Music

Billboard Magazine, known for the music charts that it compiles and prints weekly, once again majorly changed the industry standard for the Hot 100 songs chart. This time, the change lies in the inclusion of YouTube views in the streaming component of that chart, which also uses sales and radio airplay to determine with songs are the most successful in a given week.

You may know Ed Sheeran as the velvet voice cooing with Taylor Swift in the song “Everything Has Changed” from her most recent album, Red, but this 22-year-old English singer-songwriter is much more than T-Swift’s backup singer; his debut album features “Give Me Love,” the popular radio hit “The A Team,” and other songs of a similar acoustic style that will keep you satisfied for hours.

It was the year of the new artist: music fans and radio programmers welcomed more first-time hit makers to the mainstream scene in 2012 than in any other year in recent memory. Unsurprisingly, the 55th annual crop of Grammy hopefuls is strongly indicative of the public's "in-with-the-new" attitude.

Rapper Kendrick Lamar’s album, “good kid m.A.A.d city,” has received great praise from critics and fans alike ever since its release on October 22. This album is the first for the 25-year-old rapper from Compton. With this he has not only impressed rap fans, but has greatly expanded on his already growing fan base.