American DJ and record producer Bassnectar is being sued by two women who allege that he groomed, trafficked, and raped them while they were underage, EDM.com reports. The women are suing for damages, past and future emotional distress, and medical expenses. Last year, the popular EDM musician announced that he was “stepping back” from his music career after an Instagram page called @evidenceagainstbassnectar collected dozens of sexual misconduct accusations against him. Now, two of the women who shared their experiences on that page are taking the musician to court.

Sons Of Kemet share groovey 'Hustle' featuring Kojey Radical; Moist go pop-rawk on 'End of the Ocean'; Wavves share a seemingly feel-good song 'Sinking Feeling' about depression; bedroom pop meets hyperpop on Spill Tab's 'Pistolwhip'; Toronto poet Mustafa offers words of peace and hope on sad, sad 'Ali'; Rejjie Snow's 'Relax' says it all with the title.

“My heart breaks for my people of Ethiopia as innocent civilians ranging from small children to the elderly are being senselessly murdered and entire villages are being displaced out of fear and destruction” - The Weeknd wrote on Instagram announcing his donation of $1m in food aid to Ethiopia, amid the ongoing conflict in the country’s Tigray region. This $1 million will provide 2 million meals through the United Nations World Food Program, CNN reports. The singer was born Abel Tesfaye in Canada to Ethiopian immigrant parents, Makkonen and Samra Tesfaye.

A group of Cuban musicians has released a rap/reggaeton song 'Patria y Vida', which has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube, blasting the dire economic situation on the island, BBC reports. The title 'Fatherland and Life' plays on one of Fidel Castro's favourite revolutionary slogans "Fatherland or Death". The official Havana has released its own pro-revolutionary song in response, an electro samba 'Patria o Muerte por la Vida' ('Homeland or Death for Life'), which got over 900 thousand views on YouTube.

Rod Wave has reached the top of the Billboard 200 chart with his new album 'SoulFly', which opens with 130,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending April 1, Billboard reports. It's his first No.1, while the album also notches the biggest week for an R&B/hip-hop album in 2021 in terms of units earned. SEA units of 'SoulFLy' comprise 126,000 (equaling 189 million on-demand streams), album sales comprise 4,000 and TEA units comprise less than 1,000.

Morris "B.B." Dickerson, War co-founder, bassist, and vocalist died on Friday (4/2) at a Long Beach, California hospital, "after a long, undisclosed illness", reports Billboard. Dickerson co-wrote War classics as 'Low Rider', 'Why Can't We Be Friends', 'The Cisco Kid', 'Summer', and he contributed lead vocals to their psychedelic soul masterpiece 'The World Is A Ghetto'.

Pianist Rebeca Omordia has spent years looking for classical music composed by African authors, uncovering finally more than 200 composers of African art music. The most attractive features of African art music is its extraordinary variety. Some composers from Ethiopia and South Africa, for example, wrote music in a western classical style while incorporating traditional melodies and rhythms with results that are unique and uplifting in equal measure, Guardian reports. The result of Omodria's research is African Concert Series, an online series of African music she discovered, which ended this week.

"Over the last year or so, country's rappers and MCs have taken up grime and drill as idioms, reimagining and ushering them into electrifying new directions" - Pitchfork says presenting the new generation of Brazilian women in these genres. "Brazilian artists have redrawn grime and drill’s borders, threading in loops and kicks from different branches of baile funk and samba right alongside the speaker-knocking bass of 8-bar and the icy synths of eskibeat, all while they rap about life in the favelas". The ones that stand out now are: N.I.N.A. - a DJ-turned-rapper and forthright social critic; Thai Flow - the Rio de Janeiro-based raper with a great flow; Áurea Semiseria - influenced by samba and gospel rap; Peroli - bringing grime and funk closer.

Factory New is a "virtual" record label with a roster comprised exclusively of virtual artists. Their first ‘signing’ is AI-powered robot rapper, FN Meka, who has 9 million followers (and over a billion views) on TikTok, MBW reports. FN Meka is voiced by a human, but everything else about him – from his lyrics to the chords and tempo underpinning his music – is based on AI. Anthony Martini, co-founder of FN, asks himself quite sensibly - “what is an ‘artist’ today? Think about the biggest stars in the world. How many of them are just vessels for commercial endeavors?”.

Acts of all levels use Bandcamp, but it has particularly suited working- and middle-class artists with few resources simply looking to make a decent living off their work, filling a void that has become more pronounced as the music industry has gone digital - Billboard writes about the beloved streaming service. They proved this in the last year with Bandcamp Fridays, when Bandcamp waives its cut of sales - 15% of digital, 10% of physical - and passes along all revenue to artists. With this initiative, Bandcamp directed $48.3 million toward artists and labels from over 800,000 customers, and that’s on top of the $148 million it has paid out from normal sales during that time frame. To date - Bandcamp was started in 2007 - it has paid out over $702 million to hundreds of thousands of artists and more than 9,000 labels that can receive the money relatively quickly.

Toronto organization Over the Bridge has created “new” Nirvana, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Doors songs using artificial-intelligence software to approximate their songwriting, Rolling Stone reports. In "new" Nirvana case, everything other than the vocals - the work of Nirvana tribute band frontman Eric Hogan - from the turns of phrase to the reckless guitar performance, is the work of computers. The tune, titled 'Drowned in the Sun', is part of Lost Tapes of the 27 Club, a project featuring songs written and mostly performed by machines in the styles of other musicians who died at 27: Cobain, Jimi Hendrix ('You're Gonna Kill Me'), Jim Morrison ('The Roads Are Alive'), and Amy Winehouse ('Man I Know'). Each track is the result of AI programs analyzing up to 30 songs by each artist and granularly studying the tracks’ vocal melodies, chord changes, guitar riffs and solos, drum patterns, and lyrics to guess what their “new” compositions would sound like. Over the Bridge helps members of the music industry struggling with mental illness.

Scooter Braun has sold the entirety of his Ithaca Holdings to South Korea’s HYBE, formerly known as Big Hit Entertainment, and the home of K-pop superstar BTS. A regulatory filing in Korea shows that HYBE has agreed to pay a total of $1.05 billion for Ithaca, Music Business Worldwide reports. This deal brings together a range of services including management, label services and publishing for global artists BTS, TXT, SEVENTEEN, NU’EST, GFRIEND, ENHYPEN, ZICO, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, J Balvin, Demi Lovato, Thomas Rhett, Florida Georgia Line, Lady A and more.

Coldplay, HAIM, Michael Kiwanuka, Damon Albarn, Kano, Idles Wolf Alice, will perform at a Glastonbury ticketed livestream event on May 22, Music Ally reports. Performances will take place at various festival landmarks, and sets will broadcast as part of a five-to-six hour production directed by Paul Dugdale. The four airings have been staggered for different timezones - at 7 p.m. in BST, EDT, PDT, and AEST. Tickets cost £20 from WorthyFarm.live, the capacity is unlimited, with funds supporting the festival and its charities. Performers waived their fees. On the other side of the Atlantic, and a few months later everything is happening old-school way. Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival will return to Manchester, Tennessee, from September 2-5, 2021, with Grand Ole Opry, Megan Thee Stallion, Foo Fighters, Tame Impala, Lizzo, the Creator, and Lana Del Rey headlining, according to NPR.

Sony Music Publishing has bought the “complete collection” of Pual Simon’s classic songs spanning more than six decades, from his time as a member of Simon & Garfunkel, through his career as a solo artist, Forbes reports. The acquired songs include evergreen hits such as 'The Sound of Silence', 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'The Boxer', 'Mrs. Robinson', 'Homeward Bound', 'I Am A Rock', 'America', 'Graceland', and many others. Sony didn’t disclose the price of this deal, but it is believed than it ran into a nine-figure sum.

Dua Lipa, Arlo Parks, Celeste, Joel Corry and Young T & Bugsey lead Brit Awards 2021 nominations with three noms apiece. The British album category also features four out of five female nominees for the first time in Brits history, with the aforementioned women joined by Jessie Ware and J Hus. Also, more than half the nominees in key categories are non-white, making the most diverse nominations in the event's history, as Sky emphasizes. Alexis Petridis points out that - "by recognising UK rap and women’s creativity, the Brits are finally in tune".

The Pact, a group of top-level songwriters, released a letter calling for an end to one of the longest-running open secrets of the music industry: the practice of artists demanding credit and publishing for songs they did not write, Variety reports on the brave activism of music authors. Why now? - this rude practice has actually grown worse in recent years as the value of publishing and awareness of that value has risen. The Pact includes co-writers of songs by Dua Lipa (Emily Warren), Justin Bieber (Justin Tranter), Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande (Victoria Monet), the Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears, and many others.

Spotify announced the acquisition of Betty Labs, the creators of Locker Room, a live audio app focused on sports talk, with the aim to build its own rival to the buzzy Clubhouse live-audio chat app, MBW reports. Spotify’s deal values Betty Labs at around $50 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. Betty Labs first launched Locker Room for sports fans in October 2020. Spotify said it plans to rebrand the app (but keep it separate) to “evolve and expand” Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans, offering sports, music, and cultural programming along with interactive features that enable creators to connect with listeners in real time.

Britney Spears spoke for the first time about the New York Times' documentary 'Framing Britney Spears' saying that she had cried for two weeks after seeing parts of it (she never saw the whole thing), Billboard reports. However, it's the other thing that she has said that speaks volumes about her mental health: "I do what I can in my own spirituality with myself to try and keep my own joy … love … and happiness !!!! Every day dancing brings me joy !!! I'm not here to be perfect … perfect is boring … I'm here to pass on kindness !!!! ... My life has always been very speculated … watched … and judged really my whole life !!! For my sanity I need to dance... every night of my life to feel wild and human and alive !!!".

Brian Rohan, the San Francisco “dope lawyer” who represented rock clients like Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Santana, Aerosmith, Boston, Jefferson Airplane, and Kris Kristofferson, has died at 84, Consequence of Sound reports. Rohan's rock career was opened by Grateful Dead in 1966 when he helped them organize their first album contract with Warner Bros. Several months later in January 1967, the police arrested nearly 100 people on charges of loitering and “being hippies” after the Human Be-In. Rohan brought the case to trial and won, getting all other charges dismissed. Rohan also co-formed the Haight-Ashbury Legal Organization that same summer and often set up a table in front of the band’s house where he offered service to live-in and walk-in clients alike who needed help. A story has it also that Rohan punched David Geffen for having his phone calls for clients ignored, earning the applause of “Jann Wenner, Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, and Leonard Cohen".

Aphex Twin has partnered with British start-up ODDSound to develop MTS-ESP, a software plugin that allows for the use of nonstandard tunings. Most Western music is created using the 12 Tones of Equal Temperament (12 TET). However, other cultures have used various tunings for millennia, such as the microtones in Arabic maqam, the complex tuning systems of the Indonesian gamelan, or perhaps most famously, the micro-intervals in Indian ragas. MTS-ESP allows users to import, edit existing tuning files, or define tuning systems using its built-in algorithms, Pitchfork reports.

“Humour, optimism and positivity” are the main ideas behind Hell Bent for Metal, a new podcast about heavy metal from a gay perspective. HBFM founder and co-host Tom Dare’s hope was to be visible to other LGBTQ+ lovers of heavy music, and to offer a queer perspective that he felt was missing from a scene that is still affected by homophobia, as the Guardian reports. Titles to some of the episodes describe the content as well as the spirit of the podcast: 'Gay Satanic Love Songs', 'BDSM Gear and Black Metal', 'Horny German Werewolves', 'Anaal Nathrakh’s Adaam Ant Armograaphy', 'Between The Balls, The Wall And Me'...

Nike is suing Brooklyn art collective MSCHF over a pair of "Satan Shoes" that contain a drop of real human blood in the soles, feature an inverted cross, and a pentagram, the Verge reports. MSCHF released 666 pairs of shoes in collaboration with rapper Lil Nas X who wears a pair in his latest video 'Montero (Call Me By Your Name)', where he hangs out with the devil. The trainers, which cost $1,018 a pair, sold out in less than a minute. Nike claims trademark infringement, and believes they’ve harmed its reputation since consumers might think "that Nike is endorsing satanism”. MSCHF is known for stunt products like its 2019 “Jesus Shoes”, a $1,425 pair of white Nike Air Max 97s with custom stitching and 60ccs of water from the River Jordan. Nike didn’t object to the Jesus Shoes. UPDATE: Nike's lawsuit succeeded in halting production.

Paying a minimum per diem of £75 / $120 to each songwriter working with your artist would be a sensible and structure-preserving measure. This per diem would be non-recoupable from the artist share - a group of over 300 songwriters wrote in an open letter to record labels to guarantee them and their peers a per diem payment for collaborating with artists. The reason? Songwriters' work in sessions isn't guaranteed to actually see the light of day, let alone become a hit. Songwriters who've signed up for the Pay Songwriters campaign include Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Stargate, Savan Kotecha, and dozens of others.

Streaming had the biggest impact on recorded music revenue growth last year - 62% came from streaming. Trapital emphasizes three few less discussed but interesting findings from IFPI reports. Vinyl sales grew 23.5% last year - vinyl are collectibles. It's a callback to a time when fans valued owning art. Synchronization - the use of music in media like games, TV, film, ads, podcasts, etc. - declined 9.4%, but that dip came from pandemic-related production delays. Now that vaccinations are up and production is back on, this will bounce back. South Korea's music revenue grew 44.8% last year. It's now the sixth-largest music market (behind the US, Japan, UK, Germany, and France). It's driven by K-Pop, which is driven by the world's biggest musical act of 2020, BTS.

Korean boyband BTS have expressed "grief and anger" in response to deadly mass shootings in Asian-owned spas in Atlanta, Insider reports. A statement from the band - published in Korean and English - refers to discriminatory experiences that made them feel "powerless". The recent spike in the deliberate targeting of Asian parts of the US population is thought to come from people blaming China for the coronavirus pandemic.

Pioneering music producer and engineer Malcolm Cecil has died at the age of 84, Consequence of Sound reports. Cecil produced plenty of big releases in his time, including numerous Stevie Wonder albums, still, he is best known as the co-creator of the TONTO — the world's largest analog synthesizer. Over the years, the TONTO has been used by the likes of the Isley Brothers, the Doobie Brothers, Joan Baez, Quincy Jones, Bobby Womack, Weather Report, Gil Scott-Heron, Diana Ross and many others. TONTO was obtained by Calgary's National Music Centre in 2013, it was fully restored by 2018 and is available for contemporary artists to use.

Xiu Xiu share a new video for smooth 'Sad Mezcalita', featuring Sharon Van Etten; The Joy Formidable share a power-pop 'Into the Blue'; Gojira go tribal on 'Amazonia'; Jesse Malin shares a raaawk'n'raaawl 'The Way We Used To Roll'; Dallas rapper Bobby Sessions delivers some strong verses on 'Cog in the Machine'.

Belarus has been disqualified from the Eurovision Song Contest after its entry failed to comply with the non-political nature of the competition, CMU reports. Galasy ZMesta's first song 'Ja nauchu tebja' ('I will teach you') was rejected due to complaints that the lyrics mocked the mass protest movement against long-time Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The new song entry by the same band has also been disqualified by the EBU.

Mozart expert Timothy Jones, who teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London, has released an album of his completions of several fragments for violin and keyboard that Mozart never finished, the New York Times reports. Posthumous completions are not unheard of in the classical world. This new Mozart-Jones recording is unusual, though, in its choose-your-own-adventure approach. Jones, testing different aspects of Mozartian style, made multiple completions of each fragment, and the album includes some of that variety, leaving the listener to choose the version they like the most.

Justin Bieber's newest release 'Justice' debuts on top of Billboard 200 chart with 154,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending March 25, Billboard reports. It's his eighth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart - all 10 of Bieber’s charting albums have reached the top 10, and he’s only missed the top slot twice. Bieber this week also stops the chart-topping domination of Morgan Wallen’s 'Dangerous: The Double Album', which spent 10 consecutive weeks in a row (it's at No. 3 this week). Lana Del Rey’s 'Chemtrails Over the Country Club' debuts at No. 2 with 75,000 equivalent album units earned.