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Jay-Z (Sean Carter) has filed his first response in court to a lawsuit accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs, calling the case “extortionate” and arguing that the accuser should be required to litigate such “heinous allegations” under her real name.
In a motion filed less than a day after the shocking case was filed, Carter’s attorneys called the accusations “patently false” and part of “campaign of extortion” by attorney Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who has filed a slew of cases against Combs and threatened dozens more.
Allowing Buzbee’s clients to proceed under “Jane Doe” pseudonyms is a just a tactic in a “scheme” to extract settlements from innocent celebrities by falsely tying them to Diddy, Carter’s attorneys argue in the new filing — effectively allowing the attorney to “smear defendant’s good name” while his clients “hide beyond the shield of anonymity.”
“Mr. Carter should not have to defend himself in the brightest of spotlights against an accuser who hides in complete darkness,” writes Jay-Z’s attorney Alex Spiro. “Mr. Carter deserves to know the identity of the person who is effectively accusing him — in sensationalized, publicity-hunting fashion — of criminal conduct, demanding massive financial compensation, and tarnishing a reputation earned over decades.”
Plaintiffs in sexual abuse lawsuits can sometimes proceed under pseudonyms if there’s a strong risk of retaliation, but such treatment is granted in only rare cases. Already, in several of the other civil actions filed against Combs, judges have required Doe accusers to disclose their names, with one ruling that anonymity is “the exception and not the rule” and another citing the “fundamental unfairness” of allowing only one side to remain hidden.
In his filing on Monday, Carter’s attorneys cite those earlier rulings and argue that Buzbee and his accuser have not met any of the key requirements to litigate her case under a “Doe” pseudonym. In technical terms, he wants the judge to force her to reveal her name, or dismiss the case entirely.
“Mr. Carter now is entitled to defend himself against these allegations with benefit of all the protections and mechanisms available to defendants,” Spiro writes in Monday’s motion. “To be sure, attorney Buzbee’s game has been to prevent Mr. Carter from defending himself while punching below the belt. Today, that game is at an end and Mr. Carter’s defense has begun — starting with plaintiff’s unmasking.”
In an email to Billboard on Monday, Buzbee responded to Carter’s motion by saying, “I’m not doing a play by play commentary to every pleading filed in court. We will respond in due course.”
Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations over the past year, starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a bombshell federal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after the indictment, Buzbee joined the fray by holding a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than a dozen such lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Doe plaintiffs.
In a shocking complaint filed Sunday evening, Buzbee added Jay-Z as a defendant to an earlier lawsuit that had previously named only Combs. Calling the rapper a “longtime friend and collaborator” of Diddy, the lawsuit alleges Combs and Carter drugged and assaulted the victim during an afterparty following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.
After being driven to the party and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the lawsuit says, the plaintiff was given a drink that made her feel “woozy” and “lightheaded.” After she went to a bedroom to lie down, the lawsuit claims, she was assaulted by the two stars.
“Another celebrity stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor,” the lawsuit reads. “Many others were present at the afterparty, but did nothing to stop the assault.”
The lawsuit came weeks after Buzbee was sued for extortion by an unnamed celebrity who claimed he was threatening to unleash “wildly false horrific allegations” linked to Diddy if the anonymous bigwig didn’t pay up. In Monday’s filing, attorneys for Carter confirmed speculation that the mystery case had in fact been filed by Jay-Z.
“Mr. Carter sought to expose Attorney Buzbee’s latest extortion scheme in a California lawsuit … after receiving a demand letter from Attorney Buzbee,” Spiro writes in the new motion. “Because Mr. Carter called upon the courts rather than paying, he has now been sued. So be it.”
L-Acoustics is the latest entertainment industry leader to open office space at Nashville Yards, the 19-acre AEG-led development project located in the heart of downtown Nashville. Expected to open in the summer of 2025, the Music City professional space will become L-Acoustics ’s major operations and creative hub for the Americas, joining its global hubs […]
Live Nation’s Rooftop at Pier 17 in New York City will become a year-round live performance venue with the debut of a custom-designed glass structure for winter concerts starting in late 2025.
The innovative enclosure will seamlessly convert The Rooftop at Pier 17 into a climate-controlled, indoor setting, while preserving the venue’s renowned views of the iconic lower Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge backdrop through floor-to-ceiling glass sidings. The enclosed venue will be able to hold up to 3,000 fans during its winter configuration, and introduce a new VIP balcony level. Each spring, the glass structure will be removed, returning The Rooftop to its signature open-air format for summer performances with a capacity of 3,500 guests.
The announcement coincides with a five-year extension of the partnership between Seaport Entertainment Group and Live Nation to continue programming the award-winning rooftop concert venue as the exclusive booking partner.
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“We appreciate our partnership with Live Nation, which has been successful in helping us bring our vision to life,” said Anton Nikodemus, CEO of Seaport Entertainment Group. “We look forward to The Rooftop at Pier 17 transforming into a year-round concert venue. Our state-of-the-art space will deliver an unparalleled experience for both artists and guests, providing the quintessential New York City live music venue no matter the season.”
The new design allows The Rooftop at Pier 17 to expand its Seaport Concert Series, with an estimated 25 additional performances planned for the late fall and winter months. The Rooftop currently hosts over 60 concerts annually between May through October within its outdoor setup located five stories above the East River.
“With its breathtaking views of New York City and intimate atmosphere, The Rooftop at Pier 17 is truly a special place for live music,” said Stacie George, senior vice president of booking, Live Nation Northeast. “We are excited to extend our partnership with Seaport Entertainment Group and continue collaborating in creating opportunities that further connect artists and their fans in this incredible setting throughout the year on The Rooftop at Pier 17.”
The Rooftop at Pier 17
Courtesy of The Rooftop at Pier 17
The Rooftop at Pier 17 is currently planning its seventh annual concert series in 2025, including Elderbrook (May 1-2); heavy metal bands Trivium and Bullet for My Valentine (May 7); Australian punk band Amyl and The Sniffers (May 15); Peach Pit & Briston Maroney (May 22-23); Reggae Fest Blaze (June 14); country music singers/songwriters Riley Green (July 24) and Cody Jinks (August 13). Tickets for general admission and the venue’s premium Heineken Silver Zone located near the front of the stage, are on sale now at AXS.com, with many more shows to be announced over the coming months.
For more information on upcoming announcements for The Rooftop at Pier 17 visit RooftopatPier17.com and follow @RooftopatPier17 across Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok. The Rooftop at Pier 17 is located at the Seaportat 89 South Street, in New York, NY.
Courtesy of The Rooftop at Pier 17
Drake, by common consensus, has been a smart and savvy businessman over the course of his music career. So some in the music business have been puzzled following the megastar rapper’s widely ridiculed legal filing last week against his own label, Universal Music Group (UMG), as well as Spotify, for an illegal “scheme” to boost the popularity of Kendrick Lamar‘s May 2024 diss track “Not Like Us.” They wonder if the move was a strategy for a potential future contract negotiation.
“Drake could be creating his own leverage by filing the suit against UMG,” says Josh Binder, an attorney who represents pop and hip-hop stars including Gunna, Marshmello, Lisa of BLACKPINK and Ivan Cornejo. “Most lawsuits are settled pre-litigation. My gut says this isn’t going to a jury. Drake could be using the suit to alter his existing deal.”
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Although Binder has no inside information on Drake’s filing, which alleges UMG “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” in its effort to amplify Lamar’s Drake diss track, he says the case could drag out and cause bad publicity for both Drake and UMG: “Settling it would, at a certain point, be worthwhile to both parties.”
In the Nov. 25 filing, Drake alleged that UMG used bots and other means to boost the prominence of “Not Like Us” on streaming services; the rapper’s attorneys accused the label of giving Spotify a deal on licensing rates in exchange for recommending the song to users who’d played non-Lamar tracks. They also alleged a civil violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, frequently employed against organized crime, as well as deceptive business practices and false advertising — including allegedly paying Apple to have Siri steer users to the Lamar track. The legal action states that the label “conspired with and paid currently unknown parties to use ‘bots’ to artificially inflate the spread of ‘Not Like Us’ and deceive consumers into believing the song was more popular than it was in reality.”
In a second filing the following day, which alleged payola to iHeartMedia to boost the song at radio, he went even further, saying UMG knew Lamar was defaming Drake by “falsely” accusing him of being a “certified pedophile,” yet released the track anyway. This filing reads in part: “UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues.”
Of the legal filings, Universal Music released a statement saying that the “suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” and several music-business attorneys echoed that sentiment to Billboard. “I can’t believe this is anything more than a publicity stunt,” says Howard King, who has represented Metallica, Dr. Dre and Pharrell in high-profile cases. “I don’t see how Drake has standing to challenge the record industry for doing what he knows they also do for him — using all available resources to promote an artist’s profile and music.”
But others in the business agreed Drake could be using the widespread publicity he generated from last week’s legal actions as a negotiating point for a future record deal negotiation with UMG. (Drake initially signed with Young Money, an imprint distributed by Universal-owned Republic Records, then later became a Republic artist.) One source tells Billboard that Drake’s latest deal, signed in 2021 and described as “LeBron-sized” by Variety at the time, isn’t far from expiring, and the most logical explanation for Drake damaging his reputation so publicly with the legal filings was to communicate his unhappiness to UMG and aim for a lucrative new deal, or even equity in UMG.
“It’s possible that it was done to have some leverage against his label,” says Gandhar Savur, a New York music attorney, adding that he has no knowledge of Drake or UMG’s affairs. “However, my initial impression was that he’s just trying to publicly discredit the track.”
Drake is one of the streaming era’s most successful stars, having passed the 50 billion mark in 2018. Lamar’s latest album, GNX, scored 364 million Spotify streams in its first week, in late November, but Drake holds the record for first-week hip-hop albums, with 589 million for 2018’s Scorpion and 497 million for 2021’s Certified Lover Boy.
If contract negotiations with UMG were to break down, sources say, an artist of Drake’s stature could follow the lead of Kanye West, who did not renew his contract with Def Jam/Universal after it expired and has since released albums on his own label via DIY distribution services, scoring a two-week No. 1 in February with Vultures 1 and a No. 2 debut in August with Vultures 2. “He could move forward without a deal,” King says of Drake. “He can certainly distribute the music without a label, especially domestically, and would need to have a management team capable of promotion and marketing. Of course, he would give up the big advance and have to fund production costs himself.”
Drake, however, as a viable global superstar, is in a different situation from Ye, whose prior antisemitic comments made getting into business with him a publicity headache for most labels. Binder doesn’t see the dominant rapper following West’s DIY path. “I would imagine [Drake] would want the infrastructure of a label,” he says.
Jay-Z (Sean Carter) was accused in a civil lawsuit filed Sunday of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs — allegations that he immediately called a “blackmail attempt” filed by a “fraud” lawyer.
In a complaint filed in New York federal court, the unnamed Jane Doe alleges Combs and Carter drugged and assaulted her during an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards. The case came as an updated version of an earlier lawsuit that had previously named only Combs.
The allegations were filed by Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who has filed a slew of lawsuits against Combs in recent months and has warned that he reps dozens more alleged victims. Earlier this month, Buzbee was sued for extortion by an unnamed celebrity who claimed he was threatening to unleash “wildly false horrific allegations” linked to Diddy if the anonymous bigwig didn’t pay up.
In a response statement on Sunday evening, Carter strongly denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a “blackmail attempt” aimed at securing a settlement. He called Buzbee a “fraud,” a “deplorable human” and an “ambulance chaser in a cheap suit.”
“You have made a terrible error in judgement thinking that all ‘celebrities’ are the same,” Carter said. “I’m not from your world. I’m a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn. We don’t play these types of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children, you seem to exploit people for personal gain. Only your network of conspiracy theorists … will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable.”
“I look forward to showing you just how different I am,” Carter ended the statement.
Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations over the past year, starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a bombshell federal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after the indictment, Buzbee joined the fray by holding a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than a dozen such lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Doe plaintiffs.
In the new case, Buzbee calls Jay-Z a “longtime friend and collaborator” of Combs. He claims that after the alleged victim was driven to the afterparty and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, she was given a drink that made her feel “woozy” and “lightheaded.” When she went into a bedroom to lie down, Buzbee claims she was assaulted by the two stars.
“Another celebrity stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor,” the lawsuit reads. “Many others were present at the afterparty, but did nothing to stop the assault.”
In his response statement, Jay-Z questioned why allegations that were “so heinous in nature” had not been filed as a criminal case: “Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?” He also vowed to never settle with Buzbee, saying he would “expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion.”
“My only heartbreak is for my family,” Carter said. “My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence.”
Spotify continued its remarkable run this week by briefly surpassing a $100 billion market capitalization before falling slightly by the close of trading on Friday (Dec. 6). The company’s shares rose 4.5% to $498.63, marking the music streamer’s second-best closing price ever. The best closing price of $502.38 came on Wednesday (Dec. 4) when Spotify reached a new intraday high of $506.47, valuing the Swedish company at approximately $100.8 billion.
The $100 billion threshold arrived the same day Spotify launched its 2024 Wrapped, the personalized, data-driven product that breaks down listeners’ streaming time and ranks their most popular artists and tracks. Wrapped, first launched in 2015, has become both a major media event and an immensely successful product that listeners share incessantly on social media.
At Friday’s closing price, Spotify has gained 165.4% in 2024, making it the only music company to have a triple-digit gain. This improvement is three times higher than that of Live Nation, which has risen 46.1% this year. Cloud Music is close behind with a 44.2% gain year-to-date.
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With a valuation of more than double the next-largest music company, Spotify is a major driver of the 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index, which rose 2.8% to an all-time high of 2,280.51. That brings its year-to-date gain to 48.7%. Ten of the 20 stocks were gainers while nine lost ground and one was unchanged. Radio companies, buoyed by iHeartMedia’s 14% gain, led the way with an average gain of 5.9%. Streaming companies posted a 4.4% average gain. Live music companies were essentially flat. Multi-format companies (record labels, music publishers) fell 2.1% on average.
Most other streaming companies were gainers this week. Tencent Music Entertainment rose 10% to $11.54. Cloud Music increased 9.7% to 129.40 HKD ($16.63). LiveOne jumped 6% to $0.88. Deezer improved 2.9% to 1.37 euros ($1.45). Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 6.8% to $0.73.
On the live front, MSG Entertainment improved 1.6% to $36.26 this week. The company announced on Tuesday (Dec. 3) that it spent $25 million repurchasing its Class A common shares due to their price “relative to the company’s long-term growth potential.” Elsewhere, Live Nation fell 1.1% to $140.26 while Sphere Entertainment Co., which announced additional Dead & Company dates this week, fell 5.1% to $40.27.
In other noteworthy stock moves this week, HYBE dropped 3.2% to 214,000 won ($150.15) after news broke that South Korean authorities are investigating chairman Bang Si-hyuk for possible violations of the country’s Capital Markets Act. The move came after a report claimed Bang had a secret agreement with shareholders prior to HYBE’s initial public stock offering that gave him a $285 million profit when the company went public in 2020. HYBE shares fell 6.7% over the two trading days following the news report but recovered more than half its losses later in the week. Other K-pop stocks fell in unison with HYBE. JYP Entertainment dropped 5.2%, YG Entertainment lost 5.8% and SM Entertainment sank 7.5%.
Elsewhere, stocks were mostly up globally. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 3.3% and the S&P 500 gained 1%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 improved 0.3%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index grew 2.4%. Dragged down by political turmoil, South Korea’s KOSPI composite dropped 1.1%.
A year that could have been sleepy ended up hosting a slew of massive deals, from starry catalog acquisitions to top-dollar asset-backed securities deals.
If it seems like everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped, the streaming service’s data-driven annual recap of listening habits, it’s because everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped. That says a lot about its effectiveness and its value to the company.
The streaming platform’s personalized year-end recap is unmissable this time of year. Mashable began prepping its readers back on Nov. 19. A week later, Spotify heightened expectations by advising users to update the Spotify app to the latest, Wrapped-ready version. When Wrapped finally appeared on Wednesday (Dec. 4), there was an onslaught of media coverage. Billboard even got into the Wrapped coverage, revealing Chappell Roan’s top artists and songs on Spotify in 2024 (Ariana Grande and Heart’s “Barracuda,” respectively).
With so much media coverage, some of it is bound to carry a grousing, annoyed tone. “Hate your Spotify Wrapped?” Rolling Stone asked, “You’re not alone.” “Sorry, parents,” The Washington Post lamented, “it’s actually your kids’ Spotify Wrapped.” Vogue turned Wrapped into a frank self-examination in an article titled “I love Spotify Wrapped so much I hate it.” For people whose Spotify Wrapped “suck[ed],” Pocket-lint suggests ways to “fix it” in 2025. The Huffington Post’s compilation of the “funniest” tweets about Wrapped was filled with only mildly humorous complaints.
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In contrast, articles about Wrapped’s peers came and went without anything close to the same level of media hullabaloo. The annual recaps of Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music received basic coverage at mostly tech-oriented publications but didn’t elicit the kind of longwinded pop culture essays that Wrapped conjures up every year. Apple Music Replay received run-of-the-mill articles such as “Apple Music’s yearly recap is finally available in the app” at tech news site The Verge. When TechCrunch covered the launch of Amazon Music’s 2024 Delivered, the headline referred to it as Amazon’s “take on Spotify Wrapped” lest nobody know what they were talking about. YouTube Music Recap launched on Nov. 25 to little media coverage.
For its part, Spotify contributed to the media overload by building a 2024 Wrapped microsite and posting 10 Wrapped-related press releases on launch day. Wrapped itself introduced new innovations in 2024, including a personalized Wrapped podcast featuring two AI hosts and the Your Music Evolution Playlist, a personalized playlist that tracks a user’s different musical interests and phases throughout the year. Wrapped has become such an important event that Spotify hosted a pre-release press briefing that featured talks by executives across the company. As Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify software engineer and author of the book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changed Music, told Billboard via email, “nothing else they do gets as much marketing/branding energy put into it.”
Wrapped especially shines in the awareness it attracts on social media. At the end of every Wrapped recap, Spotify offers personalized badges that flood X, Instagram and TikTok — the latter two benefitting from integrations announced in November that make it easier to share content. In this way, Wrapped turns its users into “active brand advocates on social media,” as one academic study put it. Or, as another paper phrased it, Spotify turns its users into “free labour” to help market its product. “For Spotify, it is 100% a brand-visibility moment,” says McDonald. “Social virality is the only metric the company cares about. The viral attention does help with user retention and reactivation, but the virality itself is the thing they’re measuring.”
More than an effective marketing ploy, Wrapped has turned into a competitive advantage in a business where standalone music streaming services desperately need one. A company has a competitive advantage when it creates more economic value than its competitors. Economic value is the difference between the perceived value of the product and the costs required to produce the product. Some brands are able to charge a premium because they have succeeded, through the quality of the product and the effectiveness of marketing, in convincing consumers their product is worth more. Food made with better ingredients commands a price premium, for example. Sometimes differences in perception of value come down to marketing. The difference between luxury clothing brands’ prices can be explained by amounts spent on splashy advertisements and celebrity endorsements, not just the cost of materials and labor.
Unlike streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services, which attract viewers mainly through exclusive programming, music streaming platforms have — for the most part — the same content and must find other avenues to attract and retain customers. Amazon Music Unlimited, for example, is cheaper for members of Amazon Prime. Apple Music benefits from being part of the Apple entertainment ecosystem and Apple’s ownership of music identification app Shazam. YouTube Music gets its subscribers through YouTube, the most popular streaming app in the world. Spotify, a standalone company, can’t match Amazon’s low price, Apple’s omnipresence or YouTube’s ubiquity.
Instead, Spotify competes on product features it develops in-house. Launched in 2015, Discover Weekly, a personalized playlist filled with recently released tracks, was so popular that people who streamed their Discover Weekly playlists streamed twice as much as people who didn’t. A product that popular helps give Spotify an advantage over its larger competitors. Discover Weekly was launched the same year Apple launched Apple Music. Although many onlookers expected Apple would crush Spotify, Spotify has consistently maintained a sizable lead in market share, and innovation played an important role in holding off behemoths like Apple and Amazon. As Will Page, former Spotify chief economist, put it in his 2021 book Pivot, Discover Weekly “create[d] a moat to protect Spotify’s castle.”
Wrapped follows in Discover Weekly’s footsteps as a moat-building product innovation. The key is Spotify’s ability to get its listeners to talk about Wrapped. One study found that Spotify Wrapped was more effective than Apple Music Replay in users’ willingness to create user-generated content (i.e. share Wrapped on social media). That’s gold in a business where consumers can choose between a number of fairly identical substitutes with similar features. Anything that increases engagement and prevents users from leaving for Apple, Amazon or YouTube is valuable. In that sense, developing a product that becomes a part of the cultural zeitgeist, like Wrapped, is perhaps the biggest competitive advantage a streaming service can have.
A federal judge is refusing to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing electronic producer Bassnectar of sexually abusing three underage girls, sending the long-running case to a jury trial.
In a ruling Thursday (Dec. 6), Judge Aleta Trauger dismissed some aspects of the case but said that the overall lawsuit against the DJ (whose real name is Lorin Ashton) would be resolved by a jury of his peers. A trial is currently scheduled for February.
Attorneys for Bassnectar had made various arguments for why the case should be tossed out, including that he hadn’t known how old the accusers were and that they had lied about their ages. But in her order, Judge Trauger was unswayed.
Ruling on claims made by plaintiff Jenna Houston, the judge noted that she was “only sixteen” when they met and that Ashton was “obviously able to observe her in person,” meaning a jury could find that he had “recklessly disregarded the fact that Houston was underage during the first thirteen months of their sexual relationship.”
The judge cited deposition testimony from Ashton — in which he agreed that Houston “does not look like she’s 19 years old” in an old photo she allegedly emailed him, but later also said she looked “like 19, 20, 21” when they first met.
“A jury must resolve the question of whether Ashton deliberately disregarded obvious facts from which he should have known that Houston was still a minor when they met,” the judge wrote. “A reasonable jury could believe — based on photographs of Houston taken at or around the time she met Ashton and Ashton’s confusing testimony when he was confronted with such photos — that no reasonable person would have believed she was eighteen or older.”
Thursday’s order came more than three years after the three women — Rachel Ramsbottom, Alexis Bowling and Houston — filed their lawsuit, accusing Ashton of using his “power and influence to groom and ultimately sexually victimize underage girls.”
The lawsuit, which accuses Ashton of sex trafficking, child pornography and negligence, claims that the star would invite minors to his shows, bring them to a hotel room and provide “large sums of cash and other items of value” in exchange for sex.
In her ruling Thursday, Judge Trauger tossed out certain elements of those allegations. She ruled that Ramsbottom in particular had failed to show that she received any payments after she turned 18 — meaning she could not accuse him of sex trafficking after that point. And she rejected claims that the DJ had used “force, fraud or coercion” on any of his alleged victims.
“The psychological force she alleges he exerted over her amounts to nothing other than a desire to please a famous man she clearly admired and whose approval she sought,” the judge wrote of Bowling’s accusations.
Ditto for Houston: “The conduct she identifies as coercive — conduct that allegedly manipulated her into loving and trusting him, making her afraid to do anything that would cause her to lose his affection — does not qualify,” the judge wrote. “Heartbreak is simply not the form of harm envisioned by the sex-trafficking statute.”
But the ruling still leaves Ashton facing most of the lawsuit’s allegations, including claims that he had sex trafficked them as minors by paying them in return for sex. The DJ’s attorneys strongly deny that anything given to the women was a payment, but the judge said a jury might see otherwise.
“There is a question of fact as to whether the ‘travel money,’ free concert tickets, and free airfare Houston received from Ashton were causally related to Ashton’s allegedly enticing Houston to have sex with him and to provide her the means of traveling to see him again while she was underage in order to have sex,” the judge wrote.
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, the lead attorney for the accusers, M. Stewart Ryan, said: “Our clients are very happy that the Court agreed with us that this case must be heard by a jury. Rachel, Alexis, and Jenna all look forward to their day in court, yet another step on their journey to justice in this case.”
Representatives for Ashton did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday.
UPDATE: This story was updated at 2:03 pm EST on Dec. 6 with a statement from an attorney for the plaintiffs.
Swifties are trying to get last-minute tickets as Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour heads to Vancouver tonight (Dec. 6) – but resellers are beating them to the punch.
With demand sky-high for the final shows on the massively popular Eras Tour, Taylor Swift released a batch of unique ‘no view’ tickets (which offer fans a view of the screens beside the stage but not the stage itself) for her three upcoming Vancouver dates this week at just $16.50 per ticket.
As Swifties rushed to Ticketmaster to wait in large queues for the chance to hear (but not see) their favourite star, resellers were scooping up the cheap tickets.
Trending on Billboard
Before they knew it, the Ticketmaster drop had ended and many of the ‘no view’ tickets were now on StubHub – for thousands of dollars, as fans posted on social media.
Some lucky fans did manage to score the no-view tickets. But the massive resale markups of $16.50 tickets are another indicator of just how hard it is for actual Taylor Swift fans to get into the Eras Tour.
Many fans have gone through several rounds of attempts at securing tickets through Ticketmaster or ticket giveaways, spending hours waiting in queues and scouring social media for ticket tips.
Meanwhile, Vancouver is preparing for its Taylor Swift era, altering a local sign to read: Swiftcouver.
The Eras Tour concludes in Vancouver with three performances December 6-8, 2024.
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Kendrick Lamar’s ‘GNX’ Debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums Chart
Kendrick Lamar has claimed a new No. 1 album in the home country of his biggest rival.
GNX, K-Dot’s surprise sixth studio release, arrives in the top spot on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart, dated December 7.
But unlike in the U.S., Lamar didn’t manage to hit No. 1 on the Canadian Hot 100.
Gracie Abrams holds onto that spot with “That’s So True” for the second week as the Eras Tour (where she’s performing as Taylor Swift’s opening act) rolls into Vancouver this week from Dec. 6-8.
Kendrick Lamar is still well represented at the top of the Canadian Hot 100, though. His sleek slow jam “Luther” featuring SZA is at No. 2, and “Squabble Up” – which claimed the No. 1 spot south of the border – is at No. 3.
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” meanwhile, drops to No. 5, indicating his record-setting run might really be done.
Those are strong numbers for Kendrick Lamar in Drake’s home country, even if the Compton rapper hasn’t hit the same highs as in the U.S. just yet.
Lamar will be taking his GNX on the road next year on the Grand National tour, with two Canadian date in Drake’s hometown, at the Rogers Centre stadium on June 12 and 13 with SZA.
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Les Cowboys Fringants, Charlotte Cardin Most Streamed Québécois Artists on Spotify in Canada in 2024
As individual Spotify Wrapped graphics take over social media feeds, the streaming giant has shared some insightful Canadian Wrapped data.
Spotify shared the top Québécois artists streamed in Canada, with rock group Les Cowboys Fringants taking the top spot, followed by Charlotte Cardin and Céline Dion.
Les Cowboys were very active this year following the 2023 death of frontman Karl Tremblay and the outpouring of support from Quebec fans showing their immense influence in the province. The new full-length Pub Royal debuted at No. 3 on the Canadian Albums chart. The group also won big at the ADISQ Awards, taking home wins for Author or Composer of the Year and Song of the Year.
Charlotte Cardin in No. 2 comes as no surprise, given the pop singer-songwriter’s international breakout following 2023’s 99 Nights. Cardin also won the first Woman of the Year award at Billboard Canada Women in Music this year.
Céline had a huge streaming moment following her comeback performance at the Paris Olympics, spiking her own catalogue as well as Edith Piaf’s. The soundtrack to her documentary I Am: Celine Dion also charted on the Canadian Albums chart, bringing back some of her immortal hits.
Canada Most-Streamed Québécois Artists
Les Cowboys Fringants
Charlotte Cardin
Céline Dion
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