BSB DNA Pacing For #1 With 180-205K US Sales, 185-210K US Units

https://headlineplanet.com/home/2019/01/26/backstreet-boys-dna-pacing-1-180-205k-us-sales-185-210k-us-units/

Barring a surprise release, Backstreet Boys’ “DNA” will debut as a comfortable #1 on this week’s Billboard Top Album Sales and Billboard 200 charts.
According to Hits Daily Double, the new album is expected to sell 180-205K pure US copies this week. The inclusion of units from track sales and streams should yield a consumption figure in the 185-210K range.
The pure sales figure should net “DNA” a #1 bow on the Top Album Sales chart, while the consumption tally should produce a victory on the Billboard 200.
In addition to the enthusiasm one would expect for a new BSB album, “DNA” is benefiting from a concert ticket-album bundle promotion. Albums redeemed as part of the bundle count as pure sales.

http://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=314970

Backstreet Boys will debut at #1 next Friday on the strength of a ticket bundle that could make up over 80% of the first week number, confirming that more than two decades into their career, the band’s fanbase remains devoted. Here’s what we have today.
Backstreet Boys (K-Bahn/RCA) 185-210k total activity, 180-205k album
Bring Me The Horizon (Columbia) 15-20k, 11-14k

Guy Sigsworth talks Everytime with Britney

I did a couple of songs with Robyn, and she was mates with the whole Swedish crowd around Max Martin. She played them the tracks that we'd done, and they really liked them, and said, "Hey, we should bring Britney around." She just came around to the place where I'd worked on the Frou Frou material, and initially I wasn't quite sure what to do because she's famous for her more dance-y songs, and I'm not. But it all turned out great. She had the root idea for "Everytime" (on her album In the Zone), and I could really tell that her heart was in it. I knew what my mission was. I could see the picture. She believed in the song, and I had to find a way to present it that was true to the simple emotion of it. It was a joy to do.   At the time, Britney had started to play the piano a bit, and she could certainly play well enough to spell out the root chords. She'd show me what she had, and I would say, "Well, here's how we could fill this out." We both knew where it needed to go, so I could color it in after she'd sung the main vocal. I love it when I get the vocal very early on, and I'm free to experiment with arrangement ideas while always hearing that final vocal. I love it when it can happen that way, though not every time is like that. We both knew we had to avoid all the cheesy power ballad cliches. No windchimes into the chorus. No giant snare drums. I loved it.

https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/09/from-bjork-to-britney-songwriter-and-producer-guy-sigsworth-on-being-a-kindred-spirit-in-the-studio/5/

U.S. Cassette Album Sales Grew 23% in 2018, Aided by Britney Spears, 'Guardians,' Twenty One Pilots & More

Thanks to such acts as Britney Spears, Twenty One Pilots and Guns N’ Roses, along with soundtracks from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise -- which boasts the year’s top two sellers -- and Netflix’s Stranger Things series, cassette tape album sales in the U.S. grew by 23 percent in 2018.

According to Nielsen Music, cassette album sales climbed from 178,000 in 2017 to 219,000 copies in 2018. While that’s a small number compared to the overall album market (141 million copies sold in 2018), that’s a sizable number for a once-dead format. In 2014, for example, cassette album sales numbered just 50,000. But, 20 years before that, back in 1994, when cassettes were still very much a hot-selling format, there were 246 million cassette albums sold that year, of an overall 615 million albums.

Cassette album releases in 2018 are still a very niche offering, with most significant titles limited to specialty reissues and unique projects. Among the top 10 selling cassette albums (see list, below) were Twenty One Pilots’ new studio album, Trench, and a reissue of Britney Spears’ debut album, …Baby One More Time. 

 

Trench was issued on a yellow-colored cassette and sold 7,000 copies in 2018, finishing as the year’s No. 3 seller. The Trench cassette was released concurrently with the album on Oct. 5 on CD, vinyl LP and digital download formats.

Spears’ …Baby One More Time sold 4,000 cassette copies and was the No. 5 biggest seller. It was reissued on cassette for its 20th anniversary, exclusive to Target stores, as a pink-colored cassette. Spears’ …Baby One More Time was originally released in January of 1999 on CD and cassette. Of the album’s 10.6 million copies sold to date, 1.49 million are on cassette. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and the set's title track became Spears' first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100.

 

 

For the fourth year in a row, the year’s top-selling cassette album came from the Guardians of the Galaxy film series. The best-selling title in 2018 was the Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1soundtrack (24,000 sold). It was released in 2014 and served as the companion album to the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It was also the top seller in 2015 and 2016. The cassette continues to do robust business, thanks to its strong link to the first film. The cassette is a replica of the oft-played mixtape seen in the movie, and the set’s music is heard throughout the film.

 

In 2017, the movie’s sequel soundtrack took over as the year’s best-selling cassette album, as Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 was tops.

In 2018, Vol. 2 finished as the No. 2 seller (19,000). Another Guardians-related cassette, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Mix, Vol. 1, is the No. 6 seller of the year (3,000). Cosmic is the soundtrack to the first season of the animated Guardians of the Galaxy TV series.

Other titles among the top 10 selling cassette albums of 2018: Guns N’ Roses' 30th reissue of their debut album, Appetite for Destruction (No. 7 with 3,000); Metallica’s reissue of The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited (No. 8; 3,000); Elvis Presley’s new inspirational compilation Where No One Stands Alone(No. 9; 2,000); and Wu-Tang Clan’s 25th-anniversary reissue of their debut set, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (No. 10; 2,000).

In total for 2018, there were 28 albums that sold at least 1,000 copies on cassette -- up from just 17 in 2017. (Though, there were 25 titles that sold at least 1,000 in 2016.)

TOP 10 SELLING CASSETTE ALBUMS OF 2018 IN U.S.
Rank	Artist, Title	Sales
1	Soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1	24,000
2	Soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2	19,000
3	Twenty One Pilots, Trench	7,000
4	Soundtrack, Stranger Things: Music From the Netflix Original Series	5,000
5	Britney Spears, …Baby One More Time	4,000
6	Soundtrack, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Mix, Vol. 1	3,000
7	Guns N' Roses, Appetite for Destruction	3,000
8	Metallica, The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited	3,000
9	Elvis Presley, Where No One Stands Alone	2,000
10	Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)	2,000
Source: Nielsen Music, for the tracking period Dec. 29, 2017 through Jan. 3, 2019. (Titles listed with the same sales total are not tied, as their exact sales are rounded to the nearest thousand.)

Mariah Sues Former Assistant Claiming Ex-Employee Blackmailed Her over 'Intimate' Videos

From People:

Mariah Carey is suing her former assistant, alleging that the woman secretly recorded her and attempted to blackmail her with the private videos.

Court documents obtained by PEOPLE state that the singer is suing Lianna Shakhnazarian, Carey’s executive assistant from March 2015 to November 2017, for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, extortion and invasion of privacy. Carey is seeking damages upwards of $3,000,000.

The lawsuit alleges that Shakhnazarian, also known as Lianna Azarian, “turned out to be a grifter, a Peeping Tom(asina) and an extortionist,” alleging that Shakhnazarian secretly filmed Carey without her knowledge.

“Azarian, without Mariah’s knowledge or permission, secretly filmed Mariah engaged in personal activities which, if revealed, Azarian knew would be personally embarrassing and professionally damaging to Mariah,” the lawsuit said.

Shakhnazarian also “displayed the intimate videos to her friends and co-workers,” according to the lawsuit, which adds that Shakhnazarian’s salary was originally $250,000 before being raised to $327,000 prior to her dismissal.

The lawsuit continued, alleging that Shakhnazarian — whom PEOPLE has learned was hired by a previous member of Carey’s team — threatened to release the private videos she had filmed if the singer ever fired her.

“But Azarian’s criminal conduct did not end there,” the lawsuit said. “Azarian expressly told a co-worker that were she ever terminated by Mariah (which occurred in November of 2017), Azarian would sell the video for a profit and buy herself a home.”

In addition to the videos, the lawsuit also alleges that Shakhnazarian used credit cards meant for business purposes “for her personal benefit.”

“This new year welcomes Mariah’s continued efforts to clean the trash from her life,” a rep for Carey tells PEOPLE in a statement. “According to a complaint filed today in California, an executive assistant employed in 2015 to help with business and personal matters, turned out to be a grifter and extortionist.”

“Because her threats and bad acts are too great to be ignored,” the statement continued, “Mariah has been compelled to file a lawsuit against her. Given that the evidence against this former assistant is vast and deplorable, we anticipate a victorious resolution. Mariah continues her streak of success this year with an upcoming North American tour and return to Vegas.”

Shakhnazarian did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment. TMZ and The Blast were first to report news of the lawsuit.

Weeks before the latest filing, Carey settled a sexual harassment lawsuit with her former manager Stella Bulochnikov. The two “reached a mutually agreed to resolution of this matter,” though the terms were not disclosed.

Rihanna Sues Her Father for Allegedly Misusing Her Name

Rihanna claims that Ronald Fenty and his business partner have misrepresented their ties to the artist “to solicit millions of dollars from unsuspecting third parties”

 

Rihanna is suing her father for allegedly using her name without her permission, TMZ and The Blast report and Pitchfork can confirm. The lawsuit—filed today (January 15) in a California federal court and viewed by Pitchfork—alleges that Rihanna’s father Ronald Fenty and his business partner Moses Joktan Perkins “have egregiously and fraudulently misrepresented to third parties and the public that their company, Fenty Entertainment, LLC, is affiliated with Rihanna, and has the authority to act on her behalf.”

 

In the suit, Rihanna’s attorneys allege that Fenty and Perkins “have used these lies in a fraudulent effort to solicit millions of dollars from unsuspecting third parties in exchange for the false promise that they were authorized to act on Rihanna’s behalf, and/or that Rihanna would perform at various locations throughout the world.” The suit also points to instances where Fenty and Perkins allegedly “accepted” concert deals: One of the “exclusive deals,” according to the suit, was for Rihanna to play 15 shows in Latin America for $15 million.

Fenty and Perkins have also ignored several cease and desist requests, Rihanna’s lawyers write.

 

Rihanna (along with her LLCs Roraj Trade and Combermere Entertainment Properties) is suing Fenty Entertainment, LLC, Ronald Fenty, and Moses Joktan Perkins for False Designation of Origin, False Advertising, Invasion of Privacy—False Light Publicity, and more.

Pitchfork has contacted representatives for Rihanna.

 

https://pitchfork.com/news/rihanna-sues-her-father-for-allegedly-misusing-her-name/

How Britney Spears Changed Pop With ‘Baby One More Time’

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/britney-spears-baby-one-more-time-anniversary-rob-sheffield-777564/

Happy 20th birthday to Britney Spears’ debut album …Baby One More Time, released on January 12th, 1999 — a truly avant-garde full-length that permanently changed how music sounded. The Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync were having hits already, but they were doing straight-up mainstream pop compared to the alien apocalyptic robot-disco stomp of Britney. You could argue the BSBs’ “I Want It That Way” was the last gasp of 20th-century pop, just as “…Baby One More Time” was the first gasp of the 21st. She’s been predicting the future ever since. 

Not bad for a small-town Louisiana teen making her first record. Max Martin wrote and produced the title hit, but it wouldn’t have meant a thing without the menacing way she growls “ooh, baby, baby.” As Britney told me in 2000, she spent the night before the session listening to Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” (“what a sexy song”), her model for the vibe she was going for. “I wanted my voice to be kind of rusty,” Britney told me. “I wanted my voice to just be able to groove with the track. So the night before, I stayed up really, really late, so when I went into the studio, I wasn’t rested. When I sang it, I was just laid back and mellow — it sounds cool, though. You know, how it sounds really low in the lower register — it sounds really sexy. So I kept telling myself, ‘Britney, don’t get any rest.’”

 

 

It makes all the sense in the world Britney was aiming to sound like “Tainted Love” — the breathy New Wave decadence of a U.K. art poseur flouncing like a Motown diva. But she took that erotic-cabaret sound somewhere new, with her own down-home growl. “I was praying every night,” she said. “‘God, please, help them play it on just my radio station at home.’ And then they did. Then all of a sudden, it’s playing on all the big radio stations in New York. And everything just started happening for me, and I was just like, wow, you know?”

 

 
The title hit is such a classic, it’s easy to overlook how weird and disturbing it sounded when it first hit MTV in time for Christmas 1998 — so flamboyantly artificial, so post-Mentos inhuman. Who was this? Was she Swedish or Swiss or Icelandic? Was she just Not of This Earth? You could tell the lyrics were written by somebody who’d barely met the English language — oh, that irritating ellipsis in the title. (I ignore the ellipsis whenever possible, because as Brit would say, it’s my prerogative.) But there was something otherworldly about it. TLC later claimed they turned down the song, but it would have been all wrong for TLC or any other certified grown-ups. Can you imagine a worldly-wise adult like T-Boz selling a teen-psycho line like “When I’m not with you, I lose my mind”? No way. Only Britney.
 

The whole album was packed with hits.

“Bops” and “bangers” were not invented yet, but I move that “Soda Pop” get grandfathered in as a bop — a bizarro reggae move as irie as Sugar Ray. “E-Mail My Heart” is the most-mocked track (justifiably, I admit), but it stands as the last great dial-up love song, a ballad of desktop-computer romance from the age of Angelfire and Geocities. Britney spends the song hitting refresh, looking for some sign of validation from her crush — is that so different from how we all spend our time now? Yet another future she predicted.

 

“(You Drive Me) Crazy” blatantly used the exact same backing track as the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger Than Life” — Max Martin, have you no shame? — but somehow that just made us all love both songs even more. (“Larger Than Life,” the boy band’s girl-almighty salute to their fans, was the perfect feminist turf for them to share with their Brit-muse.) “Crazy” became the theme for the Melissa Joan Hart/Adrian Grenier rom-com and its MTV video, where she and Melissa immortalized their all-too-brief BFF status. (The world deserved more “Brit pretends to be a waitress” videos.) The ladies bonded in her iconic guest turn on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Sabrina: “You’re always surrounded by people!” Britney: “Sometimes that’s the loneliest place to be.” Too real.

 

 

But the lost classic is “Sometimes,” which became her all-important second hit. (In 1999, a year full of one-hit wonders, the jump from one-hit to two-hit status was tougher than the jump from zero to one.) “Sometimes” is weirdly forgotten today, but much more than “…Baby One More Time,” it defined the Britney persona the world would come to know and love over the years. She sings in the voice of an ordinary American girl with too many feelings — everything she spent her first hit pretending not to be. In the video, she mopes around the beach sighing over the cute guy (she creep-peeps him via tourist binoculars). Nobody understands except her squad of elfin dancers, who frolic around her in a heart-shape on the pier. “Sometimes” made her a mainstream star and pushed what could have been a one-shot into a franchise wearing Vegas plates. Blink-182 got famous parodying it in their career-making “All the Small Things.” This was also the hit where Brit debuted her signature video move, rolling up her eyes at the camera. The Sensitive Upblink became her trademark, and she owned it until Ariana Grande came along — in Ari’s “Problem” video, she finally shattered Britney’s record for upblinks-per-minute.

 

Britney ends the album perfectly by making her explicit claim on the grand pop tradition, covering Sonny & Cher’s “The Beat Goes On.” Brit and Cher had a deep connection — she was just a little kid when she started belting “If I Could Turn Back Time” on the state-fair circuit. It began the tradition of Brit’s awesomely sacreligious cover versions, from the Stones’ “Satisfaction” (on her next album, changing “how white my shirts could be” to “how tight my skirt should be”) to Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock & Roll.” “The Beat Goes On” sums up everything Britney does on this album — inserting herself (and her audience) into the story of pop music. Like the song says, “History has turned the page.” La-di-da-di-di. La-di-da-di-da. The beat goes on.

 

After “The Beat Goes On” fades out at the end of the CD, there’s a spoken-word thank-you from Brit. “It means so much to me that you enjoy listening to my songs as much as I love singing them!” Then she gives a preview of the upcoming release by her labelmates the Backstreet Boys: “Hit it, guys!” In other words, her debut album ends with an ad, which is perfect in itself. The CD single “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” had another message, one to put on your answering machine: “Hi, this is Britney Spears and sometimes my friend can’t come to the phone, and this is one of those times. So leave your message at the beep and baby, they’ll call you back one more time!”
 

“So much attitude in that song,” Britney told me in 2000, recalling the moment she first heard the demo of her first hit. “I was so happy because there’s a lot of good songs out there, but it’s rare when you can take a song and really put your name all over it and put your personality into it.” That’s what she achieved on her debut. She’d go on to make more albums, score more hits, inspire more scandalous headlines. But on …Baby One More Time, she proved she was here to stay.

Britney’s Vegas hiatus delays new album release

Britney Spears’ recent announcement that she was undertaking an “indefinite work hiatus” following her father Jamie Spears’ recent life-threatening health crisis (he suffered a ruptured colon late last year and spent much of December hospitalized) has resulted in the postponement of her Las Vegas residency, “Britney: Domination.” Slated to run for 32 performances at the Park Theatre at Park MGM, the show is on hold for the foreseeable future and so, it appears, is a new album that was pegged to the launch.
 
Variety has learned that hitmaker Justin Tranter (Imagine Dragons, Selena Gomez) serves as executive producer on Spears’ next full-length release for RCA Records, her tenth studio effort over a career that spans two decades (her last album was “Glory” in 2016, on which Tranter had four writing credits). Tranter acknowledges that he is working on the album, telling Variety, “I’m beyond excited to be involved,” but declines to speculate on a possible release date or whether it will come out in 2019.
 
Spears’ manager, Larry Rudolph, says, “Everything is on hold right now until Jamie is better. But once he is, she will resume working on the album with Justin. Right now, she’s taking some time off to deal with these family issues.”
 
 
Spears herself described the decision to put off Domination as heartbreaking. “However, it’s important to always put your family first,” she wrote on Jan. 4. Of her father, she added in a statement, “We have a very special relationship and I want to be with my family at this time just like they have always been there for me.”
 
As for how long this time-out could take? Spears’ creative directors for Domination, Napoleon and Tabitha (known as Nappy Tabs) anticipate a delay of six months to a year, they revealed on social media. The two also answered a fan’s question about the show’s return with an appropriate quip: “If we come back, STRONGER would be a fitting name right?”
 
Domination was due to kick off on February 17. In December 2017, Spears wrapped a four-year run at Planet Hollywood’s Axis Theater, a show that helped rebrand Las Vegas as a music destination and opened the door to successful residencies by such artists as Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga.
 
https://variety.com/2019/music/news/britney-spears-hiatus-new-album-release-delay-1203104215/

Britney Domination Residency CANCELLED

Official press release:

Multi-platinum, GRAMMY Award-winner Britney Spears has announced an indefinite work hiatus putting her “Britney: Domination” launch run at Park Theater at the new Park MGM resort on hold until further notice. She has made this decision to devote all of her time to her family and their efforts to care for her father during his recovery from a recent life-threatening illness.

Two months ago, Mr. Jamie Spears became seriously ill and was rushed to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas.  His colon spontaneously ruptured and he was immediately admitted into surgery. Mr. Spears spent the next 28 days in the hospital under the care of the amazing doctors, nurses and staff at the hospital, who the Spears family credits with saving his life. After a long, complicated post-operative period, he is recuperating at home and gaining strength, and is expected to make a full recovery.

Ms. Spears has been tremendously involved with caring for her family, and as a result of his health issues and ongoing recovery, she is going to take time off.  “I am dedicating my focus and energy to care for my family.  We have a very special relationship and I want to be with my family at this time just like they have always been there for me,” said Ms. Spears.  “Thank you to all my fans for your continued love and support during this time.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and I look forward to the time when I can be back on stage performing for all of you,” she added.

Refunds are available at original point of purchase. For more information please contact Ticketmaster customer service at 800-745-3000.