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Get ready for a Furby revival. The plushy toy that caused stampedes (and hundreds of fights) in the late ‘90s, will be reintroduced to a new generation for its 25th anniversary, Hasbro announced Thursday (June 22).
“Following its craze-inducing launch in 1998, Furby has taken the world by storm, impacting every corner of the culture zeitgeist, from music to television and film,” said Kristin McKay, vp & general manager, Hasbro fashion & preschool. “For the brand’s 25th anniversary, we wanted to ignite the same excitement for this new generation by harnessing Furby’s power of nostalgia while giving Gen Alpha everything they crave.”
Just how big was Furby mania? The robotic toy, introduced by Hasbro’s Tiger Electronics imprint, became an instant fan favorite selling over 40 million units in the first three years. The Furby franchise expanded to Furby Babies and Furby Friends including Gizmo Furby (stream Gremlins here). After sales stalled, Furby was revived in 2005 and again in 2012.
The new and improved Furby — available in purple and coral — retails for $69.99 at Amazon and will be released to other major retailers on July 15. Furby is designed for kids ages 6 and up, but ’90s babies will enjoy the nostalgia.
Despite new features such as five voice-activated modes and over 600 responses, including lights, sounds and 10 “unique songs,” the cuddly, interactive toy has the same bug-eyed design as its predecessor — but with a few, colorful updates.
Coral Furby features shades of pink fur, turquoise ears and big, black eyes with gold stars in them. Purple Furby has a similar look with turquoise fur highlights, turquoise ears and the signature big eyes, but with pink hearts in them.
Furby responds to hugs, pats, belly tickles, shaking, and you can feed it a toy pizza charm. The fuzzy creature can tell your fortune, host a mini dance party or light show and respond to other commands such as “Copy Cat” and “Let’s Chill.” Whatever it takes to match your mood, Furby will make it happen.
Purchase your furry bestie below.
Buy: Furby Coral, 15 Fashion Accessories, Interactive Plush Toys $69.99
Peso Pluma‘s Génesis is here, just a week after he announced a new album was coming. The 14-track set features collaborations with música Mexicana stars such as Natanael Cano, Junior H and Luis R Conriquez. It also includes previously released songs such as “Rosa Pastel” with Jasiel Nuñez, the Eladio Carrión-assisted “77” and “Bye.”
“I want to have my album be welcomed by the people, I want it to have the same streams as singles do,” the Mexican chart-topping artist — whose previously released albums include Ah Y Qué? and Efectos Secundarios — told Billboard. “I’m showing people another part of La Doble P.”
Génesis drops as Peso Pluma continues to make history on the charts. Most recently, the “Por Las Noches” singer became the first act to lead the Billboard Global 200 and the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. simultaneously with different songs: Eslabon Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola” and “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 55,” his Bizarrap-produced hit song. “Ella Baila Sola” spent five weeks atop the Billboard Global 200, becoming the ranking’s first leader for the regional Mexican genre.
About his rapid seismic rise, Peso (born Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija) has said, “I knew this was gonna happen, but I didn’t know at what level and what speed. I knew I was gonna do good in Mexico and the Spanish-speaking countries, but this went worldwide [so fast]. I’m thankful for that.”
The 24-year-old singer-songwriter is currently on a U.S. tour, produced by Live Nation, that kicked off in April and will make stops in Nashville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Listen to Génesis in full below.
Summer may have just started, but the Jonas Brothers are ready to welcome Kevin Jonas’ two daughters back to school with an adorable new The Children’s Place campaign.
In the ad released on Thursday (June 22), Kevin Jonas is seen FaceTiming his wife Danielle and the couple’s two daughters, nine-year-old Alena and six-year-old Valentina. “I just want to wish you an amazing first day of school,” Kevin tells his girls before Joe Jonas steps into the shot.
“Hey, Alena, you’re going to have a great day,” Joe assures, before Nick Jonas adds, “Don’t forget to dream big.”
A fantasy sequence then starts to the tune of the Jonas Brothers’ The Album track, “Celebrate!” Alena and Valentina are seen decked out in their best The Children’s Place outfits, as the sisters go on to have the best first day of school, complete with winning a talent show, eating pizza and cupcakes for lunch, and Kevin Jonas appearing for Career Day before taking the students over to the gym for a Jonas Brothers concert.
In addition to the adorable advertisement, the JoBros and The Children’s Place are teaming up for a contest in which one school will be gifted a $100,000 grant and also have the opportunity to attend a private Jonas Brothers concert at a secret location in New Jersey. Parents with children in grades K-8 who are enrolled in a non-tuition-based school for the 2023-2024 school year can nominate their child’s school through The Children’s Place mobile app until the contest wraps on July 30.
Watch the new advertisement starring Alena and Valentina below.
The Copyright Royalty Board issued its final determination on Thursday (June 22) for songwriters’ and publishers’ U.S. streaming royalty rates during the Phonorecords III period of 2018 to 2022, reaffirming its previous decision to increase the rates 44% incrementally.
This new filing triggers the start of a complicated reconciliation process to account for the past five years of royalties under the new rates. Once the Federal Register publishes the determination — which is expected within the next 60 days — streamers and publishers have six months to review their accounting for the period and rectify any additional royalties owed to the other party. This is likely result in a financial boost for the music business. Any adjusted payments from either side that lag behind this six month period will result in fines.
This final determination also triggers a 30 day clock, permitting participants in the CRB proceedings to file an appeal with the DC circuit court. Given that this verdict has already taken five years to be reached, however, sources close to the involved participants tell Billboard it’s unlikely any appeals will be filed.
Participants in the Phono III remand proceeding include National Music Publishers’ Association, Nashville Songwriters Association International, songwriter George Johnson, Spotify, Pandora, Google and Amazon.
As previously reported, the ruling increases royalties each year during the five-year period — from 11.4% to 15.1% of service revenue by 2022 — but also affirmed key requests from streaming services during their lengthy appeal, limiting royalties based on total content cost (TCC) and reinstating a rate ceiling step in the formula.
Proceedings to decide how to pay songwriters and publishers for U.S. mechanicals during 2018-2022 began over five years ago. In 2018, a CRB determination set the headline rate moving upwards from 10.5% of a streamer’s revenue in 2018 to 15.1% in 2022 and increased the subscriber count calculations for discounted family and student plans to 1.5 times and 0.5 times, respectively.
The 2018 determination also removed the publishing rate ceiling mechanism that prevents the publishers from automatically benefiting with higher payments when their label counterparts are able to negotiate higher rates for their master recordings. Many of the details from the previous determination for Phono III were especially favorable to the music business, so streaming services took issue with it, especially its removal of the rate ceiling.
Hoping to regain some of the more streamer-friendly stipulations in Phono II, Spotify, Pandora, Google and Amazon launched an appeal in early 2019 that was successful and resulted in a “remand” process that dragged on until now. Apple did not participate in the appeal.
UPDATE: This story was updated June 22 at 9:15 p.m. EST to correct that the Federal Register must first publish the determination before the six-month countdown begins for the involved parties to rectify any payment issues.
Back during the 2019 battle over masters between Taylor Swift and Scooter Braun, Kelly Clarkson took to Twitter to suggest that the pop superstar re-record the albums she doesn’t own.
“@taylorswift13 just a thought, U should go in & re-record all the songs that U don’t own the masters on exactly how U did them but put brand new art & some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions,” she wrote at the time, and in a new SiriusXM interview on Thursday (June 23), Clarkson reflected on her four-year-old tweet.
“I think Scooter took offense to it … we ran into each other, and he reached out at the time to my manager,” she told host Andy Cohen. “I was like, ‘It wasn’t anything against him.’ When she came out and said that and I heard about it, I was like, ‘Whatever. Re-record them. Your fans will support you.’ Uh, they did! She has like every top record right now in the charts!”
She added that at the time, she didn’t know much about the situation in which Braun acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records Label Group and Swift’s catalog for $300 million. Braun later sold Swift’s masters in 2020, prompting Swift to begin the process of re-recording her first six Big Machine albums. “All I heard was, ‘Man, I really want to own.’ […] She writes everything! It’s so important to her. She’s a businesswoman,” Clarkson said. “It felt wrong that she didn’t have the opportunity, right? That’s the thing. If you have the opportunity and you choose to not pay that much money, that’s one thing, but to not have the opportunity to own something that is really important to you — I’m not that artist. I don’t care like what I own. I’m not a businesswoman at all.”
Clarkson concluded by noting that Swift is a “genius,” not only for re-recording her albums but also for setting out on her massive The Eras tour. When asked if she was “thanked” by Swift for her idea, Clarkson replied, “I think she is brilliant. She would’ve come up with that on her own and she maybe already had before I even tweeted it.”
Watch the clip below.
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