Sohu TV announces 2018 release slate
Jay-Z led the Grammy race on Tuesday with eight nominations, followed closely by fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar with seven, in a striking embrace of hip-hop for the music industry’s top prizes. Jay-Z, who has won an impressive 21 Grammys over his career but has never before been nominated in a major category as a solo artist, is up for Album of the Year for his 4:44 as well as for Record and Song of the Year. Jay-Z’s 4:44 marked a return to music by the 47-year-old multi-millionaire after years focused on business ventures. The album put on display an unusually vulnerable Jay-Z, who acknowledged his infidelity to wife Beyonce, revealed his mother’s closet struggles as a lesbian and tackled the state of US race relations. Lamar’s seven nominations came for DAMN., an album which switched back to a more traditional hip-hop style after the 30-yearold Los Angeles native’s experiments with jazz, electronica and spoken word.
Bruno Mars, the fun-loving funk revivalist, also fared well with six nods including Album of the Year for his 24K Magic.
“Despacito,” the viral hit that tied for the most weeks ever on top of the US singles chart despite being in Spanish, was nominated both for Record of the Year, which recognizes the overall performance, and Song of the Year, which honors the songwriter.
If it triumphs, “Despacito” would again make history as the first song in a language other than English to win in either category since Italian songwriter Domenico Modugno’s “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu” – popularly known as “Volare” after its chorus – at the very first Grammys in 1959.
The Recording Academy, which consists of more than 13,000 music professionals, will vote to decide the winners who will be unveiled at the annual
Grammys gala on January 28. Chinese streaming site Sohu TV released a new content strategy that emphasizes AI driven content at its World Conference in Beijing on Tuesday.
According to Sohu TV CEO Zhang Chaoyang, the AI routines will introduce content based on users’ viewing habits such as recommending knowledge-based videos produced by Professionally Generated Content accounts.
In terms of self-produced content, the streaming site also released its program slate for 2018, which includes season two of popular hit procedural Dr. Qin and new shows 300 Cases of Tang Poems, which mixes history, poetry and detective stories, and Team X of Criminal Minds, which is being described as the Chinese version of Lie to Me.
Still the top platform for US TV series, Sohu TV aired 120 US series in 2017.
The company plans to maintain this position by continuing to stream content from the US such as the third season of Gotham and the latest episodes of Saturday Night Live and new shows such as Young Sheldon and Me, Myself & I.
The ceremony will take place in New York, Jay-Z’s hometown, to mark the awards’ 60th edition after 14 years in Los Angeles.
The awards mark the first time that the majority of nominations for Album of the Year, the most prestigious prize, hail from the world of hip-hop.
The breakthrough comes after years of criticism about how little the entertainment industry recognizes African American artists.