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‘NFTs for People’: BitClout Sells Coins Based on Celebs Without Their Permission
In a FAQ published on the site before it was taken down Friday afternoon — due to “overwhelming support,” a note on the now-empty website states — BitClout describes itself as a social network that allows users to “speculate on people and posts with real money.” BitClout claims to be a fully open-sourced project that built a custom blockchain using architecture comparable to Bitcoin with “no company behind it” that will allow users to purchase a new asset class called “Creator Coins” for accounts on the site, which includes celebrities, musicians, and influencers. “They were on there mostly without their permission,” a source tells Billboard. Current users can buy and sell coins that will increase and decrease in value depending on the “social clout” of the user the coin is based on, or ho...
Biden Sets May 1 Target to Have All Adults Vaccine-Eligible
“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said, calling the past year “a collective suffering, a collective sacrifice.” Biden announced that he is deploying an additional 4,000 active-duty troops to support vaccination efforts and will allow more people — such as medical students, veterinarians and dentists — to deliver shots. He is also directing more doses toward some 950 community health centers and up to 20,000 retail pharmacies, to make it easier for people to get vaccinated closer to their homes. As supplies of the vaccines continue to increase, Biden announced that he will direct states and territories to make all adults eligible for vaccination by May 1. The U.S. is expecting delivery of enough doses for those 255 million adults by the end of that month, b...
Citing Reforms, CISAC Readmits Troubled Spanish Society SGAE
Paris-based CISAC temporarily expelled the Spanish society in May 2019 after finding it had violated the international confederation’s rules, which included discriminatory treatment of rights holders and irregularities in its distribution of royalties. CISAC set out a list of 17 reforms it required SGAE to implement to comply with CISAC’s rules. “CISAC has worked for over three years to monitor, support and evaluate SGAE’s transformation into a society that is compliant with international standards,” CISAC director-general Gadi Oron and board chairman Marcelo Castello Branco said in a joint statement. “This has been a complex task of utmost importance both to CISAC members, who depend on the integrity of the collective management system internationally, and to Spanish creators and rights h...
Amazon Music Launches In-App Merch Integration, Exclusive Artist Collections
“Bringing all this into the app in a fairly seamless way with Prime shipping, we think it’s going to really help drive sales,” says Sean McMullan, director of artist product and services at Amazon Music. He adds, “We think that bringing merch in is one way to really enhance that artist-fan connection and make it a more compelling experience. We’ll continue to experiment with lots of different ways to get it in front of customers in the right way.” When asked about Amazon’s share of merchandise sales on the platform, McMullen wouldn’t disclose terms, saying simply that the percentage of revenue splits “varies” from artist to artist. Along with the announcement, Amazon Music will debut exclusive merchandise collections from several artists. These include a new a...
Verzuz Founders Swizz Beatz & Timbaland Talk Triller Partnership: ‘This Puts a Light Back on Creatives’
The ultimate payoff, says Swizz Beatz, is “hearing everybody being so floored about having shares in the company and feeling like they belong. That’s the real currency. It’s going to take the creative to save the creative.” What initially attracted you to Triller? Swizz Beatz: The whole time that Tim and I were building this platform, we didn’t really have any plans from a monetization or even a business side. We never even built out the technology for it. It was more about wanting to do this from a celebration, educational side; to give people some life, love and happiness during these hard times with COVID-19. Then as the platform started growing it turned into a business with sponsors coming in and offers from people wanting to buy ownership in the company once w...
Grimes Signs to Columbia Records: Exclusive
Grimes has signed with Columbia Records, a source tells Billboard. This marks her first foray into the major label system, having released albums only on independent labels previously. After releasing two albums in 2010 on Canadian indie Arbutus Records, Grimes’ last three albums were released on 4AD — Visions (2012), Art Angels (2015) and Miss Anthropocene (2020). Collectively these projects have earned 736,000 album consumption units, of which 307,000 are in album sales and 554 million on-demand song streams in the U.S., according to MRC Data. 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...
Music’s First Blockchain Ticketer Big Neon Has Run Out of Money
Big Neon was billed as music’s first blockchain ticketing company when it launched at the end of 2018 and announced plans top become a token-based system by 2020 and the eventual “spiritual successor” to Ticketfly. But 27 months after launching, the mobile-based ticketing system has run out of money and is now shutting its doors, co-founders Dan Teree and Ryan O’Connor confirm to Billboard. Earlier this week, Teree and O’Connor sent to a note to venue clients like the Midway and Bimbo’s 365 in San Francisco, the Gas Monkey in Dallas and The Exit/In in Nashville announcing Big Neon’s plans to close effective March 30. “It is with great regret that Big Neon has decided to cease operations,” the letter read. “This was ...
Diddy’s REVOLT Promotes Detavio Samuels, Colin McIntosh
Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ REVOLT has unveiled key promotions to reshape the top management at the hip-hop cable network after the departure of Roma Khanna as CEO last year. Detavio Samuels, hired as chief operating officer in 2020, is promoted to CEO, while Colin McIntosh adds the COO title to his chief financial officer duties at the Black-owned media company. Samuels and McIntosh started sharing the leadership at REVOLT as co-heads when former MGM and NBCU exec Khanna stepped down as CEO in July 2020. And longtime digital strategist Deon Graham has been upped to chief brand officer at Combs Enterprises, Combs’ portfolio of businesses and investments, where he will work closely with Samuels and McIntosh. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Onlin...
Roc Nation Wins $12M Insurance Claim Over Maroon 5 Manager’s Death
Feldstein died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism, with the Los Angeles Medical Examiner declaring his cause of death as natural. But HCC denied paying out Roc Nation’s claim and Roc Nation responded by suing in U.S. District Court Southern District of New York on Jan. 18, 2019, for wrongfully denying insurance coverage. HCC argued in court papers that Roc Nation was precluded from any recovery because the company failed to cooperate with HCC’s investigation of the claim — a contention that Roc Nation denied. HCC also argued that the policy language required the insurance payment be reduced by all future profits that could have been traceable to Feldstein’s services. To this, Roc Nation’s legal team argued that the policy’s plain language outlines that it was entitled to recoup...
The Chicks’ Tour Company Files $6.6 Million Suit Over Rejected Insurance Claim
Tunshoe said that their insurance providers have taken “unreasonable legal positions in direct conflict with specifically negotiated contractual language and engaged in a ten-month campaign of repeated irrelevant questions and stall tactics,” according to the lawsuit. The insurance policies were in effect from Jan. 20, 2020 until Sept. 18 and provided insurance of “Up to $40,400,000 representing 80% ‘To Pay’ of Gross Guarantee of USD 50,500,000” should the tour be “necessarily cancelled, abandoned, postponed, interrupted or relocated” as a result of any reason not excluded, per the Chicks’ lawsuit. They list the “Insured Persons” as the “Dixie Chicks being Martie Erwin Maguire, Emily Erwin Robison and Natalie Maines...
Stalley Announces New Partnership With Mello Music Group: Exclusive
Mello Music Group placed the welcome mat to Stalley by teaming him up with Joell Ortiz, Namir Blade and Solemn Brigham for their latest collaboration, “Black Rock.” The record will reside on the label’s forthcoming compilation album titled Bushido. Slated for production include vets Alchemist, illmind, and Apollo Brown, while the rap side will boast features by Skyzoo, Open Mike Eagle, B-Real, Murs, and Stalley. The project will officially be out on April 2. You can pre-order here. “While my debut Mello Music project will be released later this year, I’m eager to showcase my talents with the rest of the label on the Bushido Compilation album and debut “Black Rock”; the single is dope!” Stream “Black Rock” bel...
New York Music Venues Can Reopen at 33% Capacity Starting April 2
The news comes as the music industry approaches the one-year anniversary of the pandemic-imposed shutdown on live events. A year ago this week, on March 6, 2020, Austin’s South By Southwest was forced to cancel for the first time in its history, and by the end of the month, physical events nationwide shut down entirely. Cuomo also sightly cut back limitations on gatherings in New York starting March 22. Residential gatherings of up to 25 people can be held outdoors, while indoor residential gatherings remain capped to 10 people. Non-residential social gatherings of up to 100 people can occur indoors, and up to 200 people outdoors. The day of the announcement, New York reported 5,323 coronavirus hospitalizations, and a positive test rate of 3.53%. The positive test rate in New Yo...
