business
How We Work Now: Duck Club Presents/Treefort Music Festival Co-Founder Eric Gilbert
In a new series amid the coronavirus pandemic, Billboard is asking individuals from all sectors of the music business to share stories of how they work now, with much of the world quarantined at home and unable to take in-person meetings, attend conferences or even go into the office. Submissions for the series can be sent to HowWeWorkNow@Billboard.com. Read the full series here. This installment is with Eric Gilbert, co-founder of Duck Club Presents and Boise, Idaho’s Treefort Music Festival. Eric Gilbert: Treefort was scheduled for March 25-29 and we [initially] postponed it two weeks. At that point, the state nor the city hadn’t really done anything. We made the decision in consultation with them, but we had to take the lead on that. Two weeks after we postponed, the state fully s...
Bluesman Lucky Peterson Dies at 55
American bluesman Lucky Peterson, a master of the six string and the Hammond B3, died Sunday (May 17) at his home in Dallas. He was 55. Peterson was at home when he “became ill and was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, but unfortunately did not recover,” reads a statement posted on his social pages. The cause of death is not immediately known. Born Judge Peterson in Buffalo, New York in 1964, Peterson had blues in his veins. His father James Peterson was a notable blues guitarist and owner of The Governor’s Inn, a roadhouse club where many of the genre’s greats would stop by. [embedded content] A prodigious talent, “Little” Lucky Peterson gave his first concert when most of us were still learning to use cutlery and his talents were spotted early on by blues legend Willie Dixon....
Drake Retains Australian Chart Crown, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s ‘Stuck With U’ Starts High
Drake’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes (Republic/Universal) enters a second week at No. 1 on Australia’s albums chart, while SAINt JHN’s “Roses” (Sony) scores a sixth week atop the national singles survey and “Stuck With U” (Universal), the Ariana Grande–Justin Bieber collaboration, is the week’s highest debut. “Stuck With U” opens at No. 3 on the ARIA Singles Chart, just behind The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” (Republic/Universal), to give Grande her first Australian chart entry for 2020 and Bieber his fourth. Proceeds from the single will benefit the First Responders Children’s Foundation, which funds scholarships for kids of frontline workers who’ve been affected by the health crisis. Over the past two weeks, DaBaby’s “Rockstar” (Interscope/Universal) has risen 14-9–4 and no...
Emirates plans to cut about 30,000 jobs amid virus outbreak
Emirates Group is planning to cut about 30,000 jobs to reduce costs amid the coronavirus outbreak, which will bring down its number of employees by about 30 per cent from more than 105,000. A media reported on Sunday that the company was also considering speeding up the planned retirement of its A380 fleet. An Emirates spokeswoman said that no public announcement has been made yet by the company regarding “redundancies at the airline”, but that the company is conducting a review of “costs and resourcing against business projections”. “Any such decision will be communicated in an appropriate fashion. Like any responsible business would do, our executive team has directed all departments to conduct a thorough review of costs and resourcing against business projections,” the spokeswoman said....
Doja Cat’s ‘Say So’ Producer Yeti Beats Signs Warner Chappell Admin Deal
Warner Chappell has signed an exclusive administration agreement with Yeti Beats, co-producer of Doja Cat‘s current Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Say So” feat. Nicki Minaj. Announced Friday (May 15), the deal covers all catalog and future works by Yeti Beats, who also served writer, producer, executive producer and A&R roles on Doja Cat’s first two albums — Amala and Hot Pink — and produced such hits as “Candy” and “Juicy” feat. Tyga. He also served as an executive producer on Doja Cat’s 2014 EP Purrr! “I’ve known Yeti for a while, and it’s been incredible to see what he’s accomplished with Doja Cat and her team,” said Warner Chappell Music senior director of A&R, Wallace Joseph, in a statement. “Yeti’s in a great positi...
Arkansas’ Socially-Distanced Concert Now Trying to Reschedule, Adhere to State Law
The venue says Alcohol Beverage Control removed its license on Thursday morning, effectively shutting down the business. At a press conference on Thursday (May 14), TempleLive announced it was rescheduling its socially-distanced Travis McCready concert scheduled for Friday night in Fort Smith, Arkansas. The show was set to be one of the first shows hosted after mass gatherings were banned throughout the county due to the spread of the novel coronavirus. The venue is now hoping to hold the concert Monday, in order to adhere to state law. Despite what TempleLive described as an open line of communication with the Governor’s office over the past few weeks, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters on Tuesday that he did not approve of the event, which was scheduled for three...
Pia Mia on Signing With Electric Feel/Republic & Releasing a ‘Smash’: Exclusive
At 17, pop artist Pia Mia (born Pia Perez) was a fresh Los Angeles transplant from Guam — and landed her first recording contract with Interscope in 2013. “I was an Island girl, basically out here alone navigating Hollywood, trying to figure out the music industry and how am I going to make my dreams a reality,” she recalls. “It was just a lot to deal with.” Through the label, she released one EP, 2013’s The Gift, but it was her R&B-influenced pop single “Do It Again,” that arrived two years later and featured Chris Brown and Tyga, which helped her reach a much larger audience and score her Hot 100 debut (the track peaked at No. 71). In spite of her momentum, though, she faced a series of delays for her following project and as a result, decided to pursue her career as an independent a...
Erykah Badu and Jill Scott Streams Triple After ‘Verzuz’ Battle
The singer-songwriters’ combined streams rise from 2 million to 6 million after Saturday’s event. Erykah Badu and Jill Scott saw their combined streams more than tripled after the two contested in the first female battle of the popular Instagram Live #Verzuz series on Saturday night (May 9). The two singer-songwriters collectively pulled 6.7 million U.S. streams on Saturday and Sunday for their total song catalogs, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, compared with a 2.1 million haul for the Thursday and Friday preceding the showdown. Badu and Scott’s livestream drew more than 700,000 attendees at its peak and set a new series viewership record, overtaking the nearly 525,000 who tuned in to see Babyface battle Teddy Riley on April 20. [embedded content] Badu’s best streaming track wa...
Michael Jackson Broadway Musical Pushed Back Due to COVID-19 Pandemic
A stage musical about Michael Jackson has pushed its Broadway debut until next year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Preview performances of “MJ” are now set to begin in March 2021 at the Neil Simon Theatre. The musical — previously called “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” — was to start performances in New York City on July 6. The musical is inspired by Jackson’s life and music. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage is writing the book, using Jackson’s vast catalog of songs. Tony Award winner Christopher Wheeldon will direct and choreograph and Ephraim Sykes will star as Jackson. Jackson sold millions of records and was a 13-time Grammy winner. In 1983 he became an international icon with the release of “Thriller,” the best-selling album with such hits as “Beat It” and “Billie Jean.”...
Those Slick Quarantine Band Performances Are Harder to Pull Off Than You Think
From Dua Lipa to Blue Oyster Cult to Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, bands have been figuring out how to perform remotely during the pandemic. Blue Öyster Cult has played its rampaging-beast classic “Godzilla” 2,270 times, in theaters and casinos, at state fairs and festivals — the first time at the Maple Leaf Gardens, in Toronto, on June 21, 1977, and the last time at Robins Theatre, in Warren, Ohio, on March 8. But until late April, the pioneering hard-rock band’s five members had never done it remotely from their homes, during quarantine, mixed together into a YouTube grid of separate rectangular boxes. “We basically treated it like a gig,” says Richie Castellano, the band’s guitarist and keyboardist, who produced the “lock-down” ve...
Ticketmaster President: Reps. Pascrell & Porter Are Wrong, Company Has Processed More Than $600M in Refunds
The following letter was submitted to Billboard by Ticketmaster President Jared Smith in response to a letter posted on Billboard earlier today by U.S. Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Katie Porter (D-CA). Last month Ticketmaster revealed its plan to offer refunds for all canceled and postponed Live Nation and AEG shows. Respectfully, Mr. Pascrell and Ms. Porter either misunderstand or elect to misrepresent the realities of our business and refund policies, as we outlined in our April 17 response letter to them. It is entirely disingenuous and flatly wrong to claim that we have “pointed the finger at others.” To reiterate, Ticketmaster is a platform that allows event organizers to sell tickets directly to consumers. The fact is, the money we need to refund fans is held by our clien...
Eventbrite Posts Big Losses in First COVID-Impacted Earnings Report, Reveals Three-Tiered Refund Plan
Eventbrite is carrying about $293 million in exposure from advance payouts to the creators on the system, official with the San Francisco-based ticketing company disclosed Monday (May 11) in its Q1 earnings report, sharing new details on plans to refund ticket holders and detailing the impact of the live music shut down on their bottom line. The top line numbers for the quarter were brutal as nearly every public event on its system had to be postponed or canceled, leading to a $146.5 million net loss for the quarter, down 489.66% from the previous quarter, equaling a $1.71 per share loss. The losses included $113.7 million of chargebacks and reserve increases and a $76.5 million increase in reserves “in anticipation of potential future chargebacks and refunds,” according to the compan...
