"If public gatherings are limited to the size of the average cheese rolling contest and all big shows are banned – suddenly the nation will have to flock to their local pubs and independent venues for their monster weekenders, exposing themselves to a whole new strain of underground brilliance" - Mark, My Words sees a light at the end of the corona-tunnel. Actually, two lights: "With an unexpected year off touring and every album-then-tour cycle in the world broken, we’ll see every single major act confined to their home studios meaning a culture-wide torrent of high profile new albums".

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.

Polish jazz musician Wacław Zimpel made the 'The Long Weekend' EP with British electronic producer James Holden, a rich jazz electronica album, with a trance quality, which is where both musicians come together. They interviewed each other for the Quietus, this is how they see their common ground: "I've got a million definitions for trance - but the first sign for me is when you start hearing inside the sound, or outside linear time - notes aren't just a note in a place in a sequence but exist in relation to all the previous and future versions of themselves" - Holden; "to me one of the ways of getting to this state of mind is via repetition of a pattern. After many repetitions I stop thinking about this and I become equally listener and player. Eventually I have the feeling that I am disappearing" - Zimpel.

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.

"What 'Every Bad' really sounds like is the sea, churning then soothing, a constant battle between birth and destruction" - Stereogum says, poetically, about their latest Album of the week choice. Sonically, the Brighton band leans "in a bunch of different directions - straight-up indie, dream-pop, heaving ’90s alt-rock, the moodier edges of Britpop", but what it comes down to is a portrait of "the condition of being young and trying to locate something stable inside, some clarity about your own identity and dreams".

This year’s Coachella, originally set for the first two weekends in April, will now take place in October (9.-11.10 and 16.-18.10.), the Verge reports. Additionally, festival organizer Goldenvoice announced that the country music festival Stagecoach, which takes place at the same venue as Coachella in Indio, California, is also being rescheduled to October (24.-26.4. to 23.-25.10.). There is no word if the festivals will have the same lineups. Unlike SXSW and Ultra festivals, Coachella and Stagecoach will offer ticketholders refunds if they can’t attend.

"People think that history is finite, but it is something that needs to be explored constantly; it needs to be challenged and sometimes set alight, so we don’t continue to make the same mistakes... For there to be a change, there needs to be the end of what we want changed" - the great saxophone player Shabaka Hutchings told the Guardian ahead of the new album by Shabaka and His Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here by History (out March 13). But, he sees himself as an optimist - “I feel really positive about the future... Because there is always a fraught tension before things change – things really do have to get worse before they get better”.

Billie Eilish delivered a powerful message about body shaming as she kicked off her world tour in Miami on Monday night. "If what I wear is comfortable, I am not a woman," she said during a video interlude. "If I shed the layers, I am a slut". "Though you've never seen my body, you still judge me for it. Why?" she asked. The three-minute video was played towards the end of Eilish's 22-song set, immediately before the song 'All The Good Girls Go To Hell'. In the visual, Eilish was seen removing several layers of clothing until she was only wearing a bra, before sinking symbolically under the surface of a black, tar-like liquid.

For the creative sectors, right now, there is a big emerging opportunity in people sitting at home, being bored out of their minds - Music x Tech x Future says in an analysis of coronavirus ramifications. Oline channels with visible music experiences on Twitch and YouTube are going to see a jump in viewers; we’ll see musicians recording more video content; some festivals will try to generate digital revenue in some similar form; younger startups will be making social music experiences. Not everybody has cancelled their gigs - Israeli artist Kosha Dillz is still going to SXSW, as he wrote for Variety. When he returns to Israel, he’ll need to quarantine himself for 14 days.

New York Times has a lovely photo-story about moving a 800-pound (360 kilos) grand piano up a narrow staircase in a Harlem. The Steinway was moved only one story up, but still the legs and keys had to me removed removed before moving up and then put back. Beethoven, the company that made the job, does three to four moves a day, five to six days a week.

Led Zeppelin have triumphed in a long-running copyright dispute after a US appeals court ruled they did not steal the opening riff in 'Stairway To Heaven'. The Zeps were accused in 2014 of ripping off a song called 'Taurus' by the US band Spirit, written in 1968, three years before 'Stairway To Heaven' was written. Now, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld a 2016 trial verdict that found Led Zeppelin did not copy it.

Miley Cyrus has called off a trip to Australia, where she was due to headline a bushfire benefit concert on Friday, Sydney Morning Herald reports. Two Madonna shows in Paris have been cancelled after the French government banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people, Roling Stone reports. Pearl Jam have postponed their US and Canada tour, saying the risk "is simply too high for our comfort level", but their summer tour in Europe will carry on for now, Variety reports. Bloomberg reports the Coachella music festival in California - due to take place in April - will be put back to October.

"For much of her career, U.S. Girls has been an exploration of female violence and rage. 'Heavy Light' lives in that period of emptiness that comes after" - Pitchfork says about their latest Best new music choice. "So much of being alive is an exercise in denying the existence of personal trauma. Collective trauma, Remy seems to suggest, is the reason for the fracturing of our society" the P concludes about the experimental pop record.

"People may text me their song, but... the playlist submission tool is the only way we review music. Editorial decisions are based purely on the quality of the song and its fit in the playlist" - Spotify's co-Head of Music Strategy told Forbes about how to get to Spotify playlists. There are now 3,000 Spotify playlists, and a few metrics to determine whether a song is getting on any - "We'll look at the time people spend on the songs — it takes 30 seconds of listening for it to count as an official stream. We also look whether people are actively searching for the song or just hearing it from editorial tools. Then there’s the skip ratio". Generally, he says - "it's really hard to break as an artist but hopefully we created a world where everyone has a fair shot".

The spring Texas festival means (financially) autumn for some bands. SXSW is an opportunity for thousands of young musicians to showcase their work to US audiences for the first time. Many build album promotion campaigns and other US tour dates around their festival visit to make it as cost-effective as possible, with most having self-funded or crowdsourced money to finance their trip. NME talked to some British musicians who were about to travel to the US - Welsh band Campfire Social has spent months planning the visit to Austin, losing almost £4500 with the cancellation of the festival, mostly on travel and visa costs. American bands are hit financially too - Star Tribune reports about Minnesota bands Humbird, the Gully Boys, the Bad Man, and Heart Bones who are going to lose hundreds of dollars, a blow for an indie-band. The festival is cancelled, but some venues intend to go ahead as planned with shows they booked, the LA Times reports.

Based exclusively on online map tags, the global busking festival scene is estimated to include over 170 street music events, the Conversation writes about the underestimated and unrecognized art of playing music on the streets. But, there are things going on - a nine-day Ferrara Buskers Festival in Italy, Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland, and Fête de La Musique in France. Curation projects like The Music Man, SoundsLikeVanSpirit and StreetMusicMap identify busking hubs such as the subway systems and public squares in world cities. The Busking Project is a platform where people can join as a busker or as a fan, and artists can be hired for events and earn cashless tips.

"What does truth mean in the context of pop music, and who has to suffer for that truth" - NBC asks in an interesting article after Billie Eilish questioned the validity of certain rappers' lyrics in a cover story for Vogue. "This discussion starts with a paradox" - NBC argues - "If the artist is not actually living the life described in their music, they can be criticized as fabricators or worse. But if every line is even close to true - the drug trafficking, the suicidal threats, the boozing, the violence, the promiscuity - it will likely lead to a brief flicker of a career".

Saxophone player Alabaster DePlume changes the line-up of his band before every show to keep him on his toes - “It’s so we don’t have the time to be prepared. When you remove preparation people can’t hide, they have to be authentic and present" - as he's told the Quietus. He has released his new album 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1', with no vocal tracks, obviously, because someone had told him - "I put your music on, and it was perfect, but then you started shouting something about a pig. Can’t it just be the nice bits?". The songs were recorded by DePlume and a one-off band consisting of Sarathy Korwar, Donna Thompson, James Howard, The Comet Is Coming’s Dan ‘Danalogue’ Leavers and Snapped Ankles’ Chestnutt. The Q describes the music as "gorgeous and soothing, intimate and direct".

30 Seconds to Mars frontman has shared a video of the moment he “nearly died” while mountain climbing. Leto told his Twitter followers how he was left dangling 600ft above the ground after his rope became dangerously frayed by the ropes when climbing with Alex Honold, one of the best free solo climbers in the world. Sharing an image of the rope, he said: "Took a pretty good fall climbing with @AlexHonnold at Red Rock. Looked up and within seconds the rope was being cut by the rock while I dangled some 600 ft in the air". He said of the experience it was "a strange moment – less fear, more matter of fact, and slightly melancholy”. They continued to climb into the night. Later this year, Leto and 30 Seconds to Mars will host their own festival Mars Island on the Croatian island of Obonjan.

Loudwire chose 22 women and female members of bands that played a large part in laying the foundation for hard rock and metal as well. Next to usual suspects and famous one like Janis Joplin, there are some smaller names - Jinx Dawson from the psychedelic-rock band Coven had a song "Black Sabbath" long before the Birmingham band, and introduced devil horns long before Ronnie James Dio; Fanny were one of the first rock bands, consisting entirely of women, to release an album on a major label; Suzi Quatro - songwriter, bassist, singer, and a band leader, is one of the earliest multifaceted women in rock 'n' roll; Girlschool are the longest-running band consisting entirely of women.

Lil Baby's new album 'My Turn' sold in 197,000 equivalent album units last week in the U.S., big majority of it by streaming activity - 184,000 are in SEA units (equating to 261.6 million on-demand streams for the album’s songs in its first week), 4,000 in TEA units, and just under 10,000 in copies. It was the most-streamed debut of 2020. Bad Bunny lands a historic debut on Billboard 200, as the Puerto Rican artist’s 'YHLQMDLG' bows at No. 2 with 179,000 equivalent album units earned, the highest-charting all-Spanish-language album ever on the chart.

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo has withdrawn from this summer’s production of 'Don Carlo' at London’s Royal Opera House, in the shadow of allegations of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, the New York Times reports. The Royal Opera House said Friday it had been mutually agreed with Domingo that he will not be taking up his role in the Giuseppe Verdi classic in July. It’s the latest in a string of withdrawals over the past weeks as venues have reassessed their ties with the Spanish star. Performances by Domingo have been cancelled in cities including Tokyo, Madrid and San Francisco, among others.

"UK hip-hop and albums bemoaning the current state of things are two crowded markets: 'The Long Goodbye' is potent, original and timely enough to stand out in both" - Alexis Petridis argues in favor of his latest album of the week choice, a great record lyrically. Telegraph declares Riz Ahmed a "master rapper" for his "angry, funny, clever and, at times, swaggeringly brutal examination of a national identity crisis", whereas the NME likes the sonic side of the album - "the high-tempo, energetic sounds throughout match Ahmed’s razor-sharp lyrics and fast-paced rhymes".

Answering to a question about his "problematic" lyrics, Nick Cave had this to say on his The Red Hand Files blog: "Perhaps we writers should have been more careful with our words – I can own this, and I may even agree – however, we should never blame the songs themselves. Songs are divinely constituted organisms. They have their own integrity. As flawed as they may be, the souls of the songs must be protected at all costs. They must be allowed to exist in all their aberrant horror, unmolested by these strident advocates of the innocuous, even if just as some indication that the world has moved toward a better, fairer and more sensitive place. If punishment must be administered, punish the creators, not the songs. We can handle it. I would rather be remembered for writing something that was discomforting or offensive, than to be forgotten for writing something bloodless and bland".

A great alter-dance song 'I Was Gonna Fight Fascism' by Soccer96, a band by The Comet Is Coming members; Interpol frontman Paul Banks has formed a new band Muzz with Matt Barrick (of the Walkmen ) and Josh Kaufman (of Bonny Light Horseman) - shared a song 'Bad Feeling'; the other Walkmen member, Hamilton Leithauser has shared a song 'Isabella'; Berlin singer Sophie Hunger has a lovely new song 'Security Check'; Chromatics have shared a dark disco song 'Famous Monsters'; Courtney Marie Andrews shared a nice and pleasant song 'If I Told'; electronic producer Ital Tek got a child, moved to a barn and made a song ‘Deadhead’ about sleep deprivation; Bonnie “Prince” Billy got bouncy remixed on 'New Memory Box'; Dixie Chicks are back with 'Gaslighter', their first new song in 14 years; Jason Isbell released a great country rock single 'What've I Done to Help'; RMFTM have switched from electronics to post-punk on 'Eden In Reverse'; The Whitest Boy Alive by Kings of Convenience’s Erlend Øye released new single 'Serious', their first new music since 2009; Austra is back with an electro-pop smasher 'Anywayz'; Willie Nile vas visiting the family home when a line "a little bit of love goes a long, long way" hit him - 'A Little Bit of Love' was born; Gogo Penguin find the middle ground between post-rock, jazz and electronics on 'Atomised'; a great on-the-road song 'Late Jim's Lament' about being late by James Elkington; Osheyack has contributed original music to a new video installation by artist Shuang Li about mass-produced products as erotic objects; NY jazz group Onyx Collective got a hand (weel, actually voice) of art pop great Kelsey Lu for 'Where or When'; the title 'Come Back And Love Me<3' by the Hinds says it all; Butcher Brown's 'Tidal Wave' is about how jazz and rap came from the same soul.

Global recorded music industry revenues grew by 11.4% in 2019 to reach $21.5 billion, an increase of $2.2 billion in 2018, and the fifth year in a row the revenue grew. Of that total sum, $11,9 billion came from streaming music. The major record labels took 67.5% of the overall market in 2019. Artists without record labels was again the fastest-growing segment of the market, growing by 32.1% in 2019 to reach $873 million, representing 4.1% of the total market, up from 1.7% in 2015.

In a Friday afternoon (3/6) press conference, Austin mayor Steve Adler said that the 2020 edition of Austin’s SXSW is cancelled due to the coronavirus, the Texas Tribune reports. "We are devastated to share this news with you. 'The show must go on' is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place" - SXSW shared in a statement, adding - "we are exploring options to reschedule the event and are working to provide a virtual SXSW online experience as soon as possible". SXSW’s 2020 edition was to happen from March 13-22.

The kids from the O'Keefe Music Foundation covered the tough Pantera song 'Walk', with 9-year-old Colt Sheddin singing Phil Anselmo's parts. The rest of the band are children also - guitarist Aidan Fisher is 16, bass player Jonas Miller is 15, and drummer Justin Laroche is 15 - but only when counting in years...

Pianist McCoy Tyner was best known for his work with John Coltrane as part of his classic early-’60s quartet, but has also played with Sonny Rollins, Stanley Clarke, Wayne Shorter, and more. His influence as a pianist and musician is hard to overstate. He died at age 81. NPR describes him as a "pianist whose deep resonance, hammering attack and sublime harmonic invention made him a game-changing catalyst in jazz and beyond".