2024 has proven to be quite a notable year for the music industry. With an all out diss track war between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, seemingly endless lawsuits and allegations against Sean “Diddy” Combs, music festivals struggling to stay afloat in this particularly volatile economy, numerous big name bands coming and going at will and a potential ban on the wildly popular TikTok app on the horizon, there’s no telling what 2025 will bring. The latter in particular is stuck in limbo with the current Biden administration awaiting the demise of the social media app while the forthcoming Trump administration is seemingly looking to halt its fate. The decision now appears to lie in the hands of the Supreme Court with the Justices agreeing to hear the case in the new year. While we anxiously await 2025 and attempt to decipher what might happen and what it will mean for us, let’s first take a moment to reflect, slow down and attempt to digest what has happened thus far this year. Without further ado, here are the biggest music news stories of 2024.

– Skyy Rincon

Photo credit: Sharon Alagna

5. Kendrick vs. Drake Feud

The Kendrick Lamar versus Drake feud had many eyes (and ears) on it this year. The beef began with Drake’s song featuring J. Cole, “First Person Shooter” in which Cole raps, “Love when they argue the hardest MC / Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me? / We the big three like we started a league,” which refers to himself, Drake (Aubrey), and Lamar (K-Dot) being the “big three” in their genre. 

Lamar wasn’t a fan of being grouped in with the other two, leading him to fire the first shot on “Like That,” a collaborative track with Future and Metro Boomin. Lamar raps, “F–k sneak dissin’, first-person shooter/ I hope they came with three switches.” In “Like That” Lamar continues to go on to denounce the “big three” J. Cole spoke of, with the lyrics “Motherf–k” the big three, n—a, it’s just big me.” Lamar even dissed Drake and his album For All The Dogs on the track rapping “For all your dogs gettin’ buried/ That’s a K with all these nines, he gon’ see Pet Sematary.”

On April 19, 2024, Drake released the first of many solo diss tracks between the two, titled “Push Ups”. Billboard reports that in “Push Ups”, Drake makes digs at Lamar’s size and relationship with Top Dawg Entertainment. Before Lamar could even respond, Drake released another diss track titled “Taylor Made Freestyle” in which he decided to use AI-generated vocals mimicking Snoop Dogg and the late rapper Tupac. Tupac’s estate threatened Drake with legal action if he did not remove the song. Drake complied and “Taylor Made Freestyle” was removed from social media.

After “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle”, Lamar hit back at Drake with the song “Euphoria.” “Euphoria” really goes in on Drake. For instance, Lamar accuses Drake of being a liar in the following bar: “Fabricate stories on the family front, ’cause you heard Mr. Morale/ A pathetic master manipulator, I can smell the tales on you now/ You not a rap artist, you a scam artist with the hopes of being accepted.” He even responded to the debacle with Tupac’s Estate, rapping that Drake’s actions made “Pac turn in his grave.”

Next, Lamar released the song “6:16 LA”, exclusively on Instagram. The song’s title is Lamar’s way of mocking Drake’s pattern of naming songs after times in cities, such as “8 am in Charlotte” and “5 am in Toronto.” According to Billboard, only 14 hours after “6:16 in LA,” Drake released the song “Family Matters,” accusing Lamar of infidelity. But Lamar arguably came back with an even more serious allegation in his next song “Meet the Grahams”, where he calls Drake a “deadbeat” dad and most notably accuses him of hiding one of his children. Lamar raps “You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh, you lied about them ‘other kids that’s out there hoping that you come.'”

But the whole beef really hit the fan when Lamar released the massively successful track “Not Like Us”, which is now a contender for Song of the Year at the next Grammy Awards Ceremony. In “Not Like Us”, Lamar doesn’t hold back accusing Drake of allegedly having suspicious relationships with young girls, with lines such as “Just make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him” and “Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles.” Lamar’s bar “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-Minor” went mega-viral online. There’s no way any music fan has made it through the year without hearing this line. Likely due to its virality, “Not Like Us” went #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. During Lamar’s June 19th concert, he played the hit 5 times in a row.

Drake did respond to the very serious allegations brought up by Lamar on “Not Like Us” in his song “The Heart Part 6.” In this song, Drake claims that he baited Lamar into believing the allegedly false claim of a secret daughter that Lamar raps about in “Meet the Grahams.”

Notably, Drake has been suspicious of the success of “Not Like Us.” Drake is currently accusing Universal Music Group of working with streaming services to allegedly artificially boost the song’s popularity, filing a legal petition on November 25, 2024. One interesting claim in the claim was that Drake believes UMG charges Spotify a reduced licensing rate, allegedly in exchange for recommending “Not Like Us.” Spotify has denied the claim. 

– Skylar Jameson

Photo credit: Mauricio Alvarado

4. Bands Break Up & Make Up

Bands always come and go, that much is true but this year had its fair share of pretty terrific reunions and some gnarly break ups. Starting with the former, it’d be a shame to dismiss the gravity of Linkin Park’s return. Following lead vocalist Chester Bennington’s tragic passing in 2017, the band was put on pause. However, back in September, founding member Mike Shinoda revealed that Linkin Park would return with a new vocalist, this time, in the form of Dead Sara’s Emily Armstrong. The band has since released their comeback album From Zero and is slated to tour throughout 2025.

Another band that returned this year, albeit without new music to share and only temporarily, are thrash metal juggernauts Slayer. The group, which had not played live together since the conclusion of their farewell tour in 2019, returned over the summer with a trio of festival performances with the first being at Riot Fest in Chicago. The band’s second public appearance was set to take place at Louder Than Life in Kentucky, however, due to inclement weather the festival canceled all of their Friday sets. The festival organizers offered passholders a chance to see Slayer at Sacramento’s Aftershock Festival instead which has since marked their last show thus far. Guitarist Kerry King has also launched his new eponymous solo project with the debut album From Hell I Rise. King has warned fans not to get their hopes up, ensuring Slayer will never tour nor release a new album again.

In an unprecedented return coming from the UK music scene this year was iconic Manchester-based rock band Oasis who announced their reunion just in time for the 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe. The brother duo of Liam and Noel Gallagher are going on a world tour throughout 2025, including their first performances in North America since 2008.

Moving into major band breakups this year, the Fat Mike-led NOFX decided to call it quits this year with the release of their last project, fittingly titled Half Album. And yet, no band’s breakup is more shocking than that of Jane’s Addiction. The group canceled their tour after frontman Perry Farrell appeared to physically attack guitarist Dave Navarro onstage in Boston, Massachusetts back in September. The trek was the Jane’s Addiction’s first in 14 years to include the band’s core lineup. The group went on to release their single “True Love” mere days after the altercation. Farrell’s wife later claimed the vocalist would be seeing a neurologist and an ENT specialist following the fight. The band’s apparent estrangement has overshadowed the breakup of Farrell’s other band Porno For Pyros who released their last single “Fingernail” and completed a farewell tour of their own. Suffice to say, it was a year of big shakeups for bands across the pond and beyond.

– Skyy Rincon

3. TikTok Ban

Although President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok in 2020, this year, the TikTok ban became even more real. On March 7th of this year, the House of Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a bill that would potentially shut down the popular social media app TikTok due to security concerns. The bill’s goal was to make the app, owned by foreign companies, have to separate from their parent company. This would affect TikTok as the app is owned by the China-based ByteDance. If the app stores did not follow the ban, they could be charged $5,000 per app user. Meaning, that if TikTok was banned, app stores still distributing the app could face astonishing fines of $850 billion. 

The bill was updated to give TikTok 270 days to find a new parent company to replace ByteDance and a possible grace period of 90 days after that if the president determined there was progress towards the change in ownership. Many argued that even with the change, the bill still violates the First Amendment rights of the American People and would be detrimental to small businesses. TikTok itself assured users that they would fight to keep the app, implying that suing the House’s legislation is a way they could block the bill’s advancement.

On April 24th, after passing through the Senate, the bill pushing for a TikTok ban in the United States was officially signed by President Biden meaning that TikTok would have 270 days to part from ByteDance and find a new company to claim ownership of the app in order to keep being distributed in the United States. This meant that the deadline for TikTok to do this is January 19th of 2025. 

In response to the bill being signed into action, TikTok went through with suing. In the petition filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok and ByteDance claimed that the new law was unconstitutional because it would allegedly impose on free speech and prevent the public from accessing lawful information. However, the federal appeals court rejected TikTok’s bid to overturn the law leading to the app’s ban. 

But, there is a glimmer of hope for the app today, as the Supreme Court has stepped in to relook at the case to determine whether or not the ban is unconstitutional. The case will be expedited and arguments will be made to the court on January 10th, 2025. This news came after Donald Trump was re-elected president, who has seemingly changed his stance on the TikTok ban. The final verdict of this case is pending until TikTok’s lawyers and the United States government make their case to the Supreme Court on January 10th of next year.

– Skylar Jameson

2. Festival Woes

Something that has recently become painfully clear in the music industry, and more specifically in the live music space, is the financial instability of the festival ecosystem. Earlier this year, reports painted a picture of how cutthroat the industry has become with Coachella, the premier music festival of the entirety of North America, experiencing its slowest ticket sales in a decade. The fest took 27 days to sell out its first weekend which is a far cry from 2022 when tickets for both weekends sold out in just under an hour. Sure, there may have been several factors to impact the overall sales point of the two such as the temporary uptick in demand for in-person events that came in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as more specific reasons like the lineup and ticket prices but Coachella was not an isolated case.

Several other festivals felt the heat this year as well including Ventura’s Skull & Roses that was canceled days before the event, the inaugural Sudden Little Thrills which had featured SZA, St. Vincent, The Killers and more.

Perhaps the most shocking development of the year was the cancelation of the much anticipated Sick New World festival which has become a home for alternative and heavy music for two years now. The 2025 edition was unfortunately canceled in late November with organizers naming “unforeseen circumstances” as the reason. The lineup was star-studded featuring the newly-revived Linkin Park and thrash legends Metallica as headliners alongside Queens Of The Stone Age, Evanescence, Gojira and many more. And yet, even the obvious draw of the biggest names in metal and hard rock seemed to be no match for the economic struggle of putting on a music festival, marking a particularly troublesome moment for the live music world this year.

– Skyy Rincon

1. Diddy’s Legal Troubles

The “Diddy” saga began last November, when R&B/pop singer and previous girlfriend of Sean “Diddy” Combs, Cassie Ventura, sued Combs claiming alleged sexual assault and physical abuse. Days, after Cassie blew the whistle on Combs’ alleged behavior, Combs was hit with two more lawsuits alleging sexual assault. Combs was then hit with a fourth lawsuit by a Jane Doe, including claims of allegedly sex trafficking and gang-raping a 17-year-old girl. He later had his invite to the 2024 Grammy’s ceremony revoked. Any chance Combs had of a Hulu reality show was also canceled due to the allegations.

In February of 2024, Combs’ legal defense called the lawsuit involving the alleged gang rape and sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl “unconstitutional” and “fictional”. Despite Combs and his legal team’s attempt to get out of these allegations, the lawsuits didn’t stop. Another suit was filed against the mogul by the producer of his most recent album, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones. Jones claimed that Combs allegedly forced him to solicit prostitutes (some allegedly underage) and allegedly made Jones engage in sexual acts with them.

On March 25, Combs’ house was raided by Homeland Security with the reported purpose of investigating claims of alleged sex trafficking, alleged solicitation and alleged distribution of narcotics and firearms. After the raid, Combs tried to dismiss the suits against him, including the one claiming Combs allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl and the other suit claiming that Combs allegedly took part in human trafficking and revenge porn, but defense became even harder for Combs when a 2016 video allegedly showing Combs attacking Cassie surfaced online. After the footage went viral online, Combs attempted to make a personal apology to the world via social media, calling his behavior “inexcusable”. Cassie also made a statement on social media regarding the video, asking people to believe victims. 

After more lawsuits against Combs, federal investigators in the case announced that accusers would have to plead their case in front of a grand jury. Combs also sold his majority stake in Revolt Media and had his honorary degree from Howard University revoked, following the slew of allegations. Combs continued to fight lawsuits, trying to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Jones. After Combs was ordered to pay $100 million to one of his alleged victims, Combs was finally arrested, with his charges being alleged sex trafficking, alleged racketeering and alleged fraud. The next day, Combs tried to appeal a bail denial which was denied again. However, Combs would attempt to be allowed bail again, which was denied once more. He was also placed on suicide watch while in jail.

Combs also started being linked to celebrities, such as when an alleged incident of arson was suspected to allegedly be a part of the firebombing of Kid-Cudi’s car. More lawsuits came whilst Combs was incarcerated, including one where a woman claimed she allegedly miscarried Combs’ baby. Over 120 lawsuits are either filed or in the process of being filed against Combs, including lawsuits from 25 alleged minors, one being a 10-year-old boy. 

A judge assigned to one of the lawsuits against Combs announced that the accuser could not continue the case under a pseudonym and that they would have to reveal their identity. Another alleged teen victim of Combs was made to do the same. Jay-Z was also brought into the picture when a lawsuit linked him and Combs. However, Jay-Z denied any involvement and is seeking dismissal from the suit. After that, three more lawsuits came Combs’ way, accusing him of alleged sexual assault against three men. Combs has finally seemingly accepted that he will not be granted bail and will stay incarcerated until the judge rules on his case. 

– Skylar Jameson

Featured Image Photo Credit: Mehreen Rizvi