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music videos

Ariana Grande brought the cozy holiday energy in her 2014 “Santa Tell Me” music video, but turns out, the clip was originally supposed to go in a very different direction. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the latest episode of Spotify‘s Billions Club on Tuesday (Feb. 6), […]

AC/DC’s “Back in Black” music video keeps on rocking, as the visual reached one billion views on YouTube. It’s the Australian band’s second clip to join the Billion Views club, following their hit “Thunderstruck.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the music video, the group performs the […]

1999 The Future’s Warren Hue laced up some skis for the first time to hit the “SLOPES” with Offset for their snowy visual.
The 88 Rising artist recruited Offset for the thumping “SLOPES” last week, and Hue took a ski lift to cruise down the mountain for a pair of woozy verses.

“I need a crib up in Soho, New Yorkie like Biggie/ I trеated ‘Chella like that sh– no biggiе/ Still got the pac, hella smoke in my city/ Hit from the back, now you texting you miss me/ B—h, I got bands and it’s stuck in my pants, woah/ Feel me? Pockets they dancin’ like Britney,” he raps with a salute to the “Toxic” singer.

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See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

Hue gave fans a peek behind the curtain of the Mamesjao-directed video, which finds the use of a green screen allowing him to execute all kinds of flips and ski tricks without having to lift a foot.

The Indonesian rapper then passes his skis to Offset who doesn’t appear in the trippy visual but still delivers a pair of hard-hitting verses. The Migos rapper predicts his next album will top the Billboard charts and manifests an upcoming arena tour.

“Album going number one, I could taste it (Number one)/ I was born up a star, I’m an alien (Star)/ I’ma sell out arenas and the stadiums/ I got my gang and my family, I ain’t trading ’em,” he boasts.

While it remains to be seen about the prospects of his next LP, Offset is hitting the road for his first solo tour sans Migos running mates Quavo and the late Takeoff.

The Set It Off Tour will kick off in Philadelphia in March and make stops in New York City, Boston, Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston before wrapping up in his hometown of Atlanta.

1999 Write The Future has set the stage for the collective’s debut album later this year with singles like “MiNt cHoCoLaTe” featuring BADBADNOTGOOD and Griselda’s Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine. Last week, they followed up by teaming Rick Ross a.k.a Ricky Ravioli with Rich Brian for the starry “LiGhT rAiLs.”

Watch the “SLOPES” video below.

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Little Mix gave fans a sip of their secret potion with their spellbinding 2015 music video for “Black Magic,” and the magic still exists in 2023 — as the clip has officially hit one billion views on YouTube. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In the video, […]

Olivia Rodrigo wants to “Get Him Back!” and she painted the chaos of her revenge against a tragic ex in her new music video released on Tuesday (Sept. 12). The Jack Begery-directed clip was filmed in Los Angeles, and features multiple versions of the 20-year-old superstar as she dreams up the ultimate revenge scenario, included […]

Alt-folk singer-songwriter Noah Kahan has enjoyed a breakout 2023, cracking the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with the single “Dial Drunk” and pulling in more than 800 million on-demand streams across his catalog. But he has not released a music video this year, choosing instead to prioritize the 15-ish second clips that trigger activity on TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

“I am very much of the mindset that music videos have a limited value presently,” says Drew Simmons, who manages Kahan. “I have been moving the vast majority, if not all, of our video budgets over to short-form content efforts.”

“Dial Drunk” is in good company: None of the top four songs on the Billboard Hot 100 this week have a traditional music video. (Morgan Wallen released a performance video for his hit, while Luke Combs and Oliver Anthony have put out live clips for theirs.) While few acts wielded music videos more effectively in the 2010s than Beyoncé, a year after the release of her Renaissance album, she has yet to put out any official videos to accompany it.

Creative director Evan Blum, who has shot popular TikTok clips for Demi Lovato and Flyana Boss, sums up the new landscape succinctly: “The only problem with music videos is that nobody sees them.” Aside from that, he quips, “they’re great.” 

For roughly four decades, music videos played a crucial role in minting hits — allowing artists to immerse fans in their visual vocabulary or wow them with dance moves. The format’s influence has been waning since attention shifted from TVs to phone screens. Still, through the 2010s, superstars like Lady Gaga and Drake invested heavily in clips that caromed around the internet, while burgeoning stars like Doja Cat and Dua Lipa could go viral and gain steam with eye-catching visuals of their own.

Even that is starting to seem unusual. Executives believe a lot of the change is due to TikTok, which hooked a generation on bite-sized vertical clips. “If you brought up a music video to plenty of kids, they’d be like, ‘What’s that?’” a major label marketing executive says. “It’s just not where the audience is. The audience is on TikTok.”

In a statement, Paul Hourican, global head of music content and partnerships at TikTok, stressed “that long-form videos will continue to be one of the key forms of musical creative expression.” But, he added “the rise of short-form video on TiKTok represents a new approach to music promotion and discovery, which has significantly lowered the barrier to creativity and expression for artists.”

YouTube, the longtime home of music videos in the digital age, also rolled out its own TikTok imitator, YouTube Shorts. Music executives say this intensified the emphasis on short-form content. (A rep for YouTube declined to comment. In March, YouTube global head of music Lyor Cohen called Shorts just “the entry point” on the platform, “leading fans to discover the depth of an artist’s catalog, including music videos.”)

In this landscape, full-length music videos often fail to resonate. Cassie Petrey is the co-founder of Crowd Surf, a digital marketing company; if her clients release a music video, she frequently chops it up into snackable clips that can be uploaded to short-form platforms. “We’ll see millions of views on the short-form, and the long-form will only get like 50,000,” she says. 

Managers and marketers say the cost of music videos can range from as low as $5,000 to as high as $250,000, and leap into seven figures for a handful of superstars. And at a moment when music discovery is fragmented and there are no mass media that ensure a large audience for these videos as MTV used to, artist teams have to spend even more if they hope to corral viewers who are overwhelmed with a glut of audio and visual content. “You have to pay for visibility,” one manager says. 

This means that the bang-for-buck ratio on many music videos can be upside down — impact low, cost high — at a time when budgets are already under scrutiny due to a wobbly economy. So instead of spending a chunk of change on a lone three-and-half minute statement, Simmons has found success using that money to shoot a large number of short clips for his artists. 

“You’ll get a whole lot more content out of it,” the manager says. “The frequency of that and how you drop it through an album cycle is frankly critical to building an artist, continuing to remain relevant and be in people’s feeds. It allows for a conversation between an artist and their fans that can be ongoing and move fluidly.”

This is also a more flexible strategy at a time when artists and labels have little control over what is going to be a hit. “The more the song gets out there [via short clips], the better it should do,” the major label marketer says. If that’s not what’s happening, better to learn that before sinking $50,000 into a full video.

There are still instances in which investing in a traditional video makes sense. “The value varies significantly based on genre,” says one senior executive. “For Latin music and for hip-hop, the audience for music discovery really lives very strongly on YouTube. So music videos are a really important aspect of that.”

On the other hand, “pop and R&B are where music videos are kind of dying, especially for developing artists,” the executive continues. “They don’t move the needle for discovery.” Superstars remain, of course, the exception to every rule: They have both the money and the fervent supporters to do whatever they want. 

While recent videos for singles like Victoria Monet’s “On My Mama” have been well-received thanks to suave choreography, this sort of boost often recedes quickly — unless a song becomes part of a short-form trend. Another way to extend a traditional video’s half-life is by courting controversy: Three of the most widely discussed music videos of this decade are Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” Lil Nas X’s “Montero” and Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” 

Blum believes there’s one more key reason to make a music video: “If a music video is going to make an artist feel fulfilled, then there’s a lot of value in that,” he says. “A happy artist is a good artist.”

“But obviously most people aren’t after that [fulfillment] — they want views,” Blum continues. “If your reason for making a music video is, ‘I want to get as many eyes as possible,’ I don’t think that [presuming you will] is a correct assumption anymore.”

The sun is shining on Harry Styles fans. At high noon ET Wednesday (July 19), the Grammy winner dropped the music video for his latest Harry’s House single, “Daylight.” In the Tanu Muino-directed video, Styles walks through circus grounds, interacting with acrobats, stilt-walkers and clowns in between demonstrations of his impressive weight-lifting, horseback-riding and tightrope-walking […]

Everydaydreamer, a purpose-driven creative studio specializing in music video/content commissioning and creative direction/production, is launching a new workshop series specifically for women and non-binary people of color, the company tells Billboard.

Dubbed SheMadeIt, the music video and content director workshop aims to “challenge the status quo in this field” and “make the entertainment industry a more equitable space,” according to a press release. The workshop series will offer intensive experiential opportunities, educational seminars and networking for underrepresented voices to gain access to mentorship and work opportunities. SheMadeIt is launching the series in partnership with Kids of Immigrants, Above Ground, Nowhere, Merman and Youth Mentoring Connection.

“There is a real need for new entry points for underserved and underrepresented talents to be showcased in the directorial and content space,” said Everydaydreamer and SheMadeIt founder Shadeh Smith in a statement. “We have gathered some of the most experienced, talented and respected creative professionals in this field, all with the collective commitment to cultivate new, burgeoning talent. Ultimately, we are dedicated to re-shaping the entertainment industry to be a space of equity, inclusion, and representation for all artists, especially those who aren’t given adequate access to the resources and platforms they need to thrive.”

Courtesy Photo

The first SheMadeIt workshop will take place in Los Angeles from April 28-30 and feature industry panels, practical assignments and access to long-term opportunities for 10 participants(applications will be available here starting Friday, March 24). Additional series are set to take place in London and New York, with details to be announced soon.

Panelists and mentors confirmed for the Los Angeles workshop include Kehlani (artist), Diallo Marvel (global creative director, Beats), Alex Thurmond (creative director), Alli Maxwell (executive producer, Somesuch Productions), Devon Libran (senior vp, Republic Records) Laura Tunstall (managing partner, Nowhere), Daniel Buezo (CEO, Kids of Immigrants), David Ali (CEO, Above Ground and artist manager), Ana Julfayan (executive producer), Kevin Kloeker (vp of creative & content development, Capitol Records), Kira Carstensen (managing partner, Merman), Dani Edgren (creative producer), Anna Heinrich (executive producer, Obsidian), Zsuzsa Cook (artist manager), Karine Benzaria (producer/writer), Emmanuelle Cuny (senior vp/head of visual creative & production, Motown Records), Byron Atienza (creative director) and Monica Kran (talent partnerships).

Full entry requirements and applications are available at www.everydaydreamer.co/shemadeit.

The Weeknd has big weekend plans. In celebration of his fifth studio album Dawn FM‘s one-year anniversary, the 32-year-old pop star plans to release a music video for “Is There Someone Else?” on Saturday (Jan. 7). And in the meantime, he’s giving fans a teaser for the project.
On Wednesday (Jan. 4), The Weekend — born Abel Tesfaye — shared a snippet promoting the visual for “Is There Someone Else?” on his social media accounts, writing, “Is There Someone Else? Video drops on the 1 year anniversary of Dawn Fm … back at it.”

In the clip, he and a woman hold hands as they enter a cityscape apartment, memories of a steamy underwear photo shoot flashing in and out. At the end, the four-time Grammy winner grabs a creepily realistic mask of a human face.

The new teaser comes two days after Tesfaye shared a snippet from what looks like the same music video. This time, he donned the creepy mask while going through footage of the same woman in lingerie.

“DAWN FM turns 1 this week,” he captioned the Monday (Jan. 2) video.

Dawn FM arrived one week into 2022, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and featuring an eclectic group of collaborators including Jim Carrey, Tyler, the Creator, Lil Wayne, Quincy Jones and Josh Safdie. Tesfaye has become known for his psychedelic, experimental videos, especially when it comes to the ones made for songs nearly 1-year-old album.

The video for “Out of Time,” for example, shows Tesfaye on a romantic date with Squid Game star HoYeon Jung that deteriorates into a horrific nightmare sequence, in which Carrey makes a cameo playing a face-transplant surgeon. And in “Sacrifice,” the singer is forcefully strapped to a spinning, occultish platform by a group of nightmarish people wearing all black.

Watch The Weeknd’s teasers for the “Is There Someone Else?” below:

Selena Gomez fans who have not yet seen her Apple TV+ documentary My Mind & Me or the fans who want to relive it are in luck: On Thursday (Dec. 1), the multi-hyphenate shared a film version of her documentary’s accompanying title track, which features several intimate scenes from the film.

The video kicks off with Gomez sitting down at a grand piano, softly playing the keys to the song. Snaps of her recording the track, in addition to snippets of her traveling, performing live in concert and interacting with friends, fans and family, go in quick succession until the video’s end.

“My mind and me/ We don’t get along sometimes/ And it gets hard to breathe/ But I wouldn’t change my life/ And all of the crashin’ and burnin’ and breakin’, I know now/ If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now/ My mind and me,” the 30-year-old sings on the chorus of the introspective track.

Gomez spoke with Billboard at the red-carpet premiere of the documentary and revealed that she initially hesitated to release the project on more than one occasion.

“I was going to release this documentary multiple times and it never really felt right,” the star said. “Then the pandemic hit and a lot of people started having conversations around mental health, the isolation, people feeling depressed or anxious — never feeling those feelings before but have now. I just hope that this will carry on to something like a conversation that people will use to help later on.”

Watch the film version of the “My Mind & Me” video above.