MUSIC NEWS
MUSIC NEWS
One Direction Gets ''Emotional'' in Final U.S. Concert Before Hiatus: "This Show Is Kind of an Important One.'' And just like that, One Direction is one step closer to their extended hiatus. Loyal fans of the boy band may have a couple more months until Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan officially begin their break. But at Friday night's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball, the band performed in what turned out to be their final show in the states before this much buzzed about pause in the group. "To be honest with you, this show is kind of an important one for us," Liam explained to the sold-out crowd at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. "This is going to be the last time for a little while. I feel myself getting a little emotional." Luckily, the guys were still able to perform their biggest hits for 30 minutes including "Perfect," "Drag Me Down" and "What Makes You Beautiful." They also showed a whole lot of gratitude for the fans who have been supportive ever since they were introduced on the X-Factor U.K. "This is the song that made our American dreams come true," Liam shared before performing "Story of My Life." "We will see you very soon." That promise was reiterated backstage when the guys sat down for an interview with Los Angeles' No. 1 hit music station. While rumors have been swirling about the band's future once they take their break, the young men made it clear that they will be back onstage again soon. "I hadn't even thought about that. Now I'm sad," Liam admitted to 102.7 KIISFM's JoJo Wright when reminded of their weekend milestone. "But it's not our last show ever. That's the important thing the people need to get. This is just our little crescendo." Niall added, "It's not a bad way to go out, Jingle Ball you know?" Selena Gomez, The Weekend, 5 Seconds of Summer and Shawn Mendes were just some of the many performers who also took to the stage at Friday night's concert. (Eonline)
Scott Weiland had semi-strict rules in place to prevent him from falling off the wagon during his tour, but there was a gaping hole in the plan. TMZ got hold of a backstage rider from Weiland's management team, which requires "sober stage hands" for his shows. Members of the Wildabouts got a full stocked bar in their dressing rooms -- everyone except Scott. They got whiskey, vodka and beer. Here's what's curious ... the rider says Scott gets a bottle of Pinot and a bottle of organic vodka. Scott was a hardcore addict and just about every respectable addiction expert out there says addicts should stay away from drugs and alcohol. It's weird Scott -- who fought a losing battle for much of his adult life -- was provided booze that could trigger a relapse. Our sources say the no-drug policy was jettisoned once the band was on the road, and that explains how cocaine ended up in Scott's bedroom on the tour bus. The apparent relapse was underscored by accounts we got from some big musicians, who say Scott was "drunk texting" them over the last few days of his life. (TMZ)
Gwen Stefani Gives an Emotional and Raw Performance of "Used to Love You" on The Tonight Show. Eat your heart out, Gavin Rossdale. Gwen Stefani is everywhere these days, and on Thursday, she performed her post-breakup single "Used to Love You" on NBC's The Tonight Show. Backed by The Roots, Stefani -- dressed to the nines in a white jumpsuit -- gave one of her most emotionally raw performances to date. Host Jimmy Fallon noted that it was her "most personal" song ever, and it was no exaggeration. Rossdale, whom the song was written about, has yet to comment on "Used to Love You." Earlier that day, Stefani opened up about how writing, recording and performing the song has been a cathartic experience. "I'm just a regular girl," she said on Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Show. "But what I'm saying is when my boyfriend dumped me, you know, who I thought was the love of my life, I just wrote songs. I started writing songs; I didn't even know I could write a song! And all of a sudden I became empowered, like it became like a wake up! This is my gift, and that's crazy because now I'm doing it again and I hadn't done it in a long time." In fact, she said, "I hadn't been able to write in a long time." "I went into the studio, and everybody knows pretty much what happened to me. I got a divorce or whatever, which completely was not in the plan at all," she admitted. "At that time, I was like, I wanted to go in and write and I had a plan to make a record, and I made a record the year before really, but I hadn't written it." Musically, at least, her surprise split from Rossdale has been a blessing. "I think what happens is that in your life you go through so many different phases. Especially with success or with art, you can get blocked. I think that with everything that had gone down in my life in the last five years, I got blocked," the No Doubt singer said. "I got really insecure about it and even during the solo period I was so scared to go in with someone. They're going to have so many expectations of me, and what if I can't write something? And how did I ever write anything? I looked back and I didn't know how it happened. It's a miracle because it channels down, it's literally a spiritual experience writing songs. Like how did those ideas come?" With her new single growing in popularity each day, Stefani told Elvis Duran, "I cannot believe how rad and magical my life is. I woke up and I'm No. 5 on iTunes this morning with 'Used to Love You,' which is like a true miracle to have a song that is so reflecting this crazy, crazy year for me. I just can't believe I'm going to be on the radio and I'm here right now and that this is happening! Can you pinch me?...I just wanted to say it because it doesn't sink in. It's just so insane!" (Eonline)
Reverb, an online marketplace for musical instruments and equipment, is getting some serious amplification. The Chicago-based company has secured a fresh $25 million in funding. Led by investment firm Summit Partners, the series B round will help Reverb expand internationally, founder and CEO David Kalt tells Billboard. The new investment will also go toward Reverb's recently launched marketplace for music lessons, as well as buttressing the company's core instrument-trading business. "We're not doing anything radically different," Kalt says. "We've got a winning formula -- keep making it easy to buy and sell gear." Reverb projects it will handle more than $120 million in transactions this year. That's up from $38 million last year and $3.4 million in 2013, the year the site launched. Kalt says the site has around 5 million monthly visitors, conducting about 40,000 transactions a month. To be sure, these numbers were provided by Reverb and could not be independently verified. Summit Partners joins a list of investors with some star power in the music world. In November 2013, Reverb announced a Series A round of funding that included investments from Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick along with David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, in addition to tech-sector venture capitalists such as Eric Ries, author of The New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup. Country music star Brad is also an investor, according to a current press release. Reverb takes a 3.5 percent cut of deals made on the site, compared with larger rival eBay's 10 percent. That, combined with the site's specialist approach, have at least some pro musicians singing its praises. Dave Depper, touring guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie, says he has bought and sold about eight to 10 guitars through Reverb, along with a variety of pedals and studio equipment. "My experience has been 100 percent positive," Depper tells Billboard shortly before a headlining gig at the Chicago Theatre. "You can just tell it's run by people who are musicians or who care about musicians' experience." He describes the collection of users as feeling "a bit like a community" and notes that, with the ability to buy an instrument before a tour and sell it for about the same price afterward, "I feel almost like I'm renting stuff there." While musicians on Reverb typically go incognito under usernames, the site has more formal relationships with certain sellers. Nielsen, Ben Kweller and Ray LaMontagnehave official Reverb "shops," and Kalt says one is on the way for Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, as well. The site also offers editorial content, such as the Soundcheck interview series and a recent tutorial on how to mic a guitar amp featuring Brian Deck (who has played in Califone and Red Red Meat, plus produced the likes of Modest Mouse). Tim Thelen, co-owner of custom manufacturer BiLT Guitars, tells Billboard his shop is making an instrument for Reverb to use in its video demos. "We've seen a lot of our stuff go up for sale there," Thelen says. "We think those guys are great." Kalt also owns the Chicago Music Exchange, a brick-and-mortar store in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, which he bought three years before opening Reverb. Both ventures were a return to music for Kalt, who worked at a Chicago recording studio after graduating in 1989 from the University of Michigan. In the meantime, he'd earned a master's degree in computer science from Depaul University and become a tech entrepreneur. In 1999, Kalt co-founded OptionsXpress Holdings, a financial trading platform. Charles Schwab bought it in 2011 for more than $1 billion. Summit Partners was also an investor in OptionsXpress. Reverb launched its Reverb Lessons marketplace in September. Lessons are available online or off. They can be sold in multi-lesson packages based on genre or technique. In June, Reverb said it had teamed up with Affirm, a new lending startup from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, to provide financing for buyers whose creditworthiness might, like the appeal of a difficult piece of music, be less than immediately apparent on the surface. The size of the used-instrument marketplace is uncertain. Kalt estimates it at $23 billion in annual sales. After all, trade group the National Association of Music Merchants pegs the global market for new musical instruments and products at $17 billion. Kalt reasons that used instruments -- unlike used cars, for instance -- don't really get much less expensive over time. Market research firm eMarketer has predicted e-commerce will account for about $1.3 trillion worldwide in 2015, out of a total of more than $22 trillion in global retail sales. Niche online marketplaces such as Reverb.com are a growing part of online retail, says Gil Luria, a managing director covering financial technology stocks for Wedbush Securities. He points to the examples of Grubhub and Opentable for food, Uber and Lyft for transportation, Etsy for handmade and vintage crafts and Zulily for young mothers. "The challenge for any new marketplace is that it is difficult to create a network effect in a two-sided market," Luria tells Billboard. "A marketplace needs to get enough consumers to make itself appealing to sellers and enough seller merchandise to make itself interesting to consumers." Kalt has his eye on both sides of the transaction. "There are a lot of people who drool over musical instruments, and they dream," he says. "We want to be that place where they learn, where they drool." At the same time, Kalt adds, "if they have something they're not playing, they can easily sell it." (Billboard)
Ellen DeGeneres will announced on Dec. 4 the launch of "Ellen's Dance Off," a dance competition in partnership with Chosen, a mobile app launched last March that allows users to engage in performance-based contests headed by former Beats Music, MOG and Gracenote CEO David Hyman. The inaugural dance-off will use Missy Elliott's hot new single "WTF (Where They From)" featuring Pharrell Williams, a song that hit No. 22 on this week's Hot 100. "I've been dancing for 13 seasons and it finally dawned on me..."Why am I doing all the work?" DeGeneres said in a statement to Billboard. "So now I'm excited to see what talent is out there. I wanna see kids, teenagers, parents... And if you can explain how to download an app to your grandparents -- I'd like to see them dance too." Chosen, a free app, will enable Ellen fans of any age to both upload dance performances and judge others' nifty dance moves with the competition running through the end of January. The winner of "Ellen's Dance-Off Missy Edition" will win a trip to Los Angeles and appear on the popular daytime talk show. "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" is the app's first media partner and as part of the deal DeGeneres' Ellen Digital Ventures will take on an undisclosed ownership stake in Chosen. DeGeneres is well-known for her extended dance sessions during her show and brings to the table an impressive social media presence that includes more than 50 million Twitter followers, 22 million Facebook fans and a YouTube channel that receives more than 200 million views a month. "It's a great fit," Chosen's Hyman tells Billboard. "It's a great way for the audience to be engaged in a much more meaningful way and so much of the show revolves around dancing." Hyman is bullish on the myriad of ways his competition app can be used to promote music. "Instead of just doing an NPR First Listen," he says, "it's like, 'Hey everybody, come compete using my song either by singing, lip syncing, dancing or whatever. It's a much more fun, interactive and an engaging way to leverage your existing fan base with a new song or album instead of just putting it out there." Television, too, has apparently shown great interest in Chosen. "These days it's rare that people watch TV and don't have their mobile phones in their hands at the same time," Hyman says. "In the last few months I've had many media entities reach out to me to see whether we can do a contest to promote their TV shows but we couldn't because we didn't yet have the tools. Empire reached out wanting to do a competition where somebody won a recording contract on Empire Records." In the next month or two Chosen plans to release a turnkey tool set allowing anyone to build their own competition. "It can be anything from a user who wants to do drunk poetry, skateboard stunts or Christopher Walken impersonation contest," Hyman says. The new tools will allow users, media entities and brands to use the platform for their own unique competition categories. While Chosen won't reveal its user numbers, Hyman says the app has had over 50,000 performances uploaded from all over the world and over a million games played since it launched in March. The app is not yet monetized, though the plan is to eventually generate revenue through advertising and in-game currency. Chosen thus far has raised over $6.5 million in funding from investors that include DCM, Rhodium Capital, Fosun and CrunchFund. Hyman forecasts another round of financing within the next six months. To find out more about "Ellen's Dance Off" go to ellentv.com/chosen. (Billboard)
One Direction Gets ''Emotional'' in Final U.S. Concert Before Hiatus: "This Show Is Kind of an Important One.'' And just like that, One Direction is one step closer to their extended hiatus. Loyal fans of the boy band may have a couple more months until Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan officially begin their break. But at Friday night's iHeartRadio Jingle Ball, the band performed in what turned out to be their final show in the states before this much buzzed about pause in the group. "To be honest with you, this show is kind of an important one for us," Liam explained to the sold-out crowd at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. "This is going to be the last time for a little while. I feel myself getting a little emotional." Luckily, the guys were still able to perform their biggest hits for 30 minutes including "Perfect," "Drag Me Down" and "What Makes You Beautiful." They also showed a whole lot of gratitude for the fans who have been supportive ever since they were introduced on the X-Factor U.K. "This is the song that made our American dreams come true," Liam shared before performing "Story of My Life." "We will see you very soon." That promise was reiterated backstage when the guys sat down for an interview with Los Angeles' No. 1 hit music station. While rumors have been swirling about the band's future once they take their break, the young men made it clear that they will be back onstage again soon. "I hadn't even thought about that. Now I'm sad," Liam admitted to 102.7 KIISFM's JoJo Wright when reminded of their weekend milestone. "But it's not our last show ever. That's the important thing the people need to get. This is just our little crescendo." Niall added, "It's not a bad way to go out, Jingle Ball you know?" Selena Gomez, The Weekend, 5 Seconds of Summer and Shawn Mendes were just some of the many performers who also took to the stage at Friday night's concert. (Eonline)
Scott Weiland had semi-strict rules in place to prevent him from falling off the wagon during his tour, but there was a gaping hole in the plan. TMZ got hold of a backstage rider from Weiland's management team, which requires "sober stage hands" for his shows. Members of the Wildabouts got a full stocked bar in their dressing rooms -- everyone except Scott. They got whiskey, vodka and beer. Here's what's curious ... the rider says Scott gets a bottle of Pinot and a bottle of organic vodka. Scott was a hardcore addict and just about every respectable addiction expert out there says addicts should stay away from drugs and alcohol. It's weird Scott -- who fought a losing battle for much of his adult life -- was provided booze that could trigger a relapse. Our sources say the no-drug policy was jettisoned once the band was on the road, and that explains how cocaine ended up in Scott's bedroom on the tour bus. The apparent relapse was underscored by accounts we got from some big musicians, who say Scott was "drunk texting" them over the last few days of his life. (TMZ)
Gwen Stefani Gives an Emotional and Raw Performance of "Used to Love You" on The Tonight Show. Eat your heart out, Gavin Rossdale. Gwen Stefani is everywhere these days, and on Thursday, she performed her post-breakup single "Used to Love You" on NBC's The Tonight Show. Backed by The Roots, Stefani -- dressed to the nines in a white jumpsuit -- gave one of her most emotionally raw performances to date. Host Jimmy Fallon noted that it was her "most personal" song ever, and it was no exaggeration. Rossdale, whom the song was written about, has yet to comment on "Used to Love You." Earlier that day, Stefani opened up about how writing, recording and performing the song has been a cathartic experience. "I'm just a regular girl," she said on Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Show. "But what I'm saying is when my boyfriend dumped me, you know, who I thought was the love of my life, I just wrote songs. I started writing songs; I didn't even know I could write a song! And all of a sudden I became empowered, like it became like a wake up! This is my gift, and that's crazy because now I'm doing it again and I hadn't done it in a long time." In fact, she said, "I hadn't been able to write in a long time." "I went into the studio, and everybody knows pretty much what happened to me. I got a divorce or whatever, which completely was not in the plan at all," she admitted. "At that time, I was like, I wanted to go in and write and I had a plan to make a record, and I made a record the year before really, but I hadn't written it." Musically, at least, her surprise split from Rossdale has been a blessing. "I think what happens is that in your life you go through so many different phases. Especially with success or with art, you can get blocked. I think that with everything that had gone down in my life in the last five years, I got blocked," the No Doubt singer said. "I got really insecure about it and even during the solo period I was so scared to go in with someone. They're going to have so many expectations of me, and what if I can't write something? And how did I ever write anything? I looked back and I didn't know how it happened. It's a miracle because it channels down, it's literally a spiritual experience writing songs. Like how did those ideas come?" With her new single growing in popularity each day, Stefani told Elvis Duran, "I cannot believe how rad and magical my life is. I woke up and I'm No. 5 on iTunes this morning with 'Used to Love You,' which is like a true miracle to have a song that is so reflecting this crazy, crazy year for me. I just can't believe I'm going to be on the radio and I'm here right now and that this is happening! Can you pinch me?...I just wanted to say it because it doesn't sink in. It's just so insane!" (Eonline)
Reverb, an online marketplace for musical instruments and equipment, is getting some serious amplification. The Chicago-based company has secured a fresh $25 million in funding. Led by investment firm Summit Partners, the series B round will help Reverb expand internationally, founder and CEO David Kalt tells Billboard. The new investment will also go toward Reverb's recently launched marketplace for music lessons, as well as buttressing the company's core instrument-trading business. "We're not doing anything radically different," Kalt says. "We've got a winning formula -- keep making it easy to buy and sell gear." Reverb projects it will handle more than $120 million in transactions this year. That's up from $38 million last year and $3.4 million in 2013, the year the site launched. Kalt says the site has around 5 million monthly visitors, conducting about 40,000 transactions a month. To be sure, these numbers were provided by Reverb and could not be independently verified. Summit Partners joins a list of investors with some star power in the music world. In November 2013, Reverb announced a Series A round of funding that included investments from Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick along with David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, in addition to tech-sector venture capitalists such as Eric Ries, author of The New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup. Country music star Brad is also an investor, according to a current press release. Reverb takes a 3.5 percent cut of deals made on the site, compared with larger rival eBay's 10 percent. That, combined with the site's specialist approach, have at least some pro musicians singing its praises. Dave Depper, touring guitarist for Death Cab for Cutie, says he has bought and sold about eight to 10 guitars through Reverb, along with a variety of pedals and studio equipment. "My experience has been 100 percent positive," Depper tells Billboard shortly before a headlining gig at the Chicago Theatre. "You can just tell it's run by people who are musicians or who care about musicians' experience." He describes the collection of users as feeling "a bit like a community" and notes that, with the ability to buy an instrument before a tour and sell it for about the same price afterward, "I feel almost like I'm renting stuff there." While musicians on Reverb typically go incognito under usernames, the site has more formal relationships with certain sellers. Nielsen, Ben Kweller and Ray LaMontagnehave official Reverb "shops," and Kalt says one is on the way for Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, as well. The site also offers editorial content, such as the Soundcheck interview series and a recent tutorial on how to mic a guitar amp featuring Brian Deck (who has played in Califone and Red Red Meat, plus produced the likes of Modest Mouse). Tim Thelen, co-owner of custom manufacturer BiLT Guitars, tells Billboard his shop is making an instrument for Reverb to use in its video demos. "We've seen a lot of our stuff go up for sale there," Thelen says. "We think those guys are great." Kalt also owns the Chicago Music Exchange, a brick-and-mortar store in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, which he bought three years before opening Reverb. Both ventures were a return to music for Kalt, who worked at a Chicago recording studio after graduating in 1989 from the University of Michigan. In the meantime, he'd earned a master's degree in computer science from Depaul University and become a tech entrepreneur. In 1999, Kalt co-founded OptionsXpress Holdings, a financial trading platform. Charles Schwab bought it in 2011 for more than $1 billion. Summit Partners was also an investor in OptionsXpress. Reverb launched its Reverb Lessons marketplace in September. Lessons are available online or off. They can be sold in multi-lesson packages based on genre or technique. In June, Reverb said it had teamed up with Affirm, a new lending startup from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, to provide financing for buyers whose creditworthiness might, like the appeal of a difficult piece of music, be less than immediately apparent on the surface. The size of the used-instrument marketplace is uncertain. Kalt estimates it at $23 billion in annual sales. After all, trade group the National Association of Music Merchants pegs the global market for new musical instruments and products at $17 billion. Kalt reasons that used instruments -- unlike used cars, for instance -- don't really get much less expensive over time. Market research firm eMarketer has predicted e-commerce will account for about $1.3 trillion worldwide in 2015, out of a total of more than $22 trillion in global retail sales. Niche online marketplaces such as Reverb.com are a growing part of online retail, says Gil Luria, a managing director covering financial technology stocks for Wedbush Securities. He points to the examples of Grubhub and Opentable for food, Uber and Lyft for transportation, Etsy for handmade and vintage crafts and Zulily for young mothers. "The challenge for any new marketplace is that it is difficult to create a network effect in a two-sided market," Luria tells Billboard. "A marketplace needs to get enough consumers to make itself appealing to sellers and enough seller merchandise to make itself interesting to consumers." Kalt has his eye on both sides of the transaction. "There are a lot of people who drool over musical instruments, and they dream," he says. "We want to be that place where they learn, where they drool." At the same time, Kalt adds, "if they have something they're not playing, they can easily sell it." (Billboard)
Ellen DeGeneres will announced on Dec. 4 the launch of "Ellen's Dance Off," a dance competition in partnership with Chosen, a mobile app launched last March that allows users to engage in performance-based contests headed by former Beats Music, MOG and Gracenote CEO David Hyman. The inaugural dance-off will use Missy Elliott's hot new single "WTF (Where They From)" featuring Pharrell Williams, a song that hit No. 22 on this week's Hot 100. "I've been dancing for 13 seasons and it finally dawned on me..."Why am I doing all the work?" DeGeneres said in a statement to Billboard. "So now I'm excited to see what talent is out there. I wanna see kids, teenagers, parents... And if you can explain how to download an app to your grandparents -- I'd like to see them dance too." Chosen, a free app, will enable Ellen fans of any age to both upload dance performances and judge others' nifty dance moves with the competition running through the end of January. The winner of "Ellen's Dance-Off Missy Edition" will win a trip to Los Angeles and appear on the popular daytime talk show. "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" is the app's first media partner and as part of the deal DeGeneres' Ellen Digital Ventures will take on an undisclosed ownership stake in Chosen. DeGeneres is well-known for her extended dance sessions during her show and brings to the table an impressive social media presence that includes more than 50 million Twitter followers, 22 million Facebook fans and a YouTube channel that receives more than 200 million views a month. "It's a great fit," Chosen's Hyman tells Billboard. "It's a great way for the audience to be engaged in a much more meaningful way and so much of the show revolves around dancing." Hyman is bullish on the myriad of ways his competition app can be used to promote music. "Instead of just doing an NPR First Listen," he says, "it's like, 'Hey everybody, come compete using my song either by singing, lip syncing, dancing or whatever. It's a much more fun, interactive and an engaging way to leverage your existing fan base with a new song or album instead of just putting it out there." Television, too, has apparently shown great interest in Chosen. "These days it's rare that people watch TV and don't have their mobile phones in their hands at the same time," Hyman says. "In the last few months I've had many media entities reach out to me to see whether we can do a contest to promote their TV shows but we couldn't because we didn't yet have the tools. Empire reached out wanting to do a competition where somebody won a recording contract on Empire Records." In the next month or two Chosen plans to release a turnkey tool set allowing anyone to build their own competition. "It can be anything from a user who wants to do drunk poetry, skateboard stunts or Christopher Walken impersonation contest," Hyman says. The new tools will allow users, media entities and brands to use the platform for their own unique competition categories. While Chosen won't reveal its user numbers, Hyman says the app has had over 50,000 performances uploaded from all over the world and over a million games played since it launched in March. The app is not yet monetized, though the plan is to eventually generate revenue through advertising and in-game currency. Chosen thus far has raised over $6.5 million in funding from investors that include DCM, Rhodium Capital, Fosun and CrunchFund. Hyman forecasts another round of financing within the next six months. To find out more about "Ellen's Dance Off" go to ellentv.com/chosen. (Billboard)
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