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Want Guitar Lessons From Metallica? Yousician Launches New Artist Series
“I’ve partnered with Yousician because I hope that anyone at any age feels that now is the right time to learn,” said Mraz in a statement. “Yousician makes it so easy to learn and play. It’s like having a friend to personally guide you on your musical journey.” Hadley Spanier, head of brand marketing and artist relations at Yousician who joined the company in January 2020 after a stint as senior vp and head of marketing at UMG’s Verve Label Group, calls the Spotlight series a “natural progression” for the growing platform, which currently boasts a combined 20 million users across Yousician and its associated guitar-tuning app GuitarTuna. Spanier tells Billboard the initiative grew out of a series of live virtual sessions the platform hosted last year, which saw artists includin...
Tomorrowland Forms Dance Label With Universal Music Germany
Through the partnership, Tomorrowland will enjoy direct access to a collective pool of UMG’s international label divisions, including Virgin Records and Astralwerks in the U.S. Leading the partnership will be Berlin-based Virgin Records executives Alexander Neipp, Daniel Schmidt and Magnus Textor, and Tina Adams at Virgin Music Label & Artist Services. Over the past 15 years Tomorrowland has built a reputation as one of the world’s leading festivals and electronic music brands by consistently expanding and evolving their relationship with music fans,” Frank Briegmann, chairman and CEO, Universal Music Central Europe and Deutsche Grammophon, said in a press release. He added that the partners had created a “uniquely flexible model” that will “help drive success and create global hits fo...
Spotify Expands Its Podcast Subscriptions to All U.S. Creators
Though the focus is on building exclusive content within Spotify, which has 165 million paid users and 365 million monthly users, Anchor will also provide creators with private RSS feeds that are compatible with other podcast distribution platforms. “Our model is built to maximize creator revenue and offer the widest possible reach so creators can grow their audiences and develop deep connections with listeners,” the company said. Spotify’s top competitor in the podcasting space, Apple, went global with its own podcast subscription options in June. Like Spotify/Anchor, Apple subscriptions provide support for ad-free listening for exclusive content, however, there are more fees involved. In line with other App Store purchases, Apple will keep 30% of sub fees for the first year a...
SiriusXM Wins Appeal in Turtles Lawsuit Over Pre-1972 Royalties
“We are gratified that this important issue has been finally and correctly resolved,” Sirius’ attorney, Daniel Petrocelli of O’Melveny & Myers, said over email. Billboard has reached out to Flo & Eddie’s attorney for comment. The ruling is the latest to come from a series of royalties disputes between the parties, stemming from a complex web of state and federal laws governing radio providers and recent changes to those laws. When an AM/FM radio station plays a song over the air, it does not have to pay public performance royalties to the owner of the original sound recording. On the other hand, digital and satellite radio providers including Sirius must pay public performance royalties whenever they broadcast post-1972 recordings — but unti...
MSG Entertainment Revenues Soar, Still Way Down From 2019
Investors welcomed the improvement that exceeded the consensus revenue of $71.5 million, according to FactSet (per MarketWatch). Shares of MSGE rose 8.7% to $67.87 on Monday morning, after hitting a 52-week low of $60.26 last Thursday. Full-year results show a broader effect of the pandemic: for the 12 months ended June 30, total revenues fell 76% from the fiscal year prior, from $762.9 million to $180.4 million. Despite the last quarter’s improvement, the entertainment division’s revenues dropped 86% from $585.2 million to $82.3 million over the same period. The entertainment division — which houses such venues as Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall — improved its revenues to $31.1 million from $8.6 million, showing the concert business improved but was f...
Can Holly+ Solve the Problem of Deepfake Vocals?
Though there is evidence to suggest “publicity” or “personality” rights may provide some pathway to legal recourse for the commercial use of a public figure’s voice (like Tom Waits v. Frito Lay, a 1992 lawsuit in which the singer sued Frito Lay for the unauthorized impersonation his voice for a commercial and won), these rights vary from state-to-state and still have yet to address a case specific to the new frontier of AI-rendered vocals. But for experimental electronic musician Holly Herndon, who has been working at the intersection of music and artificial intelligence for years, including a doctoral stint at Stanford University, she sees this space as a brave new world for musicians. Instead of fighting to destroy the inevitable behemoth of AI, Herndon is showing others how to control i...
How Risky Are Concerts? We Asked an Infectious Disease Expert
Billboard spoke with Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security and an authority on infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness, to raise these questions. Adalja, 45, is a go-to pandemic expert, sharing his views on CBS This Morning, NPR and the BBC, among many others during the past year and a half. It turns out Adalja knows his way around concerts, too: A longtime skateboarder, Adalja grew up listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Metallica and Rancid and saw the original Lollapalooza twice. “We’ll have COVID cases 20 years from now,” he says. “Then we have to come up with a way to be able to go about our lives, making risk calculations jus...
Maroon 5 Will Be First Major US Act to Perform in Canada After Border Reopening
A spokesperson for Live Nation confirmed to Billboard that Maroon 5 will be the first major U.S. act to perform in Canada since the pandemic began early last year. Vaccinated Americans and permanent residents must submit proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of their arrival to Canada. The vaccinations must have been administered at least 14 days before entry. A steady stream of concerts in Canada featuring U.S.-based artists — most for dates in 2022 — have gone on sale this summer, including John Mayer, The Killers, Sebastian Maniscalco, Elton John and Sepultura. On the books from October through December of this year are shows in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver featuring Ricky Martin with Enrique Iglesias, Lemonheads, Maluma, Ge...
Downtown Music Holdings Names New CEO, Kalifowitz to Executive Director
Founder and CEO Justin Kalifowitz moves to the role of executive director in the new leadership alignment. Downtown Music Holdings — the umbrella organization that houses several music-services brands like CD Baby, FUGA, Songtrust, Downtown Neighboring Rights and more — is shaking up its executive leadership team. Founder and CEO Justin Kalifowitz will transition to a new role as executive director of the company, while longtime general counsel and COO Andrew Bergman rises to the role of CEO. The moves will take place effective Sept. 1. Kalifowitz started Downtown in 2007 as a music publisher, a business it largely exited in April when it sold the rights to its 145,000-song catalog of publishing copyrights to Concord in a deal estimated at $350 million. (Downtown still serves a...
Longtime Warner Music Central Europe CEO Bernd Dopp Is Stepping Down
Dopp is a five-decade veteran of WMG and the company’s longest-serving CEO in Europe. After working in retail, he joined Warner Music in 1984 as a label manager before working his way up to managing director of WEA Records a decade later. When WEA merged with Warner Classics and other entities to form Warner Music Germany in 2001, he was put in charge. In 2004, Warner Music International created a new European structure, grouping the major’s operations in Germany, Switzerland and Austria (GSA) into what would eventually be known as Warner Music Central Europe. As CEO from the very start, Dopp guided WMCE through the music industry’s oft-bumpy transition into digital and, more recently, through a once-in-a-generation pandemic. Through it all, he has delivered hits in his t...
Tencent Music Reports Strong Quarter Before Regulator Crackdown
While Chinese regulators were placing strict control upon the country’s tech sector this spring, its local music streaming giant Tencent Music Entertainment improved revenue and subscriber numbers substantially. In the period from April 1 to June 30, the parent company to steaming services QQ, Kuguo and Kuwo saw music revenues climb 32.8% to 1.79 billion RMB ($277 million) and subscribers jump 40.6% to 66.2 million, compared to the prior quarter, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings report released Monday (Aug. 16). For a company with a 77% market share in the country, it’s a testament to the rapid pace of growth in China’s hot music market. (That’s far greater gains on both accounts, in percentage terms, than Spotify achieved in same time span — 17% and 19.6%, respecti...
Music Companies Delay Return to Office, Mandating Vaccines
Moore adds that the highly-global nature of the Spotify workforce — the company boasts 50 offices across 25 countries — made instituting a blanket vaccine mandate even more challenging. “In some countries, in some regions, it would actually be illegal to do so,” says Moore, “and so we’re just sort of taking the stance that people will make good decisions.” Notably, local ordinances in major urban centers could force companies’ hands. Earlier this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that a proof of vaccination will be required to enter indoor restaurants, gyms and performance venues in the city starting on Aug. 16 — though the order does not yet apply to offices. Last Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to look...
