Pop culture update: Music tensions and team-ups
The music service Spotify just released this year’s Spotify Wrapped, a yearly marketing campaign of a user’s statistics on their platform. Following a pop-culture influenced design, users can view their top artists, songs and minutes spent listening to music. This year, “Your Music Evolution” was added to the statistics, displaying a user’s shift in taste throughout the year. “Longest Listening Streak” was also added, showing how many days in a row a user listened to a specific artist.
Though widely anticipated, many believed that this years Spotify Wrapped was underwhelming. Criticisms were aimed towards the poor graphic design, missing statistics and overall inaccurate details regarding users’ music history.
Most notably, users disapproved of the use of generative AI for their personalized podcast regarding their Wrapped. The push for promoting and relying on AI in Spotify’s service left a bad taste in people’s mouths. The popular opinion claims that previous years’ Wrapped was far better than 2024’s version.
@purboble It’s not even funny how bad it is maybe you should hire back everyone you laid off bc of corporate greed #spotifywrapped #spotify #fyp ♬ Chat we are cook – User not found.
The famous K-pop idol group NewJeans recently announced that they’ve departed from their agency ADOR and HYBE. This decision was made after months of disputes between the group and HYBE, in which their producer and creative director, Min Hee-Jin, was accused of corporate espionage. When Min lost her position as ADOR’s CEO during August of this year, NewJeans publicly announced their concerns and demanded Min be reinstated. HYBE did not comply with their demands.
NewJeans member Hanni revealed in October the mistreatment they’ve faced under HYBE publically. She stated that the group and their staff had faced numerous cases of manipulation and miscommunication, such as being ignored by fellow idol groups and higher-ups under the company, as well as NewJean’s success being undermined by the PR department.
All members of NewJeans went onto a press conference on November 28 announcing their seven-year contract termination with ADOR. They plan to continue their activities together, however will cut ties with their agency and continue under a different name, HIWISH.
Shortly after Kendrick Lamar released his new album “GNX” with some of the songs featuring SZA they released their joint tour along with dates.
Many fans believe that this is somewhat of a clapback to Drake from SZA because of her name being brought up in some of Drake’s previous songs, including “Push-ups (Drop & Give Me 50)” bringing her into the Drake vs. Kendrick beef earlier this year. After getting called out by Drake so many times, people believe she took the opportunity to not only work with Lemar but do a joint tour with him.
In 2025, these two artists will go on a Grand National Tour ending in Inglewood,CA at Sofi Stadium. With the tickets releasing last Friday on Dec. 6 many people are excited to see these two performers, both known for their groundbreaking performances, on the same stage.
Sabrina Carpenter and Barry Keoghan have been the talk of the town since earlier this week when they announced their breakup after only a year of dating.
Many fans believe the breakup was due to Keoghan cheating on Carpenter with social media influencer Breckie Hill. Hill has even teased it being the truth by reposting a TikTok having to do with the exact situation.
However, other than that, nothing has been confirmed by either side.
@king.asante I feel like this was the most PR response I’ve ever heard #berrykeoghan #sabrinacarpenter ♬ Suspenseful and tense orchestra(1318015) – SoLaTiDo
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