The Billboard Latin Music Awards 2021 are less than a week away. The star-studded show will parade out an array of Latin and internationally renowned artists in an evening that will feature performances by chart-topping artists Camila Cabello, Karol G, Juanes, Banda MS, Christian Nodal, Rauw Alejandro, Joss Favela and Prince Royce, and other surprises.

In addition to Daddy Yankee receiving the Billboard Hall of Fame Award, finalists and winners will be honored at the award ceremony to be broadcast live on the Telemundo network at 8 p.m. ET from the Watsco Center in Miami on Thursday, Sept. 23. The coveted event will cover 59 categories across the major music genres of Latin pop, tropical, Latin rhythm and regional Mexican.

The night will also see an array of new faces whose outstanding performances throughout Billboard Latin charts, during the Feb. 1, 2020 through Aug. 7, 2021 period, have earned them a space among the finalists.  In anticipation of next week’s awards, Billboard has compiled a list of this year’s first-time finalists in alphabetical order, with a brew of genres among its tallies.

Black Eyed Peas (eight nods)

Crossover Artist of the Year
Hot Latin Song of the Year – “Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”
Hot Latin Song of the Year, Vocal Event – “Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”
Sales Song of the Year – “Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”
Sales Song of the Year – “Mamacita”
Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Latin Pop Song of the Year – “Mamacita”
Latin Rhythm Song of the Year – “Ritmo (Bad Boys For Life)”

Camilo (five nods)

Artist of the Year, New
Latin Pop Artist of the Year, Solo
Latin Pop Song of the Year – “Si Me Dices Que Sí”
Latin Pop Album of the Year – Mis Manos
Latin Pop Album of the Year – Por Primera Vez 

Dua Lipa (one nod)

Crossover Artist of the Year 

Edgar ‘Edge’ Barrera (one nod)

Songwriter of the Year 

Frankie Ruiz (one nod)

Tropical Albums of the Year – The Greatest Salsa Ever, Vol. 1 

Grupo Firme (two nods)

Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Regional Mexican Song of the Year – “Yo Ya No Vuelvo Contigo”

J.Rey Soul (two nods)

Sales Song of the Year – “Mamacita”
Latin Pop Song of the Year – “Mamacita”

Junior H (two nods)

Regional Mexican Artist of the Year, Solo
Regional Mexican Albums of the Year – En Un Sueño 

Kali Uchis (seven nods)

Artist of the Year, New
Hot Latin Song of the Year – “Telepatía”
Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Female
Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Female
Latin Pop Artist of the Year, Solo
Latin Pop Song of the Year – “Telepatía”
Latin Pop Album of the Year – Sin Miedo (Del Amor y Otros Demonios) 

Los Dos Carnales (4 nods)

Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Regional Mexican Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Regional Mexican Song of the Year – “Cabrón y Vago”
Regional Mexican Song of the Year – “El Envidioso” 

Los Legendarios (2 nods)

Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Latin Rhythm Artist of the Year, Duo or Group 

Mora (one nod)

Productor del Año / Producer of the Year 

Myke Towers (three nods)

Artist of the Year, New
Latin Airplay Song of the Year – “Caramelo”
Tropical Song of the Year – “Travesuras” 

Natanael Cano (one nod)

Regional Mexican Artist of the Year, Solo 

Nicki Minaj (six nods)

Crossover Artist of the Year
Hot Latin Song of the Year – “Tusa”
Hot Latin Song of the Year, Vocal Event – “Tusa”
Latin Airplay Song of the Year – “Tusa”
Sales Song of the Year – “Tusa”
Latin Rhythm Song of the Year – “Tusa” 

Ñengo Flow (one nod)

Streaming Song of the Year – “Safaera” 

Ovy On The Drums (one nod)

Producer of the Year 

Piso 21 (two nods)

Latin Pop Artist of the Year, Duo or Group
Latin Pop Album of the Year – El Amor en Los Tiempos del Perreo 

Rauw Alejandro (two nods)

Artist of the Year, New
Latin Pop Song of the Year – “TBT”

Súbelo Neo (one nod)

Producer of the Year

The awards coincide with Billboard Latin Music Week, which returns to Miami from Sept. 20-25, with a roster of star speakers that includes Karol G, Daddy Yankee and Nicky Jam. For more information on Billboard Latin Music Week and to register for it, visit billboardlatinmusicweek.com.

Considered the longest-running awards show in Latin music, the Billboard Latin Music Awards is the only awards show to honor the most popular albums, songs, and performers in Latin music as determined by the sales, streaming radio airplay, and social data that informs Billboard’s weekly charts during a one-year period.

Dua Lipa and Megan Thee Stallion met up in Las Vegas over the weekend ahead of their upcoming arena tour.

The 26-year-old pop superstar was in Sin City on Friday (Sept. 17) to perform at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Festival, where she delivered such crowd-pleasing hits as “New Rules,” “Love Again” and “Hallucinate.”

“Vegas, this is amazing,” Lipa told the T-Mobile Arena audience. “This is my first time back onstage since 2020, so it’s been a long while. I hope you guys are having a good time.”

During the event, Lipa was honored by Ryan Seacrest with the iHeartRadio titanium award for her hit song “Levitating,” which reached 1 billion total audience spins across iHeartRadio stations. The track peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 2020.

Meanwhile, Megan Thee Stallion was in Vegas for her headlining set at the 2021 Life Is Beautiful festival in downtown. Later in the evening, Lipa took to her Instagram Story to share a clip of the hip-hop star performing onstage at the Marquee Nightclub at The Cosmopolitan.

“Lets go hot girl,” Lipa captioned the clip, tagging Megan.

The singer also shared a behind-the-scenes photo gallery on Instagram of the two music stars making silly faces and posing together in the club. In the snapshots, Lipa is seen wearing a light blue lace catsuit, while Megan rocks a skin-tight pastel outfit.

“If love is a gamble baby let me roll my dice,” Lipa captioned the slideshow.

Last week, Lipa announced that she’d be teaming up with Megan Thee Stallion on her upcoming 28-city North American Future Nostalgia tour. The arena outing, in support of her Grammy-winning album of the same title, is scheduled to launch Feb. 9 in Miami and wrap April 1 in Vancouver.

See Lipa and Megan Thee Stallion’s Instagram posts below.

Twitch and the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) are close to signing a music licensing agreement, multiple sources tell Billboard, potentially ending an arduous, year-long stalemate between the livestreaming platform and publishing organization.

The two parties have come to an agreement in principle, although nothing binding has been signed, according to a source familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Another source in the publishing industry says that a deal may be announced next week, but that it has not yet been signed.

Twitch has deals with performing rights organizations including ASCAP and BMI, but it does not have music licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group or any of their respective publishing companies. When Twitch users stream music in their videos, Twitch technically has no liability for any resulting copyright infringement as long as it responds to rights holders’ takedown requests, per the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its “safe harbor” provision for platforms which host user-uploaded content.

Amazon-owned Twitch has operated under the DMCA for years without backlash, but ever since the pandemic turned the music industry’s attention to Twitch for livestreaming concerts, spurring huge growth for the platform, music trade organizations like the NMPA and RIAA have accused Twitch of taking advantage of the DMCA to avoid paying for music — similar to the way the organizations have pressured TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to sign licensing deals in the past. So the two organizations have flooded Twitch with tens of thousands of takedown requests over the past year, forcing Twitch to the negotiation table by frustrating its users.

In response, Twitch vp/head of music Tracy Chan has reiterated that Twitch does not tolerate copyright infringement, arguing that Twitch’s monetization system offers artists a more valuable business model than licensing payouts could. Last September, to help streamers navigate the situation, the company launched Soundtrack by Twitch, an in-platform service that lets users legally incorporate into their videos more than 1 million rights-cleared recordings from labels like Monstercat and Anjunabeats.

Platforms licensing music usually deal with the recording side first, then tackle the more complex publishing side, but it’s unclear where negotiations between Twitch and record labels stand. Behind the scenes, executives have been complaining about Twitch’s frequent promises that a deal is coming soon. “It’s been ‘next month’ for almost years now,” says a record label source.

More often than not, platforms licensing music need time to set up reporting mechanisms to identify song usage and figure out who to pay. When the NMPA and YouTube entered a music licensing agreement in 2011, settling the NMPA’s copyright infringement lawsuit against the video platform, YouTube acquired licensing and royalty service provider RightsFlow for help. In a more recent example, even after Facebook Gaming secured music licensing deals with the major label groups last September, the platform spent a year fine-tuning its content recognition system before granting only its top users the ability to incorporate popular music into their streams earlier this month.

That’s why lump sum payments are often offered and accepted. From there, the burden is on the publisher to decide how to allocate royalties to its artists and songwriters, which is sometimes done by market share. Those settlements can also have go-forward licenses, which are also based on a lump-sum pool and distributed accordingly.

Meanwhile, the NMPA is still fighting a separate battle over music licensing with gaming platform Roblox. In June, the NMPA filed a $200 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Roblox, alleging that the gaming platform is hosting a “massive” library of thousands of unlicensed songs for users to broadcast in games. Roblox has denied wrongdoing, vowing to defend itself “vigorously” against those claims.