Month: July 2020

The Recording Academy and Color of Change, the largest online racial justice organization in the U.S., have announced a partnership to “promote positive social change within the music industry.” The Academy announced to members last month that it has made a $1 million donation to Color of Change. According to the announcement, the organizations will

In this guest column, David Israelite, president & CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners, argues in favor of the CASE Act, which would create a board within the U.S. Copyright Office to decide copyright disputes rather than going before a court.  A

ASCAP has announced the winners of the most performed songs of the past year in Latin music via its @ASCAPLatino and @ASCAP social media platforms. With the awards forced to move online like most major events this year, the virtual format, which generated record social media participation for ASCAP’s Pop and Screen Music Awards last month, opened the

Tom Meighan, the former lead vocalist of rock band Kasabian, has pleaded guilty to a charge of domestic violence. Meighan was accused of attacking his former fiancee Vikki Ager on April 9, and submitted his guilty plea Tuesday at a court in Leicester, England. The judge ordered him to carry out 200 hours of unpaid

On July 6, 2020, we lost a Country Music Hall of Famer, Grand Ole Opry star, guitar virtuoso, fiddle playing icon, proud American and my friend. This year marks my 37th year in broadcasting. Thirty of those years I’ve been solely focused on the world of country music. Currently, I host the Storme Warren Morning

SiriusXM is closing in on a deal to acquire E.W. Scripps Co.’s Stitcher podcast production, distribution and advertising unit, Variety has confirmed. SiriusXM’s deal for Stitcher would be worth about $300 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news. Scripps bought Stitcher for $4.5 million in 2016 and combined it with

When I heard that Ennio Morricone had died, at 91, my first thought was that the cinema had lost one of the most romantic of all screen composers. Morricone, who worked with filmmakers from around the world but rarely left his native Rome (he insisted on not speaking in any language but Italian), wrote movie

Garth Brooks recently encouraged his fans to socially distance by putting on a show that could only be seen on drive-in screens around the country. Now, he’s doing a lot more distancing himself by going into quarantine with his wife, Trisha Yearwood, after learning that their “camp” had been exposed to the coronavirus. The announcement

Mary “Mickey” Diage, a longtime advertising director at Capitol Records, where she worked for 40 years from 1963 to 2003, died on May 21 from pulmonary fibrosis. She was 82. Diage was among the first women to have a “seat at the table” at a major label, according to an announcement of her death. During

Variety has been nominated for 56 Southern California Journalism Awards, including three for entertainment journalist of the year and two for in-house/corporate publication. The awards, given out by the Los Angeles Press Club, honor outstanding journalism in the region across print, digital, radio and broadcast platforms. Variety’s chief TV critic Daniel D’Addario, chief film critic