Pandora Teams With Linkfire to Help Artists Optimize Their Marketing Efforts
The partnership will focus on providing data to maximize marketing opportunities to artists.
Pandora announced a partnership with smart link aggregator and music marketing platform Linkfire to make music discovery easier for fans and marketing simpler for artists. The partnership makes Pandora the first streaming service to provide advanced attribution data to Linkfire, which will help artists understand the performance of their content in order to create informed promotional campaigns to effectively reach audiences.
"We have always been committed to helping artists find their fans and connect with Pandora's massive listener base," said Pandora's Chief Product Officer Chris Phillips. "Our integration with Linkfire provides the industry with unprecedented ways to understand music streaming consumption and makes direct-to-fan marketing more impactful than ever."
Artists will now have the ability to search Pandora’s catalog and retrieve direct links to their songs, albums and playlists and also access data to see how listeners are interacting with that content, including whether they played, saved or shared the song, album or playlist. The partnership also gives them access to pre-release campaign planning that aggregates private links to content in advance of it going live.
"The paradigm shift from downloads to streaming has often left artists and labels in the dark when measuring the effectiveness of their marketing activities," said Andrea Arcari, chief business development officer at Linkfire. "We’re excited and proud to pioneer this new level of transparency with an innovative company like Pandora. It’s an industry game-changer and an essential component to building strong relationships between artists, labels and music services."
Because Linkfire works to connect artists and fans over multiple devices and platforms, its partnership with Pandora creates more opportunities for record labels, distributors, artists, and managers of all sizes to optimize their campaigns and maximize engagement.
Soundtrack for Stephen Hawking Film 'Theory of Everything' Set for Reissue on Transparent Blue Vinyl
The reissue follows the deaths of Hawking this week & the album's composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in February.
The soundtrack to The Theory of Everything -- the film about the relationship between the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his first wife -- will get a limited-edition vinyl reissue on April 27. The re-release follows the deaths of the film’s composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, on Feb. 9, and Hawking, on Wednesday.
The vinyl specialty label Music on Vinyl will reissue the Grammy Award-nominated soundtrack on 180-gram transparent blue vinyl, and the production run is limited to 1,500 individually numbered copies worldwide. (The Theory of Everythingsoundtrack was first released on transparent clear vinyl in 2015, in a limited run of 1,000 copies.)
The Theory of Everything earned Eddie Redmayne an Academy Award for actor in a leading role, for his portrayal of Hawking. The film was nominated for an additional four Oscars: best picture, actress in a leading role (Felicity Jones as Hawking’s wife, Jane), original score (Jóhannsson) and adapted screenplay.
Two-time Oscar nominee Jóhannsson also garnered an original score Academy Award nomination for Sicario. He additionally earned two Grammy Award nominations for best score soundtrack for visual media (The Theory of Everythingand Arrival).
The Theory of Everything soundtrack has sold 13,000 copies in the U.S. across all formats (vinyl, CD, digital, etc.), according to Nielsen Music, through March 8.
Judas Priest Earns Highest Charting Album Ever on Billboard 200 With 'Firepower'
Rock band Judas Priest debuts at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with Firepower — marking the group’s highest charting album ever. The album surpasses the group’s previous chart high, logged when 2014’s Redeemer of Souls debuted and peaked at No. 6.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new March 24-dated chart (where Judas Priest debuts at No. 5 and Logic’s Bobby Tarantino IIstarts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard's websites on Tuesday, March 20.
Firepower — the act’s 18th studio effort — bows with 49,000 units earned in the week ending March 15, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 48,000 were in traditional album sales — the act's best sales frame since 2005's Angel of Retribution bowed with 54,000 copies sold. Judas Priest's bow was bolstered by sales generated from a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer in association with the band's tour that began on March 13.
Firepower and Redeemer of Souls are the veteran band’s only top 10 efforts, though the act has been charting since 1978 with Stained Class (No. 173). The group collected its first top 40 set in 1980 with British Steel (No. 34) and its first top 20 effort with 1982’s Screaming for Vengeance (No. 17).
The new album was ushered in by the single “Lightning Strike,” which has so far peaked at No. 21 on the Mainstream Rock Songs airplay chart. It’s the band’s highest charting single on the tally since way back in 1982, when their classic hit “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” peaked at No. 4.
Here’s a look at Judas Priest’s history on the Billboard 200 chart:
Title, Peak Position, Peak Date Stained Class, No. 173, April 22, 1978 Hell Bent for Leather, No. 128, April 28, 1979 Unleashed in the East (Live in Japan), No. 70, Nov. 10, 1979 British Steel, No. 34, July 12, 1980 Point of Entry, No. 39, May 23, 1981 Screaming for Vengeance, No. 17, Oct. 30, 1982 Defenders of the Faith, No. 18, Feb. 25, 1984 Turbo, No. 17, April 26, 1986 Live, No. 38, July 11, 1987 Ram It Down, No. 31, June 18, 1988 Painkiller, No. 26, Nov. 3, 1990 Metal Works ’73 - ‘93, No. 155, June 5, 1993 Jugulator, No. 82, Nov. 15, 1997 Demolition, No. 165, Aug. 18, 2001 Angel of Retribution, No. 13, March 19, 2005 Nostradamus, No. 11, July 5, 2008 A Touch of Evil: Live, No. 87, Aug. 1, 2009 Redeemer of Souls, No. 6, July 26, 2014 Firepower, No. 5, March 24, 2017
Music Festivals Around the Globe Pledge to Tackle Gender Inequality
Forty-five international music festivals and conferences, including Midem, A2IM Indie Week and Canada's BreakOut West, have pledged to achieve a 50/50 gender balance across their line-ups by 2022.
The initiative is being led by PRS Foundation's Keychange scheme, which launched last year to with the aim of improving gender equality across the industry. Ambassadors include Garbage singer Shirley Manson, record producer Tony Visconti and Spanish indie-rock band Hinds.
Among the 45 festivals and events that have signed up to the 50/50 programme is by:Larm (Norway), Canadian Music Week (Canada), Eurosonic Noorderslag (Netherlands), BBC Music Introducing Stages (U.K.), Liverpool International Music Festival (England), North By North East (Canada), NYC Winter Jazzfest (USA) and Oslo World (Norway).
Also on board is Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Festival (France), Wide Days (Scotland), Trondheim Calling (Norway), Waves Vienna (Austria), Westway LAB (Portugal), Pop-Kultur (Germany) Katowice JazzArt Festival (Poland) and Kendal Calling (England) and NYC Winter Jazzfest (USA), among others.
They join Keychange's founding festival partners -- Reeperbahn Festival (Germany), BIME (Spain), Iceland Airwaves, Way Out West (Sweden), Musikcentrum Sweden, Tallinn Music Week (Estonia), MUTEK (Canada) and The Great Escape (U.K.) – in vowing to remove the gender gap in music.
"The Keychange network of female artists and industry professionals and the festival partners' idea of establishing a collective pledge will significantly accelerate change. I hope that this will be the start of a more balanced industry which will result in benefits for everyone," said PRS Foundation CEO Vanessa Reed in a statement.
Those sentiments were echoed by Keychange's festival partners, with Alex Schulz from Germany's Reeperbahn Festival admitting its "festival stages aren't as balanced as we would like them to be. Welcoming the initiative, Schulz said that Keychange was "promoting a shift that will ultimately be good for our festivals and good for the industry as a whole."
"Achieving gender equality in the music industry requires the joint engagement of men and women from the entire cultural sector," elaborated Oslo World's Alexandra Archetti Stølen, while By:Larm's Linnéa Svenssonenthused, "actions generate attitude and it starts with talent."
"An initiative like Keychange provides clear goals and measures for festivals who are already committed to presenting audiences with more diverse line-ups," added Emma Zillmann from U.K. promoters From The Fields, who run Kendal Calling, Blue Dot and Off The Record.
"By giving discrimination an ultimatum," Zillmann said, "we're ensuring that equality will eventually be the norm."
Atlantic Records announced today (Feb. 27) that the label is investing in podcasts, with a dedicated podcast production team and a podcast studio in its New York headquarters. Leading the initiative is VP Tom Mullen, who has hosted the acclaimed "Washed Up Emo" podcast for 124 episodes over seven years.
"As I discovered doing my own podcasts, they are an incredibly powerful way of feeding fans’ hunger for intimate knowledge of the artists they love, while also connecting them to new voices," Mullen said. "The birth of Atlantic Records Podcasts has been a labor of love for many of us at the company, and I’m looking forward to working with our incredible artists and my label teammates to create an outstanding series of shows devoted to Atlantic music past, present, and future."
"What'd I Say," the first weekly series of Atlantic Records Podcasts, is premiering today and takes its name from the Ray Charles song released by Atlantic in 1959. The show will feature interviews with such Atlantic artists as Jason Mraz, MILCK, Lil Skies, Trivium and Sweater Beats, among others. The label's other planned series include “Inside the Album,” “Respect: Women of Atlantic” and a series devoted to the rich Atlantic archives.
“Music-making is at the heart of our company, and we already have a state-of-the-art recording studio at the center of our offices. We have a constant stream of artists coming through the building, so the next logical step for us was to create an environment where we could spontaneously capture them telling their stories and talking about their music," said Chairman and CEO Craig Kallman and Chairman and COO Julie Greenwald.
"With our own podcast team and a dedicated podcast studio, we are able to give fans a unique, insider’s view of our artists, our label, and the creative process in action. With Tom’s deep musical knowledge and podcast expertise leading the charge, we are generating exciting audio content under our own roof, marked by unprecedented insight and immediacy.”
Female Composers & Artists Are Gaining Ground In Television
Germaine Franco attends the U.S. Premiere of Disney Pixar's 'Coco'
As television shows with strong female points of view continue to swell, the opportunity for female artists and composers to augment TV storytelling is rising in tandem.
Show runners and music supervisors on this season’s roster -- including Showtime’s SMILF, HBO’s 2 Dope Queens, and upcoming series Killing Eve on BBC America and Vida on Starz -- tell Billboard having a female musical voice was at the top of their minds.
“I like a mix of hearing both female and male voices and so I don’t want the gender of the voice to be the reason why… but you can’t help but have female artists because the story is about women,” says Frankie Shaw, who adapted her short film SMILF into the hit series about a single mom who uses unconventional means to make ends meet. “I naturally go to women because that’s whose point of view we’re in.”
Shaw says she’s gotten half the music cues from WFMU radio show Sophisticated Boom Boom, which almost entirely focuses on female artists from varying locales and decades. Princess Nokia and Nellie McKay are among the “new to me” discoveries she’s incorporated into her show.
2 Dope Queens, the new HBO incarnation of the standup show and podcast from comedians Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, closes with a song by NY-based female rapper Nitty Scott, who was brought to the project by Williams and Robinson.
“She’s an indie artist who’s just absolutely fierce, no bullshit, who fits perfectly with the two principals in the show,” music supervisor Dan Wilcox says. “We were looking at some other more obvious choices… but I always like working with artists who are independent. It’s something that really benefits them, and there can be a little more enthusiasm on behalf of the artist involved.”
While the four Dope specials open with a Shamir song, Wilcox says it was “an important part” of the conversation to involve a female musical voice. “In this case, this might well be one of those things where somebody might hear it and say, ‘Who is this?’” he says. “And the money’s not bad for the artist. She owns her music outright, hasn’t sold off her publishing and is not signed to a label, so it’s a big win for her.”
Composer Germaine Franco “was perfect for the part” of scoring Starz’s Vida, which follows the intertwining of two Mexican-American sisters who are reunited after the death of their mother, music supervisor Brienne Rose tells Billboard.
“First of all, she is a female, which is really important because we have a lot of women involved in the show so having that perspective and voice is just an added unique part of it all,” she says. “And she’s also the only Latina composer in the [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, music branch], which was very special.”
The series also features a slew of female artists, including Jarina De Marco, Maluca Mala, Selena and Magaly Meza. “In traditional Latin music, mariachi music, it’s very male-oriented, but the fun thing is you find a lot of this newer music and the female-fronted artists and bands become this really powerful thing we are able to show through the music,” Rose says.
BBC America’s Killing Eve, which premieres in April, packs female music cues from artists including Anna Karina, Cat’s Eyes and even Brigitte Bardot. “Creatively we thought that the show could really take a vocal on the soundtrack, and it would have been perverse for that vocal to be male when the focus is so female,” says EP Sally Woodward Gentle. “We didn’t rule out having the occasional male voice but in the end we didn’t have any.”
“From the outset, our musical vision for the show included a female voice or voices, and we explored lots of different artists and styles. It was important that the music was reflective of both of our lead characters, who are strong and complex women,” says music supervisor Catherine Grieves.
That exploration also led to the inclusion of recurring music from the band Unloved, fronted by female singer/songwriter Jade Vincent, and whose members David Holmes and Keefus Ciancia scored the series.
Creator Kay Mellor went with a Corinne Bailey Rae reboot of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” for the title track of new British TV series Girlfriends, which also features tracks by Amy Winehouse and Rebecca Ferguson.
The song “relates to the three women and reminds me of times spent with my girlfriends,” Mellor says. “I wanted a modern singer from the north of England whose music I love, to give it a more contemporary feel. Corrine Bailey Rae has a quality to her voice. I think it’s really important on a show with strong female PoV, that the song that opens the drama is sung by a woman.”
Similarly, the theme song for Mum, newly available on BBC Worldwide and ITV streaming service BritBox, is “Cups (You’re Gonna to Miss Me)” by Lulu and the Lampshades and Jean Simone, a revival of the 1931 Carter Family Song “When I’m Gone.”
“I think it would have been odd to have a male voice for Mum,“ creator Stefan Golaszewski says. “It's a show that's centrally about specifically female journeys. It was important to me to represent that in all aspects of the piece.”
Merrill-Williams Audio releases the R.E.A.L. 101.3 turntable system
Merrill-Williams Audio LLC of Memphis, Tennessee is proud to announce the latest version of its celebrated R.E.A.L. turntable, the model 101.3. The R.E.A.L. 101.3 retains the essential elements of the 101 and 101.2 models while adding fundamental improvements.
The most essential element retained in the 101.3 is a thoroughgoing approach to energy management design. The plinth consists of rubber elastomer sandwiched with phenolic (hence Rubber Elastomer Acoustic Laminate). All sources of vibration (motor, platter, bearing, and tonearm) are attached only to the elastomer, and each is isolated from the others in such a way that none is allowed to transmit vibration through the laminate.
Also retained are the 101.2’s microprocessor-controlled motor drive with built-in speed strobe, its energy-rejecting elastomer feet, and its sophisticated record-clamping system, which consists of a center weight (also energy-rejecting) and periphery ring. The design of the R.E.A.L. turntable is the recipient of one of only two U.S. patents granted to a turntable (#8,406,122 B2), and the first since 1958.
The improvements in the model 101.3 consist of changes in the material of the platter and the construction of the center weight and feet, in addition to enhanced cosmetics.
The retail price of the R.E.A.L. 101.3 is $7,995. This price includes the peripheral ring and the newly-designed record clamp.
U.S. distribution for Merrill-Williams is now being handled by E.A.R. U.S.A.
