YouTube Music Gives Update on $100 Million Black Voices Fund

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMass Appeal has named two key executive hires —two “trailblazing women who will play a pivotal role in elevating and expanding the entertainment company’s presence,” according to the announcement.Jessica Rivera (pictured above, left) will serve as the General Manager of Music, overseeing the creative and day-to-day operations of Mass Appeal’s music division (label and publishing) and contributing across Mass Appeal’s other two divisions in content and creative

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter years of criticism over a lack of female and diverse representation in its membership and the Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy is continuing its efforts to expand its voting body by extending invitations to 2,710 established music professionals “from wide-ranging backgrounds, genres and disciplines,” according to the announcement.It states that the 2021 class of invitees is 48 percent female, 32 percent Black or African American+, 13 percent Hispanic or

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 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 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 EditorA week after some tracks purportedly from Lorde’s third album leaked onto the internet (although it seems very few people have actually heard them?), the singer posted a note on her website Monday, along with a rather attention-grabbing photograph of a derriere, possibly hers, from below.As last week’s rumors predicted, it seems the first single is called “Solar Power.” The remainder of the message says only, “Arriving in 2021… patience is a virtue,” nodding to the

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorH.E.R. and Ingrid Andress will join the star-studded performer lineup for the 2021 CMT Awards while Anthony Mackie, Busy Philipps, Iliza Shlesinger and Michael Strahan have been added as presenters, the network announced Monday (June 7).The two artists will duet with previously announced performers: Fast-rising R&B star H.E.R.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorTo celebrate New York’s apparent reopening, Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning a large-scale performance by multiple acts in Central Park and is working with veteran producer and executive Clive Davis to help organize the talent, according to a report Monday in the New York Times.No acts have been confirmed for the show, which is tentatively set for Aug.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorWith 1989’s “Three Feet High and Rising,” the Long Island rap trio De La Soul created one of the truly groundbreaking albums in hip-hop history, bringing a happy, psychedelic, flower-bedecked vibe — dubbed “the D.A.I.S.Y. Age” — to a genre that had largely been musically and lyrically aggressive and/or self-aggrandizing up to that point.