Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/16/2016 i Billboard Magazine

TWENTY ONE PILOTS touch down in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time as “Stressed Out” flies 13-9 on the Jan. 16 chart. The pop-alternative duo’s wistful, rap-influenced track zoomed to 159,000 downloads sold (an increase of 95 percent) in the week ending Dec. 31, 2015, according to Nielsen Music. It holds at No. 4 on the Digital Songs chart while rising 14-12 on the Radio Songs tally (59 million in audience, up 8 percent) and 26-20 on the Streaming Songs list (7.1 million U.S. streams, up 9 percent). The single also rules the Hot Rock Songs chart for a second week and continues to cross over, pushing 14-13 on the Mainstream Top 40 airplay tally. “Stressed Out” is from Twenty One Pilots’ album Blurryface,…

2016 THE PREDICTIONS ISSUE Billboard forecasts the year’s breakthrough artists, key shot-callers and industry innovators Zayn Malik is standing in a dimly lit studio, spliff hanging from his lips and whiskey tumbler in hand. “My fans are giving me shit every day,” he says. “Like, ‘Where the f— is your music? You’ve been at it for months. Give us something.’ ” It’s around 9 p.m. the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the 22-year-old is indeed about to give up something, though not to his adoring public — they’ll have to wait for a solo album due early this spring on RCA. The four others here at Los Angeles’ Record Plant are part of Malik’s team, and even they seem surprised at how little the slinky, propulsive music he plays has to…

Marc Anthony — actor, producer and top touring artist — aims in 2016 to take on another title: mogul. His Magnus Media — which he launched last April as an entertainment, branding, marketing, social media and content development company — is poised to become the Latin Roc Nation, with Anthony in the Jay Z role. “This [company] was born out of frustration,” says Anthony, 47. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the industry that I don’t know, and whenever we went over the state of the business, I realized they were missing a lot of opportunities.” Those opportunities lay mostly, of course, in music — Magnus’ roster includes Gente de Zona, Venezuelan duo Chino & Nacho, radio personality Enrique Santos and Alejandro Sanz (signed to a strategic marketing deal). But…

WHEN BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN devotees noticed on Dec. 4 that seats for an as-yet-unannounced anniversary tour for The River were already up for sale on secondarymarket sites like StubHub — with markups of five to 10 times face value — furor around the practice of ticket resales reignited in an Internet instant. At issue: frustrated fans shut out from seeing artists like Springsteen and Adele, whose North American tour sold out in minutes, and a concert industry that is being challenged to level the playing field. Although such complaints have been common well before the 2000 launch of StubHub, the United States’ biggest ticket reseller with 20 million visitors to its website per month, the growth of “spec” (or speculative) selling has led to an investigation by New York Attorney General…

1 Dan Charnas’ hiphop history The Big Payback adorns a table in Weiss’ office. Weiss credits “many years of experience in rap music and dealmaking” for signing ILoveMemphis. 2 A gift to commemorate the 25th anniversary of A Tribe Called Quest’s debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. 3 RECORDS’ work-inprogress offices are shared with SONGS, which received these gold plaques from the Canadian performingrights organization SOCAN. BARRY WEISS’ ROOTS IN THE music business run deep. His father, Hy Weiss, was among the industry’s more colorful early players, producing and releasing hit records in the 1950s and 1960s and eventually selling his Old Town label to Atlantic in 1970. Son Barry also saw a music company grow firsthand, joining Zomba Publishing founder Clive Calder in launching Jive…

THEY CAME, THEY SUNNED, THEY ROCKED Some of the biggest names in music joined the usual contingent of moguls, oligarchs and celebrities on the exclusive Caribbean island of St. Barts during the holiday season 1. DO BRAZIL RESTAURANT Prince performed at Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s annual New Year’s Eve party. 2. BONITO RESTAURANT “Blurred Lines” singer Robin Thicke and his model girlfriend, April Geary, who were fixtures on the scene, enjoyed a romantic dinner on Dec. 30. 3. EDEN ROCK HOTEL On Dec. 28, Thicke humbly cleared a table of unfinished drinks so that he and Geary could sit near the bar. 4. GOUVERNEUR BEACH Justin Bieber and Machine Gun Kelly played Leonardo DiCaprio’s New Year’s party at a private villa. 5. THE LOVE BOAT Harry Styles and Kendall Jenner…

QUENTIN TARANTINO’S THE HATEFUL EIGHT (released Dec. 25 by The Weinstein Company) is the first western that legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone has scored in decades. But anyone expecting the spooky, avant-garde soundtracks he did for Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti westerns The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1966 and Once Upon a Time in the West in 1969 will be surprised. “It would have been absurd to write something of that sort!” asserts Morricone, who is talking from Rome, through a translator, and seems almost offended by the idea of repeating himself. The soundtrack for The Hateful Eight (starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell) has all the surging drama of Morricone’s best work, but it also features the creeping dread of horror-movie music, with none of…

Accepts a trophy at the Asian Awards in London, where he thanks 1D and also debuts a buzz cut. Dyes his hair green, one of many hues he’ll try out in 2015. #100DaysSinceZaynLeft hashtag trends on Twitter. Producer Naughty Boy leaks footage of Malik covering “No Type,” resulting in a falling out between the two collaborators. Signs with RCA Records, tweeting: “I guess I never explained why I left, it was for this moment to be given the opportunity to show you who I really am! #realmusic #RCA !!” His congrats to 1D on its first Malik-free tune, “Drag Me Down,” becomes the second-most retweeted message of the year. Reps confirm that Malik has ended his two-year engagement to Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards. “Studio time... J” Malik tweets, delighting…

ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS ON 25-YEAR-OLD Maren Morris’ sure-footed self-titled EP from 2015 is a song called “80’s Mercedes.” So it is only natural to scan for a vintage Benz when you’re meeting the country singer-songwriter at a pub in her East Nashville neighborhood. But you’ll be disappointed: “No, I have a Prius,” she says, perched on a stool. “But I’d love to have a white convertible like Richard Gere’s in American Gigolo.” Like the rest of her EP, the song is a canny blend of country and pop-culture references, guitars and programming, groundedness and breezy irreverence from a Texas native with a clearly defined vantage point and a delicate nose ring. Her as-yet-untitled Columbia Nashville full-length album is one of 2016’s most anticipated country releases, and she’s bracing herself…

J UST OVER A YEAR AGO, CHARLIE PUTH WAS a Berklee College of Music grad living at home with his parents in New Jersey. Now, at 24, he’s one of the world’s fastest-rising pop singersongwriters, with a gated house in the Hollywood Hills, Grammy and Golden Globe nominations and a hit — Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” — that spent 12 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2015. “It has all happened stupid fast,” he says with a chuckle. Today Puth is in New York after a late night with his new buddy Selena Gomez, cutting a song for his debut album, Nine Track Mind, out Jan. 29. “It’s called ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore,’ ” says Puth, sitting in his hotel’s restaurant. “Everyone knows what Selena…

E’RE GOING TO BUILD A STAGE HERE, WITH A TIMES SQUARE background, and stream out of it,” says YouNow CEO/founder Adi Sideman, 45, gesturing at his new office’s view of flashing midtown billboards one Tuesday evening, glass of scotch in hand. “We already have record labels and artists reaching out for album releases.” It’s a fittingly ambitious setting for a company reshaping how musicians find audiences — and poised, in 2016, to launch some stars of its own. Today Sideman is joined by Hailey Knox, a 17-year-old singersongwriter with 48,000 fans on the app, who is taking a break from recording her debut EP with S-Curve Records. The label signed her in part because of her YouNow following. Founded in 2011, the app is a live-streaming platform — like Twitter’s…

Copyright infringement is usually associated with novice music services or illegal download sites. So why has Spotify, the leading music subscription service with more than 70 million users and an $8 billionplus valuation, become the target of a $150 million class action lawsuit led by Cracker’s David Lowery? Because it doesn’t always know which publishers should be paid for the music it streams. Spotify recently as much as admitted this. On Dec. 23, 2015, it announced it would “build a comprehensive publishing administration system [to fix the] missing, wrong or incomplete” data needed to properly pay publishing royalties. Other services have the same problem. National Music Publishers’ Association head David Israelite says unmatched royalties are an issue for “any company doing interactive streaming.” For publishers, purchases result in mechanical royalties…

NEW YORK, DEC. 11 “THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, IT’S LIKE A F—IN’ BOYS CLUB that we just can’t get into... sorry, Grandma,” Lady Gaga declared during her Woman of the Year acceptance speech at Billboard’s annual Women in Music event. “To be here today means that I’m recognized for my songwriting and for my legacy,” she continued, teary-eyed as fiance Taylor Kinney, grandmother Angelina and parents Joe and Cynthia Germanotta sat before her. “And that’s why tonight is so important. Women provide a wisdom to music that is very unique... And more importantly because we’re all equal.” Empowerment and gratitude were the sentiments echoed throughout the two-hour-long ceremony, which was hosted by Savannah Guthrie and Tamron Hall of NBC’s Today and aired on Lifetime for the first time in its 10-year…

There already were tons of reasons to watch American Crime, the ABC drama whose first season was nominated for 10 Emmys and three Golden Globes, but now there’s one more for music fans: Outkast’s André 3000 is starring in the show’s second season, which started Jan. 6. The gig reunites the 40-year-old with director John Ridley, who oversaw André’s transformation into rock legend Jimi Hendrix in Jimi: All Is by My Side. But American Crime will be a new turn for André: In his first TV role, he plays an architect and the husband to season-one star Regina King. The show doesn’t signal a move away from music, however. A year after Outkast’s $60 million tour, the star tells Billboard he has been working on new music, like “Hello,” his…

HAT WAS A HUGE MUSICAL MOMENT, especially in New York,” says Mick Jagger. “You had all of this interplay.” He’s talking about the mid-1970s, when the blues-fueled metal of Led Zeppelin coexisted with the gender-bending glam rock of New York Dolls, disco and the early strains of punk and hip-hop. As a witness and survivor of the decade’s excesses, the Rolling Stones frontman, 72, says that 20 years ago, he sold his friend, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, on an idea for a movie about the record industry during that period. That film eventually morphed into Vinyl, a TV series that will debut Feb. 14 on HBO. Jagger and Scorsese — who directed the pilot, set in 1973 New York — are among the show’s executive producers, along with showrunner Terence Winter,…

JIDENNA, THE BROOKLYN SINGER WHOSE FIRST LP ON Janelle Monae’s Wondaland Records arrives in 2016, was at his label’s studio when he learned “Classic Man,” his electro-R&B ode to vintage dress and suave masculinity, had received a Grammy nomination for best rap/sung collaboration. His first dilemma: whom to take. “I’ve been plotting,” he says. “We’ll see if I get rejected.” His next: how to upgrade his look for the red carpet. “I’m sure somebody is going to be like, ‘You should switch it up, get a bit more dapper.’ Or maybe not! Maybe I’ll come in a sweatsuit. Sweatpants and a hat.” Born Jidenna Mobisson, the 30-year-old recorded his first album as a final project at Massachusetts’ Milton Academy, where he rapped in a group called The Black Spades. He…

DAVID BOWIE Blackstar Columbia THE NEW DAVID BOWIE RELEASE, Blackstar, begins with an execution, and from there the tidings only get grimmer. His 25th studio album features just seven songs, but they serve up a veritable Grand Guignol of dread, death, even dismemberment. Blackstar opens with the sprawling title track, whose scene is laid in a candlelit villa where “On the day of execution/Only women kneel and smile.” Images of sadomasochism and castration flicker through the lyrics in “Tis a Pity She’s a Whore”; “Lazarus” is narrated from beyond the grave, by a ghost who drops his cellphone from heaven to the earth below, presumably adding to the body count. There’s a straight murder ballad, “Sue (Or in a Season of Crime),” and a menacing song delivered largely in Nadsat,…