Nelly Furtado is reflecting back on some of the more toxic aspects of the entertainment industry.

The star sat down with People recently, where she recalled “a lot of airbrushing,” during the early 2000s, when she released hits like “I’m Like a Bird.” “I have olive skin, and they’d kind of lighten my skin a lot in photos,” Furtado, who is of Portuguese decent, explained, “and kind of take my hips down all the time — they would always kind of cut off in editorials.”

She noted that by the time she released her sophomore album, 2003’s Folklore, she was “kind of angry about” the way beauty was portrayed. However, she always had a good group of people around her for support. “I felt so lucky and blessed. I always had such a good team around me, that was family,” she said. “My team around me felt so solid and really looking out for my best interests. And I think I was just raised right. My mom was really strong, and so is her mom, and her mom, and her mom — a very matriarchal family, in general, on both sides, all my grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. So I was given a really solid kind of sense of assertiveness, I’m going to call it. So that was a good tool for me to navigate the music industry. And I was given really solid advice from a young age, luckily, from very paternal sort of people around me. So I was lucky, I was one of the lucky ones.”

Furtado is fresh off the release of her seventh album, fittingly titled 7.  “The key for me, with this new album, is just getting back into the craft,” she said of the project, which she worked on with her daughter Nevis. “It’s like a whole new me, who’s stronger, braver, more confident.”

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UFC goes to the City of Light! Two lightweight fighters are set to go head-to-head in the octagon as the main event for UFC Fight Night: Paris. Brazilian fighter Renato “Mohawk” Moicano (19-5-1) faces off against French fighter Benoît “God of War” Saint Denis (13-2-0) on Saturday, Sept. 28.

UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Saint Denis takes place at Accor Arena in Paris, France with a start time of 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. The main card is expected to begin at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT.

Want to watch UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Saint Denis online? The MMA event is livestreaming on ESPN+ for subscribers only.

If you’re not a subscriber, a monthly subscription to ESPN+ goes for $10.99 per month. However, you can go with an ESPN+ annual subscription for $109.99, which saves you 15% compared to the month-to-month subscription price.

Check out the complete UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Saint Denis fight card below:

Main Card, 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT

Prelims Card, 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT

In addition, you can get the Disney Trio — which comes with ESPN+, Hulu and Disney+ — starting at just $14.99 per month for both services in one package.

UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs. Saint Denis is streaming on ESPN+ on Saturday, Sept. 28, starting at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. The main card begins around at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT on ESPN+.

Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

If Sundays are for the NFL, Saturdays are for NCAA College Football. The top teams in college football, including Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama and others, face off this weekend.

College Football on ABC highlights the best games of the week for the regular season.

When Does College Football on ABC Start?

College Football on ABC broadcasts live on Saturday, Sept. 28 with a tripleheader that kicks off at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. College football games air on ABC.

Who’s Playing During College Football on ABC?

There are three games scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 28 of week 5 of play. All three broadcast on ABC.

Where to Watch College Football on ABC for Free

For cord-cutters, there are a few ways to watch College Football on ABC, if you don’t have cable — especially if you want to watch for free. DirecTV Stream has a five-day free trial, while other streaming services — such as Hulu + Live TV and Fubo — also offer free trials, so you can watch ABC for free.

Keep reading for more details on how to watch College Football on ABC with DirecTV Stream, Hulu + Live TV and Fubo.

How to Watch College Football on ABC with DirecTV Stream

A subscription to DirecTV Stream — which comes with ABC for NCAA College Football — gets you access to live TV, local and cable channels, starting at $59.99 per month (with the streamer’s current deals). The service even offers a five-day free trial to watch for free, if you sign up now.

You can watch local networks such as NBC, CBS and PBS, while you can also watch many cable networks, including ESPN, FS1, Lifetime, FX, AMC, A&E, Bravo, BET, MTV, Paramount Network, Cartoon Network, VH1, Fuse, CNN, Food Network, CNBC and many others.

How to Watch College Football on ABC with Hulu + Live TV

College Football on ABC is available to watch with Hulu + Live TV too. Prices for the cable alternative start at $76.99 per month, while each plan comes with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ for free.

Hulu + Live TV might be best for those who want all of these streaming services together in one bundle. It also features many other networks, including ESPN, CBS, Hallmark Channel, BET, CMT, Disney Channel, NBC, Fox Sports and more.

How to Watch College Football on ABC with Fubo

To watch College Football on ABC, Fubo starts at $49.99 per month (the streamer’s current deal) with nearly 200 channels — including local and cable — that are streamable on smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and on web browsers. And with a seven-day free trial, you can watch for free, if you act fast and sign up now.

The service even gets you live access to local broadcast networks including NBC, Fox and CBS, while it also has dozens of cable networks, such as ESPN, Bravo, CMT, ID, TV Land, VH1, TLC, E!, FS1, MTV, FX, Ion, OWN, Paramount Network and much more.

Starting at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT, College Football on ABC broadcast on ABC, while it’s also available to livestream with DirecTV Stream on Saturday, Sept. 28.

Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.

When Jeremy Sirota signed on as CEO of indie digital rights nonprofit Merlin in January 2020, he had already spent years championing the independent music community. 

After starting his career as a tech lawyer in the mid-2000s, Sirota worked for nine years at the Warner Music Group at WEA and ADA, helping to distribute WMG’s affiliated indie-label partners. He then moved to Facebook Music, where he was independent label lead for its business and partnerships team. That experience gives him the perspective needed to assist Merlin’s 500-plus members representing 30,000-plus label partners in more than 70 countries in navigating an increasingly complex digital world. 

Over the past four years, he has worked to set those labels — which collectively represent some 15% of the global recorded-music market — on a course to optimize partnerships that increasingly power the business. They include expanded alliances with Meta and YouTube; deals with SoundCloud, for its fan-powered royalties structure, and Deezer, for its “artist-centric” royalties plan; and a new initiative, Merlin Connect, that grants select tech startups a license for its members’ catalogs to help educate those new companies about music usage on their platforms while getting Merlin’s labels and their artists paid. 

Since Sirota became CEO, Merlin has added more than 100 members and launched a mentorship program, Merlin Engage, which pairs women music executives with the next generation of female industry leaders. He’s also debuted Merlin Insights, launched in April to help parse the avalanche of data that indies must process. And as the sector grows globally, Sirota says he’s focused on how to best superserve Merlin’s labels. “There are a lot of ways we think about growth,” he explains. “The most important are ‘Am I driving more value to my members? Am I helping support their ability to be independent? And am I helping to shape a future where artistry, authenticity and creativity can thrive?’ ” 

Have you brought in new members and territories this year?

Our growth is about making sure that our values are held by the members who join. This year, 11 new members have joined Merlin, including Artist Partner Group, UNIFIED and Rostrum Pacific. We’ve grown the team to deliver on white-glove support. That involves three things: automate as much as possible; communicate; and collaborate more efficiently and effectively. Something we think about a lot is “How do we free people up?” We’re now over 50 people and have added people around the world at all levels. One of the most important things we do is report and pay to our members on a timely basis so they can pay their bills, their labels and their artists. And we’re deepening our relationships with some of our partners, like Meta, and doing things with [graphic design platform] Canva — which I’m really excited about. We’re finding new ways to monetize music in a healthy and fair way. 

How does Merlin Insights benefit your members?

Insights is a big initiative. We now have a data operations team to make sure that all trends data is being delivered in the right format. Our market share on some of these platforms is significant — more than just the 15% we talk about. So we have this incredible wealth of data. What could we do with that that members cannot do on their own? If you’re not a global organization with 10,000 employees all around the world, we have the ability to pull out interesting stories that help our members — things they don’t know because they’re not on the ground. We do reports, webinars, feedback loops with members around: What else do they want to see? What do we get right? What do we get wrong? That’s where this membership, this community, really comes into play.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing indies right now?

Their world keeps changing so rapidly, and whatever worked six months ago doesn’t work today. That’s why I talk so much about this one-on-one white-glove approach, which is helping them understand where things are headed so that they can make better decisions. Compared to a major, they have less capital, less resources, smaller teams. They have to be more nimble, and the decisions they make have to be right more often. What kind of guidance are you giving them? What does it mean to break and sustain artists, given the way this world’s operating? And what can we be doing with data, our deal-making and with our partners? And then, what are the next, new opportunities? If music is like water, it’s flowing everywhere, and yet it’s not picking up the monetization it should. So trying to find those next, new opportunities.

Is that one of the ideas behind Merlin Connect?

We’re trying to make the ability for startups — pre-seed companies — to be able to more seamlessly tap into music, from a licensing perspective, from an operational perspective, and get value in return for that. But they may not even realize the value of music. We’re also trying to tackle people who may not have thought about music.

I look at so many different types of companies where music could be so valuable to them if they just understood it. We want to make it more seamless, the operations, the licensing, and then there’s an education piece. But it’s not just a license — we’re investing in you as well. You get access to our team, which [collectively] has hundreds of years of music experience with startups about what works and what doesn’t work. You get access to our independent members who love to be on the cutting edge.

We’ve had some really good conversations with some companies now. This is a long-term project — this is our approach now to how we think about the ecosystem and how we nurture it. I’m not going to change the trajectory of every startup just because they have music now, but I think I can fundamentally change the trajectory of so many startups in a way they don’t realize yet.

Is this about finding new growth sectors?

One hundred percent. It’s almost endless, the types of platforms and startups that could benefit from music. And it’s going to take experimentation. You can’t help everything grow, but there’s a lot out there that’s not growing the way it could. And it’s going to benefit Merlin and its members and their labels and artists, but it could have beneficial ramifications for the whole industry as well. If we can help be a part of that, that would be really exciting. 

How have your experiences at Warner and Facebook served you at Merlin?

It gave me the ability to relate to people at different levels in the business, whether it’s a product manager at a digital platform, or an engineer who’s now a founder of a startup, or it’s a member who runs a metal label, or [is] the head of [European indie trade association] IMPALA. I try to see the business through their eyes. I’ve always been on the service side, and that’s always been the through line. People want to know that you understand them, and that they were heard, and that you’re working to do what you can.

When Merlin renewed its Meta partnership this year, you said it was about more than licensing music. What else do you expect of these alliances? 

We don’t think of it as “Let’s come back and kick the tires every few years.” We want to help shape their thinking about music and their understanding of what independents need at an operational level. We want to do the same thing with our partners to create this continual feedback loop and conversation. 

What were your reasons for Merlin’s deals with SoundCloud and Deezer over their proposed changes to the royalty payout model for streaming services? 

We want to make sure no one’s gaming the system. We want to make sure that fraudulent content is not an issue. We want to make sure that artificial streaming is not an issue. We’re absolutely willing to experiment and try out different models. But when you say, “Let’s change the system,” we need to be really careful about two things. One is unintended consequences. And No. 2 is, sometimes what I hear is, “Let’s penalize independents.” Let’s prevent abuse, but let’s be careful. Let’s be incremental to avoid unintended consequences. And let’s not do something that will make it more difficult for independents to operate. It’s already expensive enough to operate in this space, and it’s creating more barriers to entry for those who don’t have the same level of capital to arbitrage against. 

That raises a question. Over the past 10 to 15 years, many of the traditional barriers to the music business have come down. It seems like some of these proposed changes to the model are a bit like “Let’s rebuild some of those walls.” Do you feel like things are too wide open now? Do we actually need barriers to entry? 

When I hear “create more barriers to entry,” I have a little bit of reflex [thinking that means] “Let’s make it more difficult for independents.” At the same time, you want to be supporting quality music. What has happened is technology is outpacing how we operate as humans. I think the biggest challenge music always has is that there is a zero-sum game around some of this. It’s one of the reasons we’re always thinking about creating new incremental revenue sources. 

Where did the idea of Merlin Engage come from, and how have things gone so far? 

Katie Alberts from Reach Records was the first to propose this, and Marie Clausen from Ninja Tune was the second. This is our second year. We’re conscious of not biting off more than we can chew. But what is really great about it is, we’re matching very senior leaders with up-and-coming, next-generation female leaders. And what I find particularly inspiring is that these people who are incredibly busy are willing to put time toward it. The second is, we’re creating another mini community. And it’s global, we’re connecting people from different countries. There’s so much we want to do at Merlin, but this one was just a no-brainer to help move the music industry in a better direction. 

This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024 issue of Billboard magazine.