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On April 13, the Circle Chart — South Korea’s longest-running music ranking, and its equivalent to the RIAA — unveiled its latest musician milestones. Alongside accomplishments by Blackpink’s Jisoo, NewJeans and BTS, stood PLAVE — a boy band whose members’ real-life identities are hidden behind digital avatars, but whose commercial performance and ambitions rival K-pop’s biggest human acts.
For almost three decades, Korean music companies have attempted to develop cyber singers, with mixed results. But none have broken through like PLAVE, which with its third mini‑album, February’s Caligo Pt. 1, became the first entirely virtual Korean act to surpass 1 million units sold, according to Circle Chart. But much like Gorillaz — the virtual British band created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett — the members of PLAVE are, behind the screens that project their avatars, real artists proving they can have real impact without revealing their faces or personal lives.
PLAVE was conceptualized in the unassuming Seoul office building that houses VLAST, an entertainment company that started as a for-hire computer graphics studio and is now a full-service production house for real-time graphics and virtual intellectual property that also provides label and management services to PLAVE, which is currently its sole musical group. Inside its scrappy yet cutting-edge production facility, and under CEO Lee “William” Sunggoo’s direction, the company imagined a virtual band in the style of manhwa, the Korean comics and webtoons that have become increasingly popular over the past two decades thanks in part to the otherworldly good looks of their characters. After successfully pitching the potential of virtual artists to the singer who would go on to voice PLAVE leader Yejun, VLAST recruited four more artists to round out the quintet as Bamby, Noah, Eunho and Hamin. “Each new member was recommended by someone who recognized their musical ability,” Lee says.
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According to VLAST, the men behind PLAVE are all artists who previously pursued K-pop or R&B careers. Their virtual selves — brought to life in meticulous 2D detail through motion-capture rendering — sing, dance and rap like any K-pop stars would. But the real men of PLAVE also write, produce, choreograph and play instruments on tracks, a level of creative involvement usually seen in chart-toppers like BTS and Stray Kids that’s still atypical among idol groups.
Bamby
Billboard Korea + VLAST
Eunho
Billboard Korea + VLAST
At VLAST’s Seoul headquarters, creative teams huddle around screens, monitors and camera rigs, overseeing motion-capture stages and ensuring the PLAVE avatars and the actual musicians in the room with them have every dance move and facial expression synced. Through real-time animation, PLAVE can host frequent livestreams with fans and play concerts and festival appearances — so long as venues have a screen to display them.
The quintet’s real members can even see its fans — known as PLLI — as it performs from inside VLAST HQ and respond directly to them. So far, the group has headlined four concerts with in-person audiences, all in Seoul: First, it sold out two April 2024 shows at the city’s 2,500-seat Olympic Hall, then two dates the following October at the 11,000-capacity Jamsil Indoor Stadium, according to VLAST. In a review of the latter, the Korea JoongAng Daily lauded onscreen feats like watching PLAVE “driving a burning motorcycle to the stage,” but noted that the band’s inability to actually meet its audience “greatly limits the range of performance,” while technical glitches jolted fans from the fantasy.
(“We are always committed to delivering the best possible results,” VLAST says. “Enhancing PLAVE’s concert experience involves upgrading every element that allows the audience to feel fully immersed and connected — including minimizing technical issues.”)
“PLLI are the kinds of fans who truly see the real us,” Bamby tells Billboard in a video interview. At 5 foot 9, he’s PLAVE’s shortest member and sports pink hair and magenta eyes. (Whether these avatars’ attributes are in any way directly inspired by the people voicing them remains a secret.) Because of PLAVE’s virtual nature, Bamby continues, “We rely even more on communication platforms. We’re constantly curious about how they’re doing and how they’re experiencing our content.”
Since its March 2023 debut, PLAVE has earned more than 2.1 billion official on-demand global streams, according to Luminate. Before its latest single, “Dash,” became the first song by a Korean virtual group to reach the Billboard Global 200 in February 2025, PLAVE had entered the Global 200 Excl. U.S. chart with “Pump Up the Volume!” and “Way 4 Luv.”
Hamin
Billboard Korea + VLAST
PLAVE joins a long history of virtual acts from Asia. In the mid-1990s, Japan pioneered virtual idols; the first from South Korea was Adam, a Sims-like cyber singer from information technology company Adamsoft who “debuted” in 1998 and whose first album, Genesis, sold a reported 200,000 copies. Adam led a small boom of cyber stars, but corporations ultimately abandoned them as costs exceeded earnings.
Virtual artists began making a comeback at the start of the 2020s after artificial intelligence and metaverse technology trends helped launch groups like Mave:, an AI-powered female quartet that virtual-artist management house Metaverse Entertainment launched in 2023. Korea’s Kakao Entertainment invested a reported 12 billion won (about $9.7 million at the time) in a partnership with Metaverse. While Mave: is strictly operated through technology, other groups with real humans behind virtual facades like PLAVE now exist, including female sextet Isegye Idol and 11-member girl group Itterniti. But none have broken through with significant sales or awards recognition like PLAVE.
“The initial investment is substantial,” Lee says. “But once that foundation is in place, there are certain advantages. Unlike traditional artists, we don’t have costs for things like hair, makeup or long-distance travel. Instead, our resources are directed toward technology, creative development and content production.”
PLAVE’s rapid ascent has attracted financial investment from HYBE and YG Entertainment, which double as strategic advisers on everything from the members’ vocal health to global rollout strategy. “As a company new to the entertainment industry, we valued getting advice and insights from established industry leaders with extensive experience,” Lee says. With global distribution from YG PLUS, Caligo Pt. 1 included the group’s first all-English track, “Island” (co-written by Adrian McKinnon, whose credits range from Rae Sremmurd to ENHYPEN). On June 16, PLAVE will release its debut Japanese single, “Kakurenbo (Hide and Seek),” following a 2024 agreement with HYBE Japan to support PLAVE’s expansion in the market.
“From an international fan’s point of view, it can sometimes be hard to fully grasp the emotions we want to express due to language barriers,” says PLAVE’s Eunho, who appears as a silver-haired rapper with fangs. “Some feelings just don’t translate perfectly, so we’re really glad we got to release an English track this time. We believe it helped us connect more deeply with our fans in English-speaking countries, and we plan to keep exploring multilingual projects.”
For now, VLAST has no plans for developing further virtual artists, focusing its energies entirely on PLAVE. Its current goals for the group include upgrading the concert experience, launching a dedicated mobile app, pushing to “reach more global fans” — including in Western markets — “and introduce them to what virtual artists can offer,” according to Lee.
“The biggest misconception we faced was that virtual idols like PLAVE were fully operated by AI,” he adds. “Even now, in some overseas markets where people aren’t yet familiar with PLAVE, that remains a common misunderstanding.”
Noah
Billboard Korea + VLAST
Yejun
Billboard Korea + VLAST
The way that blonde, blue-eyed Noah sees it, “one of the coolest parts about PLAVE is that we can do things on stage that other artists can’t — like magical effects or cinematic action scenes. People sometimes say, ‘But aren’t you AI? Doesn’t that make it easier?’ But the truth is, none of it is easy when you actually try it.” (He adds that some members even sustained injuries while rehearsing the “intense” choreography for “Dash,” created by Bamby and Hamin.)
As with so many ascendant pop stars, the real men behind PLAVE have faced their share of privacy invasion. Prying online fans have unearthed clues to the members’ real-life identities; last year, some began stalking them at VLAST and their homes, despite the company’s pleas for fans to respect PLAVE’s privacy and subsequent threat of legal action toward anyone disclosing personal information about the act. When rumors regarding the members’ real identities ran wild across social media and online forums around Caligo Pt. 1’s release, neither the band nor VLAST responded.
The group’s navy-haired, silver-eyed leader, Yejun, promises that in the coming year, “Fans will see us onstage a lot more. Up until now, we’ve had relatively few chances to perform live. In 2025, we want to change that — more concerts and more global tours.” (In early May, PLAVE announced three August dates at Seoul’s KPSO Dome.)
“All five members of PLAVE are passionate about music,” Lee explains. “We believe that high-quality music and performance are what distinguish us from other virtual artists. Creating compelling music is always one of our top priorities.”
“Our chemistry as a group, our direct communication with fans and our distinct musical identity are what have brought us this far,” the black-haired, black-eyed rapper Hamin says. Adds Yejun: “The bond we share as members — the connection, the stories we’ve built and the trust between us — that’s what makes PLAVE special.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
In the middle of his Grammy Award-winning 2024 “Not Like Us” music video, Kendrick Lamar posts up with OG executives and artists from his former label, Top Dawg Entertainment, on the patchy lawn outside of the Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. “That moment for me was strong and powerful because here we are, still laughing, joking, like when we were these 16-, 17-year-old kids back in the day,” TDE president Anthony “Moosa” Tiffith recalls. “It feels good when you and all your brothers set out to do something, and then you see everybody succeed at exactly what we set out to do. We all come from one frat, and that’s TDE.”
Moosa, now 37, was introduced to not only this brotherhood but also the broader music business by watching rappers and other creatives including Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, Derek “MixedByAli” Ali and Sounwave pull up to the recording studio, dubbed House of Pain, that his father, TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, built in the backyard of their Carson, Calif., home in 1997. “Music has always been around my family,” he says, citing his great-uncle Michael Concepcion, who managed R&B singer Rome and produced the West Coast Rap All-Stars’ 1990 Grammy-nominated single “We’re All in the Same Gang.” Moosa clicked with ScHoolboy Q and became his road manager in 2011, then eventually “fell into” being his overall manager.
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Through the years, he stepped up at the label and his responsibilities increased. “Sometimes you’re getting prepped for something that’s much bigger than you,” he says. In 2022, Moosa was elevated to co-president alongside Terrence “Punch” Henderson and tasked with overseeing TDE’s day-to-day operations on top of managing some of its artists, such as Doechii, ScHoolboy Q, Zacari, Alemeda and in-house producer Kal Banx. “Sometimes I’m in my A&R bag, and then sometimes I’m in a creative bag where I’m overseeing a rollout,” he says.
TDE, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024, remains committed to its artists’ long-term growth and creative autonomy — fostering groundbreaking output that’s often well worth the wait. In March 2024, ScHoolboy Q released Blue Lips, his first studio album in five years, to critical acclaim. And the following August, Doechii released her third mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, which earned the fast-rising star a best new artist Grammy nod and her first Grammy trophy, for best rap album, while yielding two Billboard Hot 100 hits: “Denial Is a River” (which peaked at No. 21) and “Nissan Altima” (No. 73). When Doechii released the mixtape’s extended edition in March, she included “Anxiety,” which hit No. 10, becoming her highest-peaking entry on the chart.
Those achievements represent just some of the widespread recognition Doechii has quickly garnered, from being named Woman of the Year at Billboard Women in Music to winning outstanding music artist at the GLAAD Media Awards. And Moosa played a crucial role in the rise of TDE’s latest star: “This is a project I personally signed, curated, put producers around, put directors around. It feels that much more personal to me with her winning that Grammy,” he reflects. “I knew all the accolades would come, just not the timing of them.”
Moosa has been steadily developing Doechii for the last five years, since one of his young employees sent him a list of artists to check out that included her. He listened to Doechii’s dynamic, autobiographical single “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” and found himself going down a “big rabbit hole” online that included discovering a video of her “doing choreo with two dancers next to her with probably 10 people in the club,” he remembers. “It let me know how serious she took herself. She had a vision right there, probably with no money.” While Doechii’s vision now occasionally demands the big bucks — like her high-concept 2025 Grammy performance — Moosa believes she’s worth banking on: “I got this little saying between me and my general manager, Keaton [Smith]: ‘She hasn’t missed yet.’ ”
Moosa and Doechii have a “super-collaborative and intentional working process,” he explains. He has also been inspired by the relationship between Henderson and SZA, who this year has already topped the Billboard 200 (when SOS’ deluxe LANA edition reinstated it at the top of the chart) and Hot 100 (with Lamar collaboration “Luther,” which she and the rapper performed at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show) and starred in her first feature film, the acclaimed buddy comedy One of Them Days. “These are the things that I want to build with me and Doechii, [putting] her in positions to have that same sort of impact,” he adds.
And even as TDE celebrates the successes of SZA and Doechii, Moosa remains dedicated to maintaining the storied label’s cultural impact and building up its burgeoning, boundary-pushing acts. Rapper Ray Vaughn released his debut mixtape, The Good the Bad the Dollar Menu, in April, and Alemeda’s 2024 debut EP, FK IT, showcased her indie/alt-pop sound, a departure from the label’s rap and R&B bedrock. “When you look across our roster, I try not to sign anybody that’s extremely similar to each other. I’m always looking beyond one or two genres,” Moosa says, adding that he also looks for “authenticity, discipline, work ethic and family dynamics” in new signees. “Every artist that we get, we treat them like family. It’s going to be a close-knit type of thing because that’s how we all came up.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
On a Friday night in late February, Tems was having dinner with the owners of San Diego FC, celebrating her new position as a partner in the MLS club. The next day, a video went viral of the 29-year-old Nigerian musician, known for her enviable levels of cool, briefly losing it while watching the club’s first-ever home game, bitterly throwing her arms down when her team missed a free kick and repeatedly yelling, “What the f–k was that?” while clapping her hands to punctuate her every word. Then, on Sunday, she headed to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, strutting the red carpet in a feathered gown at the Vanity Fair after-party and striking poses with the likes of H.E.R., Victoria Monét and Normani at Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s annual Gold Party. By Tuesday, Tems was overseas at Paris Fashion Week, serving classic elegance while sitting front row at the Courrèges and Dior shows.
Those prime seats offered her a rare opportunity: to be off her feet and catch her breath before hopping on a jet to her next high-profile affair. Because while Tems’ music has become known as the ideal soundtrack for unwinding and vibing out, she never really has time to do either.
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“Every day is something different, which is actually very exciting for me,” Tems insists during an early April afternoon in her home base of London, looking laid-back in a chic “groutfit” (monochromatic gray): oversize zip-up hoodie, tank maxi dress and black leather peep toe heels, her hair slicked back in a bun with laid edges. “I’m always like, ‘Hmm, I wonder how today is going to go. I wonder what’s going to happen.’ ” But even amid her whirlwind schedule, she manages to maintain some grounding daily rituals: “In the mornings, I always do my self-care. I pray and declare that everything is going to be good and whatever comes my way, I’ll be fine.”
Tems will headline THE STAGE at SXSW London on June 5 in an exclusive concert presented by Billboard at London’s iconic music venue Troxy.
That affirmative mindset has served her well. In 2020, Wizkid featured Tems on his summer anthem “Essence,” which hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 (partly due to a Justin Bieber remix); earned Tems her first Grammy Award nomination, for best global music performance; and played a pivotal role in ushering in the rise of Afrobeats in the United States. Five years later, the singer-songwriter-producer has become a global sensation in her own right, as well as a secret weapon for Western superstars. She collaborated with Drake on “Fountains” from his 2021 album, Certified Lover Boy, and the two appeared together the following year on Future’s Hot 100 No. 1 “Wait for U,” which samples Tems’ 2020 track “Higher,” from her debut EP, For Broken Ears, and earned Tems her first Grammy, for best melodic rap performance. That same year, she scored a feature on Beyoncé’s Renaissance and co-wrote Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up,” from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack; the song earned Golden Globe, Oscar and Grammy nods.
And since “Essence,” Tems’ distinguished solo releases have helped her remain at the forefront of African music. As “Wait for U” propelled “Higher,” For Broken Ears yielded another sleeper hit in 2022, “Free Mind,” which became her first solo Hot 100 entry (peaking at No. 46) and a radio fixture, spending 22 weeks at No. 1 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and nine weeks atop Adult R&B Airplay. For Broken Ears has earned 853.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate — and “Free Mind” accounts for 434 million of them.
Her A-list assists and limited but impactful solo output built expectations for Tems’ first full-length, Born in the Wild, an 18-track opus that secured three Grammy nominations, including for best global music album, and peaked at No. 56 on the Billboard 200 following its release in June 2024 through RCA Records and Sony U.K. imprint Since ’93.
“Tems is such an important voice for our times, bringing the experience of her life and music to a global audience,” RCA chairman/CEO Peter Edge says. “It is so special that RCA has been able to partner with her on her journey.”
Ferragamo dress, Justine Clenquet earrings, Mi Manera ring.
Zoe McConnell
Tems didn’t have much faith in her chances at the Grammys, and she’d thus planned a swift exit. “I was convincing myself it’s probably not me anyway. I was like, ‘Let me just sit at the back. If they don’t call me, I’ll just quickly leave,’ ” she says. So when the album’s jovial hit single “Love Me JeJe” won best African music performance during the awards show’s premiere ceremony, she “had to run to the stage,” she recalls. But she says her real “prize” that evening was witnessing the joy of her plus-one, her mother, who later spotted a certain celebrity. “She saw Will Smith and she was like, ‘Will Smith, wow!’ ” Tems says, bursting into laughter. “He was sitting at a table and was like, ‘Hey, nice to meet you!’ He was talking to her. Just giving her that experience was amazing.”
She has given her mom plenty more reasons to be proud this year, with an awe-inspiring series of firsts: Not only is Tems the first Nigerian artist to win two Grammys, but she’s also the first African-born woman to be involved in MLS ownership and the first African female artist to hit 1 billion Spotify streams for a song, with “Wait for U.” Tems can hardly keep up with them all. When I ask her where she was when she found out about her recent Spotify accomplishment, she pauses before hesitantly admitting with a laugh, “It’s very possible that I’m just learning of this.” But she’s not taking any of her historic feats for granted: “It feels good to be able to do this on this scale. My life is a dream.”
She uses the same word in “Burning,” Born in the Wild’s other Grammy-nominated track, when describing the surreal trajectory of achieving and acclimating to her newfound fame. The extra eyeballs scrutinizing her made her feel especially “uncomfortable” in the beginning, she says, but they also proved how the tides have turned for African artists. Nigerian singer-songwriter Seyi Sodimu — who sings the 1997 Afro-soul classic “Love Me JeJe,” featuring Shaffy Bello, that Tems interpolated in her Grammy-winning song of the same name — said in a 2004 interview that he pitched the original record to multiple U.S. labels, only to be told it “was hard to market me because I look ‘American’ but I sound ‘African.’ ” Wale Davies, one of Tems’ managers who is also one-half of the Nigerian rap duo Show Dem Camp, says “it wasn’t cool to be African” back then.
But now, artists like Tems are rewriting that narrative while still honoring those who preceded them. Tems thanked Sodimu on X for clearing her song’s sample: “I’m glad that it’s getting its flowers today”; she also posted photos of them on the set of her self-directed “Love Me JeJe” music video, which features the two singing the bridge together.
“The responsibility an artist like Tems has is that you’re going to be the portal through which people see Africa,” Davies says. “We have to show them that you can operate at a global level.” As she declared when accepting the Breakthrough award at Billboard Women in Music in 2024: “I’m standing with a continent behind me.”
Despite growing up in the “hustle and bustle” of Lagos, the artist born Témìládè Openiyi prefers peace and quiet. Today, she calls her sacred silent time her “energy-saving mode.”
Tems didn’t speak until she was 3 years old and found music to be a more effective means of expression. As a kid, she fell in love with the sentimental balladry and powerhouse pipes of Céline Dion, Mariah Carey and the members of Destiny’s Child and says she aspired to create music with that same level of “soul and realness.” But she felt insecure about her deep natural voice and opted for a more delicate falsetto. The music teacher at her secondary school, Mr. Sosan, encouraged her raw, unfiltered talent and offered his music room as a safe space. But as she honed her craft, her mother had other plans: She wanted Tems to attend college.
“I tried to miss all the deadlines, [but] she enrolled me to school in South Africa last minute,” she recalls. While studying economics at IIE MSA in Johannesburg, Tems taught herself to produce and engineer her own music through YouTube tutorials. When she returned home upon graduation, she started a digital marketing job — but her real postgrad goals didn’t involve sitting behind a desk.
“It just got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore… Spiritually, I was aware that this is not my path. It felt like life or death, like this can make or break your destiny and you need to make a decision right now,” Tems says. “And I chose to take that leap.”
Alexandre Vauthier coat.
Zoe McConnell
Tems figured once she was able to hand her mother her degree, “everyone should just leave me to be and let me do my music.” And her mom, whom Tems was caring for after she had broken her leg, gave her an extra push to pursue her true passion. “We were going through a lot at the time, and we needed that job. And she said, ‘I think you should go and chase your dreams and try this music thing. You can do it and I believe in you. Don’t worry about me. I’m here for you,’ ” she remembers with tears in her eyes. Tems quit in January 2018, and that July, she independently released her debut single, “Mr Rebel,” a buoyant, reflective track about standing firmly in her purpose.
“Immediately, I felt like, ‘I don’t know who this person is, but this person is singing for their life,’ ” Davies recalls of the first time he heard “Mr Rebel” soon after its release. It became an underground hit despite deviating from the feel-good, dance-driven Afrobeats popular at the time, which producers in Nigeria had always told Tems she needed to make if she ever hoped to succeed. But in the mid-2010s, the alternative alté movement was gaining popularity in the country, empowering a new generation of creatives to express themselves freely in their sound and style. “No one sounded like her. No one thought emotional, truthful, honest, no-filter music would work in Nigeria,” Davies says. And when Tems released “Try Me” in 2019, he continues, “everything changed. That song went crazy because so many people were like, ‘Ah, finally, a woman who can share our frustrations and say how we really feel.’ ”
“Try Me” and its gripping music video caught the attention of label executives from around the world, including Sarah Lorentzen, then an executive assistant at RCA (where she’s now an A&R executive) who was dedicated to “[supporting] music from back home” in Nigeria. She flew to London in October 2019 to meet Tems, who was slated to perform at Show Dem Camp’s Palmwine Festival (visa issues ultimately prevented Tems from appearing). Two months later, Lorentzen flew to Lagos for Tems’ In the Garden concert. “I just jumped in and started helping her build the stage, breaking palm leaves and sticking them in the stage,” she recalls. “We bonded throughout the night, and that was the start of a yearlong journey before she actually signed with RCA.”
Tems’ managers, Davies and Muyiwa Awoniyi, cite Lorentzen’s Nigerian heritage as a key factor in their decision to sign with RCA, as well as fellow Nigerian executive Tunji Balogun, then-executive vp of A&R at RCA (now Def Jam chairman/CEO), and his crucial work with the label’s Afrobeats and R&B acts. Before Lorentzen and Balogun signed Tems in 2021, they got her to hop on the Afrobeats remix of Khalid and Disclosure’s dance-pop track “Know Your Worth” alongside Davido, who had signed to RCA in 2016. Wizkid, who joined the label in 2017, invited Tems through Awoniyi to a recording session for his 2020 album, Made in Lagos. “[Awoniyi] called me and was like, ‘We’re at Wiz’s place, we just recorded two bangers.’ And one of them ended up being ‘Essence,’ ” Davies says.
The same weekend Tems and Wiz shot the “Essence” music video, she recorded “Me & U” with GuiltyBeatz during their first session together, in Ghana. Within a few weeks, they’d also made “Crazy Tings” and three other tracks that would appear on her first major-label EP, If Orange Was a Place. Music frequently flows out of Tems, who has recorded 7,000 voice memos worth of freestyled song ideas on her iPhone. (“I’ve saved every voice note I’ve ever had since 2016,” she adds.) But even as “Essence” blew up globally, Tems was already focused on what was ahead. “I’m so obsessed with the songs that I’ve not shared that I’m not even thinking about the outside world,” she says. “I’m more concerned with the creation of the art than the acknowledgment.”
Ferragamo dress, Christian Louboutin shoes, Justine Clenquet earrings, Mi Manera ring.
Zoe McConnell
Lorentzen believes Tems’ humble approach helps her make quality music that naturally resonates with fans. “When it comes from a pure place like that, a place without any specific intention to blow [Nigerian slang meaning “to be successful”] or for it to be a hit, it allows you to enter a different kind of flow state as an artist and really deliver what’s genuine and authentic and unique to you,” she says.
It helps that lightning also tends to strike right before she hits the booth. After a “lit night out” in London with her friends Dunsin Wright and Yvonne Onyanta, Tems took them back to the studio, where her producers Spax and GuiltyBeatz were making the beat for “Love Me JeJe.” Guilty says he and Spax initially didn’t have Sodimu’s hit in mind. “She walks in the studio and literally started singing, ‘Love me jeje, love me tender.’ We were like, ‘Yep, get on the mic and record this now,’ ” he recalls, adding that “Love Me JeJe” was the “easiest song” to make on Born in the Wild, taking under an hour to finish.
Kayla Jackson, then Tems’ project manager at RCA (and now marketing consultant), proposed debuting it during her set at the 2024 Coachella festival, where fans at the Mojave Tent instantly picked up on the nostalgic call-and-response track. For Guilty, the crowd’s reaction “reconfirmed what I believe — and that is whatever feeling you have while making music in the studio is going to translate to people.”
“Do you know this song?”
Tems is surveying the front row of New York’s Radio City Music Hall, searching for a lucky someone to serenade with a freestyle based off their name, as she did during every stop of the 2024 Born in the Wild world tour. Her security guard lifts a 9-year-old girl, coincidentally named Africa, onto the stage as “Found,” the Brent Faiyaz-featuring track from If Orange Was a Place, starts playing. Tems asks her a couple of times if she knows this song before she shyly nods her head and proceeds to surprise the singer — and 6,000 concertgoers — by not missing a single lyric.
“Everybody erupted,” Joe Harris, her agent at CAA, remembers from that night. “In that moment, I realized this woman has not only been able to touch people her age and older, but the youth of the world has fallen in love with her voice and her tone.”
And her team has made sure her voice can travel to as many corners of the planet as possible, especially on her native continent. When Tems originally announced her 31-date international tour last May, she had two unspecified African stops scheduled. Awoniyi says it’s difficult to find the right venues that will “match the standard” of the kind of show she wants to deliver, and Harris adds, “It takes a bit of groundwork to try to pull those shows together because of the infrastructure and politically whatever’s going on in each one of those different countries.” In January, after receiving backlash online for promoting her show in Kigali, Rwanda, that was scheduled for March, Tems canceled it due to the country’s ongoing conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I never ever intend to be insensitive to real-world issues, and I sincerely apologize if this came across that way,” she wrote on X.
But aside from occasional roadblocks, she has also secured major opportunities in Africa. In March, Tems became the first artist to perform at The Dome, the new, 10,500-capacity venue in Johannesburg that Live Nation launched with Stadium Management South Africa and Gearhouse South Africa earlier this year. “We’re always looking to create epic moments,” Awoniyi says. “Live Nation let us know about the venue that they were building. Our agents spoke to them, and because we are very moments-focused, for her to be the first artist to perform there is cool.” Her team is carefully planning on rescheduling her show in Rwanda while adding new stops in Kenya, Ghana and, of course, Nigeria.
Bringing the fruits of her success back home remains fundamental to Tems’ mission. Pave Investments — an African private investment firm that backs platforms creating opportunities to develop and support African talent globally, such as Tems’ company, The Leading Vibe — reached out to her camp with the opportunity to join the San Diego FC ownership group. “I grew up around my uncles and brother watching matches, and because they’re so loud, I’m forced to pay attention. I always wondered about being able to be in the business of it because it’s a man’s world,” Tems says. In her role, she’ll work closely with the Right To Dream Academy, a youth association football academy that started in Ghana and has since expanded with branches in Egypt, Denmark and the United States. “That’s something that piqued my interest, being able to build other Africans up, build other children up and give them more opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise seen,” Tems says.
Marc Jacobs jacket and shoes, Calzedonia tights, Jacquemus earrings.
Zoe McConnell
Her historic entrance into the sports realm aligns with the ethos of The Leading Vibe, which she established in 2020 and where she serves as a director. Named for a lyric from “Mr Rebel” — “I’m the crown, I’m the vibe, I’m the leading vibe” — it allows her to “[lead] by example” and make a “difference in the world” by holding and managing her assets (she fully owns her masters for For Broken Ears and co-owns the masters for If Orange Was a Place and Born in the Wild) while serving as an incubator for investment, philanthropy and new business ventures. Through The Leading Vibe, she’s working on an initiative to support young African female artists, songwriters and producers.
“The way her brand is constructed is not limiting. You can see her at a football match today, you can see her at Formula 1 tomorrow,” Awoniyi says. In February, Aston Martin reported that 15,000 people watched her perform “Higher” at the unveiling of its new car design for the 2025 F1 season at London’s O2 Arena. She’s yet to headline her own show at the famed venue, but Awoniyi says they “haven’t been trying to rush” her growth as an artist to ensure the longevity of her career.
Tems says she’s currently making music “that I’m really excited about that sounds nothing like Born in the Wild,” and that after contributing to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, she wants to hear more of her music in film — maybe even in the form of an original score — and possibly get in front of the camera. But while her universe may be continually expanding, Tems still wants her impact on the world to be fulfilling.
“My 20s, they’ve been eventful. I’ve gotten used to the uncertainty,” says Tems, who turns 30 in June. “I hope it stays that way. I hope it doesn’t slow down.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Something fortuitous happened for Role Model during the second North American stop of his No Place Like Tour live run on Feb. 27. Jake Shane happened to be in Dallas at the same time — and with some last-minute coordination, the influencer ended up onstage with the singer for “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out.”
“People loved it — like, lost it,” recalls Role Model, chatting while still on the road. “We were like, ‘Why not do this every night? We don’t need a cameo. It will be fun to do a Justin Bieber “One Less Lonely Girl”-type of moment.’ ”
Throughout the tour, Role Model has welcomed one lucky fan onstage to dance around with the artist during the bridge of the sun-kissed pop-rock song. At one of two sold-out shows at Los Angeles’ The Wiltern in April, he welcomed friend Reneé Rapp to play the part.
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Later that month, when the 27-year-old made his late-night television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, he scored an appearance from Bowen Yang for the role. The stunt resulted in viral social media moments, with the unintentional strategy helping sustain the song.
“Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” arrived on Feb. 14 as part of the deluxe edition of Role Model’s second album, Kansas Anymore. (As was much of the album, the song was co-written with close collaborator Noah Conrad, alongside Annika Bennett and Harrison Whitford.) The deluxe, titled Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye), featured four new tracks — but “Sally” emerged early on as “something we could jump off of,” says Sam Riback, Interscope Geffen A&M co-president and head of pop/rock A&R. “We were like, ‘Here we go.’ ”
By early May, Role Model made his Billboard airplay debut when “Sally” entered at No. 36 on the Alternative Airplay chart. The song also cracked the top 20 on Hot Rock & Alternative Songs and reached a No. 12 high on Hot Alternative Songs.
Riback first heard of Role Model, born Tucker Pillsbury, in 2018; at the time, Benny Blanco had an imprint with the label called Friends Keep Secrets, and one of its employees tipped Riback off to the then-unknown artist from Cape Elizabeth, Maine making music in his college dorm room. “I heard this demo, which we inevitably put out, of a song called ‘Minimal,’ ” recalls Riback. “It just immediately captivated me,” he says of the stripped-down, hip-hop inspired indie track. Later that year, Role Model signed to Interscope Records. (He signed with Best Friends Music for management in 2020, though parted ways with the firm this April).
Four years after signing, Role Model released his debut album, Rx, in 2022, where he showcased an edgier look and more alternative sound. But Kansas Anymore took a turn towards softer, more Americana-inspired indie-pop and highlighted his sensibilities as a songwriter.
“People who have been listening to me since 2017 have gotten to watch me slowly figure out music,” he says. “When I put out [‘Minimal’], that was really the first song I had made. I didn’t know what I was doing. So I feel like, truly, I did not find my sound until Kansas Anymore. It’s something I’m proud of and it feels like the most genuine thing I’ve made, ever.”
After the album arrived last July, Role Model was eager to stay in the sonic world he had built. While writing the album, he had two “rough ideas that were not fleshed out” but fit into the same universe. So he saved them (they ultimately became “Old Recliners” and “Some Protector”). But as he toyed with the idea of a deluxe, he knew he would need more: “I don’t wanna half-ass it,” he remembers thinking. Weeks after its release, he started writing again, and out came “Longest Goodbye” and “Sally,” the latter of which he calls “a new ending to the chapter…I think that this song felt like a breath of fresh air in that way of, ‘Oh, there’s somewhat of a positive spin here.’ ”
The most fun-loving song to come from the Kansas Anymore chapter, Role Model says “Sally” is “based off some truth,” with the song detailing his re-entry into the dating pool. “Lyrically, it was me being hesitant and doubtful,” he says, “not being sold on someone.”
Role Model
Daniel Prakopcyk
Role Model teased the track in the days leading to its release, and when he kicked off his No Place Like Tour dates in New Zealand/Australia in early February, added it to his set. “The very first time I did it, people were singing the words. It got louder and louder every show,” he says. “It was the bridge specifically, but it felt like a big moment in the set and the song wasn’t out yet. And that’s when I started to be like, ‘Oh, maybe this is bigger than I can imagine.’ ”
“[‘Sally’ is] an entryway for all these people to see what Tucker’s been building so sturdily over the past seven years,” says Riback. “He hasn’t skipped any steps and he has meticulously put together a fan base that I think is so onboard and along for the ride, wherever this goes next.”
In terms of the next onstage Sally, Role Model has his eyes on Kacey Musgraves, teasing that they’re on a few of the same festival lineups this summer, including Iowa’s Hinterland and Aspen’s Up In the Sky, both scheduled for August. “There’s gotta be some strings we can pull,” he says with a laugh. Riback adds: “We are always planting seeds and hoping things bloom into what we would like them to bloom into.”
In between legs of his tour, he’s also been writing a bit: “I finally had some days to lock myself in the studio again,” he says, “which was incredible and inspiring in itself.” But, much like his career, Role Model is not rushing a thing, calling his rise “a very slow incline — with bumps, of course.” He admires the way his tourmate Gracie Abrams, for whom he’s opened, has navigated her own career, saying she is “an amazing example…I feel like she has just skyrocketed and has handled it incredibly.
“It’s always scared me, the idea of a moment and a giant peak in a career, because it’s the hardest thing to keep up with,” he continues. “And I think oftentimes, you see it go away. So I’m trying not to live in it, but at the same time, I’m doing everything in my power to make sure it does stick around.”
This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Nearly a decade after indie R&B tastemakers and college students across the country first swooned over her self-released EPs and early collaborations with Monte Booker and Smino, Ravyn Lenae has earned her first Billboard Hot 100 hit with “Love Me Not” (chart dated April 12).
Lenae, who signed to Atlantic Records in 2016, originally released the bouncy, soulful, rock-inflected song in early May 2024 as the lead single from her sophomore studio album, Bird’s Eye. Thanks to a wave of TikTok momentum — one that’s also benefitted Janet Jackson’s “Someone to Call My Lover,” a kind of foremother to “Love Me Not” — the single steadily grew throughout the late winter and early spring and now reaches a No. 70 on this week’s Hot 100 (dated April 26). The Dahi-produced track also became the landmark 25th production credit for the Grammy-winning hip-hop/R&B producer.
With “Love Me Not” securing Lenae her long-awaited breakout moment, the song’s success also previews what’s shaping up to be the biggest year of her career. In April, the Chicago-bred singer-songwriter bewitched both weekends of Coachella-goers, perfectly priming both in-person and virtual audiences for her forthcoming stint as an opener on Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet tour. She’ll also visit her hometown for Lollapallooza (July 31-Aug. 3), where she’ll continuing playing sets built around Bird’s Eye, which Billboard staff named the No. 3 Best R&B Album of 2024.
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“I’m just happy for all artists who have been in this 10-plus years and are feeling the love and the benefits of so much time and effort and hard work,” she gushes to Billboard the day before her Coachella debut. “It’s a lot of that happening right now at the 10-year mark. The 10-year thing is real!”
In a conversation with Billboard, Ravyn Lenae talks her slow-burning success, drawing inspiration from Janet Jackson, gracing the Hot 100 for the first time with “Love Me Not,” and witnessing the power of TikTok firsthand.
Where were you when you found out “Love Me Not” hit the Hot 100?
I was at home watching TV, and my manager called me and told me that it was a real thing. I had a great day that day. I had great tacos, I called my mom, everything was going right. The weather was beautiful. I had a really emotional talk with Dahi and thanked him for being such an important person in my life and doing this with me and believing in me and challenging me.
Was there a specific moment in which you decided that you wanted to pursue music professionally?
I would say when I was in high school and I started putting music out on SoundCloud and I saw how much of a response I got. That made me feel like, “Oh, this is something that not just resonates with me, but people actually like this and they’re looking forward to the next thing that I do.” I think that gave me an inkling. Once Noname took me on tour [in 2017], that’s when I realized it was a possibility to do something I love every single day and be able to pay my bills too.
What was the inspiration behind “Love Me Not?”
That song was one of the first ones that we landed on for Bird’s Eye. I remember when Dahi played me the beat, I was like, “This is something I feel like I haven’t heard in such a long time.” For some reason, it reminded me of when I heard “Hey Ya!” [by OutKast] for the first time. That mix of soulfulness with pop sensibility that anybody could sing and dance to and feels like it could have came out in any era — that’s my favorite type of song.
Lyrically, I like to play with relationships and the push and pull of knowing you love somebody even though you know it can’t work. That really elementary approach to writing is one of my favorite things. I love when the lyrics feel a little sad, but the music feels upbeat, or even the inverse. [“Love Me Not”] has all the qualities of a really timeless song to me, so I knew that one had to be on [the album] and be the first [single].
Why did you decide to release “Love Me Not” alongside “Love Is Blind”?
“Love Me Not” was something that I really, really loved and I was excited for my fans to hear. But I also knew that it was a branch-out from the type of colors I dabbled in on [2022 album] Hypnos. I thought to support that, I should have something that felt like the most “Ravyn Lenae” song ever. “Love Is Blind” was a good pairing for people to see where I was going with [Bird’s Eye while] still rooted in my R&B bag, my sensuality and my yearning lyrics. I wanted people to understand where I was going, but also where I am and where I’ve been at the same time.
How did the how did the Rex Orange County remix come together? When did you know that you wanted to do a remix?
I knew I wanted a remix for the song a few months after I dropped it. I remember us talking about a feature on the song originally, so it was always in my head that I thought I heard another perspective on the song, especially a male perspective, almost like a duet type of feel. But I couldn’t think of who it was going to be, and I don’t like to decide things quickly.
My manager [John Bogaard] sugested Rex [Orange County], and I thought he was the perfect voice and perspective to add to the song and introduce it to a whole other audience.
The success of “Love Me Not” has been a real slow burn, not unlike your career in general. Are there times you wish everything would just click or are you content with the journey of it all?
I am constantly on a journey of balancing both of those extremes because it feels like two sides of my brain. One that’s like, “Get on the train!,” and the other part of me — like when I talk to my mom and my manager — [understands] that timing is everything. I have to trust that. I have to believe that. I have to stay patient and diligent and focused, and things will start to turn over for me. We’ve seen it over and over again.
I just saw Doechii [with whom she collaborated for 2022’s “Xtasy” remix] a few days ago in San Antonio. I hadn’t seen her since this major shift [in her career], so it’s been a while since I’ve been able to catch up with her. I was like, “Girl, when you won your Grammy, I started bawling!” I didn’t expect that [emotional response] to happen, but whenever I see those glimpses of hard work paying off, it reassures me that I’m on the right path. That’s what I’m holding on to right now; I’m trying not to get ahead of myself and stay right where I’m at and be happy about that.
I’m just happy for all artists who have been in this 10-plus years and are feeling the love and the benefits of so much time and effort and hard work. It’s a lot of that happening right now at the 10-year mark. The 10-year thing is real!
What else do you have planned for “Love Me Not?” You’ve been showing fellow Bird’s Eye track “Genius” a lot of love on TikTok recently.
I hope that I’m able to keep getting “Love Me Not” in new ears. I want that song to keep growing and reach as many people as possible. “Genius” is another one that I think has really strong potential to reach those super-large audiences. I’m just gonna keep pushing, working, performing, meeting people and being a good person. Beyond that, I’m working on new music that I’m so excited about.
What was your experience on the artist side watching TikTok help blow “Love Me Not” up?
Before it happened, I would have really negative thoughts like, “Maybe that type of viral moment isn’t in the cards for me.” You’re making TikToks and you feel like [they’re] not reaching anybody and you’re just putting stuff out into the void.
This was an exercise of me stepping outside of my comfort zone in a good way. Seeing people discover me and this song and then dive into my whole discography has really [shown that TikTok is] such a beautiful tool. Even beyond me, just seeing how accessible it is for people’s lives to change overnight.
I can’t help but draw similarities between “Love Me Not” popping off right now and also Janet Jackson’s “Someone to Call My Lover” having a revival. What do you think it is about these songs that are pulling in listeners right now?
I literally asked myself this the other day. I’m like, “This is too much of a coincidence!” First of all, “Someone to Call My Lover” is one of my favorite songs, so when I saw that happening it really felt like a shift. Janet is one of my biggest inspirations; she’s been able to blend R&B, alternative, rock and pop in the most beautiful, seamless way. I aspire my career to be like that too. I think people are just open to a mishmash of sounds and don’t care really who it’s coming from. Even the fact that [TikTok users] mixed “Love Me Not” with [Solange’s] “Losing You,” there’s definitely a shift happening. I think people want that soulful pop back.
What can you tell us about the new music right now?
Tricking my listeners into liking things that they probably wouldn’t have liked otherwise is something I’m really into. I’m always finding new ways to push and find new colors in my voice, get a little uncomfortable and get a little more raw. Pulling back those layers is something that I try to do with each song and each album.
A version of this story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Anjula Acharia remembers when the one person who had set her up for success told her she was going to fail. And Jay-Z was there, too.
In 2008, Acharia and Interscope Geffen A&M’s then chairman, Jimmy Iovine, were sharing breakfast at a New York hotel. Iovine — who had partnered with Acharia’s South Asian music/news hub, Desi Hits, to develop a Universal Music Group-backed imprint — remembered her previously telling him how much “Beware of the Boys,” Jay-Z’s 2003 remix of Panjabi MC’s bhangra single, had meant to her as the kind of cross-continental exchange that she hoped Desi Hits would foster. So when Acharia stood up to leave the breakfast, Iovine asked her to stick around for a few more minutes… at which point Jay made his surprise entrance.
Acharia, who was in her 30s at the time, geeked out, gushing about her love of “Beware of the Boys” and asking the rap superstar about how the remix had come together. Then Iovine pulled the rug out from under her. “While I was sitting with him and Jay-Z, Jimmy told me that Desi Hits was going to fail,” she recalls. “His words were, ‘I know pop culture, I know a visionary, and this is just way too early. This would be right in 10 to 15 years.’ ”
Anjula Acharia. Styling by Kristina Askerova. Hair and Makeup by Shayli Nayak. Versace dress and jewelry, Paris Texas shoes.
Harsh Jani
A Punjabi kid and die-hard music fan born to South Asian immigrants, Acharia grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, devouring music that fused styles from around the world and dreaming of creating a platform that spoke to both Eastern and Western demographics. She was a senior partner at a London-based executive search firm who co-founded Desi Hits Radio as a popular early podcast in the mid-2000s; then Iovine backed Desi Hits in 2007 as a stateside label for South Asian artists after she moved to New York. The pair helped engineer a crossover hit in 2009 with “Jai Ho,” A.R. Rahman’s Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire theme that was remade for U.S. listeners with The Pussycat Dolls added to it.
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“She was so talented and passionate about the music,” Iovine reflects today, “but sometimes things just don’t come together.” And by the early 2010s, Acharia admitted her mentor had been correct: The world wasn’t ready. “We didn’t have streaming platforms, social sharing or an ecosystem to support the industry,” she explains. “It was just very segmented back then and really hard for things to travel.” She wondered aloud why Iovine had invested in Desi Hits if he had doubted the idea. “And he says, ‘Because you’re an album, not a single.’ ”
On roughly the timeline Iovine predicted, the industry has changed drastically — and Acharia, who spent that intervening time outside of music, is returning to it with an entirely new album, so to speak. She and Warner Music Group exclusively tell Billboard that they have launched 5 Junction Records, a joint-venture label under WMG, as a pipeline for South Asian artists to reach North American listeners, much like a modern Desi Hits but with significantly more established talent and infrastructure. That talent includes its flagship pair of artists: Bollywood mainstay and pop triple-threat Nora Fatehi and ascendant Indian singer-rapper King. Both already have multiple hits and millions of streams overseas, giving them the ideal foundation to take the first crack at establishing North American footholds.
“It’s always been in our mind to promote this music to the world,” King says. “That has always been the fight, but now, I feel like we are at the right time and right spot. The next five years are looking bright.”
King. Styling by Nikita Jaisinghani. Hair by Javed Sheikh and Makeup by Swapnil Haldankar. Versace jacket and shirt, Brune & Bareskin shoes, Amrapali necklace.
Harsh Jani
Nora Fatehi. Styling by Meagan Concessio. Hair and Makeup by Marianna Mukuchyan. David Koma dress, tights and shoes.
Harsh Jani
Acharia believes that a cultural wave is about to crash down on the U.S. mainstream, similar to how Korean pop, Latin music and Afrobeats all made an impact on top 40 radio beginning in the late 2010s. Based on the South Asian market boom over the past decade — by the end of 2023, India had become the second-largest on-demand streaming market in the world, behind only the United States — and the English-language artists who have made overtures in the hemisphere through touring and studio team-ups, she’s not alone in that prediction.
“The best way to think about it is, what are your next billion-user markets?” WMG CEO Robert Kyncl says. He notes that the South Asian industry has been top of mind for him for over a decade: As vp of content at Netflix in the early 2000s, Kyncl saw firsthand the scope of demand for Hindi shows, and as YouTube’s chief business officer in the 2010s, he spent every year in the region, developing partnerships that he believes are paying off today. “You have to invest,” he says. “If you don’t, you’ll wake up five, 10 years from now and realize you just missed this whole new growth era.”
Kyncl has been friends with Acharia since his Netflix days (when he first discovered Desi Hits in the course of researching Hindi shows) and has followed her career closely. After leaving Desi Hits in 2014, Acharia stayed in the entertainment space by managing Priyanka Chopra Jonas, whom she originally signed as a Bollywood star trying to kick-start a music career and now helps steer as a global superstar. Acharia also joined the venture capital company Trinity Ventures before launching her own fund, A-Series Management and Investments, where she was an early investor in companies like ClassPass and Bumble.
Yet unfinished business gnawed at her. “Music is a place that makes me feel like I’m home, and fusion music makes me feel like I’m being seen,” she says. Acharia spoke to other labels last year about the idea for 5 Junction, but Kyncl personally convinced her to bring the project to WMG. She will work closely with Warner Records CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck and COO Tom Corson, as well as GM Jurgen Grebner, who steered international marketing at Interscope for over 20 years, and Alfonso Perez-Soto, who served as WMG’s emerging markets leader before recently becoming executive vp of corporate development.
Although Acharia was removed from the major-label world for years, some of its most prominent executives believe she’s the perfect steward for this ocean-spanning endeavor. Corson describes her as “a powerful force who is extremely well-connected across the world. We hit it off from the jump, and we’re thrilled to be in business with her.” Kyncl says that, if he were to describe the “ideal entrepreneur,” that person would resemble Acharia. “You have a vision, you’re strategic about it and you won’t stop until you win,” he says. “She has it. It makes absolute sense for us to partner with her, and she’ll make us better by pushing us.”
From left: Fatehi, Acharia and King.
Harsh Jani
Her ties to Kyncl aside, Acharia says that WMG made the most sense as a home for 5 Junction because the label group is “way ahead” in the scene. Since WMG created Warner Music India five years ago, the label has partnered with Diljit Dosanjh, a Bollywood superstar with 25 million Instagram followers who has headlined North American arenas; Karan Aujla, a former songwriter turned singer/rapper/YouTube behemoth; and Kushagra, a 20-year-old indie-pop newcomer whose single “Finding Her” is currently one of India’s biggest streaming hits.
When Jay Mehta became managing director of Warner Music India in April 2020, he was a team of one; now, the label has 34 employees. Part of that growth had to do with timing, as the market quickly expanded globally. Last decade, “India was dominated by Indian streaming services, which did not have a global footprint,” Mehta explains. “Spotify launched in India in 2018, and it took until 2021, 2022 for them to become the leaders [in the country]. We needed Spotify and YouTube to have massive presences in India in order to take artists global.”
Acharia also points out that subtle cultural shifts in North America helped fuel opportunities. “Think about all the foreign-language content on Netflix and other streaming platforms that people have watched — especially during COVID, where people were stuck at home,” she says. “And then, with vertical video, people are watching things with subtitles all the time … Everything affects each other. We’re more used to hearing foreign languages, so we’re more OK to listen to it in our music.”
Harsh Jani
Harsh Jani
At 5 Junction, Acharia will work closely with Mehta’s Warner Music India team, which has utilized streaming data to identify artists who can transcend international borders and songwriting camps to supply them with global hits. Fatehi, a Toronto native of Moroccan descent who moved to India and became a marquee Bollywood act, signed a deal with WMG in early 2024 to help her level up as a singer, dancer and actor. “The larger goal was always to go global, to let the whole world know my story,” she says. When she met Acharia, Fatehi told her that she wanted to become a cross-cultural entertainer along the lines of Jennifer Lopez, and Acharia told her, “Yes, let’s do it together.”
Fatehi says she has never met anyone more persuasive than Acharia. “I feel like our hungers align,” she says. “It’s hard to take a vision and sell it to someone else, because most people don’t have an attention span to listen to you for more than five minutes. But when [Anjula] opens her mouth and starts her pitch, you somehow have FOMO — you feel like you’re going to miss out if you’re not paying attention.”
In January, Fatehi released the Jason Derulo collaboration “Snake,” a thumping dance track built around East Asian melodies. It has earned 18.5 million official on-demand streams globally, according to Luminate; one month after its release, Aujla was featured on “Tell Me,” a OneRepublic collaboration that has earned 28.8 million global streams.
More than two decades after Jay-Z and Panjabi MC linked up, Acharia still believes these types of collaborations are key for breaking South Asian artists in North America. “The strategy that I had 15 years ago was cross-pollination, but we didn’t have the infrastructure to support that,” she says. Now creative borders are easier to cross. For instance, Fatehi and Derulo met up in Morocco to film a music video for “Snake” that combined hip-hop and Bollywood choreography. And after King recruited Nick Jonas for a new version of the former’s smash “Maan Meri Jaan” in 2023, King made a surprise appearance during the Jonas Brothers’ performance at Lollapalooza India in 2024 to perform it, a “cinematic” moment that he says he still can’t believe actually happened.
Harsh Jani
At the same time that Western artists are paying more attention to India as a touring market — Coldplay performed in the country for the first time in January, grossing $30.5 million across five shows in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, according to Billboard Boxscore — South Asian artists are more clearly identifying North American territories where thousands of fans will show up to their shows. Acharia name-checks New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, but also says that Canadian cities have demonstrated “huge” ticket demand. After Dosanjh scored his first top 10 album in Canada with 2023’s Ghost, his Dil-Luminati tour last year became the highest-grossing North American tour by a Punjabi music artist in history, thanks in part to sold-out stadium shows at Vancouver’s BC Place and Toronto’s Rogers Centre.
Perez-Soto sees Toronto, where the metro area had a South Asian population of more than 1.1 million as of 2021, as a crucial gateway for the rest of North America. “South Asian music through Toronto, like Latin music was through Miami, has established an important bridge between the local origin of the music and the second generation,” he says. “They have this hybrid vision of culture, where things are getting mixed up and mutually enriched.”
Kyncl has kept WMG focused on these macro-trends for years. “It’s not like we’re just starting,” he says. “It’s just that Anjula is adding an additional element, which is bringing talent here.” Under her guidance, Fatehi is spending most of April in the recording studio and will issue the follow-up to “Snake” by the end of the month, with a mix of releases aimed at Eastern and Western markets throughout the year. Meanwhile, King says he is “working on an EP and some collaborations” to follow his January single “Stay,” in addition to multiple Bollywood projects.
Mehta believes that an Indian artist will make an impact on the U.S. mainstream charts in 2025. “We saw it with Hanumankind, on the back of a viral moment,” he says, referencing the Indian rapper’s 2024 track “Big Dawgs,” which exploded on TikTok and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. “But we want to make a consistent way of bringing a lot of these artists onto the charts. The U.S. is extremely competitive, but if we get the right sound representing the culture and the right artist, with Anjula’s strengths, we should be able to make something big happen.”
Acharia knows this will take time, but for her, the personal stakes are worth the investment. She was once told that Desi Hits wouldn’t last; now, 5 Junction could define her legacy. “It’s something that I started, and I want to finish it,” she says. And for his part, Iovine is proud that the world has finally caught up to her vision.
“I’m not surprised at all at any of her success,” Iovine says, “and I’m glad she’s doing this now.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Billboard
“My family lived in an American Idol household,” says Amanda Ibanez, who goes by Kiddo A.I.; specifically, Adam Lambert was the contestant who inspired her to pursue music. “I would get in front of the TV and sing and my brothers would make fun of me.” But her mother believed in her and encouraged her to get involved with a local church youth group, in which she would write songs and perform. The Miami native, now 28, began self-releasing her music as a teenager, but calls her career a “really slow climb.” A decade in, after meeting hit-maker JKash (Charlie Puth, Morgan Wallen), she started connecting with Los Angeles-based songwriters — and even crossed paths with Max Martin at one point.
Kiddo’s “zero to 100” moment came three years ago, when she worked with Selena Gomez on Rema’s “Calm Down” remix, which hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. “I used to watch her as a kid on Wizards of Waverly Place, so it was very full circle,” she says. That moment encouraged Kiddo to home in on songwriting for other artists instead of herself — “It’s less invasive,” she says with a laugh. Since then, she has worked on a number of pop hits, including several songs on Gomez and Benny Blanco’s collaborative album, I Said I Love You First, Le Sserafim’s “Crazy” and Tyla’s “Back to You.”
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Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez, “Sunset Blvd”
“It really came out of nowhere. I think Benny or [songwriter] Michael Pollack was playing the keys, and we all just started singing this hook melody,” Kiddo recalls of one of the standout songs on I Said I Love You First, which debuted at No. 1 on Top Album Sales. “I don’t remember who said ‘Sunset Blvd,’ but it just made so much sense because then Benny and Selena were like, ‘Wait, that’s where we had our first date.’ It was great to be able to help them say what they wanted to say. We wrote it in, I think, an hour. It basically wrote itself.”
Jennie, “Like Jennie”
“That was such a crazy day,” Kiddo says of working on one of the fiercer tracks from Blackpink member Jennie’s solo debut album, Ruby. “I went to Diplo’s house and he lives deep in Malibu, so it was an hour drive. I was working with [him and] Tayla Parx for the first time, so I was very nervous because I was such a fan of both of them. When we got there, we went through a couple of different tracks, but nothing made sense. Then Tayla and I were like, ‘We need something hard and just so in-your-face. This is Jennie’s song, right? So let’s make a song called “Like Jennie.” ’ Jennie freaked out. She loved it.”
Lisa, “Chill”
Kiddo worked on another Blackpink member’s solo debut album as well: Lisa’s Alter Ego. As she recalls, “I wrote [this one] with Ali Tamposi and John Byron. We actually came up with the hook before the session, and it just came so naturally.” She says that while Tamposi devised the title, they worked together on a couple of hook ideas before Kiddo had to go out of town. “Ali worked with Lisa to finish it, and it came out great. It’s one of my favorites on the album.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
I’m not trying to force my truth on anyone,” Little Simz says firmly. “But I do need to talk about it, for me.”
She’s referring to the shocking dissolution of one of her dearest friendships, which has played out publicly throughout the year. Four months after filing a lawsuit against longtime studio collaborator Dean “Inflo” Cover for allegedly failing to repay a 1.7 million pound loan (roughly $2.2 million), Simz is ready to lift the veil on her side of the implosion. Lotus, out June 6, is her reclamation manifesto — a sonic rendering about ownership of her story, music and confidence.
In the two-and-a-half years since No Thank You, Simz’ fifth studio album and follow-up to 2021’s career-changing Sometimes I Might Be Introvert — which won the 2022 Mercury Prize and scored Simz her first top five entry on the Official U.K. Albums chart — she comfortably settled in among U.K. hip-hop heavyweights, performing at the BAFTA Awards and the Glastonbury festival.
Since launching her career in 2015, Simz had worked closely with Grammy Award-nominated producer Inflo and his wife, acclaimed R&B singer Cleo Sol, frequently joining the couple for collaborations under their Sault moniker. Simz and Inflo met at St. Mary’s Youth Club as children, and the two went on to conquer the U.K. music industry in the years that followed, with Inflo producing three of her albums.
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But in December 2023, according to legal filings, Simz allegedly fronted over $1 million to launch Sault’s first and only live show, during which Inflo and Sol were joined by Simz and Grammy-nominated artist Michael Kiwanuka. But when the debt left her unable to pay her tax liability the next month, according to her filing, something broke inside the rapper.
“I got to a point where I lost my sense of purpose,” she says, carefully choosing her words. “I’m quite an introspective person, especially when it comes to my music. But this time around, it felt harder. Making this album felt like a real breakthrough. I was led by God, my inner child and the Simz that was coming up and had this fire in her belly.”
Lotus — which Simz introduced with the Miles Clinton James-helmed track “Flood” in February — peruses the full spectrum of her emotions throughout her journey to rebuild after one of her closest relationships ended. And on the rambunctious, bluesy album opener, which has yet to be released, she spits: “I’m lucky that I got out now, it’s a shame I really feel sorry for your wife … This person I’ve known my whole life, coming like a devil in disguise.” The song is downright irate — her intonation has rarely been this ferocious — and Simz understood that it was a gamble. “I was really frustrated and hurt, and I wanted to scream,” she says. “But it’s tricky starting off on that foot sometimes.”
To temper the album’s unrelenting moments, Simz explores other relationship dynamics. On one conversational track that feels like a leaked private phone call, she weighs the impact of work and celebrity on family; on a more uptempo cut, she lists the ways her understanding of love has evolved. With more guest stars than any of her previous projects, none of whom she’s ready to reveal, there are a lot of voices on the album, but Simz undoubtedly remains at the center.
Lotus, which she says sources its title from “one of the only flowers that thrive in muddy waters,” prioritizes Simz’ catharsis, but that’s not the only reason it’s such a hard-fought achievement. She tried to complete four other albums since the 2022 release of No Thank You, all to no avail.
“They were great, but it’s more the situation of who I made them with,” she says somewhat wistfully. “In letting go of that relationship, I had to let go of that music… It’s like having a kid with someone; you might split with the person, but you don’t just stop loving the kid.”
Even if those albums are never released, Simz has plenty on the horizon. She will curate London’s Meltdown Festival, taking place June 12-22, which will include her first orchestra-backed live performance. The 11-day undertaking will further cement Simz’ U.K. superstardom, while her U.S. crossover is still taking hold. (Last year, she made her Billboard Hot 100 debut thanks to her feature on Coldplay’s “We Pray,” which hit No. 87.)
Could Lotus be the album to land that jump? Now that Simz has finally regained the confidence to narrate her own story, it very well could be. “I feel like it’s growing slowly but surely,” she says, “and I feel really honored to be a voice from the U.K. that people are taking to.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Last month, Billboard was invited to the Spotify offices in Downtown Los Angeles to meet its top editors and curators and get an inside look at how Spotify’s playlists come together, genre-by-genre. And leading that team is Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at Spotify. Over time, Ong has held a variety of roles at companies like Live Nation, Sony BMG Music and French streaming service Deezer, before joining Spotify in 2019. After coming aboard, she served as its Head of Music (UK) and Head of Artist and Label Services (UK) before taking the helm of editorial.
In her role, Ong has worked to evolve what playlists can be — from launching the ephemeral and personalized options like Daylist and AI DJ, to further building out the worlds of longstanding flagship playlists RapCaviar and Today’s Top Hits. These days, most of all, Ong is interested in adding more context to the playlists, as she senses Spotify users becoming increasingly interested in having more of a human touch to those listening experiences.
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To explain her strategy with Spotify’s editorial in 2025, Ong sat down with Billboard for an extended interview to explain her stance on AI music in playlists, changing user behavior, future growth markets and why she wants to bring her team of editors into the spotlight more than ever.
What are some of your goals for Spotify’s editorial team in 2025?
We’re thinking about how to make the playlists more engaging, and we think it’s a combination of short-form video and editorial. We refer to our roles as editorial, but they also involve curation. Editorial is the storytelling, the context: “Why is this important? Why is it culturally relevant?” The curation is, “What song? What artist?” There’s an art to combining both. As we look to the future, the editorial side is becoming even more critical. We are doubling down as human music editors in music discovery and trend forecasting in 2025.
What will this editorial short-form look like? And is it something that’s interactive, allowing for comments, likes, etc.?
We format this in what we call editorial Watchfeeds. That will include written track commentary, editor videos and more. We’ve been thinking about how do we incorporate social and community elements? Whether that’s commenting, liking — it’s a combination of all those things.
Spotify used to have more social-like features, like the direct message feature, which has since been removed. Do you see this move towards more social elements as a way to retain users in-app?
We want to broaden the ecosystem. We want to have our users spend as much [time] as possible and interact with one another as well. One of the editorial Watchfeeds that we did, as an early example to test the hypothesis, was Carl Chery [head of urban editorial] during the Drake–Kendrick battle. We kept getting asked, especially Carl, about what was happening. It was all coming so fast. So we did an editorial Watchfeed where we explained it in sequence. That did really well. Some of the feedback from users was, “I didn’t have to go elsewhere to find this information.” That was really interesting for me.
Why did you decide that short-form video was the right way to editorialize these playlists?
In a world where people’s attention spans are short, it made sense. Are users really going to sit and watch a 30 minute diatribe monologue before getting into the playlist? That’s not realistic.
TikTok, Reels and Shorts have been in the short-form video space for years now. Is Spotify getting on this trend too late?
We’re not a social media platform. This is a tool to expand the storytelling experience of the music and the recommendations, which is why it’s not all short-form video. It’s just one part of our toolkit. Text and track commentary is also something we want to do, so it’s not all short-form video content.
For a long time, it was Daniel Ek’s goal to make Spotify the destination for audio. More recently, that goal has expanded to video. The Watchfeed is not the first time Spotify has experimented with video. What have you learned from previous successes and failures with video on Spotify?
We experimented with longer-form video a few years ago, and it didn’t really connect. I think actually podcasts were something that were really interesting for us to watch. It was interesting to see how core video actually ended up being to the podcast experience and the podcast audience. Yes, podcasts are longer-form, but might that be interesting for a playlist experience to try some kind of video for editorializing? I come back to editorializing because that’s what podcasts do — they provide context on a topic. We thought the next step is to do that for music. It’s not exactly the same experience, it’s not like for like, but there are components of that technology that became Watchfeed.
Until now, Spotify’s curators have largely worked anonymously. Why change that?
A lot of thought went into it. When you think about the era that we’re in in terms of AI and machine learning, people want to know — is this AI or human? What’s your point of view? AI doesn’t have a point of view. We found that people actually are interested about the people behind the playlist.
Over the couple of years, Spotify has leaned into cutting edge tech-driven features like Daylist or AI DJ. In 2025, though you’re leaning into editorializing playlists. How do you see the balance between human and algorithmic aspects of playlisting today?
They live together. I’ve never seen it as an either/or situation. I think you need both and both have unique strengths. Over time the editorial role has grown. But we are still focused on the strengths of each and combining the two.
AI has played a key role in some of your newer features, like AI DJ, but how does the editorial team treat generative AI music that ends up on Spotify? Do you have any rules against playlisting it?
We are focused on human artists and the music they create. That is what we feel is really important. We did curate, though, Kito’s track [“Cold Touch”] that used Grimes’ AI voice on it. But Kito is a bonafide artist that had the blessing of another artist to use her AI likeness and voice. That is different to us. But we think very thoughtfully about our focus on supporting real, human artists. To this point so far, I have not seen a generative AI artist or track take off. That’s not to say that it won’t happen in the future, but right now, that’s not what we’re seeing.
What markets do you think will grow significantly in the next few years?
India will only be a more important player. Same with Southeast Asia. It’s interesting to look at Southeast Asia because we see Western artists actually getting their foothold in countries like the Philippines. In general, local-language content continues to grow.
I’ve been asking all of your editors the same question: What is the most common misconception about the role of a Spotify curator?
There are two. There’s that we are in service to labels and we curate what we’re told; that can’t be further from the truth. There’s an editorial independence that the editorial team has. The second misconception is that you can pay to get on an editorial playlist. I still see people claiming that they can get you on one for a price. It’s a scam. We have a code of ethics for our editors.
What are some things that are part of your code of ethics, and has your code of ethics evolved over time?
We have strict rules to protect our editorial independence, like if we get invited to a gig or a festival, and there’s an offer to cover our flights or travel, we’re not allowed to accept. If there is a reason, a business reason, for us to be there, Spotify will cover our travel. We don’t want to be beholden to anyone. And we are constantly reviewing [our code of ethics]. It’s a yearly process of, like, “Do we have the right guidelines and guardrails in place?”
There are reports that there is a super-premium tier on the way for Spotify users willing to pay an extra subscription cost. In return, they will receive new features. Are there any extra editorial offerings in the upcoming new tier?
I don’t have any info to share with you other than what you already know. We are obviously always thinking about what superfans want and what would entice them to go onto that super premium tier, but I’ve got no details to share.
Dating back to a Music Business Worldwide story in 2016, there have been reports that Spotify has used company-owned music or so-called “fake artists” or “ghost artists” in its playlists, like Peaceful Piano or Ambient Chill. Those allegations resurfaced this year in the book Mood Machine. Can you provide any comment or clarification on those allegations?
My team curates purely editorial lists. We curate playlist music from artists. Our team doesn’t touch that.
How much creative freedom do editors actually have? How often do they get the ability to go with their gut?
They’ve got a lot of freedom to do that, but you do need to critically explain why you believe in something. There’s a balance between our personal tastes and what we think will resonate with a listener. You need to understand the shift between the two. As an editor, it’s important to understand what your biases are and make sure you are not curating with bias. What I mean by that is overdoing it because I really love this artist, or [underdoing it] because I don’t. That’s why we also curate in groups, so we challenge each other. “Why is that there? Why is that not there?” It’s actually part of our training.
It sounds like the playlists operate in a tier structure. Like, an artist can get on Fresh Finds, and if it does well, then maybe the artists get onto All New Indie next. Is that right?
Yes, we have a playlist pyramid. It’s like working an artist up through the ecosystem. You can’t slam an artist into a big flagship. There needs to be a strategic approach as to how you introduce someone to a new audience.
When Spotify’s social media accounts started posting about the editorial team’s song of the summer predictions in 2024, global head of editorial Sulinna Ong noticed a lot of commenters asking the same question: Is this artificial intelligence? “I actually went in and said, ‘I can assure you we’re not AI,’ ” she says, adding that she then found herself wondering, “Do people care whether it is [AI]?” The answer was a resounding yes. Ong recalls commenters were overjoyed to be able to identify her as a warm-blooded source of the faceless predictions. The reaction amounted to a collective “This is great. You’re human!”
Having focused on high-tech improvements to playlisting over the last few years, such as the AI DJ that subscribers can utilize and improved personalized Daily Mixes, Daylist and other features, Ong says she realized listeners value human input and connection more than ever and decided to recalibrate the “equilibrium” between AI and Spotify’s flesh-and-blood tastemakers.
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“A big tenet of editorial is this idea of reflecting culture and also being able to propel culture forward,” says J.J. Italiano, head of global music curation and discovery.
As a result, Spotify’s editorial team is leaning further into its top playlists with new “Watchfeeds” — written and video content that contextualizes its choices. There’s also more freestyling involved, such as the throwback songs that Spotify head of urban music, editorial Carl Chery slips into RapCaviar on Thursdays, or the newsletter that head of indie/alternative Lizzy Szabo writes for Lorem. Ong says interactive elements such as likes and comments may be added in the future.
To further individualize their work, Spotify’s editorial team came together for a photo and spoke to Billboard about their backgrounds, their work and their favorite music. “We know that cultural knowledge is really important. AI and machine learning excel in passing large data sets and scaling, but when it comes to cultural understanding, that’s where human editors really excel,” Ong says. “But we are still focused on the strengths of both [tech and human features] and combining the two.”
Sulinna OngGlobal head of editorial
Sulinna Ong
Yuri Hasegawa
Raised in the United Kingdom, Iran and Australia, Ong caught the music bug when she heard Kim Gordon singing Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing” as a 13-year-old. She worked in a wide array of roles for Live Nation, Sony BMG Music and French streaming service Deezer before joining Spotify in 2019. Prior to assuming her current position in 2021, Ong served as the streaming platform’s U.K. head of music and U.K. head of artist and label services.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Misfits 2.0, Liminal.
What are your 2025 goals for the editorial team?
We’re thinking about how to make the playlists more engaging, and we think it’s a combination of short-form video and editorial. We refer to our roles as editorial, but they also involve curation. Editorial is the storytelling, the context: “Why is this important? Why is it culturally relevant?” The curation is, “What song? What artist?” There’s an art to combining both. As we look to the future, the editorial side is becoming even more critical. We are doubling down as human music editors in music discovery and trend forecasting in 2025.
Until now, Spotify’s curators have largely worked anonymously. Why change that?
AI doesn’t have a point of view. We found that people actually are interested about the people behind the playlists.
Read Ong’s full interview here.
Carl CheryHead of urban music, editorial
Carl Chery
Rebecca Sapp
After working at hip-hop magazine XXL, Chery joined Beats Music in 2012, which was folded into Apple Music in 2014. He oversaw hip-hop and R&B at both streaming services before moving to Spotify in 2018, where he leads curation for its urban music playlists, including RapCaviar.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Locked In, Gold School.
What trends are you spotting?
I’m interested in seeing what happens with sexy drill. Drill’s been around for a long time, and it keeps morphing. If you go back five years, that’s when it really broke through with Pop Smoke and Fivio [Foreign] and the Brooklyn drill scene. Part of the conversation around drill is that its subject matter is so hardcore it’s potentially [limiting the style]. But sexy drill has a lot of appeal. I’m keeping an eye on whether this is going to finally break through as the sound du jour in hip-hop.
What are some common misconceptions about Spotify editors?
Some people think playlisting is based on favors. They don’t pitch songs based on their merits or performance. They think building a relationship with editors enhances their chance of getting playlisted. That’s never been the case. [Others] think that playlisting is based on personal taste. Technically, it doesn’t matter if we like it. One of the most important qualities for editors is to be objective, [though] this doesn’t mean that personal taste doesn’t come into play. The sweet spot is when you get to support something that is at the intersection of your taste and what the audience likes.
Ronny HoHead of dance & electronic, editorial
Ronny Ho
Yuri Hasegawa
Though Ho booked concerts and hosted radio shows in college, she first worked in investment banking, and her initial job at Spotify was in business development. During her first years at the company, she got to know the members of the editorial team because she sat next to them. After moving to Spotify’s music team as a business manager, a role opened up in editorial, and she was given a tryout despite her unorthodox résumé.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Tech House Operator, Marrow.
Given the global popularity of dance, how do you coordinate with curators around the world to make the best playlists?
We have global curation groups. Dance was one of the first ones that started. It happened naturally with us just reaching out to curators in other markets to see what they’re seeing. We talk now on a weekly basis about new music coming out, trends that are popping off, local subgenres or communities we find interesting.
How are you discovering music for your playlists?
It’s a mix. We get inbound pitches from the Spotify for Artists pitch tool, but I am also going to shows all the time. A lot of DJs are rinsing tracks that aren’t released yet live. I’ll watch and see what the reaction is. If there’s something that really hits with a fan base, I’ll make note of it. Also, I look on the internet.
J.J. ItalianoHead of global music curation and discovery
JJ Italiano
Yuri Hasegawa
Italiano entered the music industry as an artist manager, then shifted his focus when he took a job as head of streaming at talent agency YMU in 2016. He joined Spotify’s editorial team the following year.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Lorem.
How do you curate New Music Friday?
New Music Friday is a bit like the newspaper. We’re trying to create opportunities for people to discover new stuff that we think they will like so, yes, there’s going to be a handful of high-profile releases that you would expect. Then everyone from their respective genres comes together and brings the tracks they think are most relevant, as well as their favorite songs. Through a process of democracy and a little bit of chaos, we get it out the door.
How do you compile Spotify’s biggest playlist, Today’s Top Hits?
One of the core tenets is that it is not a chart. Yes, we want them to be 50 of the biggest songs that week, but we’re also looking at user behavior. We look at all other playlists — how songs perform with different audiences. It’s more of a science than an art, but it is still both.
Does anyone listen to songs submitted through the pitch tool?
We get pretty decent coverage by humans. There’s over 100 people at Spotify whose job it is to listen to music. We use a combination of the tools we’ve built to sort through it and hiring the right people. Also, we pay attention to songs over time and can identify things that are trending upward or being saved a lot post-release.
Alaysia SierraHead of R&B, editorial
Alaysia Sierra
Yuri Hasegawa
After cutting their teeth as a playlist curator for Apple Music, Sierra was recruited by former Apple Music colleague Carl Chery to spearhead R&B curation.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Riffs and Runs.
What’s the process of making a playlist?
A few years ago, I noticed there was a sound that emerged out of trap-soul, like Bryson Tiller, PartyNextDoor, Brent Faiyaz. Mostly, when people think of R&B they think of women, but this subgenre of R&B caters to men. I thought, “How do I create a space for them to lean into their R&B-loving?” So we created DND, or Do Not Disturb, to feature that laid-back, masculine feel. I wrote up my ideas, what artists would make sense in the space, what it would look like and presented it.
What changes have you brought to R&B playlists?
When I came in here, I felt like there could be a fresher perspective to R&B that can cater to the TikTok era. There’s a romanticization of ’90s and pre-’90s R&B, but there are all these kids coming up who love and are inspired by the genre. I wanted to evolve R&B at Spotify to showcase that the genre can be so many things today.
Any emerging trends you are particularly excited about?
I’m really excited about U.K. R&B right now. Streaming has globalized music, and I think it’s given a lot of opportunity to that scene. We show that scene on Riffs and Runs.
John SteinHead of North America, editorial
John Stein
Yuri Hasegawa
With almost 12 years at Spotify under his belt, Stein has been involved with playlisting from the beginning. He joined Spotify when the streaming platform acquired his previous employer, the now-defunct curation app Tunigo. Stein and his team became the curators of Spotify’s Browse page, and he worked his way up to his current position.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Fresh Finds.
How has Spotify’s editorial playlisting evolved?
Back in those early days, we were very broad — much more moods- and moments-focused. There was a real emphasis on being an alternative to terrestrial radio. We wanted to introduce some new options: “Let’s think about activities and curate for those in addition to genres.” Over time, we created strong flagship genre playlists to be anchors, but we’ve also wanted to build out spaces that hit other moments in people’s lives — hopefully pushing forward the idea of blending genres.
What’s the balance of data and human curation in playlists today?
We’re coming to a point where the algorithmic side and the human side are coming together in a really balanced, beautiful way. As a company, we’re trying to embrace the fact that AI is really good at scale and serving you what we know you already like. But [identifying] moments of surprise and serendipity and cultural awareness is really difficult for it. You need a human editor to contextualize it in a way that brings emotion to it.
Lizzy SzaboEditorial lead, indie/alternative
Lizzy Szabo
Yuri Hasegawa
Szabo got her start in music as an agent’s assistant before becoming the executive assistant for former Spotify global head of creator services Troy Carter. She wrote an essay asking to move to the editorial team and detailing what she could do to expand the company’s playlists. It worked: Szabo became an editorial coordinator and worked her way up to helm the service’s indie and alternative coverage.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
All New Indie, Wine Bar.
How do you define the term “indie”?
More and more the question is, “What even is genre?” So we try to think in terms of audiences. With All New Indie, Lorem and those playlists, we are really fluid. Some weeks we question, “Is Caroline Polachek pop or indie?” You can make the case for either, but [we conclude] she would likely work best in indie.
With smaller artists, how do you balance human curation and metrics?
It is a challenge because it feels like there’s a new breakthrough every week in indie. It’s hard to predict. When we’re looking at priority releases for the year, the truth is you might not know. Someone could come along in two months that’s going to change the game. What’s incredible about something like the Fresh Finds program is that it encourages us to go with our guts on the really tiny stuff and have somewhere to put it [for] an audience craving music discovery.
Antonio VasquezHead of U.S. Latin, editorial
Antonio Vazquez
Courtesy of Spotify
A 15-year music business vet, Vasquez began his career doing digital marketing for legacy musicians in Mexico City as social media and Facebook advertisements began to take off. Spotify then hired him as its first editor on the Mexico team. After a year, he moved to New York to start a U.S. Latin team. He’s now based in Miami.
Favorite Spotify playlists?
Fuego, Hanging Out and Relaxing.
How does the Latin editorial team work?
On the U.S. Latin team, we have a small but mighty team of three people. We have balanced our skill sets and music expertise to make sure we are covering the most Latin genres as possible. Antonella [Bocaranda] handles pop and tropical music. DC [Daniel Calderon] has his ear to the ground in Los Angeles with all things música mexicana. We always make sure that everyone has a bit of say in editorial decisions so we don’t fall [victim to] bias. Almost all priority markets in [Latin America] have their own editors locally. We work closely with them almost every day to exchange music and create a strategy.
What’s a Latin trend you’re tracking?
We’re starting to see stronger local scenes. So we need to be communicating even more across countries to make sure we are aware of what’s happening.
What’s a common misconception about Spotify editors?
That everything is data-driven. That really takes away from the heart and soul we put into our playlists every day.
Cecelia WinterEditorial lead, pop
Cecelia Winter
Yuri Hasegawa
Winter got her start in the music curation business with Spring, an app founded by elite runners that gave music fans song recommendations based on how fast they wanted to work out. After working as YouTube’s pop editor, she joined Spotify’s editorial team in 2023.
Favorite Spotify playlist?
Pop Sauce.
How do you define “pop” music?
Pop, by its traditional definition, wouldn’t allow space for smaller artists, so we are really working to create spaces where artists who are making music that sounds pop — hook-driven and following a certain structure — can grow and find their audience. It’s hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. Pop music is not as tied to commercial success as it once was either. There’s top 40, which skews pop, but those metrics of success are not accessible to the vast majority of pop musicians. [With playlists] there is now an emerging mid-tier.
What is a market that tends to lead to pop trends that later emerge in the United States?
There’s a lot of interesting music coming out of the Nordics, and there are a lot of interesting stories where American or British artists who have trouble [breaking through] in their home market really explode in the Nordics first. We saw that with Benson Boone. Our editor in the Nordics flagged him really early on.
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.