Innholdsfortegnelse for February 25, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

The band, which appears in the top 10 of the Billboard Artist 100 for the first time, notches its highest-charting Billboard 200 entry in nearly a decade as This Is Why debuts at No. 2 (64,000 equivalent album units, according to Luminate). Of that sum, album sales comprise 47,000, making it the week’s top seller. NO. 2 Wallen Takes Five Morgan Wallen simultaneously tops all five of Billboard’s country charts — a feat previously achieved only by Luke Combs (for three weeks in 2019) and Kane Brown (one week, 2017). “Last Night” leads the multimetric Hot Country Songs chart, Country Streaming Songs (28.3 million streams, Feb. 10-16) and Country Digital Song Sales (10,000 sold); “Thought You Should Know” crowns Country Airplay (33.2 million in audience); and Dangerous: The…

LONDON — In early February, Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge drew a line in the sand between the traditional record business and financial companies entering the fray to tap into the global growth of streaming. “Our industry is entering a new chapter where we’re going to have to pick sides,” Grainge said at the Billboard Power 100 launch event in Hollywood. “Are we on the side of fintech [financial technology] and functional music, functional content? Or are we on the side of artistry and artists?” Though Grainge didn’t name names, he could well have been talking about Utopia Music, a Zug, Switzerland-based tech company that delivers financial services for labels, publishers and distributors. Over the past two years, Utopia, whose motto is “Fair pay for every play,” has…

IT’S 9:15 A.M. in Seoul, and most of the nine members of TWICE have just woken up. They’re barefaced, dressed casually and cozily in warm knits and sweatshirts; Chaeyoung still wears her parka hood, her blonde hair peeking out of the bottom. Nayeon, seated next to her, cleans her glasses with her shirt sleeve. Tzuyu, however, is alert and attentive. When I ask (through a translator) who’s the early riser of the group, everyone points to her. This morning, the women of TWICE look more like students who’ve arrived at an early-morning class than the wildly popular K-pop girl group they are. But for their globe-spanning cohort of fans (known as ONCE), this is a familiar sight. The group’s long-running YouTube reality and vlog show, TWICE TV, along with…

LANA DEL REY practices “automatic singing.” Using the improvisational songwriting technique, she lets her voice carry over accompaniments, not commandeering where her words or melodies take her, accepting all ideas she has in the moment and editing them later. Lately, her voice has led her home, back to memories of her childhood in Lake Placid, N.Y., and to ruminations on relationships with her family and the divergent paths they’ve taken. That subject underpins her upcoming ninth album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard? (out March 24). Del Rey, 37, says she hesitantly began to unpack this subject matter with her previous album, Blue Banisters — but now, she’s ready to dig deeper. “At first I was so uncomfortable,” she says of the more personal material.…

Donna Caseine EXECUTIVE VP/GLOBAL CREATIVE DIRECTOR, RESERVOIR MEDIA Faith Newman EXECUTIVE VP OF A&R AND CATALOG DEVELOPMENT, RESERVOIR MEDIA Caseine and Newman, two of the women leading Reservoir Media, both started and ended the year in celebration. In early 2022, Caseine helped honor client Joni Mitchell as MusiCares’ Person of the Year in 2022, and Newman bookended it by ushering De La Soul onto streaming services, just in time for the 50th anniversary year of hip-hop. “It is an incredible milestone for Reservoir,” says Newman of De La Soul. There were also plenty of other milestones for the company leaders, including the acquisition of Tommy Boy Music and welcoming Oak Felder, Killer Mike, Snarky Puppy, Phil Manzanera, Henry Jackman, Matt Sorum, Travis Tritt, Nick Lee and the late Fred…

THE TEAM THAT drives the success of the National Music Publishers’ Association comprises almost entirely women, reporting to NMPA president/CEO David M. Israelite. Two of its members appear on the 2023 Women in Music list: Executive vp/general counsel Danielle Aguirre belongs to our Women in Music Hall of Fame due to her Co-Executive of the Year honor in 2018, when her advocacy helped pass the Music Modernization Act. Senior vp of government Amelia Binder, new to the list in 2023, was chosen from among her colleagues for her work, since joining the organization in 2015, in executing lobby efforts and managing the NMPA’s political action committee, along with building relationships with decision makers on Capitol Hill. Aguirre tallies the major victories achieved last year by the NMPA, along with…

Alessandra Alarcón PRESIDENT, SBS ENTERTAINMENT “Exploring and developing new partnerships in markets that we’ve identified as growth opportunities” has become Alarcón’s main focus for SBS Entertainment, she says. In a year, the division produced and executed over 20 concerts, including the urban-focused Calibash in Los Angeles and the reintroduction of Amor en Vivo, a Latin pop-focused concert in New York. Marking another key growth area for SBS was the 2022 acquisition of two Florida radio stations — WPYO (El Zol 95.3) Orlando and WSUN (El Zol 97.1) Tampa — for a total transaction price of $12.5 million. Mary E. Berner PRESIDENT/CEO, CUMULUS MEDIA Cumulus’ ongoing transformation to a multichannel, on-demand, audio-first media company under Berner’s leadership took another step forward with the launch of its music partnerships division, forming…

Lori Badgett SENIOR VP/CO-TEAM LEADER OF ENTERTAINMENT BANKING, NASHVILLE, CITY NATIONAL BANK Badgett has been instrumental in increasing City National’s Nashville business — taking the company in Music City from a handful of colleagues to more than two dozen staffers serving top names in the music industry, while driving growth in deposits and loans. Additionally, Badgett and her team have offered financial services to artists, producers and other entertainers to help them successfully return to the road after pandemic-driven touring shutdowns. The music of country act LADY A was among the 50-plus catalogs acquired in under a year by HarbourView Equity Partners, headed by SHERRESE CLARKE SOARES. Sherrese Clarke Soares FOUNDER/CEO, HARBOURVIEW EQUITY PARTNERS Before officially opening its Newark, N.J.-based headquarters with an 18-member team in December 2022, HarbourView…

THOUGH THE CALENDAR HAS FLIPPED and Billboard’s January Boxscore report celebrates the beginning of a new year in touring, the top of the chart carries over what became a constant toward the end of 2022. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour earned $40.9 million during the month, securing his seventh at No. 1 on the Top Tours chart. He also held the peak in October and November 2022. Beyond extending his record for time atop the ranking, notably, January’s Oceania leg of John’s sprawling farewell tour pushed the entire run’s gross to $817.9 million — making it the highest-grossing tour of all time. It surpasses Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide) tour ($776.4 million), which set the previous high mark in 2019. Simultaneously,…

RECENTLY ANNOUNCED SALES OF music assets by Dr. Dre, Juice WRLD and Future are fueling investor interest in hip-hop song rights and catalogs, prompting skeptics of the genre’s near-term value to take a fresh look, sources in the music publishing and valuation industry say. Dre sold his music assets to Universal Music and Shamrock Holdings in January for a deal estimated to be worth over $200 million. Influence Media Partners acquired superstar Future’s music publishing catalog in a deal Billboard estimated to be worth $65 million to $75 million last September, and a majority stake in the late rapper Juice WRLD’s rights and income streams went for a nine-figure sum in early 2022. Those deals call into question a common assertion in the music investment space that because hip-hop…

DOECHII RECENTLY watched Avatar: The Way of Water, and it got her thinking about a key Na’vi tenet: “All energy is borrowed, and someday you have to give it back.” “That’s exactly how I feel,” she says. “From the women before me, I’m borrowing their energy so that one day I can give it back to the girl after me. That’s what I’m here to do.” In just the past year, the 24-year-old rapper from Tampa, Fla. — who started releasing music in the 2010s before self-funding her debut EP in 2020 — has used that energy to impressive ends. In March, she became the first female rapper to sign with Top Dawg Entertainment, subsequently scoring a record deal with Capitol as well. Late-night TV and awards show performances…

IVY QUEEN ARRIVES IN full color-coordinated regalia — a form-fitting, floor-length dress in lemon hues that match her long, yellow-tipped acrylic nails and the curly, beach blonde locks that reach her waist. Standing still and ramrod straight, her eyes surveying the room from under impossibly long lashes, she has the bearing of, well, a queen. It’s a far cry from nearly 25 years ago, when Martha Ivelisse Pesante Rodríguez, then 25, walked into the San Juan, Puerto Rico, studios of The Noise, the all-male rap collective formed by the pioneering DJ Negro, who sized her up: a country bumpkin from the island’s west side, her tiny frame dwarfed by oversized jeans and a T-shirt, hair tied in “500 braids,” lips painted blue, nails like talons. “What’s your name?” he…

WHEN SYLVIA Rhone received the offer to become Elektra Entertainment Group’s new chairman/CEO in 1994, the first thing she did was leave her New York office and walk over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. She remembers lighting a candle, then sitting down to think — and think. “It took me a while to process; I was overwhelmed and afraid that I couldn’t really step into those male shoes,” she recalls of a music industry then helmed by such titans as Arista’s Clive Davis, Columbia Records’ Don Ienner, Atlantic’s Ahmet Ertegun, Warner/Reprise’s Mo Ostin and her own boss, Warner Music Group chairman Doug Morris. Rhone had already distinguished herself as the first Black woman to run a major-label affiliate when she proposed a U.S. partnership with Atlantic’s East West U.K. label…

Temi Adeniji MANAGING DIRECTOR/SENIOR VP OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AND SPECIAL PROJECTS, WARNER MUSIC SOUTH AFRICA Adeniji and the Warner Music South Africa team capitalized on the global success of Nigerian singer-songwriter CKay’s sleeper hit, “Love Nwantiti (Ah Ah Ah)” — which earned the Afrobeats artist his first No. 1 on the Rhythmic Airplay chart — while releasing his debut studio album, Sad Romance, in September. She adds, “The acquisition of a majority stake in Africori, Africa’s leading digital music distribution, music rights management and artist development company, helped expand Warner Music’s footprint on the continent.” Rebecca Allen Jo Charrington CO-PRESIDENTS, EMI RECORDS Allen and Charrington took over joint leadership of EMI Records in March 2022 and soon guided the integration of Capitol Records — a front-line Universal Music Group…

Michele Ballantyne COO, RIAA “Bringing people together is the cornerstone of my role,” says Ballantyne. “My top priority has been to rebuild RIAA’s sense of connectedness among our team, the [Washington] D.C. community and our music policy peers. That’s why my proudest achievement last year was leading the RIAA in opening the doors of our new, state-of-the-art headquarters.” With a concert-quality live performance stage and cutting-edge recording studio designed by Interscope Records, the trade group’s new office hosted events honoring its own 70th anniversary, as well as the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. The latter included a who’s who of rap talent such as honorees MC Lyte and Grandmaster Flash, with special guests Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Universal Music Group general counsel Jeff Harleston. For the RIAA, MICHELE BALLANTYNE…

IN FALL 2022, THE MUSIC industry was fixated on the volume of new tracks being uploaded to streaming services — some executives believed it had crossed 100,000 tracks a day. But what if that number were to increase a thousandfold? That’s the future envisioned by Alex Mitchell, founder/CEO of Boomy, a company that offers aspiring musicians the chance to make songs in seconds with help from artificial-intelligence (AI) tools. He describes a scenario in which crafting a tune for friends could be as quick and easy as snapping a cellphone shot and posting it on Instagram, and he speaks about his company’s future in blocks of 100 million tracks. “We see a huge market with many billions of original unique songs, similar to photos,” Mitchell says. That tidal wave…

Songs Two of this year’s nominees for best original song, “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick and “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, are from sequels to films that also spawned nominees in this category. Top Gun yielded “Take My Breath Away,” the winner 36 years ago. Black Panther produced “All the Stars,” a nominee four years ago. “Applause” Tell It Like a Woman (Samuel Goldwyn Films) Music and Lyric by Diane Warren Tell It Like a Woman is an anthology of seven short stories, each directed by a woman from many different parts of the world. “Applause” brought Warren her 14th nomination for best original song, a tally only seven other songwriters have reached in Oscar history. You’re high on the list of all-time…

BY THE TIME LAINEY Wilson showcased for BMG Nashville staff in 2018, she was at a crossroads. She had already been in Nashville for over five years after leaving her small Louisiana hometown of Baskin and was struggling to fit in. Her heavily accented, twangy country vocals and Southern swagger weren’t in fashion as the genre leaned more toward pop, but her attempts to accommodate that style weren’t working either. So she doubled down on her tough-but-vulnerable authenticity. With that attitude, she sang, “She’s a soldier/When I hold her/Up in the air” in her defiant “Middle Finger.” “Take that, Nashville,” she thought. Wilson, now 30, laughs when she remembers that time. “I just got to a certain point where I’d been in Nashville for so long [and] my give-a-damn…

RUSHING FROM elementary school with handwritten raps in her pocket, 10-year-old Alyssa Michelle Stephens would hop in her father’s “old-school cars with [24-inch] rims” and head straight to the recording studio — first in his friends’ homes, but soon enough, in professional spaces. “When we started paying for sessions, he’d say, ‘You ain’t gon’ be in here all day,’ ” the artist now known as Latto recalls. “ ‘You better have that song ready, top to bottom, one take, in and out!’ ” Even then, the Atlanta-raised aspiring MC — today a chart-topping, Grammy-nominated rapper with more than 1 billion on-demand streams in the United States, according to Luminate — was preparing for her destiny, winning high school writing competitions as a fifth grader. Nurtured by her accountant mother…

Claudia Arcay SENIOR VP OF ENTERTAINMENT, LOUD AND LIVE The past year was a significant one for the Loud and Live team, which produced a record 400 shows and sold nearly 2 million tickets across North America, according to the company. Arcay was instrumental in helping position Loud and Live as a leader in the industry beyond the United States. She secured, managed and produced arena shows in Latin America for artists such as Carlos Vives and Camilo, as well as their first stadium shows in Ecuador with Ricardo Arjona. Looking ahead, Arcay and her team have 300 shows “already booked” for 2023. The Iranian singer GOOGOOSH is among the artists featured on the Women of Iran playlist that Spotify launched in late January to amplify the voices of…

Ashaunna Ayars CO-FOUNDER/EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIR, BLACK MUSIC ACTION COALITION Caron Veazey CO-FOUNDER/CO-CHAIR, BLACK MUSIC ACTION COALITION The Black Music Action Coalition furthered its reform agenda by launching a music accelerator program at Tennessee State University with Wasserman Music, Nashville Music Equality and the RIAA. It also established the Music Makers Grant with production duo Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, implemented a paid internship/mentorship program with Audiomack and presented its second Music in Action awards gala to honor advances in racial and social justice initiatives. Ayars, founder/chief marketing officer of The Ayars Agency, and Veazey, founder/CEO of talent management firm Something in Common, underscore that BMAC’s “North Star goal” is to “eradicate racism within the music business overall.” Lyndsay Cruz EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACM LIFTING LIVES/ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC ACM Lifting…

While the use of magnetic tape to record and play music dates back to the 1930s, it wasn’t until 1963, at the Berlin Radio Show, that Philips introduced the two-spool cassette. Twenty years later, the finicky format passed vinyl as the most popular music medium in the United States, but it was a short-lived victory: The CD soon spun it into the bargain bin of history. But two decades after most music fans pressed the Eject button, cassettes are following vinyl’s comeback in stores and stereos. REEL LOVE Operating under the Norelco brand in the United States, Philips launched an “intensified advertising and promotion drive” to get cassettes into American homes,” according to the Sept. 24, 1966, Billboard. “The Norelco success on TV with shavers will hopefully be duplicated…