In 1998, Brooklyn-based hip-hop superstars Talib Qweli and yasiin bey (still then going by Mos Def and capitalizing his name) found themselves recording at the same time, each working on a solo album. With the support of DJ and producer, Hi-Tek, they decided to put their individual projects on hold and make a joint album. That collaboration brought us Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star, one of the most critically acclaimed albums in the history of hip-hop. 

Now, Qweli and bey, this time with Madlib on the boards, have announced the imminent release of Black Star's sophomore album, No Fear of Time, on May 3rd. But for indiscernible reasons, the collective's first drop in nearly a quarter century is exclusive to the Luminary podcast network.

“About 3-4 years ago I was visiting yasiin in Europe and we started to talk about songs to do on an album," Kweli recalled in a Friday press release, "so I flew an engineer out just to see what that would be. Once I realized this conversation is starting to organically become a creative conversation, I started making sure to have the engineer around at all times. There was one day we were just in a hotel listening to Madlib beats, and he’s like ‘Play that Madlib tape again.’ I’m playing the beats and he starts doing rhymes to the beats. And that’s how we did the first song.”

Kweli added, “This is very similar to how we did the first album. But the first album, there were no mobile studios. This entire album, we have not set foot in one recording studio. It’s all been done in hotel rooms and backstage at Dave Chappelle shows.”

The 9-track album drops on May 3rd. You'll need a Luminary subscription ($3 a month after a 7-day trial) or access to Apple Podcasts in order to listen. 

If you were trying to watch Drake, Taylor Swift, Lil Nas X, The Weeknd, Eminem, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, Kanye West, Michael Jackson and other artists on YouTube this morning, you may not have seen what you expected. Music video network Vevo was reportedly attacked by someone with the Twitter handle @lospelaosbro, who uploaded some extremely strange clips, The Verge reported. Those included video of a rapper called Lil Tjay and a man called Paco Sanz who was sent to jail for scamming donations after lying about having cancer. 

Vevo acknowledged the incident to The Verge, saying that "some videos were directly uploaded to a small number of Vevo artist channels earlier today by an unauthorized source." It added that no pre-existing content was accessible to the attacker and said that it would be "conducting a review of our security systems."

Vevo is owned primarily by music labels Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. The company says it controls "the largest network of music channels on YouTube," and essentially acts like a contractor, allowing distributors to merge Vevo channels with existing channels as "Official Artist Channels." Google supplies ads for Vevo videos and also owns a small stake in the service.

According to a Vevo FAQ, artists don't post their videos directly, but send them to "content providers" for uploading. Content providers include major labels like Universal Music Group and Sony Music, along with independent distributors. The hacked artist channels belong to multiple labels and Vevo said that they have now been secured and the incident is resolved.

Now that pandemic restrictions have started lifting, people are eager to go back to the activities they used to do, such as seeing live music performances. Shazam has launched a new feature meant to make it easier to find shows nearby, so music lovers don't miss events they can easily go to. Starting today, when users Shazam a song or search for it in the app or on the website, they'll also see relevant concert information and tickets on sale for upcoming shows near their location.

If they have a specific artist in mind, though, they can simply launch the new Shazam Artist page on the platform and see the dates, times and locations of upcoming performances. Tapping on any of them will show additional tour or show information, along with the ability to add any event to their calendar. Shazam uses information from concert discovery app Bandsintown for this feature, and musicians who want the service to display their event details will have to make the information available via Bandsintown For Artists.

Shazam's new concert feature is now available on iOS and Android. "Shazam has a long history of innovation in music discovery and connecting artists and fans," Apple VP for Apple Music and Beats Oliver Schusser said. "With the reemergence of live music, we're excited to give Shazam users access to concerts and bring even more discoverability to artists." Apple, which purchased Shazam back in 2018, said last year that the app IDs over a billion songs per month. With this feature, Shazam has taken its music discovery service to another level. 

TikTok now has its own music distribution platform. The social network has launched SoundOn, which allows artists to upload their music directly to TikTok and to distribute it to various music streaming services. ByteDance, the app's parent company, won't be charging artists any distribution or transaction fees. Artists will get 100 percent of their royalties for an unlimited time when TikTok creators use their music for their videos, as well as for whatever they earn on ByteDance's music streaming service Resso.

For other streaming services that include Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora, artists will get 100 percent of their royalties in the first year and then 90 percent in the years after that. As TechCrunch reports, other similar music distribution platforms charge subscription fees or charge for distribution while paying out 100 percent in royalties to artists. 

SoundOn users will be able to choose which streaming services they want to upload their music to. They'll also get access to audience insights, advice from the SoundOn marketing team and promotional support from TikTok. They'll get verified on TikTok, as well, and other users will see their profile under the song page for their tracks. As noted on SoundOn's FAQ page, artists will get to keep all the rights to their music, and they're not expected to use the platform exclusively.

TikTok already has a massive effect on the music industry, thanks to viral videos on the app that tend to use the same catchy tunes. The SoundOn platform, which could potentially expand TikTok's influence even further on today's music landscape, is now live in the US, UK, Brazil and Indonesia, and musicians in those regions can visit its website to register.

Fans of the fab four, take note. Apple has uploaded a new version of the band’s 1 compilation album that includes support for spatial audio with Dolby Atmos. First released in 2000, 1 brings together nearly every number-one single the Beatles released between 1962 and their breakup in 1970. Among the songs you’ll find on the album are “She Loves You,” “We Can Work It Out” and “Get Back.” Giles Martin, the son of legendary Beatles collaborator George Martin, produced the new spatial mix. And as before, the tracks are sequenced according to release order, so it provides some sense of the band’s musical evolution.

To get the most out of the mix, you’ll want to listen with a pair of AirPods or Beats earbuds or headphones with an H1 or W1 chip. The effect is most noticeable when you enable head tracking. You can do that by pulling down the Control Center shade in iOS, long pressing on the volume slider that appears and then tapping the spatial audio icon. The mix isn’t revelatory, but if nothing else, it’s an excuse to revisit some of the most influential songs in rock history.

Kanye West says fans won't be able to stream his next album on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or YouTube Music. He plans to release Donda 2 exclusively on his $200 Stem Player, a portable device that makes it a cinch for users to remix music.

"Today, artists get just 12 percent of the money the industry makes," West, who claimed he rejected a $100 million deal from Apple, wrote on Instagram. "It’s time to free music from this oppressive system. It’s time to take control and build our own."

His fans might not find it easy to listen to Donda 2 legally, however. West said 67,000 units of the Stem Player are currently available, though another 3,000 are being manufactured every day.

The device can be used as a regular music player to listen to music as the artist intended. Those who want to play around with songs can control the volume on four different tracks or stems. With Donda 2, West says, users will be able to play just the vocals, drums, bass or samples, or any combination of those. The Stem Player also allows users to add effects and create loops they can reverse, speed up or slow down. Owners can upload other songs to the device through the Stem Player website.

West brought his last album, Donda,to the Stem Player, but it's available to stream elsewhere too. As with pretty much everything West says, it's worth taking this announcement with a grain (or an entire shaker) of salt until he actually releases Donda 2, which appears to have 22 tracks. Even so, it's not impossible to imagine the album winding up on other platforms later.

Bandcamp has always had a serviceable if unpolished mobile app for streaming the tracks you buy from its platform. However, one thing you couldn’t do before today was queue albums and tracks. The good news is Bandcamp has addressed that shortcoming of its software with a new update that’s available through the App Store and Google Play Store.

To queue a song or album, navigate to your music library by tapping the heart icon located at the bottom of the interface, and then tap the album you want to play. You can queue the entire album by pressing the relevant button under the playback controls. To queue a single song, meanwhile, press the three dots icon located next to the individual track you want to listen to. You can also reorder what’s next at any point by dragging a song to another position in the queue.

We’ll be honest, it’s surprising Bandcamp’s app didn’t include a queuing feature before today, but then it probably wasn’t used for streaming music by as many people as you might think. Thanks to its support of musicians through the pandemic, Bandcamp has enjoyed an upswell in popularity and goodwill. At the start of the year, the company said approximately 800,000 people had spent more than $70 million buying music and merchandise through the 17 Bandcamp Fridays the company held throughout 2020 and 2021. While a lot of those people had probably bought music through Bandcamp before, at least some of them were new to the platform. And you have to imagine both groups want to listen their collections on the go.

In 1955, Harry Olson and Herbert Belar created the world’s first electronic synthesizer. Little could they have known then how much their invention would change the way people make music. From a song like Blue Monday from New Order to Midnight City from M83, so many era-defining tracks from the past few decades wouldn’t have been possible to record without synths in all their various forms. In honor of that legacy, Moog Music is launching a new documentary series. Dubbed Giants, it will tell the story of some of the people who helped shape both synths and electronic music as an art form.

You can watch the first episode starting today on Moog Music’s YouTube channel. It features Herb Deutsch, the co-creator of the Moog modular synth, talking about, among other things, how he and Bob Moog met. The footage of Deutsch talking is broken up with archival images and clips. It’s all pretty standard stuff, but if you’re a music nerd, you’ll want to check out the video.

In future installments of Giants, Moog has promised to feature individuals like Daniel Miller, the founder of legendary British music label Mute Records, and Bernie Krause, who alongside Paul Beaver, helped introduce people like George Harrison to electronic music. If you want to keep up with Giants, Moog suggests signing up for its newsletter.

A website called HitPiece that has been selling music-related NFTs has temporarily closed after artists accused it of appropriating their work without permission, Rolling Stone has reported. Outraged social media posts were issued recently from artists including Jack Antonoff, Eve 6, and Sadie Dupuis. "Any [Bleachers] NFTs are fake," Tweeted Jack Antonoff. "I do not believe in NFTs so anything you see associated with me isn't real."

The HitPiece website is apparently built on top of Spotify's API. Before shutting down, it appeared to be offering NFTs of songs and albums from the likes of John Lennon and BTS, including photos and album artwork, according to the Internet Archive. 

Like many other NFT business models, however, it's not clear what HitPiece was selling, exactly. "This particular grift doesn’t really affect artists in that HitPiece wasn’t even selling files of the songs — just the receipt of purchase to the general idea of them," Infant Island guitarist and grad student Alex Rudenshiold told Rolling Stone. "It's still copyright infringement. It's re-commodifying the metadata (art, song and album titles, etc.) to make money without permission." 

HitPiece, founded by former indie label owner Rory Felton, issued a statement. "Clearly we have struck a nerve and are very eager to created the ideal experience for music fans," it said on Twitter. "To be clear artists get paid when digital goods are sold on Hitpiece. "We are continuing to listen to all user feedback and are committed to evolving the product to fit the needs of the artists, labels and fans alike." 

However, artists are skeptical of HitPiece's claim that they will be paid. "They steal your music, auction NFTs of it on their site, and when they get caught they say don’t worry you 'get paid,'" the group Deerhoof tweeted. "I get that corporate types are simply greedy and cruel on principle but what kind of mind could even imagine that doubletalk like this could somehow make it OK?"

Perhaps taking inspiration from blockbuster music experiences in Fortnite, Warner Music Group is creating a performance venue in the metaverse. It's teaming up with The Sandbox to create a "hybrid of musical theme park and concert venue" on the platform.

Some of WMG's vast roster of artists (which includes the likes of Ed Sheeran, Green Day and Dua Lipa) are expected to play shows and take part in music experiences on the virtual stage. At a later date, The Sandbox will offer ardent fans the chance to buy virtual property next to WMG's section of the metaverse.

The deal will result in The Sandbox's first music-themed world. The platform has teamed up with artists including Snoop Dogg, Deadmau5 and Steve Aoki on an individual basis, but this is its biggest music partnership to date. WMG and The Sandbox didn't say when the virtual venue will debut.

Other major music companies have started making moves in the metaverse. Last month, Universal Music Group joined the bandwagon with official metaverse avatars for its artists.