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Austin’s annual SXSW conference and festival is set to scale back its 2026 edition. Next year, the event will run from March 12-18 — two days shorter than this year’s event — with its interactive, film/TV and music programs running concurrently. The news was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman. “A shorter SX gives attendees […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. If you’re planning a spring or summer break trip to Disney World, you’re definitely going to want to grab some of […]
Billboard Women in Music 2025 is streaming on Vizio’s WatchFree+ on March 29 at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on channel 1400. Catch up with Billboard’s content on the new platform, streaming now! Tetris Kelly:Billboard Women in Music is coming to your TV screens! Can’t attend the show in person? We’ve got your back with […]
Six months of preparation translated into a 13-minute Super Bowl Halftime Show. The NFL took fans behind the scenes for the first time on Friday (March 14) with a look into how Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show took form.
The NFL released a 32-minute mini-documentary on YouTube showcasing how the performance went from an idea to the big stage in New Orleans as more than 133 million fans watched at home.
Bruce Rodgers served as the creative director and production designer for Kendrick’s performance; it was Rodgers’ 19th Super Bowl Halftime Show.
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“This literally will change the way you do halftime. We’ll have to have a full team building the square, same with the diamond, same with the circle,” he said of the video game-themed stage for Lamar.
PgLang creative director Mike Carson was also heavily involved with the performance, and he hopped on countless Zooms and calls with Rodgers while bouncing ideas off him about the stage, lighting and performance.
Before GNX even dropped, one of the early hurdles was finding a pristine 1987 Buick GNX for the performance, which was gutted to have 30 of the 400 dancers emerge from the car.
“The car is the icon of this era for him as far as album covers [GNX], in the video, so it was only right to have it as part of the performance,” Carson said.
Five hundred crew members were involved in the shuttling of the stage on and off the field in eight minutes. Even though the Caesars Superdome is indoors, they opened the vents due to the use of pyrotechnics and had to take measures for possible inclement weather, which ended up working out.
Kendrick impressed with his heavily anticipated performance — including bringing “Not Like Us” to the global stage — which saw an assist from SZA and a Serena Williams cameo.
Lamar drew a 153% bump in streams in the week following his Super Bowl performance in New Orleans on Feb. 9, which pushed GNX back to No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Over a month later, Kendrick still holds three of the top five slots on the Billboard Hot 100, including his sixth No. 1 hit with “Luther.”
Watch the NFL’s mini-doc below.
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Jonathan Majors was seen as largely shedding some of the bad press that surrounded his name in the wake of the incident between him and ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Despite the civil lawsuit brought by Jabbari being recently settled, an audio clip has surfaced that appears to highlight Jonathan Majors admitting to strangling Jabbari.
In the audio clip procured by Rolling Stone, Jonathan Majors, 35, can reportedly be heard speaking to Grace Jabbari and seemingly confessing to using physical force against her but it isn’t truly highlighted what the impetus was for that allegedly violent exchange.
In the audio clip, Majors is heard saying “I’m ashamed I’ve ever…I’ve never aggressive with a woman before. I’ve never aggressed a woman, I aggressed you.”
Jabbari is heard firing back saying “You strangled me and pushed me against the car.”
Majors responded “Yes, all those things are under ‘aggressed,’ yeah. That’s never happened to me.”
Jabbari goes on to say that a sarcastic comment she made towards Majors prompted him to violently react to her and she suggested that the actor is contending with deeper issues pertaining to anger management. Majors alluded to the fact that something about Jabbari sparked that side of him before the audio cuts off.
So far, a comment from Jonathan Majors or Grace Jabbari has yet to surface, but on X, plenty of fans have reactions pointing to the actor’s slow climb in rehabbing his image and how this sets those efforts back several paces.
We’ve got the reactions below.
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Photo: Getty
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” continues atop the Billboard Global 200 chart, adding a 12th week at No. 1. It also rebounds for an 11th week atop Billboard Global Excl. U.S. The ballad first led both lists last September.
Meanwhile, two tracks debut in the top 10 of each survey: JENNIE’s “Like JENNIE” and Doechii’s “Anxiety.”
As previously reported, Gaga’s MAYHEM launches at No. 1 on the U.S.-based Billboard 200 albums chart, becoming her seventh leading set, and JENNIE’s Ruby begins at No. 7.
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The Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
“Die With a Smile” leads the Global 200 with 116.9 million streams (up 4%) and 9,000 sold (up 17%) worldwide March 7-13.
Nos. 2-4 on the Global 200 hold in place, with ROSÉ and Mars’ “APT.” at No. 2, after 12 weeks at No. 1 starting in November; Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” at its No. 3 high; and Lamar’s “Not Like Us” at No. 4, following four weeks at No. 1 beginning last May.
JENNIE’s “like JENNIE” soars in at No. 5 on the Global 200 with 68.4 million streams and 6,000 sold worldwide. The BLACKPINK member adds her fourth solo top 10 on the chart; the group has likewise collected four top 10s, while fellow members LISA (three top 10s), ROSÉ (two) and Jisoo (one) have also hit the tier as soloists.
Also in the Global 200’s top 10, Doechii’s “Anxiety” bounds in at No. 6 with 56.9 million streams and 9,000 sold, becoming her first top 10. The history of the song – recorded in 2019 – is winding: When it was available only via YouTube, Sleepy Hallow co-opted its hook for the chorus of his own “A N X I E T Y”; billed to Sleepy Hallow featuring Doechii, it was released in 2023. The update experienced a TikTok-led revival in recent weeks, as users have soundtracked the “A N X I E T Y” chorus to a scene of Will Smith and Tatyana Ali dancing from an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the Smith-led sitcom that aired on NBC in 1990-96. “A N X I E T Y” falls 21-27 in its second week on the Global 200, led by 29.6 million streams worldwide (down 2%).
Meanwhile, the new attention for “A N X I E T Y” sent fans to Doechii’s solo, YouTube-only version, prompting the rapper/singer to release her original “Anxiety” wide to digital and streaming retailers on March 4. Her version debuts on the Global 200 following the first full tracking week (March 7-13) reflecting its wider release (and split consumption options with Sleepy Hallow’s take, which, as noted above, dips slightly in streams).
Additionally, “Anxiety” and “A N X I E T Y” prominently sample Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” (featuring Kimbra), the 2012 smash that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks, was that year’s No. 1 Hot 100 song and went on to win two Grammy Awards, including record of the year. That hit vaults 191-130 on the Global 200, up 20% to 16.5 million streams and 27% to 1,000 sold worldwide in the tracking week.
On Global Excl. U.S., “Die With a Smile” rises 2-1 with 92.3 million streams (up 2%) and 4,000 sold (up 17%) outside the U.S. March 7-13.
“APT.” descends to No. 2 after a record 17 weeks atop Global Excl. U.S. beginning in November.
JENNIE’s “like JENNIE” enters Global Excl. U.S. at No. 3 with 61.5 million streams and 4,000 sold outside the U.S. She achieves her fifth solo top 10 on the chart – surpassing the four top 10s that BLACKPINK and the group’s LISA as a soloist have each notched; ROSÉ boasts two solo top 10s and Jisoo, one.
Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” holds at No. 4 on Global Excl. U.S., after three weeks on top last August, and Gaga’s “Abracadabra” magically reappears in the top five (8-5), after reaching No. 4.
Plus, Doechii’s “Anxiety” debuts as her first Global Excl. U.S. top 10 at No. 7, with 36.9 million streams and 4,000 sold outside the U.S.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated March 22, 2025) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, March 18. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Additional reporting by Trevor Anderson.
Anne Murray, who has received more Juno Awards than anyone else in history, will pick up one more at the 2025 ceremony — the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the National Arts Centre. Murray will become just the second recipient of that award, following Pierre Juneau, a Canadian film and broadcast executive, who received the award in 1989. Juneau, for whom the Juno Awards were named, died in 2012 at age 89.
Murray will be present at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday, March 30, to receive the award, which is her second career-spanning honor at the Junos. She was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1993.
This year’s award brings Murray’s Juno collection to 26. She is followed on the Juno leaderboard by The Weeknd (22), Bryan Adams (21), Celine Dion (20), Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (19), The Tragically Hip (17), and Michael Bublé and Alanis Morissette (15 each).
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Murray, 79, received her first Juno Award — top female vocalist — at the second Junos ceremony in 1971. Murray’s collection of Junos includes back-to-back awards for both album of the year and single of the year for 1980-81. She took the album awards with New Kind of Feeling and Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits, and the single prizes with “I Just Fall in Love Again” and “Could I Have This Dance” (the latter from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack).
In addition, Murray hosted the Junos in 1996.
Murray was one of the top pop/country crossover artists of the 1970s and ’80s. She topped the Billboard Hot 100 once (with “You Needed Me” in 1978) and the Hot Country Songs 10 times. She won a Grammy for best female pop vocal performance with “You Needed Me” and for best female country vocal performance three times, with “Love Song,” “Could I Have This Dance” and “A Little Good News.” She is one of just four women to win Grammys in both pop and country solo vocal performance categories. She followed Olivia Newton-John and Linda Ronstadt in accomplishing the feat, and preceded k.d. lang.
Murray made the top 10 on the Hot 100 with her first charted hit. “Snowbird” reached No. 8 in September 1970.
In 1984, she won both album of the year and single of the year at the CMA Awards. She won for “A Little Good News” and the album of the same name. She won vocal duo of the year the following year in tandem with the late Dave Loggins (who was a second cousin to Kenny Loggins). In addition, she co-hosted the CMA Awards three times.
Murray is a Companion of the Order of Canada — the highest honor that can be awarded to a Canadian civilian. She has been inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame, and in 2008 received the Howie Richmond Hitmaker Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Murray has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Nashville’s Walkway of Stars.
Murray has also received three American Music Awards and three Canadian Country Music Association Awards.
Boi-1da and Sum 41 are also set to receive special honors during this year’s Juno Awards. Boi-1da will receive the International Achievement Award (to be presented by Jessie Reyez). Sum 41 will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame (with Joel and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte doing the honors).
Bublé is set to host this year’s Juno Awards, which will broadcast and stream live across Canada on Sunday, March 30, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on CBC TV, CBC Gem, CBC Radio One, CBC Music, CBC Listen, and globally on the CBC’s website and CBC Music’s YouTube page. The show will be produced by Insight Productions (a Boat Rocker company).
Dua Lipa brought a bit of rock to her set as she tours down under. The superstar took the stage at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday night (March 17), where she added a new song to her tour set — a cover of AC/DC’s 1979 classic, “Highway to Hell.” The tribute is […]
Will Smith will be taking his MC skills on the road for the first time in decades. The Grammy-winning polymath announced his Based on a True Story Summer Tour on Monday (March 17), which will hit major cities in the U.K. and Europe this summer. The tour kicks off in Hamburg, Germany, on July 13, […]
Music fans are amping up for 2025 to be the biggest year ever in stadium touring and leading the pack is Beyoncé, whose Cowboy Carter Tour has posted impressive sales after a month of ticket availability. The “Texas Hold ’Em” singer initially faced significant criticism when early presales revealed aggressive ticket prices for the now-31-date stadium tour through nine major markets — L.A., Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Houston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Las Vegas.
Some fans criticized Bey’s high prices — tickets in her stageside Club Ho-Down section cost $1,795 a piece — but they also bought a lot of tickets. Beyoncé sold more than 1 million tickets during the fan and sponsor presales and today two-thirds of the stops on the tour — all of the dates in Houston, Atlanta, Washington D.C. and Chicago and three of her five nights in New York — are effectively sold out, with Live Nation announcing that 94% of all tickets have already been sold.
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The Cowboy Carter Tour likely won’t outgross her 2023 Renaissance Tour — which ran 55 dates compared to 30 for Cowboy Carter — but she will earn far more on average than Renaissance thanks to higher ticket prices. It’s an impressive feat considering the number of A-list stadium tours competing for fan dollars this summer, including Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone, Shakira, The Weeknd and BlackPink.
The Beyoncé tour’s economic prowess is derived from its high ticket prices, priced to match what scalpers would sell the tickets for on the secondary market. Fans got their first glimpse of ticket prices on Feb. 11 for the Beyhive presale, the first of a handful of ticket presales for Beyoncé. Fans were required to register in advance for the presale and then wait to receive an email notifying them when it was their turn to try and purchase tickets for the high-demand outing.
Once the sale opened, they were given access to a wide range of tickets and prices, with nosebleeds as low as $102 while floor seats and tickets inside Beyoncé’s standing-room fan areas starting at $877 and rising to several thousand dollars per seat.
For example, tickets in the 500s section at SoFi Stadium in the upper seating area were among the least expensive for Los Angeles, priced at $166 apiece, while tickets on the floor started at $878 per ticket. The most expensive tickets at SoFi Stadium were priced at $1,422 for floor seats, while many floor tickets were priced between $1,000 to $1,200.
The tickets were aggressively priced — according to Billboard’s own non-weighted analysis, the average ticket price during the presale was $670 per ticket. The range in pricing also did cause some confusion among fans, many of whom accused Ticketmaster of using surge-pricing tactics during the ticket sale process, a practice the company denies. While Ticketmaster uses algorithms to help set prices ahead of a ticket sale, it does not adjust prices after they go on sale nor does it engage in surge pricing during periods of high demand.
While fans claimed to have seen prices change, what likely happened was that fans were comparing price points across multiple sections and seeing large variations in prices in seating sections that appeared close to one another. For example, tickets on the 100 level for Beyoncé’s June 28-29 shows in Houston saw large swings in price — the 138 section had tickets priced at $455, while just four sections over in 134, tickets were priced at $565. Closer to the stage, prices in section 102 were at $636 while tickets in section 108 were $852.
That variation in price across multiple sections confused fans who logged into the presale and had limited time to comparison shop. Adding to the confusion was that some of the least expensive tickets were first to sell during the presale, creating the perception that tickets were getting more expensive and the price was increasing, as the minutes of the presale ticked away.
Those high prices have remained strong on the secondary market, according to an analysis by Billboard. Typically, prices on the secondary market drop slightly below face value after a massive stadium onsale, but by only scheduling 30 concerts this summer, Beyoncé has created sustained demand for tickets that extended past the presale and general onsale. Tickets for her two Houston concerts, her three in Chicago concerts and two Washington, D.C. shows are effectively sold out, with only a handful of high-priced floor tickets for purchase on the primary market, while plenty of tickets are listed from secondary sellers for close to face-value prices.
Most impressive, Beyoncé has nearly sold out her first three concerts in New York (May 22, 24 & 25) and is closing in on selling out the final two concerts (May 28 & 29). Fans still hoping to score tickets will probably have the most success in Los Angeles at one her five concerts at SoFi Stadium (April 28, May 1, 4, 7 and 9).
Plenty of tickets are still available on the 500 level for as low as $105, as well as 300 level marked as VIP selling starting at $305, floor seats starting at $535 and tickets next to the stage inside the standing room only Sweet Honey and Buckin’ Honey pits.