A self-described “social experiment”, Rave Reparations is demonstrating the power of small-scale reparations, striving to make it easier, and safer, for black people to attend Los Angeles dance parties, held at secret underground locations across the city. The problem is, as the Guardian reports, LA’s nightlife scene – once home to a host of standout black queer venues has grown increasingly homogeneous, overtaken by “white DJ bros”. Rave Reparations work closely with party promoters to offer discounted tickets to black, brown and queer people (typically 50% off full price), and organize crowdfunded donations for free tickets. The ultimate goal: To be seen, felt, and heard.

Katy Perry has won an appeal in a copyright case involving damages of $2.8m (£2.3m) over song 'Dark Horse', which had previously been found in favour of rapper Flame, the New York Times reports. In July 2014, Perry was accused of plagiarising the song 'Joyful Noise' by a Christian rapper named Marcus Gray (AKA Flame), for her US No 1 hit 'Dark Horse', which was the second biggest-selling song worldwide that year. The songwriters sued, and in July 2019, a jury sided with Gray, and so Perry, along with five co-defendants including producer Max Martin and rapper Juicy J, were ordered to pay damages, with Perry herself owing $550,000. An appeal has reversed that decision, with the judge, Christina Snyder, setting aside the jury’s verdict saying it was “undisputed” that the eight-note section of 'Dark Horse' in question was “not a particularly unique or rare combination” of notes.

Online retail giant will temporarily cease stocking discretionary items, including vinyl records, to make room on its shelves for more essential items like household staples and medical supplies, Variety reports. Amazon will continue to sell whatever vinyl records are already in stock at their warehouses, once those are sold vinyl-buyers are gonna have to wait. Vinyl sales were up by 19% in 2019, accounting for a total of in $504 million in sales, the highest such number since 1988. Amazon is the largest seller of vinyl in the U.S. with a quarter of the overall market share.

Porridge Radio have a great new album 'Every Day' out, they promoting it today with livestream via YouTube at 9:50 am ET. Yo La Tengo‘s Ira Kaplan is filling in as DJ on WFMU from noon-3 PT. Christine and the Queens is preparing "guests and weird concepts" everyday at 6 pm ET on Instagram. Ben Gibbard is livestreaming solo performances from his home studio everyday at 7 pm ET (listen to his take on 'Green Plastic Trees' below). Miley Cyrus will host another hourlong live stream on Instagram starting at 11:30 am PT. United We Stream is going to stream music from Berlin clubs and artists. Billboard, Brooklyn Vegan and NPR keep a list of online shows.

Bandcamp announced that this Friday (March 20) from midnight PST to midnight PST, they’ll be waiving their revenue share from digital sales and merchandise in an effort to support artists during the coronavirus pandemic (the company typically takes 15% on digital sales and 10% on merchandise). Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond said in a statement: “It may sound simple, but the best way to help artists is with your direct financial support".

Organizers of the Glastonbury have cancelled this year's edition fo the festival after the UK government advised people to avoid mass gatherings, Metro reports. Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar were due to appear end of June at the muddy British fields, but they won't this year. Organisers took the decision to call off the event before 1 April, when festival-goers were expected to pay the remaining balance of their £270 tickets. Fans who had already paid the £50 deposit will be allowed roll over that sum to next year, guaranteeing "the opportunity to buy a ticket for Glastonbury 2021", organisers said. Refunds will also be available for those who want them.

There are two possible ways that music might be beneficial in the workplace: by making us smarter, or by making us feel good - BBC Worklife writes in an analysis of science about music in the workplace. So, does it help us work better? The answer is: it depends - a person’s response to music changes based on many, many factors, such as the type of job or work, the genre of music, their control over their music listening and their personality.

John Legend hosted a virtual concert on Instagram Live (watch it below) in an effort to bring happiness and content in a time of, well, bleakness (Chris Martin started it quite nice). Legend played 'Stay With You', 'Good Morning', 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'Beauty and the Beast' (his daughter Luna wanted to hear it), while his wife Chrissy Teigen was sipping some rose wine sitting on a piano. So, a lovely evening in the house of Legend.

Cherie Hu has made virtual music events directory, a comprehensive, up-to-date resource for anyone seeking guidance on how to stage alternative music events in this moment of significant upheaval for the industry. Slightly smaller, but it deserves a sentence - Boston Globe has put together a list of classical live streams. Similarly, Music Scholarship at a Distance offers daily free lectures at 4 PM EST.

Drake scored his 208th Billboard Hot 100 entry this week, making him the artist with the most US chart hits in history, Billboard reports. The rapper broke the record, previously set by the cast of the TV show Glee, with the track 'Oprah’s Bank Account' by Lil Yachty and DaBaby, which he guests on. It reached No 85 off the back of 10.5m streams. His first US chart entry was 'Best I Ever Had', which debuted at No 92 in May 2009. His 207 chart placements since have been bulked out by frequent guest spots on tracks by artists including Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Travis Scott, as well as his solo hits.

Coldplay's Chris Martin made a lovely show from his home, where he's closed due to coronavirus, in order to lift up everybody's spirits, which he managed to do actually. He made jokes, played several songs - 'Viva la Vida', 'Clocks', 'Yellow', 'Green Eyes', well, parts of them really, and sent messages regarding the virus. He passed on the torch to John Legend to play the next show, which he agreed to do - Tuesday (March 17) at 1pm Pacific time.

Jason Rainey, longtime guitarist for thrash metal band Sacred Reich, has died at age 53, Blabbermouth reports. Sacred Reich formed in Phoenix in 1985, when the members of the band were teenagers. The band’s sound was a hard, theatrical take on ’80s speed metal that sometimes crossed into hardcore. They released five albums, broke up in 2000, and reunited for occasional touring in 2007.

Duo Sama Dams (Sam and Lisa Adams) take a spot between art rock and garage rock with 'Not Gonna Lie'; instrumental project Eerie Gaits shared their tender song 'Saw You Through The Trees'; The Lickerish Quartet are just funny with their prog-glam rock song and video 'Lighthouse Spaceship'; 'X24' is a clockwork folk song by Kelora; Teyana Taylor shared a family-themed 'We Got Love', co-written by Kanye West; Lin-Manuel Miranda shared politics-themed cabaret song ‘I Have a Friend’; Brian Fallon shared a lovely Americana ballad 'Tender'; 'Lift Off' is a cool pop/free-jazz song by pop/soul artist Tom Misch and jazz drummer/producer Yussef Dayes; Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson is releasing a new solo album, and 'Personal Shopper' is a conceptual 10-minute prog epic announcing the summer LP.

The That's Not Metal podcast made a really gallant job of creating a Google Spreadsheet with a list of over 100 (metal) artists who have had to either postpone or cancel their tour due to growing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic - Sheets includes links to their respective merch stores.

Organizers of this year’s Record Store Day have postponed this year's event from April 18 to June 20, due to coronavirus, Forbes reports. In a statement, the organizers say - “RSD acknowledges the need to be good citizens of both the local and worldwide communities while still giving our participating stores around the world the best chance to have a profitable, successful Record Store Day”. Check out this year’s list of exclusives here.

The Metropolitan Opera has announced that it will stream operas for free on their website in the wake of coronavirus. The stream will occur nightly at 7:30 p.m. ET via the homepage of metopera.org and will be available to stream for 20 hours, reports Vulture. The schedule for this upcoming week includes classics like 'Carmen', 'La Bohème', and 'La Traviata', as well as 'La Fille du Régiment', 'Lucia di Lammermoor', and 'Eugene Onegin'.

Organizers of the Vive Latino Festival in Mexico City chose to move forward with the event last weekend because “authorities are telling us that we are in Phase 1 [of the Coronavirus epidemic]” and “suspending mass events is not necessary”, according to Billboard. Nevertheless, many of the festival’s scheduled artists dropped out of the event, but not Guns N' Roses - they played a 22-song set that was highlighted by the first live performance of the 'Use Your Illusion II' track 'So Fine' in 27 years. Festival-goers were subject to intense measures upon their entry into the grounds - all attendees had their temperatures taken prior to being allowed access, Consequence of Sound reports. Guns N’ Roses intend to play all concerts in areas that haven’t limited public gatherings - in Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.

Both Moog and Korg, two of the biggest names in analogue synthesizers, have each made one of their popular synth apps for a free download for a limited time to encourage creativity while people are staying home due to social distancing, self-quarantine and other preventative measures during the COVID-19 outbreak, Engadget reports. Moog is offering up it’s Minimoog Model D for iOS, and Korg is offering up its Kaossilator app for IOS or Android for free for a limited time.

Lil Uzi Vert debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 'Eternal Atake', with the biggest streaming week for an album since 2018 - the album starts with 288,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in last week, with 278,000 of it in SEA units, which translates to a whopping 400 million on-demand streams for the set’s 18 tracks, the Billboard reports. That’s the fourth-largest streaming week ever for an album, and the largest week for any album since Lil Wayne’s 'Tha Carter V' started with 433 million clicks in October 2018. Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, Jhené Aiko scores her highest charting album ever, as 'Chilombo' debuts at No. 2 with 152,000 equivalent album units. Korean pop group NCT 127 lands its first top 10 effort, as 'NCT #127: Neo-Zone, The 2nd Album' debuts at No. 5 with 87,000 equivalent albums. Closing out the top 10 is Megan Thee Stallion, who scores her second top 10 effort with 'Suga'; 41,000 equivalent album units earned.

Genesis P-Orridge, founding member of cult experimental bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, has died, Alternative Press reports. With Throbbing Gristle, Genesis helped pioneer the genre of industrial music. In later life, they became a "body evolutionist", proposing a new gender that was beyond male and female. Boing Boing made an interview with the musician - he talked about dying. Alexis Petridis wrote a lovely obituary describing the musician as a "troubling catalyst who loathed rock yet changed it for ever" by inventing industrial music.

Dr. Robert Murphy, an infectious disease researcher and the executive director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Global Health, shared some advice with the Vulture about going to concerts:

1. Stay away from crowds, stay a couple of feet from other people, don't shake hands, stay away from people who are coughing
2. Choose small venues - less than 50 people
3. Seated shows are safer
4. Wash your hands and try not to touch your face
5. Use hand sanitizers frequently
6. Avoid buying drinks, merchandise is fine

"A lot of the songs of the Beatles felt to me very complete, because they had a voice, they had lyrics, and it was fine that the songs were two, three, four minutes. But as an instrumental, without the voice and the lyrics and the fact that it was me making the record, I felt like I had to give it something else, and not do a cover of the song, but my own interpretations" - jazz fusion guitarist Al Di Meola told All Music about his approach in Beatles' covers album 'Across the Universe'. 'Norwegian Wood' is a good example of it - a 2-minute pop song is remade into a 6-minute epic - listen below.

An interesting choice by the Fast Company of the 10 most innovative companies in music marketing, merchandising, getting artists paid, music production etc. One of the chosen 10 is Gener8tor, a startup accelerator for artists and musicians. Each artist receives a $20,000 grant to help build their careers, with Gener8tor taking no equity, royalties, or revenue share. Artists do, however, still have access to Gener8tor’s network of entrepreneurs and resources to help create a more sound business model for monetizing and growing their rising careers.

Rage Against the Machine have postponed the first leg of their upcoming reunion tour (March 26 - May 20) due to concerns over the coronavirus; they plan to start playing May 23rd. Billie Eilish has postponed her March US dates - the postponement arrives after Live Nation and AEG, two of the world’s biggest concert promoters, decided to halt all large-scale tours until April due to the pandemic. Canadian Juno Awards have cancelled all 2020 programming. After New York State has banned gatherings of 500 people or more due to the coronavirus pandemic, some NYC venues are temporarily closing their doors, and postponing events. JamFest in Atlanta on April 5, with Taylor Swift headlining, has been cancelled. All events related to this year's LA Pride have been postponed, although it takes place in three months from now, in June. Also, there's American bands having trouble going home from the EU since the US have posed travel restrictions. But, not everything has been cancelled - Kendrick Lamar has been added as Glastonbury headliner, Tool still plan to play the US this March (just one show cancelled so far), mewithoutYou have just announced their farewell tour...

The music industry could lose as much as $5 billion - the same amount as the projected loss for the film industry - over cancellations and postponements due to coronavirus, analyst Kristen Jaconi, director of the Risk Management program at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, said. Kevin Kennedy, an industry analyst at IBISWorld, told the Rolling Stone that - “overall, the negative economic impact of the virus will be especially severe for smaller-scale operators that cannot effectively manage the risk".

From their start "being mediocre at best" to "touring with Madonna and Rick Rubin" Spike Jonze-directed documentary 'Beastie Boys Story' covers a life-time of a band. The docu is coming to IMAX theaters on April 3 and will then stream on April 24 via Apple TV+.

No Life Shaq is a 26-year-old hip-hop head and a YouTuber who started ith recording his reactions to hip-hop songs from the likes of Eminem, Meek Mill, 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes. In October 2018 made the decision to branch out, checking out songs he’d never before heard, starting with Metallica’s 'One', when he got something he would never have expected. Now, he has well over 1.5 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Complex interviewed him about how he started and where he is now.

Bristol singer/songwriter and Aldous Harding collaborator Fenne Lily released her first single 'Hypochondriac'; multi-disciplinary art collective Asian Dope Boys released 'Trance', an intense and erotic experimental performance piece exploring death and ritual, sonically between metal and electronic; 'Nomad' is the new single from the South Korean-Japanese family band Tengger's new album, about water's travel and their inner travel; Pizzagirl proves plenty can be done with a simple but catchy guitar line in 'Cape Canaveral'; nice groovy folk-rock in Johanna Warren's 'Part of It'; Thao & The Get Down Stay Down's 'Temple' is the first song Thao released after coming out as queer to her Vietnamese family; 'Fake Blood' is the first song by the alter-rock band Ghost Work.

Please Kill Me blog dug deep into the history of wrestling to unearth three fine instances when wrestling met rock & roll. Maybe the strangest of them is the curious case of "Classy” Freddie Blassie - a star in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the 1960s and 1970s with his foul-mouthed tirades against his opponents, and his physical aggression in the ring. Musician and wrestling fan Johnny Legend thought that Blassie’s rants would make a great record, although Blassie, according to his own words, "couldn’t keep a beat and never even sang in the shower". They made 'Pencil Neck Geek', a mouthy song successful in underground circles.

Tame Impala have announced a partnership with the nonprofit REVERB in adopting eco-friendly initiatives, in order to reduce environmental waste while on tour, Happy Mag reports. The collaboration will include free filtered water refill stations at shows to reduce single-use plastic waste, Eco-Villages where fans can learn more about environmental nonprofits, and the band will fund projects that eliminate greenhouse gases, donate unused food and hotel toiletries to local shelters, recycle backstage and on tour buses, use reusable water bottles for all band members and crew, and more.