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Neko Health, a medical technology company co-founded by Daniel Ek, said on Wednesday (July 5) it has raised 60 million euros ($65 million) from a group of outside investors led by European tech venture capitalist Klaus Hommels‘ Lakestar. Founded in 2018 by Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, this is the first time the Swedish health-tech company […]
TikTok is helping bring Tomorrowland 2023 to the world.
On Wednesday (July 5), the dance mega-festival announced the video-sharing platform as its official content partner for the event, which is taking place over two weekends in Boom, Belgium: July 21-23 and July 28-30.
The partnership will include TikTok LIVE broadcasts of headline performances from the festival’s main stage, along with behind-the-scenes footage and video-on-demand content from artists and other creators. TikTok will stream Tomorrowland content 24 hours a day across both weekends.
Additionally, the partnership encompasses in-app playlists, a search hub and activations designed to make it easier for TikTok users to find content from the festival.
“We’re delighted to be partnering with Tomorrowland, one of the world’s biggest and most iconic festivals,” TikTok business development lead of global music content and partnerships Michael Kümmerle said in a statement. “With its legendary line-up and global audience, Tomorrowland is the perfect festival partner for our flourishing community of #ElectronicMusic lovers who congregate on TikTok. As our relationship with the genre deepens, we’re incredibly excited to help grow the festival further by giving our community 24 live streams and a 360-degree experience of Tomorrowland on TikTok.”
Tomorrowland 2023 is set to host more than 600 artists across 14 stages. Performers include Afrojack, Alesso, Armin van Buuren, Black Coffee, the Chainsmokers, Claptone, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Dom Dolla, Don Diablo, Eric Prydz, Hardwell, John Newman, Martin Garrix, Netsky, Nicky Romero, Oliver Heldens, Paul Kalkbrenner, Purple Disco Machine, Robin Schulz, Sebastian Ingrosso, Shaquille O’Neal as DJ Diesel, Steve Angello, Steve Aoki, Tiësto, Timmy Trumpet, Topic and W&W.
The festival is once again set to host 400,000 fans each weekend.
Rapper, producer and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs is asking the New York Supreme Court to enforce a 2021 agreement that requires spirits seller Diageo to treat his DeLeon tequila brand “at least as favorably” as its other tequila brands.
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Combs signed an agreement with Diageo — which owns more than 200 brands including Guinness beer and Tanqueray gin — after what he says were years of neglect for DeLeon, a brand he established with the London company in 2013.
Combs’ lawsuit against Diageo was filed in May. But many details, including the 2021 agreement, were redacted at the time. On Wednesday, those details were released after Judge Joel Cohen ruled that Diageo could keep only limited portions confidential.
Combs says Diageo’s treatment of DeLeon worsened after it bought two competing tequila brands: Don Julio in 2014 and Casamigos in 2017. Combs, who is Black, says Diageo positioned his tequila as an inferior “urban” brand and limited its distribution.
Diageo has denied Combs’ accusations. In late June, it asked the court to compel arbitration or dismiss the suit. It has also in the process of terminating a partnership between Combs and Ciroc vodka, a brand he had promoted since 2007.
The newly public documents detail what Combs says was Diageo’s repeated disinvestment in DeLeon. As of last year, DeLeon was distributed in 3% of possible outlets, for example, while Don Julio was in 36%. DeLeon has been listed as “out of stock” in major markets at least ten times in the past year, the lawsuit says.
In 2021, Combs said he was informed that all of Diageo’s agave plants were allocated to other brands, forcing DeLeon to scramble to find suppliers in the more expensive spot market. Combs says Diageo also made unilateral decisions that harmed the brand, including discontinuing popular 375-millileter “half bottles” and launching a redesigned bottle with no marketing support.
Combs claims Diageo’s decisions were often tinged with racism. He says he was adamant that DeLeon not offer flavored versions until customers had more time to learn about the brand. But Diageo went ahead and developed a watermelon flavor, even though Combs had previously warned the company to be careful about the racist history and negative connotations with watermelon in brands aimed at Black consumers.
Combs says internal Diageo documents also proposed downplaying Ciroc’s connection to Combs with the goal of rolling back its “image of being an African-American brand.”
In its own court filings, Diageo accuses Combs of resorting to “false and reckless” allegations in an effort to extract monetary damages. Diageo also says sales of DeLeon have doubled since the 2021 agreement.
When introducing myself as the vp of marketing and wellness at Guin Records, a title that doesn’t conform to the usual melody of the music industry, I’m often met with raised eyebrows and intrigued inquiries. This blending of roles — pairing the vibrant, creative world of marketing with the crucial, human aspect of wellness — might seem unconventional to most in our industry. Yet, this combination isn’t just possible. It’s essential and, I would argue, long overdue.
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The responsibilities of my role involve walking the line between two worlds. I champion and promote the music our artists create, steering the narrative to connect deeply with new audiences and core fans. Simultaneously, I cultivate an environment that nurtures the mental and emotional well-being of our artists and staff.
At Guin Records, we embed wellness into the very fabric of our ethos and values. We recognize that the creative process, while exhilarating, can also be emotionally taxing. We acknowledge the highs and lows, the euphoria and the vulnerability that come with artistic expression. Therefore, we prioritize the well-being of our artists, empowering them to create and share their music in a sustainable and healthy way.
Why is this important? Because music is profoundly human. The music that touches our souls, the lyrics that resonate with our experiences and the performances that captivate our senses — all are born from the hearts and minds of individuals. Artists, like all of us, require support, care and an environment conducive to their growth and well-being.
How do we accomplish this? By acknowledging that an artist’s well-being is not a peripheral concern but a core element that directly impacts their art as well as our bottom line. As a concrete step, we offer non-recoupable wellness stipends to our artists. This financial support allows them the freedom to invest in their mental and physical health without burden.
Moreover, we maintain a strong alliance with non-profit entities like Backline, ensuring our artists and team members have readily available mental health resources. We’ve proudly signed the “Breaking The Barriers” pledge, committed to helping knock down long-standing roadblocks that often keep BIPOC communities from getting the mental health care they need. To further our investment in our team’s well-being, we’ve instituted a “Mental Health Day Policy.” This grants our employees the liberty to take much-needed breaks for personal rejuvenation; fostering a culture of prevention against burnout. After all, in nurturing our people, we nurture the music.
So I call on my industry peers to turn the volume up on this crucial conversation. Let’s recognize that a healthy artist creates better music, and a team that feels supported performs better. Let’s shift our industry narrative to one that doesn’t just produce beautiful music but also upholds the well-being of the beautiful minds behind it.
By prioritizing wellness, we’re setting the stage for a more sustainable, empathetic and human-centered music industry. By championing the music we love while investing in the well-being of those who create it, we pave the way for a sustainable industry that supports everyone involved. It’s not just about the end product but about the process, the people and the passion that fuel it all.
Brandon Holman is vp of marketing & wellness at Guin Records, whose artist roster includes Asha Imuno. Holman is also co-founder of The Lazuli Collective, an experiential wellness agency that delivers wellness and mental health programming to audiences around the world through events, music and consultancies including the Coachella Arts and Music Festival.
Meta is poised to unveil a new app that appears to mimic Twitter — a direct challenge to the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
A listing for the app, called Threads, appeared on Apple’s App Store, indicating it would debut as early as Thursday. It is billed as a “text-based conversation app” that is linked to Instagram, with the listing teasing a Twitter-like microblogging experience.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” it said.
Instagram users will be able to keep their user names and follow the same accounts on the new app, according to screenshots displayed on the App Store listing. Meta declined to comment on the app.
Musk replied “yeah” to a tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey saying, “All your Threads are belong to us,” along with a screenshot from the App Store’s privacy section showing what personal information might be collected by the new Meta app.
Threads could be the latest headache for Musk, who acquired Twitter last year for $44 billion and has been making changes that have unnerved advertisers and turned off users, including new daily limits on the number of tweets people can view.
Meta has good timing because Twitter users are growing frustrated with Musk’s changes and looking for a viable alternative, said Matt Navarra, a social media consultant.
Threads presents the “opportunity to jump to a platform that can give them many of the things that they want Twitter to continue to be that it no longer is,” he said.
Allowing Instagram users to port their profile to Threads could give the new app more traction with potential users by providing a ready-made set of accounts for them to follow, said Navarra, former director of social media at tech news site The Next Web and digital communications adviser for the British government.
Twitter has rolled out a series of unpopular changes in recent days, including a requirement for users to be verified to use the online dashboard TweetDeck. The policy announced Monday takes effect in 30 days and appears to be aimed at raising extra revenue because users need to pay have their accounts verified under Musk’s changes.
TweetDeck is popular with companies and news organizations, allowing users to manage multiple Twitter accounts.
It comes after outcry over Musk’s announcement this weekend that Twitter has limited the number of tweets users can view each day — restrictions that the billionaire Tesla CEO described as an attempt to stop unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data.
Still, some users might be put off by Meta’s data privacy track record, Navarra said. And would-be Twitter challengers like Mastodon have found it a challenge to sign up users.
“It’s hard to tell whether the upset and discontent is strong enough to make a mass exodus or whether it will be somewhat of a slow erosion,” Navarra said.
Musk’s rivalry with Meta Platforms also could end up spilling over into real life. In an online exchange between Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a cage match face-off, though it’s unclear if they will actually make it to the ring.
Sherrese Clarke Soares‘ HarbourView Equity Partners and Diddy‘s Revolt are among the bidders finalizing second-round offers to acquire a majority stake in BET Media Group from Paramount Global, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks.
Jesse Collins Entertainment, which produced the Grammys and this year’s SuperBowl halftime performance by Rihanna, is also mulling joining HarbourView and Revolt’s joint offer for the package of networks that includes VH1, said one of the sources, who requested anonymity due to the confidential nature of the talks.
Paramount Global is reportedly exploring selling a majority stake in BET Media Group, which includes BET, BET+, BET Gospel, BET HER, BET International, BET Jams, BET Soul, BET Studios and VH1, for as much as $3 billion, as it looks to offload assets like book publisher Simon & Shuster and preschool service Noggin to focus on its streaming business.
Sources say other bidders submitting second-round offers for BET Media Group include Tyler Perry and Byron Allen. Paramount is reportedly looking to finalize deals this fall.
A spokesperson for BET declined to comment for this story.
Soares, whose private equity firm owns rights to songs by regional Mexican trio Eslabon Armado, Luis Fonsi and Florida Georgia Line, confirmed during a red-carpet interview with Billboard at the BET Awards that HarbourView has an active bid for the media group.
“We are here because of how much we support the brand and how excited we are about the opportunity around the brand itself,” Soares said, declining to share further details.
A former Morgan Stanley managing director, Soares founded HarbourView in 2021, initially to acquire publishing and music recording rights — an investment strategy she helped develop as CEO and co-founder of Tempo Music. More recently, Soares has guided HarbourView’s investments in media companies, aiming to build out a distribution network for content soundtracked by artists in its catalog.
In March, HarbourView led a $90 million investment in a minority stake in MACRO, a film, television and branding company founded by Charles D. King, whose projects include Judas and the Black Messiah. Directed by Shaka King, Judas made history in 2021 as the first-ever film with an all-Black production team to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.
“Our interest is to be fuel to the entertainment and media segment,” Soares told Billboard at the BET Awards, referencing HarbourView’s investments in catalogs and MACRO. Regarding the results of the bids for BET, Soares said, “We’ll let the cards fall where they may.”
Sara Evans signed with Nashville-based label Melody Place, which she joins in partnership with her own imprint, Born to Fly Records. The country singer is slated to return to the recording studio in October to work on new music, with an expected album release in 2024. It will be her first album of original material in seven years. “When the Melody Place team approached me about working together and expanding all the things I’d already been doing with my own label — Born To Fly Records, it became clear that they share the same passion and excitement about trying new and innovative things to connect fans with music,” said Evans in a statement. Evans is represented by manager Craig Dunn at One Spark Entertainment and agents Doug Neff and Becky Gardenhire at WME.
Independent artist Petey (“Don’t Tell the Boys,” “Lean Into Life”) signed with Capitol Records, which will release his new single, “I’ll Wait,” on July 7. He’s represented by managers Ethan Silverman and William Crane and agent Tor Breon at WME. He was previously signed to Terrible Records.
Bronx rapper Scar Lip (“Glizzy Gobbler,” “This Is New York”) signed with Epic Records, which will be releasing new music from the spitter “very soon.”
Singer-songwriter Vera Sola signed to City Slang Records, which released her new single, “Desire Path,” on June 28. It’s her first new release since 2019. Sola is represented by manager Jim Martin at XXVII Arts and agent Will Church at ATC.
Country singer/songwriter and rapper C’ing Jerome (“Barn Don’t Close”) signed a record deal with Average Joes Entertainment. The label released his latest single, “Average Joe,” on June 16.
Page 1 Management added London-based songwriter/producer Tommy Sanders and songwriter/producer David Kerckhoff to its roster. Sanders will work with Rob Turnham out of Page 1’s London office and Kerckhoff will work with Nina Musolino out of Page 1’s Nashville office.
Boston band Final Gasp signed with Relapse Records, which will release the group’s debut album, Mourning Moon, on September 22. The group’s 2021 EP, Haunting Whisper, was released by Triple B Records.
MNRK Music Group signed English “tech metal” band Turin to its heavy metal and hard rock imprint MNRK Heavy.
Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited the number of tweets that users can view each day — restrictions he described as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform.
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The site is now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles — a change in its longtime practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter on what Musk has frequently touted as the world’s digital town square since buying it for $44 billion last year.
The restrictions could result in users being locked out of Twitter for the day after scrolling through several hundred tweets. Thousands of users complained Saturday (July 1) of not being able to access the site.
In a Friday tweet, Musk described the new restrictions as a temporary measure that was taken because “we were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!”
Musk has pushed back on what he calls misuse of Twitter data to train popular artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT. They scour reams of information online to generate human-like text, photos, video and other content.
Musk elaborated on the limits Saturday, saying unverified accounts will temporarily be restricted to reading 600 posts per day, while verified accounts will be able to scroll through up to 6,000.
After facing backlash, he tweeted that the thresholds would be raised to 800 posts for unverified accounts and 8,000 for verified accounts before later settling on 1,000 and 10,000 tweets, respectively.
The crackdown began to have ripple effects, causing more than 7,500 people at one point Saturday to report problems using the social media service, based on complaints registered on Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages.
Although that’s a relatively small number of Twitter’s more than 200 million worldwide users, the trouble was widespread enough to cause the #TwitterDown hashtag to trend in some parts of the world.
The higher threshold allowed on verified accounts is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an effort to boost Twitter revenue. It has fallen sharply since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to cut costs and stave off bankruptcy.
Advertisers have since curbed their spending on Twitter, partly because of changes that have allowed more sometimes-hateful and prickly content that offends a wider part of the service’s audience.
Musk recently hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO to try to win back advertisers.
An Associated Press inquiry about Saturday’s access problems triggered a crude automated reply that Twitter sends to most media queries without addressing the question.
When Madonna was forced to reschedule her 84-date Celebration Tour on Wednesday after she was stricken with a bacterial infection and hospitalized in the ICU, concern immediately turned to the pop superstar’s health (luckily, she’s expected to make a full recovery). But for industry watchers, the postponement also raises an interesting question: Just how much does it cost to reschedule a tour of that magnitude?
It’s impossible to come up with a solid number given all of the moving parts involved in a tour of this scale, particularly without having access to any insurance policies or contracts with venues and vendors. But postponing that large of a tour just over two weeks short of the July 15 opener at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada — and then rescheduling it — will nonetheless amount to a huge endeavor requiring hours of phone calls, disruptions to people’s lives and plenty of sunk costs for venues, show crew members, ticket buyers and Madonna herself.
Live Nation and Madonna’s touring team have already spent millions on equipment and infrastructure. While much of the show is custom-built and designed, there are plenty of production pieces — from speakers to staging — that are rented from major backline companies. The tour has also chartered buses and trucks and rented venues, which are expenditures that require deposits with varying costs depending on demand and availability.
Live Nation and the Madonna tour will have to pay some of these deposits, especially for those high-demand items that can’t be redirected toward other tours. In some cases, they will also be on the hook for venue deposits for canceled shows, although most venues will waive the cost to maintain a good relationship with Live Nation, which brings many arenas most of their touring content.
The largest group impacted by the postponement will be the approximately 1.2 million fans who purchased tickets for the tour, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Some fans booked airline tickets, hotel rooms and rental properties around the tour, and some of those purchases will be deemed non-refundable. Those fans will have to make new plans after the rescheduled Madonna dates are announced, likely sometime in the next few weeks. Those who can’t attend might be able to get a refund, depending on what Madonna’s team decides, or sell their tickets on either a fan-to-fan exchange for face value or on a ticket resale site like StubHub or Vivid Seats.
The largest human costs will be borne by a much smaller group: the men and women working as roadies, touring professionals and support staff for the tour. With just over two weeks to go before opening, most positions on the tour have been filled, and many have started work building sets, editing content and rehearsing. As independent contractors, rescheduling the tour means their pay will be interrupted too, potentially leaving hundreds of people unemployed when they had planned to be working. While many, depending on the state, will receive a small severance and qualify for limited unemployment benefits, the disruption caused by the postponement will almost certainly mean that many touring professionals will not generate the income they had budgeted for this year and will now have to spend the months they thought they had secure employment looking for new work.
Fortunately, because the concert business is currently so strong at the highest level, there are more work opportunities in touring now than ever before, and some crew members will be able to immediately find replacement gigs. Others, however, will have to wait months until the rescheduled Madonna tour launches.
For the touring operation itself, the costs of the postponement could easily add up to millions of dollars. But the Celebration Tour has been so successful — more than 600,000 tickets were sold the first day tickets went on sale — that it will still amount to a huge financial windfall for Live Nation and Madonna when the tour eventually hits the road. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for everyone getting there
Big Machine Music has promoted Mike Molinar to president of the publishing company, effective immediately. Molinar will continue to report to Big Machine Label Group chairman and CEO Scott Borchetta.
BMM, a division of HYBE America, also announced the advancement of Alex Heddle to senior vp of publishing and Grayson Stephens to vice president, overseeing royalties and finance.
“I’m so proud to announce that Mike Molinar has been appointed President of Big Machine Music. His leadership, vision, artist relations and song sense are unmatched,” Borchetta said in a press release. “We are also acknowledging the outstanding work and accomplishments of BMM’s Alex Heddle and Grayson Stephens as they continue to power the Machine to new heights.”
Molinar has nearly three decades of experience as a music publisher and advocate for creatives. He has led Big Machine Music since its inception in 2011, overseeing the company’s ongoing growth of a diverse roster and dynamic catalog of over 14,000 songs (including the RIAA Diamond-certified “Beautiful Crazy” (recorded by Luke Combs), “In Case You Didn’t Know (Brett Young) and “Speechless” (Dan+Shay), while also leading the company’s impact beyond its Nashville base with the addition of a West Coast division based in Los Angeles. Molinar has been named a Billboard Country Power Player for four consecutive years, and was selected for the Nashville Cohort of the Harvard Young American Leaders Program in 2021. Molinar currently serves as a board member on the National Music Publishers Association, Mechanical Licensing Collective designated by the U.S. Copyright Office, Music Health Alliance, Academy of Country Music and Country Music Hall of Fame Education Council.
Heddle recently celebrated a decade at BMM and represents songwriters Jessie Jo Dillon, Ryan Hurd, Matt Dragstrem, Geoff Warburton and Sara Davis, who recently earned her first Grammy Award nomination with “abcdefu” (GAYLE) for song of the year. A graduate of Leadership Music’s class of 2022, Heddle currently serves on the AIMP Nashville board and as a Music Row Ambassador for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. The Belmont University alum’s career includes time at Love Monkey Music, Writer’s Den Music, Propoel Music Publishing and Ash Street Music.
A graduate of Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, Stephens brings nearly 14 years of publishing administration experience to the vice president role, having previously held positions at Sony Music Publishing prior to joining Big Machine Music in 2017.
“I’m honored by Scott Borchetta’s continued faith and partnership. Big Machine Music is my home; our incredible team and world-class songwriters are my family. I’m proud to continue our journey together,” Molinar added in a press release. “In that spirit, I can’t understate how important Alex Heddle and Grayson Stephens have been through these past several years of transition and growth. I’m so happy to see their efforts recognized with such well-deserved promotions.”
BMM’s current roster includes Billboard’s 2022 Songwriter of the Year Laura Veltz, Brett Young, Ryan Hurd, Jessie Jo Dillon, Matt Dragstrem, Geoff Warburton, Sara Davis, Eric Paslay, Justin Moore, Maddie & Tae, Anna Vaus, Matt Roy, Mike Eli, Daniel Ross, Callista Clark, Tyler Rich, Laci Kaye Booth, Troy Cartwright, Ayron Jones, Dalton Mauldin and Teddy Reimer. Catalog writers include Luke Combs, Brandy Clark, Jonathan Singleton and Josh Thompson.