Innholdsfortegnelse for May 14, 2022 i Billboard Magazine

Olivia Rodrigo Age 19 Label GEFFEN Publisher SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING Management LIGHTHOUSE MANAGEMENT & MEDIA Total Streams 4.4 BILLION “Drivers license” was just the beginning for Olivia Rodrigo, who has turned the No. 1 launch of the anthemic ballad in January 2021 into one of pop’s biggest breakthroughs of the decade so far. Upon its release last May, the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series star’s debut album, Sour, topped the Billboard 200, while pop-punk follow-up single “good 4 u” became Rodrigo’s second No. 1 smash. After taking home the Grammy Award for best new artist and embarking on her first headlining tour, she’s already looking ahead to her next musical era. “It’s really exciting to think about the next world that’s coming up for me,” Rodrigo told…

SHAUNA ALEXANDER VP/global head of partnerships /// SoundCloud Alexander, 38, sees herself “as a bit of a Robin Hood,” who “instead of stealing from brands,” educates them “on why they need to invest in emerging artists.” SoundCloud, for example, dove into gaming partnerships over the past year, working with Adobe, Swiffer and Xbox on a Fortnite Battle Royale co-hosted by Rico Nasty that pitted eight SoundCloud rappers against each other. The tournament racked up over 700,000 views. “In a time where artists have been really struggling,” Alexander says, “I’m proud of my team and I for constantly finding nonconventional ways to get emerging artists paid.” TOBY ANDREWS President /// Astralwerks While Andrews, who manages all day-to-day aspects of the Capitol Music Group imprint, has overseen the expansion of Astralwerks…

THE RECORDING INDUSTRY trade organization engages in any number of activities — from setting technical standards to awarding gold and platinum certifications. But its focus is lobbying and litigating to protect the interests of labels. Here are some of the biggest scores of its 70-year run. Sound Recording Act Of 1971 For decades, recordings were only protected by state statutes. This law, which the RIAA pushed, offered federal protection to recordings made after the following year. Copyright Act Of 1976 The most important copyright law in the latter half of the 20th century codified fair use, extended the term of protection and eliminated the need to register works with the U.S. Copyright Office (although rights holders still need to do so in order to be eligible for statutory damages).…

FUTURE’S I NEVER LIKED YOU enters at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (dated May 14) with the year’s largest week for an album. His eighth leader opens with 222,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending May 5, according to Luminate — the best total since Adele’s 30 logged 288,000 units (Dec. 11, 2021) and the biggest debut since 30 scored 839,000 units one week earlier that December. Future also earns a personal best for a solo effort — his only bigger week came as part of his collaborative album with Drake, What a Time To Be Alive, which started with 375,000 units in October 2015. Concurrently, I Never Liked You’s “Wait for U,” featuring Drake and Tems, soars in at No. 1…

INDIO, CALIF., AND RIO DE JANEIRO are nearly 7,000 miles apart. Indio is a desert, and Rio a tropical beach paradise; Rio a bustling metropolis of nearly 7 million people, and Indio, for most of the year, a sleepy small town. But in mid-April, the disparate locales somehow became one when Anitta turned Coachella into a Brazilian Carnival. Sérgio Mendes’ classic samba “Mas Que Nada” played over the speakers; then, as it transitioned into her own “Onda Diferente,” the 29-year-old rode a motorcycle onto the main stage, wearing a spangled and feathered Roberto Cavalli ensemble in yellow, green and blue, the colors of the Brazilian flag. Over the course of the next 45 minutes, her eye-popping show — a master class in twerking, with funk battle, samba and capoeira…

Though he is now the co-manager of superstar multihyphenates Olivia Rodrigo and Selena Gomez, Morgenroth, 35, says with a laugh that he “didn’t even know this was a job” growing up. That changed his sophomore year at the University of Southern California when he landed an internship at a management company and realized “there’s a world out there that me in high school could have never thought about.” His next internship, at Brillstein Entertainment Partners, proved even more fruitful. It was there he met Aleen Keshishian, founder of Lighthouse Management & Media, where Morgenroth joined as a partner at the company’s inception in 2016. Having known Keshishian for nearly 15 years, he says, “gives us such a shorthand when we’re working together on clients,” says Morgenroth. “It’s like yin…

EVEN AFTER A QUARTER century and nearly 7 million equivalent album units earned from his band’s first five albums, according to Luminate, formerly MRC Data, Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins still feels like he’s on the outside looking in. “This folk music’s fucking me up/Makes me think I should quit/Maybe I’m just scared of it,” he sings on “Silverlake Neophyte” from the group’s 2021 album, Our Bande Apart, a collection Jenkins says is his favorite thing he has ever done. Musicians are expected to plug the new one. But in Jenkins’ case, after years of battling former bandmates, managers — and, in some cases, himself during dry spells — he has emerged from the most fruitful period of his career with a new attitude and a fresh perspective on…

Major labels and publishers reached a tentative settlement at the Copyright Royalty Board to increase the songwriter mechanical royalty rate from 9.1 cents to 12 cents. Live Nation reported its “best first quarter ever” with $1.8 billion in revenue. SONY MUSIC PUBLISHING led the first-quarter 2022 publisher rankings on both the Top Radio Airplay and Hot 100 charts — its eighth consecutive No. 1 on the latter chart — while British rock band Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves” and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” single-handedly catapulted their respective publishers, Hipgnosis and Disney, onto one or both of the rankings. Sony had stakes in 58 songs on the first-quarter Hot 100 chart, good for a 22.65% share of the market and up from 51 songs and a 22.51% market…

“Gbese!” Burna Boy is soaring over the crowd at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome, yelling the Yoruba term that loosely means “move your legs.” His six-foot-one frame explodes into the air, seemingly powered by enough energy to fuel the Space Drift Tour race car he zoomed onto the stage in earlier. Wearing a blue custom Botter jumpsuit, he looks like some kind of Afro-futurist astronaut, ready to fly even higher. “He gives his all. And when he comes off [stage], you’ll see him in the dressing room, falling flat out on the floor and shaking,” says his younger sister Ronami Ogulu, who’s also his stylist and creative director. “Then he comes up and we patch him all together and we go again the next day.” Three days later, Burna is in…

THE RIAA HAS GONE PLATINUM. The recorded-music business trade organization — which awards gold and platinum certifications, among other functions — celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, and the traditional gift to mark that milestone just happens to be platinum. Like the industry itself, the RIAA has changed a lot over the years. Founded in 1952, it started as a New York-based organization that developed and promoted the “RIAA Equalization Curve,” an industry standard for the recording and playing of records that let them hold more music and improved sound quality. Although the RIAA has become associated with lobbying for legislation to protect the interests of its member labels, the organization didn’t even move to Washington, D.C., until 1986. By then, it had already played a role in the…