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If HUNTR/X and the Saja Boys have gone triple Platinum in your child’s bedroom, it’s likely they’re going to go crazy over this new Yoto offering.

The parent-owned and operated children’s audio tech company just dropped a KPop Demon Hunters official soundtrack card, giving your kids the freedom to listen to top tracks such as “How It’s Done,” “Golden,” “Soda Pop” and “Your Idol” without a screen. The product is available to shop now on Yoto’s website. All you need is the newly launched soundtrack card, retailing for $14.99, and one of Yoto’s audio players to tune into the hit film’s full soundtrack.

The soundtrack card is 37 minutes long, spanning the Netflix original’s full soundtrack from start to finish. Kids can dance or sing along with the power to press play all on their own, no ads or screentime included, fixing their full focus on the music.

Yoto Device Lets Kids Play 'KPop Demon Hunters' Music: Where to Buy

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Yoto Card

A physical card that allows Yoto users to play songs from the film.


The Yoto Player is sort of like a boombox, made for tiny hands and ears ages 3 to 12+. It comes in two sizes, Yoto Player (3rd Generation) for $109.99, and the more compact Yoto Mini for $79.99. While there are some differences in the sizes, the biggest thing to note is that the 3rd Generation produces acoustically engineered stereo sound, while the mini produces mono sound, meaning a single-channel audio format. Stereo uses two channels to create a room-filling kind of sound, giving your audio a more dynamic feel. If you or your child are a stickler for good audio, go for the 3rd Gen Yoto Player.

In general, both are perfect for listening to music, audiobooks and so much more. The 3rd Gen is best for listening around the home, while the mini is best for listening on the go. The 3rd Gen is equipped with more features than its tiny companion, including a nightlight, clock and a room thermistor. The battery life on the bigger Yoto is also larger, lasting up to 24 hours on a single charge, while the mini will last up to 14 hours. Both products can be hooked up to wired headphones. You can also choose the color of your Yoto device on the website.

Yoto Device Lets Kids Play 'KPop Demon Hunters' Music: Where to Buy

Yoto Player

A Yoto audio player.


The beauty of this product is giving your children independence to press play all on their own, while limiting the amount of screen time they consume in a day. It keeps your child occupied with an interactive physical card element that can also be a sort of collection if you gather enough.

Kota the Friend has announced that he will be the halftime performer for the Brooklyn Nets opening hometown game at Barclays Center.

In an exclusive with Billboard, Kota revealed on Thursday (Oct. 16) that he will serve as the halftime performer during the Nets opening game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Oct. 24.

“Performing at the Brooklyn Nets home opener feels like a full-circle moment,” Kota tells Billboard in a statement. “It’s crazy because I went to high school literally just a few blocks away in one direction, and I grew up just blocks away in the other direction, at a time when I was dreaming big and making music in my room. Being on the Barclays Center court right here in my hometown — that’s what Brooklyn energy is all about.”

While the Nets have always taken pride in elevating local talent and spotlighting artists with direct ties to the borough, Kota’s performance will come as part of a broad strategy this season to celebrate Brooklyn in a massive way. The Nets announced they’re collaborating with the estate of The Notorious B.I.G. on a series of Biggie Nights for this season. The campaign will kick off on Nov. 11 at Barclays Center, with special musical performances handpicked by the estate.

“Being in Brooklyn, Biggie’s influence was everywhere — he made you believe you could make it from right here in Brooklyn,” Kota continues. “I wrote ‘Go Brooklyn’ as an ode to the city that shaped me, and we shot parts of the video around the neighborhood, including outside Barclays. So this feels like coming home in every way.”

Past hometown halftime performers have included other New York hip-hop powerhouse’s such as Saint JHN, Joey Bada$$, Capella Grey, Young M.A., Busta Rhymes, Lil’ Kim, Dave East, Method Man, M.O.P. and Maino.

The halftime performance caps off a stellar year for Kota the Friend, who dropped off his latest album, No Rap On Sunday, back in June, and will wrap up his tour with a hometown Brooklyn performance at Williamsburg Music Hall on Thursday.

Check out the official flyer for his performance below:

Kota The Friend

Kota The Friend

Courtesy


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VIBE is joining forces with Rolling Stone, Billboard can exclusively announce on Thursday (Oct. 16).

VIBE will bolster Rolling Stone‘s hip-hop coverage and allow the brand to go deeper in the genre. VIBE will also print special collector’s editions of the magazine and launch a new interview series that spotlights in-depth conversations with the most important figures, ranging from musicians to superstar athletes and fashion icons.

“We are thrilled to announce that VIBE is joining forces with Rolling Stone,” said Julian Holguin, CEO of Rolling Stone. “This historic team-up will enable Rolling Stone to level up the publication’s hip-hop and R&B coverage, allowing RS to dive deeper into the culture. As part of this move, Rolling Stone will invest in VIBE across video, podcasts, long-form journalism, social media and experiential opportunities – all areas where Rolling Stone is a market leader. VIBE will continue to power cultural conversations and reestablish itself as a driving force for commentary and reporting. Our goal is to continue the mission VIBE was founded on while leveraging Rolling Stone to amplify its presence across all platforms.”

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Datwon Thomas, VIBE’s longtime editor-in-chief, is being brought in as Strategic Advisor to help with the transition. “Coming back to VIBE in this role is deeply meaningful to me and I am proud to remain connected to such an iconic brand that has been such a big part of my life,” he says. “The opportunity to help guide VIBE into the next phase of its growth and continued legacy is an honor.”

VIBE and Rolling Stone are actively looking to fill positions, including a new head of the VIBE brand, a video/podcast host and an events producer.

Both Rolling Stone and VIBE are part of Penske Media Corporation, which is also Billboard‘s parent company.


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Akademiks believes Drake needs to leave his battle with Kendrick Lamar in the past, and stop dissing the “Not Like Us” rapper in his future music.

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Ak sat down with VLADTV for an interview posted Oct. 14, during which he explained why he told Drake to stop addressing Kendrick and the battle on his upcoming album, although he doesn’t think Drizzy will take his advice.

“When I mean leave him alone, we’ve got to leave the moment. There’s no more direct engaging. There ain’t no more with diss songs. It’s over,” Akademiks said. “He’s still gotta sneak diss him. It’s gotta be the Jay-Z approach.”

He continued: “After this battle, it should be Drake’s last. Like, why engage with rappers? [In] any of these situations, you have nothing to gain. Would you go on a business deal you got nothing to gain?”

Vlad pushed back, pointing to how Drake’s battle with Meek Mill and his vicious “Back to Back” hit diss song elevated his career to another level in 2015. “It was a pivotal moment,” Vlad said. “It was the biggest hit diss song of all time at that point.”

Ultimately, Akademiks doesn’t believe that Drake should be battling anyone, as he has the most to lose. “When you look at Drake’s career as a whole, why would he engage? It’s over,” he said. “He’s already solidified.”

After having tension for over a decade, Drake and Kendrick’s feud exploded in 2024 with Lamar’s bristling assist on Future’s “Like That.” Throughout April and into May last year, the two exchanged scathing diss tracks — eight in total — with K. Dot’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Not Like Us” serving as the fatal blow.

Watch AKademiks’ interview below:


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With just a few weeks left on what Garbage say is their final headlining North American tour, singer Shirley Manson is saying the loud part even louder. During a show in Denver on Sunday (Oct. 12), the outspoken vocalist explained to the crowd why the long-running group does not plan to mount such a tour again, telling fans at the Mission Ballroom, “It has become entirely unsustainable for a band like us to come and tour anywhere except the coasts.”

Manson then laid out why the group feel that way in a broadside against what she described as the wild inequality in streaming payments to non-superstar working musicians, at a time when she said some pop stars are making “billions and billions and billions of dollars,” while the majority are just getting by.

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“Most of the music industry is not made of these big pop stars. They’re made of working musicians,” Manson said. “And this is not a pity party for us. This is an alarm call for all the young generations of musicians who are in our wake and we feel duty bound to speak up for because there’s nobody speaking up for them,” she added to loud applause from the audience.

“The average musician makes $12 a month on Spotify,” she said, noting she has brought the matter up “every night” on the tour as a way to point out that there is no governmental body or union for musicians fighting to help young acts get paid.

“They’re sleeping in their vans. They’re holding down numerous jobs. And they’re playing their guts out every night,” Manson said of road dog touring acts. “The fact that they are not even able to sell a record and it’s taken from them by rich motherf–ers on streaming platforms who get paid royally by record labels, who get paid royally by Ticketmaster, who get paid royally by merch companies, who get paid royally — the list goes on and on and on. There’s accountants, there’s lawyers, they’re all f–king getting paid, except for the musician.”

At press time a spokesperson for Spotify had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment. In 2024, Billboard reported that Spotify paid out nearly $4.5 billion to independent rights holders in 2023, making up almost half of the more than $9 billion the streaming service paid to all labels and publishers that year.

After 30 years of road work, Garbage — which released its eighth studio album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light in May on BMG — are in the midst of their Happy Endings Tour, which will play the Knitting Factory in Boise, Idaho on Friday (Oct. 17) and wind down its North American run on Nov. 14 at the Corona Capital festival in Mexico City.

Manson said she brings up the inequity every night, because “you are the ones who will lose out on a generation of esoteric, risk-taking, creative, adventurous weirdos, rebels, agitators, provocateurs. You’re gonna get f–king white bread.”

Billboard’s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. For tickets and more information, click here.


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AXS is bolstering its executive team with two major technology appointments.

The ticketing and live event technology company owned by AEG has named Nikhil Bobde as chief technology officer and Alex Hazboun as chief innovation officer, signaling a sharpened focus on platform scalability, AI-driven personalization, and infrastructure growth. Bobde will report directly to CEO Bryan Perez, while Hazboun will report to Bobde in the newly created innovation role.

“These appointments accelerate our ability to deliver the most secure, personalized, and seamless live event experiences,” Perez said. “Together with our product leadership, AXS is better positioned than ever to lead the future of ticketing.”

The executive shake-up builds on a period of strong momentum for AXS, which has invested heavily in upgrading its technology stack and user experience. Recent initiatives include platform enhancements designed to strengthen trust, stability, and scalability across its global network — spanning tens of millions of transactions each year.

Under Bobde’s leadership, the company will open a new Bay Area office aimed at attracting top-tier engineering talent. “I’m excited to join AXS at such a transformative moment,” Bobde said. “Live events create some of life’s most meaningful experiences, and AXS has the strategy and technology to redefine how fans connect with those moments.”

Bobde brings more than two decades of experience from Microsoft, Meta, and Thumbtack, where he led large-scale consumer tech operations. At Meta, he helped grow Facebook Video and Messenger to hundreds of millions of users and played a key role in building the infrastructure behind Instagram and Facebook — expertise that now translates to powering the live-event ecosystem.

As Chief Innovation Officer, Hazboun will lead a dedicated team exploring next-generation technologies and architecture designed to keep AXS ahead of industry trends. The veteran executive has been instrumental in shaping AXS’s ticketing platform since its inception, overseeing engineering, product, and operations through several global expansions.

“I’m thrilled to dedicate my focus to innovation,” Hazboun said. “We are building solutions that will transform ticketing and create entirely new opportunities for fans, artists, venues, and teams.”

For AXS, the moves signal not just a deep investment in technology but a cultural evolution — one that aligns its Silicon Valley engineering mindset with its live entertainment DNA. The company, a key rival to Ticketmaster and Eventim in the global ticketing landscape, continues to expand its international footprint, including recent partnerships in Singapore and Japan.

With Bobde and Hazboun now leading the company’s next tech phase, AXS is positioning itself at the intersection of live entertainment and digital innovation — aiming to define what the future of ticketing will look like for fans around the world.


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Jon M. Chu showed a lot of courage when reaching out to the person who voices the Cowardly Lion in Wicked: For Good, with the director revealing that he simply slid into the famous actor’s DMs.

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In an interview with Deadline published Thursday (Oct. 16), Chu teased that fans can expect a very familiar voice when Lion first speaks in the November-slated sequel to 2024’s Wicked. According to the filmmaker, he had a particular performer in mind — so he sent him a message on Instagram.

“I was like, ‘It’s not a ton of lines, but maybe you have a little time,’” Chu told the publication. “‘I know you’re busy. I’ll come to you.’ He was like, ‘Why the f–k not? Let’s go!’ And then we went ahead and recorded the lines.”

While playing coy about whose voice will be featured, Chu added, “Man, wait until the red carpet when the actor who gave us the Cowardly Lion’s voice steps foot on it. It’ll be wild.”

Released in November 2024, the first Wicked film was a major box-office success. It quickly became the highest grossing adaptation of a Broadway musical in history, and its soundtrack scored a historic debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.

The epic saga will conclude on Nov. 21, when Part 2 arrives in theaters. The second film will feature two new tracks, with leading ladies Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo each singing one of them.

Of Grande’s, which is titled “Girl in the Bubble,” Chu told Deadline, “This movie had to be about the courage of someone popping their own bubble, a bubble of privilege or their bubble of safety. … How are the decisions each of them made affecting the other in their journey?”


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Finance platform beatBread said on Thursday it is launching a $100 million fund to support independent labels and distributors as the indie sector faces consolidation driven by larger music companies and big investors.

The Global Independence Fund provides a pool of dedicated capital for loans to indie companies seeking to grow and remain autonomous. Labels can tap the fund to borrow against their catalogs, get financing for the advances they use to land new artists, or to cover other discretionary business needs.

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The fund comes together just months after beatBread announced it secured $124 million from equity investors and loans and that its co-founder and CEO Peter Sinclair died, both in August.

The fund aims to strengthen the indie sector following efforts by major music companies to expand their market share by bringing indie labels and distributors under their umbrella, the company said in a statement. The largest of these deals — Universal Music Group’s planned acquisition of Downtown — is facing regulatory scrutiny by Europe’s antitrust authorities with their decision on whether to allow the deal to proceed expected around the year’s end.

“For too long, independent labels have had to play by rules set by incumbents, where access to capital comes at the cost of control, and the opportunity to sign and support artists is also limited by access to capital, even when those distributors or independent labels may otherwise be in the very best position to develop, market and support a given artist,” Matthew Tilley, beatBread’s head of artist & industry development, said in a statement. “The Global Independence Fund is one element in the ongoing fight to change that.” 

Labels who are also members of the indie trade groups AIM, AIM Ireland, WIN and IMPALA are offered access to OpenPlay, a technology platform for managing and monetizing music assets, and all labels who borrow from this fund are eligible for co-investments from beatBread’s funding network, the company said in a statement.

Noemi Planas, head of the international trade group for independent music companies WIN, applauded the launch of the fund for adding to artists’ options.

“The future of music should be shaped by the diversity, creativity, and resilience of independent labels and artists,” Planas said. “Expanding access and choice of funding options helps make that future a reality.” 

Kali Uchis has never been one to follow the rules. From the start of her career, the Colombian-American singer/songwriter has carved her own path, unabashedly blending and bending musical genres — all while rejecting the notion that she had to conform to a single language or style to succeed. Her unrelenting commitment to individuality, however, hasn’t always been embraced, but it has ultimately cemented her as one of music’s most compelling innovators.

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“I had a lot of doors closed in my face, and I had a lot of opportunities missed because I feel like nobody ever thought that this would get to this point,” Uchis says in her Billboard cover story. “A word that people used a lot was ‘unique.’ At the time, those aesthetics weren’t really popular. … I don’t think that people were ready for what I was doing.”

She reflects on those early struggles with a sense of pride and clarity, knowing that her refusal to compromise has brought her to the top of the Billboard charts and sold-out arenas.

“People kept telling me to stick to English, that it was easier to sell music that way,” she admits. “I always felt that [not] utilizing everything that God gave me into my art is the same as spitting in God’s face. … Why would God have made me with this duality if I wasn’t meant to project it into my art and use it to inspire other people and to create with all of this that I have?”

The hitmaker graces Billboard‘s latest cover story, revealed on Thursday (Oct. 16). The candid interview serves as a preview of her upcoming Superstar Q&A at Billboard Latin Music Week 2025, set to kick off Oct. 20 at The Fillmore Miami Beach. Her one-on-one conversation with Billboard Español‘s Isabela Raygoza is set for Tuesday, Oct. 21.

The full programming schedule and ticket sales are available at BillboardLatinMusicWeek.com.


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Ty Dolla $ign takes Billboard out to West Hollywood’s Casa Madera and gives his tips and tricks to becoming a tycoon. Host Jerah Milligan talks to him about everything from “Toot It and Boot It” to his new album Tycoon, to playing golf with Tom Brady and Larry David. 

Jerah Milligan: Sorry. That title of that song is so funny to me. “Nobody Flew Her Out,” it’s such a very specific …

Ty Dolla $ign: Nobody flew her out, bro. Hi, everyone. I’m Ty Dollar $ign and I’m taking Billboard out to my favorite spot.

Yo, my man. Thank you for coming.

Yes, sir, good to see you. 

I heard this your spot, man.

Yeah, man, I’m always here. It’s my brother Sasha spot. Actually, it’s called Casa Madera here in West Hollywood, Calif., home of the motherf–kin’ dollar sign,

OK. 

Tycoon.

And I heard, I heard all this on you, right?

Yeah, for sure. 

That’s why I got my drink early. 

Enjoy yourself, brother.

Yo, so you got me out here in West Hollywood, like the fanciest part of West Hollywood. Is this, like the start of a night out?

Yeah, it could be. You can even pregame before this. But this is one of the nicest dinners I feel like the city has to offer. I’m hungry.

Oh yeah, we should get food. Yeah, I’m gonna do the chicken. 

I’ll do that chicken as well. I’m going to get the hamachi serrano, that hummus. I want to get that Yucatan salad.

Yep, all right, let me get the red rice. OK, cool. Let me do that. Let me do that. So that’s tycoon s–t we just did. Is that what that was? 

Yeah. 

I’m learning y’all, y’all see that? Thank you so much.

My issue is like, when I come here, when I go to most restaurants, I need to bring way more people like a bunch say, just bring a nice, beautiful lady. It’s like, I want to … like how I eat, I like the fish, I like the steak and the chicken and the side and the salad and the appetizer. I just want to taste. It’s not that I’m gonna eat the whole thing, but I just want to taste. And I tend to like, have a lot of leftovers.

My question is, is it all for you, or is it like, “Hey, I’m gonna get this for the table?” 

I get it for the table. 

Keep watching for more!