Innholdsfortegnelse for March 11, 2023 i Billboard Magazine

LIVING PROOF THAT a song can hit new heights long after its original release, “Die for You” by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande bounds from No. 6 to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song tops the chart after it was first released on The Weeknd’s album Starboy in 2016. It was revived in recent months thanks in part to TikTok, which helped spark new promotion by Republic Records. After its remix with Grande arrived Feb. 24, “Die for You” drew 81.1 million radio airplay audience impressions and 32.4 million streams (up 181%) and sold 14,000 downloads (up 1,170%) in the United States in the week ending March 2, according to Luminate. The Weeknd and Grande each earn their seventh Hot 100 No. 1. In the days…

SEOUL — The bitter battle for control of K-pop’s fabled agency SM Entertainment has spilled out publicly like an episode of HBO’s Succession. K-pop’s largest agency, HYBE — home to boy band BTS — is pitted against the management of SM, which for years was South Korea’s dominant K-pop company. But as SM’s Lee Soo-man sided with HYBE against the company he founded, a corporate shakeup has turned into a battle royale. SM sought to maintain its independence through a partnership with Kakao, a South Korean internet giant that has acquired several entertainment agencies. In February, Kakao said it would buy a 9.05% stake in SM — against the wishes of Lee, SM’s charismatic founder and rock singer-turned-mogul, whose equity in SM allowed him to challenge the purchase in…

THE SHOW WAS GOING SO WELL. An hour into the set from Kx5 — the electronic music supergroup of genre leaders Kaskade and deadmau5 — it was, as intended, a dazzling feat of light, sound, video and the emotional punch of those elements combined. Then the power went out, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — and the 46,000 fans assembled there on that drizzly night in December — were thrust into silent darkness. From the front of the house, deadmau5’s longtime manager, Dean Wilson, sprinted backstage — where, he says, he found “everybody running around like headless chickens, screaming, ‘Generator’s on fire!’ ” The generator was not supposed to be on fire. However, it had turned itself off due to overheating and was emanating smoke. Its programming had then…

The singer-songwriter leads the Billboard Artist 100 ahead of his expected debut atop the March 18-dated Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums charts with his latest project, One Thing at a Time. His previous set, Dangerous: The Double Album, leads the latter list (dated March 11) for a record-extending 97th week. —GARY TRUST NO. 47 Lambert Climbs ‘High’ Adam Lambert reenters the Artist 100 at No. 47, his highest rank since July 2015, when he reached a No. 16 best. His return is fueled by his newest album, his covers project High Drama, which starts at No. 7 on Top Album Sales — his fifth top 10 and highest-charting entry on the list since 2015’s The Original High peaked at No. 2. High Drama includes renditions of top…

LAST FALL, THE 25-YEAR-OLD English singer Raye was on the hunt for her first U.S. hit after several years of U.K. chart success. Initially, the loping hip-hop soul single “Escapism” seemed to bring her no closer. After the first week, streams of the track started to fall, according to Luminate. But in mid-November, its trajectory dramatically reversed, leaping from 185,000 streams one week to 500,000 the next to over 6 million two weeks later. “Escapism” went on to peak at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. What happened? The burgeoning popularity of a homemade sped-up remix of “Escapism” that captivated TikTok users, spurring them to incorporate it into their videos and driving streams of the original. “I wish that I could sit here and say, ‘We were in…

WHILE A PARTNER and manager at Emagen Entertainment Group, Ebonie Ward watched #MeToo gain momentum and #The-ShowMustBePaused bring the music industry to a halt in the name of racial justice. In the wake of these movements, “there have been all these indications of putting women of color into leadership positions,” she says, but little in the way of sustained action. “I’ve seen a lot of Black women, especially in hip-hop and R&B, who are the backbones at many companies. I’ve also seen a lot of women who are actually running these companies, but they’re still not the face,” she adds. “It was time to do something different. “During COVID-19, I realized that I was limiting myself by not being forward-moving or thinking out of the box,” Ward recalls. So…

WHILE REHEARSING for its 2013 Las Vegas residency, Mötley Crüe instructed Nicolai Sabottka, its new pyrotechnics specialist, to set the venue on fire — walls, ceiling, floor, everything. But when flames exploded behind Tommy Lee’s head, the drummer, believing he was on fire, freaked out and ran off. Everyone laughed. Lee returned and demanded of Sabottka: “What the fuck is going on here?” To which an unfazed Sabottka replied: “We tried to warn you.” Sabottka, CEO of Berlin-based FFP Spezialeffekte und Veranstaltungslogistik (which translates to “Special Effects and Event Logistics”), has spent the past 26 years mastering the art of blowing stuff up at concerts while ensuring everybody remains safe. Although he earned a degree in pyrotechnics at a Dresden school specializing in explosives technology, his true studies came…

SOMEONE HAS SPARKED a blunt in the planetarium. It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some shit.” For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids…

AFTER WEEKS OF STRATEGIZING how to salvage Ticketmaster’s reputation in the wake of last November’s Taylor Swift presale debacle and Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold’s January grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ticketing giant’s parent company has settled on an approach that will ramp up lobbying (see story, page 18) to hit back at scalpers while educating consumers about ticketing fees. Despite breaking two company records with the Nov. 15 The Eras Tour presale — the most tickets ever sold in a single day (2.4 million) and, according to the company, keeping 95% of those tickets off secondary sites like StubHub and SeatGeek — Ticketmaster found itself cast as the villain and Live Nation as a monopoly after a cyberattack disrupted over 100,000 transactions. The outcry has led…

IN THE NAPSTER ERA, paid downloads were a music industry savior, generating $1.3 billion at their peak in 2012, according to Luminate. But the format seems like it’s headed toward extinction. Digital track sales have plummeted over the past decade, from 1.3 billion in 2012 to 152 million last year, a decrease of 88.6% — in 2022 alone, they dropped 25.1% from the previous year. The declining importance of the format is evident in the desktop version of Apple’s once mighty iTunes Store, which now buries such purchases halfway down its Apple Music homepage. At Amazon, searching for MP3s diverts consumers to the Amazon Music streaming platform, where options include streaming as well purchasing digital music, vinyl or CDs. “It’s a business that has been in steady decline for…

POP-PUNK TRIO Meet Me @ the Altar broke out during the pandemic as a vibrant newcomer to the scene — and has since performed at Lollapalooza and When We Were Young and in March kicked off its first headlining tour. Now, its members — vocalist Edith Victoria and guitarist/bassist Téa Campbell, 22, and drummer Ada Juarez, 24 — are eager to expand on the genre they grew up listening to with their debut album, Past // Present // Future, released March 10 on Fueled by Ramen. What conversations inspired the sonic direction of this debut? VICTORIA We wanted for it to be experimental. If fans end up liking those songs, we have so many different avenues we can take for the second [album] — and not have our fan…

WHEN BAD BUNNY picked up his best música urbana album award at the Grammys in February, he dedicated his win to “Puerto Rico, the cradle and the capital of reggaetón worldwide.” The superstar wasn’t grandstanding. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is tiny. According to the most recent U.S. Census, there are a mere 3.2 million people on an island that measures 111 miles by 39 miles, roughly one-third the size of neighboring Haiti and one-fifth the size of the Dominican Republic. When it comes to music, however, Puerto Rico is a global giant — and not solely because of Bad Bunny’s record-breaking achievements over the past three years. “Puerto Rico has been one of the main exporters of music for decades now,” says Paco López, founder and president of…