Music News

Jennifer Lopez, Daddy Yankee & Ozuna to Perform at 2019 iHeartRadio Fiesta Latina. Jennifer Lopez, Daddy Yankee and Ozuna are confirmed to perform at the 2019 iHeartRadio Fiesta Latina, with more artists to be announced in the coming weeks. The concert will take place at American Airlines Arena in Miami on Nov. 2. This year, the annual event will celebrate its sixth consecutive show with a video stream on LiveXLive.com and will also broadcast live on iHeartMedia's Latin stations nationwide. The event will be hosted by Enrique Santos, chairman and chief creative officer for iHeartLatino. "Every year we proudly host some of the most influential artists in Latin Music and this year will be no different," Santos said in a press release announcing the event. Tickets for the show go on sale to the general public on Friday at noon ET via Ticketmaster.com. (Billboard)

Tool Reveal Title of Fifth Album. Maynard James Keenan also shared that their back catalog will finally hit streaming services. After years of very little news, all of a sudden there is a ton of Tool bulletins. Singer Maynard James Keenan appeared on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, this week to announce that the band's fifth album will be called Fear Inoculum. The long-awaited follow-up to 2006's 10,000 Days is due out on Aug. 30, but the other bit of information Keenan dropped will slake Toolheads' thirst more directly. After remaining one of the biggest streaming holdouts, Tool's entire back catalog will finally hit digital and streaming services this Friday (Aug. 2). "There's probably some Tool fans that will tune into this specifically to hear some news, so rather than being a dick and waiting till the end to tell them, we should probably tell them upfront," Keenan told Rogan early in the podcast, explaining the long digital drought. "We're a very difficult band. We're very stubborn and kind of ignorant to what goes on in the rest of the world ... and the whole Betamax thing didn't work for us, and neither did LaserDisc, so we have this new thing called digital media and streaming. We're gonna try it out." He then slowly teased out the album title, calling the reveal a "lot of weight lifted off my chest. The four of us are a lot of fucking work. Everything is a fucking committee meeting, and it always gets shut down... When you get successful, you think you're right about everything. It's not that bad with us, but there's [that] dynamic." The slow leak of information about the band's first new music in 13 years has also included a recently unveiled new logo and, in May, the debut a pair of new songs, "Descending" and "Invincible," during the Welcome to Rockville festival; no track list for Inoculum has been announced yet. (Billboard)

Lil Nas X Effect: Sony's Recorded Music Sales Top $1 Billion as Streaming Revenues Climb. Overall, Sony's music operations generated $1.86 billion in sales during the company's first fiscal quarter. Recorded music sales and publishing revenue at Sony Music both grew in the first quarter of 2019, according to the company's latest financial figures. For the fiscal quarter ended June 30, Sony Music operations -- which includes Sony Music Entertainment, Sony/ATV, Sony Japan and the mobile-game dominated Visual Media/Platform -- reported 38.3 billion yen ($352.7 million) in operating income, a 19% rise on the same period the previous year. Sales revenue rose 11% to 202.3 billion yen ($1.86 billion), up from 181.5 billion yen ($1.67 billion) in the first quarter of 2018. Sony attributed the strong growth to a 27% rise in streaming revenues, which lifted recorded music sales to 111.9 billion yen ($1 billion), up 11% on the previous year. It's also worth remembering that 2018's sales revenue were impacted by a change in accounting methodology, which is no longer a factor and partially contributes to this year's bounce in operating income, versus the almost 1% decline in revenue recorded music had in the first quarter of 2018 when compared to the corresponding period in 2017. Music publishing revenues meanwhile climbed by over 80% year-on-year to 39.3 billion yen ($362 million) as a result of the consolidation of EMI Music Publishing (last year's first quarter report took place before the acquisition closed when only Sony's fee was counted as revenue and not all the royalty revenue collected). Breaking down recorded music revenue, physical sales were slightly down on the previous year totaling 21.9 billion yen ($201 million), a fall of around $6 million on the first quarter of 2018. Download sales also fell by just over $17 million to total $80 million. Meanwhile, digital sales grew to 75.2 billion yen ($693 million), driven primarily by 27% growth in streaming revenues, which totaled 66.5 billion yen ($612 million) in quarter one. By comparison, streaming sales in the first quarter of 2018 were 52.2 billion yen ($480 million on a constant currency conversion basis). License revenue from public performance, broadcast and sync, coupled with merchandising and live performance income generated an additional 14.8 billion yen ($136 million). Best-selling Sony Music Entertainment releases (albums and singles) during the accounting period included Khalid's Free Spirit, Lil Nas X's chart conquering "Old Town Road," Pink's Hurts 2B Human, Bruce Springsteen's Western Stars and DJ Khalid's Father of Asahd. The total number of songs owned and administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing as of March 31, 2019 is listed as more than 4.5 million. Although recorded music and music publishing sales were up, revenues for Sony's Visual Media/Platform division, which also sits under its music operations wing, fell by 7.7 billion yen ($70 million) to 48.8 billion yen ($449 million). The company said lower sales for the hugely popular role-playing mobile game Fate/Grand Order, compared to the first quarter of 2018, was largely to blame. (Billboard)

Katy Perry just took an L in court ... a jury ruled her song "Dark Horse" stole heavily from a gospel song that came out 5 years earlier. Monday's verdict is the latest step in a lengthy legal battle that started back in July 2014, when Katy was sued by the Christian rapper, Flame -- he claimed her 2013 hit song "Dark Horse" is a complete rip-off of his Grammy-nominated gospel song, "Joyful Noise." Flame's music label uploaded the music video to YouTube way back in 2008, and it's since racked up millions of views. He says Katy jacked the underlying beat ... but she called BS, claiming there are NO meaningful similarities. According to the suit ... Flame claims Perry also destroyed his reputation in Christian music circles because he's now associated with the anti-Christian witchcraft and imagery that's present in her "Dark Horse" music vid. The case will now proceed to the damages phase -- AKA, when Katy finds out how much the loss will cost her. As we reported ... Katy showed up to court last week wearing a mint-colored suit and took the stand, claiming she never heard the song "Joyful Noise" before the filing of the lawsuit. Katy told the jury she initially heard the beats from Dr. Luke while they were drinking wine in Santa Barbara, and claimed she wrote "Dark Horse" in only 4 hours. She remained calm throughout her testimony. (TMZ)

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