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Ariana Grande Is Taking Over ‘Fortnite’ This Weekend: Inside The Rift Tour
Over the past several years, the music industry has opened its eyes to gaming as a new way to connect with fans and drive revenue. In-game performances offer multiple revenue streams to artists, from up-front payments to virtual goods and a streaming spike for the artist’s music that tends to follow an in-game show. Compared to “Astronomical,” Grande’s performance is less visually chaotic, with fewer scene changes, and has an expanded focus on the player experience. In Grande’s world — which looks like if the Lisa Frank brand were an entire planet — players aren’t just watching the show, but actively participating in it, a key element that will be part of future experiences, according to Phil Rampulla, head of brand at Epic Games, Fortnite‘s parent company. “You’ll ...
Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Appeals Underway for Denied Applicants
Since appeal notices began rolling out Monday, 494 invitations have been accepted so far. Those entities will need to review the SVOG Eligibility Matrix to see where they believe errors were made on the behalf of an SBA reviewer. The SBA has not provided specific reasons why each entity was declined, leaving the guesswork up to the companies. “There is a balancing act we have to do. The level of specificity slows things down,” The SBA’s senior advisor for COVID-19 programs Deidra Henry-Spires told Billboard at the end of July. “There are conversations we can have after we’ve seen the whole unit of declines once we’ve gotten through [all the applications that came in the first 60 days]. But often in grant programs, you don’t...
Major Labels Hit Charter Communications With Second Copyright Suit
“Charter has insisted on doing nothing — despite receiving thousands of notices that detailed the illegal activity of its subscribers, despite its clear legal obligation to address the widespread, illegal downloading of copyrighted works on its Internet services, and despite being sued previously by Plaintiffs for similar conduct,” the complaint maintains. The new lawsuit says the labels continued to “monitor and detect infringement” occurring on Charter’s network during the current claim period and sent over 150,000 additional notices identifying the illegal download, copying and distribution of their copyrighted music through BitTorrent and other digital file-sharing services. The notices allegedly flagged the unique IP addresses of what the labels claim are “tens of thousands” of ...
Can Festivals Really Come Back? What’s Next After Lollapalooza
Since it became clear that Lollapalooza would be the first major multigenre U.S. festival since the start of the pandemic, promoters hoped it would kick off a shortened but vital festival season, with Bonnaroo, Governors Ball and Firefly scheduled to follow in September. But circumstances have changed as another wave of COVID-19 cases spreads — along with fears that festivals could become super-spreader events. In Chicago, one source tells Billboard that, as Lollapalooza approached, promoters grew nervous that public health officials would impose limits on the event’s capacity. Live Nation and rival AEG have already worked out a compromise with the major talent agencies in case other festivals are forced to cancel. If that happens 30 to 60 days before the event, the promoter only has to pa...
UK Live Industry Gets Long-Demanded Government-Backed COVID Insurance
The government says it is one of the only insurance schemes in the world to cover such a wide array of live events and not put a cap on costs claimed per event. Denis Desmond, chairman of Live Nation U.K. and Ireland, says the government-backed protection is a vital intervention that “offers certainty to artists, concert and festival promoters in the live entertainment market.” “While the new scheme won’t cover all our risk, this intervention will help protect the industry that we all know and love,” says Phil Bowdery, chairman of the Concert Promoters Association. The program follows the establishment of similar government-backed insurance schemes in a number of other European markets, including Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Denmark. They provide a much-needed safety net...
5 Things Warner Music Group’s Earnings Say About the Industry’s Future
“There are tens of thousands of tracks that are uploaded every day to streaming services around the world,” said Cooper. A label such as Warner, he said, helps artists “separate their music and their careers from literally all of this noise.” As for Warner’s finances, looking at trailing 12-month revenue, which removes the effect of any one quarter, Warner improved by 13.2%. Physical sales returned to normalcy, climbing from $51 million in a pandemic-stricken quarter a year earlier to $130 million; the quarter included Record Store Day on June 12, which led to record one-week vinyl sales in the U.S., according to MRC Data (next quarter’s earnings will benefit from the July 22 Record Store Day, the second-highest ever). Growth in streaming revenue was adequate at 22.5% for recorded mu...
UK Artists Granted Visa-Free Touring in 19 EU Countries in Post-Brexit Agreements
The coronavirus pandemic and accompanying shutdown of the live music industry have masked many of the problems created by Brexit for the live-music sector. And fears have lingered about extra customs checks and performers and crews requiring visa and work permits for when European touring does resume. According to a survey conducted by the Musicians’ Union and Incorporated Society of Musicians in April and May, 77% of U.K. musicians expected their earnings in Europe to decrease when touring resumes due to additional Brexit-related red tape and touring costs. In January, over 100 acts, including Elton John, Ed Sheeran and Radiohead, signed an open letter to the British government saying it had “shamefully failed” them with the EU trade deal that was finalized on Dec. 24 by not s...
My First Show Back: Mitch Blackman on Reopening Las Vegas With Blackbear
“To see people without masks inside — gambling, clubbing with the bottle service — it was like, ‘Alright. We’re back.'” For the first time in 15 months, live music is returning nationwide after the global coronavirus pandemic ravaged the industry. Billboard’s “My First Show Back” is a series dedicated to sharing stories from throughout the touring ecosystem about what’s happening now, what has been forever altered and what will never change. In this installment, ICM Partners’ Mitch Blackman talks about his client Blackbear performing at the grand opening of the new Money, Baby! club at the Virgin Hotel in Las Vegas on July 9, which fell on the first week of major events returning to Sin City. In addition, Blackman details his strategy for ...
Sylvan Esso Teams With Secretly For Psychic Hotline Label
Though the label has quietly released music since 2018 from artists in and around the group’s North Carolina community, Psychic Hotline now has a distribution partner in Secretly Distribution, part of the Secretly Group, and a vision for expansion that involves artist-centric deals. “We’ve always been really lucky to have a management that has negotiated really aggressive, very artist-centric deals for us, which I think is one of the reasons why our experience with labels has been relatively less painful,” Meath says. Those artist-friendly negotiations involved securing short-term deals with labels, which is why, for example, the band already fully owns its 2014 self-titled debut album. Meath and Sanborn plan on offering similar short-term, flexible deals to artists who sign with them. “We...
KAABOO Texas Principals Sued by Dallas Millionaire at Center of Sexual Assault Scandal
KAABOO Texas is the third event in the KAABOO series — the original KAABOO was launched in 2015 in Del Mar, California, and an offshoot event was held on the Cayman Islands in February 2019. The Del Mar festival was sold at the end of 2019 to Virgin Produced and has been postponed the last two years due to COVID-19. While the future of the Cayman Islands event is unclear, KAABOO Texas’ losses make a return unlikely. “In addition to the negligible attendance, KAABOO Texas grossly underestimated its financial losses in its first and only year by $8 million, vastly eclipsing the original investment projections for the initial three-year period,” Stuhlman wrote. An investor update obtained last year by Billboard showed that the event lost a total of $19 million in its f...
Bob Dylan Beats Lawsuit Over $300M Catalog Sale
New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager sides with Dylan. “For the reasons explained here, the Court determines that the plain meaning of the 1975 Agreement is that the Dylan Defendants owned all copyrights to the Compositions, as well as the absolute right to sell the Compositions and all associated rights, subject only to plaintiffs’ right to receive the compensation specified in the 1975 Agreement, which does not include any portion of the proceeds from Dylan’s sale of his own rights to the Universal Defendants,” he writes. Ostrager looks at how Levy attempted to establish joint authorship in the compositions, including witnesses to the relationship between the songwriters and affidavits from experts, but ultimately the judge sees the contract as unambiguous and precluding such a ...
Primary Wave Quietly Amasses Largest Individual Share in Prince’s Estate
New York-based Primary Wave has been acquiring expectancy interests in the Prince estate piecemeal for the last 17 months from three of his six heirs. However, the situation is complicated because the estate remains in probate administered through Comerica Bank & Trust and none of the heirs have received any distribution of assets. Sources say the probate issues could be resolved as early as the end of the year. According to documents filed July 20 in Minnesota’s Carver County district court, in March 2020 “the protocols” surrounding the estate were amended after Primary Wave purchased a portion of Prince sibling Tyka Nelson’s expectancy interest. Subsequently, an April 2021 order confirmed Primary Wave’s acquisition of 100% of the expectancy interest of Nelson’s late half brothe...
