This week in dance music: An all-star collection of French electronic artists including Jean-Michel Jarre, Breakbot, Busy P and Alan Braxe were announced as performers for the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paralympics Games in Paris; Chase & Status’ Stormzy collab “Backbone” continued its run at the top of the U.K. Official Singles Chart; we spoke with The Blessed Madonna about her forthcoming album and aspiring to be “a little shard of glass in the industry’s foot”; Charli XCX teased a new project; artists including Tokimonsta and Louie Vega offered free music in exchange for participating in democracy; we spoke with producer Clams Casino; Clean Bandit & Zara Larsson’s “Symphony” hit No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50; ADE 2024 expanded its program; and we talked to the CEO of Burning Man, which is happening this week, about the more than 100 other official Burning Man events that happen around the world.

And of course, there’s the music. These are the best new dance projects of the week.

Zedd, Telos

There’s a barrage of different styles and influences on Zedd’s new album, Telos, but on every single one of the 10 tracks, you can hear the great ambition embedded in the project, and also the achievement of its lofty aspirations. The long-awaited follow-up to the producer’s 2015 sophomore album, True Colors — which along with his 2012 debut Clarity set him up as a wunderkind of the EDM era, with a special dexterity in that genre’s pop impulses that delivered a string of hits to the Hot 100 — Telos finds the artist born Anton Zaslavski flexing every one of his musical muscles. The project shows off his classical training and good taste across productions that span classical, jazz, cinematic maximalism, Middle Eastern sounds and electronic party music that nods to the EDM origins of Zaslavski’s career, but evolves his sound into a sophisticated, nuanced (but yes, still danceable) place.

The album features an all-star collection of collaborators, including Bea Miller, who’s on both lead single “Out of Time” and the hooky, punchy “Tangerine Rays”; John Mayer, who adds his singular laidback cool to the jazz fusion influenced “Automatic Yes”; stadium rock stars Muse, who lend operatic grandiosity to the album-closing, spiritual “Epos”; and even Jeff Buckley, who Zaslavski reinterprets with style and grace on his version of the late artist’s 1994 “Dream Brother,” which leans into Radiohead territory without being reductive and hits hard with its string-drenched drops. Altogether, Telos just doesn’t sound like anything else produced recently in the electronic world or, arguably, beyond.

But the artist explains the guiding principles here best, with Zaslavski saying that the Greek word “telos” has multiple meanings, one of them being “accomplishment” or “completion of human art. I’ve always dreamed of creating an album that, 30 years on, I can look back and be incredibly proud of. That will be just as amazing then as it is right now, because it’s not based on trends or sound design that might fall off — it’s based on music, just like the albums that shaped me growing up that I still adore to this day. With Telos, I created something I didn’t think I was capable of — it just took a bit of time to get there.”

Zedd soon to bring the album to a live format with a fall North American tour that includes shows at the L.A. State Historic Park, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

Tycho, Infinite Health

Few producers capture the heady, sun-soaked psychedelia of NorCal as well as Tycho, who again takes us up the coast and into the redwoods with his seventh studio album, Infinite Health. The project is classic Tycho, offering tracks that are clean yet emotive and sophisticated while still getting the blood pumping, simultaneously capturing brightness and melancholy through often hazy, lo-fi IDM that contains thematic multitudes.

“‘Green’ and ‘Devices’ represent the conceptual bookends of the…album,” the artist Scott Hansen writes. “‘Green’ is an elegy to my childhood home, a once-rural town on the outskirts of Sacramento where I spent my youth forging a deep connection with nature. ‘Devices’ represents the struggle to stay connected to nature and our own humanity in the modern world. I wanted to illustrate this tension with a set of sonically contrasting songs.” The album is out via Mom + Pop Records in the U.S and through Ninja Tune in the rest of the world, and the 27-date Infinite Health tour will take Hansen across North America this fall.

Swedish House Mafia & Alicia Keys, “Finally”

Having woven their edit of Kings of Tomorrow classic into their sets for years now, it follows that Swedish House Mafia have now fully revamped the 2001 house anthem, bringing in none other than Alicia Keys for vocals and trading the brightly bumping bassline, hi-hat and warm keyboards of the original for a much bigger and more urgent swirl of strings. The track extends the XXL house vibe of their 2022 album Paradise Again, and nods to that album’s ambition to lean harder into the genre that the trio were so influenced by that they in fact name themselves after it.

Jon Hopkins, part ii – palace/illusion

Following his 2021 album Music For Psychedelic Therapy (the intention of which was stated right there in the title), English maestro Jon Hopkins returns with an album so deep and soothing that it could very well be used for the same purpose. “Designed,” Hopkins says, “to reconnect you to the deepest part of yourself,” Ritual is subtle, deep and often profound, with the project first sparking to life in 2022 when Hopkins was commissioned to work on an immersive experience, Dreammachine, that set the celestial sonic and visual aesthetic for the eight-track Ritual. The album is out now on Domino Records.

Caribou, “Come Find Me”

Other DJs might party harder, but is anyone having more fun that Caribou? The artist brings the playfulness that’s always defined the Canadian artist’s visual aesthetic to the video for his latest, “Come Find Me,” which finds a dancer in a tracksuit and oversized Snaith mask dancing alone in settings that include the bus, a city sidewalk and an open field. (Watch for a cameo from Snaith himself at the end.) The track itself is warm, gently building IDM — in other words, classic Caribou — and comes from the artist’s sixth studio album, Honey, coming Oct. 4 on Merge Records.

Andy C & Becky Hill, “Indestructable”

As drum ‘n’ bass extends its position on the U.K. charts, two of the genre’s key players link for the predictably walloping “Indestructible,” which gets an official release today on Astralwerks but dates back almost ten years, when Andy C first included an early version in his sets. With Hill possessing one of the defining voices of the genre and Andy C being one of its architects, the result is an acutely powerful meeting of the mninds, with Hill’s lyrics pointing to the success of genre itself.

“’How did we end up here, look how far we’ve come,’ say it all,” Andy C says. “It sums up my relationship with DnB, how popular the genre is right now as well as how huge Becky’s career is. It’s just so magical.”

Revlon is suing several former employees over allegations that they “sabotaged” the company’s decades-old fragrance partnership with Britney Spears and took the business to a competitor.

In a case filed Monday (Aug. 26) in Manhattan federal court, attorneys for Revlon and subsidiary Elizabeth Arden claim that four ex-staffers stole trade secrets and breached their contracts when they jumped ship to upstart rival Give Back Beauty and took the Britney account with them.

Though an initial delay in Spears re-signing the 20-year perfume partnership deal was “attributed to Ms. Spears being preoccupied with other matters,” Revlon claims it eventually realized that its own executives had been orchestrating a corporate heist.

“Revlon and Elizabeth Arden were completely unaware that Revlon’s own team was actively sabotaging one of their most valuable licensing relationships,” the company’s lawyers claim.

The case does not name Spears as a defendant nor accuse her of any wrongdoing.

As defendants, the lawsuit names the four employees — Vanessa Kidd, Dominick Romeo, Reid Mulvihill and Ashley Fass — as well as Give Back Beauty itself. None of the defendants immediately returned messages seeking comment on the lawsuit’s allegations.

Then at the peak of her powers, Spears signed a deal with Elizabeth Arden in 2004 to develop branded fragrances and other cosmetics. When she released “Curious” later that year, it quickly became the top selling fragrance of the year and reportedly pulled in more than $100 million in sales.

According to a 2013 report by the Hollywood Reporter, “Curious” had sold more than 500 million bottles over its first decade, and the overall Spears-Arden partnership, featuring many other scents, was pulling in $30 million a year in sales.

According to the new lawsuit, Revlon had historically renewed its partnership with Britney in five-year intervals, and the latest iteration was set to expire at the end of 2024. When negotiations began late last year, the company says it had “every expectation that the relationship would continue.”

But according to the lawsuit, Give Back Beauty had launched a “campaign to obtain the Britney Brands fragrance business,” including contacting the Elizabeth Arden staffers as early as February: “This was obviously a carefully planned and executed grab by GBB for the Revlon fragrance business.”

Though Revlon says it struck a tentative deal with Britney’s team, the agreement had not been finalized in May, when staffers who had worked on the deal began “decamping to GBB.” Less than a month later, the lawsuit says, Give Back Beauty inked its own deal with Britney.

“The speed with which Britney Brands signed its deal with GBB was unprecedented for the Britney Brands organization and could not have been accomplished without the benefit of the Revlon employees’ deep knowledge of the misappropriated proprietary information about the relationship and GBB’s unlawful utilization of that information,” Revlon’s lawyers write.

The lawsuit takes particular aim at Kidd, a senior vice president for global marketing of fragrances who had spent years working on the Britney account and was allegedly the first to jump ship.

“At the same time that defendant Kidd was negotiating with Britney Brands on Revlon’s behalf, she had interviewed and accepted a job offer with GBB,” the company’s lawyers write. “Kidd effectively acted as a double-agent, assisting GBB in taking the Britney Brands business away from plaintiffs while she was charged with cementing an extension for Elizabeth Arden and purported to be doing so.”

The case claims that before she left, Kidd accessed more than 250 electronic files that contained proprietary information, including about the Britney partnership. Revlon says the “logical inference” is that she was “arming herself and her new employer” with info that could be used to “rapidly recreate the supply and distribution chains Elizabeth Arden had spent 20 years developing.”

In technical terms, the lawsuit accuses the ex-staffers and Give Back Beauty of theft of trade secrets and so-called tortious interference with their business and contracts. It also accuses the individual employees of breach of their contracts and breach of their duty of loyalty to Revlon.

In a statement to Billboard, Revlon stressed that the lawsuit did not accuse Spears or her team of wrongdoing and said “we value our 20-year partnership and wish Britney all the best.” 

“As a company, we will always take steps to protect our intellectual property,” Revlon said in the statement. “We have filed this complaint because it became clear to us that GBB and the four former employees named in the suit unlawfully used Revlon’s proprietary information and trade secrets — and we are confident in the merits of our case.”

Six months after earning its first No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, Daughtry now has its second, as “Pieces” lifts to the top of the Sept. 7-dated tally.

“Pieces” reigns following the one-week rule of “Artificial” in February. The latter became Daughtry’s first No. 1 following 17 years of Mainstream Rock Airplay appearances (dating to 2007’s “It’s Not Over”), the longest stretch between a first entry and first leader since Jeff Beck set the record of 37 years between “People Get Ready” in 1985 and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Patient Number 9,” on which he’s featured, in 2022.

“Pieces” previously became the Chris Daughtry-led band’s sixth top 10 on Mainstream Rock Airplay and personal-best third in a row, following “Artificial” and the No. 5-peaking “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart),” a Journey cover featuring Lzzy Hale, in 2023.

Concurrently, “Pieces” rises 13-12 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.2 million audience impressions, up 5%, in the week ending Aug. 29, according to Luminate. It ties “Artificial” for the band’s best rank since the survey began in 2009.

On the most recently published multimetric Hot Hard Rock Songs chart (dated Aug. 31, reflecting data Aug. 16-22), “Pieces” placed at No. 22, making the list for the first time since April. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 138,000 official U.S. streams.

“Pieces” is the second single from Shock to the System, Daughtry’s seventh studio album, due Sept. 27.

All charts dated Sept. 7 will update on Billboard.com Wednesday, Sept. 4 a day later than usual due to the Labor Day holiday Sept. 2.

Organizers for the California festival Desert Daze have called off this year’s event. In an announcement organizers stated, “It is no longer possible to execute the weekend as planned.” 

The event, which has remained independent since launching in 2012, was unable to move forward with the 2024 edition due to “rising production costs and the current volatile festival market,” according to the announcement. 

“Desert Daze is more than a festival or business venture to us,” said Desert Daze co-founder Phil Pirrone in a release. “The community that we’ve cultivated together means so much to us and is the reason we will work to find a way to keep this beautiful thing going for many years to come.” 

The 2024 edition of Desert Daze was set to take place Oct. 10-13 in Lake Perris, Calif. Headliners for this year’s event were to include Jack White, Cigarettes After Sex, Alex G, The Mars Volta, Thundercat, Liz Phair and De La Soul.  

“With each year, we do our best to serve the Desert Daze community,” added Pirrone. “We are always learning and working diligently to improve the experience, and we tried everything to find a way forward this year. While we hit pause for now, we will be working in the background to deliver another special experience for all of us to share in the future. We thank you for your support.” 

All pass holders for the 2024 festival will be refunded and will be contacted directly via their point of purchase. While the main event will not take place this year, side shows under the Desert Daze Presents banner will go forward as scheduled.  

For additional information, head here.

TikTok creates viral hits. YouTube is unparalleled in its ubiquity. But music subscription services pay the bills.  

More than three out of every five dollars earned by U.S. record labels in the first half of 2024 — 60.2% to be exact — came from premium subscription services, according to the RIAA’s mid-year report. That marks the first time subscriptions exceeded a 60% share of total revenue, topping the 59.5% share in the first half of 2023 and the 59.3% mark for full-year 2023.  

Ad-supported on-demand streaming, on the other hand, has lost momentum, growing just 2.5%, half the rate of paid subscriptions. The slowdown has been dramatic: Three years ago, advertising revenue rebounded from a pandemic slowdown by surging 54.1% in the first half of 2021 and another 17.7% in the first half of 2022. Its share of total industry revenue — 10.3% — has slipped, too, from 10.5.%, 11.3% and 10.5% in the three preceding first-half periods.  

Other ad-supported segments also lag paid subscriptions’ growth rate. SoundExchange distributions, which include some ad-supported streaming as well as royalties paid by satellite radio subscribers, rose just 3.8% to $517 million. Other ad-supported streaming, which covers services not operating under statutory licenses, fell 1.5% to $155 million.  

The situation around advertising is worse than the numbers might suggest. Ad-supported, on-demand streaming isn’t confined to services such as Spotify’s free tier and YouTube. A new generation of platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, are grouped into this category, too. Without these emerging platforms, ad-supported streaming would look even worse off.  

For an industry that must constantly seek growth, advertising is too small to play the role. In the most recent quarter, Spotify got 12% of its revenue from advertising — both music and podcasts — compared to 88% from subscriptions. Even if advertising becomes a bigger part of the business, CEO Daniel Ek said during the company’s April 23 earnings call, it won’t be a major factor in helping the company reach 20% revenue growth. “Anything we can do on our subscription side will obviously materially outperform any improvement on the ad side,” said Ek.  

Free music has played an important role in building today’s music ecosystem, though. In 2009, author Chris Anderson followed The Long Tail with a lesser-known book titled Free that promoted the notion that not charging for digital goods can be a wise strategy. While The Long Tail was a smash success, Free never rose to the same level of renown. But Anderson’s idea proved to have merit. The same year Free was published, Spotify launched a “freemium” music streaming service in the United Kingdom—the world’s third-largest music market—that utilized a free, ad-supported tier intended to drive listeners to the paid version. Ad-supported royalties were miniscule, but it worked as planned. Free listening turned out to be an effective tool to attract customers that would, at some point in the future, become some of Spotify’s 246 million subscribers. 

The growth potential for the subscription business lays outside the U.S. Globally, subscription streaming accounted for 48.9% of recorded music revenue in 2023, according to the IFPI, more than 11 percentage points below the share in the U.S. (The RIAA reports retail value in the U.S. while the IFPI reports wholesale values for each market.) Worldwide subscription penetration is only 15%, Warner Music Group CFO Bryan Castellani noted during an Aug. 7 earnings call, “and there’s a lot of headroom to go from 800 million subscriptions today to well over a billion over the next five years.”  

The future may be a combination of free and subscription. In May, Sony Music Entertainment CEO Rob Stringer called for streaming platforms to charge users of ad-supported tiers a “modest fee” to make free streaming “more than a marketing funnel” to attract customers. Stringer also called on short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to step up their payments to rights owners. "More and more, these are primary consumption sources, and they need to be valued accordingly," he said.

With subscriptions now exceeding 60% of U.S. revenue and advertising losing share, free platforms will likely come under more pressure to deliver more royalties. Until that happens, though, expect the industry to increasingly put its hopes for revenue growth in subscriptions.