Certified Lover Boy features a long list of top-tier collaborations, including appearances from Jay-Z, Lil Baby, 21 Savage, Lil Durk, Rick Ross, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Wayne and Tems, among others. In the description for the project on Apple Music, Drake describes Certified Lover Boy as “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heartbreaking.” Apple Music has had two consecutive record-breaking weeks, with Kanye West’s latest album Donda breaking a long list of records on the platform, some of which may fall before the first week of Certified Lover Boy comes to a close. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful peopl...
Warner Music Group has signed a licensing deal with China-based short-form video platform Kuaishou. Under the agreement, WMG will make its artists’ music available on all of Kuaishou’s overseas products, including the apps Kwai and SnackVideo. According to a release, Kuaishou boasts over one billion users worldwide, a milestone it hit in June. Outside of China, it has more than 180 million active users in territories including Latin America and MENA (Kwai) and South and Southeast Asia (SnackVideo). The platform encourages its “global community to share their activities, habits, and more with the core mission to ‘embrace all lifestyles.’” Oana Ruxandra, chief digital officer & executive vp of business development at WMG, said, “We’re excited to bring our diverse music ...
HBO Max has unveiled the trailer for Season 3 of Doom Patrol, and it’s a trip. The clip kicks off with the arrival of Madame Rouge (Michelle Gomez), who introduces herself after burrowing up from below the street in her giant time machine. “Now here’s what I do know: I seem to have traveled here via time travel capsule,” she tells the ragtag group of superheroes at the center of the show. “I came here because something very big is set to occur, and it needs to be stopped.” That very bad things appears to be, as April Bowlby’s Rita Farr (a.k.a. Elasti-Girl) pieces together, is the Brotherhood of Evil — the group of supervillains from DC lore that have long been antagonists to the Doom Patrol. “They are coming for us! This is everyone’s problem,” Madame Rogue shouts emphatically later in the...
An edited version of Kanye West’s final livestreamed listening session for his 10th album Donda is expected to go live exclusively on Apple Music Tuesday, multiple sources tell Billboard. West partnered with Apple Music to host two listening sessions at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and another at Soldier Field in Chicago, collectively bringing out well over 100,000 people to hear him complete his latest work. West’s Chicago show set a livestreaming record on Apple Music, with 5.9 million people tuning in to watch the spectacle. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos,...
Though the focus is on building exclusive content within Spotify, which has 165 million paid users and 365 million monthly users, Anchor will also provide creators with private RSS feeds that are compatible with other podcast distribution platforms. “Our model is built to maximize creator revenue and offer the widest possible reach so creators can grow their audiences and develop deep connections with listeners,” the company said. Spotify’s top competitor in the podcasting space, Apple, went global with its own podcast subscription options in June. Like Spotify/Anchor, Apple subscriptions provide support for ad-free listening for exclusive content, however, there are more fees involved. In line with other App Store purchases, Apple will keep 30% of sub fees for the first year a...
While Chinese regulators were placing strict control upon the country’s tech sector this spring, its local music streaming giant Tencent Music Entertainment improved revenue and subscriber numbers substantially. In the period from April 1 to June 30, the parent company to steaming services QQ, Kuguo and Kuwo saw music revenues climb 32.8% to 1.79 billion RMB ($277 million) and subscribers jump 40.6% to 66.2 million, compared to the prior quarter, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings report released Monday (Aug. 16). For a company with a 77% market share in the country, it’s a testament to the rapid pace of growth in China’s hot music market. (That’s far greater gains on both accounts, in percentage terms, than Spotify achieved in same time span — 17% and 19.6%, respecti...
Moore adds that the highly-global nature of the Spotify workforce — the company boasts 50 offices across 25 countries — made instituting a blanket vaccine mandate even more challenging. “In some countries, in some regions, it would actually be illegal to do so,” says Moore, “and so we’re just sort of taking the stance that people will make good decisions.” Notably, local ordinances in major urban centers could force companies’ hands. Earlier this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that a proof of vaccination will be required to enter indoor restaurants, gyms and performance venues in the city starting on Aug. 16 — though the order does not yet apply to offices. Last Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to look...
The Chinese government has unleashed 50 regulatory actions — mostly affecting tech companies in recent months, by The Economist’s count, that has created what Richard Kramer, managing partner of Arete Research, called “a tsunami of uncertainties.” Investors have reacted by pricing their uncertainty into Tencent Music’s stock price. Its shares currently trade at 27.1 times forward price-to-earnings compared to 44.2 on March 31, according to Refinitiv. At its all-time high price, Tencent’s market capitalization almost equal with that of Spotify. Now, at roughly $17 billion, Tencent Music is worth 41% of Spotify’s roughly $41 billion market capitalization. The problems began in July when China’s State Administration for Market Regulation aimed to reduce Tencent Music’s market dominance ...
The second-biggest gains went to Sweetener’s “R.E.M,” streams of which rose 94% from 43,000 on Aug. 5 to 84,000 on Aug. 8. Streams of “The Way,” Grande’s 2013 collaboration with Mac Miller, rose 44% from 146,000 to 211,000. Streams of thank u, next standout “7 rings” rose 23% from 446,000 to 552,000. “Positions,” Grande’s most recent hit single, gained an extra 10,000 or so streams – from 611,000 to 621,000 – but given the song’s high starting stream count, the surge only accounted for a 2% increase. Grande’s concert also included a handful of tracks by other artists, which enjoyed streaming gains as well. Australian rock band Wolfmother‘s “Victorious” saw the biggest percentage jump of all: Streams rose from close to 3,000 ...
West held a first Donda listening event on July 23 and since then has been living at Mercedes-Benz Stadium while putting the finishing touches on Donda, his 10th studio album. Between the two listening parties, West made considerable tweaks to the album, adding and removing features and entire songs, so it remains to be seen what the definitive version of Donda will sound like once the album is released. After numerous delays, Donda is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The second event on Aug. 5 also pulled in $7 million in revenue from in-person merchandise sales, sources say. That number matches the revenue for the first drop from Yeezy x Gap, West’s new collaboration with the Gap, which former Gap CEO Mickey Drexler told Yahoo Finance generated $7 million overnight when ...
A new lawsuit brought forth by Four Tet claims his label Domino Recordings underpaid his streaming royalties for music released over a decade ago. The contract, singed in 2001, led to a partnership between the producer and Domino that manifested multiple albums, including 2001’s Pause, 2003’s Rounds, and 2005’s Everything Ecstatic. At the heart of Four Tet’s claim is the assertion that he is entitled to a 50% share of the streaming royalties for these albums. However, he was historically paid only 18%, according to the suit. The basis for the claim comes from a clause in the contract which suggests that any licensing of his masters to services based outside of the UK entitles Four Tet to a 50% royalty rate. A judge could potentially rule this to be the ca...