Innholdsfortegnelse for May 15, 2021 i Billboard Magazine

THE KID LAROI AND MILEY CYRUS’ “WITHOUT YOU” BLASTS from No. 23, its prior best, to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 following the April 30 release of its remix with Cyrus. It hits the top 10 with 12.5 million streams (up 54%) and 8,500 sold (up 254%) in the week ending May 6 and 43.5 million in airplay audience (up 9%) in the week ending May 9, according to MRC Data. The track marks its first week in the top 10 on Digital Song Sales, surging 50-5, and jumps 13-6 on the Radio Songs chart. On Streaming Songs, it reenters at No. 21, likewise a new high. The Kid LAROI posts his second Hot 100 top 10 — and first in a lead role — after his…

AFTER DECADES OF having “secret” review committees determine Grammy Award nominations in an ever-increasing number of categories, it’s majority rule again at the venerable awards show. So the nominations for the 64th annual Grammys may look a bit different when they’re announced later this year: Expect fewer surprise omissions of records that met the usual benchmarks for commercial and artistic success and cultural impact, and fewer head-scratching inclusions of projects that didn’t make a significant impression. And when the next outrage does inevitably occur, the Recording Academy can now skirt blame by pointing to an easy-to-understand nomination process that puts power back in the hands of the 11,000-person voting membership. The academy board of trustees’ April 30 vote to disband nomination-review committees — whose membership, but not existence, was…

THERE ARE ONLY A FEW BOXES left to unpack in Olivia Rodrigo’s new home in Los Angeles. On top of everything else going on in the life of the world’s busiest 18-year-old, the star singer-songwriter-actress just moved out of her parents ’ house. “Yeah, it’s very weird,” she says over Zoom from her living room in April. “I turned 18, and then I came back and finished my album and moved out and everything. So it was all a very condensed growing-up experience.” Rodrigo is happily nesting in her new digs, which she nervously but excitedly refers to as “my first, like, own house, sort of, situation.” But she won’t have time to get too comfortable. “We’re traveling a bunch, this month and the next month,” she says. “So…

Billboard’s eighth annual Country Power Players issue will profile the people who have driven another solid year for the country music industry, generating billions in sales, streaming and publishing. This special feature will highlight the top executives, artists and changemakers who kept the music playing during an incredibly challenging year, as well as coverage of the changing face of country music. Advertise in Billboard’s Country Power Players issue to congratulate this year’s honorees while reaching key decision-makers who are driving the music business. CONTACTS Joe Maimone 201.301.5933 | joe.maimone@billboard.com Lee Ann Photoglo 615.376.7931 | laphotoglo@gmail.com Cynthia Mellow 615.352,0265 | cmellow.billboard@gmail.com Marcia Olival 786.586.4901 | marciaolival29@gmail.com Ryan O’Donnell +447843437176 | rodonnell@pmc.com ISSUE DATE 6/26 | AD CLOSE 6/16 | MATERIALS DUE 6/17…

THIS YEAR, MORE BIG streaming services are offering a new way to listen to music that makes it sound richer than it has in ages. The question is, How many people will pay a premium for it? Early results from Amazon Music, which launched its “high-quality, lossless audio” high-definition service in 2019, are promising. The company says that HD subscriptions ($12.99 a month for Prime members, compared with $7.99 for its standard Unlimited tier) have grown 100% globally year over year as of March. Amazon is also seeing a bump in engagement from customers upgrading to its HD option: Those subscribers streamed, on average, 11% more overall and 16% more on albums in the first 30 days after switching, and both the hip-hop and rock genres’ global market shares…

Gerardo Ortiz is one of Latin music’s most defining artists of the last decade, scoring a total of ten No. 1s on the Billboard Regional Mexican Airplay chart, over 22.3 Million followers on social media, and an astounding ONE BILLION and counting views on VEVO. The two-time GRAMMY ® nominee and onetime Latin GRAMMY®, is one of the architects of the alternative corrido movement and one of the most award-winning singers of Regional Mexican music in the past years. In recent years, Ortiz has winning a number of awards including twenty seven Billboard Latin Music Awards, twelve Premios Lo Nuestro, earning four Platinum records and five Gold records as certified by the RIAA, and selling out festivals, dance halls, and arenas across the United States and Mexico. He breaks…

IT’S ONE THIN G TO T ALK about diversity,” says Robert Gibbs. “It’s another to actually put people in positions of power to help shape the future.” That’s the position Gibbs finds himself in now as head of music at ICM Partners. He’s also the highest-ranking Black music executive in the agency business, following the restructuring of ICM’s leadership team in February. Based in Los Angeles, Gibbs took over Mark Siegel’s role in an ICM shuffle that saw Siegel replacing Rob Prinz as ICM’s head of worldwide concerts. (Prinz returned to being a full-time agent and remains a partner.) Gibbs says the blueprint mapped out under Prinz’s watch was “a redefining moment for ICM’s music department, despite the challenges” created by the pandemic. Just prior to the shutdown of…

IN THE HEIGHTS WAS BORN IN THE WINTER of 1999 in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s dorm room at Wesleyan University, inspired by what simply wasn’t there. “It was, in many ways, an attempt to write what I saw was missing, both in terms of representation and in terms of stories about [Latinos] in popular culture,” he says. Now, Miranda’s story has made its way to movie theaters as an adaptation of the Broadway show that ran from 2008-11 — one of the few Latin musicals to become a feature film. It’s a journey that has taken two decades and many rides on New York’s A train, where Miranda rewrote much of his original score, while also working with arranger/producers Bill Sherman and Alex Lacamoire, both of whom worked on Hamilton. Miranda…

NOEL SCHAJRIS’ SOLO CAREER HAS allowed him to stretch himself sonically by collaborating with other artists and like-minded composers, from Maluma, Camila Cabello, Alejandro Sanz, John Legend and Luis Fonsi to Paul Williams, Luis Enrique and Claudia Brant. Following are some of their reflections about his songwriting legacy. —L.C. “We’ve written countless songs, and he’s one of the most talented people I know, with unmatched musical ability and talent for melodies.” —CLAUDIA BRANT “His joy, enthusiasm and passion for music are contagious. His songs were always playing in my home, and his incredible lyrics and melodies have been part of every memorable moment with my family.” —CAMILA CABELLO “There are few singers who can draw so much emotion with just piano and voice. I’ve had the pleasure of writing…

THE PANDEMIC ISN’T just hurting performers who make money touring — public performance royalties have fallen as stores, clubs and concert venues close for various lengths of time. Among those affected most seriously: film composers. In nearly every major country except the United States, composers and songwriters whose work is used in movies are paid a “cinema royalty,” a special public performance fee for theatrical showings that can, in some cases, add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fees — collected by performing rights organizations, which in turn pay creators and publishers — are pegged to box-office revenue in most territories. (They’re not collected in the United States because of a 1948 antitrust ruling against ASCAP.) Last year, however, amid pandemic lockdowns, they declined “between 50% and…

LONDON — The music business may have spent the better part of a decade trying to solve one problem with online licensing, only to create another that could make it harder to monetize song clips at a time when sites like TikTok are exploding in popularity. For years, labels, publishers and performers lobbied Brussels to address the “value gap” that let online platforms like YouTube avoid indirect liability for copyright infringement and, rights holders say, use those laws as leverage to license music on more favorable terms. In 2019, the European Union passed a new Copyright Directive that would require platforms to make “best efforts” to remove unlicensed content, take concrete steps to ensure it wasn’t uploaded again and reach “fair remuneration” deals with rights holders. The legislation, which…

FROM Hamburg, Germany AGE 19 LABEL Capitol Records UK FOUNDATION Zoe Wees grew up without any local idols: “People always think you won’t get out of Germany; they don’t believe in you at all,” she says. But at age 12, when her aunt introduced her to the music of Jessie J, particularly the song “Who You Are,” Wees says, “I directly fell in love. The song changed the whole way I think when I look at myself in the mirror. It gave me confidence and strength.” With the encouragement of her mother and music teacher at the time, Nils Bodenstedt, she decided to double down on pursuing music as a career. “[Bodenstedt] showed me that it’s possible to turn this hobby into a full-time job, and that’s always what…

On the morning of April 15, 2009, Elizabeth Sobol was flipping through The New York Times in her Miami Beach apartment when a headline and photo stopped her cold. “You son of a bitch,” she said. Sobol, managing director of IMG Artists, one of the world’s premier classical music talent agencies, was looking at a picture of the agency’s 47-year-old chairman, Barrett Wissman, in a story titled, “Hedge Fund Executive Guilty of Securities Fraud.” Wissman, a Texas financier and classical pianist, had purchased IMG Artists for $7.5 million in July 2003, two months after the death of the previous owner, legendary sports impresario Mark McCormack. Originally a division of parent company IMG, which also operated businesses in sports, media and modeling, IMG Artists was an international firm with an…