I titled this the last word , because this will be the last time I will be typing a paper about how my semester went. Yeah that’s right I will be graduating soon from Bethune-Cookman University. When we first started this class I didn’t quite know what a blog was and how to conduct it , what I did learn was the blogs are very time consuming. Although it’s not quit apart of my field , I still manage to figure it out. In this blog I talk about news within the music industry, also about what streaming app is best to use if your student looking for a discount. I originally didn’t plan to continue to post on my blog, but I am going to keep updated over the summer. I will be traveling so can post about the different artist from the cities.

 One of my major struggles when using wordpress , I didn’t like how I could post videos and photos unless I upgrade the site .my blog would have been way more bomb then what it look like.

Throughout this semester I struggled with a couple things like family, friendships and school. It was kind of hard keeping up when your taking 18 credit hours, but I did it I finished strong and confident. I would like to thank all the professors who pushed me to become more aggressive in my craft. This summer I will be intern for 99.1 The Mix, I hope to gain knowledge I can use in the radio world. 

“In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”- Tom Bodett. Just because a school semester is ending doesn’t mean that my education is over I still have many things to learn and I have learned many things throughout this semester.

To conclude my last blog i will be continue to update my blog. Keep looking forward to TuneNews.

“THE TOUR WILL NOT BE IN THE FALL! ! ! ! ! ! ! IT IS IN THE SUMMER! THIS SUMMER.” This is the what the virginia R&B artist Chris Brown , after rumor posted him and Rap Queen Nicki Minaj would be going on tour together in the fall, R&B artist clarified that the tour would be in the summer this summer. Brown also made a post following that one stating he would also be putting out an album in June.

Fans are excited to see what music they will release next together, if the legendary pair do, before they tour together. The two have worked and performed together multiple times in the past.

Chris Brown features on Nicki Minaj’s 2012 song “Right by My Side” and she is on his 2013 song “Love More”. The pair have also been guests on songs together by DJ Khaled and Meek Mill.

Tickets supposedly went on sale on April 26 .It has not been announced when the tour will take place, but it looks like they will hit the east coast in September.

You see hip hop started in the early 80s and the point of hip hop was to tell a message from the people of the streets and the struggles they had to endure. Although there were hip hop songs that you could jam out and dance to, hip hop was supposed to be a way that inner city black people were able to convey their story of struggle in a lyrical fun way.

Around the late 80s and early 90s, that’s when I feel hip hop started to change into rap music. While there were still some songs that told stories about the “black struggle”, a lot of rappers started to incorporate selling drugs, committing crimes and degrading women in those lyrics as well. Even though there were a lot of people that opposed to this new form of rap: there were a lot of other people who praised it so much that this became the new form of what is considered “hip hop”.

Hip Hop is a genre where you can relate to the actual artist, and actual get the message they are putting out.Now I know what some people might say, “I only listen to rap music if it’s giving a good message”. Then others might say, “I just want to turn up at a party”. But in my opinion, why can’t we just like both? The way I look at music is it’s all about the time, place, and mood.

College students are more willing to pay for music streaming services than non-students, according to a Monmouth University analysis of Music \Watch Inc.’s Annual Music Study, which surveyed 5000 Americans 13 and over, including over 700 college students (Crupnick, R., 2015). The study revealed that 3 out of 4 college students (77 percent) found some feature that would motivate them to pay for a premium music streaming service compared to 46 percent of overall streaming users (Crupnick, R., 2015). Although there are numerous streaming options to choose from; only a choice few have what it takes to join the list of the best. Below is an overview from the literature of the top streaming services preferred by college age students and a description of what they offer to the student user.  

Spotify

Before music streaming you might have been guilty of using file sharing sites like Napster, Limewire. By doing that it cost the music industry millions of dollars, because you not paying for the songs. Daniel Ek is the CEO of Spotify. Spotify started off as a small company. The platform was developed in 2006 due to the growing problem of piracy in the music industry. this led to the launch of Spotify in 2007 (BBC News 2018). Spotify is known for its free music streaming, for some Spotify is hands down the most fav music streaming app. With Discover weekly and Spotify connect, it seems as if this service Is coming of age and elevating with its users. Though there are many other music streaming services that come to mind, there is only one that consistently delivers, Spotify (BBC News 2018). Spotify is popular despite being in competition from Apple Music, Tidal, and other music streaming services. One reason that Spotify has remained so popular is that it remains true to its roots, by providing many choices to choose from, while still adding new features. As of June 2018, Spotify has grown from 38 million to 57 million in just a year. Spotify gives you 30 days free trial before having you pay for the service (BBC News 2018).

Apple Music

Apple Music did not reach the public until June 8 2015, but did not launch until June 30 of 2015. New subscribers get three months free before the service become paid only. Apple music has been shared with over 100 countries worldwide. Apple Music was just music, but in the 2016 they began to go into video, offering user to watch the videos of the favorite artist. Although Apple was created by Steve Jobs, in 2014 apple bought Beats Music which made the Beats CEO Ian Rogers accountable for iTunes (CNET 2018). Apple Music also has a modified version of iTunes Radio, which helps user create an A La Carte selections of what they would like to hear in their everyday experiences. As of Feb 4,2018, apple music has over 30 million subscribers, coming in a distant second to Spotify having 70 million. Apple music is similar to Spotify by making their services $10 a month or $5 a month if you are a student. Apple also has a family plan where you can add up to six family members, and share music amongst each other. (CNET 2018). Apple music’s main focus is to serve its listeners, in the app it has a tab called “for you” where you can go and create musical playlist for you just by answering  a couple of questions about yourself, like what is your favorite genre of music, and what artist do you listen to. Based off that info apple creates you own personal playlist based off what you entered.

Pandora

When Pandora first began in the year 2000, it was called Savage Beast Technologies. Pandora was founded by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren (Startup Grind 2018).  Pandora’s main focus is to create special station for each user. The magical thing about Pandora is that it knows what every song in the world sounds like, and if user loves a song it would generate a radio with songs that sound similar (Startup Grind 2018). Pandora has over 50 million active listeners as of today. Pandora is different from the other music streaming services like Apple music, and Spotify, because they let you choose the songs you want to listen to on demand as in Pandora it doesn’t allow you to choose the song you want to listen to whenever you want to. (Startup Grind 2018). Although Pandora is free you still get interrupted by many ads, unless you pay for a subscription. In 2015 Pandora had a big loss of $170 million, over the course of the next year that number doubled. By 2017 Westergren thought he could turn Pandora to a more profitable company, but he failed. In that same year Sirius XM offered to buy Pandora for $3.5 million, but Pandora CEO’s thought it was worth more than that. Sirius XM backed out of the deal calling Pandora “overvalued” (Startup Grind2018).

Amazon Music

Amazon music is an online music store operated by Amazon. Amazon launched in 1995, as a website that only sold books. Founder John Bezos knew that eventually Amazon would be an everything store. By the year of 1998 Amazon started selling CD’s and DVDs, with the music section launching over 100,000 titles. By the year of 2016 Amazon music was released in the United States. You can access millions of songs through amazon music. If you’re already an amazon prime member  it is only $7.99 a month for amazon music per month, but if you’re a student it is only $4.99 a month With amazon music you can create your own playlist fit just for you , and if you don’t have the time the time to make your own ,amazon has experts who can build you playlists for any mood you’re in, or an special occasion. Amazon focus is to make sure their users get the most out of their membership (Ong,T. 2017).

Tidal

Tidal launched on March 30, 2015. It is a global music streaming platform that has over 60 million songs in its catalog and over 240,000 high quality videos, offering passionate music fans both a premium and high-fidelity sound quality, along with videos, and curated editorial content. TIDAL is currently owned by Shawn Carter most might know him as Jay-Z, and many other artists like Nicki Minaj, Joule, Alicia Keys the list goes on. TIDAL is uniquely positioned to create more value for fans, and a stronger artist-fan connection. Jay-Z said that TIDAL was made for the future of the music industry, if you are a young artist, TIDAL offers a way where you can post your projects and share them with other subscribers. TIDAL way to stay relevant with a younger demographic by giving students a 50% discounted subscription. If a student subscribes to Tidal using their Edu emails address, they will only pay $4.99 per month. TIDAL has over 3 million paid subscribers. Compared to the other music streaming service listed TIDAL is the only one that does not have radio station (Fleischer, A. 2015).  

Swift’s performance at the 2019 BillBoard Music Awards kind of looked like a watered down cotton candy Beychella Performance.

The internet, particularly Beyoncé’s BeyHive, is seeing many similarities between Taylor Swift’s Billboard Music Awards performance and Bey’s Coachella show—and they are taking the Swift to task.

The singer took the stage Wednesday night to open the Billboard Music Awards with a performance of her new single “Me!”

While Swift hasn’t responded to the criticism, her fans have quickly come to her defense, pointing out that the singer has included band-inspired ideas in her videos and performances before.

Still, many members of the BeyHive are pulling out receipts to show that Beyoncé’s love of drumlines goes all the way back to her Destiny’s Child days, before Swift even hit the radio. All this pressure around Taylors performance, now hashtag as #MAYOCHELLA , will definitely die down but he reactions are pricless.

ChampagnePapi is definitely popping champagne as he made history at the #BillboardMusicAwards! #Drake won 12 of the 17 awards he was nominated for , including Top Artist of the year. Drizzy’s wins tonight have brought him to an all time high of 27 billboard awards he highest of any artist period! His wins tonight led him to surpass #TaylorSwift who previously held the title with 23 billboard awards.

Cardi B was also on fire with the wins at the BBMA’s. The “I Like It” artist was nominated for 18 categories , but went home with 6. Cardi B wore an ab revealing gown , while tongue touching with her husband Offset.Her nods just missed the record for most nominations set by Drake.

Although Mothers Day is this week drake gave his mom an early mothers day gift.

Montero Lamar Hill , better known by his stage name Lil Nas X, is a hip-hop artist from Atlanta. He dropped out of his freshman year in college in 2018 to pursue music full time. On December 2nd, 2018, he released the hit “Old Town Road” which blew up through TikTok memes. It finally entered the Billboard Hot 100 in early March 2019. Old Town Road reached #1 on Spotify, iTunes and Apple Music as well as becoming the first song to simultaneously chart on the Billboard country and hip-hop/R&B charts, before it was disqualified from the country charts. 

Lil Nas x releasing this song caused a lot of controversy, within the country music community. Eventually Billy Ray Cyrus father of Miley Cyrus jumped on the song and showed people how diverse music can be. This song mashed Hip Hop/ And Country together .

Old Town Road is still #1 on the billboards for the 4th week.

On March 31, 2019, the hip hop community suffered an immense loss when rap artist, activist and entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle died at the age of 33 from multiple gunshot wounds. His murder, which took place in front of his The Marathon clothing store on the corner of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, snuffed out the light of not only one of the most beloved rap artists in the game, but a leader in L.A. who had the power to create change.

While his death left rap fans and artist with grief. It also resulted in the family receiving and abundant amount of support form the community, and fans. Nipsey was more than a rapper. He was a hero to many young black and brown men and women looking to change their circumstances, while attaining spiritual wealth.

We have lost such an influential person to the community, Rap game will never be the same.

“The company you keep has a large influence on the situations you bring to yourself. So, whatever direction motherfuckers are heading in, whether it’s rap music, production, or a 9-5 life, whatever it is; you gotta surround yourself with people thats like minded and focused on the same goal you’re focused on. Birds of a feather flock together. -Nipsey Hussel

Have you and your girls been deciding whether or not to attend the Millennium Tour. B2K is back like they never left with some special guests. Over the past couple of year we have been hearing that R&B/Pop group will be going on tour, playing the songs we all know and love.

This tour marks the quartet’s first show in 15 years, when the band went on hiatus in 2004 to pursue solo ventures. 

From their self-titled debut album in March 2002 to peaking to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., B2K has made a considerable splash in the R&B world, with hit singles like, “Uh-huh,” “Gots Ta Be,” and all-time fan favorite, “Why I Love You.” 

The group broke up back in 2004 due to one of the group member sayin their manager Chris Stokes had molested him. Gladly the boys are grown enough to put that all in the past and create such an awesome tour. #TheMillenniumTour 2019 Tour Schedule! Pre-sales start 1/4 for select cities. Tickets will sale fast so make sure you pull out that jersey dress, with the forces and get there. You can use promo code: BUMP for discount .

In my first blog i will talk about how music has evolved.Over the last few centuries, music has changed tremendously. If we compare the music from two centuries ago, we see how it has changed; the genres, the sounds, the artists, the styles. As music has changed, the people and their thoughts on what is good music and what is not has evolved as well. There are genres like: classical, band & swing, jazz, blues, country, pop, hip-hop, rhythm & blues, reggae, alternative, rock, metal, latin, etc. All here to be experimented with and tampered to create a new sound.  
   Music has changed the way people feel, music has been here to support us through things we go through. If you take the genre Hip Hop for example, most HipHop songs that were created in the early 90’s had a little more substance. Like look at Tupac he made songs talking about his mother things he has been through in his life. Compared to now the Hip Hop / Rap music they rap about more materialistic things. As people we have an understanding knowing that things will evolve we just have to evolve with it.