Fast Company chooses 10 companies that are changing the face of the music industry. They are: Neon16 - a talent incubator and music label for Latin music, BeatStars - an online marketplace for producers to sell their beats to artists, Royalty Exchange - a marketplace allowing artists who are earning royalties to sell them to investors during online auctions, Audiomack - a music streaming and discovering platform aiming at Africa, Stem - a music distribution platform making it easier to artists, as well as Verzuz, Parkwood Entertainment, Harmonix, Bandcamp, and Dolby.

NASA released "the first acoustic recording of laser impacts on a rock target on Mars". The short audio sequence features the sound of 30 impacts, recorded by a microphone on the rover, CNet reports. The Quietus explains how Mars, like the few other outer space events audible within our limited hearing range, is mostly silent, and how actually do the sounds we hear come to be heard by us.

Belgium inventor Lou Ottens, who led the project of developing a cassette tape, has died at the age of 94, NPR reports. He was the head of product development at Philips’s electronics factory in Hasselt, Belgium in early 1960s when he told his team to develop an audio device that was smaller, cheaper and easier to use than the reel-to-reel tape recorder because that one was to much of a hassle. As a result, they invented the cassette tape, which went on to be sold in billions. Ottens spearheaded another advance in electronics, working on a Philips team that jointly introduced the compact disc with Sony in 1982.

Radio has become an increasingly vital source of community and comfort for its listeners - DJ Mag argues in an interesting article about the old medium. The audience has grown substantially - much-loved independent station NTS' listener numbers have grown from 1.5 million monthly listeners in 2019 to 2.5 million a year later. A similar trend is seen in other stations, which also proves that the radio is being listened to not only in the car.

American media are looking into clues about future performances after watching Patti Smith perform at the Brooklyn Museum Beaux-Arts. Rolling Stone was there with other 50-ish people: "We’ve forgotten how to have a good time with each other. It’s going to take time to figure out what makes sense for each individual, how to enjoy being alive together again. But this was a start". Smith's show was a part of NY PopsUp, a series of over 300 performances spread across the state and five boroughs over 100 days. Pitchfork saw it as a move forward: "If NY PopsUp is meant to initiate the baby steps needed to inch our way back to a normal and robust music scene, it seemed like a productive rehearsal for both audience and performer".

Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard share a baroque pop 'We, Us the Pharaohs'; Skullcrusher goes totally mellow on 'Storm in Summer'; Lucy Dacus is minimal yet tense on 'Thumbs'; (almost) anonymous band Fuckin Whatever share psych-pop song 'Trash'; Sophie completed the collaborative track 'JSLOiPNHIE' with Jlin just before they died; Nadja share ambient industrial sludge song 'Luminous Rot'; Oddisee is laid back on 'No Trouble'; actor and singer Matt Berry shares a psychedelic instrumental 'Aboard'; Sarah Neufeld shares 'With Love and Blindness' from her new album, which documents an “intense, heart-wrenching, insane two years” in her life; Home Is Where share post-rock screamo 'Sewn Together From The Membrane Of The Great Sea Cucumber'.

The Weeknd has six nominations for Juno Awards 2021, including nods for Album of the Year, Single of the Year and Artist of the Year. Jessie Reyez, JP Saxe and Justin Bieber each follow closely behind with five nominations each. Also nominated are Savannah Ré, Arkells, TOBi, Half Moon Run, the Glorious Sons, Alanis Morissette, Shay Lia, Kaytranada, WondaGurl, Murda Beatz, Alessia Cara, Crown Lands, Céline Dion, Leonard Cohen, NAV and Shawn Mendes.

While Americans mostly listen to a new generation of hip-hop, country, and pop acts, the Brits prefer both classic and modern rock bands, the US and the UK official charts show, Loudwire reports. Zero rock albums have topped the US chart in the U.S. in 2021 so far, and the last year it was only AC/DC and Machine Gun Kelly who occupied the No. 1 spot. Furthermore, rock has claimed the No. 1 spot just four times - by AC/DC, MGK, Tool, Slipknot - in the last two-and-half years. On the other side of the Atlantic, five rock albums - by You Me at Six, Bring Me the Horizon, Foo Fighters, Mogwai, and Architects - have topped the U.K. Albums Chart in 2021 alone. In 2020, a total of 15 rock artists held the top spot on the U.K. Albums Chart, including Green Day, Bruce Springsteen, Biffy Clyro, Yungblud, the 1975, and Paul McCartney.

Cardi B's major-label debut single 'Bodak Yellow' has been certified diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, meaning it has moved 10 million units, Complex reports. The New York native is the first female rapper to achieve a diamond single award. One equivalent song unit is equal to a single digital song sale, or 150 on-demand audio and/or video streams.

Producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland have sold their Verzuz project to Triller, joining also the Triller Verzuz management team to help oversee music and other company strategies, LA Times reports. Timbaland and Swizz Beatz have become large shareholders in Triller Network and in turn have allocated part of their equity stake to the 43 performers who’ve appeared on Verzuz to date, including John Legend, DMX, Alicia Keys, Ashanti, Rick Ross, Patti LaBelle, Gucci Mane, Jeezy, RZA, The Dream, Brandy, Monica, DJ Premier, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott. Pairing popular artists from the worlds of R&B, hip-hop, dancehall and gospel, Verzuz was launched in March 2020 in the wake of COVID-19. Since then, the platform has boosted sales and streams for its featured artists in addition to accumulating more than 5 billion impressions.

Monty Python member Eric Idle shared an insight into the production of the troupes 1975 film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', Rolling Stone reports. According to his tweet, British rock stars were essential in financing it - Led Zeppelin contributed £31,500, Pink Floyd Music ponied up £21,000, and Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson put in £6,300 of his own money. Monty Python's other movie 'Life of Brian' came out thanks to a musician as well - The Beatles legend George Harrison mortgaged his house and put that money in the movie.

The Weeknd 'Blinding Lights' becomes the first song in Billboard Hot 100's history (which started in 1958) to spend a year in the top 10, as it logs its 52nd week in the region, Billboard reports. After debuting at No. 11 on the chart dated Nov. 14, 2019, it reached the top 10 on Feb. 29, 2020, and has spent all but two frames in the top tier since (ranking at Nos. 11 and 18 for two weeks in December).

Among artists 21.6% are women, 12.6% are songwriters, and 2.6% are producers - a new report on women inclusion in music by Annenberg shows (plenty of stats and graphs). Looking only at women of color, numbers go way lower - 9 of 1,291 producing credits went of to women of color.

This past January and February, New Zealand pop-rock band SIX60 held a Saturdays Tour, on consecutive weekends, playing to, all summed up, 125,000 people, Pollstar reports. Their tour began at Waitangi Sports Ground in Waitangi (Jan. 16) when they played to 20,000 people, as well as at Tomoana Showgrounds in Hastings (Jan. 23). The TSB Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth (Jan.30) attracted 15,000, Hagley Park in Christchurch (Feb. 6) had 23,000, The Wellington show was on Feb. 13 with 32,000, and the final date at Claudelands Oval in Hamilton was to 25,000 on Feb. 27. All this was possible thanks to New Zealand’s successful response to COVID-19. With no social distancing restrictions or bans on mass gatherings, no other act in the world has played to an audience that size in 2021 as well as for most of 2020.

Is it really a sale of a rent? Does the buyer get something special or just random? Are NFTs here to save the music industry or are they this year's credit default swaps? Who's selling, who's buying and what the hell are they? - MusicREDEF tries to explain Non-Fungible tokens in its latest thread.

Foxing share a grand indie-rock/emo song 'Speak With The Dead' of near-epic proportions; Yerba Mansa shares violin noise in supremely-titled 'Jesus Christ Motorbike II'; Japanese screamos Lang share an easy-flowing 'Night Reeds'; Lyon-based Sathönay plays saz, an instrument similar to lute, on eastern Europe-influenced 'Doppio Picchio Verde'; Rachika Nayar shares ambient and noisy 'Losing Too Is Still Ours'; Greek black-metallers share a proggy 'The Sorcereer Above The Clouds'.

A growing body of research more directly links air and road-traffic noise to heightened risks for a number of cardiovascular ailments, the Atlantic points out. Estimates suggest that roughly a third of Americans are regularly exposed to unhealthy levels of noise, typically defined as starting around 70 to 80 decibels. People living near the Frankfurt airport, for example, have as much as a 7 percent higher risk of stroke than those living in similar but quieter neighborhoods. An analysis of nearly 25,000 cardiovascular deaths between 2000 and 2015 among people living near Zurich’s airport saw significant increases in nighttime mortality after airplane flyovers, especially among women.

Popular digital audio workstations like Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, and Cubase were built primarily to facilitate music-making in a Western mode, according to the principles of European classical music. Recently, Khyam Allami, an Iraqi born in Syria and living in London, introduced Leimma and Apotome, two pieces of free software that aim to offer possibilities outside the Europan music canon. Leimma allows users to explore tuning systems from around the world or create their own, while Apotome offers generative music creation using these diverse tuning systems. They intend to give musicians a blank musical slate, rather than nudging them towards any specific musical tradition. Pitchfork presents both.

Lars-Göran “L-G” Petrov of the Swedish death-metal pioneers Entombed sadly passed away on Sunday, after a battle with cancer, at the age of 49, Louder reports. Entombed formed in 1989 out of the ashes of their previous band Nihilist, to release their groundbreaking debut LP 'Left Hand Path' in 1990. They changed the trajectory of the genre once again with their third album, 1993's 'Wolverine Blues', which helped pioneer the subgenre of death 'n' roll. Petrov left the band in 2014 and formed the offshoot band Entombed A.D., who went on to release three albums.

Adele has been named as the UK’s best-selling female album artist of the century by The British Phonographic Industry, according to Music Week. She holds the top spot above the stars such as P!nk, Madonna, Rihanna, Dido, Amy Winehouse, Kylie Minogue, Beyonce, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga. Her second album, ‘21‘, also holds the title for the UK’s number one album by a female artist since 2000, after shifting just shy of 6 million copies in the UK alone. The new statistics have been unveiled to coincide with the confirmed return of National Album Day on October 21, which will adopt ‘Celebrating Women In Music’ as its 2021 theme.

Morgan Wallen’s 'Dangerous: The Double Album' holds on to the top of Billboard 200 chart for an eighth consecutive week, amidst the racial slur scandal. 'Dangerous' earned 82,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending March 4, which is a slight dip of 7% compared to the previous week, Billboard reports. 'Dangerous' now ties Taylor Swift’s 2020 album 'Folklore' for the second-most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the last five years -- among albums of all genres.

A total of 1,971 women were registered as professional songwriters and composers in 2020 in the UK, a 12.3% year-on-year increase compared to 2019, and a near twofold increase (79.6%) compared to 2018, when 1,097 women registered, Music Week reports. New figures released today (8 March), International Women’s Day 2021, show over half (58%) of women joining PRS for Music in 2020 were under the age of 30. However, gender balance within the professional songwriter and composer community remains heavily skewed towards men - male composers and songwriters make up 81.7% of PRS for Music’s membership, which is significantly higher than the music industry as a whole. The proportion of women working in the music industry had reached a record high of 49.6% in its latest Diversity Report for 2020. Also, the top 10 highest-earning female songwriters and composers generated 70% less income than their male counterparts in 2020.

Tame Impala played two sold-out, maskless concerts on Friday in Perth, as Tame Impala Sound System sets, bringing a sense of normalcy down under where the Covid-numbers are quite low, while the rest of the world is pretty much quarantined, NME reports. Tame Impala’s TISS sees Parker and co. reimagine tracks from the band’s discography with synths, sequencers, and samplers, creating "pulsating, fully live and organic, free-flowing digital jam out”.

A total of 1,300 people took part in a party on Saturday in Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome, which also acted as a research project, the Chronicle Herald reports. Dutch DJs Sam Feldt, Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano were playing as the party-goers were followed in all their movements and contacts through a tag they were made to wear, as part of an effort to examine how events may safely be opened up for the public again. The event was part of a series of government-backed tests that also include a business conference, two football matches and a comedy show – all of which have different rules for different groups, to see what works best.

The original Turntable.fm site - shuttered in 2013, is back up and running, but there’s also Turntable.org, which will reportedly be launching in beta this April, the Verge reports. Turntable.fm lets users create a virtual room, then select what music they want to play for anyone listening; the song selection is currently limited to what’s available on YouTube. Turntable.org, the new version, mentions there will be a subscription fee.

Henry Goldrich was the man behind the music - literally, since he was the owner of Manny's Music store in New York. There, he had sold Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton their first wah-wah pedals, as well as other pieces of equipment to numerous musicians - David Gilmour, Pete Townsend, Sting, James Taylor, members of Lovin' Spoonful - helping them define their sound. The New York Times tells the nice story of the "gear guru to rock stars" who recently died.

The next release by the acclaimed Berlin-based label Habibi Funk, dedicated to music from the Arabic-speaking world, will be a compilation of recordings by renowned Lebanese musician Rogér Fakhr. 'Fine Anyway' is released on April 9, which will be this 1970s musician's widespread release and promotion, as the Quietus points out. Guardian has recently described the quest Habibi Punk's boss Jannis Stürtz has gone through to find the Arabic music he wanted to re-release.

St Vincent looks inside her family with her new album made while her father was getting out of prison (spent 9 years there for $43 million stock fraud), 'Pay Your Way In Pain' is the first glimpse into it; Duendita brings soul to a jazz band with 'Open Eyes'; steel pan player Fimber Bravo announces his new album with an afrobeat banger 'Hiyah Man'; 'Flock' is the stand-out track from Jane Weaver's new eclectic psych-pop album of the same name; this is just lovely - Suede's Brett Anderson and Nadine Shah cover Mercury Rev's 'Holes' with help from Paraorchestra, the world's first large-scale integrated virtuoso ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians; Maple Glider presents her great voice on 'Good Thing'; Julianknxx shares his activist hip-hop poetry on 'Basement'.

K-pop stars BTS have been named the best-selling artists of 2020 by the IFPI, the organisation that represents the global recorded music industry, Forbes reports. The seven South Koreans are the first non-Western act to win, and the first whose songs are not predominantly sung in English. The boyband beat Taylor Swift (an American), who took the crown last year, into second place. Drake came third, with The Weeknd fourth (both are Canadian) and Billie Eilish at number five (she's an American). The award is calculated according to an artist or group's worldwide sales, downloads and streams, covering their whole body of work.

Germany’s revenues from physical music sales and streaming grew 9% year-on-year to €1.79 billion in 2020, Music Business Worldwide reports. A good portion of 71.5% of revenues came from digital music, growing 24.6% in a year, from €1.13bn to €1.27bn. CD sales in the market fell 18% YoY, remaining the second-strongest format in the German recorded market with a 21.6% share of sales in 2020. totalling €387m. Vinyl revenues grew 24.7% YoY to €99m, and had an overall market share of 5.5%.