Going up, up, up, it was the “Golden” songwriting team’s moment, but as the KPop Demon Hunters songwriters were in the middle of accepting the Oscar for best original song, that moment was cut short.

On Sunday (March 15), EJAE, Park Hong Jun, Yu-Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, 24 and Mark Sonnenblick made history as the Billboard Hot 100-topping soundtrack hit became the first K-pop song to ever win an Oscar, something they had only a short period of time to celebrate on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood before the group was abruptly ushered off the stage. In response, countless fans have criticized the award show for interrupting the historic victory and allowing only EJAE — who also provided the singing voice for HUNTR/X’s Rumi — to make her speech before the orchestra played everyone off.

“the oscar’s are rude af for this i’m sorry,” one person wrote on X, while another viewer added, “This was so disrespectful.”

“the oscars cut off the kpop demon hunters songwriters SO QUICK during their thank you speech that it honestly felt pointed, I was shocked,” wrote one.

Others specifically defended Yu-Han Lee, as he’d been the person speaking — making it through just a few words of his remarks — when the Oscars orchestra started playing over him. “This was probably the biggest moment of his life as an international artist & the oscars cut off his speech just as he started…,” another person wrote.

Billboard has reached out to the Oscars for comment.

Though their time on stage was limited, the “Golden” group did get to finish accepting the best original song prize backstage. Yu-Han Lee called the win “an incredible honor,” while Sonnenblick got to shout out his family and husband. “Part of the movie is about looking at someone that you had been taught to hate and to fear, and starting to trust, maybe love them,” Sonnenblick added. “A movie is like a village, and we’re lucky to be up here right now, but there’s so many people who have made this what it is.”

And despite their time on stage being cut short, EJAE’s speech was one of the night’s most moving. “Thank you so much to the academy for this insane award,” she said while holding the golden statuette. “Growing up, people made fun of me for liking K-pop, but now everyone’s singing our song and all the Korean lyrics. I’m so proud. And I realized, the song, this award is not about success. It’s about resilience.”

Since premiering last summer, KPop Demon Hunters has had an unprecedented dominance over pop culture. In a matter of a couple of months, it became Netflix’s most watched film of all time, and “Golden” previously won best original song at the Critic’s Choice Awards and Golden Globes before snagging the same prize at the Oscars.

Other big winners at Sunday’s ceremony were Michael B. Jordan, who took home best actor for his performance in Sinners, and Hamnet‘s Jessie Buckley, who won best actress. Best picture went to One Battle After Another.

Watch EJAE’s acceptance speech for “Golden” below:

The history of music consumption is one of swings between chaos and control. Over two decades, the industry moved from the physical certainty of CDs to the “Wild West” of digital piracy, finally landing on the sleek, convenient interfaces of streaming platforms. While streaming has stabilized the industry’s bottom line, it has inadvertently created a “winner-take-all” ecosystem. By shifting the metric of value from the album or song to the time spent listening to it, the industry has hit a structural ceiling that threatens the very diversity it claims to host.

From Napster to the “All-You-Can-Eat” Buffet

In the early 2000s, the music industry was in a tailspin. Peer-to-peer sharing sites decoupled music from its monetary value. The solution arrived in two stages:

The Access Era and the “Finite Time” Ceiling

When the model shifted from ownership to access, the transition introduced a restrictive way of valuing music based on how many hours a fan spends listening. This creates two major economic bottlenecks:

The Friction of Consolidation

The market has consolidated into four major gatekeepers: Spotify, Apple, YouTube and Amazon. This oligopoly has forced fans to choose a single “silo” for their entire music library. For the artist, this creates immense friction. If an artist wants to offer a unique experience or exclusive content elsewhere, they face a wall of resistance. Fans are hesitant to leave their primary library; would you buy a CD that only worked in one CD player? This locks the artist into a system where they can rarely monetize their fans beyond that fan’s pro-rata share of a standard monthly subscription fee.

The Pro-Rata Trap: Why Logic Fails the Niche Artist

Another core issue lies in the pro-rata distribution model, where all subscription fees are pooled. If a global star accounts for 10% of streams, they receive 10% of the total royalty pool, even if a specific user’s subscription was intended for a niche punk artist they listened to exclusively. In this model, 40,000 dedicated fans are “worth” the same as 40,000 passive listeners. By removing the ability to charge more for higher value music, streaming has removed supply and demand from the equation.

The Cultural Cost of Global Homogenization

Because the current model rewards volume above all else, it disproportionately favors music designed for lean-back listening and mass appeal. This penalizes niche artists who create music specific to certain geographies, sub-genres, or lifestyle communities for not having mass appeal, even if the impact on their specific culture is profound. The long-term effects are that new artists and new music are pressured to “chase the algorithm” rather than innovate. If an artist — and the investment in artists — cannot survive on the meager pro-rata share, they may stop creating altogether, leading to a future where music is safer, blander, and less representative of human diversity.

Now, for the proposal: head to ORCA’s Substack page here for a multi-part breakdown of how a direct-to-fan streaming layer could unlock this friction for artists.

The Organization for Recorded Culture and Arts (ORCA) is a global think tank and advocacy group formed by leading independent record labels, dedicated to advancing the economic, social, and cultural value of music. ORCA equips policymakers, trade associations, and communities with primary research and actionable insights to strengthen music-powered ecosystems and promote inclusive industry growth.

Founding supporters: Because Music; Beggars Group; City Slang; Domino Recording Company; Everlasting Records!; Exceleration Music; Hopeless Records; !K7 Music; Ninja Tune Records; Partisan Records; Playground Music; Secret City Records; Secretly Group; Sub Pop.

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Louis Posen is the Founder and President of Hopeless Records, an independent record label launched in 1993, which now touts 30+ numerous gold and platinum releases from the likes of Avenged Sevenfold, All Time Low, Sum 41, and more. Posen proudly serves on a number of music boards including MERLIN, ORCA, and A2IM, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Libera Awards. He also has been elected as one of Billboard’s Indie Power Players on numerous occasions. Beyond music, Posen has championed community impact through The Hopeless Foundation, the label’s nonprofit arm that has raised over $3.5 million benefiting over 150 charitable initiatives.

U.S. recorded music saw record revenue of $11.54 billion in 2025, an increase of 3.1% year-over-year, according to the latest figures released by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Streaming remained the dominant format in the U.S. recorded music market with total revenue of $9.75 billion, up 3% from $9.46 billion in 2024. Of that revenue total, $6.38 billion came from paid subscriptions, a 5.8% increase over 2024’s $6.03 billion. Paid subscription revenue made up 55.3% of total recorded music revenue in the U.S. last year, deriving from a total of 106.5 million paid accounts — up from 105 million paid accounts the year prior.

The numbers reported Monday (March 16) are in wholesale figures, a metric the RIAA began using for its twice-annual reports at midyear last year. Prior to that, the organization reported overall revenue in terms of both retail and wholesale, but only reported retail revenue when breaking down numbers for the different revenue segments. The organization has now revived its U.S. Music Revenue Database — which it removed from its website last year amid the switch from retail to wholesale — with revenue breakdowns in wholesale terms going back to 1973, allowing for direct year-over-year comparisons.

In wholesale revenue, growth in the U.S. recorded music market picked up slightly over 2024, when year-over-year growth slowed to just 1.9%. That compared with growth of 6.7% in 2023 and 4.7% in 2022. (Check out the full breakdown here.)

While paid subscription revenue increased overall, other areas in the digital segment saw declines. This included free (ad-supported) streaming, which saw a year-over-year revenue dip of 0.6% to $1.79 billion. Digital downloads declined 5.9% year-over-year, with total revenue (albums and single downloads) of $221.8 million.

On the physical front, vinyl sales grew for the 19th consecutive year and surpassed the $1 billion wholesale revenue mark for the first time since 1983, when vinyl still made up nearly half of overall recorded music revenue in the U.S., according to the RIAA’s historical figures. Year-over-year, vinyl revenue grew 9.3% to $1.04 billion from sales of 46.8 million units, up from $954.4 million and 43.4 million units in 2024. Meanwhile, CD sales revenue continued to decline, dipping 11.6% year-over-year to $312.4 million from sales of 29.5 million units. Overall physical revenue increased 5% year-over-year to $1.38 billion — up from $1.32 billion in 2024 — thanks to vinyl’s continued growth.

Lastly, synch revenue fell to $407.1 million from last year’s $412.6 million, a slight 1.3% dip year-over-year.

“Fans are consuming music from the artists they love in more ways than ever, and that passion is reflected in today’s report,” said Matt Bass, the RIAA’s vp of research and gold & platinum operations, in a statement. “2025 reveals a strong and stable music economy resulting from committed label investment and identification of new spaces to expand artists’ creativity. From the ease of streaming to new vinyl to licensing responsible AI tools and services, labels are diversifying fan engagement. U.S. recorded music has demonstrated sustained growth globally, reaching $6.4 billion alone in paid subscriptions and tallying 50% of global vinyl revenue, leading the way for fans to listen and connect with their favorite music whenever, wherever and however they want.”

Mitch Glazier, RIAA chairman & CEO, added, “The last 20 years have been marked by unprecedented transformation for recorded music — from the steady rise to dominance of anytime, anywhere streaming options as listeners enjoy tunes from their favorite artists to a resurgence of vinyl as both a listening experience and collectable art. And now, our industry is advancing free-market licensing, building responsible AI partnerships that enhance discovery, deepen fan engagement and unlock new creative possibilities for how music is made and experienced. Through it all, music remains a cornerstone of culture and a growing economic powerhouse for the U.S., contributing $212 billion to our GDP and supporting more than 2.5 million American jobs.”

RIAA 2025 Year-End Report Highlights:

U.S. recorded music wholesale revenue hit $11.54 billion, a record high.

Overall streaming revenue hit $9.47 billion, up 3.1% year-over-year.

Paid subscription revenue grew 5.8% to $6.38 billion, accounting for 55.3% of total recorded music revenue.

Vinyl revenue climbed for the 19th straight year with total revenue of $1.04 billion, up 9.3% year-over-year.

Europe’s C2C (Country to Country Festival) shared details of its 2027 edition and locations on Monday morning (March 16).

The annual event will take place concurrently across three cities in the U.K. next year hitting London, Glasgow, and, for the first time, Manchester. Country stars will perform at London’s O2 Arena, the OVO Hydro in Glasgow and Manchester’s AO Arena across the weekend of March 12-14.

The announcement was made as the 2026 edition wrapped following sets from Zach Top, Keith Urban, Brooks & Dunn, Scotty McCreery, Russell Dickerson, Drake Milligan and more. 2026’s edition took place in London, Glasgow and Belfast, Northern Ireland. 

Tickets for the 2027 festival will go on general sale this Friday (March 20) from the festival’s official website. A lineup will be announced in the coming months.

In 2025, the BPI reported that demand for country music in the U.K. was soaring, reaching the highest share of albums consumption since 1999.

First held in 2013 at the O2 Arena, the annual country festival spotlights some of the genre’s biggest names and emerging stars. Over the years, Carrie Underwood, Little Big Town, Zac Brown Band, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Emmylou Harris, Luke Combs and more have all graced the stage.

From 2014 onwards, the festival expanded to take place in multiple cities in Europe at the same time. Since its inaugural edition, it has also visited Dublin, Oslo, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Rotterdam. In 2019, C2C was also held in Sydney and Brisbane in Australia and featured such headliners as Keith Urban, Lady A and Chris Stapleton, as well as Brett Eldredge, Chase Rice, Dustin Lynch and more.

London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena has been the only permanent home for the festival since it was introduced to the U.K.

James Hetfield pulled off a proposal for the ages last week. The Metallica frontman popped the question to girlfriend Adriana Gillett on Friday (March 13) during a scuba diving excursion. Hetfield, 62, shared a snap from the special moment on Metallica’s Instagram, which featured an image of the singer/guitarist underwater in a mask and scuba gear holding up a sign reading: “Adriana Gillett Will You Marry Me?”

Floating next to him in the clear blue water was fashion designer Gillett, 45, holding up the ring box and making a thumbs-up with her left hand. The caption? “She said yes!”

Gillett also shared the good news on her Instagram, reposting the same pic and writing, “The BEST birthday trip surprise 🎉Swimming with whale sharks on Friday the 13th 👀 with the most unique, special, and romantic proposal a Pisces could ever imagine 💍 In a sea full of fish, we caught each other 🩵 Thank you God for putting us together 🐋🦈.”

Hetfield filed for divorce from his wife of 25 years, costume designer Francesca Tomasi, in 2022, with whom he shared two daughters, Cali, 27 and Marcella, 24, and a son, Castor, 25. The Metallica frontman and London native Gillett reportedly began dating in 2023.

The happy couple will have a few months to enjoy newlywed status before Metallica cranks up their three-year-old M72 world tour again on May 9 with a show at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece, followed by a May 13 show in Bucharest, Romania and a May 19 stop in Chrozow, Poland. After the summer run of European and U.K. dates, Metallica will kick off their 24-show run at Las Vegas’ Sphere on Oct. 1.