Universal Music Japan has appointed Rui Suzuki as its Tokyo-based chief financial officer starting on Jan. 1, 2021, the company announced on Monday. He will oversee the branch’s financial operations, accounting and strategic planning, reporting to Universal Music Japan CEO Naoshi Fujikura. Suzuki joins Universal after a four-year stint as chief financial officer and director
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Retired actor and dyed-in-the-wool Tinseltown scion Bridget Fonda and New Wave musician turned four-time Oscar nominated film composer Danny Elfman (“Milk,” “Good Will Hunting”) have sold one of their two mansions in L.A.’s fancy-schmancy Hancock Park-adjacent (and somewhat under-the-radar) Fremont Place enclave for $8.75 million, a small bit below the $8.8 million asking price. Though
The $900 billion COVID stimulus bill includes several special provisions for the film and television industry, including an extension of a tax break for studios and production companies and billions for small theater chains. Congress is poised to pass the measure on Monday night, along with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill to keep the
K.T. Oslin, a three-time Grammy-winning country singer and songwriter, died on Monday after battling Parkinson’s Disease and being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, according to The Rolling Stone. She was 78. Oslin won a trio of Grammys in the late 1980s for her songs “80s Ladies” and “Hold Me.” She took home best country vocal
UPDATED: It’s not confirmed yet, but after months of delays, Congress announced Sunday that it has finally reached a deal to pass the long-overdue $900 billion stimulus bill to send aid to American citizens and businesses leveled by the pandemic — including the Save Our Stages act to provide around $15 billion in relief to independent music
FanTracks Digital’s two recent livestreams with the Goo Goo Dolls — the augmented-reality movie musical “It’s Christmas All Over” and the concert performance “Grounded With the Goo Goo Dolls” — are coming to drive-in movie theaters in the U.S. via Encore Live. The current list of screenings run begin Monday (Dec. 21) and run through
In the 49 times that Grammys have been awarded for comedy album or performance, the list of winners is all-male but for a few exceptions: Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Griffin and Elaine May, who shared the award with Mike Nichols. Tiffany Haddish is hoping her name will be added to the list of female
Foo Fighters announced today that they will join Dave Matthews, Portugal. The Man, Bob Weir, Ben Folds, Tank & the Bangas, Big Freedia and many more at Georgia Comes Alive, a virtual concert taking place Saturday, Dec. 26, beginning at 3 p.m. ET to promote voter participation in the upcoming Georgia runoff elections by supporting
The self-titled third album from British singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka won Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize earlier this year and is up for Best Rock Album at the 2021 Grammys. Kiwanuka toured Europe behind the 2019 album but saw the U.S. and U.K. dates postponed due to the pandemic; they are currently rescheduled for next year. In
“Shape of You” singer Ed Sheeran has given fans an early Christmas present with the release of a surprise track titled “Afterglow” — his first new song in over a year. Alongside Sheeran’s self-created artwork (pictured, right), the musician has also unveiled a one-take performance video for the song, which you can view here: [embedded
Music streaming giant Spotify is to launch a localized service in South Korea in the first half of 2021. The move connects K-pop artists, such as BTS and Blackpink who are enjoying global success, with listeners in their home country. “South Korea is key for Spotify in its mission of giving a million creative artists
Taylor Swift’s “Evermore” became the singer’s third album in 16 months to sell a million copies globally in its first week, and the eighth straight studio release to sell that many in a week in her career, according to Republic Records. Only her debut album, “Taylor Swift,” failed to sell a million worldwide in at
UPDATED: It’s not yet time to pop the champagne, but one of the most divided and dysfunctional Congresses in U.S. history announced Sunday that it has finally reached a deal to pass the long-overdue $900 billion stimulus deal to send aid to American citizens and businesses leveled by the pandemic — including the Save Our
In what is hopefully a trend for the coming months, Dua Lipa finally got to perform the songs from her multiple-Grammy-nominated album “Future Nostalgia” on “Saturday Night Live” this weekend — some eight months after her originally scheduled appearance on the show was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Accompanied by four dancers, she delivered
Former President Barack Obama dropped a playlist of his favorite songs on Saturday morning, following his year-end movie, television and book recommendations. “Here are some of my favorite songs of the year,” he wrote on Twitter. “As usual, I had some valuable consultation from our family music guru, Sasha, to put this together. I hope
Eric Clapton and Van Morrison have released their anti-lockdown collaboration, “Stand and Deliver.” Written by Morrison and performed by Clapton, the four-and-a-half minute bluesy track expresses dissatisfaction with the government-ordered lockdowns spurred by rising cases of COVID-19. “Do you wanna be a free man/ Or do you wanna be a slave?/ Do you wanna wear
Who says women’s names never come up in the Grammys’ rock categories? Just look at the 2019 contest for rock album, when Greta Van Fleet prevailed over Alice in Chains. But if you mean actual females? Then yes, their near-complete absence has been staggering. In the 16-year time frame from 2005 through 2020, there was
Think what you will about “Music to Be Murdered By – Side B,” but you can’t say Eminem’s not having fun. This has hardly been a given on many of Marshall Mathers’ recent releases. Whether he was struggling to live up to his old bad boy image, publicly wrestling with criticism, performatively proving his chops
While Congress continues to let Americans starve and go bankrupt while playing politics with a stimulus bill, we’ll drink to this: Jägermeister and the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) have announced a long-term partnership, with the goal of helping to preserve independent live music venues across the United States through the Save Our Stages initiative,
As 2020 lurches to a close, Columbia Records has given Sarah Mary Cunningham and John Salcedo some well-earned reasons to end it with a toast: They have both been given vice-president stripes, of publicity and digital marketing, respectively. Since joining Columbia in July of 2014, Cunningham has worked closely with Rosalia, Leon Bridges, the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in
UTA Music implemented several internal social justice initiatives to address systemic racism and social injustices throughout 2020. Through a four-pronged approach to making change, employees in the Justice Now task force work to dismantle boundaries or limitations based on social or racial identity. Organized by Aicha Forbes-Diaby, Zoe Williamson, Kiyomi Calloway, Christine Lee, Bowie Chen, Brian
As this trainwreck of a year trainwrecks itself to a close, we present the final Fri5 of 2020 — and as if on cue, it’s one of the more confusing batches of songs we’ve highlighted. We’re not even entirely sure who one of these artists is (see Rook Monroe). So along with new albums from
The inspiration for Dua Lipa’s Grammy-nominated hit “Don’t Start Now” struck songwriter Caroline Ailin during a night out with co-writers Ian Kirkpatrick and Emily Warren at a bar in Wyoming. The theme for the night? Disco, of course. “We went to a Jackson Hole cowboy bar and had this wild night out and it was
DJ David Guetta is ringing in the new year with a live charity concert. Insight TV, the Amsterdam-based global channel provider, has set a live charity broadcast with Guetta from a secret location in Paris on New Year’s Eve. The fundraising concert will be part of the United at Home series, which Guetta launched earlier
Over the summer, at the apex of the summer wave of the ongoing COVID pandemic, rapidly up-and-coming alt-R&B/neo soul singer Jhené Aiko, whose full name is Jhené Aiko Efuru Chilombo, plunked down $1.95 million for a freshly rehabbed home in the well-to-do guard-gated Bell Canyon neighborhood that’s laced into the mountainous western edge of L.A.’s
Amid yet another Grammy Awards season loaded with controversy, the Recording Academy will honor the Black Entertainment and Sports Lawyers Association at its 23rd annual Entertainment Law Initiative Event & Scholarship Presentation, which will take place during Grammy Week in a new virtual format. The event is invite-only. At the event, BESLA will be honored with the 2021 Entertainment Law Initiative
Rare collaborations between Bob Dylan and George Harrison will be included on a deluxe reissue entitled ‘Bob Dylan – 1970’ that is due on February 26, Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, announced Friday. The collection will also include previously unreleased outtakes from the sessions that produced Dylan’s “Self Portrait” and “New Morning” albums, which
While she wasn’t asked about it directly, Fiona Apple, who is up for three 2021 Grammy Awards, used her interview with The Guardian to slam the Recording Academy for its treatment of ousted president/CEO Deborah Dugan and its nomination of hitmaker Dr. Luke, who has been embroiled in lawsuit with singer Kesha over unproven sexual
Last June, BMG announced that it was examining the contracts of the recorded-music catalogs is has acquired in an effort to find evidence of racial disadvantage. The Germany-based company, which was founded in 2008 but has acquired catalogs that date back to the mid 20th century, announced Friday (Dec. 18) that it has completed the
The 32nd Grammy Awards took place February 21, 1990 at Los Angeles’ fabled Shrine Auditorium, where Milli Vanilli’s Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan sat in the front row, nervously waiting for Kris Kristofferson and Young MC to announce the winner of that year’s Best New Artist award from among a group that included folk duo