London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has acquired David Bowie’s archive of more than 80,000 items as a gift from the late musician’s estate. The collection includes costumes, instruments, letters, photos, lyrics, and much more, including a Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit, his Alladin Sane tour costumes, handwritten lyrics for 'Heroes,' and notebooks Bowie kept throughout his lifetime. In 2025, the collection will be viewable at The David Bowie Center for the Study of Performing Arts, part of V&A East Storehouse, which is being built in east London’s Olympic Park. The collection was secured by the David Bowie Estate, while a 10 million pound donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Warner Music Group will go toward a display and home at the V&A East location.

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.

Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue was born with power: since the late 1970s, his father had run the small central African country of Equatorial Guinea as a despot overseeing a murderous regime buoyed and financed by unending flows of crude oil. As a result, Teodorin enjoyed flaunting his wealth however he could. Some of his wealth Mangue spent building the world’s largest Michael Jackson memorabilia collection. Rolling Stone brings an excerpt from Casey Michel’s book, 'American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History' which describes how, among other themes, federal agents used Mangue's MJ fetish to track down millions in ill-gotten gains. The book is out November.

A cassette containing what’s believed to be a previously unreleased John Lennon and Yoko Ono song, 'Radio Peace', as well as an interview has been sold for $58,300 at an auction in Copenhagen, Denmark. NPR looks back at the nice story of four Danish teenagers who were late for a press conference, but Lennon nevertheless spent half an hour with boys talking about war, local action, and singing 'Give Peace a Chance' for them.

Six strands of Kurt Cobain's hair are being auctioned as part of Iconic Auctions' 'The Amazing Music Auction', Loudwire reports. This one-of-a-kind artifact is "accompanied by an impeccable lineage of provenance including photos of Kurt posing with the woman who cut this hair, scissors in hand, and a fantastic shot of the hair actually being cut! The lucky friend who trimmed the Nirvana frontman's iconic blond locks was an early confidant, Tessa Osbourne, who cut his hair in 1989 — well prior to his 'Nevermind' breakthrough — while on the 'Bleach' tour", the press statement reads. The bidding started at $2,500.

A pair of prototype Nikes worn by Kanye West during his performances of 'Hey Mama' and 'Stronger' at the Grammy Awards in 2008 has been sold for $1.8 million in a private sale, al Jazeera reports. The sale marks the highest publicly recorded price for a sneaker sale and the first pair of sneakers to top $1 million. The buyer was sneaker investing platform RARES, the leader in fractional ownership, allowing users to invest in sneakers by buying and trading shares in them.

Phoebe Bridgers’ guitar that she smashed against an amplifier on Saturday Night Live in February, was sold for a shocking $101,500 in a GLAAD auction, Loudwire reports. Bridgers, who identifies as bisexual, was nominated for outstanding breakthrough music artist for Thursday’s GLAAD Music Awards. The winner was the upstart rapper Chika. Bids for the guitar had remained in the low five figures in the days leading up to the auction’s close, but the price went up in a bidding frenzy Sunday, the last day of the auction. Jason Isbell has said the guitar was worth around $85, before it got smashed, which means the price went up 1,200-fold after Bridgers had smashed it.

In other countries, it takes decades for musicians to get their images on coins and banknotes, but the Bank of Mongolia believes in The Hu so much that they plan to feature them on a new commemorative coin as soon as this February. Mongolian folk-metal quartet has seen a rise in popularity in the last few years, Loudwire reports.

Pawn Stars shares a lovely story about a lady named Dani who walks in a Las Vegas pawn-shop with a flamboyant western suit that she believes ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons once owned. She wants $25,000 for it. She's in for a surprise.

The first drum kit the late Neil Peart ever played with Rush has been sold at Bonhams auction for exactly $500,312, Exclaim reports. Peart originally purchased the Slingerland double bass drum in Toronto in August 1974, mere weeks after joining Rush. He played the kit on his first three albums with the band as well as during various live performances. The set had been expected to fetch between $100,000 and $150,000.