Lola Plaku, founder of Girl Connected, sits down with Courtney Stewart, CEO of Right Hand Co. (Khalid’s management team), to talk about what it really takes to build and sustain a global superstar. From the early vision to building Khalid’s career with purpose and impact, this conversation offers rare insight into the behind-the-scenes strategy and heart that powers one of music’s most successful artist-manager relationships.
In his first English-language interview, global superstar Diljit Dosanjh speaks with Panos A. Panay, President of the Grammys, about breaking language barriers and bringing Punjabi culture to the world. This powerful fireside chat explores Diljit’s rise, his connection with international audiences, and his cultural mission from India to sold-out arenas in Canada and beyond.
Polo G has settled a legal dispute over a planned European tour he cancelled in 2023, ending dueling contract and intellectual property theft claims between the Chicago rapper and a Dutch concert booking agency.
The rapper (Taurus Bartlett) was in the middle of exchanging evidence via the legal discovery process with booking agency J. Noah B.V. when the two sides reached a settlement, according to a Friday (June 20) order from a federal judge in New York.
“The court having been advised that all claims asserted herein have been settled in principle, it is ordered that the above-entitled action be and is hereby dismissed,” writes Judge Jesse M. Furman.
Settlement terms have not been disclosed in court filings. Lawyers for Polo G and J. Noah did not immediately return Billboard’s requests for details on the agreement.
The litigation stemmed from a planned 11-city European tour that Polo G hired J. Noah to book and promote. Under the agreement, the rapper was supposed to perform shows in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain and Denmark in November and December 2023.
But the tour never happened. In his 2023 lawsuit, Polo G alleged that he canceled the shows due to an injury, and he accused J. Noah of violating intellectual property law by continuing to promote the dates using his name and image after their deal was terminated.
J. Noah told a different story, however, in a counter-lawsuit it filed against the rapper earlier this year. The touring agency said Polo G’s “excuses” for canceling the shows were false, and that he therefore did not have a right to abandon their contract.
The agency sought through its countersuit to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars it supposedly spent preparing for Polo G’s cancelled tour, including money deposited to secure venues and production staffers for the shows.
Drex, CEO of OVO, takes audiences through his journey from The Remix Project to leading one of Canada’s most influential brands in conversation with Tyrone Edwards. In this compelling talk, Drex reflects on pivotal moments including a life-changing call from Noah “40” Shebib and shares what it takes to grow from grassroots creative to CEO. Learn about building a brand, leading artists, and preparing the next generation of creatives.
As demand for concerts appears strong heading into the busy summer months, Live Nation led nearly all music stocks this week by jumping 7.7% to $148.87. On Friday (June 20), the concert gian surpassed $150 per share for the first time since Feb. 25, and its intraday high of $150.81 was roughly $7 below its all-time high of $157.49 set on Feb. 24. Earlier in the week, Goldman Sachs increased its price target on the stock to $162 from $157, implying Live Nation shares have an 8.8% upside from Friday’s closing price.
The 20-company Billboard Global Music Index (BGMI), which tracks the value of public music companies, finished the week ended June 20 down 2.4% to 2,853.13, its second consecutive weekly decline after nine straight gains. Despite large single-digit gains by Live Nation, MSG Entertainment and SM Entertainment, the index was pulled down due to losses by its two largest components: Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG). The week’s decline lowered the BGMI’s year-to-date gain to 34.3%, though it’s still well ahead of the Nasdaq (down 0.9%) and the S&P 500 (up 0.4%) on that metric.
Markets sagged in the latter half of the week as investors expressed concerns about tensions in the Middle East and the potential impacts on global oil supplies and gas prices. The tech-heavy Nasdaq finished the week up 0.2% to 19,447.41 while the S&P 500 fell 0.2% to 5,976.97. In the U.K., the FTSE 100 dropped 0.9% to 8,774.65. South Korea’s KOSPI composite index jumped 4.4% and China’s SSE Composite Index dipped 0.5%.
New York-based live entertainment company MSG Entertainment rose 5.6% to $38.44, bringing its year-to-date gain to 7.1%. Elsewhere, SM Entertainment stock saw a 4.5% improvement, taking its 2025 gain to 90.4% — the best amongst music stocks save for Netease Cloud Music, which has seen a 111.2% year-to-date gain.
With streaming stocks posting the biggest gains of the year, Spotify shares reached a record high of $728.80 on Wednesday (June 18) but stumbled over the next two days and finished the week down 0.5% to $707.42. That decline took Spotify’s year-to-date gain down to 51.6%.
UMG shares fell 4.2% to 26.73 euros, marking its largest one-week decline since falling 9.2% in the week ended April 4. At the same time, Bernstein restarted coverage of UMG shares this week. Analysts believe it’s a “best in class” music company, which “implies predictability, a capital allocation framework consistent with industry trends, and steady operating leverage,” analysts wrote. Bernstein set a 33 euro ($38.03) price target, implying 23% upside over Friday’s closing price.
Shares of music streaming company LiveOne fell 6.5% on Friday and finished the week down 10.0% after the company released earnings results for its fiscal fourth quarter and year ended March 31. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue fell 37.6% to $19.3 million due primarily to a decrease in Slacker revenue. For the full year, revenue slipped 3.4% to $114.4 million and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) fell 18.7% to $8.9 million.
Billboard
Billboard
Billboard
Given the enormous stakes at play, when business leaders talk about AI, people listen.
In May, Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic — who stands to personally benefit from companies’ widespread adoption of his technology — gained widespread attention after he predicted that AI will wipe out half of all entry-level jobs within five years. And in music, Sony Music CEO Rob Stringer, in an annual presentation to investors, said the company is “going to do deals for new music AI products this year” and that it has “actively engaged with more than 800 companies” on various AI-related initiatives.
Perhaps most notable, at least on the music front, are the comments made about AI in various interviews given by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek in recent years. In them, he’s provided insights into how Spotify, the most valuable and important music platform in the world, approaches the technology. Ek’s comments carry weight: While generative AI platforms such as Suno and Udio have stirred the greatest amount of fear over AI’s ability to undermine human creativity, the largest music platforms will play a huge role in how both creators and listeners engage with it.
Understanding Spotify’s approach to AI doesn’t always require reading tea leaves. Some of its products that use AI are out in the open. For example, in 2023, the company launched two major products that utilize the technology: a personalized AI-powered DJ and a voice translation tool for podcasters that can translate recordings into other languages.
Still, given that the company’s attitudes and approaches to AI will affect Spotify’s 678 million monthly users and millions of creators, it’s worth examining Ek’s statements to see how Spotify intends to incorporate AI, embrace opportunities and address concerns. To that end, this author examined 10 podcast interviews, numerous online articles and a 2024 open letter Ek penned with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to get a better sense of how he views the technology.
The one aspect about AI that Ek has talked about most often is its ability to help Spotify deliver to listeners the right audio — whether it’s music, a podcast or an audiobook — at a particular moment. He has described a mismatch between supply and demand, and how using new innovations can help better connect listeners and creators. Right now, Spotify users can search and find what they want 30% to 40% of the time, Ek told the New York Post in May, adding that he believes AI can improve that number. “So, we still have some ways to go before we’re at that point where we can just serve you that magical thing that you didn’t even know that you liked better than you can do yourself,” he explained.
Most germane to people reading this article, the interviews show that Ek has consistently voiced a respect for creators and a belief that AI should enhance creativity, not replace it. That may not reassure songwriters who are receiving fewer royalties after Spotify adopted a lower royalty rate afforded to bundles in the U.S. Ek’s stated respect for artists also contrasts with the criticism Spotify has attracted — as detailed in the book Mood Machine and news reports — for paying flat fees for music tagged with fake artist names and inserted into playlists in order to reduce its royalty obligations. (Spotify denied claims that it’s created fake artists.) But in his public comments, Ek’s support for creators doesn’t waver, and there’s no indication that Spotify will follow in the footsteps of Tencent Music Entertainment, which offers music-making generative AI tools — it incorporates Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s large language model — and allows users to upload the resulting songs to its QQ Music platform.
But AI can aid the creative process without stepping on creators’ rights, and Ek has talked with excitement about how AI tools can help lower barriers to entry and help musicians bring their visions to life. Although making music no longer requires learning and mastering an instrument, there’s still some technical know-how involved in producing music on digital audio workstations (DAWs). AI tools can reduce the complexity of DAWs and increase creators’ productivity. “We’re most likely going to have another order of magnitude of simplicity,” Ek said on the Acquired podcast in 2023.
At the same time, Ek admits there are some frightening potential applications for AI. In 2023, he told CBS Morning that AI can make experiences in every field “better and easier,” while admitting that the notion that AI will be smarter than any human is “daunting to think about what the consequences might be for humanity.” And despite the potential for AI to unleash untold amounts of creativity, Ek admits that the ultimate outcome for creators is difficult to ascertain. “We want real humans to make it as artists and creators, but what is creativity in the future with AI? I don’t know,” he said in May at an open house at Spotify’s Stockholm headquarters, according to AFP.
Just as lawmakers and music industry groups are pushing for legislation to protect artists’ names and likenesses, Ek has revealed concern about AI’s ability to replicate a musician’s voice. “Imagine if someone walked around claiming to be you, saying things that you’ve never said,” he told Jules Terpak in 2024. Spotify wouldn’t allow it on the platform without the artist’s permission, Ek said, citing Grimes — who launched a project in 2023 allowing fans to replicate her voice to use in their songs and evenly split the royalties — as an example of permissible use of an AI-generated name and likeness. “Of course, we will let her experiment, because she’s fine with it,” Ek said.
Now that Spotify is in the audiobook business, the company’s use of AI will impact a wider swath of creators than just musicians. As Ek told The New York Post, Spotify “can play a role” in getting more books converted into audiobooks using AI — specifically smaller authors who can’t afford the expense of hiring someone to read them. Such affordable text-to-voice tools already exist and are offered to authors who would otherwise be locked out of the audiobook market. It makes sense: Just as Spotify was built on providing listeners the long tail of music, it doesn’t want its audiobook selection to be limited to major titles. If Spotify builds or buys such a tool, it could vastly increase the number of audiobooks available to its listeners.
In the interview with CBS Morning, Ek quoted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to explain how he finds inspiration in innovation. “He says that the future is already here,” Ek said during the 40-minute talk. “It’s just not evenly distributed.” What Ek means is that he looks around the world, sees what others are doing with technology and then considers how he can bring those innovations to a wider audience. And as the CEO of the world’s largest and most influential audio streaming service, how he chooses to approach AI will go a long way in determining — for better or worse — how millions of people create, consume and profit from music, podcasts and audiobooks in the future.
Summer has officially arrived, and to celebrate the three-month long season, this year running from June 20 to Sept. 22, Billboard has curated the ultimate Latin playlist.
The nearly two-hour list has 35 songs that have been released in 2025 so far and will make for the perfect soundtrack to blast on a hot poolside day, breezy beach afternoon, or at a carne asada with family and friends.
There are a handful of salsa tunes including Bad Bunny’s “Baile Inolvidable,” which currently tops the Hot Tropical Songs chart; a salsa version of Piso 21’s “Volver” in collaboration with Marc Anthony and Beéle; and “Si Llamas,” the first collaborative effort between salsa newcomers Luis Figueroa and Christian Alicea.
On the Billboard Latin Summer playlist, fans will enjoy bachata with songs like Natti Natasha’s “Desde Hoy” and Prince Royce’s “How Deep is Your Love”; merengue such as Fariana and Kiko El Crazy’s “Me Muevo”; Afrobeat as in Kapo and Myke Towers’ “ILY”; cumbia with Elena Rose, Camilo, and Los Ángeles Azules’ “Carteras Chinas”; Yailin La Más Viral’s dembow in “Todos Mienten”; and even the rhythmic reparto from Cuba with Bebeshito’s “Tacto que llegó el Reparto.”
And, let’s be frank, what’s summertime without a good mix of reggaetón bangers? The list also includes Alemán and Netón Vega’s saucy “Te Quería Ver,” J Balvin’s “Rio,” and Karol G’s “Verano Rosa” in collaboration with her boo, Feid.
Below, check out the complete playlist to enjoy during the hottest and brightest of the four temperate seasons:
Join Billboard Canada Woman of the Year (2024) and Billboard Canada’s Global Woman of the Year (2025) Charlotte Cardin in an intimate conversation with Tara Slone about breaking barriers in the music industry. From her early days on La Voix, to representing Canada as a bilingual artist on the global stage, Charlotte opens up about her journey, creative control, and overcoming self-doubt. A must-watch for anyone navigating identity, creativity, and growth in music.
Tyla talks about hosting the Kid’s Choice Awards, loving KATSEYE’s “Gnarly” and her excitement to watch their performance at the show, performing at Coachella, what fans can expect from her new music, why she wanted to be a part of The Smurfs soundtrack and more!
Tetris Kelly: Tyla is hosting the Kids Choice Awards, and before the big show, we got her to talk about new music and so much more.
Tyla: This is my first time not trying to think about it too much. Like, I’m literally just gonna be my vibe. You know, Tyla vibe. Fun, I love partying, so this is a warehouse party, so it’s my lane, so I’m just gonna have fun with the kids.
I’ve actually met [KATYSEYE]. Like, a while ago, I was shooting for Vogue, and they came to me, and they’re like, “Hi, we are new group, KATSEYE,” and they wanted to sing “Water” for me. And, like, they literally the cutest group … So, yeah, they’re cute. I’m excited to see their performance.
Coachella was insane. It was my first time performing there, so that was really fun. Like, especially the second week, I was vibing, yeah, and now I have some more in Europe and everything.
I literally love The Smurfs and Rihanna being Smurfette. So I’m happy that I’m a part of that one.
Keep watching for more!
Electronic music icons deadmau5 and Rezz come together for a candid fireside chat moderated by Fab Strong. From early musical inspirations to navigating the industry and pushing sonic boundaries, the conversation dives into the creative chemistry between these two global artists. Tune in for thoughtful reflection and hilarious moments between collaborators who continue to redefine electronic music.
