Swedish music company Soundtrack Your Brand teamed up with Spotify to create a platform that allows small business owners like bars, restaurants, and retail stores to easily stream music for 30 to 40 dollars a month, Rolling Stone reports. SYB inked unique licensing deals with Sony and Warner, alongside indie music association Merlin, and on Tuesday the company announced a new deal with Universal. The biggest study on background music to date found that 88 percent of businesses play music four or five days a week without a license, and 86 six percent are prepared to pay for an improved service.

TikTok is partnering with UnitedMasters, a music distribution company, to allow artists on the video-sharing platform to distribute their songs directly from the app to streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube, as well as brands like ESPN and the N.B.A. Instead of selling their rights to a label, artists who sign with UnitedMasters keep 90 percent of their royalties, as well as ownership of the master recordings, TechCrunch reports. The deal is aimed at “tomorrow’s stars who will be famous, fiercely independent and wealthy,” said UM's founder Steve Stoute.

“I kept waiting for someone to do something that moved or inspired me, but I began to realize that I’d have to do it myself" - Brazilian artist Linn da Quebrada told Guardian about being black and trans in a repressive country (130 trans people were killed in Brazil in 2019, more than anywhere else in the world). Linn and her musical partner Jup do Bairro make brave music with vulnerable lyrics, tongue-in-cheek statements, and genre-bending dance rhythms. They're fighting the system which is "so narrow, we have to come in through the cracks. And as we come in, we also widen these gaps so that more and more people can start occupying them, too”.

The Indian classical vocalist Pandit Jasraj has died at the age of 90, CNN reports. Known for his unique voice which had both depth and softness, Pandit Jasraj Jasraj was a pioneering artist well known for his egalitarian approach. Despite belonging to a traditional school of classical music, Pandit Jasraj is said to have pioneered adding a lighter style to his music to make it more audience-friendly. Grammy and Academy Award-winning musician AR Rahman tweeted saying "#RIPPanditJasraj indian classical music has lost one of its shining stars". Indian singer-composer Vishal Dadlani called it a "monumental loss".

XXL magazine revealed their Freshman Class list for this year with 12 rappers to watch: "NLE Choppa calls home to Memphis while Polo G and Calboy represent Chicago. Lil Tjay and Fivio Foreign hold it down for New York. Baby Keem rests his head in Las Vegas. Jack Harlow is a proud Louisville, Ky. native. Rod Wave hails from the bottom of the map in St. Petersburg, Fla. Down South gets love from Chika in Montgomery, Ala., and both Mulatto and Lil Keed are hot in the streets of Atlanta. San Francisco rapper 24kGoldn earned the most fan votes to land the title of the Freshman 10th spot winner".

UK rapper Stormzy has donated £500,000 to fund educational scholarships for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, BBC reports. His gift to the Black Heart Foundation is the first major funding arrangement since he pledged £10m to help organisations that are dedicated to fighting racial inequality in the UK in this decade. Stormzy’s £500,000 donation will cover the cost of awarding cash grants to about 50 students.

Glitchcore has skyrocketed from a fledgling scene into a sizable movement in just the past year - Complex looks back on the latest mini-genre sensation on SoundCloud. People also call the genre digicore and robloxcore, but what this songs have in common is "a ridiculous, infectious gridwork of glitches". Most of these artists are teens who grew up listening to pop-punk and emocore. They are David Shawty, whose tracks teem with glittering glitches and often dabble in darker hues; Osquinn who makes everything from megabouncy electro-rap to twinkling storms of low-end; Glaive - produces a synthesis of indie rock and electronic; Capoxxo, Dreamcache and Oaf1 all experiment in genre. When it all comes together, it’s both hideous and strangely winsome - like a painting that goes so far into kitsch it comes out the other side as genius.

Taylor Swift holds the top spot of Billboard's 200 for a third consecutive week with her pop-folk album 'Folklore - aided by the arrival of its CD version in stores, 'Folklore' earned 136,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. last week, Billboard reports. It's the first album by a woman to spend its first three weeks at No. 1 since 2018, when Lady Gaga reigned the top with 'A Star is Born' soundtrack. Three new albums among the top 10 at the Billboard: country superstar Luke Bryan debuts at No. 5 with 65,000 equivalent album units earned with 'Born Here Live Here Die Here'. Alter-rock band Glass Animals achieves its first top 10 album as 'Dreamland' arrives at No. 7 with 60,000 equivalent album units earned. Rapper NLE Choppa closes out the top 10 as his 'Top Shotta' bows at No. 10 with 36,000 equivalent album units earned.

Pete Way, the founding member of the pioneering UK hard-rock band UFO, has passed away at the age of 69, Blabbermouth reports. The legendary musician suffered major injuries in an unspecified accident two months ago and died Friday. Formed in 1968, UFO helped bridge the gap between hard rock and heavy metal, influencing acts like Iron Maiden, Metallica, and countless others, before disbanding in 1983.

Jónsi shared a collaboration with Liz Fraser, and 'Cannibal' sound just like that - Sigur Ros meets Cocteau Twins; Nas is back in shape - 'Ultra Black' is sharp and entertaining and juicy; Emiliano Melis released a melodic ambient electronic tape loop composition; Black Noi$e shared a hip-hop banger '1999'; The Killers shared a disco-rock ‘Dying Breed’, with their "most romantic lyric ever"; First Aid Kit shared a cover of Willie Nelson's ‘On The Road Again’, with proceeds going to Crew Nation; GNOD & João Pais Filipe shared live video for ambient and hypnotic 'Terra'; Melvins' Buzz Osborne released acoustic-horror song 'I'm Glad I Could Help Out'; Rufus Wainwright's new song is called 'Devils & Angels (Hatred)' but it's full of life; The Flaming Lips shared their new acoustic psychedelia called 'Will You Return / When You Come Down'; Bobby Sessions dropped militant/protest rap 'Fight'; a great little thing by Paul De Jong - he wrote a poem 'This Poem Will Fade and Die', 97-year old musician and educator Catherine Luening read it, he then set it to music (piano), and made a video featuring Luening in her Manhattan apartment listening to the track for the first time.

Black Music History Library is a living collection of more than a thousand books, articles, documentaries, series and podcasts about the Black origins of traditional and popular music dating from the 18th century to present day. Resources are organized chronologically and by genre for ease of browsing. It covers K-Pop, Latin Pop, West African, punk, hip-hop, jazz, electronic/dance, classical, música tropical and much more.

Sam Fender played a sold-out show for 2,500 fans at Newcastle’s drizzly Gosforth Park. Socially distanced show had groups of five at 500 individual platforms set metres apart. Telegraph said the gig was "a strange affair, but in their 500 little bubbles, fans had an absolute ball". NME writes that "hometown hero lifts gloom with life-affirming, groundbreaking show". Chronicle has pictures from the show. The Libertines, Two Door Cinema Club and Supergrass will follow suit at the venue over the summer.

Iranian band Arsames have fled their home country to avoid having to serve a 15-year prison sentence for playing metal music. Arsames insist they don't play satanic music, rather they sing about Persian history - "is it a crime that we love music and our country?!”. Metal is viewed as a Satanic form of music in Iran, which violates the country’s strict blasphemy laws and could result in execution, Loudwire reports.

Music venues in England have been given the green light to reopen from Saturday, BBC reports. Music and performance venues will be able to reopen with socially distanced audiences - venues will have to limit capacity and enforce wearing of masks, Route Note reports. New powers will be introduced to penalise the organisers of mass gatherings including raves. Nightclubs and discos will remain shut. Organisers of illegal raves will face fines of up to £10,000 under new rules. West Midlands Police shut down 125 parties and raves, including one of up to 600 people, last weekend, while London's Metropolitan Police have said that more than 500 illegal events were organised in the city in just one month, Evening Standard reports.

Wu-Tang Clan frontman RZA teamed up with American ice cream company Good Humor to pen its new ice cream truck jingle. It might seem funny, but RZA has pointed out that the popular ice cream truck jingle 'Turkey in the Straw', often heard from trucks has a history rooted in racism, explaining the song was popularized via minstrel shows "and some adaptations paired it with hateful, racist lyrics". RZA hopes his new jingle will be adopted by ice cream truck drivers all over, so it's been made free to use. It will even be included as an industry-standard in ice cream truck music boxes.

The Notorious B.I.G.'s son Christopher "CJ" Wallace is to release a new album featuring reimagined versions of Biggie's records, All Hip Hop reports. 'Ready to Dance' will be a melding of Hip Hop and House, with guest musicians, vocalists, producers, and deejays. 'Big Poppa (House Mix)' is the first single off if.

Berlin clubs are closed since March, clubbers soon swelled the city with a network of underground raves on the banks of local lakes and deep in suburban forests and public parks, Electronic Beats reports. “It’s kind of an altruistic act that they’re doing this... I feel like something about it recalibrated my mental health - that kind of ambient boredom has gone away since then” - Irina, 32, said after attending one of the raves. In (geographically) similar news, Berlin's famous club Berghain is reopening parts of its space next month as an art gallery, the Quietus reports.

When Mountain Goats hit it, they hit it real good - just like they did with their new folk-rawk 'As Many Candles As Possible'; The Japanese House released a new song 'Dionne', featuring Justin Vernon, an alter pop gem; Coastlands deliver mighty post-rock with 'Dead Friends'; Anjimile's 'Baby No More' is just some sweet jazzy pop.

Google beat back a lawsuit over alleged scraping of song lyrics from lyrics site Genius, according to Hollywood Reporter. Federal judge Margo Brodie in the Eastern District of New York found that while the claims of scraping were credible, the scraping did not constitute a copyright violation, since Genius isn’t the actual copyright holder, and the lawsuit was dismissed as a result.

Rocker and metal fan Valentin the Mad recorded 'Boar Metal', a "brutal death metal song with wild pigs on vocals", as he said, and it is literally like that, Loudwire reports. The guitarist and producer from Haifa, Israel recorded boars on the streets of his city - "wild hogs were always present in the city, but in recent years there has been a massive increase". The accompanying video also shows boars roaming the streets of Haifa, and Valentin the Mad sporting - boar's mask.

“Hip-hop is from our people, African people, all of us. It’d be hard for me not to fall into what my people created... Growing into hip-hop I reckon was like me understanding who I was as a person” - Melbourne rapper Nelson told Guardian about the city's African diaspora rap scene. Its hotspot is 66 Records, a house to many with similar stories: Poni who fled civil war in Sudan via Uganda; Jordan “Lil Jaye” Yermian who bounced between Cameroon, France and Australia; Ater “BabyT” Mamer left Kenya for New Zealand as a baby before moving to Australia; Nelson was displaced by the Liberian civil war at just six months of age, BBG Smokey...

Berlin-based music producer Lyra Pramuk, who uses only her voice to produce "futurist folk music", made a mix for Fact magazine where she "explores the idea of ‘folk song’ as interpreted by women singers and storytellers from the past century to today". There's Joan Baez and Dolly Parton, as well as Lauryn Hill and Lingua Ignota, among others.

Converge would be donating 100% of the earnings from their 2013 guest-filled Entombed covers EP to Entombed vocalist LG Petrov, who was diagnosed with incurable cancer, Metal Injection reports. The EP includes five covers of Entombed's 'Wolverine Blues' with a different vocalist on each one - Aaron Turner (Isis, Sumac, Old Man Gloom), Kevin Baker (All Pigs Must […]

Phil Collins' song 'In the Air Tonight' saw a 1,110% increase in sales after a viral video of two brothers reacting to the song while listening to it for the first time, CoS reports. Tim and Fred Williams, a pair of 22-year-old twins from Gary, Indiana, create reaction videos on YouTube under the account TwinsthenewTrend, and their most popular video is their reaction to Collins' 1980s pop hit, with over 4 million views. The song is climbing the Billboard charts, and it has already reached No. 3 on the iTunes Charts.

Mexican-American singer Trini Lopez, who had a hit in 1963 with his version of 'If I Had A Hammer', and was a successful guitar-maker, has died at 83 of coronavirus, The New York Times reports. Lopez, an accomplished guitarist, was mentored by Buddy Holly and Frank Sinatra and designed two instruments for the Gibson Guitar Corporation. Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters said Lopez left "a beautiful music legacy", he called his own Trini Lopez guitar his "most prized possession" and said it had been "the sound of the Foo Fighters from day one". Lopez recorded more than 60 albums and was a popular headliner in Las Vegas.

34-years-old Nikki Paterson from Scotland has 47 tattoos, 23 of which are of Eminem, The Sun reports. She hopes this will get her into the Guinness World Book of Records. Paterson said she has been listening to Eminem since she was 14, and that she fell in love with him after hearing 'Stan', a song about a crazy fan.

English music producer and engineer Martin Birch, who worked on iconic albums by Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Whitesnake, and Black Sabbath has died aged 71, Ultimate Classic Rock reports. Birch began his industry career as an engineer, earning early credits on albums by Jeff Beck and Fleetwood Mac. He worked also with Wishbone Ash, and Rainbow, while he finished his career with the epic 'Fear of the Dark' by Iron Maiden.

American funk band Vulfpeck has offered track 10 from the band's upcoming album 'The Joy of Music, The Job of Real Estate' to the highest bidder, The Line of Best Fit reports. Track 10 from Vulfpeck's new LP is currently listed on eBay, and the highest bidder will get naming rights to the track and two-and-a-half-minutes on the LP. The buyer won't get the right to earn any of money back, since the winner has to assign all royalties to the band and "will receive no financial remuneration, like ever".

Silicon Valley firm xMEMs is working on robust headphones, that would revolutionise the headphone market, BBC reports. The basis of their tech is "piezoelectric effect" - if you bend some materials, they produce an electric current, and if you pass an electric current through them they bend. They're using that bendiness to make small speakers that can match the very best sound produced the traditional way, while also being robust and waterproof. The first headphones with this technology are expected on the market next April.

Good old Alanis Morissette got it real good on 'Reasons I Drink', accompanied by a great video; Conway the Machine goes haunting on psychedelic on 'Lemon', with Method Man as his right hand; Jamila Woods continues her hommage series - 'Sula' honors the late novelist Toni Morrison; Max Richter's 'Mercy' is minimalist and beautiful, performed on violin and piano.