Global Citizen Live concert that featured performances from Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Lopez, BTS and Elton John and dozens of other stars, raised more than $1.1 billion in commitments and pledges over the weekend to fight extreme poverty, Billboard reports. It secured pledges from France for 60 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for developing countries, corporate pledges for planting 157 million trees around the world, and the U.S. government pledged $295 million for humanitarian needs around the world caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Major philanthropic commitments came from the Lego Foundation, who pledged $150 million to support UNICEF and other partners working with children, and Rotary International, which pledged $98 million in grant funding in 2022.

"With live shows slowly returning, we’re seeing a fundamental contradiction play out: Even as livestreaming platforms continue to raise more funds and announce marquee celebrity partnerships, demand for music livestreams has gone down significantly from its peak last year" - Cherie Hu looks at the (last year's) promising new live music domain. "There are two possible reasons for this stagnation. One is that music livestreams just haven’t really innovated as a format to the point where fans are continually willing to pay for them... Maybe fans are just more interested in seeing these artists perform in person".

Alana Haim of the sisters trio Haim stars in the new movie ''Licorice Pizza', directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, a frequent collaborator of her family trio. The film also stars Tom Waits, as well as Cooper Hoffman (the son of Anderson favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman), Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, and Benny Safdie. The film is about “growing up, running around and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley, 1973”. The trailer, soundtracked by David Bowie’s 'Life on Mars?' is out now.

A jury in federal court in Brooklyn found R. Kelly guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking in his federal criminal trial, CNN reports. Prosecutors had accused Kelly of directing his employees to procure women for sex and sexually abused numerous women over the span of nearly 25 years. The 54-year-old singer now faces up to 20 years in prison.

TikTok revealed today that it has over 1 billion global Monthly Active Users (MAUs), TechCrunch reports. As of October 2020 the TikTok app was reaching 732 million monthly active users (MAUs) around the world. One of TikTok’s main competitors Instagram, first hit a billion unique monthly users in June 2018. This July, TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads.

The outrageous story about Britney Spears' conservatorship just got added another new layer, thanks to a new documentary 'Controlling Britney Spears'. Rolling Stone picks out 10 new facts from it:

1. When Britney asked for an iPhone, her father Jamie Spears, her head of security Edan Yemini, and member of her management team Robin Greenhill used it for added surveillance.

2. Black Box Security set up a recording device in Britney’s bedroom.

3. Britney, who has a net worth of $60 million, was routinely denied minor indulgences for budgetary reasons.

4. Britney’s security was in charge of administering her medications.

5. Jamie Spears allegedly threatened to block access to Britney’s sons if she challenged her conservators.

6. Britney was forced onstage amid an apparent panic attack over the possibility of losing her kids.

7. Britney allegedly tried to sneak a new lawyer into rehab disguised as plumber.

8. The conservators were threatened by the #FreeBritney movement — and sent security to infiltrate it.

9. Jamie Britney was fixated on any men who were interested in Britney, and spied on them,

10. Britney’s ex-assistant was told the singer fired her, but allegedly it was a lie.

YouTube music theorist talks about rhythmic thresholds in his latest video - the slowest and fastest music we're capable of processing. The slowest music we can process, Neely argues, is 33 bpm, with the fastest being at 100 milliseconds. The rhythm that feels the most natural, or "the indifference interval" is at 100 bpm. Neely also tried this borderline rhythms with the audience of his band Sungazer.

"Levy’s ear for melody and flair for the dramatic makes for a prime example of how effective this sort of music can be when it’s done this well" - Stereogum argues its latest Album of the week choice. The Skinny appreciates how "its capacity to reach around the edges of an empty room, and equal ability to cut through the sound of life bustling in the background lends it a warm, encompassing quality". Exclaim likes its borderline quality: "The whole thing glows with a particular late-summer energy, its precise, golden hour arrangements hinting at the wide-open chill of fall".

In the latest episode of Song Exploder, singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus tells the story of her song 'Thumbs' from the her new album 'Home Video'. It's about her making company to a friend meeting an away-father. It's really an emotive story, and intriguing insight into the making-process of a song.

New York Times Magazine published an essay by Carina del Valle Schorske, 'Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief', which centers on the desire of people who've spent months in lockdown to be with others - "I needed my physique to affect and be influenced by different our bodies — this time not as a vector of illness however as a vector of pure feeling". Dada Strain looks somewhat deeply into it - "not just people’s need for simple contact, but for mass movement in improvised unison, for socially engaging rhythm, and for devising instants of momentary intimacy, locking into primordial practices of celebration and mourning".

A very interesting podcast on The Verge about music copyright and how it has supposedly gone too far with lawsuits based on similarities between songs, rather than plagiarism. "We have seen a shift where the music industry has gone from being a physical goods business to an intellectual property business. When a song starts to succeed, we see all kinds of public lawsuits and private settlements to make sure that in order to recoup on your intellectual property, which is currently earning probably negligible revenue in streaming and other places, but when there’s an opportunity for a big thing that has hit at radio or might have a big sync license in a film, yeah, you’re going to go and see if you can get a piece of it. If you look at the public record of songs which are currently under litigation, they’re only songs which are succeeding overwhelmingly".

"It’s no secret that for nearly a century, the country music market has been almost exclusively the domain of white performers – even as the genre owes tremendously to Black musical traditions. But today, in spite of the hurdles, the path for Black voices in country music appears more open than ever" - Tennessean writes in a long-read about the issue of race in country music. There are a few names presenting the Black community in the country ecosystem - platinum-selling star Kane Brown, two-time chart-topper Jimmie Allen, recent Grammy nominee Mickey Guyton, Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah, and Yola among others.

Warner Music Group boss Steve Cooper revealed a stunning stat about this second, less talked-about area of the business – a stat that, according to MBW’s calculations, suggests this is a sector already worth a billion dollars in annual revenue for the global music rights industry. Cooper confirmed that Warner Music Group’s recorded music operation has a present run-rate of $235 million per year in revenue from Facebook, TikTok, Peloton and Roblox.

The pattern of music downloads after their release appears to closely resemble epidemic curves for infectious disease - mathematicians from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada have found. The team followed the pattern of 1,000 songs downloaded in the UK between 2007 and 2014, measuring how well a standard model of epidemic disease, called the SIR model, fitted trends in song downloads over time. The research found the model performed just as well when describing song download trends as it did when describing the spread of a disease through the population. In their research, electronic music turned out to be the most infectious genre of all. Guardian reports about the interesting study.

Steve Strange, widely respected live agent and co-founder of X-ray Touring, has died aged 53 after a short illness, Music Business Worldwide reports. A statement from X-ray reads: “His overwhelming love of music lead to a 30 year plus career guiding the touring of an eclectic mix of artists from all genres of music that he adored". Strange’s artist roster down the years has included Eminem, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Queens of the Stone Age, The Charlatans, Jimmy Eat World and many more. Emma Banks of CAA wrote on social media: “Steve Strange – a truly good and loving person without a bad bone in his body. The life and soul of every occasion, a music man to the core and dedicated to his clients, friends and family".

Charles Blow and Terence Blanchard's 'Fire Shut Up in My Bones' opera opens the Metropolitan Opera season on Sept. 27. It will be the first operatic performance in the house since the pandemic shutdown 18 months ago, and the first opera by a Black musician presented at the Met in its 138 years. "I'm not the only one that was qualified throughout that history" - Blanchard told Bloomberg.

Black Marble share an amusing song ‘Preocupation’ with a funny video; LA rapper Blu samples Beatles for a trippy song ‘Because the Sky Is Blu(e)’; The Ophelias share ‘Crocus’, a baroque-folk track with great strings; Generationals deliver some good indie-pop with ‘Mercy’; some great guitar work by folk-blues singer Buffalo Nichols on ‘How To Love’.

Critics have a lot to say about the latest album by the Arizona rap gang. "Injury Reserve have woven together a darkly contorted tangle of sounds, a collage that hits like a barrage... a record that demands your attention and challenges your perspective released into an age defined by zone-out streaming bait" - Stereogum argue in favor of their choice for Album of the week, calling their music post rap. The New Yorker argues "this is the first of the group’s projects to sound greater than the sum of its parts, to feel singular", and "by far the best" album by the band. Pitchfork appreciates its creativity: "The songs are immediate and intuitive, brimming with personality and ideas".

Music theory YouTuber Adam Neely and recorder player Sarah Jeffery go back centuries to explore medieval music in her latest video. They try and prove that the early classical music wasn't really that simple, dealing with "rhythmic math FUN with polyrhythms, polypulses, and medieval music!".

A beautiful article in the New Yorker by Michael Azerrad, a journalist and one of Kurt Cobain's closest friends: "That’s the kind of thing that haunts people who know people who have committed suicide: Is there something I could have done? Twenty-seven years later, I still ask myself that question. I tried, but perhaps I could have—and should have—tried harder. The thing is, although I was in my early thirties, I was still immature and naïve. Maybe I wasn’t so well suited to the task". The long read also gives quite a convincing albeit prosaic explanation for the suicide: "Kurt had several clinically established risk factors for suicide, including inhuman levels of professional pressure, chronic and severe physical pain, and a heroin addiction that he just couldn’t seem to shake (or didn’t want to). He also had a long family history of suicide".

Music Business Worldwide does a great job analysing the UK government's inaction about the payment for music streaming issues. In July, the UK parliament's Department of Culture, Media & Sport Committee published a report which called for government action on a number of music industry issues regarding streaming payouts. The standout recommendation from the DCMS report was that the majors’ dominance of the UK record industry be referred to the UK’s competition watchdog – the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA). The UK government response was less than lame - it has declined to announce any legislative measures, and has also not officially referred the issue of major label-dominance to the CMA.

An interesting article in The Conversation about an amazing phenomenon from Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea where people, next to their names, also bear "name-tunes". These names aren't words, they're rather a wordless melody, given to children and recognised throughout the community to refer to one person alone. In Ethiopia, it's exclusive to 45,000 Oyda people from the southwest of the country. This “name tune”, or moyzé is most often whistled, but it can also be sung to a series of non-meaningful sounds different for each name tune. In one small region of Madang Province in northeastern Papua New Guinea, about 15,000 people across three language areas (Nankina, Domung and Yopno) also employ name tunes, which they call konggap. Yopno konggap differ in performance style from the Oyda moyzé, since they are either simply whistled with no use of the hands, or sung on a series of open vowels (like “a-o-a-o-e-e-a”). However, konggap and moyzé are strikingly similar. Both moyzé and konggap are unique to every individual, and generally bear no relation to a person’s given name, which is often shared with other community members. The tunes in both traditions use similar pitch ranges and last 1-4 seconds.

Audius is a brand-new decentralized streaming platform built for all the artists, not just the ones signed with labels. Decrypt reviews it: "Its biggest problem on paper is the fact that there are so few recognisable artists on there, and the ones that you will likely have heard of, don’t have much content uploaded. From another perspective, though, that's a positive advantage; if you're a trendsetter rather than a follower of fashion, it's a great way to discover new and unsigned artists... It offers quality, free streaming, with a quick and easy sign-up process to jump you straight into the action... It’s a refreshing way to dive into the unknown while hopefully discovering some hidden gems along the way".

Abba star Björn Ulvaeus has launched the Credits Due campaign, which aims to ensure all songwriters and musicians are correctly identified when a song is recorded, BBC reports. At present, missing and incomplete data means that about £500m is unallocated or misallocated globally - every year. The scheme will also ensure fans see the correct credits for songs - from the writers and producers to the session musicians and engineers - and every person who is involved in the creation of a song will be "clickable in the digital liner notes", allowing listeners to look up every other record they have worked on. BMG has pledged its support for Credits Due, as the first international music company to commit to the campaign, MBW reports.

Lil Nas X covered Dolly Parton's signature song 'Jolene' during a recent performance for BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge. Celebrating the release of his debut album 'Montero', Nas sang in a deep baritone over a sparse rock arrangement, delivering an intense, gender-flipping rendition of Parton’s 1973 hit about a woman with “flaming locks of auburn hair” who can steal men with ease.

Sarah Dash of the powerhouse R&B trio Labelle died on September 20th at age 76, just three days after her last performance. As a founding member of Labelle, Dash appeared on their ubiquitous 1975 dance floor classic 'Lady Marmalade', adding sensuality to the trio’s sound - heard especially in Dash’s parts on the deep cut '(Can I Speak to You Before You Go to) Hollywood'. Dash’s last performance was September 18, when she joined LaBelle onstage in Atlantic City for an impromptu reunion. “She was healthy and fine and sang her face off” - her bandmate Patti LaBelle says - “The crowd went crazy. She had the best send-off. If that’s the way you’re going to leave, she left like a queen”, Rolling Stone reports.

Dave and Fraser T Smith were awarded best contemporary song for 'Children of the Internet' at this year’s Ivor Novello awards, which celebrate Britain’s best songwriters and composers. The song is performed by Future Utopia, and explores the impact of social media and hyper-connectivity, particularly on younger generations. Brit Award winner Celeste was named songwriter of the year alongside her writing partner Jamie Hardman. Lianne La Havas picked up best album for her self-titled second record, written with Matthew Hales. Sky News reported from the event.

The seminal hip-hop group of Ms. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras Michel have announced a 12-city international tour to celebrate the silver anniversary of their landmark album, 1996’s 'The Score', Rolling Stone reports. The first concert takes place tomorrow night (!) - September 22nd - at an undisclosed location in New York City.

Richard H. Kirk, founding member and the sole full-time member of industrial icons Cabaret Voltaire, has died at age 65, Treble reports. Formed in Sheffield, England in 1973 by Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson, Cabaret Voltaire used reel-to-reel tape loops and early synthesizers to create a sound as bleak as the crumbling factory buildings in their hometown. Along with their Dada-influenced live performances, Cabaret Voltaire helped create what would become known as industrial music and were and remain hugely influential with classic records like 'Nag Nag Nag', 'Red Mecca', and 'The Crackdown' on bands such as New Order, Depeche Mode, Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and many others.

An important article in the Van Music Magazine about body-shaming in the opera world. “Diversity applies to pretty much everybody except fat people,” opera critic Uwe Friedrich tells the magazine. "The pressure to conform to a societal ideal of beauty has 'increased enormously' in recent years".