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Funko is preparing for the Wicked sequel with the release of their Wicked: For Good vinyl figures.

The full collection can be shopped on Funko’s website, while select pieces can be found via Amazon and Target. If you or someone you know is a lover of the franchise or a Funko collector, these new figurines are a must-have. All of the figures, beyond the Cowardly Lion, Glinda in her wedding dress and the Tin Man, can be pre-ordered right now on Amazon with a release date of Dec. 9, just a few weeks after Wicked: For Good is set to premiere (Nov. 21).

The collection includes a slew of familiar figures, both new and old, all retailing for $14.99. The full collection includes Scarecrow, two Glinda figures, two Elphaba figures, Dorothy Gale, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. In honor of the sequel’s upcoming release, we’re taking you through the collection piece by piece, helping you build up your shopping cart one Funko figure at a time.

He’s made of straw, has no brainm and is available for preorder now on Amazon for just $14.99. The tiny vinyl figure of the Scarecrow is dressed in an emerald green suit, complete with gloves and tan boots. What looks to be a brown hat adorns this 3.75-inch figure’s head, while the lovable character is posed with one hand outstretched, inviting collectors into the wonderful world of Oz.

While she may not be floating in on a bubble, this Glinda doll is pretty ethereal. The vinyl figure is dressed in a pink and blue gown with white accents to match Ariana Grande’s costume in Wicked: For Good. The good witch figure also carries her special wand and wears a tiara atop her sculpted blonde hair. The figure is posed elegantly with her wand lifted, ready to cast spells and “toss toss” her hair. An alternative figure of Glinda in her movie-accurate wedding gown was also created for the collection; however, it isn’t available for preorder just yet.

Funko’s Elphaba doll is also dressed in movie-accurate attire, down to her bright green skin, lengthy braids and freckles. The Wicked Witch of the West features a pointed black hat atop her head, the brim curved so we can see her face. For our observant readers, this Elphaba figure also has the Grimmerie clutched close to her chest. If this matte vinyl version isn’t your thing, the themed figure also comes in a glittery finish on Amazon.

Finally, we’ve got Dorthy Gale dressed in her iconic blue and white gingham dress and silver (not ruby) slippers, a wicker basket slung over her arm. The figure’s brown tresses are braided and fixed into white bows. This figure is extremely nostalgic, reminding us that there truly is no place like home.

In 2005, the music industry was in the midst of a major transition. Sales of CDs were plummeting, labels were conducting layoffs, the iPod Nano was new to the shelves and streaming services were still years away.

Enter Third Side Music: an independent publisher and synch house co-founded by attorney Patrick Curley and indie record executive Jeff Waye. Waye, who was then working at Ninja Tune Records, found that even though the record business was faltering, “the one thing that kept working was publishing,” he recalls now. “I would open our mail and get a quarter-million dollar synch check. The publishing side seemed so much steadier.”

The idea was simple: create a “proactive, services-forward publishing company, modeled after our favorite indie labels,” says Waye, who now acts as TSM’s COO. Deals would be focused on revenue streams that were proven to work, like synchronization licensing for film/TV and advertisements, and were fairer than many of their competitors. For many years, Third Side deals just offered administrative deals, but it came with a high-touch approach. “We talk internally about a staff-to-copyright ratio,” says Waye. “I don’t want to sign anyone and that’s the last they hear from us. Plenty of companies can beat us throwing money at artists, but we caution that you can take a big check, [but] you get lost in massive corporate machinery.”

Twenty years in, the industry is a remarkably different place. Institutional money has been buying up catalogs, COVID-19 and Hollywood strikes have sent shockwaves through the synch business, streaming has dominated, vinyl has had a resurgence — and Third Side Music is still going strong. Today, its roster includes a who’s who of the indie world including  BADBADNOTGOOD, Blonde Redhead, Sofi Tukker, Courtney Barnett, Goth Babe, Gregory Alan Isakov, Kurt Vile, Hermanos Guiterrez, Searows, Pharoah Sanders, Sky Ferreira, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Waxahatchee. And despite ongoing challenges in the film market, Curley assures that their synch game is still going strong (“This is one of our best years ever,” he says).

“At the end of the day, there’s a lot of institutional money, legacy majors, hedge funds investing in music copyrights and publishing, but we are still genuinely independent,” Curley, president and CEO, adds. “It’s literally me and Waye who started this with our own money. We’re a standalone company, and really proud of how it’s grown.”

One of the first things I thought about when I heard about your 20th anniversary is where the music business was in 2005. It was not necessarily a great place to be. Can you paint a picture of the founding of this company and why you wanted to start it at that moment?

Jeff Waye: The music industry has always been [challenging], so you’re just navigating various levels of it. I had been running Ninja Tune Records, setting up all the North American operations. Curley was our attorney and had a small publishing business called Plateau. Record sales had completely fallen off a cliff. Spotify didn’t exist yet. The first whispers of digital were you can buy a song for $1 on Apple and illegally download everything else. But the one thing that kept working was publishing — I would open our mail and get a quarter-million-dollar check. The publishing side seemed so steady. I had looked at publishers for years as being quite passive to all the work we were doing on labels. [I thought], “I’m sending you all this mechanical revenue, but what are you doing?” So I thought there was real space to create a proactive, services-forward publishing company, modeled after our favorite indie labels.

Patrick Curley: It was also early in the synch game. A lot of bigger publishers weren’t really servicing synch as they do now in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. Many artists looked at synch licensing as being a sellout in the ‘90s. We came from the electronic music world, where that wasn’t as much a consideration. When we started, we already had a great list of synch clients. The prior business I had that merged into TSM was basically a synch agency. When I started that, it was literally an original idea: represent bands and catalogs to get them synch licenses. It’s pretty basic: do B2B marketing for music aimed at [music supervisors] and production companies. The beauty is there’s no warehousing, no physical manufacturing, no hard expenses — just staff, contacts and some travel. We took the record side, which was very capital-intensive, and flipped it into something light to operate.

Your roster feels very cool and taste-driven. I imagine early on, given what you’ve said about the perception of synch being like “selling out,” that some bands were skeptical about signing to a synch-heavy publisher. Did you encounter that?

Curley: Every single artist has to consent to every synch we do. We found that even skeptical ones would still do some film and TV or documentaries, even if they do not want to do ads. We always had conversations with managers and artists about their comfort level.

Waye: The landscape changed so much. You can die on the hill of not doing synch all you wanted, but when record sales dried up in the 2000s and it got harder to make a living, things started to change… When we first started, you’d pitch seasonally to three networks and some advertising. Then, as everything went digital, suddenly we’re pitching to 100 things a week from Amazon, Apple, HBO, and what was getting made got significantly cooler too. There were so many iconic TV series that you wouldn’t say no to — of course, you’d want to do Mad Men or something that was part of the cultural narrative. I think people’s opinions changed then. One example was that Feist had a career, but landing in that early Apple ad launched her into the mainstream. That instance changed a lot of artists’ opinions about what synch could do for your career. At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s our job to be arbitrators of taste. We facilitate the opportunity, and artists can say yes to whatever degree they want. If they want to make money, we can make it. If they don’t, they can say no.

How many employees and offices do you have?

Waye: Around 35 employees. We have a back office in Montreal — an incredible cosmopolitan city, but being north of the border lets us run a worldwide business while keeping costs lean. If I was employing 35 people in L.A., the costs would be prohibitive. We have front-end staff and synch staff, some people in Mexico City on royalties for Latin American collections, and staff in New York. So, basically, New York, L.A., and Montreal are our three main offices.

Post-Hollywood strikes and COVID-19, what have the changes been in the synch market?

Curley: For us, I think it’s been a really good year for synch so far, but even with COVID, we never actually lost everything — growth in synch just got quashed. We had three or four years of middling, modest synch growth while our other revenue streams grew dramatically, but this year we’ve got really good numbers, so I’m hoping we’re getting the rebound.

Are you doing all admin deals?

Curley: Typically admin deals. We’ve been working mainly off admin deals for many years — exclusive rights for a certain period and territory. Recently, there have been opportunities for partial catalog purchases. We want to continue being in partnership with people. What we’re trying to do is help people develop income streams of their catalogs. If it’s a legacy catalog, often they’ve been with companies that haven’t been paying attention, haven’t fixed registrations, or haven’t been pitching effectively.

Waye: I always looked at admin deals as dating somebody. Do you want to get into a 20-year deal until you’ve spent a couple cycles making sure everything works? We’re now on fourth, fifth contract cycles with some artists. I’d rather people work with us because they want to, not because they’re locked in a contract.

With so many reversions happening, is that a boon for companies like Third Side?

Waye: We’ve been in discussions about partial purchases with some artists because there’s not really financing available for artists of moderate size. We’re positioning ourselves to offer partial catalog purchases. We’ve found that if you’re an artist who is not walking in with a catalog worth $25 to 50 million, buyers are not even talking to you. Our approach is we want to finance reasonable-sized deals on an as-needed basis. But I only want to do things that are mutually beneficial. I refuse to treat music like real estate.

Spotify announced that they are bundling their premium accounts in the U.S., which ultimately means that publishers and songwriters are being paid hundreds of millions less this year than what they thought they would be. Have you felt a significant impact?

Curley: For sure we felt impact. It’s hard to know to what extent, but it’s a vicious play by Spotify, especially when you see founders cashing out billions in stock options. I 100% support the NMPA’s approach to revoke this. It’s completely unacceptable what Spotify is doing to songwriters.

Since then, Spotify has made direct deals with two majors to improve their remuneration on the publishing side post-bundling. Do these direct deals pit major publishers against indies?

Curley: I’m very concerned about indies’ place. I don’t want to comment on third-party deals, but the situation needs to be resolved. Spotify needs to back off on bundling.

Is it a good time to be an indie publisher?

Waye: I think it’s better. I like that we’re on the inside but can operate on the outside. While everyone else talks about music like real estate at board tables, we can talk about music as music and make good money for musicians we respect. There’s so much opportunity for wider ranges of catalog that never existed before. If you told me 10 years ago you could get amazing Ghanaian music and Apple Music would do an episode specifically about 1985 Ghana — that stuff didn’t exist. That’s what attracted me to this business. And I’m super thankful organizations exist to fight the big battles so we can keep our heads down and do good creative work with artists we represent.

Curley: I think we started at a good time because now it would be really difficult to start without significant financing. We were able to learn on the job for the first few years. We started with $150,000 in 2005 and have grown every year since. Music publishing was a sleepy backwater back then. Now there’s massive money trying to acquire catalogs. Publishing revenues are growing substantially.

Where do you hope TSM is in 20 years?

Curley: We’d like to keep the institution going beyond Waye and me because we’re in our 50s. We think it’s a unique cultural institution. There are few independent publishers left, so we are going to have to think about how we do that. How do we secure the foundation to pass this on to the next generation?

Waye: I have no other transferable life skills, so I’m just gonna ride this out [laughs]. If I can have a heart attack on the dance floor of a Sofi Tukker concert 30 years from now at age 85, that’s totally fine. That’s the death I want. All I’ve ever wanted was enough money to buy records and work in music.

Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip.

This week: A new production of Jesus Christ Superstar elevates past soundtrack albums on streaming, an Ozzy Osbourne disciple takes off following his powerful tribute performance, a new Lorde fan favorite goes viral and more.

Cynthia Erivo & Adam Lambert’s Powerhouse Hollywood Bowl Run Spur Massive Gains for Four Different ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ Soundtracks 

From Aug. 1-3, Cynthia Erivo (as Jesus) and Adam Lambert (as Judas) enraptured the Hollywood Bowl with a three-night, Sergio Trujillo-helmed staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s landmark 1970 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. Thanks to Erivo’s show-stealing rendition of “Gethsemane” and Adam Lambert’s rousing turn as the most disloyal disciple, the Hollywood Bowl staging of Jesus Christ Superstar has resulted in eye-popping streaming gains for four different versions of the musical’s soundtrack. 

During the weekend of the Erivo-Lambert production (Aug. 1-4), the original 1970 cast album increased 288% in streaming activity from the weekend prior (July 25-28) to over 430,000 official on-demand U.S. streams. The 1996 London cast recording leapt 583% in streaming activity to over 235,000 official streams the weekend of the Hollywood Bowl production, and the 1973 motion picture soundtrack jumped 151% to over 155,000 official streams during the same period. Furthermore, the 2018 live recording of the album, which featured John Legend, Alice Cooper and Sara Bareilles, earned a 192% boost in streaming activity, garnering over 92,000 official streams during Aug. 1-4. Collectively, the four Jesus Christ Superstar soundtracks earned over 913,000 official on-demand U.S. streams — a whopping 283% increase from the 238,000 streams they pulled during the weekend of July 25-28. 

Three versions of Jesus Christ Superstar have hit the Billboard 200. The original 1970 concept album topped the all-genre ranking, the 1973 film soundtrack peaked at No. 21, and the 2018 live recording reached No. 46. Earlier this year, Erivo hit No. 165 on the Billboard 200 with I Forgive You, her sophomore studio album. – KYLE DENIS

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Sabbath, Bluddy Sabbath: Ozzy Protégé Yungblud Rises in Streams Following Tribute Performance to Rock Icon

U.K. alt-rock singer-songwriter Yungblud has operated at the fringes of pop and rock stardom for most of the 2020s in the U.S., since breaking through with the mgk and Travis Barker collab “I Think I’m OKAY” and the Halsey duet “15 Minutes” at the end of the prior decade. But he’s moving closer to the center of both in the past month, thanks in large part to his relationship with one of the most legendary figures in rock history. 

Yungblud has long been close with Ozzy Osbourne, with the metal godfather and Black Sabbath frontman becoming a sort of mentor to the rising artist after his appearance in the latter’s 2022 video for “The Funeral.” And at the Osbourne-led Back to the Beginning festival at Villa Park in Birmingham, England in early July — meant as a final farewell performance for both Ozzy and Sabbath — Yungblud appeared as part of the mid-day set from the Tom Morello All-Stars, taking the stage with an all-star backing band to perform the classic Sabbath ballad “Changes.” 

With a punched-up arrangement meant to better fill the stadium setting and a full-throated, full-bodied performance from Yungblud, the song was uniformly cited as one of the day’s highlights — so much so that an official version was released to DSPs and digital retailers as a charity single. The performance drew enough notice to scrape the UK Singles chart at No. 90, and has also reached No. 42 on Billboard’s Hot Rock and Alternative Songs chart. 

More importantly, the performance — which of course received increased attention following Osbourne’s death at age 76 just weeks later — has resulted in catalog gains for Yungblud across the board. After amassing 4.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams for the tracking week ending July 3, according to Luminate — just before the July 5 tribute concert — his streaming numbers have gradually increased nearly every week since, reaching 9.6 million for the most recent tracking week (ending July 31), a 109% total gain. And that’s not even including the numbers for the “Changes (Live From Villa Park)” performance, which drew an additional 1.8 million streams that week. 

The benefits for Yungblud have been catalog-wide, but have been particularly beneficial for his new album — June’s Idols — and its breakout single “Zombie” (not a Cranberries cover). The song has more than doubled in streams over that same period, racking up over 1.9 million in the most recent tracking week, enough to help push it to No. 38 on the Rock & Alternative Songs chart — his best showing on the listing since 2020. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER

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Quirky Train Trend Boosts Lorde’s Fan-Favorite ‘Virgin’ Album Closer 

The weekend Lorde’s fourth studio album, Virgin, in its entirety, TikTok user @anthonyhaynes9 shared a clip soundtracked by “David” that set into motion a trend that’s led to a significant boost in streams for the album closer. Captioned “what listening to ‘David’ feels like,” the June 29 clip finds Anthony standing on the platform in front of an arriving train as the devastating synths in the final “David” chorus swell to their peak. That clip earned over five million views and 958,000 likes, leading to a remake featuring Lorde herself. The remake, which hit TikTok on July 21, has earned over 3.1 million views and 519,000 likes. Notably, two days later on July 23, Lorde and Anthony recreated the video a second time to the sound of “Buzzcut Season,” which garnered 14.8 million views and three million likes. The official “David” TikTok sound currently boasts over 58,000 posts. 

According to Luminate, “David” has grown over 48% in streaming activity over the past two weeks. During the period of July 18-24, the song earned 2.03 million official on-demand U.S. streams, marking a 29% increase from the 1.57 million streams it collected the week prior (July 11-17). By the end of the week of July 25-31, “David” rose another 14% to over 2.32 million official streams. 

Currently lead single “What Was That” is still the only Virgin track to reach the Hot 100, but “David” could be next should its growth remain consistent. – KD

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Samia Swims Toward a Viral Hit With ‘Pool’

In April, Samia returned with her third studio album, Bloodless, which found the Minneapolis singer-songwriter pushing her indie-pop sound toward folk and alternative rock. The album earned Samia some of the best reviews of her career, but the song of hers that’s going viral right now pre-dates Bloodless by a half-decade: “Pool,” the opening track on her 2020 debut album The Baby, exploded on TikTok in late July, with users repurposing her NPR Tiny Desk Concert performance of the song from 2023 and focusing on the song’s climactic string of rhetorical questions: “How much longer ’til I’m taller?/ How much longer ’til it’s midnight?/ How much longer ’til the mornin’?/ Are my legs gonna last?/ Is it too much to ask?”

During the week ending July 17, “Pool” earned fewer than 10,000 official U.S. on-demand streams; two weeks later, however, that weekly total had skyrocketed to 487,000 streams, according to Luminate. In response to the viral uptick, Samia released a “stripped” version of the song to streaming services on Tuesday (Aug. 5), as well as a standalone clip of the Tiny Desk “Pool” performance to YouTube on July 24. For the latter, Samia wrote in the video description, “Thank you for the love on pool.” – JASON LIPSHUTZ

Jelly Roll, Jonas Brothers, CeCe Winans and Dan+Shay are among a group of artists who are helping in the fight against cancer, when they take part in Stand Up To Cancer’s ninth biennial televised fundraising special, which will air Friday, Aug. 15 at 8 p.m. ET, marking the first time the special will broadcast from Nashville.

The special will feature additional from Noah Cyrus, Gavin DeGraw, Marcus King, Brothers Osborne and Jon Pardi.

Aimed at raising essential funds for cancer research, the special will also include pre-taped segments from Kevin Bacon, Jamie Foxx, Tim McGraw, Zoe Saldaña, Keith Urban, and Reese Witherspoon. Sheryl Crow will serve as the evening’s host, while Stand Up To Cancer co-founder Katie Couric will also offer remarks. Dolly Parton also previously took part in a tune-in campaign to help raise awareness of the telecast. Meanwhile, the event will also highlight stories from cancer survivors as well as recent breakthroughs in early cancer detection and treatment.

The one-hour special will air on over 30 media platforms in the United States, including all four major U.S. broadcast networks, with broadcasters donating time slots to aid the special’s mission. The telecast will also be available to watch on several digital and streaming platforms.

The fundraising concert event will be held at Nashville venue The Pinnacle, and will be co-produced by Stand Up To Cancer and Done + Dusted. Executive producers for the event are Done + Dusted’s David Jammy and Liz Kelly, Stand Up To Cancer co-founders Pamela Oas Williams and Lisa Paulsen, Rod Essig of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Kevin Yorn of Yorn Levine / BroadLight Capital, and Rick Yorn of LBI Entertainment / BroadLight Capital. James Merryman will be the show’s director, with two-time Academy of Country Music guitar player of the year winner Derek Wells serving as the musical director.

Leading up to the special, Stand Up To Cancer has launched the #StandUpToCancer campaign which runs through Aug. 31 and unites creators on platforms including Twitch, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to support cancer research initiatives by hosting fundraising streams.

Nine Inch Nails join rarified air on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart thanks to the debut of “As Alive as You Need Me to Be” on the tally dated Aug. 9.

With the song’s No. 21 bow, the Trent Reznor-led band becomes one of just four acts with at least one Alternative Airplay appearance in each of the decades that the list has existed, dating to its September 1988 start.

In addition to the feat requiring substantial longevity — charting singles in the 1980s, ‘90s, 2000s, ‘10s and ‘20s — the pool of eligible acts is fairly miniscule because the chart existed for around just 15 months in the ‘80s.

Nine Inch Nails scored a photo finish at the start: The band debuted on Alternative Airplay in December 1989 with “Down In It,” which peaked at No. 16 in January 1990. Throughout the ‘90s, the act reached the ranking 10 additional times, paced by the No. 8-peaking “Hurt” in 1995.

One of those 11 ‘90s entries, “Into the Void” debuted on the ranking in 1999 but also counts as one of Nine Inch Nails’ eight 2000s appearances, having hit No. 11 in January 2000. The most prosperous decade of the band’s Alternative Airplay career, the 2000s brought Reznor and co. all four of its total No. 1s consecutively in 2005-07: “The Hand That Feeds,” “Only,” “Every Day Is Exactly the Same” and “Survivalism.”

In the 2010s, Nine Inch Nails appeared on Alternative Airplay twice, paced by the No. 7 hit “Came Back Haunted” in 2013. Prior to “As Alive as You Need Me to Be,” the band’s last entry was “Less Than” (No. 22, 2017).

The only other acts to string together the every-decade feat? Depeche Mode, Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2.

Depeche Mode notched two Alternative Airplay entries in 1989 (led by the No. 3-peaking “Personal Jesus”) and returned to the ranking in 2023 with the No. 9 hit “Ghosts Again.” Red Hot Chili Peppers, the chart’s all-time leaders for the most No. 1s (15), made the tally twice in 1989 (led by “Knock Me Down” at No. 6) and have four ‘20s appearances, including two No. 1s in “Black Summer” and “Tippa My Tongue.” As for U2, the Bono-led band logged seven entries in 1988-89, including the No. 1 “Desire.” In the ‘20s, the quartet has charted twice, paced by “Atomic City” (No. 14, 2023).

A few honorable mentions: In addition to the four acts whose longevity has benchmarks in all five decades, three have had entries in both the ‘80s and ‘20s — a different kind of endurance, albeit with gaps in one or more of the decades in between. The Cure, which returned with the No. 14-peaking “A Fragile Thing” last year, did not make Alternative Airplay in the 2010s (though frontman Robert Smith did so once that decade as a featured act on Crystal Castles’ “Not in Love”). Iggy Pop, who charted for a week at No. 40 in 2023 with “Frenzy,” also had a ‘10s outage. Kate Bush missed the entirety of the 2000s and 2010s before “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” peaked at No. 2 in 2022, powered by its high-profile synch in Netflix’s Stranger Things. The song’s stamina even predates the chart, as it was released and originally became a hit in 1985.

Two more acts could join Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2 with appearances in all five decades so far if they’re able to snag at least one in the five years left in the ‘20s: Beastie Boys (unlikely, though, given the group’s 2012 disbandment following the death of Adam Yauch) and Jane’s Addiction (which dissolved earlier this year).

Back to Nine Inch Nails: “As Alive as You Need Me to Be” is the band’s highest charting song on Alternative Airplay in 12 years, with its No. 21 start surpassing the No. 22 peak of “Less Than”; “Came Back Haunted” hit its No. 7 best in July 2013.

The new single, released July 17, also debuts at No. 29 on Mainstream Rock Airplay. On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, it opens at No. 22 with 2 million radio audience impressions in the week ending July 31, according to Luminate.

“As Alive as You Need Me to Be” is from the soundtrack for the upcoming movie Tron: Ares, premiering in theaters Oct. 10. The album, featuring all new Nine Inch Nails music, is due Sept. 19.