As we write this story, Scottish artist Nathan Evans is on course for a top 10 hit in the UK with ‘Wellerman’ – his sea-shanty cover that took TikTok by storm. There’s an obligatory heartwarming story about him giving up his job as a postman for a career in music. But behind this, there’s an industry move: Evans […]

Keeping all the music streaming services happy as an artist can be tough: Katy Perry was one of the most famous examples of a musician being penalised on one service for giving a rival an exclusive. So we doff our cap to Beabadoobee and her team at Dirty Hit for juggling the partners without tension. In 2020 […]

YouTube set up its Foundry initiative back in 2016 as a way to offer emerging artists marketing, promotional and technology support. The 12 acts shortlisted for the class of 2020 have just been announced and include: Jaykae (from the UK); Joesef (UK); TESSÆ (France); Tems (Nigeria); Adam Melchor (US); Eladio Carrion (Puerto Rico); Gabriel Garzon-Montano (US); Natanael […]

Pharrell Williams and his I Am Other creative company are working with SoundCloud to create a compilation for new artists. Artists hoping to take part must upload a track to SoundCloud with the #SCxiamOTHER hashtag, then the best 10 (or possibly more) will be picked by Williams and his team. The resulting ‘SoundCloud Presents: i am OTHER, […]

It’s not quite a case of: “Come in, TikTok – your time is up.” However, Triller has been growing sharply in recent months and is starting to break tracks and acts in its own way. For now, the audience skews towards both the US and hip-hop, but the app has global ambitions and wants to […]

YouTube developing music artists? It’s been at it for a while, with its Foundry ‘global artist development program’, which first launched in 2016 as a training scheme, of sorts, for artists including Dua Lipa, Rosalía, Dave and Mahalia. In April this year it was ‘refreshed‘ as an initiative offering marketing promotion as well as training […]

Congratulations are due to independent artist Aaron Smith, whose debut track ‘Unspoken’ has (as MBW noticed on Friday) gone in with a bang at the top of Spotify and Apple Music’s flagship new-music playlists in the UK. ‘Unspoken’ was the very first track in New Music Friday UK on Spotify and Best Of The Week on […]