Music News

13 Mar 2025

Laura Jane Grace Responds to Far-Right Backlash Over Her New Song: ‘Blatant Hypocrisy’

Laura Jane Grace set out to make a point with a recent performance of a new song. It turns out, the song went right over the heads of the people she was hoping would hear it most.

On Friday (March 7), Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted a town hall as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and invited Grace to perform on stage. One of the songs she performed — her February released “Your God (God’s D–k)” — caused immediate outrage online over its profane lyrics and religious themes.

In the song, Grace makes a point that while religious conservatives have a problem using the proper pronouns for trans people, they seem to have no problem imposing gender on an omnipresent, non-physical deity. “Does your god have a big fat d–k? ‘Cause it feels like he’s f—ing me,” Grace sings on the track. “Are his b–ls filled with lightning?/ Do they dangle like heaven’s keys?”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grace said that the purpose of the song was to open people’s eyes to the double standard of gender constructs today. “I’m not being profane to be profane, I’m not just saying ‘d–k’ to say ‘d–k.’ I’m asking a genuine question,” she said. “If you refer to your God as he and him, but you will not refer to a transgender person with the pronouns that are theirs … that’s just insane.”

Grace continued, adding that the outrage itself was representative of the larger problem around the right’s attack on trans people. “It’s such blatant hypocrisy. You can’t prove God exists with biology or chromosomes,” she said. “So if you’re gonna throw science continually in my face, let’s stick to that: Your god doesn’t exist.”

Sanders’ event was aimed at protesting president Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ proposed plans to cut federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid that low-income families rely on. “4,000 people came out to say: NO tax breaks for billionaires,” he wrote on Instagram following his Kenosha event. “NO cuts to Medicaid. NO oligarchy. NO authoritarianism. NO MORE billionaires buying elections.”

The White House has since stated that Trump “will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” but has alleged that there is “waste and fraud in entitlement spending” without providing concrete evidence of where that waste and fraud exists in programs like Medicare or Medicaid.

13 Mar 2025

Doug Kiker, ‘American Idol’ Contestant Known as ‘The Singing Garbage Man,’ Dies at 32

American Idol contestant Doug Kiker has died at age 32.

The singer’s sister, Angela Evans, shared the news with a Facebook post on Wednesday, writing, “It is with a heavy heart that we have to announce the passing of my brother Douglas Kiker.”

“He was sooo loved and will be missed by so many!” she continued. “[You’re] singing with the Angel’s now Bubba Please pray for our family as we go [through] this very difficult time.”

Donna Kiker Carrillos-Ramirez, another family member, also posted about Doug’s death on Facebook. “Today I got the call that no one wants to get,” she wrote. “We lost an amazing person today. He had the biggest smile and knew how to make you laugh.”

She added, “Douglas Kiker you will forever be missed. Fly high. Say hey to grandma.”

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Neither post shared Doug’s cause of death.

The Mobile, Alabama, singer competed on season 18 of American Idol in 2020, where he earned the nickname “The Singing Garbage Man” thanks to his day job as a sanitation worker. His audition moved then-judge Katy Perry to tears, with Doug performing Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road.” Though he was eliminated the following round after singing Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Doug was later invited back to virtually perform “Bless the Broken Road” again with the country trio.

In 2021, Doug was arrested and charged with third-degree domestic violence. The next year, an independent film produced in Doug’s home city titled Garbage Man premiered on Vimeo. The project found him portraying a fictionalized version of himself, with his character working as a bouncer at a club hosting a singing competition.

Doug is survived by two daughters, pictures of whom he sometimes posted on Instagram. In his bio on the platform, he described himself as “just regular guy trying to make it who found love in music!!!!!!”

13 Mar 2025

Chappell Roan, Violet Chachki & One Lucky Fan Turned the Internet Into Chaos Over an Earring

What happens when a beloved pop star, a RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, a lucky fan and one piece of discarded jewelry collide? As Chappell Roan and Violet Chachki proved, that particular formula leads to online chaos.

In a viral TikTok posted over the weekend, one of Roan’s fans revealed that her roommate had a very rare piece of memorabilia — a single earring that Roan wore during her second weekend performance at Coachella 2024. “me everytime I remember my roommate caught Chappell Roan’s earring at the weekend 2 Coachella set and it just lives in my room,” the fan wrote over a video of the earring sitting in a frame on their bookshelf.

The video went so viral, in fact, that Roan herself saw it and decided to comment revealing some key context around the earring. “Ok the tea is I was very much not supposed to throw them because I didn’t realize they were violet chachki’s and she loaned them to me,” Roan wrote. “I apologized profusely& it’s fine loll but Iconic nonetheles [sic].”

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Chachki, never one to waste an opportunity to create some funny drama, posted a video response to Roan’s comment, jokingly threatening to take the singer and her stylist Genesis Webb to court over the missing trinket. “This means f–king war. My long lost earring that I have been searching high and low for has been discovered by the children of the internet,” she said in the clip. “And you will pay Genesis Webb and Mx. Roan!” The caption for her video summed up her feelings: “justice for my bare lobes!!!!!”

At this point, even Webb herself chimed in, commenting on Chachki’s video by apologizing and offering to make amends. “I bend the knee, holding a plate of Swarovski crystals and cheese I can’t pronounce,” the stylist wrote. Chachki responded with a series of thinking emojis, followed by a few knife emojis.

For anyone who was convinced that the fan was in actual trouble, Chachki set the record straight in the comments — they responded to Chachki’s comment on their video saying that if the queen wanted her earring back, “we will make sure it gets back to you queen.” Chachki responded, saying they could keep the jewelry. “No diva it’s fine — Earrings are meant to be lost. Just keep supporting queer art,” she wrote with a purple heart emoji.

All the “drama” comes hours before Roan drops her much-anticipated new single “The Giver.” After initially premiering it on a November 2024 episode of SNL, Roan revealed to Country Heat Weekly that the purpose behind the track was simply not that deep. “I’m not trying to convince a country crowd that they should listen to my music by baiting them with a country song,” she said. “I just think a lesbian country song is really funny, so I wrote that.”

Check out the original TikTok and Chachki’s hilarious response video below:

13 Mar 2025

Word Collections Launches Royalty Collection Service Aimed at DIY Songwriters

Word Collections is enhancing its capabilities by offering a new service that will provide global royalty music publishing collections from digital service providers (DSPs) via direct deals.

As part of this new service, called Songwriter Collections, Word Collections is expanding its potential client roster by offering collection capabilities to DIY indie songwriters. It’s an apparent attempt by the firm’s founder/CEO, Jeff Price, to duplicate his earlier successes with TuneCore and Audiam, two digital platforms he co-founded and subsequently sold.

Word Collections currently administers the publishing catalogs for Metallica, Eight Mile style (Eminem), Greta Van Fleet, Jason Mraz, Grace Potter,  Silversun Pickups, John Oates, Songwriters Guild Of America, The Offspring’s Bryan “Dexter” Holland, Shriekback, George Carlin, Margaret Cho and Jerry Seinfeld, among others.

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Word Collections says it has direct licensing, data exchange, auditing and royalty collections from digital platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer and Qobuz, which generate over 90% of digital royalties.

The DSP licensing deals facilitate the payment of digital mechanical and performance royalties directly to Word Collections, thus bypassing all the intermediary administration fees deducted by collection societies around the world as the royalties flow through the system back to songwriters and publishers, according to Price.

While Word Collections will charge an administrative fee for this service, Price claims it will provide “faster and higher payouts” than if the songwriters’ digital royalty payout had remained in the traditional global collection system of waiting for payouts from local societies. That’s because freeing digital royalties from the traditional system “untangles it from what’s cumbersome and inefficient” and the retained administration fees that system has. “Besides, the traditional societies are very good at non-digital collections,” Price says.

What’s more, Price says that Songwriter Collections’ proprietary systems reduce “inefficiencies, fraud, inaccurate data, and the possibility of losing royalties” through the black box mechanisms employed by some societies of making distribution payouts by market share when a recording is not matched to the song’s publishers.

Price says that songwriter collections from around the globe go through a number of intermediaries, each taking a fee, before the royalties reach the songwriters and publishers. “In the end, those fees could collectively amount to songwriters losing out on about 30% in Europe; and as much as 50% from royalties flowing from territories outside Europe,” he says. While Word Collections will charge a 20% administration fee, he points out that’s lower than what normally happens when collections are made by other entities, pointing to the cited percentages for Europe and territories outside Europe.

“The existing system is so incredibly complicated and complex and it just doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s what Songwriter Collections does, it eliminates those issues,” Price says. “You get paid all the money; and you can see everything,” due to the removal of all the middlemen in collecting performance and mechanical royalties for digital plays.

While Price says his new service bypasses collection societies around the globe, for the U.S., Word Collections will still need to collect royalties from the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) due to the blanket compulsory license. And while the MLC doesn’t charge a fee for its administration in collecting royalties from U.S. digital services, Songwriter Collections will charge a fee on royalties from the MLC.

But he says songwriters and publishers who sign up with Word Collections will benefit from its “bespoke technology stem called Concello, which is a real-time tracking and audit system built specifically for the MLC.” He adds that this system recovers and extracts all the money the MLC collects for songwriter’s songs. 

Other differences that Songwriter Collections offers: 

  • A six-month term, with a 30-day notice after the six months that allows the songwriter to terminate if they are unhappy with the service;
  • Songwriters/publishers can pick and close the countries they would like to use the service for.
  • Songwriters/publishers can also choose what songs they want the service to cover. In other words, they don’t have to assign their entire song catalog to the service.

“This project began at TuneCore as I figured out how things worked and how to get this done,” Price says. “This has been my Moby Dick. It took me 14 years to get this done.”

13 Mar 2025

Believe Revenue Rose 12% to $1 Billion in 2024

Paris-based music company Believe delivered strong results in its first year as a privately held company. Full-year revenue rose 12.3% to 988.8 million euros ($1.05 billion), with 11.5% of organic growth, the company announced Thursday (March 13). Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a common measure of profitability, improved 33.5% to 67.1 million euros ($71 million). Revenue had been up 14% at the year’s mid-point.

This year should be equally strong: Believe forecasts organic growth of 13.0% in 2025 despite “limited ad-funded streaming growth” and assuming “no significant subscription price increases” at large music streaming platforms. 

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Believe’s major event of the year was a successful bid by a consortium formed by TCV funds, EQT X and CEO Denis Ladegaillerie to take the company private. The consortium owns 96.6% of Believe’s share capital, leaving the company with a small public float. After the deal was completed, Believe’s board of directors added a new director representing EQT X, former Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher. A director representing Ventech, which sold its shares to the consortium, departed the board.  

The company was also active in acquiring, partnering on and launching new businesses last year. It debuted two new imprints in Asia in 2024: PlayCode in Japan and Krumulo in Indonesia. It also fully acquired Turkish record label DMC in August; launched EDM label All Night Long in partnership with artist management company Kidding Aside; acquired Indian record label White Hill Music; and formed a partnership with EDM company Global Records, in which Believe acquired a 25% stake in July. 

Believe saw strong growth in both its premium solutions and automated solutions divisions. Premium solutions, which mainly consists of the sale and promotion of digital content for artists and labels, had revenue of 942.2 million euros ($997 million), up 12.0% year over year. Automated solutions fared even better, improving 17.0% to 64.6 million euros ($68 million). 

Digital sales grew above 10% throughout the year. Non-digital sales, which includes music publisher Sentric Music Group, which Believe acquired in 2023, were strong until September but were hurt in the fourth quarter by accounting changes in publishing in automated solutions, which includes digital distributor TuneCore, and lower concert activity and physical sales in premium solutions. 

In Believe’s home country and largest single market, France, revenues grew 10.3% to 162.9 million euros ($172 million). Non-digital sales in France fell in the fourth quarter due to a drop in concert activity. Germany, the company’s second-largest single market, was up just 0.4% to 111.3 million euros ($118 million). Non-digital sales in Germany fell due to Believe’s decision to accelerate its exit from contracts the company called “too heavily reliant on physical sales and merchandising.”

European revenues (excluding France and Germany) rose 23.3% while the Americas grew 18.0% to 151.2 million euros ($160 million), due in part to “significant progress” in the U.S. and the performance of TuneCore. Revenue growth in Asia Pacific and Africa was far softer at 3.5%, to 237 million euros ($251 million), due to weak ad-supported streaming revenues and foreign exchange changes. Paid streaming, while less valuable than ad-supported streaming in Asia Pacific and Africa, “remained solid” but was negatively impacted in India by the shutdown of the streaming platform Wynk.

13 Mar 2025

T-Pain’s Wiscansin Festival Returns to Milwaukee With Wale, Pusha T & Keyshia Cole

T-Pain loves him some Wiscansin. The rapper-singer announced on Thursday (March 13) that he’s heading to Milwaukee for his two-day Wiscansin Festival, which is set for June 13 and June 14.

The Florida native and some of his musician friends will take over The Rave/Eagles Club on June 14 for his fourth annual Wiscansin Fest. “He said he could put her in a mansion. He said it’d be somewhere in Wiscansin. Then one day.. Wiscansin was everywhere,” the festival flyer reads.

Other artists slated to make appearances include Pusha T, Wale, Keyshia Cole, Feid, NLE Choppa, DJ Diesel (Shaquille O’Neal), Jermaine Dupri, Kash Doll, Armani White, Prof and more to be announced at a later date.

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Fans have the option to buy daily or two-day passes to the festival. June 13 will find the Nappy Boy commanding the Milwaukee Mile as part of the Wiscansin State Fear, which contains a full day of “open drifting, carnival rides and games.”

Tickets go on sale starting Friday (March 14) at 10 a.m. local time. There are VIP and meet-and-greet packages available for June 14 for the ultimate T-Pain fans looking to attend.

T-Pain became synonymous with Wisconsin following his “Put you in a mansion, somewhere in Wiscansin” lyric from his 2008 hit “Can’t Believe It.” The Lil Wayne-assisted single reached the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10, where it peaked at No. 7.

While he didn’t release a solo album in 2024, T-Pain stayed busy on the feature side while notching collabs with Meghan Trainor, GloRilla, EarthGang and more.

13 Mar 2025

Justin Bieber Says He Struggles With Feeling Like a ‘Fraud’: ‘I Personally Have Always Felt Unworthy’

Justin Bieber is feeling introspective. In a vulnerable post to his Instagram Stories on Thursday (March 13), the pop star shared some raw musings about his self-esteem, confessing that he often feels “unequipped and unqualified.”

In black text over white background, Bieber began, “People told me my whole life, ‘wow Justin u deserve that.’”

“I personally have always felt unworthy,” he continued. “Like I was a fraud. Like when people told me I deserve something. It made me feel sneaky like. Damn if they only knew my thoughts. How judgmental I am, how selfish I really am. They wouldn’t be saying this.”

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The two-time Grammy winner added, “If you feel sneaky welcome to the club. I definitely feel unequipped and unqualified most days.”

Bieber’s post comes as he’s been teasing that he’s working on new music a full four years after his last album, 2021’s Justice, which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The day before his message about self-worth, he posted a photo of himself recording in a music studio, tinkering with a piano.

The singer has been active on social media in recent weeks, with other past posts of note including a video of himself smoking what appeared to be a blunt or cigar while dancing and listening to Don Toliver’s “Hardstone National Anthem.” Before that, he shared a video of himself freestyling over a beat while hanging with a friend, rapping, “High like a fly guy/ I fly high like a magpie/ I go high like a bad guy.”

Both clips came shortly after a rep for Justin and his wife, model Hailey Bieber — with whom he welcomed a son named Jack Blues in August — shut down rumors that he was using hard drugs. In a statement shared with TMZ at the time, the rep called the speculation “exhausting and pitiful,” and added, “Despite the obvious truth, people are committed to keeping negative, salacious, harmful narratives alive.”

Bieber’s latest note also isn’t the first time he’s leveled with fans in a serious way in recent weeks. In February, he wrote on his Story, “It’s time to grow up. Changing is about letting go!”

“Are you tired of trying to follow all of the rules in hopes to get the results you crave?” he added at the time. “Ive found love to be more powerful than rules. I tried to follow the rules. Im not good at it … Today im letting go and remembering the weight isnt on me to change. The weight is on God. So I give all my insecurities and my fears to him this morning. Because I know he gladly takes it. Asking Jesus to genuinely help me with simply the next step today.”

13 Mar 2025

Lizzo’s Spooky ‘Still Bad’ Music Video Serves as the Sequel to ‘Love in Real Life’

Lizzo is continuing the rollout of her upcoming musical era with a video for her latest single, “Still Bad.”

The clip seemingly continues the story from her comeback track, “Love in Real Life,” released in February. That video ends at nighttime, with the superstar dancing in the street with zombies as a white car pulls up. To start her “Still Bad” visual, Lizzo is laying in the same outfit on the hood of the car in the morning.

Things then take a dark turn when she gets a bucket of red paint (or blood?) thrown on her and ends up in a mystical forest with the white car on fire behind her. She walks through the trees in a red latex jumpsuit, as creepy silver creatures stalk her every move. Just like the zombies in the “Love in Real Life” video, she ends up breaking into a dance sequence with the creatures. The video ends with Lizzo, surrounded by the silver forest monsters, floating in a dark pond.

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“I don’t need him, I need a drink/ I don’t know why life is so f—ed up lately/ But after everything/ I’m still surviving and I’m still bad, baby/ So, b—- I can’t complain,” she sings on the chorus, an ode to finding confidence after heartbreak.

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“Still Bad” follows lead single “Love in Real Life,” which doubles as the title track to her upcoming album. Aside from “Pink” for Greta Gerwig’s 2023 Barbie soundtrack, the songs mark the Yitty founder’s first proper releases since 2022’s Special, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned two-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single “About Damn Time.”

Watch Lizzo’s “Still Bad” music video below.

13 Mar 2025

Brooks & Dunn Texas Tech Concert Rescheduled After Explosion, Fires on Campus

Country Music Hall of Fame duo Brooks & Dunn has rescheduled its concert that had been slated for Thursday night (March 13) at United Supermarkets Arena on the campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, after an explosion in a tunnel apparently sparked fires around the campus on Wednesday evening, leading to power outages and campus evacuations, according to lubbockonline.com.

Brooks & Dunn’s Instagram page shared an IG story from Texas Tech, which stated, “Brooks & Dunn’s performance at United Supermarkets Arena originally scheduled for tonight, March 13, has been rescheduled for Thursday, March 20, due to the events on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock, on Wednesday, March 12.”

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The statement added that all previously purchased tickets will be honored for the new show date and that additional tickets are also available. Refunds are also available at point of purchase.

Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec released a message to the campus community late Wednesday evening, noting that classes at Texas Tech have been canceled and the campus closed for Thursday and Friday. The message read in part, “Wednesday (March 12) evening, an explosion occurred in a tunnel, causing a fire. The fire spread, leading to outages on the Texas Tech campus. Electricity and gas were shut down across both the Texas Tech and Health Sciences Center campuses in Lubbock to keep the fire from spreading further. The fire was successfully extinguished Wednesday evening…We want to share our deepest gratitude to our campus emergency response teams, as well as the City of Lubbock, Lubbock Fire Rescue, Lubbock Police Department, Lubbock Power & Light, Atmos Energy and others, for ensuring the safety of our campus community.”

Brooks & Dunn are still slated to perform upcoming concerts at Moody Center in Austin, Texas, on Friday and at American Bank Center Arena in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Saturday. They will also perform at RodeoHouston on March 22.

13 Mar 2025

Offset Sues ‘Set It Off’ Song Producer in Lawsuit Over Royalty Contract Dispute

Offset is suing a producer who worked on his 2023 album Set It Off, claiming the one-time collaborator has been demanding a large increase in fees and royalties long after the deal was done.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for the former Migos member say that reps for ChaseTheMoney (Chase Rose) signed a contract ahead of the album’s October 2023 release, covering payment for his production work on the track “Worth It.” But months later, ChaseTheMoney’s new manager allegedly reached out to demand more money for the same work.

“The new manager proposed new terms for the producer agreement, including a producer fee that was more than five times the amount of the producer fee that was agreed upon, and a royalty percentage more than double,” Offset’s lawyers write in their Tuesday (March 11) court complaint.

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After Offset’s team “promptly responded” the deal had already been locked down and “would not be re-negotiated,” his lawyers say reps for ChaseTheMoney repeatedly offered other versions of the contract, each containing “different proposals as to the financial terms.”

When Offset’s team allegedly continued to refuse to alter the deal, the lawsuit claims that ChaseTheMoney began claiming that the previous manager who had negotiated the Set It Off deal — a man identified only as J Hill in court documents — was actually “not his manager” at the time the original deal was struck.

But according to Tuesday’s lawsuit, ChaseTheMoney clearly sent them to J Hill to work out the deal, saying the producer told Offset and his team via text message that Hill would “figure logistics” for clearing his contributions to “Worth It.”

“ChaseTheMoney referred to J Hill as his manager in various correspondence to Offset and his A&R team [and] ChaseTheMoney directed Offset and his A&R team to discuss the clearance of the recording with J Hill on ChaseTheMoney’s behalf,” Offset’s lawyers write. “J Hill had confirmed in writing that he represented ChaseTheMoney as his manager, and no person affiliated with or connected to ChaseTheMoney had ever claimed or contended prior to July of 2024 that that J Hill was not ChaseTheMoney’s manager.”

The terms of the original deal, according to Offset, gave Chase a $10,000 producer fee and half of the 2 percent producer royalty, minus certain amounts that were deemed recording costs and recoupable advances.

When reached for comment Thursday (March 13) via direct message on Instagram, ChaseTheMoney said: “I’m not being sued. It’s the other way around lol.” He declined to comment further, then deleted those messages. After a review of court records, Billboard was not able to locate a lawsuit filed by Chase against Offset.

Reps for Offset did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.

In technical terms, the lawsuit filed this week is what’s known as a “declaratory judgment” action —meaning Offset is not accusing Chase of legal wrongdoing but instead is arguing that Chase is improperly accusing him of doing something wrong. By filing such a case, Offset is asking a judge to rule that the original contract is valid and enforceable and that he has complied with all of its requirements.

Tuesday isn’t the first time Offset has filed such a lawsuit over a music contract.

Back in 2022, the rapper filed a similar declaratory judgment lawsuit against Quality Control Music, the record label that helped launch his career as a member of Migos. In it, he claimed the company was continuing to seek to control of his solo work, even though he had “paid handsomely” for the right to break free from his original record deal: “Offset now brings this action to vindicate his rights and to make it clear to the world that Offset, not Quality Control, owns Offset’s music.”

The star later dropped that lawsuit in August 2023.