Spotify introduced a significant redesign of its app, including the vertically scrolling “discovery” feeds, a new “Smart Shuffle” mode for playlist recommendations, a new podcast autoplay feature and more. Mashable points out that "Spotify's update aims to help users find more content on the platform. The idea is that users will scroll through their feed and see fragments of content that they then will save for later. But these changes appear to miss the thing that people actually enjoy about the app: all the music they love being in one place." The Verge agrees: "The new design goes heavy on imagery and vertical scrolling, turning your homescreen from a set of album covers into a feed that much more closely resembles TikTok and Instagram. As you scroll, Spotify is also hoping to make it easier to discover new things across the Spotify ecosystem."

"Buh Records, based in Lima, Peru... launched in 2004... specializes in Latin American experimental music, and while its catalog features plenty of contemporary artists from across the region—and the globe—it maintains a strong focus on unearthing overlooked classics and unknown gems that reassert Latin America’s place in avant-garde history" - Pitchfork presents the notable label, and picks out some stand-out tracks.

Spotify revealed on their Stream On event that through December 31, 2022, it had paid more than €34 billion in royalties to record labels, music publishers, and other rights holders since launch, MBW reports. In 2021 the streaming giant paid €7+ billion, which was up from €5+ billion in 2020, which means it will likely reach the €40 billion benchmark this year. Spotify says that “nearly 70%” of every dollar it generates from music “is paid back as royalties to rightsholders, who then pay the artists and songwriters, based on the agreed terms”. Spotify also revealed that in 2022, as many as 10,100 artists from over 100 countries worldwide generated at least $100,000, and 1,060 artists generated more than $1 million.

A great read in Bloomberg about Pras Michél, a member of the highly successful band The Fugees, who used his celebrity status to get close to several high-ranking politicians such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. He also got in contact with a high-ranking China security officer and Malaysian businessman accused of embezzlement of billions of dollars from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, blowing much of it on artwork, real estate and gifts for celebrity friends including Leonardo DiCaprio and Kim Kardashian. Pras is awaiting a trial, charged with 10 offenses, ranging from conspiracy to witness tampering and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.

Peruvian YouTuber and economist, Ioanis Patsias staged a big tribute show recreating Rosalía's performance from her latest Motomami tour. Patsias played the avant-garde pop queen himself, and he was helped on stage by eight dancers, picked out from 100 who auditioned for the part. They recreated the costume changes, the dance numbers, the lighting and stage design at an amphitheatre in Lima’s Parque de la Exposición, managing to sell-out the venue, with 3,500 fans attending the show. It took months of preparation and $100,000 of Patsias' money, who only managed to recoup only part of the money

Pitchfork suggests "several approaches that ticketing companies, public policy makers, and the music community could follow to make buying concert tickets a slightly less infuriating experience:

• Stagger the presales for big tours
• Abolish surprise fees
• Unwind Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation
• Keep resellers in check
• Give artists a choice on dynamic pricing
• Remember the Bandcamp model, and that small can be beautiful."

A new biopic 'Mixed by Erry” tells an amazing story about a huge pirate cassette mixtape business in Italy in the 1980s and the 1990s. Enrico Frattasio started the label selling his tapes to illegal stallholders in his working-class neighbourhood in Naples. By the late 80s, Mixed by Erry had spread throughout Italy and beyond, employing 100 people with an annual gross of around €4,5m in today’s money. “I was the YouTube or Spotify of the 1980s... I was doing a serious curator job” - Frattasio says.

US satellite radio service SiriusXM is reducing its workforce by 475 roles, or 8% of its total staff. At the end of 2022, SiriusXM had 5,869 full-time and part-time employees, 5% more that the prior year. SiriusXM announced layoffs are “critical for us to take the right steps now to secure the long-term health and profitability of our business.” SiriusXM posted annual revenues of USD $9.00 billion for the year 2022, up 4% YoY. Its pre-tax profit in 2022 weighed in at $1.61 billion, up 5% year-on-year.

Guitarist Gary Rossington, the last remaining original member of the US rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, has died at the age of 71. Rossington appeared on all of their albums and co-wrote the 1974 hit 'Sweet Home Alabama'. He was also one of the survivors of a 1977 plane crash that killed several of his bandmates, and marked a turn in their career. Rossington had been playing shows as recently as this last February.

An interesting article in The Pickle about YUNG YiDiSH, a library in Tel Aviv that serves as an alternative music venue in the evening. “It was obvious to me that a cultural place, in order to be relevant, needs to be in a noisy space, a hurtful space, a space where you can do things” - the founder Mendy Cahan shares his idea behind the library/club. He also believes that preserving Yiddish goes well with punk: “There is no establishment behind Yiddish. We don’t have an Académie Française, we don’t have powers from above. But Yiddish finds its way, and we manage, and have always managed, to teach our children to read and write without these structures.”