Music Biz Headlines, Oct. 28, 2021
Calgarian hip-hop artist KTheChosen (pictured) releases a concept album, the Guess Who will stay shunned by the Rock Hall of Fame, and live concerts return in Vancouver and Toronto. Others in the headlines include the imagineNATIVE fest, The Trews, Spotify, UMG, streaming analytics, Prince, vinyl, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Dee Pop, Amy Winehouse, Led Zeppelin, The Posies, the Beatles, and $uicideboy$.
By Kerry Doole
Guess Who won’t make it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
On Saturday, the Hall inducts its 2021 class. Not only is the Guess Who not among this year’s laureate crop of Tina Turner, Carole King, the Go-Go’s, Jay-Z, Foo Fighters and Todd Rundgren, the Canadian wheat-field rockers didn’t have a real shot of inclusion. Despite being eligible since 1991, the Guess Who has never been so much as nominated for the honour. – Brad Wheeler, Globe and Mail
Zimbabwe-born hip-hop artist KTheChosen releases ambitious concept album about loss, grief and identity
Thabo Chinake takes great pains to ensure that his debut album +Vice is thoroughly explained for the listener. In fact, the Zimbabwe-born, Calgary-based hip-hop artist, who performs under the name KTheChosen, created three separate trailers for the album. – Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald
Live Nation announces concerts at the Commodore Ballroom
First came news that extreme power-metal band Dragonforce would play the venue on March 13. Shortly thereafter came word that Canadian guitar-rockers the Trews would hit the Commodore stage on Feb. 5., followed by a JoJo date. – Steve Newton, Georgia Straight
Drama ‘Bootlegger,’ doc ‘Warrior Spirit’ among winners at imagineNATIVE festival
A drama about an Indigenous graduate student involved in a debate over the sale of alcohol on her Quebec reserve has won a top prize at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. – CP
Concerts are back: Sheepdogs, Pat Metheny and many more announce Toronto shows
A profusion of recent concert announcements for Toronto this week suggests the live-music industry has decided it is safe to resume touring, after 20 months of pandemic problems. Those coming, in chronological order, include The Sheepdogs, Stars, along with Charlotte Cornfield, Skydiggers, Brian Fallon's band The Howling Weather, and Pat Metheny. – Garnet Fraser, Toronto Star
The Trews expand Canadian tour dates, share new video for Permission
The Trews have been taking their stripped-down tour across Ontario, and they show no signs of slowing down — in fact, they're ramping it up with even more shows. The group's newly expanded tour announcement arrives alongside the new single and video for "Permission" from their forthcoming record Wanderer. – Haley Bentham, Exclaim!
International
Here's what Spotify and other streaming services want to pay songwriters from 2023 onwards
Music streaming service owners including Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Pandora and Google recently filed proposals with the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) containing what they think they should pay songwriters for the five years between 2023 and 2027. The CRB has now made all of those proposals public. – Murray Stassen, MBW
Is Universal going to post a $2bn EBITDA profit this year?
Universal Music Group has announced its first quarterly financials as a public company – and everything is very much still moving in the right direction. Across all of its divisions (including recorded music, publishing and more) the world’s biggest music rightsholder posted revenues in the three months to end of September (Q3) of €2.153 billion. That was up 17.4% YoY at constant currency, and up by 6.5% on the €2.022 billion revenues UMG posted in the prior quarter (Q2). – Tim Ingham, MBW
Spotify subscriptions reached 172m in Q3, up by 7m on the previous quarter
Spotify published its financial results for Q3 2021 today (October 27), revealing that its global Premium Subscriber base grew to 172 million in the quarter (ended September 30). That was up 19% year-on-year, and up by 4%, or 7 million subscribers, on the 165m that SPOT counted at the end of the prior quarter (Q2 2021). – MBW
Getting the most out of streaming analytics
For artists interested in tracking their performance, streaming services now offer up a whole host of analytical data. If aren’t numbers person, however, some of this information can be a challenging to absorb. Here, we look at how to make sense of it all. – Patrick McGuire, ReverbNation Blog
The vinyl straw: Why the vinyl industry is at breaking point
The industry is at its strongest since the advent of the CD disk, so why has it become near-impossible to get music pressed onto wax? – Megan Townsend, MixMag
First steps made in Congress to honor pop superstar Prince
Minnesota's Congressional delegation on Monday is introducing a resolution to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to pop superstar Prince. – Mark Kennedy, AP
The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame: Love it. Loathe it. Curse it. Damn it. Praise it. Bless it.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is both the most controversial and desirable location in the realm of modern music. Who’s in? Who’s not? Where are the women? What makes hip-hop rock? How does disco doyenne Donna Summer qualify? James Taylor? Madonna? ABBA? – Holly Gleason, Pollstar
Adele announces first live shows since 2017
She’ll take the stage at London’s Hyde Park for two nights next summer. – Allison Hussey, Pitchfork
Ed Sheeran has Covid-19, will do performances from home
British pop star Ed Sheeran said Sunday he has tested positive for Covid and will do interviews and performances from his house while he self-isolates. Sheeran, 30, broke the news on social media days before his new studio album is due out. – AP
Adele is Bond and BTS is Squid Game
When Spotify announced that Adele had broken the record for the most streams in one day, with 19.8 million streams, the caveat was that this was true as long as you do not include all of the streams BTS had accumulated in 24 hours for ‘Butter’ in May. ‘Butter’ racked up 20.9M streams, but 10M were wiped from the record for ineligibility, thus only counting the first 10 plays per user in any given 24-hour period. – MusicIndustryBlog
Dee Pop, drummer and downtown New York fixture, dies at 65
Initially known for his tight and soulful playing with the celebrated post-punk band Bush Tetras, he later became an entrepreneur of avant-garde music. – Alex Vadukulu, The New York Times
The Beatles ‘Let It Be’ is No 2 album in Australia
They sure love the Fab Four Down Under. The Beatles ‘Let It Be’ 50th anniversary deluxe edition has just become the number two album in Australia. – Noise11
How $uicideboy$ became the multi-million dollar brand you never heard of
New Orleans-bred punk-rap duo $uicideboy$ has never charted on the Billboard Hot 100 or any airplay tally, but it has turned its SoundCloud-era success into an underground empire -- and collected 5.3 billion streams along the way, according to MRC Data. – Kristin Robinson, Billboard.
‘I begged them not to put her onstage’: Amy Winehouse’s stylist friend
I’m going to keep this brief and be as diplomatic as I can: Amy was no angel, and with a multitude of different issues brewing, she teetered on the edge of delinquency and frequently pushed the boundaries as far she could. – Naomi Parry, Sydney Morning Herald
As sexual misconduct allegations dog Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, the band breaks up
Three women have accused Stringfellow, of the Posies and REM, of sexual misconduct. Stringfellow “categorically” denied these allegations. His bandmates said they believe the women, and that they are in the process of breaking up the Posies, a power pop band that has been beloved in the Northwest music scene for three decades. – KUOW
Reggae Sumfest returns to MoBay next year
Downsound Entertainment principal Joe Bogdanovich is confident that Reggae Sumfest will make its return in 2022, despite the uncertainties that accompany live events in the pandemic. The festival is being advertised for July 20 to 23 next year in Montego Bay. – Sadie Gardner, Jamaica Star
Led Zeppelin descend from the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to join TikTok
Band lands their Starship on the platform just in time for Rocktober. – Rolling Stone
Katy Perry releases cover of the Beatles ‘All You Need Is Love’
The pop star has released a cover of The Beatles classic to raise funds for Baby2Baby. – Noise11
