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Spotify names Taylor Swift as Kingdom’s most-streamed artist of 2023

Spotify names Taylor Swift as Kingdom’s most-streamed artist of 2023
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Updated 01 December 2023
Arab News
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Spotify names Taylor Swift as Kingdom’s most-streamed artist of 2023

Spotify names Taylor Swift as Kingdom’s most-streamed artist of 2023
  • Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ most popular song among Saudi listeners
  • Abdul Majeed Abdullah takes top spot on Arab artists list
Updated 01 December 2023
Arab News
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DUBAI: Audio streaming service Spotify this week released its annual roundup of the most popular artists, songs, albums and podcasts streamed in each country over the past year.

“From gaming playlists reigning supreme to the fascinating connection between global music trends and local podcasts, it’s evident that Saudi audiences are not only embracing the world but also cherishing their roots, especially in the realms of Khaleeji music and the ever-expanding world of podcasts,” said Akshat Harbola, managing director for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

This year’s Wrapped report marks five years since Spotify launched in the MENA region. In that time, streams of female artists in the Kingdom have grown by 9,150 percent, with Taylor Swift the most popular of all.

Assala Nasri and Sherine took the fifth and 10th spots on the most-streamed Arab artists in the Kingdom, while Balqees’s “Da Elly 7sal” ranked third and “Alfin Bab” by Oumaima Taleb eighth on the most-streamed Arabic songs list.

International artists dominated the most-streamed artists in Saudi Arabia, with Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Lana Del Rey filling the top three places.

Saudis’ affinity for international music was also reflected in the lists of the most-streamed songs and albums.

Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” Jung Kook’s “Seven” and Interworld’s “Metamorphosis” were the top three most-streamed songs in the Kingdom, while The Weeknd’s “Starboy,” Metro Boomin’s “Heroes and Villains” and Adele’s “21” were the most-streamed albums.

Most-streamed Arab artists in Saudi Arabia

  1. Abdul Majeed Abdullah
  2. Rashed Al-Majed
  3. Khaled Abdul Rahman
  4. Ayed
  5. Assala Nasri
  6. Majid Almohandis
  7. Mohammed Abdu
  8. Ahmed Saad
  9. Abadi Al Johar
  10. Sherine

Most-streamed artists in Saudi Arabia

  1. Taylor Swift
  2. The Weeknd
  3. Lana Del Rey
  4. Drake
  5. BTS
  6. Travis Scott
  7. Cigarettes After Sex
  8. Metro Boomin
  9. Abdul Majeed Abdullah
  10. Jung Kook

Most-streamed songs in Saudi Arabia

  1. “Set Fire to the Rain” by Adele
  2. “Seven” (feat. Latto) (Explicit Ver.) by Jung Kook
  3. “Metamorphosis” by Interworld
  4. “Kill Bill” by SZA
  5. “Alo Aleky” by Mohammed Saeed
  6. “Snowfall” by Oneheart
  7. “Another Love” by Tom Odell
  8. “I Wanna Be Yours” by Arctic Monkeys
  9. “Cupid” Twin Ver. by Fifty Fifty
  10. “Like Crazy” by Jimin

Most-streamed albums in Saudi Arabia

  1. “Starboy” by The Weeknd
  2. “Heroes & Villains” by Metro Boomin
  3. “21” by Adele
  4. “Midnights” by Taylor Swift
  5. “SOS” by SZA
  6. “Born To Die — The Paradise Edition” by Lana Del Rey
  7. “Cigarettes After Sex” by Cigarettes After Sex
  8. “After Hours” by The Weeknd
  9. “Proof” by BTS
  10. “1989” by Taylor Swift

Spotify users can access their personalized Wrapped experience on its mobile app and website.

Topics: Spotify Saudi music

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Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful

Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful
Updated 08 July 2024
AFP
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Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful

Kenya court rules police killing of Pakistani journalist unlawful
  • Arshad Sharif was shot in the head when Kenyan police opened fire on his car in October 2022
  • High Court in Kajiado, a town south of Nairobi, rejected a police claim that the killing was a case of mistaken identity
Updated 08 July 2024
AFP

NAIROBI: A Kenyan court on Monday found police acted unlawfully over the killing of a Pakistani journalist in 2022 following a complaint by his widow, her lawyer and local media said.
Arshad Sharif, a strident critic of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment and supporter of former premier Imran Khan, was shot in the head when Kenyan police opened fire on his car in October 2022.
His widow Javeria Siddique and two journalist groups in Kenya filed a complaint last year against top police and legal officials over the “arbitrary and unlawful killing” of Sharif and the respondents’ “consequent failure to investigate.”
On Monday, the High Court in Kajiado, a town south of Nairobi, rejected a police claim that the killing was a case of mistaken identity, and that officers’ believed they were firing on a stolen vehicle involved in an abduction.
Judge Stella Mutuku ruled that Sharif’s murder was unconstitutional and that his rights to life and protection were violated, Kenyan media said.
“I find that the respondents, jointly and severally through their actions violated the rights of the petitioners,” Mutuku said, according to The Nation.
Siddique’s lawyer Ochiel Dudley confirmed the court ruling, describing it as a “great precedent for police accountability.”
He said the ruling found “Kenya violated Arshad Sharif’s right to life, dignity, and freedom from torture, cruel, and degrading treatment.”
He said the court ordered the government to pay 10 million Kenyan shillings ($78,000) in compensation.
The Kenyan court said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and Independent Policing Oversight Authority had violated Sharif’s rights by not prosecuting the two officers involved, Dudley added.
It ordered the two institutions to conclude their investigations and charge the two police officers, he said.
Sharif fled Pakistan in August 2022, days after interviewing a senior opposition politician who said junior officers in Pakistan’s military should disobey orders that went against “the will of the majority.”
The country has been ruled by the military for several decades of its 75-year history and criticism of the security establishment has long been seen as a red line.

Topics: Kenya Pakistan Arshad Sharif

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Anime favorite ‘Grendizer U’ returns to Riyadh after 40 years

Anime favorite ‘Grendizer U’ returns to Riyadh after 40 years
Updated 05 July 2024
Rahaf Jambi
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Anime favorite ‘Grendizer U’ returns to Riyadh after 40 years

Anime favorite ‘Grendizer U’ returns to Riyadh after 40 years
  • Premiere of rebooted series held at Roshn Front cinema
  • Japanese writer Ichiro Okouchi thanks ‘fans around the world’
Updated 05 July 2024
Rahaf Jambi

RIYADH: The world premiere of Manga Production’s rebooted anime series “Grendizer U” was held in Riyadh on Thursday, more than 40 years after it first appeared in the Arab world.

The launch event at the Roshn Front Vox Cinema was attended by Ichiro Okouchi, who wrote the new series, and Essam Bukhari, CEO of Manga Production Co., an affiliate of the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, which holds the global distribution rights for the show.

The Saudi capital features heavily in the opening episode.

“Thanks to our fans around the world, we were able to produce the new ‘Grendizer U’ and show it to you today,” Okouchi said.

“That’s why we decided to start our new story here in Riyadh. Paris, Rome and other cities and locations will be present in the series.”

He said the writers and producers wanted to present the series “in a new and distinct way from the old version”.

“We hope that the work this time will be admired by generations, so that parents, children and all family members can enjoy it together,” he said.

“Grendizer U” launches in Japan and across the Middle East on Friday, with the first episode airing on MBC at 8:30 p.m. All subsequent episodes will be shown exclusively on Shahid.

Bukhari said: “Okouchi was very amazed by the audience today and how Saudi fans are really in love with Grendizer.”

The two teasers for the new series had been viewed more than 100 million times, he told Arab News.

“I think this proves the capabilities of Saudi talents and how they can work with the world, cooperate with the world and at the same time compete with our original work in the global market.”

Manga has collaborated with Shahid on several productions, including “The Journey,” which is one of the most viewed movies on the platform, and the series “Legends in the Coming of Time” and “Captain Tsubasa.”

Topics: Grendizer U anime TV show Manga Production

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Reporters Without Borders says targeted by Vivendi PR firm

Reporters Without Borders says targeted by Vivendi PR firm
Updated 07 July 2024
AFP
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Reporters Without Borders says targeted by Vivendi PR firm

Reporters Without Borders says targeted by Vivendi PR firm
  • RSF accused Vivendi’s Progressif Media of running a “vast disinformation campaign” against them, including false lookalike websites and discrediting messages
Updated 07 July 2024
AFP

PARIS: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Thursday accused a PR firm with links to French billionaire conservative Vincent Bollore of orchestrating a “vast disinformation campaign” against it.
The Paris-based NGO, known for its work in defending press freedom around the world, said the PR firm, Progressif Media, had set up false websites made to look like that of RSF.
It also sent out messages on X to discredit RSF, the NGO said.
The fake sites included content accusing RSF of trying to censor CNews, the country’s most popular news channel that is regularly accused of promoting far-right views.
Progressif Media, RSF found, is part-owned by Bollore’s telecoms conglomerate Vivendi, and is based on the same premises.
Vivendi also owns CNews and several other news organizations that are seen as shifting France’s media landscape to the right in recent years.
Vivendi, which denies political bias in its news outlets, told AFP it had “no knowledge of possible illegal practices attributed to Progressif Media by RSF.”
However, a spokesperson confirmed Progressif Media had been deployed by a part of its media empire “to counter certain arguments about CNews.”
“We will see what happens next, what choices Vivendi will make now that the facts have been exposed publicly,” said Arnaud Froger, head of RSF investigations.
CNews launched in 2017 and is often compared to Fox News in the United States.
According to RSF, the campaign came shortly after it made a formal complaint calling for stricter oversight of CNews.
Following RSF’s complaint, media regulator Arcom was instructed in February to tighten control over TV and radio stations to ensure balanced political coverage.
Bollore, known for having conservative views, has been gradually buying up many of the most important media companies in France, including film producers Canal+, Paris Match magazine and Europe 1 radio.

Topics: Reporters Without Borders Vivendi France

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Pakistan’s Punjab seeks social media ban on security concerns

Pakistan’s Punjab seeks social media ban on security concerns
Updated 05 July 2024
Reuters
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Pakistan’s Punjab seeks social media ban on security concerns

Pakistan’s Punjab seeks social media ban on security concerns
  • A request has been made to impose a temporary ban during Muharram’s Ashura processions, a 10-day mourning observance by minority Shiite Muslims
  • The measure is aimed at protecting the minority from sectarian violence
Updated 05 July 2024
Reuters

LAHORE: Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab is proposing a ban on all social media platforms for six days due to security concerns during thousands of religious processions which start next week, its information minister Uzma Bukhari said on Friday.
The proposal relates to Muharram’s Ashura processions, 10 days of mourning by minority Shiite Muslims. The event is the holiest in the Shiite calendar and commemorates the 7th century death of political and religious leader Hussain Ibn Ali.
Hussain was grandson of the Muslims’ last Prophet Muhammad.
“It is a recommendation, and no decision has so far been taken,” Bukhari told Reuters, adding that the government had received reports of some sectarian issues on social media which he said could “put the country on fire.”
The measure is aimed at protecting the minority from sectarian violence, the provincial government wrote in a letter to Pakistan’s interior ministry on Thursday.
The letter, which was seen by Reuters, said social media platforms such as “Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Tiktok be suspended across the province of Punjab ... in order to control hate material/misinformation.”
The interior ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Pakistan has blocked access to X since its February election, which the interior ministry said in a court submission in April was due to national security concerns.
Civil and rights groups have criticized the ban as an attack on freedom of speech and access to information in a highly polarized country amid allegations of election fraud.
Jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party has said that the suspension of cell phone service on the election day followed by the X ban was an attempt to hurt his supporters, who rely heavily on social media.
A court is due to rule on the last of Khan’s many convictions on July 12, the first day of the latest proposed ban. It was not clear whether the proposal is related to any likely threat of protests by his supporters.

Topics: Pakistan Punjab social media

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OpenAI’s internal AI details stolen in 2023 breach, NYT reports

OpenAI’s internal AI details stolen in 2023 breach, NYT reports
Updated 05 July 2024
Reuters
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OpenAI’s internal AI details stolen in 2023 breach, NYT reports

OpenAI’s internal AI details stolen in 2023 breach, NYT reports
  • Hacker lifted details from discussions in an online forum where employees talked about OpenAI’s latest technologies, says report
Updated 05 July 2024
Reuters

A hacker gained access to the internal messaging systems at OpenAI last year and stole details about the design of the company’s artificial intelligence technologies, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The hacker lifted details from discussions in an online forum where employees talked about OpenAI’s latest technologies, the report said, citing two people familiar with the incident.
However, they did not get into the systems where OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, houses and builds its AI, the report added.
Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
OpenAI executives informed both employees at an all-hands meeting in April last year and the company’s board about the breach, according to the report, but executives decided not to share the news publicly as no information about customers or partners had been stolen.
OpenAI executives did not consider the incident a national security threat, believing the hacker was a private individual with no known ties to a foreign government, the report said. The San Francisco-based company did not inform the federal law enforcement agencies about the breach, it added.
OpenAI in May said it had disrupted five covert influence operations that sought to use its AI models for “deceptive activity” across the Internet, the latest to stir safety concerns about the potential misuse of the technology.
The Biden administration was poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard the US AI technology from China and Russia with preliminary plans to place guardrails around the most advanced AI Models including ChatGPT, Reuters earlier reported, citing sources.
In May, 16 companies developing AI pledged at a global meeting to develop the technology safely at a time when regulators are scrambling to keep up with rapid innovation and emerging risks.
 

Topics: AI OpenAI

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