Warner Music Group, the world’s third largest music rights company, has announced a “legacy unrecouped advances program”, which will in effect scrap any unrecouped debt for artists who signed to the label before the year 2000. The program is set to be put into effect on July 1. MBW assesses this news as "huge".
Black Country, New Road frontman and co-founder Isaac Wood is leaving the band, sharing this as a reason: “Together we have been writing songs and then performing them, which at times has been an incredible doing, but more now everything happens that I am feeling not so great and it means from now I won’t be a member of the group anymore". Black Country, New Road are canceling their upcoming North American tour. The band, however, is not breaking up and is due to release their new album 'Ants From Up There' this Friday, February 4.
Nils Lofgren, a member of Neil Young & Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, has pulled his music from Spotify in protest of the platform’s spread of COVID disinformation, following Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. “Music is our planet’s sacred weapon, uniting and healing billions of souls every day. Pick up your sword and start swinging” - Lofgren wrote.
Joni Mitchell has announced on her blog that she intended to remove “all my music” from Spotify, MBW reports. Her reason are “irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives”. Mitchell added: “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue”. Neil Young pulled his albums from Spotify due to his belief that the podcaster Joe Rogan has been spreading untruths about Covid vaccinations on the service.
Two days before his death, Jimi Hendrix played with Eric Burdon, the former Animals frontman, who had recently teamed up with Latin-influenced rock band War. When the group began a residency at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, they were playing some of their first concerts together. Burdon invited Hendrix to sit in, and he showed up on the evening of Sept. 16, 1970 for the second set, and played moving, dramatic phrases all across the ensemble’s covers of blues and folk standards 'Mother Earth' and 'Tobacco Road', rousing the crowd to cheer and holler at the stage, Rolling Stone reports. Recording of guitarist jamming with War, remastered by filmmaker Oliver Murray and his team, features in upcoming doc chronicling London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s.
Rihanna has donated $15 million to the Climate Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Movement for Black Lives, and 15 other organizations that work to restore climate justice in the United States and Rihanna’s home – the Caribbean. “Climate disasters, which are growing in frequency and intensity, do not impact all communities equally, with communities of color and island nations facing the brunt of climate change,” Rihanna says in a statement announcing her support.
"The tension between dreams and reality, spirit and society, permeate every layer of Baghdadi’s impressionistic film. Personal narrative and genres like road and war documentaries interweave as Mayassi, Bechara, and their bandmates struggle to find their definition of success in a society that was not built to appreciate their work. But make no mistake: This is not another stereotypical work that casts Arab women as meek victims of repression. It’s a rallying cry (well, scream) for self-determination and rebellion" - The Daily Beast presents Rita Baghdadi’s new documentary 'Sirens', about the Middle East’s only all-female thrash metal band Slaves to Sirens.
Investment company HarbourView Equity Partners has acquired the publishing catalog of latin music superstar Luis Fonsi, the artist known globally for his megahit 'Despacito' with Daddy Yankee, MBW reports. Launched just four months ago by former Tempo Music CEO Sherrese Clarke Soares, HarbourView is focused on investment opportunities in the media and entertainment space. The Financial Times reports that “industry executives estimated that Fonsi’s catalog could fetch as much as $100 million”.
Neil Young has posted an open letter to his website directing his management and record label to remove all of his music from Spotify, which he accused of “spreading fake information about vaccines—potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them”. He wrote “they can have [Joe] Rogan or Young. Not both”, referencing the Spotify podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, which doctors have decried for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines, Rolling Stone reports.
Pitchfork shares a lovely introductory text about part 1 of 'Jeen-Yuhs', a new, 3-part Kanye West documentary, 21 years in the making: "Much of what Donda West says in 'Act 1 (Vision)' feels like ancestral wisdom, words from a loving parent that serve to humble and uplift her child. One passage in particular stands out, and Coodie even repeats it in his own narration of the film: 'You can stay on the ground and be in the air at the same time', she says, a paradox that West made true until the day Donda died".
