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LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan arrived in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, as they make a fresh start in Britain after six years in the United States, U.K. media reported.

The news comes less than a week after the couple surprised fans and critics alike with plans to return to Britain. The return was reported by media such as the BBC and the Daily Telegraph, with the newspaper reporting that their plane landed at Birmingham International Airport around noon.

Flight tracking websites showed a private charter flight from Van Nuys, arrived at the airport at 11:56 a.m.

The couple’s children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, have already enrolled at British schools and will start classes in September. The family plans to live at a private, nonroyal residence outside of London, but haven’t said exactly where that will be.

Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago to earn their living through lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Relations with the rest of the royal family quickly soured as the couple said palace staff had been insensitive to Meghan’s mental health and leveled charges of racism and media manipulation at members of the royal family.

Harry recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer. But relations with his brother, Prince William, who is heir to the throne, remain tense.

In its latest effort to protect human creators from the flood of synthetic music, Spotify will soon require AI-generated identities to carry an “AI Persona” label while barring their tracks from users’ algorithmic mixes.

The change will take effect in mid-September. It follows Spotify’s earlier moves to help subscribers understand the difference between genuine and artificial creators. The platform announced a verification badge in April designed to highlight human artists. In a statement Tuesday, Spotify said the new AI Persona label is meant to make the streamer “the most transparent and trustworthy place to listen to music.” Music from labeled AI Personas will also be excluded from the Swedish company’s personalized recommendations by default.

“While we believe all artists have creative choice in determining how they present themselves, Spotify’s programming is focused on elevating music from authentic artists building careers in music,” the company said .

The AI persona badge will soon appear on an artist’s profile, in the search feature and in playlists.

This is a step in the right direction, said Tiffany Naiman, the director of Music Industry Programs at UCLA. But, she said, she’s more interested in how the company will be identifying AI personas.

“I want to know the process. How [will they] know the difference? Are there going to be [real] artists that get tied up in it?” Naiman said. “It feels very ‘Blade Runner,’ right? Like you’re human, you’re not human.”

Starting Tuesday, Spotify users will be able to identify themselves as AI personas, if applicable. But the company said it “won’t rely on self-disclosure alone” and will use “human review alongside AI investigative tools to apply the label.”

Artists who get labeled as AI personas by Spotify will be allowed to appeal the label. In the coming months, users will also have the ability to report artist profiles as potential AI personas.

The label is the latest feature from the streaming platform that builds on transparency between the artist and their listeners. Recently, Spotify has also introduced SongDNA, an interactive feature that shows the creative team behind the track; AI Credits, a disclaimer where artists can reveal how much AI was used in their creative process and Artist Profile Protection, which allows artists to review and approve all releases on Spotify.

Artificial intelligence is becoming an essential part of Spotify’s business. The company announced a new AI deal last week with the digital music licensing company Merlin. The partnership will enable artists across the more than 30,000 labels and distributors in Merlin’s network to participate in Spotify’s upcoming AI tool. It hasn’t launched yet, but the goal is to let fans create AI-generated remixes and covers of existing songs on the platform.

Spotify is following in the steps of other streaming platforms that have taken more aggressive approaches to the new technology. Deezer, a French streamer, was the first to detect, tag and exclude AI-generated music from algorithmic recommendations. The company recently disclosed that up to 90,000 AI tracks are being uploaded to the platform daily, representing more than 50% of its new music uploads. Tidal has banned AI-generated music from receiving royalties on its platform.

“We know the music ecosystem is evolving, and so will our approach,” said Spotify in a statement. “We’ll continue to adapt as the landscape changes and as we learn from artists, listeners, and industry partners.”

When you walk into a room with Los Primos del Este, the happy-go-lucky guys immediately make you feel like part of the family. What they first cultivate with silly banter and lighthearted ad-libs eases into a more vulnerable, introspective atmosphere, comparable to a cathartic therapy session.

When I met the norteño-sax band in at Interscope Records — the major label that signed them in early 2023 — it was just a couple of hours before the official release of Los Primos’ new album, “Dulce Amargo,” on Thursday.

For a young band of players in their early 20s, they play it cool; “Dulce Amargo” is their eighth LP to date. The project feels thoroughly chiseled to their refined sonic tastes (influenced by Julión Álvarez, Legado 7 and Remmy Valenzuela) inflected with raw, sentimental lyricism and a wailing saxophone that commands each track with the spirit of an electric guitar.

“Play it back to back and actually start understanding the sound more and realize there’s new sounds being created,” said lead vocalist Geovanni Flores. “Because a lot of people get stuck in their old ways.”

Made up of five members — Flores, bassist and supporting vocalist Ariel Jesus Lopez, accordionist Juan Luis Hernandez, drummer Alejandro Tellez and saxophonist David Tellez — the group has built a steady momentum in the música mexicana genre. They’ve championed the resurgence of norteño-sax, a subgenre that fuses the accordion sounds of norteño music with an invigorating alto saxophone, made popular by legendary groups like Conjunto Primavera.

Since forming in 2017, the North Carolina-based band has gained over 2 million listeners on Spotify through catchy norteño-sax songs like “No Es Mentira (Version Norteña),” “Poema” and “Mami” — drawn together by a polka-like beat that has made them a staple of Mexican dance venues.

In 2024 alone, the subgenre grew by 39% in both the U.S. and Mexico, per Spotify.

Los Primos del Este formed in 2017 out of North Carolina.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

The band took a few years to find its groove. Its 2020 debut album, “PDE,” experimented more with the prickly, sad sierreño sound popularized by acts like Eslabon Armado and DannyLux — as well as trap-infused corridos tumbados with a thumping tololoche. Still, this was music one could bop their head to, even if dance parties were limited during the global pandemic. With norteño-sax, the group could incorporate contemporary dating themes into songs that bring people physically closer to one another on the dance floor.

“There’s been a sense of maturity that’s happened within the group. In the past, we would just make music to make music and release it,” said Flores. “ We thought about every single detail now, even down to the album cover.”

Before getting into the thick of their recent music catalog, Los Primos del Este quickly unfurled details of the album cover, which shows the group sprawled across the flatbed of a white truck. The image was inspired by Alejandro Cartagena, a Dominican Republic-born Mexican creative who photographed carpooling laborers on the flatbeds along a highway in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2012. The project was a visual representation of how everyday people — often marginalized individuals — navigate transit in a sprawling suburban area.

Such an open stance on community issues appears to be a norteño-sax speciality. In 2000, their forefathers Conjunto Primavera previously told The Times that they make music for working-class audiences: “Wealthy people don’t like what we do.”

“Personally, I found myself in the bed of a truck at one point, low-income, trying to make something out of nothing,” said Lopez. “That’s the world I grew up in, and that’s the world I wanna show everybody. It’s not all sweet, you know?”

The band also nods to injustices faced by immigrant communities — including the recent fatal shootings of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and 26-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine, respectively.

“We’re willing to take the heat,” said Lopez, referring to the band’s pro-immigrant stance. “The community looks at us as a negative presence, but in reality, we’re hard-working, dedicated family people.”

It is both that honesty and vulnerability that are etched into the 14-track LP “Dulce Amargo,” which translates to “bittersweet” in English. The band shared that each member contributed details of his own personal experience to the brainstorming sessions — a process they likened to therapy.

“We were comfortable enough with each other to let [our] stories be heard,” said Lopez. “In the Latino community, there is kinda like that stereotype [that] you have to be strong.  I think this message goes out to everybody — if you’re feeling something, specifically the men, it’s OK to just let it out.”

(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)

The hazy love melody “Tremenda,” for example, underscores an intense yearning for connection. Written after Lopez was starstruck by a woman, its first lyrics begin in wondrous marvel: “Tal vez fue tu mirada,” or, “Perhaps it was your gaze.”

“What’s the first thing you do when you look at somebody? I look at the eyes,” said Lopez. “They say the eyes are the doors to the soul.”

Alejandro Tellez’s contribution came with the punchy “Linda Sonrisa,” that pleads for someone to realize the realities of the mistreatment they’re facing with another lover.

“How many times are you gonna let him do you wrong until you realize that you have the right guy in front of you?” said Alejandro Tellez in a sing-song twang. “That’s a story that I went through in high school.”

For Flores, the EDM-fused, echoing melody “Mejor Sin Ti,” struck a personal chord; could a relationship be the only thing standing in your way to personal success? “Some people do hold you back, some people tie you down — that’s what I felt,” said Flores.

Hernandez gets a bit teary-eyed when talking about his favorite song, “Sentimientos,” a whirling polka-driven ballad about an avoidant situationship, he said. “To me, it’s like we both kinda love each other already, but we’re kind of afraid to say it,” he explained. “A lot of people are afraid of falling in love again, so that song hits close to home.”

The concept behind “Mereces Mejor,” a trance-inducing ode with floating melodies that implores a loved one to recognize their self-worth, was inspired by David Tellez’s own experience with unrequited love: “She’s trying to go to the bad guy, and I’m over here giving everything I got.”

As the five artists prepare to take their new album on the road — including an upcoming performance at the Lone Star State’s Truck Show Texas Fest on July 25 — they want to make clear that norteño-sax is not a stagnant subgenre. Like most of música mexicana, it, too, is evolving, both in sound and lyricism, encapsulating today’s complex dating culture. Their emotional vulnerability is welcome in a field flooded with artists that may otherwise shrink away from such honesty — perhaps due to the stigma of mental health issues in the Latino community, especially among men.

“We understand that changing the sound may not be for everybody, but we’re making music for the next generation,” said Lopez. “Who knows? Maybe their parents might end up liking this too.”

“Seven,” a hit solo track by BTS member Jungkook, has surpassed 3 billion streams on Spotify, making him the first Korean artist to hit the threshold with a single song, his agency BigHit Music said Tuesday.

“Seven” is also the only song released in 2023 globally to reach the milestone, according to the agency.

A passionate serenade about wanting to spend every day with a loved one, “Seven” blends a catchy melody with a warm acoustic guitar sound and rhythms from UK garage, a genre of electronic music that emerged in Britain in the early 1990s.

The song’s music video surpassed 600 million views on YouTube in April.

Since its release, “Seven” has enjoyed worldwide success, debuting at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and reaching No. 3 on the British Official Singles Chart Top 100.

K-pop supergroup BTS, to which Jungkook belongs, is currently on its largest-ever scale world tour, “Arirang.”

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