Random music news for August 20, 2019

Why do most people who insist on backing into a parking space at the mall are the worst at backing into parking spaces? Moving on to music news for August 20, 2019…

1. Weekly Canadian music sales and streaming stats vs. where things were at this time last year: Total album sales, -25.0%; CD sales, -30.5%; digital albums, -21.1%; digital tracks, -27.6%; vinyl LPs, -2.5%; audio streaming, +34.9% (1.469 billion streams in the country last week).
2. After a record-breaking 19 weeks, “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X is no longer the number one single in America.
3. Today is National Radio Day in the US (and the UK, too, apparently.) Read more here. Hug a DJ.
4. Remember the $100 million lawsuit against Univeral over the 2008 fire that destroyed all those master tapes? There’s been an amendment to the suit. Hole is no longer part of it–for now.
5. Coming soon to Netflix: An Elvis Presley-based cartoon.
6. Madonna apparently had a very nice 61st birthday party.
7. The protests in Hong Kong are making it hard on touring bands and music fans.
8. Where did The Beatles first set foot in Canada? Nope. Nope. Nope. It was here.
9. YouTube has changed some of its rules. Rights owners might not be happy about this.
10. How can a super-viral song just suddenly disappear? Like this.
11. “Is Billie Eilish An Industry Plant?” Discuss.
12. The new jam at IKEA: Smart home products.
13. This is an argument against having content quotas for streaming music services.
14. Are hippies the new Goths? Maybe.
15. Jeez, I wish I made this much from my podcasts.
16. And speaking of podcasts, here’s the second part of my appearance on The Kasey Ferguson Show.
17. A good story about Fictions Records, the label that started things for The Cure.
18. Can’t say I agree with this doom and gloom story on the future of FM radio given that radio (so far) continues to be profitable, powerful and popular. But we’ll see, won’t we?