Drake Says Long-Delayed ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Album Will Be Out by End of Summer

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter recordings of the remote audio from Britney Spears’ blistering 24-minute statement during her June 23 conservatorship hearing began circulating widely over the web, Los Angeles County courts have decided to end their remote audio attendance program completely.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMotown Records announced that Brian Nolan has been appointed executive vice president of the label and executive VP of marketing, effective immediately. According to the announcement, in this new role, Nolan joins the label’s executive leadership team and will help guide the company as well as oversee Motown’s marketing teams and initiatives.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBessemer Trust, a professional wealth management firm that was poised to take over as co-conservator of Britney Spears’ estate and work with her father, has asked to resign from the arrangement, according to a court document filed Thursday that was cited by the New York Times.The company, which manages more than $100 billion in assets, said it was requesting to withdraw “due to changed circumstances.” In the filing, the firm said it had been told the singer’s

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 EditorSince Square, the payments-processing company led by CEO (and Twitter founder) Jack Dorsey, announced plans to buy a “significant” majority stake in Tidal, the music and entertainment streaming platform run by Jay-Z, many have wondered exactly what it plans to do with the service.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAs Variety’s recent cover star H.E.R. announced during Sunday night’s BET Awards, the artist’s Lights On Festival will return to California’s Bay Area in September.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorWith “Nine,” the mysterious London-based alt-R&B collective Sault has added another layer to their mystique by making this new album — incredibly, their fifth in just over two years — available for just 99 days. Free downloads can be found on their website and vinyl is available from Bandcamp (and you can even stream the whole thing on Instagram), so it’s not like it’ll be gone forever.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorEven though they’re all alpha musicians in their own right, it’s often hard not to think of Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers — close friends and members of the semi-supergroup side-project Boygenius — as a single, multi-faceted entity.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorTo celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jay-Z’s iconic debut album “Reasonable Doubt,” the rapper has commissioned multi-disciplinary artist Derrick Adams to create a one-of-one animated digital artwork that recontextualizes the album’s cover, which will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s as an NFT in a special single-lot auction.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorOn September 24, an previously unreleased 1968 live album by Johnny Cash that was recorded by Owsley “Bear” Stanley, the Grateful Dead’s legendary concert documentarian (and lysergic sherpa), will be issued by the Owsley Stanley Foundation and Renew Records/BMG.“Bear’s Sonic Journals: Johnny Cash, at the Carousel Ballroom, April 24 1968,” is a 28-song concert — featuring two Bob Dylan covers — recorded in San Francisco by “Bear,” the famously secretive sound

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorEricka Coulter has joined Warner Records as senior vice president of A&R, the company announced Wednesday (June 23). Coulter was most recently VP of A&R at Epic Records, where she worked with acts including Rick Ross, Giveon, and Lonr., among others; prior to her six-year tenure at Epic, she held posts at Interscope and Capitol (Evolve) Records.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMetallica are giving their iconic 1991 self-titled album — known as “The Black Album” — the 30 th anniversary treatment with the usual remaster/ hardcover book / multiple live albums and DVDs. But most interesting of all is “The Metallica Blacklist,” a 53-track tribute album featuring covers of the album’s songs — with 100% of the proceeds going to charities — by a head-spinning array of artists that reads like a Pitchfork playlist: St.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorEarlier this month, in the hours after the release of “Solar Power” — the title track from Lorde’s forthcoming third album, due in August — the two songs people kept mentioning as possible inspirations were George Michael’s “Freedom 90” and “Loaded” by British rockers Primal Scream.In an interview shortly after the song dropped, Lorde said Primal Scream had given their blessing to the song.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorMore than two weeks after Ariel Emanuel stepped down as a Live Nation board member after 14 years, the Department of Justice announced that he and fellow top Endeavor officer Mark Shapiro resigned their board positions after the DOJ expressed antitrust concerns, according to a DOJ statement Monday (June 21). The DOJ’s concern was that Emanuel’s and Shapiro’s “positions on the Live Nation Board created an illegal interlocking directorate,” i.e.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorA2IM’s Libera Awards are the Grammys of independent music, the one time in the entire year that a huge percentage of that community gets (relatively) dressed up and gathers for a night of celebrating the indie sector’s wins and its continued vital importance to the global music world and economy.For obvious reasons, for the past two years the awards have been held virtually, but that didn’t stop the community from gathering around their laptops again to celebrate as

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 EditorDrake and Live Nation Canada will open History, a new live-entertainment venue in the superstar rapper’s hometown of Toronto, later this year, the company announced Tuesday (June 8).“Some of my most memorable shows were playing smaller rooms like History,” Drake in a statement.  “I wanted to take those memories and what I learned to create an incredible experience for both the artists and the fans.”According to the announcement, the 2,500-capacity venue will “offer

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorBruce Springsteen’s top-grossing “Springsteen On Broadway” show will return this summer for a limited run of performances at New York’s St. James Theatre.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorIt wasn’t all that long ago that Michelle Zauner, the creative force behind shoegaze-pop act Japanese Breakfast, was singing about the idea of becoming “Jimmy Fallon big.” The track from 2017’s “Soft Sounds from Another Planet” may have seemed like wishful thinking at the time, but Zauner’s tongue-in-cheek lyric came full circle in March when the band hit “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to make Japanese Breakfast’s late-night television debut.The singer

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorReservoir has acquired legendary independent Hip-Hop and Electronic record label Tommy Boy Music.