CMU published a two-part podcast where they examine the debate around the fairness of streaming royalties for artists and songwriters (part 1, part 2). They discuss the subscription prices, how much is a million streams really, user-centric royalty distribution etc.

Sci-fi rockers Devo shared an online store featuring coronavirus merchandise. Offerings include themed face masks and Devo’s iconic red energy dome hats with an attached clear plastic face protector. The band explains: "Once the dome was placed on your head it recycled the electrical energy that regularly escapes from your brain. People of course laughed. Now the dome is no longer a source of controversy or derision. Its popularity is a sort of proof that De-evolution is real!".

It will not be possible to operate nightclubs, bars and restaurants while enforcing social distancing measures without government support, a survey of 130 UK businesses about the viability of reopening while social distancing measures continue has shown. Owners of "night time" establishments expect to be able to operate from 40-43% of their businesses' capacity once the lockdown has been lifted, Quietus reports. If this is the case, 63.8% of respondents believe that their businesses will not be financially viable.

Perfume Genius' new album is "three-dimensional, dust-blown world that is cinematic in its grandeur and intimate in its inspection of the human form", Pitchfork states in its review (grade 9.0). The P is impressed by the style of the album - "the songs expand and contract, one minute blasting open with the melodrama of a Roy Orbison ballad, the next zooming in with surgical detail as Hadreas describes ribs that fold like fabric, a tear-streaked face, an instance of post-coital petty theft".

“Art doesn’t come from when you can do something. It comes from when you have to do something” - Einstürzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld told Guardian about the long wait between his last two albums. 'Alles in Allem' is their first studio record in 13 years. One constant is the band’s innovative approach to equipment and recording - “There’s a strategy. I want to undermine routine and sabotage logic. We’ve been doing that for 40 years with unusual instrumentation. It’s important to undermine functionality and knowledge – to disturb the obvious”.

There is sense and future to online music, BBC argues, musicians just need to come up with ideas that utilize the Internet as a medium. BBC sees Gary Lightbody as a good example. Every Saturday for the past two months, Snow Patrol singer has sat down and co-written a song with 5,000 fans on Instagram. He asks them for chords, comes up with melodies, and puts them to a vote. He then asks for ideas for lyrics before coming back an hour later with a finished track. When his sessions have generated 10 or 12 decent tracks, he'll release an album for charity.

21-year-old Just Sam was crowned American Idol's 18th winner, the first (and hopefully, the last) in lockdown. She heard the news while clutching an iPad that was connected to a call with her grandmother, who brought her up, Washington Post reports. Just Sam captured viewers' hearts with soul-stirring vocals, her personality, and her emotional back story - with mother in prison, and adopted by her grandmother, she earned money singing in the subway. She started her American Idol path by bursting into tears...

User-centric payout is a different way of distributing streaming royalties to the current ‘pro-rata’ system. MusicAlly explains: If an artist (Moses Sumney, say) got 1% of the streams in that period, then his rightsholders get 1% of the royalties pool. But what that also means is essentially 1% of the royalties generated by every individual subscriber are going to Moses Sumney’s music, even if they didn’t listen to him at all. In user-centric model, for each listener, the royalties portion of their subscription is divided only among the rightsholders of the artists they listen to. If they’re a hardcore metaller, folk or classical fan, that’s where the royalties go. If they only listen to Moses Sumney, his music secures 100% of the loot. Whether smaller artists make more money and big artists make less in this system is not always clear.

'Electronic India' is "a wonderful, warm, and eye-opening documentary" by Paul Purgas about pioneers of Indian electronic music, who produced innovating music at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad from 1969 to 1973, but then got forgotten about. The Quietus talked to Purgas about his docu, and that moment of fresh creative energy from 50 years ago - "there was a really beautiful scene that emerged in some of the conversations we had while making the documentary, this idea that at that moment India was still dreaming, there was this sense of a possibility of imagination, a utopian set of ideals and ideologies that were emerging around shaping India post-independence". Listen to the documentary at BBC.

Nav landed in the top spot of Billboard 200 chart with his third studio effort 'Good Intentions', Billboard reports. It earned 135,000 equivalent album units, of which 62,000 were from streaming, and 73,000 came in the form of album sales that were almost entirely driven by bundles that included his latest project in its merch offerings. Kehlani tallies her highest charting and best week ever in units earned, as 'It Was Good Until It Wasn’t starts' at No. 2 (83,000 units), Lil Durk’s 'Just Cause Y’all Waited 2' debuts at No. 5 (57,000) and Bad Bunny’s surprise release 'Las Que No Iban a Salir' enters at No. 7 (42,000).

BBC's article on Russian trap rapper Plinofficial reads like a crime story - musician, real name Maksim Boiko, originally from northern Siberia, started as a trap rapper, trying to emulate hit North-American idols flashing bundles of cash and driving Mercedes, although he wasn't nearly that successful. FBI might have an answer to that - they believe that Boiko took up computer and banking fraud. The FBI found Boiko's email on crypto-currency exchange BTC-e's list, linked to a client account for "gangass". In the record of grounds for his arrest, it says gangass invested $388,000 and withdrew 136 bitcoins. The FBI believes the Russian was an intermediary in chains used in the legalisation of money stolen from banks all around the world.

"'Beneath' pulls from chaotic screamo, shimmering post-rock, some more melodic post-hardcore/emo type stuff, and some absolutely vicious metallic stuff too" - Brooklyn Vegan says in praise of Infant Island's new album. They're innovating, and they've also "upped their musicianship game (the drumming on this album is the not-so-secret-weapon) and the production blows away that of their debut".

Jason Isbell and his wife/bandmate Amanda Shires celebrated the release of their new album 'Reunions' with a livestreamed release show from Brooklyn Bowl Nashville. The venue was empty, but the screens above the lanes in Brooklyn Bowl were showing fans watching, and they could be heard in-between songs. Fans were happy and excited to watch the two play, and the pair seemed touched by the warm acceptance by the audience. Everybody was apart, but they really were a collective for that one hour...

All Music made a selection of single-artist soundtracks, some lesser-known scores, worthy of a listen. It's all great, different kinds of soundtracks, being it 'Virgin Suicides' by Air, 'Tron Legacy' by Daft Punk, 'Death Wish 2' by Dan the Automator, or 'Dead Man' by Neil Young.

Phil May, the frontman of The Pretty Things, has died aged 75 after suffering complications from emergency hip surgery, following a bicycle accident. The Pretty Things' 1968 album 'SF Sorrow' is credited as one of the first real rock opera concept albums. They were cited as an influence by a wide range of artists from David Bowie (wrote May’s phone number in his address book under the name “God”) to Jimi Hendrix to Kasabian. "They were ahead of their time, descending into chaotic, free-form, feedback-laden improvisation onstage years before the Velvet Underground or the early Pink Floyd made it their trademark" - Alexis Petridis wrote.

BBC viewers have selected Abba's 'Waterloo' as the greatest Eurovision song of all time. The Swedish foursome won it in 1974 in Brighton, and the track went on to sell nearly 6m copies. This year's competition was cancelled in March amid the coronavirus pandemic. None of the 2020 songs will be carried over to next year. Instead, countries will select new entrants for the 2021 contest.

German photographer Astrid Kirchherr, whose early shots of The Beatles helped turn them into icons, has died aged 81, Zeit and NPR report. Kirchherr first came across the band when she visited a nightclub in her native Hamburg where they were playing. "My whole life changed in a couple of minutes. All I wanted was to be with them and to know them" - she later told Beatles biographer Bob Spitz. She took the first photo of the band in Hamburg in 1960, and is credited with helping develop their visual style. She began dating Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist in the band, and even cut his hair into the famous mop top style that the group came to be associated with. Kirchherr remained friends with the band after Sutcliffe's death and photographed them throughout the 1960s. Her death was announced by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, who said "her gift to the Beatles was immeasurable". Tributes are pouring in.

Stereogum jumps into the audio deepfakes wagon discussion with a long read about human creativity and the future of music generated by artificial intelligence. The story kicked off on April 30 when audio deepfakes were made public by an independent research organization out of San Francisco called OpenAI. It took recordings of real artists - Jay-Z, Elvis, the Beatles, and thousands of others - a total of 1.2 million songs, entered them into its open source model powered by a neural network, which was then given various levels of guidance and instructed to generate new works. The artificial intelligence finally made some deepfakes. General Intelligence and Pitchfork already published their takes on the story.

"I want to stay here and feel everything, not just the oblivion. That’s what I thought that freedom was, and I actively pursued that when I was younger, whether I knew it or not. And maybe I’m becoming O.K. with just being at the edge, feeling the reach for it. I’m starting to realize that the reach is really what I want" - Perfume Genius told New Yorker about his new album 'Set My Heart on Fire Immediately'. He says he wants people to feel less lonely - "That’s what I hope people feel: that something unspoken, something hard to articulate, some tension, has been understood for four minutes. There’s something about sharing any sensation, even the deepest bleakness, that makes it less bleak".

Venues have become ill-suited to the COVID-19 age. Instead, future productions will have to find less finely tailored venues, like outdoor public spaces and hangarlike halls, Vulture argues and suggests ideas. Performances scattered across campus - on plazas, lawns, arcades, parks, and venues of various sizes; or - guiding an audience safely through a landscape while performers remain still could be fruitful and sublime...

The Coloring Sessions is an awesome way to relax while doing something fulfilling. The Sessions offers outlines of album covers - they "just" need to be colored. Why? - "to reduce stress and anxieties, help with focus and increase happiness levels".

Amazon is offering three months of free access to Amazon Music Unlimited - free trial gives users access to tens of millions of songs in MP3 quality, with no ads and unlimited skips. Once three months are up, Amazon Music Unlimited is $9.99 a month.

"With 'Reunions', Isbell unites the disparate aspects of his craft — soothing acoustic and fiercely electric; Hemingway's word economy dashed with Oscar Wilde-worthy asides, relatable details and otherworldly allusions" - Exclaim says in a review of alt-country singer-songwriter's new album. Glide Magazine says Isbell's reputation as “one of the best” and “the best singer-songwriter of his generation” today is well-earned. Paste Mag praises his inner strength - "he knows a little something about putting up a fight, even if it’s against his own worst impulses. His best impulses he keeps channeling into his music". PopMatters puts it simple: "an excellent album... It's already a candidate for one of 2020's best".

Britain’s hospital radio stations are one of the less well-known features of its health system: tiny operations, staffed by volunteers, who mostly play patient requests. Patients can normally listen to the shows, which are heavy on chart music and old hits, using headphones connected to an entertainment unit beside their beds. There are still over 200 such stations, and some claim they have found themselves more useful than ever during the pandemic, providing a human connection to patients who would otherwise be alone, New York Times reports.

Spotify has officially launched new Group Session feature, which allows multiple people to control the same playlist in real time, The Verge reports. The feature can accommodate up to 100 users, and hey all have to be in the same location. To use the feature, the “host” will tap the Connect menu in the bottom-left corner of their Play screen, then share with their “guests” the scannable code that appears. The guests then join the session by scanning the host’s code. Then, using Spotify’s built-in controls, they’re able to pause, play, skip and select tracks on the queue and add choices of their own to be played next.

Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson has revealed that he is “suffering from an incurable lung disease... exacerbations”, but he's okay if he's "kept in a reasonably pollution-free environment in terms of air quality", although "my days are numbered”, Variety reports. The 72-year-old rocker pointed to fog machines as a major culprit, stating - “I’ve spent 50 years of my life onstage among those wretched things that I call smoke machines. Today, they’re politely referred to as hazers, as if they’re somehow innocent and not damaging to your lungs. I really do believe that’s a very significant part of the problem I have”.

Musicians and songwriters in the UK received a record amount of money last year - £810m, a rise of 8.7% compared to the previous year, BBC reports. PRS for Music, the body that makes sure 145,000 songwriters, composers and publishers in the UK are paid when their music is played or performed around the world, is warning, however, that the Covid-19 would result in an "inevitable decline" in 2020 and 2021.

Watch any K-pop music video and you’ll likely be met with loud hair colors, elaborate outfits, flawless skin, heavily made-up eyes and painted lips. To South Korean stars - or idols as they're called there - it’s not only the norm, it’s also specifically calibrated for audience appeal - Rafinery 29 writes in an analysis of young beautiful South Korean boy bands.

"If you want to record, just hit record. It’s not about equipment. For the Beck record we had nothing, just inspiration” - Calvin Johnson, of K Records told Guardian about recording albums in his basement. One of the latest bedroom pop artists is 21-year-old Girl in Red, who is ratcheting up hundreds of millions of streams with indie-pop tracks made in her bedroom. Everybody is locked down now due to the pandemic, so everybody can be a music producer, the G argues.

"His songs don’t settle into familiar shapes or patterns. He sings in a scratchy falsetto that seems to fray at the edges" - Stereogum argues in favor of Moses Sumney's 'Grae' (part two is out this week, part one came out in February). Sumney recruited dozens of collaborators for the album - Adult Jazz, Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, James Blake, Jill Scott, Yvette, bass virtuoso Thundercat, Son Lux drummer Ian Chang, Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin - in "a time-honored method for creative visionaries seeking to tease out different sides of themselves". Treblezine says it's "the perfect culmination of its transcendent first half", and Guardian rounds it up - "places the Ghanaian-American’s vast emotional range and unfurling musicality front and centre".