Mzansi Life & Style showcases the best that South Africa has to offer in terms of entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, culture, cuisine, travel, beauty and celebrity news. Subscribe to my website by adding your email address in the "follow" button below.
Rihanna recently released an official trailer, teasing her highly anticipated return to music as the headliner for the first ever Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show, taking place on Sunday, 12 February 2023.
With the Halftime Show just a few short days away, fans can get “Rih”-acquainted with all things Rihanna on Apple Music HERE and with the new Apple Music Sing fans can now sing their favorite Rihanna songs with adjustable vocals and real-time lyrics with multiple lyric views to help fans take the lead, perform duets, sing backup, and more.
The multi-year partnership between The NFL and Apple Music brings together the Super Bowl Halftime Show, the most-watched musical performance of the year, with Apple Music, which celebrates musicians, songwriters, producers and fans, and offers the world’s best music listening experience with a catalog of over 100 million songs, and immersive sound powered by Spatial Audio.
Apple revolutionized the music experience with iPod and iTunes, and continues the award-winning tradition with Apple Music.
Following the successful Cape Town edition, the highly anticipated Cotton Fest returns to Johannesburg and has a confirmed line-up.
Taking place in the inner city on Saturday, the 4th of February, the festival will once again merge both established and young emerging local talents performing live across three energy packed stages.
Founded to showcase the diversities in various popular music genres with the aim of fusing the gaps within the different local movements, the event platform also celebrates fashion and sport.
Every day, Shazam receives tens of millions of requests from users around the world who want to know more about the artist behind the song they’ve just discovered. These Shazams can come from anywhere—social media, car commercials, coffee shops, the mall —making them a powerful tool for predicting the next class of global superstars.
Today, Shazam unveils its annual Predictions 2023 playlist, a 50-track selection of artists that are perfectly poised to have a breakthrough year. Additionally, Shazam is spotlighting 5 artists from the list who have the potential to break out globally in 2023 and, for the first time, 5 artists who are gaining popularity regionally. Based on Shazam’s uniquely predictive data and algorithms, and coupled with the expertise of Apple Music’s global editorial team, this incredible selection of artists show early indicators of future growth — early and consistent momentum in Shazam activity, as well as discovery trends in more than one country.
Looking back at last year’s predictions, Shazam demonstrated, once again, its ability to uncover talent from every corner of the world earlier than any other service. Artists like the incredible Ayra Starr, who was one of Shazam’s five featured predictions last January, made Shazam’s Global Top 10 in October and is now being heralded as an artist to watch in 2023 by other platforms. Looking at streams, several listed artists saw their plays more than double on Apple Music worldwide from Dec. 1, 2021 through Nov. 30, 2022, compared to the previous 12 months, including Ivan Cornejo (+329%), DannyLux (+189%), Mina Okabe(+217%), La Zarra (+308%) and Lojay (+696%)
Overall, around half the artists featured in the Shazam Predictions 2022 playlist made Shazam’s Top 200 National charts and Apple Music’s Daily Top 100 charts. These artists were featured on 44 Shazam charts and 148 Apple Music charts. Three artists made Shazam’s national Top 10 and 13 made Apple Music’s. And two artists made national No. 1 on Shazam, and seven did the same in Apple Music, showing a plethora of amazing accomplishments by these artists over the course of 2022.
This year’s selection represents another remarkably global and diverse group of talented artists, hailing from all corners of the globe including Japan, Colombia, Spain, France, and Nigeria.
Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever roared into cinemas across the continent this past weekend (11-13 November, including previews) and, in doing so, lit up the box office. Across all territories, the follow up to Ryan Coogler’s 2018 hit Black Panther proved a draw for cinema-going audiences with just under 300k attendances being reported.
In West Africa, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever became the biggest industry opening weekend of all time with a box office tally of ₦240m. In East Africa the film earned Kes 25m, earning the titles of both the biggest opening weekend box office of 2022 and the biggest post-pandemic opening to date. In Southern Africa, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever brought in R16.5m respectively, becoming the biggest opening weekend box office of 2022.
2018’s Black Panther remains the number 1 film of all time in both East and West Africa, and the number 2 film of all time in Southern Africa.
I recently attended a launch event where TikTok announced that it has partnered with the 28th South African Music Awards (SAMA28), to introduce the inaugural public-voted “TikTok Viral Song of the Year” category. This award recognises and celebrates local songs and artists that have dominated the entertainment platform in South Africa in the past year.
A number of the most popular songs of the past year made their debut on the entertainment platform before shooting to the top of the music charts globally – earning the platform its well-deserved spot in the music industry.
The TikTok Viral Song of the Year nominations can be voted for exclusively on TikTok from Thursday, 11 August at midday until 24 August, and the winner will be announced at the live SAMA event taking place on 28 August 2022 in Sun City, North West.
Mzansi Life & Style by Mishkah Roman-Cassiem 