Culture
Awards season: The Golden Globes is trying to reinvent itself

Awards season: The Golden Globes is trying to reinvent itself

David Crowther

‘Tis the season

‍The Golden Globes will get the film and TV awards season properly underway on Sunday, but they’ll likely look a little different thanks to a host of fresh categories, an updated voting body, redesigned trophies, and even a new network.

Comedian Jo Koy will host the revamped ceremony, with critics predicting Barbenheimer domination and a host of TV gongs for Chartr office favorite Succession, as the awards show attempts to drag itself out of a prolonged reputational and ratings rough patch.

‍Bronze age

‍In 2021, the now-dissolved Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the show’s ex-organizers, came under fire for controversies ranging from financial corruption to racism and discrimination. The accusations saw celebrities boycott the awards, Tom Cruise return his previous Globes, and the 2022 ceremony take place behind closed doors.

‍New owners Dick Clark Productions will be hoping to leave those controversies behind with their shiny new ceremony. From 1998 to 2020, the Globes broadcast attracted a 19.3 million audience on average, even with a huge drop off in 2008 owing to a writers’ strike, but viewership for the most recent shows has slumped to 6.9 million and 6.3 million, respectively.

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Saleah Blancaflor

Justin Bieber’s music keeps surging on streaming after Coachella

You better belieb it. After Justin Bieber headlined the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California, Billboard reports the pop star is experiencing the biggest non-Super Bowl catalog bump this year, with his music tripling in streams just days after his first set on April 11.

Following Bieber’s performance on Weekend 2 at Coachella on April 18 (which included appearances from Billie Eilish and SZA), his streams climbed even higher.

On Monday (April 20), Bieber’s streams reached a new high for the year, amassing 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previous high-water mark for 2026.

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(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he’s had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams, compared with only four days in all of 2025, when he released his “Swag” album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber’s first Coachella set, the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart, with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for the artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The “Baby” singer is currently in second place, with his odds at 27%.

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

Justin Bieber’s Post-Coachella Streams Aren’t Done Spiking Yet

On Monday (April 20), Bieber’s streams reached a new high for the year, amassing 32.4 million official on-demand US streams, according to Luminate, which is a 12% increase from his total the previous Monday (just over 29 million) and a 5% gain from the previous Tuesday (30.9 million), his previous high-water mark for 2026.

Loading...
 

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Since the Coachella bump, he’s had a total of six days with at least 30 million streams, compared with only four days in all of 2025, when he released his “Swag” album.

Spotify reported that following Bieber’s first Coachella set, the pop star reached No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Top Artist chart, with his catalog surpassing 77 million streams in a single day, which marked his biggest streaming day of the year.

While prediction markets currently show that Bruno Mars is in the lead at 74% for the artist with the most monthly Spotify listeners at the end of April, Bieber could slowly catch up with a week left in the month. The “Baby” singer is currently in second place, with his odds at 27%.

culture
Max Knoblauch

Xbox cuts price of its Game Pass subscription by 23%, removes new “Call of Duty” games

A Halley’s Comet-level event in the world of subscriptions is occurring at Microsoft: the company announced it will lower the price of its Game Pass Ultimate from $29.99 to $22.99.

The move comes a little over a week after reports revealed an internal memo from new Xbox head Asha Sharma in which the exec told employees that Game Pass has “become too expensive.” Back in October, before Sharma’s tenure began, Xbox hiked its Game Pass subscription by 50%.

With the price drop, Game Pass will also see a major shift: new “Call of Duty” titles will no longer be added to the service at launch, instead joining the library about a year later during the following holiday season. The subscription will still cost a bit more than it did before the popular titles were added in 2024.

According to estimates reported by Bloomberg, the decision to put “Call of Duty” on Game Pass cost Xbox more than $300 million.

Millie Giles
HAPPY CAMPUS
4/20/26
College applications fall if weather is bad during tours, study suggests

New research finds the vibes on the day that prospective students visit a college might affect whether they apply.

Amherst College
Tom Jones
Time’s up?
4/17/26
LIV Golf’s Saudi backers are reportedly pulling out after pumping $5 billion into the tour

The 2026 season will continue “uninterrupted and at full throttle,” LIV’s CEO said.

LIV Golf Mexico City - Day One
culture
Millie Giles

The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

New data published Tuesday by the US Census Bureau has revealed the most common names provided in the 2020 Census, in the first release to include forename data since 1990.

As described in the brief, Michael was the most popular name for males in the US, with roughly 3.5 million American men reporting having this name or a close variant. This is up from fourth place in the 1990 Census, when the top US male name was James — though there were still 3 million Jameses in 2020’s tally.

Despite a three-decade gap, Mary remained the top name for American females in both censuses, with the 2020 survey counting almost 1.8 million females with this given name. Interestingly, Mary was one of just two predominantly female names that broke the top 10 given names in the US, with the overall list dominated mostly by male monikers.

Most popular names US census 2020 chart
Sherwood News

In all, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. Zooming out, almost 3x as many given names were needed to cover a quarter of the US female population than that of males.

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