Kiss fans will have to wait a little longer to see the band’s first avatar performance.

On Friday (Dec. 22), the legendary rockers — who played their final concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden earlier in the month — shared a teaser clip through social media revealing the date of their digitized characters.

“50 years is a long time, and what the future holds is in the making,” Kiss captioned the clip on X (formerly Twitter).

The 25-second teaser includes previously seen footage of Kiss’ digital avatars and concludes with the message, “2027 A Show Is Coming.”

During their the last concert of their End of the Road farewell tour on Dec. 2, Kiss made a surprise announcement that they will continue on as digitized versions of themselves going forward.

After the concert, the quartet — comprising co-founders founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons as well as guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer — shared a two-minute video on YouTube teasing their next chapter.

“The future is so exciting,” Simmons says amid behind-the-scenes snippets of the band wearing motion capture suits to develop their high-tech avatars. Stanley adds, “We can live on eternally.”

Kiss’ avatars were created by George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, in partnership with Sweden’s Pophouse Entertainment Group, according to the Associated Press. The companies recently collaborated on the ABBA Voyage show in London, a virtual concert performed by the Swedish pop group.

“Kiss could have a concert in three cities in the same night across three different continents. That’s what you could do with this,” Pophouse CEO told the AP.

In a roundtable interview, Stanley noted that Kiss “deserves to live on because the band is bigger than we are,” adding, “It’s exciting for us to go the next step and see Kiss immortalized.”

Simmons pointed out that the forthcoming digital band will be able accomplish things the original members couldn’t dream of doing.

“We can be forever young and forever iconic by taking us to places we’ve never dreamed of before,” the bassist said. “The technology is going to make Paul jump higher than he’s ever done before.”

See Kiss’ announcement on X below.

50 years is a long time, and what the future holds is in the making. pic.twitter.com/3vvo5JNExf

— KISS (@kiss) December 22, 2023

Josh Groban shocked the theater community when he and his Sweeney Todd co-star Annaleigh Ashford announced that they will be playing their final shows on Jan. 14, 2024, with Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster set to replace the pair. While Groban expressed gratitude for getting to be in the show in his departure announcement, the star provided additional context as to why he left in a new interview with Billboard News.

“I think that we feel whether we stayed in it another year, whether we left tomorrow, I think Annaleigh and I feel like we did what we came to do,” Groban explained to Billboard‘s Rebecca Milzoff. “We wanted to get it off the ground in a way that we were really proud of, to get a response that [Stephen] Sondheim would have been really excited by and proud of, we wanted to bring our essence to the role and do something to it that we personally would be really proud of. And then it comes down to, how long do you stay fresh in that and how long do you feel like you have something really vital in your tank to give it.”

Their revival of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, to use its full title, received eight Tony nominations, including best revival of a musical and best actor and actress in a musical for Groban and Ashford. The cast album from the show is nominated for a Grammy for best musical theater album. Final-round voting is currently underway. The awards will be presented on Feb. 4.

Elsewhere during Groban’s interview, he spoke about his link to David Foster, who mentored him throughout the process of recording his 2001 self-titled debut album, and revealed that the experience gave him the tools necessary to soar on his sophomore follow-up, Closer. Groban reflected on the album hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and being surprised because it felt “a little more expressive” than his debut.

“I remember it didn’t open at No. 1. I remember being surprised [when] I got the call that it had gone No. 1 when that’s usually not the case. Usually, you have your big opening week, at least that’s the way the business is now, so that was a really special feeling.”

Closer entered the Billboard 200 at No. 4 in November 2003 and finally reached No. 1 in its ninth week in January 2004. “You Raise Me Up,” a Foster-produced track from the album, became Groban’s first hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and brought him his first Grammy nod (best male pop vocal performance).

“That was the first album I started to write on,” Groban recalls. “I felt like that was the first album that I started to explore more eclectic taste and took more risks and dipped my toes into waters that felt a little more self-expressive.”

He continued, “Your first album you’re just so careful, you got a lot of chefs in the kitchen. When you got someone like David Foster, you’ve got Gordon Ramsey in your kitchen — in a good way. So that album doing what it did really made me realize that my fans are in it for the long run. That album going to No. 1 made me realize, ‘Oh we’re gonna have a journey together.’ … They were open to other styles. They were open to me being me.”

Watch Groban’s full interview with Billboard News in the video above.

BMG is getting out of the live music business. The German music company agreed to sell its stakes in two live music companies, Undercover and Karo, to the minority shareholders, the company announced Friday (Dec. 22).

The move comes less than a month after the company said it would focus on its core recorded music and publishing businesses and announced a new organizational structure. “Fifteen years after the emergence of streaming, music is going through another tectonic change,” new CEO Thomas Coesfeld, who replaced Hartwig Masuch as CEO in July, said at the time. “It is vital we now reengineer our business to make the most of that opportunity.

In an interview with Billboard in October, Coesfeld talked about adopting a more streamlined business model. “I’m truly convinced we can only be effective if we are not focusing too much on ourselves — not building too much resources internally — but instead focusing on the value creation and service delivery for the artists and songwriters.”

A few years ago, BMG wanted to provide more than recorded music and publishing services to artists. The company made its first foray into live music in 2020 by acquiring a majority stake in concert promoter Undercover. The deal was “the logical extension of BMG’s plan to integrate all the services an artist could need under one roof,” BMG executive vp of repertoire & marketing Continental Europe Dominique Casimir explained at the time. The following year, BMG acquired a majority stake in Karo, best known for its Taubertal-Festival.

In a statement, Michael Schacke, founder/owner of Undercover, called the new deal “the best solution for Undercover and our artists. Undercover will remain strong and independent in the future. We wish BMG and its team all the best and every success in focusing on its core business.”

“It has been a pleasure working with Michael Schacke and Dominique Casimir and we are pleased yet again to be pursuing an independent course as we near the 30th year of existence of Taubertal in 2026,” added Volker Hirsch, founder/owner of Karo.

“Michael Schacke (Undercover) and Volker Hirsch (Karo) are seasoned entrepreneurs who have built enviable reputations in the live music business,” said Dominique Casimir, who was promoted to chief content officer at BMG last year. “We are pleased to have agreed terms which allow them to pursue an independent future and we wish them and their teams the best for the future.”

Zac Efron can’t seem to shake his High School Musical past, but he doesn’t seem to mind. During the actor’s Thursday (Dec. 21) appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, he and his co-stars from The Iron Claw reflected on a special tribute they did for Efron while filming.

Stanley Simons, who plays Mike Von Erich (Efron’s on-screen brother) in the movie, told Clarkson, “Yeah, I think it would be a disservice to anyone form my generation if I didn’t do something. I was playing music, I was fretting about a scene and the night before I learned the chords to “Breaking Free,” and I gave a little rendition in front of Zac.”

Efron took the tribute in good stride, telling the talk show host that the surprise “was well received.”

When Clarkson inquired if the 36-year-old ever gets tired of people mentioning his High School Musical days, he explained that the fondness people have for him and the movies “means the world.” He added, “It’s so fun. The other day in Hollywood [I got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and] there were so many Wildcat jerseys out. The fans are still out there in full force. It’s fun though because they used to be really young, and now there’s 40 year-old dudes. It’s awesome. I love it.”

Efron also shouted out the Wildcats during his Walk of Fame acceptance speech and revealed that the songs from the HSM movies are on his mind frequently. “I still think about it every day — I sing the songs in the shower,” he said while accepting his star, noting that “Breaking Free” and “We’re All in This Together” are his favorites.

Watch Efron and Simons talk about the “Breaking Free” High School Musical tribute in the video above.