News

03 Feb 2023

Ambassador Theatre Group to Open New San Antonio Venue The Espee

The United Kingdom-based Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) is expanding its San Antonio venue portfolio from two facilities to three with the opening of The Espee, a 3,175-capacity outdoor boutique amphitheater and special event venue located in the city’s historic St. Paul Square entertainment district.

ATG’s GM, Emily Smith, says the venue will service “musical performances to community gatherings and everything in between,” noting that the name Espee originates from the initials S.P., short for Southern Pacific Railroad Network. The Espee is located on the site of San Antonio’s Sunset Station, the city’s first train station and one of five stops on the Sunset Limited passenger train route that began in 1894, connecting Los Angeles to New Orleans.

The Spanish Mission Revival-style complex first opened in 1905 and was purchased and redeveloped in 2019 by two private ownership groups that operated a nightclub on the Espee site for about a year. In 2022, ATG signed on to renovate and operate the space. Improvements include enhanced in-house sound and lighting, renovated artist accommodations and refreshed restroom facilities.

Paying tribute to its past, the Espee will open March 4 with the daylong All Aboard festival featuring Head and the Heart, Danielle Ponder, Grupo Fantasma and more.

ATG also operates San Antonios Majestic and Empire theatres as part of its 58-venue worldwide portfolio across the U.K., the United States and Germany, including the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End and the Capitol Theater in Düsseldorf.

For more information and to buy tickets for All Aboard festival, visit www.theespee.com.

03 Feb 2023

10 Artists Could Dominate the 2023 Grammys Narrative: Here’s What It Would Mean If Each of Them Did

One of the ways in which the Grammy Awards are distinct from most other awards shows: There’s more than one top prize. The album of the year trophy has long been viewed as the most prestigious award of the yearly ceremony, yet artists have dominated the Grammys in past years by taking home both record and song of the year, like Silk Sonic did at the 2022 Grammys with “Leave the Door Open.” In other years — like in 2020, when Billie Eilish swept the Big Four — multiple major wins, including album of the year, helped define how that year’s ceremony was remembered.

Ahead of the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday night, it’s worth asking: Which artists could dominate the Grammys narrative this year, and what would it mean if they did? Nine artists have the chance to take home multiple Big Four awards, with generous overlap between the nominees for album of the year, record of the year and song of the year (the 10 best new artist nominees, strangely, do not have any other Big Four nods this year). Meanwhile, a 10th artist only has one Big Four nod… but a win would be groundbreaking enough that it’s worth including them into the list of artists who could shape how this year’s Grammys are remembered.

Those artists range from rising pop stars with brash hit singles to music industry institutions who have been earning acclaim for decades. And all of their legacies could be altered come Grammy night — some via an early coronation, others through long-awaited wins. There’s a lot at stake in every Grammy category, but the Big Four carry the most eyeballs and the greatest weight, with lasting impacts more than possible.

With that in mind, here are the 10 artists who could dominate the narrative of the 2023 Grammys, what they would need to win in order to do so, and what those dominant performances would mean.

03 Feb 2023

Meek Mill “Don’t Follow The Heathens Freestyle,” Millyz ft. Albee Al & Leaf Ward “Risk Takers” & More | Daily Visuals 2.3.23

HipHopWired Featured Video

Last year Meek Mill promised to deliver a new project at the end of every quarter of 2023 and while his fans await his first new album of the year, the Philadelphia rapper comes through with some light work to keep them appeased till that time comes.

Dropping off some new visuals to “Don’t Follow The Heathens,” Meek Mill politics in a penthouse studio where he lays down a freestyle in the rawest of forms and in a single take no less. No booth, no headphones, no mic, just a beat bumping out the speakers and Meek’s bars over the instrumental. Good ish, b.

Back in Bean Town, Millyz continues to show and prove he’s a problem with the pen and in is clip to “Risk Takers” is joined by Albee Al and Leaf Ward in an underground spot where the men floss jewels and bubble coats galore to stay warm and probably conceal some heat.

Check out the rest of todays drops including work from Rican De Menace, Tyler Loyal, and more.

MEEK MILL – “DON’T FOLLOW THE HEATHENS FREESTYLE”



MILLYZ FT. ALBEE AL & LEAF WARD – “RISK TAKERS”



RICAN DE MENACE – “UH OHHH”


https://youtube.com/watch?v=fMaIS4ol4ac&version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent

TYLER LOYAL – “BACK IN DAT MODE”



SYMBA FT. RODDY RICCH – “NEVER CHANGE”



JAYDAYOUNGAN – “GOODBYE”



LUH TYLER – “DENNIS”



LO PROFILE – “WELCOME HOME”



GLOSS UP FT. K CARBON, SLIMERONI & ALEZA – “EENY MEENY MINY MOE”



03 Feb 2023

The Ledger: Are There Really 100,000 New Songs Uploaded a Day? Not on Spotify

The Ledger is a weekly newsletter that covers the financial and economic side of the music business. An abridged version appears at Billboard Pro. Pro subscribers automatically receive The Ledger. Sign up here to receive the newsletter without a Pro subscription.

Spotify finished 2022 with more than 100 million tracks in its catalog, according to the company’s annual report filed Thursday (Feb. 2). That’s 18 million more than the 82 million tracks streaming service had the year prior — which averages to about 49,000 new songs per day.

By most measures, 49,000 tracks a day is a huge amount of music. At three minutes per track, it would take about three and a half months to listen to a single day’s worth of new music from start to finish.

But 49,000 is only half the number that’s been cited in recent months. Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge said in September 2022 that 100,000 tracks were being “added to music platforms every day.” Earlier that month, former Warner Music Group CEO Stephen Cooper said “roughly 100,000” tracks were uploaded “to SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple” and other platforms “on any given day of the week.”

Not that self-reported numbers have always been in sync with executives’ statements. In April 2019, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said “nearly 40,000” new tracks were being uploaded daily. Based on Spotify’s own disclosures, however, the daily average that year was 27,000. In Feb. 2021, Ek said the number of daily tracks added to its catalog had surpassed 60,000. Spotify’s disclosures showed the daily average was 55,000 in 2020 — perhaps a function of artists staying home during the early days of the pandemic — but fell to 33,000 in 2021.

But there certainly could be 100,000 new tracks uploaded daily in aggregate. There’s more music on the internet than Spotify adds to its catalog. SoundCloud, for example, adds tracks at a faster rate than other platforms because it licenses music from record labels and distributors while also accepting direct uploads from independent musicians. The service currently boasts 40 million artists on the platform who are unlikely to be found elsewhere. When I wrote about the size of music catalogs in April 2022, SoundCloud had added 50 million tracks in about 12 months, or about 137,000 per day. It appears to have largely maintained that growth rate. From Feb. 2022 through Jan. 2023, SoundCloud added 45 million tracks — an average of 123,000 per day — according to numbers found in the company’s press releases.

Whether the number of new tracks being uploaded daily is 49,000 (17.9 million annually) or 100,000 (36.5 million annually) matters. Anybody following trends, making forecasts or deciding on M&A strategies should understand the size of the market and where the opportunities lay. The lower number is the amount of music landing on the world’s most popular audio streaming platform. The higher number better represents the size of what’s called “the creator economy,” or the universe of music being produced by novices, professionals and everybody in between.

The future of music is more music. People will still flock to chart-topping artists and congregate around a small number of superstars. But the barriers to entry are now so low that virtually anybody can commercially release music, and music streaming services increasingly serve every music niche in existence. The music creator tools market was worth $4.1 billion in 2022, according to MIDiA Research, and MIDiA forecast that the number of people paying for music software, skills sharing and learning will grow from 30 million in 2021 to nearly 100 million by 2030.

The technology to get that music online is well-established. Decades ago, Apple’s GarageBand opened the doors to self-produced music. Today, making music is far easier. BandLab, an online music creation platform, has 60 million users. Spotify-owned Soundtrap is another online music creation and collaboration tool. Any number of low-cost distributors, such as DistroKid and TuneCore, will get creators’ music to download and streaming sites around the world. LANDR cuts out the middleman and acts as both digital audio workstation and distributor.

That glut of music is good for some, bad for others. It’s great for distributors and developers of music creation tools. It’s bad for record labels that must fight harder to get their tracks heard and risk ceding market share. It’s a mixed bag for consumers who have unlimited access yet face a paradox of choice. How the industry will deal with all this music is unclear. What’s certain is there’s a lot of music out there — and the pace of new releases is only going to accelerate.

03 Feb 2023

Vanessa Hudgens Is Engaged to Minor League Baseball Player Cole Tucker

Vanessa Hudgens said yes! On Friday (Feb. 3), news broke that the actress is officially engaged to boyfriend Cole Tucker.

TMZ was first to report the engagement, which was later confirmed by People. The High School Musical alum has been dating the Reno Aces player since late 2020 after meeting in, of all places, a Zoom meditation class.

“If I want something or someone, I’m going after them,” Hudgens shared on a May 2021 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show after confirming her new relationship. “I fully just slid into his DMs and was like, ‘Hey, it was nice to meet you.’ So I think there is no shame in making the first move.”

Six months later, the couple made their official red carpet debut at the premiere for the big-screen musical adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick… Boom!, in which Hudgens starred opposite Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus and Joshua Henry.

Hudgens may be focused on wedding planning in the weeks and months ahead, but at least one of her exes still has her to thank for major developments in his life as of late. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Austin Butler, who dated the star for nearly a decade from 2011 to 2020, credited her for pushing him to audition for the lead role in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. “We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me,” the Golden Globe winner and current Oscar nominee said.

03 Feb 2023

Clive Davis Reveals the First Thing He Does After Each Pre-Grammy Gala

The annual Clive Davis Pre-Grammy Gala will make its grand in-person return on Saturday night (Feb. 4) for the first time since 2020 due to the pandemic. And naturally, the legend promises it to be the most stellar, most star-studded one yet.

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

The 2023 gala will honor Atlantic executives Craig Kallman, CEO and chairman of Atlantic Records, and Julie Greenwald, CEO and chairman of Atlantic Music Group. Atlantic Records’ roster includes Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Cardi B, Lizzo, Jack Harlow and more. The label scored 40 nominations at this year’s Grammys.

While speaking with Billboard days before his anticipated event, Davis reveals that two Atlantic superstars will perform. He also spoke of a duet between a “Latin superstar” and a “major rock hero” — which Davis first teased earlier this week at the Billboard Power 100 event, joking that “I’ve never followed Bad Bunny before.”

Davis also revealed how and when he begins to plan such an impressive party year after year, and shared the one thing he does right after each gala comes to an end.

“The demand for tickets is always intense,” he says. “And the challenge is to provide a show, not opportunities to quote ‘shmooze.’ It’s the show that everybody writes me of the memories.”

But regardless of who shows up and who performs this year, Davis has only one hope, “That it achieves what all the others did: that we have a celebration of music.”

The big conversation point for you this year is that this gala is coming back after three years. When did the planning start?

You know, you cannot plan until the Grammy nominations occur, because if you want someone who should be nominated — and you know that there have been surprises in recent years with people that should have been nominated and got no nomination — so nobody will commit to being in L.A. Grammy week. So we wait for the day that the Grammy Award nominations come out. However, we are no way whatsoever slaves to just have Grammy nominees perform. I mean, I’ve reached back. I thought eight years ago, “It’s time for Taylor Swift to see Johnny Mathis.” I brought out Johnny Mathis and I’m looking at Taylor from the stage and I’m saying, “Taylor, congratulations on all that you’re doing. You’ve probably never seen the next performer because he rarely tours, but he’s up there with Sinatra. The greatest of all time. And an album of his greatest hits was on the Billboard 200 for 10 consecutive years.” She did her trademark gasp and then I brought Johnny on to do his greatest hits. I have a version of that in mind for Saturday night. Something different, which I can’t talk about, but it’s a night that celebrates music.

Yes, Nancy Pelosi is coming for the 23rd consecutive year, and she’ll be there with her husband, Paul. Everybody will be touched that he is well enough to come. But the audience has every year the top leading people who run companies all over the world, music publishers but also networks and motion picture studios and sports representatives. I mean, Magic Johnson comes every year and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Chris Bosh, CC Sebathia… if you love music, you want to be there. So the demand for tickets is always intense. And the challenge is to provide a show, not opportunities to quote “shmooze,” it’s the show that everybody writes me of the memories. That they saw Whitney with Nat King Cole. That they saw Alicia Keys duet with Aretha Franklin. That they saw Rod Stewart at the height of the Great American Songbook sing with Lou Reed and Slash. As I mentioned, I didn’t know I’d be following Bad Bunny [at the Power 100 event]. So it did trigger [me discussing] Latin music, what has happened with him and Rosalia, with Anitta and so many others. I’m really pleased that we have a unique duet Saturday night of a major rock hero with a Latin superstar, and I was very pleased to point that out being in the position of following Bad Bunny. This came from the rock artist that his two songs he would like to do with the major Latin star. And I don’t know whether they ever worked together before. I had not heard of such, but it’s killer, as they say. A killer combo. 

The gala is honoring Atlantic Records’ Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald this year. You’ve known them for some time, do you have a favorite memory having worked together?

I don’t work with them. I compete with them. Because Craig is very close with two of my sons, Fred Davis and Doug Davis, we have gotten personally friendly. We are Jewish and we have Passover dinners and Craig has attended with his wife a few of my Passover dinners. So we are really good extended friends, extended family. 

When making the guest list, how do you find the right balance between inviting legends and the newer artists that you’re always so good at spotting?

We have every year given the Icon winner an opportunity to pick two artists, and we have about nine artists that we show. So the Icon section usually does not take place until after five or six artists have appeared that have no relationship to the Icon. I can’t tell you right now, but there are definitely two very, very, very talented Atlantic artists performing and I believe that an Atlantic Records artist will introduce part of the segment verbally, which is a nice touch that we’ve never had before. So they’ll definitely be, performance wise, at least two Atlantic artists.

What’s exciting to you in music right now?

What hip-hop has become. My concern was and has been that hip-hop has so dominated not only its own genre but Top 40, that I worry where the next Bob Dylan, where the next Bruce Springsteen is going to come from. I wonder where the next Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston is. It’s not easy, even for the biggest voices that are around, although I’m encouraged by what’s happening with SZA and Jazmine Sullivan and a few others. As I see hip-hop broadening its vision and combining with R&B or seeing artists of pop and folk and rock broaden their horizons, I’m seeing a broadening of musical influence. But we’ve got to make sure as exciting as Kendrick Lamar and Drake are and as wonderful as hip-hop stars are, that we don’t narrow the breadth of what contemporary music is all about.

After the gala, what is the first thing that you do?

We go to the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel and do the postmortem. You know when you have a party, whether it be a wedding or another event, that you want the postmortem to review what happened and get the reactions. You want to stew about it, gossip about it, enjoy it. So that’s what I do. 

Is there one postmortem that stands out the most, where you all couldn’t believe what had just happened? 

You know what’s surprising, and it happens every year, and maybe that’s why it’s lasted as long, is every year in a heartfelt, honest way, the postmortem is, “This was the best party ever.” I can’t believe how every year, with a straight face, so many say, “This was the best ever.” If you ask me now, reminiscing — we’re going to put together a documentary of the greatest hits of the greatest parties — it’s hard to evaluate which performance or memory was most special. 

What is the most memorable or over the top thank you that you have received?

I was leaving Arista and I decided that there’d be only two artists performing at my Grammy party that year. There was Carlos Santana performing memorably with Rob Thomas and Wyclef doing “Black Magic Woman,” Oye Como Va” and “Evil Ways” from the first time I signed him and “Smooth” and “Maria, Maria” from the second. But then Whitney came on after two memorable speeches of what my work has meant to music. One was from Stevie Wonder and the other was from Lauryn Hill, and they were both incredibly touching. But the most touching was Whitney coming to the center of the stage and singing, “I Believe in You and Me,” just to me. And then singing “I Will Always Love You,” just to me. So it was a very vulnerable time in life and it was so touching to see her love. Neither of us thought that we’d be back together again two or so years later. But you can’t top that. You can’t top those songs sung by Whitney personally expressing her love. 

Ahead of Saturday night’s gala, what is your one hope for this year’s event?

That it achieves what all the others did: that we have a celebration of music. That they see performances that are among the greatest that they would’ve seen. I’ve gotten so many personal emails from very celebrated people. I’ll give you examples of Tim Cook meeting David Hockney for the first time. Brandi Carlile meeting Joni Mitchell for the first time. Her hero. It was her first year in the audience and I got to know her because we were doing 10-20 interviews together and what emerged was what a unique heroine Joni was to Brandi. Well, I put her at the same table and it changed both [of their lives]. They are so close [now]. So meeting people that they would not otherwise meet, whether it be [Barbara] Streisand, Puffy or Pharrell. Trevor [Noah] is coming this year. Just hearing people when they attend the party saying how special it is for them.

03 Feb 2023

BMG Signed French Rapper With Antisemitic History, Then Killed His Contract Before Single Release

BMG signed a Senegalese rapper from Paris that Universal Music Group had dropped because of Holocaust-denying and antisemitic lyrics — but executives in Berlin ultimately pulled the plug on releasing his music at the last minute, according to a report in The New York Times published Friday (Feb. 3).

In internal documents obtained by The Times, in 2021 BMG’s French division weighed the financial benefits of signing the rapper, Freeze Corleone, against his history of hate speech, and decided to sign him so long as his connection to the German label would remain secret. In previous songs, the rapper had questioned the Holocaust and compared himself to Adolf Hitler. In one 2018 song featuring Corleone, “KKK,” he raps about “Nazi vehicles” and says he’s “determined with lotta ambitions nigga, like the young Adolf.” 

In 2020, Universal Music France released Corleone’s La Menace Fantôme (The Phantom Menace), which went double platinum in France and included lyrics in songs like “Tarkov” that mention a “fraternity like Aryans” (though with no explicit mention of Jews). Despite the album’s success, a week after it began distributing LMF, in September 2020 the label said it was cutting all ties with him because the album had “revealed and amplified unacceptable racist statements.”

After UMG dropped him, the 30-year-old rapper, whose real name is Issa Lorenzo Diakhate, Tweeted “finally free.”

Then in 2021, BMG’s French team proposed signing Freeze Corleone, who was becoming increasingly popular in the Parisian hip-hop scene. In internal emails and memos reviewed by The Times, French label executives at BMG noted the artist was “France’s fastest growing artist in the last 2 years” and would thus “really help us meet our revenue target.” But the executives, Sylvain Gazaignes, the French operation’s managing director, and Ronan Fiacre, the head of A&R, also noted the controversy around the 2020 UMG release.

“In order to mitigate the risk of possible controversy,” BMG executives wrote in an internal memo reviewed by The Times, their contract would ensure the label had the right to approve his lyrics. The memo also said the contract should keep BMG’s involvement with the rapper’s career hidden. There should be “no BMG logo anywhere on the release,” Dominique Casimir, BMG’s chief content officer, said in an email she sent to a BMG lawyer and other executives, according to The Times.

BMG signed a one-album deal with Freeze Corleone worth about $1 million in October 2021, according to The Times. About three weeks after signing the deal, Casimir decided to cancel the contract the day before the release of “Scellé part. 4,” Corleone’s first single from the album, titled Riyad Sadio. The decision came after Casimir’s German team had completed a review of Freeze Corleone’s past lyrics and told the French team they needed to end the relationship with the artist, a person familiar with the matter confirms to Billboard. (An undisclosed settlement was paid to Freeze, the source says.)

Freeze Corleone has two entries on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart — “Freeze Rael,” which spent one week on the chart in September of 2020 at No. 176, and “Mannschaft,” billed as SCH featuring Freeze Corleone, which landed at No. 167 in April of 2021.

In a statement sent to Billboard, BMG says “today’s New York Times story confirms that as soon as senior BMG executives became aware of the historic allegations against the artist, it ended their relationship. No record was released. BMG stands firm against anti-Semitism and hate.”

For Berlin-based BMG, the incident is the second such situation in the past five years involving an artist known to have music containing antisemitic lyrics. In 2018, a controversy exploded over an album BMG released by two German rappers, Kollegah and Farid Bang. The album, Jung Brutal Gutaussehend 3 (Young Brutal Good-Looking 3), contained lyrics like “make another Holocaust, show up with a Molotov,” but nevertheless became a hit.

Antisemitism is a particularly sensitive issue for the label’s parent company, media giant Bertelsmann, which in 2002 apologized for its past ties to the Nazi regime after an independent commission of academics the company hired found it had thrived during World War II by producing antisemitic material and Nazi propaganda. Bertelsmann previously had claimed to have played an active role in the Nazi resistance.

Casimir, who was promoted in May to the CCO post and given a seat on BMG’s board (and was recently named to Billboard’s 2023 Power 100 list), also oversaw the signing of the controversial German rappers as managing director for Germany at that time. 

After BMG decided to drop him, Freeze Corleone released his album independently. Two employees in France involved in the Freeze Corleone signing — who “believed in the artist” – have since left the company but were not fired, the source familiar tells Billboard. Gazaignes remains a top executive in the French division.

03 Feb 2023

HARDY & Lainey Wilson and Carly Pearce Add Country Airplay Chart Top 10s

HARDY’s “Wait in the Truck,” featuring Lainey Wilson, rolls into the top 10 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Feb. 11. The song pushes from No. 11 to No. 9, up 5% to 19.3 million audience impressions in the week ending Feb. 2, according to Luminate.

HARDY lands his third Country Airplay top 10 as a recording artist, after “Beers on Me,” with Dierks Bentley and BRELAND, led for a week last April and “One Beer,” featuring Lauren Alaina and Devin Dawson, ruled for a week in December 2020. HARDY has co-written 11 No. 1s on the survey, including those two chart-toppers.

“Truck” gives Wilson her fourth consecutive career- opening Country Airplay top 10. Her debut, “Things a Man Oughta Know,” topped the tally for a week in September 2021; “Never Say Never,’’ with Cole Swindell, dominated for two frames last April-May; and her third top 10, “Heart Like a Truck,” rides 10-7 (21 million, up 7%) for a new high on the latest list.

HARDY penned “Truck” with Renee Blair, Hunter Phelps and Jordan Schmidt.  “You rarely hear songs like this that bring light to heavy situations that people are really scared to talk about,” says Wilson of the tense murder ballad. “I feel, in my heart, that our job is to sing about the things that people are afraid to talk about. It’s a song that definitely starts a conversation.”

“Wait” is the lead single from HARDY’s LP The Mockingbird & The Crow, which launched at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart dated Feb. 4 with 55,000 equivalent album units, marking his first leader and biggest week to-date.

‘Didn’t Do’ Does It

Carly Pearce nets her fourth Country Airplay top 10 as “What He Didn’t Do” rises 12-10 (19.1 million, up 5%). Co-penned by Pearce, the song follows her first three No. 1s: her Ashley McBryde team-up “Never Wanted To Be That Girl,” which led for a week last May; “I Hope You’re Happy Now,” with Lee Brice (one week, June 2020); and “Every Little Thing,” (one, November 2017).