Category: Worldwide

Back in August, it looked like new downloads of the popular app TikTok were going to be banned in the US. Fast-forward just a few months later, and it now seems that the app will actually be expanding its reach. TikTok just signed a music licensing deal with Sony, meaning popular songs by artists like Beyonce, Travis Scott, and many more will soon be available for use in videos.

According to a report from Bloomberg, TikTok is shelling out quite a bit more money for the new deal compared to previous contracts. On top of allowing their artists’ music on the platform, Sony’s deal with TikTok will foster emerging artist discovery. “We believe that we should share value with the music industry,” TikTok’s head of global music Ole Obermann said in a statement. “As we grow, the value of the industry should grow.”

TikTok has shown that it has powerful influence in the music industry. Lil Nas X became a global superstar when “Old Town Road” dominated on the app, Doja Cat scored her first No. 1 single after her track “Say So” went viral, and New Zealand artist Benee experienced her global breakout following the explosion of her song “Supalonely” among users.

The new deal allows thousands of more artists to get a shot at promoting their music on the app. Because TikTok has now secured the rights to music by Sony artists, that means musicians on the label’s imprints, including RCA and Columbia, can now make their catalog available for use in videos.

Doja Cat is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ever since Britney Spears shared a video nonchalantly explaining that she burned down her home gym, the #FreeBritney movement has seen a second wave. Spear’s father and legal conservator, along with several of the singer’s lawyers, have continuously denied claims that she’s being controlled. Now, Spears is speaking directly to her fans about her wellbeing for the first time since the #FreeBritney movement’s revival.

In a video posted to Instagram, the singer assured fans that she is safe and happy. “So I know that there have been a lot of comments, a lot of people saying a lot of different things about me,” she said in the video. “But I just want to let you guys know that I’m fine. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life and I’m sending all of you guys a lot of prayers, wishes, and a lot of love.”

Britney’s brief message comes soon after her former estate manager Andrew Wallet claimed that the conservatorship is in her best interest. “Britney is in a conservatorship for good reason, but a lot of the Free Britney people have no experience with the law,” Wallet said, adding: “The most important question is whether the conservatorship is in her best interests. That’s what you always have to ask yourself and I absolutely still believe that the conservatorship is in her best interests.”

See Britney’s video above.

With the live music industry taking a major hit this year, festivals and artists have been forced to get creative. Many festivals, like Coachella, postponed their event several times before canceling altogether. Rather than wait until it’s safe to have large gatherings, several have instead pivoted to online platforms in lieu of in-person performances — and that’s exactly what Reykjavík festival Iceland Airwaves has elected to do this year.

Iceland Airwaves recently announced their livestream Live From Reykjavík would take the place of their in-person festival. Streaming November 14-15, the virtual festival boasts a lineup of local Icelandic artists, including Of Monsters and Men, Ólafur Arnalds, Ásgeir, and many more.

In a statement about the online event, festival director Ísleifur Thorhallsson said: “We wanted to find a way to shine a spotlight on the vast talent of the music scene here in Iceland, as well as support the larger industry and show some innovation. To have all these artists in Iceland at the same time is a ‘lighting strikes once’ moment, and we wanted to seize it with both hands.”

Watch the Live From Reykjavík livestream teaser above.

Live From Reykjavík kicks off 11/14 at 7:30 p.m. local time, with tickets starting at $40 for single-day passes. Get them here.

Revisit our review of Iceland Airwaves 2019 here.

Since the COVID-19 first landed in America, President Donald J. Trump’s relationship with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became the most famous face amongst the coronavirus task force, has been tricky. Trump has repeatedly expressed displeasure with him, as well as obvious jealousy of the rave reviews he’s received and trust he’s earned from the American people. On Sunday he even told the crowd at one of his rallies he was thinking of firing him “a little bit after the election.” It was a grim moment, even for Trump, and it’s inspired one of the most vicious commercials yet from Lincoln Proejct, the band of anti-Trump Republicans whose mission is to take him down.

As is usual with the group, the ad was turned around very quickly — less than a day after Trump’s threat. What’s more, it’s got as a narrator no less than Harrison Ford. The erstwhile Han Solo begins the PSA by listing his credentials: how he’s served as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since the Reagan administration, serving “tirelessly, honorably, and selflessly” through presidents Republican and Democrat.

When things get to Trump, though, it quickly cuts to the famous clip of Dr. Fauci seeming to touch his head in frustration during one of the president’s coronavirus press conferences. To really drive it home, it then plays audio of whipped-up rally crowd calling for his firing, followed by Trump swearing he’d fulfill their demands.

It then gives voters a choice for November 3. “Tomorrow, you can fire only one of them,” Ford intones over a slit image of Trump on one side and Dr. Fauci on the other. “The choice is yours.” Hopefully enough people realize which one has been the person keeping them alive over the last ten months, and if they’ve been lucky.

The ad was dropped the same day as another Lincoln Project video, one that happened to star one of Ford’s fellow Star Wars alumni, Mark Hamill. You can watch their Ford/Fauci ad in the video above.

(Via Deadline)

Dating back to Oct. 23, reports indicate that the NBA and its Board of Governors prefer an expedited start to the 2020-21 season, with a preferred start date of Dec. 22. That speedy timeline would placate powerful television partners and, according to multiple reports, presumably help the league to mitigate potential damage caused by fallout from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, the NBPA must agree to this proposal and, while the two sides have been in dialogue in recent days, it is far from certain that the two sides can close the current gap.

To that end, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe reported on Monday that NBA commissioner Adam Silver, during a phone call with general managers from around the league, conveyed the message that “time is running out” when it comes to the potential to begin the 2020-21 season in late December. While discussions continue on both sides, the NBPA is still reportedly reluctant to jump on board with the Dec. 22 date, and ESPN reports that, while optimism still exists for the league’s preferred timetable, the latest is that the rosy thinking “has been tempered in recent days.”

Though it is unclear how these figures manifest in practical terms, the NBA’s belief is that revenue losses could mount if the Dec. 22 timeline does not come to fruition. ESPN’s reporting centers on a figure “between $500 million and $1 billion” and, while details are sparse, the potential for a playoff run in the late summer and fall could cause issues with regard to the Olympics. Moreover, the NBA is on record as wanting to quickly return to their “normal” calendar and, with a 72-game season beginning in mid-January, that would be difficult to achieve for 2021-22.

In addition to the timeline, the NBA and NBPA have other issues to tackle, especially with regard to financial matters include how escrow will be handled on player contracts. Those details, along with the salary cap details for next season, will need to be hammered out in the near future, but it is clear that the NBA would love things to move quickly, while the players may not be as keen in this instance.

Just a week after over 4,000 independent artists backed a campaign that pressures Spotify to pay artists more per stream, the service announced a new feature that poses another disadvantage to smaller artists. Spotify announced they will begin allowing artists to promote their music in your personalized algorithm — only if musicians agree to take a smaller cut of streaming royalties.

Spotify made the announcement in a press release Monday. Calling the feature a “new experiment,” they explained that “artists and labels can identify music that’s a priority for them, and our system will add that signal to the algorithm that determines personalized listening sessions.”

Per Spotify’s blogpost, which Gizmodo noted as “carefully worded,” the streaming service wrote that artists will be taking a cut of royalty payouts. “Instead, labels or rights holders agree to be paid a promotional recording royalty rate for streams in personalized listening sessions where we provided this service.”

Spotify then went on to clarify that if a song isn’t performing well with listeners, they will pull the song from its algorithm placement. “Listener satisfaction is our priority—we won’t guarantee placement to labels or artists, and we only ever recommend music we think listeners will want to hear,” they wrote. In other words, artists cannot ensure priority even if they agree to take a smaller cut of royalties in exchange for taking advantage of the feature.

This new tool will not factor into listener’s Discover Weekly playlists, which is a curated cluster of music the streaming service’s algorithm has deduced a listener will enjoy based on their streaming history. The feature will only apply to radio and autoplay services, though Spotify did note they may eventually expand it to “other personalized areas” of their platform.

Read Spotify’s full blog post here.

LeBron James is one of the the most beloved athletes in the history of the state of Ohio. While he received a great deal of ire for leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, James returned back to his home state to lead the Cavaliers to their first NBA championship and, in the process, put the finishing touches on an irrefutable sporting legacy. Off the court, James has also given back in a significant way, founding his “I Promise” school in Akron and providing leadership on a number of issues.

With that as the backdrop, President Donald Trump spent part of the day before the 2020 national election speaking to a crowd of supporters in Avoca, Pennsylvania, and James became a topic. In fact, supporters of Trump chanted “LeBron James sucks” with the apparent backing of the speaker.

“How about basketball?” Trump said. “How about LeBron? I felt badly for LeBron, very badly. Down 71% and that’s with the championship. I didn’t watch one shot. I get bored. Back, forth, back, forth. You know why? When they don’t respect our country, when they don’t respect our flag, nobody wants to watch. Nobody.”

Trump didn’t stop there, transitioning into a common refrain about the NFL and pivoting back to previous rhetoric about the flag and national anthem after leading with television ratings.

“And the NFL is way down,” he said. “The NFL is way down. You gotta stand for our flag. You gotta really be great to our flag and to our anthem. And if you don’t do that, we’re not watching.”

As his NFL comments came to a halt, the chant began. Then, Trump encouraged the behavior by saying “what a crowd” and indicating that he would be okay with it continuing if not for more rallies to attend later in the day.

Reactions will undoubtedly be divided along the political spectrum, and that is the nature of the discourse in 2020. It is unquestionably bizarre, however, to have the president encouraging this kind of chant against an active athlete, and we can add this to the seemingly unending list of norm-breaking activities in recent months and years.

2020 is a strange place for a variety of reasons, but among them is brand Twitter accounts taking on a very specific voice and firing off strong takes on all manner of things from politics to sports. Sometimes that means that the Steak-Umms Twitter account brings you a painful dose of reality. Sometimes that means Velveeta’s Twitter account decides to fire off some incredibly strong takes on the usefulness and application of analytics in evaluating basketball players.

The latter of those things happened on Monday when Velveeta decided to respond to a tweet asking about an underrated player and fired off a Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf answer that stunned folks.

When asked about Abdul-Rauf’s historically bad career +/-, Velveeta then brought some heat in response to using that and on/off numbers as a metric to judge individual players.

They were not done there, launching a #TrustTheProcessed hashtag that was very clever and bringing some extremely solid takes on analytics, the issues with the GOAT debate, and more.

It all made for an excellent afternoon on Basketball Twitter, but the best idea/take Velveeta had was this.

Make Velveeta’s social media manager commissioner of the NBA or at the very least put them on the competition committee.

Many musicians have used their platform in recent months to encourage fans to vote. Taylor Swift offered her support of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Demi Lovato slammed Trump’s administration in her poignant single “Commander In Chief,” and Lady Gaga wrote a “cheesy” tune about voter registration. Now with the election just one day away, Beyonce has followed suit, announcing that she voted for Biden and encouraging her home state to do the same.

Bey took to Instagram to share her endorsement via a black-and-white video of her flexing an “I voted” sticker while sporting a Biden/Harris mask. The singer rallied her followers to join her in voting, writing: “Come thru, Texas.”

In other Bey news, the singer recently revealed she is a beekeeper — much to the excitement of her Beyhive fanbase. In a recent interview with British Vogue, she was asked, “What is something I would find surprising about you?” She responded, “I know it’s random, but I have two beehives. Real ones. I’ve had them at my house for a while now. I have around 80,000 bees and we make hundreds of jars of honey a year. I started the beehives because my daughters, Blue and Rumi, both have terrible allergies, and honey has countless healing properties.” Responding to the singer’s surprise answer the interviewer said, “So, you really are the Queen B.”

As of this writing, Election Day is still just over the horizon, and it’s safe to say that everyone, no matter the party they’re voting for, is a little on edge. Even as Team Trump has gotten even more desperate than usual in the final push, some have tried to put on a brave face, taking the high road and talking maturely about trusting “the process,” hoping that democratic norms will spare us any skullduggery. But who are we kidding? Even the most calm Biden voter must be screaming on the inside.

In a sketch that was actually cut from SNL’s John Mulaney-hosted show on Saturday, a cadre of smiling Democrats line in a faux-PSA, preaching their sunny optimism to the camera before revealing the bottomless anxiety raging underneath. You hear characters — played by Heidi Gardner, Kate McKinnon, Ego Nwodim, Bowen Yang, Beck Bennett, and Kyle Mooney — say things like “This election is about more than next four years” and “Despite how challenging the last year has been, I’m hopeful and confident.”

But then you see McKinnon gasping for an armful of Plan B pills, Bennett hording food in a vault, Mooney buying a crossbow, and Nwodim having her son pour her a couple fingers of wine. Meanwhile, Gardner finds that the Canadian border isn’t as receptive to people from a COVID-strewn country as she assumed. It’s a final exorcism before the stuff possibly really hits the fan, with an election that may be contested days, weeks, surely not months. Maybe in a couple days this sketch will already look like a time capsule from a much different era.

(Via Vulture)