Universal Music Buys Majority Stake in Afrobeats Label Mavin, Home to Rema’s ‘Calm Down,’ Ayra Starr and More

In January, Universal Orlando shared the first official “look” inside its highly anticipated new theme park, Universal Epic Universe, a development that the company expects to be a game changer.

Colson Smith - better know as PC Craig Tinker in Coronation Street - broke down in tonight's episode of Celebrity Big Brother after he was called 'boring' by Levi Roots. The soap star couldn't hide his emotions during what might seem like a harmless game of Jelly bean roulette but things took a rather sad turn when Levi had to confess who he thought was the most boring housemate. Following Lauren Simon's departure from the Big Brother house, 65 year old Levi said: “If I was going to pick one, it would have been pre yesterday, I would’ve said it would’ve been Colson...” "But it's not because of how he overcame the singing competition, so I'm not going to say that," Levi continued.

If Vladimir Putin was watching the Academy Awards on Sunday night from his dacha on the Black Sea, his mood may have been blackened by the Best Documentary Feature category. As Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast had predicted, the Oscar went to , Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing film about the early days of Russia’s brutal siege of the Ukrainian port city. 

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The standoff between Universal Music Groupand TikTok over royalty payments and AI policies has resulted in a near-complete blackout of all music owned, distributed and published by the company on the platform — the videos are still there, but the music is muted. Yet new songs by UMG artists, including Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello and Niall Horan could be found on TikTok at the time of this article’s publication. How and why is that happening? While reps for UMG and TikTok declined comment, and an explanation of the platform’s logistics and process quickly devolves into a mind-melting blizzard of jargon and abbreviations, here’s a vast oversimplification of a couple of possibilities.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As the vast reorganization of Universal Music Group’s labels continues, as expected, the company’s East Coast operations are uniting under the Republic Corps umbrella. The move reflects the company’s reorganization of its labels under the domains of Republic’s Monte Lipman (East Coast) and Interscope’s John Janick (West Coast).

When Icelandic directors Smari Gunn and Logi Sigursveinsson set out to make The Home Game, they couldn’t have imagined the response this small, local Icelandic documentary would gather on the festival circuit. The film, which follows a group of spirited underdogs as they fight for local soccer glory, is coming off the back of a rapturous reception at the Glasgow Film Festival, where it won the fest’s prestigious Audience Award. It previously screened at the Tromso International Film Festival, DOC NYC and Nordisk Panorama.

“This is a love letter to Black women,” Da’Vine Joy Randolph said backstage at the Academy Awards, having just collected her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Holdovers.

Joyce Manor’s show at a convention in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday (March 8) was shut down by police due to moshing and crowdsurfing.The show was taking place at the Collective Con, an annual pop culture convention, where the California band were playing alongside the punk bands Glazed and Porch Coffin.The California band’s set had originally been due to take place at the Underbelly venue (via Stereogum), but was moved late in the day to the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center.Shortly after they began their set, it is reported that a staff member at the venue was attempting to discourage fans from crowdsurfing, saying from the stage, “No one going up in the air.

Jonathan Taplin Jonathan Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the author of “The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars and Crypto.” He was tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band in 1969. He has written this op-ed at the request of Universal Music Group. On Monday, these pages featured a defense of TikTok that could easily have been ripped from the headlines of the 2000’s.

Viggo Mortensen really puts the word multi-hyphenate to good use for his second directorial effort The Dead Don’t Hurt as he also wrote, co-stars in and composes the music for this distinctive Western film, which played at the Glasgow Film Festival earlier this week after world premiering to critical acclaim at the Toronto Film Festival last year. 

Seven players are set to miss the Premier League title showdown between Liverpool and Manchester City this weekend.

Ari Herstand By now, it’s widely known that Universal Music Group has removed most or all of its catalog from TikTok, as well as apparently every song that includes at least one songwriter affiliated Universal Music Publishing Group. It’s a battle that pits the world’s largest music company against the most influential and powerful platform for promoting music — which for the past five years has been TikTok.

UPDATE: As expected, layoffs commenced today at Universal Music Group, which includes Interscope, Republic, Capitol, Def Jam and Island, as well as catalog division Universal Music Enterprises and UMG corporate. 

Brent Lang Executive Editor Sean Cercone has stepped down as head of Broadway Licensing Global. It’s unclear why he left the company that he acquired in 2019. Broadway Licensing Global has announced who will lead the company on an interim basis: Ted Chapin will serve as interim CEO and Dan Markley will be interim COO.

Naman Ramachandran BBC Studios has bought British broadcaster ITV‘s 50% stake in streamer BritBox International for £255 million ($322 million), the companies revealed on Friday. The streamer was founded in 2017 as a joint venture between BBC Studios, which is the commercial arm of the British broadcaster, and ITV. “The transaction will provide net proceeds including loan repayments and accrued dividends and after tax of around £235 million,” the companies said.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As expected, layoffs began hitting Universal Music Group almost immediately after the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. The moves, which have been signaled by chairman-CEO Lucian Grainge since last fall, were still evolving at the time of this article’s publication, and follow the broad consolidation of the company’s labels under Interscope (West Coast) and Republic (East Coast) groups, under CEOs John Janick and Monte Lipman, respectively.

David Israelite Guest Columnist David Israelite is the president & CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, the trade association representing American music publishers and their songwriting partners. Variety welcomes responsible commentary, please send ideas to [email protected]. Songwriters have always struggled to be treated fairly.

TikTok has confirmed that it has begun to remove Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) songs from its platform.The app has already removed tracks by artists who are signed to the label and will be doing the same with songwriters. The removal of the UMPG tracks comes three days before the UMPG catalogue becomes unlicensed for use on the social media platform.Per Music Business Worldwide, “Any recording of a song currently available on TikTok that has been co-written by a songwriter signed to Universal Music Publishing will also need to come down in the event of UMPG’s license expiring.According to BBC, TikTok has shared that up to 30 per cent of the platform’s “popular songs” could be lost, with some industry estimates revealing that up to 80 per cent of all music on TikTok could be muted.A short list of UMG artists whose music is expected to vanish from the platform is Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Drake, Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Adele, Coldplay, J Balvin, Post Malone and Sophie Ellis-Bextor – whose 2001 track ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ has gone particularly viral through TikTok following the release of Saltburn.Last month, UMG published an open letter announcing its intention to withdraw music from artists signed to the publisher and label from TikTok.In its statement, UMG announced that its licensing agreement with TikTok expired on January 31 and that negotiations to renew the contract have fallen short.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The bruising battle over royalties between Universal Music Group and TikTok entered a new and more severe stage in the early hours of Tuesday as songs published by UMG began to be removed from the platform. The standoff, which began earlier this month, initially saw recordings owned by UMG removed from the platform, but now is extending to a much larger number of songs by including those published by the company.

Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty) is left in critical condition after a car accident in EastEnders spoilers, can she be saved? In a special episode that takes place across five weeks, Whitney and Zack Hudson (James Farrar) go to visit Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer) in Milton Keynes.The pair are met with discontent from two local children, Britney (Lola Campbell) and Taylor. Whitney also tells Bianca about her pregnancy, but asks her to keep it secret from Sonia Fowler (Natalie Cassidy) who is struggling to conceive. A few weeks later, still in Milton Keynes, Whitney and Britney start to form a kinship and the youngster comes over for dinner at Bianca’s house.