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.

‘There are many things that Joe Rogan says that I strongly disagree with and find very offensive,’ Chief Executive Daniel Ek said at a company town hall on Wednesday.

But ‘if we want even a shot at achieving our bold ambitions, it will mean having content on Spotify that many of us may not be proud to be associated with.’

‘Not anything goes, but there will be opinions, ideas, and beliefs that we disagree with strongly and even makes us angry or sad,’ he added.

‘I want to remind everyone of our mission. We want to get to 50 million creators and a billion users. And to be a true platform and achieve this ambition, it’s really critical that creators are able to use their voice independently. And it’s also critical that we have diverse voices on our platform,’ he said at the town hall.

‘We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows.’

‘Even though JRE is an exclusive, it is licensed content. It is important to note that we do not have creative control over Joe Rogan’s content.

‘We don’t approve his guests in advance, and just like any other creator, we get his content when he publishes, and then we review it, and if it violates our policies, we take the appropriate enforcement actions.’

We’re defining an entirely new space of tech and media. We’re a very different kind of company, and the rules of the road are being written as we innovate,’ he said.

‘I understand the premise that because we have an exclusive deal with him, it’s really easy to conclude we endorse every word he says and believe the opinions expressed by his guests. That’s absolutely not the case.’