2020 (27.54 million of 68.01 million). Both sums represent MRC Data-era records for vinyl’s share of the album sales market....
Barry Gibb Returns With Country Collection ‘Greenfields’ Featuring Dolly Parton, Keith Urban & More: Listen
The new collection spans a dozen classic songs, including “I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You,” “Jive Talkin,’’” How Deep Is Your Love,” and “To Love Somebody”. Isbell sings on “Words of a Fool”. Gibb, he enthuses, “is one of the greatest songwriters and singers in popular music history, and I’m happy to say he still has that beautiful voice and that magical sense of melody. Working with him on this project has been one of the great honors of my career. He’s a prince.” Gibb, along with his late brothers Maurice and Robin, is a bona fide member of music royalty, with an enormous armory of silverware including eight Grammys, the Grammy Legend Award and, most recently, the 2015 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Also, he’s a recipient of the AMAs Lifetime Achievement Award, the BMI Icon Awa...
DaBaby Arrested In Beverly Hills For Alleged Firearm Possession
Rapper DaBaby was arrested in Beverly Hills Thursday after he allegedly carried a concealed weapon into a store, police said. DaBaby, whose real name is Jonathan Kirk, was walking on Rodeo Drive with a group of men when security called police, claiming that someone from the group had a “weapon in his waistband” while in a store, according to the Beverly Hills Police Department. The group was detained around 4:45 p.m. when they returned to their vehicle. After police investigated, the 29-year-old rapper, known for hits like “Suge” and “Rockstar,” was arrested on charges of carrying a concealed weapon and carrying a loaded firearm in a vehicle. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. I...
Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Good Kid, M.A.A.D City’ Returns to Top 10 on Album Sales Chart After Eight Years
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The Album Sales chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Pure album sales were the measurement solely utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram. Good Kid has sold particularly well in recent weeks on vinyl at independent record stores, as well as Target and Walmar...
Miley Cyrus Pays Tribute to Her Pooch With ‘Mary Jane 5EVR’: Listen
“A lot has changed over time. Mostly me,” she writes about the song’s origins. “Music is my medicine. This song revolves around loss & heartache. Which I am currently experiencing after Mary Jane’s passing. MJ was a true queen. She wore her grace, dignity & kindness like a crown. She will never be forgotten and will forever be missed. To know her is to love her. It has been my honor being her mom and best friend.” The “Midnight Sky” singer announced Mary Jane’s death, aged 10, on social media earlier in the week. “Our connection was purely DIVINE. An incomparable love,” she wrote at the time. Cyrus gets close to her pets, and isn’t afraid to tell the world. Her collaborative 2015 album with The Flaming Lips, Miley Cy...
Lil Baby’s ‘My Turn’ Is MRC Data’s Top Album of 2020, Roddy Ricch’s ‘The Box’ Most-Streamed Song
MRC Data’s 2020 tracking year ran from Jan. 3, 2020, through Dec. 31, 2020. Equivalent album units — for album titles and chart rankings cited below — comprise traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album, or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. 2020 was the first year on-demand video streams factored into album title totals and chart rankings. For the sake of clarity, equivalent album units do not include listening to music on broadcast radio or digital radio broadcasts. All numbers cited in this sto...
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...
Jamiroquai Is Trending For Reasons You Just Couldn’t Make Up
Everyone needs a laugh right now, and the striking Trumpite became the butt of many jokes as Twitter users compared him to late-90s and 2000s-era Jay Kay, known to millions as the “cat in the hat” and singer for Jamiroquai. The real Jamiroquai returned in 2017 with Automaton, the dance act’s first album in seven years. Over their career, the band has snagged nine Top 10 singles in the U.K., with a No. 1 for 1998’s “Deeper Underground.” Four of their albums have hit the U.K. chart summit, and five titles have impacted the Billboard 200 chart. There’s been no confirmed sighting of Jamiroquai for some time. The other guy in D.C., well, he shouldn’t prove difficult to find. Check out some of the memes below. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates ...
Demi Lovato Weighs In on Washington Siege: ‘I’m Angry, Embarrassed and Ashamed’
Like millions of Americans watching on at home, Demi Lovato was horrified by images of the siege on the Capitol. And like many others who vented their frustrations on social media, the pop star wants the nightmare to end, now. Turning to Twitter, Lovato joined the chorus of calls for president Trump’s impeachment, and vowed to convert her misery into new music. “My heart is broken,” she writes on Twitter. “It makes me to sad to believe how naive I was to think this couldn’t possibly happen, and yet it did. Here we are. For everyone in my comments saying “where’s d7” or wanting me to sing instead of speaking up about what needs to change in this country…” You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins wit...
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...
