Innholdsfortegnelse for Feb-22-14 i Billboard Magazine

DIDDY BRANDS DRIVE FIAT Fiat has secured Sean “Diddy” Combs as the face of its latest ad in what is essentially a barter deal. A new spot featuring Combs, with Pharrell’s Academy Award-nominated hit “Happy” as the soundtrack, is airing nationwide to promote the new 500L vehicle. In what Olivier Francois, chief marketing officer of Fiat owner Chrysler, describes as a “triangulation of brands,” Fiat enabled Combs to promote his own companies in the ad (Aquahydrate bottled water and Revolt TV) rather than pay him for the endorsement. DEEZER DOWN UNDER Deezer, the French music streaming service with an international profile, will close its Australian office even as iTunes Radio gets set for a launch down under. Deezer will still be available in Australia and New Zealand, but managing director…

Self-management isn’t for the faint of heart, but Aloe Blacc certainly seems up to the task. The 35-year-old singer, best-known for delivering the soulful vocals to Avicii’s worldwide smash “Wake Me Up!,” is due to release his major-label debut album, Lift Your Spirit, on Interscope on March 11, and, hot on the heels of solo success with the song “The Man” (which rises 21-17 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 and has sold 906,000 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan), recently inked a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell said to be worth nearly $2 million. That’s on top of a major synch in a national campaign for Beats Music headphones, believed to be excluded from the Warner/Chappell signing and itself worth six f gures. Blacc has been hailed as an artist with…

Martin Bandier, music publishing’s most powerful executive, pulled the industry back from the brink when he decided to f nally renew an agreement with BMI, one of the two largest performance rights organizations. The Sony/ATV chairman/CEO has been engaged in a high-stakes chess match involving himself along with other publishers, digital music services like Pandora, the top two PROs (BMI and ASCAP) and the U.S. Department of Justice. The decision to re-up with BMI, following a move by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) to do the same, ends a song licensing crisis that digital service providers in particular may have been enduring. Bandier, who has been under pressure to get this right, describes the agreement as being “back on safe grounds.” “The important thing about our BMI deal is it…

What’s one of the hottest tickets out there right now? Lady Gaga, at least according to the barometer of the secondary ticket market, which—no matter what your stance is on ticket reselling— gives an indicator of how fans value an artist. While Internet pundits prattled on about Gaga’s troubled album launch, her audience voted with their dollars. The verdict is clear: artRAVE: The ARTPOP Ball is one of the hottest tours of 2014. Secondary ticketing service StubHub’s Popular Artists ranking—shared exclusively with Billboard—indicates the increase in keyword searches on StubHub for artists in the week after their tours were announced. Tour awareness is critical, because if fans don’t know an artist is coming to their town, they’re not going. And Gaga’s artRAVE tour announcement def nitely made some noise in…

“Thanks for making ‘pussy’ a ‘sayable’ word in my household. My 8-year-old says it all the time.” —Madonna TUESDAY, FEB. 11 9:45 p.m. At Rick Ross’ listening party for Mastermind at New World Stages, there’s an audible hush as an image of the Notorious B.I.G. fashes on a screen for the Sean “Diddy” Combs-produced track “Nobody,” featuring French Montana. The song is an homage to B.I.G.’s classic “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You).” The crowd, which includes DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Fabolous, Swizz Beatz and Busta Rhymes, eats it up. 9:50 p.m. “I had to use myself on the cover,”Helena Christensen jokes about the issue of Vs. magazine that she co-edited. “I told them, ‘I know someone great and I can get them.’” The remark draws laughs from the Strokes’Fabrizio…

DEPARTMENT 29 IN THE Stanley Mosk Courthouse of the Los Angeles Superior Court is a 50-square-foot box of dirty-blond wood and fuorescent light, and a disheartening place of hard-luck stories and forlorn conclusions. On a Friday morning before Christmas, a long succession of civil cases involving special-needs trusts, disputed inheritances, stricken families and various other probate calamities passed in a dull parade before Judge Lesley Green, who announced her decisions, one after another, with a swift dispatch. But the courtroom stirred and the spectators sat forward when Case No. BP145805 was called, and no fewer than six attorneys lined up before the judge in the matter of Julie Kasem et. al., petitioner, v. Jean Kasem, respondent, in respect to a “conservatorship of person”—that absent person being 81-year-old Casey Kasem, the…

In the decade that Billboard has devoted an annual special touring feature to new and renovated venues, never before have the nation’s two biggest concert markets, New York and Los Angeles, demanded the spotlight as they do now—largely due to the initiatives of one company. In recent months, MSG Entertainment, a division of the Madison Square Garden Co., has completed both a $1 billion “transformation” of its namesake arena in Manhattan and a $100 million makeover of the Forum in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood. The Garden, which had continued operating with reduced availabilities during the three-year project, returned to full speed with three Ed Sheeran shows in late October. The Forum renovation, which began just ahead of the announcement of a new $300 million partnership between MSGC and…

It’s the end of January, but the Orange County air is balmy—the kind of weather Southern California is enviously famous for. Surfers dot the beach, basking in the remaining moments of sunlight as dusk sets in. But at least one onlooker can’t wait to leave the idyllic setting behind. Nestled inside a nondescript beach house, one of hip-hop’s most controversial rising stars is holed up in court- ordered rehab, and he’s feeling frustrated and alone. “It’s like being locked up,” Chief Keef, 18, tells Billboard, in his first interview since he entered rehab. “And when I’m locked up, I don’t want anybody to come see me. I won’t let my family come here. I haven’t seen my 2-year-old daughter .” The Chicago rapper, born Keith Cozart, is staring out a…

At 22, the baby-faced Hayes has already established himself as one of country’s key players. Enough that he’s ready to try something risky. His 2011 selftitled debut was solid, if somewhat safe, but with “Invisible,” the first single from his sophomore set, he reveals a layer of vulnerability that’s rare for a newcomer in country. “Crowded hallways are the loneliest places/For outcasts and rebels/Or anyone who just dares to be dif erent,” Hayes sings as piano and light guitar strumming introduce the ballad. It’s very teen, and maybe a touch emo. He turns hopeful on the hook, and lets the listener know that things get better: “There’s so much more to life than what you’re feeling now.” Hayes’ delivery is assured and optimistic—a sentiment that’s echoed in the anthem’s buildup.…

The DJ Mustard sound, like a Van Gogh painting or a good avocado, is easy to spot when you know what to look for. It’s taut and spare, snappy and insistent. There are usually gruf chants in the background, like the song is a boozy party where a dance circle has just taken shape. “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” Get used to the sound: Mustard’s signature beats are an early candidate for the soundtrack of 2014. He’s behind three tracks that fall in the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100 this week: Kid Ink’s “Show Me” (No. 20), YG’s “My Hitta” (No. 25) and Ty Dolla $ign’s “Paranoid” (No. 42). In the young year, the Los Angeles-based producer, born Dijon McFarlane, 23, has landed on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart…

After a two-week rule of the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200—and four weeks atop the list overall— the “Frozen” soundtrack steps aside, letting the new Now 49 hits compilation debut at No. 1. Now 49 debuts with 98,000 copies sold in the week ending Feb. 9, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Meanwhile, Frozen slips to No. 2 with 88,000 (down 6%). Now 49 is also the first No. 1 for the longrunning Now That’s What I Call Music! series since Now 43, which debuted at No. 1 on Aug. 25, 2012. All 49 of the regular (numbered) Now albums have reached the top 10, and all but the first debuted in the top 10. The last Now set, Now 48, debuted at No. 3 with 114,000 sold in November.…

Any time composer Kristen Anderson-Lopez has a casual conversation with parents about her work on Disney’s “Frozen,” the talk quickly turns to streams, YouTube and singalongs. “It’s almost mandatory that you film your child singing ‘Let It Go’ and post it on YouTube,” Anderson-Lopez jokes during a visit to Los Angeles to celebrate the success of the film and soundtrack and their Academy Award nominations. “Frozen” has snowballed into a rare cultural phenomenon that touches on music, film and the Internet, with Broadway in line to become the next high-profile platform. The soundtrack has sold 952,000 copies since its release on Nov. 25 (according to Nielsen SoundScan) and was the first film soundtrack since 2003’s Bad Boys II to spend four (non-consecutive) weeks atop the Billboard 200. Its lone single,…

It’s not quite David and Goliath, because in that story David wins. But the standout stories in the latest Publishers Quarterly rankings are a giant and a little guy, both standing tall. Sony/ATV continues to exert its dominance, topping the results for the sixth time in a row. And SONGS breaks into the top 10 for the second time in its nine-year existence. Powering both were their shares in the No. 1 song at radio: Lorde’s “Royals.” Sony/ATV, all told, had a stake in 58 of the top 100 songs played by U.S. radio in fourth-quarter 2013, including Nos. 2 and 3 behind Lorde, Avicii’s “Wake Me Up!” and Drake’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” The company’s 31.9% share of the top 100 songs was slightly down from the 33%…

THE NEW DR. DRE & JIMMY IOVINE On Jan. 28, J. Cole celebrated his 29th birthday in style: During his sellout show at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, the rapper announced he had partnered with Interscope Records to launch a new label, Dreamville. “The deal’s been of cial since late December, but it felt too important to go out and yell it right when it happened. It needed a grand announcement,” Cole later told Billboard, explaining that Interscope president of urban music Joie Manda reached out to him last year. “He told me [I could] be a Dr. Dre to his Jimmy Iovine.” Cole also conf rmed that his recording-artist deal with Roc Nation/Columbia is still in ef ect. “I love [both]—they’re the reason I can…

Though most knew Paul Ash through his family’s famed musical instrument store Sam Ash, New York jazz musician Jimmy Heath remembers him as a man he could always count on for support. Ash—who died of a heart attack on Feb. 4 at 84—ran clubs and concerts with his wife, Nobuko Narita (known as Cobi), so that musicians had the means to pay their bills, and when that wasn’t enough, he personally helped pay medical and living expenses. “When the [National Endowment for the Arts] funds dried up, Paul and Cobi never did,” says Heath, a saxophonist. “Corporations have backed jazz through the years, but they were all quick to move on to the next big thing in music. Not Paul. He loved jazz.” “It’s people like Paul Ash and his…

“I THINK I’VE HAD PERIODS OF TIMES WHERE I WAS LIKE, ‘DOES ANYBODY LIKE THIS?’ ” TURNS OUT BECK CAN MAKE HEARTBREAKING MUSIC, EVEN when he actually is doing fne. Dressed in all black except for the tiny white polka dots on his scarf, Beck sits in Silver Lake’s popular Cafe Stella during a quiet Friday morning, holding his wide-brimmed fedora in his lap. He’s wearing a lean, buttery motorcycle jacket, and his hair is close-cropped except for an asymmetrical shock of strawberry blond whose precise hue could be called — get it? — “mellow gold.” The 43-year-old’s sleek look is a far cry from the foppy knit cap, saggy jeans and overgrown page boy he sported when the world got its first look at him 20 years ago, bleating…

CARSON DALY The host of NBC’s “The Voice” and “Last Call” helped usher the countdown format into the Internet era on MTV’s “Total Request Live.” RICK DEES Since 1983, the veteran DJ and National Radio Hall of Famer has broadcast his “Weekly Top 40” to 400 stations worldwide. SPYDER HARRISON The booming voice of SiriusXM’s “Hits 1,” Harrison broadcasts his show from his Miami home. RYAN SEACREST Kasem’s oficial successor, he took over “American Top 40” in 2004. The show reaches 500 stations and 5 million listeners. JIM SHEARER VH1’s resident music expert, he’s hosted the “Top 20 Video Countdown” since 2009. Catchphrase: “I’ll see yinz later.”…

BANCORPSOUTH ARENA Tupelo, Miss.bcsarena.com @bcsarena Concert capacity: 10,000 The selling point of the BancorpSouth Arena is clear: “first-class service in the birthplace of Elvis. That’s what we’ve offered the entertainment industry since our grand opening in 1993,” BancorpSouth Arena and Conference Center executive director Todd Hunt says. While the venue has hosted such top-tier acts as Elton John, Kenny Chesney, the Eagles, Rascal Flatts, Aerosmith, George Strait, Rod Stewart and Jason Aldean, the building’s proximity to Nashville also has allowed it to be used as a rehearsal hall for major tours. “Over the past year,” Hunt notes, “we have invested in new blackout curtains and a completely new look for the venue exterior. Updating our color scheme and creating a new look for our entryways has completely changed the character…

AGAINST ME! Agent: Ryan Harlacher, Creative Artists Agency Tour Dates: March 9-April 6 Routing: Punk act Against Me! will hit 21 North American markets to push its sixth LP, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, starting March 9 in Omaha, Neb., at the Slowdown, an old haunt of the band. “It’s a rad place to play,” frontwoman Laura Jane Grace says. “They have anything you need backstage—laundry, shower, everything.” Audience: The tour will be an underplay, with the focus on core fans. Sales will no doubt be boosted by the fact that it’s been four years since the act’s last album. There’s also been a lot of press around Grace, formerly known as Tom Gabel, coming out as transgender. “Mainstream, indie—the publicity has been tremendous,” agent Ryan Harlacher says. Promotion: Touring since 1997,…

The name of Rap Genius’ first mobile app— Genius—may signal the company’s continued move away from only covering rap music and toward its stated quest to annotate all of culture. With Genius, which launched in late January, users can dissect the latest State of the Union as well as their favorite Kendrick Lamar song. Similar to the website, the app has a broad, searchable catalog of user-annotated lyrics as well as poetry and news verticals. The home page displays the top 15-20 items in each category and has a search function fxed at the top. Tapping an annotation brings the user to a new page, as opposed to the pop-up boxes that the Web version uses, which would be cumbersome on a mobile screen. Annotated songs have Sound-Cloud links (if…

With 5.1 million albums sold in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and millions more worldwide, One Direction’s success speaks for itself. But the British quintet isn’t the only one enjoying fans’ rabid devotion: In a phenomenon that can be called the One Direction ef ect, other artists are benef tting big time when the boy band associates with them. Take Jason Derulo’s hit single “Talk Dirty,” which moves 4-3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its eighth week on the chart. Last November, as part of 1D Day, a seven-hour YouTube live stream the members of One Direction unveiled a hilarious video of themselves dancing around half-naked to the song, which was already a hit in Europe but barely catching on stateside. The video quickly went viral, with…

LEGEND Bullets indicate titles with greatest weekly gains. Album Charts Recording Industry Assn. of America (RIAA) certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 500,000 albums (Gold). RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 1 million units (Platinum). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. RIAA certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 10 million units (Diamond). Numeral noted with Diamond symbol indicates album’s multiplatinum level. Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 50,000 units (Oro). Latin albums certification for physical shipments & digital downloads of 100,000 units (Platino). Numeral noted with Platinum symbol indicates album’s multi-platinum level. Digital Songs Charts RIAA certification for 500,000 paid downloads (Gold). RIAA certification for 1 million paid downloads (Platinum). Numeral noted with platinum symbol indicates…

In the last two years, Mariah Carey has cycled through three managers, two album release dates and four new tracks—will her fifth be the charm? On Feb. 12, Carey unveiled the latest single from her long-delayed new album. The finger-snapping ballad “You’re Mine (Eternal)” is her fifth new song since 2009’s Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, none of which has risen higher than No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. With Carey’s 14th album now slated for May 6, a lot is riding on the fate of “You’re Mine” for both Carey and her label, Island Def Jam. How’s it doing? The track garnered a modest 245 all-format plays in its first day at radio, according to Nielsen BDS, though the IDJ strategy is to let it develop organically before…

Lorde sings about never being a royal, but her signing to SONGS Music gave the boutique publisher the crown in the most hotly contested songwriter derby the publishing industry had seen in years. In November, with “Royals” perched at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, SONGS inked the 17-year-old sensation for a reported $2.5 million advance. Overall, Billboard estimates “Royals” earned nearly $1 million ($987,000) just from U.S. radio performance royalties and mechanical royalties from U.S. album and track sales in the final quarter of 2013 alone, when it was the top radio song. Based on Billboard estimates of typical writerpublisher revenue splits, Lorde’s take was $370,000, with another estimated $123,000 going to SONGS. (Her producer/co-writer Joel Little and his publishing administrator Sony/ATV take home another $493,000.) Beyond earnings,…

PUBLISHING Imagem Music U.S., the U.S. pop division of Imagem Music Group, names Jason Jordan president. Based in New York, he will be responsible for overseeing the division’s A&R activity and creative strategy. The company’s pop catalog includes Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, Ludacris, Mark Ronson, M.I.A. and Daft Punk. Jordan founded punk label Watermark Records and boutique music publisher Earthprogram Music, both while attending high school and college. “Since I was a teenager I have been in this industry, and over time I have worked with everything from punk rock to EDM to commercial rock and straight-out pop,” Jordan says. “My role has always been the same: to discover and work with the best music, artists and writers in any genre.” In addition to serving in past A&R roles at…

Leona Lewis, Mary J. Blige and St. Vincent made a frigid New York Fashion Week sizzle, Madonna rallied for Pussy Riot in Brooklyn, and Karen O rocked the Hollywood Reporter’s Oscar Nominees Night in Los Angeles 1 Colbie Caillat (left) and Joan Jett at the Go Red for Women/Heart Truth show at Lincoln Center on Feb. 6. 2 Leona Lewis at Go Red for Women. 3 Anna Kendrick (left) and Carrie Underwood at Rebecca Minkoff on Feb. 7. 4 Joe Jonas and Kelly Rowland at Opening Ceremony on Feb. 9. 5 Pharrell Williams and G-Star’s Thecla Schaeffer at the RAW for the Oceans event at the American Museum of Natural History on Feb. 8. 6 St. Vincent rocked American Express’ Unstaged event at the Diane von Furstenberg runway show on…

1994 Released independently in March 1993, Beck’s slacker anthem “Loser” got the attention of David Gef en and landed the singer a deal with DGC Records. The song peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 a year later. 1997 Beck’s 1996 release Odelay picks up two Grammy Awards including best alternative album, a prize he also would claim on his next studio ef ort, 1998’s Mutations. 2001 Claiming his place in pop culture, the singer gets animated for an episode of Matt Groening’s Futurama. Titled “Bendin’ in the Wind,” robot Bender tours with Beck as his washboard player in the episode. 2005 The release of Guero marks Beck’s highest chart debut as it lands at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 its first week out. Featuring hits “E-Pro”…

JUST AFTER FINNEGAN’S PUB opens at noon on a blustery, rainy, intermittently sunny winter day in Dalkey, a seaside suburb south of Dublin, Bono slides in the door and settles into a corner booth with his back to the wall and a wide-angle view of the establishment, like a wary gunf ghter who wants to see what’s coming. In a hoarse whisper, he orders tea and a plate of smoked salmon. His unimmaculate red-tinged quif and tired eyes seem to be telling me this is a man who recently rolled out of bed. The 53-year-old lead singer of the perennially biggest rock band in the world is quick-witted and preternaturally eloquent, but he also is one of the most interviewed humans on the planet, and he has a stash of…

JAN. 16 /Left: Billboard’s 2014 Latin Conference Advisory Board. Standing (from left): Nevarez Communications’ Mayna Nevarez, InPulse Digital’s Diego Prusky, Venetian Marketing Group’s Jef Young, La Arrolladora Banda el Limón’s Fernando Camacho, Cardenas Marketing Network’s Henry Cardenas, William Morris Endeavor’s Michel Vega, BMI’s Delia Orjuela, Universal Music Group’s Angel Kaminsky and Latin Power Music’s Pepe Serrano and Guillermo Serrano. Kneeling (from left): Santacruz Communications’ Paola Marin, ASCAP’s Alexandra Lioutikof, Billboard’s Leila Cobo and Latin Power Music’s Jimmy Arroyave. Top right: Billboard’s Leila Cobo with Henry Cardenas, president/CEO of Cardenas Marketing Network. bottom right: UMG’s Angel Kaminsky (left) talks promotion with Venetian Marketing Group’s Jef Young. feb. 2 /Top left: U2 manager Paul McGuinness accepts Billboard’s Industry Icon Award at the MIDEM & Billboard Breakfast, presented by Citi. Top right: Billboard…

For a 19-year-old who shares management with One Direction, MNEK uses a lot of very specific late-’80s and early-’90s references to describe his as-yet-untitled debut album, set for a September release on Cherrytree/Interscope. “If [Jimmy] Jam & [Terry] Lewis threw a house party, then invited George Michael, Janet [Jackson] and Peabo Bryson, that would be my album,” the Londoner says. As a central part of the deep-house revival that’s all over the U.K. charts and quickly taking hold in EDM-hungry America, MNEK has been a guest vocalist on high-impact tracks by Duke Dumont (“Hold On” and the Grammy Award-nominated “Need U 100”), Rudimental (“Baby”) and Gorgon City (“Ready for Your Love”). The lattermost scored him a booking on BBC Radio 1’s “Live Lounge” and recently debuted at No. 4 on…

Romeo Santos bests himself at his own game on Formula, Vol. 2. The album follows in the footsteps of Vol. 1, clinging to his bachata roots, despite the cross-genre collaborators. Where Vol. 1 had the likes of Usher, Vol. 2 features Drake on “Odio” (Hate), as well as Nicki Minaj and Carlos Santana, all performing bachata. That it all works is testament to Santos’ ability to blend traditional and cutting edge so smoothly. Aside from radio hits, the album also takes risks with the intensely personal “Si Yo Muero” (If I Die) and “No Tiene la Culpa” (It’s Not His Fault), the story of a gay teenager. Both the latter’s subject matter and its sympathetic recounting are unheard of in bachata—another example of Santos’ envelope-pushing. Romeo Santos Formula, Vol. 2…

3 MONTHS AGO The band wrapped recording of the album after only 20 days in Butler’s studio, with the finished product arriving at Vanguard in October. After years of stardom and success in Australia, the act signed with its new U.S. label home in hopes of further cracking the North American market. “The U.S. breaks more foreign bands than it makes,” Butler says. “The cost of it is exorbitant. ” Focusing on lead single “Only One,” Vanguard launched a lyric video on Nov. 18, and began servicing the track to triple A and noncommercial triple A radio. 2 MONTHS AGO After releasing a zombiethemed video for “Only One” on Dec. 3, Vanguard launched an album pre-order with instantgratification track “Blame It on Me” a week later. “Both songs showcased different…

He was just 11 when he became a chart superstar, but it took until he was 25 for Michael Jackson to truly ascend to pop music’s throne. This week in 1970, Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5 continued its nine-week domination of Billboard’s then-named Best Selling Soul LP’s chart (now Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums). The set yielded the group’s first of four Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, “I Want You Back.” Of course, it was his sixth studio album, Thriller, that turned Jackson into the King of Pop. This week in 1983, the set began its 37-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, marking the longest domination for an album by a single artist. Only the “West Side Story” movie soundtrack has spent more time at No. 1: 54…