Innholdsfortegnelse for March 28, 2020 i Billboard Magazine

BANDING TOGETHER ATX Red River Cultural District, an arts advocacy nonprofit in Austin, set up this GoFundMe to support those in the Austin live-music community who have been economically affected by the cancellation of South by Southwest. It is nearly halfway to its goal of reaching $100,000. Donate and learn how to apply for funds at gofundme.com/f/bandingtogether2020. TOUR SUPPORT Tour Support, a division of LightHopeLife, which promotes mental health in the live-music business, has partnered with counseling service BetterHelp to offer independent artists and tours affected by coronavirus-related cancellations free online therapy. Get help at lighthopelife.org/tour-support. GEMA The German collection society is rolling out a 40 million euros ($43.2 million) emergency aid program for songwriter/composer members. The program will have two tiers: 1) Members whose performances were canceled due…

LAST YEAR, KILLING EVE season two showrunner Emerald Fennell approached Sue Jacobs, a 30-year veteran music supervisor for films such as Little Miss Sunshine and American Hustle, with a lofty task: Secure a handful of massive pop hits for Fennell’s upcoming directorial debut, Promising Young Woman. Fennell already had a lengthy playlist of songs she wanted in the film — including Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind,” Charli XCX’s “Boys” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic” — and Jacobs helped her secure those three. But she also knew that the movie’s “super low” independent budget would create challenges. By August, Jacobs was sending screeners to major labels; two months later, Capitol Records signed on to distribute the soundtrack, thanks to her long-standing relationship with Capitol Music Group executive vp soundtracks and A&R…

OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, TOP 40 radio has been dominated by downtempo hits from artists like Post Malone, Halsey and Billie Eilish. Which is why Erik Bradley, music brand manager at WBBM and WBMX Chicago, clearly recalls the first time he heard Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now,” about a month before its November 2019 release. “I instantly thought it was going to be one of the biggest songs of the year,” he says. By February, more high-profile disco-infused tracks arrived with Lady Gaga’s comeback, “Stupid Love,” and the Justin Timberlake-SZA collaboration “The Other Side,” off the Trolls World Tour soundtrack. Now, not only are all three songs in the top 20 of Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart, but they’re also bringing energy back to top 40. “It seems…

MOST LIVE-MUSIC executives began the new decade with an optimistic outlook, expecting it to begin with record grosses in the touring business. Over the last month, however, the outbreak of COVID-19 completely changed that, as what initially seemed like a pause for live music turned into a longer break, then a complete standstill. Now that, combined with an increasingly uncertain economy, is threatening the already fraught balance of power among concert giants Live Nation and AEG, the independent promoters struggling to compete against them and the major talent agencies that are already coming to terms with a rapidly consolidating business. In less than a week — starting with the March 6 cancellation of South by Southwest (SXSW) and ending with Live Nation and AEG’s March 12 decision to temporarily…

Management is like every other point on the music business food chain: a disaster. I’ve been spending most of my days moving tours to the fall. If this business gets up off the mat in the summer, it’s going to be fatiguing getting back into things. People are going to be financially hurting. Running out to buy concert tickets or a T-shirt isn’t going to be first on the list. The tipping point for me was when I saw Italy get locked down. When I saw that, I was like, “We need to take evasive action.” And now everybody’s trying to move their stuff. You have what would have been 12 months of the concert business trying to cram itself into a three- or six-month window — it’s a…

Our [Head in the Clouds Jakarta] festival was supposed to be on March 7. A week prior, we were all packed, getting ready to get on a plane the next day for Indonesia. At the time, there were no known cases in Indonesia, but we were scared. We took a bunch of precautionary measures; I really wanted to make sure that people were going to be as safe as possible. But then that night we saw a news article about the first case of coronavirus in Indonesia and we were like, “Nah, it’s over.” The festival was already built, all the people were onsite making the stage, so certainly financially — because we’re doing it in Indonesia, there’s no insurance — we lost a lot. That was hard. We’re…

LAST JULY, THE NO. 1 SPOT ON BILLBOARD’S Top Tours chart came down to a fraction of a percent. P!nk’s $61.5 million gross just narrowly beat The Rolling Stones’ $61.1 million total, making it the closest race in the monthly recap’s history — until now. In February, Post Malone’s Runaway Tour was the biggest of the month with $27.2 million, a near tie with Céline Dion’s Courage world tour at No. 2, which also had a total gross of $27.2 million. The difference amounts to a minuscule $8,948, or a margin of 0.03%. Both artists — one a genre-busting superstar of pop and hip-hop, the other a legendary diva and balladeer — took similar routes to the peak of the Top Tours chart. Both consistently played North American arenas…

Round Two For Lil Uzi Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake secures a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 as the set earned 247,000 equivalent album units in the United States during the week ending March 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. That’s down just 14% compared with its debut atop the list a week ago with 288,000 units. The lack of a large second-week decline is owed to the album’s surprise reissue on March 13, when a new deluxe edition arrived with 14 additional songs, expanding upon the original 18-song set. (All versions of the album are combined together for tracking and charting purposes.) Eternal Atake would have most likely held at No. 1 for a second week without the help of its reissue. Even if…

R.E.M., Lennon Leap Amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” a 1987 chart hit by R.E.M. (above), debuts at No. 4 on Hot Rock Songs, while John Lennon’s 1971 classic “Imagine” returns at No. 15. The former, with its apocalyptic vibe, surged by 482% to 5,000 downloads sold and 169% to 1.7 million U.S. streams in the week ending March 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The latter gained by 138% to 1,000 sold and by 7% to 1.3 million streams after it was covered in a Gal Gadot-led celebrity video aiming to lift collective spirits. On the Alternative airplay chart, Sub Urban’s “Cradles” climbs 3-1 as the New Jersey native (born Danny Maisonneuve) leads…

Asbury’s ‘House’ Hits Top 10 “The Father’s House” by Cory Asbury (above) climbs 12-10 on the streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Hot Christian Songs chart. It pushes 10-7 on Christian Airplay, up by 6% to 7.3 million audience impressions, and it logged 742,000 U.S. streams and 1,000 downloads in the tracking week, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. The track is the second Hot Christian Songs top 10 for Asbury, who is part of the Bethel Music collective. His solo debut, “Reckless Love,” ruled for 18 weeks starting in March 2018. The Clark Sisters’ The Return arrives at No. 2 on Top Gospel Albums with 2,000 equivalent album units. The release is the foursome’s fifth top 10 and first since 2007’s Live… One Last Time, the act’s lone No. 1. Meanwhile,…

Halsey Takes Europe Halsey (above) kicked off her Manic world tour on Feb. 6 at the WiZink Center in Madrid and played a sweep of shows, closing out March 12 at England’s Manchester Arena. Her biggest European tour yet resulted in her most robust Boxscore showing so far: Four engagements that charted at Nos. 30, 31, 32 and 35. All 16 reported shows grossed $4.7 million and sold 97,645 tickets, according to figures submitted to Boxscore. Notably, Halsey’s London O2 Arena show on March 8 grossed $681,000 and sold over 15,000 tickets, up 99% from her previous area play in 2018. As of this issue, the Boxscore chart will be on hiatus while tours are postponed due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. —ERIC FRANKENBERG BOXSCORE: THE TOP GROSSING…

AT THE END OF February, Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino told investors on a conference call that he expected the coronavirus to affect less than 1% of their overall business. A week later, Miami’s Ultra Music Festival was called off; two days after that, Austin’s South by Southwest was canceled. That same day, March 6, Rapino and AEG COO Jay Marciano, along with heads of the top four talent agencies, formed a private task force. Now, executives at AEG credit that alliance with helping Coachella avoid a cancellation, too. Within days of AEG learning that public health officials from Riverside County in California — which includes Indio, Coachella’s event grounds — would not permit the festival to take place as planned starting on April 10, Marciano quickly received approval…

MONTHS BEFORE THE NOVEMBER 2019 premiere of the Disney+ show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, in which emerging actor-musician Joshua Bassett stars as Ricky Bowen, his manager helped him land a meeting with Nate Albert, executive vp A&R at Warner Records. Bassett arrived with a dozen demos ready to perform on guitar. “I was blown away,” says Albert, who notes CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and COO Tom Corson were also immediately interested when he played them the tracks later. “He struck me as wildly developed for somebody his age — a triple threat producing, writing and performing.” Bassett, 19, first took an interest in music at 6 years old, when his father asked him to drum for his church; by 15, he wanted to pursue it full time…

We’re contracted to do backstage catering with Coachella, Stagecoach, The Forum, Hollywood Bowl lease shows, the Greek Theatre, Dodger Stadium and all the venues at L.A. Live. The day before the Strokes show at The Forum on March 14, we were out shopping when I got the call from their team that the show had been canceled. We had a super-busy season ahead of us — we’re booked a year in advance — and within 48 hours the calendar for the next two to three months was wiped out. We have about 50 people on call, with about 20 who work constantly. For Coachella, we do job fairs locally and hire close to 200 people. They work for us year after year, look forward to and depend on it.…

We got through about one week of the Dan + Shay tour and had flown to Philadelphia in anticipation for weekend two. Dan + Shay took a night flight, but the band and crew got in in the middle of the day on Wednesday [March 11] for the show the following night. We were playing at the [Wells Fargo Center], and they had very graciously offered us a suite for the 76ers’ game that night. Me and the band and a few of our tour guys went to the game, and immediately after it ended ESPN put out an announcement saying the entire NBA season was suspended. We thought, “We’re playing in NBA arenas all year, there’s no way our tour is going to happen.” As I was at…

Weather Rolls In Niall Horan’s sophomore album, Heartbreak Weather, debuts at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, securing the pop singer-songwriter his second solo top five-charting set. It arrives with 59,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, with 42,000 of that sum in album sales. The LP got an assist from a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with his upcoming tour, as well as an assortment of merchandise/album bundles sold through his webstore. Heartbreak Weather also starts at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart, marking Horan’s second leader on the list following his debut album, Flicker. Flicker bowed at No. 1 on the Nov. 11, 2017-dated Billboard 200 with 152,000 units. Of that sum, 128,000 were in album…

AIRPLAY & SALES DATA COMPILED BY RADIO SONGS: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR SONGS, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY AUDIENCE IMPRESSIONS AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. DIGITAL SONG SALES: THE WEEK’S TOP-DOWNLOADED SONGS, RANKED BY AS COMPILED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. SALES DATA POP/RHYTHMIC/ADULT: THE WEEK’S MOST POPULAR CURRENT SONGS AT MAINSTREAM TOP 40, RHYTHMIC, ADULT CONTEMPORARY AND ADULT TOP 40 FORMATS, RESPECTIVELY, RANKED BY RADIO AIRPLAY DETECTIONS, AS MEASURED BY NIELSEN MUSIC. SONGS ARE DEFINED AS CURRENT IF THEY ARE RELATIVELY RECENTLY-RELEASED TITLES, OR SONGS RECEIVING WIDESPREAD AIRPLAY AND/OR SALES ACTIVITY FOR THE FIRST TIME. STATIONS ARE ELECTRONICALLY MONITORED 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK. SEE CHARTS LEGEND ON BILLBOARD.COM/BIZ FOR COMPLETE RULES AND EXPLANATIONS. ALL CHARTS…

Cardi’s Viral Rant Arrives Brooklyn DJ iMarkkeyz capitalizes on the viral Instagram video rant by Cardi B (above) about the coronavirus to score his first Billboard entry. The remixed tune, “Coronavirus,” is Cardi’s audio backed by a hip-hop track. It sold 3,000 downloads in the week ending March 19, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, prompting a No. 9 debut on Rap Digital Song Sales and a No. 13 start on R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales. On Twitter, both artists confirmed their plans to use the song’s proceeds to help families affected by the pandemic. Elsewhere, Russ and BIA each claim a first No. 1 on Rhythmic as “Best on Earth” lifts 3-1 with a 7% boost in plays in the week ending March 22. The collaboration’s 18-week wait to reach…

“As soon as I heard Deborah Harry singing a rough version of ‘Call Me,’ I knew we had a hit.”—MORODER As frontwoman of Blondie, Debbie Harry has been a pop culture fixture for nearly half a century. The new wave pioneer co-wrote the band’s biggest hit, 1980’s “Call Me,” with Giorgio Moroder for the Paul Schrader film American Gigolo —then watched the single reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 40 years ago this April. Harry recalls the song’s unexpected rise. The Billboard Hot 100 was the bottom line for the industry at a time when labels ruled. Airplay was the main goal for a commercial band, and the charts favored a blues-rock sound [at the time]. We had come out of a club scene, but tastes were…

FROM Ellaville, Ga. AGE 26 LABEL Capitol Nashville FOUNDATION In 2012, when Caylee Hammack was 17, she passed up an opportunity to attend Nashville’s Belmont University on scholarship; her then-boyfriend convinced her to stay home in Georgia with him, much to her father’s disapproval. “I wandered around playing more shows, building a fan base, but was ultimately lost,” she recalls. At the end of 2013, Hammack packed up and drove to Nashville, where she slept in her car at a Target parking lot for weeks before getting a regular gig on Lower Broadway at Tootsies Orchid Lounge. DISCOVERY After two years of playing shows on Nashville’s famed Broadway and cowriting with anyone who would work with her, Hammack was introduced to Universal Music Publishing Group Nashville vp creative Cyndi…

Over the next two weeks, we have 13 or 14 shows we have to reschedule [for the 500-capacity Lodge Room in Los Angeles]. We’ve been able to reschedule about half of them. It’s a work in progress. In a perfect world, we would reschedule for the moment that we’re allowed to do shows, but these bands are playing all over the country and the world. When people look at it from afar, they see, “Oh, Coachella canceled,” or “Ultra canceled.” But they forget about how it affects the independent venue and tour managers and bartenders and security guards. It is this whole network that is being propped up by the assumption that artists and venues are going to be able to operate. This is people’s fucking livelihood at stake.…

People started canceling small business conferences about two weeks before South by Southwest was officially canceled. It happened really slowly at first — in the Facebook groups, people were kind of making fun of it, making jokes. Then there was the first post: “Hey, a gig got canceled over coronavirus, this is kind of crazy.” Over the next three days, that’s all you saw anyone post: “My gig got canceled.” It [started to] happen so quick. It was a joke three days before; we had our own stagehand memes about it. Now it’s real. [SXSW] was going to be 10 days of work and $450 per day for me some days, $250 for others — that’s a decent chunk of income. Probably a fifth of my audiovisual income for…

ON A CHILLY NIGHT in New York last November, thousands of flashing multicolored lights illuminated Madison Square Garden. Fans danced in the stands to the songs of K-pop group SuperM, waving light sticks overhead. Controlled via Bluetooth by one of the band’s engineers, they pulsed in time with the bass and shimmered along with softer melodies. Sales of the $60 magenta-hued lights bearing the band’s logo were brisk at the venue, but they weren’t the only ones on display. SuperM is a K-pop supergroup featuring members of four different boy bands — EXO, SHINee, NCT 127 and WayV — and many in the audience jammed along with similar, Bluetooth-enabled sticks representing those acts as well. Some held two or more. These light sticks, known in Korean as bongs, have…

Code Orange, V Arrive Code Orange debuts at No. 2 on the Emerging Artists chart thanks to the group’s LP Underneath, which bows at No. 6 on Hard Rock Albums with 6,000 equivalent album units, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. BTS member V (real name: Kim Tae-hyung) enters Emerging Artists at No. 9 as his solo song “Sweet Night” starts at No. 2 on Digital Song Sales with 11,000 downloads sold. He’s the third member of BTS to reach the chart on his own, following J-Hope and RM. Plus, art-punk band The Garden makes its Billboard chart debut by touching down at No. 47 on Emerging Artists, fueled by its new album, Kiss My Super Bowl Ring (1,000 copies sold). —XANDER ZELLNER CHART BEAT J BALVIN BOWS Colores, the…

Dropkick Debuts Despite the global outbreak of the coronavirus putting a damper on St. Patrick’s Day’s celebrations, Celtic rockers Dropkick Murphys (above) didn’t let that spoil their annual holiday concert. The group opted to perform a livestreamed concert across multiple social media and video streaming platforms, helping the act debut at No. 36 on the Social 50. The Boston-bred band had gains in all social media categories, led by 41,000 new subscribers on YouTube (one of the platforms that streamed the show) in the week ending March 19 (up 2,628%), according to Next Big Sound. Dropkick Murphys’ Wikipedia page also racked up 28,000 views. Further, during the tracking week, the group’s song catalog was streamed 7.3 million times in the United States, up 169%, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data.…

Owen No. 1; Shelton, Stefani Surge Jake Owen (above) earns his eighth Country Airplay No. 1 as “Homemade” lifts 2-1, up 7% to 36.1 million audience impressions, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. “I think we all can relate right now to taking the time to focus on the people and small, daily moments that really matter, the ones that make your home, at the core, the most important thing in life,” Owen tells Billboard (see story, page 4). Plus, Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani’s “Nobody but You” pushes 12-10 on the survey (22.6 million, up 14%). Shelton scores his 34th top 10, tying for the 10th-most in the chart’s history, while Stefani earns her first. She previously reached the top 10 on adult, alternative, dance, pop and R&B/hip-hop airplay…

Here Comes A No. 1 As “Súbelo (Further Up)” by Static & Ben El, Pitbull and Chesca pushes 8-1 on the Latin Airplay chart, the Israeli pop duo and Chesca earn their first No. 1, while Pitbull collects his eighth. “We are thrilled to be part of such a fantastic achievement,” Static & Ben El (above) tell Billboard. “Súbelo,” which interpolates Ini Kamoze’s 1994 No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” climbs to the top with a robust 94% gain (to 16 million) in audience impressions earned in the week ending March 22, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Oddly enough, “Hotstepper” is red-hot on Latin Airplay, as it is also channeled in the No. 3 hit, “Muevelo,” by Nicky Jam and Daddy Yankee. It rises one…

Ross Leads With ‘Love’ Diana Ross (above) adds her eighth Dance Club Songs No. 1 with “Love Hangover 2020.” The track, remixed by Frankie Knuckles, Ralphi Rosario and Eric Kupper, among others, is Ross’ fourth straight remixed classic to reign supreme after “The Boss 2019” (April 2019), “I’m Coming Out/Upside Down 2018” (August 2018) and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough 2017” (January 2018). Ross is making her second Dance Club Songs run with “Hangover,” which hit No. 3 in 1989; it originally topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in 1976, prior to the inception of the Dance Club Songs chart. Note that after this issue, Dance Club Songs will go on hiatus until further notice due to the coronavirus pandemic and related closures. Also amid the outbreak,…