Random music news for Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Still at CES for another day. Man, there are a lot of people plugging new wireless headphones here. And there’s music news to talk about for January 9, 2010.

1. Here is the first report on Canadian music sales and streams 2020, comparing things to where they were at this time last year: Total album sales, -23.4%; CDs, -26%; digital albums, –24.8%, digital tracks, -28.1%, vinyl LPs, +3.8%; on-demand audio streaming, +31.9% (1.41 billion streams in the country last week.)
2. Mastercard–yes, the credit card company–just released a new single.
3. The brother of Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr has been convicted of stalking a couple of the band’s superfans.
4. The next major rock star to get a biopic: Bob Dylan.
5. Being in a metal band can hurt.
6. Is physical music media really back?
7. Coachella has been around for 20 years. Time for the documentary.
8. Bagpipes: Good for getting the homeless to mov on but not good for the neighbours.
9. Hate potholes? Then you’ll appreciate this song.
10. Koko, an iconic British music venue, went up in flames.
11. Is Toronto actually music city? Discuss.
12. Flamenco priest. That is all.
13. Ozzy and Elton John have collaborated on a song. Yes, you read that correctly.
14. Metallica used to hate Spotify. Now they’ve just passed one billion streams.
15. Sonos has sued Google for patent infringement over smart speaker technology.