Former Q editor Ted Kessler and staff members Chris Catchpole and Niall Doherty are launching a weekly music newsletter The New Cue. The first issue comes out on 26 February with new interviews with St Vincent, Arlo Parks and Tony Visconti, along with playlists and recommendations. The first few editions of the New Cue would be free, followed by a monthly subscription fee of £5 or an annual rate of £55 with occasional free weeks.

An amusing article in the Quietus about 'Nick Cave's Bar', a new book by Aug Stone about a bar in Berlin in the 1980s which was a "home from home" for many creative people - musicians, filmmakers, painters, poets, and punks. Risiko stood at 48 Yorckstraße in West Berlin, on the border between the Kreuzberg and Wilmersdorf-Schöneberg sections of the city. It wasn't really Nick Cave's bar (although some in Europe did call it that back then), but Blixa Bargeld bartended at Risiko during Einstürzende Neubauten’s early years, and Cave would come to visit it with the rest of The Birthday Party.

Across the course of this year, approximately 22 million tracks will be added to Spotify’s catalog, which is approximately 60,000 tracks per day, meaning a new track is uploaded to its platform every 1.4 seconds, Music Business Worldwide reports. Spotify confirmed in November last year that its platform played host to around 70 million tracks.

Lovely and sad The Natvral's 'New Moon' is about when love just isn't enough; nasimiYu steps into big-sounding R'n'B territory with 'Watercolor'; Visionist share a dark industrial pop 'Form'; J.I.D. raps about the syphilis experiment at the American south on 'Skegee'.

Huck tells the story of the LA punk scene which survived the pandemic with dozens of backyard gigs. The magazine argues "this attitude – of taking personal responsibility for yourself and your actions, despite what the rules say – is a common one in the DIY punk scene". Beko, the singer and frontman of punk band Lazy Dream, explains the attitude: “Our whole method is do-it-yourself. We were tired of waiting for people to do the recording thing, so we just did the recording ourselves… With the shows, we did that as well. We were like, ‘Ok, we have this backyard right here, might as well throw a show. Because if no one’s going to hire us or invite us anywhere, might as well do it ourselves’”.

NASA's Perseverance rover has recorded the first audio clips captured on the surface of Mars, and beamed it back to Earth, Space.com reports. The microphone picked up the low growl of a wind gust, marking the first sounds recorded from the Martian surface. The microphone was designed by Jason Achilles Mezilis, a Los Angeles–based rock musician, and composer.

Singer-songwriter Jim Ghedi shares his new album 'In the Furrows Of Common Place' with 'Beneath the Willow' as the stand-out track; Adrianne Lenker shares the new Big Thief song 'Simulation Swarm', played by her alone; Debbie Friday shares a dark electro-pop song 'Runnin''; José González is back with his first new song in six years, Spanish-sung 'El Invento'; female trio Horsegirl share their dreampop/shoegaze single 'Ballroom Dance Scene'.

The use of Splice, a highly rated app for mobile video editing, has boomed during the pandemic, as people stuck at home experimented with making their own tracks, Bloomberg reports. The company specializes in royalty-free samples, which allow people to use drum sounds or flutes from a large library for a monthly fee. The company has just raised an additional $55 million from investors, raising the value of the company at close to $500 million.

Spotify is expanding into over 80 new markets in more than 36 new languages – including key territories across Africa such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, Spotify reports. Together, these 80 markets house more than a billion people with nearly half of them already using the internet. The vast expansion over the coming days means that Spotify will be active in more than 173 markets.

Bruce Springsteen has teamed up with former American president Barack Obama for a new podcast series titled 'Renegades: Born in the USA', Reuters reports. The eight-episode series will cover a range of topics, including race, fatherhood, marriage, and the state of America. The first two episodes are available on Spotify.