Innholdsfortegnelse for June 8, 2024 i Billboard Magazine

Ballesteros makes a strong debut across the Billboard charts as The GB launches at No. 3 on Regional Mexican Albums and No. 5 on Top Latin Albums. His debut full-length marks his first visit to any Billboard album list. It opens with 14,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States in the tracking week ending May 30, according to Luminate. Streams contribute most of the debut-week activity, which equates to 19.6 million official on-demand streams of The GB’s songs. “Sin Yolanda” (with Peso Pluma) leads three entries from the album on the multimetric Hot Latin Songs chart, where it opens at No. 20, powered mostly by 3.1 million official U.S. streams. The set’s No. 33-peaking “El Boss” (with Natanael Cano) rises 50-44 largely from 1.9 million streams, while…

ABOUT FOUR MONTHS AGO, Maiden Voyage, an album of Iron Maiden radio recordings from the 1980s, popped up for sale on Coda Records’ website without the storied metal band’s permission. Andrew Wyllie, Iron Maiden’s head of business affairs, contacted the act’s labels, BMG and Warner Music, for help persuading the U.K. retailer to pull down the unauthorized album — with, he says, no success. His next call went to Corsearch. The 75-year-old brand-protection company, which fights bootleggers using artificial intelligence, image-matching software and automated takedown notices on retail sites like Amazon, Etsy and eBay, quickly ended the sale of Maiden Voyage and social media ads for it and was “more effective in getting those records taken down than our record company,” Wyllie says. “They’ve definitely affected the bottom line.”…

IN 2021, AYRA STARR documented her journey from adolescence to early adulthood with her debut album, 19 & Dangerous. The bold collection of bangers and ballads blended Afropop, R&B, trap and alté while exploring themes of relationship struggles and finding self-confidence. In 2022, she released her smash “Rush,” which earned Starr her first Grammy Award nomination for best African music performance in February. Now, with her second album, The Year I Turned 21, Starr contemplates the years since her debut. Across the set, the artist reflects on love, loss, getting rich, gaining wisdom and everything else that came with being 21 through a masterfully curated fusion of Afrobeats, amapiano, R&B, hip-hop and pop. She’ll take the project on the road opening for Chris Brown’s 11:11 Tour and will perform…

WHEN THE 13TH ANNUAL Libera Awards take place June 10 at Gotham Hall in New York, the event will fete the finest in independent music at a time when the indie industry has never been stronger. The awards show will kick off the American Association of Independent Music’s Indie Week, which begins June 10 and includes three days of keynotes, workshops and panels June 11-13. On June 11, A2IM will partner with Billboard to honor this year’s 2024 Indie Power Players (see story, page 46). A2IM is a not-for-profit trade association that represents indie-music recording owners and advocates for music owners on a policy level to ensure fair compensation for their work. At this year’s Libera Awards, Killer Mike, Caroline Polachek, Mitski, L’Rain and Wednesday are among the year’s…

RM reenters the Artist 100 at a new peak of No. 4, concurrent with the arrival of his second Billboard 200 top 10: Right Place, Wrong Person. It debuts at No. 5 with 54,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States May 24-30, according to Luminate. The set also launches at No. 1 on Top Rap Albums, where it’s the BTS member’s first entry.…

Zach Bryan’s “Pink Skies” debuts at No. 1 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs with 31.6 million official U.S. streams, 166,000 in radio reach and 10,000 sold May 24-30, according to Luminate. The track is expected to introduce his upcoming project, believed to be titled The Great American Bar Scene. Bryan adds his third leader on the list, after “I Remember Everything” (featuring Kacey Musgraves) reigned for 30 weeks beginning in September and “Something in the Orange” began 20 weeks atop the chart in February 2023. “Pink Skies” also opens at No. 3 on Hot Country Songs, where it’s Bryan’s 10th top 10, and No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it’s his third. The singer-songwriter has notched three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, all in…

Queen’s debut full-length, The Prodigal, enters Top Christian Albums at No. 1. Released May 24, it earned 4,000 equivalent album units in the United States through May 30, according to Luminate. The set marks the first Top Christian Albums entry for the Tampa, Fla.-based 21-year-old. He initially accumulated traction by posting videos on TikTok, where he has nearly 100,000 followers. “It has been surreal to see the response to my debut album,” Queen says. “It’s wild to me that these songs which I wrote in my living room and bedroom have made their way to people all over the world. My hope is that the album leads people closer to God.” Meanwhile, The Prodigal’s title track ranks at No. 7, after reaching a No. 4 high, on the multimetric…

PETER SHAPIRO, THE OWNER OF Relix magazine, a chronicler of the jam band scene since the heyday of the Grateful Dead, traces the Big Bang of its current generation of acts back to the 1995 death of Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. “Everyone saw the Dead; they were the No. 1 touring band in the 1990s,” he says. “Garcia dies, and that audience of live music, improvisation-loving people, splinters. That creates the jam band scene. Phish lifts up” — the band first cracked Pollstar’s highest-grossing U.S. tours list at the end of 1994 — “along with String Cheese Incident, Disco Biscuits [and] Medeski Martin & Wood.” The following year, Shapiro purchased the New York club Wetlands. “That was the home of the jam band, Dead scene in New York,” he…

IT’S 9 P.M. ON A WEDNESDAY EVENING IN MIAMI, and Ty Baisden is still taking care of business with an energy level that belies the hour. “I’m a firm sleeper who gets my eight hours,” says Baisden, his Georgian drawl giving way to laughter. “But what I don’t do is the bullshit. So subtract the bullshit, and you’ve got a lot of time to work and a lot of time to rest.” That philosophy has anchored Baisden since he broke into the business as a manager in 2008. During that time, the native Atlantan also closely observed successful creative/business partnerships including Disturbing Tha Peace Records with Ludacris and Chaka Zulu and Grand Hustle Records with T.I. and Jason Geter. Given the tenuousness of most manager-artist relationships, Baisden wanted to…

SZA scores her third Mainstream Top 40 No. 1 with “Saturn.” She previously ruled the radio ranking with “Kill Bill” for a week in April 2023 and as a featured artist on Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More” for a week in July 2021. “Saturn” arrived Feb. 23 after SZA teased it in a Mastercard commercial that aired during CBS’ broadcast of the Grammy Awards on Feb. 4. The song, which she co-wrote, debuted at its No. 6 high on the all-genre, multimetric Billboard Hot 100 in March, becoming her 10th top 10. It has also led the multi-metric Hot R&B Songs chart and the Rhythmic Airplay list, becoming her sixth No. 1 on each chart. Meanwhile, “Saturn” shines as the first Mainstream Top 40 No. 1 with the name…

AFTER TAKING ITSELF OUT of the bidding for French music group and distributor Believe in April, Warner Music Group is shopping for an alternative distribution company that could help it gain market share in the competitive space that serves independent creators and labels, according to industry sources. Since taking over as WMG’s CEO last year, Robert Kyncl has signaled his intention to build in-house the technology and services he thinks the company needs. On a call with analysts in May, Kyncl said he’s also ready to buy if the right opportunity presents itself. “As part of our mission to be a destination for artists and songwriters at every stage of development, we are expanding our lower-touch services that many indie artists, labels and songwriters rely on,” Kyncl said May…

ASKED TO recall his first musical memory, James Rosemond Jr. is quick to answer: R&B duo Groove Theory’s 1995 R&B/pop classic, “Tell Me.” He sings a snippet of the song’s infectious refrain —“Tell me if you want me to...” — and says with a laugh, “I was 4 years old, but that’s the way I fell in love with music.” Growing up, there was plenty of music to love. Rosemond, now 31, is the son of former artist manager Jimmy Rosemond, who represented Gucci Mane, The Game, Salt-N-Pepa and others. And over the past two years, he has blazed his own path in the profession, helping guide rapper Ice Spice to crossover stardom. Since breaking through in 2022 with the viral TikTok hit “Munch (Feelin’ U),” Ice has garnered…

ABOUT A DECADE into his career with Universal Music Group (UMG) — primarily heading A&R and working as a staff producer for Harvest Records — Tim Anderson had a front-row seat to the late-2010s vinyl boom. “It was still an archaic, dinosaur thing,” he recalls of how labels approached record pressing. He started to wonder why records were so hard to manufacture and had such long lead times — and what he could do about it. By the time the pandemic hit, Anderson — who is also a songwriter-producer, composing for Suits and working with acts like Banks, Halsey and twenty one pilots — had left his major-label gig and had little interest in producing. Unsure of what to do next, his wife kept reminding him that music is…

AT JUST 10 YEARS old, Christopher Brent Wood’s metamorphosis into indie disruptor Brent Faiyaz began. As he collected CDs by D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill and Joe, among other R&B/hip-hop artists, the youngster would steadily pore over album liner notes, absorbing the behind-the-scenes details of how his favorite albums were made. By middle school, he had set up his first home studio, with a USB mic and downloaded software — the start of his shift from music fan to music-maker. “I was making money selling beats; that’s how I got a lot of my friends when I was younger,” Faiyaz, 28, recalls today of his teenage years in the Baltimore area. “It’d be like grown motherfuckers coming to the house to get beats off me. My parents were like, ‘Who are…