Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” spends a 28th week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (dated June 13), adding another record to its run. The song passes Gabby Barrett’s 2020-21 hit “I Hope” as the longest-leading hit by a woman with no other credited recording artists since the survey became the genre’s main songs chart in 1958.

(Charlie Puth joined for a pop remix of “I Hope,” but wasn’t listed on Hot Country Songs.)

“Choosin’ Texas” totaled 27 million official U.S. streams, 48.9 million radio audience impressions and 8,000 sales May 22-28, according to Luminate.

Only three songs have logged more weeks at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs than “Choosin’ Texas”: Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line’s “Meant to Be,” which ruled for 50 weeks in 2017-18; Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”(45 weeks, 2024-25); and Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” (34 weeks, 2017).

“Choosin’ Texas” debuted at No. 7 on Hot Country Songs in November and has reigned each week since early December. It has also dominated the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks since February.

Plus, Langley has claimed the top three on Hot Country Songs for five weeks running, with “Choosin’ Texas” followed by “Be Her” at No. 2 and “I Can’t Love You Anymore,” with Morgan Wallen, at No. 3. No other woman has notched such a triple for multiple weeks.

Langey cowrote “Choosin’ Texas” with Luke Dick, Miranda Lambert and Joybeth Taylor and coproduced it with Lambert and Ben West.

“It was such a crazy moment,” the Alabama native previously told Billboard about finding out that “Choosin’ Texas” had first topped the Hot 100. “My label called, with my team on speaker, and it was just surreal. We loved the song when we wrote it, but none of us thought that it would be the song to do everything it’s doing. It keeps giving us a reason to celebrate new milestones.”

On the heels of taking over Roots Picnic for his first headlining festival performance since 2019, Jay-Z is heading to the West Coast and Europe for special 30th anniversary shows later this year.

Roc Nation and Jay on Tuesday (June 9) announced plans for one Los Angeles performance and a Paris concert. Hov is slated to hit Paris’ Stade De France on Sept. 10 and then head to SoFi Stadium for a show on Oct. 23.

Citi and Mastercard pre-sale tickets will be live starting on Thursday (June 11) at 10 a.m. local time on Live Nation before the general public sale begins on Friday (June 12) at 10 a.m. local time. Roc Nation added that fans subscribed to Jay-Z 30 will also be able to participate in Thursday’s pre-sale.

Jay-Z made his return to the stage at Roots Picnic in Philadelphia on May 30. He shook up the rap game with his a cappella freestyle, which appeared to see him take aim at Dame Dash, Ye (formerly Kanye West), Nicki Minaj, Tory Lanez, Drake and more.

Next up for the Brooklyn rap legend, Jay will return to the Big Apple for three sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium on July 10-12.

The July 10 show will find Jay-Z performing Reasonable Doubt in celebration of his debut’s 30th anniversary, while July 11 is set to favor 2001’s The Blueprint in honor of the seminal LP turning 25 in September.

It’s still unclear if July 12 will serve as an amalgamation of the two, or possibly a greatest hits set with Hov running through his decorated catalog.

Released by Roc-A-Fella through a distribution deal with Priority, Reasonable Doubt arrived on June 25, 1996, and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200. The Blueprint landed on Sept. 11, 2001, and debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 427,000 albums sold, according to SoundScan (now Luminate).

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Back in 2019, I wrote about the need for data hygiene in the run-up to the launch of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). My argument then was straightforward: If music publishers wanted to operate effectively in a more data-driven environment, they had to get serious about the quality, consistency and accessibility of their information. Seven years later, publishers are asking most prominently: How do we take advantage of AI?

For many music publishers, AI can be genuinely useful. But too many organizations are starting in the wrong place. They begin by asking which vendor to use, which model to test or how quickly they can deploy a new tool. Those are not the right questions. The real jumping-off point is much simpler: What exactly are we trying to fix?

The Real Problem

For most music publishers, the real obstacle is not technology-related. Rather, it is fragmentation — the same issue they were having back in 2019. Throwing more tech at any problem rarely resolves it. In fact, when systems, workflows and responsibilities are misaligned, AI tools do not create clarity. Instead, they amplify inconsistency, highlight contradictions and make weak foundations more visible.

In my experience, three structural bottlenecks commonly appear.

Identity: Which work are we talking about? That sounds elementary, but it rarely is. The same composition, recording or writer may exist under multiple identifiers across different systems. Titles may vary, names may be formatted differently and metadata may be incomplete in one place and duplicated in another. When this is the case, even straightforward matching becomes more difficult than it should be.

Logic: Royalty calculations are rarely just formulas. They are an accumulation of contractual terms, policy decisions, historical exceptions, operational workarounds and institutional memory. Some of that logic lives in software, some of it lives in documentation, and some of it lives only in the heads of the people who have been holding the system together for years. If publishers cannot clearly explain how a rule is applied, they should not expect an AI layer to apply that rule reliably.

Lineage: In publishing, trust depends on being able to answer a basic question: How did we get to this number? That question becomes critical when a royalty payment looks wrong, when two systems produce conflicting outputs, or when leadership wants confidence that a recommendation can be verified. If the path from source data to reported outcome cannot be traced, AI will only augment the problem. For music rights infrastructure to become automated, it must first be explainable.

Trust in and the effectiveness of AI will not come from how impressive a demo looks. It will come from whether someone inside the business can follow the path from data to outcome and understand what happened at each step. AI systems will only be as intelligent as the structures they operate on.

Are You Ready?

To help identify and fix these bottlenecks, I often recommend that publishers begin with an external AI readiness assessment instead of jumping straight into implementation. An outside review creates useful distance from the assumptions that develop over time inside any organization, and it helps surface where systems contradict each other, where responsibilities are unclear and where the business is carrying hidden operational risk. It makes the implicit explicit.

A good assessment is not about slowing innovation down. It is about making better decisions sooner. It should clarify how work actually moves through the organization, where the critical data lives, which dependencies are fragile and which use cases are worth pursuing first. That process should always include stakeholder interviews, a review of data quality and system fragmentation, and a practical analysis of where AI can help versus where it is likely to create more complexity than value. The goal is not a theoretical AI strategy deck, but rather a grounded 12- to 18-month roadmap that leadership can act on immediately. That may sound less exciting than buying a new tool, but avoiding the wrong AI investment is often more valuable than finding the right one a few weeks earlier.

The music industry does not need more AI theater. It needs more operational clarity. The publishers that benefit most from AI will not necessarily be the ones that moved first. They will be the ones that took the time to understand their own systems, align their workflows and build an environment where intelligence can be trusted. AI can absolutely create value in publishing, but only after publishers know what they need the technology to do.

Guy Barash is the founder and CEO of Dotted Eighth LLC, a boutique technology advisory firm working at the intersection of music, data, and emerging technology. In this role, he advises music organizations, tech companies, startups, and others serving the music industry on the data and technology that powers music rights. With a background that includes extensive publishing experience and more than 20 years as a composer, Barash excels at navigating the intricate creative, legal, and technical domains that the music industry contends with day-in and day-out.

This story is part of Billboard’s Global World Cup Series, a collection of 11 cover stories which pairs top soccer stars across the world competing in the 2026 FIFA World Cup with highly-touted musicians in accompanying countries.

There is one word that footballers and singers have in common: play. In the case of Ernia, one of the most important rappers in Milan and in Italy, it is also about playing with words. He is an AC Milan fan since childhood, despite never having played football. It may seem strange, but Santiago Giménez was also a fan too and now he fulfilled the dream of being Rossoneri’s striker. His idol has always been Kaká. For his footballing quality, but also for his relationship with God. Religion helped him when the dream of becoming a professional footballer was about to be shattered by a serious health problem.

Eight years on, things have changed. Santi has won the La Liga MX and triumphed with the national team. The next milestone will come on June 11, when he will kick off the 2026 FIFA World Cup on home soil. The Italian national team sadly won’t be there: “If you don’t deserve it, it’s right that you don’t go,” Ernia explains. A statement that reflects his philosophy: things must be earned on the pitch.

Billboard Italy: Bebote and Ernia: Two nicknames, two stories. 

Giménez: It was my family who gave it to me because I was a very big baby. The translation of “Bebote” is literally “big baby.” A friend of my father’s, a television journalist, when I scored my first goal in the First Division shouted: “Goal from El Bebote!” From that moment on, everyone started calling me that.

Ernia: My stage name goes back to middle school. I had a classmate, a close friend of mine, who had a hernia, and I used to call her that affectionately. Since everyone kept hearing me repeat that word all the time, it became my nickname.

Santi, what do you feel about the idea of playing the World Cup at home?

Giménez: It’s an incredible dream. When you wear the national team shirt you represent an entire country, so you have a great responsibility, but at the same time it’s a wonderful thing. I know that Mexico, with its people, at home, is very strong.

The first match will be Mexico vs. South Africa at the Azteca, a special stadium for you, Santi.

Giménez: The first time I stepped on that pitch was with Cruz Azul. It’s a bit like coming home for me, I will relive many beautiful moments. For me, it’s the stadium with the most history at international level. It is hosting the World Cup for the third time, and Pelé and Maradona became world champions on that pitch.

What do you remember about the first time you found yourself playing or performing in front of a large crowd?

Ernia: The biggest concert I’ve done was at the Unipol Forum in Milan. For me it was like reaching a destination after a long journey. You’re never aware of your real following, which isn’t tangible until you perform. 

Giménez: The most beautiful feeling is when you walk onto the pitch and see the stadium full of fans. It’s not a given, because before you turn professional you basically play without an audience. The first time you find yourself playing in front of all those people is unique.

Ernia, would you like to perform at San Siro one day?

Ernia: You always dream of raising the bar. In my case, though, it’s not a deep-rooted dream, because it wasn’t something I had in mind as a child. When I was young, the Italian music market was much smaller, and only major international artists performed in stadiums. It was unthinkable that an Italian, let alone someone doing rap, could even aspire to something like that.

Who is the Milan player who inspired you the most?

Ernia: Definitely Paolo Maldini.

Giménez: Excellent choice. (Laughs.) I choose Kaká, because I’ve admired him since I was a child, and because we share a deep faith.

What do you think about the fact that for the first time there will be a halftime show at the World Cup final?

Ernia: It was predictable, given that it’s in the U.S. They simply applied their own entertainment model. It could be an opportunity for European football to understand whether it can work over here too. 

Giménez: I think it can be a good moment to release the tension, because in a final, you’re always on edge. It can also be more useful to have more time to rest. In general, I think it’s a wonderful thing that football and music come together. Art is part of life, just like football.

Was there a moment in your career when you had to overcome a difficult challenge that almost made you give up on your dream?

Giménez: When I was 17, due to thrombosis, the doctors told me I would never be able to play football again. It was then that I clung to my faith and God worked a miracle, allowing me to come back and play. I think I’ve learned, in the few years I’ve lived, that the moments that make you grow the most are precisely the difficult ones. There’s a phrase I really like: “Diamonds are formed under pressure.” Life is exactly like that. 

Ernia: About 12 or 13 years ago, for a period, I decided to stop making music. I had been trying to break through for so long and couldn’t. But then, after a couple of years, I started again. Being a little older and more mature, I managed to turn it into a profession.

You are both very close to your family. Incidentally, Santi, your father is a former footballer and a coach.

Giménez: Yes, I’ve always been very close to my family and, even though I left home at 18, I’ve always maintained a strong bond with them. My father gave me a lot of advice about football, but he had to train, so the one who took me everywhere by the hand was my mother. She made many sacrifices and I owe her everything.