Germany’s revenues from physical music sales and streaming grew 9% year-on-year to €1.79 billion in 2020, Music Business Worldwide reports. A good portion of 71.5% of revenues came from digital music, growing 24.6% in a year, from €1.13bn to €1.27bn. CD sales in the market fell 18% YoY, remaining the second-strongest format in the German recorded market with a 21.6% share of sales in 2020. totalling €387m. Vinyl revenues grew 24.7% YoY to €99m, and had an overall market share of 5.5%.

Three classically trained musicians tell the Guardian about the delivery jobs they turned to during the pandemic. Classically trained trombonist Rachel Allen had to take shifts with the delivery firm Yodel to make ends meet. Violinist Catherine Martin, who delivers groceries, says that "without concerts in my diary, I totally lost my motivation. I got quite depressed and I really realised I needed to do something”. French horn player Jake Bagby found pleasure in talking to people he delivers groceries to because everybody is alone (and lonely).

More than 100 Italian artists staged a silent protest L'Ultimo Concerto last Saturday to raise awareness for the struggling live music industry. Italian musicians came to the venues and prepared everything just like for a normal show - with their instruments and sound-checks and all - and then just stood still in silence.

Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds bandmate Warren Ellis made a new album in lockdown - their first non-soundtrack album as a duo - called 'Carnage' and it was just surprise-released today. Warren says "making 'Carnage' was an accelerated process of intense creativity. The eight songs were there in one form or another within the first two-and-a-half days and then it was, ‘let’s just make a record!’ There was nothing too premeditated about it". Cave calls it "a brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe". Read the lyrics here.

Huck tells the story of the LA punk scene which survived the pandemic with dozens of backyard gigs. The magazine argues "this attitude – of taking personal responsibility for yourself and your actions, despite what the rules say – is a common one in the DIY punk scene". Beko, the singer and frontman of punk band Lazy Dream, explains the attitude: “Our whole method is do-it-yourself. We were tired of waiting for people to do the recording thing, so we just did the recording ourselves… With the shows, we did that as well. We were like, ‘Ok, we have this backyard right here, might as well throw a show. Because if no one’s going to hire us or invite us anywhere, might as well do it ourselves’”.

“Borders are a dreadful invention of mankind, and so we are just putting up another one, and I think it’s a dreadful retrograde step” - Queen's drummer Roger Taylor said about consequences Brexit will have on UK touring bands, NME reports. His band is OK, he said - "we can fall back on our songwriting and our publishing", it's the road crew that are suffering - "it’s a daily, weekly job for them and so it’s made it really hard for our industry, very hard indeed”. Guardian reports about road crews for some of the biggest bands in music that are being forced into homelessness and turning to food banks to survive during the pandemic.

DJ Mag describes what have the UK night clubs been up to in lockdown. Sneaky Petes, Edinburgh - reopened as a pizza bar; Printworks, London - hosted production projects and live-streams; Studio 338, London - transformed into a food bank; Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool - used as a COVID-19 testing centre; Fabric, London - has been reflecting and “identified lots of little details and some larger improvements"...

Quick coronavirus testing could enable nightclubs and theatres to reopen, British premier Boris Johnson said, according to Daily Mail. The PM said "rapid" lateral flow tests "in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward", could be used by "those parts of the economy we couldn't get open last year". Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the government would rely on rapid testing and "making people access their own personal vaccination records" on the NHS app, rather than issuing vaccine passports.

Unable to play in "standard" venus due to the pandemic, the artists had to come up with novel ideas for places to play. It seems as if they're just getting started. Hot Since 82 played his sets from a hot air balloon and from under a pier, Liam Gallagher played aboard a barge as it floated down the River Thames with London's lockdown skyline and landmarks in full view, Biffy Clyro played from within a cube, Disclosure played a DJ set from above a waterfall at a national park... BBC reports about the start of something really new.

Tom Moulton is one of the pioneers of remixes in disco music, the inventor of the breakdown section and the 12-inch single vinyl format, and in his 80s he decided it's time - to work. He is releasing mixes on his Bandcamp, five disco volumes since the pandemic began, made in his apartment while he avoids the coronavirus. All the music is new, drawn from his towers of authorised multitrack tapes. Guardian talked to the never-stopping producer...