music

'Michael' Sparks Jackson Fever Ahead of Release

At dawn on November 7, the numbers made headlines. Less than 24 hours after its release, the trailer for the biopic Michael had already racked up 116 million views worldwide. The figure is more than a digital milestone. It underscores Michael Jackson’s enduring presence in popular memory, fifteen years after his death, and places the King of Pop ...

Bad Bunny Dominates Latin Grammys With Landmark Wins

Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny enjoyed a victory lap Thursday night at the Latin Grammys, the biggest celebration of Spanish- and Portuguese-language music. The reggaeton star won five awards from 12 nominations, including the coveted Best Album prize — a category in which he is also competing at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards in February. Bad ...

Spotify to Launch Music Videos in North America for Premium Members

Audio streaming platform Spotify will be adding music videos "in the coming weeks" for paying subscribers in the United States and Canada, a spokesperson said Wednesday. The development marks a significant expansion by the Sweden-based audio platform into video, which until now has primarily been limited to video podcasts. The Spotify ...

Behind the Charts: The Real Cost of Brexit and AI for UK Artists

Britain's music industry contributed £8 billion ($10.5 billion) to the UK economy in 2024, but the effects of Brexit and AI have clouded the sector's outlook, an industry report showed Wednesday. UK tours by Taylor Swift and Take That helped lift the industry's contribution to the UK economy last year, according to the annual report from UK ...

Rise of an AI Country Star Shakes the Music Charts

An artist suspected of being virtual, with a voice generated by Artificial Intelligence, has reached the top of one of the most popular country-music download charts in the United States, marking a first. Walk My Walk, by Breaking Rust, an act with no known identity, is now the most downloaded country track, according to the data published on ...

Neural Nostalgia: The Calming Power of the Music of Our Youth

Tuning into an FM station, an old hit slips in between news flashes, and suddenly everything comes rushing back: the taste of an adolescent summer, the warmth of a first love, the carefree lightness of youth. Why do these songs, sometimes simple or even innocent, have such a powerful effect on our mood? In a world where nostalgia seeps into ...

Music Rights: GEMA Wins Copyright Case Against OpenAI in Germany

OpenAI has infringed copyright law in Germany by using song lyrics to train its artificial intelligence models, a court in Munich ruled on Tuesday. "Both the memorization in the language models and the reproduction of the song lyrics in the chatbot's outputs constitute infringements of copyright law," the court ruled in a case brought by the ...

Sabah: The Timeless Voice Lighting Up Lebanon’s Soul

Sabah, born Jeanette Georges Feghali in 1925 in the hilltop village of Bdadoun near Wadi Chahrour—the mysterious “Valley of the Blackbird”—was destined for artistry. Poetry ran in her family; her uncle, Anis Feghali, earned the nickname Shahrour El Wadi for his mastery of the traditional Arabic poetic form, zajal. Jeanette inherited this ...

Saudi Women Keep Ancient Dance Alive Behind Closed Doors

In a fitness studio in Saudi Arabia, dozens of women sway to Arabic music as they practice belly dancing, an activity that many feel compelled to keep secret. Despite their enthusiasm, none of them would give their real name or show their faces on camera, underlining the stigma and cultural prejudices surrounding the ancient dance. In Arab ...