Jeff Beck, the celebrated rock guitarist who played with the Yardbirds and led the Jeff Beck Group, has died aged 78, the BBC reports. Beck was known as a keen innovator - he pioneered jazz-rock, experimented with fuzz and distortion effects, and opened the way for psych-rock and heavy metal. Beck, whose fingers and thumbs were famously insured for £7m, was an eight-time Grammy winner, recipient of the Ivor Novello for outstanding contribution to British music, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of the Yardbirds. His Yardbirds bandmate, Jimmy Page wrote on Twitter - “The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless". Rod Stewart, who sang in the Jeff Beck Group, tweeted: "He was one of the few guitarists that when playing live would actually listen to me sing and respond".

The good people from Heavy Blog is Heavy have waited for the year 2022 to end, listened to all the albums coming out in December, and have served us now with a very good list of the 50 best (mostly) metal albums (and one interesting non-metal addition). Since HBIH considers music not to be a contest, they listed the 50 chosen ones from the "phenomenal year for music" in alphabetical order. A good one.

Universal Music Group has opened its first “music-based experiential hotel” in Madrid, uDiscoverMusic reports. The UMUSIC Hotel Madrid is operating at full capacity since the start of this year. The innovative hotel is located inside the historic Albéniz Theater building in the Spanish capital. “Through music’s unique power to inspire and unite – especially given UMG’s unparalleled roster of artists and labels – UMUSIC Hotels will both highlight these cities’ rich music heritages and provide new opportunities for artists to reach fans in immersive, innovative and authentic ways,” Bruce Resnikoff, President and CEO of Universal Music Enterprises, said of the project. Locations planned for UMUSIC hotels are Atlanta, Georgia; Biloxi, Mississippi; and Orlando, UMUSIC Hotels offer fans, guests, and artists immersive music experiences, incorporate elements of the local music scene,

Hardware company Kano made a name for themselves last year through a partnership with Kanye West who helped them design a Stem Player which contained his album 'Donda 2'. They have in the meantime severed ties with West, although its cofounder and CEO Alex Klein is gallant enough to admit that some days he feels “blessed” to have gotten West's eye on a player's new video cut or color combination. This year, Kano is launching a new product—a Stem Player with music by Ghostface Killah. The unique album by the former Wu-Tang Clan member will be released on custom white and black Ghostface Stems, and will run $240 and $360, respectively. “This is music for these people who care about me... It’s nothing for me to go in the studio and cook something up and just give it to [fans]. I don’t care about that. If you want it, you’re going to go get it” - Ghostface Killah says to Fast Company.

Cat Blanchett won a Golden Globe in the Best Actress in a Motion Picture category for her portrayal of fictional composer and conductor Lydia Tár. Austin Butler won in the Actor category for his portrayal of pretty much a real person - Elvis Presley. Kala Bhairava, M. M. Keeravani, and Rahul Sipligunj were awarded in the Best Original Song category for 'Naatu Naatu' from the Bollywood movie 'RRR'. Justin Hurwitz won Best Original Score for 'Babylon'. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, made a virtual appearance during the Golden Globes telecast saying "There will be no third World War, it is not a trilogy”. Variety reports...

"Globalism and diversity seem to have won in pop music. Good" - Matty Karas reflects on this year's Coachella line-up. Bad Bunny, Blackpink, and Frank Ocean headline the California mega-fest this April. "If you dare to bring a guitar to the desert, Goldenvoice will bury your guitar, and they might bury you with it... The kids want something else, and Goldenvoice will give it to them" - Tom Breihan points out.

The Guardian looks for clues for the popularity of nightcore, sped-up versions of existing songs, on streaming services and social media. Spotify-produced playlist Sped Up Songs is liked by more than 975,000 people; views of nightcore versions of songs on YouTube count in millions; on TikTok, the hashtag “spedupsounds” has 9.6bn views. The G sees record labels behind this trend - "sped-up music is a quick way for labels to monetize old music" since these kinds of remixes “drive songs up the charts” and are especially lucrative for catalogue material. There's a new trend going on parallel to nightcore - “slowed + reverb”, a slowed-down alternative "where producers pull down a song’s tempo to 60 or 70 quarter-note beats per minute, then add some skips, scratches, and stop-time moments. It’s a TikTok staple, with over 1.3m views on the app, and 623,000 followers on Spotify’s 'slowed and reverbed' playlist".

Lawyers for Dr. Dre sent a cease-and-desist letter to congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene threatening her with legal action after she used the rapper’s 1999 smash hit 'Still D.R.E.' without permission in a social media post, Billboard reports. “One might expect that, as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country" - lawyers wrote.

The New York Times looks into "trailerization" - the reworking of existing songs to maximize their impact in trailers for films and TV shows. One of the most successful recent examples is David James Rosen's take on Kate Bush’s 'Running Up That Hill' which he tweaked into a thunderous version for 'Stranger Things'. The Times explains different types of trailerizations: "There are reimaginations, which are usually instrumental covers by composers. There are overlays, where elements are added to a song in varying degrees. Then there are remixes, where the source material is distinctly altered, often to shift the context".

The success of ABBA Voyage, the avatar show based on the Swedish band set in London, could be replicated elsewhere in the world, in Las Vegas, Australasia, or somewhere else in Europe, CNBC reports. "We can duplicate the arena and the show” producer Svana Gisla told, adding - “the tech itself isn’t new but the way in which we’ve used it and scale and barriers we’ve broken down are new. I’m sure others will follow and are planning to follow”. It's really just a technical question, according to Gisla - “we have live musicians, so we keep our band and do seven shows over five days a week. But you could roll round the clock. Vegas will quickly adopt this style of entertainment and do Elvis or the Beatles”. However, it was no easy task - the London show was in the works for five years and had a £141 million (€160 million, $174.9 million) budget funded by global investors. It needs to get around 3 million people through its doors to break even, and the average ticket price is £75 (€85, $91).