Zack O'Malley Greenburg's Blog, page 101

Train Rocks Forbes With Acoustic Performance Of New Single 'Drive By'

Train rolls through the Forbes newsroom.

Here at FORBES, we've been bringing you more coverage of the music business over the past year. In the process, some of the music has ended up coming to us.

In December, David Archuleta serenaded the newsroom with a selection of holiday songs; in March, seven-time All-Ireland accordion champ John Whelan got us into the St. Patrick's Day spirit. Somewhere in between, Steve Forbes and Mac Miller became pals.

Most recently, the band Train showed up at our

Jay-Z's 40/40 Club To Recoup $10M Update Over Two Years

Champagne Tower of Power: The refreshed 40/40 Club's central feature is valued at $1 million (retail).

Jay-Z's 40/40 Club opened in 2003 to much fanfare, garnering callouts on its owner's songs, hosting birthday bashes for basketball players and generally becoming a hub of celebrity carousing in New York.

But for trendy nightspots, fame can be as fleeting as it is for the luminaries who populate them. The 40/40′s star faded over the years, dogged by declining attendance and labor disputes with ...

B.o.B Working On New Adidas Shoe With T.I.?

B.o.B: Coming to a shoe near you?

The relationship between rappers B.o.B and T.I. is one of the strongest mentor-mentee bonds in hip-hop, rivaled only by the likes of Jay-Z and Kanye West, Birdman and Lil Wayne, and more recently Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa.

But when I sat down with the two Atlanta-based emcees earlier this month, it became clear to me that theirs is a most entrepreneurial bro-mance. B.o.B was first discovered in Club Crucial, a nightspot owned by T.I., and he's now signed to...

Spotify Brings Songkick 100,000 New Users In Three Months

Spotifying The Music Industry: Daniel Ek with Songkick's Ian Hogarth and others.

What's the best way to gain 100,000 new fans? A sold-out show at MetLife Stadium, perhaps—quite a coup for any musical act, and pretty much impossible for a website.

But concert-finding service Songkick managed to find another way: developing an app for Spotify. The U.K.-based startup was part of the first wave to land on its Swedish counterpart's new platform, which made its debut late last year. Songkick today ...

Madonna's New Album MDNA Is Turning Her Into A Techie

Madonna's Tech Transformation: The writing is on the wall.

Back in the greed-is-good 1980s, Madonna styled herself as a material girl. Avarice hasn't exactly disappeared in the intervening years, but the "Like A Prayer" singer has updated herself to fit the present zeitgeist, if the launch of new album MDNA is any indication.

For the album's debut yesterday, Madonna decided to forego the typical round of morning talk shows. She instead opted for an interview at Facebook's New...

L'Arc-En-Ciel: The Richest Rock Band You've Never Heard Of

L'Arc-en-Ciel: Big in Japan.

Madison Square Garden went dark ten minutes ago, and the crowd hasn't stopped screaming since. The only clue to the headlining act's imminent arrival is an ominous synth line emanating from the arena's speaker system.

Suddenly an image flashes across the giant screen, a digital rendering of what looks like a cell phone screen displaying the word "callin." More screaming. Then light floods the stage, revealing the four-man band, and decibels double as the music...

Kevin Liles Reveals Tips On How To Become A Music Executive

Liles' thoughts on everything from glow-sticks to LL Cool J.

Long before Kevin Liles became a record label president, he dreamed of becoming a musician himself. It didn't take him long to realize that he was destined for the boardroom, not the recording studio.

"I knew when someone else could sing my records better than me," he says, laughing. "I knew when someone else made more money from my record that [being an artist] wasn't the right thing for me. But I also feel in love with the business ...

Hunger Games To Boost Lions Gate, Taylor Swift

Swift Profits: The Hunger Games will enrich a number of musicians, including Taylor Swift.

The Hunger Games debuted with a whopping $155 million at the box office in its opening weekend, trailing only the Harry Potter finale and The Dark Knight in the domestic record book.

The performance is already reverberating on Wall Street. Shares of Lions Gate Entertainment, the movie's producer and distributor, opened the trading day up 3% on assumptions that the long-awaited flick will provide a...

Can U.K. Star Ed Sheeran Make It Big In The U.S.?

Ed Sheeran: Coming to a venue near you.

Ed Sheeran has never sold a physical album in the U.S., but you wouldn't have guessed it from his performance at Austin Music Hall last week.

The red-headed Brit whipped the crowd of 2,000-plus into a frenzy with his soaring vocals, spitfire flow and vigorous guitar playing—so vigorous, in fact, that he broke one of his guitar strings. No matter. Sheeran kept playing anyway, and the audience seemed too wrapped up in his performance to even notice. And...

Songkick CEO Ian Hogarth's Top SXSW Moments, Future Plans

Ian Hogarth's Songkick earned him a spot on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in December, but a much more significant co-sign has landed him in the most recent issue (blurb reproduced above): In early March, his concert-finding site announced it had received a $10 million investment from Sequoia Capital, placing Hogarth and cofounders Michelle You and Pete Smith among Silicon Valley royalty. It was Sequoia's first deal with a U.K-based startup.

I caught up with Hogarth at 50 Cent's performance with