Artist News Awards Business News Deals Industry People Labels & Publishers One Liners Releases

One Liners: Concord Music Publishing, Amazon Music, Kanye West, more

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 1 July 2020

DEALS

Concord Music Publishing has signed Boz Scaggs to a new publishing deal, covering his full catalogue. “I’ve become familiar with the Concord folks over the last couple of years through my most recent record release, and the more I see, the more I’ve come to respect their people and their work”, says Scaggs.

Concord Music Publishing has also signed country songwriter Hillary Lindsey, best known for co-writing songs like Carrie Underwood’s ‘Jesus, Take The Wheel’, Little Big Town’s ‘Girl Crush’ and Keith Urban’s ‘Blue Ain’t Your Color’. Lindsey is “so excited” and “so grateful”.

Strictly Confidential has renewed publishing agreements with Balthazar, Soap&Skin and Nada Surf, and also signed Balthazar violin player Patricia Vanneste’s Sohnarr to a new deal. “I am extremely happy”, says CEO Pierre Mossiat. As he should be.

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APPOINTMENTS

Amazon Music UK has hired Dellessa James as Senior Artist Relations Manager, with a specific responsibility for leading the company’s black music strategy. She has previously worked at BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, and Apple Music.

Alibi Music has promoted Julia Trainor to Head Of Sync A&R. She is looking “forward to giving Alibi a definitive edge in the marketplace by working closely with our artists to maximise their creativity as it relates to sync usability”.

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LABELS & PUBLISHERS

Jack Russell Music has joined IMPEL, the organisation that negotiates direct deals in the digital domain on behalf of an assortment of independent music publishers. “I am excited to be joining the IMPEL community and working with them to increase our presence in the digital marketplace, which has become vitally important to publishers, especially during the current pandemic”, says founder Clare Ram.

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RELEASES

As promised, Kanye West has released new single ‘Wash Us In The Blood’, featuring that Travis Scott. The track is taken from his new album ‘God’s Country’. The release date for that hasn’t been announced yet, but release dates for Kanye West albums are always pretty meaningless anyway.

Katie Melua has announced that her new album, ‘Album No 8’, will be out on 16 Oct through BMG. New single, ‘A Love Like That’, is out now. “This song is asking the essential timeless question about mad love, ‘How do you make a love like that last?’”, she says. “But before it became about love between a couple it started its life centred on my relationship with work and the stamina required to keep being an artist in the music industry”.

Disclosure have released new single ‘My High’, featuring Aminé and Slowthai. “We always wanted to work with rappers”, say the duo. “We just didn’t know any and we had no means of contacting them… there’s not a lot of rappers in Reigate”. No? What about Steve? I hear Steve’s pretty good. Lives on Orchard Road, near the college. Steve.

Conor Maynard has released the video for new single ‘Nothing But You’.

Burna Boy has released the video for his new single ‘Wonderful’. “This song is about the ‘wonders’ of seeing the impact of my music on people’s lives as they shared their joy, pain and pleasure with me while I toured the world”, he says. His new album, ‘Twice As Tall’, is out later this year.

Idles have released a live album, recorded at Ramsgate Music Hall in 2018, on Bandcamp. All proceeds from the release (and associated t-shirts) will be donated to the excellent venue to help it through the current crisis,

Sufjan Stevens will release new album ‘The Ascension’ on 25 Sep. First single, ‘America’, will be here on Friday.

Bright Light Bright Light has released new single ‘I Used To Be Cool’. It’s the only track on his upcoming album, ‘Fun City’, that isn’t a collaboration, trivia fans.

The Duke Spirit’s Leila Moss has released new solo single ‘Watching The Wolf’. Her new album, ‘Who The Power’, is out on 7 Aug. The song, she says, is “an imagined rebellion created by packs of wolves, who mete out justice when they lure a power-hungry narcissistic wannabe politician to his demise. A modern day folk tale whose villain is a fraud. Useless in the face of an emergency and utterly inane, he has no idea he is despised by so many, including the animal kingdom”.

Lucrecia Dalt will release new album ‘No Era Sólida’ through RVNG Intl on 11 Sep. From it, this is ‘Disuelta’.

Linnéa Olsen’s Maggot Heart have released new single ‘Gutter Feeling’. Their new album, ‘Mercy Machine’, is out on 17 Jul.

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AWARDS

Submissions are now open for this year’s Scottish Album Of The Year Award. Find out more here.

Check out our weekly Spotify playlist of new music featured in the CMU Daily – updated every Friday.