Aurelia Butler

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    in Music

    Music Catalog Giant Hipgnosis Is Sold, and Merck Mercuriadis Exits

    The company, whose pricey acquisitions kicked off a rush on catalog sales, sold its assets to Blackstone for $1.6 billion, and its outspoken leader will step down.Six years ago, an outspoken music executive named Merck Mercuriadis kicked off a new wave of dealmaking in the industry when his company, Hipgnosis, began buying up the song catalogs of artists like Neil Young, Shakira, Justin Bieber and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.Now, Mercuriadis, who once managed Beyoncé and Elton John, is stepping down from the company after its assets have been sold to the private equity giant Blackstone, following a tumultuous year that has involved a shareholder revolt, an accounting scandal and a bidding war.In the company’s complex structure, Hipgnosis Songs Fund is an “investment trust,” which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and owns the rights to tens of thousands of songs. A separate company, Hipgnosis Song Management — which has been run by Mercuriadis — is its “investment adviser,” doing much of the dealmaking and administration work for those songs. In 2021, Blackstone invested $1 billion to take majority control over the adviser firm.The board of Hipgnosis Songs Fund voted on Monday to accept Blackstone’s offer of $1.6 billion for the company’s assets, the company announced early Tuesday.After going public in 2018, Hipgnosis got off to a bright start, beginning a spending spree for artists’ song rights that ultimately exceeded $2 billion, and making an attention-getting pitch to investors that the royalties from pop songs could be “more valuable than gold or oil.”Mercuriadis also regularly attacked the corporate conglomerates that dominate the music industry, portraying them as owning too much content to properly manage it. Privately, others in the industry complained that Hipgnosis was overpaying for catalogs, driving up prices all around. In 2021 alone, the music industry had $5.3 billion in catalog transactions, many from deals with individual artists, according to an estimate by Midia, which studies digital media and the music industry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Cassandra Jenkins Finds a Way to Follow Her Surprise Breakthrough LP

    Cassandra Jenkins had been ready to quit music in 2020 when a record she was unsure of releasing became an unexpected hit. Then, she had to figure out how to follow it up.During a winter walk in Central Park in late 2020, Cassandra Jenkins made a confession to her occasional bandleader, Lola Kirke: She had sold much of her music gear and didn’t plan to return to the road.A multi-instrumentalist and versatile singer, Jenkins had performed on stages for a quarter-century. Her parents had doggedly worked the New England hotel circuit as part of a trio that covered four decades of hits. As a teen, Jenkins and the family band played folk festivals, roaming in a hulking silver bus. After art school, she had balanced stints as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, a farmer and a teacher with short gigs in so many bands she cannot remember them all.It was draining. During a festival run in 2019, she’d maintained her sanity amid the throng by snapping a photo series called “Butts of Bonnaroo.” She had been set to tour as part of Purple Mountains, the band of Silver Jews’ David Berman, when he died by suicide days before it was scheduled to begin.“I wasn’t quitting as much as letting go of the burden of certain expectations I put on myself in terms of how a career should look,” Jenkins, 40, said during a series of video interviews. “I was going to quit that narrow hope for a lot of mystery, a lot of unknowns.”Jenkins had more news for Kirke: She had finished her second album, an idiosyncratic and frank reckoning with grief, disappointment and tenuous attempts to heal that she called “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature.” She was uncertain if she wanted to release it, but a little label had picked it up. She name-checked Kirke in the lyrics, so she said she’d send it over.“I was gobsmacked, a perfect record,” Kirke said in a phone interview, recalling her first listen. “I wrote to her and didn’t hear back for a really long time. I knew she was being welcomed into spaces that should have welcomed her well before.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Swizz Beatz Climbed to the Top of Saudi Arabia’s Camel Racing Scene

    “I’m just bringing the cool factor to it,” said the American hip-hop producer, who has spent millions of dollars on 48 camels for a team he calls “Saudi Bronx.”As the Arabian Peninsula’s fastest camels galloped around a track in the Saudi desert, Kasseem Dean, a Grammy Award-winning hip-hop producer from the Bronx, watched nervously from an air-conditioned V.I.P. viewing hall.Waiters in black vests plied the crowd with lemonade and red velvet cupcakes. Women in sundresses milled around off-white sofas, sipping fizzy mocktails.Though the camels sprinting past were the main event, Mr. Dean, better known as Swizz Beatz, felt as if all eyes in the room were on him — one of the newest competitors in Saudi Arabia’s deep-pocketed camel racing scene. Four years since he entered and won his first race, he has spent millions of dollars to buy 48 racing camels, ascending into the most elite circles of the sport.“When you discover it, you enter into a whole other world,” said Mr. Dean, 45, whose team of camels, “Saudi Bronx,” has won trophies across the region and deepened his attachment to the kingdom, which he first visited in 2006.He now travels to Saudi Arabia so often that he considers it a second home. He is a co-founder of a roller-skating rink in the desert retreat of AlUla, where the camel race was held, and keeps an apartment in the capital, Riyadh; a few years ago, he was granted Saudi citizenship.The competitors with robot jockeys on their backs, followed by trainers in SUVs who remotely control the robots.Saudi Camel Racing Federation More

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    in Movies

    David Ellison Poised to Become a New Mogul in a Diminished Hollywood

    David Ellison is poised to soon run Paramount Pictures, among other entertainment assets. But what does that mean in a fractured cultural landscape?In 1994, when Sumner M. Redstone bought Paramount Pictures for about $10 billion, the equivalent of about $22 billion today, he did more than just take over a company. He ascended a cultural throne.Studios like Paramount — founded in the 1910s, operating soundstage complexes and controlling vast film libraries — were valuable businesses on the verge of hitting a mother lode: the DVD. Perhaps more important, however, they gave their owners a precious identity as certified members of the cultural elite.Movies still towered above everything. Top ticket sellers in 1994 included touchstones like “The Lion King,” “Schindler’s List,” “Interview With the Vampire,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Philadelphia,” “Speed” and “Pulp Fiction.” In 1995, when “Forrest Gump” — a Paramount release — won the Oscar for best picture, more than 48 million Americans tuned in to watch.Those days are over.On Sunday, the Redstone family reluctantly relinquished Paramount, passing the studio to David Ellison, the tech scion behind a 14-year-old entertainment company called Skydance. If the complex deal closes, Mr. Ellison and his backers, which include RedBird Capital Partners, will spend roughly $8 billion on a collection of assets that include Paramount, CBS, two streaming services and a portfolio of cable networks, such as MTV, Nickelodeon, BET and Comedy Central.Considering the movie studio alone was worth $22 billion in 1994, it was not exactly a celebratory moment in Hollywood. Rather, it was another example of harsh reality intruding on a world that still likes to fantasize about recapturing its golden age. (Universal recently renovated its lot, adding a sign over one of its entrance gates that reads, “Welcome all who change the world.”)Sure, Mr. Ellison, 41, now ranks as a bona fide Hollywood mogul. But what does that even mean in 2024? His ascendance bears no resemblance to the robber barons like Mr. Redstone who came before him, partly because there is precious little left to rob.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Alec Baldwin’s Role as a Producer Ruled Not Relevant to ‘Rust’ Trial

    The ruling was a victory for the actor, who is set to stand trial this week on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer. He has pleaded not guilty.A judge in New Mexico ruled on Monday that Alec Baldwin’s role as a producer of the film “Rust” was not relevant to his upcoming trial for involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of its cinematographer in 2021, dealing a setback to the prosecution.Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer of the First Judicial District in New Mexico ruled that prosecutors could not argue that Mr. Baldwin’s role as a member of the film’s production team — he was one of its producers in addition to being its leading man — had made him more culpable for the death of the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.It was a blow to the prosecution, which had sought to make Mr. Baldwin’s role as a producer part of their case. “As the producer he has the power to control safety on set, and there was a tremendous lack of safety on this set,” one of the prosecutors, Erlinda O. Johnson, argued in court earlier on Monday.Mr. Baldwin’s defense has disputed that, saying that as a member of the production team he was involved in creative matters, but that others had authority over hiring and budgets.The judge ruled that the prosecution could not present evidence about Mr. Baldwin’s position as one of the film’s producers.“I’m having real difficulty with the state’s position that they want to show that, as a producer, he didn’t follow guidelines and therefore, as an actor, Mr. Baldwin did all of these things wrong resulting in the death of Ms. Hutchins because as a producer he allowed these things to happen,” Judge Marlowe Sommer said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Taylor Swift’s ‘Poets’ Ties Her Record for Most Weeks at No. 1

    Both “Fearless” and “1989” spent 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200, but the 11-week reign of “The Tortured Poets Department” has been uninterrupted.Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” has notched its 11th straight week at No. 1, holding off all challengers once again.“Tortured Poets” now ties Swift’s career total for the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Both “Fearless” (2008) and “1989” (2014) reached the peak 11 times. But unlike those, which bobbed in and out of the top slot, the reign of “Tortured Poets” has so far been consecutive and uninterrupted. It started at No. 1 — way back in April — with record-breaking numbers, and has never left that position, beating out releases from Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, the Atlanta rapper Gunna and the K-pop group Ateez.According to Billboard, the last LP by a woman to spend at least 11 weeks in a row at No. 1 was Whitney Houston’s soundtrack to “The Bodyguard,” which posted 13 consecutive toppers (out of 20 total) in 1992 and 1993. Last year, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” had 12 straight weeks at No. 1, and eventually crowned the chart 19 times.Last week, “Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 114,000 sales in the United States, nearly flat from the week before. That includes 102 million streams and 35,000 sales as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Throughout its run, the weekly sales of “Tortured Poets” have benefited from strategic drops of new “versions” of the album, offered with bonus tracks and for limited times. But Swift’s streaming numbers have remained strong, at least in aggregate, with the 31-track album never falling below 100 million weekly clicks.Also this week, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Megan” opens at No. 3 with the equivalent of 74,000 sales, and Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” now in its 71st week on the chart, is No. 2. Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” holds in fourth place, while Chappell Roan’s “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” rises to No. 5, a new peak nearly 10 months after its release. More

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    A Lost Masterpiece of Opera Returns, Kind Of

    The Aix Festival is presenting a new version of “Samson,” a never-performed work by Rameau and Voltaire, two of France’s most important cultural figures.Voltaire and Rameau looked so much alike, how could they not have ended up as collaborators? An 18th-century drawing shows them bowing to each other, mirror images of gangly bodies and jutting chins.Sealed by resemblance, the pairing of this pioneering philosopher and pioneering composer, two of Enlightenment France’s most important cultural figures, was exuberant — at least at first. “Don’t have children with Madame Rameau, have them with me,” Voltaire wrote to his partner, in a sly allusion to the works he wanted to create together.Their first opera, “Samson,” opened on Thursday in an intense and moving performance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, set in the crumbling ruin of a once-grand hall. But this “Samson” is not the one Rameau and Voltaire wrote. The original score was lost some 250 years ago, so the Aix production — the work of the conductor Raphaël Pichon and the director Claus Guth — is a quiltlike assemblage drawn from other Rameau pieces, with a largely new text inspired by the biblical Samson story.Jarrett Ott as Samson and Jacquelyn Stucker as Dalila in “Samson,” set in the bombed-out ruin of a once-great hall.Monika RittershausThe crucial challenge of such a pastiche is making a sewn-together amalgam feel like an organically flowing work. “There are questions of connection,” Pichon said in an interview. “The tonal relationships between everything, the harmonic journey, the details of orchestration.”But performed with relish by Pygmalion, Pichon’s period-instrument orchestra and choir, this “Samson” retains the hypnotic continuity of Rameau’s complete operas, their steadiness and also their variety, veering from festive to soulful, from raucous dances to hushed, hovering arias and radiant choruses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Alec Baldwin Heads to Trial in ‘Rust’ Movie Shooting: Here’s What to Know

    The trial, scheduled to start with jury selection on Tuesday, will examine whether the actor committed involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of the movie’s cinematographer.The winding prosecution of Alec Baldwin over the fatal shooting on the “Rust” film set is set to arrive at a trial this week in New Mexico, where a jury will be asked to decide whether his role in the death of the movie’s cinematographer amounts to involuntary manslaughter.The case revolves around the events of Oct. 21, 2021, when the gun Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing with discharged a live bullet that killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded the movie’s director. The weapon was supposed to have been loaded with inert rounds that could not fire.The initial announcement that prosecutors were bringing a criminal case against Mr. Baldwin was met with shock from Hollywood, where many consider on-set gun safety the responsibility of a production’s weapons experts and safety coordinators, not its actors. (The movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison.)The movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and is not expected to be a cooperative witness in Mr. Baldwin’s trial.Pool photo by Luis Sanchez Saturno/EPA, via ShutterstockThe case has put those Hollywood norms to the test and the conduct of Mr. Baldwin, a fixture of the television and movie industry for decades, under a microscope. The proceedings are expected to be highly contested by his lawyers, who have argued for months that the prosecution is a misguided bid to secure a high-profile conviction of a celebrity.The trial is expected to last about two weeks at the Santa Fe County District Courthouse, where the proceedings will be livestreamed. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More