Billboard Magazine June 24-30, 2017

FIFTH HARMONY LAUNCHES its first single as a quartet, “Down” (featuring Gucci Mane), at No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100. The lead single from the group’s forthcoming third LP starts at No. 12 on the Digital Song Sales list with 36,000 firstweek downloads sold, according to Nielsen Music. It adds 9.2 million first-week U.S. streams and 7.1 million in airplay audience and enters the Mainstream Top 40 airplay chart at No. 37. It could surge following the June 8 release of its official video. “Down” marks the first 5H single since the December 2016 departure of Camila Cabello, whose “Crying in the Club,” her first Hot 100 hit unaccompanied by another artist, lifts 61-56. On Mainstream Top 40, “Club” climbs 25-21. “Both songs belong on top 40 radio,” says…

RECENTLY, SONY MUSIC Entertainment assembled a six-person squad to crack what is shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges and opportunities for the music industry in decades. The task: getting voiceactivated speakers to play certain tunes when living-room listeners call out anything from the name of their favorite band, to more nebulous requests that Amazon has fielded recently from its Echo users, such as “dog music,” “ drinking music,” “pop music for yoga” or “Bruce.” “You’ve got to think about the way people would be requesting things,” a Sony executive says, adding that a command to “play Bruce” raises the question of whether the speaker will produce the more popular Bruce (Springsteen), or perhaps Bruce Hornsby, who, Amazon reps say, could potentially elbow Springsteen out of the way…

Late in 2016, Mark Burnett was asked to produce the official life story of reclusive Mexican superstar Luis Miguel. During 30 hours of interviews, Miguel related a tale so rich in detail that Burnett shopped the project to rival Spanishlanguage networks Univision and Telemundo, with the latter winning a bidding war to air it. Univision then asked Miguel’s longtime video director, Pedro Torres, to do a bio series of its own to compete against Telemundo’s production. Now, Miguel’s story is the latest battleground in the decades-old rivalry between Univision and Telemundo, long the No. 1 and No. 2 Spanish-language networks in the United States, respectively, as they fight for viewers. And increasingly, that competition has focused on biographical series about the biggest Latin music stars. In 2015, Telemundo first realized…

DESPACITO,” THE FIRST mostly Spanish-language song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 20 years, has already brought in $2.9 million in revenue for Universal Music Group (UMG) in the United States alone, according to estimates based on Nielsen Music sales and streaming data for both the original and the remix. Also, the song has earned more than $220,000 in revenue for the publishers and about $1.27 million in royalties for the performing artists and songwriters. But the success of “Despacito” — originally recorded by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, then remixed by Justin Bieber — isn’t as sudden as it seems. Over the past two years, predominantly Spanish-speaking artists like CNCO, Maluma and Nicky Jam have ruled streaming charts worldwide, while Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailando” peaked at…

Esteemed A&R executiveNigel Graingedied June 11 at age 70 after a storied career, during which he developed such stars as Sinéad O’Connor and the Steve Miller Band. After founding Ensign Records in 1976, he started and sold music publisher Dizzy Heights, worked as a consultant assisting artists like Robert Plant unearth old musical gems and founded the startup TunesMap to help fans find the worlds connected with their favorite songs. Here, SirLucian Grainge, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group, remembers his older brother. For as long as I can remember, my brother Nigel was obsessed with music. He was never attracted to artists, or made records, based on what he thought the audience might want. When he decided to sign an artist, he made records he wanted to hear. If the…

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y., NATIVE Justin Kalifowitz, 35, thinks both big and small. Since Downtown Music Publishing was founded in 2007, the company has made deals for the songwriting catalogs of Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco and Niall Horan; served as administrator for independents like Big Yellow Dog and the John Lennon and Yoko Ono catalogs; and expanded to London, Nashville and, in February, Tokyo. But Downtown, based in Manhattan, remains dedicated to its indie roots. In 2011, Kalifowitz built Songtrust, an online platform that allows indie songwriters — essentially anyone — to register their compositions and collect royalties worldwide. While Downtown manages 100,000 songs, Songtrust administers 1.3 million, and the company reports collections were up 90 percent in 2016. Kalifowitz has also been working on NY Is Music, the advocacy coalition…