The cornerstone upon which RuPaul’s Drag Race is built has always been the Lip Sync For Your Life — fans look forward to seeing the queens duke it out in a high-stakes battle-to-the-end in nearly every single episode.
So, what could be more fun than getting to see eight of those lip syncs in a single episode?
On Friday’s episode of Drag Race (aired Feb. 17), the 10 remaining queens entered the proverbial Thunderdome for the series’ third-ever “Lalaparuza” — for the uninitiated, a tournament-style lip-sync battle royale that forces every queen to show off their performance skills.
While All Stars 4’s Lalaparuza offered eliminated queens a chance to return, and season 14’s gave the girls a chance at redemption for one of the worst Snatch Games in the show’s history, season 15’s challenge merely aimed to see which of the girls could take a song and make it completely their own.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Drag Race if there weren’t a few twists and turns involved. From giving one queen the power to pick their opponent and the other the power to choose their song, to the final two being decided in one of the funniest (and shadiest) confessionals of the season, the Lalaparuza managed to entertain and shock viewers — especially after prove lip sync superstar Jax ended up going home.
But of the eight lip syncs fans were treated to on Friday night, which ones stood out as the best of the best? Below, Billboard takes a critical look at all eight performances from season 15 episode 8 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and ranks them from worst to best.
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Two more senators are calling for restrictions on TikTok’s operations in the U.S., citing alleged risks to national security and consumer privacy presented by the Chinese-owned platform.
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In the letter sent Thursday, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) called on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which is currently investigating TikTok’s 2017 merger with Musical.ly, “to swiftly conclude its investigation and impose strict structural restrictions” between the platform and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance — including by “potentially separating” the two companies. The letter was addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary and CFIUS chair Janet Yellen.
In the letter, Blumenthal and Moran cite a December disclosure by ByteDance — reported by The New York Times — that four of its employees obtained the data of several TikTok users, including two journalists, in an effort to locate the sources of suspected leaks to journalists of internal company conversations and documents.
Despite ByteDance’s assertion that it fired the employees involved, Blumenthal and Moran allege that the scheme was in fact perpetrated by a “formal ‘Internal Audit and Risk Control’ team” directed by senior executives, including TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
“The incident also occurred while TikTok’s executives had repeatedly promised that Americans’ personal data was secure against such spying,” the letter reads, citing testimony given by TikTok’s vp/head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, to the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection in October 2021.
The letter goes on to claim that TikTok company engineers “continue to have dangerous access to Americans’ personal data and control over its algorithmic recommendation systems, access that continues enable this spying on journalists.”
The senators cite several more reports to bolster their case, including a December article in The Wall Street Journal reporting that TikTok’s product development and management — including oversight of its algorithmic recommendation system — remains based in China. Another article published by Forbes in August, which reported that roughly 300 current employees at TikTok and ByteDance work or have worked for Chinese propaganda outlets including Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television, is also held up as evidence to support restrictions.
Elsewhere, Blumenthal and Moran cite an October investigation by Consumer Reportsthat found TikTok tracks Americans — including those who don’t use the platform — by embedding “a tracking technology” on partner websites. “While this collection effort is ostensibly an advertising effort by the company, the transmission to TikTok of non-user IP addresses, a unique ID number, and information about what an individual is doing on a site provides a deep understanding of those individuals’ interests, behaviors, and other sensitive matters,” the letter adds.
Despite TikTok’s assurance that it no longer censors videos critical of the Chinese government and other authoritarian regimes, the senators additionally allege that the platform “continues to opaquely demote or remove certain content, including blocking LGBTQ accounts.”
TikTok “is clearly, inextricably dependent on ByteDance for its operations,” the letter concludes, “and therefore beholden to the government of China.”
Thursday’s letter is just the latest in a string of recent condemnations of TikTok by U.S. lawmakers. In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill that prohibits use of the platform by nearly 4 million government employees on devices owned by its agencies, joining at least 27 state governments and several universities that have passed similar measures. The same month, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Flor.), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) introduced a bill that would effectively ban TikTok and any other China-based social media platform from operating in the United States. And earlier this month, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.), pushed Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores over national security concerns, claiming the Chinese Communist Party could “weaponize” the platform against the United States by forcing ByteDance to “surrender Americans’ sensitive data or manipulate the content Americans receive to advance China’s interests.”
These lawmakers clearly weren’t assuaged by TikTok’s announcement in June that it had started routing U.S. user data to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S., instituted audits of its algorithms and established a new department to solely manage U.S. user data for the platform.
Concerns about TikTok have been prevalent in other corners of the West, most prominently in Europe. In January, Zi Chew met with European Union officials over concerns about child safety and data privacy, among other matters. On Friday, TikTok’s general manager of operations in Europe, Rich Waterworth, attempted to allay some of those concerns in a blog post where he noted that the company plans to establish two additional European data centers, citing a commitment “to keeping our European community and their data safe and secure.” He added that the company is “continuing to deliver against” a data governance strategy they set out for Europe last year, which includes plans to further reduce employee access to European data, minimize data flows outside Europe and store European user data locally.
Zi Chew is slated to appear before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 23, when he’s expected to comment on TikTok’s data security and user privacy policies, the app’s impact on children and ties with the Chinese Communist Party.
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The Ledger is a weekly newsletter that covers the financial and economic side of the music business. An abridged version appears at Billboard Pro. Pro subscribers automatically receive The Ledger. Sign up here to receive the newsletter without a Pro subscription.
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Keen observers noticed that last quarter Warner Music Group’s global streaming revenues were down 2.6% year over year, a rare sputter in the music industry’s main engine of growth. The company’s total revenue declined 7.8% as losses in recorded music’s physical and digital revenues couldn’t make up for publishing gains.
On its face, a year-over-year decline in streaming revenue – the driving force behind growth at labels as well as the rise in music catalog valuations – might seem alarming. Declines are routinely seen in download and physical sales. Streaming is typically the dependable bright spot of any earnings report.
The decline was more noticeable when compared to companies that released earnings for the same quarter. Sony Music Entertainment posted strong growth in the same period. SME’s streaming revenue improved 33.2% in its recorded music division and 59.8% in its publishing division. Reservoir Media didn’t show streaming softness last quarter, either. In its recorded music division, digital revenues were up 17% year-over-year. Digital revenues in its publishing division rose 29%.
So, what happened? Some of it is due to a quirk of WMG accounting, some of it is due to WMG, and some of it is due to factors that affect the entire music business.
One factor in WMG’s weak streaming revenue was a shorter quarter: WMG’s last quarter had one fewer week than the prior-year quarter, which gave the company a tough basis for comparison even before other factors could be considered. A 14-week quarter has 7.1% more days to generate income than a 13-week one and that’s a big gap to overcome. Adjusting for that, WMG streaming revenues would have been up 5% year-over-year.
The stronger dollar — WMG’s financial statements are reported in dollars, Sony reports in yen, Universal Music Group in euros — also played a part in the decline. In WMG’s recorded music division, streaming revenues declined 4% as reported but were flat on a constant currency basis (which assumes no change in foreign exchange rates). In its publishing division, streaming revenues grew 13.2% as reported and 16.8% at constant currency.
WMG also blamed the soft streaming numbers on a new release line-up that CFO Eric Levin called “a softer, largely U.S.-based release schedule” that “could roll into our fiscal Q2. But given our release schedule as second half-oriented this year,” he added, “we do feel good about our performance of releases and strength in the second half of the year.”
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Another factor was not specific to WMG: a slowing ad market. Levin called it “a dislocated ad market” and warned “the decline is getting more pronounced.” The decline in ad-supported streaming revenue isn’t a surprise. The Ledger wrote about the soft advertising market in August 2022. Spotify CFO Paul Vogel warned advertising growth in the third quarter would be “slower than we might have forecast earlier in the year.” French music company Believe said “ad-funded streaming activities should be affected by rising inflation and economic uncertainties.”
The streaming market has become bifurcated. Subscription services have fared well through the pandemic and high inflation. Advertising is more closely associated with the direction of the broader economy. Consumers are generally reluctant to cancel entertainment subscriptions, but it’s easier for brands to pull back on ad spending, hurting everything from YouTube to broadcast radio companies like iHeartMedia (and music publishers to a lesser extent). At WMG, “subscription streaming grew by high single digits” but was partially offset by a drop “in the mid-teens” in ad-supported revenue, Levin said. WMG also noticed the slowdown in brands’ spending has created “a somewhat softer market for synch.”
In the fourth quarter, Spotify’s advertising revenue rose 14% compared to an 18% improvement for subscription revenue. With the growth of Spotify’s podcasting business, not all the advertising growth could be attributed to music. Advertising growth lagged subscription growth in the third quarter by three percentage points.
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