Warner Music Group posted strong results for the quarter that ended March 31, with $117 million in net income on revenues of $1.25 billion. While it’s hardly an apples-to-apples comparison, that’s a big improvement from the same quarter a year ago, when the company posted a $48 million net income loss. Streaming soared 23.2% while
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Pink will be honored with the Icon Award at this year’s Billboard Music Awards on May 23. Pink is also set to perform at the awards show. She’ll join the nine other Icon Award recipients since the honor was instituted in 2011: Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Cher, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Jennifer
Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Megan Thee Stallion A$AP Rocky, J Balvin, Da Baby and many more are scheduled to perform at the 10 th anniversary edition of Governors Ball, New York’s largest music festival, on the weekend of Sept. 24-26 at the the Citi Field complex in the city’s borough of Queens. Other top-billed performers
When Variety interviewed the Weeknd over the weekend about the Grammys’ decision to eliminate nomination-review committees (more on that here), we naturally slipped in a question about the new music he recently hinted at in social media posts, which presumably will be the follow-up to his blockbuster 2020 album, “After Hours.” To our surprise, he
J-Hope, a member of the seven-piece K-pop group BTS, has donated KRW100 million ($90,000) to help children in Africa, it was reported on Tuesday. The same day HYBE Corporation, the powerhouse agency behind BTS, revealed that its first quarter profits had increased by 11% compared with last year. J-Hope made his donation through Seoul-based ChildFund
It’s getting to be a habit: Country superstar Eric Church. puts out a new album, and it debuts at No. 2, but is beat out for the top spot by a new hip-hop release. Well, it’s a pattern that’s lasted exactly two weeks in a row, anyway. The new Rolling Stone album chart finds Memphis
Michael Jackson’s image was worth just $4 million at the time of his death in 2009, a U.S. tax court judge ruled on Monday, far below the $161 million valuation sought by the IRS. The ruling will dramatically reduce the estate tax bill incurred by Jackson’s heirs — his mother and children. In a ruling
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are selling their song catalog to Hipgnosis Songs for upwards of $140 million, sources confirm to Variety, making them the latest heritage artist to benefit from the intellectual property gold rush that has seen Bob Dylan sell his songwriting catalog to Universal Music Publishing for more than $300 million and Stevie
NBC announced that the final two episodes of “Saturday Night Live” for its 46th season will welcome first-time hosts Keegan-Michael Key and Anya Taylor-Joy alongside respective freshman musical guests Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Nas X. Key, who rose to fame alongside Jordan Peele by creating and starring in the “Key and Peele” comedy series and
I’m not sure how the major labels feel about the Recording Academy finally eliminating the Nomination Review Committees (NRC), but I can promise you that independent artists like me are doing back flips, just like I did the day I was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for best Americana album — the first in
Twin music duo Tegan and Sara’s best-selling memoir “High School” will be adapted as an original series for Amazon’s IMDb TV free, ad-supported streaming service. The show, announced as part of Amazon’s first-ever NewFronts presentation Monday, will be executive produced by identical twins Tegan and Sara and writer-director-actor Clea DuVall. “High School” is a coming-of-age
Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” — which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 35 years ago today — is best known for its brilliantly idiotic video, which features the singer performing in front of five stunning mannequin-like models bearing vapid facial expressions and holding musical instruments that they’re not even pretending to mime
Lucinda Williams is recovering from a stroke she suffered last November, she revealed in a new interview with Rolling Stone. The 68-year-old singer-songwriter spent five weeks in the hospital after doctors found a blood clot on the right side of her brain, which affected the left side of her body. Home now, Williams has spent
“This is a rock concert!” Dave Grohl kept repeating, over and over, with and without the F-word inserted, at Sunday night’s filming of Global Citizen’s “Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World” at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Some of the other participants might have begged to differ on the exact genre classification —
The Weeknd has responded to the rule changes for the Grammy Awards announced by the Recording Academy on Friday — primarily a change that eliminates the “secret” nomination-review committees that played a key role in his being shut out of all nominations for the 2021 awards, despite having one of the biggest albums and the
Gold House has revealed its list of the 100 Most Impactful Asians of the Year. Vice President Kamala Harris, Oscar winners H.E.R. and Chloé Zhao, and the K-pop group Blackpink are among the list of politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers honored. The nonprofit, which seeks to elevate Asian voices and their cultural impact on society, is working to
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin is taking on the role of mentor next week on “American Idol,” Variety has confirmed. Martin is set to mentor the current “American Idol” contestants on May 9, which is the singing competition’s Mother’s Day episode. The remaining finalists will prepare and perform two songs for the episode: one of their choosing
RIP to “the room where it happens” — the Grammys’ blue-ribbon committees, which are officially being laid to rest this year after being an essential part of the nominating process in most categories since the 1990s. Never again will non-insiders have to play the role of Aaron Burr, wondering if there was actually smoke filling
Malcolm Campbell, a longtime publishing executive for national music publications including SPIN, Blender, the Fader and Rolling Stone, died on April 29 at his home in City Island, New York. Campbell, 61, had been battling a recurrence of pancreatic cancer that had first been identified the previous year. “With heavy hearts, we announce the loss
The Recording Academy announced today that it has made significant changes to the Grammy Awards process — including the elimination of nearly all of the controversial “secret” nominating committees that made final decisions about which artists or recordings were nominated in certain categories, including the “Big Four” General field of Album, Song, Record of the Year and
Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival will return to NRG Park in Houston, Texas from Nov. 5 to Nov. 6. Now in its third year, the annual music festival has been expanded to two days. The announcement comes just in time for Scott’s 29th birthday, who is also confirmed as the festival’s headlining performer; the rest of
Country — what a concept. At least it is on Thomas Rhett’s newly released “Side A” album, in which he lets his more pop-leaning side take six as he digs deeper into his home genre. The titles of the first two singles from the collection, “What’s Your Country Song” (which already went No. 1) and
China is preparing to hit Tencent Holding Ltd. with a fine of at least $1.54 billion (RMB10 billion) as part of a larger antitrust crackdown on its major internet firms, according to a report in Reuters. That sum would be large enough to serve as a strong warning to the industry, but less than the
Esmé Bianco, a British actress who appeared on “Game of Thrones,” filed a federal lawsuit against Marilyn Manson on Friday accusing him of rape and other acts of sexual violence. Bianco first came forward on Feb. 10, as more than a dozen other women were also making allegations against Manson. At the time, she told
The track records of Bonnie “Prince” Billy — a.k.a. former Palace frontman Will Oldham — and guitarist-singer Matt Sweeney reach back some 30 years and create a dense discographical tangle that takes as long to read as most of the albums take to listen to. Yet all of Oldham’s work bears his trademark high, breathy
A month after the release of the trailer for “Spiral: From the Book of Saw,” rapper 21 Savage, who serves as executive producer of the film’s soundtrack, has dropped a music video for the song “Spiral.” (See behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot below.) The film, which opens in over 2,000 theaters on May 14, stars
Like open fire hydrants and Mediterranean fruit flies, a new set of DJ Khaled collabs with a sleek, star-crowded full-length to follow is the surest sign of spring’s slide into summer. DJ Khaled all but created The Event Album, just as Jerry Bruckheimer or James Cameron-crafted Event Cinema. Only Khaled’s is more of an annual/semi-annual
At the end of 2019, Australian-born artist The Kid LAROI was just another teenager trying to make it in America’s rap game. But a little over a year later, the 17-year-old LAROI is among today’s top hitmakers, with collaborations alongside megastars like Juice WRLD, Justin Bieber — and as of today, Miley Cyrus. Cyrus has
Sir Paul McCartney, Stevie Nicks, Led Zeppelin, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and over 150 successful artists and songwriters recently joined the growing chorus of voices demanding changes in the way music streaming pays creators in Britain. But while the open letter to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson – calling for streaming to be treated like a
After three straight years with Kelly Clarkson as host, the Billboard Music Awards have a new voice in that role. Nick Jonas will assume the duties for the May 23 show on NBC, to be broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. It’s the latest in a line of hosting gigs for Jonas,