Innholdsfortegnelse for June 25, 2022 i Billboard Magazine

BTS’ NEW ALBUM, Proof, debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, garnering the pop group its sixth chart-topper. The project — which consists mostly of previously released material — arrives with 314,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the week ending June 16, according to Luminate. The majority of that starting total was driven by CD album sales (259,000) as Proof scores the biggest week for an album on CD since Adele’s 30 launched with 378,000 (week ending Nov. 25, 2021; chart dated Dec. 4, 2021). The Proof CD includes 13 bonus tracks unavailable on the album’s streaming and digital retail editions and was issued in elaborate collectible CD packages, including two variants: a $24 edition and a more lavish $70 version. Both versions have…

AS THE SOUTHERN California-Las Vegas corridor develops into the largest year-round U.S. festival market, rival live-industry giants Live Nation and AEG are battling for control through competing minifestivals — genre-specific, commuter-friendly events that require little or no travel commitment, have lower ticket prices and could work nationally, spurring growth in a crowded market. AEG-owned Goldenvoice once dominated that niche sector, but industry sources say the former talent buyer who delivered them there, Jeff Shuman, may have helped Live Nation build a superior model: a minifestival with the potential to generate Coachella-size attendance numbers. On Oct. 22, 23 and 29, Live Nation will debut When We Were Young, a pop-punk/emo minifest — headlined by My Chemical Romance and Paramore — at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. While such genre-specific events…

THE SIX MEMBERS of Ukrainian rap-folk band Kalush Orchestra took their win at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest as a morale-boosting show of international support for their war-ravaged country, which Russia invaded Feb. 24. “They want to destroy our culture,” band founder/lead singer Oleh Psiuk, 28, tells Billboard on Zoom through a translator. “We came to Eurovision to show everybody that our culture exists. That our music is alive.” Kalush Orchestra’s victory on May 14 in Turin, Italy — where a Eurovision record 438 points from the public for its song “Stefania” helped beat 24 other finalists — also aided the war effort in more practical ways. The group auctioned off the crystal microphone trophy it collected in Italy and the pink bucket hat that Psiuk wore onstage, raising…

In just over one year, dance trio Cheat Codes completed its three-part debut album, Hellraisers, with the final piece arriving in May. But long before then, the independent act was already working on its follow-up — and considering how to keep its fan base on its toes. The answer: a country album. Having released the 2021 country collaborations “Never Love You Again” with Little Big Town and Bryn Christopher and “How Do You Love” with Lee Brice and Lindsay Ell, Cheat Codes felt inspired to keep building. “We had so much fun making [those songs], we just started working on a bunch of other ideas, and one turned into 13,” says Trevor Dahl. “It’s why we got into electronic music, because we’re able to explore other genres and other…

MARION KRAFT VIVIDLY recalls one meeting at Sony Nashville in 2007 — early in her days as a manager for then-rising star Miranda Lambert. Joe Galante, who ran the label at the time, wanted to update his artists and their managers on the state of the music business. “[He] was the master of making sure everyone felt part of it and we were all true partners with our record label,” Kraft recalls. But looking around at the group of managers and executives around her, Kraft was struck. “There was one woman and me,” she says. “That was it.” Today, “those meetings have changed dramatically,” says Kraft, 57, while sitting in the Nashville office of her company, ShopKeeper Management. Since opening ShopKeeper 13 years ago, she has built a singular…

Elvis Presley didn’t do his best work in Hollywood. But his story is coming to the big screen in the form of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, a musical biopic that explores his complicated relationship with manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks. (Austin Butler plays Presley.) When it comes to music, though, Elvis never left the building: He remains one of the best-selling artists of all time, with 25 top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, plus numerous hits that precede it. Billboard followed him from his rise at Sun Records, through his days in Las Vegas, until his 1977 death in Memphis. HOUND DOG, CASH COW Hailing a 21-year-old from Tupelo, Miss., as a “country cat” who was “powerfully inspired by authentic R&B,” an article in the…

AFTER A NOTABLY YOUNG AND DIVERSE group of tours — highlighted by Bad Bunny and BTS — led the way on the 2022 midyear Billboard Boxscore charts, classic rock elder statesman Paul McCartney finishes at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Tours chart for May. According to figures reported to Boxscore, McCartney earned $52.4 million and sold 206,000 tickets across nine shows throughout the month. The May dates of the Got Back Tour alternated between arenas (Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, Dallas’ Dickies Arena) and stadiums (Inglewood, Calif.’s SoFi Stadium, Orlando, Fla.’s Camping World Stadium), reaching a single-night $12 million high in Inglewood. The lofty total is good for the No. 2 spot on the Top Boxscores ranking. After his May 31 show at the Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, Tenn., McCartney’s…

WHEN IT COMES to the business of stand-up comedy, the process usually goes something like this: A comedian spends a year to 18 months building an hourlong set, sharpening jokes that work and tossing the ones that don’t. Once the set is perfected, a special is filmed and sold to Netflix or another streaming service. For Comedy Dynamics founder/CEO Brian Volk-Weiss, that’s just half the equation. The company’s record label — which he says releases over 150 comedy albums every year in digital streaming and physical formats — accounts for approximately 50% of annual revenue. That means vinyl is every bit as important to his bottom line as it is to any music company. The 46-year-old Queens native — who could pass for a lankier, more animated version of…

FROM Madison, Wis. AGE 25 LABEL ARTium Recordings/Atlantic Records FOUNDATION Growing up, R&B singer Ogi was often woken up at sunrise by her grandmother singing Nigerian hymns. “Those are the first songs I can remember memorizing, because we heard them every day,” she recalls. Raised in Wisconsin, Ogi says there weren’t many people of color around, so her mother made it a point to bring the family to Nigerian prayer meetings, where everyone would sing. It was there that Ogi developed a fascination with harmony and recognized the power of layered voices. And in her high school’s jazz choir, she discovered her gift of perfect pitch. DISCOVERY Despite her passion for music, Ogi majored in political science and minored in legal studies at Northwestern University. “Being Nigerian, there are…

McCartney, who runs Monument Records with co-presidents Jason Owen and Shane McAnally, oversaw Walker Hayes’ rise to stardom with his cross-format smash, “Fancy Like,” an ode to a sweetheart who’s happy with “Applebee’s on a date night/Got that Bourbon Street steak with an Oreo shake.” The song topped the Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts and reached No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. The track also won top country song at the Billboard Music Awards in May. “It not only changed everything for him as an artist,” says McCartney, “but it changed everything for us at Monument, too.” What was your biggest achievement of the year? Walker hitting the top of every country chart — blasting through every TV screen and prompting millions of TikToks —…

Messina Touring Group’s formidable roster has come roaring back to life on the road after the pandemic imposed a moratorium on touring: George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Blake Shelton and Little Big Town grossed over $170 million combined across roughly 90 shows between August 2021 and May 2022. Messina says he has been actively hiring young people to boost his company’s digital marketing efforts, but his mission is the same as it always was: “I’m not in the rent-a-van business,” he says. “I’m in the career business.” Even for his slate of stadium-ready acts, Messina is adamant that there’s still room for growth. After congratulating Church on a recent show at Madison Square Garden in New York, Messina texted: “Next tour, stadiums. Then we’ll figure out what’s bigger.”…

STREAMING HAS rejuvenated the music business, but it’s no secret that the new economic model has upset many in the industry. And no group has been more frustrated than songwriters. In a physical sales-driven world, writers could make a decent living by landing a placement on a superstar’s album whether it resulted in a hit or not — every song on a million-selling album earns the same amount of mechanical royalties, most recently 9.1 cents per copy sold. In the streaming-driven world, however, album placements no longer guarantee much income. There are only hits and non-hits, and the streaming money a writer earns from penning a couple of the latter, even if a superstar records them, “might not even equal the cost of filling up my gas tank to…

DESPITE ITS TITLE, BAILEY Zimmerman’s churning hit “Fall in Love” is not a romantic ballad, with the Illinois native lamenting on the track: “Love’s a smoke ring wrapped around your finger/One second it’s a blessing, and the next it’s already gone.” Yet the single’s impact is anything but ephemeral, as it reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and has earned 78.7 million on-demand U.S. official streams, according to Luminate. The rising country star says of the song’s inspiration, “After you lose that special person you never thought you’d lose, it’s hard to want to give love a second chance. We felt like we could relate to a lot of people by shining a light on that feeling.” Zimmerman co-wrote the song with Austin Shawn, who also…

IN 2012 — FIVE years after moving to Nashville to chase his dream of being a country artist — Jimmie Allen had little to show for his efforts. He was working multiple jobs to pay the rent, playing writers’ rounds when he could and taking gigs for tip money. He had already been tossed off American Idol. Then one day, while searching through his attic for family photos, he found a “trashy” spiral notebook and began filling the empty pages with a list of very specific career goals: Land a publishing deal. Sign a record contract. Get a booking agency to expand his reach into movies and TV. Have No. 1 singles. Play sold-out stadiums. Sing with the world’s greatest musical icons, like Elton John. A decade later, Allen…

Damon Whiteside CEO • Academy of Country Music Lyndsay Cruz Executive director • ACM Lifting Lives “ ‘Pivot and innovate’ has definitely been our theme for the past year,” says Whiteside. In March, the ACM Awards became the first major awards show to exclusively livestream, shown globally on Amazon’s Prime Video. Last August, the academy held its ACM Party for a Cause concert in Nashville for the first time to benefit its philanthropic division, ACM Lifting Lives, guided by Cruz. This fall, the academy will open its new headquarters in Nashville after nearly 60 years in Los Angeles. Whiteside is most proud of the fact that the ACM Lifting Lives COVID-19 Response Fund distributed nearly $4 million to those in need since the pandemic’s start. He took the time…