UPDATE (June 10): AMC Theatres announced that the Arena One screenings originally scheduled for June have been postponed to later this year.

“Week after week in 2026, the domestic box office performance has exceeded or met expectations,” said a statement from AMC Theatres sent to Billboard. “With a robust lineup of films and strong advance ticket sales in the weeks ahead, AMC is making some programming adjustments during the month of June.

“As part of those adjustments, the previously announced Arena One at AMC Girls Night Live concert series featuring Maren Morris, Paris Hilton, Kim Petras, and Bebe Rexha will move to later in 2026. Tickets purchased for the originally scheduled events have been automatically refunded.

“AMC is very excited about its partnership with Arena One, and we look forward to announcing updated dates and additional artists in the weeks and months ahead.”

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Your favorite performer is coming to a movie cinema near you.  

Bebe Rexha, Paris Hilton, Maren Morris and Kim Petras are among the first wave of artists participating in new, interactive concert experience that will beam the show into hundreds of theaters across the United States.

Arena One, the new live entertainment company, and AMC Theatres, the giant theatrical exhibitor, join forces for Arena One at AMC, a real-time, interactive concert format that will be pumped into 300 AMC locations in 89 markets from June.

The concerts are an upgrade from the cinecast experience that found traction with some a-list artists and their fans in the late 2000s, when a slew of live concerts and exclusive events were fed into participating cinemas.

Through this new concept, announced this week, the artist will perform on Arena One’s purpose-built stage, while “seeing and responding to fans at AMC locations through innovative interactive technology,” reads a statement from organizers.

The advantages are obvious. For the artist, the initiative enables them to reach more fans, in more places, without hitting the road. And for those fans who can’t physical get to see their hero, due to cost, distance or other reasons, they now have a virtual front-row seat.

“The next chapter of live shows isn’t about proximity to big venues, it’s about creating visceral, intimate, affordable live connection between artists and fans no matter where they are,” explains Rohit Kapoor, founder and chief creative officer of Arena One. “Arena One gives artists a new cinema-native canvas to create live performances, while amplifying the raw energy and shared fandom that makes live shows unforgettable.”

First up, Bebe Rexha will perform an Arena One at AMC concert June 17, followed by Paris Hilton (June 18), Kim Petras (June 19) and Maren Morris (June 20).

Ticketholders will soak up an atmosphere that’s “designed to feel immediate and electric, featuring powerful sound, massive screens,” comfortable seats, and more, reads a statement.

“We consider this to be a major announcement,” explains Adam Aron, chairman and CEO of AMC Entertainment, and an “innovative step forward” for the business.

Additional artists and dates will be announced in the coming weeks, with ticket prices varying by market.

“We built a cinematic stage optimized to translate seamlessly to cinemas, but artists are defining what it becomes,” adds Peter Hamilton, CEO of Arena One. “They’re not adapting tours; they’re building something new. That’s when a medium sparks reinvention.”

Showtimes are available on AMCTheatres.com, the AMC Mobile App, and at arenaonelive.com/shows.

When Mouse On Mars were preparing to welcome Lee “Scratch” Perry to their Berlin studio in December of 2019, the occasion came with parameters.

“We were told like, ‘Three hours a day is the maximum Lee can do,’” says the duo’s Jan St. Werner, “and take care of his health, and no drugs or alcohol.”

The longstanding electronic act — St. Werner and Andi Toma — were prepared to abide by these outlines. Perry, then 83 years old, was not. “[The first day] he worked from 10 in the morning until two or three in the morning, and he was super happy about it,” says St. Werner. “Then he was like, ‘When do we start tomorrow,’ and we were like, ‘Whenever you want?’ and he said to pick him up at 10 a.m. He was just constantly going… The vibe after was like, ‘What did you do to Lee? He’s so happy,’ and we did exactly the opposite of what we were supposed to do.”

Mouse On Mars ultimately spent four long and happy days in the studio with the dub icon, who lived up to his reputation as a far-out musical genius. “I thought he was going to live for another 10 or 20 years, because he was very energetic, super concentrated and he didn’t seem to be old,” says St. Werner. But as it will for all of us, death caught up with Perry on August 29, 2021, when the artist died at the age of 85 in his native Jamaica.

The men of Mouse on Mars, who’ve released 12 studio albums since 1994, had a lot of unfinished Perry music on their hands, and — having thought they’d get together with him again to complete it — weren’t sure what to do. “We didn’t know if we wanted to finish without him,” says St. Werner. “When Lee passed away, we were like, ‘We’re so glad we got to meet him and share this beautiful time.’ That already was a huge gift, so we were kind of like, ‘Maybe that’s it.”

But it would not go down like that, with the duo ultimately finishing and releasing the music seven years after it was recorded as Spatial, No Problem. Heady, stylish and deep the eight-track collaborative album from Mouse On Mars and Lee “Scratch” Perry was released last week on Domino Records.

The most forceful cajoling to make it happen came from Mouse on Mars’ friend and frequent collaborator Louis Chude-Sokei, who over the years kept on them about finishing the project. “Louis was like, ‘Guys, you cannot sit on this material,’ recalls St. Werner. “He heard a few of the sketches and kept bothering us, like “You have to get your s–t together.”

While the duo reasonably had reservations about finishing the work without input from Perry, Chude-Sokei emphasized they had an obligation and responsibility to Lee, to his fans and to music history at large. “He was like ‘It’s not just about you or whoever thinks they have claims on this [music] or ideas about what this session was supposed to be,’” says St. Werner. “This just has to happen, because it’s precious.”

He was right. As Chude-Sokei’s liner notes to the album explains, after Perry’s passing, “a deluge of recordings appeared claiming to be the ‘last’ or ‘final’ project of the Jamaican icon. These came from musicians and producers from an incredible range of genres — trip hop, dub, ambient, rock, reggae. This range represented Perry’s hunger for new sounds and ideas. However, his last official album project took him to Berlin, Germany where he landed on the doorstop of electronic pioneers Mouse on Mars. He was looking for something that remained unclear. The only thing clear was that it should not be reggae.” 

As such, Spatial, No Problem. is the final transmission of a career that began in the 1960s in Jamaica, where Lee first released music with The Upsetters, then under his own name, over the years working with and helping expand the sounds of artists including Bob Marley and King Tubby while pioneering the practice of sampling and creating the dub genre, innovations that would inform the sound and trajectory of electronic music. The way Mouse On Mars came to see it, their time with him represented a special chapter of Lee’s art, not only because it came so close to the end, but for how it functions as a confluence of styles, ideas and musical traditions.

“The material is great, and Lee loved the stuff he had recorded, but besides that, this is a particular chapter in his history and in what you could call Black Technopoetics or Afrofuturism,” says St. Werner. “It was a also moment where we were not just Mouse On Mars; we were also representing a maybe more Western or Central European idea of improvised or free music. At the same time, it was this whole history of electro-acoustic and electronic music and all this stuff coming together so casually.”

Lee’s legendary status preceded him before he arrived in Berlin, and when Mars On Mars friends and associates heard Lee would be around (arriving to town from Switzerland, where he then lived with his wife Mireille) people just started showing up. “It was like a community, because people were telling friends who were telling friends like, ‘Lee Scratch Perry is coming if you want to come by and maybe contribute something.’”

As such, the workspace got so cramped with singers, harpists, brass players, drummers and other hopeful contributors that at one point. St. Werner was in the recording booth looking out through the glass and wondering who everyone was. This freewheeling vibe suited the freewheeling Perry, who seemed to be enjoying this looseness and the possibilities therein.

“Lee was basically walking through rooms in a kind of dream state,” St. Werner continues, “sometimes sitting there listening, sometimes firing up the situation, sometimes just moving along, asking for a pen or writing something down, putting a sticker somewhere very intentionally.” Despite the untraditional nature of the sessions, the resulting recordings were rich, interesting, ready. Says St. Werner: “Everything was first take, as if the planets were working for us.”

Amalgamating dub, free jazz, electronic elements and a melting pot of other sounds, Spatial, No Problem. is, quite appropriately, a sort of retrospective of Lee’s life. Each song tells a story, with “Fire Dali” referencing the famous 1979 destruction of his Black Ark Studios in Kingston, Jamaica (with Lee often claiming that he burned down the space himself due to the negative energy that had settled there). The crackling of fire is heard of the end of the track, before it fades to nature sounds. In the eight-minute closer “State of Emergency,” Lee recounts stories of Bob Marley and other deceased reggae artists over the sounds of a New Orleans-style funeral jazz band.

“It was like he was talking about his past,” says Toma. “Then right in the end he also said, ‘This is the end, and he was laughing.”

Having performed their sacred obligation to finish the project, the pair now think of it as, St. Werner says, “a meeting of timelines, histories, genres, styles and technologies. It’s tape and digital, electronic acoustic instruments and recording techniques, and then AI.” To wit, when the duo asked Perry’s widow if it would be okay to use AI to render elements of his voice, she told them, St. Werner recalls, to “‘Go for it. Lee would have loved this, he was super into that kind of stuff.’”

As an explorer of music, art, philosophy and the nature of time itself, Perry’s work across mediums melded sounds and styles, bending things and transforming them into something different while infusing logic both scientific and spiritual. Spatial, No Problem. manages to capture that wizardry, presenting Perry’s work while functioning as a retrospective and celebration of his life.

“This record kind of predicts like, what could it be if all the knowledge you have at hand could just merge and fertilize and create something again?” says St. Werner. “It’s like you’re on a spaceship and all the nations of the world try to find other forms of life and engage in dialog, and it’s like a time capsule that travels backwards as much as it travels forward. I think that’s what that record is.”

On Tuesday (June 9), Billboard honored this year’s Indie Power Players during an event held at the Cutting Room in midtown Manhattan, celebrating many of the independent music industry’s top artists and music executives.

Billboard co-chief content officers Jason Lipshutz and Leila Cobo kicked off the evening, highlighting how indie music’s market sector has continued to expand over recent years.

“Many of the world’s biggest artists are signed to indie labels,” Cobo said. “Some of them are here in the house. And, more importantly, what you do is really fueling creativity and musicianship at a very essential and existential time for music.”

Zena White, COO of Partisan Records, accepted the award for Executive of the Year, which was presented to her by Femi Koleoso, the drummer and leader of British jazz group Ezra Collective. The group has had two top 10 hits on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart with 2019’s You Can’t Steal My Joy and 2024’s Dance No Ones Watching. Partisan is also the label home to Geese, Cigarettes After Sex, Blondshell and Interpol, among many others.

“Your belief and support is allowing us to scale and genuinely compete with established players with much bigger pockets than us,” White said in her acceptance speech. “Art is not a luxury. It’s necessary for us to connect with and understand one another, as well as ourselves. It can be a balm, an escape and in some cases, even a lifesaver.”

Read the full recap of Billboard’s Indie Power Players event here.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

Musical travels tend to take you far.

Whether you’re touring with a band, taking business trips to close a record label deal or booking an up-and-coming act for a venue halfway across the country, you’re going to need a place to rest, recoup and lay low. Hilton just so happens to have music industry-friendly properties in cities where genres were born, from jazz and hip-hop to country. We’ll be highlighting some of our favorites that our weary readers can stay at while out on the road.

At each Hilton property mentioned, guests can accumulate points along with perks via the company’s free-to-join Honors Program. New members can join now to earn 3,000 BonusPoints on their first three stays.

Hilton Nashville Downtown

Book a room blocks away from where country music began at the Hilton Nashville Downtown. Located in the heart of the city, this tuneful stay is perfect for tourists and music industry players alike since it sits just across from Bridgestone Arena, which has hosted the likes of Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Bon Jovi and Metallica and the iconic Country Music Hall of Fame, which opened in 1967. Just a block away, you’ll also find Broadway’s honky-tonks and the Music City Center.

According to WSMV-TV, Nashville has the highest concentration of musicians and music businesses in the nation, “with industry activity up to 30 times greater than the national average.” The city is a hub for music industry dealings. After long days spent dealing with business on calls and talking with artists, you’ll have access to a slew of amenities like yummy on-site and in-room dining, a tidy fitness center and a helpful and friendly concierge. If work never sleeps, the hotel also features an executive lounge and meeting rooms, perfect for taking calls and working in peace.

Room features include large flat-screen TVs with streaming capabilities, a dedicated workspace, a coffee maker, tea service, blackout curtains and a mini-refrigerator, among other things. Hilton takes the number two spot of premier hospitality companies globally, according to Fortune on their World’s Best Workplaces list from 2024. Just another reason to book with Hilton.

Visit the Hilton Nashville’s website for more info on booking your stay.

Hilton Chicago

Hilton Chicago is located on Michigan Avenue, which is home to a slew of historical audio tours, guided walk-throughs and classical performances. If you have a free day, you can pop by the Chicago Symphony Center to watch the world-renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On the same avenue, you can visit Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation for a guided tour of the former home of Chess Records, founded in 1950. Music activities aside, the views from the hotel are undeniable, overlooking the freshwater of Lake Michigan.

Not to mention, Chicago is the place to be for music business dealings. The city has smaller labels and niche venues. According to a report released by the Chicago Independent Venue League or CIVL, “Independent live music venues in Chicago generate $2.8 billion in annual economic output, support nearly 17,000 jobs, and deliver $184.9 million in tax revenue,” a major win for the little guys.

This property features over 1,544 rooms and suites with amenities similar to those of Hilton’s Nashville location, like on-site and in-room dining, access to meeting rooms for work and a fitness center. There’s also a spacious indoor pool for those looking to take a dip after a long day. Going above and beyond for the comfort of their guests, this hotel is pet-friendly and also offers cribs to those traveling with infants. Room features include blackout curtains, in-room tablets for dining orders, concierge and more, 55-inch HDTVs and ergonomic desks for getting work done, among other amenities.

Visit the Hilton Chicago’s website for more info on booking your stay.

Hilton New Orleans Riverside

Located alongside the Mississippi River, the Hilton New Orleans Riverside property is yet another musical stay just steps from the French Quarter. If you’re seeking out live music, Frenchmen Street, a little way off the Quarter in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, is a favorite among locals for local jazz, blues, funk and brass. Cash Money Records was founded in 1991 in New Orleans. At one point, No Limit Records also called the city its home. Today, you’ll find independent labels working out of the city, boasting a small but mighty presence when compared to hubs like Los Angeles and Nashville.

Amenities are similar across all three properties, with key differences here and there. This New Orleans location features a HealthClub with access to an indoor tennis court, Pilates, pickleball, squash, TRX, spin and a full weight room. This location also features a FedEx Business Center that can come in handy for those working in their room and need access to printers or copy machines. Room features include modern amenities like a fridge, flat-screen TVs with cable and streaming capabilities, among a slew of other helpful amenities.

Visit the Hilton New Orleans Riverside website for more info on booking your stay.

More on Hilton Honors Diamond Reserve

The best way to enjoy your stay at any one of these properties is with Hilton’s Honors Membership, a free-to-join program giving guests access to perks galore. For example, members can access their room with digital keys from their smartphone via the Hilton Honors app. They can also select their room before check-in. Learn more about Hilton Honors here.

The hospitality company just launched a Diamond Reserve tier as part of its Hilton Honors program. Those eligible for the premium loyalty tier must have spent 80 nights or 40 stays at a Hilton property and have $18,000 annual eligible spending with Hilton to qualify.

Once you qualify, you’ll have access to perks like lockable suite upgrades at booking, guaranteed 4 p.m. late checkout, priority upgrades and a 120% points bonus. These are all unique offerings that lower-tier members don’t have access to. Tiers are earned through nights, stays, or eligible annual spend. Learn more about Hilton’s Diamond Reserve tier here.

JI BLUE’s “Keshiki” soars to No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, dated June 10.

JI BLUE is a special unit formed by soccer-loving members drawn from boy bands JO1 and INI. The track serves as the official theme song for the Japan national soccer team campaign Saiko no Keshiki wo 2026. The CD version sold 384,166 copies in its first week to hit No. 1 for sales, while the song also tops radio airplay and lands at No. 18 for downloads.

Arashi’s “Five” rises 7-2, with downloads surging 354% week-over-week, streaming up 223%, and video views up 233%. The group concluded its activities with the final night of its last tour at Tokyo Dome on May 31, and the resulting wave of fan engagement pushed the quintet to a record 24 simultaneous chart entries — the most by any act in Japan Hot 100 history.

Bowing at No. 3 is Lienel’s “Melo Collection,” the debut single from the six-member EBiDAN-affiliated group that made its major-label debut on June 3. The track launched with 241,973 copies to hit No. 2 for sales, while placing No. 42 for radio airplay. Boku ga Mitakatta Aozora’s “FUNKY SUMMER” follows at No. 4, moving 90,035 copies to land at No. 4 for sales and No. 4 for radio. Tsubaki Factory’s “FireWorks” rounds out the top five at No. 5, with 117,077 copies sold for No. 3 on sales.

The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.

See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from June 1 to 7, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English X account.