Inspired by the tragedy at the Astroworld, where nine fans died, Slate remembers huge 1960s festivals Woodstock and Altamont where fans also died due to poor organizing and places being overcrowded. The black highpoint of the 1970s arena rock came in 1969 at the The Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum where 11 fans died. When punk came, it brought its own DIY-ethos, much smaller venues, and the podium where "orchestrated chaos" of pogo-dancing seemed dangerous, whereas actually "watch-your-peers" rule made everyone much safer. A great point, Slate!

Party and drugs connoisseur Michelle Lhooq talked to Jon Hopkins - who produced his last album 'Music For Psychedelic Therapy' while on drugs in a cave in Ecuador - about how do you make music on ketamine, how do you translate music from plants, why DMT elves love synths, why we might be on the precipice of a new genre of music. He talks to Lhooq about his creative process - "In order to write this record, I would go into the psychedelic space every few weeks to experience it, usually through ketamine... There's a lot of weird stuff that happens when you enter into the zone—you switch from thinking you're the creator to realizing you’re a channel".

A number of post-Brexit factors and regulations have led to a great deal of money being lost from independent artists and labels who have struggled in getting records and other products to their fans on the continent - NME writes in a great long read about politics messing up music.

Inspired by Brass Against's singer urinating on a fan's face, Consequence has assembled a list of the eight most shockingly gross concert moments. They go from Ozzy Osbourne biting off a bat's head, to Donita Sparks chucking her tampon into the audience, to Woodstock fans rolling in human feces. All for the sake of fun!

The 70-minute documentary 'Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson', directed by Jodi Gomes, paints a portrait both of Jackson’s remarkable career prior to that moment, as well as the cultural forces which made one “wardrobe malfunction” into a lighting bolt of controversy. "I think one of the running themes of the whole entire film is body image and the use of body image and the actual control of one’s agency and control of one’s image" - director Jodi Gomes says to Consequence. She sees a big irony in it too: "Showing how she’s been subjected to body imaging from a very young age, and then all of a sudden, flash forward 34 years later to when she’s on the Super Bowl stage, and that very thing is used against her".

A short and funny post by Boing Boing with a selection of the finest and the worst of "please hold" music. So, the best - Tim Carleton's pleasant 'Opus 1', and the title of the worst goes to Vic Berger and his senseless/irritating recording.

Alewya shares a hard-hitting reggae song ‘Dragon’ of her new EP; Mitski goes cold & clubby on 'The Only Heartbreaker'; Nils Frame shares a beautiful lullaby ‘Late’; Robert Plant & Alison Krauss have a new album out, with the Calexico cover ‘Quattro (World Drifts In)’ serving as a lovely and warm opening to it.

Spotify has announced it will make a new Lyrics feature available to all global users, both Free and Premium, across platforms, The Verge reports. The feature is powered by lyrics provider Musixmatch. Lyrics will be available across platforms from the “Now Playing” view or bar, depending on the platform. On mobile, users can swipe up from the “Now Playing” screen to see the track’s lyrics scroll by in real time as the song is playing. On the desktop app, you can click the microphone icon from the “Now Playing” bar instead. And on the Spotify TV app, you’ll navigate to the top-right corner of the “Now Playing” view to enable Lyrics from the lyrics button.

An interesting thought by Adele in Zane Lowe's Apple Music interview about her new album '30' coming out today: “If everyone's making music for the TikTok, who’s making the music for my generation? Who’s making the music for my peers? I will do that job, gladly. I'd rather cater to people that are on my level in terms of the amount of time we've spent on Earth and all the things we've been through... The 30- and 40-year-olds that are all committing to themselves and doing therapy, that's my vibe”.

Camilo took home three awards for three separate songs at last night's Latin Grammys, as well as an award for Best Pop Vocal Album, Grammy.com reports. Juan Luis Guerra also took home four awards, including one for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Rubén Blades came away with some of the most important awards of the night, including Album of the Year for 'Salswing!' and Person of the Year. Song of the Year went to 'Patria y Vida' by Cuban conglomerate Yotuel, Gente De Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo & El Funky; an unusual choice, given the Latin Recording Academy's hesitance to promote explicitly political content. CNN brings photos from the ceremony.

Celebrated rock photographer Mick Rock, once known as "The Man Who Shot the Seventies", has dies aged 72, NME reports. He worked as David Bowie's official photographer during Bowie's glam-rock years, and also shot Ozzy Osbourne, Pink Floyd and their former singer Syd Barrett, T-Rex's Marc Bolan and the Sex Pistols. Rock's famous album covers included a shot of Queen with their faces lit up against a black background for 'Queen II'; the stark black-and-white photo for Reed's Transformer'; and a shirtless Iggy Pop for The Stooges' 'Raw Power'.

At least 21 American hip-hop artists have been murdered in 2021, or about one every other week.... If this were any other group of artists, it's hard to grasp how enormous a story it would be, hard to imagine the national sorrow and outrage. What if 21 pop singers had been murdered in the United States in 2021? Or 21 working rock guitarists? Or 21 film actors? - Matty Karas goes into the issue.

"The film draws many lines between the treatment of Morissette as a teen pop star—starvation diets, long working hours and sexual abuse included—and the rage and catharsis she channeled on 'Jagged Little Pill'. One of the things that makes 'Jagged' most compelling as a film is an undercurrent that runs throughout about exploitative men in the music industry and where that leaves female artists. There's a sense of dread that casts a shadow, if not on Morissette's stage, then certainly in the wings of it" - KQED reviews the new Alison Klayman documentary. New York Times describes it as "an unsettling portrait of the structural and behavioral sexism pervasive in the music world".

"71% of musicians polled in the Help Musicians survey said they suffered from anxiety, 69% said they battled depression, 57% said they went untreated, and 53% said they had a hard time finding the right treatment.  In response to a rash of suicides by musicians and the pandemic’s crushing blow to many an artist’s livelihood, new organizations and efforts within the music community have begun to step forward" - Please Kill Me steps into the sensitive issue of mental health in punk and metal music.

Indie rap star Young Dolph was shot and killed Wednesday in his hometown of Memphis while buying cookies, when a gunman drove up and shot him through the window, the New York Times reports. He was 36 years old. Stereogum insists "Dolph always rapped in a booming, authoritative, no-nonsense style. He was slick and funny, and he recalled earlier generations of street-rap".

TIDAL is planning to launch a user-centric royalties system for a new $19.99 HiFi Plus membership option, Music Business Worldwide reports. Starting in 2022, the music streaming service is planning to adopt what it calls a 'Fan-centered royalties' approach where royalties attributed to HiFi Plus subscribers will be paid based on their individual streaming activity as opposed to the industry-standard method of aggregating streams and paying out to artists from a pool at the end of a payment period. TIDAL has also launched monthly direct-to-artist payments, which will see a percentage of HiFi Plus subscribers' membership fees directed towards their top streamed artist. TIDAL was acquired by Jack Dorsey's fintech firm Square earlier this year for over $300 million.

Tom Morello, Mannequin Pussy, Speedy Ortiz, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, Jeff Rosenstock, Anjimile are among 200 artists who signed off on an open letter against the palm-scanning technology from Amazon for entry to venues. Critics worry implementing palm scanners at shows comes with serious privacy and safety concerns for concertgoers. Rolling Stone reports on the issue.

Metallica has announced the opening of The Metallica Black Box which will offer an unprecedented and ongoing deep dive into every era of Metallica from the early 1980s garage days up to its present status as hard rock stars. The project debited with The Black Album Exhibition, the Black Box, Loudwire reports.

Trapital's Dan Runcie looks into the latest trend in the music business - bands made up of animated apes: "Last week, the music industry made two big swings with non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Both Universal Music Group and Timbaland’s new company Ape-In Productions have each started new music groups comprised of cartoon ape characters from the Bored Ape Yacht Club digital art collective. UMG’s group is called KINGSHIP, and Timbaland’s group is TheZoo".

Revolver asked an expert panel of heavy-metal and hardcore musicians — including members of Type O Negative, Revocation, Imperial Triumphant, and more — to pick out the heaviest riff. The musicians chose Black Sabbath, Slayer, Metallica, Pantera, Rage Against the Machine, Van Halen...

ABBA earn their highest charting album ever on the Billboard 200 with their first album in 39 years, as 'Voyage' debuts at No. 2 on the chart, Billboard reports. 'Voyage' starts with 82,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. Of that sum, album sales comprise 78,000, making it the top-selling album of the week and the largest sales week for an album by a group in 2021. Another big feat on Billboard 200 chart this week - Summer Walker earns her first No. 1 album as the singer’s second studio LP, 'Still Over It', arrives atop the list with 166,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. It marks both the first R&B album by a woman to top the Billboard 200 in more than five years and the largest streaming week ever for an R&B album by a woman, Billboard reports.

Venezuela's network of youth orchestras organized a world records attempt at Venezuela’s military academy Saturday where thousands of musicians, mostly children and adolescents, played with a single goal: setting the record as the world’s largest orchestra, Deutsche Welle reports. The musicians performed a roughly 10-minute Tchaikovsky piece 'Slavic March' outdoors under the watchful eyes of independent supervisors with the job of verifying that more than 8,097 instruments were playing simultaneously, which would break the current record. The Guinness World Records will determine within 10 days whether a record was set.

Rolling Stone conducted a 9-months investigation on Marilyn Manson based on court documents and more than 55 new interviews. They found he "conditioned women through flattery and dark humor before introducing a pattern of abuse that allegedly included whipping, carving initials into skin, forced confinement, and rape. Some accusers allege that he plied them with drugs and alcohol, controlled their eating and sleeping habits, and held them captive emotionally and physically until they submitted to his will". A disturbing story on power and abuse of it.

18-year old Kid Laroi has scooped the top prize in the Australian 2021 National Indigenous Music awards, Sidney Morning Herald reports. Kid Laroi, who is now based in Los Angeles, took home the artist of the year award, beating nominees Sycco, Birdz, Miiesha, Baker Boy and Jessica Mauboy. JK-47 claims award for debut album, Budjerah crowned best new talent and Miiesha wins song of the year for 'Damaged'.

The full list of NIMA winners:

Artist Of The Year: The Kid LAROI

Album Of The Year: JK-47 – ‘Made For This’

Song Of The Year: Miiesha – ‘Damaged’

Best New Talent of the Year: Budjerah

Best Film Clip Of The Year: Baker Boy (Feat. Yirrmal) – ‘Ride’

Indigenous Language Award Of The Year: Guwanbal Gurruwiwi and Netanela Mizrahi – ‘The Djari Project’

Community Clip Of The Year: Kakadu Collective & Victor Rostron – ‘Mayali’

Archie Roach Foundation Award: J-Milla

aylor Swift's re-recording 'Red (Taylor’s Version)' smashed the record for the most-streamed album in a day by a female artist on Spotify with more than 90.8 million streams around the globe, Billboard reports. That number only surpasses Swift’s own 'folklore', which previously held the record at 80.6 million streams upon its surprise July 2020 release. Taylor also earned the distinction as the most-streamed female artist in a single day in Spotify's history with more than 122.9 million streams.

"The performer who emerged amid the skyline of the Strip came with a vibe—explosive, poetic, passionate, true—that reverberated deep into the souls of the 50,000+ festival-goers who turned up to see him" - Consequence reviews Kendrick Lamar's first US performance in two years. Billboard puts it simply: "Kendrick Lamar's Day N Vegas performance was art". Rolling Stone describes it as "casually dazzling".

"Drinking from the same ancestral well that informed earlier radical Black music is integral to Irreversible Entanglements’ approach: after all, they are passionate and angry for many of the same reasons as the aforementioned [the Last Poets, the New York Art Quartet, Archie Shepp], because far too many of the circumstances remain the same. The fight isn’t over... It’s righteous music, hopefully as a prelude to righteous action" - The Quietus writes in a review of jazz/hip-hop band's new album 'Open the Gates'. "Although this ensemble boast conservatoire rigour, their revolutionary, Afrofuturist music is imbued with punk spirit, a love of ambient spaciousness and electronics" - Guardian insists.

"Has the music industry finally started to wake up and smell the burning forests?" - The Face writes in its introduction to the article about music and climate change. The Face breaks down some efforts being made in music streaming, vinyl, festivals, NFT, and touring in order to help the environment.

Abba's long-awaited 'Voyage' - their first album of new material for 40 years - shot straight to number one on the UK album chart, earning them the biggest opening week of sales for any album in four years, the UK Official Charts reports. Its 204,000 first-week chart sales is the highest since Ed Sheeran's 'Divide'. Aside from Abba, Sheeran and One Direction, only Adele's '25' has breached the 200,000 barrier for first-week sales in the past decade. 'Voyage' is also the fastest-selling vinyl release of the century, overtaking the Arctic Monkeys' 'Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino' from 2018.

Whet Records – Warner Music Group‘s pan-Asian dance label in China - is launching a ‘metaverse group’ consisting of four virtual characters, Music Business Worldwide reports. 10:22 PM, which UMG refers to as a “next-gen Web3 label”, is getting into the world of non-fungible tokens and virtual artists simultaneously, with the launch of the new group, called KINGSHIP. The characters are from Bored Ape Yacht Club, which UMG says is one of the most successful non-fungible token (NFT) projects of all time. KINGSHIP was formed by 10:22PM’s founder Celine Joshua, who according to UMG “engineered the landmark, first-ever exclusive agreement to create a metaverse group”.