Dance
First Spin: The Week’s Best New Dance Tracks From Tiga & Hudson Mohawke, Hayden James, DJDS & More
New Music Friday is intense. Hundreds of songs drop from artists around the world, and you’re supposed to somehow find the best ones. It’s fun work, but it’s time-consuming — so we at Billboard Dance want to give you a hand. Each week, we sift through the streams and dig in the digital crates to present the absolute must-hears from the wide breadth of jams. Once again demonstrating the endless variety of the dance scene, this week we got an excellent new album from the always excellent French producer CloZee, the debut solo LP from psybient legend Simon Posford of Shpongle, an equine-centric new video from Diplo and Noah Cyrus, an incisive conversation about diversity and the creative process from Coco & Breezy, DJ Sliink and Aluna plus the launch of a new ...
Rave Family Blockfest Announces Second Postponement: ‘It’s Not Fair to Deliver a Subpar Experience’
With a lineup featuring more than 950 artists, the livestream festival Rave Family Blockfest seemed too massive to be true, and as it’s turning out it just might be. At least for now. Today (July 10), organizers of the event, which was set to take place July 9-12 inside the video game Minecraft announced that it will be postponing after a chaotic first two days. The event went live yesterday, with attendees who paid between $10-$15 for entry finding major functionality issues. “Again, unless you’re a seasoned Minecraft player or gamer in general, movement in Minecraft, let alone from one massive area to another, is confusing at best and impossible at worst,” reported YourEDM. “Users are left stumbling around the virtual world or just succumbing to the location where...
Bassnectar Is ‘Stepping Back’ From Music Career After Allegations of Sexual Misconduct
Bassnectar announced on Friday (July 3) that he’s taking a step back from his career. The DJ and artist, whose real name is Lorin Ashton, shared the news after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced in a Your EDM story as well as on Instagram, where an account has been collecting allegations. Some of the allegations appear to go back years. “I am stepping back from my career and I am stepping down from my position of power and privilege in this community because I want to take responsibility and accountability,” Ashton began in his statement, which he shared on social media. “I feel intense compassion for anyone I may have hurt. I truly hope you allow me a chance to work together toward hearing.” The artist went on to claim that the “rumors” are...
Trax Records Hit With Federal Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Over Royalties
Chicago-based Trax Records has been sued over its alleged failure to pay royalties. Artists Larry Heard and Richard Owens filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit June 23 against Trax Records. Two days later, TaP Music Publishing announced that they are co-funding the legal action. Heard, professionally known as “Mr Fingers” and Owens said in court papers filed in the Northern District of Illinois that their lawsuit highlights the exploitation of the artists and their works, including unpaid royalties for various musical compositions and sound recordings that they created in the 1980s. Heard and Owens are also suing the Trax Records president Rachael Cain, known professionally as “Screamin’ Rachael.” They accuse Trax of “building its catalogue by taking advantage of unsophisticated b...
New COVID-19 Rules Mean That the Party Is Over for Ibiza Super-Clubs This Season
Sweeping new rules designed to curb “alcohol abuse” on the island also outlaw party boats, pub crawls and balcony jumping. The verdict is in, and the party is over for Ibiza super-clubs this summer. On Sunday (June 21), the Balearic government announced new rules pertaining to nightclubs and outdoor venues for the dance mecca of Ibiza in the context of COVID-19. These regulations ensure that the island’s biggest clubs and other mid-sized venues will stay closed for the 2020 season. For indoor spaces, the rules state that only venues with a stated capacity of 300 or less are allowed to open for the season and will only be allowed to open at one-third capacity. This means there can only be up to 100 people at a time inside a club, that they must be seated and that there can...
Universal Music Opens First-Ever Offices in Israel and Morocco
The new outposts, in Tel Aviv and Casablanca, continue the arms race among the labels of overseas resources sniffing for new talent. After broadening its footprint in Asia in 2019, Universal Music is continuing its global expansion with new offices in Israel and Morocco, marking the label as the first major music company to open standalone operations in either country. The new outposts in the Middle East and North Africa will add to UMG’s existing network of A&R and marketing in more than 60 countries. UMG Morocco will be based in Casablanca, while the Israel office will operate out of Tel Aviv. The moves come one month after Universal officially opened a new hub for hip-hop label Def Jam Africa based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Lagos, Nigeria. And the push into North Africa and...
What’s Your Favorite New Dance Track Out This Week? Vote!
Whether you’re into techno, house, deep hour or disco, this week’s roundup of new dance tracks has something special for you. While we recommend that you simply assemble a playlist and kick off your weekend with a living room dance party to the tune of all this new music, everyone has a favorite, and we want to know yours. Take a spin through this week’s best new dance tracks, and then let us know your standout track by voting below. 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 chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
The Biggest Dance Music Livestream of Quarantine Just Got Even Bigger: See The Lineup
Billing itself as “the biggest digital music festival in history,” upcoming dance music livestream festival Electric Blockaloo just got even bigger. Today (June 11), the event added artists including Bob Moses, Maya Jane Coles, Deadmau5’s techno alter-ego Testpilot, Skream, Blondish, Seth Troxler, Khruangbin, MK, DJ Soda, Ekali, Felix da Housecat, Ivy Lab, Kevin Saunderson, The Knocks, Krafty Kuts, Luciano, Carl Craig, MK, Paris Hilton, Rudimental, DJ Sneak, Sherelle, STS9, Steve Aoki and Todd Terry to its already massive lineup featuring a staggering 850 artists. Electric Blockaloo takes place June 25-28 inside the video game Minecraft, which during the festival will feature 65 digitally-rendered stages including those hosted by labels and artists like Bedouin,...
This DJ Snake Track Reached a Billion Plays on Spotify
DJ Snake has hit the billion streams mark on Spotify, again, with his smash “Taki Taki.” The slinky bilingual hit, featuring a no scrubs lineup of Cardi B, Selena Gomez and Ozuna, was the party starter of 2018 and has kept on racking up major plays since its release nearly two years ago. This is the third time the French phenom has reached a billion streams on Spotify. His era-defining Major Lazer collaboration “Lean On” became the platform’s most streamed song of all time just eight months after its March 2015 release, with 526 million streams. (Five years later, “Lean On” is now the platform’s 18th most streamed track of all time, with a cool 1.359 billion plays.) Then, in October of 2018, Snake again made Spotify history by becoming the fifth art...
46 Black-Run Electronic Dance Labels You Can Support on Bandcamp Right Now
This week has been hard for anyone with a working soul. The black population in the United States and beyond has taken a strong stand against police violence, only to be met with more unbridled brutality. Here are Billboard Dance, we owe everything about the genres we love to this daring and vibrant community, so, we’ve compiled a list of black-run dance and electronic music labels you can support directly today and every first Friday of the month, as well as June 19th. Black is bass. Black is lofi. Black is jazz. Black is techno. Black is house. Black is disco. Black is kuduro. Black is footwork. Black culture is the origin of electronic music itself. Below is just a small slice of what black-run electronic labels have to offer. If you need more black electronic dance musi...
What’s Your Favorite New Dance Music Out This Week? Vote!
It was a big week for dance lovers, with Kygo’s new LP Golden Hour, Diplo’s long-awaited country album, Diplo Presents Thomas Wesley Chapter 1: Snake Oil and Lady Gaga’s dazzling Chromatica all dropping today (May 29). Add these big-time projects to a barrage of new beat-laden tunes by Jayda G, Baauer, Boys Noize and A-Trak and Chromeo’s Dave-1 performing as The Brothers Maklovitch, (reasonable as they are, in fact, real life brothers.) Of all this new heat, we want to know your favorite new dance music out this week. Let us know by voting below. 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 re...
Donny Benét Talks ‘Mr Experience,’ Baking and Musical Evolution
Donny Benét doesn’t just operate in his own lane. He owns it. The Don returns today (May 22) with Mr Experience as a wiser, smarter, more mature artist, but every bit the same “Australian piss-taker,” in his own words. Mr Experience is a party in a package, which funks its way across 10 tracks. It’s the culmination of two years’ work, during which time the Sydney singer, bass player and producer created a pool of 30 songs. “Some are completely finished, some I’ve just started and an hour later started swearing and dragged it into the ‘rejects’ folder,” he tells Billboard. “I haven’t dropped the rejects folder into the trash. It’s good to look back and see where you’re at.” Benét is always looking forward, even if his sound and style harks back to a glorious age when we rolled up our j...
