If you’re mourning the end of SXSW in Austin, don’t fret: SXSW London is just around the corner.

The London iteration of the iconic festival announced the first 10 musical acts for the 2026 event on Thursday (March 19). The festival promises to “[transform] East London into a bold global music village.”

Nigerian Afrobeats artist Tiwa Savage, American rapper Earl Sweatshirt, Nigerian rapper and singer Odumodublvck, American sibling rock band Infinity Song, and Zimbabwean British singer-songwriter Rachel Chinouriri are confirmed to perform at SXSW. Jamaican Guyanese singer-songwriter Amaria BB, Irish producer and DJ Sega Bodega, London-based post-punk band Shame, English indie rock outfit Circa Waves and English producer Fraser T. Smith round out the list of performers announced Thursday. SXSW London also revealed that Industry Pass Holders will have exclusive access to a performance by DJ Pete Tong.

In total, SXSW London will bring together more than 200 artists to perform over the course of the festival. The lineup is curated by a group of 37 co-curators and more than 80 jurors from across the music industry to help pick and judge the lineup.

This is the second time the iconic festival will hit the English capital. Last year, SXSW London’s inaugural lineup included funk legend Nile Rodgers, two-time Grammy-winning Afrobeats singer Tems and Irish rock band Florence Road.

SXSW London 2026 will take over East London’s Shoreditch neighborhood from June 1 to June 6. Music wristbands for the festival are available here with prices starting at £25 for a one-day wristband, or £79 for the full duration of the festival.

Billboard parent company Penske Media acquired a majority stake in SXSW in 2023.

Almost five years after collecting best newcomer honors at the 2021 ARIA Awards, Budjerah will showcase his talents with a debut full-length album, Gentleman.

Produced by Om’Mas Keith (Frank Ocean), the collection is due out Friday, July 24 through Warner Music Australia, and via Warner Records in the United States, through a partnership struck in 2021 to break the soul-pop singer there.

Gentleman is led by the recently-released track “Want You Back,” and the title track, which arrives today.

The album is “inspired by who I wanted to be when I was growing up,” explains the Australian singer and songwriter. “This album was almost a four-year process for me. Between my life at home and life on the road, I experienced so much change and growth. Chasing my dreams I faced new challenges which helped me understand who I wanted to be. Every song on this album holds a piece of me. I hope little Budjerah is proud.”

Budjerah (full name: Budjerah Julum Slabb) is no mystery to the Australian music community. The proud Coodjinburra man with the golden voice is one of the most promising artists in his homeland, with runs on the board to prove it.

Hailing from Fingal Head, New South Wales, Budjerah dropped his self-titled EP in 2021 and in the same year became the inaugural winner of the Michael Gudinski prize, during a lockdown edition of the ARIAs. The following year, he collected his first APRA Music Award for most performed R&B/soul work of the year for “Higher” with Matt Corby, and doubled up with the 2022 ARIA Award for best soul/R&B release.

On the live front, Budjerah supported Ed Sheeran on the Englishman’s 2023 stadium tour, and jumped on a remix of Sheeran’s “2step.” All told, Budjerah’s career streams top 60 million, all of it before the release of his debut album. In 2023, he signed with United Talent Agency (UTA) for representation in the Americas. National headline tours have followed.

Ahead of today’s album announcement, Budjerah presented the project Wednesday afternoon (March 18), the day after his birthday, with a showcase at Lazybones Lounge, in Sydney’s inner-west suburb Marrickville.

Dan Rosen, president, Warner Music Australasia & Southeast Asia, made it official: we’re entering “the era of the Gentleman.” The album, he told industry guests, “is going to be a defining moment in Australian music. We first met Budjerah six years ago with a voice that stopped the nation, a once in a generation talent.” This is a “man who is finally stepping into his power and his full capacity as an artist.”

The 24-year-old artist went on to perform cuts from the forthcoming album, including the Diane Warren-written closer “Even At My Worst,” and the 2023 single “Therapy,” which is platinum-certified in Australia and boasts almost 19 million streams on Spotify.

“Gentleman” was written by songwriters Autumn Rowe (Alexis Jordan, Kylie Minogue), Kizzo Keaz (Jon Batiste, Ne-Yo), and Philip Lawrence (Bruno Mars), and has a nostalgic kick. That was by design. “You have to be a gentleman and make sure your girl is treated right,” Budjerah explains of the new tune. “I grew up around a lot of old people, so I was influenced by the music they played as well as watching how they treated each other, and that is what this song is about.”

Check out the Gentleman tracklist below and pre-order here.

​1. Gentleman
​2. Want You Back
​3. I Only Remember Your Name
​4. Competition
​5. Could I Be
​6. Sinner
​7. Pretty
​8. Hard Time
​9. Lonely
​10. Let Me Know
​11. Even At My Worst

SYDNEY — Australia’s recorded music industry posted a gain of just 1.4% to A$727 million ($512 million) in 2025, according to ARIA, a rate of growth that was considerably slower than the global result.

The total wholesale sum is the largest ever reported, for the seventh consecutive year of upward progress, and is thanks to the uptick in consumer appetite for CDs, which added almost A$5 million ($3.5 million) in value for the period, to $20.9 million (or $14.7 million up 29%), and the income from subscription platforms, the dominant format which posted a year-on-year lift of about A$7 million ($5 million), to $516 million ($363 million), up 1.4%.

Growth is good. And in a time of economic uncertainty, any growth is welcome. The rate of growth, and the slowdown in the streaming space (ad supported models were roughly flat, posting a 0.4% lift to A$69.9 million or $49 million) is surely a concern.

Overnight, with the presentation in London of the Global Music Report 2026 – State of the Industry, the IFPI reported music revenue grew to US$31.7 billion worldwide in 2025, up 6.4% year-on-year. China was a standout, posting revenue growth of 20.1% and leapfrogging Germany as the fourth largest global market.

Australia was nudged out of the top 10 in 2024, and doesn’t appear to be heading back into the top tier anytime soon, as markets with greater populations, including Mexico, clamor to streaming brands.

“A seventh consecutive year of growth reflects the enduring connection Australians have with music, and the sustained investment of our record labels in developing and backing artists,” explains ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd. “While the pace of growth eased last year as streaming markets mature, the surge in physical sales shows that fans want to engage with music in deeper, more tangible ways.”

Australia isn’t alone. That slowed but sustained growth is a pattern seen in other mature recorded music markets across Europe (Germany +1.7%, France +3.7%) and the United Kingdom (U.K. +4.8%).

“We are also seeing the rapid development of artificial intelligence globally. AI presents genuine new opportunities for the music industry – and AI licensing deals are emerging with major and independent labels and rightsholders globally – but these opportunities must be built on a foundation of  consent, transparency, and fair compensation for artists and rights holders,” Herd continues.

Australia’s copyright law is “the foundation for innovative technological development and strong local culture, and ARIA will continue to advocate strongly against threats to dismantle our copyright framework in the interests of a small number of major international AI tech companies.”

Meanwhile, the wax revolution continues. The vinyl album format in Australia grew 4.1% in revenue to A$46.3 million ($32 million) in 2025, ARIA reports, with more than 1.2 million shipped units. Vinyl now accounts for more than two-thirds of all physical revenue (68.2%).

Breaking new Australian music locally and earning a living as an artist has “never been harder,” ARIA’s Herd asserts. “Every new release enters an increasingly crowded global landscape, but the success of artists like Amyl and The Sniffers, Ninajirachi, Dom Dolla, and Troye Sivan — all recognized at the 2025 ARIA Awards — proves Australian artists can cut through anywhere in the world. We have extraordinary talent coming through at every level, and our domestic policy settings should reflect and support that.”

Removing the “arcane and deeply unfair statutory 1% cap and ABC fixed price on radio recording royalties would ensure recording artists are fairly compensated in their home radio market and send a clear signal that Australia backs its creators,” Herd continues. It has never been a “more important time to invest in and protect local culture.”

Iron Maiden’s journey from the East End of London to a stadium near you is captured in all its heavy metal glory for Burning Ambition, the trailer for which is now live.

The official Iron Maiden documentary is due out in cinemas May 7, via Universal Pictures, tracking the band’s incredible, ongoing journey, and myriad challenges along the way.

“If you’re an Iron Maiden fan,” says frontman Bruce Dickinson at the top, a rallying cry from the stage, “you’re part of one family, my friends.”

Directed by Malcolm Venville (Churchill at War) and produced by Dominic Freeman (Spirits in the Forest – A Depeche Mode Film), the film charts five decades of Iron Maiden, featuring unprecedented access to heavy metal juggernaut’s archives, plus interviews with bandmembers, actor Javier Bardem, artists Lars Ulrich, Chuck D, and Tom Morello, and an army of battle-hardened super fans from around the globe.

In the new clip, Bardem, wearing a black Maiden shirt, refers to the rockers as “Gods of metal,” while Chuck D remarks, “this group created its own universe.”

Formed in East London in 1975, Iron Maiden are giants of their scene, with 17 studio albums, over 100 million records sold, and more than 2,500 performances across 64 countries. The road to the top hasn’t been linear. Along the way, the rockers have endured lineup changes, burnout, health problems.

The fans never gave up, the music never stopped, and the story kept building. Arguably, the band, and their iconic mascot Eddie, are now as popular as ever.  

2025 marked the band’s official 50th year and is being celebrated with the two-year world tour Run For Your Lives, along with a range of merch and the release of their first-ever official hardcover visual history book, Infinite Dreams. To top it off, the metal legends are nominated for the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

A separate film about the life and health struggles of early Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno will be released this summer, through Cleopatra Entertainment. Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer is directed by Wes Orshoski (Lemmy), who shot the film in England, Croatia, Brazil and the United States, and completed it shortly before Di’Anno’s death in October 2023, aged 66.

Tickets are available here for Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition. Watch the trailer in full below.

Vince Gill was 50 years old when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, making him the second-youngest person to achieve the honor. Now, he’s advocating for an even younger star to make the cut.

In a recent episode of Rolling Stone‘s podcast Nashville Now, Gill talked about his 2007 induction into the Hall. At the time, he says he feared that the honor came too soon.

“I was grateful. There was a part of me that kind of thought, ‘A little early,’ honestly,” Gill says in the interview. Once he was inducted, he committed himself to working even harder on his craft. “What I wanted to do after the fact was earn it.”

Gill has certainly made good on this commitment. Over the course of his 50-year career, the “Go Rest High on That Mountain” singer has amassed 63 Billboard Hot Country Songs hits, five of which topped the chart. A whopping 16 of his albums have hit the Billboard 200. Now, as Gill works on his series of EPs, 50 Years From Home, he is looking at the success of an artist who came after him.

Another all-time chart-topper, Taylor Swift could be eligible for the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Modern Era category this year. To be inducted, the category requires “20-plus years since national prominence.” Swift’s debut self-titled album featuring her breakthrough single “Tim McGraw” was released in 2006, making this year the first she may be eligible, depending on the definition of “national prominence.”

No stranger to the Hall, Gill believes that Swift will one day be inducted into it. “I think they’ll put her in there. Why wouldn’t you?” he says. He also reveals that she’s one of the Country Music Hall of Fame’s biggest donors. “I’m crazy about her. I fully support that.”

If Swift, who is currently 36 years old, were to be inducted into the Hall this year or any time in the next decade, she would be the youngest person to ever do so. There’s a tie for current youngest: Johnny Cash and Eddy Arnold were both inducted at age 48.