business
How Fran Rozzano Landed a Record Deal With Pina Records in a Pandemic
A music video, directed by Fernando Lugo in Miami, features Natti Natasha as the star with a cameo from Pina. But before making the rounds with his new bop and landing on YouTube’s Trending page, Rozzano was chasing his dream. One that he was able to reach thanks to the power of social media and in the midst of a pandemic. He was discovered in October of last year during Raphy Pina’s “Tienes Un Minuto” competition on Instagram, where he encouraged aspiring artists from all over the world to remix Natti’s “Que Mal Te Fue.” Rozzano ultimately won the competition and landed a record deal with Pina Records. “It changed my life,” he tells Billboard. Below, read our Q&A with Rozzano. How did you find out about Raphy Pina’s “Tienes Un Minuto” dynamic? I come from doing covers and my fam...
Behind the Rise of Hollywood Composing Teams
Since Reznor and Ross won an Oscar 10 years ago, the pair has also nabbed a Grammy Award for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (on top of two Grammys Reznor had won previously) and an Emmy Award last September for Watchmen. The rock musicians just need a Tony to achieve EGOT status. Craig Harris and Mark IshamJudah and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.) Isham is a trumpeter and synthesizer player who has scored dozens of films since 1983, including Nell and Crash. He was nominated in this category 28 years ago for A River Runs Through It. Harris is a jazz trombonist who has worked with such artists as Lena Horne, Sun Ra and The Roots. This is the first film they’ve scored as a pair. Nicolas Becker and Abraham MarderSound of Metal (Amazon Studios) Previously, Becker scored the 2018 documen...
Can This Music Rights Search Tool Solve a Big Industry Problem?
Hines, who lives in Atlanta, and New Jersey-based Noble made strides in 2020, first with funding from Collab Capital, an investment fund that targets Black entrepreneurs, as well as WeWork Black Founders, Google Black Founders Academy and early angel investors. Nobles says that Google, for instance, has been “hands on” by providing resources, including a tech support contact who went “deep with us on architecture” and other questions. Hines and Nobles also worked with teams from YouTube and ContentID, the Google-owned platform’s audio recognition technology used for copyright protection. Also, Music Tech Works was in the 2019-2020 cohort of Project Music and Entertainment, the music-focused startup accelerator of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Rightsholder...
Mac DeMarco Reveals First Act Signed to Mac’s Record Label
The first taste from it is comfy/cosy single “Sometimes I Forget,” the music video for which was filmed by director Monika Mogi on Muira Beach, a couple hours south of Tokyo. “I’ve always loved the music he’s sent me and released over those years, and now I’m able to lend a hand in sharing his newest joint,” says Mac of Crick, a multi-instrumentalist who has collaborated with Iggy Pop, Weyes Blood, Kirin J. Callinan and Connan Mockasin. “I helped mix this record, and have heard it probably one thousand times at this point, and still love it.” Mac’s Record Label was announced in early 2019, a partnership with independent distributor Caroline. With his 2012 solo debut, the Rock and Roll Night Club EP, DeMarco busted into the spotlight, equal parts DIY wizz, psychedeli...
Liberty Media SPAC Raised $575M With Last Week’s Public Offering
Liberty Media Acquisition Corporation, the special purpose acquisition corporation of Liberty Media Corp. raised $575 million in its Jan. 22 initial offering on the Nasdaq exchange, the company announced Tuesday (Jan. 26). Liberty Media Corp. owns a majority of SiriusXM and about a third of Live Nation. Trading under LMACU, Liberty’s SPAC will “identify, acquire and operate” a business with “attractive risk-adjusted returns” within Liberty’s comfort zone: “digital media, media, music, entertainment, communications, telecommunications and technology industries,” according to the prospectus filed with the SEC on Jan. 21. 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 p...
88rising Signs First-Look Deal With Sony Pictures TV
The global Asian music and media company has hired former Imagine and NBC exec Alex Lin to spearhead its film and television development. Sony Pictures TV has signed 88rising, the emergent company that spotlights modern global Asian culture, to a first-look deal. The two will partner to develop scripted series centering Asian and Asian American culture, across all platforms, and 88rising has hired former Imagine and NBC exec Alex Lin to serve as its first development executive for film and television. Since its founding in 2015, 88rising has quickly risen — pun unintended — from a record label for pan-Asian artists to a music, media and events company that in 2018 became the first to stage an Asian music festival in the United States (Head in the Clouds, dubbed “Asian Coachella...
ARIA Appoints Annabelle Herd as CEO
Herd brings a skillset loaded with legal and lobbying work in the nation’s capital, Canberra, and extensive experience in the television industry. Previously, she carved out a 16-year career at free-to-air Network 10, where she most recently held the post of Chief Operating Officer, tasked with leading its broadcast operations; group strategy; corporate and internal communications; interstate markets; policy, regulatory, compliance and government affairs; and lobbying and stakeholder relations. And before that, she worked at senior levels with government in Canberra, culminating in a stint as Senior Advisor (Broadcasting and Copyright) and Acting Chief of Staff for then Minister for Communications and the Arts, Senator the Hon. Richard Alston AO. While in the capital, she worked as a gover...
Latin Grammy Foundation Grants Awarded to Rafael Escalona Foundation, LAMC & More
This year’s winners reflect that. The Escalona grant was given to the Rafael Escalona Foundation in Bogotá, for a project to preserve a collection of 174 physical Escalona files and offer them in a new user-friendly format. The second preservation grant went to support ongoing archival and cataloguing work at The Latin American Music Center (LAMC) at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., including the Center’s exclusive collection of compositions and manuscripts. Research grants were given to Buenos Aires’ Universidad Nacional de Quilmes for a field study to record traditional canto con caja (song and drum), and to researcher María Alejandra de Avila in Córdoba, Colombia, who is producing an interactive e-book of banda music in Colombia. Since its inception in 2015 , the ...
Clive Davis Reveals Plans for Not One, But Two Pre-Grammy Benefits: ‘We Are Here to Celebrate Music’
Davis tells Billboard plans for the Jan. 30 event were already underway when the Recording Academy decided this month to reschedule the Grammy Awards from Jan. 31 to March 14 due to the pandemic, so he simply decided to honor the original date and then hold a second event on the party’s traditional evening before the Grammy Awards. “When the Grammys moved to March 14, I had so many wonderful artists already set to join me on 30th and rather than getting into schedules, I decided to keep it Jan. 30, but also do our traditional night before the Grammys on March 13,” Davis says. For the first time, both events will be fundraisers. The annual party has been billed as the Recording Academy & Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala for the last several years. Davis is the sole host for both events this ...
Nigerian government urged to lift restrictions on SIM card registration
A telecommunications expert in Owerri, the Imo capital, Mr Charles Okeke, has advised the Federal Government to remove the restrictions placed on SIM card registration. Okeke gave the advice at a news briefing in Owerri on Tuesday, while speaking on the effects of the federal government’s SIM Card-National Identification Number (NIN) linkage policy. He urged the government to embrace a more robust system that would encourage healthy partnership between the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and service providers to ensure a seamless linkage. He said that the partnership would fast-track the process and alleviate the “unnecessary hardship” faced by Nigerians due to tight deadlines for the exercise. He further said that large crowds of people struggling for attention at NIMC offi...
Weinstein Sexual Misconduct Settlement Confirmed by Bankruptcy Judge
Once a sexual misconduct claim is allowed, each accuser will have the choice of whether to release all future claims against Weinstein. If a woman chooses to release him, she’ll get what the examiner determines to be her full share. Those who choose not to release him will only receive 25 percent of the value assigned to their claim using the points system, and the rest will go to the insurance companies. The deal includes a mandatory perpetual release of claims against The Weinstein Co. and TWC board members and execs, including Bob Weinstein. The financial penalty for not releasing claims against Weinstein, and the mandatory release of claims against the others, drew sharp criticism from women who object to the deal. They also argued that women who have rape claims against Weinstei...
Sea Shanty Singer Nathan Evans Takes Fight to Olivia Rodrigo For U.K. Chart Title
There’s action aplenty in the U.K. chart races where Nathan Evans’ sea shanty “Wellerman” (Polydor) takes the challenge to Olivia Rodrigo’s leader “Drivers License” (Interscope) and just 103 units separate the two best-selling albums at the halfway point. Bicep, the Northern Irish electronic duo of Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, take top spot on the Official Chart Update with Isles, their second album. According to the Official Charts Company, Bicep’s latest is the most-downloaded LP over the weekend and the most-streamed new release of the week so far, and should easily eclipse the No. 20 peak of their self-titled debut album from 2017. 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...
