The week in music sees key moves in top labels’ A&R camps as both Capitol Music Group and Arista have made key hires in their upper ranks. + Edgar “Edd Grand” Machuca has been appointed to the newly created position of senior VP of A&R for both Capitol Records and Virgin Music Label & Artist
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Six days after the controversy of dismissing the co-hosts of his “Joe Budden Show” podcast, host Joe Budden has apologized to fellow podcaster Olivia Dope, who accused the New York rapper of sexual harassing her throughout an episode of her show he sat in on. Dope, the host of the female-focused “See, the Thing Is”
Lollapalooza has officially announced its return to Chicago this summer, the festival announced on Tuesday. Variety broke the news of the festival’s return last week; the lineup will be announced on Wednesday. “Lollapalooza organizers are thrilled to announce that the world class festival will return to Grant Park at full capacity July 29-August 1, 2021,”
WME’s music business, like that of its fellow agencies, withstood tremendous blows for much of 2020 and into 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic brought touring to a halt. To get a sense of scale, consider that in a typical year WME, whose roster includes Adele, Bruno Mars, Rihanna, Dead and Company and Foo Fighters, books
“We’re out and I’m not in sweatpants,” Pink proudly announced as she stepped out onto the stage of the Hollywood Bowl for the premiere of her new Amazon Prime Video documentary, “Pink: All I Know So Far,” which she described as “a movie about my family, and some stadium stuff.” Bringing that stadium stuff down
Vivendi, owner of the world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, has identified the entity it is considering selling an additional 10% stake in the company to as anunnamed U.S. investor. Vivendi, which has already sold 20% of UMG to Chinese giant Tencent, is expected to distribute 60% of UMG to its shareholders a listing
When the votes were tallied in Georgia last November, then counted again and again, Donald Trump was characteristically vocal in his outrage that Georgia, a longtime Republican state, had turned blue. In addition to helping to hold Trump to a one-term presidency, Georgia voters also secured two Democratic Senate seats for Raphael Warnock and Jon
Bleachers have dropped a new song, “Stop Making This Hurt,” along with a video directed by Carlotta Kohl. The Jack Antonoff-led group’s third album, “Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night,” will be released July 30 on RCA Records (tracklist below). Starting in September, the group will also be hitting the road this fall (dates
The Amy Winehouse Foundation and MusiCares have announced a one-of-a-kind NFT (non-fungible token) from photographer Charles Moriarty with visual artist Mark Palkoski to benefit both organizations. The Winehouse foundation, created in memory of the singer, who died in 2011 at the age of 27, is a registed charity founded to inspire children and young people
Sony Music Entertainment (SME) said Monday that it has signed both a new direct China digital distribution deal with NetEase Cloud Music and a multi-year extension of its existing agreement with Tencent Music Entertainment (TME). Sony’s NetEase deal is the latest to shift power away from TME in China’s streaming industry and make the space
The Chinese government’s increasing regulation of the tech sector is a current concern for China’s major internet and online entertainment companies. But the latest quarterly results announcement for China’s biggest digital music company, Tencent Music Entertainment pointed to business as usual, at least for the moment. First quarter revenues, spanning the January to March 2021
Rapper Clifford “T.I.” Harris is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department for allegations of sexual assault, Variety has confirmed. The LAPD would not disclose further details about the probe, including whether T.I’s wife, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, is also under investigation. T.I. and Tiny’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, released a statement to Variety regarding the investigation and the
This week’s album chart saw no successful new entries and, in fact, it was so barren of fresh blood that the news has more to do with what didn’t debut well than what did — like Bebe Rexha’s new release, the low numbers for which she boldly took to Twitter to acknowledge. Rexha’s “Better Mistakes”
Irving Plaza, the long-running and newly renovated New York venue, is back in business with 40 new concerts on its schedule, including a grand reopening with Ashley McBryde kicking things off on Aug. 17; the full initial lineup, which stretches into next May, appears below. Upcoming shows slated for fall include Noah Cyrus, Guided by
Hulu has announced that a six-part music docuseries titled “McCartney 3,2,1” will premiere on July 16. While there have been many documentaries on the Beatles and McCartney over the years, what makes this one different is the fact that he will be speaking with Rick Rubin, one of the most successful producers of the last
The ASCAP Screen Music Awards kicked off a four-day virtual celebration Monday morning with the naming of winners in the peer-voted ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards, with the score for Pixar’s “Soul” managing to notch yet another triumph as its sweep continues virtually unabated. The number of categories for the performing rights organization’s still fairly new
Discovery Plus greenlit “Chasing Ghislaine,” a docuseries that investigates the alleged sex trafficker, abuser and Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The series, from James Patterson and Blackfin, will uncover the full breadth of Maxwell’s alleged crimes and secrets, and feature more than 30 filmed interviews conducted by Vicky Ward, who executive produces alongside Patterson, Bill
The “Hella Mega Tour” featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer has unveiled new dates, beginning in July and stretching into September. The Live Nation-produced tour, originally scheduled for last summer but postponed due to the pandemic, will hit 21 cities in North America, including such stadiums as Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Wrigley
Erykah Badu, Phoebe Bridgers and St. Vincent are scheduled to headline the Pitchfork Music Festival, which returns to Chicago after a pandemic-induced skip year in 2020. The festival will return to the city’s Union Park on the weekend of Sept. 10-12; the announcement comes on the heels of the Lollapalooza festival’s expected return to Chicago
Secretly Group’s Dead Oceans is the new label partner for the back catalog of veteran indie-rock outfit Bright Eyes, the group has announced. The long-running Indiana-based independent label is now home to all of Bright Eyes’ recordings, a sprawling discography that reaches back more than 20 years — from their 1998 debut, “A Collection of
As tensions continue to flare in the Middle East, Creative Community for Peace, an apolitical, non-profit entertainment industry organization, has come together to issue a collective call for “peace, balanced discourse and an end to inflammatory one-sided accounts” of the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Territories. This divisive rhetoric, notes the org, serves only to
A boxed set can include dozens or even hundreds of unreleased tracks, never-before-seen photos and copious historical liner notes, but sometimes it really only needs one raison d’etre to justify its sprawling existence. With Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s new five-disc “Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Edition,” for me, that one singularly validating factor is the
Clive Davis has a gig as music’s own new Barbara Walters, if he wants it. For the second half of his two-part virtual “Grammy gala” this year, the music mogul doubled down in Saturday night’s invitation-only webcast on interviews with the stars, including Elton John, DaBaby, Paul Simon, H.E.R., Dave Grohl, Dionne Warwick and Chris
For artists at the “Are they for real?” stage of their career, “Saturday Night Live” is one of the great proving grounds — over the decades we’ve seen Nirvana, Pink and Kendrick Lamar crush it and Ashlee Simpson and Lana Del Rey faceplant in spectacular fashion, to name five top-of-head examples. Without setting too high
With the script for Brian Baugh’s “Finding You” (in theaters May 14) centering around violinist Finley (Rose Reid) traveling to the Irish coast for a semester, composer Kieran Kiely couldn’t help but say yes to the opportunity since music was part of the storyline. In this coming-of-age story, Finley searches for herself, discovers her passion
“American Idol” has set no fewer than a dozen music stars for the series’ grand finale May 23 — three of whom may be fairly predictable, given that Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie and Katy Perry are the show’s judges. Not quite as foreseeable in the final show’s performing pecking order: Sheryl Crow, Chaka Khan, Luke
For St. Vincent, “home” is a relative thing; she doesn’t often touch exactly the same base, musically, and no one will ever accuse her of making the same album twice. So if you loved the exquisitely visceral, electronic tension of 2017’s “Masseduction” and its nearly operatic art-rock heights, prepare for something entirely on “Daddy’s Home.”
In the days after DMX’s death from a heart attack last month, several people close to the veteran rapper said that he recently had completed a new studio album, and details have begun to emerge about the release, which drops in two weeks, on May 28, via Ruff Ryders and Def Jam Recordings, the home of his
Following her well-received performance last weekend on “Saturday Night Live,” Miley Cyrus is cementing her relationship with the Peacock, sealing an overall talent and development deal with NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. The pact includes a first-look arrangement between Cyrus’ production company Hopetown Entertainment (which she runs with her mother and manager Tish Cyrus). Hopetown will
Shaed are a Washington DC-based trio who scored a massive hit two years ago with “Trampoline,” a song from their second EP that featured Zayn on the remix. The group is essentially an electronic-pop outfit, comprised of twin brothers Max and Spencer Ernst, the latter of whom is married to singer Chelsea Lee (a situation