Words: Gery Hristova

#1

During the Super Bowl show on 13th February, the official first glimpse of Amazon’s new ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ series was shown. The teaser trailer that launched during the annual games has been watched by over 257m people around the world only in the first 24 hours after its release.

The series, which has already been five years in the making and its first season cost more than £340 million ($465), including the rights for all the movies and video, plus ‘The Hobbit’ franchise, are about to go on sale for an estimate of £1,470 billion ($2 billion).

#2 

A few days ago, Abbey Road Studios, one of the world’s most famous recording studios, announces a new award show under the name ‘Abbey Road Studios Music Photography Awards 2022’.

The ceremony, which will take place in May of 2022, is now calling upon professional and emerging photographers, from all across the globe, to enter the four open-entry categories: Live, Championing Scenes and the Undiscovered Photographer of the Year. 

More information about each category can be found here.

#3

After the massive breakthrough of the soundtrack, ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ from Encanto movie, which became the first-ever original Disney song to hit Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart, Disney’s Encanto soundtrack becomes the best-selling album of the year so far, claiming a seventh week at the top of the Official Compilations Chart.

‘Encanto’ is remaining at No.1 on the UK’s Official Compilation Albums Chart for the past seven weeks. Since the beginning of the year, all the songs from the album have been streamed more than 180 million times in the UK and the compilation has already racked up combined chart sales of 93,000 units in 2022. This is more than any artist album from the likes of Adele, Ed Sheeran or The Weeknd during the same period, says Official Charts UK.

#4

A new type of star has been discovered by German astronomers from the University of Tübingen. The newly discovered star is covered in the by-product of helium burning – an exotic composition for a star and is possibly the result of a stellar merger event.

Normal stars have surfaces made up of hydrogen and helium, but the ones that were discovered are covered with carbon and oxygen – the ashes of helium burning. 

What’s more, these new stars also have temperatures and radii indicating that they are still burning helium in their cores. No current stellar evolutionary models can fully explain this phenomenon but astronomers are hoping to find an explanation on how it has been formed.

#5

Kanye West is about to release his upcoming album ‘Donda 2’ on his new device, Stem Player. On Thursday, the hitmaker announced on Instagram that his upcoming album, which will be released on 22^nd February won’t be available on streaming services such as Spotify or Apple Music. In a post on Instagram, he explained his decision to stream his new album only on his own player as putting the earning power into the hands of the artists instead of the major corporations in the music industry.

The 44-year-old rapper’s new device would give you the options to play 4 different elements of the track: vocals, drums, bass and music – It also has an MP3 player available. However, he explained that fans would need to buy the Stem player – a device that costs $200 – to listen to the upcoming record.

Learn more about Stem Player here.