LOS ANGELES — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Wednesday on social media that migrants had been transported from Texas to Los Angeles. “The first bus of migrants from Texas has … Click to Continue »
BTS is turning the page with Beyond The Story, a special book to mark the K-pop superstars’ 10th anniversary.
Beyond The Story : 10-Year Record Of BTS is slated for release July 9, to coincide with “ARMY day,” and unwraps around interviews with BTS, according to BigHit Music.
The book “demonstrates their effort, hardship, and growth starting from the band’s first gathering to becoming the 21st century pop icons,” reads a statement. “The changes and progress in the K-pop industry are also discussed in it.”
To build the buzz, BigHit Music shares an official trailer which breaks down the band’s journey in seven chapters: “Seoul”, “Why We Exist”, “Love, Hate, Army”, “Inside Out”, “A Flight That Never Lands”, “The World Of BTS” and “We Are”.
Watch to the end and you’ll spot seven glowing lines, symbolizing the seven-strong band — RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook.
The book will be published in 23 languages including Korean, English, with pre-orders now open.
Beyond The Story gives fans something tangible to remember the lads by, news of which arrives during a burst of activity.
To celebrate their milestone 10th anniversary, the Bangtan Boys gifted ARMY a live performance music video on Tuesday, June 13 for their latest single “Take Two,” which dropped last week. “Take Two” serves as BTS’ second musical release of the year; on May 12, the lads released “The Planet,” a single for the Bastions soundtrack.
Also, the BTS 10th Anniversary FESTA will kick off on Saturday, June 17 in Seoul, South Korea. The event, which will be open to the public and held on Yeouido, is set to turn the entire country purple — from Dongdaemun Design Plaza to the Lotte World Tower.
Since exploding out the blocks a decade ago, BTS has emerged as one of the most popular groups of their generation. Along the way, they’ve smashed records and earned six No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including the Grammy-nominated singles “Dynamite” and “Butter.” On the Billboard 200, the group has scored six No. 1 titles in just five years.
Watch the Beyond The Story trailer below.
Jessie Ware performed at WeHo Pride and chatted with Billboard News about her relationship with her fans, upcoming That! Feels Good! Tour, friendship with Kylie Minogue, love for “Padam Padam’,” performing at her first Pride and more!
Tetris Kelly:
Hanging out with Jessie Ware at WeHo Pride! So, your album is out. It’s so exciting. Tell me how the fan reaction has been to everything.
Jessie Ware:
Overwhelming. I mean, I thought it was amazing the “What’s Your Pleasure?” reaction but this has been, I don’t know. I feel like my fans and I have this understanding and I made it, of course, not for myself, but for them, and hopefully I delivered in their thrills. It’s just gonna be a party from here on … you know what I mean?
Tetris Kelly:
We love a party. And what is so special about that connection between you? What do you think makes it legitimate?
Jessie Ware:
I think they’ve given me the confidence to kind of push myself and to take more risks and be more myself … and push things creatively. Like, they’re my sounding board, rather than like music execs, you know what I mean? I started out as it being a thing you defer to these suits. But you know, I’ve grown a fan base, I’ve done five records now. People have stayed with me. Some people have joined to come along for the ride.
Tetris Kelly:
Sometimes, honestly, I say fans are better than the executives because if you go on Twitter, everybody’s probably telling you how your music should sound.
Jessie Ware:
I know what the next single should be because my fans have told me what it should be. So that’s fine.
Watch the full video above to see what she says about Kylie Minogue, touring and more!
According to Memphis news reports, former Three 6 Mafia rapper Gangsta Boo‘s cause of death was an accidental overdose.
The rapper (born Lola Mitchell) — who was found dead at age 43 on New Year’s Day at her home in Memphis — overdosed on fentanyl, cocaine and ethanol (alcohol), according to an autopsy report seen by NBC’s Action News 5 and Fox 13 on Wednesday (June 14).
Boo was born in the Whitehaven section of Memphis on Aug. 7, 1979. She joined local hip-hop collective Three 6 Mafia — founded by DJ Paul, Juicy J and Lord Infamous — at age 15 in 1994. That same year, she recorded “Cheefa Da Reefa,” her first solo song with the group. The pioneering Southern female rapper later unveiled her most popular hit “Where Dem Dollas At?,” from her 1998 debut album Enquiring Minds.
After the news of her death on Jan. 1, DJ Paul and Juicy J both shared tributes to their former bandmate on Instagram. DJ Paul shared a captionless photo of the late rapper, while Juicy J posted a snapshot of the pair accompanied by a broken-heart emoji. “Man we was jus together three weeks ago,” Lil Jon commented on DJ Paul’s post. “Rest well queen.”
Drake, Missy Elliott and more hip-hop luminaries also shared their condolences, and Boo’s recent collaborator, fellow Memphis MC GloRilla, felt compelled to share the messages the veteran rapper sent her when she was coming up. “I normally don’t post screenshots but the fact that she reached out to me before anybody else had a clue who I was … she always supported me & the girls way back before we blew up,” Glo wrote via Instagram on Jan. 3. “A REAL LEGEND there will never be another Gangsta Boo.”
Guy Oseary, Madonna‘s manager and an early investor in Uber and Airbnb, says he is working to find the next big artificial intelligence companies that will fairly compensate creators.
Oseary and partner Ashton Kutcher raised nearly $250 million for a growth fund to invest in artificial intelligence companies through their venture capital firm Sound Ventures in May. Speaking during a fireside chat at the National Music Publishers Association’s annual meeting, Oseary said that he understands the fears from the songwriter community that AI companies could use their work without fairly compensating them but says AI companies are still exploring business models and could develop methods that are advantageous for rights holders.
“I am on the side of talent — you can’t just type in a name and pop out a song,” said Oseary. “It’s early days. We are not losing any sales right now and we are not making any sales right now. It’s early days, and we need to figure out how to be friends.”
Sound Ventures’s AI Fund’s first investments include stakes in OpenAI — the lab behind ChatGPT that was co-founded by Elon Musk — as well as the generative AI startup, Anthropic and Stability AI, which created the AI-powered Stable Diffusion image generator.
Oseary said they are investing in companies that “plug into” ubiquitous technology companies like Google and Apple. While he has yet to meet an AI company that addresses how to compensate rights holders, Oseary said he is optimistic that companies will get there.
“Out of the last 20 companies that I’ve met with in AI, 20 out of 20 are showing me things that have nothing to do with talent,” Oseary says. “No one has really solved that problem [of paying the creators on which the technology relies].”
Oseary spoke during a slot the NMPA had previously said it would be hosting a chat with Warner Music Group chief executive Robert Kyncl.
German television personality Jan Böhmermann appears to have single-handedly knocked more than 1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) from the market value of CTS Eventim after he criticized the concert promoter and ticketing company on his late-night talk show ZDF Magazin Royale on German public television on Friday.
According to various media reports, Böhmermann, in a 23-minute news-styled feature, bemoaned the company’s dominant market position in promotion and ticketing and a lack of transparency about the fees added to tickets. “Eventim is practically the German event industry,” the satirist said (as translated to English) He singled out the company’s re-sale platform, fanSale, which allows ticket holders to sell tickets at a premium to their face values. “Why fight the black market when you can earn money yourself?” he asked.
Böhmermann also said that CTS Eventim received 15 million euros ($16 million) of COVID-19 economic aid from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. In total, the company received 272 million euros ($295 million) in economic aid from Germany and elsewhere from 2020 to 2022, according to the company’s financial statements. He noted that a director, Juliane Schulenberg, is the daughter of CTS Eventim founder and chairman Klaus-Peter Schulenberg. She has been a member of the CTS Eventim’s supervisory board since May 2016, according to the company’s website.
“Unfortunately, many facts are twisted and not the truth,” a CTS Eventim spokesperson told Billboard in an email. While Böhmermann suggested Juliane Schulenberg influenced COVID-19 aid received by CTS Eventim, the company’s spokesperson says she “had no professional position in this regard and therefore no influence.”
ZDF Magazin Royale made a significant impact when the market opened after the weekend. Shares of CTS Eventim fell 8.9% on Monday and another 7.5% on Tuesday, bringing the two-day decline to 15.7% — a 1.07 billion euros ($1.15 billion) decline in market capitalization. After a 0.8% gain on Wednesday, shares of CTS Eventim were up 1.3% year to date.
CTS Eventim is the largest concert promotion and ticketing company in Europe and had revenues of 1.9 billion euros ($2 billion) and sold 69 million tickets online in 2022. Its portfolio includes EDM promoter ALDA Germany; the Rock am Ring and Rock im Park festivals; numerous ticketing brands; EMC Presents, a partnership with U.S. tour promoter and producer Michael Cohl; and Eventim Live Asia, a partnership with former Live Nation executive Jason Miller based in Singapore.
U.S. audiences will recall a similar segment about the country’s dominant ticketing company, Ticketmaster, by comedian John Oliver on his HBO show Last Week Tonight in 2022. Oliver touched on the same themes brought up by Böhmermann: market dominance, rising ticket fees and ownership of a secondary market that profits from in-demand tickets’ re-sale values. Oliver had a negligible effect, however, as the share price of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, dropped just 0.5% the day after the episode aired. A chance of government intervention has given Live Nation investors pause on numerous occasions, however, such as politicians’ criticism of Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift pre-sale in November and a 2018 New York Times article about Live Nation’s alleged anticompetitive business practices.
Just as Live Nation and Ticketmaster are under constant scrutiny in the U.S., CTS Eventim routinely falls into the crosshairs of consumer advocates and government regulators. In February, more than 1,500 consumers in Germany had joined a model declaratory judgment against CTS Eventim filed by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. The consumer advocacy group alleges the company did not refund ticketing fees for cancelled events. In 2018, CTS Eventim’s share price fell as much as 10% after Germany’s Federal Supreme Court ruled the fees charged for printing out tickets ordered online were illegal. Also in 2018, the German Federal Cartel Office banned CTS Eventim from having exclusive ticketing agreements with promoters and box offices. In 2017, the Cartel Office blocked CTS Eventim from acquiring promoter and booking agency Four Artists, which a German court upheld the following year.
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