From Pusha T’s lyrical battle with McDonald’s to Rock’s presence at Lollapalooza, it’s been another wild week in the music business.
Spring is here, and music professionals everywhere are scrambling to prepare for the busiest summer of the 2020s. After two years of lockdown, people are ready to get in the pit and try to love someone, and musicians are more than happy to oblige. We’re doing our part to contribute to the chaos, and we hope the same is true for you. Whether it’s a good week or a bad one, you made it this far, which should be a pride point. There’s always tomorrow.
We cannot ease your workload or give you more hours in the day, but we can help you stay informed. Below you’ll find the biggest stories of the week, all covered by the best outlets in tech and entertainment. Click around, learn what’s happening, and use the weekend to prepare for the end of the month.
But let’s be honest. There is no way we can hope to cover everything that happens. If you see a headline we missed that people need to know, please do not hesitate to send james@haulix.com an email. We’ll include your links in the next update.
THE BIGGEST STORIES OF THE WEEK
Pusha T is coming back at McDonald’s with extra beef. The rap icon says he only received one check for writing the Golden Arches’ long-running “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle, and he’s now out for revenge with the new Arby’s cut, “Spicy Fish Diss.”
The actual credit for “I’m Lovin’ It,” is famously disputed. When the song first appeared in a 2003 commercial, Justin Timberlake sang the hook and Pusha T rapped, while Pharrell Williams, Tom Batoy, Franco Tortora, and Andreas Forberger received credit for writing the tune. But in 2016, marketing CEO Steve Stoute revealed that Clipse — Pusha T and his brother No Malice — were the authors of that irresistible, “Ba da ba ba ba.”
Pusha T agrees. “I am solely responsible for the ’I’m Lovin‘ It’ swag and the jingle of that company,” he told Rolling Stone. “That’s just real. I am the reason.”
Lollapalooza is back for another year in Chicago, this time pulling in metal legends Metallica to top the entire bill for the music weekend, while Green Day and Machine Gun Kelly are also among the “big letter” names atop the 2022 lineup.
While Lollapalooza has always prided itself on providing an eclectic lineup, there is plenty of hard rock and metal to see over the four day weekend at Chicago’s Grant Park July 28-31. In addition to the three aforementioned acts, fans will be able to take in sets from Idles, Turnstile, Willow, Royal Blood, Maneskin, Dashboard Confessional, Wet Leg, The Wombats, The Regrettes, Kennyhoopla, Gayle, Taipei Houston, Giovannie and the Hired Guns, Lorna Shore and Meet Me @ the Altar among many other acts.
Shazam Adds Concert Discovery Feature
Shazam, an app popular for identifying the music source by just listening to a few seconds of audio, has added another cool trick to its kitty. The Apple-owned app now offers a neat concert discovery feature that doles out information about any upcoming concerts and tickets for a nearby show featuring the song it just looked up, or the artist behind it.
Talking about artists, Shazam users can now head over to an artist’s page in the app to check out time and venue details of their upcoming live shows, tour calendar, and other relevant concert details. Moreover, there’s also an option to mark the dates of interest in one’s own calendar.
The dedicated concert pages are now available on the official Shazam website, and in the mobile apps for both Android and iOS. The app is sourcing all that information from Bandsintown, a platform for cataloging music events used by everyone from music fans to artists and event managers.
SONY and Roblox partner for 24KGoldn concert
Roblox and Sony announced that music artist 24kGoldn will perform a virtual concert inside the platform for user-generated content.
It’s just one more sign that brands and musical performers are drawn to Roblox’s platform, which attracts more than 55 million people a day. And Roblox wants to expand beyond games to broader entertainment as part of its mission to provide a metaverse for fans. Roblox is a pretty good contender for the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.
The 24kGoldn El Dorado Concert Experience will take place in Roblox on Friday, March 25 at 4 p.m. Pacific time.
Spotify and Google announce User Choice Billing Option
Today, we are excited to announce a new chapter in our partnership with Google: a multiyear agreement that represents a first-of-its-kind option in payment choice and offers opportunities for both consumers and developers.
Users who’ve downloaded Spotify from the Google Play Store will be presented with a choice to pay with either Spotify’s payment system or with Google Play Billing. For the first time, these two options will live side by side in the app. This will give everyone the freedom to subscribe and make purchases using the payment option of their choice directly in the Spotify app. Spotify will continue to freely communicate with users about our Premium subscription service, promote discounts and promotions, and give listeners on our Free tier the ability to convert to Premium directly in the app.
Over the coming months, Spotify will work with Google’s product and engineering teams to build this new experience, and we’ll roll out in countries around the world. Working together, the companies will test and learn, jointly exploring product innovations across the Android platform. We anticipate launching the first iteration of User Choice Billing later this year.
SONG OF THE WEEK: Morgan Wade – “Take Me Away”
