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Second Gentleman Dough Emhoff has established a reputation as a music nerd and, like his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, an inveterate crate digger. So it made perfect sense that as he’s been grinding it out on the road like a rock band touring in a panel van to support Harris’ presidential campaign, Emhoff took time out to chop it up with Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament to describe how he’s been connecting with voters at record shops around the country.
“I’m trying to highlight small business and talk about all the great things that Kamala Harris is gonna do for the country and merge it with my love of music,” Emhoff told the PJ singer and bassist during a visit to their SiriusXM Pearl Jam Radio channel. “And so it’s gotten me to local record stores across the country. I’ve gotten to, you know, meet you guys, but also [former R.E.M. singer] Michael Stipe kind of came out of semi-retirement, and Michael’s now done two events for us.”
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The most recent event featuring Stipe took place at an Oct. 4 Get Out the Vote concert in Pittsburgh that also featured Jason Isbell. Emhoff said indie rock legend Stipe took him to one of his favorite hometown indie rock shops [Wuxtry Records] in Athens, GA, which, he noted, is still standing. “I kind of did a whole, you know, go through shelf by shelf with him. I got to visit a record store with [California] Governor Gavin Newsom, who also loves music. So he and I were with a local business owner going through the stacks, picking out some records,” Emhoff said.
And that’s not all. Emhoff also noted that he’s gotten to hang and talk music with Jon Bon Jovi, another Harris/Walz campaign supporter, as well as Isbell. Though Bruce Springsteen has also given his thumbs-up to Harris, Emhoff lamented that he has yet to meet the Boss in person, while noting that Taylor Swift has also, famously, endorsed his wife’s 11th hour White House bid.
“So the music industry has come out in a way that you guys have always done this. It’s what you did from day one, using your voice, not only to make this music we all love, but to talk about the truth and being engaged,” Emhoff told the PJ members, who have long worn their activism on their sleeves. “And so to see that coming back and get to talk to some of the people I’ve listened to my whole life, and then see how active they are. But to do that in a record store with Michael Stipe in Athens and pick out some records was pretty, pretty damn cool, man.”
Vedder said he got the chills hearing the R.E.M. origin story, then reciting the details of it as chapter-and-verse, down to the album that Stipe and guitarist Peter Buck bonded over: Patti Smith’s Horses. To rub it in a bit more, Emhoff added that Stipe also took him to a compound of buildings he owns in Athens, where he got a personal tour, which included pointing out the very spot where the singer wrote the lyrics to the band’s 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction.
Ament wondered what albums are still on Emhoff’s need-to-get list, which inspired the Second Gent to reel off a list of some more of his favorite bands, including the Pixies, Nirvana and, of course, PJ, as well as Radiohead and The Stone Roses’ legendary self-titled 1989 debut LP.
It also stood to reason that politically plugged-in Vedder would tell Emhoff what his biggest fears are about a potential second Donald Trump administration. “People’s safety is the most important thing. So you know, when I read about this event that happened, perhaps over the weekend. A large group gathered for Trump in the thousands, and there were 20 buses that brought them in. Intense heat in the Desert Valley there, gets up to 102 during the day,” Vedder said of a recent Trump rally in California’s Coachella Valley that reportedly left hundreds of followers stranded in desert heat with no way to get back to their cars.
Vedder said that chaotic scene of unpreparedness felt like a parallel to the whole vibe of the third White House campaign by the twice impeached former President. “Not to mention the confusion, again, chaos and some of the quotes are, are chilling. But I have to say, it seems analogous to the election,” Vedder said. “Unlike any other candidate in the history of our country, [Trump’s] got more at stake on a personal level, his personal freedoms, his future, all riding on this vote. And he’s, I think he needs people. And I think he uses people. And I think this Coachella’s situation is very analogous to what would happen if and when he would potentially win. He gets what he wants, uses the people as padding, and then they’re left in utter chaos to fend for themselves. That’s what we worry about.”
Emhoff replied by echoing one of Harris’ frequent refrains, that she believes convicted felon Trump is “only in it for [himself and] doesn’t care about others. And we already saw that the first time that he was president, and he was like that then. And he is worse now. You know, he’s a degraded version of what he was, and he was a pretty horrible President that time around,” Emhoff said. “And he has just gotten worse. He’ll be surrounded by people who are like him, incompetent, who don’t really care about us extremists. And that’s what’s at stake right now.”
Elsewhere, Emhoff talked about being blown away by the sense of family and community backstage at a recent PJ show he attended in Philadelphia. The full interview is in available now on SiriusXM’s Pearl Jam Radio (ch. 22) and on the SiriusXM app, with re-broadcasts scheduled to air during the rest of the week.
Check out highlights from their chat below.
Kelly Clarkson has turned the art of the bespoke cover into a staple of her syndicated daytime talk show. Whether she’s tackling Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” Tony Bennett’s “(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco, fellow American Idol alum Carrie Underwood’s “Blown Away” or the Last Dinner Party’s “Nothing Matters,” Clarkson’s fans know to tune […]
Cody Alan is joining SiriusXM’s The Highway with a new daily show set to launch Monday (Sept. 11).
The new show, titled Highway Mornings with Cody Alan & Macie Banks, will air weekdays from 5 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s The Highway (channel 56), as well as on the SXM app. Alan will also continue to host CMT’s flagship weekly music TV show Hot 20 Countdown.
Highway Mornings with Cody Alan & Macie Banks will offer the latest in country music, pop culture and entertainment, with Alan and Banks interviewing celebrity guests, chatting with listeners and sharing their own personal stories. The new show follows the exit of former The Highway morning show host Storme Warren, who left The Highway earlier this year to join Garth Brooks’s The Big 615 country station with TuneIn.
“Cody is a well-respected and long-time member of the Country music community and we are thrilled to welcome him to The Highway family,” said SiriusXM senior vp/GM of music programming Steve Blatter in a statement. “Cody’s deep roots and connections in country music will keep our listeners’ fingers on the pulse of Nashville every morning as they tune in to Cody and Macie.”
Alan added, “I’m thrilled to be joining the SiriusXM family on The Highway. It will be a fresh start in mornings, with Macie Banks returning soon to join me. I plan to lean into my love for country music and my years of strong relationships in Nashville. The new show will be friendly and fun, and continue with an emphasis on artists and authenticity. After all, real life makes the best country songs, and from my experience, the best on air moments too! Also, I’m very excited to be part of The Highway’s rich tradition of passionately introducing fans to country music’s next generation. I can’t wait to get going!”
During his career, Alan has been named the 2021 national on-air personality of the year by the Country Music Association and has twice been named the Academy of Country Music’s personality of the year. After gigs in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, Alan made it to the major leagues at age 23 when he landed at KPLX in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. Alan was also a nine-time recipient of the country music director of the year award during his tenure in Dallas.
In 2017, Cody made national headlines after coming out as gay. He partners with GLAAD to host the annual Concert for Love and Acceptance and was honored with the 2022 visibility award from the Human Rights Campaign for his efforts in the LGBTQ+ community. The multi-faceted Alan also released the book Hear’s The Thing in 2021, writing about his on-air adventures, his coming out story and the lessons he’s learned from listening to others.
From classics by The Supremes and Stevie Wonder to Silk Sonic and SZA, SiriusXM today (June 1) kicks off the Billboard Top 500 R&B Countdown.
In honor of Black Music Month, the countdown spotlights the top 500 R&B classics by Black artists spanning the past six decades-plus, as ranked by performance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, per Billboard‘s Greatest of All Time methodology (with consideration also given to titles’ histories on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot R&B Songs charts).
The limited engagement Billboard Top 500 R&B Countdown will air on SiriusXM channel 104 June 1-7 and on the SXM App June 1-30.
From No. 500 to No. 1, the Billboard Top 500 R&B Countdown highlights the enduring legacy of the genre, from iconic Motown, funk and disco anthems to love songs and more, highlighting the biggest hits by legendary artists including Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Lionel Richie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Usher, Beyoncé and Rihanna.
The Billboard Top 500 R&B Countdown marks the latest partnership between SiriusXM and Billboard. Most recently, the Cupid Countdown made Valentine’s Day even sweeter, after the Billboard Top 112 Songs of Christmas Countdown celebrated the sounds of the season and the Billboard Top 500 Summer Hits recapped the biggest summer songs in the Hot 100’s history.
Additionally, SiriusXM’s Big 40 Countdown, on 80s on 8, and the Back in the Day Replay, on ’90s on 9, are based on historical weekly Hot 100 charts, while the Prime 30, on Prime Country, time-travels back through Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart.
Last year, Pandora started to get suspicious about the streaming activity of a prominent act. “This is a top artist by every measure,” George White, senior vp of music licensing at SiriusXM and Pandora, said during a panel at the Music Biz conference in Nashville on Wednesday (May 17). Some of the interest from Pandora users was clearly genuine. But at the same time, the platform picked up “abnormalities” — “lots of quick skips,” White noted, and “very unusual ratios of radio listening to premium listening” — along with “social media sites actively posting tutorials for how to game the Pandora system and teaching potential users how to drive those streams even higher.”
“This is challenging and more difficult to detect because it’s under a background of legitimate activity,” White continued. And he said that Pandora is seeing more of this type of behavior around “established artists.”
White was one of 11 different speakers across a two-hour, three-panel fraud extravaganza — which covered a lot of ground, jumping from bot farms all the way to thieves falsely claiming publishing ownership on songs to collect money that belongs to someone else — at Music Biz. The tone stayed upbeat, though the message was glum and occasionally paranoia-inducing, with lots of talk about cybercriminals hacking into the accounts of innocent unsuspecting users for nefarious purposes.
“We’ve been seeing lately that as technology advances, the fraud is supercharged,” said Mona Simonian, a partner at the entertainment law firm Pryor Cashman. It’s important that “people start really recognizing how much money is at stake here,” she added. And as Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s former “click fraud czar” (real title: head of global product for trust and safety), put it: “It’s always a little bit scary before you get your arms around the problem.”
While some panels stay general, these three sessions (an interview with Ghosemajumder about the ubiquity of fraud, “52 Flavors of Fraud,” and “Fraud Use Cases: What Can We Do?”) brought some hard numbers to a fraud conversation that often remains frustratingly diffuse, because the behavior is difficult to quantify. White had his Pandora case study. And Andrew Batey, co-founder and co-CEO of the fraud detection company Beatdapp, came armed with numerous examples and a boatload of graphs.
There was the account that recorded 33,500 plays in one week. (“The average user has a few hundred to a thousand plays a week,” Batey said.) There was the user with 96 devices “playing from 47 cities in 17 countries in the same week,” a geographical impossibility for even the most devoted jet-setter. There was the group of thousands of accounts all targeting the same songs with 155-ish plays a week, and the batch of 53,000 accounts playing around a dozen acts to camouflage the one artist whose numbers they’re actually trying to inflate.
If this behavior continues undetected, it represents “billions [of dollars] that are being sucked out of this industry,” Batey said. This sentiment was echoed by Christine Barnum, chief revenue officer of CD Baby: Fraudsters are “diluting the pool for everyone.” (She spoke about ways for companies to improve their fraud detection capabilities on a budget, including using ChatGPT to help write programs that can detect anomalous activity.)
Why the upbeat mood, despite the grim news? For years, many music executives, especially in the United States, were unwilling to publicly acknowledge that fraud was a problem. The fact that there was a 120-minute block — enough time to watch two episodes of Succession, quipped Beatdapp co-founder and co-CEO Morgan Hayduk — devoted to the topic at a major music business conference is indicative of an attitude shift. “I’m so happy there’s a room full of people talking about fraud,” Barnum said.
White was similarly optimistic. While recent studies have concluded that around 80% of fraud is financially motivated — grifters running bot networks to white noise recordings, for example, rather than the work of actual artists — White said, “We’ve seen enormous strides in identifying that [activity] really early.”
“I won’t say that’s in control; it’s an issue that requires ongoing investment,” he added. “But it’s at least something we feel like we have a handle on.”
Johnny Chiang, Pandora’s senior director of country programming, will expand his role to also oversee country music programming at SiriusXM, the company tells Billboard. Chiang will report to SiriusXM/Pandora’s GM and senior vp of music programming Steve Blatter.
Chiang’s new role fills duties previously held by JR Schumann, who exited SiriusXM in July 2022. Darrin Smith, SiriusXM’s vp of programming, oversaw the satellite broadcaster’s country channels on an interim basis.
Before joining Pandora in July 2022, Chiang served as vp of radio promotions and artist development at Red Street Records following the announcement that the label had launched a country division. Prior to his work with Red Street, Chiang spent 18 years at KKBQ in Houston and was also the Cox country format leader.
During Chiang’s time at KKBQ, the station was named the Country Music Association’s major market station of the year three times (in 2014, 2016 and 2018), as well as the Academy of Country Music’s major market station of the year in 2017. It also won the Marconi four times (in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018). In 2016, Billboard named him the most influential country program director in the United States.
During Nashville’s Country Radio Seminar earlier this week, Chiang led a panel during CRS’ Digital Music Summit titled “Sweet Streams (Are Made of These),” which provided an overview of music streaming services. The panel also included Spotify’s Rachel Whitney and Amazon Music’s Michelle Tigard Kammerer, as each music service detailed their respective platforms’ tools for independent artists and discussed the role of playlisting in music marketing, how DSPs use data to make decisions and more.
Chiang’s role expansion comes on the heels of SiriusXM’s announcement earlier this month that it would be laying off 475 employees, or 8% of its workforce. In a statement that followed, CEO Jennifer Witz called the job cuts difficult but “the right thing to do” as the business grapples with lower ad sales, a still-delayed recovery in the automotive subscription business and major investments in its technology.
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SiriusXM is celebrating Music’s Biggest Night with a special channel spotlighting the artists, songs and albums nominated for the 2023 Grammy Awards.
The Grammys channel, channel 105, launched on Tuesday (Jan. 24) and features music from Beyoncé, Adele, Brandi Carlile, Jack Harlow, Miranda Lambert, Lizzo, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, The Black Keys and other nominees, in addition to music from Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award honorees like Nile Rodgers and Nirvana and exclusive, behind-the-scenes interviews from the awards show helmed by SiriusXM hosts and Recording Academy CEO, Harvey Mason Jr.
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The 65th annual Grammy Awards will broadcast from Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 5, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The ceremony will air on CBS and stream live on Paramount+.
Listeners will also be able to revisit some of the biggest Grammy moments on the SiriusXM channel, which will be available from Jan. 24 through Feb. 7.
Not subscribed to SiriusXM? Join today and get three months for just $1. With SiriusXM, you can explore music by genre and decade, listen to artist-curated channels and learn the fascinating stories behind the music.
Enjoy ad-free music, personalized Pandora stations, original and popular podcast series, exclusive SXM in-studio video and lots more.
SiriusXM $1 for 3 Months $4.99/month -161% off% OFF
After the three-month promo ends, SiriusXM plans start at $4.99/month to $10.99/month for streaming only. The car radio and streaming plans start at $12.99 to stream for the music showcase plan with 100+ channels (including some ad-free channels); $17.99/month for the music and entertainment package with 400+ channels; and $22.99/month for the platinum plan with more than 425 channels.
But it’s not just music. SiriusXM has thousands of channels across multiple genres. From Howard Stern to NFL, NBA and NHL network channels, along with other talk, entertainment and news channels, SiriusXM is packed with hours of entertainment.
Need a laugh? Listen to comedy channels on SiriusXM, such as Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud Radio, Netflix Is A Joke Radio, Comedy Greats and She’s So Funny.
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