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You no longer need to walk into a bank to rob it. A team of stick-up men successfully stuck up a Brinks truck in Queens, N.Y.
As spotted on The Daily News, a pair of unidentified individuals hit a pretty big score in the Cambria Heights section of Queens on Monday (June 2). According to the report, the crooks ran up on the driver parked on Linden Boulevard and 205th Street near a Bank Of America location with a firearm. The two were able to take about $300,000 in cash from the truck and even the guard’s gun for good measure. Right after the two culprits were spotted driving away in a Black Chevrolet heading west on the Linden Boulevard. Thankfully, no one suffered any injuries during the incident.
Local workers in the area described that the robbery happened within the blink of an eye to Yahoo! News. “I was like, what? They have James Bond or something in this or something like that! There were helicopters and everything,” said Mohammed Salim. A representative for Brinks provided a statement regarding the robbery to ABC 7 News: “In general, and in the interest of the safety of our employees and others who may be affected on matters concerning law enforcement, we do not comment and recommend that you approach the relevant law enforcement agencies for further background on the incident.”
The investigation is ongoing.
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Lil Wayne is set to bless us with his highly anticipated album “Tha Carter VI” this Friday, June 6, and to mark the occasion, he’s launching a nationwide tour.
The tour will kick off in dramatic fashion with a release-day performance at New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden. After that, the rapper will take a short break before hitting the road again at the end of July, with dates running through early October.
In addition to promoting Tha Carter VI, the tour will serve as a celebration of Wayne’s entire *Carter* series, a defining body of work in hip-hop that includes fan-favorite albums like Tha Carter III and Tha Carter V. Special guests joining the tour include Tyga, NoCap, Belly Gang Kushington, and even the Hot Boys, reuniting Wayne with some of his earliest collaborators.
Tha Carter V, released in 2018, was a major success, featuring standout tracks like “Uproar,” “Let It All Work Out,” and “Mona Lisa” featuring Kendrick Lamar. Expectations are sky-high for Tha Carter VI, which Wayne has teased over the past year.
To promote the album, Weezy recently dropped a quirky skit featuring a mock collaboration with skincare brand Cetaphil. The offbeat humor and surprise product placement quickly went viral, adding to the buzz around the release.
Fans can expect a blend of nostalgia and fresh energy as Lil Wayne celebrates a legendary legacy and possibly another dope project.
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It’s an understatement to say it was a dream come true for Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying to write and record the new song “Great Rainbow” for the 70th anniversary of the Disneyland Resort.
The Grammy winner tells Billboard he’s a “Disney stan, deep down.” But Hoying didn’t stop with one song: He can be heard throughout the new Disney California Adventure Park nighttime spectacular World of Color Happiness!, including harmonizing on new renditions of familiar Disney favorites like “I 2 I” (from A Goofy Movie) and “Nobody Like U” (from Turning Red).
World of Color Happiness! is a razzle-dazzle show that, per Disney, “explores happy through a kaleidoscope of emotions,” as told through visual projections on choreographed fountains enhanced with lighting, lasers, flames and of course, a musical soundtrack.
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The entire show, staged on Paradise Bay, is hosted by Joy and the other Emotions from the animated film Inside Out 2, while a pre-show moment kicks off with The Muppets – who, like Disneyland, celebrate their 70th anniversary in 2025. (In the show, Boyz II Men are heard singing The Muppets’ iconic tune “The Rainbow Connection.”) Then, following the show, Hoying’s soaring “Great Rainbow” is heard in full while the fountains and lights in the Bay dance along to the tune. The track was created by an army of more than 100 musical individuals – including an orchestra, choir and a team of production technicians and wizards.
Much of the music from World of Color Happiness!, including “Great Rainbow,” can also be found on the recently released album from Walt Disney Records, Music From Disneyland Resort 70th Celebration.
So what does it feel like for Hoying to quite literally be part of a show at a Disney park, where his voice is heard by guests most every night?
“I don’t even have the words to accurately explain. It is such a dream of mine. There’s videos of me at [age] 3 singing ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ [from The Lion King] for anyone that would listen. I am such a Disney stan, deep down. I know the catalog through and through.
“To help create the soundtrack to such amazing memories that kids get to have – it’s just a dream,” he adds. “It gives me a sense of purpose and fulfillment that’s really, really meaningful.”
Hoying found his way to World of Color Happiness! thanks to his work on Walt Disney World’s Epcot spectacular Luminous: The Symphony of Us. That show, which premiered in December 2023, featured a song Hoying co-wrote (with A.J. Sealy and Sheléa, performed by Sheléa) titled “Heartbeat Symphony.” Perhaps surprisingly, the song was selected for the show in a “blind” audition, so to speak, where the writers were not revealed during the initial selection process.
Stef Fink – who was the music producer for Luminous and World of Color Happiness! – invited Sealy and others to “blind submit” songs for Luminous. Sealy called up Hoying (whom Fink did not know personally at the time), and the pair submitted a track, which was among the songs the Disney team initially selected for consideration. Then, Sheléa teamed with Hoying and Sealy, and the three tinkered with the track and added Sheléa’s vocals to the demo, and Disney ultimately selected the song for the show.
So when it came time for World of Color Happiness! to begin production, the relationship Hoying and Fink had built with Luminous graduated to a new level. Knowing that World of Color Happiness! was going to be a “more vocal-forward and a more pop-forward show,” Fink thought of bringing Hoying into the creative process. “I like to surround myself with people who are smarter and musically better than I am, so I was like, ‘Scott, what are you doing?’”
On this show, Scott “stepped into so many different roles creatively, by himself and alongside me,” Fink says. “He’s not just a singer on the show and he’s not just a vocal arranger – he really informed a lot of our fun decisions, along with our incredible creative director Steve Davison and our entire team over at Disney Live Entertainment.”
The creative synergy between Fink and Hoying extended to the new song “Great Rainbow,” which the pair wrote and produced together, with Hoying singing the track alongside an orchestra and choir.
Recording the song with a live orchestra was “one of the best parts of the whole experience and why I have so much respect for the Disney Music team, because they don’t cut corners,” Hoying says, stressing the lengths Disney will go to for authenticity and accuracy in their music production.
“It’s so cool to work on a project that has so much integrity for music. … I don’t get to record with an orchestra very often – obviously, Pentatonix is a cappella – and it was so magical. As magical as you’d think it’d be. I was just bawling [in the studio] to the point where I was like, ‘All right, it’s kind of cute to cry for a second, but now it’s kind of getting crazy.’ [Laughs] I was just so moved. It was the most beautiful thing I ever heard.
“And the concept of the show is about connection, and to see 70 people who all dedicated their life to their instrument come together and play an arrangement that I worked on and they loved to play, and it made this beautiful sound… and I was like, ‘Humans, we’re all connected!’ I was just in my feels and just going through it. It was just magical.”
Goldman Sachs lowered its global growth expectations for the music industry for the next five years, as well as its forecast for global recorded music revenues this year, in a report published Tuesday (June 3).
The Wall Street investment bank’s Music in the Air report, which has become a closely-watched guide for music industry executives and investors, said it expects the global music industry to generate $31.4 billion in net revenues in 2025, a $2.5 billion decline from its 2024 projection of $33.9 billion.
That reflects growth of 6.8% on average from 2025 to 2030, down from the 7.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) analysts had previously forecast for that period last year. The primary factors driving that downward revision, Goldman says, are the slowing growth of last year’s recorded music revenues and lower ad-funded streaming growth, both of which contributed to expectations of 7.9% streaming growth on average from 2024-2030, down from the 9.8% previously forecast.
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“2024 was the first year since we began forecasting music industry trends where global music revenues fell short of our expectations,” the authors of the closely watched report wrote. “This was also the first year since we started forecasting music industry revenue where the recorded music market came well below our expectations.”
Goldman also issued new estimates for future growth, projecting that the music industry will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.8% for the years 2031 to 2035.
These slower growth forecasts echo findings of earlier reports this year, such as the IFPI’s March findings that global recorded music growth for 2024 was half of what it was in 2023, and the RIAA’s similar report that found that U.S. streaming revenue growth last year slowed to 3% from 7.7% in 2023.
Nonetheless, Goldman analysts said they expect the value of music rights and companies to remain “resilient” amid an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, and that more frequent streaming subscription price increases and individualized service plans will provide support.
In 2025, Goldman says it expects global music industry revenue growth of 7.7%, down from its previous forecast of 8.3%, with growth in the live music sector and a slight improvement in recorded music revenue growth serving as the main drivers.
Goldman’s revision of its streaming growth outlook within recorded music revenues was due to significantly lower ad-funded streaming, researchers said. Ad-funded streaming growth is expected to slow to 5.7%, compared to its 2024 forecast of 11.3%.
Researchers said these “meaningful changes to our streaming assumptions” stem from a structural shift of more consumers preferring shortform as opposed to longform videos, less upside gained from emerging platforms and the impact of near-term uncertainty.
Those factors also caused Goldman to expect slightly lower subscriber and average revenue per user growth among streaming platforms.
803Fresh’s “Boots on the Ground” is flying high on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart as it rises from the runner-up spot to top the list dated June 7. The viral, line-dance track ascends by becoming the most played song on panel-contributing adult R&B radio stations in the United States in the tracking week of May […]
After battling Parkinson’s disease for some time in private, A-ha‘s Morten Harket is now sharing his diagnosis with the public.
By way of a letter written by the band’s biographer, Jan Omdahl, the singer broke the news to fans that he has been receiving treatment for the neurological disorder “in recent years,” undergoing surgeries last June and December to implant symptom-reducing electrodes on both sides of his brain. Harket also said that he’d been having conflicting feelings for quite some time about whether he should go public with his diagnosis.
“Part of me wanted to reveal it,” he told Omdahl. “Like I said, acknowledging the diagnosis wasn’t a problem for me; it’s my need for peace and quiet to work that has been stopping me. I’m trying the best I can to prevent my entire system from going into decline. It’s a difficult balancing act between taking the medication and managing its side effects.”
“It used to bother me to think about my sickness becoming public knowledge,” Harket added. “In the long run, it bothers me more to have to protect something that is strictly a private matter by treating it as a secret.”
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According to the Mayo Clinic, Parkinson’s is a “movement disorder of the nervous system that worsens over time,” often causing tremors and affecting the motor skills of patients. There is no cure for the degenerative disease, but medicines and surgery can help ease symptoms.
For Harket, both treatment paths have “led to a dramatic improvement in his symptoms,” though he still faces regular exhaustion and strain. He also said that his singing abilities have been affected, but it’s not of primary concern for him right now.
“I don’t feel like singing, and for me that’s a sign,” he told Omdahl. “The question is whether I can express myself with my voice. As things stand now, that’s out of the question … I see singing as my responsibility, and at certain moments I think it’s absolutely fantastic that I get to do it. But I’ve got other passions too, I have other things that are just as big a part of me, that are just as necessary and true.”
Even so, the Norwegian singer has been working on new music throughout his journey with Parkinson’s, revealing that he has “great belief” in the material that’s sprung out of this period in his life. “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to finish them for release,” Harket said. “Time will tell if they make it. I really like the idea of just going for it, as a Parkinson’s patient and an artist, with something completely outside the box.”
He also added that — while appreciative of the concern fans will undoubtedly have for him as they learn of the news — he’s already weary from the anticipation of all the messages of sympathy and unsolicited advice headed his way. “Don’t worry about me,” he said when asked what he wants listeners to know at this time. “Find out who you want to be — a process that can be new each and every day. Be good servants of nature, the very basis of our existence, and care for the environment while it is still possible to do so.”
Harket added, “Spend your energy and effort addressing real problems, and know that I am being taken care of.”
Over the past couple of decades, cases of disability and death caused by Parkinson’s have been “rapidly spreading,” according to the World Health Organization. As of 2019, an estimated 8.5 million people had the disease, an ever-growing population that also includes stars such as Michael J. Fox, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner’s Mick Jones, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt and Marc Cohn, who have all been open about their diagnoses.
A-ha was one of the defining pop groups of the 1980s, landing three entries on the Billboard Hot 100 in the second half of the decade: “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.,” “Cry Wolf,” and No. 1 hit “Take on Me.” The group is comprised of Harket and friends Magne Furuholmen and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, who formed the group in Oslo in 1982.
Fuerza Regida’s Jesús Ortiz Paz (JOP), Gabito Ballesteros and Lupillo Rivera join the new reality show Pase a la Fama, set to premiere Sunday (June 8) on Telemundo. The three Mexican artists will form part of the music competition series — focused on discovering the next great regional Mexican band — as mentors, where they […]
It’s officially Lil Wayne week. Weezy is set to return with the sixth installment of arguably rap’s most decorated album series with Tha Carter VI arriving on Friday (June 6).
Seven years after C5, Wayne hopes to make more history and add to his decorated legacy. The project’s slated to be another star-studded affair with a range of rumored features from Miley Cyrus, Bono, MGK, Wyclef Jean, Andrea Bocelli and more.
Three decades into a hall-of-fame career, Lil Wayne changed the aesthetic of rappers and the genre’s sound in the 21st century. Take a look at all the “Lil”s in the rap game, the tattoos and dreadlocks, that can be attributed to Weezy’s influence. His intoxicating Auto-Tune-laced rhymes and witty punchlines that seemingly never end ushered in a new archetype of rapper.
“Before I stepped into music, everyone looked a certain way and everyone did a certain thing. Look at me. Now look at music. They all look like me,” he said in 2020. “I love it.”
At the end of every concert, Lil Wayne expresses gratitude to his fans, saying, “I ain’t s–t without you.” But Weezy wouldn’t but the artist he is without Tha Carter series—a staple in his discography and an artifact of hip-hop history. “Welcome back hip-hop, I saved your life,” he raps on Tha Carter 3’s “Dr. Carter.”
Lil Wayne’s prime heading into C3 circa ‘07-’08 was something you had to see to believe. In a genre with goliaths like Kanye West, Jay-Z and Eminem dominating, Weezy stood tall at 5’5”, in a league of his own. At times, his greatness was impossible to measure through sheer commercial numbers, with the droves of leaks and mixtape files being shared online between fans in a pre-streaming world.
“You scare me, man, every time you spit,” Ye told Wayne on stage at the 2008 BET Awards while referring to Weezy as his “fiercest competition.”
The New Orleans rap deity will take a bow and a well-deserved victory lap on Friday night when he celebrates Tha Carter VI’s arrival with his first headlining solo show at Madison Square Garden. How is that possible?
Billboard sifted through all five installments of Tha Carter and attempted to do the impossible, filing down a list to the 10 best tracks from the acclaimed series. (And a quick honorable mention to “Mirror,” “This is the Carter,” “I Miss My Dawgs,” “Got Money,” “Mona Lisa,” “Fly In” and “Comfortable.”)
“Tha Mobb”
Audra McDonald has won six Tony Awards, more than any other performer, and she has a good chance to extend her record at the 2025 Tonys on Sunday (June 8). The Broadway legend is nominated for best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical for her portrayal of Mama Rose in […]
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip.
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This week: Each of Taylor Swift’s Reputation tracks are up following her announcement of having acquired the masters to her Big Machine-era albums — but which are up the most? Plus, a Kellyoke outing helps a Texas singer-songwriter get a break, and TikTok pettiness helps mint another fun new country hit.
Taylor Swift’s Surging ‘Reputation’: Which Songs Are Getting Streamed the Most?
Following Taylor Swift’s announcement on Friday (May 30) that she had bought back the master recordings of her first six albums, the superstar’s entire catalog posted sales and streaming gains, as Swifties rushed to celebrate the hard-fought victory. In addition to her five most recent studio albums and four Taylor’s Version re-records receiving boosts, her first six full-lengths naturally saw spikes in listenership — particularly Reputation, her 2017 opus which had not yet been given a Taylor’s Version treatment (and possibly never will).
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Reputation has experienced the biggest gain in consumption since Friday’s announcement, averaging 8,000 equivalent album units between Friday and Saturday, according to Luminate, and challenging for a return to the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 next week. Digging into the individual songs, every single track on the album earned a increase in daily U.S. on-demand audio streams of at least 70 percent in the four days after the announcement (May 30-June 2) compared to the same tracking period during the previous week (May 23-26), with “So It Goes…” getting the biggest percentage bounce by rising to 983,000 streams in those four days, up a whopping 262% from the previous week.
The biggest hits on Reputation earned big boosts as well: lead single and Hot 100 chart-topper “Look What You Made Me Do” rose 70% to 2 million streams between May 30-June 2, while “Delicate” was up 85% to 2.02 million streams over those four days. The most-streamed song on Reputation, however, was the opener, “…Ready For It?,” which earned 2.21 million streams over that four-day period (up 80%). When Swifties wanted to finally return to Reputation, they clearly wanted to start at the top and savor the whole thing. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Elizabeth Nichols Has ‘Got a New’ Hit Following ‘Kellyoke’ Cover
While pop star-turned-TV host Kelly Clarkson has made the ‘Kellyoke’ covers segment on her eponymous talk show a pop institution largely taking on a combination of established classics and contemporary hits, occasionally she likes to look to the future a little. That’s what she did last week, when she took on Texas country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Nichols’ late-2024 single “I Got a New One,” a clever sung-spoken ditty that sees her responding to childish romantic ultimatums by calling “next” on her partners. “I love [that song] so much, it’s so funny,” raved Fort Worth native Clarkson after her performance. “I always love shining a light on a fellow Texan.”
And indeed, the spotlight has been on Nichols and her winning debut single in the days since. In the four days following Clarkson’s performance, “I Got a New One” racked up 549,000 official on-demand U.S. streams in total, according to Luminate – a 462% gain on the four-day period prior to the cover. Even more impressively, the song shot to the top tier of the iTunes chart on the back of nearly 3,200 in sales over that same period, up over 63,000% from a negligible amount the prior period.
Given the way the country world deemed Ella Langley a star following her breakout success with her similarly sung-spoken Riley Green duet “You Look Like You Love Me” just last year, it might not be long before Nashville decides it’s got a new one in Elizabeth Nichols. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Vengefulness Propels Blackly Comedic Kaitlin Butts Single to Viral Success
“F*cking finally!” proclaimed the country newsletter Don’t Rock the Inbox about the long-overdue viral success of Oklahoma singer-songwriter Kaitlin Butts and her song “You Ain’t Gotta Die (To Be Dead to Me).” Indeed, the darkly funny highlight from Butts’ acclaimed 2024 album Roadrunner has belatedly hit TikTok paydirt, thanks to a couple sounds from it – including the chorus chant, and the spoken-word pre-chorus breakdown (“You know, I think I have heard of that man… I think I heard he got run over by a train, mauled by a bear, maybe? Hopefully”) – catching on with users sharing the reasons they’ve prematurely called a TOD on an ex.
Butts herself has helped accelerate the moment on her own TikTok, sharing some of the more unseemly examples and dueting along with high-profile cosigners like Internet celebrity Brianna Chickenfry and – once again – country star Ella Langley. Consequently, the song has begun to cross over to DSPs, racking up 473,000 official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending May 29, according to Luminate – a 3,342% gain from two weeks earlier, when the song netted just under 14,000 streams. As the song continues to rise, it just proves that the combination of a good, funny country song and the power of online vindictiveness is never to be underestimated. – AU
