News

06 Mar 2023

Paramount Explores Selling Majority Stake in BET

Paramount is exploring a potential sale of a majority stake in its BET business, which includes BET, VH1, and the BET+ streaming service, a source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter.

The source cautioned that the discussions are still in the early stages, and there is no guarantee of any transaction taking place. They added that if a deal closes, Paramount expects to maintain a minority stake in the business, as well as a commercial relationship. Scott Mills serves as BET’s CEO.

BET is also unusual within Paramount’s portfolio in that some of its divisions have minority investors of their own. BET+, for example, counts Tyler Perry as an investor, while BET Studios counts Kenya Barris and Rashida Jones as stakeholders. Those deals would complicate any effort to merge BET+ or BET Studios into Paramount+ or one of the company’s other studios.

Such a deal, if it happens, would give Paramount cash as it continues to build out its main streaming offering, Paramount+, and as it reviews its holdings and figures out where things piece together in its strategy moving forward.

In January, the company announced plans to merge its Paramount+ and Showtime businesses.

Founded in 1980 by former cable lobbyist Robert Johnson and his wife Sheila Johnson, the BET channel was the first cable network to specifically cater to African American audiences. Paramount (then known as Viacom) acquired BET in 2000 for $2.3 billion.

While it is too early to say who potential buyers could be, given BET’s status in the African American community, high-net-worth Black individuals, or a Black-led company, would make some sense. A number of high-profile advertisers, including General Motors and Coca-Cola, have committed to significantly increase their ad spend on minority-owned media companies. While BET targets a minority audience, its Paramount ownership would not fit that bill.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the discussions.

This story originally appeared at THR.com.

06 Mar 2023

Ticketmaster Isn’t the Only One at Fault for Taylor Swift Fiasco, Another Planet’s Gregg Perloff Says

As North America’s largest independent promoter, Gregg Perloff, the co-founder/CEO of Another Planet Entertainment, isn’t the type to ask for permission from the majors before making his next move.

Perloff has learned since selling Bill Graham Presents in the 1990s to the company that would become Live Nation that stealth can be a strategic advantage in the live-music business. That’s especially true when competing against Live Nation and AEG, which each have hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.

So, after three years of secretly negotiating, leasing and remodeling a 45,000-square-foot venue in downtown Los Angeles — AEG and Live Nation turf — Perloff and The Bowery Presents co-founder Michael Swier are about to open The Bellwether. The two-story venue is located west of the 110 Freeway between Third and Fourth streets. The one-city-block-long space is anchored by a 1,600-capacity general-admission theater and features a street-level bar and restaurant, plus a 600-capacity private event space. The venue also comes with provenance: It was once owned by Prince, who named it after his 1992 song “Glam Slam.”

Prince moved out in 1995, and a parade of lesser-known club operators followed. Months before the 2020 shutdown of live music, Swier found it. Instead of buying the building from its current owner, Perloff and Swier — who owns L.A.’s Teragram Ballroom and Moroccan Lounge — quietly worked out a long-term lease and started preparing the building for a 2023 opening. The Bellwether will be booked by long-time Another Planet Talent buyer Nick Barrie.

Perloff pulled off a similar coup in 2007 when he engaged in under-the-radar negotiations with San Francisco officials to secure a permit for the first multiday, after-sundown private festival in Golden Gate Park. Knowing the city badly needed revenue due to budget shortfalls, Perloff and his team kept the talks under wraps and got the agreement signed despite the last-minute protests of his competitors in San Francisco’s Live Nation office. That event, Outside Lands, is today one of the highest-grossing independently owned festivals in the United States.

Greg Perloff

Basketballs signed by late UCLA Bruins coach John Wooden and Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry. Former San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey autographed the miniature bat.

Karen Santos

Perloff, who has six decades of experience in the live-music business, sat down with Billboard to discuss his new L.A. venue, his thoughts on the Taylor Swift ticketing debacle, the U.S. Senate’s subsequent grilling of Ticketmaster, and the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2010 consent decree and the protections put in place to protect Ticketmaster customers.

Let’s hear the big news about your new music venue.

We will be opening our first venue in L.A. in decades: a 1,600-seat music venue just west of downtown. We’re partnering with Michael Swier, who owns some of New York’s most iconic rooms like Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge. The new venue will have an open floor plan that can host any type of contemporary music act or genre. It’s got perfect sight lines with a wraparound balcony and side lounge where people can relax. We’ve got a d&b [audiotechnik] sound system custom-built for this particular room. When we saw this new space, every one of us said, “Oh, my God. We have to do this.”

Greg Perloff

Perloff says he bought this sculpture by glass artist Dale Chihuly “at an Oakland children’s hospital music therapy event.”

Karen Santos

Did 2022 meet your expectations in terms of sales?

It was a really good year for us, and our sales in 2023 are so much better than they’ve ever been. I don’t think I’m alone in this. While everyone’s saying there aren’t enough acts out there, the other side of the coin is sales are spectacular. When the end of 2021 came, there seemed to be this built-up demand after the pandemic, and we had a burst of great sales including for our festivals Outside Lands and Life Is Beautiful, both of which sold out. We had a really great 2022 as well. [Billboard parent company PMC Media is a majority owner of Life Is Beautiful.]

Why is sales momentum continuing to build?

Maybe it’s that half the people going to shows right now were ready the day the doors opened back up, and the other half now have joined in. I literally have never seen a situation like this.

Do you worry about business cooling off in late summer?

Not for Outside Lands. It was held during the first week of August and had its best year in 2022. But to your point, I’ve always said that it would be better for everyone if we could figure out how to convince artists to play all year round and go from a six- or seven-month business where everyone’s compressed together to one where artists go out earlier in the year.

Another Planet was one of the few concert companies that did not lay off any of its staff during the pandemic. Why was that important to you?

We were the only concert company that kept 100% of our employees on payroll with no salary reduction during the entire pandemic. It was important that people could continue their lifestyle. I didn’t understand why these big companies didn’t do the same. There was plenty of work to be done from home: new venues, different ways to tell people about our shows and production and building maintenance. When the pandemic ended, we were ready to go.

You’ve been a Ticketmaster client for a long time and stayed with the company after its merger with Live Nation. Over a decade later, do you think the Department of Justice got it right?

I’ll say this: There is supposed to be a firewall in place so that Ticketmaster won’t share your data with the concert promotion side of Live Nation. If anyone believes that Live Nation can’t get numbers from Ticketmaster, they’re very naive. Somehow people seem to know what everybody else’s ticket sales are.

Greg Perloff

A tambourine depicting legendary concert promoter Bill Graham that Perloff got at an event thrown by his late boss’ memorial foundation.

Karen Santos

Do you agree with the argument that Ticketmaster leverages Live Nation content to land ticketing contracts?

No, and I can’t believe that the Senate keeps fixating on something that is irrelevant. They don’t do it. That isn’t an issue. To listen to the Senate talking about arenas when Live Nation doesn’t even own an arena in this country is just crazy. Secondly, when the Department of Justice said it was going to subsidize AEG’s AXS ticketing to be a competitor to Ticketmaster [in 2010], we all saw how that went — not very good. I’m not sure that most people would pick AXS over Ticketmaster.

Because of Ticketmaster’s dominance?

No. What I’m saying is that it’s hard for me to take the government seriously when they say they want to stop monopolies when there are monopolies in every part of business, from telecom to transportation.

What are your reasons for sticking with Ticketmaster?

I thought Ticketmaster was doing a good job for us. I have nothing bad to say about my competitors. Everyone wants to pick on AEG and Live Nation, but most people have no idea how hard it is to produce a tour. I toured Star Wars: In Concert with LucasFilm around the world for five years and worked on tours with Bill Graham; it’s a completely different game than being a local promoter. AEG and Live Nation do an incredible job and should be applauded for the work they do with Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. Every five years, you get an artist that’s so popular that you just can’t make everyone happy.

Do you think the Swift ticket sale was mishandled?

I think there were a number of problems with the Taylor Swift on-sale. This might be the first controversial thing I’ll say in this interview: Bands really want to put the whole tour on sale at once because they can advertise the whole tour at once and make a bigger splash.

Greg Perloff

Fender guitar cases containing instruments won at a benefit auction for The Bridge School, which was co-founded by Pegi Young, the first wife of Neil Young.

Karen Santos

Right, and for Swift, something like 2.2 million tickets went on sale simultaneously.

If someone’s touring for six months, it might make some sense to maybe break the tour into two segments and go on sale with the second part of the tour closer to the dates. But there’s no system in the world — and this is where I have to defend Ticketmaster — that could have handled the onslaught.

Do you think the Senate understands that?

My question for them is, “Why are you picking on Ticketmaster and Live Nation when you should be outlawing brokers?” They are the ones who screw up everything. Does every promoter take a few tickets? Does every venue have a few tickets? Sure. But it’s the scalpers that make it so no one can get a decent seat except the rich. The Senate didn’t do the research they should have done before they started pontificating and acting like they knew what they were talking about.

What’s the best way to stop scalping?

Many years ago, my business partner, Sherry Wasserman, came up with a brilliant system for Prince at the Wilshire in Los Angeles back when I ran the theater. We wanted to completely stop brokering for the show, and we made people line up the day before the show and present an ID when buying tickets. It was foolproof, we thought. And then the next day as people are walking in, here comes Muhammad Ali with tickets and a matching ID. Muhammad Ali certainly wasn’t in line the day before when we sold the tickets, but here he was with a ticket and ID. We didn’t know how, but he managed to beat the system. We just laughed and thought, “We did the best we could do.”

06 Mar 2023

Did Nick Cannon Just Tease Yet Another Baby Announcement?

Lucky number 13? Nick Cannon took to Twitter on Monday (March 6) to tease what seems like another baby announcement.

“EXPECT some big news tomorrow,” he wrote along with eyes and a baby bottle emoji.

If he is indeed announcing another bundle of joy on the way, the child will be Cannon’s 13th kid. He shares twins Monroe and Moroccan with ex-wife Mariah Carey, and twins Zion and Zillion with Abby De La Rosa, who gave birth to her third baby with Cannon, Beautiful Zeppelin, less than two months prior to his youngest child, daughter Halo’s birth. He shares the 3-month-old with model Alyssa Scott.

He is also dad to Golden Sagon, Powerful Queen and Rise Messiah, whom he shares with Brittany Bell; Legendary Love, whose mom is Bre Tiesi; and Onyx Ice Cole with LaNisha Cole.

Cannon’s headline-making fertility is so unorthodox it’s become a bit of a joke for his friends. Shortly after the Drumline star welcomed four children in the span of about six months starting in December 2020, Kevin Hart posted a massive billboard in Los Angeles revealing Cannon’s actual phone number.

“For any advice on fatherhood ? Call my best friend Nick Cannon,” the billboard read.

“It’s not about what society deems is right,” Cannon told Men’s Health in 2022 about having kids with multiple women. “It’s like, what makes it right for you? What brings your happiness? What allows you to have joy and how you define family? We all define family in so many different ways.”

“People even often ask, ‘Are you gonna have more? You gonna stop?’” he continued. “I’m like, those are questions that I don’t really even sit around and think about. I’m just walking in my purpose and trying to be the best father and best provider I could possibly be.”

06 Mar 2023

Activists Begin “Week of Action” Protesting Georgia’s “Cop City”

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US-POLICE-JUSTICE-DEMO

Source: CHENEY ORR / Getty

Activists and other social justice groups have begun a planned “week of action” to protest the construction of a project known as “Cop City” outside of Atlanta, Georgia.According to reports, multiple activists and environmental and social justice groups from across the United States have initiated a week of protest actions against the building of a training center complex for law enforcement in a forest area south-east of Atlanta which has been dubbed “Cop City”. 

The planned actions come a little less than two months after the death of Manuel Paez Terán, an activist known as “Tortuguita”. Terán was shot and killed by a Georgia State Trooper on January 18th in the midst of a violent raid by a combined force of state troopers, officers from Dekalb County & Atlanta, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation on a protest encampment in the South Forest area.

Protesters are seeking to block the construction of the militarization and training complex which was launched by the Atlanta Police Foundation. With an estimated price tag of $85 to $90 million, the site would be the largest of its kind in the nation once completed. Many have complained about the environmental impact, as the entire forest is slated to be razed for the project. The planned week of action will include a march among other protests. “The idea is to have a march with Black-led groups, centered in Atlanta history, and the protest movements we’ve always been a part of,” said Community Movement Builders leader Kamal Franklin. A “National Day of Action Against Police Terror” is slated for this coming Thursday (March 9th), with a music festival and a “know your rights workshop” also included in the actions.

These initiatives by protesters are meant to quash the narrative promoted by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens that the protests have been dominated by outside agitators bent on violence. On Sunday (March 5th), 35 people were detained by police at the site after a construction vehicle was set ablaze and rocks were being hurled at officers as a protest was taking place. Franklin said to CNN afterward that the arrests were “indiscriminate”, and didn’t represent the majority of those protesting who are from the Atlanta area. “These are big-tent protests. We don’t expect incidents beyond standard civil disobedience. We hope the police will act accordingly and not in violent ways that exacerbate the situation,” he stated.

06 Mar 2023

Rihanna & Jay-Z Send Senior Living Facility Roses After Viral Halftime Show TikTok

After a group of grandmothers at Arcadia Senior Living Bowling Green went viral on TikTok thanks to their adorable recreation of Rihanna‘s recent Super Bowl halftime show performance, Jay-Z, Roc Nation and RiRi herself have taken notice.

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The living facility revealed on Facebook that the “Love on the Brain” singer sent the group a gorgeous bouquet of white roses. “You ladies’ dance was amazing,” the note signed by RiRi and Roc Nation reads. Billboard can confirm that the star and her team sent over the sweet token of appreciation. See it here.

The gesture comes just a week after Jay-Z sent the living facility a huge display of red roses. “We love the TikTok here at Roc Nation,” the agency’s founder wrote in the note. See Jay-Z’s gift here.

The group of grandmothers at Arcadia Senior Living Bowling Green shared their viral video last week, in which they’re seen taking on the remix of Rihanna’s 2009 hit “Rude Boy” from the Super Bowl performance. In the clip, a number of elderly women are lined up and dressed in white — exactly like RiRi’s dancers. They move out of the way one by one to reveal one last senior citizen, dressed in red like the singer was at the Super Bowl. The grandma then sings her heart out to “Rude Boy” while dancing and holding a microphone.

At the time of publication, the post has more than 30 million views and 3.5 million likes.

06 Mar 2023

GloRilla Concert Chaos Leaves 1 Dead, 9 Injured

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GloRilla Performs at The Howard Theatre in Washington, DC.

Source: The Washington Post / Getty

On Sunday night (March 5), a GloRilla concert in Rochester ended in a stampede that left nine people injured and one person dead.

Reportedly, the show was over and fans were leaving when a surge in the crowd caused a stampede. There are unconfirmed reports that gunfire is what caused a rush for the exit.

Reports CBS News:

Fans were leaving the concert of rapper GloRilla at the Main Street Armory as it ended just after 11 p.m. when they thought they heard gunfire inside the venue, causing the crowd to surge and rush toward the exit, the Rochester Police Department said in a news release.

“We do not have any evidence of gunshots being fired or anyone being shot or stabbed,” the statement said.

Officers outside of the venue made their way inside where they found three women “with significant injuries.”

Unfortunately, it was a 33-year-old woman who did not survive her injuries. Two other people are still reportedly in critical condition.

“As the night went on, an additional seven people arrived at local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries from the event,” said Rochester PD in a statement. “Preliminary reports from people at the scene indicate that these injuries were caused from being trampled.”

GloRilla took to Twitter to express concern and offer up her prayers after hearing news of the incident. “Praying everybody is ok,” she tweeted early Monday morning.

Hip-Hop Wired offers its condolences to the family of the deceased and healthy recoveries to those injured.

06 Mar 2023

Halle Bailey Celebrates Getting Her Own ‘Little Mermaid’ Doll: ‘BRB Gonna Go Cry Now’

A part of her world! Halle Bailey excitedly unveiled the new doll version of her Little Mermaid character on Monday (March 6) via social media.

“I have something really exciting to reveal to you all. I am gonna cry,” the younger half of Chloe x Halle said in an Instagram video. “This is the new Little Mermaid doll! I am literally choking up because this means so much to me. And to have one that looks like me, that’s my favorite Disney character, is very surreal. And look, she even has my mole! See? And the hair, and the tail…I’m just stunned, so I don’t quite know what to do with it, but I’m gonna steal this and take it home.”

Indeed, the new version of Ariel is modeling exactly after Bailey’s character in the upcoming live-action adaptation of the 1989 animated classic, and the actress added even more context about how meaningful the toy was to her in her caption.

“Omg…the little girl in me is pinching herself right now ..I have my own Little Mermaid Ariel doll !!!” she wrote. “I can’t believe how much she captures my version of this iconic character…brb gonna go cry now.”

Late last year, Bailey opened up in an interview with E! News about letting go of the “pressure” she initially felt to step into Ariel’s fins. “I think that before I started filming, I did feel some nerves naturally because the film is so important to so many people,” she said, going on to add, “The fact that all these little Black and Brown babies are going to be able to feel like they’re being represented is really special to me. I know that if I had that when I was younger, it would have changed a whole lot for me and my perspective on who I am as an individual.”

The Little Mermaid is set to hit theaters nationwide on May 23, and the latest teaser gave fans a brief glimpse of Melissa McCarthy’s villainous Ursula, as well as Flounder and Prince Eric.

Watch Halle’s adorable reaction to seeing her Ariel doll for the first time below.

06 Mar 2023

Miley Cyrus, Mariah Carey & Shania Twain’s Music to Be Featured in Apple Fitness+ Workouts

You can take yourself dancing and even cycling to Miley Cyrus‘ music, thanks to Apple Fitness+ newly added workouts. In honor of Women’s History Month, Cyrus, Mariah Carey and Shania Twain will be highlighted as part of the program’s Artist Spotlight series, which dedicates an entire set of workouts to a single artist and their discography.

Starting Monday (March 6), Fitness+ users can pedal to the beat of the “Flowers” singer’s music in a cycling workout, return to heart center when it’s a wrap on the Carey-inspired yoga workout and feel like a powerful woman post-strength workout featuring Twain’s tunes.

Fitness+ Artist Spotlight

Fitness+ Artist Spotlight

Courtesy of Apple

New workouts will roll out every Monday throughout the month of March. Ahead of the release of her eighth studio album, Endless Summer Vacation, due March 10 via Columbia Records, Cyrus will have her fans sweating and singing along to her biggest hits while getting that summer body through dance, HIIT, strength and cycling workouts.

Meanwhile, the Lambily will need to stretch as far and wide as Mimi’s vocal range — which spans across five octaves and goes all the way up to those whistle tones we all try reaching when belting out her 1991 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “Emotions” — ahead of her cycling, dance, HIIT and yoga workouts.

And the Queen of Country Pop’s cycling, yoga, strength and treadmill workouts will prove her fans ain’t no quitters and will leave them impressed with their results. “You’ve got to make working out fun, do what you love, so it feels like burning energy instead of a job! I hear lots of people like listening to my music in the gym and it makes me so happy – it means it’s energetic and inspirational,” Twain said in a press statement. “That’s why I’m so excited for this Artist Spotlight series on Fitness+. So Giddy Up! And do what makes you happy!”

Other musicians who’ve had sets of Apple Fitness+ workouts dedicated to them include Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, BTS, Billie Eilish, Jennifer Lopez, Pharrell Williams, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, ABBA, Prince, Shakira, The Beatles, Nicki Minaj and many more.

According to the Apple Fitness+ website, anyone who purchases a new iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad or Apple TV (and hasn’t previously subscribed to Apple Fitness+) will have free access to Apple Fitness+ for three months before paying $9.99 monthly, or $79.99 annually. New subscribers who already have the aforementioned Apple products can get free access to Apple Fitness+ for one month. Apple Fitness+ can be shared with up to five family members.

06 Mar 2023

Karol G & Shakira’s ‘TQG’ Blasts In at No. 1 on Both Billboard Global Charts

Karol G and Shakira’s “TQG” launches as the biggest song in the world, debuting at No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated March 11).

The song is each Colombian superstar’s first No. 1 on the rankings.

Plus, The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s “Die for You” bounds 19-2 on the Global 200 and 28-3 on Global Excl. U.S., after Grande joined for its remix; Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” lifts 12-10 on the Global 200; and Yandel and Feid’s “Yandel 150” rises 11-10 on Global Excl. U.S.

The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. surveys, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.

Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.

Karol G & Shakira Reign, Wallen Reaches Top 10

Karol G and Shakira’s “TQG” soars in at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200, with 158.4 million streams and 10,000 sold worldwide in the Feb. 24-March 2 tracking week. The collaboration is from Karol G’s new album Mañana Será Bonito, which debuts at No. 1 on the U.S.-based Billboard 200, becoming the first all-Spanish-language leader by a woman in the chart’s history.

Notably, the song starts with the ninth-best streaming week since the Global 200 began (with seven of the top 10 such frames by female acts).

Biggest Worldwide Streaming Weeks in Global 200 History:
289.2 million, “Butter,” BTS, June 5, 2021
217.1 million, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus, Feb. 4, 2023
212.1 million, “Pink Venom,” BLACKPINK, Sept. 3, 2022
185.6 million, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus, Feb. 11, 2023
179.1 million, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus, Jan. 28, 2023
178.2 million, “Easy on Me,” Adele, Oct. 30, 2021
170.8 million, “Permission To Dance,” BTS, July 24, 2021
169.8 million, “Butter,” BTS, June 12, 2021
158.4 million, “TQG,” Karol G & Shakira, March 11, 2023
152.8 million, “Shut Down,” BLACKPINK, Oct. 1, 2022

Karol G claims her first Global 200 No. 1 among four top 10s, following “Provenza” (No. 6, May 2022); “MAMIII,” with Becky G (No. 4, March 2022); and “Bichota” (No. 7, January 2021).

Shakira also scores her first Global 200 leader since the list began, after her and Bizarrap’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” debuted at its No. 2 peak (where it ranked for three weeks) in January, marking her first top 10; it slips 5-7 on the latest list.

Karol G and Shakira are the third and fourth artists from Colombia to top the Global 200; Carolina Gaitán and Mauro Castillo are among the seven credited acts on Disney’s Encanto smash “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” which led for three weeks beginning in February 2022.

The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s “Die for You” roars 19-2 on the Global 200, up 250% to 109.1 million streams and 984% to 15,000 sold worldwide, after Grande was added on its remix, released Feb. 24. The song was originally released by The Weeknd solo in 2016 on his album Starboy and has resurged sparked by interaction on TikTok (which does not presently contribute directly to Billboard’s charts). That buzz helped lead to the song’s current label promotion.

The Weeknd adds his ninth Global 200 top 10 and Grande achieves her fifth. They led together for a week in May 2021 with “Save Your Tears,” also after Grande joined for a remixed version.

Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” drops to No. 3 on the Global 200 after spending its first six weeks on the chart at No. 1. Still, it logs its seventh consecutive week of over 100 million global streams (101.5 million, down 8%) – extending its unprecedented run for the most frames above that threshold from a song’s debut chart week. Overall, the track boasts the best such streak since The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” linked nine weeks over 100 million globally in 2021.

SZA’s “Kill Bill” retreats 2-4 on the Global 200, after two weeks on top in January, and PinkPantheress and Ice Spice’s “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. 2” falls to No. 5 from its No. 3 high.

Elsewhere in the Global 200’s top 10, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” pushes 12-10, with 33 million streams (up 7%) and 18,000 sold (up 51%) worldwide. The song is the country star’s first top 10 among 32 chart entries. It’s from his album One Thing at a Time, released Friday (March 3).

‘TQG’ on Top, ‘Yandel 150’ = 10

As on the Global 200, Karol G and Shakira’s “TQG” debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart, with 129.7 million streams and 3,000 sold outside the U.S. Feb. 24-March 2. It’s likewise each act’s first Global Excl. U.S. leader, among five and three top 10s, respectively.

Karol G and Shakira are the second and third acts from Colombia to command Global Excl. U.S.; Maluma led, with The Weeknd, on “Hawái,” the week that the chart began in 2020.

Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” descends to No. 2 on Global Excl. U.S. after reigning in its first six weeks on the chart; The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s “Die for You” charges 28-3, up 286% to 77.7 million streams and 2,086% to 5,000 sold, becoming the acts’ seventh and fifth top 10s, respectively; Bizarrap and Shakira’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53” recedes to No. 4 after six weeks at its No. 2 high; and SZA’s “Kill Bill” falls 3-5, after reaching No. 2.

Also in the Global Excl. U.S. top 10, Yandel and Feid’s “Yandel 150” climbs 11-10, powered by 36.8 million streams (up 8%) beyond the U.S. Yandel, from Puerto Rico, and Feid, from Colombia, each earn their first top 10 placement on the survey.

The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated March 11, 2023) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (March 7). For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard‘s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.

06 Mar 2023

Kakao Cancels SM Entertainment Investment After Court Order

HYBE’s plan to control competing K-pop company SM Entertainment and thwart a partnership with tech company Kakao took another step forward on Monday when Kakao, responding to a court injunction, announced it had canceled its stock purchase agreement to acquire a 9.05% stake in SM Entertainment.

Last week, the Seoul Eastern District Court granted a provisionary injunction against SM’s plan to issue new shares and convertible bonds. The judge ruled that SM had made its decision without shareholders’ consent. It was a remarkable win for SM’s controversial founder, Lee Soo-man, and for HYBE, the reigning K-pop company and home to boyband BTS. 

For weeks, SM’s management has been trying to wrest control of the company from Lee, who has been found guilty of embezzlement and exercised iron-fisted control over the company he founded in 1995. After SM made a deal with Kakao, Lee turned to HYBE, which became SM’s largest shareholder on Feb. 22 after it acquired a 14.8% stake from Lee, whose production contract with SM was canceled as of Dec. 31. 

On Monday, HYBE sent a letter to SM demanding that “the current [SM] Board of Directors should fulfill its duty of care and duty of loyalty towards SM and actively exercise the right to terminate the business cooperation agreement, which contains clauses that are disadvantageous to SM and advantageous to Kakao,” according to a statement that described the letter.  

With the injunction in place, HYBE also called for SM to exercise its right to withdraw the recommendation of the director candidate nominated by Kakao. SM had put forward Jang Yoon-Joong, Kakao’s global strategy officer, as a part-time director.

SM and HYBE are pushing competing visions for SM’s future before shareholders vote on a new board of directors at SM’s annual general meeting on March 31. SM wants to partner with Kakao – owner of the Melon music streaming service and KakaoTalk messaging service – to better monetize its intellectual property and launch a joint venture in the U.S.

Called “SM 3.0,” the road map calls for SM to break from the single-producer system maintained by Lee until his removal. Instead, SM wants to develop artists through multiple labels and production centers in Korea, Japan, Southeast and the U.S. 

HYBE calls an SM-Kakao tie-up an “unfair partnership” that would give Kakao permanent and exclusive rights to distribute SM’s music, protect SM’s equity at the expense of other shareholders and create conflict of interests that favor Kakao. “We believe that these details demonstrate the bias and irrationality of the current SM management who approved such arrangements,” Jung Jinsoo, HYBE’s chief legal officer, wrote in a letter to SM shareholders on Thursday (March 2).