Music Week

We are the leading trade media brand for the UK music industry with unrivalled access to game-changing artists and executives. Music Week remains essential reading for anyone who needs to understand the business of music.

Music Week

Welcome to Music Week

Pitch perfect: Villa Park to host global stars as it stages farewell for local metal legends • With Ozzy Osbourne & Black Sabbath playing a huge final show at Aston Villa, COO Ben Hatton discusses the stadium’s ambitious live music strategy

Vinyl frontier: Record Store Day labels target younger superfans • With vinyl registering a 17th consecutive year of growth, Gen-Z music fans are increasingly driving sales of the format with a shift away from catalogue

FOR THE RECORD • SOME OF THE BIGGEST STORIES FROM THE PAST MONTH IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS

SPOTLIGHT SHINING A LIGHT ON MUSIC'S BIGGEST NAMES • Founded in 2006, Paris-based IDOL has grown to become a global distribution and label management operation for independent music with offices in multiple territories. Here, founder & president Pascal Bittard addresses key challenges for the label services sector including consolidation, the role of indies and the future of streaming…

START ME UP • THE NEW COMPANIES DRIVING MUSIC’S FUTURE

DIGITAL DISCOURSE • Deviate Digital CEO Sammy Andrews guides you through the ever-changing tech world…

IN POD WE TRUST • INSIDE THE BEST MUSIC PODCASTS

SUPER BOWL/MISSION IMPOSSIBLE/JAMIE STEVENS • An inside look at how the Super Bowl trailer for the latest instalment in the Mission Impossible franchise came to life…

RISING STAR • Meet the industry’s brightest new talents…

POSTS OF THE MONTH

MISO EXTRA • “What is pop?” This is the question that inspires London-based singer and rapper Miso Extra’s genre-defying debut album, Earcandy. As she prepares for a year that promises to be huge, the Japanese-British artist unpacks the answer here, and invites us into her ever-evolving ‘Misoverse’…

ESSENTIAL INFO

KEY RELEASES

INCOMING • This month marks the arrival of Is – My Morning Jacket’s excellent 10th record. Here, singer Jim James talks survival, therapy, and why they hooked up with superproducer Brendan O’Brien…

THE PLAYLIST

TASTEMAKERS • The industry’s favourite new sounds

MAKING WAVES • THIS MONTH'S HOTTEST BRAND NEW ACT

HOTSHOTS

DUE DILIGENCE • Not many artists get the chance to turn down seven-figure record deals before they turn 21, but Nemzzz knows precisely how it feels to do just that. Ahead of the highly anticipated release of his new mixtape Rent’s Due, the Mancunian rapper tells Music Week that making such decisions “just makes you want to strive for more and not be so easily satisfied”. Here, we meet the Drake-approved rising star, together with his manager Alex Omisesan and the team at his label services partner ADA, to discover why, if you want to make it in UK rap, the only option is to do things exactly as you see fit…

ROLE CALL MEET TEAM NEMZZZ

THE Music Week INTERVIEW EMMA BOWNES • Few executives in the live music sector tell it like it is in the way Emma Bownes does. Hot on the heels of her promotion to SVP, venue programming at AEG Europe – a move which itself followed winning the Live Music Inspiration trophy at the Music Week Women In Music Awards – we meet the executive for an epic look back at her career. Strap in, as Bownes gives us her vision for The O2 and offers up her take on the grassroots crisis, surging prices and the “surprisingly brave” decision she took very early on in her career…

MUSIC WEEK X GIRLS I RATE PRESENTS MENTOR ME • THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AND SUCCESSFUL WOMEN ACROSS THE MUSIC AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES SHARE THEIR TOP 5 CAREER LESSONS…

Letting Off...