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Weekly Chart Report (6/1/18)

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Third Day’s Mac Powell Talks Farewell Tour, Upcoming Solo Projects

On Wednesday (May 30), Christian rock band Third Day will embark on their farewell tour, after 25 years in the business. The band’s impetus came from Georgia high school buddies, vocalist/songwriter Mac Powell and guitarist Mark Lee.The band initially signed with Reunion Records and in 1996 released its self-titled debut album, a blend of southern rock grooves and inspirational lyrics, wielded by Powell’s blowtorch of a voice. The band would later align with Essential Records.

Along the way, the band’s Powell, Lee and drummer David Carr have earned four Grammy Awards, released 13 full-length studio albums (including 2017’s Revival, which was recorded in Muscle Shoals), and given music fans classics including “Come Together,” “Soul On Fire,” and “Call My Name.”

While many bands opt for longer, drawn out farewell treks, Third Day’s 20-date tour will launch tonight with two shows in Seattle, Washington, and wrap June 27 with a show at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

“We just reached a point where we knew it was time,” Powell tells MusicRow. “I think we are ready to call it a day on Third Day, if you will. There was a lot going on in our personal lives as fathers, husbands and as individuals, I think we realized it was time to move on to different seasons in our lives. The hard thing about it is I don’t want to say we are breaking up, because we are not. It’s more just moving on. I don’t know the right terminology for that. I think saying farewell is the best way to say it.”

Joining them will be Matt Maher, with special appearances from Zach Williams, Crowder and We Are Messengers on certain dates.

“It just came down to who are our friends and who do we want to have in front of our fans to say goodbye with,” Powell says. “Matt Maher is at the very top of that list. He’s been on the road with us a few times and we love his writing and music and him as a person. Zach and I did several shows together last year and became fast friends with him. What those guys are doing fits well with Third Day.”

The farewell trek includes three nights at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, on June 18, 19 and 23.

“It’s going to be a big party in Nashville,” Powell says. “We have so many friends and people behind the scenes that work in management, business management, booking, label, all those people. It will be, in a way, a last chance to see them and say thank you to them. Nashville is always a unique town for us and we have a love for the town.”

So why would one of Christian music’s most successful bands choose to hold a farewell concert in a smaller, if historic, venue like the Ryman Auditorium, rather than some of Nashville’s larger venues?

“My wife asked the same thing,” Powell laughed. “We knew our fans would be great and support us but we had no idea to what extent. We wanted to plan it conservatively when it came to booking the tour with the number of shows and at the venues we were playing. We wanted to try to keep it intimate enough where people didn’t get lost in an arena. That’s why we chose a lot of these places like the Fox Theater in Atlanta. We could have chosen to go to the arena, but we wanted to keep it smaller. That’s why the Ryman fit so well.”

Twenty-five years after Third Day first formed, Powell still sounds amazed at the accolades the band has earned, which includes plenty of RIAA-certified heavy metal (two multi-platinum albums, 5 Platinum albums, and 14 Gold-certified projects), 24 GMA Dove Awards, and 31 No. 1 radio singles.

“When we started, we thought, ‘Man if we can just make a couple of records and tour a few times, that would be amazing.’” he says.

At the time of the interview, Powell said he and his Third Day cohorts were still configuring a set list to honor both the numerous chart-topping singles fans have come to expect, as well as personal favorites.

“I think every night will be different in some way. We have a big list of songs that make sense that are No. 1 radio hits, and then fan favorites that may have never been radio singles, and then songs we want to do as a band and as individuals. It’s going to be a long, great night of music.”

The final tour will also highlight music and stories from Lee’s autobiography Hurt Road, which released last year.

There is plenty of solo music in the works after the farewell tour wraps.

Lee has been in the studio working on new music with Third Day keyboard player Scotty Wilbanks. Meanwhile, Powell has been working simultaneously on two projects, including an upcoming Christmas album, as well as a project for Mac Powell and the Family Reunion. He has also been in the writing room with several collaborators, including Eric Paslay.

“I’ve got enough songs for a couple of records,” Powell says. “That’s part of the fun of this time of music we live in. Music can be released fairly quickly and as an independent I can release it when I want to. But we’re still working on the music.”

Powell says he can’t rule out future collaborations with his Third Day cohorts.

“Something might happen down the road. We are not ending because we hate each other or anything like that. I think it’s good terms we are on with each other. Because of that, there is always the chance of something in the future, and I hope that does happen.”

Weekly Chart Report (5/25/18)

Click here or above to access MusicRow’s weekly CountryBreakout Report.

Nominees Revealed For 30th Annual MusicRow Awards

MusicRow is pleased to announce the nominees for the 30th Annual MusicRow Awards, Nashville’s longest-running industry trade publication honors.

Download the PDF and see the complete list of nominees.

Subscribed members of MusicRow will receive ballots by email on Friday, May 18. Voting closes on Friday, May 25. The 2018 MusicRow Awards will be presented during a private invitation-only event on Wednesday, June 27. To subscribe and receive your ballot and invitation, click here.

Nominees in all four categories are determined by the MusicRow critics panel. Winners are determined by the publication’s subscribed members. Outside submissions were accepted for the Breakthrough Songwriter and Breakthrough Artist-Writer categories, which honor writers and co-writers who scored their first Top 10 single during the eligibility period (May 1, 2017 to April 30, 2018).

MusicRow will also distribute the Top 10 Album All-Star Musicians Awards at the event, recognizing the studio players who played on the most albums reaching the Top 10 of Billboard‘s Country Album Chart during the eligibility period. Honors will be presented for guitar, bass, drums, fiddle, keyboards, steel, vocals and engineer categories.

Winners will be profiled in MusicRow’s June/July print magazine, which will debut at the June ceremony.

If you do not have a subscription, you may subscribe to receive your ballot and invitation.

YouTube To Provide Creative Content Credits With New Feature

YouTube is expanding its song credits on the site to now include artist, writer, label and publisher. The new “Music in this video” feature will provide credits and music discovery information on both music videos and, for the first time ever on any platform, fan-uploaded content that features recorded music.

When viewers click “Show more”, they will receive more detail about the artists and songwriters and the labels and publishers who represent them, including a link to the Official Artist Channel and official music video when available.

“Music in this video” strives to provide greater recognition and exposure to the people who contribute to the creative process.  It also provides more opportunities for artists and songwriters to reach YouTube’s diverse audience, whether those viewers come to the platform for music videos, science experiments or beauty vlogs.

The new “Music in this video” credits on YouTube are made possible due to the data and technology behind Content ID, which allows copyright owners to identify and manage their content on YouTube as well as through YouTube’s partnerships with record labels, music publishers and music rights societies around the world.

Live Nation Launches Women Nation Fund To Promote Female-Led Music Companies

Live Nation Entertainment has established the Women Nation Fund, an early-stage investment fund focused on female-led live music businesses. Live Nation is setting up the fund and will provide access to the company’s resources and capital for underrepresented female entrepreneurs in the concert promotions, events and festival spaces.

Live Nation’s President/CEO Michael Rapino said, “As the leader in live entertainment, we want to meaningfully address this issue, change the dynamic and widen the playing field. The Women Nation Fund is a first step towards empowering new entrepreneurs and creating more opportunity for women in this sector of the live music business.”

The Women Nation Fund will identify, fund and grow the pool of female-led festivals, events and promotion companies available on a worldwide basis. Entrant businesses must be female-founded and oriented around concert promotion, festivals or live venue management. The Women Nation evaluating team is comprised of Live Nation female executives with diverse domain expertise including Anna Sjolund (Co-Managing Director/Head Promoter, Live Nation Sweden), Amy Corbin (Promoter, C3), Virginia Davis (Founder, G Major Management), Amy Howe (COO, Ticketmaster), Lesley Olenik (VP, Touring), Maura Gibson (President, Front Gate Tickets), Kelly Chappel (VP, Touring) and Carrie Davis (Chief Communications Officer).

Businesses selected by the fund will be given access to Live Nation resources such as strategic advisory, industry contacts and mentorship across lines of business and functional areas.

For more information and to apply to the Women Nation Fund, please visit: https://womennationfund.livenation.com/

Music Biz 2018: Modern Artist Development

Pictured (L-R): Noah McPike, Austen Adams, Martha Earls, Robert Femia, Jeremy Stover, and Kerry O’Neil.

The Music Biz 2018 conference started in Nashville on Monday morning (May 14), with a panel discussion surrounding new artists’ paths through the artist development process, and legal issues to be aware of.

Moderated by Dickinson Wright’s Austen Adams and Noah McPike, panelists included efg Management owner Martha Earls, who manages Kane Brown; UMG Nashville VP, Business & Legal Affairs Robert Femia; Big Yellow Dog Music co-founder Kerry O’Neil; and Red Creative Group owner/producer/songwriter Jeremy Stover, who is known for his work with Justin Moore.

Defining An Artist’s Goal

Adams advised the audience, which included many independent artists and songwriters, “We want to know, ‘What is your goal?’ Are you a songwriter that sometimes wants to put out music for fun, but you are focusing on creating and writing for others? Or do you really want to be n artist? Do you want to release and tour a little bit, like say a Lori McKenna who makes critically-acclaimed albums. She tours a good bit, but doesn’t really go to radio, or do you want to be a Kane Brown, and go and do the radio tour? There are different levels of artists and when you go into some of these publishing and artist development deals, you need to know what you want to get.”

“Some artists-writers are more songwriter driven in the sense of let’s go sell this as ‘This guy’s had two cuts on Jason Aldean, three cuts on Luke Bryan and three hits as a writer and they can go open shows,” said Stover. “You can upstream that in a sway that isn’t necessarily through the digital platforms. I think combining that with the digital platforms can be very beneficial as you upstream it.”

A Manager’s Role

Earls talked about the art of timing to bringing a manager on board, when a publisher has been acting as a manager up to that point.

“A manager’s role in my opinion is protecting the artist and maximizing their opportunities, said Earls. “If you are, early on, releasing music through a publisher, that manager can come in and help with merch and touring, building the brand and socials, things a publisher doesn’t have time to do because they are focusing on creative. Early in the manager helps maximize what they are doing. Once he ball is rolling it’s never too early to have someone come along and maximize it.”

You can have a lot of contradictory messages with so many players on board, so communication is important. We were talking to an artist the other day who has come into prominence on social media through covers. One advisor, his producers was telling him to pull all his covers down. Then someone else was saying to keep them up. I think you have to have communication collectively amongst the team and a unified message. Otherwise, the artist feels everyone is disagreeing.”

The Importance Of Legal Guidance

The panel discussed the details of publishing and artist development deals, which are often wrapped into one deal. O’Neil discussed that artists give up a percentage in touring and/or merch in artist development deals, similar to how they are giving up a percentage of their copyrights in publishing deals.

“One thing we do in every deal is a separate advance toward an attorney that can explain everything so up front they know everything that is happening, so in advance to have an educated writer artist,” O’Neil said. “We will give them a list of several and they will go and interview. We don’t have anything to do with that process. Sometimes people come to us without an attorney and we will give them a list of three or four different attorneys and they will go an interview. We are not involved in that process. They find someone they are comfortable with and then we will start. You always need to have someone who works just for you in that process, as it also makes the process go easier.

“If we are going to sing a writer-artist, we are going all in,” O’Neil continued. “We are going to be paying for virtually everything, the masters, everything with getting live show ready, most of the time people we sign are writers so you want to have the quality there. For the artist—you have to have a distinctive group of songs. It can’t just be another good singers with good songs. You have to break through a lot of fantastic songs.”

Stover added in relation to publishers getting touring ancillary as part of the artist development contracts. “On more then one occurrence as a publisher and producer of an artist I’ve developed, I’ve put in two or three years before. I’ve put in time on recordings and intros to labels and booking agents. Essentially so many times the publisher plays the role of manager in the first few years. So I think ancillary touring is a fair ask.”

“That’s how I got into management,” commented Earls. “One of our songwriters became an artist signed to Big Machine and that role just naturally happened.”

“When Tenille Townes signed with us we were ready to go in and start recording sides,” O’Neil said. “She had amazing music. People had started to hear about it and we never got to that phase. She signed to Sony and has music coming out. We’ve had another situation with Meghan Trainer where [Big Yellow Dog’s] Carla Wallace had taken ‘All About That Bass,’ which Meghan wrote with Kevin Kadish. Meghan and Kevin had a demo and that demo which was amazing, an executive at Epic said this is amazing and took it to the powers that be and in four months, that song and that demo became the master and went out [to radio]. Sometimes things are out of your control, and often in a good way.

“For us, in almost every case we set aside a development fund as part of the negotiation, so we can expect to do that process and we take as long as it needs in order for everybody to be happy that we got something that is going to create a seat at the table. There is no seat waiting at the table for any artist. You have to have something amazing.”

From Indie Artist To Major Label Agreements

Femia discussed the importance of having proper legal contracts in place well before starting talks with a major label.

“For an artist, when you talk about getting this fanbase built by yourself, when you come into the label world and we are taking the music you’ve put together, when that come into our world, it takes on a whole different light,” said Femia. “You could have this great fanbase, but when we sign you and you don’t have those producer agreements done or the right video agreements done for the content you’ve made, it’s a lot harder to go back and backfill agreements and work out splits. It’s not rare and not just our label, where you take something and it’s like, ‘This is great music, but we are a major label and we are a target and people like to sue us.’ People are going to come out of the woodwork when you put things out there and that slows down momentum.

There’s really no such thing as promotional only anymore. When we get involved everything Is inherently commercial. It’s on YouTube, Vevo, Spotify, it’s being monetized. They may not have cared about that content last year, but they are going to care now when they see your signing photo and you are making money off of it, and all of a sudden they go, ‘I helped him get there too.’ I think it’s a great thing that Kerri does to set them up to go the right path. It used to be, as Kerry joked with me this morning, ‘It used to be when you signed with a label, everything goes dead.’ That’s not the case any more. That online presence is important and you don’t want to [take down an artist’s pre-major label content] because if you do, people might forget about the artist and go on to the next best thing. Once an artist gets signed, you work on transitioning from that early material to the new material with management and publisher and their lawyers.”

“Nashville” Deals Versus “Pop” Deals

Adams also touched on the sometimes vast differences between artist development deals in Nashville and the pop world.

“When I see a pop production deal, it’s typically a production deal, where an artist is not just signing a deal for these masters, it’s a situation where I own you as a recording artist. You cannot record for anyone else without our permission, and you don’t have any say in your record deal. They will negotiate your record deal for you and take 33+ percent.”

Femia also chimed in on the differences in deals. “When I was at Atlantic and Virgin and had a big pop and hip-hop base, where I worked we tended to see regional production companies and they would sign an artist to the production company as if they were a label. We would sign the deal with the production company, not the artist. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, and sometimes it’s all the difference in the world. In New York, sometimes all you could talk to was that production company. You would find out the details of that deal and it was so egregious that as a label lawyer it makes me nervous that after this guy does take off, there’s a chance that he could go back and file a suit against that production company and break out of that contract. If they break out of that production contract, at least for that moment in time, they are possibly out of our agreement, too, depending on what the court rules. We do have protections built in, but at the end of the day, if the court says we don’t care, the artist can be free. For us, that usually invites a lot of competition. Chances are the artist is going to start shopping around. The foundation of your career is really important, having those building blocks in order.”

Earls said legal differences can mean a big difference when a label is considering signing an artist.

“What kind of leverage are you bringing, and not just talent.” She said. “The more baggage you have it takes away your leverage so a lot of what you built can be negated because of the legal knot you are in, when a label is looking at one artist versus another.”

Alicia Pruitt, Jennie Smythe, Tina Parol Join Music Health Alliance Board

Pictured: Alicia Pruitt, Jennie Smythe, Tina Parol

Music Health Alliance has added Alicia Pruitt (Warner/Chappell Music, Sr. Vice President, A&R), Jennie Smythe (Girlilla Marketing, CEO) and Tina Parol (Disney Music Publishing, artist & songwriter) to its Board of Directors.

The 18-member board, comprised of business leaders across multiple industries, helps develop the strategic plans of Music Health Alliance in support of its mission to protect, direct and connect members of the music community with medical and financial solutions.

Since founding in 2013, the Nashville-based non-profit has served 8,400 members of the music community nationwide, saving them over $33,000,000 in healthcare costs including insurance premium savings, medical bill reductions and discounted medications. Music Health Alliance has also spared 428 families from bankruptcy due to a medical crisis, provided eight patients with access to transplants including heart, lung, kidney and liver, and facilitated access to over 200 trauma counseling sessions for the Las Vegas shooting survivors and their families. 

Music Health Alliance Board of Directors:
President – Kris Wiatr, Wiatr & Associates, LLC
Vice President/Past Board President – Jay Williams, William Morris/Endeavor Entertainment
Treasurer – Earle Simmons, SunTrust Bank
Secretary – Dr. Michael Allsep
Todd Cayce, Richards & Southern
Rodney Crowell, Songwriter/Recording Artist
Christie Hauck, Christie Cookie Co., Christie Retail Group & Goozy
Sandy Knox, Songwriter, Knox Creative
Linda Edell Howard, Adams and Reese LLP
Cindy Hunt, Monarch Publicity
John Lytle, Lytle Management
Tina Parol, Artist and Songwriter, Disney Music Publishing
Alicia Pruitt, Warner/Chappell Music
Jennie Smythe, Girlilla Marketing
Kristin Vanderkooi, Center for Elder Veteran Rights
Rebecca Warner Strang, Philanthrophist
Dr. Herman Williams, RegionalCare
Tatum Allsep, Founder, Music Health Alliance

Weekly Chart Report (5/11/18)

Click here or above to access MusicRow’s weekly CountryBreakout Report.

Exclusive: Nashville Band The Shadowboxers Talk Justin Timberlake Tour, New EP ‘Apollo’

The Shadowboxers

After being discovered by Justin Timberlake in 2013 and later signing with the superstar’s development company Villa 40, Nashville-based band The Shadowboxers have spent the past few years working meticulously in studios in both Nashville and Los Angeles to craft a swirl of classic pop music with infectious R&B and electronic elements. That one-track focus resulted in their EP Apollo, which released in March.

Now, the Nashville band, which consists of Scott Tyler, Matt Lipkins, and Adam Hoffman, is on the road opening shows for Timberlake’s Man of the Woods tour. The tour stops at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena tonight (May 9), followed by a Shadowboxers show at The Basement on May 10 as part of their On The Side Tour.

MusicRow spoke with the band about the tour and about their recent EP, Apollo.

MusicRow: Why the long wait for this album?

Scott: First, we wanted to get the songs right. We had been writing and recording for a long time and it took a while to get the songs exactly where we wanted them. They went through a lot of forms and also, we wanted to get in the studio with Justin [Timberlake] and his schedule is so busy, we needed to set aside the right amount of time to work with him. Once those two things lined up, we had a body of work that we felt represented who we were.

MR: How many songs would you estimate you wrote during that period?

Adam: We actually wrote probably 150 songs and we demoed 130. We have a SoundCloud that perhaps will see the light of day that we wrote, and some of those songs are co-writes but a lot of them were just us in our studio in Germantown writing every day. Through that process, we found out what Apollo was going to sound like, and what statement we wanted to make. We weren’t willing to go in to record until we felt we had the best of the best.

Matt: We have a lot of different ways we write and musical influences. One of the biggest hurdles we’ve had is figuring out how to put out a body of music that sounded consistent and a lot of songs that made sense together. A lot of the Apollo EP came from one writing session, with a co-writer and co-producer named K-KOV. “Brakes,” “Hot Damn” and “Timezone” and “Shadowboxer” came from a week we did in Los Angeles, and then “Runaway” was a song we had had for years. They all worked together. But I think writing a bunch of those songs at the same time when we were in the same mode really helped.

Scott: When we would finish writing a song with K-Kov, we would drive over to another studio in Los Angeles and play them for him on the main speakers there and that was like, an immediate test of whether the song worked or not. When we first played “Timezone,” he threw up his hat and ran around the studio, he was so amped up. It was that week that we wrote the majority of the EP.

MR: What did Justin bring to the mentoring and creative process?

Scott: He pushed us to be bolder with all of our decisions and vocal takes. Being songwriters from a more coffee shop, listening room space, as well being used to writing in our dorm rooms or home studios, it’s easy to get lost in the musicianship of a recording, and it’s easy to lose the boldness and vibrato that is required to make a statement for a new band at this point. We are now realizing the potential of these songs because they were meant for arenas. You can tell the difference in a song we wrote before working with Justin and K-Kov. The songs we did with them feel bigger and more worthy of reaching someone in the back row.

MR: How do you describe the songwriting vibe in Nashville versus Los Angeles?

Scott: We live in Nashville and we write in Nashville, so when we fly to L.A. for a songwriting trip, it makes all of our decisions into intentions. There’s a certain amount of gearing up mentally that you have to do, because you want to make the trip worthwhile. Going to L.A. made us focus more on creating, not that we don’t in Nashville, but it’s a different thing. We are spending money to go out to L.A. to record so we have to make it worth it.

Adam: In L.A., you exist indoors and outdoors at the same time. The weather is always very accommodating so it’s nice to always be able to step outside and get that vibe and return to writing. But in Nashville, I love that the seasons can influence your writing. There’s a lot of that in the batch of songs. We had a lot of cold weather songs we have written.

Matt: Also, Adam you have seasonal depression [laughs]. Putting on your pants and going to the library gets you one type of work, or song, and another type of song is the sitting at home in your underwear at 3 a.m. [laughs] when the thinking part of your brain is off, kind of song. Sometimes that’s when the best ideas come, when you are at home, and the things you learn from the day swirl together and you get to be subjective and create.

MR: As the tour has progressed, how have you had to tweak your set?

Matt: This tour has been the best learning experience as a band that we’ve ever had. We’ve never played the same show twice on this tour. After each show, we go into the greenroom, and it turns into a locker room vibe, watching highlights, where we are tweaking songs, changing out songs. It’s been a slow development of us realizing that we are not just there to promote our EP as Justin’s darling band, we are there to hype up this crowd and get everybody prepared for the headlining act. That has allowed us to maximize the effectiveness of all of these songs.

Scott: There’s no question we are opening for one of the greatest entertainers to ever do it, which is a huge amount of pressure, but that pressure forces us to get every bit of energy out of the songs and the transitions.

MR: After tonight’s Bridgestone Arena show, you will be at Nashville’s The Basement the very next evening, as part of your On The Side Tour. What impact does that have, alternating between Arena dates and more intimate club shows?

Scott: We know how to play a club, that’s our home. We take that energy and we are projecting to the back row of an arena. When we bring that into a club, you can feel that energy coming back immediately, it’s like we’ve been training with weights on our wrists and ankles and then we take them off and do what we know how to do and everything feels easier. The arena show has to be about the energy, but we can break it down and do some more intimate songs in a club than we can do in an arena. It informs both kinds of shows. The arena shows are the most fun working that you can have.