The number of artists making $25,000 on Twitch has grown 16x since the pandemic started. For those making $50,000 or more, the median viewership is 183 fans, which makes for $274 per fan - Twitch’s VP Head of Music, Tracy Chan, said on the Trapital podcast. He also talked about how artists make money on the platform, finding 100 True Fans, and the creator economy. Chan also worked at Spotify and YouTube to build their creator platforms.

New concerts are being added on a daily basis to the touring schedule in the US, mostly by American artists, thanks to the high vaccination rate. Trapital's Dan Runcie asks, rightfully so, "will you have the energy (and money) to still attend all their shows in the post-pandemic boom?". Live Nation's CEO Michael Rapino sits down with Recode’s Peter Kafka to talk about the industry’s comeback and how he’s figured out new tricks.

"Today, Berlin is one of the premier destinations for techno music fans. People come from all over the world to party all night to the rhythmic beat of Berlin’s club scene. And this music that the city is most famous for developed in large part because of the thing the city is most infamous for: the Berlin wall, which divided the city into east and west for almost thirty years" - 99% Invisible podcast introduces its new episode about the unusual destiny of the dance capital.

The Foreign Desk podcast looks into the Eurovision Song Contest from a point of geo-politics, with a witty twist from the hosts, coming from the least-successful country. TFD asks what the dos and don’ts of using Eurovision to project your nation are, and does it really have real-world political potency? Europe’s most popular cultural event will take place in Rotterdam next week, following last year’s cancellation.

An easy-to-listen-to and funny podcast on Stitcher about a few specific chord progressions that show up again and again in popular music. Music journalist Jennifer Gersten and comedic musician Benny Davis discuss 'The Ice Cream Changes' progression, which originated in the 1930s, and has been used by Led Zeppelin, Bonnie Taylor, Everly Brothers and many more. The 4-chord progression is the most famous of them all, used by artists ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Lady Gaga, and from Bob Marley to Blink-182. Listen to the discussion below.

Talib Kweli, Yasiin Bey, and comedian Dave Chappelle have launched a new podcast, 'The Midnight Miracle', on the subscription podcast network Luminary, Complex reports. The first episode, titled “How to Inspire,” is available for free via YouTube. The hosts spoke about life between clips of the late Amy Winehouse. The second episode features Bey and Kweli’s first music as Black Star in over 20 years.

Classical music has always been a natural fit for podcasting. And podcasting, it turns out, might be just as fitting for the concert hall - the New York Times argues in a recent article about classical music's bigger steps into podcasting. Next to the older ones like 'Aria Code' by Rhiannon Giddens (trained in opera, better known for her banjo playing), 'Sticky Notes' by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, and 'On a Personal Note' about the last gathering on an ensemble before the pandemic, there are new ones breaking ground. 'Mission: Commission' follows three composers over the course of six weeks as they create short pieces. 'Trilloquy' goes outside music and into social issues. 'Beginner’s Mind' is idealistic in its premise - making a better world through music.

Music journalist Greg Cochrane and Savages drummer Fay Milton have launched a new podcast Sounds Like a Plan which aims to shine a light on the music community’s fight against the climate crisis, NME reports. Launched this month, SLAP will feature an “inspiring climate advocate from the music community" like The 1975’s manager Jamie Oborne, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, and Melvin Benn, director of Festival Republic, which includes Reading + Leeds, Latitude...

“Humour, optimism and positivity” are the main ideas behind Hell Bent for Metal, a new podcast about heavy metal from a gay perspective. HBFM founder and co-host Tom Dare’s hope was to be visible to other LGBTQ+ lovers of heavy music, and to offer a queer perspective that he felt was missing from a scene that is still affected by homophobia, as the Guardian reports. Titles to some of the episodes describe the content as well as the spirit of the podcast: 'Gay Satanic Love Songs', 'BDSM Gear and Black Metal', 'Horny German Werewolves', 'Anaal Nathrakh’s Adaam Ant Armograaphy', 'Between The Balls, The Wall And Me'...

Bruce Springsteen has teamed up with former American president Barack Obama for a new podcast series titled 'Renegades: Born in the USA', Reuters reports. The eight-episode series will cover a range of topics, including race, fatherhood, marriage, and the state of America. The first two episodes are available on Spotify.

Name3Songs podcast discusses the problem of sexual misconduct in alter music. Questions they pose: "Why sexual misconduct reoccurs at alarming rates in the music industry. What is the psychology behind this? How has this behavior been perpetrated across decades? How can this behavior be stopped and prevented? What is accountability and how do we apply it effectively?".

1980s pop singer Glenn Medeiros was often asked for sex by music industry figures in return for help with his careers - as he has told the Celebrity Catch Up podcast. Medeiros said he saw these offers "everywhere", and he refused them all, but other artists, as he said, would accept them: "I had friends who specifically said, 'I am going to be moving in with this person because this person is going to be helping me with my recording career. The person's attractive and I like them anyway, so it's OK"". Medeiros now runs a school in Hawaii.

The podcast industry thrived throughout the last year, The Chartable Blog reports. 2020 saw a more than 280% increase in the creation of new podcasts - from just over 300,000 new podcasts started in 2019 to almost 900,000 in 2020, which is 17,000 new podcasts each week. Just under half of the 900,000 new podcasts were in languages other than English. Many of these new podcasts have just one or two episodes - about 30%. However, 23% of podcasts started in 2021 have already published more than 10 episodes.

Guardian started a pew podcast Reverberate about the power of music, about the times when a song really did make a difference and when music sparked a moment. They started the podcast with a story about a song at the center of Hong Kong’s nascent pro-democracy movement. Listen to the podcast - here.

"I always liked things that most people didn't like" - Rick Rubin says in an interesting Stitcher podcast about his choice of artists he produced, and his creative process - "I've always been voraciously interesting in counter-culture. I'm just interested!". He says also how he guards his passion: "I try to be as true to my interests as possible. I don't listen to music to find out what's going on, I listen to music because I like music". Rubin also says how the creative moment isn't rational: "The magic doesn't happen in the head, the magic happens in the heart. The actual magic is not intellectual, it's faster than the intellect, it's much more primal, it's much more immediate, it's not to be figured out".

Australian indie-pop musician Ben Lee went into 14-day quarantine in a Sydney military hotel when he returned from Los Angeles, and he used that time to make a 30-minute podcast a day (find them all here). Rather than talk about his music, he discussed himself, as well as some general themes like conspiracy theories, blockchain, death, gurus, marketing etc. What he tried to do, as he's told the Guardian, is to answer questions like "What am I about? Why have I been attracted to all these things? What are the common threads?”.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have signed a deal with streaming service Spotify to produce and host podcasts, CNN reports. In a trailer, the pair - introducing themselves as "Harry and Meghan", without the royal attributes - promised "different perspectives" and interviews with "amazing people". Their charity will receive an undisclosed sum from the partnership between their production company, Archewell Audio, and Spotify.

"I feel like we exist at the behest of other people, but, yeah, I feel like I don't exist" - Phoebe Bridgers said about life in lockdown while talking to her new friend Bettye LaVette, who responded - "isn't it beautiful that we don't exist until the light come off and everybody applauds". Bridgers added - "I feel like my social life is built so heavily into music where I hire all my friends, I tour with my friends, so I don't even know how to exist at home". Listen to the funny conversation of the two ladies for the Talkhouse podcast.

Billie Eilish and Finneas talk to Song Exploder podcast about how they made their hit-song 'Everything I Wanted'. It all started with a dream in which Billie Eilish dies and observes people (not) react to her dying. They couldn't finish the song, and had returned to it after half a year.

A serious analysis in the Baffler of Spotify and its business model: "Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing 'music for every mood and moment' - not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself 'Audio First'". Spotify went wider with the content becoming a podcast company as well, but - "in many ways, though, the $50 billion company is treating podcasters similarly to how it has historically treated musicians, with a system that privileges the already moneyed and powerful".

Podcaster Jake Brennan told a chilling-amazing story in his Dead and Gone podcast about the unusual spate of missing and murdered fans of the Grateful Dead, better known as Deadheads, the Daily Beast reports. Brennan names several out of numerous cases of murders and disappearances, plenty unresolved to his day, and offers a possible explanation - "Grateful Dead... live and preach this super anti-authority lifestyle, even after they became an institution themselves. Being a Deadhead and traveling on the road following the band was all about living outside of the bounds of society, and there's a lawlessness that goes along with that. It's ultimately part of what contributed to this environment of vulnerability where people went missing and lost their lives".

NPR’s new podcast Louder Than A Riot is the story of the “interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration” in America where "rhyme and punishment go hand in hand". From Bobby Shmurda to Nipsey Hussle, each episode explores an artist's story to examine a different aspect of the criminal justice system that disproportionately impacts Black America. It goes from the point of power - the power the music industry wields over artists, the power of institutional forces that marginalize communities of color, the power of the prison industrial complex and the power dynamics deep-rooted in the rap game.

Song Exploder is a music podcast featuring musicians talking about the creative process behind an individual song while "deconstructing" the song into its component parts. The songs vary a lot - pop, hardcore punk, metal, r'n'b, etc. This month SE had moved to Netflix to become a documentary.

The newest season of Lost Notes podcast is out - season three covers the year 1980 - "the brilliant, awkward and sometimes heartbreaking opening to a monumental decade in popular music". This season is hosted by the poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib. In 1980, Sugarhill Gang where doing something that would change the music, the death of John Lennon would mark death of an era, punk singer Darby Crash died just a day earlier...

Take On Me' by A-Ha, 'Maniac' by Michael Sembello, 'Come on Eileen' by Dexys Midnight Runners, 'Kung fu fighting' by Carl Douglas, 'A Girl Like You' by Edwyn Collins are all one-hit wonders, songs way more famous than their respective authors, a phenomenon in music. Slate podcast discusses the theory of one-hit wonders...

Author Justin Quirk talked to The Word podcast about his latest book 'Nothin’ But A Good Time: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Glam Metal' on the age of the big hair, big songs, and big fun. Quirk was a big fan, knows a lot, but however, says you can draw a link between Kiss and Trump. Informative and entertaining!!!

Henry Rollins has launched a new video podcast 'The Henry & Heidi $1.99 Show' with co-host Heidi May, his longtime manager. Each episode is $1.99, Rollins promises show & tell, footage of him from 20 years ago, and more. The first episode is on the Minutemen, the early days of SST, the '80s hardcore scene in general. Watch it here.

'CrossBread' is a six-part ABC mockumentary podcast that charts the fortunes of a non-Christian Christian hip-hop group of the same name, and the Guardian says it's great. It's about siblings Josh and Joan who find unlikely success on the Christian rock circuit and have to pretend to have found Jesus in order to maintain their status as the hottest hip-hop act in the parish. There's a "reverend Philip Brock – an archetypal 'groovy priest' figure, played by veteran musician John Waters – sees potential ('they were the only Christian band that didn’t make me want to crucify myself'), so long as he can smooth out their rough edges". Check it out on ABC.

Joe Rogan is taking his podcast exclusively to Spotify in a licensing deal worth more than $100 million, in one of the largest such deals in the rapidly growing podcast business. Spotify's aim, presumably, is to become “the largest audio platform in the world”, but what does this deal mean for music in general?. Spotify users will probably spend less time listening to music, but Spotify will probably gain subscribers thanks to podcasts, who will also listen to music. Music Business Worldwide goes into detail what will this deal mean for both record labels and artists, as well as music publishers and songwriters. BIG thinks this means "death to independent podcasting".

CMU published a two-part podcast where they examine the debate around the fairness of streaming royalties for artists and songwriters (part 1, part 2). They discuss the subscription prices, how much is a million streams really, user-centric royalty distribution etc.