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Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department is now the only album in Spotify history to surpass one billion streams in a single week, the streaming service announced Wednesday (April 24) — and it only needed five days to do it. The pop star’s 11th studio record arrived at midnight Friday (April 19), bringing with it […]
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The 2024 NFL Draft is rolling into the Motor City! The three-day draft event kicks off on Thursday (April 25) at 8 p.m. ET.
According to the NFL, the draft will take place in the downtown Detroit area surrounding Campus Martius and Hart Plaza.
Draft Experience, the NFL’s interactive, -themed park where fans can test out their football skills, visit interactive exhibits, autograph sessions, pose with the Vince Lombardi trophy, shop exclusive merchandise and more. The Draft Experience is presented by Rocket Mortgage.
Big Sean will headline the 2024 NFL Draft Concert Series on Thursday at 6:15 p.m. The Detroit Youth Choir is scheduled for Friday and Bazzi on Saturday. The free concert will begin before Round 1 on Thursday and Round 3 on Friday.
Saturday’s performance will take place after the draft at Draft Theater. Visit NFL.com/draftevent for free passes.
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The NFL draft will include a total of seven rounds. Over the next three days, 257 players will be selected. Currently, the Chicago Bears have the first pick, followed by the Washington Commanders and New England Patriots. The Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Chargers round out the top five.
Read on to find out all the ways to watch the 2024 NFL draft.
How to Watch the NFL Draft for Free
The first round of the 2024 NFL draft will air at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes and NFL Network.
How can you stream the 2024 NFL Draft for free? Sports lovers who don’t have cable or access to live television can watch the draft on platforms such as DirecTV and Fubo TV, which offer ABC, ESPN, NFL Network and hundreds of other live and on-demand channels; plus DVR and multiple device streams for less than $80 per month.
You can watch and stream the 2024 NFL Draft on your TV, smart phone, tablet and other streaming devices via the ESPN app, ABC app and NFL+.
NFL+ offers access to the NFL Network, NFL Training camps and other off-season content, regular season games, postseason games and much more. Plans start at $6.99/month.
Want more streaming deals? Join Sling TV for just $20 for the first month. Subscribers can stream over 32 channels on Sling TV including ESPN, TNT, TLC, Bravo, FX and local channels such as ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox (in select regions.)
Another streaming option: Hulu + Live TV. You’ll get a three-day free trial, plus access to 90+ channels in addition to Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+.
Those who already have access to local channels via an antenna, cable, satellite, etc., have the option of watching the NFL draft on ABC and ABC.com in addition to ESPN, so long as your cable or streaming plan allows it.
Streaming from outside of the U.S.? Watch the draft with a free trial from Express VPN.
Lastly, if you won’t be able to watch but still want to hear all of the festivities, the 2024 NFL draft will be available on ESPN Radio.
Blink and you might’ve missed it: Dua Lipa’s “Illusion” inched onto Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart a week ago at No. 42, from one day of activity.
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A week later, the song soars to No. 1 on the April 27-dated list, as Lipa makes history at Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
“Illusion” vaults to the summit with 9.1 million official streams, 7.4 million in radio airplay audience and 2,000 sold in the United States April 12-18 following its April 11 release, according to Luminate.
With the coronation, Lipa adds her third Hot Dance/Electronic Songs No. 1 – tying Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga for the most among women since the survey began in 2013. (The only acts with more overall: The Chainsmokers, with six, and Calvin Harris and Zedd, each with four; Marshmello also has three.)
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A new No. 1 song and matching the top mark among women would be enough reason to celebrate for Lipa, but that isn’t the end of her milestone week on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. Her own “Houdini,” which reigned for 16 of the last 22 weeks, follows at No. 2, while “Training Season” sits snug at No. 3, making her the first woman to claim the top three in a single week. Among all acts, she scores just the third such triple, following The Chainsmokers, with “Something Just Like This ” (with Coldplay), “Paris,” and “Closer” (featuring Halsey; on the March 18, 2017-dated chart) and Drake, with “Falling Back,” “Texts Go Green” and “Massive” (July 2, 2022).
If Lipa’s trio of tracks can hold in the top three next week, she’ll become the first artist to achieve this feat twice.
Plus, rocketing 41 positions in just one week, “Illusion” achieves the biggest leap to No. 1 in the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart’s 11-year history, nearly doubling the 22-1 jump for Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s “Rain on Me” in 2020. Further, “Illusion” ties Calvin Harris’ “Slide,” featuring Frank Ocean and Migos, for the chart’s biggest one-week surge overall (48-7; March 18, 2017).
“Illusion,” “Houdini” and “Training Season” are all slated to appear on Radical Optimism, Lipa’s forthcoming third studio album, due out May 3.
Joe Alwyn probably can’t go to The Black Dog pub in London anymore. That’s because Swifties have been flocking to the establishment ever since Taylor Swift referenced it in a song of the same name on her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, leading a representative for the bar to hint in a new interview […]
Chicago impresario Nick Karounos and his partners at Auris Presents Stuart Hackley and John Curly are opening a 750-person capacity, 10,000 square foot venue in Chicago’s famed Bucktown neighborhood later this spring. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Outset, located on the outskirts of the Lincoln Yards […]
Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” ascends to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart, powered by Tunefind, crowning the March 2024 survey after a synch in the new Netflix series 3 Body Problem.
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Rankings for the Top TV Songs chart are based on song and show data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of March 2024.
“Video Games” bows following the premiere of 3 Body Problem’s full first season on Netflix on March 21. The song is heard in the show’s sixth episode.
In March 2024, “Video Games” accumulated 8.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 1,000 downloads, according to Luminate. The song was Del Rey’s breakout track and her first appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, debuting and peaking at No. 91 in January 2012.
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“Video Games” leads a trio of songs from 3 Body Problem onto Top TV Songs, giving the new series an admirable coronation on the first chart for which it’s eligible. Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” follows at No. 4 (1.5 million streams), and The Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile” also makes the tally at No. 8 (310,000 streams). “The Killing Moon” is from the series premiere, while “Moonlight Mile” can be heard in episode two.
The top non-3 Body Problem song, meanwhile, belongs to Resident Alien, following its usage of Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” The track bows at No. 2 thanks to 4.2 million streams and 1,000 downloads.
Resident Alien, a Syfy series that premiered its third season in February, boasted “Cat’s in the Cradle” in the seventh episode of the season, which premiered March 27. It was a No. 1 hit for Chapin on the Hot 100 in 1974, his only ruler.
See the full chart, also featuring music from Young Royals, Invincible, Will Trent and The Gentlemen, below.
Rank, Song, Artist, Show (Network)
“Video Games,” Lana Del Rey, 3 Body Problem (Netflix)
“Cat’s in the Cradle,” Harry Chapin, Resident Alien (Syfy)
“Arcade,” Duncan Laurence, Young Royals (Netflix)
“The Killing Moon,” Echo & the Bunnymen, 3 Body Problem (Netflix)
“Dream Team,” Aidan Knight, Invincible (Amazon Prime Video)
“Breaking Point,” Leon Thomas, Will Trent (ABC)
“Count Your Blessings,” Mattiel, The Gentlemen (Netflix)
“Moonlight Mile,” The Rolling Stones, 3 Body Problem (Netflix)
“Genesis,” Justice, The Gentlemen (Netflix)
“Baby Drummer,” Bad Nerves, Invincible (Amazon Prime Video)
Billie Eilish had a major revelation last year while working on her new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft: she loves women. Like a lot. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina,” the 22-year-old singer tells Rolling Stone in a new cover story.
The profile delves into some of the songs on the album, including the second one, “Lunch,” described as a “sexy, bass-heavy banger where Eilish is crushing on a girl so hard she likes sex with her to devouring a meal.” It was while recording that song that Eilish says she became acutely aware of who she really is, recording some of it before she’d ever been with a woman and the rest after her first same-sex experience.
“I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up,” she says of a 2023 Variety magazine interview in which she mentioned that she was attracted to women “for real.” The quote went viral around the globe and on a red carpet a month later Eilish was asked if she had intentionally come out in that story, telling the interviewer, “no, I didn’t,” but then thinking to herself, “‘wasn’t it obvious?’”
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She followed up with an Instagram post thanking the magazine for her Hitmakers award and also for “outing me on a red carpet at 11 a.m. instead of talking about anything else that matters. I like boys and girls leave me alone about it please literally who cares.” Eilish has typically kept her love life private and was only ever publicly linked with men, including The Neighbourhood’s Jesse Rutherford, who she broke up with in May 2023.
Now, Eilish says, she think the post was a bit of an overreaction. “Who f–king cares? The whole world suddenly decided who I was, and I didn’t get to say anything or control any of it,” she says. “Nobody should be pressured into being one thing or the other, and I think that there’s a lot of wanting labels all over the place. Dude, I’ve known people that don’t know their sexuality, or feel comfortable with it, until they’re in their forties, fifties, sixties. It takes a while to find yourself, and I think it’s really unfair, the way that the internet bullies you into talking about who you are and what you are.”
For such a global megastar, Eilish is refreshingly candid in the cover story about sex, saying it is what she likes to do to decompress. “I basically talk about sex any time I possibly can. That’s literally my favorite topic,” she says. “My experience as a woman has been that it’s seen in such a weird way. People are so uncomfortable talking about it, and weirded out when women are very comfortable in their sexuality and communicative in it. I think it’s such a frowned-upon thing to talk about, and I think that should change. You asked me what I do to decompress? That s–t can really, really save you sometimes, just saying. Can’t recommend it more, to be real.”
And then, Eilish goes on a deep-dive into another favorite, often taboo topic for women: masturbation. She says pleasing herself has boosted her confidence and is an “enormous, enormous part of my life, and a huge, huge help for me. People should be jerking it, man. I can’t stress it enough, as somebody with extreme body issues and dysmorphia that I’ve had my entire life.”
In case you had questions, Eilish also describes liking to masturbate in front of a mirror, partly because “it’s hot,” but also because it allows her to have a “raw, deep connection” to herself and her body. “And have a love for my body that I have not really ever had,” says Eilish, who notes that at this point she should basically have a “Ph.D.” in onanism. “I got to say, looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking ‘I look really good right now’ is so helpful. You can manufacture the situation you’re in to make sure you look good. You can make the light super dim, you can be in a specific outfit or in a specific position that’s more flattering. I have learned that looking at myself and watching myself feel pleasure has been an extreme help in loving myself and accepting myself, and feeling empowered and comfortable.”
Having lived in the hot spotlight for nearly her entire adolescence and young adulthood, Eilish says while others have been dissecting and contemplating her sex life for “years and years,” she is only now figuring it all out. “And honestly, what I said was funny, because I really was just saying what they’ve all been saying,” she says.
Given the chance for a do-over, the singer says she would have ignored the question, even though she knows it could have been way worse. “I’m lucky enough to be in a time when I’m able to say something like that and things go OK for me,” she says. “And that’s not how a lot of people’s experience is.”
The interview also touches on how her upcoming third album is a return to the darker sounds of her 2019 debut, When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Hit Me Hard and Soft is due out on May 17.
Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — has confirmed a new tentative release date for Vultures 2, the sequel to his and Ty Dolla $ign’s collaborative album. Ye has been one to change his mind with the wind when it comes to release dates, but West revealed on Justin LaBoy’s The Download podcast that […]
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week (for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated May 4), Taylor Swift zooms past her own already-historic career-best marks with the first week of her much-anticipated Tortured Poets Department album.
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Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department (Republic): Apologies to grunge greats Pearl Jam’s Dark Matter, which should have a very nice first-week sales debut – but this week, it’s simply all about Taylor Swift. Her 16-track, much-hyped new album’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was expanded to 31 tracks mere hours after its initial release with the set’s subsequent Anthology Edition, is set to put up some absolutely stratospheric first-week numbers – zooming past the totals even for her recent Midnights and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) releases, which already but her in a class by herself this decade as far as debut tallies go.
Billboard has reported on her Poets numbers throughout the week, most recently updating them yesterday (April 23) for the days of April 19-22. Through those first four days of release, the album had racked up 1.6 million traditional album sales, including a modern-era record 800,000 of that in vinyl, according to initial reports to Luminate – both easily the highest such first-week numbers for the decade, passing Swift’s prior marks of 1.359 million and 693,000 for 1989 (TV). It’s also already the fifth-highest single-week sales mark for an album of the modern era (since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991). The album is available for purchase in six vinyl variants, including editions named after album cuts “The Albatross,” “The Bolter,” “The Manuscript” and “The Black Dog,” which all also have CD versions available for sale on her webstore.
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Additionally, the 31 total tracks have amassed a combined 602.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams, which passes the 549.3 million streams posted by Midnights upon its October 2022 debut for the highest single-week mark for an album by a female artist. The only other albums that have posted higher single-week streaming marks are both by Drake — Scorpion posted 745.92 million in 2018 with its 25 tracks, and Certified Lover Boy totaled 743.67 million in 2021 with its 21 – both of which Swift would seem to be on pace to pass, with three days still to be accounted for in the Poets tracking week.
All in all, Tortured Poets Department is already up to 2.1 million equivalent album units in its first week of release, making it only the second album since the Billboard 200 began measuring by equivalent album units in December 2014 to clear the two million mark in a single week. The other, of course, is Adele’s 25, which posted a still-staggering 3.482 million first-week units (including 3.378 million in straight sales) upon its debut in November 2015. (*NSYNC’s No Strings Attached also earned 2.416 million in straight sales during its 2000 debut week, obviously long before Billboard calculations accounted for streaming.)
With sales and streams both slowing for Poets as the week goes on – a very normal arc for a blockbuster album release – it’s unlikely that the album will approach either of those Adele numbers. The album would have to average around 460,000 units a day over the final three days of the tracking week to challenge Adele’s 3.482 million total, and it added around 200,000 additional units on the 22nd. You can never count out a last-minute extra edition or two as far as Taylor Swift is concerned, and 2.5 million is definitely in range for her, but failing some extraordinary surge, it seems like the three-million mark will likely remain Adele-only territory for at least one more Swift album.
Swift should also remain in a class by herself when it comes to space occupied at the top of the Hot 100, however. For the second album of all-new material in a row – following Midnights in 2022 – Swift is a threat to lock down each of the top 10 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 with debuting tracks from the set, and this time her uninterrupted dominance could stretch into the teens as well, according to early data from Luminate. (Swift charting all 31 songs from Anthology is also certainly a possibility.)
The main threats to her top-dozen Hot 100 supremacy are of course Hozier’s “Too Sweet” and Future, Metro Boomin & Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That,” which occupy the top two spots on the chart this week (dated April 27), and Republic labelmate Drake’s own new release “Push Ups,” which debuted on streaming and at digital retailers on Friday after being available via internet leaks for the prior week. “Push Ups” is unlikely to get the streaming edge on any of Taylor’s top dozen Poets tracks, but its sales advantage – it remains in the top 20 on the iTunes real time chart, behind just eight of the Poets cuts – may be enough for it to get in the way if it continues through the end of the week.
Tupac Shakur’s estate is threatening to sue Drake over a recent diss track against Kendrick Lamar that featured an AI-generated version of the late rapper’s voice, calling it a “a flagrant violation” of the law and a “blatant abuse” of his legacy.
In a Wednesday cease-and-desist letter obtained exclusively by Billboard, litigator Howard King told Drake (Aubrey Drake Graham) that he must confirm that he will pull down his “Taylor Made Freestyle” in less than 24 hours or the estate would “pursue all of its legal remedies” against him.
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“The Estate is deeply dismayed and disappointed by your unauthorized use of Tupac’s voice and personality,” King wrote in the letter. “Not only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac’s publicity and the estate’s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.”
Drake released “Taylor Made” on Friday, marking the latest chapter in a back-and-forth war of words between the Canadian rapper and Lamar. Beyond taking shots at both Kendrick and Taylor Swift, the track made headlines because of its prominent use of artificial intelligence technology to create fake verses from Tupac and Snoop Dogg – two West Coast legends idolized by the LA-based Lamar.
“Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast savior/ Engraving your name in some hip-hop history,” the AI-generated Tupac raps in Drake’s song. “If you deal with this viciously/ You seem a little nervous about all the publicity.”
In Tuesday’s letter, Tupac’s estate warned Drake that the use of his voice clearly violated Tupac’s so-called publicity rights – the legal power to control how your image or likeness is used by others. And they took particular exception the use of his voice to take shots at Lamar.
“The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar, a good friend to the Estate who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult,” King wrote.
A rep for Drake declined to comment on the demands of the Shakur estate.
It’s unclear if Snoop Dogg, whose voice was also featured on “Taylor Made,” is planning to raise similar legal objections to Drake’s track. On Saturday, he posted a video to social media in which he seemed to be learning of the song for the first time: “They did what? When? How? Are you sure?” A rep for Snoop Dogg did not return a request for comment.
The unauthorized use of voice cloning technology has become one of the music industry’s thorniest legal subjects, as AI-powered tools have made easier than ever to convincingly mimic real artists.
The issue exploded onto the scene last year, when an unknown artist named Ghostwriter released a track called “Heart On My Sleeve” that featured – ironically – fake verses from Drake’s voice. Since then, as voice-cloning has proliferated on the internet, industry groups, legal experts and lawmakers have wrangled over how best to crack down on it.
It’s not as simple as it might seem. Federal copyrights are difficult to directly apply, since cloned vocals usually feature new words and music that are distinct from existing copyrighted songs. The publicity rights cited by the estate are a better fit because they protect someone’s likeness itself, but they have historically been used to sue over advertisements, rather than over creative works like songs.
Faced with that legal uncertainty, the recording industry and top artists have pushed for new legislation to address the problem. Last month, Tennessee passed a statute called the ELVIS Act that aims to crack down on voice cloning by expanding the state’s publicity right laws beyond just advertisements. Lawmakers in Washington DC are also considering similar bills that would create new, broader publicity rights at a federal level.
In Wednesday’s letter, however, the estate said that California’s existing publicity right laws clearly outlaw something as blatant as Drake’s use of Tupac’s voice in “Taylor Made.” King argued that the song had caused “substantial economic and reputational harm” by creating the “false impression that the estate and Tupac promote or endorse the lyrics for the sound-alike.”
The estate also argued that the song was likely created using an AI model that violated the estate’s copyrights by “training” on existing recordings of Tupac’s music. The legality of using copyrighted “inputs” is another difficult legal issue that’s currently being tested in several closely-watched lawsuits against AI developers, including one filed by major music publishers.
“It is hard to believe that [Tupac’s record label]’s intellectual property was not scraped to create the fake Tupac AI on the Record,” King wrote, before demanding that Drake also provide “a detailed explanation for how the sound-alike was created and the persons or company that created it, including all recordings and other data ‘scraped’ or used.”
Wednesday’s letter also pointedly highlighted that Drake himself has made previous objections to the use of his own likeness by others. In addition to last year’s incident surrounding “Heart on My Sleeve” — which was quickly pulled down from the internet — King pointed to a lesser-known federal lawsuit in which Drake’s attorneys accused a website of using his image without authorization.
“The [“Taylor Made Freestyle”] has generated well more than one million streams at this point and has been widely reported in the general national press and popular entertainment websites and publications,” the estate wrote. “Without question, it is exponentially more serious and damaging than a picture of you with some other people on a low volume website.”
In its closing paragraphs, the letter demanded written confirmation by noon Pacific on Thursday that Drake’s representatives were “expeditiously taking all steps necessary to have it removed.”
“If you comply, the estate will consider whether an informal negotiation to resolve this matter makes sense,” King wrote. “If you do not comply, our client has authorized this firm to pursue all of its legal remedies including, but not limited to, an action for violation of … the estate’s copyright, publicity and personality rights and the resulting damages, injunctive relief, and punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.”
