SPOTIFY TURNS ONE

Today marks the first anniversary of the arrival of music streaming service
Spotify onto the Australian landscape. And to mark the occasion, they've rolled out a series of completely impressive statistics about how and how much Australians have taken to it across the past 12 months.
In that time, Australians have streamed more than 42.5 million hours of music and have created more than 14 million playlists.
There are more than 240,000 playlists about love, romance and sex, around 230,000 travel-related playlists and about 150,000 for sports and exercise lovers.
"I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved in Australia in such a small space of time," says Managing Director Kate Vale. "We were quickly embraced to become the firm market leader within weeks of launch - the sheer volume of activity should illustrate how popular the service has been. We're excited that Aussies are choosing us as their go-to source to discover and consume more music than ever before."
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis top the list of most streamed artists, followed by Florence & The Machine, Rihanna, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Maroon 5 and Coldplay. Alt-J, Mumford & Sons and The xx round out the top ten list.
The top five Aussies floating our boats are apparently Flume, Tame Impala, Guy Sebastian, 360 and The Rubens.
And if one needs any more proof of Australia's love affair with Macklemore and Lewis, one only needs to take a look at the top ten most streamed tracks in Australia over the past 12 months.

01. Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men
02. Thrift Shop - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ftg. Wanz
03. Don't You Worry Child (Radio Edit) - Swedish House Mafia ftg. John Martin
04. Breezeblocks - Alt-J
05. Same Love - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ftg. Mary Lambert
06. Some Nights - Fun.
07. Diamonds - Rihanna
08. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together - Taylor Swift
09. Ho Hey - The Lumineers
10. Can't Hold Us - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ftg. Ray Dalton

BLUE : Without You

The boys from British boyband Blue have been quietly building their profile in continental Europe over the past year or so, releasing their latest album 'Roulette' and single 'Hurt Lovers' before they took things home to appear on the 'Big Reunion' tour alongside the likes of 5ive, Atomic Kitten and Liberty X.
Now they've dragged out 'Without You' - the second single from the LP - and they've just released the official video.
The boys each take it in turns to look pensive in front of the camera as each of them pine for their loves and there's even a little rap from Mister Webbe.
It's not bad, but there's nothing that's jumping out at us screaming "hit single". Trois points. (Sorry, force of Eurovision habit).

INGROSSO & TRASH RELOAD

We've been repeatedly warned that it was coming to a radio station (and retailer) near us by their very excitable publicists, so we guess it's our duty to inform you that the long-awaited collaboration between Swedish dance superstar Sebastian Ingrosso and our home grown hero Tommy Trash, 'Reload' is now rocking both radio and retail.
Originally released in 2012 as an instrumental, it's been given the commercial touch with the addition of John Martin (Swedish House Mafia's 'Don't You Worry Child') on vocals. And given it's already slammed the No.1 spot on Beatport and has been as high as No.2 on the ARIA club chart, there's every chance it's about to cross over to commercial success.
Catch Tommy on his forthcoming national tour;

May 31 : Frankston (Pier Live)
June 01 : Melbourne (Code Red)
June 02 : Perth (Villa)
June 07 : Brisbane (The Met)
June 08 : Sydney (Pacha)
June 09 : Adelaide (HQ)

BILLBOARD AWARDS : THE WINNERS

Country crossover starlet Taylor Swift has dominated this year's Billboard Music Awards, held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas earlier today Australian time. The singer, whose current album 'Red' is triple platinum here in Australia, swept the awards ceremony, taking home a very healthy eight songs, including the 'Top Artist', 'Top Female Artist' and the 'Album Of The Year' gongs.
But the accolades kept coming for our own Gotye, who bagged four awards for his international smash 'Somebody That I Used To Know', including the prestigious 'Song Of The Year'. He added 'Top Radio Song', 'Top Rock Song' and 'Top Streaming Song' to the trophy cabinet.
Barbadian songstress Rihanna swept the R&B categories, picking up four awards including 'R&B Artist Of The Year', 'R&B Song Of The Year' and 'R&B Album Of The Year', while Prince was presented with the 'Icon Award'.
Check HERE for the full list of winners.
The 2013 Billboard Music Awards are repeated on Channel [V] from 9pm.

5 SECONDS TO A NATIONAL TOUR

Sydney outfit 5 Seconds Of Summer have been living the high life over the past year, providing the support role to none other than One Direction on their recent UK tour dates, while collecting new fans with every appearance.
But the boys (Luke, Calum, Michael and Ashton) are on their way home, ready to hit the ground running with a series of headline performances ahead of their Australian dates with One Direction later in the year.
5 Seconds Of Summer will hit stages in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide in early June, with tickets for all shows on sale at 5pm today.

June 02 : Sydney (Metro Theatre)
June 05 : Brisbane (The HiFi)
June 06 : Adelaide (Uni Bar)
June 07 : Melbourne (Ormond Hall)
June 08 : Perth (Astor Theatre)

BY JOVI! IT'S ANOTHER MELBOURNE SHOW!

Well someone must be doing alright.
Tickets for Bon Jovi's Australian leg of their 'Because We Can' tour must have sold rather well on pre-sale, because the team at Dainty Group has this morning announced that the supergroup will play a second Melbourne show at Etihad Stadium - on Sunday December 08.
Once again, tickets start from a tiny $35 and they'll be covering all their biggest hits, as well as tracks from their recent No.1 album 'What About Now'.
Kid Rock will serve as the special guest on the Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide dates on his first ever Australian tour.
Tickets are on the sales desk from midday today.

December 07 : Melbourne (Etihad Stadium)
December 08 : Melbourne (Etihad Stadium) NEW SHOW
December 11 : Adelaide (AAMI Stadium)
December 12 : Perth (Perth Arena)
December 14 : Sydney (ANZ Stadium)
December 17 : Brisbane (Suncorp Stadium)

JENNIFER LOPEZ FTG. PITBULL : Live It Up

The skyline of Paris always has the ability to take our breath away - and so it is with an all-too-brief helicopter sweep across the vista of the Eiffel Tower and distant Sacre Coeur.
We're soon catapulted to a bit of a kerfuffle backstage as Miss Jennifer Lopez arrives in a black feathered number, presumably to set herself up for the product placements to come in the next few frames.
Off to the stage with her and she gives extraordinarily good face, glamming it up in front of some clearly impressed industry types.
There are more costume changes, some impressive choreography and some incredible-looking set-ups, all combining to effect... yes, another product placement.
J-Lo's so hot, you have to ask yourself why she needs to rope in Pitbull time after time...

FREE LANCELOT

We've featured the amazing electropop magnificence of Lancelot on the site before. And he's a generous chap too, allowing all and sundry to download his last release 'Spoken Word' from his 'We Can Dance' EP, along with previous releases.
But by gad, he's at it again, allowing fans across the globe to download his latest release 'You'll Never Be Mine' - a danced-up two track EP that takes inspiration from '70s disco outfit SOS Band. Lancelot tells us that the first track (and title track) borrows from 'Just Be Good To Me', while the second tune 'The Way I Feel About You' tips its hat to 'The Finest'.
Both are available to download at no cost to you HERE and HERE.

TOURING : Xavier Rudd

Aussie singer songwriter Xavier Rudd is teaming up with now-Aussie resident Donavon Frankenreiter, Nahko and Medicine For The People for a national tour.
The three acts will come together to celebrate "three different cultures, one love of music and the ocean" as they traverse the country, from Margaret River and Fremantle in the west to Sydney and Byron Bay in the east, performing fan favourites to one and all.
Tickets for all dates are on sale on Thursday May 30.

September 25 : Adelaide (Thebarton Theatre)
September 28 : Margaret River (3 Oceans Winery)
September 29 : Fremantle (Arts Centre)
October 03 : Melbourne (Forum Theatre)
October 04 : Sydney Luna Park Big Top)
October 06 : Caloundra (Caloundra Music Festival)
October 07 : Byron Bay (YAC Ampitheatre)
October 08 : Brisbane (The Tivoli)

EUROVISION : THE WINNER IS...

Well clearly we're not just going to come out and say it right here in the opening sentence. If we do that, said sentence will show up in our Twitter feed, annoying the lights out of our readers away from the Eastern states who are behind us and are relying on us not to break our promise of no spoilers.
The glitz, the glamour, the disco balls, the key changes, the outfits, the fireworks, the Shrek look-a-like, the hair, the good, the bad and the ugly... It all came together, along with 26 countries from throughout Europe to compete in the all-important, much loved 2013 Eurovision Song Contest.
Last year's winner Loreen took flight, Romania's Cesar took camp to a whole new level (as did the host of the show), and all of Europe voted to somewhat predictably crown the long-time favourite Denmark the winner of this year's competition.
Emmelie De Forest's super-catchy 'Only Teardrops' took out the competition with a total of 281 votes, ahead of Farid Mammadov from Azerbaijan, who placed second.
Positions three to ten were filled by Ukraine, Norway, Russia, Greece, Italy, Malta, Netherlands and Hungary.
Bonnie Tyler didn't fare particularly well, finishing in a lowly 19th position and Ireland's 'Ryan Dolan' finishing in lucky last with just 5 points.
So we're off to Denmark in May next year for the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. So let the countdown begin...