Florida’s unemployment agency announced Monday that it would stop jobless Floridians from receiving an additional $300 in weekly benefits next month. The Department of Economic Opportunity announced the state would … Click to Continue »
PHILADELPHIA — An Indiana man accused of stalking and raping at least six women in Philadelphia may have traversed the Eastern Seaboard, targeting victims in as many as eight states, … Click to Continue »
Sony Music has promoted Melissa Thomas to executive vp, international marketing, U.S. repertoire and Monica Cornia to senior vp of sales, Commercial Music Group, the company announced today.
Thomas was most recently senior vp, international marketing, U.S. repertoire, during which she served as co-head of the department. Notably, her teams have worked on such blockbuster campaigns as Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and the rollout of Camila Cabello’s sophomore album Romance in 2019 and Harry Styles’ Fine Line last year. She has also led global campaigns for U.S.-signed artists including DJ Khaled, Travis Scott, AC/DC, The Kid Laroi, Rosalía and Giveon.
Thomas will continue reporting to Sony Music Group chairman Rob Stringer. Along with Cornia, she was named a Billboard International Power Player earlier this year.
“Melissa knows how to harness the global power of our Company to help break our U.S. artists around the world,” said Stringer in a statement. “Her teams, in conjunction with our U.S. Record Labels, have created unique marketing campaigns that resonate with audiences and push our artists to success. I’m so happy that Melissa will be leading our U.S. Repertoire’s international marketing team for the future.”
Thomas added, “Music has no borders anymore. Our audiences are global from the beginning and hits can break from anywhere. I love bringing our U.S. artists to as many audiences as we can around the globe and I’m looking forward to the entire team continuing our unique marketing campaigns to shine a light on the creative talent coming from Sony Music.”
Thomas kicked off her longtime stint with Sony Music in 2005 after being hired at Sony Music UK, where she worked in international marketing for eight years. Prior to that, she served in roles at Universal Motown Records and Universal Music Canada.
Cornia, who will oversee all U.S. sales strategies for the Sony Music catalog, previously served as co-head of the international marketing department for U.S. repertoire for three years. In that role, she spearheaded campaigns for Foo Fighters, Alicia Keys, Khalid, Tate McRae, P!NK and more. She recently helped drive Doja Cat’s “Say So” to chart wins in a number of international markets.
Cornia started her music industry career at Sanctuary Group, where she worked for two years before joining RCA Music Group’s international department in 2005. She left the Sony fold to join Vector Management as Kesha’s day-to-day manager between 2011 and 2013, before returning to the company to serve as vp of international marketing for RCA Records from 2014 to 2018.
“I’m extremely proud and fortunate to work for a company that supports its employees exploring new areas of focus during their careers,” said Cornia in a statement. “I look forward to stretching my expertise into our sales and catalog businesses. I also can’t wait to develop new and innovative campaigns with our group, and help to further expand the fanbase of Sony Music’s amazing artists.”
Darren Stupak, executive vp and general manager, sales at Sony Music added, “From the very start of Monica’s career at Sony Music, she has always embodied our artist-first approach, showing fantastic insight, expertise and a strong track record in bringing our U.S. artists to new audiences. I am excited to see how Monica will lead our sales team through our Commercial Music Group.”
Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (Geffen) could produce a sweet chart double in the U.K.
The teenage Californian artist and actor has the U.K.’s best-selling single and album at the midweek point, the OCC reports.
Following its release last Friday (May 21), Rodrigo’s debut Sour flies to No. 1 on the Official Albums Chart Update, opening-up a lead of 7,500 chart sales ahead of its closest rival.
Sour is the most-streamed album of the week so far as its third single, “Good 4 U,” rises to No. 1 on the Official Singles Chart Update.
Some way behind at No. 2 at the midweek albums survey is Gary Numan’s 22nd studio effort Intruder (BMG), which is on track to give the veteran synth-pop artist his seventh Top 5.
Intruder, so far, is the biggest physical release of the cycle.
Meanwhile, Twenty One Pilots are coming in to land their third U.K. Top 10 with Scaled And Icy (Atlantic/Fueled By Ramen), new at No. 3, following the American alternative rock artists’ performance Sunday (May 23) at the Billboard Music Awards.
Another act who’s enjoying a post-BBMAs boost is Pink, whose All I Know So far: Setlist (RCA), the companion set to her streaming concert film, bows at No. 4. It’s the most downloaded album of the week.
Pink, the Icon Award winner and a performer at the BBMAs, also sees a spike for her 2010 career retrospective Greatest Hits… So Far!!! (LaFace), currently vaulting 68-39.
Completing the Top 5 is shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine and their classic 1991 album Loveless. The LP drops in at No. 5 thanks to a catalog reissue on CD and vinyl via Domino Recordings, while the Irish outfit’s 1988 debut Isn’t Anything impacts at No. 8 and 2013’s MBV is at No. 10.
My Bloody Valentine’s catalog was recently made available on streaming platforms for the first time.
Another ‘90s favorite from the British Isles set for an overdue return to the Official U.K. Albums Chart is Gruff Rhys, of Welsh psychedelic rock act Super Furry Animals. Rhys’ solo LP Seeking New Gods (Rough Trade) is at No. 7 on the chart blast.
The Official U.K. Singles and Albums Charts are published late Friday, local time.
Elliot Page is ready for the summer and broke out “trans bb’s first swim trunks” on Monday (May 24) to cool off before the warmer weather starts rolling in.
The 34-year-old actor took to Instagram to show off his new six-pack and swim trunks in a poolside picture that he tagged “#transjoy” and “#transisbeautiful.” Miley Cyrus commented, “Hot,” along with a heart emoji, while Page’s Flatliners co-star Nina Dobrev wrote, “You look amazing,” before adding a second comment: “And most of all happy.”
The Juno and Umbrella Academy star announced Dec. 1 that he identifies as transgender. In a letter posted both to Instagram and Twitter, Page noted that he goes by the pronouns “he” and “they” and that he was publicly changing his name to Elliot. “I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life,” he wrote in the post. “I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self.”
Tegan and Sara, Mark Hoppus, Anna Kendrick, Olivia Munn and more stars voiced their support for Page at the time of his announcement.
The Billboard Music Awards broadcast on Sunday night, for which there was an in-person, masked audience gathered outside at L.A. Live, was packed with high-energy and celebratory performances. But one in particular left viewers tilting their heads wondering, “How?”
The Weeknd’s off-site performances throughout the past year and change have, in fact, become something of a spectacle. He performed atop the Edge — the highest sky deck in the Western Hemisphere — for his 2020 MTV VMAs set, and sauntered through a frenzy of fireworks for his 2020 American Music Awards gig. But his BBMAs performance was perhaps his riskiest yet, as he performed amidst a fleet of vintage cars and semi-trucks whizzing by.
Director Alex Lill and writer Charlie Morse recall coming up with the idea for “car choreography,” says Morse, before anything else. Morse soon after storyboarded their ideas (seen below) to show the larger team their vision. “From those drawings came a lot of realizations about all the different shapes you could do with cars, and I was doing a lot of them from the top down just to showcase the arrangements, and that’s when we realized that a lot of these play well from an aerial shot, which you see in the final big pullout” that they filmed using a drone.
“One of the things we were always inspired by was those old 1950s synchronized swimmers,” says Lill. “So it was kind of recontextualizing that. We weren’t trying to do a Fast & Furious type thing, it was very much about synchronicity and elegance, and it was really interesting working with all the stunt drivers who were not used to that.” Lill and Morse worked closely with stunt coordinator Charles Grisham (Jackass, Twighlight, The Dark Knight Rises), who sourced a 21-person stunt team that rehearsed for two eight-hour days before The Weeknd’s performance.
But before rehearsals could even start, producer Brendan Garrett had an important — and difficult — task ahead: find 20 identical cars in red and white. “He went to every major-picture car place and everyone was like, ‘Good luck, that’s never going to happen,’” says Lill. “So [he] had to go source every car individually online that was for sale and find 20 of them in 4-5 days. And of course they’re vintage cars that were used, so they’re breaking down like flies.” As a result, there was a Nascar mechanic team on site, which also had to make sure each car had the same breaks so the stunts would be coordinated without any margin of error.
And while every driver had a walkie-talkie on hand to communicate while rehearsing and filming, as Lill says, “everyone had to very much have it like the back of their hand in terms of formations, how many seconds, how much distance they have to travel… because, you know, it’s a big parking lot, but we were also hitting the fence a lot of the time almost. That was definitely the most stressful part, being able to just nail a thing within a minute-and-a-half perfectly.”
He says after each rehearsal the cars started to go faster and faster, and by the day before they filmed, Lill even asked about moving the cars and trucks — which were then going 25 miles-per-hour — closer to The Weekend. “I had a conversation with him afterwards like, ‘Could we make this a little more dangerous, so it will look cooler?’’ The Weeknd didn’t hesitate. (Originally he was going to open the show walking in front of the cars, but Morse recalls thinking, “this doesn’t feel exhilarating enough” once they got on the lot and decided to place him in one of the vehicles instead).
Lill and Morse have been working with The Weeknd for over a year now, and while many of their collaborations have been pre-recorded given the pandemic, they also point out despite performing next to everything from fireworks to car engines, he’s always delivered live vocals. “That’s a testament to him,” says Morse.
Another reason the pair loves working with the superstar? “He’ll bring people [in] who he trusts,” says Lill, “and once he trusts you, he’ll let us go crazy with it.”
“There was a lot of trust with those cars going by,” adds Morse. “He didn’t seem nervous at all, which really weirded us out, because these cars were just barreling by him and he was calm, kept his composure, walked slow and just didn’t look back. It was kind of amazing.”
Independent venues are still awaiting federal grants approved five months ago to help their struggling businesses, and even after funds were supposed to start rolling out last week they haven’t arrived yet.
The Small Business Administration — which is facilitating the Shuttered Venue Operators Grants — said on May 10 that they “expected” to start awarding funds to venues, promoters, talent agencies and other live entertainment businesses last week. Now that timeline has been pushed back again.
“The SBA is committed to quickly and efficiently delivering this pandemic relief to help our theatres, music venues, and more get the help they need,” said the SBA in a statement provided to Billboard. “While there continues to be some fine-tuning of technical components of the program, we expect SVOG Priority 1 (90% revenue loss) awards to tentatively begin [the week of May 24], kicking off a 14-day priority period. We will then move on to begin processing Priority 2 awards.”
In a call with SVOG stakeholders on Monday (May 24), the SBA stated that it intend to distribute the first round of awards by the end of May. SVOG awards will come from the $16 billion in federal funding signed into law on Dec. 27 through the second stimulus package; venues, promoters, talent agencies and other cultural institutions are eligible to receive up to $10 million based on their 2020 revenue loss. The grant program was built from scratch by the SBA, an administration that had never solely distributed funds to for-profit entities.
“No doubt there have been significant hurdles in this program. We remain frustrated. It’s been a trying task to ask NITO membership to be patient and attempt to remain calm. A very long five months have come and gone since long-awaited business-saving legislation passed at the end of December 2020,” says National Independent Talent Organization vp Nadia Prescher. “Technical difficulties have only added to the stressful uncertainty that SVOG applicants are feeling. However, those assigned to the SVOG at the SBA have made promises that award notices will begin by the end of May. On the call today, the SBA again restated their commitment to this deadline and we are attempting to remain hopeful.”
Independent venues have endured more than one setback when it comes to obtaining the federal funding the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and others have been fighting for since July 2020. The SBA originally attempted to open applications for the grants on April 8, but the online portal suffered technical difficulties. On April 26, more than two weeks after the failed start, venues were finally able to apply.
“The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was signed into law five months ago. It’s been one month since applications were submitted, yet not a single application has been approved nor a single dollar of this emergency relief has been granted to businesses that have been completely without revenue for more than 14 months,” says NIVA board member Audrey Fix Schaefer. “Venues are desperate for this relief as eviction notices are coming at a faster pace. And those trying to reopen are desperate because they cannot rehire employees or put deposits on bands without this money. These small businesses are going under while $16 billion is waiting for them. The delay in delivering funding is causing the exact opposite effect of the intended bill to save venues.”
If funding goes out by the end of May as the SBA has stated, the first 14 days of awards will go to Priority 1 applicants who lost 90% or more of their revenue from April to December 2020. Days 14-28 of awarding grants will go to Priority 2 businesses who lost 70% or more of their revenue from April to December 2020. After the first 28 days, entities that lost 25% or more of their revenue in the same time period will begin to receive the aid. At this rate, those businesses may not receive funds until July.
As of last week, just over 12,200 SVOG applications had been submitted, according to the SBA. Out of that number, more than 9,250 are live music businesses.
Sunday’s Florida Department of Health’s daily COVID-19 dashboard report showed 2,069 new cases, 11 resident deaths and only 13 total deaths, as cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue sliding down. The … Click to Continue »
A man and child were found dead inside a Fort Lauderdale apartment Friday night, according to police. Fort Lauderdale police investigators launched a death probe at 11:35 p.m. Friday after … Click to Continue »
One person was killed in a drive-by shooting Sunday night in Brownsville, according to Miami-Dade police. Bullets were fired in the area of Northwest 61st Street and Northwest 31st Avenue. … Click to Continue »
