Haru Nemuri shares a bit of pop hard-rock with 'Inori Dake Ga Aru'; Illuminati Hotties step into pop-punk chaos on 'MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA'; Musk Ox share beautiful instrumental chamber folk 'Memoriam'; Moonshine shares a bit of afrobeat 'Zaire Space Program | Act I', while the video explores a bit of Congolese tradition; 20-year-old singer-songwriter Uwade shares a simple and pretty 'The Man Who Sees Tomorrrow'; Midwife goes airy on 'Christina's World'; Para One explores the power of dreams on 'Spectre: Alpes'.

Danish singer Kira Skov has released 14 albums in her career, but the new one, 'Spirit Tree' coming out in May is special. It is a duet album featuring Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Mark Lanegan, John Parish, Jenny Wilson, Bill Callahan and others. Skov explains the idea to TNC: "Uniting forces with artist that has specialized in something, that I could not master myself and vice versa, merging and creating something more than we could have done by our selves. I wanted to distill this experience on this album. It's a homage to the duet".

Logic and Madlib have formed a new duo project, MadGic, and have already represented it with a new joint single 'Mars Only pt. 3', Pitchfork reports. The song's lyrics allude the pair have made an entire MadGic album in lockdown. Logic announced his retirement from music last year to spend more time with his family.

Ticket touts and resale sites such as Viagogo and StubHub impede the tracing of fans in the event of coronavirus outbreaks, leading music industry figures have warned, Guardian reports. Their investigation found that dozens of professional touts have snapped up tickets for eagerly awaited festivals and are demanding massively inflated prices from fans. Festival firms are required to retain attendees’ details for 21 days as part of government efforts to prevent coronavirus outbreaks but industry figures warned the greed of resale firms and touts would make it much harder to comply.

Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste win best Original score award at the Oscars last night for their work on the beautiful animated feature film 'Soul'. In the Best original song category, H.E.R. took home the trophy for 'Fight for You' from the feature film 'Judas and the Black Messiah'. 'Sound of Metal' won Film editing, and Sound. Check out all the winners and nominees here.

Young Thug's star-studded 'Slime Language 2' debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, earning 113,000 equivalent album units last week. The 23-track features Young Stoner Life’s artists Gunna, Yak Gotti, Lil Duke, T-Shyne and Lil Keed, as well as acts from outside the camp, including Drake, Lil Uzi Vert, Big Sean, NAV and Future. Young Thug himself performs on more than half of the album (13 of the 23 tracks), and, in turn, the set is billed on the chart to Young Thug & Various Artists, Billboard reports.

Universal Music Group’s total revenues hit $2.20 billion in Q1, up 9.4% year-on-year. MBW does a breakdown of that number - $2.20bn quarterly turnover was equivalent to $24.5m a day, or $1m an hour. The star of the period, expectedly, was streaming - it generated $1.23bn, up 19.6% year-on-year.

Italian chanson and pop music singer and actress Milva, very popular in the 1960s and 1970s, passed away Friday at her home in Milan, Italy, aged 81, Deutsche Welle reports. With an active career spanning decades, Milva sold some 80 million records, and recorded 173 albums. Her penchant for singing in foreign languages led to her success around the world - she released songs in English, French, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese and Japanese. She had an especially large fan base in Germany, where she gained fame with sophisticated easy listening tracks.

"I’m anxious to be accepted and for people to know what I’m about. More than is necessary I hang on other peoples’ thoughts of me. That hurts or slows me sometimes" - Shock G said in a great Alice Price-Styles interview back in 2014. The interview went deep into Shock G's relationship with another late hip-hop great, Tupac Shakur, and his mother who at first didn't like her son hanging out with the prospective rapper. "I was fed up and like 'Ma, he had a rough time'. She said 'I know Gregory. You know how I know? He has those eyes that little kids give you in the grocery store when they’re not getting love at home and they’re like "will you save me? Will you take me home? Will you feed me?” But they’re not allowed to say anything, and they look at you a little too long'. She said Pac had those eyes when she first was around him". The visionary hip-hop bandleader died last week.

Remember Sports have hidden a laid-back indie-gem 'Out Loud' on their new album; Dope Purple go beautifully psychedelic on 'Evilness'; Arcade Fire's violinist Sarah Neufeld announces her new album with hypnotic 'The Top'; Royal Blood share straight-rock 'Boilermaker', made with the help of QOTSa's Josh Homme; Girl In Red endures consequences of love on 'You Stupid Bitch'; Brooklyn rappers AKAI SOLO and Navy Blue announced a joint album with 'Incursio Fur', indie-rap New York style.

“A lot of people are making music intending to break it on TikTok. Your average person on TikTok is going to have 15 seconds to make the video, right? So you want to have as much of the song in that 15 seconds as possible. I think things naturally have gotten shrunk down from there” - Jasmine Star, 17-year-old musical prodigy and a guitarist who has found a large audience through TikTok, tells Guitar World in their piece about how TikTok is changing guitar music. Star says music is - "shrinking down into two minute songs that are written hook one/hook two/hook three, back to hook one with a variation hook, to hook three. So it's all about how the guitar fits into the hooks... And I think that that will change how riffs are being written. I think that riffs are probably going to become more melodic because of how songs are being written right now”.

Video game sounds, abrasive distortion and emotional rap lyrics are a typical digicore cacophony, but that's not all - digicore artists also pull from genres as wide-reaching as midwestern emo, trance, and even Chicago drill, Vice writes in a profile. Everything about this scene of teen musicians - the kids of digicore are mostly between the ages of 15 and 18 years old - centres around the modern Internet landscape; from its origins, to its diversity, right down to how community-oriented it is, including everybody working from their bedroom.

"As increased loneliness and stress have contributed to declining mental health, people have turned to online communities to seek reassurance and companionship" - and some have found Oddly Specific Playlist, a Facebook group with bizarre playlists, such as songs i listen to when the gang of 15 year olds at the train station are intimidating me or looking for songs that make you feel like a misunderstood villain who is just struggling with past trauma. Slate insists it's not just about the music, but also the community - "people wrestling with heartbreak, trauma, nihilism, low self-esteem, and other personal issues find not just song recommendations but also people who empathize with their struggle".

4,000 people will be allowed to the Brit awards in London next month to enjoy the show and - take part in a government-led research programme into how crowds can safely return to mass-participation events, Sky News reports. Audience members will not have to wear masks or socially distance, but they will, however, have to have proof of a negative Covid test. After the performances by Dua Lipa, Headie One, and Arlo Parks, the audience will have to take a Covid test.

Classical music has always been a natural fit for podcasting. And podcasting, it turns out, might be just as fitting for the concert hall - the New York Times argues in a recent article about classical music's bigger steps into podcasting. Next to the older ones like 'Aria Code' by Rhiannon Giddens (trained in opera, better known for her banjo playing), 'Sticky Notes' by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, and 'On a Personal Note' about the last gathering on an ensemble before the pandemic, there are new ones breaking ground. 'Mission: Commission' follows three composers over the course of six weeks as they create short pieces. 'Trilloquy' goes outside music and into social issues. 'Beginner’s Mind' is idealistic in its premise - making a better world through music.

Flying Lotus shares jazzy/soul songs 'Black Gold' featuring Thundercat and 'Between Memories' featuring Niki Randa, both from anime series 'Yasuke'; Tirzah shares 'Send Me', a sparse song with plenty of tension; Ethel Cain goes from calmness to noise on 'Unpunishable'; Wu-Lu goes for a fresh take on rap-rock on 'Times'; Wolf Alice share an indie-rock smash 'Smile'.

Boomtown festival got cancelled Tuesday morning, days after the arts festival Shambala and the indie rock festival Barn on the Farm announced last week that they would not go ahead. All three cited the financial risk of staging events that could be shut down at a moment’s notice by a reimposition of Covid restrictions. Guardian reports that more than nine in 10 independent events are privately indicating they may not go ahead.

An amazing read in the CBS about Prince and his legacy, remembering him five years after his untimely death in an accidental overdose of painkillers. In July, 'Welcome 2 America', the first full previously-unreleased studio album of Prince material is to be released posthumously. It will be the tenth posthumous Prince album release overall (all the other albums were a mix of re-releases and newly mined gems). 'W2A' is an album about racial inequality and social injustice, recorded more than a decade ago just outside Minneapolis, crackling with relevance today. This album is just a small part of what Prince has recorded and stashed in his vault, which he couldn't come into since he has - forgotten the password. There's roughly 8,000 Prince's recording left unreleased, which means we could get a Prince album every year for the rest of the millennium.

Primary Wave Music has bought the catalog of songwriter and producer Patrick Leonard, in a “multi-million-dollar deal”, Music Business Worldwide reports. Included in that acquisition is Leonard’s share of a number of hits from Leonard Cohen such as 'You Want It Darker', 'It Seemed the Better Way', and 'If I Didn’t Have Your Love', as well as his share of songwriter royalties from his work with Madonna - 'La Isla Bonita', 'Frozen', and the classic 'Like A Prayer'. MBW also reports about the first acquisition by the Influence Media Partners - a portfolio of select copyrights from the catalog of multi-platinum songwriter Ali Tamposi: 'Havana' by Camila Cabello, 'It Ain’t Me' by Selena Gomez, Shawn Mendes' 'Señorita' with Camila Cabello, Justin Bieber' 'Let Me Love You', Beyoncé's 'Save The Hero' and others.

Jim Steinman, the composer, lyricist and record producer behind many rock and pop hits has died at the age of 73, Deadline reports. His roster of hit records began with Meat Loaf’s smash 1977 debut album 'Bat Out of Hell' (among the 35 best-selling albums in U.S. history, racking up 14 million units sold), only to be continued by Bonnie Tyler hits 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Holding Out For A Hero', Barry Manilow’s 'Read ‘Em and Weep', Celine Dion’s 'It’s All Coming Back to Me Now' and many more.

Rolling Stone brings an overview of marijuana's legal status in the US. The minority of 13 states have not legalized THC for either medicinal or recreational purposes by now. 17 of the federal states have given their residents a green light to smoke up at their leisure. The rest of the 20 states have it legalized for medical use only.

UK music stars young and old - including Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Robert Plant, Stevie Nicks, Sting, Roger Daltrey, Chris Martin, Kano, Noel Gallagher, Mike Skinner, Damon Albarn, Wolf Alice, and around 150 others - have called on the UK government to reform the way musicians are paid when their songs are streamed online, NME reports. They point out that "songwriters earn 50% of radio revenues, but only 15% in streaming". On streaming services, labels retain the majority of the money - with the artist receiving about 13% on average, and session musicians receiving nothing.

“The hatred shown towards me from the creators of the Simpsons is obviously a taunting lawsuit, but one that requires more funding than I could possibly muster in order to make a challenge” - Morrissey writes on his website after a Simpsons episode which parodied the former Smiths frontman. "The worst thing you can do in 2021 is to lend a bit of strength to the lives of others. There is no place in modern music for anyone with strong emotions … In a world obsessed with Hate Laws, there are none that protect me” - the singer says. Morrissey satirised during the episode 'Panic on the Streets of Springfield', in which Lisa Simpson becomes obsessed with a fictional band called the Snuffs and befriends its frontman, Quilloughby.

As of October 2020, TikTok was reaching 732 million monthly active users around the world, which was more than double Spotify‘s global monthly active user base as of the end of 2020 (345 million), but less than half the 2 billion-plus logged-in monthly active users YouTube pulls in around the world, MBW reports on the popular app's statistics. TikTok’s average user opens the app 19 (nineteen!) times in an average day, in an average of 89 minutes per day. Nearly half (42%) of all active users on the platform were between the age of 18 and 24, a further 17% were aged between 13 and 17, and just 7% were over the age of 45.

Apple Music told artists and labels it pays a penny per stream, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apple's penny-per-stream payment structure is roughly double what Spotify, the world's largest music-streaming service, pays music-rights holders per stream. Spotify pays an average of about one-third to one-half penny per stream. However, Spotify's larger user base generates many more streams.

P-MRC, the owner of Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Billboard and Deadline, has acquired a 50% stake in SXSW LLC, making it the biggest single shareholder in the music/film/tech conference and festival based out of Texas, the Wall Street Journal reports. The SXSW 2020 event was scrapped by Austin officials due to the coronavirus outbreak, and in 2021 an online event was organized, so, when “Jay Penske approached us with an interest in becoming a partner, it was a true lifeline for us", SXSW CEO and Co-Founder, Roland Swenson, has said.

The Face presents 'Deviation Classics', a compilation of music that best represents "a key part of a healthy musical ecosystem", the London club night Deviation. With Dorian Concept, Carl Craig, Flying Lotus and James Blake featured there, it "arguably represents certain values of club culture that are worth preserving for a post-pandemic world".

Plenty of records set by Taylor Swift on Billboard 200 chart this week, according to Billboard. Re-recorded version of her 2008 album 'Fearless', titled 'Fearless (Taylor’s Version)' scores the biggest week of 2021 for any album with 291,000 equivalent albums. She's the first woman with three new No. 1 albums in less than a year - in August 'Folklore' debuted at No. 1 with 846,000 units, while 'Evermore' arrived at No. 1 in December with 329,000 units. 'Fearless (Taylor’s Version)' is the only No. 1 album of its kind: a re-recording of an artist’s (own or another’s) previously released album. Album sales of 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)' comprise 179,000, making it the top-selling album of the week. The three largest weeks for an album in the last eight months all Belong to Swift. She is also the first woman with three new No. 1 albums in less than a year. Swift also becomes the first woman in the 65-year history of the chart with three new No. 1s in less than 12 months; Donna Summer held that record since 1979/1980.

Mike Mitchell, who recorded one of the most famous guitar solos of all time for Kingsmen’s 'Louie Louie' (a loose rendition of Richard Berry’s 1957 song), has died aged 77, Rolling Stone reports. With Mitchell’s rock’n’roll guitar solo adding a crazed energy to the three-chord recording, the song is a cornerstone of the garage rock sound. It also features a famous error by the band's vocalist Jack Ely as he comes back in too early after Mitchell’s solo. The band had a decades-long touring career with Mitchel as the permanent, and the only founding member left.

Russian electro group Love Object share a dance bomb 'Transparent Woman (Prozrachnaya Zhenschina)' with added cinematic video; psychedelic prog meets post-rock on Elder frontman Nick DiSalvo's 'The Reflecting Pool' which announces his solo debut; Andra Day shares a smooth banger 'Phone Dies' produced by Anderson .paak; Alfa Mist shares jazz-electronics-psych mix 'Teki'; Rodrigo Y Gabriela have covered Astor Piazzolla's flamenco instrumental 'Oblivion'.