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From deconstructing Rosalía’s success to announcing a novel partnership between See Tickets and Spain’s powerful media conglomerate Grupo Prisa, networking, technology and live events were at the forefront of the tenth annual edition of BIME, the international music industry gathering that took place in Bilbao, Spain, Oct.26-29.
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Created by entertainment company Last Tour, best known for its live events, BIME remains focused on bridging the Latin American and European markets, with a focus on live events.
This year’s anniversary event highlighted a recovered, post-COVID scene, with some 2,500 in-person attendees for both the “Pro” side of the event (made up of panels, speed dating and networking) and over 60 live shows through out Bilbao. Here are some stand out moments:
1. Rebeca León on her gut instinct and Rosalía’s au natural posts: “The pendulum has swung to the less pretentious,” said super manager León when asked about Rosalía’s frequent clean-faced, home-made posts. “It’s more about hand-held videos as opposed to showing things like a private plane.” And while León’s instinct may have served her well when she signed a still-unknown Rosalía several years ago, León admits she sometimes has to quiet her gut to take stock of opportunity. “Even when my intuition says run, run, run, I stop and listen. It’s important to consider all offers.”
2. De La Ghetto gets pragmatic: The Puerto Rican reggaetonero with multi-genre sensibility displayed sophisticated business savvy and was generous in his advice to up and coming artists. He is involved “in every single aspect of my business,” he said bluntly. In his early days, he recounted, he was relentless in giving away his music–CDs were still around—so fans would get to know him. Now, he uses social media relentlessly for the same objective. “Believe in yourself,” he said. “No one thought someone who looks like me, and who sang with an R&B sensibility would do well.” More important, he stressed, never sign anything that your lawyer doesn’t look at. “I have my lawyer, my manager has his lawyer,” he said. “Having a lawyer is the best investment.”
3. Ady Harley and Nerea Igualador on digital marketing strategies: Harley, Meta’s head of music label partnerships for Latam and U.S. Latin, and Igualador, VP of digital business for Sony Music Entertainment, provided a roadmap for effective social media marketing and promotion. “Today, you can create a marketing plan on social media that leads to consumption,” said Harley.
It starts with generation an audience, says Igualador, and that requires three steps: “Discovery; I need my audience to discover me. It’s one of the biggest challenges. There are 60,000 songs released per day, and you have to define their place and audience.” The second step, she says, is taking that audience to consume the music. “All our actions have consumption as a final objective.” And finally, there’s engagement. “Once my audience discovers me, how do I keep them engaged.”
4. James Cruz gets emotional: In a conversation with BBC London’s Beatriz de La Pava, the rap and hip-hop producer lamented the loss of community in rap music. “I come from hip-hop where we really tried to help each other,” he said. “I don’t see a unified front anymore.” Cruz also recalled growing up Latin at a time when being Latin was far from appreciated. “When I see the growth of Latin music, I get tears in my eyes. It’s incredible. We had to take the jobs no one wanted to do […] We had to create our on status and our own algorithm.”
5. See Tickets and Grupo Prisa Announce partnership: The global ticketing platform, which operates in 10 countries, and the Spanish media conglomerate announce an exclusive alliance. Not only will See Tickets sell Prisa’s many festivals and concerts, it will also receive promotion and placement on Prisa’s multiple media platforms, including leading Spanish daily El País, leading radio network 40 Principales and its social media.
6. Billboard announces the launch of Billboard Español: Billboard officially launched Billboardespañol Sept. 15. A little after the one month mark, visits to the all-Spanish site are growing 24% week by week. The site was officially presented to the Spanish industry during BIME.
Midterm elections are just around the corner, and #iVoted Festival is returning for its election night webcast featuring the top trending artists in key states whose electoral margins are often decided by the size of a venue.
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The event comes just two years after the 2020 iteration of the webcast was the largest digital concert in history.
The #iVoted Early Sweepstakes is also currently live here, in which fans can win tickets to Lizzo, Rina Sawayama, The Who, Demi Lovato, Kevin Hart, Soccer Mommy, Zac Brown Band, Dave Matthews Band, Carrie Underwood, Marc Anthony, Orville Peck, Smokey Robinson, Steve Lacy, Karol G, Omar Apollo, Ozuna, Carly Rae Jepsen, Jessie Reyez, The 1975, King Princess, Keith Urban, Noah Cyrus and many more.
See below for everything you need to know about the non-partisan 2022 #iVoted Festival.
When Is #iVoted Festival?
#iVotedFestival begins at 4 p.m. ET on Election Day (Nov. 8), and runs for six hours until 10 p.m. ET. The event will re-broadcast for 24 hours following Election Day to accommodate any fans voting last minute or stuck in line.
How to Watch #iVoted Festival
All you have to do to gain access to the #iVoted Festival is by snapping a selfie from outside your nearest polling place, or at home with a blank and unmarked ballot. Underage? U.S. residents older than 14 years old can enter by sharing what election they’ll be 18 for and why they’re excited to vote. Ineligible voters and non U.S. residents can enter by sharing which artist they’re most excited to check out.
RSVP for access to the festival here.
Who Will Be at #iVoted Festival?
#iVoted Festival’s election night webcast features “A Conversation with W. Kamau Bell & Tom Morello,” plus appearances by Billie Eilish, FINNEAS, Steph Curry, Eugene Mirman, Seth Godin, VINCINT, Taylor Bennett, Piper Perabo, Beauty School Dropout and Olympic skateboarder Heimana Reynolds.
Who Will Be Performing at #iVoted Festival?
Run the Jewels, CNCO, Rise Against, OK Go, Lake Street Dive, Los Lobos, The Revivalists, Shakey Graves, Carl Craig, Em Beihold, The Black Angels, The Range, Bully, Umphrey’s McGee, DeVotchKa, 3OH!3, Black Stone Cherry, El Trono De Mexico, La Bouche, Richard Marx, The Starting Line, Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup, Twiztid and The Suffers MILCK x Autumn Rowe, Filter, Local H, Post Animal, Dead Sara and more are all set to take the stage, with more than 400 artists confirmed for the #iVotedFestival.
The full lineup, set times and stages are available here.
Billy McFarland, convicted felon and founder of the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival, is back with a new venture.
In a video released Monday (Oct. 24) to TikTok and YouTube Shorts, the disgraced entrepreneur — who was released from prison in March after serving four years behind bars — notes he’s “working on something new” that’s “a little crazier but a whole lot bigger than anything I’ve ever tried before.” He then flips a whiteboard to reveal a treasure map taped to the other side and says he’ll reveal the full scope of his plans in November. “This time, everybody’s invited,” he adds, before ripping the treasure map from the whiteboard to reveal a phone number.
Calling the number from a cell phone causes a text message reading “Welcome to the Treasure Hunt” to be automatically delivered to the number of the person calling, along with a link to an online form. After adding contact info to the form, a second text comes through that links to a cryptic 12-second YouTube video titled “RLTH Clue #1,” featuring underwater imagery of sharks, a glass bottle with a cork and what appears to be a tropical island. The video has since been removed from TikTok, though it remains available to watch on YouTube Shorts.
No additional information on the venture is known at this time, and representatives for McFarland declined to comment further.
In 2018, McFarland was sentenced to six years in prison after he admitted to defrauding investors in the Fyre Festival, which promised ticket holders a luxurious music event on Exuma island in the Bahamas with performances from acts including Pusha T, Blink-182, Major Lazer, Migos, Lil Yachty and Disclosure. But when attendees arrived on the island, they discovered the event was a sham. In addition to the Fyre Festival fraud, McFarland also pleaded guilty to charges in a subsequent ticket-selling scam.
McFarland lobbied for compassionate release in 2020 early in the coronavirus pandemic, claiming he was “totally vulnerable” to COVID-19, but his request was denied (he later confirmed he had contracted the virus). Following his release from Milan Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan, his attorney Jason Russo confirmed to Billboard that he was moved to a halfway house in New York, with a release set for Aug. 30.
In addition to his prison sentence, McFarland was ordered to pay roughly $26 million in restitution for his crimes. In May, Russo told Billboard that McFarland was focused on finding “the best way to generate income to pay this restitution back and make amends,” adding, “Any new projects that he does become involved in will be done solely for the purpose of generating the restitution for paying back his victims.”
In addition to his criminal victims, McFarland also owes nearly $11 million to the creditors of Fyre Festival LLC as part of a default judgement won by the trustee of the festival, Gregory Messer. A separate $3.4 million judgement is owed to the state by the now defunct Fyre Media Inc.
Owing victims of a federal crime restitution money is one of the most onerous debts to have, says Curtis Briggs, a California criminal attorney. Briggs notes that the federal government’s reach into the financial system, coupled with rules that allow collection from retirement accounts and supersede state and federal bankruptcy protections, makes the feds a “super creditor” with the “most intrusive methods” available to it for collecting debt.
“Anything he legitimately declares as income” will be subject to collection by the government to repay his victims, says Briggs, who successfully defended one of two Oakland men prosecuted in the Ghost Ship fire and currently represents Black Lives Matter activist Tianna Arata.
Without any tangible assets to seize or a salary to garnish, collecting a judgement will likely mean scrutinizing McFarland’s annual tax return and monitoring his bank accounts. McFarland will be granted a modest court-monitored income and if he is operating a business, he will be allowed to write off certain expenses, but “his finances will be closely scrutinized by attorneys for the families of the victims” and FBI agents assigned to him, says Briggs.
Las Vegas’ When We Were Young Festival has Hayley Williams reflecting on the music scene that she grew up in with Paramore.
Paramore is set to take the stage at Las Vegas Festival Grounds on Sunday night (Oct. 23) after Saturday, the opening day of the festival, saw the fest’s lineup canceled due to high winds. On the bill alongside Paramore this weekend are My Chemical Romance, Bring Me the Horizon, Bright Eyes, Avril Lavigne, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World and more.
“To grow up in this scene was not a simple thing,” Williams wrote in a lengthy letter posted on Instagram Stories Sunday. “To be celebrating it (and to be celebrated by it) is not a simple thing. Nothing about this life — for you, me, or anyone — is simple. We fell in love with this subset of post-punk and hardcore likely because nothing else moved us. We didn’t fit in other places.”
“To be a young girl in love with this scene was to have the hope that I might find my own way to belong. It took years to find that belonging. It’s taken a lot of unlearning. A lot of untangling knots I didn’t even know were there. What I did know was that for every ‘Take off your top!’ or snarky punkzine review … For every dramatic headline pinned on my name, or any season of self-doubt … No one was going to define Paramore but Paramore,” she said.
“Nearly 20 years later, we find ourselves a pillar of the very scene that threatened to reject us. And me,” said Williams.
She wrote, “I do my best to stay humble. What good is a bloated ego? But beyond the intense devotion of Paramore fans around the world, the reason we made it this far is us. What I really mean to say is — we never banked on trends. Or nostalgia. Or even me, alone. We only did exactly what we knew was real for us. (And sure, I leaned into spite as needed.)”
“Tonight, while we’re running through the lengths of our discography and I’m refraining from singing the word “whore,” know that, inside, I’m celebrating the fact that, as a scene, we’ve come a long way,” Williams noted. “With much further to go. F— the ones who doubted! Hugs to the ones who watched on and even sort of believed. Young girls, queer kids, and anybody of any color … We have shifted this scene together, messily, angrily, heartbroken, and determined. Tonight, for me at least, is about celebrating all the facets of what punk music actually represents. All the things it wasn’t allowed to be when we were young. Can’t wait to see everyone tonight.”
Following Paramore’s headlining slots at When We Were Young Festival, the group will continue on its fall tour. See their currently scheduled dates here.
Organizers of Las Vegas’ When We Were Young canceled the music festival’s opening day on Saturday (Oct. 22) due to concerns over high winds.
“When We Were Young Festival organizers have spend the last several days proactively preparing the festival grounds for a windy Saturday,” organizers wrote on the fest’s website and social media pages Saturday.
“The National Weather Service has not upgraded their Saturday forecast to a High Wind Warning, including dangerous 30-40 mph sustained winds with potential 60 mph gusts. Under advisement of the National Weather Service and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, we have no other choice than to cancel today’s When We Were Young Festival. The safety of our fans, artists and staff will always be priority.”
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The nostalgic pop-punk fest at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds was scheduled to feature a massive lineup that included Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, Avril Lavigne, AFI and Jimmy Eat World.
Following strong ticket sales for the Oct. 22 edition, promoter Live Nation added dates with the same lineup on Sunday, Oct. 23 and Saturday, Oct. 29. Organizers noted that “Sunday’s weather looks sunny without any wind advisories.”
Organizers went on to explain that Saturday’s cancellation “was not a decision that came lightly. We know many of you traveled to the area to have a spectacular day with your favorite bands and have been looking forward to this day for months. We were equally as excited and are devastated to have to share this news.”
Those who purchased tickets to Saturday’s festival will receive a refund within 30 days, according to organizers.
Earlier this month, When We Were Young announced the date and lineup of its sophomore edition on Oct. 21, 2023, which features headliners Blink-182 and Green Day. Other acts on next year’s bill include 30 Seconds to Mars, Good Charlotte, The Offspring, All Time Low, Something Corporate, Yellowcard, Sum 41, Simple Plan, Pierce the Veil, Thrice, Plain White Tees, The Veronicas, The Ataris, Bowling for Soup and Newfound Glory.
See When We Were Young’s statement on Twitter below.
Organizers and artists performing at KAMP LA 2022 predicted it would be “the biggest K-pop event in U.S. history” — but the two-day festival set for Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl this weekend is quickly seeing its plans shift for the worse, causing some to preemptively deem it the “Fyre Festival of K-pop.”
Over the last 24 hours, online chatter has intensified that most of the scheduled artists on the KAMP lineup were not photographed departing South Korea from any of its international airports. Adding to the fuel were social media posts from KAMP artists like BamBam and Jeon Somi, both of whom hinted at delays in their travel plans to the U.S.
According to a source, an organizer with the festival shared internally on Friday (Oct. 14) that multiple artists were having visa issues and will be unable to perform at KAMP LA 2022 this weekend. In the same internal communication, the organizer said they plan to offer refunds.
Of the 15 artists scheduled to perform at KAMP LA, only boy band iKON and soloist Chung Ha have been photographed departing Korea from Seoul’s Incheon International Airport over the last 24 hours. Five members of the boy band Super Junior were also photographed leaving Incheon, but not the full band.
Meanwhile, fellow boy band P1Harmony appear to be in the States already, having shared a photograph from their visit to San Diego radio station Channel 93.3 on Friday morning. Three members of girl group aespa are also in the U.S., having attended NCT 127‘s concert at Newark’s Prudential Center on Thursday.
A representative for P1Harmony confirmed with Billboard that the band is planning to perform at KAMP, with rehearsals scheduled for Friday.
Billboard has reached out to KAMP for an official comment, as well as various reps for artists scheduled to perform.
KAMP LA was announced in August with a lineup also including Monsta X, Kai, Zion.T and girl group Lapillus. The mega-concert is a joint production from KAMP Global (the South Korea-based entertainment brand that aims to bring K-pop globally through festivals, live events, immersive experiences and artist representation) and partnership brand Eventim Live Asia.
Veteran Los Angeles concert promoters and talent buyers Brian Tarney and Liz Garo have joined forces to form Restless Presents, an indie promotion company that’s producing the upcoming Substance 2022 festival.
Previously produced by Tarney’s ticketing and marketing company Restless Nights and Live Nation, the annual celebration of dark rock, industrial, electronic post-punk will feature one of its strongest lineups to date, with performers including Jesus And Mary Chain, The Chameleons, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Steven Mallinder, electro-royalty ensemble Miss Kittin And The Hacker, Boy Harsher, Light Asylum, Youth Code, SEXTILE and Kontravoid. The festival is slated for Oct. 21 and 22 at the Los Angeles Theater.
Tarney and Garo have also launched a New York event called Flesh & Steel — a multi-venue, multi-date celebration taking place Dec. 1-3 and featuring Boy Harsher, A Split-Second, Psyche, Phase Fatale and more. Restless enlisted NYC artists David Castillo of Brooklyn venue Saint Vitus and DJ, promoter and journalist Andi Harriman of Synthicide to serve as creative directors for the New York event.
Tarney and Garo launched Restless Presents during the pandemic and have since booked shows for ADULT, Lingua Ignota, SEXTILE and Thee Sacred Souls. Substance is the company’s first festival, but both have produced the festival brand from its inception, going back to the launch of the Cloak and Dagger series for She Wants Revenge.
“I think one of the best things about these events is the broad, eclectic audience,” says Garo, who served as the lead talent buyer for Spaceland Presents for more than 20 years, booking the Echo and Regent Theater and concert series at the Getty Center, LA’s Natural History Museum and the Santa Monica Pier. (Spaceland was bought by Live Nation in 2019). Garo also co-founded and managed the long running Echo Park Rising series.
“There is such a broad age range at Substance. You’re definitely getting an older crowd that knows the classics but a young, healthy scene too that that’s pretty vibrant,” Garo adds. “People can come in and be who they want to be. It’s a very tight scene.”
The Los Angeles Theater in downtown LA’s Theater District was chosen as host venue because of its flexibility and eclectic layout, says Tarney, who hosted Substance at the venue in 2019 with headliner Gary Numan.
“It’s a blank slate and we built the whole thing from scratch. It’s got so many little weird rooms and nooks and crannies. We’re working really hard to activate all of them with buildouts including a marketplace and a record store,” says Tarney, a former booker at Spaceland and the creator of Restless Nites, an L.A. marketing agency and ticketing platform for independent promoters and venues. Tarney adds that Restless Presents was born from a need for more independent promoters in the live music industry and says his hope is to work closely with established and emerging acts to create unusual and forward-thinking live events.
“I think a lot of people are fed up with going to a small theater or small show and paying Ticketmaster fees or getting priced gouged on drinks when they’re there,” Tarney says. “People are looking for more than just big festivals, and many have trickled their way into some of the smaller venues. “That’s why we’re always looking for unique spaces. This is something that Liz is awesome at. She’s always finding cool, unique venues and places where we can come in and have more input.”
Tarney notes that Restless Presents has several new festival genre concepts in the works for 2023, including a roots roadhouse event and neo soul festival.
“Substance is the focal point this year, but there’s gonna be a lot more events and much more diverse sounds in the future,” he says.