Category: 5. Entertainment

Key Facts

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Big Number

323.6 million. That’s how many views the most popular Jet2holiday video has on TikTok, showing someone opening an expansive curtain in what appears to be a hotel room only to reveal a surprisingly small window.

Key Background

This summer has been arguably without a hit song of the season with few breakout hits and charts led by slower songs and holdovers from 2024. Spotify last month said “Ordinary” by Alex Warren was the most-streamed song this summer, and Billboard ranked it as No. 1 on its Songs of the Summer chart, but few other songs made a dent in the charts this summer. Of the top 10 on Billboard’s Songs of the Summer chart, only five were released this year and many were slower and less energetic than 2024’s “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey. Behind “Ordinary,” the next three songs on Billboard’s summer chart are all Morgan Wallen country ballads.

Tangent

One of the songs on Billboard’s summer chart, “Golden,” is from the soundtrack to Netflix smash hit film “Kpop Demon Hunters.” Billboard last month said the movie’s soundtrack broke a record to become the first soundtrack to ever chart four simultaneous top 10 songs. “KPop Demon Hunters” is only the fifth soundtrack ever to achieve four Hot 100 top 10s at all, and the first since “Waiting To Exhale” in 1995. “Golden” has spent 10 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. As a Spotify artist, the KPop Demon Hunters Cast has 51.8 million monthly listeners on the platform.

Further Reading

ForbesThe ‘Nothing Beats A Jet2 Holiday’ TikTok Trend, Explained—And How The Airline Capitalized On Viral AdBy Conor MurrayForbesSummer Songs: ‘Ordinary’ Tops Charts—But Critics Question Whether There’s A Song Of The Summer This YearBy Conor Murray

HBO just changed the names of six of its U.S. linear channels. Don’t worry, HBO Max is still HBO Max — for now, at least.

The new lineup:
HBO2 is now HBO Hits
HBO Signature is now HBO Drama
HBO Zone is now HBO Movies
MoreMAX is now Cinemax Hits
ActionMAX is now Cinemax Action
5starMAX is now Cinemax Classics

Oh, no — how is this going to work on X (fka Twitter)?

But yes, Cinemax is back! Sort of. (Side note: Wow, HBO had at least four terribly named channels.) Those who subscribe to HBO are also subscribed to these half-dozen support channels.

The updated names will also be reflected in available HBO Max live in-app “Channels,” which launched last year on select plans. The feature enables subscribers to stream live HBO programming via simulcasts.

Clearly, the branding team at Warner Bros. Discovery can’t sit still. Max (fka HBO Max) reverted back to “HBO Max” on July 9, 2025; the reversal was first announced at the company’s May upfront event.

“The powerful growth we have seen in our global streaming service is built around the quality of our programming,” Zaslav said at the time. “Today, we are bringing back HBO, the brand that represents the highest quality in media, to further accelerate that growth in the years ahead.”

“With the course we are on and strong momentum we are enjoying, we believe HBO Max far better represents our current consumer proposition,” Casey Bloys, the chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, added. “And it clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”

At the start of Three Days in June, Gail Baines, a 61-year-old teacher, has a meeting with her school head, who informs her she is about to retire. Gail assumes she is next in line for the job, but the head tells her she doesn’t have the people skills and asks if she has considered retirement herself. Affronted, she walks out of the school and from her job without collecting the photo on her desk of her daughter, Debbie, who is about to get married. After Gail gets home, her ex-husband, Max, arrives. He is staying with her for the wedding weekend and tells her he has forgotten to bring a suit – although he has brought a cat. Not for the first time, Gail wonders “why it was that I had so many irritating people in my life”.

Set in Baltimore, Anne Tyler’s novella spans the before, during and after of Debbie’s wedding. Told through Gail’s eyes, the plot is deliberately slim as it explores subtle family dynamics and the mundanity of everyday life. Thus, we accompany Gail as she collects her outfit from the dry cleaners and visits a hair stylist with whom she declines to make small talk. J Smith Cameron, best known for her role as Gerri in Succession, is the narrator, and adeptly captures Gail’s social awkwardness that, unbeknown to her, can come over as chilly and detached. As she ponders the breakdown of her marriage to Max, we see that the headteacher had a point. Although we root for Gail and her future happiness, it is clear her people skills need work.

Available via Penguin Audio, 4hr 24min

Further listening

The Story of a Heart
Rachel Clarke, Little, Brown Audio, 9hr 1min
Clarke’s Women’s prize-winning book traces the remarkable journey of a heart from the body of a nine-year-old girl who is killed in a car crash, and transplanted to a young boy suffering from acute cardiomyopathy. Read by the author.

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Gertude Stein: An Afterlife
Francesca Wade, Faber, 12hr 26min
The Square Haunting author reads her biography of a writer who became an overnight celebrity at the age of 60 following the publication of her 1933 book, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.

The anguished final pleas of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car under Israeli fire are retold in “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a searing new film that received a rapturous premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

“Hind’s story carries the weight of an entire people,” one of the actors, Saja Kilani, told reporters in a statement she read out on behalf of the whole cast and crew ahead of the screening.

The true-life drama focuses on telephone operators from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society who tried for hours to reassure the trapped Hind Rajab as she begged to be rescued from the car, where her aunt, uncle and three cousins already lay dead.

“I’m so scared, please come,” the little girl says, with the original recordings of her increasingly desperate calls to the dispatchers used to powerful effect throughout the film.

“The real question is, how have we let a child beg for life? No one can live in peace while even one child is forced to plead for survival. … Let Hind Rajab’s voice echo around the world,” Kilani said.

After a three-hour wait, the Red Crescent finally got the green light from Israel to dispatch an ambulance to save Hind. But contact with the girl and the rescuers themselves was cut just after the ambulance arrived at the scene.

Days later, the girl’s body was found along with those of her relatives in the car. The remains of the two dead ambulance workers were also recovered from their bombed-out vehicle.

The Israel Defence Forces initially said its troops had not been within firing range of the car. However, independent investigations challenged this assertion and a subsequent UN report said the IDF had destroyed Rajab’s car and killed the two medics who were trying to save her.

Asked about the killings this week, the IDF said the incident, which happened on January 29, 2024, was still under review and declined further comment.

The film received a thunderous, 24-minute standing ovation at its premiere, by far the longest of this festival to date, making it the clear crowd favorite to win the prestigious Golden Lion award, which will be awarded on September 6.

“Free, free Palestine,” people in the audience chanted.

The movie has also attracted some top Hollywood names as executive producers, giving it added industry heft, including actors Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara, who were both in Venice on Wednesday to support the production, as well as Brad Pitt.

Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania, who also wrote the screenplay, said Hind’s voice transcended a single tragedy.

“When I heard the first time the voice of Hind, there was something more than her voice. It was the very voice of Gaza asking for help. … It was anger and helplessness that gave birth to this movie,” she told reporters.

The IDF invaded the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. More than 63,000 people living in Gaza have died in the fighting, Gaza health authorities say.

“The narrative around the world is that those dying in Gaza are collateral damage. I think this is so dehumanizing, and that’s why cinema and art are important, to give those people a voice and a face. We are saying enough, enough of this genocide,” Ben Hania said.

The world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars announced this week that it had passed a resolution saying the legal criteria had been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, something Israel denies.

The actors playing the Red Crescent dispatchers said they only heard Rajab’s recordings when they were on the set, making the filming an extremely emotional process.

“There were two times where I couldn’t keep filming. I had a panic attack,” Palestinian actor Motaz Malhees said.

African filmmakers have long faced challenges in securing wide-scale distribution for their films. In this context, digital platforms such as Netflix and YouTube have been hailed as bringing huge new opportunities.

This optimism in filmmaking resonates with the hype digital technologies more generally have had in Africa. They have been seen to offer almost unlimited opportunities for African entrepreneurs to transform and grow their businesses. Ghana’s communication minister, for example, declared in 2017 “it’s Digitime in Ghana”.

We are researchers in film studies, theatre studies, sociology and geography, and in this study, we set out to understand how platforms were being used and thought about in the Ghanaian film industry. We wanted to look beyond the techno-optimistic hype – the idea that technological progress can solve every problem known to humans.

We held interviews and focus groups with 50 filmmakers in Ghana to understand the experience of platform entrepreneurship in filmmaking across the country. We found that while filmmakers were very optimistic about technology, they were also deeply sceptical of what existing platforms could do for them in Ghana. Creating local platforms was an important alternative.

Enthusiastic but short on know-how

Ghana’s film industry dates back to its colonial roots when the Gold Coast Film Unit was established by the British in the 1940s. Although it has achieved remarkable successes, they haven’t been consistent. In the sub-region the industry is dwarfed by Nigeria’s Nollywood.

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Film distribution in Ghana is in a transitional moment, driven in large part by technological change. For a long time, Ghanaian movies reached their audiences on CDs and DVDs. With the rise of digital television and internet streaming, this once lucrative model collapsed. Ghanaian filmmakers are now experimenting with platforms in their businesses.

We found that they used and thought about platforms in three principal ways.

First, many filmmakers enthusiastically embraced platforms and believed they had the power to create global reach and dramatic business growth. Many felt, like prominent Accra filmmaker Isaac, that “opportunities are endless in the industry” because of new technologies.

Some Ghanaian filmmakers distribute their films on major global platforms such as Netflix, but it was only a very small minority. They did not feel that working with platforms had revolutionised their businesses, but rather that being on Netflix enhanced their status, and they hoped this would help them attract financing for future projects.

Second, filmmakers were also well aware of the limits of platform distribution. Those with films on Netflix were the most affluent and well connected. Others struggled to access some global platforms. They also found it very difficult to make money on easy-to-access platforms such as YouTube. They struggle to make the large volume of content needed to get high viewing numbers and thus monetise their content. It was almost impossible to make enough to justify the cost of production.

Some filmmakers felt that they did not know enough about how to use platforms. Emerging filmmaker Esther expressed a common view when she said:

We need more education in filmmaking. Those of us here, we have the talent, we want to do movies, we are doing our best, but most of us have not been to film school to learn.

Some felt they were not benefiting from the potential of platforms yet, but could in the future. Thus, they were motivated to continually experiment and develop new strategies for making and distributing their movies online and offline.

Third, some filmmakers experimented with creating Ghanaian platforms.

John, a leading figure in a national association, said:

In five years, the industry will be better, far, far better than ten years ago. … if we are able to move with time, build a platform like Netflix.

He wanted to create something that would focus on Ghanaian film and support the local industry.

John was not alone. Selwyn, a film and TV entrepreneur, for example, had created an app specifically for local language film.

Ghanaian filmmakers could see that the business models of global tech giants did not favour them, and that Netflix and other American platforms would not transform film distribution in Ghana or fulfil their dreams of global audiences and business growth.

Local solutions

Film makers did not give up in the face of these challenges. Rather they worked hard to devise their own solutions to the challenge of film distribution – solutions that were tailored to their circumstances and put Ghanaian filmmakers at centre stage. Local Ghanaian platforms were one such solution.

The idea that technology can change the world emanates powerfully from Silicon Valley in the US and has been exported globally. Yet Ghana is starkly different from Silicon Valley and thus the experience of technological entrepreneurship is likely to be different too.

There is a well-trodden line about assessing the trustworthiness of online bargains: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. It comes to mind when looking at the extremely unusual way in which Morrissey is apparently seeking to offload his business interests in the Smiths. This is not like the forensic and formal processes behind huge catalogue sales in recent years such as Sting, Bob Dylan, Queen, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd or Paul Simon.

A post on Morrissey Solo – the outlet for all official Morrissey communiques – says the singer has “no choice but to offer for sale all of his business interests in ‘the Smiths’ to any interested party/investor” and that he wants out. Maybe psychologically this is the closure he needs – the band will never reform, given bassist Andy Rourke’s death in 2023 and Morrissey’s clear personal and political differences with guitarist Johnny Marr – but, in straight business terms, this is shockingly cavalier.

It all has the musty whiff of a yard sale. There is a Gmail address listed as the only channel of contact for prospective bidders. Except when you email it, you get a bounce back saying no such address exists.

“Putting a rights sale on a free email account feels like the corporate equivalent of scrawling ‘guitar for sale’ on a lamp-post,” says Cliff Fluet, a partner at legal firm Lewis Silkin, a highly respected veteran of catalogue sales. “Serious investors will expect data rooms, warranties and proper disclosure. A Gmail pitch says none of that is coming, so heavyweight bidders will either steer clear or mark the price down heavily to cover the risk.”

Most of Morrissey’s Craigslist-style post is vague, talking about “all” Smiths recording and publishing rights, merchandise rights, trademarks and so on being bundled up for sale. Yet he does not own any of these outright and even turned down an offer from Marr to share control of band-related trademarks. Uncertainty reigns. Will he sign a deal with Marr ahead of this sale to clear obstacles for potential new owners? That is the great unanswerable question. Marr’s management declined to comment when asked by the Guardian.

There is an argument that bitter in-fighting, non-communication and Morrissey’s own controversial political pronouncements in recent years have seriously damaged the Smiths brand. Repairing and reviving it is perhaps never going to happen under current ownership, so something has to change.

“On the face of it, Morrissey is simply cashing out of a partnership that appears to be long past ‘irretrievably broken down’,” suggests Fluet. “It feels less like a strategic play and more like a desire to walk away with whatever value he can still extract.”

Alan Wallis is CEO of Dynamite Songs and previously ran the music transactions practice at Ernst & Young in the late 1990s and early 2000s, so has seen the changing dynamics of catalogue sales up close for more than a quarter of a century. He says selling a major stake in a commercially and culturally significant music catalogue in this idiosyncratic manner is utterly without precedent.

How such sales normally happen, he says, is that “you put together a pack with all the information that someone who is buying it would need to make a non-binding offer. Then you go into a diligence process with financial information for the last three to five years.” After that, the seller needs to put all related contracts in place. “This is to show that you’ve got title for whatever these assets are and that you own these assets,” he says.

From there, the process is typically to solicit a small number of serious bidders. “Normally, you wouldn’t go out far and wide,” says Wallis. “You’d do it to a limited number [of potential bidders]. You pick who the likeliest are. What you want is a little bit of tension between the two or three [bidders] to try to maximise the price. I don’t think this is going to achieve that.”

Wallis’s concern is that offering a sale in this way could be read by the market as a sign of desperation. Its unconventional nature and structure may scare off serious bidders such as record companies or major rights investors. This could mean more mercenary players step forward, ones who are equally mercenary in their bids. “When you look at it and you read how he just wants to get away from [the Smiths], bidders would low ball,” suggests Wallis.

Quick sales can happen, but invariably they are dramatically below market value.

The Smiths were originally signed to Rough Trade in 1983 but their catalogue of recordings is now owned by Warner Music Group. The collapse of the Rough Trade distribution network in 1991 saw the Rough Trade label sell off its entire catalogue to help pay off debts on the distribution side. A source with inside knowledge told the Guardian that Warner paid £1m for the Smiths’ recordings in this fire sale (equivalent to £2.3m today). “In retrospect,” they say, “it was far too cheap.” As such, any plans for the band’s recordings would need the full involvement of Warner. Buyers will be getting an important share, not total autonomy.

Then there is Marr himself. As co-writer of all the Smiths’ songs, he controls 50% of their publishing. He is also currently the sole owner of their associated trademarks, which will directly impact anything related to merchandise. Anyone scooping up Morrissey’s stake will still have to find common ground with Marr and he will have the power to overrule any commercial plans if he feels they are inappropriate or potentially detrimental to the band’s legacy and earning potential.

“You’d be buying into joint ownership with a co-writer who holds the trademark – on behalf of them both – and who has veto power over most commercial uses,” explains Fluet. “Without Marr’s nod, you don’t get control; you get a near-permanent negotiation.”

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Morrissey had full creative control over the record sleeves for all Smiths releases on Rough Trade. As their creator or creative director, he technically would have owned the IP in them since Rough Trade was not as obsessed as the major labels with nailing everything down contractually. The sale of the catalogue to Warner, however, is likely to have contained a clause whereby ownership of artwork and promo videos would be rolled into the sale of the master recordings.

One resolution, of course, would be that Marr and his team buy out Morrissey’s stake, meaning all the creator rights sit in a single pot and there are no complications or fraught negotiations needed to clear uses such as synchronisation deals. Yet given Morrissey’s terse statement (“I am burnt out by any and all connections to Marr, Rourke, Joyce”), it may be the case that he would peevishly refuse to sell to his former creative and business partner.

There is, argues Fluet, too much financial uncertainty here for any potential purchaser. “The only dependable cash for a buyer lies in Morrissey’s receipts of publishing and master recording royalties – the receivables that come in every quarter,” he says. “But even that income depends on the seller standing behind his paperwork and staying willing to cooperate on audits and future clearances. Right now, buyers can’t be sure of either.”

With politics and relationships being as curdled as they are, and the impact this has had on the band’s legacy management in both creative and commercial terms, the asking price could be significantly lower than one might expect for such an important catalogue.

“In a perfect world – clean chain of title, no arguments, full cooperation – a Smiths catalogue could fetch tens of millions,” estimates Fluet. “This is not that world. Overlapping claims, years of legal sparring and the hint of fresh litigation mean any bidder will apply a chunky discount.”

This is, even if everything is as it claims to be, undoubtedly the most unusual tactic to sell a significant catalogue and bundle of rights.

Wallis, wincing at the fact bids have to be submitted via a Gmail address (functioning or otherwise), says Morrissey really needs hardened professionals around him to strike an equitable sale price. “Someone’s going to have to help him do this deal,” he says. “I don’t know who’s going to be looking at the offers that come in.”

This, frankly, is just not how music rights sales are done. “It might be a pathetic attempt at trying to get attention,” sniffs one highly knowledgable music industry source.

Another well-placed industry name is partly sanguine and partly drily cynical: “It will be interesting to see if he actually means it.”

The exclusive research estimates that consumer spend driven by live music hit £6.7bn—a record figure and a year-on-year increase of 9.5%. It caps a remarkable post-COVID recovery for the sector, and 2024’s figure was over £2bn more than in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic decimated live music across the UK.

 

Spending in 2024 was driven by a very strong line-up of live music that included some blockbuster shows, led by Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Live concerts attracted three quarters (75.3%) of total spending, with significantly faster growth than festivals, which accounted for 24.7%.

 

The research from LIVE and CGA by NIQ also highlights the importance of live music as a source of jobs. The sector employed more than 234,000 people on a permanent and casual basis in 2024—a 2.2% increase year-on-year, and 11.7% more than in 2019.

 

However, the report sets out significant challenges for live music businesses in 2025—especially for grassroot music venues, which have been vulnerable to inflationary pressures. Extra payroll costs after increases in National Minimum and Living Wages and National Insurance contributions from April have deepened problems for many employers.

 

Other insights from the UK Live Music Report include:

• Greater London attracted a third (3%) of all consumer spending on live concerts in 2024, with Manchester and Glasgow the next biggest cities
• Pop music was the single biggest live music genre in 2024 with a 1% share of all spending—a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percentage points
• Live music remains a major source of employment for freelancers, and a LIVE survey reveals nearly three quarters (73%) of them think it a great industry to work in.

 

The Live Music Report combines data from operators, associations, music licensing bodies and ticket agencies with CGA by NIQ’s proprietary hospitality research sources. It is based on data from more than 55,000 gigs, concerts, festivals and events where music was a core part of the entertainment, and captures box office income, venue spend and spend immediately before and after attending events.

 

Jon Collins, CEO of LIVE said, “2024 was a standout year for LIVE as we took our seat at the top table of Government.  While UK live music continued the post-lockdown trend of strong performance for the biggest names at the biggest venues, while pressure built across our grassroots as venues closed, tours were cancelled or cut back and festivals called time.  And yet, as the figures in this report show, we can be a driver of that growth in all regions, towns and cities across the country.  Live music is a joyous experience and venues and festivals of all shapes and sizes, operated by world-class teams and showcasing world-class established and emerging talent, will continue to delight audiences for decades to come as long as industry and Government protects and nurtures the ecosystem.”

 

Steve Lamacq, Chair of LIVE said, “It is a really exciting time for live music. More and more people have enjoyed going to gigs over the past year.  There’s more shows, more choice and incredibly one live gig every 137 seconds. It’s testimony to the fact that live music brings people together and provides experiences and memories that will stay with us for years to come. Whether that’s a mega star in a stadium or an up-and-coming band or artist playing their heart out in your local grassroots venue, live music is the most exciting, immediate and sometimes life-changing part of the music industry.  With the launch of the LIVE Trust, we hope to make sure that those crucial small venues can survive and flourish so that they can continue to nurture the acts that’ll be filling venues and headlining festivals in years to come.”

 

Reuben Pullan, senior insight consultant at CGA by NIQ, said: “These numbers show the immense contribution of live music to the UK economy. It significantly outperformed the wider hospitality and leisure sectors for growth in 2024, and the lucrative reunion of Oasis is likely to make 2025 a very strong year too. While major-league artists and big cities inevitably dominate, our report also shows it supports the economic and cultural life of every region of the UK, and beyond pop, indie and rock there is a very long tail of genres that entertain the nation. This is an incredibly rich diversity of entertainment, but it is built on the foundations of small venues that deserve much more help then they currently get.”

 

Download the UK Live Music 2024 Report here.

 

About LIVE
LIVE (Live music Industry Venues & Entertainment) is the voice of the UK’s live music and entertainment business. LIVE members are a federation of 16 live music industry associations representing 3,159 businesses, over 35,000 British artists and 2,000 backstage workers.

LIVE works to ensure that the interests of live music in the UK are understood and communicated to Government, policymakers, regulators, the public and the wider music and entertainment industries.

LIVE was initially formed in response to the unprecedented pressure and devastation faced by the industry due to COVID-19 and is structured around four pillars: lobbying, economic analysis, messaging, and skills & diversity. Its work is driven by a series of sub committees on topics including festivals & outdoor events, venues, touring, people and sustainability. https://livemusic.biz/