music

It's definitely time — Mariah Carey is back in the top 10 of this week's Billboard 200 with Merry Christmas.Mimi's holiday album, which initially released in 1994, jumps up four spots to No. 10 with 56,000 equivalent album units in the past week. 2024 marks the seventh year in a row that Merry Christmas has reappeared in the top 10; it initially peaked at No. 3 during its release 30 years ago.Elsewhere on the chart, Stray Kids debuts at No. 1 as HOP earns 187,000 equivalent album units in its first week, including 176,000 in album sales, 10,000 in streaming equivalent album units and 1,000 in track equivalent album units.Making up the rest of this week's top 10 are Kendrick Lamar at No. 2, Taylor Swift at No. 3, Sabrina Carpenter at No. 4 and Michael Bublé at No. 5. Bing Crosby's Ultimate ...

Spotify — who pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 every time a track is streamed on its platform — has allegedly been filling out its playlists with tracks from "ghost artists" to minimize its royalty expenditures and increase its profit margins. Per a report from Harper's Magazine following a multi-year investigation, Spotify has been working with what the report describes as a "web" of production companies to pad out its playlists in genres like jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, ambient and classical. Since 2017, these companies have been creating music called "Perfect Fit Content" (or PFC for short) that's shared through hundreds of "artist profiles," making these PFC tracks cheaper to host on the platform as Spotify doesn't have to pay out royalties to external artists when PFC songs are streame...

On the heels of the release of his most-streamed studio project to date, BRAVADO + INTiMO, IDK still has some gas left in the tank before the year closes out. On his new single "FLOW," IDK reflects on the price of fame."Hoping and praying the kids will understand me / Labels is praying and wishing and working for the Grammy / Granny praying and praying I duck a double whammy / Family happy only when I can come in handy," he spits on the first chorus.The rapper sat down with Hypebeast earlier this year to share more on the release of the dual-minded BRAVADO + INTiMO. "To me, [my thought process] seems pretty straightforward, but I realized, to others, I’m pretty complex. So I thought, 'You know what? Let me strip myself down to my most simple form,' and that is BRAVADO and INTiMO," he said ...

Gunna is ending the year on a high note. After stamping his seal of influence on 2024 with One of Wun, the rapper has dropped off another one-off single to hold us over until 2025. Initially previewed at the close of his "HIM ALL ALONG" video – the first post-One of Wun release from the rapper – the new cut is entitled "GOT DAMN" and hears the rapper listing off his credentials and demanding the respect he deserves."On and off the jet, goddamn / Uh, I don't get no rest, goddamn / I want my respect, goddamn / I been running up a check, yeah (Yeah)," he repeats on the chorus – the bit that was teased in the "HIM ALL ALONG" visual.The roughly two-and-a-half-minute offering closes out a memorable year for Wunna – a year with high expectations after 2023's release of a Gift & a Curse.  In a...

The moment we've all been waiting for since the release of SZA's SOS album – a.k.a more of SOS – is here at last … A little over two years after the acclaimed album's release, SZA has expanded the ethereal universe introduced on the album on her deluxe envisioning of the project entitled SOS Deluxe: LANA.An ode to her birth name Solana, the deluxe reissue of the December 2022 album arrives after a slight delay. Initially slated to release on Friday, December 20 at midnight EST, the songstress gave it a slight push to an unconfirmed time later this morning – which eventually materialized in the form of a roughly 3 p.m. EST release."Just needed a few more hours for new mixes to ingest evenly across all platforms .. mixes are important," she wrote in an Instagram story a few hours back.Howeve...