Random music news for Tuesday, May 28, 2019

On this day in 1987, something very weird happened in Red Square. Don’t try that. Now onto music news for May 28, 2019.

1. Weekly Canadian music sales and stream numbers vs. this time in 2018: Total album sales, -23.3%; CDs, -28.9%; digital albums, -18.3%; digital tracks, -28.4%; vinyl LPs, -3.8%; on-demand audio streams, +35.8% (1.417 billion streams in Canada last week).
2. Rocketman, the Elton John biopic opens Friday. There are lots of sex and drugs in the film–at Elton’s request.
3. That time Elton married a woman.
4. Back to biopics: Here comes the series on Tupac.
5. Twenty One Pilots had to cancel a Toronto date. Blame the Raptors’ playoff run.
6. Ed Sheeran used to be homeless. Now he’s on track to be a billionaire by the time he’s 30.
7. Sure, Pink Floyd man Roger Waters could travel in luxury, but he feels the subway works just fine for him.
8. Things went rather wrong at this music festival.
9. Noel Gallagher has a new place. It’s nice.
10. Union musicians in the US are getting a terrible pension cut.
11. Puma is going to issue a line of sneakers in memory of rapper Nipsey Hussle.
12. A Chinese teenager died when a stage collapsed during an audition.
13. The Mars Volta reunion is “definitely happening.”
14. Here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “Band cancels tour after DRUMMER falls off stage.”
15. There’s some interesting Canadian broadcasting history to be learned in this article about the CBC. (Subscription required.)
16. The Inuit pop scene is getting some international attention.
17. Michael Hutchence might be getting a statue in Melbourne, Australia.