Music Biz News

Independent music distribution service UnitedMasters is adding advances and instant royalty payments to its artists, the company tells Rolling Stone, bringing in two significant financial tools for music creators to get money quicker to help fund their projects. UnitedMasters has partnered up with music financial tech companies beatBread to bring …

Portishead are commercially releasing their 2016 cover of ABBA‘s “SOS” for the first time, exclusively through SoundCloud‘s fan-powered royalties, the two groups tell Rolling Stone. The influential trip-hop act originally recorded their version of the Swedish pop hit for a film soundtrack; until now, it could only be found on …

The University of Southern California (USC)’s Annenberg Institute, which conducts annual research on gender and race in the music business, released a new report on Tuesday. It details the gender and race makeup of executive-level managers across the music business — and unsurprisingly, the Institute’s findings suggest significant room for …

2 Chainz is standing on the deck of an 82-foot yacht off the coast of Miami, beating the shit out of something. It’s a futuristic-looking heavy bag one might expect to see in the gym of an alien spaceship. The stunt, filmed last month, appears in new content for Liteboxer …

Mike Myers and Dana Carvey may be rock heroes in the Wayne’s World universe, but they’re not the only party-starters to nab key roles in Super Bowl commercials this year. In the concert-less pandemic era, many artists are eager to strike brand deals — and several of them scored big …

All across the U.S., independent concert venues are revamping their marquees to include fun facts about artists that have played there in the past: Lady Gaga at Tampa’s Ritz Ybor, Childish Gambino at Portland’s Aladdin. The concept may sound simple — but it took a national deal with Spotify to …

Chinese music giant Tencent Music Entertainment (TME) is now an investor in fast-growing virtual concert startup Wave, the company announced early Thursday — a move that sees Tencent taking minority equity in the company as well as establishing a partnership to bring Wave’s animated shows to all of Tencent’s music …

“We’re making it easy for your fans to tune in wherever you are and wherever they are,” Spotify told artists in a blog post on Tuesday morning. The streaming service announced that artists can now list virtual events on their Spotify profiles, in an attempt to help mitigate the effects …

Nothing has come close to “The Box.” Roddy Ricch‘s squeaky, sticky surprise hit dominated the first half of 2020, topping the list of the biggest songs in the U.S. from January through June by a hefty margin. After it reached Number One on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs Chart …

Popeye’s — yes, the fried chicken company — is raising some eyebrows in the music industry this week. The restaurant chain announced a new national campaign on Monday, May 4th encouraging musicians to compete in a contest in which they perform the company’s famous “Love That Chicken” jingle using the …