As digital download sales plummet—along with sales of physical music formats, excluding vinyl—Apple is focusing on streaming as the future of its music services. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple will re-launch Beats Music (which it now owns) next year as a part of iTunes rather than a standalone service.

On the one-year anniversary of Lou Reed's death, John Cale released a video for a new recording of his 1982 song "If You Were Still Around," paying tribute to his former Velvet Underground bandmates as well as Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick. (Rolling Stone)

Any Prince appearance on Saturday Night Live would be a big deal, but this Saturday's deal just got bigger: SNL will make the unprecedented accommodation of allowing Prince and 3RDEYEGIRL to play—rather than two separate songs—a single, uninterrupted eight-minute jam. (Local Current)

Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, also known as "the Mother Church of Country Music," broke ground on a $14 million renovation that will include, Billboard reports, "expanded lobby and retail areas, a cafe space in the outdoor plaza and an interactive multimedia tour." The interior auditorium itself "will remain virtually untouched."

The first 600 fans who order a copy of the new Go-Betweens anthology G Stands For Go-Betweens—Volume One will receive a book from the personal library of the band's co-founder Grant McLennan, who died in 2006. The four-disc box set will be released in January. (Billboard)

Monday was a big day for Taylor Swift: she released her new album 1989, she was named as the headliner of the upcoming New Year's Rockin' Eve, and the recently relocated Pennsylvania-via-Nashville native was named the "global welcome ambassador" of New York City.

Stitchers, a Miami rapper whose bizarre "Brick In Yo Face" video has gone viral on YouTube, invited a number of women onstage with him at a recent show to...do cocaine. Given how deeply illegal that is, it went surprisingly well until the artist's wife started yelling at him and he quit the performance to argue with her. Of course, the whole incident was captured on video. (Stereogum)

Listen to the Morning Show’s music news roundup on the Current every weekday at 9:00 a.m. to hear Jill Riley and Steve Seel discuss the latest music news.