Month: October 2018

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) NPR First Listen is streaming Low Country Sound songwriter Adam Hood’s ‘Somewhere In Between’ (10.12) in full, here: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/04/653324422/first-listen-adam-hood-somewhere-in-between?t=1538746214643 “Over the course of 11 songs, he also teases out the tension that, for him, lies at the core of what it means to be a small-town, southern singer-songwriter: describing small displays of deliberateness in a thoroughly easygoing fashion,” says NPR Music’s Jewly Hight. The Alabama native’s first album in nine years is a pure reflection of Hood’s live show. It was produced by Oran Thornton (Miranda Lambert ‘Revolution,’ Eric Church ‘Caught In The Act: Live,’ Angaleena Presley ‘Wrangled’) and recorded at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studios. Known as the “go-to country songwriter” (Billboard) for songs like Brent Cobb’s “King of Alabama,” Anderson East”s “”Surrender“” and album cuts recorded by Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town and Lee Ann Womack, Hood is ready to be back on the road touring under his own name and with his music. Fri., Oct. 5 will kick off a run of headline dates through the Fall that will travel through New York, Chicago, Boston, Nashville and more. For more information and tickets, please visit adamhood.com. ‘Somewhere In Between’ tracklist:1. Heart of a […]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The owner of China’s largest music streaming services is looking to strike it rich in the U.S. stock market. Tencent Music Entertainment plans to sell its stock in the U.S. as part of an initial public offering. The IPO documents filed Tuesday propose raising $1 billion, but that preliminary figure often ends up being substantially higher. Investor demand is likely to be high, given the rising popularity of music streaming and Tencent’s success so far. Tencent says its services have more than 800 million users, including 23.3 million subscribers who pay to listen to its music library. Most Read Business Stories Unlimited Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks. It’s also profitable, having earned $199 million on revenue of $1.66 billion last year. Tencent’s major shareholders include the leading music streaming service Spotify, which went public earlier this year.

You probably already know that listening to music no longer requires trips to a music store, or purchasing individual songs or albums from iTunes to download to your computer. Today’s best music streaming services have millions of songs in their catalogs, offer personalized playlists, and feature exclusive internet radio shows and podcasts. But which should you pick and pay a subscription fee for? A good streaming music service has a straightforward user interface that makes it easy to organize a library of thousands of songs or playlists across the web, Android, and iOS apps, and in some cases, a desktop Mac or Windows app. However, while most music streaming services have these features, most of them aren’t free, and nearly all services require paid plans that grant you access to a full on-demand library of music and other features. While testing these music streaming services, I considered factors like audio quality options, social integration, and built-in lyrics. It’s also absolutely necessary that your streaming app plays nice with more than one personal device. These are all important points when considering which music service to pick and ultimately, make for a better listening experience. Spotify is the best streaming music service […]

New York, NY (Top40 Charts / NetEase Cloud Music) NetEase Cloud Music, the popular Chinese music streaming platform owned by leading Chinese internet company NetEase, Inc., announced the signing of a copyright licensing partnership with Loen Entertainment, one of the largest entertainment firms in South Korea. With the signing, NetEase Cloud Music has been granted the license to the copyright of the firm’s music catalog, including a large collection of music as well as sought-after albums and tracks from popular performers, including IU, Apink, CNBLUE, GFriend, AOA and THE BOYZ. Loen Entertainment boasts a variety of music genres, covering the gamut from dance music, hip hop and R&B to folk, ballads, TV theme songs and electronic music. The collection will now become available on NetEase Cloud Music, including Palette and CHAT-SHIRE by IU, Miracle and ONE & SIX by Apink, 7°CN and BLUEMING by CNBLUE, Sunny Summer and Time For The Moon Night by GFriend, BINGLE BANGLE and ANGEL’S KNOCK by AOA, as well as THE START and THE SPHERE by THE BOYZ. In addition, NetEase Cloud Music has been granted the license to the copyright of popular albums including Post It by Loco, Gashina by Sun Mi, WHAT IF […]

EDITORS’ NOTES There’s a wistfulness to this album that emerges from its faded colours and the vintage feel of the muffled piano on many of its tracks. French-Canadian pianist/composer Alexandra Stréliski’s music is fragile and vulnerable, its surface optimism a mask for her deep introspection. But it’s also calming: The opening “Plus tôt” is a reassuring waltz, “The Quiet Voice” a lilting, innocent miniature. Stréliski returns to the full-throated sound of a grand piano for the beautiful “Burnout Fugue”, a mesmerising toccata, before delivering a gentle, rippling ballad, “Revient le jour”.

British rock band You Me at Six made their album debut in 2007 and rose to Top Five success in 2010 with their second effort. Founded in 2004 in Weybridge, Surrey, the band comprises Josh Franceschi (vocals), Max Helyer (guitar), Chris Miller (guitar), Matt Barnes (bass), and Dan Flint (drums). They made their recording debut in 2006 with We Know What It Means to Be Alone, a four-track EP that was followed by another, Untitled 4 Track EP. You Me at Six made their full-length debut one year later with Take Off Your Colours on Slam Dunk Records in the United Kingdom and Epitaph Records in the United States. Produced by Matty O’Grady and John Mitchell, Take Off Your Colours reached number 25 on the U.K. albums chart and spawned the hit singles “Save It for the Bedroom,” “Finders Keepers,” and “Kiss and Tell.” Thanks in part to heavy touring, including a performance at the 2007 Slam Dunk Festival, the band’s popularity grew steadily and earned them a nomination for Best British Band at the 2008 and 2009 Kerrang! Awards. Working once again with producers O’Grady and Mitchell, You Me at Six released their second album, Hold Me Down, in […]

twenty one pilots’ cathartic, kitchen-sink style—which folds in alt-rock, reggae, electronic music, and rap—is one of the most unique, unclassifiable commercial sounds of the 2010s. Formed by friends Tyler Joseph, Nick Thomas, and Chris Salih in Columbus, Ohio, the band took its name from Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, in which a contractor knowingly sends off faulty airplane parts to Europe during World War II, resulting in the death of 21 pilots. The band self-released two albums before making the leap to a subsidiary of Warner Music Group in 2012, shuffling ranks along the way before settling on singer-songwriter Joseph and drummer Josh Dun as its core members. As a duo, they delved further into the idiosyncrasies of their sound—characterized by a minimal blend of keyboards, driving drums, and playful, self-probing lyrics—winning a Grammy in 2017 for their single “Stressed Out.” In 2018, they released the heavily anticipated Trench. A practicing Christian, Joseph credits his faith—and the sustained internal dialogue that comes with it—as a source of inspiration, using his art as a platform to wrestle directly with his demons. Touring behind 2015’s Blurryface, for example, he covered his neck and arms with black greasepaint on stage—a visualization of […]

Rapper Lil Baby grew up in Atlanta hanging with friends like Young Thug, Coach K, and Pee, leaning more toward a life of petty crime and street hustling while his friends went on to thrive in the music industry. In 2015, at age 19, Lil Baby went to prison for two years for a probation violation. Upon his release in 2017, he jump-started his rap career with a mixtape called Perfect Timing, released in April of that year. The mixtape featured cameos from friends like Lil Yachty, Young Thug, and Gunna, and strong production from 808 Mafia, Brickz, and many others, highlighted by Lil Baby’s woozy flows. The mixtape immediately brought the young rapper fame, in part due to his affiliations with friends in the Quality Control family of artists as well as the 4 Pockets Full clique. As his mixtape attracted more listeners, Lil Baby worked constantly on new music, releasing singles like “My Dawg” and the Young Thug collaboration “Pink Slip” in the summer of 2017. Other 2017 releases included Harder Than Hard, 2 the Hard Way (with Marlo), and Too Hard. Lil Baby’s debut studio album, Harder Than Ever, appeared in May of 2018. Featuring guest appearances […]

Glamorously gaudy, a self-made postmodern diva stitched together from elements of Madonna, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury, Lady Gaga was the first true millennial superstar. Mastering the constant connection of the Internet era, Gaga generated countless mini-sensations through her style, her videos, and her music, cultivating a devoted audience she dubbed “Little Monsters.” But it wasn’t just a cult that turned her 2008 manifesto The Fame into a self-fulfilling prophecy: Gaga crossed over into the mainstream, ushering out one pop epoch and kick-starting a new one, quickly making such turn-of-the-century stars as Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears seem old-fashioned, quite a trick for any artist to pull off, but especially impressive for an artist who specialized in repurposing the past — particularly the ’80s — for present use, creating sustainable pop for a digital world. Perhaps unsurprisingly given her flair for grand gestures, Lady Gaga has deep roots in drama. Born Stefani Germanotta on March 28, 1986, the future Gaga played piano as a child and pursued musical theater in high school, regularly auditioning for New York-based television shows, notably landing a background role for a 2001 episode of The Sopranos. At the age of 17 she enrolled at New […]

British rapper Chipmunk began his musical career during grime’s first wave of artists in the U.K., eventually moving toward a more mainstream hip-hop sound that brought him success in his home country and America. After the release of his second full-length, 2011’s Transition, Chipmunk officially shortened his name to Chip, signifying a gradual return to his grime roots. The change coincided with the collapse of Jive Records and Chip’s subsequent move to T.I.’s label Grand Hustle. His first release for the label was 2012’s London Boy mixtape, which featured both U.K. and American guests, including Iggy Azalea, Meek Mill, Skepta, and Wretch 32. Over the next three years — and two further mixtapes, Get Dough or Die and Rap vs. Grime — Chip re-established himself as grime artist; in particular an artist who wasn’t afraid out call out his peers, as in 2015 when he called out Tinie Tempah during a freestyle on BBC Radio One. Later the same year he also began feuds with Bugzy Malone and Yungen, as well as releasing a two-part EP series called Believe and Achieve. By 2017, Chip was fully submerged in the London grime scene; signified by the release of his third album, […]

An imaginative and stylistically dynamic rap artist who emerged during the early 2010s, Logic launched his career through uploads and independent mixtapes prior to reaching the mainstream with a Def Jam record deal. Born Sir Robert Bryson Hall II in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer dropped a mixtape as Psychological in 2009, then shortened his name. After the 2010 release of Young, Broke, & Infamous, Logic joined the independent label Visionary Music Group. A one-tape-per-year schedule continued with a trilogy of Young Sinatra releases, a period during which he toured internationally without label support and was selected for XXL magazine’s Freshman Class of 2013. Additionally, Logic and Visionary Music Group worked out a contract with Def Jam. Logic released his major-label debut album, Under Pressure, in October 2014. Executive produced by No I.D., it didn’t need any guest appearances to enter the Billboard 200 chart at number four, and was eventually certified gold by the RIAA. The Incredible True Story, an ambitious concept album based 100 years in the future, arrived in November 2015 and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. The following year, Logic embarked on the Endless Summer Tour with G-Eazy, YG, and […]

“I wanted to write an album that could give justice to being someone complex in the pop world,” the surging French star sometimes known as Héloïse Letissier tells Apple Music. “Pop music is so much recently about trying to simplify narratives, and I was trying to complexify mine. Christine is really me taking your shirt and talking to you really up close. I just want to make sure you actually meet me.” If you have not yet made her acquaintance, you are about to: Her second album under the name Christine and the Queens takes her alter ego a step further with a bolder, more androgynous iteration named Chris. “The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman,” she says. “The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will to just own everything a bit more and apologize a bit less.” While the new album, also named Chris, undoubtedly works as an exploration of identity and sexuality and power—and as self-aware performance art worthy of touchstones like David […]

Armed with a mesmerizing, nimble soprano—and a vocal register often likened to Mariah Carey’s and Christina Aguilera’s—Ariana Grande began her career as a child star on Broadway and Nickelodeon before transforming into a pop and R&B powerhouse. Instantly recognizable thanks to her signature ponytail, cat ears, babydoll dresses, and breezy self-confidence, her slyly sexual personal brand has, like that of the Spice Girls before her, become an iconic image of young female power. But Grande is more than a symbol: Over the course of several albums and scores of hit singles—beginning with 2013’s “The Way” (featuring Mac Miler) through The Weeknd-assisted “Love Me Harder” and “Break Free” (featuring Zedd)—she has consistently outshined her male collaborators and deftly parlayed her stardom into activism. An LGBTQ advocate and outspoken feminist (“I’m tired of living in a world where women are mostly referred to as a man’s past, present, or future PROPERTY,” she tweeted in 2016), she uses her platform to confront issues like misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and bullying, spreading a message of love over all. Nowhere was this more clear than in May 2017: After terrorists attacked her concert in Manchester, England, killing 22 and injuring hundreds, Grande continued her tour. “Perspective […]

Kojo Funds emerged amid a number of rap artists mixing Afro-swing, dancehall, and R&B in the late 2010s. He was born and raised in East London — an area that also produced Dizzee Rascal, Kano, and Wiley — but was also of Ghanaian and Dominican Republic heritage, and African and Caribbean influences would later influence his work. Kojo’s music career began in 2014 when he started freestyling with friends, and their encouragement led him to take his musical aspirations seriously. His first track, “Want from Me,” was released in 2014 and featured his melodic rap style as well as demonstrating the impact of dancehall on his music. In 2016, Kojo released the track that would prove to be his big break. He collaborated on “Dun Talkin’” with Abra Cadabra, and it won the Mobo 2016 Best Song Award. ~ Bekki Bemrose https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/golden-boy/1434400391?app=music