Naoki Osada, former CEO of Avex USA, has announced the launch of Nebula17, a multi-faceted music company that offers label, publishing, venture capital, international strategy and management services. Like much of his work at Avex USA, the company is designed to propel forward-thinking Japanese artists, looking to launch their careers in the U.S. and other global markets.

Launched as demand for J-pop and other Japanese genres grows abroad, Nebula17 will be headquartered at a new studio house in West Hollywood, Calif., that will serve as both an office and a hub for its songwriters.

Already, Nebula17 has a record deal in place with Awich, a leading voice in Japanese hip-hop who has collaborated with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and A$AP Ferg, and a publishing deal inked with writer-producer Marcus Munroe, whose credits include GENERATIONS and BALLISTIK BOYZ from EXILE TRIBE. Osaka has also recruited Oscar Cornejo (Tyla, Quavo, Rich The Kid) to act as head engineer for the Nebula17 studio. According to a spokesperson for Nebula17, the company is also actively developing “multi-platform IP and preparing its first slate of international releases” for later this year.

On the venture capital side, Nebula17 has participated in the early-stage financing round for Indify, an online platform designed to connect viral indie artists to strategic investors. Nebula17 itself is backed by a group of strategic investors, all of which hail from entertainment, culture and technology-related industries. This includes Akatsuki Inc., a leading Japanese entertainment company, which led this round of funding, and other key investors like Japanese management companies BMSG, ASOBISYSTEM and And Music. Angel investors include Paul Bragiel (serial entrepreneur and an early investor in Uber and Unity), the co-founders of the crypto-centric VC Decima Fund, and executives from gaming and Web3 firm Gumi.

“There couldn’t be a more perfect time to bring this vision to life,” says Osada. “The world is finally ready to hear these voices, and Nebula17 is here to amplify them — with the right A&R strategies, global management expertise, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Our goal is to build a new bridge between Japanese culture and the global mainstream — one artist at a time, powered by top U.S. creatives and business leaders.”

Osada brings more than two decades of experience working for the Japanese entertainment company Avex, both in his homeland of Japan and in the U.S.. While at the helm of Avex USA, he made a strategic investment in S10 and launched a publishing joint venture with S10 founder Brandon Silverstein, leading to the signing of top talent like Harv, Jasper Harris and GENT!. Osada also created a publishing joint venture with Runner Music, a company co-founded by Ryan Tedder, where he signed producer Grant Boutin. Additionally, Osada used his top post to help launch the Japanese boy band ONE OR EIGHT internationally.

Billie Eilish has long been leading the charge against the music industry’s negative impact on the environment — and in an interview on an upcoming episode of The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, the singer-songwriter looks back on the positive changes she’s been seeing since she started speaking up.

In an exclusive clip shared with Billboard from the singer’s conversation with CNN Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir, Eilish opens up about the culture shock of going from growing up in an eco-conscious household to becoming famous in an industry marked by overabundance and excess. Eilish’s mom and fellow climate activist, Maggie Baird, also joins her for the interview.

“We were meeting different brands, and I was going to go on tour and making perfume and my own clothing line,” Eilish recalls of the early years of her career. “We learned how much unbelievable waste is going on that we don’t really know is happening.”

“We stepped into this other world, and it was a little bit like, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening here?’” Baird added incredulously.

The mother-daughter duo go on to say that the music industry didn’t have any sort of “plan” for minimizing its eco footprint back when Eilish first found fame around 2016 — but now, they say it’s changing for the better. “You would not believe how wasteful this industry is,” the nine-time Grammy winner says in the clip. “They then started making plans, because we would yell at them. We would demand a plan.”

“I was raised to feel this way, but I think I also have my mom’s gene of really caring about the world and animals and not wasting things,” Eilish adds.

For years, the musician has been a fierce climate advocate. In addition to working with fashion brands such as Nike and Oscar de la Renta to create vegan designs and partnering with environmental nonprofit REVERB on tour, the star launched her very own climate summit, Overheated, in 2022. She’s also been a key player in carrying out the initiatives of Support + Feed, an organization founded by Baird in 2020 with a mission to fight climate change and food insecurity.

Eilish and Baird’s segment on The Whole Story echoes what both women previously spoke with Billboard about last year. Recalling how “bleak” it was to take meetings with record label executives who couldn’t even speak to their companies’ sustainability efforts — or lack thereof — the singer pointed out how wasteful unethically sourced merchandise and album variants can be.

“It is right in front of our faces and people are just getting away with it left and right, and I find it really frustrating as somebody who really goes out of my way to be sustainable and do the best that I can and try to involve everybody in my team in being sustainable,” she said at the time. “Then it’s some of the biggest artists in the world making f–king 40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more.”

In that same interview with Billboard, Baird praised Universal Music Group for coming “a long way” in its environmental practices since Eilish signed to them nearly a decade ago. The live music industry has also been making strides, from Lollapalooza implementing a battery-powered hybrid system for its main stage to Coachella debuting a zero-carbon stage in 2025. 

Eilish is just one of a few musicians featured on the latest installment of The Whole Story, which will premiere at 8 p.m. ET on July 20. Titled “Change Amplified: Live Music and the Climate Crisis,” the episode will also include first-hand accounts from Bonnie Raitt, Jack Johnson, Perry Farrell and AJR’s Adam Met about how they’re personally working to revolutionize the music industry’s approach to environmentalism.

Watch the exclusive clip from Eilish and Baird’s interview with Weir above.

If the immersive, state-of-the-art entertainment venue Sphere didn’t already exist, Zac Brown would have had to invent it.

“I’ve been wanting to do a spectacle for a couple years,” he tells Billboard. “I’ve been planning to figure out how to do something where the production and the fan experience is just on [another] level. And then in my planning for doing that, I heard about the Sphere and toured the building while it was under construction. I was like, ‘This is the place…’ The Sphere is the greatest canvas that’s ever been created for imagination.”

A little more than two years after Sphere opened in September 2023 with U2, Brown and his Zac Brown Band mates will get their time there with Love & Fear, a four-show limited engagement that coincides with the Dec. 5 release of the band’s similarly titled, seventh full-length album. The Sphere dates are Dec. 5-6 and Dec. 12-13. When asked if he anticipates more concerts being added, Brown simply says, “Yes.”

Last week, the band scrubbed their socials and hinted that a new chapter was coming, posting on Instagram, “There’s no way to sum up what the last chapter has meant to us…The next chapter? It’s the biggest one yet.”  Then on Monday (July 14), the band posted the dramatic cover of the Love & Fear album, which features what looks like a battle between a mythical angel and devil, with the message, “Two sides of the same truth.”

Brown calls the Sphere appearance and the new album “2.0 for our band. There’s some bands, they keep going for a while and then they kind of get tired, they stop,” he says. “But my passion and my creativity is as good now as it’s ever been, and I just want to keep pushing the envelope of what our band is capable of and bringing our fans along for the ride… This is our chance to show that we’re not slowing down. We’ve actually got our foot on the gas.”

The Grammy-winning band, who has landed five albums on top of Billboard’s Country Albums chart, began working on the album two-and-half years ago and then creating the visuals for the Sphere run began 14 months ago. “Every single detail of [the] show is going to be extremely memorable,” Brown says. He promises the performance will (in a good way) “make people’s eyes bleed and make them feel every range of the human emotion that we’re capable of.”

The album, which the band is self-releasing, and the show tell the story of Brown’s life. “You know, I’ve never really told the story of my life to anyone that doesn’t know me really well,” the Georgia native says, “and so this is a chance to get to do all of those things.”

The album’s first track, “I Ain’t Worried About It,” is already out, while a new track, “Let It Run” (feat. Snoop Dogg), will come out Friday (July 18). The album also features Dolly Parton and Marcus King.

Brown goes so far as to call Love & Fear “one of our masterpieces, and the amount of work we put into that is incredible, from having a 40-piece orchestra [to] having a 20-piece choir.” He says that same detail has gone into the enveloping experience the band has created for Sphere. (Since Sphere acoustics can’t handle a live orchestra, the symphony’s parts for the Sphere show were recorded on the Sphere stage and will be incorporated into the visuals).

Brown, who has seen Phish, Eagles and Anyma at the venue, says the process of planning the show has been all-consuming. “Our challenge for ourselves is to raise the bar. You’re only limited to your imagination and your budget,” he says. “It’s this massive creative mountain, but I absolutely love it, and I’m obsessed with it. You’re kind of building the plane as you’re flying it.”

The show will take attendees on a journey, featuring around six songs from the new album with many of the multi-platinum group’s hits reimagined in a way that builds a cohesive story, Brown says.

He says he has no hesitation about revealing so much of himself in the album and show. “I think that’s what makes our humanity,” he says. “As an artist, you’re naked on a fence anyway and people can either say, ‘That’s amazing,’ or they can throw rotten vegetables at you. But that’s a risk that you have to be willing to take. I’m unapologetically musically going to do the things that I feel like I’m led to do. It’s just an expression of my life and my influences and the things that happened. If you don’t know who you are, the music industry will chew you up and spit you out the other side. You’ve got to fight hard for who you are.”

The band limited its touring to develop the album and show and to encourage fans to come to Sphere—ZBB only has a handful of Australian dates in October between now and the Vegas run.

“I’m pulling every favor from every friend that I have on the planet for this album and the Sphere,” he says. “Because of the contract with the Sphere, you can’t really go out and tour, so all the money we’d be making touring, we’re just kind of betting on ourselves and investing all the money it takes to create it all. I want to step things up, and this is a time for us to do it, and this is the venue we’re going to do it in. This is the album that’s going to help us to get there.”

After the Sphere run, Brown, plans to take the Love & Fear show on the road. Though certain elements will only work in the Vegas attraction, the themes will be adapted and carried over to more conventional venues. 

“We’re having to build all of our staging and all of our lighting and everything that’s going into the Sphere, so we will be able to bring those pieces out on the road,” Brown says. “But the level of detail and amount of time and energy that’s gone into creating the video content [for Sphere], it just won’t be on as grand of a canvas [on the road.]  I mean, the Sphere is like a modern marvel.”

Tickets to Love & Fear go on sale to the general public on July 25 at 10 a.m. PT at ZacBrownBand.com. Travel VIP packages, which include a concert ticket and two-night stay at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas are available now at ZacBrownBand.com. All other VIP packages will be on sale July 21 at 10 a.m. PT.

Tony Hawk is addressing fans’ concerns about the soundtrack for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, which arrived last week as a modern-day revival of the skateboarding video game classics.

While the updated compilation delivers reimagined levels, a fresh roster of skaters and new gameplay features, it’s the soundtrack — long celebrated as a cornerstone of the franchise’s cultural impact — that has sparked the most heated reactions.

When Activision unveiled the tracklist back in May, fans were quick to voice disappointment that only 10 original songs from Pro Skater 3 and 4 survived the update. The absence of certain fan-favorite tracks, like Alien Ant Farm’s “Wish,” ignited frustration online, with many arguing the nostalgic music defined the games as much as the skating itself.

In a new interview with the BBC, Hawk defended the decision, explaining that curating the soundtrack was a collaborative process, not solely his call. “These days, just what I think fits and what I’m interested in [makes the soundtrack],” Hawk said, adding that he wasn’t “the only decider” in shaping the final list.

Still, Hawk revealed he successfully pushed for the inclusion of artists he’s personally excited about: “I did manage to throw a couple of bands in that I was stoked on – Fontaines D.C., Idles. I also picked songs by artists that were already in the game, but a different song.” Seven artists from the original soundtracks — including KRS-One, Agent Orange, De La Soul, and Iron Maiden — returned with new tracks to maintain a sense of continuity.

“Not everyone agreed with that decision, but I feel like ‘let’s keep it fresh’ and also ‘here’s help discovering other music,’” Hawk continued. “In the beginning, that’s what people expected of it – once the soundtrack became such a prominent part of the game, people were like ‘okay, what are you going to throw at us now,’ almost like an underground radio show.”

Alien Ant Farm recently weighed in on the exclusion of “Wish,” telling fans they were “disappointed” by its omission after the track’s association with Pro Skater 3. Hawk responded diplomatically, saying: “We’re trying to make room for new acts and new songs as well. Not everything makes the cut. It’s nothing personal, and I appreciate that people have a fondness for that song… so just fire it up on your streaming service if you’re so inclined.”

The Pro Skater series has long been credited for introducing players to underground and alternative music scenes, with soundtracks that often mirrored skate culture’s raw energy. The 2020 reboot of Pro Skater 1+2 debuted at No. 1 on U.K. game charts and brought a mix of legacy and new tracks that largely satisfied longtime fans.

With Pro Skater 3+4, the developers aimed to strike a balance between honoring the series’ legacy and evolving it for a new generation of players. The updated playlist leans heavily into contemporary punk, hip-hop, and hardcore artists, alongside the handful of returning classics.

Whether the new approach will win over skeptical fans remains to be seen, but Hawk remains confident in the game’s spirit: “I’m hoping that discovery is half the fun, and a big reason these soundtracks resonated in the first place. So listen and enjoy the ride.”

Suicidal Tendencies are heading back Down Under later this year for a string of headline dates in Australia and New Zealand, coinciding with their role as special guests on Metallica’s massive M72 world tour.

The announcement comes exactly two years after their last visit to the region and promises fans a series of explosive performances, with the band bringing along a wave of firsts for their return.

The tour will arrive alongside the release of the band’s first new single in seven years, “Adrenaline Addict,” featuring Australian vocalist Nisha Star. Set to drop ahead of the shows, the track marks a long-awaited return to the studio for the California skate-thrash pioneers, whose last album, Still Cyco Punk After All These Years, landed in 2018.

Fans will also get the chance to see Suicidal Tendencies’ revamped lineup in action for the first time. Frontman and founding member Mike Muir is joined by guitarist Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan, longtime shredder Dean Pleasants, bassist Tye Trujillo, son of Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, and former Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg.

This will be the first time the group has performed in Perth and Auckland since 2018, adding extra weight to an already highly anticipated run.

Support across all headline dates comes from Big Noter, the new heavy project from acclaimed Yorta Yorta/Wurundjeri/Wemba-Wemba artist Briggs. Known for his sharp lyricism and cultural commentary in the hip-hop world, Briggs is making a full-circle return to his punk and metal roots. Big Noter’s debut album, produced by Nick DiDia (Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam), is due out later this year.

The tour will also see a unique family connection play out on Australian stages. With Robert Trujillo touring with Metallica, his son Tye holding down bass duties for Suicidal Tendencies, and his wife Chloé performing with her band Blvd of Eyes at Brisbane and Sydney’s Heavyfest, the Trujillos will have all corners of the live music scene covered.

Tickets for the Australian dates go on sale Thursday, July 17 at 10 a.m. local time, with New Zealand sales opening the same day at 12 p.m. local time via the band’s official website.

Suicidal Tendencies 2025 Australia & New Zealand Headline Tour

Australia: Tickets on sale Thursday, July 17 at 10 a.m. local time.
New Zealand: Tickets on sale Thursday, July 17 at 12 p.m. local time via suicidaltendenciesofficial.com.

Oct. 31 – Magnet House, Perth
Nov. 7 – The Forum, Melbourne
Nov. 9 – Pier Bandroom, Frankston
Nov. 11 – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Nov. 14 – The Roundhouse, Sydney
Nov. 18 – The Powerstation, Auckland