Tag Archives: features

This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. LJ Gutierrez’s head is full of Pokémon, frozen pizza, and Legos. At Universal’s branding division, her 35-person team obsesses over musical …

Pale Waves’ tour bus crashed about a year ago, overturning and sliding off a road into the snow between Stockholm and Berlin while the band was on their way to a gig supporting Halsey in an arena run. Drummer Ciara Doran said everyone on board thought they were going to …

In his memoir Testimony, Robbie Robertson recalls the first time he played a new song called “The Weight” for Bob Dylan. “This is fantastic — who wrote that?” Dylan said. When Robertson replied that he had, Dylan “shook his head, slapped me on the arm and said, ‘Damn! You wrote …

LoveRenaissance, also known as LVRN, only has 10 acts on its roster. The tight-knit, black-owned music company — run by first-generation immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria, Trinidad, and Jamaica — dedicates time to a small group of rising artists instead of going after superstars. “It’s just more fun that way,” says …

The first half of 2020 was an intense whirlwind, but one that “clarified and in some ways accelerated cultural trends that Gen Zs and millennials have been shaping for years,” Dawn Ostroff, Spotify‘s Chief Content & Advertising Business Officer, says. Ostroff and the audio-streaming platform released “Culture Next” this morning, …

In Rolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. Katie Vinten studied film at New York University, never thinking she’d go into the …

There was a telling stat buried within the financial results of BMG, the recorded music and publishing company with a $670 million-plus annual turnover, last week. According to its German parent Bertelsmann, BMG’s total recorded music streaming revenue in the first half of 2020 was up by 26% year-on-year — …

InRolling Stone‘s series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. Shane McAnally is a big advocate of finding a crew. When he arrived in Nashville …

InRolling Stone‘s weekly series At Work, we go behind the curtain with decision-makers across the fast-changing music business — exploring a range of responsibilities, burgeoning ideas, advice for industry newcomers, and more. Read earlier interviews here. File transferring doesn’t have the most glamorous sheen. But the music business relies on …

What is the path to a Grammy? It’s supposed to go this way: The Recording Academy, the Grammy Awards’ parent organization, receives an avalanche of submissions, organizes them by category, and sends them to its 12,000 eligible voting members, who select around 20 contenders per category by popular vote. That …