The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has been rescheduled to November 7th.

Leslie Goldman, writing at Vox:

The closures are a way to enforce social distancing, a crucially important public health intervention that can help stop coronavirus transmission by avoiding crowds and large gatherings such as weddings, concerts, conferences, sporting events, and mass transit. Best practice requires maintaining at least a six-foot distance between yourself and others.

You may have already come into contact with an infected person — the woman who rode the bike before you at SoulCycle, the kindly fellow who coughed while standing next to you in line at Costco, or someone who touched your mail as it made its way to your mailbox. (At least one study estimates that about 25 percent of transmissions of coronavirus may have occurred in pre-symptomatic stages — meaning it may be spread by people who don’t yet know they have the virus.)

Things are really weird right now. Waking up to the various news headlines on my phone feels impossibly surreal. We’re still trying to figure out everything and what our lives are going to look like going forward. Hannah’s currently in our kitchen doing violin lessons over Skype and I’ve got beach sounds going through my headphones to block out the world and get some work done. I thought this article did a good job walking through how and what our responsibilities and lives should look like going forward in the short to medium term.

Stay safe out there, and wash your damn hands.

Billboard:

Recognizing national concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, Live Nation is instructing its touring shows to prepare to return home, Billboard has learned. The announcement affects all Live Nation tours, domestically and internationally.

Earlier Thursday (March 12) the company told employees it is hitting the pause button on current touring arena shows through the end of the month. A few shows will play out Thursday and Friday, but the remainder of the shows starting this weekend will be postponed.

In the Atlantic, Alan Taylor has put together a photo gallery of various public spaces that are now virtually empty due to COVID-19.

Ultra Music Festival is being postponed due to coronavirus:

The 2020 Ultra Music Festival will be postponed — possibly for a full year, which would effectively cancel this year’s edition of Miami’s marquee electronic dance music event, the Miami Herald has learned.

The decision to postpone, which sent shock waves through the electronic dance music community on social media, was made in a meeting Wednesday morning between Miami’s elected leaders and Ultra representatives, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

If this keeps spreading I feel like it will have a huge impact on the music industry. Touring is how many artists make their living. The ramifications could be enormous.

Vulture put together a list of the “100 greatest emo songs” of all time. By and large, pretty damn good list. It’s full of great songs and there’s some massive nostalgia factor in there. Obviously, I have a pretty strong attachment to this genre of music. And, I thought the authors handled the issue of Brand New about the best you can:

Initially, they were considered a viable candidate because telling the story of emo without Brand New would be like making a 1980s list without Thriller. “More broadly speaking, there’s a difference between not supporting a band going forward and writing them out of history,” Garland noted. But on further reflection, this isn’t simply a historical account of emo, but rather a series of subjective opinions organized to quantify greatness. Especially after witnessing Leaving Neverland and Surviving R. Kelly in the time since the initial voting, it became impossible to include Brand New on this list and not replicate the same mistake that’s plagued popular music throughout history — condoning an artist’s actions and minimizing the victims if the music’s good enough.

This is a topic I think about a lot and I still have no good answers. I keep thinking one will come, but maybe I’m just lying to myself that I’ll be able to think my way to some kind of clarity. I’ve started and stopped various essays on this topic multiple times because I still feel too close to it and it always ends up with me in a weird headspace. But, how the authors handled this feels right to me.

Anne Steele, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. music streams on services like Spotify Technology AB, Apple Music and YouTube rose 30% last year to top one trillion for the first time, according to Nielsen Music’s annual report, fueled by big releases from artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Post Malone.

Streaming services have upended how people listen to and pay for music, and now account for 82% of music consumption in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Sales of physical albums, meanwhile, dropped off 19% in 2019 and now make up just 9% of overall music consumption.