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Music News: Unreleased Prince music emerges during Versace fashion show

by Staff

June 20, 2016

Fashion designer Donatella Versace has shared music she says Prince wrote and gave to her 21 years ago. Playing the music during her menswear show at Milan Fashion Week, Versace issued a statement saying she "would like to use this special occasion as an opportunity to share this incredible music from a dear, and much missed friend." (SPIN)

Is more of Prince's music — possibly including unreleased music — headed to Broadway? Charles Koppelman, a music-industry veteran who's helping to manage the star's estate, has reportedly hinted that a jukebox-style musical could be in the cards. "Prince was an icon on the level of The Beatles and Michael Jackson, and his legacy should be honored," Koppelman told the New York Post.

Chino Moreno performs inside a volcano

Deftones frontman Chino Moreno has played a show inside an inactive volcano, for 20 fans who paid approximately $2,000 each to see the three-song set, which Iceland's Secret Solstice Festival called "the world's first public gig inside a volcano." Moreno's set list included the Deftones song "Change (In the House of Flies)" as well as, reportedly, a Morrissey song and a song from David Bowie’s album Blackstar. There was even an opener: Snorri Helgason. (Pitchfork)

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Today's movie news

There's a release date and a trailer for Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years. The film will be released in movie theaters on Sept. 15 and will subsequently hit Hulu — who are releasing the film as the first offering from their new documentary-video arm — two days later. Howard has been "working closely" with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on the authorized film, reports Rolling Stone.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams is adapting a new book about the last days of Michael Jackson into a TV series, reports Billboard. Author Tavis Smiley’s Before You Judge Me: The Triumph and Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Last Days is being published Tuesday. There are no specifics as of yet regarding the timing of the TV series.

Attorneys for Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have asked Judge R. Gary Klausner to halt the trial over the alleged plagiarism of their song "Stairway to Heaven." Page and Plant say that after three days of testimony, the estate of Randy Wolfe has not established the legal elements of a claim that the song was cribbed from "Taurus" by Wolfe's band Spirit. (Billboard)

Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift are among 160 artists and record labels calling for the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to be reformed. According to a public petition to Congress, the act "has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters' and artists' earnings continue to diminish." (Rolling Stone)

Check your Ticketmaster account: you might have ticket vouchers waiting for you. As a result of a class-action lawsuit over ticket fees, the ticketing giant is giving eligible customers vouchers for free tickets to selected events. (Billboard)

M.I.A. in Black Lives Matter controversy

M.I.A.’s participation in the inaugural Afropunk festival has come in for criticism due to comments the artist made this spring about the Black Lives Matter movement. "It’s interesting that in America the problem you’re allowed to talk about is Black Lives Matter," she said at the time. "Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say Muslim Lives Matter? Or Syrian Lives Matter? Or this kid in Pakistan matters?" M.I.A. later clarified that she supports the Black Lives Matter movement, but that she also thinks attention should be drawn to discrimination and violence directed at Muslims. (Pitchfork)

Neil Young won't sell MP3s

Neil Young hates MP3s so much, rather than sell them to you he'd prefer you just rip them yourself. "Go onto Tidal and just record it off Tidal!" he told podcaster Marc Maron. "I can't sell that crap," he said, referring to compressed audio — then admitted, "When I start talking like that, my manager shows up." (Pitchfork)

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