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TikTok unveils the BTS ARIRANG In-App Experience

Eric Alper
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TikTok unveils the BTS ARIRANG In-App Experience
  • TikTok today announces the launch of the BTS ARIRANG In-App Experience, a bespoke in-app destination celebrating the highly anticipated return of pop royalty BTS and their new album ARIRANG.

ARIRANG marks BTS’s first new music since all seven members completed their military service in 2025, ushering in a new era for the group and ARMY.

Launching today, March 20, the dedicated campaign page gives fans new ways to celebrate the band’s long-awaited comeback on TikTok. Fans can complete interactive tasks to unlock an exclusive BTS Sailor Hat profile frame, play games to earn bespoke BTS sticker packs, explore custom BTS effects, and discover the official tracklist for the new album. The experience will also give fans the chance to learn more about the upcoming BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE | ARIRANG on Netflix, offering an early look at the group’s next chapter.

BTS are the biggest band in the world on TikTok, with more than 74.4 million followers, over 104 million posts using #BTS, and 1.7 billion likes across their content, underscoring TikTok’s role as a global destination for ARMY to celebrate the music and culture they love. The group’s official account continues to bring fans closer to their world giving ARMY even more ways to connect with BTS.

KC You, TikTok’s Head of Artist and Label Partnerships, Asia, said: “BTS has built one of the most passionate global fan communities on TikTok, which continues to shape music culture and fandom on the platform every day. As BTS begin this exciting new chapter together, we’re proud to partner with them on the ARIRANG In-App Experience, giving ARMY around the world new ways to celebrate their comeback, unlock exclusive features, and connect with the music they love.”

The BTS ARIRANG In-App Experience launches globally on TikTok today, giving ARMY everywhere new ways to celebrate the reunion set to be etched in pop culture history.

Ms. Lauryn Hill Headlines Diaspora Calling! Festival’s Landmark UK Debut at Milton Keynes National Bowl

Eric Alper
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Ms. Lauryn Hill Headlines Diaspora Calling! Festival’s Landmark UK Debut at Milton Keynes National Bowl

Diaspora Calling! is coming to the UK, and it is arriving with one of the most significant lineups of the British festival summer. On Friday August 7th, Milton Keynes National Bowl hosts the inaugural UK edition of Ms. Lauryn Hill’s celebrated music and arts initiative, with Hill herself headlining in what is currently her only confirmed UK performance of 2026. Wyclef Jean, YG Marley, and Zion Marley join her, with further artists across two stages still to be announced. Tickets go on sale Tuesday March 31st at 9AM via diasporacalling.com.

Launched by Ms. Hill in 2016, Diaspora Calling! began as a curated art exhibition and live performance at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre, where Hill presented a gallery focused on Haitian art alongside a programme of live music. The concept expanded into a touring platform featuring artists including Nas, Kehlani, Noname, and Little Simz, consistently centering themes of unity, resilience, and cultural exchange among African descendant communities worldwide. The UK debut at Milton Keynes National Bowl is the most ambitious iteration of that vision yet.

The lineup carries enormous weight. Hill, whose landmark solo album ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ earned five Grammy Awards and remains one of the most culturally significant records ever made, is joined by fellow Fugees founding member and Grammy-winning artist Wyclef Jean. YG Marley brings conscious lyricism and reggae-rooted sounds that reflect his family’s extraordinary legacy while carving out his own contemporary voice. Zion Marley extends that lineage further, fusing reggae, soul, and hip-hop in a way that feels both deeply rooted and entirely present tense.

Milton Keynes National Bowl is one of the UK’s largest and most storied outdoor concert venues, a setting that has hosted some of the biggest shows in British live music history and brings the technical capacity and scale that an event of this ambition demands. A full food village celebrating diaspora cuisine rounds out the experience. This is not simply a festival. It is a cultural statement, and one of the most important live music events on the UK calendar this year.

Tickets go on sale Tuesday March 31st at 9AM. Sign up for early access at diasporacalling.com. Move fast.

Jack Harlow Takes ‘The Monica Tour’ to North American Theaters This Summer

Eric Alper
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Jack Harlow Takes ‘The Monica Tour’ to North American Theaters This Summer

Jack Harlow is back on the road, and this run feels like a proper statement. “The Monica Tour,” promoted by Live Nation, launches August 4th at Brooklyn Paramount and stretches through seventeen North American theater dates before wrapping September 21st at The Fox Theater in Oakland. It supports ‘Monica’, his R&B-heavy new album and first release in nearly three years, and the venues chosen, intimate, high-capacity theaters in major markets, suit the moment perfectly.

The last time Harlow headlined a proper tour was his sold-out six-city 2023 Kentucky run, which closed at Lexington’s Rupp Arena with a show that grossed over $1.2 million on 12,450 tickets. “The Monica Tour” is a different kind of campaign, wider in geographic reach and rooted in the more sonically intimate world of the new album. Theater settings are the right call for music this R&B-leaning, close enough to feel the room, large enough to make noise.

The routing hits hard. Brooklyn Paramount, The Salt Shed in Chicago, MGM Music Hall at Fenway, The Anthem in Washington, Hollywood Palladium, and a San Diego stop at Gallagher Square at Petco Park are among the highlights. A hometown Louisville date at Old Forester’s Paristown Hall on August 29th will carry its own weight, as Harlow shows at home always do.

Presales begin March 26th, with general on-sale at 10am local time on March 27th. For an artist with Harlow’s track record of selling out rooms and delivering high-energy live sets, moving quickly on tickets is the right call.

“The Monica Tour” Dates:

August 4 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount

August 8 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed

August 11 – Detroit, MI – The Fillmore Detroit

August 13 – Cincinnati, OH – The Andrew J Brady Music Center

August 15 – Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore Philadelphia

August 18 – Toronto, ON – HISTORY

August 21 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway

August 25 – Washington, DC – The Anthem

August 29 – Louisville, KY – Old Forester’s Paristown Hall

September 4 – Atlanta, GA – Coca-Cola Roxy

September 7 – Houston, TX – 713 Music Hall

September 8 – Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom

September 11 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium

September 14 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium

September 17 – San Diego, CA – Gallagher Square at Petco Park

September 19 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic

September 21 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet Co-Founder Don Pyle Delivers a Wildly Candid Music Memoir

Eric Alper
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Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet Co-Founder Don Pyle Delivers a Wildly Candid Music Memoir

Don Pyle has lived one of the most genuinely singular creative lives in Canadian music, and ‘Rough Description: Love Letters and Ghost Stories From a Life in Music’, out May 26th from ECW Press, tells that story with the kind of candor and dark humor that only someone who has actually lived it could pull off. Pyle, drummer and co-founder of beloved instrumental group Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, the band behind the Kids in the Hall theme, brings a sharp observer’s eye to 304 pages of memoir that are alternately hilarious, melancholic, and consistently impossible to put down.

The book covers an extraordinary amount of ground. Pyle traces his earliest bands, the absurdity and rewards of touring, his evolving relationship with his mother, a life-changing car accident, and the genuinely improbable chain of events that turned a punk rock pen pal connection into a career in showbiz. His working relationships with the late Dallas Good, legendary producer and engineer Steve Albini, and the iconic Kids in the Hall comedy troupe all figure prominently, and Pyle dishes on all of it with the kind of unguarded honesty that makes music memoirs worth reading in the first place.

What sets ‘Rough Description’ apart is Pyle’s perspective. A photographer, film and TV composer, producer, and writer with 15 albums to his name, he approaches every creative discipline as part of the same continuous stream, and that unified sensibility gives the book a texture and depth that goes well beyond standard rock memoir territory. The chapter on how the Ramones rewired his teenage brain alone is worth the price of admission.

‘Rough Description’ is available for pre-order now ahead of its May 26th release from ECW Press, in paperback at $24.95 CAD, with digital editions also available. For anyone who came of age with Canadian indie music, comedy, and punk in their bloodstream, this is essential reading.

Tom Doyle Finally Gives Ringo Starr the Biography He Has Always Deserved

Eric Alper
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Tom Doyle Finally Gives Ringo Starr the Biography He Has Always Deserved

Ringo Starr has spent decades being the most underestimated member of the most famous band in history. Tom Doyle’s ‘Ringo: A Fab Life’, out May 12th from ECW Press, makes a compelling and long-overdue case for why that underselling has always been a mistake. Doyle, the critically acclaimed author behind the award-winning Kate Bush study ‘Running Up That Hill’ and a veteran of Q and Mojo, brings the same forensic depth and warm narrative instinct to Starr’s remarkable life across 400 pages of exclusive new interviews and meticulously researched detail.

The book’s scope stretches far beyond the Beatles years, which is precisely what makes it essential. Doyle traces the full arc from Richard Starkey’s poverty-stricken Liverpool childhood and near-fatal illnesses, through the dizzying years with the biggest band on the planet, and deep into the messier, richer decades that followed: the film career, the addictions, the career detours, the children’s television narration, the furniture design, the marriage to Barbara Bach, and ultimately the hard-won peace and sobriety of his later years. It is a life so packed with incident that the Beatles chapter, remarkable as it is, feels like one movement in a much longer symphony.

The critical response has been emphatic. Classic Rock awarded it a perfect 10, calling it “full of drama, emotion, comedy, tragedy and incident” and “an essential purchase for music fans, never mind Beatles fans.” Mojo called it a “resolutely fab” portrait of “the Beatles anchor emotionally as well as rhythmically.” Record Collector gave it five stars, praising Doyle’s “friendly, informal, engaging yet fact-packed and forensic” style. Samira Ahmed of BBC Front Row called it “perhaps the most dramatic life arc of any of the Beatles,” adding that it is “a beautiful read.”

‘Ringo: A Fab Life’ is available for pre-order now ahead of its May 12th release from ECW Press, in paperback at $29.95 CAD. For Beatles obsessives, music biography devotees, and anyone who has always suspected there was far more to Ringo Starr than the punchlines suggest, this is the book that settles the argument once and for all.

Wilco Frontman Jeff Tweedy Delivers “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Eric Alper
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Wilco Frontman Jeff Tweedy Delivers “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” on Jimmy Kimmel Live

Jeff Tweedy took “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” to Jimmy Kimmel Live this week, and the performance is exactly what you want from one of American rock’s most enduring and quietly essential voices. Watch it here.






Leicester R&B Talent CRUZEJUDE Captures the Push and Pull of Modern Love on “Talk 2 Me”

Eric Alper
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Leicester R&B Talent CRUZEJUDE Captures the Push and Pull of Modern Love on “Talk 2 Me”

CRUZEJUDE arrived in music the way the best artists do, through a foundation so deep in performance that it was only a matter of time before it found its fullest expression. The Leicester-born R&B talent, who built his early career as a dancer working alongside Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, Kylie Minogue, Bebe Rexha, and Girls Aloud, has released “Talk 2 Me,” a warmly nostalgic, emotionally precise new single that confirms he is operating at a genuinely compelling level.

Produced by LoopGod (Nipsey Hussle, Freddie Gibbs, T-Pain), the track is built on inviting guitar licks layered over gently hypnotic drums, creating exactly the kind of open, breathing space that lets a vocalist with CRUZE’s instincts do their best work. The production carries all the hallmarks of early 2000s R&B without feeling like a replica, warm and familiar but shaped by a songwriter with his own distinct point of view.

The emotional territory is one most listeners will recognize immediately. “Talk 2 Me” is about wanting something deeper with someone and sensing they feel the same, only to realize they only return when they need that moment of connection. CRUZE describes it as “that push and pull between wanting to hold onto someone and learning not to settle for less than the kind of love that’s actually right for you.” That kind of lyrical clarity, delivered with genuine vocal warmth, gives the track a universal resonance that sits comfortably alongside his previous singles “Touch” and “Ain’t Me.”

With early support from BBC Introducing and placement on Spotify’s Fresh Finds, the attention around CRUZEJUDE is building with real momentum. “Talk 2 Me” is the kind of single that accelerates that trajectory, soulful, well-crafted, and impossible to shake after a single listen. One of the most assured R&B releases to emerge from the UK so far this year.

Apple Music and TikTok Just Made Music Discovery Seamless for Artists and Fans Alike

Eric Alper
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0
Apple Music and TikTok Just Made Music Discovery Seamless for Artists and Fans Alike

TikTok has always been where music breaks. The platform’s ability to turn an unknown track into a cultural moment overnight is well established at this point. What it has never fully solved is the gap between discovery and deeper listening. Apple Music and TikTok’s new Play Full Song feature closes that gap entirely, and the implications for artists are significant.

The mechanics are straightforward. Apple Music subscribers who discover a song on their For You Page or Sound Detail Page can now tap a single button to hear the full track inside the TikTok app, powered by an Apple Music player built on Apple’s MusicKit. From there, the listener can continue into a personalized stream of recommended songs, save tracks to their library, and add them directly to Apple Music playlists. The moment of discovery flows immediately into the moment of engagement, with no friction and no redirect to another app.

For artists, that frictionless path matters enormously. The existing Add to Music App feature helped convert TikTok discovery into playlist saves. Play Full Song goes further, turning a fifteen-second clip into a full-length listen in real time. Every one of those streams counts as a paid play within Apple Music, meaning discovery on TikTok now translates directly into streaming revenue without the listener ever leaving the platform.

The partnership also introduces Listening Party, a new social feature that lets artists and fans listen to songs together in real time, interact with each other, and engage directly with the artist during the session. It is a genuinely new way to build community around a release, turning what was previously a passive streaming moment into a shared, live experience.

Blood Orange, Lucius, and The Crane Wives Lead Ohio University’s Eighth Annual Music Industry Summit

Eric Alper
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Blood Orange, Lucius, and The Crane Wives Lead Ohio University’s Eighth Annual Music Industry Summit

The Ohio University Music Industry Summit is back for its eighth year, and the 2026 edition is the most compelling lineup the conference has assembled. Scheduled for April 14th through 16th in Athens, Ohio, the three-day event brings together keynote artists Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), Grammy-nominated indie-pop band Lucius, and harmony-driven folk-rock band The Crane Wives alongside a roster of music industry professionals that spans label presidents, sync supervisors, journalists, and Grammy executives. Free virtual attendance is available to anyone, and in-person registration starts at $75.

The artist keynotes anchor the Summit with genuine creative range. Dev Hynes operates at the intersection of art, composition, and pop with a singular restlessness that defies easy categorization. Lucius bring a Grammy-nominated pedigree and a live show built around vocal power and bold production. The Crane Wives ground the lineup in the kind of deeply felt, community-rooted folk-rock that resonates well beyond genre boundaries. Conference director Josh Antonuccio puts it plainly: “Our artist keynotes each represent a completely unique path through and within this industry.”

The programming surrounding those keynotes is equally serious. Bob Boilen, creator of Tiny Desk Concerts and All Songs Considered, is among the speakers. Thomas Golubić, the Grammy Award-winning music supervisor behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, will conduct and perform a live score in a joint event with the Athens International Film and Video Festival. Nabil Ayers, President of Beggars Group US, joins panels alongside Marcus J. Moore of The New York Times, Frankie Pine of Whirly Girl Music, and Adam Sensenbrenner, manager of Caamp. A panel with the creative design team behind Twenty One Pilots and a ROAR Records in-store performance by Jake Ewald of Slaughter Beach, Dog round out Tuesday’s programming.

Dolby and Focusrite bring an immersive audio studio experience to Wednesday and Thursday, offering calibrated Dolby Atmos listening sessions on a premium Adam Audio 7.1.4 speaker system, a rare opportunity to experience spatial audio production at its most refined. The Official Music Industry Summit Party, presented by Qobuz and featuring a DJ set by J Rawls, is free and open to the public on Wednesday evening. Lucius close the conference with the Thursday night concert at Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium, followed by an after party at The Union Bar.

Named one of the seven essential music conferences by Soundfly alongside South by Southwest and Canadian Music Week, the Ohio University Music Industry Summit drew more than 4,000 in-person and online attendees last year. Free registration is available to all students, educators, and Ohio University alumni. For the full schedule and to register, visit ohio.edu/music-industry-summit.

Marshmello Headlines as FEED THE BLOCK Brings Free Outdoor Dance Parties Back to Downtown Las Vegas

Eric Alper
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0
Marshmello Headlines as FEED THE BLOCK Brings Free Outdoor Dance Parties Back to Downtown Las Vegas

Downtown Las Vegas has a dance floor again. FEED THE BLOCK, the free open-air block party series that pulled more than 40,000 fans to Fremont East in its debut year, returns for its 2026 season with GRAMMY-nominated artist and producer Marshmello headlining the kickoff event on Thursday, April 2nd, starting at 6pm. Presented by Wynn Nightlife and Corner Bar Management, the series transforms the intersection of 6th and Fremont into a high-energy outdoor celebration under the desert sky, and admission is free.

The series earned its reputation fast. Its inaugural run featured electrifying sets from Gryffin, Major Lazer SoundSystem, and Diplo, establishing FEED THE BLOCK as one of downtown Las Vegas’s most talked-about live music experiences. The premise has always been straightforward and genuinely rare: world-class dance music, open to everyone, in the middle of the city. Corner Bar Management founder Ryan Doherty puts it plainly: “Artists like Marshmello represent the very best of what this series stands for, pure energy, massive sound, and a community of fans who come together to celebrate music.”

Marshmello is exactly the right artist to open this chapter. Since emerging in 2015, the masked producer has accumulated more than 50 billion streams and built a catalog that moves without friction between dance, pop, hip-hop, and country. His 2024 collaboration with Kane Brown, “Miles On It,” made history as the first song to debut at number one simultaneously on both the Top Dance/Electronic Songs Chart and Top Country Songs Chart. His April 2nd set will take place atop the legendary Forest House Art Car, a stage that has graced Electric Daisy Carnival and Burning Man. The setting alone raises the stakes considerably.

Wynn Nightlife Senior Vice President Ryan Jones frames the partnership with equal enthusiasm: “Bringing an artist of Marshmello’s caliber off property and to the streets of downtown Las Vegas speaks to the power of this partnership.” That instinct, to take genuinely premium entertainment and hand it directly to the community, is what makes FEED THE BLOCK one of the most exciting recurring events in live music right now, and one of the most generous.

General admission RSVP is free. VIP tickets, featuring a dedicated viewing area and open bar, are available now at blockparty.vegas/feed.

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That Eric Alper

Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.

Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com

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