Music Biz News

With live events greatly stalled, the pandemic era has been rich with Hollywood movers and shakers putting their money in promising startups across tech, livestreaming, and social networking. Justin Bieber and J Balvin joined manager Scooter Braun as investors in mixed-reality concert developer Wave; the Chainsmokers and Snoop Dogg were …

Five months after the federal government passed the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) to assist independent venue owners, promoters and other small live music businesses who’ve been dormant during the pandemic, applicants are finally beginning to receive grant approval notices. Getting a grant approved means venues still must wait to …

Arizona Zervas’ debut single “Roxanne” is four-times platinum in America and has more than a billion streams worldwide — but he started out as an unsigned artist self-releasing via DistroKid. That was 2019, when the DIY trend and the might of independent, non-label distributors became acutely clear to the music …

Last week, Shawn Mendes became the latest and biggest artist to launch a line of digital goods in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Mendes partnered with Genies, a company that makes 2D avatars, to design virtual versions of some of his most identifiable accessories, like his signature Fender guitar, …

Spotify and Universal Music Group announced a new licensing partnership Wednesday that could align the world’s biggest music label with the streaming service’s long-awaited “two-sided marketplace” — which would funnel additional money back from the record industry into Spotify’s pockets. The new multiyear global contract “further aligns [our] efforts to …

Where are all the women? According to Rolling Stone‘s just-published rankings of the biggest songs and albums of the first half of 2020, female artists are vastly underrepresented. Among the Top 100, there are only 19 songs and 17 albums by women. When compared with all of 2019, the number …

Earlier this month, Sofar Sounds, a startup that stages around 10,000 intimate concerts a year across 400 cities, had no choice but to suspend all its shows due to the coronavirus pandemic — a decision that immediately impacted more than 2,000 artists in six continents. The company is now moving …

The viral Bird Box challenge, in which people blindfold themselves in daily life in the style of characters from Netflix’s cult-status sci-fi flickBird Box,will no longer have a home on YouTube. Videos that “cross the line” between funny and harmful are prohibited from the platform from now on, the video-streaming …