State Champ Radio Podcasts
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When Lauren Spencer Smith started crafting her new song “Fantasy,” she had a feeling that it could use an extra dose (or two) of girl power to really drive home its “teenage, angry feelings about a breakup.”
“I kind of knew that I wanted a collaboration, but it just sat in a folder for a while and I hadn’t reached out to anybody. I didn’t really know who or what exactly it was going to be,” Smith told Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast, chatting on a Zoom call alongside eventual collaborators GAYLE and Em Beihold.
“And then throughout like a couple months, me, GAYLE and Em met each other on so many different occasions and became friends and we had a group chat,” Smith added of the ongoing text thread they dubbed the “Powerpuff” chat. “And I’ve been a fan of GAYLE and Em forever. I always listened to their music since way before I met them. So after we had had a group chat for a while, and we were like kind of a little friend group, I was like, ‘I’m just gonna ask because these seem like the perfect girls to have like a woman-empowerment moment on this song.’”
And so she did, texting her very own Powerpuff Girls with the idea. “I, like, freaked out,” Beihold recalls. “I was laying down on my bed, and then Lauren texted and I like bolted right up and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she wants me to be on a song with her and GAYLE!’ And I was just super stoked because I love them and I love both of their music. And I just think it was such a fun opportunity. And also just going through all this together as friends is amazing. Because sometimes you do collabs with people that you don’t know too well and it’s fun, but to do it with people that you can just laugh with is amazing.”
“We only replied in all caps,” GAYLE adds. “We flipped out. So many exclamation points, like so, so much excitement.”
They also teamed up for an angsty music video, each starting out in their own scenes before coming together onscreen — including one perfect moment where they huddle together to yell the “OH, CONGRATULATIONS” line from the visceral chorus.
“When we were on set, I was like, ‘OK, if they asked me to be in a girl group tomorrow, I would say yes,’” Smith recalls.
Elsewhere in the interview, we discuss where each artist is in the process of making their debut full-length albums and about how well they relate to each other being young female pop stars who all broke out in the music industry in 2022 (Smith with “Fingers Crossed,” GAYLE with “ABCDEFU,” and Beihold with “Numb Little Bug”). Plus, GAYLE tells us all about hitting the road with Taylor Swift for her epic Eras Tour. “I’ve never really performed in a stadium before, so it’s such an honor and it’s definitely not something that I take lightly,” she says. “And so I’ve been trying my best to just do the best that I possibly can.”
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Drake’s “Search and Rescue” debuts at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his 68th top 10 hit, how a regional Mexican song is in the top 10 of the Hot 100 for the first time as Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola” jumps 17-10, and how both NF and Linkin Park make a splash in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Spotify is targeting radio broadcasters with its latest product update that will make it easier to convert radio shows into on-demand podcasts and offer a new source of ad revenue on existing content.
Beginning Thursday, Spotify’s “broadcast-to-podcast” technology will be fully integrated into Megaphone, the podcast ad tech and hosting platform that Spotify acquired in late 2020. The radio-to-podcast conversion technology itself comes from the Australian podcasting platform Whooshkaa, which was purchased by Spotify in 2021.
Using Megaphone, publishers will be able to input the URL to a live stream of their broadcasted content and automatically have a podcast created from that programming, according to Emma Vaughn, Spotify’s global head of advertising business development and partnerships. The “broadcast-to-podcast” tech will identify ad marker locations, giving publishers the opportunity to remove the ads that were originally aired on the live version of the program and dynamically insert new ad spots in their place, resulting in more revenue.
Companies using “broadcast to podcast” can continue to sell their own ad inventory or, in the near future, do so through the Spotify Audience Network, the audio giant’s ad marketplace.
“These publishers obviously have a ton of content that they create. The libraries are massive, [but] they don’t always have a full podcast operation that’s set up, [so] creating podcast-only content might not make sense for them,” Vaughn told The Hollywood Reporter. “That’s where ‘broadcast to podcast’ comes in because it’s seamless and allows them to join the ecosystem.”
As part of the initial rollout, publishers like Fox Corp. — which has an existing advertising and distribution deal with Megaphone for its Fox Audio Network — will use the conversion technology to create on-demand podcast versions of the broadcaster’s radio programming, though Vaughn said the goal is to attract publishers and broadcasters around the globe that “previously weren’t able to access Megaphone and access the podcast ecosystem.”
The executive also noted that converting radio programming into podcasts could give radio broadcasters a better chance at expanding their reach to Gen-Z listeners.
“More and more people are listening to content via these digital channels,” Vaughn said, “so it’s going to be able to bring some of this broadcast content that was maybe more isolated to a certain type of demographic to the Spotify demographic and to these young audiences that they haven’t been able to capture before.”
This story was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Coachella returns this weekend to Indio, Calif., with Bad Bunny, BLACKPINK and Frank Ocean headlining.
So what can we expect from the three-day festival? On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are looking ahead to what surprises might be in store from the stacked lineup. Could BLACKPINK bring out one of their many pop-star collaborators, like Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga or Dua Lipa? Might Bad Bunny call up one of this high-profile friends, like Drake, Cardi B or J Balvin?
Billboard will be on the ground covering all three days of weekend 1, and you can tune in live on YouTube to follow along with all the fun. Listen to the new Pop Shop Podcast below:
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Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Morgan Wallen is back at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with “Last Night” while he continues atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with One Thing at a Time. Melanie Martinez and Boygenius, meanwhile, debut in the top five on the Billboard 200 with their new albums. Plus, Rema and Selena Gomez’s “Calm Down” hits a new high on the Hot 100, Lady Gaga is back in the top 10 on the Pop Airplay chart with her viral 2011 song “Bloody Mary,” and Depeche Mode reach the top 10 on the Alternative Airplay chart for the first time in over 25 years with their latest single “Ghosts Again.”
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
There’s never a dull moment in Las Vegas, but this past weekend was a particularly jam-packed one for Sin City.
Taylor Swift brought The Eras Tour to Allegiant Stadium for two nights, Adele performed the last two nights of her Weekends With Adele concerts at Caesars Palace’s Colosseum (and announced that she’ll be back in June for more), Maroon 5 opened their hits-packed Dolby Live at Park MGM residency, and Kelly Clarkson announced a string of dates around her next album Chemistry starting in late July at Planet Hollywood’s Bakkt Theater.
5 Best Moments From Maroon 5’s Hits-Packed Las Vegas Residency
03/28/2023
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are breaking down all the Vegas action — including our very own Pop Shop field trip to see T-Swift and Katie’s review of Maroon 5’s opening weekend. Listen below:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how U2 becomes just the fourth group with new top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in every decade from the 1980s onward, how Coi Leray and Bailey Zimmerman score their first top 10s on the Billboard Hot 100, and how Swift scores an impressive seven albums in the top 40 of the Billboard 200 for the first time.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
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Source: New and Making Noise / New And Making Noise
Big Latto graces the studio for Episode 12 of New And Making Noise with hosts Incognito and DJ Misses. The Grammy-nominated artist discusses her next moves and her thoughts on the current state of Hip-Hop.
Source: New and Making Noise / New And Making Noise
The Atlanta-raised rapper describes what it was like to transition from the 16-year-old who won The Rap Game to the Billboard chart-topping success that she is today.
“It was [difficult], just because I had so many opinions and people in my ear and so many hands on my career, and I feel like I wasn’t really telling my story how I wanted to tell it,” she says. “So I had to get to a point where it was like… there is no right or wrong way to do this. I just gotta be me with it.”
Now 24, Latto is enjoying life fresh off the success of her multi-platinum breakthrough single ‘Big Energy’ and her last two albums Queen of da Souf and 777.
“I’m learning to live in the moment lately,” she says. “I feel like I’ve been rapping for so long, so it could start feeling like a routine sometimes… But I’m learning to live in the moment and appreciate and just take it all in.”
We can expect more freestyles on the way—Latto’s way of responding to critics who question her lyrical ability. “That’s a joke. We laughed at that for sure. Y’all gotta remember, I came in writing,” she says.
Latto is taking the momentum from ‘Big Energy’ and running with it. “I think after Big Energy, my horizon was just different,” she says. “I didn’t put myself in a box anymore. I learned to think bigger. I saw the bigger picture.”
From releasing new music to appearing on the big screen this year, Latto isn’t limiting herself. “I want to step into the business world,” she says. “Music is not going to last forever… So I’m getting ahead of that while I’m young.”
The artist also gives a nod to other women in the music industry who have supported her, including the late Gangsta Boo and Mariah Carey, who is featured on the ‘Big Energy’ remix with DJ Khaled.
Latto stans for her fellow women in Hip-Hop as well. “I love the inclusivity of everything right now. And I’m really a fan of the movement,” she says.
Latto also discusses her current style inspiration, her first tattoo, and what she would change about the music industry.
Ever since Taylor Swift announced The Eras Tour back in November, fans have had a lot of questions. The biggest one: With six albums released since her Reputation Tour back in 2018, how could she possibly do each project justice in a limited setlist?
Well, after she kicked off the first two tour dates on Friday and Saturday in Glendale, Ariz. — or Swift City, ERAzona, as it was ceremonially renamed — we discovered that the setlist wasn’t so limited after all. Over the course of the three-hour-plus concert, Swift performs all or portions of 44 songs.
The 13 Best Moments From Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Kickoff
03/21/2023
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen below), Katie & Keith are talking all about the much-anticipated tour launch, thanks to on-site reporting from founding Pop Shop host Jason Lipshutz. Plus, we’re looking ahead to our own Pop Shop field trip for this weekend’s Las Vegas dates.
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Rema and Selena Gomez hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 together with “Calm Down,” how Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” is back at No. 1, how both Miley and TWICE make splashy debuts in the top three on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and how women dominate the top of the Billboard 200 in a way we haven’t seen in over a decade.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Questlove won best music podcast of the year at the fifth annual iHeartPodcast Awards on Tuesday (March 14). The virtual event, hosted by actor and comedian Brian Baumgartner, was video-streamed on iHeartRadio’s YouTube Channel and Facebook Page and broadcast on iHeartMedia radio stations nationwide and on the iHeartRadio app.
Charlamagne Tha God presented the award to Questlove, host of Questlove Supreme. This adds to Questlove’s growing trophy collection which includes an Oscar for directing Summer of Soul and six Grammys.
Sportscaster Bob Costas opened the 2023 iHeartPodcast Awards.
Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden presented the fan-voted podcast of the year award to Las Culturistas. Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang thanked Marc Maron and Snookie for paving the way in podcasting.
Zach Braff and Donald Faison presented Nicole Byer, host of Why Won’t You Date Me, with best comedy podcast of the year. Alex Borstein later presented Byer with her second award of the night for best overall host.
Comedian Iliza Shlesinger awarded the new best overall ensemble award to Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett of SmartLess.
The show also featured appearances by Mayim Bialik, Colin Cowherd, Malcolm Gladwell, Draymond Green, Bethany Joy Lenz, Enrique Santos, Angela Yee and more.
Executive producers for the 2023 iHeartPodcast Awards are John Sykes, Tom Poleman, Conal Byrne and Bart Peters for iHeartMedia, and Deviants Media Studio founder Ivan Dudynsky and show runner Jayson Belt.
Here’s the full list of 2023 iHeartPodcast Awards winners:
Social Impact Icon Award: Dr. Laurie Santos and Dr. Joy Harden Bradford
Audible Audio Pioneer Icon Award: Kara Swisher
Innovator Icon Award: Ashley Flowers
Podcast of the Year Award: Las Culturistas
Best Overall Ensemble: SmartLess
Best Overall Host: Nicole Byer
Best Music Podcast: Questlove Supreme
Best TV & Film Podcast: Films to be Buried With
Best Pop Culture Podcast: Decoder Ring
Best Business & Finance Podcast: Planet Money
Best Comedy Podcast: Why Won’t You Date Me
Best Crime Podcast: Believe Her
Best Food Podcast: The Sporkful
Best Wellness & Fitness Podcast: Maintenance Phase
Best History Podcast: You’re Wrong About
Best Kids & Family Podcast: Wow in the World
Best News Podcast: The Daily
Best Fiction Podcast: Welcome to Night Vale
Best Sports Podcast: The Draymond Green Show
Best Science Podcast: Radiolab
Best Technology Podcast: Pivot
Best Ad Read Podcast: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Best Political Podcast: NPR Politics Podcast
Best Spanish Language Podcast: Ciudad Mágica
Best Advice & Inspirational Podcast: Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People
Best Beauty & Fashion Podcast: Natch Beaut
Best Travel Podcast: Atlas Obscura
Best Green Podcast: TED Climate
Best Spirituality & Religion Podcast: On Being
Best Branded Podcast: Smart Talks with IBM
Best Emerging Podcast: Sounds Like a Cult
Best International Podcast: El Viaje (Mexico)
More information can be found at iHeartPodcastAwards.com.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour might be opening on Friday night, but the best pop concert of this past weekend was Sunday’s Oscars. Both Rihanna and Lady Gaga performed their best original song nominees at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre for a packed room of movie A-listers — and Billboard was there to see it all.
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Keith peppers Katie with questions about her night at the 95th annual Academy Awards, from arriving at the red carpet through toasting the winners at the Governors Ball afterparty and all the movie moments in between.
Snubs & Surprises at 2023 Oscars
03/14/2023
Listen below:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Morgan Wallen not only has a massive debut atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with One Thing at a Time, but all 36 songs on the album are on the Billboard Hot 100 — setting a new record for the most concurrent songs by a single artist on the chart. One of those songs, “Last Night,” shoots all the way to No. 1 — his first Hot 100 chart-topper. With Miley Cyrus and TWICE on the horizon, can Wallen stay at No. 1 for another week? We talk about all that and more.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Spotify is launching a TikTok-like vertical-swiped homepage to its mobile app. Though Bloomberg leaked the news last week, the new homepage was officially unveiled by company executives at Spotify’s Stream On event Wednesday (March 8).
The new homepage — unveiled during the demonstration led by Spotify co-president/chief product officer/chief technology officer Gustav Soderstrom — will trade Spotify’s formerly static carousels of playlist and song recommendations in favor of a vertical, swipeable, video-based interactive feed which will automatically play previews of music, podcasts and audiobooks for users in hopes of helping them discover new content.
The top of the homepage will continue to boast a few quick links to help users instantly find their favorite podcasts, audiobooks and playlists.
“When I open my home screen, I won’t have to choose what I might be interested in just based on a cover art that I’ve never seen before, or an episode name I’ve never heard of,” said Soderstrom. “Instead, I can instantly hear the most interesting part of a song or an episode.”
The new video-centric feed, as well as other announcements at Stream On, represent a move away from positioning Spotify as a solely audio-focused company and toward creating a more audiovisual platform. As Spotify CEO Daniel Ek noted in his introduction, “In the past few years, people likely thought of Spotify as being the best destination for listening. But today, this evolution is really about bringing Spotify to life.”
Spotify has spent years trying to assert itself as the world leader in audio products, diversifying its offerings from music to exclusive podcasts, live audio and — most recently — audiobooks. But not all of these pushes have played out well for the company. At least six of its live audio programs, for example, were canceled after roughly a year.
The company began to offer more visuals in recent years to strong success, including adding video capabilities to some podcasts and its Canvas feature which lets artists showcase a looping video to accompany their songs. According to Spotify, songs that use Canvas are 145% more likely to get track shares, while listeners are 5% more likely to continue streaming them.
The Canvas feature will now play an even bigger role at Spotify, Soderstrom noted, as artists’ Canvases will now serve as the visual backdrop for audio previews on the app’s newly designed homepage.
The news of its more interactive, vertical homepage marks Spotify as the latest major tech company to seemingly take cues from TikTok. Instagram and YouTube have made pushes to popularize short-form, vertical video offerings on their sites in the last few years, while on the music side, apps like Discz, a swipeable music discovery service à la Tinder, have proven there’s an appetite for interactive music recommendations. SoundCloud followed suit this week as well, announcing a vertically-based Discover page that uses AI to power tailored recommendations.
Of Ariana Grande’s 72 Billboard Hot 100 hits, nearly half (32) are collaborations. In fact, more than half of her top 10-charting hits — 10 of 19 — are collabs.
Her latest hit team-up is The Weeknd‘s “Die for You” remix, which debuts at No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week — Grande’s fourth collab to top the chart.
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All this to say, Grande is clearly a collaborative queen. On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are talking about why Ari and The Weeknd are a potent combination, why she came out of musical retirement for this remix, and what dream duets we’d love to see her tackle next.
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Karol G makes history atop the Billboard 200, scoring not only her first No. 1 album, but the first No. 1 all-Spanish-language album by a woman.
Plus, the Oscars are this Sunday! Will Rihanna become a first-time winner? Could Lady Gaga take home her second win? Will Austin Butler win best actor for playing Elvis Presley? And what are we going to be watching out for during the show?
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
