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Britney Spears Says Fans ‘Saved’ Her Life During Conservatorship

Legions of fans had celebrated with cheers and showers of pink confetti last Friday in front of the downtown Los Angeles court house where a judge terminated the guardianship first imposed in 2008. (AP)
Legions of fans had celebrated with cheers and showers of pink confetti last Friday in front of the downtown Los Angeles court house where a judge terminated the guardianship first imposed in 2008. (AP)
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Britney Spears Says Fans ‘Saved’ Her Life During Conservatorship

Legions of fans had celebrated with cheers and showers of pink confetti last Friday in front of the downtown Los Angeles court house where a judge terminated the guardianship first imposed in 2008. (AP)
Legions of fans had celebrated with cheers and showers of pink confetti last Friday in front of the downtown Los Angeles court house where a judge terminated the guardianship first imposed in 2008. (AP)

Pop star Britney Spears has addressed her fans directly for the first time since a judge ended the controversial guardianship that has controlled her life for the past 13 years.

In a video posted to Instagram late Tuesday, Spears, wearing low-rise black shorts and a flowered crop top, thanked fans and the #FreeBritney movement for raising awareness while her "voice was muted and threatened for so long."

"You guys rock," she said. "I honestly think you guys saved my life."

Legions of fans had celebrated with cheers and showers of pink confetti last Friday in front of the downtown Los Angeles court house where a judge terminated the guardianship first imposed in 2008.

"That's a really long time to be in a situation you don't want to be in," the 39-year-old said in the two-minute video filmed on a sun-drenched patio.

Speculation had abounded over the star's future plans.

She has not given an interview in years, rarely makes public appearances and last performed in October 2018 -- bound as she was to a lifestyle largely governed by her father, Jamie.

Family should be 'in jail'

In her video, she said she was now appreciating for the "little things," like "seeing cash for the first time, being able to buy candles" -- adding she wanted to be "an advocate for people with real disabilities and real illnesses."

"I'm just grateful honestly for each day and being able to have the keys to my car and being able to be independent like a woman and owning an ATM card," she said.

With the ruling, the "Baby One More Time" singer regained the majority of control over a multi-million-dollar estate that had been managed by the conservatorship, which she has described as abusive.

In the caption to her post, Spears hit out at family members and "all the bad things they did to me which they should all be in jail for."

"It still blows my mind every day I wake up how my family and the conservatorship were able to do what they did to me... it was demoralizing and degrading!!!!"

Most of what the public knows about Spears -- who soared to global fame as a teenager before a highly publicized mental breakdown saw her become a paparazzi punch bag -- comes from her eccentric Instagram account.

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Music Streams Hit Nearly 5 Trillion in 2024. Women Pop Performers Lead the Charge in the US

Sabrina Carpenter appears at the Time100 Next event in New York on Oct. 9, 2024, left, Billie Eilish appears at the 66th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 2024, center, and Taylor Swift appears at the MTV Video Music Awards in Elmont, N.Y., on Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo)
Sabrina Carpenter appears at the Time100 Next event in New York on Oct. 9, 2024, left, Billie Eilish appears at the 66th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 2024, center, and Taylor Swift appears at the MTV Video Music Awards in Elmont, N.Y., on Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo)
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Music Streams Hit Nearly 5 Trillion in 2024. Women Pop Performers Lead the Charge in the US

Sabrina Carpenter appears at the Time100 Next event in New York on Oct. 9, 2024, left, Billie Eilish appears at the 66th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 2024, center, and Taylor Swift appears at the MTV Video Music Awards in Elmont, N.Y., on Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo)
Sabrina Carpenter appears at the Time100 Next event in New York on Oct. 9, 2024, left, Billie Eilish appears at the 66th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 2024, center, and Taylor Swift appears at the MTV Video Music Awards in Elmont, N.Y., on Sept. 11, 2024. (AP Photo)

More music, more listeners, no problems.

The global music industry hit 4.8 trillion streams in 2024, a new single-year record, Luminate’s 2024 Year-End Report found. That’s up 14% from 2023, which held the previous record.

If you streamed a lot more music in 2024 — and in particular, a lot of women pop performers — you are not alone.

In the US, on-demand audio streams grew at a rate of 6.4%, totaling 1.4 trillion.

Contemporary music is fueling the growth. The overwhelming majority of US plays – 79.5% — were from songs released in 2010 or later. Songs released between 2020 and 2024 accounted for nearly half of all streams.

And Taylor Swift, 2024's most-streamed songwriter worldwide, is only partially responsible.

Pop rules Midway through 2024, Luminate determined that Latin music had become the fastest growing streaming genre in the United States — up 15.1% from summer 2023 — followed by pop, rock and country.

A lot can change in half a year, because now pop leads, followed by rock and Latin.

“We saw some interesting trends within the US,” said Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations.

"Latin was the fastest-growing US streaming genre in the first half of the year based on growth of genre streaming share. However, due to a shift of streaming activity in the second half of the year, pop took the No. 1 spot ... Female solo artists led this surge in pop consumption, as streams of their music were responsible for nearly two-thirds of all audio streams amongst the top 100 pop artists in the US”

The shift is led by six women who dominated pop’s streams in the US:

1. Taylor Swift with 12.8 billion streams

2. Billie Eilish with 4.46 billion

3. Sabrina Carpenter with 3.71 billion

4. Ariana Grande with 3.12 billion

5. Olivia Rodrigo with 2.76 billion

6. Chappell Roan with 2.49 billion

That’s at least partially reflected in the top 10 global streaming songs as well:

1. Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things”

2. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso"

3. Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Father"

4. Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control”

5. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars,” “Die with a Smile"

6. FloyyMenor, “Gata Only”

7. Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”

8. Hozier, “Too Sweet”

9. Taylor Swift, “Cruel Summer”

10. Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please”

Regional Mexican music continues to grow Even if pop has replaced Latin music as the fastest growing streaming genre in the US, the music is not slowing down in popularity. In 2024, regional Mexican music overtook Latin pop as the largest Latin subgenre in the US.

“Latin still grew by both volume and its share of total US audio streaming during the course of 2024,” Marconette said. “When looking at Latin subgenre activity, Regional Mexican dominated in terms of growth.”

Regional Mexican music — a catchall term that encompasses mariachi, banda, corridos, norteño, sierreño and other genres — has become a global phenomenon over the last few years, topping music charts and reaching new audiences as it crosses borders.

The genre reached 28.57 billion streams in 2024, followed by Latin pop with 24.09 billion.

Rap and R&B are forever Pop rules, but just like 2023, when it comes to overall music streaming in the US, R&B and hip-hop still lead, accounting for more than one in every four streams stateside.

In 2024: Rap and R&B accounted for 341.63 billion on-demand audio streams, followed by rock with 234.22 billion, pop with 165.49 billion, country with 117.58 billion and Latin with 113.02 billion.