For a second year, Billboard presented our weekly “Bubbling Under” column, named after the longtime chart that tracks activity below the Billboard Hot 100. The idea was to spotlight up-and-coming acts on the verge of breakout chart action. Last year, the feature marked, in many cases, our first editorial or chart ink on such eventual…

Customers may be impressed with the fuel economy provided by either a four-cylinder or a diesel engine, but they may not be bowled over by the acoustic properties. To reduce — or in some cases, improve — the noises made by engines, BMW is working with a series of acoustic systems, including one it calls…

Jay Z’s integrity as an artist is being questioned by millennials, according to a story on businessinsider.com. Celebrity branding expert Jeetendr Sehdev’s research found that the Brooklyn rapper “scored 70% lower in the categories of trustworthiness and honesty than did celebrities like Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lawrence, an issue Sehdev chalks up to Jay’s intense…

Not everyone can afford professional mastering, and it’s so easy to do it yourself these days thanks to some great and affordable tools. The problem is that these tools are so powerful that it’s really easy to get into trouble and wind up with a product that’s a lot worse than what you started with….

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has spoken out about collaborating with country act the Zac Brown Band at the Country Music Awards in November of this year. Speaking to Access Hollywood at the Napa Valley Film Festival, he commented of his appearance: “I actually told my wife before I went there, I’m like ‘hey babe,…

Rap Genius is bad at making friends. In November the National Music Publishers Association called the site “blatantly illegal” because they never actually obtained the licenses required to display lyrics. And though they seem to be making strides toward legitimacy in that department (Rap Genius and Sony struck a deal), they’ve now pissed off Google…

“A Rational Conversation” is a column by writer in which he gets on iChat or Gchat or the phone or whatever with a special guest to examine a music-related subject that’s entered the pop culture consciousness. The holiday season is not just a boom time for retailers and portly older men with bushy white beards,…

If you’ve been following the marketing strategy used by team Beyonce on her latest self-titled album, you know that it’s been quite clever so far. To recap, the Beyonce album was released on the unsuspecting public without any advance marketing fanfare whatsoever, which caused a bit of a commotion as that fact was trumpeted far…

Rather than sue fans who illegally download Iron Maiden‘s music, the British heavy-metal group has begun playing concerts for them. Tech website CiteWorld reports that the headbangers have been consulting with a U.K. company called Musicmetric, which measures everything from social media chatter to how well a band performs on sites like BitTorrent. Using data…

In an interview with Okayplayer, as pointed out by Exclaim, the singer explains that “I told Damon [Albarn] and Richard [Russell, who produced The Bravest Man together with Albarn] that whenever they’re available to record I will make myself available. But I was already working on a new album, I have Stevie Wonder on it, I have…