Americana singer-songwriter David Olney died Saturday in the middle of his set at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Florida. Olney had played his third song from his set, took a pause, apologized and closed his eyes. He never dropped his guitar, or fell of hist stool. Singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, who was performing alongside him at the 30A Songwriters Festival, was there when it happened: "He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket".

Madonna has canceled her Sunday night show in Lisbon saying - "I must listen to my body and rest!". She gave her fans just 45 minutes' notice that her show in Portugal's capital was being called off. It is the eighth time Madonna has had to cancel a show on her current world tour. In a video posted to social media last week, she was shown wearing knee supports while rehearsing for an earlier show in Lisbon.

OutKast's André 3000 is coming to the TV-screen again - he is one of the four main characters from 'Dispatches From Elsewhere', a new TV show for AMC co-created by Jason Segal. The show follows four individuals who play a game that promises to expose new realities behind everyday life. The show received a boost of publicity when André 3000 was filmed playing the flute at an airport in Philadelphia, where the show was filmed.

Björk has created a generative score for the boutique Manhattan hotel Sister City, using AI tech from Microsoft to pull a selection of snippets of her favorite choral arrangements from her archive. Björk said this in a statement: "My choir archives, written over 17 years that will float through the pinball of artificial intelligence by the grid of bird migrations, clouds, aeroplanes and that voluptuous thing called barometer".

TV host Samantha Bee devoted an entire segment of her show 'Full Frontal' to the lack of women on country radio. Her journalists talked to artists Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker, Mickey Guyton, and Margo Price, with Carlile posting the essential thought: “Ask yourself this question, what do you want your daughter to know about herself? And if you can’t get that from country music or you can’t get that from country radio, it’s a problem”.

British soul singer Izo FitzRoy with a mighty voice has released ‘Blind Faith’, the third single from her album ‘How The Mighty Fall’, an up-tempo song about second chances in relationships, a powerfull, dancey, melodic record.

Matt Wilson & His Orchestra released a lovely song 'When I Was a Writer' about Wilson's fear of dementia - "I live so much in my mind and because so much of my joy is in thinking and writing, the idea of the window shutting on that part of my life started to terrify me", he said. Inspirations also come from different places now - "When I was young, I was just awash in hormones like any kid. My greatest inspiration was girls. I don't write about that anymore for the most part. I think a little bit more about life. Trying to be a good person. What does life mean?".

First Iron Maiden singer Paul Di'Anno will perform with three other former members of the band for a one-time-only concert this summer, at Worcestershire, England's Beermageddon Festival 2020 on Sunday, Aug. 30. It will be Di'Anno's "final ever" performance following the musician's recent health issues, and he will sing next to the classic Maiden members. They will come out to the stage under the Ides of March moniker.

Before he joined Linkin Park, Chester Bennington fronted a late grunge band Grey Daze. Beginning of 2017 the band got together and reworked recordings from their early releases, with vocals Bennington recorded as a teenager. The album is coming out this spring.

In four days after the news of Neil Peart's passing, on-demand audio and video streams of Rush’s catalog of songs in the U.S. increased to a combined 24.54 million - up 776.4% as compared to the previous four days (2.8 million on Jan. 6-9). In terms of sales, Rush’s catalog of songs grew by 2,304% to 19,000 (from 1,000), while the group’s album sales gained 1,820% to 6,000 (up from a negligible figure).

Mariah Carey, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics, members of The Isley Brothers, Steve Miller, Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes, Rick Nowels and William “Mickey” Stevenson have been announced as the class of 2020 of the Songwriters Hall Of Fame.

People behind Chicago label International Anthem like it to be defined as "boundary-defying music", or at least “jazz and its offshoots”, “jazz-identified music”, and “post-jazz” instead, especially with its two founders, Scottie McNiece and David Allen, coming from a DIY-punk scene. McNiece said they wanted to create publish music that was modern and less academic - “It was very important to us to create a more inviting entry point”. by now, they've released local musicians such as Makaya McCraven, jaimie branch, Damon Locks, Junius Paul, and Angel Bat Dawid.

Akon has “finalized the agreement for AKON CITY in Senegal” with the Senegalese government - it will be built on 2,000-acre land gifted to him by the President of Senegal, Macky Sall. Akon City will supposedly be the first city to ever run on 100% renewable energy, and the economy will be run entirely on cryptocurrency Akoin.

Independent music venues in Britain should receive the same support as the ballet or opera, musician Anna Calvi said - “Just because it’s music that is played with guitars, why is it any different to a place like the ballet or opera?". The musician believes that venues which predominantly focus on live music need to be protected at a time when a third of smaller venues report they are struggling.

Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’ is the most played song on Spotify with 2.3 billion streams, earning the singer just over £7 million. Drake's ‘One Dance’ is the second most streamed song with over 1.7 billion plays and £6 million in profits, and Post Malone’s ‘Rockstar’ came third with 1.7 billion streams and £5.8 million in royalties. Four of Sheeran's tracks make the top 100 most streamed on Spotify - collectively 'Shape of You', 'Thinking Out Loud', 'Perfect' and 'Photograph' have had 6.1 billion plays, and earned an estimated £21 million. On average, Spotify pays artists an estimated £0.0034p for every stream on the platform.

Various Caterina Barbieri tracks, Coil’s ‘Ostia’, Claudio Simonetti’s Phenomena OST and Marilyn Manson’s iconic cover of ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ provided an atmospheric soundtrack to the 2020 Menswear show from Gucci at Milan Men’s Fashion Week. Gucci designer Alessandro Michele’s explained the show was intended as a statement against toxic masculinity.

Today the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced the inductees for this year, it's - Depeche Mode, The Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, The Notorious B.I.G. and T. Rex. Billboard argues the inductees "represent one of the most forward-looking and least genre-stringent classes we've seen acknowledged by the Rock Hall". NPR points out to the lack of women in the Hall, generally and this year - over the course of 34 years, there were 69 women inducted out of 888 inductees or less than 8%.

Plenty of good new songs this week - Nadia Reid has released a delicate and atmospheric new record, Drive-By Truckers sing about how thoughts and prayers aren't enough to deal with mass-shootings, emo-core veterans Alexisonfire are reunited and going atmospheric, LA beatmaker TOKiMONSTA gets help from EarthGang on her highly psychedelic song, Ultraista is a band made up of members of Atoms For Peace + vocalist Laura Bettinson, they released a dancey new song, dark-folk singer Myrkur goes theatrical on her new record, modern jazz meets electronica on Wacław Zimpel's new song...

Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O'Connell have composed and recorded the title track for the new James Bond film, 'No Time To Die'. Eilish, who turned 18 last month, is the youngest artist in history to write and record a theme for the franchise. "James Bond is the coolest film franchise ever to exist. I'm still in shock" - she said.

Filipino singer Marcelito Pomoy is a contestant in America's Got Talent show, where he sang a rendition of 'The Prayer', singing Celine Dion parts in one second, and then Andrea Bocelli parts in second. The jury was impressed, rightfully so.

The best selling vinyl album in the 2010s in the USA was 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles, selling in 558,000 copies. In fact, all the biggest vinyl albums of the past 10 years are older performers like Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Miles Davis... Only two albums actually released in the 2010s appear on the list: the 'Guardians of the Galaxy' soundtrack - which is entirely comprised of songs released in the ’60s and ’70s, and Lana Del Rey’s 'Born to Die'. The only album from the noughties on the list is Amy Winehouse's 'Back to Black'. No album from the 1990s on the list.

Iceland composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is nominated for Oscar, in Music - Original Score category for her work in 'Joker'. Other nominees in this category are Alexandre Desplat for 'Little Women', Randy Newman for Marriage Story, Thomas Newman for '1917' and John Williams for 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'. Nominees in the other music category - Original Song - are: Randy Newman for 'I Can't Let You Throw Yourself Away' from 'Toy Story 4'; Elton John and Bernie Taupin for '(I'm Gonna) Love Me Again' from 'Rocketman'; Diane Warren for 'I'm Standing With You' from 'Breakthrough'; Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez for 'Into The Unknown' from 'Frozen II'; Joshuah Brian Campbell and Cynthia Erivo for 'Stand Up' from 'Harriet'.

Chicago musician Nez - from the production duo Nez & Rio who produced already for Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Rocky, Chance The Rapper - is breaking out on his own with his debut single 'Wild Youngster', deep house jam featuring ScHoolboy Q. "I want to make people feel again. I want to make people dance" he explained the idea behind his debut.

Silence festival is the biggest music fest held in Kathmandu, Nepal, with 1,500 or so metal fans attending. It takes place in two courtyards of a small hotel and restaurant complex in Kathmandu. Festival director Flower KC said he will lose £25,000 on Silence, all covered by him and his friends. But, he has a higher goal: “The idea is guided by the idea that why should it be only mountaineers or hippies who come to Nepal? Why can’t we attract a different breed of people? My goal is to make Nepal a heavy metal destination".

Queen and Adam Lambert, Alice Cooper, k.d. lang, Olivia Newton-John and John Farnham will play the Sydney’s ANZ Stadium for a massive bushfire relief concert, to be held February 16. All profits and contributions will go to Australian wildfires relief efforts. Also confirmed for the Fire Fight Australia concert are numerous homegrown artists.

US music fans streamed more than 1 trillion songs on demand for the first time in 2019, that's around 3 billion streams a day, or, roughly, nine streams per day per person. On-demand stream consumption now represents 85% of all music consumption in the United States

"These two iconic, legendary English fucking rockers that have been through it all are singing about the end of their lives — 'I don't wanna die an ordinary man' — it's fucking great" - Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith said about Ozzy Osbourne's new song 'Ordinary Man'. Elton John plays the piano and sings on it, Slash plays the guitar. Smith plays the drums on the whole album.

Dave and Lewis Capaldi are the most nominated artists at Brit Awards this year, with four nominations each. Grime star Stormzy has three nominations, as well as 23-year old Mabel, being the most-nominated female artist this year.

Last year's phenomenon Billie Eilish had the biggest-selling album of last year in the USA with 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' selling in 2.5 million total album-equivalent units in 2019, 400,000 more units than any other album.

Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist for Rush has died at age 67. Peart had joined Rush in 1974, remaining their drummer and primary lyricist up through their 2015 breakup.