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03 Oct 2023

How the Musicians Behind ‘Dicks: The Musical’ Helped Bring Its Absurdist Story to Life

There’s a lot of things audiences might not expect when going to see Dicks: The Musical, A24’s new movie musical starring and originally created by comedians Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson. From a capital-G Gay God (played by Bowen Yang) to emaciated puppets known simply as the “Sewer Boys,” the film revels in its own delightful weirdness from start to finish.

One thing audiences should expect from the new film though is a top-tier soundtrack. Composed by newcomer Karl Saint Lucy (an original collaborator of Sharp and Jackson’s when the show ran at Upright Citizens’ Brigade in New York) and music directed by industry veteran Marius de Vries, the music of Dicks is genuinely thrilling and fun, while further underlining some of the project’s more left-field comedic moments.

As de Vries tells Billboard over Zoom, bringing a balance of movie magic and campy theatricality to the film was vital. “We wanted to turn this into a movie that worked as a movie, but we knew that some of the theatricality of it all, both for comedic purposes and other purposes, was our friend,” he says. “So, while the material itself was heavily extended and revised, the ethos of the original was preserved in a way that I think was healthy.”

Below, Billboard chats with Saint Lucy and de Vries about how they each got involved with Dicks, what it was like translating the show’s absurdist humor into genuinely good music, and how Megan Thee Stallion‘s rap number nearly didn’t come together.



I know it’s been a very long road to get here, so how are you two feeling about the film’s imminent release?

Marius de Vries: I feel fantastic, extremely relieved that it’s finished. It was a long journey in so many ways, with Karl having been involved in the original stage show, and me having met the twins seven years or so ago when the project was actually up and running somewhere else. There have been many twists and turns along the way, and many periods where it looked as if it wouldn’t get made. We got a burst of momentum, and we realized it was getting made, but we had to make it really fast. But then it kind of slowed down in post-production, and it took quite a long time to get it right. With all of that, I’m just thrilled to see it up on a big screen in front of an audience, and not on my desk. 

Karl, take me back to the beginning of your partnership with Josh and Aaron onthe original stage show F–king Identical Twins in 2014. How early on in the process did they reach out to you to put the music together?

Karl Saint Lucy: Very early on. I knew Josh through Story Pirates [a comedy theater program], and I think that he and Aaron had just been set up as comedy partners at UCB when they first approached me. I was oversharing about some gay drama that happened while I was on tour with this children’s show, and they were like, “Oh, we’ve gotta get this person involved.” So they approached me, and over the course of something like six weeks, we got together in rehearsal studios at CAP21, and hashed this out. They came with the big beats of the story and most of the lyrics, but yeah, it was a very easy process. 

What was your initial reaction to those initial story beats?

Karl: Oh, I was sold from the beginning. I think one of the things that worked early on about our partnership was that Josh and Aaron and I have always had a very similar comedic sensibility. Although I will say, when we were working on it, I hadn’t seen any of the staging. In the original show, there’s a scene with Josh and Aaron in a wheelchair f–king at the restaurant, and when I saw that for the first time, I was like, “Wow, I can confidently say that I have never seen this on a stage before.”

Marius, you brought something up I wanted to mention; 20th Century Fox bought the rights to F–king Identical Twins back in 2016 and planned to release it; that stalled in production for six years before A24 came in and bought the rights out from them. What was that elongated process like for you two?

Marius: Yeah, I was immediately aware that we had a big challenge turning something that was a 30-minute piece of cabaret into a feature-length script. To be honest, that’s what I relished about the task. I could see a way forward, and they’d done a great job on the first pass of the script. So I was excited to get involved. I was somewhat skeptical about it having a home at Fox. I imagined what would happen is, we’d get a little bit of progress going, and then someone upstairs would finally wake up, realize what was going on and shut it down. Then, of course, the Disney acquisition happened, so that was, you know, a non-starter. With the greatest of respect to my friends at Disney, this is not a Disney film.

Can you imagine if this was released on Disney?

Marius: It’s kind of like Snow White, in a sense, right? In that, I guess, it’s got songs and a story? [Laughs.] Honestly, thank God we hit that brick wall and ended up at A24. The most important thing about the relationship with A24, which has been fantastic, is that they’ve been supportive of all of our creative instincts with no restraint at all — up until it came to considering what the title of the movie should be. Then there was a fairly bigger discussion about that, but that happened quite late in the process, and it took a little bit of getting used to; it’s like having a 7-year-old child who’s called something, and then all of a sudden, you have to start calling them something else.

As you mentioned, part of this process meant adding in more and more songs to the film, one of which is “Out-Alpha the Alpha,” Megan Thee Stallion’s blistering rap performance. How did you go about making this song that feels entirely different from a lot of the rest of the musical theater-specific melodies used throughout Dicks?

Marius: Well, when we were doing the additional writing and construction of material specifically for the film, which was well-over half of it, not including the score, we didn’t have any idea who was going to be cast as Gloria. So, we just wrote the song for a random actress that we imagined might be the kind of person that would be cast as Gloria. That person was not Megan Thee Stallion at all, so, when the casting conversation rolled out, and we learned that it would be Megan, we had this song — which was, I thought, really promising, but was in no way suitable for the force of nature that is Megan. 

So, we had to very, very quickly go back to the drawing board, because it had to be completely re-styled, and it had to be done unbelievably quickly. She had a very limited amount of time to construct and record the rap, rehearse it on set, and shoot it. All of that process was very condensed into four or five days. So, we had to kind of pause efforts on all fronts at a very late stage in rehearsal, lock ourselves away, and come up with some sort of musical skeleton that we felt she wouldn’t find offensively inappropriate in terms of what was suitable for her to sing.

We sent over something that we thought was embarrassingly rough, but she was great. She rolled her sleeves up, turned the vocal around in a day. Then it was time to rehearse it; the choreographers had about 12 hours to put the whole routine together. The whole thing was an immense panic, and there were certainly moments where we thought that we weren’t going to pull it off. But that’s the thing with this film; there were many moments where we felt it was impossible, but as the film teaches us, nothing is impossible if you force it not to be, to paraphrase. 

Another song I love is “All Love Is Love,” which I think is a perfect send-up of the anthemic, Broadway finale number. I’m curious, Karl, what was the sort of ethos behind creating this song?

Karl: Yeah, this is one of the songs that, in some way shape or form, existed in the original — though, of course, everything that we brought over from the original stage show has been transmogrified within an inch of its life. But for me, this one is about queer joy. Getting to say whatever I want on stage in a very queer setting is always a lot of fun, and providing that opportunity for other queer people is huge for me. I remember, too, that we were in a discussion about whether or not we would have the lyrics on screen with the bouncing ball, and I’m so glad we went with it, because that was a feature of the original stage show that I felt really worked — we were implicating the audience in singing this refrain. 

Marius: Yeah, retaining some of some of those extremely theatrical elements from the original was key to the way we approached this.

Are there any songs that stand out to you two from Dicks that were extremely fun to write and work on?

Karl: I think “Sewer Song” was the one, for me. It was so much fun, and it was such a challenge because you’re writing three different verses that kind of sound like they could be a song on their own, but you’re also negotiating everyone’s range, you’re making everyone’s voice is sitting well. That’s the ultimate song, to me, because they had a joke at the end of the stage show about “being in a sewer that smells like piss,” and I just was like, “I have no idea what to do. So I guess this will be a samba at the end.” To me, that song is a good example of the ways in which we just kind of went for it, and didn’t necessarily always have a reason for what we were doing — and that works really well. 

Marius: Yeah, let’s take these three completely incompatible melodies and have them all sing it at the same time, and somehow make it work. That was an adventure for sure. 

Marius, as someone who has music directed a number of classic movie musicals like Moulin Rouge and La La Land, how different is it working on a project like Dicks that tends to poke fun at the artform itself?

Marius: It’s very refreshing. I love that self-awareness and the surface lack-of-seriousness that is actually disguising a real sincerity. These songs wouldn’t work if they weren’t pretty great, and if they weren’t emotionally sincere. The artifice to which you’re drawing attention, that sits on top of that, wouldn’t work if the structure underneath it was sketchy or shoddy. It’s really a great testament to Karl in particular that it works as well as it does. Plus, it did allow us to poke fun at ourselves while we were in the process of making it, which is really thrilling and liberating. 

Karl: I’ll also say, for myself, I’m really grateful that for my debut project, I get to share something where I had such creative freedom. I’m really grateful to Marius for giving us the opportunity to do that. 

It’s also great music that also isn’t overly referential. You’re allowing the songs to speak for themselves in the musical world that you’ve created, instead of making a series of inside jokes about musical theater itself. Why was that an important part of this process?

Karl: I think that’s part of the DNA that Josh and Aaron and I brought to this, because we came at this from a diagonal. There was a focus on the characters and, as Marius said, the emotional truth of the moment. That is kind of what grounds a lot of Larry’s work as well, which is why he was exactly right to direct this movie, because he knows how to really dig in to the joke and also unearth those emotional moments. 

The film is getting very positive early reviews. What do you hope audiences take away from their experience of watching Dicks: The Musical?

Karl: I just really hope people have fun. I love movie musicals, and I obviously have a perspective on what I want movie musicals to look like. But I hope that this inspires more work like this. 

03 Oct 2023

Ronnie Milsap Brings His Country Soul to Nashville One More Time: ‘I’m Thankful’

When vocalist and piano player Ronnie Milsap worked with Elvis Presley on Presley’s 1970 hit “Kentucky Rain,” Milsap recalls The King possessing a keen sense of the feel and drive he wanted on the song.

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“He’d say, ‘More thunder on the piano, Milsap!’ You’d go to a low note on the piano and he just wanted more thunder,” Milsap relates to Billboard.

Thanks to his soulful singing and piano playing, and his exuberant stage presence, the Country Music Hall of Famer Milsap has been bringing the thunder for five decades, on such signature songs as “Stranger in My House,” “Smoky Mountain Rain” and “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me.”

Tonight (Oct. 3), the wide-ranging scope of his sound and influence on country and pop music will be highlighted during his final Nashville concert, taking place at Bridgestone Arena. A swath of artists will take the stage to honor the 80-year-old Milsap, including Trace Adkins, Ricky Skaggs, Little Big Town, Kelly Clarkson, Charlie McCoy, The McCrary Sisters, Ray Stevens, Steven Curtis Chapman, Pam Tillis, the Gatlin Brothers, BRELAND, Elizabeth Cook and more.

“I think we’re going to blow up the Bridgestone. We’re going to blow it up. I’m very thankful for everyone,” Milsap says of the evening.

In 1977, Milsap won entertainer of the year, and over his career has taken home album of the year four times and male vocalist of the year three times from the CMA Awards. He earned Grammy Awards for his Kenny Rogers duet “Make No Mistake, She’s Mine,” and his own “Lost in the Fifties Tonight,” “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me,” “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” and “(I’m A) Stand by My Woman Man.”

Several of the artists on the Bridgestone lineup collaborated with Milsap on his 2019 album The Duets, including Little Big Town, with whom he recorded “Lost in the Fifties,” and Chapman, who sang “You’re Nobody” with the singer.

“They’re really good, wonderful people,” Milsap says of LBT. “They are fun to be around. We did that song on [Jimmy Fallon]’s show and they were just wonderful.”

Of Chapman, “he used to pitch me and Ronnie songs,” Milsap’s current producer, Rob Galbraith, tells Billboard. “Sometimes he would text me from the road and just say, ‘Man, I’m listening to some of Ronnie’s old stuff. Thank you for cutting that music.’”

Milsap has an even closer tie with another performer on the bill: since 1976, Milsap has lived in a Nashville residence he bought from Stevens.

“I loved working with Ray,” Milsap says. “Ray wanted to move out of this house because Webb Pierce lived across the street and he was selling tapes and CDs out of his house there and Ray said he wanted out of that. Well, Webb also played music kind of loud.” He adds, “Ray Stevens is one smart cookie, I’m telling you.”

Having a plethora of artists singing his music and feting his work is light years away from Milsap’s difficult childhood. The North Carolina native was born blind and was subsequently abandoned by his mother, who felt her son’s blindness was a kind of divine punishment. He lived with his grandmother from age one, until he was enrolled in the State School for the Blind in Raleigh at age six.

The school had a premier music program, with Milsap learning classical technique. He took up violin at age seven and piano a year later, all the while soaking up sounds of Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles and Fats Domino from the radio. Milsap studied at Young-Harris Junior College in Atlanta, but ultimately turned down a full law school scholarship to chase his dreams of music. His first release came with his 1963 single “Total Disaster.” He first broke through as an R&B singer, earning a top 20 hit on the R&B Songs chart with Ashford & Simpson’s “Never Had It So Good.”

He relocated to Memphis in 1968, working with legendary producer Chips Moman. Milsap was also playing several clubs around Memphis, including The Thunderbird and TJ’s; Presley would bring in Milsap in to play a few of his New Year’s Eve bashes.

“I said, ‘Elvis, any possibility you want to get up and sing anything? We know all your songs,’” Milsap recalls of those parties. “He said, ‘No, I’d rather sit here with my friends and enjoy the evening.’ Elvis went around kissing all the girls ‘Happy New Year.’”

Milsap calls those Memphis years “magical,” saying, “Everything that happened in Memphis, with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis … that energy was all over the place.”

Even so, Milsap’s heart was in country music. “I decided I needed to do what I wanted to do, not what everyone else was asking me to do,” Milsap recalls. After seeing him perform in a nightclub, Charley Pride encouraged Milsap to move to Nashville.

Milsap moved to Nashville in 1972 and quickly landed a gig playing five nights a week at a popular Nashville industry hotspot, Roger Miller’s King of the Road Motor Inn. Milsap, who was managed by Pride’s manager, Jack Johnson, recorded a batch of demo tapes, and they took them to then-RCA Nashville label head Jerry Bradley.

“Jerry said, ‘We know about Milsap. He’s down there in Memphis and he plays rock n’ roll and rhythm and blues. He’s not a country singer,’” Milsap recalls. “Jack played him a song I cut called ‘That Girl Who Waits on Tables,’ and Jerry heard that and said, ‘Well, that S.O.B. really is a country singer.’”

Milsap’s slate of hits in the 1970s and 1980s proved Bradley correct. Milsap’s first Hot Country Singles top 10 hit with RCA Nashville was 1973’s “I Hate You.” “That Girl Who Waits on Tables” reached No. 11 on the same chart a year later. In 1974, he earned his first No. 1 there with the Eddie Rabbitt-penned “Pure Love,” launching a string of chart successes that also included the Grammy-winning “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” as well as “Daydreams About Night Things.”

His blend of country and soul sparked even greater crossover triumphs in the 1980s, most notably with his 1981 hit “(There’s) No Getting’ Over Me,” which spent two weeks atop Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart but also garnered Milsap his most preeminent pop chart hit, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning a Grammy for best country vocal performance, male.

Milsap has earned 35 Billboard Hot Country Songs No. 1 hits, many of them recorded in his own studio, which he purchased from Roy Orbison in 1978 and renamed Groundstar Laboratories. Among the songs recorded at the studio with his then-producer Collins were 1979’s “Nobody Likes Sad Songs,” and the Mike Reid-penned 1983 hit “Stranger in My House,” which netted a Grammy for best country song.

“We cut everything there, as soon as Mike Reid would write a song, I’d get in there and record it,” Milsap recalls. Affectionately known as “Ronnie’s Place,” the studio is now under the ownership of Black River Entertainment.

Notably for an artist who grew up steeped in the soulful sounds of artists such as Charles, Lewis and Presley, Milsap was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame last year. Recently, he’s spent time recording in his home studio, cutting classics from the Great American Songbook for a project he hopes to release next year.

“It’s not a small studio; it fits like six or seven people in there, but it’s a wonderful studio,” Galbraith says. “We did an album like this back in 2004 [Just For a Thrill], but we’re doing other songs and more songs that Ronnie grew up on. We cut [Frank Sinatra’s] ‘Witchcraft,’ [Tony Bennett’s] ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’”

03 Oct 2023

Chartbreaker: Why Teddy Swims Had to ‘Lose Control’ to Take Off

In February, during a writing camp in Palm Springs, Calif., singer-songwriter Teddy Swims had a professional breakthrough — amid a period of personal turmoil, following a breakup. “I was so unhinged at the time,” he remembers. “I just needed to say a lot of stuff.” Over the course of five days, he poured his emotions into half of the songs that would ultimately comprise his debut album, including his biggest hit to date, “Lose Control.”

Rooted in piano-driven production — and an impressive ability to stretch his vocal runs — the R&B-pop ballad details a relationship that’s been tainted by substance abuse. “Lose Control” has steadily grown since its release in late June, leading to Teddy Swims’ first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. “When it was finished, I was showing everybody before the song came out,” he says. “I just felt that energy, like, ‘This is lighting in a bottle.’ I knew this was going to change my life.”

Born Jaten Dimsdale, the 31-year-old began performing a decade ago at his suburban Atlanta high school, trading football for musical theater (he joined with a friend, who still plays guitar in his live band today). His senior year was particularly pivotal: he helped the theater department out of debt prior to graduation with an in-school production of a Star Wars musical parody he created with his teacher. That same year, his band at the time, Heroic Bear, released its first EP, a hardcore project he now deems “really bad.”

In the years that followed, he explored countless genres including country, alternative, funk and metal in various musical projects. “He was in, I kid you not, like eight bands,” says Luke Conway, who started managing Teddy Swims while he was touring as an opening hip-hop act in early 2019. “He was doing every single thing that you could possibly do.”

Teddy Swims, Chartbreaker

From left: Teddy Swims and manager Luke Conway photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.

Meredith Jenks

In June 2019, on the 10th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death, Teddy Swims uploaded a YouTube cover of “Rock With You” that soon went viral. The success prompted him to ask his friends for a six-month commitment to help him keep momentum. During that time frame, he sang classics (Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”) and hits of the moment (Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved”) alike, with his spins on Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” and Mario’s “Let Me Love You” each eclipsing 100 million YouTube views. Publishers called first, then booking agencies, and before long, a dozen record labels had made offers. On Christmas Eve 2019 — a day short of six months from when he uploaded “Rock With You” — he signed to Warner Records.

While the covers helped grow Teddy Swims’ audience on a global scale, his priority upon signing was to create an identity all his own. “Some people get stuck in that world and never really make it out,” he says. “There was a lot of fear in no one caring about my [original] songs. I wanted to be an artist with my music.”

Warner placed him in rooms with veteran songwriter-producers like Julian Bunetta and John Ryan to help him hone his voice, and over the next few years, he wrote hundreds of songs, releasing singles across four EPs (including the holiday-themed A Very Teddy Christmas) and getting featured on tracks by Meghan Trainor, X Ambassadors and others. “I go back and listen to some songs that I did four years ago,” Teddy Swims reflects. “They started this idea of the signature Teddy sound that I feel like I’m finally nailing now.”

Teddy Swims, Chartbreaker

Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.

Meredith Jenks

That “signature” sound punctuates his September debut album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1), which is full of “sad boy breakup songs,” as he puts it. His powerhouse vocals (“Some Things I’ll Never Know,” “The Door”) and poignant writing chops (“Suitcase”) are on display throughout its 10 tracks, but no song better illustrates the style he’s created than “Lose Control.” After its June release, he shared three new versions — live, strings and piano — as the song gained steam on digital service providers and radio. By the end of August, “Lose Control” debuted on the Hot 100, where it has since reached a No. 67 peak. On Adult Pop Airplay, it climbs to a new No. 26 high on the Oct. 7-dated chart.

As the hit keeps growing, Conway says the strategy isn’t to strike while the iron is hot with unrelated follow-up content. In fact, it’s the opposite: he hopes the song becomes “cemented in culture” in the months to come, likening “Lose Control” to Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”

“We have to be protective,” he says. “It’s his story. This is the golden egg we’ve been searching for and fighting to dig out of the ground for five years. There have been a lot of conversations about finding a feature, but we see the lifespan of this song. We can’t dilute it by giving it anybody else’s identity.”

Teddy Swims is currently on a 43-date North American tour in support of the project, studying how each city reacts to the new material. “There’s no A&R that [compares to] when you’re at a show and you see what really moves people,” he says. As the title of his album suggests, there are plans for another installment. He says it could arrive by the middle of next year, though both he and Conway share that the writing likely won’t begin until after the tour wraps.

However, Teddy Swims does suggest that, if all goes well, the follow-up will contain brighter content. “I’m really hoping the next time is me falling back in love and moving on,” he says, taking a beat and then laughing. “Or it’s more sad s–t. You never know. Life is happening to us, what are you going to do?”

Teddy Swims, Chartbreaker

Teddy Swims photographed on September 15, 2023 in New York.

Meredith Jenks

A version of this story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.

03 Oct 2023

Madden Brothers Expand Veeps Into All Access Streaming Video Platform

Benji and Joel Madden, the creative forces behind pop punk outfit Good Charlotte, successful music management outfit MDDN and streaming service Veeps are launching their most ambitious project yet.

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Today the famous music brothers are launching Veeps All Access, a new Live Nation-backed online video subscription service built atop the Veeps live-streaming infrastructure developed and launched by the Maddens in 2018 and acquired by Live Nation in January 2021. All Access is a shift for Veeps, which has operated as a pay-per-view business up until now, charging customers to access live and on-demand streams by artists like Southern rockers Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown or soul and R&B star Miguel, typically priced between $9.99 to $14.99.

All Access will grant fans access to all live shows streamed through Veeps as well on-demand content, special artist exclusives and original programing including the newly greenlit “Sidehustles” and “Artist Friendly,” Joel Madden’s music interview podcast-turned-video talk show, premiering tomorrow (Oct. 4) with Brandon Boyd of Incubus.

The price of All Access is $11.99 per month or $120 for annual pass, which is in line with other popular streaming services like Disney Plus which increases from $10.99 per month to $13.99 per month on Oct. 12, or Paramount Plus, which is now bundled with Showtime at $11.99 per month. Veeps also has struck early partnerships deals with Samsung, Ticketmaster, and Verizon and will be available on the Veeps app on iPhone, Android, Apple TV or Roku service.

Veeps All Access will kick off today with the premiere of The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie’s sold-out show from AZ Financial Theater, October and November will feature performances from a wide range of artists, including Run The Jewels, performing a special 4-night series live from the Hollywood Palladium October 11-14, pop acts Macklemore, Jessie Ware and Chappell Roan; hard rock, indie and alternative acts A R I Z O N A, Bad Omens, Bishop Briggs, Boys Like Girls, Misterwives, Nothing But Thieves, Senses Fail, Frank Turner and Waterparks; shows from rap and soul artists like OhGeesy, Flatbush Zombies, Kiana Ledé and Phabo and country artists such as Darius Rucker, Jason Aldean and Shane Smith & The Saints. New shows will be added weekly.

Joel Madden tells Billboard that the mission of Veeps has always been to connect fans who can’t attend a concert with their favorite artists, even if the artist is not touring in their city or the show is already sold out. He adds that by providing an affordable subscription option, Veeps is also helping Live Nation drive most artist discovery, connecting fans with a wider range of artists and their fan communities.

Veeps All Access will also include a wealth of archived content from artists including 5 Seconds of Summer, Aerosmith, Amy Winehouse, Dierks Bentley, Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry, J Balvin, Lainey Wilson, Mumford & Sons, Muse, Niall Horan, Norah Jones, Poppy, PVRIS, Rage Against the Machine, Rolling Stones, Shania Twain, Slipknot, Sting, The Killers, The Smashing Pumpkins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs,= and more. Veeps will be powered by a show recommendation engine and nearly all concerts are delivered with spatial sound capabilities and high-quality 4K streaming.

Joel said partnering with Live Nation on the project has been critical to the company’s expansion, noting “If we call anyone inside Live Nation for help, we get support and access to a great group of people.”

Benji Madden added “there’s a lot of generosity with their resources and experience,” noting that “It’s taken a lot of investment build out a Netflix-style experience, but it’s important because everyone involved in this project believes that the future of live entertainment is access.”

That means reaching the far corners of the globe where bands don’t always tour — or finding a way for a fan that can’t be at the show to “have the same access that fans expect for their sporting events,” Joel Madden said. “We know that music fans are going to expect access more and more access with artists and we know that Live Nation is the right partner for to provide that access.”

Kyle Heller, co-founder and chief product officer at Veeps tells Billboard “one of the things that has blown us away on this journey is the attention a viewer pays to a Veeps show. We live in a world of 15-second clips, short-form videos, and quick 20-minute episodes dominating the landscape but when people switch Veeps on it’s not unusual for them to watch 2+ hours of content, uninterrupted. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.”

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino added, “Live performances have a unique magic, and Veeps has done an incredible job bringing fans that experience in their homes. All Access is giving fans a new way to discover music and artists another marketing platform that will only continue to fuel the demand for live with an even bigger world of concerts at our fingertips.”

Subscription plans will initially be available in the U.S. with international expansion planned to meet Veeps’ global usership. Learn more and sign up at veeps.com.

03 Oct 2023

Inside the New Music Industry Conference That’s Prioritizing Wellness Over Status

In 2020, amidst the pandemic, Nick Maiale started thinking about the music industry beyond titles and company affiliations. Having spent over a decade working in music, including at the Music Business Association and Music Biz Conference, he felt inspired to promote more than professional development — he wanted to advocate for personal growth, too. 

Through his work, Maiale was consistently meeting impressive and driven young professionals, but a throughline started to emerge. “After listening to [so many] stories of working in the industry and feeling the limitations [of it], I asked myself ‘How can I help add value to these people’s lives?’…Our business is so fast-paced and revenue driven that we don’t always get the opportunity to step back and get to know people for who they are — and this leaves us placing strong emphasis on job titles, company affiliation and status,” he says. “The answer was clear: build a company that helps my community navigate the industry.”

By the end of 2020, Maiale had launched jump.global, a “community-first” company that manages music business executives. And come November, it will host its first annual summit in Los Angeles. “I started to think about this around the same time I thought about starting the company as a whole,” says Maiale, who serves as founder/CEO. “ I thought it would take place somewhere like Wyoming with 30 people in a cabin — but here we are, about to welcome a much larger number than that to Los Angeles in just a month.”

Held Nov. 12-14 at The LINE Hotel, conversations will largely avoid hot topics like AI and streaming and instead center on stress management, burnout prevention, resilience in the music business and more. Speakers include J Erving (founder of Human Re Sources and executive vp at Sony Music), Moody Jones (GM of dance at EMPIRE), Fadia Kader (executive vp/GM at Venice Music) and Gwen Bethel Riley (senior vp of music/head of content partnerships at Peloton).

“The topics we are covering at the summit are necessary to work in any industry or simply just to exist: leadership, effective communication, stress management, pivoting, financial literacy,” says Maiale. “Imagine a music industry where more people are trained on different personality types, emotional intelligence, how to deal with conflict in the workplace, how to manage their money and how to really address and support mental health.”

Perhaps the best evidence of the need for such a summit is also the biggest challenge in launching it: “Getting people to focus on themselves, as opposed to their work,” says Maiale. “It’s going to take a lot of work, but we believe that as a community, we can all make the music business more human.”

Fittingly, attendee badges will solely list their first and last names, with no companies or titles to be found.

Registration and more information on the jump.global annual summit can be found here. The event kicks off Nov. 12 with a NO EGO Welcome Party.

03 Oct 2023

Songtrust Helps Indie Songwriters Collect Their Publishing Royalties. What Slowed It Down?

On July 19, Songtrust sent an email — part update, part apology — to the 350,000 songwriters who use the publishing administration company to collect their songwriting royalties. Songtrust’s message pointed to friction in this process: “slower registration timelines” for songs, which in turn would slow the flow of income, plus a “slower response rate” for writers who believed they were missing money or had other questions. 

The slow-down had a few causes, wrote Downtown Music Publishing president Emily Stephenson, including “new leadership,” a new “organizational structure,” and the implementation of Know Your Customer-style registration and payment processes to combat “increased fraud in the music industry.” (Downtown Music Holdings owns Songtrust.) “We recognize that these changes have caused frustration,” she added.

Four former Songtrust employees believe these delays have their roots in plans the company put into motion before this year. The ex-employees describe Songtrust as a “pioneering” organization that did something no company managed to do before: Offer professional-level publishing administration services to small, independent songwriters. “Before Songtrust,” Stephenson tells Billboard, “there was really no way for them to collect mechanical royalties.” 

The global publishing system was developed over decades to serve the needs of several thousand writers, not several hundred thousand. “The problem with music publishing,” according to one former employee, “is that scaling is nearly impossible because it’s kind of like an archaic, dark art.”

So as music creation exploded and Songtrust was “trying to sign so many people” starting at the end of 2019 and into 2020, a second former employee explains, “the technology couldn’t keep up with the volume.” 

At times, former employees say, that volume — of both new songwriters and new compositions — simply grew faster than the company could handle. (Songtrust is almost certainly not the only organization that has had trouble keeping up with the surge in music creation.) “Making the promise to help the little guys and then not following through on the best technology and best employees and resources — that’s where they f—ed up,” adds a third former employee. “That’s just not a feasible business model.” (Half a dozen former employees spoke in total, all on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating former colleagues.)

Downtown Music executives disagree. “As the music industry grew, Songtrust grew, and we’re evolving to better serve independent songwriters,” Stephenson says. In a post-interview email, Songtrust executives added that despite “temporary delays in responding to writer inquiries,” the company “has continued to process and pay out royalties accurately and on time to all clients who have submitted accurate tax and payment information.” Multiple songwriters who spoke to Billboard about payment difficulties would take issue with that statement.  

“All Songwriters Deserve Publishing Administration”

Traditional music publishing companies focus on just a slice of the world’s songwriters — the top earners. One publishing administration executive says it’s not even worth it for his organization to work with “the bottom 80%” of clients because the cost of doing so would exceed the revenue collected. 

Songtrust launched in 2011 with the belief, as Stephenson puts it, “that all songwriters deserve a publishing administration solution.” The company has paid out more than $130 million in royalties so far, according to Downtown Music Holdings president Pieter van Rijn, and 2023 payouts are on pace for “another record year.”

To collect publishing royalties, most songwriters either sign with a publisher or a publishing administrator. Otherwise, it’s possible to register songs with both a performance rights organization (PRO) and a mechanical rights organization, but Songtrust facilitates what would otherwise be a complex, time-consuming process for a one-time fee of $100 per writer, plus 15% of the royalties it collects. 

In many cases, that may not amount to much; although some independent songwriters earn enough publishing income to live on, many earn next to nothing. And while there may be less money in this part of the market, the administrative work can be just as complicated, if not moreso. “It is a laborious task to onboard and disseminate music publishing information, particularly with DIY artists who are disadvantaged because they don’t have the knowledge base to understand the questions you’re even asking,” says Jeff Price, founder of another publishing administration company, Word Collections.

So it’s not surprising that former Songtrust employees say writers often make mistakes when registering their songs — claiming 100% ownership of a co-write, for example. Also, since it was relatively easy to sign up for Songtrust’s services, “if someone wants to register fraudulent things, they have the tools,” explains one former employee.

Fraud is a concern across the publishing sector. “If you do not register your songs with a PRO, someone else will within a few months, almost guaranteed,” according to one label founder who also oversees a publishing operation for the acts he signs. “Artists don’t know what publishing is to begin with, and there’s a lot of confusion and disinformation, [creating] a perfect recipe for fraud. This problem is only getting worse, especially for international artists finding success for the first time in the global marketplace.”

In the case of Songtrust, a former employee says that fraud on the platform — such as users registering songs they didn’t write — “creates distrust” with some of the societies charged with collecting royalties around the world. “That was happening to a big extent,” the former employee continues. 

There were also times, former Songtrusters say, that the societies simply didn’t have the technology to keep up with the number of songwriters it was representing — and that some of the societies focused their resources on the big writers and publishers who generate more revenue. “At scale, issues of bandwidth and efficiency are always a challenge when you have software-based rights administration,” a veteran rights administration executive says. 

Songtrust is in “daily communication with our partners at the collecting societies,” Stephenson says. “We maintain a very positive relationship with them and we’re constantly looking with them to improve the way we can support songwriters.”

In a post-interview email, Songtrust executives added that “the fact that [publishing administration] is a complex business does not change our belief that it is a worthwhile, meaningful service” for the long tail of songwriters. 

“There Are Always Issues”

At the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, former employees say Songtrust amped up its efforts to sign more songwriters, which taxed the company’s internal systems. (Around the same time, Downtown Music also went on a buying spree, acquiring the distributor CD Baby in March 2019 and the tech and services company Fuga in January 2020.) 

One former employee says that the company “really put their money into marketing.” The mindset, according to this person, was “let’s make us as shiny and inviting as possible on the front end, but we’re not going to fix any of the backend technology.” 

In another former employee’s view, Songtrust was “not prioritizing actually doing the job that we’re supposed to be doing” — registering and paying songwriters. A third former employee says simply, “if you invite too many people to your house, it’s gonna fall apart.”

Stephenson rejects the idea that the company was too focused on growth. Downtown Music executives also pushed back on former employees’ accounts of technical troubles. “Technology was not the issue” for Songtrust, van Rijn contends. “Based on the input of societies, we did improve our KYC [know your customer] and registration and data processes,” he notes. “Part of that is technical. Part of that is operations.” Van Rijn also points out that the $130 million Songtrust has paid out to date is money that “otherwise may not have found its way to the songwriter community.” 

The fact that small, independent songwriters have the means to collect royalties is fairly new; the publishing business wasn’t built for a world in which anyone can write a song on an app, upload it right away, and immediately start earning money around the world. Some amount of friction is inevitable when so many songwriters need to be integrated into the intricate, infamously opaque global music publishing system.

“When you have outcomes that you don’t like as a customer, or even as a partner, it’s easy to talk about incompetence,” says the veteran rights administration executive. “The reality is that these are the outcomes based on the way rights administration happens in the world.”

Some of the challenges faced by Songtrust are “endemic” in publishing, says Price, the Word Collections founder. The administration executive agrees: “Whether you’re a big company or a small one, there are always issues. It’s just that you’re going to get way more issues the bigger you are.”

03 Oct 2023

Swizz Beatz & Timbaland to Receive Rock The Bells Cultural Influence Award at 2023 BET Hip Hop Awards

With the 2023 BET Hip-Hop Awards slated to air next Tuesday (Oct. 10), a bevy of legends are slated to be honored that night, including VERZUZ co-founders Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, Marley Marl and Kiernan “AKA” Forbes.

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Super producers Swizz and Timbo will be on hand to receive the Rock The Bells Cultural Influence Award from the founder and CEO of Rock The Bells, LL COOL J. The award will honor the pair for their cultural hip-hop contributions and boundless creativity.

LL will be working double duty, as he and Rakim will team up for a tribute performance honoring this year’s I Am Hip Hop Award recipient, Marley Marl. Marl’s inventive mindset dates back to his iconic production with the Juice Crew and his influence on some of the genre’s best producers, including the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, DJ Premier and Pete Rock.

Lastly, Kiernan “AKA” Forbes, will posthumously receive the “Global Visionary Award” for his global impact on the hip-hop landscape. The 35-year-old South African rapper was shot and killed earlier this year. His parents, Tony and Lynn Forbes, will accept the award on his behalf.

Fans can also expect performances from Offset, DaBaby, Fivio Foreign, GloRilla, Sexxy Red and more. Members of the legendary label So So Def — including Jermaine Dupri, Bow Wow, Da Brat, and Dem Franchise Boyz — will also perform in in a celebration of the label’s 30th anniversary.

Slated to take place live in Atlanta, the 18th annual awards show will premiere on Oct. 10 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BET. Fat Joe will host the ceremony for the second consecutive year.

03 Oct 2023

NBC’s All-In Coverage of Taylor Swift During Chiefs-Jets Sunday Night Game Majorly Boosted Female Viewership

NBC has taken some slings and arrows from the traditional sports press for its over-the-top coverage of Taylor Swift‘s attendance at yet another Kansas City Chiefs game on Sunday night. But the network might have the last laugh as ratings for the exciting prime time win by the Super Bowl champs over the New York Jets led to some serious gains in a few key demos.

According to Deadline, the preliminary Live+same day data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics showed that the Swift-centric broadcast saw a 53% uptick in viewership by girls ages 12-17 from the season average over the first three games of the season, as well as a 24% bump among women 18-24 and a 34% increase for women over 35; NBC will release the official data on Tuesday (Oct. 3). The lean-into the hype about the alleged Traylor romance — neither Swift nor Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce have publicly confirmed rumors that they are dating — also reportedly led to an average of 27 million viewers for the Chiefs’ 23-20 win.

Those numbers were the best for a Sunday contest since the Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII in February; viewership peaked in the second quarter at 29 million. While impressive, the numbers were not the highest ratings for the season so far, falling just short of the 27.5 million who watched the Chiefs lose to the Detroit Lions in week one.

NBC did everything it could to remind viewers that Swift was once again in the house, from 17 reaction throws to the family skybox — where Taylor was hanging with Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Sabrina Carpenter, Sophie Turner and Hugh Jackman — as well as a “Taylor Made for Sunday Night” promo that ran earlier in the week that used Swift’s “Welcome to New York” as its theme song. The game also opened with The Voice host Carson Daly explaining how football works to Swifties and included a bizarre moment when Swift looked stressed when the game was tied 20-20 and the broadcast cut to a shot of the “Cornelia St.” sign, a reference to one of Swift’s saddest songs, the 2019 Lover song “Cornelia Street.”

03 Oct 2023

Who Should Win Artist of the Year, New at the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards? Vote!

With the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Awards set to take place this Thursday (Oct. 5), fans are about to find out who won in each of the ceremony’s 48 categories, including Artist of the Year, New.

Five artists — Bizarrap, Chino Pacas, Grupo Frontera, Peso Pluma and Yng Lvcas — are currently competing in the sought-after category. Along with joining their fellow newcomers in the Artist of the Year, New category, both Grupo Frontera and Peso Pluma are finalists vying for the coveted Artist of the Year award.

Four out of the five acts are Mexican or of Mexican descent, a testament of the ever-expanding Mexican movement that has blossomed throughout 2023. Pacas, Frontera and Pluma are representing regional Mexican music with their corridos bélicos and Tex-Mex cumbia, respectively, while Lvcas is championing a new kind of persuasive “Mexican reggaetón.” On the other hand, Argentine alchemist Bizarrap has showcased his genre-spanning production wizardry that has broken the internet numerous times. Last year, sierreño star Ivan Cornejo took the coveted award.

Pluma leads all finalists this year, with 21 nods across 15 categories. Frontera aren’t far behind, with a total of 15 nods. Yng Lvcas and Bizarrap hold six entries each, while Chino Pacas has only one in the new artist category.

Finalists and eventual winners are based on key fan interactions with music, including audio and video streaming, album and song sales, radio airplay and touring, tracked by Billboard and Luminate. This year’s awards are based on the chart period of Aug. 13, 2022, through Aug. 12, 2023. The ceremony will broadcast live on Telemundo from the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, Fla., at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 5. It will also broadcast simultaneously on Universo, Peacock, the Telemundo App, and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean on Telemundo Internacional.

Who would you like to see win Artist of the Year, New? Vote for your favorite artist in our fan poll below! (Editor’s note: The poll winner does not impact the award decision.)

Purchase tickets to the 2023 Billboard Latin Music Week here.

03 Oct 2023

Ethan Hawke & Maya Hawke Cover Willie Nelson’s ‘We Don’t Run’ For Light In the Attic Compilation

Ethan Hawke and daughter Maya Hawke share one of their family’s beloved go-to playlist tracks on an upcoming Record Store Day Black Friday compilation Light in the Attic & Friends. The compilation, due out on Nov. 24, features covers of songs released on the reissue label including the Hawkes’ hushed take on Willie Nelson’s “We Don’t Run.”

The song appeared on the country icon’s bare bones 1996 Spirit album and in a statement, Ethan Hawke explained, “This song is off Willie’s brilliant album Spirit, which has been a mainstay in our home since it was released in 1996. Everybody needs a good anthem song. This is one of the best.”

The Hawke family Nelson cover opens with Ethan singing over gently picked acoustic guitar, “You are the road, you are the only way/ I’ll follow you forever more/ We’ll look for love, we’ll find it in the eyes/ The eyes that see through all the doors.”

Maya then comes in for the third verse, matching her dad’s hushed, vulnerable vocals with the lines, “There is a train that races through the night/ On rails of steel that reach the soul/ Fueled by fire as soft as candle light/ But it warms the heart of a love grown cold.”

The family then comes together for the inspiring chorus, “We don’t run, we don’t compromise/ We don’t quit, we never do/ We look for love, we find it in the eyes/ The eyes of me and the eyes of you.”

Stranger Things star Maya released her sophomore studio album, Moss, last month, which she said was “super inspired” by Taylor Swift’s Folklore. Dad Ethan has long kept a hand in music, from directing the 1994 video for Lisa Loeb’s breakthrough hit, “Stay (I Missed You),” to his 2014 documentary debut with “Seymour: An Introduction,” a profile of classical pianist/composer Seymour Bernstein. He also portrayed a fictional musician in the 2018 film Juliet, Naked and directed the biopic of obscure country singer Blaze Foley in that year’s Blaze; he also portrayed jazz icon Chet Baker in 2015’s Born to Be Blue

In a statement about the collection, archival label Light in the Attic said it has long sought to spotlight the “most unique — and often forgotten — voices” in music. “We believe that an essential component of archival work, aside from simply honoring the music, is to seek ways in which to bring fresh perspectives, context, and reverence to the original artists and their work,” said LITA Founder and co-owner Matt Sullivan. The 20-track collection collections LITA’s 7″ vinyl and digital singles from its Cover Series, in which contemporary artists pay tribute to their favorite LITA artists and songs.

Among the other notable covers are Iggy Pop & Zig Zags covering funk queen Betty Davis’ “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up,” Mac DeMarco taking on Japanese pop singer/songwriter Haruomi Hosono’s “Honey Moon” and Swamp Dogg, John C. Reilly, Jenny Lewis and Tim Heidecker doing the Louvin Brothers’ “The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea.” The collection also includes covers by Vashti Bunyan and Devendra Banhart, late Screaming Trees singer and solo star Mark Lanegan and Angel Olsen, among others.

Listen to the Hawkes sing “We Don’t Run” and see the Friends announcement below.