Adele has gone back to number one in the UK with her new single 'Easy On Me', scoring the biggest chart figures for almost five years - she had a record 24 million streams in the UK in its first week as well as 23,500 downloads. That is equivalent to 217,300 sales - the highest since Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of You' in January 2017, UK Official Charts reports. In the album chart, Coldplay's 'Music of the Spheres' became the fastest-selling record of the year so far, with 101,000 chart sales, Charts reports.

Paul McCartney made an appearance. Bruce Springsteen serenaded the 3,000 people who attended. Alicia Keys sang. The Jonas Brothers ended the night - the event at the Javits Center in New York on Wednesday night raised $77.5 million for the charity that focuses on reducing poverty. Rollin. stone reports about the event.

Some interesting thoughts by The Roots' drummer Questlove about history in his new book 'Music Is History': "I can relate the history dispassionately. That’s something to practice. It’s important. If you let all your emotions in all the time when you’re giving historical accounts, you may find yourself too often overcome by sorrow, rage, and wonder... At the same time that it’s worth being honest about the importance of personalizing history, it’s vital not to limit ourselves to personal points of entry... Understanding history begins with learning history, and learning history begins with being able to see both inside yourself and outside yourself". Rolling Stone brings the excerpt.

Singer/songwriter Amy Shark and hip-hop artist Genesis Owusu both attracted six nominations across as many categories for the 2021 Aria awards. Shark is up for album of the year for 'Cry Forever', whereas her single 'Love Songs Ain’t For Us' (featuring Keith Urban) is nominated in the publicly voted categories of song of the year and best video. She is also nominated for best artist, best pop release and best Australian live act for her Cry Forever Tour 2021. Owusu is nominated for best artist and best album of the year for his debut 'Smiling With No Teeth'. He is also in the running for the best independent release, best hip-hop release and best Australian live act for his Smiling With No Teeth album tour.

The lone existing copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s album 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' was bought for $4 million by PleasrDAO, a group with a passion for buying digital collectibles honoring “anti-establishment rebels”. Their previous purchases include NFTs connected to Edward Snowden and the Russian band Pussy Riot, with Nadya from Pussy Riot now being a PleasrDAO member. PleasrDAO describe themselves as “a collective of artists, anons, crypto degens, cypherpunks, and visionaries”. Rolling Stone met the group.

Songwriter and composer Leslie Bricusse, well known for the Nina Simone classic 'Feeling Good', and the theme songs to the James Bond films 'Goldfinger' and 'You Only Live Twice', has died at the age of 90. Bricusse won two Oscars - Best Original Song 'Talk to the Animals' from 1968's 'Doctor Dolittle' and Best Original Score for 'Victor/Victoria' in 1983. His songbook also includes 'Candy Man' and 'Pure Imagination' from 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'. BBC remembers the "lyrical genius of film".

"It’s a genuinely exciting time for music, and three and a half hours seemed, if anything, not enough to give a real feel of all these ideas in the air" - Centuries of Sound reads about its selection of music from 1939. The times were changing back then - "this is the year that swing starts to really split; band leaders were taking inspiration from blues to create an upbeat kind of stripped-down jazz, which would soon be labelled 'rhythm & blues', 'jump blues' and eventually 'rock & roll'. Then there were the swing pioneers, looking to break down ideas about rhythm and melody, big names like Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington who were kicking off what would soon become 'Bebop'".

Investment giant KKR's new venture Chord has acquired the KMR Music Royalties II portfolio for approximately $1.1 billion, Music Business Worldwide reports. The catalog, which contains over 62,000 copyrights across multiple genres, includes hits by The Weeknd and Lorde.

Employment in the UK music industry plunged by 35% from 197,000 in 2019 to 128,000, UK Music unveiled in its This Is Music 2021 annual report. The report also shows that in 2020 music industry’s economic contribution fell 46% from £5.8bn to £3.1bn in 2020. Launching the report, UK Music called on the Government to introduce tax incentives and other employment-boosting measures to help the sector rebuild after the pandemic.

Adele's comeback single, 'Easy On Me', broke the global record for day-one streams on Spotify after its release on Friday, Rolling Stone reports. UK superstar achieved the same feat on Amazon Music. 'Easy On Me' had 19.75 million chart-eligible day-one Spotify streams (10 plays per head per 24 hours are counted), nearly double of BTS' 'Butter', which had 11.04 million plays on its day one on Spotify in May.16