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Pearl Jam have been named this year's official Record Store Day ambassadors. They'll be working with the initiate to promote vinyl shopping on Saturday, April 13. Since Eagles of Death Metal's Jesse Hughes became the first Record Store Day ambassador in 2009, rock-star ambassadors have included Iggy Pop, Jack White, Chuck D, Dave Grohl, and St. Vincent.

It's appropriate that Pearl Jam are getting behind Record Store Day, since they had the last big seller of the original vinyl era. After the success of their 1994 release Vitalogy, no record sold as many copies for two decades...until Jack White rode the crest of the new vinyl boom with Lazaretto in 2014. The lead single from Vitalogy was called, very appropriately, "Spin the Black Circle."

Garth Brooks joins Pirates for spring training

The Pittsburgh Pirates have recruited a 57-year-old rookie for spring training. Granted, they only finished barely over .500 last season...but are they really that desperate? Well, here's a key detail: the new player's name is Garth Brooks. The country star is joining the Pirates at spring training this week as a fundraiser for his Garth Brooks Teammates for Kids children's charity. This is the 20th anniversary of that foundation, and previously Brooks has done similar stunts with the Padres, the Mets, and the Royals.

Brooks's appearance at spring training was a surprise to his teammates. Left fielder Corey Dickerson said, "I went out to take some fly balls and the guy didn't look familiar. Then it hit me. It's really cool. My brother and I grew up listening to his music." (Billboard)

Tidal allows users to mute artists

The streaming service Tidal has enabled a feature similar to one recently introduced by Spotify, allowing users to mute designated artists and make sure their songs don't get played on the user's accounts. When Spotify introduced the feature, the streaming giant was criticized for taking an easy out rather than making tough choices about what artists to block across the board...but then, when it did block artists across the board, at least from its own curated playlists, it was criticized for that too. So far, the user-driven approach seems to be less controversial. (Pitchfork)

Grammys buck ratings slide...but why the silence on 21 Savage?

Good news for the Grammys: viewership numbers were up for Sunday's broadcast. Reaching an audience of 19.9 million viewers, they were only slightly better-watched than the 2018 awards, but given that last year's awards saw a huge 24% ratings drop over 2017, any increase counts as a huge win for the Recording Academy, especially since some of the night's biggest nominees (Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande) declined to perform. (New York Times)

Here's something else you didn't see on Sunday, as Jade and I mentioned in our analysis: anything besides a glancing mention of 21 Savage, the rapper who appeared on not one but two Record of the Year nominees: Childish Gambino's "This is America," which won both that award and Song of the Year, and "Rockstar," a Post Malone song where he had a much larger presence.

Malone played the song with Red Hot Chili Peppers as part of a medley on Sunday, but no one was there to handle 21 Savage's verse. The rapper himself wasn't available because he was being held in detention in Georgia by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for allegedly overstaying his visa.

One of 21 Savage's managers is now saying that their team tried to arrange recognition for the rapper during the Grammys, including a possible guest rapper to perform his "Rockstar" verse, but nothing came to fruition. Post Malone wore a "Free 21 Savage" shirt to the Grammys, but it wasn't visible during his performance. (Billboard)

Meanwhile, the rapper himself, according to U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, who's advocating for the artist's release, was being held "in solitary confinement, basically, 23 hours a day. And so his family is worried about him, and his community is worried about him." (NPR)

In breaking news just as we were getting ready to record today's episode, the rapper was reportedly released on bond pending a deportation hearing. (Consequence of Sound)

TikTok takes heat for low payments to artists

In our rundown of 2018's biggest music trends, we talked about the rise of lip-sync apps. Now, one of the biggest singalong apps, TikTok, is the subject of a major Pitchfork story about how some artists are complaining about meager payments for the use of their music on TikTok.

Basically, here's how TikTok works: you can create your own short videos, and if you want you can soundtrack them with music from a large licensed music library, or you can upload your own music. When I say it's popular, here are the kind of numbers I'm talking about: there are a million different videos using Ariana Grande's chart-topper "Thank U, Next." But there are also lots and lots of viral hits by much smaller artists on TikTok, often in cases where the music was uploaded without the artists' knowledge or permission.

Some of those artists are starting to look for more money from the platform, given that TikTok's parent company is currently worth three times the market value of Spotify. Legally, any time a music recording is used in any kind of music video, even a short amateur clip, the artist and songwriter are entitled to payment.

There are elaborate, complicated systems for getting artists paid when they work with a distributor, but that doesn't help artists like iLOVEFRIDAY, whose song "Mia Khalifa" had to become a massive TikTok hit before the platform reached out to their management to arrange payment. In the end, iLOVEFRIDAY agreed to let TikTok use their song for free in exchange for promoting future releases.

In another case, the band Falling in Reverse have a song called "Good Girls Bad Guys," which turned into a TikTok meme where guys change from "good boys" into "bad boys." The band have now made a grand total of $750 from TikTok, along with the same amount going to their record label. They're not sad about it, though.

The band's lead singer, Ronnie Radke, says, "I loved it — sales and streams skyrocketed off that song. I'll be honest, I don't really get the TikTok movement as a whole, but to each their own."

Atonal bluegrass song goes viral

"Merle Hazard," the comic bluegrass name of Nashville financial manager Jon Shayne, has a viral hit with a song all about, believe it or not, atonal music.

The song itself is mostly firmly tonal, detailing this history of a "dear ol' daddy" who used to love avant-garde classical music, then pauses for atonal solos on banjo and fiddle, as well as a moment of silence in honor of John Cage's infamously silent 4'33". (Washington Post)

Audio sampled in podcast
Jahzzar: "Comedie" (CC BY 4.0)
BoxCat Games: "Against The Wall" (CC BY 3.0)
Pearl Jam: "Spin The Black Circle"
Childish Gambino: "This Is America"
Post Malone feat. 21 Savage: "Rockstar"
Jesse Spillane - "Ruffling Feathers" (CC BY SA 4.0)
iLOVEFRiDAY: "Mia Khalifa"
Falling In Reverse: "Good Girls Bad Guys"
Merle Hazard: "(Gimme Some of That) Ol' Atonal Music"