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Shuttered Venue Operator Grant Applications Expected to Relaunch Next Week
The SBA said the vendors for the portal, which launched and quickly closed on April 8, have fixed the root cause of the technical difficulties but discovered additional issues while testing the site. The newly identified issues are being addressed now before the portal reopens later next week. Independent venues, promoters and producers have been waiting to apply for the more than $16 billion in funds since the bill passed at the end of December, but the SBA was tasked with creating the program from scratch and has taken nearly four months to open the application process. When the administration announced the opening date for the grant applications, they assured venues that funds would be awarded later in April. The SBA has not commented on whether or not th...
LA’s Staples Center Reopening: Behind the Pandemic Safety Precautions
Staples Center is California’s first professional indoor sports arena to reopen to the public — Orange County’s Honda Center opens Friday with an Anaheim Ducks game, followed next week with San Francisco’s Chase Center and Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center. The Staples Center reopening is being done under guidelines from the state and the Los Angeles County health department, Zeidman says. Attendees will be required to wear a mask while inside the Staples Center and must show proof of vaccination (which can be a picture of their vaccine card) or a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of tip off. Fans will also be asked to maintain social distancing and seats will be organized in socially distanced pods. Fans will be not be permitted to eat on the concourse, ...
The Deals: Def Jam Strikes JV With Poo Bear; Deadmau5 Cosigns New Gaming Startup
“I’m extremely grateful for Bearthday Music to have partnered with Def Jam and Universal,” added Poo Bear. “This is truly a dream manifesting to have the support of Def Jam, and their belief not only in me but in the artists I believe in. I’m looking forward to what’s to come from this new promising venture. Thank you to Lucian Grange, Jeff Harleston and Naim McNair for this opportunity. HBD!!!!” In addition to the aforementioned artists, Poo Bear has worked with J Balvin, DJ Khaled, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran, among many others. He boasts nearly 300 songwriting and production credits with sales of over 350 million records worldwide. Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) and Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) along with music industry visionaries Ben Turner, Dean Wilson and Ind...
Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei’s 2020 Pay Rises to $47.1 Million
The bulk of his overall compensation last year continued to come from option awards, stock awards and a non-equity incentive plan. Maffei’s 2019 compensation had jumped thanks to a new employment contract that boosted his option awards from $8.8 million to $27.8 million. His option awards dipped to $24.98 million in 2020. Liberty Media in its regulatory filing also disclosed the annual pay for chairman Malone, which amounted to $1.09 million. He had made $1.4 million in 2019, $1.1 million in 2018, $797,082 in 2017 and $747,156 in 2016. Liberty recently reported 2020 revenue of $9.4 billion, down from $10.3 billion, and a loss of $1.4 billion, compared with 2019 earnings of $106 million. Maffei recently suggested that streaming giant Amazon would drive an accelerated push by Big Tech ...
Reservoir Leading Music Publishing Funds Onto the US Stock Market
Ross CH Acquisition II is bringing $115 million to Reservoir’s public offering as part of the deal. Some institutional investors including Caledonia have been lined up as anchor shareholders, which will bring in $150 million in gross proceeds. In the end, after investment banking, legal fees and other expenses, Reservoir will be left with $246 million in gross proceeds from the transaction. The company’s current shareholders, including the Khosrowshahi family, will roll over all their Reservoir equity into the new company, giving it an enterprise value of $788 million. That means that the Reservoir shareholders will likely have a lock-up period — maybe 180 days — before they can cash in any of their shares. In the meantime, the company has an implied pro-forma equity value of $...
What Spotify Ratifying Ringer & Gimlet Unions Means for Music’s Labor Movement
“This is not just a significant victory, it’s also an innovative victory,” Bronfenbrenner says. “There’s language that prioritizes those that needed it the most. They’re fighting for the lowest-paid workers, workers of color and LGBTQ workers.” In recent years, unions have struggled to gain traction at Big Tech companies: Amazon warehouse workers lost an election Friday (April 9) to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; Google workers formed the Alphabet Union in January, but it has only 700 members in a company of 130,000 employees. And although music workers aren’t specifically impacted by the Spotify ratifications, the streaming service’s action is the latest in recent small but positive signs for labor movements after indie rec...
Executive Turntable: Kardinal Offishall to Helm A&R at Universal Music Canada
In his new role, Kardinal will continue to discover, sign and develop artists, forge new creative partnerships and provide strategic direction to drive the international success and cultural prominence of UMC’s artist roster. He will work closely with UMC’s urban marketing team while continuing his roles as chair of UMC’s B.L.A.C.K. Coalition (BLC) and Canada’s representative on UMG’s Task Force for Meaningful Change. Republic Records promoted Xiarra-Diamond Nimrod to vp of marketing strategy. In her new role, she will continue to oversee marketing, rollout and release strategy for multiplatinum chart-topping rap artists such as Pop Smoke, Metro Boomin and Jacquees. “We’ve been lucky to have a front row seat to Xiarra’s evolution into a world-class marketing executive,” said Republic’...
Ozuna Joins Gaming Company XSET in ‘Match Made in Heaven’
“This is something that we’ve been looking to do for a while,” says Edgar Andino, Ozuna’s manager. “We’ve been looking at what gaming has been doing for artists, the masses and the unique engagement within the gaming community. We understand that this is the future. We realized this could be an interesting opportunity for not only gaming but also fashion and music.” In the upcoming months, Ozuna’s now-iconic teddy bear logo will be incorporated on the professional jerseys worn during XSET’s competitive games. “That’ll be a first for a team to have a musical logo presence,” says Selkoe. Future initiatives include an NFT dropping mid-May, and gaming will play a major role at Ozuna’s Cancun Fest scheduled for Nov. 4-8. &#...
IMPALA Unveils Sustainability Program for Europe’s Independent Music Sector
One specific initiative under the program will be the development of the first carbon-accounting tool specific to recorded music, covering both the supply chain and label activities. Collective offset investment options for IMPALA members will also be considered. Last month, IMPALA made one of its first strides in meeting the climate charter’s targets by asking streaming services to help assess and reduce the carbon footprint of digital music, which was unveiled as part of a comprehensive ten-step streaming plan. Among other things, the plan asks DSPs to help reduce artists’ reliance on touring by creating “new initiatives and products” to increase their earnings in the streaming space. In addition to Weidenmüller, the task force which developed the sustainability package includes Ali...
This Consultant Wanted Countries to Invest in Music. So He Took His Case to the U.N.
Shapiro was especially perplexed by the absence of music in discussions around the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 intertwined objectives to tackle such systemic issues as poverty, gender inequality, climate change and lack of access to quality education included in the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (adopted by all U.N. member states in 2015). “In most countries, governments choose how they’re going to spend money based on SDG targets and indicators,” says Shapiro. “So the way to get music projects embedded into government policy is to embed it into SDG policy.” Unfortunately, he found there was “no framework to engage with music” at the U.N. Shapiro’s first significant stab at rectifying the i...
Danny Wimmer Presents Launches BrandMark, With Maureen Valker-Barlow at Helm
Danny Wimmer Presents has spun off its sponsorship and branding department into BrandMark Agency, a wholly owned standalone business run by DWP’s evp Maureen Valker-Barlow who will now serve as president of BrandMark. Valker-Barlow joined DWP in 2019 after holding various sales roles at record labels and at agencies with clients that include Anheuser-Busch, BMG, Bushmills Irish Whiskey, Cantu Beauty, Jack Daniel’s, KAMP (K-Pop Festival), Kona Brewing Co., Manic Panic, Proof Media Mix, Rockstar Energy Drink, Shelter Music Group and Zenni Optics, among others. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by cha...
Republic Records Forms New Arab Music-Focused Label With The Weeknd Manager Sal Slaiby
Slaiby, who has been pushing on other fronts to boost the profile of Middle Eastern music, founded the new label and will serve as CEO. “It’s been my dream to highlight the talent and culture of Arabic music on a global level with partners that I trust and admire,” he said in a press release. The label, unveiled on Tuesday by Slaiby, UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge and Republic Records founder and CEO Monte Lipman, will seek to give Middle Eastern music — both from the region and from the diaspora around the world — a more global platform to reach the widest possible audience. Slaiby, a refugee or the Lebanese Civil War who immigrated to Canada at 15, has dramatically raised his profile in the music industry in the past few years. In addition to managing The Weeknd, who had the top son...
