Mexican folk singer-songwriter Ed Maverick shared a piece of latino nostalgia called 'Contenta'; Berlin post-black metallers Praise The Plague released their intense single 'Blackening Swarm II'; American r'n'b'/soul singer Mereba shared some powerful R'n'B with ‘News Come’; Julia Jacklin and fellow Australians RVG cover beautifully Björk's 'Army Of Me'; Dusted shares some seaside rock with 'They Don't Know You'.

Pop-country vocalist B.J. Thomas, famous for the 1969 smash 'Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head', written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the 1969 Paul Newman/Robert Redford Western 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', has died at the age of 78 from lung cancer. Grammy-winning singer had hits in pop, country, and gospel with songs like 'Hooked on a Feeling' and '(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song'. The New York Times looks back at his career.

“In the wake of criminalisation, our nighttime and festival industries had become a massive success... It was still rave, at the end of the day. The spirit was still alive and kicking in the people who chose to get fucked up and go dancing together at every possible opportunity” - author and rave veteran Matthew Smith writes in his new photo-book of ​’00s clubs. Music journalist Simon Reynolds goes beyond the obvious: "In the public but intimate setting of the rave, private fantasies that can’t be expressed within the strictures of routine existence are enacted... We see people both losing themselves and finding themselves, building a collective dreamworld under the cover of night”. The Face invites us to step inside 'Full On, No-Stop-All Over'.

Metal Hammer sees four female influencers on social media who continue to prove metal is still alive. Sophie Lloyd (@sophieguitar_) is a British guitarist whose videos have amassed tens of millions of views; Kiki Wong's (@kikiwongo) cover of 'Blinded By Fear' by At The Gates has racked up a quarter of a million views on Instagram alone – four times higher than the number who actually follow At The Gates on Insta; Yasmine Summan (@yasminesumman) is Metal Hammer and NME journalist hosting On Wednesdays We Wear Black podcast raising awareness of issues facing the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ members of the rock and metal community; Cassyette (@cassyette) says she hopes she can "influence people with the genre of rock and metal to express themselves through music, fashion and make-up, and maybe help people that are struggling with their identity".

The guitar industry has been struggling with scandals over illegal logging, resource scarcity and new environmental regulations related to trade in endangered species of trees. The Conversation went on a 6-year-long quest tracing guitar-making across five continents, looking at the timber used and the industry’s environmental dilemmas. A great piece of investigative (music) journalism.

Sony Music Group spent $1.4 billion on music acquisitions in the last six months, according to SMG Chairman Rob Stringer, MBW reports. According to Stringer, by Sony’s calculations - “in just the first four months of this year, music-related M&A and catalog investment activity was over $7 billion”. Sony estimated says that this $7 billion figure was “nearly equal to the total investment activity in the 12 months of 2020”.

Over 600 musicians have signed an open letter Musicians for Palestine expressing their support for Palestine and urging their fellow performers to boycott shows in Israel. Signatories include Rage Against the Machine, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Run the Jewels, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Chromeo, Nicolas Jaar, Noname, and Owen Pallett. In an open letter, the group denounced the recent Israeli attacks against Palestine while demanding “justice, dignity and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and all who are fighting colonial dispossession and violence across the planet".

EXIT Festival - which takes place at Novi Sad, Serbia across 8th-11th July - will offer 1,500 coronavirus vaccines to international artists and festivalgoers attending the event this summer, DJ Mag reports. David Guetta, Paul van Dyk, Paul Kalkbrenner, Eric Prydz B2B Four Tet, and Honey Dijon feature in this year's line-up. On the other side of the musical spectrum, the UK Download festival - which will take place from June 18-20 - will allow 10,000 attendees to “mosh, dance and hug”, the Evening Standard reports. All attendees will have to take a lateral flow test at home beforehand, and will also need to send a PCR test by post prior to the event. Only those with negative results will be allowed onto the festival site. Five days after the event, those who went to the festival will have to take a second PCR test, and send it off to the Events Research Programme.

Singer John Davis, the true vocal talent behind notorious pop duo Milli Vanilli, has died from coronavirus at the age of 66, Variety reports. Fronted by Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, Milli Vanilli sold more than 30 million singles, but were stripped of a Grammy Award after it emerged they lip-synced on hits they had never recorded. Davis and other fellow session singers provided vocals on Millie Vanilli's album 'Girl You Know It's True', which sold 11 million copies, but were only listed as backing singers, with Morvan and Pilatus falsely given credit. After the lip-syncing scandal, Davis and fellow original singer Brad Howell formed The Real Milli Vanilli. In later years Davis performed alongside Morvan as part of their collaborative project Face Meets Voice.

Mashable explores the incoming reality where artificial intelligence make music. Their main idea is that the evolution of technology always included some kind of progress in music. With AI in music the plus side is - "they're never late. The downside? Creepiness, obviously".

BTS' new single 'Butter' broke the record for the most viewed YouTube music video in its first 24 hours with 108,200,000 views on Friday, May 21. After the single dropped on Spotify it garnered 11,042,335 global streams in just one day, breaking the record for the most streamed track on Spotify in the first 24 hours, Guinness World Records reports. Also, as of 27 April 2021, the music of BTS had been streamed 16.3 billion times on Spotify, breaking the record for the most streamed act on Spotify.

Spotify announced its new Fresh Finds program, which will spotlight indie musicians in marketing campaigns and equip them with a variety of educational tools, Music Ally reports. The program is a spin-off of the Fresh Finds playlist, which has added more than 25,000 emerging artists since its launch five years ago. In 2021, about half of the artists added to the playlist previously had fewer than 21,000 monthly listeners, but the average artist sees their listens increase by 108% in the month after being playlist, according to Spotify. The first four Fresh Finds program artists are Wallice, Unusual Demont, Julia Wolf, and EKKSTACY. For now, the Fresh Finds program is U.S.-only, but Spotify is expanding the reach of the Fresh Finds playlists, adding new regional versions in 13 territories including the U.K., South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as other parts of Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

New Hampshire police have published a warrant for the arrest of Marilyn Manson on two counts of simple assault, regarding a spitting incident involving a videographer at a concert in August 2019, the New York Times reports. Manson's lawyer Howard King said that a venue videographer had asked for more than $35,000 “after a small amount of spit came into contact with their arm. After we asked for evidence of any alleged damages, we never received a reply". The misdemeanor claim can carry a jail sentence of up to one year and a $2,000 fine. Manson, real name Brian Warner, has been accused of sexual and mental abuse by two former romantic partners, Evan Rachel Wood and Esme Bianco.

TikTok is launching TikTok Radio this summer, a full-time SiriusXM music channel, Music Business Worldwide reports. It will be available in vehicles and as a streaming channel on the SiriusXM App, desktop, and all connected devices. TikTok Radio is pitched as a radio version of TikTok’s For You page, a discovery tool for trending videos, and it will be presented by TikTok creators, tastemakers, and DJs.

"A time machine through the origins of metal music, its connection to darkness and decadence, the lifestyle of many of its followers and how its upped the ante on the phrase 'sex, drugs and rock n’ roll'" - reads the introduction to 'Backstaged: The Devil in Metal' podcast. The latest episode goes into the originators - Black Sabbath.

To make it easier to navigate their expansive archives, Pitchfork has created the Reviews Explorer, an interactive tool designed to help you discover new albums, rediscover old ones. Type an artist’s name into the search bar, select that artist from the dropdown menu, and see their reviews, plus reviews of similar artists, arranged by rating in a graphic interface. You can also filter the results to show which album recommendations are designated as “Best New Music” releases, and sort reviews by date.

The number of artists making $25,000 on Twitch has grown 16x since the pandemic started. For those making $50,000 or more, the median viewership is 183 fans, which makes for $274 per fan - Twitch’s VP Head of Music, Tracy Chan, said on the Trapital podcast. He also talked about how artists make money on the platform, finding 100 True Fans, and the creator economy. Chan also worked at Spotify and YouTube to build their creator platforms.

Megadeth have parted ways with their original bassist and co-founder David Ellefson amid allegations of sexual impropriety, Next Mosh reports. Sexually explicit video of Ellefson, age 56, masturbating and photos of flirtatious exchanges with a woman surfaced online earlier this month. At the time, rumors spread online that he had been grooming an underage fan. He vehemently denied the accusations and posted a statement from the woman he claimed he had sent the material to who said she was of age the whole time they were in contact.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood presented their new band, The Smile, during a surprise appearance at Glastonbury's Live at Worthy Farm webcast on Saturday, NME reports. The band of true greats also featurs jazz drummer Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet. The Smile revealed their existence hours before the livestream officially kicked off.

The Weeknd took home 10 awards at the 2021 Billboard Music Award, including top artist and top male artist, Billboard reports. Pop Smoke won five, including top new artist and BTS and Bad Bunny each earned four. P!nk was honored as the Icon, Drake as the artist of the decade and Trae Tha Truth as the Change Maker.

J. Cole debuted at No. 1 on Billboard 200 chart with his newest album 'The Off-Season', with an impressive 282,000 equivalent album units, Billboard reports. Cole’s record is the largest rap album of the year with his new release more than doubling the first week of Rod Wave’s 'SoulFly' album, as well as the second-biggest […]

Navy Blue shares smooth jazzy psychedelic hip-hop 'Ritual' from his surprise-released new album; Curtis Harding shares a warm, conscious soul single with a pretty video for 'Hopeful'; Sa-Roc released s deluxe version of her last year's album, featuring new song 'Re-Birth' with MF Doom on the mic; Jade Bird's 'Different Kinds of Light' is just a nice love song; 'Like I Used To' is slightly 1980s-big-ballad song by Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen; Yoo Doo Right go enjoyably post-rocky on 'Don't Think You Can Escape Your Purpose'.

Italian competitor Måneskin won Eurovision 2021 with their song 'Zitti E Buoni', a rock song sang in Italian. Singing in French was a thing, since the two closest competitors were France's Barbara Pravi with a big-sounding song 'Voilà' and Switzerland's Gjon's Tears with a grandiose ballad 'Tout l'Univers'. The UK got, all summed-up - zero points!

“A little while before we went into lockdown, a boy in my class came up to me and said that his dad told him to stay away from Chinese people. After I told him that I was Chinese, he backed away from me. Eloise and I wrote this song based on that experience” - Mila (10) describes how she and her bandmate Eloise (13) wrote 'Racist Sexist Boys', a song that made their band The Linda Lindas the stars of this week. LA punks are rounded up by Lucia (14) and Bela (16), and they've been playing for two years now. Consequence brings the story of the band.

Sarah Neufeld released an intense and dancy 'Tumble Down the Undecided' on her latest album; Florence + The Machine releases a silly little song 'Call Me Cruella' from the Disney live-action film 'Cruella'; black midi share jazz/rock 'Chondromalacia Patella'; Dark Lo & Harry Fraud go lo-fi psychedelic hip-hop on 'Missing Summers'; Wristmeetrazor join together melody and metalcore on 'This Summer's Sorrow Ⅱ: Growing Old In The Waiting Place'; David Bazan is deeply melancholic on 'Your Bearings'.

There will only be one winner at the Eurovision 2021 on Saturday evening in Rotterdam, however, the Guardian found some other winners, in the "good", "bad" and "weird" categories. One of the stand-outs is Jeangu Macrooy, the Dutch contender, born in former Dutch colony Suriname and now living in the Netherlands, who elegantly criticises colonialism while singing in both English and Suriname’s Sranan Tongo language.

Sober 21 is a free PDF zine with essays by, and interviews with, sober musicians like Brad Truax (Interpol), Cait O’Riordan (The Pogues), Darryl “D.M.C” McDaniels (Run-DMC), John Grant, Mix Master Mike (Beastie Boys), Nile Rodgers (Chic), Peter Hook, Moby and others. Zine's goal is to "help other alcoholic/drug-addicted musicians see the amazing freedom, and benefit to our art, that we found in sobriety by sharing our own experiences".

Amaro Freitas shares a Brazilian bossa-nova jazz smoothie 'Baquaqua'; cabaret-punk is pretty much an accurate description for Callum Easter's 'What You Think?'; Jorja Smith's 'Time's shortness is made up for with her great voice; dubby dream-pop meets electronica on 'Lost and Found' by Corbu and Doves' Jimi Goodwin; John Grant continues his streak of great songs which announce his new album, the latest one is a dramatic take on masculinity called 'Billy'; Anthetic start at ambient, end up at dark electro with 'Scope'.

ouTube Shorts has launched its ‘Shorts Fund’ worth $100 million that will be distributed to its creators over the course of 2021-2022, TechCrunch reports. Shorts Fund will be available to anyone creating original content for Shorts, with the company saying “thousands of creators” will be paid for their content on Shorts through the Fund. Creators won’t be able to apply for the fund. Instead, YouTube will reach out and reward creators whose videos have exceeded certain milestones each month, including engagement and view counts.

A beautiful collection of colored vinyl presented in the Guardian. 33 artists were given 33 test pressings of vinyl, who used it as a canvas to paint them however they liked. An auction of their work will be launched on May 20 at HeliumLondon.com, and all proceeds will go to mental health charity Music Support.