Innholdsfortegnelse for April 3, 2021 i Billboard Magazine

JUSTIN BIEBER BECOMES THE FIRST SOLO MALE TO DEB UT AT No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 simultaneously as “Peaches” (featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon) launches atop the Hot 100 and parent album Justice enters at the Billboard 200 peak (see page 6). Bieber joins only BTS and Taylor Swift in having concurrently debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, an honor Swift has achieved twice. She became the first artist to pull off the feat when “Cardigan” and folklore began atop the respective charts dated Aug. 8, 2020. BTS joined the elite club when “Life Goes On” and Be soared in at the top of the tallies dated Dec. 5, and Swift repeated the feat with “Willow” and evermore…

EARLY LAST YEAR, executives at the New England music chain Newbury Comics were discussing pulling back on vinyl, thinking the format’s comeback might have run its course. Then, during the pandemic, sales picked up, thanks to a new kind of customer: young people. “The pandemic totally remade who the vinyl customer was,” says Carl Mello, Newbury’s brand engagement director. “Teenagers who haven’t had to move yet don’t know the pain of moving vinyl, so they’re the perfect people to collect it.” Increasingly, they seem to be collecting the kind of music they also listen to on streaming services: Last year’s best-selling vinyl albums were Harry Styles’ Fine Line (231,553 copies) and Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (195,679), according to MRC Data. Overall, U.S.…

AHEAD OF THE OSCARS ON April 25, three films have more in common than just competing for top honors. Sound of Metal and Minari, which both have six nominations, and One Night in Miami…, which has three, highlight how much more collaborative composers have become in the filmmaking process, whether working closely with actors on select songs or even doubling as a screenwriter. For Abraham Marder, working with his brother, director Darius Marder, on the Sound of Metal script — about heavy metal drummer Ruben (played by first-ever Muslim best actor nominee Riz Ahmed) — also guided how he made the film’s music. As co-screenwriter, Abraham identified how the film, which also earned a best original screenplay nod, could best express the experience of Ahmed’s character going deaf by…

LAST FALL, ERIC Church was standing in his office, perusing the concert photos hanging on the wall, when one caught his eye. It captures the defiant country superstar standing amid a throng of fans packed tightly around him, their arms raised and waving like a many-tentacled creature. Church looks up at the camera from behind his omnipresent Ray-Bans, a sly smile on his face. Today, he has another perspective on the scene. “It looks so strange to see me in the middle of this pit, hugging everybody and taking shots of Jack Daniel’s,” says Church. “It’s like, ‘What universe…?’ It just seems so far away. All I’ve ever done is play live shows. That’s my whole gig.” When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the concert industry, it robbed Church…

On April 24, Billboard will salute Primary Wave Music on its 15th anniversary. Founded in 2006, Primary Wave Music is home to some of the most iconic songwriters and artists across the history of recorded music including Bob Marley, Stevie Nicks, Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons, Smokey Robinson, Whitney Houston, Burt Bacharach, Olivia Newton-John, and many more. With offices in New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Nashville and London, Primary Wave Music has embraced an entrepreneurial spirit, offering and executing proactive one-of-a-kind ideas, unique services and marketing campaigns for our artists. Primary Wave has earned a stellar reputation for being forward thinking and re-introducing classic artists and their music into the modern marketplace as well as nurturing young talent to become legends themselves. This success is based upon their…

A MID A DEVASTATING global pandemic that put the world on pause and shut down entire industries, the recorded-music business didn’t just survive — it thrived, up 7.4% to $21.6 billion in its sixth consecutive year of growth. As usual, that increase was driven by gains in streaming — up 19.9%, as measured by record-label revenue, according to IFPI’s 2021 Global Music Report. That more than compensated for declines in downloads, mobile and other digital products (down 15.7%) and physical music (4.7%) — plus pandemic-fueled falloffs in revenue from performance rights (10.1%) and synchronization (9.4%). The top five countries, as measured by revenue, stayed the same, with relatively modest changes: The United States grew 7.3%; Japan declined 2.1%; the United Kingdom grew 2.2%; Germany grew 5.1%; and France declined…

TOKYO — Near the iconic scramble crossing in Tokyo’s Shibuya district stands Tower Records Japan’s nine-story flagship store — a hulking, gray colossus proudly defying the local music market’s slow drift toward streaming. Emblazoned in red letters above the entrance is the chain’s slogan: “No Music, No Life.” Despite the pandemic, there’s ample evidence of both. The store is a vivid reminder that music fans here still haven’t given up on physical formats like CDs, vinyl and even cassettes. While much of the world moves further into streaming as the dominant form of music consumption, Japan still has a physical fixation. That is hampering the overall market, which declined for the second straight year in 2020, falling 9% from 2019 to 272.6 billion yen ($2.64 billion), according to the…

JESSE COLLINS IS REIMAGINING the modern awards show. In 2020, the Emmy-nominated producer’s work on the BET Awards set the standard for what large-scale virtual events could accomplish during a pandemic. This year, the 50-year-old CEO of Jesse Collins Entertainment worked on his 17th Grammy Awards (his first as co-executive producer) and became the first Black executive producer of the Super Bowl halftime show. Now, thanks to a personal recommendation from Oprah Winfrey, Collins is gearing up for his first Oscars stint as co-producer alongside Stacey Sher and Steven Soderbergh of the 93rd Academy Awards. How has working on the Oscars differed from your usual music-specific programming? It has been very different from what I’m used to, but it’s still an awards show. There will be some people that…

1961 Duke Ellington becomes the first Black composer nominated for best original score, for the romantic drama Paris Blues 1978 Quincy Jones becomes first Black composer to receive two career nods in scoring categories thanks to The Wiz (best original song score) and his previous nomination for 1967’s In Cold Blood (best original score) 1984 Prince becomes first Black composer to win in a scoring category when Purple Rain takes home the award for best original song score 1985 Quincy Jones becomes first Black composer to receive three career nods in scoring categories with the addition of a best original score nomination for The Color Purple. Jones shares the nod with 11 other composers, including two other Black composers 1986 Herbie Hancock becomes first Black composer to win for…

When can I go to a concert? That depends on where you live. The return of shows will be decided largely on a state-by-state basis by both governors and city leaders, not federal officials, although many states and private businesses will build their reopening strategies around guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida and Texas have already allowed concerts to resume, though not without some issues: Steve Aoki and Diplo each got warnings from local police and reproof from the mayor of Tampa, Fla., for performing in front of maskless crowds during Super Bowl weekend in February. More restrictive states like New York and California have announced that outdoor concerts could resume as soon as April 1 if capacity is capped at 25%. Bright Eyes is…

DYLAN BALDI, THE FRONTMAN OF THE CULT favorite garage-rock band Cloud Nothings, has a new favorite holiday. “I don’t care about Christmas anymore,” he jokes over the phone from his home in Philadelphia. “In a way, this feels like ‘Music Day.’ ” He’s talking about Bandcamp Fridays, when the online music marketplace Bandcamp waives its cut of sales — 15% of digital, 10% of physical — and passes along all revenue to artists and their closest stakeholders (like labels and managers). Originally launched as a single-day effort on March 20, 2020, to help artists at the start of the COVID-19 crisis, the event stuck around as it became clear the pandemic wasn’t going anywhere either. So far, the platform has held 11 Bandcamp Fridays, directing $48.3 million toward artists…

LONDON — THE U.K. PARLIAMENTARY Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee opened hearings on the economic impact of streaming last fall. Now that the first stage of the inquiry is complete, the major labels’ power in the streaming market has emerged as a significant subject, with digital and culture minister Caroline Dinenage saying — when pressed — that she would support a referral to the Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.competition enforcer. “The inquiry has shown that there is strong support for reform to keep the dominant multinational labels in check, provide transparency where there is little and provide our musicians with sustainable incomes,” said Ivors Academy CEO Graham Davies after the final hearing on March 22. The academy, which is an association of songwriters, has advocated for services…

TIM KANG, A 28-YEAR-OLD software engineer from Los Angeles, became wealthy by investing early in the cryptocurrency Ethereum. But he sees more potential in blockchain, the digital-ledger technology that enables the existence of cryptocurrencies. “I’ve been waiting so long,” he says, “for something that communicates to the world that it’s about more than just cryptocurrency.” Kang found that something in NFTs, the nonfungible tokens that use blockchain as authentication and have become digital collectibles — as well as a booming new business for musicians. And he’s putting his digital money where his mouth is: So far, he estimates that he has spent about $2 million on art and music NFTs, which he does not intend to sell. His collection includes one of the 33 NFTs that mark the third…

EVERY CEO IN THE WORLD HAS A story about how his or her company has handled the pandemic. But how many of them were first-time CEOs just two months into building a brand-new company when the crisis hit? And not just any new company, but one charged with solving what may be the most vexing problem in the music industry: making sure creators receive their mechanical royalties when their songs are streamed. That’s the situation Kris Ahrend — CEO of the Mechanical Licensing Collective — found himself in last year. The organization was created under the 2018 Music Modernization Act (MMA) to administer a blanket mechanical license for on-demand streaming and digital download services. Though a board was installed in 2019, Ahrend did not start until January 2020. Due…

SONGS Of the 12 songwriters who are vying for best original song this year, 11 are first-time Academy Award nominees. The 12th is category perennial Diane Warren, who lands her 12th nod. This is the only Oscar nomination for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga and The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se), which delivered two prime candidates, “Husavik” and “Io Sì (Seen),” respectively. The other three films represented here all have multiple nominations. “FIGHT FOR YOU” Judas and the Black Messiah, Warner Music: H.E.R., Dernst Emile II Lyric: H.E.R., Tiara Thomas Less than 12 hours after winning a Grammy Award for song of the year, H.E.R. arose at 6:30 a.m. to a stream of congratulatory texts — but they were for an entirely different nomination.…

MIKE KNOBLOCH, president of global film music and music publishing at Universal Pictures, has been reminiscing a lot lately about how the studio pulled off its first project under COVID-19 restraints. While recording the Academy Award-nominated orchestral score for the Tom Hanks Western News of the World, Knobloch says composer James Newton Howard did the “unimaginable” by recording and executing his work from another country. While musicians safely gathered at London’s Abbey Road Studios, Howard remained at home in Los Angeles. “He had to come to terms with not being able to get on a plane and be in a small control room at a recording studio for any of the sessions,” says Knobloch, “and that was a tough adjustment.” Although the pandemic has altered the way in which…

THROUGH IT ALL, THE DEALS DID NOT STOP. NOR DID CALLS for greater fairness and equality, both within and beyond the music business. Over the past tumultuous year, the leading music attorneys chosen for the 2021 edition of Billboard’s Top Music Lawyers — nominated by their firms and peers and chosen by our editors — have played an essential role. Those helping clients to buy and sell recording and publishing catalogs were busier than ever. Among the headline-grabbing transactions were Universal Music Publishing Group’s acquisition of Bob Dylan’s iconic catalog, Primary Wave’s creation of a joint venture with Stevie Nicks after acquiring a majority share of her publishing copyrights and the buying spree of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, which brought the catalogs of creators from 50 Cent to Shakira under…