H.E.R., Ingrid Andress Join CMT Music Awards Lineup (EXCLUSIVE)

Michael Strahan‘s ex-wife Jean Muggli has been arrested.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe United States is the only major country in the world where terrestrial radio pays no royalties to performers or recorded-music copyright owners of the songs they play, a situation that is largely due to the powerful radio lobby’s influence in Congress. While the more than 8,300 AM and FM stations across the country pay royalties to songwriters, they have never paid performers or copyright holders, although streaming services do.On Thursday, Reps.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThree and a half years after Elton John announced his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road: The Final Tour,” after an unavoidable pandemic delay, he has finally unveiled the closing stadium dates of that tour.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorGrammy-nominated singer, songwriter and actor Janelle Monáe has signed an exclusive, worldwide administration agreement with Sony Music Publishing, the company announced on Tuesday.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorA year on from the “Blackout Tuesday,” during which the music industry paused to take a look at its racial policies and plan to reform them, how is it doing? According to both last week’s USC-Annenberg “Inclusion in the Music Business” study and a “report card” released over the weekend by the Black Music Action Coalition — a 200-plus-member organization formed around this time last year — it’s doing fair-to-badly.BMAC’s 37-page report takes a look at dozens of

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorA2IM’s Libera Awards are the Grammys of independent music, the one time in the entire year that a huge percentage of that community gets (relatively) dressed up and gathers for a night of celebrating the indie sector’s wins and its continued vital importance to the global music world and economy.For obvious reasons, for the past two years the awards have been held virtually, but that didn’t stop the community from gathering around their laptops again to celebrate as

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBack in the day, one of the great perks of being a music writer was “Free CDs and Tees” (t-shirts).

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorRepublic Records, Sony Music Publishing and Spotify were among the big winners at last week’s Clio Music Awards.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorVeteran artist-producer DJ David Guetta has entered into a career- agreement with Warner Music that sees the company acquiring his recorded-music catalog from the last two decades, as well as striking a new deal for future recordings.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter months of rumors, music agents Matt Galle, Mike Marquis and Rachel Pestik have joined CAA’s Music Touring department, the company announced Wednesday.Galle most recently served as a member of Paradigm Talent Agency’s Music Executive Leadership Group.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) will present an overview of its inaugural Industry Action Report Card on Friday morning June 18th as part of the National Museum of African American Music’s State of Black Music Summit.With journalist and industry exec Naima Cochrane, BMAC drafted its first-of-its-kind report to “track and measure how individual companies in the music industry delivered on their pledges to work toward justice, equality and change in the wake

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe new report on “Inclusion in the Music Business: Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across Executives, Artists & Talent Teams” from the USC-Annenberg Inclusion Initiative makes no bones about how far the music industry has to go in its stated goals of gender and racial equality — even after most major music companies loudly trumpeted their commitments to advancing its efforts in those directions in the wake of Blackout Tuesday and the Black Lives Matter protests last year.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBlack and underrepresented artists may be heavily represented on the charts, but the music companies that release, promote and tour those artists have a long way to go when it comes to diversity in their executive ranks, according to “Inclusion in the Music Business: Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across Executives, Artists & Talent Teams,” an authoritative new study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBiz 3 PR veteran Dana Meyerson has launched an imprint called Slashie through Mom + Pop Music.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorPrimary Wave Music, the fast-rising independent music company, has entered into a worldwide distribution agreement with Virgin Music Label & Artist Services, an arm of Capitol Music Group in the U.S.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSony Music Entertainment has announced “an expansion of the comprehensive support we provide to thousands of our artists around the world” via a new initiative called Artists Forward, “prioritizing transparency with creators in all aspects of their development,” the company stated in a letter to artists.The most striking element of the campaign is the “Legacy Unrecouped Balance Program,” whereby the company “will no longer apply existing unrecouped balances to

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBruce Springsteen is getting back to work this summer, playing a big role in Broadway’s return by bringing back his $108-million-grossing “Springsteen on Broadway” for the entire summer, but that isn’t all he has in the works, as he revealed in a call on Sirius XM’s E Street Radio.“I am looking forward to being in front of an audience,” he told hosts Dave Marsh and Jim Rotolo. “It’s going to be quite a thing.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt is remarkable how few people know that the same person produced Bob Dylan’s three defining early albums (as well as “Like a Rolling Stone”), the first two Velvet Underground albums, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s debut “Freak Out” and pivotal music by jazz legends Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor (including tracks with John Coltrane), among many others.It was Tom Wilson, a visionary music producer who died in 1978 at the age of 47.He was even the man who in

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorLast June, YouTube launched a $100 million #YouTubeBlack Voices Fund in an effort to help equip Black musicians with the resources and support to enable them to “thrive and invest in work that amplifies the voices, perspectives and stories of all Black artists around the world,” according to the announcement.The company has provided periodic updates on aspects of the program, and on Wednesday, unveiled a report on the progress its music efforts have made over the

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorNew York’s City Parks Foundation returns to live, in-person performances this summer with the announcement of the shows planned for the 2021 season of Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage, New York City’s largest free outdoor performing arts festival. SummerStage shows will be returning to Rumsey Playfield in Central Park, Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, and The Coney Island Amphitheater.