New Music

Childish Gambino released a video to his new song, ‘This Is America’. The song features background vocals from Young Thug, 21 Savage, Quavo, Rae Sremmurd’s Slim Jxmmi, and BlocBoy JB, while the video is a politically oriented depiction of violence and chaos. Donald Glover is also set to go on tour this year, with Vince Staples and Rae Sremmurd, while his upcoming material will reportedly be the last under the artistic pseudonym, ‘Childish Gambino’.

Jimmy Eat World shared two new songs, ‘Love Never’ and ‘Half Heart.’ Their most recent album, Integrity Blues, came out in 2016. The band is currently on tour, performing in North America and Europe.

Father John Misty performed his new single ‘Mr. Tillman’ live on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The artists also announced earlier this year that his new album, God’s Favorite Customer, will be coming out on the 1st of June.

Alice In Chains released a new single, for the first time in five years. The song, titled ‘The One You Know’ teases their new, sixth album, which should be released at some point this year. The band already commented on their upcoming record by saying: “There’s some really heavy shit, some really ugly stuff, some real beautiful stuff, some weirdo trippy shit. It’s good!” Currently, Alice in Chains are touring North America and Europe.

Music Industry

Spotify made an announcement earlier this week about its financial performance for the first three months of 2018. The world’s most popular streaming platform confirmed that it has reached 75 million paying subscribers globally, while its revenues went up to €1.14 billion ($1.4 billion) in the first quarter of the year. At the end of December 2017, Spotify had 71 million paying subscribers.

Ticketmaster is supposedly working on implementing face-recognition technology, which would replace paper and digital tickets for live shows. Live Nation, which is the parent company of Ticketmaster, announced its new partnership with Blink Identity, a facial recognition company responsible for developing a technology which “can register an image of your face as soon as you walk past a sensor”. At the same time, questions about the applicability of the technology, as well as about privacy issues, have been raised.