Sean “Diddy” Combs’ prison release date has been revealed just over three weeks after he was sentenced. Combs was found guilty on two counts of prostitution.

Combs is currently scheduled to get out of prison on May 8, 2028, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ online database.

The 55-year-old disgraced hip-hop mogul is currently behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

On Oct. 3, Judge Arun Subramanian sentenced Combs to just over four years in prison and a fine of US$500,000, the maximum possible, for his conviction on federal prostitution-related offences. He will also be under five years’ supervised release after his time in prison is served.

In his ruling, Subramanian said “a history of good works can’t wash away the record in this case, which shows that you abused the power and control over the lives of women who you professed to love.”

“You were no John,” he added. “You were more than that, even if your currency was satisfying your sexual desires instead of money.”

Subramanian said a substantial sentence is required “to send a message to abusers and victims alike that exploitation and violence against women is met with real accountability.”

Federal prosecutors had asked that Combs, 55, be sentenced to at least 11 years and three months in prison. Combs’ lawyers urged the judge to sentence him to no longer than 14 months, which would have resulted in his near-immediate release, as he has already served nearly 13 months in a Brooklyn jail.

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While addressing the judge, Combs thanked Subramanian for “giving me the chance to finally speak up for myself,” as the former rapper did not testify during his trial.

“One of the hardest things that I’ve had to handle is having to be quiet. Not being able to express how sorry I am for my actions,” Combs said in his statement to the court.

“I want to personally apologize again to Cassie Ventura for any harm or hurt that I’ve caused her – emotionally or physically.”

Combs called his conduct “disgusting, shameful and sick.”

“Because of my decisions, I lost my freedom, I lost the opportunity to effectively raise my children and be there for my mother,” Combs said. “I lost all my businesses, I lost my career, I totally destroyed my reputation.”

Combs said that he’s “lost my self-respect” and he has been “humbled and broken to my core.”

“I hate myself right now. I got stripped down to nothing,” Combs said. “I want to apologize to my seven children. Y’all deserve better.”

The sentencing marked the conclusion of Combs’ New York trial, which began on May 5.

Combs’ legal team filed a notice of appeal on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from the Oct. 3 judgment. Details of the appeal have not been made public other than the legal filing.

It began at the record label level. Without a deal, getting distribution of your music was nearly impossible. Even if you did, your music was run through other filters: radio, music video channels, record stores and music magazines. The entire time, you competed with all the other new songs out there, along with older established favourites.

Getting the public’s attention was hard. Getting them to part with their limited disposable income to buy your music was even harder.

But because the initial supply was small and the winnowing process so stringent, rewards awaited the lucky few who came out the other side of the star-making machinery system. We lived in a monoculture, driven largely by radio airplay. In those days, we had a general idea of what everyone else was listening to. Music fans were connected by a common music vocabulary and a need to know that there were others with similar musical tastes. And because the biggest songs were so ubiquitous, we couldn’t help but learn the lyrics to even songs we hated.

To be a mainstream artist was to be BIG: Michael Jackson-Madonna-AC/DC-Eagles big. You could stop any stranger on the street to name three songs by any of those artists and get three correct answers.

Today, though, we all live in our separate, individual and highly personal musical bubbles, and we like it a lot. It’s so empowering to have our own little special niche that’s tailored for us. Thanks to streaming, there’s no more “mainstream” music fan. We’re all unique, each with an opinion on what music is “good.”

Even with someone as big as Taylor Swift, her songs haven’t achieved the kind of ubiquity we used to see before 2000. If you want to test that, ask a random stranger to name three Tay-Tay songs. Unless you choose a Swiftie, that person will probably struggle. I work in the music industry with all sorts of music 24-7-365 and I have trouble.

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Another example: What was the song of the summer of 2025? What song was in everyone’s heads over June, July and August? For the first time in years, there was no clear winner. This underscores the fact that we’ve moved beyond big artists having big hits for the masses. Today’s hits are far smaller than those of the past because the same number of people can no longer come to a consensus on what we should all be listening to. That shared experience over a song/artist is nowhere near what it used to be.

Radio, as popular as it still is, is no longer as dominant as it once was when it comes to getting the word out on a song or artist. The music video channels have disappeared. When was the last time you bought a physical music magazine? And how many regular people make regular visits to record stores because there’s that hot new release everyone says they must have? Instead, we have streaming algorithms that automatically and constantly offer an endless parade of songs that they think we, as an individual music fan, might like. There’s no “everyone” anymore. It’s just “me.”

The music industry is struggling to redefine “mass appeal.” And it’s more than just radio airplay, streaming numbers and record sales. In today’s music business, you can have a hit outside the realm of what used to be defined as mainstream. In fact, you’ll be surprised to learn how big an act can be serving just their community.

Take My Chemical Romance, for example. When they announced their reunion tour, I was surprised that they’d been booked to play stadiums. Stadiums? For an emo band that had broken up for years and whose reunion was sidelined by COVID-19? Yet in one 30-day period this past summer, they averaged 42,797 people per show, a sellout rate of 100 per cent Surprised? I was.

Then there are the Lumineers, the Ho Hey band that became a Family Guy meme. During the same 3o-day period, they performed seven sold-out arena shows, averaging 18,430 tickets per gig, resulting in an average box office gross of nearly US$2 million per show.

Here are some other recent numbers via Pollstar, the bible of the touring music industry. Are any of these “mainstream” artists in the old sense of the definition?

• ENHYPHEN: eight shows at 98 per cent sold, average of 20,329 tickets per gig, average gross of US$2.9 million.
• Rüfüs Du Sol: nine shows at 96 per cent sold, average of 18,197 tickets per gig, average gross of US$1.65 million.
• Phil Wickman/Brandon Lake: six shows at 100 per cent sold, average of 15,733 tickets per gig, average gross of US$889,512.
• Anuel AA: eight shows at 85 per cent sold, average of 13,794 tickets per gig, average gross of US$1.2 million.

Even Creed, one of the most ridiculed bands of the last quarter-century, is selling out shows with an average attendance of 11,000 people. That’s close to a million bucks a night.

To be clear, none of what I’m saying is the screed of an old man pining for the old days. I’m merely pointing out the difference between how the music world used to be and what it’s become.

While the major labels still haven’t figured out how to deal with this new world, indie labels have more of a chance. Songs and artists bubble up online through streamers and social media and end up finding their audience, person by person. Eventually, there are enough of them to band together into a community for that artist, communities that, while large, are largely invisible to everyone else.

Another paradigm is to create a superfan constituency. If you can convince just 3,000 people to pay you $10 a month for all kinds of exclusive access and special privileges, that’s $360,000 a year. Not bad.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to listen to the new Jehnny Beth album, You Heartbreaker You. It’s excellent. Everyone’s listening to it–or at least should be.

Every time there was a potential addition to the team, Atkins never failed to mention their “high character.”

He believes that policy has paid off in 2025, with the Blue Jays reaching the World Series for the first time in 32 years in large part thanks to their cohesiveness and dedication to each other.

“I’ve always been taught and learned and believed strongly that hiring and identification of — whether it be players, coaches, scouts, anyone that’s helping support the organization — that hiring’s the most important thing we do,” said Atkins during a news conference on Friday before Game 1 of the World Series. “If you do that with values that are important to you, then over time, that’s going to pay off for you.”

Atkins said that centring the team’s personnel policy and the resulting atmosphere is something that he and manager John Schneider actually spoke about earlier in the week.

“The thing that I think about the most is the relationships, the people that we have hired and the people that we have grown with together,” said Atkins, who was hired as the team’s GM in December 2015. “I’ve always felt there’s a big group of people here that I’m working with that will, for sure, be lifelong relationships and lifelong friendships.

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“This success — albeit we’re not done, with work to do — not just this year, but well beyond, I think just emboldens that feeling of how powerful these relationships will be.”

Toronto led all of Major League Baseball with 49 come-from-behind wins in the regular season, with 12 of those victories coming when the Blue Jays trailed by at least three runs.

They also rallied from a 2-0 deficit to the Seattle Mariners in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series. The climactic Game 7 in Toronto was capped by George Springer’s three-run homer in the seventh inning, undoing Seattle’s early 3-1 lead in that series finale.

“I think that’s what forms a good team. It’s talent and it’s players, but it’s people,” said Schneider before the World Series began. “I think that we’ve done such a phenomenal job of creating a culture where people are just welcome.

“It’s what we’ve grasped on to, the standard we’ve set. Not just the type of player we want, but the type of people we want in here, too.”

Schneider has been with the Blue Jays organization since 2002 when he was drafted in the 13th round of that year’s draft. He retired from playing after the 2007 season due to three concussions suffered that year, then became a minor-league manager for the rookie-level Gulf Coast League Blue Jays in 2008, working his way up through the franchise’s different levels of ball.

He said that the relationships that have been built in Toronto during Atkins’s tenure has helped create the culture that made the Blue Jays (94-68) playoff run possible.

“I think that when you’re trying to establish a winning environment and a winning organization that can do it repeatedly, that people come into play,” said Schneider. “People that are going to push things forward and not be satisfied.

“Even this year, when we acquired (infielder Andres Gimenez) and signed (Anthony Santander) and signed Max (Scherzer), we were talking about what that would do for people around them too and where the people that we had already were in their career and in their lives.”

Schneider said it was also a factor in July as Major League Baseball’s trade deadline approached and the Blue Jays were gearing up for a deep post-season run.

“It was cool to have those conversations with Ross, understanding what we were doing at the time, and not trying to disrupt that,” said Schneider. “You want to try to add people that are going to help.

“So Seranthony (Dominguez), who is about as selfless as there is, Louis Varland, Ty France, they’re good pieces for what we already have, too. We made it a point to be really aware of it this year and, again, it’s been a couple years in the making to get to this point.”

Varland and France were traded to Toronto by the Minnesota Twins on July 31 for Alan Roden and Kendry Rojas. Varland, who has become a fixture in the Blue Jays bullpen in the post-season, said that the strong culture on his new team was immediately apparent.

“From the coaching staff to the players to the support staff to the chefs, like everybody’s great, everybody’s friendly, welcoming,” he said. “I saw this the other day, ‘the Glue Jays.’

“That’s, like, a perfect way to sum it up. Everybody’s so close and everybody’s a great guy or girl.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2025.

As the Toronto Blue Jays get ready for the World Series to begin Friday night, one fan has travelled from the United Kingdom to show her support for their playoff run.

“This is a big moment for the Jays and it’s a big moment for me, so I had to come home,” Karla Courtney said.

Having grown up in Toronto while spending summers in Newfoundland, the Blue Jays represent ‘home’ for Courtney.

“I think I want to be in Toronto for the energy, right? It’s really exciting; these things don’t happen that often,” she said.

Courtney shifted her sleep schedule while across the pond to make sure she never missed a Jays playoff moment.

To keep herself busy while watching nerve-wracking games in the middle of the night, she began knitting to ease the tension.

Her first project: a Blue Jays sweater for her good luck charm knitted lobster to wear — but that wasn’t enough of a challenge.

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Courtney challenged herself with knitting a Blue Jays post-season sweater — which could only be worked on during game days.

“However far they go, I’ll have something to commemorate the season,” Courtney said.

She began the retro-style sweater during Game 4 of the ALDS against the New York Yankees, documenting her progress on social media.

Each section of work carries memories of different moments along the playoff run. One moment involving a mustard stain from a game.

“We did lose those two games, so that represents a hard point,” she said while pointing to the Blue Jays logo she’d crafted.

For Courtney, knitting keeps her present and grounds her emotions during stressful innings.

“I’m only allowed to knit during game days; I haven’t broken that rule,” she explained. “I knit on the flight on the way, but that was a game day, so that’s fine. I’m kind of following the progress of the team. So, hopefully the longer they go, the longer I go.”

Dedicated to her craft, she kept up the project while in the Rogers Centre for games 6 and 7 of the ALCS.

She remembers the game-changing moment when George Springer got the home run that gave the Blue Jays the lead in Game 7.

“I had the sweater in my hands and I thought, ‘Now I’m going to get mascara on it,'” she remembered. “I was crying, it was so exciting and everyone was cheering and it was really, really incredible.”

Courtney plans to stick around Toronto as long as it takes to see the Blue Jays take the World Series.

“I am not going anywhere, of course not, no,” she said. “I’ll just keep changing my ticket, I don’t care.”