January 6, 2017 Page 1 of 21 BY DAN RYS In a year full of milestones, 2016 became the first time streaming overtook sales as the music industry’s dominant model, accounting for 51.3 percent of album consumption and besting physical and downloads combined, according to Nielsen Music. Now in 2017, a series of factors are converging that could leave some of its most significant players behind. First, the good news: Streaming led the U.S. music industry to its first back-to-back yearly growth this millennium and in the first half of 2016 was the single highest source of revenue in the U.S. recorded- music industry, bringing in $1.61 billion. All three major labels — Universal, Sony and Warner — posted streaming-driven double-digit percent boosts in earnings throughout the year. And subscriber growth overall has consistently increased during the past few years; in 2016, Spotify and Apple Music together added more than 20 million subscribers, boosting their numbers to 40 million and 20 million, respectively. But that growth has attracted new competitors to the space, as digital giants Pandora, iHeartRadio and Amazon all debut their own on-demand streaming services. Along with established offerings like Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play, not to mention YouTube, there will soon be nearly a dozen on-demand music streaming services in the United States alone. Which of them can survive in such a competitive market? “I think ‘consolidation’ is a great word for what’s coming next,” says Chris Carey, CEO of Media Insight Consulting. “Smaller companies won’t go away, but you might see acquisitions from them in order to catch up.” Currently, the big players, Spotify and Apple Music, have turned the quest for on-demand market share into a two-horse race, which means the clock could be ticking for smaller stand-alone companies like SoundCloud and Tidal, both of which have been linked to acquisition rumors (Google is reportedly eyeing the former for $500 million). In order to survive, streamers will need to offer more, or different, value than the market leaders already have. INSIDE 2017 Streaming Wars: Will Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Dominate? Fifth Harmony’s New Deal: Quartet Re-Ups With Epic After Camila Cabello’s Exit: Exclusive Who Is Philip Anschutz, Controversial Owner of Coachella Parent Company? What Happened in Latin Music In 2016? Consumption Up, Market Divided Ray BLK on Winning BBC Music Sound 2017 Poll: ‘I’m a Dreamer, But This Was Really Unexpected’ (continued)
Transcript
January 6, 2017 Page 1 of 21
BY DAN RYS
In a year full of milestones, 2016 became the first time streaming overtook sales as the music industry’s dominant model, accounting for 51.3 percent of album consumption and besting physical and downloads combined, according to Nielsen Music. Now in 2017, a series of factors are converging that could leave some of its most significant players behind.
First, the good news: Streaming led the U.S. music industry to its first back-to-back yearly growth this millennium and in the first half of 2016 was the single highest source of revenue in the U.S. recorded-music industry, bringing in $1.61 billion. All three major labels — Universal, Sony and Warner — posted streaming-driven double-digit percent boosts in earnings throughout the year. And subscriber growth overall has consistently increased during the past few years; in 2016, Spotify and Apple Music together added more than 20 million subscribers, boosting their numbers to 40 million and 20 million, respectively.
But that growth has attracted new competitors to
the space, as digital giants Pandora, iHeartRadio and Amazon all debut their own on-demand streaming services. Along with established offerings like Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play, not to mention YouTube, there will soon be nearly a dozen on-demand music streaming services in the United States alone. Which of them can survive in such a competitive market?
“I think ‘consolidation’ is a great word for what’s coming next,” says Chris Carey, CEO of Media Insight Consulting. “Smaller companies won’t go away, but you might see acquisitions from them in order to catch up.”
Currently, the big players, Spotify and Apple Music, have turned the quest for on-demand market share into a two-horse race, which means the clock could be ticking for smaller stand-alone companies like SoundCloud and Tidal, both of which have been linked to acquisition rumors (Google is reportedly eyeing the former for $500 million). In order to survive, streamers will need to offer more, or different, value than the market leaders already have.
INSIDE 2017 Streaming Wars: Will Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon Dominate?
Fifth Harmony’s New Deal: Quartet Re-Ups With Epic After Camila Cabello’s Exit: Exclusive
Who Is Philip Anschutz, Controversial Owner of Coachella Parent Company?
What Happened in Latin Music In 2016? Consumption Up, Market Divided
Ray BLK on Winning BBC Music Sound 2017 Poll: ‘I’m a Dreamer, But This Was Really Unexpected’
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[In Brief]One example will be different price
points and new services, as incoming players look to undercut the currently standard $9.99/month all-access model. iHeart and Pandora have already negotiated direct deals with labels to offer enhanced radio at $4.99 that includes offline listening and replay functions, while Amazon, through discounts for its Prime members ($7.99/month) and owners of its hugely successful voice-activated home assistant Echo ($3.99/month), has made similar moves.
“It’s difficult to have more than a couple of really big, all-things-to-all-people services,” says MiDia Research founder Mark Mulligan. “Amazon is trying to open up a different customer base, but for big companies like Pandora wanting to create another global player, the dice is very much loaded against them.”
Where does Apple Music fit in? The clear No. 2 has had impressive growth since its June 2015 launch, but its marketing magic bullet — exclusive album releases — faded significantly following Universal Music Group boss Lucian Grainge’s label-wide ban in August. “I don’t know if catching Spotify needs to be the goal, but I think making Apple Music stronger is,” says Russ Crupnick, managing partner at MusicWatch. “You don’t want to put yourself in a situation where you’re losing ground.”
Indeed, several analysts agree that the streaming landscape in 2017 will be dominated by Spotify and its long-rumored IPO, expected to arrive around September. “Spotify’s IPO will have a bigger impact at the industry level than any other company in any other major industry,” says Mulligan. “If successful, you’ll see an influx of capital, new services and revenue for labels, publishers, artists and songwriters. If not, you’ll see potential investments fall through and questions about the model. Successful or not, it will shape the market.”
Spotify lost nearly $200 million in 2015 on $2.2 billion in revenue, and the company’s $1 billion round of convertible debt, raised in March 2016, will require hefty interest payments the longer the company stays private. If CEO Daniel Ek does take the company public, it doesn’t need to be profitable; Netflix never turned a profit before its IPO in 2002, for instance, and now boasts a valuation north of $50 billion. But analysts tell Billboard that Spotify needs to show a clear path to profitability in order to attract wary potential stockholders.
Yet there’s plenty of room for optimism, even if smaller services eventually bow out of the race. A U.S. Department of Commerce report from October estimates that global streaming revenue will balloon
to $5.4 billion by 2019, while a study by IHS Markit expects the number of U.S. on-demand subscribers to triple by 2020.
“It’s going to be a three-horse race among Spotify, Apple and Amazon as the dominant players,” offers Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research. Counters Carey, “I think four services with different focuses, all looking after consumers and none driving price down, would be your ideal situation ... Whether or not I’m living in a dreamland is a different question.”
This article originally appeared in the Jan. 14 issue of Billboard.
Fifth Harmony’s New Deal: Quartet Re-Ups With Epic After Camila Cabello’s Exit: ExclusiveBY SHIRLEY HALPERIN
The group Fifth Harmony splintered over the Christmas holiday, announcing on Dec.
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19 that founding member Camilla Cabello, 19, was leaving the group to pursue a solo career and that the four remaining girls — Ally Brooke, 23, Normani Kordei, 20, Dinah Jane, 19, and Lauren Jauregui, 20 — will continue on as a four-piece. Three days later, Epic Records and Syco exercised their option on the pop act, Billboard has confirmed, moving full-steam ahead with a third Fifth Harmony album to be released in 2017. Cabello, meanwhile, is expected to drop her first single — after appearing alongside Shawn Mendes and Machine Gun Kelly on two Hot 100 top 20 hits — in April or May.
After selling 7 million U.S. digital downloads and nearly half-a-million albums (according to Nielsen Music), scoring a top five Billboard Hot 100 hit (“Work from Home” in 2016) and racking 1.6 billion U.S. on-demand streams in a career launched on Fox’s The X Factor in 2012, Fifth Harmony has reached the sort of career milestone that graduates of reality shows rarely see. “There’s a stigma attached to a reality show that they have eclipsed,” says Joe Willis, longtime manager of American Idol winner Jordin Sparks. “That Fifth Harmony has been able to build their fan base, as One Direction did, was a masterstroke by Simon Cowell.”
And success provided the act the leverage to renegotiate what is typically an onerous contract — signed by the girls as individuals before even stepping foot on the TV stage that would give them their Cowell-constructed shot — with terms that dictate a length of seven years and assign them to specific companies and affiliates within the Sony Music system. (Syco Entertainment is a joint venture with Sony.)
“The standard contract is worse than a 360 nightmare,” explains Loeb & Loeb attorney Debra White, who negotiates similar deals for contestants of NBC’s The Voice, adding that a company like the Cowell-founded Syco Entertainment “gets to be the record company, the publisher, the manager, they have a piece of touring and merchandise.” Re-signing allows for a re-evaluation and offers an opportunity to diminish or eliminate terms that seem
unfair to an artist who has had hits and brought the label revenue. According to a source, negotiations are ongoing, with the Fifth Harmony members having already reclaimed ownership of their trademark. Adds White: “If it were me, I would want a higher royalty rate; I would try to get all of the ancillaries uncrossed and limit the amount of product and length of the contract. I would also fight hard to increase the committed money for marketing and promotion, and creative approval.”
Representatives for Fifth Harmony would not comment beyond affirming that “Epic has in fact exercised their deal option with Fifth Harmony,” but a source in the camp says staying put is a win-win. (The group shared its first official photo as a quartet on Jan. 5, below.)
“They’re in a position to have more creative involvement and really direct where they want their music to go,” the insider offers. “They’re a huge name on the Epic roster so it makes sense to keep them there and work on another hit album. While, at the same time it benefits the girls to stay as well and really own the direction they’re going in rather than litigate themselves out of a deal.”
Another label source says Epic Records chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid “Doesn’t ‘let go’ of successful artists — ever. He even has a hard time parting with the unsuccessful ones.”
As for Cowell, a rep assures that he has remained “committed as ever to the group he envisioned.
The girls’ contentious division — made all the more awkward with both Fifth Harmony and Cabello signed to the same label and working on music separately but at the same time — shouldn’t worry fans, either, says White. “It proves that Epic/Syco is really believing in the brand, and they don’t give a shit if it’s Fourth or Fifth Harmony. They’re going to find amazing songs and make a go of it.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the Jan. 14 issue of Billboard.
Who Is Philip Anschutz, Controversial Owner of Coachella Parent Company?BY DEAN BUDNICK
Not long after the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival announced its 2017 lineup Tuesday and tickets sold out almost immediately, attention turned to a very different subject regarding Philip Anschutz, the founder of the festival’s parent company. Through his pyramid of financial holdings, the 77-year-old Colorado billionaire businessman owns the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and AEG Live, the world’s No. 2 live-event promoter, which operates Goldenvoice, the company that launched Coachella in 1999 and also promotes such events as Stagecoach, Panorama, Firefly and 2016’s most lucrative festival, Desert Trip.
Reports surfaced tying Anschutz to a number of conservative organizations, whose missions, some would say, run counter to the spirit of freedom and inclusiveness embodied in events like Coachella. He is an associate of the fiercely conservative Koch brothers and many of his financial commitments have been purely partisan: Along with his wife Nancy, he donated just over $1 million to Republican causes (according to OpenSecrets.org), with $500,000 directed to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC that focuses on maintaining and expanding the party’s Senate majority. He has operated for decades with minimal outcry despite accounts that he has backed conservative advocacy groups, including Greenpeace’s 2013 charge that he was a “financier of climate science denial.”
However, there has been greater hue and cry over recent stories identifying his
financial support of organizations with aggressive anti-LGBT agendas, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, the National Christian Foundation, and the Family Research Council. And in 1998, Colorado’s Westword magazine reported that five years earlier, he had contributed $100,000 to Bob Dole’s Republican think tank and that he also “quietly gave $10,000 to the backers of anti-gay-rights Amendment 2.” (At press time, Billboard had not been able to independently verify those claims.)
In response, Anschutz himself has issued a rare public statement on the matter, challenging some of the assertions now circulating: “Recent claims published in the media that I am anti-LGBTQ are nothing more than fake news — it is all garbage,” the statement reads. “I unequivocally support the rights of all people without regard to sexual orientation. We are fortunate to employ a wealth of diverse individuals throughout our family of companies, all of whom are important to us — the only criteria on which they are judged is the quality of their job performance; we do not tolerate discrimination in any form.
“Both The Anschutz Foundation and I contribute to numerous organizations that pursue a wide range of causes,” the statement continues. “Neither I nor the Foundation fund any organization with the purpose or expectation that it would finance anti-LGBTQ initiatives, and when it has come to my attention or the attention of The Anschutz Foundation that certain organizations either the Foundation or I have funded have been supporting such causes, we have immediately ceased all contributions to such groups.”
Anschutz’s political leanings certainly have not been a secret, and a source close to the situation questioned the timing of the articles, which seemed to stem from a Washington Post article published in July that identified him as one of the “enemies of equality” for the LGBT community. The Afropunk site appears to have been the first to publish such a report on Wednesday, although the news quickly spread and gained steam via a post on Teen Vogue.
Billboard reached out to multiple acts
on the Coachella lineup for comment, although none have responded as of press time. However, Mitski posted on her Twitter account, linking to the Teen Vogue report and writing, “Ah f—-.Well I agreed to do this+not going would only hurt me not the fest, but u can still not go,” adding that those who do attend can “make sure the spaces we inhabit are made safe.”
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What Happened in Latin Music In 2016? Consumption Up, Market DividedBY LEILA COBO
Latin album sales are down (as with everyone else) and Latin digital song sales are down (as with everyone else) in 2016. But buoyed by strong streaming numbers, overall consumption of Latin music in the U.S. (in equivalent album units, which combine traditional albums sales, streaming equivalent units and track equivalent units), grew by 13.6% in 2016, from 25.6 million in 2015 to 29 million, according to Nielsen Music.
That means Latin saw the third-biggest increase in music consumption year-over-year, after R&B/hip-hop and holiday music, among the major genres tracked by Nielsen.
It’s a bright spot for a Latin music market that has been in major flux over the past five years, but which seems to be finally turning around.
2016 was a year of new artist signings (new teen group CNCO had the No. 12 top-selling Latin album of the year), of growing awareness of Latin in the mainstream marketplace and of exciting music, from Cubatón to Colombia’s soulful reggaetón, that had an impact beyond Latin consumers.
What’s happened in the past 12 months bodes well for a genre whose lingua franca — Spanish —allows it to flow freely across many countries. If streaming is a saving grace for music, Latin has an edge by virtue of its mobile-friendly fan base which increasingly has access to smartphones.
Here in the U.S., streaming should continue to go up as well, as more and more acculturated Latins start tapping into their phones and into the music; in terms of sheer percentages, for example, overall consumption among all genres is up 3.1% compared to Latin’s 13.6%.
Overall on-demand Latin streams (combining on-demand audio and video) were up 28 percent (to 35.9 billion), although both Latin album sales and Latin digital song sales were down (falling 26 percent to 3.7 million, and 26 percent to 13.7 million, respectively).
A deeper dive into the Latin charts, however, show some quirks. The deep divisions in the U.S. Latin marketplace have always been vexing for labels and promoters: There’s a West Coast market, an East Coast market, a Miami market and a Puerto Rico market, each with its own distinct and defined tastes.
Now, Nielsen’s year-end tally of the top-selling Latin albums and Latin songs of the year shows not a division, but a chasm, where what’s happening with traditional physical album sales is completely different from what’s moving the singles and the streaming markets.
An analysis of Nielsen Music’s top 10 top-selling Latin albums of 2016 gives us a list dominated by Mexican artists overall (the late Juan Gabriel has a stunning four out of the top five selling albums of the year) and regional Mexican artists in particular.
Ray BLK on Winning BBC Music Sound 2017 Poll: ‘I’m a Dreamer, But This Was Really Unexpected’BY RICHARD SMIRKE
“When I put out my first EP I genuinely expected to have no more than 20 listens,” says 23 year-old singer songwriter Ray BLK, reflecting on her rapid rise to fame. “I made it with no resources. I ripped the beats off YouTube. I begged someone that I found online to let me use his studio and I just sent it to a bunch of my friends, who I thought would be the only ones who heard it. So to be here is really crazy.”
Life is also about to get a whole lot crazier, after BLK — whose real name is Rita Ekwere – was today (Jan 06) announced as the winner of the BBC Sound of 2017 poll, previously topped by everyone from Adele to Sam Smith to Ellie Goulding. “I’m sure everybody [nominated] hopes to win it and I’m a dreamer, but this was really unexpected,” says Nigeria born, London-based BLK, who is the first ever independent artist to top the annual poll, voted for by around 170 industry experts, DJs, festival bookers, critics and bloggers. Second spot went to 2017 Brits Critics’ Choice winner Rag N Bone Man (signed to Columbia) with 18 year-old London singer Raye in third.
“It’s a bit crazy to be amongst the names of the alumni winners,” continues BLK. “It means the voters must have seen something special because they saw something special in those artists who have gone on to achieve so much success. I just hope that I follow on from that, take the torch and achieve some success as well,” adds the singer-songwriter, whose adopted surname stands for Building Living Knowing.
The artist describes her music as “new school R&B influenced by soul and hip hop” and cites her childhood singing in a church and school choir as lighting the fire for her future career. In her early teens, her tastes expanded to U.S. hip hop artists like Missy Elliot, Jay Z and Nas, swiftly followed by Amy Winehouse and Lauryn Hill, who she describes as “two of the biggest influences” behind her own sound, which blends raw and candid lyrics about life in Catford, a far from glamorous part of South London, with soaring melodies and soulful, gospel-tinged vocals.
“I just write about me and the environment and where I’m from,” states the singer, whose debut Havisham EP tells the story of a girl who falls in love, has her heart broken and becomes a cold hearted man hater. Released in March 2015 on SoundCloud and named after the character Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the 7-track EP was followed by 5050, which sees BLK document a rocky relationship with a commitment-phobe drug dealer over skeletal beats and glacial synths. The Aston Rudi-produced track landed BLK spots on the A-List of influential radio stations BBC 1Xtra and Rinse FM, introducing her to a wider audience. Last year’s bittersweet “My Hood” — written after her home was robbed by her neighbors and featuring a guest vocal from British grime artist Stormzy — brought her further mainstream recognition.
“I wanted to get Stormzy on it because I felt like the message of the song really represented who he is and what he means to people. People see him a real inspiration and I wanted the song to hopefully inspire people where I’m from,” explains BLK, who says she has mixed feelings about the area where she grew up in and continues to live. “Some mornings I love it and some I don’t. As an innocent teenager who wasn’t involved in anything rough at all I just walked around blindly and I never felt like I lived in a rough area, although people would always tell me that. But I feel like coming from [Catford] has really grounded me and made me a strong person. It pushed me to work harder.”
Last fall’s “Chill Out,” a stirring electro soul torch song made in collaboration with British producer SG Lewis, with a video shot in Jamaica that features BLK performing alongside members of the Gully Queens, a community of LGBT individuals living in one of the world’s most homophobic countries, offered further evidence of the singer’s talent. It features on Durt, a 7-track mini album that collects together the artist’s singles to date, released late last year. Today also sees the release of a soulful new freestyle called “Patience,” although BLK says there’s no concrete plans for a debut album proper quite yet.
“You never know what might happen. But for now I’m just working on compiling the best songs I can for whatever it will be that I put out in the future,” says BLK, whose elevation through the pop ranks comes at a time when home grown urban artists are thriving in the U.K. Four of the top five Sound of 2017 acts are black British women, reflecting a blossoming of female R&B and hip hop talent, largely based in London.
Last year also saw grime, a long underground, hard-hitting and distinctly British form of hip-hop, make its mainstream breakthrough, with Skepta’s Konnichiwa album beating David Bowie and Radiohead to the 2016 Mercury Prize and scene stalwarts like Kano and Giggs scoring commercial success.
“It makes me so happy that Britain is starting to appreciate British music more,” declares BLK, who says that, like many of the current scene leaders, she intends to remain independent (in partnership with Kobalt Music Services). “It makes me so happy to turn on to the radio and hear acts form the U.K. and also see them being successful. It’s a privilege to be among those names. It’s representative of what’s going on right now. The more artists that come out being authentic to who they are and what they want to do will influence other people to do the same.”
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Creative Community for Peace on Urging Artists to Play Israel & Challenging Roger Waters to a DebateBY ANDY GENSLER
A common love of music may have carried Craig Balsam (co-founder of Razor & Tie Entertainment), David Renzer (chairman of Spirit Music Group) and Steve Schnur (Electronic Arts’ worldwide executive and music president) to the top of the music business, but each is also engaged in another mutually shared passion: The Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), a group advocating for greater international cultural engagement with Israel.
The advocacy group, which began in 2012, has grown in the wake of the proliferation of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel, which has led to high-profile Promise Land cancellations by touring musicians including Roger Waters, CeeLo Green, Annie Lennox, Lauryn Hill, The Pixies and Elvis Costello. (Other more high-profile cancellations, including by Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Lana Del Rey and Neil Young, cited the cause as security concerns or scheduling conflicts and not BDS.)
“We decided there needed to be a response to the BDS movement, because very few music executives are advocating for Israel,” Balsam says of the CCFP, which counts approximately 40 entertainment executives on its advisory board from the music, film and TV sectors in cities that include Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and London.
CCFP’s mission statement is a simple
one: “Culture and arts help build bridges,” says Renzer. “We try to provide balance to the dialog. An example of the power of music to build bridges is that when an artist performs in Israel, the audience is made up of people from all religions — Christians, Muslims and Jews — and they’re all present together at concerts, which is not the case in many other countries. We also support organizations such as Polyphony, which sponsors classical orchestras made up of half Arab and half Israeli students.”
Cancellations in Israel by international acts is not a new phenomenon and dates back to the intifadas — the Palestinian uprisings of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — and gained more traction in the mid-aughts with the launch of the BDS movement. The result is that the Israeli concert industry has lost millions because these called-off shows are most often not covered by insurance (a topic reported on in Billboard).
Waters is one of the BDS movement’s most high-profile and vocal proponents, preaching the protest movement’s message to boycott Israel and its government — which it considers an occupying force — from stages across the globe, most recently at Desert Trip and in two interviews with Billboard (“Roger Waters Shares What He Really Wanted to Say About Trump [and Clinton] at Desert Trip” and “Roger Waters Eviscerates ‘Racist, Sexist Pig’ Trump & Urges Israel ‘To End Occupation’ at Desert Trip”).
“He’s made some really outrageous statements,” says Balsam, who cites Waters’ use of words like “genocide,” “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” and comparisons to Nazism when describing the Israeli government’s policies. “We’re not trying to whitewash it and say Israel is perfect, but these terms are just factually incorrect, inflammatory and extreme, and it really troubles us.”
Balsam says one of CCFP’s messages is that performing in Israel is an opportunity for artists to see what’s going on for themselves. And further, if an artist is critical of the Israeli government, “They should go perform, stand on the stage and say you don’t like the current government.
You can do that there. No one is going to arrest you. We don’t expect everyone to agree with every policy of the Israeli government, just like I wouldn’t expect everyone to agree with every policy of the U.S. government.”
CCFP also considers itself something of an information clearing house and resource for artists and their teams who may be concerned about playing Israel and/or facing pressure from the BDS movement. Says Balsam: “What happens is, the minute an artist mentions they might play Israel or sets aside a date, they are barraged from many different angles. And it’s not just the artist who’s barraged; it’s the manager, sometimes it’s booking agents, and they don’t know what to make of it. What happened before CCFP was that they would just cancel the show because they felt very pressured and like they were doing the wrong thing. They didn’t really understand the issues and options. We felt we had to do something to support the artist community and encourage music to be played wherever in support of peaceful gatherings.”
The CCFP works directly with artists along with management and agents to identify additional causes and/or collaborations that resonate with an artist, their fans and others. “For example, we worked closely with Cyndi Lauper and her management in helping identify a program she could work with that appealed to her,” Renzer recalls. “She wanted to visit a LGBTQ center in Tel Aviv, which is something we helped facilitate. … When Alicia Keys announced a concert in Israel, she was slammed very hard by the boycott Israel movement. Not only did we work with her management team and agents, but we also connected her with a musician in Israel named Idan Raichel who is all about promoting music as a means of peace and co-existence and has a multi-ethnic and – religious band. She went on to perform in Israel with Muslim and Israeli musicians and even invited them to Central Park to perform with her. That’s a perfect example of how artists can utilize the power of music to help build bridges.”
“THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST ALBUMS YET OF 2016.”HHHHHHHHHHHH
“AN OUTSIZED DANGEROUS TALENT”HHHHHHHHHHH
“DRAKE HAS BEEN UNSTOPPABLE THIS YEAR -- HE’S A TRUE
GLOBAL SUPERSTAR.”HHHHHHHHHHHH
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would welcome the opportunity to have a dialogue with Waters and mention that the other artists on the Desert Trip bill — The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan — have played the Holy Land (along with other top-tier acts, including Madonna, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Justin Bieber, Elton John and others). “I find it very ironic that he has a powerful platform and announced his new ‘Us and Them’ tour as being about the power of music to build bridges towards peace, and yet he’s saying some pretty incendiary things,” Renzer argues. “Frankly, we would love to challenge Roger Waters to debate in a public forum where we can talk about the facts and the issues.”
Ultimately, Razor & Tie’s Balsam says, it’s all for a higher purpose. “People have to live in peace,” he says. “Our hope is that by creating dialogue and conversation and education, there will someday be a peaceful resolution.”
Drake Tops Canada’s Year-End ChartsBY KAREN BLISS
Mirroring his 2016 success in the U.S., Drake’s Views has been named the most popular album of the past year in Canada, according to Nielsen Music. The set earned 457,000 equivalent album units during the tracking year (which ran from Jan. 1-Dec. 29, 2016). Next in line was Adele’s 25 with 266,000.
(Equivalent album units are traditional album sales combined with track equivalent album units, where 10 tracks sold from an album equals one unit, and streaming equivalent album units, where 1,500 streams from an album equals one unit.)
Views shifted 196,000 in album sales, 194,000 in streaming equivalent album units and 67,000 in track equivalent album units. Views was by far the album with the
most streams for its tracks in 2016, with 291 million on-demand audio streams earned for the set in Canada — twice as many as the No. 2 most-streamed album, Justin Bieber’s Purpose (137 million streams for its songs).
At No. 2 on the year-end overall top albums list is Adele’s 25, with 266,000 units (196,000 in traditional album sales). Justin Bieber’s Purpose is No. 3 (240,000 units; 92,000 in album sales), followed by Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface (172,000 units; 73,000 in album sales), The Weeknd’s Starboy (171,000 units; 79,000 in album sales) and Rihanna’s Anti (170,000 units; 59,000 in album sales). Rounding out the top 10: Sia’s This Is Acting at No. 7 (169,000 units; 63,000 in album sales), Celine Dion’s Encore Un Soir at No. 8 (140,000 units; 134,000 in album sales) Beyonce’s Lemonade at No. 9 (138,000 units; 101,000 in album sales) and The Chainsmokers’ Collage at No. 10 (136,000 units; just 6,000 in album sales).
TOP-SELLING ALBUMSViews and 25 also finish at Nos. 1 and 2,
respectively, on Canada’s year-end top 10 best-selling albums list (Views edges out 25, though rounded figures give each title 196,000 sold). With Drake at No. 1 on the top sellers list, he is the first Canadian to lead the list since 2004.
The country’s top 10 best-selling albums includes six Canadians: Drake’s Views at No. 1 (196,000); Celine Dion’s Encore Un Soir, No. 3 (134,000); Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, No. 4 (106,000); Justin Bieber’s Purpose, No. 7 (92,000); The Weeknd’s Starboy, No. 8 (79,000); and The Tragically Hip’s Yer Favourites, No.9 (75,000). Non-Canucks Adele’s 25 sat at No. 2 (196,000); Metallica’s Hardwired…To Self Destruct at No. 5 (103,000); Beyonce’s Lemonade at No. 6 (101,000) and Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface at No. 10 (73,000).
“2016 was an exciting year for Canadian artists and the overall Canadian music industry,” said Paul Shaver, head of Nielsen Music Canada, in a statement issued with the Canada year-end report. “From the increased popularity of streaming to the total consumption growth, the music landscape continues to evolve
at an incredible speed, and we’re looking forward to tracking the industry trends for the year ahead.”
In line with the U.S. which showed a two percent increase in total audio consumption, in Canada the figures confirm an even greater upswing of 5.3 percent, driven by a 203 percent increase in on-demand audio streams when compared to 2015. Total audio consumption — 43.8 million — encompasses traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Following behind Drake’s Views and Adele’s 25 in the Overall Top 10 chart are Justin Bieber’s Purpose with 240,000; Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface with 172,000; The Weeknd’s Starboy with 171,000; Rihanna’s Anti with 170,000; Sia’s This Is Acting with 169,000; Celine Dion’s Encore Un Soir with 140,000; Beyonce’s Lemonade with 138,000; and The Chainsmokers’s Collage with 136,000.
Overall album sales were down 21 percent to 21.1 million in 2016. Notably, catalog album sales were 51 percent of total album sales, surpassing current album sales for the first time. Figures for overall current were 10,349,300 versus 10,788,700 for overall catalogue. Both were a drop from 2015, which was 14,555,500 and 12,344,400 respectively.
The Tragically Hip — whose singer disclosed his diagnosis with brain cancer earlier in the year — sold more than 250,000 units of their album catalogue and totaled more than 67 million streams. The band’s latest album, Man Machine Poem, and 2005 best of, Yer Favourites, both reached No. 1 on the weekly Billboard Canadian charts.
As for digital song sales, the format’s sales fell 23 percent to 73.7 million downloads. The top selling digital song of the year was Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” with 367,000 downloads sold.
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FOR YOUR GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
THE AVETT BROTHERS
“[TRUE SADNESS] IS THE MOST EXCITING AND ADVENTUROUS
Adele, The Chainsmokers Rule Australia’s Year-End ChartsBY LARS BRANDLE
When Adele visits Australia next month to kick off her first tour of these parts, she’ll do so knowing she’s still No. 1.
The British songstress’ 25 (XL/Inertia) tops Australia’s year-end albums chart for the second successive year, according to newly-published trade data, while The Chainsmokers “Closer” featuring Halsey was the year’s best-selling single in the market.
Adele’s third album is No. 1 on the ARIA 2016 End Of Year Albums Chart, ahead of Keith Urban’s Ripcord (Capitol/EMI), Beyonce’s Lemonade (Columbia/Sony), the soundtrack to the homegrown Molly TV series (Liberation/Universal) and Michael Buble’s double-diamond certified Christmas (Reprise/Warner).
Adele’s 25 spent two weeks at No. 1 in 2016 and hasn’t dropped outside the top 30 since its release in November 2015, notching eight-times platinum sales along the way (platinum is registered at 70,000 units). The album has clocked 45 weeks in the ARIA top 10 and its joined in the 2016 best-sellers survey with Adele’s previous two albums, 21 at No. 29 and 19 at No. 93.
With its chart feat Down Under, 25 achieves a spectacular double-double. The album also came in at No. 1 for two successive years in the U.K., the Official Charts Company reported earlier this week. The north Londoner joins Pink as the only artists to top Australia’s year-end sales chart over consecutive years with the same album (Pink managed it with The Truth About Love in 2013-14). It’s not Adele’s first time atop Australia’s year-end chart; her blockbuster sophomore album 21 was No. 1 for 2011.
Bublé’s seasonal favorite Christmas album has now spent six consecutive years in the end-of-year top 100. It finished No.
2 in 2011, No. 4 in 2012, No. 7 of 2013, No. 8 in 2014 and No. 7 in 2015.
Meanwhile, American EDM duo The Chainsmokers had the year’s highest-selling single with “Closer” (Columbia/Sony), which managed nine weeks at No. 1, the longest streak for the year.
“Closer” is seven-times platinum and is one of four Chainsmokers tracks on the ARIA 2016 End Of Year Singles Chart. No other act landed more than three in the top 100, though Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Little Mix, Twenty One Pilots, Shawn Mendes and Zara Larsson all hit that mark.
Drake had the year’s second-best selling track with “One Dance” (Republic/Universal) featuring Wizkid & Kyla, while Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” (Warner), Flume featuring Kai’s “Never Be Like You” (Future Classic) and The Chainsmokers featuring Daya’s “Don’t Let Me Down” complete the top 5.
Domestic acts enjoyed a strong showing across both main charts with 31 homegrown LP releases and 15 singles making the cut.
ARIA compiles its charts from data supplied by more than 1,200 music retailers, including department stores, chain stores, independent retailers, streaming outlets and digital providers. The trade body does not publish accurate sales figures.
Top 10 Albums of 2016 in Australia1. Adele ‘25’2. Keith Urban ‘Ripcord’3. Beyonce ‘Lemonade’4. Soundtrack ‘Molly (Soundtrack From
The TV Series)’5. Michael Bublé ‘Christmas’6. John Farnham & Olivia Newton John
‘Friends For Christmas’7. Jessica Mauboy ‘Secret Daughter
(Songs From The TV Series)’8. David Bowie ‘Blackstar’9. Justin Bieber ‘Purpose’10. Soundtrack ‘Suicide Squad: The
Album’Top 10 Singles of 2016 in Australia1. The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey
‘Closer’2. Drake featuring Wizkid & Kyla ‘One
Dance’
3. Lukas Graham ‘7 Years’4. Flume featuring Kai ‘Never Be Like
You’5. The Chainsmokers featuring Daya
‘Don’t Let Me Down’6. Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna ‘This
Is What You Came For’7. Justin Timberlake ‘Can’t Stop The
Feeling’8. Sia ‘Cheap Thrills’9.Twenty One Pilots ‘Stressed Out’10. Justin Bieber ‘Love Yourself ’
How James Van Der Beek’s Diplo Spoof Became a Scripted TV SeriesBY ELIAS LEIGHT
Anything that incites fervor is ripe for parody, so it’s not surprising that the world of big-tent dance music has inspired its fair share of send-ups: try Andy Samberg’s Saturday Night Live digital short, where the bass drops with such force that dancers’ heads literally explode; a skit based on the movie Whiplash, where a cruel teacher at “Skrillex academy” tortures would-be DJs by hurling lit glowsticks at their heads; or a trailer for the fake show NCIS: Ibiza, in which Moby, Nile Rodgers, Steve Aoki, and other mainstream dancefloor luminaries poke fun at the conventions of their business.
Last summer, Diplo — who was himself the subject of a spoof video by Thao Nguyen and tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus in March — offered his own entry in the genre, which doubled as an ad for his annual Mad Decent Block Party. In “Day In The Life Of Diplo,” James Van Der Beek, who became famous as a heartthrob on the ‘90s show Dawson’s Creek, portrays Diplo as the pompous, amusingly out-of-touch emperor of a dance music kingdom. Van Der Beek punctuates all his sentences with either the term “fam” or a crass blast from a nearby
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airhorn, and he pays aspiring producers to create his beats — while decked out in elf costumes. All the while, the producer blithely dismisses his detractors with two-bit platitudes like, “ain’t no compliment greater than a hater.”
Van Der Beek’s Diplo will reach a much wider audience at some point this year: Viceland, a cable network partnership between Vice and A+E that launched last year, ordered six episodes of a scripted series, titled What Would Diplo Do?, based on the Mad Decent Block Party promo. It’s the network’s very first scripted program. Van Der Beek will help write the show and serve as an executive producer along with Diplo, Diplo’s manager, Kevin Kusatsu, and the director, Brandon Dermer; each episode will focus on a fictional account from Diplo’s life on tour. TMWRK, Kusatsu’s management company, produces along with Matador and Viceland.
“The comedy of it is what attracted us,” says Jay Peterson, who co-founded Matador in 2013. “[Diplo]’s sort of self aware about his identity out in the world. And it’s taking a chance, which I think is what we love more than anything.” “Vice is the perfect partner for this particular project,” adds Jack Turner, head of scripted and digital content for Matador. “For them to be doing scripted is so exciting, given the audience that they have. They want to do projects that are not what people are going to expect.”
The initial idea for the Van Der Beek treatment came from Dermer, who has extensive experience with music videos, including Major Lazer’s “Scare Me” and Panic! At The Disco’s VMA-nominated visual for “Victorious,” and also worked for Comedy Central for two years. “Everybody has this idea of Diplo — who he is, what he sounds like — based on nothing but the music and social media,” Dermer explains, slightly frazzled on the phone from L.A. after a four hour meeting with Viceland co-president Spike Jonze. “Even talking to friends back home, they’re like, ‘[Diplo’s] life must be crazy!’” Dermer continues. “So I thought it would be funny to do an interpretation of what he looks and sounds like.”
The director immediately thought of Van Der Beek as a good candidate for spoof-Diplo. “I’m a fan of his from Rules of Attraction and Varsity Blues,” Dermer says. “And obviously he played himself masterfully in Don’t Trust The B—— In Apartment 23 — he has a sense of humor.” The hunch paid off: Not only did the actor meet with Dermer and Kusatsu, but Van Der Beek was so taken with the project that he asked to contribute to the dialog. “Obviously the dude has years of experience in television working with incredible people,” Dermer notes. “He really brings a lot of that to the table. James is a great writer.”
The spot that resulted from their initial efforts has accumulated more than a quarter of a million views to date, including, eventually, Jonze — the famous director of both feature films and music videos who now helps run Viceland. Kusatsu started conversations with the network about expanding the project into a series; Paradigm’s head of Creation/Distribution, Ben Weiss, helped close the deal with Vice. At the same time, Kusatsu reached out to Matador — TMWRK and Matador are partners on several other projects, including a forthcoming documentary about Major Lazer’s historic 2016 concert in Cuba — about possibly producing the episodes. “James and I sat down with Jay over there, and he just gets it,” Dermer says.
Peterson hints that the show may have some sort of life beyond the screen — in a life-imitating-art moment, the line between Van Der Beek’s Diplo and the real one may occasionally blur. “[Diplo] has a sense of humor about this,” Peterson says. “He’s helping us find people to be involved, other people from the world of rockstar DJs and producers. We may have it so that audiences go to see a Major Lazer show or a Diplo show and all of a sudden they see James Van Der Beek up there. We have a lot of ideas that Diplo fully supports.”
Peterson and Turner have no qualms about being the guinea pig as Viceland makes its first foray into scripted programming. “We’re thrilled that we get to be the first thing out of the gate,”
Peterson asserts. “The idea is that being the first hopefully we will over-deliver and just do more and more with these guys.” And though it’s early in the process of putting the show together, Turner suggests that one season may not be enough to portray all the facets of Van Der Beek’s Diplo. “All the projects that Vice wants to do, they want to have ongoing beyond just one season,” he points out. “The amount of ideas we have, it’s hard to totally capture them in just six episodes.”
“The best reaction we want from the announcement that went out [this week] is people don’t know exactly what to expect from the show,” Peterson sums up. “And that gives us more freedom creatively to really mess with people.” If Van Der Beek’s Diplo were around, he would surely applaud this sentiment with a blast from the airhorn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoAIzki2jOI
Wiz Khalifa and Former Manager Benjy Grinberg Settle LawsuitsBY MARC SCHNEIDER
Wiz Khalifa and Rostrum Records founder Benjy Grinberg, the rapper’s former manager, have resolved their lawsuits against each. According to a statement provided to Billboard, “all disputes” have been resolved following a joint settlement agreement.
“This agreement includes the dismissal of lawsuits that each party had previously filed against each other earlier this year,” the statement reads. “Both parties are pleased with the outcome and look forward to putting this matter behind them.”
Financial details of the joint settlement were not disclosed.
On May 31 of last year, the Pittsburgh artist filed a $1 million lawsuit against
Grinberg and Rostrum, alleging that the parties had profited from “virtually every aspect” of his professional life through a 360 deal signed in 2005 when he was a teenager. Khalifa’s suit alleged that Grinberg and Rostrum entered into deals with Warner Bros. Records and Atlantic Records for his recordings.
Grinberg and Rostrum followed with their own lawsuit a month later, seeking “millions of dollars in unpaid” royalties and earnings from touring and merchandising. Grinberg said his former client’s allegations were the “complete opposite of our actions and the antithesis of what Rostrum Records and I stand for.”
Barack Obama on His Post-POTUS Plan: ‘I’m Still Waiting for My Job at Spotify’BY MARC SCHNEIDER
If Barack Obama grows tired of trying to rebuild the wounded Democratic party after leaving office, as he has signaled, there’s always money to be made in digital music. The president is said to have joked “I’m still waiting for my job at Spotify” while speaking with former Swedish ambassador Mark Brzezinski at the White House this week, according to the diplomat’s wife, podcast host and writer Natalia Brzezinski.
On Instagram, Natalia gave a “word for word” account of her husband’s chat with his former boss. “I loved visiting you in Stockholm, it was my favorite trip,” he said, referring to his 2013 trip there. “I plan to go back there really soon.” He went on to joke about the Spotify gig, riffing that Daniel Ek and company would want him on board “Cuz’ I know y’all loved my playlist.”
(Mark Brzezinski is the son of former National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski and the brother of MSNBC morning host Mika Brzezinski.”)
Obama’s 2016 Summer playlist for Spotify included contemporary tracks from Leon Bridges, Janelle Monae and Edward Sharpe, as well as classics by Nina Simone, the Beach Boys and Charles Mingus. In October, he dropped a playlist for the gym and he had another one back in 2012 during his campaign for re-election.
Since Donald Trump’s surprise win over Hillary Clinton, Obama has been talking about his role in politics going forward. At his last year-end press conference, Obama — who is staying in D.C. until youngest daughter Sasha finishes high school — said he’ll work to heal his party and find the “next generation” of leaders across all fields.
“With respect to my priorities when I leave, it is to build that next generation of leadership; organizers, journalists, politicians. I see them in America, I see them around the world, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who are just full of talent, full of idealism,” he said. “And the question is how do we link them up? How do we give them the tools for them to bring about progressive change? And I want to use my presidential center as a mechanism for developing that next generation of talent.”
Ganja Tourism in Jamaica Gets Boost as Largest Reggae Festival Approved for WeedBY PATRICIA MESCHINO
Jamaica’s largest reggae festival Rebel Salute, founded in 1994 by Rastafarian sing-jay Tony Rebel, can now openly advertise as a marijuana festival, too.
Rebel Salute (Jan. 13-14) is one of three annual events granted ganja exempt status by the Jamaica government, meaning marijuana can be freely used throughout their duration despite still being illegal in Jamaica. Rastafarians consider marijuana a sacred plant and since Rebel and most artists who’ve performed on Rebel Salute over the past 22 years have extolled the plant’s usage, the government has finally, if somewhat begrudgingly, sanctioned what Rastafarians have consistently championed.
Featuring more than 50 reggae artists ranging from legendary band Third World to contemporary dancehall star Popcaan (rumored to be signing to Drake’s OVO label), Rebel Salute 2017 will also include a marijuana-derived product exhibition (by Jamaican and internationally based companies) and a smokers lounge in an area designated as the “herb curb.”
In addition, newly formed Jamaican companies as well as individual ganja farmers spearheading the move towards a regulated, legal medical marijuana industry on the island will be participating in daytime symposiums.
Rebel Salute and the other ganja exempt events, Steppin High (March) and Rasta Rootz Festival (December), each showcasing marijuana products and providing nightly entertainment by herb-endorsing reggae stars, has prompted the development of (openly advertised) ganja tourism by small independent companies. While the Jamaica Tourist Board has not yet advertised ganja as a reason to visit, they’ve increased their support of Rebel Salute this year, after years of refusing to back it in any way.
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Kane Brown and His Team Aim for a Radio Breakthrough In 2017BY PHYLLIS STARK
Can a new country artist break big without the widespread support of radio? Historically, the answer to that question has been no, but 23-year-old Zone 4/Sony Music Nashville artist Kane Brown may prove to be an exception.
Brown came to prominence in ways still considered nontraditional in the country format: TV and social media. He appeared on Fox’s The X Factor in 2013 (and also auditioned unsuccessfully for American Idol). From there, he began building his social media presence by posting low key, yet wildly popular videos on his Facebook page featuring himself performing country song covers and some originals. His Facebook fan base now numbers more than 2 million followers.
“He was posting raw, acoustic covers on Facebook from his apartment,” says Sony Music Nashville executive vp promotion and artist development Steve Hodges. “No studio, no band, no stage, no lights, no postproduction, nothing. Just a guy with a unique voice, a love for the music and a story to tell. Although he has amassed a huge social platform, it all started very real, intimate, believable and small.”
In the past, country radio has rarely opened the door wide for TV talent show contestants (Carrie Underwood being among a handful of notable exceptions). And until Brown, country really hadn’t been confronted with a serious contender who — like Justin Bieber in the pop world — gained his initial fan following on social media rather than hustling through years of club gigs before landing a label deal. In fact, Brown had never played live until
November 2015, shortly before he got signed to Sony.
Since then, he has made up for lost time on the touring front with more than 200 dates in 2016, including opening Florida Georgia Line’s Dig Your Roots Tour, as well as headlining more than 60 of his own shows. Many of his club gigs were sellouts, according to Braeden Rountree, Brown’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. While most of those were in 1,500 – to 2,000-capacity rooms, his bigger sellouts have included 4,000 tickets at Coyote Joe’s in Charlotte, N.C., and he landed a sponsorship from Monster Energy Drink. “All of this,” says Rountree, “has been without a major hit at terrestrial country radio.”
Indeed, radio has yet to warm up to Brown. First single “Used to Love You Sober,” picked up by Sony after it had already taken off on social media, peaked at No. 35 on the Country Airplay chart in May 2016. Follow-up “Thunder In The Rain” stalled at No. 43 in October, but re-enters Country Airplay in the new year at No. 57.
“Kane created his massive and loyal fan base through very nontraditional means for the country format, and that’s a difficult thing sometimes for people to understand,” says Brown’s manager, EFG’s Martha Earls. “He got his music directly to his fans and we have, at times, found ourselves having to explain to people his authenticity. What’s ironic about that is it doesn’t get any more authentic than a direct artist-to-fan connection.”
Earls, who has worked with Brown since the summer of 2015, thinks fans were drawn to the striking, biracial, heavily tattooed and quietly charismatic artist because “they see themselves in him. They appreciate his honesty and love his traditional country voice matched with his modern image.”
His self-titled RCA Nashville debut album (for which Brown co-wrote seven of the 11 tracks) arrived at No. 1 on Top Country Albums and No. 10 on the Billboard 200 in the week following its early December 2016 release, with sales of 45,000 copies (and 51,000 equivalent album units on the all-genre consumption
chart), according to Nielsen Music. Those sales were bolstered by major TV bookings on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Today, spots on multiple “artist to watch” lists at print and digital media outlets and his live shows.
“When he began touring, the fan connection became massively stronger,” says Earls. “The casual fan became a rabid fan,” and his solo dates “legitimized him as a touring act.”
Brown recently watched a recording of his first live show, in Darlington, S.C., that was packed with cover songs. “If I was a fan in the audience [that night], I would have been like ‘What the heck did I just buy this ticket for?’ ” he jokes. Since then, Brown has observed and learned from Florida Georgia Line and the other acts on the FGL tour, and eagerly absorbed advice from the duo, its band and crew.
“It’s very impressive to see how far he has come in such a short amount of time,” says WME’s Rountree, who calls Brown “a humble and genuine guy.” His success on the touring front, adds Rountree, “speaks to the kind of work ethic and attention to detail he has.”
Airplay chart numbers notwithstanding, there have been pockets of early support for Brown at FM radio. Hodges cites Brown’s hometown station, WUSY Chattanooga, Tenn., among them, along with KEEY Minneapolis, KJKE Oklahoma City, KMPS Seattle, WIL St. Louis and WKLI Albany, N.Y., which he says all “have over 300 spins on ‘Thunder in the Rain.’ ”
Brown admits that the slow going at radio has been “kind of frustrating,” but adds, “My fans are ... what got me here, so that’s what we’re living off of right now. I want them to play my songs on the radio because I’m always thinking of how much we could blow this thing up, hopefully, but you got to respect that we did come off social media, so [radio programmers] don’t know who I am.”
He also didn’t make the rounds on the kind of traditional radio tour most new country artists spend months doing, although Brown has tried to spend as much time with radio personnel as possible while on tour and work in acoustic shows for
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radio stations where feasible, including what he calls “a crapload of guitar pulls.”
“In country radio, everybody has such a connection and a bond,” he says, “so you’ve got to meet them.”
The label staff and Earls are taking their time choosing a third single, knowing it will be a critical swing. They’re planning to go for adds in early February. “We intentionally wanted our partners at radio, satellite, digital service providers and the fans to live with the album and ingest the music, before choosing a single,” says Hodges.
Adds Earls: “Fortunately, Kane has made a great and deep album, so we’re not struggling to find good songs. We’re struggling to narrow it down to one.”
Once chosen, Hodges says that third single will come complete with “a multifaceted campaign to support it at radio. We’ll continue to shake hands and make time for as many people that have time for us. There’s nothing like getting the chance to sit down with Kane and hear his story straight from the source. He’s a very compelling and engaging young man.”
“All of the analytics,” says Hodges, “point to success for this artist.”
Brown is keenly aware that “everybody’s got high expectations for me,” and says, “I just don’t want to let anybody down.” At the same time, he adds, “The competitive side of me wants ... to exceed their expectations.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKS1GFJxYCw
Billboard 200 Chart Moves: ‘La La Land’ Soundtrack Sizzles, A Tribe Called Quest is Hot on VinylBY KEITH CAULFIELD
On the latest Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Jan. 14), Pentatonix’s A Pentatonix Christmas held on to the No. 1 slot for a second week, earning 101,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Dec. 29, according to Nielsen Music.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the week’s most popular albums based on their overall consumption. That overall unit figure combines pure album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the action on the latest Billboard 200 chart:
— Shawn Mendes, Illuminate – No. 11 — Promotion and associated sales generated by Mendes’ new Live at Madison Square Garden album (a debut at No. 200) assist his first two full-length sets at Nos. 11 (Illuminate) and 108 (Handwritten) with unit gains of 87 and 47 percent, respectively.
— Soundtrack, La La Land – No. 52 — The buzzy film’s expansion into further theaters on Dec. 25 helps its companion soundtrack zip 95-52 (17,000 units; 47 percent, with 13,000 copies sold; up 43 percent). Earlier in December, the movie scored seven Golden Globe nominations, including best musical or comedy. The film currently (as of Jan. 6) has a 93 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
On the Soundtracks chart, the title reaches a new peak, climbing 8-5.
— A Tribe Called Quest, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service – No. 32 — A Tribe Called Quest vaults up the chart, rising from 62-32 (25,000 units; up 66
percent, with 22,000 sold; up 83 percent), thanks to its release on vinyl LP on Dec. 23. The vinyl set sold 11,000 copies and debuts at No. 1 on the Vinyl Albums chart.
11,000 is a particularly robust figure for a rap album — and a vinyl set in general: in the past year, there have only been 10 instances where an album sold 10,000 or more on vinyl LP in a single week (and none of those were rap releases).
Further, We Got It From Here is just the third rap album to top the Vinyl Albums chart in the past year. It follows Twiztid’s The Green Book and De La Soul’s And the Anonymous Nobody.
The vinyl version of Tribe’s album hits the chart six weeks after We Got It From Here debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — supported largely by download sales of its digital album. The title’s CD edition did not arrive in wide release until the album’s second chart week.
— Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 3 – No. 35 — The hip-hop act nets its highest charting album yet — and first top 40 title — as Run the Jewels 3 bows at No. 35 with 23,000 units (17,000 from traditional album sales). The duo (El-P and Killer Mike) previously charted with Run the Jewels 2, which peaked at No. 50 in 2014. The act’s first release, its 2013 self-titled album, did not reach the Billboard 200, but did impact the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, debuting and peaking at No. 60.
— Frank Ocean, Blonde – No. 44 — Frank Ocean’s former No. 1 Billboard 200 album Blonde zooms from No. 167 to No. 44 following its commercial release on CD and vinyl — for one day only. The set made its CD and vinyl debut on Nov. 25 — for 24 hours only — via Ocean’s official website, while those purchases were fulfilled to customers during the Dec. 23-29th tracking frame. The album was previously only available as a digital download or stream.
Blonde sold 9,000 copies on CD, and 2,000 vinyl LPs. In total for the week, the title sold 13,000 copies – enough for a reentry at No. 35 on the Top Album Sales chart. Plus, Blonde launches at No. 19 on the Vinyl Albums chart.
Ed Sheeran Tops Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 Chart With ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Castle on the Hill’BY XANDER ZELLNER
New year, new music from Ed Sheeran. Hours after the singer/songwriter released two tracks off his forthcoming third studio album, both tunes launched to the top of the Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart Friday morning.
The Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 chart measures the real-time acceleration of conversation around artists and their music on Twitter.
The first track – and the only one of the two songs that Atlantic Records is actively promoting to radio – “Shape of You,” debuted at No. 1 on the chart at 6 a.m. ET Friday (Jan. 6), after he teased 30 seconds of the song in a Snapchat filter the day before. “Castle on the Hill,” the more pop-rock of the pair, debuted at No. 2 at the same hour Friday morning. Similar to “Shape,” Sheeran previewed the song on his social media channels Thursday (Jan. 5).
Sheeran also released lyric videos for each song on YouTube, which have both surpassed 1 million global views since their release. Sheeran initially announced the release date of the tracks on New Years Day, after posting a video of him holding a sign reading “New Music Coming Friday!!”
Both tracks are slated to appear on his latest album ÷, pronounced “divide.” He has yet to announce a release date for the album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dK2tDK9grQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qp5vcuMIlk
Little Mix and Clean Bandit Still Invincible on U.K. ChartsBY PAUL SEXTON
With no changes atop the U.K. charts, Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye” (Atlantic/Warner), featuring Sean Paul and Anne-Marie, is the No. 1 single for a ninth week. Little Mix’s Glory Days (Syco Music/Sony) spends a fourth non-consecutive week atop the album survey, to match Destiny’s Child 2001 run with Survivor as the longest-running girl group No. 1 album of the millennium.
“Rockabye” thus becomes the 18th song to spend nine or more weeks at the top of the U.K. singles chart, in a countdown that shows Rag ‘n’ Bone Man’s “Human” (Best Laid Plans) moving back 3-2. It trades places with “I Would Like” (Black Butter/Epic/Sony) by Zara Larsson, with Little Mix’s “Touch” steady at No. 4 and The Weeknd’s “Starboy” (XO/Republic/Universal), featuring Daft Punk, back up 8-5. The song peaked at No. 2 in October; this is its 15th consecutive week in the top ten. Neiked’s “Sexual” (Neiked Collective), which hit No.5 last month, rebounds 11-6.
Also climbing again is The Weeknd’s other collaboration with Daft Punk, “I Feel It Coming,” up 19-13 after reaching No. 9 in December. JP Cooper’s “September Song” (Universal Island), which spent the last two weeks at No. 45, makes a sudden dash to No. 16, and John Legend’s “Love Me Now” (Columbia/Sony) races 38-17.
The Little Mix album may have drawn level with Destiny’s Child, but it has work to do to match the longest run atop the U.K. album chart by a female group, which is the Spice Girls’ 15 weeks with Spice in 1996-’97. The OCC reports that combined U.K. sales of Glory Days now stand at 434,000.
Racing 24-2 on the album chart is “superstar DJ” Pete Tong’s Classic House (Polydor/UMC/OMOD) with the Heritage
Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley. It features orchestral adaptations of classic dance tracks, and was inspired by the ensemble’s performance at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2015, for the so-called Ibiza Prom.
Without any new releases on offer, the chart welcomes Adele’s 25 (XL Recordings) back into the top ten for the first time since August, as it rises 14-7. Christine & the Queens’ U.K. breakthrough Chaleur Humaine (Because Music), which spent ten weeks in the top ten from June last year and reached No. 2, catapults 71-19.
The Weeknd’s ‘Starboy’ Set for No. 1 Return on Billboard 200 ChartBY KEITH CAULFIELD
The Weeknd’s Starboy is on course for a return trip to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, according to industry forecasters. Those in the know suggest the set — which debuted atop the list dated Dec. 17, 2016 — could jump back to the top of next week’s tally, notching its second week at No. 1. The album may earn over 70,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Jan. 5.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The top 10 of the new Jan. 21, 2017-dated Billboard 200 chart — where Starboy could bounce back to No. 1 — is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s websites on Sunday, Jan. 8.
If Starboy does return to No. 1, it would do so with a decline in overall units earned for the week, as the industry gets back to business-as-usual after the busy holiday
shopping season. The set might drop by 20 percent in units compared to the previous frame (week ending Dec. 29).
In fact, the only album that could score a unit gain in next week’s top 10 might be the soundtrack to the animated film Moana, which could vault from No. 6 to No. 2 (a new high) with perhaps a 10-20 percent gain. Another soundtrack, La La Land, is poised to break the top 20 for the first time (rising from No. 52 on the current Billboard 200 chart), with perhaps 20,000 units.
No albums are likely to debut in the new top 10, as few major albums were released during the tracking week.
