Marie Ulven Ringheim who goes under the moniker of Girl in Red signs with Columbia.

She was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2020 Norwegian Grammy Awards and her singles “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” and “We Fell in Love in October” were certified gold. Before striking a deal with Columbia, Ulven signed a worldwide recording deal with distribution company AWAL.

You’ll like Girl in Red if you’re in the mood for indie pop, dream pop, bedroom pop.

Canadian singer-songwriter from Vancouver Island and former American Idol contestant Lauren Spencer-Smith has signed with UMG’s Island Records and Republic Records. She started buzzing last November when her song “Fingers Crossed” become a TikTok smash.

Before signing, her self released track Fingers Crossed reached the top 20 in numerous countries, including the US, and peaked within the top ten of the charts in numerous countries including Australia, New Zealand and Spencer-Smith’s native United Kingdom. This was on the back of a demo of the song going viral on TikTok. Spencer-Smith’s rise is similar to Olivia Rodrigo.

Snoop Dogg buys Death Row Records, the label that released his debut album, Doggystyle. The label was previously owned by MNRK Music Group controlled by private-equity funds Blackstone which was run by Stephen Allen Schwarzman and Jeffrey B. Kindler former Chairman and CEO of Pfizer.

Snoop says. “I’m thrilled and appreciative of the opportunity to acquire the iconic and culturally significant Death Row Records brand, which has immense untapped future value. It feels good to have ownership of the label I was part of at the beginning of my career and as one of the founding members. This is an extremely meaningful moment for me. I would like to personally thank the teams at Blackstone, MNRK and especially David Kestnbaum, who worked collaboratively with me over several months to make this exciting homecoming a reality. I’m looking forward to building the next chapter of Death Row Records.”

TikTok is still the go to platform for music with no signs of letting up. The apps new breakthrough artist? The 22 year old Emmy Meli.

The 21-year-old singer-songwriter posted a video of herself singing part of the song in the fall of last year and the next day the video had racked up hundreds of thousands of views, with a trend to follow.

“I literally posted it at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and then I went out to a bar with my friends and I really didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even check my phone the whole rest of the night. The next morning, I woke up and my friends were like, ‘Emily, wake up. Look at your TikTok.’ The explosion had begun,” Meli tells Variety of the video, which now has over 27 million views and half a million videos made to its sound. “And then I was like, well fuck. I have to write the rest of the song now.”

The California native finished the song while working a job at a golf course. Meli says. “I wanted the whole song itself to be like an affirmation for people, because originally I wrote it to inspire myself everyday.”

The song has garnered over 25 million plays on Spotify and landed #1 on Spotify Viral and Top 50 Global charts.

Check out the podcast now up on Spotify with Steve Thompson, veteran & Grammy Award winning engineer, producer, mixer, & writer that helped acts as Metallica, Guns N Roses, Korn, and hundreds more create iconic tracks that have defined genres.