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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. The 2024 Paris Olympics has been nothing short of entertaining with some of the best moments including Simone Biles winning gold […]

The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, accusing the company of violating children’s online privacy law and running afoul of a settlement it had reached with another federal agency.
The complaint, filed together with the Federal Trade Commission in a California federal court, comes as the U.S. and the prominent social media company are embroiled in yet another legal battle that will determine if – or how – TikTok will continue to operate in the country.

The latest lawsuit focuses on allegations that TikTok, a trend-setting platform popular among young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance violated a federal law that requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting personal information of children under 13. It also says the companies failed to honor requests from parents who wanted their children’s accounts deleted, and chose not to delete accounts even when the firms knew they belonged to kids under 13.

“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children’s private information without any parental consent or control,” Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.

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TikTok said it disagreed with the allegations, “many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the company said in a statement.

The U.S. decided to file the lawsuit following an investigation by the FTC that looked into whether the companies were complying with a previous settlement involving TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.

In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by failing to notify parents about its collection and use of personal information for kids under 13.

That same year, Musical.ly — acquired by ByteDance in 2017 and merged with TikTok — agreed to pay $5.7 million to resolve those allegations. The two companies were also subject to a court order requiring them to comply with COPPA, which the government says hasn’t happened.

In the complaint, the Justice Department and the FTC allege TikTok has knowingly allowed children to create accounts and retained their personal information without notifying their parents. This practice extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” a version of TikTok for children under 13. The feature allows users to view videos but bars them from uploading content.

The two agencies allege the information collected included activities on the app and other identifiers used to build user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing the data with other companies – such as Meta’s Facebook and an analytics company called AppsFlyer – to persuade “Kids Mode” users to be on the platform more, a practice TikTok called “re-targeting less active users.”

The complaint says TikTok also allowed children to create accounts without having to provide their age, or obtain parental approval, by using credentials from third-party services. It classified these as “age unknown” accounts, which the agencies say have grown into millions.

After parents discovered some of their children’s accounts and asked for them to be deleted, federal officials said TikTok asked them to go through a convoluted process to deactivate them and frequently did not honor their requests.

Overall, the government said TikTok employed deficient policies that were unable to prevent children’s accounts from proliferating on its app and suggested the company was not taking the issue seriously. In at least some periods since 2019, the complaint said TikTok’s human moderators spent an average of five to seven seconds reviewing accounts flagged as potentially belonging to a child. It also said TikTok and ByteDance have technology they can use to identify and remove children’s accounts, but do not use them for that reason.

The alleged violations have resulted in millions of children under 13 using the regular TikTok app, allowing them to interact with adults and access adult content, the complaint said.

In March, a person with the matter had told the AP the FTC’s investigation was also looking into whether TikTok violated a portion of federal law that prohibits “unfair and deceptive” business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data.

Those allegations were not included in the complaint, which is asking the court to fine the companies and enter a preliminary injunction to prevent future violations.

Other social media companies have also come under fire for how they’ve handled children’s data.

In 2019, Google and YouTube agreed to pay a $170 million fine to settle allegations that the popular video site had illegally collected personal information on children without their parents’ consent.

And last fall, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. A lawsuit filed by 33 states claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of COPPA. Nine attorneys general are also filing lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 plus Washington, D.C.

This story was originally published by the Associated Press.

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’ve been scrolling on TikTok, you’ve probably spotted the buzz around bubble dresses. These dresses are everywhere. Bubble dresses come […]

Thirteen years ago, the then-unknown teenager Rebecca Black posted her song “Friday” to YouTube, hoping to spark her music career. We all remember what happened next. The song, which amassed 171M views and 881K comments on YouTube to date, was pushed up the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 58 on the Hot 100. “Friday” was a true cultural phenomenon — but only because it was a laughingstock. 
“I became unbelievably depressed,” Black said of the song’s meme-ification — and the cyberbullying that came with it — on Good Morning America in 2022. “And [I felt] trapped in this body of what the world would see me as forever. I hadn’t even finished growing.” 

Many music makers dream of waking up one morning and realizing a song of theirs has gone viral overnight. But, as Black’s experience shows, not all virality is created equal. At best, it can bring a Hot 100 hit, radio play and a slew of new, lifelong fans. At worst, it can be the artists’ worst nightmare.

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One such worst-case scenario recently took place with Gigi D’Agostino’s 1999 Italo dance track “L’amour Toujours,” which was recently co-opted by the German far-right. In a popular video posted to social media, a group of young men sang the song outside a bar on the German island Sylt, replacing the original lyrics with a Neo-Nazi slogan that translates roughly to “Germany to the Germans, out with the foreigners.” As they chanted the xenophobic lyric, one of the men raised his arm in a Nazi-like salute. Another put two fingers to his upper lip in a seeming allusion to Adolf Hitler’s characteristic mustache. 

After that, several events in Germany, including Oktoberfest in Munich, looked into banning the song, and D’Agostino replied to an inquiry from German newspaper Der Spiegel with a written statement, claiming that he had no idea what had happened.

Granted, the circumstances of virality are rarely that bad, but songs commonly end up on an “unintended side of TikTok,” as Sam Saideman, CEO/co-founder of management and digital market firm Innovo, puts it. “We try to educate our partners that sometimes you cannot control what uses of your song [are] on the internet.” While Innovo “may plan a campaign to [pay creators to] use the song in get-ready-with-me makeup videos,” he explains, another user’s totally different kind of video using the song could become far more popular than the originally planned use, pushing the campaign organically onto another part of the platform and away from its target audience. 

For example, Twitter and TikTok users twisted “Cellophane,” FKA Twigs’ heartbreaking 2019 ballad about unrequited love, into a meme beginning in early 2022. Oftentimes, videos using the song pair Twigs’ voice with creators that are acting melodramatic about things that are clearly no big deal. Even worse, one popular version of the audio replaces Twigs’ voice with Miss Piggy’s (yes, the Muppet character). 

“Digital marketers are able to boost certain narratives they support,” says Connor Lawrence, chief marketing officer of Indify, an angel investing platform that helps indie artists navigate virality. “It happens a lot — marketers boosting a narrative that is most favorable to the artist’s vision to hopefully steer it.” Saideman says he likes to keep a “reactionary budget” on hand during his song campaigns in case they need to try to course-correct a song that is headed in the wrong direction. 

But digital marketing teams can’t do much to fix another bad type of song virality: when songs blow up before the artist is ready. “I am actively hoping that my baby artist does not go viral right now,” says one manager who wished to remain anonymous to protect their client’s identity. “They need to find their sound first.” Omid Noori, president/co-founder of management company and digital marketing agency ATG Group, adds, “It’s a real challenge when someone goes viral for something when they aren’t ready to capitalize on it, or even worse, the song that took off sounds nothing like anything you want to make again.”

Ella Jane, an indie-pop artist who went viral in 2020 for making a video that explained the lyrics to her song “Nothing Else I Could Do,” says that going viral early in her artistic career had positive and negative effects. She signed a deal with Fader Label and boosted her following, but she’s also still dealing with the downsides four years later. “I’m grateful for it, but I think because my first taste of having a successful song was inextricable from TikTok, it has cast a shadow on my trajectory in some ways,” she says.

Over her next releases, Jane says she chased the algorithm, like many of her peers who experienced TikTok hits early in their careers, trying out lots of different video gimmicks to hook listeners. “It doesn’t reflect who I am as an artist now,” she says. “That feeling is addicting, and you feel like you’re withdrawing from it when your videos don’t hit. It can leave artists at a point where they’re obsessed with metrics.” This obsession has been reinforced by some record labels who use metrics as the only deciding factor in whether or not to sign a new artist.

“This is no different than hitting the lottery,” Noori says. “Imagine you get the $100 million jackpot on your first try… It makes artists feel like failures before they even really get started.” 

As artists are increasingly instructed by well-meaning members of their team to make as many TikToks as possible, some have turned to sharing teasers of unfinished songs as a form of content — which have occasionally gone viral unintentionally, despite not even being fully written and recorded. That’s what happened to songs by Good Neighbours, Leith Ross, Katie Gregson MacLeod and Lizzy McAlpine, leading many of them to rush to finish recordings so they could capitalize on their spotlight before it faded.

“People put a lot of pressure on the recorded version,” says Gregson MacLeod, whose acoustic piano version of her song “Complex” went viral before she had recorded the official master. “If it is not exactly like the sound that went viral, if you don’t sing the words in the exact same way or use the exact same key, sometimes people decide, ‘We’re not having it.’” While she says she was ultimately happy with how it all turned out, not everyone is so lucky. Within two weeks of the song’s virality, she rushed to release a “demo” version to match the rawness of her original video, as well as a produced version, earning her a combined 43 million plays on Spotify alone. 

McAlpine, however, decided to run away from her unfinished viral song. After posting a popular video of herself playing a half-written song, she told her fans in a TikTok video, “I’m not releasing that song ever because I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel genuine. It never felt genuine. I wrote it for fun. It wasn’t something I was ever going to release, or even going to finish… That is not who I am as an artist; in fact, I think I’m the opposite… I’m not concerned with overnight success. I’m not chasing that… I want to build a long-lasting career.” 

Noori says TikTok virality in particular has led to a “huge graveyard of one-hit wonders,” something that is far more common today than the bygone days of traditional, human gatekeepers. “With the algorithm, how do you even know who saw your content?” he asks. 

Still, there’s an argument to be made that perhaps, as P.T. Barnum famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” “I’ve been thinking about that idea a lot and whether or not it is true for virality,” says Saideman. “And it’s hard to say.” 

Black ultimately reclaimed “Friday” and her music career in 2021 by getting in on the joke, turning the decade-old cult hit into a hyperpop remix, produced by Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs and featuring Big Freedia, Dorian Electra and 3Oh!3. From there, Black continued to release music as a queer avant pop artist and played an acclaimed DJ set at Coachella in 2023. Still, the original version of “Friday” is her most popular song on Spotify by a long shot, even though it was released before the streaming era began.

“The beauty and curse of these platforms, especially TikTok today,” Saideman says, “is that they are remix platforms. When you put your music on them, you are opening your music up creatively to other people using it in positive and negative ways. You can’t have one without the other.”

This story was featured in Billboard’s new music technology newsletter ‘Machine Learnings.’ Sign up to receive Machine Learnings, and Billboard’s other newsletters, for free here.

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.
Your personal style goes beyond what your wear for clothes — you can also show off your unique tastes through your home decor. Before you go throwing up another music poster or expanding your vinyl record accessories, Target has gone viral for its nature-themed throw pillows, including a mushroom-shaped accent pillow that’s only $10 and perfect for eclectic tastes.

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More than one million people have viewed user @faithful.fool‘s TikTok showing off the lifestyle retailer’s June new arrivals, which included a tufted mushroom pillow. “They’re so cute I need them!” the caption for the video reads.

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Shoppers were clamoring to get their hands on the item, and as a result, Target has kept the cozy decor in stock — and just in time for Target Circle Week.

Keep reading to shop the accent pillow below.

Room Essentials Mushroom-Shaped Embroidered Throw Pillow

Add a touch of the outdoors to your home with Room Essentials’ mushroom pillow, which comes crafted with a soft tufted material combining trendiness with comfort. The embroidered design spotlights three varying shapes of mushrooms and is complete with a sewn seam edging for a more put-together look.

If one isn’t enough, Target Circle members can take advantage of a limited-time deal that gets you a second accent pillow for 50% off (that way you can complete your couch decor at an affordable price). The rest of the pillows mentioned in the viral TikTok are eligible to score the discount including the strawberry, frog and snail-shaped pillow.

Shop even more Target-exclusive accent pillows below.

Room Essentials Tufted Strawberry Accent Pillow

$5

$10

50% off

Consider this strawberry pillow the pick of your home decor — it’s that irresistible. Featuring hues of pink, red and green, it’ll be almost impossible for this fluffy accent piece to not steal attention from your other furniture. Plus, when you pair it with another decorative pillow, you’ll be able to score it for 50% off.

Room Essentials Frog-Shaped Embroidered Accent Pillow

$5

$10

50% off

Hop on the Target Circle deal to score this adorable frog pillow for a fraction of the price. It comes with a smiling embroidered face made from 100% cotton material that’ll be tempting to cuddle with everyday after work.

Room Essentials Snail-Shaped Embroidered Throw Pillow

$5

$10

50% off

Complete your outdoorsy aesthetic with a simple snail-inspired pillow that doesn’t lack style or comfiness. It’s crafted with cotton materials and a tufted exterior you’ll always want placed front and center on your throw pillow display.

You have until Saturday (July 13) to take advantage of the buy one, get one for 50% off discount, and just need to have a Target Circle membership in order to redeem the savings.

Don’t have a membership? It’s free to sign up for the basic Target Circle membership — just provide your email and you’ll immediately get access to exclusive savings. For even more benefits like free same-day delivery and an extra 30 days to return items, you can sign up for Target 360 for $99 a year or $49 annually if you have a Target Circle Card.

For more product recommendations, check out ShopBillboard‘s roundups of the best bedding deals, fashion coffee table books and mermaid tail blankets.

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. With the heat wave in full swing, you might want to consider ways to protect yourself from UV rays this summer. […]

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. Singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves hopped on a TikTok-viral summer trend by wearing a denim vest when she joined fellow musician Zach Bryan […]

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. Ice cream and BBQ snacks are summer staples, but now Target is allowing you to show off your love for warm-weather […]

Years before Myles Smith broke through with his anthemic single “Stargazing,” he followed his mother’s advice by focusing on his education — graduating from the University of Nottingham in 2019, launching his own company at 19 and making it profitable by 23.
“I [was] earning good money, but I [wasn’t] fulfilled within my heart,” Smith explains. “That, for me, was a moment of [realizing] that I can’t dedicate years of my life to doing something that I know I’m truly not completely invested in.” So he quit — and already, just two years later, the returns have trumped any apprehension.

As he speaks with Billboard from his Brighton home in late June, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter’s runaway hit “Stargazing” has reached a No. 41 high on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, earning 61.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams through June 27, according to Luminate. He has also been announced as a supporting act for select dates on Imagine Dragons’ upcoming fall tour, and will jet to Australia and New Zealand in November for his own headlining trek, which has sold out shows across Europe and North America.

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Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.

Jennifer McCord

As a kid born to a Jamaican family in Luton, England, Smith consumed a wide-ranging selection of genres: Reggae was a mainstay, but between his mother’s love for Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” and his siblings’ indoctrination of Destiny’s Child, Ne-Yo and Justin Timberlake, he listened to plenty of R&B. His vibrant working-class neighborhood also exposed him to hip-hop and grime, but it was the music of the 2010s that truly honed his songwriting skills. He credits the heartbreaking lyricism of Adele’s 21, Ed Sheeran’s +, Bryson Tiller’s Trapsoul and Mumford & Sons’ Babel as four foundational albums.

While he crafted his sound, he began uploading unfinished song snippets to TikTok, one of which caught the attention of Extended Play Group’s Eric Parker as he was scrolling through his For You page in fall 2022. “It was a very sad song [that] hit me in a place I don’t normally get hit on TikTok,” Parker says. He promptly reached out and started managing Smith that November.

The two worked to build his following by joining his originals with evocative covers of songs that mined Gen Z’s penchant for nostalgia, including The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather.” “Covers [were] an opportunity to find an audience that I thought would match with the music I would eventually create,” he explains.

With a growing online fan base by 2023, Smith was independently releasing his own singles through Ditto Music, including early tracks like the thumping “My Home” and the witty wordplay fest “Solo” (his first U.K. chart hit). Once he surpassed four million monthly listeners on Spotify, Smith and Parker agreed it was time to look for a label deal. After meeting with scores of potential partners, Smith signed with RCA U.K. last January, in partnership with the U.S. label.

“[My] incredible A&R Jaryn [Valdry] made me cry my eyes out in a meeting because she saw me for who I was,” Smith says. “[RCA’s] whole philosophy being growth over a long period rather than a flash in the pan really aligned with me.”

Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.

Jennifer McCord

Two months later, Smith dropped his debut EP, You Promised a Lifetime. “Stargazing” — written in Malibu, Calif. shortly after signing his deal — wouldn’t arrive until May. Fueled by Fireball shots, nachos and tacos, he and co-writers Peter Fenn and Jesse Fink were “eight or nine songs in,” before Smith came up with a chorus melody so arresting that it sparked an immediate search for complementary chords. Most of the song was written in 15 minutes, with verse details finalized in the following weeks. And when the rest of his team heard it, they solidified his confidence in the looming hit.

“I get back to West Hollywood at two or three in the morning, and I play the day-of demo on the speakers in the [ceiling],” he recalls. “I remember my manager waking up on the sofa like, ‘What is this?’ Everyone in the house is running and jumping around. For my team — my harshest critics, after my mum — to give me that genuine reaction, I knew I was on to something.”

They soon launched a month-long rollout for the song, culminating in its release on May 10 to coincide with the start of his next touring leg. The first snippet he posted to TikTok on April 8 doubled down on the intimacy of his guitar-backed singer-songwriter style, and each subsequent teaser featured more members of his team lip-syncing and dancing along to the track.

“Being able to draw people into the context of the song really works,” Smith says. “I’m Myles Smith, but I’ve got a team, and they’re my best friends. There’s a strange culture of everything revolving around the artist. You think I could do this without everyone around me? No way.”

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The song’s radio campaign began across the pond, but Parker mentions that RCA wanted to make a stateside push immediately. “They were very proactive, [which] was a good sign that they believed in the song as much as we did.” Their hunch was right: “Stargazing” continues to build at radio, debuting on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated July 6 and reaching new peaks at Alternative Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay.

Amid his breakthrough, Smith sees himself as someone known for his full bodies of work. “I want to be an album artist,” he stresses. “There’s only so much you can say in an EP or single.” But even more importantly, he’s focused on setting an example for how the music industry intersects with the world’s larger systems of oppression.

“I don’t want to be used as a means of saying, ‘We’ve done enough,’” he says of his success in the singer-songwriter space as a Black man. “If anything, I want to be used as a question for why aren’t there more Myleses breaking through.”

Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.

Jennifer McCord

A version of this story will appear in the July 20, 2024, issue of Billboard.

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 into TikTok, you’ve probably seen the viral ballet flat trend featuring the Reformation Bethany Ballet Flats all over your For You page. You don’t need to be a dancer to join in on the balletcore aesthetic. In fact, the balletcore aesthetic is all about capturing the essence of a ballet dancer by incorporating it into your everyday life, from clothing choices to home decor.

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Whether you’re taking a walk at the park or enjoying a night out, these comfortable and versatile flats will keep you staying cool all season long. These Reformation Bethany Ballet Flats feature a flat heel, round toe and ankle security, making you feel comfortable and secure wherever you go. Its breathable design ensures you can go sock-free with ease. With its leather upper insole, rubber sole and buckle strap, you’ll be ready to slip your feet in and take on your day.

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You can find these trendy Bethany Ballet Flats on Reformation and Anthropologie.

Reformation

Reformation Bethany Ballet Flat

You can get these Bethany Flats in myriad colors and designs on Reformation, from Black Rhinestone Mesh to Silver. This is one you’ll want in all colors to change up your look.

If you are still a bit unsure on whether or not to hop on this trend, check out the reviews. One Anthropologie customer wrote, “I’m loving the updated take on the ballet flats! The leather is soft right out of the box and needed very little time to break in. They look like they have a thin sole, but once you try them on you’ll feel padding; I can wear if for a whole shift on the sales floor and still feel supported …they look great paired with dresses, skirts, and denim…”

Another Anthropologie customer said, “I love these! I purchased the silver… have them in black as well. The leather is really nice and they go with everything!”

For more product recommendations, check out these Dr. Scholl’s Sandals, these comfortable Mega Crush Crocs for added comfort, and these celebrity-approved Uggs to achieve a relaxed look.