Iván Cornejo chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
The voters who determine the 2026 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees have a tough choice ahead of them: narrowing a list of 13 strong candidates in the performing songwriter category down to their top three selections. (They also will be choosing three non-performing songwriters from an equally strong list of 14 contenders.)
The fact that there are exactly 13 nominees in the performing songwriting category – nine individual songwriters and four songwriting teams – may be a good omen for Taylor Swift, who has long said that 13 is her lucky number. Swift received the SHOF’s Hal David Starlight Award, which goes to newish songwriters who show promise, in 2010. She would be the first person to graduate from the Starlight Award (which dates to 2004) to full membership status.
A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song. Swift’s first single, “Tim McGraw,” was released in June 2006. The SHOF gala is typically held in June, so she just makes it.
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Seven of this year’s nominated songwriters or songwriting teams have had one or more No. 1 hits as songwriters on the Billboard Hot 100 – Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings (The Guess Who), Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell (America), Richard Carpenter (Carpenters), Harry Wayne Casey (KC & the Sunshine Band), Kenny Loggins, P!nk and Swift.
Bachman co-wrote The Guess Who’s 1970 No. 1 hit “American Woman” and was the sole writer on Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s 1974 No. 1 hit “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” Casey co-wrote five No. 1 hits for KC & the Sunshine Band from 1975-80 and co-wrote George McCrae’s No. 1 1974 hit “Rock Your Baby.” (Casey co-wrote all of these hits with Richard Finch, but only Casey is nominated for the SHOF.) Bunnell was the sole writer of America’s first No. 1 hit, “A Horse With No Name.” Beckley was the sole writer of their second, “Sister Golden Hair.”
SHOF voters vote for their top three choices in the performing songwriter category, so we made it so you too can vote for your top three choices. So tell us: If you were a Songwriters Hall of Fame voter, which three candidates would you vote for?
Morat chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Los Pleneros de la Cresta chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Laura Pausini chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Danny Ocean chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Jowell & Randy chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Juan Duque chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
Armenta chatted with Billboard’s Griselda Flores & Jessica Roiz on the red carpet of 2025 Billboard’s Latin Music Awards.
On Wednesday (Oct. 22), around fifteen employees in U.S. and Latin American music roles at TikTok and ByteDance across multiple territories were told their positions were terminated, according to sources close to the matter. Two sources say a number of those impacted will have their accounts on the company’s business management platform, Lark, deactivated on Friday (Oct. 24), marking the end of their employment.
More music team members at TikTok in other parts of the world are expected to be laid off soon. One source says that some TikTok employees in the U.K. office were recently notified that they had been terminated — a requirement by U.K. law — foreshadowing another round of layoffs.
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Sources say TikTok will focus on current artist and festival partnerships for now. A number of roles are said to have been eliminated on the music-related partnerships and programming teams.
The people who remain on the music team after the layoffs include Tracy Gardner (global head of music business development), Rachel Dunham (artist partnerships lead), Kat Kernaghan (label partnerships director), Jordan Lowy (global head of music publishing licensing and partnerships), Emily Mitchell (manager, music publishing partnerships) and Graham Pierce (music partnerships Americas, Australia, New Zealand), according to sources.
Six months ago, Gardner took over the post of global head of music business development from longtime leader Ole Obermann. Obermann is now the co-head of Apple Music. Gardner’s team remains unaffected by the layoffs.
This would mark the first round of significant layoffs at TikTok’s music division since 2023, when seven U.S.-based staffers on the artist services team were cut to improve efficiency. Those cuts came one month after the company unveiled its TikTok Music streaming platform in several international markets, though that service was wound down the following year as the company said it would instead focus its efforts on its “Add to Music” app.
A representative for TikTok declined Billboard’s request for comment.
