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launched against them earlier this year. Said motion mainly raises jurisdiction issues with the lawsuit, which was filed by a Spanish musician against a British band with the courts in Louisiana.Sergio Garcia Fernandez claims that the Stones’ 2020 track ‘Living In A Ghost Town’ rips off two songs he wrote in the 2000s, ‘So Sorry’ and ‘Seed Of God’.His lawsuit claims that the Stones track lifted “vocal melodies, the chord progressions, the drum beat patterns, the harmonica parts, the electric bass line parts, the tempos, and other key signatures” from ‘So Sorry’ and the “harmonic and chord progression and melody” from ‘Seed Of God’.As for how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards might have heard Fernandez’s music before writing ‘Living In A Ghost Town’, the Spanish musician alleged that he had previously sent a demo CD to “an immediate family member” of Jagger.According to Digital Music News, legal reps for the Stones filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit last month.

DEALSGlassnote Records has signed Tors. Label founder Daniel Glass says: “We are THRILLED to welcome Tors to the Glassnote roster.

According to NME, Mangold also noted that the film will not be a “typical biopic”, it being focused on a specific time in Dylan’s life.“It’s a kind of ensemble piece about this moment in time”, he explained, “the early 60s in New York, and this seventeen year old kid with $16 in his pockets hitchhikes his way to New York to meet Woody Guthrie who is in the hospital and is dying of a nerve disease”.“And he sings Woody a song that he wrote for him and befriends Pete Seeger, who is like a son to Woody”, the director went on.

Nina Keith has returned with her first new track since 2021, ‘Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)’.Written during a turbulent period as she relocated from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, the track sees Keith collaborate with musician Barrie and composer Qur’an Shaheed to create a vivid soundscape. Despite its micro-emitted sounds, the track conjures up imagery of nature, from running water to time-lapses of plants unfurling, reminiscent of artists like The Books and Susumu Yokota.“Lately the more I wear the turmoil of my life on my sleeve the more often I find myself in conversations with strangers and loved ones that reach a similar end”, says Keith.“I can never be the one to tell someone to burn it down and start over.

Bombay Bicycle Club have announced some shows this August where the fans will be doing the singing. Which seems fair enough.

Suede have canceled shows that were due to take place at the Brixton Academy later this year, replacing them with some more intimate gigs at the near by Electric Brixton venue.That decision comes amid continued uncertainty regarding the future of the Brixton Academy. It has been closed ever since two people died as a result of a crowd crush at a sold out Asake show last December.Venue operator the Academy Music Group has put forward plans for safely reopening the building.

The US Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has upheld the ruling in a copyright dispute over the circles of hell image famously used on Nirvana’s merchandise since the 1990s. The appeals court concurred that the dispute would be better fought out in a UK court.The image in question was seemingly created in the late 1940s by British writer CW Scott-Giles, depicting Upper Hell as described in Dante Alighieri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’.

APPOINTMENTSArtist services and rights management company Interstellar has announced the appointment of Vickie Nauman to its advisory board. “Interstellar is a business that has impressed me from the off, in terms of the calibre of the team, its commitment to its clients and, importantly, the passion they have for music and its creators”, she says. “The company sits right at the intersection of music and innovation, so I hope that it will benefit from my experience as it enters its next phase of growth”.————————————————–RELEASESNZCA Lines will release new EP ‘Universal Heartbreak’ on 22 Sep.

Shabaka Hutchings – of bands including The Comet Is Coming and Sons Of Kemet – has issued a statement elaborating on his decision to stop playing saxophone from the end of this year.Hutchings first announced his plans to take a “hiatus” from the instrument on New Year’s Day, telling fans that – once this year is up – “I don’t know when or if I’ll return to the big metal horn”.Now, six months on from that announcement, he has provided a lengthier explanation of his decision, writing on social media: “What I do on stage when I play the sax is intense both physically and emotionally”.“I’m able to undertake the kind of intense touring which finds me on the road consistently”, he goes on, “treating the performance of a spiritual practice as a commodity to be sold repeatedly because of my enthusiasm towards what I’m doing. The moment this enthusiasm wanes in the slightest is the moment it’s time to reassess artistic orientation.

An “ultra rare” Ed Sheeran demo CD has sold at auction for £8000. Just 21 copies of the album, recorded when Sheeran was thirteen, are known to exist.

Nina Keith has returned with her first new track since 2021, ‘Blow Up Yr Life (U Need To)’.Written during a turbulent period as she relocated from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, the track sees Keith collaborate with musician Barrie and composer Qur’an Shaheed to create a vivid soundscape. Despite its micro-emitted sounds, the track conjures up imagery of nature, from running water to time-lapses of plants unfurling, reminiscent of artists like The Books and Susumu Yokota.“Lately the more I wear the turmoil of my life on my sleeve the more often I find myself in conversations with strangers and loved ones that reach a similar end”, says Keith.“I can never be the one to tell someone to burn it down and start over.

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz has been discussing his band’s updated cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’. He’s explained the thinking behind the post-1989 events that they included, and also those that they didn’t – most notably the COVID pandemic, which, in a song about significant world events from the last 34 years, you might have thought would feature quite prominently.Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Wentz said that the idea to update the song had been “brewing for so long”, but until recently he had been trying to convince other artists that they should do it.“I’ve been trying to get somebody to do it for four years”, he explained. “And finally Patrick [Stump, frontman] was like, ‘We should just do it’”.With that decided, then came the task of choosing what to include in the verses.

A grand jury in Harris Country, Texas has declined to indict Travis Scott in relation to the Astroworld tragedy that occurred in November 2021. Jurors likewise concluded that there we insufficient grounds to pursue criminal charges against five other people involved in organising the event.Ten people died and hundreds more were injured when a crowd surge occurred during Scott’s headline set at the Houston-based festival he founded, which took place at the city’s NRG Park on 5 Nov 2021.A criminal investigation got underway almost immediately, with police investigating whether the actions of Scott and various other people working on the Live Nation-promoted festival contributed to the crowd surge.That investigation was completed last week and resulted in a report that runs to over 1000 pages.

Holly Humberstone has announced that she will release her debut album ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ later this year. To celebrate this long-awaited news, she’s put out not one, but more than one new single. A double A-side, if you will.

Cooking Vinyl Publishing has extended its deal with songwriter Matt Attard – the company having originally taken him on in 2019.To date, Attard’s biggest success has been with Norwegian artist Pedar Elias, whose album ‘Love & Loneliness’ went six times platinum in 2022.“I’m so happy to extend our relationship with Matt”, says Cooking Vinyl Publishing MD Ryan Farley. “He is the real deal; super talented, musically versatile, hardworking, open-minded and a genuinely good guy to have in the room!”Referencing the platinum discs awarded to ‘Love & Loneliness’, Farley continues: “It was a joy to present [Matt] with his first plaque for the Pedar Elias record and I’m sure it will be the first of many.

Logic has sold his music catalogue to the BlackRock and Warner Music-backed Influence Media Partners in an “eight-figure deal”.“Logic is a changemaker with an independent mindset and entrepreneurial spirit”, says Founding Advisor Rene McLean. “He’s proven himself to be a multifaceted artist who never confines himself to one box”.“Logic has made a tangible impact not only on the music charts, but on culture, and his commitment to destigmatising and raising awareness around mental health issues is admirable”, he goes on.

DEALSZayn Malik has signed a new record deal with Universal Music – releasing through Mercury in the US and Island in the UK. “As soon as Zayn and I met, I knew we had to work together”, says Mercury Records President Tyler Arnold.

Rachael Lavelle is not what you’d call a prolific recording artist. I made a note to feature her in this column as soon as she released something new when I saw her perform live back in October 2021 – at which point her then most recent single, ‘Perpetual Party’, was already two years old.

DEALSPrimary Wave has bought a stake in the songs catalogue of George Brown, founder member and drummer with Kool & The Gang. “Kool & The Gang’s influence on generations of musicians and fans around the globe cannot be denied”, says Primary Wave SVP Business And Legal Affairs Samantha Rhulen, who also confirms that the company is “THRILLED” to be partnering with Brown.Reservoir Media has acquired music rights from four of the founding members of The Spinners.

Fall Out Boy have released an updated version of Billy Joel’s song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ in order to, I don’t know, highlight how lists are still a thing, or something.Joel’s original song was released as a single in 1989 and listed 118 people and events from politics, culture, science and sport that had proven notable between 1949, the year when Joel was born, and the year of the track’s release.So, your first verse goes like this: “Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray, South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television, North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe, Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom, Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye, Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen, Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye”.Anyway, it’s now 34 years since Joel released the song. So, to mark this, erm, milestone, Fall Out Boy have recorded a new version, listing significant things that have happened since 1989.

Madonna has postponed the start of her 40th anniversary tour next month after developing a “serious bacterial infection” last weekend, which required intensive care treatment.“On Saturday 24 Jun, Madonna developed a serious bacterial infection which lead to a several day stay in the ICU”, wrote her manager Guy Oseary in a statement posted on Instagram. “Her health is improving.

Kanye West has formally responded to an unauthorised sample lawsuit filed against him late last year which claimed that his track ‘Life Of The Party’ sampled Boogie Down Productions track ‘South Bronx’ without licence. Seeking to get said lawsuit dismissed, West’s team cite the Bible’s Tenth Commandment before getting down to more routine copyright arguments around fair use and ownership.West and his business partners were sued by a company called Phase One Network last November, which says that it controls the rights in ‘South Bronx’, the lead single from ‘Criminal Minded’, the 1987 debut album from the KRS-One-led Boogie Down Productions.The plaintiff claimed that it had been approached by West’s team in July 2021 when the rapper was busy working on his ‘Donda’ album, on which ‘Life Of The Party’ sort of appeared.

Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Dolly Parton and Adele were among a group of artists who protested outside Meta’s London offices yesterday. Not the actual artists, obviously, but a group of tribute acts.

Following his Glastonbury performance last weekend, Lewis Capaldi has announced that he is cancelling all upcoming live shows in order to concentrate on improving his physical and mental health.Earlier this month, Capaldi cancelled several dates in the UK and Europe, saying that he needed time to “rest and recover” in order “to be at my best and ready for Glastonbury”. During a well-received performance at the festival on Saturday, the musician nonetheless visibly experienced ‘ticks’ as a result of his Tourettes syndrome – with which he was diagnosed last year – and later in the set began to lose his voice.In a statement posted to social media yesterday, he told fans: “The fact that this probably won’t come as a surprise doesn’t make it any easier to write, but I’m very sorry to let you know I’m going to be taking a break from touring for the foreseeable future”.“I used to be able to enjoy every second of shows like this and I’d hoped three weeks away would sort me out”, he continued.

Following their surprisingly unsurprising surprise appearance at Glastonbury this weekend, the Foo Fighters have announced a series of UK stadium shows for next summer.

APPOINTMENTSCross-sector trade group UK Music has confirmed Eunice Obianagha as its first Head Of Diversity. She will develop the organisation’s diversity strategy and work with its Diversity Taskforce, and also offer advice and support to the other trade bodies that make up the UK Music membership.Wise Music has appointed Massimiliano ‘Max’ Moroldo as MD of the recently established Wise Music Italy.

1. I’m Still Standing2. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart3. Rocket Man4. I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues5. Your Song6. Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me7. Step Into Christmas8. Candle In The Wind9. Sacrifice10. Are You Ready For Love

wrote on Twitter yesterday. “No one is more excited than us to be sharing something with you later in the year”.However, he added, “we’ve seen some confusion and speculation about it.

Kesha and Dr Luke have settled their long-running defamation legal battle, both posting statements confirming the settlement to Instagram. It means that a court battle due to get properly underway in New York next month will now not happen.Luke’s defamation lawsuit against Kesha was all that remained of what began as a multi-layered multi-state legal battle between the producer and musician.

DEALSPeermusic has acquired the entire songs catalogue of the late bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs and the majority of the songs catalogue of his son Gary Scruggs. It was already involved in managing the Scruggs catalogue, however, via the new deal, “Peermusic acquires the US rights it was previously administering for Earl Scruggs as well as some of the songs that were previously controlled by the Scruggs estate”.————————————————–APPOINTMENTSWarner Chappell Music in the US has announced the promotions of Wallace Joseph to SVP A&R and Jon Chen to VP A&R.

DEALSPeermusic has acquired the entire songs catalogue of the late bluegrass musician Earl Scruggs and the majority of the songs catalogue of his son Gary Scruggs. It was already involved in managing the Scruggs catalogue, however, via the new deal, “Peermusic acquires the US rights it was previously administering for Earl Scruggs as well as some of the songs that were previously controlled by the Scruggs estate”.————————————————–APPOINTMENTSWarner Chappell Music in the US has announced the promotions of Wallace Joseph to SVP A&R and Jon Chen to VP A&R.

Taylor Swift has announced a load more dates for her The Eras Tour, including UK shows in June next year, and some extra London dates in August 2024 as well.“Excuse me, hi, I have something to say”, she posted on Twitter yesterday. “I can’t wait to see so many of you on The Eras Tour next year at these new international dates!”In addition to shows in Latin America later this year, Swift will also play Japan, Australia and Singapore in early 2024, before arriving in Europe in May with a couple of dates in Paris.Fans were urged in the tweet to visit Swift’s website for “more information on your registrations, pre-sales and on-sales!” Ah yes, registrations and pre-sales for a Taylor Swift tour, what could possibly go wrong with that? Nothing, nothing can go wrong.

Bucks Music in the UK and Mushroom Music in Australia have together signed Joshua Epithet to a publishing deal. The Manchester-based artist/producer is already working with Mushroom’s labels on his recordings, including his first single of 2023, ‘She Writes Fanfiction’.Confirming the new deal around Epithet’s songs, Bucks’ Director Of A&R Sarah Liversedge Platz says: “We are ecstatic to be working with Joshua Epithet.

Universal Music Publishing has only gone and signed itself Niall Horan to one of those big fuck off global publishing deals that all the cool kids keep talking about. Endlessly talking about them they are. TikTok is full of cool kids talking about global publishing deals.

RELEASESGucci Mane will release new album ‘A Breath Of Fresh Air’ on 13 Oct. Out now is new single ‘Bluffin’, featuring Lil Baby.Rick Astley has announced that he will release new album ‘Are We There Yet?’ on 6 Oct. “Now, that phrase has multiple meanings”, he says of the title.

Corinne Bailey Rae will release her first album since 2016 later this year. Several years in the making, ‘Black Rainbows’ is inspired by items collected by visual artist Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago.“I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever”, says Bailey Rae.