Tamela Mann earns her 12th No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Airplay chart, breaking out of a tie with fellow gospel music icon Kirk Franklin for the most leaders in the list’s 20-year history. Mann achieves the honor as “Deserve To Win” ascends a spot to the top of the chart dated March 29.

Mann co-authored the song with Phillip Bryant and Tameka Mintze, and Jevon Hill produced it. The track is from Mann’s LP Live Breathe Fight, which was released last October.

“I never dreamed of achieving 12 No. 1 singles … I am so thankful for them all. Wow,” Mann tells Billboard. “I’m also thankful to be a blessing and an encouragement to others that we all can make it through. Know that you deserve all that’s coming to you. We are all overcomers.”

After Mann’s 12 Gospel Airplay No. 1s and Franklin’s 11 (through “Try Love” in December), James Fortune & FIYA follow with 10 leaders. Jekalyn Carr and Tasha Cobbs Leonard are next with eight each.

Mann has now rattled off six successive Gospel Airplay chart-toppers, as “Deserve To Win” follows “Working for Me,” which dominated for three weeks beginning last September; “Finished” (three, starting in March 2023); “He Did It for Me” (two, May 2022); “Help Me” (four, beginning in September 2021); and “Touch From You” (five, starting in December 2020).

Mann matches three acts who are also on active runs of six Gospel Airplay No. 1s in a row: Cobbs Leonard, Jonathan McReynolds and Pastor Mike Jr., the lattermost of whom has achieved the feat with his first six entries on the chart.

The trend has been clear in recent years: Listeners are less enthralled with new songs. Current music’s share of ear-time has fallen from 27.8% in 2022 to 27.3% in 2023 to 26.7% last year, according to Luminate. In 2024, listening to catalog albums — releases more than 18 months old — increased by 6.5%, more than twice as fast as consumption of current albums.

Much of the music cued up on streaming services is still relatively recent: Luminate found that tracks released in the last five years account for roughly 50% of on-demand streams in the U.S. Even so, SoundCloud users are much more keenly attuned to the newest releases than the average listener — current music has accounted for more than 46% of plays on the platform in each of the last three years, according to SoundCloud’s latest Music Intelligence Report, an annual run-down of listener behavior which the company is making public for the first time.

The document “highlights some of our unique positions in the industry,” says Wyatt Marshall, the company’s director of music intelligence. “An artist might start on SoundCloud before they go somewhere else. [As a result], you get people coming to listen to new music on SoundCloud, because that’s where it exists first.”

For young listeners, new music discovery is increasingly spread across a variety of short-form video platforms and streaming services; TikTok especially has commanded the conversation in recent years. Still, even “in today’s landscape dominated by TikTok and Instagram, SoundCloud remains a critical launchpad for Gen-Z’s emerging cult favorites,” says Corey Goldglit, manager of A&R at the distribution company Too Lost. “While social media fuels trends, and Spotify fuels hits, SoundCloud continues to be where devoted fans first discover raw, innovative talent like Fakemink, OsamaSon, 1oneam, and Nettspend.”

While SoundCloud is best known for nurturing rappers and electronic producers, it’s adding value in other genres as well: Sean Lewow, co-founder of the label Music Soup, has seen the platform introduce listeners to Waylon Wyatt and Vincent Mason, a pair of rising country artists on his roster. (Music Soup is a joint venture with Interscope Records and Darkroom Records.) Uploads of country and folk music on SoundCloud have risen by more than 50% in the last two years, while streams of these styles rose 15% on SoundCloud in 2024. 

This mirrors the growing interest in these genres in the U.S. and around the world. “These scenes are attracting people [on SoundCloud] who have always been into it,” Marshall says, “but also engaging a new group of people who are discovering these sounds.”

Since SoundCloud artists and users can interact with music in ways beyond just clicking “play” and “skip” — commenting on songs, for example, or sending direct messages to peers — the platform has additional data to parse when trying to map scenes. “We look at social interaction amongst artists as an indicator of affinity,” Marshall explains. “Zooming out from that gives a feel for what shapes a scene.”

And for how scenes meld borrow from and build off each other. Historically, it’s been difficult for U.K. hip-hop to acquire fans en masse outside of its home country — even with other English-speaking listeners. The Music Intelligence Report, however, singles out two sets of British acts “that are building their sound around the U.S. underground while adding a unique English twist;” in the process, they are “drawing listeners from England and beyond.” 

These two groups — the first includes fakemink, Feng, and GhostInnaFurCoat, while the other counts Rico Ace, kwes e, and TeeboFG as members — enjoyed a 71% uptick in streams in the past two years, according to SoundCloud’s data. “In recent months,” the report continues, “tracks from these artists are increasingly showing engagement spikes indicative of future success.”

The Music Intelligence Report identifies other sounds that SoundCloud believes are poised to become more popular in 2025: Vinahouse, which Marshall describes as a “hyper-speed, really energetic” style of club music that’s popular in Vietnam; Brazilian plugg, the latest mutation of a hip-hop sub-genre that has thrived on SoundCloud for several years; and shoegaze, which has also been enjoying a revival on TikTok. 

New rappers continue to see success on the platform as well. The third most-played account created on SoundCloud last year belonged to BabyChiefDoIt, who trailed behind only VonOff1700 and Raq Baby. BabyChiefDoIt signed a deal with Artist Partner Group in August, and Izzy Elefant, the label’s head of streaming, calls the platform an “essential” part of the rapper’s rise. 

SoundCloud’s features, especially “real-time comments and direct messaging, create an interactive experience that sets it apart from other streaming services,” Elefant continues. “These tools allow BabyChiefDoIt to engage with listeners directly, receive immediate feedback, and foster a sense of community.”

In a splintered landscape for music discovery, Lewow adds, it’s important to “leave no stone unturned.” SoundCloud “has opened our artists up to an audience that they might not have found otherwise.”

Selena Gomez isn’t afraid to talk about the double standard when it comes to comments about her appearance. On this week’s episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Gomez lamented that she gets “a tad bitter” when people mention her weight, noting that those comments are always aimed at women.

Appearing with fiancé Benny Blanco — who said he never reads too deeply into what people say about him online because he’d rather “free-fall through life” without knowing what anyone else thinks — Gomez said her take is very different. “I was also going to point out that women have it much worse,” she said. “From my perspective, it’s pretty wild, and I think this isn’t news to anybody, that obviously women have a lot more intense feelings from their appearance to what they are wearing to everything.”

The scrutiny is so intense that Gomez said it gets in her head when she’s getting ready for the red carpet. “When I get prepared for an event, 90 percent of the time I’m just like, ‘I just hope I can take the picture and sit down.’” Gomez said, “It’s the character that gets judged, it’s the way I’m not white enough, I’m not Mexican enough. There’s just so many different things that come up in my face that I can’t help but see. But I fall victim to looking at things, and it really doesn’t add to your life, but it’s just so difficult. From the choices of people you date, it’s like nobody cares about those kind of things with men. They’re just like, ‘yeah, the did that, they said that.’”

Gomez, 32, said the most frequent unsolicited comments she sees are about her weight, with “everyone” online having “something to say” about it. “My weight’s a big one too,” she said. “It’s really making me sad and — not even sad cause, I’m not a victim, I just think it’s made me a tad bitter, and I feel really guilty for saying that, but it’s true.” In the past, Gomez has shared that the medicine she takes to combat the chronic autoimmune disorder lupus can cause weight fluctuations.

In November, Gomez hit back at negative posts about her posture at a red carpet event promoting her Oscar-nominated film Emilia Perez, after some TikTok users suggested she was trying to hide her body with poses in which her hands were positioned across her stomach. “This makes me sick,” Gomez wrote in the comments of the speculation. “I have SEBO [SIBO] in my small intestine. It flares up. I don’t care that I don’t look like a stick figure. I don’t have that body. End of story. No I am NOT a victim. I’m just human.”

As she’s revealed before, the singer also told Shetty that she takes mental health breaks from being online and “most of the time” she ignores the haters, noting again that she doesn’t have social apps on her phone. “So there are ways to combat it,” she said. “I’m not like, ‘I hate it.’ I understand the power of what social media is, it’s just tricky.”

Watch Blanco and Gomez on the Shetty podcast below.

Erykah Badu has loudly and proudly always marched to the beat of her own drummer. But the “Call Tyrone” singer admitted this week that she’s happily hopping on a recent trend to protest the deep cuts to government agencies being led by Elon Musk as part of his DOGE team by trashing one of the richest man in the world’s signature vehicles.

“Just vandalized my own Tesla,” Badu tweeted earlier this week. “Trying to stay on trend.”

There have been a number of attacks on Teslas and Tesla dealerships around the country over the past few weeks, from Cybertrucks set on fire to molotov cocktails hurled at Tesla dealerships and vandalism of charging stations. Attackers have also taken their ire out on the all-electric vehicles with anatomical drawings and NSFW messages such as “Hail Elon” and “Nazi car,” in seeming reference to Musk’s Nazi-like salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

It was unclear if Badu — who recently revealed to Billboard that she is working on her first new album in 15 years — was joking or actually dinged up her Tesla, but she is not the only one breaking up with the pricey vehicle that was once considered a badge of environmental courage. Sherly Crow announced last month that she had sold her Tesla and donated the proceeds to NPR in protest; NPR and PBS executives will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday (March 26) to testify in a hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” as DOGE is reportedly homing in on drastic cuts to public radio and television.

While many protests across the nation, and the world, have focused on Teslas and Musk, Green Day took aim at the billionaire during shows in January, where singer Billie Joe Armstrong swiped at the unelected DOGE boss while performing in Musk’s home country of South Africa. “I’m not part of the Elon agenda,” he sang in a switch to a classic “American Idiot” lyric.

Jack White also slammed Musk during a performance of his 2018 single “Corporation” at a February 18 show on his No Name tour. “I was thinking about becoming an oligarch, who’s with me?” White sang in Boston. “I was thinking about taking government subsidies and starting my own electric car company. Who’s with me?” he added. “I’m thinking about not being elected. Never holding a public office. Never serving one day of military service. But somehow having the authority to control parts of the U.S. Government. Who’s with me?”

Then, on the debut episode of Netflix’s Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney earlier this month, 1960s folk legend Joan Baez lamented that “our democracy is going up in flames… we’re being run by a bunch of really incompetent billionaires.” And while she didn’t name names, when Mulaney joked about Baez owning a Tesla, she noted that she did used to have one, but that she sincerely regrets the purchase now.

“I hated that thing,” Baez, 84, said. “But I thought I was supposed to like it. So I drove off in it. Within 45 minutes I had smashed it into an oak tree on my property… I was thinking, ‘That’s a sign.’” Without saying when she ditched it, Baez added, “I hated it… It was too big… I sold it and got one-half the amount of money I paid for.”

A rare piece of Beatles history has resurfaced in an unexpected place: a small record store in Vancouver.

Rob Frith, owner of Neptoon Records, recently stumbled upon what he believed was a run-of-the-mill bootleg labeled Beatles 60s Demos. But after finally playing the reel-to-reel tape—years after acquiring it—Frith realized he may have uncovered a direct copy of the band’s original 1962 Decca audition tape.

“I just figured it was a tape off a bootleg record,” Frith posted on social media. “After hearing it last night for the first time, it sounds like a master tape. The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have what sounds like a Beatles 15-song Decca tapes master?”

The tape is believed to be a copy of the infamous Jan. 1, 1962 audition session The Beatles recorded at Decca Studios in London. The label famously passed on signing the group—who would instead join Parlophone under George Martin and release their debut album Please Please Me in 1963.

Frith, speaking to CBC, said the sound quality was so pristine “it seemed like the Beatles were in the room.” The tape, wound in what’s known as “leader tape” (used to separate tracks on master recordings), was identified by music preservationist Larry Hennessey as something far more than just a fan-made compilation.

Further intrigue came when Frith tracked down the man who brought the tape to Canada: Jack Herschorn, a former Vancouver label executive. According to Herschorn, the tape was given to him by a producer in London during the 1970s with the suggestion to sell copies in North America. But he refused, saying, “It didn’t feel like the moral thing to do. These guys are famous and they deserve to have the right royalties on it… it deserves to come out properly.”

Now, more than 60 years after the original session, fans can hear a snippet of the first track—“Money (That’s What I Want)”—via Frith’s Instagram, where it’s quickly gone viral among Beatles devotees.

Frith says he has no intention of selling the tape but would gladly offer a copy to Decca or, as he joked, personally hand it to Sir Paul McCartney if he ever stopped by Neptoon Records.